Chapter 18
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“It’s been a long time since we shared a bottle of wine together,” said Vitalius, pouring me a dark red glass of Burgundy in his private office later that night. An album by Elementum De Chao was playing in the background, which tended to cut the “auld lang syne” effect a bit considering that the album was literally a recording of Vitalius and his followers murdering somebody, set to bizarre avant garde noise music.
Back in Hennington, MN, I had been out late on many evenings with Professor Andrew Mann, getting drunk and talking till after midnight about the strangest things. Spiritual alchemy, the apocalyptic prophecies of Joachim of Fiore, the sky-worshipping religion of the Mongolian Tengerists, why shamans shouldn’t be called shamans but some other less popular w
