There are sexy, seductive vixens and then there are invisible, timid wall-flowers that never get noticed. The latter one used to describe me perfectly. There are witches and then there are Witches. I used to be the former. There are also women that you just need to fuck and those that you’ll do anything to or for just to be able to keep on fucking. Now that I have the grimoire, I am both of those.

It’s a long story involving me being the invisible ugly duckling that grew into an ugly duck instead of a beautiful swan, my favorite aunt, Grace, her mystical grimoire, and the Witches’ Cypher. Seeing how I got from there to here is a long journey, but I’ll need to start someplace.

Do you remember that one girl that you just can’t quite recall? Of course you don’t. That was me; always plain and pastel, never vibrant and colorful. Ignored, invisible, and always overlooked—even my next-door neighbor, Jeff, never recognized me after seeing me almost every day for two years—I was the one that you never noticed, never remembered, and forgot about as soon as I was out of sight.?”

Even with pale, freckled skin, flaming red hair that turns orange in the sun, and decent body parts hung onto my gangly-limbed frame, I was not notable. I was hardly there. I was too timid, shy, introverted, and mousy to be acknowledged. If you knew me and tried to describe me to your friends, you’d say, “You know, good old ‘what’s-her-name’. The kind of cute one…who is she?”

Aunt Grace was not only my favorite relative, but she was also a Wiccan, a Witch, an Occultist, and a Ceremonial Magician. She lived and breathed the occult and led an exciting and colorful life of affluence and adventure. She also never seemed to age.

Rumors in the family were that she sold her soul to some dark power in exchange for eternal youth and wealth. To everyone else, she was the black sheep and mostly shunned; to me, she was my favorite aunt with whom I spent most of my childhood summers because my parents couldn’t be bothered with their sixteen-year-old daughter, or was she seventeen? They neither knew nor cared.

Aunt Grace and I shared countless adventures together and she, alone, believed in me and told me that I was destined for greatness. She was also wealthy, somehow. Nobody knew where her fortune came from, but she never lacked for money. She inspired my love of great mysteries, fantasy, the occult, and taught me the Witches’ Cypher.

The Witches’ Cypher is a series of one hundred and seven symbols that represent a phoneme in the English language, a commonly-used word, or a numeral. The last symbol represents either side-notes or nothing; anything book-ended by a pair of the final symbol is just nonsense or a notation, depending on the context. The symbols are arbitrary and can be assigned any meaning; it is the order of the phonemes, words, and numerals that one must know. Once you know what symbol represents which phoneme, you can decipher the text.

While the ways of the witch and the workings of magic held mystery, romance, and appeal to me, the actual practice of such things didn’t take, except for living my life in a constantly repeating ritual. My adult life was an existence of mundane, boring ritual. It consisted of being ignored, reading, and masturbating. I’d wake up and masturbate, shower and masturbate, go to work at the bookstore I was employed at to be ignored by my coworkers and customers, come home and strip nude, masturbate more. Afterwards, I’d stay nude and either read romance or fantasy novels and masturbate while pretending I’m the heroine, or I’d watch television and masturbate while wishing I could lead a life like that. My invisible and mundane existence was the polar opposite of aunt Grace’s high hopes for me.

The only reprieve from my predictable, lonesome existence was Jeff’s girlfriends. He had two of them. I had occasionally seen them in the hallway but I knew them by the sounds of their voices. A couple of weeknights each week, the “Giggler” would stay at Jeff’s apartment next to mine. She would laugh and giggle quite a lot. I could hear them have sex, but she was quiet.

About every other weekend or so, the “Screamer” would stay over. I liked listening to her. She talked loud, cursed and swore prolifically, and was a foul-mouthed, dirty talker during sex. Our apartments were supposed to be soundproofed, but I could hear them plainly. When the “Screamer” was over, my nightly ritual changed from me reading and masturbating, wishing I was the heroine, to me finger-fucking myself with my ear pressed against the wall, wishing that somebody made me feel like that.

Where the “Giggler” was wholesome and cute, the “Screamer” was a veritable sex kitten, a true lust vixen. She was blond, outgoing, and always dressed for sex. She was also nice to me when we encountered each other. She never remembered me but she was nice. I found her to be incredibly sexy. When I masturbated to her high-volume sexual sessions, it was she that caused the wetness between my legs. The “Giggler” was hot but the “Screamer” was every man’s fantasy.

Life continued like that; lamentable. Aunt Grace was my only solace. As we played in my childhood, conversed in my youth, and I later joined her in rituals and learning spells in my teens, she would say things such as, “until I simply fade into the shadows,” and, “someday I’ll just disappear and never be heard from again. Won’t that please your parents?” The frequency of those comments bordered on an obsession with her.

But she and she alone noticed me, loved me, and felt that I would blossom into a Goddess on Earth. She inspired me to dream, to imagine what could be. She also instilled a desire to be special. I longed to be seen, to be noticed. My strongest, most burning desire was to be desired. Yes, I’d had sex before and I had an active and exciting sex life. The only problem was that I had nobody to share it with.

Over the years, Grace’s life of adventure led her farther and farther away; our communications suffered. Part of that was my own fault. I was so ashamed of my existence that I seldom contacted my favorite aunt. I didn’t want to lie to her and it seemed better to become mostly invisible to her than to disappoint the only person that ever believed in me. Our last communication was over Email a little more than a year ago. She had told me that she was headed to the Far East to seek knowledge and adventure.

It was a short communication. “There is one more tidbit of knowledge I need before I move beyond the veil. I’m heading to the Orient to find the final pieces. I won’t be reachable at the temples and may not return, only fade into the ether. Keep the faith and remember that you are powerful.”

It had been over a year when I received the news of her death. This is where my journey begins. My adult life of being ignored and masturbating was forever altered when aunt Grace finally went beyond the veil.

Word of her demise came in the form of a mysterious, sealed, large cardboard box and a letter. There were no return addresses but I recognized her handwriting. I had to sign a document on an important-sounding legal firm’s letterhead to acknowledge that I had received my inheritance. That was how I received word of my favorite relative’s and only friend’s death.

I interrupted my life-ritual that evening to cast a spell of remembrance; I was not a practicing witch but aunt Grace had taught me many such things. Afterwards I drowned my sorrows with one of her favorite wines, a Pinot Noir, and opened the letter. It read:

    Krys;

    If you are reading this I am either missing or dead; I knew this day would come. I have instructed my lawyers to deliver my most prized possessions to you in the event that I do not check in with them for more than one year and seven days.

    Of all my prior students, friends, and relatives, you, and you alone, possess the knowledge and power to achieve true happiness. You are also my favorite person on this Mother Earth. You may not believe it right now, but all of the games we played and the adventures we took in your youth were in preparation for this moment. I used to be exactly like you; my desire to live the fantasy life drove me to unravel the mysteries of magick and the universe.

    Sealed in the box are the secrets to my youth, my wealth, and my power. All things imaginable are possible if you have the key. You must simply decipher the secrets in my grimoires and lay yourself open to change with perfect faith and perfect acceptance. You know how.

    I shall see you beyond the veil
    Grace.

It was days before I could bring myself to open the box. If I didn’t open it, it wouldn’t be real; she’d still be alive, somewhere. A week later, though, I had resumed my typical pattern of stripping nude as soon as I got home and playing with myself while I yearned for a better life. After an amazing orgasm, spurred to even greater heights by the “Screamer” narrating her sexual endeavors from the apartment next door, I gave into temptation and opened the box.

The box contained lots of bric-a-brac such as ceremonial and ritual tools, a chalice and an Athame, and lots of books on magic, magick, and the occult. These were not the books found at the local New-Age Shoppe; they were serious books for serious practitioners.

Several of them were copies of hand-written notes from ceremonial magicians or practitioners of Thelema and other sorts of ritual-magic-oriented disciplines. There were books on demonology and the occult. There were books on Astral projection and lucid dreaming, as well as one on how to incorporate meditating on your desires into real magick rituals.

There were also many spell books, all geared towards using magick to harness your desires. They weren’t the standard fare for young Wiccans; they were real spells. They described the rituals, the energies, as well as the price. They included dark magic that would send H.P. Lovecraft into therapy as well as harmless and “white” magick. I also found two handwritten notebooks on how to dress and do one’s makeup to look sexy and witchy. I set those aside because I could use any help I could get to be noticed.

There were also various photos in a smaller box that she and I had decorated together in my childhood. The photos were all of her and me. I mused in reverie as I scanned through them all. I saw myself grow up in pictures but she remained almost exactly the same. Her style of dress, while always seductive and witchy, changed over the years. Her hair color and style changed along with her fashion, but her youthful appearance remained constant.

Another small box contained a sampling of aunt Grace’s prized Halloween and monster Pez dispensers. There were several witches, pumpkin heads, ghosts, and even a Count Dracula and Frankenstein dispenser. I smiled when I saw those. I loved them as a child and aunt Grace always had a supply of Pez candy on her person. Wrapped in clear plastic was my favorite one, the one I carried everywhere when I summered with her. It was an old astronaut dispenser. She had told me, “Krystal, this one is yours, forever, a reminder that you can and will reach the stars.”

At the very bottom of the box, wrapped in a simple purple linen altar cloth, I found what had to be her grimoires. They were hand-written in pen within simple, canvas-covered, unlined journal books. Her grimoires had no leather or skin covers, no mystic or magical symbols, almost no adornments at all. On the very bottom of each of the bindings was a symbol. The top book had a circle, the middle one a circle and a crescent moon pointed outward, and the final grimoire was decorated with two crescents and the circle, completing the triple-moon Goddess symbol. They were all in the Witches’ Cypher.

I scanned them intently, barely noting that as my mind focused decoding the mystery before me that my hand was idly stroking my pussy. I perused them all and was clueless to her key. Without the key I would have no way of knowing which symbol represented what sound or word. I set them aside and browsed the scores of other books.

I neither believed nor disbelieved in aunt Grace’s obsession with magick and the occult. I did, however, love the enticement of unraveling the mystery. It became my new, constant obsession. Rather than come home, strip nude, read or watch movies, and masturbate, I would come home, strip nude, try to decode Grace’s grimoires, and masturbate. I poured over the tomes, read the other books over and over, and fingered myself into countless orgasms. Nude and soaked between my legs, I’d fantasize over unlocking her secrets and attaining the life of my desires. I wanted to be wanted, appreciated, and lusted after, just like my aunt. I also wanted that carefree joy and seemingly infinite wealth of hers.

It was ultimately by accident that I stumbled upon the solution. The “Screamer” was spending the night at Jeff’s apartment and I had been dividing my time between stroking my clit while I studied the tomes and stroking my clit while I listened to her curse and beg and shout out sexual instructions and encouragement.

I had even pulled up a chair to the wall so I could hear better and had one of the other books laid out on a folding tray in front of me. My neighbor must have been doing something extra-pleasurable to her because she was louder and more passionate than usual. I was plunging my fingers inside of myself, imagining that I was the lucky recipient of his lusty attentions, and I timed my orgasm to match hers. I had propped one foot on the flimsy TV tray to allow access with both of my hands. The throes of my own orgasm caused the top of the tray to unlatch, and my leg, the tray top, and the book on intentional ritual plummeted down to the floor. I tried to maintain balance, but my body betrayed me and I flopped onto the floor with a loud crash, an odd mixture of contorted pain and exquisite pleasure. My neighbor and his banshee-wailing girlfriend didn’t notice or simply ignored me if they had.

Drawing myself up onto my knees as my orgasm subsided, I knelt down to replace the fallen items. I popped the tray top back into place and picked up the book by one corner. The opened pages faced me and I noticed, for the first time ever, a symbol from the cypher written, very small, deeply within the fold at the bottom of a page. It was inscribed so close to the binding that one had to push the pages down and apart to actually see it.

I was elated! I had discovered something! What it was, I didn’t know; it was something. Something was infinitely better than the prior months of nothing. I sprung up and ran to my desk, grabbing a pencil and some blank paper. All my prior notes succumbed to gravity and fell onto the floor; I didn’t care.

I scanned the book, page by page, pressing the curled sections near the binding down so forcefully I feared I’d break the binding. I discovered four symbols hidden away on the bottom edges of a few pages. I wrote down the name of the book, the symbols I had discovered, and the page numbers.

Many hours and orgasms later, I had found one hundred and seven symbols. They were scattered throughout most of the books. It was somehow the key, but how? I attempted to remember the orders the books had been placed in the box; that netted me nothing. I arranged the titles alphabetically, then by author, then by publication date; again, that netted me nothing. The solution was so simple that I almost overlooked it. The answer was in the page numbers. One of the symbols wasn’t on a numbered page but all of the others were placed in the margins on pages two through one hundred and seven. I had finally discovered aunt Grace’s key!

I was so elated that I ordered pizza and masturbated furiously until my food arrived. I quickly threw on a long, thin, white t-shirt, knowing that my nipples and red pubic hair could be seen through it, and answered the door. The handsome young delivery man promptly ignored my revealing lack of clothing and left as soon as he got my money. I was still so elated that I didn’t care that he ignored me.

I bathed, masturbated some more, and slept. I was awakened shortly after nightfall by the “Screamer” talking excitedly about the movie they were watching. I didn’t know the movie, but she was announcing how she’d just love for somebody to take her in a library like that. I cleaned myself up, not bothering to dress, and readied myself to begin the long process of decoding the cypher.

Dining on room temperature wine and cold pizza, I lazily caressed my pussy as I set about decoding what I assumed to be the first book, the one with only the full moon sigil on the binding. I slowly wrote down the phonemes by cross-referencing them with the key. Then I formed the shorthand into actual words.

“Swear you will follow the instructions,” was the first line. I swore.

“Translate each section until you reach a ‘null symbol’ STOP ‘null symbol’ then go no [farther] until you have mastered that section,” was the second line.

The ensuing lines were interesting to me. “The other task you are doing is your ritual,” and, “what you are wearing is your vestment.”

Then, “Choose the goddess of your desire and call upon her to fulfill your desires through your ritual until she appears. Lay yourself open to the universe; project your will through the magick until she appears. ’STOP’.

”It sounded silly to me but I felt that I understood. I did as I had learned to do from pouring over the other books and from what aunt Grace had taught me decades ago. From what I guessed, I was to be nude since that was my vestment and masturbating was my ritual for her grimoires. Aunt Grace had alluded to such things years ago; understanding had only come just then, in that moment.

“The ritual of true power is the ritual of one's self,” was something she’d said often.

I wanted the life my aunt had lived. I needed people to desire me the way the “Screamer” was being desired. I called upon Aphrodite, the representation of lust, love, sexuality, and beauty. I begged for eternal youth and wealth; I yearned to be wanted and desired. In short, I desired the life aunt Grace had led.

I masturbated, slowly at first, then with growing intensity. I blanked my mind and quelled every thought except for my burning desire for the things I wanted in life. I felt myself floating, drifting. The screams of ecstasy from the apartment next door fueled my lust and my desire to be desired. My fingers became a blur on my mons. Waves of orgasm washed over me, bringing a feeling of lucid peace along with them. Continuing on, I started anew and revived my efforts on my sex organs.

It is difficult to lay oneself open to the magick of the cosmos, while meditating, while masturbating, and while being assailed by the vocalizations of somebody having the best sex ever. The “ritual” continued until long after Jeff and the “Screamer” were finished. While concentrating on inviting my personal goddess, I finger fucked myself until I was sore, weak, and exhausted. Orgasm after orgasm washed through me, coursing with an odd feeling of energy and power. All the while I concentrated on youth, beauty, wealth, and being desirable. I reached the point of passing out and pushed myself into the black depths of my pleasure.

After I blacked out, I had the most insane, realistic dream. I was floating through the ether, wrapped in the warm embrace of the primal powers that formed the universe. Seeing without eyes and hearing without ears, I felt as if I were at the pinnacle of creation itself. The feeling that the answers to all of life’s questions were nearby was overwhelming; they seemed just beyond my keening. It was there that she came to me.

“I heard your calls in the ancient rites,” a soft, alluring, disembodied voice said to me gently from the void. “Speak your desires.”

In my dream, I spoke with authority, confidence, and unbridled hunger. “I desire to be eternally youthful and beautiful, wealthy, and desired by all.”

“Ye seek the power of the gods?” she asked with obvious mirth in her voice.

“Yes.”

“I grant unto you all that you seek, and more,” the voice said, booming through all of creation. “As the blood of your blood served me before, so shall ye serve me by living the life that symbolizes my virtues. So mote it be.”

Then I was falling through the endless void, through eternity itself. I felt the powers of the universe course through me until they were a natural part of me. Then the void consumed me as if I were dead and had blinked out of existence.

An endless litany of dreams assailed my slumber. They were not fanciful dreams; they were not my usual nightmares of being truly invisible and overlooked by all. In these dreams, it was my idealized version of my life. People noticed me, men wanted me, women desired me, and I was fulfilled, happy, and satisfied. My destiny was in my control; I merely had to desire it and take the proper steps. Somehow, what those steps might be came to me instinctively.

I awoke feeling happy for the first time in many years. “I’ve contacted my Goddess,” I said aloud to aunt Grace, wherever she may be.

I brushed out my long, red hair and threw on a simple frock of a dress, intending on getting some breakfast. I noted how bright my smile was for the first time. I ventured out to the local café and ordered a to-go breakfast. I was crestfallen when the cute cashier barely noticed me. She only extended the minimum acknowledgement to take my order and money.

I ran back to my apartment, fighting back tears of disappointment. It hadn’t worked! Jeff and the “Screamer” were having their morning sex and I could hear them in the hallway. I masturbated to the screams of their sex before I set about translating the next bit. My breakfast grew cold as I discovered that one orgasm didn’t stave off my own lust; I needed four.

The next section held my answer. “Repeat the previous ritual in your vestment using the ‘Lucid Meditation’ instructions in the Thelemic book until the goddess manifest while you are conscious ‘STOP’.

”After the “STOP” there were also some notes. “The gods may appear in your dreams, but they must appear while you are awake. Open yourself to their power and let them flow through you. You are the lens and the vessel.”

Night after night, I repeated the ritual, each time laying myself open to the powers of the divine that we call magick. Night after night, I had the recurring dream of Aphrodite coming to me as a disembodied voice that washed over me with lust, power, and passion. Each and every night, I’d have recurring dreams of the life of my desires. My logical self, embedded in reality, told me that I was hoping for magic where none exists. My emotional self, that which desired to be visible and worthy of attention, held onto the strings of fantasy and hope.

Two things happened to me. I slowly, imperceptibly crossed the line from disbelief towards belief. My desires grew into an incessant need and I began to throw myself totally into my nightly rituals without hesitation, doubt, or fear. My libido also increased exponentially. Somehow my focus on others strayed from worrying that they might not see me or might hate me to me wondering if I’d like sex with them. Masturbation, lust, desire, and yearning became a constant state.

It was during a full moon on a Saturday night that I finally broke through my barriers of self. Until that moment, I had honestly thought that I had been letting go and focusing on the ritual and manifesting the goddess of my life’s desires. I had been masturbating to The “Screamer” and my neighbor having a marathon session, feeling the power of my own will coursing through me, and had moved beyond masturbating into one orgasm after another. I had passed the point of sequence and my existence became one infinitely extended orgasm.

All of existence fell away and I was just my lust, my desire, and my pleasure accompanied only by the screams and moans of the action occurring next door. In that moment, all of myself, except for my desires, was stripped from me. That is when She came.

She appeared to me as a vision of human beauty so intense I couldn’t look at her without feeling desire. Her form was exquisite; perfection with perfect breasts and erect nipples. Her curves were stunning and her body exuded power and desire. Her hair was red, matching mine, and her eyes sparkled with vibrant hues of green.

Her face was a masterpiece of beauty, filling my ideals of perfection. Her plump lips parted to show a perfectly seductive smile. She was topless and wearing only a diaphanous, flowing, long skirt, split on either side up to the waist. She didn’t glow; there was no music; she was not accompanied by a chorus of divine beings.

She appeared as a dreamlike vision, incorporeal but yet completely solid. It was as if she was connected to my plane through some unknown magick. Her visage was a mask of lust, desire, empathy, power, and an almost melancholy sadness.

“You have proven yourself able and worthy of my blessings,” she said to me. Her voice cascaded over me as if a thousand tongues were pleasuring me at once.

“All that you desire is yours, but you must tribute me through acts of pleasures of the flesh. All that you give shall be returned to you times three; now take my power into you and feel the rapture of my chosen.”

She pursed her lips and blew me a kiss that came to me like a chilled wind of pleasure. My entire essence erupted into euphoric ecstasy. The pleasure was too much for my mortal coil and I “died” there in the void, succumbing to the pleasures of divine lust and passion. My entire soul screamed out in delight. I knew that I was dying but didn’t care; I embraced my fate as wantonly as I’d ever embraced anything. Then I felt nothingness, then nothing at all. After that, blackness consumed me.

I awoke mid-orgasm, startled at how amazing it felt. I had no clue as to how long I had slept but it was still pitch black through the window. Somehow I felt totally refreshed, as well as ravenous. I raised myself from my prone position on the floor and was astounded over how energetic I felt. The manifestation appeared in my mind and I shunted it aside as just another dream. However, I felt different; I didn’t feel like my normal self, but more akin to an idealized version of myself.

When I looked in the bathroom mirror to brush out my hair, I was, again, hit with the feeling that I was still myself, but somehow altered. It was still my face, my moss-green eyes, my orange-red hair, and my nude body looking still shapely and youthful. It was still all me but somehow a heightened me. I threw on my simple, solid dress, not bothering with undergarments because nobody would notice me, anyway.

I listened to the “Screamer” and Jeff in the apartment next door. They were having a post-coitus loud conversation which I knew would lead to more sex. I laughed at their distant voices as I headed out the door. The clock read 2:17 AM. The night was cool and clear and the full moon lit the way to the closest restaurant that was still open. I felt reborn.