Sandalphon

“Listen to the angels scream.
Round your body cages rost.
So warm the venom in your veins,
You are there?

Are you ready to dream, my sweet boy?
Are you ready to dream, my sweet child?
Come with me and taste your flesh, boy.
Are you ready to sleep?

Do you wanna have a dream or two?”
[ Lullaby - Leandra ]

Duke Sandalphon is the current Second-in-Command of Cherubim under Great Angel Gabriel’s leadership. His position is rather ambiguous and definitely unique, as he’s neither a Fallen Angel like the Courtiers of Hell, nor is an undercover agent like Prince Absinthion, but has nevertheless a place saved in the Court as a Duke. This is because, due to his nature and story, he sympathizes for Hell and, among the Great Angels, is the farthest from the Grace of God, almost on the verge of his Fall.
Duke Sandalphon was created at the time of the Great Heavenly War along with his twin brother, Great Angel Metatron, the current Chief of Seraphim, as the key to the Tree of Life, God’s new system of power made aptly to prevent further seditions in Heaven or massive attacks from Hell: he divided the immense power of Heaven into ten Sephiroth and sealed them in the eight most powerful Angels who took his side during the Great Heavenly War, plus the two newborn twins, in order to prevent it from being accessible by anyone but himself and his most trusted Angels. Within Duke Sandalphon is sealed Malkuth, the lowest Sephira. Malkuth, the Kingdom, represents the foundation of Heaven’s powers and the basis of the ties that keep the whole Tree of Life together, without whom it would collapse. Moreover, it acts as a shield absorbing the unholy spiritual energy of Hell and the Sublunar World and preventing it from corrupting the lowest Skies.
Despite the key-role of Malkuth and, thus, Duke Sandalphon in maintaining Heaven’s order, the implication of carrying the lowest Sephira within are rather disastrous in practical terms. For instance, differently from the other Great Angels, who can draw from their Sephiroth’s powers to boost their own, Duke Sandalphon has to sustain Malkuth in order for the Tree of Life to function; thus, despite having huge powers, he can access only a part of them and is subsequently assigned to relatively low-grade duties, often regarding the Sublunar World. Among other things, he’s the one in charge of collecting Mankind’s prayers into light orbs and pass them on to the higher Angels, and is often sent off to the Sublunar World to inhabit Mortals’ bodies or to be summoned by them if needed, in a totally similar way to Demonic possession or invocation. To reinforce his ever-waining powers, Duke Sandalphon resolved to start feeding on the Mortal’s nightmares, whose energy is unholy and consequently more compatible with the one Malkuth absorbs from the lower levels of the Universe; in turn, this further hastens his corruption process, making him subtly scorned by fellow Angels and an easy prey for Emperor Lucifer’s flattery. However, he does not openly side with Hell, as his downfall would have severe (albeit unknown) consequences on his twin brother’s very existence: despite the latter barely acknowledging it, Duke Sandalphon harbours indeed a mixture of resentment and deep affection towards his brother, which binds him into not to give in to Hell... yet.

Sandalphon: development and symbolism

Credits:
Photo, concept, styling, make up, frame design: GothicNarcissus
Manipulation: GothicNarcissus and LunarShore
Model, hair: Dirk Alexander
Additional resources: Amptone-Stock (textures), DeviousRose (sparkle texture), Mithos-2000 (wings).
Special thanks to Kira Novak for helping me with the Hebrew lettering.
 
The first thing I want to say about this work is that I want to dedicate it to a very dear friend of mine, Soy Mallika, for her endless support to my Infernal Lords series, for helping me take a clear decision about this particular character and, more generally, for reminding me I have to stand for what I want and is worth to me.

The second is that this has been the most difficult Infernal Lord so far, both in conception and realisation, and it’s been constantly troubled throughout its development.

I will say it straightaway: Sandalphon is by no means listed as Demon by any source. He’s a very important Archngel in both Jewish and Christian traditions and there is basically no instance of him being a Fallen Angel. The only account of him being somewhat of an evil creature is a plot twist in Kaori Yuki’s Angel Sanctuary (woops, spoiler!) and that’s it. So, apart from Yuki-Sensei’s work being so influential on mine, why did I decide to include such a potentially controversial character to the bunch despite the fact that I always wanted to stick the most I could to the “official” sources and not to depend on Angel Sanctuary too much? Why did I take even more freedom than I did for Barbelo, which I already considered a risky move, this time?

The answer is very complex and multiple factors contributed to my final decision. The first is most obviously Kaori Yuki’s rendition of the character, which is simply brilliant: childishly cruel, totally manipulative, with a sort of inferiority complex towards his twin brother Metatron, and most certainly a miserable victim of God’s schemes, it’s a creepy character that gets his fair share of attention; I was also fascinated by his nature of “Nightmare Eater”, which was something I wanted to include in some character of project.

Sandalphon from Kaori Yuki’s Angel Sanctuary.

The “official” chartacter I discovered thanks to Kaori Yuki’s was interesting on his own and I particularly loved the fact that he’s openly depicted as having a twin brother, the aforementioned Metatron, even in the kabbalistic sources; this made him somewhat closer to humanity in my eyes, together with the fact that he’s linked to Malkhut, the lowest sephira of the Tree of Life, and carries on many duties in the Material World. He even goes as far as inhabiting (basically possessing) mortals and being summoned in a rather demonic kind of way. So, all in all, he’s an easy character to bring on the verge of his fall.

Moreover, on the one hand Soy Mallika did some further researches for me and found no interesting alternative for a “dream eater” kind of Demon, and on the othershe reminded me that, as I’m not a believer anyways, all of my characters differ from their “official” counterparts, so what’s the point in worrying at all? And since she said she would love to see Sandalphon in a Grimoire or among the Fallen ones, I was glad to fully accept the challenge and give her this “gift”.

Finally, a general plot for a possible Infernal Lords-related novel is starting to take shape, and a character like Sandalphon would be a very useful one, so why not? And there I was, ready to shoot.

Even after I finally overcame doubts and conceptual issues, the story of this Infernal Lord kept being plagued by mishappenings, difficulties and random troubles. First of all, when I accidentally dropped my external hard drive, some of my files got damaged and the PSD with the background for Sandalphon, which I did long before taking the photo, was one of them (actually, the only IL-related file that did not open). I did export the full-resolution jpg image before, but I eventually noticed that the names of the Sephiroth were spelled backwards, so I had to do it all over again, eventually to a much better result. Aftermaths, I found the perfect model in Dirk Alexander: with his blond, flowing hair, he really had something of a badass angel, which was what I was looking for. Unfortunately, it took us many months and several attempts to finally arrange a meeting (coincidentally, quite similarly to Abaddon we first talked about it in July and eventually shot in early December), so the shooting was delayed twice before we actually did it. The shooting itself went quite fine and dandy, after some time for the make up it only took a couple of test-shoots and two or three actual attempts to finally get what I wanted. And then, postproduction started and further problems rose.
I have been very ambitious with this work: the colourful yet abstract background made it rather difficult to effectively blend the model in, the white wings worsened the problem, and the bright Malkhut orb floating among his hands made the lighting quite tricky to achieve. I started the postproduction straightaway while at LunarShore’s house, and this time he did physically help me manipulate the image with his tablet, in particular for the whole light and shadows ordeal (so part of the credits go to him). With the lights set right, I thought most of the work was done, but no, just no, because the blending was painfully difficult. I kept working on the manipulation for the next month and a half and was never totally satisfied. During this time I had to change the wings twice because they looked super-fake, tried different combinations of lights and shadows to blend the model with the background before settling for a slight halo, and changed about a million textures to see what would make the image work as a whole. To no avail, the work still lacked cohesion and depth.
Again, it was LunarShore who saved me by suggesting that, rather than a neutral texture, I added something either hazy or sparkly. I found a texture that worked in both ways, and finally, after ages, the image started working, I got what I wanted and was kind of satisfied with the result. Seriously, I do think DeviousRose’s Ice Galaxy texture is what saved the whole work – which, by the way, is a monstrous 410 MB PSD file which kills my computer every time I try to open it, compared to the average 110-or-so MB of the other works. And gosh, only Legion took me longer from the shooting to the publication, and only because I had to gather more faces for the spirits.

So, now that I’m finally done (and have ranted about how difficult it was to complete it), let’s talk about the symbolism. As in the continuity of my project Sandalphon’s position is unique, this work is in many aspects an “odd one out” in the project. First of all, a particular emphasis is put on the background (which doesn’t show that much in the final work, but you can see it by clicking on the preview on the right), in which I built the scheme of the Tree of Life except for the lowest Sephira. Indeed, even though I got inspiration for the pose from the idea of Sandalphon collecting the prayers into orbs of light, what he’s holding in the image is actually a physical manifestation of Malkhut, which is how it is in the picture. I was really glad to use Hebrew characters (which simply spell the names of the Sephiroth) as I particularly like them and find them mysterious and elegant (yes, I know that sounds stupid), and had fun with the whole copy-paste process, which proved to be a bit difficult because Photoshop screwed the right-to-left direction and I had to manually compose the words.
Of course, much like Absinthion, Sandalphon has pure-white wings and lacks a Seal, as he’s not a Fallen Angel yet (he’s not even an undercover agent, he’s just… confused, if you will).
Also, this work is unique because, despite its theme colour being fandango, the background itself had two dominant colours and the work as a whole tends more to a bluish hue which, in turn, gives it a more heavenly feeling. Anything but heavenly is the theme song, Lullaby by Leandra, which is more connected to the ambiguous, dream-eating nature of the character.
On a side note, I mentioned a more concrete possibility of a written work inspired by this project. Although I sort of have a long-term plot and I’ve even tried to write down a prologue and a chapter, I can’t really say I’m moving in that direction yet. The details of the plot are still unclear, so it’s something I’m saving for the future. Perhaps after the graphical project is done. Oh, and by the way, this is the twentieth entry out of thirty, so two thirds of the Infernal Lords project are officially done! While waiting for the next work, enjoy a couple of test shoots that turned out particularly nice.

Lilith the Succubus

Princess Lilith from the Court of Pandemonium is kind of a free spirit, and sometimes finds the strict Court rules suffocating; moreover, she shares with the Seven Satans the need to feed on Mortals to strenghten her powers: while the Satans feed on their respective sins, she needs to feed on the virility of men. Thus, to have a taste of her own freedom and to eat, she often flies to the Sublunar World to act as a Succubus, a nightly Demon who seduces men to feed on their energy...

So, this is the miniseries about Lilith, a spin-off of my Infernal Lords project. It’s been a while since I thought of some collateral photo abou my Demons, and with my dear Briar Rose we came up with the idea of representing Lilith in her Succubus side, seducing and feeding on some mortal, who would have been played by her boyfriend Yue. Finally, last time we met we got the right occasion and shot the series. At the beginning I was only thinking of a single shot, namely #4 Lilith: Satisfaction, but just like with Where The Wild Roses Grow, our creativity merged into an intoxicating mixture and we ended up with a little chronological series.
Technically speaking, it was not a piece of cake, as we basically had to create a studio out of nowhere in the bedroom. No mystery about it: the lighting on these photos was done with a common desk lamp, tungsten white balance to dim the hotter tones and selective colour correction in Photoshop, as it was the only way to shoot at 10 pm and get the dramatic light we all wanted (which wouldn’t have worked with natural light from the window). As far as it concerns my part, I’m pretty proud both of the shooting and the postproduction, combining the two things I managed to get exactly the mood I wanted on this series.
A special mention goes to Briar Rose and Yue: they’ve been just amazing on this series. The subject and the situation needed some good acting, rather than mere posing, and they did their job flawlessly, effectively portraying both Lilith and the dying bohemian musician.