Miro Lac-du-Manse - Pharmakon

[Erudiche]

[A slim and professionally kept ledger of case-notes, scribbles decorating the margins.]

CAUSA PRAECIPUA

Regarding Psychoanalysis and Oneirocritique

Contents

Sister Hypatia - 19 Tabbah 7788
Kellyn Faraday - 6 Illul 7788
"Noukou" - 9 Illul 7788
Sister Nebtu - 9 Illul 7788
Margarethe Eisenberg - 17 Illul 7788
Itziyal Nenairral - 19 Illul 7788
Sister Amelie - 21 Illul 7788

Let me close my eyes and dare to dream,
Lay together, stirred in ancient sea,
Run down in sunset's wounded bloody gleam.
Have I gained enough strength here to grieve?

[Erudiche]

19 Tabbah, 7788 - Hypatia, Sister of the Sibylline Vine - First Session

「de'Rossi's Serenade in D Minor」

"They understand the heart's yearning,
they know the pain of love;
with their silvery notes
they touch every tender heart."

Impression

The world is her flame. She will not survive it.

Working Notes

Hypatia (3::8), governed by Muir, who travels within and without the prison of our time, who embodies the Insidious Fog, the anti-creation. Along the path drift ocean storms, communications with the Other, and incursions of the Other into the Self (Stern's Disease). She was born in Isphi, and it is her world. She cannot concieve of this world as anything but, and it lives immortal in her, through her, as her, suffusing her with its spectral presence, communicating even from the remote realms of non-potentiality.

She knows it is over, and yet. And yet. Such embodies the case. Hypatia is wistful, melancholic in temperment. That she assented to this meeting at all is indicative of a certain instability. It is, as all things are, a trap, yet even in setting it much is revealed, and blood is drawn. She is a dancer. I can see it through the moonlight, a gentle waltz, there, with her love. She is not a prisoner, insofar that there is no prison. No, it is crueller and I think a measure more permanent, for one can escape a prison. She is less than even a slave. She is as an automaton, or a homunculus, for whom these things are so deeply ingrained.

The case will continue to be a struggle, in both a conventional and unconventional context. She is a difficult patient, for she is quite clever and is not easily cowed. She is dangerous. And she is testing me. I have given her some of my blood, that which I can spare, that which makes me human. I give it, and I see her drink of it and I hope that she might develop a taste. Like her, there is so much simply out of my reach. I hope this shall stir the beasts of that ancient sea. Already I have revealed its existence -- that she did not anticipate. Soon I shall begin my descent, and we shall witness what ancient bodies there stir.

Her reading was unfortunate. This will not end well. It will likely end terribly. And yet.

[Erudiche]

6 Illul, 7788 - Kellyn Faraday, Acolyte of the Sibylline Vine - First Session

「Maurabande's Etude Op.8 No.12」

"A spirit cries, entangled by the weeds.
They grew from seeds nourished by blackness.
Their poison stuns. They bind in shackles,
like horrors sealed in the pyramids.
But neither fire-born marble nor granite
can make a frame immune to the power
of the flows of ageless primal lava that
flows through our veins
and fills us with might."

Impression

There are fingers which must be removed to fit the glove.

Working Notes

Kellyn Faraday (8::0), governed by Minom, ruler of the liminal space of Limbo, who sees the passage in and out of linear time, who is submerged in ambiguity, walks the path of shamanic voyage and dream sorcery. Auspicious, to say the least. Yet a far cry from her potential she remains. Kellyn remains imprisoned in the world of her childhood, a starveling wretch clinging barely to life in the collective refuse of Ring 99. Within her are the ancient flows of desire, a desire to be fulfilled, to be understand. She is unable and unwilling to face these fully.

Fitting her theme of ambiguity, she is at many crossroads, ever becoming and never being. In this sense she is likely the ideal Acolyte. Yet she is tormented by failure and ruin. It is a mystery, and I believe in this matter we will have to undertake an effort to complete Kellyn, to plumb these depths and understand her fully. There are pieces I am missing. As much as we will have to discard, I fear we will have to create.

[Erudiche]

9 Illul, 7788 - "Noukou", Sellsword of Frostport - Informal Encounter

「Riccardo di Ghuelf's Northern Dances」

"'Tis not the tiller
That steataing furrows drives
In chilly glades when autumn wanes;
And in her wounds the Disc
Rejoices not;
'Tis not the plow
That left these gaping traces on the glebe.
Not heavy seeds of golden wheat,
Nor Spring's sweet showers
That fecundate earth's ever-virgin womb,
But steel and brass,
And living flesh and seething blood."

Impression

She will die nameless or ascend to greatness. She will remain, always, fate's slave.

Working Notes

"Noukou" (9::6), governed by Natchi (Glory! Glory!) who moves so quickly she is paralyzed, who lurks without space and time in coiling, seething outsideness and glances in only through conceptual anomalies, spent a brief time with me in Elossi's Lounge. It seemingly took her interest to inform me that Asherias would miss our little political meeting. She was skeptical in disposition, and I cannot distinguish a sardonic character from a sort of Northern laconicism. Afflicted with some manner of malady of the skin, she wears a parasol and is white as the snows of her homeland.

This Noukou is destitute by birth, so common an origin in these circumstances, and hails from Frostport the bastard of a sailor, hoping to carve her name into history. She sought a reading, and I thus provided it to her. A spiritual prosperity, an aristocrat of the soul, and one undertaking a journey perilous into the dark forest -- to be greeted with success. She will find her prize, a place in history, regardless of if she should like it. Without any trepidation or fear she took it as her prize, this fate, and rejoiced.

Perhaps she is wiser than me, for she readily loves her fate. We will see what becomes of her. I cannot tell whether it would be better for the world for her to die in a gutter or rise to her aspirations. Certainly, I cannot tell which would be better for her.

[Erudiche]

9 Illul, 7788 - Nebtu, Sister of the Sibylline Vine - Formulation

「Isman al-Ahbahi's ar'Parus Variations - Aria da Capo」

"Lo! 't is a gala night
   Within the lonesome latter years!   
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
   In veils, and drowned in tears,   
Sit in a theatre, to see
   A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully   
   The music of the spheres."

Impression

I was right, I fear.

Closing Thoughts

Sister Nebtu (4::0), governed by Raos the Mantid; or Rokat, the Spinal Cervix, the Croaking Curse, of the land of flaming hail, half-way immersed in the land of dead where he holds court over all subsidence, and where he weighs the heaviness of fatality, is away for a time. It is no matter, I think, whether it is for a short time or a long time. I am prepared to say farewell, sadiqa. You, who brought me to this Abbey. You, who lighted the way. You, who have failed me. I wonder if those words wounded you.

Growing up a lonely child, told by your father that you will die... you look at humanity as though you are an outside observer. As though you sit in the court of Raos, and weigh their sufferings and their heavy hearts with casual indifference. As thought you are the very clerk of the Stone Library. But you are not, Nebtu. You are a woman. Perhaps less. Perhaps a child, still scared, still awaiting death come the morning. I looked up to you so many times. Now I see that I was right. You are human. And, more definitely --

You do not exist.

I brush my hand across the surface of the water. My reflection vanishes.

Goodbye, Nebtu.

[Erudiche]

17 Illul, 7788 - Margarethe Eisenberg, Apothar of Q'tolip - Informal Encounter

「Antonio di Octavine's 'Qadiera', from Fiametta 」

"Quand je vous aimerai?
Ma foi, je ne sais pas,
Peut-être jamais, peut-être demain...
Mais pas aujourd'hui, c'est certain."

Impression

"Come and enter my parlor," entreated the spider to the fly.

Working Notes

Margarethe Eisenerg, path-fraud (5::4), initial path (5::0). Let us see her governed, in this instance, by Tythys Fleshy-Heart as opposed to Desolator Karakh, although discerning her true patron will be perhaps one of my major objectives. Tythys, the Angel of the Cards, sits at the 5th Door, Formoria, and presides over talismania and destined numeric convergences. Karakh the Desolator, alternatively is also associated with convergence, although of a cataclysmic and inauspicious sort, representing the phase limit of Formoria and presiding over nature's redness in tooth and claw (tail-chasing, rabies) and panic in its purest form (see the grotesque pulp of la Freccia and the religious fervor of Gellemites). As Karakh is bound within linear time, I think it remains rational to place Eisenberg in the custody of Tythys.

My psychological assessment is brief. Eisenberg is an insecure narcissist of a compensatory form. Despite what her superficial grandeur may impress upon the unwary, she has failed dramatically in several major and perhaps legitimate respects, and is thus haunted by this. She is unable to move on, and is instead forced to ruminate over it. If she terminates her bloviating and bravado, her psyche will collapse in on itself. She is highly resistant to treatment, both as a matter of professionalism and as a matter of ego synonia. With this little evidence, this is the level of reasoning possible to a psychoanalyst!

I must continue my analysis to obtain a more complete profile. There is more to be collected. There is more to be done. Offer me a bitter winter, Margarethe, and let a wall of ice ten centuries deep stand between me and the abysses you wish to hide. I shall break your defenses, and I shall expose the darkness which is mine by right, and I will drink deep of it, and it shall be good.

Bishop to e6.

[Erudiche]

19 Illul, 7788 - Itziyal Neniarral, Acolyte of the Sibylline Vine - First Session

「Maurebande's Op. 45: No. 1 Feuillet d'album」

"Calm grew the sea, and tumultuous beating
Turn'd to a ripple, as Unda the fair
Trod the wet sands in affectionate greeting,
Beckon'd to me, and no longer was there!"

Impression

It is not undesirable to disappear.

Working Notes

Itziyal Neniarral (9::7) is governed by Yalka al-Yirkesh, the Mimetic Anorganism, who is the final threshhold between the Last Stop. Yalka imitates life, and governs that which is made of metal and which moves and creeps despite it -- the Cobbled, the Remade, the Auto-Loom. She governs lunacy through the magnetic shift of iron in one's veins and emergent sub-specifications, the self-animating life of invention and economy, the propulsion of Hyperstitional states and social development. Mimesis has clear relevance to Itziyal by the nature of her condition. She is in a state where she, I believe, on some level recognizes the fundamental truth: she does not exist. The conflict between the truth and the observable reality, or perhaps her misplaced desire, produces dysphoria. She is caught in a gravitational pull far greater than herself.

She believes to disappear is a fatal, perverse pleasure, and in this is incorrect. There is no higher honor than to disappear, there is nothing more righteous. We emerge from the darkness, the Sea, the Soul, the Mother, and invariably there return, to be dredged out again when we are needed, in time's crossed circle, its spinning wheel. Her heart is in this abyssopelagic depth, and it is a tangle of a thousand different knots. One by one we shall have to untangle or cut them in turn.

Despite everything it is not unfair to say that I am fond of Itziyal, this illusion here before me. I am fond of few people in an earnest or genuine sense, but there is a certain sense of exhiliration I feel reaching into the mud of her heart and circling my fingers around what pearls we find. I look forward to our next session. I believe some fascinating progress might be made.