We had come to the Lost Domain, leaving as the last of the night leaked from the sky under the last wedge of the Waning Moon. I carried with me a glyph of Will-Working, charged in an intense ceremony in which the Dark One-Eyed Wanderer stood before me, covered me with his raven-cloak, watched as I coupled with a Demon Minx, Succubus, Moon-pale and black-haired, in black scant clothing, with little horns and lashing tail, which flicked across my shoulders as she brought me to shudder and spill. I thought it right to fire it there, in the Master’s House. After a day of drinking and feasting and fencing at the Moon’s Dark, I rose at dawn on the heels of a nightmare in the Old Man’s Sanctum, and broke fast on meat and mustard, bread and cheese, white wine and coffee with my mother-in-law, and heartspeech.
Then I prepared. I felt the grime & sweat of the day and night before, wore a light, dark-blue shirt, cords, new leather runners. I took my bag, Book & Glyphs inside, and my Bull-Staff from Le Bleymard, from the magical journey three years earlier. I set out to beat the boundaries, widdershins, West, to South, to East, to North. Down the leafy passageway, all moist and humming from the night’s rain. The sky was warm and dark, thundery, the air fresh and damp. In the hidden Forest Glade, among the vines, over fallen trees, through thorns and spider-webs, I found the Menhir. Its Keepers had left rún: hiking socks hung on a low branch by it. Blessing the Wanderings of Summer, perhaps? I walked around it, widdershins, and placed my hand upon it. I whispered in its mouth “Deliver Us from Evil” (the next glyph, made but not charged yet), then stood a moment, leaning on my staff. I saw the dew-drops glistening on the leafs above it [sic], and I drank one down, to wet my lips and free my tongue. And then a gift-omen, a single raven feather. I took it, with thanks, and tucked it behind my left ear.
Staff in right hand, I strode on through the dew-wet grasses and pushed gentle past the thorns. Off among the vines I walked, warm wind and darkening sky, sweat on my chest & back. Off to the South, towards the High Road, guns cracked, and I curtailed my boundary-walking, heading straighter for the Tower, which brought me to one of the still and secret pools. There I approached, and a frog swift-plopped in at my stirring. I dipped my staff, with a blessing. I wandered through vine-rows, along tree-lines and ridges, seeking the Tower at the East of the Domain, reaching it circuitously.
The Tower of the Seigneur de la Rigaud, nearly 500 years gone, the Windmill of the Mage-Kings, I approached from East, saw the great poisonous stamens, yellow fleurs du mal on their heads [sic]. From their [sic] walked widdershins once around, marking paces with my steel-shod staff. I breathed, and emptied my mind. Then once around again, singing a charm of protection, “Seacht páidreacha faoí seacht, Faoí Bhríd is a brat, Faoí Día is a neart, Faoí Muire is a Mac, Idir sinn san Slúa Ghaoith, Idir Sinn san Sluath Sídhe [sic]” Though the words came slow, and I forgot the Bríd verse. Once again around, intoning “Odin-All-Father” to invoke. Birds cried. My stick a sword, I beheaded the Fleur du Mal. Within, insects buzzed a choir of tense celebration. I reached the door, and stepped down among the debris and the fallen stones, looked up at the weed-grown Tower, open to the sky. Facing the door, I opened, Book in the left hand, staff in the right. I cast bright pentagrams in all the quarters with my steel-shod staff’s point. Upon the point I speared the glyph, the sigil, of Will-Working, dedicating it to Odin, to Lúgh for his light and his time of High Summer, Odin, Darkfather, Magician, Vagabond, Stealer of Runes, Drinker from the Well of Wyrd. I set the glyph alight, stood facing the Southern Door, staff pointed out, book held aloft, and closed my eyes as it flamed, its image imprinted on my eyelids.
The hum and drone of wasps fell silent. I blew away the ash from the point of my staff, swirled the sky back down to ground where I pinned it, felt thundery, briefly thanked the Quarters, then I left, quickly, quietly, stopped and lit a cigarette of liquorice, and another – as earlier – butterly imago flittered past around my feet, this one white where the previous (by the Fleurs du Mal) had been brown, read [sic], black. I stuck my staff in my left hand, pulse racing, breath shallow, head light. I made my way back down to the Graceful Park at the centre of the Domain, climbed, enjambed the beast-broken fence at the Orchard, the Verge, and stalked back to the house, between Chestnut, Cedar, and Magnolia, my feet heavy with earth, my shirt soaked and prickling with sweat. I began the ritual at the Tower at 11 o’clock, and finished at 11.11.
Malachas Ivernus
Magus. Hierophant. Mystagogue. Simulacrum.
Professor Emeritus at Université de Paris-Nouvelle Athènes
