Sophea

Old European oil paintings and ancient Chinese scrolls aren’t the only way to encode the complex visual information necessary to provide insights into the occult. Works of modern art can also be used to relay knowledge of the occult. Today, even graphic novels and music downloads are used to convey occult truths.
The most famous example is Sophea. Created by Roger Bennett, a skilled and famous creator of comic books and graphic novels who is also an amateur occultist, this work was produced as a limited edition, leather bound graphic novel with a print run of only a hundred copies. The Laundry did not discover this work until it was already printed. However, since most of the actual occult knowledge is contained in the illustrations, Laundry operatives were able to arrange for the print quality to be deliberately lowered in the large-scale commercial release, so that this far more widely-printed version provides no actual occult knowledge. Digital scans of this book are also insufficiently detailed to provide occult knowledge to the viewer. However, while the Laundry has managed to acquire sixty-three of the copies of the limited edition, the author still owns five, and the other thirty-two copies are in unknown hands. Roger Bennett is watched by the Laundry, but while he collects ancient magical oddities and worships a presumably mythical reptilian deity in his basement, the Laundry has no evidence that he actually performs sorcery, and he is sufficiently famous that interfering with him would be difficult, especially since several of his fans are important government officials.