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was marked with short vertical posts about a foot in
diameter. In the middle of the sandy area in the middle of the ten foot
diameter circle was the remains of a campfire. A phone call to the Vancouver
Parks Board confirmed my first impression when I saw it. The Parks Board had
built it as a safe site for the guests at the adjacent hostel to have a
campfire and sing songs (you can clearly see the hostel a few hundred yards
away though the trees). The posts are just high enough to form handy seats.
Why did this patrol officer assume that it might be a Satanic ritual site?
He’d read some bogus investigative article based on misinformation
disseminated by self-appointed experts. He’d been told that a circle with a
fire in the middle was Satanic. Sometimes
these cases do have some basis in reality. For example, I recently had a skid
row patrol officer turn a hand written hard bound notebook that he had found
in a hotel room. The writing in this book was in a script which the officer
could not decipher. It was a grimoire, written in an old “magical” script
called Theban. The author of it called himself “Frater Midgard Asmodias.”
Frater is a Latin term meaning “brother.” Midgard is both a place and a giant
serpent in Norse mythology. Asmodias is a corruption of Asmodeus, a demon
mentioned in the Apocrypha. The content of this grimoire was generally
Satanic in nature. Frater Midgard Asmodias (a drug addicted juvenile
trafficker) had created this grimoire by plagiarizing various works to create
his own unique mixture of Ceremonial Magic, the works of Aleister Crowley,
and Norse mythology. Over the
years I’ve done a lot of consulting work in this area. Yet very little of the
consulting that I have done has involved the activities of criminals.
Landlords and tenants have called me to help explain beliefs to one another.
Churches and other organizations have asked me to do educational
presentations. I have even been used as a consultant to the entertainment
industry. This last form of consultation began, appropriately enough, with
“The Scottish Play.” For those
of you unfamiliar with the theatre, there is a long tradition of superstition
associated with Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Many performers believe it to be
jinxed. Actors will refer to it as “The Scottish Play,” because they believe
that if they use the name “Macbeth,” it will bring them misfortune. If you
accidentally use the “M” word, you have to run out of the theatre and recite
the first lines from any other play by Shakespeare that you can to neutralize
the curse. So there I
was sitting in the Gang Crime Unit office one afternoon in 1992 when the
phone rang. I answered it and the following conversation took place: “Gang
Crime Unit.” “I...
uh... that is... I’m looking for...” “You’re
looking for the Witch, aren’t you?” “Uhh...
yes.” “You’ve
found him.” The caller
turned out to be the director of a local production of Macbeth by the
Vancouver Playhouse. They were about to start rehearsals, but the cast was
very concerned about the curse surrounding “The Scottish Play.” He had heard
that some theatre company in England had recently employed a Witch in some
way to neutralize the “curse.” So now I
had progressed from Wiccan priest to Occult Detective to... Curse Busters. Phoenix and
I went down to meet the cast and crew on the first day of rehearsals. We
needed to use a little psychology to set their minds at ease. First of all,
we explained what the first rule of magic is: You create your own reality. If
you believe that the play is cursed, for you it will be. You’ll be so
preoccupied worrying about ill fortune that you’ll trip over the extension
cord. I noted
that some of them cringed each time I used the “M” word. I half expected
someone to blurt out lines from Twelfth Night or Henry V to counteract it. I
pointed out that being a Witch, I could say “Macbeth” with impunity. I had
learned to control my reality: The first rule of magic, remember? They all
visibly relaxed. Phoenix and I then explained that there are no Witches in
the play Macbeth. The fact that Shakespeare called them “weird sisters” in
Macbeth is the clue. In Saxon mythology the Weird Sisters or “Wyrds” were a
group of three sisters: She-Who-Was, She-Who-Is, She-Who-Will-Be. The Norse called them the Norns. The three
Wyrds or Norns lived in a cave at the root of the World Tree, determining the
fate of every living creature. They were very similar to the Fates (Moirae in
Greek mythology, Parcae in Roman). They were also three sisters: Clotho the
spinner, Lachesis the disposer of lots, and Atropos who cut the thread of
life. Look at what the weird sisters are doing in Macbeth: You will see that
this is exactly what their function is. Shakespeare called them weird
sisters, not witches, in his original script of the play. The word “witches”
got added in director’s notes in later transcriptions. |
Careful What You Ask For, Part II pg
2
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There is
a long tradition of superstition associated with Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.
Actors will refer to it as “The Scottish Play,” because they believe that if
they use the name “Macbeth,” it will bring them misfortune. If you
accidentally use the “M” word, you have to run out of the theatre and recite
the first lines from any other play by Shakespeare that you can to neutralize
the curse. |
