Challenges and Rewards
of Being Married
to Another Magician
A Marriage Secret
When two strong souls,
And two strong wills,
And two strong minds unite,
There will come rounds
When standing your grounds
Will turn in to a fight.
So here and now,
Before reciting your vows,
And while you’re high as a kite,
Agree that one of you will know everything,
And the other will always be right.
This compromise
Is very wise,
You’ll use it day and night.
It’s an understanding
That’s not demanding,
It’s unbreakable, try as you might.
So leave behind
The undefined.
Step boldly into the light
Of a world where one of you knows everything,
And the other is always right.46
I don’t know if the above sentiments are really the ultimate secret of marriage, but they certainly ring true in the DuQuette household. Constance and I discovered in the early days of our marriage that when we discuss (argue about) important matters, each of us contributes a unique and ultimately accurate assessment of the issue. I am usually armed with an arsenal of facts and objective observations, but I am quick to jump to conclusions and am inclined to pragmatically (or emotionally) surrender my ideals under the inescapable weight of objective reality. Constance, on the other hand, possesses the absolutely annoying ability to immediately grasp the deeper spiritual dimensions of any manifested issue or question. Furthermore, to make matters doubly infuriating, she has the guileless audacity to give perfect voice to the moral, spiritual, and philosophical truth underlying the entire situation. In other words, I may know everything, but she is always right!
A relationship such as ours could hardly be called serene, but when all is said and done, it has produced a life of profound serenity. I won’t try to kid you. We argue. We argue a lot! Familiarity really does breed contempt, and so far we’ve enjoyed forty-seven years of familiarity. We argue because occasionally she actually needs to hear the cold hard facts and the perspective of a flawed and perpetually adolescent mortal, and I ultimately always need to hear the voice of God and understand what those cold hard facts actually mean to my soul.
Together, since 1978, Constance and I have directed the activities of a lodge of the O.T.O. We’ve organized, set up, performed, torn down, and cleaned up after hundreds of degree initiation ceremonies, Gnostic Masses, public rites, plays, and celebrations and literally thousands of classes and workshops. All of these events have taken place in classrooms, temples, and theaters created from the space and the furnishings of our home—from our living room, from our garage, from our backyard. End tables become altars and fonts, plant pedestals become ritual columns, and curtains become veils.
Getting ready for homemade magick can be exhausting. I have to confess that Constance does 99 percent of the hard work of setting up for our public events and lodge rituals. I caught her resting a moment on a shady coffin prior to a backyard Rite of Eleusis.
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Constance as Scorpio-Apophis dances to Albinoni’s Adagio in D minor and mourns the death and entombment of the sun god (played this year by our son, Jean-Paul) in this scene from a backyard performance of the Rite of Sol (from the Rites of Eleusis). The columns in the background are our living-room plant stands. The veil (barely visible) is strung between two backyard trees. The coffin was built by a lodge brother. On other occasions it has served as the tomb in the Gnostic Mass.
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It’s hard work, and because of her need for neatness and perfection (and because of my inherent laziness and sloppiness), Constance always ends up doing 99 percent of the physical labor involved. Each event is preceded by prolonged and spirited “discussions” (in which I know everything about one thing or another and she is always right). But from out of all the tension and conflict is born something very magical—a world rare and wonderful; a safe and relatively stable environment to raise our son; a cultural (or sub-cultural) atmosphere filled with stimulating conversation, art, music, and literature; a universe peopled with some of the most interesting, talented, brilliant, and colorful individuals in the world. Together our craziness has enriched and transformed our lives, and allowed two magicians with extremely different styles and temperaments the freedom to do our individual Great Work while sharing our lives and our love with the world.
Perhaps our most important collaboration has been the creation and presentation of “The Miracle of the Mass,” our all-day public seminar on the O.T.O.’s Mass of the Gnostic Catholic Church (more commonly referred to simply as the Gnostic Mass). In the last twenty years, we have presented this seminar from Tokyo to Oslo and throughout the United States. It has recently been recorded and serialized on the Internet.
The Gnostic Mass is a ceremonial tour de force of sexual alchemy, and in many ways is one of the most beautiful and important contributions from Aleister Crowley to Western esotericism. It is quite frankly the essence of the mysteries of the Holy Grail. Our love for (and appreciation of) this ritual made our collaboration uncharacteristically civil, and our usual volatile chemistry transmuted to create a serious and authoritative commentary on the ceremony (in particular) and sex magick (in general).
Constance and I have yet to collaborate on a full book or musical project (which is perhaps a good thing). But in the early 1990s, we began collaboration on an art project that is likely to last long after we have both moved on to our next incarnational adventures. I’m talking about the Tarot of Ceremonial Magick, our deck of Tarot cards. I believe there is perhaps no more perfect example of the challenges, tribulations, and rewards of a homemade magick operation than the story of the creation and eventual publication of this deck of cards.
46. Lon Milo DuQuette, Ask Baba Lon: Answers to Questions of Life and Magick (Las Vegas, NV: New Falcon Publications, 2011), pp. 80–82.