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Five Years Worth of Sketches: Ritual Magic, Death Masks, and Helmets

This weekend I finally started digging into about 5 years worth of sketches and thumbnails doodled in the margins of my school notes. The majority of the sketches are for helmets, masks, and faces, but there are some symbols and ritual magic designs.

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Most of the helmets on the left are meant for Redcaps, which are elves that have warped their bodies into killing machines. Their helmets usually have a grinning skull motif, like death masks. On the right are robes, designs, and a mask for a necromancer. The almond-shaped mask design is one of the oldest masks I made.

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Most of the designs on the left are ritual hook designs, surrounded by symbols. I’m not sure what I’ll use them for yet. The other symbols scattered around the page are for necromancy. On the far bottom-right corner is a sketch of the god of death, Erroth.

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I’ve been experimenting with creating a language of symbols for magic based on Chinese or Japanese pictograms. The two blocks in the center and left are some automatic drawing examples. On the right is a design based around the mask of the god of death.

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More helmets on the left, and death masks on the right. The mace in the middle is a take on the Gae Bolga, the famous weapon of Cuchulain, the Irish hero.

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These are some assorted drawings of faces, including the skull-like face of a necromantic character and the alien-like neck and head of Absurdity, which is an embodiment of chaos.

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The Rats in the Walls: Word is Spreading.

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The hour is getting late, and word of the Rats in the Walls is spreading. Both ANIMAL New York and The Dusty Rebel have written up articles about Kilroy and his activities in Manhattan, which can be read below:

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Kilroy: Tompkins Square Invocation by the Dusty Rebel (Daniel Albanese)

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NYC Occult Performer Summons the Rats in the Walls by ANIMAL New York

Follow @kilroyisgod, and watch #ratsinthewalls for more updates.

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Welcome to the Lab.

“Chris Mahon’s Occult Triangle Lab” started as a joke. It was meant to be an umbrella term for all the bizarre, elaborate pieces of metaphysics, geometry, and philosophy I would come up with while writing fantasy during college. I didn’t leave my room much in college–I stayed up late at my desk, drinking vast amounts of milk alone, reading about the architecture of human veins and meta-patterns in Pascal’s triangle.

When I came up with something good after all my reading and sketching, I would get really excited and write up a six-page document explaining the whole idea (with phrases like “motherfucking entropic heat death”) and post it to my friends with the heading “New, from Chris Mahon’s Occult Triangle Lab.” All of it tied into my fantasy world and my stories.

Dispatches from the Lab dealt with practical things, like magical aeronautics, as well as terrifying, abstract things, like maps of the soul, as seen through Zen Buddhism and fractal geometry. While working on material in the Lab, I learned three things: that everything feeds into everything else, that the world is a frightening and wonderful place, and that, when you dig deep enough, triangles lie at the heart of everything.

My library is stacked with books on mythology, philosophy, chemistry, and Terry Pratchett. My desk is covered with pieces of origami, sketches, essays and story drafts. People seem equal parts entertained and confused by it all, so I thought I could make a good blog out of it.

This is that blog.

Sketches and notes from the Occult Triangle Lab
Sketches and notes from the Occult Triangle Lab

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