chapter 10 Revolt of the Magicians
REVOLT OF THE MAGICIANS
The routine order of business out of the way, the assembled members begin chatting.
Annie Horniman again silences them with the gavel.
This time, the sound awakens the cat. It sits up and licks its paw and washes its face.
From the sidelines, Allan Bennett again takes particular interest in the feline’s behavior.
Horniman begins to address the members. “Brethren, I realize there has for several years been increasing unrest within our ranks. As we all know, for almost four years our founder and Supreme Adept, Samuel MacGregor Mathers, and his wife, Moina, have lived in Paris. During their absence, they’ve allowed us to receive, initiate, and instruct new members into the Outer Order.
But those of us who are qualified to enter the Inner Order have languished at the portal awaiting advancement.
We all know there is so much more for us to learn and master as we climb the Tree of Life toward our goal of supreme illumination.
We’ve mastered the Outer Order work, and now I believe it is time for us to demand our advanced initiations! ”
Stoker stands up and shouts, “They’re hiding out in Paris, Annie! Five years! . . . not even a scrap of new instruction in five years! It should be clear to all of us that Mathers has lost the link to the Secret Masters. He’s stalling!”
The room erupts with a combination of booing and applause.
Horniman repeatedly gavels. She almost has to shout to be heard. “He claims he has made contact with the Secret Masters from whom all our rituals and teachings and our magical dispensation flow. He says that new material and higher initiations are forthcoming!”
A fellow stands up and shouts, “He’s lost magical dispensation! His link is severed. Stop paying his rent in Paris, Annie! Let’s sack him and make the magical contact ourselves!”
She slams her gavel and continues to shout from her prepared statement. “He insists that he and he alone is presently capable of sustaining our inner-plane link with the chiefs.”
Allan Bennett stands. The others notice, and the room falls silent. He addresses the Chair. “Greatly Honored, if I may?”
“The Chair recognizes our Most Honored Senior Adept, Brother Allen Bennett.”
“Perhaps we should allow our Supreme Adept to address these issues in person. If I’m not mistaken, he’s been with us all evening.”
He points his walking stick at the cat across the room. It jumps down from the chair and prances to the center of the hall, then straight up the dais steps to Horniman’s podium.
As the whole assembly watches, the cat magically transforms into Mathers wearing a brown wool suit. A few members gasp. Several even applaud. Horniman is speechless. She steps aside to allow Mathers to take the podium. He pauses to coldly glare at each member.
“So, you think I’m hiding out in Paris?”
Silence in the hall.
“Tell me! Is there anyone here who doubts my authority?”
Bram Stoker swallows hard.
“Tell me! Is there anyone here who believes I am lying when I say I remain in intimate contact with the Secret Masters, and they have chosen me to lead this order?”
With fearless poise, Horniman ignores the question. “With all due respect, MacGregor, we don’t need tricks. Most all of us can transform into a cat. We need the advanced initiations and further training you’ve promised us.”
Mathers turns and stares Horniman in the eye. She tries to speak but is struck dumb. She clutches her throat in pain.
“Cat got your tongue, Annie?”
He turns and glares at the terrified members.
“As of this moment, you are all still initiates of this magical order. If you doubt my authority, or my power, or my leadership, get out now!”
No one moves. Mathers snatches the gavel from Horniman’s paralyzed hand.
“Very well. This meeting is adjourned.”
He slams the gavel on the podium and dissolves into thin air.
Sir Francis fell silent in his chair. It was as if the stress of dictating this particular scene had drained him of his energy.
“Are you unwell, Sir Francis?” I ventured to inquire.
“Oh, Milo,” he sighed. “It saddens me so to think how far Mathers had fallen in those days—and how difficult it must have been for young Crowley to enter the Golden Dawn in the midst of all that magical madness. It was in its own way a war in heaven.
“But let’s now move ahead in time . . . two weeks, to the scene of Crowley’s neophyte initiation. Oh, Milo, don’t you wish you could have been a fly on the wall?”
The preparation room of the Golden Dawn Temple is a small, windowless chamber with one austere wooden chair and a small oak lowboy table upon which burns a single taper that illuminates a human skull that has a green leaf clenched in its teeth.
The door opens, and Crowley, wearing a plain white robe, stands silhouetted in the doorway. From behind, a robed officer pushes Crowley through the door and slams it shut, leaving Crowley alone in the room.
He pauses for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dim light; then he sits down and closes his eyes. He is so nervous that his hands shake. He starts to practice pranayama to calm himself. After taking a few breaths, he senses he is not alone in the room.
Unseen by Crowley, Moina Mathers, in a black robe, has materialized directly behind him. Before he can turn to see her, she throws a black hood over his head and cinches it suffocatingly tight at the neck.
“Get up!” she snaps.
Crowley awkwardly stands up. “It’s hard to breathe.”
“Yes,” she hisses. “I know.” She produces a silken rope and proceeds to wrap it three times around his torso.
Crowley winces in pain as the rope roughly irritates the swollen welts of his recent self-flagellation. “Ah! Careful. A bit tender there.”
“Shut up! Put your hands up and together.” Moina continues to tortuously rub the rope back and forth over his wounds before finally tying the ends. “Now kneel!”
Crowley obeys. “I am ready.”
“Are you, Mr. Crowley?” She produces a dagger; she slips it under the hood and holds its cold steel against his throat. “I don’t like you, Mr. Crowley. You don’t belong here.” She presses the dagger deeper, just shy of piercing the skin.
“You and your sodomite friends and your degenerate poetry. What could you possibly know of real Magic? Leave now while you can, or we will squash you like the insect you are.”
“Can you be a bit more careful with the blade? This is a test, right?”
“A test?” she hisses. “Oh, you have no idea!”
Someone is at the door to the temple. The doorknob is turning. Moina bends down and puts her lips to Crowley’s ear.
“Turn away, Mr. Crowley. Or I will eat your soul!”
The door opens and light streams in from the illuminated temple room. Moina vanishes.
Florence Farr stands silhouetted in the doorway.
She wears a white robe with a red cross sewn over the heart.
It is the robe of the Hegemon, the ceremonial guide and protector of the candidate.
Her headdress is an Egyptian nemyss with broad black-and-white stripes.
In her right hand she holds a miter-headed scepter.
In her left she holds a black blindfold and a coiled length of rope.
She is startled when she sees that Crowley had already been tied and hooded.
Crowley is unaware that Moina has vanished. “You’ll eat my what?”
“Mr. Crowley, is that you?” Farr asks, a bit confused.
“Yes. I’m still . . . I . . . I’m sorry, you said you’d eat my what?”
“No one’s going to eat your anything. I see you have already been prepared.” Farr is puzzled but carries on. She clears her throat and speaks clearly and deliberately. “Child of earth, rise and enter the path of darkness.”
Crowley gets up. From under his blindfold, he asks in trembling seriousness, “Do many candidates die at their initiations?”
Farr smiles. Crowley cannot see.
“We’ll fade to black at this point, Milo.”
“Fade to black? Sir Francis, surely we’re not going to skip over the Golden Dawn neophyte initiation ceremony, are we? It’s the most colorful and dramatic part of the whole story so far. Please! You know perhaps better than anyone the details of the ritual.”
I probably shouldn’t have interrupted Sir Francis’s dictation, but since his fairy tale had taken us as far as threshold of the Golden Dawn’s magical initiation ceremony, I could see no reason to not treat the audience to the full experience.
“Milo, dear boy, are you suggesting we write a twelve-hour movie? Of course, it would be wonderful to shoot the entire series of the degree ceremonies, but tell me exactly how that would advance this story one iota—a story we must tell in one hundred eleven minutes! Get a grip, Brother Harland, and let’s move forward. ”
“Sorry, Sir Francis. You’re right, of course. My apologies.”
I don’t know if I meant it or was just growing tired. I did want to see where he was going with this.
“So, Milo, let us move ahead to the moments after the initiation ceremony—to an interior shot of the temple’s robing room and the sounds voices and casual laughter.