The Myths, The Legends, A Man
written for www.insidewrestling.com, by Jennifer The cafe we've arranged the meeting at has all but emptied He strides in a fashionable twenty minutes late, striding We sit down, and his smile doesn't fade anywhere, but 'As they say here.' Another measure of distance from the His expression hardly even flinches, and he laughs. ”It is a Carcer is being obtuse on purpose, or at least that is the Carcer punctuates his story with another sip of his coffee His words sound sincere, or as sincere as he can make them, Carcer speaks cryptic, but it must strike a resonance As I ponder my next question, Carcer begins to move Carcer's posture slumps a bit, a heavy sigh escaping his I'm not even aware of a moment's passing, but suddenly He refuses to speak any more until we are out of the cafe. --- As we move through Washington Park, he opens up a bit. His I try to ask him about the Wendehorn-rune he has sometimes It takes a good while to coax him back into a talkative He tells me he has been fighting professionally for “six or The question about the Wendehorn led nowhere, but when I ask A step, two, three, pass in silence. “I am an act of rebellion, in a sea of motion.” I ponder upon his latest words, when I suddenly find that As he departs towards the shining sun, I am only left
Bocadillo
since the morning rush. I'm looking back and forth from my
watch to my laptop and then to the main door of the café,
while getting lazily harassed about the subject of more
coffee. I've tried the cellphone number I was given about
ten minutes ago: nobody answered me there. Grudgingly, I
accept another cup.
through the door swiftly. Almost immediately he notices me
and walks through the room with a brisk pace as the bell
above the door rings behind him. I rise out of my chair to
greet him and get my first proper look. At a first glance,
he looks impeccable. His dark grey suit is clean and well-
pressed, and one can't help but notice the golden cuff links
glinting in his sleeves. His face is lit up with a smile,
though the sunglasses do a good job of covering his eyes up.
However, his rush is apparent from the smallest of hints:
the handshake is clammy, and the top of his bald head has a
shine rivaling his leather shoes. He apologizes twice, once
when we shake hands and a second time when I let slip that
his cologne seems to be a bit strong. He's coming from the
gym, he says: that's why he's late.
neither do his sunglasses: making eye contact is impossible.
I ask if he has been training hard for the upcoming All
Summer Long event as I set up my laptop. ”I always train
hard”, replies Jonathan Carcer, ”Why would you bother with
the effort if you half-assed it, as they say here?”
German native, whose voice has only a slight hint of accent.
At times, I am quite sure he varies it on purpose, letting
it grow thicker or getting rid of it as he pleases. The
sensation of being watched and observed never leaves me.
This is Jonathan Carcer, magician extraordinaire and a
touted addition to the Atlantic Wrestling Club roster. It is
hard to imagine the link between this modern man and what he
espouses. He rubs his hands as a cup of coffee gets placed
before him, expectant. I decide to go straight to the
source: can you do magic, Mr. Carcer?
hard question to answer, especially if the person asking it
isn't even sure of what they are actually asking”, he fires
back, deadpan, as if expecting me to buy the whole load by
itself. He raises his hands, interrupting my follow-up
before I have gotten hardly a word out. ”Let me explain...
If you expect me to fly, or to explode my adversaries with
gouts of flame from my hands and bolts of lightning out of
my ass, then you are sadly mistaken. That is idle fantasy.
But if you ask me if I can read the prayers of Enuma-Elish
to Marduk, or say the dead-words for a warrior of Wotan, or
cast the stones for luck? Sure. Truly, few and far are the
men that actually can, these days.”
impression. He sips coffee while I write down his words,
seemingly content at how things have been going so far. I
decide to press further: what of infamous magicians like
Alestier Crowley? Carcer puts down his cup, rubbing his
temples. His smile dies down. I brace for a heavy-handed
response. ”Crowley... Well, Crowley had his thelemic magic.
Practitioners of voudoun, on the other hand...” He stops,
looking down at the table. A tad too theatrical, too
calculating, if you ask me. ”Look. The best way I can
answer, is an anecdote of Aleister Crowley. He was asked the
very same question at one point in his life: can you do
magic? Show me magic. Cast some spells. And Crowley was
silent, until he started walking down the street, and picked
a man from the crowd, entirely at random.”
and a smack of his lips. ”Ahh... So, Crowley began to follow
this man, matching the man's walk step by step. When his
right leg moved, so did Crowley's, and likewise on the left
side. He became the man's shadow. And after a while, Crowley
deliberately stumbled: and the man fell over.” Smile returns
to Carcer's face, as if he had described some great victory.
”That, my dear lady, is magic. I could rant and rave on the
different disciplines, and the rituals, and everything else
until the dawn became the dusk and the sun died down: but
put simply, magic is about affecting people. That is the
plainest truth it can be expressed in, the smallest it will
contort into.”
and he lightens the mood with yet another laugh before I can
ask the next question. ”Look, it is not magic that should
ever be held as the one and only cause for anything. When I
fight, and win, it is because of this and this”, Carcer
clenches his right hand into a fist and points at it, then
at his own head, ”and not because of the words of praise
that Týr heard this morning emanating from my mouth.
Relentless training, relentless preparation, that is what
you need to succeed in anything. But when push comes to
shove and there are two who are otherwise identical... Who
would you wager on? The one with the gods on their side, or
the one without? Magic is belief,” Carcer says, stirring his
half-drunk coffee vigorously, ”and belief is magic. What use
are spells if you yourself do not expect anything to happen?
What good are the spirits and the fey if you cannot see them
out of the corner of your mind's eye?”
somewhere. After all, these are things we've heard from our
grandparents and they from their own grandparents. The
superstitions of black cats and walking under ladders. But
how can a man turn it all into a lifestyle? If all that
there is is belief, then why is Carcer such an oddity
amongst it all? ”It is about perception”, he states, finally
removing his sunglasses. His eyes sparkle green and brown,
and his smile dies down. ”For example, what would your
reaction be if I told you that some of the most powerful
incantations are held by the followers of Jesus Christ?
You'd probably laugh. But 'Our father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name'... That is one of the most wide-
spread, most written-down spells of all time. And multitudes
believe it, with all their hearts and minds. Compared to it,
whatever I could conjure would be bush league. At best. I
merely wish to preserve and spread those creeds that would
otherwise be forgotten: to offer the same power from the
sources that we almost forgot already.”
uneasily, shifting his eyes to both his wristwatch and the
clock on the wall of the cafe. After all those words, he
does say very little. I type as fast as I can, but
apparently it is not enough: he asks if we could leave and
finish the interview during a walk. I oblige by finishing my
coffee, and then snap back: show me some magic. Back up your
talk.
lips. His eyes close, for a moment, and then they open
again, staring straight at me. ”The old man the boat.”
Carcer is holding me by the wrist, gently. His fingers
barely brush against my jacket, but they are still there.
Slowly, he lowers himself back into his seat and apologizes.
”It is a simple, grammatically correct phrase that
nevertheless makes you stop and think. Your brain forces
itself to go back and re-interpret the meaning of the
sentence. And in that space is where I move, where my craft
thrives. Like I said: affecting people.”
parents were German, of course, and he tells me they were
the reason for his introduction into the occult (a word he
lets slip by his lips only after a careful minute of
coaxing). He is skittish with any other personal information
of his parents: merely stating that his father has been
buried in Hamburg for several years now, and that his mother
is doing fine, thank you very much. He stresses again that
he doesn't wish for the interview to end: rather, it is
merely his work schedule that keeps him busy.
painted on his forehead according to some tapes of his
fights I have seen, and its usage in nationalist or Neo-Nazi
occultism. He refuses to speak and looks irritated, his brow
furrowing deeply and his eyes shining with emotion.
mood. As joggers, dog-walkers and the elderly pass us by on
the gravel road leading through the verdant scenery, I once
again think how much of this silent treatment is him
actually being offended and how much of it is him acting
like he is offended. I am being horrible, I freely admit:
but I want to claim some eccentricity to myself, and not let
him dominate it all. His personal history, especially in his
current field, seems to open him up a bit: through tight
lips, he lets me know that the way of the warrior was pretty
much the only choice for him. He regales me with tales of
summers spent not with schoolbooks but with occult tomes: of
long afternoons spent practicing chanting and figure-drawing
instead of playing outside. It does not dawn on me how this
would translate into a fighting career, but Carcer feels
like being helpful for a change: he says it was all he could
do after a youth spent wrong. “It was a surprise for me that
fighting was so natural, that hurting a fellow human being
would feel so made for me. But those are the secrets and
surprises of the universe that we all treasure so, are they
not?”
seven or eight years; who keeps count?” Any questions on
whether this had anything to do with his parents are deftly
cast aside. “I fight because it has been all the good I have
been able to implement myself for. Through fighting, I can
express the deeper, more personal subjects. I can express my
beliefs and my wants, my insecurities and my needs. All held
within the art of punching someone in the face really damn
hard.” He laughs again. I begin to doubt he has ever laughed
or smiled sincerely.
him of his diamond-shaped Carcer symbol, his face lights up.
“It is a very deep part of my core beliefs,” Carcer says as
we walk past a duck pond, “in all that it represents. In
geomantic reading, Carcer means 'the prison'. It's a symbol
of stability, of refusal to change. And that is what I am,
almost literally. An atavist who clings to outdated
practices and beliefs. But I do not wish to see it as such
a... Conservative sign. My interpretation?”
the ground isn't where my foot expected it to be. I begin to
fall forward, and suddenly I find myself within the arms of
Jonathan Carcer, his body tensing against mine to keep me
from falling down. I am flustered, and blushing: and for the
first time in a good while, Carcer is smiling again. He
stands me up, reminds me to “watch my step”, and pulls on
his sunglasses. So sorry, he says. A gym appointment, he
says. Does not want to be late for All Summer Long, he says.
thinking: how long was it since I last heard Carcer's
footsteps and my own as separate?
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