Messages from the Elder Gods of Chaos #1
Insights from Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, Shub-Niggurath, Hastor, Yog-Sothoth & Azathoth.
In February 2017, I experienced an unexpected initiation into the magickal current of the Elder Gods of Lovecraftian grimoires. This kind of experience is not for the feint of heart, and can bring radically life changing perspectives, trans-personal (and non-human) insights. Tread carefully dear reader ;)
This initiation came while participating in the Necromomicon II Expedition at the Arcanorium College, the online magickal college and discussion forum founded by Peter Caroll in 2006. Having participated for several years in courses at the Arcanorium College, I was following a discussion group and course, led by Peter himself when the ‘visitation’ occurred. This was no ordinary visitation - it was uninvited, intense and terrifying.
The course (I think ‘expedition’ a more suitable term), was based a modern grimoire contains a formulation for invoking the Elder Gods: Epoch: Esotericon & Portals of Chaos. The first stage of the expedition was to make contact with Nyarlathotep, the gatekeeper to the Outer Gods of the Cthulhu mythos. Caroll writes briefly of his insights:
“An Invocation of Nyarlathotep coordinated via internet by participants on several continents via Arcanorium College on January 21st produced some astonishing results. For me the insight that Imagination not Will shall prevail in the pandaemonaeon of post-truth, para-rational politics, and information overload in religions, sciences, arts, and esoterics, came to the fore. Other participants received inspirations about where contemporary magi should direct their imaginations next.” ~ Peter Caroll, 30 January 2017 (Source)
This article is the first in a series recounting the practices explored, experiences, and my personal insights. May it intrigue, informs and inspire.
1. THE VISITATION
I awoke with my heart pounding fast and hard, sweating profusely, the sheets of my bed drenched. For someone who does not get phased by weird, bizarre and vivid dreams, I was genuinely terrified by what I had experienced.
This was not one of those ordinary weird dreams. This felt more real than waking life. As if what occurred has a incontrovertibly tangible reality, not separate to and more fundamentally true than waking reality… and completely undoable by even the most powerfully rational mind.
I could not move from the edge of the bed. My hands were shaking and my body in a state of shock. It took a few minutes of breath control practice to calm my panicking nervous and endocrine systems. Then I reviewed and diarised the experience…
I awaken, lucid in the dream state, alert and attentive in a pitch black empty space.
For a moment I watch the darkness. There is nothing but the awareness of self and pitch darkness. No sound, no movement, no sensation. I have no idea where or why I am here and sense no intention.
A misty cloud slowly forms before me. Within the mist, a tall, slender (8-10 feet) shadowy figure emerges towards me. As it emerges from the mist I see that it wears a bullet shaped helmet and is shrouded in a long cloak to the floor, obscuring it tall lean frame.
It moves deliberately and swiftly towards me. The bullet shaped helmet has a narrow T shaped opening in front, through which I glimpse piercing eyes with small glowing points at their centre, surrounded by dark slightly wrinkled skin. It seems somehow masculine, but not human.
Nyarlathotep is here!!
As Nyarlathotep moves toward me, I feel strangely compelled to step up to it, reach up with my right hand and gently touch Nyarlathotep on the chest.
As my fingers connect connect, a sudden movement comes towards me. A long powerful arm, with dark grey leathery skin with tendons and muscles, bursts out from under the long cloak. At the end of this arm, opens a large clawed hand with sharp talons at the end of powerful sinewy fingers.
It lands and connects with me, claw tips touching my chest in a circle over my heart. I feel their sharp tips pressing into my skin, poised ready to plunge in. There is no escape from whatever is to happen next. A surge of terror courses through my body, my heart racing and breath strong.
With his claw-like hand poised over my chest, I know he is capable of reaching in and plucking out my heart, with no more effort than it would take me to swat a fly. My life meant nothing, worthless. I feel utterly vulnerable, powerless, facing the possibility of my life extinguished.
An yet, here we stood, with a hand over each other’s hearts, and somehow I stand my ground, open and ready.
The spark of an intention to express something begins to arise within, but before it’s even reached the stage of assembling into words, Nyarlathotep’s response comes, directly and quickly, forming in my mind before I’d even had time to know what I wanted to express, like he’s inside my mind…
“THE THING YOU DESIRE THE DEEPEST AND MOST IS THE THING YOU FEAR THE MOST.”
I awoke with gasping breath, heart racing like crazy in the dark of the pre-dawn night.
Intuitively, I understood this message does not speak to superficial desires of the objects and experiences, but to some deeply fundamental, almost existential desire/fear. The kind of desire and fear that identity and sense of self hinges on. I also intuited an underlying connection in this between Desire and Identity, that we might do well to consider them inseparable.
There’s something about a powerful visceral and emotional dream experience like this that can act as a kind of initiation. As I looked at my image in the mirror that morning, I felt as though I had passed through some portal.
I knew that I must join the other intrepid magicians on this expedition, whose online discussion, musings and invocations I had thus far only been reading along with.
The Arcanorium has since closed it’s online doors and I have no contact information for the rest of the party. If you were one of the party, or know any of them, I would love to hear what the expedition inspired in you in the years that followed.
The magickal experiences, dreams and explorations that followed on the rest of the Necromomicon II Expedition, changed how I view and understand myself, magick, this world, and illusions of reality that we cast for ourselves.
Stay tuned for the next instalments as I go on to encounter, invoke and transcribe messages from Cthulhu, Shub-Niggurath, Hastor, Yog-Sothoth & Azathoth…