12. The Second Re-awakening: 2. The Magician

Ridge

In my memoir about the prison workshops, I mentioned travelling to Geelong, where one prisoner poet had been transferred, to get his input for the anthology. On the way home, going for a coffee near the station during the long wait in the middle of the day for a train back to Melbourne, I bumped into an old neighbour doing the same thing – a man I had not seen since our respective children were quite small, as both families had moved away from the neighbourhood where we met. The only customers in the cafe, we sat together and had a big catch-up. I’ll call him Ridge, a name he did use (in a specific context, of which more in a minute).

It turned out that his marriage had broken up, after his business had folded due to a partner who defrauded customers, unknown to Ridge, and skipped the country just in time, leaving Ridge holding the baby. He was prosecuted; all but one of fifteen charges were thrown out of court. For that one, he was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment in a low-security facility in the country. He had served this sentence and was free again, determined to raise enough money to get his one conviction overturned as wrongful, but currently unemployed and looking for work (which was what he was doing in Geelong, chasing a potential job opportunity). 

He also confided in me the startling news that, since I knew him last, he had been studying Hermetic magic. Ridge was the name he liked to be known by in that context, his magician name. This aspect of him came to be the way I knew him best. 

By then I didn't discount the possibility of magic. I'd read Colin Wilson's books. I'd had intuitive and other experiences which were largely inexplicable by rational means. I could easily entertain the idea of 'the paranormal.' Magic was only a short stretch further. And I recalled one of my Balinese friends, when I asked if he believed in magic, telling me that his uncle had been the village sorcerer, and saying,

'I have to believe, because I have seen.'

Just because I didn't understand something didn't necessarily mean it wasn't real.

Ridge told me he had been clairvoyant since early childhood, but usually kept that fact concealed, as it tended to freak people out. Since his release from prison, he had become acquainted with another man who was a powerful clairvoyant, and through him a witch who became Ridge's friend. This man (the witch) introduced Ridge to the idea of pursuing his own magical studies. (No, male witches are not called wizards or warlocks – not by themselves and their fellows. They are called witches.) Ridge decided to focus on ceremonial magic rather than the more earthy witchcraft, and acknowledged the Egyptian deity Thoth as his patron. (The Ancient Greek version of Thoth was Hermes. Hermetic magic is regarded as the product of Thoth’s teachings.) 

We discovered that Ridge was now living close to me again, just around the corner in fact. The job-hunting was hard for him; he was no longer young. He claimed to be 56, presumably to make himself more marketable; but I happened to know, from having been friendly with his ex-wife when we were neighbours in the past, that he was really 65 at the time we became re-acquainted. I never let on to him that I knew, and also refrained from remarking whenever the hairs at the back of his neck began showing wisps of grey as the dye he was obviously using grew out.

Between the bouts of job-hunting – one had to be shown to be actively seeking work in order to keep receiving the dole – he began popping in to see me for a morning or afternoon cuppa. This was a period when I wasn’t in 9-5 employment but working from home, voluntarily, for the Melbourne Branch of the Poets Union, as well as in various self-generated paid jobs such as teaching meditation, teaching crochet, modelling for local art classes … 

Ridge's visits began after my time working in Pentridge had stopped. At that time, neither of us said much to each other about our respective prison experiences, though we were aware of them.

What he did talk about was his magical work. 

He showed me the Tarot deck he used, naturally enough the Thoth deck. It was designed by magician and writer Aleister Crowley, with artwork by Lady Frieda Harris. At that time I found the images rather cold and sinister.  Later, it became for a time my favourite deck and the one I used for reading professionally. But that was some distance into the future; at the time I had no idea I would ever be personally involved with Tarot.

I was slightly acquainted with it. A few years previously, Bill and I had billeted a young Adelaide poet called Span for a national Poets Union event held in Melbourne. He was into both Tarot, using the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, and the I Ching, and travelled with both as a matter of course. The whole family warmed to Span, and we were fascinated by his mystical interests. My little boys begged him for a Tarot reading. He asked Bill's and my permission, then gave them a three-card 'past, present and future' reading, interesting and accurate enough to delight us all, but not so detailed as to freak us out or mess with the kids' heads. Very responsible of him, I thought. He was low-key and matter-of-fact about it; no big 'woo-woo' act or dramatic presentation.

I was far more interested in the I Ching, which seemed to me mysterious indeed, and full of strange wisdom.  

Eventually I would explore both oracles deeply, but at the time of my conversations with Ridge over coffee, I was still largely ignorant of such things.

I didn't want Ridge to read for me with his slightly scary Tarot cards. I wanted to hear about his clairvoyance and his magicianship. So he would tell me stories and anecdotes about those things, and how they formed part of his life.

For instance, he wanted to be a professional singer, and said he had asked for guides to come and help him with training when he was in sleep state. (He couldn't afford singing lessons in the everyday world.) He sang some snatches of song to show me, and it was true he had a lovely voice and (as far as I could judge) good technique. He could certainly have entertained people successfully, but when I'd known him before there had been no hint of such a talent. As to where it had come from, I was open-minded but reserved judgment.

However, I reached a point of accepting that the things he told me were true for him, even  if I couldn't quite fathom them.

He spoke too of some of the principles behind the magic he was practising, e.g. that magicians seek a balance of 'light' and 'dark,' believing that to be the way of Nature, and therefore what works in the world. For instance, we need daylight and also night-time; our planet, and the living things on it, require heat and also cold; there is a place in life for the huge and also the tiny ...

A feat of (magical) strength

Prison is a disturbing experience, even for one who only visits briefly. I went through some paranoia after I left. The fact that John and I had had to communicate in a 'reading between the lines' way in our letters, rather than openly, didn't help. I began to be suspicious of other communications from that source, reading more into them than was obviously there. When, after I opted out of the workshops, I received a beautiful big card featuring roses and signed in green ink, telling me my friends in Pentridge were thinking of me, I perceived it as a veiled threat. (I am certain now that it was a genuine expression of gratitude. A prisoner I was in touch with later, for some time after he was freed, told me none of them had blamed me for opting out; on the contrary they were used to tutors eventually freaking out from exposure to that environment and needing to quit. And I didn't leave them in the lurch; I arranged for an excellent replacement.)

I confided in Ridge. He took my word for it that the card was ill-intentioned. He lived in a magical world where curses could be real, where thoughts carried energy. And he had been in prison, where threats and irrationality can both be real.

'Let's burn it,' he said, meaning to destroy any harmful energy it might carry. He held it over my kitchen sink and set it alight with a cigarette lighter. It was very thick card, and refused to burn. The flame simply fizzled out. Rather than try again with the cigarette lighter, Ridge gathered all his energy into himself, then expelled it with a mighty burst. I saw him do this – I was standing right next to him – and can only describe it thus. It wasn't that he performed any action; only a huge effort of will. The card burst into flames and was rapidly consumed.

'I've seen him call down fire,' I would tell people afterwards who were sceptical of his magic. Over the next few years I witnessed various other examples of his ability to use energy, but that was the first. Very dramatic!

Visitations

Then I started getting night-time visitors. 

I'm not very clairvoyant. It's a long time since the unfettered perception of my childhood! The subsequent shutting down may have damaged my psychic senses, or perhaps they'd have altered anyway. I've no way to tell. I'm just grateful now for whatever I have.

As an adult, I have sometimes 'seen' immaterial things, occasionally have heard them (which is called clairaudience), but I'm much more inclined to sense things intuitively, to get a kind of inner knowing. This can, however, be very strong. 

The visitations didn't happen when I was asleep, when they could have been mistaken afterwards for dreams. I've always been a night owl, and in those days when I was a busy wife and mother and often working outside the home too, or from home, late night was often the only time I could work on my poetry. That was not different from earlier days, when I was a student, and just writing it for me. The night has always been my time for writing – not the only time, but the most comfortable and natural.

These night visitors were very different from the nasty, nightmarish ones I'd had in childhood. I would be immersed in writing, then I'd get a sense of someone watching me. I could feel their energy very distinctly, but it wasn't at all threatening. On the contrary, it always felt friendly.

I felt there was some purpose to these happenings, but I couldn't figure out what it was. One day I said, impulsively, to Ridge, 

'Ridge, who visited me last night?'

'Let me just tune in,' he said.

After a little while he began describing someone, whom I soon recognised as my beloved Nana who died when I was four. I didn't have any photos of her, back then (I have acquired one recently) nor had I ever mentioned her to Ridge, let alone described her. I was ecstatic that she had come to see me.

After that, I kept getting night visitors. Each one felt a little different from the others, and so it turned out to be. I would ask Ridge and he'd start describing what he was getting until I understood who it was. They were always people in my life who had died.

One time I just couldn't figure out from Ridge's description the identity of one particular man.  Eventually Ridge said, 

'He's got a funny walk. I'll show you.'

He got up and strode forward with quick steps, his chest pushed out in front like a pouter pigeon.

'Oh!' I cried out delightedly, 'That's my stepfather, Jack.' 

I became curious.

'Why are all these people coming to see me?' I asked one day. 'Is there some message they're trying to give me?"

He pondered for a while, listening to some hidden source.  Then he said,

'No ... I'm not getting anything. Maybe just, "Hello".'

'Why at this time?' I asked. He had no answer.

Then came a profound shock which made it very clear why.