My Nephilim Occult RPing Blog

In the US Nephilim rulebook and supplements, "Agartha" is the perfected spiritual state that Nephilim seek to achieve. Although there are stories of Agartha being a physical place, a city located at the center of the Hollow Earth , these are lies concocted by malevolent secret societies to seduce initiates.  In the French version, the mythical city was later introduced as "Aggartha" (with two Gs). This was the headquarters of the World Arcanum, and thus a play on the wording of "center of the world". It was not located in the center of a Hollow Earth, but was located in the astral plane. Anyway, the real life occultist description of Agartha mentions it is a city at the center of the Hollow Earth and lit by an inner sun (in some accounts a "diamond sun"). What does this inner sun remind you of? It reminds me of the "Grail", the game's name for the Earth's core where the planetary Ethers are transmuted into the magic fields. (In ...

In the character creation for Ar-Kaïm, during the Past step the note determines how much of their mortal life the character remembers. Apprentice means they have total amnesia, Journeyman means they remember only dreams and confuse it with reality, and Master means no memory loss. However, this section contradicts the rest of the book(s): Ar-Kaïm don't suffer any Skill loss and amnesia is never mentioned in their lore. I suspect this text was leftover from an earlier draft as an oversight. It obviously creates problems for roleplaying so I can understand why it was revised. However, the Ar-Kaïm Codex has a short story where the narrator briefly mentions she sometimes has difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality. This inspired me to imagine a new degeneration just for Ar-Kaïm, one I tentatively call "Reverie." Ar-Kaïm have a close bond to the Astral and to the dreams of humanity. The idea behind Reverie is that it represents a loss of control and identity as a result ...

I neglected to post it in any of my prior posts touching on the French cosmology, but below are some maps of the cosmology taken from the French books. These should give a useful picture of how the cosmology works. Circa Nephilim: Revelation Circa Nephilim IV The cosmology was originally codified some time in second edition and consolidated in third edition ( Nephilim: Revelation ). It hasn't changed significantly since to my knowledge. The Summoning Worlds of the French version aren't include in the above maps. They form their own category separate but adjacent to the Astral. By contrast, the US version never had a chance to develop its cosmology. The most we get is that there's an Astral Plane where summoned beings come from and dreams may be entered from, known as Yetzirah to Summoners and Uat to the High Priestess. There's also the Subtle Planes of Agartha aka the Akasha, but their relationship to the Summoning Worlds (of which the Astral is one) is never explained....

I watched the 2000 Hallmark version of The Argonauts recently and it inspired me to think about the Golden Fleece. In the US version In the US version, the nature of the Golden Fleece was never explored due to the line being cancelled. What was mentioned (see Gamemaster's Companion ) is that a mortal Jason and the Nephilim Hercules traveled to the lost Atlantean colony Colchis—nevermind that at this point in the timeline that Atlantis has been extinct for 100,000 years!—where they entered the so-called Tomb of Prometheus and acquired the Golden Fleece. Jason was unable to decipher it before he was killed by an unknown assailant and the Fleece was lost. Its true nature remains unknown... until the PCs happen to rediscover it, anyway. The Knights of the Golden Fleece (see Secret Societies ) are trying to recover it by investing in scientific research and development—although I have no idea how this helps them find the Fleece. In the French version The Quest for the Golden Fleece was...

For a recap of how the astral plane worked in the French, check this post . Anyway, an old French article suggested some ideas I found very interesting. All of the elements besides Moon-Ka have obvious material manifestations: mountains and soil for Earth-Ka, skies and winds for Air-Ka, forest fires and lava flows and lightning storms for Fire-Ka, bodies of water and waterways for Water-Ka... but what of Moon-Ka? That article suggested that the material manifestation is dreams . Solar-Ka is provided by dreamers, the energy of their aspirations and desires, is reflected by the Moon and materializes into Akasha. The astral plane itself fall under the analogy of the Moon. But a lunar materiality is thus false, changing, inconstant: an immaterial materiality. Conversely, the fears and worst desires of humanity are refracted by the residual Black Moon Field and materialize into nightmares . I'll get into more detail as I start adapting more of the third edition rules to the US ver...

I'm not an occultist myself and my knowledge of the occult is practically nil, so I've never really understood concepts like the Olamot nor how to authentically simplify them for a gaming context. However, I've found one explanation someone else already did for a gaming context. In Craig Cochrane's Immortals Handbook: Ascension , he mentions the Four Worlds of Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth by name and describes them in simplified form for a gaming context. He assigns them to different dimensions, axes of a coordinate system, that make up our universe. These dimensions are, respectively, Space (technically three dimensions), Time, Matter and Spirit. (Da'ath, "The Abyss", is the dimension of Thought.) So I thought I'd recap that here and explain it in terms of the emanations. Within the Kabbalistic context, the Four Worlds are successive emanations of the Divine that give form and existence to our universe. The first emanation is Atziluth and it i...

To continue from my prior posts on revising Summoning and giving more options to enter Uat, I decided to write this post going over my thoughts on the astral plane, astral travel, and astral evocation. Astral Plane, aka Yetzirah or Uat The Astral Plane is one of several planes (or strata), arranged in the following order: Physical, Astral, Mental, and Spiritual or Causal.  The Astral Plane has several features: It is inhabited by various astral entities that may be contacted or summoned. Summoners call this “Yetzirah”. It has its own geography composed of places drawn from the collective unconscious, such as the Pharphar Wells or individual dreamscapes. It is possible to visit via astral projection, either deliberately with spells or unintentionally via dreaming and altered states. The High Priestess calls this “Uat”. Astral Travel aka Shemmut It is possible to project one’s consciousness into the astral plane. The High Priestess specializes in this, referring to it as Shemmut . Th...

While scouring through the old mailing list archives, I found a discussion from 2005 discussing astral travel, specifically how common it would be and what spells would accomplish it. So I thought I'd distill the relevant bits of that discussion here for expanded rules on the undercooked astral travel rules presented in Major Arcana . The first thing you'll need to establish is how common astral travel is expected to be, as that will determine the options for doing so. Is it rare, uncommon, or commonplace? The discussion established the following three options: Astral travel is rare This is the style presented in Major Arcana .  The Arcane Technique Shemmut is required to navigate the Astral.  The Initiate Spell Door to Shemmut , a Ritual Magic spell that requires knowledge of Seals, is required to enter the Astral. This approach favors the High Priestess, but as the book notes others can learn it. Astral travel is uncommon This style is still restrictive, but less so than the...

In an  older post  I presented my thoughts on organizing the planes. Since then I did a deeper dive into the French version by partly translating the third edition to learn more. Using what I’ve learned, along with some old articles by Ramos-Tavener, I’ve got some revisions for my cosmology. The earthly plane consists of both material and spiritual sides that exist in concert. Raw Ka gives rise to matter, and all matter contains residual Ka. Ka is the essence of energy, life and the soul. Additionally, there is a second wholly spiritual level of reality: the astral. The astral planes are wholly spiritual in nature, composed entirely of Ka, without matter or even space. The astral planes are are divided into the upper planes and the lower planes.  The upper planes, or Akashas , are composed of elemental Ka contained by sheaths of Solar-Ka. These are shaped by the hopes and dreams of humans, inhabited by myths and legends come to life. Agarthans reside here, elemental summo...

Back in the day Ramos-Tavener wrote essays on the history of summoning , unfinished revised summoning rules , and the nature of the subtle planes . I've been consulting these for my own revisions to summoning for a more authentic Enochian system. In this post I'd like to touch on the subtle planes and the summoning worlds. The US version was based on the first edition of the original French game. Subsequent editions of the French dramatically revised the cosmology (a brief recap of the 2e cosmology may be found here , but it doesn't account for 3e revisions). One thing that hasn't changed, however, is that the subtle planes and the summoning worlds remain distinct places. The subtle planes are the realms of human dreams and nightmares, Akashas and Anti-Lands, linked respectively to Solar-Ka and Black Moon-Ka. The summoning worlds are the source of the various creatures summoned by Kabbalah (the original French name for Summoning). Both can be visited by the PCs long bef...

The Nephilim game, at least as published in the USA, didn't really have a detailed or coherent cosmology. The summoning rules mention magical realms based on Kabbalah and achieving Agartha allows one to travel the "akashas" and "subtle planes." How these relate to one another, if any relation exists at all, is never explained. Some passages in the rulebook and the Major Arcana supplement suggest or state explicitly that some of the third circle evocations are Agarthans, Pharaonic Egregors, KaIm, etc. Meanwhile, the French version  underwent its own series of revisions. For my campaigns, I'd use a cosmology loosely inspired by the French version's . There are several sets of planes composed of different kinds of Ka, and these are organized into upper and lower planes. This directionality isn't literal but spiritual: the upper planes are closer to Agartha, whereas the lower planes are closer to Abaddon (see Major Arcana p71-2). There are basically f...