#occult diagrams

[shisasan]

Magic Circle - Alex Stellar

[danskjavlarna]

Source details and larger version.

It might be a sign: my collection of vintage zodiac imagery.

[nemfrog]

The signs of the zodiac represented as a snake, showing their association with parts of the body. La lumière d'Egypte ou la science des astres & de l'âme, en deux parties. 1899.

Internet Archive

[upennmanuscripts]

Everybody look at your hands!

Diagrams of hands from:

Ms. Codex 1663: For palm reading, f. 122r ff Ms. Codex 1680: For use in chiromancy, f. 77r Ms. Codex 1690: Hand of the Philosopher, p. 193 Ms. Coll. 390 Item 778: Manual and guide for a palm reader Ms. Codex 1248: Guidonian hand, f. 122r

[cybercultnzicd]

1920s freemason ephemera belonging to Frank W. Winter of lodge 134, Elizabeth New Jersey. Blueprint instructions for the positions of ritual participants.

[cymorilcinnamonroll]

Holy Diver: A Gay Lucifer x Beelzebub Dark Fantasy Romance (Paradise Lost Fanfiction) PART 1

(Read Part 2 Here)

I flexed my white muscle and moved as one with my katana, picturing Minoan bulls to leap over as I flayed Lucifer’s cheekbone from its sinew. He was heady with exertion, looking like a scraped up, bloody Jude Law as devil-may-care Bosie in Wilde.

But Lucifer was always a snake – ready to strike – and he took his broadsword and met my steel – tempered in fire, a thousand carnivorous folds of singing metal – and sparks ignited as we cascaded into a series of cuts and slashes, fileting each other.

“I draw your final blood, you owe me a beer,” I teased, nicking his shoulder lightly – just a paper cut, letting the linen-like flesh and gold hair of my master, owner of my heart – Lucifer – quiver atop the paper crane edge of my katana.

The droplet spilled in the air as I shoved him with a mighty push down, my steel-toed boot digging into his chest as I captured his scapula-blood on my thumb.

Lucifer smirked, turning into a white albino serpent with emerald eyes that curled around my sword, bleeding as his scales plied up my katana. I licked the stolen bloody drop, then guided the shimmering serpent onto my pale limbs, letting Lucifer idly twist and thread around my fly wings – hardened keratin against a body that would put Asmodeus to shame – and brought the White Serpent to my lips.

We kissed deep, and I bit the White Serpent, tasting his heart in his throat. The Green Language of the Birds filled my ears like a panoply of spring. Suddenly, Lucifer turned back to man, corvid-winged, his bronze ampoules of curls spilling across my arms, to my groin, as we threaded together as Serpent and Fly.

Spent, we gathered our clothes at the dojo, showered, then polished our blades with some whetstones Mulciber had forged for us eons ago from adamant. Mine sparkled with iodized black, Lucifer’s was pale as the moon.

“A beer,” Lucifer grinned. He extended his lace-like hand, sharp talons abroad, and took his palm in mine. We ambled out of our chalet into Dis City proper, walking the long gardens and Pleasure District to our favorite restaurant – Tantalus’ Spoon. Cursed by the gods as he was, we made Tantalus cook, but never could Tantalus touch, taste, or eat his dishes. The lust and wicked longing old Tantalus stewed and simmered and reduced into his mad cuisines would have pleased even the most discerning gourmand.

We ordered two Kirins from the young qilin waitress, and the other Hell After Hours crowds filled in quietly – Samael and Lilith crowded the back with their brood, flirting over a game of dice with blood at stake – craps it looked like – and Moloch and Tanit shared some Sherry and read the New Yorker.

“Nice fiction this week, Bee,” Moloch drawled, adjusting his black-red curls. Tanit winked at Lilith, motioning her to bring Lilith’s newest baby to her, letting her rock on Tanit’s lap. They cooed over the baby, and Lucifer joined them, letting the brown-haired boy ride hobby horse on his lap.

“Who wrote it?” I said, lighting a Tareyton. The cig tasted like Demon Est Deus Inversus, a peated whiskey Michael had made last century that turned out particularly good. Christmas presents from Heaven always pissed me off – join us Fallen Brothers, celebrate the Golden Boy Christ – but the angels did good spirits.

We were all incorporeal, after all. Spirits in spirit enspirited.

Moloch frowned. “There’s something odd in the paper, look at this,” he said, motioning to the Times feature: a man of the book with prominent jowls, a pate of slick white hair, and gray eyes that shimmered like G-d.

“’Top Exorcist of the Vatican Claims He Will Drive Beelzebub Out of America’s Billionaire Heiress,’” Moloch read.

Samael sniggered. “The fuck. You’re touching a human?”

I bristled. “Elodie and I have our arrangement.

Lucifer gave a laugh like a wolf. “One of your consorts misbehave, husband? And she dialed Daddy Pope. How fucking hilarious.”

Elodie. Elodie. Elodie. A rich brunette of archaic, refined breeding, old Manhattan money, half Rockefeller lady of the hour, half Nigerian heiress. She was one of my favorites. The fuck had she done now? Elodie had always been an occultist with a tendency to scare easily – I delivered showerings of golden fortune and money and goodwill to her, men and models and Silicon Valley shit to play with, rare, limited edition jewels I had Mulciber handpick and Mammon summon on black market mines and deliver to Elodie’s designer’s door. I even got Elodie a private retreat to Socotra for some Burning Man-adjacent tech fest. Socotra all to herself didn’t come cheap.

And the sex? Of course she was addicted. But addiction could scare Satanists, frighten occultists, or send the demonolaters running to the holy hills. Weaving into their sinew like I had Lucifer earlier, melding a blot of ink of my verdant black soul with Elodie’s tiny spirit spark, crushing her to iced clarity with my mandible?

Perhaps she has found G-d. I probed her feelings with my mind – Elodie was praying the Rosary. She had shut off our psychic line.

“Excuse me, I’ll take care of this matter,” I said. “Least I need is Michael on my ass.”

Especially if I wanted what I’d been coveting all year: his newest peated whiskey: Sol Invictus. Aged in cambion blood barrels. Add in some of Aphrodite’s womb yeast and it was promised to be:

Impeccable. A treasure. It was the only bloody thing getting me through a crumbling real estate market in Pandemonium, my muckraking drunk Secretary Eve screwing everyone and writing Carrie Bradshaw style tell-alls in the yellow pages, and fucking Metatron complaining about the backup of souls in Limbo. It wasn’t my fault Penemue had roc flu. The roc had been shipped here illegally from Jahnna. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I straightened my lapel.

Exited Hell

And debuted in Elodie’s kitchen.

I eyed what was in the penthouse atop Central Park: bare bones. She was one of the eccentrics that refused kitchen staff or servants. Fancied herself a Bohemian. Insisted on Soylent Green and micro-micro-micro wheatgrass dishes. But she needed food. I took flour and two eggs, made a mound of fresh pasta dough, took a knife and wine bottle to roll and separate it, and made spaghetti aglio et olio with the dull, boring ingredients she had in her state-of-the-line kitchen.

Tantalus would lose his shit at the wasted grace of space.

“Honey?” I said, my voice sweet as Elodie ambled in, her eyes bleary. She was dressed in silk and chiffon.

She froze. “Bee.”

“Miss me? I made us dinner.”

She frowned, her rich, luscious brown skin and model-thin frame with the height of a caryatid standing in stark contrast against her amber-earth curls.

“I told you to leave me alone,” she said, amused. “I’m fasting. It lengthens the span of your telomeres.”

“You can’t afford to skip a meal.”

“Sigh. Fine, Bee… it smells delicious. What can I do for you?”

“First, wine,” I said, summoning a Malbec. It would cost the firstborn of a multimillionaire. Not my finest vintage by far, but I wasn’t trying to overpower her. Gentleness and subtlety, and a smile, were weapons of mediation too.

Everything, in the end, was warfare games.

She settled like a bird across from me in the minimalist, blue kitchen. She ate like a she-devil.

“God I’m hungry. Maybe I should give up Goop.”

I kissed her neck, massaging her shoulders. “You’d look marvelous with some curves, and you look marvelous as you are now. But I don’t want you losing weight. My human is precious to me alive. Dead… you cannot enjoy Tblisi.”

“True!” she sang, suddenly energized, and kissed me. I noticed the Barbara medal on her necklace.

“Praying to a saint?”

“Virgins, martyrs, Lilith and Mary, who gives a shit,” Elodie smiled. “I want to see how powerful you are. I called in a favor at the Vatican. This penthouse is booby trapped with the most powerful relics, Solomonic Seals, and anti-ether wards. There’s even a true nail from the Cross. You’re mine, Bee. My toy.”

“Ah, I see.” I gently separated myself from her, hopped onto the table, and sat cross-legged, parting my platinum-bordering-on-white hair from my eyes. “You want to cage me.”

“You’re wasting your time in Hell. What is the point of Hell and Heaven, of Lucifer and God, Bael? You’re old – older than God. Older than all that. We could do good work here in Manhattan. I could use your magick for my charities. Marry me, ignore me, I don’t care, but binding you has its uses.”

My eyes were laser focused. I probed the Cabalistic trap. It was airtight, with some room for negotiation.

“But what would you get out of that, Elodie? I don’t see the point,” I mused.

“What is the point of life, when even fucking Socotra is mine to myself?” She sighed, slumping to the ground, toying with the Saint Barbara medallion. “I’m oh so bored, Bee. I figured, if I caught you… you, who had caught me first! I’d – I’d feel something.”

“And? How do you feel.”

“Empty.”

I gently let myself down from the table and sat beside my charge-turned-attempted-kidnapper. “So, you fancy yourself Lady Solomon. Did I ever tell you how empty he felt too? Solomon trapped me as well. And he died bitter and ruined, his kingdom in waste.”

“But he was Wise. I want Wisdom.”

“You have it. Grace. Refinement. Work. An education. Toys that would cost the Gross Domestic Product of Korea.”

“And it matters fuck – ALL!” Elodie burst. She tore her Saint Barbara apart and tossed it into her artfully decorated, sickeningly expensive Boho chic living room. It landed on some pashmina.

“I’m afraid, Elodie, that even a King of Hell cannot give you meaning in life. My Father neither.”

She sighed, sobbing. “I tried everything. Retreats in Iquitos on aya. Dancing in Ibiza on peyote. Sex with street performers. Submitting my poetry to The Paris Review – I pulled all the strings my family had, and the editor said, in her most eloquent way: Elodie, you’re unpublishable. What’s the bloody point?”

I smiled, savoring what might well be our last conversation. “Then my work with you is fulfilled.”

She shuddered. “What?”

“You realize that all the magick, the powers of Heaven and Hell, the world’s most addictive sex with archons and archdemons and scoundrel human poets, riches and fame and the world as your toy, are nothing without love.”

“I love you, Bee.”

“I’m training wheels, Elodie Okowa. I have to set you free now. You have a good heart that I have fostered. Girlchild, you are twenty-three. It’s time to find yourself without the trappings of the occult and richness. Here,” I said, summoning her soul gem from my dark recesses. It was amethyst-pink, and I hung it on a silver chain atop her brown breasts, set in an adamant bee. “My gift to you. Our contract is done. You no longer owe me offerings, blood, sex, worship, anything. You have my favor forever, Elodie Okowa. I adore you, and I am proud of the woman you became. I will always help you. But it is time to fly on your own wings.”

Elodie startled, touching the elegant soul gem. “You’re – you’re setting me free from our blood pact?”

I laughed. “You want to know the truth of it Elodie, finally?”

She nodded, fearful yet enchanted, leaning against me on the floor as I stroked Elodie’s shoulder.

“Soul pacts aren’t real, my dear. Demons are cultivators of mortal souls, tempering them like steel. Like a katana, finely melded, beaten, folded over and over again, until it is strong as adamant. You are one of my many blades, Elodie. And it’s time for you to wield yourself in the moral, righteous matter you see fit. A final parting gift for you, my soul daughter.”

There were tears in her eyes, and Elodie sat in wonder as I rose in my fine dress, then pulled out of my private collection in the netherworld the katana that I had spent years crafting for her. I hung it on her wall, letting a bit of the metal poke through from the sheathe to reflect my smile back at her.

That blade? It was some of my finest work.

“I love you, Bee.”

“I love you too, Elodie. Let me help you up.”

“Kiss me, please. Our final seal.”

I did. We went to get coffee at a local diner, our favorite spot. She made no mention when I stepped over the iron, ancient nail by the threshold and the foot of my flesh burnt, smelling like smoldering patent leather, melted muscle, and charred bone.

I told her many things. Things I tell all souls in time – some earlier than others. She was a fine woman, my Elodie, and I was amazed and proud of the long life she lived after that night and the works of greatness Elodie did – but above all, the fine wife Elodie found and the children they had together.

And me?

I got

Sol Invictus

That year.

“This is his best yet,” Lucifer murmured, in a Santa hat, as we shared two glasses by our fire – celebrating Christmas for the first time, well, ever.

“Yes, Michael surely did work a miracle.”

The grime of the neon lights of Dis City’s tech district was a pink and green metropolis on rainy pavement. Beings of all realms flittered like flies underfoot as salarymen and career women waded through the grit of the asphalt. Imps scurried about as the ghosts of the dead went about delivering pizza and wine.

“Hard day?” Lucifer asked, resting his motorcycle at the stoop of my office. I liked to work in remoteness, in a boarded up little back-alley desk where I could meet with lost souls, those in need, and arbitrate and heal them of their addictions and problems. I administered therapies and medical regimens – alongside my friendship – in my practice as a Jungian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist that dealt in Afterlife trauma and confidence issues.

I didn’t want abused souls coming into the gold and adamant metropolis of my main office, the trappings and edifice dripping finery from starry, pinnated columns, and feel ashamed for being small. Father knew I had been made to feel small in my life, eons before the Great Reconciliation. I understood what it was to be crushed as beetle under the heel of those mightier, marching over your keratin towards progress.

“I met with Hua,” I said quietly to my husband Lucifer, dusting my tan trench coat and black loafers with a lint brush. I stood in the door of my therapist’s office and locked the padlock, pocketed the lint brush into my etheric carryon bag – invisible to the naked eye – and took the band of the bag of Chinese takeout Lucifer had for us to share. I smiled. “You got me lo mein and chow fun. My favorites. Thanks, love.” I pecked him on the cheek.

Lu’s navy business suit stood dark against his blond cowlick and golden stubble. His eyes burned like blue brands under his wire-rimmed glasses. “Hua… the one from the latest caseload. The sweatshop fire?”

“The one.”

“Funny how mortals don’t realize they all come to Hell to process their trauma, sins or not. We are simply Sheol, the purifying fires of the grave, with love enough for those departed…”

“To carry them up to Heaven on our faith, yes,” I smiled, and we walked back to our quiet little flat on the corner of Rue Merlebleu and Chambeau Mélange. We unpacked the Chinese food and changed into athleisure, Lu in gray sweatpants and a black turtleneck, I in all-white loungewear.

“Hua’s hard,” I admitted. “I feel like I’m making no progress.”

We ate in companionly silence, then settled into marital bliss – worries of the hard day’s labor temporarily forgotten.

Hua Lee met me the next day in my office of homely colors, greens and blues, with polished stone accents in muted blacks and grays. I prided myself on having constructed from scratch the all-natural wood and moss interior, with a clear burbling automatic creek flagging the floor over a meditation set I had constructed last year to give my patients more happiness and cultivate a sense of peace.

My patient sat drawing in the sand meditation garden, nine years old. She had long black, beautiful hair, and a shimmy of limbs that danced like a tiny singer, like she’d be at home doing the lindy hop with a pack of spiders.

“What are you drawing, darling?”

“A dragon!” Hua smiled, looking up at me. “Mr. Kwan is so kind at my auntie’s home. I wish mom and dad were here, but I’m glad they’re watching Jiehong on Earth. I – I wouldn’t want my baby brother to be alone. It’s nice Auntie Chao found a husband in the Afterlife. I’d be lonely without Auntie Chao and Mr. Kwan.”

I noticed the impressive scales in the sand garden’s drawing, the solar beast’s breath of hot ramen noodles, and it giving the audience a thumbs up.

“The dragon seems happy, Hua. Last week, it didn’t look as, well, enthusiastic.” I smiled, giving her some blocks. “Can you make it in 3-D?”

“I’m happier than I was last week, I guess,” Hua acknowledged, biting her lip. “School is great, and my best friend Tahirah and I like to get custard after math – we didn’t have American frozen custard in Chengdu, but Auntie Chao’s mooncakes really can’t be beat, Mr. Bee.”

Hua made the impressive dragon out of the PlayMobil, then added a princess riding it in a sparkling green ballgown. “Ah hah! A dragon and his fearless knight!” For an extra touch, Hua gave the dragon a lightsaber, and princess knight a sword. “I’m happier, these days, Mr. Bee. Truly, like you said – the afterlife heals, and though I miss mom and dad and my little brother, I know I’ll grow up here.”

“You can be anything you want in the Celestial Realms, once you come of age, Hua. In fact, I have an idea.”

Her black eyes lit up like polished onyx pearls. “Oh? An adventure? I love our adventures.”

And that was how I phoned her darling aunt and guardian – Chao Kwan, né Lee, and asked if I could take her niece on a field trip.

“A real dragon!” Hua said, amazed, as I flew her in my arms to Michael’s dragon ranch on the outskirts of Texas’ shadow side. We had stopped at a Buccee’s earlier and I had bought her some brisket and one of the mascot plushes. Hua grasped Buccee Jr. in her arms and spread her hands like Kate on the Titanic as I carried my patient through thermals of air, letting my fly wings ride the warm currents.

Michael waved below, saddling up the Clay Dragon – a shining yellowish-gray wyrm mare – with a saddle and stirrups suitable for a tiny, scrawny nine-year-old (and her plush.)

“Popsicle, Hua? I see Mr. Bee has decided to take you on another adventure.” Michael smiled, his long, Southwestern-styled attire (he loved cowboys and the Wild West), black hair, tan skin, and crinkled smile showing with glimmering white teeth. He was barbecuing a pig in a smoker and hoisted a plate onto the table for Hua and me.

“Oh, Mr. Mike, yes! Did you make me the pulled pork and elote again?” Hua begged, rushing to hug Michael. He lifted her in his golden arms and twirled her around.

“Of course! Have you been a good girl, my darling?” Michael said. He winked at me. “I have another bottle of Sol Invictus, Bee, for bringing me this angel made flesh.”

“Ask Mr. Bee if I’m good!” Hua said, a feral child, ravaging the pulled pork, BBQ sauce, and buns with her tiny limbs and blunt teeth.

“Excellent,” I said genially, hoping my therapy would work. I put the Sol Invictus – my favorite of Michael’s peated whiskeys – into my etheric storage chamber that went to Lucifer and I’s private palace resident and country estate, out in the boonies of Hell. “Thanks, brother.”

“Welcome,” he smiled, slapping me on the shoulder. We hugged as we usually did and set in for a pig picking. Michael took the small roasted sow down from the smoker, and then we ate, listening about Hua and Tahirah’s adventures.

“And then, Auntie Chao said: Hua and Tahirah, clean up the dog poop, or I’ll make you walk her a thousand miles to get the hyperness out of you both!”

Hua laughed, joy settling into her. I remember when her body had Fallen into my outstretched soul web – a fast fashion factory fire, her parents praying over her limp body, tiny Hua charred to the bone. I had wept egregiously, knitting little Hua’s starflesh body back together with my restorative powers – what little magick I still possessed of my once great majesty as Baal Hadad, Canaanite lord of fertility, health, thunder, lightning, and war. The Fall had only affected gods, at first: Astarte to Eve, Marduk to Michael, Nergal to Samael – and my beloved Attar to Lucifer – but as human beliefs grew into Abrahamic fashions, so did the Afterlife.

When the first human had Fallen – oh, the weeping and wailing of Heaven and Hell! Oh, what a broken world. We had fought, faction upon faction, some granted salvation, others mercy – G-d driven insane…

But, that was before the Great Reconciliation.

(A small shudder passed through me as I remembered being trampled by Michael’s flaming foot, myself stinging his heel, bitter-winged my soul.)

It was not just “demons” who Fell, after all… and the workings and currents of the chthonic Afterlife had little sense to them, running on Mother Nature’s instincts and Darkness’s Chaos. That all souls came to Gehenna to seek immortality in the purifying fires of Sheol, well, that was one of G-d’s greatest mysteries.

So Humans Fell, in turn. All before they could

Ascend.

But here was Michael, smiling at me – us not at war ever again. My brother winked, knowing I was remembering. “You did well to raise the dog so kindly,” Michael told Hua, stroking her hair. “Now, Hua, what did Mr. Bee say about dragon mares?” We settled her into the harness and saddle, looped Hua in, gave her the reins, and took her out for a walk on the Clay Dragon’s back.

“Feel the rhythm of the flight. It comes from the song of your heart,” she repeated, eager. “Let’s go, girl!” Hua cried, taking off at a gallop on the Clay Dragon mare.

I was fast on her heels, flexing my wings and flying after her. I led the nine-year-old through gentle aerial exercises on her dragon… and then, it was time for her Trust Fall: the core event.

“Are you ready to see if you can fly too, Hua?” I shouted.

She nodded yes. “Yes, Mr. Bee. I have created my own song of the heart, like you taught.”

We put the dragon mare back to stable and went to the human flight ring – where Michael and I taught all souls their own power.

Michael held out a water of life vessel, sprinkling it on Hua’s forehead in a baptism that carried the scent of lilies and song of G-d. “Alright, little lady, show us what you’ve got, Hua – and high five!” my brother encouraged.

“Remember, Hua, I’ll be there to catch you,” I said, helping her up onto the dive board over the foam pit. I waded into the foam blocks as she scaled the gymnastic equipment.

Hua’s black pants, Hello Kitty tee shirt, and gold skin shone in the sun of Texas’ fall. She began to sing, opening her lips, a honeyed tune flowing from her verdant voice. It made me want to weep, but Michael and I steeled ourselves, for this was a time of joy! – and watched Hua leap.

Fire licked her shoulder blades, then dragonfly wings sprouted as her soul ascended to immortality, and her halo winked on like a shining lunar disk. I was gazing at her own personal circlet of moon, watching the brilliant blue bottle dragonfly wings weave in and out of the air in syncopation with her limbs.

“Mr. Bee! Mr. Mike! I’m finally immortal like Tahirah, my doggie, and Auntie Chao. Like the immortals, I can fly!” Hua grinned, giddy, darting in and out of our arms. Michael took to the sky on his own snowy owl wings and I on my fly, and we wove dusk pink in with the fall air, helping the sun set.

“Thank you, boss,” Chao said as I dropped her niece off. “I’ll make you and your husband mooncakes!”

We hugged, my employee in happy tears, and I gave Chao and her family a bonus for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

“God, are these delicious,” Lucifer sighed, eating a lotus root paste mooncake on our stoop as we watched children play soccer in the alley.

“Like home.” I finished my red bean one.

“Oh? Yes, you are my home, Baal.”

Attar-called-Lucifer nestled into my arms. We cheered on the kids, then shared another bottle of Sol Invictus – Michael had rewarded me with a whole case.

Hua had passed on at seven – she’d been my longest ward. Typically, souls reached immortality in a few weeks.

Her soul was stubborn. Resilient. Breathless.

Brilliant.

Michael and I had poured all our resources, alongside my stellar employee and head draftswoman and office manager, Chao, into healing Hua.

And it had paid off, her soul aging like

the finest of peated

whiskey.

“To Hua!” I raised my glass.

“To Hua,” my husband dear and darling said, and we drank deep of it, then deep of each other

that

night.

Eve chewed on her persimmon hair, a capped pen behind her pale pink ear as she answered my phone. My secretary was, as usual, inebriated, her Louboutins on the chaise lounge as she slinkily answered Samael on my old rotary phone – never out of fashion -  in a houndstooth coat and black velvet dress.

“Oh yes, Sammy, your new horse is how big? Sturdy? Easy to ride?”

I sighed, clenching my fist around my fountain pen as I went over this year’s upcoming Halloween tax amendments. Halloween was the biggest festival in Hell, and Lucifer and I had promised to show Gabriel his first time celebrating it a grand time. After Michael and I had cultivated our friendship since Sol Invictus – that brew Michael’s first palm leaf offering to Hell in a literal handbasket – relations between Hell and Heaven had thawed from their usual Seventh Circle ice.

But Eve and Samael could be a problem.

“Oh yes, Sammykins,  I can work with a mount that big –

“Eve, dear, can you get back to work?” I called. She was, despite her flirtations, the best worker I had, by far – even more organized than Lucifer himself.

She hung up the phone, smiling, a manila envelope in her hands. “I have a surprise for you, boss.” The redheaded first woman plopped it down across from my secretariat, a Seal of Caligrosto in red wax inked on the front – the Morningstar stamp of approval, and royal seal of Lucifer and Beelzebub Morningstar, King and Prime Minister, First Family, of Hell.

I raised my iced platinum eyebrows. “You didn’t, Eve. That’s impossible. Is this what I think it is?”

She winked, her green-blue eyes and freckled, creamy skin and wide curves kindly. “Gabriel’s passport expedited with Metatron’s approval? Why yes, as Adam works for Michael in Heaven doing exactly what I do-

“Minus the cheating.”

She laughed heartily – a witch’s cackle. “Is it cheating if it’s Biblical? You know Samael, Lilith, Adam and I have our ways.”

“Eve, the humans these days have a word for that: Polycule. But fuck, Eve – how did you finagle that bastard Metatron’s approval?”

Metatron: iced, gray-haired miser of Heaven. My mortal enemy. He had taken pleasure in torturing during the Harrowing, when Lucifer and I suffered with Hell’s sins for thousands of years. Michael had cried.

Metatron? Laughed. It was true, demons could be cruel.

But certain angels were

Crueler.

“You know I fucking hate him. How, Eve? He’s been set against me inviting Gabriel for a year, ever since I told him Lucifer and I celebrated Christmas for the first time.”

“Let’s just say I have a vested interest in reuniting Heaven and Hell, boss. Not all of us want the Apocalypse, after all.” She poured some Cabernet Sauvignon for the both of us and lit a Virgina Slim on a black cig holder like Audrey Hepburn was fond of.

“I’m glad I can count you on my team, my star Employee of the Month. Shit, expedited passage of an archangel, only the finest employee in the Hellopolis could match that.”

She winked: “A favor earned is a favor done, and a boss pleased is more bonus for me to spend on my houseplants and wine collection.”

Lucifer listened as we made ramen from scratch, me regaling him with Eve’s genius.

“She’s dynamite. Be careful, Bee.” Lucifer smiled, then boiled the handcut ramen in salted water. I fried an egg and the fixings.

“As if Gabriel isn’t. You invited him, darling. What to do with a fireball angel on the biggest shutdown party in the Afterlife, high and drunk in the bowels of Hell, when our citizens go on a bender for the month of October?”

Lucifer smiled like a fat housecat, all elegance and artful distress gone in a moment of sheer glee: “It will be nice to have my favorite brother as our guest for a month.”

We cuddled on the couch and watched Golden Girls. Then, we just watched Girls.

“I think you’re Jessa, Bee.”

“Fuck you.”

“Want to? Fuck me?”

“Always.”

Gabriel’s black hair and gray eyes were wide with glee as he ate pumpkin cotton candy. “Shit, this stuff is stickeh. Itsah all over my faceh.” He got some in his wings. I conjured a handkerchief embroidered with the Morningstar seal and cleaned him up. “Thanks, buddy! Jee willeckers, Hell at High Noon, Harrowed in Halloween, Hallowed by a Heavenly Arrival.”

“I take it the heavenly arrival is you, Gabe,” Lucifer smiled, riding his white Ferrari down I-666 past the Styx. The beach houses and red crystal waters bobbed on the sandy tide, red from iron deposits that made the fish healthy and delectable, and sunsets pink as wine.

I had given dear old Gabriel shotgun after picking him up at the airport with cotton candy – he had always had a sweet tooth, and his grumpiness at the cramped morning flight between Heaven and Hell – half of Hell’s residents lived in Heaven, half in Hell, depending on if they wanted a more pastoral, ‘cottagecore’ life of the wildness of Gan Eden, or city of wonders and madness of Hell, where every pleasure existed, for a price. The ether separating the Seven Rings of Hell from the Seven Spheres of Heaven was so thick and clotted as blackish blood that only the dead souls of the Red Baron and his ilk of bushwhacking World War I and II pilots could fly the aircraft, ensuring limited supply of flights, cramped spaces, and an airsick Gabriel.

Oh, how his tune had changed when Lucifer pulled up with beach supplies and a white Ferarri decked out in Beetlejuice garb.

“Yes, deario brother, I’m the Heavenly Arrival in Heavenly Attire,” Gabriel sang, whumping Lucifer on the back. We pulled into our beach house at tropical Emerald Bay, where the gley made the water greenish and jewel-toned, which the fish were adapted to, and we unpacked. The season in Hell and Heaven mirrored each other, our summer in winter, their winter on the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, and we moved in a cosmic dance of fall and rebirth in spring. “Who wants to barbecue? Watch out, boys, I’m a grill master and sasser.”

“Sure, Gabe,” I smiled.

We cracked a Riesling open – Gabe liked girly wines – and made some shitty drinks that would please a sorority sister. It was the first of October, and Gabriel was ready to party.

A month of debauchery followed: floats and parades, drinking Asmodeus under the table, mud wrestling between me and Gabriel to see who owed who a rack of lamb, craps and pong and arcade games… karaoke, which I slayed at, the lead singer of my own garage band.

Still, Gabriel outdid me on his horn, in the end.

When November 1st came, and we sent Gabriel back in style, my shrew Secretary Eve looked at me knowingly, grinning coyly.

“And, how did my hard work pay off?” she asked.

I smiled at her, a hard hug on her petite form escaping my limbs – I hated showing feelings at my main job as Prime Minister, reserving it for my private psychoanalytic practice – but Eve deserved one. I even kissed her on the cheek, though I certainly didn’t ‘swing’ that way with Hell and Heaven’s fairer sex (except with living mortals, of course. On that count, all demons were omnisexual.)

“Gabriel invited me and Beelzebub to him and his dear old husband Mike’s cabin for Christmas.”

She laughed in joy, hugging me, wine and cigarette smoke on her breath: “And like that, thanks to a muckraking Secretary Eve, Hell and Heaven enter new ground – a parlay.”

“Yes, Eve, it seems we do.”

“I always knew you’d do swell with hosting Gabe, Bee. You doubt yourself too much.”

I smiled, pouring us some more Cabernet. “Was it my panic attack choosing cotton candy flavors for the airport pickup?”

She nursed her wine, paused to inhale a cig, then smiled bemusedly: “It’s the care you put into your charges, cultists, friends, family, and city, Bee. Your empire. It is as much your Empire as Lucifer’s, the Morningstar Kingdom, the City of Dis. You are perhaps it’s kind master. You’re the best man I know, Baal.”

“Thanks, Astarte. Say, Samael’s at the door.”

“Teehee, oh, he has roses!” she said, peering over my desk at the entrance. “Time to go, Bee!”

I squeezed her hand, then ambled my way back to Lucifer’s arms.

“You smell of Eve’s perfume – stealing kisses?” Lucifer teased as he greeted me with a peck on the lips at the door.

“Ugh,” I jerked myself out of my dress clothes, naked as G-d made me. “She reeks of Dior Gris – always covers my austere office.”

“Maybe she’s getting back at you for making her do everything in Lotus Notes and a rotary phone.”

“Touche, Lucifer,

Touche.”

I was rotting in an abyssal sea, wounds eons deep, my fly mandible and carapace of wings and flesh twisted, mutated, abandoned.

Try as I might, I couldn’t move my broken limbs. My husband Lucifer – then lover – was comatose beside me, face caved in by Michael’s sword.

The tides of Hell assailed us, and I watched hell maggots eat away at us, unable to move, unable to budge, voice stolen, mind screaming in pain as the wicked winds of the Seventh Circle assailed us. A frozen lake and fallen feathers began to grow from our refuse, and that was how the Lake of Fire and Blood was formed. Lucifer’s fire, my ice.

            I woke in a sweat, screaming, as the maggots that had once made their home in my limbs wormed their way into my nightmares. My cries rose in time with the downpour of iron rain, and Lucifer startled, his six white wings of swan lurching.

Instinctively, Lucifer clutched me protectively, his fangs biting into his bottom lip, drawing silver blood. I curled around him, shuddering, my mandible nesting at the joint of his arm. He ran his violinist fingers through my long, platinum hair. Fire grew in my belly as I thought of the Harrowing.

“I was back There too, love,” Lucifer sighed, he my anchor against the night. Lightning pierced the sky as storm lamia wreathed the air under Vepar’s lead, bringing healing rains that would fill the reservoirs of the Sixth Circle and replenish the water supply. “Another wicked dream.”

“Yes, dear, another wicked dream,” I echoed; he licked my tears. We kissed, and I drank the bloody drops of black from his lip. He bit down on my tongue, piercing it, and we drank the healing ichor of each other. “Coffee, Eve lent me some Virginia Slims. I’ve grown to like them.”

“Yes, Bee,” Lucifer smiled, putting on his horn-rimmed glasses as we dressed in robes and slippers low enough to let our wings rest comfortably. “It will soothe.”

We held hands in the highest penthouse in Hell, in Dis City – our working apartments, far from the country outskirts where our palace and estate was – and admired the gleaming metropolis we had created together over the ages. “Are you ready to leave for Heaven tomorrow, for Michael’s cabin in the Shamayim, to spend Christmas with him and Gabriel?” I asked, swallowing the hazy memory of fear. Wicked dreams, indeed.

Lucifer squeezed my hand, then kissed my cheek – he was quite tall, but I was taller. “Of course, Bee. I’ve been looking forward to it all winter. It’s always hot in Hell, never snows like Gan Eden. I would like to see my old orchard.”

“Ah yes, the apples.”

“Yes… Michael says he tended them well, and Eve waters and prunes them with Adam daily.”

“Yes, I am sure they are majestic.”

“It has been so long since we have been allowed to roam Gan Eden – Heaven – on pleasure, not business reined in by Metatron’s asinine rules.”

Neither of us made mention of G-d’s living corpse:, blind, deaf, and dumb atop the Throne, that Metatron divined from with the holy flame of the Shekinah. Some things were better left unsaid, and Lucifer sacrificed much of his blood, sanity, and sleepless nights ruling from Erebus, making the black refuse of Hell into ether and matter that would grow crops, water, food, air, life, and make a hell of a home, or a home of Hell.

We went to go exert ourselves in the dojo, then made our usual eggs and toast for breakfast and played Mario Kart and watched anime, before a busy day at the Hellopolis. I brought my limited-edition Lord of the Rings trilogy omnibus to read at lunch, and Lucifer stole my worn copy of the Silmarillion from my nightstand. Sometimes, in secret, we roleplayed Mairon and Melkor…

“How is Hua, darling?” I asked her aunt Chao, my office manager. Eve and Chao were chatting by the water cooler as I helped myself to an espresso.

“Wanted me to give you this, boss,” Chao smiled, her rosy cheeks broad and jolly. Chao fished in her purse for a carved wooden fish on a leather thong, clearly evidence of an elementary school project. “In Hell, fish bring luck, as you teach us all at Soul Orientation, Bee, when us souls arrive. Bend your tall-as-fuck head down, and watch the mandible.”

I did, and Chao ran her firm, strong hands cross my hair in a motherly fashion – (and I had always longed for a mother, but for us sorry lot of angels and demons, we never had one) – parting it to tie the necklace into a slipknot.

“I love it, Chao. Tell Hua thank you.”

Eve smiled, pensive. “I have a feeling we will all need the luck, Bee.”

Lucifer and I took the Red Baron’s jet to the Shamayim. Gabriel was bouncing on his heels at the airport, corn dogs in hand as he rushed to hug us. Michael smiled widely, staying back with a trestle for our luggage, which Gabe helped eagerly carry.

“Christmas! Christmas! Oh, the holly and the ivy! Brothers, WELCOME TO HEAVEN!” Gabriel sang, magicking a string of holly crowns from his pocket for me and Lucifer, placing them on our heads before we could protest.

“Thanks, Gabe,” I smiled. Lucifer winced. Some wounds were still fresh.

“I love it,” Lucifer said. “Greenery. A tree. The best gift Earth has to offer.”

“That’s what I always say,” Michael smiled, and we departed for their cabin.

There was much mirth, drinking, snow men, and aerial snowball fights to be had – and, of course, beer, alongside National Lampoon’s Christmas – at Michael and Gabriel’s cabin.

Christmas morning came around, and Michael handed us our presents.

I got his new whiskey – Copernicus. But Lu?

Lu got apple seeds

From his old Tree.

Lucifer, not able to help it, sank to his knees, and was wracked with sobs – heretofore forbidden from visiting his old Orchard of Life, though Eve and Michael always sent him updates and pics and logs on text, and had set up etheric cameras so my husband could watch his precious apple blossoms, squirrels, and deer.

I rushed to him.

Michael hugged him, and Gabriel did too. We all held him.

“I thought you could grow a new orchard, Lu,” Michael said kindly, proud. “We love you.”

I touched my necklace, pensive like Chao had been.

Would I need it, luck?

“I can really go to my old orchard?” Lucifer asked Eve and Michael as we ate in a little slice of Italian coast in Michael’s favorite harbor in the Shamayim – the one bit of pocket of summer in Gan Eden. Michelangelo spent his days here, carving immaculate sculptures that never even graced Italy in the 13th Century – he was Michael’s personal artist. I admired the sea naiads frolicking that towered over Heaven’s Gate above the Lake of Memories Michelangelo had carved, with fishermen hauling in the day’s catch below their giant embrace, and souls that chose old age as their favorite appearance ambling about with spaghetti, gelato, and art supplies (Michael taught still life classes, after all, and his was the Heaven of Artists. Also, the most idyllic retirement-style community for old souls at heart.)

Eve checked her iPhone – my secretary was quite happy to be free of my rotary phone and office attire – she was in a red checkered sundress, peach lipstick, and straw sunhat. Eve smiled tenderly, squeezing Lucifer’s pale, elegant hand. “Of course, Lu. Metatron doesn’t control everything – we just give him busy work. Christ and Michael are mostly in charge, just like you and Bee in Hell.”

I winced. “I hate him. Metatron, I mean. Such a fucking ass.”

Michael laughed softly. “And I think his feelings are mutual. You two are too set in your ways, Beelzebub. Stolid, conservative, obsessed with soul economics – inflexible. Unbending.”

“The solid wood breaks, the green wood bends,” Eve said. She loved to misquote the Tao Te Ching, fancied herself ‘spiritual.’ Usually, I thought it cute.

But now it irritated me. Her and Michael assuming everything was swell and easy.

“I loathe him too, admittedly,” Lucifer murmured, scrolling on Eve’s phone to view his favorite orchard sparkling in snow, winter berries ripe on bushes as cardinals, robins, and sparrows harvested the ripened red and seeds. “But I need to see my Garden.”

“Then bend,” Michael said kindly. “Nobody wants the Apocalypse, Lu.”

I smoothed Lucifer’s Italian linen shirt. He looked like Lestat, and I was Louis, my husband’s blond hair dangling in spirals, his sharp smile against fangs. I kissed his hand, and he kissed mine. Finally, we were in the Garden of Eden – Lucifer’s old estate and orchard, where he had planted the wine bushes of Baruch and apple trees of Knowledge and Life long ago.

We sat in a little awning, under an angel statue, snow ripe on the land, bundled up in pea coats and stomping black combat boots, black jeans on underneath. We liked to match our clothes.

“It’s like being home, Bee.” He cried softly, in joy, taking pictures of the animals and plants with his phone. “Eve said I could garden.”

“It is your Garden, Lu. And Lu?”

“Yes, my love?”

“Anywhere you are, is my home.”

We embraced, tended the bushes with clippers, cleaned the graves of the angels that had died in the War – it was a veteran’s cemetery park now, where mystical poppies bloomed in autumn when the veil between Immortality and Eternity was thinnest, and those of the Great Far Beyond could stretch their mysterious hands across the Void to nudge their brothers of times long forgotten, harvest hearts, and friendship.

For all of them – we remembered. Asmodeus, Moloch, Samael, Gabriel, Michael. Me and Lucifer. Even Metatron.

We did not let our fallen brothers fade, and Michael and Eve still tended Veteran’s Park – once the Garden of Eden – and led field trips of Heaven and Hell’s children to teach them why we should never

War

Again.

“Do you think it was worth it?” Lucifer said distantly, tone icy. He got the faraway look in his eye that meant his torment and past Harrowing was haunting him.

I leaned down and nestled my head in the crook of his shoulder, then kissed his neck, biting slightly – not enough to raise blood. He moaned, leaning into me as I stood behind him, and we threaded our hands across each other.

I turned him to me, reassuring – “What, Lu, my angel?”

He winced. “I am no angel, Baal.”

“To me, Attar, it does not matter. Angels, demons, gods. Who gives a fuck. You’re beautiful.” I kissed him, and we fell together like fire and ice, kissing, plucking, fucking – Eve had cleared the schedule and closed down Veteran’s Park to give us time together for an amorous escapade, as we had done in Lucifer’s Garden long ago.

When I was inside him, cock heavy with seed, Lucifer looked up to me and smiled, cried. He kissed me hungrily as I pumped, fucked, and worshipped him – sucking on his nipple, running my claws and mandible down his treasure trail and chest.

“It was worth it for this. Carnal delight.” He said in my embrace as I climaxed in time with him, panting.

“Hyup – what? Eve’s fruit? Giving humans souls, virility and fertility, giving them immortality? Ha – ha – ha. Fuck Lu, you’re beautiful -”

He silenced my moans with kisses, rolled me over so he, smaller and tender, was atop me, a golden dove on Lady Esclarmonde’s Cathar tomb in the French Alps. He began to sing, once Heaven’s lead vocalist, a tender B’shem HaShem. I cradled him, staring up at the snow falling from the cloudy sky.

It steamed on our naked flesh, the snowflakes, and I thought

That I

Could see G-d.

Elodie had asked me to be her birth doula, a perfumed, red wax sealed letter arriving from her summoning circle on my Hellopolis desk. I smiled at the picture she attached – her and her wife, Alicia, and Elodie pregnant through a donor. Her stomach was just beginning to show:

“Dearest Bee, my oldest friend,” the letter began: “I have found myself with a little Bug, as I was once your Brood. Please, do me the honor of being Godfather and birth doula of my beautiful daughter: Bailah. P.S. – I’m writing a novel about you.”

My eyes steamed with tears at my beautiful foster-daughter, the purple bee gem shining proudly on her brown breasts above a white sundress. It was summer, then winter, then summer again, and in time, my daughter had courted Alicia, married, and was now

With child.

“What a marvelous idea Elodie had,” Lucifer said happily as we ate at Tantalus’ Spoon, putting on Hedwig and the Angry Inch with my garage band later that night. I was dressed as Hedwig, black-white wig on, bustier attached under a sparkling net dress, pink go go boots and perfume.

We performed, and Samael and Lilith applauded the most of all. Eve and Adam sat at the back with their gaggles of children playing – basically four wedded parents to the Broods of Heaven and Hell.

“Brava, Bee!” Eve crowed, giving me flowers. Asmodeus smiled, lazing idly in Eligos’s arms. They poured me some wine, toasting me.

“To the garage band!” the Demon of Lust and Wrath said, his dark blond hair shining, and Eligos gave me a lei.

“I didn’t know we were supposed to wear Hawaiian shirts and shorts after the performance and we got out of the drag,” Lucifer sulked, dressed in a three-piece navy suit.

“Huh, well, I told you this morning,” I said, amused.

He undid his cufflinks, looking at the pineapples on my t-shirt. “Well, I was playing Baldur’s Gate and saving Karlach.”

“Ah.”

My meeting with Metatron was not going well.

Metatron’s gray hair and beard were brushed with fine oils, he looked like an old image of G-d. “Well, Bael. The taxes just won’t do. We need more capital gains tax on the markets of Hell.”

I grew icy, anger rankling my stomach. I gritted my teeth, arranging my manila folder of records. I took my elegant hands and turned to the graph showing bloating on the stock market in turn with the moves of more souls from Heaven to Hell: “Souls prefer, on average, the modern amenities of the Underworld, Enoch.”

“Heaven is austerity. Pure. We cannot modernize, we are pastoral, tourist-destination laden. It’s how we thrive, in tune with nature. If we raise the capital gains tax on expatriates, we can deal with the inflation.”

“And trample Hell’s stock market, yes? Fuck you sincerely, Enoch.”

He bit his lips, frowning. “My name is Metatron, oh Bael of Rot. I am the ascended prophet. I shed that name when I became the Lord of Hosts, Right Hand of G-d-“

“We all know your G-d is as much corpse as the Emperor of Warhammer 40k.”

“The fuck is that, Bael?”

“A – a tabletop game – oh fuck you Enoch, I do not agree to the trade!”

He cursed me out too, and soon we had drawn our swords, my katana against his broadsword, and were dueling as demon and angel. He pierced my flesh, I skinned his shoulder. Anger! Hatred! O Empire of Hell I must defend, against the swollen indolence of Heaven. I pummeled, toppled him, got him in a bloody Half Nelson, then kicked his shin in.

Metatron groaned, slumping. I wiped my hands off on my pants, then magicked away the mess – careful to let the blood show still in my triumph.

“Wait, help me, Bael – HACK. Is it – hack – really so bad for Hell to suffer in honor of the righteous Paradise, Heaven?”

I fixed my briefcase and put my hair back in a ponytail, my mandible tasting his fear on the air. “It would starve Hell’s lower classes, as I explained, Enoch. Do not test me again.”

Metatron, before I could react, ambled over and stabbed me though the back. It was my turn to slump to the floor. He took my briefcase in his angry hands, stormily threw my phone, Tareytons, Elodie’s invitation of miracles – to the Devil a Daughter – and stamped them under his flaming feet. He scowled at the burning invitation.

“Fuck, the letter, fuck you!” I couldn’t stand, could stand, up, fuck, barf, up, damn you, Enoch.

“I’m reporting you to Michael for this infraction. I know he and Eve hope we can stop the Apocalypse. I hope, for the sake of my sword through your cock and bladder, it happens, Fly.”

I grabbed the burning letter, but Metatron summoned Godsfire, and burned me to a husk, castigating me with every curse in the Bible. Psalmic ones, wrathful ones, an angel

Scorned.

I bled, burnt, and wept, thinking back to Elodie’s iron nail that made me feel utmost pain.

Even those that loved me

Hurt me.

(Gladly, Father G-d?)

Fuck

Metatron.

Elodie was waiting for me at a luxe Prenatal Yoga studio that Paris Hilton loved in Chelsea. We got lox bagels beforehand then went inside, my platinum hair bunched back in a messed, artful bun, my gray workout clothes on against my icy skin.

“Bee,” she hugged me. “Thanks for being my doula, and Bailah’s godfather.”

“Of course, Bug,” I said happily. My soul-bonded goddaughter was a fine, sparkling woman: her and her wife Alicia had started a wildlife action nonprofit that protected cloud forest in the Amazon, something she had fallen in love with on a volunteer trip. She was using her Nigerian heiress and Rockefeller money well.

Elodie’s brown eyes sparkled like black movie glass, and her lips were done up in a beautiful shade of plum paint. She was plump and pleasing, and I gently wiped some of the garlic cream cheese from her lip with my elegant handkerchief Abaddon had embroidered for me for my last birthday on April 21st. I forbid even Lucifer from celebrating, but everyone always insisted on tiny gifts.

Metatron’s anger haunted me, but I erased it from my mind, having told no one of yet another dangerous encounter with the blasted Voice of God.

I would not let him harm any of my humans, or my citizens.

Not even let Lucifer have a go at him.

Metatron: abrasive, testy, conniving. Me: plotting, quiet, conservative, fastidious. We were always like fire and oil, combusting. In truth, I craved I and Metatron’s weekly fights.

Blowing off steam is always, shall we say, pleasant.

“Breathe in, lower your pelvis, hold for five seconds, then push. Have your partner position you,” the yoga instructor said, a cute Asian woman with a whip of black hair and pink sports bra.

I helped Elodie into the position, my strong mind probing her uterus to Bailah’s soul: Bailah was joyful in the uterine fluid, her soul spark dancing in time with Elodie’s heartbeat.

There was nothing I loved more on Earth, Heaven, or Hell than children like Bailah and Hua!

“Thanks, Bee. You’re amazing,” Elodie smiled as we got cappuccinos afterwards. “Say, Bee, do you think, um, well… oh God, maybe I shouldn’t say it.”

She looked nervous, her face flinching. She toyed with her goddess braids. I steadied her hand in mine, squeezing.

“What is it, dove?”

She lowered her onyx eyes: “Well, erm, do you think I’ll be a good mother? As good a parent as you are to your soul-bond charges?”

I softened, remembering raising Asmodeus, Belial, Jophiel, and the other archangel-gods in Pagan Heaven – before the Angelic Gene Corruption, and we became angels – then some of us Fallen, hellbound.

“You’ll be a wonderful mother to an adamant daughter, Elle.”

I toasted her with my coffee silently, and Elodie smiled, and we

Drank

Deep.

“So, you’re basically having a daughter,” Samael smiled, eating a lemon meringue donut he had baked for me and Lucifer after inviting us over for a barbecue in honor of Lucifer’s birthday on the Winter Solstice. Almost a year had passed, and Elodie was due in a month. “That’s wonderful, Bee.”

“Yes, well, little Bailey – Bailah’s nickname - will be my goddaughter, technically,” I smiled, warmth flooding my bones and mandible. I carried around a miniature photo of her sonogram everywhere, took Elodie to all her appointments, cooked with Alicia in the kitchen every day to satisfy Elodie’s pregnancy cravings, was working on a set of wings for my little human angel –

And Lucifer was carving an oaken cradle.

Lucifer grinned, licking the lemon curd with his forked tongue – it got on his golden stubble: “I’ve never seen Bee this happy, Sam.”

“Oh, fuff! So much merriment, and I feel left out – Sammy stopped celebrating our births ages ago!” Lilith laughed, ribbing her husband. Her green eyes, olive skin, and black-purple curls under velvet horns and above ruby lips shone in the Tiffany lamplight like sin.

Samael ribbed her right back: “Lily, we have a brood of a hundred a day. And I cook you everything.”

“Heh.” Lilith licked some chocolate cookies she’d baked, then foisted them onto my husband. “Happy eleventy eleventh birthday, Lu.”

“Oh yes, you always insist on Eleventy Eleventh birthdays,” Samael laughed.

“It’s a nice tradition,” I said amenably, my husband and I, just like Samael and Lilith, Tolkien nerds. When we LARPed, Lilith was Eowyn and Samael was Elrond. Eve liked to be Galadriel, and Michael was Celeborn. Adam, well, took photos and handed out the weapons. I loved to be in Sauron armor I custom blacksmithed, but Lucifer was too lazy, and ordered Mulciber to forge his – he was more into woodwork.

We had broken our roleplay of Mairon and Melkor finally, out, in public…

“To Lucifer’s Eleventy Eleventh! I mean, uh, Melkor’s!” Lilith cheered, fixing us a round of espressos.

We all blew our party streamers, then Samael cut into a vanilla ice cream chocolate fudge cake.

We ate the leftovers later that night in our palace by the fireside, our new dog – Naberius – a hellhound par excellence, basking by the smoldering woodstove.

“This is fucking divine,” Lucifer said mid-bite.

“Good birthday?” I asked.

“They’re always wretched,” he sighed. “I hate growing old. I think I have wrinkles.”

“Lucifer, you’re immortally 24.”

“Pah.”

I held his face in mine, gazed intently at his flawless skin, then kissed his brow: “You’re a vain creature, Heylel ben Shachar.”

“And proud,” he said bitterly. “Hell needs more glory. Sometimes, I ache for my spear, to go toe-to-toe with Michael again. Say, you think he’ll at least spar me for some territory, some of Purgatory’s outskirts by the Cedar of Lebanon transplants? I could bribe Eve with more of my strawberry plants from our yard to make the arrangements-

“Chavah is my Secretary, not yours, Lucifer. Talk to Chao. If so, I’d have to fight Michael’s number two, the cotton candy fiend. The sugar high that archangel carries alone might make me drunk.”

“Gabriel oh Gabriel, blow your horn!” Lucifer laughed, then pounced on me. “No, Bee, if I am the most beautiful angel, then you are the most splendid demon.” We sank into each other like wine in a glass, and made love to each other’s

Hell.

The sparring match was arranged in a fortnight, and I almost missed it in case Elodie was going to break her water, but she still had two weeks left. Chao drank some Aquafina and was dressed in a pantsuit, and Eve was marking the ground in chalk, while Lilith, CEO of Hell’s Business Department, held an official List of Barter:

Michael flexed on the side, in golden armor. Gabriel was in silver, winking at us. I had my katana, Lucifer his spear… for shits and giggles, we were in our Silmarillion armor.

“Okay, up for negotiation is the Cedar Grove of Purgatory. Lucifer wants to garden in it, and says Michael is using the wrong manure.”

“He is,” Lucifer said solidly, brushing back his blonde cowlick, golden muscles twining: “It needs more phosphate.”

“I prefer less,” Michael opined, then lit a cigarette. “I yield nothing.”

“I claim everything,” Lucifer called. “Get in the fucking cage, Mike.”

“Sure thing, little brother.”

“I was first, twin.”

“But I’m taller.”

They laughed, then got in the ring. Chao set off the bell: “Testosterone-addled combatants, engage!”

Lucifer fell on Michael with swift fury, stabbing. Michael took his burning sword in a cutting motion and steel, ether, and spark met in blazing combustion, Lucifer’s swan feathers against Michael’s owl. Michael’s black hair and tan skin shone in the dusk of Heaven, a plum sky above as snow fell outside the facility in Gabriel’s riverine Sphere.

“I yield!” Michael said as Lucifer wedged his Satanic, Paradisiacal spear deep into the flesh of his left thigh, then wrestled Michael into a Half-Nelson. Michael’s gold blood spilled out, mixing with Lucifer’s silver. “Care to crush my head, brother?”

“That’s blasphemous,” my husband teased. “Alright, Mike – if Bee wins against your second, best two out of three, I get my trees.”

“Yes, well, they are still my trees as of now, brother.”

They shook hands, healed their wounds, then exited the ring to watch their husbands.

Gabriel and I’s match barely lasted five minutes – he was distracted by the cookies Chao had brought, and had a bulging belly of oatmeal chocolate chip.

“Sorreh,” Gabriel said to Michael, face stuffed again mid-seconds after the match.

Michael looked baffled: “Honey, why did you stuff your face before the match?” he hugged his husband Gabriel.

Gabriel choked on crumbs: “Hungreh.”

“Ah.”

Elodie’s water broke at five past midnight on Sunday, January 1st, 20XX.

When I held Bailah in my arms? All the suffering – of the Fall, of long hours poring over soul returns and property law at my desk, my fights with Metatron… even the old days when we had to carry out Father’s torture of souls, before he sunk, blind deaf and dumb, in an eternal metaphorical barrow?

All my Exile, my Fall?

Was worth it.

Bailah gazed up at us with newborn blue eyes, and I ran my fingers through her beautiful brown locks.

Elodie smiled, sweating, holding Alicia and Lucifer’s hands.

I set our baby Bailah upon Elodie’s beautiful brown breast to nurse, and picked out the baby dragonfly necklace I had spent nine months fashioning in my blacksmith studio, enchanted with a drop of me – Beelzebub’s – Fly blood to give them life:

“A gift of my soul to my goddaughter,” I said, weeping with tears of joy.

Elodie cried too, tired, ecstatic, and Lucifer smiled through tears.

I put the necklace on Bailah, settling it upon her tiny stardust flesh.

Like it, she shined.

Girl and Fly Out Drinking (Eve Interlude)

My boss Beelzebub was irked. He took his fountain pen and elegantly scrawled with his albino hands atop the morning’s ledgers: tax returns for Dis City, immigration papers, votes for the next Duke – all that was legal passed through the Prime Minister of Hell’s desk. But his mandibles under his icy platinum hair perked, tasting the air in disdain.

“Morning, Bee,” I winked, handing him his cappuccino. I took my flat white to my desk next to him. It read: “SECRETARY CHAVAH.”

“Morning, Eve. Darling – you’re late.”

I deflated, my strawberry blonde hair and freckles reflected in his Gucci glasses. Bee was in a Valentino dress casual outfit and gray slate Doc Martens with graffiti designs of little yellow lemons, a black streak in his long white hair. As usual, avant garde.

“Sorry, boss. Last night was hard. Adam spent forever going over the water main systems of Heaven’s Fourth District. And my rhubarb pie burned.”

Bee smiled, making a vermouth on the rocks – too early on Earth to imbibe, but it was always drinking hour at hand in Hell. He extended it to me as he poured a twin one for himself. “Sounds stressful, dear. Here, to soothe you. Fuck, these returns are taking forever. The Rent-An-Imp service Aym runs is operating on the black market – I need to deal with him.”

“Fucking Aym,” I smiled, clanking my glass with his. We worked in the belly of the Hellopolis, past Penemue’s Soul Return Department, past Samael’s Justice Department, even beyond Dumah’s Department of Hellgriculture, where he always put tacky redneck pictures of him riding his thunder dragons with AK-47s on the fucking hallway walls. Bee and I always joked about the idiotic pics. Trashy, tacky shit.

“Say, Beelzebub, you think the drudgery of office work in Heaven and Hell was G-d’s intention all along? Ineffable bureaucracy,” I mused.

“Hmm, I suppose a dog returns to its vomit.” Bee smiled slightly, half-moon glasses shining atop his austere cheekbones, like he was cut from ice. “Say, Eve. Let’s get dinner today. Lucifer says I should socialize more.”

I smiled, shaping my red painted nails into finger guns, then pretending to shoot him: “Attaboy, Bee! Getting out of the office and out of board meetings! I’d love to.”

The day passed in its usual fashion – President Lucifer’s speech, Prime Minister Beelzebub taking votes, the Dukes and Kings debating, Judge Samael presiding. Dumah even handed out beer cozies from him and his wife’s side hustle – black camo, eugh. All in all,  terrible day.

I found myself fumbling a Pilsner into a beer cozy as we waited for the 6:00 clock dismissal alarm to blare off when the President, Lucifer, pulled it – The Devil Bee’s husband and eternal burning flame.

My boss rose, fly wings and elegant architecture of his bones standing out in contrast under the harsh fluorescent lights – some fucking building code required the hideous flashers. I preferred soft incandescent, and Bee? He loved the Zenn Buddhist darkness of Yin.

Bee lit a Tareyton as he idly played with the light on his desk: ON/OFF, ON/OFF, ON/OFF – I drank each time he let his nervous habit happen.

“Hmm, maybe I could help Adam with the Heaven’s water main systems if you like, I need to sweat-

I tossed Bee a Corona, his favorite. “Beer, then dinner, boss. Beer and dinner. No busywork, you crazy Fly.”

“Ha.” There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Right, Eve. Dinner. I could use a steak.”

We idled our way over to Positano on the Amalfi Coast, magicking our way across dimensions. The seabirds spanned a cerulean summer sky, and I got sea bass and pasta at Riviera, and Bee got his aforementioned steak.

“Fuck, it’s perfect,” Bee sighed, smiling, disguising his fly appendages. I had noetically magicked a green sundress and peach straw hat with a rose decal, gold slingback heels dangling from my tiny feet, and white tote bag slung to my side.

Bee lowered his shades, lit a Tareyton, and smiled. “Marriage is hard, ugh. Lucifer says he is doing well, but as the week grates on with this damn problem with Aym’s Rent-an-Imp black market deals… Lu thinks he’s going to have to use ‘Executive Perdition.’”

I froze in my spot. “On Aym? A demotion?”

Bee’s pale lips thinned – his strangely handsome, oddly angled face pursed. “Yes, well… I think it is necessary. Judgment and Punishment, and Efficiency and Passion, are the Laws of the Morningstar. And yet…?”

“And yet, Aym is one of your best friends.”

Bee smiled sorrowfully. “Yes. Thanks for listening, Eve.”

“No problem, boss. No problem. Don’t blame yourself Bee.”

“For what?”

“Any of it.”

“Aym is –

“The War. The Fall. I prefer Knowledge, after all.”

He smiled, genuinely – we all had ancient ghosts haunting us. Tenderly, Bee reached for my hand. I squeezed his, smiling.

“Hey, let’s get dessert,” I said.

“You’re a good friend, Eve. A lion among ladies.”

“And you’re a spider among flies, Baal.”

We walked off hand in hand, girl and her Fly, back to our husbands, back to the TV and domesticity, one in Heaven, one in Hell. We had a friendship that spanned Edenic generations.

Girl and Fly, out drinking.

[khaosritual]

[cosmicportal]

 NAVAYONI CHAKRA

is a mystical diagram that represents the union of masculine and feminine divine energies:

it is composed of nine interlocking triangles surrounding a dot in the center called a bindu. Four of these triangles are upright representing Shiva or the Masculine divine energy. Five of these triangles are inverted representing Shakti or the Feminine divine energy.

Navayoni chakra symbol tee by 12sidedsolid

[esoteric-images]

[nailzscratch]

[transcendentalsurrealism]

The "Reverse of Filioque" view is one formulated by Ravenna and Feuerbach.

[danskjavlarna]

Source details and larger version.

It might be a sign: my collection of vintage zodiac imagery.

[nil-the-glitch]

... I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you are from Laikas blog. Hello. Please do not expect any grand theological posts from me I am in fact a babbling idiot who's simply wise enough to know it

[emma-d-klutz]

I'm cleaning out my room and I just found a Dan and Phil merch notebook with some writings from when I was in an...usually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe mental space (delusional)

[a-killer-obsession]

I hope no one already sent this one in when you asked for it, but 2 X

You have freed me from my horny, horny curse, I am forever in your debt

Fresh Ripe Peach

Prompt: Writer's Choice

Additional Tags: afab reader, she/her pronouns, incubus!killer, loss of virginity, monsterfucking, rough sex, biting, demon summoning, cum play, oral (receiving and giving), cumshot, fingering, bulging, deepthroating, praise kink, p in v sex, creampie, cockwarming, slave/master terms used

WC: 5k

Event Masterlist

🔞 Minors DNI 🔞

It was frankly embarrassing how horny you were, and desperate times called for desperate measures, kneeling on the floor of your cabin, chalk in one hand, dodgy looking occult spell book in the other, tracing out the markings on the page as instructed. The book was probably all bullshit, and you were already mentally resigning yourself to another night of disappointing jerking off until your vibrator died, but it was at least worth a shot. Chalk replaced by a lighter, you put down the book momentarily to light the five candles that sat at each tip of the pentagram you'd drawn, adding to the ambient low light in your room given off by your bedside lamp.

You adjusted your provocative clothing, feeling a little ridiculous but hey, if it worked you were dressed to impress. Strappy leather harness forming an upside down pentagram on your chest, lacey black bra that lacked cups, framing your bare breasts. Matching panties with a triangular cutout over your bare-shaved mound, thigh garters adorned with small metal pentagram charms, the bands digging into your plush thighs and creating delicious indents. Your hair was fixed in a sleek high ponytail, eyes lined with heavy black liner, lips painted in dark, nearly black, smudge-proof purple lipstick. You hoped the spell would work, or this immaculate outfit would be quite a waste.

Satisfied your outfit was all as it should be, you picked the book up and began to chant. Did you understand the latin you were reading? Absolutely not a lick, but you hoped it translated to something along the lines of ‘excuse me demons, dinner is served, come get some pussy’. You finished reading the spell and let out a deflated sigh as nothing happened, seriously considering begging someone on the crew to fuck you, when suddenly the room went dark, the candles all blowing out at once and the bulb in your lamp failing. A few moments of pitch black darkness later and the lamp flickered back on, your heart racing as you heard heavy footsteps running up the hall outside your room. Oh shit, did it work?

The door flew open, a flurry of blond and blue flying in and immediately yelling, the door slamming shut and latching again, notably untouched. “A SUMMONING CIRCLE? REALLY [Y/N]? ARE YOU STUPID?” The bare foot of the first mate rubbed furiously at the chalk diagram on the floor, clearly fresh from his bed in only a pair of blue gingham pyjama pants and his mask, “get rid of this shit before some other asshole decides to answer, for Lucifer's sake.”

You were entirely speechless, suddenly remembering your physical state and crossing your arms over your chest to cover your bare tits. “KILLER! GET OUT OF MY ROOM!” you shouted.

“Oh now you don't want me in here,” he tsk'd, “you summoned me, here I am! Chicken out already, girlie?”

“Summoned you?” You replied, so very confused, looking at your discarded spell book. Was there even a spell for summoning a first mate? That seemed oddly specific, and not at all occult. Superior summoning spell? Blonde asshole spell? Huh? “I- I didn't-”

“You summoned a companion demon, did you not?” he loomed over you with his hands on his hips, every rarely seen curve and divot of his muscular chest on display.

“I summoned an incub-”

“Do NOT use that word,” he cut you off, physically pinching your lips together. “It's derogatory, we prefer companion demon”

“Okay?” you relented as he let your lips go and crossed his arms over his chest, “I summoned a companion demon,” you repeated sarcastically, “so why are- wait, what do you mean ‘we’?”

“How do you think I knew what you were doing in here? You called, I answered,” he replied nonchalantly, “you're fucking lucky it was me, stupid girl.”

“But you're not-”

“-a demon?” He laughed. He removed his striped helmet and squatted in front of you, letting you see his unmasked face up close and personal. You'd always been told he didn't like his smile, but you could see now that was a blantant lie. There was a very obvious reason the Massacre Soldier covered his face. His eyes were icy blue, his pupils thin slits like a snake, his sclera entirely black, as though dipped in ink. When he opened his mouth you could see sharp extended canines and his tongue was longer and more pointed than a human's. “Like I said,” he continued as he stood, placing his mask on your dresser, “you called, I answered”

“Why- what the fuck is a inc- sorry, companion demon, doing on a pirate ship?” You asked, pulling a blanket from your bed and wrapping it around yourself, Killer rolling his eyes at the bashful motion.

“It's a long story,” he sighed, “Kid's mother was my master, she bound me to Kid as she was dying to protect him till he reached adulthood, but I grew fond of the little guy and had him bind me himself”

“So, wait, if Kid is your master, why are you here?” You queried.

“This is my territory,” he huffed, “you sent an open invite to every available asshole on the Grandline. Thanks for that, by the way. You're fucking lucky I was close enough to get here first or you'd already have some disrespectful dickhead balls deep in you. Do you have no regard for your own safety? What the fuck came over you to summon a demon?”

“I was horny… “ you mumbled under your breath.

“And you couldn't just go ask someone for a quickie?” He scorned, “Nobody on this crew is good enough for you?”

“It's not that…” you pulled the blanket tighter around yourself, “they're just not… um… my type?”

“Really, nobody on this extremely diverse crew is your type?” He raised a brow.

“They're not uh… monsters?” You replied hesitantly.

“I think you'll find given our reputation that there are plenty of monsters on board,” he replied, before the penny in his brain dropped, “unless- oh you're really fucked up, huh?” He said with a shit eating smirk, “So that's it, you summoned a demon cos you want your brains fucked out by some beast? Is that it? Dirty girl~” he purred.

You were bright red with blush, slowly sinking under the top edge of the blanket. “Can you just go away please…” you mumbled, muffled by the fabric.

“Actually, I can't,” he huffed, “you made a contract when you summoned me. I'm here till sunrise. What, the scary eyes and fangs not enough for your needs?” You couldn't even bring yourself to look at him, so unbelievably ashamed of yourself. “It's just as well this isn't my true form then,” he grinned toothily.

Your eyes widened as his skin began to shift hue, turning to an icy blue that matched his eyes, the colour darkening as it made swirling patterns on his arms, turning to a royal blue, then a deep, almost black, navy at the hands. His nails lengthened, forming sharp, dangerous looking claws. His ears elongated, turning to points. You let out an audible gasp as he dropped his pants and underwear, letting the fabric pool on the floor and revealing an absolutely monstrous cock that made your mouth water, a deep royal blue adorned with navy swirls, and a now freed tail flicked out to the side from his rear, the end capped with a sharp arrow tip as he let it slowly move. Two mostly straight, navy coloured horns sprouted from the top of his head, curving almost back into him, tipped in icy blue and lined with ridges. Most impressive of all though were the two grand bat wings that spread out from behind him, clawed at the top-most point, the structured areas navy while the membranes faded to royal blue, and the same icy blue as his skin at the centermost edges.

“Is this more to your liking, Master?” He stepped towards you, leaving his pants on the floor, entirely naked and proud in front of you. Even flaccid his cock was huge, directly at your eye level as you hid under your blankets, and you bit your lip as you shamelessly eyed him like a meal, scanning over his blue tinted body. He squatted in front of you, tilting your chin up with a hooked finger, his thumb pressed against your bottom lip, claw threatening to injure. “Don't even bother trying to lie to me, this is what I was made for. I can smell your arousal, I can hear your heart quicken”

“Fuck,” was all you managed to get out, letting the blanket fall to the floor around you, exposing yourself to him.

“There's a good girl,” he purred, “let me see that pretty body.”

You leaned back on the palms of your hands, letting your legs stretch out in front of you, forced to part slightly as they slid either side of him. He ran his eyes down your body, humming contently to himself, before his eyes ran back up and met yours. “This contract is an exchange,” he explained, crawling forward to loom over you, “I give you pleasure, and in exchange you allow me to feed off your sexual energy. It costs you nothing, you won't even notice it leaving you, save for being maybe a little tired tomorrow”

“Is this… what you usually do with Kid?” You stuttered as he placed a hand on your stomach, catching the waistband of your panties and playing with it as he used the cutout to hook his thumb through them.

“It is,” he smirked, “people don't summon demons like they used to, it's better to have a bound Master”

“Killer, how old are you?” You asked curiously, noting that the slits in his eyes were significantly more dilated now as he looked at your body.

“I resent that question,” he huffed.

“Oh come on, humour me,” he squinted at you in annoyance, “more than a hundred? More than five hundred?” He rolled his eyes. “More than a thousand?” He gave you a playful look that told you that you were close. “MORE THAN A THOUSAND?”

“Why, you wanna call me great-great-great-great-great grandaddy while I fuck you?” He smirked, unflinching as you smacked his chest in retaliation. “What do you want out of this anyway? I'm at your servitude, whatever you want, it's yours. No kink too fucked up.”

“I, uh… I don't know…” you mumbled, turning shy again.

“No? Nothing you particularly enjoy?” He asked. You looked at him shyly and he blinked in recognition. “I swear to Lucifer, [y/n] tell me you did not summon a demon to take your virginity!”

You gave him a forced apologetic smile and he groaned, “You are actually so fucking lucky that I answered your call, fucking hell. Actually, scratch that, maybe I'm the lucky one. Do you even know what a rarity you are to demons like me? You're a ripe peach, ready to sink teeth into. Fuck, your energy is going to be delicious.” You could see the way his pupils were pulsing and dilating as he looked at you, his sharp tongue running over his fangs, looking like he was ready to physically bite into you. You felt very much like prey pinned under a predator with Killer's large body looming over you, looking down at you with eyes nearly entirely black from lust, mere slivers of blue left in them, his tail flicking behind him like that of a cat enjoying playing with a mouse. “I'm going to have such fun with you, my peach”

You squeaked as Killer suddenly grabbed you and threw you on the bed unceremoniously, your body bouncing a little at the impact. You started to instinctively crawl backwards, away from the dangerous predator, but he grabbed your ankles and pulled you back towards him. “Ah, ah, where are you going, my peach? We have a deal. I'm gonna eat you right up,” he gave you a toothy grin before pulling your leg up and sinking his teeth into your plush thigh, right over a garter, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to make you yelp. He hooked the garter with his fangs as he drew back, pulling on it and letting it go to ping against your thigh, making you hiss. “Such a pretty outfit for me too,” he hummed, spreading a hand out over your mound, sharp claws pressing against your soft belly, before he suddenly made a fist, bunching the front of your panties in his hand and pulling hard, “it's too bad I have to ruin it,” he feigned a pout, before adding his other hand to the mix and tearing the panties from your body.

“Killer!” You shouted, trying to squish your legs shut, but he was far stronger than you and easily pried your thighs open, pinning them against your stomach.

“Come now, don't go getting shy on me now,” he purred, getting his first look at your bare pussy, “such a pretty, pink peach too, and so juicy,” he knelt down and flicked out his long, pointed tongue, swiping it over your cunt and collecting your slick on it as you whined, drawing it back into his mouth with a satisfied hum as he savoured the flavour, “so sweet too, I can't wait to devour you. You'll let me, won't you my peach?”

He looked at you expectantly, and you realised that despite his rough and threatening treatment thus far, he was asking for consent before going any further. Perhaps you were lucky it was him and not another, you got the sense that demons did not usually ask consent. You bit your lip and gave him a nod, your pussy aching for more after the one brief touch, and he gave you a toothy grin, his fangs glinting under the low light from your lamp. His face disappeared from your view again, unable to see him past your own legs, but fuck could you feel him. His tongue was sinfully skillful as it played with your clit, rolling and flicking it, running firm stripes over it, dipping down towards your entrance and teasing it with just the tip of his tongue as he gathered the honey that dripped from it. You moaned and writhed at every gesture, clawing at the blankets either side of you wishing you could pull on his hair or, fuck, maybe even his horns. Whether it be because he could read your mind, sense your need, or because he just wanted to look at you with that shit-eating grin, he let his hold on your legs loosen enough that you were able to let your knees fall outwards, revealing his face half covered by your pussy. His head now accessible, you were able to reach down and grab one of his horns, which he must have liked as he groaned against your cunt. Spurred on by your small spike of confidence, he let his tongue drag down to your entrance, looking up at you with those inky eyes and a sharp smile as he sunk his tongue inside you, enjoying the way your face contorted with pleasure as a deep moan fell from your lips.

He thrust his tongue in and out of you, curling its length occasionally to flick against your g-spot as he brought a hand to your mound, pressing against it while his thumb reached down to play with your clit. You pulled hard on his horn as your head lolled back, hips rolling in time with his shallow thrusts as he brought you to your peak, creamy ring forming around his tongue as he worked you through it.

“So sweet, my peach,” he purred as he kissed your thighs, wings stretching out behind him as he crawled up your body. “I ask again though, is there anything you want of me? Before I fuck the coherence out of you”

“Wanna- wanna taste you,” you mumbled, one hand draped over your face, the other still clutching his horn.

“So take it,” he purred. You stared at him through half-lidded eyes, before grabbing his other horn and pulling him down towards you, crashing your lips against his. He let you lead the kiss, flicking his tongue against yours, enjoying the feel of your curious muscle against his. Your hands left his horns to travel down his body, feeling and groping at his arms and pecks, rubbing your thumbs over his nipples and tracing your nails down his abdomen. You wrapped both hands around his thick cock, pumping it sloppily, your inexperienced determination making him smile against your mouth. He reached down and guided your pace, squeezing your hands to adjust your pressure and moving your hands in a way that indicated he preferred the focus on the base, letting your hands go once you got the hang of it. His hands wandered over your body, pinching and pulling at your nipples, one hand moving further to play with your cunt more, making lewd squelches that made you blush as he slipped two fingers inside you and matched his thrusts to the pace you were pumping him with. He swallowed your moans, your pure sexual energy making his whole body tingle delightfully as he consumed it, adding a third finger and working towards stretching you out enough to take his thick member.

You could feel his precum dripping down his shaft in generous streams, running over your fingers as you stroked him, lubricating your motions. You brought a hand to your mouth and he watched as you experimentally licked the precum from it. He brought his own fingers from your cunt to your mouth, and you opened your mouth for him, shivering at his toothy grin as you sucked your own arousal off his digits. You hollowed your cheeks, sucking hard on them, running your tongue around them and pressing it flat against the underside, and he swore under his breath.

“Such a pretty mouth, my peach, almost as pretty as that pussy,” he purred, “would you like to taste more? I'd love to see how those pretty pink lips look wrapped around my cock”

He pulled his fingers from your mouth with a pop and you pushed towards him, his wings spreading behind him as he let you push him flat against the bed to straddle him. You kissed him hard before running your kisses to his jaw, breezing past his goatee to suck and nip at his neck. He whined as you made a particularly harsh bite, the sound making electricity go straight to your cunt, so you did it again. Over and over you bit down, sucking his flesh into your mouth and leaving dark bruises in your wake, running your tongue flat to soothe over them before continuing, leaving a trail of bites and bruises like step stones from his neck to his cock, each whine and groan making your pussy drip more. You enthusiastically took his cock in your hand as you reached it, running your tongue up the underside and collecting the precum beaded at the end, salty and hot on your tongue as you swirled it over the head. He was watching you carefully as you licked him, his head falling flat to the bed as you finally took him in your mouth, a string of curses falling from his mouth as you took as much as you could fit off him and serviced the rest with your two hands tight around his base. His cock stretched your lips to the limits, corners stinging from it, and you gagged as his tip hit the back of your throat, so much of him still outside your mouth. With each dip of your head you worked to take him deeper, gagging less intensely each time as you adjusted to the intrusion, breathing through your nose and relaxing your throat till you were able to take most of him, having to remove your hands from his base and instead groping at his thighs. His tail wrapped around your throat gently, using it to feel the way his cock made your throat bulge, one of his hands grabbing your ponytail and twisting it around his wrist to hold it like a leash.

“Fuck, good girl [y/n],” Killer groaned, “look at you, taking me like a natural, you look so pretty with my cock in your mouth. Do you want my cum, sweet girl? Want me to cum down that tight throat of yours? Or maybe you want it on your face, paint you with my cum so you look like the sweet little monsterfucking slut you are, huh? Would you like that?”

You whined around him, vibrating his cock in your mouth before burying his cock right to the base, your nose against his blonde tuft of public hair as your eyes watered, eyeliner running down your face with it as your lipstick wore off and made a purple ring around his cock. “Ohhhhh fuck [y/n], just like that, just like that, fuck, gonna cum sweet girl, where do you want it baby?”

You pulled off his cock with a pop, making your choice clear. He held your ponytail tight, making you whine as he started furiously fisting himself with his other hand. “Show me your tongue sweetheart,” he groaned, and you lolled your tongue out for him, closing your eyes as you anticipated getting cum near them. Your hands kneaded his thighs as he threw back his head and groaned, ropes of cum splashing against your face and tongue, some of it overshooting and getting in your hair as he coated your face with dripping swathes of cum, making your pussy clench around nothing. Your pretty cupless bra and harness were entirely ruined by this seed, white puddles catching on the pieces as his cum dribbled down your neck and chest.

“Damn, look at you,” Killer purred as he loosened his hold on your hair and let his cock go, using his thumb to push more cum into your mouth, watching you swallow it as you sucked on his thumb and shivered at the dark look in his eyes. “Now you look like a needy little slut who would summon a demon, perfect little peach. C'mere”

He pulled you close and kissed you hard, and you shivered as he started running his long tongue across your skin, cleaning his cum off you, occasionally using his tongue to push more cum into your mouth which the two of you would then swap between your mouths and play with till you needed to swallow, Killer then returning to licking your face and repeating the cycle till his cum was entirely replaced with his saliva. His cock was still hard and you pulled yourself the rest of the way into his lap, grinding your cunt against his dick, making you both moan.

“Needy little slut,” he cooed, “you want my cock, my peach? Take it, it's yours.”

You ached with a desperate need to feel full, so you raised yourself on your knees eagerly, reaching down between your bodies to take him in your hand and align him with your entrance. He watched with pride as you sunk down on him, hand going to his shoulder once he was inside you enough, gripping him hard as he guided you with a hand on each side of your ass. The stretch stung but you were more than determined to get all of him inside you, and you let out a stuttered breath as you found yourself fully seated in his lap, entirely impaled on his thick cock. “Look at you!” He exclaimed proudly, “I didn't think you could do it, you take me so well, so tight and wet around me”

“Killl~” you whined, using his shoulders as anchor points to lift yourself before dropping back down, whining at the pull against your strained pussy. “Too- too big-” you whined.

“Nonsense, look at you, you took all of me first try,” he praised, “look at your lovely tummy bulging, what a pretty sight, my peach”

You looked down between your bodies and sure enough you could see the swelling of your abdomen where his cock was sheathed inside you, making you whine at how full you were. “You're doing so good,” he cooed, lifting you easily by your ass and lowering you again, making you moan, repeating the process over and over, each time lifting you further and faster, until you were bouncing on his cock and screaming his name, holding his horns for support and he brought his hips up at the same time, slamming into you each time he lowered your body. His eyes were rolling from the pungent sexual energy that was emanating from you, making his whole body shudder, the dense concentrated nature of your previously untapped energy making him moan and curse under his breath as he consumed it. There was a burst of energy that made his toes curl as you came hard, squirting on his cock and writhing against him, pulling so hard on his horns he wouldn't be surprised if you accidentally tore them clean off. You went entirely limp as your orgasm faded, still jolting occasionally from aftershocks as he continued at the same brutal pace, drunk on your sexual energy and craving more of it. No human food could ever compare to the pure satisfying flavour of a virgin's untouched energy, not even his favourite spaghetti dish, you were a rare delicacy he was thoroughly enjoying.

Unable to hold yourself up any longer, he let you fall to the bed, pulling out of you only for a moment to flip you to your front, pushing your thighs together and straddling them as he resheathed himself. He fucked you like a stag in rut, grunting with every hard thrust, wings flapping excitedly above you and tail shaking like a lion about to spray to mark his territory. He wanted to mark you, make you his possession, against his better thinking and his contract as your servant. Your energy was just so intoxicating that it was making him blind with lust, and he couldn't help but lean down and sink his teeth into your shoulder, holding you tight in his jaw as he felt your pussy clench around him again. You saw white and were sure you passed out for a moment from how hard you came, sparkles in your vision as everything went tight then slack, that last wave of energy and your pussy tight around his cock being all he needed to throw him over the edge. He groaned against your shoulder, biting down harder and drawing blood, his wings stretching out and shaking, tail going limp, cock throbbing as he unloaded inside you, his heavy load dripping from your overstuffed cunt as he stilled inside you.

His jaw finally released you, swiping his tongue over the tender mark in apology as he panted hard against your back, his wings falling slack and draping either side of you like curtains. In your haze you reached out and touched one, making him shiver as you ran soft fingers over the delicate membrane. “Don't pull out yet, please…” you whispered shyly. He kissed the centre of your back and wrapped his arms around you, rolling you to your side with him and draping his wing over both of you like a blanket. His tail wrapped around your thigh as pressed his legs against yours, his head coming to rest on the pillow behind you, his soft breath tickling the baby hairs on the small of your neck.

“Whatever you want, my peach,” he cooed, “I'm yours till sunrise”

“And… after sunrise?” You asked hesitantly.

“Enjoyed yourself, did we?” He chuffed, “promise me you won't summon anymore demons and I'll let you have me on your whim, when Kid doesn't want me. Perhaps you can have both of us, if it pleases you. But this has to be our secret, okay my peach? The demon stuff, not the fucking. The World Government does not take kindly to demons, hence why I don't reveal myself in battle, even if it would give me a significant advantage. Fairly sure the whole ship knows we fucked at this point though, given how loud you were, I wouldn't be surprised if you even woke Kid, screaming like a coyote in heat”

“Killlerrr,” you whined with a pout. He smacked your face playfully with his wing and you huffed indignantly.

“What, you summon a demon to fuck you and expect to stay dead silent the whole night?” He laughed, “sweetheart I've got a thousand years of experience making people cum, and I'm young for a demon. The sounds you made were absolutely delicious, music to my ears, you're lucky I'm even letting you rest right now. A sweet ripe peach like you, any other demon would still be fucking you, even if you passed out they wouldn't stop till sunrise. Don't think you're off the hook yet just because I allowed you some cuddles, I can't wait to get more of your delectable energy.” He punctuated his sentence with a quick thrust of his cock still inside you, making you squeal. You didn't understand how he could possibly still be hard but you could only assume it was a demon thing. “Are you well though, my peach? Didn't hurt you too much?”

“Mmm… just my shoulder,” you touched where he'd biten and winced, and he apologetically kissed the spot tenderly, “otherwise I feel good. Feels nice, havin’ you inside me”

“Ah, I got a little carried away with that bite,” he ran his tongue over it and you could feel the pain fade as it magically began to close, “my apologies, master. Perhaps I can make it up to you.”

His hips began rocking again, a devious grin on his face, making you moan unabashedly as he set off a new wave of merciless fucking, and you had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

[bestworstcase]

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN it's a draw let's talk about the principles.

In the rulebook for The Lady Afterwards, these are defined as "the most fundamental elements of reality; or, the various natures of the Hours; or, a post-facto invention of scholars of the invisible arts." Mark that third note in particular, because the aspects we discuss herein are—expressly—only an attempt to taxonomize the occult forces at work in the world and thus necessarily an imperfect and imprecise model thereof.

Keep this in mind. There are no clean dividing lines between the principles, and what we label (for example) 'Lantern' and 'Forge' are not, in reality, discrete individual forces but rather a cluster of interacting forces, patterns, rules et cetera which may be expressed or called upon in different ways at different times. Many seeming contradictions or inconsistencies are thus resolved.

With that out of the way:

The interaction most visible to the player is of course the Cultist Simulator 'subversion' mechanic, but I think it is also elucidating to consider 1. differing categorization of certain books shared between Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours, and 2. the principle aspects associated with each of the nine parts of the soul in the latter.

Before we dive into that, a note on 'Secret Histories' and 'Rose':

History is the scar on the world's skin. [Secret Histories describe the unknown complexities of the world, and its many pasts.] vs 'The rose which encompasseth all'. Nine directions to new horizons. [Exploration? Enlightenment? Hope?]

It is evident that Secret Histories and Rose have some relation and may even be synonymous to an extent—for instance, Dr. al-Adim is interested in the former in Cultist Simulator and the latter in Book of Hours—but Secret Histories notably isn't treated like a fully-realized principle in its own right, whereas Rose is mechanically indistinguishable from any other power. What's going on here?

Well, if Rose is the aspect 'which encompasseth all', then we might describe Rose as the skin; and therefore what we call Secret Histories are the scars or the flaws which inform the principle called Rose, in effect making Secret Histories not a principle in its own right, but rather an aspect of Rose.

So for the purpose of this discussion, I will refer only to 'Rose', even with regard to entities and things with Secret Histories aspect in Cultist Simulator. I believe the relation here is comparable to the relation between, for example, Heart and Dances.

Onward!

I have made a series of diagrams. First:

We begin with a wheel representing the order in which the Cultist may subvert lore and influences from one principle to the next, beginning with Lantern at the top and proceeding clockwise; into Forge, into Edge, into Winter, into Heart, into Grail, into Moth, into Lantern. Knock, placed at the wheel's center, cannot be subverted and subverts every other lore except Rose into itself.

Note the larger gap between Moth and Lantern. My reason for arranging the principles this way will become apparent shortly.

For ease of reference, here is a spreadsheet comparing the principles associated with every text that appears in both Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours. In cases where the text's mystery aspect does not match the lore fragment(s) it yields in the first game, I've noted the skill and memory as well.

This is a simple way to demonstrate the 'fuzziness' of the principles, noted at the beginning of this post.

In cases where the principle lore yielded by texts in Cultist Simulator differs from the text's mystery aspect in Book of Hours and the mystery aspect is not one of the newly-introduced aspects, generally speaking, the lessons the Librarian learns will match both; for example, 'The Six Letters on Memory' yields Forge lore in CS, but has Moth as its mystery in BoH, and the Librarian learns a lesson in Transformations & Liberations, a skill whose primary/secondary aspects are Forge and Moth.

The one notable exception is Sunset Passages. In Cultist Simulator, this text yields Winter lore; in Book of Hours, its mystery aspect is Forge, and it provides a lesson in Sacra Solis Invicti (Lantern/Sky). In order to understand the re-categorization of this text, we must consider its subject matter: it is a "miscellany of the funerary prayers, ceremonies, and hymns of the Church of the Unconquered Sun," which "schismed during the Intercalate, when the Sun was divided." It is thus concerned primarily with pre-Intercalate worship of the Madrugad, whose aspects are Winter and Forge, and the skill the Librarian learns from it pertains to those rituals.

Sunset Passages thus serves as a useful illustration of how and why certain texts may be categorized differently between the two games. It is not arbitrary. It's a mechanical representation of the taxonomic 'fuzziness' in that the Cultist can read a certain book and conclude that it's a volume of Winter lore whereas the Librarian can read the same book and categorize it as a book of mainly Forge lore with some relevance to Lantern and Sky, and both are correct, although the Librarian, being a scholar rather than an adept, takes a more nuanced view.

The point being that we can look at those texts which have been reassigned to one of the four/five aspects introduced in Book of Hours as a rough approximation of common relations between those aspects and the ones in the earlier game.

We'll use Moon as an example.

Kanishk at the Spider's Door — Edge lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Sharps (Edge/Moon) — Memory is A Stolen Secret (Moon/Knock)

Larquebine Codex — Heart lore -> Moon Mystery — Lesson is Sea Stories (Moon/Grail) — Memory is Gossip (Rose/Grail)

Morphy Codex — SH lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Tridesma Hiera (Moon/Grail) — Memory is Beguiling Melody (Grail/Sky)

Viennese Conundra — Moth lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Wolf Stories (Moon/Scale) — Memory is Fear (Scale/Edge)

Voyages of Ferninshun of Oreol — SH lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Sea Stories (Moon/Grail) — Memory is Salt (Knock/Moon/Winter)

Tally up the aspects associated with these texts: Grail: 5, Edge: 3, Rose: 3, Knock: 2, Scale: 2, 1 each Sky, Moth, Winter, Heart.

& secondary aspects for skills with primary Moon aspect: Grail: 2, Scale: 2, Edge: 1, Heart: 1

& primary aspects for skills with secondary Moon aspect: Winter: 5, Rose: 2, Edge: 2, 1 each Grail, Heart, Nectar, Sky, Scale.

& other aspects on Moon-aspected memories: 4 each Rose, Edge, Winter, Knock, 1 each Sky, Moth.

Keep in mind that this is only an approximation, because we're not taking into account any context for when, why, or how these conjunctions may occur. But we can identify certain patterns just by looking at the frequency; the two most common conjunctions are with Edge and Winter (10x), followed by Rose (9x), Grail (7x), Knock (6x), Scale (5x), Heart and Sky (3x), Moth (2x), and Nectar (1x).

Rose and Knock are both unusual in how they interact with other principles, with Rose being all-encompassing and Knock all-opening. So we're somewhat less interested in them for now. If we consider only the frequency of Moon's associations with the seven 'regular' principles present in Cultist Simulator, where might we position Moon in relation to the subversion wheel diagrammed above?

Well, the most intuitive way to decide its placement is to first put it in between Edge and Winter, then move it a bit clockwise to reflect its significant overlap with Grail and minor associations with Heart and Moth. Right?

In the interest of brevity I won't go through the tallies for the other three 'regular' aspects introduced in Book of Hours, but after going through this same process (and making some aesthetic adjustments, because this is only an approximate representation)...

What we have here is the Cultist Simulator order-of-subversion wheel with the four new aspects plotted onto it as the corners of a containing square; Sky in the juncture between Moth and Lantern, Scale between Lantern and Edge, Moon between Edge and Heart, and Nectar between Heart and Moth. I propose that:

These four principles subvert each other clockwise around the outer wheel, Sky into Scale into Moon into Nectar into Sky, and

The principles in Cultist Simulator, including Knock and Rose, all emerged through division of these older four during the striving and conflicts of the Lithomachy.

Any serious discussion of the Lithomachy is well out of the scope of this post (BUT WE'LL GET TO IT SOONER OR LATER BECAUSE HOO BOY) so my argumentation on this second point will necessarily be rather thin. Sorry. The remainder of this post will concern how well the above diagram holds up to more substantive investigation, and to that end here are the definitions of each principle aspect as per Book of Hours, in order of subversion:

Rose. 'The rose which encompasseth all'. Nine directions to new horizons.[Exploration? Enlightenment? Hope?]

Sky. Wind, storm, echo, song; the intricacies of mathematics and the principles of flight. Law's touch is lighter than we sometimes think.[Matters of balance, harmony and necessity.]

Scale. Hard without, hard within, hard to rouse, harder to subdue. [What is left of the crude powers of the deep earth.]

Moon. Secrets are soft; night is softer still; the sea speaks. It is not always wise to listen. [The nocturnal, the forgotten.]

Nectar. The green wealth in the world's veins; the pulse of the seasons. [Long ago, some called this principle Blood.]

Lantern. 'Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.' - Thomas Browne [Lantern is the principle of the secret place sometimes called the House of the Sun, and of the light above it.]

Forge. 'Fire', I once read, 'is the winter that warms and the spring that consumes.' [The principle of the Forge transforms and destroys.]

Edge. All conquest occurs at the Edge. One who dwells there is blind, and cannot be wounded. Another is strong, and grows stronger. [Edge is the principle of battle and of struggle.]

Winter. ... [Winter is the principle of silence, of endings, and of those things that are not quite dead.]

Heart. The Heart Relentless beats to protect the skin of the world we understand. [The Heart is the principle that continues and preserves.]

Grail. Hunger, lust, the drowning waters. [The principle of the Grail honours both the birth and the feast.]

Moth. I knew a man who captured moths in a bell-jar. On nights like this, he would release them one by one to die in the candle. [Moth is the wild and perilous principle of chaos and yearning.]

& Knock. The Knock permits no seal and no isolation. It thrusts us gleefully out of the safety of ignorance. [The Knock is the principle that opens doors and unseams barriers.]

And while, as I said, we are not going to delve deeply into the subject of the Lithomachy in this post, I do want to make a brief note of the gods-from-stone and their probable aspects. The Horned-Axe, we know to be both Knock- [Liminal Evocation] and Winter-aspected [Winter veneration]. Her attestation in 'On the Winding Stair' is also quite interesting:

Gregory evidently succeeds in opening a way to something he calls the 'Moon-Hall', but here his account becomes erratic. He insists that in the Moon-Hall the Horned-Axe is still an Edge-power; he hopes for an 'eternal rival', but cannot find the one he needs. The narrative is increasingly interspersed with chess notations, and ends abruptly.

Here we have an implication that the Horned-Axe was and is no longer an Edge-power, but within the House of the Moon she still is Edge-aspected (or possibly a cross-gender mirror-twin of hers retains an Edge-aspect that she has lost or discarded). The similarity here to the recurring idea that the Wheel still turns in the House of the Moon is striking. Her altar beneath Hush House accepts Edge, Scale, Winter, and Knock aspect.

The Horned-Axe is one of the three Hours of the Chancel alongside the Meniscate and the Sister-and-Witch, of whom the former has obvious associations with the Moon and the latter with the Sea. I submit, then, that before the Lithomachy, the Horned-Axe's aspects were instead Moon and Scale, and that she was—in some way—divided or bifurcated in the course of the Lithomachy into two halves, both with Knock aspect, one Winter-aspected and the other an Edge-aspected reflection.

(<- I will note, as an observation, that there is a vague and rather tangential precedent for such an occurrence; the Wolf-Divided is the product of the division of an Hour, and likewise has Edge and Winter aspect. The common factor would seem to be the coincidence of an ending, hence Winter, with the emergence of an entity driven by an unfulfilled need, hence Edge.)

That is our only living god-from-stone. The others are the Wheel, the Flint, the Tide, the Seven-Coil, and the Egg Unhatching. We know that the Wheel was usurped by the Moth (and that its blood, shed on the roots of the Wood, birthed the Velvet); that the Flint was shattered by the Forge; that the Colonel and the Mother of Ants conspired to slay the Coil; and that the Egg Unhatching fled to the Glory by unknown means and with uncertain outcome.*

[*The Unwise Mortal brought it through the Tricuspid Gate and then it hatched into the Sun-in-Splendour. This is how he ascended to Hourhood as the Watchman. I can't get into it right now or we'll be here all day but: TRUST.]

So, the Wheel was replaced by the Moth and the Velvet (aspects: Moth, Heart—& I submit, also Moon). When the Medium paints the endless memory: "With each turn its cilia pulse and wriggle and its body flushes translucent to crimson. It might be ugly but it is beautiful like the withdrawing of blood from the labyrinths of glass. It does not cease and all its involutions are infinite." All of this locates us firmly in the neighborhood of Moth/Heart, emphasis on Heart given the imagery, and given that the aspect now called Nectar was once known as Blood, this one is easy.

The Wheel's first aspect was Blood. I believe it may also have been Scale-aspected, due to its association with serpents. (On this see Serpents & Venoms. Note that the Secret Histories wiki identifies the 'low red sun' as the Egg Unhatching mostly on the basis of the Medium's glorious memory, but this plainly incorrect. The 'low red sun' was the Wheel, and the Egg Unhatching was a moon, before it hatched. We'll talk about this in more detail in my next post.)

The Flint was 'eclipsed and then shattered' by the Forge. In nearly all of its attestations it's associated with the earth in some way. When painting the golden memory, the Flint is described thus: "This is only a stone, though it is smoothed and sharpened to a midnight point, but look closer. Each of its facets shows a single point of light. It might be the glint of firelight. It might be each a different Star."

As with the Wheel being a Blood-Hour, it seems quite straightforward that the Flint's aspect was Scale; and given its connection to the Wheel through the line of Antaios, an argument could be made that it had a minor Blood aspect as well, making the Wheel and the Flint reflections of each other (Blood/Scale | Scale/Blood).

Next, the Tide, which the Red Grail drowned and consumed. Its usurpation by the Grail and association with the Sea would suggest Blood (the primordial precursor to Grail) and, obviously, Moon. Painting the luxurious memory offers the description: "In a night-blue Mansus-haze swims a coral palace-crown. At its fore-edge it absorbs the lesser Names, coating them with its minerals and juices, and at its rear edge it expels some of them, polished like jewels. The others go to feed its thorny Tide-heart," which reinforces the 'Grail-precursor' angle pretty strongly.

Further, the Tide being Moon- and Blood-aspected offers an elegant explanation for the unusual frequency of Moon-Grail conjunctions in comparison to the other 'precursor' aspects (Heart-Sky is also a common conjunction but otherwise conjunctions with aspects outside the precursor 'quadrant' are quite rare); consider the Sea as the world's blood, an ever-churning life-giving liquid, and the Moon must figure as the world's heart, as the engine of the tidal forces which keep the waters circulating. Heart is the connection between the two, but Grail having supplanted Blood (now Nectar) as the principle most strongly associated with the Sea, it remains closely entangled with the Moon.

Like the Flint, it seems fairly straightforward that the Seven-Coil was Scale-aspected: its monstrous serpentine form and present associations with earthquakes both unambiguously point in this direction. Contra the Secret Histories wiki, I actually do not believe that the Seven-Coil had Rose aspect itself. The events leading up to its slaying are (notably) recounted in much greater detail than the death of any other god-from-stone, and unlike the others, its defeat came not at the hands of a god-from-blood but what seem to have been the first two human* gods-from-flesh; it follows that the death of the Seven-Coil occurred much later than the usurpation of the Wheel, the Flint, and the Tide...

[*I believe the Elegiast and the Beachcomber may be much older, but neither of them were mortal humans as the Colonel and the Mother of Ants seem to have been prior to their ascensions. Jury is out on when the Vagabond ascended to Hourhood exactly, but she's of the Cross. Probably.]

...and indeed, 'The Deeds of the Scarred Captain' places the slaying of the Seven-Coil immediately prior to the founding of Mycenae, which occurred around 1350-1200 BC—well into the Bronze Age and not remotely prehistorical.

The Coil itself wasn't Rose-aspected; I believe its slaying is the inciting incident for one of the Histories—most likely the Third. The massive proliferation of Worms in that History, the loose association between Worms and the Coil, the origin of the Seven-Coils' Temple in the Third History, Sparrow's paranoid conviction that this History is "overrun by Coils," and even the aspects of the Third History's encaustum Nillycant (Winter & Edge for the Colonel; Scale for the Coil) all seem to point in this direction.

That leaves only the Egg Unhatching, vexing little enigma that it is. In the Medium's painting it appears like this: "A faded pale white-gold seen in certain patches of the sky, when the mist is clearing but the sun might be mistaken for the moon. We hold our breath and watch it brighten, until each colour divides from the next like a new-minted alphabet." Despite its having been a moon, I'm not wholly convinced that it had Moon aspect; that it hatched into the Sun-in-Splendour (you'll have to trust me on this for now) might suggest it was Sky-aspected, although this doesn't feel quite right to me either.

The other Lantern-precursor it could have had is Scale, and I am fairly confident that the Egg Unhatching was Scale-aspected. The Seven-Coil is described as 'the nest' in a certain ending and there are some hints toward a connection between the Sun-in-Splendour and the Scīmafectra-kind of the Carapace Cross; it would not be unreasonable for the Egg Unhatching to have been laid or incubated in the Nest—that is, the Seven-Coil—during the era of the Carapace Cross, and thus to have Scale aspect. The Scale determination may loosely support this as well. Furthermore, the Unwise Mortal "learnt the shaping arts of the Flint" and later "ascended to the shadow of the Egg Unhatching," which is suggestive of some degree of similarity between the Flint and the Egg. So we'll put this one down as Scale and a 'maybe' on Moon/Sky.

...and that's my 'brief' note on the probable aspects of the gods-from-stone. TO RECAP:

Horned-Axe: Moon/Scale -> Knock/Winter + Knock/Edge

Wheel: Blood/Scale

Flint: Scale/Blood

Tide: Blood/Moon

Seven-Coil: Scale

Egg Unhatching: Scale + Moon/Sky (?)

Lastly—and this is more a footnote for a future post, really—notice the absence here of any gods-from-stone with clear, unambiguous signs of having been Sky-aspected. An argument can be made for the Wheel and the Flint to have had Sky aspect, the Wheel having been the old sun and the Flint being associated with starlight, but there is little in the way of supporting evidence (and neither Sky-Nectar nor Sky-Scale are common conjunctions, although Heart and Sky are frequently conjunct in matters of weather, so the argument for the Wheel to have been Blood / Scale / Sky is a bit stronger than the one for the Flint).

Right. So.

Let's talk about the nine elements of the soul.

Here, I've marked how different aspects are connected through, or by, each part of the soul. Where two aspects are not adjacent, the connection is represented passing through the simplest juncture, such that the aspects of Ereb, Wist, and Trist connect to each other through Knock; the Moth and Rose of Fet pass through Sky; and Moon is the joint between Health's Nectar/Heart and Scale.

Depicting the elements this way reveals some interesting patterns:

Other than Health, which is unusual in other ways, every non-adjacent pair here is joined through its juncture at a 135° angle (and if we were to route the connection from Heart to Scale through Knock rather than Moon, this would be true of Health too; however, I believe that Moon is the more appropriate juncture in this case for reasons I will outline in a bit.)

The two paired aspects that are adjacent around the inner wheel, Forge/Edge Mettle and Heart/Grail Chor, are stronger in the principle subverted when these aspects interact. In theory, this suggests that Sky may subvert Lantern—and this in turn would be a small point in favor of interpreting Sky / Scale / Moon / Nectar as precursor aspects whose division created the modern principles, on the grounds that Sky subverting Lantern then obeys the Sanguine Exception.

(which holds that every door must open both ways.)

Chor, "exuberance, rhythm, and instinct," has Heart aspect with a lesser power of Grail; when subverting Heart lore or influence into Grail, the project description is "what does not cease will succumb, at last, to temptation," and the action "all that moves must succumb to hunger." This conjunction is also reversed in Memory: Satisfaction, which has Grail aspect with a lesser power of Heart, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to conclude that Chor arises from hunger in moderation; that is, the need for sustenance and meaning in life, absent the wilder hedonism of Grail.

Chor's malady, Duendracy, is a lapse in concentration brought on by what is described as a quite pleasant but very distracting (or perhaps inspiring) "possessing presence from the Mansus." It has Heart aspect only; but notice how afflicted Chor seems to be stilled as the Grail aspect is lost to the pleasant distraction—even though Heart is defined as the principle of relentless motion! Similarly, that Duentratic Chor must be roused by a sufficient power of Moth, the "wild and perilous principle of yearning," suggests the best cure for Duendracy is a nameless dissatisfaction which reawakens the Heart to its hunger, and thus restores its balance with Grail.

Ereb is "pride, compassion, hatred, fear" and "the shadow in the soul's cellar." It has Grail aspect with a lesser amount of Edge; so, we might call it an expression of passionate desire bringing about, or brought about by, strife. And while Ereb itself lacks Knock aspect, the way its Grail-Edge conjunction is expressed does resonate with the principle of Knock for much the same reason that one facet of Knock is wounding.

What commonality unites the qualities of pride, compassion, hatred, fear?—here I will note that Book of Hours (and Cultist Simulator, in less unsubtle ways) incorporates a number of Jungian concepts into its storytelling; the Archaeologist in particular is more or less explicitly tormented by their projected Shadow, in Jungian terms. The Shadow is an unconscious aspect of the personality composed of traits that are unwanted, that do not align with the aspirational ideal image of oneself, and which are therefore both repressed and projected outward, driving conflict both within and without. Confrontation with the Shadow is inevitable and may lead to either possession by it (which produces confusion, distress, emotional paralysis) or assimilation of it (which acknowledges and integrates the Shadow into the conscious self, a spiritual awakening).

The word Ereb derives from ἔρεβος (érebos), the ancient Greek for the darkness of Hades; and it's "the shadow in the soul's cellar," the intersection of Grail's "drowning waters" with the conflict and conquests of Edge—it is the Shadow, and so it is hidden or buried but must, sooner or later, be encountered. And so we might say that the Shadow will eventually, inevitably, perhaps violently, Knock. Note, also, the descriptions when strengthening Ereb with either Bosk ("the Wood is filled with shadows") or Skolekosophy ("...will unchain my Ereb"), and more generally Ereb's association with the unwritten, instinctual lore of the primaeval wood and the study of things that should not be studied. The Shadow comes Knocking, etc.

(I find Ereb especially interesting in relation to both Calyptra and the Corrivality, and will get into a deeper dive about this at some point in the future. For now: Westengryre is the affliction incurred by provoking the Mare-in-the-Tree. Sleep softly!).

Fet is "that part of us which walks in dreams," and its first aspect is Rose, its second Moth; and, as noted, I propose that the juncture in this conjunction is Sky. Why?

Sky concerns "matters of balance, harmony, and necessity." Moth is an unpredictable, wandering principle of chaotic yearning; Rose is "exploration, enlightenment, hope." Now think about Fascination: 2 Moth, THE HIGHER I RISE THE MORE I SEE; and if the Cultist succumbs to visions with three Fascination, this is their ending: "First it was the dreams. Then it was the visions. Now it's everything. I no longer have any idea what is real, and what is not."

Fet, the part which walks in dreams, which traverses the Mansus, has Moth aspect commingled with the aspect of enlightenment and exploration. Its malady is Gisting, the Rose aspect absent the Moth, and described thus: "As my concentration fails, a part of my soul flutters away, drawn by a distant half-imaginary light. [...] My fet is gisting - too loosely tethered to me - so that I glimpse the Mansus even in daylight hours. [...] In dreams I have visited the House behind the world... and some part of me is trapped there now, even when I wake." Whence does the Cultist's Moth-aspected Fascination derive? From the unmooring of Moth from their Fet.

To maintain one's Fet in good health—to walk the Mansus in dreams with the dangerous impulse to wander tethered safely to the skin of the world and the ways beneath it—what is required most of all is balance; harmony between the peril of Moth and the Rose which anchors the dreamer to the Wake. This is a matter of Sky.

(& of course, Rose and Moth together represent the nine divisions of the wind itself: the eight winds of the compass rose and the directionless, chaotic ninth.)

Health—Health is unusual in several ways, the most obvious being that it has three aspects rather than two. It is not a part of the soul per se but rather the dwelling-place thereof; its aspects are Nectar, Heart, and Scale. I believe that the reason for this is relatively simple. The aspect now called Nectar was once instead named Blood, and so we might consider that the first aspect of Health, the body, is the Heart-Blood, or the Blood-in-the-Heart. Or we might conceptualize this combination of Nectar-Heart as within-without, the lifeblood moved by the heart beating to protect the skin.

Then why Scale?

Well... Scale is the aspect of what is left, of what remains, of the old forgotten songs asleep in the depths of the earth which might yet be roused; and the Cross died not but passed within. Health has Scale-aspect because that is the last trace of the Carapace Cross, long-buried and forgotten but never quite gone. Hence my choice to route Nectar-Heart's union to Scale through Moon, the secret and forgotten things, rather than through Knock and Forge. Either is cogent, but I think Moon is the better fit.

Next! Mettle. Mettle is easy. Mettle is the "will; self-discipline; that part of us which makes the right choice" and "the capacity for meaningful choice," and it has Forge aspect with a lesser power of Edge. When subverting Forge lore or influence into Edge, the Cultist invokes the Lionsmith's rebellion at Issus: "The Hour called Lionsmith shattered his own sword to escape his master's dominion. All things can be overcome, with sufficient force. [...] I've shattered what I believed before. Thus have I subverted my Forge lore to Edge."

A small—but important!—detail I want to underscore here. In shattering his sword at Issus, the Lionsmith enacted a teaching of the Forge of days, that "the artisan may achieve their highest goal only by destroying their most precious tool." That is to say, the method used here to subvert Forge into Edge is not to conquer the Forge with the Edge but instead to reforge the Edge using Forge-techniques. One principle subverting another doesn't necessarily imply an adversarial relationship to each other; they are instead complements, or united opposites, or both. Forge-into-Edge is the clearest demonstration of this.

Thus, Mettle encompasses not just fortitude and conviction but specifically the will to change oneself—to break and be reforged—in pursuit of the highest goal. I would also submit that it is the part of the soul most in conflict with Ereb (the ego-ideal of the superego, if you want it in Jungian terms; that aspirational sense of self and identity which suppresses the Shadow). The drowning waters of Grail versus the consuming fire of Forge, the birth-and-death, end-and-beginning of Grail vs the metamorphosis and shaping arts of Forge; opposite and the same, passion striving against self-discipline, willpower striving to give form to unconscious desire, and so conflict arises from the Edge between them.

Phost is "the light within: sight, perception, inspiration" and "all the Glory's gifts." Its first aspect is Lantern, its second Sky. When afflicted, its malady is Fascinated: "My inner light gutters, then flares - I am snared in a dangerous fascination. [...] Phost is the brightest part of the soul - sometimes it can grow too bright for safety." Unlike the Cultist's Moth-y Fascination, Fascinated Phost has a small degree of Lantern aspect. It does, however, appear to be the same condition, hence "the HIGHER I RISE the MORE I SEE."

The discrepant aspect here may come down to a simple difference in temperament between the Cultist and the Librarian; one imagines that an adept must have a greater inclination toward Moth than a scholar—otherwise why seek what lies above and beyond the Stag Door? Thus Glory entices the adept but blinds the scholar. Or else, for the scholar, the danger of Fascination lies in what perilous yearnings might be enticed toward you, as Daymare insinuates, although whether the advice she offers Gwen is applicable generally or not is, given Gwen's particular circumstances, unclear.

In any case, Phost is the part of the soul afflicted by Fascination, and it seems reasonable to conceive of it as a counterpart or perhaps the fulcrum of Fet. Consider the Watchman's Paradoxes, a Lantern-Sky skill which can be committed either to Illumination or Nyctodromy:

From Light (Phost) Our dreams are shadows cast by the Watchman's light. So we perceive him even in our shadow. This is Illumination. From Change (Fet) We recognise the dream-places that the Watchman shows us, though we have never seen them before. Perhaps we were something else when we saw them. This paradox is fundamental to Nyctodromy.

If a dream is the shadow cast by the Watchman's light, or a place thereby illuminated, and Phost is "all the Glory's gifts," and the Fet is the part of the soul which walks in dreams, then it is—perhaps—Phost which illuminates the way, as an inner semblance of the Watchman's light, and keeps the balance between Rose and Moth.

Shapt is "eloquence and understanding; the door opens both ways." It has Knock aspect and a lesser power of Forge. It is words. It is speech: the first wound, the first sword, the first key. When afflicted, it develops the malady Acusis, "in which the door, Shapt, cannot be closed. [...] Every sound rings like a bell - every word scratches at my eyes or skin." Knock, absent Forge, soothed only by the silence of Winter. I get very excitable about Shapt and this is already a quite long post, so I will leave it at: Ebrehel is the Shapt of an Hour.

Trist is "the change and the longing," and its first aspect is Moth, its second Moon. Its affliction, Despairing, has Edge aspect instead: "Trist is already half a hand trailed in a river of deeper sadness. [...] Melancholy is the mist on the soul's waters. Despair is the wolf that prowls the water's edge." Trist is also implicated in the existence of what seems to be the most dangerous of the 'great shadows' that can be found in tombs—as described in 'The Barrowchild's Elegies':

The Barrowchild warns particularly of the 'avidity of trist', where a remnant-shadow's longing for change survives its sense of self and even devours its wist. That longing may draw the curious into the tomb, where the remnant-shadow changes so that it cannot be distinguished from its visitor - or that the reverse becomes true - and that it is never again possible to say whether it is the shadow or the visitor that exits the tomb.

ahem. Conceptually what this 'avidity of trist' describes is, in Jungian terms, possession by the Shadow. In Secret Histories terms, I believe that Ereb (fear) overtakes Trist, which turns to despair; the Mettle (will, choice, the determinants of self) is eroded or forsaken or otherwise lost, whereafter the despairing Trist provokes a complete obliteration of everything else that remains in a violent, agonized desperation to destroy the Ereb. & that's what a Wolf-Splinter is.

So the Moth aspect needs no explanation. Moon, however, is interesting, as is the juncture through Knock and Winter. Trist, the change and the longing, is melancholy... and Moon is the aspect of secrets, of nocturnal and forgotten things. Trist, I believe, is specifically the longing for what has been lost, after the changing, after something ends. Hence the danger of its avidity.

Last and not least, we have Wist; "the soul's memory, the true name scratched on its cornerstone, what remains after the rest has passed." It's the memory and the remnants. Its aspects are Winter and Lantern, and its malady, Shell-Crossed, has the aspect Scale, expressly because it's a surfacing remnant: "Memory crossed, hatched, lined, snapped. My thoughts are tangled and unfamiliar to me. Something of those who came before - the Carapace Cross - has always lingered in humankind. It's risen now in me."

The Winter-aspect is of course straightforward, given the Wist's role as memory-keeper for the soul. The Elegiast comes to mind, as does the nowhere-Hour called Snow (for death alters; Snow endures).

But why Lantern? Lantern is not an aspect frequently associated with preservation or endurance—quite the opposite, it purifies and it blinds. It begins to make sense if we consider this Lantern-aspect in relation to the Scale-aspect that emerges when Wist becomes Shell-Crossed, and that is, I think, the closest we have to a smoking gun in terms of Scale being a precursor to Lantern. What remains of the Carapace Cross now? Only light. This is why Shell-Crossed Wist is cured with Lantern; its Scale aspect is purified and therefore forgotten, all but the very last, inextinguishable trace.

(We'll discuss that more in another post.)

So!

All of these conjunctions of principles within the soul track quite well with the positioning of Sky / Scale / Moon / Nectar at the corners around the 'inner wheel.' I think the elements of the soul provide a more comprehensive look at the way the principles interact with each other than do Cultist Simulator's subversion projects, which we turn to now. Briefly. (she says, lying.)

Lantern into Forge: "The magus Julian Coseley claims the Forge of Days split the Sun. Perhaps he was right. [...] Light yields to Heat."

Something interesting to note is that there is a recurring if rather subtle motif of the Sun's light—the light of the Glory, Lantern—being cold. Or at least, not very warm. Besides the Meniscate, whose light is that of a reflection because her domain is the Moon, all of the extant Solar Hours have Winter aspect, which is not particularly unusual in and of itself given the influence of the Intercalate. But the Medium's splendid memory implies that the Sun-in-Splendour, although brighter than the Madrugad or the Sun-in-Rags, was likewise chilly: "The Sun was brighter once - no warmer, but its light held colours we no longer see."

This contrasts the Wheel, as described in, for example, the Inks of Revelation commitment to Hushery: "...since the dawn times when the sun hung red and low and we felt its warmth like autumn." But even that suggests only a little warmth.

Lantern and Forge are similar in myriad ways—light purifies, light blinds; fire gives light and consumes knowledge; one is unmerciful, the other inspires unmerciful change—but one key enduring difference does seem to be that Lantern-light is cold, unyielding, whereas Forge-light burns, desires, consumes, destroys. In this specific way Forge holds more similarity to Moth and Grail than it does to Lantern... and indeed we do see Forge-Moth or Forge-Grail conjunctions here and there. Notably, Transformations & Liberations (Forge-Moth) and Numen: A Merciless Alteration (Edge-Forge-Grail).

Forge into Edge, we've touched on already.

Edge into Winter: "I am acknowledging the victory of patience over strength. [...] Patience defeats strength."

Just as the method for subverting Forge into Edge recalls the Lionsmith, Edge into Winter may—arguably—call upon the Colonel's understanding of victory through the cunning borne of experience. Or we might interpret the operation from the perspective that even the fiercest conflict must end in time, whether in victory or defeat; that even the strongest warrior must fall. The White waits west of the world, but she will not wait forever. In all likelihood both are true, or at least can be true. I would imagine there are different techniques drawn from either viewpoint. (& this, too, is Edge.)

Winter into Heart: "Winter's coming must yield at last to spring."

This operation, I find most interesting in conjunction with the description of Forge as "the winter that warms and the spring that consumes." On its face, it is reasonable to interpret Winter and Heart as opposite forces—silence and stillness, striving against the drums and motion of life—but... but. Winter is the principle of endings, of silence, and of those things that are not quite dead.

Consider the Winter-Heart skill Quenchings & Quellings:

Arts which quench fires and bring solace to the troubled mind. 'A true adept is never troubled by fire, nor by fever, nor by restless spirit'. – Ambrose Westcott Safety in Silence (Trist) Unwise words are dangerous. Mourn them, remember them, speak them not. This is Hushery. Safety in Oblivion (Health) Let the flesh forget disease, let the smoke forget the flame, let the troubled mind forget its pain: Preservation.

Ambrose Westcott was a metallurgist, an alchemist, a pyrographer—his area of specialization pertained to Forge, not to Heart or Winter. But Quenchings & Quellings is first and foremost a skill interested in regret and forgetting, and therein lies the connection: Regret is a Winter-Forge memory. "Every choice has its shadow."

I do not think Winter and Heart are opposing forces at all, but rather two sides of a three-sided coin. (If you'll pardon the tortured metaphor.) Winter ends and Heart renews. Winter remembers and Heart preserves. What's missing from these pictures? Forge, which destroys; Forge, which transforms. Not for nothing are these the principles of Calyptra; the Black Flower's Heart-aspect, the White's Winter-aspect, the Red's Forge.

Heart into Grail, we've already discussed.

Grail into Moth: "Even the Red Grail falls prey to the buzzing in the brain."

Obviously, little daylight exists between hunger and yearning; both are a form of desire. Moth and Grail are similar in their hedonism, their wildness, their violence; the Moth flayed the Wheel and the Thunderskin was flayed at the Grail's behest. (Much is made of the confounding question of whether the Moth or the Grail came first, feasted first, arose first. There are no end of contradictory answers, but the truth is really very simple. They are twins—triplets actually but we don't have time for that—born together.)

But do note the specific phrasing used here—that the Red Grail falls prey to the Moth. The Hour called Moth is a hunter. This is described, for example, when committing Horns & Ivories to the Bosk. So the Red Grail is an Hour which hungers and consumes, presiding at births and deaths in equal measure, and sometimes she falls prey to the hunter-Moth; there is some notion here of reversals, of the hunter-becoming-hunted, of hunger being what is preyed upon.

Here I will draw your attention to the Moth-Grail skill Resurgences & Emergences: "Birth and death are only directions. Between the two we find a crossroads." When Grail is subverted into Moth, this is the crossroads they approach.

& into Knock: "Place pressure upon a weakness, and rend the skin of the world." Any aspect studied with Knock becomes Knock.

Knock is a power of opening, of wounding, of breaching; but I think it is also—perhaps even more importantly—a principle of intersection. It is the joining-together which dissolves all boundaries. The reason it subverts everything is less that it's a cosmic skeleton key and more a question of Knock being the principle that understands everything to be connected to everything else, because it is the principle which connects all things. Nothing is truly separate, and nothing can be divided unless it was first joined.

It's the aspect of the Mother of Ants, who encircles, who arises from wounds, who spares those who are already harmed. Knock is the principle that both wounds and heals by wounding, the venom that is also the antivenin. If you've ever wondered why Sacrament Ascite is brewed from Glassfinger Toxin, this is why.

Now—finally—let's discuss my proposed operations of Sky into Scale, into Moon, into Nectar, back into Sky.

Sky into Scale: This one is actually quite open-and-shut. We'll start with the Ithastry commitment for the language Kernewek Henevek:

The Stars (Wist) A smiths' proverb in Brancrug: 'What starts in the sky, ends in the earth.' A story goes with it, that the village smith's anvil in the time of the Dewulfs was hatched from a meteor stone, and so every plough in the village knows something of the stars. Not many remember the story, but everyone remembers the proverb. It would probably count as Ithastry.

From the sky to the earth; as above, so below. Sky is "wind, storm, echo, song... matters of balance, harmony, and necessity." Scale is "hard without, hard within, hard to rouse, harder to subdue; what remains of the old powers of the earth." What's an earthquake if not a storm within the stone? Or is it a song that still echoes beneath the earth?

Both are precursors to the modern principle of Lantern; Scale, the principle of the Flint, is very closely associated with Forge—and in Lightning we find the conjunction of Sky-Forge.

There is also a whole tangent we could go into here about the birds and the serpents and the birds-of-a-scale, worms-of-a-feather. But I won't belabor the point. Next!

Scale into Moon: One could make an argument, too, for Scale into Nectar, on the grounds of stone-and-soil, fossil-and-seed, antecedent for the Winter-Heart relationship. However, that becomes more difficult when the relationships between the precursors and the modern principles is taken into account, and I think the similarities between Scale-Nectar and Winter-Heart are more accurately represented in terms of Scale-Moon-Nectar preceding the triad of Forge-Winter-Heart.

The Scale-Moon subversion also has Hill & Hollow going for it, in particular the Preservation commitment:

The ways of the hill-children and the gods-from-stone. Old paths, old secrets, the songs that still echo beneath the earth. How They Endured (Health) In the beginning, the Carapace Cross served the first Hours, the gods born from stone. When the gods-from-stone were defeated, where could the Cross go? Into the hills; into the Bounds; and into us. This is how humankind came to be, and in our most secret hollows, the Cross endures. This is a matter of Preservation.

(Note that 'the Bounds' seems to also encompass the House of the Moon, as per the Nyctodromy commitment for Hyksos.)

Scale is what sleeps, remains, what might be roused, while Moon is what is secret, what is hidden, what is nocturnal, and what has been forgotten. Scale endures and fades from memory; Moon remembers what was forgotten. The old songs that echo under the earth become the secrets whispered by the waves beneath the moon.

Like Forge and Winter, Scale and Moon pair the violent destruction of Scale (as a shattering earthquake) with the softer, gentle endings presided over by Moon (as the sea erodes stone). Next!

Moon to Nectar: Here, of course, the dual nature of Grail—the drowning waters but also blood—is worth noting. Both Nectar and Moon are far more strongly tied to Grail than to Heart. And of course, the Wheel, the low red sun, once had the aspect Blood; and it still turns inside the House of the Moon.

Speaking of the Wheel, while Serpents & Venoms is a Scale-Moon skill, it undeniably concerns the Wheel (which may, as we discussed earlier, have also been Scale-aspected), and its Hushery commitment has some interesting implications regarding the relationship between the Wheel and dreams:

The Last Sun (Trist) In the dawn times the sun was lower, so we gave it our blood. From our blood it knew us, and so it was kinder. Its serpents brought us its poisons to drink, and so we died. But we only died a little, and so we dreamed, and returned the next day to give it our blood again. Those times of peace persist in the lessons of Hushery.

In the Mansus as it exists now, dreams are shadows cast by the Watchman's light, or else illuminated by his light, but of course this could not have been true in the dawn time when the Watchman didn't yet exist. The Moon-Knock memory A Stolen Secret, "Something I overheard in dreams?", together with Moon's associations with secrets and nocturnal things, at least circumstantially supports the conclusion that dawn-dreams were illuminated instead by the Moon.

Thus, this interplay between the blood-drinking Wheel whose serpents opened the way each night into dreams beneath the light of the Moon, speaks to the interaction of Moon with the old principle Blood, and what traces of that remain between Moon and Nectar.

Blood drinks of life and gives death and the Moon heals in dreams; Blood brings the dawn and Night yields to day. Nectar is the principle of germination and of poisoned thorns and of renewal, and the Moon still remembers what it was.

Also, the Velvet. Just... the Velvet. Next!

Nectar to Sky: We return to Kernawek Henavek, but this time it is the Bosk commitment that interests us...

The Roots (Health) A farmers' proverb in Brancrug: 'What starts in the roots, ends in the sky.' A superstition goes with it, that before a child's first birthday you should leave her for a summer night sleeping in the roots of an apple-tree, to make sure she grows tall and straight-backed. Not many pay heed to the superstition now, but everyone remembers the proverb. It would probably count as Bosk.

...along with the Birdsong commitment for Leaves & Thorns:

Looking Up (Chor) The gardener's first lesson is this: look up. What starts as weather ends in the world, what starts as sky ends in the soil. This is what the birds know, and the birds know most things first.

As beneath, so above. What is a tree but a throne to birds, and what is Sky but a crown for birds? What begins in sky ends in soil, and so the first lesson of the gardener is to look up.

Nectar is the pulse of the seasons, the ripening, the wild vigor of new life. Sky is the principle of balance and harmony, mathematics and law—moderation, but also music. The wind in the branches, the bird in the nest, the lightning-strike that fells the tree and lets in the sunlight so that new flowers can grow. I rest my case.

& Fin. (ominously) for now.

I would apologize for the sheer amount of things I've glossed over things to the tune of "but we don't have time for that now" but in my defense, 1. I'M FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE (this post is 8.2k words long) and 2. I have half of a far more comprehensive disquisition regarding the various shadows-under-the-boat we carefully ignored in this post sitting in my drafts; perhaps a quarter of it is complete; it is pushing forty thousand words in length, so 3. It Will Happen Again.

Tune in next time for: VAMPIRE SUN, EGG MOON, & ...THAT GUY.