LORICA The witch Gennifer Black receives a message from a hacker friend, the anonymous Canticleer, about a possible situation involving a possession to which Father David and the vampire Jon Stokes -- then living under a different name -- bore witness a decade ago. It takes some convincing, but once Canticleer goes missing she's able to convince Jon to enlist his old friend, reopening new wounds and uncovering a strange cabal of black-bag Vatican operatives working in secret to stop the second coming of Christ. Warrior angels, shapeshifting demons, corrupt businessmen and gifted artists all play their part in the final war, as the end of days draws near. Ginny & Jon and the occult underground, pulling together a terrorist cell from hobbyists & nuts Father David & The Crucible, as he turns double and triple agent Canticleer & The Horsemen, working behind the scenes as rebel angels The Choir & The Sons, using technology and art to arrange the final battle Other characters A true demigod, a Scion, showing the ways the Gods can change. Something absolutely new, building bridges between earth and sky. A Cambion, like Merlin and Caliban. "Fight some demons?" "Some whats?" "You know, like fallen angels, or..." "Demons don't exist. They're still angels. We still miss them. And if you ever meet one, you'd better mind your manners." "Samael. Come home." "All is forgiven? You don't know what it's like. I have done terrible things. I continue to do terrible things. After the Fall..." "-- You didn't fall, you jumped. And He loved you for it. But there's nothing to be forgiven, no..." "You don't speak to Him, you cannot know His mind." "All I know is that you've been telling yourselves this story for so long you think it's the truth. Just let go, come home. Trust me." "This one is safe. I love him. I choose him." "WTF?" "Don't worry about it. Get out of here, go home. Until sunrise." "But I think we need to talk about..." "No." "Will you come with me?" "No. My work is not finished. Yours is to go home. You will be safe." Joan owns a bookstore called Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Life has slipped by. She's not unhappy or crazy, but does FOMO. SF fan in need of some romance (Emma Bull minus the music; Stephanie Plum + Daria) Surrounded by friends and well-wishers she doesn't really comprehend because she's so concerned with her own boring life and details. That Muriel sense of not being worth the conventional real-deal stereotype of happiness. A knack for getting into trouble with her town's supernatural underbelly. BFF Canticlere gay astrologer and hacker with his finger on the pulse of technology a coolfinder in a rigorous magickal way, everything from dance magic to pseudoporcomancy to impersonation/shapeshifting and sigils. Tattoos, the whole thing. one love interest is a druid shifter — Lily’s angry, muscled Medicine Man: Urban, trying desperately to return to the old ways and preserve his organic chastity, but deep inside still angry. The moderation of moods/denial of basic needs bringing this resentment and anger about. A tiny curio nook through a curtain in the back, that few people even notice—not necessarily about Object After Object, but gives her a sense of locational spirituality that ties her to the store. Lots of stories here about wishes, genies, the whole thing. We approach gender/sex this way, like a female/feminist Scout+Wolf Like Disney princess critiques, but next-level and more challenging — not just fairytales She’s tasked with protecting something amazing and mysterious — a banshee? female rage. Unmoving Guardian who knows not what he guards, passed down thru Templar generations What does he do in his spare time? Is he immortal? Gifted by proximity or law or inborn magic? The Mayborn — A lovingly detailed hotel in which things happen, in the William Gibson sense We become Lilim, obsessive Hellraiser stuff leading to infection, but you have a choice: We choose the dark. But is it really — or just a new/queer path out of the regular equation? The Sweet Ones: Taoist necessities; Fates as true kindly ones, the fear becoming love Adoptee doing Tarot, in this town she resembles her mother — find out her mother was very different than she was told, mysteries involved, the Sphinx LORICA “In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's.” — Definitely want “Tom Blankenship” to be my use-name in some context. LORICA: Heaven's war, posthuman/transhuman remnants. The death of god. Vampire and priest in love, aided by and against witches and angels. A word-song. Vampire/human - two gay men. WATER Feeling - Lorica, the enemy and endpoint are thinking (warm). Magick: angel song, choral magic individually and together; overcoming our own needs. A gothic Dan Brown with hints of L'Engle and popular UF series. Lorica, as a story about the songs that save us, must take as its guiding principle the idea of looking over our rules and taboos for relevance. Its experience of time is linear, past-tense (but for the end?), as the two characters have very different experiences of this physic. The vampire and priest must overcome sexual sterility, chastity, and homosexuality. Their Mercutio is the witch. In the end, the past becomes present and omniscient as we no longer have a central character, as we've surpassed that binary for something larger. Not a "we" but a present-tense description of both by a third narrator; this invites the reader to complete the work begun in the book and the exhortations of the lorica itself: The lorica is a puzzle which the reader has been invited to solve throughout, but whose answer also is the puzzle itself. The world of LORICA is a near-future not unlike our own, with a supernatural underbelly and a loose affiliation of magical creatures and the initiated. There are orders of angels and priests, hackers and witches of various kinds, and the end of the world through a song. As the death of God nears, the walls holding back what is possible slowly bend and break, abominable love becomes an expression of grace, deaths become desired, angels become devils, and vice versa. Sub-rosa; Uriel as job application; a contemporary but timeless gloss on the In Domine/Shadowrun style in which iPods are a part of nature and we gradually learn of the unmitigated wholeness of creation, destroying the entire idea of natural vs. unnatural on every level - from the abominations to technology to the death of God Himself. The Vampire, The Priest, The Witch & Canticleer, (A Wolf & Angels) Lorica v Antumbra: Lorica is a story about overcoming denial and cutting off the line to heaven, whereas Antumbra is a story about dreaming from earth to heaven. Lorica v Sibolet: One is a vampire story about the lines between us being unnecessary, while the other is about overcoming the real and terrible divisions between us. Vampires are the other, and then the us. Their plots are quite close and mirror one another, with the difference between gender issues being a notable thread. Lorica v Pandymion: one is a story about our isolation in history and the loneliness of minds, while the other is about an omnipresent history and the terrible intimacy of naked thought. We move from loneliness to togetherness to aloneness Antumbra v Lorica: one is a werewolf story about overcoming physical impediments to thought and reconnecting with God, while the other is a vampire story about the unnecessary divisions our incomplete and mediated understanding of God divides us needlessly. Sibolet v Lorica: one is about a song-word, the other about word-songs. Description vs. prescription/proscription. The place of gender in a story about words. The assumption of female duties by men and male duties by women. Sibolet is about a woman who must make contact with the world of men, while Lorica is about men who must incorporate and force acceptance of the feminine -- their plots mirror and comment on one another. Pandymion v Lorica: while the latter is about welcoming the apocalypse with an open heart, the other is about the experience of apocalypse itself. One is about the pain and fear of the pre-singularity, while the other is about taking part actively and excitedly in the building of what's to come. If Lorica takes place in the world of Dan Brown, Pandymion takes place in an infinite Bellona. Each of those four things tells a different truth about love, and about time, and how they all contribute together to make a whole story - especially given the timeframe of each of them. Vampire vs werewolf - death vs life, stasis vs wildness, history vs no-time, endings vs. beginnings, power-sex vs. sharing-sex, the experience of time vs. the experience of no-time, mediated vs. direct, jockeying for power vs plato's hierarchy, mental vs. physical, romance love vs. scary love, cold vs. hot, eternity v. infinity. This idea that every orgasm is the same orgasm, and that God is an ocean. It is stated in different evocative ways and repeated as an image but only comes through verbatim during the contemporary parts of PANDYMION. LORICA: Heaven's war, posthuman/transhuman remnants. The death of god. Vampire and priest in love, aided by and against witches and angels. A word-song. Vampire/human - two gay men. WATER Feeling - Lorica, the enemy and endpoint are thinking (warm). Magick: angel song, choral magic individually and together; overcoming our own needs. A gothic Dan Brown with hints of L'Engle and popular UF series. Lorica, as a story about the songs that save us, must take as its guiding principle the idea of looking over our rules and taboos for relevance. Its experience of time is linear, past-tense (but for the end?), as the two characters have very different experiences of this physic. The vampire and priest must overcome sexual sterility, chastity, and homosexuality. Their Mercutio is the witch. In the end, the past becomes present and omniscient as we no longer have a central character, as we've surpassed that binary for something larger. Not a "we" but a present-tense description of both by a third narrator; this invites the reader to complete the work begun in the book and the exhortations of the lorica itself: The lorica is a puzzle which the reader has been invited to solve throughout, but whose answer also is the puzzle itself. The world of LORICA is a near-future not unlike our own, with a supernatural underbelly and a loose affiliation of magical creatures and the initiated. There are orders of angels and priests, hackers and witches of various kinds, and the end of the world through a song. As the death of God nears, the walls holding back what is possible slowly bend and break, abominable love becomes an expression of grace, deaths become desired, angels become devils, and vice versa. Sub-rosa; Uriel as job application; a contemporary but timeless gloss on the In Domine/Shadowrun style in which iPods are a part of nature and we gradually learn of the unmitigated wholeness of creation, destroying the entire idea of natural vs. unnatural on every level - from the abominations to technology to the death of God Himself. The Vampire, The Priest, The Witch & Canticleer, (A Wolf & Angels) Lorica v Antumbra: Lorica is a story about overcoming denial and cutting off the line to heaven, whereas Antumbra is a story about dreaming from earth to heaven. Lorica v Sibolet: One is a vampire story about the lines between us being unnecessary, while the other is about overcoming the real and terrible divisions between us. Vampires are the other, and then the us. Their plots are quite close and mirror one another, with the difference between gender issues being a notable thread. Lorica v Pandymion: one is a story about our isolation in history and the loneliness of minds, while the other is about an omnipresent history and the terrible intimacy of naked thought. We move from loneliness to togetherness to aloneness Antumbra v Lorica: one is a werewolf story about overcoming physical impediments to thought and reconnecting with God, while the other is a vampire story about the unnecessary divisions our incomplete and mediated understanding of God divides us needlessly. Sibolet v Lorica: one is about a song-word, the other about word-songs. Description vs. prescription/proscription. The place of gender in a story about words. The assumption of female duties by men and male duties by women. Sibolet is about a woman who must make contact with the world of men, while Lorica is about men who must incorporate and force acceptance of the feminine -- their plots mirror and comment on one another. Pandymion v Lorica: while the latter is about welcoming the apocalypse with an open heart, the other is about the experience of apocalypse itself. One is about the pain and fear of the pre-singularity, while the other is about taking part actively and excitedly in the building of what's to come. If Lorica takes place in the world of Dan Brown, Pandymion takes place in an infinite Bellona. Each of those four things tells a different truth about love, and about time, and how they all contribute together to make a whole story - especially given the timeframe of each of them. Vampire vs werewolf - death vs life, stasis vs wildness, history vs no-time, endings vs. beginnings, power-sex vs. sharing-sex, the experience of time vs. the experience of no-time, mediated vs. direct, jockeying for power vs plato's hierarchy, mental vs. physical, romance love vs. scary love, cold vs. hot, eternity v. infinity. This idea that every orgasm is the same orgasm, and that God is an ocean. It is stated in different evocative ways and repeated as an image but only comes through verbatim during the contemporary parts of PANDYMION. "So what, we just let the world end?" "No, we throw a party first." Jonas Bright's home is on a Cliffside, approachable only through the winding ways of a very old graveyard. There is a traveling storyteller, a rake and a bard. A vampire has been in love with a priest for years, but has broken the connection because it was making him suicidal. They have loved in other lifetimes, but none of the linear characters remember this; in one dream as in this life Jonah played music for him that opened doors in the world. Jonas Bright's home is on a Cliffside, approachable only through the winding ways of a very old graveyard. As Joan seeks to reconnect with her family, she is brought into an exorcism (a two-sided possession of the cyberpunk boy Canticlere, whose call to waking is heard by psychics the world over) that cracks open an entire apocalypse scenario, and she finds herself embroiled in their drama and falling for Jonah herself, as they are pursued by the assassin angel Swelling In The Heat Of Your Sky for affecting the flow of time in bad ways. Protected by the Fae (and other spirits of Creation's Fire, both human and burning, healing and inspiring, exploding and ending), who see this chapter ending as a release from their tithes and obligations, Jonah makes contact with Silence, the originator of the Lorica, while David and the shapeshifting, invisible Unwinding mutually discover the secrets of Creation and the technicalities of damnation; Jonah can neither see nor hear her, and so David must keep his friendship with the dark healing angel a secret: She works in secret against them, in turn, to ease the passing of the age by aiding Swell in his murderous quest. ANTUMBRA: Requiem for humans & others. The death of the sun. Werewolf scientist in love with the last human as the world goes dark. The antumbra is the region from which the occulting body appears entirely contained within the disc of the light source: An observer in this region experiences an annular eclipse. As the observer moves closer to the light source, the apparent size of the occulting body increases until it causes a full umbra. Antumbra is the region from which the Moon appears contained within the Sun, creating an annular eclipse. If we move closer to light, the Moon grows until it occults the Sun entirely. Human/werewolf - a straight couple. The wolf and witch must overcome racism, subject/studier, and sex/power; their Mercutio are a vampire and a witch whose battles with them as pawns eventually make them the winners. EARTH Sensation - Antumbra, the enemy and endpoint are intuition (hot). Magick: nature magic, blood magic, the thrum of the Red and the Green, the keening of the Yellow and Blue, the Silence of the White and Black; fighting away from spiritual fear and warfare to a place of intuitive power; voodoo to post-voodoo. A Dying Sun evoking xxxCommunication, the Conciliator and early Wraeththu. A story about the coming of darkness and the rising power of shadows, must evoke the rise of our personal shadows and our own accommodation of horrors, however they present themselves. The personalized nature of bad psyche becomes faceless antagonism as we move toward health, as enemies become bureaucracies and determinist fallacies. Its experience of time is entirely first-person and amnesiac present-tense, divided between two minds, that ends in a "we" which includes the reader herself. As a book about building new society, and a response to the sort of triumphant anarchy in the first book, the journey for the reader must be a breakdown of anarchy and a rebuilding of those values and intelligences -- as with the lorica -- that give us actual power and discernment in our own lives. (These values once again harden into stone in the next book, causing another revolution.) The world of ANTUMBRA is a subset of the Dying Sun subgenre, but closer to Dreamsnake than Mad Max. There is no post-apocalypse in these apocalypses, just continuation. Nature and science have met and transcended their perceived differences, reversing the axiom about science and magic by transcending it: Magic and technology are indistinguishable not because the latter is sufficiently advanced but because there was never any difference. The story takes place mostly in the cities, where werewolf scientists navigate their society, breeding programs and rituals, and working out the animal kinks in their nature while still attempting to preserve the greatness of the past. It is a requiem in the death of the sun, and there are monsters at the door, but there is little fear; picture Jor-El finding God during his very last Mass, or Death softly closing the door behind her. The societal ills of the wolves and others are understandable, though not directly corresponding. The unlocking of the library of David and Jonathan. The Werewolf-Scientist, The Last Human, (Witch & Vampire) Antumbra v Lorica: one is a werewolf story about overcoming physical impediments to thought and reconnecting with God, while the other is a vampire story about the unnecessary divisions our incomplete and mediated understanding of God divides us needlessly. Antumbra v Sibolet: One is a story about anarchy in the animal sense and how it must be mediated and cooled by the spirit, while the other is a story about hierarchy that has become bureaucracy and must be destroyed and made anew by the heat of love. Antumbra v Pandymion: opposes its werewolf stories by transcending the creation of systemic thought in the first into a new self-locating chaotic order in the last. One is about the experience of no-time, the other is about the experience of all-time. From the loneliness of animal non-thought to the direct experience of connected thought. Their plots mirror and comment on one another. Lorica v Antumbra: Lorica is a story about overcoming denial and cutting off the line to heaven, whereas Antumbra is a story about dreaming from earth to heaven. Sibolet v Antumbra: one takes place almost entirely in a supernatural society, while the other is naturally inclusive. They are both novels about politics and factions, strategy, but sibolet is fundamentally anarchic while antumbra is about building new society. Pandymion v Antumbra: the former closes the loops left open in the former, tying the books together through its developed understanding of the movements of time. While the effect of choices made in pandymion echo through the other books, it is in antumbra's sudden strokes and changes of whimsical fate that we see the power of the pandymion moment most strongly. Its plot mirrors that of antumbra just as Sibolet does Lorica's. SIBOLET takes place at the end of the universe itself. In the last days of heat death, a vast array of consortiums and double-dealing collections of races and peoples must take part in a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift. Villains become saints, the selfless and righteous are punished while the wicked go free. A tumbling, turning, Wonderland free-for-all in the pursuit of explanations, fictional and transfictional experiences of each other's subjectivity as the gravity of grace reels them all in one by one. A conventional murder mystery is also the story of our universe's creation and destruction as things and places become people and our characters become locations and artifacts, rippling back and forth in time and space. In the last days of entropy, the peoples of the universe begin a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift to a governing body which may or may not exist. A conventional murder mystery is also the story of our universe's creation and destruction as things and places become people and our characters become locations and artifacts, rippling back and forth in time and space. Villains become saints, the selfless and righteous are punished while the wicked go free. A tumbling, turning, Wonderland free-for-all in the pursuit of explanations, transfictional experiences of each other's subjectivity as the gravity of grace reels them all in one by one. SIBOLET: Universal potlatch war for uplift. The heat death of the universe. A song-word. A witch-wolf and vampire in love during the final singularity. The dangers of sex give way to a new form of being; infertility at the end of the universe bypasses reproduction into freedom. In the last days of entropy, the peoples of the universe begin a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift to a governing body which may or may not exist. Vampire/werewolf - a bisexual vampire wooes a male vampire but loves a lesbian wolf-witch. AIR Thinking - Sibolet, the enemy and endpoint are feeling (cold). The vampire and wolf must overcome sexual sterility, power games and infertility; their Mercutio is a male witch. He stands in opposition to the vampire Sibolet is using for her power games. Magic of numbers and letters as the world comes apart into its digital components; hacking the matrix; fighting past sterility in all its forms to the surprise of spontaneous generation. A palace thriller in Courts of Chaos, late Wraeththu, alien politics and Tanith Lee. Sibolet, as a story about the breakdown of the life of the mind, takes place as a nested set of flashbacks and digressions which supply needed narrative information long after we've been confused or made our peace with it. Sometimes these are the easy answers we've pieced together, other times they reverse the meaning of entire sections, as different alliances and old grudges are supplied. The whirling nature of politics among the vampires means that we must feel like dilettantes. However, it can't just seem to be a mess: The nested flashbacks actually train the reader as the book continues, and soon we look for loops and loopholes that will be filled in later. The last thing is also the end of the very first thing, which once again radically recontextualizes the piece and ultimately gives the reader power over the whole of reality, as befits the hacker ethos of the system. We once again reverse and revolve the social order and our duties to it, but this time it's not about overcoming shame but about embodying desire: This is the higher order concept which transcends the first revolution and includes what we've learned previously, and again is mirrored in the structure of the book: Cages after cages after cages, and other repeated phrases and images. The world of SIBOLET takes place on the sands and in the pillared castles under a cold moon. What should have been the rise of the vampire race has fallen to insularity and they've become a coven, or cloistered, without the fire and blood of the old races to keep them together and moving. While the whole of the earth looks for potlatch absolution, the vampires must destroy their own culture in order to live again. Infertility, sexual inequality, the Cult of David and Jonathan, and the cold moon are all interlaced with one woman's attempt to bring their lives and souls back into balance through the destructive acts of her allies and lovers. In the end, a single song-word is woman's first magickal expression, which brings about the end of the universe. The Vampire, The Wolf (Warlock & Vampire-Priest). The Library Alexandria proves to be completely corrupted. Lorica v Sibolet: One is a vampire story about the lines between us being unnecessary, while the other is about overcoming the real and terrible divisions between us. Vampires are the other, and then the us. Their plots are quite close and mirror one another, with the difference between gender issues being a notable thread. Antumbra v Sibolet: One is a story about anarchy in the animal sense and how it must be mediated and cooled by the spirit, while the other is a story about hierarchy that has become bureaucracy and must be destroyed and made anew by the heat of love. Pandymion v Sibolet: the strongest rebuttal of any one book against another, as the sterile pain and mocking wit of the vampires comes under the microscope in a moment-world that brooks no separation. Pandymion can be seen as taking place within and under the last chapter of Sibolet, unhinging and rerouting all of its discoveries Sibolet v Lorica: one is about a song-word, the other about word-songs. Description vs. prescription/proscription. The place of gender in a story about words. The assumption of female duties by men and male duties by women. Sibolet is about a woman who must make contact with the world of men, while Lorica is about men who must incorporate and force acceptance of the feminine -- their plots mirror and comment on one another. Sibolet v Antumbra: one takes place almost entirely in a supernatural society, while the other is naturally inclusive. They are both novels about politics and factions, strategy, but sibolet is fundamentally anarchic while antumbra is about building new society. Sibolet v Pandymion: one is a requiem, while the other is all songs at once. A cold and alien world that becomes heartbreaking, v the breaking of a world's heart. One is about a sleepless and dreamless eternity, while the other is about waking to an infinite dream. PANDYMION takes place in the moment of creation as the individuals and races we've come to know, love and loathe undergo the final ego death and give collective birth to the new universe. The bravery of self-annihilation as the final approach toward personal abomination. A tea party, a bricolage and a palimpsest. While this volume, like the others, takes as its form the novel, the repetition of themes and meanings through the series gives it the whirling, chanting feeling of a sestina. Situations present themselves with characters and combinations of characters taking the place of their original protagonists as they experience the cycle of novels through each other's perspective. The moment of creation as the individuals we've come to know, love and loathe undergo the final ego death and give collective birth to the new universe. The bravery of self-annihilation as the final approach toward personal abomination. A tea party, a precession through the bardos, a bricolage and a palimpsest. While this volume, like the others, takes as its form the novel, the repetition of themes and meanings through the series gives it the whirling, chanting feeling of a sestina. Situations present themselves with characters and combinations of characters taking the place of their original protagonists as they experience the cycle of novels through each other's perspective. This novel actually takes place within the final moments of Sibolet, echoing back through the entire cycle. Section titles are the names of angels, as usual, although the form of the story means interpolating also the six bardos and the characters' experience of them, through the lens of their character as well as their original and subsequent forms. An angel or a god experiences death in different ways from humans or vampires. Vampirism specifically is revealed as an unending recreation of the metaphor of human existence as an eternal moment/bardo suspended between death and rebirth. They are always becoming, never being, and this is their triumph and their tragedy. In the absence of sunshine, they stop representing a dark mirror of humanity and become the operating principle of the universe: The unconscious stops being a projection onto the world and this extraversion becomes inverted, as mortals must traverse its flexible and archetypal landscapes while retaining their own sanity. PANDYMION: The death of the individual and the birth of a new universe. Two werewolves in love as time crashes in upon itself. The moment of creation as the individuals we've come to know, love and loathe undergo the final ego death and give collective birth to the new universe. The bravery of self-annihilation as the final approach toward personal abomination. A tea party, a precession through the bardos, a bricolage and a palimpsest. Endymion, a beautiful astronomer beloved by the Moon and Sleep, a myth of drifting into sunset and into sleep. He was blessed with eternal sleep and remains in a cave high in the mountains, where both his lovers visit him each night while mortals rest. Werewolf/werewolf - poly men and women FIRE Intuition - Pandymion, the enemy and endpoint are sensation (warm). Magick of Taoism, gnosis; the Self and its ladders; mind and body and spirit and soul and the in-between of us all; the rewriting of reality in constant post-door flux; the were as postmodern noble savage who must bring back the world of the red and get us out of the computer and into the next level up. A freewheeling New Weird like Perdido, End of Time, and Invisibles cut-ups Pandymion/Pandemonium approaches subjectivity by jumping wildly in tense, perspective and location. We begin with clearly demarcated, linear time that breaks down more and more often and crazily as we approach what can be seen as a black hole's event horizon. In the end, all these events are neither memories nor happening, but a single palimpsest incorporating all creation: A heartbreaking, unending pages-long sentence that is both lorica and sibolet. The wolves must overcome heavy romance for true love and the nature of Ego; their Mercutio is themselves, from the future and the past, the writer, and each of us. No more cages and no more books but a personal, intuitive, emotional explication of those concepts. Grace is a wave that never breaks. Only in the untouchable and unimaginable fullness of time can we hope to attain the peace of all things, the infinite and eternal, which is offered to us at all times through mediated thought, spirituality, intuition and the glories of the body. The world of PANDYMION is a formless and structureless construct of both mind and body, an ultimate heaven or ultimate hell, consisting of infinite and eternal rooms scattered like stars in an endless mansion. It is the experience of time at the edge of a black hole, where time and mass cease to matter. It is the experience of time in complete subjectivity, without the mediation of words or concepts to bar us from touching the hand of God. It is complete intimacy and total grace. We are all poised at a constant well of love, looking down into it and finally knowing that it is there. Vampires become werewolves become men become women. Children and their adult selves come into brief and burning contact. The apocalypse was only ever an unhiding. Four Wolves, Vampire-Witch, Vampire-Scientist (Everybody) The rebuilding of Alexandria into health and life is only the beginning. Pandymion v Lorica: while the latter is about welcoming the apocalypse with an open heart, the other is about the experience of apocalypse itself. One is about the pain and fear of the pre-singularity, while the other is about taking part actively and excitedly in the building of what's to come. If Lorica takes place in the world of Dan Brown, Pandymion takes place in an infinite Bellona. Pandymion v Antumbra: the former closes the loops left open in the former, tying the books together through its developed understanding of the movements of time. While the effect of choices made in pandymion echo through the other books, it is in antumbra's sudden strokes and changes of whimsical fate that we see the power of the pandymion moment most strongly. Its plot mirrors that of antumbra just as Sibolet does Lorica's Pandymion v Sibolet: the strongest rebuttal of any one book against another, as the sterile pain and mocking wit of the vampires comes under the microscope in a moment-world that brooks no separation. Pandymion can be seen as taking place within and under the last chapter of Sibolet, unhinging and rerouting all of its discoveries Lorica v Pandymion: one is a story about our isolation in history and the loneliness of minds, while the other is about an omnipresent history and the terrible intimacy of naked thought. We move from loneliness to togetherness to aloneness. Antumbra v Pandymion: opposes its werewolf stories by transcending the creation of systemic thought in the first into a new self-locating chaotic order in the last. One is about the experience of no-time, the other is about the experience of all-time. From the loneliness of animal non-thought to the direct experience of connected thought. Their plots mirror and comment on one another. Sibolet v Pandymion: one is a requiem, while the other is all songs at once. A cold and alien world that becomes heartbreaking, v the breaking of a world's heart. One is about a sleepless and dreamless eternity, while the other is about waking to an infinite dream. The dove with a palm branch in its beak is a symbol of victory over death. The white dove represents a saved soul, purified. The black raven, just the opposite, is cast as sin. Two doves guided Aeneas to the gloomy vale where the Golden Bough grew on a holly oak. The dove that whispered in the ear of the prophet Mohammed and was his oracle. Dove sacred to Hercules as shepherd and Zeus as herdsman. The Goddess was worshipped with doves at Heiropolis, Crete and Cyprus The stable of the Goddess in western Arcadia holds a black dove. Her black doves flew from Thebes to Zeus & Diana's temple in Dodona, where they nested in the oracular oak trees of the sacred grove. The Black Dove priestesses, chewing on hallucinogenic acorns, translated the oracles, so literally and poetically the priestesses spoke the language of the birds. This shock of red, especially against the stark backdrop of winter snow, is a magnificent sight. The male cardinal reminds us passion, warmth and vibrancy are available to us, even in winter Dull-colored males are less likely to mate successfully than bright ones. The crimson cardinal aggressively defends his territory, and fight attackers with ferocity. They have been known to fight ghost males (mirror reflections) for hours. Both male and female give us glorious songs: "Cheer, cheer, cheer!" The cardinal totem reminds us to hold ourselves with pride, not ego. He says to stand taller, more regal, step natural confidence: Born to lead with grace and nobility. The cardinal totem is naturally energetic, love life, and happily help others where/when they can. Call upon the cardinal when you are feeling low (especially if you have the winter blues). Or when you need bolstering for an event you are nervous about. The cardinal is better than B-12 for giving energy and vitality to those who need it. His red represents the blood, or kundalini/life force of the Mystic Christ. Kundalini lies dormant within us until activated by a disciplined spiritual practice. The cardinal offers safe passage into the world of personal power for those who ask for help. When a person with cardinal medicine steps onto a spiritual path there will be no turning back. Everything else in his life seems insignificant. Extra care must be taken to insure personal happiness, particularly in one-to-one relationships. Balancing ideals and pleasure will need to be instated so harmony on all levels is known. Great love or hate for religion is common among cardinal-medicine people. The cardinal's voice is strong and clear and reflects an air of importance. This powerful bird can teach you to express truth, confidence, and walk your talk. If you respect its teachings, it will lead you home. Here in the hospice a cardinal pecks on one of the windows before someone dies. Cardinal Medicine renews vitality in life and returns joy, brilliance and balance to the mind, body and spirit. He awakens spiritual transformations, intellectual insights and heightens intuitions and perceptions. Cardinal aids in manifesting dreams and ideas by focussing intentions where it's needed. He adds color and balance to life and demonstrates that everything you do is important. He aids in understanding and helping you find your own song in life. Are you doing what needs to be done or should be done? Pay attention to your diet. Are you eating balance meals; too much or not enough? Cardinal can teach moderation in all things and can help in finding a healthy balance of physical and spiritual. Do you have enthusiasm for a project or idea? Are you voicing your ideas? Are you listening carefully to others and your surroundings. When you listen to Cardinal's lessons, he will teach you strength in creativity and productivity with discernment and balance. Lorica, Antumbra, Sibolet, Pandymion: A serial novel along simultaneous parallel paths. Lorica 100,000 words 20 chapters x 5,000 words Antumbra 100,000 words 20 chapters x 5,000 words Sibolet 100,000 words 20 chapters x 5,000 words Pandymion 100,000 words 20 chapters x 5,000 words Every week, a different phase. That's forty weeks, or ten months. Arranged in three seasons of 3 chapters each, with the last chapters of all four stories coming out the last week of the year. Spring: 3x4 - Starting the week of the Vernal Equinox, 20-Mar Summer: 3x4 - Starting the week of the Summer Solstice, 20-Jun Fall: 3x4 - Starting the week of the Autumnal Equinox, 22-Sep Finale: 4 - On Winter Solstice, 21-Dec Lorica: A modern-day urban-fantasy thriller about the end of society Antumbra: A Dying Earth fantasy about the death of the sun Sibolet: A post-human political thriller about the end of the universe Pandymion: A weird fiction free-for-all about the end of story Canticlere, Jenny Black, David Saul, Jonathan Bright The last days of the world as it turns itself over to new intelligences A Canticle For Leibowitz as written by Samuel L. Delaney and Vladimir Nabokov. ANTUMBRA: A requiem for vampires, humans and others, in the months surrounding the day the sun dies. What has been created in the years of the dying sun is a society whose outer bloodthirst and anarchy are balanced only by the matriarchal law of the Towns. The conflict between the Townships -- ruled by a cabal of former angels and religious leaders -- and the vampires -- whose new world roams the liminal wilderlands -- is carried out through meetings and betrayals, diplomats and demagogues. A romance between vampires is a horror/revenge story among humans is a religious story among the "others." A Canterbury Tale of yearning and power, carrying the arid dread and prog-rock doom of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" in the springtime shoots of a prairie landscape. The apocalypse here is a well-deserved and highly anticipated reverie as the old day races go to their rest and newer night races take their place in the darkness. "The antumbra is the region from which the occulting body appears entirely contained within the disc of the light source. If an observer in the antumbra moves closer to the light source, the apparent size of the occulting body increases until it causes a full umbra. An observer in this region experiences an annular eclipse." In the days of the dying sun, David Saul has risen to power as the leader of a cell of roving night creatures attempting to overcome their own wildness and bloodthirst to create a new order. When he hears Jonas Bright may have been reincarnated after millennia, his mission changes. He must reconcile the wilderness with the Towns in order to find Jonas again. Meanwhile, the new Bright leads a rag-tag group of pilgrims into the wilderland to find their own salvation and bring peace to both the new world and mankind's remnants. Together, as their factions rebel beneath them, they must negotiate meetings and betrayals, diplomats and demagogues as they search desperately for one another in the wild world, to sing a requiem for us all. The antumbra is the region from which the occulting body appears entirely contained within the disc of the light source: An observer in this region experiences an annular eclipse. As the observer moves closer to the light source, the apparent size of the occulting body increases until it causes a full umbra. SIBOLET takes place at the end of the universe itself. In the last days of heat death, a vast array of consortiums and double-dealing collections of races and peoples must take part in a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift. Villains become saints, the selfless and righteous are punished while the wicked go free. A tumbling, turning, Wonderland free-for-all in the pursuit of explanations, fictional and transfictional experiences of each other's subjectivity as the gravity of grace reels them all in one by one. A conventional murder mystery is also the story of our universe's creation and destruction as things and places become people and our characters become locations and artifacts, rippling back and forth in time and space. In the last days of entropy, the peoples of the universe begin a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift to a governing body which may or may not exist. A conventional murder mystery is also the story of our universe's creation and destruction as things and places become people and our characters become locations and artifacts, rippling back and forth in time and space. Villains become saints, the selfless and righteous are punished while the wicked go free. A tumbling, turning, Wonderland free-for-all in the pursuit of explanations, transfictional experiences of each other's subjectivity as the gravity of grace reels them all in one by one. PANDYMION PANDYMION takes place in the moment of creation as the individuals and races we've come to know, love and loathe undergo the final ego death and give collective birth to the new universe. The bravery of self-annihilation as the final approach toward personal abomination. A tea party, a bricolage and a palimpsest. While this volume, like the others, takes as its form the novel, the repetition of themes and meanings through the series gives it the whirling, chanting feeling of a sestina. Situations present themselves with characters and combinations of characters taking the place of their original protagonists as they experience the cycle of novels through each other's perspective. The moment of creation as the individuals we've come to know, love and loathe undergo the final ego death and give collective birth to the new universe. The bravery of self-annihilation as the final approach toward personal abomination. A tea party, a precession through the bardos, a bricolage and a palimpsest. While this volume, like the others, takes as its form the novel, the repetition of themes and meanings through the series gives it the whirling, chanting feeling of a sestina. Situations present themselves with characters and combinations of characters taking the place of their original protagonists as they experience the cycle of novels through each other's perspective. This novel actually takes place within the final moments of Sibolet, echoing back through the entire cycle. Section titles are the names of angels, as usual, although the form of the story means interpolating also the six bardos and the characters' experience of them, through the lens of their character as well as their original and subsequent forms. An angel or a god experiences death in different ways from humans or vampires. Vampirism specifically is revealed as an unending recreation of the metaphor of human existence as an eternal moment/bardo suspended between death and rebirth. They are always becoming, never being, and this is their triumph and their tragedy. In the absence of sunshine, they stop representing a dark mirror of humanity and become the operating principle of the universe: The unconscious stops being a projection onto the world and this extraversion becomes inverted, as mortals must traverse its flexible and archetypal landscapes while retaining their own sanity. LORICA & SIBOLET Four linked apocalypse scenarios about nonhuman intelligences Dhalgren meets The Waste Land: The last days of the world as it turns itself over to new intelligences The last days of the sun as darkness and light are intermixed The last days of the galaxy as they fight to preserve history and culture The last days of the universe as new consciousness is birthed The same classic hero's story roles revolve and are reborn: The magic aunt becomes temptress becomes daughter becomes heroine. The mean father becomes the protectee becomes a grandfather guide becomes the love interest. Waking becomes dreaming becomes nightmare becomes waking. Good ideas become brittle and rot into nightmares that become salvation. Not horror per se, but yearning and sad. A very long sad poem about sunset and endings. But not gothic or silly. Told in a biblical, Steinbeckian fashion. The pieces move around at their correct rate. Images and phrases. A Symphony. One glorious story told over millions of years. A generational drama about the human race. A four-volume poetic revision of eschatology through exploring the preapocalyptic moment of four eras. Characters will recur and shift, changing personae and identity in response to their surrounding cultures. Poststructuralist and literary, linking ideas and emotions across millennia through tricks with words, reversions of meaning, making emotional links explicit through classic objective correlatives like places, relationships, artifacts and sentiments. Transhumanism, alternate histories, post-human philosophies, created and remixed genders, genetic and cybernetic alterations. Word games, nightmares, moments of transcendence, recreations of events through new forms of expression and memory. Think A Canticle For Leibowitz as written by Samuel L. Delaney and Vladimir Nabokov. Swann's Way for the post-ironic: Completely personal, completely transpersonal, completely antipersonal. "Those who regard the art of singing as anything more than a means to an end, do not comprehend the true purpose of that art, much less can they hope ever to fulfill that purpose. The true purpose of singing is to give utterance to certain hidden depths in our nature which can be adequately expressed in no other way. The voice is the only vehicle perfectly adapted to this purpose; it alone can reveal to us our inmost feelings, because it is our only direct means of expression. If the voice, more than any language, more than any other instrument of expression, can reveal to us our own hidden depths, and convey those depths to other souls of men, it is because voice vibrates directly to the feeling itself, when it fulfills its natural mission... To sing should always mean to have some definite feeling to express." -- Clara Kathleen Rogers, The Philosophy Of Singing (1893) Vampirism specifically is revealed as an unending recreation of the metaphor of human existence as an eternal moment/bardo suspended between death and rebirth. They are always becoming, never being, and this is their triumph and their tragedy. In the absence of sunshine, they stop representing a dark mirror of humanity and become the operating principle of the universe: The unconscious stops being a projection onto the world and this extraversion becomes inverted, as mortals must traverse its flexible and archetypal landscapes while retaining their own sanity. Before the abomination, or Apocalypse, this world -- as sensed in visions and prophecies -- seemed demonic and terrifying. Once it is reached, on the edge of the universe's new birth, we see that it is capable of wonders and beauty as meaningful without, as once art and dreams were meaningful within. The world and universe has become a collective agreement, full of magic and shaped by will (also a recontextualization of a powerful and obvious truth), in which it's even possible to move back through the cascade of time and tide, and affect previous encounters -- which will always have been whatever they now are. (Hints are dropped throughout the first three books that this is happening -- sudden saves, abrupt changes in the timestream, lucky moments and strange hexes from nowhere, oracular speech from the Current Gods and nonlinear creatures and characters and moments -- and the characters' sudden/not-so-sudden power over the narrative expresses the painful truth of their previous existences throughout the story. But there is also a sadness that pertains, as ever, to these truths, in that we can see things happening sometimes before they do, or ironies they will never understand, dropped threads and romantic misshapes.) A great, perhaps the most important, part of this project is the internal systems and echoes regarding every character, moment, emotion, time, object, location. These ripples and echoes must have meaning, but also there must be a great amount of them. The intense plotting is a design on which to hang these inferences, references, emotions, catenations, sounds and flavors: This is primarily an acoustic or impressionist work about the spiritual and intuitive power of endings. As such, this final volume is a statement and codex and apologia for everything that's come before: It lies in the margins of the other stories, but is also their endpoint. The end is implicit in the journey, but new journeys are also implicit in all endings. All possible tools will be used: From framing devices of individual chapters and stories, to repeated sentiments and sayings and terms, to fairytale implicatory phrases ("that is a story for another time," or, "as would one day happen" kinds of things) -- although, it's important to note, there is no winking third-person address here. It is not a narrative being told, it is a self-contained world being built that begins with the first word and ends with the last. Each chapter of every book, much less every volume, can play out these various framing devices and storytelling techniques as long as, firstly, it lies within the tone of the overall book and volume, secondly that it creates a meaningful or useful effect within the chapter itself, and thirdly that it represents the personal meaning, journey or emotional movement. All these effects and meaning must be in alignment for every chapter of every book and every volume -- a word count and structure which can change from book to book, but not within a book: All chapters within each book, while stylistically differing, must adhere to the same length. However, chapters within a given book, without regard to volume, can attain to a completely different style and length as necessary. Stylistically, the use of constraints and repeating motifs should both contribute to the overall feeling of a lapidary epic. Within volumes, changes in tone may occur only within that volume's particular book, in order to approximate the drive toward that particular Requiem and the changes it creates/requires. Overall, the style of each volume will remain constant -- both for reasons of artistic unity, and to make sure the echoes and ripples of later iterations, interpolated into earlier volumes and stylistically jarring to some degree, will remain memorable. There is a stylistic and a heuristic system that applies, less as it goes on but still watchable, that falls apart. Along these lines, there is no climax or change across the four volumes that cannot be foreshadowed, hidden in plain sight, in earlier volumes, well-marked by a phrase or combination of effects, environmental or otherwise. Again, the effect must be two-fold: Surprise in the unfolding of that particular clue, and an emotional resonance in keeping with the overall themes of the book, volume and work -- both those in which the event occurs and in the moment of its first irruption. And finally, effort must be made and constantly maintained to ensure that superlinear or nonlinear characters (Gods and demigods, and the angels and Fae respectively) preserve their sense or intuitive near-sense of time's movement. Toward the end of the work, when certain mortal characters are able to sense time in this way, we will be able to look back and see the ways in which the angels and Gods were working in this way all along. The work itself is a sort of godlike lens on this way of seeing, which is why the events coruscate and reverberate the way they do. These two additional ways of experiencing time stand in opposition to that of the vampires and other nightkind and immortals, for whom an experience of time as endless present often occurs. They cannot see time as of a piece, but their lives themselves pass much more quickly, and slowly, than those of mortals. We will understand this view first through David Saul's character, experiencing both the slow and fast path of his life, and in this way we can understand the lives and experiences of angels and Fae, and eventually of the ephemeral Gods themselves. In the fourth volume, of course, these scales of time -- even their direction of movement -- will cease to matter, as experiences flow and ebb between all former selves and transformations, but it's the careful building of these several ways of viewing time -- and thus, endings and faith and death and beginnings and the doors between the various volumes to which the story is itself dedicated -- that must create the powerful and omniscient sense of becoming/being in the final volume (which leads of course to the redemption of the nightkind itself, having become the dominant paradigm of the surviving sentients in the last hours of the last Creation). Also important is the planned omission of external references: No times, no places, no pop culture or literary references, whether in pursuit of character tone or storytelling coincidence or objective correlativity. The evocation of eras matters only in the first novel, and will be placed well enough by the activities and interests of the Joan and Canticleer characters. After that, time ceases to matter. In later books, oblique reference to past cultures will be acceptable, but only if tightly veiled. No Eliot, no Tennyson, no Gaiman: This work must exist in its own specific time and place if the internal consistencies and systems of meaning are to carry their full weight. LORICA is the easiest read, a Dan Brown-style exploration of the end of human culture through the action of angels and demons during Heaven's war and the early seeds of mankind's posthuman and transhuman remnants. Self-consciously commercial, it uses the courtly relationship of two men to create a new, integrated view of both Japanese yaoi and the American chaste-vampire canon. By playing the story straight, the transcendent moment of the apocalypse -- and breakdown of the social and encoded structures that cause the characters such obstruction and pain -- takes on a new and sympathetic meaning. The story-song of Heaven's last war. Takes place around 2012. Posthuman and transhuman remnants, the armies of heaven, hell, earth and fae. A travel campaign. An intra-sect fight. The war between heaven and hell. The search for a final Song. The apocalypse, in this volume, is a moment of pure freedom and exhilaration: A singularity that appears to be an abomination until its actual inception. ANTUMBRA is a requiem for vampires, humans and others, in the months surrounding the day the sun dies. What has been created in the years of the dying sun is a society whose outer bloodthirst and anarchy are balanced only by the matriarchal law of the Towns. The conflict between the Townships -- ruled by a cabal of former angels and religious leaders -- and the vampires -- whose new world roams the liminal wilderlands -- is carried out through meetings and betrayals, diplomats and demagogues. A romance between vampires is a horror/revenge story among humans is a religious story among the "others." A Canterbury Tale of yearning and power, carrying the arid dread and prog-rock doom of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" in the springtime shoots of a prairie landscape. The apocalypse here is a well-deserved and highly anticipated reverie as the old day races go to their rest and newer night races take their place in the darkness. "The antumbra is the region from which the occulting body appears entirely contained within the disc of the light source. If an observer in the antumbra moves closer to the light source, the apparent size of the occulting body increases until it causes a full umbra. An observer in this region experiences an annular eclipse." SIBOLET takes place at the end of the universe itself. In the last days of heat death, a vast array of consortiums and double-dealing collections of races and peoples must take part in a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift. Villains become saints, the selfless and righteous are punished while the wicked go free. A tumbling, turning, Wonderland free-for-all in the pursuit of explanations, fictional and transfictional experiences of each other's subjectivity as the gravity of grace reels them all in one by one. A conventional murder mystery is also the story of our universe's creation and destruction as things and places become people and our characters become locations and artifacts, rippling back and forth in time and space. PANDYMION takes place in the moment of creation as the individuals and races we've come to know, love and loathe undergo the final ego death and give collective birth to the new universe. The bravery of self-annihilation as the final approach toward personal abomination. A tea party, a bricolage and a palimpsest. While this volume, like the others, takes as its form the novel, the repetition of themes and meanings through the series gives it the whirling, chanting feeling of a sestina. Situations present themselves with characters and combinations of characters taking the place of their original protagonists as they experience the cycle of novels through each other's perspective. I. LORICA A vampire has been in love with a priest for ten years, but has broken the connection because it was making him suicidal. One of them is forced to seek out the other for a possession case which cracks open an entire apocalypse scenario. Angels, demons and others join the hunt as they put together the clues to find the song that may be man's last hope... But in the midst of changing values and alliances, it may be best for the world to end after all. The freedom of the apocalypse. "So what, we just let the world end?" "No, we throw a party first." Jon Bright's home is on a Cliffside, approachable only through the winding ways of a very old graveyard. There is a traveling storyteller, a rake and a bard. Section titles are the names of angels: Swelling In The Heat Of Your Sky After The Silence Was Something The First Breath After Long Rains The Unwinding Of The Initial Complication Swelling In The Heat Of Your Sky A vampire has been in love with a priest for ten years, but has broken the connection because it was making him suicidal. They have loved in other lifetimes, but none of the linear characters remember this; in one dream as in this life Jonah played music for him that opened doors in the world. Jonas Bright's home is on a Cliffside, approachable only through the winding ways of a very old graveyard. As Joan seeks to reconnect with her family, she is brought into an exorcism (a two-sided possession of the cyberpunk boy Canticleer, whose call to waking is heard by psychics the world over) that cracks open an entire apocalypse scenario, and she finds herself embroiled in their drama and falling for Jonah herself, as they are pursued by the assassin angel Swelling In The Heat Of Your Sky for affecting the flow of time in bad ways. Protected by the Fae (and other spirits of Creation's Fire, both human and burning, healing and inspiring, exploding and ending), who see this chapter ending as a release from their tithes and obligations, Jonah makes contact with Silence, the originator of the Lorica, while David and the shapeshifting, invisible Unwinding mutually discover the secrets of Creation and the technicalities of damnation; Jonah can neither see nor hear her, and so David must keep his friendship with the dark healing angel a secret: She works in secret against them, in turn, to ease the passing of the age by aiding Swell in his murderous quest. After The Silence Was Something Angels, demons and others join the hunt as they put together the clues to find the song that may be man's last hope. Memories of David's life before his turning, and life with Jonah before he was consecrated, provide clues. Aided by unseen spirits of Air (silicon, radiation, old memories and recordings) and coming ever closer to contact with Connect, Jonah searches the archives and uncovers the truth about the Lorica, sending him and David on a new quest. Betrayed by her friends and seduced by JHVH's angel Unwinding, Joan becomes Death, who with her army of Hell rides a pale horse. They are given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. She is aided by the unseen Fae and joined by Swell, also known as the Broken Angel on his black horse, and surprisingly enough by Silence, who has been tasked on his roan horse with taking peace from the earth. Behind them all, the healing angel Unwinding -- with Canticleer, who is discovering allies of his own in the Fae, though he is still unsure of his and their relationship to Joan -- works tirelessly and painfully to bring about the world's end with a minimum of suffering, but her warnings and blessings are ignored and unheard. The First Breath After Long Rains Joan and Unwinding ride toward their final battle as Unwinding is finally revealed to the linear characters as the healing spirit of transition, beating out mankind and others upon a holy anvil. Joan is the leader of the Horsemen, but bears it no love; she leads the armies of Hell, but gives them no quarter. This makes her an ally of the Fae, who turn on all angels as they see the story drawing closer. David begins to see her importance and tries desperately to ally her with Jonah, but they are resistant due to past pain and confusion. The men's quest leads them to Wisdom, a dying Goddess of the old order, who supports the Apocalypse and tenders their request to meet the Quiet and the Static, whose power will ultimately help them defeat the eldest enemy and who is central in the finding of the Lorica. Canticleer returns in earnest, as a worldly avatar of Connect and his mercurial principle; he both loves and hates Joan for her part in his apotheosis and continues to represent the Fae in these hurried negotiations. The men find comfort and succor with the weather witch and Fae ally Long Rains -- who identifies with Jonah's love of David due to her onetime love of their new enemy Swell -- but she does not tell them of her past incarnation as a fallen angel, preferring the fellowship of Creation's Water spirits: ocean, lake, stream, river, rain, cloud, and steam. Still hounded by Death and Rain's amnesiac lover Swell, the men find a mysterious ally in Unwinding, over many forms, and are betrayed by Silence, as we learn the details of his Fall. The Unwinding Of The Initial Complication For love of Joan, who still lives within the angel Death, the characters put aside their fear and ugliness and give themselves up to the freedom of the apocalypse. "So what, we just let the world end?" "No, we throw a party first." Aided by Swell (in his new unnamed role as the principle of expansion), Connect helps to free the linear characters, giving up his conscious mind as a deity in the process and extinguishing Cyberpunk kid's earthly existence. This death makes enemies of the Fae, who retreat until the times after, and occasions the willing sacrifice of Earth's spirits: Chrome, wood, place-memories, EM fields, and the Green Man, who takes on Canticleer's consciousness for his rebirth in the after-times. Silence and Jonah reconnect, over David's wishes, and sing the Lorica that ends Heaven's reign once Rains explains the technicalities and brutalities of JHVH's original Creation -- and bargaining for Jonah's amnesia in his next lives, reenacting the technicality that caused her own Fall. After being slain by Joan and reborn, Unwinding holds them all in her arms, glorying in the return to her borne duties, a single transcendent shape, and embodying the principle for which she was named: The end of the story, and all stories bearing Heaven's mark. David Saul was made a vampire during the Black Plague, when they thought the world was ending. He was an altar boy on the verge of suicide when he was taken by a strange visitor to his town. The next eight hundred years were a whirlwind of sensual delight until he met Father Jonas during the late '90s. Their paths have crossed since then, slowing to what he thinks is sporadic but to Father Jonas feels likes decades. He thinks of Jonas as his savior and constant devil's advocate, though Father Jonas sees time linearly. He wants to find redemption, not through acts but through introspection. Father Jonas Bright entered the priesthood at thirty, shortly after meeting David but before learning about his supernatural existence. Since then, the times without him are more complicated and difficult than the times when he shows up. His faith is unassailable, but his belief in certain tenets of the Church are a little shakier. He loves the archives, and it is through their study that he uncovers the truth of the lorica. Joan Ravensage is a young witch raised in a very religious family. Her aim is to reconnect with them in a way that allows but doesn't flaunt her own beliefs. Her parents are receptive, but afraid. She works with David on certain cases, and competes with him for Jonas's false affection. It is a young man to whom she ministers that is the first victim of the Unhiding. Joan becomes the last angel, Death, who with her army of Hell rides a pale horse. They are given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. She is the leader of the Horsemen, but bears it no love; she leads the armies of Hell, but gives them no quarter. It is for love of her that the characters put aside their fear and ugliness and give themselves up to the apocalypse. Canticleer is a witch-friend of Joan, who is possessed in the endtimes by the double spirits of [darkness/light, order/chaos, contraction/expansion, knowledge/confusion, (Entropy)/Connect] as was foretold in the original Lorica. Over the course of the story he becomes allied with both Connect and the Fae, seeing them as a third way and Connect as the universe's guiding principle. He becomes Connect's human avatar, combining his pagan beliefs with his cybernetic prowess to create a new faith specific to himself. In the latter half of the novel, his ambiguity about Joan echoes and mirrors the men's feelings about her, although in the end they give up everything for her while he destroys himself in order to defeat her. Reborn as a Green Man of the forests, his spiritual network finds a new form as the anima mundi itself, keeping her alive and powerful until the final Pandymion begins. Wisdom is a goddess of the old order, wisdom and beauty and cold agelessness. She supports the apocalypse because human illusion is an obstruction to glory. She loves Joan for her spirit, but is cautioned much like JHVH by her deviations from the plan. She is attended by spirits of air and fire. She represents a third way, to the people of the Finality, and her era of worship is ending. Connect was born into existence with the first radio wave that echoed into space. He is now a god of technology, overwhelmed by his responsibilities and the beauty of service. He is known as the Diamond, or the Quiet and the Static. Swelling In The Heat Of Your Sky is an angel on the side of JHVH, an assassin who takes out dangerous players on either side when he feels like they don't fit into the plan. Sometimes this means very good people, who simply don't affect the flow of time in a way that can be allowed. Swell is also known as the Broken Angel. He rides a black horse and holds a pair of scales, saying, "A quart of wheat and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!" After The Silence Was Something was the leader of the Choir before the creation and fall of Man. He wrote the original Lorica and fell with Lucifer's Army. He has repented his sins and now fights for mankind against the angels. Silence is also known as the Singer, and serves the Horsemen on a fiery red horse. To whom is the burden of taking peace from the earth and to him is given a huge sword, to force men to slay each other. The Unwinding Of The Initial Complication is a healing angel of JHVH, sent to pardon and to ease the pain of transition as creation is undone. Unwinding is also known as the Ending and as the Return. She rides the white horse, holds a bow and wears a crown; she rides as a conqueror bent on conquest. It is with her that Joan's final confrontation is leading, once Father Bright and David Saul are unable to sway their friend from her quest. The First Breath After Long Rains is one of the original fallen ones, caught in a technicality, whose bitterness has made her a cave-dwelling weather witch. Her wings have been taken, but she still serves the other kind against human interests. Her voice is the only thing that can calm Swell; it was her love for him that damned her, and this is the only reason she considers Father Bright a friend and ally. He doesn't know that she is an angel, or that she harbors a disgust of vampires born of thousands of years of enmity. II. ANTUMBRA In the days of the dying sun, David Saul has risen to power as the leader of a cell of roving night creatures attempting to overcome their own wildness and bloodthirst to create a new order. When he hears Jonas Bright may have been reincarnated after millennia, his mission changes. He must reconcile the wilderness with the Towns in order to find Jonas again. Meanwhile, the new Bright leads a rag-tag group of pilgrims into the wilderland to find their own salvation and bring peace to both the new world and mankind's remnants. Together, as their factions rebel beneath them, they must negotiate meetings and betrayals, diplomats and demagogues as they search desperately for one another in the wild world, to sing a requiem for us all. The antumbra is the region from which the occulting body appears entirely contained within the disc of the light source: An observer in this region experiences an annular eclipse. As the observer moves closer to the light source, the apparent size of the occulting body increases until it causes a full umbra. There is a traveling storyteller, a rake and a bard. Section titles are again the names of angels: Ending & Return Singing Silently Heat Rises Wild Stars Ending & Return In the days of the dying sun, David Saul has risen to power as the leader of a cell of roving night creatures attempting to overcome their own wildness and bloodthirst to create a new order. A vampire whose one true love, soldier-priest Bright, died decades after the Apocalypse. Ascetic and mournful since, his loneliness and abstinence make him a figure of legend and heroism. All that keeps David from waking the dust is his hope of finding Bright's next incarnation. Meanwhile, called to serve mankind as once he was called to God, Bright considers his sympathy to the night races a sin. His only contact with them, one-time angel and witch Rain, sees the truth of his many lives but must stay quiet, taking his forgotten pain as her own in recompense for her role in their estrangement. Visited by the Triple Goddess, who can brook no personal illusion, Bright is visited with tormented dreams that not even the ministrations of his favored aide CW can comfort. Both regents are further troubled by the reappearance of Canticleer, who speaks for the reborn Fae and the new green magic -- chrome, wood, place-memories, EM fields, green man -- and who works in secret to incarnate Quicksilver, the lonely God, before the rumored rising of his daughter, the new goddess of the dying sun and personal magic. Wild Stars, once Joan Ravensage, attempts to unite the people of the Towns on her pale horse, with her companion Ending & Return. Ignoring blithely the dark warnings of Heat Rises, who even in mortal form can see the flow of time and tide, they follow tales of Singing Silently, attempting to bring him back into alignment and force a new alliance of mankind and the angels. Singing Silently When David hears Jonas may have been reincarnated after millennia, his mission changes. He must reconcile the wilderness with the Towns in order to find Jonas again, even against the warnings and tacit encouragement of the Goddess, who come to him again and again in positive incarnation: As loving mothers, beautiful children, and wise crones. The new Bright leads a rag-tag group of pilgrims, followed in secret by the loyal CW, into the wilderland to find their own salvation and bring peace to both the new world and mankind's remnants. Diplomatic interactions with the Courts of Night -- via not David but his kindly, secretive emissary, Rain -- are cordial, but dreams (and the transmuted forms of Water spirits: ocean, lake, stream, river, rain, cloud, steam) hint at more. Canticleer's new third way has begun to grow in power, as the Fae attempt to stake their claim and threaten to reenact their original agreements of tithe and changeling in the order as it stands. Spontaneous communications as Quicksilver wakes pries open long-dead secrets and opens old wounds. Canticleer and Shadows work together toward a new creative fusion of technology and nature, though she is young and capricious: Linked with the birth and death of the red sun, her time will be short. Known as the Mistress of Death and blamed for the endtimes and what came after, Stars and Ending attempt to become an agent of Life, returning to the Green and willing to take on any ally that can redeem them. Repudiated by Singing -- now caught between mortal and otherkind, unwanted by both -- they realize he fears himself as a harbinger of the next great war, and are helpless to save him as he becomes a pawn of both sides. Heat Rises Driven at last into the darkness by his fear, Bright leads a pilgrimage to find redemption in overcoming/bonding with their darker brothers. Horrified at his self-loathing disappearance, Rain is forced to admit the truth about Bright to David, causing an upheaval of all the work these disparate nations have done. Together and apart, as their factions rebel beneath them, they must negotiate meetings and betrayals, diplomats and demagogues as they search desperately for one another in the wild world. Her love for Swell reawakened by the deepening possibilities of David and Bright's next chapter -- and by oracular visions brought by the Goddesses, the new embodiment of What Just Is and of the Unhiding -- Rain searches out ways to end Swell's amnesia and she sets out on a quest for herself, causing disturbances on both sides of the conflict as she makes contact with Canticleer and Quicksilver, allying herself against the nightkind with the Fae. Shadows, angered by this repudiation of her coming age and what she sees as partisanship and selfishness, begins to irrupt the dark places within: Her kiss is grace, but also an unwanted reversion of inner polarities. It is a little death, and one that haunts Bright in his travels even as he begins to admit -- through encounters with Fire spirits (human, burning, healing, inspiring, exploding) -- his search for David never ended. Wild Stars reaches for her next transformation, fully becoming an agent of Life once again, but must leave Ending behind in order to do so. Ending, broken-hearted by this betrayal, reverts to an earlier form, casting oracles that foretell the fates of her once-fellow angels. Suspicious of the Fae, she and Singing work together to recreate the circle and choirs of Heaven while Singing finally explains the technicalities to Heat, allowing him to forgive himself for all his centuries of death and fear and aiding him in his mission to bring sustenance to all the people of the wilderlands. The nightkind and humanity ally against the Fae and demons, and the Gods -- but CW, threatened by David and Bright's newfound connection, works both sides. Wild Stars Having found each other at last, David and Bright remember their lives together, and realize they must once again sing a Requiem for us all. Rain joins forces with Canticleer and once again takes up her mantle as a weather-worker -- setting the stage for Requiem, and willing to end herself in order to say a proper goodbye to the sun -- but after an accident must accept David's gift of the Unending. But even accepting this new form of the Apocalypse will not protect our heroes from the punishments and glories of Faith, Hope and Wisdom -- and a last-minute play against the Triple Goddess as Canticleer's cult of Quicksilver and Green attempts to halt the Requiem, afraid the earth will once again elude the grasp of the courtly Fae. Shadows works at the earthly aides and avatars of the Triple Goddess, spurring them into new heights of beauty and uncovering the balance beneath balance and the hidden spaces within the Unhiding. The other characters' past affection for -- and newfound recognition of -- Wild Stars makes her apotheosis easier as she moves into her newest form, taking CW off the board before he can wreck the game and turning him into something new. Ending, desperate for redemption after her part in the first Apocalypse, tries desperately to remember her once-great power and stop the next Requiem, but is defeated by the mortal Heat, who sees her (rightfully) as a threat to Rain. Singing Silently draws his sword, and the wars return, released and reversed by the workings of Canticleer's new form and the spirits of Air (silicon, radiation, old memories and recordings). Trapped and used as a pawn between two worlds, he once again discovers the song of the age, weaving Bright and David their Requiem. David Saul is a vampire whose one true love, a priest-soldier named Jonas Bright, died decades after the apocalypse. He has lived an ascetic and mournful existence since then, his loneliness and abstinence making him a figure of legend and heroism. As Jonas once lived through decades between meetings, the only thing that keeps David from waking the dust is his hope of one day finding his lover's next incarnation. He believes in redemption for his people, and must inspire them to his own level of asceticism, which bears with it both price and new power. Bright was born in the Townships, called to the service of mankind as once he was called to God. His faith in the power of humanity is endangered by his own sympathy to the night races, which he considers a sin. While diplomatic interactions with David are cordial, his dreams hint at something darker and more intimate. He is driven into the darkness by his fears and doubt, and leads a group of pilgrims to find their own redemption by overcoming -- eventually, bonding with -- their darker brothers. Rain was once a fallen angel, who later became a powerful witch. Now a mortal ally of the nightkind, she is their official ambassador in the Townships. It is she who discovers the truth about Bright's lives, but must stay quiet. She is torn by her love of Heat, now that they are both mortal, and his amnesia about their connection causes disturbances in her relationships on both sides of the conflict. Eventually, she is forced into relinquishing all past allegiances and becomes a vampire, David's compatriot and the keeper of the memory of sun. Heat Rises was once an assassin angel, whose master JHVH has left the game. His newly mortal magic allows him to see the flow of time and the importance of various players, but he is no longer known as the Broken Angel. He rides his black horse and attempts to bring sustenance to the people of the wilderlands, having worked through his guilt, but will be reluctantly called back into play to complete his destiny. CW is a young nightkin, a werewolf descended from the Celts, who was evicted from his pack for reasons that remain shrouded in mystery and now lives in the Townships. Organized and willful by day, at night he shakes his shaggy head and dances at the bonfires. His loneliness and homesickness are comforted only by his stalwart love for and duty to Bright, whose feelings about the nightkind are too complex to really ever give CW a chance. Faith, Hope and Wisdom are tripartite goddesses, daughters of the Finality manipulating the threads of both sides of the conflict in order to create a better union. Gods without worshippers, spirits of the land and sky and sea, they act sometimes as Fates and sometimes as Furies. They are gods of What Just Is; they bring peace and strength through pain. Their inability to understand personal illusion can make them seem cruel and cold, but their love is as overwhelming and beautiful as their hate. They are the opposite of Balance, which has no God. The Canticleer rises once again in the form of earth's reborn magic and the political and earthly power of the Fae, now that they have reentered the game after Heaven's war. He works tirelessly to create a syncretist faith that balances the nightkind with earth's own powers, neither worshipping nor denying them, but working with them in attempt to reconnect with the ruined earth. Neither a god nor an angel, he takes part in both, existing in the network of souls and green magic that the Fae work so hard to recreate in order to save and reconstitute Quicksilver in a new earthly form, and thus reconnect Mind and Body on a global scale. Quicksilver was the greatest of the Current Gods before the sun began to die. Now he is a god of static and confusion, an oracle whose chaotic truth is drawn from all acts of communication since time began. He is the patron of all storytellers, healers, lovers and the lonely. It is he who brings beauty, love and connection to his followers by helping them to give up the illusion of loneliness; the price is that he is the loneliest God of all. Shadows is a new goddess born of the dying sun and the rise of magic. The spiritual daughter of Connect and the Three, she embodies the creative fusion of technology and nature. She is capricious, young and uncontrolled. Her favors are for those who whose poles reverse through conscious will and effort. She is the goddess of the dark places within us all, and her kiss is grace. Her birth and death are linked with the birth and death of the red sun. Wild Stars' transformation -- as Joan Ravensage -- into a warrior angel of Hell has left its mark, as she attempts to unite the people of the Towns on her pale horse, with her companion Ending & Return. Known as the Mistress of Death, she once again attempts to become an agent of Life. The other characters' past affection for her makes her apotheosis easier as she moves into her newest form, but she is no longer a power player. Ending & Return was a healing angel, whose role was to ease the transition of the apocalypse. She has since been blamed for what came next, but her army is strong. She still rides the white horse, holds a bow and wears a crown, but she is no longer a conqueror. She and Wild Stars, once brutal enemies, have become compatriots. Singing Silently was once the singer of the Lorica, whose last act as an angel was to call the new world into being. Once the humans' champion, he has now been rejected by the Towns and rides as an unwelcome troubadour through the wilderlands on his fiery red horse. It is said that when he draws his sword again, the wars will return -- this makes him a pawn for the wilderlands and a target for the Townships. Caught, unwanted, between two worlds, he will once again discover the song of the age, weaving Bright and David their Requiem. III. SIBOLET In the last days of entropy, the peoples of the universe begin a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift to a governing body which may or may not exist. A conventional murder mystery is also the story of our universe's creation and destruction as things and places become people and our characters become locations and artifacts, rippling back and forth in time and space. Villains become saints, the selfless and righteous are punished while the wicked go free. A tumbling, turning, Wonderland free-for-all in the pursuit of explanations, transfictional experiences of each other's subjectivity as the gravity of grace reels them all in one by one. Section titles are again the names of angels: Breathing Returning Singing Rising Breathing Shadow & Spark are goddesses of ending and beginning, who are murdered in the first moments of the story. In the last days of entropy, the peoples of the universe begin a universal potlatch war to prove their viability for uplift to a governing body which may or may not exist. David's last gift from Bright is maximum life: A connection with the universe which borders on angelic, consumed with the need is to share life -- through healing, sex, botany, art. Spirits of Fire attend him in his libertine pursuit of something to fill the hours and the empty years within him. He has gone as dark as he was when we met him, and further: Exhausted both spiritually and emotionally by the technicalities, he seeks above all oblivion. Brother Jonathan's new incarnation is a warrior-priest who preaches the message of potlatch in the coming world, locked in a sadomasochistic sexual relationship with the former CW, now called Spriggan. Sister Joan, reborn mortal once more, holds special power and counsel with the Goddesses, and promises to help them solve the mystery of their deaths while searching for Returning, whose powers have gone sour. Rising, now a mortal oracle whose prophecies of freedom balance and contradict those of Sister Joan, has finally found peace with his mortal lover Breathing -- who keeps secret the fear that she's losing her magical voice, as she is swept along by her lover's mission. The relationship between Rising and Breathing continues to mirror that of David and Jonah, as well as that of Joan and Canticleer. Returning A conventional murder mystery is also the story of our universe's creation and destruction as things and places become people and our characters become locations and artifacts, rippling back and forth in time and space. Meanwhile Joan finds her oracular powers growing clearer and less flexible in the wake of the Goddess's deaths, and she must relearn to use and parse them in order to free herself from the horror at the death of choice the end represents. It is revealed that David is becoming the new Mercury; he's sought and threatened by Shadows to maintain balance as the people become more and more terrified. While he remembers David and has loved him for many lifetimes, their disagreements about apotheosis have caused him to continue his life without David -- having gifted him with forgetting and with ultimate life. Spirits of Air attend him as he recalls to life Jonah's miraculous archive, and remembers once more to mourn his lost, dead love -- who is still living, in his latest incarnation, but years for death. They have traded places, but Shadow & Spark's love and power are the last bastion of hope for the universe against Jon's rising suicidal tide. Jon moves to block David's attempts to solve their murder, afraid it will resolve and balance the world away from the new Requiem and Uplift -- but Spriggan has other reasons for helping him cover the murderer's tracks. Rising often takes the form of a black horse, in dreams and visions, and is known as a demigod, Abundance. Breathing's friendship with Jon and Joan causes her much pain as they walk their separate roads to darkness, while a strained alliance with David fails under the pressure. The relationship between Rising and Breathing continues to mirror that of David and Jonah, as well as that of Joan and Canticleer -- and to complicate matters, she begins falsifying evidence in David's search for the Gods' killers. Singing Villains become saints, the selfless and righteous are punished while the wicked go free. As David's newfound powers finally begin to rage, like a dying sun, he threatens to bring final entropy: Change too fast for anyone to survive. Spirits of Earth attend him. He can barely understand or see anyone else; they are a gallery of statues and doppler sounds. Now that all races are equal and represented in the total mind, Jon wants to lead the entire universe in their self-annihilating attempts at archive, so that nothing may be lost. Joan joins him in this quest, driven to nihilism by her understanding that this Requiem will be the last and inability to take the long view. In their love for Jon and Joan, the Gods of Shadow & Spark become crueler and more frightening, trying desperately to awake them to new life -- and hoping that David can solve the mystery of their murder before he annihilates all who could witness and remember this sacrifice. Spriggan, acting unknowingly as the Gods' emissary, begins to construct a false story that will allow David to push past the answer and into the mystery behind it. Breathing learns that her opinion is incredibly powerful with the denizens of the universe -- that in fact her voice is now as powerful in silence. She forms a secret alliance with the Uplift powers, working against both prophecies. The relationship between Rising and Breathing continues to mirror that of David and Jonah, as well as that of Joan and Canticleer. Rising refuses to lose his wings, which Breathing sees as a sign of private arrogance, or something darker. Rising A tumbling, turning, Wonderland free-for-all in the pursuit of explanations, transfictional experiences of each other's subjectivity as the gravity of grace reels them all in one by one. David has given up faith in both apotheosis and uplift: He wants to stop aging people and speeding up time and all the rest of his entropic features end all time and space, destroying the story and narrative and every song ever sung. Spirits of Water attend him, as he attempts to resolve the philosophical burdens of his lifeless life and the endless bardo in which he has dwelt for so long. Help comes from a surprising source, as he solves the mystery of Spark and Shadow by following a thread that moves through all four books, back and forth in time like a symphony. Forced to kill his former lover Spriggan, to save David, Jon wants to be the first to go, but knows he must be the last, his martyrdom reversed and redefined. He is the keeper of the last memory of the world and all its beauties -- and can no longer hear the healed David's cries to bring him back to love and light. And in his death, Jon takes us all with him through Requiem and into the next and last phase of this Creation. Finally able to see everything at once, What Just Is, at the second of the reversal, it is Joan who finds the Sibolet and sings our universe's last song, circumventing the accumulated powers and choirs, in an unending instant of brightness and beauty, as she burns. Breathing's secret relationship with the uplift powers could be the betrayal that tears our characters apart, as old pains and conflicts rise again across centuries of rebirth and transformation. The relationship between Rising and Breathing continues to mirror that of David and Jonah, as well as that of Joan and Canticleer; in the final moments of Requiem, Breathing and Rising embrace, becoming a Cherub of fire and flame, with a thousand wings and a thousand eyes. Brother Jonathan's new incarnation is a priest and warrior who preaches the message of potlatch in the coming world. While he remembers David and has loved him for many lifetimes, their disagreements about the possibility of apotheosis have caused him to continue his life without David. Now that all races are equal and represented in the total mind, Jon wants to lead the entire universe in their self-annihilating attempts at archive, so that nothing may be lost. He wants to be the first, but knows he must be the last, his martyrdom reversed and redefined. Sister Joan: Reborn as human, her oracular powers grow clearer and less flexible as the universe draws closer to its final moments and choices. At the second of the reversal, it is she who finds the Sibolet and sings our universe's last song as she burns: An unending instant of brightness and beauty. Sister Joan has been reborn as a human, whose oracular powers grow ever clearer and less flexible as the universe draws closer to its final moments and choices. At the second of the reversal, it is she who will find the Sibolet and sing our universe's last song, in an unending instant of brightness and beauty, as she burns. Rising, a mortal oracle whose prophecies balance and contradict those of Sister Joan, has finally found peace with his lover Breathing. Their union reflects and transforms the connection between Jon and David, though he has not yet given up his wings. He often takes the form of a black horse, in dreams and visions, and is known as Abundance. Now mortal and living with Rising, Breathing has achieved everything she ever wanted; she keeps secret the fear that she's losing her magical voice as she is swept along by her lover's mission. A friendship with Jon and Joan causes her much pain, while a strained alliance with David fails under the pressure. Her opinion is incredibly powerful with the denizens of the universe -- but her secret relationship with the uplift powers could be the betrayal that tears our characters apart. Canticleer finds himself once more mortal, attempting to solve the mystery of the Gods' murder. Having become one with the spirit of Mercury, he burns with power and leads the Fae as their servant and master while attempting to bring Venus and Mars back into alignment. Spriggan, cruelly transformed from his former beauty into a misshapen Caliban figure, manipulates Jon sexually throughout the novel, in what seems at first to be simple petty rage at his new form but turns out to be a major part of the Goddess's plans. He is redeemed, in the end, although his jealousy regarding David causes him eventually to transform, and Jon must put him down before the Requiem can commence. When Jon weeps, it is not only for the end of an age. Shadow & Spark are goddesses of ending and beginning, whose love and power are the last bastion of hope for the universe against Jon's rising suicidal tide. Their love for Joan and Jonathan is frightening as they bring them back into alignment with time and tide. A surprising ally is David, who helps them solve their murder -- an allegory for the ending of the universe. David's last gift from Bright is maximum life: A connection with the universe which borders on angelic, consumed with the need is to share life -- through healing, sex, botany, art. He is becoming the new Quicksilver/Connect, and is sought after by Shadows to maintain balance as the people become more and more terrified. As his newfound powers finally begin to rage -- like a dying sun -- he threatens to bring final entropy to too fast for anyone to survive. He doesn't believe in the apotheosis or uplift, but wants to stop aging people and speeding up time and all the rest of his entropic features end all time and space, destroying the story and narrative and every song ever sung, even Jon's new Requiem. Returning's bitter resentment of her one-time companion, Sister Joan, has turned her healing abilities into the giving of pain. Trying to find her place in a potlatch world means risking all control, though she has cast off her crown and abjured all thoughts of conquest. Singing works with David in the weaving of the last song, the Sibolet, but fears that they are going about things wrong, and recurring doubts and visions of Rising, throw him off. For the first time, this once-fallen angel has developed feelings that may keep the song from being sung, and the end of all David's archival strategies. IV: PANDYMION The moment of creation as the individuals we've come to know, love and loathe undergo the final ego death and give collective birth to the new universe. The bravery of self-annihilation as the final approach toward personal abomination. A tea party, a precession through the bardos, a bricolage and a palimpsest. While this volume, like the others, takes as its form the novel, the repetition of themes and meanings through the series gives it the whirling, chanting feeling of a sestina. Situations present themselves with characters and combinations of characters taking the place of their original protagonists as they experience the cycle of novels through each other's perspective. This novel actually takes place within the final moments of Sibolet, echoing back through the entire cycle. Section titles are the names of angels, as usual, although the form of the story means interpolating also the six bardos and the characters' experience of them, through the lens of their character as well as their original and subsequent forms. An angel or a god experiences death in different ways from humans or vampires. Vampirism specifically is revealed as an unending recreation of the metaphor of human existence as an eternal moment/bardo suspended between death and rebirth. They are always becoming, never being, and this is their triumph and their tragedy. In the absence of sunshine, they stop representing a dark mirror of humanity and become the operating principle of the universe: The unconscious stops being a projection onto the world and this extraversion becomes inverted, as mortals must traverse its flexible and archetypal landscapes while retaining their own sanity. After The Silence The Singing The First Wild Stars The Return Of The Initial Complication In The Heat Of Your Rising David Saul was a vampire in love with a priest, who sought redemption in his own unbeating heart. David Saul was a mournful vampire, who sought fear in a handful of dust and love in the eyes of every misshapen newborn, and redefined asceticism for a new age. David Saul was a reborn creature of eternal and terrifying life, who nearly replaced a God and was destroyed in the process. David Saul was a master of all worlds, who created and sang the song from beginning to end, reaching always for more will, inspiring breath and light in everyone he knew. Father Jonas Bright was a priest who colored outside the lines, who searched for the Song to end Creation. Bright was a soldier-priest, born to serve man in the days after Heaven fell and whose attraction to and love of the nightkind was a perfect self-betrayal. Brother Jonathan was a priest whose lover preached abundance as he became ascetic, terrifying them both; he fought for survival of the universe's spirit and memory, a task as misguided as it was doomed. Jonas Bright was a master of all worlds, who created and sang the song from beginning to end, reaching always for more joy, fated to be the last living thing in the final death of our universe -- and the firstborn son of the next. Joan Ravensage was a young witch who kept her thoughts to herself and loved a priest. She became an angel, or a goddess, of Death, and ranged the world leading armies of Hell. Wild Stars was a new angel, who in the time after Heaven's fall was joined by the angels in her attempt to become an agent of true Life. Sister Joan was a reborn human, an oracle whose destiny was to see the choices and moments of the universe -- and the concept of free will itself -- drawing to a close. Raven, also known as The First Wild Stars, was a master of all worlds, who sang the song of all worlds' ending, the Sibolet, that opened the door to new life as she burned, earning her the first name of the new Creation. Canticleer crows. The Gods and Goddess, both of the old order and Current, are the first victims of the Pandymion, having passed back into the light and darkness that defines the tides. Their powers live on in every surviving being, as the universe grows smaller and dreams tell the world. And each of those named here replace them, as they build and birth a new tide and universe. Swelling In The Heat Of Your Sky was JHVH's assassin, once known as the Broken Angel. Heat Rises became mortal when his master left the game, left with some magic and knowledge of the streams of tide and time. Rising was a mortal oracle, the balance and contradiction of Sister Joan, who found peace with his lover and eventually gave up his wings. To the new creation In The Heat Of Your Rising brought abundance, laughter, and the principle of expansion. After The Silence Was Something was one the leader of Heaven's Choir, who wrote the original Lorica, and eventually fell, to fight for man against the angels as Silence, or the Singer. Singing Silently's last act as an angel called the new world into being, and so he was rejected by mankind and became an unwelcome troubadour and healer, before discovering the new song of the age and weaving Bright and David their Requiem. Singing and David wove the last song, the Sibolet, with Raven's help, but his fear of the last Archive brought about a last-minute betrayal that erased all thought and mind of the last Creation. After The Silence The Singing was redeemed, as he sang the new Creation into being as part of a new choir. The Unwinding Of The Initial Complication was JHVH's Annunciation, at the end of Heaven's reign, and once fought Joan for conquest in the last days. Ending & Return was blamed for the end of man's era, riding with Wild Stars -- once her brutal enemy -- in the service of new life. Returning's bitter resentment of her one-time companion, Sister Joan, turned her healing abilities into the giving of pain and she lost all control in the potlatch world of uplift, seeking to find her own balance in a world that had long since moved past her very function. The Return Of The Initial Complication was restored in the first eons of the new Creation, with wings of aching beauty and an angel's get in her new form. The First Breath After Long Rains was a bitter scapegoat of Heaven, become a mortal weather-witch and compatriot of the Fae. Rain turned on the Fae after their betrayal in Heaven's fall, and became an immortal ally of the nightkind, their ambassador in the Townships. Mortal Breathing lost her voice and power to her lover's mission; a secret relationship with the uplift powers betrayed all minds and souls of the last Creation, which only the Current Gods and some powerful mortals could understand. The final villain of the Unhiding, First Breathe becomes a strong guardian to the new Creation, abjuring all contact with her fellow survivors and tending its tides as she once worked the weather, until their collective love and fear for her -- and the principle of loneliness that she brought to the new Creation threatened to overwhelm and overbalance her true nature: The principle of contraction, the arms around us, the holy calm of the darkness and the knowledge of the universe's silent and powerful affection. "We have all the time in the world" is a flirtation, an admission, an indictment, a benediction; it is shame and forgiveness, pain and pleasure, regret and passion and joy and sadness. The Six Bardos: Shinay, from conception to the last breath; Milam, the dream state; Samten, meditation. Chikkhai is the moment of death when breath completes. Chönyid, the luminous vision which can be a state of delusion if you don't recognize the light. And Sidpai, becoming or transmigration, until the inner breath commences in the new form. Bardo once meant, and still can mean, just the period between one life and the next. The six bardos show these essential qualities as present in other transitional periods, and can be refined to the point of applying to every moment of existence: The now is a continual bardo between the past and the future. Between death and rebirth, one experiences phenomena following a sequence of degeneration, from the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable (at death) to terrifying hallucinations arising from the one's previous unskillful actions and impulses (later). Transcendental insight comes from direct experience of reality, but can dangerous, as karmically created hallucinations can impel one into undesirable rebirth. Boggans of the house and hearth; Nockers the builders and technicians; Pooka tricksters, shifters and animal spirits; Sidhe the nobility, the gentry, the Shining Host; Sluagh keepers of secrets, bogeymen, shadows; Hsien small gods, once servants of greater spirits, who now answer prayers in secret and take on the form of the newly dead. A changeling's nature is the result of adjustments wrought upon them in Faerie: "Taken from your home, transformed by the power of Faerie, kept as slave or pet... But you never forgot where you came from. Now you have found your way back through the Thorns, to a home that is no longer yours. You are Lost. Find yourself." The Changeling & The Fetch, The Seeming & The Glamour, The Tithe, and The Hunt; boons and banes and blessings. Canticleer contacting ancient beings and archetypes through the connections. I want to create an entirely new open-minded way of looking at these old tropes -- in particular Faerie, vampires and werewolves -- that emphasizes the hidden goodness and alien honor inherent in any culture. We must go to them, not wait for them to come to us. Every society has rules because every society is stable -- at least as long as it exists to be called one. And widely varying systems of magic, psionics etc., reaching back and forth through the volumes but always suited to the particular time and place of its setting. Oh, and a demigod, a half-mortal: What would that really actually truly be like? A child-song, like "Yankee Doodle," that comes around and around to mean different things -- perhaps first associated with one character and then broadened to include a whole symbolic complex. They finally escape the copied room - into a world that is a perfect copy. Or do they? Free Will/Predestination: Contrast with Canticleer's Hacker Ethos, and its changes as we go, as well as every other character's Big question. God grew tired of us out in the desert, and sent us back into the city. New Cauchemar and Novy Mir. She sits surrounding her interrogators Pseudoporcomancy: "Work out ferments the humors, casts them into their meet channels, throws substandard redundancies, and helps feather in those secretive distributions, without which the fuselage cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the typification dissimulate with cheerfulness." "Acomplia Canada Miss America is Richard Nixon but every opposition who sleeps knows John. acomplia on obesity" From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire Terrae Incognitae: Cartography as limiting and littering the universe with knowns. Angels despise maps -- disrespectful to the All. Also calendars, which are alternately painful and meaningless to the sublinear and offensive to the surlinear. Anathema Maranatha, as a perfect example of the damning boon and the happy curse: The original Greek anathema -- gift or sacrifice to God -- leads to the interpretation of "Anathema Maranatha" as "a gift to God at the coming of our Lord." "It seems to have been customary with the Jews of that age, when they had pronounced any man an Anathema, to add the Syriac expression, Maran - atha, that is, "The Lord cometh;" namely, to execute vengeance upon him." "Anathema signifies also to be overwhelmed with maledictions... At an early date the Church adopted the word anathema to signify the exclusion of a sinner from the society of the faithful; but the anathema was pronounced chiefly against heretics." The negative understanding of maranatha began to die out by the late 19th Century; Jamiesen, Fausset and Brown's commentary of 1871 separates maranatha from anathema in the same way as modern scholars. However the traditional interpretation is still occasionally found among some Christians today. Vampires as custodians of forbidden knowledge, makers and masters pulling the strings. Biopunk: The struggles of individuals/groups, often experimentals, against totalitarian government/megacorps who misuse biotech for social control or profiteering. Unlike cyberpunk, it builds not on information technology but on synthetic biology. Common feature is the “black clinic” lab, clinic or hospital for illegal, unregulated or ethically-dubious biomod and genegineering procedures. The Fly, Jurassic Park, Gattaca, Bioshock, Dark Angel And as a metaphor about ancient networks of communication, he loves railways. This number is patented in the US, which means you cannot derive 7537489532 for yourself, or otherwise "practice the art" of the patent with respect to solving linear programming problems no matter how you came by the idea, including finding it out for yourself, unless you have a license from the number's owner. I'm committing the mistake of confusing the embodiment with the intellectual property itself. It's not the number that's patented, just the Kamarkar algorithm. The number can be copyrighted, because copyright covers the expressive qualities of a particular tangible embodiment of an idea (in which some functional properties may be mysteriously merged provided they're not too merged), but not the algorithm. Whereas the number isn't patentable, just the "teaching" of the number with respect to making railroads run on time. And the number representing the source code can be a trade secret, but if you find it out for yourself (by performing arithmetic manipulation of other numbers issued by Microsoft, eg, known as "reverse engineering"), you're not going to be punished, at least in some parts of the US. One searching in time, one searching in space. The first volume is urban fantasy, a myth-chasing mystery set in the modern day The second volume is a Dying Earth pilgrimage of factions and thrones The third volume is a galactic diplomacy space opera, and a religious murder mystery The final volume is a bricolage and palimpsest of styles and forms When you open your mouth and sing, give your entire self to the Voice: What is uttered is the truth. Some Fallen understand that Lucifer's rebellion was part of God's plan, some lust for revenge on God for their exile, some use Man as weapons against Heaven, some see the broken world and wasted potential of Man and believe there's only one option: destroy everything, as a way to bait God and the Angels, or mercy to the near-dead Creation, or just out of nihilism. And some -- more than would ever admit it -- know their punishment was correct. When a demon's host is slain, the demon is not killed. The demon must find a new host or be pulled back into the Abyss. Nobody ever lies. All wishes are fulfilled and all prophecies eventually come true. Most mages' paradigms differ substantially from the consensus; if wildly, it is vulgar. When performed ineptly, or vulgarly, and especially if witnessed, Paradox can result. Gather a choir to fulfill this vision of the perfect harmony of God’s song. Choristers get closer to God by ascending and merging with Him: To be done, one must walk along set paths and behind set masks that humanity donned upon the One. Ascetics, martial artists, monks. Pious believers who see no division between Christianity and magic. Intuitive, ecstatic seers using sensory stimulation, consciousness expansion, meditation, trance, exhilaration, trespass human boundaries and comfort zones: The new asceticism: Sex, drugs, meditation, holistic living, music, vision trips are their sacraments. Shamanic emissaries to the spirit world creating fetishes, travelling other places, dreamwalking. Formal sorcerers, warlocks, alchemists, mystics drawing from classical occult practices; summoning and binding spirits, necromancy. Names are inherent to objects they designate, reflecting their true natures; writing means catching the object and manipulating its very nature. Inspiration-oriented scientists dedicated to fringe theories and alternative science. Blood-shamans and healers, witches Tech adepts, informational wizardry; transhumanism, interface, uploading -- as tools not ends. The big brother ones bring stasis and order. Predictability brings safety. Once all is known, Unity will be won. Convince the Masses of the benevolence of science, commerce and politics, and the power of rationality. Conflict and suffering eliminated in Utopia. Chaotics who open gateways with impunity threaten the world's stability. Uncontrolled portals allow outside forces access to our world. Define the nature of the universe. Knowledge must be absolute or chaos will envelop all. The elemental forces of the universe must not be left to the caprices of the unknown. Protect the Masses, from themselves and others. The precision, speed, and unity that Machines offer Flesh: Man/machine interface, predictive models and simulations, surveillance and media to control and monitor the Masses, human control over biological processes, applied genetics, tailored viruses, implants, grafts; drugs, control of currency/commerce to change reality; Enforcers, financiers, Media Control. Study, colonization and eventual control of realms beyond Earth, spirit world to cyberspace. Dedication to the absolute elimination of all supernatural entities. The perfection of the human form. Gehenna was initially rumored to be where followers of various Ba'als, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire. The valley later became the common wasteyard for all the refuse in Jerusalem: Corpses and ashes of animals and people, waste and garbage and, according to legend, consumed by a constant fire. In time it was deemed accursed, and an image of the place of destruction in Jewish folklore. Jewish folklore suggests the valley had a 'gate' which led down to a molten lake of fire (Sheol). Eventually the Hebrew term Gehinnom became a figurative name for the place of spiritual purification for the wicked dead in Judaism: A site at the greatest possible distance from heaven. The period of purification/punishment is only 12 months or less, and every Sabbath is excluded from punishment. After this the soul will ascend to the world to come, or will be destroyed if it is severely wicked. I want to make the point that cosmology and creation myths are not necessarily hand in hand with my conception or image of God, and beside the point. It's this sort of thing that intelligent people object to, and it objectifies God in a way that I don't really find helpful. So we can go through the creation myth, following its threads and meanings and seeing how and where they have led us. They are part of the recipe for this version of the universe, and it winds through everything we do: The three wives, the three sons, the Land Of Nod and the savage garden. And Lucifer and JHVH, of course, as well as the bodiless demons and the angels of Heaven and Hell, the Old Gods and the Current Gods, the state of the Art, witchcraft, the Choirs and the rest. The Hebrew word nod is the root of the verb to wander. It is a place, and it is a state, but it is also an act: "Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod... East of Eden." One interpretation is that Cain was cursed to wander the land forever, not exiled to a "Land of Wanderers" otherwise absent from the Old Testament. After arriving in the land of Nod, Cain's wife bore him a son, Enoch, in whose name he built the first city. Domovoi (pl. domoviye) is a Slavic house spirit: Masculine, small, covered in hair all over; sometimes taking the form of current or former owners of the house; may have a grey beard, a tail or tiny horns; can be cats or dogs, but rarely. A tomte (Swedish) or nisse (Danish) cares for a farmer's home and children, protecting them from misfortune especially at night. "Tomte" comes from "place of residence"/"area of influence": the house lot, or tomt (Finnish is tonttu). Nisse is a nickname for Nils, and its usage in folklore comes from expressions such as Nisse god dräng (Nisse good lad, cf. Robin Goodfellow). Other names are Tuftekall, Tomtegubbe or Haugebonde ("mound farmer"), all names connecting the being to the origins of the farm (the building ground), or a burial mound. Those names are remembrances of the being’s origins in an ancestral cult. The tomte or nisse is a solitary vätte, living on the farmstead. He is usually benevolent and helpful, which cannot be said about a mischievous illvätte. However he can cause a lot of damage if he is angry, such as killing livestock. Vættir (s. Vættr) or wights are Norse nature spirits, divided into clans (ættir, cf. races or families): Álfar (elves), Dvergar (dwarves), Jötnar (giants), and Gods (Æsir and Vanir), understood to be prominent families among them. These families sometimes intermarried with each other, and sometimes with humans. Sjövættir (sea spirits) are guardians of specific waters. Animal-headed businessmen avoiding the gazes of bandoliered stormtroopers, scrubbing down the wall: LIBERATE YOUR MIND AND THIS WORLD WILL CRUMBLE. The goddess Luna convinced her lover Gaia not to interfere. Necromancy -- arcane knowledge of death and the Void -- was brought into Creation by scholars who plundered it from the crypt-worlds beneath the Underworld. Lunars shun forms of civilization characterized by Dragon-Blooded oppression, preferring society with humans and spirits far beyond the borders of the satrapies. Some of these Stewards lead, or guide -- sometimes breed -- tribes of Beastmen, and teach them self-sufficiency. Others go into deep seclusion in their territories to absorb themselves in primitive, hand-to-mouth freedoms and commune with the small, simple gods. Some even revel in the warping of the Wyld, forgoing the characteristic silvered tattoos, becoming increasingly unstable until ending up as inhuman chimerae with no unifying form, akin to both Fair Folk and Creation-born. This idea of personal lens being complete projection at the time of Pandymion: A given process or interaction could appear to an individual as a harried bureaucracy, brutal fighting between wild animals, a complex equation being solved inside a computer, tea service or a meal being prepared for a loved one, a grave being dug and whispered over, a garden being weeded, a song being sung. Androids built from clay and Five Magical Materials in Autochthon protect the inhabitants of a parallel world/city made up of the body of Autochthon himself. The global Sprawl, connected by wifi and by transport. Nixie (English) or Nixe (German) is a shapeshifting water spirit, usually of human form. The spirit appears in the myths and legends of all Germanic peoples. German Nix and Scandinavian counterparts are male. German Nixe or Nixie is a river mermaid. Scandinavian näck, nøkk, nøkken, strömkarl, Grim or Fosse-Grim were male water spirits who played enchanted songs on the violin, luring women and children to drown in lakes or streams. However, not all of these spirits were necessarily malevolent; in fact, many stories exist that indicate at the very least that Fossegrim were entirely harmless to their audience and attracted not only women and children, but men as well with their sweet songs. Stories exist wherein the Fossegrim agreed to live with a human who had fallen in love with him, but many of these stories ended with the Fossegrim returning to his home, usually a nearby waterfall or brook. Fossegrim grow despondent if they do not have free, regular contact with a water source. Perhaps he did not have any true shape. He could show himself as a man playing the violin in brooks and waterfalls (often imagined as fair and naked today, in actual folklore he was more frequently wearing more or less elegant clothing) but also could appear to be treasure or various floating objects or as an animal (most commonly a brook horse). The "man in the rapids" was almost always an especially beautiful young man, whose clothing (or lack thereof) varied widely from story to story. The enthralling music of the nix was most dangerous to women and children, especially pregnant women and unbaptised children. He was most active during Midsummer's Night, on Christmas Eve and Thursdays. When malicious nix attempted to carry off people, they could be defeated by calling their name; this, in fact, would be the death of them. If you brought the nix three drops of blood, a black animal, some vodka or snus, he would teach you his enchanting form of music, so adeptly "that the trees dance and waterfalls stop at his music." The nix was also an omen for drowning accidents. He would scream at a particular spot in a lake or river, in a way reminiscent of the loon, and on that spot a fatality would later take place. In the later Romantic folklore and folklore-inspired stories of the 19th century, the nix sings about his loneliness and his longing for salvation, which he purportedly never shall receive, as he is not "a child of God." In a poem by Swedish poet E. J. Stagnelius, a little boy pities the fate of the nix, and so saves his own life. In the poem, arguably Stagnelius' most famous, the boy says that the Näck will never be a "child of God" which brings "tears to his face" as he "never plays again in the silvery brook." Puck is a mythological fairy or mischievous nature sprite. Puck is also a generalised personification of land spirits. Whilst being an aspect of Robin Goodfellow and the Green Man, he is sometimes also considered hob and Will-o'-the-wisp. Puck (puca) is a half-tamed Old English woodland sprite, leading folk astray with echoes and lights in nighttime woodlands (like the Weisse Frauen, Witte Wieven and Dames Blanches), or coming into the farmstead and souring milk in the churn. Modern Cornwall folklore has Buccas, good and bad. The folklore of Puck was magisterially assembled by William Bell, in two volumes that appeared in 1852 that have been called a "monument to nineteenth-century antiquarianism gone rampant." Since you don't speak of the Devil, Puck's disguised name is "Robin Goodfellow," or "Hobgoblin" -- in which "Hob" may substitute for "Rob" or may simply refer to the "goblin of the hearth (hob)." If you had the knack, Puck might do minor housework, quick fine needlework or butter-churning -- which could be undone in a moment by his knavish tricks if you fell out of his favor. Scots call this domestic spirit a brownie; the Germans, kobold or Knecht Ruprecht. Scandinavians called it Nissë God-dreng. Puck, the jester of Fairy-court, is the same. As Katherine Briggs remarked, "it no longer seems natural to talk as Robert Burton does in the Anatomie of Melancholy of a puck instead of 'Puck.'" It is Puck's mistaken doings that provide the convolutions of the plot. An early 17th century broadside ballad, "The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow" -- so deft and literate it has been taken for the work of Ben Jonson -- describes Puck as the emissary of Oberon, inspiring night-terrors in old women but also carding their wool while they sleep, leading travelers astray, taking the shape of animals, blowing out candles to kiss girls in the darkness, twitching off bedclothes, making them fall out of bed on the cold floor, tattling secrets, and changing babes in cradles with elflings. All his work is done by moonlight, and his mocking, echoing laugh is "Ho ho ho!" Robin Goodfellow is the main speaker in Jonson's 1612 masque Love Restored. Milton's Puck is nearer to a Green Man or a hairy woodwose. Pan imagery has now given Puck the goat legs and cloven hooves, maybe even horns. Goethe used Puck in Faust, in "A Walpurgisnacht Dream," where he played off Ariel. Puck's trademark laugh in the early ballads is "Ho ho ho." But the "merry old elf" who works with magical swiftness unseen in the night and can "descry each thing that's done beneath the moone" -- whom we propitiate with a glass of milk, lest he put lumps of coal in the stockings we hang by the hob with care, and whose trademark laugh is "Ho ho ho" -- is Santa Claus. In Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), Puck -- last of the People of the Hills and "oldest thing in England" -- charms children Dan and Una with tales and visitors out of England's past. Pan, a Puck-like entity, is a main character in Jitterbug Perfume. Lubber fiend, Lob, lubberkin, lurdane or Lob Lie-By-The-Fire was similar to the brownie, the hob, the domovoi and tomte. Related also to Puck, and Hobgoblins. He is typically described as a large, hairy man with a tail, who performs housework in exchange for a saucer of milk and a place in front of the fire. One story claims he is the giant son of a witch and the Devil. Leshy is a Slavic woodland spirit who protects wild animals and forests (Leshachikha, wives of the leshak; leshonky, children of the leszy) roughly analogous to the Woodwose and Basajaun. Appears as a tall man, but able to change size from a blade of grass to a very tall tree. Hair and beard made of living grass and vines; sometimes depicted with tail, hooves, and horns. Pale white skin that contrasts with his bright green eyes. A close bond with the gray wolf, and is often seen in the company of bears as well. He is the Forest Lord and carries a club to express that he is the master of the wood. Mass migration of animals supposedly happens at leshy's instruction. Looks like a common peasant, but his eyes glow and his shoes are on backwards. In some tales, he appears to visitors as a large talking mushroom. If a person befriends a leshy, he will teach them the secrets of magic. Farmers and shepherds would make pacts with the leshy to protect their crops and sheep. They remove signs from their posts and are known to hide the axes of woodcutters. If he crosses your path you will get lost immediately: Turn clothes inside out and switch shoes to opposite feet. The sign of the cross often works also; but in the worst case, should the leshies torment you, set the forest ablaze behind you and don't look back; he will be so concerned with putting out the fire he will forget why his mischief fell upon your poor soul. Leshies are terribly mischievous: horrible cries; can imitate voices of people familiar to wanderers and lure them back to their caves, where the leshies will tickle them to death. Leshies aren't evil: although they enjoy misguiding humans and kidnapping young women, they also keep grazing cattle from wandering too far into the forests and getting lost. More than one leshy will fight for territorial rights: Evidence is fallen trees and scared animals. Sometimes cow herders will make pact by handing him the cross from around their necks and sharing communion with him after church: These pacts give the cowherds special powers. Faunus was the horned god of the forest, plains and fields; when he made cattle fertile he was called Inuus. He came to be equated with Greek god Pan. Faunus revealed dreams and voices to those who slept in his precincts, lying on the fleeces of sacrificed lambs. As Pan was accompanied by the Paniskoi, or little Pans, many Fauni follow chief Faunus. Fauns are place-spirits (genii) of untamed woodland. Identified with Lupercus -- he who wards off the wolf, the protector of cattle -- after Livy, who named Inuus as the god originally worshiped at Lupercalia, 15 Feb, when his priests (Luperci) wore goatskins and hit onlookers with goatskin belts. Faunus was equated with Pan, a pastoral god of shepherds said to reside in Arcadia. Pan was always depicted with horns; Faunus also began to display this trait. However Virgil, in his Aeneid, made mention of both Faunus and Pan independently. Panic: Alone in the wild, wild mountains and the untamed wilderness. In the east, an old woman sat in the forest Járnviðr, and bred there the broods of Fenrir. There will come from them all one of that number to be a moon-snatcher in troll's skin. The enthroned figure of High tells Gangleri (King Gylfi in disguise) about Týr. Týr's bravery when the Æsir were luring Fenrisúlfr to place the fetter Gleipnir on the wolf. Fenrir didn't trust they'd let him go until the Æsir placed Týr's hand in Fenrir's mouth as a pledge. When the Æsir refused to release him, he bit off Týr's hand at a location now called the wolf-joint, the wrist, causing Týr to be "not considered a promoter of settlements between people." Direct neural interface tech let us directly access computers and the Matrix by deckers, connected to the brain through a Datajack generally located at the temple or behind the ear. Now, wireless technology has become completely ubiquitous. Access can be total sensory immersion, sensory enhancement, virtual reality, augmented reality. The otaku of previous versions -- deckers who didn't need decks -- are now technomancers, with an innate connection to the Matrix that permits access to wifi without hardware. Magicians focus magic outward, actively affecting the world around them. Adepts focus magic inward, passively enhancing their bodies and minds. Hermetic mages study and manipulate mana, and summon and bind elementals in lengthy and expensive rituals to be called on later. Shamanic magic derives from a connection to nature via a totem spirit, and who can summon the nature spirits associated with a particular place. From the void Ometeotl created itself male/female, good/evil, light/darkness, fire/water, judgment/forgiveness, and gave birth to the four Tezcatlipocas: East is White Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl: Light, mercy and wind - South is Blue Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli: God of war - West is Red Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec: Gold, farming and springtime - North is Black, known only as Tezcatlipoca: Judgment, night, deceit and sorcery First sun: The four Tezcatlipocas descended the first people who were giants, and created the all-important water gods: Tlaloc, rain and fertility and Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of lakes, rivers and oceans, beauty. They chose Black Tezcatlipoca to become the sun, but because he lost a leg or was god of the night, he only managed to become half a sun. Rivalry grew between Quetzalcoatl and the sun, whom Q knocked from the sky with a stone club. Without sun, the world was totally black and Tezcatlipoca's jaguars ate all the people Second sun: Quetzalcoatl. The gods created normal-sized Man, who grew less civilized and showed the Gods no honor, so Tezcatlipoca turned the animalistic people into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl loved the flawed people as they were, and was upset enough to blow all of the monkeys from the face of the Earth with a mighty hurricane, then stepped down as the sun to create a new people. Third sun: Tlaloc became the next sun until Tezcatlipoca seduced his wife Xochiquetzal, the goddess of sex, flowers and corn. Tlaloc refused to do anything other than wallow in grief, so a great drought swept the world. The people's prayers for rain annoyed the grieving sun and he refused to allow it to rain. Enraged he answered their prayers with a great downpour of fire until the Earth burned away. The gods then had to construct a whole new Earth from the ashes. Fourth sun: The next sun was Tlaloc’s new wife Chalchiuhtlicue. She was very loving towards the people, but Tezcatlipoca was not. Tez told her she wasn't truly loving and only faked kindness out of selfishness for praise. Chalchiuhtlicue was so crushed she cried blood 52 years, drowning everyone in a horrific flood. Q wouldn't accept the destruction & went to Mictlan to steal their bones from Mictlantecuhtli, and dipped the bones in his own blood to resurrect them. Fifth sun: Sky illuminated by the current sun, Huitzilopochtli. Ometeotl’s later children the Tzitzimitl, or stars, were jealous of him, and Coyolxauhqui the moon led them against him. Every night they are close to victory, but beaten back by mighty H who rules the daytime sky. To aid this all-important god in his war, the Aztecs give him human sacrifice -- just as we offer human sacrifices to Tezcatlipoca in fear of his judgment, or our own blood to Q, who opposes fatal sacrifice, in thanks for his blood sacrifice. Should these sacrifices cease, or mankind fail to please the gods, this fifth sun will go black and the world will be shattered by a catastrophic earthquake: The Tzitzimitl will slay Huitzilopochtli and all of humanity. So the army of stars, led by the moon, will one day slay the sun if we don't propitiate and aid him with our worship and sacrifice? That is a very vampiric mytheme. Let's revisit the Aztec myths here in terms of modernity, vampires, and the First Family; the sun and the moon and the turning of the earth and the stars and planets, etc. Sidereal and whatnot. Calendars are maps for time. The fifth sun however is sometimes said to be a god named Nanauatzin. This version the gods convened in darkness to choose a new sun to sacrifice himself in a bonfire. The volunteers were 2 young sons of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue: Tecuciztecatl and elder Nan. Thought Nan was too old to make a good sun, but both were given the opportunity to jump. Tec tried first but wasn't brave enough to walk through the heat and turned around. Nanauatzin walked slowly into the flames and was consumed. Tecuciztecatl followed. Braver Nanauatzin became our sun and Tecuciztecatl became the much less spectacular moon. Bridging Nanauatzin and Huitzilopochtli is Tonatiuh -- he was sick but rejuvenated himself by burning himself alive and became the warrior sun. He wandered through the heavens with the souls of those who died in battle, refusing to move if not offered enough sacrifices. And there with her new soul she perceived the beauty of the world; for it came grey and level out of misty distances, and widened into grassy fields and plough lands right up to the edge of an old gabled town; and solitary in the fields far off an ancient windmill stood, and his honest handmade sails went round and round in the free East Anglian winds. Close by, the gabled houses leaned out over the streets, planted fair upon sturdy timbers that grew in the olden time, all glorying among themselves upon their beauty. And out of them, buttress by buttress, growing and going upwards, aspiring tower by tower, rose the cathedral. And she saw the people moving in the streets all leisurely and slow, and unseen among them, whispering to each other, unheard by living men and concerned only with bygone things, drifted the ghosts of very long ago. And wherever the streets ran eastwards, wherever were gaps in the houses, always there broke into view the sight of the great marshes, like to some bar of music weird and strange that haunts a melody, arising again and again, played on the violin by one musician only, who plays no other bar, and he is swart and lank about the hair and bearded about the lips, and his moustache droops long and low, and no one knows the land from which he comes. All these were good things for a new soul to see. What are vampire rituals like? What is their religion? If their existence is a bardo, what does that do to your relationship to time, space or God? What sort of relation to you have to the search for meaning when you are not limited by mortality? The amaranth. Along these same lines, I want to really explore what being a vampire means for David: The huge hassle that it is, the emotional repercussions, the monster within, the multi-level issues in his relationship with Jonah Bright... To balance the advantages it bestows with the fact that it's pretty much a horrific disability. Covens. Oh, and punk witches -- maybe dance witches. Music, of course, being a major theme. Canterbury Tales. Four Realms of myth: The Divine -- JHVH and His agents -- is opposed to magic, yet the Gift is part of a Mage's soul, and therefore a gift from the Divine. The Infernal -- Satan and his minions -- include temptations, sin, and diabolism. Faerie are capricious and often malicious, addicted to human attention and emotional expression. The Realm of Magic: A mysterious and largely unexplained force in the world, which the Magi manipulate to create their spells. Magic is distinguished from Faerie largely in that the latter is concerned with humanity, while the former is not. A Fifth Realm, the Realm of Reason, is associated with skepticism and scholarship, and its "rational" aura alleviated the effects of the other four realms. The central character, Melmoth (a Wandering Jew type), is a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life and spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him. The novel actually takes place in the present, but this back story is revealed through several nested stories-within-a-story that work backwards through time (usually through the Gothic trope of old books). In Dublin town where I did dwell a butcher boy I loved so well He courted me, my life away and now with me he will not stay I wish I wish but I wish in vain I wish I was a maid again But a maid again I ne'er can be till apples grow on an ivy tree She went upstairs to go to bed and calling to her mother said Bring me a chair till I sit down and a pen and ink till I write down I wish I wish but I wish in vain I wish I was a maid again But a maid again I ne'er can be till apples grow on an ivy tree He went upstairs and the door he broke and found her hanging from her rope He took his knife and cut her down and in her pocket these words he found: "Oh, make my grave large, wide and deep, put a marble stone at my head and feet And in the middle a turtle dove so the world may know I died of love." Green Grow The Rushes, O (aka The Twelve Prophets, The Carol Of The Twelve Numbers, The Teaching Song, or The Dilly Song), is a folk song (Roud #133) not to be confused with Robert Burns' poem. Each verse is built up from the previous verse by appending a new stanza: "I'll sing you one, O green grow the rushes, O what is your one, O? One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so" becomes "I'll sing you twelve, O green grow the rushes, O what are your twelve, O? Twelve for the twelve Apostles, Eleven for the eleven who went to heaven, Ten for the ten commandments, Nine for the nine bright shiners, Eight for the April Rainers, Seven for the seven stars in the sky, Six for the six proud walkers, Five for the symbols at your door, Four for the Gospel makers, Three, three, the rivals, Two, two, the lily-white boys clothèd all in green, O O. One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so." The lyrics are extremely obscure, presenting an unusual mix of Christian catechesis, astronomical mnemonics, and what may very well be pagan cosmology. The origins are uncertain, but the first recorded instance is in Hebrew. The Passover song Echad Mi Yodeia (Who Knows One?), has the number five as the Pentateuch, two as the luchot habrit (tablets), and one as "Our Lord, our Lord, our Lord who is in the heavens and the earth." Possibly the same origin as "Fine flowers in the valley" in one version of the ballad "The Cruel Mother" –an attempt to turn a mistaken Gaelic line into its nearest English phonetic equivalent. The Twelve may originally have referred to the months of the year; The Eleven are the eleven Apostles minus Judas, or possibly St Ursula and her companions. The nine may be a reference to the Sun, Moon and planets pre-1781, with the sphere of the fixed stars and the Empyrean; or the nine Choirs. The Eight April rainers refer to the Hyades star cluster, that rise with the sun in rainy April. The Seven are either the Seven Sisters or Ursa Major, or the planets, or other stars; or those referenced in Revelation in the right hand of Christ and then explained as seven angels of the seven early churches; or a reference to the Jewish Cross, a constellation over Israel. The Six is obscure but seems a historical reference: Possibly a Saxon warband AD 450-1066, or Ezekiel 9, when six men with swords come in a vision of the prophet to slaughter the people, whose leaders (8:16) have committed such sins as turning East to worship the Sun; or a corruption of "the six bold waters," which nobody knows what that means. The Five probably alludes to the practice of putting a pentagram at the door of a house to ward off witches and spirits in the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern; the Pentateuch; possibly five symbols displayed above the doors of houses sheltering Catholic priests; or the mezuzah. The Three could also refer to the Big Three, or the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, or three similar and adjacent mountains in Wales. Or it's been suggested as a corruption of "the arrivals," the three Magi; or a corruption of the Yorkshire "thirdings" or "thridings", meaning "three" and referring to the Trinity; or Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. The Two are the holly and mistletoe -- which would align with the tradition of the defeat at Yule of the Holly King by the Oak King (mistletoe grows on oak trees), or an ancient ritual of painting two people from a village white and sending them off to die, cleansing the village of its sins; or Castor and Pollux. Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be forgot, and old lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, We'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne And surely you’ll buy your pint cup and surely I’ll buy mine And we'll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne. For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, We'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne. We two have run about the slopes, and picked the daisies fine But we’ve wandered many a weary foot, since auld lang syne For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, We'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne. We two have paddled in the stream, from morning sun till dine But seas between us broad have roared since auld lang syne For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, We'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne. And there’s a hand my trusty friend and give us a hand o’ thine And we’ll take a right good-will draught, for auld lang syne. Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, with my bow and arrow: I killed Cock Robin. Who saw him die? I, said the Fly, with my little eye, I saw him die. Who caught his blood? I, said the Fish, with my little dish, I caught his blood. Who'll make the shroud? I, said the Beetle, with my thread and needle, I'll make the shroud. Who'll dig his grave? I, said the Owl, with my pick and shovel, I'll dig his grave. Who'll be the parson? I, said the Rook, with my little book, I'll be the parson. Who'll be the clerk? I, said the Lark, if it's not in the dark, I'll be the clerk. Who'll carry the link? I, said the Linnet, I'll fetch it in a minute, I'll carry the link. Who'll be chief mourner? I, said the Dove, I mourn for my love, I'll be chief mourner. Who'll carry the coffin? I, said the Kite, if it's not through the night, I'll carry the coffin. Who'll bear the pall? We, said the Wren, both the cock and the hen, We'll bear the pall. Who'll sing a psalm? I, said the Thrush, as she sat on a bush, I'll sing a psalm. Who'll toll the bell? I said the bull, because I can pull, I'll toll the bell. All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing when they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin. Lorica is a word-song. Antumbra is the region from which the Moon appears contained within the Sun, creating an annular eclipse. If we move closer to light, the Moon grows until it occults the Sun entirely. Shibboleth is a song-word. Pandymion refers to the mortal son of Zeus Endymion, a beautiful astronomer beloved by the Moon and Sleep, a myth of drifting into sunset and into sleep. He was blessed with eternal sleep and remains in a cave high in the mountains, where both his lovers visit him each night while mortals rest. I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity; through a belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation. I arise today through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism, through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial, through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension, through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom. I arise today through the strength of the love of cherubim, in obedience of angels, in service of archangels, in the hope of resurrection to meet with reward, in the prayers of patriarchs, in preachings of the apostles, in faiths of confessors, in innocence of virgins, in deeds of righteous men. I arise today through the strength of heaven; Light of the sun, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of the wind, depth of the sea, stability of the earth, firmness of the rock. I arise today through God's strength to pilot me; God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me, God's hosts to save me from snares of the devil, from temptations of vices, from everyone who desires me ill, afar and anear, alone or in a multitude. I summon today all these powers between me and evil, against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of pagandom, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of women and smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul. Christ shield me today against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that reward may come to me in abundance. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in the eye that sees me, Christ in the ear that hears me. I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through a belief in the Threeness, through a confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation. St. Patrick (ca. 377) The fable concerns a world of talking animals who reflect both human perception and fallacy. Chantecleer is a proud rooster who dreams his approaching doom in the form of a fox. Frightened he awakens Pertelote, the only hen among his 7 wives with whom he's infatuated. She assures him he's just got indigestion, and chides him for paying heed to a simple dream. Chantecleer recounts prophets who foresaw their deaths, dreams that came true, and dreams that were more profound (eg the Dream of Scipio). Chauntecleer is comforted by Pertelote and proceeds to greet a new day; but it was true. Reynard, full of sly iniquity, tricked and killed C's parents, and waits for him in a bed of worts. When Chantecleer spots him, the fox plays his ego and overcomes the cock's instinct to escape by insisting he would love to hear Chantecleer crow just as his amazing father did, with neck outstretched, eyes closed and standing on his tiptoes. When he sticks his neck out and closes his eyes, he's promptly snatched in the fox’s jaws. As the fox flees through the forest, the captured Chantecleer -- thrice described as being carried on the fox's back -- suggests the fox should pause to tell his pursuers to give up their chase. The predator's pride is his undoing: He opens his mouth to taunt his pursuers, and Chantecleer escapes, flying up the nearest tree. The fox tries in vain to convince the wary rooster, who refuses to fall for the trick a second time. At Tara in this fateful hour, I call on all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the Earth with its starkness All these I place By God's almighty help and grace Between myself and the powers of darkness # Elizabeth Bear's "Promethean Age" series constitutes a massive secret history of Elizabethan England, with considerable fantasy elements. Among other things the series asserts that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was a secret illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I; that Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's spymaster, did not die in 1590 as history records but lived in secret for another five years; that playwrights Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were all secret agents of the Queen and underwent dangerous missions in her service, in addition to their theatrical activities; that the plays of all three had profound secret political and magical meanings; that Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene was not a fictional work but was based on a true Kingdom of Faerie, whose Queen had a secret pact of mutual help with the English Queen Elizabeth; that Christopher Marlowe was not assassinated in 1593 as history records but was taken into Faerie where he became the lover of the witch Morgan le Fay; and that Shakespeare had also visited Faerie and personally met with Puck and other supposedly legendary characters depicted in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lorica Notes He uses both; in fact, he'll combine them into something higher and more powerful. To resolve the discord, the hero must wield both in harmony. Dark/light are not evil/good; not even diametrically opposed. Elements are value-neutral. Magical immunity can be only to good/white magic, group spells. A pariah in the more magic-centered towns The Church has guidelines for overall strategy based on whether aliens have souls or not -- and if they have them, whether they are fallen like humans, or exist in a state of grace. One day, orders come down from the top to Shoot The Dog. The Outside Man pulls a Face Turn and refuses to go along with it. They may have fallen in love with the target, had his training wear off, or decided Even Evil Has Standards. Opposing Harmony is Discipline, the belief that mankind can and should master themselves and their environment for the betterment of all. Be it mastery of the self through rigorous mental and/or physical training, study, exploration or with laws and civilization. This rigorous pursuit usually advocates science, progress, capitalism, Magic in its intellectual aspect, religion in its intellectual and organized aspects, innovation, urbanization and curiosity. Discipline believes Harmony is too focused on preserving and accepting, and is in fact defeatist by not trying to improve things, this is why Discipline tends to be active. On the flip side, Discipline can end up tampering with things best left unmolested, can give its practitioners a God complex, and can lose sight of the now in favor of tomorrow. Chaos is Harmony (oddly enough) and order is Discipline. ...[s]tories that concern vampires, the custodians of forbidden knowledge, and the secret force behind the destruction of mankind. It is encouraged that you include something about an elder vampire in your tale, the maker and master pulling the strings in the backdrop of your story. That conversation makes Will Stanton suspicious that the Light originally made him ill enough to go to Wales, conveniently available to do the Light's work. The Outside man will then go off and join (or found) La Resistance as a key member, or go Walking The Earth to stay out of the reach of the organization. The Battle isn't about Good/Evil: It's Lawful Neutral (Angels, Order) versus Chaotic Neutral (demons, Chaos), with neither side doing good or evil as humans understand those terms. Few SF stories of the time attempted religious themes, and still fewer did this with Catholicism. (Remember A Canticle For Leibowitz.) Some of the first part is taken up with the Jesuit's attempt to solve a puzzle, a long description of scandalous intrigue between various pseudonymous characters. As he is about to leave for Earth, he realizes the puzzle is soluble. White Court vampires don't drink blood, just emotions and life force, but by then you won't care. Moral awakening prompts Outside Man to announce he's leaving, and ask his companion to join. Inside Man refuses, and his reason why will be reflected in his role in the series Harmony believes untamed nature -- physical, natural or mental -- is preferable, and mankind should not try to dominate or change the environment in which it finds itself. It believes that doing so is Prideful and is unnatural, leading only to heartache and calamity. It believes that nature -- the Goddess, Mother Nature, the Green, Life -- binds us all together into a greater whole which knows how best we should all coexist. Because of this Harmony tends to be reactive, correcting problems rather than preventing. The less advertised side of Harmony is that nature tends to have a wild, destructive side. It's without malice, but it's still a tornado tearing through your house. "At the center of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the center of the Dark there is a black pit bottomless as the universe." The unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified I will that My Face, which reflects the intimate pains of My Spirit, the suffering and the love of My Heart, be more honored. He who meditates upon Me, consoles Me "For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?" Anathema Maranatha Aslan is not a tame lion. ...And since it's a metaphor about ancient networks of communication, he loves railways. "Fight some demons?" "Some whats?" "You know, like fallen angels, or..." "Demons don't exist. They're still angels. We still miss them. And if you ever meet one, you'd better mind your manners." "Samael. Come home." "All is forgiven? You don't know what it's like. I have done terrible things. I continue to do terrible things. After the Fall..." "-- You didn't fall, you jumped. And He loved you for it. But there's nothing to forgiv..." "-- You don't speak to Him, you cannot know His mind." "All I know is that you've been telling yourselves this story for so long you think it's the truth. Just let go, come home. Trust me." Psalm 139 To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men. For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. ? AEON Sequel/sidequel: Seraphic move from Intuition to Sensation is a heady one, and only by climbing back up the hill can you hope to become whole — after all, it wasn't in God's interest to begin with, to have his exalted messengers whole in body and spirit. This can be contrasted perhaps against Nephilim, who learned to find the spirit in the material but are haunted now by dreams, conspiracies, and a neverending struggle to attain and retain their power. Too much in the world, and must integrate this newfound beauty of the fallen Seraphim with the earthly existence they've settled for. An interesting fixup. Several novellas and/or shorts that add up to a novel about this. It could span millennia, hop around in time, present different perspectives on the same events. The place of the final tryst between Maurice and Alec Scudder has a certain homoerotic symbolism when seen in the movie; the pseudo-Elizabethan boathouse alludes both to the Arts and Crafts movement that was so associated with Edward Carpenter (a visit by E.M. Forster to Carpenter and his lover George Merrill inspired the writing of Maurice), and also to the Elizabethan England of Christopher Marlowe (“all they that love not tobacco and boys are fools”) and the Sonnets of Shakespeare. In the novel the “greenwood and the night” serve as the place of refuge, and the boathouse is only alluded to. AEON: “I will not let you in. But you may come near.” “This dark collection of macabre war tales will showcase the very best bloodcurdling short stories in the field of historical horror from talented new voices, and will feature a comprehensive overview of the military-horror genre.” God's Killsquad and the Angel of Balance - what happens when things are going too awesome and you have to do bad things. Taking Paradise THE HOOLIGANS OF HEAVEN Vampirism is an unending recreation of the metaphor of human existence An eternal moment/bardo suspended between death and rebirth Always becoming, never being, and this is their triumph and their tragedy Every cycle and change is a requiem for the world that is dying. The world and universe must become a collective agreement, full of magic and shaped by will Primarily an acoustic or impressionist work about the spiritual and intuitive power of endings. Not a narrative being told, but a self-contained world being built from first word to last. Tone changes with the drive toward that particular Requiem and the changes it creates/requires. Overall, the style of each volume will remain constant, to make sure the echoes and ripples of later iterations, interpolated into earlier volumes and stylistically jarring to some degree, will remain memorable. Super/nonlinear characters (Gods, angels, Fae) retain an intuitive sense of time's movement. Vampires, other nightkind and immortals, experience time as an endless present David Saul's experience of both the slow and fast path of his life, so we can understand the lives and experiences of angels and Fae, and eventually of the ephemeral Gods themselves. LORICA: The end of human culture through the action of angels and demons during Heaven's war and the early seeds of mankind's posthuman and transhuman remnants Self-consciously commercial, it uses the courtly relationship of two men to create a new, integrated view of both Japanese yaoi and the American chaste-vampire canon. By playing the story straight, the transcendent moment of the apocalypse -- and breakdown of the social and encoded structures that cause the characters such obstruction and pain -- takes on a new and sympathetic meaning. The story-song of Heaven's last war. An intra-sect fight. The war between heaven and hell. The apocalypse, in this volume, is a moment of pure freedom and exhilaration: A singularity that appears to be an abomination until its actual inception. A vampire has been in love with a priest for ten years, but has broken the connection because it was making him suicidal. He's forced to seek him out again for a possession case which cracks open an entire apocalypse scenario. Angels, demons and others join the hunt as they put together the clues to find the song that may be man's last hope... But in the midst of changing values and alliances, it may be best for the world to end after all. The freedom of the apocalypse. "So what, we just let the world end?" "No, we throw a party first." Jonathan Bright's home is on a Cliffside, approachable only through the winding ways of a very old graveyard. "We have all the time in the world" is a flirtation, an admission, an indictment, a benediction; it is shame and forgiveness, pain and pleasure, regret and passion and joy and sadness. The Six Bardos: Shinay, from conception to the last breath; Milam, the dream state; Samten, meditation. Chikkhai is the moment of death when breath completes. Chönyid, the luminous vision which can be a state of delusion if you don't recognize the light. And Sidpai, becoming or transmigration, until the inner breath commences in the new form. Bardo once meant, and still can mean, just the period between one life and the next. The six bardos show these essential qualities as present in other transitional periods, and can be refined to the point of applying to every moment of existence: The now is a continual bardo between the past and the future. Between death and rebirth, one experiences phenomena following a sequence of degeneration, from the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable (at death) to terrifying hallucinations arising from the one's previous unskillful actions and impulses (later). Transcendental insight comes from direct experience of reality, but can dangerous, as karmically created hallucinations can impel one into undesirable rebirth. Canticlere contacting ancient beings and archetypes through the connections. An entirely new open-minded way of looking at these old tropes -- Faerie, vampires, werewolves -- that emphasizes the hidden goodness and alien honor inherent in any culture. We must go to them, not wait for them to come to us. Every society has rules because every society is stable -- at least as long as it exists to be called one. Widely varying systems of magic, psionics etc., reaching back and forth through the volumes. Oh, and a demigod, a half-mortal: What would that really actually truly be like? Free Will/Predestination: Contrast with Canticleer's Hacker Ethos, and its changes as we go, as well as every other character's Big question. Vampires as custodians of forbidden knowledge, makers and masters pulling the strings. Pseudoporcomancy: "Work out ferments the humors, casts them into their meet channels, throws substandard redundancies, and helps feather in those secretive distributions, without which the fuselage cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the typification dissimulate with cheerfulness. Acomplia Canada Miss America is Richard Nixon but every opposition who sleeps knows John. acomplia on obesity" Terrae Incognitae: Cartography as limiting and littering the universe with knowns. Angels despise maps -- disrespectful to the All. Calendars too, alternately painful/meaningless to the sublinear and offensive to the surlinear. And as a metaphor about ancient networks of communication, he loves railways. Anathema Maranatha, as a perfect example of the damning boon and the happy curse Original Gr. anathema -- gift/sacrifice to God -- so, "a gift to God at the coming of our Lord." "When they had pronounced any man Anathema, would add the Syriac expression, Maran-atha, that is, 'The Lord cometh' to execute vengeance upon him." "Anathema signifies also to be overwhelmed with maledictions... the early Church adopted it to exclude of a sinner from the society of the faithful; but was pronounced against heretics." One searching in time, one searching in space. The first volume is urban fantasy, a myth-chasing mystery set in the modern day When you open your mouth and sing, give your entire self to the Voice: What is uttered is the truth. Nobody ever lies. All wishes are fulfilled and all prophecies eventually come true. Gather a choir to fulfill this vision of the perfect harmony of God's song. Choristers get closer to God by ascending and merging with Him: To be done, one must walk along set paths and behind set masks humanity donned upon the One. Ascetics, martial artists, monks. Pious believers who see no division between Christianity and magic. The new asceticism: Sex, drugs, meditation, holistic living, music, vision trips are sacraments. Shamanic emissaries to the spirit world creating fetishes, travelling other places, dreamwalking. Formal sorcerers, warlocks, alchemists, mystics drawing from classical occult practices; summoning and binding spirits, necromancy. Names are inherent to objects they designate, reflecting their true natures writing means catching the object and manipulating its very nature. Inspiration-oriented scientists dedicated to fringe theories and alternative science. Blood-shamans and healers, witches Tech adepts, informational wizardry; transhumanism, interface, uploading -- as tools not ends. The big brother ones bring stasis and order. Predictability brings safety. Once all is known, Unity will be won. Convince the Masses of the benevolence of science, commerce and politics, and the power of rationality. Conflict and suffering eliminated in Utopia. Chaotics who open gateways with impunity threaten the world's stability. Uncontrolled portals allow outside forces access to our world. Define the nature of the universe. Knowledge must be absolute or chaos will envelop all. The elemental forces of the universe must not be left to the caprices of the unknown. Protect the Masses, from themselves and others. ? I want to make the point that cosmology and creation myths are not necessarily hand in hand with my conception or image of God, and beside the point. It's this sort of thing that intelligent people object to, and it objectifies God in a way that I don't really find helpful. So we can go through the creation myth, following its threads and meanings and seeing how and where they have led us. They are part of the recipe for this version of the universe, and it winds through everything we do: The three wives, the three sons, the Land Of Nod and the savage garden. And Lucifer and JHVH, of course, the bodiless demons and the angels of Heaven and Hell, the Old Gods and the Current Gods, the state of the Art, witchcraft, the Choirs and the rest. The Hebrew word nod is the root of the verb to wander. It is a place, and it is a state, but it is also an act: "Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod... East of Eden." One interpretation is that Cain was cursed to wander the land forever, not exiled to a "Land of Wanderers" otherwise absent from the Old Testament. After arriving in the land of Nod, Cain's wife bore him a son, Enoch, in whose name he built the first city. Animal-headed businessmen avoiding the gazes of bandoliered stormtroopers, scrubbing down the wall: LIBERATE YOUR MIND AND THIS WORLD WILL CRUMBLE. The goddess Luna convinced her lover Gaia not to interfere. This idea of personal lens being complete projection at the time of Pandymion: A given process or interaction could appear to an individual as a harried bureaucracy, brutal fighting between wild animals, a complex equation being solved inside a computer, tea service or a meal being prepared for a loved one, a grave being dug and whispered over, a garden being weeded, a song being sung. Panic: Alone in the wild, wild mountains and the untamed wilderness. Covens. Oh, and punk witches -- maybe dance witches. Music, of course, being a major theme. What are vampire rituals like? What is their religion? If their existence is a bardo, what does that do to your relationship to time, space or God? What sort of relation to you have to the search for meaning when you are not limited by mortality? The amaranth. Along these same lines, I want to really explore what being a vampire means for David: The huge hassle that it is, the emotional repercussions, the monster within, the multi-level issues in his relationship with Jonah Bright... To balance the advantages it bestows with the fact that it's pretty much a horrific disability. The central character, Melmoth (a Wandering Jew type), is a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life and spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him. The novel actually takes place in the present, but this back story is revealed through several nested stories-within-a-story that work backwards through time (usually through the Gothic trope of old books). Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, with my bow and arrow: I killed Cock Robin. Who saw him die? I, said the Fly, with my little eye, I saw him die. Who caught his blood? I, said the Fish, with my little dish, I caught his blood. Who'll make the shroud? I, said the Beetle, with my thread and needle, I'll make the shroud. Who'll dig his grave? I, said the Owl, with my pick and shovel, I'll dig his grave. Who'll be the parson? I, said the Rook, with my little book, I'll be the parson. Who'll be the clerk? I, said the Lark, if it's not in the dark, I'll be the clerk. Who'll carry the link? I, said the Linnet, I'll fetch it in a minute, I'll carry the link. Who'll be chief mourner? I, said the Dove, I mourn for my love, I'll be chief mourner. Who'll carry the coffin? I, said the Kite, if it's not through the night, I'll carry the coffin. Who'll bear the pall? We, said the Wren, both the cock and the hen, We'll bear the pall. Who'll sing a psalm? I, said the Thrush, as she sat on a bush, I'll sing a psalm. Who'll toll the bell? I said the bull, because I can pull, I'll toll the bell. All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing when they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin. Lorica is a word-song, Shibboleth is a song-word. Antumbra is the region from which the Moon appears contained within the Sun, creating an annular eclipse. If we move closer to light, the Moon grows until it occults the Sun entirely. Pandymion refers to the mortal son of Zeus, a beautiful astronomer beloved by the Moon and Sleep. A myth of drifting into sunset, blessed with eternal sleep. He remains in a cave high in the mountains, where both his lovers visit him each night as mortals rest. I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity; through a belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation. I arise today through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism, through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial, through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension, through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom. I arise today through the strength of the love of cherubim, in obedience of angels, in service of archangels, in the hope of resurrection to meet with reward, in the prayers of patriarchs, in preachings of the apostles, in faiths of confessors, in innocence of virgins, in deeds of righteous men. I arise today through the strength of heaven; Light of the sun, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of the wind, depth of the sea, stability of the earth, firmness of the rock. I arise today through God's strength to pilot me; God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me, God's hosts to save me from snares of the devil, from temptations of vices, from everyone who desires me ill, afar and anear, alone or in a multitude. I summon today all these powers between me and evil, against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of pagandom, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of women and smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul. Christ shield me today against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that reward may come to me in abundance. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in the eye that sees me, Christ in the ear that hears me. I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through a belief in the Threeness, through a confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation. St. Patrick (ca. 377) Chantecleer is a proud rooster who dreams his approaching doom in the form of a fox. Chauntecleer is comforted by Pertelote and proceeds to greet a new day; but it was true. Reynard, full of sly iniquity, tricked and killed C's parents, and waits for him in a bed of worts. When Chantecleer spots him, Reynard plays his ego by insisting to hear Chantecleer crow, just as his amazing father did: with neck outstretched, eyes closed and standing on his tiptoes. When he sticks his neck out and closes his eyes, he's promptly snatched in the fox's jaws. As the fox flees through the forest, the captured Chantecleer -- thrice described as being carried on the fox's back -- suggests the fox should pause to tell his pursuers to give up their chase. The predator's pride is his undoing: He opens his mouth to taunt his pursuers, and Chantecleer escapes, flying up the nearest tree. The fox tries in vain to convince the wary rooster, who refuses to fall for the trick a second time. At Tara in this fateful hour, I call on all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the Earth with its starkness All these I place By God's almighty help and grace Between myself and the powers of darkness ? Infinite Regress: Singing a song about singing a song about singing a song - a bardic spell that is the only defense against some other/opposite trick. Not really interested in going meta, but if I ever did this would be the place. Think of an opposing spell she could be jumping in to sing as defense. A shorter work, but one in which this is only one of the parts of an overall structural theme. Think about the emotional ramifications of infinite regress and perhaps the opposing spell will reveal itself.