The summer of 2008 found my companions and I back in Tennessee renting an apartment on the third floor of a building on the town's old main street. The building we were in had been the original general store of the town in the 1800's. It was an interesting area of the town if you like history. With 2 or 3 blocks there must have been more than a half dozen antique shops in buildings that had long since became antique themselves.
I was working as a Manager at a local restaurant and was gone a lot of the time. Shawn worked with me and was gone a lot of the time as well. Our other two room mates at the time were in between jobs and so spent a great deal more time alone in the apartment. They would tell Shawn and I strange stories about the apartment that I don't know if either one of us really believed at first. They would say things like that they had heard the front door opening an closing by itself when it had been locked with a key lock and deadbolt. They said they were hearing footsteps from the front door leading to the bathroom, or from the bathroom to one of the bedrooms. Supposedly they would hear voices as well. Twice they told us that they had been in the bathroom and heard the front door unlock and open and then close, foot steps approaching the bathroom, and then actually had conversations with one of us through the door, thinking that we had come back home early. And then supposedly when they came out of the bathroom no one would be there and the door would still be locked. I believed something was happening, but I didn't quite believe the stories about them talking to someone or something through the bathroom or bedroom door after it had unlocked the front door and dead bolt and just waltzed into our apartment. Shawn was a skeptic as well, at this point he did not particularly care for either of our other two room mates but put up with them for my sake, so he was not really putting much stock into what they were saying. One day I was off work with my girlfriend while Shawn and the other room mate were at work and had walked across town for one reason or another. We had locked the door when we left, and it was locked when we returned, but the living room was discombobulated. Things had definitely been rearranged and the oddest thing to me was that the couch cushions were all standing/leaning together in a strange manner. No one else had a key, not even Shawn or the other roommate. I was the only one who had a key. Shortly after the couch cushion incident I was at the local Library on a day off, again with my girlfriend. After browsing around a bit and picking up a few books we headed to the front desk to check the books out. I don't recall exactly how the conversation came up, but my girlfriend and the somewhat elderly Librarian began discussing our apartment. She said she knew were it was because her niece had lived there but had moved out because she believed it was haunted. That she would hear voices, foot steps, and had even came home to discover he couch cushions standing at weird angles and things in the living room rearranged. I couldn't believe it. She had just validated the experiences my roommates had had as well as my own. A month or two passed from the time of the Library trip and I was coming home from work late one night. It was around midnight and I was dead tired. I had walked from the store to get some fresh air an wake up a bit. It was only a couple miles. I hit the front door of the building and started up the old steps to the third floor. About half way up I got a very sinister feeling. I am not one to be afraid of the dark but at that moment I wished the hallway had a better light. I reached the 3rd floor landing and as soon as I did something jumped out at me from the shadows. A shadow in the shape of a man. It leaped right at me from within the dark little nook in front of apartment number 3 (the first one at the top of the stairs). By the time it would have hit me it just vanished back into the thin air. My girlfriend had mentioned seeing a shadow man in that long dark hallway multiple times. I am assuming that is what I had just encountered. I personally never saw it again, but we ended up moving not very long after that.
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The entity referred to as "The Devil," or "Satan," by Christians is said by some to be based upon The Horned God also known as Cernunnos, Herne, Pan, or the Green Man, whom was worshiped by Pagans before the world was purged by the church in it's attempt to become the supreme Religion of mankind. Just as some would say the story of Jesus Christ was based upon an older Pagan god.
Satan, The Devil, The Destroyer, Apollyon, Abaddon, Dragon, The Great Deceiver, Father of Lies, and many more names have been placed on this supposed fallen angel who came to Earth an taught men technology and warfare as well as teaching women cosmetics. Some refer to him as Lucifer, the bearer of light. Others call him the Morning Star. I will refer to him with the name I am most comfortable with, which is "Azazel." Demonology had fascinated for as long as I had been aware that Demons existed. By the time that I found my 22 year old self in North Carolina that January of 2008 I had spent a great deal of time researching it, as well as I did with any other number of world Religions or belief systems that I had come across with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. I gleaned all the information available from texts such as the Bible, the Book of Enoch, and the Lessor Key of Solomon, and so gained a basic understanding of what Demons were supposed to be, and had even compiled a list of particularly well known ones. Azazel was the top of the list. I was convinced that he was not only the real deal, but was also most probably the "chief," or leader of all other Demons here on Earth. I believed he was one and the same as this "Devil," that the Christians referred to. After certain events that had occurred to me while living in Maryland the previous fall, I had temporarily stopped studying world religions and spirituality on my free time and delved deeper into Demonology than I had ever before. I was reading anything credible that I could get my hands (or should I say my eyes) on. I needed to know the truth about them, where did they come from? What did they want with humans? What really were they, what power or abilities did they have? The obvious conclusion is that I would have to try and contact one and communicate with it directly. I believed this to be a very real possibility if one was experienced enough or powerful enough of a "Sorcerer," "Magician," or "Witch," which by no means would I have considered myself any one of those things at the time. However, I could not resist the burning desire I had to lay some questions to rest for good, so what did I do? I tried to contact a Demon. And not just any Demon would do. It must be the Prince of Demons. I have never been good at waiting for things to happen, or even remotely good at idly passing the time. I drive myself crazy. I jump the gun. I make rash decisions and I make many mistakes because of it. It is a good thing that we at least learn from our mistakes, because there was to be no exception of my normal tendencies this January. I wanted to talk to Azazel and I wanted to talk to him a.s.a.p.. I wont get into exact details of how I initially tried to "summon," Azazel or contact him, but I did try. I tried multiple times. I was using Occult methods that I had read about and I am not referring to the ouija board or a blacked out mirror (though I have used both). Anyway after a couple days and a few failed attempts, or at least unresponsive attempts, I become extremely frustrated feeling purposefully ignored by the Demon I was trying to communicate with. I felt as if I were trying to have a meaningful conversation with someone and they kept looking the other way, pretending not to hear me, and all-together just completely ignoring me. So one evening right around dusk, feeling like I would never be successful, I ran out the door and into the front yard. I threw my hands into the air and looked up into the sky. Arms raised high, fingers spread out wide, I turned slowly in a circle with my palms facing upwards and yelled at the top of my lungs into the darkening cloudless blue sky. "Why?," and then "Why wont you answer me?," follow by profanity and wicked insults. Completely losing control of my temper I then proceeded to curse Azazel with every name, phrase, an word in the book. I told him he wasn't real. I told him he was a powerless has been that had only ever been jealous of mankind in the first place and would never be as powerful as myself, a mortal man, even if he were real. I told him he didn't probably even have the strength or ability to communicate with me even if he wanted to anyway. I said things like, "some all mighty fallen Angel you are," and "what a legendary chief of Demons are you," and "I doubt that you are real at this point, I will now dismiss you as a myth created to scare children and masses of peons into submission in the name of Religion." I was not impressed, and so I walked back to the house, sorely disappointed. I gave up on contacting Azazel. I uttered one last F-bomb at him. Walking up the steps I felt drained, all my energy had been spent out there in the grass screaming and raging at some entity that didn't even exist. What a damn fool I was. I would just go drink a glass of water and lay down for the evening. I upset that everything had come to naught. About the time I was in the center of the living room that all changed. It was a calm and clear sort of windless day outside, a blue sky that was fading into night, and unusually warm for January. The front door burst open as if someone had kicked it with all their might and then instantly slammed back shut. I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to look at it and as I did the back door flew open and slammed shut as well. My eyes rested on the front door as it continued to repeat this several times in unison with the back door doing the same thing, it was as if there was a tornado out in the yard causing some sort of violent vacuum effect on the doors. Looking out of a window, the limbs of the nearby trees were not blowing, neither was the pinwheel at the end of the driveway. The cat's back arched and its hair stood on end and it would not calm down, it was emanating a deep and low sound hiss/growl that I have never heard a cat make before. Turning in the direction of the cats gaze I noticed the computer chair start to turn in a circle right before my eyes and it continued to spin around in at least half a dozen circles before stopping. My girlfriend and best friend Shawn were both freaked out and asking me "what the fuck did you do?" It was at this point that I knew that I fucked up. I was in some sort of shock, because for a moment or two, all I could do was just stand there. And then all of a sudden It dawned on me that I had truly done it. I had really opened up some sort of portal or doorway straight to Azazel himself and now I needed to do something to protect my companions, and myself for that matter. I quickly gathered up a wooden bowl that I had purified water in and I added sea salt to it in a particular fashion all the while while reciting particular words of power. I was creating my own personal version of holy water. Moving from one doorway and window to the next, also including all of the mirrors in the house, I said blessings of protection and incantations of banishment at each opening and flicking the holy water above and below each one. I was creating magickal wards of a sort, for lack of better terminology, I don't know how exactly but I knew exactly what to do apparently because I was on auto-pilot. I had one hundred percent perfect faith in my ability. I had never created a magickal boundary of any sort, banished anything, or even ever displayed such faith in the supernatural, or for that matter faith in myself. I just did what I needed to do to protect myself and my companions. The doors had stopped slamming, nothing was spinning in circles anymore, and it had turned full dark outside by the time I had put up a defense around the entire house. I took a moment in the center of the house to still myself, take a few deep breaths, and envision white light starting inside of me and growing to radiate and push out to overtake the house and cover the whole property. It was not the most concentrated effort as I was still pretty shaken up but it at least made me feel more comfortable. I returned the bowl of holy water to our temporary altar in the bedroom and I picked up a the sage and saying a prayer I lit one end. Walking around the house again, with the sage in my right hand I smudged, and with my left hand I made sacred symbols and recited words of power all the while. I repeated incantations as well as psalm 23 and the lords prayer, as I was still in a transition of my old Christianity based spirituality that I had developed since I was a child, and the Paganistic spirituality I was now evolving into. My companions were still very rattled, and that was very understandable to me given the situation. I told them that I was sorry, that I had no idea anything that intense would have happened, or really been possible. It seemed like a scene from a scary movie or something. They asked me what had I honestly thought would happen? That told me that I had been trying to get a reaction or communication from this thing for days, and hadn't I thought that sooner or later it would answer me? Especially if provoked? I suppose that I did and now I felt really bad. And that was about the time that the scratching started. It was coming from the front door and it sounded like an animal was clawing the bottom of it. My girlfriend walked over and opened it expecting the cat to be there. It wasn't. She looked around outside but there was nothing to be seen. There were no trees even remotely close to the house for it's branches to have raked the door either. We tried to tell ourselves that we didn't have a clue as to what had made the scratching sounds, but practically as soon as the door was closed the noises started up again. We decided to try and ignore the sounds. They continued anyway. It was super creepy and gave us all the willies to say the least. We decided to go to bed instead of sitting around feeling freaked out and paranoid that the Devil was going to try and break down the door and walk right on in. We all decided to just go to bed. Laying down in the bedroom 30 minutes later, I was no where near being able to sleep. My girlfriend was on one side of me, and Shawn was laying on the floor at the foot of the bed right in front of the door. All of a sudden the door opened and almost faster than my eye could even track, a sinister half-man half-dragon looking creature flew across the foot of the bed and straight towards me. It was roughly the size of a man, though it may have been hunched over, and it's face was quite similar to that of a man as well. Long greasy looking blonde hair fell to at least it's shoulders and large leathery appearing wings seemed to be folded behind it's back, I could see the spine of each one jutting up behind it's shoulders. Firey red eyes appeared so intense they could have literally been flames set inside it's eyes. Tight but wrinkly almost bleached looking pale white skin stretched over it's body. Large man-like hands were raised up about level with it's chest, old looking yellowish colored nails coming to sharp points at the end of each long slender finger as they were bent into a position as if poised to gouge my eyes out. It's mouth opened into a silent sneer/scream as it came closer to my face and I could see inside to the rows of yellowish shark looking pointed teeth. About an inch away from my face it disappeared into thin air. I thought I was going to have a heart attack, it was beating so loud and hard that I could hear it and feel it in my ears. I could not believe what I had just saw. I was sort of frozen like that for a moment totally in shock again for the second time that day. Looking around the room I saw that my girlfriend had not moved and neither had shawn, which meant the door could not have been opened. What in the hell had just happened then? Thinking rationally I tried to play it back it in my mind, it felt very surreal. I had not been asleep. I had not been tired and didn't even have my eyes closed. I had been laying there, wide awake, reciting the lords prayer and other words of power over and over. I had been completely coherent, but had I somehow suffered from a hallucination? I didn't take drugs. I had smoked pot in months, I wasn't drinking, I had even taken an aspirin. No... there was only one explanation I could come up with. I had experienced a very concentrated psychic attack, or astral projection of sorts. I had just seen Azazel. Both my girlfriend and Shawn assured me that they had heard or seen nothing and that the door had most definitely not been opened. I needed a drink of water because my mouth had become very dry. I climbed out of bed, stepped over Shawn, out of the bedroom and down the hall. I passed the spare bedroom, the bathroom, and into the livin groom. I was half way across the floor to the kitchen when something made me stop. The hair all over my body was standing up and I felt my skin turn to gooseflesh. Turning to my right I looked out the bay windows overlooking the back yard and for the third time that day I felt as if I might have a heart attack. Outside the windows, 10 to 12 feet above the ground, something was floating there. Something in the shape of a man. Something in a tattered looking black cloak. Something with a face as white as the moon as completely featureless. Something that was staring back at me through the window. The winter of 2007 was a particularly memorable one for me because of my 3 month stay at my sisters place right off of the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Asheville, North Carolina. If you have never been there I would suggest visiting sometime if you have a chance, it is a very pretty place. I know quite a few people from the area.
I had the unfortunate, but not surprising, experience of being robbed at gunpoint by two thugs a couple blocks away from my townhouse in Southern Maryland very late in the autumn. I had cut down a side road leading to highway 301 which is where my work place was located, but before I could make it, two hooded men ran up on me guns drawn in front of the Jeep dealership. One of the med stood behind me jamming a gun into my back and one stood to my left and pressed the cold steel of his black and chrome .45 to my temple. One of the car salesmen working the car lot was busy trying to sell a vehicle about 50 yards away, but I knew better than to yell. To make a long story short I ended up losing around a grand in cash and valuables including everything from my cell phone to me I.D. and social security card. The only thing they didn't take (I found out later it was because they were afraid I would have recognized them, they lived in my neighborhood) was my Italian made leather jacket. To make the story even shorter, a few days later I had to suddenly move out of state because of the events from the previous days. So my best friend, and room mate, Shawn, my girlfriend, and myself boarded a bus to NC to go and stay with my sister for a few weeks before heading to a rental in East Tennessee. It was enjoyable for me to see my sister Joy, my only older and full blooded sibling, and to visit with her two children Esme and Gwyneth, my third niece Alice had not been born yet, and to spend Christmas with them. Joy and her husband were more than hospitable considering our situation, it was more than kind of them to put us up for the three months that we ended up staying with them. Joy, her husband, and the girls went to Maryland to visit family for the new year and left Shawn, my girlfriend, and me alone at the house. I was still very much studying, researching, and secretly practicing the occult and took the time they were away to build a homemade ouija board out of a wooden plank and conduct a few sessions of attempting to contact things in other planes than this one mundane/physical one. We we more than successful. We also conducted a seance to contact a beloved family member of mine, my dear sweet grandmother, or as I called her, " Grandma Bonnie." The seance was very interesting to me, and to this day is the only one that I have been a part of. We recorded the entire thing with Shawn's Sony Vaio desktop PC which he had brought with him on the bus. At first I was very disappointed because on the first time playing it back none of us had heard any responses. The problem was we were listening for knocks or voices. I played the recording again and listened from another perspective and could not believe my ears. During the seance we had asked several questions and made several statements and left a long pauses for my grandmother to be able reply to us. The second time I played the recording back, with the volume maxed out on the speakers, I heard distinct responses in the white noise during each pause. It wasn't just that the white noise was louder because no one was speaking, it sounded like purposeful spikes or changes in the frequencies being picked up by the external microphone that we were using. Listening very closely to the recording several times I am completely convinced that it was my grandmother replying. There were none of these spikes found anywhere else during the recording, which was over 30 minutes long. We conducted other recordings of us talking and leaving pauses, just to see if the spikes showed up again. They did not. I could go into much greater detail about these events, and sometime I probably will write a blog about each one, but if I get into them right now I would not get around to the real blog I intended to write today. A blog about the most personally important and long lasting memorable event of that occured that winter. I had meant for this blog to be just that, but once I sat down to write I realized just how much had actually happend in those few short months (and in reality most of it had happened inside the time frame of the one week that my sister and her family were away in Maryland), and decided to give the readers a bit of information describing the happenings leading up to the actual pentacle of events. I will write about it in my next blog. The day after my dedication I felt really good, other than when I thought about that voice from the night before. I told myself it wasn't real, that it didn't really happen, but deep down within I knew better. It had happened. Something, someone, had called my name. Chill bumps came up on my skin every time I thought of it.
I went through my day like I would any other. Got out of bed, had coffee, hung out with the girlfriend and my best friend. When it was time to get ready for work I did my normal 150 pushups and 150 situps and then I jumped into the shower and washed up. My work place was right around a mile or so from the house so I walked for the fresh air and exercise. My work day was basic but I was sort of in auto-pilot mode. After I clocked out I walked home and changed out of my work clothes and plopped down in front of my altar. I stuck an incense in the burner and lit it along with a handful of candles, including the ones on the very back of the altar the represented Cronos, Gaia, and myself. I said a blessing and prayer and sat back cross-legged on the floor, hands on my knees. After clearing my mind in the usually manor I sat in a light meditative stance for quite a few minutes. I suppose somewhere around a half an hour passed. I wasn't really meditating deeply like I sometimes did but more so quietly reflecting on the dedication ritual I had performed the day before. I had such wonderful feelings when I thought of it. It had felt so real and empowering even though the majority had been carried out in the astral. I opened my eyes and looked at my altar. I felt very good about it.. but I wasn't so sure about the holy bible. I knew that it was very non traditional to mingle the holy bible with witchcraft but was not unheard of. As far as using it on the altar, I have no idea if others had ever done such a thing or not. Later I learned that a founder of one of the very first British Traditional Witchcraft Traditions, Alexandrian Wicca, had kept a small statue of Jesus Christ on his altar or mantle for some time. I decided to keep it the way it was for now. Rising to my knees I snuffed the candles out but left what little bit of the incense there was left to finish burning. I stood up and walked over to turn the lights off before I laid down. I wasn't quite ready for bed yet, but I enjoyed laying down after meditating because of the peaceful floaty feeling it left me with. It was like I felt more alive somehow. I was laying there with my head on the pillow, thoughts bouncing around in my head, trying to focus my attention on one question at a time. What, or rather who, had that voice last night belonged to? Had it really came from the altar because It had sure sounded like it. Why had it sounded so ancient, yet somehow familiar? Was it good or was it bad, and why had it felt so cold and terrifying? And the most important question in my mind: was it the Devil, or was it a God? After posing those words in my mind my world was turned upside down. The moment I had posed the last question in my mind, "was it the Devil, or was it a God," the very same ancient sounding raspy yet extremely strong voice from the night before spoke up from the left side of my room. The voice answered my question in a single eloquent string of simple but profound words. After that night I would never look at things the same, but in the moment I froze up, in awe, in terror, in utter disbelief, and so many more powerful emotions that I can not even describe. If you have ever read one of the many biblical accounts of men encountering an angel or God himself, it is the best comparison that I can think of because If I had been standing I too would have fallen to my knees and hid my face just as they did. Raymond Buckland's blue bible sat on the left side of the altar, the holy bible sat on the right side. Behind each of the books was a tall white candle signifying the Lord and the Lady, my chosen God Cronos, better known as "Father Time," or "Grim Reaper," and my Goddess was Gaia, or "Mother Earth." In the middle was a third candle symbolizing my spirit. There was also an incense burner, or censor, sitting at the very front. An athame, or knife, in it's wooden stand occupied the middle of the altar.
My athame had been acquired 3 years earlier in a trade for some pot. It was a beautiful piece. and very unique, I have never seen another even remotely like it. The handle was a bit larger than a set of brass knuckles and you handled it in about the same manner. Imagine the brass knuckles have black horns at each end, the face of a demon in the middle where your hand went when you picked it up, and twin blades protruded from the opposite side of the horns. I called it "Demon Blade," and believe me that is exactly what it looked like. Four votive candles sat just in front of the books, representing Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. The incense burner was positioned slightly in front of a tea light that represented the cosmos and the connection of deity, elements, and spirit. The Altar itself sat low in a shallow but wide closet. I would open the doors light tea lights and incense and meditate normally on a daily basis after I erected it. I wanted everything to feel right before I performed my dedication. I had wanted to initiate myself into Wicca the way that Raymond Buckland had made possible for solitaire practitioners with his Seax-Wica Tradition. Whether he had truly intended for Witches to be able to sprout up little eclectic covens and practice without being lineaged, or if he had just wanted to sell books one can only speculate. Either way, I was very tempted to perform a self-initiation but instead felt more comfortable upon deciding to do a dedication first and take it from there. I thought about the actual steps of a dedication everyday for what seemed like forever to me. It must have been two or three weeks after I had made the decision to do one. I wanted to create my own ritual for it and I was not so familiar or comfortable with performing them at the time so I was sort of caught up on that for a bit. Should I do something different with the altar? should I wear certain clothes? should I be skyclad? Did I need a special type of incense or color of altar cloth? I had a million questions. One evening I came home from work and I just felt like it was time. I still hadn't finalized a plan for my ritual and instead had an urge to just do it. To hell with a planned ritual or specific form. I told everyone not to knock on my door or bother me until I came out of my room. I took a shower and then walked into my room. I closed the door and then sat down cross-legged in front of my altar. I had said a prayer to Gaia while the water was running over me and cleansing me in the shower, so I picked up my athame in both hands and said a prayer to Cronos and then sat it back down. I lit a long wooden match stick and then used it to light each of the tall candles on the back side of the alter, inciting words of invocation and praise as I did so. After lighting the four tea lights on the front of the altar I paused for a moment of reflection. Everything felt right so far, and in-fact everything felt more than right. I felt as if the alter was coming to life. I concentrated my energy on the incense and lit it. I asked it to carry my prayers to the cosmos with its rising smoke. And then I leaned back from the altar, got comfortable, and closed my eyes. So here I was sitting indian style on the bedroom floor a foot or two away from the altar and everything felt absolutely perfect. My normally serious looking face wearing a slight smile. I let my all of the random thoughts in floating around in my mind run their natural courses one by one until my mind was cleared. I sat for a few moments thinking nothing at all just feeling the energy present in the room. I felt oddly electrified as I used visualization techniques I had been practicing for a while now to enter into a deeper and deeper levels of meditation. In my meditative state, I envisioned myself in a nature casting a circle, I hailed the Elements one by one, invoking them and then welcoming them to my sacred space there in the astral. After the circle was erected and I walked around it three times, completing it and empowering it, standing in the center, arms raised, I called to the Lord and Lady, Gaia and Cronos. I formally invited them to my circle as honored guests and announced my intentions. At this point I felt the energy level change, and I swear I felt a gust of wind in the closed off bedroom. Strangely I now also felt as if I was literally floating. I wanted to open my eyes but I didn't dare. I stood in the circle feeling extremely peaceful and empowered. I bowed to the Lord and Lady and made my vows. I vowed to always be true and faithful to both of them and to also respect the elements. I vowed to be true to the ways of paganism and to continue learning and practicing and growing for as long as I lived. I vowed to help educate and reeducate those who wished to learn the old ways and to never abuse what knowledge I would be blessed enough to attain. I vowed to never force my religion, philosophy, or ways of life onto others. I vowed to be true to myself. After my vows were finished I thanked the deity, I thanked the elements, and I said goodbye to them. I walked around my circle counter-clockwise absorbing the magick back into my astral body as I went. I found a comfortable place in my nature sanctuary near the spot I had cast the circle and held the astral ritual and I sat down to reflect. When I opened my eyes the incense had already finished burning out. I felt so good it is honestly hard to describe, like somehow I was completed for the first time. As if I was finally understood. I was connected with the Cosmos. I leaned forward and snuffed the candles and then I stood up and walked over to the bed and sat on the edge of it for a minute. I was smiling as I laid back on my pillow and stretched my legs out. The feeling was amazing but my knees were a little sore from sitting still for probably close to an hour like I had just done. About 30 or 45 minutes later, I really couldn't tell you, I was very relaxed and that was when It happened. From the left side of my room, the side with the altar, clear as a bell, "Jorrrrrr-daannnnnnnnnnnn-uhhhhhhh." To this day I get chill bumps and my hair stands up whenever I think about that voice. It is a hard thing to describe, not only the voice itself but the feeling that it instantly caused. The voice was distant but very audible with its harsh, raspy, ancient sounding tone, it is hard to explain but it sounded like it was being spoken from across the very sands of time. At the same instant that the voice called out I had a vision of a someone, or something, in a raggedy grey cloak that covered their body and a hood that cast a dark enough shadow that you saw no face or even eyes. One arm of the cloak was stretched straight out, and I thought it held a dangling lantern because it was gleaming, but it wasn't, it was holding an hour-glass. The other arm was down by its side, and and held a short handled sickle with a blade that was almost black. Before the voice had even faded the vision was gone. I was so terrified I could not move, I could barely even think. I remember being frozen like that, hair standing on end and goosebumps over my entire body, for what seemed like eternity. It could have been five minutes or an hour I could not tell you, but know that I did not move until I feel asleep. The next morning it was the first thing on my mind as soon as my eyes opened and I decided to pretend it wasn't real, but I knew that it was. Very shortly after finding the Blue Bible, another name for Buckland's most popular book, I decided to move back to the city and find work for awhile. I ended up moving back to Southern Maryland where I still had family living and within 3 days of getting there I was working. After being in Waldorf for a few weeks I drove to Indiana and brought my best friend from childhood back with me to find work and live in Maryland.
Shawn, my girlfriend, and myself were all working and within a couple of weeks after getting back from Indiana we rented a townhouse together within walking distance of our work places. I spent my days working and my evenings studying and researching more thoroughly the practices and beliefs of Witchcraft, Paganism, and the Occult. I met a few other Pagans in the area through my old Mentor, as well as through my work place, and had many in-depth and spirited discussions to help stimulate intellectual growth and to keep an open mind to more than just my personal views of Wicca and Paganism as a whole. I had found this book of Raymond Buckland's before moving back to Maryland and I had been seriously digesting its contents since the day I picked it up. I discovered that Buckland was the first Witch to come out of the closet so to speak here in America back in the 70's. He had been initiated and trained in the ways of British Traditional Witchcraft by Gerald Gardner, the father of Wicca, whom had supposedly sent him over here to teach the religion, and that after a couple of years and a divorce with his wife, he created his own new version of Wicca. The Seax-Wica Tradition, also know as Saxon Wicca. He has published over 40 books on various occult subjects since then. Over the next little bit I delved into this book and devoured it completely, as well as a handful of other books that I had acquired dealing with the same topics. I am a heavy reader and a fast learner, I always have been, and it didn't take me long to finish the books, and to re-read key sections multiple times to help retain information. I had already been introduced to the Faery Wicca Tradition a year or two earlier and had spent many hours thinking, practicing, and developing various skills and beliefs so after coming to understand the history of Witchcraft and Paganism more fully it was no surprise that I felt as if I had at long last found the religion that actually made sense to me. I had come home. I put together my first true Grimoire, or Book of Shadows, out of a black 90 page spiral notebook. It was basically notes taken from Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft and various others, mainly tables and lists, as well as few basic Wiccan staples such as the Wiccan Rede and the Thirteen Principles of American Witchcraft. I also recorded my own personal thoughts and ideas about most everything that I had put down into the book. After some time had passed, and my B.O.S. continued to grow (I don't think a Grimoire is every truly complete), I felt as if I was very close to being ready to dedicate myself. Not only to be faithful to my chosen God and Goddess but to declare my desire to walk the pathway of the Pagan Priesthood. A promise to be forever devoted to learning living and growing in the ways of a the wise. In the fashion of what I called myself at the time, an Eclectic Pagan and initiate of Seax-Wica, I put together my first Altar and planned my dedication ritual. In the late Spring of 2007 I was camping in the ridges of East Tennessee, out past White Bridge, Demory, even a bit further than Murphysville, and had been out there for about 3 months. Sometimes I had companions, sometimes I didn't, and during the days I was mostly alone roaming around the hills and shore lines. I spent a lot of the time in a deep meditative state as I found that the nature I was submerged in was quite therapeutic.
One day I was hiking back towards the general area of my main camp, and as I was coming down the big hill with the old fruit cellar in it, I saw the all black Ford Crown Victorian that my girlfriend and I drove pulling up the old road below. It had been used by the Knoxville PD for a K-9 unit and sold for 1500.00 in a local auction. The boat sized car was parked in the gravel and leaves at the bottom of the hill by the time I made it down and my girlfriend was sitting in the drivers seat with the door wide open, one leg dangling out, smoking a Marlboro red and rolling a joint. After our normal greeting we decided to drive the 10 or 12 miles out to a friends house that sat on top of a ridge pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It was the first time I had been away from the Nature in weeks. Normally I would have let her go by herself but for whatever reason I decided to ride in with her. I remember watching the camp disappear behind us as we went up the first hill. The roads on the way there were nothing but hills and curves. Just like all the back roads in East Tennessee. When we got to the top of the the driveway at our friends house, it was empty. We got out of the cruiser and walked up the stairs of the porch and banged on the front door. No one answered. My girlfriend walked around to the back door but didn't get an answer there either. Peering in through one of the windows on the front of the house it appeared to be empty. Upon trying the front door again we realized it was not locked and we entered into the home. It had been pretty much cleaned out of everything. You could obviously tell they had moved out and by the looks of it they obviously weren't coming back. There wasn't much left in the place but an old table, a few articles of clothing, other than a large blue book that was sitting on the table. Now I am a lover of books and it would have been against my nature to not at least have a look to see what the title was. It looked awfully large. Picking it up I looked at the cover and my interest was almost instant as I took in the silver lettering and the large pentacle that dominated the front of the book. Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft is what it read. I would later find out that this book has often been referred to as "The Blue Bible." I obviously took the book with me. No use letting it go to waste or be thrown away by the landlords or next tenants to move in, which is more than likely exactly what would have happened consider that part of Tennessee is heavily Christian. It would become a very influential text/tool on my quest of finding my spirituality and would serve as a guide of sorts on the next leg of the journey for sure. Three days after finding the mask I woke up with a shiver. It was the tail end of April and the mornings were heavy with dew and still somewhat chilly. I rolled out of my sleeping bag and could see my breath in the air as I took a deep breath and exhaled. I rubbed my hands together and breathed on them and then pulled my clothes from the bottom of the sleeping bag where I'd stuck them to keep them toasty for just this reason.
I walked over to the dead fire, blew a few inches of ash out of the center, and poked a stick deep into the burnt-out pit. Swirling the poker around and blowing I found the coals that were hidden beneath the charred ruins of yesterday's fire. Picking up the left over wood from the outer edges of the fire circle, I set one fresh piece of wood in the middle, and then set them down on all four sides with their burnt ends facing the new log. I threw some smaller stuff on top and then bent over and blew on the coals. A minute later I had a nice flame which I fed some twigs and small branches. The fire pit came back to life. Crouching down I took out my bugler pouch and removed the makings. After rolling my cigarette I stuck it between my lips and picked up a branch from the fire to lit one end. I stood by the fire warming up and puffing on my smoke. When I was halfway through my cigarette I took some twigs and tinder that I always kept stored under a corner of the wood pile in case it rained and sat it in the center of a small bowl shaped indention in the stone wall of one of the giant rocks that we were camped out in. I took a long hard draw on the cigarette, causing the cherry at the end to double in size, and then I stuck the cigarette under the pyramid of twigs and bark fluff and watched it spring to life in a small flame. Using my trusty e-tool (a military grade folding shovel/axe) I scooped some coals as well as a couple fist size smouldering chunks to drop on top of the twigs and tinder. Snapping a handful of thin branches I sat them on the small fire and watched it grow. I poured water into the percolator and filled the basket with fresh coffee grounds then dropped it back inside the tin pot, closed the lid, and sat it on the cook fire to start perking. breaking branches must have woke my companions because they were both rustling around in their sleeping bags. A half an hour or so later, after a quick and dry breakfast, we sat around sipping coffee, smoking and talking about what we wanted to do with our day. I stood up and walked over to the rock where I had sat the mask the night before. It was not there. I searched on the ground near the rock, and all around the camp. I looked in my bags, my companions bags, and out near the shore even though I knew there was no way wind could have blown it that far through the giant stones. It was gone. Confused about the loss of the mask, and still wondering why I had found it in the first place, I decided that it was time to send Edward back to the rest of his family in town and then take a day or two of solitude to sort out these events and what they meant for me. I have been back to the area many times, including the cave and its hidden altar room, all to no avail. I have never laid eyes on the mask again. The flames from our fire crackled and jumped this way and that making our shadows dance about on the massive rocks encircling our camp. My girlfriend and her son were busy with cleaning up after dinner and making coffee. I could smell the strong aroma of the grounds and could hear the water hitting the bottom of the lid as it was being heated and shooting up through the tube inside of the pot one drop at a time. I rose from the spot I was sitting in and walked up out through the giant rocks to stand peering out at the lake.
I looked down at the mask that I held in my hands. It was pretty dark outside by now but I could still make out it's unique shape. I would know it anywhere, who wouldn't recognize the face of Batman? I had been a fan since I was a young boy and over the years Batman had become my favorite superhero. I found that I could relate more easily to him than any of the other superheros from D.C. or Marvel. He was human after all and it didn't take much of an imagination to believe in that. I was more interested in reality than fantasy and he was the closest thing in my young mind to what a real superhero might be like. So there I stood with a mindful of questions. Who had placed the mask in that cave? Where had the mask came from, it seemed to be seriously heavy duty, and hard enough to break an attackers fist or deflect a light caliber bullet. What had it been used for and why was it in the middle of an altar in a secret chamber at the back of that cave? Why had I found the cave in the first place and why, of all the things that I could have said finding my first cave ever, did I have to say what I said about "finding Batman's cave." I found very little answers, if any at all. Returning to the crescent shaped camp in the rocks I sat near the fire and accepted a cup of coffee as it had just finished brewing. Percolating coffee on a camp fire can be a tricky thing if your not used to it and Edward had scorched this pot pretty good. I remember it tasting somewhat burnt but was happy to have it anyway. After a round of cigarettes to go with the coffee we passed a pipe around. After an hour or so of conversation between the three of us I put the mask of my face and walked back out of the circle and into the night. It was full dark now and the stars were shining up above. I walked through the massive stones that were scattered around our camp for a few hundred yards and reached the old gravel road and walked up into the forests edge. A little ways into the forest I turned and looked back off through the woods, I could not see the glow of our camp because it was hidden well. Hearing an owl sound off behind me somewhere in the ridges I turned and peered into the darkness. After awhile I let my eyes drift up to the tree tops. I could see shining lights twinkling down through the branches and leaves. I strained my ears to hear all of the sounds of the night. It was like a symphony out here. Crickets, frogs, birds, creaking trees, rustling leaves and brush on the ground. Occasionally a bobcat would let off the blood curling cry that sounded eerily like how I imagined it might sound to hear a woman being murdered. As I stood there amongst a copse of pines a pack of coyotes began to sound off. They sounded pretty close, maybe a ridge or two away. I started to make my way through the trees and down the slope towards the gravel road. Finding the road I followed it around the bend and towards the giant rocks near the lakes shore. I stepped back off of the road and headed for the hidden crescent shaped camp. Up above a sliver of moon shone it's light onto the surface of the lake turning it silver. I returned to the fire circle just as smores were being made. I wasn't very hungry and really didn't feel like eating anything sweet but I accepted one anyway. After I finished the sticky treat I threw my tinfoil in the fire and looked on through the flames and watch it turn bright orange and become one with the bed of coals. A short time later we were laid out in our sleeping bags under the night sky. I remember making out constellations and pondering the meaning of the mask. The last thing I remember was a crow cawing in the distance. He cawed three times. Deep within the cave I stood in front of the stone altar, staring at the mask. I really was having a hard time believing it, I could barely accept that what I was seeing was real. It was a heavy duty Bat Man replica mask, it appeared to be movie grade quality. Who in the world had put this mask here? What was it used for? How long had it been sitting here in this hidden cavern.
My first thought was that someone had put it there to play a joke on me. Everyone knew I was a huge Bat Man fan. I had even made the comment of "finding Bat Man's cave," when I had first came across the cave. I was silent when my two companions climbed up out of the hole and approached the stone altar. "Which one of you put the mask here," were the first words out of my mouth, to which they both replied to me, "what mask?" I was still not convinced that it had not been some sort of prank because of the comment I had made, but who would've been able to pull it off? My girlfriend would not have been able to come out and do it without me knowing and we hadn't shown the cave to anyone else yet. I took a lighter out of my pocket and lit a candle or two so that the mask was better illuminated. "This mask," I said flatly. My companions walked around me and shined their lights onto the table, saw the candles, saw the mask, and automatically burst out with excited laughs and profanities. "O.k. so when did you find the time to sneak back here and put this mask here?," is what basically what my girlfriend said. Edward made some comment or another about Witchcraft and covens that had been known to practice in hidden hollers between ridges and caves. I had been thinking something similar since the moment I had first seen then amount of candles sitting there on the altar. Something about the whole thing just wasn't adding up to me. Despite my confusion about the situation and still not quite believing that someone hadn't placed the mask there just for me, but I decided that I wasn't leaving this cave without that mask, that it was somehow meant for me. I took a step closer to the altar, I picked up the mask, and I put the mask on my face. An hour later we came out of the mouth of the cave and into the golden sunlight spilling down through the green leaves of the trees. Somehow I felt more empowered than I had ever felt in my entire life. It was a primal, tribal sort of feeling. I took the mask off my face and put it in my back pack and then we started the hike back to our camp. |
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December 2018
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