The Practice
Magik in the HKE is referred to as the art or practice. Its historical roots lie in the ancient Khemd magik schools, and HKE magik is an umbrella that covers ceremonial magik, practical alchemy, and necromancy.
The Eastern Rite Faith defines all magik as automatically forbidden and powered by demons. Ghosts, spirits, magik, it’s all a demonic ruse. Consequently, the practice’s widespread use nearly has died out. The civic legal code does not make magik illegal, per se, but it punishes any sorcery, demonology, or necromancy with death, and most judges paint all occult activities with a single brush. Nobody admits to using magik, and even a false accusation can ruin a citizen’s reputation.
The Silent Convocation
In Thendaros there is a highly secret, underground community of wizards called the Silent Convocation, but most citizens don’t know it exists, and its secret is guarded closely. It is housed in the city’s colossal cisterns in a basement complex with no surface access. It only can be accessed by boat by those initiates who have been awarded with the secret directions.
Mages have no method for identifying each other in public, no special handshakes or passwords. This is to insulate the greater group from discovery, because a mage put to the question cannot surrender names he does not know.
HKE mages often smoke or ingest sweet flag root for its psychodelic effects to aid in their art. They also employ sex magik as needed. Their spells usually fall into the following groupings:
Capture Victim’s Spirit And Make It Into A Familiar Spirit
Conjure Living Humans, Huge Dogs, Or Flying Chariots
Create Amulets and Planetary Talismans
Create Homunculus
Divination by Water Gazing (Lekanomancy), Crystal Gazing (Katoptromancy), Casting Lots (Cleromancy), Casting Barley (Crithomancy), and Dream Reading (Oineromancy)
Exorcism
Healing
Illusion
Immunity to Disease or Fire
Internal Spiritual Fire
Invisibility
Levitation
Manifest Human-Like Phantasmata
Metamorphosis into Animal
Necromancy/Summoning Souls For Questioning
Prestidigitation
Psychokinesis
Arpathian Mystery School
Arpath was a gnostic prophet. He wrote the Arpathian Gospels, a banned book that has been lost to time.
The adherents subscribed to the gnostic worldview, but they approached the art very differently. Modern ceremonial wizards project themselves to other planes, appeal gate guardians respectfully, and are granted entry via secret formula. On each successive plane, the mage gains wisdom, experience, and secret knowledge that they bring back with them to the physical world.
Arpath was different. He invaded one astral plane after another, conquering it, absorbing its guardians and usurping their power and authority to become a self-proclaimed god. He repeated this often to maintain his formidable magik power in the material world.
Arpath believed every wizard had a secret fire in his torso, and controlling it would make their bodies glow brightly, and gradually replace his flesh and bones with the finer, more subtle matter of the higher planes. As the heat consumed their mortal bodies, they attained perfect, spiritual forms, the mages would glow like lanterns and produced magik carried on rays of light.
Master Arpath and his followers invaded not only the higher, more subtle worlds, but the lower demonic planes, as well as the planets with their daemons and spirits. The ultimate Arpathian goal was for each mage to conquer a plane, become its all powerful god, and leave miserable Aarthus behind, thus fulfilling their gnostic, binary vison of salvation.
Arpathians killed each other by ripping the secret fire out of each other's torsos, utterly killing the victim and absorbing his essence. No living adherent to this mystery school has been recorded in a millennium.
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