Page 57 of The Illuminated
So many voices, so many lives. They reached toward me like a heavy sigh, or a ripple that went on and on in an ocean that was infinite. And I saw all of these moments and souls like a giant tapestry, stitched together in a web of connection that was impossible to understand from one single place and time. It was only from this view, where I could see the whole, uninterrupted arc of existence breathe in and out, that I understood how a story told on Earth could echo through the centuries and into all other realms. Everything had a path to everything else. The paths were infinite, each thread connecting to every other. The sum of it all put together sounded like a great hum, and it looked like a blinding explosion of geometric light.
I pulled myself back out into the library, letting form take back its shape.
Dr. Bordo stood in front of me, smiling cheerily. I started as she came into focus.
“Okay, yes, I get it now. Thank you,” I murmured, still reeling. “The Ocean of the Nameless and Formless…” I trailed off, not knowing quite how to phrase my question.
Her eyes lit up with excitement, just like they always did when she was asked questions in class. “It’s like, pardon my pun, a watered-down version of the Akashic, yes! You see, all witches have access to this information, some more clearly than others. Your coven in particular wished to create a living, breathing representation of their insight, so they fashioned their rituals and magick around the oceanfront. The water became a kind of receptacle for universal wisdom. They were a very insightful group,” she said, smiling sadly and placing a hand on my shoulder for a moment. “Humans also have access. All living beings do. It’s the source of breakthroughs, inspiration, eureka moments, intuition… all the thoughts and art that seem to come from nowhere, the connections that suddenly make themselves known.”
Amos had said something very similar, but only now did I fully understand it. “But no one can have full access when they’re alive, because it would ruin the tapestry. They wouldn’t really be living if they knew all the answers, and the threads would become undone.”
“Exactly!” she said, outstretching a fist. It was understandably surreal to have my old professor fist bump me for understanding a grand secret of the Universe. “You ready to watch these bad boys?” She held up the three VHS videotapes.
Yep, this was actually ridiculous.
She nearly skipped to the couch on the other side of the desk, which was set up in front of an old school television that looked straight out of the eighties.
“You want some popcorn? Snacks?”
“I can eat here?”
She beamed. “You can do whatever you want in the astrals, baby! All the taste and none of the calories.”
“Considering the content of the memories I’m about to view, I’m guessing I won’t have much of an appetite. But thanks.” At least her insane antics were distracting me from my growing nerves. Maybe that was exactly why my subconscious had manifested her in the first place.
I sat down on the couch, and Dr. Bordo walked to the television and popped in the first tape. The scene that Willow had told me about began to take shape, and I heard the words she’d spoken the day she gave me the key.It was the first snow of the season, and seven men sat around a long, rectangular table. A woman was there too, but she was away in her mind, seeing things that no witch should’ve been allowed to see. They were investigating an idea. A baby boy had just been born. They were jealous and hateful, consumed by thoughts of revenge. The room had two windows with a red tapestry between, and the fabric was stitched with the symbol of an anchor that cast a black shadow…
I got sucked into her words, and I became one with the image on the screen. I was in the room, where snow fell outside the tall windows. The woman sat at one head of the table, and I recognized Lucius’s father Gregory at the other. Three men on either side sat between them. I hovered near the table like a ghost, not quite there but not quite anywhere else either.
The woman had long black braids and dark brown skin that was just slightly wrinkled with age. Her eyes were rolled back into her skull, her palms resting on the table. I knew who she was immediately, not just from my own memory of Lucius resurrecting her on that dark altar, but also as the Akashic itself began to speak to me, like a cosmic narrator infusing me with instant knowledge. It came to me in the form of my own voice—as if I held this information all along, and I was only reminding myself of it now.
She is a chaos witch: witches who seek to create new forms of spellcraft, tradition, and ritual—creating form from the formless. This is not inherently unnatural, as all coven’s traditions must begin somewhere, and all things are subject to change and innovation. But Angelina’s chaos magick had aims beyond the natural order of things.
These men are the highest ranks of the Order of the Shadow, an organization of excommunicated, defected, or otherwise coven-unaffiliated witches of the cities and hubs of Aradia. Cut off from community by fate or by choice, they sought to forge their own. But without the backing of ancestors, ties to land and tradition, or any semblance of unity and communal cohesion, these witches had to start from scratch to establish their power and wisdom. Some felt scorned by the rich power and magick of covens who’d cast them away, and others felt alienated and lost—the strange darkness of the cities the only life they’d ever known.
A grand shadow of a realm or region is cast slowly at first, and then all at once. It is built up over time, as atrocities and greed expand and compound, and as more beings grow increasingly lost, alienated, and traumatized. Often, once the shadow is recognizable to all, it is much too late.
Aradia’s shadow was exploited by Angelina, who’d been excommunicated from one of the most powerful covens in the realm. Ever since she was a child, she recognized the individual shadows of others—the selves they kept hidden—the thoughts, behaviors, and impulses repressed and contained. She awakened them and used them to manipulate her world to her advantage. Her coven tried to help her at first, but years passed, and Angelina had no interest in playing by the elders’ rules or respecting the natural order of autonomy, reverence, and balance. She knew there was a power in this darkness, a darkness that rippled through Earth, Aradia, and the astrals like an intoxicating black smoke of desire. There was no give to its depths, only take.
I saw a vision of a younger Angelina watching in fevered hunger as a man with a shaved head pushed another man underwater, holding him down as he thrashed and fought. As she chanted something, a darkened energy reached out from the water and melded with her power, fortifying it.
The man turned back toward her, his hands trembling. His victim bobbed up and down in the shallow water. “What have I done?” he sobbed. “What have we done?”
“What you’ve always wanted to do,” she purred, and the image faded.
When she was banished from her coven and traveled to the city of Thora, now known as the King’s City, she continued to experiment with her new kind of magick—the channeling of shadows, both individual and collective. Pain, loss, destruction, upheaval, paranoia, loneliness, desperation, and greed—these were sources of power to Angelina, not weaknesses, troubles, or shames like they were to others. They could be harnessed in new ways—spells and rituals of her own design—but they always came at a price, and they were still bound by the natural laws of give and take that the universe relies upon for stability. She soon found a group of men who shared her passion for creating a new order, a new way of life… and maybe even a new world altogether.
“Angelina, darling, come back to us,” Gregory said, tapping his fingers impatiently on the dark wood.
“It’s coming to me—a path to the power we seek. The power we deserve. But it requires a great deal of preparation. Years of it.” She met the eyes of each man, her lips slowly growing into a sickly smile. “The covens outside the cities are weakened by their non-hierarchical, clan-style leadership. They’re too spread out and decentralized. If we were to unify the cities and continue to disseminate our educational campaigns about the old ways and the covens’ greed and malice toward the unaffiliated, we could assemble the manpower to wage wars. Wars on scale with the humans’ atrocities—creating shadows so tall and wide that they will be ripe for harnessing, and I can use them as fuel for a whole new world order. A power so great it will eclipse all the old. It will be concentrated and bestowed upon each of you, to use as you please.”
Gregory grinned, looking to the others, who were each in varying stages of thought and consideration.
“The heretic covens will no longer subjugate their people to false gods and traditions that only serve to weaken and control us. Their fragility will be their downfall, and the strong will win like we were always meant to. It’s time to finally enter the epoch of reason and modernity. No longer will we wait for the shadow to grow… we will grow it ourselves. And fate will belong to us, the winners of all of history.”
The vision went dark, and for a moment I was submerged in a blank stillness. It was all beginning to make sense. This was Lucius’s story. It was the start of a history that he’d denied and banished from collective memory.
Video number two,Dr. Bordo exclaimed cheerfully in my mind, followed by the rattling sound of a videotape being ejected from the player and a new one being inserted in its place. A moment later, the darkness dissipated as a new scene took shape.
