I sat at the table, trying to calm down, fully intending to gather up the cards and confront Paul with my latest out of mind/body experience. The cards had other plans.
He was right—they were mesmerizing. Every picture was like an open doorway, inviting me inside. A couple of times I could have sworn I saw the images moving in my peripheral vision, like they were peeking at me and as soon as they saw I wasn’t looking directly at them, they began whispering about me.
When my eyes landed on the card called The Saint (formerly The Hanged Man), I saw a flash from my dream vision about the crucified angel. Every tarot deck I’ve seen depicts The Hanged Man upside down, hung by his foot. Paul’s Saint is crucified. Lots of nails. Everywhere. A halo too, but no wings. So The Saint (any relation to Johnny?) isn’t an angel. But what did the crucifixion signify? A sacrifice? Or persecution?
I thought the surrounding cards might offer an explanation, but they only deepened the mystery—and wonder. An androgynous Judge (Justice) precedes The Saint. She/He is sitting on a throne, holding scales in one hand—and the Emerald Tablet in the other. That blew me away. The others are just as strange and wonderful. Death is called the
Turning.
I know I’ve heard that before. Paul? The Striker? Anyway, it shows an angel ascending into the heavens, carrying the bloody Saint. Then comes The Alchemist (Temperance) with the angel and the Saint superimposed in Leonardo da Vinci’s
Vitruvian Man
pose, standing on an altar with the four elementals. The next card is called Triumph, with a very godlike male figure seated on a throne. Two angels kneel on one side, a man and woman kneel on the other.
This card frightens and confuses me more than any other. First of all, it has a subtitle, The Lord of Two Realms, which appears to be painted over. Secondly, it looks a fuck of a lot like Paul. Since this card is called The Devil in other decks, what is this supposed to mean? The Devil triumphs as Lord of Heaven and Earth? Are we talking Anti-Christ here? When Paul shouted, “The Devil is jealous of me!” did he mean it…literally?
I got up and splashed some water on my face. I felt slightly less crazy and panicked, but I didn’t want to look at those cards anymore. They called me back anyway. Maybe it was The Angel beckoning—that’s the new name of the Judgment card. The four cards preceding it are some of the few cards in the deck that aren’t renamed—The Tower, The Star, The Moon and The Sun. Then…The Angel.
It is absolutely stunning, by far the most masterfully painted card. The Angel is semi-androgynous, but masculine, like The Hero and The Herald. He is posed with his arms stretched out and feet together, like The Saint on his cross. Unlike that bloody mess, The Angel glows with golden light, free and floating in the clouds, smiling beatifically. His giant white wings reach upward, the tips almost touching above his golden hair. It is so incredibly beautiful. It should be in a museum, not on my crappy table in my crappy apartment.
Speaking of which, I need to get out of here and over to the chapel to see what Paul has waiting for me. As much as I’m semi-looking forward to another of Paul’s theological discourses, I just want to know more about the angel. More later.
Well, I’m back—more or less in one piece. I keep trying to convince myself that what I saw and heard and felt in the chapel could not have happened. I’ve tried every explanation I can think of—that I was hypnotized the whole time, that Paul is simply a master illusionist. Unfortunately, even if his conjuring abilities exceed David Copperfield’s, and my sensations of sight and touch can be manipulated to such an extreme extent, there is no way to account for the sheer
pain
I felt. Like everything else, it had to be real. I am the sorcerer’s apprentice. But my Master isn’t Merlin in a purple robe…it’s who the fuck knows who, in a filthy, long, black overcoat.
I better start at the beginning.
On my way over to the chapel, I stopped to see The Striker. I wanted to know what, if anything, he was willing to tell me about the angel. Like Paul, all his replies were cryptic or insulting, until I changed direction and asked, “Who is Johnny the Saint?”
The Striker’s eyes lit up like someone struck a match inside them. “Johnny the Saint is the most dangerous man in the world,” he said, sounding both respectful and contemptuous.
“To who?” I asked, completely taken aback by his response.
“To all of us. Especially to you and your line. To the Kellys.”
“What about you? Aren’t you part a part of the clan?”
“Not by blood. Viking stock. Druid High Priest,” he replied, as if compelled to answer, but with no more information than necessary—name, rank, serial number.
Druid High Priest. Here we go again. Still, it opened an opportunity I wasn’t going to waste. “So, do you know…”
“More than you ever will, at the rate you’re progressing,” he said, cutting me off from asking whether he knew the secret druid lore, if it was really written in Paul’s Book, and what I was most curious about—whether he had mastered the druids’ alleged prowess in sorcery.
“Tell me more about Johnny,” I said, bobbing and weaving. He said nothing, so I pressed ahead, “Does he have something to do with the angel?”
“Oh, my! It thinks!” The Striker gasped, covering his mouth with bony fingers. I’d had enough of his crap. I didn’t even bother with a follow-up, just put on my coat and headed for the door. As my fingers touched the doorknob, he gave me a parting shot.
“If you want answers, consider the source.”
“I intend to. I’m going over there now.”
“Not Paul. If you have questions about the angel…ask him.”
“Ask the
angel
?” I replied, not sure I heard him correctly.
The Striker laughed in that deep voice. “Isn’t that what all your grimoires are for?”
I walked out, shaking my head. Was he seriously suggesting that I
invoke
an angel? Without even knowing “who” the angel was? Apparently. But that was impossible. I had never even attempted to conjure a spirit. I sure wasn’t going to break my cherry in that creepy chapel, calling forth whoever or whatever happened to be floating between those piss-soaked walls. Most of the grimoires I’ve read use the same basic recipe for invocation: create a protective magic circle (carved into the floor using a consecrated ritual sword, which I didn’t have); wear a protective amulet (which I didn’t have); carve a lot of magical symbols in the circle and then recite all the invocation phrases from memory (which I could do, but without the other stuff it didn’t make a difference).
Suddenly, I had a one-word flash of inspiration.
Prayer.
I could pray to the angel and see what happened. It was a chapel, right? What do you do in chapels? Pray. Mother was never a churchgoer, so I didn’t have any templates to work with, but I figured whatever success I might have would come from a combination of desire, heartfelt sincerity and of course, my big, fat
gift
. Maybe it was finally going to provide me with something other than an effective eavesdropping device.
I rehearsed various prayers all the way to Paul’s place. Most variations began with “Dear Angel.” That was way too corny to say with any degree of passion, but I felt confident the right words would come to me when I was kneeling, yes, kneeling in front of the angel.
Paul was waiting for me in the chapel. I was about to ask him if I could have some “private time” when he gave me a hard, blank-faced stare and left me alone without saying a word. What happened to the big speech? The Gospel according to Paul? Did he know what I’d been thinking about all day? Was he inside my head without my even knowing it? Honestly, I was just happy to be left alone, so I didn’t give it another thought.
I kneeled on the pew-like stand behind the lectern, staring at the golden rays emanating from the angel’s heart, his gently smiling face, the hundred or so spikes driven into his wings and torso. I hadn’t even started to pray when I felt a warm glow come over me, like the angel was calling out, beckoning. Like it wanted to share a secret.
I closed my eyes and started praying. My prayer was simpler than I thought it would be. Only three words. A question I asked over and over.
Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?
Soon a vision flooded my eyes with such clarity I felt blinded. I think I fell and hit myself. There was blood on my forehead when I got up. But my head didn’t hurt and my fears had melted away. When Paul came in, he gave me the biggest smile I’d ever seen.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
“The angel? Yes, but I still don’t understand about the cross and…”
“Never mind that,” he said dismissively. “What did else you see?”
“I saw this place. I don’t know how to describe it. It was so amazing. Everything was swirling. It felt like I was being crushed…dying. Then we must have passed through something. There was a temple.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, nodding eagerly.
“I saw two people in robes, turning a wheel…” I continued, my eyes focused far beyond the wooden creature nailed to the crucifix above me. Then I asked the only question that seemed to have any true importance: “Is it real?”
Paul lowered his head, resting his ruddy chin on the tripod of his knuckles. “Real…” he said softly. He paused for more long seconds, then spoke haltingly, as if the precision of every word was critical to even the remote possibility of comprehension.
“The Wheel is…a construction…of
intent,”
he said finally. “The power is in the
intent
…the
will
…of the Master. In the creation of the most powerful ritual objects, the Master molds his
intent
, with the guidance and participation of the angels and the
Intelligence
. True creativity is within the purview of the Master, occasionally even the gifted initiate. Such abilities are the luminous heritage we share with the angels of the divine realm. Those beings of the twin universe use that power effortlessly, as humans do in the realm of dreams. But to do so fully in the material realm takes extraordinary energy.”
He paused, longer this time. I assumed he was searching for the right words again, but he did not speak. He cupped his hands in front of him like he was holding a delicate invisible vase. He closed his eyes, lowered his head and became completely still. A true flesh-and-blood statue. I stared at his face. It was smooth and waxy. The mask revealed nothing. What was he doing? I thought he was in some kind of meditative trance. Instead, he did the most extraordinary thing I have ever witnessed. I looked in his hands and a golden light began hovering above his calloused palms. I stared in wonder as the glow took shape: round, then elliptical, then ovoid, becoming more solid with each passing moment. As it gained mass it settled downward, finally resting in his palms, fully formed. A golden egg.
Slowly he opened his eyes and looked into mine. His face remained blank, but I could sense he wanted to smile or make some expression to share the moment with me. He did it in a way I never could have imagined and still can’t comprehend. He held the golden egg between his thumb and forefinger, placed it in my hand, then closed my fingers slowly around it. I felt the heavy weight of it in my grip. It was so smooth, so warm. Living?
“It’s real,” I gasped, wanting to applaud, cry, hug him. It felt that intimate. He nodded, the hint of a smile finally forming on his lips. With that simple movement the egg began to disintegrate in my hand. I opened my palm and it turned into a bright, golden glow again, hovering, as if releasing its spirit to heaven. An ascension of sorts. Then, like a single birthday candle blown out by a child, it was gone.
“It takes too much energy to hold the form in our world,” he said, breathing deeply, sounding almost apologetic.
“So the Temple, the Wheel, it’s all…”
“The elementals were created eons ago, after the completion of the Sanctum Santorum of the Temple. They were forged jointly with the
intent
of the Masters, the
Nous
and the angels. Together they form the Wheel. It is a
replica
, a balancing counterpoint, a
mirror
…of The Great Wheel in the Maelstrom…the Axis.”
“All this still exists?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“It exists now only in the divine realm, as you saw. A mirror of the mirror we made. It can still be used, very sparingly, but only by those with the greatest mastery and the strongest intent. The Temple was destroyed in our dimension but not the elementals. Soon it will be rebuilt. Then the words of the Book will make it come alive in both universes. The Wheel will turn. The gateway will open. The glory will be fulfilled.”
He opened his shirt and showed me the key hanging from his neck and the scars on his chest. They were the same shapes as my implants, but much more horrible. He reached beneath the altar and placed the Book on top of the blood-caked wood, turned the key, opened the binding. He stood with me facing him, the angel looming over his head, and began reading. It was a very long and very sad tale. I listened raptly to every word, memorizing every intonation and gesture, putting my photographic memory to good use, for a change.
I’m going to keep it simple, but it’s like whittling a five-act Shakespeare play into sound bites:
In the fifth century CE, after much persecution by the Christian Roman Empire, the Master (his name is never spoken) gathers his disciples and all the manuscripts he’s managed to salvage from the book burning bonfires. They sail to Erin (his homeland, which was unexpected) and take over a ruined abbey built on top of a hallowed Druid site by early Christian missionaries. The Master poses as an abbot, his disciples as monks. They make copies of the codices and scrolls they’ve hidden in caves below the chapel and begin construction of an underground temple, because the time of the prophecy is finally at hand.
Under the light of the full moon, the Master spies Morgana, the Queen Matriarch/druid high priestess of Clan Something-or-other (Paul’s Gaelic was incomprehensible), performing a magic ritual atop the abbey tower. She’s naked, beautiful and happens to be Sophia incarnate, his
syzygy
. Naturally, they fall in love. He breaks his vow of celibacy. She cuckolds her husband King Bradan and immediately becomes pregnant. This is a big problem because a) she hasn’t had sex with Torcan in over a year; b) she can sense it isn’t a girl, and as a Matriarchal monarch with no successor, she’s getting antsy; c) if he’s found out, The Master will lose face with his disciples and incur the wrath of her entire clan.