Part VI
Post Mortem
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary;
men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Joseph Conrad
Marc and I treated ourselves to a couple bottles of water as we debriefed in the faculty lounge. Neither of us shared many details of our labors. I did mention that Larry had burst in on me at the climax of my conjuration. We giggled uncomfortably for a moment, then fell silent as we both realized that Larry’s office was the only place in the building neither of us had worked on. At that moment the door opened and Larry poked his head in.
“Sorry if we bothered you, Larry.” I said with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“I just wanted to make sure you guys were all right. What was it that you were doing?” Larry was visibly agitated. Marc shot back an answer.
“Just helping out Sister Martha. You’ll have to ask her for details.”
“Well, if it has anything to do with the computers, I’m doing a backup tonight and it will take a while.”
“Nothing to do with your computers.” I told him. “And we’re done for the night.” Larry said nothing in response. He just lingered in the doorway for a moment as if unsure what to do or say next.
Marc and I were indeed done for the night. We were both very tired. I wanted nothing more than to get home, take a long shower and sleep all day—which is pretty much what I did. I woke up early in the afternoon and in the cold light of day replayed the events of the night before in my mind.
I was generally pleased with the exorcism and harbored little doubt that I had magically done everything I was capable of doing. However, I was convinced that Sister Martha would need to address a couple of very serious issues if the school was ever to become psychically healthy—the most obvious (and the easiest to correct) being the layout of the administrative staff area. I would be completely remiss in my exorcist’s duty if I neglected to advise Sister Martha in the strongest terms to immediately hire a commercial feng shui consultant to rearrange the area.
My second concern would be more difficult to address head-on, because it dealt exclusively with my own very personal and subjective impressions. I had to be very careful as to how I would go about advising Sister Martha on this issue; I’m referring, of course, to the issue of Larry.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Not in my wildest magical fantasies did I suspect Larry was consciously some kind of Satanic minion—a “Renfield” to Slug-Shlug’s Dracula. I had no reason to believe that he was anything more or less than a harmless IT nerd doing his best every night to make a living. But his insecurity, paranoid behavior, and willingness to defy Sister Martha’s instructions led me to question, at the very least, his personal integrity and emotional stability. I am not a mental health expert, and my impressions are totally subjective, but Larry’s conduct and demeanor left me with the distinct impression that he was a very disturbed man; and very disturbed men make effective conduits, capacitors (condensers), storage batteries, and amplifiers of magical and psychic energy.
You may beg the question, “Did the evil school building make Larry crazy, or did crazy Larry make the school building evil?” It does not matter. Larry was likely every bit a victim as Sister Catherine, or the maintenance man who cut off his finger. As a magician, however, I cannot ignore the obvious. When I conjured the demon Slug-Shlug by name, Larry-the-IT-man walked into the room. Larry was in all likelihood an unwitting cog in the great nightmarish machine that was Slug-Shlug. I strongly believed that for the good of the school, and for Larry’s own good, he should be removed from that environment.
I called Marc, and we discussed our conclusions. Marc then called Sister Martha and told her that the staff area needed a feng shui professional to rearrange things. Being inclined to embrace New Age concepts, she enthusiastically agreed and said she would do that immediately.
Marc then mentioned that we both had our serious concerns about Larry—that he twice interrupted us and made us feel uncomfortable. She then confided that she too was uncomfortable with Larry working there at night and that there were other issues she didn’t want to share regarding his character and “habits.” She said she was probably going to soon let him go.
I wish I had a more colorful and dramatic way to end this story, but I don’t. I think that’s probably a good thing. Several months later Marc asked his Reiki instructor how his sister was and how things were going at Our Lady of Sorrows. He told Marc as far as he knew things were going fine. In this case, I’m hoping no news is good news.
[contents]
91 Matthew 9:22, 15:28; Mark 5:33–35; Luke 8:42–49; Acts 14: 8–10. See also my book Accidental Christ: The Story of Jesus as Told by his Uncle (Chicago: Thelesis Aura, 2006).
92 I here call it “Our Lady of Sorrows.” That is not, however, actually the name of this historic school.
93 The liturgical text of the exorcisms in the Roman Ritual was written in 1614; it was revised following Vatican Council II. A “New Rite for Exorcisms of the Roman Ritual” was presented by Cardinal Jorge Medina in 1999.
94 The Exorcist. Warner Brothers, 1973. Book and screenplay by William Peter Blatty.
95 Bishop making has nearly always been a man thing in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.
96 Matthew 16:18.
97 See appendix 2. Those of you for whom such things matter will be interested to know that the consecrations to which I refer in this place come from apostolic lines other than those I also possess in my capacity as archbishop of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis.
98 Chi (or qi) the active principle or energy
