Niis Zamran Ciaof Caosga
Zorge
Niis Zamran Ciaof Caosga
Zorge
Torsvi
I knew when I started writing Darkness Below that I wanted to put chants in the story, a series of ritual invocations that would appear throughout Ellen and Carter’s first adventure. H.P. Lovecraft peppered his work with several original chants (the most famous being Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn), but I didn’t want to rely on them because they are in such heavy rotation.
The solution to my problem arrived in a book about the Renaissance. Turns out the Renaissance was not only an interesting time for art, politics, and music. It was an interesting time for magic. After suffering for decades from the Black Death, people distrusted the Catholic church, especially after it failed to protect its followers from a devastating plague. They longed for a more direct way to communicate with God.
Enter John Dee, court astronomer to Elizabeth I of England. He long believed that good angels communicated directly with the Christian prophets. In 1582, he teamed up with psychic Edward Kelley to rediscover this lost language. It took almost a year, but on March 26, 1583, Dee had a vision of a twenty-one-letter alphabet that “the angels dictated to him”.
This was followed by a book, Liber Loagaeth, and the introduction of an ancient language he called Enochian (named for Enoch, the biblical patriarch Dee claimed was the last human to know the angelic language).
Dee and Kelly knew the risk they were taking by sharing their discovery. Even though the Renaissance was entertaining new (and radical) ideas, the Inquisition was still going on. In fact, it didn’t die out in Europe until 1834. Upon the book’s release, Dee was accused by the scholar Meric Casaubon of “acting as the unwitting tool of evil spirits when he believed he was communicating with angels”. Only two things prevented Dee and Kelley from the fate of other heretics. One, Dee was connected to the Queen of England. Two, Dee and Kelley never tried to profit from their “discovery”, even though both men desperately needed the money.
So what is Enochian? Is it a language?
The short answer is no. Enochian possesses elements that are language-like. It has its own grammar and syntax. But there is no established system, no rules to make this a “regular” language that people can use. Of course, supporters point out that if it is indeed the language of angels, it is not meant to be spoken as a daily language. Many scholars regard Enochian as a form of glossolalia, which is a fancy way of saying John Dee and Edward Kelley were speaking gibberish (or if you believe they were in contact with divine beings, they were speaking in tongues).
Which made Enochian perfect for my story. I needed chants that sounded strange, but which weren’t associated with any known ritual. So I fed my invocation of the cthonians into an on-line Enochian translator and it came up with this.
Niis Zamran Ciaof Caosga
“Come ye, show yourselves, the terror of the earth”
Zorge
“Be friendly”
Torsvi
“Rise”
And the finished chant that Ellen and Carter used in the mine.
Niis Zamran Ciaof Caosga
“Come ye, show yourselves, the terror of theearth”
Zorge
“Be friendly”
Torsvi
“Rise”
Amayo De A Coasga
“Lord of the Earth”
Consia Ta Ol Alonusahi
“Make Me Your Power”
Fascinating footnote: In Lovecraftian fiction, John Dee did something else that made him (in)famous. He translated the Necronomicon, the dreaded magical book that summons powerful creatures and is the source of all bad things.
