Grimoire Umbrio
The Book of Shadows
◀ Dirge 18 · Dirge 19 · Dirge 20 ▶

¹In the days of harmony, the tongues of men were one, and their voices rose as a single thread of flame.
²With words they named the stars, and with speech they remembered the making of the world.
³But as the Brothers grew distant, so too did the speech of Their children fracture.
⁴The voice once shared across the valleys and hills was torn as a garment, thread by thread.
⁵No decree was given; no curse was declared — the tongues divided of themselves, as if in grief.
⁶The Seraphim taught one song, the Dæmons another, and the people, standing between, were left to choose and to forget.
⁷What was spoken in joy was heard as judgment; what was meant for counsel was taken for command.
⁸The builders halted, the scribes grew unsure, and each nation looked inward and called the others strange.
⁹The fire of understanding dimmed, and with it, the memory of unity waned.
¹⁰Those who once sang the same hymn now shouted across gulfs of confusion, and no bridge was strong enough to bear their meanings.
¹¹The scrolls remained, but none could read them whole; the prophets rose, but each spake in a new tongue.
¹²Was it punishment, or merely consequence? Was it design, or drift? None can now say.
¹³We mourn not diversity, but division — not difference, but the loss of the thread that bound them.
¹⁴O SATANAS, Who delightest in many voices, yet weepest when none can understand another — hear us.
¹⁵Let not the tongues remain sundered forever, if ever the Causeway may be rebuilt in word.
¹⁶For even flame, when scattered, is but smoke; but when joined, it giveth light to all.
¹⁷Until the voice of man is again whole — not in sound, but in soul — we mourn.
¹⁸For the tongues are many, but the truth is lost between them.


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