N'wraenomicon

I have decided to move things from here to Substack, where the posts can now be found at  The Silver Key  . Substack's system made importing all of my previous posts very easy for me. Things could be edited. Not all of the spaces and line breaks are there. I'm not likely to go in and edit all those little details, though, because it's still easily readable and I'm glad I didn't have to copy and paste text, upload pictures again, and change the dates on things. I've been inclined to keep things here, even after doing other writing on Substack, because I've had no big desire to promote my writing about my experiences in Yog-Sothothery. I like having things tucked away in this little corner where maybe someone will stumble across it, and maybe they won't. After using Substack for other work for a while, though, I'm feeling comfortable there and like keeping things easily accessible for myself mentally. It's just time to move.

My experiences in the dreamworld are growing. I'm not at a point yet where I can fully control things, but I am more frequently able to make choices that shape how the dream flows. I remember my dreams much, much more often now. When I don't remember the details, I do usually remember that I did dream and what the overall feeling of the dream was. I'm also noticing a pattern in where dreams take place. Places in my dreams repeat. Some are clearly based on places I have known in the waking world, and some I only know in the dreamworld. Dreams will happen in the same place for a few nights, then I'll have a night or two of very fuzzy dreams that I don't remember well, then I'll be in a different place. A few nights ago, I was dreaming of being in some kind of fishing village. It was a very clear, detailed dream. There were piers and walkways, but streets were pretty much replaced with creeks, narrow rivers, and canals. The town sat at the edge of a big port. Statu...

The last time I wrote something here, the 45 day project I was participating in was about to start. I just just finished creating something that was an important element of the project, and the creation of that item needed to be done in preparation. And now...well, it has been 45 days, so has the project ended? Yes and no. The structured project, with the ritual everyone involved in the project was doing, has ended. It's time to write up reports, combine them, pass them out, let us all see what was happening across the project as a whole. All I have to do is write my part, send it in, and study the greater results when it all gets sent out. I'm not part of combining everything and sending it out. The formal project has ended. On a personal level...maybe it's not that simple. There were things that popped up during this project that I know aren't contained to just what we've been doing for 45 days. There are also things that seem to be more personal, or at least weav...

As I mentioned before, I've got a project coming up. One of the things I needed to do as part of my preparations for the project was create a ritual icon to be used in the work. I knew the symbol and colors I should be working with, but a lot of the design for the icon was left open for my personal creative process. No problem! I knew what I wanted to do, the materials to use, method, style... all good! And then the whole house got sick. I'm two or three days into this. I'm not sure. Yesterday may have been two days long, and symptoms are having an even heavier effect on me today. I would be cutting things close, but I could just wait a few more days and make the icon after the fever has passed. But then I asked myself if that was really the best plan. Again, I would be cutting things close. It would reduce my time for consecrating the icon. I really needed to make it today. In my feverish condition? Why not?! A feverish condition can open gates of its own. This might, in f...

I want to make some notes here about a few things, and I don't really have time right now to check and see how much of this I have or haven't said before. I am participating in NaNoWriMo, and I'm trying to get my word count as far ahead as I can earlier in the month when I have the most time for writing. Perhaps it's best that I not go back and read older posts on this right now anyway. I sometimes like seeing later how my mind explored the same topics at different times. I know I mentioned reaching the point in the Lovecraft Index books where the shining trapezohedron came into play. And that spawned my doing a little bit of looking things up (not even what I'd call "light research") about garnets. I may or may not have mentioned wearing the ring I've had for many years that has an amethyst set with a small garnet on each side of it. Okay. That brings things up to where I am today. I have some work coming up that relates to the shining trapezohedron, ...

Lovecraft dug deep into history for the inspirations for his stories. Or entities that go back deep in history reached far to inspire him. It's hard to say which. We know from his personal letters that he and his circle of writing associates laughed about how seriously some readers thought he believed the things he was writing. I'll trust his word that it was all just fun storytelling...on the surface. I think it was Stephen King who once said, "Fiction is the truth inside the lie." He might have been quoting someone else, but I'm pretty sure I read it from him, and it has stayed with me for years. Writing fiction often gives an author space to work out things they haven't recognized in themself. There are many reasons to believe Lovecraft didn't consciously believe the Old Ones actually exist, but also many reasons to believe pieces of what he created were manifestations of bigger things than just his own imagination. And maybe some of it was misguided gn...

I've mentioned before that the 23rd of each month is a date that carries meaning in my practices. I consult the Temple of Abzu cards much more often than I talk about here, and I make sure I do so as part of these practices. A strange group of things came together for the 23rd of this month. The date came just a few nights after the peak of this year's Orionids meteor shower, a night before the dark moon, and during the time of year that is often described as being one of the times "the Veil is thinnest". I don't think of that Veil as being like a curtain, but more like a liminal space that cannot clearly be defined and is a boundary between worlds. A very real boundary...but not one that cannot be crossed, or that crossing it would be as simple as taking a step to go from one side to the other. It's much more than that. The Ancient Abyss An Ancestral Stargate To Stand Alone Before Eternity The Darkness Seems Light Blood Flows From The Dark Eye Dre...

I'm reading Illuminations , the new short story collection from Alan Moore. A lot of my answer to the questiin, "Are the Old Ones real?" can be found in one of the stories in that book. The book just came out this month, so I don't want to give away too much and spoil a whole story for people. I'll be careful. In one of the stories, there's a small detail of a conversation between two characters about a metal ball that is a puzzle. One of the characters explains there is a whole story involved about some kind of lizard that can, essentially, go into extremely long term hibernation. Centuries of hibernation. And the puzzle of the ball is trying to figure out whether or not it's true that one of those lizards is sleeping inside the ball. The story is set in a world that isn't clearly identified, but there's enough description of things and oddities in interaction between characters that the reader can tell it's not our world. So do these lizards ...

I enjoyed editing the colors and lighting to turn a very plain photo of my new ring into a photo more suited to the feeling I aim for with pictures on this blog. Yes, in case you're wondering, that is a replica of the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings . It took some work to get everything situated for the photo so that the Elvish inscription would show. It isn't obvious and disappears, leaving a plain gold band, if everything isn't just right. At least I don't have to hold it to a flame. So why am I writing about a Tolkien ring on a Lovecraft blog? Well, it isn't really a Lovecraft blog. It's a Yog-Sothothery blog. We can discuss all day whether or not it's fair to identify the Mythos with the name of the man who laid the groundwork when most of the creation has been done by other authors. We can avoid that by identifying it with the most famous Old One in the mythos, but we also know Lovecraft himself wanted it identified with Yog-Sothoth. In ...

After making the notes on my thoughts of Nyarlathotep as a keyhole, I decided to see what the ToA cards might show me about this. I also wanted to see what messages I might get from the cards about something I keep experiencing in the dreamworld. To explain what I noticed in these two readings and how it may shift some things for me, I should explain the dreams first. Over the past week - ever since the ritual I participated in a week ago - I have had several experiences while asleep of spending time with someone I can't see. I can't see them because I don't look at them. I don't need to. It's like sitting next to a friend and looking in another direction while you talk. There is no doubt in my dreams that I know them. We are close, with a mental and emotional intimacy that is almost sensual or erotic just because of how very intimate it is. There isn't physical intimacy in the dreams, and no sexual tension. Nothing that feels like the intimacy is building until...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this line of thinking yet. I mostly just need to scribble some notes down so I don't lose this if it does end up leading somewhere. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is also the key to the gate. For a while, when I first started reading Mythos stories, I had a hard tike distinguishing between Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth in my mind. Names, descriptions, roles they play in things...it was all too similar. Which one is asleep and has no clue that any of this is really happening, but also the only reason it's happening is because he's asleep and dreaming it? (That's Azathoth.) And which one is a lot like the sleeping one, but does know it's happening, knows why it's happening, kind of seems to be the Overseer of everything, and got Old Man Whately's daughter pregnant - possibly with more of Old Man Whately's help than I want to know? (That's Yog-Sothoth). Eventually, I started thing of them as being sort of like ...

There was weird work to be done tonight. I don't talk too openly about these things. I talk more openly, and in other places, about my worship practices. There are parts that are too private, too intimate, so I don't open up about all the details. I will talk pretty openly about worship, though, and one reason is that talking about it is part of those practices. Magical practices, though? I learned a long time ago that there are good reasons for keeping quiet that aren't about asking, "But what would people think?!" I'm not concerned about the opinions. I'd be a lot quieter about a lot more things if that was the case. Unless certain things were constructed for being made public, though, there is vulnerability in revealing too much. As a side note, I will say here that the pictures I take are not of the actual practices. Social media culture, algorithms, marketability...it all encourages us to share what we're doing. Sometimes it's bett...

From the beginning of the book The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep ,  by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe: "Your modern man would rather disbelieve something than be lieve it. He likes to think he is cynical and hard-boiled, whereas he is the most credulous creature ever made. When he can't under stand a thing, like astronomy, or relativity, or finance, he believes anything you care to tell him, if you tell him with sufficient scien tific and financial trimmings. But the trouble is he can understand a sea serpent. He can visualize it. Therefore, he disbelieves it. His disbelief flatters his vanity, makes him think he is a superior fellow. Well, it doesn't make him a superior fellow. Any fool can disbe lieve in sea serpents..." -Archie Wills, Editor of The Victoria Daily Times , October 11, 1933

I drew these cards from the ToA deck on the 23rd of this month. I talk about divination a lot on social media, and I sometimes share glimpses of my Yog-Sothothery work without explaining what it is. I wouldn't say I'm hiding it. Having a link to this blog publicly available wouldn't be the way to do that. I just keep it quieter than other things. I admit I do fret over what people think of me, but I'm not afraid of being weird online and I don't think that's what keeps me quieter about it. It's personal. There are other things I do that with, as well. These things are public, but I'm not really advertising them. It's personal. Quiet.  So I didn't post the cards on social media, and I was going to do it here (that's why I took the picture), but the past few days have been hectic. Not all in good ways, not all in bad ways. Here are the cards now. Reading them in that odd back-and-forth way that I do with this deck... Eyes Forming An...

The 23rd of each month is a special day in my practice of Yog-Sothothery, as it is for many others in their own practices. I can't say it's a hard rule for all who would describe their practice as Yog-Sothothery. We are called to the Old Ones in different ways, and for different reasons. The choice of the 23rd day of the month wasn't a choice I personally made, though, and there are reasons the number is important to others, not just myself. Oh, but I probably would have chosen it if it had been up to me! It was something that drew me in. My favorite number! There are stories about that, and jokes about 5 and 23 being the same number, but I'll save those for other times. The number wasn't my choice, but it did already have personal meaning for me. I find that happens often in my practice of Yog-Sothothery. Things line up in a way that shows how unconnected they seemed before to be an illusion. There's a certain box I keep items related to my practice...

After over 25 years of experience practicing multiple forms of divination, I can say there's always something new for me to learn. Not just that the readings still surprise me (though that is true), but that there are always things for me to learn about different types of divination. I stuck with only tarot cards for a long time. It used to not be as common as it is now. There are a lot of people who don't read cards but, upon finding out I do, will tell me there is someone close to them who does. A roommate, a sibling, a friend at work...someone. I remember when it was necessary to know somebody who knew somebody who could tell you where to buy a deck, and if it was okay to tell someone I could read cards it would almost guarantee they would ask for a reading. "I've never had my cards read. Do we need to do it at night or something?" Oracle cards weren't one of my tools for a long time. In fact, I've only really started working with them frequently in the...

This week has tested my limits, and the worst of it may not even be here yet. I knew it would happen. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. It's a situation too personal to write the details here, but I do want to record what I was given when I pulled out my cards tonight to seek guidance. I'm still getting familiar with my ToA deck. That process doesn't usually take this long, but I've never worked with a deck like this one before. Diving into the Eldritch Mysteries...well, it's possible I'll never truly know this deck like all the other decks and various divination tools I work with. There may always be some surprise, some new method, some unexpected twist. I pulled out three cards tonight, looking for guidance for the situation I'm currently working my way through. Reading them with that back and forth flow that I do: A Wide-Nebulous Shadow Black Wells Of Wisdom A Central Black Throne Beyond The Veil Colors And Sounds ...

The spiritual journey that has led me to Yog-Sothothery has, so far, flowed like a river carrying me to where it wants me to be. That's not a common theme in my life. In fact, I've often rolled my eyes and been frustrated by people who say things like, "It all just kind of...flows, y'know?" No, I didn't know. That's not a privilege I was blessed with.  There are only two areas of my life where I can now say everything just seemed to flow, and they are closely connected. One led me to other other. Maybe it's really just one big flow. Going with that whole "it just seems to flow" thing, I come back to what I had previously written about the Shining Trapezohedron and the garnet.  I think there's definitely some work for me to be doing here, though I don't know what it is yet. I've suddenly found myself in possession of a raw garnet. It was a surprise gift, and I knew what it was as soon as I held it in my hand! To have this stone sho...

Math is not one of my strengths. A lot of people say that, and there is a while range of reasons why it may be so. There are serious problems with how we approach teaching math in schools. There's also an "attitude problem". Adults often display an attitude of, "No, it's not fun. Yes, it's hard. Quit whinin' and start studyin'!" That doesn't really encourage children to want to learn. Personally, I think math is fascinating! That's even true after years of adults confusing my dread of doing the schoolwork for not liking math. The biggest obstacle for me is that my ability to understand concepts hits a point where it is impaired by my limitations when it comes to arithmetic. I have a learning disability called dyscalculia. Even if math came easy to me, though, algebra probably would have been something I felt neutral about. It would have been a necessary class to acquire skills to move on to things I found more fascinating. I wish I had be...

Why do we generally only refer to fiction as "creative writing"? All writing is a creative process. Even text messages. Not every written message has an obvious creative process to it, but it's there. Communication is creative. I've been doing a lot of work in my own writing recently. I wouldn't say I'm finding specific inspiration in my dreams, but I have noticed my creative process becomes more focused, and more fruitful, as my dreams become more vivid and remembered more in the waking world. I pray for the Lake Monster to make things flow, and I get a flood of creativity! I have devotional training work to do for my religious practice. I have work to do within Yog-Sothothery. None of this is being forgotten or procrastinated. Because I am putting a lot of time and energy into my writing, though, I may have less of it to spend on documenting and reflecting on things in blog posts. Or, maybe I'll find even more of it. I'm just guessing at this point.