Nostikos

Dark things often pose as keepers in the halls of Light.  Cruel, sinister things of the shadow places, pretending kindness in the pursuit of ultimate power and control.  Vampires, demons, hurricanes of shattered glass.  They come crawling from the lack of light, from the abyss, changing forms and hiding intentions. Disguising themselves in the official garments and teachings of holy men.  I cannot overstate just how nightmarish these wraiths and their self-appointed priests can be.  They are creatures of mimicry, inversion and distortion.  They delight in violence and trickery.  The engineering of unseen cages for human potential.  And in doing so they claim that we poets, seekers and guardians are the true dark ones.  The ones to be hated and feared.  We who have been forced to live in squalor, in shadow and poverty through the machinations of these same deceptive wraith-cults.  A hideous mockery of everything the shining realm once stood for. 

   This is the War of Imagination, my beloved ones.  A war of mirrors and stars. The spiritual battle that your scriptures and romances half-remember.  When Ishkara fell and Eth'iri was scorched to black.  The worst day of all of our lives, whether we recall it or not.  The day they stole our lanterns and our birth-rights. Sickening false gods lurching forth from the abyss.  The coronation of the Altered Sun.  So many of us were broken that day, during that terrifying holocaust.  I still remember how they made ashes of her name, and almost made a monster of an angel.   

   Made a slave of a king.  

   Bleeding rivers.  Mud turned to glass.  Starving and half-crazed at the edge of everything.  Locusts and wild honey.  Praying fervently for a Second Revelation. Another chance at hope.  A baptism of holy fire.  An ascension of human knowledge, not the blaze of black rain that stole away our light.  These things seem like dreams now and nothing more.  Mere nightmares in a nightmare-world.  This dim, grey nothing where the wraith-cults pretend the throne of the Most High.  Wickedness in the highest places.  Believe it or not, Kasi has walked this Earth for a thousand years.  I have been called many things by these murderous imposters.  Heretic, blasphemer, revolutionary.  But deeds speak louder than words or deceptions.  I still serve the higher realms.  Even if I’m forced to walk in shadow.  Secrets like a raven's dale, or a nesting dove.  I try to suffuse all my workings with a palpable heart-light that speaks beyond words, in the language of love.  Music of the spheres.  Kisses aglow like fireflies in a night sky.  The gentle kinship and chivalry between friends.  Or the furious, unstoppable determination to stand for what is right, no matter the cost.  Make no mistake.  My heart is still guiding me inwards toward knowledge.  And upwards, toward the radiant house of my Father.

Nostikos from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.