piece of rawhide. The customs inspector didnât even bother opening them. He just waved Albert through the turnstile with a yawn and a look of bored indifference.
Albert fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket and lit it with a flick from his monogrammed Zippo lighter. It always worked on the first try. He trusted that lighter like he trusted nothing else in this godless world.
Godless? Well, maybe not, thought Albert. Now that heâd seen it with his own eyes, he couldnât say for sure what omnipotent beings ruled our festering universe. He knew about one for sure. The devil was real.
Every culture has a religion, and every religion has a devil, or so it seemed to Albert when he began his scholarly quest to catalog and investigate every reference.
It turned into an enormous job that kept him busy for years, but Albert had a mission. He wanted to establish the face of Satan around the world. He wanted to compare and understand what characteristics stayed the same from culture to culture. Maybe, among those statistics a pattern would emerge, a common thread of belief in the Prince of Darkness that Albert could use to conjure him up.
So far his best efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears. Like the monk who prayed for years in vain and never saw the slightest sign that his lifetime of prayers had been answered, or even heard by an indifferent God, Albert had been trying to raise the devil without success. He reasoned that a universal approach might work. After all, there was really no such thing as good and evil, just manâs interpretation of it.
A scientific approach was called for.
It was the modern way, and in 1957, modern was the name of the game.
People everywhere were searching for new ways to do things. Albert saw himself as a pioneer. He was, after all, the first person to establish the only openly Satanic church in America, a bold move in any era.
In his research, heâd found no fewer than 1,665 references to Satan, spanning hundreds of cultures.
There were many similarities, too. Belief in Hell, eternal damnation, demons, demonic possession, sin, and evil incarnate seemed to be universal concepts.
For Albert Beaumond, it was vindication. He felt a breakthrough was just around the corner. His ultimate goal, of course, was to conjure the Prince of Darkness, to be the first in modern times to commune with him. His search went on for years.
âDo what thou wilt shall be the extent of the law,â he said, muttering his favorite Aleister Crowley quotation.
In South America, in the high country of Peru, on the misty plains beyond Machu Picchu, he found something truly staggering, truly magical. There, cut off from the outside world, lived a tribe of Indians who worshipped a demon they could summon whenever they wanted through the use of an ingenious device.
His liaison to the local scientific community, a smarmy little man named Carlos from the Anthropology Department at the University of Lima, had mentioned it to him in his hotel room in Ecuador. He had arrived there en route to Peru to study some quaint local human sacrificial customs among the native population. The Ecuadorians were less than enthusiastic when he approached them to photograph their rituals.
He then prepared to travel to Peru and explore the mountainous regions there. In addition to his anthropological pursuits, Albert planned to study the native flora, taking specimens of the numerous unknown and uncatalogued species along the way. Albertâs encyclopedic knowledge of flowering plants, especially the narcotic and hallucinogenic varieties, had proved valuable. In the past, heâd sold the rights to several of his discoveries to pharmacological companies, offsetting the cost of his expeditions.
Albertâs hotel room sweltered in the oppressive tropical heat. Humidity so intense that it made the wallpaper peel debilitated him. He was reduced to sitting on the rattan chair beneath the ceiling fan and drinking
Albert fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket and lit it with a flick from his monogrammed Zippo lighter. It always worked on the first try. He trusted that lighter like he trusted nothing else in this godless world.
Godless? Well, maybe not, thought Albert. Now that heâd seen it with his own eyes, he couldnât say for sure what omnipotent beings ruled our festering universe. He knew about one for sure. The devil was real.
Every culture has a religion, and every religion has a devil, or so it seemed to Albert when he began his scholarly quest to catalog and investigate every reference.
It turned into an enormous job that kept him busy for years, but Albert had a mission. He wanted to establish the face of Satan around the world. He wanted to compare and understand what characteristics stayed the same from culture to culture. Maybe, among those statistics a pattern would emerge, a common thread of belief in the Prince of Darkness that Albert could use to conjure him up.
So far his best efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears. Like the monk who prayed for years in vain and never saw the slightest sign that his lifetime of prayers had been answered, or even heard by an indifferent God, Albert had been trying to raise the devil without success. He reasoned that a universal approach might work. After all, there was really no such thing as good and evil, just manâs interpretation of it.
A scientific approach was called for.
It was the modern way, and in 1957, modern was the name of the game.
People everywhere were searching for new ways to do things. Albert saw himself as a pioneer. He was, after all, the first person to establish the only openly Satanic church in America, a bold move in any era.
In his research, heâd found no fewer than 1,665 references to Satan, spanning hundreds of cultures.
There were many similarities, too. Belief in Hell, eternal damnation, demons, demonic possession, sin, and evil incarnate seemed to be universal concepts.
For Albert Beaumond, it was vindication. He felt a breakthrough was just around the corner. His ultimate goal, of course, was to conjure the Prince of Darkness, to be the first in modern times to commune with him. His search went on for years.
âDo what thou wilt shall be the extent of the law,â he said, muttering his favorite Aleister Crowley quotation.
In South America, in the high country of Peru, on the misty plains beyond Machu Picchu, he found something truly staggering, truly magical. There, cut off from the outside world, lived a tribe of Indians who worshipped a demon they could summon whenever they wanted through the use of an ingenious device.
His liaison to the local scientific community, a smarmy little man named Carlos from the Anthropology Department at the University of Lima, had mentioned it to him in his hotel room in Ecuador. He had arrived there en route to Peru to study some quaint local human sacrificial customs among the native population. The Ecuadorians were less than enthusiastic when he approached them to photograph their rituals.
He then prepared to travel to Peru and explore the mountainous regions there. In addition to his anthropological pursuits, Albert planned to study the native flora, taking specimens of the numerous unknown and uncatalogued species along the way. Albertâs encyclopedic knowledge of flowering plants, especially the narcotic and hallucinogenic varieties, had proved valuable. In the past, heâd sold the rights to several of his discoveries to pharmacological companies, offsetting the cost of his expeditions.
Albertâs hotel room sweltered in the oppressive tropical heat. Humidity so intense that it made the wallpaper peel debilitated him. He was reduced to sitting on the rattan chair beneath the ceiling fan and drinking
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