This is part 9 of a series. Here are Part 1 & Part 2 & Part 3 & Part 4 & Part 5 & Part 6 & Part 7 & Part 8

It’s a Wednesday, and I’m staring at the screen, trying desperately to get the creative juices flowing. It’s a Wednesday and I’m staring at the screen, with no idea how this is going to go. Nor is this a new thing, because every time that I begin to to write or tell a story, I have absolutely no clue where or how to begin, or what I’ll say.

All those words I put together, all those images, sensations and memories I conjure for you – the ones that somehow have led folks to say very complimentary things about this series? The ones that catch your attention, and also the ones that end up up sinking into the depths of your mind, yet will surface when you least expect them?

All of those. All of that.

I have no idea where it comes from. None at all, and yet rationally, I know it must come from somewhere, some kind of alchemy of experience, talent and years of putting one word in front of another. I don’t even know if I’ve repeated myself, re-emphasised points over and over again, or used the same phraseology over and over again.

It’s as if I’ve stepped blind into a dark room.

And in that kind of scenario, all you have available to you is yourself, isn’t it? The room’s so dark that you can’t even comprehend what might, or might not, be present for you to use. You have no frame of reference.

Now:

Theoretically, you could step further in, stumble about, try to find a way to locate a wall or something. But anything could be in that room, from a predator, to a pit yawning inches away from you. In that sort of situation, it’s best to proceed slowly – and in fact what you want is to somehow achieve a sense of where you are, without moving. Without betraying yourself to any monstrous hungry watchers, or tripping any any traps.

I’m correct in that – and in thinking you want to keep living, right?

So what do you do, given the principles I’ve outlined in these posts?

Rather than attempting to extend your awareness outward, use what you have. Notice your breathing, the way you’re standing. Soon enough, you’ll begin to notice things about yourself, you’ll begin to feel your senses sharpen, as the distractions of the external world are somehow no longer there.

With nothing to focus on, your eyes will be moving, pupils expanding, trying to get as much light as possible. Your body will begin pumping stress hormones to organs, ready for fight or flight. Everything you are, will want to do something – to change the circumstance to your advantage.

And here’s where it gets difficult, because you need to not do. You need to observe only, and you will find that change happens without you doing anything, because the universe is always changing, always moving.

And this might sound counter-intuitive, a little like I’m advocating laziness or procrastination. I assure you, I’m not – as terrible procrastinator myself, I recognise that procrastination happens because you’re actually afraid to fail. There is a difference between procrastinating, and being a procrastinator – if you’re putting something off because you dislike it, because you don’t want to experience the drudgery of taxes, housework, homework or whatever, then I salute you.

I salute you because you’re human. Because avoiding unpleasantness is very sensible indeed, on some level.

But if you are a procrastinator, it is often because you don’t want to fail, because part of who you are, is what you do – what you can give to the world, and if you fail at that, your self-esteem takes a hit. So you put off the inevitable failure until the last minute, and then get things done in a mad rush of adrenaline because it overpowers that potential doom.

Or you don’t do it, because why the hell bother, you’re going to fail anyway, and it’s just more evidence that you’re a shit person, isn’t it?

I’ll lay odd that both of these positions are familiar to a good chunk of readers right?

But I’m not suggesting we indulge in either of them – quite the contrary.

Because everyone would like to be an expert, to know exactly what to do, the precise arrangement of actions and thoughts to Get Shit Done. That’s why there’s so many How To books, manuals and courses. I’ll bet that’s why some of you started reading this series. Hell, I gave you basic exercises and such like early on, didn’t I?

The funny thing is though, that experts and novices are not that far apart – the financial experts who precipitated the economic downturn knew their stuff. The Captain of the Titanic knew his ship. And yet, disasters still occurred – precisely because something changed, and rendered their expertise irrelevant. But they were experts, and they had weathered many things – pulled things out of the fire many times before.

This time however, all those processes did them no good – indeed there’s evidence that their expertise, their knowledge of how to Get Shit Done, actually made things worse!

So let’s go back to that dark room, shall we?
Actively not-doing means precisely that – you strive not to do anything but observe. You take all the sensations, all the things you perceive, as things in themselves. But you do not react. You focus solely on allowing your body to adjust, to do what it wants, to try and frantically sort out the stimuli. You ride the adrenaline, you observe it. Think of it as a kind of tantra – the exquisite delaying of action, until the precise moment when its coming is inevitable. Then, all that action is compressed into the last moment.

Or, to put it another way, not-doing frees up a lot of space – you can act with more information than anyone else in the room. Think of the professional athlete – most of them, particularly in tennis, cricket or baseball, operate at speeds of fractions of a second, and yet they are professionals precisely because they are able to bring all that training to bear in the last possible moment – the rest of the time is observation.

The same thing applies with storytelling – the delayed action of pregnant pauses and observing your audience can enable you to tell a better story. The delaying then, almost seems counterintuitive to what we’re being enculturated with right now – streaming video, instant bank transfers, online downloads.

The ability to act instantly, as soon as possible, is feted, but in terms of both storytelling and sorcery, delay truly is your best friend.

Which is why I’m not going to tell you the rest of that story until next week!

It’s not a Wednesday, and I’m not a chaos magician.

I do have a background in chaos magic, but the last time I identified that way was oooh…over a decade ago now. I mention this, because there’s an interesting debate going on in certain circles (and has been going on for years) about using fictional figures vs apparently ‘real’ deities and spirits.

This one’s been triggered by someone seeming to suggest that the ancient idea of Heroes and modern Superheroes are the same. More details on this can be found over at The House Of Vines

My dear beloved brother in arms Jack Faust has a post on it wherein the major positions are linked to, though I also suggest you go and read Notitiae Doctoris for albeit long but very important look at things in terms of cultus and doing honour to folks. (The good Doctor has some great points on devotion, which need wider reading).

My dear mophead brother (Who is looking increasingly like a sordid Californian Austin Spare as he ages) talks about thoughtforms and going on adventures and value judgements and stuff. Read his post, since this is a quick one from me (I hope (ETA: I was very wrong)) and draw your own conclusions. He’s not as dyed in the wool Chaos Magickey as that seems, I assure you, and in fact this post will possibly get me yelled at for the next month but sod it, I’m British and blatant mockery of friends is a veritable necessity.

Anyway, everyone loves thoughtforms. They’re relatively easy to create, with practice, and once you know how to make ‘em, it’s easy to break them. Seriously, watch people you know who have certain tendencies to fall into repetitive thought patterns/actions. They do it without even trying. Don’t even get me started on people who suffer depression and what kind of mess we can generate. Yeesh. There’s a reason mental discipline is important in magic, folks.

Anyway – as I said, I have a background in Chaos Magic, but I’m a Heathen. Maybe I’m not a proper Heathen for some, but you know what, I do not give a fig. Point is, in my experience, the world seems full of Stuff & Things, and some of that Stuff & Things fits the shapes ascribed to gods, landwights, and ancestors according to lore. Some of That Stuff & Things does not.

I’ll be blunt – I’d never ask Batman for help. You know why? Because I don’t live in Gotham. I’d never pray to Superman because frankly, he’s too much of a boy-scout. But if you want to? Knock yourselves out.

On the other hand, I’ll call on the old gods and the Mighty Dead, and maybe even the man-god that is Yeshua because dammnit I have family history, my Dad’s a bloody priest of his and I’ve been initiated into some of the rites associated with him – having been baptised and confirmed and all.

Why them? Why have I even hung with the Lovecraft squad in rituals?

Not because ‘it works’ though it does, but because of something very bloody important:

I have a relationship with them. I have a tie to them.

Cthulhu, Nylarathotep and the rest – fictional all. Yet when you call, there’s at least something that moves behind the names for me. And I hate to tell the chaos magicians in the audience, but ‘belief’ is a blind alley. It’s as nebulous a concept as prana or chi or orgone. [ETA: As far as the average Westerner is concerned [1]]

Just a name, just a story to tell ourselves, to try and get our heads round the fact that we did something weird, maybe a little kooky, and something happened.

And we don’t know why.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s repeatable, and if it is? Bully for you. Really. Let me know when your all encompassing Grand Theory Of Everything is published.

But also bear in mind this – it may only be repeatable for you. You may have a mutant nervous system, or your life experiences may have altered you in such a way as the linkage of imagery, sound, feeling, thought and memory mean you can do things other people can’t.

Or, as it more likely, it might just be a freakish one-off, like a shotglass full of blood emptying itself after a ritual.

You see humans like to know why. It’s a survival trait, and one that has served us in good stead, so we tell stories, we make shit up to fill in the gaps, or tweak theories or models to get good-enough approximations.

Do you know what a Cargo Cult is? Read the link, please.

OK?

Now, some of you might be laughing at how ridiculous that is, being modern, technologically aware folks who have probably seen The Matrix, or read Simulacra and Simulation or something like it by Baudrillard.

Except, welcome to the unpleasant notion:

Reality is a Cargo Cult. Everything you learn is by repetition, mimicry and extrapolation. The Gnostic truth of it is that you are at the mercy of your sensorium, locked into it until you die, at the very least.

I’m not saying there is no Real. I’m just saying that you’ll never,ever get to to touch it. You may experience a close approximation, but you will never, ever hit zero per cent error.

So stop buggering about with belief. Stop worrying about what’s real and what’s not. Work with what’s in front of you. Use what you have, and use it with inhuman bloody precision. Don’t ever be satisfied with it, but never give it up. Spend the rest of your life studying your Mysteries – not anyone else’s.

A blade of grass – study it. And then when you are done, abandon what you know, and start again.

There are mysteries of land and song, of blood and bone and breath, of word and deed. You are a Mystery that takes a lifetime to discover, one of infinite depth.

You are a damn rune, one that is risted with the blood which runs in your veins.

The rune-god, the Terrible One, the Father Of Magical Songs – for nine nights he hanged himself, wounded. No escape, no quarter. No bread, no mead.

No. Escape.

All that he was, burned to ash by fire, and frozen by ice. He gave it up, sacrificed it, because he acknowledged there was no other greater Mystery in all the worlds. He sacrificed himself to his Self.

And if the superheroes are part of you – if you truly bleed Gotham, if the you can hear the Joker in your own voice, feel the pain of immigrant from a destroyed world who is feared, shunned and worshipped. If you get down on your knees and weep the heartfelt sobs of an orphan boy who watched his parents get murdered in front of him, or feel the unending rage of the strongest there is, while all the while struggling not to hurt anyone?

If those are truly yours, and not just mirrors, not just reflections, because you want to escape the face in the mirror for somewhere better, then you know what, what the hell are comics creators doing reading my blog?

Me? I shall take my Mighty Honoured Dead. I shall drink with them, and laugh with them, and love with them, as I did in life, and as my kin did with their forefathers, and their forefathers did with theirs. I will take every piece, every moment of my life, every breath, and I shall not move from the centre of my Self, at the crossroads of the worlds. I will fail at looking constantly at myself, but I shall keep looking, keep seeking. I will fall, and I shall be bewitched, and in that bewitching, I shall be bound, and in that binding I will discover the laughter that breaks all fetters, and find that I never left.

And I shall burn with the light of my own lamp, which has been fuelled by my ancestors, that burns blood-red across ten thousand years. I shall eat the flesh of every moment, every experience, and every word and song that calls to that unuttereable infinite self shall strengthen me, shall echo and reflect that Mystery.

Do you understand yet? Or would you know more?

My ancestors, my heroes, my words, my deeds; my mistakes, my triumphs, my betrayals, my hopes and my dreams. My gods, my songs, my stories, my breath, my bone; my thoughts, my memories, my sex, my death.

My love, my life, my body, my mind; my tears, my blood, my pain; my despair, my joy, my agony, my ecstasy.

My fury. My wodh.

All of these and none, are doors to my Mystery. They are the bindings and the ties, the dreams that point the way, the prophetic speech that encompasses my life.

I am a word spoken, a rune sung by the voice of the All. There is nothing else for me, but me.

Austin Spare once wrote:

“However great your reach, whatever you touch, shall touch flesh.”

Perhaps chaos magicians should listen to their Grandfather, eh?

That notwithstanding, only unflinching devotion to that which makes you, you ,matters. And although you are, in some sense utterly alone, you are not and cannot exist in isolation. So I say again, learn the Mysteries of your land, of your living, and your dead and they shall show you the path. Perhaps then a god will smile out at you from the pages of a comic book, or pass you by in the skin of a stranger on the street.

Perhaps your ancestors will greet you when you look in the mirror, and if you sit with them long enough, enjoying their company, perhaps they will introduce you to long dead heroes, now so much more than mortal?

I’ll leave you with words which are not mine, and are from fiction, yet are spoken and written truly from the heart:

“Lo, there do I see my father.
Lo, there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning.
Lo, they do call to me.
They bid me take my place on Asgard in the halls of Valhalla,
Where the brave may live forever.” -The 13th Warrior

Be seeing you.

[Addendum [1]:It’s been pointed out to me that prana and chi are not nebulous concepts within the contexts of their own traditions. This is entirely correct. It’s just the Western Materialist Paradigm that views them so within the context of not being satisfied with traditional forms of measurement, and hence would regard them as nebulous. Mea culpa for falling into dominant-culture unconscious biases. I hope the drift of the sentence can still be grokked. ]

So, I finished a book the other week. Not so unusual, except that it was one that I wrote myself, in response to a very clever fellow askling me to tell a story. I’ve pimped it enough for now – indeed it’s not actually finished, because it’s sat with the publisher ready to be edited. Now, you might be thinking, why don’t I shut up until it’s ready? The answer to that is that, in fact, this has nothing to do with the publishing process, and everything to do with the writing process.

Now, I don’t know if the book is actually any good, and I know that it’s full of typographical errors, and the odd missing word; the speed at which you think is often rarely matched by your fingers, and even the fastest typist will often get carried away. So, given that, what’s the initial maneuvering for?

Let me put it another way:

The final manuscript comes in at just over 100,000 words, and I have no idea what it is. Honestly, it’s like the thing came to life on its own, and as I wrote the last page – which incidentally, returns you to the first page, because I’m clever like that – I realised that it was an impenetrable thing.

A bloody slab of something that requires participation and in return exerts an odd influence on you. I say this because in the latter stages I spent 18 days, 8 hrs a day hammering out words. One after the other, again and again, and do you know what that does when you do it day after day?

It. Rewires. Your. Brain.

Even uncle Aristotle knew that, despite being a bugger for the bottle:

(I was considering including the full Bruce sketch but I thought Gordon might kick me.)

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

I could point you to all kinds of evidence on neuroplasticity, or pretty MRI pictures, and I could equally spout some bollocks about expert-hood taking 10,000 hours to achieve. Yes, I could do that, and I’m not going to, because if you are really interested, then you’ll look it up yourself – and if you’re not, I’m wasting my time typing them all out. It’s a bit like summoning witnesses to prove a case, and honestly I’m not interested in that, and nor, I think, are you.

Instead, I’d ask you to picture this:

A chap with long tangled hair and a prodigious beard glares at the monitor, swigging coffee and gulping it down so fast that it might be bruising his gullet. Hunched over the keyboard, he hammers away, hearing the voice in his head conjure up emotions and experience; crazed juxtapositions and frenzied metaphors serve as door into recalling and recombining of sensation and experience.

You see, you can’t expect to have an effect, unless you are affected. It’s not simply about stringing words together, and indeed anyone who tells you that is lying. Think of the last time you spoke to someone more than in passing, of how the conversation takes you through a range of thoughts, and how the other other person’s responses shape what you’re saying and the emotions you’re feeling.

Imagine summoning them up, before you put them on the page – imagine going first – never expecting anyone to feel something you’re not capable of feeling yourself, because that’s what you’re trying to do – you’re trying to share with the other person, with your audience, with your co-conspirator.

Of course, you can never be sure how they’re going to react, can you? They might have had a bad night’s sleep, be annoyed at their partner, or perhaps have something so awesome on their minds that they’re only listening for long enough so that they can get a word in edgewise.

Such things are pretty much beyond your knowledge; the complex interactions and circumstances are just that – complex. So all you can do is fire them up and cast them into the void. Which, in a way is a bit like sigils – you fire ‘em and then you forget. Except a lot of people have a problem with the forgetting, and understandably so.

After all, if you’re going to use magic, it’s probably either to get you that extra edge, or because you’re hitting a wall and want to bring out the big guns, right?

So you’re invested, quite obviously, and sometimes that investment can get in the way – your striving for a particular outcome can screw things up, narrow your perception and mean you miss precisely the opportunities you need to achieve your goals. One of the ways around this is the practice that Gordon refers to as shoaling where you break down your goals to maximise their potential probability. It’s a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if its done – eventually something will stick.

It’s a useful technique, and one that I’ve used before, especially when applied with the other kind of work – the laser-focused statement of intent.

One thing writing this book has taught me is that, on a long term project like this your emotional relationship to it shifts. You can love it one moment, and hate it the next, and it doesn’t matter because if you’re doing it right, you can’t not work on it. It literally becomes an habituated obsession.

You bcome literally obsessed, fudamentally occupied and beseiged by the idea, by the project, and here’s where this sort of thing gets deeply interesting.

Because you’re suddenly not doing it for any goal except itself. I was asked to tell a story, but soon enough that was not the goal – I wasn’t telling it for my audience. I wasn’t even telling it because I liked it – indeed I often hated it. It was, at points, the vilest most disgusting piece of excrement ever to be produced by a human mind.

Understand, this is not a metaphor. There were days when I felt literally sick as I sat down to work on this monstrosity, but I did it anyway, because I couldn’t avoid it. I’d been doing it so long that thinking thoughts which were not connected to it became impossible. It was in me like an invader.

Like a disease.

It became the ground of my existence, this story, until it was telling me what to write, and there were loops and whorls and repetitions and oddnesses galore; until at last I began to realise that this stream of conciousness was revealing the oblique, the hidden thing behind and beneath it – as if the words were but doors to something incomprehensible, like 100,000 fingers pointing at the moon in the zen koan.

I mention this because the project becomes a thing in-and-of-itself. It doesn’t matter if it’s succesful or not, doesn’t mater if it gets you fame and fortune or leaves you penniless in a ditch. It’s simply is – an event in  space and time. It doesn’t matter if those goals are even possible, because the goal is irrelevant. You’re not doing it for a goal.

You are doing it because your doing-of-it is an inevitability.

It is habit squared; you do not have anything other than it. Or as Spare puts it:

Does not matter – need not be

The result does not matter, and need not be in any particular form. Think of how many times your emotions shift, and how they influence your actions – think how easily your thoughts are capable of carried like tumbleweed from one thing to another. Many schools of esotericsm require the development of so-called ‘thought-control’  to create a disciplined focus, yet I’d argue it’s a misleading misnomer.

If the idea is to silence the mental chatter, then people are often taught to squelch it – yet in writing a book that originates in that stream of chatter, I’ve found that it’s far better to let the chatter proceed unresisted, because eventually its underlying structure is revealed. Or to put it another way, our inner storyteller spouts a load of shite but if you do not react to it, it eventually starts producing gold.

Without external stimuli, things smooth out – the emotions and worries, the loves and the hate of it rise and fall, and all that matters is the writing itself. Is it any wonder perhaps, that Spare’s major written work is The Book Of Pleasure (Self-Love)?

There is no-one involved but the Self – it pays no attention to external stimuli, is heedless of possibility, or probability.

Bringing this out of the realm of high concept, consider the idea that probability manipulation is by its very nature, referential to an external source – that of reality. Circumstances may change, and due to the sheer complexity of the universe, what’s possible may change from moment to moment.

The only thing that is inevitable is the impossible. Black Swan events are events with near-impossible qualities which are rationalised in hindsight as probable. The mob-spectacle of perception known as reality tries to rationalise them afterwards – to provide causal links, to render them stable, rather than feral events.

Think back to that image of the frenzied writer, posessed and obsessed by a story. It does not give a monkeys for ‘reality’ – the book, once produced, does not change in reference to stimuli. It is, in the McLuhan sense, a colder medium.

Just like a sigil, it is itself – and the whole point of scrambling the statement of intent in modern chaos magic is to obliterate meaning, to render the sigil into an occult glyph, an unintelligible thing. The sigil doesn’t give (another anamalistic metaphor)’s for your goals. It does its job, as best it can given the environment.

There’s a problem, I think, in casting magical work into the realm of probability – but that’s not to say one shouldn’t take advantage of it when it benefits you. No, instead, perhaps you should instead acknowledge that what you are seeking to do is impossible, and that you’re deliberately attempting to induce events which reality will almost instantaneously attempt to co-opt with its ration-al-isation.

Do what you do, and be cold about it. Be obsessed by it, not for what it can do for you, but what it is. Get into the habit of being impossible

Do you know something? I never had an invisible friend as a child. Not so strange perhaps, except there’s this thing about me. I’m fairly certain that if you have read any of my stuff, you’ll know what that thing is so I’m not going to say exactly what it is yet. Hell, you may even work it out as you read on, on the off-chance you don’t already know, or this is the first time you’ve read my words.

But, as a child, I did as most children did, and played games. I imagined things, played out stories in areas that weren’t necessarily conducive to being a cowboy, a super intelligent android, a barbarian hero, a starship pilot or a being of phenomenal cosmic power.

(Cardboard boxes, behind the sofa, in concrete playgrounds and under the dining room table for example).

The raw power of this always amazes me now, the fact that children can manufacture and incorporate disparate pieces of environment into a coherent whole. The creativity of it is stunning – the effortless conjuring up  of alternate existences for the purposes of exploration, understanding, and above all of these, sheer unadulterated fun.

Of course, adultery, adulteration; all these words have their roots in violation, alteration and corruption. Etymologically they emerge from alter:

alter (v.)

late 14c., “to change (something),” from O.Fr. alterer “change, alter,” from M.L. alterare “to change,” from L. alter “the other (of the two),” from PIE *al- “beyond” + comp. suffix -ter (cf. other). Intransitive sense “to become otherwise” first recorded 1580s. Related: Altered; altering.

An adult world is a complete world. Adulthood is the culmination of development, the completeness, the crystalisation of a full person. This is what is subtly taught in our culture. School trains us to think in terms of ‘work’ and ‘play’. Play is something children do, permitted because you are incomplete. It’s seen as a trial stage, a way of learning before the actual business of life begins.

We even ascribe play to juvenile animals, as practice for hunting or social interactions. It’s a dry run, the testing phase. To play as a child is acceptable, and as we grow older, the time for play becomes smaller, eventually morphing into a ‘break’ from work; a necessary sanctioned interrupt, rather than what it was before.

It’s interesting how things change, isn’t it?  It’s okay to goof off on your break, but not too much because you’re still at work, right? Certain things are Not Safe For Work, and I’m not just talking about porn here, am I? For some people this blog is NSFW – being spotted reading a site like this might range from the totally fine to outing one as alternative and slightly odd, or.at worst, some kind of crazy person or sinister black magician.

Exposure of one’s nature as an alternative sort of person isn’t always the best thing – everybody knows that. From pogroms to social snubbing and mockery, the gauntlet can be a little annoying and frankly unpleasant. Not ‘taking things seriously’ can be levelled as an insult, a criticism or worse.

Have you ever been in a situation when the word ‘immature’ has been used? I’m sure you have, haven’t you?

Because:

You’re not old enough, ready or willing enough to understand what I’m talking about.

Really.

You have yet to reach the level of understanding and advancement that I have, have you? You’ve not gained enough experience to level up.

This is a grownup thing, only discoverable by highly spiritually aware persons…

(Even writing that made me feel dirty, that and want to laugh, by the way).

You get the idea though, don’t you? This is the kind of thing that’s there all the time, the glass ceiling, the pay grade barrier, the security clearance. Sometimes, there is honestly a reason for it – certain information is necessary or maybe specific training. That’s not what we’re referring to though.

No, what we’re talking about and thinking about here, you and I, is the way there’s always another hoop to jump through, some illusionary threshold held up.  Once you cross it, you’ll be OK. You’ll be there, you’ll be accepted.

And to do that, to form yourself correctly, you accept certain things as true. It’s a social reciprocity. We learn it as kids, collaborating with others if we play with them. For the duration of the game, we accept that the cardboard box is the fortressspaceshiphousegaolbedroomspaceofinfinitepossibility.

But to echo the late, great, Bill Hicks:

“It’s just a ride.”

Just a game, and when it’s over we can do something else. Except people forget, don’t they – and they forget because they’ve been trained to look for the next stage in some kind of progression towards…something. Something complete, something ultimate. Something ripe and ready that will answer all your problems.

And you know, that’s how power works.

“Stick with me kid, and you’ll go far.”

Mimic the cool, the successful the wealthy; strive towards some halcyon thing that allows you to entertain the reptile-brain dream of a post-scarcity existence; essentials whenever and wherever you want. Glorious unaging immortality, avoiding the nasty business of flux and struggle and eventual death.

Ah, promises, promises.

Kids know the game ends eventually, because their world is one of eternal incompleteness. That’s fine, because they fill in the gaps with will and imagination. You were a kid once, and you know what it was like. Remember that simple decision to treat something in a particular way, just because you could?

I’m a trained philosopher – undergraduate and postgraduate too, and I’ve studied Aristotle, Plato, and a host of other dead people from various places and times. I’ve even done it with some living people too.

That was fun.

Really fun, playing with the fundamentals of the universe, chopping and changing premises like some manic six-year old who’s found the joy of playing dress-up in their elders’ clothes.

It’s so much fun, I do it all the time. I’m doing it now. That’s what this is. That’s what I’m about, and you’re here with me, playing along.

Are we having fun yet, or do you want to look away, to stop reading because somewhere, there’s an itch in your mind? And that’s part of it, that itch.

The very concept of ‘Is’? Blame Aristotle for most of the roots of thought on Being and Is. That’s a game too, by the way. It’s not even neurologically accurate. If we wanted to be accurate we’d have to say ‘It seems to me.’ every time we use ‘Is.’

What a mouthful. It’s a pity we don’t have a ‘Find and Replace’ mechanism for our thoughts, a Copy ‘N Paste Brain. Or is it?

Austin Spare would talk about the power of ‘as if‘.

Suppose you treat everything as having a goal? Wouldn’t that mean that rambling, labyrinthine posts have a point? And that reminds me of a story.

This is how it goes:

Once upon a time, there was a King and there were some gods. These gods, being much less ineffable than the one that lurks in the back corner of the modern Western mind, liked gifts. We can all get that, right? We’re all aware that we might be more kindly disposed to those who just plain nice to us, yes?

And just as we like gifts to be unequivocally ours, so these gods liked that too. They had certain things they liked humans to do, so that the gifts were marked as theirs. So these marks were obvious to the universe, like a nametag, or a sticky label on the tupperware box which your lunch is in while your store it in the fridge at work.

One of the gods, Poseidon, was rather nice to the King, who happened to be called Minos. In return for being rather nice, there was a great white bull which the god liked very much and put his mark on. Now, this was an extraordinarily handsome specimen of taurean flesh. Snow white it was, and shining like the seafoam; its breath was as fierce as a roaring storm and the sound of its hooves was like the crash and boom of a thousand thunderous breakers

This bull was, in short, the shiznit; it was the zenith, the veritable peak of bovine brilliance, trust me on that. Its flanks gleamed brighter than the moon. It was tasty, tasty, very very tasty, if you catch my drift? Everyone knew it, even King Minos, in fact, especially King Minos. It was the gourmet leftovers in the fridge of life, the ones that somehow smell and look delicious despite being neatly sealed and tidily labelled. Makes your stomach growl so it does, sets the mouth to water like a stream. We’ve all been there, and it’s all the more delicious because you can’t have it, because it’s just beyond your reach, isn’t it?

Sometimes people idly entertain nicking a little bit don’t they – the owner won’t really notice a spoonful gone, that sort of thing. It’s a very human thing to do. King Minos was very human, which is always nice because that means you have someone to identify with in this story, and that always helps. Plus, humans do slightly silly things when we’re enamoured of something – and we’ve all done that.

Now, Minos was a King, and by ancient definition, being a King meant you were a bit larger than life; you turned things up a notch or six. In fact, you might say Minos turned it all the way to eleven in the silliness stakes, because despite that bull being marked, very clearly, in big black capitals as POSEIDON’S BULL  – DO NOT TOUCH: MORTALS THIS MEANS YOU! Minos raided the divine fridge. Not just a spoonful either.

No, Minos pilfered the entire lot for his very own self.

(Many a courtier was plagued by the sound of nonchalant whistling from the royal chamber for days after, let me tell you!)

Having brazenly stolen from a god, well, as I’m sure you’d understand if some uppity git had nicked your gear, King Minos’ name was mud as far as your average divinity was concerned. So much so that Aphrodite, stunning, beautiful, vindictive, vicious Aphrodite – the lovely lady who emerged from the sea-foam, decided to give King Minos a bit of a slap for his temerity on behalf of her oceanic colleague.

So it was that goddess of love did her thing, wove her way over King Minos lady wife – who since you ask, was named Pasiphae. For if Minos so desperately wanted god-stuff in his life, she’d give it to him – and how! Gods you see, though they walked among men, were way beyond what most mortals could handle. They sort of made normal life impossible if you bumped into them. Your average mortal just went pop – mad, dead, cursed, or all of the above and worse, times ten.

Let me tell you, many’s the folks been changed by contact with those things that lie beyond the human world. Divine attention was not necessarily what you wanted. Most kept their head down and made sure they did enough to keep the folks on Olympus pleasantly disinterested. Rare was the individual who stuck their head above the parapet, y’know?

King Minos however? He’d not just stuck his head above the parapet. No, he’d dropped his trousers and hung his naked arse over it for everyone to see. Not, as I’m sure you’re aware, the best thing to do when there’s an inhuman immortal who nurses a grudge looking your way, is it?

So Aphrodite, she caused Pasiphae to find the bull mighty fine, if you know what I mean? If there was anybody around then and there who could make you want a bit of bull in every way you could, and several you couldn’t but were going to try anyway, it was Aphrodite.

But Pasiphae, she wasn’t some empty-headed bimbo. No, she was one smart lady, albeit maddened by divinely inspired lust. She knew there were going to be some anatomical…issues. So she commissioned Daedalus – yes, that Daedalus – to make here a hollow cow she could be inside so that the whole business would be…more interesting.

And Daedalus, more of a mechanical genius than Leonardo Da Vinci plus Archimedes, multiplied by the incomparable Montgomery Scott, does so. It’s a mighty fine cow, for a mighty fine bull, and the inevitable soft focus and seventies soundtrack occurs. In due time, there’s a child, a sprog, some bullspawn.

These days he’s mostly known as the Minotaur, but his name is Asterion and his mother loved him very much, despite the head and the tail of the bull poking from his little bastard rump. Now you may think a bit of adultery is a mild punishment for thieving Minos, but there’s more.

The divine violence wrought on Minos continues, for ickle baby Asterion not only provides a reminder of his wife’s infidelity and rampant zoophilia, the  little star – for Asterion means ‘starry’- possesses some distinctly inhuman appetites. Asterion you see, grew not by normal human methods of nourishment. Mother’s milk did not sustain him, no. He grew and grew and grew, becoming huge and terrible and hungry for human flesh.

Such a thing was really rather unpleasant for Minos, as the hungry beast seemed never to be sated, and if there’s something worse than a bull in a china shop, it’s a monstrous hybrid spawned by divine ire and lust. So Minos, thoroughly sick of his impossible stepson and his violation of human order, called on the supergenius Daedalus, who built a prison for Asterion in the form of a maze – the Labyrinth.

(You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. They have nothing to do with David Bowie or his sock. Or maybe they do…)

Asterion is killed by Theseus after Minos’ daughter helps him through the Labyrinth, but that is another tale, to be sure, one which precedes the flight of Icarus. The events continue on, there is never really and end to storytime. It is endless and shifting, nested, layer upon layer, spooled like a ball of twine given to Theseus by Ariadne.

So lets play in storytime.

Imagine yourself in the Labyrinth; at the centre sits the Minotaur Asterion. In the night of the looping tunnels, the enclosed, claustrophobic spaces, air stirs. The echo of his father’s breath roars past your cheek, warm and stifling.

> N

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

> what is a grue?

The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.

Is the  Minotaur a grue? A monstrous star in the dark? Why put such a bright thing in the mazelike place? Are you fearful or are you an adventurer? What secrets might Asterion hold, his feasting never finished, his hunger never sated, where might the endless tunnels lead?

The Labyrinth holds endless potential in its darkness, just as the blank page or badge conceal possibilities. If the senses are deprived of things to grasp, what then? A half-seen, twilight world, phantasmal and yet absolutely real and totally immersive when experienced. Such is the stuff of dreams, of hopes, of aspirations and of nightmares.

Incomplete and in total flux, Heraclitan in the extreme.

For those of you who have read The Invisibles, there is a reason I go by VI. The elegant turncoat.

“I just met the Secret Chiefs of the Invisible Order. They’re as alien as the space between your bloody fingers and I mean that.”

The space between, the potential multiplicity. What happens if we introduce many gods instead of one, just as an idea, just as play, just as a method of exploration. Play with serious things, like Love and Justice and Honour and Integrity. Especially morality. What if we could imagine that all the gods that were, in a vast company, at a party?

Allah and YHVH discussing literary criticism with Vishnu. Dionysus and Tammuz chewing cornstalks and getting drunk on homebrewed beer? What if, after thousands of years, the Devil picks himself up from his prat-Fall and twirls his Chaplin umbrella? Or Jesus and Astarte nip off into a corner for a spot of tantric sex?

If you don’t exist, then what’s wrong with dying? If nothing is what it seems then a thing can be anything and everything. The flesh and blood of man can embody the entire universe, after all – the incomparable vastness of the All present within the space of a hands-span.

Aristotle gets drunk, and IS shifts into SEEMS TO BE. It’s all bleary and smeared and I LOVE YOU MAN.

Let us experiment rigorously, ruthlessly, for SCIENCE! Let us experience completely and furiously, caught up in the awe and terror of Aphrodite, the rage of the roaring sea  – the hieros gamos – carnal and full of lust.

Experi! Experi! To Try, to Play!

The same word root, the root of being human. And that’s not human is, it’s human-seems-to-me! Come dance in the Harlequinade – turn your coat inside out and stand on your head.

“The Invisibles is an immune program: triggered by the Barbelith buoy when the game crashed and embedded the player.”

Do you know something? I never had an invisible friend as a child.

Would you like to come and play with us? We’ll back in time for tea.

Be seeing you.

And I haven’t given you any crunchy blog posts in a while, have a slightly odd story I wrote. Hope you enjoy!

“THE ISLE”

But you, they say, were on Sams Isle,

And drummed for the wights with the Völvas,

Like a wizard (vitki) through the world you passed,

which I thought was an unmanly (ergi) thing to do.

(Lokasenna: 24)

He comes to a place where the roads meet; there in the dead of night, he raises his gaze to the gallows and sees its heavy corpse-fruit swaying in the breeze. The dark is full of strange cries and weird rustling noises; shrieks from creatures not seen abroad by the light of day fill the air; his skin crawls and he pulls the knife from his pocket, slicing open his thumb along the old scar.

It burns like fire for a moment, the edges of the flesh gaping wide and empty for a frozen instant and then the wetness pulses and drips; warmth swiftly stolen by the wind as he marks the design out on his forehead; a spindled wheel with forks and bars which forms the stave-sign – an ægishjálmr – the helm of awe.

Nine breaths later, he feels his face shifting upon the planes of his skull; something old and terrible emerging once again from his features as he steps up and hugs the legs of the hanged man tight to his body. The sharp stench of excrement rises from the dead man’s breeches, mixed with the faint odour of spent seed, sticky and cold now that the final spew is done and the head lolls upon a broken neck.

Ignoring the urge to retch, his bloody hand now seeks the prize; finds it flaccid and shrivelled and so anoints it; paints it scarlet there in the dark and soiled places of death, strokes it like a lover – crooning, croaking runes like a lullaby.

A groan escapes the dead man’s mouth – lips all spittle-flecked and slack around a swollen tongue in a bloated, blackened face. A groan like an old oak creaking in a storm, like the timbers of a ship as she strains against roaring waves and jagged rock; a groan of doom and horrified release.

The prize now hard as iron in his palm, all blood-slick and leaping as a wild horse beneath his fingers; he grips tight and feels sightless eyes upon his face as he works, the grave-gaze chill and inhuman.

“More.” A sepulchral pleading, a doom-laden entreaty. “Give me more…bitch.”

The last word is bitten off in a snarl, a savage jerk of the wrist wrenching at manhood’s root, sending the memory of pain down into the depths to reach this dead thing.

“Please, I beg you. I was not always as you see me, all full of foul wind and rot. Once I was mighty and beautiful, and all the women wished my seed within their furrow. They howled when I took them, she-wolves and hell-cats all.” A death-rattle of laughter then, “If they would not throw open their gates at fine words then I would break them with fist and fury, ’til I could wash myself in their tears.”

“But the dead shed no tears now, for we are far too cold and our souls are all crusted with sea-rime; the rivers are poison and so we may not bathe. Our stench follows us like a cloak, we who are barred even from the halls of Hel, cast out beyond her yard across the plains of misty darkness and writhing serpents. Have you no pity for us – you with your hand so warm and breath so sweet?”

“No pity for me, who was once a man amongst men, who fought and fucked and fed like any other? I who raised my voice in battle-song and sought victory harder than any, I who sired sons and daughters all over the kingdom. I who honoured the gods and gave them the finest things?”

And though the red hand does not cease its work upon the corpse’s prick, the reply comes like a song of steel voiced with the roar of thunder:

“No pity.”

Cunning fills the corpse-voice then, like oil on water, or the whispering of doubt:

“You have the look of him, grim and severe – like a son to his father. I’ll be betting you’ve had your way with better furrows than the grave, just like him. Cut me down; let me stand and we’ll range across the worlds, living and dead, all full of fury. He’d like that, no?”

Silence is the only answer, broken by the wet slap of hand on flesh, moving with inexorable rhythmic purpose.

“Or maybe,” this last in a tone of echoing desperation. “Maybe I’ll tell a tale they sing, out in the wilds where the wind blows raw and the sky goes on forever; where the world is roofed with the skull of a giant?”

“Maybe…”

**

This is the tale they tell of the Old One, amongst the quiet ones and the shrivelled and amongst the shriekers too. This is the tale of how Jalk – the Gelding – came to the womenfolk and danced and sang, how he drummed and called; how the Allfather opened himself as mother opens herself to her child.

For this is one of many ways he learned the secrets of the volvas and the spaewives; how the wisdom taught by the lady of Fólkvangr in distant past set him to wax and grow in endless understanding; how that hidden god, every greedy for the Mysteries, learned women’s ways and wiles.

Thus did Waytamer come to that isle in the North, and first he walked in the guise of mortal flesh and did learn many things from the men of that place. Gifts of war-wisdom he gave in return, woke the thunder in the blood and fettered many a warrior there – freezing their hearts and setting the fury to rise so that they ran as wolf and bear.

A kingly few he marked, mixing blood with god-breath and words born in the cries of eagles and the croakings of the blackest birds – for is it not told by the skalds that there are lords arising from the very loins of the god himself?

Yet those are tales for another time, for the graves of Angatyr and his brothers did not yet lie upon the isle and the berserkers’ deeds were as yet unspoken. Still, even in those distant times the isle was known by all as a hallowed place, full of mighty wights and ancient powers.

So came Jalk across the sea and over land, to sit and spy out the places where men shiver and move hurriedly on. Long he waited in wind and cold, and many were the runes he carved; strange were the words he hurled from his lips into the air like spears. Many were the days he shook, and more still were those in which he was still as stone, until word came to him of a path that led to a secret place.

Along that path he walked, until he came to a high place in the wilderness, and there he waited for night to fall. So it was, as he was biding his time, that he began to see movement below, there in the dusk. Flame and torch sprang up, marking out an enclosure and the wind carried the sound of women’s voices to his ears. Carefully, silently, he moved closer, the encroaching night gathered about him like a cloak, to rest all hidden just beyond the reaches of the light.

Now let me tell you, sweet one, of that which Jalk saw with his eye on Sams’s Isle. Let me tell you of the gathering there; of the wise women that stood proud and unfettered by the fire with their hair unbound, all clothed in brightness – gleaming with amber and fine work – full of power and deep knowledge.

For you have heard and seen tales of seeresses, oh red hand. You have heard of their staff kept close by them and the songs that are sung to call the attention of the wights and sweetly slide free of flesh.

But I ask you, have you seen as Jalk saw? Have you see them pass the rod from hand to hand, raise it to their lips and kiss it, or heard them call their ancient mothers and unborn children to the rite to witness? Have you heard them call out to the earth, to the great and terrible women with the might and power of the greatest of giants?

All this he saw, that and more; unveiled he saw them, gentle one moment, fierce the next. Clothed and naked, young and old, all adored the secret centre. Coarse and refined, lust and chastity both; unleashed – unfettered and free.

There in the dark he watched as they opened themselves to the world, holy and unafraid as it poured into and through them – watched the awe-inspiring embrace of womankind as it enfolded all things without fear or judgement. There he saw them, laughing with troll-wives and giantesses; each volva as mighty as those who the very gods themselves took as wives!

For have you not heard the doom of the worlds, spear-stroker? How One-Eye went to the mound and called upon Her and she spoke of ancient days and those yet to come? She spoke of the giants who gave Her bread before the world was made, and of those mighty giant-maids come from Jotunheim before the gods made men and dwarves.

All these things Jalk knew, had heard from Her in days before men; all this he knew and he saw yet more there. Great wights came up from the earth to feast and put on form; to whisper words and discharge ancient obligations.

Fine were the shapes there in the light, well-wrought was even the oldest hag – years worn like jewels, sunken dugs and sagging flesh gleaming with sacred power. Things monstrous to menfolk walked there, wearing the faces of daughter, wife and mother. Great was the wailing and the air was thick with power all unchained.

Such was the way of things when silence fell and all eyes turned to where Jalk hid – golden gazes and lambent eyes piercing the dark. Fixed there as surely as if a spear had pierced him, so the watcher looked boldly back, meeting each in turn with brazen frankness, though his breath was held.

Many are the names and many the ways of the speargod; he brings death at a word and victory to those he chooses. Yet even he paused there, when all had the ancient blood awoken in their veins, each a terrible fury, as fierce an enemy as a horde of giants.

Until at last, a voice spoke from that great throng:

“No man can come here tonight. All know this, and yet you come. Did you think to feast on us with your eye, to steal our beauty and lock it away in the treasure-chest of memory, to stroke your spear on cold winter nights? Or perhaps you thought to rape, to rut, to plant your seed, to seize and take by force the one that caught your fancy?”

Now had it been I, my sweet guest, this would be true – for rutting was my greatest joy. But even I should have died there screaming, ripped asunder by vengeful hands and butchered like a beast. As it is, I hang here for the same reason. But I am not Jalk.

Nay, not he; for he shook his head and stepped forward, saying: “No, great Lady. My lust is for other things, great though it is. I am no man, for my name is Jalk.”

“Gelding is it?” the voice was arch as he moved slowly onward, until he was surrounded on all sides by witches. “Queer then, are you? If you prefer the company of men, you are in the wrong place entirely!”

Can you imagine, can you hear the laughter of witches all around you, unfettered by law or propriety? It echoed off the landscape like a storm, and many were the hands that reached to grab and test him, but Jalk smiled and inclined his head in acknowledgement.

“Bent and crooked; these both I have been called for many years, and surely will for many hence Lady – just as I have been called treacherous and fickle, and I am sure there are many here who have borne the same!”

At this the laughter ceased abruptly, a murderous silence rising up and enveloping the world. Yet still they held back, as the Lady emerged from the throng. Her hood was furred with catskin, face obscured, and about her waist gleamed amber that seemed to burn in the firelight. It drew the eye to her hips, highlighting her movements, fluid and elegant as they were.

In her arms she cradled the staff – thick as a man’s arm, carved and ridged and trailing bright streamers that shifted faintly in the breeze.

“Is that courage or foolishness I hear Gelding? We have little use for the latter and the former must be of the right kind. Perhaps we should test the truth of your name?”

“Neither courage nor foolishness, Lady. Merely the truth – just as my name.”

Hardly had the words left his mouth when hands began to rip and tear at his clothes. Sharp nails drew blood, voices shouted and laughed as he was roughly stripped to stand naked amidst them. Hungry eyes devoured his form on all sides – taking in the beasts and runes, the battle scars and ritual marks that told their tale upon his hide.

Naked stood he, member drooping and sac shrivelled as the Lady circled, prowling like a cat. Stock-still, waiting; thus he was as the staff struck him from all angles, testing his poise. Three times he was driven to his knees, rising each time to stand with resolute strength until she stood before him, eyes upon him within her hood.

“Are you afraid, Gelding? I have seen many a man unmanned by fear – brave warriors on the field of battle sometimes turn to craven cowards in the bedchamber. We have all seen it.”

“I would be wise to fear Lady. There are many of you and I am alone – I have seen the forbidden and the holy and know you may wish to end me for it. But I am not unmanned by fear, no.”

“Is your name a curse then?” she asked him coolly, slipping off a catskin glove and stretching out a hand to grasp him with firm fingers. “Has some wife wished you ill, some wizard struck your rod with black thunder?”

“No curse Lady, though given by men. No wizard’s spell has stolen my manhood, nor have I abandoned the ways of my grandfathers.”

“What then?” asked she who stroked him, as you stroke my cold cock. “Why do you not leap as a stallion at my touch? Why does the sight of womanhood all unveiled not fill you with desire?”

He smiled then, all crooked and bent, flesh soft in her palm. “I am full of desire Lady, full of hunger and fury – my blood is the blood of bright blue ice and shining moon. But I am old and have no need to spread my seed, an old wolf with many cubs and grey fur.”

“Are you spent then, Gelding?” she asked him mockingly, eyes gleaming from within her hood. “Is your day done, are you an empty thing?”

“As empty as the yawning void where rime met fire, in the days before the worlds my Lady, full of naught all up to the broad brim of my hat and empty eye!” he said with gusto, exultant and amused.

“What need have we then of you? We who have a staff where you bear none.”

“No need at all.” admitted Jalk. “Save that I come in openness and without fear.”

“Why should we feed an old grey wolf who is always hungry? Why should we place the fruits of our labour in your gaping maw, so you may gobble them up, glut-lusty with knowledge?”

“No reason at all, nor need, as I have said. Simply thus:

The eagle’s eye gleams brightest and his voice cries loudest when the wind is beneath his wings.
The horse is at his finest when he runs and and rears with smooth muscle and shining mane.
The serpent is at his wisest when he coils, ready to spring, all venom held in fang.”

“All these things have no master Gelding, and yet by your own name, you have been mastered. Your staff is crooked and cold when another’s would be aflame. What knowing have you of these things?”

“I know much Lady, but I would always and ever know more. Before the question is asked by the spaewives, I would no more. Before their tongues twitch and breath gather, I would know more. In that knowing, and by it, I taste the truth of your words, for all those things have I been. All have known no master, and yet you speak rightly!”

Bright was the eye of the Gelding as he spoke, glinting with sharp merriment. “I have been mastered by he who is High, Just as High, and Third. I have been bound and pierced by the spear of Volsi himself. Aye, Lady, Jalk I am, and made so by Ygg the Terrible One, ridden by his fury until I knew naught else and my flesh turned as if to water!”

Now at these words, shaft-cradler, the Lady gave a great cry and all assembled began to pound the earth as a great wind sprang up and set the flames to roar. In answer came the shriek of an eagle ripped from the throat of a shape than ran like a river and howled like the wind. There, in that place began a terrible thing, there on that dark night.

For there danced the Gelding, twitching and arcing like I when the noose tightened about my neck. Unmanly were his movements, all wild and unrestrained his Art – with spit-frothed lips and rolling eyes did he thunder across that plain as if a horde of maddened horses.

One moment he fell down dead as a corpse, the next he leaped up as a ghastly thing – face black and breath foul, food for the worms as all semblance of manhood left him. A womanly thing it was, or so men would say, as he shivered and shook like a newborn babe, begging a suck from the tit of the Earth itself. There, he sweated like a maiden, crying out in agonized joy as the song of the stars pierced him like spear. There he bled moon-blood like like a lass, spilling out upon the ground, seeping into the places below, filled up with spirit seed until he drowned in that fierce jism.

The took him them, the witches and the volvas and the spaewives and the giant maids. They raised him up as the roots of Yggdrasil clamped about him. Twining about his limbs, the roots of that great tree held him as he gripped that trunk, festooned with a noose of his own bowels, bound there by tendon and sinew as he held the staff – the vast column of the pizzle of that wooden horse the axis of his very existence.

They raised him up to the heights and lowered him to the depths, and in the darkness of the hood he was seidhmadhr – the seidr-man. Charms and spells he spun and wove and wove them well, though men say such weavings be women’s work. Bestla’s son was he – born betwixt the thighs of a giantess, and blood breeds true – this you know, my night-worker.

From shadows he struck his enemies, and with poisoned words and subtle spells he ended great men and tugged upon the threads of wyrd, touching the lives of those not yet dreamt into existence. His fingers ran over the loom of fate, learning the ways of the Norns and seeing the growth of many a fylgia as a child slumbered snug in its mother’s womb.

And when the night was done, when the wights had sunk and returned from whence they came; when the blue dawn hour came and his body ached and his skull felt empty; when his hide felt loose yet shrunken and the shadows rose out of the night, so Jalk remained once more no-man, with a belly full of boiling dreamstuff nourished in the darkness of his bowels, full of power and quiet might.

Upon that isle then, it is said that he learned those ways, and that ever more, upon some silent night beyond the walls of Asgard, a shivering flowing shape would shriek and sing until dawn in that godly place, with the body of the lord of that realm seeming to lie cold and dead upon its earth.

**

“Unmanly then, the lord of Valholl, or so they whisper.” groans the corpse, “Filthy work, filthy as the hand that is my whore. Filthy bitch come greedy for my seed, begging for it with your every breath, your every word. Your features flow like water, run like rivers of fire through my sodden soul.”

In the dark, the gallows creak with the rocking of a dead man’s hips, the rustling of the leaves and the rhythm of frozen breathing. Then, abruptly, a splash of silver gulped greedily down by a shadow.

The sob that echoes forth from the corpse is already fading; the ties of inhuman lust are fraying, the summoning diminishing and bond between bloated flesh and outlaw shade now thinning to nothingness. Upon a plain of bones and writhing serpents a once-man wakens from a half-remembered dream of life to trudge endlessly through the icy wastes of Nifel.

There at the crossroads, a figure pauses to feel the singing in its cold blood with gleaming silver sheen, and then tips a broadbrimmed hat to the dead and to the living before striding silently out into the night, the sorcerer from out of the blue…