/ho/ - Hobbies

>>119931125 (OP)
/x/ is a board with an interesting history. Originally made to keep creepypasta spam off of /b/, it quickly developed its own unique culture based on creativity, paranoia, larping, and hardcore schizophrenia. For many years, /x/ was far and away my favorite part of 4chan, with a wonderful (if very acerbic) community that did a lot to foster the culture of the board. The things that I did with /x/ were maybe not always the best - watching pirate movie streams, posting rituals like One Man Hide-And-Seek and the Elevator Game, trying to get to the bottom of Yvette's Bridal and the Children's Immortality Project, debating the Grifter, and actually gangstalking a Korean woman who previously only thought she was being gangstalked - but it was like nothing else on the site, much less anywhere else online.

Traditionally, the attitude of /x/philes was very permissive as long as some effort or originality were presented. While most claims of paranormal experiences were greeted with harshly-worked skepticism, their posters were always encouraged to continue telling their stories, fake or not, as though they were real. Because of this attitude, many threads and ideas that wouldn't get any time of day elsewhere on the site could be given a great deal of space to develop and attention (deserved or otherwise) to go with it. The users of /x/ were game for almost anything - investigating websites, doing real-world urban exploration, cold-calling mental hospitals and radio personalities looking for answers - in the name of killing boredom. Whether the stories were true or not, no matter how obviously stupid things were, people would play along anyway. The lines between "ARG," "art project," "schizo rambling" and "something actually interesting" have always been a little fuzzy, and I guess the line of thought was that it was better to be safe than sorry, or else that it was better than doing nothing at all.

Claims of paranormal experiences, spooky websites, and mysterious organizations were a dime a dozen on /x/. The subject we will explore today was in many ways no different than countless other posts. In other respects, however, it was far, far stranger.

On the night of Saturday, April 27th, 2013, a user on /x/ detailed a harrowing account of their experience with an unknown, malicious entity:

>I am here as an act of desperation if nothing else.

>As a long time atheist I have been trying to rationalize the events that have been afflicting me for the last few days and my faith – or lack of it – has been completely shaken. I have photos to document the following; I hope that someone can help me out.

>It all started a few weeks ago right here on this board. I don’t visit /x/ much; I tend to stick mostly to /pol/, /int/ and /k/ really. If anything I only came here to poke fun at magikfags and start skeptic threads. In one of those particular days I noticed a thread that started off as a list of Wikipedia articles that eventually became all inclusive – creepy pasta, web based games, screamer sites and occultism related links. I remember to have spent a few hours checking out most of the links and honestly I was not impressed, all occult websites seemed to have been built in the 90s with their cheesy skeletons and pentagram image backgrounds; All of them with the exception of one.

>It was very minimalistic and modern, built most likely by a hired designer and not some 13 year old kid with obsessions to metal and magik. It didn’t have any pictures, mostly relied in some peculiar suggestive iconography and plain text. It truly was an unusual .org website with the seeming objective of introducing people into the occult. The main page consisted of twenty four icons, of which the first one was available. This leads you to another page that explains and provides material for “lesson one” which consists of a tutorial of summoning and capturing a Yokai which according to the website would reveal things to me through my dreams. I chuckled and was ready to leave the site when I realized how easy this tutorial was. It truly was for a beginner and I was shocked in its very simplicity. I decided to carry out these instructions the very next day but I didn’t, the days passed and eventually I forgot all about it. It was the events in Boston that reminded me of it, all of you /x/ philes invading /pol/ with your conspiracy theories lead me back to check out /x/ and to remember the place.

>>119931237
>This morning I woke up rather early, Id say around 3 am. I opened my eyes and as they adjusted to the dark I noticed something. I noticed the silhouette of something in the corner of the room. It was my cat standing on two feet (very much like in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qnf9nx706w ) But unlike the video it wasn’t for a few seconds. I think it noticed that I was awake and then it walked out of the room, just like that, walking on two feet. I was horrified but convinced myself that it was a nightmare and that I had just woken up. I had rationalized everything up to that point until I heard the blunt loud noise coming from the living room. A minute ago I had just seen the cat walk out of the door standing on two feet and now I heard something, it was very real, my heart was racing and all of my hairs were standing up like never before. I graved a baseball bat and went to check it out. There it was - the very very expensive canvas wrap of my wife and daughter on the floor. They are both visiting family and it meant it to be a welcome/ mother’s day gift. I paid $300 for the damn thing and I was worried that the corners were dented. But it was far worse, their faces were scratched by claws, claws of what? my cat already had its front paws declawed when he was adopted. The marks are just too big for a cat to have done this.

>I heard the cat yelling the creepiest thing from down stairs. I think I had a panic attack, I graved my rifle, a handful of hollow points and barricaded myself in the bathroom for who knows how long. I eventually came outside after dawn and looked for the cat. I don’t know where he is. He must be hiding because he is an indoor only cat and there is no way he left the house. There is also no way someone is playing a nasty trick on me, everything’s locked from the inside.

>Ive been researching the shit out of this, nightfall is almost here and I don’t know what to do. I contacted the website and left my information. The only thing that I received was a phone call from a blocked number with nothing more than what sounded like an elderly man laughing.

>It looks like I will be doing an all nighter with my rifle at hand and computer. I will be posting photos of whatever happens. Please let me know if you find something that can help me out.

>If you really want to know, the website is esotericamerican.org

The link to esotericamerican.org was much as OP described - a sleek, modern website, with simple text and suggestive symbolism. According to their description, Esoteric American were "committed to providing a series of illuminating tutorials and articles designed to introduce, educated and tutor individuals into the world of the occult from fresh beginnings to complete mastery." While symbols for 24 lessons were present on the page, only one was actually available: "Lesson 1: The Void is not Empty."

As OP said, the tutorial describes a method for for invoking and capturing a yokai spirit which will "illuminate your dreams with knowledge and personal revelations." While the ritual is not described as dangerous, it does warn that the jar used to capture the spirit must never be opened nor come into contact with running water or pets. The OP's cat, having both opened the jar and been in contact with its contents, had broken both these rules and seemingly damned its owner to misery and terror.

>Picture of your wife and daughter? Yes?
>Sure about that?

As it happened, the image that the OP presented as being of his family was in fact a standard filler image used by Aaron Brothers in their picture frames, beyond just being common stock photographs. The thread was soon filled with other photos from the set, some featuring a rather homely man that some assumed (largely jokingly) to be OP.

>OP if that is legitimately you i would just like you to know you are a 6/10 solid.
>The pictures of your wife and daughter are all over the Internet.
>post a picture of your face, if you look like the model in that stock photo, we'll know you're legit.
>Thread started out fun, but you could've taken a real new picture mate. You can't use stock photos from the internet and expect people not to notice.

The OP tried to save face by claiming his wife and daughter had "made some money with a few modeling pics" and tried to get the thread back on track, but to no avail.
> I now find myself in a situation to prove that she is my wife and thats my daugher. Its funny to find myself doing the same shit i used to do as an skeptic, I dont want to give out more personal information. just help me out on this.

The other anons, however, didn't buy it. While a few other posters offered their genuine advice for dealing with malicious Asian spirits, the thread quickly devolved into making fun of the OP and arguing about whether the thread was a simple hoax, performance art, viral marketing, or something else.

Over the following weeks, a number of threads were made by anons detailing their experiences with the Esoteric American ritual and inquiring about others' results. Many described unusual dreams filled with shocking personal revelations. One anon wrote:
>I dreamed that I walked in the streets of my town at dusk when I noticed this black blob thing (it seems to appear differently to each person) just floating in the air. It started very small like a bubble and it hovered on top of people that seemed to be made out of greens and vegetables (wtf does this mean) while ignoring normal people made out of flesh. Anyhow I caught its attention and it came to me. And its voice was like a woman and it told me "do you want the bliss that comes from ignorance? or the pain that comes from truth". I choose the latter and then these eye things appeared on the blob. "Then come and see" it said. I could see myself as a young boy, in my old home. I was crying and could only see a locked door, but could identify the voices within the door. It was the voice of my mother and father. They had an argument, It was my fault but I dont know what exactly it was. Then i heard the sentence that hit me like a train "You fucking whore, that bastard is not mine! I am sick and tired of your lies". My mother ran out of the room ignoring me. I had hidden this memory from myself all of these years. I woke up immediately after that. I called my mother and asked her about it, she broke down crying and apologizing. We were on the phone talking about it, the man that I thought was my father who passed away four years ago was not mine. I dont know how to feel about this, I am shocked but i wished the thing hadnt showed me this.

Others described more benign, but no less unusual experiences, such as being led to hidden treasure:
>I followed the instructions last night and it seemed to have worked. I woke up to a dream of a black sphere that was talking to me, telling me to look at a particular place. Well I felt kinda silly but checked it out anyways and found this strange little trinket damn close to where the blob thing said it would be. It is probably just a coincidence [...] The black blob sphere in my dreams also said something about my learning had just started, so I cant wait to see what to do next.

While others, in contrast, described no significant effects from the ritual.
>I've done it and had a few vague nightmares but nothing really horrid or more than usual. No real signs of a yokai in my dreams that I can tell.

Throughout these subsequent threads, many anons speculated that all the posts verifying the ritual were the concerted effort of one group or individual, possibly the first thread's OP. While this may have been the case - at this point, it is impossible to verify - it was soon apparent that the ritual and Esoteric American as a whole were experiencing genuine viral interest across /x/. Many posters warned others against attempting the ritual, believing it was suspicious that there was no listed way to banish the spirit, or else that EA were operating with malicious intent.
>Those poor souls who did this and are trapped with malicious beings, what now? What if they bury that shit but it still disrupts their well being?

For the most part, however, posters on /x/ remained tentatively curious about the ritual, its effects, and possible origins. When Esoteric American themselves were contacted, however, their responses only raised more questions:
>Hello Jet,
>I am glad that you enjoy our humble website. The website itself is very new, however Esoteric American goes back many many years as a traditional mystery school (under a different name of course). It was decided long ago that this was the time in which our knowledge would no longer be kept by a select few in secret but actually disseminated and spread around the world in an open manner. These twenty four lessons will become available to you and anyone else in the coming months one by one as we are working on simplifying each one into the easiest way possible of execution, while still providing meaningful effects. >Have you tried lesson one? we welcome any feedback.
>Thank you for your patience and interest,
>Eckhart

While many anons eagerly awaited news or further lessons from Esoteric American, most were disappointed and confused by the updates they received. According to reports, in late April the Esoteric American homepage was first replaced by a featureless expanse of same deep red color of the Yokai PDF. Then, on May 4th, the site was replaced by the image of two fuzzy white circles, resembling eyes, piercing through a black field. Some anons believed that this may have been part of a second lesson, while others began speculating that the whole affair was part of an ARG. Subsequent attempts to email Esoteric American went unanswered. Some anons who had attempted the ritual, uncomfortable with the possibility of trapping a spirit forever, pleaded for advice, believing help from EA was not coming. Others simply derided their boardmates for falling for what they saw as an obvious swindle.

While an update from Esoteric American would soon arrive, it was not what anyone hoped for or expected.

On May 5th, the Esoteric American website was updated:
>Our website was recently the target of a malicious cyber attack. We will be back late May with lesson one and lesson two.
>We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

On /x/, this message was very negatively received. Few earnestly believed that Esoteric American had been subject to any cyberattack, and many questioned why they could not simply restore the website to its original state, with the first tutorial intact. One anon wrote:
>Because the whole site is one big attention whoring scam. There's no reason why it'd take a whole month to recover from a "malicious cyber attack", which obviously never happened. Not to mention:
>>an edgy radioactive symbol
>>naming the site esoteric american and giving instructions on summoning stuff from japanese mythology
>messages in automatically translated chinese and russian
>the whole old intro page trying to appear all mysterious and shit
>It's probably just some random troll.

Regardless, interest in the site and the ritual remained high. Even if the site was viral marketing, an ARG, or simple attention-seeking, anons were curious to find out where it might lead. Posters anxiously awaited the site's next update, in the meantime continuing to share the first ritual and and write about their experiences with it. As the end of May loomed, anons braced for what might come next, but there was nothing. The promised updates never arrived, and the Esoteric American website never updated again. Soon enough the domain expired and Esoteric American vanished from the internet, the only trace of its existence being the ritual still shared by anons on /x/.

The text of the original ritual offers the following in regards to its provenance:
>As the first lesson of our series, this tutorial serves as an introduction into the occult.
>Lei Ao Sheng retrieved and simplified these instructions from a manuscript found in a private collection in Osaka. Although the word 'Yokai' is native to Japan, the characters and art seem to have been copied from an even earlier Chinese source. The characters are similar to those used in Archaic Chinese writings from the Late Shang period (1,200 BCE).
>Shang religion consisted of a mixture of shamanism, divination and sacrifice.

Beyond that, the instructions are simple: print the attached PDF, paint the marked symbols, and sleep on the paper. After two intervals of sleep each followed by more painting, place the paper in a sealed jar and enjoy the company of your newly-captured Yokai. Indeed, much of the appeal of the ritual is because of this simplicity - it requires few supplies, no complex or expensive initiation, is easy to share with others and according to the webmasters offers few risks. It is obvious that this ritual was designed to be easily-propagated, and in that regard Esoteric American have no doubt succeeded.

The actual efficacy of this ritual is, naturally, impossible to ascertain. Skeptics will claim that any effects are the result of suggestion, confirmation bias, or an over-active imagination, while believers will hold that their mystical, revelatory experiences are legitimate, even if they are wholly unprovable and intransmissible. Of course, there is reason to believe that the initial, slightly-fanciful claims of the yokais' powers were the work of Esoteric American themselves or else just anons "along for the ride," but many others have since posted their experiences, fruitful or not.

What is easier to discuss, however, is the historicity of the ritual, and whether it truly is what it claims to be. For most 4chan posters (much less the general public), the particulars of Shang writing, religious practice, and connections to Japanese folklore are entirely unknown, and given the other, more prominent rabbit holes therein, it is not surprising that these aspects of the Esoteric American story never came into question. Given, however, that this ritual is the sole remaining legacy of Esoteric American online, I believe it to be worth exploring.

According to Dr. Paola Dematte's book The Origins of Chinese Writing, the earliest Shang inscriptions began to appear in the early Bronze Age, circa 1500 BC. While many surviving Shang texts were tools for divination, many other, less /x/-approved documents have been discovered as well. Shang writing corresponds broadly with what is called Old Chinese, a term which Dr. Marc Hideo Miyake characterizes as "an extremely vague term [for] any variety of Chinese up to 600 CE" (90). This is not to say, however, that Shang characters survived unchanged into the 7th century. Beginning in the Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 1000 BC), a form of writing called "Bronze Script" developed which was morphologically distinct from Shang writing and which became increasingly prominent and standardized as time went on, eventually developing into Classical Chinese. Though Shang script survived for several centuries, it was far from the only, the most prominent, the most important, or the longest-lived writing system in ancient China.

The use of Shang characters (or at least what resemble Shang characters) in the Esoteric American ritual is therefore very unusual, and the question arises when and how it might have arrived in Japan. Though there was some contact beforehand, it is unlikely that anyone in Japan became literate in any form of Chinese before the 4th century AD (Miyake 8). By the time that Chinese texts and characters would be meaningfully imported into Japan, even the youngest Shang texts would be nearly 2000 years old and long forgotten.

While some ethnic groups, such as the Yayoi people, could have begun arriving in Japan from mainland Asia as early as 1000 BC, and possibly imported Shang religious practices with them, there are many issues with these suppositions. First, a majority of scholars believe that these early settlers of Japan arrived from the Korean peninsula, isolated from China by the Changbai mountains, much less the central Chinese regions which are the primary source of Shang Oracle Bones. Secondly, the notion that neither the religious practices nor the inscriptions thereof would change thereafter (having apparently survived in secret for some 3000 years) is farcical and ahistorical. Perhaps the original ritual was locked away untouched for several millennia, but that just raises other questions, particularly as to why it's a "yokai" ritual.

On a related note, while many yokai are considered nature spirits - an important facet of Shang religion - as Dr. David Keightley notes, by the time of the earliest potential importation of Shang characters to Japan (circa 1000 BC, fallacious as the idea may be), Shang religion had changed considerably, with little mention of nature spirits in favor of ancestor worship (260-61). As such, there is little reason to believe that Shang inscriptions would ever be associated with the nascent, possibly even nonexistent, notion of Yokai in Bronze Age Japan.

But what about the symbols themselves? Are they legitimate Shang writing, and if so, what do they mean?

There are five distinct symbols in the Esoteric American document, each appearing twice in the inscription in a regular pattern. True to the description, these characters do closely resemble actual Shang oracle bone inscriptions - indeed, they very closely resemble many of the characters visible in one of Wikipedia's example images of Shang text, albeit often reflected or missing radicals. While it may be tempting to dismiss the Esoteric American document on this basis, assuming that their symbols were just lazy, imaginary, meaningless variations on real writing, it is important to note that such variations in writing are not necessarily damning. According to a paper by Junheng Gao and Xun Liang, Shang writing was not particularly well-standardized, so many symbols are often found in variations, including mirrored versions.

While many would assume that ancient script such as Shang oracle bone inscriptions are poorly-understood, particularly given the many variations in which a particular glyph may appear, considerable research has been undertaken to discern the meaning of these characters. As such, it is possible (if extremely challenging) to read and understand Shang inscriptions. One of the most definitive published sourcebooks on oracle bone transcriptions, the Synthetic Index for Interpretation of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, edited by Michio Matsumaru and Kenichi Takashima and published by the University of Tokyo Press, catalogs thousands of oracle bone glyphs and their meanings, allowing almost any Shang oracle text to be interpreted, at least partially.

In saying this, I must admit that I am by no means on expert on ancient or contemporary Chinese, and it is likely that there are flaws in my methodology and efforts. However, in the interest in leaving no stone unturned in the Esoteric American story, I felt that understanding the ritual text, as best I could, was an essential undertaking.

Attempting to identify the ritual glyphs in the Synthetic Index presents numerous difficulties, foremost among which is the aforementioned inconsistencies in Shang writing. The index often presents countless variations on a particular character, many of which appear largely incongruent outside of a few shared elements. Eliminating a character as a potential match for one found in the ritual often means acknowledging fundamental similarities in the face of apparently-minor differences.

Further challenges come from the various shared elements across characters. Like modern Chinese characters, Shang glyphs are often constructed as gestalts of many smaller elements often other characters with distinct meanings. Elements of the "halberd" glyph, for instance, appear in hundreds of characters with various, largely-unrelated meanings. Other characters, such as the "tree" glyph, seldom recur at all.

After cross-referencing the characters in the ritual document against the the Synthetic Index, several potential matches for all the glyphs were apparent, as well as over one hundred characters with high similarity. From there, it was a matter of choosing the best matches morphologically and, potentially, grammatically.

In my opinion, the closest matches in the Synthetic Index for the characters found in the ritual text are:
>"Claw": 1699
>"Angel": 0513
>"Throne": 0606
>"Halberd": 1412
>"Throne" and "Halberd" together: 0996
>"Tree": 1249

Each of these characters are translated into their modern equivalents in Synthetic Index, with additional context given for their use in Shang texts. According to these notes, the "claw" glyph can literally mean "claw," while also standing for an ox or a spiritual connection between mother and child. The "angel" character refers to beauty, and was apparently often an element in given names. The "halberd" glyph on its own is used to negate some verbs, while the "throne" character on its own can refer to a kind of ritual drum or a sacrifice. Taken together, however, as in character 0996, they most often refer to military ranks. Finally, the "tree" character is a simple conjunctive meaning "and," "also." or "again."

Compared to legitimate Shang texts, the Esoteric American ritual is lacking many characters that function as grammatical particles and allow for cogent expression. As such, while the characters themselves are legitimate and meaningful, their structure ultimately renders them asemic and untranslatable. What few words are present in the text are disparate in meaning and challenging to find connections between. Even when applying other potential character matches, it is extremely difficult to see any link between the text presented in the ritual and its supposed magical effects. Given the resemblance between the characters on the Esoteric American document and those present in Wikipedia images, it appears likely that the authors of the ritual simply chose random Shang characters, perhaps altering them slightly, and arranged them in a manner suggestive of an occult incantation without regard for their meaning or grammatical purpose. What meaning there is in the ritual is solely the work of those who choose to undertake it.

All told, Esoteric American seemingly operated as "normal" for only a few weeks. Though some report the website briefly returning in 2015, no further lessons nor correspondence with its webmasters were ever shared. Today, few references to Esoteric American survive outside of 4chan archives - indeed, it seems the site was almost solely advertised on /x/. The yokai ritual is still posted occasionally, often with passing reference to its strange origins. In a way, the unexplained disappearance of Esoteric American gives the ritual more cachet than the early threads and their fragile attempts at verisimilitude ever could. After all, who could resist something so enchanting it evidently led to the downfall of its creators?

The story of Esoteric American is, like most others but particular those from 4chan, largely inconsequential. It is likely that the ritual was a simple hoax designed to waste others' time or scare people, and it is unlikely that those who completed it a decade ago would give any particular credence to what took place therein. The jars, perhaps once earnestly believed to contain a yokai spirit, were probably all thrown away in one bout of spring cleaning or other, with little regard for the warnings that once gravely flashed across their makers' screens. But perhaps somewhere out there is someone for whom the ritual really worked, who really did capture their yokai, and who has taken great care to attend to and look after their little spirit friend ten years on. To those babysitters, I wish you only the best.