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Authors: Robert Irwin

Satan Wants Me

BOOK: Satan Wants Me
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Contents

Title

May

June

August

Copyright

Friday, May 12, 1967

The Master has commanded me to keep a diary. It’s part of my apprenticeship in the way of the sorcerer. Yesterday evening I was accepted as a probationer for Adepthood and the Master inscribed a cabalistic-looking sigil on my diary-writing hand. Today I went and scored this notebook in W.H. Smith’s in High Holborn. (Apparently we sorcerers use black notebooks as diaries, but red notebooks for transcribing spells and exorcisms.) Then went over to the LSE, but still a sit-in, so library closed. What a drag! So split from there and went up to Senate House and borrowed some stuff from its library. I am indeed a ‘profound and diligent searcher’. According to
The Goetia of the Lemegeton of King Solomon
,
‘Magic is the Highest, most Absolute, and most Divine Knowledge of Natural Philosophy, advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things; so that true Agents being applied to proper Patients, strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced. Whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into Nature; they, because of their skill, know how to anticipate an effect, the which to the vulgar shall seem to be a miracle.’
Saw from the news-stand Brian Jones was busted. The other Stones are being tried at Chichester.

I went round to Sally with the news, but she knew all about Brian Jones, for Mr Cosmic was already there. He too had his black and red notebooks. What he also had was three bundles of leafy twigs wrapped up in a damp cloth. This was qat – not only is the u in ‘qat’ silent, it is also invisible. (If the Yemeni Arabs can do without the u, then so can I. Why does there always have to be a fucking u after every fucking q? That is my qestion.) Cosmic scored this qat from a couple of Yemeni sailors in Shadwell and apparently it is completely legal. Having now tried it, I am not surprised, as it’s no big deal, no big blast and no hallucinations. Under Cosmic’s instructions, we stripped the branches of their leaves and we each stuffed them in one of our cheeks, leaf by leaf, until the three of us looked like lop-sided marmosets. Ghastly bitter taste – only drinking powdered and boiled opium is worse in my experience. Bert Jansch was moodily brooding on the record player. We kept taking sips of water as we sat with this foul stuff bulging and drooling out of our mouths for a couple of hours, trying not to gag, and all we got from this was a very mild high, plus in my case I was having lots and lots of thoughts – more thoughts than I had words for – but the trouble was that they were all sane thoughts, whereas I only really like my thoughts when they are fucking weird.

The one thing about qat was that it did make us conversational. Sally was cruelly reminiscing about some of our earlier dud trips – like the time we tried smoking dried banana skins – a real bummer that. Or the time I met someone who had got a three-hour erection from sniffing aircraft glue. So I went with Sally to a model shop to score some of this stuff and we tried sniffing this glue for hours without any payoff whatsoever. In the end we went back to the shop and bought a kit for making a Sopwith Camel, so we could use up the glue. At least making the aeroplane was a buzz. But the general rule of thumb is that legal highs are always downers.

Then Sally wanted to know about the notebooks and we explained how everybody in the Lodge has to keep diaries as part of the training and how everything has to go in, especially the bad things. Sally did not approve as she does not like being in other people’s diaries (which, for her, is like being in someone else’s dream when she doesn’t want to be). And, besides, she has come to hate everything to do with the Black Book Lodge. But she did say that it would be nice for us to look back on these diaries in our old age.

‘I am not reckoning on reaching old age,’ I said. ‘When Saint-Just went to the guillotine, he told the blood-hungry mob who were milling round his tumbril that he was dying at the age of thirty-three which is the age that all true revolutionaries die at, as Jesus was thirty-three when he was crucified. I am definitely not planning to live beyond thirty-three.’

Sally was unimpressed. ‘Thirty-three is quite old,’ she said. ‘I bet you anything I die before you.’

Then there was a long silence – which, given we were on this chatty qat stuff, was unusual.

Then Sally said, ‘Peter, promise me one thing.’

‘What?’

‘You have to promise before I tell you.’

‘I am not promising anything without knowing first what it is.’

‘You have to promise first. You have to be blindly committed, if you love me … ’

I hate Sally’s little tests, but ‘OK,’ I said.

‘You swear?’

‘Yes, I swear.’

Sally’s eyes had a strange kind of glow to them and with all that stuff in her mouth she looked quite freaky.

‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘You have promised that if I die before you, you will screw me when I’m dead.’

‘Bugger that! No way!’

‘You have sworn to do it. It will be my final gift to you. You should do it while my body is still warm.’ Sally was smiling faintly. ‘Otherwise I will come back to haunt you.’

Cosmic was quite enthused,

‘He should carry your corpse out into some park or garden. Your face is wet with tears, but they are his tears. Your body without its animating spirit is somehow heavier than when alive and he staggers a little under its weight. There is a rumble of thunder, as if God himself is angered by what is about to happen. It begins to rain … ’

Now I chime in,

‘Heedless of the rain, I lay the body reverently down on the grass and pull up the skirt, but it is difficult getting the knickers off a corpse, as the legs are so stiff. Rigor mortis … ’

‘Rigor mortis is actually a big come-on and he is surprised to find that his prick is as stiff as your body. He thrusts into you and, as he does, your body jolts upwards and your arms flop round his neck. For a ghastly moment … ’

‘For a ghastly moment I have the horrific illusion that you have come back from Hell to claim me for the dead (who are always hungry for new members) but your apparent gesture of affection is only a final meaningless spasm caused by contracting muscles. My … ’

‘His seed is in your corpse. Under the earth, in the coffin, the foetus germinated by your accursed union begins to grow. As your body rots, the foetus feeds off your deliquescing juices and, by the time the host body has no meat left on it, this subterranean mannikin, who is your unnatural love child, will have learned to supplement its diet with worms and termites. For a long time, it will incubate in the cool earth. Then … ’

‘Then one dark wintry day the earth will crack open and it will come up blindly looking for its father … ’

‘I hate the way you two refer to our future child as an it,’ interrupted Sally. ‘I think she will be a girl. Anyway I just fancy being shafted when I’m dead.’

‘Definitely something to look forward to,’ said Cosmic.

That was the end then of my riff with Cosmic. We quite often do these fantasy riffs – like two guitarists improvising at a jam session.

Then Cosmic was talking about how he had read in the autobiography of the sixteenth-century occultist, Jerome Cardan, that demons inhabit fresh corpses in order to have sex with people. Cosmic is very widely read. Also he was saying that necrophilia might well be one of the things we have to do in the Black Book Lodge as some kind of initiatory ordeal. It is best to start thinking about such things now, so that we get used to the idea.

As I say, qat was a big disappointment. I was looking forward to lots of oriental-flavoured hallucinations, but none turned up. The coming down was as good as anything. Coming down has its gentle melancholy aspect which is generally pleasant. I grok coming down from drugs and registering the ordinary suchness of things around me. Sally, who has been reading Zen poetry recently, has picked up a whole lot of technical vocabulary in Japanese to describe the quiet moods we get when coming down.
Wabi
is the basic grokking of the ordinary suchness of things – like seeing the kettle and the lime-scale on the kettle and accepting that as it is. Then there is
aware
, which has a quiet sense of the pastness of things – like you might be remembering the time, years ago, when the kettle had no lime-scale.
Sabi
is seeing everything as lonely and detached. Even in a room with Sally and Cosmic, I am on my own. I am not connected to anything – not even the kettle I am looking at. Finally, there is
yugen
which is a sense of deep mystery. It is a pure sense of mystery, so that even what is mysterious is mysterious.

Cosmic shuffled out, heading back to his pad and I became aware that I was very
aware
, i.e. sad about the pastness of the day, which was now gone like a bubble which was floating in the air but then has suddenly popped. In bed tonight Sally insisted on pretending to be a corpse, because she said I would need the practice. It might have been fun for her, but she made it really difficult for me. I wish I hadn’t made that promise. Still, she is younger than me and women usually live longer than men. When it was over, Sally passed from shamming dead straight into sleep. Unable to sleep for her snoring, I started writing this, my diary. It has taken ages to get all this down. I doubt if I will be able to keep on writing my diary at this level of detail.

Saturday, May 13

Copied stuff from
The Goetia of the Lemegeton of King Solomon
into my notebook, but it was pretty boring, so goofed off with Sally to King’s Road. Walked past Granville’s shop, but he never seems to be there. It’s always some manky assistant. Shopped with Sally. I was going to buy her ‘Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear’, but then I scored Jeff Beck’s ‘Silver Lining’ as well, because Sally’s ‘everywhere and nowhere’ and she wears ‘a hippy hat’. Then at her pad for a bit, before going dancing at Middle Earth. This time Sally wanted to know what was the most horrific thing I could possibly imagine. I said that it was being naked and sliding down a banister studded with razor-blades. Subsequently however, I had another thought connected with yesterday’s necrophily business. What would really hang me up – what would be the most horrific thing I could imagine is not the razor-blade slide, nor for that matter having sex with a corpse, but having sex with someone who is middle-aged. It is horrible to contemplate the rubbing of paunches together, the flapping withered dugs, the worry about whether to take the dentures out before or after. She would be middle-aged, but the ultimate horror is that I would be middle-aged too. It does not bear thinking about – like one’s parents having sex. Split around 4. Went over to Arts Lab and used its cinema as a crash pad as usual.

Sunday, May 14

Up at ‘the crack of dawn’, but, for some reason, dawn did not crack for me until three o’clock in the afternoon. More of the social construction of reality which is hard going. Also taking notes on Crowley’s
Magick in Theory and Practice
and practising my fingering on the guitar. Perhaps this year will determine whether I become a sociologist or go on the road. Raining.

After I had written the above down, Sally came round with Cosmic. They had succeeded in scoring mandies. At least one knows what one is getting with mandies – a nice reliable downer which infallibly delivers an agreeable woozy feeling. Good for sex too. I often find the big white pills a bit difficult to swallow, but it’s worth it. I think one of the reasons I like this drug is that the name mandrax makes me think of mandrakes. Of course, there is Mandrake the Magician in the comics, with his shiny top-hat and cloak. (I sometimes fantasise that I am Mandrake. Sally is Princess Narda and Cosmic is Lothar, my faithful companion and the three of us have bizarre adventures in Drugsland.) But there is also the fork-rooted plant which is used by witches and other folk. It used to be thought that the mandrake was the seed of a man hanged on a gallows. I haven’t got round to trying mandrake yet, but Cosmic has. He once scored it from a herbalist in the Old Kent Road. It is fairly dangerous. One can go mad on it and its smell was pretty terrible, so he only took a small amount. Mandrake was what used to give witches the illusion they were flying about on broomsticks. Cosmic got the flying sensation a bit, before he was painfully sick.

BOOK: Satan Wants Me
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