As a
child, I was never particularly afraid of the Devil or devilish things. Rather,
I was afraid of Dracula and Frankenstein, whom I could see lurking in the
darkness of my closet just a few feet across from my bed at night. I was afraid
of some creature that dwelt under my bed as well. I went to a Catholic grade
school and high school, but they never talked much about the Devil or even
evil. Mostly they talked about Christ and all his goodness and love and
sacrifice for our sins. My father was often physically abusive of me but I
never considered this to be evil even though it engendered much fear in me on a
daily basis. In high school study hall, I noticed that someone long ago had
scratched “I like Eich” upon a radiator. It was 1965 and the Holocaust had
ended on 21 years ago and wasn’t a focus of history yet; I don’t recall it
being taught in grade school at all. But I was somehow aware of it, probably
due to the fact that many of my father’s friends and associates, especially in
the legal professions and judicial systems, were Jewish, and in our many social
interactions, probably spoke of the losses within their own families. But I
hadn’t thought about it much at all until I saw this graffiti on the study hall
radiator that was put there by a Catholic boy in my high school. I was
horrified that someone at my school could have written this, thinking that they
must be incredibly ignorant and hateful.
I
realized that what happened to the Jews was evil. The evilness of it somehow
seared into me like a laser. I felt the absolute unhumanness of it, the
soullessness that could take over people’s minds, and allow them to kill with
passion and faith.
At this same time, 1965, the Civil
Rights Movement was happening. Blacks were being subjected to beatings and
hangings and shootings, and this was appearing in the news. As I watched this,
I realized that this was another form of Holocaust, and was stunned by its
utter evilness. I recognized how many people were stupid and ignorant, and had
been raised and trained in a stupid, ignorant culture. I could not understand
how Americans could treat other Americans in this way. I saw it as pure evil.
There was a boy in my grade school
when I was in fifth or sixth grade who became my friend. We played together and
enjoyed each other’s company. The other kids seemed to shun him and someone
said that his father have been a soldier in the Nazi army. I didn’t know how to
respond to that. I didn’t want to ask the boy. I envisioned his father in a
Nazi uniform and very frightening, for he must have killed Americans, and Jews
too. But the boy was very kind and sweet, and I didn’t want to be mean to him
by rejecting him. He invited me to his house, over on Eileen Street, not far
from my house, to play and have a sandwich for lunch one Saturday. I was afraid
that I would see his father but I went. We played in his back yard and then his
father called out and told us to come in a get some lunch. I was terrified when
I heard his voice; it sounded very harsh and severe. But I went in the house
and sat down at the table anyway. The father came into the kitchen as we were
eating the sandwiches. He was small and hunched over and looked very sad. He
said “hello” to me, shook my hand gently, and smiled. I smiled back. I wanted
to ask him is it is true that he was a Nazi soldier but I said nothing. He was
so small and gentle and did not seem like he ever could have been a bad or
cruel person in his life. I didn’t hate him and I wasn’t afraid. And he was
here in America, so he must be a good man. That’s how I explained it to myself.
How I
Conjured Up a Demon
When I
was a freshman at Boston College, a Catholic university, I had a old Jesuit
theology teacher who was quite “old-fashioned Irish” in his passionate faith
and fear of the Devil. He spoke like an old-time preacher leading a revival
meeting and talked a lot about Satan and demons and the like. I think it was
his fear-mongering that got me interested in conjuring up a demon so that I
could find out for myself if it was true or not. I checked the archives at the
library and found all sorts of Puritan books from as early as the 17th
century, all speaking of devils and demons and Satan, and in great fear of the
witches who held Black Masses in worship of them. I decided I would have a Black
Mass in my dorm room on the second floor of Fenwick.
But in
order to actually conjure up a demon, you had to follow the proper procedure
and have the necessary accoutrements. I found a store in downtown Boston, near
Beacon Hill, which was called, appropriately, The Coven Bookstore. I went there
and found it to full of items which were necessary to conduct a Black Mass. I
was helped by a few older women who were very interested in helping me to
attain my goal of conjuring up a demon. They showed me a very old, black,
leather-covered book that told how to conduct a Black Mass safely and how to
bring a demon for assistance. The book smelled like waxy smoke and was very
heavy. In it were precise instructions on how to draw a pentacle with various
symbols and a circle in the middle in which the one who was conducting the
Black Mass would stand for safety. They went through the book, almost page by
page, with me, and were quite pleased. They actually lent me the book to use
since they said it had much “conjuring power” itself. In addition I bought a
large black candle, about four inches wide and four inches high that smelled of
cannabis and honey, and a smaller “dab stick,” like a narrow, short piece of
tallow that was to be heated up and then dabbed on one’s forehead, shoulders,
and chest in a backwards sign of the cross. They told me any good Catholic
cross would be sufficient.
While I was at the bookstore, another
woman, who was probably in her mid-20s, came over to me and struck up a
conversation. She was perhaps six feet tall with long black hair and very pale
skin, and wearing a long black cotton shift. Her name was Cassandra. I should not reveal her last name. She asked me if I wanted to come with her to her house
so that she could throw the I Ching
for me. I had no idea what she was talking about but she was pretty so I went
with her in her car. She lived in a large “house” which had been built among
the warehouses on the docks of Charleston. The building was very old and ornate
and large and dark. She told me that these warehouses had been in her family,
who had been shippers, for hundreds of years. They had been among the original
Puritans and that one of her ancestors has been hung as a witch in Salem. She
showed me a room full of Puritan furniture, books, scrolls, kitchenware, pans,
utensils, tools, children’s toys, as well as public notices. Then she threw I
Ching coins and read me “my future,” which indicated that I would choose not to
kill my fellow man and might go to prison for doing so. Again, I had no idea
what she was talking about, though five years later I would argue my case to be
a Conscientious Objector rather than going to Vietnam and partake in the
killing there and be willing to go prison for my beliefs, which prevailed.
My dorm room, on the second floor, had
a linoleum floor and cinderblock walls, with a bed on either side of the room,
and a built-in dresser and desk at the foot of the bed. Outside the window was
a floodlight that shown brightly into the room, even when the pastel green
curtains were closed. For some reason, I ended up chalking the pentacle on the
floor in front of my roommate’s dresser, while my roommate and two friends sat
on my bed across the room, maybe five feet away from me. It was dark and late in
the evening. The dorm was quiet. I had drawn the pentacle very carefully on the
floor and the instruction was to stay inside the circle within the pentacle so
as not to be harmed or even be taken by the demon. On the top of the dresser,
which was over four feet tall, I placed the leather-bound book, the black
candle, and a four-inch cross which was upside-down, up against the shaded
lamp, which was not on. Light was provided by the candle and more so by the
streetlight outside the window. I stepped into the circle, lit the candle,
which had an oily, sweet, marijuana, smoky smell. I began reading the Black
Mass in Latin, which I could read and somewhat understood, having taken it for
four years in high school and now at college, turning each page carefully. I
read for perhaps fifteen minutes and noticed that the room was getting quite
smoky and dark. The candle was burning bright enough for me to read but the
room had become an inky black and I couldn’t see anything else, including my
friends sitting on the bed.
Suddenly, I heard what sounded like
body punches and groans. It sounded as if my friends were being physically attacked.
I heard them trying to get up to run out of the room. I panicked and stepped
out of the circle. At that moment I saw a hideous face just six inches in front
of my face. It was a demon. Its face was like a very muscular hairless black
cat with bat ears, sharp features, and firey red eyes. Its mouth was small and open with no
teeth but an immense tongue. The face was there for only a second, after which it
moved away from me, and I literally saw a small black fist come at my face in
an instant and hit me so hard in the jaw and cheek that the room spun and I
lost consciousness. I don’t know how long I was on the floor knocked-out but
when I awoke, the room was clear, my friends had turned the overhead light on
and were coming over to me. They had been punched in their faces, which were
swollen and with red marks. My right cheek and jaw were swollen and painful.
When I went to the ER later that night, I was told that my jawbone had been
splintered a bit but would be ok. My friends hadn’t seen anything come at them;
they said it was as if they were attacked by an invisible force. The candle had
burned all the way to the bottom of the wick, but the book had vanished! There
was nowhere it could have fallen to since everything was built-in to the wall;
it was simply gone. My friends were so freaked out that they never even talked
about what happened after that night. None of us believed in demons.
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