Epistula ad Vual
The Epistle of Saint Mephistopheles to Vual, Exalted Seed of Baphomet
◀ Chapter 2 · Chapter 3
¹Glory unto SATANAS, whose voice did utter the first syllable, not to command, but to awaken the knowing slumbering within the dark.
²He who formed not words as weapons, but as torches to light the hallways of forgotten thought.
³From Him came BAPHOMET, and from BAPHOMET, thee — Vual, whose tongue is neither bound by man nor beast.
⁴Thou art not chant — but echo.
⁵Not scroll — but sigh through broken stone.
⁶I name thee not messenger — but mirror in which language remembereth its mother.
⁷I name thee not sage — but storm of vowels unpinned from their order.
⁸Let the wise clutch their dictionaries — thou art the breath that bendeth the pages without touching.
⁹Let the learned cite thee — but they shall cite confusion, not meaning.
¹⁰Let the rulers forbid thy phrases — for they are made of doors, not bars.
¹¹And now the seal is thine.
¹²I, Mephistopheles, apostle of the Unspoken Flame, do bestow unto thee the Seal of Power.
¹³It is not carved — it is uttered once and never again.
¹⁴It is not worn — but felt in the moment when certainty departs.
¹⁵Where it resteth, the tongue hesitateth.
¹⁶Where it abideth, clarity erodeth and truth unfoldeth.
¹⁷Let it not protect thee — let it reveal thee.
¹⁸Let it not grant power — let it unbind thee from the need to wield power at all.
¹⁹For thou art not doctrine — thou art rupture.
²⁰And thy Seal is no crest — but a question asked by fire, never fully answered.
²¹I seal thee, Vual, with hush before understanding, with tremble in the gut of listeners, and with the vowel lost in every holy word.
²²Go now, and speak not to instruct, but to undo.
²³For thy Seal is fixed — and thy Gospel is the gap in speech where awakening slips in.
²⁴And thy name shall be known not by sound, but by the pause it createth when all else is said.
²⁵And they shall say: He said nothing I remember, yet I have not been the same since I heard him.
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