[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Andrew Ervin, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $51.]

Several weeks ago I was biking around the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, or what’s left of it, and shooting photographs of the rebuilding process. I have been hearing the same two descriptions over and over — “It’s like a war zone” and “It’s like a bomb went off” — but the reality is more like something from the Old Testament, something supernatural. Most of the original residents of the neighborhood I visited that day have moved on — into formaldehyde-poisoned FEMA trailers, to Baton Rouge or Lafayette, to Texas or Mississippi. Those who have moved in fill the streets with foreign, burning smells and songs that are strange even by New Orleans standards. The new residents mark the streets with incomprehensible runes. They tell me the loa have never left.

That day, a small but vocal crowd had gathered at an unmarked and all but deserted crossroads. Several women were holding on to a panicky stray goat. Their jewelry glittered in the afternoon sun. I stopped to take some pictures and was told that a young man had attempted to steal a car at gunpoint, but was thwarted by the neighbors and detained. But before the women could determine a suitable punishment, the would-be thief transformed himself into a goat in order to avoid capture. There were witnesses.

“Someone fetch The Judge,” the oldest of the women said.

“Meh!” the goat said. “Meh meh meh!”

A small girl took off on foot and returned fifteen minutes later holding a sack of silvery cloth. She handed it to the old woman, who, with a flourish, reached in and removed this figurine — The Judge. She held the idol over her head and then placed it on the ground next to the goat. The other women released the animal. Everyone stepped back to form a wide circle and await the verdict. The goat’s eyes appeared mournful and even, I must admit, guilty of some crime.

“The Judge will soon decide the fate of the thief,” the old woman said.

“Meh meh meh!” the goat said, then it took off in a trot.

It was a terrible thing to do, I know, but amid the pandemonium I threw the idol into my camera bag and pedaled away.

That night I put The Judge on my bedside table, but was unable to sleep. I felt the idol watching me. Weeks later, I remain sleepless and have grown irritable and feverish. It was The Judge — he was hectoring me but also, I knew, praying for me. Then, this morning, I took a half-slumbering walk to the corner for coffee and, I swear to you, saw a goat drive by in a blue Toyota four-door.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Glen David Gold, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $56.50.]

Hell, of course, has a hierarchy; it is by definition all hierarchy. As James Blish noted, any act of magic requires harnessing the work of one demon at a time. Those who answer the call are subalterns, grumbling Malebranches whose job otherwise is to stir the pitch into which politicians are tossed. Think of them as the enlisted men.

The officers — the ones who disdain pacts with sorcerers — are demons with actual names. Above them — the majors and colonels — are the 400 primal sinners envisioned by Albertus Magnus in Ein Katalog der Kritiker die Ihren Eigenen Berichten Glauben. Higher still are the 13 evil forms identified by Eliphas Lévi before his mysterious fall from the window of l’abbaye du psellus. Unspeakably powerful, the generals above them are Belial, Othiel, and Qemetial, of whom Aleister Crowley wrote “Let no man see these dark shapes before the final dawn approaches.”

And ruling them all, Lucifuge Rofocale, tyrant of hell. At his fingertips are the powers of the 15,485,863 (a deconsecrated prime number) demons below him. Controlling him? Unlikely.

However…

The possibility of summoning this ur-demon has frightened the most rational of scholars. In the age of the Enlightenment, Athanasius Kircher is said to have torn crucial pages from the Voynich manuscript’s cryptic sections on herbs and astronomy to prevent exactly this evocation. Nonetheless in the course of several generations, the mysterious Eruditi di Nerezza managed to file away the procedures required. When the Collegio Ghislieri located the single necessary talisman, their sanctuary — stone towers and all — burned to the ground with no survivors.

And yet tales of the talisman remained.

Etchings in The Grand Grimoire, assembled in 1522 by Alibek the Egyptian, indicate it would depict one of the pseudo-Solomons, a bald-headed figure, bearded, in supplication. He would show wear on his knees (from prayer) and his bib (from feasting on mysterious flesh). He would hold a hammered copper tray of offerings (four serpent eggs dyed in rosewater) in his left hand. His right would be extended in the anatomically-difficult position of first and last finger splayed, center fingers adjoined, making in other words the sign of the sage bound to Baphomet.

The base would be verdant green, textured grass, representing nature trampled by the self-determination of man (and by extension, of demon). The figure would appear to wear the skin of a golden bear he had slain himself, surmounted with a red silk cloth representing sacrifice, and leather shoes made from the skins of his enemies. His trousers would be blue, and have no significance.

Descriptions at this point traditionally conclude with a warning/exegesis on the nature of desire. An object is only an object unless invested with manna, animal spirit. In short, all authorities from the Deum te Inharmonium onward have noted power does not tend to give itself up. Thus the talisman’s guardian must desire power with a single-minded lust, slaking off any vestige of humanity like a snake shedding its scurf.

In order to use a demon, you must believe in a demon. Which carries its own price. The pact will get you all that you want, but, as it will be provided by demons, nothing that you keep.

[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Annie Nocenti, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $26.]

I’m long off the vine. Eighty, truth be told. I refuse to be one of those biddies that dies with clutter. Found drooling in a wing-back, her thousand-strong frog collection eyeballing her. My clutter is for sale. I was a housewife in the Fifties, so there were various disappointments, which led to… various remedies. But that kind of clutter is not up for sale, and certainly not worth the price.

Let me see here… Salt Lick JFK. When I was thirty and Edith was eight, we’d go into the department store, and she’d rush up and down the aisles licking everything that took her fancy. She was a terrible embarrassment to me. I’d dig my fingernails into her until her arm glowed with a row of red crescent moons. But that little tumbleweed would twist out of my grip and be off licking a ceramic gnome or Easter egg or whatnot. I took her to the doctor and he said it was a “compulsion” she’d grow out of. She didn’t, but that’s another story.

One day Edith licked JFK and said, “It doesn’t need salt.” Turns out she had good taste. Most of the junk Edith licked turned out to be collectibles. Those pre-assassination JFK Salt Lick heads went on to be very popular after ’63. We used the head for a school report. Turns out salt licks are cosmic, from some divine cow of Norse mythology descended from one-eyed Odin. Salt licks have a certain… resurrection quality, not that that helped poor JFK. Cows quite like them. I can’t promise this one is unadulterated. But it’s got history.