from http://www.cultofcthulhu.net/infernal_book_of_his_law.htm (accessed 9/6/06) The Slimy Infernal Book of His Law Book One: Concepts Beyond R'leyh is an aquamarine, dripping, labyrinthine grotto in the darkest region of Hell. Satan and Cthulhu are the great links to Concepts Beyond. Beyond what? Time, space, reality, sleep, duality, our egoÉ Yes, the Loathsome Axis of Outer Darkness - Cthulhu and Satan combined into one is a paradigm unto itself. Everyday thinking must be abolished, what we consider "reality" is nothing more than a dank prison. A few individuals have a chance to awaken and become as God, which is to say fully conscious and aware of oneself and the surrounding world. This is the tradition of the Gnostics, Satanists, Cthulhu cultists, esoteric schools of the Fourth Way, and sensitive outsiders. Man's divinity is obscured by the nonsense of this world. We must break out of our sleep, our prison. Most Satanists see the Devil as a thing to be captured, some idea which has to be fenced in. The majority of humanity needs to identify, and that's where ideas start to go wrong. The masses would rather have a precise definition, a simple answer. Satan is this, Satan is that, etc. I am who I am only in relation to Satan. Foolishness! Adherents to the lunatic fringe of the radical left handed path use Satan as a justification. He is their diabolic emblem of rebellious behavior, indignant atheism, paranoid megalomania, reckless youth, wasted potential, close minded idiocy, and short sighted maturity. Who would they be without their horned God? Probably nothing. Members of the Cult of Cthulhu have power no matter who they honor. At its heart, every serious occultist is alone. Is Satan not more than man's distorted shadow? Is he not a primal image / entity of struggle and evolution? A living symbol of willed change? Cthulhu benefits from His anonymity. He doesn't have empty shell followers awaiting His every command. In fact, Cthulhu is most definitely fictional which makes Him an ideal choice to be a God which the independent magician wills into being. It behooves man to describe and envisage the alien forces which influence our "reality". What we seek is the filter - some faculty in us that can receive these malevolent vibrations. This influential force might as well take the form of a slimy green cephalopod from outside time and space. Now you know why the Cult of Cthulhu utilizes both Our Drowned Lord and the Devil. Each tempers and balances the other to form an ideal Loathsome Axis of Outer Darkness! Book Two: Satanic R'leyh Where demons parade in costumes of human skin and unutterable screams are the poetry of dark redemptionÉ God is God; which is like saying the unknowable is the unknowable. We humans have to bring such impressions down to a level that we can appreciate. Some call this god Satan, others use names such as Cthulhu, Set, Christ, Odin, or the Tsalal. As with everything, there are shades of grey and layers - many, many layers. Perhaps it would be clearer to only use the word godlike. One thing is more godlike than another. And what specific qualities make something, or someone, godlike? WellÉ no one knows, no one human at least. That's one of the problems with defining God, let alone becoming one. To take a vague stab at defining such a complex problem: God is the source of everything. Therefore, being godlike is close proximity to that source. We may call ourselves a God, but we are far from the source, far from perfect. In fact, we are no where near the beginning. It would be more realistic and fruitful to accept that we are close to the end - slowly drifting towards oblivion. Only when we have totally given up our false selves, can we see the truth for what it is. For those who take these Three steps into His Infernal Law, be prepared. Your safe and comfortable world is about to die. A Trinity of Steps Towards Satanic R'leyh 1. 1. Man does not know himself. Remember yourself by realizing that you are, at this very moment, asleep. Keep your attention on who you are and what you are currently doing. Eventually you will be able to remember yourself while you pay attention to the world around you. In Chaos Magic, one needs something called gnosis to fire up a spell and launch it into the aether. This might be considered a moment of clarity. The mindfulness which comes from Self-Remembering is what I call gnosis. Gnosis is the infernal spark that energizes one's magic. Be aware of yourself as you form the magic and then project it with your will. 2. 3. 2. Man wastes his energy on expressing negative emotions. This energy would be better spent creating what you want. You are used by your negativity. Expressing negative emotions distracts you, sucking your energy like a vampire. Do not let the idiocy of life influence you. If something causes you to express negative emotions which you cannot ignore, then perform a destruction ritual and be done with it. 4. 5. 3. Man has many "I's" within him. He has no controlling center, permanent I, or ego. Man is always going in a hundred different directions during a single day. If this is the case, you might wonder, then how can man do anything? He cannot. Man cannot do, everything is done to him or comes to him by accident, not by his own design. However, there are a group of "I's" with a commonality, "I's" which desire to awake. Make this magnetic center your master. Using all three of these principles will put you on the path of the Dark Way. Putting effort into these three steps, you will eventually be more awake, energetic, and successful. Book Three: Nihilistic Horror "The Extraordinary is a province of the solitary soul. Lost the very moment the crowd comes into view, it remains within the great hollows of dreams, an infinitely secluded place that prepares itself for your arrival, and for mine. Extraordinary joy, extraordinary pain - the fearful poles of the world that both menaces and surpasses this one. It is a miraculous hell towards which one unknowingly wanders. And its gate, in my case, was an old town whose allegiance to the unreal inspired my soul with a holy madness long before my body had come to dwell in that incomparable place." Thomas Ligotti - "Sect of the Idiot" The bleak and desolate paradigm created by authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti reveal something in the universe and in ourselves. This something is the terrible knowledge that human life is an unfortunate accident at best and a cruel joke at worst. Such authors show us a reality that few are capable of facing. It could only be an evil god that created man as he is: alive and able to comprehend his own in insignificance and his own potential in a world of suffering, ignorance, and death. If god is evil, then this would lead us to believe that humanity might be part of some awful plan. The other option, of course, is that we view ourselves as meaningless anomalies that have grown like an unexpected fungus in this universe. Man is ridiculous. He sees himself as the center of the universe. He believes he knows what he is and where he is headed. Everything he sees becomes either concrete truth or some truth parody influenced by society at large. He is a mistake. For these reasons, man is a laughingstock. Humanity dresses itself as a peacock and parades up the street expecting God to gaze lovingly at him. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The whole of mankind was fashioned, if he was fashioned at all, by some unspeakable divinity as either an unwitting tool or a malicious amusement. Those who realize this might have a chance to use this black wisdom. We might become like our hideous mastersÉ "Pain is normal throughout all living, and perhaps non-living, particles: it is the status quo without threat of subversion. All is in harmony with it, everything plays the tune. Flowers shrieking on a summer's day, wolves wailing in their lairs of ice, worms mute with underground panic--all the keys and stops function perfectly, melodies of agonies are backed by chords of excruciation. While children whine in hospitals of gingerbread, the other voices in the worldly menagerie sing their parts... in field and sky, in swamp and jungle, under seas and on mountain-tops. The mysterious music flows." Thomas Ligotti - "The Stricken Philosopher" END