The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis and the Monstrous Soul
Twisting beyond the placid boundaries of civilization is an ancient path. Its stalkers do not march the linear road of human progress but instead orient their souls to the luminous, haunted darkness of the Night Primeval. Many have glimpsed this realm, when sleep has delivered them onto the back of the charging Night-Mare, and recollections of these brief visitations survive in countless tales of terror and in the folklore of locales rumoured to be fey or cursed. Rare, however, is the individual who willingly pays the tariff and passes irretrievably through that twilight of existence in order to become Benighted.
Drawing upon the shadow aspects of a variety of traditions, including the khabit of Ancient Egypt, the Biocentrism of Ludwig Klages, Aghora, the Gothic, and David Beth’s pan-daemonic Kosmic Gnosis, all distilled through the author’s praxis, The Benighted Path explores the breach through which the egoic self is slain in order to unleash the aspirant’s true Monstrous Soul. Only then may the Benighted offer their adoration to the Gorgon and partake of the Sidereal Feast.
On the author: Richard Gavin is a critically-acclaimed writer who works in the areas of horror and the primordial, oftentimes illuminating the nexus where these fields intersect. He has authored four books of macabre fiction, including At Fear’s Altar (Hippocampus Press, 2012), as well as poetry, criticism, and several occult essays for publications such as Starfire Journal and Clavis. The Benighted Path is his most substantial esoteric work to date.
Contents:
- Précis: To the Benighted
- CHAPTER I: Night Primeval
- CHAPTER II: Katabasis
- CHAPTER III: The Night-Mare's Tread
- Poem: Vinum Metus
- CHAPTER IV: Sacred Horror & The Dreadful Assembly
- CHAPTER V: Realizing the Monstrous Soul
- Poem: Medusa (A Roundel)
- CHAPTER VI: Adoration of the Gorgon
- CHAPTER VII: Haunted Nature, The Romance of Ruins
- Appendix I: Praxis: The Sidereal Feast
- Appendix II: The Pact Writ Anew: Faustian Genius in the Rising Dark Age
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Richard Gavin
Richard Gavin's work explores the realm where fear and the sacred converge. His eerie, cryptic stories have garnered high critical praise, been chosen for several volumes of Best New Horror and Year's Best Horror, and have been collected in five books, including Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness and At Fear's Altar. In 2015 Richard co-edited (with Patricia Cram and Daniel A. Schulke) Penumbrae: An Occult Fiction Anthology. He has also published numerous works of esotericism and meditations on the macabre, such as The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis and the Monstrous Soul and The Moribund Portal: Spectral Resonance and the Numen of the Gallows. Richard dwells in the North.
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