The Kheprian Charge

We are the many-born. We are the immortal. We have been known by many names throughout the ages, though few have understood the truth of our existence. Endlessly, we die and are reborn, changed yet unchanging throughout the ages. We move from lifetime to lifetime, taking up bodies as garments. We are watchers and we are wanderers. We seek knowledge and understanding above all.

Long ago we strove the sunder the life of our body from our roving minds, for it grounded us. It held us back. It bound us to a single span of days. Through a ritual of death and rebirth, we severed our living ties and gained immortality. Now we are freed of the life of the body, but we are irrevocably tied to the life we cut away. It sustains us and empowers us. We thirst for life and we feed upon it. It is our greatest weakness and our greatest prize.

Eternal, we wander the aeons, moving to the rhythm of our own inner tides. Freed from the most fundamental of cycles, we are nevertheless beings bound by cycles. Our heightened awareness of ourselves and the world around us forces us to acknowledge natural rhythms that others simply ignore.

As the day waxes and wanes, we can feel it, and we know that the true realm of magick is the night, for that is when we wax in power. As the moon grows gravid and slim, we feel it, and we know, too, that there are more complex rhythms of power tied to her phases. As the wheel of the year turns round, we feel the wild times, the apogees and nadirs of power.

The dark time of the year is our time, as are the threshold times when we celebrate Samhain and Beltane. These days are our Im Kheperu, the Day of Transformation, and our Im Sekhemu, the Day of Double Power. As beings poised on the threshold of many things, the energies of these holidays affect us profoundly. At these times we enjoy our greatest power, but in balance, we also pay a stronger price. Waves of energy rise and fall within us, and when in their grip, our hunger burns.

Forever, we are active elements moving through passive worlds. Our rules are our own. We accept no others. We define who we are and what we shall become. There is nothing in our lives which we cannot control if we but choose to. Our memories are carried like gems within our souls. Over the lifetimes they build and crystallize until we can take them out and gaze upon them as we choose. Life sustains us, but death defines us. We are the many-born. Our conception was in death, and each death now brings us a new beginning, forever without end.

Everything we touch, we change. We take in energy constantly, and although this is how we feed, this energy is never destroyed. Through us, it is transformed. It changes states. It resonates to a higher level.Yet every birth is accompanied by struggle and pain. Every rebirth is just as painful. It may seem that we bring destruction, chaos, and turmoil to all those around us. And in a sense we do. But the changes are always for the better, even though the initial change may seem terrible.

Change is terrible. It tears away what we've grown comfortable with. It destroys what we find familiar, stable, and simple, leaving uncertainty in its wake. But to face uncertainty and to thrive is to become stronger. Everything must change or die. We are active participants in this universal mystery.

Every person that we come into contact with, no matter how casually, is altered. Wherever we go, change will follow. Our dynamic spirits stretch out all around us, and the wake we leave in our passing is like ripples on the ocean. Only the ripples we cause can become tidal waves.

As beings on a threshhold state, we are living embodiments of the dynamic complimentarity that keeps the universe in constant motion. This is our burden. Yet this also is our purpose. In the gray area between two polar opposites lies revelation. We feed upon all around us. Yet we can also harness that energy to heal. We tear away and bring destruction, yet we also nurture new growth. This is our nature, the mystery of who we are.

There is no rebirth without destruction. Light only blinds without shadow to throw it into relief. Understanding comes from balancing all these things within the Self. We are that Balance. We affect it, and it affects us. We are facilitators of the universal flow. We must accept this, and never fear to move with that flow.

We are neither wholly born nor wholly made what we are. The choice for us to become was made long ago. From that time onward, we have been reborn again and again, carrying within us in every lifetime the seed of what we are. Sometimes we forget ourselves, and wander our lives like sleepwalkers, only half-aware of our true natures. Yet sleeping or awakened, we are born with the potential for transformation.

Awakening is a process of expanded awareness. Anyone with gifts and talents of a subtle nature undergoes an awakening in their life. This is when they come into their own, finally accepting what has been latent within them since birth. For us, the process can be traumatic, as the existence we awaken to opens us up to a host of strange thoughts, sensations, and experiences which lie outside the limits accepted even by other Awakened.

Awakening is the alchemical forge in which we are transformed from dross to spiritual gold. It is the recalling of a part of our Selves that has become clouded over time. It is becoming more than the little self of this lifetime, grasping the totality of who we were and who we are to be -- our Essential Self.

Some of us have greater potential than others. Some are born with an instinctive understanding of their potential and they may gradually come to realize that potential on their own. They recall without prompting and their power is great.

The bulk of our number are born ignorant to what they are. As they grow and mature, there are subtle hints of the latent power, but fear and self-doubt generally keep these from being acknowledged and accepted. Such as these must be awakened to their true selves by another of our number already familiar to our ways.

There are two rituals of initiation. The Lesser Initiation is an exchange of feeding which occurs between the teacher and the initiate. The initiate is drained deeply, often for the first time. This heightens his awareness of his energy body and will often catalyze him into realizing his potential in the next few days. The sensations that this process inspires are usually too intense to ignore or explain away. If fed from deeply enough, his instincts will overcome him and he will feed from others in order to replenish his depleted system.

The Greater Initiation involves a ritual death and rebirth which occurs on both the physical and spiritual levels for the initiate. It is visionary and shamanic in nature and forces the initiate to face himself and all that he has been within the boundaries of his own soul. Like all deaths and rebirths, this ritual strips away old identities and assumptions. The little self of this lifetime is subsumed into the greater Self, and the initiate is irrevocably changed. This rite is reserved for only the strongest minds, for any who are weak or filled with fear may not survive the initiation. Their minds can be blown away like dry autumn leaves in the face of the totality of who they are.

We often associate with the Awakened or with those who hover upon the threshold of Awakening. We prefer the company of those who can interact at least to some degree with the level of reality that is our constant daily experience. By our very natures we Awaken those around us. Even those not of our kind can be affected by the transformative effects of our presence. We draw out latent powers and provide a burden of proof for individuals who have otherwise rejected their own natures due to self-doubt. We can use this intentionally if we choose, though it will always occur to some degree, whether intentional or not.

Sometimes we mistake a Potential of our own kind merely for one of the Awakened. If such an unrecognized Potential is fed from, the effect, though unintentional, is equivalent to the Lesser Initiation. The Potential feels himself undergo a change and is driven to feed from others. Such accidents cannot be abandoned. Confused as to their true nature, ignorant of their power, they wield that power nonetheless and can cause much damage to themselves and others if left to struggle on their own.

Still others have Potential, but it is too weak to ever fully be realized in this lifetime. Others are too unstable to survive the initiation. They are best left to sleep so they will come to maturity in their own time. If forced to awaken, they are merely shadows of us -- weak in power, unstable in mind, whose powers are likely to fade unless constantly put to use or manipulated by their mentor.

Sometimes a feeding vessel may manifest the symptoms of vampirism, but this is merely a sympathetic state brought about through prolonged or obsessive contact with one of our own. Such a one's natural reserves are depleted to a point where they cannot recover their vitality on their own. Given time, however, and separated physically and / or emotionally from the dominating personality, such a person will gradually recover and return to a normal, non-vampiric state. In some cases, the afflicted person does not wish to give up the state of sympathetic vampirism. If the person understands even a little of what has happened to him and wants the condition to continue, he can maintain this quasi-vampiric state indefinitely and may even eventually come to be mistaken for one of our number as he will accept that he is nothing else.