N'wraenomicon

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'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...

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 ...

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.

I usually include black and white photos, if I am including one at all. This one needs to be shown in color, though. I worked on this for about a week and a half. I didn't plan it out. I sat down with my pens, turned on the Ah Pook the Destroyer Silver Key album, and let it all flow. I thought about the fact that ink is liquid. Water. This both is and is not my usual style. I do this kind of work only in black ink. Colors are used for other kinds of work. Something kept nudging me to put the colors in, though, and I did. Then I added the white highlights. I have no reason other than it felt like I was supposed to. The tentacles, web, scales, stars, growing spiral of leaves or feathers...berries? What is it? I don't know. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's everything. It is, apparently, something swirling around in my unconscious mind, so Azathoth dreamed it.

Maybe I'll never tell the whole Lake Monster story here. Maybe I'll just keep referencing it as if the whole thing is already known. I seem to be in That Sort of Mood tonight, but I do need to come back to the Lake Monster because things continue to...reveal? Unfold? I'm not sure exactly what's happening, but it's something. In talking to a few trusted companions about the Lake Monster, things were mentioned about the mythologies of various Indigenous peoples who lived in our area, and stories of great horned serpents came up. I'm being a bit vague here because I don't want to make it sound like I'm claiming that my Lake Monster must be the exact same spirit that was known to these Indigenous people. I don't know that she's not, but I don't know that she is and too much has been taken from our Indigenous peoples. At this point, I'm looking at the connections as a flow of information to lead me deeper, not as any kind of evidence that thes...

My personal story of an experience with a Lake Monster is absolutely fascinating. Of course, I think it is. Who would claim to have a Lake Monster experience and then wave it off as being too casual and boring? A lot of what makes the story so fascinating, though, is a long trail of details that have revealed themselves in odd ways. Tonight is not the night for writing the entire story, but I have discovered another interesting detail. My Lake Monster experience ties very closely with the aquatic dinosaur Tylosaurus. No, I'm not claiming there's a physical live one out there somewhere. That would be too simple a story, and easily disproven. For now, all that's necessary to know is that this aquatic dinosaur is important to me, and that I recently been exploring thoughts of how Tylosaurus may or may not be some kind of appropriate representation of Father Dagon and/or Mother Hydra. I was reading more information about the dinosaur tonight, digging deeper into how this all co...

I'm not particular about restricting my knowledge of the Mythos to only Lovecraft's writing. That just...well, wouldn't work. Lovecraft's work laid a foundation, but the Mythos really exists because other writers added to it. Even that oversimplifies things. There are things commonly accepted as "part of the Mythos" that inspired Lovecraft. Does that make them "pre-Mythos"? Is it really that simple? Should any of it be seen as so simple? And yes, there are folks out there who do not accept the works of certain authors as being "true Mythos" because they feel those authors went too far from what Lovecraft intended. I disagree. There are works in the Mythos I don't like. Sometimes the focus of the work is boring to me. Sometimes the writing style doesn't appeal to me. I don't judge whether or not it belongs in the Mythos, though. Lovecraft isn't known for being the most accepting and inclusive person to walk the earth, but it ...

I wrote before about the dreams I've been having, the songs that follow a string of multiples nights of these dreams, and the feeling that Home is communicating something to me. After writing about it, it occurred to me to put the word "home" through the ToA gematria and see what that adds to things. The number I got is 23. "Of course it is," I thought. After all, 23 is a special number for me. A lot of the things that make it a special number are tied to home. So before I went any further with this, just the number itself stood out. But let's see what I get with that number from the ToA cards. I started with card 23...the obvious one to start with. Mystically Magnetised Invoking A Quantum Gateway This sounds right up my alley! But it's not really enough for me to truly start feeling like things either do or don't line up, so I also decided to look at cards 2 and 3. Card 2:  A Trail Of Sailing Stars An Aura By The Rim Card 3: ...

Things have been peacefully busy for me lately. It's been productive in many ways, not just Getting Tasks Done, but it also means a few things have been pushed to a back burner temporarily. One of those "back burner" things has been divination work.  I can pull out a favorite deck of cards and look at Things That Need to Be Looked At pretty much anytime, but that's not what I think of when I think of the work. I've been studying and practicing divination for over 20 years. "Work" requires a lot more from me than just tossing things out there and interpreting them based on what I already know. There's a lot of deeper study, broader study, trials, reflections...a lot goes into "work". And that's why it's been temporarily removed from Top Priorities. There are times when I make sure I take at least a few minutes a day for something that I want to keep on my radar, and then there are times when things need to be put on hold until I can ...

I've been working on a project that, at first glance, wouldn't seem to be related to my work in Yog-Sothothery. A deeper dive into how the project is developing shows several connections. I'm not ready to reveal details about the actual project yet, but I will say it combines multiple forms of art, language, and storytelling. It also gets into how broad "storytelling" can be. Stories, history, information. And these things are not just influences on the development of the project, but also messages that the project seeks to put out into the world. I think of how fictional stories are born from factual events, how fictional characters are inspired by the lives of people in the physical world. I think of the stories of Cthulhu channeling all kinds of weird information through artists. The way the fictional Necronomicon has had bits of information about it added to many stories by many authors. Folklore. Fairy tales. Written stories read to and by children that were ...

After I started giving serious thought to creating a Silver Key, a key found its way to me. Of course it did. Keys like to find their way to me. Always have. This one is actually a key I've wanted for many years. I spent a lot of time as a child reading books about Harry Houdini, watching David Copperfield specials, and dreaming of someday being an apprentice to Blackstone the Magician. This is a particular type of key I eventually gave up on the idea of ever having. It had to be the right one , and after that hadn't happened for a long enough period of time, I thought it just wouldn't. Randolph Carter lost his key after he'd been an adult for too long. Maybe I found mine. I'm still going to make that very special key for very special uses. This one is special in its own ways, and not just because of the particular things it was specifically created for. Groups of occult practitioners can sometimes get a bit aggravated about wanting people to understand ...

I'm still experimenting with the TOA cards. I'm not sure that experimentation ever will (or should) end. These don't feel like the kind of cards one gets so familiar with everything designed into them that one becomes some kind of master of using them. That's not to say mastery cannot be reached, but that it would come from a very different approach than with other decks. I decided to go ahead and try a Past/Present/Future reading and see what I get. The way I've been reading three cards each day is really working. I intend to take some time one day to think about the shape it makes when I follow the written messages that way. But the first time I tried the P/P/F reading, following it that way didn't look like it would work. Following it that way would give me: Past -  With a pandemoniac cachinnation Present -  Beyond the world of man Future -  Fire from Earth can't burn it Growing in hidden evil caves Present - Prehuman vaults of nightmares Past...

Working with sigil creation is something I have a passion for. Probably because that's where my hyperlexia, visual arts, and magic come together. As I'm willing to bet is the case for many people in my generation and the generation before us, I was introduced to sigil work through my days of chaos magick. Specifically, my introduction was the Austin Osman Spare method. There are many methods. I've worked with several, and eventually the things I learned evolved into what is "my" method. That doesn't mean I created the method. Many other people, working with many methods, did. It just means it's the method I use. Sometimes, depending on the exact work I'm doing, I do stick with a specific method. My views on what is called magic have changed a lot over the years. I actually kind of dislike the word now. I feel it carries a lot of misunderstandings and assumptions, even within groups of people who identify themselves as being practitioners of various for...

I've mentioned my dice a couple of times now.  This is the set I'm using.  Yes, it's a Mythos-themed set. That almost stopped me from buying them. My dice are devoted to a particular deity, and everything about this set was perfect for what I needed except for that Mythos connection. Which wouldn't really matter, except...well, look at mine. That symbol that takes the place of the largest number on each and every piece? Yeah. I don't keep them in the box they came in (though I did keep the box), but that stmbol is always there on each one. But there's a flow to everything that has drawn me toward Yog-Sothothery, so there's a story to this. I started with astragalomancy by using my old set on tabletop rpg dice. I haven't played a game they'd be needed for in, oh...too many years to figure out what number to attach. Those dice have their own story, though, and I've kept them all this time. Getting enough of a grasp on the basics of usin...