Chapter 10
The Neutralization of the Black Fire

The Healer Mage cuts the gibbet rope at the exact moment when the strangulation risks becoming fatal.

The candidate, passed out, slides down then, supported by the Mage, to the bed of hay covered with a cloth of yellow silk, ready at the foot of the gibbet from the beginning of the session.

The Mage arranges the arms and legs of the Freedman, and gets his head into a comfortable position.

In a low voice the Venerable Warriors and the witnesses say the prayer of the healing sleep, while the Mage takes up the incantation that will accentuate and prolong the unconscious state of the man tested, all of whose strength still belongs to Satan.

A quarter of an hour later the basement door opens, and the priestess-lover of the tested Hunter appears on the threshold, draped entirely in white veils and with her hair flowing down her back.

She salutes the Warriors and the witnesses, who give her the acknowledgment owed to her high mission, and approaches the Healer Mage, who gives her the necessary instructions.

Absolutely calm, she listens and inclines her head in sign of comprehension. She immediately stretches out beside the man tested, but in the opposite direction. She remains thus, immobile, for several minutes, then she raises herself with a serpentine movement, extricates herself from her veils, and presses her palms upon the knees of the sleeper. Like a perfect acrobat, she raises herself on her hands, as a living column, perpendicular to the body of the supine man.

Her face being turned toward the man’s feet, her long blond hair falls over the thighs of the victor, communicating to them the solar vibrations with which it is charged. One knows, indeed, that a woman’s head belongs to the sun, and all the more so to the extent that she has been able to preserve, as our priestesses of the Satanic Temple do, the lunar quality of her sex. The young priestess stays in this bold position only a few moments. Very slowly, and in four wellcalculated movements--that of the legs, and then of the whole body lowered progressively to a low height over that of the sleeper, and the last two movements unfolding the legs and bringing the feet, one after the other, to rest upon the forehead of the Hunter--she forms a harmonious curve with her whole silhouette, and the Healer Mage immediately verifies the desired precision.

When everything is ready, the Mage pronounces the formula that favors and hastens the neutralization of the satanic fire in the man’s virile member.

This lasts several minutes.

The Mage verifies that the normal state has been reestablished in the body of the one tested, and he invites the woman to again take her first position beside the man, on the yellow cloth.

The priestess obeys.

Two witnesses rise then and bring near the bed a long cloak of black silk, which they spread out over the two bodies.

After that, the Warriors, the witnesses, and the Healer Mage exit in good order, leaving the couple alone, who must stay in the cellar of executions until the first light of dawn.

What happens during the night that follows in the somber cellar, at the foot of the gallows?

Here is what a twenty-six-year-old priestess says about it, who has become, thanks to their common victory, the bride of her Tested Knight.

“I had no doubt fallen asleep quickly after the departure of the witnesses and the Venerable Warriors, but I would not be able to say how long my dreamless sleep lasted.

“It was completely dark in the room, when I felt my Knight’s amiable hand upon the skin of my belly. I grabbed his wrist and said to him, ‘Are you behaving yourself?’

“‘What voice is this that interrogates me?’ he asked.

“‘The voice of the woman who has watched and maintained the sacred fire of the lamp, still burning tonight for you.’

“‘A woman, what is that?’ he said.

“And he himself answered:

“‘It is the Door by which we enter into the world and the Threshold, which we cannot cross to leave it. Woman, it is your fault if I am still here. Where do you want to take me now?’

“‘I am waiting for the dawn,’ I said.

“He sat up on our common bed and, pulling me gently by the arms, he made me sit up, too. We couldn’t see each other, because the torches had burned down to the end. A fragrant lukewarmness enveloped us, and I felt it as a very tender caress. Several long minutes went by in a deep silence.

“He then pulled me to him and, as we were both naked, I felt the heat of his body on my cheeks and my breasts.

“He took my head in his hands and kissed me on the forehead.

“It was the first kiss that I had received from my Knight, for whom alone I had lived for seven years.

“I was profoundly moved by it, and he realized it, for he said to me:

“‘Reclasp your golden buckles over your breasts, O adorable creature! It would be foolish to profane now what has been kept intact for such a long time. According to the Rule of this astonishing House, you are now my bride . . . now that I have known a wholly other felicity! Do you grasp the depth of this nostalgic exclamation? Are you ready to walk with me on a path whose eternal sorrow I now know and where nothing more will from now on be able to deceive me? Do you wish to belong to me in spite of that?”