Read time 2 minutes. Goth Zen isn’t costume worship. It’s the same instinct that made the ancients draw a sacred outline around the window of perception. Cleopatra Eyes is a stand alone article in our ongoing Goth Zen series.
Goth Zen? Seems silly, right? Maybe.
Until you realize that some rituals are as old as the pyramids.
You know the look—flawlessly traced eyeliner.
Unapologetically dark.
“I don’t care” drawn with care.
Perfect lines pretending.
But long before cat-eyes flickered in clubs, kohl ringed the eyes of the living and the dead.
That’s right—Cleopatra was doing full-commitment eyeliner millennia before Hot Topic.
And it wasn’t for fashion. It was sacred.
The Eye of Horus tells the story of sight lost and renewed—
The god Horus losing and regaining his eye after battling Set.
To wear kohl was to embody that myth—to participate in the eternal repair of sight itself.
What’s more, Egyptians understood the eyes to be day and night—one for seeing, one for sensing.
Left eye, moon.
Right eye, sun.
Intuition and logic taking turns.
The makeup wasn’t vanity—it was balance.
The kohl line tied day and night together, kept the light from drifting too far in either direction:
a living yin-yang around perception. Goth Zen.
Kohl was applied daily with intent—both art and alchemy.
Literal and spiritual sunscreen.
Minerals to protect and heal, and a barrier against hostile, draining energy.
For if eyes are windows of perception for the soul, they are also open doors.
The line that sharpens vision
When Goth crosses over into Goth Zen, it becomes more than just eyeliner and ennui.
The line sharpens vision—“I see, and the mask is seen through.”
Eyeliner as clarity—the ritual of drawing the line before crossing it,
the threshold between fascination and dissolution.
A line that dissolves with the one who drew it.
Darkness is not always something to fear or get lost in.
Is darkness the opposite of light—or is it what gives light its shape?
That’s the question, isn’t it?
Because when dueling opposites stop competing and start completing as one,
you are finally seeing.
The deeper the black, the clearer the outline.
Filling the gaps
So, you think Goth Zen is silly?
Cleopatra ruled empires and still made time for eyeliner.
Turns out, people like their edges defined.
Like the myth of the Eye of Horus—sight dies and comes back clearer.
What was fractured has been made whole again.
Not a disguise, but a ritual of precision—
symmetry as a way of remembering balance:
sun and moon, reason and instinct, life and its shadow,
all meeting in a single stroke of black.
Awareness in costume.
Consciousness at play.
Accessorizing with death.
Clarity just looks better through black.
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Explore more:
The kohl and myth of the Eye of Horus on Wikipedia.
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