N'wraenomicon

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 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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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: ...

This is all going to be kind of vague. I'm writing it more for myself than anyone else. That's what I always do, but it applies even more than usual to this. Things have been recorded with more detail in other places. The way my memory works, I don't even need "more detail" to remember things, so I really just need enough here so that I know what I'm talking about. Okay, that first part alone plays into some things I've been thinking about lately. It's not time yet to write about those things, though. I did some work the other night, and one of the things that work included was the Banishing Ritual of the Old Ones I wrote up last month. There were, shall we say, Other Things involved, as well. And we weren't expecting a big storm that night. I was going to do this work outside. That seems to be a bad plan for a lot of things lately, so it works out that it's my nature to have a secondary Just In Case plan. It turned out I had to do the work ins...

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'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...

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...

No, I will not always be writing about these cards. I'm spending time getting familiar with them, and it's been a slow few days with other projects right now because of some physical obstacles. When those two situations are put together...lots of fascination with the cards! As I've said before, the easy thing to do is lay out three cards, read across the tips, then read across the bottoms. The art makes sort of eldritch Rorschach inkblots, so finding out what I see in them each time is interesting. I haven't been doing anything to assign the positions of the cards to specific things. With tarot, I've got lists of things three cards can be for. Past, Present, Future is an obvious one. That's what I'm intending to try with these cards, but I haven't done it yet. Today, I was playing with how I read the written phrases. Doing the "read the tops, read the bottoms" thing here gives me: A dance of strange attraction Some half-imaginary di...

I have a specific set of dice I work with for divination. Astragalomancy is still a new skill for me. I'm experimenting with working with the dice in different ways. The past couple of days, I've been combining that with drawing cards. I do the 3 card thing. Then I roll dice to tell me which single card to pull out and reflect on. The dice I use for this are a pair of d10s. Ten-sided, and one is what is known as being for percentages in roleplaying games. The numbers start with 00 and go to 90, always as one of the tens. The other is single digits...1,2,3, etc. So I roll them together, add the numbers, then find the card. Yesterday, I got 20 and 5. Card 25: A dream-infested daemon-city Transdimensional shadows Today, I got 60 and 7. Card 67: Phantasms of drugs or delirium Strange dark rites I was sitting on the edge of the bed when I rolled the dice and didn't have them on a more stable surface. I reached over the grab something and they shifted a bit. When I turned back ar...

One of the three cards I pulled today from the Temple of Abzu  deck is card 52. I'm going to be experimenting with different ways to read these cards, but I'm starting with the simple "Pull three. Read across the tops. Read across the bottoms." What was written on the cards isn't what I'm focused on right now, though. I want to look at the art on card 52. None of the cards have art that looks like A Specific Thing. That's interesting to me. My start with divination was tarot. There's a lot of symbolism in the art, and I lean heavily on that. I'm a skilled reader, but I've never been somebody who can give much of an answer if you ask, "Is it bad news if I get these two cards together?" I need to see the cards. I need to see the other cards. I need to see where they sit in relation to each other, and I need to see what's going on with the art. I know the concepts associated with The Magician, but some Magicians put a lit...