This work presents the art of the Wise Ones concerning the Dead, collected from thirty-seven Black Art Books. These manuscript books, passed from one Wise One to another and copied, were ideally to be colored black with title in white - a tradition respected in the out-of-print hardback edition, published in 2012 by the Society of Esoteric Endeavour. The paperback edition has been revised, updated, and rendered portable for the nomadic gravedirt sorcerer. It is the nimble companion to Dr. Thomas K Johnson's Svartkonstbcker (Revelore, 2019), an immense tome which contains the entire translations of these thirty-seven Black Art Books.
The Wise Ones called Graveyard Wanderers obtained the services of the Dead by leaving an offering for their wages. Usually a coin, but sometimes other metal - shavings from a church bell for example. Bar human bone itself, metal was the ideal vehicle for the transmission of deathliness. Coffin nails were extracted - sometimes to be entwined with horseshoe nails by a smith evoking infernal beings - and put to magical purpose. Needles employed to sew a corpse into its shroud were likewise sought after. Some of the spells herein derived from the black art book of a smith, nestling amongst mundane recipes for working metals. But then metal is the zenith of Man's creative art. Extracted from the Earth by man, its mutability to will and permanence makes metal ideal for coin offerings for the Dead.
The nature of the practice can be simply stated:
A ritual of initiation to commence dealings with spirits of the Dead, after which, by taking bones and leaving payment, they may be called upon to:
- Take pain from the living, as they are now beyond suffering.
- Torment or transfix thieves - setting upon them the stillness of death.
- Communicate the stillness of death to animals or humans; stopping them from moving
- Send the bane of death to a victim
- Protect the living, and their possessions
- Predict chance, being beyond time, and assist the gambler
- Assist with shooting, conferring lethality to ammunition and guiding aim.
And the spirit of the dead may be kept in a little box, or in the form of a rune stone.
But always, the bones must be returned.