“Liber Spiritus Tenebrarum” excerpt
I got another 6 pages of my pseudo-Lovecraftian grimoire/cultic scripture done today. It’s actually coming out pretty good, I think, though I still haven’t gotten quite the Old-Testament-hysterical-prophet tone that I’m looking for. Here’s a little excerpt; this particular bit is heavily influenced by Thomas Ligotti’s writing:
We are nothing, nothing, nothing but vanity and nihility.
We are not even a name, for what is a name? Are not our names naught but fragile masks that we cling to in desperation, hoping that if we hold them in front of the pulsing chaos of our forms we may convince both ourselves and others that we are eternal and unchanging?
Are you now the same as you were five years ago? Are you now the same as you were five days ago, five months ago, five hours ago? Is your body the same, your blood the same, your bone the same? I run a blade over my arm, and the flesh separates, and the blood spills. I wait, and the blood scabs, and the flesh heals, and the spilt blood is replaced. I wait longer and the scab is gone but a scar appears. In many ways large and small do our bodies change from moment to moment; and as our bodies, so with our minds. Does not your thought change from moment to moment, and your disposition from minute to minute? And your beliefs, they change more slowly except when sometimes they change in a flash, but do they too not change with the years and the seasons?
Long after anything that resembles who we were then, or are now, has passed on our names will remain, and always will people cling to their names and cry out to the heavens that they are the same person as they have been always, and always will be the same person as they are now.
And indeed there is truth to this, though not the truth that people cry out for. For a person is nothing, nothing but a few dim and hazy memories in a sea of chaos, blown about by impulses and by circumstances like snowflakes in a gray and endless void. Release our names and we will fall upwards into the empty gray sky!
We are nothing, nothing, nothing but vanity and nihility.
We are not even a name, for what is a name? Are not our names naught but fragile masks that we cling to in desperation, hoping that if we hold them in front of the pulsing chaos of our forms we may convince both ourselves and others that we are eternal and unchanging?
Are you now the same as you were five years ago? Are you now the same as you were five days ago, five months ago, five hours ago? Is your body the same, your blood the same, your bone the same? I run a blade over my arm, and the flesh separates, and the blood spills. I wait, and the blood scabs, and the flesh heals, and the spilt blood is replaced. I wait longer and the scab is gone but a scar appears. In many ways large and small do our bodies change from moment to moment; and as our bodies, so with our minds. Does not your thought change from moment to moment, and your disposition from minute to minute? And your beliefs, they change more slowly except when sometimes they change in a flash, but do they too not change with the years and the seasons?
Long after anything that resembles who we were then, or are now, has passed on our names will remain, and always will people cling to their names and cry out to the heavens that they are the same person as they have been always, and always will be the same person as they are now.
And indeed there is truth to this, though not the truth that people cry out for. For a person is nothing, nothing but a few dim and hazy memories in a sea of chaos, blown about by impulses and by circumstances like snowflakes in a gray and endless void. Release our names and we will fall upwards into the empty gray sky!