9 The Grind: The Satan Seller pp. 28-35

 Mike has now been inducted into SATANISM! and he licked his lips which is supposed to mean that he’s totally evil now. However, what does it actually mean to be in SATANISM? Well, it sounds like a lot of work to be honest.

Our section begins with one of Mike’s lies, “or holding one of my grassy conferences with guys and chicks…” on the college campus. This is a lie because on page 25 (of the PDF) page 38 of the text, he told us that he growled too much at them and he was left talking to himself under a tree.

Dean Anderson has been giving Warnke more tasks to accomplish, which we assume has been more drug dealing and these tasks, “came at the hours of darkness.” Just say “night,” it’s less annoying.

Warnke has ambition and he wants Anderson’s position this means he has to study “Witchcraft and magic.” Here’s where we could use more information: like the titles of the books he’s getting from the library. I have many questions: but more pressing is what does it mean to say you study witchcraft? I ask, not to be snarky, well a little of that; but because other than history books or some “New Age” stuff which isn’t that great: I don’t know what he could be reading. I’m actually impressed that he does the reading instead of telling us, like he has been, that he just figured it all out on his own because he’s so so smart.

We get a long section where he meets “Teresa,” a “trim red head”—a description that we do not need to know, but she is going to instruct him on some more advanced witchery. She warns Mike that he needs to take it seriously because “any levity or disrespect during the actual ceremonies is liable to have demons down on our necks.”

Literal demons. Teresa has a scar near her ear from an actual demon attack. Instead of dropping everything they are talking about and focusing on a literal demon; we get some potion making.

One thing we have to keep in mind when reading this book is that any explanation of the reality of demons, magic, Satan, etc. is just taken for granted. This is a fallacy that we call “special pleading” magic is a real power granted by Satan to his followers, everything else will follow from that. Think of the Iron Man movies, if you suspend your judgment about the arc reactor everything else makes sense.

Iron Man is fiction and this is pretending to be real. As a real thing we should focus more on what a literal demon is like, but we don’t because Warnke’s intended audience is not going to question this.

Teresa has plenty of “witchcraft items” in her apartment. So much that Mike tells us that she had a perfect “front” and that any straight friends wouldn’t even know she was a real witch. I’m pretty sure I dated one of these girls and they don’t hide it, because they don’t need to. Anyone going over to this woman’s house knows she’s got some silver cups and a tarot deck somewhere. What Mike is doing here is trying to spread paranoia about single women in their homes. Anyone could be a witch which is why you never see one. They are all hidden. I’m surprised we aren’t told that she has a cat.

Teresa is going to make a magic potion. We get a description of her measuring, grinding, and mixing the ingredients when Mike thinks, “Maybe if I sprinkled a little pot on the spoon,’ I suggested, ‘it would magnify the effects.”

This tracks. I call it “pot logic;” the cannabis enthusiast thinks that everything can be improved by their completely non-addictive drug (I know it’s not physically addictive).

Teresa scolds him. Everything needs to be precise and just sprinkling some weed on it is not only not going to help but is going to make everything worse. It could even cause a demon attack and we don’t want that.

I have to admit that Teresa’s reaction is interesting in that it makes this absurd notion a little more real. That there has to be rules to this makes sense. Not just anyone can make a wishing potion, or everyone would do it all of the time. Teresa’s whole wish potion making display is for Mike, to convince him that this is real and not just pretend. I don’t like this part, because he’s already been convinced. He’s acting skeptical but this kind of thing belongs before his initiation ceremony not after.

The ceremony ends and Teresa tells him to make his wish. So, what does he wish for? To make Teresa fall on the floor and beg Mike to have sex with her, he’s such a skeeze. There’s actually a good scene where she reacts to being controlled with anger and disappointment in Mike. Mike surprisingly shows regret and doesn’t mind control rape her. This little section, I have to repeat, would be better if it came earlier. If this was how he was roped into SATANISM the story would be better. Instead, we have another scene where he gets convinced that Satanism is real.

Mike goes home and gets woken up by Anderson in his house. Anderson chides him for sleeping when he, “ought to be out hustling.” Those drugs aren’t going to sell themselves; he’s got to be out on the corner. Anderson tells him that someone named Bill provided him with a fake ID saying that he’s 21 so there’s no reason he can’t be out in the bar selling drugs.

There is a phenomenon with this world where they don’t quite understand how the world works because they’re so afraid of it. Remember when Mike was buying marijuana at a “buck a load”? Here’s another one. Mike doesn’t need to be 21. He’s in California, the drinking age in that state would not be 21 until 1986 and this scene is supposed to be taking place in the 60s. Anderson tells him to go to “Bluebeard’s” the hangout bar for all the guys “who just recently turned 21.”

Mike is hooked up with a woman named Melanie. They engage in what we call a “honey trap.” Melanie, a self-described “nympho” which is Mike’s idea of a woman who likes to have sex and not someone with a psychological condition. They find lonely guys at the bar, Mike tells him about a girl who is “with it,” and he takes the guy back to her apartment. Maybe the 60s were different, but I cannot imagine going along with this. “You know a girl that wants to have sex, and you’ll take me to her place?” The only reasonable assumption is that Warnke is a pimp because the other option is that this is going to be a devil’s threesome. Slowly, they take the guy back to Melanie, where Warnke looks at records or reads a magazine while they have sex and introduce the mark to the fact that Melanie is a witch. This is how they think Big Satan recruits men. Ok, maybe this would work on the incel community but how do they recruit the women? Obviously you don’t send Mike Warnke to recruit women because they’d just fall so hopelessly in love with him.

The chapter ends with Anderson breaking into Warnke’s house to inform Mike that he’s taking his place, while Anderson is going to Mississippi for a promotion. We learn a few things, the first is that Warnke has been having nightmares, so he got himself a night light. The second thing is that Anderson tells him, “You don’t have to make no more deliveries, I reckon.”

“I reckon,” Mike tells us that he must be practicing his Southern drawl, but ‘reckon’ is an old West cattle farmer expression. Not evidence of a Southern drawl. I’m beginning to wonder if Mike knows anything about anything. The final thing we learn is that Warnke can have whatever he wants, whenever he wants, as long as he puts an order in. They might even give him a second apartment, instead of a house, or perhaps the giant mansion they hold their orgy meetings in.

Mike ends the chapter telling us that, “I was under a spell.” I don’t, however, know what that means. The problem is that I think he’s using it metaphorically, but he can’t do that when there are literal magic spells.