ENOCHIAN MAGIC: THE CRY OF RII, THE 29TH AETHYR

FIRST THERE WAS a yawning void, and I was falling upwards into it.  I seemed to fall forever.  Then there was light in the darkness, a growing brightness.  Stars, planets, galaxies rushed past me.  Was I falling, or were they?  Upwards, faster and faster, I sped.  Then, above me, I beheld an immense black orb, burning in an aura of orange light not unlike the corona of the sun.  I was racing towards this, passing unburnt through the orange flames and swallowed whole in the darkness of the sphere.

My feet touched ground.  Slowly, as if lights were being raised in a darkened theater, a world around me emerged.  The brightness grew intense, like noonday.  Before me towered a giant Caduceus, forged of brass.  It seemed to me more Egyptian than Greek.  It was embedded like a flagpole in the ground, in the very center of a circular plaza orf brilliant white stone.  From the base of this Caduceus, that same orange light, like fire, rose and swirled upwards around the shaft.  It did not burn the metal, but caused the pole to hum and vibrate, wobbling rhythmically. 

I looked around me.  Around the edge of the plaza were greco-roman columns, of the same white stone.  Above was a clear blue sky, dazzling.  A few puffy white clouds hung in the air.  The entire plaza was open and airy, a soft breezing blowing through.

I strolled towards the edge of the plaza.  From there, I saw I was atop a high, grassy hill, green lawn stretching down a great distance around me.  All around were green, rolling hills, treeless, but each carved with chalk figures dug into the turf, reminding me of figures like the Uffington White Horse in England.  But these were not animals, or giants.  Each hill bore a variety of symbols, sometimes geometric figures, sometimes the runes or letters of dozens of different alphabets.  I marveled at this, walking around the circumference of the plaza looking out at the endless sea of strange, carven hills. 

Then I sensed movement behind me.

I turned to behold a Sphinx.  It was strolling away from me, towards the opposite side of the plaza.  It had the immense, tawny body of a lion, and great wings feathered white and brown like a hawk.  Its tail, however, a living Caduceus…a lion’s tail ending in a smaller pair of wings and around which two serpents, red and green, coiled.  Cautiously, I approached it.

Excuse me, I am SOMUE.  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

It turned slowly to face me.  It had a man’s face, with kohl around the eyes, and a pharaonic beard and head dress.  Under this, however, hung the pale, naked breasts of a woman from its chest.  It stared impassively at me.

Is this RII, the 29th Aethyr?

The creature face a nod.  That it is, Thelemite.  The sphinx spoke with the high, sweet voice of a little girl.

May I ask your name?

I am XILOPE, it answered.  I simultaneously heard and saw it.  You have questions, Thelemite.

I hesitated a moment, considering where to start.  What is the nature of this place?

It is the beginning of Bindings, of Yogas, of Religions.  The Sphinx replied.  This is where the Higher Planes are linked to your world.

It’s nature is communicative?  I saw the symbols in the hills.

The creature licked its front paw and nodded.  All words and symbols have their origins here.  This is where the Logos is made Flesh.  From these raw materials are hammered the realms of TEX and the Watchtowers.  But symbols are not the same as truths.  They suggest the truth, but cannot claim it.  To know the Real you must transcend the symbols, and cross the lightless dark of the Abyss.

I shuddered at this, and nodded, looking out at the horizon.  Somewhere out there lay the Abyss.  Is RII Mercurial then?

The creature flicked its tail.  In the sense that it connects the worlds of Gods to Men, yes.

RII is the foundation of thought?  Is that correct?

The Sphinx yawned and nodded again.  Obviously.  But not the foundation of experience.

How can I better understand this?  I asked.

The Sphinx indicated that I should follow, and so I did.  We left the plaza together and strolled down the grassy hillside.  At the bottom of the hill flowed a crystal clear stream.  As I looked more closely I saw it was not exactly water, but a sort of silvery, flowing light.  Around the stream grew tiny flowers of scarlet and yellow. 

There, Thelemite.  The cup.  The Sphinx pointed with its nose.

Beside the stream, on a small rocky ledge, was a silver chalice.  It was engraved with alchemical symbols, and had two handles, like wings, in the shape of laurel leaves.  You must drink, the Sphinx informed me.

Strangely, this made me nervous.  For a moment, I looked at the stream and it now seemed mercury, which I knew was highly toxic.  So I asked the Sphinx to give me a sign that it was a friend and not a foe.  

Clearly bored, it reared up on its hind legs to give the LVX signs.  When it fell back to all fours it watched me through lidded eyes.  Satisfied?

I nodded, and lifting the heavy cup dipped it into the stream.  Raising it to my lips, I drank.

As soon as I drank, a thousand million characters exploded in my mind.  Every letter of every alphabet, every glyph, every number, every possible symbol lost or yet to be discovered flashed through my brain.  It was overwhelming.  Endless streams of silvery data poured through my consciousness, and I understood wholly and completely that all manifest things are formed from pure information.  Anything that existed was a string of code.

Then, I blacked out.

I cannot say how long I was unconscious, but I opened my eyes in a bed of red velvet, the cushions trimmed with gold tassels.  There was a low table beside me, bearing a bowl of fruit.  An ornate Persian carpet, also crimson and gold, covered the floor.  Incense was burning.  All around the bed were scattered books and scrolls.  I looked around and realized I was in a great orange tent, like that of some bedouin king.

The Sphinx lay at the foot of the bed.  It raised its head when it saw me awake.  When you feel strong enough, you should perhaps return to your realm.

I sat up in bed.  That drink?  Was that the nature of Mercury I took into me?

You must gather what you will need for your journey.  What is now in you was in you before, but a seed has begun to grow.  You will now develop your mercurial powers.

I placed my feet on the floor as the Sphinx sauntered over and opened the tent flaps.  Sunlight streamed in.

I stood, and followed the creature out.  We were encamped by the side of the stream, at the base of the hill where the plaza stood.  

You may return any time that you wish, the Sphinx told me, but I can instruct you further only as your initiation deepens.

Thank you, I replied, and started back up the hill.  Now I walked a white stone path, and each stone bore a distinct character.  Then I realized that each of the red and yellow flowers growing on the hillside also bore a character, as did each and every blade of green grass.  Even the motes of pollen drifting through the air had their own unique markings.  Everything around me bore information for those who could read it.  The world was a book, waiting to be interpreted.

I re-entered the plaza, and immediately began falling upwards, back to the Earth.

Here ends the Vision of RII.

ENOCHIAN MAGIC: THE CRY OF TEX, THE 30TH AETHYR

NOTE: This is the first in a series of Enochian inspired visions.  Please read this Introduction before proceeding.

I FELL, upwards from the face of the world.  Up, up, up amongst the wheeling stars I plummeted into the night sky.  I saw the constellations moving around me like living beings of pale, blue-white fire.  Pegasus, Draco, and Scorpio moved by me.  Then I saw great wheels all around, tracing out the courses of the stars and planets.  It was as if I found myself in some great astrolabe of crystal.  Earth was at the center, around which all the heavens turned.

Then it seemed to me my eyes adapted to the dimness, for everywhere about me I could now see turning gears of transparent glass.  They were impossibly ornate, like the rose windows of a cathedral, or snowflakes.  They all moved in harmony with each other, the motion of one affecting the next, and thus maintaining the motions of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, as well as the turning of the Earth.  

Suddenly I saw the Angels all about me, everywhere.  Like ants they swarmed.  I perceived they were the engineers, maintaining the system of crystalline gears ceaselessly, diligently.  Everywhere they flew.  One of their countless number passed near me and I hailed him to stop.

He was fashioned of the same pale blue fire as the gears, but liquid and less dense.  He flamed and flickered like the blue of a gas flame.  Winged and robed, he bore no halo.  He was immaterial and ghostly.  Turning towards me he demanded my name.

SOMUE, I told him.  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Ah, said he, a Thelemite.  Then I say unto thee ‘Love is the Law, Love under Will.’

Cautious I gave the LVX signs to see if he was a hostile spirit, but he returned them with ease.  I asked him his name.

I am ZAAMPE, he replied.  I asked him to spell this for me and he did.  Then to me he asked, Why come you to this place?

I wish to walk all the Aethyrs, seeking the First.  What can you tell me of this Aethyr?

This is TEX, the Machinery of the Universe.  This is the densest of the Aethyrs, and most like unto the material world.

I recognized the phrasing.  Machinery of the Universe?  Is its character like Yesod, then?

Only distantly, he answered.  Man makes machinery of the world…machines of the animals, of the soil, of nature itself.  It is a defect in perception, seeing only half of what is.  TEX is the understanding of the Universe possessed by Man.

I considered this.  It is then only Man’s perception of the Universe, not its true character?

This Aethyr is shaped by the perceptions of those billions down below, he replied, gesturing towards the blue-green globe of the Earth hanging in the center of the void around us.  This is the machine of their making, as indeed they make we who work upon it.

What is the true nature of TEX, then?  I asked.  Can you reveal it to me?

At this, the Angel took up a great hammer.  His face suddenly bunched up in fury he swung the weapon in a great arc, shattering the closest gear.  A chain reaction spread through all the heavens.  The countless wheels screamed and shattered in a rain of jagged glass.  One by one the stars burst and faded to blackness.  The planets crumbled.  The Earth went dark.  All that was left was a desolate darkness, through which a wind howled and moaned.  

This is the true nature of things, from whence they come and to which they return.  The Void, the Angel told me.

I shivered in the darkness.  Are we to fear this?

You are to Understand and Embrace it, said the Angel.  Only this way can you cross the Abyss when that time comes to you.  The Machinery of the Universe, made by Man, with its calendars and clocks and laws is Illusion.

Suddenly, the darkness was lifted, and I beheld the stars and planets again.  The gears were back in place, restored by the angels.  They had dutifully repaired the machine.

Can you tell me any more of the nature of TEX?  I asked him.

I can only show you, he replied.  He took me by the hand and we fell downwards into the world, falling through the atmosphere and clouds, until I saw racing beneath us snow-capped mountain peaks.  So high were these jagged mountains that they seemed to touch the very sky. 

Then, on the highest of the high peaks, I beheld a terrifying figure in silhouette.  He was impossibly tall, looking like one of those towering mecha from Japanese animation, with massive, outstretched wings like an eagle and great horns upon his head.  He stood motionless on the mountain, arms reaching up like Atlas to support the sky.  We landed at his feet, tiny, like ants.

This is the essence of the Plane, the soul of TEX, my Guide informed me.

Then a great voice, like thunder or the roar of a titanic engine, boomed out.  MORTAL THING.  INSIGNIFICANCE.  COME FORWARD AND KNOW ME.  LAY YOUR PUNY HAND UPON MY FOOT IN OBEISANCE.

I did as he bade me, stepping forward through the deep drifts of snow.  I felt ridiculously small as I approached his massive right foot.  I saw now that his body was made of rusting iron plates, all haphazardly riveted together, piece by piece.  As I reached out to touch this Machine God, the rusted iron crumbled beneath my fingers.  The crumbling spread, and soon the entire statue was raining down upon me in jagged pieces and iron dust.  I caught one fragment in my hand.  The Eye of Horus was etched into the metal, inside a Triangle.  

That which ceases to move becomes stagnant, my Guide whispered in my ear.  Subject to entropy and decay.

As the great juggernaut disintegrated, the sky came crashing down with it.

September 30th, 2004     

ENOCHIAN MAGIC: SCRYING THE AETHYRS

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

Aleister Crowley

Visions.

Whether you view them as psychic explorations of higher planes or something more akin to Jungian active imagining, visions are an essential part of any magician's career.  It's the oldest magic, really, with roots deep in the shamanic experience.  To cross over into the Otherworld (however you wish to define it) and bring back treasures is the core of the magic experience.  It is what makes a magician a magician.

It's also a nearly universal motif, a classic feature of what Eliade, Campbell, Leeming, and Vogler understood as the Monomyth, or Hero's Journey.  The Hero sets out of his quest, and at some crucial point crosses over into the Unknown, which can be represented as an Underworld, an Otherworld, or an Inner or Outer world.  There he faces challenges and trials, gains wisdom and strength, at at some crucial point crosses an Abyss that leaves him irrevocably transformed.

Magic is interacting with Myth as much as anything else.  The magician deals habitually with gods, demons, and spirits liberated from story and fable.  For those seeking such visionary experiences, there are scores of systems available to the modern practitioner.  For my part, I have always had extraordinary success with the "Enochian" magic of John Dee.  I have operated other methodologies with varying degrees of success, but invariably and without fail, the process of chanting an Enochian Key or Call lights up my brain.  By the end I am flying.  The visions are the most coherent, the most vivid, the most intense.  And they have also had the most profound effect upon me.  Naturally I do not expect this to be true for everyone, and magicians all need to experiment to find which techniques best trigger visions for them.  I am hardly alone, however, in attesting the efficacy of the Enochian Calls.

I have been scrying the 30 Enochian Aethyrs or Aires for thirteen years now, keeping careful records of these sessions, as well as work with the spirits or "angels" of the Watchtowers, in notebooks set aside purely for Enochian work.  Recently, I crossed the 10th Aethyr, which in the Enochian cosmology is the Abyss, the gulf or chasm separating the phenomenal universe from the noumenal one. This was a transformational experience, reordering my priorities and changing the way I view things.  One side effect of the experience is the decision to share my experiences of scrying the Aethyrs, not with dogmatic intent but to--as Crowley states above--"convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine."  By making these records public, I hope to show others the type of experience that is possible, fully aware that these experiences are mine and naturally cannot mean to others what they mean to me.

I invite the reader to check out the links above first, to familiarize himself or herself with the Enochian system and cosmos.  The short version, however, is a gnostic cosmology in which the physical world is surrounded by 30 concentric "Aires" or "Aethyrs," the 30th being the innermost and closest to physical reality, the 1st bordering on the Divine, or "Ultimate Reality."  The Enochian magician experiences each in a series of visions, moving ever outwards.  The best example of this is probably Aleister Crowley's The Vision and the Voice, which provided many crucial elements of his system of Thelema.

In subsequent posts, I will be sharing abridged journal entries of my own journey across the Aethyrs, starting with the 30th Aethyr of TEX back in 2004 and moving forward.  My methodology has been more or less consistent.  I perform a banishing/purification followed by an invocation.  In my case, these are specifically The Star Ruby and The Star Sapphire, but again any equivalent rituals will do.  I then recite the 19th Enochian Call or Key, inserting the name of the Aethyr I intend to visit.  This is followed by intoning the names of the Governors associated with that Aethyr with my eyes closed.  The vision usually comes on fairly quickly.

I tend to narrate what I see and hear aloud, either recording myself or working with a partner who keeps a record.  

In the next post, we will start out journey with TEX.  

PSYCHONAUT: THE ART OF BLUEFLUKE

"...it is my position that art, language, consciousness and magic are all aspects of the same phenomenon. With art and magic seen as almost wholly interchangeable, the realm of the imagination becomes crucial to both practices."

- Alan Moore

Magic seems to go hand in hand with artistic impulses.  It only makes sense; Magicians and Artists work at manipulating symbols, and the act of "creation" is integral to both.  Rattle off a list of modern Magicians and you find a pack of artists as well.  Crowley was a poet and prolific writer.  Spare was a renowned visual artist.  Anton LaVey was a gifted musician keenly interested in the idea of the image as essential to magic.  Andrew Chumbley's works combine striking visual imagery with magic and poetry.  Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are both comic book high priests and public Magicians.  Indeed. if you dig deeply enough for the Indo-European roots of the words we use, it is even likely that magic and imagine derive from the same source (possibly PIE magh- "to be able, to have power").  It goes back to the shamans who painted on cave walls to ensure a good hunt, to the idea of seizing an idea from the hidden realms and shaping it into something tangible.

  

What we now call "chaos magic" originally was just referred to as "magical art" in seminal works like Liber Null and Psychonaut.  Generally viewed as the offspring of Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin (the latter of whom liked to use the term "the theatre of magic"), chaos magic was born in the 1970s as an attempt to look across the broad field of magical traditions in an attempt to distill the techniques and practices common to all.  It was meant to be magic ripped free of tradition, a highly individualistic path that encouraged the development of one's own symbol sets.  If Carroll and Sherwin were the parents, Austin Spare was clearly the grandfather (though to my mind, LaVey does not get the credit he should for being a sort of uncle).  At the core of sorcery, chaos magic wanted to tell us, was the exploration and manipulation of consciousness. "Belief," in this quest, was "a tool."  I would liken this to LaVey's "suspension of disbelief."  The idea was that magic invested symbols--any symbols--with power, irregardless of where these symbols were drawn from.  The Magician could invoke Isis or Gabriel or Alice in Wonderland so long as in the course of the ritual these beings were animated by belief.

Obviously this flies in the faces of hardcore Traditionalists like Julius Evola, who tended to see their symbols as a sort of Truth handed down from time immemorial.  This iconoclasm gave chaos magic its sort of "punk" glamor.  Chaos magic was a post modern field where magic was liberated from dusty grimoires and kabbalistic laundry lists.  Now magic could turn up anywhere.  Even, as Morrison and Moore have demonstrated time and time again, in comic books.

This brings us to Arch-Traitor Bluefluke.

Since I first tripped across Bluefluke's work, it has become a destination I recommend to anyone trying to get a sense of what chaos magic is  ("Curious about chaos magic?  Go check out http://bluefluke.deviantart.com").  All the hallmarks are there.  The Magician comes at you with a striking visual style simultaneously mystical, anime, and punk and a "magical name" that sounds like a rave DJ.  Bluefluke writes and illustrates with the same cocktail of respect/disdain for tradition that fuels zen, a yin-yang fusion of opposites essential for reaching "qabbalstic zero" (or again, Crowley's n + -n = 0).  In a way, this Magician is performing the same trick that LaVey used in slapping Satan across his magic...many will look at Bluefluke's art and think "this can't be taken seriously" and wander off (LaVey was going for the more "frightened off").  The intellectually curious, however, will stick around and suddenly discover how deep the well goes.  This is an ancient trick, my friends, separating the initiates from the voyeurs.

And Bluefluke is worth sticking around.  The Psychonaut Field Manual, at this writing in it's 3.5 incarnation with four of five chapters finished, is a free grimoire containing a completely workable system.  The title is obviously a wink and a nod to Peter J. Carroll, and this combined with the focus on gnosis (qabbalistic zero again), the Discordian touches and the frequent appearance of Michael Moorcock's star of chaos all plant Bluefluke firmly in the chaos magic stream, but the tech in its digital pages is universal.  This isn't to say that Bluefluke's work isn't highly idiosyncratic and recognizably unique, nor that the particular synthesis of ideas here isn't new (it is), but rather that this very uniqueness is showing by example what chaos magicians should be striving for.  "Take these tools and explore thyself."

I'm still fond of Grant Morrison's "Pop! Magic" essay as an entry point for chaos magic, but The Psychonaut Field Manual is meatier on a thousand different levels.  Browse the illustrations alone and the Magician communicates this approach to magic; they seem at once hieroglyphic and Pokemon, stained glass and Cartoon Network.  This gives the images a punch that even, say, Chumbley's illustrations did not have.  They seem to say "magic is not all spooky and scary...it is spooky and scary and cotton candy Wizard of Oz.  That alone is heady stuff.

So what is actually in this system?  It starts with the familiar chaos magic idea of gnosis, a transcendent state wherein opposites are reconciled and thus nullified, including the subject/object dichotomy.  This mental "void" state is akin to the yogic samadhi and Buddhist nirvana, a deep meditative state in which the mind is silenced.  It is in this state that commands are implanted, causing subsequent change in the Magician and his Microcosm.  Part of this process involves overcoming the Ego, which Bluefluke terms the "Selfconscious."  This is the "I" that most people identify themselves with, the "I" that speaks, goes to work, and pays the bills.  The Selfconscious is really just a construct, however, a complex operating system running on our brains that is built by our experiences. Bluefluke tells us the Selfconscious is just one of a Trinity of "selves", and these three must be brought into alignment to enter gnosis.  Its partners are the "Subconscious," which is the body and its animal drives, and the "Superconscious" which is the artist, the visionary, and idealist.  Exercises are offered to bring these into "Soul Resonance," alongside visualization and meditative techniques.  This is the core of the system, which always runs along the lines of "Invoke Soul Resonance, enter gnosis," and then perform whatever specific act of magic follows.

The rest of Psychonaut deals with techniques like sigilization, invoking and evoking, god forms, and astral projection...among a great deal else.  There is a lot crammed into this deceptively simple little work.  Along the way Bluefluke offers a new way of looking at traditional consciousness mapping like chakras or the Qabbalistic sephiroth, looking at these as evolutionary stages of brain development in a new eightfold system partially inspired by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.  

This is a beginner friendly system, but also a refresher course for those who are old hands at all of this.  Like most chaos magic is it stripped entirely of "religious" elements, pared down to simple techniques and workable exercises.  It's a manual you are going to want to actually use to understand.

As with Bluefluke's artwork, the writing style is refreshing.  It is playful while taking itself serious, irreverent while speaking reverently, and relentlessly modern while teaching tricks used since before the mammoths went extinct.    The Psychonaut Field Manual will entertain you, challenge you, and delight you.  What more could one want in a grimoire.

And while you are there, do check out Bluefluke's Tarot Trumps.  I might prefer the Thelemic re-alignment of the Thoth deck better, but there are some fresh, powerful images there.





  

       

THE DRACULA DOSSIER: A REVIEW

"I write to tell you how very much I have enjoyed reading Dracula. I think it is the very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years."

Letter, Arthur Conan Doyle to Bram Stoker

Dracula does not immediately present itself as a spy thriller, until you stop and think about it.  Here is a foreign power from the shadows of Eastern Europe, secretly buying up properties and planning the covert invasion of a Western democracy.  Here is an illegal immigrant smuggled into the country, a terrorist in the deepest sense of the word.  Here is a foe secretly recruiting the young and the vulnerable, brainwashing and turning them to his cause.  Here is a conspiracy that threatens the Crown.  Academics have wrangled over how exactly to classify Bram Stoker's 1897 masterpiece for more than a century, and many have described it first and foremost as invasion literature, the fear of the foreign creeping into society and taking it over.  Seen in this light, it becomes a spy thriller, or at least lends itself to being one with a little help.  That is where Ken Hite comes in.

Some of us have been Hite groupies since the days of Chaosium's Nephilim, and despite a wide variety of RPG credits (he was the line developer, for example, of Last Unicorn's Star Trek: The Original Series) he is probably best known as the guy you go to for painstakingly researched horror games.  We're talking Secret Societies and Major Arcana, we're talking Mage the Sorcerer's Crusade and The Cainite Heresy, we're talking GURPS Cabal and the definitive edition of GURPS Horror.  The list goes on.  Of late he has been with Pelgrane Press, writing the exceptional Trail of Cthulhu around Robin Laws' Gumshoe system.  But it is with The Dracula Dossier, a campaign setting for his Gumshoe-powered game Night's Black Agents that Kenneth Hite outdoes himself.  This thing, ladies and gentlemen, is a masterpiece.

Hite describes NBA as "Jason Bourne meets Dracula," but this is selling the core rules short.  Offering a wide variety of play modes, styles, and options, Agents could just as easily be "George Smiley meets Lestat," "Richard Hannay meets the alien energy drainers from Lifeforce," or "Jack Ryan meets Miriam Blaylock."  Essentially it comes down to the player characters being spies who discover, and take on, a massive vampire conspiracy, but both the type of spy thriller--from gritty, paranoid conspiracy tale to cinematic shaken-not-stirred action--and the nature of the vampires can be tailored to taste.

Agents was good, but the appearance of The Dracula Dossier elevated it to amazing.  While it consists of a full line of materials, I will be talking specifically about two books here; Dracula Unredacted and Director's Handbook.

The backstory goes like this:

In 1894, British Intelligence attempted to recruit the ultimate deniable asset, a vampire.  Their assets--George Stoker and Armin Vambery--had uncovered the existence of these creatures nearly two decades earlier on the front lines of the Russo-Turkish War.  Spymaster Peter Hawkins sends a young agent, Johnathan Harker, to bring the vampire in.  Transport is arranged for him to Britain and a safehouse secured.  But this vampire, Count Dracula, cannot be controlled.  He turns on his handler and launches his own schemes.  British Intelligence has no choice but to recruit others to terminate him.

In the fall-out of this mess, George Stoker's brother, Bram, is assigned the task of collecting all pertinent documents (diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings) to prepare the after action report.  For whatever reason, the original is then heavily redacted and released to the public as a misinformation campaign.  The rogue branch of Intelligence that attempted to recruit Dracula, Operation Edom, goes underground.

Neither Dracula, nor Edom, surrenders so easily.

In World War II Edom attempts to recruit Dracula again, and in the 1970s realize Dracula had left behind his own network of agents that was preying on British Intelligence and feeding secrets to the Romanians.  After the terror attacks of 7/7 in 2011, Edom crawls out of the woodwork yet again, hoping to recruit Dracula to eat his way through Al-Qaeda and ISIS.  But like the back of the book says, "Dracula cannot be controlled and Edom cannot be trusted."

This is where the players come in.  Intelligence agents, they come into possession of the original, unredacted Stoker report.  This is the complete record of the 1894 operation, annotated over the years by three different Intelligence agents (one in the 40s, the 70s, and the present day--charmingly they use the work names Van Sloan, Cushing, and Hopkins after the actors who played Van Helsing).  Using this file, the "Dracula Dossier," they follow up its clues and attempt to hunt down the vampire once and for all, taking on his own massive conspiracy and Operation Edom in the process.

None of this does justice to the immensity of what Hite and co-author Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan have done here.  Dracula Unredacted is Bram Stoker's entire, full-length novel, published with hundreds of annotations scrawled in the margins in three colors of ink by the three different "Van Helsings."  Each of these corresponds to an entry in the Director's Handbook that offers several different takes on what the entry might mean.  Dracula Unredacted is then given to the players as what has to be the most amazing player handout ever conceived, and they use it to steer the campaign.  The players read it, and decide which entries to investigate.  The GM then consults the Director's Handbook and responds by taking the option that best suits his campaign.

For example, Lucy Westenra finds a brooch on the beach in Whitby.  An annotation mentions that this item was not found among her personal belongings after death.  If the players chose to pursue this clue, several different locations for where the brooch might be found are given in the Director's Handbook, as well as options for the brooch's significance.  Is it an occult artifact that calls out to vampires?  An ornament Dracula gives out to his agents?  Just a simple piece of jewelry with no significance at all?  Each choice leads to other options, allowing the players to follow the trail of clues back to Dracula.

In essence we are talking a sandbox campaign here, with the novel itself serving as the map.  The players go where they deem best and the GM responds.

The Director's Handbook also helps the GM set up the structure and purpose of Dracula's conspiracy, as well as determining what sort of vampire the Count really is.  Everything is a choice in this campaign, from the true names of the principal characters (was "Johnathan Harker" really his name, or was this a cover identity) to their exact roles (Quincy P Morris...a Texan?  Really?  Or was this an elaborate cover for an Edom agent or minion of Dracula?).  The end result is that no two playings of the Dracula Dossier would ever be the same.

For hardcore Stoker fans, Dracula Unredacted is a treasure unto itself.  While it is essentially the original Stoker novel, Hite and Ryder-Hanrahan have gone back into the author's original notes to replace characters, subplots, and events eventually cut from the novel.  These have been flawlessly inserted and repurposed.  I will say no more without spoilers, but the way Stoker's famous Dracula's Guest is put back into the book is a stroke of genius.  Even just reading Dracula Unredacted alone is a game of figuring out where Stoker ends and the new additions begin.

Because this is set in the modern day, because just as in our world Dracula was published and made into umpteen films, plays, and television programs, Dracula Unredacted is not even the players' only resource.  Nothing stops them from pulling out their smartphones and tablets in the midst of play, Googling historical figures, locations, and details from the text.  Hite hasn't just made shit up, he's drawn on a ridiculous number of other sources and references for players to chase down.  Again, this makes the Dracula Dossier a genuinely one-of-a-kind experience as reality itself conspires to further the tale.

If you have the kind of group that likes to be genuinely challenged--not just falling back on dice rolls and optimizing character stats--this is for you.  It will push players to the limits of their own ingenuity as they match wits against Dracula and attempt to dismantle his schemes.  If you like gothic horror, historicity in games, globe-hopping spy thrillers, you need to own this.  It is truly unique.

  

LILITH: THE SYMBOLS OF TRADITIONAL WITCHCRAFT, PART FOUR

PART FOUR: THE WITCH AND THE SERPENT

I'm the obeah woman

from beneath the sea

to get to Satan

you gotta pass through me...

Nina Simone, "Obeah Woman"

We have already discussed the myth of Eden in comparison with other tales of the Serpent, the Woman, and the Tree, already seen how the male protagonist's role is altered from a freeman who comes to test his mettle against the Dragon to that of a chattel punished for trying to rise above his appointed station.  We talked of how Odin, Heracles, and Jason willfully face the Tree and are elevated; Adam unwillingly is tested and is cast down.  Yet there is another difference in the Eden story from all the others, a critical one.

In Odin's tale, the Woman is represented by the Norns, powerful and shadowy beings that control the fates of all living beings.  In the story of Heracles, the Woman appears as the three Hesperides, the daughters of Night (Nyx) and Darkness (Erebus).  These "Nymphs of the West" own the Tree of Immortality and the Dragon that guards it.  In Jason's quest, the Woman is Medea, the granddaughter of the Sun, a princess and powerful sorceress.  In the "Churning of the Ocean," the Woman is the goddess Sri, the embodiment of fortune, blessing, and kingship, connected to the cosmic center and the elixir of divinity.  

In Eden, however, the Woman is Eve.  

We can debate the original role of Eve in these scriptures; many scholars have.  The majority opinion down through history has been that she was created as Adam's "helper," from one of his ribs;

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

The traditional conclusion drawn from this is that women, like Eve, and subservient to men.  The second century rabbi, Joshua ben Hananiah, puts the matter succinctly;

"God deliberated from what member He would create woman, and He reasoned with Himself thus: I must not create her from Adam's head, for she would be a proud person, and hold her head high. If I create her from the eye, then she will wish to pry into all things; if from the ear, she will wish to hear all things; if from the mouth, she will talk much; if from the heart, she will envy people; if from the hand, she will desire to take all things; if from the feet, she will be a gadabout. Therefore I will create her from the member which is hid, that is the rib, which is not even seen when man is naked."

Modern scholarship questions just how subservient Eve was meant to be; the original Hebrew designation for "helper," for example, is ezer kenegdo, can also mean "opposite" and "counterpart," translations with a markedly different connotation than "helper."  Likewise, the name Eve is derived from hawwah, which means "living" or "source of life" (importantly, it can also be translated as snake).  This implies a more noble view of Eve as well.  Regardless, the fact remains that historically Eve was made to serve man, just as man was made to serve God.  She is the servant of a servant.  A subordinate.  Furthest removed from God, she is the first to surrender to the temptations of the Serpent.

This is clearly a very different role than that played by the Norns, the Hesperides, or Medea.  They are all powerful, otherworldly beings connected to the Dragon and the Tree.  We might even call them witches, if by this we mean a figure that appears human but is possessed of occult powers and properties.  This cannot be said of Eve.  Of course, there was a witch in the Garden, a being of secret knowledge and immense power...but by the time the temptation occurs she has already packed up and gone.  In fact, she might even be the Serpent.

We are speaking of Lilith.

Fittingly, Lilith is a subject of great controversy.  She appears explicitly only once in the scriptures.  In Isaiah, the Lord will lay waste to the kingdom of Edom, turning its rivers to pitch, drenching the land in blood, and making it the habitation for all sorts of Hebrew demons and monsters.  The name Lilith appears in Isaiah 34:14, where it is sometimes mistranslated as screech owl.  This is, to put it bluntly, incorrect.  Theologian Charles Ellicott wrote;

the “screech-owl” is the Lilith, the she-vampire, who appears in the legends of the Talmud as having been Adam’s first wife, who left him and was turned into a demon. With the later Jews, Lilith, as sucking the blood of children, was the bugbear of the nursery. Night-vampire would, perhaps, be the best rendering.

Albert Barnes agreed; 

The screech-owl - Margin, 'Night-monster.' The word לילית lı̂ylı̂yt (from ליל layil, night) properly denotes a night-spectre - a creature of Jewish superstition. The rabbis describe it in the form of a female elegantly dressed that lay in wait for children at night - either to carry them off, or to murder them. The Greeks had a similar idea respecting the female ἔμπουτα empouta, and this idea corresponds to the Roman fables respecting the Lamice, and Striges, and to the Arabic notions of the Ghules, whom they described as female monsters that dwell in deserts, and tear men to pieces (see Gesenius, Com. in loc; and Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 831). The margin in our version expresses the correct idea. All this is descriptive of utter and perpetual desolation - of a land that should be full of old ruins, and inhabited by the animals that usually make such ruins their abode.

Most other scholars concur.  The "Lilith" that finds her rest in the damned and ruined kingdom of Edom is a mythological being, a figure of terror, that may or may not have her origin in far more ancient stories from Sumer, Akkad, and Babylonia. And while Isaiah is her only explicit appearance, she is implicitly present in the very first chapter of Genesis...at least in the traditions of late Judaism.

The problem, of course, is what to do with the glaring inconsistency of Genesis.  Genesis 1:27 states clearly that Man and Woman are created at the same time, from the same material, and both in the image of God.  In the next chapter, as we have seen, the Woman is gone and Adam is alone.  Eve is created from his rib.  To reconcile this, a tradition emerges as early as the 3rd to 5th centuries of the Common Era, coming to fullness a few centuries later (circa 700-1000), that the scriptures are talking about two different women.  The original woman, created co-equal with Adam, was Lilith.  The second, made subservient, was Eve.

Lilith's tale is a striking one, and deserves to be quoted directly from The Alphabet of ben Sirach (Alphabetum Siracidis, Othijoth ben Sira);

While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.

Lilith flees the Garden for the Red Sea, where legends have her immediately begin mating with devils and demons and spawning a monstrous brood.  God sends three angels to bring her back and she rebuffs them.  When she is punished by having a hundred of her children killed every day, she vows to make herself a terror to the children of Adam.  She becomes a sort of boogeyman, a night flying vampire that causes unmarried young men to have nocturnal emissions and kills infants in their sleep.

How far back exactly her story really goes is difficult to say.  As we have noted, written sources carry her name as far back as the third century of the Common Era, but the Book of Isaiah dates back to at least the Babylonian Captivity, roughly 597 to 539 B.C.E.  And if the Jewish Lilith is indeed a "borrowing" from earlier Mesopotamian stories, adopted during the Captivity, the essence of her story reaches back thousands of years before even this.  Some have even argued she makes an appearance in the Gilgamesh cycle, in a way that it relevant to our study.

In this story, “after heaven and earth had separated and man had been created,” the goddess Inanna plants and lovingly tends a willow tree. Her plan is to build a throne for herself from its wood. But the Tree becomes possessed by three sinister forces, a zu bird, a Serpent, and "in its midst the demoness Lilith had built her house.”  Gilgamesh slays the Serpent, frightens the bird off, and banishes Lilith to the wastes.  The echoes here--the Woman, the Tree, the Serpent--are unmistakeable.  

Regardless of her antiquity, it is in the early Middle Ages that Lilith takes on her present form, and it was in medieval Judaism that she became the very archetype of the Witch. Indeed, as the Middle Ages moved into the Renaissance, her tale only grew.  In this period we find a Lilith who not only mates with demons but is the bride of Samael or Samyaza, chief of the Fallen Angels (the Christian Satan).  Indeed, to some--such as Moses ben Solomon of Burgos, Samael and Lilith are a united pair, an androgyne;

Both Samael, king of the demons, and Lilith were born in a spiritual birth androgynously. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is an epithet for both Samael and Grandmother Lilith (e.g. the Northerner). As a result of Adam's sin, both of them came and confused the whole world, both the Upper one and the Nether one.

Given the association of the Serpent and the Tree with the constellation Draco and the Pole Star, it is significant here that Lilith is identified with the North as well.  Also significant is that late Medieval tradition identifies Lilith with the Serpent of Eden itself.  The Zohar tells us;

The secret of secrets:
Out of the scorching noon of Isaac,
out of the dregs of wine,
a fungus emerged, a cluster,
male and female together,
red as a rose,
expanding in many directions and paths.
The male is called Sama'el,
his female is always included within him.
Just as it is on the side of holiness,
so it is on the other side:
male and female embracing one another.
The female of Sama'el is called Serpent,
Woman of Whoredom,
End of All Flesh, End of Days.
Two evil spirits joined together:
the spirit of the male is subtle;
the spirit of the female is diffused in many ways and paths
but joined to the spirit of the male.

It is as the Serpent that Lilith appears on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel itself, painted by none other than Michelangelo, for by the Renaissance, Lilith now returns to the Garden to seduce both Adam and Eve;

And the Serpent, the Woman of Harlotry, incited and seduced Eve through the husks of Light which in itself is holiness. And the Serpent seduced Holy Eve, and enough said for him who understands. An all this ruination came about because Adam the first man coupled with Eve while she was in her menstrual impurity -- this is the filth and the impure seed of the Serpent who mounted Eve before Adam mounted her. Behold, here it is before you: because of the sins of Adam the first man all the things mentioned came into being. For Evil Lilith, when she saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks, and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore him many demons and spirits and Lilin.

She is then, here, both succubus and incubus, the Serpent, one and the same with Satan himself.  Thus in the Jewish tradition, Lilith is--like the Norns or the Hesperides--bound to the Tree and the Serpent as one.

What are we to make of her, then...the Woman tied to Tree and Serpent?  

If we recall our discussions of number symbolism and Qabalah, we are reminded that of the Decad the first three numbers describe Heaven, and the subsequent seven represent Earth.  One is Unity, the Point.  Two is Division and Opposition.  In the northern hemisphere this is symbolized by the Pole Star and Draco, the axis mundi and the Dragon.  On the Tree of Life, these would be Kether and Chokmah.  Chokmah, as the Prime Masculine quality, has as his counterpart the sephira Binah, the Prime Feminine.  These three are collectively known as the Supernal Triad, the three numbers that exist above the Abyss and define Heaven.

Binah, the Divine Feminine, is the Gateway to and from Heaven.  Climbing the Tree of Life, you must first pass through Binah to reach Chokmah and Kether, the Dragon and the Tree.  Aleister Crowley associated Binah with Babalon, whose "Whoredom" is in fact that she will receive anyone who comes to pass through her Gate.  If the Circle is seen as the symbol of Heaven, then Binah is its circumference, with Chokmah as the radius--the Path leading from the threshold to the Center--and Kether being that Center, the Crossroads, the axis mundi itself.  If we think of the Pole Star and Draco, Binah might be seen as Draco's orbit, or even the night sky itself.

It is the latter association that is most compelling.  In Thelema, the Divine Feminine is embodied as Nuit, the starry night sky.  The Hesperides, as we have said, were the daughters of Nyx and Erebus, night and darkness.  And Lilith, who is called the Night Demon, derives her own name from a root cognate with the Hebrew layil and the Arabic layl, both meaning "night."  Night--Lilith--is the Circle, and she must be penetrated to reach the Serpent at the Crossroads.  As the song goes; "I'm the obeah woman from beneath the sea, to get to Satan, you gotta pass through me."

It is worth noting here the symbolism of Stanislas de Guaita's famous "sigil of Baphomet," later adopted by Anton LaVey as the official logo of the Church of Satan.  Here, the names Samael and Lilith are surrounded by the Hebrew word Leviathan.  Leviathan--related etymologically to Ladon, the Dragon guarded the Apples of Immortality--is the great cosmic Serpent, Draco, that the Hebrew god boasts of taming.  Guaita's image references the Hebrew tradition that Samael and Lilith, as Serpents, are both manifestations of Leviathan.  Moses Cordervo wrote;

And about this mystery it is written, And on that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the Slant Serpent, and Leviathan the Tortuous Serpent, and He will slay the Dragon that is in the sea (Isa. 27:1). Leviathan is the connection and the coupling between the two who have the likeness of serpents. Therefore it is doubled: the Slant Serpent corresponding to Samael, and the Tortuous Serpent corresponding to Lilith....

The symbolism in Guaita's image is unmistakable; a Dragon coiled around a Star and forming a Circle, the twin Serpent energies of Lilith and Samael present within.  Even the pentagram itself suggests a sort of Crossroads.

We might regard then, Lilith and Samael, the Woman and the Serpent at the Crossroads, as the Gate and the Key respectively (with awareness of the sexual symbolism implied). Together they unlock the power of the Tree. We see here again Crowley's formula of 2 = 0, that the union of opposites results in the transcendent "nothingness" that is the source of all power and creation.

This is something we will examine more deeply later.