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Friday, January 2, 2026

Tales of the Sanctum: Era of the Spellbound - Episode 9: What Faust Hath Found (Published January 2, 2026 16:00 EST)

 Despite this storyline taking place mostly in Shepperton off the Thames, United Kingdom, it is entirely written in Moss Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


I am Brian Joseph Johns and this is Shhhh! Digital Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.com or https://www.shhhhdigital.ca in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701.


[Spellbound - Siouxie And The Banshees]


Do you like enigmatic characters, engrossing story, magic and the ever atemporal weave?

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Chapters

  1. The First Session (Finished January 2, 2026 EST)
  2. Forever Live, Forever Die... coming soon...

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I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

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In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.


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Shhhh! Digital Media

Brian Joseph Johns


Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:

Tales of the Sanctum: Era of the Spellbound - Episode 9: What Faust Hath Found

by Brian Joseph Johns





The First Session


On the floor before them lay a carefully painted circle, born of paint that Mila had specifically mixed for its colour and reflectivity, though the shade of the circle itself was white for all intense purposes.


There within was a carefully crafted pentagram, whose five points aligned to the points on a compass, with the tip of the pentagram pointing northward and towards the star Polaris. The pentagram itself was painted with red paint, made from the same reflective material as the white.


At each of the points of the pentagram were a series of concentric circles each of whose five colours reflected the shade of differing elements, with each colour representing multiple significance with regard to the origins of such symbol.


At each point in the pentagram were situated five candles, each one representing one of the five stations of the pentagram throughout their various origins. The candles were wide bodied and slow burning, and flickered gently in the darkness of Mila's basement.


The walls too were covered in symbol, though nothing there upon the walls ever repeated. Not even once. However, it still held a sort of cohesion. Of self-similarity by way of style and design, that spoke volumes about the artist more so than the symbols there scribed upon the walls. Embossed in the form of a thick oil paint, and whose shadows moved in the candle light.


Mila sat at the point of the pentagram and its northern-most tip. To her right was Shaela and to her left was Nelony. The two sat facing their own corresponding points of the pentagram, Shaela's being that of an orange hue, while Nelony's was that of green.


Beside Nelony (to her left) sat Neville, the point of his pentagram of a yellow tone, while beside Shaela and to her right sat Wes, whose element colour was blue.


"All of the candles are lit... what's next?" asked Mila of Nelony, who within her lap held an old book, written upon wax embalmed papyrus and bound in a woolen cover crafted from goat's fleece.


"...can you tell me what that might be?" Nelony carefully passed the book to Mila, who examined the line pictographs in question.


"...it mean to hold? as in one's hands?" Mila examined the pictograph, trying to make heads or tails of it.


"Let me see it..." Shaela reached for the book, which Mila then handed to her.


"Its not hands, its the alchemical symbol for shield. To protect, but because its preceded by this symbol, which is probably what she meant as to hold close, the pair of symbols means to cherish or sanctify one's offerings..." Shaela explained to them, attempting to pass the book back to Mila.


" Why don't you keep it then, and act as our interpreter?" Nelony asked what she'd initially asked them before they started their first session.


"Because we agreed that I was going to act as the keeper of protections. So far, I'm the only one of us as far as we know, who's traveled beyond this plane of existence and lived to tell about it..." Shaela justified her claim over her tasking.


"Susan slash Miana too. She... they've been beyond this plane. Miana has been to many from what I gather of her ramblings," Nelony responded.


"But we, of our circle. The ones who've been chosen to rebuild this thing of which we have little or no idea, are the ones who must do it, and I believe that it is in our best interests if I act as the holder of protections. The one who keeps us against outside threats from beyond..." Shaela defended her position and role within their coven.


"But we need a translator, and you seem to have a natural knack for the symbols... far more so than I?" Nelony argued her point.


"I have a solution. I'll handle the translations. I am an artist and I have a degree in interpretive symbolism. I've just never seen symbolism like this before. Its definitely of an esoteric nature, preceding modern pictographs, though it does share slight symbolism with Middle Eastern, and Oriental alchemical graphs, and if I took it even further, I can see origins going back to Kanji and pre-Kanji symbols. I just need a few weeks with this book," Mila looked to Nelony, who nodded in agreement.


"Fair enough. That leaves me then as...?" Nelony asked Mila.


"Ambassador of natural affairs," Neville suggested.


"That's brilliant. It always astounds me how one moment you can be a complete and utter arse, and the next you come up with a selfless appreciation of your fellows like that," Wes responded to Neville, though no jealousy intent as much so as truthfulness.


"Uhhhh. Thanks, I think..." despite Neville's sense of wit, some of Wes' better cloaked insinuations often got in beneath his radar.


"I'm feeling a bit warm right now," Nelony fanned her face with her hand, smiling at Neville.


"Good. If I need guidance, I'll be turning to you for it. I think the important thing is that we have to work together," Mila summed it all up.


"And your interpretation of the symbols then?" Shaela asked her.


"Its as you said. These two symbols together indicate the sanctifying of an offer. We've all put something in the circle of great meaning to us, and symbols are nothing without meaning. They are the empty husks and shells that some mistakenly worship absent of meaning. Putting the symbol ahead of meaning. We're to give six minutes of contemplation, before we start and after we've finished a session. We must contemplate the importance and meaning of our offerings, and the place they hold in the overall picture of what we're trying to achieve, this temple of whatever it is that we're creating..." Mila explained to them.


"Very well. Let us begin the six minutes of our contemplation... Six. One for each of the stars of the constellation Lyra. Take the hands of the people to your left and right," Mila smiled, taking Shaela's and Nelony's hands in her own.


They closed their eyes and contemplated the meaning of their offerings, which each in essence were something connected to people they cared about greatly. People they'd known. People they'd lost. People who in the greater scheme of things were essential to the people that they'd each eventually ended up becoming and people who were important to what they were trying to achieve.


When the six minutes were at an end, as signified by Mila's mechanical music box chimes, they released each other's hands and began their session.


"We, the Wytches of this temple, do hereby begin this session of the night, seeking to bring wisdom and knowledge to our conduct and hope to the future, so that we may use our abilities for the betterment of this Earth, and the lives thereupon," Mila spoke both for and as them.


"Our first order of the night should be the formalize what it is that we are called," Shaela suggested.


"True.  We've just sanctified our first session in honour of those who inspired us to such ends. Let us give it a name so that it becomes what he hope it to be," Nelony agreed.


"Sanctified it? That's a good start. We could call ourselves the Sanctifiers?" Neville suggested.


"Sounds too zealous, and too imposing of ideas and beliefs," Shaela responded.


"Sanctify means to make sacred. To be of worth and importance greater than oneself alone," Wes explained to them.


"Them what is the Latin for a sacred place?" asked Nelony.


"Sanctum," Shaela responded.


"Does it have to be Latin? I mean, aren't we imposing some kind of stigmatic disposition of ownership or empire upon this if we use Latin?" asked Nelony.


"True, some might be offended and immediately make assumptions about it," Neville reminded them.


"So you're saying that you'd never trust a Doctor because the entire etymology of anatomy and ailment in Western medicine is named via the Latin language?" Wes grilled Neville.


"No! I'm just saying that some might see it as authoritarian," Neville pushed his point.


"That's what it is to worship the symbol, before its meaning. A stigma that is arrived at by completely ignoring its meaning, and only taking into consideration its outer shell. Assuming that because its Roman of origin, that its an empirical attempt at secret authority. That's discarding the meaning, and idolizing the symbol. That's what we want to avoid," Mila explained to them, having spent many hours contemplating the meanings hidden in her artwork and how it might be both praised or prejudiced as a result of the difference between symbol, and meaning.


"I like Sanctum. It literally means a sacred place or sacred idea," Wes backed up the idea.


"I agree," Mila nodded in approval.


"I don't. I think we're discarding an entire idea by embracing something that could potentially be signified as authoritarian," Neville folded his arms.


"I like the meaning, but I sort of see Neville's side. We have to be cautious. What's in a name? Everything, if we're going to be confronting the kind of ignorance that arises from those who act on the stigma of symbol without the knowledge of its meaning. We have to choose carefully, because we want to minimize that effect initially so that people don't just automatically distrust us," Nelony explained to them, perhaps more capable of fulfilling Neville's perspective than was he.


"That's two and two. Shaela? What do you think?" asked Mila of Shaela.


"I'm descended from the same people as Boudicca. Isn't it apparent? We were essentially eviscerated by authoritarians, and yet, somehow through it all into what we became, we maintained the origins and dignity of our ancestors, proving that empire isn't always erasing its own tracks, though there are some people and ideologies nowadays who are erasing their tracks and others from history, who have yet to be held accountable. We as a people still exist within our society, and that is sacred to me. I like Sanctum. It protects the idea of that which is sacred to us all. A common to us, we who live upon this Aerth, as we so used to refer to this world of ours," Shaela gave her nod of approval and that of the Welsh, who at one point in distant history were the enemy of the Romans.


"Are we in agreement?" Mila turned to Nelony, and then cautiously to Neville, who folded his arms as if he were protecting a resentment within himself.


"I think Shaela' argument in support of Sanctum is pretty convincing, and though I can see Neville's perspective quite clearly, I think that it might be clinging to the very ignorance that we're trying to undo," Nelony looked to Neville with a gentle smile, perhaps pleading with him.


"Alright. What choice do I have then but to go along with you," Neville spoke in a chiding manner.


"Do you, or don't you. We all have to be in agreement about this, though we have the right to go forward with the majority. We're only doing this because we respect your input to this and if we can't solve it here, how can we solve anything out there?" Mila reminded him.


"My parents grew up in a west London neighbourhood where there'd be fights every day between the Catholics and the Protestants. My parents were devout Protestants, and held a lot of angst against Catholics and a lot of other people and religions as well. But us, we were always perfect. Like someone or something was always stoking the flames of conflict and keeping us on edge. When they tried to explain it to me, I couldn't understand. I only knew that if I let the Catholics win for the day, that I'd be less the son of my parents and more the heel. Like I'd let the family down, and that has stuck with me for my entire life so far. So this idea of letting Latin win the name of this thing we're making... It just... hurts! I know its not right, but it hurts..." Neville responded to Mila, looking to Nelony, Shaela and Wes each in turn.


"Like you're the only one? We went through the same too any time we went to Church. If it wasn't the Protestants, then it was the Muslims or the Jews... the Buddhists and Taoists... The Atheists and Agnostics... It was always something, but it was never us. Until one day, I confronted someone in our Church about it. Told him I didn't want to hear it anymore. He left me with a black eye, and I never went to Church ever again. We can't have these kinds of problems if we're really going to do this, and that means that we have to be better, and we have to ensure that whoever we bring into this are better. Not taking advantage of the fact that we've got these standards, and tricking us into breaking them to make themselves look like perfect angels and vice versa. Making sure that we keep protect ourselves against those secretly trying to stoke the flames of conflict, and they're out there. We all know that now. That if we create something, and they stoke us to react in a way that contradicts that, it no longer belongs to us. We have to protect ourselves against that, and make others aware of it and the impostors doing that. Like Mila said, putting the symbol ahead of its meaning. We have to rise above that, so that issues of religion and belief are not barriers and we are able to deal with each other on the basis of our mystery and mysticism as a people. Of the things of this universe that we're trying to understand, in the harmony of those myriad ways, towards the ends of a future. Of peace... " Wes explained to them, clearly as passionate about a solution as was Neville, despite their being on opposite sides of the fence from each other in terms of the origins of their beliefs.


Wes being Catholic and Neville being Protestant.


"...of a Sanctum... Seclorum," Mila suddenly realized their destiny.


"...a Sacred place of the Secular," Shaela translated for them.


"...for the people of the Aerth," Nelony added her touch, borrowing from Shaela's namesake for the planet Earth.


With all due respect, I am neither a Freemason, or a Rosicrucian or a Gnostic or a Templar. I am not a member of the Salvation Army and never have been. I'm an Atheist that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism and Paganism. I'm also not a Knight of any kind, nor am I seeking to be. 

Years ago, when I used to work for a company called Ferretina Film Production Ltd, I had a noble goal of that kind, but now I am certainly not seeking any such thing, because I can see easily how people take the history of others, by creating situations where they contradict their own history at some point in their future. As if you lose your own history by later contradicting it. Yes, there are cults and ideologies who do take the history of others and cannibalize it, as if in eating someone else's history, it makes the original person disappear and be replaced by the person who ate it.

Most of the time you see rants, here on Shhhh! Digital Media, is because of the fact that a cult spies on my computer as I write, and then harasses me in specific ways so that it seems that I contradict my own writing. The cult doing this then gives the credit for my writing to other people they're trying to promote and all of this operates according to colour symbolism and with the goal of stealing the efforts of others and crediting them to other people, while harassing the people that they're stealing from to ruin them.

I'm exposing this. All of it.


To be continued in Era of the Spellbound - Episode 9: What Faust Hath Found


Credits and attribution:


Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts

Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history

Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)

Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art

Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion 
Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility

Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools

Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!

Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

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