Chapter 31 - Cinders
From: The Craft of Scientific Witchcraft by Morag Awen PhD
ClairvoyanceClairvoyance is a standard tool in a witch's repertoire. Like Tarot; reading tea leaves; and the rest, clairvoyance seems, to a receptive mind, to be more than it actually is. At its best it's similar to psychiatry, listening to a person then telling them what they want to hear. In other respects, it can be like mesmerism, in each case the subject's belief in the practitioner is key. Telling the future is simply a matter of degree. In the short term everyone can do it. You have a good idea where you will be in an hour and can probably imagine quite accurately what you'll be doing then. It gets less certain as you go further forward. Like a weather forecast, how far forward you can see and in what detail, is a matter of prior knowledge. A person's past and their current tendencies, desires, beliefs and plans are already known to them, either consciously or unconsciously. The clairvoyant needs to discover the important parts of this data. The past is obviously, important to the future. For example, it's helpful to know a person's family background; their belief system; their relationships; their means and their state of health. And some of these, like their wealth and social status, general health and often their current relationships are immediately evident to a skilled observer using their accent; their grammar; their grooming; their clothes; their jewellery; tattoos and piercings; and obvious disabilities and illnesses, as clues. And there's nothing like a social media page or a quick rummage through a wallet or handbag to establish the clairvoyant's foothold. Starting with what they already know, the clairvoyant adds information, piece by piece - filling it in like a jigsaw puzzle - making suggestions; trying this piece here or there; receiving positive of negative iris reactions or hand twitches; noticing distress or arousal and so on - for example, after suggesting a loss or a gain: as in a love affair; or in a family; or in a career. Props, like Tarot cards, an Astrological chart or tea leaves can elicit a reaction and help to suggest topics to explore. Filling in the blanks in a prediction is like painting between the lines, limited only by the clairvoyant's imagination and their care not to be too specific. And it's here that it's easiest to influence future decisions and thus change the future through self-fulfilling prophesy. What might happen if you tell someone that their relationship will fail, that someone at work is plotting against them, that their headaches or back pain will get worse or that they will drown? The clairvoyant has more scope to influence decision making than most future tellers, as they are not constrained by stars or cards or chicken entrails or the flight of birds. When combined with supposed communication with the dead, clairvoyance becomes necromancy. It's a skill so feared by religion that the Judeo-Christian Bible warns against it repeatedly. The Bible requires Jews and Christians and possibly Muslims to promptly kill a necromancer - by stoning. It seems a contradiction that scientific witchcraft should resort to deceptions like necromancy. Obviously, necromancy relies on a deception: that people whose brains have been destroyed by death can continue to think and communicate with the living. Why people continue to believe this is a mystery. Surely, they have noticed that even a live person with a brain disease, like advanced Alzheimer's, is unable to communicate like a normal person and where there is no functioning brain, as in an induced coma, there is no cognition at all? But just as it's not unscientific to attract a bee with spun-sugar or a feline with cat-nip, these techniques can be very useful. They are among a witch's tools for manipulating weak minds or those stronger minds that are nevertheless in the thrall of a belief in heaven and hell. Thus, these tools can be incredibly persuasive for believers in the occult or the religious: the believers in a life eternal, saints and messengers and devils and ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. Without resorting to enchantment, a witch can persuade such a person to do something that they wouldn't otherwise do or to cause them to do something they are trying to avoid. For example, if the subject has an obvious addiction to smoking it's likely that predicting they will soon smoke can make their craving irresistible. The same applies to more serious: homicidal; suicidal; or sexual cravings. Used together with mesmerism or full enchantment this vulnerability to manipulation, created by a faulty belief system, can put a believer to death by wasting away; or make them suicide; destroy them mentally or financially; cause them to murder someone; or simply reduce them to becoming one's familiar. +++ There's a mnemonic to help with this tool: SCALE Situation - set the scene - just as the placebo effect works best if a medico is wearing a white coat and smells of chloroform the clairvoyant needs to 'be in character'. Environment is important for technical reasons. Eye dilatations are most variable and useful with the iris in the middle range so lighting the face is important. Heart rate and nervous twitches are best read in a warm place. Command - to be believed you must establish authority. The apparent authority a clairvoyant is essential to being believed. Establish a commanding or perhaps mystical presence and persona. Authenticity - clairvoyance relies on the subject's belief that you are connected to another realm. This 'alternative truth' needs to be authenticated. Use secret knowledge about the subject or a magician's trick to secure authenticity. Belief, even if partial, is key to ongoing success. Authenticity can be further reinforced by revelations about the subject throughout the session. Learning - become the subject's source of new knowledge while draining them of the things you wish to know. Like a lie-detector, the basis of clairvoyance is biofeedback to gather the necessary data. This aspect of the art is evidence based. Using bio-feedback techniques such as holding hands with a finger on the wrist and watching eye dilatations, the information required for a reading can obtained. Once sufficient data is to hand it's trivial to predict the obvious. Ensnarement - once the data gathering is in hand, a skilled clairvoyant can also set about subtlety interfering with the subject's tendencies, desires, beliefs and plans so that their prediction of the future is indeed fulfilled, at least sufficiently to achieve the desired influence over that person. The ultimate goal is to ensnare the subject in a web of illusion and confusion; like a spider with a fly; restructuring their reality to your design; and to thus lead and manipulate them during the course of the session and thereafter. |
Claude was away at his telescope again and Cindy was about to settle down to watch MV when the robo-concierge in her building announced a visitor. The woman gave her name as Mirela.
On her screen Cindy saw a striking woman who sent a shiver up her spine. The woman was wearing a red and gold head scarf, tied like a pirate over her shoulder length black hair. Her cream-coloured lace top was off her shoulders, tied with a cord above her cleavage and she wore a calf length, heavily pleated, multi-coloured skirt, on top of which was tied a large contrasting scarf scattered with astrological symbols. Above that a smaller scarf matching the one around her head was tied. Around her waist was a wide black cummerbund that matched her long black, laced stiletto boots. With her gold bangles, large circular earrings, featuring a five-pointed star in each disk, and bright red lipstick she looked exactly like a storybook Gypsy.
Cindy was immediately on guard. She's always been scared by Gypsies.
"What do you want?" she demanded of the woman's image in her security screen, wondering if she needed to call the robo-concierge for help to get rid of this apparition.
"Oh, I'm sorry for alarming you Cindy," said Mirela soothingly, close into the camera. "But I've received a message from someone beyond, who says she's your mother. She told me to come here and said to tell you Thornton."
Cindy felt like fainting. Thornton was the village where she'd lived as a child. It's no longer there. Only her mother, who's passed, could possibly know this. It's so personal and obscure that she even uses it as a password.
"Come in," Cindy replied.
"Password indeed," thought Margery, "open sesame would've been more fun."
***
As she ushered this woman in, Cindy caught the strong scent of sandalwood. 'Mirela' was at least Cindy's height and her high-heeled boots made her seem even taller. Her voluminous skirt accentuated her hips and made her altogether larger than life. She was also carrying a large patchwork shoulder bag made from irregular fabric squares. She pushed straight passed Cindy into the apartment, as if it was her own, and went into the dining room to put her bag on a chair then sat on another.
"I have to warn you," she said in a very businesslike way, "not all messages from beyond are benign. This woman who says she's your mother could be an evil spirit. Are you sure you want to hear from her? If you don't, I can leave immediately."
"But what if it is my mother trying to tell me something important," Cindy protested, her heart sinking. "How can we find out?"
"I can ask for proof if you like but first, we need to make contact again. I will set up the table for a séance," said the woman, delving into her bag and bringing out a dark tablecloth with mysterious golden markings and the signs of the zodiac in a circle; a pack of Tarot cards; and a large candle, that she lit in front of Cindy. It gave off a strange perfume. She somehow, knew how to dim the apartment lights.
Now she sat across from Cindy in a business-like way, dangling a crystal on a silver chain from one hand while she took Cindy's hand in the other.
"Can you hear your mother," she asked Cindy while distracting her by moving the candle.
Cindy could hear a woman's voice, but could make no sense of it.
"The connection is too faint to understand her" said 'Mirela', not knowing enough about the mother or wanting to risk more ventriloquism this intimately, even though Margery was very skilled at speaking without moving her lips, breathing with her stomach, and had often deceived others this way.
"She can hear you but we'll need to use the crystal to get her replies. She'll swing it this way, around the central star, for yes or back and forth, towards the crescent moon, for no. Have you thought of a question to make sure it's her?"
"Mum," Cindy asked, "when I was little, did I have a doll called Jemima?"
This was simple, even had 'Jemima' not been another of Cindy's passwords. The crystal said yes.
Cindy then asked a series of questions about her mother's happiness and various dead relatives to check and got very satisfactory answers.
"Now, with your mother's help, would you like me to tell you about your future?" Mirela asked. "We can use the cards or I can read your energy from you hand. I have clairvoyance."
Margery was pleased that she'd been right about this younger woman. Claude was a good selector when it came to his girlfriends. This one was a particularly good specimen - she was going to be fun to deal with.
Mirela had Cindy split the cards then laid them out in a pattern and turned them over.
"Oh dear" she said, alarmed.
"What?" asked Cindy.
She told her that she'd better shuffle them again and repeated the process.
Then she laid them out again. But without saying anything, looked worried and gathered them up.
"I think it would be better if I hold your hand and we just talk this through," she told a now very frightened Cindy.
Holding her hand, Mirela proceeded to tell Cindy all sorts of facts about her life that Margery had discovered rummaging around the apartment; and in her messages; and documents on-line. She repeated Cindy's hopes and aspirations back to her; and imaginatively told her about her desire to get her finances back in order and settle down, perhaps as a wife.
"With a man, who I see is someone in the media, a scientist. Someone who you find very sexy but who sometimes makes you feel uneasy about the sexual things he wants to share with you."
"Yes, it's true!" Cindy said. "But I do love him."
"And you've made home movies with him doing some of these things. And you watch them when he's not here and get very excited thinking about him."
"Is that in my hand too?"
"But he won't commit. Even though you do dirty things for him, which, as a Christian, trouble your sense of what's right and proper? And he does dirty things to you. That you've come to enjoy. And that worries you too."
"No. I mean yes, I mean ..."
"That's alright dear, give me both your hands and I'll look into your mind, no need to say it out loud."
***
Mirela held her hands and appeared to download Cindy's shameful memories. When it was done, she sighed and told Cindy that she was not at all shocked. After feeling Cindy's aura she'd expected something shameful. But these things were quite normal among sophisticated young woman like her. Even her mother was telling her it was alright to share these things with the man she loved.
After Mirela's lack of reproof, all Cindy's sins came pouring forth. She opened her troubled heart and revealed all to her new confessor. Within the hour Mirela had a catalogue all her previous lovers, including one who, deliciously, overlapped with Claude.
Mirela uncovered some interesting deceptions too, such as Cindy lying to Claude about her credit status. Of most interest, in addition to her belief in astrology, was religion. Cindy had on-going religious affiliations and was secretly going to church to confess then lying to Claude about where she'd been. All this lying; while dating an outspoken atheist, must be putting her conscience at odds with her faith and beliefs, Mirela sympathised.
Cindy had told Mirela that she wasn't the only one who'd made a sex movie with Claude. When Claude had first suggested that they made a movie of their lovemaking, Cindy had suspected that he'd made one with Joy, his previous. She'd asked him and he was a evasive. It made her determined to see it. He didn't trust The Cloud and had stored it on removable media that he kept in a cupboard. Cindy had been so determined and annoyed by his evasiveness that she'd used her key to his place and had a look at one. She was going to destroy them but he might get angry, so she copied them without his knowledge. Yet he must have suspected, because now he's hidden them somewhere else.
Margery realised that was the reason one had still been on his device. He, and she, was more careful than that.
It had been a long session and Mirela suggested that Cindy lay down on her bed so that Mirela could use her phrenology skills to read the bumps on Cindy's head. They went to Cindy's bedroom and Mirela sat sideways of the bed, near the pillows, so that Cindy could comfortably lay her head in her lap, looking up into Mirela's eyes.
***
"Enchantment will be quite sufficient," thought Margery although she is quite attracted to the idea of fully bewitching and training Cindy as her apprentice, after her failure with Bianca. The prospect was tempting.
With Cindy's head in her lap, Mirela bent over her and began quietly crooning Summertime from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess while feeling her bumps.
Cindy could feel Mirela's warm Gypsy breath puffing against her ear with each word:
| ...hum hum hum
Your hum hum's rich |
Cindy felt wonderfully relaxed and she found that her wings were spread and she took to the sky. After her emotional and corresponding hormonal rollercoaster Cindy took just minutes to enchant so that she was more than happy to give Mirela copies of the home movies that she had made with Claude and include those that she had stolen of Claude making love to Joy.
Before Margery released her she told Cindy that the phrase 'making home movies' would re-enchant her and clapped her hands to release Cindy from her trance.
***
As Kat, she messaged Joy, the ex-girlfriend, from Woodsman's apartment and claimed to have enjoyed a one-night-stand with Claude during which they sat up in bed watching sex movies he'd made with her and with his current girlfriend Cindy. She elaborated about her night, describing his bedroom, bathroom and so on so that Joy knew that she must be telling the truth. Kat claimed to be a friend of Cindy's who Claude had slept with on the side. She gave Joy the most damaging information about Cindy, including her ongoing confessions at Church, during which she told a priest potentially damaging information about a prominent atheist; her real credit position; and all about the concurrent lover.
"Even though she pretends to be a Christian, Cindy was screwing two men at once and I'm sure that she's enjoying their nights sitting up in bed with Claude, watching the movies that you made with him."
Then she described some of the more graphic highlights to confirm that she'd seen them too; and to rather deliciously turn the knife.
"How many did you make? One of them he showed me is very unflattering of you, particularly that scene when your flabby flesh is bouncing like a fat cow on a trampoline. We laughed so much. They're probably laughing at you right now. You should crash his place when they're both there, demand that the movies are destroyed and tell him what a deceptive bitch Cindy is."
After that Joy did all the dirty-work and it was totally untraceable to Margery. Cindy was cinders.