Drawing Down the Lunettes

This is a story about an early act of magick I was involved in. I have been drawn to the misnam'd "dark arts" since I was a kid; one time me and my best friend in those 1970s pre-fundie days got a book on witchcraft from the elementary school library and, as we sat on my front porch, I recited a spell to turn him into a rabbit. Nothing happened immediately, but four or five years later he moved to Texas.

Anyway: fast-forward to age 18, when I and many of the men in my college dorm worshiped the same Goddess, a deity named "Linda Ellerbee," whom one could only approach in deepest night. Linda would appear to us in our temple, the TV lounge, uttering sacred oracles about the world, politics, stuff that happened...

well, we weren't listening as carefully as we could have been. She was of voice dulcet, of mighty intelligence, and yea most wittie and sardonick, and yea of Her entire pantheon (television news) was She the fairest and most wise. At the time, the early 1980s, the idea of a non-T&A-flaunting "smart chick" on TV truly--I'm not making this up--confused many people. Linda to them was a Lilith, but to us the very Shekhinah.

Not least among her allures were her glasses. (It was the geek dorm.) If you are at all stirred by swimsuit or Victoria's Secret models, then it may be impossible for me to convey to you the occult significance of glasses, for we speak erotic languages as different as Dante's Italian and New York cabbie slang. Suffice it to say that to perusers of Plato and the periodic table, glasses in combination with a high IQ are Da Bomb...a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb of Hot.

Each night the dark rites continued. Linda made us laugh and, most supernaturally and mysteriously for a network television personality, made us think. All was happy in our sect until, one fated day, there dawned a ratings Ragnarok. Linda's show, NBC News Overnight, was to be banished from the air, to be replaced, I believe, by reruns of Nightline. The myrmidons of Mithras had won out...

and so we had to reach Her. Bring Her to our humble realm, and lift ourselves to Her heaven. And so the name of the deity (very important) was inscrib'd 'pon finest paper, and so the proper zodiacal coordinates were determin'd (the address of NBC Studios in New York), and so a sacrifice was made, of that most precious substance: money. We took up a collection so we could FedEx (back when it was damn difficult and a big deal) a prayer to our Goddess. We asked for a sign. We asked: When Thou say'st, for the last time, Thy supernal Verse, "And so it goes," wouldst Thou take off Thy glasses?

In the wording of our spell we groveled, the way only males can do when trying to curry female favor. Did we speak to Her of our pet dogma, that She had borrow'd her verse from the Prophet Vonnegut? I know not. But the spell was cast, and we had only to wait; we cast the spell Tuesday, and Gotterdammerung would air Friday night.

She manifested as usual, and the vision contained farewells and lamentations of divers sorts. At the end, as She was about to speak the Verse, all was breathless silence in our temple. And She lifted Her hand...and yea She spake the Verse, and... yea Her hand touch'd the spectacles playfully but removed them not. The temple erupted in laughter and joy, for She had come down to us, yet stayed in Her starry heaven; we were with Her and She with us.