All Occult in the Super Market
Aug. 19th, 2015 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonAt the Farmer's Market, killing time between trains and scoring milhojas from one of the best Panaderias on Buford, when I wander down the cleaning supplies aisle only to discover that this is also where they apparently stock all the magic.
Down here with the mops and sponges and ammonia there is a wall of tall glass candles, each an incantation sealed in crayon colored wax with a wick charged like a fuse's promise. They are marked with a wide array of martyred saints, with a Jesus who shoots rainbow laser beams from his perpetually burning sacred Heart, with a Mother Mary who seems wiser than her son and more merciful than his father, with a regiment of Santo Muerte's ready to bless those secret endeavors that the other saints are powerless to do anything but forgive. Here are spells for warding off hexes, for summoning money, for winning a lover or driving an overbearing one away, for protection of family, for a little luck, and yes, occasionally that means bringing the bad kind down on some poor fool's head.
There is an excited wonder I feel here. A goose bump shiver of pure uncut 'privileged moment' ("Shhh... my Proust Senses are tingling!"). The scene hits an itchy trigger warning and I slip into flashback. Getting processed out of the Navy, I was in Philly, checking out one of those occult bookstores that used to exist in, like, every major North American city until the Internet and the 21st Century reduced their ranks to a handful of remaining New Age crystal and Spirit Catcher boutiques. There both an armchair mage and earnest adept alike could wander idly, perusing a wide range of initiations and enchantments to the pantheon of her choosing, to the path of his calling. On a whim I bought a copy of the Book of the Law and since I was getting discharged soon bought a dime of weed that I smoked in an alley off South Street. From there I sat in a fine Italian restaurant in a new outfit that I bought on a whim, bluffed my server into serving me wine a full year before my ID would let me, and over my first decent meal since arriving back stateside read of the coming of the Age of Horus.
I saw it all so clearly, where my life was going to go, I was going to be this magical poet ala Yeats and all I needed was a Maude Gonne of a muse ready to start some fires and a covenant to come knocking at the door of opportunity.
Which, the later it turns out, did just that. The next leave off the base I was granted I went to a more conventional bookstore and the kid working behind the counter hipped me to an OTO meeting that weekend. From there... a very different story gets told from the one I expected.
But back here at the Farmer's Market, down in the aisle where they all the magic, there is a young lady a good half my age decked out in a, Bela Lugosi bless her, brand spanking new Bauhaus shirt. She's got chemical black hair with a regal lack of smile or concern in eyes and scuffed stomp boots. She studies the array of candles, selects a few Santo Muerte's, plops them in a basket with a bottle of apple soda and a few packs of incense. She walks right by and had I been a ghost maybe she would have seen me, but no, age and fat render me invisible.
Nevertheless I smile.
Because somewhere tonight or tomorrow or this weekend I know there's someone in this city trying to hack into reality with a little magic and no matter its purpose the act makes our world a little stranger. A little more mysterious, a little wilder.
As for me, all the magic I need nowadays is in these milhojas and in the words that wait for me at the end of the night.
Down here with the mops and sponges and ammonia there is a wall of tall glass candles, each an incantation sealed in crayon colored wax with a wick charged like a fuse's promise. They are marked with a wide array of martyred saints, with a Jesus who shoots rainbow laser beams from his perpetually burning sacred Heart, with a Mother Mary who seems wiser than her son and more merciful than his father, with a regiment of Santo Muerte's ready to bless those secret endeavors that the other saints are powerless to do anything but forgive. Here are spells for warding off hexes, for summoning money, for winning a lover or driving an overbearing one away, for protection of family, for a little luck, and yes, occasionally that means bringing the bad kind down on some poor fool's head.
There is an excited wonder I feel here. A goose bump shiver of pure uncut 'privileged moment' ("Shhh... my Proust Senses are tingling!"). The scene hits an itchy trigger warning and I slip into flashback. Getting processed out of the Navy, I was in Philly, checking out one of those occult bookstores that used to exist in, like, every major North American city until the Internet and the 21st Century reduced their ranks to a handful of remaining New Age crystal and Spirit Catcher boutiques. There both an armchair mage and earnest adept alike could wander idly, perusing a wide range of initiations and enchantments to the pantheon of her choosing, to the path of his calling. On a whim I bought a copy of the Book of the Law and since I was getting discharged soon bought a dime of weed that I smoked in an alley off South Street. From there I sat in a fine Italian restaurant in a new outfit that I bought on a whim, bluffed my server into serving me wine a full year before my ID would let me, and over my first decent meal since arriving back stateside read of the coming of the Age of Horus.
I saw it all so clearly, where my life was going to go, I was going to be this magical poet ala Yeats and all I needed was a Maude Gonne of a muse ready to start some fires and a covenant to come knocking at the door of opportunity.
Which, the later it turns out, did just that. The next leave off the base I was granted I went to a more conventional bookstore and the kid working behind the counter hipped me to an OTO meeting that weekend. From there... a very different story gets told from the one I expected.
But back here at the Farmer's Market, down in the aisle where they all the magic, there is a young lady a good half my age decked out in a, Bela Lugosi bless her, brand spanking new Bauhaus shirt. She's got chemical black hair with a regal lack of smile or concern in eyes and scuffed stomp boots. She studies the array of candles, selects a few Santo Muerte's, plops them in a basket with a bottle of apple soda and a few packs of incense. She walks right by and had I been a ghost maybe she would have seen me, but no, age and fat render me invisible.
Nevertheless I smile.
Because somewhere tonight or tomorrow or this weekend I know there's someone in this city trying to hack into reality with a little magic and no matter its purpose the act makes our world a little stranger. A little more mysterious, a little wilder.
As for me, all the magic I need nowadays is in these milhojas and in the words that wait for me at the end of the night.