the Magickal Memoirs of Frater Pontificus Maximus

by the Reverend Rob

In the beginning, before the languinous summer of my sixth year, there was a calling to me, hidden from even those with the most astute of vision and clarity of perceptual focus. From the vacuous heavens, through the heralded pulsing of the distant meadows outside my dear Aunt's farm where I once spent a fitful week learning the lessons of nature and the inevitable and inexorable pace towards death, a proverbial voice rang from the hills where a silent heartbeat struck time; there was a knowing, that all would be as I willed it, that the boy christened Richard Milhouse Nixon would someday grow to be powerful, a king from rags, and whose might was far beyond those vicious hotel-grubbing journalists who made their reputations on the backs of the hard-working and law-abiding civil servants whose only aim was to protect the nation's security, to ensure that the Law was for all.

From these humble beginnings, through the tumultous years of the Presidency where like crickets buzzing outside my hospitable environ on the 1974 trip to China, there was a calling to exercise my Will, albeit far from the eyes and understanding of the common man. During these years, where I was in constant communications with the Secret Chiefs acting as Commander in Chief, I spread the Law throughout the land, and those who are wise shall remember Mr. Nixon, for I would not grant even myself license to use the vulgar Richard or the unbegotten Milhouse, as it was not my Will, as the humble and virtuous Frater Pontificus Maximus.

This is my story, beginning with a simple event in the mystical and unheralded years of my childhood. It was a Wednesday sixteen days after my sixth birthday, and there was a vacuous heat, a distant rumbling of desire in my as-yet developed loins, for a refreshing childhood treat. My father assented to my Will that I acquire a Dreamsicle in the arduous heat, and gave me two nickels and six pennies with which to purchase the object of my desire. With a gleam in his eye, knowing that he had consented to providing the necessary succor for my Will to come to fruition, he said unto me, "Mr. Nixon (for even then, I had earned the respected title of Mister 6^3), go forth and do your Will, as dictated in the words of the Wise!" With that admonition firmly affixed within the bounds of my skull as a glyph of knowing, I meandered purposefully down to the corner druggist, where there was bound to be frozen delights with which to tickle a young boy's fancy, a glacial fruitiness wrapping a creamy center, providing a balance akin to Tipareth versus the phallic brilliance of Geburah, and which was the object of my Will. This was to be the first disappointment in my career as a master magician; my Will was clear; my desire focused, but the druggist only had grape popsicles rather than the sought-after Dreamsicle.

After paying the eleven cents to the druggist for the frosty treat, I sucked bitterly upon the dismal fruits of discontent; with droplets of purple falling from the ice-covered stick adhering to my fingers unable to make the Sign of Silence, my sunset Resh was a moment of brilliance, of clarity against the red-streaked skies long before I became aware of the sinister implications of night, where Ra had been hidden beneath the veiled lies of the Black Brothers' communist conspiracy to hide the Law and make sure that none passed from the Abyss of Daath to the sweet cream discovery of mystical Dreamsicles in the languinous summer days of my sixth year. I, Mister Nixon, who would become Commander in Chief of all the forces of the Law, was not to be swayed by the evil influence of the Black Brothers, and would strive to ensure that the free world was capable of remaining beneath the starry splendors of Nuit and that no child would be forced to endure the bitter ironies of childhood Will misspent. Thus, I vowed upon the conjunction of the Sun and Venus that very midnight clear that forevermore, I would learn to savor the fruits of the vine no matter how they may be frozen, and master their sweetness in order to further my Will.

I remember visuallizing this day clearly, as I ordered Frater Ubiquitous to bring me the Kaballistic analysis of the remaining troops in Vietnam, and the astrological conjunction by which the six and fifty bomber groups amassing off the Haiphong harbor would do my Will from afar. This was the day in which the bowling alley renovations beneath the White House, center of all that was not black, would be finished, and a full altar besmirched in ceremonial accoutrements would forever be dedicated and made present directly beneath the all-seeing Oval of Osiris that is inscribed beneath the third leg of the desk that my great-great-great grandfrater Maximus Erectus had built in accordance with the Memphis rites taught to him by his fathers before him, where all that was good and proper could be focused to greater extemporize and make those in contact with the words written upon the streaked walnut frame more aware of the truth of the Will; that the user of this seemingly innoculous furnicular item had become a Master of Time and Infinite Space. So, as I affixed my sigil upon the order elevating MacNamara to the IX Degree, the heavens took the shape in my scrying space of a popsicle dripping across the heavens, covered in purpicular greatness and testifying to the Will my father had awoken in me those long and languinous summer days so far removed from the exalted and enlightened space that I had now possessed.

Those were the most difficult days of the Nixon Administration, when there was a secondary war going on beneath the Good War in Vietnam, waged between those who participated actively in the Great Work and the Black Brothers, whose schema for world domination had nearly come to pass through their efforts to keep the Law out of the hands of every man and woman. The strategems employed by those bleary-eyed residents of Daath were simple, yet effective, and I was forced to analyze their activities with every fiber of my being. Armed with a network of neophytes whose efforts in the Work were making strong headway against the rising tide of dark oppression, this was a deciding time, where the very fate of the New Aeon could be decided by a single misstep of Will.

Thus were the battle lines drawn, much in the manner of my first winter in boyhood memory, in which some of the neighborhood youth, unable to listen to their Will and act decisively to bring about a more enlightened time, ambushed me outside in my grandmother's yard. This was a terrible winter day, during which the sun in all its' brilliance failed to rise decisively and where after reading the battered copy of the Blue Equinox, I henceforth decided that it was imperative to summon a daemon in the frost-covered steps of an afternoon of a promising youth. After meticulous preparation, the invoking circle drawn carefully in the virgin snow, and after borrowing my father's Lamp fuelled by invisible and indiscernable Aethyr, with the chariot of Ra hidden behind a blanket of billowing clouds that reminded of the unfortunate weather the first time I set foot on Air Force One and invoked the slyphs to entertain Mrs. Nixon in those nervous days prior to assuming the exalted station of Commander in Chief. So gathering my Will about me, and envisioning the macrocosm spread out like melting butter on Miss Duchoire's hot and steaming English muffins, the rite had begun, only to be interrupted by that randy William and his juvenile gang of minor delinquents and a torrential assault of balled snow. Even as a junior Magus, there were those who would seek to mock me and torment my efforts to expand my understanding of the wide and vast cosmos in an attempt to someday fulfill my obligation of instructing every man and woman to be a star.

I occasionally look back upon my childhood memories to gauge the progression of my Will from embryonic grandeur to matured greatness, and realize then that the first steps placed upon the moon by Frater Armstrong and his expedition of acolytes, in an attempt to gather the ritual ingredients that would be necessary to further brighten the nighttime sphere and provide a source of sustenance and light to those who were still in the Dark. It was during this tumultous time, in which the sorcery being perpetrated to secure the nation and its' Law was being worked full-time by devoted Cabinet members and the wise and enlightened Mr. Agnew whose early work towards procuring a method which would protect the innocent and babelike in their pristine homes and ensure the safety of the nation was later overlooked as the dogs attempted to tear the meat from his bones as punishment for making the streets safe for all and stopping the tumultuous riots that brought this great nation to a standstill.

During this Great Work, even the obvious was often misrepresented in the press, whose troglodytesque fixation on gossip and slander failed to notice the mighty efforts of the American people as represented in their Commander in Chief and his duly appointed advisors. What the pundits claim was the greatest error of the Nixon Administration will someday be acknowledged as a masterstroke of genius, during which time Mr. Nixon was able to drop from the public eye for a year and a day to complete the Abramelin ritual which would allow him to continue the work for every man, woman, and voter behind the scenes, and pass the mantle of Outer Head of America to my designated successor, the King whose air of ineptitude allowed him to further the Cause of the Work, the beloved Frater Ford. Beneath that bedraggled exterior and apparent clumsiness, a true King lurked, gathering information and ensuring that the safety of the nation would not be imperiled as I walked the paths and furthered my rite of ascension which would power the nation until the next Aeon.

This is all I am able to disclose at this juncture without violating my oaths to the Order, and let it never be said that Frater Pontificus Maximus did not take his oaths seriously, from boyhood magus to enlightened Commander in Chief. As I begin to examine with frankness and enlightenment granted by the passing of the years, I am reminded of a quote from the Book of Babalon: "So they shall cry fool, liar, sot, traducer, betrayer. Thou art not glad thou meddled with magick?" Such is the public legacy I shall leave, but I can finally relax, knowing that my part in the Great Work is complete and the world is safe from the benightened plots of the Black Bretheren.