"James E. Gunn - The Magicians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

"What kind ofтАФof connection?" I asked.
"If you know the person's real name and call the doll by it, for instance. Or if you have hair or
fingernail clippings or handwriting or a photograph or a recordingтАФanything associated with the person."
"The law of contagion," I said.
"That's right," she said in surprise. "How did you know that?"
"The program this morning," I said gloomily. "I learn. I learn slowly, but I do learn."
She was thoughtful for a moment as if she were remembering some painful experience. "Just
before he died, Father told Uriel that somebody had said a Mass of St. Secaire for him. But by then his
mind was wanderine."
A Mass of what? I thought. I would never get everything straight. They kept pulling new terms
on me.
 "A Black Mass," Ariel said. "Sometimes it's described as the customary mass that's said for the
dead, but it is said for someone who isn't deadтАФyet. Sometimes it includes all sorts of demonic
reversals. You know, like inverting the cross, starting the Lord's Praver with 'Our Father who wert in
heaven.' Instead of the Host, they eat and drink all kinds of vile substances. Sometimes they copulate on
the altar, kill animals, some say human children, all sorts of nastiness' that I hate to think about, much less
describeтАФ"
I was trying to understand the kind of people who would do these things, not just for fun but
seriously. "Why would people with such power descend into those kinds of perversions?"
"For some of them it's part of the process of getting the power," Ariel said. "For others it's a
religion. The Cathari and the Albigensians were still powerful religious sects in twelfth-century France
before the Pope declared a holy crusade against them, and a vast army of Christians swept down on
southern France to wipe out whole towns, heretics and faithful alike, with plenty of rape and plunder.
And what the crusade didn't destroy, the beginnings of the Inquisition mopped up."
"ButтАФa religionтАФ" I began. To me there was only one religion, Christianity with all its splintered
faiths which, along with atheism, provided opportunity for any variety of conviction to find a home. To me
the other religions of the world were just a kind of exotic playacting, often with costumes and strange
architecture and peculiar fascinations.
"The Cathari drew much of their beliefs from the Gnostics and the Manichees," Ariel said. "They
believed that the Old Testament God was a demon, that the world was the creation of the Devil, the
Monster of Chaos, that physical existence was evil, that it should be ended as soon as possible, that
people should not have children. Many of their practices ended up associated with witchcraft."
"YouтАФyou believe in this sort of thing?" I asked, fearful of an answer even here in the polished
plastic and chrome of the coffee shop. Ordinary people were going about their ordinary concerns,
waitresses clanked dishes and silverware and snarled at the customers, the air was filled with the smell of
potatoes and meat and coffee, and I was back in the Dark Ages with heretics and the Inquisition.
"Of course not," she said. "That's all superstition. But other people believe it, and they act upon
their beliefs. You see, witchcraft and magic have two separate traditions. One believes in the worship of
the Devil and his demons; it practices pollution, sacrilege, desecration, violation, and other kinds of filth.
The other believes in the ability of the human mind to command secret forces, in compelling them to do
the bidding of man through knowledge and moral force."
Yeah, I thought. Black magic and white magic.
"To call them black and white is an oversimplification," Ariel said. "Every magician believes that
his magic is white."
"Every one?"
"Well," she admitted, "maybe not every magician. Like ordinary people, some of them enjoy
sadism and degradation. Anyway, my father told Uriel that he had been wrong. He said they should have
given the Art to the world as soon as they had demonstrated that it worked."
"Or, better yet, burned it," I said gloomily.
"My father said that, too," Ariel continued. " 'I'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the