There are vast tracts of my life, extending into my middle twenties, of which I have almost no memory. There are incidents, episodes, vignettes; but no narrative connects them, makes them part of a whole that I can identify as 'my life'.
My life doesn't take on any narrative form until I was twenty-four - and the night of my conversion to what I thought was Christianity. I can connect my life from that moment (2.00am, 18th. October 1984) to this (4.32pm ET, September 16th 2005). but beyond that point in 1984 almost everything else is buried in inky blackness. Except for those... moments... I've spoken of.
This article is about one of those moments.
Between 1969 and 1971 I was between the ages of 9 and 11. At some point in those three years I lived in a part of London called Peckham Common. My father was a prison officer (what Americans call a 'Corrections Officer'). So my family lived in a block of apartments provided as accommodation by the prisons for which my father worked (first Brixton then Wandsworth).
The one constant that I am aware of in my early life is fear, the fear of abandonment. I know its origins, I have found ways in which to reconcile myself with it and eventually to overcome it. None of that has any place in what I want to write about.
As a very young child (between 3 and 5) I used to derive enormous pleasure from looking at my family's copy of the Bible. It was a Catholic Family edition, complete with reprints of classical religious art and Our Savior's Words in red ink. It was from reading this immense thing, or more precisely through the record of family events contained at the back, that I learned I had a brother who died before he could be brought home from the hospital. I was aware, profoundly, of the Spirit at a very early age (I understood, as many do not, that being aware of the Spirit does not entitle you to a happy life) - but I had no idea what Name to give to that Spirit. As an infant I had been baptised a Catholic. I attended my first Communion at seven, I attended confession. I had been exposed to religious iconography and to Catholic theology (though at a very low level, of course). I had heard of God, Jesus, and the Devil.
I remember that I prayed, and that I prayed faithfully. And all of my prayers went unanswered. I remember too that by the time I was 11 (for a variety of reasons, none of which I'll go into here) I was a basket-case, my life a round of unmitigated anguish.
I also remember that I first contemplated killing myself at age 9 or 10. But all my life, from my earliest recollection, the thought of suicide (before I even knew what the word meant) has nauseated and appalled me. It is, in my opinion, an abominable thing to throw in God's face the gift that It has given you.
I knew that God and Jesus were good, that the Devil was bad. And I remember that on a night that was thick with stars, that made the heavens look like curdled milk, I went out (I sneaked out) and walked widdershins in a circle (left to right) and I prayed to Satan. I prayed for an end to my pain, which I could no longer tolerate. I prayed for the strength to be apart, to no longer care how different I was from others (and I was different, both physically and emotionally), to be capable of resisting the terrible compulsion I was under to be what I could not possibly be. The same prayers I had directed, over and over, to my God and my Jesus with no result.
And I was answered.
I lost my terror of being alone (to this day I am happiest when alone), I lost my fear of being abandoned (except where I love, and there I shall always be afraid - if no longer subject to that fear), I lost my terror of not being like others (a freedom that remains with me) and what settled upon me, what remained with me, was a sense of presence that, even when obfuscated and confused by the Christian ideology that I later (much later) came to accept, was a constant in my life.
That is, in every episode that I can recall beyond that point, that presence is still manifest.
What I had invoked remained with me and would not depart.
What do I mean when I say I 'prayed to Satan'? I mean I addressed everything of the Spirit that was not what I had been taught was the Spirit, everything I knew to exist but had no dogma for, no explanation of. In an inchoate, chaotic fashion i knew that God was far more than anything I had been taught - and it was to that more that I appealed.
The more I called upon I called upon in ignorance, but in perfect faith. I knew I would be answered, and I was. If the answer that I received was not quite what I wanted and had in itself reults that some (if not all) would consider damaging, attribute that as I do to my own lack of understanding of what it was that I actually wanted.
The fact remains that I was answered, my ritual (walking twelve times widdershins while praying to 'Satan') worked. To me, this incident has a profound resonance for my life now. I called, and was answered, but I knew nothing and I understood nothing. The rituals that I employ now, though far more elaborate, are no more than sophisticated versions of that first instinctive reaching out to that which is not comprehended.
The fact that my understanding is now magickal rather than Christian and Catholic is irrelevant. What I reached out to then is what answers me now, and no Name will ever encompass or explain that reality. God, whether we call It Satan, or Jesus, or Allah, or some other Name completely, is that which answers those that reach out to it in the honesty of perfect desperation and torment.
The answer that you receive depends as much on your understanding of yourself as it does upon the Nature of what answers. And what I have learned is best summed up in this simple saying - do not wake that which you cannot put back to sleep.
