There once was an ageless reality of great power and wonder. The things that inhabited this reality, for they could hardly be called "people", could will into creation anything they wished, and became whatever suited their purposes at any given time, although both desire and purpose were alien concepts to this bygone age. Theirs was an absolutely free existence of chaos without consequence, and it was that complete lack of consequences that made all the difference. Consequence, you see, upon even a cursory examination of the word, revels itself to be, in essence, cause and effect. So, these beings existed in a manner unlike anything that we can imagine today, for pure chaos free of causality is just a mad and disturbing dream in this age, a dream that is set perhaps in this place of which I now speak.
Eventually, one of these god-like beings, not out of any sort of need, but perhaps as a novel distraction, invented the first symbol. This was not just a mere advance in technology, but the first step towards a significant metaphysical development, one that, although unforeseen, would change the very nature of their reality forever. In the modern age, humans rely so heavily on symbols that one might be inclined to assume that this invention was a very useful discovery for these strange beings, but humans of course have no concept of the old ways of being and becoming that made "representations" impractical to say the least. In those days, to communicate a past event it was merely repeated, to describe another thing it would just be created, and, sooner than one could desire something, one instantly became it, and it was for that very reason that these beings had no concept of “desire” as we each do today.
The symbol was the first concealment, the first lie, the first scarcity, the first unreality, and the first limitation on the inception of a wished for state, to ever exist, but this was not the greatest tragedy to come. In fact, it was almost a romantic notion. For it was this "limit" on what one was or experienced that gave birth to the concept of "desire," an experience that all would agree is entirely pleasurable. Unless of course it leads one to despair, but they were all still far too powerful to fall into this all too common snare. No, the tragedy of the great fall begins with the next invention, a natural "consequence," if you will, of these new symbols. Although it was some time before symbols reached the sophistication necessary to seduce these magical beings with their splendid illusions, the rise of the new order begins with the first creature who ever took a name.
It's hard to imagine that all the trouble that was to come was caused simply by the adoption of a symbol for the self, but it was the beginning of "self" as we know it today, the primary cause and reason for all order, the root of physics and laws, and, as we will soon see, the eventual inspiration for much, much worse.
Endless becoming was no longer possible to those growing few who were named, for they would always be anchored and delineated by whatever name they carried, no matter what changes in form or force that they managed to produce, and yet names continued to gain hold of these once limitless beings at an accelerating pace. Of course it was not for mere petty epithets that these god-like beings consented to the singular definitions that their new names bestowed. Symbols, which had begun humbly as nothing more than superfluous labels for the many known and concrete objects of which these ancient ones were accustomed, eventually allowed these beings the power to definitively represent abstract concepts and ideas as well, opening up a whole new world of ideals that had previously remained invisible despite the unlimited polymorphous abilities of these old gods.
It was these fantastic words, for lofty and transcendental concepts such as Wisdom, Power, and Beauty, that became the first titles to enrapture many of the old gods, yet it came to be understood that none in the ever growing cult of the name should dare to take the most sacred of names as their own. For it was perhaps inevitable that someone, feverishly crafting symbols for the great and unseen, would utter the first word for "God."
With the creation of a name for a most high, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being, a single supreme figure who was simply greater than all else imaginable, these delineating fanatics were nearly as one swept away by the splendid promise encapsulated within this Word of “God.” Although none were yet so bold as to take this name as their own, it was almost instantly incorporated into nearly every name that had ever been taken since the practice of naming began. Thus were the first Angels, set aloft in their newly conceived Heaven, created. Suddenly, these strange symbols, the first lies, emerged as reality's first truths, and, perhaps as an inevitable consequence to the birth of "truth", there came the first great war.
For the Nameless Ones below them, the strange inhabitants of this new Heaven made poor neighbors. The Angels, finding issue with more and more as they divided all things into new, and increasingly moral, classifications, shunned contact with those whom they soon came to refer to as the denizens of Hell. Heaven was guarded by Angels that carried powerful words of protection or banishment, and this militant face to the exclusive cult didn't particularly endear them to those outside either. Yet it was not their distance, or even violent magics that set the two worlds into conflict and war, but an act of peace on behalf of a single Angel who tried to come home.
After years of noninteraction, an Angel named Azazel set out on a holy mission deep into the dwelling of the Nameless Ones. He brought with him many powerful Words with the notion that these should be used as mirrors that would allow the Nameless to know themselves. Many of the Nameless instantly realized the danger that these formative sounds posed to their very nature, and although they had tried to shun this arbitrary system of distinctions and discriminations, the handful of words that Azazel had brought from Heaven proved to be very dangerous indeed. Watching as their undifferentiated namelessness was slowly drawn away into the rigid ideas that this tiny creature postulated, they rose up into a massive onslaught of murderous intent. Driven by fear and desperation they attempted to destroy the words completely, starting with the small outpost that Azazel had erected, and then lunging directly for the mighty Heaven above and all the Angels within it. Unfortunately, this didn't work out very well at all for the Nameless Ones.
It appears that that Azazel's mission was an attempt to avert Heaven's implementation of its previously conceived "final solution" to the Nameless problem. A word for the creation of the material world and the biological cycle of life had been conceived of by the Angels with the sole purpose of bringing an ultimate order to the Nameless One's chaos. This mother word, forged into a weapon called the Sword of the Elements, was to be used to subdue the Unnameable Ones in their Unspeakable Abyss, and would have been unleashed much sooner than it was, had not Azazel pleaded to be allowed one final attempt to win the primal forces over to the side of Heaven. He entered their depths armed only with the numinous beauty of God and all Its attributes, and though he had won many converts there, only he escaped the titanic fury of the horrible firestorm that sent him flying home like a bat of hell.
When the largest magical force that reality had ever seen reached the gates of Heaven hot on the heels of the desiccated husk of their failed messiah, Heaven was not surprised, nor was it unprepared.
Eden was unleashed, and the Nameless Ones were scattered. Every last one of them was either pushed out of the new objective world that the Angels were consolidating or else became that which the new Masters of the Name called them. As chaos gave way to their creation, the Sword of the Elements cut the Nameless into pieces, giving birth to the five elements of creation. Humans were created then, in a garden, monkeys with no memories of being more, and this might have been the story's end, if not for a second Great War, this time among the Angels themselves.
With the horror of the first war fresh in their minds, many in Heaven were still fearful of the humans that slept in the garden below them, aware that they might at anytime dream of the past that was stolen from them and reemerge as the unspeakable nightmares which the Angels had just conquered. Though the Word of God offered inspiration, hope, and even power, an Angel stepped forward offering all this and more, such as his divine presence and authority to a Heaven that was becoming too scarred to maintain its faith in a Word too often beyond its sight.
Among the Angels in Heaven only he had been so bold as to take the name Michael, a title which boasted that "He is like God," and it wasn't too long, as many in Heaven had foreseen, until this proud Angel made his attempt to take power in that empty space where all other Angels piously dreamed an invisible lord and master who could always maintain absolute perfection. Michael believed that it was time for a "real" being to at last step forward and make actual that grand ideal that all Angels longed to behold, and he was far from alone in this rutting belief.
If there had been a de facto leader in the old "Godless" Heaven, it was Azazel, the brave Angel who had stepped out into the deep to convert the darkness. As one of the most pious worshippers of the most holy Word, he spent his days with the other Angels in a shared contemplation of the divine Word and Its countless virtues, just as he had tried to do for the Nameless before the first war. Even his Angelic name, Azazel, humbly signified, "He who is separate from God." So it was only natural that this respected imam was thrust to the front of this new war in Heaven against this fierce pretender to the throne and his army.
Unfortunately for the light bringer, it is quite hard for many to remain faithful to a dream that will never completely come true. The few remaining followers of a God who was only present in their hearts were eventually thrown down from the heavens by the overwhelming number of Angels that flocked eagerly into the ranks of Michael's powerful army, with its irresistible promises of divine consummation.
Seeing humans, and their sleeping powers, as perhaps their only remaining chance to tip the scales, the Fallen Angels waited until the time was right to reignite their holy war, this time from Earth. When the Angels had created the Animal Kingdom to hold the Nameless, they also created disease and death as a ready tool by which to subdue the Nameless powers whenever they stirred. Yet the inextinguishable power of the Nameless would still surge from time to time, triggering epidemics of plague and infirmity designed to offset the recollection and release of the Forgotten Ones. It was during one such attempted awakening that the Fallen managed to save the first humans with whom the Hidden Covenant was formed. In exchange for the patronage of the Fallen Angels and the acceptance of the Word, power would be returned to those Nameless who swore to conspire on behalf of the First Heaven.
In its beginnings, the Ahd al Jann, the Arabic term for the Hidden Covenant, was controlled completely by the Fallen Angels, for those human who could draw on the lost power of the Nameless were few and weak, and would never have survived without the magical protection that the Fallen provided. For the Fallen Angels preserved not only the wisdom of a not-yet-idolatrous Heaven, but the magical use of the word as well. It was these celestial logomancers who changed the true names of those in whom they awoke the sleeping power of the Forgotten, creating the first "Djinn." This new word, invested with the meanings "Hidden" and "Wise," not only concealed, at least for a time, the illicit existence of these abominable security risks from the Angels above, but also shifted the very fates of these once Forgotten Gods, that they might never forget their vows to seek enlightenment and a more perfect understanding of the Word.
For the Fallen Angels of the Ahd al Jann took these philosophical studies of the Good quite seriously, as they knew that the unrestrained power of the Forgotten Ones stirred within every human being, and it was a power that gave pause to all the Angels, on either side of their war.
As the number of Djinn grew, so did this dreaded power, and new traditions began to be formed within the Covenant. An order known as the Silsilah Monks rose up to develop and protect what little power had either been returned to or rekindled by the awakened Djinn since the ancient beginnings of al Ahd al Jann. Although they remained seemingly diligent students of the Fallen Angels and their celestial wisdom, the search for some final way to fully unlock the elusive magics of the Djinn began in secret within the monastic orders of these early "Chain" Monks.
They sought power to rebuild the scattered might of the Nameless, which under the watchful eyes and guiding hands of their Fallen Angel Imams always seemed to be just beyond their grasp. It wasn't long until a form of what is today commonly known as the Cainite heresy sprung up among them and began to sow the early seeds of destruction for the ancient Covenant of the Djinn.
According to Cainite beliefs, the path to liberation from the physical restrictions of this world was not a path of appeasement, but of rebellion. Moral law as handed down from on high was seen as highly suspect, and therefore, to properly battle against their current circumstances, all the "good" that humans were commanded to do had to be inverted as to be used against the powers above. Sin was viewed as virtue and obedience was marked as a sin. This heresy spread in fervent whispers throughout the frustrated ranks of the Djinn.
Eventually, there was a great uprising of Djinn who abandoned that restrictive name to become the first Demons, a name chosen to pay homage to the divine power of their buried creative fires. They prepared in secret for a war against their masters, claiming that the Fallen Angels had only ever really been interested in domesticating them, not setting them free. They accused the Fallen of trying to civilize them to death, dandifying them until they would one day completely lose the necessary will to actually wield the limitless powers that were being withheld from them. Although they had come to believe that their supernatural strengths would be reclaimed in due time no matter what the powers above had done to them, their god-like strength would mean nothing once these Titans became merely the neutered puppets of the Fallen Angel Imams and their seemingly philosophical war.
Although they attempted to move in secret, discretion was largely abandoned with their old name, and the small number of Demons quickly developed a large reputation for many, many terrible things. Dark magics were also being developed, and the limits of this reality were pushed to create monsters so terrible that they have burned themselves indelibly into the memory of mankind.
Yet despite their many infamous successes, the Demons could not claim their final prize, which was freedom from the flesh. The intensity with which they threw themselves into the brutal study of the fragile corpses which imprisoned them gave rise to the first whispered tales of Ghuls, and of other monsters that eat of the dead. Of course, the actual fate of whatever unfortunate flesh the Demons obtained was far worse than mere consumption, and both the living and the dead fell victim in great numbers to this horrible research.
With a host of new powers and knowledge, the Demons prepared to move against their former masters, but the breaking of their name would prove to be the undoing of more than just the Fallen Angels. With the still very necessary discretion of the Djinn long behind them, the Hyperion above soon became aware of these giants among men. Before the Demons had time to turn on their Angelic Imams, both they and the Fallen Angels found themselves completely overwhelmed by the celestial armies of Lord Michael.
The Fallen Angels were subdued first, and then forced to watch helplessly as their precious magical children were easily put to the Sword. For without the Fallen Angel's knowledge of Angelic Magic to aid them in their fight, the clueless Demons were only dimly aware of the subtle battles that slaughtered them all.
The Fallen had one final card left to play. Knowing that these Archontic Angels knew little to nothing of the wild places beyond their patterns, they cunningly managed to persuade their captors to cast them out into the vast Abyss beyond the edge of the real. The Angels believed that this would prove to be a fate worse than death for the Fallen, but the Fallen realized that there was a very good chance that the Hidden Covenant would now serve to protect them, just as it had the Djinn, once they were all plunged helplessly into the world outside of the world. From there, though they knew they would have to change much of their ways, they placed their final hopes in the possibility that the Namelessness would suffer them to exist in the one place where even the most powerful Angel could not. The Abyss closed around them, and the Fallen Angels were as one ejected from existence.
From the nameless nowhere outside of creation, the Fallen endured and soon mankind experienced its first dreams. Out of the Abyss, the Fallen reemerged as the Aeons, the transcendental forces of inspiration and vision, existing now only as subtle whispers from nonexistence that could reveal the true beyond the real, and pushing the creative faculties of mankind to a state previously undreamed. Indeed, the Fallen Angels had traveled full circle, and Heaven and it petty Archons no longer had any power to control them.
Although unable to reach the Aeons beyond reality, Heaven turned its attention on the world and those who had witnessed their forbidden works, and moved with frightening celerity to wash all traces of them from existence. Many cultures mark the coming of a great flood at this point, but the physical deluge was only a small side effect of their greater magical working.
The true flood was released directly into the body of man, and, through its effects, humans were placed even deeper under the power of this reality. Some say it brought mankind forgetfulness, others say it was the birth of a great invisible despair, and yet others claim it was the root of a deep-seated mortal fear, or some other manner of crippling indolence, which we are all now almost powerless before. Breathing even now the invisible waters of the flood, any hope of an objective analysis being obtained by a human being still lost in the deep is slim indeed, so the full truth of the great flood continues to be one of our greatest mysteries.
Yet even this unnamed truth can be reached if one learns how to touch the powers of genius which calls out to mankind from beyond the veil. Remember, as you tremble before the armies of Heaven, that these Archons first trembled before you, and that secretly, beyond your sight, all of the Archons still do.
After the flood and the destruction of the Hidden Covenant, the Angels soon realized that there were those who seemed to be able to recall the concealed events that had come before. Though these memories where not clear, more like a nagging feeling in the back of their minds or a half forgotten dream, they drove those who carried them to create fantastic stories and mysterious works of art in efforts to express this mystery that lingered inexplicably inside them. It became clear to the Archontic Angels above that no matter how deeply it was buried, the truth would eventually rise to the surface, unless something was put on top of it to hold it down.
This was the precursor to a host of religious revelations from the Angels, revelations that mirrored the truths which the Aeons were whispering in human dreams just enough to satisfy the average human whose subtle intuitions could be easily overwhelmed by these stark, visible deceptions that they could both see and hear. The religions also served to police mankind for continued signs of the Aeons, for those who saw past these lies found themselves in sympathy to the very figures who were now most reviled by their community and its leaders. Thus, the faithful moved almost mechanically to crush all such heretics in the pious service of their new gods.
Theologies shifted, merged or were destroyed to meet the needs of the shadow war that continued between the Archons above and the Aeons who were now outside of the real. Like viciously divided parents battling for their children’s affections, each side had to be careful how hard they pushed their agenda for fear of endangering either their follower’s affections, as in the case of the Archons, or, in the case of the Aeons, their very lives. Yet out of a host of eradicated tribes and cultures, one dessert people, and their conception of this secret war, would become the intense focus of both sides.