SATANIC RITES OF PASSAGE, or PROOF THAT ROLE-PLAYING GAMES DON'T LEAD TO DANGEROUS DABBLINGS IN THE OCCULT

(our own little tale)

Introduction

Some time ago, one of the designers of this page turned to the other and said; 'You know all that stuff about heavy metal and role-playing games and horror films leading to a dangerous fascination with the occult and a subsequent imperilment of the individual's immortal soul?'

'Yeah?' replied the other, laconically.

'It's not true, you know,' said the first.

A hollow laugh greeted this statement.

All very inconsequential of course, unless you're aware that the speaker was referring to a period in their lives when precisely that had happened; resulting in cosmic teenage angst, demonic possession by Babylonian deities, and a suicide attempt; not to mention one designer losing his virginity to a sixteen-year-old Satanist, and the other to a thirty-five year old witch.

We move in some odd circles.

1. Children of the Wild

One evening in early spring, when I was seventeen, three of my role-playing buddies called. They included my namesake Gav, who'd been in the same year as me at school, and two lads a year younger, Phil and Dave (aka 'Dave the Gay Satanist'). For reasons that later became apparent, Phil and Gav dragged me off into my sister's bedroom (she had gone to university, so it was luckily vacant), while Dave, left alone, rooted through my dream diary.

Phil loomed above me (tall chap for his age - still is). With a maniacal gleam in his eye, he asked

'What would you say to sects?'

'Really, Phil,' I murmured reprovingly. 'I hardly know you.'

With Gav's aid, he hastily cleared up the misunderstanding. They weren't intending to relieve their pubescent sexual appetites upon my quivering body - they were merely suggesting that we form some kind of occult coven. What was so strange about that? Actually, Phil insisted that it wasn't going to be a coven, because that would suggest witchcraft. We weren't going to get mixed up in witchcraft, he insisted. Or Satanism. That was why we'd left Dave in the other room. He'd expressed an interest in Satanism, but that really wasn't our thing, Phil told us firmly. We would never abandon the right hand path. Well, what were we going to do? I asked, mystified and unable to take the notion seriously. Phil explained that it would involve a lot of meditation.

'But I do that all the time!' I exclaimed.

Not masturbation, Phil insisted, meditation. There's a difference, he explained.

The next Thursday (if my memory serves me well), Phil and Gav came round to my house, minus Dave the Gay Satanist, but with our mutual friend Jim in tow. They frightened my parents, gathered in my room, sat on inappropriate items of furniture, bounced around with the lights out to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana (this was a long time ago, kids), before they finally decided to get down to the serious business of meditation.

I think at this moment it would be a good time to point out that I thought the occult was utter rubbish. I'd been brought up to be an atheist, or maybe an agnostic (my parents were never quite sure) and, despite some peculiar experiences involving ghostly footsteps heard at dusk in a remote and nameless cottage in North Wales (alright, it was really called Bwlchrhoswen, but with a name like that it might as well have been nameless), I didn't believe a word of it. But I told myself that I had an open mind.

Nonetheless, it took several attempts before I stopped giggling. Phil burnt some sandalwood incense, whose scent later caused my mother to comment (I felt rather like Charles Dexter Ward in those days), and we all sat cross legged, listened to New Age music, and thought profoundly about mystic forests.

After a while I got a bit bored, and conceived the crazy notion of trying to look in on my friend's meditations. I got an impression of trees from Gav (on my left), and much the same from Jim (on my right), but when I inclined my mind in Phil's direction I got a picture of some kind of sloping hole in the ground in the middle of a forest.

When the meditation ended, we discussed our experiences. I was startled to discover that while Gav and Jim had been generally assailed by images of trees, Phil had found himself imagining the old bear pit in the woods at the back of the college we both attended. I told him about my own experience, and he looked at me as if to say 'Pull the other one, mate.' But it was true!

I think it was that time when Phil also mentioned the camp site in Snowdonia he'd visited as an army cadet, an area of forests, mountains and lakes, much like the area we were beginning to picture in our meditations - also inhabited, he swore blind, by a North American Indian shaman (in Wales? Perhaps he'd escaped from a zoo). I believed him no more than he believed me. And yet it was equally true. Funny old multiverse.

This set a precedent for many more Thursday evenings that spring. Life consisted of dull college work, dull YTS work placements, Tunnels and Trolls or Call of Cthulhu once-weekly (sometimes with Dave the Gay Satanist as Gamesmaster), and every Thursday, visions of another world. We meditated, we learned how to write in the runic alphabet and to use Tarot cards. Five hundred miles to the north-east, serious-minded Norwegian metalheads were plotting a series of church-arsons as a protest against the dominance of Christianity in their country. But we were happy enough playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Role-Playing Game.

We decided upon a name for our sect; 'The Children of the Wild'. What can I say? We were seventeen at the time. It could have been worse.

As a matter of fact it was. We came up with a set of rules for the sect, which I transformed into what I laughingly call verse. It began something like this:

Over a decade has passed since those days and the other three couplets have slipped my mind, but I can assure you they weren't much better. All I can recall is that we broke each rule resoundingly over the next six months, even though we recited the verse before each session.

So life continued, until two events at about the same time; we visited an occult bookshop in Liverpool where I bought a copy of a tome entitled 'The Necronomicon Spellbook'; and a girl called Hazel reappeared in our lives.

2. The Call of Kutulu

The rest of the Four, as we informally named ourselves, made a visit to an occult bookshop in Liverpool. For some reason I didn't accompany them on that occasion. But when they told me about it, in the middle of another of our interminable role-playing sessions, Gav happened to mention that he'd found a copy of the Necronomicon - softback, he added, though not bound in human flesh.

My jaw dropped open. I was willing to keep an open mind, but this was going a bit too far. The Necronomicon was an ancient grimoire from the stories of HP Lovecraft - inspiration for the RPG Call of Cthulhu. What was rather more significant was that the writer had sworn blind that he had invented the book - it didn't exist. It had featured quite heavily in our gaming sessions, however, and I was thoroughly obsessed with it.

There was a knock at the door. It was Gav's house, so he answered it. He came back in and said that there was someone outside who wanted to speak to me. Surprised, I went to the door. Outside were five people I recognised, two youths who'd been in the year above at school, two girls who were going out with them, and another girl who I knew - Hazel. She'd previously been one of our role-playing circle, but had vanished a few months back. I had been told that she rather liked me. 'You're coming down the pub with us,' said Ian, one of the youths. Spinelessly, I accepted. I told the others I was going, and went down to a pub in the lower village for a drink with Hazel.

Now I was a painfully shy chap back then, and had never really gone out with a girl before. I don't know that I said much during the evening. Still, I walked her back home, agonised over whether or not I should kiss her goodnight, bottled out of it, and went home to receive an earbashing from my mother. I'd been out after ten o'clock, horror of horrors! I was grounded for the next two weeks.

It's not easy being a teenage occultist.

The grounding didn't apply to daytime, so I was able to accompany the rest of the Four, and a few others, including Dave the Gay Satanist, on a trip to the occult bookshop in Liverpool. Dave had been a bit miffed that we weren't letting him in our sect, but apparently he knew an older man who worshipped the devil on a farm outside Chester, so that would make work for his idle hands - we thought. The left-hand path wasn't for the Children of the Wild, Phil reminded us.

I was a little disappointed by the bookshop, which was a dingy little room in the bowels of an alternative shopping centre named Quiggins (still going, just). It was more of a New Age shop with a Gothic edge, really, but there were genuine occult tomes on the shelves. The Necronomicon Gav had seen and flicked through had gone, but my heart beat fast as my eyes fell upon a slim volume entitled 'The Necronomicon Spellbook.'

I...

I bought it.

We got the bus back home. I remember us sitting on the top deck, with our long hair and enthusiastic little beards, our leather jackets and our denims (I had a bit of fuzz on my chin and wore an anorak, but my hair was halfway down my back), attracting hostile glances from our fellow passengers as we flicked through our blasphemous purchases. Gav had bought a book on 'Celtic Magic' by the crazed occultist DJ Conway. I was immersed in the Necronomicon Spellbook.

It transpired that most of the book contained only a few references to the Cthulhu Mythos, with various Elder and Outer Gods nattily re-edited as pseudo-Sumerian demons with names such as KUTULU (Cthulhu), ISHNIGGARAB (Shub Niggurath), AZAG-THOTH (Azathoth) or IAK SAKKAK (Yog Sothoth). Nyarlathotep was conspicuous by his absence, perhaps because of his clearly Egyptian name. Otherwise the book was about Marduk, the Babylonian god. As a student of comparative mythology, I was a little concerned that 'Simon', the editor of the tome, insisted on referring to the background mythos as Sumerian, when I knew full well that Marduk hadn't become chief god in Mesopotamia before the days of the Babylonians (The Kassite Dynasty, to be precise). The whole thing seemed like a crazy muddle, a mishmash of Mesopotamian mythology and the Cthulhu Mythos, supposedly written by a Mad Arab in the sixth century AD. But I got a definite kick out of being able to pronounce the name of the spirit Nariluggaldimmerankia without so much as a stutter.

We wended our separate ways, and I went home. I was feeling a bit down, actually, about Hazel. Did she love me or not? I wasn't sure whether I loved her, I hardly knew the girl, but I knew I wouldn't be happy until I was positive that she was panting after me every minute of the day. I flicked idly through the Necronomicon Spellbook, and my eye fell upon the passage concerning the aforementioned unpronounceable one. I hope Magickal Childe will permit me to quote it briefly:

A helpful footnote from the editor explained to the ignorant that 'maskim' and 'rabisu' were demons who caused depression. Feeling a little glum at the time, I stared intently at the relevant seal, and wished things would get better. When nothing happened, I flicked through the book (the 'Book of Fifty Names' from the Simon Necronomicon, for all you Necronomicon anoraks out there) and listened to depressing Nirvana ballads.

The phone rang. My heart pounding, I answered it. It was Hazel. We chatted at length - well, she did, and I grunted at what seemed like appropriate moments. Eventually she rang off, and I went back to my room with a happy smile on my face. I sat down, beaming merrily at the world. Idly, I flicked through the silly old Necronomicon again. My eyes fell on the passage concerning Nariluggaldimerankia.

My heart stopped.

It was true! Without even performing the ritual as suggested, it had worked. Hadn't it? I had been miserable: I had gazed at the seal, muttered the words. Then what had happened had put to flight all the maskim and rabisu that haunted me, and no mistake.

How very odd.

What really perplexed me was the fact that this alleged grimoire, which was so patently a hoax, a forgery, had been so effective. I didn't believe in magic (or magick, either), and I certainly didn't believe in the Cthulhu Mythos.

But it had worked.

And so began my descent into the occult underworld.

3. Four Go Mad on Thurstaston Common

That Easter we went camping in Snowdonia. Of course, since it was the Four (and a few others) it was no normal camping trip. We went to the valley where Phil had told us a North American Indian shaman lived with his tribe. He wasn't there, but what we did and what we met in that valley, on that and subsequent visits, more than made up for his absence. I won't go into the details, since it is a long story, by no means germane to the matter in hand, and besides, would incriminate me. We also came up with the name Primordial Sprog and the Tent Piranhas as a name for the band we had formed (to keep ourselves busy when we weren't role playing or meditating, or even doing our college work). It rained a great deal, the tent flooded, and we squelched home hastily after a couple of days. I remember how a yellow-eyed goat watched our retreat from the slope above with an expression of contempt upon its diabolical visage. Children of the Wild, my arse!

Back in civilisation, we decided it was time for a party. Jim's family were out for the night so we grabbed vast amounts of alcohol and piled down to his place. Dave the Gay Satanist was there too; he seemed to have got over being snubbed by our sect, and was friends with us again. But you should never trust a Satanist.

Dragnet was on TV. We hooted with glee at People Against Goodness And Normalcy, and went on to dance the goat dance with Jim's rug. One drink led to another, Dave tried to seduce everyone except me (I was obscurely insulted by this), an Iron Maiden video freaked me out, I rolled down the stairs, walked through the back gate, and ate half a gateau, (though not necessarily in that order). Very little of this has any direct bearing on the tale in hand, but it provides local colour, and sets the scene for the next escapade.

(Five hundred miles to the north-east, a small stave church near Bergen blazed against the evening sky, the first of many attacks on Norwegian Christianity by Satanic terrorists).

Things went from bad to worse with Hazel, or from nothing very much to not even that. Imagine Sons and Lovers written by HP Lovecraft; that was about the size of it. It never really got anywhere.

I'd told the Four about my magickal experiences. Gav had nodded, and said he'd met much the same kind of uncanniness while messing around with Celtic Magic. Phil took a sterner line, and told me that it was bad karma to cast spells on other people. I would like to have it put on record that I did not cast a spell on the poor girl, I just wanted to shake my mood of depression, and her phone call was instrumental. I'd never considered casting a spell on anyone. Until Phil put the idea in my head.

Yes, so I tried to improve matters between Hazel and I by calling up every blessed spirit in the Book of Fifty Names. There I'd sit in candlelight, gazing at the relevant seal and chanting

as I struggled to bend reality to my will. It worked like a dream, sometimes. But not always. Much like a computer, in that respect.

Phil had his birthday not long after, and lo! it was decreed that he was going to have a party. I decided to invite Hazel, get her horribly drunk and take advantage of the situation. It made sense back then.

Well, as it transpired, it was me who got more than a little tipsy. There was some kind of rift between Gav and Hazel, so I stood in one corner of the room with her, talking to various of Phil's friends, including Jason (who proudly showed me the scars on his wrists where he'd recently attempted to kill himself), while the rest of the Four stood in another corner, as Jim held forth on his latest Egypto-astrological obsessions.

'Now let's get SiriusE I heard Phil demand at one point.

Dave wasn't at the party, as far as I remember, but I heard that he had bumped into Phil recently, and boasted about calling up a demon on the golf-course in the nearby park, to set it on us in revenge for being barred from the sect. I laughed merrily at the notion, and started drinking heavily.

Far be it from me to contradict Lovecraft, but I perosnally think the most merciful thing in the world is the loss of memory that results from a major bender. Let's just say I don't remember much more of the night. It would appear that I flung myself at Hazel, who spurned my alcoholic embrace. Rejected, heartbroken, I proceeded to make a thorough-going arse of myself, vomit everywhere, sob wildly in the toilet, make protestations of love to pretty much everyone, and many other things, with which Phil has never ceased taunting me. Well, it was his party.

They led me home, propped me up in my parents' porch, rang the bell, handed me over like a defecting East German, and scarpered. The next morning I discovered what I'd done.

I rang Hazel later, and she told me that her parents had banned her from seeing me. I suggested we meet in secret. Delicately, she explained that she didn't really want to see me anymore either.

Maskim and rabisu haunted me. I remembered Jason's suicide attempt, and brooded.

I spent a couple of weeks on holiday with my family, up in Scotland. One of my clearest memories is of an evening walk along the banks of the River Ness, in the shadows of the bridge to Inverness, looking bleakly out over the estuary, thinking bitter thoughts. It was a relief to escape, but in some ways I was glad when we got back.

The rest of the Four called a day or two later, looking serious. Apparently, a couple of local hoodlums had waded into Phil for no apparent reason, at the bus stop. Other, equally unpleasant and unlucky things had been happening to the other two. As we mooched down the backroads, Phil put it to us that Dave's demon was responsible. I followed in gloomy silence, contemplating my own misfortunes.

'So what are we going to do?' someone asked. I suggested we cast a counter spell, a spell of protection. How do we do that? they wondered.

I suggested the Necronomicon Spellbook. I think the spirit I mentioned was ASARUALIMMUNNA.

We planned the rite carefully. No seal scribbled on a piece of paper with biro, no tu'penny ha'penny candle from the local shop. The seal would be inked on parchment by Gav, the artist of the group, and the rite would be conducted at the appropriate hour of the night, deep in the woods of Thurstaston Common (a local beauty spot that included Thor's Rock, a large sandstone outcrop rumoured to have been a religious site for the heathen Vikings).

We really thought we knew what we were doing.

On the chosen night, we walked through the fields, over the heath, and into the woods. Phil was leading us. He took us to a small glade in the darkest of the rhododendron thickets, and there we began the rite. Phil cast the circle, using salt and holy water. As the most experienced with this grimoire, I was chosen to be the priest of Marduk, and I chanted the words with the other three chorusing the Sumerian incantations. Then we gazed at the seal of Asarualimmunna, and prayed for protection...

We made our way back home. In the darkness, we heard a shrill, unidentifiable whistling that seemed to follow us. Strange lights were visible occasionally through the trees. It was an eerie journey.

I went to bed later that night, wondering if now we would be safe. Somehow I didn't feel so sureE

4. In Madness You Dwell

But one thing changed, seemingly for the better. Hazel got back in touch with me. 'But only as a friend,' she said firmly. I had different ideas.

They came to nothing, though, and I grew more and more glum. I remember days when I'd do little more than lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. One day, there was a knock on the door and I opened it to an old school friend named Guilfoyle, who'd been off in Ireland for the past year, and I'd heard nothing from him. His sister knew Hazel, and he had told me that she fancied me even before these events began. We caught up, and he asked me how I'd got on with her. I told him everything.

'Don't worry,' he said. 'We'll sort something out.'

He suggested we take her out for a drink, get her drunk, and then she'd be more receptive. I muttered something about having tried that one before, but he paid me no attention. That evening we called on her, and took her off for a walk, plying her, and ourselves, with copious amounts of alcohol. Excellent, I thought. The plan is working.

Things went well until we were walking past our old school, when my friend of many years leaned over to Hazel and passionately kissed her. She returned his kiss with enthusiasm, while I stood looking on open-mouthed, feeling betrayed - by both of them.

Something inside me snapped. I remember little else. I kicked a fence in at one point. I threatened Guilfoyle in graphic terms. A wave of black despair rolled over me, and I turned and left.

I went home and slashed my wrists.

As it happens, your earnest narrator slit them the wrong way, leaving himself with deep gashes in his wrists without actually cutting any arteries. Despite the black cloud that had been gathering over me during previous months, the whole episode had been so out of character that it bewildered me, not to say everyone else who learnt about it.

I called round at Gav's the next day. Phil and Jim were there as well. I told them about the events of the night before. We all looked at each other. If the rite we'd performed had been a protection ritual, it didn't seem to be working. We needed expert advice.

But before we went further, we contacted Dave, and arranged a meeting in a local pub. We awaited his appearance with uncertainty. He turned up at last, and took a seat across from our group. Phil accused him of setting a demon on us.

Despite his earlier claims, Dave denied this.

'Then how do you explain this?' I demanded, drawing back my sleeves to reveal the deep gashes in my wrists.

He stared at them in surprise, and looked at me. I can still remember the way he smiled in delight.

We had no more to discuss. But we still needed to solve the whole problem. Who could help us? Naturally, Phil knew just the person. A white witch of his acquaintance lived in a cottage in the lower village. He left her a note in runes, 'I need help.' She got in touch, and listened to his tale of woe.

Her conclusion was that the whole purpose of the ritual had been entirely reversed because of the ground upon which we had performed it. Thurstaston Common was sacred to Mars, she said, and since he was a negative deity this had meant that rather than protecting us from the attacks of Dave's demon, it had attracted them. I, as leader of the rite, had been possessed by this negative entity, leading to my suicide attempt.

We waited for the most auspicious hour, which was two weeks later. I considered turning myself in to a sanatorium for the duration, but decided against it. My mum would take on so. Then we went up to the top of the nearby hill, in the late summer sun, and burnt the cursed seal of Asarualimmunna with fitting ceremony.

I remember that on the way back to Gav's house we bickered about whether or not the Evil Dead counted as splatterpunk.

The first time I recounted this story was in her friend's dingy flat near the river. I remember how Tracie (short for Tracifer) stared at me in increasing horror as I related the experience, her eyes widening by the second.

I met the others again the next spring or summer, though I didn't see so much of them. They'd got mixed up with spiritualists in Birkenhead - Gav was going out with some old witch - and I really didn't want to know. It wasn't for a few years that we were all in the same room together. By then, Phil had moved into a bed-sit in Birkenhead. Naturally, he held a party and I started drinking heavily. I blacked out and learnt the next morning that I had spent much of the party attacking people. I developed a tendency for similar blackouts whenever we had a little gathering. For many years, I couldn't read HP Lovecraft, or books on Mesopotamian mythology. I also had a strong aversion to role-playing games.

I lent my Necronomicon Spellbook to Phil, who later lent it to Lucie. Many years later we were in her house, and I noticed it on the bookshelf next to copies of the Witch's Bible, the Satanic Bible, and the Hay Necronomicon. I didn't want it back.

By then I had actually read the full-length Simon Necronomicon. Gav and Phil bought a copy at one point. I read it with affected amusement until I reached the chapter on banishings. I think it's possible that I went pale as I read the following words;

***

 

 

Epilogue: Where are they now?

Jim met a half-crazed punk girl in South Wales and vanished beyond mortal ken. Phil became a nomadic Goth before finally settling in Liverpool, where he was last heard of working in the museum. Gav works in Tesco's. I teach English in the same college we attended irregularly back in those crazy adolescent years. We meet up now and then to compare mental scars.

And as for Hazel, and Dave the Gay Satanist; they live now only in my memory.

 

 

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