Aqedah Knife

Introduction

A powerful magical artifact, the Aqedah knife originally appeared in my “New York by Night” Vampire campaign, and was eventually repurposed for Call of Cthulhu, where as the “Knife of Nephren-Ka” it served as a trigger for a contemporary Cthulhu Now! scenario. More recently, the knife has appeared in my Deadlands 1876 campaign. This page describes the relic, offers its history, and suggests various ways to use it in all three role-playing games.

The Binding
Aqedah is a Hebrew word meaning “binding,” and it serves as the common description for the testing of Abraham by God as told in Genesis 22.1–19 and in the Qur’an in sûrah 37.101–113. The actual knife is specifically mentioned in Genesis 22.6 and 22.10. According to the story, God issues Abraham a terrible command: he must offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Heartbroken, Abraham nevertheless obeys, taking his son to a mountain in the land of Moriah. Just as Abraham is about to plunge the dagger into his son’s breast, an angel commands him to desist. A ram appears to be offered in the place of Isaac, and Abraham is praised for his loyalty. The place is renamed Jehovah-jireh, and the angel bestows a blessing upon Abraham that his generations will multiply and prosper. (In the Torah, the place is named Adonai-yireh, which means “The Lord will see.”) The angel that stays Abraham’s hand is usually identified as Michael, but other traditions ascribe the feat to Metatron, Tadhiel, or Zadkiel.

Description

In terms of physical appearance, the only striking thing about the relic is its remarkable state of preservation. A Canaanite sacrificial knife, the ancient blade is composed of meteoric iron, now pitted and slightly corroded. At the base of the blade are initials engraved in Latin: “M.Q.V.” The blade is set into a wooden grip, reinforced by bone plates and bound with three rings fashioned from horn. The wooden grip has been replaced several times; the last most likely two centuries ago. The bone is worn and blackened, and features faint traces of Aramaic writing, possibly carved over an older Hebraic inscription.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?
—Ludwig Prinn

History

The history of the Aqedah knife is shrouded in confusion, and represents a tangle of myth, fact, and supposition. Most of our knowledge is derived from four principle sources: Rebekah of Edom, Ludwig Prinn, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Junzt, and Julius Niemand. Through their writings, the relic may be loosely tracked across three thousand years of human history.

I. Origins of the Knife
Unfortunately, the oldest source is also the least credible. Officially dubbed “The Rebekah Scroll” but more popularly known as “The Dreams of Joseph,” this parchment was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1952. One of the many sensational treasures of Cave 4, the Rebekah Scroll is the earliest non-Biblical text that specifically mentions Abraham’s knife. The author of the scroll claims to be “Rebekah of Edom,” a lover to the Biblical Joseph during his years as the Pharaoh’s advisor. Although the scroll is only partially intact, and was obviously recopied from an earlier source, it speaks clearly in the voice of a woman faithfully devoted to her acclaimed lover, and diligently records one hundred and forty-four of his dreams. While some of Joseph’s dreams appear to be precognitive, many are visions of the past, and probably represent folk history or oral tradition.

More famously known for his silver chalice and coat of many colors, Joseph also possessed a third item of note—a sacrificial knife, passed down his bloodline from his great-grandfather Abraham. The history of this relic was presented to Joseph during a series of dreams, diligently recorded by his lover. The following information is compiled from the Rebekah Scroll and the scholarship surrounding it, specifically sections 63 to 75 (4QR2.63-75). It is provided with the expected caveat lector—while the scroll itself is genuine, its author claims intimacy with the Patriarchs, and fully embraces the legitimacy of Joseph as a seer. It may have been a hoax, an early work of fiction, or an inventive piece of political propaganda. Indeed, as many of Joseph’s “precognitive” dreams involve the triumph of Israel and the coming of a messiah, most Qumran scholars believe the latter. For this reason, the Rebekah Scroll is considered a work of minor pseudoepigrapha—although certainly above average in imagination!

The Origins of the Knife
The Aqedah knife has its origin in a meteor that blazed across the Egyptian sky during a state religious ceremony. Landing in the Nile just above the First Cataract, the curiously three-lobed meteorite was discovered by three brothers, fishermen from Elephantine. Known as ba’a-en-pet, or “iron from the sky,” the Egyptians valued such iron for its magical properties, and it was considerably more valuable than iron smelted from common ore. The fishermen broke the heavenly gift into three fragments. Two of these passed into the mists of time and were never heard from again; but the third fragment was sold to a Kush trader, who carried it as a good luck charm in his travels.

On his way to Mesopotamia, the trader had a dream—the first “gift of prophesy” attributed to the relic. In his dream, he was instructed to have a Hebrew smith forge the iron into a sacrificial dagger. He found such a smith in Haran. According to the Rebekah Scroll, this was none other than Tubal-Cain, the blacksmith descended from Cain and mentioned in Genesis 4.22. This mythological addition is telling; for the most part, Rebekah’s narrative free from such patent embellishments. This, along with the fact that several generations and a Deluge separate Tubal-Cain from Abraham, leads most scholars to believe that Tubal-Cain was a later and certainly spurious addition to Rebekah’s narrative, probably contributed by an overzealous copyist.

The tale continues. In Nineveh the Kushite’s luck took an unfortunate turn. Cornered in an alley after a night of drinking, gambling, and whoring, he was beaten and robbed by a Canaanite pimp. The knife passed with the thief into Erech, where it was traded for a pair of female slaves. Unaware of its mystical properties, the slaver carried the knife for several years, finally losing it to a Chaldean while gambling in Ur. This man was Abram of Haran.

It was, of course, with Abraham that the knife acquired its biblical import, being the blade he nearly used to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah. After the angel stayed his hand, Abraham kept the knife as a symbol of his relationship with God. From Abraham it passed to Isaac, who then bequeathed it to his son Jacob. After Joseph relocated his family to Egypt, Jacob bestowed the heirloom to his favored son; but that was not the first time Joseph had encountered the angel-touched knife. According to Rebekah, Joseph began having his strange dreams when he was a child. Apparently as a young boy he had discovered the knife in his father’s belongings, and while using it to fend off a horde of make-believe bandits, he accidentally cut his left hand. That night, gripped in a fever, he had his first prophetic dream.

II. After Joseph: Four Divergent Histories

After Joseph, the knife sinks from view for two thousand years, generating a wake of widely diverging legends. One of these, espoused by nineteenth-century mesmerist Amon Götterschatten, claims the knife was lost in Egypt before the Exodus. It was acquired centuries later by a Roman centurion, passing through his family until falling into the hands of an Irish monk. The knife was looted from Ireland during a Viking raid, traveling to Byzantium and returning to Rome after the Crusades. Because Götterschatten acquired this information by interviewing the “past lives” of his subjects, the story is obviously suspect; but its simplicity and lack of mythological ornamentation lend it credibility with some Aqedah scholars. It should also be mentioned that Amon Götterschatten—real name Klaus Weber—never claimed possession of the knife. However, the fact he was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant in the infamous “Brothel of Ghosts” only adds to the allure of his story, as does the date of his murder: 1888!

An alternate history is put forth by the Nazi occultist Julius Niemand, who spent several months examining the actual knife in conjunction with the St. Magnus Tapestry. Niemand contends that the knife was buried with Joseph in Egypt; but was plundered from his tomb by his family and returned to Canaan. It was eventually taken to Jerusalem, where it became one of the treasures of the Temple and was subsequently lost when the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD. Although this narrative is plausible, Niemand’s purported “documentation” perished when he set fire to his home during the Nuremberg Trials. (More on Niemand later.)

A more colorful proposition, put forth by the Templar Society of London, agrees that it was plundered from Joseph’s tomb and brought to Canaan, eventually falling into the hands of the Sicarii. In a story that borrows elements from Arthurian myth, the Aqedah dagger was thrown into the Dead Sea a few months prior to the siege of Masada. It remained submerged until a thousand years later, when after the successful capture of Jerusalem in 1099, it was miraculously raised from the depths by the angel Michael and given to the Crusaders. It was taken to Rome and presented as a gift to Pope Paschal II, who entombed it with the recently dead author of the Crusade, Urban II.

The strangest—and certainly least likely!—legend comes from Howard Benjamin Rand and the Anglo-Israelites. Rand contends that the Aqedah knife is a holy relic intended for the “White race,” and along with the Ark of the Covenant and the Spear of Destiny, represents one of the “Treasures of Birthright” for the “Anglo-Saxon-Celtic” people—tools to bring about the New Jerusalem during the End Times. According to the literature of Anglo-Israelism (which includes the Yahwists and Christian Identity), the Aqedah knife passed flawlessly down the generations from Joseph to his son Ephraim, thence to the line of Judah, down through David, and finally to none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, it was the knife Jesus used to slice the bread during the last supper! After the Crucifixion, it passed into the hands of Joseph of Arimathea and made its way to Caligula’s Rome, where it was entrusted to a secret cabal of Roman Christians.

III. The Middle Ages

Regardless of the path taken, all stories ultimately place the knife in Rome. According to the writings of papal scribe Umberto of Alessandria, a relic fitting the description of the Aqedah knife remained in Rome under secret protection of the clergy—until 1387, when Pope Urban VI took personal possession of the relic to aid in his war against the Avignon papacy. It did not help the mentally unstable pope, and he was swindled out of the knife by a phony magician from Naples.

We pick up the thread again in the writings of Ludwig Prinn, infamous author of De Vermis Mysteriis and one of the reputed owners of the knife. According to Prinn’s Liber Abramacus, the Naples charlatan carried the relic north, where it passed through the hands of various alchemists and astrologers, slowly making its way across Europe and Asia. Prinn details their stories like a medieval version of the Arabian Nights, each tale more bizarre and fantastic than the last. Prinn himself came across the knife in Constantinople, where a Persian sorcerer had used it in a ritual designed to trap and bind an angel. An exile from a nameless city along the Tigris, the Persian had sired a son upon a Damascene woman for the sole purpose of re-enacting the sacrifice at Mount Moriah. After preparing a complex magical trap, he strapped his infant son to the altar, prayed to Allah, and drove the Aqedah dagger through his heart. No angel came to stay his hand. The sorcerer was murdered by the child’s mother, who sold the dagger to Ludwig Prinn for a pair of gold earrings.

With Prinn, the knife arrived at Brussels, and finally into the hands of the Inquisition after Prinn’s arrest and execution in 1485. The Inquisition studied the knife in Rome, eventually coming to the conclusion that it was a hoax. It was scheduled to be destroyed in 1498; but was replaced by a forgery and smuggled to Moldavia by a Dominican who had become convinced of its authenticity. The knife was hidden in the Black Monastery of Vatra Inima for a few years, but the Iasi Translations suggest it was stolen by a “strange traveler” from England.

The Aqedah knife next appears in the Shrikesbury Missal, the only surviving manuscript from the so-called “Salted Abbey” near Shrikesbury Tor in Wales. In an illumination depicting the Binding of Isaac, the Aqedah dagger may be plainly discerned, down to the Roman initials anachronistically carved into the blade! Of course, this missal is better known for its other “anachronisms,” including the celebrated “Spitfire Angels” and “Panzer Demons” which have inflamed conspiracy theorists throughout the years. Admittedly ambiguous in form, these images are dismissed as artistic embellishments by most scholars, who lament the sort of willful misinterpretation that promotes belief in ancient astronauts, the Bermuda Triangle, and Egyptian batteries! Needless to say, Aqedah scholars claim these curious embellishments as evidence that the artist was using the knife to trigger precognitive visions. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1536, the Shrikesbury monastery resisted, and was subsequently destroyed on orders of the King, who ordered it dismantled “stone by stone” until the “damp earth be salted.” Whether this was pretext for an exhaustive search is unknown, but the knife again vanished from the historical record for another two centuries.

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
—Matthew 19:12

IV. The Skoptsi

Here one of the more colorful figures of the occult world enters the story: Friedrich-Wilhelm von Junzt, the German scholar, magician, and madman. The story of von Junzt’s involvement is best told in Von Junzt: A Study in Black by Steven Marc Harris, the foremost von Junzt scholar in the field. Harris reports that in 1823, a young von Junzt arrived at the monastery of Suzdal in Russia. He had come to this isolated place to meet a man named Kondratji Selivanov, the founder of a cult known as the Skoptsi, or the “Castrated.” An overweight man devoid of body hair, Selivanov was quite a colorful character himself, and impressed von Junzt with his messianic zeal. According to Selivanov, he was not always a peasant and a cult leader: he was none other than Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich, better known as Tsar Peter III, whose death history had recorded in 1762!

Selivanov’s story was remarkable. Never a strong-willed or particularly honest man, the young Grand Duke was not a popular choice to succeed his aunt, the Emperor Elizabeth, and he spent much of his early life in poor health, drinking to excess and playing childish games. Holding German Protestant beliefs that put him at odds with the Orthodox Church, he was religiously estranged from the majority of Russia. Obsessed with Prussia, the young Peter initially saw Lutheranism as a “modern” alternative to the hidebound ways of the Orthodox Church. As he grew older, Peter found himself becoming more fascinated with notions of personal redemption. As his health and sanity began unraveling, he flirted with religious philosophies even more alien than those of Martin Luther.

One night in 1745, Peter was granted a mystical experience that changed his life. Drunk on wine and in the throes of depression, he broke into his own treasure room and began smashing invaluable family heirlooms. Among these was an antique knife supposedly owned by Emperor Nero, a gift from England’s Queen Elizabeth to Ivan the Terrible.

Cutting himself inadvertently on the blade, Peter lapsed into a violent seizure. His mind was engulfed by a torrent of apocalyptic visions, the final one featuring a fiery angel named Madiel. According to this spiritual messenger, man’s pathway to Salvation was blocked by Original Sin, and the only way to achieve unity with the Godhead was to excise the “mark of Cain” from one’s own flesh. Transforming into a white dove, Madiel lighted upon the knife, and the prince understood: If Peter wanted to become closer to God, he’d have to practice celibacy, and eventually “seal” himself through the act of castration.

That this epiphany occurred shortly after his marriage to the princess Catherine was a stroke of bad luck for Peter’s young wife, who desperately tried to convince her husband that his visions were false. But to no avail; their marriage was doomed to many loveless and unhappy years. Although Catherine took other lovers—and it was widely known that her children were not Peter’s—she never stopped pleading with him to accept his duties as husband and future Tsar. For sixteen years she suffered as his neglected wife; and then on Christmas Day in 1761, the same day that brought the death of Empress Elizabeth and Peter’s subsequent coronation as Tsar Peter III, Peter castrated himself, tossing his penis onto Catherine’s bed and collapsing into the arms of his loyal physician. The instrument he used to commit the deed was the Aqedah knife.

Catherine, having failed to halt her husband’s self-mutilation, fell into despair. Nor did Peter seem any happier, and the Tsar’s rule was as troubled as his marriage. Everything Peter did only alienated him further from Russia. He surrounded himself with a private guard of Germans and scandalized his army by forcing them to adopt Prussian customs. He offended the Church by forcing them to use Lutheran vestments, and began confiscating Church property and closing private chapels. Peter even laughed at his aunt’s funeral; a time during which his poor wife was observed in humble prayer.

Peter’s reign soon passed beyond carelessness into open challenge, as if he were seeking to be deposed. When a palace finally revolt put Catherine in power, the Tsar abdicated with a palpable sense of relief. It was, however, too late. Catherine was not satisfied with mere abdication, and she planned to have him assassinated. Through an old drinking companion in the Guard, Peter was told of her plot—he was to be killed in a drunken brawl. In a move that displayed a rare sense of cunning, he changed places with the man who had been serving as his body double. That night he escaped, leaving his doppelgänger to be murdered in his place.

Divested of his imperial duties and believed to be dead, Peter was finally free, and his religious mania imploded into the vacuum created by his newfound liberty. Changing his name to “Kondratji Selivanov,” he ingratiated himself into a peasant community of flagellants known as the Khlysti, a play on the words “Christ” and “whip.” His princely dissolution alchemically transformed into mesmeric charisma, he quickly emerged as a leader among the cult, and began referring to himself as the “Redeemer.” By 1771, Selivanov had acquired a sizeable following he called the Belyye Golubi, or “White Doves.” Preaching the doctrine of castration, Selivanov encouraged his male followers to remove their testicles and penis, and his female followers to perform mastectomies. As the cult gained in popularity, they became known as the Skoptsis—the “Castrated.” Of course, this practice was alarming to both the common Russian and the Church; and orders were issued for Selivanov’s arrest. Fleeing to the district of Tambov, the former Tsar went into hiding.

It was during this period that Selivanov met the man who would become his most faithful disciple, Alexander Shilov. Shilov was a lawyer whose intelligence was matched only by his zealotry. He fell readily under the Redeemer’s spell, and began recording every word his master said, enshrining his prophetic utterances as a new Gospel.

In 1775, Selivanov and Shilov traveled to Moscow to establish a new circle of followers. This time Selivanov could not avoid arrest, and in 1780 he was sentenced to exile in Siberia. With the help of a Tsarist minister whom Selivanov had spent several years converting, he escaped and returned to Moscow in 1795. There he rejoined Shilov and retook possession of the Aqedah dagger. Shilov had proved a worthy disciple, and had kept the Belyye Golubi loyal, quiet, and committed, all the while developing an underground network and organizing his master’s teachings into a series of texts collectively known as the Harvest. In 1797 Selivanov traveled to St. Petersburg, where Tsar Paul I detained him for an interview. After confessing that he was really the Tsar’s father Peter III, the Redeemer found himself confined to the “Dolgauz” lunatic wing of the new Obukhovskaya Hospital.

Fortunately for Selivanov, political winds were shifting, and after numerous petitions he was granted an audience with the new Tsar in 1802. Finding himself strangely fascinated by the prophet, Tsar Alexander granted Selivanov his freedom. But as his fame spread and his preaching acquired an anti-government bent, Alexander’s advisors convinced the Tsar that Selivanov posed a genuine threat. In 1820, Alexander humanely ordered him confined to the Spaso-Evfimiev monastery in Suzdal. Exhausted by his ordeals and longing to make peace with God, Selivanov turned the leadership of the Skoptsi over to Shilov, who was allowed to visit his master for instructions and guidance—and to renew himself with the power of the holy relic.

It was here that von Junzt interviewed the Redeemer. Although he was skeptical as to whether or not Selivanov was truly Tsar Peter III, there could be no question that he was in possession of the Aqedah knife; von Junzt was quite familiar with it from the writings of Ludwig Prinn. To Selivanov, the relic was a sign of God’s commandment for humanity to practice castration. When von Junzt posed the question as to how the Chosen People could multiply and procreate if the men were all castrated, Selivanov laughed harshly and cast him out of the monastery.

Selivanov died in 1825; von Junzt writes that the relic was buried in a golden chest below an oak tree near the monastery. Although their numbers have dwindled considerably, the Skoptsi still claim that one day Selivanov will reappear, and taking hold of the Aqedah knife in his right hand, he will carve a path to a new Holy Russia under the Law of God.

Berndt reicht mir eine Ausarbeitung über die von uns zu betreibende okkultistische Propaganda ein. Hier wird in der Tat Einiges geleistet. Die Amerikaner und Engländer fallen ja vorzüglich auf eine solche Art von Propaganda herein. Wir nehmen alle irgendwie zur Verfügung stehenden Kronzeugen der okkulten Weissagung als Mithelfer in Anspruch. Nostradamus muß wieder einmal daran glauben.
—Josef Goebbels

V. The St. Magnus Circle

If the Skoptsi legend is true, the reborn Selivanov will have to look elsewhere than his golden casket. According to Nazi occultist Julius Niemand, in 1898 the Aqedah knife was discovered by a Polish girl named Eva Blazusiakówna, a Christian savant guided to the relic by a series of visions. Eva took it to Warsaw, where it was hidden in the basement of St. Magnus Church. There it served as the focus for a small circle of female mystics. These sisters believed that the Apocalypse would arrive in the year 2001, and they were preparing a great tapestry as a gift for God. Depicting the “noble deeds” of the world from Creation until the Day of Judgment, the tapestry would require seven generations of women to work through the century. The sisters gained inspiration through visions invoked by using the Aqedah knife to cut their own flesh; once a sister had acquired seventy-seven scars, she was assigned the task of recruiting her replacement. When the Day of Judgment finally arrived, the seventh generation would present God with their gift. It was the sisters’ belief that upon seeing the tapestry, God would be moved to temper His wrath upon mankind.

The circle lasted for three generations, until the Nazi occupation brought the project to an abrupt end. In 1939, the unfinished tapestry was placed under the care of Julius Niemand, head of the Institute for the Examination of the Secret Sciences, a division of Himmler’s infamous Deutsche Ahnenerbe, or “Ancestral Heritage Society.” Interviewing one of the sisters at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Niemand learned of the existence of the Aqedah knife, but by the time the SS raided St. Magnus, the relic had been relocated.

Niemand searched in vain for the knife until 1942, when Alfred Berndt summoned him to Zakopane to interview a middle-aged nun arrested for assisting a fugitive priest. The prisoner turned out to be Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, the granddaughter of the mystic who founded the sisterhood. Blazusiakówna broke under interrogation, revealing that the knife was submerged under the waters of the Cicha Woda. After the knife was recovered, Blazusiakówna was enslaved at the airplane factory in Mielec, and Niemand took the relic back to his laboratory in Berlin.

Hingabe, Inbrunst, Sehnsucht! Das sind meine Pfeiler. Brücke zur Zukunft müssen wir sein.
—Julius Niemand

VI. Niemand’s Studies
Once in possession of the relic, Niemand began an intensive program of study that involved every occult science from alchemy to oneiromancy. Unlike many of his comrades, Niemand was fascinated by Jewish mysticism, which he believed was the foundation of Christian power. For Niemand, the act of studying Jewish mysticism was an act of vampiric appropriation—he absorbed the essence of the very thing being systematically destroyed, increasing his power as he undermined its “alien” source. Niemand believed that the relic was best understood within the framework of Qabalism, and collected his studies in a volume he called Hebräische Studien.

According to Niemand, the figure of Isaac represents the sephirah Din, also called Gevurah, which is known as “God’s Severity.” Abraham is representative of the sephirah Chesed, or Gedulah, which is known as “God’s Mercy.” Abraham was prepared to make the sacrifice, but God stayed his hand. By the forces of Chesed placing Din on the altar but halting the sacrifice, the Aqedah story illustrates that God’s Mercy ultimately balances God’s Severity. The results of this equilibrium are important, as they allow the Holy Marriage to occur between God and his “bride,” the material world. The next sephirah to be emanated is Tipharet, symbolic of the male energies of God made incarnate in this world, and usually associated with Christ by Christian Qabalists. This sephirah must be brought into union with the final emanation, the female Malkhut, which represents the material world, the prison that holds the exiled Shekinah—the female aspect of God. By the balancing of Chesed and Din, God allows our universe to come closer to the perfect union of Tipharet and Malkuth.

The knife is symbolic of this relationship. Niemand believed that the relic was invested with the powers of Yesod, the sephirah that connects Tipharet with Malkuth. Not coincidentally, Yesod is symbolized by the Biblical Joseph, and in occult circles represents the veil of illusions and storehouse of dreams that separate the subconscious from the higher faculties. Niemand believed that if used properly, the Aqedah knife could rend the veil of illusions and draw down the powers of the divine.

Despite his intentions to “crack the code” of the Aqedah knife for his own malignant purposes, Niemand’s writings indicate that of all the knife’s possessors, he was the one who best understood its mysteries. Unfortunately for the good doctor, his discoveries were fruitless. The tide had turned for Germany, and the Allies were winning the war.

VII. Naked Among Wolves
Two weeks before the siege of Berlin, the Aqedah knife was stolen by SS Sturmbannführer Hans Stolz, the officer in charge of its acquisition in Poland. With the end in sight, Stolz had begun robbing his masters indiscriminately, secreting stolen valuables around Berlin in hopes of fencing them to the allies after the war. He recorded these caches in his diary, usually including a sketch and a brief description crudely encoded as a lewd poem. Whether or not Stolz was aware of the knife’s true powers in unknown, as his part in this saga is a short one: Stolz was killed three days before the surrender, shot in the head by his supervisor and left in a bathtub. His diary was found by a Russian soldier who traded it to an American for a pack of cigarettes.

The American was only interested in the diary for one thing. Stolz was a talented sketch artist, and among his drawings of Berlin were racy nudes depicting his girlfriend in lesbian positions with her cabaret coworkers. The American tore out these salacious pages and gave the rest of the diary to an Australian doctor named Charles Cave, who appreciated the Sturmbannführer’s drawings of Bauhaus architecture. Cave settled in England, and the diary remained in his collection of war memorabilia until his daughter Emily sold the lot to Absalom Warnock in 1962, a London collector specializing in Nazi paraphernalia.

Fluent in German, Warnock was the first owner of the diary to actually read it, and immediately understood that Stolz’s “poems” were encoded treasure maps. Flying to West Berlin, Warnock hired a team of private investigators to track down these leads. While most of them resulted in dead ends, the team was fortunate enough to uncover a stash of Fabergé carvings, the score for an unfinished opera written by a young Maxwell Planck, and a water-damaged manuscript that appeared to be a fragment of an unknown story by Kafka! And there, behind the flyspecked mirror of a former cabaret transformed into an East German cinema currently showing Nackt unter Wölfen, they found the knife of the Aqedah, wrapped in newspaper and padded with ostrich feathers.

Wondering what, exactly, he had on his hands, Warnock turned to his friend and fellow collector, an American specialist in Biblical archeology named George Reynolds. After subjecting the knife to radiometric dating and having it examined by numerous specialists, Reynolds declared it a seventeenth-century Russian forgery. He published a small article about his ordeal in a vanity trade, and prepared to send the knife back to England. Warnock declined, allowing his friend to keep the knife as compensation for his troubles. Two months after his article was published, Reynolds was found in a pool of blood, the “forgery” missing from his collection.

Its whereabouts are currently unknown.

Powers of the Relic

The powers of the Aqedah knife are great, but subtle and mysterious, and may be freely adapted to any supernatural-based role-playing game. There are three main powers the relic should have in any gaming milieu:

Combat
The Aqedah relic is still a knife, and may be used in combat. If should have the same statistics as a dagger, but buffed with an appropriate +2 type bonus. It should have some form of additional power over supernatural creatures.

Precognition
The knife grants its owner the ability to experience precognitive visions. These may take the form of dreams, trances, or even seizures, and are generally triggered when the knife draws blood from the user. There should be a negative side-effect associated with this power, generally a permanent reduction in constitution and/or a drain on one’s mental health. It is up to the gamemaster to set these costs, and to determine the exact nature, frequency, and scope of the visions.

Holy/Unholy Powers
The Aqedah knife is a holy relic, and should feature a “holy power” specific to the gaming milieu. As with many sacred objects, the Aqedah knife is subject to exploitation and misuse, and may also have a set of appropriate darker powers.

I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim—
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name.
—H.P. Lovecraft, “Nemesis”

Game-Specific Ideas

The Aqedah knife has appeared in all three games I’ve run: Vampire: The Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, and Deadlands. The following section outlines my use of the relic in each milieu. They are listed by game-date rather than the chronologic order of setting. Because Deadlands takes place in 1876, the Deadlands entry preempts discovery of the knife by Eva Blazusiakówna, and picks up after the death of Selivanov.

Vampire: The Masquerade (World of Darkness)
In my “New York by Night” campaign (1993–2002), the Aqedah knife was stolen from George Reynolds by a cult of vampire hunters. The murder of George Reynolds was the “adventure hook” I used to introduce two player characters—Reynold’s wife Elizabeth, and his business partner, R.J. Williamson, both of whom became Ventrue.

In Vampire: The Masquerade, possession of the knife results in the permanent reduction of Stamina by one dot; visions are granted by adopting a special “Visionary” merit and self-inflicting a point of Health. These visions may be enhanced by deeper injuries, with Kindred sacrificing Vitae from their Blood Pool. The Aqedah knife has special powers against vampires, who are purported to be the children of Caine. The knife causes aggravated damage when used in combat, and has the power to inflict the True Death upon a vampire if his Blood Pool has been completely drained. Furthermore, according to Sabbat lore, the knife may be used to summon angelic beings…most likely Madiel, but possibly even Michael, Metatron, Tadhiel, or Zadkiel.

Call of Cthulhu
As should be obvious to any Lovecraft scholar, the Aqedah knife has a decided Mythos provenance, having passed through the hands of both Ludwig Prinn and Friedrich-Wilhelm von Junzt. In my Cthulhu Now! scenario “Dark Anisotropy” (1999–2000), the knife was tied to the Church of Starry Wisdom and Enoch Bowden, who had acquired the Shining Trapezohedron while traveling through Egypt, which was contained in a “metal box of peculiarly asymmetrical form” created by “the crinoid things of Antarctica.” Well, it turns out that while the “curious” box may have been made by the Elder Things, the metal armature that held the Shining Trapezohedron was fashioned by the metalsmiths of the Black Pharaoh, Nephren-Ka. Of course, the source of this iron was the same meteor that furnished the Aqedah knife.

The plot of “Dark Anisotropy” concerned a modern resurgence of the Church of Starry Wisdom, now reincarnated as a circle of amateur astronomers in the Pennsylvania woodlands and led by a “fringe” astrophysicist related to Enoch Bowden. Already in possession of the Shining Trapezohedron, the cult acquired the knife by murdering George Reynolds in New York City. (This date was changed from 1993 to 1998.) While the knife could be used to trigger precognitive visions, ultimately the relic was intended to summon an avatar of Nyarlathotep, which must be done—naturally—through human sacrifice. The cultists believed they could glean the secrets of the universe from Nyarlathotep, whom they believed was related to the newly-discovered concept of “dark energy.” Unfortunately for the cult, they had failed to locate the third fragment of the original meteor.

Hired by Absalom Warnock to investigate the death of George Reynolds, the Investigators stumbled upon this conspiracy, discovering that the missing piece of meteoric iron was located in a small museum in war-torn Kosovo. This lead to an encounter with the Colour Out of Space, and ultimately back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to confront the Church of Starry Wisdom.

In Call of Cthulhu, the Aqedah knife has no “holy” powers—this is, after all, Lovecraft’s world, and Judeo-Christian artifacts don’t resonate as they do in World of Darkness. Whether or not the knife was actually possessed by the Biblical Joseph is a matter of speculation, but it was definitely owned by a pharaonic vizier in the service of Nephren-Ka. Possession of the knife allows its owner to sacrifice 5 points of permanent SAN to acquire the Dreamlands ability. Furthermore, by spending 10 Power Points and 1d4 SAN, the owner may inflict 1 HP of damage on himself to acquire a precognitive vision—up to the Keeper’s discretion, of course. When used in accordance with the correct Mythos lore and in conjunction with the Shining Trapezohedron and the Kosovo meteorite, the knife may be used to Summon Nyarlathotep through an act of human sacrifice.

Deadlands (Savage Worlds)
In my “Deadlands 1876” campaign, the Aqedah knife was retrieved from Selivanov’s golden box by none other than Helena Petrovna Blavatsky on her travels through Russia. When she was visiting England, Blavatsky shared its power with the spiritualists Maria Hayden and Sophia De Morgan. This brought the relic to the attention of Sophia’s husband Augustus De Morgan, the Grand Master of the Invisible College of New Atlantis. Purchasing the relic from Blavatsky, he was studying it at the lodge the night the fateful fire claimed his life and destroyed the lodge. As far as my player characters are concerned, the whereabouts of the knife are currently unknown.

In Deadlands, possession of the Aqedah knife costs one die of Vigor. Once per session, it may be used to trigger visions by inflicting a Wound Level; however, such visions are genuinely prophetic only if the character takes a special “Visionary” Edge. In combat, the knife is treated as if Smite has been permanently cast upon its blade. When used against supernatural creatures, it causes and additional d6 damage; but against Abominations it inflicts an extra d12 damage! In the hands of a Blessed character, the Aqedah knife bestows four additional Power Points, and bestows a +2 to any use of Dispel and Banish. Unfortunately, the knife may be used to tear the veil separating the mortal world from the spirit world. In the wrong hands, such damage could be irreparable, perhaps granting its owner power over a manitou itself…?

Bibliography

Ariel, David S. The Mystic Quest: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism. Schocken Books, NY: 1988.

Bass, Trystan. Biblical Allusions in the Gothic World. Salon Press, San Francisco, CA: 1990.

Baigent, Michael & Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Jonathan Cape, London: 1982.

Bloch, Robert. “The Shambler from the Stars.” Weird Tales Vol. 26, No. 3, September 1935.

Bryusov, Valery. The Fiery Angel. Scorpion, Moscow: 1908. English Translation: Ivor Montagu and Sergei Nalbandov, Dedalus Books, UK: 2005.

Cave, Charles. War Diaries, Vol. 1-3. Platypus Press, Sydney: 1954-1958.

Chiacciero, Michael. Holy Relics and the Vatican. Manutius, Milan: 1984.

Chiacciero, Michael. The Writings of Umberto of Alessandria. Manutius, Milan: 1987.

Cisco, Michael, ed. Weird Bindings: Twelve Tales of the Aqedah. Centipede Press, Lakewood CO: 2005.

Civan, Judith. Abraham’s Knife: The Mythology of the Deicide in Antisemitism. Xlibris, 2004.

Daw, Laurence. “Iron Dagger, Silver Chalice: Joseph’s Dreams and the Rebekah Scroll.” Biblical Archeologist, January 1955, pp. 208-214.

Golb, Norman. Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? Scribner, NY: 1995.

Glavin, Michael. Knife, Spear, Shroud & Grail. Salamander Press, Salt Lake City: 1975.

Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, England: 1985.

Götterschatten, Amon. Conversations with the Dead. (orig. 1876) Mesmer House, Los Angeles: 1981.

Grohe, Allan T. “Speculations on the Rebekah Scroll and its Role in the Qumran Community.” New Directions in Biblical Archaeology, ed. D.N. Freedman, J.C. Greenfield. Doubleday, Garden City, NY: 1971, pp. 90-104.

Gross, Kristoff. “Die Träume der Josef (4QR2.63-75).” Qumran Studien No. 12, Heidelberg: 1978, pp 12-17. Translation provided by author.

Harris, Steven Marc. Von Junzt: A Study in Black. Bridewell, London: 1988.

Harris, Steven Marc. Cult of Castration: The Skoptsi. Bridewell, London: 1995.

Hutchings, Timothy. Spear and Magic Helmet: Hitler’s Abteinung zür Überprüfung der Sogenannten Geheimwissenschaften. Penn State University Press, PA: 1997.

Ionescu, Radu. The Iasi Translations, Volume IX. DisInformation House, NY, 1982.

Kossy, Donna. Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief. Feral House, Portland, OR: 1993.

Lovecraft, H.P. “The Haunter of the Dark.” Weird Tales Vol. 28, No. 5, December 1936, pp. 538–53.

Metzger, Bruce & Michael Coogan, ed. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1993.

Niemand, Julius. “Notes on GVZ76P89—St. Magnus Tapestry.” Reprinted in The Nazi Quest for Occult Lore Vol III, ed. Trevor Ravenscroft. Samuel Weiser, Inc., North Beach, Maine: 1985, pp. 120-187.

Niemand, Julius. Hebräische Studien. (orig. 1944) Samuel Weiser, Inc., North Beach, Maine: 1991.

Prinn, Ludwig. Liber Abramacus. (orig. 1467) Rose & Cross, Philadelphia, PA: 1967.

Rand, Howard B. Treasures of Birthright. Destiny Publishers, MA: 1947.

Ross, Colin. Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment. University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Reynolds, George. “Falsifying Antiquity: Notes on Establishing the Stolz ‘Aqedah Knife’ as a Forgery.” Black Book Collector, Vol. 5, 1993, pp. 42–77.

Ruch, A. Buell. The Original Is Unfaithful to the Translation: The Influence of Ludwig Prinn on J.L. Borges. Aarhus University Press: 1991.

Ruch, A. Buell. Dark Relics: A Mythopoetic Investigation into Biblical Objects. Lophortyx House, Lancaster, PA: 1996.

Shanks, Hershel. Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls. Random House, NY: 1992.

Shriek, Duncan. Aqedah and the Squid Cult. (Chapbook) Hoegbotton & Sons, FL: 1976.

Shilov, Alexander. The New Holy Russia. (orig. 1779) Divinity, London: 1959.

Shilov, Alexander. The Way and the Light. (orig. 1782) Divinity, London: 1959.

Skehan, Patrick W, et al. Qumran Cave IV. Paleo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manuscripts. Oxford: 1992.

Stanley, Joan C. Ex Libris Miskatonici: A Catalogue of Selected Items from the Special Collections in the Miskatonic University Library. Necronomicon Press, West Warwick RI: 1993.

VanderMeer, Jeff. “The Transfiguration of Hans Stolz.” From Cabinet of Curiosities. Frankwrithe & Lewden, FL: 1992.

Von Junzt, Friedrich-Wilhelm. Nameless Cults. (orig. 1839) Golden Goblin Press, NY: 1909.

Warnock, Absalom. “Speculations on Canaanite Relics.” British Journal of Art and Archeology. October 1970, pp. 454-468.

Youmans, R. Scott. A Constellation of Infamy: The Reynolds Collection. Edmund & Juliet, San Francisco, CA: 1995.

Sources & Notes

This document was first uploaded on 4 February 1996. I originally got the idea for this relic while reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail. It took a long time to do the research necessary to create this page; and I am greatly indebted to the sources listed in the Bibliography. I would like to especially thank Steven Marc Harris for informing me of the Skoptsi, and Signor Garamond and Signor Casaubon at Manutius Press for sending me translations of the Chiacciero works. The May 2018 revision expands the material, corrects some historical errors, and offers detailed notes on using the Aqedah knife in various RPG campaigns. Over the years, I have been surprised to find sections of my fictional history of this fictional relic quoted as fact on various web sites and blogs! I certainly hope that the alterations I’ve made to names, places, and dates don’t cause additional confusion to these poor souls. As compensation, I’ll send them free, autographed copies of my book, Dark Relics.

Some of the quotes used in this document have been re-attributed to fictitious authors: Ludwig Prinn’s quote about dreams was actually made by H.P. Lovecraft, while Julius Niemand’s quote was made by Josef Goebbels, and may be translated as, “Devotion, fervor, longing! Those are my pillars. We have to be the bridge to the future.” The Goebbels quote prior to that has been translated as, “Berndt handed in a plan for the occultist propaganda to be carried on by us. We are getting somewhere. The Americans and English fall easily for this kind of propaganda. We are therefore pressing into service all-star witnesses of occult prophecy. Nostradamus must once again submit to being quoted.”

The banner image is taken from a painting by Laurent de la Hyre, and is the crappy original banner from my 1996 version of this page. One day I’ll replace it with something nicer.

Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 18 November 2020
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
PDF Version: [Coming Soon]

The door it opened slowly,
My father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, “I’ve had a vision
And you know I’m strong and holy,
I must do what I’ve been told.”
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
And his axe was made of gold.

Thought I saw an eagle
But it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
He looked once behind his shoulder,
He knew I would not hide.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father’s hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
Forgive me if I inquire,
“just according to whose plan?”
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
—Leonard Cohen, “The Story of Isaac”