Clyssus of Man

By Choir Korneli Leviyey

Choir Korneli Leviyey, also known as Tendon Levey or simply Tendon, is an experimental mystic, psychologist and musician who, in his youth, was witness to a profound and personal vision to which he would go on to dedicate the whole of his lifetime—even when such dedication brought with it madness, isolation and life-threatening illnesses that would leave him mute, immobilized and perpetually choking. Clyssus of Man follows a worldweary Leviyey, decades on, as the anticipation of death forces him to descend into his own psyche in a desperate attempt to resolve and satisfy his childhood revelations and to share his findings with the modern, mythless public before his body gives out. This decades-long riddle is given its conclusion in the form of Aseitism: a mystical philosophy that not only challenges existing notions of what it means to exist, but also introduces a much-needed air of optimism and purpose into what might otherwise come to be regarded as one of the most visceral and tormented biographies ever to be shared.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Choir Korneli Leviyey
• Release date: Apr 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201564445

Book preview

Part I: Aseity

Iwas only a child when I committed my whole being to a vision that I saw in sleep. At the outset I desired an idol—a proud and unflickering polestar—and with only a silhouette in view I gave myself thereto without so much as asking what it would require of me. There was no way to predict how this life would unfurl, but in such an age I would have accepted any outcome at all inasmuch as it was representative of my truest efforts.

I am thirty years of age at the time of writing; fifteen years into my practice as an experimental mystic. For fifteen years I have strained and staggered toward the divine, a gambler, through sickness and indefensible debts, believing that the vision I beheld all those years ago was that of my highest potentiality. This undertaking has cost me mine own health and humanity, putting me at odds with all the earth. Every moment calls to my death. I have become as the caricature of the piteous seeker who ventures out too far into the mapless voids and must necessarily suffer the spite of gravity—this to the satisfaction of the docile who will cite my name as a justification for their timidity, not caring to acknowledge all that I have had to gain from so much loss. To the end of my days, I seek my Imago beyond the stuckest door; the opaquest window; the blackest mirror of them all. The Idem is the end goal of all my unsettled hours, and to fail at this task would be to mark my lifetime a pointless tragedy.

I write to you now from on my dying bed, surrounded by the sum of sunless living. Herein will be documented the surrender of my accumulated understanding of the Known—all this in seeking after my highest conceivable permutation and wholeness in Existence. Herein will be documented the denouement of my tortuous operation. Though to truly be able to share with you my end, I must first provide you with a look at how it all began, as if to proudly say See how long I have been a fool!

MY RELATIONSHIP TO my childhood is a strange one, marked by equal parts veneration and dissociation. I often claim to have come into existence at the age of fifteen, and so I tend to speak sparingly of my earlier years, doing so with detachment in my tone. You will hear it said that I was born on the twenty-first of April 1989 to a household of doom-obsessed eschatologists living in southern New Jersey, where I lived a cloistered religious upbringing deprived of access to media, education and with limited opportunities to socialize. These limiting conditions created for an especially claustrophobic worldview and forced me to develop on my own terms as an autodidact. I was considered intellectually gifted, though any such intelligence that I contained was invariably offset by my immaturity and worldly ignorance—the natural effects of being so woefully unsocialized. While I experienced thought and emotion as anyone, my experience of consciousness was at that point so very different from what it has since developed into that I find it a stretch to say that I was conscious at all, since there was very little awareness, if any.

It was around the time that I became a teenager and moved to Virginia that my reality began to shift to where I would finally begin to question the paradigm under which I had been brought up, and littlest intimations of awareness leaked into my life in the guise of shame. I became more aware of the lies and hypocrisy that surrounded me. I became aware of my foolishness. I began to feel myself increasingly disadvantaged due to the limits of my understanding, and I was greatly disturbed by what I didn’t know, and especially by the idea that circumstances beyond one’s control might determine one’s access to the truth of Existence. As someone raised within a religious household, I thought it dangerous to be so ignorant, what with my believing in consequences that span all of eternity. This troubled me deeply, as I needed to believe that the truth was accessible to all who were receptive, and in my desperation I sought to test the hypothesis that all necessary knowledge is connatural or otherwise readily available to all. Thus, I willingly adopted an experimental philosophical stance for which I vowed to live in ignorance of society’s influences on an indefinite basis. It was only meant to last me until I felt that I had established a firm and earnest foundation on which to erect my personal worldview and I had no intention of keeping it up for all my years, yet with time I would only become more and more stringent in my pledge to abstain from extraneous influence—a feral form of autodidactism which manifests in my life through a refusal to indulge in worldly media and philosophies (with rare exceptions being made within social contexts).

Age fifteen marked the inception of a new paradigm and saw to the generation of symbols and practices which are still observed to this day. My story begins thus with a mystical event occurring in the fall of 2004—an orison—which has been retroactively referred to as the Ritual of Nullity: a ritualized acknowledgment of the inescapable ignorance by which we as humans are plagued and a plea to be given a glimpse into the truth of this Existence so that I might not waste this opportunity of life on lesser pursuits and alluring lies.

This is my prayer... my humblest need. Whoever responds shall become my lord, and whatsoever that is spoken shall become my truth.

I must have fallen asleep mid-thought, and on that very night as I slept I appeared before the most unsettling landscape of stroboscopic imagery and subliminal distortions. It makes sense to think of it as a dream, yet it was like no dream that I had ever experienced before, being characterized by an uncanny surplus of emotion. Feelings of nausea, anxiety and alienation pervaded the night in its entirety, creating for what can be called the loneliest and most urgent experience of my lifetime theretofore. My surroundings were formed from a blur of ever-shifting images: hundreds, possibly thousands of scenes shown in rapid succession—all too quickly for me to consciously register their contents. To make use of a clichéd expression: my life flashed before my eyes, but it was not the life that I had known, or not yet, and the ‘unfamiliar familiarity’ which colored my perceptions left me both disturbed and astonished.

The intensity came to a sudden stop following a long, dramatic montage and I found myself standing on a simple city street which I have come to call the Avenue of Sun. There I stood gazing off at the goings-on of modern mythless society, fixated on the strangeness of it all. I saw into the eyes of strangers. I watched the sun grow dim. It was deeply unsettling to me, though I struggled to understand the cause of my own discomfort, seeing no explicit justification in the imagery before me. I reasoned with myself, saying It is just an ordinary scene. These people... they’ve done no wrong! They’ve done nothing at all! All is as it ever was! However, nothing could be said or done to alleviate my feelings of repulsion and as all came together to form a crescendoing point a strange lucidity came upon me.

It was at that moment that I first caught sight of him: an anguished figure standing amid the streets, silhouetted against the tension of his surroundings. He wasn’t like the others I had witnessed. I watched him from afar before moving closer, at which point it became clear that I was looking upon myself; though I saw myself as though through the eyes of an onlooker. My appearance was striking, appearing older but not by so much that I failed to recognize mine own Essence. I was noticeably gaunt, my posture rigid. I wore a dark and tattered robe and a bulbous cap which emphasized the thinness of my face. I feared to have a closer look, if because I feared what would happen if our eyes did meet.

I extended my hand to him—to myself—but the vision could not be sustained beyond that point. All went black in an instant and I was plunged into the deepest void, where I remained for an immeasurable length of time while I underwent a violent struggle to regain and retain my self-awareness. At the end of the eon I was met by the boom of an all-pervasive voice which addressed me in a tone of sternness and spoke to me of a fiery candelabrum to which I was somehow entitled, and only by accepting said fire could I be spared of the fate of a slave; only then could I avoid that which I had witnessed taking place upon the Avenue of Sun. I have heretofore recalled only the general idea of the message conveyed to me on that visionary night of my youth and I do not doubt that the specifics have distorted with time, though I can still recall the heat against my flesh. Moreover, I can still recall the sensation of being surrounded by others who I could not see.

The vision dissolved immediately thereafter and I awoke in my bed, dripping with sweat. Awake though I was, I had arisen to a world so utterly unlike the world I once called my home. And it was not simply my environment which appeared to have undergone some drastic, albeit abstract, change; when I awoke from this visionary experience I was a changed individual—enough to be convinced that I was someone else entirely. Whatever it may have meant for me, this event acted as a sort of partition, dividing past from present and leaving me incapable of relating to any part of who I was previously. I have made note of this disconnect on numerous occasions throughout my lifetime and across multiple texts, finding it so noteworthy as to merit reiteration. After all, I had climbed into bed with the sense of a naïve, dispensable child and awoke as a vector of symbols, cursed with the clotting of a filthy infinity.

In time, I would establish my own understanding of the aforesaid vision; though as confidently as I spouted off my speculations in the wake of this event, the truth is that I never actually managed to work it all out within my mind. It was a mystery unlike any known to me. What was the cause of my anguish? Was the candelabrum inherently positive or negative as a symbol? And to whom belonged the voice of instruction? Notwithstanding all the confusion and dubiety surrounding this night and its inherent message, the candelabrum of five branches would be adopted as an emblem of my mystical practice on the whole.

The essential nature of my experience was disputable. I would have then opposed the idea that my dealings were inherently spiritual, being still apt to identify as a Christian and not wishing to be accused of strange devilry—disgruntled though I was with the modern church—and it is surely possible that this would influence my tendency of viewing these events through a psychological lens, approaching the matter as a psychonaut and chocking all things up to consciousness and perception alone. Nonetheless, I was ever wary of sharing my experiences with the people in my life who, in being of a religious orientation, were sure to condemn me for my dealings, thus establishing a precedent of clandestinity and, as a natural matter of course, begrudgingness.

As much as I would have it sound like some psychotic fit involving melting landscapes and diabolical conspiracy, it was fundamentally simplistic and may be compared to the popular concept of a spiritual awakening. Overwhelmed though I was, it was not distortion but clarity which threatened to capsize me, and through this new awareness I was forced to acknowledge the fragility, the ignorance and ultimately the responsibility of one and all. And most crucially, I now experienced a sense of purpose—a sense not to be conflated with whatever desire or expectations I contained within myself. It was a way of living that I wasn’t used to, and as much as it benefited me to be granted such insights, I found myself intimidated by these changes, especially when no one else appeared to share in my realizations, and before long I began to disdain the sense of separation, giving way to depressive and suicidal behaviors. Among other incidents, I once leapt out of a third-story window, doused myself from head to toe in gasoline and prepared to set myself afire. My parents found me as I was batting at an outdoor lantern with a brushless broom-pole. I had not lost my sanity; only my handle on humanity. I spent the night sobbing in the bathtub and covered in minor burns, believing that in my determined efforts to know the truth I had been forced to abandon all that I once knew and loved, thus creating for a rift between myself and my species that would never be overcome. I felt as though I had signed away my name on a sort of spiritual contract and, as enthralling as it was to experience such a meaningful and revelatory existence, my awe, on its own, was not sufficient to counter the pain of knowing that my perceptions were not shared by others. I was then fifteen years of age and this was only but the start of a long and sorrowful howl.

While nothing would ever match the intensity and sheer psychomythic potency of my breakthrough experience, I continued to experience strange, cryptic visions in a sleeping state in which I would often hear the voice of an apparent entity who offered me guidance. This nameless advisor would come to be known as Steulugalnemraiant (among other titles kept private) and I tended to think of it as a sort of interchronological mediating agent, allowing me insights into the person that I would one day become. And in dreamless sleep it came to me with wisdom and instruction to lead me down the narrow and arduous course that would bring me to my Holy Imago: a purported water pourer of whom he contained extensive firsthand knowledge. In other words, it seemed that I was being groomed to become the man that I had witnessed within the aforeshared vision, and in my hunger I welcomed it all.

With the clearing of each objective it would return to authenticate my progress and offer me my next task, which appeared to me ever more like riddles than like unequivocal commands. These objectives varied from the learning of complex psychological skillsets to the full eradication of traits, outlooks and/or desires deemed detrimental to the furtherance of my personal growth and development—all seeming quite mundane given the context in which they came. This relationship continued on indefinitely, becoming the primary channel from which I derived my bolder insights, and I looked to Steulugalnemraiant as a mystical teacher, ineffable and wise. Upwards of three dozen tasks awaited me over the coming decades—some taking mere hours to complete while others would require multiple years and lots of proverbial blood—and I followed along with perfect obedience to its will and instruction, being myself so captivated by the probable outcome that I would have done anything at all to see it to fruition. I was a disappointed child, after all, unable to stomach the complacency of my peers. I strived for something more: honesty and integrity and all things pure! Only then, in these, will one find the eternal; the Irreducible. Thus, with aches and pains in my childly chest I began my second incarnation as a tireless hunter following the spectral spoor of my highest, most adept self, which was called Idem in the absence of any detailed explanation.

I WOULDN’T SAY THAT I was particularly fond of sleep. Even now, as an adult, I tend to view it through the lens of a child: as being an unwelcome interruption to the day’s activities. Nevertheless, my fondness for dreams has formed a notable part of my life, with lucid and purportedly veridical dreams coming as a natural occurrence since very early on, along with frequent episodes of sleep paralysis, and these happenings have long had a significant influence on my development, whether do we speak of art, mysticism or knowledge on its own. With so much of my practice being reliant on insights gleaned from a sleeping state, I devoted myself fully in this time to developing control over sleep and other parasomnial occurrences in the aim of controlling the pace of my mystical operation (as well as in the hope of putting every part of my living existence to productive use): a practice which I referred to as ‘hypnognosticism’ in the absence of a more widely recognized classification (from Greek hypnos, sleep and gnosis, knowledge), and such a practice has remained my primary medium in all years since.

Through rigorous self-discipline I gained the ability to paralyze the entirety of my body at will, leaving active only my mind and, on occasion, my right eye. Total paralysis could often be achieved within minutes and I would remain thereafter in a strange, liminal state of mind for upwards of five or six hours at a go as I attempted a variety of psychonautical (and arguably divinatory) experiments. I then spent the better of two years in bed while being put through a multitude of symbolic visions, purported out-of-body experiences and more—all achieved in an absence of drugs and other expedients. My time on that mattress was rather spent running down hillsides and navigating cosmic slop—experiences which many would be apt to associate with the popular idea of astral projection, whereas I, personally, tend to relate all such occurrences to hypnagogia. Though it wasn’t always a pleasant experience for me, and as I ventured out further into psychical spaces I became acquainted with greater horrors as such that could neither be explained nor stomached. Among these was an ominous event encountered recurrently in which, within the deepest realms of thought, I would come upon a most mysterious phenomenon that I came to regard as a sort of ‘stopping point’: the point beyond which I dare not travel lest I lose myself to the darkness of mine own mind and soul. It was too dead to be alive, but it was positively aware of me. Apart from the name Parashurna, which I had somewhen begun using to describe this entity-event, there wasn’t much known about it, but it was accepted as true that whenever I would venture out too far into the psychosphere, as it were, that its effects could be felt and it frightened me dearly. What it actually was, I could not say, but I built it up in my mind as having the potential to corrupt my mystical aims and thought of it as occult darkness. I have variously compared the aforesaid force to black holes and leeches, and while I have witnessed many odd and disturbing happenings over my years of psychospiritual experimentation, nothing else has ever struck me as being quite so formidable as this ‘Parashurna’. Over the ages I have come up with a variety of creative explanations for the who, what and how of its being, yet in all cases they have fallen short of providing me with any real insight into its nature and role within my world.

I continued to develop my hypnognostic practice in this period, spending most of my days at rest within a state of self-induced paralysis. So common was the atonia and the concomitant hallucinations at the time that I didn’t think anything of it when I awoke one night amid an episode of sleep paralysis in the company of a young, doe-eyed woman who was found arched over my body. Her formidable gaze and quiet presence were in many ways alike what I had come to expect of the figures encountered during such episodes, and I watched her from in the calmness of my corpselike rigor, at first thinking little of my predicament. My paralysis soon went away, however the young woman did not.

At first a surreptitious affair, I would often wake in the middle of the night to find her resting at my side or wandering around my bedroom, inspecting my possessions and sifting through my notebooks, yet upon discovering her she would regularly leave in haste without any exchange. After catching her in several instances over weeks of time, I reluctantly invited her to stay insofar as she agreed not to harm me or my family, seeing as I still lacked all concept of who she was and what she was capable of, and it was discovered that she had wandered into my sister’s bedroom once or twice, frightening her. With that said, I didn’t immediately trust her company—something that was not helped by the fact that her appearance seemed to change ever so slightly from month to month (though never so much that it required me to alter the manner by which I would describe her).

Whereas such claims would cause most individuals to appear mentally unsound, if not simply pitiable, the manifestations of her presence were often so overt and, in some cases, disruptive, that my peers were quicker to label it as a paranormal occurrence than anything to do with my sanity, eventually developing into rumors that I had attracted a succubus or similar spiritual entity. As for me, I never knew what to believe, although I tended to relate it to my hypnognostic experimentation.

For months she wouldn’t disclose her name, citing reasons beyond my understanding. Thus I began to call her ‘Jeiezza’, which she did not like. Even after being given a name by which she would prefer to be addressed, which was Mora (short for Mora Nisha), I would still opt for calling her Jeiezza. All in all, our meeting has been described as one of the most influential events of my existence, as well as one of the strangest. Yet despite the profundity of her influence, I grew sadly accustomed to minimizing her presence within my life over time, largely due to my inability to rationally account for her nature and not wishing to invite the scrutiny of others—for her sake as well as mine. Nevertheless, those who knew me in those years are more than likely to recall this inexplicable bond which I have often regarded as the only true friendship of my lifetime. I may not have been able to explain her existence, but that could not keep me from cherishing her. She stood by me as a supportive and knowledgeable presence in a time when I was alone, ignorant and quite confused as to how to cope with my new paradigm and her uncredited contributions to my mystical practice, as well as to my art and music, are indispensable.

My waking life had taken on all the qualities of a dream and I embraced the excitement of our encounter in my embracement of a unique life experience, but it was a lot to get used to in the beginning. Indeed, I struggled for a while to sleep beside this stranger whose very nature eluded me, and in time I nearly went back on our agreement due to the insomnia that ensued, wherefore she committed to humming softly so as to lull me into a peaceful slumber. It was often the same, simplistic tune: a serene and airy waltz that evoked the most vivid emotions in me. Oh, it brought me such comfort that I would have her hum it for me even when I was not struggling to sleep. As was eventually explained to me, the lullaby in question was chiefly associated with the story or legend of a woman who is forced to watch her husband die again and again in the belief that it will make him immortal. I had never heard of such a story, yet I was enamored by how it all came together.

It was my fascination for the tales she told that would eventually give way to the first of several astragones (‘a conflict between stars’, from Greek astra, star + agon, conflict or competition): a sort of guided trance during which the many recurrent symbols and themes of my lifetime were dropped into a psychical coliseum and forced to interact (at the mercy of nature). These highly abstract undertakings—in some cases lasting upwards of a year—comprise the wellsprings from which I have drawn the bulk of my strange ambitions throughout the course of my earthly existence, for such was their greater purpose: to both put me in touch with and aid in the development of mine own symbols; mine own disposition; mine own constellative myth. The process is assisted, as well as documented, by a mythopoeic form of text known as an agonography (literally ‘a written account of conflicts’) which also encourages the creation of a pseudo-paradigm that envelopes the individual and provides (or augments) the characteristic trancelike quality.

The first of these undertakings, lasting approximately fourteen months between late 2004 and early 2006, has been labeled as the profoundest and most impactful period of my lifetime and forms the strange substrate of my personal myth, as it were. The worthy centerpiece of this spell is a short agonography called Divinity of the Idem which was produced alongside a companion musical score (the likes of which saw a partial release on the Baby’s First Bible compilation, where it was rendered in a sort of faux 8-bit style and therefore lacks in the dramatic intensity of my original vision).

The entirety of the tale is suffused over a series of epistles and recounts the originary revelation of the Idem and my subsequent descent into derealization and notoriety as I struggled to integrate my insights into daily mundane living. Said epistles were purportedly written from Hell and addressed to a sum of five associates (given zodiacal identifiers) who were charged with having been present during crucial events in the plot line that apparently defined and cemented my path, for which reason I speak blamefully throughout much of the text as I am viewing them as having had a hand in shaping the outcome of my existence.

The work in question prominently features Haudam and Collbalchasse, the two of whom acted as my guides upon receipt of the revelation. They were called ‘dipas’—a term which I was led to believe meant something along the lines of ‘psychopomp’, being then unaware of the fact that it was (or otherwise resembles) a word of Sanskrit origin, meaning light or lamp. They were unusual entities, having many forms and disguises and often going against my wishes, despite claiming to be my allies. Moreover, it was hinted at that they may be affiliated in some manner or form with the mystery known to me as Parashurna, although no specifics ever came to light regarding this vague supposition. Theories and presumptions aside, it is not within my capability to define their nature, and so I know them only by their roles, which was essentially to inform and guide me through the prodrome of spiritual existence.

Unable to adapt properly to my newfound perceptions, I became agitated, abandoning all composure and suffering repeated public breakdowns. I was consumed by the divine and could not be reasoned with, and as I held out for my ideals the earth did escape from me and I fell out of favor with man. My only solace came to me by way of a jewel which I carried on my person throughout most of the narrative, small enough to be worn upon a cord around my neck. This rare, ambery adornment was none other than the widowstone of which I spoke previously, for it had become a part of mine own legend. There was something to its melody which granted confidence to its wearer, as if making the dreams of the heart somehow more tangible and bringing Heaven all the closer. At least that’s what I got out of it, personally; and with every setback experienced along the way, the beauteous melody would seem to become louder, ensuring my stamina and reminding me that I must never settle out of fear, loneliness or boredom for the sort of vulgarity which is readily available to us all, as that is how corpses have come to walk the earth and define our kind.

The majority of the story is established through strange and disturbing allusions that are never properly contextualized, whereby the reader is provided only the vaguest of insights into my most damning circumstances. The titular scene sees me entering uninvited into a roaring celebration where, in an attempt to prove myself to the people (and perhaps in foreshadowing what is to come) I wind up leaping from a balcony, severely injuring myself in the process. Look, this is the divinity of the Idem! The men and women scoffed as I laid vomiting on the ground. The story takes its title from this moment of mockery which finally leads Collbalchasse to act against me, as he could not bear to see such ideals degraded any longer, whereas my divinity is as vomitus (which, itself, can be viewed as symbolic of all the ways in which I apparently disgraced or otherwise encouraged misunderstanding of my mystical insights).

Then, in the end, Collbalchasse did disguise himself as a cancer and seek to detoxify me of my sin against sense. I was consequently drugged, bound to a stag and carried away to a remote grainfield as part of his attempt to chasten me. The final act of this visionary tale plays out within this very location, which is sometimes called Christ’s Arctic (for reasons untold). At the end of the grainfield was found a steep escarpment known by all as the Edge of Knowing, below which was the abyss of Hell or an analogous inferno which was being used as a deterrent in the case of this story, like how the concept of Hell is used by religious folks as a means to quell the curiosities of the cognizant. It was not actually expected that any harm would befall me on that day, surely as all men were known to cower before the chasm, turning away as from their shame.

I arrived wounded to this place, drunken and betrayed, and while standing among the grains and staring into the fiery depths I appeared to concede, fearful of the consequences with which I was faced. I could cope no longer with feeling myself so misunderstood by the masses. I could cope no longer with the mortification brought on by my awareness, and in a moment of sorrow I removed the widowstone from around my neck and buried it within the soil to acknowledge the end of my mystical venture. But the jewel which I had planted like a seed in the earth then suddenly and unexpectedly gave way to a sort of revenant goddess who rose up from the soil like a wild vine and offered her hand in a dance.

"All will come in due time.

All will come that is due."

So spoke the beautiful woman as we danced toward the Edge of Knowing: a dance which culminated in my fall from the cliffs and into the abyss below. This promise has remained within the chambers of my heart all these years, wherein it reverberates everlastingly in memorial of all that I gave up willingly unto the fires of fate. And whereas this series of epistles was oftentimes hostile in tone, like a blameful rebuke uttered by a regretful soul, it concludes on a note of unanticipated gratitude, implying that I had managed to find great meaning in my path and could claim that one dance with immaculacy was worth an eternity in agony as such that awaited me in the deepest abyss.

Divinity of the Idem has long since remained a cornerstone of my mystical life and I have guarded it from the public thusly like a rare garnet, knowing it not as a work of fantasy fiction but the first of my visionary accounts. I would even go on to purchase and wear a cheap, winged jewel for several years thereafter in a reference to the jewel that featured within the story.

A lack of private internet access amid this period contributed to the purity and highly personal nature of my approach, with all exercises, concepts and terminology of which I speak being mystically informed or otherwise endogenous to my person and having not been influenced by anything that I had read or overheard elsewhere. Another consequence of having limited channels at the time of these occurrences is that the weight of my realizations was rarely comprehended until years after the fact. Accordingly, I built up my fortress in ignorance of how my ideas and philosophies measured up to established concepts, as with my being ignorant to the fact that most of the terms which I had come to employ in my practice—terminology often used by and borrowed from Jeiezza—appeared strangely similar to words in the Sanskrit language, with even their associated definitions appearing pertinent to the manner in which I had come to use them.

The first astragon of my lifetime came to a close on some unspecified day in early 2006 and was punctuated by an unsettling portent appearing in dreamless sleep which blatantly hinted at some event or occurrence that would come to pass in fifteen years’ time, although the vagueness of the portent in question left me to fill in the blanks on my own strength, wherefore I would assume that it all related in some manner to my mortality, or to the amount of time that I was given to complete my mystical operation. I have since lived by the belief that I would meet my end at the age of thirty or thereabouts. I often tried putting it out of my mind in an effort to prevent it from influencing or otherwise derailing my natural trajectory, but this ominous countdown has continued to appear within dreams unto this day and I have not been allowed to forget.

FOLLOWING YEARS OF psychomythical experimentation, I stepped out into the world in a pair of platform shoes and a black sequined blouse looking to begin a new phase of life. I immediately gathered up all my angry, apocalyptic poetry and formed a disco band with overtones of post-hardcore aggression (which, at the time of its demise, went by the name Gravedancers) in which I came to be known as The Boogie Man for my mixing of goth and disco aesthetics. This would signal the start of my most social period as the hold of my overprotective parents was slowly diminishing. An outsider though I was, I was typically well-received in such an age despite the unordinariness of my beliefs and practices, as if being but some character out of a storybook who managed to put everyone just slightly more in touch with their own curiosity. Whereas the spirit of previous years lived on through my newfound music project, which primarily dealt with themes relating to my psychospiritual experiences, as well as my abnormal relationship with Jeiezza, she herself took issue with my shifting priorities and the fact that our undertaking had been interrupted, leading to a series of difficult and emotionally-charged interactions which caused her to leave for a period of eight or nine months.

From an outside glance it would appear that I had moved on from the strange fixations of previous years to something more standard; but while the experiments may have died down temporarily, I would not be able to walk away from all that I had witnessed so easily and continued to operate within a very detached and mythopoeic state of mind, finding myself plagued by frequent dissociative spells and flashbacks in which I envisioned myself falling from cliffs, burning alive or being locked inside another realm—the latter of which was especially notorious, as my perceptions didn’t always seem to align with my senses and I was often walking into walls.

As the disco died and my friend group dispersed, leaving for college, I was left on my own once again and began flirting with drug culture—a damning interest which did not always sit well with my occult interests and therefore saw a limited but climactic run which flooded the streets with empty bottles of cough syrup. Amid my many drunken ambles through the local mall in late 2006 I became acquainted with a certain Florentin, at that time known as Adam: a chain-smoking stoic who was content to spend his free time sneering at strangers from the hood of his car. The two of us bonded over music and soonly formed a short-lived experimental prog outfit called Martyr-Go-Round which was promptly moved to the back burner once his connections to a small (and by all means questionable) underground occult community was brought to light. Come early 2007 and I was invited to participate in said community by the group’s overseer: a mysterious mythologist-cum-lifeguard by the name of Lajos who had taken a special interest in my background and initiated a surprise interview at a local café after I failed to respond to his earlier invitations. I must have been anticipating something along the lines of a spooky, ceremonious order congregating by candlelight in the basement of an abandoned church, whereas the reality was more like a home group taking place in an unassuming house filled with carnivorous plants and the scent of strong tea. It was not the format but the personalities involved which made it what it was. And what, exactly, was it? I still find myself trying to answer that question all these years later as I struggle to discern nostalgia from regret.

At the time, however, it did seem like a godsend, for after many years of feeling alone in my ambitions and lacking peers who saw the worth of inner exploration, my new affiliates were exactly the type to perceive the value in my experimental stance, seeing purity and potential where others would see only ignorant ideals. Yet as much as we had in common, I was considerably more reckless in my approach, having the tendency to glamorize the danger and the vulnerability associated with the practice, which I viewed romantically. It often left my advisor conflicted, as the very aspects of my person which amounted to success and innovation within my operation were also seen as a hazard. And then you also have the fact that I did not believe in traditional spirituality and argued that all things were cognitive at their base, seeing me compared more often to a psychonaut than a spiritualist. This combination of beliefs led me to being barred from participating in certain ritual events early on, at least until I was willing to make certain acknowledgments regarding the reality of these things in which I involved myself. The instatement of such a rule was interpreted as demeaning, and instead of responding with respect to the demands of the group head I quietly opted to carry out my will in secret.

It was on the night of March 3rd, 2007 that I would conduct my first and most consequential ceremony: an unplanned ritual performed within view of a total lunar eclipse and modeled after principles taught to me by the Steulugalnemraiant amid long nights of dreamless sleep. It was during this event that I gained my first glimpse of the preternatural intelligence whom I called Thummim, the Gravity Angelus: a murky presence which would sermonize from upon the highest branches of the highest tree. Few events would ever come with such a tremendous impact on my life, though I regularly tend to obfuscate or altogether avoid disclosing the details surrounding our meeting in honoring a request made by the entity in question.

Still clinging to my romantic ideals, I continued without caution into a world which others found dangerous and ill-advised, conducting nightly rituals among the dense, local forest wherein I grew in knowledge of the Thummim, who I viewed as all-wise and strangely alluring. These meetings would take place at precisely the same time each night and I could always expect a similar scene. First the wind would pick up, causing the birds to awaken from their sleep. The air would subsequently fill with a cacophony of caws while birds, bats and flying insects were hurled back and forth through the air, sometimes leaving lifeless carcasses at my feet. It was then, in the eye of the storm, that I would be greeted by the most mesmerizing voice to which I had ever been witness. Its quality was so otherworldly, yet so very approachable. I would have described it as androgynous and... quivery. Our interactions generally consisted of questions, orations and even a bit of music. And at the close of each meet, as he vanished into the midnight stillness, he would say to me I evade your eyes, though I am not gone. These words, which came to define an age of mystery, would later be encapsulated within the phrase Ayl Iamth Ayl Ia.

Even with my attempts to keep my practice a secret from the people in my life, my changing aura was becoming impossible to conceal and my notability among the local community saw a sudden and unprecedented spike as my descent into the occult nightside, in conjunction with my youthful immaturity, brought about a host of bizarre, recurrent manifestations. Of these I am most likely to be remembered for my peculiar interactions with bees: an insect which now appeared abnormally responsive to my person and often followed after me wheresoever I went. Oh, it seems like an absurd joke—a fantasy—and I shall pardon anyone who refuses to believe such claims, but my interactions with these insects rarely escaped the notice of even the most skeptical sort, being often within my hair and clothes as I went about the town (and never stinging even once). The bees would thus go on to become one of the foremost symbols within my life, serving as a powerful reminder, if nothing more, of the fact that not everything could be explained away; that science is limited by our understanding, and that whatever I was doing, it was working—at least on some level—and I followed that bee into the lightless zones of comprehension with the gladdest gallops.

All these happenings had me feeling high, and before long my confidence had begun to exceed its rightful girth. I was full of wishes, after all—the boy that I was. Me, I wished to be like the Thummim in all aspects: an otherworldly captivator. I wished to transcend my form entirely, appearing like only a shadow in possession of arcane wisdom and... a voice! A voice so indescribable. And after all that I had witnessed in his company, I was convinced that no-thing was beyond him. Therefore I entered into his presence one summer night, coming before the tree of forbidden metabolism, and so boldly requested to be changed by him: to be given a voice and a presence like that of his own so that the world may know of our association, to which he said nothing in response and I was left feeling foolish and impudent. In the days and weeks that followed I avoided the ceremonial setting and I heard nothing from him within said period, although I did end up hearing from multiple peers who expressed a mixture of concern and confusion over my changing presence. Some claimed that the very structure of my face had been altered, now resembling that of an animal: a goat. Others claimed that I was casting two shadows as I went about my way. But the most meaningful reaction, to me, was the shock expressed by my frequent musical collaborators who, upon hearing me sing, would go on to argue that my singing voice had changed suddenly, as if overnight, and in such a way that bore scant resemblance to my natural voice, thereby earning me the nickname Goat Throat.

While all of this was taking place, my participation within Lajos’ fraternity was growing ever more complicated. I was beginning to attract the attention of more established occultists throughout the country and beyond with my ostensibly mythopoeic approach which was often being talked up by my advisor, leading to an increase in opportunities and affiliations. I want to say that my freedoms increased therewith, but the opposite was true, as the group head was becoming increasingly controlling in his behaviors to where he had even begun interfering with my relationships and creative expression insofar as they were deemed a distraction in my life. These attempts at controlling my actions struck a tender nerve and introduced an air of resentment into our relationship; yet as much as it disturbed my peace, I was not accustomed to someone placing such faith and investment in my capacity and typically found ways of justifying my decision to remain.

THE OVERALL COLOR AND tone of my world saw a sudden shift when in August the glare in my eyes was overtaken by the glimmer of adolescent infatuation. Coming at a time in my life when I was feeling increasingly out of touch with the people of society, I sought sanctuary within these basic emotions which allowed me to experience the world as the teenager I was. Most would even agree that the girl was merely a catalyst and that I was ultimately seeking a confirmation of my own humanity and, to a lesser exist, my youth—two things which I felt had been lost along the way among the path of dark peculiarities.

It was the very pleasant and inspiring serenity of this period that motivated me to begin a new recording project: the solo music project by which I would become best known—referring of course to Tendon Levey (which, in the early days, went by a different name altogether). Starting out as an experiment in personal psychology, I utilized this project as a means to bypass my acquired preferences, abilities and even my shame so as to access mine own innate and unconscious core. It was quite unlike anything I had ever done before, seeing as I tended to affiliate my work with the progressive rock genre and most often considered anything under fifteen minutes in length to be incomplete. I no longer cared, at this point, to create some sprawling masterpiece or a grand philosophical statement, wanting only to capture the emotional tone of a given moment. Thus I pushed past all ideals of form and technique, viewing them as a distraction, and the result was a project built on spontaneous improvisations and dizzy incoherence.

It was at this point and for these reasons that I opted to stop listening to the music of others—a stance which, while long having been applied to other forms of media, bore little effect on my listening habits theretofore. It wasn’t always easy, though as I once put it: I didn’t wish for the songs in my ears to drown out the beating of my own heart. I was also excited by the silly idea that, if only permitted to listen to my own works, that I might somehow come to emulate mine own works like in the manner that we unconsciously emulate what we consume, thereby becoming more and more like myself along the way like a damned fractal.

Though just as it seemed that my life had reached a point of absolute serenity, the sun in the sky was eclipsed by a confrontation initiated by a violent and unstable individual bent on sabotaging my efforts. My then-romantic interest and I became the unwitting targets of a man with whom neither of us had any previous ties nor interactions who would then go on to stalk and threaten us with acts of violence over a period of a month, at one point requiring police involvement. And because of my sheltered nature, I was not accustomed to unprovoked confrontations of this sort and could not find it in myself to pardon the senselessness of it all. The hatred and hurt within my heart grew strong enough to trigger intermittent black-outs, along with other agitated behaviors which were the cause of great concern for others who feared what this was doing to me. Without knowing how to proceed, I brought my grievances before the Thummim in a bid for reinforcement and in the morning I awoke to find my oppressor had been incapacitated, his tendons torn. The man’s only public statement regarding the event read This TENDON is KILLING me. [sic]

I didn’t care to seek out the details of what had actually occurred. I beheld an opportunity, and I took it. The situation was therefore put to rest without any further confrontations, though not without leaving a lasting scrape on my self-concept. A private ceremony was later held wherein bags of photographs, childhood drawings and any extant documents bearing my given name of Korneli were burned away in a backyard fire in inauguration of Tendon as both a name and an ideological paradigm—one which perfectly encapsulated the questionable nature of my newfound lust for justice.

The threads continued to unravel as the year ran its course. Following a stint of homelessness, multiple run-ins with the law and months of court ordered community service, it was plain to see that I had begun to grow disconnected. The occult fraternity to which I belonged was being overtaken by the paranoid and controlling behaviors of its chief member, causing disorder and frustration within the group and leading to a momentous contention between myself and Florentin which ravaged our friendship and more or less pitted us against one-another. And yet despite the trouble that it caused for me, I was still finding it difficult to leave it all behind. My sense of identity had become so intricately entangled in my affiliations and status as an occult luminary and to abandon these people I would be abandoning a world of promise, or so