I Shall Endure To The End

Literally so!

Advancing a long stalled tale. I've got a better idea where to go with this now.

In which Crowley and Aziraphile encounter the romanticks, mysticks and would-be Mages of the fin de siècle….

Paris, the morning of 18th March 1314.

Crowley sighed, with a heavy heart. He'd have much preferred not to be here. But Hell had insisted. The throng of close-packed mediaeval bodies in a typical mediaeval city was irritating his nasal passages, for one thing. And several thousand had gleefully turned up in this particular place, all intent on the elaborate street theatre that was about to happen. Even though he could professionally appreciate the heady cocktail of joyous anticipation, the psychic miasma of sin which was in its way a bouquet to his demonic senses, the way in which practically everyone down there was bringing something to the party for Hell to rejoice in, it was the heavy constant stench of everyday life that was making him feel queasy. And the Seine, that stinking open sewer of a river, was adding its own unmistakeable perfume to the day. Even up here on this expensively-rented balcony, Crowley could smell everything.

What a bloody way to spend a Friday, he thought. But They insisted somebody be here to Observe.

He turned to the associate his hosts only knew as a guest from outside the city. Crowley had introduced him as Le Seigneur B. à Phomèt. Monseigneur à Phomèt was currently heavily cloaked and shrouded. Anyone looking at him from the outside might see a well-sculptured face and a very appropriate goatee beard underneath the hood. He also walked strangely. This was put down, by Crowley, to not-properly-healed war wounds from a Crusade.

"Barbaric, isn't it?" à Phomèt remarked, indicating the elevated stake and the pyre. They were set on a small islet in the river, known as The Island of Jews. The crowd was gathering to watch on the banks.

Crowley shrugged.

"And the thing is, they thought of it all by themselves." he replied. "Just because the Bible says Hell is a place of sulphur and brimstone they leapt to the conclusion that it must be alight. Or at least molten."

His colleague nodded. The strange shapes underneath the baggy hood moved oddly with his head.

"So they give people they single out a little taste of fiery Hell. Just to encourage the others. And the irony is that Jacques was a good man. It'll still be Heaven who claims him."

"Shame about Jacques." Crowley agreed. "More strength of character and guts than the Pope. And certainly a lot more honest than King Philip."

They watched the crowd pick up interest and expectantly watch the boat-borne procession of condemned heretic, guards and priests on its way to the scaffold. Cries of "Heretic!" and "Burn the blasphemer!" picked up around the crowd. The condemned man, however, moved with immense dignity. He somehow managed to convey the idea that he'd have walked taller and prouder if he hadn't spent most of the previous five years being tortured.

Crowley sighed again. You really got to see humanity at its worst in this job.

"I think I'm getting the idea." à Phomèt remarked. "His expression clouded. "I think…" His legendary uncertainty asserted itself. "I think they want to see a man burn to death. They want to take pleasure in it."

Crowley nodded. There had to be some consolations. He was watching thousands of people each rushing to take up a tiny piece of a massive collective sin that would tarnish their souls. And he hadn't needed to do a damn thing.

"But most of all, each one of them is delighted it's not them on that stake. So they're shouting even louder."

They watched as silence was enforced and the executioners tied the condemned man to the stake. He looked out with fierce pride as the crimes were read out.

That he'd conspired against God and the Pope. That he'd cheated King Philip, his liege-lord, out of untold wealth. And that the proscribed organisation called the Knights Templar, of which the accused had been head, had been a front for hideous blasphemy, sodomy, and recantation of Christ in favour of worship of the demon Baphomet.

Monseigneur B à Phomèt preened himself and looked proud.

"Well, at least that last bit's true." he said, modestly. "Thanks to you, Crowley."

"Hmm. Not sure about the sodomy, though." Crowley replied. There had been some real macho men among the Knights Templar.

Monseigneur B. à Phomèt looked tolerantly at his fellow demon.

"Inevitable, really. A cloistered monastic order. A fighting order. Men in peak physical condition. Warrior-monks. No women. Working in the Middle East where social mores are different. They learnt a lot from the Saracens. Besides, I couldn't really object, could I?"

"No." Crowley agreed, thinking about his fellow demon. "No. You couldn't."

And the crowd hushed as, according to custom, Jacques de Molay, last Head of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, commonly known as the Knights Templar, was offered the inviolable custom of voicing his last words. Several thousand people and two demons listened as in a carrying voice belying his physical torment, de Molay cursed those who had consigned good innocent men to death and unjustly taken their lands and monies. And a silent square listened.

"Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort!"

Crowley reassembled the French into words that made more sense.

"God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death!"

De Molay cursed the King and the Royal House of France down all its generations and prophesised that the last King of France would die here, executed by the people of France…

And then, urged on by a frantic nobleman, he was gagged. Shortly afterward it all ended in fire and flame. For now.

Crowley and Baphomet shared a bottle of wine. They agreed that humans under stress or at the point of death may receive the gift, from Satan-knows-where, of true prophecy. After all, if they're on the point of death, that silences them pretty effectively, in accordance with the directive for Heaven or Hell to squash that sort of thing flat. And thousands of people would remember.

And so the demon Baphomet returned to the infernal regions to report back. For now.

Pope Clement V, who had ordered Jacques de Molay to be arrested and inquisitioned for heresy, died a month later on April 20th, 1314. Whilst his body was lying in state in the cathedral, lightning struck the building causing a fire which destroyed it. The fire was so intense that the Pope's body was cremated, leaving only ash and whitened bone.

King Philip IV went hunting in November 1314. The man who had brought actions against the Knights Templar simply to evade repayment of his massive debts to them (he had expelled all Jews from France for the same reason) was seen to fall from his horse thrashing in spasmodic fits. He died some agonizing hours later in a manner consistent with a massive stroke, or a ruptured blood vessel in the brain. His son Louis became King of France after him.

Paris, 21st January, 1793.

Crowley looked down from the balcony overlooking Revolution Square. La Place de la Revolution was crowded with thousands of people. Revolutionary Guardsmen lined a processional route and closely guarded the scaffold. He sighed, with a heavy heart. He'd have much preferred not to be here. But Hell had insisted. The throng of close-packed bodies in a typical eighteenth-century city was irritating his nasal passages, for one thing. And several thousand had gleefully turned up in this particular square, all intent on the elaborate street theatre that was about to happen. Even though he could professionally appreciate the heady cocktail of joyous anticipation, the psychic miasma of sin which was in its way a bouquet to his demonic senses, the way in which practically everyone down there was bringing something to the party for Hell to rejoice in, it was the heavy constant stench of everyday life that was making him feel queasy. And the Seine, that stinking open sewer of a river, was adding its own unmistakeable perfume to the day.

Crowley felt he'd been here before.

He looked over to the river, past the square, and frowned. That little islet in the river looked familiar from somewhere. Never mind, he'd place it. Not important. Paris, like everywhere else, had grown and changed with the centuries. He caught a whiff of unwashed clothes and stale bodies. But not to the point where they'd discovered the secret of soap yet. Heigh-ho.

Sanson, the civic executioner, stood impassive on the platform by the machine, awaiting the arrival of his client. Crowley studied the device, marvelling at the way the humans had devised a way of speeding and industrialising execution, deskilling it somewhat, taking out all that long and tedious training a man had to undergo to swing an axe or a sword. Now all a relatively untrained person had to do was to pull a lever, then signal for some muscle to pull the blade up again. And he'd had nothing to do with it. This was something else they'd innovated all by themselves.

And then the carriage arrived, with little fuss or fanfare, and the crowd hushed as the short stocky man, with a weak face and little apparent chin, was helped down. Spurning assistance, he walked up the steps himself without hesitation and stood back as the charges were read. Crowley listened with half an ear. His last words were to forgive his executioners and to express what he feared was a forlorn hope, that his blood being shed on the soil of France would not usher in an age of French blood spilt by the gallon at home and on battlefields abroad.(1) His words were drowned by a massive fanfare of drums, and Sanson led the King to his death.

The blade of the guillotine dropped and there was a sickening spray of blood. In the hushed silence, as the crowd realised the sheer enormity of what the Revolution had done, that the King himself could be executed as a common criminal, when even the women knitting at the foot of the guillotine paused to look up, there was a single carrying voice from the crowd.

"Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!"

It took Crowley a second or two to recall who Jacques de Molay had been. Then he remembered. Especially about the prophecy made at the point of death.

Crowley did not stick around for Marie Antoinette's execution in October. No point, really.

Craven Cottage, Fulham, London. 1870.

Crowley had been working with the impressive French occultist Eliphaz Levi, born as Alphonse Constant, for some years now. Events in France had, malheureusement, forced Levi to take exile in England, temporarily. Paris was currently under siege by the Prussians in the culmination of what for France had been a short, disastrous, war with their mighty neighbour. The Germans had rolled all over the country with the speed and power of lightning during a storm and were awaiting the coup de grace, for the city holding on against all logic and reason to surrender itself. It was not a congenial place to be, and Levi had gratefully accepted an invitation from his English patron, the milord Bulwer-Lytton, to reside indefinitely. Crowley had equally gratefully returned to his London apartment and was now a welcome guest in Fulham, where a circle of suitably mystically inclined intellects debated the eternal secrets.

Only Levi knew anything at all of the real truth about Crowley. Bulwer-Lytton and the others understood the congenial but slightly sinister man in their midst to be a fellow scholar, a student of eternal truth, a high-degree Mason, and in all probability an initiate of several magickal paths. They thought the same about the wonderfully erudite antiquarian bookseller, Mr A. Ziraphile, who was known to keep the most marvellous collection of Bibles and biblical scrolls from down the centuries. Something of a biblical scholar, he was also renowned for his collection of epigraphia, apocrypha and pseudopigraphia, all the works of religion that were contemporary to the Bible, were commentaries on Scripture, or else were the disputed books that had not made it into the final version but which the Church still considered had merit for teaching and reverential purposes. Although Mr Ziraphile was known on the surface to be purse-lipped and disapproving, many of the pseudopigraphical works necessarily overlapped the area of the occult, of mysticism and magick, of Rosicrucianism, and the most mystic and majestic Quabbalah. Why, he even had, among his curios, Arabic writings from the Sufi school of Islamic mysticism, and in the very best preserved state, what looked like original Egyptian parchments, which he showed to few. Levi, who could be a touchy and volatile man to those outside his circle, assiduously cultivated the scholar with the intention of getting close to this treasure-trove of arcane knowledge. The antiquarian had – sometimes – allowed him access to selected books and scrolls so as to further his researches. But not often.

That evening an elderly German composer was fuming on about the damned Jews and how they were stifling all originality in music. The wretched Hebrews controlled all aspects of the entertainment business, he complained. They owned the music printers who published the scores. They owned the theatres that performed the music. They owned the newspapers that dictated public taste. All they wanted were shallow, trite, musical forms that pleased the public on a superficial level, themes the common man could hum or whistle in the street, mere musical catchphrases, so as to make the maximum of money, thus adulterating the holy Muse and debasing her to the level of a common whore.(2)

Crowley listened, with half an ear. It was an old song with a trite note that the common man could indeed whistle in the street. Anti-semitism was good for Hell. It added to deepening the patina of ingrained sin in the human race. But he recalled things like the expulsion of Jews from England and France in the 1300's. The burning of ghettoes in Italy in the 1500's. Nasty little pogroms in Poland and Russia, where the Slavs had proved themselves the most anti-semitic of all. He wondered if it was possible to have too much of a good thing, and above all where the Hells it had all sprung from. He, Crowley, was sure he hadn't devised it, although its presence had won him another Depreciation.

"There is always Bayreuth, Richard." said a younger man in his late twenties. "That's Judenfrei".

Crowley recognised they were speaking the human German language, although it reached his ears in the same way and unless he focused, it all sounded the same to him.

"Ja." Richard said. "Beyreuth. That is a consolation. Thank you, Herr Chamberlain."

Aziraphile, who had also listened to the tirade, raised a questioning eyebrow at his host. Lord Bulwer-Lytton, slight and ascetic, smiled slightly in apology.

"Richard did me the great honour of turning one of my earlier novels into an opera." he said. "Rienzl. He will always be welcome in my home."

"A shame I cannot stay longer, my Lord." the composer said, in English. "Visiting here and discussing the hidden tides of the world is always a pleasure. But soon I must return to Berlin."

"And to hear your views on the symbolism of Germanic legend, likewise." Bulwer-Lytton replied. "The virtue of these group meetings is the way men, of creative ability and deep insight, from various professions, spur one another's minds on to greater heights of achievement."

"Indeed, from such a group as this, could well spring a new European Renaissance." said the bear-like Frenchman, in very careful English. "And my life's dream, the renewal of true religion and spirituality, as Christianity dies into its cold unmourned grave!"

Levi expounded on this theme for a while, his voice building with Gallic passion. Crowley, who had recognised a Nephilim-streak in this man, wasn't surprised he had charisma and the power of persuasion.

"Only from renewed spirituality and a reborn connection with the wisdom of previous ages, from that which Christianity has lost or obscured, can a New Age of the world be born. Only the most brilliant and shining minds, such minds as are gathered here, can usher in this New Age, to be midwives at the birth of a new Homo Superior. My friends, we are at the darkest hour of the world. The Prussians represent the soul-less technology, of Science bereft of Wisdom, avatars of unfettered blind Progress that can consume the world in warfare. Even now their armies surround Paris after a lightning war that has humbled France. Where next for them? London? Moscow? Unless new light enters a darkened world, we are doomed to die in great and terrible wars. But we can usher in a new era with the light of a new day. A new Dawn, shining gold over the horizon!"

Even Richard nodded his assent. He wasn't Prussian, after all. A Saxon, he'd witnessed Prussian military might annex his country into their German Reich. He knew Bavaria, where had made his home, was next. (3) Those damned northerners, just militarist marching cockroaches, might have their uses in a Greater German Reich. But they wielded too much power.

"New men. A new Dawn." said Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the young political philosopher, a man thought of as having a brilliant, if somewhat erratic, mind. He sounded awed and thoughtful.

Crowley shrugged.

"A Golden Dawn." he said. "Like it, snappy name."

There was a pause while various people present turned this over in their minds.

"My friend Professor Nietszche at the University of Basel has postulated as much." Richard the composer said. "He advocates the rise of the Übermensch, the Higher Man, the Homo Superior. You have met him, I believe, my lord?"

Bulwer-Lytton nodded.

"A most remarkable mind." he agreed. "And Eliphaz here advocates that the higher man already exists in most of us, but is concealed and lost because we are lost, befuddled in a perpetual fog of mundanity, negativity, normality. He may be right in advocating that a new devotion to higher spirituality will enable each of us to become our own, er, Übermensch. To make that next step in the progression of the human race. Evolution, as Professor Darwin coined the word."

"And thus we turn to tonight's business." Eliphas Levi said. "My friends, through the good offices of the esteemed Mr Ziraphile, we have something new and of immense treasure. Among his scrolls and papers, those he tells me which await correct cataloguing, he discovered what I am satisfied is a lost book of the Bible. He allowed me to transcribe a copy from a manuscript of immense antiquity, and with great labour, I have extracted a partial translation. I have here copies."

Crowley's jaw dropped open and he looked accusingly at the Angel, who smiled back serenely.

"Gentlemen. I present The Book of Enoch, thought lost in the purges of the early Roman years." (4)

There were sighs of interest and acclamation. Even Crowley accepted a copy with deep interest. Something to tell Hell about when I report? My job here is to hinder these highly educated idiots in case they stumble on something important, by accident. To keep them blundering in the Dark, seeing the odd flash of illumination but getting no nearer to it. Why is the Angel giving them this?

Later on the meeting was dissolved, farewells were made and cabs were called. Crowley and Aziraphile took a cab together. After a frosty silence, Crowley demanded "Well?"

The Angel smiled a long seraphic smile. He took his time in replying.

"It's all very simple, really. Levi knows what we are. The only reason he hasn't gone public on it is because nobody would believe him and we'd just deny it. He knows about my little collection. So I gave him a Book of Enoch to translate to keep him quiet and diverted."

"Yes, angel, but The Book of Enoch!" Crowley shouted. "There are reasons why that had to disappear!"

"No. Crowley. A Book of Enoch."

The demon caught the nuance. He paused. Aziraphile smiled.

"Look, Crowley. My mission is also to keep them confused. Did you really think I'd give them a book that encodes secrets of Caballah and Gematria? To people, human people, with minds trained to do the decoding?"

"Go on." Crowley said.

"At the last count there were thirty-seven books in existence each claiming to be the long-lost Book of Enoch. I should know. I've got thirty-three of them. They all have a few lines or a few verses of the original in them, but they're hopelessly corrupted. The real version is something I show to nobody. Picked it up at Nicea in 325 when the Council voted to burn it." (5)

"So you gave him a forgery…"

"One of the better ones. It contains the lines quoted by that ghastly little hunchback from Tarsus. But he was too ill-educated to realise the full significance of the book."

"And copying an old scroll, character for character and line for line, then translating it, kept a dangerous mind occupied for months on a wild goose chase…" Crowley looked on in admiration.

"Look, Crowley. You can tell outright lies. I have to be more creative. I wasn't lying when I assured Levi he was looking at a copy of the long-lost book of Enoch. I just didn't say there's more than one of them."

Crowley shook his head in reluctant admiration.

"Just sometimes, Angel. You can be almost as big a bastard as I am."

The angel smiled.

"And just to show willing, Crowley, I'm going to allow him access to a choice of Apocalypses, and a late-mediaeval rabbinical interpretation of the book of Ezekiel as a Cabbalistic metaphor for summoning the Holy Guardian Angel. Completely inaccurate and totally hopeless, of course, but Levi's going to snap them up."

"Keep a dangerous mind ungainfully occupied." Crowley said. "I like it!"

"And when he's finished with those, I can say to him I've just discovered what looks like a variant version of the Book of Enoch…"

Crowley grinned. He knew he could almost trust the Angel when it came to the important things.

"So what do you make of these people, Angel?" Crowley asked. "After all, they claim to be working for your side."

Aziraphile sighed. He'd attended several meetings of the Societas Rosicruciania Anglia to gather facts and gain an impression. Rosicrucianism was a late-flowering attempt by mystics to make the Jewish system of Cabbalah work within a specifically Christian framework, to give Christianity a mystical and spiritual dimension it had hitherto largely lacked. The angel therefore had to be diplomatic about it and treat it as one of the accepted coalition of groups and denominations comprising Heaven's army on Earth. But Crowley could tell by his face that he lacked conviction about them.

"Bulwer-Lytton arranged the introduction." Aziraphile explained. "But to be frank, they just seem to be a bunch of dreamers playing at being mystics. Some of them also attend those wretched Temples that people like Eliphaz Levi are setting up. So they've got access to copies and even more inaccurate translations of those junk scrolls I loan Levi, for him to get terribly excited by. They pretend they're in direct line of succession back to the Knights Templar and beyond that to the Temple of Solomon."

"Which means it was all cooked up in a rush last Wednesday night." Crowley remarked. He knew how these things were done in secret occult societies claiming lineage going back for millennia. He'd set up quite a few lately. The Angel nodded soberly.

"And others are also in the Freemasons, and keep going on about Jahbulon, the Great Architect of the Universe. It's all rather a mess, really." Aziraphile reached for the port bottle.

Crowley made sympathetic noises. All the competing occult and mystical schools operating out of London in the latter part of the nineteenth century were really muddying the waters and spreading confusion. As well as the rivalry and the politicking between them. Illumination and Enlightenment seemed further away than ever. He was pleased with this achievement.

"Never mind, Angel." Crowley said, reassuringly. "I'm booked to appear at Levi's Temple next week. Want to come? Got a surprise for them."

Eliphaz Levi's London temple-in-exile claimed to have recovered at least some of the secrets held by the Knights Templar, the secret wisdom that had made them so dangerous to established spiritual order in the fourteenth century that the Pope had decided to expunge them from human memory. He had commissioned a large statue of the demon-god Baphomet, allegedly worshipped by the Templars, which stood behind the altar in the dimly lit Temple. Crowley had helpfully advised on the fine details.

Crowley looked at the circle of acolytes as they filed into the Temple, Fraters and Sorors in white robes with coloured cords symbolising their rank in the Order. (6) They had been told that the Illuminated High Master was going to attempt to raise the demon-god Baphomet and restore him as a Presence in the world, to teach and to instruct as he had done for the original Templars. He grinned as they took their places around the mystical pentagram and lit incense, candles and oil-lamps. Smells of balm and sandalwood filled the air. Aziraphile stood primly to one side with his arms folded. Angel and Demon would be invisible until they wanted to be seen. It was part of Crowley's Arrangement with Levi that he would play the part of a conjured and summoned demon for the edification of the Faithful. Crowley did this happily. It spread belief in the message of Hell. Among people avaricious for power, greedy for earthly wealth and prestige, or who wanted to be more sexually potent, who were there for the wrong reasons. The ones who really did want genuine spiritual understanding – well, they went away more confused, knowing something had happened but not being able to work out exactly what. And now and again you got a Prospect for the Immortal Soul Pact, a really important politician, or a member of the royal family, attending incognito(7). It was win-win all round.

And tonight, in this new Temple, Crowley had a doozie set up for them. They'd remember this one. He looked around the room, recognising Chamberlain, the political philosopher, McKenzie, the brilliant linguist, that Bavarian woman who went under the name of Frau Spengler, and the man with the Godsawful Birmingham accent, Westcott. Who is also a brilliant mind in his own right, Crowley reminded himself. Doctor, scholar, polymath, forensic investigator…

They would all see something to remember tonight.

In the New Temple of Solomon, the Ritual began, to awaken and propriate the present and guarding Daemon of the Presence. Acolytes swung thuribles. The Grand Master led the Ritual. The Congregation chanted the response. Insufficient light flickered in dull reds and orange-yellow.

The Daemon who was present stood back in the psychic aethyr, unseen by men, and sniggered slightly. Opposite him, a High and Holy Guardian Angel stood primly with arms folded. Crowley's agreed part in what was not quite a deception was to Manifest at the appropriate time in the Ritual and make the approved noises concerning what you puny humans wish from me now. Crowley was good at this. It meant he could use his acting talents to ham it up, to stalk the pentagram and pretend he was unable to leave it, to fix a selected Soror with a baleful eye and stare at her, one night until a puddle really had formed at her feet. (8)He gave every impression of longing to get out there and reap souls for Our Father Below, restrained only by the power of the Grand Master.

Black Magic, and the Black Mass especially, was really a sort of dreadfuly over-acted ham theatre performance. And I've made it hammer, Crowley thought. He put from his mind that they could call it the Hammer Theatrical Company, noting a nice pun there for possible future use, and reflected on how this latest manifestation of human ingenuity and gullibility was good for everyone. Fearful rumours spread in the wider community. People of an occult tendency were blinded by the spectacular-but-empty theatrics and diverted from more dangerous explorations. They got a taste of Hell. Every so often, as per Agreement, Levi got to conjure up a Holy Guardian Angel who would bless and reassure them of the presence of Heaven, and remind them to study Christian mysticism as or more assiduously than they did demonology. Both sides could therefore claim the renewal of a New Age of Magick was a victory.

But tonight…

Eliphaz Levi felt it as the ritual rose to its climax. Almost like an implosion of magenta light, a serious change in the psychic landscape. As he strutted and implored and demanded the Daemon show himself, there was a sudden blooming of non-light, the light of Hell.

And then…

The demon Baphomet was standing in the centre of the pentagram, looking slightly confused, as if he… or she… had travelled a long way very quickly.

Baphomet turned on his… or her… goat-legs, the reversed knees giving him… or her… a strange strutting walk. The demon studied the physical likeness of itself in the statue behind the high altar, as if it were a patron of an art gallery. Then he turned the grave face, with the goatee beard and the long curling horns, to Levi.

"I'm impressed at the likeness." Baphomet said. "Well done. But you could have made the, er, penis a little bit bigger."

Eliphaz Levi was almost soundless. But he muttered "Plus grande. Oui. I shall attend to that presently."

Then the demon glared out over the Temple and the assembled Fraters and Sorors.

"Reminds me of the last time I was up here." Baphomet said, as if trying to recall how these things were done. "Jacques de Molay's mob. Jerusalem. Right. Got it. Form an orderly line for the old osculum infame! You first, High Priest!"

Crowley and Aziraphile turned away, fastidiously, as Baphomet turned and bent forward slightly, raising his tail. A congregrant whimpered as he realised what the osculum infame entailed and which part of the body was ritually kissed.

"That wasn't clever, Crowley!" the Angel said, in deep disapproval.

"Hey, they wanted a demon. I asked Below. I got them one. And everybody Below can exact their price for Manifesting to humans. They should be lucky it's not one of the mad buggers from the Central American Bureau."

"And Baphomet's price is…" the Angel shuddered. "That."

"Everybody's got a perversion, Angel."

"So I try not to see. I remember him from Above, though."

"Or her".

"I remember he or she from above." The Angel amended. "I'm surprised he, or she, managed to make a firm decision to Fall. I mean. Legs and horns of a goat. Body of a man… well, human. Beard. Breasts of a woman. And…. That thing… Definitely male. That spells confusion to me, Crowley."

The angel shuddered.

"So he can rock a 40DD." Crowley said. "Hermaphrodite, Angel. That's power, to those people. Combines and transcends limitations of merely male and female. Also completely in control of his beast-side. Or something."

"Half-man, half-woman, half-goat, completely mixed up. But while he's working it all out, confused as Hell." The Angel muttered.

"As Hell, Angel. And your point is?"

They settled back and watched the show.

And Eliphaz Levi died, mourned by a wife and a small group of friends, on May 31st 1875.

-WHERE IZZ HE, CROWLEY?

"err… who, Lord?" Crowley shifted with guilt. He'd attended the funeral in Paris, naturally. He'd taken it as axiomatic Levi was Hell's.

-THE FRENCH MAGICIAN, LEVI. WE WERE EXPECTING HIM DOWN HERE. BUT HE APPEARZ TO HAVE GIVEN UZZ THE ZZZLIP.

"Errr…"

HEAVEN MAY HAVE GOT HIM AT THE LAZZZZT MOMENT. A REQUEZT FOR CLARIFICATION HAS BEEN MADE.

And elsewhere across London a similar conversation was playing out.

-THIS IS ALL VERY UNSATISFACTORY, AZIRAPHILE.

"I hear, sir." The Angel replied, politely.

-WE EXPECTED TO SEE THAT REMARKABLE FRENCHMAN, ALPHONSE CONSTANT. WITH WHOM YOU HAD RECENT DEALINGS. HIS WORK IN CREATING A FRAMEWORK FOR CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM WAS REALLY QUITE REMARKABLE. THE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEE FELT HE COULD BE FORGIVEN FOR HIS NECESSARY DALLIANCES WITH THE DARK SIDE.

"And he hasn't arrived, sir?"

There was what felt like an embarrassed pause.

-NO. THE POSSIBILITY OF HIS HAVING GONE TO HELL IS THERE, OF COURSE. A DIPLOMATIC REQUEST HAS BEEN MADE.

Know ye, o seeker after Truth, that the soul does not enter into its human habitation until that House of physical matter be sufficiently prepared for it in the womb of the mother. The soul joins the body not at the moment of conception, but rather to a prepared habitation, no earlier three months later. And once joined only Death may sunder, to begin the cycle of life again…

(Extract from an ancient book of wisdom and lore, possibly Tibetan).

"It's bloody reincarnation again, isn't it?" Crowley demanded. The Angel nodded, ruefully.

"Some of them are too clever for their own good, Crowley."

"Wish we could find out where they reincarnate to." the demon said. "And then watch the kid."

And in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, on the 12th October 1875, approximately six months after the death of Eliphaz Levi, a child was born unto Mr and Mrs Edward Crowley.

And thus recursion happens and we return to where this story started….

(1) In years to come, when Crowley met Napoleon and recognised a ruthless careerist with ambition, he would wonder about prophecies uttered on the point of death.

(2) Richard Wagner, for it is indeed he, made all these points in a well-circulated book, Das Judenthum in der Musik, about the pernicious influence of the Jews on German society. Any apologists trying to make out that Wagner's words were twisted to make him sound like an anti-Semite should read this. There's a reason why Wagner is banned in Israel.

(3) Bavaria was formally annexed into the Reich in 1871 after France had been dealt with. Apparently southern Germans use the phrase "Prussian soldiers" or something similar to denote an infestation of cockroaches…

(4) In the New Testament Letters, St Paul refers several times, with great approval, to an edifying scripture called The Book of Enoch. He commends it as the work of God and something Christian believers may learn from. Unfortunately for those who believe the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible are the entirety of God's revelation, there is no such book anywhere in the Old Testament as we have it. It isn't in the Roman Catholic Bible, which is larger, nor the Orthodox Church Bible, which is larger still. Theologians tend to get embarrassed when this is pointed out, or if you ask if God mislaid a book. It's not the sort of the question they like to hear. Various books of Enoch have been "discovered" over the centuries but discredited as elaborate forgeries, the "Hitler Diaries" of biblical scholarship. Extravagant claims have been made that Enoch codifies really interesting secrets of Cabbalah, like how to speak words of Power, how to re-animate a corpse, how to animate a golem, and how to bring about death in people you disapprove of just by willing it. In short, how to become a Superman. Occultists such as Eliphaz Levi, Madame Blavatsky, W. Rider-Waite, and Aleistar Crowley, among others, have sought it, as a sort of Holy Grail. The mystery continues.

(5) The council of Nicea in 325 AD was a conclave of priests – and politicians – who sat in debate to establish the final edited shape of the Bible – literally Library – of holy texts that should guide and inform the Christian religion. Again, lots of conflicting ideas persist about what was decided here and more importantly why. All we can be sure about from this distance is that like any anthology edited by committee, the Bible represents a bit of a compromise that nobody was completely satisfied by. It is entirely possible Crowley and Aziraphile were in there somewhere. A lot of people were involved working to a lot of different agendas. Aziraphile, for instance, would have been motivated by the bibliophile's utter opposition to burning books which have fallen out of favour. Crowley would have seized on a chance to spread confusion and doubt. Both would have claimed it as a victory for their side.

Research note. And it's always the one you think you already know and therefore don't need to check that turns out to be wrong. Thank you to readers such as Nimbus L who pointed out the error. amended. Nicea was one of the Seven Great Ecumenbical Conferences of the early Church that set out its direction and dogma, as well as laying the groundwork for some pitiless religious wars and schisms later.

(6) Think of it as like proficiency belts in martial arts.

(7) Crowley was working on Edward, Prince of Wales, who had attended several Temples incognito, looking for new thrills and new shocks to give to his dear mother. Who was most assuredly not amused at her son's antics. Frustratingly, on her death he performed the same sort of about-turn Henry V had given Falstaff. He reformed his wastrel ways, or most of them, and became a remarkably good King. He also told Crowley there was no earthly reason now for him to sign an Immortal Soul Agreement, I mean, I'm King, for goodness' sake, so nice knowing you, Anthony, thanks for the nights out, good memories, but it just isn't on any more, old chap. Edward VII was one of Crowley's failures. Crowley sighed, but put the thought into a Lincolnshire farmer's head that here was a good name for a potato…

(8) Crowley did feel guilty later on, though.