2001

January 24:

Happy 22, Dean. Hope you’re enjoying Arkansas.

March 18:

May 2:

Sammy is eighteen years old today. Surprised he didn’t take off. We’re not getting along too well. He hunts when we need him to, but he’s never committed himself the way Dean did. Dean’s never known any other way to live, or if he has, he doesn’t act like it. He’s playing the role he was born to play. Sammy’s the younger brother. He doesn’t know what his role is, even though I can tell him until I’m blue in the face and we’re both ready to kill each other. He’s got one more year of school and them I’m drafting him full-time into the family business. I’ve given him more slack than I ever gave Dean, more than I would have ever gotten from my dad. He needed it. Now he’s a grown man, or almost. Time for him to step into what’s expected of him. Dean never even thought about college. We used to joke about it once in a while. But Sammy still believes he can have a normal life, but they’re both more useful to the world as hunters than… what, lawyers? Dentists? Sammy’s convinced himself that smart kids have to go to college. Part of my job is to convince him that college would be a waste of his smarts. And I gotta hand it to him on the brains front: there’s nothing he can’t find on the computer. I still dig around in actual books, libraries, newspapers. It’s all keystrokes and search words for Sammy. He’s done a good job hiding our trail on all the credit cards.

May 4:

La Cueva, near Mesilla NM. Hermit with healing powers lived in this cave. Was murdered, and found on a crucifix wearing a gridle of spikes. Murder unsolved, but hermit’s ghost said to appear on Friday nights at sundown.

May 17:

This would have been our twenty-third anniversary. Now the new century is really here, and I’m still on the hunt. Getting closer? Bobby threw me this curveball the other day:

Admitting that demons exist might not be the same as believing in demons —esp. since the demons don’t even believe. Even if they aren’t demons, if they think they are —if they’re some kind of spirit that believes itself a demon— then they’re going to act like demons are supposed to act.

In other words, even if demons aren’t real, as long as there are malevolent spirits that think they’re demons and act like demons, they’ll need to be fought like demons. Kind of a spin on the thoughtform, created from belief…?

Sounds too complicated to me. Either there are demons or there aren’t.

Another Seal of Solomon:

June 20:

John Dee. 1527-1608. Chose coronation date of Queen Elizabeth, signed his letters to her with 007. Knew Mercator, Tycho Brahe. Propaedeumata Aphoristica, 1558. Quinti Libri Mysteriorum. Monas Hierglyphica, 1564. Enochian language and alphabet. Tried to syncretize Hermetic, Pythagorean, Christian traditions, Kabbalistic belief that numbers were the basis of reality and understanding. Gravestone disappeared after his death.

July 18:

Enoch one of the Judeo-Christian tradition’s crazy magnets. Supposedly taken up into heaven at the age of 365, transformed into the angel Metatron. In Islamic tradition, Idris. Pre-Judaic Watchers tales have Enoch as one of the angels who taught men the first sciences, and how things worked. In variant stories, Enoch is a giant —son of the fallen angels? Nephilim? Great-grandfather of Noah. Brought writing and arts, therefore considered a father of language. Dee picks up on this, tries to recover original Enochian language.

You have to be soft-headed to believe in angels. But I’ve written down every random esoteric thing I’ve run across, just in case it might be a clue. Someone who didn’t know me before reading this journal would think I was crazy.

September 11:

Shaken. 11 is the number of sin, between the perfection of 10 —digits on the fingers— and the holiness of 12 —Zodiac signs, apostles, hours of day and night… I can’t believe that a handful of religious nuts with boxcutters could do something like this. There must be more to it. Have been on the phone with every hunter I know today, and it’s unanimous. Everyone’s talking demons, nobody has any details but nobody thinks that what’s on the surface is all there is. I’m going to New York to look around. Meeting a couple of other guys there.

September 15:

God, the spirits in Shanksville. The story coming out is bull.

Looking for sigils that resemble any of these.

November 2:

Eighteen years.

December 19: