From: ecsd@tfs.com (Eric C. S. Dynamic)
Subject: A story
Organization: The Great Beast 666
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 09:21:07 GMT

Copyright (C) 1992 - Eric C. S. Dynamic (14 October 1992)

The Daring, The Recondite, The Totally Obscure
Guide to the Universe through the portal known as
ECSD

Part II of "Various Diversions of ECSD"
---------------------------------------
Things that go bump in your head.

A Walk Through the Pit, continued

{
Before we continue, allow us to introduce some of the topics to be - mm,
discussed here or in times to come.

The First Psychic.
Artificial Intelligence.
Recurrent foreshadowings.
God and Cosmic Consciousness.
The Occult first steps.
Pessimism in The Age of Astrology.

My First Therapist.
An excursion through the DSM-IIIR.
The Icon Machine (Archemania).
Hypersensory Space - Varieties of Channels.
The Connectedness of all Things.
Synapse Theory.
A remark about the cellular nature of reality & memory of a flashback.
Extranormal Awareness. Drugs.

Women, Sex and Love.
A New General Theory of Human and Social Behavior.
    Reflexive Psychology.
    The New Politically Correct Approach For A Men's Movement.
    Pornography.
    :), my ass.

And now we continue.
}

The Exorcism. This will take some explaining. I'll have to leave the
background to another story, but by mid-1987 I had become almost totally
paranoid - afraid of people. Any exchange I had with anyone made me
unbearably self-conscious and I visibly shrank away from such encounters,
while trying to present an even demeanor, but it was no good - I could
read my strangeness in everyone's reactions. I was living in my place
in Cambridge on Dudley Street, 3rd floor. By now I had begun to hang out
in Salem at the Pyramid Bookstore, browsing the literature, buying
Astrology books, looking around. I had already met John Cabot, I think,
related to - I think Laurie Cabot, famous Witch - ? John called
himself a warlock - he was young, early twenties, blond hair and a
mustache, sort of archetypal-magician.
Across the street there was a little set of small shops set in the front
of a house-sized building, on the way to the wharf and restaurants.
I explored this one day for lack of anything better to do, and there was
a Psychic, a woman - well, I'm pretty impressionable, let's check it out.
So it's this voluptuous Greek woman, I couldn't take my eyes off her.
Not so much older than me - bad instant crush. Married - yuch, a kid.
Fine - I can handle it - but what *lust*. She did a Tarot reading - okay,
interesting. But I was hooked - cool. Transparently.
So things are really bad in my life - I skulk around. Pass a palm reader.
Check it out. Get a reading. Things suck. You need a candle burned for you.
Names a fee, I say what? A stipend? She wanted a fuckload of candles
burned, it seemed - two dozen @ whatever, amounted to some change - a couple
hundred bucks. I declined. Thanks, but that's okay. Days go by. Back in
Salem, check in with that psychic. What's the deal, I ask. Why does
everything suck? She proceeds to describe how someone had placed a curse
on me - taken something of mine & buried it with something dead. So the
cure? A *blank check* to buy a coffin, and to finance her and her husband's
search for the whereabouts of this, and for the reburial of this thing of
mine, whatever, and an unspecified amount for lagniappe!! I was shocked!
What! I kept shaking my head - the images were so compelling - sounded about
like what I was going through, some curse - some enemy - but this deal was
so ludicrous! A figure in the neighborhood of $3000 was bandied about!
My eyes narrowed and I viciously said - fine - I'll be back - she and I had
got into an argument about her credibility mostly from her side. I stormed
out and promptly called Steve (The First Psychic) - what's this all about?
I described the sequence of events. He did a reading: some entity had
attached itself to me - in the ether. It was sapping my energy and feeding
on my misery and the emotions that brought - the cure? An Exorcism. He runs
a witchcraft supply store - he had an exorcism kit complete for $80. Hey -
I'll try it. Cheaper than $3000, cheaper than $240. What the fuck, I've got
nothing to lose. Got in touch with another psychic in New York - someone
I didn't know; the entity story checked out; fine. This was August, 1987.

So Haider, my friend from Pakistan, who I'd met at Miami University (Ohio)
in 1976, was visiting me. I'd just gotten the exorcism kit in the mail when
he arrived. He stayed away the day I did it, coming back in the evening -
this was a source of amusement. I couldn't vouch for what I was doing, but
I was determined to do it with a serious intent all the way through, for
how I thought it was going to work. So I carried myself around a little
grimly, while I tried to make light of it to him - um, don't worry, just a
little thing I got to do here. - The exorcism kit consisted of four stick
candles, a cat candle, and a skull candle. It included some flash incense
containing saltpeter, and some coarse salt. And a chant which I carry with
me to this day - to suggest the same assumption of superpowers . . .

I bathed with the salt, as indicated. I burnt the incense and lit candles in
every room, as indicated. I arranged the table with the candles, as
indicated. And began. I had to chant a verse seven times:

The Powers of Zeus and Diana I need,
Remove all Negative from this Being,
Reverse and return all Negative to Them who Negate Me.
So Mote It Be.

I did all the steps required, not many, and waited for the candles to
burn down, repeating the chant for lack of anything better to do,
in groups of seven. And thought a lot about being straight with what
I was trying to do, and wondering if I could sense this 'entity' in
any way. The skull candle took *so fucking long* to burn it almost became
a joke - minutes passing away - until a side caved in & it went out.
I gathered the tablecloth and all the rest into a bunch, which was to be
burned before midnight that night. I went out on route 2 West looking for
a place, no dice & almost ran out of gas. Came all the way back, North
this time, south of Newburyport there is a tall bridge over a river,
with a dirt road leading down. I went far underneath the bridge, where
I saw evidence of other fires, and burned it finally at 4AM.
I called Steve and the other psychic and both said I had rid myself of it -
I couldn't tell a fucking difference.

But I was decidedly past a threshhold in dealing with the occult.
I saw how *I* felt doing it.

{Intermission.}

{exclaimer.}

I was minervalized (initiated) into the O.T.O. on 23 February 1991.
I moved into Thelema Lodge in early March.
The walls were black
the ceiling was red
the furniture was ugly
the room still had stuff in it
I threw it all out
I bought some blue and yellow paint
I got a black light
I furnished a 'submarine', as Drax calls it.
Seed of the New Workshop.
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