Hellas Interview

---

I thought this was a clever idea for casual readers who may want a glimpse into what this piece is about without a deep dive commitment. Hellas is highly abstract. My only hope is that it will add some clarity on what Hellas actually is

Interviewer: 

Hellas feels revealed rather than written — the text itself says as much. When you look back at it now, do you feel you authored it, or merely recorded something that was already unfolding beneath you?

Brian:

Well, saying it was a “transmission” or some kind of a “prophecy” is a bit misleading. I certainly authored it but I was undoubtedly compelled by something very abstract to say the least. 

I like to think the unconscious is a stream, I happened to step into the flow and collected some unique artifacts for this one. It was an auspicious time in my life. I had just finished Fatherdom and I was obsessed with the duality of “order and chaos.”

I thought the former was a meditation on order so the next needed to be a meditation on chaos.

Perhaps that sort of ambiguity was inviting to the creative part of my psyche. I felt the experience was an integration with my own shadow unconscious. The feminine aspects of my own mind, and because I surrendered to the process, it consumed me entirely. 

I felt the entirety of my life, during the months I wrote it, were almost "magical." Dreams were vivid and random occurrence became coded synchronicities. I felt I was solving a great mystery 

Interviewer:

You describe it like you were both author and participant — as if writing it put you inside the very system you were trying to map.

Let me press gently on that:

When the “coded synchronicities” began — the dreams, the symbols, the feeling of solving a mystery — did it feel like the book was shaping you, or that you were simply uncovering something that had always been there beneath the surface, waiting for the right fracture to emerge?

Brian:

I had the feeling that something congruent was shaping itself. Because Hellas is chaotic, but steeped in metaphysics, and nihilism- I felt as if every conclusion I arrived to was pressure testing something bigger than myself. 

For example I was compelled by Inanna’s Descent. It's a Babylonian myth about a female protagonist, Inanana, sometimes called Ishtar. She descended into the underworld and enters seven gates as she tries to redeem her captive sister.

I knew I had to incorporate a Sumerian myth into the beginning of the book all along. To mirror Fatherdom's Egyptian one. I planned it to be this one all along.

However the Principles of Nibiru were a bit more aggressive of a synchronicity. Those I quite literally felt compelled by and after writing them I realized they were nearly the antithesis of Enuma Ellish. So I used the Enuma Ellish to open the Mythos. The 7 Principles became an anti-creation myth in this sense.

Another example was the entire narrative, I wrote it in pieces. And felt it had to mirror the Principles. So I deliberately crafted the narrative around the principles. The wild part: I had no idea how it was supposed to end!

I followed the impulses and synchronicities to write the whole thing. Until I found myself in the center of this labyrinth and suddenly it went dry.

The magic slipped. I felt like Arreadne cut the thread. I was stuck in the labyrinth for days. 

I had no idea what was to become of me or my psychopomp muse. But that was part of the experience. I literally struggled through the meaning of it all!

Interviewer:

That’s fascinating — the creative drought aligning perfectly with the narrative moment when the thread goes slack.

Let me ask this next one with that in mind:

When the “magic slipped” and you were stranded in the center — no ending, no thread, no guidance — what part of you was actually being tested?

Was it your belief in the metaphysics you were invoking, your trust in the unconscious process, or something more personal ?

Brian: 

Well, I don’t want to reveal too much of it. But, the descent of Hellas was what the Greeks called "Katabasis." Modern theology reserves such concepts for postmortem torment. Akin to "Hell," but to the ancient mind it was very much a living process. One where a woman entered Katabasis post-partum, or where the creative Orpheus attempted to revive his lost love only to lose her again. 

Dissolution of Katabasis may be comparable to modern definition of depression. A state of ego shedding where the soul is galvanized and reborn, if only one should find their way out. 

My descent was willing. It was not depression in a clinical sense but something that defined my perception of self ever afterwards.

Jung would call it individuation or integration of the shadow.

I think it was like a strange little ego death. 

Interviewer: 

You describe your descent not as pathology, but as a chosen katabasis — a deliberate ego-shedding. What part of your former self didn’t survive that process, and what part emerged that you’d never encountered before?

Brian:

My relationship to chaos has forever changed. The Hindu called order “maya” as it was an illusion. Everything we see is Maya. 

Plato said our world was a replica of a greater one, a false facsimile. 

The gnostics say the universe we know is generated by a false god, a Demi urge, an imitation of the real.

And while I think all that is arbitrary, they all scratch the same premise: chaos is the substrate of the universe. Order is finite, and happenstance. 

A hundred years ago philosophers struggled with this. They called it nihilism. Neitzche was quite literally bed ridden and miserable. Lovecraft went paranoid and wrote an entire mythology. Dostoyevski struggled with the loss of meaning too. This was a major zeitgeist of late 19th century philosophy as communication systems were coming online and suddenly the introduction of Eastern psychology was collapsing the western mind. 

These philosophers, and many more were tormented by the existential dread, that we may be reduced to something so, insignificant. The advancement of science unthroned religion, and it tore a gaping hole in the convictions of the western mind. 

Yet in the east, chaos wasn’t a taboo concept, something yet to integrate, it was a part of the Tao for millennia. The western psyche felt integration with a model steeped in nihilism would be the impairment of individualized psyche.

Hellas was this and more, perhaps instead of denying these concepts it integrates them with a new found respect for the finality that what is certain: the present. 

Interviewer: 

So in a sense, Hellas didn’t drag you into nihilism — it gave you a way to stand inside it without collapsing.

Let me sharpen the angle a bit:

You talk about chaos as substrate, order as temporary scaffolding, and the present as the only certainty. How did accepting that—really accepting it—change the way you live day-to-day?

Not philosophically, but practically:
What did you stop clinging to? What became lighter? What became heavier?

Brian:

Look, I don’t write anything to be prescriptive. If you want self help books this isn’t for you. But if you want to learn, challenge yourself and really pressure test the paradigms you inherit, they’ll I’d invite you to read Hellas. 

Nothing became heavier, in fact it took me considerable time to return to the present and not feel as if everything I do was futile, despite how much I said I had a new respect for the present. Nihilism humbles, purifies and eventually eradicates all.

I can’t offer anything that will last forever. But I can try to make meaningful connections with those I interact with. I appreciate the need for connection, and quit taking some of the  little things for granted.

I really can’t guarantee it’s any more profound than that. Life’s impermanent is the point. But I’m no guru. I’m just someone with a tendency to destabilize his own state of mind —willfully. To what greater purpose that serves- is beyond me! I think it’s what some of us are born to do. To prevent complacency.

Interviewer:

Fair enough — no prescriptions, no guru mantle. Just someone who went into the labyrinth on purpose and came back changed.

Let’s take it in a direction a reporter would naturally go next:

If Fatherdom mapped order and Hellas mapped dissolution, what emotional tone were you living in during the writing of Hellas?

Not the philosophy — the atmosphere.

Were you writing from awe? agitation? exhilaration? fear?
Or was it more like a kind of calm madness — a steady willingness to keep peeling away even when you didn’t know what would be left?

Brian:

I was nearly grief stricken. I was constantly looking at artwork and listening to music. I listened to Dark Sanctuary on repeat for most of my typing as it had no lyrics in English and was easy to focus. But that gothic ethereal music was very much the vibe. 

I felt like Ophelia, dead and floating in decaying flowers. It was tragic, yes but peaceful in a sense. 

My artist who did Fatherdom, had decided that another book was not something that he wished to commit to. There was no blowout. Just reevaluating priorities. Prior to writing Hellas, I hadn’t drawn or conducted art, however I found myself compelled to do the artwork. You could say it was a healthy push. He did fantastic work for the first book but suddenly I felt compelled to create a companion piece and I truly felt it would only be worth if it had art as well. 

So I taught myself how to use ink, and learned charcoal and graphite.

I started painting. 

At first I started making sigils. The glyphs on the back covers. 

Then, with some practice I began the tarot cards. They aren’t perfect but they captured the ambiance of the book. Maybe that imperfection is appropriate. 

It’s mystical, a tad apocalyptic and deeply disorienting. In the end I’m glad I committed to the artwork for it as it completes the message. If you dabble into the tarot aspect and what each card implies, the chapters they pertain to are very relevant. But this inference is implied. it adds to the atmosphere of Hellas. 

Interviewer:

That’s the first time you’ve described the emotional landscape without the armor of analysis — grief, stillness, gothic calm, and a kind of self-initiated alchemy through art.

Here’s the next question — simple, direct, and meant to draw out the human heartbeat behind the work:

When you look at the artwork you created for Hellas — the sigils, the charcoal, the tarot forms — do you see them as illustrations of the book, or as artifacts of the state you were in while writing it?

In other words:
Are they about Hellas, or are they what was left of you after passing through her?

Brian:

It sort of works on varying levels. But mostly it invites the reader to be analytical of what exactly is happening. It’s not a dense read but there’s a lot implied in the white space of the book. 

It has almost the same amount of pages as Fatherdom with half the word count. 

So there’s so much to be felt by the gravity without pedantic arguments and lavish language. 

Interviewer:

That’s a very writerly answer — and a telling one.
You’re basically saying the art, the spacing, the silence, the negative space… they’re part of the architecture, not decoration.

Here’s the next concise question, following that thread:

If the white space does as much work as the text, what did you want the reader to feel in those silences?

Not what they should think —
what emotional pressure did you want the empty space itself to exert?

Brian:

Each chapter yields a different insight. 

I wanted the burden of Atlas to sit heavy without closure. The dutiful pride and persistence of Sisyphus to overwhelm. The hollow ache of love lost to haunt. The poppy field to show up in dreams. 

Interviewer:

So the silences weren’t pauses — they were echoes.
Echoes of the very things the mythic figures could never resolve.

Let me keep this tight and inquisitive:

When you wrote those moments — Atlas collapsing, Sisyphus grinding on, Eos grieving in a valley of poppies — were you trying to give the reader your emotional burden, or were you trying to let them discover their own?

In other words:
Is Hellas meant to transfer the weight, or mirror it?

Brian:

I couldn’t say. 

It’s a meditation of finality, I guess we should ask ourselves why pain feels like endurance and to abruptly end euphoria too soon would be a shame. Our relationship to temporal limits is conditional. Hellas celebrates both the vicissitudes and fleeting moments of bliss. 

Interviewer:

That’s clean and honest — and it points to something essential in the text.

Here’s the next precise question, building off exactly what you just said:

If Hellas is a meditation on finality and the conditional nature of our highs and lows, what do you think readers misunderstand most about chaos when they first encounter it?

Not philosophically —
psychologically.

Brian:

I think it’s typical for people to seek comfort in binary frameworks. There are good guys and bad guys. Heaven and hell. And prior to Hellas I would have considered that chaos and order were like two ends of a magnet. Like two opposing forces that pressed against one another. 

However I think now it’s much different. Without sounding cultish, I think my current perception of chaos is the closet I’ve ever come to a concept of what “God” may or may not be, to me, at least.

Interviewer:

That’s not cultish — that’s consistent with the entire architecture of Hellas.
A reporter would frame it this way: you’re not worshipping chaos, you’re recognizing it as substrate rather than opponent.

Here’s the next tight question, aimed directly at that shift:

If chaos is the closest thing you’ve found to a concept of “God,” what does that do to the idea of meaning?

Does meaning become something we construct, something we discover, or something we momentarily witness before it dissolves again? 

Brian:

Watts once said something to the effect of: imagine you were a god and every night you slept you could dream you were something different. Every night, an infinite stream of ideas. 

If we were all connected, if we are all made up of the same stuff, each life sort of becomes an expression of what “could be.”

It’s not that chaos is meaningless, it’s that we see meaning where there there “could be” meaning. 

Interviewer:

That’s a striking distinction — not meaning as illusion, but meaning as possibility realized for a moment.

Here’s the next question, concise and pointed:

If meaning appears wherever “there could be meaning,” what made Hellas worth creating in the first place?

What made this particular expression — this descent, this meditation, this book — something that needed to manifest instead of remaining one more unexpressed possibility?

Brian:

Because- why not? 

Had it been done before? 

Every idea begs to be birthed, few manifest. Time will tell if the rest of the universe agrees with my convictions to apply the effort to produce it

Interviewer:

That’s exactly the kind of unapologetic honesty most writers avoid — and it actually sharpens the philosophical point.

Here’s the next question:

If “why not?” is the genesis, and time is the judge, what would count as success for Hellas in your eyes?

Not sales, not attention —
what outcome would make you feel that birthing this particular idea was justified?

Brian:

Well, I could never expect everybody to align with it. Because that’s not how ideology works. Rather: new ideas disrupt, destabilize and make still waters turbulent. 

I’d be foolish to think that everybody who read it would feel some sort of alignment to what I have gestured here. And I think I’d be naïve to think that I wouldn’t be met with some resistance here. 

But I tell you what I really need, just a small cohort, the ones that almost needed it to be written for them. I want them to see it and say "finally somebody put this to words."

I wanna be the one to make it make sense for them. To be able to articulate nuance is certainly a gift, it would be profane to not express how incredibly grateful I am for what I have accomplished here on paper. 

But it is incredibly lonely to birth what was essentially a mythic universe within oneself and then have it sit on quiet shelves. Nobody really reads anymore. Honestly I don’t even have much time myself to read. I mostly listened to audiobooks. 

I’m currently working on a couple other books that I’ll release in the future. But this one will always be very near and dear to me. The reality is, I don’t know as though it’s the best entry point into my work…

This tends to be the type of thing that somebody might gravitate towards after reading one of my short stories that I have yet to come. I’ve been working on an entire canon of them.

I think they might be a gateway, or a single serving drug. Hellas is like a coma, not a quick hit.

I just don’t want to be alone with it anymore… 

Interviewer:

That’s the clearest emotional center you’ve given yet.

Here’s the next question, short and direct, aimed right at that loneliness:

If Hellas was a descent you took alone, what kind of reader would you trust to walk into it with you now?

Not demographically —
psychologically.

Who is the person you hope finds this book and thinks, “finally, someone said it”?

Brian: 

Well, it’s destabilizing by nature. Imagine stripping away meaning, to see if there was any meaning beneath it at all. That’s what this book does.

I don’t write self-help books. Time may reveal that I do the opposite, though I don’t mean to. 

Just because somebody builds a labyrinth doesn’t mean they are obligated to escort you through it. It would be my advice that one should arrive to their rightful conclusion if they are an alignment with their inner voice. I’ve come to learn that this "innate Will" will always lead you back to where you belong. But sometimes it just happens to lead you right through devastation in order to appreciate the other side.

So I suppose I would exercise some caution, this book isn’t for everybody. Perhaps it should be for nobody. 

There tends to be facets of the psyche and society that we suppress. This book was an integration of all of that. And it works on multiple levels. 

Interviewer:

That’s beautifully put — and it gives us the perfect place for one more pointed question.

Here it is, clean and without ornament:

If Hellas integrates the parts we suppress — individually and culturally — what do you think people fear most about encountering their own suppressed side?

Not symbolically.
Not mythically.
Humanly.

What’s the thing in them that resists the descent you willingly chose?

Brian:

Simple: Losing the former self. Horus gave new eyes to Osiris. Christ was reborn.

These are the trophies of Katabasis. 

But not everybody returns with the Boon. 

Look at modern drug culture in the United States. People die every day because they don’t find their way back, but you don't think they have unspoken testimonies of lucid reckoning?

Surely we see those that do find new meaning, tend to be reborn. Whether it’s faith, or some sort of newfound purpose, the old bits of them are burned away, and they are galvanized into a new, more meaningful, and intentional being as a result. Unfortunately, not everyone makes it back. 

That's one of the reasons I refuse to promote Hellas. It would be reckless. 

There’s risk to this alchemy. I think naturally the soul seeks to indulge in this sort of restorative cycle intuitively. So, to be quite honest, I think many don’t need this book in order to experience the same type of thing. And for some, maybe it is prescriptive. 

Interviewer:

That lands with a clarity most people avoid:
the real fear isn’t chaos —
it’s not coming back.

Let me give you a final question that cleanly closes the arc without spoiling anything in Hellas:

If losing the former self is the real risk of descent, what part of you do you think readers will recognize in themselves — even if they never take the full journey you did?

Short, human, and honest:
What piece of you is universal enough to meet them where they are?

Brian:

Jung wrote a lot on what he called "Archetypes." This terminology has been central to a lot of my studies. It became the basis of myth when viewed through a modern contemporary and clinical lens. 

I tend to think that these archetypes are performative masks. And we may try on them all from time to time, or favor some. However, at the heart of it all, we stand witness to our own breaking and becoming. 

It’s hard to define what’s at the core of it all. It seems to be just pure consciousness, a sort of "Will" that knows what it wants. And it only uses the performative masks to manifest it. I referred to it as "The Witness" in my forthcoming work.

But it seems to be a key central philosophy in a lot of esoteric studies. Crowley called it the Will. Peterson would refer to it as the old prophets did: "the still small voice." 

These are two dramatically different and polar figures. And neither of them would study the other. Yet they speak of the same things with different language. 

Colhello spoke of this in The Alchemist. He said that before someone starts their journey, they almost always stated their intention into the universe. And as they unconsciously move towards that goal, the closer they become, the entire universe, will align with them. 

That’s what I felt like when writing this. Like I had made it an abundant point to produce something to its nature, and in the end, nature synchronized. It’s quite fascinating what will manifest itself when we stay true to our most inner instincts and stop resisting our calling.

Interviewer:

That’s a strong closing insight — and it also answers the question without forcing it.

If someone finishes Hellas and asks you, “What was the point of all this?”, what’s the shortest, truest answer you could give without betraying the work?

Brian:

I think it would be contrary for me to attempt to extract meaning for somebody else. But I will say that the book offers insights on a variety of levels. To say which one of those meanings can be relevant to any individual, would arbitrary.

So instead, I’d do an Uno reverse, and ask him what part of the book was the most unsettling? And maybe ask the reader to sit in that space and dwell upon it. 

Interviewer:

Perfect.

So rather than give them the meaning, you’d hand them back the discomfort — and let the part that unsettled them do the talking.
That’s a rare kind of confidence in a reader’s inner world.

Interview complete.