Jupiter was next on February 27 (Constance’s birthday), followed by Venus exactly one month later. The Venus talisman evoked the most remarkable reactions. My dreams were filled with vividly erotic encounters, the likes of which I had not experienced since adolescence. They continued until April 4, when I consecrated my talisman of Mercury, when my dreams turned anxious and confusing. (Oh well!)
I started the Saturn talisman on May 10 and consecrated it at midnight on the thirteenth. The next day, I started to collect the symbols for my seventh and last planetary talisman. Sol took ten days to complete. I consecrated it during a lunar eclipse38 that took place on May 24. My arsenal of planetary talismans was finally complete.
Throughout this entire talisman-making period and the months that followed, life at the DuQuette house continued to be a litany of chaos, frustration, and despair. In an attempt to make money doing something other than singing in saloons, I accepted a house-painting job and we moved to the San Gabriel Valley. As it turned out, I would never be paid for my (admittedly inept) labor and we found ourselves stranded in La Verne, the smoggiest town in Southern California, with no job and no money.
July 11 dawned with the prospect of the worst birthday of my life. About 11:15 in the morning, I shut myself in my bedroom temple. I lit a candle and put it on my altar top. I halfheartedly performed the Banishing Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram and sat down and tried to meditate. I couldn’t. To cheer myself, I removed my cherished talismans from their bags and lingered on every detail of their splendor. As I turned them in my fingers, I whispered the words of power and the names of the gods, angels, and spirits inscribed on each one of them. Finally, as if to bring order to my otherwise unordered universe, I placed the Sun talisman in the center of the altar top and surrounded it with the six remaining planets in their proper hexagram positions.39 They were so beautiful—so perfect.
For a moment, I didn’t know how to feel. I was alternately depressed and elated; depressed that these talismans were the only things perfect in my life, and elated that at least something was perfect in my life. I looked at the clock. It was almost noon and time to rejoin Constance and little Jean-Paul for birthday cake. They were both giggling in the kitchen. Their laughter made me giggle too. And then, in a clichéd moment—an epiphany worthy of a Frank Capra film—I realized that there were lots of perfect things in my life. In fact, at that moment I was the luckiest man on earth.
My melancholy lifted. I credited the talismans for my change of mood. As I gazed at them there on the altar top, I realized that they would never be more beautiful or meaningful to me than they were at that moment. In just a few weeks, their colors would start to fade, the inks would crack, the edges wear. In a few years, I would probably lose some of them, and those that remained would shrivel into crumbling bits of brittle card stock. I wished I could preserve them forever just like this—at the zenith of their strength—in an eternal environment where their beauty would never be effaced—a place where their power could never diminish.
These talismans were no good to me sitting on my altar top or tucked away in their sterile little bags. I needed them to literally become part of me. No! More than that—I must use their magick to make me someone else—someone new. I must reabsorb my precious planetary children and plant them in the womb of my own soul. I must impregnate myself with their magical potency and, by doing so, beget upon myself a new self.
One by one, I joyously plunged the seven talismans into the sacred fire of the altar candle flame. I inhaled their light and heat as the frail husks of paper and ink were reduced to a clean white ash.
It was noon, July 11, 1975—the first moment of my life as a magician.
[contents]
29 Partially excerpted from my foreword to the third revised limited edition of Israel Regardie’s The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic (Reno, NV: New Falcon Publications, 2008), 37–41.
30 See chapter 1.
31 Originally published by Sangreal. Most recent revised edition by Thorsons Publishers, 1983.
32 Israel Regardie (1907–1985), born Francis Israel Regudy, was personal secretary to occultist Aleister Crowley in the 1920s. He was arguably one of the twentieth century’s most influential voices perpetuating the legacies of Aleister Crowley and the rituals and teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. We eventually met in the late 1970s and became friends.
33 Sometimes called amulets, talismans are small objects often bearing magical symbols and/or words created with magical intent and charged with a specific spiritual force. Talismans have traditionally been created and carried on one’s person in order to ward off evil, attract good luck, or for other magical purpose.
34 Marc E. DuQuette. b. 1942. Author of Orange Sunshine—How I Almost Survived America’s Cultural Revolution (Los Angeles, CA: Self-published, 2008).
35 A kamea, or normal, magick square consists of the distinct positive integers 1, 2, … n2, such that the sum of the n numbers in any horizontal, vertical, or main diagonal line is always the same. A kamea of Luna is a square 9 × 9 (Luna being attributed to
