Witches' Brew

Everybody, except for the nefarious Eli, was going to be there. The astral jet setters. Riders incomparable of the inner planes. In a word, the flower of American witchery. Say, Philip Emmons Isaac Bonewits, a reconstructionist Druid with a B.A. in magic from the University of California, endorsed by no less than Ronnie Reagan. Bonewits, a mere 22-year-old, his hair worn in a pigtail, his beard wispy, sucking on a calabash pipe and adorned in Moroccan robes, his leather belt slung low, an athame (a black-handled knife made or inherited by a witch) riding one hip and a hammer of Thor, the other. P. E. I. Bone-wits is the sole begetter of Real Magic. "Learn how to cast spells or heal a friend. Discover clairsentience [vibes], clairvoyance, telepathy, astral projection, as magic leaves the Dark Ages and enters the age of reason." Gavin of Boskednan and Yvonne were also going. They are codirectors of the Church and School of Wicca (Route 2, Salem, Missouri), the craft's first mail-order college. "Introduction: Some people would call me a wizard. They would call my mate a witch. We call ourselves flamens of the Wicca faith. Wicca is the old word meaning 'wise' or 'wisdom,' which is now pronounced 'witch.' To our believers, Wicca is the oldest religion."

Eighty-five-year-old Marc Edmund Jones, founder of the Sabian Assembly, author of Astrology: How & Why It Works, had promised to appear. So had Tim Zell, of the Church of All Worlds (CAW), and his high priestess, Ms. Carolyn Clark, who was scheduled to pronounce on "The Great Mother vs. the Great Motherfucker." The fabled Lady Sheba, queen of American witches was going. So, for that matter, was Lady Cybele, hereditary witch and professional palmist, pastor of the Church of the Wiccan Rede and sole prop. of Lady Cybele's Caldron, Madison, Wisconsin. Russ Michael, who had died at the age of 17 and returned to his physical body to finish the work he had started in two former lifetimes, would also be there, as would the inscrutable Quantz Crawford, master of the mind-blowing art of the supernatural orgasm.

There would be not only 25 lectures daily--seminars, workshops--but, every night, in the basement of the Gnostica Bookshop, actually a converted mortuary, a witchmeet. For initiated witches only. "It will be preferred that all attending wear either street clothing or robes. For obvious reasons, no one will be sky-clad"; that is to say, starkers.

• • •

On a Wednesday, flying out to the Third Annual Gnostic Aquarian Festival of Astrology, Mind Power, Occult Sciences & Witchcraft in the New Age, at Hyatt Lodge, Minneapolis, I had to confess to something like total ignorance. I went forearmed with a hastily acquired paperback library of the occult, a certain skepticism, but only the most commonplace knowledge of the craft. There was Snow White, of blessed memory, being proffered the poison apple by an old crone in the traditional black pointed hat and Judy Garland being pursued for her magical ruby slippers by another malevolent witch. I had read Dracula, Grimm's Fairy Tales and, of course, Macbeth:Double, double toil and trouble;Fire burn and caldron bubble.But, to come clean, I had never knowingly encountered a bona fide witch until--shortly after checking into the hotel, a drummers' stopover--I was joined for drinks by Vicki Zastrow, festival director. An attractive witch, slender and black-haired, Vicki wore a low-cut white blouse and a black pants suit with white trim, rather like an inverted condolence card. Vicki had also come multiringed. With a blue sapphire for wisdom and speed and a topaz for tact and diplomacy. She also sported an ankh ring. The ankh, a T-shaped cross surmounted by a loop, is Egyptian, and symbolizes life. "Most people," Vicki said, "wear it with the point facing out to protect themselves against negative forces, but I've got a strong psychic shield. I've surrounded myself with good influences. So I wear it with the point inward."

I asked Vicki how old she was.

"You mean my chronological age?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Twenty-six. But yesterday I was with an older man, he was in his forties, and I was thirty-two. This morning I was with a younger man and I was eighteen."

Vicki drove me to the Gnostica Bookshop. Inside, Philip Roth rode the same shelves as Aleister Crowley and Edgar Cayce. Another counter was choked with sabbat artifacts. Groovy Fruity Incense, magical pentagrams, brass bells and, for the deodorant-minded Wiccan, Chinese Wash. Powdered brimstone was also available, as was war water, in an economy-size bottle.

"I would like to make it clear," Vicki said, "that we don't practice black magic. Our credo is, 'And it hurt none. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.' "

More Gnostic Aquarian celebrants were gathering in the lobby of the Hyatt Lodge.

"Merry witchmeet, honey."

"Blessed be."

Yvonne stood tippy-toe to kiss Russ on the forehead. "I'm aiming for your third eye," she sang out.

Me, I was aiming for the party at Carl Weschcke's 24-room mansion, on Summit Avenue, in adjoining St. Paul. The amiable, gray-bearded Weschcke was sponsor of the festival and president of Llewellyn Publications, a thriving occult press. Everything in his opulent living room was done up in black or gold. Even the cutlery, when it appeared, was gold-plated; the dinner plates, black. The Wiccans, already gathered there, sipping wine, had come flamboyantly dressed. The wizards, many of them insurance-claim adjusters, pharmacists or Government surveyors by day, favored medieval robes or black-velvet capes. Most of the witches, heavily made up, multiringed, were tricked out in long skirts slit to the thigh. There was even a black cat on the prowl. But the followers of the craft, just like your friendly Lion or Rotarian, wore lapel tags for easy identification: Hello, My Name is ... Lady Circe.

Gavin of Boskednan told me his Church and School of Wicca had been registered with the IRS and was now tax-deductible. The traditional church, he argued, was now a nonparticipating sport, like basketball. "We participate. We do ESP, for instance." And, yes, he was something of a psychic reader.

"Can you tell me anything about myself?" I asked hungrily.

"You're very interested in swimming and gym."

"Sorry, no."

"Well, you win some, you lose some."

Yvonne, his witchmate, had enjoyed three previous incarnations. She had been a man in pre-Christian Britain and, another life out, an Arab mathematician. "In my last reincarnation in Wales," she said, "I used to ride out on horseback to meet my lover. Just like in Ryan's Daughter. It gave the neighbors something to talk about."

Gavin was not without a sense of responsibility about hexing people. "But if a cabby rooks me," he said, "I'm going to hex him."

"What would you do?"

"Make him drive off the road."

P. E. I. Bonewits confessed to even mightier powers. He could, he ventured, heal blood diseases. "I'm also developing a nice flair for weather control."

As we were joined by Kim Efel, the conversation turned to England, where I had been rooted for almost two decades. "Oh," I asked, "have you been to England?"

Kim smiled darkly. Yes, she allowed.

"When?"

"In 1248. I was also here four thousand years ago. I was a king or a queen."

"In England?"

"No. Egypt. In another life, I was buried alive."

The editor of Gnostica News, 27-year-old Ron Wright, was also a traveler. He had been to Vietnam. But in this life, as it were. "I used magic there. Creative visualization. To visualize myself out. Same as positive thinking, you know."

Which was when I espied Jose Feola, parapsychologist, sinking trancelike into a chair; Yvonne, her eyes squeezed shut, was stroking his neck with her hands of power. "He's got bad tonsils," she explained.

Russ Michael, the warlock, who had passed through death's door and back again, introduced himself. He is founder and publisher of the Aquarian ESP Herald and toured with the House of David basketball team for seven years. Michael had been reincarnated only twice so far. Once in India, another time in Egypt, where, as he put it, he had helped upgrade civilization. "I was the Pharaoh known as Ahmose," he said. "I drove the invaders out in 1600 B.C."

Enough. Back in my hotel room, I settled into my homework. I am, I should point out, a sucker for outré newspapers and magazines, turning to the ads first out of habit. Gnostica News (paid circulation 5000) offered witch haberdashery, robes fully lined, with pointed hoods, from $50 to $100, and genuine rock-crystal balls, ranging from $49.95 to $6000 (Wisconsin tax extra). There was also an ad for a "beautiful scale replica of an authentic Spanish guillotine." The Warlock Shop, in Brooklyn, sold hooded robes for only $15 and enjoined members of the craft to Boycott Witch Crap Books. A distressed reader of The Green Egg was in urgent need of a female boa constrictor, eight to ten feet, at a reasonable price. The Green Egg, published by CAW, also sought help for a St. Louis man who had been possessed by a demonic being. "We ask all of you to please get together and send him all the power you can afford so that this evil being will vanish." The same issue also included a controversial article on "The Craft and Homosexuality," the authors concluding that "the gender of the earthplane shell is not necessarily the gender of the spirit dwelling in that shell." On balance, the authors were against homosexuals' being allowed into a hetero magic circle. Makes for bad vibes. But they did feel homosexuals could form nifty covens of their own, provided polarities were balanced.

Finally, I curled up in bed with Louis T. Cullings' Manual of Sex Magick. The author, like many a skeptic before him, stands foursquare for "magickal congrex," heightened, in his case, by something he calls the Bud-Will Intelligence. As an illustration of how well it works, he tells the story of an exemplar who was driving home in California when he picked up a hitchhiker, "100 percent woman," who soon ended up in his cabin. "Kiss me, Lou," she said. "Ever since I had titties I have dreamed about being loved by a man like you."

And so to bed.

• • •

The next morning, Thursday, I descended into the hotel lobby to sniff incense rising from the registration desks and found witches, witches, everywhere, collecting their festival kits and badges.

"And what's your rising house?" somebody inquired of an ebullient matron.

"I have a stationary Mercury rising in Pisces."

"Oh-ho!" he said.

A young man, an apprentice astrologer out of Winnipeg, drove me into a corner. Standing inches from my face, he peered into my eyes. "I'm aiming for pupil-level contact," he explained.

Of all the simultaneous lectures being offered, I opted for P. E. I. Bonewits and his hammer of Thor, in the Regency West Room. "During World War Two," Bonewits declared, "occultists brought down numerous German aircraft. They also eliminated Gestapo cells. In fact, they played an unsung role in bringing down the greatest black magician of them all."

Tim Zell was holding forth in another (continued on page 120)Witches' Brew(continued from page 92) room. Clad in a monk's robe, his hair worn in a pigtail, Zell explained to his audience of 20 that, as pagans, they were in the peculiar position of having a public image "created not by ourselves but by our prosecutors. It is much as if the Nazis had succeeded in eradicating Judaism to the extent that, generations later, the common opinion of what the Jewish faith was all about was derived solely from the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Third Reich." In Europe alone, he pointed out, 9,000,000 pagans were martyred by the Christian church during the Inquisition and witch trials. "Among Christians, a common accusation leveled at members of non-Jahvist religions is that they are Devil worshipers or Satanists. But Satan is a specifically Christian concept and no one outside Judaeo-Christianity recognizes him at all."

The time was ripe for a new religion, Zell felt, based on reverence for the earth and all the life that springs from it, but more than one member of his audience quarreled with his all-embracing endorsement of paganism.

"Look here, the fertility goddess of the Aztecs was a shit-eater. I mean, literally."

Here a thoughtful lady interjected, "So is the earth, if you think about it."

Zell and Carolyn Clark joined me for lunch. They were both rain makers. "Weather control," Tim said, "that's easy. Even my ten-year-old son can make blizzards in April. He has his own altar."

Outside, it was overcast. I invited Zell and Carolyn to have a shot at rain making and, sportingly, they agreed, sinking to the pavement to meditate for ten minutes. On rising, Zell said, "We'll have rain in an hour."

Alas, the rains didn't come in one hour, or even four, by which time I was ensconced in the bar with yet another witch couple, this pair out of Chicago. The male witch, a brooding young man with melancholy eyes, confided, "It's hard to be a Jewish witch. You'd understand."

"Sure."

"If my boss knew I was Jewish, there'd be trouble. If he found out I was a witch, I'd be fired."

His witchmate declared she was no mean rain maker herself.

"All right, then," I said. "Let's go outside and make some."

"I don't do parlor tricks," she replied sharply.

Possibly, there was more to it than that. A sense of ecological responsibility. Lecturing to an audience of more than 100 the same afternoon, Lady Cybele enjoined one and all not to use their powers frivolously. "I don't want any of you to raise the temperature to seventy-five degrees in St. Paul on January second, because, sure enough, if you do that, it will be thirty-five degrees and snowing on May second. Nature has its own pendulum."

Plump, bejeweled Lady Cybele was actually lecturing on psychic self-defense to a rapt, largely middle-aged audience, many of whom were armed with tape recorders. When undergoing psychic attack, she advocated the construction of an instant psychic shield. Making negative static, or jamming, was also a good ploy. Vampires, she ventured, who suffer from a leaky aura, are particularly deadly. "They latch on to your aura, make a hore and suck out energy." Lady Cybele, a good housekeeper, suggested that self-respecting witches ought to exorcise their homes once a month, just to keep them spiritually spick-and-span. If undergoing malevolent psychic attack, she said there was nothing for it but active self-defense. "Don't accept spells or nightmares, but send them back along the channels from whence they came. Go after your attacker with your astral sword. Rain fire and brimstone on him. Make it good." Finally, if nothing else worked, there was always the occult fuzz. "They have opted out of the reincarnation wheel," she explained, "but can always be summoned if you ask the Great White Brotherhood to come to your aid."

Some 50 enthusiasts turned up in their finery for the first evening banquet at the Hyatt Lodge. Yankee pot roast. My dinner companions were the delightful Crescent Dragonwagon and Officer J. P. Little from Arden Hills, a Minneapolis suburb. Little was in uniform; he wore a gun. The year before, I was told, a band of Jesus freaks had crashed the festival, stirring things up. "Expecting trouble?" I asked.

"Naw. They seem like regular, ordinary people to me."

"But you are on duty here?"

Officer Little lowered his eyes. Toying with his fork, he said, "Well, helping out, sort of. My lieutenant's a witch. He has a coven of his own."

There were two more cops, plain-clothesmen, on duty inside the Gnostica Bookshop, guarding the door to the basement witchmeet. Fortunately, Carl Weschcke had issued me a pass.

There was no magic circle. The witches sat in rows, like the P.T.A., rising now and then to pluck a Coke from a machine thoughtfully placed in a corner. Once more the ladies favored skirts slit to the thigh and many of the men wore hooded robes. Plump, middle-aged Lady Sheba rose to speak, flashing gold teeth. "There has been bickering among the people of the wise," she said, "because an evil man, you all know who I mean, some of his followers may even be here, has cast a spell on some of you, attaching elementals to your back. If any of his innocent victims wish to come to me privately afterward, I will cleanse you in Carl's temple."

A young man, his face ashen, stood up to plead for the evil one. "He is sick. He means well."

Another witch shot defiantly out of his chair. "His name is Eli."

"I didn't mention his name," Lady Sheba shot back, "you did."

"I tried to return his elementals," a man began falteringly, "but he polarizes them."

"He left me with sores on the soles of my feet."

Lady Sheba's eyes widened. She held a hand to her cheek. "Oh, he's a vampire, then. You've got real trouble!"

Witches began to murmur among themselves.

"Why don't we do a return-to-sender?" P. E. I. Bonewits suggested. "The curse of the mirrored light. Until he disintegrates."

But Tim Zell wouldn't have it. "Oh, fine. A splendid start! We're beginning with a witch-hunt. Paranoid pagans die of old age!"

"I am Sheba, queen of the witches. I published the Book of Shadows because the goddess so commanded me. I am meeting many of you here for the first time, but I tell you that she has asked me to gather all our rituals together--"

"Ours are secret--"

"Into revised temple books. The night I arrived here, the goddess took me into the astral to reveal to me thar that the star of knowledge hangs over St. Paul. Carl wanted me to announce it to the world, but I didn't want the publicity. But we are going to build a temple here, because this is the source, this is the center."

"I've never seen you before. How do I know you are queen?"

"I am the queen and I will publish the temple books. Thus I have been commanded and thus I will do--"

Bonewits interrupted again. "This is the U. S. A. We don't want a monarchy but a congress of witches. We don't want a monarchy, regardless of your ancestry."

"The fact remains I am queen and there is nothing any human being can do about it."

Everybody began to talk at once.

"If you won't follow me," Lady Sheba threatened, "there are thousands who is."

"Why don't we lay our quarrels aside," a witch interjected, "and find out those things we can agree on?"

"Yes," somebody else said. "How would we describe ourselves, for instance?"

A robed man, unheard from until now, rose slowly from his chair. "Let's say we are gods and goddesses in human form, and leave it at that."

Everybody clapped for the first non-controversial remark of the witchmeet. And then suddenly, without warning, George Lincoln, a lecturer and consultant on witchcraft clad in a black-velvet robe with a red-satin lining, stood up and pointed a stern, trembling finger at Lady Sheba. In a booming voice, he declaimed, "Lady Sheba, I challenge you! In the name of the Great White Brotherhood, do you stand in the light?"

Lady Sheba glared. She snickered. "You go into the astral," she said, "and the goddess will answer you thar."

• • •

The next morning, I managed to corner Lincoln in the coffee shop. "I wouldn't have done it," he said, "but my contacts demanded it. I was commanded astrally."

"Did you at least get the answer you wanted?"

"No. I saw the challenge go out astrally, but then she put up her shield, deflecting it."

Gavin of Boskednan pointed out there was rather a lot at stake. If Lady Sheba were recognized as queen, it could mean a fat publishing contract and a good deal of TV exposure. "It's a ticket to the network talk shows."

Finally, I caught up with Lady Sheba. "It's for goddamn sure," she said, "I don't stand in his light and I don't goddamn want him standing in mine. I don't need him in my aura. But they can't pick on me any more than they could on Moses."

In this life, Lady Sheba sprang from Knott County, Kentucky, and now lives in Florida. She's 53 years old and her legal name is Jessie Whicker Bell. Her husband works for General Motors. "Doing what?" I asked.

"Oh, he's a leader, or boss, or something. I have been queen of the witches since Camelot. You know, King Arthur's time," she said, allowing me to hold her moon-goddess necklace, evidence of her royal heritage. "I'm reincarnated into my family every seven generations. I'm part Jew, part gentile and part Cherokee. Oh, I have a beautiful memory of when I was queen of Camelot. Eleanora, you met her, she was my nurse then. She knowed it and I knowed it. And did I tell you that I was once a good Jewish mother, you know, when I saw the Crucifixion? To this day, you let somebody say something about Israel and it's a good thing I don't have the ultimate power, because I'd destroy all the Arabs."

There were other lives, of course. In India, Lady Sheba was once a great queen, tall and majestic, and so even now she returns to the River Ganges from time to time. On the inner plane, traveling astrally. "Did I tell you," she said, "that I have a hand of power?"

"Not yet."

"The great goddess--she's so beautiful, how can you describe her?--well, she took me into the astral and lifted my hand to the sky and it lit up like neon. Look," she said, showing me her palm, "she cut a pentagram in here and the sign of the goddess thar."

Apologetically, I protested I couldn't make out either symbol.

"Why, of course not," she said, unperturbed. "But if you had psychic vision, you could see it."

Yes, I agreed.

"Anyway, it's thar. Nancy becomes queen in two years. I'm going to step down for my daughter. I want a movie made of her crowning. I want it shown to all the world." Rising, Lady Sheba smiled and said, "I was a magnetic child. People used to flock to me like bees to honey. I used to have beautiful blonde hair. Now my hair is Lady Clairol. Moongold."

• • •

Friday, I eschewed the public lectures in favor of private consultations with astrologers, palmists, graphologists and psychic and tarot readers. Before the day was done, I had everything but my toes read.

I was told, on the one hand, that I was untrustworthy and not particularly generous, but, on the other, that I was a big spender and absolutely incorruptible. One palmist proved her sagacity by confirming that I had royal blood, something she had detected on only two percent of the hands she read, and another endeared herself to me by saying I would live until 93 and, furthermore, could count on a creative revival at 80. My tarot reader, distressed, observed that for a writer I had a singularly un-creative disposition, but an astrologer swore I was due for a big literary breakthrough. I was informed that I was both a fast and a slow thinker. Within two years, depending on which advisor I credited, I would leave my home in Montreal to live in England, Connecticut or Brazil. I was also told that I was musical, which is nonsense, and that I was a fastidious dresser, which is also untrue. My finances were in both good and bad shape. I was diplomatic, yet a faultfinder. My next novel, an astrologer advised me, should be "energized." I ought to begin right now.

"No kidding?"

"Mars changed direction on September nineteenth," he said, clinching it.

But my tarot reader pleaded with me not to begin for another six months, if I wanted to make the New York Times best-seller list.

With all the evidence in, I could only conclude that I was, as I had always suspected, so large a personality as to be charged with contradictions.

My first consultation, at 9:30 A.M., was with Noel Tyl, 6?9' and a Capricorn. Tyl, a charmer born, holds a degree in psychology from Harvard and is an opera singer who has performed with the Vienna State and New York opera companies. He is writing a 12-volume series on the principles and practice of astrology. He greeted me with a magnetic, all-embracing smile. "I've been working on your chart since six o'clock this morning and, Mordecai, it's made my day. If I had never seen you and this chart had come in the mail from Iceland, I would have known immediately that here was a writer, indeed."

Mmmm.

"You're not the most brilliant of men, there are better minds--"

Shit.

"But, Mordecai, Mordecai, you can hear the grass grow."

Maybe there's something in this, after all, I thought.

Consulting my chart, Tyl, his smile immense, told me, "You had a big sexual experience in 1947."

"You're damn right," I shot back.

"Nineteen seventy-two was a fine year."

"Spiffy."

"You've not yet come into your full creative powers--"

Yes, yes.

"But it is about to happen. Nineteen seventy-six will be a very big year for you."

Tyl, to be fair, also made some shrewd character judgments, and I left him, floating, almost a convert. Alas, later in the day, I ran into a girl who had also consulted Tyl. "Isn't he wonderful?" she said.

"And perceptive," I added.

"Yes. You know what he told me? He told me I could hear the grass grow."

I got off to an unfortunate start with the next astrologer I consulted, the venerable Marc Edmund Jones, who told me, "You have an empty first house. Just like Richard Nixon."

Hey, hey there, I thought, but he also allowed that I was incisive, honest beyond compare and that 1977 was going to be a vintage year for me, which left me with a two-year streak.

After having my palm read twice and visiting a tarot reader, I hurried off, my head spinning, to meet with bouncy Prince L. Bokovoy, Jr., "a leader and innovator in Twin City graphology circles." Bokovoy, 58 and out of North Dakota, is a construction inspector when he isn't lecturing or entertaining at private parties. He told me I'd make a good detective, I hold grudges and think in bed a lot. Nudging me, he added, "You're a smooth lover and a smooth operator. More greedy for sex than money. You know I can tell if a guy's a homosexual?"

"How?"

"If a guy makes a g like this," he said, drawing a tangled letter for me, "he jacks off, he's a fag. But me, I'd just tell him he had 'unconventional sex desires.' Listen here, I can tell if a girl is oversexed or dry-sexed. That's useful, don't you think?"

"Sure."

"OK. You want a girl who's lots of (continued on page 164)Witches' Brew(continued from page 122) fun?" Without waiting for my reply, Bokovoy drew yet another g, this one with a generous oval tail. "If she makes that kind of g, she's hot stuff."

Committing Bokovoy's salacious g to memory, I entertained visions of myself going from bar to bar, cross-country, inviting girls to write "gang, gringo or garbage" and, if the g's tail were full-blown, taking matters from there.

But, first of all, there was the evening banquet. Butter-baked one half spring chicken. I sat with the Weschckes. Sandra, also a witch, turned to her husband: "After the witchmeet, remind me to go to Super Value to pick up some cat meat."

Friday night's witchmeet was poorly attended but much more convivial to begin with, possibly because this time we sat in a magic circle, invoking the power. Lady Sheba, her mood conciliatory, even refreshingly republican, referred to the meet as no less than the first council of American witches, and then she called on the Wiccans to identify themselves and their trads. The witches in the circle stood up one by one.

"I'm Avery, American Celtic. My training goes back many years in other lives."

A potbellied man in a white sweater declared, "I'm a wizard, unaffiliated with any trad."

"I'm Lady Cybele. I've been practicing in this life for twenty-four years."

"George Lincoln. American eclectic."

An attractive witch, slender, long-legged, with streaky blonde hair, who had practiced the craft in three previous lives, identified herself as Celine. "I am a solitary witch," she said.

"I'm Lady Circe, from Toledo."

Uneasily, I realized it would soon be my turn to stand up.

"My name is Charles Leach. We're Celtic reconstructionists. And I just want to say there seem to be very good vibes here tonight."

"I am Jehovah," another witch declared, his manner sour.

"I'm Morning Glory and I'm from Oregon. I was initiated in the Neo-Gardnerian fashion."

Now it was my turn and there was no evading it. "I am Mordecai," I said, "and my trad is Jewish."

Jehovah shot out of his seat, enraged. "We were only supposed to be initiated witches here. He's from Playboy. And he described himself as a Jew. I used to be one and I know them and their ilk. If he's here tomorrow night, I'm not coming."

Well, now, unlike Russ Michael and other reincarnates, my suspicion was that if I didn't meet my deadlines in this lifetime, there would be no second chance (or, at best, a Playboy check postdated for two centuries), so I did return the following night, and the witches, embarrassed, stood up as one to apologize for the self-styled Jehovah's thunderbolt. Jehovah, as advertised, did not show. But, on reflection, this was, after all, the seventh day and possibly, just possibly, he was resting "from all His work which He had made."

• • •

Sunday's unrivaled attraction, for which more than 100 of the curious turned up, was a demonstration of "hypnosis, regression and past-life memory" by Jack and Mary Rowan. Three subjects, or astral trippers, were on hand, having their auras cleansed, when I slipped into the lecture room--two youngsters (Tom and a plump blonde, Sharon) and a cross-eyed, middle-aged man called Jack. The only difference, incidentally, between dusting a person and cleansing the aura is that in the latter case, you do not actually touch the person.

Astral travel, Jack Rowan ventured, "is real fun and real easy." His first subject, Jack, was already seated in a chair onstage. "Sleep, sleep, sleep," Rowan whispered into his ear. "Go back into the depths of your mind... deeper and deeper asleep...."

Within seconds, Jack was snoozing.

"Now we're going back to a life you lived before. Where are you?"

"Germany.... My name is Heinrich."

"Hiya, Heinrich. He's in Germany, folks. And what do you see?"

"Cathedral...."

"He sees a cathedral. Describe it."

"Big, stones...."

"It's big and made of stone. Who is your most famous friend?"

"Johann Sebastian Bach."

"Bach. Did he teach you to play the organ?"

"His son taught me...."

"His son, huh? Now say something in German for us, Heinrich."

No answer.

"They can speak German. Now say something in German, Heinrich."

Jack began to mutter softly.

"Heinrich, will you please say something in German?"

"Guten Tag...."

"Guten Tag," Rowan said, beaming. "Did you hear? He said Guten Tag."

Next, Sharon was taken into the astral by Mary Rowan.

"We're going back to a life you had before. Way back in time...."

Egypt, 1221 B.C. And Sharon is a boy in a house with many slaves. The son of Orpheus.

"And what does your dad do for a living?" Mary asked.

"He's on the council. For the Pharaoh."

Sharon went on to describe the temple, with its immense white pillars, and, my God, this skeptic recognized it! Yes, yes, I knew that temple. But, on second thought, it wasn't through a past life. It was undoubtedly the temple featured in Cecil B. De Mille's Ten Commandments.

In another life, one squandered in the Dakota Territory circa 1863, Sharon was a saloon singer called Lola, and, filling that office, she sang a ballad for us, very poorly, indeed. Afterward, Mary Rowan revealed, "In that life, you know, we found out Lola was my granddaughter. I was her grandfather," she added, tittering.

Finally, Jack Rowan guided Tom back through time and space to a previous life in Ireland, 413 A.D., where he was Sean O'Donnell, the renowned Kerry wizard. "I can create or stop storms," Tom declared, his affected Irish accent unconvincing. "I can see into the future."

"He can create or stop storms and see into the future," Jack announced. "Anybody want to ask him something?"

"Make rain," some lout shouted out.

"Not today...."

"Not today, he says. Anybody else?"

"Can you see into the Twentieth Century?"

A hush fell over the assembly as Tom, his eyes closed, obviously in a trance, struggled with words. Rowan, solicitous, offered him a sip of water and the wizard tried again. He struggled, he winced. Finally, he said, "I see wars... many wars... trouble, trouble...."

"He sees wars and trouble. OK, that's it. Cleanse his aura for him, will you, Mary? Sean, you're going into the astral again.... You're dying, but it doesn't hurt... into the astral... and when I snap my fingers three times, you will wake up in 1973, at the Hyatt Lodge, in Minneapolis. One, two, three! Wake up, Tom."

• • •

Only later did I discover that the intrusive oohs and ahs from the next lecture room, even as the Rowans guided subjects through the astral, had been evoked by Gavin of Boskednan's practical demonstration of sex power to which couples only (preferably robed, for easier mutual access) were admitted. The foreplay, however, was all in the good name of healing. All the sexual energy, or horniness, evoked was to be dispatched to a nine-year-old boy who was going blind.

"Did it work?" I asked.

"I don't know yet."

"Something else, Gavin. If, as you say, nobody was allowed to come to a climax, weren't your subjects, um, frustrated?"

"Oh, once the energy was harnessed, we didn't care what they did with it in their rooms afterward."

At the closing, sparsely attended witchmeet on Sunday night, Lady Sheba sang out, "I'm going home the happiest woman in the world. I'm going home just glorified because of you."

I saw the queen of American witches once more later that night, in the lobby of Hyatt Lodge, as I was hurrying to catch a late flight to Chicago.

"I expect to be on NBC television on Halloween night," she called after me, "Don't forget to watch."