#dhima

From the journal of an unknown author. Translated from Lower Hittite.

I have done it at last. After decades, I have found a window into the Outer Dark. I have done so many vile things and left so many dead behind me. To think that I hesitated at first. At the precipice, I was afraid. I am another person now, and I hardly know who I was before. The face I see in the water is almost gone.

I began this work because I was curious. Now I see that the task was laid before me especially. Unique among all seekers, I was chosen for it. The Darkness wanted to be found, and I alone could find it. Now, as it commands, I will soon show the world the way.

The Maraxiis works no better than any of the other magics. Ignore the prevailing theories. To bridge the gap, I had to reinvent spell geometry. Mine is a new way, and it is the only way that works. It's by my blood that I have the key and by no harrowing but mine that I finally saw the sigil. The lesser pilgrims have too long been killing each other when they would have done better to kill themselves.

The gates are tall and black. Their planks are coffin lids, and their locks are beating hearts. They open only for enterprising self loathing. My flesh is torn for the toll, and my eyes see only that Great Fire. The body is consumed by fire, but it does not burn. The heart is sealed in ice, but it does not freeze. The throat is full of blood, but it does not drown. The Outer Dark is not a place but a thing, and it is alive. As its one mind is made manifest in its demonic inhabitants, so is it its own mind and infinitely more. The spirit is split, but it does not die.

The window is closed, but I hear them scratching at it. They wait there like lovers for me, and I can't help but throw it open to hear their longing entreaties. Their faces are lost in horn and flame and maws that gape eternally. Some walk upright, but others have no one form. You'll know when you see them why I must listen when they speak. And they are never silent anymore, these ardent whisperers.

I cannot write so enraptured. Wait for my sign, cousin, if you are still alive. It will not be long. Meet me next at the head of man's new way into Hell.

A sigil is attached:

Antoneta Dhima: Ja pse firmosa shkarkimin e Ilir Metës, presidenti është bërë palë me opozitën, askush nuk e shtyn dot 30 qershorin

Deputetja e Partisë Socialiste, Antoneta Dhima ka komentuar situatën politike në vend, duke e ndalur theksin tek përplasjet e fundit mes Qeverisë dhe Presidencës, zgjedhjet lokale të 30 qershorit, ecurinë e reformës në drejtësi, protestat e opozitës dhe paralajmërimet e kësaj të fundit për ta çuar vendin në përplasje civile. Gjatë një interviste për gazetën “SOT”, zonja Dhima akuzoi presidentin…

Në seancen e sotme plenare do të miratohen disa ndryshime në përbërjen e komisionit për reformën zgjedhore

Fjala e deputetes së PS Antoneta Dhima

Diskutimi në seancën e sotme plenare mbi raportin e veprimtarisë vjetore të komisionit Qëndror të Zgjedhjeve për vitin 2018.

I nderuar zoti Kryetar i Kuvendit! Të nderuar koleg deputetë dhe deputete! Të dashur Qytetarë!

Në seancën e sotme plenare jemi duke diskutuar mbi raportin e veprimtarisë vjetore të komisionit Qëndror të Zgjedhjeve për vitin 2018.

Duke…

It has been said that dhima, and all magick, is evil. Condemnation emerges on a cycle from both the magickal and paramagickal communities, never more informed than it was the cycle before no matter who the critics are. Morris in 1783, Degros in 1650, Zeno of Miletus in 513. All cited the insidious work of bad people and the clumsy work of bad magicians to assert that magick in general, and dhima in particular, was insidious and bad. Hor-aha, after founding the Cult of Enlil, denounced magick as an "unspeakable corruption." There is cause to suspect that the disfiguring of his dhima master in an ill-advised and incorrectly performed rite of phallomancy had some impact on his opinion.

So it goes with many of dhima's opponents and critics: danger seems to be, in their minds, the primary indicator that magick is wicked across the board. Examples given range from the horrific (that of Abel Wickman, most recently) to the ridiculous (that of Hor-aha's master). Some, such as the story of Abigail, are completely fabricated. The fear these horror stories are meant to instill is equivalent to the fear the storytellers feel. It is a tulpa in that way: thought given form. The tulpa of sensationalism and hatred. Reason must dispel that fear.

Magick can be associated with death. Magicians have wrought harm, destruction. There has been depravity. It isn't necessary for us to hear more and more salacious tales of woe to acknowledge such. Likewise, we needn't baptize ourselves in accounts of ordinary slaughter to affirm that the Innocent world is terrifying in its own right. This we know already. Many of us have turned to dhima for protection from the cruelty of the Innocent. And we have found it a salve, adequate respite - the power to move the shadows aside. In untrained hands, a scalpel can be wildly dangerous. In the hands of a surgeon, it is significantly less so. This is the point Kuznetsov meant to make when he abjured the Ekenäs gathering to "leave the soaring to the vultures."

Evil, as an idea, is monolithic, facile. There are dangerous entities and powers in the Obscure. Some are consciously hateful. Others are bestial or simply without minds and present peril only incidentally. The same can be said for the world beyond magick. Here there are malicious beings, destructive forces, beasts that kill. We can consider all of this and admit that there is no force of evil. Even the worst conscious fiend, even the most dangerous animal, is a being or a power of dimension moving through realms of effect, changed between moments, however subtly. We each of us contain worlds of experience. As we would not be reduced to a single motivation, so we must not draw everything in the Obscure as if it is exclusively hostile. There are no such entities anywhere. One may use dhima to cause suffering or come to harm through neglect or inexperience, and another may call that evil, but to use this as proof that evil exists as a force is to collapse a living philosophical discussion into a matter of semantics.

Meditations on Hartshoen's Sign (Kulatąo) and the Perkwunosian have led many magicians to suspect that there may be more ways into the unworld of Qell besides those two sigils. Čiurlionis, Qell's discoverer, himself said that there must be "another door."

Romantic as the idea is, and as much as I know we magicians need to feel that nothing is impossible, I dismissed the so-called Other Ways idea for a long time, because the magick behind the theory was unconvincing. In the formulae I read, there were always too many variables, or there was too much unstable original spellwork or too heavy a reliance on rustic magick and shamanism such as seiðr, faea, and kulning. Serious practitioners have derided the Other Ways idea since the 12th century, I among them.

But, as we must accept the impossible, so we must remember that the limits of the possible can only be accurately described by those who have really seen them, and seeing is not quite so simple a thing as it sounds, even (if not especially) for an adept and diligent practitioner of the dhimaic arts.

I have recently been in contact with a spirit that calls itself Bhaon. For 8 months, I have communicated with it, at first through a green-flame Solomon's Window and then more directly - in my east-facing chamber at dusk - as it became bold and grew familiar. Bhaon is a sciall spirit, comfortable among human magicians. It began to speak to me of a place beyond a sliding door, and a sliding door began appearing in my dreams; after some investigation into the things Bhaon said, I realized that it was describing Qell. Once this had come to me, Bhaon showed me a novel sigil. It is to be painted in oxblood facing either south or toward the nearest body of water. In a Dorian ring, it glimmers and has a faint lavender halo. Drawn into a mandala, it produces Thule radiation. It appears to be a leywalking sigil, but there is an unusual glamor to it. It is not man-made. After my first successful charge and casting of the sigil, Bhaon disappeared for a month or so. On that same occasion, I saw the gates of Qell from a new vantage point: from the west, with Hartshoen's Gate visible. The experience was real, not hypnogogic; I felt the winds of Qell and heard the songs of the threshold spirits. I was as Čiurlionis must have been that night in 1137, but his magic was rough and primitive. Here I reveal the sign, which I call the Bhaonic, for any magician to cast with a stern warning: Qell is a wild place, even more so in the west, and the Bhaonic's casting left me enervated for 7 hours afterward. Cast it only under strong wards, or you will be vulnerable in the unworld. Remember what eventually befell Čiurlionis.

I have found another way into Qell. There are more. I'm certain of it.

The ritual as performed upon Enheduanna of Ur by an ašipu of Kish.

Paint upon a golden bowl the sign of Cthon. Wrap the deceased in strips of grogram. Write upon each strip a prayer from the 27 Verses or a blessing of Kajan. Wrap from chest to feet while burning foxglove in the golden bowl. You or an assistant may chant Hurrian Hymn number 7 while undertaking the wrapping ritual.

When the deceased is wrapped, open its mouth and pour into its mouth and throat plaster mixed with blood and gold. In this way, make the nushva. When the nushva has dried, pour into it a mixture of oil and blood. Set alight the mixture, and in the flames burn either the burial shroud or 9 feathers from a monk vulture.