A light appears in the darkness but heed my warning. The path is long and uncertain. There is no turning back. No expense may be spared. You must overcome your fears and delusions and lay claim to a terrible strength. Then you may unlock what is closed and enter the gates of Babylon.
The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows have played an important role in my spiritual life for some time. The engravings symbolizing these Gates first appeared in the novel The Club Dumas and later in the film adaption entitled, The Ninth Gate. While both of these are works of fiction, the engravings, and the stories surrounding them, seem inspired to me for lack of any better way to describe them. I believe Satan and Lilith communicate to us often through art and, for me, there is no work that is more true for than the Nine Gates.
Unfortunately, I have always been disappointed with the essays on the Gates that are available online. Mostly because the vast majority of them either try to make the argument that the movie isn’t Satanic at all, which is ridiculous, or they spend too much time on Kabbalistic minutiae. I set myself to writing a commentary of my own. A guide to the Nine Gates for Diabolists by a Diabolist.
The end restult was much larger: a book of Diabolist philosophy with the Nine Gates acting as a framing device to structure and link each section.
This book, a philsophical companion to The Book of Infernal Prayer, is for those seekers who wish to better understand the crooked path they have found themselves compelled to tread. Where The Book of Infernal Prayer provided the praxis, The Nine Gates provides the theory.