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 ...

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....

As I previously mentioned, the French version gave each occult science five paths . Five mazes of Sorcery, five worlds of Summoning, and five materials of Alchemy, each preferred by Nephilim of one of the five elements. For purposes of organization, I label these the "watchtowers" of the elements. To recap: Element Sorcery Kabbalah Alchemy 🜂 Fire The Axial Way of the Wandering Principles : Fight the darkness and learn from the struggle Aresh, World of Conflict , where the world is in a constant state of war and honor and atrocity are the only lords Metal , mastered by the Green Lion, is Mastery 🜄 Water The Primal Way of the Rising Spiral : Change yourself to change the world. Zakaï, World of Purity , where the world is dying and the only hope rests on the healing of the Fisher King Liquor , mastered by Esmeralda, is Transformation 🜃 Earth The Natural Way of the Winding Pa...

In (my)  Nephilim cosmology, there are a few different types of spirits contrasting the Immortals and their Paredri. The three broad categories are: Summoned Beings are spirits called by Summoning from the astral plane and other planes within the magic fields that seem linked to the collective unconscious. Unlike Elemental Beasts, and like humans, they operate on seeming intelligence rather than instinct. They assume countless forms, including those resembling animals. Summoners argue over whether summoned beings naturally live on some other plane, are conjured into existence by the summoner's will and imagination from the personal or collective unconscious, or if there's even a difference. Elemental Beasts  are to the Immortals what mortal animals are to mortal humans. As with mortal animals, Elemental Beasts operate on instinct rather than humanlike intelligence. They typically have a single Ka-element, sometimes two, but rarely more. All Beasts have a defining Personality ...

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...

Back in the day when the US fandom discussed Chinese Nephilim on the mailing list, the idea that each culture would have different elements and so on often came up. The idea was that the cosmology given in the rulebook was too Eurocentric and not inclusive of other cultures, mixed with the general exoticism and poor understanding of other cultures because it was the 90s. Firstly, I think it's okay for Nephilim to have a unified cosmology regardless of what a given Immortal's culture is. Trying to invent a new cosmology for every culture and then have them all play well together is infeasible. Secondly, I don't think the cosmology is too westernized. It's actually a mix of multiple Eurasian astrology traditions. The idea of a pentacle of five elements , and associating the planets with specific elements , doesn't come from Greek philosophers but from Chinese astrology. The idea of five elements composing reality rather than four comes from Vedic philosophy. Indeed, ...

Chaosium's adaptation of Nephilim was based on the 1st edition of the French, which was crude and unrefined compared to subsequent supplements. Case in point, the US version recaps the Olamot as the four summoning worlds: Assia, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth. In the French, these worlds would be discarded and replaced with Aresh, Meborack, Pachad, Sohar and Zakaï.  A brief summary comes from this rpg.net post by a reviewer translating the French: Kabbalah Kabbalah as a science knew many false starts whether the studies of King Salomon or the wanderings of Helen in mythic Greece. However it is Jesus the Son of Ether that drew the fundamentals of the Occult Science used today. The Messiahs posited that worlds exist around us in the magical fields. He could call the creatures of these worlds and draw Wisdom from their teachings. Kabbalah was the legacy he left to his Fallen creators hoping they would find solace in Sohar the world he had more often walked. Five worlds are studied...

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...

What follows is how disembodied and incarnated Immortals work in my campaigns, how they’re born, their ecology, sentience, etc.  Nephilim What is a Nephilim? A Nephilim is a fusion of a human being and an elemental spirit of the five fields, creating a microcosm of the Solar system that allows the Super-Ego to emerge and pursue Agartha.  What is that elemental?  Every proto-Nephilim is born from a Nexus during a Grand Enthronement when the stars are right. The element of the Enthronement determines its Dominant Ka. The conditions are so precise that this is impossible to predict more than a week in advance.  By itself, the proto-Nephilim is a beast little different than others born from the magic fields. The key difference is that it is composed of the five elements at once, when other elementals rarely exceed one. It looks like its metamorphosis fully manifest in Khaiba, but may display a few curiously human features and a seemingly higher intelligence than most ot...

In a prior post I mentioned the "black elements." These were basically evil versions of the conventional elements, briefly mentioned in both Serpent Moon and Major Arcana . I find that idea a bit silly, though. But the third edition French version has an idea that I think salvages this... The Black Moon is most strongly linked to the Moon field, but in truth it insidiously insinuates itself within and parasitizes all the magic fields. There is no Black Fire-Ka, Green Fire-Ka, Bitter Water-Ka, Dead Air-Ka, or whatever else you could think of... these are all manifestations of Black Moon-Ka. In the French version, there's a black summon named "Those whose Touch is a Red Iron." They're creepy green fireballs. The text states that they seem to echo Fire-Ka in their appearance in Ka-Vision. Are these Black or Green Fire-Ka entities? More or less, if you interpret Black Fire-Ka as the Black Moon's parasitizing of the Fire Field. In my planned rules for Black...

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...

What is a Nephilim? What are the Ego, Super-Ego, and Id? What is the nature of an elemental essence outside a body? What is the relationship between Nephilim and elemental beasts? How do the secret societies view Nephilim? How do Selenim and Ar-KaIm differ? Who were the KaIm and how do they differ? Long story short, I've tweaked Immortals to no longer be body snatchers because I want to make it easier for players to get into the game and sympathize with the PCs. That seems to be much easier when the PCs aren't body snatchers. See Montgomery's blog posts  here , here , here , here and here . Each Immortal is a fusion of a mortal human being, body and soul, with an elemental essence or spirit. Each has a psychic apparatus of three interacting agents: the elemental Id, the human Ego, and the immortal Super-Ego. The elemental's Id provides the Immortal's Personality Traits aka Emotional Traits, which the Immortal must understand and master in order to reach Agartha. Th...

In this post I explain the spiritual meaning of the Nephilim’s pentacle and the Ka-elements themselves. Although linked to specific game statistics, like Fire to Strength and Moon to Charisma, all of the elements have physical, mental and spiritual correspondences and manifestations.  It’s not one or the other . You don’t have to posit different cultures all have different elements to explain varying beliefs. Real occultism isn’t supposed to be accurate in the game world anyway, but the result of information leaks and cargo cults by muggles. Liam Routt gave a good explanation in  his old FAQ : (I’m putting it between horizontal rules because blogger has issues with formatting) The Spiritual Pentagram Traditionally, the pentagram represents our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical composition: Fire Doing—Fire is energy, the power to act. But it is pure action, undirected by thought or feeling. Air Thinking—Air is thinking, ideation, mental activity, but it can...

This is my attempt to classify the magic fields. The different types of Ka may be categorized into several overarching categories: evolving Ka, elemental Ka, and residual Ka. Each Ka is linked to a particular planet, zodiac sign, and day of the week. [The nomenclature of evolving, elemental, and residual Ka was written  by Sisensee . More information on Ka-vision and related subjects may be found at the old  mailing list FAQ .] Evolving Ka Solar-Ka—aka Sun-Ka—is linked to the Sun, the sign Leo, and dominates Sunday. In Ka-vision it  appears  as intense glowing spots, more visible than any other field.  It naturally concentrates in humans and other mortal animals, forming the soul in both the living and the dead. It is referred to as Evolving Ka because mortals are able to change and adapt over time, both individually and over generations, whereas elementals generally remain static. Solar-Ka doesn't form elementals like other Ka. The closest analogue are the dead...

The rules for Summoning used the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as their foundation. Indeed, in the French version the occult science was literally named “Kabbalah” and the Realms were named after the Sefirot . While thinking over revisions to Summoning and non-Western Nephilim, it occurred to me that the occult science could be decoupled from this Kabbalistic foundation. Then I glanced over the French again and noticed something interesting. Figure 1: Tree of Life diagram. Sefirot in black, Olamot in red.  In the French version In the French version, the occult science was called Kabbalah (renamed "Summoning" in the US version). The exact arrangement of the Sefirot  differed between editions : First, US & Second Edition Seals: Malkut, Yesod & Hod Pentacles: Netzah, Tiphereth & Geburah Keys: Chesed, Binah, Hokmah & Kether Third Edition aka  Nephilim : Révélation Untrained: Malkut (= Assiah) Seals: Yesod, Hod & Netzah (= Yetzirah) Pentacles: Ti...