vermeil (adj.) "bright-red," late 14c., from Anglo-French and Old French vermail, "bright-red, scarlet, crimson" (11c. in Old French), from Late Latin vermiculus "a little worm," specifically, the cochineal insect from which crimson dyes were obtained (comparekermes), in classical Latin, "larva of an insect, grub, maggot," diminutive of vermis "worm." As a noun in English from 1590s.
cacodoxy (n.) late Greek kakodoxia heretical opinion, from Greek kak- cac- + -doxia (from doxa opinion, from dokein to seem). First known use in 1716.
A cryptical work that is part-grimoire, part-liminal-tunnel to a dismal sub-world called Riddle. The longer one spends mulling over the book's contents, the closer Riddle encroaches on the reader's reality -- until finally there is only Riddle-town, and Riddle-town is all that ever was.
The Cocodoxy's text is a patchwork of aphorisms, cabalistic formulae, unfinished sonnets in odd meter, unknown symbols and the sporadic appearance of pressed insects that are somehow exotic and yet deeply familiar to the percipient. Some passages seem to describe the reader's most fragmentary, half-obliterated memories in clinical detail. Other sections instill a profound and unidentifiable emotion that denudes the external world of its surface-reality and reveals the moist and undulant ghost-flesh that glistens beneath. This is the arrival of Riddle.
[More on this/ had to eject it from the head]