This is the text of my journal entry for my scrying of the 10th Aethyr, ZAX. See my previous post on scrying the aethyrs for instructions and a description of exactly what the Aethyrs are.
I light a candle say a prayer, recite the 19th call, and lay down with my eyes closed to let the vision overtake me.
A sensation of falling.
I am in complete blackness, but I feel as if I’m falling backwards. There is no wind indicate this is happening, just the feeling of my stomach dropping.
I hit the ground on my back.
Standing up, I am in a circle of light. High, high above there is a point of light. Around me is complete darkness. It reminds me of the spotlight in the previous Aethyr.
I call out for anyone who may be around, but receive no answer. Looking into the darkness in every direction I try to discern any features, but find none.
To my right I hear a mischievous laugh. Keese, again from the previous Aethyr, catches my attention as he shuffles off out of sight.
I call out to him. From the shadows extends his clawed hand into the light, holding a ring of keys. Old fashioned ones, like you would expect a jailer for a castle dungeon to be carrying.
He jingles them for a moment and then retreats out of sight.
I walk after him in this direction. Every so often he jingles them again so that I am able to continue following.
We come to a freestanding mirror. Looking around, the circle of light is just behind me, as if I’ve barely taken a single step beyond it despite having been following Keese.
He steps behind the mirror, leaving the ring of keys hanging on the upper left corner of it, and disappears.
It is a funhouse mirror, and makes my reflection look very wobbly. Behind me in it it appears as if I am in some sort of room, but I am unable to make it out clearly.
I retrieve the keys and attach the ring to a belt loop.
Unsure of what to do, or why I’m doing what I’m about to do, I push the mirror over. It breaks into many sharp shards of glass.
I pick one up and step back into the light, using the piece of the mirror to reflect the light from above around the area, trying to make out any features that I can.
At ground level, nothing is illuminated by this. Above, however, it looks as I’m in a chamber with a vast domed vaulted ceiling. There are no features on it, though it looks as if it is made of concrete or similar material.
As I watch, far above something begins sliding across the source of light, like a manhole cover being replaced.
I call out but still receive no answer.
Continuing to wander this area, I come to a freestanding closed door. It is very plain, like a house door. It has a frame, but no top to it, and no wall that it is attached to.
Behind this door is another. It is the same in nearly every respect, except it is slightly smaller.
Behind that, another, also smaller than the previous two. And then another, and another, and another…
The number of doors seems uncertain, like trying to count the reflections in two mirrors facing each other.
Using the ring of keys, I unlock the first door and try to open it, but after it swings slightly ajar it is blocked by the second door.
One by one, I unlock each door in turn, opening them in reverse order, such that I find myself standing in front of the original door.
I push it open and as I go to step through it I feel an immense suction and am pulled through the row of doors at a great speed.
I feel as if I’ve been shot out of a railgun.
I am floating now. Still in darkness.
But I get the sense that something is here.
Something absolutely immense.
There is no light here. I am able to move around freely by willing myself in a direction, but I cannot see a single thing.
Yet I still feel whatever is out there in the blackness.
I feel a gigantic eye open.
It is red at the outer edges, green in the middle, and yellow at its center. It is slit, like the eye of a snake or crocodile.
After a moment it closes.
Across the room, my phone buzzes as it gets a call. I would later find out that this was someone calling to ask if I had heard that a football player had suffered a serious injury on the field. I had not, nor do I watch football, nor did I know who the player was.
I have a strange insight, or perhaps intrusive thought, on the nature of “true madness”. Something about becoming so surrounded by shadows that not a single bit of light can poke through to reveal anything. I am only making a note of it here, because at the time it was very random and confusing to push through during the scrying.
Whatever is here with me is so huge that no matter where I move it still seems to be distantly gigantic. Like approaching a planet in space.
My impressions of it shift in some details while others remain the same. Try as I may, I cannot pin down the features.
It is a vaguely human-shaped figure overall. It is sitting, such that its knees are bent with its arms wrapped around them and its forehead resting on top of them, face down.
In one moment it gives me the thought of Cthulhu. Though, without face-tentacles.
The next, it seems like a naked angelic figure, with curly hair and large wings folded behind its back.
I consider calling out to it, asking if it is the governor of this place, but think better of it and instead simply meet it with silence.
As I float in the darkness before this immense being, my body dissolves into dust.
The dust falls and is caught in a chalice.
The chalice is gold in color, with red and blue gems upon it.
It is being carried by a figure in a black hooded robe, who places it upon a stone altar.
I am dust, and cannot move or speak. I can only experience the inside of the chalice.
I remain here for a while, waiting to see if something else will happen within this vision.
An uncertain amount of time passes. Nothing has changed.
I open my eyes and the vision ends.
Again, as for the previous few Aethyrs, I had not read the scrying of Aethyr 10 by either Duncan Barford or Crowley before scrying today. I am reading them now, and adding relevant similarities here:
- Duncan knows that the 10th Aethyr is inhabited by Choronzon. This is only noteworthy because I did as well, based on previous readings of his and Crowley’s scryings (though not of this particular Aethyr).
- Duncan writes of not being sure if he is completely lucid or in a dream, and of confusion. I did not include it in the description above, but at the beginning of the scrying I did wonder if I was having a “true” vision of the Aethyr, or if I was “just imagining” something, as there were no features but blackness.
- Duncan’s vision sees Choronzon manifest as a former negative relationship replaying over and over. Again, though not in my vision above, I recently had been reliving and remembering some negative aspects of certain friendships in the past.
- As far as these similarities go, this one is odd, but perhaps that is appropriate for Aethyr 10. Duncan is told. by an old and wise magician, of a serial-killer named Gormogon from the T.V. series Bones who leads a character called Zack into committing a murder. Earlier today I was speaking with a magickal colleague about a divinatory working he did with another colleague named Zack, and about how it did not turn out as intended. Specifically, they felt creeped out by it, and the communication seemed mostly random and confusing. Zack is close to ZAX, the name of this Aethyr.
Interesting that there isn’t much similarity to Duncan’s vision itself, but to external things.
As I am now finding out, Crowley did not scry the 10th Aethyr in the traditional sense, but instead proceeded with a working more closely resembling a Goetic evocation, with his scribe inside a circle fortified with divine names. Going a step further, he placed himself inside the triangle and invoked Choronzon into himself directly.
- Continuing with similarities outside of the Aethyr scrying itself, Crowley armed his scribe with a quill and a dagger, both implements of air. I did a tarot reading earlier, which identified me as the Ace of Swords: the weapon of air. Even more interestingly, the tarot reading that I did was prompted by the aforementioned magickal working by a few colleagues.
- Crowley speaks of formlessness of the Abyss, which is a reasonable description of the constant blackness in my vision.
- Crowley again speaks of formlessness, this time of Choronzon. I had a hard time pinning down any details of the immense being. I do not say that that being was in fact Choronzon, but I’m making a note here regardless.
Something additional to note here: As I’m writing this blog I keep getting interrupted by many different distractions. Also, at multiple points in my typing I looked to the screen only to realize my fingers were in the wrong place on the keyboard, and that everything I wrote looked like this:
noq kniwrh rhw axeivw rhR HW Qa
- “The Scribe”, Neuburg, writes after that Choronzon is terrified by silence. I chose to be silent to the immense being, when I felt an impulse to call out to it.
There is not much else to say here, as the majority of Crowley’s experience of this Aethyr is Choronzon’s attempts at seduction, intimidation, and lies.
I’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes now trying to get my image generation software to respond to the descriptions of images I’m putting into it, but haven’t been able to even get it to draw a simple door in the blackness. I’ve chosen one of the images that was aesthetically pleasing to be the cover image for this post, and I’ve left the rest blank.
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