Although I Am blAck,

,kcAlb mA I hguohtlA
o dAughters of JerusAlem,
,melAsureJ fo srethguAd o
I Am beAutIful.
.lufItuAeb mA I
St. John of the Cross

The Gift

of the Kosmos
Cometh!
In
prAIse
of
nIght
And kosmos

abcdf
damian murphy & geticus polus
fdcba
lhomme rcent, publisher
bucharest
mmxv
into
the
indigo
abyss

The Gift of the Kosmos Cometh!

published by lhomme 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 swordgirt 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 Hymnbook by Alcebiades Diniz (125) It is Kindness and
Mythology by Joseph Dawson (145) Black Night Testament by Jonathan
Wood (183) Sleeps 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)
abcdf

We waited for a secret word, that should bear

witness to the hope of nations, as now
accomplished for ever. At midnight the secret
word arrived; which word was Waterloo and
recovered christendom! the dreadful word shone
by its own light; before us it went; high above our
leaders' heads it rode and spread a golden light
over the paths which we traversed. every city, at
the presence of the secret word, threw open its
gates to receive us. the rivers were silent as we
crossed. All the infinite forests, as we ran along
their margins, shivered in homage to the secret
word. And the darkness comprehended it.
Thomas De Quincey's
The English Mail-Coach (Section III: Dream-Fugue)

gA lAc tIo n

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 multifarious 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 childhood, 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 compensated 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, philosophies.

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. galactions younger siblings had all started
to excel in some form of artistic or literary pursuit which they successfully undertook with an extraordinary level of enthusiasm.
galactions father sourced the best clays and softest carving
marble available in order to allow his son to pursue the art of sculpture. 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 identical. 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