Aries the Ram: The Cardinal Fire sign, ruled by Mars. The furious birth of life in the rawness of spring. Courage and Initiative. The Triangle set on its base, symbolizing the gathering of the inchoate powers of consciousness and the emergence of Ego just as the two-dimensional triangle is born from one-dimensional lines. The blind desire of the newborn.
The Archangel is Tzaphkiel, of the Order of Thrones. His sacred Sigil is drawn on the wooden floor, a huge shape enclosing Jayne, the set for the shoot, the consecrated lamps, and even the day bed which has been pulled out from the wall. It was a big job to draw that weird, twisted circle on the floor and get it right, and it took me almost all morning, crawling around with red chalk and measuring string. But now everything is enclosed in that sacred space and we're ready to begin.
Jayne is standing in the lights wearing a black tiara of wrought iron on her head, an iron amulet on an iron chain around her neck. She is swathed in a seamless gown of crimson silk: well, it's really more of a poncho than a gown, but it is seamless, made from one long piece of crimson crepe, tied around her waist with a black cord to show the flare of her hips and drawing the fabric tight against the bountiful mounds of her breasts. She wears black stockings and black gloves that reach to her shoulders.
Her hair is a tumble of brassy red: beautiful, insolent hair. Her lips are painted the reddest, glossiest scarlet I could find. Her birthday is right; even her numerology is right. She should be Aries personified, but she isn't. That's what drew me to her. Instead of commanding the space she stands in with regal authority, she's giggling and covering her mouth to stifle a self-conscious laugh.
"Where do you want me to hold these things?" she asks me, a sword in one hand, a crystal globe in the other. I can tell she feels silly, which is an odd thing for a model to feel. You think she'd be used to weird clothes and props by now.
"Hold the sword pointing down, at your feet, but hold the globe up, like you're offering it to us," I say. "You're the spirit of Aries, the Ram, and you're commanding us to kneel at your feet. When I tell you, lift the sword up; hold it high, like a lightening rod. That's how the spirit of Aries comes into your body, see, through the sword."
She giggles again.
She still thinks this is just another photo-shoot, another modeling job, and for her, I suppose it is. After all, she's getting paid by the hour and making out like a bandit. I had to run out to Victoria's Secret for another half dozen pair of black stockings when the first pair ran when she put them on, and while I was gone she just sat around with Johnny drinking Perrier and watching Jerry Springer, getting paid all the while. And she wasn't cheap.
It bothers me because I don't have a client set up for these photos. I'm doing this on a lark, and the photos aren't really the point. I've tried to tell her that, but she just doesn't seem to hear me. To her it's just another job: what I tell her to do, she does..
I step behind the camera and look at her through the viewfinder. I have to admit she looks great. She's worth the money, just the sight of her. All legs and tits and those slightly surly lips beneath her wild mane of hair. If only she could act more like her sign.
"Pull the neck down a little, Jayne. I want a little more cleavage."
She's got her hands full so she puts the crystal ball against her neck and tries to hold it in place with her chin, but before she can tug the neckline down it slips out and she just manages to catch it before it hits the floor. She drops the sword and it falls with a clang.
"Johnny?" I call. "Johnny, can you get your ass in here and maybe help out?"
"Oh what is it now?" my assistant says, coming in from the kitchen in the back of the studio and wiping his hands on his apron. He's been making his blue-corn salsa for our break and hates being disturbed when he's cooking. "I can only do ten things at once."
"Just take a midol or something and calm down," I say. "I need you to help me over here."
"Fine, fine. The hell with the salsa then!" He looks at Jayne who's reaching for the fallen sword. "Don't move, Jayney," he says. "You chip a nail and Johnny kill."
"I need some more cleavage," I say, "Just tug her neckline down a little."
"You'll see that tacky black bra then," he says, handing her the sword. Then to her, "I don't know why you don't just take it off, Jayney. Your boobs are plenty perky without. If they were any higher you wouldn't even see your face."
Jayne laughs and shakes her shoulders at him like a belly dancer, making her tits shake. "You're sweet, Johnny. But Rob's the boss."
Johnny tsk-tsks. He sucks his fingers clean of lime juice and then tugs Jayne's neckline down a little and prissily pats it into place.
"Deep breath," he tells her, then he puts his hands inside her neckline and pushes her boobs together as if he's fluffing a pillow. They both break into giggles, and Johnny finishes adjusting the robe, straightening the shoulders.
He looks back at me. "How's that, boss?"
The twin hillocks of Jayne's gorgeous tits are pressed together as if they're ready to spill over the top of her bra. I figure we have about an inch of leeway before we start seeing nipple.
"That's good." I say. "Great. Now give her some more sweat. Tits only."
Johnny holds a magazine over Jayne's face to protect her makeup while he sprays water on her cleavage with a mister until they have just the right amount of shine. I snap on the red filter and have a look. Perfect. She looks like she's shining with perspiration.
"The look, Jayne." I say, "Give me the look now."
She lowers her face slightly and looks at me through her long lashes, her lips parted, almost dripping with desire. Her eyes are intense, supernaturally green but look bottomless through the filter. She looks hot and sultry, almost dangerous. Just perfect.
But before I can get off a shot she suddenly loses it and bursts into nervous laughter. The goddess of desire turns back into a giggly twenty-eight year old. Honestly, I've dealt with models getting the giggles before, but she seems to be really having trouble getting into this shoot.
"Wait, wait," she says. "Give me a minute. I'll be okay. Just a minute. Johnny made me laugh."
I'd been seriously reading about ceremonial magic and the occult for a few years, but it never occurred to me to try anything myself till just recently, because I never really understood it before. I mean, it's always interested me. I'm a sucker for anything occult or mystical, but it just always seemed like a bunch of hocus pocus before, a lot of dungeons and dragons stuff: colorful and interesting, but basically make-believe.
But it's just as they say, you can't expose yourself to these things without them starting to rub off on you, and in my case it began to rub off when I started reading about the Tarot and Qabbalah. Maybe it was the material or maybe it was me, but suddenly it started resonating. Suddenly the Tree of Life started to make a kind of deep kind of sense to me, as if hidden patterns in my life were emerging and trying to make themselves known. Random occurrences no longer seemed so random, coincidences started occurring that were more than coincidences, even the people I knew started sorting themselves out in to archetypal groups corresponding to the four Tarot suits. Events in my life arranged themselves into patterns centering on the ten Sephiroth of the Qabbalah, each a different Manifestation of occult power, Holy Emanations. As above, so below.
For the past few months meaning was everywhere and I felt energies at work behind the scenes, as if they were trying to signal to me. The image I had was of supernatural forces trapped behind some membrane, trying to break through to me, trying to rip through a veil and make themselves known. The more significance I saw in things, the more I studied, and finally I realized that I had to act. I had to meet this thing halfway. If something was calling me, I had to pick up the phone. I had to open myself to the message; become receptive to the subtle signals they were sending me. I had to open the door and invite them in.
I decided to try and invoke the spirit of Aries.
There were several reasons I chose Aries. First of all, it was early April, the weather raw and turning, and I was aware of feelings abroad in the air, as if I could feel the whole creaking wheel of the universe moving overhead towards the coming spring. It was something I'd never felt before, like being propelled through time, and I was inspired. The second was that if I was going to invoke something, I didn't it to be anything dangerous. I didn't want to start fooling around with grimoires and invoking demons. I wasn;t really sure whether I believed in this stuff or not, but even so, why take a chance?
The third thing was Jayne M. From the time I met her she struck me as a perfect vessel for some kind of occult work. She was an Aries, born in the first decade of the sign, and with her piercing green eyes and that striking hair she could have been the Ram's own daughter. And yet she didn't have the Aries character, not at all. When she wasn't posing she was a kind of vague and mild creature, great to work with, but a little bit not all there, a little abstracted. She was one of those rare photo models who came to the business late, so she didn't have time to develop that prima Donna complex that plagues so many of them. She was still amazed that she could make so much money by doing so little. Also, she seemed to have no life outside of the studio. There was never anyone waiting for her after a shoot, she had no other interests I could tell, and she was always available. She was like a vessel waiting to be filled. She was perfect.
I won't go into the details of the ritual and the preparations I went through. This isn't a how-to story. The books and the information are available. Look on the web. Look at Crowley, look at the Book of Abra-Mellin the Mage, the Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon, The Book of Thoth, 666. The principles are always the same, the correspondences are there, linking the Tarot of the Egyptians to the Tree of Life, webs of meaning and intent reaching down from the heavens to the earth below: the Emanations of the Godhead Manifested in the material world. The Aries energy has certain symbols and correspondences that have to be collected and assembled in the right space at the right time. It's all a matter of concentrating enough energy in one place.
I didn't lie to Jayne about what I was doing, but, as I said, she just wasn't very interested in my motives. To her, it was just another shoot, this time with an astrological theme. Fine. I left it at that.
She composes herself now, biting back her laughter. "It's the water," she says, tugging at the gown. "It's running down between my boobs and it tickles."
I sigh. "You want a towel?"
"No, no," she says. "It's okay. It stopped. Okay. Here we go now. Ready. Ahem."
She clears her throat to show me she's ready to be serious now, and takes up the position, sword pointing down at her feet, crystal orb at shoulder level. She lowers her face and looks at the camera.
"That's beautiful," I say. "Lights, Johnny," and he hits the mains so Jayne is standing in the spots. Once she composes herself, she looks hot: extremely sexy.
