A Glimpse of Heaven

by Olivier Bosman

  “Welcome, gentlemen,” he said in a booming voice. “And you too, ma’am,” he added, turning towards the woman. “Welcome all to the Temple of Thoth. I am delighted that you were able to come. We sent out five invitations this week, and I am very pleased to see that all five of you are here. Well, sit down, please” – he addressed this at the four gentlemen still standing – “and all will be made clear to you.”

  Billings and the three gentlemen took a seat. They watched tensely as the man sat on the throne and stared at the invitees. A serious and intense stare.

  “You all look so uncomfortable,” he said. “And you have every cause to be. Because what you’re about to witness is going to change your lives forever. We are members of a society called the Sons of Cain and Daughters of Lilith.”

  Billings jolted in his seat at the mention of the Daughters of Lilith.

  “We are the keepers and purveyors of magic. That’s right. Magic. Over the last few days, you have, unbeknownst to you, had a conversation with one of our members. And this member has seen something in you. Something extraordinary. A certain look in your eye. Or perhaps it was something you said. But whatever it was, something about you betrayed to our member that you are a son of Cain” – he turned towards the woman – “or a daughter of Lilith, and that you have what it takes to understand those things which are normally hidden from the ordinary man. You are extraordinary. And the magic that you will learn in this society will be extraordinary. You will obtain great powers. But with this power comes responsibility. We need to make sure that whatever happens within the society, stays in the society. I need all five of you to make a solemn promise not to speak about this to anyone. If you do not agree, get out now. Leave this building immediately. You will never hear from us again. But if you do agree, if you do want to receive the power and wisdom which God has laid at your disposal, then nod. But beware! Break your promise and the wrath of the Gods will be unleashed on you!”

  He passed his eyes over the invitees. They all looked nervous but intrigued. Monkey was the first to nod. Cat followed soon after. Jackal and Crocodile came after. Only Billings remained. All eyes were now on him. He nodded slowly. Ibis smiled.

  “Very good.” Ibis got off his throne and spread his arms. “This ballroom, this wonderful space we have hired, is known as the Temple of Thoth. Named after the Egyptian god of wisdom and magic. Thoth presided over Cain and Lilith after they were banished from Eden and showed them the power and wonder which was concealed from the rest of humanity. Cain and Lilith are the patriarch and matriarch of magic. Their knowledge has been passed down through their descendants and written down by the priests of Babylon and ancient Egypt. Moses, prophet and Prince of Egypt, took this knowledge with him to the Holy Land, where it was consequently concealed in Solomon’s Temple. When the temple was destroyed, this knowledge became scattered. Parts of it were re-discovered by Sephardic Jews in Moorish Spain, and Greek priests in Byzantine churches, and crusading monks in Jerusalem. Other parts of that knowledge were never forgotten but held in trust by fakirs and Buddhists in China and India. Over the centuries, little by little, various learned men and women have reassembled these sacred texts and grimoires, and now we, the Sons of Cain and Daughters of Lilith, are in possession of most of it. By becoming members of this society, you too can learn to perform magic. By magic, I do not mean trickery or sleight of hand. I mean real magic. The ability to do things which were previously unimaginable. Magic is not an innate gift. We can all learn to do it. All you need is to train your mind and your body, and we can show you how.”

  Ibis stopped and scanned his audience. He smiled. “Oh, I can see that look of scepticism in your eyes. And you are right to be sceptical. That is why you have been chosen. Because you are inquisitive and curious, and you never take anybody at their word. But I am not asking you to believe my words. I’m asking you to believe your eyes.”

  He headed to the hidden door in the panelled wall. “You shall now witness first-hand the power of the occult.”

  He opened the door. In the doorway stood a tall Indian man wearing a white turban, a lime green sherwani and scarlet silk breeches. On his face he wore a black mask with a big snout and long ears. Billings couldn’t make out what it was. A dog? An anteater? On the man’s feet were black and gold juttis with pointed tips. He stood rigidly in the doorway, his hands clasped on his chest, staring ahead of him

  “Gentlemen... and lady.” Ibis now spoke in a low, soft voice. “This is Frater Dramboo, one of our teachers. We have brought him over from Kashmir – an old and enchanting region where the best esoteric traditions of Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism have come together to give us some of the most powerful magic in the world.”

  The Indian man walked towards the centre of the room, his gaze fixed firmly in front of him. He sat cross-legged on the floor. He kept his back straight and placed his hands on his knees, palms facing upwards.

  “What Frater Dramboo is about to perform,” Ibis continued in a low voice, “is an incredible feat for which he has been preparing these last eight hours. He has put himself in a trance using various breathing techniques, and he must remain in a trance throughout the performance. It is imperative, therefore, that we remain as quiet as possible, so as not to break his concentration.”

  The Indian closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The rapt invitees followed his every move.

  After a few minutes, he began to tremble gently. Then suddenly he began to float upwards. He rose nearly a foot in the air, casting a shadow on the black and white tiles beneath him.

  The audience gasped with astonishment. The man stopped trembling and hovered in the air for a few seconds before gently coming back down. He opened his eyes, stood up, bowed to the invitees and walked out through the secret door.

  Monkey, Jackal and Crocodile burst out in cheers and applause. Cat was struck dumb. She kept gazing at the hidden door, holding her hands to her mouth.

  Billings was neither gasping nor clapping. He looked at the spot on which the Indian had been sitting, searching for signs of a trapdoor, or strings, or mirrors or anything that could explain the remarkable feat he had just witnessed.

  “Gentlemen... and lady,” Ibis resumed in his loud, booming voice. “You too can learn to do that, and many other incredible and wondrous feats, if you join the Sons of Cain and Daughters of Lilith. In the coming days, you shall receive an invitation to another venue. We never use the same venue twice. If you decide to come, in exchange for a one-hundred-pound donation towards the maintenance and expansion of our library, you shall be inducted into the society. If you do not come, then this will be the last you hear from us.”

  He turned his back on his audience and disappeared through the hidden door.

  5. The Purification of the Beast

  Extract from Alick Lourie’s diary, April 15th, 1895

  There is something so peaceful and serene about the desert. This vast empty void fills me with a mystical energy I’ve never felt before. My heart pounds and my fingers tingle as we trek from oasis to oasis. I have the most vivid dreams every night (no, it’s not the drugs talking. I haven’t chewed on the sacred cactus yet. The peyote is being rationed. I’m saving it for the ritual).

  The only thing ruining this adventure is the constant huffing and puffing of Angel Puck as he stumbles behind me with the tent on his back, moaning and complaining and sweating like a pig. I should’ve come to Algeria on my own, but the ritual calls for two people. And anyway, every guru needs a disciple. I suppose Angel Puck is mine.

  Never in my life have I met someone with a more inappropriate name.

  “Why did your mother call you Angel?” I asked him last night, as we sat by the campfire.

  He shrugged. “I dunno. I suppose she thought I looked like an angel.”

  “Well, you don’t look like an angel to me,” I said. “You have a face like a warthog’s arse!”

  He laughed. He is so used to my put-downs, it’s becoming irritating.

  Ang
el is all that remains of my time at Cambridge. He was one of the college porters, but he lost his place after he helped me procure the syphilis-infected prostitute who sealed both our fates. I’ve supported him ever since. I felt I owed it to him, even if the measly annuity from my father’s inheritance is barely enough to sustain me.

  Angel is my companion. He is the Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. And he is also a good sounding board for the philosophy I’m struggling to develop. I tried explaining it to him last night.

  “It’s all about will,” I said. “Will is the driving force of our existence. It’s what we live for. Many people suppress their will, and it makes them bitter and frustrated. My philosophy is that we must give in to our will. We must discover what it is and embrace it. Strip away all pre-conceived ideas of convention and society and find out exactly what it is that we’ve been put in this world to do. I’ve been using sex as a means of training myself. Have you ever heard of sexual magic? Don’t look at me like that, Angel. It’s not just an excuse for me to get my cock wet. Will is a force. Like gravity or magnetism, but even more powerful. Sex for me isn’t just a quick wet dip, like it is for you. For me,it’s like entering into a magical realm. A passionate exchange of bodily fluids, like an arid desert being watered for the first time. Oh, if you could only experience what it is like to have sex with me. My women are so lucky. I see their cheeks redden, and their eyes roll up, and their backs arch in pleasure, and their bodies quiver with the explosions I provoke inside them. I envy them. Sometimes I wish I were a woman. Just to know what it feels like to be entered.”

  Angel laughed.

  “Don’t laugh at me, you big oaf!”

  He straightened his face and looked away. Like a chastened dog.

  “What is your will?” I asked.

  “Well... um...” He thought about this. Long and hard. Scowling and frowning and scratching his head, as if the very act of thinking caused him physical pain.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “Well, pay close attention tomorrow, then, for I shall be having my purification ritual. It’s all about stripping the obstacles which block your will from manifesting itself. Once we’ve done mine, we might concentrate on doing yours.”

  THE ENOCHIAN PURIFICATION ritual was last attempted by John Dee and Edward Kelly in 1587 on a frosted turnip field in Bohemia. It is said that this ritual drove Edward Kelly to insanity. A proud husband and loving father, Kelly was forced by the spirit he summoned to swap wives with his partner, causing great pain and anguish to all involved. A few months later, while dining with his family, he took some poison and dropped dead right in front of his wife and children. The ritual has never been performed since. Until now.

  It is an essential ritual for anyone who wants to make progress with magic. Its aim is to steel you against the demons of guilt, shame and pride – the very things which block you from doing what your will demands.

  The Sons of Cain’s library holds a copy of John Dee’s diary, and I’ve been studying the ritual for many months. I invited the other members to practice it with me, but they were horrified at the prospect. Called it black magic and warned me to stay away from it. I am very disillusioned with the Sons of Cain. It seems to me they don’t want to practice real magic. Games and party tricks are all they’re interested in. So,I’ve come here to the deserts of French North Africa to perform it myself.

  Dusk is the right time at which to summon demons. It is the time when the portal to the other world opens. Angel and I spent all day in the blazing sun looking for rocks and stones to create the magic circle in which the ritual was to take place.

  After the circle was completed, and before the sun began to set, I sanctified the ground by chanting an Enochian spell so that it would protect me from my otherworldly visitors. Then I retreated into the tent, placed a dried button of peyote on the fire and inhaled its fumes.

  Angel stayed outside. He had to remain alert and sober, in case the demon took possession of me and he had to wrestle it out of me. Angel’s job was to watch and observe. Magic needs a witness. Without one, there can be no proof.

  As the sun began to go down, I crept out of my tent and entered the circle. Angel squatted on the ground before me, wrapped in a blanket. The desert gets very cold at night in early spring. Goosebumps rose all over my body as I began to strip.

  Angel, unaware that the ritual called for me to be naked, sat up and raised his eyebrows.“What are you doing?” he asked.

  The dumb oaf! He nearly ruined the whole thing by speaking. I scowled at him and urged him to shut up.

  I bundled my clothes together and placed them outside the circle. Then I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, spread my legs apart, raised my arms in the air and began calling in the Enochian language for my guardian spirit.

  I could feel Angel staring at me in amused surprise. This was the first magic ritual he’d witnessed, and he wasn’t used to pagan ceremonies. I even heard him giggle from time to time. But I could not let him distract me. I had to concentrate deeply. Ignoring the desert chill, and the stings and bites of the various insects summoned out of their resting place by the cooling air, I persevered.

  I stood like that for nearly an hour, trembling all over, getting cramps in my outstretched arms and my neck. But then I felt a warm glow engulf my whole body, and I knew that Baphomet, my guardian spirit, had appeared. With Baphomet to protect me, I summoned the three demons into the circle one by one.

  I was in a trance as I wrestled the demons into submission, and I have no memory of the event. The ritual lasted for three hours. As I woke from my trance, I found myself on my hands and knees, soaked in sweat, panting with exhaustion. Angel sat before me, wrapped in his blanket, staring at me, wide eyed and open-mouthed. He said I’d gone completely berserk. That I was shouting and jumping and throwing myself onto the ground. (Indeed, the bruises on my arms and side testify to this fact.) Angel said he’d never seen anything like it.

  Released from the demons of guilt, shame and pride, my will was finally able to enact the one thing it had so desired. Still on my hands and knees, I crawled out of the circle and crept towards him.

  Angel looked confused. “What are you doing?” He got up on his feet and staggered backwards, but I clasped my hands around his ankles and stopped him. I raised my head and looked him straight in the eyes. “Fuck me,” I said.

  Angel didn’t take much persuading. There was a good reason why he always put up with my taunts and belittlements.

  And so, the act was performed. Digging my fingers into the sand as Angel slid in and out of me, I tried to summon to my mind the moans and blushes of all the women I’d given pleasure to. But something wasn’t quite right. Something had gone horribly wrong during the ritual. One of the demons had not been fully vanquished – the demon of pride.

  Although I enjoyed the sensation, at first, I couldn’t shake the notion that I was demeaning myself by letting Angel bugger me. Perhaps if it had been another man, one of my own stature. But Angel Puck?This lardy peasant’s hands all over my body?

  As Angel began reaching his climax, he got more and more animated. He started rubbing his dirty hands all over my chest and grabbing my thighs. At one point he even shouted “Giddyup!” and pulled my hair and slapped my arse.

  “Get off me!” I hissed.

  “Wait until I’ve finished,” he huffed back.

  The demon of pride filled me with fury. I turned around and pushed him off me. I swung my elbow into his face. “How dare you lay your filthy hands on me, you fat toad!”

  Blood poured out of Angel’s nose. “Jesus Christ, Alick,” he said, putting his hands to his face. “You asked me to!”

  I picked up the hunting knife which lay in the sand, grabbed him by his hair and put the blade against his throat. “You tell anyone about this, you’re dead!”

  He looked back at me with teary eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”

  I stuck the bl
ade further into his neck, but without piercing the skin. “Swear you won’t tell anyone!”

  “I swear, I swear.”

  I let go of him and went back into the tent. Still fuming, I curled into my sleeping bag. This had all been a terrible mistake. I had failed to defeat the demon of pride, and now it had got hold of me. I had fucked up.

  6. Heaven and Earth

  Trotter finished his sentence, put his pen in the inkwell and looked up from his report.

  “I tell you, Mr Billings, I think Mr Doucet is wasting his money. There is nothing suspicious about Miss Bunton’s behaviour. I’ve been shadowing her for four days now, and the reports are practically identical.” He picked up the report and read out loud. “She leaves Mr Doucet’s house and buys ten white roses at a flower stall in the Chelsea Embankment. Then she goes to a certain Mrs Moorhouse...”

  “That’s her cousin,” Billings interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Mrs Moorhouse. I looked her up in the Register Office. She’s Miss Bunton’s cousin. First cousin, once removed. Make sure you write that down.”

  Trotter smiled. “Thank you, Mr Billings.” He continued reading. “After fifteen minutes or so, she leaves the house and continues on to Sloane Square, where she takes an omnibus to Islington. She spends the rest of the night at her family home. Last night, however, there was an exception. She visited a music hall, and she was accompanied by her father, her mother and one of her younger sisters.”

  “How do you know it’s their house?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said she stayed at her family home. How do you know her parents own the house? A lot of poor people moved to Islington when the inner-city slums were cleared for the railway. They’re more likely to be renting or living in with another family.”

  Trotter looked at the report, then back at Billings, then back at the report.