The World in Dissonance (Volume 1)

Chapter 3 - Part 3

Part 3

Time passed.

It was now thirty minutes past noon.

All of the person entangled in the spiral of fate and by extension, would take part in the stage set up by the two Christian girls, Alyss and Sonya, were all gathered in the cafeteria.

Not necessarily accustomed to each others, nor even sharing the same table, but they were definitely there.

On one hand, Eldritch and Mathers along their witches friends. On the other one, the representative of class 12B who just made the acquaintance of Alyss and Sonya, whom she knew as Lola and Helena. And lastly, the mysterious culprits who could be anyone without any distinctions.

The group of Witches were gathered at their usual place, at the table in the middle of the cafeteria. Mathers and Eldritch had probably set runes to prevent their exchanges from being heard by anyone expect whoever they wanted to hear it, because their group were discussing about what they would do next regarding the circumstances of their plans to end the ongoing Witch Hunt.

“Can’t we just create a spell to force the culprit to turn themselves in? It will avoid us a useless collaboration with those girls! I definitely can’t stand them!”, said the witch girl going by the name of Tabitha. The aftertaste of her previous humiliation was still bothering her that much.

For witches such as them, a truth spell wouldn’t be out of reach. They could just use Sigils taken from the book of the ‘Ars Goetia’ that belonged to Grimoire of ‘The Lesser Key of Solomon’.

The Ars Goetia systematized the idea of 72 named infernal demons that was summoned and subjugated by the King of Israel, Solomon, through means of a ring imbued with a Sigil which was given to him by the Archangel Michael. The later put them into his service, according to their abilities and powers, to achieve the creation of the Temple dedicated to YHWH. The term ‘Goetia’ itself was derived from the Ancient Greek word ‘γοητεία’ (goēteía) that referred to Witchcraft as the evocation of demons or evil spirits.

Those were legends disregarded as canonical scriptures by the Jews or Christian groups, classified by The Vatican in the current era as ‘Apocrypha’. Yet, the 72 Goetic Demons in that book were closely tied to the 72 Kabbalistic Angels of the ‘Shem HaMephorash’ and were subjected to them. And the term Shem HaMephorash itself was a Mishnaic Hebrew term for ‘The Tetragrammaton’, also known as the four-letter theonym, symbolic of the Name of God YHWH, read as ‘(yod/Y) ה (he/H) ו (vav/W) ה (he/H)’ which was translated as the verb ‘To be’ or ‘To cause to become’.

In the end, legends or not, it was all but an eternal cycle of entanglement between both sides, just like the ‘Ouroboros’.

And in the section of Ars Goetia in The Lesser Key of Solomon, there was a specific demonic spirit working to bring back both the thief and the stolen goods, to discover hidden treasures or truths and all dishonest dealings.

As described in the book: ‘The Seventy-second Spirit in Order is named Andromalius. He is an Earl, Great and Mighty, appearing in the form of a Man holding a Great Serpent in his Hand. His Office is to bring back both a Thief, and the Goods which be stolen, and to discover all Wickedness and Underhand Dealing, and to punish all Thieves and other Wicked People and also to discover Treasures that be Hid. He ruleth over 36 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, the which wear thou as aforesaid, etc.’

“It is not a matter of whether it is feasible or not, but rather a question of ethics. His Hierophant and Execration Johann would have easily done what you suggested but he didn’t do any of it yet, meaning he is either for solving this situation by human means or for doing nothing at all!”, explained the witch girl Lilim to her friend. “Either we like it or not, in the end, the arrival of those two girls was a good thing because we can make use of them to do all the dirty works while we are staying many steps away from being busted!”

Unlike what was portrayed in fairy tales and literature, the Witch Society operates in strict accordance with its own code of ethics. There might be some troublemakers but there were rules that should never be broken and hierarchy that should always be respected. Regarding this case, the Dark Priest Johann never tried to interfere directly on a situation that involved a great number of normal civilians, and that was even before he had that clash of will against Dedicatus.

A Warlock of his caliber could have used powerful incantations to influence greatly the culprit to turn themselves in, and in case they happened to have really discovered the existence of witches, he could even use dark magic to forcefully erase those precise information from their memory. When it came to memory and consciousness, Johann Fawkes’s belief was closely tied to that of the famous British Occultist and founder of the religion of Thelema, Aleister Crowley. In the book ‘Magick in Theory and Practice’, that human connected directly the Expansion of Consciousness to the ‘Formula of the Neophyte’ in order to awaken deeper layers of consciousness. Memory and Consciousness were believed to be intricately intertwined, with many memory systems being foundational to consciousness, acting as a ‘conscious memory system’. But if the Occultist Crowley made his formula to sharpen memory and achieve ‘True Will’ by transcending the Ego, Fawkes inverted the principle behind it to tamper into the memory of someone. If one was to take off the blindfold of the ignorant to guide that person into reaching his Higher Self, the other one was about putting blindfold on someone to limit his consciousness, and by extension affect his memory.

That was the kind of witch that Johann Fawkes was. And he recently reached a new level of power after the festival of debauchery during the Dark Baptism of Lilim. But just as the witch girl Anès stated before, being a witch meant to be disciplined, and the Dark Priest Johann was one of their model when it came to that.

“In any case, for the likes of us, a spell on that level would require many belongings of the culprits, which we don’t even have!”, said Tabitha to herself in a low voice. She was most likely trying to convince herself there was nothing they could do about it.

While they were focused on that minor debate, the main protagonist of the final act finally came back from their visit of the main stage. Their arrival were not as glorious or outstanding as that of those heroes from fictions, but nevertheless they were the ones all the people, that were concerned with the witch hunt, were waiting for.

The one to come to them first was the class rep of 12B Elena Rosenthal. They were not acquainted to each others that much, but they shared the same goal and that was enough to create a bound between people in general.

“Howdy Helena, Lola! I hope you two had it good this morning! I have so much to share with you that I ended up finishing some papers which are pointing the existence of secret magical society since modern era.”

“Oh~ that’s interesting. Come and have a seat with us, we can talk about it there.”, replied Sonya while giving a charming smile.

“Would that be fine? I don’t want to be invasive!”

“No worries, it would be of a great help for us!”, reassured the young maiden wearing glasses.

The three of them thus arrived in front of Eldritch and co, who were just done with their debate. Well it was mostly the witch girls who were debating as Eldritch and Mathers didn’t even pay much attention to it. But it was not like they didn’t care, it was more like avoiding pointless troubles because in the end, the debate will close without bringing them anywhere.

“Oh~ you two finally showed up! And you brought the class rep with you!”, stated Eldritch as the three girls stood in front of their table.

“I guess you two knows each others!!”, assumed Sonya.

“You could say that!”, answered Elena. “We are not that much of a close friend but we are acquainted to each others. After all, we belong to the same class!”

“You don’t mind if she joins us then?”, questioned the young maiden.

“You two know what you’re doing so no probs if that’s fine with you!”, replied the witch boy.

“Well then, let’s take a sit and wrap this meeting quickly! The more time we waste, the less are we expected to reach our goal!”, prompted Alyss.

While the three of them were joining the table, the usually chaotic Tabitha were rather quiet.

Maybe she had a sudden change of heart, or was it that she just decided to avoid any useless altercation for the time being! Well, Alyss and Sonya, whom the class representative Elena knew as Lola and Helena, didn’t really mind either she would start another quarrel.

(Are you crazy? Why are you bringing a regular human with you, and furthermore the representative of my and Mathers’s Class!)

It was Eldritch who opened a telepathic flux to directly talk with Alyss and Sonya through ‘Clairsentience’, more commonly known as Transmission of thoughts.

(Well we didn’t know she was acquainted to you. But in any case, her presence with us in this circumstance will be of some help! Having a third party witnessing who the culprits are would have more impact if we want to shatter the lie they planted in the mind of the citizens of Carnforth!)

That was Alyss’s answer to Eldritch’s worries.

(Just go with the flow, everyone! No need to stress yourself over having that person present here. Just let those two run the conversation and keep on a low profile!)

This time, it was the young warlock Mathers who transmitted his thoughts directly to all the witches on the table.

“So, everyone this one here is Elena! Well, some of you already knows her, some doesn’t! She is our class representative!”, declared Eldritch in order to break the wall between the aforementioned and his friends. “Elena, you already know sister there, Lilim, and my friend Mathers here. Next to Lilim, on her right, you have the twins, Inès and Anès and on her left are Tabitha and Stella! They are respectively from class 3E and 7D”

“Glad to make your acquaintance! I apologize for tagging along all of a sudden. I’ll be in your care!”, replied the girl.

“She will help us with the redaction regarding the documentation of the Witch Hunt happening here!”, declared Sonya as the three of them finally took a seat. “You may start, Elena!”

The young girl named Elena Rosenthal was carrying a thin, delicate pile of paper—most likely the very same papers she had referred to Alyss and Sonya but a fleeting moment before. She then shared it across the table for each one of them sitting there. It went without saying that her handwriting mirrored astonishingly the grace of her elegant figure. The text upon each page was arranged with such a meticulous order and refinement that it might well rival the content of a doctoral thesis. One might well wonder how did she manage to write such accurately detailed documents in so brief a span of time, all while having to attend diligently her classes. But that was a question to which not even Eldritch and Mathers, who were her classmates, would provide an answer.

“In my analysis, I tried to provide a detailed report about the existence of secret magical society and the turning point that revealed their activities to the public. It’s a necessary step we shouldn’t overlook as we will mirror those events with what is actually going on in town!”, started the girl. “Let’s start with the paper with Mathers! That document introduces a small report on how the most famous and influential magical cabal, founded during late 19th, became known to public!”

Every one of them turned their gazes towards Mathers, who was giving a glance upon the paper.

“The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn!”, read the young warlock.

“Devoted to Occultism, Mysticism, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah, the Golden Dawn was the cornerstone of all modern occultism. The Order itself was founded based on Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry with a hierarchical structure based on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Their magical practices were shaped in the shadow of the world, hidden from the eyes of the public.”

“But then happened The Battle of Blythe Road, right?”, asked the witch girl Lilim as if to confirm what she already knew.

“Yes! That incident was the turning point that prompted the downfall of that magical cabal.”, replied Elena before providing more detailed information. “On a certain day during April 1900, a conflict rose within The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn! Aleister Crowley, the instigator of the incident, tried to seize by force the control of the Isis-Urania Temple in London on behalf of their Leader Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. Occurring at 36 Blythe Road, Hammersmith, that infamous confrontation led to the internal collapse of the Order, resulting in the departure of several key members that would later on led to the exposure of the Golden Dawn. The exposure itself happened not directly because of the Battle, but mostly due to the publishing of the Order’s secret rituals and teachings by Aleister himself in his book ‘The Equinox’ and his media coverage as ‘The Wickedest Man in the World’. But the most definitely blow was done by the former member Israel Regardie’s big reveal, when he published a massive four-volume set titled ‘The Golden Dawn’ between 1937 and 1940.”

“If we look back in the 17th Century, we can also explore the story of another Order which was symbolized by a rose on a cross!”

“The Rosicrucian Order!”, declared Inès and Anès in unison.

For Alyss and Sonya, it was like a feeling of a ‘déjà vue’. Undoubtedly, Elena gave the same vibe as Dedicatus when she explained those facts about the Golden Dawn.

“As an esoteric movement that merged Christian mysticism with Hermeticism, Alchemy and Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism was one of the pillar foundation of Modern Western Occultism, including The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn itself. The belief of the ‘Microcosm/Macrocosm’, well known by the expression ‘as above, so below’, meaning humans are a reflection of the universe, was one of the key concepts behind it.”, introduced Elena as she started her explanation. “The Rosicrucian Order became known to the public primarily through anonymous publication of three foundational texts, commonly known as the ‘Rosicrucian Manifestos’. It happened between 1614-1616, where the three books ‘Fama Fraternitatis’, ‘Confession Fraternitatis’ and ‘The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz’. Between 1614-1620, those manifestos sparked the ‘Rosicrucian Enlightenment’ across Europe, which led to the publishing of more than 400 manuscripts discussing, defending or even attacking the Rosicrucian claims. And it was finally in 1623 that the Order reached the peak of public notoriety during the public displaying of mysterious placards on the walls of Paris, in France. The aforementioned posters claimed the existence of the ‘Brethren of the Rosy Cross’ who were staying in the city ‘visible and invisible’ to teach every science without books and signs.”

She could have continued with further examples; each paper upon the table appeared, in all likelihood, to dwell upon a different kabbalistic order. She just made sure to mention those popular magic cabal to make sure everyone was on the same pace. It was then that Eldritch asked the question they were all eager to ask.

“You managed to write all these papers today? It’s really impressive!”

“That would be impossible for me!”, answered the class rep while making a shy face. “I actually started to write those since the beginning of this witch hunt in town. Something felt off, so I did some researches!”

The girl with glasses, known as Sonya, allowed a faint smile to grace her lips as it was beyond obvious where this situation was going to lead them all.

“When a secret cabal, or coven for some groups, it’s mostly because of internal issues where you have the members themselves revealing its existence to the public!”, highlighted closely Alyss.

“I also made a research to compare the ritual circle that was discovered in Lord’s Lot forest with all the known Sigils used in Witchcraft but it didn’t match any of them. Well it’s bot like I am an expert in that field, all I did was to compare the picture of the magic circle in the newspaper with that of different Sigils that was available in some books.”

“So you are implying that the magic circle discovered in the forest is actually fake? And that this Witch Hunt is definitely wrong in the first place?”, asked directly Stella.

“Based on those facts, I root for that truth!”, answered the girl regarding her standing on that matter. “The reason behind it is still unknown to me but I believe someone set this up!”

“Then answer me, Elena, do you actually believe that witches exist?”, suddenly questioned Tabitha.

The answer to that question was crucial as that group of witches might decide how they would consider Elena in the future, either if she would be labelled as a threat or not.

“I am not entirely certain! Yet history taught us, time and again, that what we see and know are nothing more than the merest tip of the iceberg, all while ignoring how unfathomably deep the rabbit’s hole truly descends. But I also have my doubts as the same history also enlightened us that what we ultimately believed to be facts often turned out to be the illusion of misinterpreted truth or misinformation. Albeit Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, the Leader of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, frowned upon all such methods, some members like Aleister Crowley, Alan Bennett or William Butler Yeats were the perfect example of drug user, thinking at some point they were doing magic under the illusion of ecstasy drugs!”, answered Elena with an extended explanation. “So, what I wanna say is that we can’t deny the reality that witches may exist, but I am not sure there are witches in Carnforth!”

They all had their answers. For the time being, the group of Witches could come into the conclusion that the existence of Elena Rosenthal was not a menace to their coven. And on their side, the group of Christian girls got themself another ally.

Forgetting entirely that they were still in the cafeteria, Alyss rose abruptly from the bench then struck the edge of it with her right foot in a sharp and emphatic stomp.

“What are we even waiting for? It’s time to hunt the Hunter!”

Despite how existed she was, she did not forget to lower her voice, making sure that no one beyond their circle night overhear what she had just said. And there was, as well, the spell that Eldritch and Mathers had quietly invoked to ensure that not even a fragment of their discourse ended up overheard by any unintended ear.

“Lord’s Lot forest... here we go again!”