Thoughts on the novel ShadowWalk by Amos Keppler

The first thought striking me when I’m reading ShadowWalk by Amos Keppler is how great it will be as a film, if the story is followed closely. Its visuals are truly amazing.

Then tons of other thoughts strike me. I’ve rarely read a novel so rich in detail and content.

This is a book about witches, about the hidden depths of the world, still here, even in this age of indifference and inch-deep culture.

It isn’t just that Keppler write about alternative lives in one specific area. He does it in all areas, presenting us all with riddles of mystery and empowerment. His stories are like a looking glass into a different, but very real realm of existence.

It also takes a good, hard look at Christianity and its violent history and present, and has a great origin myth for God. It's filled with blasphemy. This makes it even more valuable to an atheist like myself.

Strong-willed women and people loving strong-willed women will definitely love Keppler's books. There are few «typical, civilized, conditioned, overcautious human female characters» in his books. He doesn’t insult the readers that way either.

Any Keppler is an entry into the unknown world of humanity and ShadowWalk is one of his best.

It’s also the first in the series The Janus Clan. At least I read that one first and it worked fine.

So far four books have been published and they are all intense beyond words. While reading them you are venturing into the real world, not the fantasy most present day people immerse themselves in.

The Defenseless is another starting point, the book that is «officially» the first book and it’s certainly the start of the story chronologically. The main characters are merely early teenagers at this point, taking their first nascent steps on their path of vast discovery and endless growth, but life’s cruelty is with them already, as it always is and will be.

If you want to read a pleasant goodnight story for children, stay away from this one. If you seek a story filled with brutal realism and one that doesn’t insult the reader, go for it with all your heart. ShadowWalk, The Defenseless, The Slaves and Birds Flying in the Dark are all novels written for those having a strong need to experience everything life has to offer, both within and outside made up stories.

Sighing wind

The wind is sighing between the tombstones. Even when there is no wind there is a whisper in the rotting ears of the walking dead. Skeleton feet are subbing on the wet ground. An ice cold howl casts its echo between the walls of the downtrodden castle. Blood is dripping from dirty branches and color the stone gray. Fangs and claws flash in the dirty moonlight. The thunderous sound of growth mixes with that of tasty raw meat torn apart. Blood and bones and slices of flesh decorate the overgrown garden. The ballet and the dance begin on the desolate yard. The ground is slick, causing many to slip and break their neck, and the ground turns even slicker. Blades turn golden metal in the light from the fires, and red upon being dipped in buckets of blood. The swimming pool in the backyard is used often and well. Virgins are being fucked to abandon, drawing their final breath through cut throats. Hot seed is pumped into cooling bodies. It’s raining and people calling the castle home are cheering and drinking the most exquisite wine. Skulls are the most practical of glasses. Bodies decorate the trees as the most beautiful of dreams, as art in red and gray. At dawn most people are rushing by. Only a few stop to admire the exhibition, the desolate beauty, and even fewer dare venture inside when the night once more grows ascendant. Huge eyes glow in the moonlight, while raindrops fall like knives in the three-dimensional painting breathing and panting and rocking on the enormously beautiful graveyard right by the city hall, where the undead politicians are making their final effort before nightfall.

Total honesty and true freedom: a life without hypocrisy

I remember seeing a TV-program about the Norwegian black metal scene in the early nineties. It was a riveting experience. I was about ten at the time, and it clearly opened my eyes to many things, at least long term.

The program was about the music, really, but the music couldn’t be removed or seen apart from what was an integral part of black metal, of what quite a few of the performers did in their spare time. It was a fairly deep dive into the lives and various philosophies of the members of the bands, and therefore into Satanism and mysticism in general, at least as deep as a program made by the national Norwegian public broadcasting company could go, without being closed down.

We lent the ears of a wide variety of people in the «movement», both people just in it for the music and others, with a more or less well developed and critical view of the world and existence as a whole, christian Satanists (believing in the bible, but with a slightly different focus compared to other christians) and independent Satanist, rejecting all sides of christianity, inspired by Anton la Vey, Aleister Crowley (who wasn’t a Satanist btw) and others. Boys with long hair and dressed in black were interviewed inside churches and replied with impunity to all the ridiculous questions, questions basically formed by the christian mindset of those asking them. It was a refreshing change of pace, for one thing, to say it the least.

I remember seeing a man in a dark bedroom expressing his contempt for ordinary people, calling them soulless beings. It sounded right, more than right to me. I remember all the church burnings. Churches had always felt wrong to me. I had, to a point been forced to go there, every christmas, with the rest of my class, as part of my school’s christmas arrangements. To burn down churches felt right, very right. I had seen a lot of christian hypocrisy and tyranny in my life, and had always rejected and resented it.

Hysteria, what was clearly religious panic ravaged Norway at the time. Even I, in my youth and ignorance knew that what the so called experts said about most of what was happening and people’s reason for doing it was pure baloney. One expert, for instance, spouting his uneducated nonsense in the local newspaper stated, without the slightest doubt in his mind that Satanism and paganism were two sides of the same coin and both dangerous and inhuman. Or worse: he didn’t really distinguish between them at all. A ten year old boy knew better than an old man with a professorate in the subject (comparative religion, I believe).

Me? I found both exciting. It wasn’t like a bolt of lightning from the blue sky or anything like that, but I had always been a keen observer (one of my better features), and I saw right through everybody criticizing and attacking the recent resultant bedlam and, as they saw it: the inevitable end result of the success of the black metal music. In hindsight I would say it helped me see through, then and in the years to come a society surviving through hypocrisy, dishonesty and tyranny, and set me on the path I am on, now: that of a free, independent and beyond honest human being.

In the ashes of old buildings raised as homage to a non-existing god, a temple to deceit, ignorance and intolerance I found my own fire, one just burning stronger as the years go by.