Everything

• The children of Caine and Seth abandoned the secrets of birth for patriarchal folly.

• Women must be given full control of the power of birth.

• Birth is the ultimate creative force, and Lilith’s highest manifestation is as the Mother of Monsters.

• We will achieve enlightenment by inheriting the power of Lilith’s womb so that the dead may give birth to the living, the living may give birth to the dead, and all may beget children stronger than their mothers.

In the time of the First City, Lilith created D’hainu, the last holy garden. The Dark Mother took seeds from Eden within to grow a place free from the curses of the Elohim, where Lilith’s children lived in a state of serene instinct. As predators and prey, they dwelled far from humankind’s spears and half-barren fields. This refuge was necessary because Caine’s get greedily drank life from the rest of the land. Pale mortals crawled across deserts that were once crops, surviving on wild grass. Antediluvian vampires preyed on anything with blood, leaving starving slaves and untended land. Indifferent to the needs of life, Enoch’s self-styled gods paid no heed to their suffering subjects until the city itself crumbled from lack of care, as too few lived to maintain its glory.

Thus, the Antediluvians assaulted D’hainu. They drank from mortal refugees and the Dark Mother’s beautiful monsters. Their corruption defiled the land and their starving slave armies ate like locusts, and then burned the remains so their ashes would fertilize Enoch’s fields. All that remained were fire-hardened thorns. Some Bahari say it was the final sin God was willing to endure, triggering the Deluge. Noah’s dove fetched an olive branch from D’hainu’s thorns to signal its end, for burnt and barren as they were, only its trees could stand against the storm. The garden fell, but its trees re-seeded the world.

Named for the imperishable remnants of Lilith’s last home on Earth, the Thorn Garden embraces its namesake’s transformation. Although D’hainu fell, its ash-covered branches survived where untested trees did not. Lilith was exiled from this last echo of Eden, but now whispers in every receptive heart. All Bahari endure pain to enter the cult, but members of the Thorn Garden chase it with a lover’s fervor to overcome barriers to self-knowledge. Some will arrange masochistic psychodramas, but for others this lacks authenticity — gnosis can only come from a genuine experience, not a simulation. Adherents wish to inflict refined pain as well — an eye for an eye describes the principle, but not the necessary degree of precision. Thus, the True Hand often employs Thorn Garden Bahari to teach through punishment. Beyond the Kindred, followers set upon mortals to correct their behavior. They carry the aspect of Lilith as the owl and

night terror. Under Thorn Garden protection, mortals need not have the existence of vampires hidden from them. They know that the consequences of displeasing their undead guardians are so horrific that they dare not resist.