The Philosophers Hand

I walked up to his shop just as he had closed it up
for the night. He said he would open up for me if I
really wanted to look around. He unlocked the gate
and pushed it to the side, a rusty grinding sound
bled into the night. He flipped the light switch
flooding the shop with clarity. There were guitars
lining the walls. I had never seen or heard of most
of them. Pools of water were scattered across the
room looking similar to baptismal fonts you would
see inside a church. He stepped from the back of
the shop and emerged with a silver plate with a
hand resting on it palm up. There are illustrations
of the great classical philosophers standing upright
in their robes with one arm at their side and the
other raised upward pointing at the heavens. That
is what that hand looked like. I could only watch
in awed shock as he walked around from one pool
of water to the next. Each time he would tilt the
silver plate towards it as a few drops of blood would
color the water. "I guess you could say I practice
the black arts." he said before the  question ever
left my lips. "You need to open yourself to other
phenomena in this world." I couldn't help but
think of this as a beginning.