This is one of those footnotes that hurt to cut. I did cut it with the resolve of a Civil War battle surgeon—for pacing—but I promised it a proper eulogy. Consider this your pocket history of a brilliant cautionary tale and how it brushes the edges of The Angelus Key.
The book that started the argument
In 2000, a slim, angry volume called Sangre en el Altar (“Blood on the Altar”) made the quiet rounds of Spain’s occult underground. Its author, Koldo Iturriaga (1965–2022), argued—forcefully—that power only lands when the practitioner actually does the work:
“The true mage is an artist, just as the true artist is a mage.
Their essence is their sacrifice, their creativity is communion.” — K. Iturriaga
He called it “bleeding on your own altar”—not spectacle, not cosplay, and definitely not “a rehearsal of a gruesome play.” Ritual, in Koldo’s rulebook, demanded sincerity over script, sweat over stage direction.
On paper, I agree with him more than is comfortable.
Bilbao to Salamanca: the hothead with a library card
Born in Bilbao, raised on Basque folklore (which he treated less as stories and more as minutes from the old world), Koldo studied Comparative Mythology and Occult Studies at the University of Salamanca. In 1987 he was expelled for “insubordination,” which is academia’s way of saying: this student makes classrooms loud.
The rumor behind the rubric: to protest slights against Basque-speaking (Euskara) students, Koldo summoned three Mairu—ancestral folk beings that feel less like ghosts and more like egregores with elbows. Think cadaverous, hooded figures with hands like winter. He loosed them on the second floor of administration “as if tipping a carton of roaches.”
It went about as well as you think: one student died; two people broke; the university called for help.
Enter the Owls (and a certain professor)
The exorcism contract landed with the Order of Wisdom and Light Seekers—our Owls—who brought a small, very serious team that included Dr. Stephen Dunlop (yes, that Dunlop). The Mairu were driven back; the building stopped whispering; paperwork resumed.
For a spell (pun intended), Dunlop mentored Koldo, steering him toward discipline, sources, and the kind of caution you can only learn in rooms with no windows. Koldo listened—until he didn’t. Pride and appetite tugged harder than pedagogy.
He named his path Wild Abandon, which tells you where the brakes were mounted.
Lamiak at midnight: the fall
Koldo’s later work sought to fuse eros with river lore. The Lamiak—Basque water guardians sometimes mistaken for mermaids by men who should read more—became his obsession. During a sexual rite on a bridge over the Errobi near San Sebastián, witnesses claim a dozen nude women (but not exactly women) dragged him into the current.
Six days later, they found him in La Concha Bay. Naked. A brother told a paper: “Instead of the fish, he got the hook.”
What to take (and what to set down)
Koldo is both right and wrong, which is why he’s useful:
- Right: Ritual isn’t theater. Sincerity and personal effort matter. Bleed metaphorically—through attention, integrity, risk of the real kind (truth, not stunt).
- Wrong: Wild Abandon is not a sacrament. When you bypass craft and community safeguards, the river takes what it’s owed. The Lamiak are older than your grimoire.
Dunlop would put it this way: “Ends without ethics is an agenda, not a virtue.” The Owls, for their part, added a line to the house rules about egregoric deployments and consent. (You’d think this didn’t need writing down. It always needs writing down.)
Why this matters in The Angelus Key
Because means and ends are the series’ spine. Our antagonists prefer switches—broadcast, flood, overwhelm. The Owls prefer levers—small turns, shifted ground. Koldo’s ghost story sits between them: proof that fervor without form spirals, and form without fervor starves. Dunlop’s arc is about finding the seam that holds both.
If you only remember one line
Bleed on your altar = Do the work that costs you ego and comfort. Do not expect salvation on other people’s altars.