Stealing Sacred Fire
Book Three of The Grigori Trilogy
Storm Constantine
Stafford, England
Stealing Sacred Fire: Book Three of The Grigori Trilogy
© Storm Constantine 1996
Smashwords edition 2009
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, or events, is purely coincidental.
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Author’s Foreword
February 2008
When this book was first written, world politics were not quite what they are today. Reading back over the text, I feel it’s now necessary to say that this book should be read in context of the time it was written. There is no mention of wars in the Middle East or terrorism, except for the struggles of the Yarasadi, a fictional group who are based loosely on certain religious factions of the Kurds – and I chose to do this in context of ancient legends rather than modern politics. Of course, the world is a very different place now, and certain areas of discussion are very sensitive. However, I do not feel that I should update any of this book’s text to reflect the political sensibilities of the twenty-first century. This is a historical fantasy.
In the story, a self-styled king rules in Iraq, believing himself to be a descendent of the Watchers. This setting was a geographical decision on my part, rather than a political one. However, events since I wrote the book, with Saddam Hussein’s role on the world stage, might make it appear I was trying to make a statement about that. I wasn’t. The area of the Middle East where Iraq lies is significant in terms of ancient legends; it’s no more than that.
Original Foreword to Second Edition
This book was first published in 1997, two and a half years before the Millennium. I wanted the story to end with the Millennium, the dawn of a new age. People asked why I considered that date important. It was a celebration of two thousand years of Christianity, after all, and as I am distinctly not Christian, surely it made no sense for me to give it any credence. Also the true millennium should be celebrated on the eve of the year 2001.
I understood their points, but for me the most important aspect of the event was the fact that all over the world people would be focusing upon it. All that energy. It defies belief in itself. It did not matter what people were celebrating. For an ephemeral moment, humanity was in accord, as that hour of midnight swept across the world like a scythe. To any practitioner of magic, the life energy inherent in that event had to be at least interesting, if not a direct source of power.
Another aspect of the Millennium also intrigued me greatly. At the turn of nearly every century, magical groups and societies, through ritual, have attempted to initiate a new Golden Age for humanity, an age of freedom. I was interested in the symbolic and spiritual implications of this supposed New Age of Man.
Also, after two thousand years of patriarchal religion, it was interesting to reflect on where we are now, spiritually and politically. Although I am not Christian, I have no grudge against Christ, who, if we are to believe his story is historical rather than mythical, imparted sound teaching. It was what happened after he died that I condemn, how warped individuals twisted his message into an ascetic, repressive misogyny, almost a hatred and denial of life itself. Now, in the year 2000, we can see that Western people have far greater freedom to express themselves spiritually in the manner they choose, without being tortured, burned or hung for it. This might not be the case the whole world over, but it is a progression.
The total eclipse of the sun on August 11th, 1999, was also regarded as an exceptionally powerful magical event. Some people thought that what happened on that day would set the pattern for the rest of the year, the build up to the New Year.
As I was writing this book, the eclipse was two years in the future, and I had to speculate about what would happen. In this edition, I have slightly revised that section to be more realistic. The best place to view the eclipse in England was predicted by psychics to be The Lizard in Cornwall, which featured heavily in the second book of this trilogy, ‘Scenting Hallowed Blood’. Although I was unable to go down there myself, some of my friends braved the hordes and hired a cottage on The Lizard for a few days. On the day of the eclipse, which was due to occur at 11.00 a.m., the sky was smothered in clouds. My friends went to sit on the lion simulacra in the cliffs, (named Azumi in ‘Scenting Hallowed Blood’), and thought they wouldn’t be able to see much. However, for just a few minutes, the clouds opened, and they were able to view the entire eclipse. Only ten miles north in Falmouth, where all the scientists and astronomers had set up their equipment, nothing was visible except the darkness at the moment of the eclipse.
When my friends came home, they barely had the words to describe the feelings that had swept through the crowd during those brief minutes. Several of them told of how before it happened, they had felt depressed or even physically ill, and people around them complained of similar conditions. The moments of blackness were entirely surreal and some primitive instinct within them had been terrified, as if it really had been the end of the world, the death of the sun. But when the sun came back, and radiant rays of diamond brilliance shone forth around the black centre, hope and joy surged through the crowd. People yelled, sang, clapped and wept. Any sense of depression or nausea lifted instantly. The last two thousand years of civilisation might never have happened. For just a short time, people were united in a pagan conjunction with nature.
Those of us who hadn’t been able to go to Cornwall went up to Cannock Chase, miles of ancient heathland near our town, which before the advance of towns and roads had been joined to Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, legendary home of Robin Hood. Many other people had the same idea, so it was quite a festival atmosphere. One of my friends suffered a depression similar to the ailment that had assailed people in Cornwall. While the eclipse was actually happening, she couldn’t even bring herself to look at it. Everyone was offering her their smoked glasses, saying, ‘Go on, you can’t miss it.’ But she just refused. Afterwards, escaping the crowds who were still engaged in picnics around us, we went to an ancient oak grove a short distance away, where we often meet to meditate. Here, we performed a short visualisation about the birth of the Child of the Aeon. Everyone felt extremely strange or disorientated. Something magical was certainly happening that day.
Prior to this, in 1998, I attended a Kurdish rally in Trafalgar Square in London. As I was writing about the Kurds in ‘Stealing’, I wanted to meet some of them first-hand. My friend and colleague, Andy Collins, whose research has always inspired me, had made contact with Kurdish organisations while writing his
book ‘From the Ashes of Angels’. Andy believed that Kurdish factions, such as the Yezidi and Yaresan, are direct descendants from the race who’d once lived in their country. He’d found evidence to suggest that Kurdistan was Eden, and the Kurds’ ancestors were the Anannage. Although the majority of Kurds are dark-haired and skinned, astonishing red-heads and blondes are sometimes born, who have blue or green eyes. The Yezidi practice an unusual form of angel worship and have been called devil worshippers, because they see the serpent of Eden as a good guy, who brought knowledge and enlightenment to humankind. In their religion, he is called Azazil. Shemyaza.
You need to read ‘From the Ashes of Angels’ to learn the complete justification for Andy’s well-researched claims. There is simply not the room here for me to do so.
The Kurds invited Andy to speak at the rally, after all the politicians, actors, and celebrities who supported their cause had had their say. I wasn’t quite sure how the people would react to Andy’s ideas. He would follow worthy speakers, who were working towards political aid for the Kurds. I knew what he was going to say, and I could barely bring myself to watch, sure he’d get lynched. I glanced around the crowd and saw men in wheel-chairs with missing limbs, and other obvious casualties of the conflict in Kurdistan, who had come to England for treatment. How would they view Andy’s ideas? It seemed almost insulting. But Andy knew no such temerity. He got on stage and told these people, most of them exiles, many of them combat veterans, that they were descended from angels and that their country was the cradle of civilisation. Well, he didn’t get lynched, and the applause was enthusiastic, but I suspect the truth was that few people there really understood what was being said to them. This day, however, provided great inspiration for one of the chapters near the beginning of this book, when Shemyaza first comes into contact with the Yarasadi, who are a fictional Kurdish faction.
In this novel, Shemyaza, from one viewpoint, is the Anti-Christ, he who comes to break down the rigours of patriarchy and asceticism. But from another viewpoint, he is the true Christ, shorn of millennia of dogma and misunderstanding. This is why there is one scene in the book where he is shown as both Christ and the Devil, two sides of the same coin: Ahura Mazda and Ahriman; Horus and Set. I found a passage in ‘The Genealogy of Morality’ by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which seemed to describe Shemyaza, a being who is beyond good and evil and could raise humanity from its degenerative state to a new freedom and power:
‘But some time, in a stronger age than this mouldy, self-doubting present day, he will have to come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit who is pushed out of any position ‘outside’ or ‘beyond’ by his surging strength again and again, whose solitude will be misunderstood by the people as though it were flight from reality -: whereas it is just his way of being absorbed, buried and immersed in reality so that from it, when he emerges into the light again, he can return with the redemption of this reality: redeem it from the curse which its ideal has placed on it up till now. This man of the future will redeem us not just from the ideal held up till now, but also from the things which will have to arise from it, from the great nausea, the will to nothingness, from nihilism, that stroke of midday and of great decision which makes the will free again, which gives earth its purpose and man his hope again, this Antichrist and anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and of nothingness – he must come one day…’
Writing this book affected me greatly. It was as if I was tapping into some primal vein of archetypes, using symbols that have great meaning for the human race. The scene involving the well in St Menas (I won’t say more to avoid plot-spoiling) made me feel physically sick. It was one of the most difficult scenes I have ever written.
Some of the scenes were inspired by dreams that I had during the writing process. The episode in the mountains of Kurdistan, when Daniel has a vision of the holy twins, was lifted directly from a dream I had a couple of days before. The appearance of the Crystal Chambers and their history was inspired by the visions of a psychic called Bernard, who worked with Andy Collins on this subject in 1985.
The time when I was writing this novel is long past, the pseudo-Millennium spent, and we have returned to mundane routine. The sky did not open at mid-night on December 31st, no angels flew against the stars, and humanity did not change miraculously for the better. As to what will happen at midnight on the eve of the year 2001, who can say?
At this point in time, I cannot emulate the introduction to ‘Scenting Hallowed Blood’ and give directions to readers who might want to investigate the areas I’ve written about, because war and political regimes have made them inaccessible to Western travellers. We cannot seek the valley of Kharsag and soak ourselves in its history. But in fiction, we can dream better futures, better worlds. We can dream of living there.
Storm Constantine
March 27th, 2000
Introduction
Iraq
The mound reared up incongruously from the rubbled hot-plate of the desert. It did not look like a city at all. Around it, the plains of scorching rocks were flat, like the dun, shattered terrain of some hostile planet, where only parched lizards blinked at the sun. The mound, or tell, had lain dead for many thousands of years. Here, at the hot girdle of earth, ancient secrets smouldered beneath miles of dust and memories. Shunned and feared, remembered only as the lost dwelling-place of demons, who had no place in the world of more recent, jealous gods, the tell had lain untouched by human hands for millennia. But now men had come here, religious taboos broken in the crack of stone, the opening of the earth. On the side of the tell a wound had been made, a simple, black hole that oozed cold. Carrion birds wheeled over the excavation; dark angels against the intense blue sky. Their cry was an echo of forgotten calls to buried gods.
An old man, squatting near the opened earth, glanced up at the ragged shapes and said to himself, ‘Death is here. The eyes of the ancient ones have come.’ He made a protective sign with his fingers and shivered as the cold breath that came out of the ground touched his cheek. Some hours earlier he had heard shouts below, and felt deep in his ancient fibres a tingling. The hot ground seemed fragile beneath him, as if it could open up like a hungry mouth, or a cut made in flesh by a blade, and swallow him into itself. They had found something momentous in the forgotten city below; something that should not have been found. Nothing would induce him to enter the tunnels of the excavation, not even the generous pay offered by the king to those who would work there.
Presently, having been advised of the new discovery, the king arrived at the site, his jeep throwing up a spray of desert grit. He alighted with dignity, trod purposefully up the slope in his shiny boots; a tall man in the prime of life. Like many dictators before him, he was dressed in khaki, his dark-skinned face half hidden by a neatly trimmed moustache. But, unlike his predecessors in this turbulent land, his hair was long and oiled into coils and on the second finger of his left hand, over his leather glove, he wore a large, golden ring, which bore an ancient seal. All creatures would kneel before him and did. He had named himself Nimnezzar, having been taught in a dream his true origins. He believed that royal, unearthly blood ran in his veins.
As the king strode up the side of the tell, scattering stones, the old man made an obeisance. ‘Do not enter, great one. The secrets of the ages must remain in darkness.’
The king paused. His expression was unreadable as he peered down at the old man, although the fingers of his right hand tapped his khaki-clad thigh. ‘Why is that?’ he demanded. ‘You know why we are here.’
The old man ducked his head in deference. ‘Yes, oh great one.’ He pointed to the sky. ‘But the eyes of the Old Ones behold your subjects desecrating the ancient domain. I speak only to warn you.’
The king stood motionless for a moment. His eyes seemed empty of feeling. They were eyes that could watch death in all its forms without flinching. He could snuff out a life with a twitch of his fingers. Yet he did not call for his guard t
o punish the old man for his outspoken words. He smiled. ‘Hassan, I am of the ancient line. The eyes of the Old Ones are my eyes. They are here to attend this great moment, like serpents drawn to the birth of a divine king. Do not fear for me.’
Again, the old man ducked his head. ‘I have served your family long, great one. I know that your blood is sacred, yet the shadows of those carrion wings hang over me... Once you have beheld what lies within the darkness, there is no going back.’
The king reached down and touched the old man lightly on his shoulder. ‘This is a new age,’ he said, with a tenderness that seemed inappropriate from his lips. ‘The world is different now.’
He climbed over the rubble and then on, into the darkness. His personal guard followed him, casting cold glances at the old man as they passed. He did not look at their faces, only their guns.
Within the excavation, the tunnel sloped downwards steeply. Temporary lighting hung from the walls, trailing ropes of cable and emitting an electrical hum. The air smelled musty, but also sweet, and it was hot upon the lungs. This was unexpected, for the king had been told by experts that in the underground cities temperatures remained constant. The bright lighting must be heating the air.
The chambers in the levels nearest the surface were empty, and had been constructed at a later date than those beneath them. They were crude in design and had perhaps been storehouses, or else barracks for military, but who could really tell how the inhabitants of this alien place had run their community?
Markers had been placed to show the way through the labyrinth to the lower levels. The king and his entourage emerged from a twisting corridor onto the lip of what first appeared to be a ledge. The king paused. He made no outward sign, but there was no doubt the scene before him surprised and awed him.
He and his officers stood at the brink of a great circular shaft; their heads nearly brushed the ceiling. Dark openings punctuated the walls of the shaft, visible in the sporadic glares of yellow light. Further below, there was darkness.