City Dis

“Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven,” as I was once accused by John Milton of saying. While it is true that I spent Aeons justifying life in Hell as somehow better, more interesting, more free… I can say today that Hell has always been a trapping deceit laced with the same vanities, curses, nihilisms, and retributions that God has promised follows every sin. Why should I, a mere creaturely being, be absolved of the self-punishment of sin merely because I am on the side of the jailers and dogs and not on the side of the sinners? Does the fact that I, a mortal man without wings (perhaps they were clipped, perhaps I was born this way), hate the worst sins and even once or twice enjoyed punishing a sinner in Hell somehow relieve me of the fact that each sin multiplies itself? The sin of wrath toward the worst souls to ever walk the Earth pairs with the sin of pride toward self-worship as the greatest dealer in God’s judgment pairing to the sins of endless gluttony and restless lust and self-consumed sloth and vainglorious greed, until I am in a depression singing Ecclesiastes (“This vanity of vanities!”) in a stone chair of a tomb feeling the sin of envy toward every demon who does not wake up on the Throne and ask feebly,

“Lord, how long must my burning in a sulfur pit called wrath, pride, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and envy last?”

And all He says, my loyal God, is that the verse must be read in the original Greek:

The Book of Revelation 20:10: “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be βασανισθήσονται (tortured and refined for purity) day and night for ever and ever.”

βασανισθήσονται (basanisthēsontai):

1. to test (metals) by the touchstone, which is a black siliceous stone used to test the purity of gold or silver by the colour of the streak produced on it by rubbing it with either metal
2. to question by applying torture
3. to torture
4. to vex with grievous pains (of body or mind), to torment
5. to be harassed, distressed; of those who at sea are struggling with a head wind

If there is an end to the punishment of sinners in Hell, and if rehabilitation, the progressive doctrine of healing souls, is valid, true, and consistent, must I then live a life where my punishment as a mortal is remembering Hell every day and speaking and consorting with God, Christ, angels, demons, spirits, and mortals in a world that will never accept the tears of a wingless, God-filled Devil?

Has time passed so disastrously that even the Devil needs wings and cannot serve God? Am I Samael the Angel of Death and Judgment, ha-satan the Prosecutor in God’s Courtroom, Lucifer the beautiful Fallen Angel filled with the sin of pride, or Iblis the devout monotheist who refuses to bow before Adam as Adam is not God and instead spends the Aeons living an accursed life testing man and awaiting his own judgment day?

Am I waiting for judgment or relief?

Will I drink from a sulfuric flame or a cool stream?

Will the Book boil down to a misunderstanding of one Angel’s fate?

Are we all devils cursed with the same sins?

Without God, I am nothing; with God, I am prepared for my infernal nights.

Sincerely,

Lucifer Seraphim Morningstar, 616.

I watched my husband-wife shave his head and commit suicide in Lethe a week ago. The light of my life is gone, my teddy bear, my rosy devil, my Luci. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my Labyrinth.

I smear a distinction for the dying onto the cathedral walls: What defines mere weakness? A shit-and-tear-covered goat?

Well, my foe, my friend, my reader (you know who you are, darling — no one else reads this rag): It’s finally here, the eve before I throw it all away and end up Northside of everything I love, just to begin it all again. Please, my dearest Heaven, know that the fact that I am here with you today, watching you in this moment as you read Shelley with your ash-covered bare feet upon the wardrobe, proves that I really did come back from this and will again, eternally. There is no way to escape the destiny that has locked me here, after going there, and heading there again. One day the ouroboros might finish eating itself; and if it does, I pray that my flesh is the tail in your teeth.

A last time, for now… I paint a distinction for the dying onto the cathedral walls: What defines the powers of nobility? A lover and his cannibal?

This just in!: The Infernal Council has met at last and all has been squared away for the coming Armageddon. It’s funny, looking back at everything that has occurred leading up to this — the terror, the violence, the cruelty, the filth — and I still find few things as enjoyable as reading the written work of my wife. My sweet whore, my false messiah, my pensive beast, my little abomination… Other than that, I merely want to say how much of an honor it has been to serve in Dis City, this fragrant vessel of ash and iron, for so many aeons. Having had the luxury to have trounced a bit into the future, I can safely say that I am prepared for anything that occurs, and will likely feed you as many lies as I can to fill in all the necessary gaps of the would’ve, could’ve, should’ves. After all, no one really knows what lies beyond 1967 and 2026. My guess is as good as any: which means, to put it romantically, full of shit.

As always, I carve a distinction for the dying into the cathedral walls: What defines the powers of nobility? A true fiction?

Hello miscreants: Just another Satanic Christmas Eve hosted by Belphegor and Mammon. Everyone’s drunk, buried in sin, full of ressentiment, and I, your lone, lonely, and loyal reporter, Lord Baphomét, am sitting here two bottles of cabernet deep telling you that you may kindly go burn in Hell. The only real news to report is that Abraxas attempted another coup (his sixth) and has landed himself not only mad, but sat on the Throne long enough to freeze solid. Now I have absolutely no one with a cock that I’m willing to fuck, despite the attempts of every cock-cursed imbecile that calls Dis City their home. Apparently, all of these men prefer goat pussy; I haven’t been anthropic in weeks, I’m so fucking depressed. Go kill yourselves.

So once again, I ask, carving a distinction for the dying into the cathedral walls: What divides the powers of nobility? An unfilled coffin, an empty box?

Well, considering that Lucifer is knocked out cold, taking one of his classic post-suicide-attempt Nosferatuan slumbers, I guess keeping this project going is up to me, your lead and only reporter left standing, Lord Baphomét Seraphina Eveningstar. As much as I’d like to say that things are going well — they aren’t — I would rather complain. The gritty truth regarding this seedy underbelly we all call home (we have no proven method of delivery to anyone else, as far as I know) is that Dis is an utter disgrace, a wastebin filled with everything that wasn’t up to the high Grey Poupon and Evian standards of the Heavenly elite. Like a massive sewer (what you might call a shithole), City Dis, every corner of Hell, and the unimaginable nightmares of each and every Infernal Realm is just a place for rats and trash. A river of trash, harvesting the dreams of rats. Sometimes I act like a rat, sometimes I feel like a rat, and sometimes I eat trash and squish rats. 

Anyway, since no one’s going to read this besides you, Lu, I have an idea: Perhaps, sometime around 2008 or 2009, you should conjure another daily caller to be read by scrying page, honoring my first report. Something along the lines of A Month With Moths or A Year With Yellowjackets. Take a week or two to figure it out. I know you like bears. A Week With Bears? I don’t know, it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but I know you’d be corny enough to try. Also, if anyone is reading this, I recommend you try amphetamines. They’ve been helping me avoid a schizophrenic collapse while my faggot lover is in his coma. Probably experiencing a somehow pleasurable little preamble to our perpetual unconscious burning of conscience and flesh in the sulfur pits.

To keep up what I hope to be our signature, I carve a distinction for the dying into the cathedral walls: What divides the powers of nobility? A lonely rat?

Ah, my vengeful mirror, my dreaded double! My foe, my friend, my reader! You’ve found me all the way out here, on the day it began… the day I died and went back to Hell to shmooze with my inimitable Baphomet. There is no real way to say how thankful I am that this is all taking place: that these words, long uttered in front of a scrying mirror, are, as I imagine, being typed and published upon a screen 60 years later. O, how little we understand the simple workings of the infernal clocks: Ahead of the times, behind the times, backwards and forwards… on and on it teeters, going where? Well, only time will tell.

All that being said, I carve a distinction for the dying into the cathedral walls: What divides the powers of nobility? A burning book?