Read Online Satan Wants Me by Robert Irwin - Free Book Online Page B

interrogation was most curious. The wine was forgotten – well not exactly forgotten, but he was drinking it rather than sipping it as he cross-questioned me about my observation of the children in the playground. Although I tried to explain about ritual conceived of as a formal action which is primarily symbolic, he was not interested in any of that sort of ‘bogus academic jargon’. He wanted to know what the playground looked like? How many children were there in it? How old were they? Could I describe some of the individual children? Did I know any of their names? Were they all taken home by their parents? I did my best to answer, but I was and am uneasy. There are two ugly possibilities – but, no, I think some things are best left unwritten. After a while, his interest in the children subsided and, I, not seeing why I should always be on the receiving end, started to cross-question him. I did not get much for my pains.
    I wanted to know if Felton really thought what astrological sign I was born under was significant? Why was it so important for him to read my diaries? What was the Black Book Lodge set up for? What was its Work? Why had Felton stayed with the Lodge and what had he got out of it? What was his relation to the Master? Was it true that Felton was born in Alexandria? What was the Cairo Working? What if anything happened between Felton and Crowley?
    It was no use. Felton was like one of those politicians who, instead of answering the question he has been asked, prefers to answer his own questions.
    The Work is something one only fully comes to understand as one advances on the Path. The truth about the Cairo Working was buried within myself and I should recognise it when I was ready for it. Magical knowledge is like that. It is extremely difficult to say how many people are affiliated to the Lodge, since there were so many different degrees of belonging. Nor could one pin down a firm foundation date for the Lodge, as it evolved out of and gradually broke away from the Ordo Templi Orientis. Felton had continued to visit Crowley after the Lodge’s breakaway, but, in his last years, Crowley’s powers were fading. There always were problems with his sex-magic techniques, but, in the end, ‘the trouble with Crowley is that he went to a minor public school.’
    Really! That is precisely my impression of Felton – that he went to a minor public school. Unlike Granville, for example. Granville is a Harrovian – and he keeps letting you know it. I know that Laura went to one of those experimental private schools where children are encouraged to run wild. Agatha gives the impression that she received a university education, though by now it is overlaid with all sorts of dottiness. As for the Master, he stands outside the British class system. According to Mr Cosmic, the Master was born in Damascus, the son of Christian missionaries, but he was educated in Tibet, at Shamballa, or some such place. Felton, I now learn, got his doctorate in music.
    Perhaps it was the effect of the claret. Suddenly Felton was excited, lit up – like a jelly on fire – if that is possible.
    ‘Music can take a man along the Path. Music is the image and the foreshadowing of the harmony that pervades the world and organises its secret hierarchies. The motions of the spheres in the heavens are in conformity to harmony and proportion, so that, though their passage is made in perfect silence, that passage is musical. The Adept who seeks to make his life a work of art will comport himself in conformity with the harmony that is in all things. Even today’s debased popular ditties, redolent as they are of vaudeville shows and dance halls, speak of higher truths. As Sir Thomas Browne put it, music “is a Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World”.’
    I made a mental note to think of this when I next listened to Martha and the Vandelas.
    A little later, Granville joined us for sorbets and coffee. I had not known that we were