The Battle of Blythe Road Demon Est Dues Inversus vs Perderabo - As Told by The Fifth Sibling.

1900 was an ominous year for the Yeats’ household of Bedford Park. Our lives lived in parallel with the occult and supernatural. It was 1887 when our family moved back to London. I was the youngest of the five Yeats siblings. Everyone knew of Willy, most knew of John, some knew of Lilly and Lollie, none knew of me. They jeered my youth, proclaiming that all I had to do was lie long and dream in my bed, of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head.

The feud between Willy and Crowley was labeled a battle of dark and light, the fruit of evil and good. It was nothing more than the ego of two grown men who should have known better. Envious of each other’s triumphs in fields they themselves craved to excel in. Sooner than coming together and endorsing each other, they preferred to spar, their sword blades making a rapturous music.

Magic may have been at the centre of all my brother did, but it was diluted with pride and prejudice. The year had but begun, the golden dawn of a new era. Willy devoted many hours at 36 Blythe Road, his church, and his university. Since he was initiated, he endeavoured to reach the inner circle. Many laughed at my brother when he blathered on about such matters as magic vaults. Willy believed profoundly in what he followed and had scant time for anyone who was not of the same mind. Danger no refuge holds; and war, no peace. He spent days and nights locked up there, his glistening eyes gazing off into the middle distance and Madam Blavatsky’s own glistening eyes peering into his, to see what she could find in their depth. What dreams of dark folk, what visions of hybrid men amongst the sand, learning to chaunt a tongue, man did not know.

Crowley was determined to be admitted into the fold. He sought to be as great a poet as Willy, and Willy was unnerved and intimidated by Crowley’s rapid progress with magic. Willy declared, “I do not think that a magical society should also double as a reformatory.” He announced Crowley a person of ‘unspeakable life’, based on nothing more than mere rumours of Crowley being a dabbler in matters homosexual. Willy had no interest or opinion on sexual matters of Crowley or anyone else: of a homosexual nature or not.

MacGregor Mathers had skulked off to Paris and was desperate for cash. He used the initiation fees as his own private revenue. Of course, this infuriated Willy, and most of the others, and they sought to overturn MacGregor Mathers. Crowley, slithered his way to Paris and joined forces with MacGregor Mathers. Together they concocted a plan that would have Crowley break into the Temple on Blythe Road and steal the magic vault, vanishing it away to Paris, where they would form a new temple. Crowley broke in, but instead of taking the vault and leaving, he changed the locks of the temple and installed himself there.

It came to a head on April 19th. Willy received information that Crowley had briefly left the Temple. He wasted no time in changing the locks Crowley had installed. Willy waited on the street, outside the temple, with a professional boxing acquaintance. I don’t know how long they waited, Willy and his burley companion. Willy reported, ‘What rough beast slouches towards me? I thought. Around the corner came, dressed in full Highland regalia, with sheath and dirk, the buffoon! And what had he upon his face? A mask of Osiris!’ Willy bellowed, ‘And what came sloughing around the other corner, their knuckles dragging along behind them, mere minutes after I dispelled Perderabo? A gang of thugs!

‘Master Crowley?’ the one who had somewhat mastered human language asked; his single eyebrow coming to a point in the middle. I dispatched them to Brook Green.’ My brother’s braggadocio was loathsome at times. It was a good while after the event that my brother told the story. For the same day as Willy changed the locks and dispelled Crowley, he moved into the temple himself. For more than a week he lived there to prevent break-ins.

Crowley sued the temple. The temple used its resources to gather unfavourable information on Crowley, which I am sure was not a laborious task. There was a court case, but whatever information was collected on the plaintiff, it was enough to have the case thrown out of court. Another occasion of celebration for my dear brother.

They made Willy Imperator of the temple. A glorious cause of elation for him. The joy was soon overshadowed. Our dearest mother died later that year. By the time she died, she had been unavailable to us for some while. She was not in her own mind the last few months of her pitiful existence. She dwindled and extinguished like a blown-out candle, only a faint whiff remained. Maud Gonne was lost to Willy, which was a thousand times more difficult for him than the loss of our mother. Something I never thought possible happened; he ceased writing poetry.

His hallowed Troy, who he had regarded as his own, he discovered was another’s. Not only belonging to another man but also to a child. All he had conceived of: the silence and love; the long dew-dropping hours of nights spent together, embraced under the stars above, gone. My brother, strong and virile and full of colour, before our eyes became a thin grey man half lost in the gathering night.

My brother, gently arose and rebuilt himself. In 1923 he won the Nobel Prize for Poetry, and his nemesis was in the tabloids as ‘the wickedest man in the world’. I never could resolve which of these headlines

Can these be the final days?

Hours?

Minutes?

It’s crossing the lake. Border your doors, Make no mistake.

O’ Blackened Shadow, here once more.

Eye at the peephole. Its one mission, My father’s soul.

O’ Deathly Entity, horrid apparition.

by Teresa Heffernan

Unholy screams. We have lost. Or so it seems.

O’ Soul Collector, what would it cost?

Father, I am not ready to understand Death in its face, Father, please save your breath.

Father, I am not ready to take your place.

Do not drown yourself in dirty death.

by Maria Hamill