The Spectre Garden

The Spectre Garden, neon railed, surrounds us. Its mind animals displayed. Before us is the habitat of an Enochian Angel, summoned first by Edward Kelly in the sixteenth century, whose utterances terrified the seer, that afterwards abandoned magic. Now, at our approach, a quickening of ultraviolet, shivering veil-shape, womanness upon the brink of form, solidify her, name her, call her, Bay-al-a-tay, Bay-al-a-tay...

(I) The Enochian Angel Of The 7th Aethyr
"I am the Daughter of Fortitude and ravished every hour from my youth. For behold, I am understanding, and science dwelleth in me, and the heavens oppress me. They cover and desire me with infinite appetite, for none that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the circle of the stars, and covered with the morning clouds. My feet are swifter than the winds, and my hands are sweeter than the morning dew. My garments are from the beginning and my dwelling place is in myself. The lion knoweth not where I walk, neither do the beasts of the field understand me. I am deflowered, yet a virgin. I sanctify and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me, for in the night season I am sweet, and in the day full of pleasure. My company is a harmony of many symbols and my lips sweeter than health itself. I am a harlot for such as ravish me, and a virgin for such as know me not. Purge your streets, O ye sons of men, and wash your houses clean. Make yourselves holy and put on righteousness. Cast out your old strumpets and burn their clothes, and then I'll bring forth children unto you and they shall be the sons of comfort in the age that is to come.”

Behind, the fans of slatted light and feathered rays recede. The shock and tingle of her afterpresence. Elmo's fire about the nerve ends. On into this dream menagerie amongst the spore of visionary beasts. A track of jades and garnets puddled deep, drags at our heels like estuary sand. Ahead, a haunted maze of glass where is the Demon Regent called Asmodeus, charisma without subject, who, in antique Persia loved a princess, slew her seven suitors on their wedding night in jealousy, was banished into Egypt. Strange attractor ripples in the forebrain, as we near. His algebraic beauty is insufferable.

(II) The Demon Regent Asmodeus
Symmetry becomes it.
Come to ruin our impending feast,
a presence that nourishes suffering.
All things below voice his burning name.
His turmoil offers only truth in which longer moments live.
Let consciousness recapture the flicker it saw then.
Torch our continuity of thought
now until that mind evaporates.
Lust after shadows in us,
rend that lace of promises broken and white lies,
regard our love of wreckage,
the way our heads thunder approaching that warning pulse
and temple of throbbing light that is Asmodeus.

Asmodeus is that light throbbing of temple and pulse
warning that approaching thunder heads our way.
the wreckage of love,
our regard lies white and broken,
promises of lace that rend us
in shadow, after lust evaporates.
Mind that until now thought of continuity,
our torch, then saw it flicker.
The recapture, consciousness let live moments longer,
which, in truth, only offers turmoil.
His name burning, his voice below things.
All suffering nourishes that presence.
A feast impending. Our ruin to come.
It becomes symmetry.

Beyond the shuddering Rorschach, the magnetic walls of Hell's Ninth Duke, our cinder path of precious stones gives way to fine blonde sand. The demon chill to dry and desiccated warmth. We close upon the last of the imaginary beings manifested here within this garden of appearances. Three separate phyla, Angel, Demon and, at last, a Deity.

Asleep amongst giant tumbled stones, eroded and decalcified, rests Glycon. Last created of the Roman gods. His form is of a serpent. Taller than a man when risen up, with human ears and nostrils, lidded chinks for eyes. His golden hair in ringlets, curling from his scalp. Proceed with caution. This is old power. And the idea of a God, a real idea.

(III) The Deity Glycon
His dry cheek sleeping flat against cold rock, he waits the vital hot of dawn, even to think, even to think. No gap between sun and that reason which it represents. The parched air oiled with myrrh, a depthless, lidless dark before awakening, but pin lit, scented, pearled in thousands, naked brainstem, arid spine of lightning, fossil stripes the white dunes outside time, his belly filled with understanding, jewel and poison. Call him. Saying "Sweet One". Saying "Master". Call him "Father of the Garden." Shivered warmth of scale half felt inside us. Whispering brush and slither wind the cortex. Fixed eye mad and needle sparked with figment. Flickering kiss and hair of sticky gold. It rears against the roar of noon and knows with slitted gaze when are we breathless in the coils of God.