"Choronzon: I say, I say, I say - Thinkest thou, 0 fool, that there is any anger and any pain that I am not, Or any hell but this my spirit?"

Mephistopheles: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But I'll tell you this - I stuck my tongue out at God (and lived to talk about it)."
   -         I WAS ALEISTER CROWLEY 'S BED-PAN

                                      MEPHISTOPHELES

I remember, Mephistopheles, the goat I couldn't cure; 
spellbound, Mephistopheles, in algebraic lore. 
Pagan Mephistopheles, the crescent on your brow, 
you christened me with mistletoe to crystallise the Now.

But dogs and daylight do not mix – 
no sun my darkened days could fix. 
Harass me with the goats of night 
and leave eternal bats to fight.

0 Brother Mephistopheles, I couldn't hit the floor – 
first I asked for nothing, then I begged for nothing more.
My fired imagination failed to grasp the thing it sought.
There was no horn of plenty, when we milked the goat for chalk.

                                              *

I turned my head to see the sky 

reflected in my empty eye. 
The burning question's never asked – 
the purpose of All This is masked.

They tell me, Mephistopheles, the Cosmos never lies; 
the Spheres revolve serenely, each sadness winks and dies. 
The colours of our horoscopes are dyed before we're born – 
what drives us, Mephistopheles, to hunt the unicorn?

Sick souls with Doctor Death debate 
the shades of meaning of their fate. 
Believe me when I tell you now – 
my future is a sacred cow.
Well, I suppose this brings us to a discussion of the forces of darkness, which we must ever overcome if we are to be able to get on with our Fish- Worshipping in peace. You already know about Archie Bennett's encounter with the wee green accountants from Jupiter, and how he was victorious over their dandelion plot. But this was just an isolated manifestation of a deeper-rooted, altogether more sinister evil. Their nefarious deeds had been instigated by one who exercises an almost godlike power over them: the one they hail as the Biscuitmaker General - Mephistopheles.

Who is this Mephistopheles, and why should he bother us? Let us examine the nature of the beast...The inspiration behind the Big Biscuit Theory of Creation, and an original member of the leather-clad Evil Demons of the Seven Planets
extraterrestrial stockbroking gang, Mephistopheles stands under Jupiter as its Lord Protector. From this base, he has branched out into real estate and petty larceny, earning him Arohie Bennett's dubbing of 'the Universal Poacher'. He is also the author of that hideous work of demonic ill-humour-the black joke-book, "I WAS ALEISTER CROWLEY'S BED-PAN". This disgusting piece of filth was entirely hand-written on shiny toilet paper. (One dreads to contemplate what he did for ink.) What a monster!
Mephistopheles - Mephisto behind his back - is best known as an embodiment of the evil principle of Dualism. This is a corrupt concept whereby any force for good, or positive principle, is opposed by the spirits of darkness in an attempt to neutralise it with a negative force of equal strength - just as matter and anti-matter cancel each other out, somewhat explosively, to produce Nothing. But Mephistopheles, the Anti- Fish, lacks the necessary power to succeed in his devilish schemes. This second-rate demon cannot dim the Light of God, although that doesn't stop him having a go at our Archie.
It is understandable that a spirit of such limited capabilities as Mephistopheles should suffer from an inferiority complex. Especially when he is reduced to forming an alliance with tiny green accountants, with the primary purpose of pestering humanity with biscuits. Pretty pathetic, eh? He even looks inferior - his demonic horned eyebrows can not overshadow the fact that he is short, fat and bald. And although equipped with the ability to transform his outward appearance more or less at will, he never quite seems to rid himself of tell-tale mannerisms and shortcomings all his own. By any standards,
Mephistopheles is a bit of a failure. In the middle ages, his most common manifestation was as a monk - it suited his natural obsequiousness and lack of hair.
And the outward show of piety Dualistically parodied the impishness of his true character. But, of course, monks are not such a common eight in the late twentieth century; and after embarrassing incidents in wash-and-brush-ups and the like, the penny finally dropped, and he gave it up in favour of the leather-look. This has proved much more suitable. The drinking dens and dives of Western society abound with short, fat baldies; all wearing identical leathers, and pretending to have once been Hell's Angels. If they knew that the real thing was so down-market, they'd probably pack in the pretence and
go home.

Even here, Mephistopheles had to botch things by attempting to show off on a stolen motorbike outside "The Curling Tongs" - a favourite Glasgow haunt of these pitiful dreamers. The resulting multiple fractures left him with a permanent limp, which dogs all his disguises to this day. Indeed, researchers at the Aquarium think it possible that Stecky ("lame") Giblett was one of Mephistopheles' impersonations, his waxed moustache being no more than another feeble falsehood. The intention behind this would doubtless be to enslave humanity to El Alcohol’s Ethylated Nightmare and make it easy prey
for Mephisto and his green hangers-on.

This would certainly tie in with the balding pseudo-bikers and their favourite pistime - testing the Theory of the Expansion of Alcohol; though Mephistopheles would have had to have access to suitable timewarp facilities, to allow him to hop about through his past like that. You can be sure, anyway, that whenever violence flares, or dirty deeds are done, in the noxious atmosphere of dodgy taverns - the forces of darkness are working there. It is enough to make your hair stand on end. Mind you, reader, if Mephistopheles really was Stecky Giblett, the faking of his death does deserve some credit.
(After all, I was at the funeral.)

In Dualistic terms, though, this limp acts as a foil to Archie Bennett's energetic stride. Bennett - tall and thin, in contrast to Mephistopheles - walks so fast that his wife Iris has to pogo-stick alongside him, in order to keep up with his 983 m.p.h. gait; the blades of his helicopter beanie- hat whizzing round, and his stripey pyjamas billowing in the breeze of his passing. Quite a distinguished old man, the Arch-Fishmaster. Not like the miserable Anti-Fish, Mephistopheles.
But it was in Archie's younger days that Mephisto had attempted to infiltrate the Word Mine in the guise of a kobold, a goblin-like spirit of the mines. His motive was undeniably diabolic. Believing language to be greater than man, the Universal Poacher sought to undermine it, and thereby overthrow the human race in its infancy. He succeeded to the extent that, even in the present day, Piscite sounds remarkably similar to biscuit; if they are pronounced according to certain occult rites. Think, reader, how much more damage he could have inflicted, had he not given himself away one afternoon, when under the influence of black pudding - the infernal apotheosis of sausage sticks. Archie's suspicions were aroused by the strains of "Hey-ho, hey-ho it's off to Hell we go:" wafting up through the trap-door in his kitchen. Abel, the faithful
cheesehound, was sent to see him off - for which dutiful act Mephistopheles never forgave the dumb brute.  We have seen how Abel paid for his obedience to Archie, by falling foul of a poison-arrowroot biscuit during the
dandelion plot. Now, Mephisto had also tried to get rid of Adam, the wily Westphalian mumfrie-cat, who was proving something of a hindrance to his dubious designs. Mumfries, you see, were the fifth column in the green accountants' weedy invasion, having been planted on Earth millenia in advance of the main offensive. Related to the hopping potato, mumfries infest golf-courses, where they cause untold havoc by massing in clumps in front of holes and dividing by mitosis just as a player is about to take an important shot - thus ruining his concentration. They resemble a cross between a potato and a
golf ball (only slightly fluffier), making them difficult to recognise on the greens - except in times of danger, or in the mating season, when they can move pretty fast. Another nasty habit of theirs is the communication of negative golf criticisms, through thought-waves, to sensitive greenhorns of the course; their semi-resemblance to golf balls adding all the more to the sting of the jibes.
However, in the early days of the Creation the Arch-Fishmaster had designed a select breed of cat especially suited to extirpate mumfries with skill and rapidity, so that he could enjoy the pleasures of his preadamic putting-green undisturbed. These wily Westphalian mumfrie- cats look just like ordinary grey tabbies - to avoid confusion with alligators. Nevertheless, they don't mess about when it comes to the crunch.  The thermo-nuclear blast which devastated the garden at "Fishbowl" - ridding itof dandelions and wee green parasites - failed, oddly enough, to eliminate the mumfries, which instead evolved into a new fast- breeder strain. Without Adam, therefore, and the other wily Westphalian mumfrie-cats, Archie's planned new golf-course and his projected tournaments with Essential Fish Personalities, in celebration of the demise of the dandelions and the resulting new-look landscape, would face a major setback. Nowadays, we think we have problems with hordes of bigoted golf hooligans invading the course, brandishing tartan granny-warmers and broken tea-caddies. But these mumfries are a real pain. So, while the new golf-course was under construction, Mephistopheles decided to take the opportunity to try to exterminate Adam, as the chief of the wily Westphalian mumfrie-cats. He came to Earth in the form of a bear, in which shape he intended to eat him all up. But, instead of growling a lot and savaging Adam with his sharp teeth and claws, he kept sitting up and begging for coconut crumbles, to which 'goodies' he was hopelessly addicted. What with this obvious sign of weakness, coupled with a totally bald pate - unusual in bears - Adam didn't take long to assess the situation. He dispatched Mephistopheles back to Jupiter with a withering old-fashioned look, backed up by a snide telepathic reference to "The Beast From A Thousand Turnips". These wily Westphalian mumfrie-cats can be very witty, at times.

Mephistopheles, as I'm sure you can imagine, has next to no sense of humour, his character having been largely formed on the basis of Bennett's Second Law of Physics. (The toilet seats in Jupiter are every bit as cold as those in Hell itself.) But, how can you be expected to appreciate a good joke, if you can't laugh at yourself? As Stigmar Anguilla often said to me in my early days on the staff at the Aquarium: "Laugh at yourself at regular intervals, and beat the Devil's snigger." bxt all Mephistopheles could manage was his book, "I WAS ALEISTER CROWLEY 'S BED-PAN", which is little more than a series of anti-jokes designed to bring about the death of humour, and herald in an age of bleak puritanical self-repression.

It was to these grimly unexciting resources that he now turned-having failed to destroy Adam, who now had the mumfrie situation well under control. The Universal Poacher was all the more determined to spoil the Arch-Fishmaster's upcoming golf tournament with the Essential Fish Personalities. The mumfries may be subdued, but the Anti-Fish was going to blast the Beloved Bennett right off his stroke with uncensored, unnecessary and unfunny anti-jokes! He had a grudge.

But, Dualism being what it is, Archie was already preparing equal and opposite measures against Miserable Mephistopheles. Re too bore a grudge: he wanted the Anti-Fish to atone for the death of Abel, his faithful cheesehound.  He had jokes of his own - extremely funny jokes (for the tastes of that particular period in the formation of the world). Come the glorious day of the golf tournament, there would be a battle of banter unleashed, of Manichasan significance.  The subtle nuances of the wit, or otherwise, are best captured by quoting direct from “THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING, or LIES ABOUT NOTHING":-

"I decided that my first line of attack would be a direct reminder to my enemy of the heinous wrong he had done me; which, I hoped, would also serve as a challenge and demand for satisfaction. Taking a deep breath, wiping a tear from my eye, and girding up my laverocks, I retold that old chestnut about Abel, which had regaled many a putting party in the old days:

- I say, I say, I say, my dog won't eat whiting.

- What d'you say? What d'you say? What d'you say? Why will your dog only eat haddock?

- Because it's a cheesehound!

Oh, the laughter and the thigh-slapping that heart-warming avocado had occasioned in the past.' Even now, a gurgle or two got by the lump in my throat as I told it.

"I could see Mephistopheles wince, on his cloud of Jupiter-gas. I knew he would retort immediately, and so he did:

- I bought one of your reindeer flavoured nosebleeds the other day, and I couldn't get the packet open. Was this a vertical take-off?

I was so shaken, I nearly bit my own body off. But I had been up all night stirring words over my primal stove, to come up with this new joke to keep the memory of Abel alive, and begin my revenge:

- I say, I say, I say, my dog can't smell.

- Why don't you cut its nose off?

- Because I haven't got a dog!

Several Fish Personalities burst out laughing, and Salmo frutta did a somersault in ten under parr. Jumping Jack Sprat did heel-springs. Pandora, Princess of Bream (Black Ray's old wife) played fast-and-loose with Geronimo Box-fish. Someone shouted: "Fore!" and the garden echoed with earthy delight. Exploding in our souls, the ascendant Phoenix played hop-scotch with Confusion. The Anti-Fish was not amused. The Anti-Fish doesn't like fun... because the Anti-Fish doesn't like himself. If we believe our purpose in life is to love one another, then first we must find a way to love ourselves. But
Mephistopheles can't do this, because the circles of his heart and soul don't overlap properly, to form a vesica piscis: thus depriving him of a suitable receptacle for any potential source of humorous spirit.

"My own chubby person, by contrast, has been blessed with a vesica piscis of cosmic proportions - from which 'bladder of life' springs a profuse outpouring of witticism. Because of this, disciples sometimes call me Mahatma. This has nothing to do with headgear. The epithet is not a reference to my accustomed helicopter beanie-hat. It is not Mad-hat! Ha! (True, the Bactrians have a saying: "The more mad, the more holy" - but hats are in a class of their own, as we shall see.) In fact, Mahatma means "Great Soul of Fish". But wait - did I say I was chubby, just then? Surely not, you must be thinking?
Yet this is a pet name given me by Mrs. Bennett4..Iris explain. it better than I can, in this extract from her journal, published by the Aquarium as "THE FISH-WIFE'S TALE":-

""Although Archie has always been as thin as a hake, he is chubby by comparison with Mephistopheles, who is fat; because chubby means "shaped like chub" (is streamlined) and not "chubby" (like Billy Grunter). Therefore, the plump Anti-Fish isn't chubby, like the sleek chub; but Archie is chubby because he's so skinny...I would have thought all this was obvious..."
"Of course it's obvious...Look: There's a fish in the sky!
"Anyway, as far as a sense of humour is concerned, Mephistopheles is as eviscerated as a Japanese Existentialist picnic party. Upstaging and outwitting him in this burlesque ordeal of rapid-fire banter was like shooting fish in a barrel. They say
"You can't cod a cod that's been codded beforeul, but in Mephisto's case, "All's fish that comes to the net". (Then again, if he had been one of Milton's "finny drove9', the mephitic keynote of his muse must have predisposed him to be a crappie.) Only a fluke could have made one of his jokes funny. Indeed, he actually resorted to having his accountants send down a tribulation of wee green tapeworms from Jupiter, to afflict clown-fish with comic cystitis - just so that he could 'take the piscary' out of their 'bladders of life'. And when his worms played monkey tricks with the gonad- stimulating functions of
their hosts' pituary glands, he thought he was the Top Banana of the Coral Cabaret because he shouted out: "Something fishy this way comes!” The joke was on him, though, since the resulting sterilisation of many clown-fish not only cleaned up their act, but even made them more popular by preventing audiences from getting too much of a good thing. Honest. Anyway, as the Poet said, "It's no use crying over spilt milt".

"You can see that Mephistopheles would stoop to any level, then, to gain points in our contest; even 'borrowing' one of Jovial Jimmy Green's radio gags:

- What's a four-letter word beginning with F...F...FISH ?

- TETRA-GRAMMATON!! (Tee-hee-hee.')

I felt a Jimmy-riddle to be uncalled for here, but refrained from accusing him of plagiarism. After all, he is the Universal Poacher. I replied in kind:

- How many eyes has a four-eyed fish?

"Two up and two down," a shy voice interrupted. It was Anna Bleps, hiding her fish-baby blush behind glinting bi-focals. Second-sighted Anna could search the sky for rainbows and still keep both eyes on events underwater. The Anti-Fish was looking confused, but persevered meekly with the foursome theme:

- If there are four winds, four dimensions and four freedoms, which way is forwards?
“What are the forewords to the four words?" I forestalled him with glee. (Suspecting him of holding a four-flush hand, I had decided to call his bluff.) "God's Tits:" said he. I could see the Anti-Fish frantically turning the insanitary pages of his black joke-book. He seemed to be wishing he hadn't started all this, and read aloud through gritted teeth:

- (1) THOU SHALT LIMIT THE NUMBER OF THY NIPPLES TO TWO PER PERSON.
  (2) THOU SHALT NOT LICK THE FLAPS OF SELF-SEALING ENVELOPES
  (3) DESPISE THY UNCLE'S GOAT.
  (4) TAKE TWO ASPIRIN AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING.

"Even delivered in block capitals, these unholy orders failed to raise so much as a sneer. Then he burst out with a prophetic toilet gag:

- Alasdair McTayfish is the Scottish equivalent of someone flushing a lavatory in New South Wales!

Mephistopheles had blown his chances - scored an own goal. At this stage in Creation, humanity was barely in its infancy.  Alasdair MoTayfish would not appear on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years. If you are going to tell jokes successfully, you must have a sense of timing. Clearly, the Anti-Fish had not.

"I countered with an anatomical gem of Iris's:

Sometimes I think I have three feet.
But I've only got two legs.
(One of them must be a yard-arm.)

I could hear him sobbing quietly - he knew he had lost. I put the boot in:

She was only a farmer's armpit, but she went out with anyone who oxter!

"I heard a whimper, and decided to finish it. The Universal Poacher has no stamina, you know. My landscape supply engineer (God) had helpfully provided me with a limitless reservoir of Rainbow Dream Clouds, with which to counteract the dismal Dualismic Jupiter-gas of Mephistopheles' fleets of spaceships. I now chucked one in the direction of his cumulo-chariot, which dispersed instantly; forcing him to hop, sharpish, like a twisted barbed-wire caricature of Bactrian Elijah, straight back to his familiar planet. I was revenged at last."

A word about these Rainbow Dream Clouds, reader. Don't confuse them with the bland heart-shaped pink clouds of the Bactrian escapists en route to Jerusalem. No, no, reader: you may burn your Christopher Valentino greetings cards with gusto - Rainbow Dream Clouds are perfectly real (and don't cost anything). God supplies them free for the asking - and if anyone wearing a funny hat comes up to you and says he wants you for a sunbeam, just chuck a Rainbow Dream Cloud at him - that'll sort the sheep from the goats. The Devil comes in many guises, but if you make sure you are well provided with plenty of Rainbow Dream Clouds, you have nothing to fear. It's all a matter of faith (and trusting to your imagination).  It helps, too, if you are familiar with the Official Fish-Worshipping View on Hats (as again expressed by Archie Bennett):-

"You can spot a spiritual opportunist a mile away, by the kind of hat he is wearing. Not that one would wish to deny the right of every individual- regardless of race, sex, colour, or political underwear- to sport the hat of his or her choice. But: by the same to ken, YOU, the honest Fish-Worshipper, have the right to use the sign-language of the wearer's taste in headgear to reach a decision as to whether or not you wish to be approached by this person: or whether to either avoid them, or take aggressive counter-action.

"To give a couple of examples. If someone is wearing a hat over 250 metres in height, he is probably concealing a radio transmitter of some sort, with which to contact, perhaps, Jupiter. If we are extremely unlucky, he may even be an amateur disc-jockey. Whichever he turns out to be, you can thus recognise his undesirability and either run away from him, or have him arrested for attempting to obstruct low-flying air traffic. "But the law isn't always on the side of upright Fish-Worshipping. Did you know that you can hide up to 300 lbs of black pudding under your hat, and no matter what, your hat can not be arrested? Fortunately, the main black pudding smuggler we need to worry about is Mephistopheles, the Universal Poacher; and he usually succumb. to
the narcotic effect this substance has upon him, and gives up and goes home to lie down.
"Still, the legal system can work for us in another way. The Anti-Fish has tried to make himself appear inconspicuous to Fish-Worshippers, in order that he might infiltrate our ranks by stealth, and so play merry hell with our research at the Aquarium. But remember this, devoted ones: a large pile of fish-offal mixed with frogspawn, stuck err the head to disguise baldness, does not legally constitute a hat. If you come across anyone attired in this fashion, it will almost certainly be Mephistopheles, and you can have him done for breach of the Hats Descriptions Act."

Fair enough, Archie. Now, Mephistopheles may have been squashed like an aubergine in the Ultimate Contest of Manichaean Slapstick, but he wasn't going to lie down for long. He may have failed to totally corrupt human
language (though we will never fully know how much damage he was able to do before being apprehended). He may have failed to disrupt Archie Bennett's pan-piscatological golf tournament. But, as the eons glided by, the bald, leather-clad baddie was bound to keep trying. Things are never plain sailing in this life - but perhaps we need a little adversity to keep us out of the doldrums of mind-destroying boredom, which can overturn our faith just as easily as stormy weather.  Having proved hopelessly disaster-prone when it came to any direct form of antagonism towards the Forces of Fish, Mephistopheles eventually (he's a bit slow) decided that he might have a better chance of success if he attacked the souls of unwary mortals; got to the heart of the matter and irreversibly corrupted novice Fish-Worshippers by, as it were, catching them off guard - while their conscious minds were otherwise engaged.
Bear in mind, reader, that it takes years of practice and dedication to 'tune in' one's conscious and unconscious brainwaves to all the surrounding positive and negative vibration frequencies of the Cosmic Ocean. And mental absence makes the target softer.

Being a total coward anyway, the Universal Poacher initially turned his attention to the easiest of all available prey - dead people. Even such an intrinsically inept spirit as Mephistopheles has, by now, managed to acquire some skill in capturing the souls of the newly-deceased in his Abysmal butterfly net. What he then does to them, when he takes them back to Jupiter with him, is probably too distasteful to contemplate. Suffice it to say that he twists them
unrecognisably out of character.

On returning to Earth, the Bald One then turns his attention toward another defenceless minority - new-born babies. It is shameful to relate how this nasty, evil, dirty rotten stinker then implants the corrupted souls of the dead
into these innocents who- as a direct result, and through no fault of their own-grow up to be social criminals such as soap-powder promoters, stand-up comedians, and even disc-jockeys. Wherever you see one of these unfortunates, reader, remember that there,but for the Rainbow Dream Clouds of God, go we. Not every individual is blessed with the opportunity to devote his life to Fish. Some are accursed before they even see the light of day.
So, the next time you set fire to a comedian, or cripple a disc-jockey (society must be protected from such undesirables, after all) say a little prayer before you go on your way, that Fishna may move to extend his Piscine Grace to these lost souls, in their next go around the Pond of Life.

Remember Jovial Jimmy Green, the primeval D.J. who signalled the wee green accountants down to the garden at "Fishbowl"? We now think that he personifies in archetype the Essence of Character Assassination which
Mephistopheles employs in his dastardly doings. If you'll take the advice of the Aquarium, the only good disc-jockey is a deaf one. Keep your radio tuned to 'sensible' radio stations at all times, lest your spirit be snatched away, and your brain dissolved. in the mindless drivelling of Chaos. If you must have a 'fun' station tuned in, at least take the precaution of shouting a constant stream of obscenities at the set, so as to drown out the waves of inanity, and protect your head from drip damage... The term Manichaean appears once or twice in these pages. This denotes the doctrine of Dualism as apprehended by a specific sect of lapsed Zorro-Bactrians. The most interesting thing about these
wanderers from sanity is their brave attempt at beating Mephistopheles at his own soul-stealing game.  Seeking the Dualistic counterpart of biscuits, they devised a sanctified substance called gingerbread with  which they made tiny effigies of the wee green men. By sticking pins, skewers, even bicycle pumps into various parts of the bodies of the gingerbread men, they hoped to be able to adversely affect the corresponding anatomical areas of Mephisto's diminutive army, and thereby bring them under subjugation. Although totally ineffectual, they persisted in this deluded practice for over a thousand years, until Faustus -one of their bishops, and the 'apostrophist' of the poem at the start of the chapter - had a go at stealing the soul of the Biscuitmaker General himself. Once he realised what a useless possession that would be, he
gave up, got on his bike and was never seen or heard of again.

We at the Aquarium experimented with Manichaean gingerbread men, to see if napalm, or nerve gas, or radiation might be more effective than pins. But to no avail. Indeed, some of our research students were so badly affected by all the cooking they were obliged to do, that they began to take an unhealthy interest in baking biscuits!  Fortunately, we spotted the danger signals in time to prevent any of our shoal becoming possessed by evil digestives - or worse; but some of them had to sleep with a kipper nailed to the underside of the bedside table for three weeks, to ward off dangerous influences.

Mephistopheles has been blamed for many of the adversities which beset Fish-Worshippers, and humanity in general: the weather, natural disasters, buses coming late, wrong numbers, and even The Eels Anomaly. But don't
be fooled. The Anti-Fish would love to think we believed him to have more demonic abilities than he really has. In fact, most of these setbacks are simply due to natural wear and tear on the smoothness of the world's passage, as it revolves in its cradle of ball-bearings and hope.

As for The Eels Anomaly - well, reader, I have already examined possible causes of this aberration, and Mephistopheles is most certainly not one of them. It would be a frightening thought if we Beriously considered the
hand of the Anti-Fish as being a factor in bringing about the changes in the eels' behaviour patterns. If the Universal Poacher had the power to wreak such havoc on one species of fish, just think what he could do to Fish- Worshipping as a whole.' But Mephistopheles is too stupid, too accident-prone, and too short to be seen as
a threat of any real force. The problem arises primarily from within the eels themselves and, as with all Fish-related
occurences, is far too subtle and refined in nature to emanate from a being too idiotic to be able to handle his own
black pudding with safety.

The worst that can be said about Mephistopheles is that he is a persistent nuisance. No amount of defeat or
humiliation has so far put a stop to his irritating onslaught of perversity. And although the Force of Fish must always
prevail over him in the end, he is at least capable of demoralising the sensitive neophyte and causing breaks in
concentration during devotions, which can indirectly leave the mind open to doubts and lapses of faith. Again, I
must point out that the actual causes of doubts and lapses of faith are too complex and interesting for
Mephistopheles to be able to claim any direct responsibility. All he succeeds in doing is making the general
atmosphere irksome.

Yet, many students have complained personally to me, and - call them whimpering cissies if you will- there is some
good reason for their distress. He does have a shifty look about him. But this is no ruthless, impregnable villain.
This is no Fiend of the Ultimate Abyss; no committer of unspeakable acts of sex-crazed depravity, cannibalism, or
even the occasional murder. This is no chopper-off and eater of babies9 arms. No; Mephistopheles is just a short,
fat, bald, leather-clad irritant from Jupiter. One day, reader, we will catch the miscreant - and, in the fullness of
time, after due moral deliberation, we shall STRING THE BASTARD UP!!!

SUNSET VII

Blasted varnish! Why must you turn

your missing mind to no-one's death? 

Your hatred cannot hedge behind my eyes. 

Get from me with your biscuit breath, 

stalemated prince of pocket lies!

I watch your naked children burn 

(some blackened thoughts of no degree) – 

the wardrobes of God's mansion keep 

more dreams than you have sense.

Why drain your closet, let brain seep 

away to naught? Get off my fence!

Your madness matters nought to me. 

Don't cram the mantel of my shelves 

with bric-a-brac of other selves.
 
 

     Choronzon's speech:- "Thinkest thou, 0 fool..." is cited 
     in Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts (London: Routledge 1967, 
     Pan 1969) as from J.Symonds, The Magic of Aleister Crowley 
     (London: Muller 1958).