FoolishPeople

From the Ministry #7

Sanity and Security make Sense. #ministryofinformation

 

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Mysterium Tremendum Et Fascinans!

 
With every work that FoolishPeople undertake, we aim to "create a numinous experience within the spectator".

As we move deeper into the creation of a new form of FoolishPeople narrative with our first feature film Strange Factories, it is worth explaining what exactly it is that we mean by the Numinous. Reading on, you will discover that his task itself is something of a paradox...

Definition and Potted History

(nū'mə-nəs, nyū'-)

1. Of or relating to a numen; supernatural

2. Filled with or characterised by a sense of a supernatural presence

2. Spiritually elevated; sublime

The word Numinous is derived from the Latin word numen, which means "will, the active power of the divine" and was coined by the German theologian Rudolph Otto at the beginning of the 20th century. For Otto the Numinous is characterised by mystical awe invoking fear and trembling (mysterium tremendum) in addition to a sense of divine power (majestas) which possesses the ability to compel and fascinate (mysterium fascinans).

According to Otto, the Numinous object is an indescribable one which has the power to alter the perceiver's consciousness by creating the experience of being in communion with the mysterious Other.

Jung later adopted Otto's notion and incorporated it into his own work, believing the "Numinous effect" to be therapeutic, whilst Mircea Eliade later suggests that behind the Numinous lies a "nostalgia for paradise"; a longing to return to the Home Sweet Home. Describing their awe and wonder at the Universe, both Einstein and Carl Sagan refer to the Numinous as a secular experience; showing that religious belief of any sort is not a prerequisite for encountering the Numinous. Rather it stands for a total annihilation of the Self in the face of the divine or a moment of absolute connection with "the unknowable". Think of it, if you will, as catching a glimpse behind the curtain.

 

CS Lewis & The Numinous

In C.S. Lewis' study of suffering, The Problem of Pain, the numinous is eloquently defined using this very simple illustration:  

"Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told 'There is a ghost in the next room', and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is 'uncanny' rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous...wonder and a certain shrinking - a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it - an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words 'Under it my genius is rebuked'. This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous."

Lewis goes on to note that the Numinous and fear are certainly not one and the same. Firstly, the Numinous object is "beyond good and evil". It has absolutely nothing to do with a moral experience. Secondly, whilst fear develops from a physical actuality - as the logical conclusion of a material "interference" or danger, the Numinous object may be impossible to pinpoint. Just as it is near impossible to describe the beauty of that which is beautiful, it is near impossible to sum up the Numinous further than asserting that it some sort of impression that one gets from the Universe. In this sense, like the noting of beauty, it is an interpretation of that which is. And so Lewis concludes:

"Either it is a mere twist in the human mind, corresponding to nothing objective and serving no biological function...or else it is a direct experience of the really supernatural, to which the name Revelation might properly be given".

Now, I am rather given over to the idea that there really aren't that many twists in the human mind. Or rather, that there are in fact many twists in the human mind but just because we cannot fully explain them does not mean that they do not have a function or a certain rationality of their own. And if the Numinous experience can then be defined in terms of revelation (I use a small 'r', as I refer to the act of revealing and disclosing rather than in the more overtly theological sense) then I understand that surely there is no other experience more worthy of chasing.

 
FoolishPeople: Revelation & True Will 

Those who have had the opportunity to attend a FoolishPeople event will be well aware of the powers of the Numinous with regards to altering consciousness in a way that is truly indescribable. This, ideally, would be the aim of all true Art. But the Numinous experience is pregnant with much more than a split-second "wooaah, out there!" feeling. As revelation, such experiences are nigh impossible to wipe from the mind as they work their magick for positive change in the lives of both audience and performers alike. Through the annihilation of self, layers of unneccessary falsehoods are shed, former notions of what we might be topple to the ground in flames. Let's return to the etymological orgin of the word -"will, the active power of the divine". What we experience as the Numinous, as the shedding of self, necessarily implies the revelation of our True Will, of the alignment between our deeper selves and the natural order of the Universe.

In this sense, I think that FoolishPeople's statement of intent is as essential as any I've ever heard. As Lewis notes, the experience of the Numinous is one of the few events which "does not disappear from the mind with the growth of knowledge and civilisation". Perhaps it serves as both a memory of paradise and a glimpse into the future. Or, more likely, it is the absolute, quite literal epitome of Timelessness.

Images:Dead Language at the ICA; engraving, artist unknown; watch by Yiannis Katsaris

Please don't forget to join Strange Factories on Facebook:

Are You Being Entertained?

 
"Entertainment! That's a key word. Literally, it means "to hold between," from OF entre between, and tenir, to hold. That is, it can be construed as the making of liminality, the betwixt and between state. Webster gives it both playful and serious valences, for it can mean (1) "to keep the interest of and give pleasure to; to divert; amuse," or (2) "to allow oneself to think about; have in mind; consider." Thus, in confession when the penitent told the priest that he had had lustful thoughts, the latter asked him, "But son, did you entertain them?" His answer, honest enough, came quickly, "No, Father, but they entertained me." This ambiguity is the soul of theatre, which is not a mechanism of repression or even of sublimation, but fantasised reality even while it realizes fantasy...

When we act in everyday life we do not merely re-act to indicative stimuli, we act in frames we have wrested from the genres of cultural performance. And when we act on the stage, whatever our stage may be, we must now in this reflexive age of psychoanalysis and semiotics as never before, bring into the symbolic or fictitious world the urgent problems of our reality. We have to go into the subjunctive world of monsters, demons, and clowns, of cruelty and poetry, in order to make sense of our daily lives, earning our daily bread. And when we enter whatever theatre our lives allow us, we have already learned how strange and many-layered everyday life is, how extraordinary the ordinary".

-Victor Turner, anthropologist

 (Image: Andrew Shore as Punch, by Laurie Lewis)

An Assortment of Secrets

"No one can be the person they were born to be if you cut out the most wonderful sections of the narrative"

 
Under the glare of last weekend's Full Moon the Core Creative Team behind Strange Factories once again embarked on a 48hour Tweetathon in the run up to the final week of our IndieGoGo fundraising campaign.

We heard stories both profound and provocative, secrets at once dark and delightful, dreams with the potential to rouse nightmares in our readers.

Thankyou to everybody who participated by sending in their fragments. At the final moment we announced the lucky winner of the Strange Factories Secrets, Dreams and Storytelling Competition. Huge congratulations to Adrian Giddings, who will now be joining us at Stronheim's Mansion in the beautiful Czech countryside!

So here are some highlights from the finale of our epic Tweetathon. As our funding campaign draws to a close we heard some amusing tales of the effects of sleep deprivation and workaholism on FP's Core Team, as well as some of the bizarre events that have occured in the pre-production phase of Strange Factories:

In a crazed moment of exhaustion, I lost all perception of common sense and stuck my hand in a live socket!

We intuitively feel and know in our bones when sacrifices have been made for a story to be built and told...

The burglar had dragged my violin case out of a cupboard and left it open on the floor, the instrument untouched and perfectly in tune..

We also heard many beguiling truths and fictions of magick and mystery:

Her hinged jaw opened impossibly wide, and her misshapen mouth somehow managed to form the words again: "Am I beautiful?"

The yanari were illustrated as tiny daemons…They looked like distorted humans with wide demented grins on toothy mouths.

I know woman who was turned in to a white rabbit.

A woman drugged her husband, tied him to a bed, cut off his penis, threw it in the waste disposal unit and switched it on, police say

And we pulled a few skeletons out of the FP closet too:

As with all magickal rites, sometimes the thing you don't want to happen is the thing that needs to happen. You have no control over it...

I think even Carrie was a little worried that we had all carried on with our manifestations when we thought she was dead!

FoolishPeople are akin to those Pioneer Village actors, and would be horrified to see the audience catch a glimpse 'behind the curtains'...Where dedicated actors never break their character, even when faced with a horrific hostage-situation!

This is one of many reasons why we will survive the zombie apocalypse and become a touring troupe of zombie fighting minstrels.

I had the pleasure of dunking her in the river, cleansing her 'soul' and then taking her home for a bath......

Desecration dealt with human demons. How they're created & constructed from the bleakest and saddest stories of our lives.

I miss Deluge still!

Finally, it was noted that:

Having strangers pledge and support Strange Factories who have never seen our work has been the highlight for me, personally.

I think this is a thought that all of the FoolishPeople team hold in our minds. We are so grateful to everyone who has contributed to our campaign so far. There are only a few days to go, so please, if you can, do not hesitate to join us on this wonderous journey:

Go to IndieGoGo

 

FP production photos by Cecile Melie and Yiannis Katsaris

 

Fragments, Histories, Truths

Astonishing things happened the weekend before last. The Core Creative Team behind Strange Factories were, it was said, gripped by "obsession, hallucinations and mania". We shunned both the Sun and sleep in order to conduct the Secrets, Dreams and Storytelling Tweetathon for our beloved Stronheim. Many thanks to all who contributed their fragments and put themselves forwards for Stronheim's Tombola. For all of those suffering withdrawal symptoms (I know there several known cases here at FP HQ) we have compiled something of a "Greatest Hits of Tweetathon I" for your entertainment and enlightenment!

Throughout the Tweetathon, members of the Strange Factories team recalled some extraordinary experiences from their time with FoolishPeople. These previously untold demented, hilarious and disturbing tales served to construct and reveal a narrative history of FoolishPeople through the eyes of the individuals who have lived it:

- For the first time in my life someone asked me questions I even didn’t know how desperately I needed to be asked but I knew that in that moment my future shifted, my life changed and I became Foolish…

- One of the most powerful currents I've been caught up in was 'Desecration' that we performed at the Galleries of Justice. On the last performance, I think it would be safe to say that one of the performers was possessed by something other. He was knelt on the floor, tearing the rancid meat between his teeth, with his eyes completely glazed over...

- I turn up at their test site with a famous fetish model and suddenly you realise that life can be far weirder than any fiction you can imagine.

- I knelt down with my bucket and sponge and began to clean shit from the stage of the ICA.

- I was once chased by a wolf deep in the Czech countryside. No joke. He could have taken my blood without remorse. I ran like I’ve never ran in my entire life. It came from somewhere. FP has taken me to places within myself that I didn't even know existed. Looking at the darkest parts of myself with a defiant grin.

- Left on my own in the gallery as night fell, I hallucinated that Lilith had sprung out of Otaiti + was now slung over my shoulder in a sack. I carried Lilith across Blackfriars Bridge in that sack, heaved her along the banks of the Thames, felt her writhing as I carried her burden.

- I always suspected that casting me as an actress was an elaborate ploy to use me as a ritual sacrifice! Being shut into a coffin doesn't do anything for your nerves when you feel there could be a possibility of being killed...

The very essence of the work FoolishPeople undertakes was revealed:

-FP offers a ritual space that allows us to slough off and clear away the parts of ourselves that we’ve mistakenly identified as ‘us’. Once you’ve undergone this process it’s easier to see what you need to be happy, rather than what you think you need to be happy.

-Forced to confronted everything you are, and forced to question yourself and the way you live your life. This process is the very essence of our work, as you become the fool archetype, stepping off the cliff.

 
 

We also exposed many beautiful thoughts, fragments, dreams and secrets from all over the world. All of these will remain with us but here are a few highlights we've picked out:

-True anarchy is freedom of the soul, regardless of societal constraints, the daring to be a true representation of one’s will.

-Does your spirit know that you almost didn’t become?

- I awaken with the peppery, florid aftertaste of that fantastical flesh on my tongue, a lingering ember.

-I was about to be ‘touched’ by an 80 year old man!

- Duck down between the pause in the beats of your heart and you’ll find the answer to your own riddle

Many thanks again to everybody took part, your responses and enthusiasm (along with copious amounts of caffeine!) really did keep us going over that marathon weekend of collating, dreaming and typing. This was more than just a Tweetathon, it was the preservation of our collective histories; yours and ours. After all, we are all Memories of Events Yet to Occur.

The Strange Factories team are now preparing for the final installment of the Secrets, Dreams and Storytelling Tweetathon. Get your fragments in early by emailing them to [email protected]. Remember you could win a stay at Stronheim's mansion in the beautiful Czech countryside.We'll preserve your anonymity so there's no need to be shy! For full details click here.

FoolishPeople Announces Launch of IndieGoGo Funding Campaign for 'Strange Factories'

FoolishPeople is pleased to announce the launch of the IndieGoGo funding campaign for our forthcoming living feature film Strange Factories.

IndieGogo is the world’s leading international funding platform, launched at Sundance Festival in 2008 and founded on the principles of opportunity, transparency and action. It has enabled over 1000 projects in more than 80 countries to find funding for a wide array of ideas. The Age of Stupid is a recent high-profile example of a successfully crowd-funded film. 

We believe that funding Strange Factories in this way will allow for truly independent filmmaking, enabling us to create a cinematic experience which is free from the commercial constraints and commodity-driven values of the big studios.

Strange Factories aims to offer a new mode of cinematic experience which will fuse film and theatre, with the film’s narrative also existing as a live event which will explore the earliest traditions of cinema and film, via the touring traditions of phantasmagoria and theatric arcana. As Writer/Co-director John Harrigan notes in The Phantasmagoria of Strange Factories:

“I always knew it would take time to adapt the immersive nature of FoolishPeople’s live art to a motion picture. It was crucial to maintain the direct connection we share with our audience via immersion in the ritual space, this is the most important aspect of our work.”

 

 

Strange Factories promises to be an immersive experience like no other. We aim to reclaim the transcendental, transformative power of cinema by creating cinema which lives and breathes. Rather than inviting our audience to watch a recording of a recording, ticket holders will be able to meet the characters of Strange Factories in a screening which dissolves all traditional  Actor/Watcher boundaries, delving into the very womb of cinematic creation, challenging contemporary assumptions that film has become solely the domain of mega-bucks conjurers and techno-savvy tricksters. We aim to prove that the elusive magic of cinema can still be unearthed, through an almost alchemical understanding of its processes. Indeed, this shall be a film by film-lovers, for film-lovers. As Susan Sontag notes in The Decay of Cinema, the time has never been more ripe:

“Cinephilia tells us that the Hollywood remake of Godard's "Breathless" cannot be as good as the original. Cinephilia has no role in the era of hyperindustrial films. For cinephilia cannot help, by the very range and eclecticism of its passions, from sponsoring the idea of the film as, first of all, a poetic object; and cannot help from inciting those outside the movie industry, like painters and writers, to want to make films, too. It is precisely this notion that has been defeated.

If cinephilia is dead, then movies are dead too . . . no matter how many movies, even very good ones, go on being made. If cinema can be resurrected, it will only be through the birth of a new kind of cine-love”

Active participation and collaboration from our fan base and audience lie at the heart of every project that FoolishPeople undertake. We believe that funding Strange Factories via IndieGogo will take this form of collaboration to new levels, enabling you, our audience, to enter into the narrative of the film at the earliest possible stage - before the film has even been made.

Because stories are given life by those who engage with them.

 

Your pledges and donations (from as little as $1) will be used for the equipment, location costs, production design, and costume needed to make the film. We’re aiming to raise $12,000 via IndieGoGo to support the production costs needed to bring this unique story to life. Your pledges and donations are vital to enable us to create new forms of storytelling for audiences who hunger for vital new truthful experiences that go beyond simple entertainment.

This narrative needs You.

We’re offering magical and exclusive experiences as ‘perks’ for our funding drive on IndieGoGo revolving around the film's release that will give you the opportunity to explore the mystery of the narrative and learn how you may even already be part of this story. To show our gratitude for your support and confidence in our idea and work, anyone who pledges via IndieGoGo will be the very first afforded the opportunity to see the film, and explore the heart of the mystery surrounding Stronheim’s Strange Factory.

To find out more about Strange Factories, the perks we are offering and to donate, click here. If you believe in this project please do let as many people as you can know about it. We are truly grateful for your support and look forward to you joining us on this project.

Register for Strange Factories Updates

Venture deeper into the mystery of Strange Factories

Support 'Strange Factories' on Facebook

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Photography by Yiannis Katsaris, Director of Photography for 'Strange Factories'

A special thank you to Arban Severin, designer and maker of the Punch mask

 

Inside the Temple of Cinema

In a previous post, I discussed the transcendental nature of cinema, noting the parallels which can be drawn between the language of film and the language of religion; particularly with reference to notions of consciousness-raising via means of myth, ritual and symbols.

I would now like to zoom in (sorry...) on that concept, focussing on the parallels between the act of cinema-going and ritual in particular. In fact I propose that cinema-going is itself a form of ritual and cinephilia the religion to which its devotees adhere.

Those familiar with the work of FoolishPeople will understand ritual as a vital tool in the process of storytelling, myth-making and - ultimately- the recreation and renewal of the world. Ritual enactments of mythologies allow for active participation in and concentrated experience of a particular current or lens for viewing the world. These lenses are interchangeable.

Stories are given life by those who engage with and participate in the ritual, enabling the mythology's current to be projected into the world, rebuilding it (the world) from its very foundations.

By means of absolute focus inside a heightened or alternate, mythical reality, ritual participants are able to take the leap from nomos to cosmos, so that the material aspects of the ritual act as some sort of conduit between the individual and the universe, the human and divine. As religious anthropologist Bobby Alexander notes:-

"[rituals] open up ordinary life to ultimate reality or some transcendent being or force in order to tap into its transformative power"

Traditionally, such rituals might be performed using symbolic objects, colours, movement, chants, and so on, with the ritual itself performed within a sacred space, every detail concerned with and deliberately angled towards raising a numinous experience within the spectator.

It is this concentration of experience, the possibility of awe, of the numinous, which is reflected in the movie theatre and picture house, particularly by means by framing. When we enter the cinema we enter something of a sacred space - a cinephile's temple- eager to undergo some form of transformative experience (to quote, as Walter Benjamin does, Georges Duhamel "I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images").

When the lights dim we allow the screen to act as a conduit between this world and an alternate reality, and we (hopefully) lose ourselves for a time in the process, re-entering the world with a new experience or filter through which to explore reality.

As noted previously, cinema imbues objects with life, bombards us with symbols and more often than not engages us in some form of mythological narrative (the Hero myth of Star Wars or the Buddhist/Gnostic mythology of the Matrix are prime examples). Perfectly tempered music is used to effect our manipulation and transportation (consider the minimal use of music in Japanese horror movies an example of how eerie mere silence can be to the Hollywood-trained ear), whilst the logos of the big studios provide their own "Once Upon a Time..." scene-setting mechanism. Indeed the logos of studios such as Dreamworks and Universal clearly demonstrate Hollywood's implicit understanding of cinema as ritual - note the heavenly, dream-like, space age connotations of the graphics; both feature clear depictions of the bridging of worlds, of transcendence, as if planting these signals at a movie's opening might prepare the viewer's mind for the optimum experience of the ritual. As anthropologist Mary Douglas points out:

"Framing and boxing limit experience, shut in desired themes or shut out intruding ones".

She is discussing ritual here but I'm certain the same can be said of cinema. Take also this passage from Paden's 'Religious Worlds' and swap each use of the word 'ritual' for 'cinema':

"In ritual, what is out of focus is brought into focus. What is implicit is made explicit. All ritual behaviour gains its basic effectiveness by virtue of such undivided, intensified concentration and by bracketing off distraction and interference".

So, if cinema-going presents itself as a form of ritual, which mythology is it enacting, transforming and projecting? Which world view does it expound?

The wonderful Susan Sontag argues that in cinema's glory days the religion was cinephilia itself:

"The love that cinema inspired...was special. It was born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral - all at the same time. Cinema has apostles (it was like a religion). Cinema was a crusade. For cinephiles, the movie encapsulated everything. Cinema was both the book of art and the book of life..."One can't live without Rosellini" declares a character in Bertolucci's 'Before the Revolution' (1964) and means it".

Sontag is discussing the 1960s and 70s, the cinematic heydey, and mourns cinephilia's subsequent decline, film's hyperindustrialisation, as something that was inevitable. Indeed unlike other forms of art film has always been only a reproduction, a recording. It has declined and fallen as a technology which has aged because it is not just an art form but firstly a technology. It has always blurred the line between art and science, just as it now blurs the line between art and communications media (or propaganda). The current modes of film production and distribution are epitomised by mass production, mass audiences, and mass spectatorship. The mythology now reinforced is a white, heterosexual, male supremacist, consumerist mythology. The Hollywood Mythology. As Benjamin warns:

"The film is the art form that is in keeping with the increased threat to his life which modern man has to face".

Benjamin's essay "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" focuses on film as a medium which epitomises the termination of uniqueness and authenticity (the "aura" of a work of art). In contrast to my view of cinema as ritual, Benjamin argues that cinema is the first form of art purely devoid of any value gleaned from the "fabric of tradition".:

"For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitic dependence on ritual"

Film is not experienced by a few individuals alone in a gallery, bowled over in awe by the mystique wrapped around the original piece of art before them. Rather, film is a mass media. The audience watch a reproduction of a recording. Unlike in the theatre, they do not breathe the same air as the actors, they do not smell the greasepaint. The audience, somewhat disengaged, become well-versed critics. The artist is no longer revered; artists are human and fallible.

In short, cinema is a commodity, a tool of mass communication and it's function is not as ritual but to serve a (political) purpose in our time. I cite The King's Speech, coincidentally released ahead of royal nuptials, as a lighthearted example. Throwaway (yet subliminally charged) entertainment for the masses. Art for art's sake, for the cults of magic, beauty or religion, Benjamin declares dead. However, in reference to Leni Riefenstahl's propoganda films, Benjamin displays the way in which he does believe in cinema's (technologically driven) power to manipulate, infiltrate and transform. He notes cinema's revolutionary use value as a tool for exploring and understanding our world and its history. He also believes that cinema's egalitarian nature allows the masses to not only gain the potential to know but therefore to act. Just as ritual, as FoolishPeople understand it, can be a powerful tool for transformation, so too can cinema. Ritual may, for Benjamin, conjure images of dust-encrusted mummies and skeletons in the closets of history but I would argue that this is a different understanding of ritual entirely: FoolishPeople's work to date demonstrates the possibilities of utilitising ritual to create new and relevent mythologies for our time. Mystique is not false importance, it is a charge, an electrical current and technology in itself and impossible to relegate to the halls of history.

But Benjamin does have a point. Now that cinephilia has declined, now that Hollywood has dumbed down and cashed in, we're in big trouble. It's up to us, the last standing cinephiles, to face forwards, eyes to the horizon, fingers on "PLAY". We need to generate a new mode of cinematic experience, which embraces the possibilities of transmedia to create weaponized cinematic art that lives and breathes, cinema which has the power to transform, transcend and induce awe (in the true meaning of the word). Cinema for our time. 

All milestones lead to Strange Factories.

Photos: Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, Yiannis Katsaris.

Chocky

 

 

It’s obvious to anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s that high quality science fiction and fantasy for children and young adults isn’t quite what it used to be.

The cloud Thatcher cast over Britain and the growing impending doom of nuclear war created an atmosphere in which ITV created brave and imaginative programming such as 'Chocky'. 

 

'Chocky' was adapted from a book written by John Wyndham, author of the uniquely English tale of the end of the world by alien plant doom ‘Day of the Triffids'.

 

 

 

John Wyndham remains one of Britain's most celebrated post-apocalyptic science fiction writers.

'Chocky' was the story of an alien consciousness sent to scout for planets to colonise, who inadvertently becomes friends with a young boy called Matthew, manifesting to him as his imaginary friend.

 

 

 

Chocky demonstrated that during periods of turmoil and stress we begin to recreate the world in our minds. Our imaginations cut a hole in the sky and neon narratives flood the land with ecstatic visions that teach and enable us to imagine new reallities, which in turn offer glimpses of hope in desperate times.

I know 'Chocky' played some a part in who I came to be.

How sublime it is to see the map of our imaginations, brightly constructed and landscaped throughout our lives by stories such as Chocky?

FoolishPeople invoke the memory of stories such as 'Chocky' for three reasons: to pay respect to the storytellers of our childhood, to remind us of the forgotten possibilities of youth and to offer us protection as we venture deeper into the narrative.

 

Fragments Of The Erotomachia

In the beginning all memories are given to us. For example, the scalpel cutting through fat and muscle to breech the chalice whereupon practiced hands would rend me from it lifting my pink squealing body into freedom. Lifeblood against white sheets a perfect metaphor for the great blizzard of seventy-eight reigning over the frozen world held within its white silence; affecting a world at end. Such was the omen of my birth.

Shortly afterward I am told of a scene inside a department store. A celebrity of witchcraft hailing from the Salem area tells my mother I'm absolutely beautiful and asks if she may hold me. While in her arms she blesses me, assuring my mother I am a special child. All accounts do indeed find me a perfect child; helpful, curious, smiling, well mannered, and thus continues my mother's narrative until round about my eleventh or twelfth year when she discovers I have been chasing after an authentic witchcraft.

By now you should know, as I learned, that the legends you've heard of an old time white witchcraft religion in Europe are false. Most of those calling themselves witches today, who, wishing to tie themselves to an ancient tradition of witchcraft won't ever admit it, but the only tradition there to draw on is the Devil's work.  Each in their own way pays a price for their refusal to give the Devil his due. Anyone who has spent time among the anemic traditions of neo-paganism knows this is true, and will nod inwardly even as their trained tongues perform a litany of baseless protestations.

I bring this up because whoever's name she may have evoked in her blessing or even if it was a clichéd "bright blessings", I know full well whose bright light she blessed with. No matter what name she called on, or what she imagined she was doing, it was Old Scratch. This in itself may be something of a misnomer, perhaps purely the result of an Irish Catholic upbringing. Still it is undeniable that for some time the dominant mask worn by and at the heart of magic's great mystery has been that of the devil. How else do you explain a bit character becoming an equal to god? Become a symbol both tormenter and sympathetic cosmic rebel; a muse to great minds and artists. All this, though mostly digression, is a necessary aside to paint the atmosphere presiding over that moment where my narrative diverges from my mother's and whereupon memories become something seized and shaped rather than something given in full and fixed forms.

The Devil visited me late one night some years after the witch blessed me, careful not to wake this sleeping babe, he left by my side an illustrated children's bible. The bible was by most accounts normal, saving two details. The first was the tale of Job. Here the tale was altered slightly so that the primary message is of a Satan revealing to creation the monstrous nature of a God who is only too willing to crush utterly one of his most faithful believers and all to win an argument on which there was nothing at stake. The second was a chapter which can be found in neither biblical canon nor published apocrypha. Almost all the contents of this chapter are lost to my mind now but what I do recall is one of the accompanying illustrations: Lucifer and a host of Angels riding as a band of brothers on the backs of fiery steeds over the clouds and through the gates of paradise. Whether they were entering or leaving or whether there was ultimately a difference for that band was unclear, but it was glorious.

This chapter in particular caused a bit of a stir at the Catholic School I attended. We had religious instruction every day of course, but once a week it was under the tutelage of a parish priest. Shortly before my devil's annotated bible had shown up a priest new to the diocese took over our weekly instruction. Shortly after, he asked a question, or perhaps made a fishing sort of comment that prompted me to speak with an assumed authority born from the certainty that a priest would be familiar with every passage extant in my bible. One would think my line of questioning would set off alarms, and surely it seemed to vex the good Sister, but the young priest only ever encouraged my words and eventually entreated me to bring him my bible that he might see the illustration of which I so often spoke. Perhaps unsurprisingly when I went to fetch it that night the book had vanished. This however only seemed to excite the priest, who called my mother to suggest that I may be called to the vocation of the priesthood.

The good father departed shortly thereafter. On the day he was to leave he came by the classroom to give me a key to a small abandoned chapel in a quiet corner of the school. Excusing myself to go to the bathroom the next afternoon I found my way there. Behind the locked wooden door was a large stone chair. To a child as young as I was it was practically a love seat. Along its walls were damaged and shrouded statues carved in a cool grey stone depicting saints I had never before seen and whose names I am oath bound not to repeat. But who I swore that oath to, that is the real crux of this tale!

For this history the natural chronological progression coincides with the entrance of women who served as divine anima, heralding a stage in my development as both young man and black magician. This first flicker of consciousness then was the Goddess called Meredith.  The day I first saw her is in many ways the most vivid of the days marked in my memory as belonging to her. In truth I must have seen her before that day as she had been a classmate the year before as well.  But that morning beneath the cold crisscrossed shadows of the church and school building she seemed something new.  Lined up by the Sisters into rows for attendance she looked back over her shoulder in such a way that even though I knew she was not really looking at me I felt trapped in her gaze. She was so alive in that instant that the sun, obscured by human edifice and thick rolling clouds, found a way to dance in her eyes. She seemed the only warm thing in the world, a last flame to keep the soul safe from frostbite.

The next several weeks saw me consumed by her topography. Her habits, mannerisms, friends, and yes even the contours of her hidden flesh were my fascination. Reasonably I was too young for such things, or just, the reasons have always been lost, but how I longed to adore her with seeking hands and questing lips.  It was an education in persistence and a challenge with which to pass the drudgery of days; a month full of unreturned smiles, and of finding reasons to stand close to her.  By the close of that month the classroom was all a flutter with gossip of my increasing brashness.  The good Sister looked on nervously at the way my gaze lingered longer than it had a right to, but my baby fat not yet gone provided my intent a cherubic mask with which to disguise itself, and so I skated a thin line.  Meredith spurned me at every turn. She would not even lower herself to give words to her repudiations; all she had to say was said with disapproving green eyes. Or at least this was the case when other eyes were upon us.  There were times where she would smile in secret to me, and so I came to understand she enjoyed my chase even if it was just a game to her.

That game stopped midway through the first week of the next month.  What I had learned in the previous month was to be grateful for her silence. Her tongue was sharp and she had a love of carving with it. One day one of our classmates said something to her, a petty barb in an inconsequential and ultimately forgettable squabble.  My own tongue, a hungry predator sensing its quarry by instinct, proved quicker than Meredith’s.  She laughed at my jab, salting their wound with her approval.  From that day forward she invited me and my friends to take lunch with her and hers.  She never ate anything aside from blood oranges, plain yogurt, and whole milk.  On days I made the table roar at dispersions cast against the nuns she would feed me a bite of sweet juicy pulp dipped in the tart yogurt.  Such a day was the one on which the teacher sent us to the front office on an errand where in the quiet of deserted halls I confided in her and produced from my pocket the priest’s black iron key.  She of course demanded I show her the chapel at once.

We made every excuse to sneak away to that hidden place. Though to be honest it was not as if excuses were hard to come by. The chapel seemed to want us there and arranged it to be so. All these years later I would still swear that we were able to pass weeks together inside the chapel while only minutes passed in that other church.  Outside the chapel we were a terror taking delight in harsh games we invented. Hidden away in the chapel, however,  is where I came to know Meredith best. The recollection of her on the chapel throne is where my mind’s eye sees her loveliness most clearly: raven hair, olive skin, and catholic school dress. For me she is French, the language more than culture or country, and this is why, when I speak of it, it is always La Loge Noir, never The Black Lodge. She was arrogance, full lips dressing a scornful gaze. The way she moved betrayed no weakness. She loved to torment. We shared each other as a secret. How great a joy is a cruel woman who wishes only to be kind to you!

On the day I swore my oath to her she asked me what I thought about when I looked at her.  With fumbling and imperfect words I spoke of curiosity and thirst.  She took my hand in hers and sat me beside her on the throne. She told me I was different from the other boys. She told me she would never forsake me, and always call me friend in front of others, but also why what would come next must remain secret. I didn’t care.  I had no need for the world to know, to pass the time with her was all I cared for. The rest of the world could burn. Still holding my hand she called me her boyfriend, whispering the word against my flushed cheek. It was then that we heard the stone saints for the first time. Marble lips whispering through aeons of a hunger.  These Saints of the Pit encouraged us, told us where to look and what to touch. We were imperfect students, balking at much of what was said.

We did not kiss. Indeed our lips never met, though curious mouths did taste.  Mostly necks, shoulders and collar bone.  Much more like eating than kissing; small teeth tugging, tongues pressed flat against exposed and salted skin.  Her hand stopped mine when it rose halfway up her thigh taking most of her pleated skirt with it. Where she stopped it she also urged me to squeeze the finely formed muscle of her leg and to feel the friction of our skin. It was the first time I ever felt strong.  Ultimately it was simply the stuff of curious children awakening to the fullness of experience and desire. Nothing more debauched than the games of house and doctor played the world over. But buried beneath it was the stirring of two devils recognizing each other, trying to forget their timidity, if only for a moment’s indiscretion.  Like the day when during a film, under cover of a darkened classroom, and beneath the trapezoidal desk she took my hand and placed it on her bare knee; the good Sister just a few feet from us.  How easy it is to imagine those things I dreamt of doing to her and half whispered hints of what she might do to me would have shamed the devil. For what we did share, in occult places, in stolen moments, and sometimes beneath the nun-teacher's noses The Devil blessed and favored us; such was our wickedness.