Although I Am blAck,

o dAughters of JerusAlem,

I Am beAutIful.

St. John of the Cross

AlthoughI AmblAck,

o dAughtersofJerusAlem,

I AmbeAutIful.

The Gift of the Kos’mos

Cometh!I n

p r A I s e

o f

n I g h t

A n d k o s m o s

damian murphy & geticus polus

l’homme récent, publisher

bucharestmmxvintothe

indigoabyss

abcdf

abcdf

The Gift of the Kos’mos Cometh!

published by l’homme recent in bucharest &

printed on the Akhlys street,

where All is crimson and gold

All ruin and decay

gateways upon gateways

gateways upon gateways

december, 1928

to the naked starlight, the immortal nectar which

overflows the boundaries of the chalice of night,

gushing forth in fountains and streams and rivulets,

cleansing the gears of the machinery of sleep, rolling

forth like a tide of radiant dew to wash away the

iniquities of day. to the great night of the ancients,

to stars and constellations long since forgotten, to

the night of blasphemy and heresy, to the senseless

kosmos of the demiurge and of Azathoth, the

sightless monarch of monotony's empire and regent

of the infinite wastes. to Ain soph, the immaculate

void of the kabbalists, the perfect potentiality of the

Absolute and the annihilation of the contemplative,

the ascetic, the undefiled lover of the pure one. to

the abominable city of dreadful night, to the burned

and blackened ruins of piranesi and bruegel, to the

miserable curses of the wretched and the damned,

abandoned and forsaken beneath the ravenous stars

of perilous winters. to n.o.X. and to lAYlAh, to

bAbAlon and chAos, to nuIt, the naked

brilliance of the voluptuous night sky, sublime and

holy body of eternity unveiled, divine drunkenness

of poets and of prophets, of mystics and of

madmen. o guiding dark of night, o dark of night

more darling than the dawn, your light is more dear

than the lilies of the day. there are gifts and sights

that kos'mos brings to those with eyes to see. We

need more eyes! We need more eyes!

abcdf

"through the midnight thou art dropt,

o my child, my conqueror, my sword-

girt captain, o hoor! and they shall find

thee as a black gnarl'd glittering stone,

and they shall worship thee."

Aleister crowley,

Liber LXV, The Book of the Heart Girt

with the Serpent

Galaction by Andrew Condous (9) —

The Dark Dao by Quentin S. Crisp (23) — Vision to the Dark: An

Adventure by John Howard (43) — The Endless House, the Dreamless Sleep

by Thomas Stromsholt (53) — The Lost Words by Harold Billings (99) —

The Exctinction Hymnbookby Alcebiades Diniz (125) — It is Kindness and

Mythology by Joseph Dawson (145) — Black Night Testament by Jonathan

Wood (183) — Sleep’s Lost Labour by D.F. Lewis (217) — Archontes

Ascendant by D.P. Watt (243) — Cast the Seed into the Heart of the Night

by Stephan Friedman (257) — Nocternity by Avalon Brantley (276) —

Altars by John Gale (290) — Black Chroma by Adam S. Cantwell (297) —

The Hour of the Minotaur by Damian Murphy (316) — Fire Fades and

Night Have no Lords by Geticus Polus (330) — Untitled Yet

by Colin Insole (341)

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“We waited for a secret word, that should bearwitness to the hope of nations, as nowaccomplished for ever. At midnight the secretword arrived; which word was Waterloo andrecovered christendom! the dreadful word shoneby its own light; before us it went; high above ourleaders' heads it rode and spread a golden lightover the paths which we traversed. every city, atthe presence of the secret word, threw open itsgates to receive us. the rivers were silent as wecrossed. All the infinite forests, as we ran alongtheir margins, shivered in homage to the secretword. And the darkness comprehended it.”

Thomas De Quincey's The English Mail-Coach (Section III: Dream-Fugue)

gAlActIon

Andrew Condous

thIs vAst blAck shAdoW, this swelling, sterile seed that is

encased by nothingness, is reclaiming this city with its black

mortiferous flame, devouring the last translucent mauve ribbons and

rags, the last ghosts of the day, remnants of the malignant light

intruder.

the wheel of instants started spinning again, inconsistently at

first, slowed by the friction of the viscid last dream, before the

ferocious pace settled in and time regained its linearity.

the last dream, watered by black internal jungle rivers that twist

and turn and carry the decay of the past, the silt of darkness. that

last dream, where landscapes, malformed creatures, mucilaginous

movements, were shaped, given textures and phantom physics by

strange sounds, aggressive unfamiliar smells, and by that foreign

intruder that always came in, but only in his dreams, with its mul -

tifarious forms, to infuse them with a dense, unspeakable horror.

galaction demodolescu was the first born son of the richest

landowner of the eastern lands. he was born, and spent his child -

hood, at the family stronghold of castelul demodolescu where he

received his education through a revolving series of visiting scholars,

an education that lacked consistency and linearity but was compen -

sated by its richness and variety. It was never clear to what extent

galaction absorbed such teachings, no one had any idea of what he

10

thought about the history of the lands, the sciences, philo sophies.

he was never tested and never asked to answer any questions on what

had been taught. he just listened without any outward display of

either enthusiasm or boredom, never raised an inquiry or relayed an

observation. A statue listening to the wind.

outside of his education, his father and mother provided

galaction with all the opportunities to pursue what they perceived

as interesting endeavours. galaction’s younger siblings had all started

to excel in some form of artistic or literary pursuit which they suc -

cessfully undertook with an extraordinary level of enthusiasm.

galaction’s father sourced the best clays and softest carving

marble available in order to allow his son to pursue the art of sculp -

ture. Apart from carefully fashioning small balls and spheroids from

such materials, galaction did not display much enthusiasm for this

tactile art. the fashioning of frozen corpses of time had little appeal.

he did nevertheless create a number of sculptures, each a simple

lump of clay or marble, all pock marked with craters by thumb or

chisel, small hollows where he wished the silential darkness could

permanently reside, before swelling in the freedom of night. each

of these sculptures supposedly represented a particular emotion. You

could not differentiate among these creations, they all looked iden -

tical. the lump that apparently represented anger was no different

to the one that depicted euphoria. his father encouraged his son to

create representations beyond the internal but he vehemently refused

to create any sculpture that represented or symbolised the outside

world.

each summer, his mother would take him and his siblings to

join the multitude of families that congregated at the valley springs.

the orchestra of the summer swim played across the wetland pockets

11