tinhuvielartanis | The Augury of Gideon

It was never a given that the Augury of Gideon was a actual book. To my understanding, it was tradition in most ancient civilisations to transfer wisdom by rote. Some believe this is because humanity was once illiterate and had to commit everything to memory as a result. I prefer to believe that learning by rote is actually a more advanced way of transmitting information because it triggers portions of the brain that we probably don't even utilise today. Portions that are more intuitive, empathic, and connected to the realm of thought and memory. Books are becoming the new "rote" thanks to the Internet. Many people don't even buy books and seem to have little regard for reference sections of libraries. I've found myself being drawn to the convenience of the Internet. But books and the Internet aren't eternal like, say, cellular memory. The Internet is even more temporary than books. Books can be burned. But memory, the history of tribes, can be passed on, even if it's just a fraction of what once was. It continues in the genetic make-up. The passing along of wisdom by rote I think encourages the awakening of these deeper memories.

So. The Augury of Gideon. Its actual form came to me by accident a few days ago when Gideon passed it on to Paine. What better way to pass on a collection of prophecies, wisdom, and ancestral memory than in the cells that actually carry it?

The sun was losing its power as he and I found a secluded place behind some tents. The hippie sat down on the ground and dug into his jeans pocket. He pulled out a small red stone and held it out to me. “Sit down, Paine,” he said to me. “I’m Gideon. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Astonished that he knew my name, but not really thinking much of it since it seemed that everyone knew everyone else during those mad and magical days, I sat down across from him and took the stone.

“D’you know what that is?”

I shook my head as I rolled it around in my fingers.

“It’s petrified Blood. My own. Yeah. It’s that old. I’m that old. You wanna live forever? Wanna taste that crazy trip called immortality? All you gotta do is drink. I can be your fountain of youth, man. It’s that easy.” His grin displayed a rainbow of madness and I began to feel tad uneasy, even in my inebriated state. I handed the red stone back to him, but he refused to take it.

“No, man. It’s yours. Keep it as a reminder. Keep it to remember me by.” He closed my hand around the stone with both his hands, squeezing my fingers against my palm with the strength of desperation.

I was wondering why Gideon did what he did and why I was writing it down. Honestly, it thrills me when characters do things or behave in a way that seems purely independent of myself. It gives them a sentience that convinces me that all of us are merely characters in someone else's collection of stories. But that's another theory altogether.

What I find so intriguing about all this is now the Augury of Gideon, the precious collection of Vampiric prophecy and tradition, is in the hands of a mortal.

Agatha turned her attention to the strange stone Paine had passed on to her. Odd…..She could almost sense the weight of history throbbing from its center. It was important, enough so for Paine to give it to her. She sighed and rubbed her eyes, then returned to her story. She’d sort the stone out later.

I'm now really jazzed about Gideon. I want to learn more about his history. The only things I truly know about him is that he was one of the Original Ten, which makes him Tarmi, he was driven mad by his own visions of the veiled present and the future, and that he might have led the Quest Army during the Great Mortality. That last bit I'm a bit iffy on now, though. I'm thinking that another "Tenite" was responsible for that because I really can't see a madman being a war general. What the hell did I just say, living in a country currently being led by a madman? Okay.... I'm not even going to go there.

It's always been quite clear to me that Cadmus Pariah held Gideon in a "kind of fascination" because Gideon foretold Cadmus. As such, Gideon knew more about the Pariah than even his own mother and father. He became much like the crazy old uncle that you hear a lot about, but never meet or hardly know. Maybe Gideon was driven mad specifically because of his foretelling of Cadmus Pariah. Goddess knows, he's been doing a good job on making me crazy as hell. I'd say that Cadmus knows more about the Augury of Gideon than any other vampire. How he knows it has yet to be explained to me. The Augury came into being in the short story I wrote for Me'Shel'le called The Embrace of Cadmus. The idea of prophecy and arcane wisdom has always been associated with Cadmus in my head, so I thought it would be pretty cool to make his taking a bride something that had been foretold. "The Augury of Gideon" just rolled of my tongue, so it manifested.

The Augury itself isn't a lucid thing in my mind. I've quoted from it a couple of times and referenced it many more, but to say it's something that I could quote would be a vicious lie. Maybe in the future the contents will become clearer but, for now, I like the idea of a mysterious collection of prophecies and insights that no one has ever truly seen (to their knowledge), yet everyone knows of its existence.