WARLOCKS   AT   THE   DOOR

   Gone are the days when witches were portrayed as ugly old women practising the black art; when these 'black hags' were alleged to goad morally restrained men into doing evil in spite of themselves.
Now that sexual bias is couched in less misogynous terms, there's no denying that the number of XY warlocks is the same as that of XX witches. And now that racial prejudice survives mainly in subtler claims, these male and female warlocks may just as well belong to the chosen race as to a different one. A white witch is not normally good anymore; black art not normally used for evil purposes. Shakespearean verses in which witches are vilely described as chasing the livers of Jews, the noses of Turks and the lips of Tartars have meanwhile tiptoed out of literature.
These days warlocks m/f include ugly old white women along with attractive young black men, provided they do not select their victims by ethnic background.
   Gone are the days when witches could be officially accused of intercourse with the Devil and of using their magic power to make all sorts of bad things happen; when these 'weird sisters' had to hover in the fog, in thunder, in lightning or in rain, on the distant moors of Scotland.
Now that almost everyone respects their human rights, witches of all lands and their male counterparts prefer to appear in the open when it is sunny and the air clean. And now that they have been acknowledged as fellow citizens it is they who, this time as hunters themselves, may persecute dissenters or dissidents; on the pretext of promoting the general weal, as usual.
These days warlocks m/f have, for the most part, changed their feudal allegiance from the Lord of the Flies to the much mightier Lord in the Skies that created him, altho not few of them remain divided, torn between the former and the latter.
   Gone are the days when witches met upon the heath, dancing around in the altogether, singing their eerie songs; when these 'filthy fiends' went from one place to another on rickety broomsticks, so withered and so wild in their attire.
Now that millions of mortals have migrated to towns and cities, warlocks of both sexes make their way thru urban streets and the corridors of concrete apartment buildings. And now that electricity has replaced manual labor, they do not knock at the doors anymore: they press electrical doorbells.
These days warlocks m/f make a different song and dance, about peace and justice. Dressed in prim clothes, they travel on foot, in wheelchairs, or by car. They even fly in supersonic aircrafts from continent to continent.
   Also the sight of three witches in tandem is not that common anymore. If not alone, latter-day witches, and warlocks in general, tend to move about side by side in twosomes. Thus, a male warlock may accompany a female one, a hideous warlock a handsome one, a wheelchair warlock a pedestrian one. A very elect group of them will hurry to people's homes in such pairs when they have even the slightest of suspicions that their well-meant warnings are brushed aside. While the Spirit urges them on, crying "'Tis time; 'tis time", they come to discharge their beclouding belief of an expiring epoch; to sell it door-to-door. None of them will admit to being a 'warlock'. The only ones who may proudly proclaim themselves 'witches' are the followers of Wicca, an earth religion revolving around a Great Mother goddess. But in the overwhelmingly patriarchal universe of divine discourse these folks form a negligible minority of eccentrics. Literally all warlocks, whatever they call themselves or whatever form of disturbance they are up to, now refuse to wait till a brindled cat in the neighborhood has meowed three times, or till a local hedgehog has whined four times.
   And yet, there are numerous things which have not changed, one being the pristine meaning of warlock itself: someone who breaks the (rules for) truth, who betrays the (principle of) truth. Warlocks have always broken the truth, this foundation of sincerity and cornerstone of science, by violating what personally binds everyone and what naturally binds everything, by showing contempt of nature's universal reality. Ossified by mundane and extramundane convention from day to day, hoodwinked by pump and circumstance on special occasions, they often behave as creatures that tarried in pitch-dark nothingness before being molded into tangible figures by a wizardly potter. The really fine ones among them continue to believe that the Earth is but a film which may crack in twain at any moment, with warrior and warhorse sinking beyond plummet's sounding; the really occult ones that there are mysterious powers, hidden from ordinary people, that can be subjected to the control of those who share their secret knowledge. It is awful to consider that even in the smartest of these souls lies a martial, or martial-pacific, world of internalized delusion; a schizophrenic, stagnating realm of supernatural beings and preternatural forces in the midst of a technologically more and more advancing society. Forever shall the religious or paranormal stuff roar in the mythiest of these minds like a gigantic pride of indefatigable lions.
   On top of all this, modern warlocks resemble male warlocks and witches of olden times in that they, too, seem to be dead serious about the treacherous metaphysical ideas that possess them. One would not expect it in this day and age, but each lie, each prevarication has been repeated so consistently from generation to generation that they know no better.

   Until recently i (not a Supreme Being to be capitalized on) cherished the illusion that i knew how to handle supernatural truth-breakers, especially those trying to encroach on my privacy at home. As soon as i opened the door, and saw one of these weird brothers or sisters in front of me, i would firmly say "No, thank you" and swiftly close it again. (Since it is everyone's natural right not to speak with a person when they do not feel like it.) Even tho warlocks need not be ugly old specimens at all, it never seems a problem to pick them out when they want to palter with you, or when they want you to join them in their paltering with truth. As of old you easily recognize them by their charming and alluring looks. But before they would have any chance of seizing me with their smug smiles, i always unambiguously showed i was not interested, and they left me alone.
   That is, they used to leave me alone. Because yesterday two warlocks, one male, one female, returned unexpectedly.
   "Didn't you ring at my door before?" i asked, astonished to see back the faces of the same two characters that ventured to accost me a few weeks earlier.
"You thanked us without having listened to the Glad Tidings we have for you", the witch of the two spoke with some sort of a vestigial croak.
"I'm sorry, but i'm already acquainted with the purpose of your supernatural soliciting. All of you are the same."
   These words i should never have uttered, for now they sang out in unison:
"All of us are different.
 Our Master created us purely white,
 Our Master created us not that light.
 Our Master created us strong and so wealthy,
 Our Master created us poor and unhealthy.
 Our Master created us first male,
 Our Master recreated us from rib to female".
"And," i interrupted, "your master miscreated you rather foul, trying to lead people on with false and unjustifiable ideas that are a travesty of truth and fairness."
   My words must have touched a string, because both of them looked daggers at me, and snarled:
"Fairness is foulness, and foulness is fairness, for fair is foul, and foul is fair".
"Yes, indeed, in the world of warlocks", i thought.
   It was hard to guess what repercussions the equivocation might have on the fair sex. But i (a member of the foul sex) was surely in trouble -- double, double toil and trouble. The reason was not the equivocation, as it even could be to my advantage; no, the reason was simply that i had started to talk to these creatures instead of immediately shutting my mouth and the door after my usual No, thanks. The bright sunshine at the front door even made me sneeze, which in turn induced the two worshipers to utter a God bless you.
"I wish you wouldn't perpetuate the belief in a supernatural deity at the expense of my health", i replied.
   If from then on they were going to disturb me every witching day, their visitations had at least partially to be a punishment for this reply. With their preternaturally fine senses they would always be able to tell whether i was home or not. Did i not give myself up into their, or their god's, hands sooner or later, they might proceed to boiling certain delicate parts of my body, eventually my whole body, in a pot large enough for all humanity.
   "Do you read the Book?", the second warlock, the male one, asked me.
"Not while falling under the spell of its power of reasoning," quoth i, "but i do cite its most heinous or hilarious passages now and then. Do you realize that like all nonbelievers, and like all murderers, and like all liars, you sorcerers too, shall have your part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone?"
"We're not sorcerers; we're not controlled by evil spirits but by the One And Only Good Spirit."
"Evil is good, and good is evil, in the world of warlocks", i thought.
   "We realise that you need help, and it is our duty and supreme aim in life to help you, you personally. By compact with the King, our Master, we possess the power of infinite and eternal love. If you don't feel this stirring love witch [sic] climaxes in our Master, please, let us help you."
   I could not feel any love in any part of my body then; not even in my mind. I was only filled with a mixture of pity and horror at the sight of these silly suckers standing before me and so desperately longing for intercourse with me. In order to provoke my desire nevertheless, i grabbed a bottle of liquor which stood on a little table behind the door and took a long, copious pull. My person just desired to provoke his desire for the witch in particular. Quite aware that the spirits were likely to take away the performance, i figured she was wholly and holily intent on superspiritual contact anyhow.
   "Do you love your neighbour?", the witch and her mate continued their interrogation.
"Perish the thought!" i exclaimed, "My left-hand neighbor is a married woman and my right-hand neighbor a man. You wouldn't allow me to openly admit that i love somebody who's married, but not to me, or somebody who doesn't have the right type of genitals, would you?".
Being determined not to have myself led into temptation, i was convinced this was a perfect apology.
"Upon my soul, I don't mean physical love! Physical love and lechery are dirty and sinful. Loving somebody of one's own kind, not in word but in deed, is even dirtier and more sinful. Such love our loving Master abominates most of all."
"We warn you: if you don't embrace Him above as soon and as lovingly as possible, you'll suffer eternal damnation hereafter!" Altho i never knew i had a neighbor upstairs as well, i said, before the juggling devils could rabbit on about their Master's intimate abominations:
"O, i see you still foretell people's future like you used to do in former times. But your sooth is not my truth, even tho believing in it may be your supernatural right".
"Love is hate, and hate is love, in the world of warlocks", i thought.
   "Do you believe in God?", the witch inquired of me next, still smirking.
"Please, be your age! Mature people nowadays believe in the primacy of norms and values".
   I am sure the unlucky wretch had never heard of such a thing on the moors of Scotland. Granting that some latter-day truth-breakers enjoy greater intellectual powers than their male and female predecessors, they always exercise these powers in such an unquestioning manner that the Authority of the infinitely wise Maker of which they are the workmanship is never challenged. Therefore it did not surprise me that the other serf of the infallible Master went on:
"But you must believe in God and His Kingdom! Aren't you concerned about the salvation of your soul? Your earthly life is but a walking shadow; solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short without His Authority".
"I'm not that fond of this indulgence in soul-gazing by individuals who are, ultimately, only interested in an eternal happy afterlife for themselves", i riposted. "I admire people who help others to protect them from violence and pain, to free them from oppression and discrimination, to save them from religious and paranormal myth-mongering, without being sure that they themselves will ever reap the fruits of their goodness".
   "But aren't you concerned about the moral degeneration of man as we see it in today's dire disturbance of the natural order? Aren't you concerned about the day of the Last Judgment, when God will redress the balance and when He will judge you too?"
"Naturally, i'm very much concerned about the disturbance of legitimate order. Very little concerned, however, am i about the established order of your Church and the established order of your Monarchy being upset. In your ideology the stay of the world is the obedience of mere creatures to the laws of what you befoggingly call "nature"; in mine it's the obedience of persons to normative principles such as those of truth and relevance or inclusiveness. In your power- and struggle-centered state of mind you're constantly worrying about a demon that threatens to replace your capital-G god at the head of the universe; you're constantly worrying about a regicide that threatens to replace your capital-K king at the head of the body politic. You've thus become blind to the future in which normal beings free from exclusivity will have replaced both your abnormal god and your abnormal demon; in which republican democrats bound by equality will have replaced both your monarchical king and your monarchical regicide. If you had it your way, a fabricated Lord of the Lies would now rule, or still rule, an Orwellian theocracy in which war is peace, slavery freedom and ignorance knowledge. How sadly you overreach yourself in propagating an unnatural order of eternal, infinitely bright daylight rather than to content yourself with the naked truth; with the natural, godless and kingless order in which the night succeeds the day and the day succeeds the night for all human beings, for all animal beings, tailed and tailless. What i am looking forward to is the day of the last supernatural judgment. Your godly, kingly condition only inverts the truly inclusive, and your godly, kingly tradition only retards the newly relevant. The belief you try, but fail, to inflict on me is blasphemy against nature".
While being stared at in complete bafflement, i added: "In your world supernatural is natural, and natural supernatural".
   (At that moment i did not know yet that more than 150 years before i uttered these words by way of reproof, Carlyle, an equivocator of letters who used to view all reality in the light of some vital spark, had already seriously contended that everything natural is supernatural.)
   Their mouths agape, the confused warlocks (who did not seem familiar with Carlyle's 'natural supernaturalism' either) turned their heads to each other.
   "Must the fire burn, the cauldron bubble?" the creepiest one asked after a few seconds of awkward silence.
"Oh, God damn it," ejaculated the other, suddenly losing his self-control (albeit not as long and as gravely as God Himself when crying out that all nonbelievers should be damned). "He's not yet capable of suffering. To frighten him he must first accept that the fire and cauldron are real".
"Yes, and we, the King's humble servants, we want to convert others. We're not going to be reasoned out of our faith ourselves -- Lord preserve us!"
"Come, sister, let the fire burn in hell, and the cauldron bubble in heaven, please God. Let's make haste, for there's trouble brewing here."
"Yes, brother, there's trouble brewing here, as sure as God made little green apples."
   As sure as Nature continues to make small, medium-size and large, green, yellow and red apples, there was no love lost between the two prospective proselytizers and me. They could not get away from me fast enough, soon making themselves air, into which they vanished. I never found out whether they belonged to Yehova or Someone Else. Generally it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. As they have already sold their souls to a prophet of supernatural lore the day of the last unnatural judgment will probably never arrive for them anyhow. The more they floodlight their Master, the more in darkness they remain.
   But, at least, they have taught me a lesson, namely, that i should stick to my house rule thru fair and foul: "No, thank you" to the warlocks, and close the door immediately.