Christian Peet

Second Tritone Lecture

In addition to the Art of Tattoo, or Spiritualism, Art which hath for its medium the Body:

The Art of Murder.

The Art of Rape.

The Art of Torture.

Which together form the second Tritone on the Illumasonic Tree of Sorrow.

O

1

One is the loneliest number.

One was beautiful. Once. 

One made a big scene one night and then totally disappeared. And then came back.

One is Johanna Michaelsen.

Johanna Michaelsen believes invisible playmates can be dangerous, possibly even demon spawn.

Throughout Western history, spiritual practices of the Other are viewed as magic or akin to magic—irreligious if not “heretical”— that which is separate, allegedly different, and often banned by the dominant cult or by the state (where it is possible to perceive a difference), etc., and even today most scholars discuss hymns, lamentations, myths, and prayers of temple cults—including administrative records—under the classification of “religion.”¹

Maintaining this distinction remains, of course, important to monotheism.

In the beginning, “[t]he social and in a broad sense political foundations of magic are visible in the struggle for precedence among cults and ritual practices. To be able to monopolize divination is to wield power….”²

The present writer has studied and practiced for years to care this little about the One.

It can be done.

Say it.

Write it.

Let it go.

Goodbye, One

2 

Two is endless night (or not).

Two’s tedious duality is unavoidable, but quickly becomes Three, which is a good thing or a bad thing or a third thing, where “third” denotes any one or a number of “infinite” possibilities.

Frequently, however, Two is the conversation that never ends and includes all manner of things about which — alcohol or no demon alcohol — the conversants know fuckall, including, or most especially, that Tritone indicated in the language symbols ALL CAPS GOD (a.k.a. “YO”) which is not to be confused with ( )

Via direct trauma of some variety to the body of its host, the metaphorical mind of the target may “split” not merely into two, but in patterns present throughout all nature and time, including actual blunt-force impact on human skulls from the earliest sacrifice to today’s fresh homicide—split in any number of directions, that is, “fragmenting” or “shattering.”

Pseudonyms, however, are generally more useful than multiple personalities. I don’t write “under” a pseudonym so much as make it do my bidding.

Orit Badouk Epstein, Wanda Karriker, Ellen P. Lacter, Pamela and Randy Noblitt, Carl Raschke, Colin Ross, Joseph and Rachel Wingfield Schwartz, Valerie Sinason, take note.

The PsyMage deals with targets who, like people everywhere at all times, are fixated on the same clutch of earthly concerns: health, wealth, sex appeal, a decent marriage, happy children, protection from social dangers and natural disasters, etc.

While magicians of all varieties, including priests and prophets and alleged human gods, have endeavored to explain the soul, in Western tradition it is only the so-called Black Magicians who harness the hopes and fears of their clients, and who target the same in their victims, in order to manipulate both to the magician’s calculated and focused Will.

3  

Three are the flaming prongs |_|_| in the heart the Tetragrammaton:

Y H |_S | h_| V H

4 

Four is for those would see the present text as poetry and so deserve a slap.

See also: Black Sabbath, Vol. 4

But also: Ozzy, Bark at the Moon (or) The Ultimate Sin (!)³

5  

Five is where it begins —

for around me flames the pentagram

6 

Six still totally rocks after all these years. And He shall continue to rock just as long as Six is needed, which you can bet is a while, as long as there are fives and sevens.

Inasmuch as Six is an extraordinarily powerful idea that may be rendered/translated in any number of of symbols, the evidence for Six’s power is so ubiquitous as to be noncontroversial.

Six visited West Memphis, Arkansas, for example, in 1993.

Though we might call Six the Devil or Satan or Old Scratch.

Nearly everyone thinks of Him as a man.

Some say it was He who took the lives of three boys under the light of a full moon.

Some say it was He who put three other innocent boys in prison by the light of day.

But most agree that He had help.

7 

Seven is a crime on Earth if not in Heaven: See that you do not do it.

8

Eight is not the only character waiting for a story, but Eight is the youngest girl.

9  

Nine is our Name.

10

Ten are the years we have waited.

11

Eleven is moonlight in November; a 1980s “boom box”; patients who report “feeling most alive inside a pitch-black room.”

Eleven is initiation; trauma; the near-death experience.

12

In Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus) avra kedabra means “I create as I speak.” The verb avra, not unlike the genesis of Christianity itself, is cognate with the Hebrew evra, although linguist and mage Patrick Dunn is careful to note that Hebrew also distinguishes between “evra,” to make something from nothing, and “etzor,” to create something from something else.⁴

Twelve is Peter Carroll, Damien Echols, Johannes Göransson, Bhanu Kapil, Joyelle McSweeney, Doug Mesner, Richard Metzger, Debbie Nathan, Vanessa Place, Selah Saterstrom, Rebecca Wolff, Fr. U∴D∴

And Twelve are all the rest of the best.

And Twelve is You

And Twelve is Yes

Christian Peet currently writes about crime and magic(k) and is publisher for Tarpaulin Sky Press. Forthcoming books include Angela's Story (GenPop Books 2014) Crimen Magiae: No Evidence, No Jury, No Justice (GPB 2015). He is also the author of Big American Trip (Shearsman Books) and a chapbook-series called The Nines (Palm Press and Interbirth Books). His work appears in the anthologies The Best of Fence (Fence Books) and A Megaphone (Chain Arts) and in journals and websites such as Denver Quarterly, Montevidayo, and SleepingFish.