Tirnancait

“… lest that dread shape be upon you.”

“But which shape am I to take?”

“Forego all shapes. A pale lamb you were, jumping over the treetops, pierced with thorns and nettles. A crimson wolf you were, sliding along the edge of the cliffs, drinking up rivers and lakes. Are you not yet weary of the masquerade?”

Thus begins a fragment from A Tincture of Thorns, possibly the single most significant work of Tirnancaitian mysticism. Thorns describes the dreaded journey towards the True Darkness, a gnosis-slaying realm of vicious trials (or “holes”), each one viler than the last, designed to test the possessed’s ingenuity and/or willpower to the breaking point.

We are born into a world of chaos, the anonymous author of Thorns claims: Matter waits and quivers to manifest itself, ready to disintegrate into us while we cling to the reaffirming pain which flows from life itself. We live in the realm of dreams and delusions, of misery and anger, of tears and despair, all those sufferings designed to create a feverish sense of resignation in order to hold onto what we imagine is life: For what is life other than a larva of death (quid est vita nisi mortis larva)? No matter how alluring life may look, all that is mortal will eventually be hurled off the swaying cliff of reality into the True Darkness (lacuna prima), whose horrors are so real and unspeakable that they break those who enter into “shards of futility.”

To cheat the True Darkness out of its prey, the Tirnancaitians created, or were in some manner informed of, a specific set of rituals which came to be known as the First (or: Lesser) Initiation (“Withering of the Loins”). This was executed when two Tirnancaitians, blinded by a flurry of hormonal spittle, happened to beget a child. While being familiar enough with the general principles of procreation, everyone involved thought it best to feign ignorance, and childbirth was postponed as long as possible: The “Screaming from the Womb” might stop by itself, it was hoped against hope, if one exercised patience. Indeed, only the strongest infants managed to claw their way out of their mothers, and it was them who were subjected to the set of rituals known as the First Initiation.

(…)

excerpted from Tirnancait