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Dancing with Demons

 

The endless round of underworld parties and feasts and spiritual celebrations we took part in


as members of the religion filled our lives to the brim, but we loved every minute of it—being part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes Mari and I attended meetings to summon dead relatives. In other gatherings, demons showed up and would speak of themselves: their birthdays, their favorite foods, what colors they liked, how they lived, and what part of the world they inhabited in their past life. They required special celebrations in their honor, and like obedient pawns we did their every bidding.

Late one evening, Mari and I received an invitation to go to a spiritual feast to celebrate the birthday of a particular demon who claimed to be born as a gypsy in the mid-1700s in Spain. She was very rich, very beautiful, and very powerful when she walked the earth, she claimed. Men adored her, and she was beheaded at the hands of a jealous man at the age of thirty-two. The gathering took place at my aunt’s basement. A string quartet dressed in Spanish garb had been hired to play classical music, and the basement was decked out with flowers and eighteenth-century decorations.

Champagne flowed all night long at this classy black-tie event, but despite the refined music and fancy clothing, debauchery and promiscuity studded the atmosphere because that’s what this particular demon spirit was all about. This feast, which only came around once a year, was a time to dance promiscuously, touch lasciviously, and cross boundaries.

I glanced around the room and noticed the mirrors were left uncovered. Normally, whenever we had demonic parties, the host covered the mirrors because the demon spirits could not look at themselves (or rather the reflection of the human they possessed that night) in the mirrors. But this spirit—the beautiful Spanish gypsy—earned the privilege of staring at herself in the mirror.

The demon had so completely taken possession of Aunt Maria that night that her features changed to the likeness of the Spanish woman from the mid-1700s. My aunt wore a costume gown from the era the demon spirit lived in, made particularly for that feast and only to be worn that night and never again. When she smiled at her reflection in the mirror, it was no longer Aunt Maria looking back from the glass—I saw the features of another woman from another time. Immersed though I was in this dark underworld of espiritismo, even I felt a chill run down my spine.

 


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 706


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