Still in the cold.

I raised the blind a couple of inches and looked out onto the gray street. The Berlin twilight was as gray as the road. The only splash of color was some hastily sprayed graffiti on the opposite wall. I took a deep breath and walked out of the bar towards the checkpoint.

The wall was behind me and to the left. Three miles back was Space Beach where the disco lights were beginning to sparkle and the sound of Bob Marley was beginning to start the evening’s movement. I didn’t look back though.

Out of well-trained habit I observed what was happening around me without appearing to move my head in any direction. No one was following me. The only person walking towards me was a Slavic looking tourist who was examining the new Checkpoint Charlie stamp in his passport. It had cost him five Euros.

I kept walking at a steady pace across the crossroad and towards the taxi rank on the corner of the street opposite me. It was maybe a hundred yards away. The light from the small café shone into the solitary taxicab. Sitting inside the cab was a large man reading a newspaper. I was now fifteen feet from the passenger door.

I arrived at the taxi, opened the door, got inside and used my mangled German to request the driver take me to the Zoo railway station. As we drove away I looked around to see if we were being followed. We weren’t. As the cab pulled away I breathed a sigh of relief in three hours I would be back in Warnemunde onboard the ship.

When I arrived back on the ship I had one more question; how long before I could come in from the cold.

The Three Forces

People often ask what a magician does. These are the people who have realized that the answer must be more than; “He fools people.” Magicians have been around for a long time and their standing was a lot better than it is now. During the last century the average magician has been a cross between a game show host and used car salesman. It wasn’t always this way. When people ask me that question, and I think they want a serious reply, I always say the same thing; a magician’s job is to wake up people who don’t know they are asleep. If that answer makes them want to ask more questions then the real conversation can begin.

Aleister Crowley the notorious British magician had another answer; a magician causes change according to will. Crowley (Which rhymes with holy) was the self-proclaimed wickedest man in the world. In the ‘60’s his lifestyle would have made him a prototype hippy. However, not many hippies had his strength of mind or body, he was a one of a kind which is probably just as well! He was also one of the three great magicians of his era. The other two were Rasputin known as the mad monk (His name which means the dissolute one, a more accurate description) and the other is Mr. G.I. Gurdjieff. About Grigory Rasputin I have very little to say except that he was a very tough man to kill! However, modern magick reached the crossing in the road with the works of Crowley and Gurdjieff. Most followers of Mr. Gurdjieff’s ideas would be reluctant to believe that magick has much to do with his teachings. Most followers of Crowleyanity wouldn’t be prepared to acknowledge that much else was worth exploring. Since both men were brilliant, misunderstood and ahead of their time a comparison of their ideas can be a very illuminating experience.

Among the conclusions that a careful study would reveal is that both men were expert and adept at controlling forces that very few people realize exist, let alone understand.
Without adding much detail at this point let me define these three forces in Gurdjieffian terms.
Force One: Holy Affirming.
Force Two: Holy Denying.
Force Three: Holy Reconciling.
These forces have been given many different names and feature in every major spiritual practice.
In his final writings Mr. Gurdjieff turned them into a very practical code for living.
I Am
I Can
I Wish
In this form they become the key to All and Everything.
Later on I will explore these ideas in more detail but for now just let the words run loose in your mind. Rearrange the order.
Before you realize them as a key you need to see the door they will open.

The Case

Someone first noticed the case at 8:35 am. It was a compact black leather piece of hand baggage of the design known as a ‘sample case.’ It was a Delta counter assistant at gate 43 who saw it sitting next to an empty seat on the end of a row slightly to her left. It was no big thing when she saw it but she made a mental note of it because that was part of her job. She assumed that the owner was just getting a coffee from the Starbucks opposite gate 30.

Ten minutes later the gate assistant noticed that the case was still there and still unattached to anybody. She did what she was supposed to do and called airport security. She explained the situation and location: the security officer replied that someone would come along and check it out.

Four minutes later an airport security guard arrived at gate 43 and walked up to the case. He asked several of the people in the area if they knew whom the case belonged to. Nobody could give him any details other than one youth in a Led Zeppelin tee shirt who said he thought it had been placed there by a tall middle-aged man.
“But he wasn’t wearing a turban or anything.” He joked.

The Security officer fixed him with a stern look and said: “We don’t appreciate remarks like that sir; please keep them too yourself.” The fact that it was exactly the kind of remark that the security branch and TSA employees exchanged all the time remained his little secret. The young man looked somewhat abashed and replaced the earbuds from his ipod into his ears.

Next the security officer removed his walkie-talkie set and reported to his senior in the small office space that was shared by their department in the center of the airport. Having done his job he stepped back and kept his eye on the case. This kind of thing happened at least four or five times a day. There was never much to get worried about.

Five minutes later a uniformed officer with a small work case arrived in the company of another uniformed man who had a lively looking dog on the end of a short leash. The dog approached the case and sniffed around it for a moment or two before returning to the side of his trainer. The trainer gave him a dog treat from his pocket and the dog ate it happily. He liked to sniff things and he loved the Pupperoni he was given as a treat for doing so. Life was good.

The second officer approached the suspicious piece of luggage with a small instrument he had removed from his work case. There was a brief whirling sound and the small LCD screen on the instrument registered a series of different shapes and colors. The officer looked at it carefully and said to his colleague: “There is a lot of stuff in there, quite a bit of electronics. We had better play it safe.”

The security guard who had been on the scene first picked up the case carefully and flanked by the other two officers walked the case carefully away from its resting place. They made there way to the concrete bunker that was housed in the bowels of the airport. Everybody involved had done his or her job in a timely and correct manner.

In just a little over 20 minutes the case had been spotted, reported, investigated and removed. In another few minutes it would be covered in thick white foam and destroyed by a highly controlled explosion by the head of the mechanical team. The explosion would be watched and videotaped by him as it took place behind the 24-inch concrete wall in front of his computer stand.

It was at about this time that the tall blonde haired man arrived at gate 43 with a cardboard Starbucks in his hand. He had a smile on his face as he had been enjoying drinking his latte in the company of a fellow magician he had met inside the coffee emporium. The smile left his face when he realized his case full of magic props was no longer where he had left it.

He approached the person sitting closest to where the bag had been and asked him if he had seen where his case was. He didn’t hear it but almost exactly as he spoke there was a muffled bang from a concrete room in a distant part of the airport. Life is hell during wartime.