The Blackbone

ASPECTS
Grail?
GENERAL INFORMATION
ARCANA	-
ORIGIN	???
PRONOUNS	She/It
OTHER TITLES
- The Wave
WF Catalogue Entry

The Blackbone is one of several obscure Hours about which little information is currently known. Extremely vague references to them seem to exist currently in Cultist Simulator, alongside the Giribrago and Snow, which implies that these three Hours have been "cast down", and information about them seems to have been suppressed. Another development document for Book of Hours however mentions a censored Hour tied to “the crushing black of the deep sea”, which is likely Blackbone. Possibly has the aspect of Grail, due to its associations with the sea. It is supposedly 'sated' by the sinking of ships.

Real-World References

• Blackbone might be a reference to the work of H.P. Lovecraft, whose personal fears of the ocean and what dwelled in it are heavily featured in the beings of his Cthulhu Mythos. Cultist Simulator itself is often marketed as a “Lovecraftian” game.
• The quote on the Blackbone's Weather Factory Catalog page references Donald Crowhurst, an English businessman who competed in a race to sail around the world solo, eventually abandoning the race and committing suicide at sea following a mental breakdown.

Other Notes

• Blackbone and the other obscure Hours are hinted at in the Priest legacy, when preaching about the aspect of Heart, as “those who were cast down, wave or wound or snow”. For a time it was also postulated that this could simply be a reference to the dead gods-from-stone, who can similarly be tied to these symbols, but the official reveal of Giribrago and his alternate title as "the Wound" appears to clarify this issue. Blackbone in this case would likely be the wave, due to the connection to the sea. A similar reference exists about incantations used to defend against Worms as well as “the Wave and the Wound,” though these Protections apparently haven’t been performed for at least a thousand years.
• The image on Blackbone's WF Catalogue page is a distorted GIF from the 1991 film Prospero's Books, an avant-garde adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Theories and Questions

• One speculation about Blackbone and the other leaked Hours is that they might have been existing Hours which were “displaced” by the Intercalate, which created the Solar Hours and the Wolf-Divided and pushed them into their current odd position outside the “standard” Tarot but within the 24 Hour day.
• Blackbone might have a connection to the Tide, as another Hour that was tied to the sea. It could even be some fragment of that dead Hour which has survived or returned, though such possibilities are VERY speculative.
• Donald Crowhurst's private log entries, which Blackbone's WF Catalogue page quote is from, talk about the laws of reality being determined by several cosmic beings as part of a "game". Humans are able to resign from the game through death or sufficient effort, shedding their physical bodies, becoming "second generation cosmic beings" and entering the realm of the divine. While this bears numerous similarities to the Mansus and how mortals access it, ascension in Cultist Simulator typically increases rather than decreases involvement in the occult—could Blackbone and the other leaked Hours have been "cast down" for their refusal to engage in Mansus politics?
• It is likely that Blackbone was connected to the deaths of Eva Dewulf and Abbot Thomas of the Abbey of the Black Dove.
• Blackbone may be a god-from-Nowhere alongside the Snow.