Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts

by Dennis Wheatley

  The dual principle of Good and Evil, which is the basis of every religion, must continue in perpetual conflict until the end of time. On the Right hand we have light, warmth, growth and order; on the left hand, darkness, cold, decay and chaos.

  Each of us, having within us a part of the eternal Spirit, is able at will to communicate with the Higher Powers and draw down from them additional power to ourselves. The Saints did so by prayer to God, which enabled them to perform their miracles. The Devil may be found even quicker to answer.

  As a young officer in the 1914-18 war, while convalescing, I played a lot of vingt-et-un. After one ten-hour session, having become bored from drawing few cards worth betting upon, on the bank passing to me, I called on the Devil to give me luck. I drew two aces, doubled the table, drew another ace, split three times and finished with two naturals and a five and under. Everyone paid me sixteen times his original stake.

  That shook the other chaps at the table; but it shook me infinitely more, as, sooner or later, that sort of ‘luck’ has to be paid for.

  I have never prayed to the Devil since. Neither have I ever attended any form of magical ceremony or a seance. It is obviously such a fascinating gaine that even the strongest-willed person could easily get drawn further and further into it until—well, there are several very real dangers. The least is that one might find oneself being blackmailed for taking part in obscene practices. The worst, failure to pull out in time, with the realisation that one had imperilled one’s immortal soul. There is also the risk of slipping up in some ritual, with consequent failure to keep under control the forces one has called up. The result of that used to be called demonic possession. It is now classed as lunacy. One of Crowley’s occult ‘operations’ misfired; so that he was found next morning a gibbering idiot, and had to spend six months in an asylum. By prayer, fasting, and mortification of the flesh, the Saints called down power in order that they might perform miracles to the glorification of God, and heal the sick. This, the use of Supernatural Power for good or unselfish ends, is WHITE MAGIC.

  The use of Supernatural Power for wicked or selfish ends is BLACK MAGIC. Such magic is of the Devil and can be obtained only by such sexual depravity and bestial rites as are described in the official reports of the initiation ceremonies of the Mau Mau.

  Yet it is not only in Africa that such abominations are practised. A few years ago women were giving themselves up to hideous eroticism with a great carved ebony figure, during Satanic orgies held in a secret temple in Bayswater, London, W.2.

  Article No. 2

  THE BLACK ART AND THE SUPERNATURAL

  Perhaps the most interesting man I met while collecting data for my novels with occult backgrounds was Mr. Rollo Ahmed. He was an advanced practitioner of Yoga and made good use of it. Although a native of the West Indies he never wore an overcoat and used to go about London in the winter in a thin cotton suit. One night, when it was well below freezing, he arrived to dine with me. He had no gloves but his hands were as warm as toast.

  Rollo Ahmed was deeply versed in magical lore and possessed the gift of explaining it with great lucidity. From him I learnt much of the theory of the Black Art. Briefly it may be defined as a system of short cuts to obtaining Power.

  Anyone can say prayers, or think evil. God will give new strength and fortitude in answer to prayer. The Devil will give strength and resolution actually to perform the evil deed contemplated. However, the human brain resembles a radio set. It needs tuning in to get the best results.

  In very early times ways were discovered of ‘tuning in’ more rapidly. The holy used fasting and mortification of the flesh; the unholy gross indulgence and sexual depravity. Hence the wild orgies which are a main feature of every Satanic gathering—both ancient and modern.

  It was also found that contact could be more swiftly achieved by the use of certain material aids. For example, the Clairvoyant does not actually see things in the crystal. It is a device to induce self-hypnotism and turn the mind inward so that it can pick up occult vibrations. To achieve this state practitioners of the Black Art consume potions composed of the vilest secretions of the human body. The Mau Mau do this; so, too, do the depraved followers of the Devil’s cult who still live in our midst. Such acts may be compared to the ringing of a bell which summons a supernatural Power.

  SUPERNATURAL is simply a word to express that which lies beyond our comprehension, and MAGIC the procuring of a result normally regarded as impossible by the accepted LAWS of cause and effect. In the MATERIAL sphere the MAGIC of yesterday becomes the SCIENCE of today; but there remains innumerable NATURAL LAWS which are not generally understood. That applies particularly to the ability of certain humans to call upon the forces of a SPIRITUAL nature; and since all spiritual power emanates from either God or the Devil those who employ them become priests and priestesses of either Good or Evil.

  The good ‘priest’ uses supernatural power for unselfish ends; and the most common forms of his activities are ‘pain-taking’ and faith healing. A recent inquiry by the British Medical “Association has revealed that this type of White Magic is widely practised all over Britain. The investigators admit that warts can be charmed away, and can offer no explanation for that. Concerning more important cures, brought about by prolonged prayer, their report states:

  ‘In the Committee’s opinion it is probably better to acknowledge that the cures are at present inexplicable on scientific grounds.’

  In this connection I had first-hand knowledge of an extraordinary happening while staying with my sister-in-law in South Africa. Her old negro cook, Maria, complained of acute pains in the breast and displayed to her an ugly tumour. Maria was at once taken down to the hospital. After examining her, the doctor put her in the waiting-room then, just outside its door, told my sister-in-law that the tumour was an advanced cancer and that it must be cut out without delay. An hour later he telephoned to ask where Maria was. She had disappeared.

  Ten days later she returned with not a trace of the tumour. When asked for an explanation she said: ‘I hears what that white doctor says to you, Missis, ‘bout cuttin’ me up. I’s scared, so I slips off back to ma Kraal. The black doctor, he throws the bones for me and I’s well again now.’

  Another supernormal potential of the human mind which has now been recognised by the medical profession is Hypnotism. Yet no doctor can explain how it is possible for a subject to be made so iron rigid that his neck can be placed on one chair-back, his feet on another, and the hypnotist be able to kneel on the subject’s stomach without his body even bending.

  The French psychologist, Pierre Janet, has even succeeded in hypnotising a patient at a distance of over a mile, at a time known only to the experimenters. That brings us to Mental Telepathy, of which countless people have had personal experience. Such happenings used to be put down to coincidence; but a few years ago Dr. Soal, by infinipatient patient and prolonged tests, proved the case for telepathy conclusively. And Water Divining—a common and valuable practice—what explanation can science give for that?

  Turning to more sensational manifestations of the supernatural, many people have been saved from death by warnings of an occult nature. One of the most intriguing is that which was vouched for by the late Lord Dufferin and Ava.

  While staying in a house in Ireland, one night before getting into bed he looked out of the window. Below him in the bright moonlight he saw a man carrying a coffin. The man looked up; his face was striking and most unpleasant. Next morning no one in the house could offer any explanation of this extraordinary occurrence. Years later, Lord Dufferin was in Paris. He was about to enter an already crowded hotel lift. Suddenly he recognised the face of the lift attendant as that of the ghoul with the coffin. Startled, he stepped back. The man slammed the lift gates and up went the lift. At the third floor the cable broke. It crashed to the basement and everyone in it, including the lift man, was killed.

  Many people will swear to having seen a ghost; but proof of the actual materia
lisation of a spirit is very difficult to obtain. Personally, I am prepared to take the word of that great seeker after Truth, Harry Price. He carried out countless tests of reported psychic phenomena and ruthlessly exposed scores of fake mediums; but he told me once that there could be no possible explanation, other than a supernatural one, for the appearances of Rosalie.

  Every conceivable check to prevent fraud was taken. Yet on using his luminous plaque he saw this little naked girl standing in front of him; and having felt her all over would have sworn—but for the low temperature of her flesh—to her being a living child.

  It was Harry Price who told me of a strange haunting in Sussex. One bedroom in this old house was so badly haunted that even the most sceptical visitors woke in it to find themselves being strangled; and any food left in a semi-basement room became putrid within a few hours. An exorcist was called in. The exorcism was carried out just before dawn in the bedroom. A ball, seemingly composed of black smoke and about the size of a football, appeared, rolled down stairs, out through the window of the semi-basement room and across the lawn to disappear in a small lake. The lake was later dredged and no less than three skeletons were brought up from it.

  The Reverend Montague Summers told me of an exorcism he had performed in Ireland. He was called to a farmer’s wife who, it was said, was possessed by an evil spirit. He arrived in the evening. On the table in the living-room the remains of a cold leg of mutton had already been placed for supper; the woman was in the same room. At the sight of a priest she became so violent that she had to be held down. As he sprinkled the Holy Water on her and commanded the demon to come forth, a small cloud of black smoke issued from her foam-flecked mouth. It went straight into the cold mutton, and within a few minutes everyone present saw that the meat was alive with maggots.

  Few men had more knowledge of the Occult than Montague Summers, and his books upon Witchcraft and Werewolves are classics. But he was, to say the least of it, a curious character. Rumour has it that he was not, in fact, a priest.

  My wife and I went to stay at his house for a week-end. On the ceiling of our bedroom we found a score of enormous spiders. When I mentioned this, he replied only, ‘I like spiders’; and in his garden my wife came upon the biggest toad she has ever seen. He tried to sell me a rare book. When I refused to buy it, I have never seen such malefic anger come into the eyes of any man. We made an excuse to leave on Sunday morning.

  With his long silver locks and, normally, benign expression, he looked like a Restoration Bishop. Years later I used his physical appearance for Canon Copely-Syle in To the Devil—a Daughter. For that I had a precedent, as in Mr. Somerset Maugham’s early book The Magician the sorcerer, Hado, bears a striking resemblance to Aleister Crowley.

  Mentioning books reminds me of A. E. W. Mason’s Prisoner in the Opal. In it, he rightly associates the presence of the most powerful evil entities with intense cold. Dante’s lowest circle in Hell was formed of ice.

  I do not regard myself as psychic but I have once felt that terrifying chill. I was building a shack by moonlight in an old walled garden behind the Somme battlefield. It came upon me without rhyme or reason. I knew that something incredibly evil was watching me from behind—and it had suddenly become very cold. After a minute that seemed an eternity I panicked and fled in abject terror.

  All this adds up to the fact that one cannot laugh off the Supernatural, and that like everything else in the Universe it is governed by definte laws. To utilise those laws for personal ends is to practise the Black Art. And it is still practised in England today.

  One of the doctors who gave evidence before the B.M.A. Committee of Inquiry into faith healing stated that Black as well as White Magic is still widely practised in Devonshire; and that among his patients he had had one definite death caused by Witchcraft. That is something to give pause for thought to those readers who will this summer be motoring through Devon’s lovely lanes.

  Article No. 3

  The Witches’ Sabbath

  The Sabbath—at which thirteen person met by night to worship the Devil with obscene rites—was in Europe the direct outcome of the spread of Christianity. The New religion sought to enforce fasting, chastity and a generally puritanical existence. Many people were used to looking forward to such Roman festivals as the Saturnalia, when slaves were for a day the equal of their masters, and feasting ended in a general orgy. In consequence the Old religion went underground.

  It must, too, be remembered that in the Dark Ages there were no buses to take people from lonely villages into the towns; no newspapers, football pools or television. So the Devil was on a good wicket for tempting country folk into occasional nights of wild indulgence.

  Today Sabbaths—like those recently reported from Birmingham—usually take place in houses. But one cannot altogether ignore the persistent rumours of moonlight gatherings for Satan worship in Cornwall, Derbyshire and Northern Scotland; and there is very good reason to believe that a Sabbath was held on the site of an old pagan temple in the Cotswolds as recently as last April.

  Aleister Crowley, so I was told by a well-known Member of Parliament who knew him intimately, held a Sabbath, of sorts, when he was up at Cambridge. He was a brilliant scholar, and planned to produce a Greek play; but owing to its immorality the Master of John’s forbade him to do so. To be avenged he made a wax image of the Master, then induced some of his fellow students to accompany him on a propitious night to a field. Having performed certain rites, Crowley called on the Devil and was about to plunge a needle into the liver of the wax figure. But his companions panicked. His arm was jerked and, instead, the figure’s ankle was pierced. Next day the Master fell down some steps and broke his ankle.

  Covens always numbered thirteen—a parody of The Last Supper. They met in lonely dells, or sometimes in a high place if upon it there was an ancient monolith. There had to be a pond near-by: if there were not the members of the Coven dug a hole and urinated into it.

  Sabbaths were held at full-moon, and on St. Walburga’s Eve (April 30th), St. John’s Eve (June 23rd) and Allhallowe’en (October 31st). On those dates Grand Sabbaths were also held, by thirteen Covens uniting at such places as the Brocken mountain in Germany and on Salisbury Plain.

  The badge of office of the Chief of each Coven was a string worn below the left knee. This emblem of occult power goes back to prehistoric times, and it is probable that the Most Noble Order of the Garter originated from it.

  The chronicle tells us that while King Edward III was dancing with his mistress, the Countess of Salisbury, her garter fell off; and, to her great confusion, snatching it up, he proclaimed the founding of the Order. Her confusion would have been great if it was a witch’s garter; and it is conceivable that she was the Queen Witch of England. If so, by seizing her insignia he took her power to himself. It may well have been a clever political move to merge into his person as King the Chieftainship of the followers of the Old religion, of whom in those days there were still great numbers.

  It is at least curious that he should have limited the Order to the Sovereign, the Prince of Wales and 24 Knights—two Covens; and that the Sovereign’s mantle is embroidered with 168 garters which, with the garter he wears, makes 169—i.e. 13 × 13 signifying lordship over that number of Covens.

  The attempted suppression of the Old religion did not start till much later, and had its origin in the growing Puritanism which led to the Reformation. There then began the horrible witch-hunts in which old women, often guilty only of ugliness or practising White Magic, were ducked in ponds to see if they would float, stripped and searched for a third teat from which they were believed to feed their familiars—a cat, owl or toad—and stuck with pins, to find the spot rendered painless by the touch of the Devil’s finger when he had accepted them as his own.

  When preparing for a Sabbath, witches smeared their bodies with an unguent. Some unguents had stupefying qualities which caused them to dream that they had ridden naked through the night on a broomstick and th
at the Devil had had sexual intercourse with them.

  The cult of the Voodoo goddess Erzulie is of a similar nature. Today, in the West Indies, every Thursday night thousands of negroes light candles to her, put clean sheets on their beds and—as she is violently jealous—turn their unfortunate wives out of the house; then give themselves up to dream embraces with this female counterpart of Satan.

  The use of unguents by those who actually attended the Sabbaths is paralleled by modern worshippers in Satanic Temples inhaling the smoke from burning certain herbs. This has the effect of overcoming the scruples of the more timid, who might otherwise be revolted by the acts they are called on to perform, and stimulating the more hardened to a frenzy of abandonment. Aphrodisiacs are, of course, taken by all to increase sexual potency.

  A Sabbath must have been a truly hellish spectacle. Head masks of goats, bats, cats and other animals were worn to conceal the identitv of the participants. In a great cauldron a hell-broth bubbled—’eye of newt and toe of dog, wool of bat and tongue of dog’, etc. A band struck up but each member of it played a different tune, resulting in cacophony. Grabbing up food and drink, the company gorged themselves to a surfeit. Naked but for their masks, they danced in a circle back to back. The Chief of the Coven presented his posterior and the others kissed it in homage. He, or she, then ‘blessed’ evil amulets, among which there was sometimes a dead man’s hand—a talisman that was said to enable a robber to enter any house without being heard. Finally, in a wild orgy they vied with one another in sexual excess and every form of perversion.

  The equivalents of Sabbaths are held by the Mau Mau to initiate recruits. Among other horrors the initiate, male or female, is made to perform most bestial acts with a goat—and one of the Devil’s names is ‘The Goat of Mendes’.