"In the race of life, genius looses the conventional runner all too easily"   Darrick Dishaw

Since first reading Lovecraft, I knew his stories were about something different. There was more to them than just weird tales of horror and the macabre. And as I noticed that others saw a hyper-validity in stories like Dreams in the Witch-house, Call of Cthulhu, and the Dunwich Horror… realized that Lovecraft wrote accurately about things he could not have known in the 1920's and 30's… and that others believed in the his Mythos as some would believe in christianity, I allowed myself to go deeper into that strange abyss of demoniacal madness and alienage!

You might say my "magnetic center" collected these substantive impressions. Along with Lovecraft's mythos, I absorbed the Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Ligotti's nihilistic nightmare of Gnosticism, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's Fourth Way teaching, and Chaos Magic Theory pioneered by Peter Caroll and Phil Hine. It became clear to me that all these disparate concepts were esoterically linked beyond the shadow of ordinary reason.

Satanism focuses on Indulgence, realizing how the world works and providing opportunity to exploit earth's carnal offerings. Humanity is earth-bound, we are physical beings with certain desires and needs; animals but at the same time more than animals. Satan represents the hidden dark forces in nature that raised man up to his current level of evolution. These black vibrations can also extend an individual's will and make him master of this world.

The Cthulhu Mythos represents something very similar. Although Cthulhu is even more "outside", more foreign, more ineffable. Cthulhu is something that we are not. Humans have nothing of the Great Old Ones in them, the Mythos is something that can occasionally be glimpsed and rarely understood. Certain cultists, artists, and madmen can come to know the eldritch truths from dimensions unknown. This knowledge will change a person; an individual will become more like a thing from His universe than an earth-bound human. If Cthulhu is sought hard enough, He will show His monstrous self. And the seeker of forbidden wisdom will be changed!

The Fourth Way is about self-development, man's place in the scheme of things. "Our daily life, our profession, our trade, our occupation, etc., are nothing but a dream with which we identify. But this understanding comes slowly - when we understand better what sleep and mechanicalness means and why mankind is called asleep and life is called mechanical." Maruice Nicoll

From a very young age, I was filled with darkness. Satanism, Cthulhuism, and Yog Sothothery. Those were my guides because those were the things I was interested in.

I used to use elaborate ceremonial Satanic Rituals to accomplish something by black magic. One great effort to punch through everyday "reality". Now, however, I use lots of little efforts. I find that exerting my will frequently and using less formal means, will fatigue "reality" and make a well-worn gateway that can be used over and over again.

I happen to like structure and a set God or Gods. Even though the power of magic begins and ends with the magician, I believe that there exists a "shadowy middle ground" where a higher power intervenes. Unless we are the potential Gods ourselves, unable to awaken our potential. Perhaps then we are worshipping a part of ourselves that we will never reach? It has occurred to me that perhaps all of the power, all the magic, and all of the will lies within the magician himself, fast asleep. The person next to you, your friend, neighbor, boss, teacher… they are machines that react to stimulus without thinking, without deliberate and conscious thought.

We are plagued by our illusions of this world, we are divided, we identify with external events and situations and pretend that they are us, we are consumed by negative emotion. Realizing our situation, some of us see no choice but to change ourselves, self-develop, struggle with our being until we start to reach a higher awareness. Where is our attention if not on ourselves and our mechanicalness? We are daydreaming, not observing, asleep when we need to remember ourselves, put our attention on what we are doing. We must continually put in effort today, here and now, to become conscious.

Daily self-work can produce great change in us. In the Bible, when God was asked who He was, the response was "I AM". Self-remembering will lead to a higher state of consciousness, as close as we may come to being Gods ourselves. And a person who is not divided, does not identify with things to the point of loosing themselves, a person who is not asleep… such a person starts to attain more valuable qualities that they never had before.

We are malleable, as is "reality" around us. We can change and so can the world. Humans are made of the same stuff as the universe, meaning that if we are aware of ourselves and obtain the control and the will that we are lacking, we may be able to awaken things outside of us. There is a faculty within struggling individuals that can produce inner consciousness. This self-development can alter external things and events.

The Gnostic Nightmare of Ligotti is about reaching farther, trying to get at the ultimate truth of existence, the universe, and reality… and finding it a barren wasteland. These concepts don't exist for man as he is. A sly man who realizes that life is meaningless as it is being currently lived, has some hope for inner development, self created change. Only a man of higher being might come to understand existence, the universe, and reality.

And once that ultimate truth is understood, it changes things. Not with simple logic, but far beyond ordinary reason. This reaching farther has to do with the nature of revelation. When the darkness has been shed upon essence, unimaginable things are revealed: funhouse mirrors, people you know melting into holographic energy fields, alien demonic entities waiting outside time and space, wizards casting the spells which leave nothing unaltered.

The horrible things of this world are waiting in the dark places of the inside. Our inner-universe is the theater and the magician chooses what play is performed, who is to attend, and what scenes will unfold. Our grotesque theater is also influenced by things completely separate from ourselves. Monsters living in the hyperspace of twilight, patient for release; the chance to work their madness.

When it comes to magic and inner-development, slow and steady wins the race. One huge effort is not enough. The sorcerer is on a journey, and he should know that no matter how far he walks or where he goes there is no destination. The sorcerer will progress on his journey until the end of time. There is always farther, always more road to travel. Understanding and the Power to Change are the two things you can't get enough of.