While in London, however, I found a little occult shop called Atlantis Books (think Gerald Gardner's old stomping grounds) which specialized in Austin Osman Spare. I managed to snag copies of Stealing the Fire from Heaven and Automatic Drawing relatively cheaply (so long as I don't think about the Canadian dollar to British pound sterling exchange rate). They also had a delightful edition of Aleister Crowley's Magick I-IV, though I really couldn't have managed carrying it in addition to all my other crap through a rush-hour subway ride and a 7 hour flight.
I also found a copy of the Book of Enoch, Nigel Pennick's The God Year (full of great artwork) and Secrets of East Anglian Magic, and Evan John Jones' Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed. I bought The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus but managed (with difficulty) to put The Goetia back on the shelf. I was worried about airport security enough as it was, without adding demonic evocations to my collection of books with erotic-looking goatish creatures on the covers. Baphomet porn, anyone? :)
Anyway, loved the UK, have dropped out of university (again) and am heading back over in September. I promise not to drink so much this time.
...Luring me on with a fascinating church, a Sumerian plague demon, awesome witch doctors, and a sexy Catholic priest, and then, what do I get? Beetlejuice. Fucking Beetlejuice. It was like picking up Milton's Paradise Lost and finding that someone had ripped out the pages and glued in LaVey's Satanic Bible. It was that kind of disappointment. Horror movies were so much better when I was actually scared by them.
In other news, I have books. More books. And I'm going to list them, because it gives me pleasure to do so:
The Devil's Picturebook by Paul Huson. Most interesting book on Tarot I've ever read, in part because of the long rambling chapters on historical witchcraft.
The Pillars of Tubal Cain by Nigel Jackson and Michael Howard. Fallen angels, Luciferian witchcraft, gnosticism, Dame Venus... It only took me seven years to get my hands on this book. I'm not sure if it was worth the wait yet; I would have been giddy if I'd found it when I was 13, when I first started to look for it.
The Real Middle Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages by Brian Bates. Probes Tolkien's sources...
Visual Magic: A Manual of Freestyle Shamanism by Jan Fries. I like it; it's quite chaotic for a Thelemite. The result is quite nice, like going outdoors and stretching out.
Nocturnicon by Konstantinos. Although 9 times out of 10 I won't buy a Llewellyn book just because it's a Llewellyn book, this one wasn't bad. It only took about an hour to read it, but for $13 I'm quite forgiving. My overall impression was that it was fun... I'm not sure if that's what the author was going for, but anyway...
I was sick the past few days and spent my time huddled in front of the fire, reading a few of Poe's short horror stories and most of Absinthe: History in a Bottle by Barnaby Conrad. And that just made me worry about the fate of the Wormwood. I hope she survives the winter. The hyssop's long gone. I wonder, if you brewed a Cedar beer, would you get absinthe-like effects from the high thujone content or would you just convulse and die? Must think more on this...
And at the end, she seems cruel and utterly random in her decisions. We forget all the things we've gotten away with, all the times we drank too much or drove too fast or tried a new drug or went home with a stranger and woke up the next day, unhurt, still breathing. We get away with an innumerable amount of stupid, stupid things.
But not always...
And if she doesn't catch you today, she'll catch you tomorrow.
And if you don't pay for all the times you escaped, unscathed, alive, someone else will.
Or you think that they've paid for you. You might slow down for a few days as you drive past the spot where he died and others bled, but the river flows on and you have places to go. And you slide back into your old, stupid habits, because you are young and death is something that happens to other people. You might think that because someone has already died on this road, the toll has been paid and you're free to carry on.
And for a long, long time, it might seem that way.
Or maybe I just hate Winter. Seed catalogues become a form of solace. New medicinal herbs to stick in the garden and occasionally chew. Other medicinal herbs to grow and later sell for $20/gram and put towards my tuition. :) That sort of thing. Fucking snow.
***
So, from Veseys I bought:
Aconite Aconitum napellus
Toad Lilies Tricyrtis spp.
And from Richters I'm buying:
Maikoa Brugmansia spp.
Belladonna Atropa belladonna
Diviner's Sage Salvia divinorum
Chinese Wolfberry Lycium chinense
Black Cohosh Cimicifuga racemosa
And as seeds:
Henbane Hyoscyamus niger
European Mandrake Mandragora officinarum
Syrian Rue Peganum harmala
***
I also found a copy of The Fabulous Illustrated History of Psychoactive Plants, Or, Great Grandma's Pleasures by Michael Starks, which is rather interesting. Nothing's better than Dale Pendell, though. I found my French dictionary, so I can finish reading Le livre de Cain, which is also about drugs, funnily enough. I'm sensing a theme, here. Cheers
Andrew Chumbley once wrote that the best way to learn to practice witchcraft was to go deep into the forest, into some deserted, lonely place, and invoke something.
I did this often, as a child, naming places and staring, open-eyed, as the landscapes whirled and shifted and settled again. Finding the piles of pigs' skulls deep in the woods, the bones green with age and moss, empty eyes staring out, and running for home like the devil himself was after me. I didn't know about devils then.
My friends, raised Christian unlike myself, filled me in.
Satan, they said, is waiting. A monster, who'll eat your soul over and over and over. And then still want more.
It was... intriguing... Gave a new name and face to my nightmares. I gained more control; a name is a good thing to have. If I must have bad dreams, I will at least get to pick their content.
I spent a lot of time dreaming. Asleep, awake. Still do. Went to bed early so the dreams would take me. Love, perhaps, at first sight.
At 13, wandering the woods at twilight, collecting bones. Building something to watch over this land, keep it safe from industry and suburbia. The devil forgotten entirely. Christian propaganda. So what if my Wiccan friends think Hekate is evil. So what if they're squeamish about the bats and the snakes. I spend a lot of time reading about angels. I like the fallen ones.
Winter. The forest again. I trudge through snow up past my knees, heading to the meadow I saw the night before in my dreams. Blood on a stone for a goddess. I wonder what else might be in these woods. I am more afraid of bears than spirits. Or, at least, I tell myself that.
The river flows on. I visit my friends, talk about boys and sex, and then go home and craft an entire ritual system around the fallen Watchers of the Book of Enoch. What did you accomplish when you were 14? :)
My dark one returns under a new name. I refuse to pick between a goddess and the devil, and as a result, I lose both. Or I think I do. But that's bad enough. In a swamp, crossing a stream using stepping stones and realizing that they are cow skulls, left for the coyotes. Nothing answers my call.
A memory of walking with friends through hay fields under a huge, golden moon. Sometimes, we simply think too much. Most times, it's just we talk too much.
