Transcription
I'm here to tell you what changed my life, what changed me, why I started down this path of studying and practicing occultism to begin with. It's a very strange story, one I can't naturally explain, one that's very personal and hard for me to tell people because of just how crazy it makes me sound.
Hi, welcome to Cipher Grove, the channel where we dive deep into the profound esoteric mysteries of spirituality, religion, metaphysics, and the Occult. Please remember to like, comment, and subscribe to help the channel grow. That said, please enjoy the video.
It was the fall of 2019. Life was mostly mundane. I was a pastor, a minister at a church that in its prime had 3 to 400 people in its congregation. I was a respected evangelist and Bible teacher in my community, to the point some of the other pastors started calling me "boy wonder" because I could understand the Bible and teach it more effectively than those of them who'd been preaching it for 30 years. And that's not a boast on my part, but a testament to the fact I studied the Bible obsessively. I understood what I was studying.
But all was not well. Something was wrong, but I couldn't really explain what. In certain ways, I was feeling like a machine, a robot of holiness, you could say. I lived a life that was perfectly clean, perfectly honest, and I lived a lifestyle that was honestly in impressive alignment with the values of the modern interpretations of the Bible and what it teaches. My life revolved around the Bible, and I wasn't one of those fake ministers. My heart was wholly in the game, but I felt fake for some reason. I felt this strange dissonance between myself and the life I was leading. It was almost as though somewhere in the back of my brain or in some deep buried part of my heart, someone was trying to tell me there was something wrong with all of this. Things felt so very forced, staged, squeezed. I felt like a machine when I would notice inconsistencies in the Bible or notice how a certain doctrine or narrative was written and being used in a manipulative way or teaching something that did not place a person's well-being first. I had to reframe the ideas so that they appeared to be wise and loving and of sound thought and reason, but they weren't. This is how Christianity causes you not to just manipulate others, but to fundamentally manipulate yourself.
When the pandemic hit, everything changed. Our world was shaken, and in that shaking, I saw the true nature of this beast revealed. I started to see the underbelly of churches, how they were attempting to co-op the power of governing modern life and leeching off the meek, the naive, and the vulnerable. But that's a subject for another time.
But around this time, I was faced with reflection more and more. I could not stomach this role as Shepherd of the herd and Keeper of the flock while continually leading the Sheep to the Butcher's Block. I prayed earnestly to know the truth. I prayed I might see through this and whatever piece of the puzzle I was looking for might present itself. I prayed the prayer of Solomon to be gifted with nothing but wisdom.
And suddenly came that very fateful night. In the hours of my deepest slumber, something woke me up. A strange, painful sensation all over my body, like a part of me had been ripped out, pulled like a Band-Aid. It was as though I'd been broken, like an eggshell burst, like a balloon. At first, I thought I was dying. I felt like I was being pulled through some tunnel of what felt like lightning, further and further away from this world. I'd heard of things like this before, out-of-body experiences. Now I call them astral projection, where you are fully awake, fully alert, yet your body remains still, slumbering, and your conscious mind, your body of light, steps out from your physical body.
And suddenly, I was standing on the sand dunes of an empty desert. The wind drew these strange geometric shapes in the sand. This place felt foreign, alien, not of this earth. Almost there was a strange feeling like being watched from every angle, and everything seemed just a few inches off. Suddenly, the wind picked up, a sandstorm rolling in, and then darkness.
I wandered aimlessly in the desert for what seemed like an entire lifetime. It's so strange how time worked in this realm. I felt like I had spent ages and ages searching these dunes, only to find more and more of them. And then, suddenly, he appeared. What I saw looked like an eclipse in human form, a silhouette made of both the deepest darkness and the brightest light. A cloaked figure wrapped in folds of roiling light, a light that seemed to talk, like every voice in the universe spoke through it. But at the figure's core was the deepest blackness that seemed to swell and pull me in, and within it, I felt my very life seemed to escape from me, as if grabbed by some unseen violet hand. It was as though the colors of this figure were inverted, like he was made of some blazing black fire, and the figure invoked in me sensations I have never felt before, feelings I can't describe with any words from any language I know. I thought I had died. I knew this wasn't a dream. I was awake. I saw it in front of me as clearly and soberly as the screen you're looking at now. My first assumption was that I was glimpsing God himself, but quickly my mind changed. I remembered an old lesson I had learned from the gospels: test the spirits, for not all of them are from God. So I asked the figure, "Who are you?" And it smiled at me, not with a mouth I could see, but one I could feel, and not just with one, but with many grins, all these devilish grins I could not outright see, but still somehow saw in my mind's eye or felt somewhere beneath my skin. And then it spoke, "I, I am I am. I am the one who resides in."
Me before I even had time to process this, the figure held out a golden chalice in its hand, and with its other hand, it held out some type of fruit I've never seen before, but the closest thing I can think of that it looked like was a cluster of grapes. This so-called many-named figure proceeded to squeeze the fruit, crushing it in a fist, letting the juices run over his knuckles and into the cup. He held the chalice out towards me and bid I refused. Almost by reflex, the next thing I knew, I was back in my bedroom, and it felt like my head had had been hit by a truck.
In the days following, I brushed it off as nothing more than a hyperrealistic dream, and indeed, as time went on, the nature of this vision took a more dreamlike quality. As I looked back on it from memory, it was easy to dismiss at that point. But then I had the same vision again, just as before, and again, and again. Eventually, every night for weeks, and then for months, I had the same vision every single night without fail, and every single detail exactly the same, and each time feeling as fresh and as new as ever. Every time I found myself in that sandstorm, the figure appeared, and every time he appeared, he spoke, and every time he spoke, he squeezed that fruit into the cup and offered it to me, and every time he offered, I refused.
I began thinking I was having some sort of sleep disorder, or maybe my subconscious was trying to tell me something. But as much strangeness filled my night, there was still yet plenty to seize the day. At first, I didn't notice some of the strangeness. Life was too hectic, too busy, and my focus was on other things. I barely had time to think about anything strange or spiritual. But certain odd occurrences were becoming undeniable. I started to think of things before they'd happen. An image would enter my mind that I'd barely pay attention to, and then suddenly it would happen. And these weren't just ordinary, meaningless things. These were hyper-specific things, things like a coworker's kitchen catching on fire and black soot coating the walls of the rest of her home, things like a car crashing against the side of the building I worked in, things like knowing the names of people I hadn't met when others would mention them to me, or knowing their birthdays or anniversaries without being told, things like certain friends or family members dying before they had. And I was seeing things, auras, colors, strange shapes, and waves of energy. I remember my dog grabbing my attention one day and leading me to a pair of snakes swallowing each other in our back field, a black one swallowing a white one, not once, but somewhere around six or seven times. I started noticing synchronicities, triple numbers appearing everywhere. I would see 10 of them within just a few minutes of each other. Sometimes crows started following me everywhere, which sounds ridiculous and felt just the same, but I swear to God, they were everywhere, and they were watching me, which definitely makes me sound schizophrenic, but that's what it felt like. And I thought I was becoming schizophrenic, especially when I started hearing voices, which was what made me consider mental illness as a source of these things. The voices weren't extreme, and they never encouraged any kind of behavior from me, harmful or otherwise. In fact, they actually seemed to encourage me to act in level-headed ways. A voice or a whisper somewhere across the room or coming from a tree line or the bushes would tell me to monitor my body and emotions during moments of anxiety or rage, things usually your therapist would tell you.
And so, around this time, I started actually seeing a real therapist. And while I discovered I have ADHD, as well as some moderate anxiety and depression, my therapist, my very real and licensed therapist, was completely unable to diagnose me with schizophrenia, stating my symptoms did not at all match the patterns they normally would with that type of disorder. She encouraged me to view them as one-off incidents where other outside factors may have been involved, or I didn't have all of the information, or my overactive imagination was playing tricks on me. But my therapist also understood spirituality, and she told me I was free to interpret these things from a spiritual lens, as long as they weren't causing any harm and as long as I wasn't obsessing over them.
And so, this was my life for several months, but I started thinking about this dream more seriously. I wanted to know who or what this figure was or would represent. It identified itself as "the many-named," which basically meant nothing to me. Anything or anyone can have many names. "Planter of the vine" didn't mean much either. It was too vague. But the next part of the phrase was something I could latch on to. "I am the one who resides in Zafon." I knew that word, Zafon. I recognized it. I hadn't paid much attention to it before, thinking it was just some random word my brain was constructing, but no, I definitely recognized it. How couldn't I? I was a Bible teacher. Mount Zafon, the modern-day mountain known as Jebel Aqra, it was the site of a Canaanite cult, but I never really paid attention to it up until then. It was hard to find information on the mountain or the cult that practiced there. Mentions of it in the Bible itself are not too plentiful either, but they're there. Essentially, Zafon was considered the Holy Mountain of the Canaanite god Baal. It was called the Cosmic Mountain par excellence in the Northwest Semitic regions, and it was the place where the Canaanite god Aqhat fell after he had usurped the throne from Baal. My studies, however, led me to a certain name that was associated with the mountain: Baal-Zaphon, which is another epithet of Baal-Hadad, the chief of the Baals, and known as a storm or sky god. It made sense at the time. There was a storm in the vision. The climate seemed Middle Eastern or African, I think, and the figures seemed reminiscent of a deity of that type. So, the spirit of Baal-Hadad visited me in a dream, or my hyper-religious subconscious made me think he did, and that explanation seemed to satisfy me for a time.
But something still didn't sit right with me. I felt like I was missing something. I confided in a non-religious friend from university about the dream, but one that shared my interests in spirituality. My friend sent me a passage from a book that I've since devoured, a book very well known in occult circles called "Stellis Damam." The Hebrew name of the city Eon translates to principle, law, foundation, and barrenness in its original essence, but in the context of Zephaniah, it involves a semantic wordplay of the root *aqir*, which denotes uprooting and emphasizes the later threat to root up Eon's people. Similar wordplay is applied to that city's patron deity, Baal-Zebul, "the Lord of the Exalted Abode," whose epithet is twisted into the derogatory Baal-Zebub, "Lord of the Flies," an insult that suggests the consumption of feces, a similar insult to that leveled upon the cult of Baal-Peor. And then it seemed to make sense. It laid naked before me: Baal-Zebub, or as it was anglicized, Beelzebub. Suddenly, I was terrified. Still fresh from Christianity, I had a natural, programmed fear of things that were demonic. And so, in a panic, I began to do more research, and my studies led me to this verse that at first appears unrelated until you make the connection: "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."
The "Mount of the Congregation in the sides of the north" references a literal geographic location that isn't apparent in the King James version, but the north is the home of Baal, and in the north was the mountain aligning with the North Star, and upon which the priests of Baal would see the island of Cyprus in the west where Venus aligned, thus earning the island its association with the goddess of love. But this "Mount of the Congregation and the sides of the north" would have been a direct reference to Mount Zaphon in the time of Isaiah, especially in the area the scripture comes from, around the Mediterranean. But there's more to this. Let me read the verse in its proper context: verses 11-15: "Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." The Morning Star, Venus itself, the first star to appear at dusk and the last star to be swept away by the dawn, Lucifer. And suddenly, my fear of this dream was far more intense. Not only was Zaphon the site of the Canaanite cult, but it is the site of the fall of Lucifer. "I am the one who resides in Zafon."
And then suddenly, the next thing the figure said to me made even more sense: "I am the one who strikes the heel." Genesis 3:5. This is God speaking to the serpent that tempted Eve: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This is a prophecy of the Son of Man, the Christ, who would later come and bruise his heel against the head of the serpent, the enemy, Satan, the one who tempted Eve. It was later that I stumbled on the fact that in the apocryphal book of Baruch, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is referred to as the vine of Samael. Samael is essentially equivalent to Lucifer, and I identify the two as the same being, which I'll discuss in later videos. But one thing was very clear to me: this being I had encountered in this vision was Lucifer.
Not long after I uncovered the identity of the figure, I finally had a different dream. I say dream because again, that's the only way I knew how to rationalize it. But again, I was ripped from my body and taken into what I now know was the astral realm. But this vision was different. I was standing in a church, the pews filled with friends and family, and then I realized I was at a wedding, my wedding, and I was standing at the altar. I was being married to a beautiful bride. She was stunning, from what I remember, but at the same time, there was that familiar feeling, that old robotic feeling, that something just wasn't right, that forced, squeezed, tired feeling. Somewhere in me, I was thinking about how this bride was probably one my family selected for me, but not one that would truly make me happy, one that was in alignment with my Christian values, but beyond that, didn't have much to offer me. And as I stood there thinking of these things, the pastor droning on next to us, I remember looking into her eyes and feeling empty, and realizing she was melting. Yes, that's that's right, melting like candle wax. Her skin and flesh dripped off her like liquid butter, like chocolate on a hot summer day, and beneath her muscle and tendons as they stripped off and waxy drops, her blood trickled off, all the same. And then I realized everyone in the congregation and the pastor and everyone along the altar was melting. My bride melted all around me, and suddenly I was caught in her waxy residue like a mouse caught on a trap. I remember screaming, crying, hoping someone would hear me, unable to free myself from the strange gelatin that she'd become, the strange black eye holes of her now bare skull boring straight into me as her skeleton stood there in front of me motionless.
Then suddenly, a quiet fell over the room, and in the corner of my eye, I knew I saw him. I turned my head, and he was there, standing in the aisle, a great flowing black flame. The figure had returned with his cup, squeezing his fruit into it. He thrust it forward, offering it to me one last time, and I drank.
When I woke up, I had a split migraine. The place between my brows felt like someone had thrown a brick at it or stood on it with a jackhammer. My entire body pulsed, or rather, my body was feeling everything around me pulsing. It was as though I could feel the vibrations of the world around me, reality's rhythmic current that stitched the world together particle after particle. The auras I had been seeing were 10 times as vivid, and I was certain I was hallucinating. I had to have been. And everyone I talked to that day seemed to radiate colors. I pretended as though nothing odd was happening, but it was difficult to contain my reactions. I'd never done any kind of hallucination in my life, and up to that point, it's exactly how I imagined they'd feel, but I felt completely sober. My mental faculties weren't the least bit hindered, and my motor skills and reaction times were entirely normal. This would only last for the remainder of the day before everything would return to normal, and life would go on.
Since then, I've been able to access some of these sensations again through meditation and astral travel, but usually only through meditation and astral travel. And as for the entity, I have since encountered him in many, many other ways, and that's the subject for another video. But essentially, this experience caused me to renounce my former beliefs. I began to study spirituality, religion, metaphysics, and the Occult, desperate to understand what happened to me. And now, almost 5 years later, I have become a practicing occultist and have learned how to communicate with the entity I encountered on a daily, waking basis. I experience the entity in many different ways. Sometimes he appears in extreme forms, but most times he is a shadow, a voice, the feeling of a calming hand on my shoulder, a presence that looms over me with his protection. And despite the opposition I've experienced in the midst of my religious transition, and despite the heartache along the way, the severed relationships, and the radical life change, the social pressure, and the constant fear that I am actually going insane, I am happier than ever and finally at peace with who I am.
Thank you for watching. My name is Dorian, and this is Cipher Grove.
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