Jack of Ravens (56 page)

Gabe looked shocked.

‘The drug is only a tool to contact the Godhead,’ Leary continued. ‘A catalyst. It has no inherent value beyond its ability to trigger that part of the brain, which we all have, that is responsible for spiritual experience. From that perspective, one’s view, intention, attitude, personality and mood are just as important in achieving the right state.’

‘So in the wrong hands psychedelics can be dangerous,’ Church translated.

‘The same as anything. But for someone who wishes to transform spiritually, hallucinogens
can
be a catalyst. They
can
lead to an understanding of your own destiny, and insight into the basic spiritual realities. This is what the ancient Greeks called gnosis—’

Church had a flash of a deeper connection stretching across the centuries, of the Universe itself giving him information to shape his path. ‘That’s the same thing John Dee was talking about,’ Church said to Tom.

‘John Dee?’ Leary interjected. ‘You mentioning his name is a very weird coincidence.’

‘Yeah, there seem to be a lot of those going around,’ Church said.

‘I was on a trip to North Africa with my wife Rosemary, and a friend, Brian Barritt,’ Leary said. ‘We took acid in the desert at Bou Saada, and Brian had a vision of a cowled man in a cloud of dust – a dust devil. He heard the name “Doctor John Dee”, and an image of a giant scroll took over his mind, followed by visions of golden vessels with the faces of Egyptian gods. Weird, but true.’

‘What’s Gnosticism got to do with it?’

‘Everything. My life, and my understanding of everything I see around me, changed just over three years ago when I first took psilocybin mushrooms in Cuernavaca in Mexico.’ Leary closed his eyes and let his head drop backwards. ‘You understand the mystery religions of ancient cultures? Every one had outer mysteries, which consisted of myths that were common knowledge – the stories of the gods and the like – and rituals that were open to everyone. And then there were the inner mysteries, which consisted of a sacred secret known only to those who had undergone a powerful rite of initiation. During
my
initiation I learned what that secret was, the one all ancient seers understood fully. The secret that is at the core of Gnosticism.’

Church could see why Leary annoyed as many people as he inspired. He had a taste for showmanship that often meant his message was lost.

‘So what’s the big secret?’ Church prompted.

‘That we’re all living in hell.’ Tom’s voice rang with echoes of the Court of the Final Word.

‘At the heart of it is the nature of evil,’ Leary said. ‘If you believe there is a creator-god, why did he introduce evil into the world? The orthodox Christians found the answer. They put the blame for evil on mankind,
particularly Eve, who allowed evil into the world when she accepted knowledge in the form of the apple from the snake in the Garden of Eden. The Gnostics took a different approach. They are, essentially, dualists: two sides, two faces, two worlds, two great opposing powers.’

Church began to see more connections in the recent events that had shaped him and brought him to this point. He had a strange impression that Leary, and the study, and Millbrook Mansion, were an illusion and that in fact Existence was speaking directly to him.

‘Do you ever wonder why children are murdered or suffer in poverty? Why diseases devastate our bodies? Why wars destroy generations? Why there is such an overwhelming drive to make money even if it brings about more human suffering? That we all know these things are wrong and that it is in our power to put them right, yet we do nothing about it?’ Leary pressed his palms together as if he were praying. ‘Because this creation is a defective work. The material world is a trap for man and always has been, in the control of a force that we characterise as “Evil”, but which is simply the opposite of what life should be. Dark to Light. Anti-Life to Life.’

‘Despair to hope,’ Church said.

‘The Gnostic Secret says there is a solution,’ Leary continued. ‘The sacred secret that has been taught for thousands of years is this: that at the point when Light and Dark split into two, sparks of the divine light became embedded in what would be humanity, like slivers of glass from a broken mirror. The aim of all Gnostic teaching is to awaken those who contain the divine spark so they can find a way back to the Light, or Life.’

Tom leaned forward eagerly. You understand what he’s saying? You know who these people are with the “divine spark”? You thought you were fighting to save this world from the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders. The truth is, they’re trying to stop you from leading a revolution that will overthrow their master, who created this world and who has let it tick over in his absence.’

‘And now he’s back to take control of his creation?’ The concept was so huge Church found it difficult to comprehend. ‘You’re saying the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders are the foot soldiers of this … this power … this force for Anti-Life?’

‘It has many names,’ Tom replied. ‘The Void. The Demiurge. The Tuatha Dé Danann know it as the Devourer of All Things.’

‘You suddenly know a lot of things you’ve never seen fit to mention before,’ Church said sharply.

‘Life itself is an initiation, Church.’ In Tom’s words, Church heard echoes of what he had been told so many centuries ago by the spirit in the Blue Fire. ‘Once you pass the test, you gain the knowledge.’

Gabe turned to Leary. ‘Tom said you’d seen the spiders.’

‘In some trips, one in particular.’ Leary shifted uncomfortably. ‘They
were moving behind the scenes of reality, keeping things the way they should be in the Void’s world.’

‘But now they’re in this world because you’re here,’ Tom said to Church. ‘Because now Existence has champions, and it’s finally a threat to the rule of the Void. Because humanity is now rising and advancing, and there’s a chance that everything could change. Everything.’

‘What’s this got to do with the president’s assassination?’ Gabe interjected with frustration.

‘Everything is connected,’ Tom said.

Leary nodded. ‘When you’re up hard against the pattern, you can’t see the pattern at all. What I’m going to tell you now you have to keep secret for your own safety.’

More showmanship
, Church thought.

‘A couple of years ago I was contacted by a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer at my office at Harvard University. She’d been following my experiments with LSD very closely. Mary is an artist in Washington, and she wanted to organise an LSD session for some friends.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Mary was JFK’s principal lover. Forget Marilyn – Mary was always the one.’

Gabe was aghast. ‘You’re saying the president took drugs in the White House?’

Leary smiled at the teen’s naivety. ‘JFK smoked pot and took cocaine, which was his favourite. But the important point here is that he turned on to acid. Mary arranged several trips for him. He was expanding his consciousness … starting to see the way the world really works.’

Gabe looked as if he might be sick. ‘My dad … I mean JFK … He really did this? I’m sorry. I’m starting to get confused.’

‘The day after JFK was assassinated, Mary called me up.’ All traces of showmanship had been replaced by a deep unease. These were her exact words: “They couldn’t control him any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much … They’ll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m scared. I’m afraid.” They’ve left Mary alone so far, but she’s still living in fear.’

‘You’re saying JFK was assassinated because he dropped acid?’ Church couldn’t hide the note of incredulity in his voice.

‘Not because he dropped acid – because he began to understand some universal truths. I’m saying he was a charismatic, influential and powerful person who, although flawed, was starting to open his eyes. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking metaphorically or not – “spider-people” is a good way of describing those who buy into the whole Anti-Life agenda – kind of like the pod people in that Body Snatchers movie. The spider-people are everywhere, and every year that passes they control more and more of the world. But they have to carry out their business from the
shadows, because otherwise they’d ruin the illusion of what they’re trying to create.’

‘How do you recognise them?’ Gabe said anxiously.

Leary thought about that for a moment, and then said simply, ‘You don’t.’

6

‘I know what you’re doing, Tom,’ Church said when they were back at the apartment. ‘You’ve learned a lot of manipulation skills out there in the Far Lands. But if you think you can get me back wasting my life in a fight I can’t win, you’d better think again.’

Tom shrugged and acted as if Church was speaking nonsense.

‘Especially now you’ve told me I’m supposed to be fighting some kind of universal god of darkness. It’s just insane.’

With infuriating aloofness, Tom ignored Church completely, dropped an LP onto the record player and turned the volume up full.

7

In July, author Ken Kesey took his first Magic Bus Trip to New York on an LSD-fuelled quest to discover America, at the same time as President Lyndon Johnson was signing the Civil Rights Act.

On the night of 19 July, Niamh dragged Marcy into the apartment. Blood streamed from a gash on Marcy’s head and Niamh had a stunned expression that Church had never seen before.

Gabe ran to help. ‘Who did this?’

‘The police,’ Niamh said. ‘They came at us as if we were vermin being driven from a sewer.’

Marcy sat in a chair in the kitchen, clutching a towel to her wound. ‘It was a Congress of Racial Equality protest in Harlem,’ she said. ‘The cops went crazy. Shot one guy dead, hundreds more injured. There was blood all over the sidewalk.’ She stared into the middle distance with an expression of mounting horror. ‘We only wanted a voice, just black people saying who we were.’ She smiled weakly at Niamh. ‘Sorry for dragging you into it, darlin’.’

‘Do not apologise. I need to see these things.’ She rested a hand on Marcy’s shoulder. Church could see that a bond had grown between them similar to the one between Gabe and himself.

‘We need to get out of this city,’ Gabe said, demoralised.

‘No,’ Marcy replied defiantly. ‘We need to fight.’

They buried their differences for the rest of the summer and into the autumn. But then in October, as the cold winds blew harder, Tom came across a small article in the newspaper. Timothy Leary’s presidential contact, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had been murdered as she walked along the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath in Georgetown. It looked to have been the work of a professional hit man. The first bullet was fired into the back of her head, and when she did not die immediately, a second shot was loosed into her heart. The evidence showed that in both cases the gun was almost touching Meyer’s body when it was fired.

Immediately afterwards, Church, Niamh, Tom, Gabe and Marcy left town and headed west.

8

While President Johnson was outlining his Great Society, they were holed up in a leaky warehouse in St Louis. By the time the US had started bombing North Vietnam in earnest on 8 February 1965, they had moved to slightly better surroundings in an old meat-packing plant in Chicago.

There was no sign of the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders anywhere near their lives. Church couldn’t make the guilt go away entirely; he knew they were being left alone because he had chosen to walk away from the battlefield. With the lamp containing his stolen Pendragon Spirit still safe in his bag, he could claim to be little more than an average person, trudging through life below the radar of the forces that controlled everything.

On 21 February, black revolutionary leader Malcolm X was shot and killed. Marcy cried all night and there was nothing Gabe could do to drag her out of her growing despair at the worsening political situation.

All around them the misery continued to mount. On 6 March the first American soldier officially set foot on Vietnam’s battlefields, and two days later 3,500 marines landed to protect Da Nang airbase. In between, Alabama state troopers attacked 500 civil rights workers preparing to march, and by the end of the month the Ku Klux Klan had murdered another civil rights worker in the same state. At home and abroad, the spider-people – in metaphor and reality – continued to take control, spreading despair, crushing hope.

‘Existence needs its king to lead its troops,’ Tom said to Church as he browsed a day-old paper one morning. Church gave his standard response: it was somebody else’s job now.

Over the months, to Tom’s annoyance, Niamh had sided with Church. She pointed out that people were fighting back of their own accord. Martin Luther King Jr. and 25,000 supporters took the fight for civil rights back to
Alabama. A further 25,000 marched on Washington in April to protest against the spiralling Vietnam War.

‘Music is the voice of hope,’ she pointed out to Tom as he listened to his growing record collection, and he had to agree: Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Judy Collins joined the anti-war marches, and the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan spread the message of discontent.

On 5 September, writer Michael Fallon applied the term ‘hippie’ to the San Francisco counterculture in an article about the Blue Unicorn Coffeehouse where campaigners for sexual freedom and the legalisation of marijuana met.