Lavinia, Into Mexico
A New Short Story in an Ongoing Series of Mysterious and Powerful Women Who Vanished
Check out Benjamin’s previous short fiction published at God of the Desert Books, “Miranda, on a Night of Rain,” and also listen to this podcast for Editor-In-Chief David Swindle’s discussion of Benjamin’s nonfiction writings.
Lavinia Denmer was from the ‘60s. She emerged fully formed out of the tie-dye and love beads, Haight-Ashbury and LSD, the out-of-tune meanderings of Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane, the great messianic frenzy fueled by media spectacle. Today, her generation seems laughable to us. We find its music unlistenable, its dances absurd, its ideals infantile, and its moral reverberations horrific. But proper respect must be paid. They lived with technicolor vibrance; so unlike our own desaturated existence. It may be this — our knowledge of how much fun they had and how beautiful they sometimes were — that makes us hate them, and take shameful pleasure in their aged misery and ugliness.
Lavinia will always be defined by her association with Markos Caledanian — Harvard professor, psychonaut, entheogenisist, theoretician of the cosmic psychosphere, seeker after the manifestation of the gnosis, and pontifex of the Circle. It took time, however, for the nature of that association to be understood. It only became clear with the revelation that it was Lavinia who authored the Great Work, and it was the struggle to reveal this secret that transformed the memory of Lavinia into an obsession.
We do not know how, why, or from where Lavinia Denmer came to San Francisco. She told so many stories that it is impossible to know which, if any, were true. At various times, she was a former cheerleader from a small town in Nebraska, an army brat born in a nudist colony, the daughter of a professional gambler, a housewife who abandoned domesticity to follow her bliss, a one-time striptease artist from Texas... there are too many for a comprehensive list and too few to fill an encyclopedia; and as you may have guessed, it is probable that Lavinia Denmer was not her real name.
She was not one of the expectant runaways or scenesters who flooded San Francisco when flower power hit the airwaves. There are indications that Lavinia was in the city as early as 1965. There is a reference in the unpublished diaries of Timothy Leary to a certain “Lavinia” with whom he had an assignation after a lecture at UC San Francisco in February 1965. His description of her corresponds with our Lavinia. Given that Leary is dead, however, and Lavinia vanished, this cannot be confirmed.
By 1966, Lavinia was a resident of Haight-Ashbury and well-ensconced in the neighborhood’s burgeoning counterculture. Her apartment on Masonic Ave., near what would become famous as the “Grateful Dead House,” was already a meeting place for all manner of soon-to-be luminaries. They included members of the Dead, Allen Ginsberg, Michelle Phillips, Grace Slick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the absurd jester Wavy Gravy, and Leary himself. There were rumors that Hunter S. Thompson visited, but if he did, he never wrote about it. Besides playing hostess, Lavinia conducted regular classes in yoga, astral projection, crystal healing, and meditation techniques. She was also known to possess the most potent LSD in the city, which she distributed on a non-profit basis. No one seemed to know where she got it. On the street and in private, people began to speak simply of “Lavinia,” without surname or title.
There were also rumors, as there always are with women, of witchcraft. Eldritch rituals, it was said, were being carried out at the Masonic Ave. house. They involved secret “initiations” of the local virgins — such as still existed — and in the wilder stories, the drinking of the blood of the deflowered and the emissions of overexcited young boys. The purpose of these supposed rituals was never made clear. But such tales have been told about the odd, the idiosyncratic, and the heretical for centuries. Lavinia’s modest gatherings likely involved nothing more than the standard sex and drugs, and probably more of the latter than the former.
It was at these gatherings that Lavinia first met and befriended Maria Benvenides and Victoria Alyn. They, along with Lavinia, would eventually form the “Triad” that was to play such an important role in the drama to come. How and when they met has never been precisely determined. By mid-1966, all three women were definitely present at Lavinia’s nightly gatherings, which were now being referred to in the Haight as “séances.”
Maria brought the money. A daughter of Mexico’s pure-blood European upper class, she had inherited a substantial fortune when her father, a prominent businessman, was murdered in what many believed to be a political assassination. With her help, the séances came up in the world, as guests found that a plethora of exotic substances — not just LSD — were suddenly available as a result of Maria’s largesse.
Victoria was one of the East Coast transplants who came to join the ongoing bacchanal. She was above all heartbreakingly beautiful. In her native Manhattan, she had worked as a model, with only marginal success. But here, among the unkempt, her cascading black hair and mannequin- pale skin created a luminous presence that drew an endless stream of smitten men and women into Lavinia’s orbit.
Near the end of the famous film of the Monterey Pop Festival, the three women can be seen in the second row of spectators, barely a few feet from the likes of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Mama Cass Elliot. There is an eerie quality to the image: Maria and Victoria gaze at the stage with mesmerized and intoxicated expressions on their faces. But Lavinia simply stares, her eyes set and completely without affect. Her brow furrowed as if possessed of some great and terrible purpose. Here, one thinks, is a woman who will not be content to watch. And what was she watching in that moment? Perhaps it was something that had been waiting for her and her alone for a very long time.
Yet we must remember that Lavinia was still a woman. Despite its pretentions, the hierarchy of Aquarius was the same as its predecessors: wholly masculine. Lavinia was a pragmatist, and must have known that, to fulfil her destiny, she would need a man. This may be why she waited. As the Summer of Love erupted with volcanic force, Lavinia did no more than continue the Masonic Ave. séances, even as the streets of the Haight swelled to breaking point.
Then she met Markos Caledanian. We do not know precisely where and when. It may have been at his famous teach-ins at UC Berkeley or the private seminars he held in the San Francisco area. It is probable that she sought him out. Caledanian was beloved by the Aquarian community, but he was not of it, so a coincidental meeting between the two is unlikely. And Lavinia was a cynic in the classic sense. She understood the need for decisive action.
She could not have chosen a more auspicious benefactor. By then, the former professor of theoretical physics had established himself as one of the most radical and notorious scholars in the United States. Scion of a long line of Boston Brahmins, Markos Caledanian was born Edmund Tremont of the Beacon Hill Tremonts. He displayed all the qualities of a prodigy in his youth, and at Harvard University, he became the object of fascination — and derision — for his genius and charismatic personality. For a time, he was considered the only potential rival to Richard Feynman.
That changed in the mid-1960s, when Tremont began to quietly formulate his theory of the “cosmic psychosphere.” Tremont proposed that all human phenomena — including art, religion, sex, love, creativity, and the vital principle itself — could be quantified via a series of equations. These equations proved that all matter is thought; and all thought, matter. Thus, the individual psyche is simply a pleroma of the collective matter/energy of the universe — the cosmic psychosphere. With appropriate inducements, direct communion with the psychosphere could be achieved; and with it, enlightenment.
This was fertile ground for theological speculation. But Tremont took it in another direction. He embraced the use of psychotropic and psychedelic substances — then not quite illegal — with great enthusiasm, declaring them miraculous instruments that allowed any man, however spiritually underdeveloped, to achieve communion with the psychosphere.
For a time, Tremont was able to pursue this theory in relative peace, as Harvard’s psychology department was just credulous enough to indulge him with a small grant. He was not alone in his speculations, and maintained intimate contact with prominent psychonauts. He did unspecified field research with Leary and participated in John C. Lilly’s early experiments with sensory deprivation tanks. He was also keen on self-experimentation, at one point reportedly taking one LSD trip per day for two solid months.
It is remarkable that Tremont retained his position at Harvard for as long as he did. He kept a lower profile than Lilly and Leary, which saved him from dismissal for a time, but in 1966 he was asked to resign. He did so without protest, and declared that he preferred to function as an independent researcher, unfettered by the drudgery of academia. He had already acquired some renown as a dynamic lecturer, and began to make the rounds of various campuses. Before long, he had built a reputation in the counterculture and new age movements; which, one imagines, is what drew Lavinia to him.
In mid-1967, Tremont began to attend the Madison Ave. séances. Soon, other participants began to notice that Lavinia was reorganizing the events. Once random and chaotic, they now took on a definite structure. Stranger still, Lavinia began to interrogate each participant about their experience, albeit in the subtlest way possible. Tremont was always nearby while she did so. He never spoke, but paid close attention. A few of the more clear-minded attendees began to refer to themselves as “Lavinia’s lab rats,” which was a good description of what they were. Lavinia and Tremont were conducting research.
Edmund Tremont then became Markos Caledanian. The new name was almost certainly given to him by Lavinia, and the reason for it is obvious: who could imagine an Edmund Tremont at the heart of a counterculture that rejected everything represented by that name? “Edmund” was too archaic and too aristocratic; while “Tremont” was redolent of the WASP establishment. He had no choice but to change it.
Why “Markos Caledanian” was chosen is another matter. Neither he nor Lavinia ever gave any hint as to its origins, but it was an inspired choice, a tribute to Lavinia’s genius: “Markos,” related to “Mark”; and “Caledanian,” which evokes words like “Caledonia,” “Catalan,” and “Caliban”; were both familiar and unfamiliar, so as to create the sense of the uncanny that people often find tantalizing. They gave the former Edmund Tremont an aura of the alien, strange, and fascinating in a milieu that was determined to be all three.
In late 1967, as the Summer of Love gave way to the autumn chill, Markos moved into the Masonic Ave. house, which was then purchased outright with Maria’s inheritance. Above the front door hung a small shingle emblazoned with the words “The Circle” in psychedelic lettering. Markos took up residence on the second floor, with Maria and Victoria installed in two of the downstairs bedrooms. Lavinia chose a more ascetic option. She sequestered herself in an attic garret, which she transformed into a sanctum that few ever visited. Within, nestled behind the widow’s walk with its ancient bay windows, Lavinia made herself over as a species of dowager princess, presiding over the fate of a strange kingdom.
For a time, nothing unusual happened. The nightly séances continued; the Madison Ave. house remained open to all; the drugs were still plentiful; luminaries like Peter and Jane Fonda, Janis Joplin, Dennis Hopper, and others flitted in and out; and Lavinia and Markos continued to collect their data. In early 1968, their efforts bore fruit, when the manuscript of Markos’ magnum opus Dimensions of Experience began making the rounds of the New York publishing houses. Months before publication, word was out that it was a masterpiece, a document that captured the spirit of the age. It was not Bob Dylan or the Beatles, but Markos Caledanian who was the “voice of a generation.” Aided by these rumors and Knopf’s diligent marketing, the book debuted in late 1968 to a rapturous reception, including a rave in the New York Times, extensive excerpts in the New Yorker, and sales of over a million copies.
Suddenly, the cosmic psychosphere was all anybody talked about. The book was discussed in hippie squats and at high society cocktail parties. Markos made television and radio appearances, including an infamous interview with Johnny Carson during which he was clearly intoxicated. Prominent literary figures like Norman Mailer and Joan Didion sang his praises. But the book was a hit on main street as well, to such an extent that Life magazine devoted an early 1969 photo spread to suburban “psychosphere parties,” in which housewives and stolid professionals would gather to discuss the book and its lessons. They even, it was rumored, experimented with the substances Markos recommended.
Ordinary people did not just read the book; they loved it. It made them feel better. There were understandable reasons for this. Its optimistic message came in the wake of the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, the riots that followed, and the ongoing Vietnam War. The nation wanted a way to transcend this terrible world, and Markos gave it to them.
There were a few readers, however, who were familiar with Markos’ previous work, and to them, there was something vaguely anomalous about Dimensions of Experience, which they could not quite put their finger on. There were also a handful of independent researchers, journalists, and critics who were intrigued by the origins of this new publishing phenomenon. So, both groups began to crawl back through Markos’ published writings, in search of they knew not what. There wasn’t much to go on: some academic papers laden with jargon and equations, a half-dozen or so articles written for the popular press, and a slim volume on the Heisenberg principle published by Harvard. But these self-appointed skeptics were stubborn, thorough, and diligent — most of them had little better to do — and they immersed themselves in Markosiana until there were no sources left to mine.
No one at the time was interested, but almost to a man, they came to the same conclusion: It was highly unlikely that Markos Caledanian had written most or all of Dimensions of Experience. They pointed out that Edmund Tremont, whatever else he may have been, was a pedantic and boring writer. He had no gift for the vernacular, and possessed a vocabulary so vast and specialized that his work was almost incomprehensible. Of course, this was par for the course for academic papers. But, the skeptics argued, it was also the case with his popular articles. Despite the best efforts of editors, they were as dry and dreary as his scholarly work.
Tremont appeared to have no talent whatsoever for retaining, let alone enthralling, the reader. Could he have changed so much by simply becoming Markos Caledanian? For Markos Caledanian was nothing if not enthralling, whatever one thought of his theories.
There was also the language of the book. The author was in total command of the idioms of the counterculture, and this was deep knowledge. He did not employ the pseudo-slang already familiar to the nation via television, but a patois that forced the publishers to add a glossary to all printed editions. Indeed, this became the object of much derision on the part of the counterculture itself, which sometimes called Dimensions of Experience “a book for tourists.” The skeptics eventually concluded that, while Markos was a genius, it was unlikely that you could take the Brahmin out of the boy. No one who had lived as sheltered and rarified a life as Edmund Tremont could, in a few short months, have acquired a new dialect of English.
The book’s content was also at issue. In particular, the concept of the “manifestation of the gnosis.” The book claimed that communion with the psychosphere led not just to inner enlightenment, but specific changes in the physical world. Gnosis, the book implied, could cure cancer, render nuclear weapons inert, increase the quality of orgasms, and even raise the dead. It went so far as to theorize that the resurrection of Jesus may have been achieved by such a manifestation. The book further argued that certain specific techniques to achieve gnosis had existed throughout human history, and lay behind ancient and medieval forms of practical magic. The witch-cult of Europe, for example, was an entire religion founded, all unknowing, upon this principle.
This, the skeptics felt, was a step too far for Edmund Tremont, even in the guise of Markos Caledanian. Tremont was eccentric, but he was also a trained physicist. He had never previously suggested that the psychosphere was anything other than a spiritual phenomenon. It impacted the human soul, but not the physical world. Nor had Tremont even hinted that a “gnosis” or any other form of communion with the psychosphere could suspend the physical laws of the universe. Heavy use of psychedelics can change a man, but the skeptics did not believe it could change him that much or that quickly. In less than a year, Markos Caledanian had dispensed with Edmund Tremont’s most deeply held belief. Such a catastrophic metamorphosis seemed, at best, unlikely.
The skeptics thus began to cast about for a more suitable author. Initially, suspicion fell upon Markos’ closest colleagues. For some time, the skeptics were convinced that the author had to be either Leary or the dolphin-obsessed Lilly. Ram Dass was also considered a strong candidate. There were even those who suggested William S. Burroughs. But in the end, these possibilities were all rejected. There was first of all the philological problem. Leary, Dass, Lilly, and the rest all had distinct and recognizable styles that would be difficult to suppress, and did not match that of Dimensions of Experience. Second, each man, while they agreed on certain things, had a distinct ideology. They were proud of their theories, and would not have compromised them, even as a favor to a fellow psychonaut. The main stumbling block, however, was simple: it would have been an impossible secret to keep. If one of the most prominent gurus of the counterculture had ghosted a bestselling book for another, dozens of people in the Haight, the scene, and the New York publishing world would know about it — could not have not known about it. Someone would have talked. It had taken a matter of months for people to learn that the Monkees did not play their own instruments. It would not have taken much longer, under such circumstances, for Markos to be exposed.
It was possible, the skeptics admitted, that Markos had simply hired the services of a professional ghostwriter. But while it did not seem to be his, the book did possess a distinct style that was unlikely to be the result of simple hackwork. And a ghostwriter would have been a professional well-known in the publishing world. He would have told the secret too.
As a result, while a few held out for more prominent candidates, the consensus among the skeptics was that someone relatively unknown was the secret author. In all likelihood, the publishers had no knowledge of the ghosting whatsoever. The ghost had to have been someone close to Markos, but anonymous to others and willing to remain so. And they had doubtless written the book at Markos’ personal request.
According to the skeptics’ profile of the suspect, the ghost had a certain gift for words, but was unfamiliar with the subtleties of formal prose writing. They had an excellent working knowledge of the counterculture. They were highly intelligent, but probably lacked much formal education. They understood the basic concepts behind Markos’ theories, but simplified them and avoided pseudo-scientific jargon. And they had an instinctive sense of what people want to hear and how they want to hear it.
The skeptics’ profile led them, by inexorable logic, to the Masonic Ave. house. Those who gathered there for Lavinia’s nocturnal séances were, after all, Markos’ inner circle during the time Dimensions of Experience was written: they were familiar with his theories, alien to academia, and fluent in the patois of the counterculture.
For a time, a habitué of the séances named Bernard Paulson was a favored candidate, as he had been a writer for the San Francisco Oracle, the Haight’s alternative broadsheet. But a quick perusal of his oeuvre — which was punctuated with alarming frequency by the word “wow” — revealed him to be at best semi-literate. That may have been adequate for the Oracle, but would not have been for the editors at Knopf.
Oliver Hepton, another frequent guest at Masonic Ave., was a favorite of several skeptics, who discovered in the late 1980s that Hepton had written two memoirs of the Summer of Love — Flowers and Blood and the better-received Adoration. While not widely distributed, they were of high quality, and scholars of the era have used them as reliable source material. Inquiries revealed, however, that Hepton and Markos had loathed each other. Hepton considered Markos a bourgeoise dilettante and Markos considered Hepton an anti-intellectual poseur. A collaboration between the two, let alone a secret kept for so long, was considered impossible.
Out of desperation, the skeptics then turned to the Circle itself. Maria and Victoria were quickly ruled out. So far as the skeptics could ascertain, the two women had never written anything or even had the desire to write anything. So, after decades of fruitless inquiry, the skeptics were left with only one possibility. At first, it was considered so unlikely that a few skeptics went so far as to recommend going back to square one and reexamining Leary or Dass.
The proof came in the mid-1990s, when the FBI files on the Circle were finally obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. The Bureau had kept tabs on the Circle for some time, though the surveillance had been sporadic at best. Among the dry and monotonous reports with their blocks of blacked-out type, however, there was a collection of documents procured by undercover agents in the Haight. Among these documents were a series of short, typewritten musings on various issues related to spirituality, wellness, new age thought, and the possibilities of world peace. The files stated that the documents were written and personally distributed by Lavinia during her early days in San Francisco.
The skeptics fell upon these documents as if they were holy writ. They analyzed the precious texts from every conceivable angle: writing style, vocabulary, ideological content, historical context, and so on. They were nothing if not fastidious, which is much to their credit. When the conclusion finally came, it was unequivocal: Lavinia Denmer was and always had been the sole author of Dimensions of Experience.
Markos and the Circle had faded from popular memory by then, so there was little media interest. Knopf, of course, refused to comment. But among the skeptics, the mood was euphoric. They had uncovered the secret that had bedeviled them for so long. And not only that: the history of the Circle would now have to be rewritten from top to bottom. Lavinia Denmer had not been Markos Caledanian’s servant. She was the true leader of the Circle. She had created Markos. It now seemed as if the jagged fragments of the Circle’s history had fallen into place, and its inevitable logic became clear. There was now a possible meaning — a terrible meaning — to the Circle’s ultimate fate.
The skeptics took some time to reach a consensus on their revised narrative, but its broad outlines were clear early on: The nation’s collective hangover that followed the events of 1968 treated the Circle rather well. Lavinia’s first move was to expand and formalize her now-famous séances. They became a kind of performance art. Around midnight, a few dozen guests would gather at the Masonic Ave. house, which would be lit solely by guttering candles. They were greeted at the door by Maria and Victoria, who distributed marijuana and wine, while a turntable played quiet but somewhat ominous music. Then they were ushered into the main room.
Lavinia made certain that no chairs were available, which forced the participants to sit on floor mats and cushions. This enhanced the effect that would inaugurate the evening, as it forced the attendees to look up at the house’s central staircase from the lowest possible angle. The railings of the staircase were adorned with candles, and Maria and Victoria would light them one by one, so that the stairway became a procession of glowing amber lights. On the second-floor landing above the spectators, Lavinia would emerge out of the shadows in a flowing purple kimono. From the other side, Markos would appear in a black robe with Nehru collars. They would meet and join hands at the top of the staircase. Then, followed by Maria and Victoria, they would descend to the ground floor. There, Markos would bow to Lavinia and her to him. Markos would then sit facing the audience, flanked by the Triad, and begin his discourse.
By all accounts, the discourse was never quite the same every night, but there were certain set themes: an explication of quantum theory and the uncertainty principle, of which no one understood a word; admonitions that everything in the universe is energy; anecdotes about various cosmologies from ancient times to the present; and finally a long monologue on the cosmic psychosphere and the manifestation of the gnosis. As a result of the manifestation, Markos would say, all wars would be obsolete, all poverty ended, all men happy, all women fulfilled, and pain and illness would become nothing but a vague memory from a darker time.
Having finished, Markos would defer to the Triad. They would lead the participants in a series of chants that sounded vaguely Buddhist, but were not, followed by a silent meditation. At that point, the ritual was brought to a conclusion and the attendees invited to socialize. Sex and drugs of various kinds followed, until the séance broke up around dawn.
This new model séance was instantly popular. Dimensions of Experience was still a bestseller, and word spread that its author could be experienced live and in person. As 1968 bled into 1969, people from all walks of life and every creed and color spread through the first floor of the Masonic Ave. house, even into the kitchen and what had once been a maid’s room. This presented serious logistical challenges: there weren’t enough bathrooms, about which the less said the better; food supply became an expensive proposition; the endless stream of soft drugs was not endless enough; and there was concern that the aged floor might give way under the weight of the crowd. Most California houses do not have basements, but this one did, and the thought of dozens of people tumbling into it was not a pleasant one.
It was clear that the available facilities were inadequate. The Masonic Ave. house would have to be abandoned and other arrangements made. It took Lavinia some time, however, to find a new venue for the burgeoning Circle. The reason for the delay, given the severity of the crisis, was mysterious to some, but obvious in retrospect: it was the staircase. Lavinia was willing to compromise on many things, but she understood the importance of a grand entrance. The descent down the candlelit staircase gripped the audience and held them from the first moment. Without it, Lavinia knew, a great many might not stay. Markos’ discourses, after all, were not scintillating. The staircase entrance therefore had to retained at all costs. So, she went in search of the grandest of staircases, and it took time.
It was fortunate that money was no object. Markos’ first major royalty check had arrived, and overnight, he was a millionaire. It seems that Lavinia took pride in this proof of her success. She began to act with growing confidence and resolve. And when she finally chose the mansion in the affluent Seacliff neighborhood as the new home of the Circle, it was her name, not Markos’, that was affixed to the deed. It was hers and hers alone. Markos had paid for services rendered. He might have signed the check, but he knew that the money rightfully belonged to his ghost.
Lavinia divided the mansion as she had the house on Masonic Ave. Maria and Victoria were on the first floor, Markos on the second, and for Lavinia, there was a personal sanctum in the attic. But the heart of that great house was what Lavinia had searched for over many months. The mansion contained an enormous first-floor grand ballroom that had once served the highest of San Francisco society. In that ballroom was the most magnificent of staircases, made of pure gleaming mahogany and adorned with a carpet that was a radiant shade of royal purple. Up and down that staircase would have gone brides and grooms, debutantes and their beaus, presidents and governors and their wives, and perhaps even visiting kings and queens. The beautiful people of the fin de siècle. It was for this, and this alone, that Lavinia purchased the Seacliff mansion, and she would soon make use of it to terrible effect.
This staircase would be the centerpiece of what in counterculture lore would come to be called the “Great Séance,” which took place on the night of December 31, 1969. It was not only intended to inaugurate the Seacliff mansion, but to usher out the old decade and welcome the new. There was also talk of a mysterious trip, or what Maria and Victoria referred to as a voyage, that Markos and Lavinia had recently taken. No one was quite sure where they had gone, and there was much excitement as to what revelations they might have brought back with them.
So, on New Year’s night some 300 people gathered in the great ballroom, and they all imbibed and embraced in hopes of a better decade that was not to be. At the stroke of midnight, the lights were extinguished, the candles were lit, and all eyes turned to the top of the grand staircase. From the right side of the second-floor landing came Markos in his black robe. From the left came Lavinia in her kimono of royal purple. Amidst the glowing candles, the two joined hands and slowly descended to the sound of pan flutes. The dutiful Maria and Victoria followed them, their heads bowed and flowers clutched in their hands. At the bottom of the stairs, they bowed to one another, bowed to the crowd, and were silent for several minutes.
Then Markos began to speak in his soft and measured voice, the voice of a professor of secret things. He said that there would be no discourse tonight. Instead, a ceremony would be undertaken, a unique journey, because the new age lay within, and only within. Communion would be achieved and the gnosis manifested by each one of them. He and Lavinia, he said, had recently come into possession of a certain substance, one that had been used by generations of Mexican holy men in order to achieve communion and manifest the gnosis. Sufficient quantities had been acquired, and the time to partake in it could not be more auspicious. Man had just walked on the moon, and now he would walk the path of consciousness itself. He had discovered the texture of the universe, but soon he would know its essence.
No one is quite certain what happened next. Few who were there ever spoke of it, and then only in the vaguest terms. It is probable that the substance in question was some variant of the peyote cactus. We know that following Markos’ speech, Maria and Victoria disappeared for a few minutes, and then reappeared toting two large steaming pots of tea, which is a common preparation of the plant. Cups were distributed, the contents of the pots ladled out, and the substance drunk by the attendees.
Those who have spoken of what followed describe impressions of flailing limbs, distorted faces, menacing colors, music of an unknown rhythm and melody. People spoke, shouted, and screamed in strange languages; a great pit opened before them; snakes and spiders crawled across the ceiling; walls split from top to bottom; grotesque shapes that seemed only semi-human moved in the shadows. Five separate witnesses saw a bleeding child in a white garment that appeared to produce its own luminescence. Others saw a large black dog that fed upon a pile of fingers and toes. Still others spoke of faraway howls of a strange, mechanical quality that echoed through the halls of the mansion. And there was Lavinia, resplendent in her purple kimono, presiding over all. To a man, they spoke of a pervasive atmosphere that led them to believe they were breathing in horror itself.
It was 1970 when the event broke up. Most participants returned home under their own power. But there were permanent aftereffects. Within a year, six had committed suicide, including one who shot herself on the lawn of the Seacliff mansion. Others became suddenly withdrawn, furtive, and anxious, at times to the point of delusional paranoia. At least eight were committed to mental hospitals. There were four heroin overdoses, and ten more became addicted or saw their addictions intensify.
It is possible to explain all of this away. It was the tail end of the counterculture, after all, and the bill for the Summer of Love was coming due. People were going mad and dying of drugs and self-inflicted violence on a constant basis. What cannot be explained away is the immense silence surrounding the Great Séance. It is difficult enough for one person to keep a secret, and almost impossible for two to do so. But in this case, three hundred people more or less kept their mouths shut. And from those few who did speak, we know that something more was at work than the fallout of a dying counterculture. Multiple people saw the bleeding child and the black dog, and heard the terrible mechanized scream. In all likelihood, all who were there did so as well. Perhaps they saw a great deal more. And they knew never to speak of it. Something actually happened.
For Lavinia, the Great Séance was both her greatest triumph and a catastrophic disaster. Because, although the details were kept secret, the general atmosphere of the event was not. Word spread that, although no one would say why, the Seacliff mansion was best avoided. Attendance at the nightly séances began to dwindle, until only a few dozen regulars remained. Many of the Circle’s fellow travelers cut off all contact. The demand for Markos’ lectures collapsed. Invitations to college campuses and other venues ceased. Even the providers of the endless supply of drugs were suddenly nowhere to be found.
Lavinia soldiered on, stoic to the last, but Markos was terribly affected. His appearances at the séances became more and more rare, until he almost completely shut himself away with his “work.” Lavinia even gave up the opening processions down the staircase she had fought so hard to preserve. All theatricality and ritual went out of the séances. They became mere exercises in prayer to no discernable god.
In a strange way, however, this meant that Lavinia and the Circle were still very much in tune with the zeitgeist. The counterculture had managed to limp past the turn of the decade, fueled by drugs and remnants of idealism. But the Nixon years had begun to take their toll. A million flowers had not bloomed. They had been stamped out by assassination, political reaction, and the flower children’s own wretched excess. The horrors of life began to reassert themselves. The Haight became a fallen paradise where junkies littered the filthy streets and burglaries, rapes, and murders became commonplace. Even the Grateful Dead decamped for greener pastures. The Masonic Ave. house was now a decrepit squat from which screams were often heard late at night. There was much talk of the possible atrocities underway inside.
Above all, people were dying. They died of overdoses and robberies gone wrong, of course, but there was also a strange ailment called “junkie flu” that was silently making its way through the community of heroin addicts. Its symptoms were ominous and arbitrary, and the survival rate was non-existent. But they were junkies, so no one took much notice as the thing wormed its way out of the hard drugs scene and into the gay bathhouses, and from there to Los Angeles and New York and points beyond.
The speed with which things fell to pieces must have stunned Lavinia. No doubt, she struggled. One can imagine her ensconced in her garret, seated in the lotus position on her cushions of royal purple, as her extraordinary mind cogitated the worst-case scenarios and how they might be avoided. From 1970 to early 1972, she was sequestered from the world, leaving most of the dissipated séances to Maria and Victoria.
At some point in late 1971 or early 1972, Lavinia began to plan for the Sedona retreat. The small Arizona town is now a hotbed of new age activity — the “capital of woo” — but at the time it was little more than a destination for fly-fishing enthusiasts. It had attracted a handful of crystal- gazers and meditation practitioners, who had an oceanic reaction to the sight of the nearby mountain ridges and the meandering streams that brought water from the desert, but no more than that. Nonetheless, Lavinia must have sensed that Sedona’s isolation and reputation for spiritual uplift made it the perfect place to realize her design. Markos, Maria, and Victoria would see nothing unusual in the destination, and go willingly.
Receipts later obtained by the authorities show that in mid-1972, Lavinia rented a large cabin in a secluded area on the banks of Oak Creek, near the stark buttes that rise up from the river into the sky. At some undetermined date in August, Lavinia gathered the Circle’s few remaining acolytes for a special séance. She told them that the Triad was to accompany the pontifex on a voyage to the southwest for the purposes of spiritual renewal. The exertions of recent years, she said, had left Markos exhausted, and impeded his ability to achieve communion with the psychosphere. This retreat would allow him the inner peace necessary to once again manifest the gnosis. Such a renewal, however, would require complete seclusion, in which the pontifex could hear nothing but the voice of the psychosphere. The Triad would be there to tend to his needs under a vow of silence, but no one else would be admitted into his presence. She hoped they understood that they were not being punished. This was a voyage of hope.
The acolytes accepted this. Three nights later, a subdued and somewhat melancholy séance was held at which Markos at last made an appearance. He appeared cheerful and serene, but some would later testify that they perceived a certain vacancy in his eyes. It unnerved them. When Markos ingested certain substances, his eyes took on a glazed illumination. But this vacancy seemed bizarrely sober. They sensed that the pontifex was frightened. Why, they could not say.
The séance broke up around 1:00 am, which was earlier than usual. Markos bowed to each of the acolytes and held their hands in his for a brief moment. Lavinia, Maria, and Victoria kissed them on both cheeks. And in a diaphanous processional, the Circle disappeared up the candlelit staircase. The acolytes left the house together, and each went their separate way in the foggy darkness. They would later speak of a certain trepidation, a sense of unsettlement, nearing vertigo, that came over them in those dark hours.
The Circle flew to Phoenix at 7:30 am the next morning. After a brief layover, they took a local Piper Cub to the tiny Sedona airport, and from there a taxi to the cabin. One or two witnesses, who noticed the Circle due to their outlandish dress and hairstyles, would later say that they appeared subdued but in no way distressed. Lavinia, they said, placed her hand almost lovingly over Markos’ as they sat next to each other on the plane, and from time to time she smiled at him in a manner one witness described as “beatific.” The taxi driver who left them at the cabin noticed a similar atmosphere of goodwill. The Circle appeared to be a relatively happy family. He could not have known that Lavinia was not any kind of wife.
The driver helped carry in their bags, and later said that they seemed meager for a long stay — which may, perhaps, indicate something — but he thought nothing of it at the time. As he left, he looked back, as perhaps he should not have done, and caught a glimpse of Maria and Victoria as they opened the living room curtains. The cabin was bathed in white light as motes of dust danced among the rays. Lavinia moved like a shroud toward the back bedroom into which the receding shadow of Markos was disappearing. The driver closed the door and drove away.
For three days, nothing happened. On the fourth day, Maria and Victoria were spotted in town making a few minor purchases. Five days later, a local fisherman caught sight of Lavinia bathing naked in the creek, which he took in stride. He considered it yet another sign of the town’s burgeoning population of weirdos.
The next morning, another local fisherman happened to bring his dog with him as he walked along the banks of Oak Creek. When they came near the Circle’s cabin, the animal went mad, dashed up to the nearest window, and began to bark uncontrollably. The man wanted to apologize for the disturbance — the Sedonians are a polite people — but knocked on the door to no avail. He looked through the window, however, and what he saw distressed him enough to send him back to town to summon the sheriff. The sheriff and two deputies arrived at the cabin a half-hour later. After some debate, they broke down the door.
Maria and Virginia were found in the living room, one on each side of a large rustic sofa. They were staring at the cabin’s antique fireplace. It contained enough ash to indicate that, at some point in the last day or so, a fire had been lit. The sheriff and his men ventured further into the cabin, and found Markos in the master bedroom. He was seated on the bed in a lotus position, propped up by pillows of royal purple, with his chin fallen on to his chest. His right hand clutched a strange object composed of wood and twine that was later identified as a “dreamcatcher” — a Native American talisman used to ward off nightmares. All three persons had been shot once through the head with a .22 caliber pistol — a woman’s gun, so they say — and there was not the slightest trace of Lavinia.
The Sedona police, unprepared for a crime of this magnitude, called in the state police. Even so, they were unable to ascertain the identities of the victims for two days. Finally, the cabin’s absentee owners — who had been skiing in Boulder, Colorado — were reached, and not only the names of the victims, but also Lavinia’s identity and absence were discovered. This led the police to Sedona airport, where the taxi driver was found. This in turn led to Phoenix and then, at last, to San Francisco.
The police realized that the case had crossed state lines, and the FBI was called in for assistance. The FBI, as it tends to do, quickly took over the case, and took immediate action. An APB was put out for Lavinia in both Arizona and California; agents began making the rounds of local transportation services, the taxi driver’s description in hand; agents from the San Francisco office proceeded immediately to the Seacliff mansion and the Haight; and roadblocks were put up on all highways leading out of Arizona. The agents, however, had no illusions: invaluable hours had been lost, and Lavinia had more than enough time to make her getaway.
It did not take long for a solid narrative of Lavinia’s movements to emerge. Maria, Victoria, and Markos had likely been killed on the day the fisherman spotted Lavinia bathing. She was either washing off the blood or performing some kind of ritual ablution, the nature of which was best left to psychologists. Several hours later, two motorists saw a woman answering her description walking alone on the shoulder of the highway. The woman was headed south and carried a large suitcase. A bus driver testified that a woman answering the same description boarded his bus at a stop near Camp Verde, still heading south, and stayed all the way to Phoenix. A clerk at the Phoenix bus station said that a similar-looking woman bought a one-way ticket to Sierra Vista, a town less than a hundred miles from the Mexican border. From there, nothing. Lavinia was gone.
With pursuit now futile, the Bureau turned back to San Francisco. Agents discovered that two days before the Circle left for Arizona, Lavinia had visited the Bank of America branch on Geary Boulevard. She presented a notarized document, signed by Markos, that granted her full control over the account set up to receive his royalty payments. At the time, the account contained approximately $50,000. The document was accepted, and Lavinia then withdrew the balance in cash, leaving a token sum to keep the account active. The stunned clerks had no choice but to fill a leather suitcase with $100 bills and escort her out with their compliments. The Bureau was now certain as to the contents of the suitcase Lavinia carried with her on her voyage south.
In light of this evidence, the Bureau developed a rough theory of the crime: faced with the ruin of her empire, Lavinia persuaded Markos to hand over control of his money. She then took him and anyone else who might lay a claim to the Circle’s assets to a remote area where there would be no witnesses. Having dispatched her rivals, she absconded with the cash and made her way south. She gambled that the length of time it would take for the crime to be discovered would keep her safe on the journey. Having reached the border area, she illegally crossed into Mexico, in all likelihood on foot, which left investigators no trail to follow.
What became of her from there, it was impossible to say. The Mexican authorities were alerted, of course, as was the American embassy in Mexico City. But there was little optimism that Lavinia — whose plan had, thus far, worked perfectly — would be apprehended. She would keep a low profile and move further south into deep Mexico. It was easy, in such places, to disappear forever. After a year or so, the Bureau threw up its hands. Lavinia, they decided, had gotten away with it.
The reaction to the murders in the counterculture was relatively muted. Since the Great Séance, the Circle had been viewed with quiet dread, and its catastrophic end did not come as a surprise. The handful of acolytes who remained loyal were, of course, devastated. But more than would have cared to admit it counted themselves lucky they had not been there in Sedona. And they were thankful that Lavinia had considered them unimportant enough to exempt them from her terrible vengeance. A few attempted to carry on, and some séances were conducted over the months following the murders. A few were well-attended due to morbid fascination, though this quickly passed. Soon, it was clear that no one was interested in manifesting the gnosis of the cosmic psychosphere anymore.
At the time, Markos was still well-known enough for the murders to gain coverage in the New York Times, which mourned “the controversial but brilliant intellectual dissident and guru of the counterculture.” Several other media outlets followed suit, including a brief segment on CBS News presented by Walter Cronkite himself. As a result, Dimensions of Experience climbed the bestseller lists again. If she knew about it, Lavinia must have been amused.
In the short-term, as was once said of Elvis, the death of the Circle proved to be a good career move. Several million dollars replenished the royalty account Lavinia had emptied in preparation for her crime. There was considerable controversy over what should be done with those millions, as Markos had died intestate and without issue. In the end, the courts dispersed the funds among several claimants, most of them distant cousins. Since no one was able to ascertain Lavinia’s true identity, let alone find her next of kin, the Seacliff mansion was sold in short order by the city. It passed through the hands of several owners until it was acquired by one of the earliest Silicon Valley investors.
The memory of the Circle soon faded. It was a victim of the times. By the mid-1970s, the euphoric theophany of the ‘60s was already long past. An age of disco, cocaine, and urban, cultural, and political decay took over. There was little patience for communion. And the decade that followed was no better. With its euphoric capitalism and reassertion of the traditional virtues, it rejected everything the Circle represented. And so, Lavinia and her creations disappeared from the national consciousness.
A handful did remember: aged hippies determined to carry the flame and never grow old; historians of the counterculture; and, of course, the skeptics, obsessed by the strange and terrible mystery that is the Circle. They began as weekend researchers, held together by mailing lists and local conventions, and now populate innumerable websites and chatrooms. Their avocation is to fill up infinite cyberspace with their speculations and revelations. They continue to do so today.
But even this army of amateurs has been unable to answer the questions that most obsess them: why did Lavinia do it and what happened to her? As I’m sure you’ve imagined, there are numerous theories: She did it for the money. She did it out of spite and jealousy. She was a government assassin sent to destroy the counterculture by murdering its leaders. Or, at the most extreme, Lavinia was an agent of Satan, who sought to prevent mankind from manifesting the gnosis.
As for where she might be, the theories are just as plentiful: Lavinia stayed in Mexico. She went to Brazil or Belize or Switzerland or Botswana or Cuba as a personal guest of Castro. She died of exposure in the attempt to cross the border. The FBI or CIA or another nefarious government agency relocated her. Or, again at the extreme, Lavinia was taken up, or rather down, by her satanic masters, and now sits at the right hand of the evil one.
I have drawn my own conclusions. Humans are wholly irrational creatures, and in the end, we are a mystery even to ourselves. Nonetheless, I believe I know why Lavinia Denmer did what she did: She knew, as no one else could, that Markos Caledanian was a fraud. She had given him his name, engineered his reputation, and written his greatest work. For a time, she was content to orchestrate his fame and fortune, and nurture the Circle at her breast. But this could not go on forever. There came a time when she decided that she had served for long enough. Lavinia had come to see the Circle as poisoned and vile. It was an edifice built by her lies, and in the end, she tired of lies. Markos, Maria, and Victoria, who resided within the Circle with such childish ease and entitlement, became repellant to her. So, she destroyed them. I believe that Lavinia killed out of contempt.
As to what became of her, the simplest answer is best: she went into Mexico. Perhaps to the border towns like Ciudad Juarez; perhaps to the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, where the peyote flowers bloom; perhaps deeper still, to Oaxaca or Chiapas. She went to places where the law is unwritten and malleable, observed in the breach, and questions are not asked. This could have been precisely what Lavinia wanted: to be free of questions. If I am right, then it is possible that, for the first time in her life, she was happy.
Sometimes I think that I too will go to Mexico. I will cross the tempestuous border in the direction less traveled by. And perhaps I will find her there, at some roadside bodega or mountain fastness of the vanquished Aztecs. Perhaps she will ply me with peyote, and we will make love in dreams beneath a gibbous moon, in silence but for the chirp of nocturnal insects and the clatter of blue scorpions, though the thought of sex with one so old repulses me. Nonetheless, I would count myself lucky, because, in my way, I revere Lavinia. Whatever her crimes may have been, she was a formidable woman in a time and place where women were not formidable. In such circumstances, her crimes were inevitable. How could she have acted otherwise? She was a woman out of time, seized for a moment by destiny, and derangement followed. No, we may find her guilty, but we cannot condemn her. She deserves at least that much. Lavinia Denmer, your judges salute you.
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