Open Secrets - Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll 13

Open Secrets

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll 13

She can tell something is wrong - and the wrongness extends beyond the difficulty she’s having with her body, which doesn’t seem to respond to her will. The problem doesn’t seem to lie in the Lady Racheal’s strangely slippery unfocused mind, as she awakens from her dead faint on a hard cool surface. The difficulty is more fundamental than that; the world itself is somehow awry.

For a start, everything seems to be spinning in slow erratic spirals, and Racheal’s thoughts echo in her head like chiming gongs and resonating bells in the corridors of an unfathomably complex cathedral. The teenage priestess has never taken drugs more potent than aspirin, alcohol or hashish, but she’s lived with the Centraxians and their hip squatter friends for long enough to suspect that some hallucinatory, hypnotic or narcotic substance is completely distorting her senses and judgment.

She hears a cough and tries to open her eyes; the tribal divinatrix slowly realises that they’re already open, but covered with a silken cloth. Her mind flails in the darkness while she attempts to recover her scattered wits and regain control of her unresponsive muscles. Her naked body is laid out upon a smooth hard plane, and the cold stony surface beneath her numbed flesh is strangely comforting in its solidity. The cloying aromas of frankincense and myrrh fill Racheal’s nostrils; she begins to dream she’s lying beside her lover in their bedchamber, where their brass censer often fills the room with the familiar cleansing fumes of olibanum.

As she starts to drift into a languid trance, the blindfold reminds the young witch of the cloth her liege lord had wrapped around her head when he took her from her bed, carrying her from the chamber she shares with her Prince Ram’yana in the communal Centraxian stronghold. Where am I? she wonders. The dreamy recollection restores the more recent pleasant memory of soaking her exhausted body in a sumptuous black marble tub; the luxurious bath had ended with Kha-Aan’s reappearance, when he’d returned dressed in a black robe - alongside a pair of similarly garbed women.

That’s when they blindfolded me, the young witch recalls as the world whorls and reels around her. How long have I been here? Her mind wanders hither and yon, and she begins to puzzle at the provenance of the skirt she notices she’s wearing. Of course, the witch-girl decides. This must be my initiation into the Court…

Her breasts are bared to the sultry night air and the uninitiated teenage priestess feels a dizzying torpidity immobilize her as she lays on the smooth stony surface. She’s unable to summon enough energy to rise to a sitting position and her shoulderblades and buttocks merely wriggle against the unyielding hardness when she attempts to roll over. My initiation… She surrenders to the situation and gives up on the attempt while her mind circles the impending possibilities. What a surprise... but I’m so tired and hung over… When the Lady Racheal turns toward the percussive barking noise of someone clearing their throat, a flickering light pierces the edge of her blindfold and an unfamiliar deep voice begins chanting in a language the Wiccan teen fails to recognise; Not Latin. Hebrew? she wonders, Or Arabic?

Dancing images of sculptured syllables writhe before her mind’s eye, cast in living flames that dance and swirl in multihued splendour. She lazily allows herself to be lifted to her feet when two pairs of hands clamp around her thinly clothed hips and supine bare shoulders. When a chorus of voices joins in the chant, Racheal begins to wonder whether this can be her Centraxian initiation after all. She’s vaguely surprised when cool rough fingers glide across the exposed skin of her belly and breasts. “Mm…” Her mouth begins to function, after a fashion; “Mm… uhh… ishn’t like y’tol’ me… mm… mme…” The words emerge as inaudible mumbles from her thickly numbed lips and the barely articulate murmurings are lost amid the rhythmic chorus of chanting voices.

The Lady Racheal tries to imagine the scene being enacted around her paralytic form, and flagrantly sexual fantasies intrude on her musings and parade across her inner eyelids when the masculine fingers glide down her trembling belly and quiver past her loins. The luxuriant imagination of the clairvoyant teenage priestess runs riot as she begins to be suffused by tremulous disquiet. Her faintly fearful concern is gradually replaced by a rising font of undeniable lust; droplets of moisture slither down her cheekbones and precipitate from her pores and loins as a heated rush fills her squirming flesh.

Starkly challenging scenes rise before her blindfolded eyes as the chanting grows louder – vividly arousing images of her helpless nubile femininity being explored and used in every imaginable manner by the entire tribal court. Racheal watches herself being prepared as a sacrificial virgin for some quasi-Satanic rite, spreadeagled by clutching hands that squeeze and probe her utterly vulnerable flesh – and her visions become reality when she feels her unresponsive arms and legs drawn apart by the her unseen captors.

The priestess had hoped her initiation might be some typically theatrical ritual - wonderfully quaint and baroque, as befitted the nature of the Centraxian court – yet the visions which enflame her so thoroughly are very different from most of her previous imaginings. She sees her immobile young body stripped utterly bare by grasping hands before being carried aloft through a crystal-studded cavern; she watches herself being held down on a carven stone altar and spread wide by black-robed figures, as a red-garbed giant of a man trusses her up like a lamb being readied for slaughter.

When an indefinite number of fingers and hands begin pawing at her body and enfolding her slender limbs, the teenage witch feels a frisson of fear-filled vulnerability overtake the extraordinary rush of unendurable horniness that moistens her thoroughly cleansed crevices. She feels herself being lifted to her feet, and smiles with relief when reality fails to accord with her fearful imaginings. Four cool pairs of hands grasp her naked limbs while others grip her cloth-covered hips and bare shoulders; they hold her upright while the strange syllables vibrate through her bones. The swooning girl reels within a psychedelic blast of geometric colours that bludgeons her thoughts into submission. She feels her mind slip out of focus while the steadying encirclement of grasping hands hold her up like a boneless rag doll.

She returns to a semblance of full awareness when the blindfold slides from her flowing blonde mane. Racheal’s watery eyes blink open and her drug-altered eyesight smears with a totally unexpectedly vista. At first she’s only aware of a circle of dark-robed hooded figures arrayed around her on a stony checkerboard floor; an incredible myriad of candles sear streaks through the scene as she vainly attempts to encompass the view revealed to her swimming vision. She searches the shadowy cowls of the chanting circle arrayed around her, hoping for a glimpse of her beloved Ramses – or another familiar face – as the supportive pairs of hands grope her flesh while they hold her erect and root her to the spot.

Constellations of bright flames flicker in chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling and from candelabra standing before tall stone columns. I must be dreaming, the Lady Racheal concludes when the sheer opulence and size of the chamber becomes more evident. She sees a surprisingly large group of people and her groping mind stalls as she tries to decide whether their numbers match what she’d come to expect from her partial knowledge of the far-flung Court of Centraxis. A score or more black-garbed bodies stands arrayed in a circle, holding hands as they chant - and it seems that four people are holding her shivering seminude body upright while the deep-voiced leader stands unseen at her back.

The Lady Racheal decides not to speak and break the carefully arranged spell that’s being cast, and thereby spoil the theatrical ritual which is being enacted for her benefit. She attempts to stand erect of her own accord, only to slump into the loose posture of a boneless puppet as she gives up on the attempt. A set of fingertips dips beneath the waistband of the unfamiliar lace skirt and sharp nails brush against her blonde pubic curls. Another palm cups her left breast, and more hands grip her tightly by her elbows while fingers squeeze around her soft tender flesh. Are these the wardens of the rite? The question follows a meandering course through the booming caverns of her altered consciousness. Or are they… what are they doing?

She glances at the faces of the peers who are holding her firmly in place in the centre of the high-ceilinged chamber, and their hooded visages are partly revealed in the shifting candlelight. The caresses of the cloaked figures grow bolder and the chant approaches its climax as Racheal’s heavy-lidded eyes widen slightly in surprise; Who the fuck are you? The words stay locked in her throat when a wave of fear returns, propelled by a sudden jolt of adrenaline. The rush of shock fails to restore any movement to her limbs, and a shudder vibrates through her entire body instead as Racheal becomes certain that she’s under the influence of some almighty powerful drug. The unknowable chant beats the thoughts from her mind when she realises that complete strangers are squeezing her breasts, while a roaming hand slides around inside her skirt.

Her eyes sidle to her left as she tries to place the people who are flanking her, and she flinches when a roughly probing finger rubs past her clitoris and slides partway inside her maidenhood. Other hands grip her thighs through the rough material and hold her legs apart, and squeeze her roughly when she attempts to close her legs. The atavistic hackles of the fine golden down lining the witch-girl’s limber limbs and the back of her slender neck rises with a disquieting presentiment of terror; the chant sounds and resounds through her squirming body while the probing finger presses deeper. Racheal’s befuddled brain grinds its gears when a flush of panic fills her with mind-snaring dread.

The young priestess attempts to puzzle out the robed figures’ identities, and her eyes flicker into focus as she’s filled with a breathless urgency that momentarily overcomes her dreamy funk. Colourful organic patterns swim across the unfamiliar faces, further obscuring the shadowed features which are half revealed by their open cowls. The man on her left is a leering long-nosed stranger who ogles and fondles her exposed breasts while his mouth works around the indecipherable chant; she sees a beautiful black-lipped woman whose glittering eyes glow with obvious lust - and a less easily definable exultation. I don’t know you at all… When Racheal makes fleeting contact with her intensely fixated gaze, the woman’s finger slides all the way up inside the teenage Wiccan. She gasps as a sharp nail scratches against her most tender membranes. Her mind treads water while her body quivers with shocked and shocking pleasure at her unexpected violation.

The Lady Racheal has exposed her naked body to her fellow tribe members many times, intentionally and otherwise. Nudity is common in the libertarian Centraxian urban stronghold, and is often ubiquitous at the Court’s rural holdings in the semi-tropical Rainbow Region of Oz - but the unwontedly woozy witch-girl feels unprecedentedly vulnerable in her semi-naked exposure to the black robed circle of unidentifiable figures. Guttural syllables issue from their mouths in a complex epic of memorisation, rising in pitch and volume as the chant swells towards an inevitable climax. Racheal can discern no repetition in the rhythmic mantra, and is surprised and strangely disappointed when it reaches a sudden conclusion and an English phrase intrudes into the arcane atmosphere.

“May the Aspirant’s conduct be duly vouchsafed and her discretion guaranteed by a duly ordained member of the court?” The deep voice booms through her brain as the leader speaks from above and behind the priestess. When Racheal cranes her neck to face the speaker, hands clamp upon her arms and entwine painfully in her long blonde tresses to prevent her from turning her befuddled head. The stranger’s use of the term ‘court’ dispels much of the panic that’s overwhelming her will, and the lord Kha-Aan’s familiar voice causes the young priestess to relax with relief when he replies to the leader of the group. The Lady Racheal stands an increment taller and tries to square her shoulders, secure in the belief that she’s safely ensconced in an assembly of her Centraxian brothers and sisters after all.

“Aye,” he intones, “by leave of our Empress, and of thy Grace.” Kha-Aan speaks from somewhere out of sight behind her. “I hight Shondor Attila, tutelary Lord of the Kingdom of Centraxis and verified peer of the Royal Court.” His rumbling tones pierce the priestess’s languor and the sensations aroused by the rough hands massaging and sampling her smooth-skinned flesh are suddenly intensified by the booming silence that follows.

Where is my Ramses? Racheal wonders as she warms to the rite, resisting the urge to search for her lover once more in the surrounding circle. The strange black-lipped woman’s finger works away inside her loins and she strokes Racheal’s clitoris with a rotating sex-wetted thumb. The witch-girl feels herself responding with deliciously wicked arousal, and her teenage flesh is emblazoned by a flushing rush of goosebumps. She sighs and wriggles while half a dozen hands grip and stroke her pale skin and squeeze her tingling breasts and firm clenching buttocks.

The teenage witch attempts to hold onto a fragment of her fragile sense of decorum by fixing her attention on a single candle in one of the multi-branched candlesticks. The trick fails to centre her as swiftly as it usually does, and Racheal feels her nipples growing erect while many willful hands continue to fondle her flesh. The skin of her breasts tightens as a sudden surge of sexual heat makes her groan from the depths of her belly, from the place where a feminine finger is probing her most private interior. Until the previous night – when she shared young Crystal’s enviably elfin body with their teenage lovers - she’d never known the intimate touch of another woman. No man had felt her naked skin - besides her Ramses – before Crystal’s new lover Arne had taken advantage of her exposure. Her flesh scintillates with extraordinary sensations while a dozen hands stroke her half-nude form and the deep voice rumbles behind her.

“Lord Kha-Aan - art thou ready to vouchsafe this Aspirant fit for induction into the Mysteries, in full knowledge of thy responsibilities as her sponsor?” The words reverberate through the exhausted teenager as she trembles in the strangers’ indecorous grasps. She banishes the ritualised conversation’s all too immediate import from her dazzled consciousness whilst the living flame of the candle absorbs the last shreds of her distracted attention. Kha-Aan’s voice is distorted and warped as it arrives in her drugged ears, twisted as if by an arduous passage through a convoluted brass horn. “Aye, that I am.”

“Then so mote it be.” The deep baritone rumbles through Racheal’s bones and the phrase is repeated by the entire assembly. “So mote it be.” A female voice echoes the words from immediately behind the Centraxian priestess. She experiences a shimmering tingle of unexpected shock when a light spray of water flickers across the bared skin of her shoulders and breasts - and feels a disquieting sense of deprived disappointment when the intrusive female finger slides out of her loins at the same moment. The young priestess’s lips stumble around the short sentence as she belatedly repeats the reverberating affirmation. She’s surprised and embarrassed by the slurring words which erupt from her drugged mouth, only to be lost in the renewed chant; “So smote it me.”

All the hands abruptly release her – except for those of two strong men, who hold her up by her armpits and hips as they turn her unresisting body around to face the leader of the group. Her hands fly toward her face as she realises she has no inkling of who he is, or any awareness of the identities of the black-garbed figures who surround her – but her arms only function for the briefest of moments before falling back to her sides like obdurate leaden weights. The only person Racheal recognises is Kha-Aan, and he returns her wide-eyed stare with a stern unrevealing countenance only slightly softened by a marginal wink. His unrevealing and unprecedentedly cool demeanour unsettles the priestess, and she’s uncertain whether the movement of his eyelid is merely a momentary tick.

The circle of chanters starts to sway as the middle-aged leader begins speaking to her in a language she doesn’t understand. Racheal’s mouth widens in dismayed shock when the middle aged man suddenly reaches forth and strips the ceremonial skirt from her quivering pale body. He rips strips of lace from her immobile frame while she’s fixed to the chessboard floor, held immobile by irresistibly strong hands.

The sudden silence is pregnant with a terrifyingly potent immanence. The priestess trembles within the wide open vulnerability of her total exposure, and the living ring of presumed magi inhales with a single united susurrus of breath that fills the chamber with a sibilant serpentine whisper. The Lady Racheal feels her nude body quaking with fear - and is suddenly more concerned about the possibility she’ll wet herself in her uncontrollable state, than alarmed at her stripped-bare nakedness. Her legs begin to respond slightly as she attempts to close her thighs, and her bare feet slide along the smooth checkerboard as the leader begins a different refrain – one whose words the teenage witch can easily recognise. “Isis Astarte, Hecate Demeter, Diana Kali, Inana…”

The rite begins in earnest, and as the cloaked figures surge toward her the Lady Racheal’s eyelids slip shut. She joins the age-old Wiccan invocation to the Seven Great Goddesses, while innumerable hands begin to caress, fondle and enfold her in turn. She swoons as gloved hands grip her helpless body from behind and lift her from the hard cold marble floor.

That’s why they’re all wearing black, the Wiccan girl surmises while she mumbles the familiar chant; then she notices a scarlet robe flashing in the periphery of her hallucinating sight, while an indefinite number of hands begin to caress and fondle her as they hold her aloft. But if they’re Wiccans then why… She hears a faint wheedling cry, and a loud animal bleating distracts the young witch from her cogitations.

“So where’s Racheal?” Crystal asks. The slender girl has covered her alluring frame with another of Racheal’s prized robes; a finely embroidered duck-blue cotton gown edged with white swans and cranes, flying over a blue-white current of water. “Aren’t y’worried?” Her nails are still wet and the acetylene stench of nail polish poisons the fragrant atmosphere of the bedchamber as she waves her splayed fingers in the thick humid air.

Ram’yana puts the camera back in it case and turns off the slide projector that sprays patterns of light across Crystal’s pale skin and Racheal’s embroidered robe. He lights a green stick of incense, drawing a seven-pointed star of grey smoke that holds its shape in the still afternoon air for a lingering moment. It dissipates with his sudden movement toward the record player. “Concerned,” he corrects the younger girl while he mounts the incense in a ceramic holder that bears the hexagonal seal of the Centrax. “Concerned enough to do a reading.”

He selects an L.P. and rolls the vinyl disc from the pastel-hued cover - holding it by its edges with the heels of both hands - and carefully places the record on a spindle in the centre of the rubberised turntable. He lifts the sapphire-toothed head and gently glides it into position as the disk rotates up to speed, selecting a narrow spinning break in the patterns of closely spaced spirals. “Is that all right with you?”

Crystal glances up as she toys with the cubic wooden puzzle box that’s captured her attention since she first entered Ram’s bedchamber. “Sure. What are you gonna read?” The Centraxian shaman takes a paisley patterned velvet case from the bookshelf and unzips it as a track of Tibetan Bells crackles into the resonant stillness. The silence becomes inexorably populated by perfectly timed strokes of magical bell-like instruments. “A Tarot reading,” he replies, and cocks his head to indicate the unusual music filling the poster-lined chamber. “These are drum-bells composed of the seven sacred metals, infused into a base of electrum,” Ram’yana informs the younger teenager. He pulls a black bag from the paisley cover and drops it on the bed – and instantly feels like a parochial jerk when he sees the young teen’s reaction to his tutorial tone. “A card reading, y’mean?” she asks with a frown.

“Aye,” he agrees, slipping the brightly coloured deck from its tight cardboard sheath. “Racheal made the bag and the cover…” He doesn’t complete the sentence; …when she first moved in with me. Crystal’s puzzlement is dispelled when her wide blue eyes become riveted to the oversized Thoth tarot deck that emerges from the black silk shroud. The Centraxian shaman places the cards face down on the velvet bag and kneels beside the redhead to spread the black silk sheath on the mattress.

Crystal waves her hands in the still humid air while the magician carefully splits the deck, and fleeting glimpses of the oversized cards’ rosy-crossed backs peep at the girl between Ram’s long dexterous fingers. His hands are beringed with encrustations of bright silver, red coral, dark strands of elephant hair, darker ebony, yellowing mammoth ivory and various colourful gemstones; purple amethysts, umber amber, bright turquoise, deep green jade and darkest jet, ruddy chips of garnet and ruby and a smattering of whorled carnelian. A many-faceted bezeled blue mirror hangs at the naked young magician’s throat, completing his current collection of quasi-magical adornments.

Ram’yana mentally circles Crystal and himself within the matrix of their shared timespace while he shuffles the large deck. He activates the four elemental quarters - delineating the compass points in a mental projection of a magic circle which fills the room - and sets the charged spin of the symbolically arranged bedchamber to match the magnetic magic net of the wider globe. “Tua Isis,” he intones. Then he murmurs under his breath; “Wither be thy vessel?” He cuts the deck to reveal an ominous image of a massively horned goat before a tall phallic pole. The satyric three-eyed figure leers at the pair of teenagers, who face the card from the three-dimensional realm of the magician’s bedchamber.

A quartet of trapped naked figures swims through testicular vessels depending from the phallus – whose summit ascends beyond the trump’s frame through an encircling bright blue ring - and a serpent-coiled Caduceus staff of Hermes Thrice-Greatest stands erect before the smiling goat, surmounted by the standard’s winged globe. “Arcanum Fifteen,” Ram’yana announces with a flat intonation that matches his consternation, as he withdraws the card and places it on the ruffled black surface. “The obverse of The Lovers.” In some versions of the trump a man and a woman stand at the devil’s feet, linked by chains – a detail Ram decides not to impart to the enthralled teenage girl just now.

Crystal leans down to squint at the image, and her voluminous coppery curls cascade down around her head. “The Devil?” She shakes her hair back over her shoulders and squats beside the young magician, holding her hands in the air. “This is a five-card reading,” the tribal shaman explains, rejoining the two halves of the deck. “A simple question and answer spread. Let’s wait and see before…” He doesn’t want to communicate the alarm that’s been riding his spine like a tenacious monkey for the last few hours - a deep disquiet that the flamboyant Crowleyan image of pagan Pan-diabolism threatens to ignite into an outburst of genuine panic.

The prince quiets the tumult that disturbs him and deepens his breathing, feeling his accelerated heartbeat slow as he frames the subvocal question; Great Mother of All, is Racheal happy and well? He carefully focuses and rephrases his unvoiced plea; What is the condition of thy Priestess?

The second cut reveals a roiling magenta and crimson background which frames a semblance of the Kabalistic Tree of Life, formed of various blades; the centremost sword - with a handgrip shaped like a rayed red heart - is splitting into three shattered shards. Ram’yana frowns and places the card beside the first. “The Ten of Swords.” Undisciplined warring force, he recalls from his studies; Mirthful disdain, eloquent verbosity and complete disruption… His brow wrinkles as the memories return with malevolent portentousness. A jolly cleverness, loving to overthrow the happiness of others… An image begins to form in the space between the mage and the card, and Ram’yana catches a glimpse of a chessboard swarming with black pieces. The three sword shards reform to become a white king, queen and bishop, surrounded by an unbroken black army of pawns and a clutch of more powerful playing pieces.

“‘Ruin’?” Crystal frowns, and the vision dissipates as she reads the word printed on the art deco frame at the base of the card. “Y’can’t start again or somethin’? I wish I could roll a joint.” She holds her hands out to her sides, sweeping them backward to protect the embroidered robe’s irreplaceable material from the congealing lamina on her fingertips and toenails. Ram’yana is so preoccupied with omens and correspondences that he barely registers the fact that the girl’s pink-tipped breasts are dangling free of Racheal’s robe, less than a handspan from his face. The ridgepole sags to breaking point… the heart breaks… or self-confidence is shattered in the Realm of Unmanifest Formations...

The deeply woven musical tapestry flowing through the room (and filling half the Centraxian squat’s interlinked houses, through widely spaced stereo extension speakers) goes right through and past Ram’s concentrated awareness. The illuminating tracks etched into the hard black disc of tarry resin emerge from the void, to merge into the visions flitting darkly through his mind’s eye; fleeting glimpses that twist half-formed into new configurations before the young mage can apprehend them. He breathes more deeply and allows his focus to slip and dissolve, loosing the tightly gripped reins of his concentration. His consciousness smears into a convolved fusion of the material and astral planes. The Thelemic deck warms between his palms as unvoiced words flow through his hands into the deck and beyond; Will Racheal be restored unharmed? He makes the third cut with a decisive motion.

The Second Arcanum joins the first two cards and their intricate images spread across the shielding template of black worm-sheath. The young redhead names the card as she bends toward the pale blue icon; “The High Priestess?” A relieved sigh flows out of the long haired shaman’s lungs and Crystal stands and turns to the window, leaning her elbows on the wooden sill. A prop plane angles upward through jostling bundles of cumulus just as she glances into the narrow gap of afternoon sky between the close-set buildings. The flying kangaroo on the aircraft’s tail flashes in the afternoon sunlight as the sound of its beating propellers begin to reach the Earth’s surface.

Ram’yana regards the Trump with a relieved mind and steadying heartbeat. The High Priestess’ upraised arms bestow, proclaim and reveal a living cornucopia of harmony between animals, plants and mineral realms. The figure of Isis unveiled is crowned with the moon and her white-blonde head partakes of the Crown of Creation; her sublime eyes are closed, yet seem to stare into Ram’s jade orbs with the preternatural awareness of a blind seer. The card’s portents release him into a broadened breathing space of sudden respite from his most cloying concerns, and his needy attitude of supplication fades with the relaxation of his tense musculature. The narrow middle path that traverses the Abyss…

He lifts his eyes toward the rectangle of daylight and sees his Lady Racheal standing at the window. Her vaporous shape is superimposed over Crystal’s slight body, which is fully outlined by the lightly clinging material of Racheal’s robe; the priestess turns and smiles at him and her image fades as Crystal says, “That must be a good sign.”

“It is,” he mutters, and asks his penultimate question; What must I do? The Knight of Disks slides from the deck - an armored cavalier mounted upon a grazing shire horse. The rider is portrayed in profile, staring toward the unseen summit of a nearby mount as a heavy flail dangles from his tightly clenched grip. The open visor of his helm is crowned with am antlered stag and concentric rings emanate from his discus shield. The symbolism swims in Ram’s mind as tables of arcane correspondences unfurl through his random access memory. All the flittering array of symbols bear manifold meanings, but none is specific to the moment - to the horary gestation of his heart-felt question. Gravity and mountains… a patient and laborious knight, cunning with material things… or conversely one who’s jealous and avaricious…

“Sorta looks like that Kay guy – nah - more like Arnie.” Crystal squats back down to examine the quartet of cards more closely. “Are they all like that? People I mean?” The Fire of Earth… Ram’s intent consideration of the card’s correspondences is diverted by her naïve comment. Kha-Aan or Arne? “Not usually,” he replies absently. “Note the Ten of Swords.”

“Acha.” She’s picked up the term from Jean-Claude, who’s freshly returned from India and Nepal. The visiting traveler is currently sleeping in the downstairs meeting hall while awaiting the return of the American G.I. – a smuggler and vendor that Freedom first brought to the commune a few days hence. When Ram’yana last saw the Frenchman he was smoking thickly resinous temple balls with Kiwi Rob and Evangeline. The rambling train of his thoughts leads the shaman back to his original question, and he considers his options: Whatever it is that I need to do, it may be something concerning Arne or Kha-Aan...

Even as the thought is formed, Crystal’s synchronous comment appears to confirm it; “Well, the face sorta looks like Arnie, but for some reason he reminds me of that older guy – Kay somethin’?” She smoothes the unruly crown of her blazing hair back from her pale pink-rimmed eyes. “Joe said he was comin’ back soon,” she says, turning to face her new lover. “Is he bringin’ more acid tonight?”

The Lord Kha-Aan had taken the bulk of last night’s mind-altering acquisitions with him, when he left the party before the witching hour had commenced. Lord Moonwatcher had taken much of the remainder when he left for the Rainbow Region and Chaos Castle, almost two hundred leagues to the north. He’d headed off in his car that very morning, to drive toward the Centraxian base in the subtropical region that’s home to the original hippies of Oz.

The magic triangle of free love, abundant psilocybin mushrooms and tall green weed sprawls between the rocks off easternmost Byron Bay, following a line to the ancient several volcanic spires of Nimbin Rocks and turning to the imposing heart of the vast extinct volcano – in its destructive prime the size of Everest. The stone spire at the remnant core has been known as Mount Warning to the white invaders, ever since the time when Captain Cook disobeyed his orders (and broke the established international laws of the day) to proclaim the already occupied continent for the British crown.

The English explorer had spied the spire from the Pacific shelf while endeavouring northward in 1770, toward his near-calamitous rendezvous with a hard coral chunk of the Great Barrier Reef on his return voyage to Mother England. The imposing sacred peak is known by the name Wollumbin to the indigenous Bundjalung Nation, and is the eyecatching central focus of the entire blessed Rainbow Region.

G.I. Joe will soon return with another big bag chock-full of imported goodies to trade with the appreciative conjoined households of squatters. He’s one of the last Americans to pass through this very friendly port after a sojourn in the jungles and paddy fields of South East Asia - a straggler who won’t talk about whatever he’s been doing with the US armed forces in unnamed foreign lands, more than a year after the Vietnam War has officially ended.

Ram’yana draws his wandering mind back to the task at hand. He focuses on the image of his Lady’s smiling face until a doppelganger of his living breathing beloved hovers before him in full-blown triple dimensionality. The final question in the prince’s Tarot reading is the hardest for him to frame, and he decides that a standard archetypal query is appropriate. What is the final outcome of Racheal’s current situation?

The deck splits to reveal the last card - that’s the complement and twin of the first - and Ram’yana intones its rank with a rising sense of hope; “The Sixth Arcanum…” Crystal names the Trump with a clap of her freshly painted hands; “The Lovers! Hey, that’s outta sight!” The girl leans forward and plants a quick kiss on Ram’s cheek while she holds her hands above his head, quickly pulling away again before she overbalances. “Almost dry,” she shrugs, settling onto the balls of her feet. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

He takes the simplest course. “Aye; it is.”

“

Freedom is helping Kiwi Grant chop carrots and potatoes on the round table and Jean-Claude prepares pastry on an expanse of grease-proof paper beside them. Their conversation is silenced when everyone looks at Ram’yana and Crystal as the teenagers finally emerge into the communal kitchen.

The newly met lovers had showered together before returning to the prince’s bedchamber to dress for the anticipated nocturnal party. After they’d made loud impassioned love beneath the warm spraying water in one of the communal bathrooms, Ram’yana had delighted in coating Crystal’s smooth elfin body with essential oils of red sandalwood and lavender before she borrowed some more of the Lady Racheal’s clothing. The young shaman had placed Cream on the sound system before they descended the stairs to the ground floor of the Centraxian dwelling.

“Anything we can do?” the prince inquires as the unique virtuosity of Tales of Brave Ulysses fills the household.

‘You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,

But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun…’

“You can roll a beeg fat joint,” the Parisian hippy suggests with a flick of his tight blonde curls. “There, next to zee ’erbal tea.” A small black velvet pouch slouches on the large wooden table, beside the grease-proof paper that shields the wood’s grain from Jean-Claude’s buttery pastry - and protects the food from the oft-used cluttered surfaces of the communal Centraxian stronghold.

‘And the colours of the sea bind your eyes with trembling mermaids,

And you touch the distant beaches with tales of bright Ulysses.

How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,

For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips…’

Black globes of Tibetan hashish lay in a cannonball bundle in the open drawstring pouch, nestled together like sticky spherical eggs. The deep chocolate-coloured resin is mottled with the marbled beginnings of a white patina of mould; each of the potent ‘Temple Balls’ weighs a little over an ounce. The teenage prince takes a chunk from a broken egg of hashish, reaching past the hard casing which has formed an outer shell around a core of softer resin, shrunken within the expanded crust like a smooth testicle within a wrinkled scrotum. “Eet’s seex months old,” Jean-Claude apologises. “But eet’s very good!” His pink eyes and broad unselfconscious grin attest to his veracity.

‘And you see a girl’s brown body dancing through the turquoise,

And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea

And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,

Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind…’

“Can I roll one?” Crystal asks. The barefoot teen is dressed in extremely brief pink satin hotpants and a sky-blue satin bolero jacket that barely conceals her puckered aureoles; the lapels are pinned together between her breasts by a large silver brooch, shaped into a spiraling green-eyed dragon. A slight spangling of jewellery offsets her freckled skin with a sparse glitter of copper and silver, and the shell necklace she arrived with when Arne first brought her to the squat still adorns her slender neck. When she shakes a few remaining droplets from her flame-bright hair, clusters of aquatic exoskeletons disappear beneath the girl’s crowning glory, which she’s brushed into a bright orange Affro.

‘The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,

And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter…’

Ram’yana smiles as he samples the texture of the hashish ‘twixt his large thumb and long forefinger. I’ll only be able to smoke for another week, he realises with bemused trepidation. The young shaman’s magical training with the circle known as The Dawn of Ra is overdue to commence, and he isn’t exactly looking forward to a year bereft of his usual range of exotic mind altering substances.

The Centraxian base is home to a never-ending round of parties, open-house feasts, visitations of travelers from near and far and regular night-spanning jams - when musicians fill the longhall and myriad chambers with merriment and high times. In the years following the folksy sixties and the Summer of Love, an extraordinary proportion of hippies and other members of the indefinable alternative movement play instruments and create their own original music. Impromptu jams are common happenings and real live music regularly fills the happy homes of trans-cultural change agents, artists, students and all the rest who dwell on the fringes of the Twentieth Century’s suburban nuclear-industrial warrens.

Centraxis is a Realm where bold examples of free expression, free love and free musical and artistic cross-pollination are rife. The tribe’s continual experimentation even extends to the remodeling of their communal dwellings. Frequent off-the-cuff renovations to the abandoned houses of the squatters’ stronghold have resulted in a varying number of sledgehammered doorways and access holes, smashed through the mortar and bricks of the hastily conjoined buildings. These alfresco exits and entrances are occasionally repaired or filled in again, after further inspection or widening cracks proves them to be architecturally unsustainable. The squat is a continually morphing warren of Centraxians, global travelers, street urchins, mad poets, alcoholic artists, harlequin magicians, threadbare actors, multiply-talented musicians and a plethora of merchants and buyers.

The unassuming joined houses - together with a surrounding fenced-in abandoned building site - are a fragment of the multidimensional and discontiguous Realm of Centraxis. The alternative sanctuary is but one little oasis of the eternal renaissance which springs up for all-too-brief moments in the infinitude of time and times. Similar cooperatives spring into existence in all fertile communal slums and high-living ‘lowlife’ districts - before being sucked dry or drowned out or exterminated or moved on, or covered in concrete and converted into a sought-after upper-crust enclave for mediocre self-styled elitists. The temporary squat is part of the trans-local temporality of Centraxis – an estate that some in the Court of the Centrax would falsely call a Kingdom.

‘Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,

And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands

With tales of brave Ulysses, how his naked ears were tortured

By the sirens singing sweetly…’

“All empires fall, all kings go down, but Tanelorn remains…” Evangeline reads from a crumbling Michael Moorcock paperback. As a sheath of pages slides from the book and flutters onto the linoleum floor she bends down with a grunt, steadying her plump gravity-defying stance against the wooden able to retrieve the fallen pages. Two temple balls roll off the edge of the painted surface in response to Evangeline’s jostling, and Ram’yana intercepts them with a sweep of his hand while he continues crumbling hash into miniscule granules with his experienced long-nailed fingers. “Will Racheal be eating?” Evangeline asks the prince, and a mischievous twinkle glitters in her ash-grey eyes as Ram’yana glances at the older woman. He sees that she’s looking at Crystal with an appraising and faintly disapproving cast to her square-faced features. “That’s up to her,” he replies. “Do you know where she is?”

‘The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,

And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.*’

Tony appears from the doorway leading to the rear courtyard before Evangeline can reply. The inveterate traveler’s brightly woven Afghani vest, heavy amber necklace and Indian pantaloons advertise his status as a veteran of the Hippy Trail. His hair sticks out crazily from the sides of his head and as he enters the kitchen he begins juggling a quintet of colourful balloon skins filled with tiny compacted seeds.

When the inspired juggler had reentered the country three moons earlier, his juggling balls had been filled with the best Cannabis sativa and indica seeds he’d been able to find on his pilgrimage to the Himalayan source of manifold worldly and unworldly things and events. His replacement set of homemade juggling balls are now filled with dried lily seeds. “Bravo!” Evangeline applauds his dextrous performance. “You’re up to five!”

“And I can talk and chew gum at the same time!” the street performer boasts with a toothsome smile. A sixth ball joins the quintet and the spinning planetoids soar through a small cloud of ubiquitous houseflies playing tag in the upper half of the high-ceilinged kitchen. “Wow! You’re ready for Afghanistan, then.” Evangeline sidles up to the wild-haired juggler; she and Tony have had a thing going since he returned from India three months earlier.

“I’d better be. I’m leaving next week.” A seventh ball joins the orbiting planetoids. Jean-Claude puts down the rolling pin and turns to face him. “I don’t theenk eet ees such a great idea now, Afghanistan.” Tony continues juggling as his head swivels toward the experienced French traveler. “Why not go to Nepal instead?”

“Because I’m going to Afghanistan. I fell in love with the place and it’s one of the last almost unspoiled places that Westerners haven’t descended on… yet…” His eyes rise to the ceiling, “…like flies to a diseased wound.” He catches each ball in turn and leans against the wall. “Besides, the joy on the faces of the kids on the streets and in the mountains is really something. To them, what I do is real magic. And everyone’s so utterly poor - they all have a desperate need to be entertained.”

“You’re really good,” Crystal smiles. “Here – light this.” Tony straightens the lopsided joint before raising it above his bushy hair in a silent offering to the godhead. Thick clouds of Tibetan resin are soon competing with the complex cooking smells to pique the squatter’s appetites.

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon begins to fill the kitchen, prompting Ram to glance up at the ceiling – which is also the floor to the bedchamber he shares with the Lady Racheal - where the control centre for the squat’s main sound and lighting systems reside. A lightly treading footstep causes the boards to creak in the stairwell that buttresses the kitchen, and J.D. appears at the foot of the steps. “I hope you don’t mind,” he smiles. “Great choice,” the prince assures him. “When are you heading for the Culture Palace?”

“Well, I was going to leave in a minute… but something smells really good, so I might wait until after tea.” J.D.’s subtle hint tilts the clockwise path of the joint in his direction as it transits from Evangeline to Kiwi Grant. “Nono!” Jean-Claude insists. “Stand here,” he orders, pointing to Grant’s right. “Always pass to zee left,” he instructs Evangeline with an unexpected outburst of gruffly stern admonition. “Never break zee circle.” Grant looks at the ceiling. “Eet ees a matter of paramount importance.”

“We’re doing Macrune’s Guevara next,” J.D. informs the group when Grant’s need and Jean-Claude’s sense of decorum are both finally sated. The technician turns to Ram’yana. “You want to do the lights?”

“If you need a hand,” Ram replies, continuing his marathon rolling effort. “A play about Che?” He nods toward the poster of the famous revolutionary, nailed to the wall over the secret door beneath the stairs – a hatchway that’s always concealed by a large wooden tallboy and is only ever broached by a handful of knowledgeable Centraxians. The iconic revolutionary’s portrait graces most hippy and ‘alternative’ homes in one or more forms, ranging from coffee cups to dishcloths, enameled badges to stenciled graffiti. “That it is,” J.D. confirms. “Sort of. It’s a play about a playwright writing a play about Che, anyway. And I might need a hand, now that Peter’s working with Ellis D. Fogg.”

“Is that his real name?” asks Evangeline, as she tastes the stew with a wooden spoon. “It’s the name Peter’s always used,” J.D. replies. His feline grin flashes around the room. “No surnames, please.” Tony insists through a brief burst of laughter. “I hope no-one knows mine!”

The first course of vegetable stew and fresh home-made buttered nutbread is soon being ladled into mismatched bowls and the hollowed hemispheres of coconut shells. The copious cauldron easily fills a further assortment of mugs and plates as sundry sods and bods emerge from the woodwork. “Home, home again, I like to be here when I can…” Evangeline sings along with the all-time best selling L.P.. “When I come home cold and tired, I like to sit here by the fire…”

“Hey, this is really good!” Crystal eats like a waif who hasn’t been fed in days. J.D. joins Evangeline for the last lines and Ram’yana and Jean-Claude straggle in at the end; “Far away across the sea, the tolling of the island bell draws the faithful to their knees to hear the softly spoken magic spell.” As the dreamy track transforms into an extraordinary wordless paean they all sit eating in silence, thrilling to the gut-wrenching female voice that solos through the full range of human emotions; the singer’s unparalleled contribution helped lift the album to its unrivalled status as the best (psychedelic) rock album ever made.

At the very moment the needle lifts with automatic precision at the end of the track, a loud American accent booms into the squatters’ stoned reverie. “Hey – am I late for dinner?” The uniformed G.I. drawls his greeting from the open doorway; a somewhat tousle-haired Charmayne hangs from his beefy arm, beaming at the squatters with a lopsided, out-of-it grin lighting up her thoroughbred features. He leads the Humanities student into the kitchen and throws a huge bag of thick heads onto the round table. “Any sign of my pal Jerry? He was s’posed to meet us here.”

No-one is quick to answer, and Ram’yana inserts an urgent question of his own: “Have you seen Racheal anywhere?” Crystal leans against his velvet-clad arm and strokes his thigh as they sit perched on three-legged stools before the feasting table. He’s positively shocked when Charmayne offhandedly replies in the affirmative. “Sure – I just saw her outside.”

“Where?” Just as Ram’yana puts down his bowl and begins to rise to his feet, silence descends on the crowded kitchen and he turns to see his beloved Lady striding in through the open back door. Racheal’s smile freezes slightly when she sees Crystal hanging at Ram’s side, but she quickly recovers her aplomb and crosses her arms as she leans against the wall. “I’m glad to see everyone’s here,” she announces with a glance toward Joe. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’m not feeling myself. Have a good night.”

The blonde priestess lurches from the wall and strides purposefully toward the stairwell, and Crystal stands to make room for the prince as he starts after his bride-to-be. Ram’yana pauses with an apologetic smile and plants a swift kiss on the bemused young redhead’s freckly cheek. He belatedly notices Racheal’s unusual ensemble as she pauses in the hallway at the foot of the stair; his Lady wears an unfamiliar leather micro-miniskirt that reveals the full slender lengths of her long pale legs, and a tightly fitting black t-shirt displays her alluring bosom to full effect as the buxom girl pauses to yawn and stretch with catlike grace before the surprised assembly.

The tribe has never seen Racheal dress in black, and the contrast of her ultra-white complexion with the jet darkness of her clothing throws her obviously unhealthy pallour into stark relief. The young prince eyes her pale features with concern as he wonders at his Lady’s disregard of her long-standing avowal to eschew the ‘colour’ black - which she’d announced in the week after they first met. He’d never fully understood her injunction against wearing one of the four colours that graces his own heraldic raiment in the Court of Centraxis, but has oft encountered similar reactions to the shade in others.

As the Lady Racheal opens her arms to her beloved Ramses he notices the dark half moons shining within the translucent skin beneath her aquamarine eyes. “Come to bed,” she says loudly enough for all to hear as her arms encompass his slim frame and she eyes her audience through his long dark mane. “I need to fuck you - now.”

A true story

Continues…

R.A.

Lyrics by Martin Sharp & Credit to Eric Clapton & Cream

And The Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon

Further tales of the Prince of Centraxis -

See Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 1

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 2 -Free World

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 3 -Stretching the Envelope

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 4 - Home to Roost

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 5 - Could It Be Any Body?

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 6 - Free Lovers

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 7 - Wild Widow's Son

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 8 - Womanimals

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 9 - Incautious Wishes

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 10 - Freedom of Choice

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 11 – Smuggled Desires

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 12 – Love the One

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 13 – Open Secrets

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 14 – The Second Arcanum

Adder Ladies and the Dawn of Ra Part 1 - Doves and Serpents

The Shaman of Centraxis Part 1 - The Whole is Greater

Psychedelic Water Part 1 – Fractal Rainbow

And for further enlightenment see

The New Illuminati - http://newilluminati.blog-city.com/

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com/

Save the World from RamPage - http://www.geocities.com/r_ayana

This material is published under Creative Commons Copyright – reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged, if you give attribution to the work & author - and please include a (preferably active) link to the original along with this notice. If you like what you see, please send a tiny donation or leave a comment! Thanks for reading this far…

The Prince of Centraxis – http://centraxis.blogspot.com