Descent to Paradise (ritual)

The **Descent to Paradise** is an esoteric homicide-suicide ritual created by the Bishops of the Styx, an illusive theistic Satanist cult that existed on the East Coast of the United States until around 1997. It is most infamous for both its contents and its invocation in the 1989 "Hell's Staircase" Incident that occurred on the property of the Lakeview Inn & Resort in Cedarcrest, Atkins County, New York.

## History

The history of the ritual is entirely unknown to authorities, with the only information found pertaining to it having been collected from Wood's remaining items. However, since knowledge of the Bishops of the Styx exist, it is assumed that this ritual has been codified and perfected beforehand due to its successful practice in 1989.

## Steps of the ritual

The following steps are comprehensive and extracted from the Stygian archives left over by the Lakeview Skinner, Archie Wood, in the basement of the maintenance shed that he used as a base of operations. It can *only be practiced by a person who has received the "**dreams of passage**",* which are anomalous dreams that showcase the best memories that a person may have, and the mixture of nostalgia and peace that one may experience from spaces in the mind that differ from true reality (possibly being reflections of The Other in one's mental space). The residual psychological damage left by these dreams lead the person to commit such heinous actions through an increased mixture of anxiety, hallucinations, and rage for being "bound to reality". If committed by a person who has not received the dreams of passage, the ritual is said to not work even upon completion of all steps below.

The ritual is stated to allow the transition of a human from the "*reality of God's demesne*", or true reality, into a dimension where "God has no place" and the laws of reality are rendered defunct, allowing one to potentially live forever and without spiritual consequence. Thus, the dreams of passage are both prophetic and preternatural in nature, indicating the person's state of "liminality", or mental/physical transition between true reality and the Other. Due to the rigors of the ritual, it is considered a homicide-suicide ritual, demanding the eventual death of both the victims and the person conducting the ritual.

**STEPS OF THE DESCENT TO PARADISE:**

1. Dig a circular trench about eight feet deep and twenty to twenty five feet wide in diameter.
2. Skin, disembowel, and dismember thirteen women and prepare their body parts for arrangement. It is optimal for the ritual to work if the women are alive during these procedures to ensure freshness of the parts and "connection" (to what being unstated).
3. Line the surfaces of the hole with the flayed skin to create a canvas between the earth and the air in the trench, in order for the soil to not directly touch the following contents.
4. Deposit all residual tissues such as membranes and muscles on the base of the trench.
5. Deposit all organs, blood, and other excesses into the hole itself, above the initial layer of tissue.
6. Collect the bones of the thirteen and form a sun-ray emanation from the circumference of the hole outward with thirteen individual rays composed of these bones. End the rays with the cranium of each woman at their ends.
7. Douse the hole with a flammable material.
8. Douse oneself with a flammable material.
9. Cut one's arms open vertically, from wrist to elbow (or directly from wrist to upper shoulder). Let the blood pour into the trench.
10. Recite the **Command of Translocation**. (The specific words involved have not been found in any of Wood's journals to date).
11. Light the hole on fire.
12. Light oneself on fire.
13. Fall into the prepared hole.
14. Experience the **Translocation**.

## Interpretations and aftermath

### Aftermath

What is created by the ritual is, as seen in the Hell's Staircase incident, a massive plume of fire that towers up to forty feet in height, in additional to a large amount of residual smoke that rises to the sky. Following the cessation of this fire, the skin canvas that was made will hold the bones and ash of those the ritual's invoker - however, the bone count does not match what should be, and it is unknown whether this is due to the fire disintegrating the bone with abnormal temperatures or something else.

Lifting the skin canvas will reveal a shocking anomaly - that being a featureless, black void. Instruments that measure the void cannot discern a bottom, but it does not innately lead to any alternate dimension or reality; it is as if it is simply an infinite fall within true reality. This void does not seem to impact local geography, being smooth in its walls. and not causing what would be a collapse of soil and rock. It disappears within a day of the ritual.

### Intent

The Preternatural Investigation Branch of the Anomalous Research and Intelligence Office considers the ritual one of the most direct and demanding ways to create a portal between true reality and the Other that humans can possibly attempt, as no other artificial means of opening a portal has ever been found by the PIB or other preternatural research organizations. However, due to the destructive nature of the ritual against the physical body of those who practice it, it is assumed that the physical body itself is *not* what is transported into the Other.

Due to the nature of the ritual involving homicidal and suicidal sacrifice, in addition to having vocalized prayers that are to be uttered during the ritual, it is hypothesized that some sort of intelligence may be at play and even possibly invoked. However, evidence from the Hell's Staircase incident does not indicate the existence of such.

### Involvement of women

The usage of women in the ritual is unknown, but speculated to somehow invoke a parallelism with rebirth of the person operating the ritual.