The Beginnings of Normalcy and Its Future - SCP Foundation

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F.A.Q.

Excerpts from Critiques of the "Normalcy" Mandate, Chapter III: The History of "Normalcy".

This manifesto was originally published in 1934 by a half-Fae half-human, Osvendor Sarrian Enzan. To this day, the following work provides the ideological foundation for the modern "Serpent's Hand" movement as well as other groups opposing the existence of the Veil policy and the actions of the organizations that maintain it.

Antiquity

In the primeval times of the beginning centuries, when the world was still young and the first empires of the three mortals species — Yeren, Fae, and Humans — rose and fell; magic, miracles, and gods were not something distant, but close, even tangible. Although there was no rational explanation for all the questions plaguing mortals, there was no division between what was considered "abnormal" and what was "normal." However, when Adam was tempted by the false Starlight to commit the unforgivable sin of the Second Diaspora, these centuries have inevitably passed, and mortals were forced to hide in caves from the darkness in the ruins of their former empires. Most of the knowledge of those times has been lost to the depths of history, and the few remnants have adapted to newly formed beliefs, such as the titans mentioned in the Bible and in the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, which have their origins in the stories of the Nightwalkers.

Fig. 1.1: The seal used by the "Abnormality Institute."

However, civilization managed to rebuild, now with humans as the dominant species. The first ancient states and cities began to emerge, using magic and the still-present — though much smaller than before — divine presence. From the ancient Xia Dynasty, the Ortothan Kingdom, the matriarchal Daevite Empire worshiping the gods of darkness and blood through the Kingdom of Israel and the rebellion of the Sorcerer-King of Adytum to the Mediterranean power of the Mekhanites. However, as the years passed, this open approach slowly began to change.

The important milestone in the birth of modern normalcy was the establishment of the first prenormalcy organization, the Abnormal Objects and Phenomena Institute of China (中华异常事物与现象学会); also known as Abnormality Institute (异学会). It was created after the Zhou Dynasty took power in the 11th century to secure objects related to the cult of the Golden Crows, which existed during the Shang Dynasty, and was composed of prominent scholars and sages. The organization would last for the next few centuries with ups and downs, to eventually, be forced to merge into what is known today as the SCP Foundation at the dawn of a new era.

As the world moved into a new age, it began to increasingly turn its back on what it started to consider inexplicable, particularly in Europe, where the rise and expansion of Roman Catholic Church influence strongly contributed to this.

Middle Ages

The expansion of the Church's authority and the stabilization of the papacy's dominant position in Europe, involving the suppression of local pagan beliefs, led to an even greater decline in the former ancient acceptance of paranormal phenomena.

Fig. 2.1: Witch trials, an example of anomalies persecution.

Although the Church initially coexisted fairly peacefully with anomalous species and people practicing magic, the thing that ultimately broke the camel's back was the Fourth Occult War, the Mongol Empire invasion of Europe. As a result of it, the Church's policy towards the incomprehensible became more restrictive, in the form of Iron Crusade, allowing only a few groups and orders associated with the Church to be authorized to practice magic, forcing other magic users and anomalous species to hide in special enclaves, such as Esterberg, Avalon or the mystical island of Hy-Brasil, out of fear for their lives.

This was the first major separation between what was subjectively considered anomalous and what was non-anomalous. The existence of the former began to be actively demonized and persecuted, of which the most famous example is the witch trials that continued even after the end of the Dark Ages. Despite this, to this day many medieval legends and tales mentioning Fae, various magical practices and other anomalous species have survived.

Of course, with the inevitable approach of the end of the Middle Ages and the transition into a new era, this status began to slowly change, symbolically culminating in Fifth Occult War, which happened simultaneously with the Thirty Years' War, and lasted between 1618 and 1648.

Renaissance

Fig. 3.1: Nostradamus; a French astrologer, prophet, occultist, and mystic.

The Reformation movements, the beginning of the Renaissance era, and ultimately conflict — or more accurately, conflicts — led to a significant weakening of the Church's position and a loosening of its oppressive grip toward the unexplained; although, of course, this did not mean that its persecution completely stopped. For example, the aforementioned witch trials continued to some extent even up to the 18th century. The result of it was the proliferation and progression of magical practices that lasted for more than 200 years.

In the 15th and 16th centuries before the Fifth Occult War, the wealthy bourgeoisie and nobility began to take interest in the artes magicae — Latin for magical arts, also called artes prohibitae due to being prohibited by canon law, which aligned with the ideals of the Renaissance period, positioning itself as a counter to the Dark Ages.

During these times many now-famous and prominent occultists, mystics, alchemists, and other people involved in esoteric research became famous and laid the foundation for future ages, including, among others: Nostradamus, Johann Weyer, Michael Sendivogius, John Dee, or Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the famous philosopher and creator of Renaissance Kabbalistic and Hermetic magic. Representations of magical phenomena also began to appear in art, with the most famous example being the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, whose works often included references to magical practices, interventions of occult forces as well as the Fae, and whose presence in the British Isles at the time was significant.

The symbolic end of the Fifth Occult War additionally allowed for a full blossoming of all sorts of groups, cults, brotherhoods, clubs, and other organizations practicing and working with magic, not limited only to those associated with the Church as in the Middle Ages — from the infamous Marshall, Carter & Darke through the Polish Anomalous Mushroom Picking Association (PZGA) to the secret society of the Bavarian Illuminati and many other groups still in existence today — as well as individuals studying esoteric practices.

However, as the centuries passed, the numerous and significant magical organizations of the time began to fall into increasing stagnation and conservatism, unwilling to adapt to the new realities of a world that, with the Enlightenment and then the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, began to move more and more toward a deeper modern and scientific understanding of the world. Scholars cataloging and systematizing previously unexplored fields of science slowly began to push aside the occult world holding on to outdated dogmas and old practices, stuck in stagnation, further and further increasing the separation between them.

This situation allowed organizations and institutions associated with the most powerful governments at the time to grow into something resembling China's Abnormality Institute nearly 3 000 years after its creation. Driven by the ideals of "securing the safety of their nation," they slowly launched their campaign of terror with the goal of protecting themselves from the imaginary threat posed by the world of magic, which they ultimately created themselves. They established a modern understanding of the Greek-derived word "anomaly" — meaning a deviation from the objective norm — creating themselves a subjective definition of said norm, excluding from it the conservative esoteric world stuck in stagnation not yet aware at the time of the disastrous consequences this would have for its future. This laid the groundwork that eventually contributed to the official establishment of the Veil dictatorship after the Sixth Occult War.

Among the most infamous prenormalcy organizations of the time were the American Secure Containment Initiative (ASCI), which introduced the immoral practice of using human subjects in experiments, which is still used today by the SCP Foundation, having racist roots in its origins; the ruthless and brutal His/Her Majesty's Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal (HMFSCP), which wanted to maintain the hegemony of the British monarchy; or the French Estate noir. The growing terror of these organizations left an increasingly bigger mark on the occult world, which became stagnated in its dogmatic beliefs and was perpetuated in it by the actions of those prenormalcy organizations. Divisions and conflicts among many paranormal organizations that emerged from this system eventually culminated in the outbreak of the Sixth Occult War in 1864.

Modernity

Fig. 4.1: Photo from the SCP Foundation archives supposedly depicting the signing of the "Convention on Preternatural Phenomena."

The Sixth Occult War finally ended in 1868 after 4 brutal and bloody years of fighting, with the death of the ancient Demiurge — killed by a German group of thaumaturgists taking advantage of the ongoing chaos — responsible for keeping the numbers of thaumaturgists down as well as stabilizing baseline reality, preventing hostile extradimensional beings from seeping into it. Both the scale of the conflict and the fear of such powerful forces eventually pushed national governments to step in, ending the conflict between all the parties already exhausted and devastated by it — many of the significant pre-conflict groups hadn't survived it or had significantly declined .

As a result, representatives of the most powerful governments and occult organizations — the majority of which were prenormalcy ones — met in an unknown location, officially signing the "Convention on Preternatural Phenomena" (French: Convention Sur Les Phénomènes Surnaturel) on November 23, 1868. Formalizing with it so-called normalcy, precisely defining their subjectively determined "consensus reality" and what is to be officially considered "anomalous" — which was previously understood rather loosely by prenormalcy organizations — and hidden from the public behind the "Veil" for its supposed welfare and protection, through lies and manipulation. Anomalousness isn't some constant of reality, it is what a group of old men in suits a couple of decades ago arbitrarily decided as such.

Although the intentions officially behind its signing can be considered noble — the desire to protect the world from a disaster on the scale of the Sixth Occult War — the manner in which they were carried out shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what led to this tragedy in the first place. The oppression of prenormalcy organizations and the conservatist stagnation of the magical society that caused the subdivisions and discord were what unleashed this conflict, giving the former an opportunity to create a convenient narrative of conflict between good and evil; between normality and abnormality; between order meant to protect humanity and alleged anomalous disorder which in logical consequence supposedly meant to endanger it. This also shows the xenophobic and supremacist ideas behind the whole concept of "normalcy," elevating humans to the title of the "normal" and dominant species above the Fae, Yeren, and other sentient species considered "anomalous" and therefore lesser and inferior.

Such thinking about anomalies, which are always supposed to pose a threat simply by their existence, is fundamentally flawed. As dangerous as some can be, so can too the phenomena considered subjectively "normal" — from all manner of diseases to fires or storms — and suppressing knowledge about them will only force humanity to cower from them in the darkness of ignorance. Hiding behind science and the objectivity of the Convention's ideas and their realizations represent only the death of knowledge, science, development, and light, comparable to how the Catholic Church fought against the heliocentric theory, unable to accept changes and things going beyond the dogmatic status quo they imposed.

Fig. 4.2: Adam Bright, the last general director of ASCI, and later O5-12.

Although the exact signatories of the convention itself are unknown and it is protected by many magical and occult seals, anonymous sources as well as rumors circulating for years in anomalous communities identify as potential signatories, among others: Adam Bright (future O5-12) of ASCI and few other later O5s; the future SCP Foundation Administrator;1 Hadfield Senior, director of HMFSCP (who died a year after the signing of the Convention);2 and the Deathless Merchant of London, Percival Darke of Marshall, Carter & Darke, whose involvement adds a certain dark ambiguity regarding the purity of the intent of its establishment.

The convention also resulted in the birth of the idea of modern national and international normalcy organizations designed to deal with its maintenance, led by the international SCP Foundation formed in 1870 from the ashes of the former alliance of 13 prenormalcy and occult organizations — the General Assembly of Thaumaturgists and Theologists Against Queen Mab — which took as its goal the noble fight against Queen Mab and the less noble maintenance of "normalcy," which the first amendments to the convention entrusted to the Foundation to later become one of their infamous "SCP-001."

This beast — headed by the aforementioned Administrator with a decision-making arm in the form of the O5 Council, seated by the representatives of these 13 organizations, some of which were also signatories to the convention — hid behind numbers, was able over the next few years to slowly overwhelm most of the world's major governments with its hideous tentacles, develop and popularize the technology of synthetic chemical amnestics in order to maintain its normalcy in 1894 — replacing the old expensive and not fully effective practices based on hypnosis and alchemy, disregarding the fact that their use could lead to carcinogenic side effects — convert the traitorous archivist of the Library to its side, and cut itself off from the magic world, locking it behind the bars of its prisons and chambers, forgetting that it itself had roots in it.

Although, in the interest of the questionable honor of these organizations, I must give credit to the national normalcy organizations belonging to the Entente and the Foundation for the fact that they were able to prevent the outbreak of another occult conflict parallel to the Great War.

However, to the surprise of many, this whole situation has ignited a Promethean fire of development in a now even more repressed and hidden in shadow magical society. From the development of the theory of Unified Thaumatology by J.S. Carver in 1913 which gave a new scientific understanding of what we had previously called "magic," to all sorts of discoveries and miracles created by Prometheus Laboratories which helped to solve many problems considered unsolvable for generations — and which the SCP Foundation, in its own hubris and hypocrisy, helped fund — and also the birth of new movements in anomalous art. In doing so, the anomalous communities exposed the nonsense of the "Veil" policy born by the closure to change of occult organizations prior to the Sixth Occult War, fuelled by prenormalcy organizations for which this fact was in their favor. The gray areas of science, that they had previously decided to reject, began to show that people thinking in this way were wrong, giving a better understanding to new fields of so-called modern parascience like taumaturgy, memetics, psionics, metaphysics, and ontokinetics.

Fig. 4.3: James Rollander's Factory.

Despite this, the monolith that the Foundation has become remained blinded; this fact led to the greatest tragedy of the occult world in the early 20th century, the Third Diaspora. The Foundation, in February of 1910, took over a large Factory belonging to James Rollander — whom that organization had wiped from the pages of history beyond the Veil — manipulated by the ancient Queen Mab impersonating her sister to help her enter baseline reality once again, who also managed to fool the Foundation with her tricks, which remained deaf to the cries and warnings of the Fae and the rest of paranormal world about the threat; until there was nothing left for them to do but, in a sudden burst, grab weapons to oppose the return of the ancient beast that the organization, which one of main goal was to stop it, now wanted in its own blindness and stupidity bring back to the living.

It is estimated that the following tragedy claimed more than 85% of the Fae population at the time, sacrificing their souls to Queen Mab. It cost the lives of countless men, women, mothers, fathers, friends and loved ones, while also giving impetus to extreme Neo-Mabbites organizations to act, the largest of which is Triumviraté, propagating the idea of rebuilding the ancient monarchist dictatorship of the Fae empire under Mab regime, citing humanity's harms against their species.

Although the Foundation seems to have finally understood its blindness and foolishness on this issue, initiating needed changes in its approach, it is still not enough. Fundamental changes are needed, related to understanding the basis of its mistakes allowing to finally catch the arsonist, rather than merely trying to fight the caused fire.

Future

However, despite these glimpses of small changes, the dictatorship of normalcy that has existed for more than 60 years does not promise to fall. The Veil system has managed to establish itself in the magical world, and most occult organizations have adapted to it under the threat of being destroyed. And while many of my dear like-minded colleagues are creating romantic visions of a great revolution against this system — it doesn't look like it will be realized any time soon. Also, highly disturbing are reports from Europe of significant repressions and persecutions by a more and more radical and nationalist Germany.

In addition, some modern research as well as ancient legends and tales suggest that such radical changes of perspective on the world have significant consequences, as it will also cause the world to change as well. The establishment of the so-called Veil on an unprecedented scale, its restrictive maintenance, control over magic, as well as the subjective exclusion of a part of reality will certainly have its repercussions — some ancient accounts mentions the weakening and dying of magic and related phenomena in the ancient Daevite Empire where it was reserved only for oligarchic matriarchs or during the medieval persecutions by the Church. However, this subject still remains heavily unresearched, and only in the realm of legends and myths based on accounts from hundreds of years ago, so I will refrain from drawing additional conclusions from it.

Although certainly, some kind of more serious consequences of the establishment of the Veil will eventually occur, with worse or better results for the occult world. For the time being, I look to the future uncertainly, hoping to see some glimmerings of hopes for change on the distant horizon.

While the rest of mankind dwells in the light, we must stand in the darkness to fight it, contain it, and shield it from the eyes of the public, so that others may live in a sane and normal world. Because if we don't, there might soon be no more world to guide forward.

— The SCP Foundation Administrator, preamble of "About Extradimensional Beings and Their Queen" (1870)

Footnotes

1. Banished for his sins to grove, where names have power after being tricked by the ancient queen into losing his name to her; can be freely addressed per Administrator, as the title of SCP Foundation Administrator is thaumaturgically reinforced and protected.

2. Whose daughter later inherited his position of HMFSCP director and became part of the Foundation.