Satan Wants Me

by Robert Irwin

  ‘I had thought that you might have brought her along today. She seems to be the leading figure in the perpetual, swinging party which has kept you so busy in London in recent months. But I suppose funerals aren’t her sort of cool scene.’

  ‘Actually, Sally and I have broken up.’ I thought that this would lighten my father’s spirits a bit, but it hardly seemed to register, and he returned to brooding. Probably he was brooding about the loneliness to come.

  We stood outside the chapel. I looked at its grey walls. I was madly hoping to find salvation in them. I thought that I could see ghostly Egyptian hierophants, coloured smokes and Alice’s white flesh quivering – all superimposed on the chapel’s walls like a transparent film. These were not pleasant things to contemplate on a coke comedown. My skin itched and there was a raw pain between my legs. Was it possible that Divine Providence had brought me here on this day of all days? Could the Baptists help me? As we entered the chapel, the mad thought came to me that I might pray to God for forgiveness for what I had done. Of course I did not believe in God, but even so, despite my unbelief, God might take pity on me and grant me the grace to believe in Him. Then all the demons who were invisibly walking beside me would be silently wailing and gnashing their teeth. There was still hope.

  So when the service commenced and everybody inclined their heads to pray I really started praying, ‘O God, help me in my unbelief. Have mercy on me, a miserable sinner. Give me a sign that I am forgiven.’ But it was impossible to pray with all this noisy Christian ritual carrying on around me.

  At last I found myself standing with Dad at opposite ends of the pit in which they were burying Mum. The grave yawned beneath me. I yawned back at it. It was all so drab. If the Lodge had been organising this, we would have been resplendent in our robes. There would have been censers and candles, invocations to Choronzon and the Goat of Mendes, billows of coloured smoke, queues to kiss the corpse. We who are initiates feed upon the energies of those who have been dead.

  In a way, I would like to have discussed these matters with some of the people who came back to the house after the funeral. But no way. They stood chatting quietly and smiling at one another. I think that each one of them in his or her heart was secretly pleased to have outlived yet another person.

  Things only became a little lively when the minister came over to me. He was a big, beefy man and I caught a glimpse of his braces under his jacket. I thought that I would ask him what hope of salvation there might be for a practising Satanist who could not bring himself to believe in God. That might make our chat a bit livelier, for I presumed that he had come over to offer the conventional condolences, but what he said was,

  ‘“If a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him”.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘“If a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him”,’ he repeated. ‘1 Corinthians, 11:14. Your hair, Peter, is an insult to the occasion. To turn up looking as you do on this day of all days … I happen to know that the length of your hair was a matter of great distress to your poor, dear mother.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Her hair was long enough – at least until she started getting the radiotherapy.’

  ‘If a man have long hair, it is shame unto him.’ The Lord Absalom, who was son of King David of Israel, wore his hair like a living crown. The heaviness of Absalom’s hair on his head was as the glory of women’s hair, yet it was no glory to him, for he raised his hand against his father in unfilial revolt. And when it was the day of battle between father and son, ‘Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule that was under him went away.’ And Absalom, suspended by his raven locks and hanging from the tree, was like the Fool on the Tarot card. The man who has raised his fist against his father is like one who mocks and curses his God and it was for this that Absalom was hacked about and slain as he swung by his hair from the tree.

  Surely it is vain to seek salvation in the Church, when its ministers are heirs to the witchcraft of ancient Israel and the latter-day slaves of snakey-haired Jewesses? The curse of Saul, sinful King of the Hebrews, runs as poison in the bloodline from generation to generation. Saul said, ‘Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit that I may go to her, and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.’ And the Witch shook out her hair and tied knots in its tresses and blew upon those knots, so that Saul might hear Samuel, who was dead, speak. Thus the kingdom was infected, the kings tormented and the Holy made desolate from the corpse’s stinking breath: the seduction of Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, the butchery of Absalom, the bringing of Abishag the virgin Shunamite to David’s bed, the whoring of Jezebel and the murderous dance of Salome. Belial has set up his pulpit in your heart. The Devil can quote the Scriptures, those tales of ancient darkness, for his own purposes. There is no hope outside the church – nor inside it.

  The minister stiffened and turned away when I made that crack about radiotherapy. Which was fortunate. Otherwise we might have had a real argument on our hands. I am not buying selective observance of the Scriptures. Sure there is all that stuff in Corinthians against long hair. That does not mean we have to pay any attention to it. After all, it is quite some time since the Church has stopped purifying the houses of lepers by killing a bird in an earthen vessel over running water, even though that is exactly what Leviticus orders us to do. Times have moved on.

  As for all that stuff about Absalom and the long-haired Jewesses, I am trying to pay no attention to whatever it is that my writing hand is trying to tell me. It is nothing to do with what was happening at the time. My writing hand has become a tiresome companion, like a witch’s familiar. I shall give it a name – Pyewhacket.

  Then Dad came up. I thought that I might have counted on him to support me against the minister, but what he said was,

  ‘You are no good to me here, Peter. You might as well go back to your funny friends in London.’

  So it was that. I was cast out of my father’s house on the day of my mother’s funeral and I was set loose like Satan to walk backwards and forwards on the earth. Now I am sitting writing my diary on the train back to London. As for the minister’s intemperate outburst, that is precisely why I grew my hair long – so as to alienate the sort of people who would be alienated by that sort of thing. Life is too short to waste on uptight straights. Looking back on that drab funeral, it just seems so sad that the mystic teachings of Jesus the Sorcerer should have degenerated into the mingy morality of the Baptists – a matter of paying your bills on time, never drinking more than a couple of glasses of sherry, of washing milk-bottles out before you put them on the doorstep, and not indulging in much heavy petting before marriage. What good did all this do my mother?

  Tuesday, June 13th

  All mail received at the Black Book Lodge is opened and read aloud at the breakfast table. (The only secrets which the Lodge tolerates are its own.) Either Felton or Agatha reads the letters. This morning there was a letter for me and it was Agatha who read it to the six of us assembled at breakfast.

  Dear Peter Keswick,

  I have recieved your address from the computer-dating agency. If you would like to meet me, please telephone me in the evening, so that we can arrange how to meet. I am in most evenings. I am looking forward to meeting you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Maud Boleskine

  It bodes ill that the girl cannot even spell ‘received’. The phone number given at the letterhead told me that she lives in Camden Town. If she is in most evenings, it suggests that she is not exactly a swinging chick. I really am most unkeen about the whole business. But Felton and Laura are excited and they are insisting that I ring her this very evening.

  I spent the greater part of the day at the playground and tidying up my notes in the cafe nearby, but I kept thinking about Maud and what she would be
like. Maud, Maud, Maud! The resonances of thy name … She sounds like something left over from the Victorian age, as in the poem (or is it a song?) ‘Come into the garden, Maud, for the black bat night has flown.’ In my mind’s eye, I see her entering the garden, veiled and in a long, high-buttoned, black dress. She works as a governess and there is tragedy and a broken heart somewhere in her past. I do not really fancy the idea of Maud and I would rather be going out with a Caroline, a Helen, a Susan, a Gillian, a Georgina or a Daisy. Not Maud.

  In the evening, Felton practically has to drag me to the phone. I was praying that she would be out, but my prayers never seem to be answered these days.

  ‘Hello, is that Miss Boleskine? This is Peter – Peter Keswick.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ her voice is cool. ‘How good of you to ring. I just got in from work.’

  (What work? A governess. A python-handler. A masseuse. A policewoman. One of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting.)

  ‘Er … I suppose we ought to meet or something. I don’t know when you are free.’

  ‘Well how about tomorrow?’

  (She is not exactly playing hard to get.)

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose tomorrow would be fine. I could take you out to dinner or something.’

  ‘That would be lovely. Where shall we meet?’

  ‘Um … How about Piccadilly Circus under the Statue of Eros and we will go on from there to dinner.’

  ‘How will we recognise one another?’

  I said the first thing that came into my head,

  ‘I will be carrying a copy of Aleister Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice.’

  ‘Oooh! Are you a conjuror or something?’

  ‘Or something. Let us talk when we meet.’

  ‘OK. Bye for now.’ And she put the phone down.

  Felton had been standing near me while I made the call and I now followed him into his study for the regular diary session. Another hundred pounds changed hands. Am I being corrupted by the money? It is obviously possible, but I keep checking – as it were rummaging inside myself. The money makes no difference. Before Felton could start in on his grumbles about my wonky grammar, I attempted to derail the session by observing that, after all the pathworkings and meditations I had been doing, I still had not seen any demons and that consequently I did not believe in magic.

  But then Felton pointed to what I had written in my diary and said,

  ‘You do not believe in magick, but yet you believe that Odi Profanum has a special magical gaze which forced Sally to sleep with him?’

  I was about to say no, and then I wanted to say yes. I did not know what to say. The thing is, either magick is true, or, if it is not, then, when Sally slept with Granville (Odi Profanum is his magical name), she betrayed me of her own free will, because at that moment, at least, she preferred Granville to me.

  Seeing me sitting there, tongue-tied and wrestling with myself, Felton leant over to whisper in Boy’s ear,

  ‘Fetch Odi Profanum. Boy, go fetch.’

  Then he walked over to open the door for the dog.

  We sat there silent and waiting. My eyes came to rest on a photograph on the mantelpiece. It showed two slender young men standing on either side of a goat in a desert. One of the men held a shotgun. With a start I realised that his companion was Felton – a Felton who was slim and young. Who was the other? Not the Master.

  After a few minutes the dog reappeared and Granville was with him. Felton silently passed my diary to Granville. It was open on the page where I wrote about Cosmic telling me about Granville’s seduction of Sally. Granville scowled down on what I had written. Not that he was particularly angry. The scowl is just his usual expression.

  ‘Fucking awful handwriting!’ he declared and lapsed into silence.

  Felton looked to me.

  It took me a while to find the words,

  ‘Is what Cosmic says there true?’

  ‘Do you want there to be demons? Then there are demons,’ replied Granville, and then, seeing that I was expecting more, ‘Yes, I used the power of the Mordo Dolorosa to bring Sally to my bed.’

  ‘And that is the truth?’

  ‘If that is what you want it to be, Non Omnis Moriar,’ said Felton.

  This was like punching air. But I had an idea,

  ‘Can I see the page of Odi Profanum’s diary for the relevant day?’

  Granville immediately protested,

  ‘I only show my diary to the Master!’

  ‘Shall I call the Master?’ Felton’s hand rested on the telephone.

  ‘No, of course not. But is he really so important?’

  It was not necessary for Felton to reply. We, all three of us, knew that I was so important. Only I did not know why this was so.

  I smirked up at Granville. After a long silence, he said that he did not have his diary on him. Felton said that that was fine. He was sure that I could wait until Thursday. Granville went out, not quite slamming the door. Hitherto I had thought of the Lodge as a single body, an organisation of totally like-minded people dedicated to a single thing. But I now see that this may not be the case.

  Felton moved on to the next thing. He still felt that I was holding something important back. How did I feel about Brother Vigilante (Cosmic to profane mortals) coming to my room on Sunday morning to propose that we did a joint bunk? Was I not tempted? I said it was all just as I had reported.

  Felton’s smile was cold. He stuck doggedly with his point. When I wrote up Cosmic’s visit to my room and his proposal that we should flee the Lodge, I knew that he, Felton, would read what I had written and that there would be consequences. Felton wanted to know how it felt to have betrayed a friend?

  But I replied,

  ‘I have no friends.’

  As I left the room, that song by the Loving Spoonful, ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’ was running in my head. This evening we were scheduled to hear a lecture by Agatha on extraterrestrial forces and then to do a short pathworking on the same subject, but things turned out a bit more interesting than that.

  First the session started late. We all hung around waiting for Agatha or one of the senior Lodge members to appear. Alice was one of the circle. I tried to think myself back to the drug-intoxicated state in which I had actually desired her body, but that was a seriously bad trip which went nowhere. It was a bit like meditating on the razor-studded banister and I swiftly gave it up. Eventually Granville and Grieves entered and took up positions on either side of the door. They were shortly followed by Felton, Agatha and the rest of the senior members. Then Laura went over to Cosmic and demanded that he fetch his diary and Granville escorted Cosmic as he went off to fetch his diary from his bag which he had left outside Laura’s room. At this stage Cosmic was looking merely puzzled. When they returned, Granville again took up a position beside the door. Now I noticed that he held a sword by his side.

  Then Felton asked Cosmic to read from his diary his account of the morning of Sunday, June 11th. We formed a circle and listened to him read,

  ‘Sunday, June 11th. Got up early enough to walk to Horapollo House. Got changed in Peter’s room. Peter hung-up on not having a record-player, but I put him right on that. Then we went down to the Ritual Room and waited for Alice and – ’

  Felton cut him short and, turning to me, asked me to read my account of what happened that morning up to the point at which we descended to the Ritual Room. So I read my version. Then Felton stepped into the circle of Adepts and turned to each of us as he spoke,

  ‘What should be done with someone who has been planning to leave the Path and betray the Lodge? What is the penalty for such a thing? Non Omnis Moriar, you must speak.’

  ‘He shall be as one who is dead to the Lodge,’ I replied.

  ‘Peter – Non Omnis Moriar is lying,’ Cosmic swiftly protested. ‘I never said any of those things that he has put in his diary. I am completely loyal to the Lodge, whereas he is lying. He is cunning and dangerous – ’

  Felton cut him short,
r />   ‘Non Omnis Moriar has delivered judgement.’

  At that, Granville and Grieves advanced on Cosmic and forced him to lie face down on the floor. Then Granville brought the sword down to tap the nape of Cosmic’s neck with the point. Only after this was he allowed to rise and told that he could leave.

  ‘You are dead to us now.’

  I had thought that Cosmic would feel relieved when he was ‘killed’ merely in a symbolical sense, but in fact, as he looked back at me before leaving the room, he looked grim.

  The Nine Barbarous Names were invoked and we all went outside briefly to witness first the burning of the Athanor and then the casting of Cosmic’s diary into the same brazier. After that most of us returned inside for what turned out to be a rather dull lecture by Agatha on the winds that blow in outer space and the screaming spirits that travel from planet to planet. However, I was not paying much attention to the lecture. I kept thinking about Cosmic, for it now occurred to me that he was another temptation set to lure me from the Path. Not that he was a manifestation of the Qlippoth as Sally was. I was toying with the idea that I had been dealing with the real Cosmic, but something had got into his head and he was being manipulated by some higher power that did not want us to advance further on the Path. And I kept wondering what he would do now that he was expelled from the Lodge. Would he go to the press? One thing I was pretty sure of was that he would go to Sally and tell tales against me. I was never seriously tempted by Cosmic though. I could never leave the Lodge, for I am just so curious to see what will happen next.

  Over the last few weeks one thing has been preying on my mind more than I have let on in these pages. It is the business of being made to learn the Obscene Kiss. The Knights Templar performed it on one another as part of their weird Gnostic initiation rituals. I have been wishing that I had kept my mouth shut about getting lessons in kissing right from the first. I need not have worried. It was a gas. This evening it was Laura who performed it on me. I was trying to protest and suggest that it was not really necessary to go through it all, but she said that it was and that it was necessary that it be her who paid me homage as I outranked her. All quite weird. Fun though.