Houses of Sorcery

{ The following is an excerpt from our book Black Templar Handbook.}

Man has always sought power and meaning in rites of black magick and sorcery, conducted in special power-spaces (râkâdwânz) and temples (zâkshodz). The earliest evidence of human ritual was a nameless snake cult that offered spearheads to a python statue in a sacred cave in southern Africa. One of the earliest known paintings is of a stone age sorcerer on the wall of a cave-temple in southern France. Pre-Islamic Arabia was dominated by snake cults that worshipped in elaborate temple complexes containing altars, chapels and buried snake bones. Shamans and sorcerers in every culture lived in strange dwellings that were feared and set apart from the rest of the tribe.

Across the world, massive megalithic structures aligned with various celestial objects testify to the importance of temples to the magick and myths of ancient peoples. From Göbekli Tepe and Stonehenge to the Temples at Karnak, Giza, Baalbek, Chichen Itza, Angkor and Tiahuanaco, the ancient world still awes us with the magick and majesty of their stone temples, the precise purposes of which are still shrouded in mystery.

The Abrahamic tradition, which buried so many temple-building civilizations before it, itself began with a nomadic desert tribe who conducted magickal rites in a portable temple called a tabernacle. This proto-temple evolved into the grand First Temple built by the arch-magician Solomon, where the Kohanim performed sacrifices and other sorcerous rituals preserved by the Rabbinical orders and Synagogues to this day. According to Jewish belief, this Temple was constructed at the command of their god Yahweh to house his presence and glorify his chosen people upon earth.

The sorcerer-priesthood of the Aztec Empire, one of the true black magocracies of history, constructed vast temples to their bloodthirsty war gods and sacrificed captives en masse atop them by cutting out their hearts and offering them to the sun. They did this according to a complex magickal cosmology, in which the human heart was a fragment of the sun, which must be offered to the gods to prevent the sun from going out and the world from ending.

The first Buddhist king of Tibet, Songtsän Gampo, ordered the construction of twelve temples across his kingdom to drive away an evil demoness named srinma, the traditional ruler of the land and a sworn enemy of Buddhism. Thus was born Jokhang Temple, the most sacred temple in Tibet and the heart of the Tibetan lamacracy.

The Catholic magocracy used (and still uses) their cathedrals to propagate their ideology and authority outward from their imperial power center in Rome, entrancing the minds of millions across the planet with their Latin liturgies, symbolic cannibalism and other repetitive rituals. The cathedrals themselves were constructed to reflect the majesty and divine order of the heavenly realms promised to believers.

With all of these Orders and many others, the heart of their power lay in their temples, which performed vital magickal functions according to their worldviews. The temples won the favor of the gods, kept hostile spirits at bay, and brought power and fortune to their followers―or brought suffering and destruction upon them.

As we shall see, the Black Temples envisioned by the Dark Lords shall play a similarly central role, by accumulating unlimited power for the Order, immortalizing our Lords and perhaps even saving this universe from destruction.

Sith Sorcery Meditation: Crystal Gazing

{ The following is based on material found in our book Sith Academy: Acolyte Training }

Crystal gazing is a powerful meditation used by Sith sorcerers to strengthen their will and increase their Force power. To do it, acquire a dark crystal such as smoky quartz or obsidian, or a red crystal such as carnelian. Sit in your meditation chamber and gaze into the crystal, held in your outstretched hand or placed on a table. Fix your gaze on the crystal and don’t look away for several minutes. As you gaze, chant a simple power mantra in the Black Tongue such as “Zy âm nâm” (“Force to me”) or “Nâm âsh Zy” (“I am Force”). In time, you should be able to extend this meditation to an hour or more.

The crystal acts as a lens to focus Force power from a Source such as the Black Sun and transmit it into your Third Eye. Feel this dark energy burning away inner weakness, endarkening your mind and honing your Sword of Will. You may have “Force visions” of other times and places or perceive thoughts of other beings. Carry a crystal with you at all times and use this meditation to gather Force power into yourself and direct it at targets or expand your consciousness as needed. Zy âm chod!

The Great Reset

{ The following is an excerpt from a work in progress by the Dark Lords, to be published in 2022. }

Nihilism as we know it is not the “Great Work” of magicians seeking a transcendent Source of meaning in their lives, but the “Great Reset” of sorcerers seeking to eliminate their delusions and bring themselves back in line with cold, hard reality. This has been our path in recent times.

After exploring metaphysical Sources that drew us ever deeper into darkness, chaos and insanity, we reached a decisive breaking point, at which our world was on the verge of a terminal conflagration. Lord Ravuk was literally a fraction of an inch from burning down the Dark Lords’ compound, and did, to all appearances, magickally affect the death of Lord Karzathor’s parents via a diabolical pact carried out in our Black Sanctum. Such events, one might think, would be a glorious affirmation of the Dark Lords’ path, which proved beyond reasonable doubt the power of the forces we had called into our lives. And in the black magickal reality we had conjured about ourselves, perhaps it was. But in a more mundane reality, we faced the prospect of a dramatic defeat, by the forces of law and order, mental health, and financial ruin. Something had to give.

We have spent much of the past few years deconstructing and reconstructing our realities in order to avoid a fate worse than death: powerlessness and self-delusion. We have ruthlessly culled most thoughtforms, ideologies and practices from our magickal lives and focused our energies on strengthening our bodies, adventuring in nature and securing our home and financial fronts. The sorcery of hiking, biking, travelling, cooking, investing and home improvement may sound rather mundane, but after years of unhealthy, unhinged and impoverished living, we find it very powerful. There is little that is more pathetic than a “black magician” who lives in total squalor but imagines that by sufficiently intense, obscure or depraved incantations alone he can instantly extricate himself from his predicament and make himself a man of power. Not likely. Our turn to Nihilism was necessitated after taking a hard look at our reality and calling bullshit on our own impotence and delusions. Living in a black magickal fantasy world can be highly alluring and intoxicating, but it is not the way of the true Dark Lord. Destroying your own dream-worlds, pulling yourself out of solipsistic role-playing games that lead nowhere and putting your life on a path of real power is the mark of a true magician. And Nihilism is the best philosophical tool we have found for this purpose. Instead of asserting that “everything is true”—the motto of the delusional solipsist—Nihilism assumes that “nothing is true”, and forces every would-be belief or value to prove its power in the crucible of experience. It works for us.

Cosmicist Political Philosophy

{The following is an excerpt from Book of Cthulhu, by the Dark Lords.}

Cosmicism, being a philosophy of man’s relationship to the larger Cosmos, is not inherently political, but tends to be associated with thinkers of a conservative or reactionary bent. This is not difficult to understand, since liberalism and leftism are rooted in Enlightenment ideals such as “progress”, “equality” and “human rights”, which are themselves rooted in Christian and Judaic metaphysical concepts like Imago Dei (man is created in the image of God), universalism (religious values are true for everyone, everywhere) and tikkun olam (man is obligated to help “fix” a broken creation). Since Cosmicism posits a universe that is totally indifferent to us, with no benevolent gods in whose image we were created, no “arc of the universe that bends toward justice”, no historical dialectic or metaphysical forces compelling humanity to build a better world, it provides no philosophical support for liberal or progressive ideology. Neither does Cosmicism support the projects of Promethean/Faustian man, who by his genius, reason and will hopes to remake the world into a more pleasing form and place himself on the throne previously reserved for God. Nor does Cosmicism support the secular humanism which holds that “man is the measure of all things”; on the contrary, Cosmicism posits that man is the measure of nothing but his own impotence and insignificance in the cosmic scheme of things. None of these ideals associated with liberal, progressive and leftist thought find support in Cosmicism, so Cosmicist thinkers are associated with conservatism and rightism by default. Here are quotes from two notable “reactionary” thinkers to further illustrate the point:

In and of itself the destiny of this small planet that pursues its course somewhere in infinite space for a short time among the swarms of the ‘eternal’ stars is of no importance. Still less important is what moves for a couple of instants upon its surface. But each and every one of us, in and of ourselves of no importance, is for an unspeakably brief moment–a lifetime–cast into that whirling universe. … There are no ‘men-in-themselves’ such as as the philospophers prattle about, but only men of a time, of locality, of a race, of a personality type, who contend in battle with a given world and win through or fail, while the universe around them moves slowly on with a godlike unconcern. This battle is life, and life in the true Nietzschean sense of a cruel, pitiless, relentless battle deriving from the Will to Power. ―Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of “world history”—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die. One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense

The Legend of the Black Sun Scroll

{ The following story is an excerpt from Black Ninja Handbook and Book of the Black Sun. }

In modern times, many important historical Ninjutsu scrolls have come out of the shadows of private family collections and been made available to scholars or published in book form for the first time. But there is one scroll that has yet to surface, though it still exists as a dim legend and a dark vision in the minds of the few who have heard of it.

We speak of the legend of the Black Sun Scroll: a document which describes the darkest arts of Black Ninjutsu, much as the Shoninki and the Bansenshukai describe the ways of White Ninjutsu. The Black Sun Scroll is said to contain the secret lore of a Ninja clan that originated as an Akuto—one of the “evil bands” of thieves and bandits who terrorized ancient Japan. It is said that some six hundred years ago, this band came under the influence of a mad Buddhist monk named Kano—an adept of the Mikkyo sect who had also trained with Yamabushi mountain mystics and the fanatical Sohei sect of warrior-monks.

Kano was obsessed with a vision of the Kuro no Hi—the Black Sun, which he alone was apparently capable of perceiving. By his perception of the dark energies emanating from this invisible sun, the monk believed he had been given magickal powers and prophetic abilities, but most people just thought he was mad. Expelled from the orthodox Buddhist orders for his erratic nature, Kano wandered the wilds of Japan, a desperate man who resorted to begging and petty criminality to survive. That was when he came in contact with a band of thieves and mercenaries, who, equally outcast and despised by conventional society, took him as their spiritual leader. Together, this unlikely band evolved into a bizarre cult, led by an inspired madman who gave them an ideology that elevated their activities above common criminality and mercenary terrorism to apocalyptic holy war. For Kano saw the cult’s activity in cosmic terms: he taught that the “White Sun” of the present age was dying, a “Black Sun” would soon rise that would cast the world into war and darkness, and the chaos the cult spread was the will of the “Dark Tao”.

In time, the cult settled down in a remote mountain village in Koka province. There, they constructed a temple known as Kuronohiji—Black Sun Temple—where Kano conducted services for the cultists. He also began to record the cult’s lore and his prophetic and magickal insights in secret scrolls. Thus was born the Black Sun Scroll of legend. By this time, the cult had become a skilled band of mercenaries who conducted night raids, arson, theft and assassination for any warlord who would hire them. Thus, they became one of the earliest and most notorious clans of shinobi-no-mono—stealers-in—Ninja.

After years of this way of life, the Black Sun Clan, as they became known, made many powerful enemies and were eventually targeted for destruction. It seems that their decisive offense was propagating their heretical religion, which Kano was now calling “Black Sun Zen”, “Black Shinto” or “Dark Taoism”. This religion produced a breed of apocalyptic religious terrorist-shinobi that terrified even the powerful warlords who employed them. Finally, with the prodding of several religious authorities, a powerful Koka Daimyo decided the time had come to wipe out the Black Sun Clan and end their fanatical cult forever. Soon, a large force of samurai descended upon the Clan’s village, joined by an army of Sohei fighting monks who saw it as their religious duty to wipe out the heretical evil-doers. Thus, according to the legend, the Kuro no Hi Temple and village were burned down by the Daimyo’s men and all its members were put to the sword. The evil scrolls which the Temple was said to contain also went up in flames, and with them some of the darkest flights of the human imagination and blackest magick ever conceived.

But the legend also states that Kano’s scrolls weren’t all destroyed on that violent and fiery night. The most sacred of his scrolls, Kuro no Hi no Maki—the Black Sun Scroll—was stolen out of the village by the Clan’s swiftest Ninja and taken to a place of safekeeping. The final prophecy of Kano, it is said, was that the Black Sun Scroll would one day be rediscovered, its revelations proven true, and the cult of the Shinobi no Kuro no Hi—the Black Sun Ninjas—born anew. Whether any of this is true we cannot say, since the fate of the scroll is still unknown. However, we will note that shortly after the destruction of Kuronohiji Temple, Japan was plunged into its “Sengoku” or “warring-states” period—a dark age of war and chaos that lasted for more than a century. Thus, in that respect Kano was prophetic, though it remains to be seen whether the Black Sun Scroll will resurface and its cult of Black Sun Ninjas will live again.

The Hell-World to Come

{ The following is an exerpt from our book Temple of Satan: The Devil’s Disciples }

The world of the future shall be a hell-world. It shall bake in the heat of a warming sun, burn in the flames of a thousand wars, smolder in the ashes of atomic holocaust. In time, the very seas of the planet shall be boiled off by the expanding sun. No domesticated human of the modern type shall survive in the hell-world to come. Only the race of Homo Satanicus, born and bred for this new infernal Earth, shall thrive or even survive. The last age of men ended in a great flood, which Yahweh sent down to punish man for his sins. The current age shall end in a great fire, which the Devil shall send up to cleanse the world of the weak and faithless.

In preparation for this hell-world, our Templars shall build our network of Black Houses, Lodges and Schools not just as places of pleasure, knowledge and magick, but as fortresses in which to ride out the Apocalypse. We shall build some of them deep underground, in cave complexes and bunkers, able to survive even atomic hellfire. We shall stock them with provisions, weapons and supplies of every kind, and connect them via our private communications network. In this way, when the world has burned and been cleansed by Satan’s holy fire, the present system broken down by the tribulations of a warming earth, our kind shall emerge unharmed to become the masters of the new Earth.

Prepare yourselves for the hell-world, all Disciples of the Devil! Live for today, but also for tomorrow, when the world shall be ours for the taking. Fear not the Apocalypse, but welcome it, for it shall be our day of deliverance into the Aeon of Satan’s kingdom of Hell on earth!

Shadow Scouts

{ The following was written by Dred Nightstalker, author of Black Ninja Handbook. }

Shadow Scouts are a Brotherhood who specialize in scouting operations: reconnoitering enemy forces, infiltrating forbidden areas, exploring, route-finding, crossing borders, stealth travel, tracking and wilderness survival. Their inspirations include the traditional Apache scouts, Japanese ninjas, Rangers of the North and modern thru-hikers and explorers. Shadow Scouts move among the survivalist, hiking, hunting, hobo, pilgrim, urban exploration and similar communities, gathering intelligence about regions, routes and resources. They are actively scouting locations and recruiting members for a network of lookouts, meeting places and caches in preparation for the collapse of civilization. They pass on their skills and knowledge from master to apprentice, and communicate in the Black Tongue of Borgâl. They mark their presence with a sigil which represents the word “scout” in the Black Tongue, as pictured below:

Shadow Scouts give their allegiance to their Brotherhood, to the Empire, and to the Dark Tao or Shadow behind this world of illusions.  They bow to no government, corporation, legal system, ideology or other construct of men. They reserve the right to roam across any border or land at will, to infiltrate any territory, escape any prison and live free, or die.

This is my vision—of a spirit, way of life and lineage that I seek to establish and pass on. I am the first of my kind, but the Dark Tao willing, not the last. I am Dred Nightstalker, Shadow Scout.

Break Internet Addiction

{ The following is an exerpt from our book Sith Academy: Masters of the Will }

The internet is the latest mass propaganda and programming medium, potentially even more powerful than television. The internet combines the capacity for mass surveillance and social engineering with an ability to immediately feed any particular mental craving on demand—it is a highly addicting “brain candy” and a potent new opiate for mankind.

Pornography in particular drives much of the internet traffic, and pornography, by its nature, is a destroyer of the Will. For if you simply give someone what they desire—or more accurately, give them a simulation of that thing—their brain is tricked into thinking that the desire has been satisfied, and they will be satiated, but not strengthened. For instead of motivating you to go out and strive in the real world to satisfy your cravings—for sex, power, money, knowledge, adventure, or whatever the case may be— the internet makes you passive and content with a meager, simulated, risk-free, zero-cost existence. This is not the way of the Sith!

Every Sith disciple must liberate himself from the Will-destroying clutches of the internet. Use it sparingly, to gather essential information and conduct vital business, but do not make it the center of your life. Force yourself away from your computers and phones, try “internet fasting” for days at a time, use timers to remind yourself to turn it off, and most importantly, get a life in the real world!

This is easier said than done, in a world where the technology industry wants to invade everywhere, addict everyone and control everything, but here a few simple things you can do to free yourself from its clutches:

  • Make outdoor physical challenges such as hikes, runs, climbs and cold water dousings a regular part of your Sith praxis.
  • Take extended wilderness excursions.
  • Establish a Dag and meet other Sith in outdoor râkâdwânz (power spaces) and temples.
  • Use alternative methods of networking and communication such as couriers, mail, literature exchange, symbolic markers and geocaching.
  • Write in a physical journal and publish Dag handbooks.
  • Develop a Sithy physical craft such as blade-making, mask-making or holocron-building.

Emblem of an Occult Empire

{ Below is an excerpt from “Book of the Black Sun” }

The Black Sun is a symbol of the darkest aspects of all that is occult—unknown, hidden, mysterious, irrational and supernatural—within ourselves and in the external world. As such, it is a natural unifying symbol for black sorcerers, mystics, warriors and philosophers of all times and places. It encompasses the full spectrum of dark magical, esoteric and cultural currents, from East to West, premodern to postmodern, mystical to scientific. The nihilist intellectual trolling true believers in a coffee shop, the premodern shaman throwing a curse upon an enemy tribesman, the “goth” teenager shocking her community with her black attire, the neo-ninja creeping into forbidden territory in darkness, the mystical fascist participating in a group power ritual, the apocalyptic cult leader leading his followers to a beautiful doom, the terrorist cell plotting death and destruction, the sorcerer summoning dark forces at a secret altar, the writer spinning Lovecraftian weird tales—all share a certain commonality of spirit, characterized by an opposition to the spirit of recent ages: the effeminate moralism of Judeo-Christianity, the empty rationalism of the Enlightenment, the metaphysical delusions of the cult of Progress, the homo-centricity of the humanists, the aesthetic impotence of the utilitarians, the general modern fear of the dark, visceral truths of existence and condition of slavery to mundane governments, laws, ideals, religions and systems of propaganda not created by their kind.

We therefore raise the banner of the Black Sun as a unifying emblem of dark occultism and spirituality for this age—one that supplants the culture-bound forms of previous ages, such as Ahriman, the Devil and the desert demons, which are rooted in Mesopotamian, Judaic and Christian metaphysical milieus that don’t speak to people of other cultural heritages or resonate with postmodern sensibilities. The Black Sun is our universal symbol of Darkness, and the Empire of the Black Sun is our imaginal alliance of beings who feel its power and walk in its Shadow. For Satan, like God, has lost most of his power in a post-Judeo-Christian age, along with most of his following. But the Black Sun only gains in power as the darkness of the new Aeon dawns, and the ranks of Black Sunnites who can perceive it grow.

Chaos Jihad

{The following is an excerpt from Book of Chaos, by the Dark Lords.}

The Chaote does not make war upon Order for common causes like “liberation”, “justice”, “equality”, “the nation” or “the environment” in the manner of the mundane radicals of this age. He does not fight for territory, tribe, nation, economic system or culture, or against the rulers and power structures of this world. The Chaote’s motivation is ultimately metaphysical, much more akin to the Islamic holy warrior than the secular anarchist or Communist. The Chaote’s war is a Chaos Jihad (Klân-Zâkshâz), and he is a Chaos Jihadist (Klân-Zâkshâzor). He does battle in a spirit similar to the Islamic Assassin, Christian Crusader or Japanese Kamikaze, knowing that his life in this material incarceration is but a brief illusion, which points the way to a greater freedom and destiny beyond this world.

When you engage in Chaos jihad, don’t think of yourself as a mere mundane human warrior, but as an embodied demon from the Chaoverse, charging into battle under the banner of the Chaos Cross, shouting “Nothing is true, everything is permitted!” as you attack the structures of Order, not just on this material plane, but in the greater extra-Cosmic realm of which which our earthly struggles are but echoes. Our wars down here mirror the eternal wars between the gods of Order and Chaos out in the Multiverse. This must never be forgotten!