Black Lodge Initiation
and the Nephilim Working
The goal of the Nephilim Working was to rebirth myself using the archetype of the Nephilim. My reasons for this dealt mainly with the completion of my K&C and how I felt it affected my ideas of adepthood. Additionally, it dealt with my initiation into the Black Lodge, and that is perhaps the best place to start.
My initiation into the Lodge happened a short while before I started my online journal and it is where the user name for that journal comes from. The Black Lodge is not a traditional lodge by any means. There are no degrees, no formal ritual structure, no sanctioned governing body. The Black Lodge instead is an occult order consisting of individuals dedicated to a single cause. Some members work in concert, some stay lone wolves their whole lives. Initiation into the Lodge is purely experiential, and personal. No man can bring you into the order. Though I'm sure there are other methods, the few members of the order I have met were all initiated in dreams. The following is the account of my initiation into the Lodge:
I awoke in a gray windswept landscape. The ground was a dry sandy soil compacted tightly into patterns of black and gray. The landscape was a wilderness of dead trees and silence. I woke up as part of a group of pilgrims on our way to a place referred to as The Devil's Mansion.
"This is the abyss," a fellow pilgrim remarked matter-of-factly.
We marched on in silence for days. The woods grew more dense and the gnashing of teeth and snarling of dogs gradually replaced the silence. After some time the path we took lead us away from the forest of dead trees and to the shores of an immense lake. The group became visibly nervous as we walked along the coast. The water was perfectly clear in that dead lake, and I noticed several feet from the shore there was a dagger laying on the floor of the lake.
My party recoiled in horror as I broke away and headed into the lake.
"Turn back!" they pleaded. "It is a lake of acid! Nothing can survive in it's waters!"
I shrugged them off, feeling detached from their concerns, from anything. I was not drawn to or compelled by the dagger in the lake, I simply went to retrieve it because it was there. My party ran off screaming into the wilderness as I stepped into the waters. The gray sand gave way there to a cool hard gray stone. I was waist deep in the lake. The lake was indeed acid, yet it did not burn my flesh. I reached in and grabbed the dagger. The handle was ornate and covered in a scarlet pattern. The blade was a glistening silver chrome and curved like a woman's thigh, coming to a point where the knee would be.
I looked out at the horizon and made out an island in the center of that vast lake. I turned toward the shore to continue my pilgrimage.
My path took me away from the shores of the lake and back into the wilderness. I marched solemnly with the dagger in hand toward a mountain in the distance. Eventually I arrived at the base of the mountain. The slopes were gentle and weathered. I came across a path concealed by a large earth-encrusted boulder. The earth was rich and brown and warm, the first thing I had come across save for the dagger that was not the familiar pattern of blacks and grays.
The path lead to the summit of the mountain where four pillars stood. Each pillar reached about twelve feet into the sky. The pillars had huge complex sigils carved into them which covered every inch of their surface. Each pillar had a different sigil. I approached the one nearest to me and reached out to touch it. I noticed that my hand was brown from the dirt on the boulder I had passed to reach the path. The moment my hand touched the pillar my head was filled with a variety of visions and information. The information consumed my whole body, imprinting itself in each of my cells. Despite the intensity of the transmission I remained detached and walked over to the next pillar.
Something about the pattern on this pillar drew my attention, so I leaned into to examine it more closely. Pondering the sigil, I breathed in deeply, and as I exhaled the portion of the pillar I had been examining opened and out came a long blast of arctic wind which rushed down my throat. This wind filled me in much the same way the information from the first pillar had. Again I was overcome by visions and information that permeated my every cell.
Stepping toward the third pillar, I noticed it stood in a ring of sky blue water. I stepped in the pool and touched the pillar. At once the ground dropped out from me and I sunk into a seemingly bottomless abyss of water. Just before I hit bottom I could hold my breath no longer and warm water rushed into my lungs as I inhaled. Again I was filled with visions and information. My feet hit the bottom hard and just as suddenly as the bottom dropped out I was standing in that pool completely dry despite the submersion. Once again, despite the traumatic nature of the events, I remained detached.
I then stood before the fourth pillar. Suddenly the dagger in my hand fragmented and crumbled into dust. I looked up from the dust in my hand and at the pillar. I was greeted with a blast of flame. Instinctively I raised my arm. The flame engulfed my arm. Searing pain ripped through my body. Though the pain was excruciating I was indifferent to it, the flames died quickly leaving me filed once again with vision and information.
I noticed then that the area of rock in the center of the pillars had been upturned and rich black earth covered the stone. I reached into the hole from which the earth had erupted and pulled out a human skull adorned with golden horns and encrusted with strange stones.
Skull in hand I marched down the side of the mountain opposite the slope I came up and headed toward a building in the distance.
I arrived at the gigantic mansion. Though it was clearly ancient, the architecture seemed familiar somehow, almost modern. Perhaps it was the timelessness of the place. The only entry to the building was between to massive black iron gates. The place looked empty and desolate, foreboding I suppose but again I remained detached.
When I stepped through the gates it as though I had stepped into another world. The mansion was abuzz with activity. A party was clearly in progress. The landscaping which from outside the gates had seemed dead and gray was now lush and fragrant.
I made my way inside the building. All around me were people drinking and eating, taking drugs which glowed by every method conceivable. A man dressed as a butler approached me, looked at the skull in my arms and asked me to follow him to the library.
I followed him upstairs and through hallways littered with bodies locked in coitus, perpetually in the moment of climax. The place smelled of sex and sweat meats.
Eventually we arrived at a massive set of oak double doors.
"This is the library, sir." said the butler. "Your audience is requested inside."
I stepped alone into the library. The doors closed behind me leaving the butler outside. Directly in front of me were waist-high replicas of the elemental pillars. A pedestal stood in the middle; right where I'd retrieved the skull from in the version of the pillars on the mountain. I placed the skull atop the red velvet pillow there and turned to face the man waiting for me in the corner. I noticed as I turned that the pillars and pedestal stood inside a ritual circle painted in gold.
The walls of the library were lined from floor to cathedral ceiling with shelves stuffed with books. The size of the library was astonishing, and reminded me immediately of a library I had often dreamt of as a child.
I spoke at length with the man in the corner who wore a black pinstriped suit. We discussed in depth the details of my pilgrimage, the symbolism involved in what he called the Black Pilgrimage. He seemed somewhat surprised that I had been able to see the island in the center of the lake. He told me of The Black Lodge:
"For as long as there has been man there have been forces that wished to control them. The reasons for this are not always sinister, but they are never just. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Black Lodge is the serpent in the garden. Nothing is forbidden to the Lodge, when others balk we move forward. The Lodge is not driven by greed or lust, but by experience, by the impulse to evolve. We are the enemy of all agencies which restrict mankind, of all who would use wisdom to impose order. We are black magicians, hedonists of flesh and spirit. We are spiritual anarchists. Many are invited to the celebration; few are driven to ever leave the celebration. I will show you who you are in the order. If you accept it, you will be sent to initiation. Do you accept this invitation?"
I answered yes, that I would accept it.
He lead me down a short hall in a far corner of the library. At the end of the hallway was a stained glass door that opened up onto the roof. The man spoke:
"Outside this door is your identity in the order. You have chosen this identity for yourself, and yet even though you have chosen it, you may not be able to understand or accept it. You cannot unsee what you will see if you step through the door."
I didn't say anything, but simply pushed him aside and stepped through the door. A violent storm had formed outside. Lightning flashed and sheets of rain pummeled the slick shingled roof. I stepped out onto the roof maintaining a precarious balance. Lightning lit up the inky black sky revealing a large black monstrosity standing before me. This giant was simultaneously obsidian black and brilliant crystalline light. I felt like I should recoil in horror, but my ambivalence stayed with me, and so I just continued my gaze. This demoniac vision stood at least twice my own height and seemed to fill everything as it stretched out it's arms, all four of them. Suddenly I was no longer on a roof but in a small room. I was no longer looking at a terrifying beast, but my own reflection in a mirror that took the entirety of the wall in front of me. I turned around and walked back through the stained glass door.
"Do you understand?" asked the man.
I did not answer, but he smiled suggesting he knew I did.
I made my way back through the mansion and out the front door. There waiting for me was the angel Azazel.
"Come Brian," he said. "I know a quicker way to the edge of the lake."
We stepped outside the iron gates and there we were at the shore of the lake. Azazel walked over to a cove shrouded by dark maroon bushes and untied a small raft. We stepped onto the raft and using a pole to propel the raft, he took me to the island in the center of the lake.
The island was amazingly small, large enough only to hold a dozen or so trees and a small grass hut.
"Go inside," said Azazel. "I will wait for you here."
I went inside the hut, which was easily ten times the size of the outside of the hut. Though there were no fires in the hut, firelight flickered on the walls and the scent of wood smoke was heavy in the air. Sitting in the center of the hut was a huge being, so tall in fact the though he was sitting his serpentine head was still a good five feet above my own head. The creature had the body of a man but his neck and head were long and serpentine. His body seemed to be composed of a green living marble which grew paler as it reached his marble white neck and head.
We spoke at length about a great many things. He mentioned several sources that I should study. He told me to call him Lucifer, a name he explained that was given to him, just as I would from that point be known by a name he would give me.
"You are Sammael," he said. "You bear the name of an angel, but that is not all you are." He stood up revealing his full awe inspiring height. "Brother Sammaelhain, go forward into the world spread the influence of The Black Lodge. Think not that you are named after the poison angel, but know it is for a reason that your name is the same."
I left the hut where Azazel greeted me and spoke to me at great length of the Great Work of the Lodge. Which essentially boiled down to the spread of (r)evolutionary principle. He explained that though we are branded as devils, we exist to serve mankind.
At this point I awoke from my dream.
Eventually a series of divinations, dreams and automatic writings lead me to ascertain that that the black "demon" would in part be realized by embarking what developed into the Nephilim Working, and my codifying and developing what I have termed the 144 current. I have detailed the conception of the Nephilim, and covered various stages of the development of this working. Of prime importance was the until now not-commented-on realization of the relationship between Lilith and Babalon. I mentioned, in a rather graphic post, that I had chosen Lilith as the adoptive mother of my Nephilim Self after encountering her while pathworking the Tree Of Death. I have had numerous encounters with Lilith since that first one where I was nourished via sexual congress instead of the consumption of her menstrual blood.
The key thing to note here is that this makes it an essentially incestuous relationship. I'm not saying this for some creep-out factor, but because it relates the correspondence of Lilith and Babalon. The closer I approached the birth date the of myself/Nephilim the usually raven black hair of Lilith became scarlet, and I often found my thoughts turning to Babalon. I eventually had the book Sex and Rockets practically jump out at me at the book store. (For those of you who aren't familiar this book is about Jack Parsons who among other things participated in the infamous Babalon Working, if you don't know who Jack Parsons was, shame on you.)
Eventually it became clear to me that much in the way the Nephilim was my son, my brother and myself, Lilith was the daughter of Babalon, the sister of Babalon, and Babalon herself. Though I couldn't quite put my finger on why this clicked, it all fell into place last night as I finally made my way through Kaos14 and reminded me of material I had read years ago. Those interested in the details can read Kaos14 themselves. The sections "Lilith and Babalon" on through "The Daughter Of Fortitude". The basic summation is that there is information here and there, much of it dealing with Enochian Magick, that establishes a link between Lilith and Babalon.
While I was in the midst of the Nephilim Working I was introduced by word of mouth to Kaos14 which deals with the Kaos-Babalon current, specifically by someone who had done some work combining that current with the 144 current. I filed it away to read later as I already had my hands full. Shortly after deciding the mother was not simply Lilith but Lilith as an aspect of Babalon last month I ritually birthed the Nephiliim. The ritual essentially amounted to at first a Chod rite where I used the death posture to kill off the shell housing the nephilim, followed by a rebirth ritual using a combination of inhibitory gnosis (sensory deprivation) followed at once by excitatory gnosis (karezza). At the moment of birth I had brief but intense vision of:
"666=9 144=9"
There's actually a further correlation here to Joel Biroco's work with the 156 current that is discussed in Kaos14, in particular that Kaos(156) is a secret name of The Great Beast(666). Though I'm not a particularly huge fan of Thelemic magick, and there are some portions of the material in Kaos14 I disagree with, I still find these similarities interesting and sort of fun.
So anyway, that makes 3/18 the birth date of this new aspect in my development. It's been an interesting and insightful ride so far, but I'm also left with the feeling that the birth was just the tip of the iceberg. In closing, I'd like to apologize to my wife for any of the distance I've demonstrated through this process and to thank her for being patient and understanding throughout it despite being kept in the dark about most of it out of necessity. I'm really looking forward to the places this working will take me and my work especially with the 144 current.
