Sometimes I become quite morose in my practice, and the fire that is usually reserved for those who would attack the wider occult movement is instead turned towards the shades of the past. The following article, which originally saw digital print over at ChaosMagick.Com towards the end of 2022 is one such exercise in self exploration, and leaves very little to the imagination as to my origins within the necromantic paradigm. More representative of anger at a stolen childhood than a shadow work based self examination, I have lived these words more closely than I care to remember.

Empathic Outcast
A Life Lived in the Shadow of the Veil
By Gavin Fox

The majority of those who walk the winding path to occult understanding are considered outcasts in one form or another. Many straddle the thorny hedge between sane and something far darker, hiding the burning need to know behind forced and imperfect smiles. And this is especially true in my case, because while some necromancers are born, I was most definitely made. Growing up withdrawn and folklore obsessed in a working class slum that had little time for myths and even less for magick my school years were typified by a grungy and disinterested aesthetic, one that saw me prefer the library to the sports field and urban legends to playground gossip.

While this eldritch calling may have been in the youthful sense of those whose age forces a limited understanding of the wider world, I have no doubt that an eerie and unsettling cloud hung over me like a shroud even then. And ever have the herd instinctively attacked the monster in their midst. Looking back I am willing to admit that I was indeed bullied within an inch of suicide, the violence so pronounced that some of the scars of their heavy handed actions still dance upon my flesh even today. Worse, it became a constant struggle to stop the curse of empathy from robbing me of the very ignorance that other victims of repeated violence shelter behind.

The ability to see deep into the hearts of those why hated me so forcefully was a weight almost as impossible to bear as the bruises and bloody cuts they administered in a pointless attempt to force me into line. When you can smell what the vile little neanderthals are planning to do to you, if not exactly when it will happen, every day becomes an exercise in skulking between shadows. In that at least those wounds served to teach me well, my mind turning from capitulation to manipulation and the very empathy itself becoming an exquisitely nuanced weapon. Survival is a primal evolutionary force, and I realized that the only way I would outlive my enemies was to outsmart them.

Eventually I mastered how to shield myself from their hatred and return it, embracing the cultural streams that they slaved under and weaving them around me until only what they needed to see to be kept at bay remained visible. Adopting a memetic mask of mirthless smiles I dared my detractors to try and tear it away. It goes without saying that they would not have liked what was churning underneath. Soon my less than stellar school life came to a close and I succeeded in holding out against the very people that had previously sought my destruction, exuding both charm and malice as the situation required.

I thought the problem was solved. Convinced myself that I could now live a normal life. And then the dead arrived. Be it some quirk of empathy or just violence induced hypervigilance, time spent dodging the fists and feet of my peers left me with the ability to sense the emotional spark that denotes a living person in my general vicinity, plotting them on an internal map for future reference if needed. It was when I moved on to college and left the schoolyard violence far behind me that I realized not all of these had an obvious physical shell, a point that had been lost on me when I was only concerned with survival as opposed to exploration. Consensus reality crumbled around my ears.

It is through this technique that I experienced the majority of my contact with the various entities that inhabit the world with us in those now mythical years before I declared myself a practicing magickian. I guess in hindsight my long slide first into witchcraft, chaos magick and eventually necromancy itself were inevitable. As was overlaying my previous distrust of social groups onto interactions with the discarnate. Some people seem to look into the spirit world with rose tinted reading glasses, spreading messages of peace and love without any real notion of the true intentions of the beings which they come into contact with. Frankly, they are fools, because despite what the meme says the monsters are not always human.

Oh yes, not only do I remain highly suspicious of the entities that stumble across my cemetery path on a regular basis, but for me the very point of necromancy is to stand as the bulwark between the realm of the living and the underworlds of the dead. We who have chosen this blackened paradigm realize that there is no good to come from the breaking down of such fundamental barriers, nor should either side of that divide seek to freely interact with the other unless everyone participating, living or otherwise, is aware of the potential dangers involved. This statement is born of pragmatism, not elitism, because while the Veil is likely a purely human concept it still exists for a reason.

The dead are not happy, honest or even particularly pleasant. They know hunger, feel want, and in that are no different than the people that they once were. Interacting with any stranger can be potentially dangerous, and this is doubly true when the outsider in question is confused, invisible, and able to walk through walls to get at you should the mood take it. I have met such spirits while exploring the unseen world, of course, but as bad as they are those who did the most damage to me were very much alive. While I do not fear others, I make adequate preparations to keep them at bay should the need arise.

Perhaps in hindsight I should actually thank the vile human herd who drove my light inward, and forced it to pulse in secret within an outwardly normal shell. The years of violence did not break me. My enemies simply forged me into a colder blade, one better suited to the role I would later adopt among the dead. While I was not born a necromancer, I make an extremely good one, no doubt due to my origins among the slums of my home town. I bled for my magick long before I even knew it coursed through my veins. And in the face of their anger, I became whole.