The Grim Reaper Revealed
By Necromagickal
Death has embodied its chilled energies in many forms upon the human condition since the genesis of mankind. Death has been given a face, a name, and in some cases strange aesthetic wardrobe complete with utensils sharp enough to reap your jugular into fields of scarlet eternal.
Mankind has always felt a need to find comfort in the presence of death by personifying and spiritualizing its natures beyond those of a cold indifferent force habitually making human compost. As such, death has become more anthropomorphic, becoming a creature invoked, sacrificed to, and worshipped by the timorous for centuries.
The most common personification of death has been the Grim Reaper, an entity that from the 15th century onward has been depicted as an anorexic sickle-wielding skeleton whose continuous black robe fashion suggests an issue of laundry hygiene. And according to Monty Python, he “poisoned the salmon”.
The origins of the Grim Reaper may be traced back to the Greeks with Cronos and his harvesting sickle, but his black hoodedness may be found cloaked within many traditions. Odin for example used the disguise of the reaper within the Underworld. Azrael, Angeu and Ankou as well as Yamaraj are each personifications of the reaper and according to cable television are a bunch of misfits hanging out in a diner.
Esoterically, the Grim Reaper is a sentient symbol for the harvesting of the soul and corporeal aspect of the existential realm. He is a reminder of the tenuous element to all things, the impermanent natures of creation and consciousness. Through his arrival our ties to life are severed and the soul is guided into the realms beyond within which, we shall reap what we have sown in life.
Religio-magickal texts dealing with the rites and doctrines of a personified Grim Reaper are scant at best. Beyond the arcane summoning of spirits for divinatory purposes, historic texts dealing with elements of a corporeal death remain virtually nonexistent.
It was not until the modern age that texts dealing with working with death began manifesting upon the bookshelves of the curious. Yet despite this influx of occult books within the latter 19-20th centuries it was not until 2008 that the rites concerning specifically the Grim Reaper graced the bookshelves of mourning Goths and angry adolescent metal heads.
The world of the Grim Reaper fetishist now received a new sacred tome. It was within this year that a mysterious author with a predisposition for abbreviations and cryptic numerology known as N.A.A 218, wrote an occult book known as “Liber Falxifer- The Book of the Left Handed Reaper”. The history and origin behind this book and its author are slippery. The book is connected to a group known as the Temple of the Black Light, an international order dedicated to a Luciferian Satanic tradition that has nothing to do with Black light bulbs and a lot of visible lint. The temple is also linked to the black metal band Dissection if that makes things any clearer, and less linty.
Liber Falxifer is a modern grimoire of death magick, personifying the Grim Reaper beneath aesthetics of Argentine and tribal origin with Afro-Caribbean and Latino influences mixed in as a decomposing ethnic side dish. Within the book, the Grim Reaper is personified under mainly the names Qayin Mortifer and Senor La Muerte (Lord/Gentleman of Death).
Liber Falxifer is sickle sliced into two segments. The first deals with the theory and practice of summoning the Grim Reaper beneath an esoteric paradigm. Besides spells and invocations, we do also learn that the Grim Reaper has an articulated handicap as being called a “left handed reaper” and not ambidextrous. He apparently swings his scythe like a southpaw. It is unclear what he does with his right hand; perhaps he searches his pelvic area for where his junk used to be. Even death is not omnipotent, maybe impotent, but not omnipotent.
The second part of Falxifer details what is called a “Qayinitic” and “necrosophic” gnosis, a state where consciousness is elevated through death energy into higher states of being as opposed to states of being high. It may be presumed that the latter state may assist in validating the experiences. Within this section we learn that death wants presents, to smoke cigars and drink rum like a poker playing hooker, and to be distracted from his cosmic eternal duties to hang within a bunch of squiggly lines and arcane symbols with humans. Whether the Grim Reaper is that bored slicing souls in the trans-dimensional realms to stop and fraternize with angst ridden adolescent Goths and metal heads remains conjecture. Liber Falxifer hopes to answer this question for interested parties.
Liber Falxifer is an instruction manual for getting to know the Mr. Reaper. One learns how to construct altars, purchase grave soil from the dead, create fetish skulls, and utilize the fourteen key sigils of death to channel the various aspects of the Grim Reaper into your psyche. It’s a fun time to be had by all!
What is ultimately gained from invoking the Grim Reaper into ones life? Why focus your attention on some macabre fellow with halitosis, hygienically challenged physicality, and always seems to be depressed and in a bad mood? Why not summon sunshine, puppies, and smiley faces into a world already plague with heartless global narcissistic self-destructive death wishes? I do not really have an answer to that. Perhaps practicing what is contained in Liber Falxifer and cavorting with the Grim Reaper will integrate and prepare you for the inevitability of death. By getting to know death you may cease to fear its unknown. Then again maybe it suggests not taking too seriously what you cannot prevent and instead of looking at the Grim Reaper, you should be looking at hot girls and corpses...
