The Fool - Chapter Twelve ========================= I - I put the kettle on and stand there watching it boil. As I watch, I am seized by a sudden urge to take all my magickal gear, my robes, my altar things, and so on, put them all in a sack, find somewhere to make a bonfire and burn them. The train of thought stops when I cannot think of anywhere to go and make the bonfire. Where on earth did that come from? I dismiss the thought quickly and make tea. I sit on my chair. Dora's book is still on the table. I pick it up, and turn to the introduction. "Some Thoughts On the Release of the Printed Version of the Secrets of the Society of Mysteries, by Fr. P. "It is with mixed feelings that I take up my pen to write this introduction to the collected Works of my Order, for I am well aware that not every reader will find this tome to their liking; indeed, there are many who wish it had never been published. To the latter I say this - the deed is done, and it were done a long time ago, many years before the printing of the volume you now hold in your hands. To the former, I recommend a minimal degree of experience in the study of these matters before venturing an opinion. "There is material covered in this volume that has never been before released to the general public, and in this (absurdly) specialist endeavour (how did such a goal as ours fall so low as to become specialist) and it is therefore in practice the preserve of a select few to be capable of genuinely constructive comment and criticism. If the material herein be so lacking, may our bookshelves soon yawn with the weight of alternative redactions from each reader who is not satisfied with the present volume. For myself, I have found it comprehensive and complete." Blah blah blah. Several pages, all saying 'I like this book and anyone who disagrees with me doesn't know what they are talking about'. Ok. So far I fall into the latter camp. What about the rest of it? II -- The book is dense and unreadable. A lot of it is in note form, with many symbols and shorthands that are vaguely familiar but still make no sense to me. There is a section at the beginning that looks a lot like the Golden Dawn stuff - the basics of astrology, alchemy, tarot and kaballah all mixed up and correlated with one another. Then it loses me. Flicking through towards the end of the book, absolutely nothing makes any sense to me at all of any sort, though I feel a strong reluctance even to read too much of the material in that part of the book without first understanding what it is. I go with that sense of reluctance. I put the book down. I have a free day, and I don't have to panic about work, because that's sorted for Monday. I should wash and do some yoga and get dressed and go and do something. III --- I am lying in the corpse position, but I am not me. I am not these words. I am not this ego, these feelings, these memories. I am not this body. I am not this mind. I am not this soul. That is not me. All those me's are false. The true me feels a deep calm, for the true me is always at peace. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, no worries to be troubled by. I am that me. I breathe deeply. My eyes are closed. There are tensions in my body, but none that I can consciously relax. I am lying in the corpse position, and I am at peace. I breathe deeply for a while, letting my mind go blank. Eventually, my eyes open, and I rise. I stand for a moment with my hands clasped together. I am thankful that I have been able to learn to do these few yoga techniques, even though I do them badly. I dress, feeling the false me's take over again. IV -- I take a bus to London Bridge and go for a walk along the river. It is a cold November day, grey and overcast, but it is not actually raining. The river too is grey, and heaves with a tired majesty. I want to find somewhere to sit down for a while, but cannot. I walk for ages. Eventually, just by another bridge, I find an old stone stairwell leading down to the river itself between two modern office blocks, and find myself on a small pebbled bank littered with shards of wood. I sit at the foot of the stairs and watch the bit of water I can see from here, between the brick wall of an office balcony on the one side, and the vast concrete feet of the bridge on the other. These stones are old. I have no idea how old, but they clearly predate the other building work around them. They are enormously worn, with great rounded gouges taken out of them, and they seem oddly steep and narrow for stairs, which makes them seem somehow older. The sound of traffic from behind and above seems distant and patchy, as if from another world, and I wonder how long these stairs have actually been here, for how long people have been coming to sit on them to escape the city and watch the river. I sit in calm, feeling the cold of the stone beneath me, and light a cigarette. A barge passes slowly across my line of sight, grey and blue and belching puffs of white smoke. I blow blue smoke back at it, and the barge disappears slowly from view until it is gone. It really is cold on this stone. I have to stand up. I stand facing the water for a moment, watching it undulate. It seems to calm me even further. After a while I turn and climb the staircase back to the city, cigarette in hand. V - I find a cafe and install myself in a corner, wishing I had something to read. There is a bookshelf in the cafe, and I twist to read the titles on the spines. Nothing catches my eye though, and I twist back in my seat. The cafe is quiet and mostly empty. Three men in suits are engaged in soft conversation over the far side of the place, and a young couple are staring lost in one another's eyes on the table next to me. A guy in a green fleece is sitting on his own at one of the other tables, hunched over and scribbling intently in a notebook. I stop gazing round the room and stare meaninglessly at my coffee. It stares back at me, steaming. It is not great coffee. I decide to ring Beth. She isn't answering, and I ring off without leaving a message. I decide to text her, but get as far as 'Hi', before deleting the message unsent and putting my phone away. This really is not great coffee. VI -- I leave the cafe and head down the street, feeling vaguely claustrophobic. All the faces of the people on the street seem to leer and gape at me strangely, and it is beginning to rain. I hurry down the road, not entirely sure where I am, looking for a bus stop or tube station or something. It rains harder, and I begin to look for anywhere at all to take shelter. There, a bookshop. I go in. It is a second hand bookshop, old and long, a maze of tall wooden bookshelves heavy with musty volumes. An elderly man is dozing in a chair in one corner, and I hear a low shuffle of people moving about in the maze. This appears to be the History and Politics section. I move towards the back of the shop, where there is an open doorway, and a sign reading 'Other Sections This Way'. I go through, and follow a short corridor to a staircase leading down. At the foot of the stairs, the room opens out into a large space, lined with bookcases, dotted with tables spread out with books. Posters in bright colours on each wall denote this to be the Children's, Health and Travel section. A doorway on the other side of the room is marked 'Other Sections This Way', and I follow a narrow corridor around a corner to a place where the corridor opens wide enough for there to be bookcases at each side. There are paperbacks here, all Crime and Horror fiction, in endless rows. Towards the end of the corridor there is a small Science-Fiction section, and I browse it for a while, but there is nothing there to catch my eye, nothing I haven't read already. VII --- A curtain is hanging over the wall at the end of the corridor, with a sign above it reading 'More Downstairs!', and I pull the curtain aside to reveal another staircase heading down. As I am halfway down the stairs I hear someone coming up the stairs below me, breathing heavily. He is an elderly man, very fat, wearing a large hat and a huge brown overcoat. I stand aside to let him past and he stares balefully at me for a moment over the top of his spectacles before turning to heave his way up the rest of the stairs. The room at the bottom of the stairs is smaller than any before, with a low ceiling and another maze of bookcases. Here, says a sign, I may find Fiction, Poetry, Philosophy, Occult, and Self-Help. I look around for a while, but can find nothing I want to read. My head begins to ache, and I have a sudden, hurried urge to leave the bookshop, and so do, clambering up the stairs with increasing irrational panic. VIII ---- When I get out into the street it is still raining, but not as badly as before, and I catch the next bus I see, since it seems to be going somewhere I might recognise. My headache worsens, and I am feeling dizzy. I miss my stop, and end up having to walk half a mile back in the other direction to get to my connecting bus. By the time I get home I am feeling distinctly feverish, and my throat feels sore. I get in at last, and check my temperature. Yes. Feverish. Fabulous. I boil the kettle, and make a hot blackcurrent juice, with a spoonful of honey in it. This soothes my throat, but I am craving a cigarette. I resist the craving for a while, then give in and light one up, coughing horribly. The phone rings. It is Beth. "Hi," she says. "How are you doing?" "Fine," I say. "Actually not fine. I'm feeling ill. How are you?" "Ill?" she says. "Like what?" "I don't know," I tell her. "I've got a temperature and a sore throat and I feel like shit." "Oh," she says, as if disappointed. She is silent for a while. "Erm," she says, and falls silent again. "I was going to ask you if you wanted to meet up for lunch tomorrow," she tells me eventually. My heart sinks. "Maybe," I say. "I don't know." "Ok," she says. "Take care. Get some rest. I'll call you later." She hangs up. IX -- The phone rings again. It is also Beth. "Have you been doing banishings, like I told you?" she says without warning. "Uh, no," I say. "Well, could you? I really think it would be a good idea." "I'm not sure what to do," I say. "Didn't you tell me you'd been doing a banishing ritual?" "Not that I remember," I tell her. "You did. I remember," she says. "Ages ago, but you told me." "I have no idea what I meant," I say. "So you were bullshitting then. I thought so. Well look," she says, "it doesn't really matter. You should have done this before you got ill." "Thanks," I say. "Whatever," she says. "Look, you got my mum's book, right?" "How do you know?" "I posted it. Anyway, if you can't think of another banishing ritual, you'll find one in there. It's called the Rite of Cleansing, or something. Look it up and do it. Even if it seems strange. Please, Adam, say you'll do this for me." "Well, I don't feel up to much right now." "I know. Trust me Adam, you'll feel better." "Ok, I'll do it." "Good. Thank you Adam." There is a pause. "Anyway," I say, "How are you?" "Oh fine, fine. Busy. Keeping busy. Lots happening." "Yeah," I say. "Look, I'll call you later, alright?" She hangs up. X - I look up the Rite of Cleansing. It looks a lot like the Golden Dawn's Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, only with different wording. This is now the third version I have seen. Aleister Crowley also has one, in Greek, somewhere in the Book of Lies. Ok. I did promise Beth, and it can't hurt. I change into my robe and perform the ritual, using the Golden Dawn wording rather than the new and unfamiliar one. I make the sign of the cross, draw pentagrams, vibrate names, and make the sign of the cross again. Bad spirits begone. I still don't feel well. On impulse, I fill a small glass with salt water, and sprinkle it into the corners of the room, for good measure. In one of the corners, I hear a sharp crack and a fizz as I sprinkle the water, or I think I do. Begone. Begone, begone. Whatever is troubling me, begone. I lie back on my bed, exhausted, and fall into the arms of a feverish, dreamless sleep.