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Chapter One
My First Birth and Family

1.
I was told that the night I was born, my mother saw a terrible face at the window of the midwife's house, of a man who seemed the very Devil.

Given that I have spent most of my life in the Devil's shadow, I believe my mother saw the truth.

2.
I was born a monster, and I grew from a monstrous life, and if you read of this, you will understand. I had no choice in my monstrosity.

Fate takes us by the hand and leads us where we are meant to go, and, in turn, we bite her for the pleasure of it. I am a murderer and a scoundrel, but once, I was a child, just as you once have been. Once I sought the goodness of all creation.

Once, I was a common urchin in a tidal pool, surrounded by eagerly devouring eels.

It is all a charade! This life! How we see it! How I saw my own! My life was never my own, but was drawn up as if by a great draughtsman, this Necromancer who had found the relics and used them to enslave me and bring me into the Veil!

I should have burned my books and instead turned to the quiet rustic life to which I had been born, and died with coal-dust in my throat and seven babies 'round the room, and a wife at the hearth! Instead, I allowed the curse that had been laid upon me at the hour of my birth to grow and fester. I followed my will, my flesh, and those who guided me, to this most wondrous and terrible place! Read this and know!

I have seen the other side of existence and it has torn away all conscience from me, and yet, I love the horror more than I love life itself and would not turn back if given the choice.

3.
Pleasure and its humours in the human body are what allow us to experience the mystical world. My first pleasure was my mother's nipple and my last, in my twenty-first year, was found at the breast of the Whore of Babylon, that visionary salve, that nectar of the necropolis, the supreme Lotos of the Visionary.

Why me? We each cry, alone, to the universe, to the mute gods or God. Why this fate? Why my destiny and not the destiny of the comfortable life, free of terror and abominations of the flesh? Why not the hypocritical, cushioned life of the normal man? Why not the world in which God is for Sundays and life consists of hours of labor followed by a few hours of entertainment and rest? Why this soul searing?

This I cannot answer satisfactorily. I was chosen before I even knew a choice could be made. My only answer can be that it was destiny itself, carved on my bones and sung within the chambers of my heart.

I had a sponsor to bring me to the attention of that secret society called the Chymera Magick. I could not have avoided my destiny had I desired to do so.

My life is written on my skin, tattooed as surely as if needles had been pressed into me, in the pathways of my blood, and the subcutaneous layers, the prick of life - and of the Occult Arts - dug chigger-like into me, and it is there. We are not mind, although we feel we are. We are body, we are flesh, we are the points of hair and the torn skin, and it is the obliteration of the mind that brings us in contact with the visions and the truth. It is through the destruction of social hypocrisy, of taboo, of restraint, that opens us up, that finds doorways where there have been none, and bores holes into us, opening us to the vibrant hum of the cosmos. In the story of my life, you will read of terrible things, by your standards. You will read of vows broken, of demons raised, of bodies used unnaturally, of deviancy, and unholy ritual, of nuns brought into the orgy pit, and of men used as women, and women used as men. Do not flinch from this, for that is the squint of the weak human mind that we believe we possess.

Use these shocking acts as a way of awakening the creature within its cage.

The one who is the Many. The Lord of the Flies is no Devil. The Lord of Pestilence is no beekeeper of souls.

He is our brother.

Use this to gain wisdom and seek your heaven. I have seen the afterworld, and I will tell you it is more terrible than the worst tortures of this fair land. Do you walk the Earth and believe it unmerciful and unjust? The life beyond this one is ten thousand times more horrible. It is a screaming moment frozen in an eternal chamber of torment. You would do well to seek the disordering of your senses now, to ungird yourselves of your weighty prison of the mind and unleash every desire of your flesh, every forbidden thing you can imagine, let it come to pass. For the end of your life already circles around you. You shall be bitten by its ravening silver teeth, and torn by its pincers. You must embrace it and open yourself to it

As I did.

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(from The Necromancer copyright © 2003 by Douglas Clegg)