Satan Wants Me

by Robert Irwin

  ‘You are telling me that all the time when I play my guitar, that invisible little spirits are leaping in and out of it, like my guitar was a sort of sonic swimming pool? You are having me on. You are saying that that is music?’

  ‘That is a fairy-tale, but it is a fairy tale which happens to be scientifically true. The mystics have always known this, because it is part of the ancient Bardic tradition. Modern scientists are only just discovering the same thing and confirming ancient musical truths.’

  I think about this. Then I spot a flaw in his argument and I pounce. I prod him in the chest,

  ‘Well that’s my guitar-playing sorted out. But how about the music which comes out of the record player? How are you going to explain that?’

  We are high as hawks, discoursing on a really elevated plane. Cosmic smiles and scratches his nose. Looking at him a bit out of focus, I find that his face is all yellowy and rubbery and it keeps stretching into strange shapes – like he cannot control his appearance any more. It looks simultaneously demonic and entirely normal. It makes no sense, but it is a bit like if one keeps repeating the word ‘dog’ over and over again, it ceases to have any meaning at all or maybe it has all the meanings. Who knows?

  Suddenly Cosmic’s face pulls itself back into its normal shape,

  ‘Got a magnifying glass?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’ (I do not normally take a magnifying glass out with me, when someone invites me to lunch.)

  ‘Oh well, we will have to manage with the naked eye. Look closely at the surface of this disc.’

  He takes ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ off the record-player and moves it up and down to catch the light in different ways.

  ‘Look here! See the tiny shimmering patterns on the surface. These are the shadows of the elementals we are looking at. Aren’t they beautiful! If we concentrated, we wouldn’t even need to play the record to get a buzz out of it. This is recorded music, so they are all of them dead – the lifeless replicas of living elementals. They were constellated in the air and then fossilised in vinyl … ’

  Cosmic keeps talking, but I drift off, gazing at the oily shapes which shimmer over the grooves of the record and I think about Dylan’s near-death experience. Perhaps his recording all those LPs brought him into too close a contact with dead elementals? Perhaps Sally is right about him? Sally used to inhale and then blow the hash smoke into my mouth. I wonder if Cosmic has been to see Sally yet? Will she start getting at him too, to try and get him to break with the Lodge? I want to ask him if he has been to see her, but then again I do not really want to know. It would be ironic, if she breaks with me because I am tied up with the Lodge, but then shacks up with Cosmic. For after all he is as deep into this occult thing as I am and he too is under the obedience of the Master. Still, it’s a worry, for Sally swallows everything that Cosmic tells her, whereas I do not believe that all this elementals stuff really is in Paracelsus. For Christ’s sake, they did not have record-players in Paracelsus’s time. Cosmic is just making it up as he goes along.

  Cosmic pulls me out of my reverie. He is saying something on the lines that owning a record collection is like being the manager of a haunted cemetery. I would like to sleep and I have lost the thread, but I lunge desperately,

  ‘So how do we hear these elementals if they are dead?’ I ask.

  ‘How do you normally hear what is on a record?’ He is speaking to me as if he is addressing a dummy.

  ‘Well, I put it on the record-player and switch the record-player on. Is it the electricity that wakes the elementals?’

  ‘No, that’s crazy! If that were true nobody would be able to hear music coming out of wind-up gramophones or musical-boxes. You dope, it’s obviously the stylus which releases the music! You’ve got a sapphire stylus, haven’t you? Since it’s mineral, it will be inhabited by tiny gnomes. The dead sylphs, undines and other elementals on the record are liberated by the gnomes. If only you could see them, you would behold them come floating out of the speaker and circulating in the air before trying to find your ears.’

  ‘If only I could see them … ’

  Cosmic lights the last of the six joints. Watching its tip begin to flare, I get a sudden pang, experiencing the transience of all things. He takes a hard draw, hands it to me and watches me as I nurse the joint. It is like a sacramental chalice passed between us.

  ‘We’re mates, right?’

  I nod warily. I sense that what is coming next is not good.

  ‘Well explain this to me. You know fuck all about music, and fuck all about most things. You spend less time on the meditation exercises than I do and yet you are Felton’s blue-eyed boy. Don’t get bugged by what I’m saying. It’s nothing personal. I’m just curious. I want to know. It’s not just Felton. It seems that Laura has got the hots for you too. And now I hear that they are going to make you a zelator soon.’

  This is news to me. I do not think that it can be true. I smile propitiatingly at Cosmic. A mistake. He does not respond well.

  ‘What are you smiling for? Don’t tell me. I’ll tell you. You’re smiling because you think I’m stupid, so stupid that I don’t even guess that you think I’m stupid. It’s the same with Felton and Laura. They don’t take me seriously because I’m not of their class and I didn’t go to university.’

  He stands up and spreads his arms out like bat’s wings. He hovers over me,

  ‘But Peter, I want you to put this down in your diary, so that Felton can read it. I am not quite the fool that I seem and if I suspect that someone does not like me or even, maybe, likes me but does not take me seriously, then I can generate very powerful vibes. It’s natural in me. I can project vibes outwards and hex people just by thinking bad thoughts about them. So I try not to get bad thoughts, because I know that they can mutilate or even kill. Anybody who has ever crossed me has come to a bad end.’

  Kneeling in front of him, I make the sign of the manu cornuta, the horned hand and I cry out,

  ‘Lucifer defend me from the Cosmic Master! By the powers of Ashtaroth and Asmodeus, I take refuge in the Satanic One from all bad vibes.’

  It looks like I am horsing about, but actually Cosmic in his present state is freaking me out, so, though I am play-acting, it is serious play-acting. He grins uneasily and sits down again.

  ‘Yeah well, you don’t take me seriously. But I’m being really straight with you. The main reason I joined the Lodge is so as to learn how to control and channel the powers that are already within me. I only need the knowledge … ’

  At this point, heavy with beer, chillies and dope, I nod off briefly. Then, when I come to with a start, I find Cosmic kneeling in front of me, watching me intently.

  ‘I’m sorry man,’ I say. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night and I’ve got to crash. But I can’t do it back at the House.’

  ‘Yeah, because the horrid lurgies will get you if you do. It’s no hassle. You can crash here. In a minute I’ve got to go out and score, but you can sleep here and let yourself out, if I’m not back when you wake.’

  ‘Thanks man. See you this evening.’

  ‘And then again on Sunday evening.’

  (I had forgotten there is to be a special ritual, a Consecration of the Virgin on Sunday. It will be a closed meeting of the Lodge – all very big deal.)

  Cosmic puts ‘Hapshash and the Coloured Coat’ on the record player at top volume in order to help me get off to sleep, which I do almost instantly, carried off into the deep by the strange half-oriental chanting.

  When I awake, it is again with a sudden start. Cosmic is no longer there, but there is what at first seems to me like a feeling of a presence in the room. Only slowly do I become aware that the ‘presence’ is really the feeling of an absence. My mother is dead.

  I’m a bit groggy from the Chlorodyne, so I walk about the room. Then I catch sight of a black notebook, a schoolkid’s exercise book, lying on the floor. I know instantly what it is. It is Cosmic’s diary. To open it would be an abuse of friendship. But I have n
o hesitation, since, for a sorcerer, knowledge takes precedence over friendship. I pick the book up. There is a painted silver talisman on the cover and then beneath it in decorative calligraphy a sort of curse is inscribed: ‘We Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, Hagith, Ophiel, and Phul, ruling spirits above and below earth, true possessors of its wealth, do hereby command all persons, if they wish to avoid our disfavour, in no way to breach this book’s secrets without its owner’s freely given permission. Whoever infringes this law will be banished to the realm of Pluto.’

  The Hell with that. I do not think that Cosmic has enough rank to work such a curse. I open the book, but, after the words on the outside, the words inside are a distinct disappointment. There is not much in his diary and it is not written up in the way Felton has been making me write my diary. Mostly, it records his removal jobs, plus attendance at the Lodge’s rituals, but there is hardly anything that is personally revelatory. Although Cosmic is an intelligent person, his diary is semi-literate and his spelling is awful. Still there are a few points of interest. Cosmic, who listens to the Stones a lot, has taken a strong dislike to Brian Jones, whom he regards as too weedy to be a proper Rolling Stone. So he has been spending a lot of his spare time directing hex spells at Brian Jones and he reckons that Brian’s recent arrest is the first result of his maledictory labours. I see that Cosmic also made the mistake of being polite to Alice. A casual ‘How are you keeping?’ from him drew half an hour’s vitriolic diatribe from Alice, about people wasting her time by asking how she was when it was obvious that they did not care one way or the other how she was; also how Cosmic should stop trying to be nice to people so that he could discover his own true nature. It totally wrecked Cosmic’s evening. He knows that he is not as sure of himself as Alice is and he got really depressed thinking about what she had said. Also Cosmic had an audience with the Master a couple of days ago. However, he does not say anything about what transpired. Also he has been to see Sally. As far as I can tell, she would not put out for him. Cosmic notes that ‘she is seriously hung up, and its not just busting up with Peter. There’s something else going on in her head, which I can’t suss out. She wants me to be patient.’ Cosmic goes on to speculate that she has always been afraid of me, just as he is. (I find this pretty astonishing, particularly as Julian was also afraid of me.)

  I let the diary drop where I picked it up. I feel uneasy about having looked at it. Not that I think that Aratron, Bethor and the rest of them are going to look after Cosmic’s grotty little notebook, but it certainly seems to me possible that he does have naturally bad vibes like other people naturally have bad breath. I hurry out of his pad. I am going to be late for my session with Dr Felton. Also I’m still a bit stoned and there is nothing I can do about it.

  I was more than usually apprehensive when I knocked upon Felton’s door. I cannot work out how far on we are with these ghastly kissing lessons and how far off I am from being introduced to the Obscene Kiss. True I am going to get another hundred pounds. But then is it just the diary that I am selling to Felton for this price?

  There is a lot to go through in the session with Felton: the pathworking based on the Westcar Papyrus, my move into Horapollo House, the parting with Sally, my work cataloguing the library, our country-house weekend with Julian, Laura’s visits to my room, my talk at Leeds University, the death of my mother, the screaming man with horseshoes on his feet. I guess many people would have been totally freaked out by the horseshoe man. However, I am confident that there is a rational explanation. In fact there are two perfectly rational possibilities. First, it is notorious that anyone who takes LSD runs the risk that his trip does not totally finish when it seems to. Years later odd bits of acid hallucination can suddenly surface. It is one of the accepted hazards of tripping. That’s cool. Secondly, it is quite possible that what I saw had nothing to do with drugs, but was a genuine manifestation of the supernatural – a materialisation of the Qlippoth, or perhaps some soul in torment in the afterlife. So then Horapollo House is going to deliver what was promised and I will find myself sharing my space with such unearthly visitants as elephant-headed monsters with skewers for hands and crab claws for feet. That would be really tremendous. To know for sure that the supernatural really exists …

  However, to get back to the point, as usual Felton misses all the important issues raised by my last few days of diary keeping. He just had his little grumbles,

  ‘I see that you describe last Thursday’s little drinks reception as “this Satanists’ sherry party”. Now, I know that you are perfectly aware that we are not Satanists and that you know that we regard the worship of Satan as a childish and perfectly pointless activity – something that does not really exist, except in the minds of popular journalists and pulp novelists. I know that you know this, just as I know that you are only writing such things to tease me.’

  He keeps leafing through my diary as he talks. Every now and again, he looks up to see if I want to argue with him, but I am much too stoned.

  ‘Of course, humour is supposed to be a good thing. That is an article of English, middle-class faith. In reality humour is an obstacle to thought. For example, it is evident from what you have written here that you are disturbed by Sally’s description of you as “evil”. Your clowning pretence that you are involved with a group of Satanists who worship and promote evil has actually prevented you from thinking clearly about what Sally might mean by the word “evil” and what evil really might be. As you describe her, it seems that Sally is not interested in thinking about evil. She is using the woolly and ill-defined concept either as a term to abuse you with, or to manipulate you by. We in the Lodge, on the other hand, have been trying to make you think about evil – and good – and to understand both the commonplace morality and the higher morality that lies beyond. Sally’s notion of evil is embedded in a morass of unexamined notions about humanity and human morality. On the plane we are moving to, there is no place for the sickly deceptions of self-sacrifice and consensual morality. Evil and, for that matter good, must in the end both be overridden by the imperative of love. In the dark lands you are about to enter the only ones who laugh are the exultant.’

  The matter seems closed, but then, a few minutes later, he is sighing heavily,

  ‘That blasted sense of humour has wrecked what should have been an entirely serious exercise with Laura on Sunday night and turned it into just a laugh and “good fuck”. Yet what is at stake is terribly serious – But I forgot … I shall no longer be instructing you in the occult arts of the kiss. It has been decided that Laura should take over this part of your instruction. Your lessons with her will normally take place late on Tuesday and Thursday nights.’

  My face split open in such an enormous grin, that I thought my head might split apart like a melon which has been slashed by a machete. Felton was presenting this latest development as a mere matter of administrative redeployment, but he did not look at all pleased. He busied himself with my deplorable prose and bad attitudes. How serious everything was, but I would only know just how serious when I earned their trust. All the usual stuff.

  I was vaguely aware that I ought to have been arguing with him, but I just sat there smiling. Everything made me happy. Listening to all this high-flown talk made me happier than anything. Even when he started talking about my mother’s death, or rather my account of hearing about my mother’s death, it did not faze me, for it seemed to me that life and death were, after all, part of a continuous flow – part of the transcendent vision which is love. Kissing Laura was going to be such a buzz and yet it was being imposed on me as work!

  ‘You are still being selective in what you record,’ Felton was insisting. ‘You are still holding back, particularly with regard to your emotional response to your mother’s death. Your diary is your brother. Trust your brother! If not, you will carry the corpse of your mother on your back forever. You must let brother diary share the burden.’

  I thought I knew exactly what he meant and I smiled back. It s
eemed to me that I was being terribly benign and so was Felton. There was this enormous feeling of benignity which even the dog was feeling, I could see that he was benignly smiling too. If only we could always understand one another like we were all understanding one another now. Then Felton broke another piece of amazing news,

  ‘However, I do detect encouraging signs of a different kind of voice in the diary. It is clear that something is stirring within you … The necessary energies are being generated. I have been consulting with the Master and we have agreed that you should be raised to the rank of zelator on Sunday, after the ritual of The Consecration of the Virgin.’

  A zelator! So Cosmic was right! I know that I am not supposed to use exclamation marks, but how can I not use an exclamation mark at such a prospect? And some more exclamation marks! A zelator! A man of power! The first real step on the occult ladder!

  Seeing my big grin, Felton spoke more coldly,

  ‘Frankly I am not really sure that you are ready for it. However, there is not much time. And, to come to present matters, though there is quite a lot more in your diary that I should like to go over with you, it is now time for the lecture. You had better hurry.’

  I hurry downstairs to find that I am first in the room. This evening’s lecture is a closed one, for initiates only. Tonight’s lecture is special, a rare event, for the Master is to give the talk, which is on ‘Thinking Backwards’. Laura enters, followed by her pupils, Cosmic and Alice. I notice that Alice is looking rather strange – yet even more intense than usual. Then Granville comes in and takes his accustomed seat at the back of the room.