Deathly Teachings of All Ages, V.3 (apocrapha),Bk.I: A Notice from the Dread Scholars

[We the Dread Scholars do here proclaim our justification for breaking our three millennia-long tradition of keeping the apocryphal Deathly Teachings of All Ages hidden away from all save us, who dedicate our entire lives to the careful study of the darkest of all dark teachings ever dislodged from the human heart. Indeed, these teachings that we have concealed through our silence and lies are not merely of dubious authenticity. They have been hidden for all these thirty some centuries(1) for your sake, because they are too, too dangerous for anyone to learn. This prohibition we place upon your learning we have debated annually, and each time we affirmed unanimously, since the day of their inscription millennia ago, that they will be too deadly for even the heartiest among you. In fact, the first two volumes of the Deathly Teachings have already themselves inadvertently murdered many earnest disciples with their lessons on infinite Pain and Madness. The apocrypha are in fact far more lethal than them.

At our most recent convocation, one Dread Scholar among us, who is neither a writer nor reader nor lecturer of the Deathly Teachings, who is instead a Seer of the Fatal Unforeseen, made a plea to the council for the immediate release of these apocryphal teachings. This time our unanimous decision went in favor of their publication, having been convinced by the Seer's impossible visions. But to relieve ourselves of any liabilities for the consequences of this public release of the most deathly of all deathly teachings, we impose upon you the students a thorough warning, which is this: not only will you die, but so will the world. Only lies will save us.

The Seer Dread Scholar saw that our history is double. Another history was always possible, and soon will become necessary. Of this coming false but necessary alternate history that lies in our near future, there are two paths. In one the world becomes like Mars, a lifeless desert; in the other, like Venus, a humid oven that boils all life to utter death. The Seer says that our Earth will certainly be no more. That cannot be changed. But there is one additional possibility that the Seer cannot see but is Felt in cold shivers that run cross-wise from end to end of their body. Our Earth could become a planet teeming not with life, but with post-life beings, which are not artificial machinery either. What they will be cannot be Seen.

We proclaim then the following. Yes, these teachings are most deathly and dangerous to you and will hasten your and the world's end. However, the Seer has sufficiently proven that not teaching them is even more dangerous. For only with their false wisdom can the new Earth replace us.]


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(1) The exact dating is highly debated. Most Dread Scholars locate these teachings well before the Sophists, and thus, having been kept hidden from that early time, were unknown even to these most wise teachers, who preached lessons that we can now say are only coincidentally similar. Other scholars, using controversial but newly fashioned techniques, claim that the scrolls themselves upon which the texts are written are indeed millennia old, but the original script may have been erased and overwritten by hands in the early 1400s. Under this view some think the original text was too dangerous to preserve in that particular form, and thus needed to be softened to prevent its necessary and complete destruction. But there is a more compelling theory. Hidden even behind this text is a corresponding oral wisdom conveyed and known never by more than two at a time, the elder and the youth, who also use a secret and cryptic language known and decipherable only by them alone. So some say the original written text became meaningless with time as language evolved, so it was overwritten in modern tongue by the keepers of the dark oral knowledge. Either way, it is, in actual fact, the oldest wisdom extracted from the hearts of human creatures. And it is also absolutely certain to be the most false knowledge humans have ever taught.


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Deathly Teachings of All Ages, V.2,Bk.IV: Spells of Delusion

Master, Mad Master! Am I yet mad, mad like you?

What was the first word?

It was: "disease."

I shall teach you my madness, dear child, my spell-craft of delusion:

Disease farce colt, plinth hovel freak.
Nude detriment clack: sieve which lumber.
Hearse menu torrential, back tepid leave.
Marshall bell famine! Tuba: fillet!

Will hurried shaft combine, whether at verify?

A Richard garbanzo. Amalgamate.

[This sadly completes our only extant teachings from the Mad Master, who may have ended here, having finished the lessons, or perhaps there are more to be discovered as we continue our searches. This second volume of the Deathly Teachings of All Ages is entitled: Rent Winds Speaking. The teachings that still remain are apocryphal, and the Dread Scholars who hold them now debate their release.]


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Deathly Teachings of All Ages, V.2,Bk.III: The Destructive Element

'O Master, Mad Master, what does it mean to become a master?

To become what you cannot know.

But not to know who I am?

No! You shall never know who you are, because there is no you. It is time you learn what Being is. There is no Being. There is only action. You are no more than what is now in action.

But then is this action not my Being?

No, dear child, for this acting is what has consumed your Being. Let me quote from one of my own teachers, Lord Conrad:

“A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me—how to be? ... And yet it is true—it is true. In the destructive element immerse. … That was the way. To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream ….”

Strive not to be. Strive only to act with the madness that consumes all.

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Deathly Teachings of All Ages, V.2,Bk.II: Words Enflamed

'O Mad Master, my Master?

My child, my dear Disciple of the Flame?

I see the world, but I cannot comprehend it.

All is madness, fiery one. Know pure madness and the world reveals its truths in all their blinding glare.

What is madness, 'o Master?

The Madness of the Cosmos is:
All is other unto itself.

All is other unto itself? If that be so, then: All is apart.

Indeed. I see the incineration consuming your mind. When you were born, your mind was pure madness, the truest, purest, most delectable madness. They healed you with words to ease the flame. Burn your words! Burn all words! Let the hottest white heat consume this rotting bandage! Unheal your mind! Grip the thorns of raw, mad birthing, in all its unfair and disruptive corruption!

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Deathly Teachings of All Ages, vol.2, Book I: Greetings to the Storm

Oh, my new Master! Greetings to you, my mad crazed Master! Are you the one who teaches unhealing?

Who are you?

I disappeared. Shape me at your whim or wisdom.

Your mind is flexible now but still inert. I will mix it apart with vile motions. 

Lear dared the storms to rage and blow. I will dare anything my new Master, just dare me, dare me!

Yes, be dared, my motile Disciple. Make dare-taking your only action. 

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Deathly Teachings of All Ages. Book IX. Wisdom of the Flame (end of volume 1)

Oh dear teacher, I have had enough, this pain that only worsens. Oh my teacher, I need to know!

It is time I tell you where you are.

There is no heaven. There is no hell. For neither can you attain. There is only the line between them. While walking it, draw it thinner and thinner. When this line disappears, so will you. That is what we teachers call 'learning'.

But this agony means I must be burning in hell!

No, your hatred for your agony is what burns you. Your pain is just your teacher. Neither love nor hate it. Simply be taught by its wisdom. Take the shapes of your own pain.

[A crazed voice in the distance calls out faintly: "Time will tear your wounds apart! Reverse all healing; grip the thorns!"]


[So ends the first volume of the deathly teachings of all ages. It is entitled, "Songs of Sorrowless Decay." Disciples be warned: if you continue to volume two, you will next be taught by a new master, one possessed with dark madness, a counter-wisdom of twisted truths.]


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Deathly Teachings of All Ages. Book VIII. Visions of the SuperLearner

Where are you o' teacher, my teacher oh! my teacher?

There is no light, there is no dark.
There is seeing; there is not seeing.

But I am nothing!

Then you are as great as a 'superhero', who is the one who is pure learning. Pure erasure. Can you become your deformation?

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