Protections, Nuances, The Eldritch, and You

    The structure that is building up protections and defensive magics and energies is incredibly underrated in certain circles. Having control over your miniscule space in the grand scheme of things is incredibly important. It is with good conscious that I emphasise the importance of grasping that we are so very small and insignificant that protective alarms and bells are some of the most reliable forms of magic that you can master. If anything, know that there are things that can completely bypass the wards and shields that you put up. But the important thing is that we master them so we know when we are in the line of fire or in the presences of things that are more than capable of making any sort of protection look like it is made out of cellophane.

  And by not giving these schools of study enough scrutiny, we are able to witness failures and shortcomings of these particular circles. Their performance is easily scrutinised and observed and clear cut analysis makes itself present. It is easy to hold a comprehensive understanding for where they fall short. And more often than not, what you are bearing witness to is an uneducated individual who thinks highly of themselves through a distorted concept of ego. Energy and magics are everywhere and it is indeed a true statement that they function based upon the sheer will of the person that is wielding them. It comes from a poor and lacking attitude towards the relevance of our own understanding of insignificance. This understanding is so incredibly important. I cannot stress how much it is important to grasp your relative perspective and how microscopic you may truly be and how this sense of relativity is actually far more beneficial than it is a curse.

However, there is a commonplace ego that announces itself like a large heradling banner. Someone, and many many individuals, have this amazingly twisted view that just because they have this concept of “Willpower” over the energies at play that they have control over them. And that is entirely far from the truth. They operate on pretences that they are somehow powerful innately. And this is a horribly hilarious and mocking lie. They operate on this fantasy that they hold the secrets within themselves already. I cannot help the wickedly cruel smile that I get whenever any foolish sap believes this of themselves. It’s actually almost cute in its own innocent and ignorant way. I have had the utmost pleasure gazing at the statements from silly mainstream trendsetters in the occult community. And it is with my own ego that I know better.

I would never have the audacity to assume I am somehow innately more powerful than the forces around me. It does not work quite like that. They word their ass-wipe papers and books with this grandiose and predatory text. They prey upon the ignorance of people that already acknowledge that they are helpless and adrift in space and time and life. They wave an aroma towards a particular type of individual. People that are already susceptible because of their predisposed feelings of inadequacy and lack of control. They predate people that want a sense of control and power by mimicking an air of authority that “you, too, can have this ultimate strength and power!” as if it is something that can be marketed.

And idiots buy into it. We see it in BALG content and authors like Koetting and VKJ. We see it in the poor unfortunate and depraved souls that just want to be admired and full of power and a sense of authority! And it is incredibly laughable. We see it in other groups and circles that mock the concept of our true place in relative space and time. And I personally believe it comes from a place of fear and discomfort. It is like admitting defeat or not crying because it would be so horribly unmanly and uncool to cry. It is like thinking your sexual position during coupling makes you weaker or less dominant. It falls under the same silly concepts for me. The ignorant concept that showing emotion or weakness is somehow beneath you.

This is both about power and understanding and not about power and understanding. In this way, we absolutely must have a grasp as to where we actually stand on the grand cosmic scale of things. 1:1 we have to really grasp our place in the scheme of things. You may be able to pass as a wannabe badass to a local spirit that shies away at the force of fire or water or some banishment spells. You may be able to pass as a halfway competent magician to a local group because you have memorised three pretty solid spells that you are decently confident that you can pull off nine times out of ten. You may be able to pass as a thoughtful student to a larger Divine like the Demonic or Angels or Deities of other classifications. But there is something beyond all of that you may be completely ignorant of, and it can and will creep into the depths of your mind from the cracks and corners that you leave exposed because you are a reckless teenager-at-heart with no real concept of relativity. And everything is relative. Know the scale upon which you are operating. Know the level upon which you stand and what rules those spaces and where the lines need to be drawn. This is far more important than deciding that you can bypass any sense of security because you have a false sense of authority over the “Powers that Be”.

For there are things that are not explosive or even cunning in the ways you think they are. There are things that are going to sink into your skin because you did not think to prepare yourself or your spaces. And it will not matter how many sticks hang from your windows or patrols you give some sort of paid-off shackled thing you bought off of a .com website. You forget that poison can be administered in many ways that are not you directly drinking from the glass. What I am talking about is skin on skin contact or even airborne, metaphorically speaking. You may brush against something in the background and think: “Oh. Strange. I don’t know what that was.” And because you did not think about it, that simple contact has left a scent upon your tender flesh and it has sunk into your pores and your lungs and crept into the little soft hairs of your body and it soaks and marinades into your being until you are sleeping poorly and picking up habits you know are wrong, but what’s just one time?

You end up down a hole that you did not see open up before you and swallow you down. It’s slow. Like squeezing the life out of your shit lungs all tainted with kush and cigarettes bought for 10.50 at the petrol station. You think you know better and you just “fix” a few things. Maybe you lay off the extra alcohol for a bit and decide some good hearty reading will set you straight. What about meditation? Sure, sure, that helps doesn’t it? Oh of course, we’ll just do some shadow work and I’m sure it’s “just something I haven’t been dealing with” and it’ll resolve itself with some self-service help desk spirits and guidance from “Something from above”. We’ll use magic to solve this problem, of course. You’ve been sober for two months, congratulations! That is an achievement, isn’t it? What a “feel good moment” that must be.

But it creeps back in. This time it isn’t your usual. It seems to have come out from the wood itself but it seems to have no true meaning in how it works. You just feel terribly awful. You tampered with things that said “Wear Gloves”. But you were too important for this sort of thing because somewhere along the lines you convinced yourself that you were just too hot to touch without understanding that what may burn your flesh is actually cold to the sickening tendrils of something else. All you needed to do was be aware. You called things and you did not even know it. You were just reaching like a grabby infant that wants and wants and wants and it must have because “Do you know who I am???”. And really, it is your fault. So how do you fix it?

Well, there are a few options, but quite frankly, that’s not my problem. What you should have done to begin with was take caution seriously and not allow your ego to run rampant. If you have so much control over the cosmic wholeness of your pitiful existence, then why are you here wasting your time staring at a screen that you think has answers you want to hear?

I digress. We are going to get to the real meat of the reason why I am here and writing this segment. Mostly, I have brought these words to form because I find that this time of year is a perfect time to discuss how important and relevant it is to use these sorts of protections. But specifically I wanted to discuss the Elder Sign. And I wanted to use a clear cut point that no one is above the concept of protections or security. Even, if after all, they cannot actually truly stop the things that may be coming your way, but provide an idea of when you are absolutely in danger.

The hamster ball may protect the small critter from the cat, but it does not stop it from being batted around like a ping pong ball. And OH, how there are things that delight in the shrieks of terror of watching you spiral out of control all between two massive claws.

This time of year (no matter which part of the year this may be for you, Northern or Southern)... the cold season. The season, whichever it may be for you when it is dark and cold, always has a way of cycling through the eldritch in ways that will sink into the core of your bones and leave you shaking. But temperature is just as relative. When you are alone and isolated in spaces that are cold and cruel, finding a sense of security may be quite the challenge. We want to feel safe, especially as resources diminish during the winter seasons. We want to feel fed and secure. We want to feel safe and protected. But when we tamper with things within the wheelhouses of eldritch natures, it may come as a surprise or a known concept that our usual defences are not something that holds up. Normal wards and security is paper thin at best and this leaves us feeling rather exposed when things creep into our spaces that make us shudder and shake.

We have a few tools at our disposal. Using tools that originate specifically from the eldritch is one way. It is not exactly fighting fire with fire, but the principle does require us to meet a particularly tuned in calibre that matches the signals that we want to guard against. Eldritch language works well enough and the sigils and works can be used to apply enough netting to capture smaller fry that wander about in a blind and chaotic manner, reckless and thoughtless, propelled only by the impulses of things much much larger and coercive. Fetishes and structures that are bound by the eldritch workings and unique structures that are specific to particular forces seem to be one of the only truly reliable sources of protection. And oftentimes it is due to allyship that you find a sense of security. It is not required for you to seek shelter through the King in Yellow, but it may provide respite from Mother Shub-Niggurath as she is claimed to be the Mate of the King in Yellow and thus the Thousand Young may turn a blind eye to you, but it is only a mayhaps and not a guarantee. You may find yourself safe from the biddings of the Black Pharaoh as Nyarlathotep and the King in Yellow do not particularly take pleasure in sharing space. You may find they all turn a blind eye to you through the watchful gaze of The Gate and the Key, for Yog-Sothoth sees all and knows all and is the sanctuary through which you may experience all of the Outer and Old Ones. The secrets of R'lyeh may prospect the concept of understanding and wisdom, a sense of security as Mother Hydra and Father Dagon may see to it that those under the schools of Cthulhu, the High Priest, are like the Vatican of the Outer and Old Ones. They are neutral and peaceful, if that can be considered much of a thing within these spheres of influence and power.

But all in all, while it is not an ultimate source of security, there is indeed always the Elder Sign. There is dispute as to what the Elder Sign actually is and how it functions. Does it summon or does it repel? Does it invoke or does it involve? Does it shield or open the door? I believe it does all of these and provides the hamster ball through which you stand. You are not immediately reachable but do not feel the forces you are contending with do not know how to twist the top off and reach inside. It does, however, announce that you are not looking for conflict and seek some sort of sanctity and respect for space due to how so terribly small you are. And this is usually respected.

But do you use the branch? Or do you use the star? That is a huge question. Myself? I do use both. However, I prefer the branch. You know the one. The star with the eye I find is far more useful for alerting you of the presences of things that lurk and move about where we cannot see. The branch, however, is the most potent, I find, at truly providing a strong and ample barrier when it is needed. But do not think for a second that it will hold the Black Pharaoh himself at bay. It will be stepped over as one does any threshold. But overuse of these tools will turn on the user, I find. It may be beneficial to learn to lay low and remain small in your own ways. Drawing less attention to yourself is one of the greatest forms of defence. If you are passing by completely unnoticed, then it is better to have these at your disposal and not need them then have to use them and fail to use them properly.

When applying the Elder Signs upon things, try to bear in mind what they are facing and what directions. Be aware of what else may interact with the Elder Signs you are using and how other spirits and energies may react. In fact, it cannot hurt to be aware of how you yourself conduct the execution of these sigils. Be aware of how they function for you.

Keep your weapons close but your camouflage closer. The eldritch commonly operate on a scale that makes it quite convenient to remain undetected if you are clever enough to avoid the entropic nuances of their natures. Calling upon them when needed does indeed bring you closer to the spotlight. This can be beneficial and harmful depending on your ability to remain flexible. Do not be afraid to be creative with your skills and adapt to the forces you are working around. And do not forget that protections are just the beginning of creating a successful and healthy relationship to the eldritch forces that seek to shed light on the shivering twitches that dance around your peripheral visions. 

            

How I Got To Working With the Eldritch

I was 16 and I was bloody hungry. All the time. I was on a "ban" from doing too much more reading and diving and experimental rituals and the such by none other than Lucifer Himself. I was sucked in right well and I was simply hellbent on finding out more and ignoring my problems around me.

I was utterly convinced that just one more book, one more ritual, one more try, one more spell or just a little bit more information would surely hold the answer to what I needed to really do in order to solve the shit situation my life was in. 

My stress, my frustrations, my emotions most of all. I needed them to resolve themselves in some sort of way. Moral of story is that it was all things I did not have control over and there was utterly nothing I could do to stop things, people, or what was happening. I needed to learn to be resilient and stalwart in the turbulence.

So I thought for several months while I was embargoed on being able to perform any successful spell or ritual and found escapism in other books. And I re-read the King in Yellow. It was a shabby old dusty thing with a dark cover and almost abstract motifs of gold crowns upon the cover. At the bottom there was a faint gold mask. 

And I got thinking.

And I went shopping. I got yellow candles. Gold and black themed things. A plate. I thought about it and I stayed my hand but I thought about it. And finally I was pushed in a way where I knew that meditation was the best solution for the immediate circumstances I was in. I wanted relief and I wanted to relax. So I did.

And I found Cryo Chamber which had just been around for about a year.

And I picked something random.

And on a whim, I tried to think of how I imagined Caracosa. I imagined the King in Yellow and how that would feel or look to me. I imagined my life as one huge stage. A theater stage. And how I wanted less of this and more control over the play that was being acted out. I wanted the script or the playwright itself. I wanted something to lean into so I could navigate better.

What I got was more… academic. The play was part of it. But it was one part of a much, much grander scheme. Hastur made full contact with me.

And I was not sure what to do. It was so incredibly unique of a feeling that there was an authenticity to it in a way of: "You know when you see it."

I tried to be polite and humble myself. I mean, his title was The King after all, and while he received it well enough, it was made clear that it was not entirely needed to be overly lavish. Treating him with due respect was expected and required. But he still was an entity of "People".

But the King in Yellow was incredibly gracious and polite. I was invited on walks and to discuss what it is I believed I knew and what I believed I wanted. And I was asked far more questions than mine got answers for.

Eventually we came upon an agreement. I agreed to perform some rituals on behalf of the King in Yellow, and my situation would smooth out. Moreso, "The strain you feel will diminish to nothing."

I was suspicious and he told me that was wise. And left the offer open. If I chose to perform the rituals then I did. If I did not, then no big deal.

I opted to do them after a few weeks of contemplation. I was fed up. And 16. Add those details up and I chose to carry through with it.

Long story short, I was put through the wringer in a way that had me scrambling desperately to keep everything together and keep certain secrets from my family that revolved around some broken traditions and me loosing the remains of my great great uncle in a horrible trade I made with a woman in Gdańsk and getting lost in the wood for two days.

These two days were filled with a frustrating trial of time and my ability to navigate sharp moors and deep hills and trees on horseback. It was not my most graceful of times. But it also was my most quiet, as I said not a word to anything or spoke aloud during the deepest of my lost hours. I had ate what I had packed with me for my trail ride over the last 15 hours of being lost and had no concept of time by the time I was found/found my way back.

By the time I got home and everything had settled in a way that was what I could loosely call "stable", I had become so desensitized to the entire situation that I had previously been in that I had absolutely been given plenty of tools to no longer give a damn about certain things. But in the duration of my isolation I became addicted to the isolation. I had nothing with me but what I had set out with and a very heavy horse who was my only company and alarm for predators such as bears.

I was in shock by the sounds of human life and craved the silence once more. In that I sought out the King in Yellow. I asked to meet. I slept beneath the stars one night and it was not the King in Yellow that answered me. It was something else. Something else came to me in the form of a headless man, dashing clothes and shadowy smoke billowing from the neck in a strange and curved nature. 

I met Nyarlathotep.

He offered me access to the Dreamlands through the augur of Cthulhu. Told me to seek the dream itself through which Cthulhu resided. To find the High Priest. I did.

I ended up working off and on with N and Hastur. At the slight displeasure of both who dislike one another. But aside from sarcastic remarks and bantering they never interacted with one another and allowed me to work with them both off and on as I needed but never together.

I perfected some rituals to invoke them and learned their sigils and their symbols. I became familiar with their words and their incense and their colours.

I learned how they felt and feel and react when invoked. And I am always startled as to how incredibly quickly they arrive when called.

And to this day I still am testing things and working through things but I work plenty with Hastur, Nyarlathotep, Mother Shub-Niggurath, and Cthulhu. But I spend most of my time with Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep.

I have intention to write more about how each of these Elder/Outer Gods behaves toward me and my experiences with them and their nuances and their Avatars when time affords me. But for now this is just an introduction to how I myself began and what has pulled me into working with Eldritch Deities.

An Essay Rambling on Void Meditation and Cosmic Nonsense (A Cult of Cthulhu Study)

This is an excerpt on the study and contemplation section of void meditation while combining some already explored philosophies, experiences, and thoughts. As an avid lover of space and the concept of cosmic studies and philosophy, I really had to cut off some of the ramblings I had begun and recondense it somewhere else.


I understood Void Meditation as disconnecting entirely from the surrounding stimuli and connecting to the essence of the deep nothingness of the void itself. It is a way to gain perspective of yourself and the cosmic whole of everything. When asked about the "Basics" of VM in the exam, there isn't necessarily anything that is basic about it. The concepts of "Binding Oneself to the Void" is a task that heavily revolves around our sense of being alone and isolate, separated from everything, adrift in space and time, it is not basic but an intense situation that makes up a hearty understanding of our place is the cosmic wholeness of it all. It is the embracing of "The Great Silence" as it is worded in the lesson. To embrace the "Stagnant motionlessness of deep space". Which is ironic in and of itself for space is not as empty as we think it is. It is breathing and thriving and moving and shifting with particles and radiation and elements, gases, sounds, elements in the forms of rocks and debris and materials absolutely everywhere.


We may look and see such vast distances between worlds and asteroids or the general masses within “Space” itself and the reality is that so very much of it is more closely knit together than we even understand. We measure things in a scale that is easy for our minds to comprehend as we ourselves are just so small by comparison. But the reality is that our perspectives absolutely need to adjust in order to grasp the scale of things. Planets are closer than we understand. Gravity expands distances and is a measurable force that we experience even while hundreds of parsecs away are a lot closer than we know.


Imagine that. To us, to our relative size in the world, we may see distance as massive but on a cosmological scale it is all quite nearby. So to imagine ourselves in VM as being alone and isolated in deep dark space is not exactly as realistic as it sounds. But we are indeed close by within the proper perspectives to nearby planets and star and moons and chemicals and substances. We are literally experiencing the stardust and particles from Sirius at all times because we are that “Close By”. So in a way, to me, Void Meditation actually really won’t isolate me in ways I may think but connect me closer to the cosmic whole of the everything beyond us. It may be pushing back the essence of my sofa or my dog or the neighbour outside mowing her lawn. It disconnects me from the earth I am sitting upon and instead it connects me to the prospects of everything else out there that breathes in the cosmos.


And I often do this. I go for walks and hikes at night to places where air and light pollution is less dense. And I look “Up”. I understand though that I am gazing down into the abyss of a hundred thousand million stars gazing back. Mostly void, partially stars. But between those we experience so much more than we cannot see or interact with within the confines of our bares hands and the naked eye. Cosmic rays are still sending particles across the entire vastness of nothing. The largest reservoir of water we are aware of is actually in space. It is within APM 08279+5255, a quasar that is rapidly pushing and pulling atoms together at such a rate that they smash into one another creating water.


The milky way smells like rum but tastes like raspberries because of the particles of ethyl formate. We know that there are over 100,000,000 goldilocks planets within a habitable distance from our home planet. We are complexly close and yet distant from things that we fail to understand. the reality is that we are closer and more knit than we even realise. Our measurement of distance in both space and time can be adjusted in perspective. But the biases that we operate on really change out philosophical outlook on the hostility of the universe versus the chemical density of our entire understanding of the cosmic whole. We are together and bound so densely to things that are so far away even by cosmic standards that we fail to understand it. We share base atoms with things so long and even things far far gone that we are carbon footprints of things that are no longer and the things that will be simultaneously.

“The only elements created in the big bang were hydrogen, helium and a little bit of lithium, all the stuff that makes your life livable, those elements were created in the big bang. And the only place that they were created within the big bang were in the fiery cores of the stars. And the only way that they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode.”


For me, Void Meditation is indeed going to involve so very much with disconnecting into the here and now. But it is an exchange for the connection and the companionship of the deep vast and endless possibilities that anchor my very essence to the complex relationship my even most subatomic particles have to the cosmic whole of the universe and everything in it. It will more so be networking me and my connection to the cosmic whole through companionable silence and understanding for the vast and infinite impossible possibilities that are always dancing on the precipice of the intensity of our universe and everything beyond.