Year 2024 In Review

Wow, it has been amazing year for me. So much has happened to me, both as a writer and a Witch and Magician that is seems difficult to unravel it all. Yet the year started off with a bang, and had many exciting developments. It also had one powerful disappointment, and that, of course, was the election results. I will briefly say a few words about that event, but mostly, I want to outline the amazing things that happened in the course of the year. Life has been good to me, and there is much to be grateful about, and people to be thankful for helping make this an amazing year for me.

I have been writing all year long, and what I have produced has been truly prodigious. During the year I wrote three books and submitted them to my publisher. These books will be coming out in the next two years. Titles for these books are Abramelin Lunar Ordeal (02/2025), The Magical Notary Art (04/2025), and Liber Artis Archaeomancy (Winter 2026). The manuscript for Liber Artis Archaeomancy turned out to have 217K words, so it will be a large and comprehensive work. Additionally, I have edited and revised Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick (08/2024), Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick (12/2024), and Practical Qabalah for Occultists (previously, Magical Qabalah for Beginners), which is likely to appear in print some time in Spring, 2026. I have completed six literary projects for the year.

However, during the year, I have seen six books printed and released, and these were in the following consecutive order, Sacramental Theurgy for Witches, Transformative Initiation for Witches, Mastering the Art of Witchcraft, Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick, Liber Nephilim, and Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick. My total output for the year 2024 has been ten books, written and edited both last year and this year. That is quite an amazing output. I am thankful that at present, there are no outstanding book projects awaiting me. I have completely cleared my occult book work-desk of all projects, so for the Yule period, I have been writing blog articles and working on the planing stages for next set of books. I have three books projects for 2025, although I will take my time planning, assembling, writing and producing these manuscripts, and then getting contracts and readying the documents for submission. Here is a list of three projects that I have planned for next year - they won’t be released until late 2026 and 2027.

The Gnostic Tetra-Sacramentary: Liturgies and Sacred Rites of the Magician Priestcraft

Since the system of magic that I espouse uses the Mass rite, Benediction, and other sacramental rites, I believe that producing a ritual workbook of the entire collection of rituals that I have used or planned to write should be developed as a manuscript and then published. The four Gnostic theurgical systems in the Order of the Gnostic Star, consisting of Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, each has a Mass rite, a Benediction rite variation, and other sacramental rites, such as the Rite of Naming, Gnostic Wedding, Exorcism, Excommunication, Requiem and the Holy Orders of Deacon and Pontifex ordination would be a part of this liturgical lore. Other ancillary rites would be included, such as the Gnostic Book of Seasons, Mass of the Great Goddess (full version), and the Rite of Beatification, and a Benediction rite to Santa Muerta. A full background to this Gnostic Sacramentary, and the use and obligations of rites of Priestcraft would be fully covered. This manuscript would likely be the first task that I would undertake for 2025 and would likely not be completed until autumn.

Ordeal XV: Rites of Luciferian Ascension

My previous book, Liber Artis Archaeomancy, focused mainly on the Angelic hierarchy and the magic associated with their invocation. However, a ritual magician must also traverse the paths of darkness and undergo the ordeals, and the challenges associated with the Devil in order to be truly and wholly spiritually evolved. One cannot avoid the darkness, especially the darkness of one’s own soul and being. Those who espouse the ways of light and who have not undergone and achieved victory and accommodation with their dark side can never be trusted not to unconsciously exhibit their negative ethos in a subtle and opaque manner. A true initiate must master both the Light and the Darkness to know and master themselves. Ordeal XV divides the darkness into the Gnostic Tetra-Sacramentary of Thelema, Agape, Thanatos and Eros, to develop the ordeals associated with the Involution Avatars Aiwaz/Astoreth, Lucifer/Promethius, Azrael/Samael, and Baalzebul/Pan Priappus. The fifth in this series is Sothis-Set, who are joined together with the four Involution Avatars to produce a tabernacle of darkness where the soul meets its ultimate challenges. This book contains all of the evocation rites and the Five-Fold Inverted Vortex, which is the heart of the chamber of trials. Included are the mystery rites of the Tabernacle of Sothis-Set and the associated Black Rites of expiation, purification, and release. The ordeals are introduced with a full set of background articles and analyses that explain in detail the nature of this ordeal, its purpose and ultimate conclusion. I will be assembling the material and writing this book from late 2025 to Spring of 2026.

Liber Nephilim Additum: Additional Rites of the Enochian Ordeal

While the book Liber Nephilim covered the basic rites needed to evoke the first two chiefs of the Nephilim angels, and also included the evocation of Lilith and other ancillary rites, other components of that working were excluded due to the limitations of the book size and length. There were quite a number of rituals and lore left behind. This book seeks to gather together all of the additional material that was not included in the original book. This book is broken into three parts, representing the topical areas that contained important but excluded ritual workings. The first part will contain the rituals for invoking the Enochian Bonarum, which I called the Binary Planetary Intelligences. I invoked seven consecutively to form a powerful planetary ordeal, with the eight workings invoking the ruling spirit Camara. Included would be diary entries of that ordeal. The second part would be the instructions and rites involved in the Enneagrammic Goddess Gateway working, representing the gate structure used in the Enochian Ordeals. The third part of the book would contain the additional rituals for the evocation of Turiel, Ramat’el, and Samael, the invocations of Seth and Enoch, the Enochian Mystery Vortex Rite, and the Convocation rites of Lilith and Enoch. The diaries for some of the workings would also be included. I may also consider including evocation rites for Lilith’s sisters and demonic queens, although there would not be associated diaries for those spirits. I would not begin to assemble, edit and write this manuscript until after Spring 2026.

***

So, those three project will take me into the middle of 2026, not including the final editing passes and other pre-production tasks. Much of this lore is already written, but other parts will need to written and everything will have to be revised and edited before it is ready for submission. We are looking at a lot of work that will need to be accomplished, and that will also depend on how things are going with me in terms of my health, day-job demands, and the likely relocation that will happen sometime in late 2025 or early 2026.

As for traveling and teaching this year, I attended the ConVocation convention last February and taught two classes. I taught a six-week series at Mama Luna’s occult book store in Richmond, based on the book Mastering the Art of Witchcraft beginning in April and extending into May. I attended and was the headliner at the Swamp Mystics mini convention in Tallahassee, FL. I also had a book tour in New Orleans in early November that was modestly successful, and I got to meet some exceptional folks who live there. I had wanted to revisit NOLA when I had first went down there in November 2023, and coincidentally, I was able to visit again almost a year later. I had promised myself to return, and that happened, thanks to the folks at Cross Crow Books.

For the coming year, I may teach my six-week class again, and visit a few more local occult book stores, I will certainly be returning to ConVocation this coming February, but I don’t have much plans beyond those events. The coming year will be one where I focus on the home front, since my wife is working out of town during the week days, and only is able to come home on the weekends. Because we have six cats and a dog, and my wife is absent during the week, it makes things more difficult for me to be away from home. That will change after we relocate, of course.

I will be relocating to a new home, and a priority for me will be getting a room for a permanent temple, and having a private outdoor location to host a grove would be a nice touch. I have been living in a small house since May 2018, and I have not been able to establish a place to work ordeal magic. I am planning on changing that situation, but the details of how that will happen, when and where, will have to be determined. There is a lot of magical work that I have left unfinished, so I would like to have the opportunity to finish these magical projects and formulate some a new ordeals. While I still have my health, I want to explore and experiment with new magical lore and additional magical ordeals. Of course, all of this work will feed into additional books, so that work will likely keep going until I can no longer write or have anything to write about.

All of these writing projects, relocating, getting temple space to work ritual magic, are quite exciting and makes me very happy and optimistic about my future. I have a great paying job, my wife is fully employed, and the future is looking to be very exciting. There is also the possibility of travel to Europe and Asia, and maybe even turning my literary talents to writing fiction once I finally retire. I hope to live many years yet to come, and there are still many adventures awaiting me. In January 2025, I will turn 70 years old, but I still feel pretty good for my age, and there may be many possibilities if I can manage to keep my health.

I am not happy or optimistic about the fate of our nation, since the election appeared to be about overcoming the status quo and exercising anger at the state of economy and at the sequestering that occurred due to the Covid19 pandemic at the ballot box. Since Democrats were nominally in charge during that period, especially the POTUS, people foolishly decided to punish them in the election. Over the last four years we have had a very competent presidential administration and until the mid-term elections, we have had reasonably good government. Now that a majority of the American people have voted to elect Donald J. Trump to another four year term, that period of seemingly good governance will evaporate. I am beside myself with concern and worry because despite all of the facts known about Trump, people still voted for him, somehow thinking that he will make things better, particularly with the state of the economy. As it will likely turn out, they will be proven wrong with a vengeance. Trump doesn’t represent either the middle class nor the down-trodden people who feel that the nation is no longer concerned with their difficulties, whether economic or social. Trump is a transactional politician who truly represents the oligarchic class, and it is they who impacted the election and ensured that he would be re-elected POTUS.   

While some will blame the Democratic Party for completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting the will of the people, there were many who did vote against Trump and the Republican Party. There was also a significant group of people who could have voted but didn’t vote for various reasons. Would they have made a difference? Possibly, but we will never really know. People were angry about inflation, which was caused by a post-pandemic economic recovery and also corporate greed. People were also angry about being forced to wear masks and about the confusion associated with the nature of Covid19, that it was a new kind of virus and not enough was initially known about it. Of course, when Trump was president, he allowed, through his inactivity and lack of planning, over one million to die, and also helped to spread misinformation about various cures and that masks were ineffective. Biden’s administration pushed forward the actual plan that not only helped to reduce the effect of Covid19, but also ensured that the economy was able to recover with less troubles than other countries in the world. The fact of the matter is that president Biden got little positive press for cleaning up the mess that Trump left behind, and spent two years undoing what Trump had done in his four years as president.

Our main stream press is owned and operated by the donor class, and after just a few months, they had basically written off Biden and his presidency, and proceeded to ignore all of the good that he was doing in favor of pointless criticisms and blame for whatever was not immediately fixed and made efficient once again. They created a hostile environment that helped to tank Biden’s favorability while white-washing and sane-washing Donald Trump. The press is mostly responsible for Biden’s poor popularity, since they focused on what was not working or wrong and seldom mentioned all of the things that he and his administration had accomplished, which was probably more than what any recent president had achieved.

Whatever troubles happened domestically, Biden and the Democrats had mostly fixed. International crises, such as the invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza and Lebanon, were more difficult to manage, as foreign policy typically is to any administration. The crisis in the Middle East showed that the government of Israel was not interested in working with the Biden administration, even though they had the complete support of the U.S. I abhor Hamas, Hezbolah, and the Houthis for their terrorist activities and starting and intensifying the conflict with Israel, but I also abhor the government of Israel, who have become terrorists in their own way. It is a no win scenario, and I cannot blame Biden too much for supporting Israel, since not to support them would have been political suicide during an election year.

However, as it turned out, the donor class and the oligarches did not want either Biden or any Democratic candidate to win in 2024, since they believed that a more friendly and transactional Trump would be a better replacement. I believe that the only thing that I am critical of regarding Biden is that he shouldn’t have sought a second term and thereby allowed a younger and more energized political group of Democrats to be weeded out and ultimately selected through the primary process. Having a democratic process occur during the year 2023 and 2024 for the Democratic Party might have eclipsed the effect that Trump was having on the electorate with help from the media moguls. Whether that would have been sufficient to defeat Trump at the polls is debatable, yet considering that Harris came close to defeating Trump with only 100 days to campaign indicates that it could have happened that way. Still, thinking about the possibilities doesn’t change the reality that in January we will be getting a second dose of Trump and his MAGA miscreants.

For some reason people have written off the dangers of having someone like Trump in charge of our nation for another four years. I am thankful that he can’t run again, and that many who came out to vote for him this time might not have voted at all if it was someone else running without his celebrity status. However, I believe that he will cause a lot of damage to our nation and the world at large based on his various statements about domestic and foreign policy. Additionally, it seems that Trump’s choices for cabinet members and close advisors represent a wealthy group of oligarches whose role in government will represent a massive conflict of interest. Trump is very transactional, and for his wealthy supporters, the pay-off will be their ability to grift the nation and make it all legal and acceptable. We, the people, are in for a rough four years, all because of a large number of ill-informed and misguided individual voters.

A Canadian journalist has pretty much defined our moment with the following quotation.

“There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.” Written by Andrew Coyne

While I have a certain amount of excitement for my own personal future, I am quite aware that many others will not be doing so well. It is my hope that the incoming administration and the trifecta of their control of the government shows them as over-reaching, overly ambitious, incompetent and overall, a failure to make any significant changes. That is my hope for my nation in the coming years. I also hope that a lot of people think about what they have done to vote for Trump and the Republican Party, knowing that these people care nothing for those who aren’t wealthy or members of the oligarchy. Maybe having some painful experiences will be a good lesson in how to use their vote to help their own interests instead of listening to pundits and politicians who lie, cheat, steal and who pretend to be compassionate to the powerless and the advocate of the under-represented. Republicans, as a rule, represent a status quo that is all about the donor class, and no one else.

Frater Barrabbas

 

 

 

 

 

 

Calends Meditations and Insights

The year 2023 is coming to an end, and there is much to be thankful for and to acknowledge successes and also some failures. However, there is a great deal of potential awaiting me in the coming year, and I also suspect that significant outcomes will occur deciding the fate of our nation. I won’t talk about politics in this article, since I have already discussed that topic in a previous article. What I will focus on are the personal struggles that I have waged over the course of the year, and the outcomes that can be realized as specifically magical, spiritual, and metaphysical. I am also aware of the fact that I am getting older and more prone to illness as the years progress, and that I am in the autumn period of my life. I will have good days of brilliant sunshine and amazing clarity, and other times will be dark, gloomy, confusing and sad as I contemplate what I have failed to accomplish or what still evades me after years of effort.

Therefore, let me celebrate and commiserate the highs and lows of my life in the calends of the year 2023, and seek to see clearly into the coming year 2024 and beyond. As I have said, the coming year will be an important mile-stone for me, and one that I can celebrate as an amazing accomplishment by itself. My dream to make much if not all of my magical lore available for anyone who would seek to perform it is becoming fully realized. This was one of my spiritual and magical objectives set upon me by my personal Goddess and the agency of my Higher Self, one that I struggled for years to achieve. I lacked the writing skills to make this happen when first the mandate was delivered to me, and I had to spend more than a decade of writing to finally get to the point where I could actually write up this lore into books that were intelligible to the occult reading public. Few would guess that I was a poor writer, barely able to put my ideas down on paper unless it was a ritual. I couldn’t spell very well and my writing skills were awkward and clumsy. Over time, that changed, but I had a long way to go before I managed to achieve the level of writing that I now possess. It was a hard earned skill, that’s for certain.

So, I have six books coming out in 2024, and I should be thrilled by that fact, but in some ways I am not as excited as I should be. The reason for this blunting of my enthusiasm is simple. I have been sick off and on again since late September. It’s hard to get too excited when your health really is n poor shape. Some of this is because I have become more sedentary than I should be, but writing books and functioning as a data warehouse architect requires me to sit at my desk for long periods of time. However, that is just an excuse I should try to overcome if I expect to live through my 70's without any serious illness because I am doing so little to manage my health. What will ultimately happen is based on genetics, of course, but these potential diseases can be mitigated through exercise and getting out more often into nature, and traveling around this marvelous state where I currently reside. I have made promises to myself that I have not fulfilled, so now I realize all too well what will be my fate if I continue to procrastinate regarding getting more physically active. I caught a lower tract flu in late September, then got a really bad cold in October which mutated into bronchitis, and then pneumonia. Right now, I am recovering from pneumonia, and it is a hard slog to get back to having a reasonable healthy body. That series of illnesses are a warning to me that I better change my basic habits if I want to avoid more of the same, or even worse occurrences.

One thing that saddens me somewhat is that I don’t have a temple to work my magic and to celebrate my connection with the Deities and the mysteries of light and darkness, life and death. All I can do is meditate in a quiet space in my office. This is the first time in decades that I don’t have a temple, and it means that there is a lot of new lore that I could be developing, experimenting with new approaches to working magic, and engaging in new ordeals that have presented themselves to me as I have been writing up my lore. The last set of major workings that I performed was in 2017, prior to the change in my career that had me working and traveling to Richmond, VA, where I now live. The house that we bought in Richmond was new and well-built, but it lacked the space for a real temple, and the extra bedroom became an office for my wife so she could seek to expand her career and become the main contributor to our household.

My job status has stabilized and I can continue in my current role beyond 2026. I won’t have to deal with getting laid off or terminated anytime in the future, so at least that part of my life is in a good state. Still, I miss my old home where I had a large temple and an outdoor grove. That place is where I performed some of most significant magical workings of my life as a ritual magician, and that is saying a lot. What I realize is that my current home is likely a temporary location, and that in time I will find a new home that can accommodate my need for a temple.

The pandemic made my relocation to Richmond quite complicated, since it forced me to be sequestered for two years. Since I have allergies and I am elderly, I felt that it was prudent not to expose myself too much to the public except where necessary, such as going to stores and buying groceries or other needed items. Due to the demands of my job, I had not started to reach out to the community and get acquainted with the Witches, Pagans and Occultists living in my community when the pandemic occurred. I did attempt to work with a local OTO body, but the body master was a control freak and unable to allow the members of the group to share their knowledge and experiences, and this turned out to be something that I decided not to invest any further time. I did meet a few interesting people, and I have continued to be connected with them, but overall, I have failed to make any important impact on my community.

I am living in the same location as other many other folks, many of whom are beginners, but I am unknown to them, and that is wholly my fault. I was slow to get out from the pandemic sequestration, and I have not yet become a known personality in my community. You would think that with as much knowledge and experience that I have to give to others that I would have, by now, made inroads into my community and made myself available to teach and share with others what I know. That hasn’t happened yet, and it is one of my failures.

What I can at least take consolation from are my book writing projects and the fact that I have a new publisher who treats me like a Rock Star. I am hoping that sentiment continues into the next year, and there is no reason to think that it will change. Blake and Wycke Malliway, and their publishing company, Crossed Crow Books, understand that I am at a point in my writing career where I can produce new books quickly and efficiently, particularly because I have three decades of material to assemble, edit and pull together into publishable books. While Llewellyn trained me for a decade on how to write occult books, the CCB publishers are the one’s that are reaping what I learned during that period of indenture. It seems sad to me that a year ago I was still solidly a Llewellyn author, and although they still have four of my books in print, I cannot rely on them to publish any of my new manuscripts because they are so outside of what they typically publish. So, CCB will acquire the benefits of my mastery of the art of writing occult books and it is my hope that they prosper accordingly. The books that I write in the coming years will contain the magical workings and techniques that I am most excited about, since I have now established a foundation of work for all to use in order to make this newly available lore accessible and useful.

For the coming year, I am planning on making an appearance at Convocation in Ann Arbor, MI, which is happening on February 22, 2024. I am going because my publishers are paying for my travel and accommodation for this event. They have also taken care of my registration and set me up to teach two classes there. I will write another article to give more information about this event as we get closer to the time when it will be held. I am quite amazed that my publishers have afforded me this privilege, and it only shows that they have a great deal of reguard for my work and what I am seeking to share with my reading public. Llewellyn would never have spent that kind of money on me, even though they are a much larger company. In fact, I found that Llewellyn treats their authors rather cheaply, and this has been a factor for decades. Maybe it makes some business sense to be this way, but it is much more a corporatist mind-set that is all too common in our post modern world. So, I am glad that I am considered a valuable author and treated well by my current publishers.

Other travels for the coming year would likely include a return to New Orleans with an emphasis on marketing my books. I would like to travel there sometime in October or November after my book “Liber Nephilim” has been released, and make that a focus of my trip. I was enthralled with NOLA, and it seemed like such a very Witchy friendly place. I have some friends who have occult contacts in that town with Witches, healers and the local chapter of the OTO. I intend on making the most of being there and meeting with as many people as possible. I will seek to do some book signings and maybe even a couple of classes. I have discussed this possibility with my publishers and seems likely that they will also be interested in traveling there at the same time and see if the witchcraft oriented stores would stock more CCB books on their shelves. I think that event would be quite amazing, and I look forward to exploring it for the coming year.

Another amazing event that has occurred to me is that I have met the owner of a local occult bookstore who is interested in working with me and also getting trained and initiated as a Witch. It was something that I had not been looking for and it just dropped into my hands. I won’t name any names or identify the store, but all I can say is that this person is strikingly knowledgeable and mature in her work as a Witch and a Pagan. Being the owner of an occult bookstore has the option of meeting nearly everyone in the community who is following this path, so it would be likely that through this person, I might be able to finally connect with my community. There is a great deal of potential that might happen through this chance meeting, but until my health improves, I cannot spend the time to determine how it will work out, so I must wait until the coming year and the holidays are over. Then, if I have healed up sufficiently from my bout of pneumonia, I should be able to move forward with developing this relationship and helping this person gain whatever I have that can aid the process of self-validation and enrichening the path of Witchcraft with advanced forms of ritual magic.

Thus, there is a lot of potential on my horizon for the coming year. A lot of good change is coming my way, and I am looking forward to meeting it with all of the positive energy that I can muster. I am an optimist by nature, so feeling down or depressed is always a temporary state for me. There is much to be thankful for in the closing of this year, but also very much to look forward to in the coming year. Thinking about it all energizes me and makes me feel a lot more happy, just in time for this festive season.

Bright Blessings to One and All this Winter Solstice Season 2023.

Frater Barrabbas

New Orleans and the Autumn People

 

I just got back from my six day visit to New Orleans, and I am still feeling the effects of that visit. NOLA is a very magical place, and it has captured my heart in ways that I would not have expected. After walking many hours through the French Quarter, listening to wonderful Blues and Jazz music, saw the grave of Marie Leveau and toured the grave yard, and explored several occult bookstores all within walking distance from each other, I can say that I am quite enchanted.

No other city that I have ever visited pridefully advertised itself as the locale of Voodoo and Witchcraft. Not to mention that it is a place where you can find and satisfy nearly any vice imaginable, whether legal or illegal. It is a place frequented by witches, sorcerers, voodoo practitioners, vampires, werewolves, the rich, the famous, tourists from nearly everywhere, and the poor and the homeless, too.

There is a superficiality promoted to the tourists and visitors, and there is a darker underground where resides the real practitioners of the forbidden arts. The food is astonishingly good everywhere, from cheap sidewalk vendors to expensive upper-class restaurants. And everywhere is an overflowing abundance of mixed drinks, from tailored and timeless Sazerac and Absinthe, to disgustingly sweet daiquiris. There are plenty of people getting alcoholized at all times of the day and night.

While fundamentalist Christians would be horrified at the excesses and dark reputation of the Big Easy, I found it completely charming and even beguiling. It was an insightful experience for me, and I feel as if I have found a second home. A Witch walking the streets of the French Quarter is almost as ubiquitous as a Muslim walking the streets of Cairo. Or at least that is how it felt to me. I saw lots of people dressed up in Goth clothing, with obvious occult tattoo subjects inked on their bodies, talking about their latest Tarot card reading or the book of spells that they are reading. These were also local folk, with some tourists gawking at them as if they were some kind of exotic and weird species of hominid.

Two of my favorite stores were the Esoterica Occult Goods and Sassy Magick. We looked over the premier Witch store Hexe, but I found that it was blatantly pimping its owner, Christian Day, and his forgettable book on Necromancy. We are talking about two sets of shelves, from floor to ceiling containing just copies of his book. Another set of shelves had the book written by his lover about beginning Witchcraft. I found that presentation to be a sad example of an over stuffed ego versus a genuine desire to promote many writers and perspectives. He could have had a small table with his books and those of his lover, but multiple shelves? Anyway, Esoterica was a very friendly place without the hype of Hexe, with lots of interesting books and products. The same could be said of Sassy Magick, which now has two stores within blocks of each other. I would recommend these stores, but not so much the over hyped Hexe.

 

 

While strolling around the French Quarter, I saw a number of really beautiful buildings decorated in the old classic style, upper story galleries with wrought iron railings, shuttered doors, and occasional glimpses at garden courtyards adorned with flowers, pools and fountains. This is where old wealth lived and congregated. I had an impression of being in one of these courtyards with a select group of people, performing a magical conjuration, with dim gas lights and candles illuminating a sequestered domain in the dark of the night. It was a brief vision, and I don’t know if it is based on some premonition, or just my fanciful imagination. Perhaps if I returned some day and spend some time in New Orleans, I might just discover this to be a premonition instead of just a day-dream. Needless to say, the book store owners informed me that my books were so popular that they couldn’t keep them on the shelves, especially the book “Spirit Conjuring for Witches,” but the others were popular as well. I didn’t have time to meet anyone for any length of time, but I intend on going back next year and making some further connections there. It seem like a welcoming place for me to explore. 

 

New Orleans is a tourist town and is geared to promoting memes and themes that help draw in visitors from all over the world. There are lots of events, venues, hotels, eating and drinking establishments, live entertainment of every stripe, and many locations that hearken back to a more French provincial colony kind of existence, a veritable window into a time long past. That past, while seemingly picturesque and charming to today’s visitors represented a time of inequality, slavery, persecution, exploitation, and the illicit mixing of races, religions and cultures. There were dark places and times in those days where unspeakable cruelty reigned all the while the class system was white-washed with Catholic morality and white race superiority. While slavery has disappeared, inequality has grown over the decades, and now there is once again a servant class serving the needs of the well healed along with the neglected and dispossessed homeless who are abundantly seen throughout the town. New Orleans has its superficial charm that is consumed by the tourists, and it has a dark underworld of predation and despair.

Ray Bradbury described what he called the Autumn People in his book “Something Wicked Comes This Way” and I think that it brilliantly applies to my perceptions of New Orleans. How curious it is that I visited this town in the “autumn.”

“For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth....Such are the autumn people.”

At the very bottom of New Orleans, striving up from the crumbling above-ground cemeteries to the gritty taverns, gentlemen’s clubs, seedy bars, and secret gathering places of predators, sorcerers, witches, pagans, vampires, despoiled Christians, drug addled or drunken victims and the vagrant and pathetic, filthy homeless, are the autumn people who quietly lurk and inhabit the town while mindless and heedless tourists flitter about them. It is a fascinating place, but despite the hype and whimsey about witchcraft, voodoo and sorcery, there is a true bedrock of practitioners and cultists living invisibly amongst the visible tourist traps and party atmosphere. That is the New Orleans that I love and seek to know better in the future. It may be in my autumn years that I have discovered this wondrous place, but perhaps I may have some adventures there in the future. Only time will tell.

Frater Barrabbas