Author’s Note: This volume serves as both a basic introduction to key concepts behind the Gnosis, and a personal volume concerning my explorations with intuitively exploring the Gnosis myself. Modifications I will make to this article in the near future include adding an additional section about the personal power of practitioners.
Edit made 08/03/22: I added a section titled “The Touch of a God” and I corrected the document for typos.
I wish to hear and embrace the audient abyss, and so in order to help others comphrend, and because I feel so compelled, like the Mad Arab, I write.
This volume is a retrospective on my own understanding of the core of the Outer Gnosis and the nature of the path itself. As I have grown in my spiritual practice I find it necessary to be a guiding light to others in the field with regards to work with the eldritch and the void itself.
These are notes from my actual magical practice. My work is formally no longer theory.
△△△△
An Essay On Insanity:
The eldritch is naturally incomprehensible by humanity. Its scarcest whispers to humanity, if not funneled by the unconscious and brought forth appropriately, can be overwhelming to the human pysche. The eldritch is a force which originates outside of humanity, of Earth, of this plane, and of the other stabler energetic forces. This raw power is corrosive by its nature and causes insanity when grasped fully and completely.
Insanity as a starting point in one’s Self, however, is conductive to eldritch and void work precisely for this reason. Insanity is naturally incomprehensible. It is something which is not fully understood by modern science, and rather can only be completely understood by a being after they have experienced it, or while within its throes.
A sort of fragmentation of ones being is necessary to truly understand the eldritch without succumbing to insanity, for it is the realm of your mind already.
The eldritch is something which I believe is often mislabeled, in terms of its effects on the human psyche and the body of one who should not be on this path or is otherwise ill prepared. It is not, and was never, a matter of something being so ugly and horrific as to utterly destroy someone’s being, but rather, of someone finding what they were never meant to discover.
These are beings which embody and are concepts which are truly beyond the realm of the understanding of most of humanity. Something which naturally corrodes, opens up souls, and reveals truths to those who are willing, ready, and able to accept them.
△△△△
A Glitch in the Void:
“And beyond all else he glimpsed an infinite gulf of darkness, where solid and semi-solid forms were known only by their windy stirrings, and cloudy patterns of force seemed to superimpose order on chaos and hold forth a key to all the paradoxes and arcana of the worlds we know.”
– HPL, “The Haunter of the Dark”
The eldritch as a force which controls chaos among the void, and yet is chaos personified is an interesting treatise, and I believe that one way of understanding and embracing the eldritch is by diving into this chaos. This requires delving into the inner depths of one’s Self and wrenching out your inner Shadow, of unleashing it and learning to meld with it.
To expound on my viewpoint of the eldritch and insanity, the eldritch is something which naturally defies order. Where it walks, chaos roosts and order cannot find rest within the hearts of already sane men. Warped geometry, worlds undiscovered by man, and corruptive sentient power are forever the domain of the void, and especially the eldritch.
The void as the ice and the eldritch as the burning black flame of its Will.
The eldritch is the sentient darkness which escaped from the void and refused to be assimilated into the endless forever consuming chaos, and yet has two forever sleeping beings as its heralds and very core. (To roughly paraphrase a dear friend.)
△△△△
And What of the Darkness?
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”
– Milton, Paradise Lost, Adam to GOD
Ultimately, I had no idea gods could be suicidal until I spoke with a friend who told me Azathoth wants desperately to die. In all of my years of being spiritual, of being Christian and then shirking my upbringing, of discovering paganism and eventually delving into spirit work, I had literally no conception of an all powerful being wanting to cease existing.
The collective void is a milky, black tar of unlimited potential, and yet even the being which controls all of this desires to end itself.
This path is full of secrets like that. It is not the poison path, of the scarred body, but rather it is the path of the mind scarred by knowledge which forces its full being open to truly perceive the truth of the universe.
What does the truth of the gods wanting to die say about life, and about us, as creatures of the Outer Gnosis? As individuals who may contain voidic, celestial, and eldritch energy and soul fragments, and who yet have our own desires, independence, and needs, in a more optimistic light this experience of being the partial vessel for a god or entity may be an opportunity for both us and our deities to discover a light, or at least a less dark, part of life.
At the very least, the grace of this desperation from deity, from the physical emanation of the void and the collective light, allows us as humans to have distance from the gaping abyss of our own suicidal maws, as well as those of the universe itself.
The secrets and the darkness of The Outer Gnosis, the wild impulses, the drive to discover the essence of the darkest parts of living, is what lies on this path. What you can See, Feel, and Experience is what is able to be able to be leveraged against others. The clarity, potential, and power of your own being allows you to tap into your own power and those of the suicidal maw, of pain and suffering and the loneliness of the void itself. What you See cannot be unseen, what your subconscious sees will never be forgotten, and the void waits patiently for you to initiate yourself into its path.
Learn self control, patience, stillness, and to listen. Explore. Do, as faith without works will get you nowhere in this path.
Here within the eldritch lies darkness, power, and truth. As one of its heralds, I implore you to travel carefully and know thyself.
△△△△
Added 08/02/22 –
The Touch of the Gods: A Note on First Contact
One of the brilliant aspects concerning the Outer Gnosis is the ability for the touch and knowledge of the inner Self and of communion, communication, or honest conceptualization with its essence to be extremely rewarding. It is an electrifying feeling to know and grasp secrets of the universe and of living that others only dream and then forget.
To touch this current and have it flow through you is that beginning of waking up and realizing that what was grasped in your dreams is an eternal truth. Or to put it more plainly, what is discovered through work with the Outer Gnosis reveals what is usually hidden within human consciousness. It changes your views regarding the world and how it works, because the eldritch is something which exists outside of Earth and is not inherently tied to.
What does this touch feel like, and what does it grant? I will not share my full experience, but the overall feeling contains wonderment, awe, and the expansiveness of the cosmos all at once. It contains the glory of the creation and heartbeat of the universe, and yet a chill as you know you are apart of and yet outside of something that is much, much larger than you.
It grants, of course, a door to the universe and its knowledge, of gods as old as its beginning, and, perhaps, a fraction of its being.
△△△△
Notes on Pathwork:
– Generally, if you are not already eldritch most deities in the “pantheon” may not bother to give you the time of day. If you are not associated with a voidic or eldritch current, they legitimately have little reason to interact with you unless you want to become eldritch.
– Formally, I retract my statement about worshipping eldritches being unwise. I believe that people can do what they wish. The pantheon is not necessarily inherently dangerous to those that are already on it unless they do not tread carefully. Reverence and/or respect take you as far as you wish to get here.