And so, I was not at all surprised that the school building itself was capable of snagging and enraging a malignant force. What I didn’t as yet know was exactly what that force was. Furthermore, I needed to figure out what magick formula would be appropriate for an operation such as this.
My mind was spinning too fast. I needed to pull myself together. I needed to ground myself. I needed to enter sacred space—a telephone booth to God—a place where the true omniscient “me” talks and the not-so-omniscient me listens. As it happened, I knew of just such a place—and it was just a few steps from my telephone. I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower.
There, where the blessed hot water descends like the Holy Spirit from my crown to my toes—while my hands busy themselves with the automatic routine of the bath—while my brain runs on automatic pilot and my senses are engaged by familiar smells and sensations, my mind is released to listen to the great intelligence of which my own is merely the small and opaque reflection.
I have composed entire songs in the shower. I have conceived books in the shower. Month after month I figure out how I will pay the rent in the shower! And that afternoon, before the hot water turned cold, I knew precisely how I would go about exorcising Our Lady of Sorrows high school.
Part II
Preparation
Father Damien Karras: “I think it might be helpful if I gave you some background on the different personalities Regan has manifested. So far, I’d say there seem to be three …”
Father Merrin: “There is only one.”
The Exorcist100
It has been my observation (always in hindsight) that the real “magick” of a magical operation is accomplished in the preparation process rather than the execution of the ceremony itself. The magick ritual is merely the seal that grounds the current of the magician’s will and completes the circuitry on all planes.
Like Minerva leaping from the cloven skull of Zeus, my plan for the exorcism was fully formed before I stepped out of the shower. It crystallized in my brain in the timeless moment between the shampoo and rinse, and was triggered by a simple vision—a childhood memory of old Mr. Jacobs, the janitor at my old elementary school,101 sweeping the floor of the gymnasium. His technique was simple, methodical, and tidy. He would first sweep all the dirt and debris from every corner of the gym floor and concentrate the mess into one neat pile in the center of the floor. Then, with a final flourish of the broom, he dispatched the nasty pile into his dustpan.
I would do the same. I would sweep the totality of the phenomena—the entire conglomerate of forces and energies that were tormenting the school and its inhabitants—into one pile, and then I would treat that pile as a single spiritual entity. I would focus and create one master devil that embodied all the lesser demons that severally worked their specific acts of mischief and terror—one spirit that I would evoke into the Solomonic Triangle of art. Once I had the nasty critter trapped, I would have a proper talk with it, banish it, curse it, and if necessary, annihilate it using the tried-and-true techniques of the art of Solomonic magick.
You might think this somewhat presumptuous of me. After all, where does DuQuette get off creating demons? Aren’t there already enough evil spirits running around the cosmos? I confess these questions didn’t even occur to me, because for all intents and purposes the staff, faculty, and students of Our Lady of Sorrows had already created the devilish spirit. They just didn’t know its name. And, for the moment, neither did I.
What’s in a name? It is a universal axiom, promulgated by the magical traditions of nearly every age and culture, that discovering the name of a spiritual entity gives the magician power over it. Recall the story of Rumpelstiltskin. In traditional Solomonic magick or Goetia, the names of the seventy-two spirits are provided in the text.102 The book also contains the images of each spirit’s “sigil” or seal. The seal is a very important ingredient in the recipe of evocation. Indeed, it is upon the seal in the Triangle that the spirit appears before the magician.
Two copies of the sigil are used in the classic ceremony: one is drawn on a medallion that is worn around the magician’s neck; the other is drawn on parchment and placed within the Triangle where the spirit will appear. The magician and the spirit are thus linked by the two sigils. The spirit is drawn to its own sigil, and then becomes trapped in the Triangle while the magician stands in the relative safety of the Circle. I’ll talk more about that in a moment.
My first task would be to discover the spirit’s name, and then use the letters of its name to generate the image of its sigil, which I would use in the operation. Other magicians I’m sure will have their own ideas about how this is best done. On this occasion, I chose to use the pendulum. Over the years I’ve gained some proficiency applying this marvelous tool in magical and divinatory operations. My pendulum is a small brass plumb that was given to me many years ago by my dear friend Donald Weiser. It is attached to a string about eighteen inches in length. I use it in a variety of ways, but for this task I would use it to determine a series of “yes” or “no” questions—a clockwise rotation indicating “yes” and a counterclockwise rotation indicating “no.”
I went to the garage and got down the family’s Scrabble103 game, opened it up, and emptied the lettered tiles on the living room coffee table. I turned the tiles face down on the table and swirled them around for a moment. I then tied the string of my pendulum to the tip
