The Great Beast

Zacharia palmed the LSD tab while the other Disciples set theirs on their tongues. Eyes closed, no one noticed the dissenting sleight of hand. At this phase of the pledge it was all but certain no one would disobey commands. Multiple disciples had already broken their vows and had been disappeared for undesirable behavior: One vocalized logical fallacies in The Book of the Law. One wandered off of the compound and drunkenly revealed the happenings of The Order in the town pub. One refused to submit to the sexual desires of The Coven (the more you submit, the higher your place in The Order). If “disappeared” meant trespassed from the compound or worse was anyone’s guess.

Dawning black cloaks, the final three disciples stood in a circle in the chaotic living room. A table here, a smashed TV there, few chairs had four legs and none looked like the next. The compound was the physical representation of The Book of the Law’s key passage: “Do what thou wilt; every man and woman is a star; the word of sin is restriction.” These very words were written on the dilapidated yellow tint walls, amongst various Latin phrases, incomprehensible spells scribed backwards, the Eye of Providence . . . Everything was written in blotchy metallic smelling brown. Six barefeet, their hoods cast shadows over their eyes with their heads slightly bowed. The LSD began to take effect on the other two disciples

One Disciple began to speak, “during a pleasure session, The Leader told me of their love for the scientific method and its bedrock status in Thelema. One must examine, study, and know all things in order for them to be accepted. The Leader knew this truth from a young age. The Leader’s Christian parents claimed that cats had nine lives. The Leader could accept this as an idiom, but the underlying meaning that cats are durable surely must have been tested. And so it was. After careful rounds of poisoning, stabbing, choking, and burning, The Leader threw the lifeless body out the window as the ninth test. The null hypothesis, Christianity, and The Leader’s parents were all rejected that day.”

The two Disciples' heads remained at a slight tilt as they maintained their middle distant stare, traveling further out of the Earthly dimension of reality. Zacharia’s head, heavy with the fate of the cat at the hands of The Leader, hung towards the filthy checker tiled floor. Oliver the cat was nothing but good to Zacharia growing up. And cats were cautious, fearless, had great reflexes . . . That’s why people said they had nine lives. Could The Leader be that dense? Or was it something else?

It was time. The door to the oratory forebodingly opened. The three Disciples turned and calmly walked towards the dark, six feet apart in single file, Zacharia last. Lit candles revealed fifteen smiling mouths of The Coven, sinister and inhuman, standing in a half circle. The top half of their faces were adorned with masks, no two the same. All were nude. Members with penises wore lipstick and long hair, regardless of hairline recession. Members with breasts wore short hair and strap on dildos. A prominent bronze statue of Baphomet sat upon an altar, The Coven emulating the winged horned idol’s androgynous appearance. The Naturom Demonto record played in reverse and otherworldly demonic sounds filled the room.

Emerging from the dark was a stocky, muscular man in a bull mask. It was The Leader. A member of The Coven broke from the half circle and maritime marched to the altar, proof to the spirits of ultimate commitment to order in an otherwise chaotic scene. From an altar a triangle was retrieved, which was wrung three times. The Leader removed the bull mask, revealing his hairless, oblong head. He was pale. His stare was distant, with his mind seemingly partly in the oratory and partly in some drug infused astral projection. Palms facing up and outstretched, like some macabre dereliction of a Catholic Christ painting, The Leader began to circle the pentagram chalked on the floor in a counterclockwise direction. The disciples’ feet stood at the edge of the circle, heads still slightly tilted avoiding eye contact. Various relics were brought to attention as The Leader’s gravity commanded the room’s attention, all set upon altars on the perimeter of the dark room. A statue of the Sun God Ra, Egyptian god of the sun, order, kings, and the sky with a human body and falcon head. The Lord of Mictlan, Aztec god of the dead, depicted as a blood spattered skull and bones, owl feathered headdress adorned with human teeth. Finally, a neutral gray, small bodied with a comically large conehead and abyss black eyes, not made of earthly materials but seemingly taxidermied from another world. Not even the slightest break in The Coven’s smiles as their necks slightly adjusted to remain fixed on the movement of The Leader. The supernatural forces to be conjured in this room were esoteric, expansive, and interdimensional.

The Leader stopped and spoke, “When attempting to climb higher than any mortal before me, summiting the five sacred peaks of Kanjianjunga, the Himalayan guides warned of a god that protected the mountain and refused to continue the ascent. Wanting to meet this god, I and my fellow trekkers continued. The climb was brutal and harsh. Before the summit, most tragically, I lost my fellow trekkers to an avalanche. Children of Earth, I tell you, this was the god smiling upon me and anointing me the leader of The Second Order. However, the men lost that day were not pure. The god required a satisfactory sacrifice.”

The LSD in full effect, The Leader was now floating counterclockwise, naked and pale, around the pentagram in the eyes of The Coven and the disciples, minus Zachariah who was clear minded.

The Leader continued, “To ascend to the higher order, and to meet this deity that sits atop the mountain, we must give back something that we desire. Zachariah, step into the circle,” The Leader commanded.

Zachariah, standing in the middle of the disciples, took two steps and now stood in the center of the pentagram.

The Leader continued,”I conjured the Spirit of Buer and asked him to send us a boy, pure and of the false Christian God. And then Zacharia appeared in the commune.”

Zacharia, seventeen, joined his friend for a novel night of debauchery at the compound. He had never sipped alcohol, took a hit of anything, or even kissed a girl. All of one’s worldly desires could be fulfilled at the compound that espoused “Do what you want”. Zacharia and his friend began frequenting the compound more frequently, eventually pledging their loyalty to The Order. Zacharia’s friend had been one of the disciples who had disappeared. Zacharia thought of his mother and father as the weight of the room began to press upon him.

The Leader continued, “Let us enjoy this moment as we present the boy to the god who will grant us access to The Second Order. This sacrifice will be consecrated with blood, sugar, and sex magik.” The smiles faded from The Coven’s faces and their faces turned to lust. Their lips met those to the left, and to the right, commencing an orgy. The Leader commanded Zacharia to the ground, taking on the image of the Vitruvian Man in the center of the pentagram. The Leader handed Zacharia a sword, rumored to be yielded by a Knights Templar. The Leader towered over Zacharia as the disciples looked on and The Coven thrusted into one another.

The Leader continued, “To avoid karmic retribution, we must not lie or deceive. We must give a choice. If I poison an apple and offer it to you without telling you it’s poisoned, the gods will frown upon me. However, if I poison an apple and tell you that it’s poisoned and you still choose to eat it, then the gods smile upon me. The more innocent one is, the closer to God they are. To defile, to kill the innocent is as close as we’ll get to defiling and killing God.”

The Leader continued, “Zacharia, it is time to cross over.”

Arms outstretched, Zacharia held the handle with his dominant hand and covered that hand with the other. The blade pointed directly at his heart. His eyes met The Leader’s, and The Leader’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly. Even The Leader couldn’t escape the fate of the moment. Zacharia had flicked his wrists forward in an arc to perfectly aim the sword at The Leader’s sternum. With great vengeance and furious anger, he thrusted the sword into The Leader. 

The Leader’s calm never left his face as he slumped to his knees like a side of beef. The two disciples remained in a hypnotic LSD induced obedient haze, never flinching or moving. The Coven continued to fill each other’s orifices, acting out the dominance hierarchy with their natural and unnatural phalluses. Zacharia scrambled to his feet and ran out the door.