Low Magick: It's All In Your Head ... You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is - Lon Milo DuQuette 2010
That’s Not What Invocation Is About
Ax me no questions ’n ah’ll tell y’ no lies!
QUEENIE, SHOWBOAT68
About fifteen years ago, Constance and I were driving to Huntington Beach to attend a group celebration of the Rite of Mercury,69 when I perceived myself divinely inspired at a stop light. It was as if the wing-footed messenger of the gods himself had whispered in my ear, informing me how I could magically manifest in myself the spirit and presence of the god Mercury upon the entire gathering.
“Am I not the god of liars?”70 I heard him say as the traffic light turned green. “Honor and invoke me tonight by speaking nothing but lies!”
I instantly recognized the profundity of the idea. Excitedly, I turned to Constance and told her that I was going to invoke Mercury by telling nothing but lies for the whole evening. “No you’re not!” was her wise response.
I couldn’t believe she did not see the magical genius of the idea. I argued that it would be the perfect invocation. “Every chance I get, I will lie! Mercury will love it. I’ll be the only person there actually doing something purely mercurial.” I told her. “Besides, it will be lots of fun!”
But Constance saw nothing perfect or fun about it. “I want nothing to do with it!” was her answer. “You’re not going to do it!”
I finally gave in and said, “Okay. I won’t do it.”
(The invocation of Mercury had begun.)
We arrived a few minutes late. I apologized for our tardiness, saying that we had just returned from the cemetery where we had watched the exhumation of my father’s body. Constance looked at me with silent disgust and found an excuse to get as far away from me as she could for the rest of the evening.
She’s still mad at me!
Of course, everyone wanted to know why my father’s body had been exhumed, and I was only too glad to tell them. It seemed that the family of my mother’s second husband had been told by an acquaintance that my mother had bragged to a mutual friend about how she had poisoned my father. They took their suspicions to the police and finally got a warrant to exhume Dad’s body for testing.
Everyone at the party was enthralled by the story, which I told with a perfectly straight face. I even proudly pointed to the ring I was wearing that evening, and told them that I had been allowed to take it off my father’s finger when they opened the casket.
Next, I told a few of the cast members how hot they looked in their Egyptian wigs and costumes, but I didn’t get a chance to tell many more lies before the ceremony started. At the party that followed, however, I again became fully possessed by my lord Mercury. The lies dripped like quicksilver from my lips.
I started by announcing that our landlord had discovered that our house was contaminated with radon and that we had been forced to move to Garden Grove, where we now rented a large house owned by General Ky, the former prime minister of South Vietnam. I said it had a big backyard where we would be able to do initiations and produce the Rites of Eleusis—and that there was a rifle range in the basement. Everyone believed me!
You know, it’s hard to keep up a constant stream of lies, even for me. In fact, I was starting to realize that it’s impossible not to drag some element of truth into a lie. Actually I was starting to realize the inconstant and relative nature of reality itself—how there is no absolute truth, no absolute lies.
Was this the Mercurial revelation—the Mercurial trance of sorrow?
Try as I might to remain in character, the strain of all the lies eventually began to show. As the evening wore on (and it couldn’t end fast enough for Constance) people began to suspect something was wrong with Lon’s behavior. Our closest circle of friends became genuinely concerned. They cornered me in the kitchen just as I was reaching into the freezer for the bottle of gin.
“Lon, is there anything wrong? You’re acting sort of strange tonight.”
I looked at each of their sweet faces and it suddenly seemed the burden of the universe was about to be lifted from my shoulders. Every cheap movie confession cliché echoed now in my brain with Shakespearian gravitas … “I can’t go on living a lie!”
This was a surprise payoff—a moment of unexpected spiritual bliss; a breathless moment when the feather of Maat quivers on tiptoe upon the scale-pan of judgment; the moment my answer would free me from the Mercurial hell that Constance knew I would create for myself with this stupid, harebrained idea. These people loved me. These people cared. I had toyed shamelessly with their feelings. I was ashamed, and so overwhelmed that I didn’t know whether I’d be able to answer without choking up. I put down the bottle of gin, and looked each of them in the eye and confessed …
“My doctor told me I have a brain tumor.”
Everyone gawked at me in stunned silence. People near the kitchen overheard and soon everyone at the party “knew” why I had been saying such outrageous things all night.
When Constance heard this last whopper, she could stay silent no longer. “He does NOT have a brain tumor! He’s been telling lies all night because Mercury is the god of liars. Nothing he’s said is true. I told him it was a stupid idea.”
When the shock wore off, everyone else thought it was a stupid idea, too. Nobody, it seems, recognized the pure magical genius of my invocation of Mercury—nobody but me, of course. For a while I chalked it up to that Curse of the Magus71 thing. Then I just realized pranks such as this are not what invocation is all about.
[contents]
68 Showboat. Act I, Scene I.
69 The Rites of Eleusis are a series of seven ceremonies, each centered on one of the seven classical planets of antiquity, constructed by Aleister Crowley to be performed in public. They were first dramatically performed by Crowley, Victor Neuburg (who danced), and Leila Waddell (who played violin) in October and November 1910 at Caxton Hall, London. The Equinox I (6). London, Fall 1911. Reprint. (York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 1992). Supplement.
70 Traditions based on the mythological escapades of Mercury (the Greek Hermes) do indeed award to the wing-footed messenger of the gods the dubious distinction of being the god of liars, thieves, and lawyers.
71 I, of course, am being facetious. “Magus” is the title of the initiatory level corresponding to Chokmah, the second Sephirah of the Tree of Life, and representative of the second-highest level of human consciousness attainable. Among many other obligations, the Magus is vowed to “… interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my Soul.”