The Black Freres Book of Beasts and Other London Curiosities
Demogorgon
There is a secret inherent in the title of the dread Demogorgon. Buried by antiquity and mired in secrets, the name of this particular spirit comes to us from the ancient Greeks, though no precise origin has yet been uncovered.
Equated in Christian tradition with a great devil and name-checked as such by the playwright Christopher Marlowe in his seminal work, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Demogorgon’s true associations are much more mysterious.
Marlowe’s Elizabethan contemporary, Edward Spenser, familiar to most for his epic poem in praise of Elizabeth I, The Faerie Queen, also made mention of Demogorgon, “prince of darknesse and dead night,” in his famed aforementioned work.
First associated with the commentary by an unknown author on the Thebaid by Publius Papinius Statius, who draws a comparison between the poem’s mention of ‘the supreme being of the threefold world’ and a supreme creator whose name, like that of the true G-d in Jewish tradition, is taboo to impart.
Displaying influence from both Judaism and Mithraism in the commentary, the unknown author’s suggestion is of a primordial creator deity.
Sometimes considered a corruption of the more classically renowned term demiurge (see Plato’s Socratic dialogue, Timaeus), the more traditional assumption is that the Demogorgon was a principality in its own right, yet it is impossible not to note a certain correlation with the Gnostic parable of Yaldabaoth.
This association with Platonic allegory is considered at the heart of French philosopher Voltaire’s work of early science fiction, Plato’s Dream.
But how did a concept so neatly associated with creation and Platonic thought come to gain demonic status in medieval Christian thought? Of course, the Abrahamic faiths are no strangers to the demonisation of deities in other faiths, but how did such a specific figure enter into the grimoires and lexicons of demonology?
Let us, for a moment, enter the realms of pure conjecture: imagine a time in which the leontocephaline figure found etched upon the walls of the uncovered mithraeum of the mystery cults is both named and known; imagine that it is the early 2nd century AD and the serpent that winds about the fierce lion-faced countenance of that mysterious figure is none other than the Demogorgon itself.
Beneath the arc of the cave’s roof, beneath the decorations and depictions of the constellations that mark both time and space, you have inherited the truth of possibility, the knowledge of the supreme creature and the three dimensions in which it exists.
Gazing up at its monstrous face, you know it as the Nemean Lion, the Strength card of the tarot’s major arcana; reaching out for the keys in its hands, you know it as Aion, his presence representing the unbounded mastery of time—and wrapped about the monstrous frame of the deity is the aged and wondrous serpent, the bringer of knowledge, the liberator of Eve from the Garden.
It is in this moment that you realise that the figure is none other than the insane and rabid creator of matter, Yaldabaoth—and in this moment that you realise that the creator is not so much the demiurge of Plato’s imagining, but rather the true aspect of the fiendish Demogorgon. And in this, both the fallen angel Samael and the creator deity are once more revealed as one.
Tournament Armoured Hero
“The Story So Far”
by Kevin Joyce
Taryse Leiter has known her far share of sorrows as of late. Believing her husband to have been murdered by the covert governmental agency, the United States Monster Defence Force, she has found herself on the run across the vast landscape of America with her young daughter, Amelia, as she tries to avoid kidnapping by the same agents who took her husband’s life.
Meanwhile, her childhood friend and mentor, Mark Mitsukai has been desperately trying to catch up with her in order to inform her of a conspiracy within the USMDF itself—a conspiracy that threatens to put the very world itself in danger.
Yet Mitsukai is not the only one searching for Taryse. Her old friend, Spike Campbell, has been sent out into the desert to search for her and protect her from USMDF also.
Standing in the desert before them stood a young man, his long red hair recently shorn close to the scalp like peach fuzz.
Lazily, he lifted a cigarette to his lips, the tattoo upon his left arm reading, ‘‘Victims... Aren’t We All?’’. Pale blue smoke streamed from his nose as he nodded first towards Amelia and then towards her startled mother.
“Hey Taryse,” he offered with a casual smile, “a friend of ours told me you could use a lift.”
Yet Spike is not the only one of Taryse’s old friends caught up in recent events.
Sky Raider, the former armoured hero known as King, has witnessed the death of his mentor, Joji Yamamura at the hands of a sinister mage dressed in black armour and hidden behind a mask sculpted in the likeness of a magpie.
Rescued from certain death by the United Kingdom’s own USMDF counter-agency, Raider and agent, Koji Ryusei set out to pursue the sinister mage and lure him back for a final confrontation in the desert where Yamamura was vanquished.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing with a wave of his hand, “Kabuto Kaiser can take us wherever you need to go.”
He paused and turned, an amused smile tugging at his lips.
“I assume you know where you want to go?”
Sky Raider remained silent, impassive behind the iron faceplate.
The younger man sighed and simply turned away again.
“Fine, fine. We’ll just fly around until we find something interesting then.”
Without waiting for the older man’s reply, Koji simply marched forward, showing no sign of hesitation, or of relenting.
Sky Raider did not reply.
Whilst Raider sets out to avenge his mentor however, his old friend and once rival, Hao Wong—travelling with former student, Jyunichi Kanemura and the extra-dimensional hero, Dreamcaster—have recently rescued the young Jessie Elias from imprisonment by the transhumanist mystery cult known as Destronger.
Still blinking, Jessie Elias struggled to identify the man standing over him, extending a hand down towards him.
“Hao?” he whispered, the words like broken glass upon his tongue, “Hao Wong?”
Beside him, he felt Alicia stir, fragile breaths drawn down into a frail chest. All at once, he felt incredibly possessive of the young boy at his side, his hand reaching out, searching in the sand for pale, slender fingers.
Alicia found him before he could make contact, taking hold of his hand and squeezing it reassuringly.
“I’m here,” the boy whispered reassuringly, his voice both familiar and yet hauntingly different.
“It’s you, isn’t it, Hao? It’s really you!”
Meanwhile, and with much reluctance, Demonseed engineer, Travis Triton is preparing to cross the dimensional barriers with a time-traveller named Livingston Chance and a magpie named Anna Romanova…