Purpose: To develop a functional system of ceremonial magick for the Archonist Church.
Participants: Tommy Duffy, Malachi del Eden’d, Seth del Eden’d
Materials: A small potted date palm, a bar of midnight blue soap in the form of a dodecahedron, chart of esoteric correspondences, a datapad.
Hypothesis: A model of the pleroma based upon the correspondence techniques of the ancient theurgists is proposed. Such a model could be used to determine the nature and form of future emanations, as well as having certain practical applications.
Procedure [Reported by Her Eminence Tara del D’myn, Matriarch of Skarsia]:
Jack was everything he used to be again; I was shocked to realize how hard Whirljack had been trying to keep up a façade all these years. Jack is so intense, but there’s an easy confidence about it, a puckish sense of humor, and that part of him had been preserved in Blackjack.
We were together in the garden one afternoon, talking and laughing, when I suddenly recalled the foolishness of my youth. “Why did I fight this?’ I asked, more to myself than anything. I saw something dart through his eyes, and then I realized, “I must’ve hurt you.”
He turned his head away, saying nothing, saying everything. “I hurt all of you, so many times,” I continued. “You must’ve hated me.”
He turned back quickly. “I never did,” he said. “I couldn’t.”
“You should’ve,” I said. “It’s only natural after how I treated you.”
“It’s only human,” he corrected me. “It never would’ve occurred to me. To any of us. Except…”
For a moment, he looked away from me. “I would’ve said we’re not human. But we are – the emanations are. It never would’ve occurred to any of us, but the pain, the resentment built up in I and I until He created Lorcan. Lorcan had to carry that burden for all of us, and we ostracized him for it, and I and I quarantined him. We never realized how he served us all, and what it cost him.”
“I fell in love with him, though,” I said. “Almost immediately.”
Jack nodded. “That’s what saved him. He really is the hero.”
I’d blown it with Jack so many times before; this time, I was determined to make the most of our time together. Lord Danak went apoplectic because I kept cancelling my appointments. “A woman my age shouldn’t be expected to keep up with such a grueling schedule,” I told him.
“What age is that now? Seventeen? Because that’s how old you’re acting.”
Jack just laughed at him, and I took my cue from that. There didn’t seem to be any clouds on the horizon, no hidden enemies, the economy was good and the colony was developing nicely. Sooner or later, we would have to go back to Shambhala so that Balin could put in an appearance; sooner or later, we’d have to go to Eirelantra so that Ailann could put in an appearance, and come to think of it, the K’ntasari might like it if Ari checked in on them on Eden. But for once, it seemed that we had a little breathing space.
One morning, when I emerged from the bath, Constantine was waiting. “Don’t worry,” he said, “Jack will return this afternoon. We just thought that you needed a little exercise, and it was suggested that I give it a try.”
I was agreeable. I was getting pathetically out of shape – fortunately, Ash was preserving my muscle tone, but my combat reflexes were going to hell from lack of use. We changed into the loose-fitting practice suits used on Skarsia. The shirt was belted such that it exposed part of Constantine’s chest, revealing the colorfully tattooed musculature. It was sexy as all hell.
Constantine isn’t nearly as good as Mickey, but he’s better than I am, and unlike Mickey, he didn’t let me win. We fought until I was exhausted, then he called it a draw. Mickey always fought until I was excited, then fucked me in the showers. But Constantine was not without a strategy. We bathed together, and then he gave my aching muscles a long, sensuous massage. Within the hour, we were back in my enormous bed.
He’s changed for the better. He’s more confident, fucking like a piston, giving himself completely over to pleasure. The patterns on his hard body gleamed with sweat, and I wanted to drive him crazy. I rolled over on top of him and rode him like a rocket until he was clutching at the sheets.
“We should do this more often,” I told him, drifting off to sleep. “An occasional change in workout partners will keep me on my toes.”
I woke in the early afternoon, to the sound of voices, sandwiched between Whirljack and Blackjack. “I wanted to talk to someone that wasn’t in my own head,” said Whirljack apologetically.
This went on for a few weeks: days spent with Jack or Jacks, the occasional workout with Constantine, the even more occasional evening tryst with Wynne. It was a curious period emotionally. I was still deep in the grasp of infatuation with Wynne, but I’d always been in love with Jack, and so I wasn’t pining for Wynne like I had been. I wasn’t in love with Constantine, but I liked him well enough, loved him because he was Ash, and it was a nice break from the intensity of my emotions.
Ash was playing me expertly, but I was happy, and I didn’t care. Why should I care? He wanted to be the focus of my desire, my attention, and if he used an alien means, he certainly had a human motivation.
And then one morning, I woke up next to Seth. “Official church business,” he said, handing me a datapad. “It’s the statement on brotherhood. There were a few wrinkles, but all in all, brotherhood is a much simpler concept than love or evil. You can read it later. I’m also here for the next experiment. The experiments have been working out rather well, haven’t they?”
“Most of them,” I agreed, “although the intervention for Chase was a complete cock-up.”
Seth looked puzzled. “The intervention was for Whirljack,” he said. “Chase is fine. The psychological tests were invalid. Tarlach is in the process of developing a new inventory applicable to the Cu’enashti.”
“That may be true, but it’s still clear that his opium usage inhibits nau’gshtamine production,” I replied, hopping out of bed. In the corner of the room was a stasisstorer I kept full of juice. “That reminds me. Let’s get on the same page.” I pulled out a bottle numbered 34 and took a swig.
Seth sighed, flopping back on the bed, running his fingers through his violet hair. He’s so decadent, reminiscent of a Beardsley caricature; maybe Driscoll should draw him in that style. He’s also an Archbishop in the Archonist Church, the theological expert on the natures of love and evil, which makes his neo-Gothboi attire all the more hilarious.
I threw myself down next to him, feeling the euphoria of his consciousness spreading through my body. He’s sexy in the campy way that vampire movids are sexy. He’d play the role of the mysterious priest who studies the dark secrets of the occult. Actually, he does play that role, and rather well. He’s much more popular amongst the faithful than the conservative Archbishop Venesti.
“So what’s the experiment?” I said, nuzzling up to his ear.
“Developing an Archonist system of ceremonial magick,” he replied.
“What?” I sat up suddenly on the bed.
“Well, after the fiasco with Lilith, I realized that there was a whole demographic that Archonism wasn’t reaching. We need to build a heresy into the church, a harmless heresy that appeals equally to those fascinated with esoterica and those attracted to the romantic image of evil.”
“Seth, you are so weird. You know that, don’t you?”
“This isn’t my idea. It’s coming from the Mover himself.”
“I need a drink,” I say, getting out of bed again. “I assume you’d like the usual?” He nodded. I mixed him a Vlad’daiquiri, his own special concoction of mooniberri, rum and licorice.
“So what are you going to do? Slap together some rituals? Bell, book and candle?”
“It’s not nearly that easy,” he said. “The first thing is to establish a table of correspondences. All magick functions on a principle of equivalencies. One thing resembles another, and it causes a resonance connecting the two. For example, the way drinking the juice causes a resonance between your consciousness and my branch.”
“The juice contains a psychoactive chemical. There’s nothing magical about it.”
“Ah, but there’s no difference between the chemical from apple to apple, is there? All nau’gshtamine amide-t. So why should eating my apples cause a particular resonance with me?”
I was stumped. “We haven’t quite figured that out,” I said. “It’s a topic for further research.”
“Correspondences,” he said. “Sympathetic energies. Here, look at this. It took a lot of work, but it’s fairly comprehensive.”
He produced a roll of parchment. “It’s much more impressive than a datapad,” he said.
The chart was labeled Arcanum Magicam Archontes. “You’ve got the idiom right although a spreadsheet would be more practical,” I replied. The chart was divided into columns labeled number, name, totem, RGB hue, Dhruva Tāra, and esoteric symbol. The totems were all species of trees, Dhruva Tāra referred to the old fixed stars of Earth, and the esoteric symbols were attributions of Platonic solids, Archimedean solids, geomantic figures, the letters of the Etruscan alphabet and the trumps of the Minchiate.
“This really does look like one of those ancient correspondence charts. But aren’t the correspondences supposed to be to gemstones and totem animals and zodiacal symbols and the Hebrew alphabet and Tarot cards?”
“It’s a new system of magick,” Seth sniffed. “In an Archonist context, totem trees make a lot more sense than totem animals. The zodiac is meaningless outside of Earth’s solar system, hence a reliance on the properties of individual stars, which remain the same despite their position relative to the observer. The Hebrew alphabet is far too deeply connected to a religion other than Archonism; the Etruscans were supposed to be the greatest magicians in the ancient world, anyway. And the Tarot is just so done. Driscoll refused. He said it was trite. Besides, the Minchiate is like the Tarot on steroids.”
“What’s RGB? I’ve never heard of it.”
“An ancient system of attributing colors to alpha-numerical values. It has some intriguing possibilities for gematria. The color names are from the latest edition of the Decorator’s Guild Handbook.”
“The guilds died out 800 years ago.”
“Quennel revived the Decorator’s Guild. He said he needed a staging platform for his political ambitions.”
“Quennel has political ambitions? Do I really want to know the details?” I examined the document more closely. “This chart goes up to 101,” I realized. “Some of the names are left blank.”
“The secret names,” said Seth. “You can’t have an esoteric sect without esoterica.”
“There are a lot of names I don’t recognize,” I said. “A lot. For example, who are #1 Stephen, #13 Hollis, and #16 Manan?”
“Malachi says that Stephen is a Goliath emanation, a combination of Wynne and Chase. Manan is the Ashvattha emanation embodying the spiritual virtue of wisdom.” He cleared his throat. “No one has ever heard of Hollis.”
“Time for another drink,” I said.
“All right,” he agreed. “Then we should try it to see if it works.”
“Wait, what? I thought it was just mumbo-jumbo, church propaganda. How is it supposed to work?”
Seth looked really offended. “Really, Tara, we’ve put an enormous amount of effort into these correspondences. It isn’t just mumbo-jumbo, as you say. As to what it will do…that’s what the experiment is determined to find out.”
“All right. We’re going to do a dark ritual designed to obtain a result unknown to us. That’s the setup in about 23% of all ancient horror vids, you know. We’re liable to release Yog-Sothoth.”
“Highly doubtful, as we’re going to evoke the spirit of something simple and harmless – Tommy.”
“Tommy?”
“Tommy and Malachi are listed as my partners in the experiment. Malachi has been most helpful as a consultant, but the only use we could figure out for Tommy was as our initial test subject.”
I consulted the chart. “Tommy corresponds to Phoenix dactylifera, the date palm, midnight blue #110C6C, the star named αGemini or Castor, and the dodecahedron. What the fuck does that mean?”
“It’s all esoterically significant,” said Seth, doing that sexy eyebrow thing.
“The date palm and midnight blue make an intuitive sort of sense. But what’s up with Castor? It’s a nothing star.”
“Castor and Pollux are traditionally part of the constellation of Gemini, the twins. From Earth, it’s an impressive pairing. Unfortunately, Castor is some 300 light years from us. Nevertheless, the name Thomas means ‘twin.’ As you can see, Thomas got Pollux. The literal translation of Pollux is ‘much wine,’ and the literal translation of Castor is ‘beaver.’ Malachi and I discussed it and thought Tommy made a better Castor since he’s more interested in, um…”
“Beavers. I’ve noticed. ‘Much wine” would’ve worked although ‘much rum’ would’ve been better. Why didn’t you just use Skarsian astrology?”
“Why study Shakespeare? When it comes to the occult, classic is best. We did include a few Skarsian stars, though.”
“What about the dodecahedron?”
“It’s a mystery of the faith.”
“In other words, you don’t know either. Well, what are we supposed to do with all of this?”
“We have to design a ritual involving the symbolism.”
“Lord love a dobergator infected with fetid saliva syndrome. Are you sure we can’t go back to bell, book and candle?”
Seth went into the bathroom and returned, handing me a midnight blue dodecahedron made of fragrant bath soap. “It was an easy transformation,” he said, shrugging. “Do you have a date palm in the arboretum?”
“I can have one of the servants bring one up. How do we involve Castor?”
“Traditionally, we’d want to do the rite under the light of the star. Can you find out where it is?”
It wasn’t much effort to call up an astronomy app on my datapad. “It’s under the horizon,” I said. “Not that a star 300 light years away is going to shed much light on us.”
“Ye of little faith. Let’s go outside and wait for the star to rise.”
I followed him. “Seth, this is the dumbest idea Ash has ever had.”
We went down the back stairs and into the center of the secret garden. “This is perfect for a ritual,” he said. “Perhaps we should paint a circle on the ground.”
“Perhaps we should get your head examined.”
One of my ladies-in-waiting arrived with the palm tree. She placed it on the ground; Seth knelt next to it, examining the leaves. “A fine specimen,” he murmured, setting the soap dodecahedron in the pot next to the trunk. My lady glanced at me curiously, and I nodded for her to take her leave before Seth had the chance to be the origin of anymore strange stories about the Archon.
“We ought to verbalize – some sort of chant or invocation,” he suggested.
“Instead of Om, we could chant Tom.”
“You’re not taking this at all seriously.”
“You’re so perceptive. How long until Castor is supposed to rise?”
“Soon, very soon. Arise, Castor! Arise twin! Arise Tommy!”
“Seth…”
At that moment, the radiance of Castor, imperceptible due to light pollution, fell on the potted tree. Seth raised his arms in a dramatic gesture – and turned into Ash.
A moment later, Tommy was standing on the ground, arms folded. “It worked!” he said.
“Somehow, I sense that it won’t work quite the same way for every would-be magician in the Domha’vei,” I replied.
“Malachi says that for the faithful, it will work just like regular magick. That is, it will operate on their subconscious archetypes. But in your case, the evocation will have an immediately practical effect. You know, as long as I’m here, we could get drunk and fuck.”
“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that I can summon any emanation I want if I use this silly chart?”
“That seems to be the upshot. I and I works in mysterious ways.”
“This is the best idea Ash has ever had.”
Data:
The correspondences can be accessed, along with a short biographical sketch, in the menu to the left of this document. The experiment was later repeated successfully using the proper correspondences to summon Seth and Malachi.
Results:
Tommy’s suggestion seemed reasonable. After copious amounts of alcohol and sexual debauchery, we relaxed in the bath together. I leaned back against him, eyes closed, while he nuzzled my neck. “I don’t understand,” I said finally. “Why can’t I just ask to see the emanation I want?”
“Dunno,” Tommy replied. “Maybe the Big Guy didn’t want to make it too easy. Maybe He wanted you to be able to call on one of us if you really wanted, but not to swap around on a whim.”
“But it’s silly,” I protested. “Don’t you think it’s silly?”
“Maybe. I don’t want to judge. Malachi put a lot of effort into it.”
“Malachi? I thought it was Seth’s idea.”
“They worked on it together. Now Seth, if it were just Seth, well, you know, he has a way of making simple things complicated.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Malachi is different. If anyone knows what’s going on, it’s Malachi. For him to put the effort into designing that system, there must be a reason.”
I scooped some soap suds into the cup of my hand and blew them into the air. I watched them settle on the surface of the water as I considered. “Ash doesn’t speak directly to the emanations much, does he?”
“Nah. Every now and then, but mostly He communicates through a strong feeling or impulse. I think it’s hard for Him to talk, for some reason. Then sometimes one of us will say something and know it’s from Him. Like He doesn’t talk to us so much as through us.”
“Do you think these weird correspondences mean something to him? Like in his mind, you’re really a dodecahedron?”
“Kiddo, I don’t even want to think about that. Not without another whiskey.”
Conclusion:
Tommy hung out for a few days before I decided to test the system again. Since Malachi was involved in the experiment – and since he was the one most likely to have the answers – I evoked him.
“Yes, it can be used as a magical system, both by you and by the Archonist faithful. But that isn’t its primary purpose,” he said, indicating the chart. “It’s really a map.”
“A map? Ironically, I’m lost.”
“The Mover has abandoned the idea that He can create a perfect emanation. Over time, He has concluded that the complexity of His pleroma could never be adequately encompassed in one human persona. Instead, He is drawing on a time-honored esoteric tradition: representing an ineffable deity through the use of multiple names. In Kabbalah, there are 72 letters in the true name of God, called the Shemhamphorasch; in Islam, there are 99 names of Allah, in Hindu practice, 108 names of Lord Shiva. It’s similar to the way a polyhedron with many vertices begins to approximate a circle. The more vertices, the closer the approximation. The Mover has concluded that the ideal number of emanations to express His true nature will be 101.”
“Holy crap. I need a scorecard.”
“You have one – the correspondence chart. Actually, two, when you consider the trading cards made from Mickey’s spreadsheet. The advantage of the chart is that it allows us to predict the nature of the emanations yet-to-come. The seemingly nonsensical nature of the correspondences is, in fact, based on absolute data. Do you remember what happened when you looked at Goliath under the influence of the Blue Moth Mushrooms?”
“Wait – I thought the branches were all different colors. Is that…”
“Yes. Actually, it’s more apparent when you look at it this way.” Malachi took my datapad from the table. When he passed it to me, there was a display which hadn’t been there before – some sort of color chart, a circle divided into ten segments and eleven bands, all extending from a gray square in the center.
“I spent a long time working this out. It’s a Cu’enashti color space. It was so difficult because I had to figure out a way to make the Mover’s perception of color intelligible to a human. These aren’t actually colors of light – they’re the colors perceived by the human eye when looking at nul-energy. That’s why some of the colors seem to skip enormously. They aren’t arranged according to the usual spectrum.”
“But what’s the point?”
“Relationships. That color space indicates a different way of understanding the nature of the branches. Referring back to the original correspondence chart, the relationship of each branch to a species of Terran tree – overt in the case of the Canopus emanations – was a deep intuition belonging to Jamey.”
“You’re serious.”
“We had enough information based on Davy and Dermot’s knowledge of Goliath, coupled with Driscoll’s ability to visualize the hidden face of an unemanated branch, to construct the correspondences for all the existing branches. The real trick was filling up the spaces in between. Under the influence of the Blue Moth Mushrooms, I was able to sense an additional eleven Canopus emanations. That leaves twenty-two.”
“Wait – 25 each Atlas and Goliath, 7 Yggdrasil, 10 Ashvattha and 13 Canopus leaves twenty-one.”
“Jack counts as one emanation.”
“Really?”
“Look at how he’s depicted in the color space – a gray square surrounded by a black circle, with the white delineators issuing from it. I suspect that the chart could not be properly constructed until his reunification was accomplished. Have you seen his trading card?”
Come to think of it, I hadn’t looked at it since he had gained the remarkable ability to become one or two emanations by choice. I shuffled through the deck and found one card, completely rimmed in gold. But the picture on it was of two men in profile, standing back to back.
“When they’re both emanated, they’ll have two cards, half-gold, like before,” said Malachi.
“The missing emanations – are they from Canopus?”
“No one knows. We believed that Canopus was created to be the final tree in the grove, but we could be wrong.”
Future Investigation:
It’s been two days now since I evoked Seth, and he’s still here. I wonder if eventually Ash will replace him with another emanation. I was thinking that perhaps Jack or Constantine or Wynne would come back, but it hasn’t happened.
Has Ash left the choice of emanation entirely in my hands? If so, then who do I choose? What seemed at first to be a great blessing has become a complication.
I’ve always tried to avoid playing favorites. I suppose my hypocrisy is self-evident by the existence of the gold cards. But I can hardly control falling in love. Loving is a different matter entirely. They’re all equally Ash; as such, I love them equally.
Perhaps the only fair way is to leave it to chance. Roll dice – or maybe draw a random card from the stack. Ironically, my choice then would be even less likely to correspond to whom I truly wished to see than when Ash second-guessed my desires.
For now, I’ll wait and see what happens.