Pleased to meet you … hope you guess my name.

  
    It was the summer school holidays, I had no real plans. I heard from Graham a friend of mine that his folks were going to be out of town for a week or so. I had a stash of acid, it was just about all I considered worthwhile in those days, so putting two and two together I grabbed my jacket and the drugs and hitch-hiked to his house. I could get high in the daytime while he worked, we could hang loose at night, wonderful idea I thought.

   So Monday morning he's off to work, I take the acid and turn on the music. I believe I started with Abraxas by Santana, such a great album it was too, and the cover, oh my the cover, and the drifting beginning, the smooth smooth guitar, the drums, the rhythm and then into Black Magic Woman of course. Next stop was a few things from the Woodstock triple album, no memory of what I started with but after awhile went back to Santana and that potent, potent tune Soul Sacrifice.

  Now those of you familiar with the properties of that popular drug LSD back then will be figuring that its about time that I started to take off, and you'd be right. Santana played, I raised up the volume on the player, the drums beat, the rhythm pulsed, and I couldn't keep still. I began to loosely dance on the living room carpet, swaying, moving, turning to a slight circular motion as the drums led me on, almost as Native American dancers would, knees bending, turning and turning.

 Then things changed, it could have been a lyric from the song, could have been just the way my mind was turning too, but I suddenly sort of said to myself, oh man, this is not good. It dawned on me that I had actually been performing some invocation as I danced, I began innocently but was now being led, I was actually offering up my soul to sacrifice.

 Now again you'd have to be familiar with the character of LSD to follow me here. This was not felt as a hallucination, as some sort of psychedelic illusion, this was experienced as being absolutely and totally real, an actual solid event, happening now. I had with my music and dancing tuned into something very, very dangerous and now I was reaping the consequences. There was no one else there to tell me otherwise, Leary always suggested a friend or guide beside you, and here he was right for without that outside reference I was lost, just lost.

  Seconds after realizing the ritual nature of what I'd got myself into and beginning to get worried I looked up at the wall opposite. There was my shadow, a dark massively winged and horned shadow. I had invoked the Devil and he was now inside me. I could see him there before me, reflected back in that awful black shape of wings and horns. Again, please understand me here, this was not experienced as a scary but illusory vision, this was felt as absolutely real, absolutely real. I had with the drug, the music and the dance tuned into a dark, dark place, I had in actual fact invoked Lucifer and given up my soul.

 I trembled unsteadily as I stopped the music, the great black shadow both seen before me and felt rising forth from my shoulders. I was terrified, frantic. I knew that I needed to communicate with a sympathetic soul here, I needed human reassurance, I needed help. There was in those days a London based organization called Release, mainly concerned with drug issues and the counter-culture, and somehow they came to mind and somehow I got their number. The woman at the other end of the line listened briefly to my panicked mumblings and then slowly, slowly took charge. There was no such thing as the Devil, he did not exist, all good and all evil was within, there was nothing without to be afraid of, everything came from myself, it was all me. She suggested I go in the garden, fly a kite, sit on a swing, just be … I was turned around during this brief conversation. "Oh Yes!" it hit me, how could I be afraid of myself, Lucifer .. Hah! … an illusion of my own creation. I recovered, I was whole again.

  I don't recall what I did for the rest of the day, but when Graham came home we shared a joint and I told him of my day. I had to go home I said, my foundations were rocked here, I needed to be back in my own room, safe. So the next day I hitchhiked back and the holiday was over. Always have remembered that day though, as you can imagine.