Low Magick by Lon DuQuette (the reading strategies book TXT) 📕

Like a fool, I initiated a conversation.

“Why do you torment these people?”

“Is it evil for the crow to feast upon the eyes of a dangling knight?”

Right now, as I’m writing these words, they appear on the page to be melodramatic and corny, like something pulled from a demonic fortune cookie. At the time, however, they sounded anything but corny. In fact, Slug-Shlug’s response took my breath away. In my fevered brain, the allusion was unmistakable. The demon was describing the doom of the luckless Knights of the Round Table who failed in their quest for the Holy Grail; they were hung from trees like obscene fruit, and their eyes were plucked out and eaten by crows.

I didn’t answer—at least, I didn’t make a conscious effort to answer. I stood accused by my own tidy spiritual worldview—paralyzed by the paradoxes of my smug philosophy. Indeed! Who was I to presume to understand and judge the rightness or wrongness of the tragedies of Our Lady of Sorrows? Were not little goods and little evils both parts of the Great G “goodness” of the supreme consciousness? Had I plumbed the depths of the souls of these people? Had I weighed their infinitely complex karmas—their inherited destinies—and found some profound miscarriage of cosmic justice that only Lon Milo DuQuette could put right? Did I think I was some knight in shining armor galloping down the freeway to save the fair nuns and children? Was my clarity of vision so superior that I could, with ego-driven impunity, tamper with the momentum of life and death of hundreds of people I’ve never met? Indeed! Is it evil for the crow to feast upon the eyes of a dangling knight?

Why was I here? What really was my motive for doing this? Why was I standing here with my almond wand and my holy water and my magick toys and my purple yarmulke and my pretty bishop’s stole? Did I look cool? Did I think all this was going to look impressive in my magical diary? Maybe I’d even write a book about this someday!

These thoughts triggered in my exhausted brain a chain reaction of even more crippling doubts and self-recriminations—all as the great bird grew more noble and stately as it stared silently at me from within the Triangle of my magical mind’s eye. But then, I realized that he wasn’t being silent, and that the accusatory voice I was hearing was that of the demon and not my own inner soliloquy. It was the damned magpie that tormented me with these thoughts, these ideas, these images.

I had to hand it to Slug-Shlug; this was classic demonic behavior and I had fallen for it hard. My concentration had been severely broken and as soon as I realized what was going on, Slug-Shlug started to flap his wings and lift himself into the air. I brandished my wand toward the Triangle as if I were snapping a whip.

“Back down! You son of a bitch!”

Every ounce of will flowed through my extended arm and out the barrel of my wand. It took everything I had to bring the great bird down upon the Triangle. The moment his talons touched down, I heard a noise outside in the hallway. Out of the corner of my right eye I saw the door to the staff area suddenly swing open.

“Oh! Sorry!” was all Larry the IT man could say after barging into a smoky, candle-lit room to find a red-faced wizard in a yarmulke and a bishop’s stole aiming a stick at a tiny yellow Post-it Note.

I did not move; neither did I take my eyes off the Triangle. With the same strange voice that called forth Slug-Shlug, I snarled at poor Larry through gritted teeth, “You’re going to have to leave, Larry!”

Larry left.

That did it! No more talking to Slug-Shlug. I didn’t care any more why I was doing this. I didn’t care whether or not I was here because of my ego or my insecurities or my karma or my duty or my goddamned spiritual quest. Screw my motives! Screw good and evil! I was here, doing what I was doing because the universe had conspired to put me in this place. That was enough! The momentum of my life put me here and I wasn’t going to leave until the job was finished. There would be no attempts to redeem this spirit. I would not fart around trying to cajole, torture, banish, exile, or otherwise attempt to reprogram this monster into an “angel of light.” I was insanely angry—filled with a rage that exploded from my heart and arm, and through the death-ray gun of my wand.

I would not abide its existence for one second longer. I took fiendish delight in spitting out the most hideous curse in my arsenal of Solomonic curses:

Christeos cormfa peripsol amma ils! (“Let the company of heaven curse thee!”)

Christeos ror, graa, tofglo aoiveae amma ils! (“Let the sun, moon, all the stars curse thee!”)

Christeos luciftia od tofglo pir peripsol amma ils, pujo ialprg ds apila, od pujo mir adphaht! (“Let the light and all the Holy Ones of Heaven curse thee, unto the burning flame that liveth forever, and unto the torment unspeakable.”)114

Slug-Shlug dissolved without a squawk. I felt as though my body was set in stone, my arm and wand still leveled at an empty desk. Oddly enough, I did not feel triumphant, or even relieved. My overall feeling was that of embarrassment over the fact that I had allowed the spirit to toy with me, and that I had not simply annihilated it immediately upon conjuration.

I composed myself for a moment or two, then performed the seven part banishing procedure and sealed the vice principal’s office. I took the Post it Note Triangle (with the departed spirit’s seal) into Sister Martha’s bathroom, burned it, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. I packed my gear back into the briefcase and joined Marc who was waiting for me in the faculty