Stealing Sacred Fire

Stafford, England

Stealing Sacred Fire: Book Three
of The Grigori Trilogy

© Storm Constantine 1996

Smashwords edition 2009

This is a work of fiction. All
the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to real people, or events, is purely
coincidental.

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1988.

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An Immanion Press Edition
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8 Rowley Grove, Stafford ST17
9BJ, UK

February 2008

When this book was first written, world
politics were not quite what they are today. Reading back over the
text, I feel it’s now necessary to say that this book should be
read in context of the time it was written. There is no mention of
wars in the Middle East or terrorism, except for the struggles of
the Yarasadi, a fictional group who are based loosely on certain
religious factions of the Kurds – and I chose to do this in context
of ancient legends rather than modern politics. Of course, the
world is a very different place now, and certain areas of
discussion are very sensitive. However, I do not feel that I should
update any of this book’s text to reflect the political
sensibilities of the twenty-first century. This is a historical
fantasy.

In the story, a self-styled
king rules in Iraq, believing himself to be a descendent of the
Watchers. This setting was a geographical decision on my part,
rather than a political one. However, events since I wrote the
book, with Saddam Hussein’s role on the world stage, might make it
appear I was trying to make a statement about that. I wasn’t. The
area of the Middle East where Iraq lies is significant in terms of
ancient legends; it’s no more than that.

Original Foreword to Second Edition

This book was first published in 1997,
two and a half years before the Millennium. I wanted the story to
end with the Millennium, the dawn of a new age. People asked why I
considered that date important. It was a celebration of two
thousand years of Christianity, after all, and as I am distinctly
not Christian, surely it made no sense for me to give it any
credence. Also the true millennium should be celebrated on the eve
of the year 2001.

I understood their points, but
for me the most important aspect of the event was the fact that all
over the world people would be focusing upon it. All that energy.
It defies belief in itself. It did not matter what people were
celebrating. For an ephemeral moment, humanity was in accord, as
that hour of midnight swept across the world like a scythe. To any
practitioner of magic, the life energy inherent in that event had
to be at least interesting, if not a direct source of power.

Another aspect of the
Millennium also intrigued me greatly. At the turn of nearly every
century, magical groups and societies, through ritual, have
attempted to initiate a new Golden Age for humanity, an age of
freedom. I was interested in the symbolic and spiritual
implications of this supposed New Age of Man.

Also, after two thousand years
of patriarchal religion, it was interesting to reflect on where we
are now, spiritually and politically. Although I am not Christian,
I have no grudge against Christ, who, if we are to believe his
story is historical rather than mythical, imparted sound teaching.
It was what happened after he died that I condemn, how warped
individuals twisted his message into an ascetic, repressive
misogyny, almost a hatred and denial of life itself. Now, in the
year 2000, we can see that Western people have far greater freedom
to express themselves spiritually in the manner they choose,
without being tortured, burned or hung for it. This might not be
the case the whole world over, but it is a progression.

The total eclipse of the sun on
August 11th, 1999, was also regarded as an exceptionally powerful
magical event. Some people thought that what happened on that day
would set the pattern for the rest of the year, the build up to the
New Year.

As I was writing this book, the
eclipse was two years in the future, and I had to speculate about
what would happen. In this edition, I have slightly revised that
section to be more realistic. The best place to view the eclipse in
England was predicted by psychics to be The Lizard in Cornwall,
which featured heavily in the second book of this trilogy,
‘Scenting Hallowed Blood’. Although I was unable to go down there
myself, some of my friends braved the hordes and hired a cottage on
The Lizard for a few days. On the day of the eclipse, which was due
to occur at 11.00 a.m., the sky was smothered in clouds. My friends
went to sit on the lion simulacra in the cliffs, (named Azumi in
‘Scenting Hallowed Blood’), and thought they wouldn’t be able to
see much. However, for just a few minutes, the clouds opened, and
they were able to view the entire eclipse. Only ten miles north in
Falmouth, where all the scientists and astronomers had set up their
equipment, nothing was visible except the darkness at the moment of
the eclipse.

When my friends came home, they
barely had the words to describe the feelings that had swept
through the crowd during those brief minutes. Several of them told
of how before it happened, they had felt depressed or even
physically ill, and people around them complained of similar
conditions. The moments of blackness were entirely surreal and some
primitive instinct within them had been terrified, as if it really
had been the end of the world, the death of the sun. But when the
sun came back, and radiant rays of diamond brilliance shone forth
around the black centre, hope and joy surged through the crowd.
People yelled, sang, clapped and wept. Any sense of depression or
nausea lifted instantly. The last two thousand years of
civilisation might never have happened. For just a short time,
people were united in a pagan conjunction with nature.

Those of us who hadn’t been
able to go to Cornwall went up to Cannock Chase, miles of ancient
heathland near our town, which before the advance of towns and
roads had been joined to Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire,
legendary home of Robin Hood. Many other people had the same idea,
so it was quite a festival atmosphere. One of my friends suffered a
depression similar to the ailment that had assailed people in
Cornwall. While the eclipse was actually happening, she couldn’t
even bring herself to look at it. Everyone was offering her their
smoked glasses, saying, ‘Go on, you can’t miss it.’ But she just
refused. Afterwards, escaping the crowds who were still engaged in
picnics around us, we went to an ancient oak grove a short distance
away, where we often meet to meditate. Here, we performed a short
visualisation about the birth of the Child of the Aeon. Everyone
felt extremely strange or disorientated. Something magical was
certainly happening that day.

Prior to this, in 1998, I
attended a Kurdish rally in Trafalgar Square in London. As I was
writing about the Kurds in ‘Stealing’, I wanted to meet some of
them first-hand. My friend and colleague, Andy Collins, whose
research has always inspired me, had made contact with Kurdish
organisations while writing his book ‘From the Ashes of Angels’.
Andy believed that Kurdish factions, such as the Yezidi and
Yaresan, are direct descendants from the race who’d once lived in
their country. He’d found evidence to suggest that Kurdistan was
Eden, and the Kurds’ ancestors were the Anannage. Although the
majority of Kurds are dark-haired and skinned, astonishing
red-heads and blondes are sometimes born, who have blue or green
eyes. The Yezidi practice an unusual form of angel worship and have
been called devil worshippers, because they see the serpent of Eden
as a good guy, who brought knowledge and enlightenment to
humankind. In their religion, he is called Azazil. Shemyaza.

You need to read ‘From the
Ashes of Angels’ to learn the complete justification for Andy’s
well-researched claims. There is simply not the room here for me to
do so.

The Kurds invited Andy to speak
at the rally, after all the politicians, actors, and celebrities
who supported their cause had had their say. I wasn’t quite sure
how the people would react to Andy’s ideas. He would follow worthy
speakers, who were working towards political aid for the Kurds. I
knew what he was going to say, and I could barely bring myself to
watch, sure he’d get lynched. I glanced around the crowd and saw
men in wheel-chairs with missing limbs, and other obvious
casualties of the conflict in Kurdistan, who had come to England
for treatment. How would they view Andy’s ideas? It seemed almost
insulting. But Andy knew no such temerity. He got on stage and told
these people, most of them exiles, many of them combat veterans,
that they were descended from angels and that their country was the
cradle of civilisation. Well, he didn’t get lynched, and the
applause was enthusiastic, but I suspect the truth was that few
people there really understood what was being said to them. This
day, however, provided great inspiration for one of the chapters
near the beginning of this book, when Shemyaza first comes into
contact with the Yarasadi, who are a fictional Kurdish faction.

In this novel, Shemyaza, from
one viewpoint, is the Anti-Christ, he who comes to break down the
rigours of patriarchy and asceticism. But from another viewpoint,
he is the true Christ, shorn of millennia of dogma and
misunderstanding. This is why there is one scene in the book where
he is shown as both Christ and the Devil, two sides of the same
coin: Ahura Mazda and Ahriman; Horus and Set. I found a passage in
‘The Genealogy of Morality’ by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,
which seemed to describe Shemyaza, a being who is beyond good and
evil and could raise humanity from its degenerative state to a new
freedom and power:

‘But some time, in a stronger
age than this mouldy, self-doubting present day, he will have to
come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the
creative spirit who is pushed out of any position ‘outside’ or
‘beyond’ by his surging strength again and again, whose solitude
will be misunderstood by the people as though it were flight from
reality -: whereas it is just his way of being absorbed, buried and
immersed in reality so that from it, when he emerges into the light
again, he can return with the redemption of this reality: redeem it
from the curse which its ideal has placed on it up till now. This
man of the future will redeem us not just from the ideal held up
till now, but also from the things which will have to arise from
it, from the great nausea, the will to nothingness, from nihilism,
that stroke of midday and of great decision which makes the will
free again, which gives earth its purpose and man his hope again,
this Antichrist and anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and of
nothingness – he must come one day…’