Chapter 1b

– David –

I called Anne Phillips, a Prof at York university, who'd done work on characterizing the minority faiths. The religious colleges associated with the University had objected to her appointment; but the university had argued that her work didn’t support the practice of illegal magics, just catalogued them. Anne felt their fussing was simply the traditional religions were trying to maintain their influence. I told her about the series, and that the next piece would be on Wicca.

"Oh, that would be fabulous — I’ve been corresponding with a few people, including one woman who’s running a store, if you can believe it. I mean, it’s not a ground-level storefront, but she’s surprisingly blatant about the whole thing."

"Do you think you could give me a few names for a meetup?" I asked.

She hesitated. "I think it’s best if I initiate contact, David. People are skittish about getting in trouble with the Bureau. Let’s see who’s willing to talk."

"That would work for me," I said.

* * *

Two days later I woke in the dark of a winter’s morning to the faint murmurings of my clock radio. I could hear the wind howling around the house and headed into the kitchen to make some coffee, my mind distracted by half-remembered fragments of legends and archetypes from the texts I’d been reading to prepare for the meeting. Gazing out the back window, frenetic gusts of snow glowed faintly with the city’s light. The porch lantern created a spot-lit whirlwind, and I felt a chill at the stark chaos of winter just outside my warm kitchen.

Then a fox, eyes of green and amber, entered my backyard’s centre stage. She looked at me through the window, pausing, and for the life of me, I thought I saw her frown as she took me in. Then she gave a dismissive shake of her head and trotted towards Babe’s fence. I tried to keep sight of her, but the porch light wasn’t up to the task.

I continued to strain for some sight of her and finally turned away, unnerved. It was the second time in little more than a week that the creatures in my backyard seemed to have more intelligence than they should.

I’d always known there was a good deal of animal life in the city, but until now it had always struck me as picturesque. The raccoons, like neighbours given to the occasional drunken binge, or the squirrels akin to the presumptuous neighbour constantly borrowing sugar. But that fox was something else, primal and just a little unnatural, like Babe. It unsettled me. I felt as though there were forces at play in the world beyond my control, disturbingly akin to those tales that I’d been studying.

The mood stuck with me as dawn crept quietly across the grey sky. The glyphs and sigils of faith and power kept distracting me from writing my interview questions. I pondered the strange power these symbols possessed to make people fear and revere them so. I had to remind myself that the only powers they possessed were the ones we gave. Anything else was to admit that magic might be real, and not some left-over superstition from the middle ages. I had a job to do, and that, most certainly, did not include becoming some crystal-wearing crackpot.

By the time I finished, I really had to hustle to get to the meeting, so I took a shortcut, hopping the fence surrounding the Parkdale Capstone. Like many Capstones, it was right beside one of the traditional churches. It was supposed to be restricted space, maintained by the Inquisition – sorry – the Bureau of Ecclesiastical Orthodoxy. However, it was shovelled, unlike many of the sidewalks, so it let me cut off a minute of my trip without stuffing any more snow into my shoes.

Luckily, it was only a few blocks to travel to my meeting. I’d arranged it at a café that was a regular haunt of mine. Last year it had been a boarded up storefront, split into two or three shops, all defunct. Now it was a single large space renovated with a retro feel. As part of the renovation, they'd freshened the protective sigils against magic on the lintel, although I suspected they were, now, decoration more than anything else. I was no expert, but they didn’t look quite right. Rather ironic, given the folks I was about to meet. This place was a stark contrast to my previous café, a CoffeeTime Donuts just across the street. They still served the rougher side of the neighbourhood, those folks whose life here had preceded the latest wave of gentrification.

The mismatched wooden floors had been polished to a brilliant shine, with the gaps and scars lovingly preserved. An old espresso machine gleamed bronze on the counter by the entranceway, though it was, as far as I could tell, just for display. The barista, a bored, but efficient young man in overalls, flannel shirt and Leafs toque, was putting together a mocha chai latté with almond milk for a woman in a long black coat over a jade green turtleneck paired with a black wool skirt. She had a slightly distracted air as she juggled her drink and a tote bag stuffed with papers. The barista glanced up as I entered, gave me a nod, and started getting my americano ready. "Good morning, Dr. Phillips." I said.

"What?" she responded, glancing up. "Oh, hi, David." She fubled with her papers and managed to shake my hand without dropping anything.

"I see our group has arrived," I said, glancing over at the crowd clustered around one of the larger tables, mostly younger, black-clad and covered in silver jewellery. Pentagrams were prominent, though to be honest, if they weren’t such a large group, they’d have fit in with much of the rest of the alterna-hipster clientele of the place. I began to roll my eyes, but then I looked down at what I was wearing. Black on black. I sighed.

She smiled, recognizing my glance, "Well, at least our clothes won’t alarm them."

As we approached, the mood of the table was looking tense, with most in attendance looking down at their drinks or wistfully at the exit. The conversation at the table was dominated by a heavy man taking up an inordinate amount of space. He had floppy black hair in a style unsuited to his developing bald spot — an incipient tonsure, I thought. His tone was nasal and aggravating, more for its dismissive arrogance than anything else. Our arrival did nothing to interrupt him.

"Any effective magic," he opined, "must include some element of sacrifice, and blood is the most powerful of these. If you want a ward to be anything more than symbolic, then something must die."

As Dr. Phillips and I took our seats, we exchanged slightly alarmed glances. It was this kind of talk that made people call the Bureau. Until recently, their history spoke of an iron cruelty; though these days, they were little more than a vestigial appendage of the police. Thankfully, this place was hipster enough that the only raised eyebrows were of the goth variety, more annoyed by the Tonsure’s grating intonation than what he was saying.

Just as I was about to interrupt him, a woman at the table decided she’d suffered enough. She was distinct from the others; in her early fifties, with long curly salt and pepper hair, and dressed in khakis with a white shirt. Her Jane Goodall style clashed dramatically with the predominant black. Despite her dashing appearance, her voice held a certain resignation, as though she couldn’t stop herself from countering the Tonsure, but also recognizing the likely futility of doing so.

"A ward does not require blood," her voice clear and firm, with a faint Dutch accent. "Even if one did, it would not necessarily require a sacrifice. It would depend on the practitioner’s intent." Her wording was careful, never indicating that she had ever cast a ward herself. She sounded like an academic, perhaps a colleague of Dr. Phillips?

My musings were interrupted by the Tonsure’s response.

"A ward is for protection," he sneered, “thus the name — and any idiot knows that the best protection is a good offence.”

"You’re the only offence here," came the muttered response of one of the younger women, and the Tonsure reddened at the slight.

"If you knew anything about the original texts," he huffed, "rather than some crap you read on the internet, you’d know better. I have an excellent translation of a Romanian spell book that makes these things quite clear. In fact –"

The tinny jangle of the café door interrupted his comment. Something about its tone made everyone look up. I smelled something too, some sort of synaesthetic connection to the sound, a faint smoky and bitter smell, like burnt herbs.

"Oh," said the new arrival, dropping a pile of bags and books next to the Tonsure, forcing him to yield space and the seat beside him, "are we discussing Romanian wards? That’s wonderful. I found a lovely 13th century text in Hungarian, of all things, discussing the wards of the practitioners in the lower Danube, mostly to prevent attack by wolves and bears. They used honey and urine as the key components," and she pulled out a book, brandishing it with a smile, leafing through the pages, she dropped it in front of the Tonsure, and smiled. "Sorry, it’s untranslated. Do you read Hungarian? Such a fascinating language!"

The room fell silent at that comment and there were a number of looks exchanged, amused at how this chatty invasion had completely decapitated Tonsure’s argumentative momentum.

I studied the new participant. She was plump, with short black hair cut in a stylish pageboy framing a round face. Under her heavy coat she wore a plain black skirt with a matching blazer, very conservative and business-like, but her blouse was an imperial purple with a variety of mystical symbols embroidered onto it. On her jacket, one lapel had a row of those symbols iterated in a line of small, tasteful silver medallions. She was self-possessed and rather unlike many of the willfully iconoclastic group that sat around the table, with the exception of the woman who’d spoken so carefully against the Tonsure.

"David Andrews," I said, holding out my hand, pleased at her intervention, but only now realizing that she’d been outside for the bulk of the argument, so how had she…?

"Hi," she said, before I could consider the matter further, "so you’re the one who wrote that Voudou article."

"Yeah, that’s me," I said, blushing a little. "I’m doing a full series now."

"That’s great! It’s nice to see someone looking at Wicca seriously. I’m Louise Beacon."

Introductions around the table came smoothly after that, and the conversation grew much more productive. Even Mr. Tonsure (whose name turned out to be Alan) was, when restricted in his volubility, a good source of information about the various groups in the city. He’d known a lot of them, though I got the impression much of his experience was about how he came to be excluded from them. Though perhaps shunned might have been the more accurate description. Interestingly, though, he was the only one that spoke openly of actually casting spells. The others talked about ‘studying’ magic, and about spells that they had ‘encountered’. All careful words should the issue of actually doing magic ever come up in court.

I asked Tonsure, er, Alan, "Don’t you worry about speaking so openly about your, ah, practice?" I found his brazenness shocking. Despite the relaxation of attitudes, magic was illegal, as were many spiritualist and indigenous practices. With the Voudou, they’d been careful to focus on worship; no invocations, no spells, no ‘hoodoo’. The priest and Houngan had insisted upon this to their congregation. I’m sure the spells happened, but in the public ceremonies, they’d been very, very careful. It helped that their rites happened within a church that was rife with glyphs of protection, along with a Capstone under the pulpit.

As I scribbled in my notebook, I realized that something about his talk unnerved me. Not the illegality, but rather his practical talk about his experimentation; what he claimed worked and what didn't. He was so concrete in his language that I had to remind myself that there was no reason to believe that magic still existed, if it ever did.

Alan seemed immune to my unease. "Pfft, why?" he responded. "I know my rights. They haven’t tried to prosecute any real magic in what, thirty-odd years? The last case that actually came to court was a bunch of housewives playing at ‘magic’ by getting stoned on peyote and dabbling in visions. They got off with what, a little community service? The advantage of having a husband who’s a cabinet minister, I guess. The only thing the ‘Bureau’ gets involved with these days," I would have heard his sarcasm, even without the finger quotes, "are the gangs who claim their coke or weed have magical properties. Or when they use magic glyphs to mark their territory. But it’s only an excuse to arrest. They never prosecute. They know that they’re one Charter of Rights challenge before the entire section in the criminal code gets struck down. Nowadays, the Bureau is just another word for pig."

"Are you hoping that you’ll get arrested?" asked Jean, the curly-haired woman who had challenged Alan previously. "You want to initiate a Supreme Court challenge?"

Her pointed question punctured his bombast. "Well, no, but they wouldn’t dare, would they? It would be more trouble than it was worth."

"Maybe not. Still, have you ever been arrested? Do you have a plan if you are?" Jean actually seemed genuinely concerned.

"No, but jeez, ever since those housewives…"

"But those ‘housewives’, as you called them — it wasn’t just that one of them was married to a cabinet minister, they were all members of the establishment — married to judges, high-profile doctors and a few bankers. Sure, they were prosecuted and convicted, but the court only gave them a minor drug charge. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t likely be able to arrange a suspended sentence after a few weeks of community service."

"So, sure, you’re right," she continued, "They never prosecute for Witchcraft, and even if you don’t end up with a criminal record, let me assure you, you don’t want to spend the night in the Don Jail. It’s very… unpleasant."

"Oh." said Tonsure.

"You have?" I asked Jean.

"I’m not here to talk about that," she said, definitively.

"But you are here to talk, so how do you thread that needle, yourself?" I asked.

"Carefully," she replied with a wry smile. There were some chuckles around the table. "I began studying the history of magic while I was in grad school. It was a challenging time in my life. I’d come out as a lesbian, so my church had shunned me. Not long after this, I had my first genuine encounter with the occult. I was lucky. The lesbian community back in the early 80s was quite exploratory about faith issues; and it helped me find an alternative path that echoed the Beguine tradition of women’s faith community from the 13^th century."

"And you didn’t run into problems with the Inquisitors?"

“Oh, they fussed; but the Beguine communities were definitely Christian, though more mystical than the authorities liked. And while we did some, shall we say, research, outside of the strictest of Christian traditions – Christian it was, and thus protected under the Act. There were rumours about our ‘unnatural practices’, so our circles were raided, much like the gay bath houses were. Honestly, it was more about homophobia than anything else. I think that the only reason that we didn’t get as much press coverage as the bath houses is because we weren’t naked as frequently."

"But occasionally," I couldn’t resist.

She gave me a delightfully wicked smile. "There are a lot of different magics out there. Some are more fun than others."

"That would be an interesting story," I began.

"And that’s all I’ll say about the matter." Jean finished.

I smiled. "Okay. So, what about now?"

"I’m still interested in the older traditions, when Christianity was more mystical, and incorporated traditional magics – especially the nature traditions that underlie contemporary Wicca. Before I dropped out of grad school, I’d found an amulet. It had some, well, some interesting properties. It was a, um, a code key of sorts, able to read and understand text that had been hidden by, ah, various means, in other manuscripts so that I could look at old texts with fresh eyes.

"So it was a cryptomantic artifact?" Alan interrupted enthusiastically, “Did it decode texts, or reveal hidden ones?"

"Let’s say it was revelatory, shall we?" was the inevitably coy response.

There was a harrumph from Alan, but he didn’t push her. He knew better by now. But Jean gave him a small smile. He and shrug that seemed to disarm his frustration, and he settled back with a roll of his eyes.

"So what did this artifact reveal for you?" I asked.

"It gave me some insight into the Beguine community’s day-to-day life. A lot of household spells mostly, wards against vermin, for example." She gave a sidelong glance towards Alan, who flushed, but seemed to take the gently delivered jibe in stride.

The modest nature of her claims surprised me. I was accustomed to the wide-eyed exhortations of the true believers, with claims as extravagant as they were poorly defined. Yet this very sensible woman was very carefully not stating that she possessed a magical artifact. She wasn’t using it for some megalomaniacal power, but to answer obscure questions about mediaeval history. The others around the table simply nodded, as if charms and spells were tools as practical as any other. Even Tonsure, despite his disappointment, was kinda nodding along. He might be an arrogant know-it-all, but he acted as though magic were simply, practically real.

Her response ran against the lurid stories that I’d been exposed to when I was a boy in Sunday school – tales of those who’d found a grimoire and how it all ended up in some sort of magical disaster. As I’d grown older, I’d recognized them as blatant morality plays.

Indeed, it had been this flagrantly biased messaging that made me question whether magic, or religion, was real at all. Now, like any sensible person, I believed that both were mere superstition.

But old imprinting dies hard and I felt uneasy as the others, emboldened by Jean and Alan’s conversation, described some of their own experiences. Initially, everyone was careful to make some disclaimer about not doing spells themselves, that it was only stuff that an ‘acquaintance’ had done. But as their enthusiasm got the better of them, and as conversation flowed freely, these careful statements were abandoned.

They universally complained about the hypocrisy of the ‘Protection against Sorcery, Witchcraft and Maleficium Act,’ their animated voices drowning out the chatter of conversation in the café. Most of the group were seeking Wiccan as an alternative spiritual tradition and while it included some banned rituals, the act of doing magic was part of their spiritual journey. This rather conflicted with my Sunday school indoctrination; the search excited them; a desire to see the world in a new way, not satisfy some terrible thirst for power.

Indeed, when Alan, of all people, expressed his rapturous delight at the simple act of lighting the wick of a candle through a spell, there was a chorus of affirmation — along with enthusiastic interjections outlining at least four methods of doing this. They also described the various methods they used to escape the damping effects of the Capstones, and other protective sigils, that the Bureau used to reduce the natural flow of magic through the ley-lines. As fascinating as they found the technical aspects of spell casting, it was certainly not anything I could publish.

Then Louise spoke, "In my shop, I have at least fifteen methods to do a candle lighting, from eight different traditions, not only Wiccan."

There was stunned silence at this pronouncement, and before they could inundate Louise with questions, I interjected, hoping for something I could write, "So, could you tell me about the traditions that each of you follow?" Hoping I could get a story that would actually be legal to publish. From there, the focus was much more on the spiritual aspects of their beliefs, and would be something that would be a nice follow up to the Voudou article, but with a touch of magic to keep the readers excited.

I was drained but delighted by the time I was saying good bye to Dr. Phillips and thanking her for her help. "It was my pleasure, David," she replied, "all of my older contacts are far too leery of the Bureau to risk an interview like this; but this newer generation is impatient for change. It’s all very exciting." With that, she took her leave.

As I gathered my things, a gaggle of practitioners surrounded Louise, including Alan, who were talking to her excitedly about her shop. It occurred to me that both Dr. Phillips and Louise had their own incentives to be here. The former for more research options, and the latter for customers. I smiled to myself. It seemed all motives were mixed.

I found it stunning that she had opened a shop. There were stores that skirted the edges of the regulations, like the old head shops, but with crystals instead of bongs. But she was selling spells! Maybe Alan wasn’t aiming for a Charter challenge, but Louise was.

I bulled my way, gently, into the crowd to thank them all, especially Louise. She nodded at my thanks, but held my gaze. I shuffled a bit, feeling awkward and was about to make my excuses when she held up a finger to forestall me and began rummaging through her bags.

Then, with an exclamation of, "Aha!" Louise pulled out a small bag. "Would you humour me? I was wondering if you could cast the runes for me?"

I felt a deep unease — I really didn’t want to do this, but if Louise was willing to do magic in public, well, my editor would have my guts for garters if I didn’t play along. Still, what was it with these people? Did they want to get arrested?

The things we do for a paycheque.

"Ah, sure," I said, "can I ask why?"

She shrugged. "I am feeling a connection between you and me, and I’d like to get a sense of how these things might go."

I managed a queasy smile. "Forewarned is forearmed?"

She gave me a smile in return. "If you like."

I took the small bag of ceramic tiles, each inscribed with a single rune. At her instruction, I let them pour from one hand to the other, and then tossed them across the table. The crowd that had gathered around Louise watched intently. There was a small gasp from the crowd as some tiles skittered backwards. It was a disconcerting trick. But Louise didn’t look at me, to see if I was impressed with what must have been some sleight of hand. She just gave a small nod.

Before anyone could say anything, she scooped them all into the bag, far before I could make any sense of them. There was a small murmur of protest from the Wiccans, but Louise stopped any comment by simply saying, "Personal matter," with an air of finality that seemed to discourage the others from lingering.

She then reached into her bag and pulled out a business card:

The Flying Rowan

Supplier of Magical and Alchemical Materials and Texts

26A Corktown Lane,

Toronto, ON, M5A 3H2

Louise Beacon, proprietor

"So you know where to find me, when you need to, for either the small issue or the large one." She shrugged. "Of course, they’re probably the same issue, but it may be unclear at the time."

"Ahhh, okay." I held up the card. "Thanks," I said, and I gave her one of mine. I was still a little shocked that I’d participated in something that could be considered magic. But I wasn’t about to complain about her eccentricities. They’d contributed so decisively to the success of the meeting, as well as being a potential interview subject. I stared at the card. Heck, if she had an actual storefront, rather than operating on the black market, that would be a story in itself.