SCP Foundation

It is symbolically related to other archetypal figures that stand at the boundaries between animals, humans, and gods. These similarities may relate to a common origin, or are perhaps merely a manifestation of the monomyth as it relates the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

Traits:
The Lord of Endowments is a divine being and as such is primarily composed of spiritual energy. It has, however, manifested in physical form at least once and has claimed to also have manifested in the distant past. Its last vessel was said to be a giant humanoid with many devices grafted into it. During its last manifestation it had altered a man by installing implants similar to its own who was sent to spread its teachings as its herald.

Nature:
The Lord of Endowments claims not to desire worship or obedience, but instead seeks to rebuild humanity into a new form with the powers of gods. It shows active contempt for human institutions, religions, moral systems and governments. It scorns conservatism of all kinds, and encourages a redefinition of humanity.

History & Associated Parties:
At sometime in the 10th century C.E. the Lord of Endowments manifested somewhere in the Atlas Mountains. It uplifted its herald and began to attract a small group of followers. These followers clashed first with Muslims, who saw them as dangerous apostates and associated the Lord of Endowments with Iblis; then later fought with the Christian Kingdoms of Northern Spain who apparently confused them with Islamic invaders. These teachings spread north into Spain and east throughout North Africa, but little remains of this movement today. The herald was believed to be immortal, but has also been lost to history.

No conventional historical record or even oral histories exist that chronicle these events, and it may be that they were veiled or expunged from human memory¹ by supernatural means.

In 1975, Maria de Guzman began to channel a follower of the Lord of Endowments named Israfil; most of our knowledge comes through him.

The Lord tells us that he has come before. He is that which gave fire to man, and separated us from the animals.

The Lord has sat alone all the long centuries, kept separate from mankind by the jealous gods.

The Lord of Endowments was betrayed by his own herald. The armies of the Caliph Al Hakam² came and dismembered him. They slew all of us who followed him. They destroyed all our works. They rendered us forgotten.³

— Israfil (speaking through Maria de Guzman)

Since then, de Guzman has continued to channel Israfil and has gathered a small following of practitioners who seek apotheosis. They claim that racial memory of the dawn of human sapience as facilitated by the Lord of Endowments is responsible for the myths of the theft of divine fire throughout the world⁴ and associate it with the neo-Ophite serpent of wisdom.

Approach:
De Guzman claims that it is possible to summon the Lord of Endowments into a physical form. This would require a portion of the corpse (which they claim has survived in a secret tomb and is effectively immortal) and a place of power where it had been manifest in the past. She and her fellow devotees of Israfil's revelations are currently searching for both.

It was in the autumn of 1089 A.D. that word had reached the archbishop of Toledo of a cursed cave near a spring in that place, where the Devil had hidden his general, after the battle with León, against the Day of Judgement. It was said that if you went down to the cave, this devil would speak with you, and that some people had done so. So it was that his Grace had summoned me from my hermitage to do battle with this devil and cast him back to hell.

I traveled to the place and while at first the people were afraid to show me, eventually, after I had performed some small miracles and healings, they took me down to the cave. There was a voice there, and it spoke of things that the Church deems heresy, in the manner of that related by Hippolytus from the lectures of Irenaeus, but was not like other devils I had met and I could not, with all my craft, banish it. So instead I called on the bones of the earth, and sealed up the way down to the cave, though I left a channel through which the spring may still flow.

The curious thing, when I returned to that place for the founding of the University at Salamanca⁶, was that no man or woman in that town recalled the story of the devil cave, even those with whom I had spoken with during my earlier visit.
— The Chronicles of The White Monk of Tours⁷

It was there [hiking near the Barrage Sidi el Barrak in Tunisia] that I encountered this curious band of barbary apes⁸. They demonstrated a much higher degree of caution and cooperation than others of the species, and I resolved to attempt to communicate with them. I was surprised to find a single mind, not like the sensual animal semi-consciousnesses that I was expecting, but rather a clear self-identity, somewhat alien, but fully sapient.

This mind was a telepathic gestalt shared by the entire band. It believed that it had existed for two score or more of the lifetimes of its component monkeys, and it may be effectively immortal as long as the apes breed true. At first it was suspicious, but I demonstrated that I was not like other men, and not just for my psychic gifts. It was lonely, having not communicated with any other being for a millennium and soon we became cordial.

The ape-mind shared vague memories of once being an ordinary troop of clever, but pre-sapient beasts. The image of a giant, towering over not just the apes, but humans as well, was quite clear (perhaps as tall as two dozen of the apes stacked one upon the other). This being did something to these particular apes, something both unendurably painful but also transfigurative. Afterwards the apes were one mind, with apprehension and reasoning equal to or greater than that of a human mind.

This being communicated its desire to raise up all things to an even more rarefied level of consciousness, and explained that it had used this band as an experiment. It said that it planned to use some of the same techniques on humanity as well. I asked the band-mind what had happened to this giant, but it did not know, having fled shortly afterwards.

I asked then why, if it has such human-like or even superhuman-like faculty it has chosen to live in the wild like a simple band of apes. It replied that it has in that millennium seen the works of men, the rise and fall of kingdoms, war after war, the over-logging of its forest, the world's endless parade of self-inflicted suffering and that it could not see the point. I allowed that it was probably wiser than we are.
— Sean Wexford, In the Secret Kingdom of Dido

I don't know if this is related, but I was a consultant for the Pilferers⁹ in the late 80s. They found something¹⁰¹¹ in a desert in Spain, back in '88. I only got a look at some of it, but what I saw was the arm of a giant, with a complex prosthetic hand grafted onto it. The thing was just oozing power, we did aetheric imaging and aura studies, and both the arm and the prosthetic radiated EVE, the prosthetic more than the flesh, but both were pretty active. I was NDA-geased of course, but I guess those guys never banked on going under, and the contract ensorcelment lapsed when they closed up shop.
— Bill Pastor, Choronzon Consulting

So it was, that I, Rashid Keeper of the Lion Gates¹²¹³ was approached by Maria de Guzman about the Lord of Endowments. She had found the place of His last coming, and there a disciple had built a house. In that house the disciple had children, and so forth, for all the long generations, all secretly in service to the Uplifter of Men. She had approached the disciple dwelling there now, Ahmed, and he was willing to let her come there. She asked me to assist her in calling Him into a vessel again, that He might give us His gifts and improve us. I had since acquired a familiar, a rat, bred from those that the Pilferers had crossed with the flesh of the Lord. So we gathered there to call upon Him.

We had some little warning, by way of cartomancy, and we expected trouble, but not with the fury that descended upon us. They tore through our guards as a storm through an untroubled sky. I retreated to deep within the house and sought to divine what it was that attacked us. I saw, four warriors, moving with a brutal swiftness, their wounds closing as swiftly as they formed. I felt my familiar's divinely derived blood calling to them, like to like. They were the flesh of the Uplifter Himself! These immortal constructs feared not pain or death, for I saw that from death they would return again in new flesh.

Someone has, like Shelley's Frankenstein, unbound Prometheus¹⁴ and created a new Adam. That these new beings serve either the Bookburners or the Jailors is obvious, but I sensed that they are as yet not what they are to be. Perhaps they can lead us, like the herald of old that they resemble, into apotheosis!

Are they aware that they are using the flesh of the Lord of Endowments to hunt Him? Or were they bound to us, to my familiar, by the law of sympathy, and drawn to our encounter by destiny?

When they came for me, I left the Grinder of Limbs to greet them and I fled into the Library, where I have now penned my account.
— Rashid Keeper of the Lion Gates

Transcripts of Maria de Guzman's channeling sessions can be found in The Teachings of Israfil by Juan Carlos de Guzman.

الدرب الصاعد (or الطريق التصاعدي)¹⁵ is purported to be a 11th century grimoire describing rituals for invoking the Lord of Endowments or a manual for self-actualized apotheosis or both. No known copies exist.

If this thing is real, and that's a big if, it wants to take us apart and borg us into "gods", which is like some low-fi version of the Devout's WAN, but whatever. Anyway, if this thing is real, and it wants to turn us into posthuman magic cyborg ubermenschen, and be all Beyond Good and Evil about it, then it's basically Nyarlathotep, isn't it? How exactly is summoning this thing a good idea?
— S. R.

Maybe we don't even need Azazel anymore. Isn't it true that the fire is ours now? Why can't we lead ourselves to Ascension? Azazel never wanted to be a god, but I think we made him one anyway. Perhaps we always needed to do it ourselves.

If godhood was gifted to us, then wouldn't we be always inferior to the giver? I think we learned the wrong lesson. He first taught us by stealing the fire, yet we have been begging for him to give it to us. Wrong! We should have stolen it from him.

I think Prometheus Labs lived up to their name. They were bold while we were timid. They snatched the fire and ran. All while we were still kneeling.

We need to find these Prometheans, these transhuman warriors that so struck Rashid. We need to free them from bondage so that they can strike the chains from us all.
— Ulyana the Witch

This is all so much bullshit. I talk with Coyote all the time and he says he was the one who stole the fire.
— Crow Far-Walker