The Devil Rides Out (Duke de Richleau)

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James Hilton, reviewing The Devil Rides Out, described it as "The best thing of its kind since Dracula". [2] Heaven and Hell are only symbolical of growth to Light or disintegration to Darkness. There is no such person as the Devil, but there are vast numbers of Earthbound spirits, Elementals, and Evil Intelligences of the Outer Circle floating in our midst. But anyone who accepts Satanic baptism does exactly the reverse. They willfully destroy the barrier of astral Light which is our natural protection and offer themselves as a medium through which the powers of Darkness may operate on mankind.”

It must be truly important for Simon to miss the reunion dinner with the duke and Rex. And the duke is even more worried as Rex discovers. Since their friend is too important to them both, the men repair to Simon’s new house where they discover the depths to which he has sunk. Birkenhead, 1973. The eighteen-year-old Paul O'Grady gets ready for a big Saturday night out on the town. New white T-shirt, freshly ironed jeans, looking good. As he bids farewell to his mum, who's on the phone to his auntie, and wanders off down the street in a cloud of aftershave, he hears her familiar cry: 'Oh, the devil rides out tonight, Annie. The Devil rides out!'

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The book details how de Richleau seals the windows with asafretida grass and blue wax and makes the sign of the Cross in holy water over every entrance and doorway. He sets five white tapering candles at each apex of the five-pointed star along with five horseshoes with their horns pointing outward and five dried mandrakes, four females and one male, in a vase of holy water. He binds Simon’s wrists and ankles with asafcetida grass and strings garlic for everyone. Each chapter is well written & makes ones heart race. Two part of the novel which I want to highlight here are 'The Sabbat' & 'Within The Pentacle'. Both resonate with suspense & horror beyond words.....the most grotesque form of terror possible.....the scariest part of it is that, such things do take place & that is marrow chilling enough which is escalated with the authors excellent narrating skills. From the two chapters mentioned above...the one that made my blood run cold was 'The Sabbat' especially the image of 'The Goat Of Mendes' that was described to perfection by the author.

I found the story a lot of fun. Yes, it’s dated. But it’s also a fascinating time-capsule of pre-war British horror. Wheatley gives a good jab at the Nazis at one point and it was interesting to see the thoughts about them so far before the start of the war. It’s obvious that Wheatley did some incredible research for this book. I even read somewhere that he interviewed Aleister Crowley about it. However some of the thorough occult information Wheatley pumps into the novel skates a narrow line between absolutely fascinating and boringly tedious. But the histories and debates the Duke gives when convincing his friends that magic is real are simply wonderful. I do not propose to discuss with you the rights and wrongs of practising the magic art. I will confine myself to saying that I am a practitioner of some experience. Mocata, modest as ever

Heaven and Hell are only symbolical of growth to Light or disintegration to Darkness,” de Richleau explains. “There is no such person as the Devil, but there are vast numbers of Earthbound spirits, Elementals, and Evil Intelligences of the Outer Circle floating in our midst. But anyone who accepts Satanic baptism does exactly the reverse. They willfully destroy the barrier of astral Light which is our natural protection and offer themselves as a medium through which the powers of Darkness may operate on mankind.” Led by the Duc de Richleau, his friends begin a race against time and encounter the terrifying experience of Satanic entities. Saruman: And this is rightly considered a part of the horror genre, and we should also consider a comparison to Arthur Machen’s excellent treatise The Great God Pan.

Having said that, Wheatley does appear to at least make an attempt at giving his story broader, more universal concerns. The Duc of the book interestingly appears a bit more worldly and less outwardly religious than his counterpart in the film. I don't think the book even mentions Christ directly more than once, and this is a contrast to the screenplay, where in several instances the protagonists invoke the name of Jesus and the movie even ends on a somber note that they should all thank God and his son for having allowed them to triumph in the end. I have to confess that the overtly Christian angle is the one thing about the movie that I didn't entirely like, and Wheatley seems to take some pains to imply that it isn't necessarily christianity that will save the world, and that one positive religious or spiritual faith is essentially as good as any other (although he does condescend to make a list of the applicable ones, I believe). Instead of the repetition of the Sussamma Ritual, Marie Lou instead invokes an angelic being, one of the ‘Lords of Light’ who intervenes to defeat Mocata. De Richleau et al then find themselves transported beyond the physical world, until they are floating above their own unconscious bodies, still lying within the pentacle in the library of Cardinal’s Folly.Bear in mind that the book was published five years before the outbreak of the Second World War, giving melancholic weight to de Richleau’s warning that ‘Europe is ripe now for any trouble and if [the Four Horsemen] are loosened again, it will be final Armageddon. This is no longer a personal matter of protecting Simon … We’ve got to prevent [Mocata] plunging the world into another war.’ The production designer was Bernard Robinson who joined Hammer in 1956 and had previously worked on several successful Hammer productions, including The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula (1958, Terence Fisher ). Robinson drew meticulous pencil and ink sketches of his designs and his attention to detail includes decorating the satanic temples with intricate astrological and Kabbalistic symbols. Fifty-two of Wheatley's novels were published posthumously in a set by Heron Books UK. More recently, in April 2008 Dennis Wheatley's literary estate was acquired by media company Chorion.

She looks forward the upcoming Satanic festival as ‘an extraordinary experience.’ As she argues: ‘by surrendering myself I shall only suffer or enjoy, as most other women do, under slightly different circumstances at some period of their life.’

every adept knows that it started because one of the most terrible Satanists who ever lived found one of the secret gateways through which to release the four horsemen. The Devil Rides Out, Chapter XX, The Four Horsemen He wrote adventure stories, with many books in a series of linked works. His plots covered the French Revolution (Roger Brook Series), Satanism (Duc de Richleau), World War II (Gregory Sallust) and espionage (Julian Day). Osiris’ wife, Isis, managed to find thirteen of those parts and successfully restored Osiris to eternal life. The missing fourteenth part? Osiris’ phallus. Yep. That’s what Mocata is searching for – an Egyptian God’s penis! Uriel Seraphim Io Potesta, Zati Zata Galatim Galata. The final two lines of the Sussamma Ritual, as spoken by the Duke de Richleau Anyway, sort of despite all that and sort of because of it, I had a lot of fun with this. The first half at least. It's not a long book, but it's twice as long as it needs to be. I haven't seen it, but I suspect the Hammer film adaptation may be the best way to sample it. That has Christopher Lee as the Duke and that guy who played Blofeld as the villain. Which, to be honest, is exactly how I imagined them both from the book anyway. And it's only an hour and a half.