Before 1962, I spent two years living in my uncle’s apartment, with Juan. I spent half the day at school, where I’d see Betty, as if our families had not decided on a separation that at the time seemed definitive or at least unusually long. I never again set foot in the Chascomús house, although I missed it: the underbrush of spiny hackberry, the acacias, the Jerusalem thorns, and especially the dogs. I understand and have always understood that the Order must go to extremes to obtain knowledge, and that in many cases this entails forgoing affection or embracing madness; it entails cruelties that are hard to comprehend, even for Initiates. But when I had to feed the caged ones, I found out what my limit was, or one of my limits.

My grandfather taught me to draw chalk circles; he said they were magnificent. I wasn’t allowed to invoke yet: at that time, the youngest in the Order were preserved until adolescence. (Florence broke that rule with her youngest son, but no one knew until the damage became impossible to hide.) My grandfather, however, allowed me to learn things that he considered minor. Tarot. The circles. Some local rites that both delighted and disgusted Tali and me, like crucifying frogs in a circle of salt to ward off storms. He also let me help Juan, who, when he felt very bad, lost the defenses that kept presences and incarnates at bay. So, I’d leave a sign beside his door or a talisman under his pillow. He always needed those small assistances at certain moments in his life, though most of the time he could deflect any intrusion on his own. He once explained to me that after he had mastered the method my uncle taught him, it felt absolutely normal, like not wetting the bed.

Those two were the most pleasant of my formative years, away from my mother, whom I never again called Mother, only Mercedes. Away from her and close to the men of my family, failures and alcoholics, hunters and collectors, who reminded me of the Order’s founders and of George Mathers, my first love.

In Puerto Reyes I started making lists. I always liked writing everything down: recipes and instructions, catalogues and advice, dictionaries and indices. When Juan revealed himself as a medium, I was working on a basic dictionary of all the beings who lived in the area around Puerto Reyes. I talked to people, collected testimonies, kept notebooks. My grandfather told me I could study religion and culture if I wanted to; I could major in anthropology at Oxford or Cambridge or whatever university I chose. The Order always kept up its profile in research and study: the Darkness had to be interpreted, not merely worshipped blindly. It was a difficult balance to maintain, but it was done by incorporating other esoteric traditions and magical systems; so there were specialists in the Kabbalah and the mystical doctrine of Judaism, and in Sufism, spiritualism, necromancy, alchemy. The Order gathered together the most distinguished students of the Graeco-Roman mysteries, and they even brought in doctors, especially neurologists, because epilepsy, schizophrenia, neuronal hypersynchronization or hyperia, mystical ecstasy, it was all thought about and investigated. I wanted to be part of that tradition, which, of course, also involved practices. “Study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!”—the definition given by Eliphas Lévi. A charlatan, as my grandfather said, but a charlatan who wrote very well.