How can rituals guide, mislead or comfort us? For the second episode of our collaboration with The Couch*, Bea Xu’s piece EsƨƎ-1 invites us to follow the leader of an anthrax death cult. Made in collaboration with Markéta Skalková and formed by Xu’s research into melting permafrost, their work imagines a post-anthropocentric future where anthrax spores have become objects of fascination and obsession, containing magical properties, transforming skeletons into talismans and forests into autonomous actors against climate devastation. Together we delve into how the occult can provide tools to process extinction beyond nihilism, a means to navigate death in organic or organised ways and how rituals can engage with technological advancements, through both individual and collective means of relating to the planet. This episode contains themes of death and suicide. *The Couch, is a digital editorial and arts platform to continue these debates through texts, screenings and online discourse.Bea Xu is a Chinese-British psychic worker experimenting with reality production. Using collaborative play, speculative fiction and therapeutic intervention they design and means-test integral, post-Anthropocene cosmologies with live participants and fellow accomplices. Often foregrounding blood magic, decolonized time and non-binary logic with an EcoGothic focus, their work engages with archetypal shadow and is informed by their training as an integrative, transpersonal psychotherapist. A studio resident at London’s HQI, Bea is a member of oiioiooi collective and completed the 9th Alternative Education Programme at Rupert, Vilnius. They are the creatrix of ritual laboratory LUNARCHY 2.0 and have collaborated with Furtherfield Gallery, Omsk Social Club and Ittah Yodah – with work selected for Solo Show, Plague Space, Arts of the Working Class, amongst others, and shows in Prague, Oslo, Seyðisfjörður, Berlin, NYC and Milan.Artist: Bea XuHosts: Nina Davies and Niamh SchmidtkeMusic: Joe Moss and John TrevaskisProducer: Flo LinesBroadcast through Radio Thamesmead, and released with The Couch (Het HEM)