power. Then he inscribed a pentacle with oriental sigils on the notebook’s flyleaf and intoned some Latin over it. He handed the diary back to me, together with a copy of Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend (another early hippy document apparently).
Just as I was shakily making my way out of the room, he called me back,
‘ Quis custodiet custodies ? I have been talking to you about the importance of memory, but I am a fine one, for I forgot to ask you. Do you have a suit and tie?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘In that case, you will join me for dinner at The Gay Hussar in Greek Street at nine o’clock tomorrow evening.’
‘Oh, thank you for asking. That would be really nice, but unfortunately I cannot. I have promised to take Sally to the cinema tomorrow evening.’
‘Break that promise.’
‘I cannot.’
‘I am not inviting you to dinner. I am giving you an order. Your oath to the Master takes precedence over earlier or subsequent commitments to outsiders.’
‘But what shall I tell Sally?’
‘You will think of something. Why not lie to her? In the months to come you are going to need a lot of practice in lying.’
‘You are just testing me!’ I cried out.
‘Of course I am,’ he replied imperturbably. ‘Don’t forget to take your money … and do not forget to wear a suit and tie – and a clean shirt if possible. Love is the Law. Love under the Will.’
I took the money. It was a test, but what kind of test? Is it possible that Felton despises me for taking the money he offers me? Does he think that I have become Hell’s rent boy?
I only just made it in time to the pathworking downstairs. Granville was conducting it, while Agatha accompanied our meditations on the piano. God knows what she was banging out. It sounded like a Beethoven sonata as rendered by a mad and deaf Turkish dervish. The pathworking was based on The Tempest and it was unusually long and complicated with stuff about the storm of human emotions, the isolation of being apparently alone on a desert island, with Ariel and Caliban as representations of the higher and lower souls, and on winning through to gain the hand of the sorcerer’s daughter – a symbol of the Adept’s union with Sophia, or the Higher Wisdom. But I kept returning to the storm and to the song of Ariel: ‘Full fathom five thy father lies … ’ I imagined the eye-sockets of the dead looking up at me through the murky water and the fish darting among the bones.
(By the way, it turns out that Shakespeare was a leading occultist. Everybody seems to have been one. It will probably turn out that Charlie Chaplin and Joseph Stalin were leading occultists too.)
It was late when I got back and by then my mind was made up and I decided that I had to ring Sally straightaway. The morning would be too late, as she would be at her archaeology lectures by then. So I rang her and told her that I had food-poisoning and that I doubted if I would be able to make it the following evening. She sounded seriously concerned – tiresomely so, as she kept wanting details about what I was throwing up, and she even threatened to come round and look after me. She thinks that I might be the victim of a psychic attack and that it is the Lodge which is making me ill. But in the end Elvira Madigan got postponed till Thursday.
Before our grisly kissing session, Felton said so much that it is hard to remember it all. He said something about how I was holding back on my emotional reactions to things and people. Oh yes, he did talk again about the magical purpose of training the memory. The Lodge has many enemies and from time to time its Adepts are subject to magical attacks. The commonest form that these psychic assaults take is an attack on the memory of an Adept. If one is attacked and one loses the psychic battle, then parts of one’s past will be accessible only through the record kept in the diary. The diary then is a kind of back-up memory for use in the spiritual warfare which is to
Just as I was shakily making my way out of the room, he called me back,
‘ Quis custodiet custodies ? I have been talking to you about the importance of memory, but I am a fine one, for I forgot to ask you. Do you have a suit and tie?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘In that case, you will join me for dinner at The Gay Hussar in Greek Street at nine o’clock tomorrow evening.’
‘Oh, thank you for asking. That would be really nice, but unfortunately I cannot. I have promised to take Sally to the cinema tomorrow evening.’
‘Break that promise.’
‘I cannot.’
‘I am not inviting you to dinner. I am giving you an order. Your oath to the Master takes precedence over earlier or subsequent commitments to outsiders.’
‘But what shall I tell Sally?’
‘You will think of something. Why not lie to her? In the months to come you are going to need a lot of practice in lying.’
‘You are just testing me!’ I cried out.
‘Of course I am,’ he replied imperturbably. ‘Don’t forget to take your money … and do not forget to wear a suit and tie – and a clean shirt if possible. Love is the Law. Love under the Will.’
I took the money. It was a test, but what kind of test? Is it possible that Felton despises me for taking the money he offers me? Does he think that I have become Hell’s rent boy?
I only just made it in time to the pathworking downstairs. Granville was conducting it, while Agatha accompanied our meditations on the piano. God knows what she was banging out. It sounded like a Beethoven sonata as rendered by a mad and deaf Turkish dervish. The pathworking was based on The Tempest and it was unusually long and complicated with stuff about the storm of human emotions, the isolation of being apparently alone on a desert island, with Ariel and Caliban as representations of the higher and lower souls, and on winning through to gain the hand of the sorcerer’s daughter – a symbol of the Adept’s union with Sophia, or the Higher Wisdom. But I kept returning to the storm and to the song of Ariel: ‘Full fathom five thy father lies … ’ I imagined the eye-sockets of the dead looking up at me through the murky water and the fish darting among the bones.
(By the way, it turns out that Shakespeare was a leading occultist. Everybody seems to have been one. It will probably turn out that Charlie Chaplin and Joseph Stalin were leading occultists too.)
It was late when I got back and by then my mind was made up and I decided that I had to ring Sally straightaway. The morning would be too late, as she would be at her archaeology lectures by then. So I rang her and told her that I had food-poisoning and that I doubted if I would be able to make it the following evening. She sounded seriously concerned – tiresomely so, as she kept wanting details about what I was throwing up, and she even threatened to come round and look after me. She thinks that I might be the victim of a psychic attack and that it is the Lodge which is making me ill. But in the end Elvira Madigan got postponed till Thursday.
Before our grisly kissing session, Felton said so much that it is hard to remember it all. He said something about how I was holding back on my emotional reactions to things and people. Oh yes, he did talk again about the magical purpose of training the memory. The Lodge has many enemies and from time to time its Adepts are subject to magical attacks. The commonest form that these psychic assaults take is an attack on the memory of an Adept. If one is attacked and one loses the psychic battle, then parts of one’s past will be accessible only through the record kept in the diary. The diary then is a kind of back-up memory for use in the spiritual warfare which is to
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