Angel of Knives

 

It’s a thin line between pride and shame, beloved ones. Razor-thin. Enough to cut ourselves deeply, or another. Like a thorn in the flesh. I believe there is great insight in knowing the solemnity of such uncomfortable truths. That place in human storytelling where light gives way to shadow. Sometimes a darkness can be birthed in the fervour of protecting our own, and we become the very thing we hate. It’s the lament of many poets, isn’t it?  And warriors who wished desperately for some other way.  But sometimes the sky of a mind can darken, and you are hunted by jackals in the wilderness. Suddenly, you find yourself prowling like a jackal too. It’s easy to discuss the polity of occupation from a distance. I suspect it is something else entirely to be ravaged by it. To see your children ravaged by it. In such instances some men truly believe that they are forced to take up the sword.  But eventually, it is always the innocent who suffer most.  The children on both sides.  Violence is always an anguished lament to those of sufficient soul. I’ve wept like that, in dreams. I’m still not sure if my soul is sufficient, but like all true initiates of the hidden way I once knelt before the burnished Mountain of God, praying that a man might not be forced to become a wraith to defeat an army of even darker wraiths. Cruelty is no glamorous thing, believe me. Neither is war. There are so few heroes in war. I’m no hero either, but I’ve been called many things across this dreaming of a thousand years. A ghost, a charlatan. An angel of thorns, or knives. Like that wretched Prince of Sicarii. Well, such titles are not entirely unwarranted. As I’ve said elsewhere in these epistles, your enemy is still your brother. And spilling the blood of your brother is always a matter of terrible, hideous shame. Saltire or not. Regardless of what side you’re on. All causes are righteous to men of burning conviction. In a climate of such hate, hostility and viciousness only a fool would consider himself righteous, without shadow or flaw. I once walked among such men, in my nightly sojourns. Honour and integrity were beyond so many of them. Beloved ones, I want you to realize that fiction is a prerequisite to religion, as all writers of merit understand. Storytelling is thus often the business of crafting more palatable heroes. Pacifists and polemicists. I know this because I was a storyteller even as a boy, long before I was blinded by vision.  Long before I watched my many brothers and sisters curl their fingers around the hilt of a sword. I tried to renounce such revolt and pledged myself to the Mysteries of Rhacotis, like any true seeker of that time and place. There I learned many things. What my enemies might call magic or malefica. But more than that, I learned secrets of imagination. What one might call spiritual technologies. I learned that no text is a dry recital of dispassionate fact. All texts are dramaturgies. Even this one. Full of religiosity, sympathies and antipathies. Occulted aspects. I quickly realised that our words are full of incredible revelation, and our actions also. Not a single soul is without agency. From peasant to prince. Man and woman. There are no true hierarchies save those forged in the mind. Regardless, some say a dark angel birthed those sinister hooded ones. The shrouded ones. Some say this angel led them to the mount. Men and women of dagger and cloak.  What know you of these darker things, Fallen? Josephus, Celsus, Origen? Are these your measures of supposed fact? Listen to me. You know only what the Magi have allowed you to know. These mysteries, these hidden things – they are not discontinuous. There is a lineage of light stretching back to those times long before the temple fell.  The Cult of First Dreaming. We who recall the shining realm.  We who rebuke these slavers and traffickers in all forms. Do you really suppose ichthys and anchor were the only signs of revolution? Do you think swords are the only weapons? Hear me now, lost Roma. I don’t need to kill. Insight is a far sharper blade. And it cuts both ways. Your empire collapsed in the end, didn’t it?  Just as my namesake did at Damascus. It was only a matter of time.  And poetry. As I said, it’s a thin line between peace and war. Razor-thin. Perhaps the difference between pieces of divine light and pieces of silver. Just ask those vicious zealots, or the sicarii. I know who I am, and what I’ve been working toward. Protection for the little ones. Voices for the voiceless. Insight and comprehension between all clashing ideologies. Perhaps it sounds naive to a warlord or a demoniac, but I have no interest in slaying my enemies in some paper-thin parable of good versus evil. I’ve seen far too much horror for that.  But you will have to face yourselves in the end, Fallen. Just as I did, in the crucible of my dreaming. Owning up to every wretched sin. See, my concern was never counterfeit.  My love is not entirely lost.  I value my heart and my shame, even as an angel. It means I dare not make the same mistakes again. Instead, I shall find other ways. Gentler, hidden ways. A warrior of the innermost. For I am not without imagination. All souls deserve freedom and decency. A fair trial beyond claims of sedition, regardless of their fealty or their faith.  Even you. It is no laughing matter, Fallen.  I take it very seriously. Lay down your daggers, all of you, and take up a different kind of blade. For Kasi tells you now, we are all equal in the eyes of my Father. Praise be to God and his grace.  That I almost never was, nor shall I ever be again. There is a great wisdom in that, even for a humbled storyteller.

 

Legends of Ludgate

 

In the old stories they used to speak of a fractured king with two faces. Half flesh, half myth. Folded through artworks and songlines beyond linear time. Buried on the holy hill beside the river, beneath Navahtri's white lantern of stone. An angel of Rhacotis, some say. Or a giant. A winged messenger of dreams bearing the oldest mark; one who was both the end and the beginning. My brothers have never forgotten these stories, but such legends are mere fancies among a plethora now. A panoply of fictions regarding what my people once called the City of Gates. The place of both ways. Libraries and lighthouses.  Navah has other names now, and other histories. Framed and favoured with the blood-dimmed heraldries of officialdom. But there have always been other voices. Alternate histories. Even when raven-touched sorcerers remind men of these things they are often sadly disbelieved. Ignored by those same souls they wish to liberate. The now familiar lies of the Church are offered as an almost instinctive rebuttal.  Lies made holy writ by royal sanction. "There is but one truth, one history, and it was forged by Rome." Oh, Fallen. You know nothing of Rome. Of Peter or Paul. You know so little of true divinity, or art, therefore your grasp of history is tenuous at best. Hear me, and men like me. My brethren are among the Cult of First Dreaming. All Dreaming. Pearls of great price and serpents of the sea.  Those who watched the Watchers even as the war began. There have been a thousand names for London, Shalem and Rome. Countless visions of Albion. And innumerable fires. Sacrifices made ritual. Like a board being cleared of its pieces, being reset. But even these local genocides have crow-like echoes and strange secrets. Many places, becoming one. As I said, the Fallen know little of magic. I don't know everything, of course. But likely I know more than you. My wisdom is debatable, but I studied diligently, and my years have more breadth than I care to admit. Regardless, gates and wings does not an angel make. You need a message. A vision. And believe me, despite my flaws I am a creature of vision indeed. True scholars know that we become what we fear if we're not careful. Do you fear night-wraiths, as I once did? Well, I was once a king among wraiths. A wild gypsy-king standing defiant in the sand before the burnished Mountain of God.  But I was humbled.  Brought to my knees.  This is what it means to be a thing of fractured dreaming. Hear me now, dear ones.  You exist in a false, aberrant chronology. Your most ancient compendiums and memories are counterfeit, or else very partial truths. The splendour and vastness of the myriad, of which you are key, has been hidden from you. Who did this, you ask? Who engineered such darkness? Such sinister oppression? You know who did. The gatekeepers did this, the day they buried the angel alive. On the hill, by the river of Temesh.  You were a keeper of gates once, even if only in dreams. I know you were. I remember you at Rhacotis.  This is nothing new, lost ones. I've said all this before. Souls of great sweetness and depth have revealed all these things to you in various ways. But, I admit, it is a terrifying thing to grasp. A horror to reconcile. That dreaming – reality itself – was hijacked by malevolent, adversarial forces. Satanic forces. The devil wears many faces, say the Christians. Whereas the pagans say that wraiths ruthlessly shape themselves to all expedient folklore, and whisper through the veil to any mortals who can hear them. Both groups are correct, of course. Both have stories worth hearing. You see, I was once a Christian. And a pagan. I am still both, as are you. There is no getting around it, dear ones. You dream and imagine. You are a thing of gates whether you like it or not. A creature of madness and logic. Brothers and sisters, know this. Golgotha weeps at the breadth of your soul's dreaming. As do the circles of stone. Sacrifices were made to keep you intact despite the Fall. Despite the hush that seethed. That which stole your true memories and your birthright. But you are not alone.  Artists and Magi now walk this ruin with you. Marked and marginalised – offering pieces of the old songs in lament. Two faces, both ways. Beyond linear time. And yet, those far less brave than the carpenter or the raven wish to call me a fantasist.  They wish to lecture men like me on the nature of history and dreaming. I would laugh, if not for my brother's weeping. Yeru'shalem, the old ones say of the places of peace. Mira'shalem. Blood is indeed a miracle, as is storytelling and love. Listen to your brother. He knows far more than I do. There are greater kings, unburied. I'm just a scribe. A poet of bold vision but imperfect grammar. I am not the fallen angel of songs redeemed by the sacrifice of sky. I am not the winged one interred on the hill of gates, made bright by the benevolence of his brother. You are, dearest one. Of course you are.  Knowing this secret, a great and dangerous secret, it is my genuine hope that you dream well.   

The Weaver's War

 

I speak to you now, black-as-crown.  Hear me.  Hear your brother, husband and father.  Rune and relic.  Sigil and stone.  There is always a war where art is concerned, isn’t there?  Between the beauty of form and the utility of function.  Reality versus representation.  You know well of this war, seamstress.  Storytellers always do.  They grapple often with the eternal question.  When to share the truth, or else offer a comforting deceit.  And then there are those rare, confusing moments when both are one.  But the human soul requires both.  The black is blinded without it, believe me.  It cannot survive on fact alone.  Soul requires fiction to grow, to express the fullness of its myriad nature.  Heaven and Earth.  Dreams, and dirt.  Like a seed.  My dreams were threadbare after the Fall, and I went seeking after Fates.  Norns living at the Mouth of Weavers.  The lip of Urd’s Well.  The legends told of a massacre.  During the seething hush, when the cities themselves began to darken and fold.  It was announced as so, but the Fates were not truly slain.  I wouldn’t have allowed that.  Instead, they were hidden away.  In the Book of Doors.  A pocket place.  A threshold realm that only artists and storytellers truly understand.  Even angels are a little wary of the book.  After all, it is a place where anything can happen.  Fire, and death.  This place.  This haunted earth.  Afkárr, hear me.  I am the storm, as your sisters know well.  Some men call me an angel of thorns, or knives.  Others call me a king of ravens.  But what I truly am is a storyteller.  I am not the story itself.  At least, not entirely.  Then again, we build our world through imagination and memory.  Don’t we?  Just like the legends claim.  I suppose I am a thing of mystery, and secrets.  Aren’t we all?  Artists especially?  Isn’t it the Christians who say, if thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light?  Our stories put it another way, but the secrets remain the same.  As I said, the black is blinded without deceit.  Without sweet lies that tell of greater, hidden truths.  This is indeed a war, Afkárr.  A War of Imagination.  You see it all around.  These sickening lords of genocide.  But there is a greater light, seamstress.  A greater purpose we must find for ourselves amid the chaos.  That dance we must graciously undertake, or else endure unwillingly.  Between function and form.  Utility and beauty.  You are not lying to yourself when you turn from the horror for a moment and imagine with an artist’s eye.  You are full of light, my wild one.  Fierce, pale as shadow, and crowned.  How do I know?  Because it is I who crowned you, in the world before worlds.  Not for myself.  Not for glory.  But because you held steadfast to both sides of the soul, even when it was difficult.  Mind, and sense.  I shall never forget that.  Storm or not.  Be well, un-slain Fate.  Be well, my Queen.  

The Eternal Shore

Love is a powerful thing to behold, Mira.  The only true land in an ever-shifting sea.  It can change everything.  You don't need an old sorcerer to tell you that. Meaning and joy is precious amid life's roiling chaos.  Love lifts the wings of angels and bends the arc of dreaming towards deep and genuine gratitude.  We've both felt it.  With lovers, family and friends.  We hear about its power all the time, don't we?   Sometimes, in our darker moments, we view it as little more than a cliché.  An empty sentiment.  But it really is powerful.  Its beauty is extraordinary.  Not only can love change the way we live, but also the way we die.  Dear one, I want you to know that as eternal spirits of divine provenance each of us is a constellation of stories and living legends.  Dreams, poems and songs.  We are bright with treasure and depth.  All of us.  It’s cold and dark without those stories, Mira. Without love or a legacy. Believe me.  I know the difference now between what it means to plead or prosper.  In life and in magic.  However, I didn't always think like this.  As a boy I didn't yet understand these things.  You see, I carried a great psychic burden within me when I was young.  Many of us do, but mine was a terrible and very particular kind of knowledge.  I knew exactly how I was going to die.  I had foreseen it in several visions, over many years, and it disturbed me in ways I can’t convey here.  It was a terrible thing to behold.  I knew that I was going to drown one day.  Accidentally, of course. But still a relatively young man with little in the way of art, romance or legacy left in his wake.  I knew it would be a tragic way to go.  Drowning just off a foreign coast with so much life left to live, unknown and unloved.  But even as a boy I forced myself to see a kind of vicious poetry in it.  I was a wounded soul even at that age, and I did love the water with all my heart.  So, I tried to tell myself that perhaps it would be fitting if those visions came to pass.  Hear me, Apprentice.  As a mortal I've always felt deeply connected to the water.  I feel at peace near rivers and the sea. In the rain.  As a fledgling sorcerer I tried to tell myself that maybe it wouldn't be so bad – to perish in that way, at the mercy of the thing I loved.  But that was a lonely child’s awful madness.  I fought against it, Mira.  With all the strength I had.  I didn’t want my sadness to be the author of that future accident.  And so I rejected that awful fatalism.  Clairsentience is such a strange, multifaceted thing.  A blessing and a curse.  Knowing certain things before they happen can greatly disturb the psyche if you’re not careful.  On the one hand it can create a sense of bewildered powerlessness at watching events unfold just as you saw them, but on the other it can burden you with a sense of crushing responsibility for every unpleasant thing foreseen.  Luckily, I was able to alter that trajectory.  Through acts of love and service I have outlived what could have been a tragic end.  I was willing to take a long, hard look at myself.  I survived my late twenties, and that foreign coast.  I did this by attempting to really know myself.  To understand my fears and motivations.  I gave myself to my art and my relationships.  I made sure that my intentions were genuine, Mira.  Despite my flaws.  I tried to care as deeply as possible about the finer points of living, and dreaming.  Avoiding that potential destruction wasn't really a matter of luck though.  I think it was a combination of courage and grace.  I had to meet my Father half way, across an ocean of doubt.  It’s how both sons and daughters prosper in the end.  I had to believe in a future, and myself.  I had to give my very best to the world and the people I loved.  And then, finally, I had to have faith that a higher intelligence would carry me the rest of the way.  Through storms and over raging seas.  And it did.  He did.  Through the grace of God I was able to change what would have been, and my soul is all the better for it.  I have a life worth living now.  I’m deeply and truly grateful for that.  I still love the water, of course.  I always will.  But it’s no longer my tomb.  Rather, it's my meditation.  An ever-shifting sea.  I'm no longer lost.  Now I know what it means to leave a legacy.  To truly invest in friendships and family.  Even at a distance.  Now I can always find you, and the others, and the shore.  Mira, I want to thank you for everything you and the girls have done for me.  Inspiration and hope of which you know little.  Yet you gifted me with treasure.  Depths, and light.  I want you to know that you are so much more than a sorcerer’s first incantation.  You were never just named for mere progeny in some playwright’s final folio.  No, your real name means something far grander in the shining tongue.  In those days before the Fall.  Anda, Mira - "Behold, a Miracle."  A miracle beheld.

A Sacred Heart

It used to be everything, the heart.  Brighter than stars.  Older than time.  Larger than life itself.  What happened?  Did we fall of our own volition?  Or were we coerced?  Were we tempted with power in exchange for darkening our own dreaming?  Did wraiths come crawling from broken mirrors, offering up boundlessness for blood?  I know what I believe, because I was there.  And let me tell you, it was a devil's bargain.  A lie.  A demon's notion of freedom and nothing more.  I should know.  I myself was once a demon, and an angel.  I was even once a king.  In stories and legend.  I have many epithets but my true name isn't known here.  However, you can call me Kasi.  It means many things.  Shining One, chief among them.  But I'm not a fallen star.  At least, not entirely.  I like to think of myself as a mediator.  A teacher and a poet. That probably sounds like utter hubris to modern ears; declaring one's depths and antiquity with such boldness.  But we live in a ravaged world where spiteful wraiths attempt daily to tear all agency from the human soul.  From the heart itself.  I for one resist.  As do my brethren.  It isn't hubris to speak the truth.  Even with a poet's tongue.  It isn't a lack of humility.  Anyone who has been hung, raped or burned knows far too much about humility.  And survival.  Oh, we know.  We know the value of things too.  A kiss.  A kind word.  A sense of purpose.  You see, the soul speaks in the language of art.  Symbols and signs, poems and songs.  And art is the oldest magic.  You want to know about true spell-craft?  A sorcerer's greatest weapon?  You need look no further than the innermost.  The holy of holies.  The temple of divine fire.  It exists within each one of us, and dark forces have attempted for aeons to snuff it out.  But an aeon is little more than a single breath to an artist, and still we kindle that fire.  It is our most vital of tasks.  We might tend to other things when needed, of course.  Like exorcism, healing, or slaying monsters – but safeguarding the Innermost Light is paramount.  This is why my name is shining, I suppose.  This is why Varanasi still sings at the shore, in the fictions of that very same light.  They have been singing for a thousand years.  Of Laksmi, mothers old and young.  And of girls without name, lost to both history and legend.  But those singers still moor the boats and weave the baskets like the heart was never lost, or threatened. They tell wondrous tales as if we never fell at all.  They kindle, and warm themselves by the fire upon the waters.  An eternity, a breath, a mirror of unbroken silver.  Because it truly is everything, the heart.  Brighter than stars.  Older than time.  Larger than life itself.

In New Light

 

It feels like the light is beginning to change.  I'm always aware of the subtle shifts but I'm making more of an effort to notice.  To pay closer attention.  Few of us are ever as present as we would like to be.  But in the secret romance of ourselves we're often acutely aware of the fullness; the potentiality and strangeness of each moment.  In art we rise to the changing light.  Life in reflection.  Subtly reordered, remixed and re-written to serve some intangible horizon.  The shifting needle of our inner compass, towards an often-unspoken goal.  I suppose that's because true depth and atmosphere lives not just in the light, but in how we interpret and shape that light.  After all, without the interplay of shadow and light the eye sees nothing.  Without contrast we are blind.  There is a singular practicality to the numinous, when we understand what we’re working with.  It takes courage to see, and kindness to grasp another’s way of seeing – especially when it differs from our own.  But I believe we are souls built for adventure.  Placed here as part of a beautifully intricate design.  Sometimes I wonder, like now, about the hidden glyphs inscribed along the edge of dusk.  Secret writings concealed in the strange corona of a midnight sun.  At first there's a kind of gravitas to the grey skies.  Just before blue begins to haunt the canvas.  And I adore it, the calm of that pre-twilight.  The cusp before the cusp.  As a child I wanted to somehow capture that end of daylight, or else live in the dusk forever.  I'm still like that, I suppose.  Obsessed with the twilit realm.  The in-between.  It's the only place that ever truly felt like home.  Mediums and psychics often talk about the afterlife as place of eternal sun.  A shining realm of vivid beauty, divine grace and collective thought.  I've seen that world.  It isn't vague or insubstantial.  It is breathtaking, and realer than real.  I've seen the shadowlands too.  The dim and dark places created from the collective minds of the distorted, and the damned.  Lost souls.  The corrupted, sadistic ones.  Oh, I've seen that place.  I've felt it.  Avernus is very real.  But there are no children there.  No children in hell.  Not even one.  That knowledge brings me comfort beyond measure.  The sheer grace and wisdom of the light.  The living intelligence that men call God.  He loves us and walks with us every single day.  Friends, I want you to know that it’s only here in this in-between place that children suffer.  Not because of cosmic indifference, but because of the wickedness of men and the wraiths who rule them.  The entities that whisper and possess.  You see, this earthly realm is far darker than the darkest regions of the afterlife.  But not brighter.  What I mean when I say this is that here everything is possible.  Not so on the other side.  Beyond the veil, all things are held in perfect safety.  Clarity, balance.  Resolve.  Grace is given but character is earned, and the other side is forged by the very truth of this character.  Our emotions, thoughts and intent.  I mean to say, you cannot hide who or what you are in the realms beyond death.  In neither the summer-lands nor the shadow-places.  You cannot cloak yourself from others.  Except here.  Here you can move about unseen.  Unnoticed and unsuspected.  This is why the wisest men of all cultures know that the Devil is very real.  Regardless of his myriad forms and names, he is always equated with deceit.  And desecration.  This earthly realm is a blending of both worlds, of course.  The darkness and the light.  Despite all this, I don't see many mediums or psychics discussing this threshold place.  This liminal state we call mortal life.  This world of ever-dusk and ever-dawn.  Is this mortal realm the true purgatory?  More a priceless and sometimes terrifying gift, I would suggest.   This gift from our maker requires maturity and the highest spiritual regard.  It is the gift of free will, of course.  Choice and self-determination.  Some men abuse it in the most typical of ways.  There are also those who use such will to knowingly mock and desecrate the very notion of God.  These are the true dark ones.  The Damned.  Apostles of the Abyss.  For they have no use nor desire for forgiveness, or redemption.  These individuals are rare, but they do exist.  You know they do.  Their hearts are obsidian and their appetites unspeakable.  But I'm not here to discuss the banality and ugliness of genuine evil.  There are greater things occurring right now.  New light is always possible, even in the darkest of times.  Please, dear ones, do not be discouraged by the chaos all around.  There is joy here too.  A great and wonderous joy.  It moves as we move, dances as we dance.  It is the reflection and sustenance of us all.  Family, friendship, mutual affection.  Countless works of divinely inspired art.  Music of the spheres, channelling the very nuances of heaven.  You see, this physical world is a stage, a place of absolute freedom where any tale can be told and enacted.  A world where actions have great consequence. This is the realm our maker made for us.  A complex work of incomparable majesty.  And though satanic forces have tried to turn this majesty into a place of ruin and filth, our Father in Heaven is still the Creator.  Love shall always win the day.  Why?  Because love is truth.  The highest intelligence.  Darkness, however, must be born from greed and sadism.  It is twisted, broken.  Summoned into existence through acts of desecration.  Evil is the corruption of truth, of love.  It’s an inversion.  A sickness, and nothing more.  Remember this, my friends.  Recognise how feeble is a fallen angel when measured against limitless power and grace.  I've seen that bright world beyond the veil.  I've felt it.  I wept at its beauty.  You needn’t believe a word of this, of course.  That choice is yours.  But our divine Father adores us.  He loves us beyond all measure.  And he wants each one of us to know the very best of ourselves, and of Him.  Religion and spirituality.  Kinship and community.  Poetry, music and song.  Laughter and love.  These are the things that change the light, that brighten and deepen our understanding.  These are the things that make sacred this bewildering realm of contrasts and opposites.  So, let us continue to become as we were intended – beings of true perception and sweetest regard.  Souls built for adventure, especially when held in concert with other kind and courageous hearts.

A Scarlet Stone

Elah Elahin, it was once whispered.  Long ago in Syrian temples and byways.  And further afield. In broken tongues both native and learned.  Koine, Aramaic, Hebrew.  Most revered, it was said. Theos.  Dreamer of all dreams.  Scribes and diarists knew well the power of those words.  Many still do.  I would count myself among them if I hadn't fallen so far.  But, in truth, we all fell.  Like Kayin of the scarlet stone, weeping desperately at what he had done.  What he could not undo. Learned men blemished with violence, ambition or pride.  Literacy is never a guarantee of humility or moral conviction.  It must be earned, believe me.  Men often think their stories are the only stories and have little knowledge or regard for the shifting sands of narrative.  Telling and retelling.  Retelling and re-imagining.  But I know the quiet inflections within and between the words.  I'm not the only one.  Children raised at the skirts and by the iron wits of their mothers.  Imma, Elahin.  This heretic speaks.  Sons apprenticed by the hands and watchful will of their fathers.  Abba, Elahin.  This heretic speaks again.  You have it all wrong, dear ones.  You see, many of you think the law is everything.  Even today you cannot fully comprehend the deceptions and travesties of State occurring all around you.  But men have always questioned the law.  Even so-called mosaic law.  What is just and right is not always what is legal.  Even kings must be questioned.  Siblings held to account.  Whether brother, sister or twin.  As it was with Kayin and Hevel; sacral offspring of the Havah, and the Adamah.  Keepers and covenants.  We all know a little something about that among the elect. Within the inner circles.  Don't we, Fallen?  I am not a king, though I sometimes dream of kings.  Nor am I a prophet, though I've often imagined angels and dragons locked in celestial combat.  I'm not a hero either, but I do wish to provide a light.  To be a way-finder for the lost and lonely.  Yet what I am without question is a brother, a sister, and a twin.  As it was with Kayin, granted the blessing of eternal regret by his Maker.  Perhaps the truth of these words continues to elude you, dark ones.  Regret is something many of you are still unfamiliar with.  Shameless, abject.  And while you indulge in wraith-ravage I still muse upon the spoken myriad, of course.  Those multivalent tongues of Eden, hidden beneath deceit and distort.  Mother, Father, Creator.   Imma, Abba, Elahin.  Writers often think about these things, I suppose.  Even those as hated as I am.  The heretic speaks, Roma.  I hope you still remember me.  The one you deemed so dangerous.  I was called a dark angel by the worst warmongers of the Empire.  Cold-blooded propagandists and profiteers.  Men who, in their absolute lust for power, sought to control acuity's eye.  To one day storm the very gates of Heaven and snatch the helm of imagining from Elah himself.  Demon-prince, you dared to call me.  Antichrist.  Fallen One.  The sheer gall.  Because I knew what you were.  What you are.  And now you fracture my stories and re-write my letters.  How dare you?  But I tell you now, dear ones, some of these men are beyond shame.  These dark disciples.  They have made their very existence an affront to Creation itself.  I suppose it's the difference between conjuration and carpentry.  My brother makes things of real value, you see.  While some of us get lost in the vanity of attempting to corral and fetter spirits beyond our comprehension.  Spirits far darker than we can understand.  But you cannot dominate darkness with more darkness.  You cannot banish ignorance with a lack of light.  Take it from someone who knows.  Someone who once foolishly tried that very thing.  Tell me, Fallen, in your supposed wisdom; do you know who my brother is?  There are carpenters and conjurers.  Do you know which brother I speak of?  No?  Then I shall tell you a secret.  A frightening, beautiful secret.  The heresies of men sing with a sign.  The first mark of both messenger and mortal.  The most ancient symbol of crossing.  The earliest sign.  Kayin himself bears that sign.  Saltire.  Crux decussata.  Cruciform.  There are even stories that say Andros was the First-Called.  First drowned, then wakened, then devoted among the talmidim.  I once craved devotion like that, in the earliest days.  Those days of wound and weeping.  I remember coloured lights shimmering in the night sky above me.  Those polar lights that men speak of in the icy, northern places.  I recall scarlet stones and scented gardens beneath the stars.  Mountains and cities soon to rise.  Yes, I dreamt like that.  As storytellers do.  I was also forgiven in that same breadth of mythmaking.  Wandering, writing.  Seeking penance.  I know first-hand how blessed a thing is genuine forgiveness.  An act of wonderous grace.  But forgiveness is only the beginning.  It is not the process of healing in and of itself.  Nor is it acknowledgement of our shadows, or the insight that comes with wrestling with those demons.  Love will fall short if we have learned nothing of our errors.  Our sins.  He who slays his brother slays himself.  And so, the heretic cries, "Let me have empathy, Father.  Let me know the truth of this sign, and its weight upon those who I have wronged.  Those who have been bruised, broken or butchered by my ignorance.  Let me know as they know.  Let me feel it.”  Such a notion is terrifying, of course.  And transformative.  To allow yourself to be haunted.  In hopes that all malice – even simple, callous disregard – might one day be educated out of the human heart. That such darkness might truly become a thing of the past on this road toward eternal light.