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Extract from Alick Lourie’s diary, April 15th, 1895
There is something so peaceful and serene about the desert. This vast empty void fills me with a mystical energy I’ve never felt before. My heart pounds and my fingers tingle as we trek from oasis to oasis. I have the most vivid dreams every night (no, it’s not the drugs talking. I haven’t chewed on the sacred cactus yet. The peyote is being rationed. I’m saving it for the ritual).
The only thing ruining this adventure is the constant huffing and puffing of Angel Puck as he stumbles behind me with the tent on his back, moaning and complaining and sweating like a pig. I should’ve come to Algeria on my own, but the ritual calls for two people. And anyway, every guru needs a disciple. I suppose Angel Puck is mine.
Never in my life have I met someone with a more inappropriate name.
“Why did your mother call you Angel?” I asked him last night, as we sat by the campfire.
He shrugged. “I dunno. I suppose she thought I looked like an angel.”
“Well, you don’t look like an angel to me,” I said. “You have a face like a warthog’s arse!”
He laughed. He is so used to my put-downs, it’s becoming irritating.
Angel is all that remains of my time at Cambridge. He was one of the college porters, but he lost his place after he helped me procure the syphilis-infected prostitute who sealed both our fates. I’ve supported him ever since. I felt I owed it to him, even if the measly annuity from my father’s inheritance is barely enough to sustain me.
Angel is my companion. He is the Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. And he is also a good sounding board for the philosophy I’m struggling to develop. I tried explaining it to him last night.
“It’s all about will,” I said. “Will is the driving force of our existence. It’s what we live for. Many people suppress their will, and it makes them bitter and frustrated. My philosophy is that we must give in to our will. We must discover what it is and embrace it. Strip away all pre-conceived ideas of convention and society and find out exactly what it is that we’ve been put in this world to do. I’ve been using sex as a means of training myself. Have you ever heard of sexual magic? Don’t look at me like that, Angel. It’s not just an excuse for me to get my cock wet. Will is a force. Like gravity or magnetism, but even more powerful. Sex for me isn’t just a quick wet dip, like it is for you. For me,it’s like entering into a magical realm. A passionate exchange of bodily fluids, like an arid desert being watered for the first time. Oh, if you could only experience what it is like to have sex with me. My women are so lucky. I see their cheeks redden, and their eyes roll up, and their backs arch in pleasure, and their bodies quiver with the explosions I provoke inside them. I envy them. Sometimes I wish I were a woman. Just to know what it feels like to be entered.”
Angel laughed.
“Don’t laugh at me, you big oaf!”
He straightened his face and looked away. Like a chastened dog.
“What is your will?” I asked.
“Well... um...” He thought about this. Long and hard. Scowling and frowning and scratching his head, as if the very act of thinking caused him physical pain.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, pay close attention tomorrow, then, for I shall be having my purification ritual. It’s all about stripping the obstacles which block your will from manifesting itself. Once we’ve done mine, we might concentrate on doing yours.”
***
THE ENOCHIAN PURIFICATION ritual was last attempted by John Dee and Edward Kelly in 1587 on a frosted turnip field in Bohemia. It is said that this ritual drove Edward Kelly to insanity. A proud husband and loving father, Kelly was forced by the spirit he summoned to swap wives with his partner, causing great pain and anguish to all involved. A few months later, while dining with his family, he took some poison and dropped dead right in front of his wife and children. The ritual has never been performed since. Until now.
It is an essential ritual for anyone who wants to make progress with magic. Its aim is to steel you against the demons of guilt, shame and pride – the very things which block you from doing what your will demands.
The Sons of Cain’s library holds a copy of John Dee’s diary, and I’ve been studying the ritual for many months. I invited the other members to practice it with me, but they were horrified at the prospect. Called it black magic and warned me to stay away from it. I am very disillusioned with the Sons of Cain. It seems to me they don’t want to practice real magic. Games and party tricks are all they’re interested in. So,I’ve come here to the deserts of French North Africa to perform it myself.
Dusk is the right time at which to summon demons. It is the time when the portal to the other world opens. Angel and I spent all day in the blazing sun looking for rocks and stones to create the magic circle in which the ritual was to take place.
After the circle was completed, and before the sun began to set, I sanctified the ground by chanting an Enochian spell so that it would protect me from my otherworldly visitors. Then I retreated into the tent, placed a dried button of peyote on the fire and inhaled its fumes.
Angel stayed outside. He had to remain alert and sober, in case the demon took possession of me and he had to wrestle it out of me. Angel’s job was to watch and observe. Magic needs a witness. Without one, there can be no proof.
As the sun began to go down, I crept out of my tent and entered the circle. Angel squatted on the ground before me, wrapped in a blanket. The desert gets very cold at night in early spring. Goosebumps rose all over my body as I began to strip.
Angel, unaware that the ritual called for me to be naked, sat up and raised his eyebrows.“What are you doing?” he asked.
The dumb oaf! He nearly ruined the whole thing by speaking. I scowled at him and urged him to shut up.
I bundled my clothes together and placed them outside the circle. Then I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, spread my legs apart, raised my arms in the air and began calling in the Enochian language for my guardian spirit.
I could feel Angel staring at me in amused surprise. This was the first magic ritual he’d witnessed, and he wasn’t used to pagan ceremonies. I even heard him giggle from time to time. But I could not let him distract me. I had to concentrate deeply. Ignoring the desert chill, and the stings and bites of the various insects summoned out of their resting place by the cooling air, I persevered.
I stood like that for nearly an hour, trembling all over, getting cramps in my outstretched arms and my neck. But then I felt a warm glow engulf my whole body, and I knew that Baphomet, my guardian spirit, had appeared. With Baphomet to protect me, I summoned the three demons into the circle one by one.
I was in a trance as I wrestled the demons into submission, and I have no memory of the event. The ritual lasted for three hours. As I woke from my trance, I found myself on my hands and knees, soaked in sweat, panting with exhaustion. Angel sat before me, wrapped in his blanket, staring at me, wide eyed and open-mouthed. He said I’d gone completely berserk. That I was shouting and jumping and throwing myself onto the ground. (Indeed, the bruises on my arms and side testify to this fact.) Angel said he’d never seen anything like it.
Released from the demons of guilt, shame and pride, my will was finally able to enact the one thing it had so desired. Still on my hands and knees, I crawled out of the circle and crept towards him.
Angel looked confused. “What are you doing?” He got up on his feet and staggered backwards, but I clasped my hands around his ankles and stopped him. I raised my head and looked him straight in the eyes. “Fuck me,” I said.
Angel didn’t take much persuading. There was a good reason why he always put up with my taunts and belittlements.
And so, the act was performed. Digging my fingers into the sand as Angel slid in and out of me, I tried to summon to my mind the moans and blushes of all the women I’d given pleasure to. But something wasn’t quite right. Something had gone horribly wrong during the ritual. One of the demons had not been fully vanquished – the demon of pride.
Although I enjoyed the sensation, at first, I couldn’t shake the notion that I was demeaning myself by letting Angel bugger me. Perhaps if it had been another man, one of my own stature. But Angel Puck?This lardy peasant’s hands all over my body?
As Angel began reaching his climax, he got more and more animated. He started rubbing his dirty hands all over my chest and grabbing my thighs. At one point he even shouted “Giddyup!” and pulled my hair and slapped my arse.
“Get off me!” I hissed.
“Wait until I’ve finished,” he huffed back.
The demon of pride filled me with fury. I turned around and pushed him off me. I swung my elbow into his face. “How dare you lay your filthy hands on me, you fat toad!”
Blood poured out of Angel’s nose. “Jesus Christ, Alick,” he said, putting his hands to his face. “You asked me to!”
I picked up the hunting knife which lay in the sand, grabbed him by his hair and put the blade against his throat. “You tell anyone about this, you’re dead!”
He looked back at me with teary eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”
I stuck the blade further into his neck, but without piercing the skin. “Swear you won’t tell anyone!”
“I swear, I swear.”
I let go of him and went back into the tent. Still fuming, I curled into my sleeping bag. This had all been a terrible mistake. I had failed to defeat the demon of pride, and now it had got hold of me. I had fucked up.