The Shepherds Are Dense-Chapter 29: The Shepherd

It was in the dead of night that the waxing crescent moon had almost sunk below the earth, and the sky was starting to pale with the earliest glimmers of dawn.
The pendulum in Aiwass's room was ticking rhythmically, with its hands at 4:20 a.m.
But still, Aiwass did not move. He was stiff, like a statue, crumpling through
The Shepherd's Secret Scripture
.
Two streaks of strange purplish-red blood tears trickled endlessly from his eyes, dripping onto the pages of the book—and being absorbed by it.
Aiwass was utterly entranced by the secrets in its pages.
His face had flushed crimson, and the veins on his forehead and forearms bulged visibly. Those veins, which should have appeared bluish, now pulsed with a deep violet, web-like pattern.
Despite the winter, the room was warm. But with every great, husky breath Aiwass breathed, pale mist crept from his mouth. Now and then, when he coughed, a few sparks of flame even flared out.
It was not until a bird's song cut through the stillness at dawn that Aiwass came out of his trance, as if awakened from a dream.
His eyes cleared, and the purple veins on his cheeks gradually retreated.
Unbeknownst to him, he had turned to the back of the thin, black leather book. Its wisdom was now etched into his memory—without even needing to open his eyes, he could recall it in complete detail. The text glowed in his mind's eye.
".So this is what it truly is."
The black text outlined a mysterious process called
Shepherding
.
It was more than a thousand years ago—well before the notion of "classes" had been invented in the supernatural realms.
Most all transcendents of that era traversed several Paths at once, since the then-unusual dictum—*one should keep the number of Paths followed to a minimum*—hadn't been invented yet.
Chasing multiple Paths not only jeopardized going mad and complicated making progress in any individual Path, but also greatly impeded passing on one's skills. In these circumstances, each transcendent had to transfer their methods to followers who were identical to them in terms of personality, preferences, and very essence.
Transcendents were therefore very scarce in human society in ancient times—and even those that did exist tended to be weak.
Because there was no mechanism of inheritance, few methods survived for more than three generations. And because every person could only learn by experimentation, they seldom progressed far along any Way.
It wasn't until sometime in the 4th or 5th century that the idea of "Classes" gradually came into being. By using different methods of cultivation, transcendents would slowly purify and polarize their personalities, forsaking Paths that they had no intention of following. While doing so, they also protected against internal corruption and worked to stay on safe, tried-and-true paths laid out by those who came before them.
The teachings of the Nine Great Paths were amorphous and malleable, tending to overlap and change.
Consider, for example, the Path of Beauty, pertaining to art. It shifts radically with time—every few hundred years, the understanding of beauty by man changes. Most art works that were vulgar in their time come to be so highly valued as "ancient style."
But untrained transcendentals are susceptible to going off the path.
Everyone with healthy psychology automatically contains elements of several Paths.
For instance, a natural-born transcendent on the Path of Devotion may stumble upon the
Illumination Spell
on their own. But if they don't realize that the fundamental principle of Devotion is
altruism
, they might be tempted to use their healing ability for power—perhaps being the leader of a small cult.
And then it's an easy downhill slide into the Path of Authority.
In the same way, a seeker of knowledge treading the balanced Path of Equilibrium may, through obsession or hubris, stray into the Path of Wisdom.
Or, should a priest become too obsessed with ascending the ecclesiastical ladder, he'll soon find himself walking the Path of Transcendence.
Walking two Paths simultaneously is possible—but human attention is finite, and memory imperfect.
If he forgets his original self and becomes a completely different person, the power accorded by his original Path—such as Devotion—will necessarily lose strength and vanish.
That is why
Class
inheritance is all about maintaining the essence
bottom line
of a Path. Regardless of whether a Path's limits are undefined, what it is stands out. As long as one sticks to that essence alone and employs only its safest methods, one can maintain a virgin link to its power.
Even a priest who desires power, money, or lust—provided they stick to the rule of
altruism
—will not lose their class level.
And with the arrival of the Class system, supernatural knowledge could finally be transmitted formally. And since then, transcendents as a group have only gotten more powerful.
But it doesn't mean the old techniques were weak.
Pre-Class mystical arts were virtually all legacies of mighty beings.
The
Shepherd's Secret Scripture
, for instance, was chiseled from the recollections of a man known simply as
the Shepherd
.
This method required harmony with both the Path of Devotion and the Path of Transcendence—and required one's advancement along both Paths to remain utterly balanced. Only in that case could one employ the
Art of Shepherding
.
Once Aiwass leveled up his Priest class, and until he advances to a Demonologist, he will be unable to use this art for a while.
And this strange technique… could only be called
sorcery
.
Its basic principle was:
to give life to the abstract with the concrete, and give life to the concrete with the abstract
.
Essentially, it delineated a mystical approach to make
anyone
powerful.
Since the time Aiwass opened the book, he had entered a state of hallucination. In the book, he beheld a hooded figure in black attire feeding his own flesh and blood to weak demons.
He forged no pacts with them—he merely enticed them with his body, as one might nurture livestock or graze sheep. These weak demons became potent under his guidance.
The man himself became thin and marred.
Later, Aiwass observed people bowing down to this robed figure in black, pleading for power.
The man employed a special ceremony to impart the demon's intangible might into the supplicant. Enveloped in flames, the supplicant was physically transformed in a brutal manner—and acquired strength.
In this way, the supplicant became a follower.
He murdered numerous people, sacrificing their lives to the demons. But when he became weakened, he himself was fed to the beasts.
And again and again, the demons became more powerful and multiplied. The Shepherd employed the same technique to plant them into new, power-seeking followers.
And thus he created an army of demon-possessed soldiers.
This army amassed holy relics and immense treasure. The Shepherd, who was becoming increasingly gaunt, started creating even more powerful phantasms. Soon, he was being attended by demons—light-aligned phantasms also began to accompany him.
They had all been raised from infancy by the man. Even without contracts, they obeyed his commands and willingly shared their power with others.
Under the black-robed man's stewardship, his followers multiplied and grew powerful.
Like a snowball rolling downhill, he created a terrifying force in a short span of time—and attracted the attention of many factions, who moved to eliminate him.
At the last battle, he offered all his followers as a sacrifice to nourish a powerful phantasm with the
Art of Shepherding
.
Any who had ever been "shepherded" by him could not help but resist his coerced sacrifices.
They were consumed, calling forth an even more powerful phantasm.
Aiwass witnessed it vividly in the vision.
Even as a shadowy figure, there was no question about it—it was
the Fallen Archon
, who only fell and was defeated in Version 3.0!
But something did go awry with the Shepherd's scheme.
He tried to employ the
Art of Shepherding
to transfer the Fallen Archon's energy into him.
—But the ceremony went wrong.
He couldn't hold the Archon's power correctly, catching the crucial moment.
Since he had attempted to take the phantasm's essence head-on—without employing the correct Shepherding technique of taking power without damaging the core—he had actually tried to steal from the phantasm.
Angered, the Fallen Archon retaliated, seriously wounding him. The Shepherd was thereafter killed by a fellow assassin.
Thus came to an end the wicked legacy of the individual known as
the Shepherd
.
".Because when he attempted to inject that stolen energy into himself, he had already lost his way upon the Path of Devotion," Aiwass whispered.
That name really did fit him.
Utilizing humans as sacrifices to create phantasms, and then drawing power out of them—or even immolating the entire phantasm for the purpose of energizing humans.
Like a good shepherd.
Utilizing ever-expanding grass to rear sheep, and deriving their milk and flesh.
In this allegory—**grass** symbolized mortals.
Sheep
symbolized phantasms.
An odious comparison indeed.
—Unless one saw the boundless fields of grass as the cost incurred,
shepherding
stock would amount to a miraculous practice, creating vigor out of nothing.
(End of Chapter)