The Book of Shadows: End of Times

   How can one tell a story? Is a question like this enough to get it started? Ok, then! Do you believe in the existence of the soul? I guess I’m not so sure myself, either! Most people seem to believe they have one, though. The artists certainly talk about it often and when one acknowledges it to someone, that they have a “good soul”, it sounds like a nice thing to say! The ancient Egyptians definitely believed they had a soul! Not only that, they claimed it consists of five different parts! Those components, they believed, were: Ren, Ka, Ib, Ba, and Sheut. They do sound kinda funny!     Ren is the person’s name, the one which described all his life experiences from the day he was born. Ka is the vital energy that disappears after a human dies. Ib is the heart, which was perceived not only as of the organ but as the place where the soul was located! Ba is the part that makes everyone special, unique, different! The power that makes us strive for the things we most desire! And, lastly, Sheut is our shadow, our silhouette, the part that exists out of our body! And there you have it! A soul!    What about the afterlife then? Have you ever thought about it? Is there a place for us after we depart from this world or do we simply return in a new form?  Maybe there’s no way we can know for sure… The Egyptians, however, had an opinion on this matter too! Those fuckers seemed to have it all figured out, back then!    According to them, after a person’s death, Ren would still exist for as long as someone remembered the person’s name. His Ka, on the other hand, would be vanished for good. Ba was turned into a spirit, with the form of a human-faced bird, and soared through the skies! Ib was judged by the gods who ruled upon death, about being reincarnated as a new soul or eaten by a monster! But, what about Sheut? The part that remains attached to the body even after death but loses its form when flesh decays… I guess, not even Egyptians could have imagined the fate of one’s shadow! Not all of them, anyway.    A cult of wise women studied magic long forgotten in this modern era, under a goddess who had the power to reshape the shadows, and, from their story, a legend was born! The story explained the goddess’ choice to leave from the realm of gods and walk in the “Kingdom”, the realm of mortals and demigods so that she could teach her magic to humans, the same magic she learned from the great Mother Earth! The gods were frightened by her actions, thinking of what could happen to them if mortals learned the art of magic! They decided upon stripping her from her divinity, leaving her powerful in a mortal body, able to teach her magic only until she dies!    Overwhelmed by their measures, the goddess tried her best to teach everything she knew to the women’s cult but her wisdom was so vast, they could not contain it all! The goddess then, asked Thoth, the god of knowledge, science, and art to bless humans with the art of writing so that they could sustain all the secrets she would share with them. In return, she would give him access to some of her secret magic, too! Convinced by her offer, the god of knowledge taught the written language of hieroglyphs to the humans so that they could store information!    The other gods were displeased by his behavior and even more scared now for their fates! They send demons and beasts to hunt the goddess who became human, and kill her to destroy her soul once and for all! The goddess was powerful enough to overcome their challenges and live through their trials! However, by the time she fought them of, her body had become weaker and she’d soon die from old age. Furious with this outcome, she did something she would not live to regret. She taught a spell to the cult, a spell that could defy the judgment of gods` the power to reincarnate someone’s shadow! Her Sheut would be attached to a new soul, blessing it with all her powers, achievements, and sins! She then enchanted a grimoire, a book of spells, and signed her name in it. “Only she who possesses my Sheut can sign and erase the names of those whose shadows will return, attached to new souls, from my Book of Spells” she declared!    Worried about the successors of such terrifying power, the women met in secret to discuss a plan to stop the goddess's reign. The most cunning of them, the youngest one, talked to the goddess about the flaws she had found to her otherwise, marvelous scheme. What would happen if another goddess chose to live as a human and gained control of her shadow? Or if someone with her shadow erased her name from the Book? The young woman then proposed a solution!    To secure that her name stayed in the Book, the goddess should bind a great evil inside its pages. If the book didn’t contain enough shadows to match her Sheut’s strength, erasing it would unleash a great terror upon the Earth! To seal her power away from the clutches of another goddess, she should put a curse on her own shadow: to grasp its full abilities, the holder must sacrifice the one who would love her truly! Since mortals cannot lay their eyes upon the gods to fall in love with them and gods themselves are immortal, they cannot pay the curse’s price and her abilities would remain hidden!    Afraid of those possibilities, the goddess followed through with her disciple’s instructions and made the book of spells a prison for cursed Shadows! She also trapped the name of the young woman in the Book, to guard it in her absence and granted her the power to locate the holders of Shadows with the help of it. After the goddess’ death, the young woman vowed to her cult that she would keep the Book safe, away from its Mistress, and use it only to spread the wisdom it withheld to those who’d were willing to learn from it!    That’s pretty much how the story unfolds! What do you think of legends like this? I like to believe they hold some fragments of reality, a reality that feels distant and lost from where- or when!- we are now. It helps me see the world somewhat bigger and a lot older than I fantasized him to be! And even more mysterious!                                                                                       ~ The White Rabbit