In which Doktor Snake and Professor Crow school up a neophyte in the black arts…
“Wash my feet – lick ’em clean if needs be,” growled Professor Crow to RedJack, who had been literally begging us for months to be our apprentice.
Prof had finally conceded, and was now merrily ordering RedJack around to see what he was made of. So to show his genuine dedication to learning the magickal arts, RedJack duly got down on his knees, removed Prof’s boots, and proceeded to lick his bare feet.
It wasn’t a pretty sight, and probably wasn’t a pleasant taste either. But there you go. The path of hardcore sorcery isn’t easy.
It was Friday last week (May 26th, 2017). Prof and I had met up with RedJack to do a magickal working involving the creation of a servitor (thoughtform) and gaining the blessing of The Beggar King. RedJack and I are both based in Norwich, England. But Prof had travelled over from his base in Glastonbury in the West of England.
We had decided to work our magick on the walkway come park that overlooks Norwich’s medieval market, which was founded in the late 11th century. The walkway area is a kind of liminal place between the old market and the more modern city council buildings.
RedJack is a curious character. He’d had great success in the 2000s on the internet by blogging about his somewhat colourful life, which involved magick and the occult, indirect hypnosis, and a good deal of drugs. All of which lead to his downfall around 2007. He’d fallen prey to the conceit of many magicians before him, and had come close to madness.
Since then he’d been paying off what he saw as his “karmic debts” and was humbled into a life of business writing – a far cry from his glory days as an edgy blogger pushing the boundaries. But now he wanted to revive his magickal persona as RedJack in a more balanced and healthy way – thus he’d approached Prof and I to be our apprentice in the dark and sometimes hazardous world of sorcery.
It was around 8pm when the three of us found a bench to sit on overlooking Norwich market, which was now deserted as it closes around 5pm. There were very few people around generally, which is how Prof and I like it – though RedJack, being more gregarious and something of an exhibitionist, likely would have preferred an audience. But he was in our charge now, and as Prof put it – “He’d better do as he’s told. He does it our way, or not at all.”
I’d got my messenger bag with me full of magickal items and dip pens and parchment. So I instructed Prof and RedJack to go into a trance – with Prof intoning “unknown tongues”, the language of the spirits and the subconscious mind. I followed suit, and then pulled out some parchment, a small green bottle with a cork in it, and a dip pen, and began creating various sigils, weaving ideograms mirroring the intention of the working and creating a channel into the ether for it to manifest. The sigils were also designed to provide the searing prism for a spirit or servitor to be conjured into existence, which would reside in the small green bottle.
As I drew the sigils, Prof and I, with out almost monotone unworldly chanting, were bringing the servitor or thoughtform into tangible manifestation via the freeform sigils. Slowly a strange obsidian mist seemed to form around the parchment paper that was now covered in my arcane glyphs. At that point I rolled up the parchment into a scroll and pushed it into the bottle, the swirling dark mist seeming to follow it inside. I then capped the bottle with the cork and the central stage of the working was done.
Now it was time to give an offering to The Beggar King, the mysterious and shadowy spirit that inhabits many cities and towns. He is the patron of the homeless.
Prof looked around the walkway where we were sitting, gestured, and said, “On that bench over yonder, it’s The Beggar King.”
Sitting there was an old black guy with very long hair, and scruffy and dishevelled in appearance.
“You need to give him money,” Prof told RedJack. “A tenner should do it.”
RedJack walked over to the guy and asked him if he was homeless. The guy, with evident irritation, said “no.”
So RedJack returned to where Prof and I were sitting, and said, “Maybe he isn’t The Beggar King, maybe we got it wrong?”
With a wave of dismissal, Prof said, “Make no mistake, that guy is The Beggar King, but he’s a tricky character, and this is a test.”
“What we need to do,” I cut in, “is find one of The Beggar King’s minions, a homeless person, and give them the money as an offering.”
With that we walked into the main shopping area of Norwich city centre and looked around for homeless people, of which, like in many towns and cities today, there are many. Yet, surprisingly, at this time, we couldn’t find any. We walked for twenty minutes, and still no homeless.
At that point, RedJack had a personal revelation come to him to do with regaining the almost shamanic power he had during his glory days as a well known internet blogger. As he became animated about the revelation, we turned a corner, and there, at last was a homeless guy.
So RedJack went over to him and said: “I’ve been looking for you. It’s an honour to meet you. Here is my tribute…” He duly gave the homeless guy £10.
With the offering to The Beggar King done, we wandered over to a small park where various events were going on as part of the Norwich and Norfolk Festival. We sat down on a bench and had a general chat as a way of grounding ourselves and dispelling the leftovers of the magickal energy we had generated.
Then it was time to go. But RedJack saw a guy he knew on a pushbike and ushered him over to view a short humorous video he’d created on his phone – the video being part of RedJack bid to regain the success he’d had in the past.
As the two were watching the video, a homeless guy came alongside them both. He had a strange, almost scary look in his eyes, and had long unruly hair and a beard. It was The Beggar King, a slightly different manifestation to the one that was sitting on the bench near the market square, but The Beggar King, nevertheless.
As he shuffled past he looked shiftily at RedJack as if giving grudging blessing to the magickal work we’d done to help bring RedJack back to prominence in the entertainment world.
With that, RedJack, Prof and I, went our separate ways. But RedJack messaged me later that night saying:
“Some people tried to get me to lend them my phone for money. I said no at first then I realised it was a test from the beggar king. I knew that it was about trust – even though these people were scumballs. I took no money and let them have the phone for their drug dealer call. The king wished to make sure I was sincere for his host and that I had really learned my lesson. Scumballs is a bit harsh – street drug people…”
And then a couple of days latter, he said:
“So I went out the following night with this woman I know, and she was very upset about all the homeless people on the streets. I gave the homeless people money and what have you and then we espied the guy who was the beggar king from the following night and she gave him some money out of nowhere. It was more than a coincidence and one that I believe could be rather good…”