Prelude - John

It took more than a week to get back on my feet. Apparently sliding into the Otherworlds unprepared did quite a number on my body. During this time recuperating, the house became my de facto hospital, with Todd being my main carer. Bitsie and Professor stopped by everyday, having lengthy talks with me about my life "pre-event", upbringing, the weeks leading up to that accursed night. Once they were certain that I was not a devil-summoning satanist, they began to slowly lift the veil - tying various events in my personal life and the world around me with their own worldview. It all sounded very.. religious, but with one crucial difference - just as I could smell the smoke from my cigarettes, I could smell the magic around them. Taste it in the air. I knew it was real, deep down, even if all their talk of awakenings and enlightenment was a tough pill to swallow.

The nightmares began plaguing me from day 1. Every night, some new iteration of horror would assault me in my dreams, invisible, slithering. Lindsey figured it was a reaction to the mental trauma I suffered on the other Plane, but unable to deal with it properly himself (the drugs he made for me did not help) he asked for help from his colleague, Dr. Linda Yamamoto, a fellow hermetic who specialized in the inner workings of the mind (and the corresponding Sphere). The slow process of healing started under her watchful tutelage.



After about two weeks, I was finally on my feet and ready to return home. Coming back wasn't a happy occasion though - every little thing in my tiny flat just reminded me of the life before. And the photos I took with Tish last Christmas on the end-of-the-year party.. Just couldn't look at them. I went to work the next day and quit. Looking back at it now, I realize that my new mystic patrons were probably responsible for sweeping the whole "botched ritual" thing under the rug and getting me out of trouble with the police. I doubt it was any consolation to the parents and loved ones of the victims. I think about them often, but could never muster the courage to go and see them, to tell them what happened to the people they love.

The life goes on in the corporate world and no one really noticed that I was gone - just another replaceable cog in the machine. The only person to have kept in contact, to my surprise, was Melissa, from accounting. At this point in time, she is one of the few threads keeping me connected to the outside world. The Mundane.

I quit my job, couldn't stay at home. At the Bitsie's suggestion, I moved in with Todd. Soon after I began attending the lectures and studying at the Chantry. The idea of following a different Tradition was briefly flaunted, but I rejected it outright. I think despite the outlandish nature of the Hermetic base teachings (for a recently Awakened), it approached the subject with a level of logic and provided a fundamental structure that I didn't know I needed at the time. I have since had the pleasure to converse with few members of other Traditions and each one made me appreciate landing in with the Hermetics that much more.

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It took more than two years to fully "graduate" and be recognized as an official member of the Order, but I've never risen above the apprentice rank. A problem that presented itself early on and continued plaguing me was that any attempt at progressing further than just perceiving the new, true aspects off reality stumbled upon the strong mental block. This mental blockade would prevent me from actually affecting the world around me, no matter how much Bitsie, Professor or Dr. Yamamoto would encourage (at first) or outright push (later on) me to perform magic consistently. The images of Tish and the others would inevitably pop into my head the more I tried to harness the primal energies and that feeling, that nasty feeling of being drenched in blood, being caressed by the.. I just couldn't. It would all shut down, I'd shut down. Bitsie said that there might be more going on, while Professor and Doctor insisted that it is a mundane reaction to traumatic event that I've been a part of of. No matter how much I've tried (and they helped) I could not advance further.

On the other hand, the sheer amount of the different aspects of reality that I'm able to perceive surprised all three of my mentors. The common consensus is that my violent Awakening pushed my senses a bit too wide, resulting in a much easier time not just understanding the varied Spheres, but utilizing them as well. Apparently a much more common scenario was hyper-specialization on one or two areas of expertize, governed by the Sphere of one's choice - the road that both Bitsie and Professor followed. Dr Yamamoto on the other hand, was closer to me in her abilities, though even she couldn't boast the full range of my senses.

Dr. Yamamoto was also instrumental in getting my sleep under control. What started as a series of therapy sessions slowly evolved into a full blown study of sleep, Maya and the nature of the Dream Zone. While the controlling effects of lucid dreaming have never worked for me, simply letting go and surrendering to the dream, instead of running from it, did. Soon, the dreaded visages of invisible monstrosities began to give way to the familiar shapes of the HAPPINESS! NOW! building.
The walls would protect me from the outside, from the nightmarish energies and weathers clamoring to get in. The true shock (to both me and the doctor) was when my old cult-mates began to appear. Dr. Yamamoto posited that me fighting against my own fears and traumas every day in my dreams have slowly shaped the stuff of dreams around me into my own personal pocket of space, my own personal dream castle, my own little dream realm. The "people" that thus inhabit it are in essence self-aware spirits created by me. I've yet to grasp this last one. Thinking of myself as a creator of intelligent life just doesn't seem real. Seeing familiar faces of both Tish and Red was.. hard. It still is. They are living?.. They are reminders of that day's tragedy. That, and the constant feeling of otherness, which I feel, whether real or illusory, when I work my rituals and magic.

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Learning the Hermetic tradition I enjoyed.. a lot. I'm sure many would see the need to learn massive amount of formulae, laws the govern them, phrases and words in ancient languages and their components, among other things, as incredibly tedious, but I for one always preferred the "step-by-step" learning. Not least because focusing on all those things would take most of my time and my mind, leaving me with scarcely any free moment to brood.

The way that hermetic practitioners realize their craft was different. Professor used strange old-timey gadgets - clock-work gizmos, tuning fork and other metallic noise-makers, arcane looking dividers. Bitsie chose language as her primary form of focus and delivery, chanting incantations and inter-lingual wordplay. Yamamoto mostly stuck to her pre-Awakening tools of trade - thoughtful sentencing, hypnosis and other psychologist tricks to weave the magic in, hiding it in the trappings of the mundane. All of them used the same principles, the same formulae, even the same incantations, but each in their own unique way, whether it was Lindsey's "victorian" styled metallics, Bitsie's linguistic prowess, or Doctor's carefully inserted words.

In my own style, I found, I often use fire, paper and water/blood as conduits to open up my perceptions further. Burning up crumpled lists of paper filled with proper incantations and diagrams, to then use the ash; cigarettes, inscribed with ancient words of power, and dried up, after being submerged in blood; the calm stillness of water and the reflections within.. I find the elements centering, grounding. A few prized possessions of mine that I often use in my craft is an old pocket knife, passed down from my grand-grandfather and a Zippo lighter, a gift from Bitsie, enhanced to never run out of fluid.

Life at the Chantry goes on, with me splitting my time between studying and working part-time and running errands for the older members.

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