A whiff of sulphur...

There’s a definite whiff of sulphur in the air.  It’s been wafting around for the last couple of weeks, but I’ve kept ignoring me.  Me?  Did I really type that?  Dontcha just love the way the subconscious works?  Sigh. Sign. Cian. Kian. Oh my. A whole screed in a word there.  Let’s look at the other signs and portents, shall we?

In the post: the Egyptian Book of the Dead. O Bone-breaker; O Eater of Entrails; O Disturber; O Serpent. O yes. 

On the phone: Hecate and dark dark spells.  Incandescent necrophilosophy and a future with multiple, mistaken pasts.

On email: pacts and Chaos Magick. 

On my headphones: Dead Man's Bones, SoulSavers and Thea Gilmore. "Have you heard the Messiah went and joined the other side?"

On Twitter: Dante and domination, ego and id.  

Even, for pity’s sake the lamp-posts of town are in on the game, winking with Blake, memories of Milton.  Rags and bones.

How could I have been so dumb, so blind, so deaf? 
I’m trying to write a book about Hell while I’m living in an earthly Paradise.  I’m trying to remember brimstone while breathing bluebells. Go figure.

So I cast the tarot.  I haven’t done it for aeons and swiftly remember why.  My, but that’s one big mess of dark darn cards.  Death, The Devil, The Tower, The Wheel of Fortune, The Magician, Judgment, Strength.  Plus a small flurry of swords to dig in the knife.

Hermes, Hermes, you Trickster, you most fetching Fetch, you’re dogging my heels with the Fates giggling behind your back. You’re leading me a merry dance, through the swaying poppies again and back into Hecate's Cave; sliding past the old witch, sewing aconite; limping through the Labyrinth with Pan, that old goat.  And finally, deeper still, to the cold halls of Hades.  So, my old hermetic friend...do I follow you?  Are you wise?  Or do we follow one another in ever-decreasing circles? 

I know your game of old.  So I smile and sigh and tap out an email.
‘May I?’  
A swift reply: ‘Of course’. 
And my heart surges, my stomach flips over. Just three days to wait.  I’m going to the City of Dreadful Night.  Oh, and you do realise, don’t you?  You’re all coming too...  ;)

While we're waiting, let's have some music, eh?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/v10DNkeSct8