Review: James Blish, Black Easter or Faust Aleph Null, London: Faber and Faber, 1968, SBN 571086993

by Frater Acher

Black Easter (1968) is a book bristling with electrifying static. Even from looking afar it reveals itself as a book full of tension: It is a short-story rewritten as a novella, it is a science-fiction author’s take on Late Medieval grimoire magic, it also is a Raymond Chandler-like film noire interpretation of the gothic novel. And, as Blish continued to be fascinated with its characters and subject, it both turned out to be the first half of a single book that would be completed by its sequel The Day After Judgement (1970), as well as the last part of a trilogy, later on titled After Such Knowledge, borrowing a line from T.S. Elliot’s Gerontion: ‘After such knowledge, what forgiveness?’.

[…] it was only after completing Black Easter that Blish realised it shared a centre of significant thematic interest with both Doctor Mirabilis and A Case of Conscience: “I realized that I had now written three novels, widely separated in times of composition and even more in ostensible subject-matter, each one of which was a dramatization in its own terms of one of the oldest problems of philosophy: ‘Is the desire for secular knowledge, let alone the acquisition and use of it, a misuse of the mind, and perhaps even actively evil?’” (David Ketterer, Imprisoned in a Tesseract : The Life and Work of James Blish, Kent/Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987, p. 296) 

Opening the cover of Black Easter is like seeing the lights dim and curtains pull up in a theatre: What awaits the reader is the precise opposite of a couple of hours of fantasy escapism à la Disney+, but a most enjoyable tour de force through some of the most essential problems of modern-day Western Magic. These problems are put on stage in the form of a small ensemble of sharp characters, not more than three settings (an office, a library and a temple), as well as an intoxicatingly wild hunt through ethical dilemmas and magical rituals. While the plot itself in its pulp simplicity resembles a tabloid expose, the splendour and brilliance of the work unfolds in the altercations and clashes of characters.

The plot may be briefly summarised: Theron Ware, a black magician, operating as sole practitioner in a large Renaissance villa in Positano/Italy, is requested by a wealthy arms industry tycoon, Mr. Baines, to conduct several remote killings, and – following these initial trials – to proceed to a major operation of much more significant scale, which is expected to not only bring about significant business opportunities for Mr. Baines, but also to satisfy his egomaniac artistic desires, with the blood of the world as his paint and canvas. In the periphery of these central operations, we encounter Father Domenico, a rather helpless white magician, Jack Ginsberg, the power-hungry research assistant of Mr. Baines, Rita, a cold and alluring succubus teaching Ginsberg a nightly lesson or two, as well as Dr. Adolph Hess, a warfare scientist working for Baines, first forced to become a magician’s apprentice and later swallowed whole by a demon.

Black Easter attracted some of the most favourable reviews in Blish’s entire opus, and yet its initial sales failed miserably. Partly this was because the novella’s style deliberately broke with romantic conventions of bestsellers such as Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, released just one year prior in 1967. Additionally, however, the book confused Blish’s usual readers, as it not only digressed from his traditional terrain of the science-fiction genre, but, with its present day setting and no-nonsense tone, “attempted to bridge the modes of realism and fantasy” (Ketterer, p. 295). As we can see with the gift of hindsight of fifty years, consciously or unconsciously, Blish did not write this novella for traditional science-fiction, fantasy or film-noir readers; instead, he wrote it for us: the tiny nerd-community of magical practitioners. In fact, it turns out this is more than an ironic claim: At the time of his death in 1975, Blish was in the middle of writing a two-volume set on the history of witchcraft and demonology (Ketterer, p. 298). 

Much of the allure of Black Easter stems from Blish’s unique perspective on the topic at hand. From what we know, he was not a magical practitioner himself. However, he brought the cold piercing view of the modern scientist and secular pragmatist to the mist-shrouded stage of Western Magic. Embodying some of the best traits of modern science-fiction authors – especially their uncompromising rootedness in logic and plausible science – he turned his gaze towards Medieval grimoire magic in order to draw us into a wild and haunting spectacle of how these books might be able to come to life. 

Blish himself leaves no doubt about his intent, when stating in the novella’s Author’s Note (p. 7): 

There have been many novels, poems and plays about magic and witchcraft. All of them that I have read — which I think includes the vast majority — classify without exception as either romantic or playful, Thomas Mann's included. I have never seen one which dealt with what real sorcery actually had to be like if it existed, although all the grimoires are explicit about the matter. Whatever other merits this book may have, it neither romanticizes magic nor treats it as a game. 

Technically, its background is based as closely as possible upon the writings and actual working manuals of practicing magicians working in the Christian tradition from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, from the Ars Magna of Ramon Lull, through the various Keys of pseudo-Solomon, pseudo-Agrippa, pseudo-Honorius and so on, to the grimoires themselves. All of the books mentioned in the text actually exist; there are no "Necronomicons" or other such invented works, and the quotations and symbols are equally authentic. 

Admittedly, a lot of the details presented in Black Easter can be traced back to a single source: a very careful and literal read of A.E. Waite’s The Book of Ceremonial Magic (London: de Laurence, Scott and Company, 1910). Thus, while reading Blish’s novella, it is handy to have a copy of Waite’s book next to one’s reading desk, as e.g. it allows us to see the magical circles and symbols described in the novella in their full iconographic detail and glory. 

However, the unique value of Black Easter does not (only) lie in the technical descriptions of magical operations, but rather in the spirit in which they are presented. In his short book, Blish brings to life the spirit of the grimoires, and in the process of doing so he deliberately overdraws both cast and characters involved, as well as the magic and demons released. The reader finds themselves drawn into a most materialistic kind of magic, on several levels. For one, this is true for the literal description of the conjurations enacted, but equally for the motives of its operators. 

At an early point of the plot the black magician Ware explains his exact operating procedure to his prospective client Baine, who is surprised about the former’s frankness. Ware answers in return: “I try to leave as little mystery as possible” (p. 25). And that is exactly what we get: A hard look at magic as a quasi-commercialized contracting system of constantly competing potentates, both on the side of humans and spirits. 

Black Easter is an incredible joyful ride, when we don’t understand it as an attempt to depict genuine magic, but as a deeply sarcastic and yet knowledgeable commentary on what humans have magic turned into. Its characters are either depraved demonic pragmatists or desperate theists, their relationships are regulated by formal bonds and pacts, and utter chaos is unleashed under the strict observance of magical orthopraxy. In the end, the black magician Ware is nothing but the mirror image of the arms industry tycoon, Baine: the former bargaining and competing for knowledge, the latter for power, one in the realm of the fallen angels, the other in the occult arena of geo-political interests, both though enshrouded in an entirely materialistic worldview, without the faintest glimmer of mysticism, let alone of bare humanness. 

Blish points us to this heart of his novella with the following chapter quote by C.S. Lewis, which opens to the final climax of the book.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive or unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. […]

We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence, we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and skeptics. At least not yet. […] If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war will be in sight. (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, in: Blish, p. 123)

So, now that we know how to read Black Easter, let’s take a look at a few of its many wonderful passages. 

Quotes & Spotlights

Right at the beginning magic is defined as just another kind of science, where the stakes are higher, but the rules are the same as in any other natural science:

[…] black magic is a body of technique, like engineering. […] With books and the gift, you could become a magician — either you are or you aren't, there are no bad magicians, any more than there is such a thing as a bad mathematician — in about twenty years. If it didn't kill you first, of course, in some equivalent of a laboratory accident. It takes that long, give or take a few years, to develop the skills involved. (p. 25/26)

Hess had thought himself prepared to know everything and be surprised by nothing, but he was taken aback when the expression on the knocker changed, slightly but inarguably, when Ware touched it. Apparently expecting his startlement, Ware said without looking at him, “There's nothing in here really worth stealing, but if anything were taken it would cost me a tremendous amount of trouble to replace it, no matter how worthless it would prove to the thief. Also, there's the problem of contamination — just one ignorant touch could destroy the work of months. It's rather like a bacteriology laboratory in that respect. Hence the Guardian.” (p. 69)

The scientific precision with which magic is introduced in the first chapters is thwarted with relish by the unexpected ending of the novella. It is only there that we are led to understand that the very notion of an orderly, confined and clean laboratory has to be the antithesis of the expected working conditions when dealing with enlivened natural forces in their raw demonic states.

However, operating logically from the viewpoint of the scientist, Ware warns his future apprentice Ginsberg that the first thing to sacrifice in magic is laughter. This remark made in passing, indeed, could be seen as the original spark of an idea that turned into the bright fire that is Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (San Diego: Harcourt, 1980). 

“Do you have a sense of humour, Mr. Ginsberg?” 

“Certainly. Everybody does.” 

“Untrue," Ware said. "Everybody claims to have, that’s all. I ask only because the first thing to be sacrificed to the Art is the gift of laughter, and some people would miss it more than others. Yours seems to be residual at best. In you it would probably be a minor operation, like an appendectomy.” (p. 99) 

Blish follows through on this train of thought in full consequence. Thus, the skeptical Dr. Hess challenges Ware that accepting the risks and ambiguities of magic is folly. If it was Faustian knowledge the latter was after, why not simply invest all the money, effort and ego into actual science directly? Why accept the nebulous mystery as well as the seemingly excessive control over one’s lifestyle that magic brings about? 

“But the real fact of the matter. Dr. Hess, is that I think what I'm after is worth the risk, and what I'm after is something you understand perfectly, and for which you've sold your own soul, or if you prefer an only slightly less loaded word, your integrity, to Dr. Baines: knowledge.”

“Uhmn. Surely there must be easier ways —” 

“You don't believe that. You think there may be more reliable ways, such as scientific method, but you don't think they're any easier. I myself have the utmost respect for scientific method, but I know that it doesn't offer me the kind of knowledge I'm looking for — which is also knowledge about the makeup of the universe and how it is run, but not a kind that any exact science can provide me with, because the sciences don’t accept that some of the forces of nature are Persons. Well, but some of them are. And without dealing with those Persons I shall never know any of the things I want to know.” (p. 78)

Emphasizing the same point in reversal, we encounter a wonderful description of the white-magician Father Domenico, bound and confined by a mysterious covenant, attempting to divine without the involvement of ‘Presences’ (p. 90). This allows Blish to introduce us to the complex process of Ramon Llull’s Ars Magna (1305) and the use of several paper wheels in combination to produce an I-Ging like divinatory message, that at least on the surface did not involve the direct involvement of angels or other spirit entities. 

Guised in such pedestrian style, Blish accomplishes something quite remarkable: the precise illustration of a Western animistic worldview in action. Blish’s novella balances skilfully on the knife’s edge between the common secularisation of Faustian magic into operations with ‘forces’ and the stereotypical romanticization of demons according to the genre-rules of the gothic horror story. Equally plentiful are the allusions to both magic as an art and science, and ultimately all characters fail in their varied attempts to commoditize and control the beings that sit on the other side of magical contacts into slaves of any kind of human agenda. 

In this manner, Black Easter’s cynicism and acid humour is not at all directed at (black) magic as such, but much more at the alleged operators who all try to exploit it for their own purposes. Accordingly, and echoing A.E. Waite’s voice again, throughout the novella we find several sharp remarks against famous magicians and their so-called traditions… 

There were no black sanctuaries, except for the Parisian Brothers of the Left-Hand Way, who were romantics of the school of Eliphas Levi and were more to be pitied for folly than condemned for evil. (p. 41)

[…] said the Director, who had not himself practiced [ritual magic] for many years. He had been greatly talented once, but the loss of gifted experimenters to administrative posts was the curse of all research organisations. (p. 43)

“In goëtic art, everything does [have a symbolic function]. […] The grimoires and other handbooks are at best so confused and contradictory that it's never possible to know completely what steps are essential and what aren't, and research into the subject seldom makes for a long life.” (p. 73)

Now, in terms of the actual daemonic pantheon that features in the novella, Blish again follows the dichotomy A.E. Waite illustrates in his Ceremonial Magic: Father Domenico and the white-magicians lean into the support of the Arbatel’s Olympic Spirits or wear a leather-bound copy of the famous Enchiridion as a talisman around their neck (p. 54). Theron Ware on the other side leverages a host of spirits taken partly from the Key of Solomon, the Lemegeton (p. 99) as well as the Grimoire Verumand the Livre des Esperitz. It can make for a joyful evening with a bottle of wine, comparing the detailed appearance of these demons in Black Easter against their description in either Waite’s Ceremonial Magic, or even more helpful, in Jake Stratton-Kent’s recent Pandemonium - A Discordant Concordance of Diverse Spirit Catalogues (s.l.: Hadean Press, 2016).

However, by allowing the reader to witness the long cavalcade of demons in the Last Conjuration – as the final chapter is titled – Blish indirectly makes a much more serious point. He dedicates almost ten pages to the intricate description of the apparitions of about thirty different demons; each one of them as weird and grotesque as the minds of juvenile pulp-fiction readers (or some of the old spirit catalogues for that matter!) would want to imagine them. By arranging the climax of his plot in such a spectacle, Blish again overdraws magical operations as a circus in a circle, a freak show for the lone practitioner, and as a spicy dash of exoticism for the numb, rational Western mind. 

The very real backlash of this megalomaniac operation, however, should be considered more than a bitter after-taste following another magical adventure. The literal apocalypse that occurs after this last conjuration is as much a caricature as the figurative description of its unleashing demons was before. Intended or not, what the reader can learn from the closing of Blish’s novella is an important lesson on the dangers of objectifying spirits, of turning them into peregrine specimens in our very own cabinet of wonders.

Conclusion

What we are left with in the end, is the realisation that, from the alien viewpoint of the spirits, it is humans who become the freaks, and the vessel of otherness. To me, this is the core message of Black Easter’s journey into black magic: whether we regard it from the side of humans or the vantage point of the spirits – it is the replacement of a genuine living relationship with exploitative instrumentalism that seeds destruction. Humans thinking of spirits as keys to locks on treasure chests, and equally spirits, considering humans as the key to roaming the physical realm – both are terminologies of parasitical nature, of domination, expansion and exploitation. 

Black Easter is a firework of a short novel, shooting out into the dark sky of black magic. The kind of magic that does not aspire to work in service, and that values the short, sharp, spicy taste of exoticism over the genuine discovery of what lies beyond ourselves. Depending on how we like to approach the small book, it can either make for an entertaining noir-fantasy read or, alternatively, for a thought-provoking parable on modern-day magic.