In the Boudoir of Mists 🌙

For Anne Rice, 1941-2021

There are few modern works which plainly materialize the process of Magical Initiation, or the trials of the Soul as it endures transmutation, as consummately as Interview with the Vampire. Anne Rice is the single most eminent figure in my mystical education; those first, subtle hints of unworldly foreshadow, conferred by the Great Minds of antiquity, always flickered through her writings like snake eyes in the dark. Anne etched in my Soul with wild enthusiasm, that erotic love in all its chthonian splendor, out to be preserved with ornamentation, as if by taste of a portraitist. The Vampire, afar from shallow dualisms, is often indifferent—but personifies an unyielding devotion to its perceived object of adoration; much as the portraitist studies and impresses every detail upon the page, as an act of congress with the cosmos. Anne taught me that words are charms; frail and fine by themselves, like all magical instruments, but when impregnated with affection, and stitched with skill, they can lure out strange, lost arcana from the pits of Night. The Word is one of radiance; there is no end to its effect. It has power to clasp fallen hands quivering over the edge of the Abyss and drag them up with the strength of wolves, despite its spectral exterior. You see, literature might be, in uncommon cases, sincerely Magical.

The Vampire, a personification of the Void, with its beatific, sprawling gaze and lips of burning, ruddy blue; wholly seductive, penetrant and voluptuous, sees through our veneers naturally, and without strain. Yet, the compassionate hands of Anne Rice drew these beings out of the Great Deep with honest, tender warmth. When we peer deeply, we see the creature not as antithetical to life, but rather supportive of it. Over Anne’s life, her own tone transmuted, signifying her private spiritual development; at first, she saw these beings as “damned” and afterward, “liberated.”

Hence: if you can take a high tragedy, attain from the Darkness a living, breathing Wisdom, rather a Golden Extravagance for others to step into, immerse, become lost and reborn, then you have done the Great Work.

Rest in Peace, to our Beloved Anne.