by Richard Oxman

As The Great Matilda quietly served Our Great Oceanic Organic Tea to our Good Al Malone, she recounted fragments of her honeymoon for him. Initially. He quickly got her to change the topic, though, back to the business of tracking down…Those Responsible.

Not before, however, he had the thought: “You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake.”

Wild thoughts in the ‘midst of a manhunt for The Mastermind. Funny as the hell they were in, but he couldn’t help himself.

His mind was racing into *film noir*. The visual motifs that predominated in his favorite began to catch his attention in Matilda’s room: the low key lighting, the diagonals (of kitsch)…reality not being what it seemed, he was sure. *Mildred Pierce.*

He could have sworn he was hearing the oddest version of “You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby” drifting in from what he presumed was the kitchen.

Not tuned into whatever realm Al was inhabiting at the moment, our psychic returned to elaborating on The Magician:

“This is a *major* Trump with much inner symbolism,” she said. “We have a youthful figure in the robe of a magician. With his smile of confidence and shining eyes we can see the countenance of divine Apollo. See…above his head…the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit…the sign of life…like an endless cord, figure 8 in a horizontal position.”

“What’s with the serpent around the waist?,” asked Al.

“Serpent-cincture,” she corrected him, “devouring his own tail.”

“What….”

“Nothing wasted here with this conventional symbol of eternity,” she added, cutting him off, ” indicating here, most particularly, the eternity of attainment in the spirit.”

“What’s in the right hand?,” he continued, undeterred. “What’s he….”

“A wand pointing toward heaven,” she interjected, clarifying that the left was pointing toward the earth.

He didn’t need her to tell him that the dual sign was known in very high grades as Instituted Mysteries, but he let her. “It shows the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above and derived from things below,” she intoned. “The suggestion throughout is the possession and communication of the Powers and Gifts of the Spirit.”

Al asked –in all humility– about the four Tarot suits on the table in front of the Magician.

“They signifiy the elements of natural life, which lie like counters before the adept, and he adapts them as he wills,” she explained. “Beneath the roses and lilies,” she went on, “the *flos campi* and *convallium*, change into garden flowers to show the culture of aspiration.”

The linguist in him was impressed.

“Let me read to you what it says here,” she recommended.

“This card signifies the divine motive in man, reflecting God, the will in the liberation of its union with that which is above. It is also the unity of individual being *on all planes*,” she emphasized. “In a very high sense it is thought, in the fixation thereof,” she concluded.

“I’m interested in this “sign of life” and its connection to the number eight,” he explained.

“Christian Gnosticism speaks of rebirth in Christ as a change ‘unto the Ogdoad’,” she elaborated.

She returned to reading: “The mystic number is termed Jerusalem above, the Land flowing with Milk and Honey, the Holy Spirit and the Land of the Lord. According to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ.”

“What?,” he blurted out, so loudly the sound seemed to move, nay…*straighten* the room’s diagonals. “Read that last sentence again,” he pleaded.

Her ears cleared, she repeated: “According to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ.”

“I want to speak to you about this…*Martinism*,” he said.

“That’s funny,” she responded.

He looked very puzzled.

“Me too,” she responded, clarified.