© Linda Falorio, 1989

New Moon, August 1981.

The mass of the Shenandoah Mountains brooded to the south, a somber presence, dark and imposing against the steel gray summer sky, obscured by bion-blue haze, eternally waiting. So that in contrast our mammalian awareness seemed too-quick, nervous and distracted, and we became exhilarated, giddy, and expectant as the car began its climb from Front Royal into that strangely silent isolation imparted by the mists that settled shroud-like upon the shoulders of the mountains. The road ahead twisted at an impossible angle, disappearing behind a profusion of gnarled trees and too lush growth of moss and fern and red-cupped lichen. It was our first experience of these ancient Eastern mountains, once part of what would one day become Africa in that long ago time of super-continent Pangea, and we wondered at their beauty and their mystery.

On the advice of a friend, we had decided to travel Skyline Drive from Front Royal to Rockfish Gap where we would pick up route 64 East and head for the coast, on our way to what would become an annual pilgrimage to the Outer Banks—Cape Hatteras—the northeast corner of the Bermuda Triangle, Graveyard of the Atlantic.

The going was slow, yet the twisting road, and shifting, moisture-laden mists, with intermittent rain and dazzling fog made the time seem magickal, as if we traveled to that Pure Land beloved of the Taoist Immortals as we passed Matthews Arm, Elkwallow, Thornton Gap, Pinnacles, and Skyland. The sky had darkened into evening when we at last approached Loft Mountain, "campground with trailer sites".

The sense of magick continued through the evening, as a wild bird, species unknown to us visited our camp and we conversed with it in the manner of the Greek Mopsus, who understood the speech of birds. A chorus of crickets and frogs raised voices in the deep forest night, as we burned incense, invoking Nuit under her night-stars, astrally adorned with heavy golden jewelry—cuffs, anklets, and Egyptian collar against indigo-stained skin.

On impulse, I asked for the "lost" star, of Liber AL (see page 19 of original manuscript in Crowley's hand), and a sigil burned itself into awareness. As if in response to a kind of calling, a black, glittering, amorphous entity came upon me from behind, hovering, sinking icy astral fingers into my consciousness. Then there came a feeling of possession, of wildness, as the entity, time out of mind somehow connected to our kind, transmitted in a melodious voice her urgent message: that denial of the body and its pleasures is a lie; that sin is a lie against innocence; that our birth right is to experience the universe as joy, as beauty, as laughter and as pleasure.

The Ancient One made known that in distant aeons she had been banished from our Urth by other gods, and now having been called, returned to bring her Truth. Ever ready to redress the wrongs inflicted by the lords of death, she would bring justice, would bring our world back into balance—with violence if need be—even while her message remained one of joy, and the promise that those who fear not Life need not fear what might come to be in some future purging.

Overwhelmed by Her energy, power, and passion, images surfaced: an altar of cool stone, an ancient priesthood who worked their dark antediluvian magick on this mountain top in some long forgotten epoch, as they sought to open a stellar gate and call through the Ancient Ones from dimensions beyond our space-time. Thus they communed with vast, ineffable intelligences and powers that we moderns dare not open our small minds to, lest we become as "gibbering idiots, slavering at a gibbous moon".

My partner and I had reawakened an ancient ceremonial site of tremendous power: I banished, tried to sleep, yet the feeling lingered, lingers still.