Black Easter

infobox Book |
name = Black Easter
title_orig =
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image_caption = Cover of first edition (hardcover)
author = James Blish
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country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = After Such Knowledge Trilogy
genre = Fantasy novel
publisher = Faber and Faber
release_date = 1968
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages = 165 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-571-08699-3
preceded_by = Dr. Mirabilis (1964)
followed_by = "Black Easter" is a Nebula Award-nominated fantasy novel by James Blish in which an arms dealer hires a black magician to unleash all the Demons of Hell on earth for a single day. It was first published in 1968. The sequel is "The Day After Judgment". Together, those two very short novels form the third part of the thematic "After Such Knowledge" trilogy (title from T. S. Eliot's "Gerontion," "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?") with "A Case of Conscience" and "Dr. Mirabilis". "Black Easter" was serialised as "Faust aleph-null" in If magazine.

Plot introduction

"Black Easter" and "The Day After Judgment" were written using the assumption that the ritual magic for summoning demons as described in grimoires actually worked.

Plot summary

In the first book, a wealthy arms manufacturer comes to a black magician, Theron Ware, with a strange request: he wishes to release all the demons from hell for one night to see what might happen. The book includes a lengthy description of the summoning ritual, and a detailed (and as accurate as possible, given the available literature) description of the grotesque figures of the demons as they appear. Tension between white magicians who appear to have a line of communications with heaven, and Ware is woven over the terms and conditions of a magical covenant that is designed to provide for observers and limitations. "Black Easter" ends with Baphomet announcing to the participants that the demons can not be compelled to return to hell: the War is over, and God is dead.

"The Day After Judgement", which follows in the series, develops and extends the characters from the first book. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth. In a lengthy Miltonian speech at the end of the novel, Satan Mekratrig explains that compared to humans, demons are good, and that if perhaps God has withdrawn Himself then Satan beyond all others was qualified to take His place and if anything would be a more just god.

It is likely that Blish got the name for his black magician, from the titular character in Harold Frederic's 1896 novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware. The quest for knowledge leading to damnation is central to the lives of both the black magician in Blish's novel and the Methodist minister in Frederic's novel.

Grimoires and Assorted Texts Mentioned

Blish claims in his foreword that all of the texts referenced in the novel are authentic magical texts. Here is a complete list of the books as referenced in the book. Obviously some are secular texts, but most are not.

*Ars Magna by Ramon Lull
*The Nullity of Magic by Roger Bacon
*The Book of Ceremonial Magic by C. A. E. Waite
*Enchiridion of Leo III
*The Effects of Atomic Weapons by The U.S. Government Printing Office
*The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
*Grimoire Verum
*Clavicula Salomonis
*The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis