The Joske Pavilion is a real magickal place that appears in my writing. This document contains two excerpts featuring this location.
The Pavilion San Antonio, Texas
New Eridu Media
©2010, New Eridu Media The three-quarter moon was bright in the summer night sky and cicadas droned loudly in the tall pecan trees. Elliott knew he hadn’t gone far: not only was he still on Earth, he probably remained in San Antonio. A few picnic tables were visible in the pocketed moonlight, and he realized he had to be in a public park, although he wasn’t sure which one. To his right, a captive river stagnated in a stone channel and a formation of ducks floated lazily in it, dipping their bills periodically as a host of water striders ran before them, their silent passage forming a delicate lace of ripples in the reflected moonlight. He was in a small clearing, coarse red grit beneath his feet. Something bade him to kneel and he did, more out of emotional exhaustion than out of any Wizard sensibility. For a moment, Elliott must have closed his eyes, although he had been unaware of it until he opened them again. No longer was he in the moonlit clearing: bright torchlight illuminated the stonework of an open air pavilion of distinctly magickal proportion and design. He knelt upon a Focus, and gone was his suit, replaced by a simple robe of white linen embroidered with a blue Star of David. “Welcome to the Temple of a New Tradition, consecrated to the service of the new Aeon,” a melodious male voice spoke; its pressure heralding the Presence that descended upon Elliott, uninvoked. A tall figure evolved from shadow on the north end of the Pavilion and moved with grace as it walked a measured pace, bare feet following the occult design of the inlaid stone floor. “Have you come to be initiated? No, I can see you are already of Holy Magick,” the voice debated with itself. “Indeed you have come to this place with a heavy heart, one broken by sorrows, primed for the ultimate rectification. You have come here to die.” “I don’t want to die! I want to live!” Elliott retorted. “But you don’t know how to live, do you?” Having traversed the path of the Hermit, the black-robed figure towered over Elliott. “No.” “Then it is likely that you do not know how to die, either. What should we do with you, then, if you are unfit for either condition?” “Make me fit.” A wave of shame washed over Elliott, the tidal product of a lifetime of tears unwept: not tears of sorrow, but tears of joy. His life to date had been a wasteland, and he knew it. “Make you fit?” the dark presence scoffed. “You, the cripple of your own making? I cannot make you fit, o shattered heart, only you can make anything of yourself.”
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©2010, New Eridu Media “Can you show me what to do?” “I can show you the Path of the Star.” The hem of the dark robe pooled upon the stonework as the figure knelt before Elliott. “Understand, o dying one, that to take one step on this path is to die. There is no turning back, there is no second chance; there is only the eternal death of the Abyss, and beyond it, if you dare, the Star. I see that you have considered this transit before, but you did not know what strange knowledge compelled you, so you turned back, even as your very toes were all that held you upon the Precipice.” “Who are you?” Elliott tried in vain to penetrate the murky shadow that dwelt within the black hood, but not even the glimmer of a moist eye gave a hint to the features thus concealed. “I am he who proved the path,” the dark-robed one replied and a finely-wrought hand reached up to the cowl and drew it back. “BJ!?” “I am not your world’s Redeemer.” The firm, evenly-proportioned features of the face drew up into a self-satisfied smile. “Although his Path and mine were not so different, as all Paths are one.” “My father said that BJ said something similar to him once.” “Your BJ had the Path in him.” “You never answered my question: who are you?” “You may call me Tzaddi,” the man replied without a trace of emotion. “Names, at this point, are not important. I am merely a Star of the Abyss.” “I have heard your name before,” Elliott nodded eagerly, thinking he had solved the mystery of the unidentifiable RealmNet user. "I think you knew my uncle.” “Seth?” “Yes! Then you're still alive?!” Tzaddi chuckled softly and shook his head in embarrassment. “No. I am quite dead, but also quite free. Your uncle was right in abandoning me as our paths had diverged; I know he must have intuited the depth of my eventual degeneracy from the popular press. If he retains a good opinion of the man I was, he is deluded, but well loved.” “Seth is still on Earth, still doing the work of the Realm,” Elliott offered enthusiastically. “You are the reason we are here at all.”
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©2010, New Eridu Media “The work is reason enough,” Tzaddi stated. “What is your part in this work?” “I am translating a few scrolls, and I have compiled an inventory of the magickal knowledge of Earth to take back with me to Caldria.” “Enoch and Jacob,” Tzaddi nodded. “I suspected as much. The time is short, and the foundation is yet unformed. The kingdom cannot stand on two legs.” “I don’t understand.” “You shall. She can explain it to you.” “She?” “You know her already,” Tzaddi smiled mysteriously. “Hers is the final Word.” “I really don’t understand.” “Listen to your heart,” Tzaddi said softly and placed the index finger of his left hand firmly on Elliott’s breastbone. With his touch, Elliott felt himself teeter, then fall, and fall, and fall…forever it seemed. All around him was velvety blackness - velvet without warmth, without substance - it soaked up all light, absorbed all sound, diminished all energy. Cut off from the Source of life energy, his life force wavered like the wick of a candle that has burned away all of its wax; he blazed up as the fire of his own being consumed the only thing left: himself. Past the shells of those for whom no escape was possible, Elliott fell, a coal, an ember, a spark, a cinder, a mote, a molecule, an atom, an electron, a quark, a potential. I have run out as far as I can, he thought his last as his substance evaporated. Holy Absolute, show me the way to run in again! I am with you always, even unto the end. The Voice was that of the Presence, yet Elliott continued to fall, a fragment of thought, an inkling of an idea, a singularity. The fall stopped so gently, what little was left of Elliott sensed only how tiny and alone it was in this endless Void. An eternity passed, and even these final definitions of separation dissolved into nothingness. With nothing to keep it separate, the pervasive emptiness rushed in, as if nothing could contain emptiness. It couldn’t, it was mathematically impossible. On error, the nothingness inverted: from nothing, everything. A point-source, he flew forth blazingly: as he streaked across an Abyss that no longer could contain him, the forces of Creation remade him, and remade the Universe around him. “Elhannan,” the voice of the Presence spoke, “Star of the Abyss, Foundation of the Paraclete, by all thy words and deeds let all know that thou art a Worthy Wizard of Highest Rank, and by all thy silences that thou art Hidden Wizard Supreme of the Realm.” 3
©2010, New Eridu Media The left-hand candle spat, a sharp sound in the silence of the library. Elliott startled awake and had to put a leg down quickly to keep from falling from the stool, which rocked precariously beneath him. The scroll was still on the table before him, and the cursor on the laptop blinked idly at the end of a sentence. He didn't recognize the phrases on the screen and he started to scroll to where he had left off, but the cursor was already at the end the document, on page 93. Elliott shook his head in disbelief: the translation was finished. He had only been on page 22 when he had been interrupted by the videoconference with Seth. Elliott saved the document and shut down the laptop. It was fifteen minutes past midnight, and he was exhausted. TTTT "Growing up wasn't the same for me as it was for you. My parents didn't have a clue about magick," Dee explained as they followed the footpath across a river spillway and rounded a curve made blind by a thick growth of cypress and bracken that blocked the illumination from the street lights. Lightning leaped from the top of the distant thunderstorm and spread across its massive anvil, rendering everything in chiaroscuro outlines. “Oh.” Elliott exhaled as if punched. In the clearing before them, the scene from his dream resolved itself: there were the picnic tables, the clearing, the stone-walled river…the same, but different. Where was the temple? “What’s the matter?” “It’s this place,” Elliott whispered involuntarily; he had not recovered his breath. “I know,” she smiled. “I’m used to it, and still it’s almost overwhelming. There’s so much magick here, it feels like I’m in the presence of the Almighty Himself.” “You are,” Elliott replied. “We are. This place was consecrated to the eternal service of the Holy.” Red granite sand crunched beneath their shoes as Dee’s memory lifted the vaulted tile roof overhead once again, erected the stone walls from storm-shadows, and transmuted the gritty earth into inlaid stone. Once again, the Pavilion stood as it had for nearly a century before the Parks Department finished the demolition begun by misguided Christian vandals. Neither the vandals nor the Parks Department knew that by no mortal means could the Holy Magick be erased. “How long have you known about this place?” Elliott asked as he watched her mentally reconstruct the pavilion from his dream. The Presence latent in the Holy ground steadied him, even as the hope and fear of love filled him to bursting: Dee is the one.
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©2010, New Eridu Media “Since I was a small child,” Dee smiled as the shadows congealed into a simulacrum of solidity. “Part of me will always be here: this is the place of my secret, and I'm going to share at least part of that secret with you. It was here that I met the Master of the Temple and was initiated into the Tradition of Holy Magick." The Presence descended in response to her simple somatic invocation. "You are on sacred ground now; it is time to release yourself from whatever is holding you in a place of pain." TTTT
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