---
title: "Clint Sabom’s ‘Panic Magic’ – Sample Chapter"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/clint-saboms-panic-magic-sample-chapter/
date: 2026-05-18
modified: 2026-07-24
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Sample Chapter Panic Magic Chapter 1 The following is the first chapter of my book Panic Magic, published by Star Lore Publishing. It’s about a traumatized magician who performs at..."
categories:
  - "Guest Post"
tags:
  - "Magic"
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word_count: 4554
---

# Clint Sabom’s ‘Panic Magic’ – Sample Chapter

![Panic Magic book artwork showing a stage, theater curtains, and a levitating figure](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81AkhyT0iLL._SY522_.jpg)

Sample Chapter

# Panic Magic

Chapter 1

The following is the first chapter of my book Panic Magic, published by Star Lore Publishing. It’s about a traumatized magician who performs at increasingly larger venues until his performances attract nefarious enemies, and intelligence agencies recruit him to work for them. It is both a thriller and a love story, a journey into magic and a carnival ride through the unconscious mind. You can buy it [here on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Panic-Magic-Clint-Sabom-ebook/dp/B0DY6PCDNS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Y35QGSJYO8VB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.OFeoDdooY_l3Ewoluq_NnQ.fgM-3hTGoPy6CHflA7IHYZ5V4PqDYmAdN8CcRSx3j2Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=panic+magic+clint+sabom&qid=1779028515&sprefix=panic+magic+clint+sabom%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1). I hope you enjoy! -Clint
[Buy on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Panic-Magic-Clint-Sabom-ebook/dp/B0DY6PCDNS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Y35QGSJYO8VB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.OFeoDdooY_l3Ewoluq_NnQ.fgM-3hTGoPy6CHflA7IHYZ5V4PqDYmAdN8CcRSx3j2Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=panic+magic+clint+sabom&qid=1779028515&sprefix=panic+magic+clint+sabom%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1)

This is a work of fiction. It is a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

## Chapter 1

Panic Magic

The curtains opened. I hit the stage.

“The show this evening comes from the castles of Old, where I once lived as a court jester, simply because it struck me as the only way to live near royalty. So let’s talk about missions and dreams. The dream of power rests in every magician, but power gives way to fun. The dream of a poet is simply to survive their own life. The dream of most Americans is to make more money. My dreams are of a different kind, of a world seen only by a few, who traverse the land of deep-sea foam and the mountains of hidden altars. As of now, pedestrians walk in crowds of the fiercest warriors. Old men jump through windowpanes and mirrors to participate in the protests and anti-protests. A woman puts on makeup and sees snow lions in the tubs, tripping her shock into the oblivion of useless store fronts. A feast of professionals gathers at a table to eat human flesh, giving them the power to retain full possession, integrated possession, of Lucifer himself, who is not any deity, but more like the King Vampire in vampire novels. I call upon the muses tonight to sing lullabies many hours before the warm waters of sleep. I call upon the ancestors, who protect the good. And once and for all, I am good!” I exclaimed.

In the black chairs of the theater and the blackness of the stage, it was easy to download the magnetic fluid. Quickly, I sensed it moving downwards and below the stage, like magnets aiming for the center of earth, a negative charge that repelled against gravity. I levitated ten feet, holding myself in air before slowly moving back down.

“I will now come down to the audience, two rows at a time, having everyone who so desires check me for wires or strings or gimmicks, and then I will levitate there, again and again, at each set of two rows. Here we go now, two rows by two blue fish, clinging to the chimes of old nursery rhymes. And where are the Visionaries here tonight? I know you are here. I know you know how many have achieved The Philosopher’s Stone. The people of this tattered earth need you more and more, but still, you hide in secret. Enough, enough. Here we go now, two rows by two blue fish, clinging to the chimes of old nursery rhymes.”

I came down the rows, doing the usual routine, and the procedure succeeded flawlessly. It didn’t last very long, as Pushing Boundaries theater was not that big. Afterwards, I returned to the stage.

“The debts have been paid, the flighty, entitled princesses of the wealthy have been kissed, the little girls in their steel houses have been screaming all day, until now, when they are calmed by the comfort of my far-way world, hearing my voice through a realm of fractured black smoke. The phantoms have appeared, but they are nothing to fear, though some of the fear will remain forever buried in our psyche’s vacuum of wheels. But now, again, I call the seers, those hidden, perhaps in other countries and cultures that allow more time in the day than ours. The hours wane on and off, and Father Time can speak, apart from my words, as streets have a voice and chairs have something to say. Plato’s forms are the structure, Buddhist prayers for the inanimate keep everything alive, and thoughts become objects even in this plane. But just knowing this will yield little good for anyone. Manifestation is a corrupt business, and scholars lie in a swarm of bees stressed out by the wetness that summer can bring.”

I paused.

“I leave you now, with only my levitations as solid proof that will never be accepted by conventional scientists. And it is the strangers that most deceive, appearing in mysterious romance, but unable to resist ruffling the feathers of winged lights that come from the constellations we cannot see. I depart now, my friends. With well wishes, with the gold of the roads of The New Jerusalem, with the City on the Hill that once served for the powerful and now should serve us all. Infinite forms have not been lost. Keep in mind the cheers of crowds that will one day route you to the Beyond safely, past everything you purchased, past any bad you’ve done. All will be forgiven – is already forgiven. Goodnight.”

I bowed to a standing ovation. The curtains closed.

I rode back home with Nova and Melanie, Nova behind the wheel. I sat in the backseat upon my request. I was shaking and trembling madly, as I did after all the performances.

“Don’t worry, Troy. I will give you a good hug when we get home, and there is freshly baked bread awaiting us, not to mention your perpetual espresso that is ready in minutes.” Melanie assured, wearing her all-black gothic attire as usual.

“Thank you,” I said. “How did I do?”

“It was good,” Nova said, “I couldn’t tell if you were speaking linearly or nonlinearly, although maybe that’s the point.”

“Yeah, maybe it is. I already forgot what I said, once out of me, never returning, each time.”

Melanie laughed. “We know, Troy.”

The next day I awoke after eight hours of sleep, trembling in fear from nightmares about whether I would survive my own life. But after two hours of espresso, cigarettes, and my morning medication, the fear subsided.

“Perhaps it will be a great day,” I said to Venus, the presider of my altar.

Indeed, it was really beauty I was chasing, not magic. “You have the soul of a poet,” a Professor of English once said to me in my younger years, at the kind of party gathering of intellectual circles in which I was immersed in those days.

But I never wanted to write many poems. And the poems I did write were written to people, given away as presents, in lieu of buying something unnecessary.

“Let’s see what happens, Great Venus.”

Indeed, I filtered all love objects through the Hall of Venus – lovers, potential lovers, longtime girlfriends, and if they shimmered enough in Her colors, I knew they were right for me. Melanie still was half and half: one glistening star but the other side with the dread of gothic daggers. But did Melanie even have a romantic interest in me? And are goths ever teachers of the heart?

I looked then at the list Bruce, my therapist (and I called him Bruce) had given me at our last session as a recommendation. “The death meetings.” There was one tonight, not too far away, and I resolved to go, to dispose myself to whatever would echo in such a gathering.

I traveled to the meeting, eventually, after a seemingly long day of laundry, grocery shopping, and standing up by my desk, barely able to think straight. My chronic anxiety always beckoned me instinctively to stand, where sitting became anti-natural, and indeed, my mom said in childhood I did my homework standing up, all the way up until high school.

My mental problems had all started, after the stability-ending of my peace of mind, when I was sexually abused at age 7. It was a man, a seemingly gentle-souled man, that picked me up from carpool one day, stating he was a friend of the family that was asked to come because my parents couldn’t. Truth be told, my mom was just a little late. How this man knew to choose me, at the appropriate time, will forever remain a mystery. The schoolteachers for some odd reason consented, and I climbed into the backseat of his sedan, after which he took me to his house. He abused me, then, as if nothing had happened, he took me home and dropped me off quickly. How he knew where my home was remains, too, a mystery.

When I got home, my parents realized instantly what had happened, and they were alarmed and outraged. They immediately reported it to the cops, but the man was never found. They rushed me to the ER.

That’s when I entered therapy, at age 7, which has continued to this day at age 47, with the darkest of memories of that man’s house, whose structure I cannot make out, where memories are locked and sealed in a pit of doom impenetrable by thought.

So that has sat at the base of me ever since, sometimes oddly calming, sometimes signaling a hyper-vigilance alert state, sometimes a chronic freeze response, carrying me through each day and seemingly unrelated to the events I now experience. The Great Experiment involves filtering that man through the halls of Venus. One of the few things I remember about the day of abuse is his face. And when I aim that romantic light of Venus towards him - for he was, after all, my first encounter with Eros, albeit forced - when aimed at Venus a pitch-black dim hangs over her, yet sometimes if I persist, She shines through from the other side with scattered petals of red, blue, and green, breaking up the darkness but not completely. That is the center-point, more like the depth point, of my consciousness. Going there, I feel a bit more grounded, as painful as the exercise might sound.

Alas, another thing to mention that remains in the absence of obviousness is how one could possibly arrive in a condition plagued with psychological problems while retaining the supernatural gift of levitation? I had come to the conclusion that it can best be explained if one divides Being into three parts – body, psyche, and spirit. My spirit, even with the foreground of decay in the psyche, still retained an awakened state. This can happen, as does with many when they open to the mystic without having a solid container to hold it. My spirit still remained, lit up like a sun from another planet, in the wildest golden light, and it was this golden light that enabled the download of the magnetic fluid to offset my weight and repel against gravity, though my mental health issues still continued in the realm of the psyche.

Eventually, then, yes, to returning to the current, I made it to the death meeting. It was held inside a church, in a quiet, small room, with about thirty folded chairs in a circle. About fifteen people arrived, and there was a host, sitting in a cozy armchair, who addressed the meeting when it was time to start. He appeared immaculately manicured, perhaps in his late sixties, with a neatly trimmed gray beard and semi-formal attire. He spoke: “Let us begin with the death inscription.”

“Death will come to us all; each day disposes itself as an eternal gift.” Everyone said in unison.

“Who’s first?” the host asked.

“I am Elizabeth, and I am afraid of death,” a tall slender woman spoke.

“Hi Elizabeth,” everyone echoed in unison.

“Oh my God, people! I don’t know how you do it. Talk about death regularly! It scares the living daylights out of me, and I just want to get back to normal living. But ever since I first started coming to these meetings – and I know I’m fairly new to these – I can’t stop thinking about that one line repeated, ‘All fear is fear of death.’ I mean, is it really? It seems like I just have fear of things to do now, not even fear, but a total consumption of the present. How to face death – I mean how would that really help me? I can’t wrap my mind around it!”

“Thanks for sharing,” came the crowd’s response.

“Hi, I’m Rob, and I’m afraid of death,” a man appearing in his mid-fifties, dressed in business casual attire said.

“Hi, Rob.”

“I’m not only afraid of death but so scared of life. I’m facing a monster of debt, and I must get it resolved before I pass. Do I have enough time to do it all? If I died tomorrow, would it be an unlived life? I have scarcely traveled out of the country, aside from one vacation to Cancun. I want to throw questions out: is the fear of life the fear of death, too? Is the fear of people the fear of death also? I don’t understand this, though these meetings have given me some peace – talking about the worst-case scenario does indeed shine a brighter light on the blessings I have now and while subsiding enough in this play of money and work, I am at a point stable enough but still scared of the future. Still not living with hope. I heard one psychologist, a famous writer, declare that the hope center in the brain was also the default center of the brain, so if there is hope, there will be more peace, accordingly. And my worries about the future too often overtake me. Thanks for letting me share.”

“Thanks, Rob.”

The host intervened: “There was the early psychoanalyst Otto Rank who made speculations and experiential references of others, all to explain the fear of life and the fear of death. Some interpreted that his conclusion was that the fear of life dwelled heavier in one’s psyche. But later interpretations put the fears together. Fear of life and fear of death go hand in hand, I believe, inextricably wed, like The Lovers card in The Tarot Deck, albeit the dark lovers, who oh yes, are everyone. Who’s next?”

“Hi, I’m Byron, and I’m scared of my wife.”

“Hi, Byron.”

“I hear that sex and death are inextricably tied, too, as the great works of literature reveal, though this, my struggle, is less about sex, or so it seems. The fear of my wife’s moods terrifies me. But moreover, she doesn’t trust me. I have lied to her in the past; I have even separated from her for a while against her better wishes. And I feel suspicion from her, whether it’s there or not. I fear being accused of lying, of hiding things, though I do not do this – it's a remnant from our history forever resurrected in her heaviness of diamond-sharp swords stuck into me by her words. We seem to be unable to move past this, and I live in a state of paranoia, wondering if she is being honest with me, wondering if she is hiding from me. It’s The Trauma Hall of Mirrors we look through, and though rested in our current dynamics, we both underwent severe childhood trauma in the past. I concede then to the fear of death, and it lightens my load. Ever since I have been coming to these meetings, for years now, my half-psychosis has ceased, though half remains in the frantic nerves of broken trust.”

“Thanks for sharing.” everyone said, and I felt validated, relating so much to Byron’s fear and wondering why he used mystical language similar to my own.

“Hi, I’m Jay, and I am less scared of death now.”

“Hi, Jay.”

“I’m just so grateful for these meetings. Most of you seem like intellectuals. But I guess I am a simple person. I work. I have a family. And the relationships I have with my family are better now since I started coming to these meetings. Going to the end, death, fills me with gratitude each day for the many blessings I have. Whenever I may get anxious or nervous, I just think of death, the ultimate loss. In another program I go to, they say fear is fear of losing what I have or not getting what I want. And death seems to include both of those. There is hope, and there is a more meaningful life for me now. I guess you could say that death has become my resting point, my center of gravity. Just so, so grateful, thank you.”

“Thanks, Jay.”

The meeting went on for a while, for about an hour, the rest of the shares were similar, and I took notice how most people were caught in the present, almost unable to arrive at death in their present minds. I did not share. But I resolved to go to other meetings, as there was something here, something I wanted to infuse in my blood that might make my anxiety and trauma less brutal. We closed with the second inscription, both inscriptions written on old stones outside the meeting room.

The host began with all of us holding hands. “Let us now praise Death, sacred Death, that binds us all in the quest of the unknown. To paraphrase a great poet, 'When thou must come, come unfalteringly.’ Amen.”

“Amen.”

I did not stay and talk to the others afterwards, though many were chatting it up. I felt a strange sense of hallucination, like a psychedelic drug I just took that was only half-effective, pulling me into visions but then quickly out. And before I could get to the car, two members stopped me in the parking lot.

“Hi, you’re new. I’m Mark and this is Gary.”

“I’m Troy, nice to meet you,” I said, shaking their hands.

“Are you a visionary like us?” They asked. “You appear as if you might be.”

“I’m not quite sure,” I said. “I’ve done some work in the esoteric arts but never became psychic or anything close.”

“You don’t have to be psychic to see things in these meetings. The quality of them contains a darkness, filled with soothing shadows of crescent moonlight in the spring. And the visions come from that, unrelated to your capacities.”

“Well, now that you mention it, maybe. Nothing came too clear, but I plan on coming back and perhaps you will be right. Though I care to leave things an open question, as open questions are the unknown of death, right?”

“Wow,” Gary said, “you seem to get it.” And turning to Mark, “I think he may be one of us. Here are our numbers if you ever need to call.”

“Thanks,” I said, “and I may call. I suffer from intense trauma.”

“We all do or have. That’s why we’re here.” Mark paused. “Nice to meet you. Hope to see you again.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said. “Take care.”

And with that, I went to my car and drove home, feeling relieved. It felt as if I had gained protectors throughout my life, some of whom I lost touch with and others I only contacted sporadically. They looked out for me, as if knowing I danced both miraculously and with an emotionally fragile core at the same time. And now, at this point, I had new protectors – Nova and Melanie, these two cats at the meeting, Bruce still, and more would come, I thought, especially now with these performances of levitation and monologues.

So how did I first come about this power of levitation? What had happened, many years ago, when I received a lucrative scholarship to study literature in Budapest, Hungary, is that I first climbed Gellert Hill, which one really couldn’t call a mountain. It had winding steps, running to the top, amid flats almost cave-like in the arrangement of the rising earth and stone. I had asked people, at my therapist's suggestion, “who is the keeper of these mountains?” My therapist had been studying with a shaman who declared that all mountains had keepers, who used mountaintops as their altar, tending to it like tending to the forces and possible blessings with which it could imbue the populus. Sure, enough, a woman of about 40 directed me to a spot where such a man went, usually around sunset. I went that evening to find him, and sure enough, he had a cloth spreading, lined with bones and stones and other talismans of sorts that I did not recognize.

“Are you the keeper of this mountain?” I had asked.

“Yes, after my brother died.”

We stared in silence for a while.

“Is there something I’m meant to learn from you?”

“No. But already I can sense you have a gateway inside you to Open Presence. I can refer you to a man in Prague. He will perhaps take you as a student and if you’re lucky, initiate you into the Holy Mysteries.”

“Wow. I’m not sure what to say, but I’ll go.”

The man in Prague was known simply as C.K., and he met me one night in Old Town Square beneath the clock, after the previous night when I had gone to a party of American expats living there, where I quite enjoyed myself.

C.K. did try to initiate me, but I could not get down most of the exercises of magic. Sure, there was something about being in Europe that always freed me of the visually-infused conditioned associations with America, and my relaxation there had reached a point where I was completely off all psychotropic medication. But I attributed this to me relaxing in my flat, with little homework to do, and just sitting there, drinking espresso and smoking, slipping into dazed releases of pent-up tension. But it didn’t necessarily feel like the Open Presence of which the keeper of the mountains spoke.

C.K. gave me exercise upon exercise, meditations of sorts, working with the four elements, but I could not get them. Then, when he explained to me the electromagnetic fluid, something seemed to resonate. The electric was Fire, expansive, positive, while the magnetic, to which I was more inclined, was Water, negative, contracting. He had once mentioned that one could achieve levitation if one progressed solidly enough into these Mysteries. He gave me the exercise to do this, but he had very little hope for me in the end.

“You’re just not ready for this,” he said.

“I agree. But I will take what you have given me so far, and perhaps it can develop at a future time.”

“Fair enough,” he said, “I will leave you with this stone: the shape of a thick phallus, though it’s meant to be, and I know it is, your soul stone.”

And with that, I headed back to Budapest, to enjoy the peace and solitude of my flat dwelling in relaxations and releases. However, one night it struck me to try the levitation technique. It amounted to drawing the dense magnetic fluid from the stars, down into the body from the head, and filling oneself with it so much that the heaviness of the negatively charged magnetic fluid offset one’s own body weight. The two negative charges, earth’s gravity and magnetic fluid, would repel, and once sufficiently done, one would rise. When I first tried, I felt such grounding, such a force from my head to my feet that I felt stuck to the ground, more tightly than ever in my life. I would continue to do this each night, for only about 15 minutes, before returning to reading in my armchair and relaxing. But would you know it? One night, I did it! I came several inches off the ground! And the next night, and the next night, and the next night, I kept improving. C.K. had warned against learning the higher abilities before the introductory and middle ones (which I had so remarkably failed at), but here, in this flat, in a building two centuries old, with gunshot markings still in the stone from WWII, I learned how to levitate. For years and years, I told no one.

Upon returning to America, my mental health declined again. My psyche was depressed and anxious, and yet, I’d continue to perform these levitations, alone of course, until many years later, at the age of 47, when I had at last returned to a Bohemian scene in Atlanta, I decided to give public performances. An avant-garde theater eventually agreed for me to perform monthly, given the initial tickets were selling out the theater, and they would pay me $4,000 a month. It was the only job I had, but enough to subsist on. I would give dramatic monologues in between levitations. I would have audience members come up to verify that there were no wires or strings or other artificial illusions moving me, and I would levitate again. The shows continued to sell out. The manager of the theater thought firmly that this was just a stepping stone into larger things, and I would eventually depart ways with the Pushing Boundaries theater into bigger events. He had even been called by talent agents. But many of them wanted illusionists with a full show of spectacle, not just some guy preaching in between levitations. But I was fine doing just this for now. And even though the audience checked me, it was amazing how many thought it was still just fake. But people would still come, again and again!

I shared a three-bedroom house with Nova and Melanie. Nova, a painter, lived in the uppermost part, which was a loft, giving him room for an in-house studio. Melanie, an emerging gothic horror novelist, lived at the ground level. And me, in a basement efficiency-styled apartment, where I had high ceilings and kept the spaciousness of emptiness open, filling it with little furniture and having my own bathroom. A portrait of Venus hung above my altar, where the soul stone sat, amid blue candles. I’m relieved that through my many lifetime hardships, I was still able to retain talents and personability, amid moving suddenly out of places, amid the alcoholism that ate my early thirties to dust and fake bronze.

The night before each performance, I had the dream that I always do that particular night, the one dream in an otherwise black dreamless sleep. In this dream of a capital pre-caution, Melanie and I floated in dark space, perhaps in damp clouds, perhaps the fog, perhaps beyond the skies of earth in space. She would look at me with stern eyes, black-clad as she always was, approaching me with knives, swords, points of hardened wires, as if wanting to fight but never fully attacking. However, as disturbing as it could be, her shadows would enter me, giving me a sacred dark force that helped me levitate. After turning paranoid at this dream at first, I eventually came to relish it as an initiation and a reinitiation every time, as much as it contradicted her behavior (well not completely) in waking life.

But I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

### Continue the story

This is a sample chapter from *Panic Magic*. Continue the story on Amazon.

[Buy on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Panic-Magic-Clint-Sabom-ebook/dp/B0DY6PCDNS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Y35QGSJYO8VB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.OFeoDdooY_l3Ewoluq_NnQ.fgM-3hTGoPy6CHflA7IHYZ5V4PqDYmAdN8CcRSx3j2Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=panic+magic+clint+sabom&qid=1779028515&sprefix=panic+magic+clint+sabom%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1)