Magick Magazine No. 8
Echols as the Magickal Monk in prison & his deterioration after being sent to Supermax with the worst of the worst and being confined to virtual solitary for 23 hours a day
Mr. Echols decided to utilise the routine of prison as a monastic retreat opportunity for magickal study. He began the more complicated High Magick of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the 19th-century occult group that counted Crowley, W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle as members. He began to get results. At first, he questioned whether his rituals were just him playing mental tricks on himself. “Is this really happening or is this just like my imaginary friend? But what else did I have to do all day?” Then he was startled to experience an angelic manifestation. “I understood why biblical angels always say right off, ‘Be not afraid,’ and I never questioned it again.” In 2003, the state transferred Echols to the new supermax unit where inmates were kept in sealed rooms for 23 hours a day. Lorri Davis, Mr. Echols’s wife, said. “The supermax sealed them up in tombs.” Yet, the discipline of the GD rituals kept Mr. Echols sane in virtual isolation. “By the last two years, it was all I did. I slept very little. I would just eat and work out and do magick.” It is a well worn anthropological theory that our ancestors first turned to magick to even the playing field in an unjust world. Magick was used to bring justice then and Damien reminds us that it can do so today too. Damien developed his own magickal style that saved his life. Being so cut off from nature in his solitary confinement, he decided to use strong sense memories to astrally project himself outside into the seasonal sabbats. Additionally, he describes how he and his wife …“would dredge up as much energy as we could and program it with the intent of getting me out. Eventually I stopped thinking about the goal, and it became about the joy of doing it.” The return to joy was the key that unlocked his cell door. This new magickal technique produced a tangible shift. His wife saw a change in him. “Even the way he carried himself started to change. He got his confidence back. He absolutely came alive.” Then, magickally, a breakthrough. In July 2007, new forensic evidence was presented in the case. A status report stated: "Although most of the genetic material recovered from the scene was attributable to the victims of the offences, some of it cannot be attributed to either the victims or the defendants." Given this and the revelation of potential juror misconduct, the West 33
