The Silsilah Monks practice Hijira, "the Breaking of Bonds," in order to gain access to the potential powers of their sleeping souls. At the top of this venerable order one will find the Anasbesti, "The Unextinguishable". Their name is a reference to none other than Azazel Himself, called the Anasbestic One for His perseverance during the time He spent trapped in flesh. Moving among mankind to reach the dreaming Djinn that slumbered in so many below Him, Azazel perfected His force here in the worlds of form, His immortal voice now whispering to His chosen in their dreams of the City of Brass, His kingdom that waits beyond the horizon for those who can see their way to it. Once the voice of the Black Flame is heard, Its recognition is the awakening of the Djinni within the bottle, and another Effendi, a term that is used to denote a recognized Djinni, can join the Order and struggle here on earth toward the Magocracy that will one day return the Djinn to power.
But this dream is not to be gained without such a struggle, and it is often in the beginning, by necessity perhaps, a lonely struggle as well. It is this period of blindness and incarceration in flesh, often without much if any awakened companionship, that the Silsilah have called the Amerce. Much of the Amerce is a time of complete Kenosis, the renunciation of one’s divine nature, and although the Effendi within the Ahd al-Jann are fortunate enough to suffer the Amerce together, and then eventually not at all, the Anasbesti declare that those who sincerely seek to serve the Djinn King immanently are never truly alone. It is generally believed among the Ahd al-Jann, and by the Silsilah Monks in particular, that their King endured the same incarceration in magic-inhibiting matter that they must now suffer, and that He watches invisibly for those who will earn their place at His side. They say this is why so many of His chosen must endure alone, until their Gardens are cultivated and made full by their own hands. The Amerce is viewed by many Effendi as a necessary and inviolable right of passage; a prison that can only be opened from within.
For this reason, a quietly observant state of salutary neglect, established in honor of the isolated trials endured by the First Himself, has made the Anasbesti within the Silsilah the quintessential sea tortoises of the initiation game. They subtly reveal themselves and their magicks and then leave the initiate alone on the proverbial sandy shore with a bottled-up Djinn and a vague idea where the ocean might be. Needless to say, many of these poor souls go mad and dry up in the sun. The ones who don’t, who find the way to open the bottle, can survive with Azazel and His Nephilim in the City of Brass, or at the very least among his Effendi still on earth.
Like the core of many other “secret societies”, the Anasbesti “do not exist.” This is so that none within the Silslah may seek the Inner Circle out to be recognized, for that is the tragic way of the deceptive world of forms, the world of seeming, that one is often satisfied to be “seemingly” validated by external things. Yet if it is by one’s own force, and not mere forms, that one will be found Anasbestic by the Amaranthine King, then who better to discern the worthiness of your heart than you?
"If you need to find the Unextingishable lords of the Djinn," it is said, "you obviously do not deserve to walk among them yet." Ironically perhaps, those who truly deserve to be counted among the Anasbesti are those who have no pressing need to be counted at all, but to those new Djinn who have not been cordially recognized by their brothers and sisters, the Inner Circle has but one reply; "Persevere, and either His voice will find you, or you will find His voice, yet until then, know that we will all struggle, in our own separate ways, for the Magocracy.”