The meeting lasted three hours. When he left, the obsessive Paulo stopped at the first bar they came to and scribbled on the cover of his Bach LP every detail of their visit to the man he still referred to as ‘the guy’. Every blank space on the record cover was taken up with tiny, almost illegible writing:
We were greeted by his wife, Edith, and a little girl who must have been three at most. It was all very respectable, very proper. They brought in little dishes with canapés…It’s years since I’ve eaten in someone’s house where they had little dishes with canapés. Canapés, how ridiculous!
So then the guy comes in: ‘Would you like a whisky?’
Well, of course we wanted a whisky! A rich man’s drink. Dinner was hardly over and Gisa and I were desperate to leave.
Then Raul said: ‘Oh, I wanted to play you some of my music.’
Oh, shit, we were going to have to listen to music as well. All I wanted was to get some advertising out of him. We went into the maid’s room and he picked up his guitar and played some marvellous music. When he finished, the guy said to me: ‘You wrote that stuff on flying saucers, didn’t you? Well, I’m planning on going back to being a singer. Would you like to write some lyrics for me?’
I thought: Write lyrics? Me write lyrics for this guy who’s never touched drugs in his life! Never put a joint in his mouth. Not even an ordinary cigarette. Anyway, we were just leaving and I hadn’t yet mentioned the advertisement. I plucked up courage and asked: ‘Since we’re going to publish your article, do you think you could manage to get an advertisement for CBS in the magazine?’
Imagine my astonishment when he said that he had resigned from CBS that very day: ‘I’m moving to Philips because I’m going to follow my dream. I wasn’t born to be a manager, I want to be a singer.’
At that moment I understood: I’m the conventional one, this guy deserves the greatest respect. A guy who leaves a job that gives him everything, his daughter, his wife, his maid, his family, his canapés! I left feeling really impressed with the guy.
Gisa’s premonitions were not entirely unfounded. She had mistaken the year, but not the date. While it marked Paulo’s first step in the direction of one of his dreams–fame–25 May was, by coincidence, going to be a crucial date, a watershed in his life: the day chosen by destiny, some years later, for his first appointment with the Devil, a ceremony he was preparing for when he met Raul Seixas. Under Marcelo Ramos Motta’s guidance he felt he was a disciple of the Beast’s battalions. He was determined to immerse himself in the malignant forces that had seduced Lennon and Charles Manson, and began the process by being accepted into the OTO as a ‘probationer’, the lowest rank in the sect’s hierarchy. He was fortunate that his guide was not Motta but another militant in the organization, a graduate employee of Petrobras, Euclydes Lacerda de Almeida, whose magical name was Frater Zaratustra, or Frater Z, and who lived in Paraíba do Sul, 150 kilometres from Rio. ‘I received a letter, rude as ever, from Marcelo,’ Paulo wrote to Frater Z when he heard the news. ‘I’m forbidden from contacting him except through you.’ It was a relief to have a well-educated man like Euclydes as his instructor rather than the uncouth Marcelo Motta, who treated all his subordinates appallingly. Extracts from letters sent to militants of the OTO by Parzival XI (as Motta self-importantly called himself) show that Paulo was being quite restrained when describing the leader of the followers of the Devil as ‘rude’:
I’d prefer you not to write to me any more. If you do, send a stamped, addressed envelope for the reply–or you won’t get a reply.
[…] Be aware of just where you are on the vertebrate scale, monkey!
[…] If you’re incapable of getting up on your own two legs and looking for the Way through your own efforts then stay on all fours and howl like the dog you are!
[…] You’re no more than a drop of shit on the end of the monkey’s cock.
[…] If suddenly your favourite son, or you, were to fall ill with a fatal disease that required an expensive operation and you could only use OTO money, then rather let your son die, or die yourself, than touch the money.
[…] You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until your name is known as a member of the OTO. The Army’s secret service, the CIA, Shin-Beth [Israeli military intelligence], the Russians, the Chinese and innumerable Roman priests disguised as members of the sect will try to get in contact with you.
On at least two occasions Paulo’s name appears in correspondence from Parzival XI to Euclydes. In the first, one gets the impression that Paulo will be working on the publication by Editora Três, in São Paulo, of the book The Equinox of the Gods, by Crowley and translated into Portuguese by Motta: ‘I got in touch with Editora Três through their representative in Rio, and we shall soon see whether or not they’re going to publish Equinox of the Gods. Paulo Coelho is young, enthusiastic and imaginative, but it’s too early for us to assume that they really will publish the book.’ In the second, Euclydes is castigated for having told Paulo too much and too soon about Parzival XI’s power: ‘Paulo Coelho said that you told him I destroyed the Masons in Brazil. You talk too much. Even if it were true, Paulo Coelho doesn’t have the magical maturity to understand how these things are done, which is why he’s confused.’
At the time, Paulo had had his own experiences of being in contact with the Devil. Some months before getting to know Motta and the OTO, during one of his regular anxiety crises, he was full of complaints. The reasons were many, but behind them lay the usual fact: he was nearly twenty-five and still just a nobody, without the remotest chance of becoming a famous writer. The situation seemed hopeless and the pain this time was such that, instead of asking for help from the Virgin Mary or St Joseph as he usually did, he decided to make a pact with the Prince of Darkness. If the Devil gave him the power to realize all his dreams, Paulo would give him his soul in exchange. ‘As an educated man who knows the philosophical principles that govern the world, humanity and the Cosmos,’ Paulo wrote in his diary, ‘I know perfectly well that the Devil does not signify Evil, but just one of the poles in the equilibrium of humanity.’ Using a fountain pen with red ink (‘the colour of this supernatural being’), he began to write out his pact in the form of a letter to the Devil. In the first line he made it clear that he was setting out the conditions and was not willing to deal with intermediaries:
You have wanted this for a long time. I felt that You were beginning to close the circle around me and I know that You are stronger than I am. You are more interested in buying my soul than I am in selling it. Whatever the case, I need to have an idea of the price that You are going to pay me. For this reason, from today, 11 November 1971, until 18 November, I’m going to do an experiment. I will speak directly to You, the King of the Other Pole.
In order to confirm this agreement he took a flower out of a vase and crushed it, at the same time proposing to Satan a kind of spectral test: ‘I’m going to crush this flower and eat it. From now on, for the next seven days, I’m going to do everything I want and I’m going to get what I want, because You will be helping me. If I’m satisfied with the results, I will give You my soul. If a ritual is necessary, I take it upon myself to carry it out.’
As a proof of good faith, Paulo promised the Devil that, during this experimental period, he would reciprocate by not praying to or saying the names of those considered sacred by the Catholic Church. But he did make it clear that this was a test, not a lifelong contract. ‘I retain the right to go back,’ he went on, still in red, ‘and I want to add that I’m only doing this because I find myself in such a state of complete despair.’
The agreement lasted less than an hour. He closed his notebook, and went out to have a cigarette and walk along the beach. When he returned home, he was deathly pale, terrified at the mad thing he had done. He opened his notebook again and wrote in capital letters that took up the whole page:
PACT CANCELLED
I OVERCAME TEMPTATION!
Paulo felt sure that he had tricked the Devil,
but this ruse did not work for long. Although he and the Devil did not meet this time, he continued to invoke the spirit of evil in his articles for A Pomba and in a new enterprise in which he had become involved, the storyboards for comic strips. Beings from the Beyond created by him were brought to life in Gisa’s drawings and began to illustrate the pages of the magazine. The positive reaction to the series Os Vampiristas, which told of the troubles and adventures of a small, peaceful solitary vampire, convinced Gisa to send her work to King Features, an American agency that distributed comic strips, but she received no reply. The couple did, though, manage to get some of their work into two of the main daily Rio newspapers, O Jornal and Jornal do Brasil, creating a special cartoon about the little vampire for the latter’s children’s supplement, which came out on Sundays. They also created a highly popular character, Curingão, whose image was used on lottery tickets. From time to time, one of their comic strips even appeared in Pasquim, the magazine favoured by the Rio intelligentsia.
A Pomba was managing to survive with almost no advertising revenue and even achieved sales of 20,000, a real achievement in the tiny counterculture market; however, by the middle of 1972, it was heavily in debt, and looked set to take 2001 down with it. When the publisher, Eduardo Prado, announced that he was thinking of closing both publications, Paulo and Gisa moved to the newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa, where they produced a whole page that was published on Saturdays and given the name of the magazine that had died after only two issues–2001.
This change of medium was another step towards their work emerging from the subworld of flying saucers, elves and sorcerers to reach a wider public. Although in comparison with the other Rio dailies, Tribuna didn’t publish many copies, it had earned respect as a fighter. It had been founded in 1949 by the journalist Carlos Lacerda in order to combat the ideas, the supporters and the future government of President Getúlio Vargas (1951–54) and now, under the editorship of Hélio Fernandes, it was the favourite target for the military dictatorship’s censors. The arrival of Paulo and Gisa in the old building on Rua do Lavradio, near Lapa, coincided with the most repressive period in the entire history of the dictatorship, and this was reflected in the daily life of the paper. For three years, the offices of Tribuna had been visited every night by army officers, who would read everything and then decide what could and could not be published. According to Hélio Fernandes, a fifth of their daily output was thrown in the rubbish bin by the censors. He himself was an example of what happened to those targeted by the regime’s violence, for he had been arrested no fewer than twenty-seven times since 1964 and imprisoned twice. However, since the military were not too concerned about alchemy and the supernatural, the page produced by Paulo and Gisa remained untouched.
The visibility they achieved in the paper encouraged Paulo to go to the advertising department of Petrobras and show them a comic strip he and Gisa had created to be handed out at their petrol stations.
The man they met had approved the idea, but then Paulo, eager to make the project a success, said: ‘Just so that there’s no risk to Petrobras, we can work for free for the first month.’
The man turned round and said: ‘For free? Sorry, but you’re clearly a real amateur. Here no one does anything for free. Go and do a bit more work and try again when you’re a professional.’
In August, while he was still smarting from this rejection, Paulo received an invitation to go with his mother and maternal grandmother, Lilisa, for a three-week trip to Europe. He was heavily into his journalistic work, and hesitated before agreeing, but then it wasn’t every day that one was invited on a trip to Europe with all expenses paid. Added to this, he could leave several cartoons ready, as well as the Tribuna page, for Gisa to illustrate and design while he was away, since his mother’s invitation did not include his girlfriend. During the twenty-one day trip, which started in Nice and ended in Paris, with stops in Rome, Milan, Amsterdam and London, Paulo visited museums, ruins and cathedrals. Apart from two or three occasions in Amsterdam, when he escaped his mother’s vigilance in order to smoke a joint, the trip meant that he went almost a month without his daily intake of drugs.
Having been brought up by a methodical, obsessive mother, Paulo was furious with what he found when he arrived home. He wrote: ‘The house is a complete tip, which really annoyed me. It hasn’t even been swept. The electricity bill hasn’t been paid, nor has the rent. The page for Tribuna hasn’t been handed in, which is utterly irresponsible. I’m so upset by all this that I have nothing else to say.’
However, not everything was bad. While he was away, a tempting invitation had arrived in the post. Professor Glória Albues, who worked for the education department in Mato Grosso, had finally organized a project that the two had thought up when they had met up in Rio. The idea was that Paulo would spend three weeks every two months in three cities in Mato Grosso–Campo Grande, Três Lagoas (now in Mato Grosso do Sul, a state that did not exist at the time) and Cuiabá–teaching a course in theatre and education for teachers and pupils in state schools. The salary was tempting–1,500 cruzeiros a month, which was double what he earned on A Pomba and 2001. There was another reason that led Paulo to exchange the delights of Rio for the inhospitable lands of Mato Grosso. When the idea for the course had first come up, he hadn’t been involved with the OTO, but now, eager to spread Crowley’s ideas, the thought came to him: Why not change the course into a black magic workshop?
CHAPTER 15
Paulo and Raul
EITHER ALONE OR WITH GISA, who was following him on his journey to satanism, Paulo began to try out some so-called magical exercises. One he frequently performed consisted in going to a park to pick a leaf of Sansevieria trifasciata, a plant with hard, pointed leaves, popularly known in English as mother-in-law’s tongue and in Brazil as St George’s sword. Performed in public, this exercise was likely to expose the novice to a certain amount of ridicule, since it was then necessary to walk ten steps holding the plant as though it were a real sword, turn towards the setting sun and then bow to the four points of the compass, pointing the ‘sword’ at each and shouting at the top of one’s voice: ‘Strength lies in the West!’ Each step to the left was accompanied by a roar, with eyes raised heavenwards: ‘Knowledge lies in the South! Protection lies in the East! Victory lies in the North!’
He would then take the leaf home, where he would cut it into eleven pieces (eleven being the Thelemites’ magic number) with a penknife or an ordinary knife that he had previously thrust into the ground, and then heated over a fire and washed in sea water. After this he would arrange the eleven pieces on the kitchen table to form the symbol of Mars–a circle topped by a small arrow, which also represents the male sex–while boiling up some water in a saucepan. He would then mix the pieces up with the torn petals of two yellow roses and add them to the boiling water. The entire ceremony had to be performed so that the thick, viscous liquid thus produced would be ready at precisely eleven at night, which, according to the Liber Oz, is the hour of the Sun. He would then add it to his bath water, in which he would immerse himself until midnight, the hour of Venus. After performing one such ceremony, Paulo dried himself and wrote in his diary, with the house in almost total darkness and his notebook lit just by a single candle:
I realize that this ritual might appear naive. It lasted in total almost two hours. But all I can say is that for the greater part of the time I was in touch with a different dimension, where things are interconnected in the Laws (Second Causes). I can feel the mechanism, but I am not yet able to understand it. Nor can I rationalize the mechanism. I feel only that intuition works in close conjunction with rationalization and that these two spheres almost touch each other. Something leads me to believe that the Devil really does exist.
Another ceremony he frequently performed was the so-called Ritual of the Lesser Pentagram, which involved spreading out on the floor a white sheet on which one had to paint a green five-pointed star. The star was surrounded by a length of twine dipped
in sulphur, with which Paulo would draw the symbol of Mars. He would turn off all the lights, and then hang a lamp from the ceiling, immediately above the centre of the pentagram, so that it created a column of light. With sword in hand and completely naked, he would turn to the south, step into the middle of the sheet and adopt the ‘Dragon pose’–a yoga position in which the person crouches on the floor with one leg forward and the other back–and then jump up and down like a toad while repeating invocations to the Devil. On one of these occasions, the ceremony ended very strangely, as he recorded in his diary:
After half an hour, my personal problems began seriously to interfere with my concentration, thus wasting a great deal of energy. I changed from the Dragon pose to the Ibis pose, finally crouching in the centre of the circle, shaking my body. This made me sexually excited and I ended up masturbating, even though I was only thinking about the column of light over the circle. I ejaculated into the column of light in several successive spasms. This brought me a feeling of total confirmation. Obviously I felt very guilty while I was masturbating, but this soon passed, so profound was my state of ecstasy.
It was during this time that Paulo was preparing for his first stay in Mato Grosso. He left various texts and storyboards ready for Tribuna and the other publications he was working for and typed out a programme for the course. Anyone not in the know would have had difficulty identifying any magical or satanic content. ‘I used this trick on purpose, so that no one would realize,’ he confessed years later, ‘because I knew it was an act of supreme irresponsibility to use magical techniques and rituals in order to give classes to teachers and adolescents…There I was performing black magic: I was using them without their knowledge, innocently, for my own magical experiments.’ Before leaving, Paulo asked permission from Frater Zaratustra to use Hermes Trismegistus’ Emerald Tablet on the course. This was a text containing such statements as: ‘By this means wilt thou partake of the honours of the whole world. And Darkness will fly from thee’, and ‘With this thou wilt be able to overcome all things and transmute all that is fine and all that is coarse.’
Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life Page 26