The birth name of the thaumaturgist known as Spectro is unknown--and can never be known. As he grew in power in wisdom, he reached a point where he thought it prudent to erase his name from the face of the universe.

To those that travel outside the local comos into astral realms where thought is form, birth names are a vulnerability. They are a man’s life and destiny compressed into a couple of syllables. In mystical places, to have a man’s name on your lips is like having his throat in your hands.

Spectro had plans to do great things, and doing great things meant earning powerful enemies. To protect himself, he used his cosmic powers and secret ways to erase his name. All mention of his name vanished from the pages of history and the memories of man. His very parents forgot the name they called him in his crib. It was even erased from his own mind. He knew he had a name, and he knew that name carried tender feelings when spoken by those that loved him. But he couldn’t remember what his name was. It was a blank, a suggestion, and he made the name Spectro to fill that blank.

Some think “Spectro” is a reference to the spectrum of red colors in the cloak of stars he often wears. It’s a good guess. Spectro is very fond of his cloak. He made it himself when he was struck by the beauty of the red rectangle nebula in the monoceros constellation. It was a naturally formed bit of symmetry and an ideal focus for the order of his magic. And so he compressed the nebula into a cloak of stars and wore it.

But that was not why he was called Spectro. He took the name from the general meaning of spectrum--that of a scale between two extremes.

He named himself what he hoped he would become. It was the oldest trick of magic--simple but woefully unreliable.

He didn’t think erasing his name would hurt himself like it did. When he worked the spell that erased his name, he believed he was doing a simple thing for the greater good. He would be able to work miracles without worrying about the retaliation of evil powers. Those that shared his name, for it was a common name, would not be targeted. But it was not a simple thing. The cost was greater than he imagined. And he understood just how great it was when his mother with tears in her eyes asked him why she couldn’t remember her baby’s name.

In that moment, Spectro understood the highest meaning of the thaumaturgical saying the “sacrifice of Odin,” also called the “blinding of Tiresias.” The saying at face value meant making a great and irreversible loss for the sake of mystical knowledge. But there was a deeper meaning to the saying. Odin was blind in one eye and Tiresias in both. The sacrifice of Odin makes one blind to the mundane. To open the third eye is to become blind in two. Spectro understood this when his mother confronted him about the loss of his name. So engrossed was he in the life of a thaumaturge that he didn’t realize that his sacrifice could have affected anyone besides himself. He didn’t consider how his parents would have felt forgetting his name. The thought never crossed his mind.

When Spectro realized how blind he had been he wept like a child.

He vowed never again to be so unaware of the mundane world around himself. This vow would serve him well as a student of the Circled Square for it was his attentiveness that led him to anticipate the miraculous sin of Dr. Styx and guard the world against it.

But the sacrifice of Odin is irreversible. Once blinded, one can never again see like a mundane man. Despite Spectro’s best attempts to keep aware of the mundane world there would always be a blindness to his vision.

In the late 1930’s, his blindness took an insidious form. His blindness was that he was unaware of his blindness. His success during the Dr. Styx crisis made him feel as if he was the member of the Circled Square most intune with the world and most responsible for the Circled Square’s dealings with it.

When the Worlds War of the 1940’s erupted under the watch of the Circled Square, Spectro felt uniquely responsible. His guilt would gnaw at his sanity all the days of the war.

And the Stardust incident would snap it.

.....