My legendarium as a whole is entitled The Solenicon, which means “Children of the Moon.” The name itself stands for an important idea: that some of us belong in a better world than this. This idea is explicitly stated in the Gospel of John 15:19 where Jesus says—
If you belong to the world, then the world would love you as its own.
But I chose you from this world, and you do not belong to it.
That is why the world hates you.
The Gnostics called themselves the Children of Seth, who encompassed on Earth the Thirteenth Kingdom and were destined to follow in the steps of Christ to another world. I take this a step further and insist that this is all literal and there is in fact a world (and dimension) waiting for us that is our inheritance. I connect it symbolically with Camelot because in my mind they are one and the same. The Solenicon are therefore those of us who want to break away from the American Dream and the paranoid crusade to defend “freedom,” for something much simpler—a life in tune with the Cosmos, the inexplainable, and in this way with one another.
Moon symbology has beckoned to me for a specific reason. If the world we live in was built up by Sun worshippers, then the world to come awaits the Moon worshippers. But this statement by itself is too vague to capture your hearts and minds. Therefore the Two Ladies haunt me, that I may tell at last the full story of how we came to be here and the future promised us in a word—Amarantus. The word means “flower that never wilts” and I chose it to symbolize the place where one achieves Oneness with Goddess.
The Solenicon begin with these Two Ladies, who occupy central roles in my legendarium. They came to me at first simply as names. Little by little they’ve coaxed me to unravel their identities and in so doing, discover my own. And that’s what life is all about: the journey of unraveling who you truly are. I, for one, have never truly felt at home in this world and am convinced now that it’s because it isn’t. At a young age I used my imagination to write worlds into existence more alive and meaningful than ours. Now I understand that writing (and the music that inspires my writing) is my way of connecting with what lies beyond our five senses, of living supersensually. This is why I’ve never been able to give it up despite crippling criticism during my years at university. The more I indulge in it, the more I become in tune with something that makes me truly happy and fulfilled. And at the heart of this experience are these Two Ladies, who have finally revealed themselves to me and who make me feel that there is a purpose for me having been born in this world after all, and that’s to tell you about them.
The name Nyykys (pronounced NAI-jis) was told to me in a dream once by a young girl. I believe it was Nyykys’ voice who came through in a postcard given to me by a Wiccan witch during my time in Findlay, Ohio. The witch filled it with automatic writing addressing me as Pearlfisher Bard. The final verses still wring my heart to this day:
You’ve travelled through depths of risk,
You’ve travelled through oceans of hate,
You’ve travelled through life to Death’s emotional gate.
Pearlfisher Bard, Here is the Key,
Love has brought you once again to me.
It was a life-changing moment. I had found the Muse I was seeking and it was only natural to associate her with the Lady of the Lake. It stuck and she has remained that ever since. The Lady of the Lake is the darker, more mysterious character of the Arthurian legends, and being somehow tied to a body of water, I naturally saw her as goddess of the moon, the dark side that is, tied to its magnetic powers that create the forms of things before they acquire substance in our material world. She is the stuff of dreams; that subconscious impulse that is more who we are than our conscious egos and can make us do crazy, wonderful things. Yes, she can be a virginal, dangerous huntress like Diana, but she’s so much more; and her true face lies hidden from all but the most humbled and honorable men, because it is of such beauty and purity, merely looking upon it cleanses the soul and moves the hearts of such men to pity and tears of joy.
This is how I picture her. And I think Tolkien touched upon this very sentiment when he spoke of Gandalf during his time as Olorin in Valinor spending his time with weeping Nienna: “and of her he learned pity and patience.” When I read George MacDonald’s Lilith, I instantly recognized Nyykys in the “cat-woman” Mara, who also weeps for mankind’s suffering, comforts the repentant in her house and reveals her true face only at the right moment to help a man carry on. It is my deep desire for Nyykys that fueled this whole journey to begin with.
Now, when I say “moon” I don’t mean our moon, which scientists now admit is hollow and others say is an artificial satellite like a space station. But there is a true moon in the world we, Solenicon, belong to and its waters lie hidden, drawn to the surface by an ancient magick in cycles like the tides. When this happens, an island forms surrounded by water, like Avalon in the midst of a vast, shallow lake. I call it Alufia (pronounced ah-LOO-vee-ah) and there Nyykys became immortal, but it was by the power of another enigmatic lady. The name that came to me is Aramys (pronounced ah-RA-miss), and I knew of her importance from the beginning, but not her identity until more recently. I know her now as the Grail Maiden because she is the conduit for supernatural forces to enter the natural world. Like the hermetic maxim: “As above, so below.” In this role she becomes therefore the holy vessel that receives Life and regulates its flow into our natural world. A woman of radiance and deep wisdom, like Athena, Aramys is almost inhuman. She cares not for our petty grievances but knows what needs to be done, and is ready to exact the sacrifice necessary to make it happen.
These Two Ladies are the pillars of the Solenicon. Imagine my shock when it turns out they actually do exist and were worshipped thousands of years ago in Egypt. That discovery began with my esoteric name: Wrias (pronounced oo-REE-as). I never imagined what importance that name would hold and how it would link me to the Welsh tale of the two dragons. Somehow I was lead to learn of the Egyptian Uraeus, which sounds uncannily similar to my name. It turns out the Uraeus is the Egyptian cobra standing upright and a symbol of the goddess Wadjet, who along with the goddess Nekhbet were worshipped as “The Two Ladies,” joint protectors of unified Egypt. They were so important that every pharaoh had to take on what is called a Nebty name as part of his title that basically said, “He of the Two Ladies.” This tradition survived among the rulers of Egypt until the end of the Roman Empire. That’s four thousand years in which despite many drastic changes in god worship, the Two Ladies remained core to the continuity of Egypt as a unified people.
The story of the Uraeus is also relevant in how it relates to my legendarium. It was Isis who fashioned Uraeus, granted him life, and sent him out to give Ra the poisonous bite that would bring him to the brink of death, forcing him to give up his secret name of power to Isis in exchange for the antidote. Similarly, in my tale, Wrias is a demon brought back to life in the form of a red dragon by Aramys so that he might recover the Cauldron of Light stolen by the servants of Mamuc. Experiencing this resurrection forces Wrias to acknowledge that his former master Mamuc is not the only God he claims to be. Guarding the Cauldron is Wrias’s twin (and now nemesis) Tali, who takes on the form of a white dragon typical of Mamuc and his followers. Unable to convince Tali of the truth concerning their false god Mamuc, Wrias accepts that he must sacrifice himself by jumping in the Cauldron, causing it to explode, thus ending both his and Tali’s lives.
It is my understanding of sacrifice, my devotion to the Two Ladies, and my interpretation of the climaxing struggle against the Sun worshippers that informs my writing through and through. The reason why their monotheistic religions don’t satisfy is because they deny Goddess and therefore half the spectrum of human experience, causing a severe imbalance in the human psyche and the collective mind-space.
