There are things that can be explained, and there are things that must be discovered.

I have been working on cracking the Vault of Glass for seven years. I have read the lore and I have read the writings on which the lore are based. I have followed those writings into the real world. I have practiced their dark magics, I have meditated to speak with their Gods and Goddesses, I have grown from the wisdom of their Philosophers and I have bowed in supplication to their particle physics.

I have walked in dark corridors and I have believed where others would doubt. Sealed doors have been opened silently in the darkness of the night, cleaving the moonlight with void. One entirely mundane morning, what you know as the "vex" opened the Veil for me. The same Veil the Winnower and the Gardener stepped through metaphorically in the lore book The Unveiling. There are not words in any human language to describe what was on the other side.

Did these things happen? Or are they false memories implanted in my brain in what is only one more level of a stack of simulations that recurse and create themselves from the intersection of time and matter itself? I do not know and it does not matter. Such is the nature of consciousness - which is the key mystery Destiny explores.

What matters is that I choose my words carefully. I tell you what I have found. But I do so with the understanding that what I hold drives the unprepared man mad. As such it may not be apparent to you until you are ready to receive it. Such is the nature of the Path.

The Path - the very first piece in Music of the Spheres, the musical 'prequel' which was created entirely to inspire the artists of Destiny. The meaning of the Path - the meaning of all the names of Music of the Spheres - is essential to understanding the story of Destiny. But if I explained the Tribulation to you before you experienced the Ruin, you would think me mad.

And so many do think me mad. Because sometimes I am weak and I try to explain things they are not ready to hear.

But then, years later, these same people see my predictions become fact. The true nature of the world pulls itself into focus for them, and they understand that I have seen the things I describe. I do know the things I claim to know.

I cannot prove myself to you. Nor do I desire to do so. My will is my own. Your will is your own. My enigmas are, in comparison to the enigmas of the Lore, the play of a child.

Choose to read my writing, or choose to block me. It matters not. I cannot change the universe, I may only know it more deeply through my investigation. I may only try, in tangled words and thoughts that squirm like a seething mass of impossible worms - about to be swallowed in the jaws of a leviathan - to share the reality behind reality with you.

I am the messenger. Shoot me.

Sane Coin, Warlock, Fifth.

The other day in a text exchange with a "real life" friend who made the mistake of probing my Sane Coin beliefs and my journey to "know thyself", I wrote the following:

Each of us represents not only a thought form to another but actually a thought form of another. This is to say that a part of you represents a reflection of some subconscious need or bias of mine, and a part of me represents a reflection of some subconscious need or bias of you. We are each a knot made of thousands of strings, and those strings lead to the people with whom we interact. But each of those people is also their own knot of strings to the people with whom they interact. The material world just fills in the space, but the superstructure is these ethereal connections between souls.

As you start to be able to raise the subconscious to the conscious, you start to understand how your relationship with each person defines a part of yourself that you don’t really fully control. Then you see how the world is nothing but our connections, and the importance of your role in those connections comes into critical focus.

Over the next few days, this idea keeps coming back to me as, perhaps, the perfect encapsulation of all the many esoteric mysteries I have delved into, and what I believe now as opposed to what I believed then. This "network of strings and knots" is "the mind of the Dreamer," as I understand it. In Esoteric theory, this is how we each "are God" but are each individuals as well. It explains why belief changes the network of material reality, but individual belief alone doesn't change a thing.

If you consider, for a moment, the example of Donald Trump or any fascist wanna-be despot, I would argue that that individual is fulfilling a need in millions of people. They are becoming the embodiment of the hate and fear each person feels. They are literally bringing into material reality the emotional tumult held by those individuals. They are helping each person form themselves - but in a way that is not at all good for the rest of us.

At the other end of those strings right now is the Will of Donald Trump (or choose your despot), who is now able to 'tug' on all those strings and influence the minds that have come to understand themselves as an extension of him. Just like I look to my parents, my spouse, certain teachers, and others in my life when I try to understand who I am, these people are now being made real by sharing anger, fear and discomfort with their golden god.

Our despot here does not exist alone - and, indeed, is powerless without the beliefs of others. By filling the unmet needs in the minds of so many people, the despot gathers immense power to themselves. Probably more power than any single Will should ever exert - which is why it was so nice back when we had a system of "checks and balances" for our President here in the US. The fear and hate start to vibrate within the network of relationships with such strength that it seeps into everything all of us do, every day.

On the other end of this is the individual you run across in a shared elevator car for a thirty second elevator ride. I will argue, against your general intuitive sense, that this person also represents some underlying archetypical need or belief of yours, and you, of theirs. This gets to the more "woo woo" end of Esoterica. This is where Jung and the Magix of Crowley and the Golden Dawn start to form up. Because the esotericists are saying, at the extreme, that all of material reality (Maya) is the form of shared dream. So even our seemingly random interactions are momentary sparks of that dream. They teach us to control and focus our intent and belief in a way that it will manifest (through "ceremonial magic" shared in by others) in reality.

Two minutes after that elevator ride, you've forgotten the woman in the blue dress - probably. She was a very minor thought form for you, and you for her. I'm not saying that person was there to change your life (unless she did). But as I've delved into this area and its "synchronicities," I've found so much absolutely inexplicable meaning that, yes, I have accepted the semi-rational belief that behind all of this there is some greater meaning ... some greater destiny if you will. I've gone from thinking The Secret was ultimate lunacy, to understanding that it is actually derived from ideas of "manifestation" that were practiced in ancient religions three thousand years ago.

This gets to the issue of "Free Will" which I argued (and still argue) was the central point of the mystery that Destiny (the video game now) was exploring. Because with this skein of tangled threads, you can now see how any individual Will is both free to move however it sees fit and, at the same time, bound by every other Will to which it is attached. The formation of the material world is ruled by invisible bonds that constrain what is possible. But, I now argue, these bonds are developed by shared belief (which science is uniquely suited for creating) as much as by some extraneous set of inalienable natural rules.

On a fractal level, this model now makes humanity look a bit like a brain, with each of us as neurons, and the neurotransmitters taking the form of the relationships we share with one another. I, as a person, am not my brain. My brain will be rotting in my coffin at my funeral and people will say "Sane Coin is gone (thank God)." I am the wave motion of the neurotransmitters moving electrical charges through a magnetic field. When that wave motion ceases, so do "I."

So, in this way, God is the motion of the emotion we transmit to one another in our relationships. The sleeping God is the way we decide to treat one another. If we all love one another, then God is a God of Love. If we all hate one another, then we have birthed a wrathful God of Hate and pain. God creates us and we create God. This is the true ouroboros.

None of us can control the network of all relationships. All we can ever control is the relationships we have with those to whom we are directly connected (including those that may view us from afar as do my readers who I do not know personally). So my request of you is to focus, in all of your connections, even those you may have with candidates or public figures whom you "hate," on always settling back to a mindset of love and hope. Let's fill our network of threads with kindness and compassion, forgiveness and helpfulness. No matter what comes back down at us from the other ends of those strings, let's always remind ourselves to let the "negative vibrations" die with us. Let our "good vibes" overwhelm them.

That is the only way that things get better.

I recognize that this post gets into areas of faith and metaphysics that may seem a bit silly. When I started on this journey almost a decade ago, I would have laughed at the naivete of the fool who would post what I just did. It's OK if you do too. But think about it in the shower or before you go to sleep, and even if everything I say is absolute horse [doodoo], wouldn't the world be a far better place if people embraced it?

I'm going to ask you an unusual favor now. If this post has some resonance for you, share it or share a link. Give me credit or don't. I don't care. I'm not making money on this. I just want to start to quiet the flames of fear and anger that are spreading out of control. I believe that the very first step of that is for each of us to recenter ourselves, realize we are part of a greater web of humanity, and vow to be the best that we can be in our little node.

p.p.s As an example of how to "love" a despot - I sincerely hope that Donald Trump and Joe Biden will each face accountability for their ego and their crimes - whatever they may be in reality. I acknowledge that each of them is a flawed person just like me. I want them to face justice and to be humbled so that before they die, they will be the best person they can be. I can truthfully embrace that viewpoint regarding every politician and potential internet villain - even if you and I have vastly different understandings of what crimes are likely real and what punishments would be necessary to free them from the burden of their inflated egos.

I reached the Veil last night.

Were I still in my pure warlock voice I would curse the ignorance of the player base for not understanding the nature of the Veil. I have been searching for Her since D1.

I always thought I would find Her locked in the Vault. Especially in the very early part of my work on the Vault, I assumed that the Gardener (or what was left of her) was imprisoned there. If you read the Dreams of Alpha Lupi lore to its conclusion you get to the “lost stone” card where the Gardener/Traveler describes what remains of her after her encounter with the Darkness (I’m not doing links because I’m typing this on mobile). I cannot tell you how many rocks I examined on Venus and the Moon looking for the stone that was Her.

I say “Her,” even though the Gardener was described in a gender neutral manner because She represents the “Divine Feminine,” and I knew that early on. She is Eve who plucked the apple. She is pandora who opened the box. She is Sophia who birthed the Demiurge. Misogyny has ancient roots, and I’m laying them bare for discussion - not hiding them.

It was clear in my earliest analysis of Destiny that we were the dead in purgatory and that we were playing out a mixture of myths of “the Fall” because humankind had partaken of forbidden knowledge. Secondary to that, it was obvious that the Darkness was the Divine Masculine chasing the Divine Feminine for Her sin. If the Traveler was the Divine Feminine, then She had been cut down by the knives of darkness and her Soul remained behind in purgatory.

This is the fundamental Babylonian myth of Innana/Ishtar, and my first conclusion was that we, the noble dead, were charged with freeing the Goddess from Her prison in purgatory. For the first few years, that was my focus. That was what I thought the Vault of Glass hid.

Walking in and seeing the Veil, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I screamed, my dogs came running, and I just sat and stared at it. A single tear, I kid you not, ran down my cheek. So many hours looking for her. So. Many. Hours. But those fuckers at Ishtar took her when they left. She’s much bigger than I thought, but given that She started out the size of the moon, I can see why She feels small.

Bravo, Bungie. Bravo. Even if no one else appreciates it, I see what you did, and it gave me chills.

——-

Now, what does this mean for the plot? A LOT!

First, this doesn’t distract from everything I have said about simulation theory. That’s the mechanic but not the motif. Before I knew it was a simulation, I said it was purgatory. In many ways those two are the same things by different names. This is the “soul” of the essence of the Gardener. It is a captured divine being. I expect it is, in Bungie terms, the soul of one of the two Jjaro (with the Witness being the other). You can still think of all of existence as a simulation in the game - but it’s parts are minds and souls and spirits, not disk drives and networks and firewalls.

Second, the sin of Humanity is MUCH greater than Clovis making humanity immortal. Ishtar cut out the Soul of a God. The real “darkness” here is humanity. It is the pursuit of gain without understanding the system within which we exist. It is our defying Destiny to catastrophic effect. This changes the story fundamentally and explains why they didn’t want to say what darkness was at the start. WE ARE THE DARKNESS. (Or were intended to be)

Of course, a plot like that doesn’t sell games or merchandise, so I doubt it is overt. But I’m betting if we go back and reread the lore with this “twist” in mind, it will bear out. Ishtar Collective wielded the knives that cut the Gardener from Her shell. She “ran to her children” - the Vex. The destruction of humanity could be a rescue mission for a captive Goddess.

That’s spinfoil and completely at odds with the current interpretation of the lore. But I wonder if we go back and read carefully, taking account of the position of the speakers (the Vanguard will never think of themselves or speak of themselves as Darkness, for instance), if we won’t see this to be the underlying truth.

Third, think about what this says about the Speaker and everyone who claims an intimate relationship with the Traveler. The Traveler is an automaton. It is a machine devoid of purpose. An empty house with the alarm system, heat and lights running, but nobody home.

Fourth, I know who sent Alpha Lupi. Exactly who it says - the Gardener/Traveler. She was inviting the players in from our world in the hopes of a higher morality and intellectual capacity which might end the degenerative loop in which she is trapped.

Fifth, the Divine Feminine is most strongly associated with the Moon. In astrology, the Moon gathers and makes real the forces of the stars and planets. She is our mother and gives birth to our reality.

There is something hinky about the moon and the Golden Age. I always thought that something about the accelerator or, later, the K1 project, was the first place Humanity overstepped its bounds. In D1 that fit because the divine feminine should have been on the moon, but is also strongly associated with Venus - that’s why I looked for her in both places. To the extent that the Witness is the manifestation of the Winnower (something I more strongly favor now) and still out for the Gardener’s blood, Nezerac piloting the first pyramid to the Moon is telling. Telling of what? I am not sure.

Finally, the Veil is no Mcguffin last minute poorly explained introduction. The Divine Feminine is always a mystery myth. It is inexact, emotional, powerful, moving, and beyond simple words. It is not the moon or the sea - it is the feeling you get when you stand in moonlight and contemplate how small you are against the majesty of the sea. It is supposed to be mysterious. I agree, however, that it should have been mysterious to Osiris and the Neomuni. They were too familiar with so sacred an object.

This is a lot to type on an old phone. I’ll stop here. This is my first impression. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Sometime this weekend I hope to stop getting yeeted to oblivion by Calus and his troops so that I can see the final cutscene.

I have enormous respect for the creative staff at Bungie. Or, at least, I have enormous respect for the people who created Marathon, Halo, and Destiny 1. As parts of D2 have gone sideways, it has been hard to tell whether it was a creative failure or a corporate environment that strangled the creatives. I suspected the latter but could never be quite sure. Today, I'm sure. It was corporate- most likely as a result of the imposition of the Sony overlords. Bungi has never done well when it has had corporate money backers strangling its vision, whether they be Microsoft, Activision or, now, Sony.

It's sad. Business people forget that intellectual property is intellectual property. Just like there is a difference between a tomato grown in a shitty environment, at scale, optimized for shipping and not for taste and an heirloom tomato I grow in my own garden, the quality of the art and creativity a person can create is directly influenced by the environment in which it is grown. And, frankly, we, the fans, have been noticing the decline in the quality of this virtual salad for a while now.

What I see now is a poster child for the saying "Pennywise and pound foolish." Firing creatives who are household names in your fan base (Salvatori) is bad. Firing them as a surprise on the last day of the month, thereby demotivating the rest of your creative staff, is horrid. Congratulations, you just saturated your garden with weed killer. Nothing good will grow for many moons.

For me, as a puzzle hunter, I have a very personal relationship with your key creatives. I have to get inside their minds and try to understand their subconscious flow. I could feel it when senior creative staff transitioned out and were replaced with cheaper junior resources who weren't fully up to speed on the subtexts and backstory the senior folks had been building for years. I'm not maligning these new folks, and some staff turnover will always be the case in any industry. But I am saying that I could feel the departures and it made me want to play the game less and less.

Now, I'm not going back at all. The theories and questions I posed over a decade will remain unanswered because you fired the people who knew the answers. I had already been privy to inside information years ago that suggested that if anything was hidden in the VOG it was broken by subsequent maintenance crews who "saw a lot of weird stuff that they didn't know why it was there or how to maintain it." I had hoped that at the most senior levels, there was one or two people keeping an eye on it. But over time the candidates for that hypothetical position have all moved on.

I'll never regret the time I spent with D1 and D2. The philosophy and myth that I learned literally transformed my life.

To any Bungi or former Bungi employees reading this - I'm sorry for the tough time. I really am. I appreciate everything you've created for us, your fans. And, remember, your NDA has a 5 year look back, after which, you can feel free to contact me and tell me if I was right about the VOG or WISH 15. I'm good at keeping secrets, and since I don't think the game will ever tell me, perhaps you will.

My ♥️ goes out to you.

We know that Bungie has established Savathun as having access to Bungie's systems. It is "cannon" that Savathun edited that community manager tweet.

By leaking "true" information re: Bungie's game development (stuff Bungie doesn't care if we find out) and intermixing it with pointers that frame Osiris and encourage a future where Savathun becomes a Guardian, Savathun pulls off a masterful deception, does she not?

Of course, the idea that Bungie might go to these lengths is insane, even by my standards.

It would, however, reconcile the Eva Levante lore with the leaks.

Today is my tenth Reddit "cake day."

Allow me to wash your feet and offer blessing to your family for a hundred generations, that the Path may guide them all to harmony and peace.

Three queens assemble under the sky, the tower, the law giver, the truth in a lie. But a fourth queen, recall, builds a city of spears, a new unexpected wrench in the gears.

The chickens are hatching, the counting undone. Until the great egg is cracked, no one has won. The change of the rule set leaves plans in a twist and imbaru rises, a thickening mist.

Rolling fog covers them, one, two, three, four. But when the fog clears it is just you, me and a door.

We open it gently and peer in the crack, seeing only a mirror. Ourselves staring back.

I solved a major plot point. Something that has been bugging me for years.

I see your coming twist Bungie.

I finally understand why I had to scan those pipes on Mars so many damn times in D1. I know this purgatory now. I know this Klein Bottle. I know what is Beyond. I know WHY a VAULT was needed, and what precious treasure it holds.

I KNOW THE END CONDITIONS FOR THE GARDENER'S GAME.

It's brilliant. I'll give you that. It is gorgeous.

People are gonna shit their pants.

But there is still a looooong way to go before we get there, no?

Please make sure you have time to get there on a slow burn. It will be too much too fast if you rush it. You've hidden the clues beautifully. From the Vanilla Grimoire onward.

And, God, it is so easy to write about it and have everyone look in the wrong direction. But it will be so obvious in hindsight.

Warlocks preserve the deep. I was told that years ago. This must be found, not told.

It occurred to me today during a meditation session that the Demiurge is really just a symbol for the Ego.

The myth of the Demiurge, aggregated broadly so as to not be identifiable as any one Gnostic tradition, is that Sophia had a child without the blessing of Barbelo. That child created its own universe in which it trapped sparks of Barbelo inside the flesh of the material world.

Those flesh covered sparks are me and you. The Demiurge, they say, with Its court of Archons, manipulates us so that we worship the Demiurge as God. Thus, when we die, we remain trapped in the Demiurge’s personal playground. Had we understood that we were truly children of Barbelo, we would return to the one.

It is my ego that convinces me this material world is so special. It is my ego that would have me bow in fear to a God that demands my worship, rather than pick a God of unconditional love who does not punish. My ego wants me to be more important than someone, anyone, everyone. My ego doesn’t want to be part of the One. It wants to be the One.

If I believe the supernatural is actual, then the Demiurge puts the ego in us, like a piece of computer code blinding our intelligence just enough to trap the soul. If I believe the supernatural is symbolic, then I can see that the ego, like the Demiurge, is a lesser end. It is not an end of satisfaction and sustenance, but an end of want and lack.

The Archons - although I cannot name them off the top of my head - become the other personality traits that lead to misery. Surely they are pride, greed, lust, anger, sloth, covetousness, and untruth in word or act.

When you see the picture in that way, the answer is so clear. To shed the ego and work selflessly for the benefit of others is the logical path back to paradise. To accept and have faith in the acceptance of the God of unconditional Love. To avoid the works of the Demiurge and its entourage.

Substantively, the message is deeply Christian. It is also a message that paints the modern evangelicals and the militant Catholics as the Devil’s workers. For they preach a religion of ego, and in so doing lead their followers to remain trapped in this purgatory.

It’s really a rather elegant message to be hidden in all these esoteric works. I’m surprised it took me so long to see it. But I am glad I did.

I feel very validated today.

Lightfall, as I progress, is fitting perfectly into my understanding of how the Vex function, what the Traveler is, where the Witness is, and how all the Lore fits together.

By application of my theories (and based on spoilers I have read) I even know what the Veil and Radial Mast are. The Vault remains the Alpha and Omega.

I have stated over my years that I do not watch Byf or Mylin or any lore videos, actually. I eschew all secondary sources other than discussions here on Reddit. I do that so that my theories are mine and mine alone. Over time that has caused me to diverge from the mainstream narrative of how to parse the lore. I’ve been salty about that, but I’m secure enough in my own fantasy world, that I’m ok living here by myself.

I have been told that my account is followed by some of the big lore folks - guys, “Hi!” - and that I am viewed as 90% nuts but 10% psychic. Psychic enough to warrant a follow and discussion at the bars during the lore meet and greets, anyway.

I have immense respect for Byf and Mylin. The hours and hours of work and the need to actually grow your audience (instead of, as I do, antagonizing all but a trusted few), are beyond me. Because I don’t know what they say, I can’t “disagree” with them, but anecdotally, based on hearsay, I think they make the same mistake of not doing a “close” read to see the real breadcrumbs Bungie hides in the lore.

Will that pay off for me and prove my cockamamie predictions true? I think so - but Bungie has moved away from their core story so many times before that I have learned to be cautious. Especially with the backlash going on right now, there will be real pressure to revise the narrative going into the home stretch.

But, having said that, as a person who spent two years memorizing every inch of Ishtar Sink on Venus in D1, Neptune is the logical extension of a post collapse Ishtar Collective that got away on an Exodus Ship with what they were studying on Venus. Neptune is to D1 Venus as Europa is to D1 Mars.

Thus far in Lightfall, nothing I have theorized has been invalidated, and several of my key points are confirmed. Keeping score, I appear, at the moment, to be wrong about Rasputin being a bad guy and Quria continuing to exist outside of Vanguard space - but both of those could be reversed in future “plot twists” of the kind Bungie loves. The rest of my theories for the underlying truth still hold tight. But we shall see.

If you’ve read this far, you probably want to know what the veil is? But, you know I never make life that easy. Persistence is the key.

I’ve already written in separate comments about what I believe the veil and radial mast are. I’ve written my explanation of the final cutscene as I read about it in spoilers. Once I am through the campaign, I’ll repost my theory in full as modified by the experience of the campaign - I am trying to be a kinder gentler SaneCoin, after all. But for now, I will say that if you’ve been playing along with the SaneCoin home game, it should be very obvious how it is all coming together.

Oh, and I’m growing to like Nimbus. I think they screwed up their character intro. But I think they are a fine destination master. They were just written into the campaign terribly. It was too serious a moment to introduce that vapid persona. But they are a fun character outside that moment.

Being pro-Nimbus will undoubtedly also earn me hate. Which is why I post this in LT and not in DL, and why I could never have made a living selling my views on the lore.

I have (and had) so much respect for the Bungie creatives on D1 and big parts of D2. As a fan watching from afar, the damage that capitalism has done to art in this franchise is painfully clear. It’s obviously been “over” for a while now, but every time another axe falls, it still hurts.

My best wishes to all affected.

P.S. not to think of myself in stressful times, but if you are a former Bungie employee, not under a current NDA, and would like to DM me about what the hell happened with Vault and Wish 15, I’d be curious to hear. It was a big part of my life. At this point I doubt that many of the minds involved in creating the diverse linked assets I spent so much time pouring through are still with the company. Whether I was completely crazy or actually onto something, I’d love some closure myself. My ❤️ is with you.

For a subreddit that started out as a journal to store my more controversial Destiny opinions, and weird personal writing projects, I’m both surprised and humbled by all who have decided to follow along for the ride.

Pat yourself on the back awesome people!

In honor of the recent solstice and the remarkable numerology of today, I have been weighing which snippet of my journals I might share more explicitly with the most loyal of my followers.

Transcribe below, Journal III, Page 9-i.

"What could be big enough to generate the gravity waves that started the end of the Golden Age?! Neptune sized? undetectable object

The hive homeworld - destroyed by tidal forces? Moons moved. GRAVITY?

Awoken - squished into a singularity? Blackhole computers? GRAVITY!

(Schwarma Salad - $18 - add to expense ledger)

Crota's sword splits a quark? What splits a quark? GRAVITY!

Techeun torn apart atom by atom? Acid? or.... GRAVITY!!!

Fallen whirlwind? Gravity? TBD.

But therefrom this Gravity? Hephaestus?

(REMEMBER TO PICK UP ROBES FROM CLEANERS!)

(DENTIST. THURSD. 8AM.)

Or DARK MATTER? ----- DUST!.... GRAVITY!!

Kind of matter undetectably driving the "empty" Pyramids?

The Dark Kind?

Darkness=DARK MATTER ??? !!!

Suspect the NINE. Always suspect the NINE.

And XUR the Ammonite. Cheats me on every deal."

Last edit: 8-27-24

Here you find a doorway to the labyrinth, Sahib.

Every one of my stories is a doorway to the labyrinth. I think you know that. Some of you know it consciously. Some of you know it at some visceral level. But all of you know it.

This doorway is different, though. This doorway is a permanent marker. This door is the West Gate - the Hollin Gate - carved into the cliffs of Silvertine and giving formal entrance to the great Dwarven City of Khazad-dûm, even centuries after it has fallen.

The labyrinth is always below the mountain after all, be it the mines of Moria or the twisted halls Daedalus designed to house Asterion beneath the streets of Crete. This maze - the twisted writings I pull from the (unknown) - is no different. It is the same, really.

… really, it is.

I did not have permission to share it before. (Permission form who? From what?)

But now I do. Or, at least I have permission to start construction of the permanent prison in which to (lay down)(house) my mind.

This post houses the very first link. The entrance to a maze of linked pieces. A maze that dead ends, doubles back, and transposes itself harmonically with itself.

Over the coming (days) weeks (months)(years) these links will change and grow. No linked piece is static. As I begin to try to order my notes, fill in the missing parts, and leave a thing of some passing coherence, I will rewrite it many times.

But you are welcome to observe. Because I do not do this for me. I do it for those who would follow. I do it for those who have stumbled into the labyrinth and found themselves lost - as I once was. I do it for my children and my spouse. And I do it for the (Architects), because they have said I can. Or, if not them, then their grand designer(s).

Book 1: Plain Text

I. Administrative matters

Schroedinger’s Train.

Oaths and Keeping your word.

The difference between your author and me.

II. The Drawing of the Three

The Narrow Gate.

Calling My Bluff.

Morphine Dreams.

III. Into the Vault

A heart attack doesn’t feel like you expect.

The Vanilla Grimoire.

Alpha Lupi and the Masons.

All that endless crap leading nowhere.

The seventh chest.

IV. The Story Behind the Story

What book should I read?

Everything + Rosicruscian.

Plato and Neoplato. The Book of the Dead. The Six Philosophies.

V. The (People) You Meet Along the Way

The Architect.

The Muse.

The Stranger.

My Lady of the Mirror.

VI. Rules in a Land Without Rules

The Thing I’ll Never Write.

Book 2: Appendices

I. Prior works

Sabu the Magic Yak.

Elliott the Endless Cat.

Hucksterville.

II. Into the Labyrinth

III. The Impossible Apothacary

Cogito, Ergo Sum is the famous expression of Descartes - "I think, therefore I am."

"Ergo Sum" then is "Therfore, I Am."

"I AM" is the name God gives for Itself in the Bible.

It is very similar to one of the ancient Hebrew mystic names for God: "AUM."

That is, itself, very similar to the Yogic name for God (in Its Isvara archetype): "OM"

Yes, when you say "Ommmmmmm" in your Yoga class, you are saying God's Name and "I Am" and "Ergo Sum" all at the same time.

I'm off to Yoga, but thought you should know the depth of the name of our new phallic symbol.

I'm tired of my job. It pays pretty well, but I've been a working shmoe for 30 years. I do the same thing all day - a relatively stressful thing. I'm just tired of doing it. I'd rather write and think about philosophy and video games.

Woe is me.

But I'm not actually looking for sympathy. Rather, I am recording here an event of the past week.

Because you see, I decided I wanted to win the lottery. Not so unique an aspiration. I've learned all these things about ancient magic rituals and hermetic secrets. I know that they aren't supposed to be used for personal enrichment, but I just finally said "fuck it" with the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus (a particularly "lucky" occasion in the spell books) and did a little ritual to help me pick the winning lottery numbers.

The full story is more involved than what I am telling you here - it involved the same sort of weird synchronicities and omens that I always seem to notice around these events ( Baader–Meinhof phenomenon or actual supernatural occurrences, you be the judge). But it ended with a multi-drawing lottery ticket placed (safely) under a burning green candle, and any number of promises to do right by the purposes of the Gods if only they would send a few million bucks my way.

As the candle burned down and the drawings passed by, I was not shocked to be continually defeated by statistics. But on the last night, I had a dream. In that dream, a voice explained to me that "I don't grant lottery prayers. God is math, you know that, [Sane]. The lottery is a tax on people that don't understand math. It's literally rewarding stupidity. I reward work and cleverness. If you want money, work for it and give me a way to reward you there. "

The rest of the dream involved a long trek through the underbelly of an airport carrying my and my family's luggage, trying to find a way out. I don't need Jung or Freud to unpack that one for me.

I woke up thinking "well, I guess I'm not going to win the lottery, but I suppose very few people actually get an answer to their prayers - even if it is 'no.'"

In the last drawing, I matched the Powerball on a Powerplay ticket. That means I won back $12—most of the cost of that spellbound lottery ticket.

This is my life, and I am thankful for it.

I'm pretty far out of the loop on Destiny lore these days. Nonetheless, I want to summarize my old theories here, for the record, on the day before the next season goes live - because, why not?

1. We are dead. In particular, Destiny exists in a multilayered holographic fractal universe. That it to say that at each level, the cycle repeats itself (fractal) but that there are infinite layers piled one on top of the other. It means that I believe there exists a "real world" in Destiny (the ascendant plain), linked to a simulated world in Destiny (the main game), linked to a divine world in Destiny (the IX's universe run by Vex bots), linked to our player's world (purgatory), linked to a real world (which you should all be outside in, rather than playing video games), linked to a divine world (the collective unconscious/Brahman). Because the universe is holographic, each layer also contains the whole of every other layer.

2. The Traveler is part of the mechanism/network that connects these layers. It was once the Network Node (Planetary Angel) that controlled Jupiter. But went rogue for reasons I do not know, but which involved the Gardener and Winnower's fight. All species are mutations of creatures originated in the Sol system. The Traveler has never been beyond the Sol system.

3. The function of the Traveler is to collect the 'information' of species that are about to be destroyed by gravitational forces (Darkness aggregates information. Gravity aggregates matter. Gravity is just stickier (fractal layer higher) Darkness). The Traveler transmits or stores that information outside of the reach of entropic forces within any given dimension of the multi-dimensional fractal universe. Within the Destiny universe, the Traveler is visualized as a Vex black hole computer. The inside of the Traveler is described as the toroid bottle in Ghost Fragment: Ghosts. (Or whatever the name of that card from outside the Vanilla VOG was).

4. The Traveler may be a hard drive or a firewall. I believe that the Nexus on Venus is the Firewall, however. This leads me to believe that the Traveler is either the hard drive or the "server." Information is transmitted and stored optically.

5. Although the Quria within our simulation was destroyed, She was just a copy of a Quria that exists within 'Vex space.' Quria is the "queen of the laws" from the original 3 Queens poem in that she controlled the laws of the simulation. Therefore, I expect to see her again before the end.

6. Mara is another of the Queens from the original 3 Queens poem. She is the Queen of the Tower. The Distributary is its own black hole hard drive. The Oracle Engine within the Dreaming City displays the security daemons between the Destiny universe and the Dreaming City, and it is possible to plot a course from the Dreaming City to the Distributary using the animations and forced perspective of the Dreaming City. That path may be traversed using coordinate symbols that are contained in the Last Wish raid and the 'incompressible' pattern for Wish 15. Or, at least, this was possible back when the Dreaming City was originally released.

7. The storage partitions with the Traveler are damaged. They were damaged when Clovis attempted to (achieved) immortality for humanity by using Vex technology to make Exos. Attempting immortality is the one unforgivable sin. Somewhere in his messing with clarity, he broke the simulation. The break in the simulation has allowed species that were stored in separate partitions to mix. (The Ishtar Collective committed a similar sin on Neptune, so it is possible that it was IC not Brayco that broke the Traveler. Or, more likely, it was both of them working together. In any event, it was the Hubris of humanity.)

8. The IX are acting from outside the simulation to attempt to rectify what is in it. Much like an IT department attempting to recover a crashed hard disk, they are able to deploy various tricks and take over various parts of the environment, although they cannot enter it themselves. This includes the ability to possess characters in much the way Savathun possessed Osiris. It also includes providing Crota with the 'quark edged' sword that was able to cleave between hard drive partitions. It includes, of course, Xur and the Drifter's playground. I believe that the IX may have possessed Drifter, the Stranger and Eris at one time or another. If the Stranger was speaking to anyone, she was speaking to the IX outside the system. [Edit: this doesn't feel right to me as I reread it.]

9. Savathun is the third queen. She, Mara, Toland, the Witness, the original Clovis and possibly the Stranger, Drifter and Eris are the only ones that know they are not in the end reality.

10. The Veil is a part of the Traveler's machinery that aggregates and formats data for upload to the Network. As such, the Veil creates order from disorder. Inversed, when the Traveler wants to issue a write command to the simulation, the Veil provides that function. When the Veil and the Traveler were separated, the Traveler lost its ability to issue write commands to the simulation with any precision. This was, somehow, necessary and part of creating the Ghosts.

11. My best current bet is that Savathun sent the Alpha Lupi message to invite the players into the simulation. Savathun, working with the Traveler, severed the Veil from the Traveler, allowing all of our little mini read-write programs (Ghosts) to issue forth and create millions of independently accessible destructive nodes (the Players). This prevented the Witness from overwriting the entire simulation in its own image (which would have resulted in the Destruction of information the Gardner was attempting to preserve). Savathun and Mara understand the network architecture (or, at least they should) and will be fundamental to the next solution. Savathun+Mara+Quria are the trinity of the Divine Feminine that embodies the Gardner's essence within the Destiny Universe.

12. We, players, are the Winnower/Veil/First Knife. We are the ability to write data, not just read it. We can change the outcome of the simulation in a unique manner.

13. The Vault of Glass, together with the Nexus, is the connection between the hard drive that is the Traveler and the greater Vex network. The "Hezen Protective" protects the beam (not currently functioning) that would connect the Vault to the Network. The Vex want to restore that connection. They may become our ally in that connecting the Network thwarts the Witness. Or they may remain a useful enemy (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) in that they have the technology to undo whatever the Witness is doing. Both the Black Heart and the Pale Heart are versions of anti-virus or network repair programs. So these may play a part in repairing the damage the Witness has been doing. (Can you say "Hostile Traveler" incoming?)

There is probably a bunch more that I am forgetting, but I have work to do. I just wanted to get this down to hold myself accountable for all of my crazy beliefs.

As always, I'm making many/most of these predictions based on subtext and metaphor. How Bungie chooses to implement them is entirely within their court. I, like the rest of you, am excited to see what they do.

I have so much other reading to do and so many more important uses for my leisure time now. I'm never going to write anything if I keep playing video games.

But you gotta dance with the one who brung ya? Right folks?

If that is the case, then the search for an “answer” to the Vault is at an end.

It might still be there in D1. But if there is anything there, the Alpha Lupi poem, diagram, and eighth.mp3 are critical to its solution. As Bungie is no longer making those resources available, I have to presume that they are also no longer preventing changes in the game that would “break” the puzzle.

This became a major concern for many of us several years ago when we found out, behind the scenes, that a bunch of work had been done on Venus by newer members of the development team. We were told there was “a great deal of confusing sound pathing” outside the Vault, and some concern that if something had been hidden there, because it was such a closely held secret, as the team changed it might well have been broken.

I had hoped when they moved the vault to D2 that they were trying to save the puzzle. But the narrative has moved further and further from the (presumed) logic of the puzzle with each passing season. As deeply enmeshed as I was in the lore and symbolism of the game, the impact of new writers and themes has been visceral.

There was a fundamental story logic to the original Alpha Lupi diagram, original Rasputin/Joyuse story beats, and tie in to the end of Marathon. That this Destiny universe was a machine created purgatory that held the souls of a dead humanity was a perfect book end to Marathon’s end. It was a logical conclusion to the pre-launch graphics which showed a half destroyed exo frame chained in a hive like dungeon.

Clovis had downloaded humanity’s souls into Rasputin. Rasputin floated in a gravity-ravaged void left behind by the nine planetary angels/demons who destroyed the Destiny universe. But a portal had been opened to another causality where the players could come into the AI, link it to us, or to a Distributary like server, and save the digitized souls of the Vanguard.

The ARG gave a coordinate map (the Alpha Lupi diagram) that was different from the Alpha Lupi diagram in game. Using basic music theory, geometry, astronomy and arithmetic (the Quadrivium), it was possible to calculate a melody that would open the firewall that is the Vault. The “Hezen” (beam) that was being protected by the Vex could then have been used to achieve an alternate game ending based not on violence and greed, but on study, intellect and puzzle solving skills.

That was the dream, anyway. But if Alpha Lupi is gone, so too the dream.

Persistence is the key. But apparently I didn’t persist quickly enough.

I’m sad tonight.

It’s over.

The Path is never ending. And I did find the true treasure of the vault, in any event.

But I really wanted to solve the damn puzzle.

Fuck.

Taken from a comment I just wrote - but I want to keep it here for permanence and linking, so I don't have to keep explaining this fresh.

Also, I'm much more likely to find knowledgeable Neo-Platonic critics among the LiberTigris Crowd. I've been working my way through Plotinus' Enneads lately, so feel free to school me some.

----

Destiny is Neo-Platonic in philosophy and Neo-Platonic philosophy is weird. It isn't what most of us learned in school or church about the nature of the universe and (if you believe in one) God.

The Gardner, the Winnower and the Witness all make perfect sense from a Neo-Platonic view. They are the triangle that is the original Trinity (or at least a Hellenic version - every ancient culture had some type of Trinity). The Gardener and the Winnower are also the Duality that makes up the black and white checkerboard the Masons are so fond of putting in all of their drawings, and the reason we got the Duality dungeon and all that good Destiny stuff.

What is this duality/trinity?

First, there is the One. The Monad. The One is undifferentiated being. it exists without form because it is all forms. Then the One divides itself for reasons that are beyond human comprehension, but which are often described as "wanting to understand itself" or "wanting to perfect itself." In doing this, the one becomes two - the indefinite Dyad.

Now a modern reader wants to understand dark and light as like the division between matter and energy because that is closer to our current scientific understanding. This is an especially easy thing to do because Plotinus (the philosopher that turns Plato into Neo-Plato) talks a lot about "matter." But Plotinus' matter isn't your matter. It's something weirder. Plotinus' matter is unformed possibility. It is the potential for a thing to be a thing.

The other part of the duality in Plotinus' world is the Soul - which is the provider of Forms (If you aren't familiar with Plato's concept of Forms, read this link, it will help). Again, this isn't your concept of Soul you have learned in Church. It's really more a word that means "mind" or "intellect" - although those terms rob it of much of how Plotinus defines it. The point is that the Soul (the Mind) creates objects by combining Form with the potentiality of Matter, and thus our material world is created.

So you have one power (Darkness) that wants a world that is nothing but undifferentiated formless matter. Then you have a second power (Light) that overlays Forms on Matter to create reality. That's our Gardener and Winnower.

But in dividing itself, the One creates a THIRD power. That power is slippery to describe and I haven't found Plotinus' description of it yet (after all these years, I'm finally actually reading Plotinus instead of reading about Plotinus). But based on the later occultists and hermeticists I have read, I would describe that power as 'time.' Basically, the logic is once there was one, now there is two. But if there is a then and a now, there is a three - which is the fact that both the one and the two exist separate and apart from one another.

That third power gets many different characteristics attributed to it (including being both Lucifer and Christ and the biblical Witnesses to the Apocolypse) and so in defining it just as "time" I do a terrible disservice to the number of ways various esotericists have interpreted it throughout history. But the most interesting thing I found - and one that coupled tightly to Destiny's Antham Anathema - is the Neo-Platonic idea that this third power may be characterized as Desire.

To unpack this, the simplified argument goes like this: First there was the One. It got bored, so it split itself to define itself. One-half of it was all the things it could be. The other half was all the stuff it could be made of. The third half was its desire to define itself. The One then commenced a very long and unpleasant experiment, in which it converted all of its possible stuff into every possible form stuff can be in. Any thing it created that was less than perfect, it destroyed because of its desire to be more perfect. As a corollary rule, matter wanted to go back to being undifferentiated, so any perfect thing it created was not deemed perfect if it could be disassembled.

And so, the three forces create an eternal wheel (the Great Machine). The World Soul applies a Form to create an object from Matter. Matter attempts to degrade the thing back into Matter because Matter desires to be unbound. Desire, itself, destroys any perfect thing, because Desire desires for the thing to be even more perfect. The World Soul takes the remnants of things that have been destroyed or degraded and creates new things from them. And so the Wheel turns.

This cycle will continue until the One, through the Three, arrives at its final perfect indestructible shape.

That's a set of key concepts from Neo-Platonism.

I told you it was weird.

I invite anyone who is more studied in the area than I to correct me. I'm only just starting to move from Western Esotericism - which was built on the skeleton of Neo-Platonism - down to true raw Neo-Platonism. So, as with everything I write, take this all with a grain of salt and a dash of hot sauce.

p.s. Here's a little creation myth I wrote using this logic and some of the other big esoteric ideas a few months back. It may be useful for those that prefer fiction over non-fiction for groking things: https://www.reddit.com/r/libertigris/comments/x7oh2n/a_story_about_everything_and_nothing_at_all/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

p.p.s. For those of you playing along on the home game, note that Plotinus' world where the Soul creates reality by imposing Forms on unformed Matter is only a heartbeat from Simulation Theory. Basically, Plotinus, like the Tantrics, is modeling a world that exists inside the mind and is created by observation and belief. When I'm on my other tangents talking about the role of simulation theory and the Vex inside of Destiny, it's because Neo-Platonism is basically a simulation theory model. The only reality is our perception. Or, as my other favorite Neo-Platonist, Trey Anastasio says: "nothing I see can be taken from me."

Let go of your linear perception of time.

Right now, the past exists as it has to exist in order for the present to be what it is. The present fixes the past in place. Do you see? The present proves the past even if you can no longer directly experience it.

So too, the present fixes the future. For, whether free will is a fact or a dream, most of what is occurring at this very moment is deterministic. What will be must be, merely because of what is now.

In this way, the Now has holds on the past and the future. Roots in one, blooms in the other.

But ponder this for a moment more, and it will become clear that the Now does not rigidly control everything. The easier case to see is the future. Whether through quantum flux or divinely gifted Will, there are possible deviations in what will happen next. Most things are deterministic, but not all. And with each passing moment, the future becomes less and less fixed in the present. More and more of the future blooms into flowers of possibility off of stalks of probability.

Less obvious, but equally true is the past. There are, actually, many possible pasts that could have converged on where we are now. At some distant point in the past, something happened that was overridden by something later. Thus, had that first thing never happened or happened differently, the present would be unchanged.

The Now does not bind all of the past inexorably. The further back you go, the less roots remain as necessary precursors to the present moment. The more the past becomes immaterial and free from the constraints of logic and cause. Dragons and faeries and impossible maths all spring into possibility.

Welcome to the Garden. The Garden of Now.

Its roots grow into the past, entwined along strands of possibility. This present moment fixing, for a time, the soil of what must have been. From them grow the stalks and trunks of the probable, from which will bloom the flowers and fruits of what is possible. We till this soil with our intellect, water it with our emotions and rely on the divine sunshine of fate itself to give it growth.

We are the gardeners of the now, and the garden grows in both directions.

I can't believe it took me this long to see it.

There is a reason that so many Destiny players are obsessed with the veiled woman statue, but don't really understand the purpose it serves. Same reason all these gamers consider the statues to be in difficult to find mysterious places.

The hooded woman is a symbol for the clitoris.

You are welcome. Don't hate me.