2,000 Greater & Lesser Mysteries

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THE EQUINOX Vol. I. No. III 1st part October 22, 1989 e.v. key entry and June 25, 1990 e.v. first proof reading against the 1st edition done by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O. (further proof reading desirable) (c) O.T.O. disk 1 of 3 This is the XYWrite word processor version. To print, use substitution tables from printer drivers 3G10X.PRN or 3G10X-L.PRN, February 1990 e.v. revision or later (new graphics symbols used this time). A 7-bit ASCII version is also available. O.T.O. P.O.Box 430 Fairfax, CA 94930 USA (415) 454-5176 ---- Messages only. Pages in the original are marked thus at the bottom: {page number} Comments and descriptions are also set off by curly brackets {} Comments and notes not in the original are identified with the initials of the source: AC note = Crowley note. WEH note = Bill Heidrick note, etc. Descriptions of illustrations are not so identified, but are simply in curly brackets. (Addresses and invitations below are not current but copied from the original text of the early part of the 20th century) ************************************************************************ THE EQUINOX No. IV. will contain in its 400 pages: VARIOUS OFFICIAL INSTRUCTION of the A.'. A.'. THE ELEMENTAL CALLS OF KEYS, WITH THE GREAT WATCH TOWERS OF THE UNI- VERSE and their explanation. A complete treatise, fully illustrated, upon the Spirits of the Elements, their names and offices, with the method of calling them forth and controlling them. With an account of The Heptarchical Mystery, The Thirty Aethyrs or Aires with "The Vision and the Voice," being the Cries of the Angels of the Aethyrs, a revelation of the highest truths pertaining to the grade of Magister Templi, and many other matters. Fully illustrated. THE CONTINUATION OF THE HERB DAN- GEROUS. Selections from H. G. Ludlow, "the Hashish- Eater." MR. TODD: A Morality, by the author of "Rosa Mundi." THE DAUGHTER OF THE HORSELEECH, by ETHEL RAMSAY. THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING. [Continuation. FRATER P.'S EXPERIENCES IN THE EAST. A complete account of the various kinds of Yoga. DIANA OF THE INLET. By KATHERINE S. PRITCHARD. Fully Illustrated. ACROSS THE GULF: An adept's memory of his incarnation in Egypt under the 26th dynasty; with an account of the Passing of the Equinox of Isis. &c. &c. &c. "To be obtained of the" THE EQUINOX, 15 Tavistock Street, W.C. "And through all Booksellers" ----------------------- "Crown 8vo, Scarlet Buckram, pp. 64." This Edition strictly limited to 500 Copies. PRICE 10s A.'. A.'. PUBLICATION IN CLASS B. -------- BOOK 777 THIS book contains in concise tabulated form a comparative view of all the symbols of the great religions of the world; the perfect attributions of the Taro, so long kept secret by the Rosicrucians, are now for the first time published; also the complete secret magical correspondences of the G.'. D.'. and R. R. et A. C. It forms, in short, a complete magical and philosophical dictionary; a key to all religions and to all practical occult working. For the first time Western and Qabalistic symbols have been harmonized with those of Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Taoism, &c. By a glance at the Tables, anybody conversant with any one system can understand perfectly all others. The "Occult Review" says: "Despite its cumbrous sub-title and high price per page, this work has only to come under the notice o {sic} the right people to be sure of a ready sale. In its author's words, it represents 'an attempt to systematise alike the data of mysticism and the results of comparative religion,' and so far as any book can succeed in such an attempt, this book does succeed; that is to say, it condenses in some sixty pages as much information as many an intelligent reader at the Museum has been able to collect in years. The book proper consists of a Table of 'Correspondences,' and is, in fact, an attempt to reduce to a common denominator the symbolism of as many religious and magical systems as the author is acquainted with. The denominator chosen is necessarily a large one, as the author's object is to reconcile systems which divide all things into 3, 7, 10, 12, as the case may be. Since our expression 'common denominator' is used in a figurative and not in a strictly mathematical sense, the task is less complex than appears at first sight, and the 32 Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah, or Book of Formation of the Qabalah, provide a convenient scale. These 32 Paths are attributed by the Qabalists to the 10 Sephiroth, or Emanations of Deity, and to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which are again subdivided into 3 mother letters, 7 double letters, and 12 simple letters. On this basis, that of the Qabalistic 'Tree of Life,' as a certain arrangement of the Sephiroth and 22 remaining Paths connecting them is termed, the author has constructed no less than 183 tables. "The Qabalistic information is very full, and there are tables of Egyptian and Hindu deities, as well as of colours, perfumes, plants, stones, and animals. The information concerning the tarot and geomancy exceeds that to be found in some treatises devoted exclusively to those subjects. The author appears to be acquainted with Chinese, Arabic, and other classic texts. Here your reviewer is unable to follow him, but his Hebrew does credit alike to him and to his printer. Among several hundred words, mostly proper names, we found and marked a few misprints, but subsequently discovered each one of them in a printed table of errata, which we had overlooked. When one remembers the misprints in 'Agrippa' and the fact that the ordinary Hebrew compositor and reader is no more fitted for this task than a boy cognisant of no more than the shapes of the Hebrew letters, one wonders how many proofs there were and what the printer's bill was. A knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet and the Qabalistic Tree of Life is all that is needed to lay open to the reader the enormous mass of information contained in this book. The 'Alphabet of Mysticism,' as the author says ___ several alphabets we should prefer to say ___ is here. Much that has been jealously and foolishly kept secret in the past is here, but though our author has secured for his work the "imprimatur" of some body with the mysterious title of the A.'. A.'., and though he remains himself anonymous, he appears to be no mystery-monger. Obviously he is widely read, but he makes no pretence that he has secrets to reveal. On the contrary, he says, 'an indicible arcanum is an arcanum which "cannot" be revealed.' The writer of that sentence has learned at least one fact not to be learned from books. "G.C.J." RIDER'S LIBRARY OF ALCHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY THE HERMETIC AND ALCHEMICAL WRITINGS OF AUREOLUS PHILIPPUS THEOPHRASTUS BOMBAST OF HOHENHEIM, CALLED PARACELSUS THE GREAT, now for the first time translated into English. Edited with a Biographical Preface, Elucidatory notes, and a copious Hermetic Vocabulary and Index, by ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE. In Two Volumes, Dark Red Cloth, medium 4to, gilt tops, 25s. net. Vol. I., 394 pp.; Vol. II., 396 pp. THE TURBA PHILOSOPHORUM, or Assembly of the Sages. An Ancient Alchemical Treatise, with the chief Readings of the Shorter Codex, Parallels from Greek Alchemists, and Explanations of obscure terms. Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by A.E. WAITE. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. A great symposium or debate of the Adepts assembled in convocation. The work ranks next to Gober as a fountain-head of alchemy in Western Europe. It reflects the earliest Byzantine, Syrian and Arabian writers. This famous work is accorded the highest place among the works of Alchemical Philosophy which are available for the students in the English language. THE NEW PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. the Treatise of Bonus concerning the Treasure of the Philosopher's Stone. Translated from the Latin. Edited by A. E. WAITE. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. One of the classics of alchemy, with a very curious account, accompanied by emblematical figures showing the generation and birth of metals, the death of those that are base and their resurrection in the prefect forms of gold and silver. A GOLDEN AND BLESSED CASKET OF NATURE'S MARVELS. BY BENEDICTUS FIGULUS. With a Life of the Author. Edited by A. E. WAITE. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. A collection of short treatises by various authors belonging to the school of Paracelsus, dealing with the mystery of the Philosopher's Stone, the revelation of Hermes, the great work of the Tincture, the glorious antidote of Potable Gold. Benedictus Figulus connects by imputation with the early Rosicrucians. THE TRIUMPHAL CHARIOT OF ANTIMONY. BY BASIL VALENTINE. Translated from the Latin, including the Commentary of Kerckringius, and Biographical and Critical Introduction. Edited by A. E. WAITE. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. A valuable treatise by one who is reputed a great master of alchemical art. It connects practical chemistry with the occult theory of transmutation. The antimonial Fire-Stone is said to cure diseases in man and to remove the imperfection of metals. THE ALCHEMICAL WRITINGS OF EDWARD KELLY. From the Latin Edition of 1676. With a Biographical Introduction, an Account of Kelly's relations with Dr. Dee, and a transcript of the "Book of St. Dunstan." Edited by A. E. WAITE. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. A methodised summary of the best Hermetic philosophers, including a discourse on Terrestrial Astronomy, in which the planets are replaced by metals, and instead of an account of stellar influences we have the laws governing metallic conversion. YOUR FORTUNE IN YOUR NAME, OR KABALISTIC ASTROLOGY. New edition, largely revised. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 96 pp., 2s. 6d. net. By "SEPHARIAL." A MANUAL OF CARTOMANCY, Fortune-Telling and Occult divination, including the Oracle of Human Destiny, Cagliostro's Mystic Alphabet of the Magi, &c. &c. Fourth edition, greatly enlarged and revised, by GRAND ORIENT. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 252 pp., 2s. 6d. net. COLLECTANEA CHEMICA. Being certain Select Treatises on Alchemy and Hermetic medicine. By EIRENAEUS PHILALETHES, &c. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. CONTENTS ___ The Secret of the Immortal Liquor called Alkahest ___ Aurum Potabile ___ The Admirable Efficacy of the True Oil of Sulphur Fire ___ The Stone of the Philosophers ___ The Bosom Book of Sir George Ripley ___ The Preparation of the Sophic Mercury. THE HERMETIC MUSEUM, Restored and Enlarged: most faithfully instructing all disciples of the Sopho-Spagyric art how that greatest and truest medicine of the Philosopher's Stone may be found and held. Now first done into English from the Latin original published at Frankfort in the year 1678. Containing 22 celebrated alchemical tracts. Translated from the Latin and edited by A. E. WAITE. With numerous most interesting engravings. Fcap. quarto, 2 vols. Very scarce, 35s. AZOTH, or The Star in the East. A New Light of Mysticism. By ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE. Imperial 8vo, pp. xvi + 239. Original edition in special binding. Price 5s. A presentation of mystic doctrine and symbolism in the light of Christian Teaching and Hermetic philosophy; evolution in the Light of Mysticism; the way of attainment; and the interior life from the mystic standpoint. "Note. ___ Many old books on Astrology and Alchemical Science are also kept" "in stock. Write for latest new and second-hand catalogues." ____________________ WILLIAM RIDER & SON, Ltd., 164 Aldersgate St., London. E.C. The Star in the West BY CAPTAIN J. F. C. FULLER " ""FOURTH LARGE EDITION NOW IN PREPARATION" THROUGH THE EQUINOX AND ALL BOOKSELLERS SIX SHILLINGS NET ------------------------------------- A highly original study of morals and religion by a new writer, who is as entertaining as the average novelist is dull. Nowadays human thought has taken a brighter place in the creation: our emotions are weary of bad baronets and stolen wills; they are now only excited by spiritual crises, catastrophes of the reason, triumphs of the intelligence. In these fields Captain Fuller is a master dramatist. ------------------------------------- £10 REWARD Ten Pounds ("£"10) will be paid by the Proprietors of THE EQUINOX for a copy of the Journal containing the following passage, which has been anonymously sent to this office, or for such information as may enable them to trace the perpetrators. (TORN EDGE) the circumstances. _________________ Cox, Box, Equinox, McGregors are coming to Town; Some in rags, and some on jags, And the Swami upside down. _________________ Cran, Cran, McGregor's man Served a writ, and away he ran. _________________ Cadbury Jones! Stop your groans, And open the Family Bible, I fancy cocoa Would tint your boko Less than Criminal Libel. _________________ What did Waistcott Wynn? Anyway, he lost his shirt. _________________ See-Saw, Bernard Shaw Sold his beef to live upon straw. Wasn't he a thousand miles From sense when he went to Eustace Miles? _________________ Jagmatite said (TORN EDGE) The Back contains some account of a football match played on some Saturday in January, apparently in Lancashire. The envelope was addressed in female script, and bears postmark "Rock Ferry." Besides the senseless vulgarity and scurrility of this disgusting stuff, it implies the false and malicious statement that a writ has been served upon us; and we shall proceed according to law, if we can trace the offenders. A GREEN GARLAND By V. B. NEUBURG Green paper cover. 1s. 6d. net _______________ "As far as the verse is concerned there is in this volume something more than mere promise; the performance is at times remarkable; there is beauty not only of thought and invention ___ and the invention is of a positive kind ___ but also of expression and rhythm. There is a lilt in Mr. Neuburg's poems; he has the impulse to sing, and makes his readers feel that impulse." "The Morning Post", May 21, 1908. "There is a certain given power in some of the imaginings concerning death, as 'The Dream' and 'the Recall,' and any reader with a liking for verse of an unconventional character will find several pieces after his taste." "The Daily Telegraph", May 29, 1908. "Here is a poet of promise." ___ "The Daily Chronicle", May 13, 1908. "It is not often that energy and poetic feeling are united so happily as in this little book." ___ "The Morning Leader", July 10, 1908. There is promise and some fine lines in these verses." "The Times", July 11, 1908. ___________________ " ""To be obtained of" "THE YOUNG CAMBRIDGE PRESS," 4 MILL STREET, BEDFORD London: PROBSTHAIN & CO. And all Booksellers. "This page is reserved for Official Pronouncements by the Chancellor" " of the A".'." A".'.] Persons wishing for information, assistance, further interpretation, etc., are requested to communicate with THE CHANCELLOR OF THE A.'. A.'. c/o THE EQUINOX, 124 Victoria Street, S.W. Telephone 3210 VICTORIA, or to call at that address by appointment. A representative will be there to meet them. ---------------------- Probationers are reminded that the object of Probations and Ordeals is one: namely, to select Adepts. But the method appears twofold: (i) to fortify the fit; (ii) to eliminate the unfit. ---------------------- The Chancellor of the A.'. A.'. wishes to announce that those whom he represents are only responsible for the Publications on which their Imprimatur is set; the rest of THE EQUINOX is edited as literary and commercial expediency may suggest to the person responsible. THE EQUINOX " "The Editor will be glad to consider" "contributions and to return such as" "are unacceptable if stamps are enclosed" " for the purpose" THE EQUINOX THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE A.'. A.'. THE REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC ILLUMINISM An. VI VOL. I. NO. III. Sun in Aries MARCH MCMX O.S. "THE METHOD OF SCIENCE---THE AIM OF RELIGION" LONDON SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LTD. CONTENTS PAGE EDITORIAL 1 LIBER XIII 3 AHA! BY ALEISTER CROWLEY 9 THE HERB DANGEROUS ___ (PART III) THE POEM OF HASHISH. BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (Translated by ALEISTER CROWLEY) 55 AN ORIGIN. BY VICTOR B. NEUBURG 115 THE SOUL-HUNTER 119 MADELEINE. BY ARTHUR F. GRIMBLE 129 THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING (BOOK II ___ "continued") 133 THE COMING OF APOLLO. BY VICTOR B. NEUBURG 281 THE BRIGHTON MYSTERY. BY GEORGE RAFFALOVICH 287 REVIEWS 113, 285, 304 THE SHADOWY DILL-WATERS. BY A. QUILLER, JR. 327 "SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT" LIBER DCCCCLXIII ___ THE TREASURE-HOUSE OF IMAGES ILLUSTRATIONS THE SLOPES OF ABIEGNUS "Facing page" 4 THE STUDENT " 10 THE COMPLETE SYMBOL OF THE ROSE AND CROSS " 210 THE ELEMENTAL TABLETS AND CHERUBIC EMBLEMS " 212 THE LID OF THE PASTOS " 218 THE CEILING OF THE VAULT┐ │ THE FLOOR OF THE VAULT │ ├ " 222 THE CIRCULAR ALTAR │ │ THE ROSE AND CROSS ┘ "SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT" THE TRIANGLE OF THE UNIVERSE " 4 THE GREEK CROSS OF THE ZODIAC " 70 {WEH NOTE: Two different versions of this editorial exist in separate marketings of the 1st edition. Both will be given. This first one seems to be the earlier version.} EDITORIAL HAPPY is the movement that has no history! At the beginning of our second year we have little to record but quiet steady growth, a gradual spreading of our Tree of Knowledge, a gradual awakening of interest in all parts of the earth, a gradual access of fellow-workers, some young and enthusiastic, others already weary of the search for Truth in a world where so many offer the Stone of dogma, so few the Bread of experience. There! we had nothing to say, and we have said it very nicely. Floreas! * * * * * We must apologise for the necessity of holding over our edition of Sir Edward Kelly's account of the Forty-Eight Angelical Keys, and other important articles. Considerations of space were imperative. * * * * * Mr. H. Sheidan-Bickers will lecture on behalf of THE EQUINOX during the year. We shall be glad if our readers will arrange with him through us to speak in their towns. Mr. Bickers makes no charge for lecturing, and THE EQUINOX may assist if desired in meeting the necessary expenses. {1} NOTES OF THE SEMESTER MR. SHERIDAN-BICKERS held a large and very successful meeting at Cambridge in November. We beg to extend our warmest sympathies to Brother Aloysius Crowley. The gang of soi-disant Rosicrucian swindlers whose profits have suffered through our exposures, having failed to frighten Mr. Aleister Crowley, decided to assassinate him. Their hired ruffians seem to have been knaves as clumsy as themselves, and Brother Aloysius suffered in his stead, escaping death by a miracle. If we do not extend our sympathy to Mr. Aleister Crowley also, it is from a conviction that he has probably deserved anything that he may get. In order to cope with the constantly increasing budget of letters of inquiry and sympathy from every part of the world, we have moved into new premises at 124 Victoria Street, Westminster, to which address all communications should be directed. Callers will always be welcome, but it is advisable to make appointments by letter or telephone. {2} {WEH NOTE: Of the two different versions of this editorial found in different copies of the 1st edition, this seems to be the later version. It is found tipped in to some copies where the original pages 1-2 have been cut away.} EDITORIAL HAPPY is the movement that has no history! At the beginning of our second year we have little to record but quiet steady growth, a gradual spreading of our Tree of Knowledge, a gradual awakening of interest in all parts of the earth, a gradual access of fellow-workers, some young and enthusiastic, others already weary of the search for Truth in a world where so many offer the Stone of dogma, so few the Bread of experience. There! we had nothing to say, and we have said it very nicely. Floreas! * * * * * We must apologise for the necessity of holding over our edition of Sir Edward Kelly's account of the Forty-Eight Angelical Keys, and other important articles. Considerations of space were imperative. * * * * * Two days after the bound advance copies of this Number were delivered by the printer, an order was made restraining publication, continued by Mr. JUSTICE BUCKNILL, and dissolved by the Court of Appeal. {1} NOTES OF THE SEMESTER MR. SHERIDAN-BICKERS held a large meeting at Cambridge in November, as successful as one would expect from the intellectual preeminence of our great university. We beg to extend our warmest sympathies to Brother Aloysius Crowley. It seems possible that some gang of swindlers, fearing exposure, and having failed to frighten Mr. Aleister Crowley, decided to assassinate him. Their hired ruffians seem to have been knaves as clumsy as themselves, and Brother Aloysius suffered in his stead, escaping death by a miracle. If we do not extend our sympathy to Mr. Aleister Crowley also, it is from a conviction that he has probably deserved anything that he may get. In order to cope with the constantly increasing budget of letters of inquiry and sympathy from every part of the world, we have moved into new premises at 124 Victoria Street, Westminster, to which address all communications should be directed. Callers will always be welcome, but it is advisable to make appointments by letter or telephone. {2} LIBER XIII VEL GRADUUM MONTIS ABIEGNI A SYLLABUS OF THE STEPS UPON THE PATH A.'. A.'. Publication in Class D. Issued by Order: D.D.S. 7° = 4° Praemonstrator O.S.V. 6° = 5° Imperator N.S.F. 5° = 6° Cancellarius 51. Let not the failure and the pain turn aside the worshippers. The foundations of the pyramid were hewn in the living rock ere sunset; did the king weep at dawn that the crown of the pyramid was yet unquarried in the distant land? 52. There was also a humming-bird that spake unto the horned cerastes, and prayed him for poison. And the great snake of Khem the Holy One, the royal Uraeus serpent, answered him and said: 53. I sailed over the sky of Nu in the car called Millions-of-Years, and I saw not any creature upon Seb that was equal to me. The venom of my fang is the inheritance of my father, and of my father's father; and how shall I give it unto thee? Live thou and thy children as I and my fathers have lived, even unto an hundred millions of generations, and it may be that the mercy of the Mighty Ones may bestow upon thy children a drop of the poison of eld. 54. Then the humming-bird was afflicted in his spirit, and he flew unto the flowers, and it was as if naught had been spoken between them. Yet in a little while a serpent struck him that he died. 55. But an Ibis that meditated upon the bank of Nile the beautiful god listened and heard. And he laid aside his Ibis ways, and became as a serpent saying Peradventure in an hundred millions of millions of generations of my children, they shall attain to a drop of the poison of the fang of the Exalted One. 56. And behold! ere the moon waxed thrice he became an Uraeus serpent, and the poison of the fang was established in him and his seed even for ever and for ever. LIBER LXV. CAP. V {4} {Illustration facing page 4 partially described: This is an ornamented diagram of the Tree of Life, from Tipheret downward. At the bottom of the figure is a solid line, below it the words: "PROBATIONER Liber LXI and LXV [In certain cases Ritual LXXVIII.]" Above this line, to the left: "PORTA", and to the right "PORTAE". A triple ringed circle rests on this base line, for Malkut. Arched between the rings at the bottom "RITUAL DCLXXI." Written within the circle are the words: "The Four Powers of The Sphinx NEOPHYTE. Liber VII. The Building of the Magic Pentacle." Extending vertically from the circle of Malkut is the path of Taw, with these words: "Control of the Astral Plane". This path connects to the circle representing Yesod. Extending at an angle from the circle of Malkut to the left is the path of Shin, with these words: "Meditation Practice Equivalent to Ritual CXX". This path connects to the circle representing Hod. Extending at an angle from the circle of Malkut to the right is the path of Qof, with these words: "Methods of Divination". This path connects to the circle representing Netzach. The ringed circle representing Yesod has "RITUAL CXX" arched between its rings at the bottom and the following words written inside: "Posture Hatha Yoga Control of Breathing. ZELATOR Liber CCXX The Forging of the Magic Sword." Extending upward from the circle of Yesod is the path of Samekh, interrupted by the crossing path of Peh. These words are on it: "Rising on the Planes". This path is also interrupted by the center of a crescent before continuing on to the circle representing Tipheret. Extending at an angle from the circle of Yesod to the left is the path of Resh, with these words: "Meditation Practice equivalent to Ritual DCLXXI". This path connects to the circle representing Hod. Extending at an angle from the circle of Yesod to the right is the path of Tzaddi (as Crowley considered at this time), with these words: "Meditation Practice on Expansion of Consciousness". This path connects to the circle representing Netzach. The ringed circle representing Hod has "NO RITUAL" arched between its rings at the bottom and the following words written inside: "The Qabalah Liber DCCLXXVII Gana Yoga Control of Speech PRACTICUS. Liber XXVII The Casting of the Magic Cup" Extending horizontally to the right from the circle of Hod is the path of Peh, with these words: "Ritual & Meditation Practice to Destroy Thoughts". This path connects to the circle representing Netzach. Extending at an angle from the circle of Hod to the right is the path of Ayin, with these words: "Talismans Evocations". This path is interrupted by the left horn of a crescent moon and then continues on to the circle representing Tipheret. Extending vertically upward from the circle of Hod is part of the path of Mem, with these words: "Leads to Grade of (underline bifurcates path lengthwise) Adeptus Major". The path breaks at top without closure. The ringed circle representing Netzach has "NO RITUAL" arched between its rings at the bottom and the following words written inside: "Devotion to the Order Bhakti Yoga Control of Action PHILOSOPHUS. Liber DCCCXIII The Cutting of the Magic Wand" Extending at an angle from the circle of Netzach to the left is the path of Nun, with these words: "Mahasatipatthana Etc" This path is interrupted by the right horn of a crescent moon and then continues on to the circle representing Tipheret. Extending vertically upward from the circle of Netzach is part of the path of Koph, with these words: "Leads to Grade of (underline bifurcates path lengthwise) Adeptus Exemptus". The path breaks at top without closure. A solid line is drawn behind the paths, from the upper arc of the circle of Hod to that of the circle of Netzach. Above it are the words "PORTA COLLEGII ad S.S." A crescent moon depends from the circle representing Tipheret, body centered on the intersection of the "PROTA COL..." and the path of Samekh, horns touching the outer limit of the circle of Tipheret at the terminus of the horizontal diameter of that circle. Within the crescent are the words: "Control of Thought. Raja Yoga Harmonizing of the Knowledge & Powers already acquired. Liber Mysteriorum The Light- DOMINVS LIMINIS Lamp -ing of the magic" The ringed circle representing Tipheret has "RITUAL VIII" arched between the rings at the bottom. Inside is circumscribed an upright pentagram with the following in the averse pentagon formed by its lines: "ADEPTVS MINOR". Between the points, inside the circle are these words, clockwise from the top right: "Ritual", "Revealed", "in Vision", "of Eighth", "Aethyr". Finally, there is a half-glory radiant about the upper half of the circle representing Tipheret. This is composed of 26 spikes, black with a hollow flame like a tear-drop extending into each. The bulbs of the flame-drops define an arch. The bottom of the arch is defined by an arc concentric with the Tipheret circle, and the edges curve up to meet the edges of the half- glory. The following words are inside this arch: "The Knowledge & Conversation of the HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL".} LIBER XIII VEL GRADUUM MONTIS ABIEGNI A SYLLABUS OF THE STEPS UPON THE PATH " ""Quote LXV. Cap. V. vv. 52-56"1 1. "The Probationer." His duties are laid down in Paper A, Class D. Being "without," they are vague and general. He receives Liber LXI. and LXV. [Certain Probationers are admitted after six months or more to Ritual XXVIII.] At the end of the Probation he passes Ritual DCLXXI., which constitutes him a Neophyte. 2. "The Neophyte." His duties are laid down in Paper B, Class D. He receives Liber VII. Examination in Liber O, Caps I.-IV., Theoretical and Practical. Examination in the Four Powers of the Sphinx. Practical. Four tests are set. Further, he builds up the magic Pentacle. Finally he passes Ritual CXX., which constitutes him a Zelator. {5} 3. "The Zelator." His duties are laid down in Paper C, Class D. He receives Liber CCXX., XXVII., and DCCCXIII. Examinations in Posture and Control of Breath (see EQUINOX No. I). Practical. Further, he is given two meditation-practices corresponding to the two rituals DCLXXI. and CXX. (Examination is only in the knowledge of, and some little practical acquaintance with, these meditations. The complete results, if attained, would confer a much higher grade.) Further, he forges the magic Sword. No ritual admits to the grade of Practicus, which is conferred by authority when the task of the Zelator is accomplished. 4. "The Practicus." His duties are laid down in Paper D, Class D. Instruction and Examination in the Qabalah and Liber DCCLXXVII. Instruction in Philosophical Meditation (Ghana-Yoga).2 Examination in some one mode of divination: "e.g.", Geomancy, Astrology, the Tarot. Theoretical. He is given a meditation-practice on Expansion of Consciousness. He is given a meditation-practice in the destruction of thoughts. Instruction and Examination in Control of Speech. Practical. Further, he casts the magic Cup. No ritual admits to the grade of Philosophus, which is {6} conferred by authority when the Task of the Practicus is accomplished. 5. "The Philosophus." His duties are laid down in Paper E, Class D. He practises Devotion to the Order. 1 WEH NOTE --- This line seems a printer's error, the quotation was made on page 4. 2 All these instructions will be issued openly in THE EQUINOX in due course, where this has not already been done. Instruction and Examination in Methods of Meditation by Devotion (Bhakti- Yoga). Instruction and Examination in Construction and Consecration of Talismans, and in Evocation. Theoretical and Practical. Examination in Rising on the Planes (Liber O, Caps. V., VI.). Practical. He is given a meditation-practice on the Senses, and the Sheaths of the Self, and the Practice called Mahasatipatthana. (See The Sword of Song, "Science and Buddhism." Instruction and Examination in Control of Action. Further, he cuts the Magic Wand. Finally, the Title of Dominus Liminis is conferred upon him. He is given meditation-practices on the Control of Thought, and is instructed in Raja-Yoga. He receives Liber Mysteriorum and obtains a perfect understanding of the Formulae of Initiation. He meditates upon the diverse knowledge and power that he has acquired, and harmonises it perfectly. Further, he lights the Magic Lamp. At last, Ritual VIII. admits him to the grade of Adeptus Minor. "The Adeptus Minor." His duty is laid down in Paper F, Class D. {7} It is to follow out the instruction given in the Vision of the Eighth AEthyr for the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. [NOTE. This is in truth the sole task; the others are useful only as adjuvants to and preparations for the One Work. Moreover, once this task has been accomplished, there is no more need of human help or instruction; for by this alone may the highest attainment be reached. All these grades are indeed but convenient landmarks, not necessarily significant. A person who had attained them all might be immeasurably the inferior of one who had attained none of them; it is Spiritual Experience alone that counts in the Result; the rest is but Method. Yet it is important to possess knowledge and power, provided that it be devoted wholly to that One Work.] {8} AHA! AHA! THE SEVENFOLD MYSTERY OF THE INEFFABLE LOVE; THE COMING OF THE LORD IN THE AIR AS KING AND JUDGE OF THIS CORRUPTED WORLD; WHEREIN UNDER THE FORM OF A DISCOURSE BETWEEN MARSYAS AN ADEPT AND OLYMPAS HIS PUPIL THE WHOLE SECRET OF THE WAY OF INITIATION IS LAID OPEN FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END; FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF THE LITTLE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT. WRITTEN IN TREMBLING AND HUMILITY FOR THE BRETHREN OF THE A.'. A.'. BY THEIR VERY DUTIFUL SERVANT, AN ASPIRANT TO THEIR SUBLIME ORDER, ALEISTER CROWLEY {Illustration facing page 10 partly described: This is a collotype in bright crimson. It is a photo of Crowley in black robe, only visible from diaphragm up. His elbows rest on a table before him, and his hands form the sign of the "horns of Horus" against his face on a level with his eyes. His hood is turned back and pulled on as a hat, showing the eye in the triangle and forming a rough triangle in cloth about that device. He wears a serpent ring on the third finger of his right hand. On the table to the left, in the corner of the photo, is a large and circular honey topaz set in a vermilion cross (colors from other sources). A ribbon is attached to the cross. To the right is a standing book, evidently Crowley's magical diary. This book is bound in what looks like red Moroccan leather, chased in gold and embossed (conjectured from surviving diaries of Crowley's) The spine of the book has "PERDURABOMAGISTER" vertically on it. The "P" has Alpha and Omega to either side, and the last "R" has "2" to the left and "4" to the right. The cover board is engraved with a large pentagram in a circle. The pentagram is interlaced as envoking earth would form, and there is a left eye of Horus in the center.} THE ARGUMENTATION A LITTLE before Dawn, the pupil comes to greet his Master, and begs instruction. Inspired by his Angel, he demands the Doctrine of being rapt away into the Knowledge and Conversation of Him. The Master discloses the doctrine of Passive Attention or Waiting. This seeming hard to the Pupil, it is explained further, and the Method of Resignation, Constancy, and Patience inculcated. The Paradox of Equilibrium. The necessity of giving oneself wholly up the the new element. Egoism rebuked. The Master, to illustrate this Destruction of the Ego, describes the Visions of Dhyana. He further describes the defence of the Soul against assailing Thoughts, and shows that the duality of Consciousness is a blasphemy against the Unity of God; so that even the thought called God is a denial of God-as-He-is-in- Himself. The pupil sees nothing but a blank midnight in this Emptying of the Soul. He is shown that this is the necessary condition of Illumination. Distinction is further made between these three Dhyanas, and those early visions in which things appear as objective. With these three Dhyanas, moreover, are Four other of the Four Elements: and many more. Above these is the Veil of Paroketh. Its guardians. The Rosy Cross lies beyond this veil, and therewith the vision called Vishvarupadarshana. Moreover, there is the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. The infinite number and variety of these Visions. The impossibility of revealing all these truths to the outer and uninitiated world. The Vision of the Universal Peacock ___ Atmadarshana. The confusion of the Mind, and the Perception of its self-contradiction. The Second Veil ___ the Veil of the Abyss. The fatuity of Speech. {11} A discussion as to the means by which the vision arises in the pure Soul is useless; suffice it that in the impure Soul no Vision will arise. The practical course is therefore to cleanse the Soul. The four powers of the Sphinx; even adepts hardly attain to one of them! The final Destruction of the Ego. The Master confesses that he has lured the disciple by the promise of Joy, as the only thing comprehensible by him, although pain and joy are transcended even in early visions. Ananda (bliss) ___ and its opposite ___ mark the first steps of the path. Ultimately all things are transcended; and even so, this attainment of Peace is but as a scaffolding to the Palace of the King. The sheaths of the soul. The abandonment of all is necessary; the adept recalls his own tortures, as all that he loved was torn away. The Ordeal of the Veil of the Abyss; the Unbinding of the Fabric of Mind, and its ruin. The distinction between philosophical credence and interior certitude. Sammasati ___ the trance wherein the adept perceives his causal connection with the Universe; past, present, and future. Mastering the Reason, he becomes as a little child, and invokes his Holy Guardian Angel, the Augoeides. Atmadarshana arising is destroyed by the Opening of the Eye of Shiva; the annihilation of the Universe,. The adept is destroyed, and there arises the Master of the Temple. The pupil, struck with awe, proclaims his devotion to the Master; whereat the latter bids him rather unite himself with the Augoeides. Yet, following the great annihilation, the adept reappears as an Angel to instruct men in this doctrine. The Majesty of the Master described. The pupil, wonder-struck, swears to attain, and asks for further instruction. The Master describes the Eight Limbs of Yoga. The pupil lamenting the difficulty of attainment, the Master shows forth the sweetness of the hermit's life. One doubt remains: will not the world be able instantly to recognise the Saint? The Master replies that only imperfect Saints reveal themselves as such. Of these are {12} the cranks and charlatans, and those that fear and deny Life. But let us fix our thoughts on Love, and not on the failings of others! The Master invokes the Augoeides; the pupil through sympathy is almost rapt away. The Augoeides hath given the Master a message; namely, to manifest the New Way of the Equinox of Horus, as revealed in Liber Legis. He does so, and reconciles it with the Old Way by inviting the Test of Experiment. They would go therefore to the Desert or the Mountains ___ nay! here and now shall it be accomplished. Peace to all beings! {13} AHA! OLYMPAS. Master, ere the ruby Dawn Gild the dew of leaf and lawn, Bidding the petals to unclose Of heaven's imperishable Rose, Brave heralds, banners flung afar Of the lone and secret star, I come to greet thee. Here I bow To earth this consecrated brow! As a lover woos the Moon Aching in a silver swoon, I reach my lips towards thy shoon, Mendicant of the mystic boon! MARSYAS. What wilt thou? OLYMPAS. Let mine Angel say! "Utterly to be rapt away!" MARSYAS. How, whence, and whither? OLYMPAS. By my kiss From that abode to this ___ to this!" My wings? MARSYAS. Thou hast no wings. But see An eagle sweeping from the Byss Where God stands. Let him ravish thee, And bear thee to a boundless bliss! {15} OLYMPAS. How should I call him? How beseech? MARSYAS. Silence is lovelier than Speech. Only on a windless tree Falls the dew, Felicity! One ripple on the water mars The magic mirror of the Stars. OLYMPAS. My soul bends to the athletic stress Of God's immortal loveliness. Tell me, what wit avails the clod To know the nearness of its God? MARSYAS. First, let the soul be poised, and fledge Truth's feather on mind's razor-edge. Next, let no memory, feeling, hope Stain all its starless horoscope. Last, let it be content, twice void; Not to be suffered or enjoyed; Motionless, blind and deaf and dumb --- So may it to its kingdom come! OLYMPAS. Dear master, can this be? The wine Embittered with dark discipline? For the soul loves her mate, the sense. MARSYAS. This bed is sterile. Thou must fence Thy soul from all her foes, the creatures That by their soft and siren natures Lure thee to shipwreck! OLYMPAS. Thou hast said: "God is in all." MARSYAS. In sooth. OLYMPAS. Why dread The Godhood? {16} MARSYAS. Only as the thought Is God, adore it. But the soul creates Misshapen fiends, incestuous mates. Slay these: they are false shadows of The never-waning moon of love. OLYMPAS. What thought is worthy? MARSYAS. Truly none Save one, in that it is but one. Keep the mind constant; thou shalt see Ineffable felicity. Increase the will, and thou shalt find It hath the strength to be resigned. Resign the will; and from the string Will's arrow shall have taken wing, And from the desolate abode Found the immaculate heart of God! OLYMPAS. The word is hard! MARSYAS. All things excite Their equal and their opposite. Be great, and thou shalt be ___ how small! Be naught, and thou shalt be the All! Eat not; all meat shall fill thy mouth: Drink, and thy soul shall die of drouth! Fill thyself; and that thou seekest Is diluted to its weakest. Empty thyself; the ghosts of night Flee before the living Light. Who clutches straws is drowned; but he That hath the secret of the sea, Lives with the whole lust of his limbs, {17} Takes hold of water's self, and swims. See, the ungainly albatross Stumbles awkwardly across Earth ___ one wing-beat, and he flies Most graceful gallant in the skies! So do thou leave thy thoughts, intent On thy new noble element! Throw the earth shackles off, and cling To what imperishable thing Arises from the Married death Of thine own self in that whereon Thou art fixed. OLYMPAS. Then all life's loyal breath Is a waste wind. All joy forgone, I must strive ever? MARSYAS. Cease to strive! Destroy this partial I, this moan Of an hurt beast! Sores keep alive By scratching. Health is peace. Unknown And unexpressed because at ease Are the Most High Congruities. OLYMPAS. Then death is thine "attainment"? I Can do no better than to die! MARSYAS. Indeed, that "I" that is not God Is but a lion in the road! Knowest thou not (even now!) how first The fetters of Restriction burst? In the rapture of the heart Self hath neither lot nor part. {18} MARSYAS. Tell me, dear master, how the bud First breaks to brilliance of bloom: What ecstasy of brain and blood Shatters the seal upon the tomb Of him whose gain was the world's loss Our father Christian Rosycross! MARSYAS. First, one is like a gnarled old oak On a waste heath. Shrill shrieks the wind. Night smothers earth. Storm swirls to choke The throat of silence! Hard behind Gathers a blacker cloud than all. But look! but look! it thrones a ball Of blistering fire. It breaks. The lash Of lightning snakes him forth. One crash Splits the old tree. One rending roar! --- And night is darker than before. OLYMPAS. Nay, master, master! Terror hath So fierce an hold upon the path? Life must lie crushed, a charred black swath, In that red harvest's aftermath! MARSYAS. Life lives. Storm passes. Clouds dislimn. The night is clear. And now to him Who hath endured is given the boon Of an immeasurable moon. The air about the adept congeals To crystal; in his heart he feels One needle pang; then breaks that splendour Infinitely pure and tender ... ___ And the ice drags him down! {19} OLYMPAS. But may Our trembling frame, our clumsy clay, Endure such anguish? MARSYAS. In the worm Lurks an unconquerable germ Identical. A sparrow's fall Were the Destruction of the All! More; know that this surpasses skill To express its ecstasy. The thrill Burns in the memory like the glory Of some far beaconed promontory Where no light shines but on the comb Of breakers, flickerings of the foam! OLYMPAS. The path ends here? MARSYAS. Ingenuous one! The path ___ the true path ___ scarce begun. When does the night end? OLYMPAS. When the sun, Crouching below the horizon, Flings up his head, tosses his mane, Ready to leap. MARSYAS. Even so. Again The adept secures his subtle fence Against the hostile shafts of sense, Pins for a second his mind; as you May have seen some huge wrestler do. With all his gathered weight heaped, hurled, Resistless as the whirling world, He holds his foeman to the floor For one great moment and no more. {20} So ___ then the sun-blaze! All the night Bursts to a vivid orb of light. There is no shadow; nothing is, But the intensity of bliss. Being is blasted. That exists. OLYMPAS. Ah! MARSYAS. But the mind, that mothers mists, Abides not there. The adept must fall Exhausted. OLYMPAS. There's an end of all? MARSYAS. But not an end of this! Above All life as is the pulse of love, So this transcends all love. OLYMPAS. Ah me! Who may attain? MARSYAS. Rare souls. OLYMPAS. I see Imaged a shadow of this light. MARSYAS. Such is its sacramental might That to recall it radiates Its symbol. The priest elevates The Host, and instant blessing stirs The hushed awaiting worshippers. OLYMPAS. Then how secure the soul's defence? How baffle the besieger, Sense? MARSYAS. See the beleagured city, hurt By hideous engines, sore begirt And gripped by lines of death, well scored With shell, nigh open to the sword! Now comes the leader; courage, run {21} Contagious through the garrison! Repair the trenches! Man the wall! Restore the ruined arsenal! Serve the great guns! The assailants blench; They are driven from the foremost trench. The deadliest batteries belch their hell No more. So day by day fought well, We silence gun by gun. At last The fiercest of the fray is past; The circling hills are ours. The attack Is over, save for the rare crack, Long dropping shots from hidden forts; --- ___ So is it with our thoughts! OLYMPAS. The hostile thoughts, the evil things! They hover on majestic wings, Like vultures waiting for a man To drop from the slave-caravan! MARSYAS. All thoughts are evil. Thought is two: The seer and the seen. Eschew That supreme blasphemy, my son, Remembering that God is One. OLYMPAS. God is a thought! MARSYAS. The "thought" of God Is but a shattered emerod: A plague, an idol, a delusion, Blasphemy, schism, and confusion! OLYMPAS. Banish my one high thought? The night Indeed were starless. MARSYAS. Very right! But that impalpable inane {22} Is the condition of success; Even as earth lies black to gain Spring's green and autumn's fruitfulness. OLYMPAS. I dread this midnight of the soul. MARSYAS. Welcome the herald! OLYMPAS. How control The horror of the mind? The insane Dead melancholy? MARSYAS. Trick is vain. Sheer manhood must support the strife, And the trained Will, the Root of Life, Bear the adept triumphant. OLYMPAS. Else? MARSYAS. The reason, like a chime of bells Ripped by the lightning, cracks. OLYMPAS. And these Are the first sights the magus sees? MARSYAS. The first true sights. Bright images Throng the clear mind at first, a crowd Of Gods, lights, armies, landscapes; loud Reverberations of the Light. But these are dreams, things in the mind, Reveries, idols. Thou shalt find No rest therein. The former three (Lightning, moon, sun) are royally Liminal to the Hall of Truth. Also there be with them, in sooth, Their brethren. There's the vision called The Lion of the Light, a brand Of ruby flame and emerald {23} Waved by the Hermeneutic Hand. There is the Chalice, whence the flood Of God's beatitude of blood Flames. O to sing those starry tunes! O colder than a million moons! O vestal waters! Wine of love Wan as the lyric soul thereof! There is the Wind, a whirling sword, The savage rapture of the air Tossed beyond space and time. My Lord, My Lord, even now I see Thee there In infinite motion! And beyond There is the Disk, the wheel of things; Like a black boundless diamond Whirring with millions of wings! OLYMPAS. Master! MARSYAS. Know also that above These portents hangs no veil of love; But, guarded by unsleeping eyes Of twice seven score severities, The Veil that only rips apart When the spear strikes to Jesus' heart! A mighty Guard of Fire are they With sabres turning every way! Their eyes are millstones greater than The earth; their mouths run seas of blood. Woe be to that accursèd man Of whom they are the iniquities! Swept in their wrath's avenging flood To black immitigable seas! {24} Woe to the seeker who shall fail To rend that vexful virgin Veil! Fashion thyself by austere craft Into a single azure shaft Loosed from the string of Will; behold The Rainbow! Thou art shot, pure flame, Past the reverberated Name Into the Hall of Death. Therein The Rosy Cross is subtly seen. OLYMPAS. Is that a vision, then? MARSYAS. It is. OLYMPAS. Tell me thereof! MARSYAS. O not of this! Of all the flowers in God's field We name not this. Our lips are sealed In that the Universal Key Lieth within its mystery. But know thou this. These visions give A hint both faint and fugitive Yet haunting, that behind them lurks Some Worker, greater than his works. Yea, it is given to him who girds His loins up, is not fooled by words, Who takes life lightly in his hand To throw away at Will's command, To know that View beyond the Veil. O petty purities and pale, These visions I have spoken of! {25} The infinite Lord of Light and Love Breaks on the soul like dawn. See! See! Great God of Might and Majesty! Beyond sense, beyond sight, a brilliance Burning from His glowing glance! Formless, all the worlds of flame Atoms of that fiery frame! The adept caught up and broken; Slain, before His Name be spoken! In that fire the soul burns up. One drop from that celestial cup Is an abyss, an infinite sea That sucks up immortality! O but the Self is manifest Through all that blaze! Memory stumbles Like a blind man for all the rest. Speech, like a crag of limestone, crumbles, While this one soul of thought is sure Through all confusion to endure, Infinite Truth in one small span: This that is God is Man. OLYMPAS. Master! I tremble and rejoice. MARSYAS. Before His own authentic voice Doubt flees. The chattering choughs of talk Scatter like sparrows from a hawk. OLYMPAS. Thenceforth the adept is certain of The mystic mountain? Light and Love Are Life therein, and they are his? MARSYAS. Even so. And One supreme there is Whom I have known, being He. Withdrawn {26} Within the curtains of the dawn Dwells that concealed. Behold! he is A blush, a breeze, a song, a kiss, A rosy flame like Love, his eyes Blue, the quintessence of all skies, His hair a foam of gossamer Pale gold as jasmine, lovelier Than all the wheat of Paradise. O the dim water-wells his eyes! There is such depth of Love in them That the adept is rapt away, Dies on that mouth, a gleaming gem Of dew caught in the boughs of Day! OLYMPAS. The hearing of it is so sweet I swoon to silence at thy feet. MARSYAS. Rise! Let me tell thee, knowing HIm, The Path grows never wholly dim. Lose Him, and thou indeed wert lost! But He will not lose thee! OLYMPAS. Exhaust The Word! MARSYAS. Had I a million songs, And every song a million words, And every word a million meanings, I could not count the choral throngs Of Beauty's beatific birds, Or gather up the paltry gleanings Of this great harvest of delight! Hast thou not heard the word aright? That world is truly infinite. {27} Even as a cube is to a square Is that to this. OLYMPAS. Royal and rare! Infinite light of burning wheels! MARSYAS. Ay! The imagination reels. Thou must attain before thou know, And when thou knowest ___ Mighty woe That silence grips the willing lips! OLYMPAS. Ever was speech the thought's eclipse. MARSYAS. Ay, not to veil the truth to him Who sought it, groping in the dim Halls of illusion, said the sages In all the realms, in all the ages, "Keep silence." By a word should come Your sight, and we who see are dumb! We have sought a thousand times to teach Our knowledge; we are mocked by speech. So lewdly mocked, that all this word Seems dead, a cloudy crystal blurred, Though it cling closer to life's heart Than the best rhapsodies of art! OLYMPAS. Yet speak! MARSYAS. Ah, could I tell thee of These infinite things of Light and Love! There is the Peacock; in his fan Innumerable plumes of Pan! Oh! every plume hath countless eyes; ___ Crown of created mysteries! --- Each holds a Peacock like the First. OLYMPAS. How can this be? {28} MARSYAS. The mind's accurst. It cannot be. It is. Behold, Battalion on battalion rolled! There is war in Heaven! The soul sings still, Struck by the plectron of the Will; But the mind's dumb; its only cry The shriek of its last agony! OLYMPAS. Surely it struggles. MARSYAS. Bitterly! And, mark! it must be strong to die! The weak and partial reason dips One edge, another springs, as when A melting iceberg reels and tips Under the sun. Be mighty then, A lord of Thought, beyond wit and wonder Balanced ___ then push the whole mind under, Sunk beyond chance of floating, blent Rightly with its own element, Not lifting jagged peaks and bare To the unsympathetic air! This is the second veil; and hence As first we slew the things of sense Upon the altar of their God, So must the Second Period Slay the ideas, to attain To that which is, beyond the brain. OLYMPAS. To that which is? ___ not thought? not sense? MARSYAS. Knowledge is but experience Made conscious of itself. The bee, {29} Past master of geometry, Hath not one word of all of it; For wisdom is not mother-wit! So the adept is called insane For his frank failure to explain. Language creates false thoughts; the true Breed language slowly. Following Experience of a thing we knew Arose the need to name the thing. So, ancients likened a man's mind To the untamed evasive wind. Some fool thinks names are things; and boasts Aloud of spirits and of ghosts. Religion follows on a pun! And we, who know that Holy One Of whom I told thee, seek in vain Figure or word to make it plain. OLYMPAS. Despair of man! MARSYAS. Man is the seed Of the unimaginable flower. By singleness of thought and deed It may bloom now ___ this actual hour! OLYMPAS. The soul made safe, is vision sure To rise therein? MARSYAS. Though calm and pure It seem, maybe some thought hath crept Into his mind to baulk the adept. The expectation of success Suffices to destroy the stress Of the one thought. But then, what odds? {30} "Man's vision goes, dissolves in God's;" Or, "by God's grace the Light is given To the elected heir of heaven." These are but idle theses, dry Dugs of the cow Theology. Business is business. The one fact That we know is: the gods exact A stainless mirror. Cleanse thy soul! Perfect the will's austere control! For the rest, wait! The sky once clear, Dawn needs no prompting to appear! OLYMPAS. Enough! it shall be done. MARSYAS. Beware! Easily trips the big word "dare." Each man's an OEdipus, that thinks He hath the four powers of the Sphinx, Will, Courage, Knowledge, Silence. Son, Even the adepts scarce win to one! Thy Thoughts ___ they fall like rotten fruits. But to destroy the power that makes These thoughts ___ thy Self? A man it takes To tear his soul up by the roots! This is the mandrake fable, boy! OLYMPAS. You told me that the Path was joy. MARSYAS. A lie to lure thee! OLYMPAS. Master! MARSYAS. Pain And joy are twin toys of the brain. Even early visions pass beyond! OLYMPAS. Not all the crabbed runes I have conned {31} Told me so plain a truth. I see, Inscrutable Simplicity! Crushed like a blind-worm by the heel Of all I am, perceive, and feel, My truth was but the partial pang That chanced to strike me as I sang. MARSYAS. In the beginning, violence Marks the extinction of the sense. Anguish and rapture rack the soul. These are disruptions of control. Self-poised, a brooding hawk, there hangs In the still air the adept. The bull On the firm earth goes not so smooth! So the first fine ecstatic pangs Pass; balance comes. OLYMPAS. How wonderful Are these tall avenues of truth! MARSYAS. So the first flash of light and terror Is seen as shadow, known as error. Next, light comes as light; as it grows The sense of peace still steadier glows; And the fierce lust, that linked the soul To its God, attains a chaste control. Intimate, an atomic bliss, Is the last phrasing of that kiss. Not ecstasy, but peace, pure peace! Invisible the dew sublimes From the great mother, subtly climbs And loves the leaves! Yea, in the end, {32} Vision all vision must transcend. These glories are mere scaffolding To the Closed Palace of the King. OLYMPAS. Yet, saidst thou, ere the new flower shoots The soul is torn up by the roots. MARSYAS. Now come we to the intimate things Known to how few! Man's being clings First to the outer. Free from these The inner sheathings, and he sees Those sheathings as external. Strip One after one each lovely lip From the full rose-but! Ever new Leaps the next petal to the view. What binds them by Desire? Disease Most dire of direful Destiny's! OLYMPAS. I have abandoned all to tread The brilliant pathway overhead! MARSYAS. Easy to say. To abandon all, All must be first loved and possessed. Nor thou nor I have burst the thrall. All ___ as I offered half in jest, Sceptic ___ was torn away from me. Not without pain! THEY slew my child, Dragged my wife down to infamy Loathlier than death, drove to the wild My tortured body, stripped me of Wealth, health, youth, beauty, ardour, love. Thou has abandoned all? Then try A speck of dust within the eye! OLYMPAS. But that is different! {33} MARSYAS. Life is one. Magic is life. The physical (Men name it) is a house of call For the adept, heir of the sun! Bombard the house! it groans and gapes. The adept runs forth, and so escapes That ruin! OLYMPAS. Smoothly parallel The ruin of the mind as well? MARSYAS. Ay! Hear the Ordeal of the Veil, The Second Veil! ... O spare me this Magical memory! I pale To show the Veil of the Abyss. Nay, let confession be complete! OLYMPAS. Master, I bend me at thy feet --- Why do they sweat with blood and dew? MARSYAS. Blind horror catches at my breath. The path of the abyss runs through Things darker, dismaller than death! Courage and will! What boots their force? The mind rears like a frightened horse. There is no memory possible Of that unfathomable hell. Even the shadows that arise Are things to dreadful to recount! There's no such doom in Destiny's Harvest of horror. The white fount Of speech is stifled at its source. Know, the sane spirit keeps its course By this, that everything it thinks Hath causal or contingent links. {34} Destroy them, and destroy the mind! O bestial, bottomless, and blind Black pit of all insanity! The adept must make his way to thee! This is the end of all our pain, The dissolution of the brain! For lo! in this no mortar sticks; Down come the house ___ a hail of bricks! The sense of all I hear is drowned; Tap, tap, isolated sound, Patters, clatters, batters, chatters, Tap, tap, tap, and nothing matters! Senseless hallucinations roll Across the curtain of the soul. Each ripple on the river seems The madness of a maniac's dreams! So in the self no memory-chain Or causal wisp to bind the straws! The Self disrupted! Blank, insane, Both of existence and of laws, The Ego and the Universe Fall to one black chaotic curse. OLYMPAS. So ends philosophy's inquiry: "Summa scientia nihil scire." MARSYAS. Ay, but that reasoned thesis lacks The impact of reality. This vision is a battle axe Splitting the skull. O pardon me! But my soul faints, my stomach sinks. Let me pass on! OLYMPAS. My being drinks {35} The nectar-poison of the Sphinx. This is a bitter medicine! MARSYAS. Black snare that I was taken in! How one may pass I hardly know. Maybe time never blots the track. Black, black, intolerably black! Go, spectre of the ages, go! Suffice it that I passed beyond. I found the secret of the bond Of thought to thought through countless years Through many lives, in many spheres, Brought to a point the dark design Of this existence that is mine. I knew my secret. "All I was" I brought into the burning-glass, And all its focussed light and heat Charred "all I am." The rune's complete When "all I shall be" flashes by Like a shadow on the sky. Then I dropped my reasoning. Vacant and accursed thing! By my Will I swept away The web of metaphysic, smiled At the blind labyrinth, where the grey Old snake of madness wove his wild Curse! As I trod the trackless way Through sunless gorges of Cathay, I became a little child. By nameless rivers, swirling through {36} Chasms, a fantastic blue, Month by month, on barren hills, In burning heat, in bitter chills, Tropic forest, Tartar snow, Smaragdine archipelago, See me ___ led by some wise hand That I did not understand. Morn and noon and eve and night I, the forlorn eremite, Called on Him with mild devotion, As the dew-drop woos the ocean. In my wanderings I came To an ancient park aflame With fairies' feet. Still wrapped in love I was caught up, beyond, above The tides of being. The great sight Of the intolerable light Of the whole universe that wove The labyrinth of life and love Blazed in me. Then some giant will, Mine or another's thrust a thrill Through the great vision. All the light Went out in an immortal night, The world annihilated by The opening of the Master's Eye. How can I tell it? OLYMPAS. Master, master! A sense of some divine disaster Abases me. {37} MARSYAS. Indeed, the shrine Is desolate of the divine! But all the illusion gone, behold The one that is! OLYMPAS. Royally rolled, I hear strange music in the air! MARSYAS. It is the angelic choir, aware Of the great Ordeal dared and done By one more Brother of the Sun! OLYMPAS. Master, the shriek of a great bird Blends with the torrent of the thunder. MARSYAS. It is the echo of the word That tore the universe asunder. OLYMPAS. Master, thy stature spans the sky. MARSYAS. Verily; but it is not I. The adept dissolves ___ pale phantom form Blown from the black mouth of the storm. It is another that arises! OLYMPAS. Yet in thee, through thee! MARSYAS. I am not. OLYMPAS. For me thou art. MARSYAS. So that suffices To seal thy will? To cast thy lot Into the lap of God? Then, well! OLYMPAS. Ay, there is no more potent spell. Through life, through death, by land and sea Most surely will I follow thee. MARSYAS. Follow thyself, not me. Thou hast An Holy Guardian Angel, bound to lead thee from thy bitter waste {38} To the inscrutable profound That is His covenanted ground. OLYMPAS. Thou who hast known these master-keys Of all creation's mysteries, Tell me, what followed the great gust Of God that blew his world to dust? MARSYAS. I, even I the man, became As a great sword of flashing flame. My life, informed with holiness, Conscious of its own loveliness, Like a well that overflows At the limit of the snows, Sent its crystal stream to gladden The hearts of me, their lives to madden With the intoxicating bliss (Wine mixed with myrrh and ambergris!) Of this bitter-sweet perfume, This gorse's blaze of prickly bloom That is the Wisdom of the Way. Then springs the statue from the clay, And all God's doubted fatherhood Is seen to be supremely good. Live within the sane sweet sun! Leave the shadow-world alone! OLYMPAS. There is a crown for every one; For every one there is a throne! MARSYAS. That crown is Silence. Sealed and sure! That throne is Knowledge perfect pure. Below that throne adoring stand {39} Virtues in a blissful band; Mercy, majesty and power, Beauty and harmony and strength, Triumph and splendour, starry shower Of flames that flake their lily length, A necklet of pure light, far-flung Down to the Base, from which is hung A pearl, the Universe, whose sight Is one globed jewel of delight. Fallen no more! A bowered bride Blushing to be satisfied! OLYMPAS. All this, of once the Eye unclose? MARSYAS. The golden cross, the ruby rose Are gone, when flaming from afar The Hawk's eye blinds the Silver Star. O brothers of the Star, caressed By its cool flames from brow to breast, Is there some rapture yet to excite This prone and pallid neophyte? OLYMPAS. O but there is no need of this! I burn toward the abyss of Bliss. I call the Four Powers of the Name; Earth, wind and cloud, sea, smoke and flame To witness: by this triune Star I swear to break the twi-forked bar. But how to attain? Flexes and leans The strongest will that lacks the means. MARSYAS. There are seven keys to the great gate, Being eight in one and one in eight. {40} First, let the body of thee be still, Bound by the cerements of will, Corpse-rigid; thus thou mayst abort The fidget-babes that tense the thought. Next, let the breath-rhythm be low, Easy, regular, and slow; So that thy being be in tune With the great sea's Pacific swoon. Third, let thy life be pure and calm Swayed softly as a windless palm. Fourth, let the will-to-live be bound To the one love of the Profound. Fifth, let the thought, divinely free From sense, observe its entity. Watch every thought that springs; enhance Hour after hour thy vigilance! Intense and keen, turned inward, miss No atom of analysis! Sixth, on one thought securely pinned Still every whisper of the wind! So like a flame straight and unstirred Burn up thy being in one word! Next, still that ecstasy, prolong Thy meditation steep and strong, Slaying even God, should He distract Thy attention from the chosen act! Last, all these things in one o'erpowered, Time that the midnight blossom flowered! The oneness is. Yet even in this, My son, thou shalt not do amiss {41} If thou restrain the expression, shoot Thy glance to rapture's darkling root, Discarding name, form, sight, and stress Even of this high consciousness; Pierce to the heart! I leave thee here: Thou art the Master. I revere Thy radiance that rolls afar, O Brother of the Silver Star! OLYMPAS. Ah, but no ease may lap my limbs. Giants and sorcerers oppose; Ogres and dragons are my foes! Leviathan against me swims, And lions roar, and Boreas blows! No Zephyrs woo, no happy hymns Paean the Pilgrim of the Rose! MARSYAS. I teach the royal road of light. Be thou, devoutly eremite, Free of thy fate. Choose tenderly A place for thine Academy. Let there be an holy wood Of embowered solitude By the still, the rainless river, Underneath the tangled roots Of majestic trees that quiver In the quiet airs; where shoots Of the kindly grass are green Moss and ferns asleep between, Lilies in the water lapped, Sunbeams in the branches trapped ___ Windless and eternal even! Silenced all the birds of heaven {42} By the low insistent call Of the constant waterfall. There, to such a setting be Its carven gem of deity, A central flawless fire, enthralled Like Truth within an emerald! Thou shalt have a birchen bark On the river in the dark; And at the midnight thou shalt go to the mid-stream's smoothest flow, And strike upon a golden bell The spirit's call; then say the spell: "Angel, mine angel, draw thee nigh!" Making the Sign of Magistry With wand of lapis lazuli. Then, it may be, through the blind dumb Night thou shalt see thine angel come, Hear the faint whisper of his wings, Behold the starry breast begemmed With the twelve stones of the twelve kings! His forehead shall be diademed With the faint light of stars, wherein The Eye gleams dominant and keen. Thereat thou swoonest; and thy love Shall catch the subtle voice thereof. He shall inform his happy lover: My foolish prating shall be over! OLYMPAS. O now I burn with holy haste. This doctrine hath so sweet a taste That all the other wine is sour. MARSYAS. Son, there's a bee for every flower. {43} Lie open, a chameleon cup, And let Him suck thine honey up! OLYMPAS. There is one doubt. When souls attain Such an unimagined gain Shall not others mark them, wise Beyond mere mortal destinies? MARSYAS. Such are not the perfect saints. While the imagination faints Before their truth, they veil it close As amid the utmost snows The tallest peaks most straitly hide With clouds their holy heads. Divide The planes! Be ever as you can A simple honest gentleman! Body and manners be at ease, Not bloat with blazoned sanctities! Who fights as fights the soldier-saint? And see the artist-adept paint! Weak are those souls that fear the stress Of earth upon their holiness! They fast, they eat fantastic food, They prate of beans and brotherhood, Wear sandals, and long hair, and spats, And think that makes them Arahats! How shall man still his spirit-storm? Rational Dress and Food Reform! OLYMPAS. I know such saints. MARSYAS. An easy vice: So wondrous well they advertise! O their mean souls are satisfied {44} With wind of spiritual pride. They're all negation. "Do not eat; What poison to the soul is meat! Drink not; smoke not; deny the will! Wine and tobacco make us ill." Magic is life; the Will to Live Is one supreme Affirmative. These things that flinch from Life are worth No more to Heaven than to Earth. Affirm the everlasting Yes! OLYMPAS. Those saints at least score one success: Perfection of their priggishness! MARSYAS. Enough. The soul is subtlier fed With meditation's wine and bread. Forget their failings and our own; Fix all our thoughts on Love alone! Ah, boy, all crowns and thrones above Is the sanctity of love. In His warm and secret shrine Is a cup of perfect wine, Whereof one drop is medicine Against all ills that hurt the soul. A flaming daughter of the Jinn Brought to me once a wingèd scroll, Wherein I read the spell that brings The knowledge of that King of Kings. Angel, I invoke thee now! Bend on me the starry brow! Spread the eagle wings above {45} The pavilion of our love! .... Rise from your starry sapphire seats! See, where through the quickening skies The oriflamme of beauty beats Heralding loyal legionaries, Whose flame of golden javelins Fences those peerless paladins. There are the burning lamps of them, Splendid star-clusters to begem The trailing torrents of those blue Bright wings that bear mine angel through! O Thou art like an Hawk of Gold, Miraculously manifold, For all the sky's aflame to be A mirror magical of Thee! The stars seem comets, rushing down To gem thy robes, bedew thy crown. Like the moon-plumes of a strange bird By a great wind sublimely stirred, Thou drawest the light of all the skies Into thy wake. The heaven dies In bubbling froth of light, that foams About thine ardour. All the domes Of all the heavens close above thee As thou art known of me who love thee. Excellent kiss, thou fastenest on This soul of mine, that it is gone, Gone from all life, and rapt away Into the infinite starry spray Of thine own AEon ... Alas for me! {46} I faint. Thy mystic majesty Absorbs this spark. OLYMPAS. All hail! all hail! White splendour through the viewless veil! I am drawn with thee to rapture. OLYMPAS. Stay! I bear a message. Heaven hath sent The knowledge of a new sweet way Into the Secret Element. OLYMPAS. Master, while yet the glory clings Declare this mystery magical! MARSYAS. I am yet borne on those blue wings Into the Essence of the All. Now, now I stand on earth again, Though, blazing through each nerve and vein, The light yet holds its choral course, Filling my frame with fiery force Like God's. Now hear the Apocalypse New-fledged on these reluctant lips! OLYMPAS. I tremble like an aspen, quiver Like light upon a rainy river! MARSYAS. Do what thou wilt! is the sole word Of law that my attainment heard. Arise, and lay thine hand on God! Arise, and set a period Unto Restriction! That is sin: To hold thine holy spirit in! O thou that chafest at thy bars, Invoke Nuit beneath her stars With a pure heart (Her incense burned {47} Of gums and woods, in gold inurned), And let the serpent flame therein A little, and thy soul shall win To lie within her bosom. Lo! Thou wouldst give all ___ and she cries: No! Take all, and take me! Gather spice And virgins and great pearls of price! Worship me in a single robe, Crowned richly! Girdle of the globe, I love thee! Pale and purple, veiled, Voluptuous, swan silver-sailed, I love thee. I am drunkness Of the inmost sense; my soul's caress Is toward thee! Let my priestess stand Bare and rejoicing, softly fanned By smooth-lipped acolytes, upon Mine iridescent altar-stone, And in her love-chaunt swooningly Say evermore: To me! To me! I am the azure-lidded daughter Of sunset; the all-girdling water; The naked brilliance of the sky In the voluptuous night am I! With song, with jewel, with perfume, Wake all my rose's blush and bloom! Drink to me! Love me! I love thee, My love, my lord ___ to me! to me! OLYMPAS. There is no harshness in the breath Of this ___ is life surpassed, and death? MARSYAS. There is the Snake that gives delight {48} And Knowledge, stirs the heart aright With drunkenness. Strange drugs are thine, Hadit, and draughts of wizard wine! These do no hurt. Thine hermits dwell Not in the cold secretive cell, But under purple canopies With mighty-breasted mistresses Magnificent as lionesses ___ Tender and terrible caresses! Fire lives, and light, in eager eyes; And massed huge hair about them lies. They lead their hosts to victory: In every joy they are kings; then see That secret serpent coiled to spring And win the world! O priest and king, Let there be feasting, foining, fighting, A revel of lusting, singing, smiting! Work; be the bed of work! Hold! Hold! the stars' kiss is as molten gold. Harden! Hold thyself up! now die --- Ah! Ah! Exceed! Exceed! OLYMPAS. And I? MARSYAS. My stature shall surpass the stars: He hath said it! Men shall worship me In hidden woods, on barren scaurs, Henceforth to all eternity. OLYMPAS. Hail! I adore thee! Let us feast. MARSYAS. I am the consecrated Beast. I build the Abominable House. The Scarlet Woman is my Spouse ___ {49} OLYMPAS. What is this word? MARSYAS. Thou canst not know Till thou hast passed the Fourth Ordeal. OLYMPAS. I worship thee. The moon-rays flow Masterfully rich and real From thy red mouth, and burst, young suns Chanting before the Holy Ones Thine Eight Mysterious Orisons! MARSYAS. The last spell! The availing word! The two completed by the third! The Lord of War, of Vengeance That slayeth with a single glance! This light is in me of my Lord. His Name is this far-whirling sword. I push His order. Keen and swift My Hawk's eye flames; these arms uplift The Banner of Silence and of Strength ___ Hail! Hail! thou art here, my Lord, at length! Lo, the Hawk-Headed Lord am I: My nemyss shrouds the night-blue sky. Hail! ye twin warriors that guard The pillars of the world! Your time Is nigh at hand. The snake that marred Heaven with his inexhaustible slime Is slain; I bear the Wand of Power, The Wand that waxes and that wanes; I crush the Universe this hour In my left hand; and naught remains! Ho! for the splendour in my name Hidden and glorious, a flame {50} Secretly shooting from the sun. Aum! Ha! ___ my destiny is done. The Word is spoken and concealed. OLYMPAS. I am stunned. What wonder was revealed? MARSYAS. The rite is secret. OLYMPAS. Profits it? MARSYAS. Only to wisdom and to wit. OLYMPAS. The other did no less. MARSYAS. Then prove Both by the master-key of Love. The lock turns stiffly? Shalt thou shirk To use the sacred oil of work? Not from the valley shalt thou test The eggs that line the eagle's nest! Climb, with thy life at stake, the ice, The sheer wall of the precipice! Master the cornice, gain the breach, And learn what next the ridge can teach! Yet ___ not the ridge itself may speak The secret of the final peak. OLYMPAS. All ridges join at last. MARSYAS. Admitted, O thou astute and subtle-witted! Yet one ___ loose, jaggèd, clad in mist! Another ___ firm, smooth, loved and kissed By the soft sun! Our order hath This secret of the solar path, Even as our Lord the Beast hath won The mystic Number of the Sun. OLYMPAS. These secrets are too high for me. {51} MARSYAS. Nay, little brother! Come and see! Neither by faith nor fear nor awe Approach the doctrine of the Law! Truth, Courage, Love, shall win the bout, And those three others be cast out. OLYMPAS. Lead me, Master, by the hand Gently to this gracious land! Let me drink the doctrine in, An all-healing medicine! Let me rise, correct and firm, Steady striding to the term, Master of my fate, to rise To imperial destinies; With the sun's ensanguine dart Spear-bright in my blazing heart, And my being's basil-plant Bright and hard as adamant! MARSYAS. Yonder, faintly luminous, The yellow desert waits for us. Lithe and eager, hand in hand, We travel to the lonely land. There, beneath the stars, the smoke Of our incense shall invoke The Queen of Space; and subtly She Shall bend from Her infinity Like a lambent flame of blue, Touching us, and piercing through All the sense-webs that we are As the aethyr penetrates a star! Her hands caressing the black earth, {52} Her sweet lithe body arched for love, Her feet a Zephyr to the flowers, She calls my name ___ she gives the sign That she is mine, supremely mine, And clinging to the infinite girth My soul gets perfect joy thereof Beyond the abysses and the hours; So that ___ I kiss her lovely brows; She bathes my body in perfume Of sweat .... O thou my secret spouse, Continuous One of Heaven! illume My soul with this arcane delight, Volumptuous Daughter of the Night! Eat me up wholly with the glance Of thy luxurious brilliance! OLYMPAS. The desert calls. MARSYAS. Then let us go! Or seek the sacramental snow, Where like a high-priest I may stand With acolytes on every hand, The lesser peaks ___ my will withdrawn To invoke the dayspring from the dawn, Changing that rosy smoke of light To a pure crystalline white; Though the mist of mind, as draws A dancer round her limbs the gauze, Clothe Light, and show the virgin Sun A lemon-pale medallion! Thence leap we leashless to the goal, Stainless star-rapture of the soul. {53} So the altar-fires fade As the Godhead is displayed. Nay, we stir not. Everywhere Is our temple right appointed. All the earth is faery fair For us. Am I not anointed? The Sigil burns upon the brow At the adjuration ___ here and now. OLYMPAS. The air is laden with perfumes. MARSYAS. Behold! It beams ___ it burns ___ it blooms. * * * * * OLYMPAS. Master, how subtly hast thou drawn The daylight from the Golden Dawn, Bidden the Cavernous Mount unfold Its Ruby Rose, its Cross of Gold; Until I saw, flashed from afar, The Hawk's eye in the Silver Star! MARSYAS. Peace to all beings. Peace to thee, Co-heir of mine eternity! Peace to the greatest and the least, To nebula and nenuphar! Light in abundance be increased On them that dream that shadows are! OLYMPAS. Blessing and worship to The Beast, The prophet of the lovely Star! {54} THE HERB DANGEROUS PART III THE POEM OF HASHISH THE POEM OF HASHISH CHAPTER I THE LONGING FOR INFINITY THOSE who know how to observe themselves, and who preserve the memory of their impressions, those who, like Hoffmann, have known how to construct their spiritual barometer, have sometimes had to note in the observatory of their mind fine seasons, happy days, delicious minutes. There are days when man awakes with a young and vigorous genius. Though his eyelids be scarcely released from the slumber which sealed them, the exterior world shows itself to him with a powerful relief, a clearness of contour, and a richness of colour which are admirable. The moral world opens out its vast perspective, full of new clarities. A man gratified by this happiness, unfortunately rare and transient, feels himself at once more an artist and more a just man; to say all in a word, a nobler being. But the most singular thing in this exceptional condition of the spirit and of the senses ___ which I may without exaggeration call heavenly, if I compare it with the heavy shadows of common and daily existence ___ is that it has not been created by any visible or easily definable cause. It is the result of a good hygiene and of a wise regimen? Such is the first explanation which {57} suggests itself; but we are obliged to recognise that often this marvel, this prodigy, so to say, produces itself as if it were the effect of a superior and invisible power, of a power exterior to man, after a period of the abuse of his physical faculties. Shall we say that it is the reward of assiduous prayer and spiritual ardour? It is certain that a constant elevation of the desire, a tension of the spiritual forces in a heavenly direction, would be the most proper regimen for creating this moral health, so brilliant and so glorious. But what absurd law causes it to manifest itself (as it sometimes does) after shameful orgies of the imagination; after a sophistical abuse of reason, which is, to its straight forward and rational use, that which the tricks of dislocation which some acrobats have taught themselves to perform are to sane gymnastics? For this reason I prefer to consider this abnormal condition of the spirit as a true "grace;" as a magic mirror wherein man is invited to see himself at his best; that is to say, as that which he should be, and might be; a kind of angelic excitement; a rehabilitation of the most flattering type. A certain Spiritualist School, largely represented in England and America, even considers supernatural phenomena, such as the apparition of phantoms, ghosts, &c., as manifestations of the Divine Will, ever anxious to awaken in the spirit of man the memory of invisible truths. Besides this charming and singular state, where all the forces are balanced; where the imagination, though enormously powerful, does not drag after it into perilous adventures the moral sense; when an exquisite sensibility is no longer tortured by sick nerves, those councillors-in- ordinary of crime or despair: this marvellous {58} State, I say, has no prodromal symptoms. It is as unexpected as a ghost. It is a species of obsession, but of intermittent obsession; from which we should be able to draw, if we were but wise, the certainty of a nobler existence, and the hope of attaining to it by the daily exercise of our will. This sharpness of thought, this enthusiasm of the senses and of the spirit, must in every age have appeared to man as the chiefest of blessings; and for this reason, considering nothing but the immediate pleasure he has, without worrying himself as to whether he were violating the laws of his constitution, he has sought, in physical science, in pharmacy, in the grossest liquors, in the subtlest perfumes, in every climate and in every age, the means of fleeing, were it but for some hours only, his habitaculum of mire, and, as the author of "Lazare" says, "to carry Paradise at the first assault." Alas! the vices of man, full of horror as one must suppose them, contain the proof, even though it were nothing but their infinite expansion, of his hunger for the Infinite; only, it is a taste which often loses its way. One might take a proverbial metaphor, "All roads lead to Rome," and apply it to the moral world: all roads lead to reward or punishment; two forms of eternity. The mind of man is glutted with passion: he has, if I may use another familiar phrase, passion to burn. But this unhappy soul, whose natural depravity is equal to its sudden aptitude, paradoxical enough, for charity and the most arduous virtues, is full of paradoxes which allow him to turn to other purposes the overflow of this overmastering passion. He never imagines that he is selling himself wholesale: he forgets, in his infatuation, that he is matched against a player more cunning and more strong than {59} he; and that the Spirit of Evil, though one give him but a hair, will not delay to carry off the whole head. This visible lord of visible nature ___ I speak of man ___ has, then, wished to create Paradise by chemistry, by fermented drinks; like a maniac who should replace solid furniture and real gardens by decorations painted on canvas and mounted on frames. It is in this degradation of the sense of the Infinite that lies, according to me, the reason of all guilty excesses; from the solitary and concentrated drunkenness of the man of letters, who, obliged to seek in opium and anodyne for a physical suffering, and having thus discovered a well of morbid pleasure, has made of it, little by little, his sole diet, and as it were the sum of his spiritual life; down to the most disgusting sot of the suburbs, who, his head full of flame and of glory, rolls ridiculously in the muck of the roads. Among the drugs most efficient in creating what I call the artificial ideal, leaving on one side liquors, which rapidly exite gross frenzy and lay flat all spiritual force, and the perfumes, whose excessive use, while rendering more subtle man's imagination, wear out gradually his physical forces; the two most energetic substances, the most convenient and the most handy, are hashish and opium. The analysis of the mysterious effect and the diseased pleasures which these drugs beget, of the inevitable chastisement which results from their prolonged use, and finally the immorality necessarily employed in this pursuit of a false ideal, consititutes the subject of this study. The subject of opium has been treated already, and in a manner at once so startling, so scientific, and so poetic that I shall not dare to add a word to it. I will therefore content {60} myself in another study, with giving an analysis of this incomparable book, which has never been fully translated into French. The author, and illustrious man of a powerful and exquisite imagination, to-day retired and silent, has dared with tragic candour to write down the delights and the tortures which he once found in opium, and the most dramatic portion of his book is that where he speaks of the superhuman efforts of will which he found it necessary to bring into action in order to escape from the damnation which he had imprudently incurred. To-day I shall only speak of hashish, and I shall speak of it after numerous investigations and minute information; extracts from notes or confidences of intelligent men who had long been addicted to it; only, I shall combine these varied documents into a sort of monograph, choosing a particular soul, and one easy to explain and to define, as a type suitable to experiences of this nature. {61} CHAPTER II WHAT IS HASHISH? THE stories of Marco Polo, which have been so unjustly laughed at, as in the case of some other old travellers, have been verified by men of science, and deserve or belief. I shall not repeat his story of how, after having intoxicated them with hashish (whence the word "Assassin") the old Man of the Mountains shut up in a garden filled with delights those of his youngest disciples to whom he wished to give an idea of Paradise as an earnest of the reward, so to speak, of a passive and unreflecting obedience. The reader may consult, concerning the secret Society of Hashishins, the work of Von Hammer- Purgstall, and the note of M. Sylvestre de Sacy contained in vol. 16 of "Mémories de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres"; and, with regard to the etymology of the word "assassin," his letter to the editor of the "Moniteur" in No. 359 of the year 1809. Herodotus tells us that the Syrians used to gather grains of hemp and throw red-hot stones upon them; so that it was like a vapour-bath, more perfumed than that of any Grecian stove; and the pleasure of it was so acute that it drew cries of joy from them. Hashish, in effect, comes to us from the East. The exciting properties of hemp were well known in ancient Egypt, and the use of it is very widely spread under different names in {62} India, Algeria, and Arabia Felix; but we have around us, under our eyes, curious examples of the intoxication caused by vegetable emanations. Without speaking of the children who, having played and rolled themselves in heaps of cut lucern, often experience singular attacks of vertigo, it is well known that during the hemp harvest both male and female workers undergo similar effects. One would say that from the harvest rises a miasma which troubles their brains despitefully. The head of the reaper is full of whirlwinds, sometimes laden with reveries; at certain moments the limbs grow weak and refuse their office. We have heard tell of crises of somnambulism as being frequent among the Russian peasants, whose cause, they say, must be attributed to the use of hemp-seed oil in the preparation of food. Who does not know the extravagant behaviour of hens which have eaten grains of hemp-seed, and the wild enthusiasm of the horses which the peasants, at weddings and on the feasts of their patron saints, prepare for a steeplechase by a ration of hemp-seed, sometimes sprinkled with wine? Nevertheless, French hemp is unsuitable for preparing hashish, or at least, as repeated experiments have shown, unfitted to give a drug which is equal in power to hashish. Hashish, or Indian hemp ("Cannabis indica"), is a plant of the family of "Urticacea," resembling in every respect the hemp of our latitudes, except that it does not attain the same height. It possesses very extraordinary intoxicating properties, which for some years past have attracted in France the attention of men of science and of the world. It is more or less highly esteemed according to its different sources: that of Bengal is the most prized by Europeans; that, however, of Egypt, of Constantinople, of Persia, and {63} of Algeria enjoys the same properties, but in an inferior degree. Hashish (or grass; that is to say, "the" grass "par excellence," as if the Arabs had wished to define in a single word the "grass" source of all material pleasures) has different names, according to its composition and the method of preparation which it has undergone in the country where it has been gathered: In India, "bhang;" in Africa, "teriaki;" in Algeria and in Arabia Felix, "madjound," "&c." It makes considerable difference at what season of the year it is gathered. It possesses its greatest energy when it is in flower. The flowering tops are in consequence the only parts employed in the different preparations of which we are about to speak. The "extrait gras" of hashish, as the Arabs prepare it, is obtained by boiling the tops of the fresh plant in butter, with a little water. It is strained, after complete evaporation of all humidity, and one thus obtains a preparation which has the appearance of a pomade, in colour greenish yellow, and which possesses a disagreeable odour of hashish and of rancid butter. Under this form it is employed in small pills of two to four grammes in weight, but on account of its objectionable smell, which increases with age, the Arabs conceal the "extrait gras" in sweetmeats. The most commonly employed of these sweetmeats, "dawamesk," is a mixture of "extrait gras," sugar, and various other aromatic substances, such as vanilla, cinnamon, pistachio, almond, musk. Sometimes one even adds a little cantharides, with an object which has nothing in common with the ordinary results of hashish. Under this new form hashish has no disagreeable qualities, and one can take it in a {64} dose of fifteen, twenty, and thirty grammes, either enveloped in a leaf of "pain à chanter" or in a cup of coffee. The experiments made by Messrs. Smith, Gastinel, and Decourtive were directed towards the discovery of the active principles of hashish. Despite their efforts, its chemical combination is still little known, but one usually attributes its properties to a resinous matter which is found there in the proportion of about 10 per cent. To obtain this resin the dried plant is reduced to a course powder, which is then washed several times with alcohol; this is afterwards partially distilled and evaporated until it reaches the consistency of an extract; this extract is treated with water, which dissolves the gummy foreign matter, and the resin then remains in a pure condition. This product is soft, of a dark green colour, and possesses to a high degree the characteristic smell of hashish. Five, ten, fifteen centigrammes are sufficient to produce surprising results. But the haschischine, which may be administered under the form of chocolate pastilles or small pills mixed with ginger, has, like the "dawamesk" and the "extrait gras," effects more or less vigorous, and of an extremely varied nature, according to the individual temperament and nervous susceptibility of the hashish-eater; and, more than that, the result varies in the same individual. Sometimes he will experience an immoderate and irresistible gaiety, sometimes a sense of well-being and of abundance of life, sometimes a slumber doubtful and thronged with dreams. There are, however, some phenomena which occur regularly enough; above all, in the case of persons of a regular temperament and education; there is a kind of unity in its variety which {65} will allow me to edit, without too much trouble, this monograph on hashish-drunkenness of which I spoke before. At Constantinople, in Algeria, and even in France, some people smoke hashish mixed with tobacco, but then the phenomena in question only occur under a form much moderated, and, so to say, lazy. I have heard it said that recently, by means of distillation, an essential oil has been drawn from hashish which appears to possess a power much more active than all the preparations hitherto known, but it has not been sufficiently studied for me to speak with certainty of its results. Is it not superfluous to add that tea, coffee, and alcoholic drinks are powerful adjuvants which accelerate more or less the outbreak of this mysterious intoxication? {66} CHAPTER III THE PLAYGROUND OF THE SERAPHIM WHAT does one experience? What does one see? Marvellous things, is it not so? Wonderful sights? Is it very beautiful? and very terrible? and very dangerous? Such are the usual questions which, with a curiosity mingled with fear, those ignorant of hashish address to its adepts. It is, as it were, the childish impatience to know, resembling that of those people who have never quitted their firesides when they meet a man who returns from distant and unknown countries. They imagine hashish-drunkenness to themselves as a prodigious country, a vast theatre of sleight-of-hand and of juggling, where all is miraculous, all unforeseen. ___ That is a prejudice, a complete mistake. And since for the ordinary run of readers and of questioners the word "hashish" connotes the idea of a strange and topsy-turvy world, the expectation of prodigious dreams (it would be better to say hallucinations, which are, by the way, less frequent than people suppose), I will at once remark upon the important difference which separates the effects of hashish from the phenomena of dream. In dream, that adventurous voyage which we undertake every night, there is something positively miraculous. It is a miracle whose punctual occurrence has blunted its mystery. The dreams of man are of two classes. Some, full of his ordinary {67} life, of his preoccupations, of his desires, of his vices, combine themselves in a manner more or less bizarre with the objects which he has met in his day's work, which have carelessly fixed themselves upon the vast canvas of his memory. That is the natural dream; it is the man himself. But the other kind of dream, the dream absurd and unforeseen, without meaning or connection with the character, the life, and the passions of the sleeper: this dream, which I shall call hieroglyphic, evidently represents the supernatural side of life, and it is exactly because it is absurd that the ancients believed it to be divine. As it is inexplicable by natural causes, they attributed to it a cause external to man, and even to-day, leaving out of account oneiromancers and the fooleries of a philosophical school which sees in dreams of this type sometimes a reproach, sometimes a warning; in short, a symbolic and moral picture begotten in the spirit itself of the sleeper. It is a dictionary which one must study; a language of which sages may obtain the key. In the intoxication of hashish there is nothing like this. We shall not go outside the class of natural dream. The drunkenness, throughout its duration, it is true, will be nothing but an immense dream, thanks to the intensity of its colours and the rapidity of its conceptions. But it will always keep the idiosyncrasy of the individual. The man has desired to dream; the dream will govern the man. But this dream will be truly the son of its father. The idle man has taxed his ingenuity to introduce artificially the supernatural into his life and into his thought; but, after all, and despite the accidental energy of his experiences, he is nothing but the same man magnified, the same number raised to a very high power. He {68} is brought into subjection, but, unhappily for him, it is not by himself; that is to say, by the part of himself which is already dominant. "He would be angel; he becomes a beast." Momentarily very powerful, if, indeed, one can give the name of power to what is merely excessive sensibility without the control which might moderate or make use of it. Let it be well understood then, by worldly and ignorant folk, curious of acquaintance with exceptional joys, that they will find in hashish nothing miraculous, absolutely nothing but the natural in a superabundant degree. The brain and the organism upon which hashish operates will only give their ordinary and individual phenomena, magnified, it is true, both in quantity and quality, but always faithful to their origin. Man cannot escape the fatality of his mortal and physical temperament. Hashish will be, indeed, for the impressions and familiar thoughts of the man, a mirror which magnifies, yet no more than a mirror. Here is the drug before your eyes: a little green sweet-meat, about as big as a nut, with a strange smell; so strange that it arouses a certain revulsion, and inclinations to nausea ___ as, indeed, any fine and even agreeable scent, exalted to its maximum strength and (so to say) density, would do. Allow me to remark in passing that this proposition can be inverted, and that the most disgusting and revolting perfume would become perhaps a pleasure to inhale if it were reduced to its minimum quantity and intensity. There! there is happiness; heaven in a teaspoon; happiness, with all its intoxication, all its folly, all its childishness. You can swallow it without fear; it is not fatal; it will in nowise injure your physical organs. Perhaps (later on) too {69} frequent an employment of the sorcery will diminish the strength of your will; perhaps you will be less a man than you are today; but retribution is so far off, and the nature of the eventual disaster so difficult to define! What is it that you risk? A little nervous fatigue to- morrow ___ no more. Do you not every day risk greater punishments for less reward? Very good then; you have even, to make it act more quickly and vigorously, imbibed your dose of "extrait gras" in a cup of black coffee. You have taken care to have the stomach empty, postponing dinner till nine or ten o'clock, to give full liberty of action to the poison. At the very most you will take a little soup in an hour's time. You are now sufficiently provisioned for a long and strange journey; the steamer has whistled, the sails are trimmed; and you have this curious advantage over ordinary travellers, that you have no idea where you are going. You have made your choice; here's to luck! I presume that you have taken the precaution to choose carefully your moment for setting out on this adventure. for every perfect debauch demands perfect leisure. You know, moreover, that hashish exaggerates, not only the individual, but also circumstances and environment. You have no duties to fulfil which require punctuality or exactitude; no domestic worries; no lover's sorrows. One must be careful on such points. Such a disappointment, an anxiety, an interior monition of a duty which demands your will and your attention, at some determinate moment, would ring like a funeral bell across your intoxication and poison your pleasure. Anxiety would become anguish, and disappointment torture. But if, having observed all these preliminary conditions, the weather is fine; if your are situated in favourable surroundings, such as a picturesque {70} landscape or a room beautifully decorated; and if in particular you have at command a little music, then all is for the best. Generally speaking, there are three phases in hashish intoxication, easy enough to distinguish, and it is not uncommon for beginners to obtain only the first symptoms of the first phase. You have heard vague chatter about the marvellous effects of hashish; your imagination has preconceived a special idea, an ideal intoxication, so to say. You long to know if the reality will indeed reach the height of your hope; that alone is sufficient to throw you from the very beginning into an anxious state, favourable enough to the conquering and enveloping tendency of the poison. Most novices, on their first initiation, complain of the slowness of the effects: they wait for them with a puerile impatience, and, the drug not acting quickly enough for their liking, they bluster long rigmaroles of incredulity, which are amusing enough for the old hands who know how hashish acts. The first attacks, like the symptoms of a storm which has held off for a long while, appear and multiply themselves in the bosom of this very incredulity. At first it is a certain hilarity, absurdly irresistible, which possesses you. These accesses of gaiety, without due cause, of which you are almost ashamed, frequently occur and divide the intervals of stupor, during which you seek in vain to pull yourself together. The simplest words, the most trivial ideas, take on a new and strange physiognomy. You are surprised at yourself for having up to now found them so simple. Incongruous likenesses and correspondences, impossible to foresee, interminable puns, comic sketches, spout eternally from your brain. The demon has encompassed you; it is useless to kick against the pricks of this hilarity, as painful as tickling {71} is! From time to time you laugh to yourself at your stupidity and your madness, and your comrades, if you are with others, laugh also, both at your state and their own; but as they laugh without malice, so you are without resentment. This gaiety, turn by turn idle or acute, this uneasiness in joy, this insecurity, this indecision, last, as a rule, but a very short time. Soon the meanings of ideas become so vague, the conducting thread which binds your conceptions together becomes so tenuous, that none but your accomplices can understand you. And, again, on this subject and from this point of view, no means of verifying it! Perhaps they only think that they understand you, and the illusion is reciprocal. This frivolity, these bursts of laughter, like explosions, seem like a true mania, or at least like the delusion of a maniac, to every man who is not in the same state as yourself. What is more, prudence and good sense, the regularity of the thoughts of him who witnesses, but has been careful not to intoxicate himself, rejoice you and amuse you as if they were a particular form of dementia. The parts are interchanged; his self- possession drives you to the last limits of irony. How monstrous comic is this situation, for a man who is enjoying a gaiety incomprehensible for him who is not placed in the same environment as he! The madman takes pity on the sage, and from that moment the idea of his superiority begins to dawn on the horizon of his intellect. Soon it will grow great and broad, and burst like a meteor. I was once witness of a scene of this kind which was carried very far, and whose grotesqueness was only intelligible to those who were acquainted, at least by means of observation of others, with the effects of the substance and {72} the enormous difference of diapason which it creates between two intelligences apparently equal. A famous musician, who was ignorant of the properties of hashish, who perhaps had never heard speak of it, finds himself in the midst of a company, several persons of which had taken a portion. They try to make him understand the marvellous effects of it; at these prodigious yarns he smiles courteously, by complaisance, like a man who is willing to play the fool for a minute or two. His contempt is quickly divined by these spirits, sharpened by the poison, and their laughter wounds him; these bursts of joy, this playing with words, these altered countenances ___ all this unwholesome atmosphere irritates him, and forces him to exclaim sooner, perhaps, than he would have wished that this is a poor "rôle," and that, moreover, it must be very tiring for those who have undertaken it. The comicality of it lightened them all like a flash; their joy boiled over. "This "rôle" may be good for you," said he, "but for me, no." "It is good for us; that is all we care about," replies egoistically one of the revellers. Not knowing whether he is dealing with genuine madmen or only with people who are pretending to be mad, our friend thinks that the part of discretion is to go away; but somebody shuts the door and hides the key. Another, kneeling before him, asks his pardon, in the name of the company, and declares insolently, but with tears, that despite his mental inferiority, which perhaps excites a little pity, they are all filled with a profound friendship for him. He makes up his mind to remain, and even condescends, after pressure, to play a little music. But the sounds of the violin, spreading themselves through {73} the room like a new contagion, stab -- the word is not too strong ___ first one of the revellers, then another. There burst forth deep and raucous sighs, sudden sobs, streams of silent tears. The frightened musician stops, and, approaching him whose ecstasy is noisiest, asks him if he suffers much, and what must be done to relieve him. One of the persons present, a man of common sense, suggests lemonade and acids; but the "sick man," his eyes shining with ecstasy, looks on them both with ineffable contempt. To wish to cure a man "sick of too much life, "sick" of joy! As this anecdote shows, goodwill towards men has a sufficiently large place in the feelings excited by hashish: a soft, idle, dumb benevolence which springs from the relaxation of the nerves. In support of this observation somebody once told me an adventure which had happened to him in this state of intoxication, and as he preserved a very exact memory of his feelings I understood perfectly into what grotesque and inextricable embarrassment this difference of diapason and of pity of which I was just speaking had thrown him. I do not remember if the man in question was at his first or his second experiment; had he taken a dose which was a little too strong, or was it that the hashish had produced, without any apparent cause, effects much more vigorous than the ordinary ___ a not infrequent occurrence? He told me that across the scutcheon of his joy, this supreme delight of feeling oneself full of life and believing oneself full of genius, there had suddenly smitten the bar sinister of terror. At first dazzled by the beauty of his sensations, he had suddenly fallen into fear of them. He had asked himself the question: "What would become of my intelligence {74} and of my bodily organs if this state" (which he took for a supernatural state) "went on always increasing; if my nerves became continually more and more delicate?" By the power of enlargement which the spiritual eye of the patient possesses, this fear must be an unspeakable torment. "I was," he said, "like a runaway horse galloping towards an abyss, wishing to stop and being unable to do so. Indeed, it was a frightful ride, and my thought, slave of circumstance, of "milieu," of accident, and of all that may be implied by the word chance, had taken a turn of pure, absolute rhapsody. 'It is too late, it is too late!' I repeated to myself ceaselessly in despair. When this mood, which seemed to me to last for an infinite time, and which I daresay only occupied a few minutes, changed, when I thought that at last I might dive into the ocean of happiness so dear to Easterns which succeeds this furious phase, I was overwhelmed by a new misfortune; a new anxiety, trivial enough, puerile enough, tumbled upon me. I suddenly remembered that I was invited to dinner, to an evening party of respectable people. I foresaw myself in the midst of a well-behaved and discreet crowd, every one master of himself, where I should be obliged to conceal carefully the state of my mind while under the glare of many lamps. I was fairly certain of success, but at the same time my heart almost gave up at the thought of the efforts of will which it would be necessary to bring into line in order to win. By some accident, I know not what, the words of the Gospel, "Woe unto him by whom offences come!" leapt to the surface of my memory, and in the effort to forget them, in concentrating myself upon forgetting them, I repeated them to myself ceaselessly. My catastrophe, for it was indeed a catastrophe, {75} then took a gigantic shape: despite my weakness, I resolved on vigorous action, and went to consult a chemist, for I did not know the antidotes, and I wished to go with a free and careless spirit to the circle where my duty called me; but on the threshold of the shop a sudden thought seized me, haunted me, forced me to reflect. As I passed I had just seen myself in the looking-glass of a shop-front, and my face had startled me. This paleness, these lips compressed, these starting eyes! ___ I shall frighten this good fellow, I said to myself, and for what a trifle! Add to that the ridicule which I wished to avoid, the fear of finding people in the shop. But my sudden goodwill towards this unknown apothecary mastered all my other feelings. I imagined to myself this man as being as sensitive as I myself was at this dreadful moment, and as I imagined also that his ear and his soul must, like my own, tremble at the slightest noise, I resolved to go in on tiptoe. 'It would be impossible,' I said to myself, 'to show too much discretion in dealing with a man on whose kindness I am about to intrude.' Then I resolved to deaden the sound of my voice, like the noise of my steps. You know it, this hashish voice: grave, deep, guttural; not unlike that of habitual opium-eaters. The result was the exact contrary of my intention; anxious to reassure the chemist, I frightened him. He was in no way acquainted with this illness; had never even heard of it; yet he looked at me with a curiosity strongly mingled with mistrust. Did he take me for a madman, a criminal, or a beggar? Nor the one nor the other, doubtless, but all these absurd ideas ploughed through my brain. I was obliged to explain to him at length (what weariness!) what the hemp sweetmeat was and what purpose {76} it served, ceaselessly repeating to him that there was no danger, that there was, so far as he was concerned, no reason to be alarmed, and that all that I asked was a method of mitigating or neutralising it, frequently insisting upon the sincere disappointment I felt in troubling him. When I had quite finished (I beg you well to understand all the humiliation which these words contained for me) he asked me simply to go away. Such was the reward of my exaggerated thoughtfulness and goodwill. I went to my evening party; I scandalised nobody. No one guessed the superhuman struggles which I had to make to be like other people; but I shall never forget the tortures of an ultra-poetic intoxication constrained by decorum and antagonised by duty." Although naturally prone to sympathise with every suffering which is born of the imagination, I could not prevent myself from laughing at this story. The man who told it to me is not cured. He continued to crave at the hands of the cursed confection the excitement which wisdom finds in itself; but as he is a prudent and settled man, a man of the world, he has diminished the doses, which has permitted him to increase their frequency. He will taste later the rotten fruit of his "prudence"! I return to the regular development of the intoxication. After this first phase of childish gaiety there is, as it were, a momentary relaxation; but new events soon announce themselves by a sensation of coolth at the extremities ___ which may even become, in the case of certain persons, a bitter cold ___ and a great weakness in all the limbs. You have then "butter fingers"; and in your head, in all your being, you feel an embarrassing stupor and stupefaction. Your eyes {77} start from your head; it is as if they were drawn in every direction by implacable ecstasy. Your face is deluged with paleness; the lips draw themselves in, sucked into the mouth with that movement of breathlessness which characterises the ambition of a man who is the prey of his own great schemes, oppressed by enormous thoughts, or taking a long breath preparatory to a spring. The throat closes itself, so to say; the palate is dried up by a thirst which it would be infinitely sweet to satisfy, if the delights of laziness were not still more agreeable, and in opposition to the least disturbance of the body. Deep but hoarse sighs escape from your breast, as if the old bottle, your body, could not bear the passionate activity of the new wine, your new soul. From one time to another a spasm transfixes you and makes you quiver, like those muscular discharges which at the end of a day's work or on a stormy night precede definitive slumber. Before going further I should like, "à propos" of this sensation of coolth of which I spoke above, to tell another story which will serve to show to what point the effects, even the purely physical effects, may vary according to the individual. This time it is a man of letters who speaks, and in some parts of his story one will (I think) be able to find the indications of the literary temperament. "I had taken," he told me, "a moderated dose of "extrait gras," and all was going as well as possible. The crisis of gaiety had not lasted long, and I found myself in a state of languor and wonderment which was almost happiness. I looked forward, then, to a quiet and unworried evening: unfortunately chance urged me to go with a friend to the theatre. I took the heroic course, resolved to overcome my immense desire to to be idle and motionless. All {78} the carriages in my district were engaged; I was obliged to walk a long distance amid the discordant noises of the traffic, the stupid conversation of the passers-by, a whole ocean of triviality. My finger-tips were already slightly cool; soon this turned into a most acute cold, as if I had plunged both hands into a bucket of ice-water. But this was not suffering; this needle-sharp sensation stabbed me rather like a pleasure. Yet it seemed to me that this cold enveloped me more and more as the interminable journey went on. I asked two or three times of the person with whom I was if it was actually very cold. He replied to me that, on the contrary, the temperature was more than warm. Installed at last in the room, shut up in the box which had been given me, with three or four hours of repose in front of me, I thought myself arrived at the Promised Land. The feelings on which I had trampled during the journey with all the little energy at my disposal now burst in, and I give myself up freely to my silent frenzy. The cold ever increased, and yet I saw people lightly clad, and even wiping their foreheads with an air of weariness. This delightful idea took hold of me, that I was a privileged man, to whom alone had been accorded the right to feel cold in summer in the auditorium of a theatre. This cold went on increasing until it became alarming; yet I was before all dominated by my curiosity to know to what degree it could possibly sink. At last it came to such a point, it was so complete, so general, that all my ideas froze, so to speak; I was a piece of thinking ice. I imagined myself as a statue carved in a block of ice, and this mad hallucination made me so proud, excited in me such a feeling of moral well-being, that I despair of defining it to you. What added to my abominable {79} enjoyment was the certainty that all the other people present were ignorant of my nature and of the superiority that I had over them, and then with the pleasure of thinking that my companion never suspected for a moment with what strange feelings I was filled, I clasped the reward of my dissimulation, and my extraordinary pleasure was a veritable secret. "Besides, I had scarcely entered the box when my eyes had been struck with an impression of darkness which seemed to me to have some relationship with the idea of cold; it is, however, possible that these two ideas had lent each other strength. You know that hashish always invokes magnificences of light, splendours of colour, cascades of liquid gold; all light is sympathetic to it, both that which streams in sheets and that which hangs like spangles to points and roughnesses; the candelabra of "salons," the wax candles that people burn in May, the rosy avalanches of sunset. It seems that the miserable chandelier spread a light far too insignificant to quench this insatiable thirst of brilliance. I thought, as I told you, that I was entering a world of shadows, which, moreover, grew gradually thicker, while I dreamt of the Polar night and the eternal winter. As to the stage, it was a stage consecrated to the comic Muse; that alone was luminous; infinitely small and far off, very far, like a landscape seen through the wrong end of a telescope. I will not tell you that I listened to the actors; you know that that is impossible. From time to time my thoughts snapped up on the wing a fragment of a phrase, and like a clever dancing-girl used it as a spring-board to leap into far-distant reveries. You might suppose that a play heard in this manner would lack logic and coherence. Undeceive yourself! I discovered an exceeding subtle sense in {80} the drama created by my distraction. Nothing jarred on me, and I resembled a little that poet who, seeing "Esther" played for the first time, found it quite natural that Haman should make a declaration of love to the queen. It was, as you guess, the moment where he throws himself at the feet of Esther to beg pardon of his crime. If all plays were listened to on these lines they all, even those of Racine, would gain enormously. The actors seemed to me exceedingly small, and bounded by a precise and clear-cut line, like the figures in Meissonier's pictures. I saw distinctly not only the most minute details of their costumes, their patterns, seams, buttons, and so on, but also the line of separation between the false forehead and the real; the white, the blue, and the red, and all the tricks of make-up; and these Lilliputians were clothed about with a cold and magical clearness, like that which a very clean glass adds to an oil-painting. When at last I was able to emerge from this cavern of frozen shadows, and when, the interior phantasmagoria being dissipated, I came to myself, I experienced a greater degree of weariness than prolonged and difficult work has ever caused me." It is, in fact, at this period of the intoxication that is manifested a new delicacy, a superior sharpness in each of the senses: smell, sight, hearing, touch join equally in this onward march; the eyes behold the Infinite; the ear perceives almost inaudible sounds in the midst of the most tremendous tumult. It is then that the hallucinations begin; external objects take on wholly and successively most strange appearances; they are deformed and transformed. Then ___ the ambiguities, the misunderstandings, and the transpositions of ideas! Sounds cloak themselves with colour; colours blossom {81} into music. That, you will say, is nothing but natural. Every poetic brain in its healthy, normal state, readily conceives these analogies. But I have already warned the reader that there is nothing of the positively supernatural in hashish intoxication; only those analogies possess an unaccustomed liveliness; they penetrate and they envelop; they overwhelm the mind with their masterfulness. Musical notes become numbers; and if your mind is gifted with some mathematical aptitude, the harmony to which you listen, while keeping its voluptuous and sensual character, transforms itself into a vast rhythmical operation, where numbers beget numbers, and whose phases and generation follow with an inexplicable ease and an agility which equals that of the person playing. It happens sometimes that the sense of personality disappears, and that the objectivity which is the birthright of Pantheist poets develops itself in you so abnormally that the contemplation of exterior objects makes you forget your own existence and confound yourself with them. Your eye fixes itself upon a tree, bent by the wind into an harmonious curve; in some seconds that which in the brain of a poet would only be a very natural comparison becomes in yours a reality. At first you lend to the tree your passions, your desire, or your melancholy; its creakings and oscillations become yours, and soon you are the tree. In the same way with the bird which hovers in the abyss of azure: at first it represents symbolically your own immortal longing to float above things human; but soon you are the bird itself. Suppose, again, you are seated smoking; your attention will rest a little too long upon the bluish clouds which breathe forth from your pipe; the idea of a slow, continuous, eternal evaporation will possess itself of {82} your spirit, and you will soon apply this idea to your own thoughts, to your own apparatus of thought. By a singular ambiguity, by a species of transposition or intellectual barter, you feel yourself evaporating, and you will attribute to your pipe, in which you feel yourself crouched and pressed down like the tobacco, the strange faculty of smoking you! Luckily, this interminable imagination has only lasted a minute. For a lucid interval, seized with a great effort, has allowed you to look at the clock. But another current of ideas bears you away; it will roll you away for yet another minute in its living whirlwind, and this other minute will be an eternity. For the proportion of time and being are completely disordered by the multitude and intensity of your feelings and ideas. One may say that one lives many times the space of a man's life during a single hour. Are you not, then, like a fantastic novel, but alive instead of being written? There is no longer any equation between the physical organs and their enjoyments; and it is above all on this account that arises the blame which one must give to this dangerous exercise in which liberty is forfeited. When I speak of hallucinations the word must not be taken in its strictest sense: a very important shade of difference distinguishes pure hallucination, such as doctors have often have occasion to study, from the hallucination, or rather of the misinterpretation of the senses, which arises in the mental state caused by the hashish. In the first case the hallucination is sudden, complete, and fatal; beside which, it finds neither pretext nor excuse in the exterior world. The sick man sees a shape or hears sounds where there are not any. In the second case, where hallucination is progressive, {83} almost willed, and it does not become perfect, it only ripens under the action of imagination. Finally, it has a pretext. A sound will speak, utter distinct articulations; but there was a sound there. The enthusiast eye of the hashish drunkard will see strange forms, but before they were strange and monstrous these forms were simple and natural. The energy, the almost speaking liveliness of hallucination in this form of intoxication in no way invalidates this original difference: the one has root in the situation, and, at the present time, the other has not. Better to explain this boiling over of the imagination, this maturing of the dream, and this poetic childishness to which a hashish-intoxicated brain is condemned, I will tell yet another anecdote. This time it is not an idle young man who speaks, nor a man of letters. It is a woman; a woman no longer in her first youth; curious, with an excitable mind, and who, having yielded to the wish to make acquaintance with the poison, describes thus for another woman the most important of her phases. I transcribe literally. "However strange and new may be the sensations which I have drawn from my twelve hours' madness ___ was it twelve or twenty? in sooth, I cannot tell ___ I shall never return to it. The spiritual excitement is too lively, the fatigue which results from it too great; and, to say all in a word, I find in this return to childhood something criminal. Ultimately (after many hesitations) I yielded to curiosity, since it was a folly shared with old friends, where I saw no great harm in lacking a little dignity. But first of all I must tell you that this cursèd hashish is a most treacherous substance. Sometimes one thinks oneself recovered from the intoxication; but it is only a deceitful peace. There are moments of rest, and then recrudescences. {84} Thus, before ten o'clock in the evening I found myself in one of these momentary states; I thought myself escaped from this superabundance of life which had caused me so much enjoyment, it is true, but which was not without anxiety and fear. I sat down to supper with pleasure, like one in that state of irritable fatigue which a long journey produces; for till then, for prudence sake, I had abstained from eating; but even before I rose from the table my delirium had caught me up again as a cat catches a mouse, and the poison began anew to play with my poor brain. Although my house is quite close to that of our friends, and although there was a carriage at my disposal, I felt myself so overwhelmed with the necessity of dreaming, of abandoning myself to this irresistible madness, that I accepted joyfully their offer to keep me till the morning. You know the castle; you know that they have arranged, decorated, and fitted with conveniences in the modern style all that part in which they ordinarily live, but that the part which is usually unoccupied has been left as it was, with its old style and its old adornments. They determined to improvise for me a bedroom in this part of the castle, and for this purpose they chose the smallest room, a kind of boudoir, which, although somewhat faded and decrepit, is none the less charming. I must describe it for you as well as I can, so that you may understand the strange vision which I underwent, a vision which fulfilled me for a whole night, without ever leaving me the leisure to note the flight of the hours. "This boudoir is very small, very narrow. From the height of the cornice the ceiling arches itself to a vault; the walls are covered with narrow, long mirrors, separated by {85} panels, where landscapes, in the easy style of the decorations, are painted. On the frieze on the four walls various allegorical figures are represented, some in attitudes of repose, others running or flying; above them are brilliant birds and flowers. Behind the figures a trellis rises, painted so as to deceive the eye, and following naturally the curve of the ceiling; this ceiling is gilded. All the interstices between the woodwork and the trellis and the figures are then covered with gold, and at the centre the gold is only interrupted by the geometrical network of the false trellis; you see that that resembles somewhat a very distinguished cage, a very fine cage for a very big bird. I must add that the night was very fine, very clear, and the moon brightly shining; so much so that even after I had put out my candle all this decoration remained visible, not illuminated by my mind's eye, as you might think, but by this lovely night, whose lights clung to all this broidery of gold, of mirrors, and of patchwork colours. "I was at first much astonished to see great spaces spread themselves out before me, beside me, on all sides. There were limpid rivers, and green meadows admiring their own beauty in calm waters: you may guess here the effect of the panels reflected by the mirrors. In raising my eyes I saw a setting sun, like molten metal that grows cold. It was the gold of the ceiling. But the trellis put in my mind the idea that I was in a kind of cage, or in a house open on all sides upon space, and that I was only separated from all these marvels by the bars of my magnificent prison. In the first place I laughed at the illusion which had hold of me; but the more I looked the more its magic grew great, the more it took life, clearness, and masterful reality. From that moment {86} the idea of being shut up mastered my mind, without, I must admit, too seriously interfering with the varied pleasures which I drew from the spectacle spread around and above me. I thought of myself as of one imprisoned for long, for thousands of years perhaps, in this sumptuous cage, among these fairy pastures, between these marvellous horizons. I imagined myself the Sleeping Beauty; dreamt of an expiation that I must undergo, of deliverance to come. Above my head fluttered brilliant tropical birds, and as my ear caught the sound of the little bells on the necks of the horses which were travelling far away on the main road, the two senses pooling their impressions in a single idea, I attributed to the birds this mysterious brazen chant; I imagined that they sang with a metallic throat. Evidently they were talking to me, and chanting hymns to my captivity. Gambolling monkeys, buffoon-like satyrs, seemed to amuse themselves at this supine prisoner, doomed to immobility; yet all the gods of mythology looked upon me with an enchanting smile, as if to encourage me to bear the sorcery with patience, and all their eyes slid to the corner of their eyelids as if to fix themselves on me. I came to the conclusion that if some faults of the olden time, some sins unknown to myself, had made necessary this temporary punishment, I could yet count upon an overriding goodness, which, while condemning me to a prudent course, would offer me truer pleasures than the dull pleasures which filled our youth. You see that moral considerations were not absent from my dream; but I must admit that the pleasure of contemplating these brilliant forms and colours and of thinking myself the centre of a fantastic drama frequently absorbed all my other thoughts. This stayed long, very {87} long. Did it last till morning? I do not know. All of a sudden I saw the morning sun taking his bath in my room. I experienced a lively astonishment, and despite all the efforts of memory that I have been able to make I have never been able to assure myself whether I had slept or whether I had patiently undergone a delicious insomnia. A moment ago, Night; now, Day. And yet I had lived long; oh, very long! The notion of Time, or rather the standard of Time, being abolished, the whole night was only measurable by the multitude of my thoughts. So long soever as it must have appeared to me from this point of view, it also seemed to me that it had only lasted some seconds; or even that it had not taken place in eternity. "I do not say anything to you of my fatigue; it was immense. They say that the enthusiasm of poets and creative artists resembles what I experienced, though I have always believed that those persons on whom is laid the task of stirring us must be endowed with a most calm temperament. But if the poetic delirium resembles that which a teaspoonful of hashish confection procured for me I cannot but think that the pleasures of the public cost the poets dear, and it is not without a certain well-being, a prosaic satisfaction, that I at last find myself at home, in my intellectual home; I mean, in real life." There is a woman, evidently reasonable; but we shall only make use of her story to draw from it some useful notes, which will complete this very compressed summary of the principal feelings which hashish begets. She speaks of supper as of a pleasure arriving at the right moment; at the moment where a momentary remission, {88} momentary for all its pretence of finality, permitted her to go back to real life. Indeed, there are, as I have said, intermissions, and deceitful calms, and hashish often brings about a voracious hunger, nearly always an excessive thirst. Only, dinner or supper, instead of bringing about a permanent rest, creates this new attack, the vertiginous crisis of which this lady complains, and which was followed by a series of enchanting visions lightly tinged with affright, to which she so assented, resigning herself with the best grace in the world. The tyrannical hunger and thirst of which we speak are not easily assayed without considerable trouble. For the man feels himself so much above material things, or rather he is so much overwhelmed by his drunkenness, that he must develop a lengthy spell of courage to move a bottle or a fork. The definitive crisis determined by the digestion of food is, in fact, very violent; it is impossible to struggle against it. And such a state would not be supportable if it lasted too long, and if it did not soon give place to another phase of intoxication, which in the case above cited interprets itself by splendid visions, tenderly terrifying, and at the same time full of consolations. This new state is what the Easterns call "Kaif." It is no longer the whirlwind or the tempest; it is a calm and motionless bliss, a glorious resignèdness. Since long you have not been your own master; but you trouble yourself no longer about that. Pain, and the sense of time, have disappeared; or if sometimes they dare to show their heads, it is only as transfigured by the master feeling, and they are then, as compared with their ordinary form, what poetic melancholy is to prosaic grief. But above all let us remark that in this lady's account {89} (and it is for this purpose that I have transcribed it) it is but a bastard hallucination, and owes its being to the objects of the external world. The spirit is but a mirror where the environment is reflected, strangely transformed. Then, again, we see intruding what I should be glad to call moral hallucination; the patient thinks herself condemned to expiate somewhat; but the feminine temperament, which is ill-fitted to analyse, did not permit her to notice the strangely optimistic character of the aforesaid hallucination. The benevolent look of the gods of Olympus is made poetical by a varnish essentially due to hashish. I will not say that this lady has touched the fringe of remorse, but her thoughts, momentarily turned in the direction of melancholy and regret, have been quickly coloured by hope. This is an observation which we shall again have occasion to verify. She speaks of the fatigue of the morrow. In fact, this is great. But it does not show itself at once, and when you are obliged to acknowledge its existence you do so not without surprise: for at first, when you are really assured that a new day has arisen on the horizon of your life, you experience an extraordinary sense of well-being; you seem to enjoy a marvellous lightness of spirit. But you are scarcely on your feet when a forgotten fragment of intoxication follows you and pulls you back; it is the badge of your recent slavery. Your enfeebled legs only conduct you with caution, and you fear at every moment to break yourself, as if you were made of porcelain. A wondrous languor ___ there are those who pretend that it does not lack charm ___ possesses itself of your spirit, and spreads itself across your faculties as a fog spreads itself in a meadow. There, then, you are, for some hours yet, {90} incapable of work, of action, and of energy. It is the punishment of an impious prodigality in which you have squandered your nervous force. You have dispersed your personality to the four winds of heaven ___ and now, what trouble to gather it up again and concentrate it! {91} CHAPTER IV THE MAN-GOD IT is time to leave on one side all this jugglery, these big marionettes, born of the smoke of childish brains. Have we not to speak of more serious things ___ of modifications of our human opinions, and, in a word, of the "morale" of hashish? Up to the present I have only made an abridged monograph on the intoxication; I have confined myself to accentuating its principal characteristics. But what is more important, I think, for the spiritually minded man, is to make acquaintance with the action of the poison upon the spiritual part of man; that is to say, the enlargement, the deformation, and the exaggeration of his habitual sentiments and his moral perception, which present then, in an exceptional atmosphere, a true phenomenon of refraction. The man who, after abandoning himself for a long timr to opium or to hashish, has been able, weak as he has become by the habit of bondage, to find the energy necessary to shake off the chain, appears to me like an escaped prisoner. He inspires me with more admiration than does that prudent man who has never fallen, having always been careful to avoid the temptation. The English, in speaking of opium-eaters, often employ terms which can only appear excessive to those innocent persons who do not understand the horrors of this {92} downfall ___ "enchained, fettered, enslaved." Chains, in fact, compared to which all others ___ chains of duty, chains of lawless love ___ are nothing but webs of gauze and spider tissues. Horrible marriage of man with himself! "I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labours and my orders had taken a colouring from my dreams," says the husband of Ligeia. But in how many marvellous passages does Edgar Poe, this incomparable poet, this never-refuted philosopher, whom one must always quote in speaking of the mysterious maladies of the soul, describe the dark and clinging splendours of opium! The lover of the shining Berenice, Egoeus, the metaphysician, speaks of an alteration of his faculties which compels him to give an abnormal and monstrous value to the simplest phenomenon. "To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin or in the typography of a book; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in: such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation." {93} And the nervous Augustus Bedloe, who every morning before his walk swallows his dose of opium, tells us that the principal prize which he gains from this daily poisoning is to take in everything, even in the most trivial thing, an exaggerated interest. "In the meantime the morphine had its customary effect ___ that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf ___ in the hue of a blade of grass ___ in the shape of a trefoil ___ in the humming of a bee ___ in the gleaming of a dew-drop ___ in the breathing of the wind ___ in the faint odours that came from the forest ___ there came a whole universe of suggestion ___ a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought." Thus expresses himself, by the mouth of his puppets, the master of the horrible, the prince of mystery. These two characteristics of opium are perfectly applicable to hashish. In the one case, as in the other, the intelligence, formerly free, becomes a slave; but the word "rapsodique," which defines so well a train of thought suggested and dictated by the exterior world and the accident of circumstance, is in truth truer and more terrible in the case of hashish. Here the reasoning power is no more than a wave, at the mercy of every current and the train of thought is infinitely more accelerated and more "rapsodique;" that is to say, clearly enough, I think, that hashish is, in its immediate effect, much more vehement than opium, much more inimical to regular life; in a word, much more upsetting. I do not know if ten years of intoxication by hashish would being diseases equal to those caused by ten years of opium regimen; I say that, for the moment, and for the morrow, hashish has more fatal results. One is a soft-spoken enchantress; the other, a raging demon. {94} I wish in this last part to define and to analyse the moral ravage caused by this dangerous and delicious practice; a ravage so great, a danger so profound, that those who return from the fight but lightly wounded appear to me like heroes escaped from the cave of a multiform Proteus, or like Orpheus, conquerors of Hell. You may take, if you will, this form of language for an exaggerated metaphor, but for my part I will affirm that these exciting poisons seem to me not only one of the most terrible and the most sure means which the Spirit of Darkness uses to enlist and enslave wretched humanity, but even one of the most perfect of his avatars. This time, to shorten my task and make my analysis the clearer, instead of collecting scattered anecdotes I will dress a single puppet in a mass of observation. I must, then, invent a soul to suit my purpose. In his "Confessions" De Quincey rightly states that opium, instead of sending man to sleep, excites him; but only excites him in his natural path, and that therefore to judge of the marvels of opium it would be ridiculous to try it upon a seller of oxen, for such an one will dream of nothing but cattle and grass. Now I am not going to describe the lumbering fancies of a hashish- intoxicated stockbreeder. Who would read them with pleasure, or consent to read them at all? To idealise my subject I must concentrate all its rays into a single circle and polarise them; and the tragic circle where I will gather them together will be, as I have said, a man after my own heart; something analogous to what the eighteenth century called the "homme sensible," to what the romantic school named the "homme incompris," and to what family folk and the mass of "bourgeoisie" generally brand with the epithet "original." A constitution half nervous, half {95} bilious, is the most favourable to the evolutions of an intoxication of this kind. Let us add a cultivated mind, exercised in the study of form and colour, a tender heart, wearied by misfortune, but still ready to be made young again; we will go, if you please, so far as to admit past errors, and, as a natural result of these in an easily excitable nature, if not positive remorse, at least regret for time profaned and ill-spent. A taste for metaphysics, an acquaintance with the different hypotheses of philosophy of human destiny, will certainly not be useless conditions; and, further, that love of virtue, of abstract virtue, stoical or mystic, which is set forth in all the books upon which modern childishness feeds as the highest summit to which a chosen soul may attain. If one adds to all that a great refinement of sense ___ and if I omitted it it was because I thought it supererogatory ___ I think that I have gathered together the general elements which are most common in the modern "homme sensible" of what one might call the lowest common measure of originality. Let us see now what will become of this individuality pushed to its extreme by hashish. let us follow this progress of the human imagination up to its last and most splendid serai; up to the point of the belief of the individual in his own divinity. If you are one of these souls your innate love of form and colour will find from the beginning an immense banquet in the first development of your intoxication. Colours will take an unaccustomed energy and smite themselves within your brain with the intensity of triumph. Delicate, mediocre, or even bad as they may be, the paintings upon the ceilings will clothe themselves with a tremendous life. The coarsest papers which {96} cover the walls of inns will open out like magnificent dioramas. Nymphs with dazzling flesh will look at you with great eyes deeper and more limpid than are the sky and sea. Characters of antiquity, draped in their priestly or soldierly costumes, will, by a single glance, exchange with you most solemn confidences. The snakiness of the lines is a definitely intelligible language where you read the sorrowing and the passion of their souls. Nevertheless a mysterious but only temporary state of the mind develops itself; the profoundness of life, hedged by its multiple problems, reveals itself entirely in the sight, however natural and trivial it may be, that one has under one's eyes; the first-come object becomes a speaking symbol. Fourier and Swedenborg, one with his analogies, the other with his correspondences, have incarnated themselves in all things vegetable and animal which fall under your glance, and instead of touching by voice they indoctrinate you by form and colour. The understanding of the allegory takes within you proportions unknown to yourself. We shall note in passing that allegory, that so spiritual type of art, which the clumsiness of its painters has accustomed us to despise, but which is realy one of the most primitive and natural forms of poetry, regains its divine right in the intelligence which is enlightened by intoxication. Then the hashish spreads itself over all life; as it were, the magic varnish. It colours it with solemn hues and lights up all its profundity; jagged landscapes, fugitive horizons, perspectives of towns whitened by the corpse- like lividity of storm or illumined by the gathered ardours of the sunset; abysses of space, allegorical of the abyss of time; the dance, the gesture or the speech of the actors, should you be in a theatre; the first-come phrase if your eyes fall upon a {97} book; in a word, all things; the universality of beings stands up before you with a new glory unsuspected until then. The grammar, the dry grammar itself, becomes something like a book of "barbarous names of evocation." The words rise up again, clothed with flesh and bone; the noun, in its solid majesty; the adjective's transparent robe which clothes and colours it with a shining web; and the verb, archangel of motion which sets swinging the phrase. Music, that other language dear to the idle or the profound souls who seek repose by varying their work, speaks to you of yourself, and recites to you the poem of your life; it incarnates in you, and you swoon away in it. It speaks your passion, not only in a vague, ill- defined manner, as it does in your careless evenings at the opera, but in a substantial and positive manner, each movement of the rhythm marking a movement understood of your soul, each note transforming itself into Word, and the whole poem entering into your brain like a dictionary endowed with life. It must not be supposed that all these phenomena fall over each other pell- mell in the spirit, with a clamorous accent of reality and the disorder of exterior life; the interior eye transforms all, and gives to all the complement of beauty which it lacks, so that it may be truly worthy to give pleasure. It is also to this essentially voluptuous and sensual phase that one must refer the love of limpid water, running or stagnant, which develops itself so astonishingly in the brain-drunkenness of some artists. The mirror has become a pretext for this reverie, which resembles a spiritual thirst joined to the physical thirst which dries the throat, and of which I have spoken above. The flowing waters, the sportive waters; the musical waterfalls; {98} the blue vastness of the sea; all roll, sing, leap with a charm beyond words. The water opens its arms to you like a true enchantress; and though I do not much believe in the maniacal frenzies caused by hashish, I should not like to assert that the contemplation of some limpid gulf would be altogether without danger for a soul in love with space and crystal, and that the old fable of Undine might not become a tragic reality for the enthusiast. I think I have spoken enough of the gigantic growth of space and time; two ideas always connected, always woven together, but which at such a time the spirit faces without sadness and without fear. It looks with a certain melancholy delight across deep years, and boldly dives into infinite perspectives. You have thoroughly well understood, I suppose, that this abnormal and tyrannical growth may equally apply to all sentiments and to all ideas. Thus, I have given, I think, a sufficiently fair sample of benevolence. The same is true of love. The idea of beauty must naturally take possession of an enormous space in a spiritual temperament such as I have invented. Harmony, balance of line, fine cadence in movement, appear to the dreamer as necessities, as duties, not only for all beings of creation, but for himself, the dreamer, who finds himself at this period of the crisis endowed with a marvellous aptitude for understanding the immortal and universal rhythm. And if our fanatic lacks personal beauty, do not think he suffers long from the avowal to which he is obliged, or that he regards himself as a discordant note in the world of harmony and beauty improvised by his imagination. The sophisms of hashish are numerous and admirable, tending as a rule to optimism, and one of the {99} principal and the most efficacious is that which transforms desire into realisation. It is the same, doubtless, in many cases of ordinary life; but here with how much more ardour and subtlety! Otherwise, how could a being so well endowed to understand harmony, a sort of priest of the beautiful, how could he make an exception to, and a blot upon, his own theory? Moral beauty and its power, gracefulness and its seduction, eloquence and its achievements, all these ideas soon present themselves to correct that thoughtless ugliness; then they come as consolers, and at last as the most perfect courtiers, sycophants of an imaginary sceptre. Concerning love, I have heard many persons feel a school-boy curiosity, seeking to gather information from those to whom the use of hashish was familiar, what might not be this intoxication of love, already so powerful in its natural state, when it is enclosed in the other intoxication; a sun within a sun. Such is the question which will occur to that class of minds which I will call intellectual gapers. To reply to a shameful sub-meaning of this part of the question which cannot be openly discussed, I will refer the reader to Pliny, who speaks somewhere of the properties of hemp in such a way as to dissipate any illusions on this subject. One knows, besides, that loss of tone is the most ordinary result of the abuse which men make of their nerves, and of the substances which excite them. Now, as we are not here considering effective power, but motion or susceptibility, I will simply ask the reader to consider that the imagination of a sensitive man intoxicated with hashish is raised to a prodigious degree, as little easy to determine as would be the utmost force possible to the wind in a hurricane, {100} and his senses are subtilised to a point almost equally difficult to define. It is then reasonable to believe that a light caress, the most innocent imaginable, a handshake, for example, may possess a centuple value by the actual state of the soul and of the senses, and may perhaps conduct them, and that very rapidly, to that syncope which is considered by vulgar mortals as the "summum" of happiness; but it is quite indubitable that hashish awakes in an imagination accustomed to occupy itself with the affections tender remembrances to which pain and unhappiness give even a new lustre. It is no less certain that in these agitations of the mind there is a strong ingredient of sensuality; and, moreover, it may usefully be remarked ___ and this will suffice to establish upon this ground the immorality of hashish ___ that a sect of Ishmaelites (it is from the Ishmaelites that the Assassins are sprung) allowed its adoration to stray far beyond the Lingam-Yoni; that is to say, to the absolute worship of the Lingam, exclusive of the feminine half of the symbol. There would be nothing unnatural, every man being the symbolic representation of history, in seeing an obscene heresy, a monstrous religion, arise in a mind which has cowardly given itself up to the mercy of a hellish drug and which smiles at the degradation of its own faculties. Since we have seen manifest itself in hashish intoxication a strange goodwill toward men, applied even to strangers, a species of philanthropy made rather of pity than of love (it is here that the first germ of the Satanic spirit which is to develop later in so extraordinary a manner shows itself), but which goes so far as to fear giving pain to any one, one may guess what may happen to the localised sentimentality applied to a {101} beloved person who plays, or has played, an important part in the moral life of the reveller. Worship, adoration, prayer, dreams of happiness, dart forth and spring up with the ambitious energy and brilliance of a rocket. Like the powder and colouring-matter of the firework, they dazzle and vanish in the darkness. There is no sort of sentimental combination to which the subtle love of a hashish-slave may not lend itself. The desire to protect, a sentiment of ardent and devoted paternity, may mingle themselves with a guilty sensuality which hashish will always know how to excuse and to absolve. It goes further still. I suppose that, past errors having left bitter traces in the soul, a husband or a lover will contemplate with sadness in his normal state a past over-clouded with storm; these bitter fruits may, under hashish, change to sweet fruits. The need of pardon makes the imagination more clever and more supplicatory, and remorse itself, in this devilish drama, which only expresses itself by a long monologue, may act as an incitement and powerfully rekindle the heart's enthusiasm. Yes, remorse. Was I wrong in saying that hashish appeared to a truly philosophical mind as a perfectly Satanic instrument? Remorse, singular ingredient of pleasure, is soon drowned in the delicious contemplation of remorse; in a kind of voluptuous analysis; and this analysis is so rapid that man, this natural devil, to speak as do the followers of Swedenborg, does not see how involuntary it is, and how, from moment to moment, he approaches the perfection of Satan. He admires his remorse, and glorifies himself, even while he is on the way to lose his freedom. There, then, is my imaginary man, the mind that I have {102} chosen, arrived at that degree of joy and peace where he is compelled to admire himself. Every contradiction wipes itself out; all philosophical problems become clear, or at least appear so; everything is material for pleasure; the plentitude of life which he enjoys inspires him with an unmeasured pride; a voice speaks in him (alas, it is his own!) which says to him: "Thou hast now the right to consider thyself as superior to all men. None knoweth thee, none can understand all that thou thinkest, all that thou feelest; they would, indeed, be incapable of appreciating the passionate love which they inspire in thee. Thou art a king unrecognised by the passers-by; a king who lives, yet none knows that he is king but himself. But what matter to thee? Hast thou not sovereign contempt, which makes the soul so kind?" We may suppose, however, that from one time to another some biting memory strikes through and corrupts this happiness. A suggestion due to the exterior world may revive a past disagreeable to contemplate. How many foolish or vile actions fill the past! ___ actions indeed unworthy of this king of thought, and whose escutcheon they soil? Believe that the hashish-man will bravely confront these reproachful phantoms, and even that he will know how to draw from these hideous memories new elements of pleasure and of pride! Such will be the evolution of his reasoning. The first sensation of pain being over, he will curiously analyse this action or this sentiment whose memory has troubled his existing glory; the motive which made him act thus; the circumstances by which he was surrounded; and if he does not find in these circumstances sufficient reasons, if not to absolve, at least to extenuate his guilt, do not imagine that he admits {103} defeat. I am present at his reasoning, as at the play of a mechanism seen under a transparent glass. "This ridiculous, cowardly, or vile action, whose memory disturbed me for a moment, is in complete contradiction with my true and real nature, and the very energy with which I condemn it, the inquisitorial care with which I analyse and judge it, prove my lofty and divine aptitude for virtue. How many men could be found in the world of men clever enough to judge themselves; stern enough to condemn themselves?" And not only does he condemn himself, but he glorifies himself; the horrible memory thus absorbed in the contemplation of ideal virtue, ideal charity, ideal genius, he abandons himself frankly to his triumphant spiritual orgy. We have seen that, counterfeiting sacrilegiously the sacrament of penitence, at one and the same time penitent and confessor, he has given himself an easy absolution; or, worse yet, that he has drawn from his contemplation new food for his pride. Now, from the contemplation of his dreams and his schemes of virtue he believes finally in his practical aptitude for virtue; the amorous energy with which he impresses this phantom of virtue seems to him a sufficient and peremptory proof that he possesses the virile energy necessary for the fulfilment of his ideal. He confounds completely dream with action, and his imagination, growing warmer and warmer in face of the enchanting spectacle of his own nature corrected and idealised, substituting this fascinating image of himself for his real personality, so poor in will, so rich in vanity, he ends by declaring his apotheosis in these clear and simple terms, which contain for him a whole world of abominable pleasures: "I am the most virtuous of all men." Does not that remind you a little of {104} Jean-Jacques, who, he also having confessed to the Universe, not without a certain pleasure, dared to break out into the same cry of triumph (or at least the difference is small enough) with the same sincerity and the same conviction? The enthusiasm with which he admired virtue, the nervous emotion which filled his eyes with tears at the sight of a fine action or at the thought of all the fine actions which he would have wished to accomplish, were sufficient to give him a superlative idea of his moral worth. Jean-Jacques had intoxicated himself without the aid of hashish. Shall I pursue yet further the analysis of this victorious monomania? Shall I explain how, under the dominion of the poison, my man soon makes himself centre of the Universe? how he becomes the living and extravagant expression of the proverb which says that passion refers everything to itself? He believes in his virtue and in his genius; can you not guess the end? All the surrounding objects are so many suggestions which stir in him a world of thought, all more coloured, more living, more subtle than ever, clothed in a magic glamour. "These mighty cities," says he to himself, "where the superb buildings tower one above the other; these beautiful ships balanced by the waters of the roadstead in homesick idleness, that seem to translate our thought 'When shall we set sail for happiness?; these museums full of lovely shapes and intoxicating colours; these libraries where are accumulated the works of science and the dreams of poetry; this concourse of instruments whose music is one; these enchantress women, made yet more charming by the science of adornment and coquetry: all these things have been created for me, for me, for me! For me humanity has {105} toiled; has been martyred, crucified, to serve for pasture, for pabulum to my implacable appetite for emotion, knowledge, and beauty." I leap to the end, I cut the story short. No one will be surprised that a thought final and supreme jets from the brain of the dreamer: "I am become God." But a savage and burning cry darts from his breast with such an energy, such a power of production, that if the will and the belief of a drunken man possessed effective power this cry would overthrow the angels scattered in the quarters of the heaven: "I am a god." But soon this hurricane of pride transforms itself into a weather of calm, silent, reposeful beatitude, and the universality of beings presents itself tinted and illumined by a flaming dawn. If by chance a vague memory slips into the soul of this deplorable thrice-happy one ___ "Might there not be another God?" ___ believe that he will stand upright before Him; that he will dispute His will, and confront Him without fear. Who was the French philosopher that, mocking modern German doctrines, said: "I am a god who has dined ill"? This irony would not bite into a spirit uplifted by hashish; he would reply tranquilly: "Maybe I have dined ill; but I am a god." {106} CHAPTER V MORAL BUT the morrow; the terrible morrow! All the organs relaxed, tired; the nerves unstretched, the teasing tendency to tears, the impossibility of applying yourself to a continuous task, teach you cruelly that you have been playing a forbidden game. Hideous nature, stripped of its illumination of the previous evening, resembles the melancholy ruins of a festival. The will, the most precious of all faculties, is above all attacked. They say, and it is nearly true, that this substance does not cause any physical ill; or at least no grave one; but can one affirm that a man incapable of action and fit only for dreaming is really in good health, even when every part of him functions perfectly? Now we know human nature sufficiently well to be assured that a man who can with a spoonful of sweetmeat procure for himself incidentally all the treasures of heaven and of earth will never gain the thousandth part of them by working for them. Can you imagine to yourself a State of which all the citizens should be hashish drunkards? What citizens! What warriors! What legislators! Even in the East, where its use is so widely spread, there are Governments which have understood the necessity of proscribing it. In fact it is forbidden to man, under penalty of intellectual decay and death, to upset {107} the primary conditions of his existence, and to break up the equilibrium of his faculties with the surroundings in which they are destined to operate; in a word, to outrun his destiny, to substitute for it a fatality of a new kind. Let us remember Melmoth, that admirable parable. His shocking suffering lies in the disproportion between his marvellous faculties, acquired unostentatiously by a Satanic pact, and the surroundings in which, as a creature of God, he is condemned to live. And none of those whom he wishes to seduce consents to buy from him on the same conditions his terrible privilege. In fact every man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul. It is easy to grasp the analogy which exists between the Satanic creations of poets and those living beings who have devoted themselves to stimulants. Man has wished to become God, and soon? ___ there he is, in virtue of an inexorable moral law, fallen lower than his natural state! It is a soul which sells itself bit by bit. Balzac doubtless thought that there is for man no greater shame, no greater suffering, than to abdicate his will. I saw him once in a drawing-room, where they were talking of the prodigious effects of hashish. He listened and asked questions with an amusing attention and vivacity. Those who knew him may guess that it must have interested him, but the idea of "thinking despite" "himself" shocked him severely. They offered him "dawamesk." He examined it, sniffed at it, and returned it without touching it. The struggle between his almost childish curiosity and his repugnance to submit himself showed strikingly on his expressive face. The love of dignity won the day. Now it is difficult to imagine to oneself the maker of the theory of will, this spiritual twin of {108} Louis Lambert, consenting to lose a grain of this precious substance. Despite the admirable services which ether and chloroform have rendered to humanity, it seems to me that from the point of view of the idealist philosophy the same moral stigma is branded on all modern inventions which tend to diminish human free will and necessary pain. It was not without a certain admiration that I once listened to the paradox of an officer who told me of the cruel operation undergone by a French general at El-Aghouat, and of which, despite chloroform, he died. This general was a very brave man, and even something more: one of those souls to which one naturally applies the term "chivalrous." It was not, he said to me, chloroform that he needed, but the eyes of all the army and the music of its bands. That might have saved him. The surgeon did not agree with the officer, but the chaplain would doubtless have admired these sentiments. It is certainly superfluous, after all thee considerations, to insist upon the moral character of hashish. Let me compare it to suicide, to slow suicide, to a weapon always bleeding, always sharp, and no reasonable person will find anything to object to. Let me compare it to sorcery or to magic, which wishes in working upon matter by means of arcana (of which nothing proves the falsity more than the efficacy) to conquer a dominion forbidden to man or permitted only to him who is deemed worthy of it, and no philosophical mind will blame this comparison. If the Church condemns magic and sorcery it is that they militate against the intentions of God; that they save time and render morality superfluous, and that she ___ the Church ___ only considers as legitimate and true the treasures gained by assiduous goodwill. The gambler who {109} has found the means to win with certainty we all cheat; how shall we describe the man who tries to buy with a little small change happiness and genius? It is the infallibility itself of the means which constitutes its immorality; as the supposed infallibility of magic brands it with Satanic stigma. Shall I add that hashish, like all solitary pleasures, renders the individual useless to his fellow creatures and society superfluous to the individual, driving him to ceaseless admiration of himself and dragging him day by day towards the luminous abyss in which he admires his Narcissus face? But even if at the price of his dignity, his honesty, and his free will man were able to draw from hashish great spiritual benefits; to make a kind of thinking machine, a fertile instrument? That is a question which I have often heard asked, and I reply to it: In the first place, as I have explained at length, hashish reveals to the individual nothing but himself. It is true that this individual is, so to say, cubed, and pushed to his limit, and as it is equally certain that the memory of impressions survives the orgy, the hope of these utilitarians appears at the first glance not altogether unreasonable. But I will beg them to observe that the thoughts from which they expect to draw so great an advantage are not in reality as beautiful as they appear under their momentary transfiguration, clothed in magic tinsel. They pertain to earth rather than to Heaven, and owe great portion of their beauty to the nervous agitation, to the greediness, with which the mind throws itself upon them. Consequently this hope is a vicious circle. Let us admit for the moment that hashish gives, or at least increases, genius; they forget that it is in the nature of hashish to diminish the will, and that {110} thus it gives with one hand what it withdraws with the other; that is to say, imagination without the faculty of profiting by it. Lastly, one must remember, while supposing a man adroit enough and vigorous enough to avoid this dilemma, that there is another danger, fatal and terrible, which is that of all habits. All such soon transform themselves into necessities. He who has recourse to a poison in order to think will soon be unable to think without the poison. Imagine to yourself the frightful lot of a man whose paralysed imagination will no longer function without the aid of hashish or of opium! In philosophical states the human mind, to imitate the course of the stars, is obliged to follow a curve which loops it back to its point of departure, when the circle must ultimately close. At the beginning I spoke of this marvellous state into which the spirit of man sometimes finds itself thrown as if by a special favour. I have said that, ceaselessly aspiring to rekindle his hopes and raise himself towards the infinite, he showed (in every country and in every time) a frenzied appetite for every substance, even those which are dangerous, which, by exalting his personality, are able to bring in an instant before his eyes this bargain Paradise, object of all his desires; and at last that this daring spirit, driving without knowing it his chariot through the gates of Hell, by this very fact bore witness to his original greatness. But man is not so God-forsaken, so barren of straightforward means of reaching Heaven, that he need invoke pharmacy and witchcraft. He has no need to sell his soul to buy intoxicating caresses and the friendship of the Hur Al'ain. What is a Paradise which must be bought at the price of eternal salvation? I imagine a man (shall I {111} say a Brahmin, a poet, or a Christian philosopher?) seated upon the steep Olympus of spirituality; around him the Muses of Raphael or of Mategna, to console him for his long fasts and his assiduous prayers, weave the noblest dances, gaze on him with their softest glances and their most dazzling smiles; the divine Apollo, master of all knowledge (that of Francavilla, of Albert Dürer, of Goltzius, or another ___ what does it matter? Is there not an Apollo for every man who deserves one?), caresses with his bow his most sensitive strings; below him, at the foot of the mountain, in the brambles and the mud, the human fracas; the Helot band imitates the grimaces of enjoyment and utters howls which the sting of the poison tears from its breast; and the poet, saddened, says to himself: "These unfortunate ones, who have neither fasted nor prayed, who have refused redemption by the means of toil, have asked of black magic the means to raise themselves at a single blow to transcendental life. Their magic dupes them, kindles for them a false happiness, a false light; while as for us poets and philosophers, we have begotten again our soul upon ourselves by continuous toil and contemplation; by the unwearied exercise of will and the unfaltering nobility of aspiration we have created for ourselves a garden of Truth, which is Beauty; of Beauty which is Truth. Confident in the word which says that faith removeth mountains, we have accomplished the only miracle which God has licensed us to perform." CHARLES BAUDELAIRE ("Translated by" ALEISTER CROWLEY) {112} REVIEW A BOOK OF MYSTERY AND VISION. By A. E. WAITE. William Rider and Son. 7s. 6"d". "The Introduction." Mr. Waite speaks of a "kind of secret school, or united but incorporate fraternity, which independently of all conventional means of recognition and communication do no less communicate and recognise one another without hesitation of hindrance in every part of the world. ... Of this school the author may and does claim that he is the intimate representative and mouthpiece," &c. &c. Good. "This mystic life at its highest is undeniably selfish." Hullo, what's this? "It is a striking fact that so little of any divine consequence has been uttered by poets in the English Language." Really? "The inspiration of it (the sense of sacramentalism) at certain times saturated the whole soul of Tennyson ... there is scarcely a trace or tincture of this sense in Shelley." Poor Shelley! "In the eighteenth century there was none found to give it Voice." Poor Blake! (William Blake, you know! Never heard of William Blake?) "For this school it is quite impossible that Shakespeare, for example, should possess any consequence." Poor Shakespeare! And then --- "This book is offered by the writer to his brethren, "ut adeptis appareat me" "illis parem et fratrem," as proof positive that he is numbered among them, that he is initiated into their mysteries, and exacts recognition as such in all houses, temples, and tarrying-places of the fraternity." An adept trying to prove that he is one! An adept with thoughts of his own rank and glory!! An adept exacting recognition!!! What about the instant recognition all over the world of which you prated above? Mr. Waite, you seem to me to be a spiritual Arthur Orton! Mr. Waite, we have opened the Pastos which you say contains the body of your Father Christian Rosencreutz ___ and it's only poor old Druce! "The Book." This is the strange thing; the moment that Mr. Waite leaves prose for poetry, there is no more of this bunkum, bombast, and balderdash; we find a poet, and rather an illuminated poet. We have to appeal from Philip sober to Philip drunk! "In vino veritas." Good poetry enough all this: yet one cannot help feeling that it is essentially {113} the work of a scholar and a gentleman. One is inclined to think of him as Pentheus in a frock-coat. A MYSTERY-PLAY. DIONYSUS. I bring ye wine from above From the vats of the storied sun --- MR. WAITE. Butler, decant the claret carefully! DIONYSUS. For every one of ye love --- MR. WAITE. Ay, lawful marriage is a sacrament. DIONYSUS. And life for everyone --- MR. WAITE. And lawful marriage should result in life. DIONYSUS. Ye shall dance on hill and level --- MR. WAITE. But not the vulgar cancan or mattchiche. DIONYSUS. Ye shall sing through hollow and height --- MR. WAITE. See that ye sing with due sobriety! DIONYSUS. In the festal mystical revel, The rapturous Bacchanal rite! MR. WAITE. If Isabel de S.......should approve! DIONYSUS. The rocks and trees are yours --- MR. WAITE. According to Laws of Property. DIONYSUS. And the waters under the hill -- MR. WAITE. Provided that you pay your water rate. DIONYSUS. By the might of that which endures --- MR. WAITE. Me, surely, and my fame as an adept. DIONYSUS. The holy heaven of will! MR. WAITE. Will Shakespeare was not an initiate. DIONYSUS. I kindle a flame like a torrent To rush from star to star --- MR. WAITE. Incendiarism! Arson! Captain Shaw! DIONYSUS. Your hair as a comet's horrent, --- MR. WAITE. Not for a fortune would I ruffle mine. DIONYSUS. Ye shall see things as they are. MR. WAITE. Play fair, god! do not give the show away! ["The Maenads tear him limb from limb, and "MADAME DE S ...... "tries to" "brain "DIONYSUS" with a dummy writ." This is a great limitation, yet Mr. Waite is a really excellent poet withal. All the poems show fine and deep thought, with facility and felicity of expression. "The Lost Word" is extraordinarily fine, both dramatically and lyrically. It seems a pity that Mr. Waite has no use for William Shakespeare! The fact is (whatever George Hume Barne may say) that Mr. Waite is (or has) a genius, who wishes to communicate sacred mysteries of truth and beauty; but he is too often baulked by the mental and moral equipment of Mr. Waite. Even so, he only just misses. And I will bet George Hume Barne a "crème de menthe" that if Mr. Waite (even now) will ride on a camel from Biskra to Timbuktu with an Ouled Nail and the dancer M'saoud, he will produce absolutely first-rate poetry within six months. Enough. But buy the book. A. QUILLER, JR. {114} AN ORIGIN IN fire of gold they set them out, The garlanded of old, who comb The Mount of Evil, strong and stout To wrest from Venus' brow the comb. " "The fiery wind, the web unspun," " "The nine stars and the circling sun." Not theirs to wander lost and lone, Adream by mountain lake, and sea; Not theirs to bear a face of stone Away from human mystery: They pondered o'er the runes of time, They slew the Serpent of the Slime. The brutish brain, the nervous hands, The conscious power of thew and mind; The agony of burning sands, The blithe salt breezes blowing blind ___ The birth-pangs of the Emperor Thought, Of Earth and Pain the wonder-wrought. They hurled them blindly on the breast Of foaming hate, of wild desire: {115} From Time they held the old bequest, The passioned pangs, the flash of fire ___ Not through the gods they dreamed of ran The stream that fired the veins of man. They stanched the gaping wound with turf, With water slaked the burning maw; Rolling within the boiling surf, They caught the brine in eye and jaw. They roared and rushed with tangled mane To rape and ruin in the rain. The hours flew by all swift and red; They gorged, they slept within the shade: They yelled in fear with muffled head When thunder made them sore afraid. Loud laughed the gods to see the wild Mad glory of their weanling child. A flash of long-forgotten light ___ I found again the men of old, The wondering children of the night, The ravagers of hill and wold ___ Our sane, strong, savage satyr-sires. In whom were born the artist-fires. The scorching sun, the sleeping moon, The yelling wind that clave the trees, The monsters that they fled, the croon Of squaws with babes upon their knees, The wet woods' call, the insistent sea, The blood-stained birth of mystery. {116} The scream of passion, and the foam Upon the willing women's lips; Green, dripping forests, love's dark home ___ These were the god-enwroughten whips That gave the eagle-cars of Art First impulse in the cave-man's heart. The artist-light is backward borne, Master within my brain to-night; Back in the long-forgotten morn I see the dawn of Thee and light; The men that made me stare and stare Through the great wood-fire's lurid glare. And through the haze of time and life Anew the dim, dark visions loom; The matted bloody hair; the knife Of jagged stone; the reeking fume Of purple blood; the gore and bones Rotting beneath the straight-aimed stones. The dream is past; the night returns, Old mother of the primal Fear; Within me, Master, throbs and burns The old grey wonder. Yea, I hear ___ The heritage is mine; I take The wand encircled by the snake. Far in the night I wander; far Back in the forest of the Past, Led by my sole and single star, Where I shall dwell in peace at last. {117} But once again I see Thee stand Guarding the old forgotten land. ___ A silent land dream and fear, Where thought-waves break upon the shore, And reach the high gods' listening ear, And echo on for evermore Through the dark ages, till they reach Their long-sought goal, and burst in speech. VICTOR B. NEUBURG. {118} THE SOUL-HUNTER THE SOUL-HUNTER1 I BOUGHT his body for ten francs. Months before I had bought his soul, bought it for the first glass of the poison ___ the first glass of the new series of horrors since his discharge, cured ___ cured! ___ from the "retreat." Yes, I tempted him, I, a doctor! Bound by the vows ___ faugh! I needed his body! His soul? pah! but an incident in the bargain. For soul is but a word, a vain word ___ a battlefield of the philosopher fools, the theologian fools, since Anaximander and Gregory Nanzianus. A toy. But the consciousness? That is what we mean by "soul," we others. That then must live somewhere. But is it, as Descartes thought, atomic? or fluid, now here, now there? Or is it but a word for the totality of bodily sense? As Weir Mitchell supposed. Well, we should see. I would buy a brain and hunt this elusive consciousness. Just so, luck follows skill; the brain of Jules Foreau was the very pick of the world's brains. The most self-conscious man in Europe! Intellectual to an incredible point, introspective beyond the Hindus, "and" with the fatal craving which made him mine. Jules Foreau, you might have been a statesman; you became a sot ___ but you shall make the name of doctor Arthur Lee famous for ever, and put an end to the great {121} problem of the ages. Aha, my friend, how mad of me to fill my diary with this cheap introspective stuff! I feel somehow that the affair will end badly. I am writing my "defence." Certainly that excuses the form. A jury can never understand plain facts ___ the cold light of science chills them; they need eloquence, sentiment. ... Well, I must pay a lawyer for that, if trouble should really arise How should it? I have made all safe ___ trust me! I gave him the drug yesterday. The atropine was a touch of almost superhuman cleverness; the fixed, glassy stare deader than death itself. I complied with the foolish formulae of the law; in three hours I had the body in my laboratory. In the present absurd state of the law there is really nobody trustworthy in a business of this sort. "Tant pis!" I must cook my own food for a month or so. For no doubt there will be a good deal of noise. No doubt a good deal of noise. I must risk that. I dare not touch anything but the brain; it might vitiate the whole experiment. Bad enough this plaster of Paris affair. You see a healthy man of thirteen stone odd in his prime will dislike any deep interference with his brain ___ resent it. Chains are useless; nothing keeps a man still. Bar anaesthesia. And anaesthesia is the one thing barred. He must feel, he must talk, he must be as normal as possible. So I have simply built his neck, shoulders, and arms into plaster. He can yell and he can kick. If it does him any good he is welcome. So ___ to business. 10.30. A.M. He is decidedly under the new drug ___ eta "; yet he does not move. He takes longer to come back to life than I supposed. {122} 10.40. Warmth to extremities. Inhalations of lambda . He cannot speak yet, I think. The glare of eyes is not due to hate, but to the atropine. 10.45. He has noticed the plaster arrangement and the nature of the room. I think he guesses. A gurgle. I light a cigarette and put it in his mouth. He spits it out. He seems hardly to understand my good-humour. 10.47. The first word ___ "What is it, you devil?" I show him the knife, "et" "cetera," and urge him to keep calm and self-collected . 10.50. A laugh, not too nervous. A good sigh. "By George, you amuse me!" Then with a sort of wistful sigh, "I thought you just meant to poison me in some new patent kind of way." Bad; he wants to die. Must cheer him up. 1 Unpublished pages from the diary of Dr. Arthur Lee --- "the Montrouge Vampire." 11.0. I have given my little scientific lecture. The patient unimpressed. The absinthe has damaged his reasoning faculty. He cannot see the "a" "priori" necessity of the experiment. Strange! 11.10. Lord, how funny! ___ he thinks I may be mad, and is trying all the old dodges to "humour" me! I must sober him. 11.15. Sobered him. Showed him his own cranium ___ he had never missed it, of course. Yet the fact seemed to surprise him. Important, though, for my thesis. Here at least is one part of the body whose absence in nowise diminishes the range of the sensorium ___ soul ___ what shall we call it? "chi ." Some important glands, of course, rule a man's whole life. Others again ___ what use is a lymphatic to the soul? To "chi "? {123} Well, we must deal with the glands in detail, at the fountain-head, in the brain. 11.20. My writing seems to irritate him. Daren't give drugs. He flushes and pales too easily. Absence of skull? Now, a little cut and tie ___ and we shall see. N.B. ___ To keep this record very distinct from the pure surgery of the business. 11.22. A concentrated, sustained yell. It has quite shaken me. I never heard the like. "All out" too, as we used to say on the Cam; he's physically exhausted ___ "e.g.", has stopped kicking. Legs limp as possible. Pure funk; I never hurt him. 11.25. A most curious thing: I feel an intense dislike of the man coming over me; and, with an almost insane fascination, the thought, "Suppose I were to "kiss" him?" Followed by a shiver of physical loathing and disgust. Such thoughts have no business here at all. To work. 12.0. I want a drink; there are most remarkable gaps in the consciousness ___ not implying unconsciousness. I am inclined to think that what we call continuous pain is a rhythmic beat, frequency of beat less than one in sixty. The shrieks are simply heartbreaking. 12.5. Silence, more terrible than the yells. Afraid I had an accident. He smiles, reassures me. Speaks ___ "Look here, doctor, enough of this fooling; I'm annoyed with you, really don't know why ___ and I yell because I know it worries you. But listen to this: under the drug I really died, though you thought I was simulating death. On the contrary, it is now that {124} I am simulating life." There seemed to me, and still seems, some essential absurdity in these words; yet I could not refute him. I opened my mouth and closed it. The voice went on: "It follows that your whole experiment is a childish failure." I cut him short; this time I found words. "You forget your position," I said hotly. "It is against all precedent for the vivisectee to abuse his master. Ingrate!" So incensed was I that I strode angrily to the operating-chair and paralysed the ganglia governing the muscles of speech. Imagine my surprise when he proceeded, entirely incommoded: "On the contrary, it is you who are dead, Arthur Lee." The voice came from behind me, from far off. "Until you die you never know it, but you have been dead all along." My nerve is clearly gone; this must be a case of pure hallucination. I begin to remember that I am alone ___ alone in the big house with the ... patient. Suppose I were to fall ill? ... Was this thought written in my face? He laughed harsh and loud. Disgusting beast! 12.15. A pretty fool I am, tying the wrong nerve. No wonder he could go on talking! A nasty slip in such an experiment as this. Must check the whole thing through again. ... 1.0. O.K. now. Must get some lunch. Oddly enough, I am pretty sure he was telling the truth. He feels no pain, and only yells to annoy me. 2.10. Excellent! I suppress all the senses but smell, and give him his wife's handkerchief. He bubbles over with amorous drivel; I should love to tell him what she {125} died of, and who. ... A curious trait, that last remark. Why do I "dislike" the man? I used to get on A1 with him. (N.B. to stitch eyelids with silk. Damn the glare.) 2.20. Theism! The convolution with the cause-idea lying too close to the convolution with the fear-idea. And imagination at work on the nexus! About 24 mu between Charles Bradlaugh and Cardinal Newman! 2.50. So for faith and doubt? Sceptical criticism of my whole experiment boils up in me. What is "normality"? Even so, what possible relation is there between things and the evidence of them recorded in the brain? Evidence of something, maybe. A thermometer chart gives a curve; yet the mercury has only moved up and down. What about the time dimension? But it is not a dimension; it is only a word to explain multiplicity of sensation. Words! words! words! This is the last straw. There is no conceivable standard whereby we may measure anything whatever; and it is useless to pretend there is. 3.3. In short, we are all mad. Yet all this is but the expression of the doubt-stop in the human organ. Let me pull out his faith-stop! 4.45. Done; the devil's own job. He seems to be a Pantheist Antinomian with leanings towards Ritualism. Not impressive. My observation-stop (= my doubt-stop nearly) is full out. (Funny that we should fall into the old faculty jargon.) Perhaps if one's own faith-stop were out there would be a fight; if one's reception-of-new-ideas-stop, a conversion. {126} 5.12. I only wish I had two of them to test the "tuning-up" theory of collective Hallucination and the like. Out of the question; we must wait for Socialism. But enough for the day is the research thereof. I've matter for a life's work already. 7.50. An excellent scratch dinner ___ none too soon. Turtle soup, potted char, Yorkshire pie, Stilton, burgundy. Better than nothing. To- morrow the question of putrefactive changes in the limbs and their relation to the brain. 3.1. Planted bacilli in left foot. Will leave him to sleep. No difficulty there; the brute's as tired as I am. Too tired to curse. I recited "Abide with Me" throughout to soothe him. Some lines distinctly humorous under the circumstances. Will have a smoke in the study and check through the surg. record. Too dazed to realise everything, but I am assuredly an epoch. Whaur's your Robbie Pasteur noo? 12.20. So I've been on a false trail all day! The course of the A.M. research has let right away from the "chi -hunt." The byways have obscured the main road. Valuable though; very very valuable. In the morning success. Bed! 12.30. Yells and struggles again when I went in to say good-night. As I had carefully paralysed "all" sensory avenues (to ensure perfect rest), how was he aware of my presence? The memory of the scented handkerchief, too, very strong; talked a lot of his wife, thinking here with him. Pah! what beasts some men must be! Disgusting fellow! I'm no prude either! If ever I do a woman I'll stop the Filth-gutter. "Ce serait" "trop." {127} 12.40 Maybe he did "not" know of my presence; merely remembered me. He has cause. How much there is in one's mind of the merely personal idea of scoring off the bowlers. And every man is a batsman in a world of bowlers. Like that leg-cricket game, what did we call it? Oh! bed, bed! 5.0. Patient seriously ill; plaster irks breathing; all sorts of troubles expected and unexpected. Putrefaction of left foot well advanced: promises well for the day's work if I can check collapse. 5.31. Patient very much better; paralysed motor ganglia; safe to remove plaster. Too much time wasted on these foolish mechanical details of life when one is looking for the Master of the Machine. 6.12. Patient in excellent fettle; now to find "chi " ___ the soul! 11.55. Worn out; no "chi " yet. Patient well, normal; have checked shrieks, ingenious dodge. 2.15. No time for food; brandy. Patient fighting fit. No "chi ." 3.1. "Dead!!!" No cause in the world ___ I must have cut right into the "chi ," the soul. The meningeal --- [Dr. Lee's diary breaks off abruptly at this point. His researches were never published. It will be remembered that he was convicted of causing the death of his mistress, Jeannette Pheyron, under mysterious circumstances, some six months after the date of the above. The surgical record referred to has not been found. ___ EDITOR.] {128} MADELEINE OH, the cool white neck of her: The ivory column: oh, the velvet skin. Little I reck of her Save the curve from breast to chin. Oh, the rising rounded throat, Pain's subtle antidote. To sit and watch the pulses of it beat, And guess the passionate heat Of the blood that flows within! I see it swelling with her even breath And long to make it throb With a love as strong as death, To cause the sharp and sudden-catching sob And the swift dark flood, Showing the instant blood, Quick mantling up where I had made it throb With love as strong as death. Oh, the pure, pale face of her; The chiselled outline, chaste as starlit snows. The ineffable grace of her; The distant, perfect grace of her repose. Her mouth the waiting redness of a rose; 129} A rose too nearly cloyed With its own secret sweetness unalloyed: That waits in scented silence, stately-sad, Wed to a guarded passion thro' long days, But lifts the proud head, saying "I am glad," Haughty receives as due the word of praise, And flings her perfumed wonders on the air: "Afar," she says, "fall down and gaze; for I am fair." Oh the dark, sweet hair of her, Burnished cascade of heavy-tressèd black: Nothing's more rare of her Than its thick massed glory over breast and back. It rolls and ripples, silver flecked, Like moonlight on a misty sea, Whose lifting surfaces reflect A sombre, ever-changing radiancy. I would compare The dusk, soft-stealing perfume of her hair To breezes on a Southern Summer eve, When the night-scented stock hangs drowsing on the air. Its languid incense bids me half believe I pass the dreamy day in reveries, By some sleep-haunted shore of the Hesperides. Oh, the deep, dark eyes of her, Half slumbrous depths of heavy lidded calm: There's naught I prize of her More than the shrouded silence they embalm. There's all the mystery of an enchanted pool, Hid in brown woodlands cool; {130} Profound, untroubled, where the lilies grow And the pale lotus sheds her stealing charm: Dappled where silent shadows come and go, And all the air is warm With the low melody of the Sacred Bird Sobbing his soul out to the waiting wood, And over all a hushèd voice is heard: This place is consecrate to Love in solitude. ARTHUR F. GRIMBLE {131} THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING A.'. A.'. Publication in Class B. Issued by Order: D.D.S. 7° = 4° Praemonstrator O.S.V. 6° = 5° Imperator N.S.F. 5° = 6° Cancellarius Book II. continued THE SORCERER BEFORE we can discuss the Operation of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin, commenced by P. in the autumn of 1899, it is first necessary that we should briefly explain the meaning and value of Ceremonial Magic; and secondly, by somewhat retracing our footsteps, disclose to the reader the various methods and workings P. had undertaken before he set out to accomplish this supreme one. For over a year now he had been living "perdu" in the heart of London, strenuously applying himself to the various branches of secret knowledge that his initiations in the Order of the Golden Dawn had disclosed to him. Up to the present we have only dealt with these initiations, and his methods of Travelling in the Spirit Vision, and Rising on the Planes; but still there remain to be shown the Ceremonial methods he adopted; however, before we enter upon these, we must return to our first point, namely ___ the meaning and value of Ceremonial Magic. Ceremonial Magic, as a means to attainment, has in common with all other methods, Western or Eastern, one supreme object in view ___ identification with the Godhead; and it matters not if the Aspirant be Theist or Atheist, Pantheist or Autotheist, Christian or Jew, or whether he name the goal of his attainment God, Zeus, Christ, Matter, Nature, Spirit, Heaven, {135} Reason, Nirvana, Asgard, No-Thing or No-God, so long as he "has" a goal in view, and a goal he is striving to attain. Without a goal, he is but a human ship without port or destination; and, without striving, work, WILL to attain, he is but a human derelict, rudderless and mastless, tossed hither and thither by the billows of lunacy, eventually to sink beneath the black waters of madness and death. Thus we find that outside the asylum, we, one and all of us, are strenuously or slothfully, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, progressing slowly or speedily towards "some" goal that we have set up as an ideal before us. Follow the road to that goal, subdue all difficulties, and, when the last has been vanquished, we shall find that that "some goal" is in truth THE GOAL, and that the road upon which we set out was but a little capillary leading by vein and artery to the very Heart of Unity itself. Then all roads lead to the same goal? ___ Certainly. Then, say you, "All roads are equally good?" Our answer is, "Certainly not!" For it does not follow that because all roads lead to Rome, all are of the same length, the same perfection, or equally safe. The traveller who would walk to Rome must use his own legs ___ his WILL to arrive there; but should he discard as useless the advice of such as know the way and have been there, and the maps of the countries he has to journey through, he is but a fool, only to be exceeded in his folly by such as try all roads in turn and arrive by none. As with the traveller, so also with the Aspirant; he must commence his journey with the cry, "I "will" attain! and leave nothing undone that may help him to accomplish this attainment. By contemplating the Great Work, and all means to {136} its attainment, little by little from the Knowledge he has obtained will he learn to extract that subtle Understanding which will enable him to construct such symbols of strength, such appliances of power, such exercises of Will and Imagination, that by their balanced, chaste and sober use, he MUST succeed if he WILL to do so. So we see, it matters very little whether the Aspirant, truly the Seer, cry "Yea" or "Nay," so long as he do so with a "will," a "will" that will beget a Sorcery within the cry; for as Levi says: "The intelligence which denies, invariably affirms something, since it is asserting its liberty." Let us now inquire what this liberty is, but above all, whatever we write: "Be not satisfied with what we tell you; and act for yourself." And, if you act with daring and courage, you will indeed outstep the normal powers of life and become a strong man amongst strong men, so that "if we say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done." For the land into which you enter is a land which, to the common eye, appears as a fabulous land of wonder and miracle. Yet we say to you that there is no wonder imagined in the mind of man that man is not capable of performing, there is no miracle of the Imagination, which has been performed by man, the which may not yet again be performed by him. The sun has stood still upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, and the stars of heaven have fallen unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken by a mighty wind. What are suns, and moons, and stars, but the ideas of dreaming children cradled in the abyss of a drowsy understanding? To the blind worm, the sun is as the fluttering of warm wings in the outer {137} darkness, and the stars are not; to the savage, as welcome ball of fire, and the glittering eyes of the beasts of night: to us, as spheres of earth's familiar elements and many hundred million miles away. And to the man of ten thousand years hence ___ who knows! And to him a hundred million years after that ___ who cares! Senses may come and go, and the five may become ten, and the ten twenty, so that the beings of that last far-off twilight may differ from us, as we differ from the earthworm, and the weeds in the depths of the sea. But enough ___ Become the Changless One, and ye shall leap past a million years, and an hundred hundred million in the twinkling of an eye. Nay! for Time will burst as a bubble between your lips; and, seeing and understanding, Space will melt as a bead of sweat upon your brow and vanish! Dare to will and will to know, and you will become as great as, and even greater than, Apollonius, Flamel or Lully; and then know to keep silence, lest like Lucifer you fall, and the brilliance of your knowledge blind the eyes of the owls that are men; and from a great light, spring a great darkness; and the image survive and the imagination vanish, and idols replace the gods, and churches of brick and stone the mysteries of the forests and the mountains, and the rapture which girds the hearts of men like a circle of pure emerald light. The great seeming miracles of life pass by unheeded. Birth and Generation are but the sorry jests of fools; yet not the wisest knows how a blade of grass sprouts from the black earth, or how it is that the black earth is changed into the green leaves and all the wonders of the woods. Yet the multitude trample the flowers of the fields under their feet, and snigger in their halls of pleasure at a dancer clothed in {138} frilled nudity, because they are nearer seeing the mysteries of Creation than they are in the smugness of their own stuffy back parlours; and gape in wonder at some stage trickster, some thought-reading buffoon, and talk about the supernatural, the supernormal, the superterestrial, the superhuman, and all the other superficial superfluities of superannuated supernumeraries, as if this poor juggler were some kind of magician who could enter their thick skulls and steal their sorry thoughts, whilst all the time he is at the old game of picking their greasy pockets. Miracles are but the clouds that cloak the dreamy eyes of ignorant men. Therefore let us once and for all thunder forth: There are no miracles for those who wake; miracles are for the dreamers, and wonders are as bottled bull's-eyes in a bun-shop for penniless children. Beauty alone exists for the Adept. Everywhere there is loveliness ___ in the poppy and in the dunghill upon which it blows; in the palace of marble and in the huts of sunbaked mud which squat without its walls. For him the glades of the forests laugh with joy, and so do the gutters of our slums. All is beautiful, and flame-shod he speeds over earth and water, through fire and air; and builds, in the tangled web of the winds, that City wherein no one dreams, and where even awakenment ceases to be. But in order to work miracles we must be outside the ordinary conditions of humanity; we must either be abstracted by wisdom or exalted by madness, either superior to all passions or beyond them through ecstasy or frenzy. Such is the first and most indispensable preparation of the operator. Hence, by a providential or fatal law, the magician can only exercise omnipotence in inverse proportion to his material interest; the alchemist makes so much the more gold as he is the more resigned to privations, and the more esteems that poverty which protects the secrets of the "magnum" {139} "opus." Only the adept whose heart is passionless will dispose of the love and hate of those whom he would make instruments of his science; the myth of Genesis is eternally true, and God permits the tree of science to be approached only by those men who are sufficiently strong and self-denying not to covet its fruits. Ye, therefore, who seek in science a means to satisfy your passions, pause in this fatal way; you will find nothing but madness or death. This is the meaning of the vulgar tradition that the devil ends sooner or later by strangling sorcerers. The magus must hence be impassible, sober and chaste, disinterested, impenetrable, and inaccessible to any kind of prejudice or terror. He must be without bodily defects, and proof against all contractions and all difficulties. The first and most important of magical operations is the attainment of this rare pre-eminence.1 The "via mystica" leading to this pre-eminence may aptly be compared to a circle. Wherever the Aspirant strikes it, there he will find a path leading to the right and another leading to the left. To the right the goal is all things, to the left the goal is nothing. Yet the paths are not two paths, but one path; and the goals are not two goals, but one goal. The Aspirant upon entering the circle must travel by the one or the other, and must not look back; lest he be turned into a pillar of salt, and become the habitation of the spirits of Earth. "For thy vessel the Beasts of the Earth shall inhabit," as sayeth Zoroaster. The Magus travels by both simultaneously, if he travels at all; for he has learnt what is meant by the mystery: "A straight line is the circumference of a circle whose radius in infinity"; a line of infinite length in the mind of the Neophyte, but which in truth is also a line of infinite shortness in that of the Magus, if finite or infinite at all. The circle having been opened out, from the line can any curve be fashioned; and if the Magus "wills it," the line "will be" a triangle, or a square, or a circle; and at his word it will {140} flash before him as a pentagram or a hexagram, or perchance as an eleven-pointed star. Thus shall the Aspirant learn to create suns and moon, and all the hosts of heaven out of unity. But first he must travel the circumference of the circle; and, when mystically he has discovered that the goal is the starting- point, and where he entered that circle there also will it break and open out, so that the adytum of its centre becomes as an arch in its outer wall, then indeed will he be worthy of the name of Magus. The keystone to this arch some have called God, some Brahma, some Zeus, some Allah, some even IAO the God of the sounding name; but in truth, O seeker, it is Thy-SELF ___ this higher dimension in which the inner becomes the outer, and in which the single Eye alone can see the throbbing heart, Master of the entangled skein of veins. Let us for example's sake call this attainment by the common name of God (SELF as opposed to self). And as we have seen the path of union with god or goal is twofold: I. The attainment of all things. II. The destruction of all things. And whichever way we travel to right or to left the method is also twofold, or the twofold in one: I. Exaltation by madness. II. Exaltation by wisdom. In the first we awake from the dream of illusion by a blinding light being flashed across our eyes; in the second, gradually, by the breaking of the dawn. 1 E. Levi, "Doctrine and Ritual of Magic," p. 192. In the first the light of knowledge, though but comparable to the whole of Knowledge as a candle-flame to the sun, may {141} be so sudden that blindness follows the first illumination.2 In the second, though the light be as the sun of knowledge itself; first its gentle warmth, and then its tender rays awake us, and lead us through the morning to the noontide of day. Like children of joy we rise from our beds and dance through the dewy fields, and chase the awakening butterflies from the blushing flowers ___ ecstasy is ours. The first is as a sudden bounding beyond darkness into light, from the humdrum into the ecstatic; the second a steady march beyond the passionate West into the land of everlasting Dawn. Concerning the first we have little to say; for it is generally the illumination of the weak. The feeble often gain the little success they do gain in life, not through their attempts to struggle, but on account of their weakness ___ the enemy not considering they are worth power and shot. But the strong gain their lives in fight and victory; the sword is their warrant to live, and by their swords "will" they attain; and when they once have attained, by their swords will they rule, and from warriors become as helmèd kings whose crowns are of iron, and whose sceptres are sharp swords of glittering steel, and reign; whilst the weak still remain as slaves, and a prey to the wild dreams of the night. Of a truth, sometimes the weak charioteer wins the race; but on account of his weakness he is often carried past the winning-post by the steeds that have given him the victory, and, unable to hold them back, he is dashed against the walls of the arena, whilst the strong man passing the judges turns his chariot round and receives the crown of victory, or if not that, is ever ready to race again. {142} To learn how to WILL is the key to the kingdom, the door of which as we have seen contains two locks, or rather two bolts in one lock, one turning to the right and the other to the left. Either pile up the imagination with image upon image until the very kingdom of God is taken by assault; or withdrawn one symbol after another until the walls are undermined and the "cloud-capped towers" come tumbling to the ground. In either case the end is the same ___ the city is taken. Or perchance if you are a great Captain, and your army is filled with warlike men, and you are in possession of all the engines suitable to this Promethean struggle ___ at one and the same time scale the bastions and undermine the ramparts, so that as those above leap down, those beneath leap up, and the city falls as an arrow from a bow that breaks in twain in the hand. Such warfare is only for the great ___ the greatest; yet we shall see that this is the warfare that P. eventually waged. And where the strong have trod the weak may "dare" to follow. This path must necessarily be a difficult one; illusions and delusions must be expected, temptations and defeats encountered with equanimity, and fears and terrors passed by without trembling. The labours of Hercules are a good example of the labours the Aspirant, who would be an Adept, must expect. However, there is not space here, nor is this the place, to enter into the twelve mystic works of this man who became a God. Yet let us at least note three points ___ that the tenth labour was to slay Geryon, the "three-"headed and "three-"bodied monster of Gades; that the eleventh was to obtain apples from the garden of the Hesperides, where lived the "three" daughters of Hesperus; and that the last was to bring upon earth the "three-"headed dog Cerberus, and so {143} unguard the gates of Hades. Similar is the Adept's last labour, to destroy the terrors of hell and to bring upon earth the Supernal triad and formulate the HB:Shin 3 in HB:Heh HB:Vau HB:Shin HB:Heh HB:Yod . One idea must possess us, and all our energies must be focused upon it. A man who would be rich must worship wealth and understand poverty; a man who would be strong must worship strength and understand weakness; and so also a man who would be God must worship deity and understand devilry: that is, he 2 The greater our ignorance the more intense appears the illumination. 3 N.B. --- the Shin is composed of three Yodhs, and its value is 300. must become saturated with the reflections of Kether in Malkuth, until the earth be leavened and the two eyes become one. He must indeed build up his tower stone upon stone until the summit vanish amongst the stars, and he is lost in a land which lies beyond the flames of day and the shadows of night. To attain to this Ecstasy, exercises and operations of the most trivial nature must be observed, if they, even in the remotest manner, appertain to the "one" idea. You are a beggar, and you desire to make gold; set to work and never leave off. I promise you, in the name of science, all the treasures of Flamel and Raymond Lully. "What is the first thing to do?" Believe in your power, then act. "But how act?" Rise daily at the same hour, and that early; bathe at a spring before daybreak, and in all seasons; never wear dirty clothes, but rather wash them yourself if needful; accustom yourself to voluntary privations, that you may be better able to bear those which come without seeking; then silence every desire which is foreign to the fulfilment of the Great Work. What! By bathing daily in a spring, I shall make gold?" You will work in order to make it. "It is a mockery!" No, it is an arcanum. "How can I make use of an arcanum which I fail to understand?" Believe and act; you will understand later.4 Levi here places belief as a crown upon the brow of work. {144} He is, in a way, right; yet to the ordinary individual this belief is as a heavy load which he cannot even lift, let alone carry, act how he will. Undoubtedly, if a boy worried long enough over a text-book on trigonometry he would eventually appreciate the theory and practice of logarithms; but why should he waste his time? why not instead seek a master? Certainly, when he has learnt all the text-books can teach and all the master can tell him, he must strike out for himself, but up to this point he must place his faith in some one. To the ordinary Aspirant a "Guru"5 is necessary; and the only danger to the uninitiate is that he may place his trust in a charlatan instead of in an adept. This indeed is a danger, but surely after a little while the most ignorant will be able to discriminate, as a blind man can between day and night. And, if the pupil be a true Seeker, it matters little in the end. For as the sacrament is efficacious, though administered by an unworthy priest, so will his love of Truth enable him to turn even the evil counsels of a knave to his advantage. To return, how can these multiform desires be silenced, and the one desire be realised so that it engulf the rest? To this question we must answer as we have answered elsewhere ___ "only by a one-pointedness of the senses" ___ until the five-sided polygon become pyramidal and vanish in a point. The base must be well established, regular, and of even surface; for as the base so the summit. In other words, the five senses must be strong and healthy and without disease. An unhealthy man is unfitted to perform a magical operation, and an hysterical man will probably end in the Qliphoth or Bedlam. A blind man will not be able to equilibrate the sense of sight, {145} or a deaf man the sense of hearing, like a man who can both see and hear; however, the complete loss of one sense, if this is ever actually the case, if far better than a mental weakness in that sense. All senses and faculties must share in the work, such at least is the dictum of Western Ceremonial Magic. And so we find the magician placing stone upon stone in the construction of his Temple. That is to say, placing pantacle upon pantacle, and safeguarding his one idea by means of swords, daggers, wands, rings, perfumes, suffumigations, robes, talismans, crowns, magic squares and astrological charts, and a thousand other symbols of things, ideas, and states, all reflecting the one idea; so that he may build up a mighty mound, and from it eventually leap over the great wall which stands before him as a partition between two worlds. 4 "Doctrine and Ritual of Magic," pp. 194, 195. 5 Instructor. All faculties and all senses should share in the work; nothing in the priest of Hermes has the right to remain idle; intelligence must be formulated by signs and summed by characters or pantacles; will must be determined by words, and must fulfil words by deeds; the magical idea must be rendered into light for the eyes, harmony for the ears, perfumes for the sense of smell, savours for the palate, objects for the touch; the operator, in a word, must realise in his whole life what he wishes to realise in the world without him; he must become a "magnet" to attract the desired thing; and when he shall be sufficiently magnetic, he must be convinced that the thing will come of itself, and without thinking of it.6 This seems clear enough, but more clearly still is this all-important point explained by Mr. Aleister Crowley in his preface to his edition of "The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King": I am not concerned [writes Mr. Crowley} to deny the objective reality of all "magical" phenomena; if they are illusions, they are at least as real as many unquestioned {146} facts of daily life; and, if we follow Herbert Spencer, they are at least evidence of some cause. Now, this fact is our base. What is the cause of my illusion of seeing a spirit in the triangle of Art? Every smatterer, every expert in psychology, will answer, "that cause lies in your brain." * * * * * * This being true for the ordinary Universe, that all sense-impressions are dependent on changes in the brain, we must include illusions, which are after all sense-impressions as much as "realities" are, in the class of "phenomena dependent on brain-changes." Magical phenomena, however, come under a special sub-class, since they are willed, and their cause is the series of "real" phenomena called the operations of Ceremonial Magic. These consist of: (1) "Sight." The circle, square, triangle, vessels, lamps, robes, implements, &c. (2) "Sound." The Invocations. (3) "Smell." The Perfumes. (4) "Taste." The Sacraments. (5) "Touch." As under (1). The circle, &c. (6) "Mind." The combination of all these and reflection on their significance. These unusual impressions (1-5) produce unusual brain-changes; hence their summary (6) is of unusual kind. The projection back into the phenomenal world is therefore unusual. Herein then consists the reality of the operations and effects of ceremonial magic; and I conceive that the apology is ample, so far as the "effects" refer only to those phenomena which appear to the magician himself, the appearance of the spirit, his conversation, possible shocks from imprudence, and so on, even to ecstasy on the one hand, and death or madness on the other.7 6 "Doctrine and Ritual of Magic," p. 196. 7 "Goetia," pp. 1-3. Thus we see that the Aspirant must become a "magnet," and attract all desires to himself until there is nothing outside of {147} him left to attract; or repel all things, until there is nothing left to repel. In the East the five senses are treated in their unity, and the magical operation becomes purely a mental one, and in many respects a more rational and less emotional one. The will, so to speak, is concentrated on itself by the aid of a reflective point ___ the tip of the nose, the umbilicus, a lotus, or again, in a more abstract manner, on the inhalation and exhalation of the breath, upon an idea or a sensation. The Yogi abandons the constructive method, and so it is that we do not find him building up, but, instead, undermining his consciousness, his instrument being a purely introspective one, the power of turning his will as a mental eye upon himself, and finally seeing himself as HimSELF. However, in both the Western and Eastern systems, equilibrium is both the method and the result. The Western Magician wills to turn darkness into light, earth into gold, vice into virtue. He sets out to purify; therefore all around him must be pure, ever to hold before his memory the one essential idea. More crudely this is the whole principle of advertising. A good advertiser so places his advertisement that wherever you go, and whichever way you turn, you see the name of the article he is booming. If it happens, "e.g.", to be "Keating's Insect Powder," the very name becomes part of you, so that directly a flea is seen or mentioned "Keating's" spontaneously flashes across your thoughts. The will of a magician may be compared to a lamp burning in a dark and dirty room. First he sets to work to clean the room out, then he places a brightly polished mirror along one wall to reflect one sense, and then anther to reflect {148} another, and so on, until, whichever way he look, up or down, to right or left, behind or before, there he sees his will shining; and ultimately so dazzling become the innumerable reflections, that he can see but one great flame which obscures everything else. The Yogi on the other hand dispenses with the mirrors, and contents himself in turning the wick lower and lower until the room is one perfect darkness and nothing else can be seen or even recognised beyond SELF. By those who have passed along both these mystic paths, it will be found that the energy expended is the same in both. Concentration is a terrific labour; the mere fact of sitting still and mediating on one idea and slaying all other ideas one after the other, and then constantly seeing them sprout up hundred-headed like the Hydra, needs so great a power of endurance that, though many undertake the task, few reach the goal. Again, the strain brought to bear on a Ceremonial Magician is equally colossal, and often costly; and in these bustling days the necessary seclusion is most difficult to obtain. And so it came about that a combination of both the above systems was ultimately adopted by P. However, it must be remembered that the dabbler in Ceremonial Magic or Yoga is but heaping up evil against himself, just as the dabbler on the Stock Exchange is. Magic, like gambling, has its chances; but in the former as in the latter, without "will to work" chances are always against him who puts his trust in them alone. There is, however, one practice none must neglect, except the weakest, who are unworthy to attempt it ___ the practice of Sceptical selection. Eliphas Levi gives us the following case: {149} One day a person said to me: "I would that I could be a fervent Catholic, but I am a Voltairean. What would I not give to have faith!" I replied: "Say 'I would' no longer; say 'I will,' and I promise you that you will believe. You tell me you are a Voltairean, and of all the various presentations of faith that of the Jesuits is most repugnant to you, but at the same time seems the most powerful and desirable. Perform the exercises of St. Ignatius again and again, without allowing yourself to be discouraged, and you will gain the faith of a jesuit. The result is infallible, and should you then have the simplicity to ascribe it to a miracle, you deceive yourself now in thinking that you are a Voltairean."8 Now all this may be good enough for Mrs. Eddy. To borrow a sword from one of Voltaire's antagonists, and to thrust it through his back when he is not looking, is certainly one way of getting rid of Voltaire. But the intellectual knight must not behave like a Christian footpad; he must trap Voltaire in his own arguments by absorbing the whole of Voltaire ___ eighty volumes and more ___ until there is no Voltaire left, and as he does so, apply to each link of Voltaire's armour the fangs of the Pyrrhonic Serpent; and where that serpent bites through the links, those links must be discarded; and where its teeth are turned aside, those links must be kept. Similarly must he apply the serpent to St. Ignatius, and out of the combination of the strongest links of both their armours fashion for himself so invulnerable a coat of mail that none can pierce it. Thus, instead of burying one's reason in the sands of faith, like an ostrich, one should rise like a phoenix of enlightenment out of the ashes of both Freethought and Dogma. This is the whole of Philosophic Scientific Illuminism. Now that we have finished our short disquisition upon the Methods of Western Magic, let us once again {150} turn to Frater P. and seen how he applied them to his own labours. Shortly after becoming a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, P., as already mentioned, became acquainted with a certain Frater, I.A. by name, a magician of remarkable powers. At once a great friendship sprang up between these two, and for over a year and a half they worked secretly in London at various magical and scientific experiments. During this period P. learnt what may be termed the alphabet of Ceremonial Magic ___ namely, the workings of Practical Evocations, the Consecrations and uses of Talismans, Invisibility, Transformations, Spiritual Development, Divination, and Alchemical processes, the details of which are dealt with in a manuscript entitled "Z.2." Of the Order of the Golden Dawn, which is divided into five books, each under one of the letters of the name HB:Heh HB:Vau HB:Shin HB:Heh HB:Yod . These five books show how the 0° = 0° Ritual may be used as a magical formula. They are as follow: HB:Yod BOOK I PRACTICAL EVOCATION A. The Magical Circle. B. The Magician, wearing the great lamen of the Hierophant, and his scarlet robe. The Hierophant's lamen is on the back of a pentacle, whereon is engraved the sigil of the spirit to be invoked. C. The Names and Formulae to be employed. D. The symbol of the whole evocation. E. The construction of the circle and the placing of all the symbols, &c., employed in the places proper allotted to them, so as to represent the interior of the G.'. D.'. Temple in the "Enterer": and the purification and consecration of the actual pieces of ground or place selected for the performance of the invocation. {151} F. The invocation of the Higher Powers. Pentacle formed by the concentric bands, name and sigil therein, in proper colours; is to be bound thrice with a cord, and shrouded in black, thus bringing into action a blind force, to be further directed or differentiated in the process of the ceremony. "Announcement" aloud of the "object" of the working, naming the Spirit or Spirits 8 "Doctrine and Ritual of Magic," p. 195 which it is desired to evoke. This is pronounced standing in the centre of the circle, and turning towards the quarter from which the Spirit will come. G. The name and sigil of the spirit wrapped in a black cloth or covering is now placed within the circle, at the point corresponding to the West, representing the candidate. The Consecration, or Baptism by water and fire of the sigil then takes place: and the proclamation in a loud and firm voice of the spirit (or spirits) to be evoked. H. The veiled sigil is now to be placed at the foot of the altar. The Magician then calls aloud the name of the spirit, summoning him to appear: stating for what purpose the spirit is evoked: what is desired in the operation: why the evocation is performed at this time: and finally solemnly affirming that the Spirit SHALL be evoked by the ceremony. I. Announcement aloud that all is prepared for the commencement of the actual evocation. If it be a "good" Spirit the sigil is now to be placed "within" "the white triangle." The Magician places his left hand upon it, raises in his right hand the magical implement employed (usually the sword of Art) erect, and commences the evocation of the Spirit. This being an exorcism of the Spirit unto visible appearance. The Magician stands in the place of the Hierophant during the obligation, and faces West irrespective of the particular quarter of the Spirit. But if the Nature of the Spirit be evil, then the sigil must be placed "without" and to the West of the white triangle; and the Magician shall be careful to keep the point of the magic Sword upon the centre of the sigil. J. Now let the Magician imagine himself as "clothed outwardly" with the semblance of the form of the Spirit to be evoked: and in this let him be careful "not to identify himself" with the Spirit, which would be dangerous, but only to formulate a species of Mask, worn for the time being. And if he know not the symbolic form of the Spirit, then let him assume the form of an angel belonging unto the same class of operation. This form being assumed, then let him pronounce aloud, with a firm and solemn voice, "a convenient and potent" "oration and Exorcism of the Spirit unto visible appearance." At the conclusion of this exorcism, taking the covered sigil in his left hand, let him smite it thrice with the "flat" blade of the Magic Sword. Then let him raise on high his arms to their utmost stretch, holding in his left hand the veiled sigil, and in his right the sword of Art erect, at the same time stamping thrice upon the ground with his right foot. K. The veiled and covered sigil is then to be placed in the Northern part of the Hall, at the edge of the circle, and the Magician then employs the oration of the Hierophant from the throne of the East, modifying it slightly, as follows: "The Voice {152} of the Exorcism said unto me; let me shroud myself in darkness, peradventure thus may I manifest myself in Light," &c. The Magician then proclaims aloud that the Mystic Circumambulation will take place. L. The Magician takes up the sigil in his left hand, and circumambulates the magic circle once, then passes to the South and halts. He stands (having lain his sigil on the ground) between it and the West, repeats the oration of the Kerux, and again consecrates it with water and with fire. Then takes it in his hand, facing westward, saying: "Creature of ... twice consecrate, thou mayest approach the Gate of the West." M. The Magician now moves to the West of the magical circle, holds the sigil in his left hand and the Sword in his right, faces S.W., "and again" "astrally masks himself with the Form of the Spirit:" and for the first time partially opens the covering, without, however, entirely removing it. He then smites it once with the flat blade of this sword, saying in a loud, clear and firm voice: "Thou canst not pass from concealment unto manifestation, save by virtue of the Name HB:Mem-final HB:Yod HB:Heh HB:Lamed HB:Aleph . Before all things are the Chaos, and the Darkness, and the Gates of the Land of Night. I am he whose Name is 'Darkness': I am the Great One of the paths of the shades. I am the Exorcist in the midst of the exorcism; appear thou therefore without fear before me; for I am he in whom fear is not! Thou hast known me; so pass thou on!" He then reveils the sigil. N. Operations in L repeated at the North. O. Processes in M are repeated in the N.W. Magician then passes to the East, takes up sigil in left hand, and Lotus Wand in right; "assumes the mask" "of the Spirit-Form;" smites sigil with Lotus Wand and says: "Thou canst not pass from concealment unto manifestation save by virtue of the name HB:Heh HB:Vau HB:Heh HB:Yod . After the formless and the void and the Darkness, there cometh the knowledge of the Light. I am that Light which riseth in the Darkness! I am the Exorcist in the midst of the exorcism; appear thou therefore in harmonious form before me; for I am the wielder of the forces of the Balance. Thou hast known me now, so pass thou on unto the cubical altar of the Universe. P. He then re-covers sigil and passes on to the altar laying it thereon as before shown. He then passes to the East of the Altar holding the sigil and sword as explained. Then doth he rehearse a most potent conjuration and invocation of that Spirit unto visible appearance, using and reiterating all the Divine angelic and magical names appropriate to this end, neither omitting the signs, seals, sigilla, lineal figures, signatures and the like, from that conjuration. Q. The Magician now elevates the covered sigil towards Heaven, removes the veil entirely (leaving it yet corded); crying in a loud voice: "Creature of ... long hast thou dwelt in Darkness, quit the Night and seek the Day." He then replaces it on the altar, holds the magical sword erect above it, the pommel immediately above the centre thereof, and says: "By all the Names, powers, and rites already rehearsed, I conjure Thee thus unto visible appearance." Then the Mystic words. {153} R. Saith the Magician: "As the Light hidden in the Darkness can manifest therefrom, SO SHALT THOU become manifest from concealment unto manifestation." He then takes up sigil, stands to the East of the Altar and faces West. He shall then rehearse a long conjuration to the powers and Spirits immediately superior unto that one which he seeks to invoke: "that they shall force him to" "manifest himself unto visible appearance." He then places the sigil between the pillars, himself at the East facing West. Then in the sign of the Enterer doth he direct the whole current of his will upon the sigil. Thus he continueth until such time as he shall perceive his will-power to be weakening, when he protects himself from the reflex of the current by the sign of silence, and then drops his hands. He now looks towards the Quarter that the Spirit is to appear in, and he should now see the first signs of his visible manifestation. If he be "not" thus faintly visible, let the Magician repeat the Conjuration of the Superiors of the Spirit; "from the place of the" "Throne of the East." And this conjuration may be repeated thrice, each time ending with a new projection of will in the sign of the Enterer, &c. But if at the third time of repetition he appeareth not, then be it known that there is an error in the working. So let the Master of Evocations replace the sigil upon the altar, holding the sword as usual, and thus doing "let him repeat a" "humble prayer unto the Great Gods of Heaven to grant unto him the force" "necessary correctly to complete that evocation." He is then to take back the Sigil to between the Pillars, and repeat the former processes; "when assuredly that Spirit will begin to manifest, but in a" "misty and ill-defined form." (But if, as is probable, the operator be naturally inclined unto evocation, then might that Spirit perchance manifest earlier in the ceremony than this: still the ceremony itself is to be performed up to this point, whether he be there or no.) Now so soon as the Magician shall see the visible manifestation of that spirit's presence, he shall quit the station of the Hierophant and consecrate afresh with Water and with Fire the Sigil of the evoked Spirit. S. Now doth the Master of the Evocation remove from the sigil the restricting cord; and, holding the freed sigil in his left hand, he smites it with the flat blade of his sword; exclaiming: "By and in the Names of ...... I do invoke upon thee the power of {p}erfect manifestation unto visible appearance!" He then circumambulates the circle thrice, holding the sigil in his "right" hand. T. The Magician, standing in the place of the Hierophant, but turning towards the place of the Spirit, and fixing his attention thereon, now reads a "potent invocation of the Spirit" unto visible appearance; having previously placed the sigil on the ground, within the circle at the quarter where the Spirit appears. This invocation should be of some length, and should rehearse and reiterate the Divine and other names consonant with the working. That Spirit should now become fully and clearly visible, and should be able to speak with a direct voice (if consonant with his nature). The Magician then proclaims aloud that the Spirit N hath been duly and properly evoked, in accordance with the sacred rites. {154} U. The Magician now addresses and Invocation unto the Lords of the Plane of the Spirit to compel him to perform that which the Magician shall demand of him. V. The Magician carefully formulates his demands, questions, &c., and writes down any of the answers that may be advisable. W. The Master of Evocations now addresses a conjuration unto the spirit evoked, binding him to hurt or injure naught connected with him; or his assistants; or the place; and that he fail not to perform that which he hath been commanded, and that he deceive in nothing. He then dismisses that Spirit by any suitable form such as those used in the four higher grades in the Outer. And if he will "not" go, then shall the Magician "compel" him by forces contrary unto his nature. But he must allow a few minutes for the Spirit to dematerialise the body in which he hath manifested; for he will become less and less material by degrees. And note well that the Magician (or his companions if he have any) shall "never" quit the circle during the process of Evocations; or afterwards, till the Spirit be quite vanished, seeing that in some cases and with some constitutions there may be danger arising from the astral conditions and currents established; and that without the actual intention of the Spirit to harm, although, if of a low nature, he would probably endeavour to do so. Therefore, before the commencement of the Evocation let the operator assure himself that everything which may be necessary be properly arranged within the circle. But if it be actually necessary to interrupt the process, then let him stop at that point, veil and re-cord the sigil if it have been unbound or uncovered, recite a Licence to depart or banishing formula, and perform the lesser Banishing rituals both of the Pentagram and Hexagram.9 Thus only may he in comparative safety quit the circle. HB:Heh BOOK II CONSECRATION OF TALISMANS PRODUCTION OF NATURAL PHENOMENA A. The place where the operation is done. B. The Magical Operator. C. The forces of Nature employed and attracted. D. The Telesma; The Material Basis. 9 See "Liber O," THE EQUINOX, vol. i., No. 2. E. In Telesmata, the selection of the matter to form a Telesma, the preparation and arrangement of the place: The forming of the body of the Telesma. In natural {155} phenomena, the preparation of the operation, the formation of the circle, and the selection of the material basis; such as a piece of earth, a cup of Water, a flame of fire, a pentacle, or the like. F. The Invocation of the highest Divine forces; winding a cord thrice round the Telesma or Material Basis; covering the same with a black veil and initiating the blind force therein; naming aloud the "purpose" of the Telesma or operation. G. The Telesma or Material Basis is now placed towards the West, and duly consecrated with water and with fire. The purpose of the operation and the effect intended to be produced is then to be rehearsed in a loud and clear voice. H. Placing the Telesma or Material Basis at the foot of the altar, state aloud the object to be attained, solemnly asserting that it "will" be attained: and the reason thereof. I. Announcement aloud that all is prepared and in readiness either for the charging of the Telesma, or for the commencement of the operation to induce the natural phenomenon. Place a good telesma or Material Basis within the triangle. But a bad Telesma should be placed to the West of same, holding the sword erect in the right hand for a good purpose, or its point upon the centre of the Telesma for evil. J. Now follow the performance of an Invocation to attract the desired current to the Telesma or Material Basis, describing in the air above the Telesma the lineal figures and sigils, &c., with the appropriate magical implement. Then taking up the Telesma in the left hand, smite it thrice with the flat blade of the sword of art. Then raise in the left hand (holding erect and aloft the Sword in the right), stamping thrice upon the Earth with the Right Foot. K. The Telesma or Material Basis is to be placed towards the North, and the operator repeats the oration of the Hierophant to the candidate in the same form as given in the K section on Evocation. He then ordains the Mystic Circumambulation. L. He now takes up the Telesma or Material Basis, carries it round the circle, places it on the ground, bars, purifies and consecrates it afresh, lifts it with his left hand and turns facing West, saying: "Creature of Talismans, twice consecrate," &c. M. He now passes to the West with Telesma in left hand, faces S.W., partly unveils Telesma, smites it once with Sword, and pronounces a similar speach to that in this M Section of Evocations, save that instead of "appear in visible form," he says: "take on therefore manifestation before me," &c. This being done he replaces the veil. N. Operations of L repeated. O. Operations of M repeated in the North, and an oration similar to that in section O on Evocation: Telesma, &c., being treated as the Sigil of the Spirit, substituting for: "appear thou therefore in visible form," &c.: "take on therefore manifestation before me," &c. P. Similar to the P section on Invocations, except that in the prayer "to visible appearance" is changed into: "to render irresistible this Telesma," or "to render manifest this natural phenomenon of ...". {156} Q. Similar to this Q section on Evocations, saying finally: "I conjure upon thee power and might irresistible." Follow the Mystic Words. R. Similar to this R section on Evocations. In the Telesma a flashing Light of Glory should be seen playing and flickering on the Telesma, and in the Natural Phenomena a slight commencement of the Phenomenon should be waited for. S. This being accomplished, let him take the Telesma or material Basis, remove the cord therefrom, and smiting it with the Sword proclaim: "By and in the name of ... I invoke upon thee the power of ...". He then circumambulates thrice, holding the Telesma in his right hand. T. Similar to this T section for Evocation, save that, instead of a Spirit appearing, the Telesma should flash visibly, or the Natural Phenomena should definitely commence. U. Similar to the U section for Evocations. V. The operator now carefully formulates his demands, stating what the Telesma is intended to do; or what Natural Phenomenon he seeks to produce. W. Similar to what is laid down in the W section for Invocations, save that in case of a Telesma, no banishing ritual shall be performed, so as not to decharge it, and in the case of Natural Phenomena it will usually be best to state what operation is required. And the Material Basis should be preserved, wrapped in white linen or silk all the time that the phenomenon is intended to act. And when it is time for it to cease, the Material Basis, if Water, is to be poured away: if Earth, ground to a powder and scattered abroad: if a hard substance, as metal, it must be decharged, banished and thrown aside: or if a Flame of Fire, it shall be extinguished: or if a vial containing Air it shall be opened, and after that shall be rinsed out with pure water. HB:Shin BOOK III PART HB:Aleph : INVISIBILITY. A. The shroud of Concealment. B. The Magician. C. The guards of concealment. D. The astral light to be moulded into the Shroud. E. The equation of the symbols in the sphere of sensation. F. The Invocation of the Higher: the placing of a Barrier without the Astral Form: the clothing of the same with obscurity through the proper invocation. G. Formulating clearly the idea of becoming invisible: the formulation of the exact distance at which the shroud should surround the physical body; the consecration with water and fire so that their vapour may begin to form a basis for the shroud. {157} H. The beginning to formulate mentally a shroud of concealment about the operator. The affirmation aloud of the reason and object of the working. I. Announcement that all is ready for the commencement of the operation. Operator stands in the place of the Hierophant at this stage: placing his left hand in the centre of the triangle, and holding in his right the Lotus Wand by the black end, in readiness to concentrate around him the Shroud of Darkness and Mystery. (N.B. ___ In this operation as in the two others under the dominion of HB:Shin a pantacle or Telesma, suitable to the matter in hand, "may" be made use of: the which is treated as is directed for Telesmata.) J. The operator now recites an exorcism of a shroud of Darkness to surround him and render him invisible, and holding the wand by the black end, let him, turning round thrice completely, describe a triple circle around him, saying: "In the name of the Lord of the Universe," &c. "I conjure thee, O Shroud of Darkness and of Mystery, that thou encirclest me, so that I may become Invisible: so that, seeing me, men may see not, neither understand; but that they may see the thing that they see not, and comprehend not the thing that they behold! So mote it be!" K. Now move to the North, face East, and say: "I have set my feet in the North, and have said, 'I will shroud myself in Mystery and in Concealment.'" Then repeat the oration: "The voice of my Higher soul," &c., and command the Mystic Circumambulation. L. Move round as usual to the South, and halt, formulating thyself as shrouded in Darkness: on the right hand the pillar of fire, on the left the pillar of cloud: both reaching from darkness to the glory of the Heavens. M. Now move from between these pillars which thou hast formulated to the West, and say: "Invisible I cannot pass by the Gate of the Invisible save by virtue of the name of 'Darkness.'" Then formulate forcibly about thee the shroud of Darkness, and say: "Darkness is my name, and concealment: I am the Great One Invisible of the paths of the Shades. I am without fear, though veiled in Darkness; for within me though unseen is the Magic of the Light!" N. Repeat processes in L. O. Repeat processes in M, but say: "I am Light shrouded in Darkness, I am the wielder of the forces of the Balance." P. Now concentrating mentally about thee the shroud of concealment pass to the West of the altar in the place of the Neophyte, face East, remain standing, and rehearse a conjuration by suitable names for the formulation of a shroud of Invisibility around and about thee. Q. Now address the Shroud of Darkness thus: "Shroud of Concealment, long hast thou dwelt concealed! quit the light; that thou mayest conceal me before men!" Then carefully formulate the shroud of concealment around thee and say, "I receive thee as a covering and as a guard." {158} Then the Mystic Words. R. Still formulating the shroud say: "Before all magical manifestation cometh the knowledge of the Hidden Light." Then move to the Pillars and give the signs and steps, words, &c. With the Sign Enterer project now thy whole will in one great effort to realise thyself actually "fading out" and becoming invisible to mortal eyes: and in doing this must thou obtain the effect of thy physical body actually, gradually becoming partially invisible to thy natural eyes: as though a veil or cloud were formulating between it and thee. (And be very careful not to lose self-control at this point.) But also at this point is there a certain Divine Extasis and an exaltation desirable: for herein is a sensation of an exalted strength. S. Again formulate the shroud as concealing thee and enveloping thee, and thus wrapped up therein circumambulate the circle thrice. T. Intensely formulating the shroud, stand at the East and proclaim, "Thus have I formulated unto myself this Shroud of Darkness and of Mystery, as a concealment and a guard." U. Now rehearse an invocation of all the Divine Names of Binah; that thou mayest retain the Shroud of Darkness under thy own proper control and guidance. V. Now state clearly to the shroud what it is thy desire to perform therewith. W. Having obtained the desired effect, and gone about invisible, it is requisite that thou shouldst conjure the forces of the Light to act against that Shroud of Darkness and Mystery, so as to disintegrate it, lest any force seek to use it as a medium for an obsession, &c. Therefore rehearse a conjuration as aforesaid, and then open the Shroud and come forth out of the midst thereof, and then disintegrate that shroud by the use of a conjuration unto the forces of Binah, to disintegrate and scatter the particles thereof; but affirming that they shall again be readily attracted at thy command. But on no account must that shroud of awful Mystery be left without such disintegration; seeing that it would speedily attract an occupant: which would become a terrible vampire preying upon him who had called it into being. And after frequent rehearsals of this operation, the thing may be almost done "per" "nutum." PART HB:Mem : TRANSFORMATIONS A. The Astral Form. B. The Magician. C. The forces used to alter the Form. D. The Form to be taken. E. The Equation of the symbolism of the sphere of sensation. F. Invocation of the Higher: The definition of the form required as a delineation of blind forces, and the awakening of the same by its proper formulation. G. Formulating clearly to the mind the form intended to be taken: the restriction {159} and definition of this as a clear form and the actual baptism by water and by fire with the "mystic name of the adept." H. The actual invocation aloud of the form desired to be assumed, to formulate before you. The statement of the "desire" of the operator and the "reason" thereof. I. Announcement aloud that all is now ready for the operation of the transformation of the Astral body. The Magician mentally places this form as nearly as circumstances will admit in the position of the Enterer, himself taking the place of the Hierophant; holding his wand by the black end ready to commence the oration aloud. J. Let him now repeat a powerful exorcism of the shape into which he desires to transform himself, using the names, &c., belonging to the plane, planet, or other Eidolon, most in harmony with the shape desired. Then holding the wand by the black end, and directing the flower over the head of the Form, let him say: "In the name of the Lord of the Universe, arise before me, O form of ... into which I have elected to transform myself; so that seeing me men may see the thing they see not, and comprehend not the thing that they behold." K. The Magician saith: "Pass towards the North shrouded in Darkness, O form of ... into which I have elected to transform myself." Then let him repeat the usual oration from the throne of the East, and then command the Mystic Circumambulation. L. Now bring the form round to the South, arrest it, formulate it there standing between two great pillars of fire and cloud, purify it by water and incense, by placing these elements on either side of the form. M. Passing to the West and facing South-East formulate the form before thee, this time endeavouring to render it physically visible; repeat speeches of Hierophant and Hegemon. N. Same as L. O. Same as M. P. Pass to East of Altar, formulating the form as near in the proportion of the neophyte as may be. Now address a solemn invocation and conjuration by Divine and other names appropriate to render the form fitting for the transformation thereunto. Q. Remain at East of Altar, address the form "child of Earth," &c., endeavouring now to see it physically; then at the words "we receive thee," &c., he draws the form towards him so as to envelop him, being very careful at the same time to invoke the Divine Light by the Rehearsal of the Mystic Words. R. Still keeping himself in the form the Magician says: "Before all magical manifestation cometh the knowledge of the Divine Light." He then moves to the pillars and gives the signs, &c., endeavouring with the whole force of his will to feel himself "actually" and "physically" in the shape of the form desired. At this point he must see, as if in a cloudy and misty manner, the outline of the form enshrouding him, though not yet completely and wholly visible. When this occurs, but not before, let him formulate himself as standing between the vast pillars of Fire and of Cloud. {160} S. He now again endeavours to formulate the form as if visibly enshrouding him; and still astrally retaining the form, he thrice circumambulates the place of working. T. Standing at the East, let him thirdly formulate the shape which should now appear manifest, and as if enshrouding him, even to his own vision; and then let him proclaim aloud: "Thus have I formulated unto myself this transformation." U. Let him now invoke all the superior names of the plane appropriate to the form, that he may retain it under his proper control and guidance. V. He states clearly to the form, what he intends to do with it. W. Similar to the W section of Invisibility, save that the conjurations, &c., are to be made to the appropriate plane of the Form instead of to Binah. PART HB:Shin : SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT. A. The Sphere of Sensation. B. The Augoeides. C. The Sephiroth, &c., employed. D. The Aspirant, or Natural Man. E. The Equilibration of the Symbols. F. The Invocation of the Higher, the limiting and controlling of the lower, and the closing of the material senses to awaken the spiritual. G. Attempting to make the Natural Man grasp the Higher by first limiting the extent to which mere intellect can help him herein, then by the purification of his thoughts and desires. In doing this let him formulate himself as standing between the pillars of Fire and of Cloud. H. The aspiration of the whole Natural Man towards the Higher Self, and a prayer for light and guidance through his Higher Self addressed to the Lord of the Universe. I. The Aspirant affirms aloud his earnest prayer to obtain divine guidance; kneels at the West of the Altar in the position of the candidate in the "Enterer," and at the same time astrally projects his consciousness to the East of the Altar, and turns, facing his body to the West, holding astrally his own left hand with his astral left; and raises his astral right hand holding the presentment of his Lotus Wand by the white portion thereof, and raised in the air erect. J. Let the Aspirant now slowly recite an oration unto the Gods and unto the Higher Self (as that of the Second Adept in the entering of the vault), but as if with his astral consciousness; which is projected to the East of the Altar. (NOTE. ___ If at this point the Aspirant should feel a sensation of faintness coming on, let him at once withdraw the projected astral, and properly master himself before proceeding any further.) Now let the Aspirant concentrate all his intelligence in his body, lay the blade of his sword thrice on the Daäth point of his neck, and pronounce with his whole will the words: "So help me the Lord of the Universe and my own Higher Soul." {161} Let him then rise facing East, and stand for a few moments in silence, raising his left hand open, and his right hand holding the Sword of Art, to their full lengths above his head: the head thrown back, the eyes lifted upwards. Thus standing let him aspire with his whole will towards his best and highest ideal of the Divine. K. Then let the Aspirant pass unto the North, and facing East solemnly repeat the Oration of the Hierophant, as before endeavouring to project the speaking conscious self to the place of the Hierophant (in this case the Throne of the East). Then let him slowly mentally formulate before him the Eidolon of a Great Angelic torch-bearer: standing before him as if to lead and light his way. L. Following it, let the Aspirant circumambulate and pass to the South, there let him halt and aspire with his whole will: First to the Mercy side of the Divine Ideal, and then unto the Severity thereof. And then let him imagine himself as standing between two great pillars of Fire and of Cloud, whose bases indeed are buried in black enrolling clouds of darkness: which symbolise the chaos of the world of Assiah, but whose summits are lost in glorious light undying: penetrating unto the white Glory of the Throne of the Ancient of Days. M. Now doth the Aspirant move unto the West; faces South-West, repeats alike the speeches of the Hiereus and Hegemon. N. After another circumambulation the Adept Aspirant halts at the South and repeats the meditations in L. O. And as he passes unto the East, he repeats alike the words of the Hierophant and of the Hegemon. P. And so he passes to the West of the Altar, led ever by the Angel torch- bearer. And he lets project his astral, and he lets implant therein his consciousness: and his body knows what time his soul passes between the pillars, and prayeth the great prayer of the Hierophant. Q. And now doth the Aspirant's soul re-enter unto his gross form, and he draws in divine extasis of the glory ineffable which is in the Bornless Beyond. And so meditating doth he arise and lift to the heavens his hand, and his eyes, and his hopes, and concentrating so his Will on the Glory, low murmurs he the Mystic Words of Power. R. So also doth he presently repeat the words of the Hierophant concerning the Lamp of the Kerux, and so also passeth he by the East of the Altar unto between the Pillars, and standing between them (or formulating them if they be not there, as it appears unto me) so raises he his heart unto the highest Faith, and so he meditates upon the Highest Godhead he can dream on, or dream of. Then let him grope with his hands in the darkness of his ignorance: and in the "Enterer" sign invoke the power that it remove the darkness from his Spiritual Vision. So let him then endeavour to behold before him in the Place of the Throne of the East a certain Light or Dim Glory which shapeth itself into a form. (NOTE. ___ And this can be beholden only by the Mental Vision: Yet owing unto the {162} Spiritual Exaltation of the Adept it may sometimes appear as if he beheld it with his mortal Eye.) Then let him withdraw awhile from such contemplation, and formulate for his equilibration once more the pillars of the Temple of Heaven. S. And so again does he aspire to see the Glory enforming: and when this is accomplished he thrice circumambulateth, reverently saluting with the "Enterer" the Place of Glory. T. Now let the Aspirant stand opposite unto the Place of that Light, and let him make deep meditation and contemplation thereon: presently also imagining it to enshroud him and envelop, and again end endeavouring to identify himself with its Glory. So let him exalt himself in the likeness or Eidolon of a Colossal Power, and endeavour to realise that "this" is the only "true" Self: And that one Natural Man is, as it were, the Base and Throne thereof: and let him do this with due and meek reverence and awe. And thereafter he shall presently proclaim aloud: "Thus at length have I been permitted to begin to comprehend the Form of my Higher Self." U. Now doth the Aspirant make treaty of that Augoeides to render comprehensible what things may be necessary for his instruction and comprehension. V. And he consults it in any matter wherein he may have especially sought for guidance from the Beyond. W. And, lastly, let the Aspirant endeavour to formulate a link between the Glory and his Self-hood: and let him render his obligation of purity of mind before it, avoiding in this any tendency towards fanaticism or spiritual pride. And let the Adept remember that this process here set forth is on no account to be applied to endeavouring to come in contact with the Higher Soul or Genius of "another." Else thus assuredly will he be led into error, hallucination, or even mania. HB:Vau BOOK IV DIVINATION A. The Form of Divination employed. B. The Diviner. C. The Forces acting in the Divination. D. The Subject of the Divination. E. The Preparation of all things necessary, and the right understanding of the process so as to formulate a connecting-link between the process employed and the Macrocosm. {163} F. Invocation of the Higher: arrangement of the Scheme of Divination, and initiation of the forces thereof. G. The first entry into the matter: First assertion of limits and correspondences: beginning of the working. H. The actual and careful formulation of the question demanded: and consideration of all its correspondences and their classification. I. Announcement aloud that all the correspondences taken are correct and perfect: the Diviner places his hand upon the instrument of Divination: standing at the East of the Altar, and prepares to invoke the forces required in the Divination. J. Solemn invocation of the necessary spiritual forces to aid the Diviner in the Divination. Then let him say: "Arise before me clear as a mirror, O magical vision requisite for the accomplishment of this divination." K. Accurately define the term of the question: putting down clearly in writing what is already "known," what is "suspected" or "implied," and what is sought to be known. And see that thou verify in the beginning of the judgment, that part which is already known. L. Next let the Diviner formulate clearly under two groups or heads ("a") the arguments "for," ("b") the arguments "against," the success of the subject of one divination, so as to be able to draw a preliminary conclusion therefrom on either side. M. First formulation of a conclusive judgment from the premises already obtained. N. Same as section L. O. Formulation of a second judgment, this time of the further developments arising from those indicated in the previous process of judgment, which was a preliminary to this operation. P. The comparison of the first preliminary judgment with one second judgment developing therefrom: so as to enable the Diviner to form an idea of the probable action of "forces beyond the actual plane" by the invocation of an angelic figure consonant to the process; and in this matter take care not to mislead thy judgment through the action of thine own preconceived ideas; but only relying ___ after due tests ___ on the indication afforded thee by the angelic form. And know, unless the form be of an angelic nature, its indication will not be reliable; seeing, that if it be an elemental, it will be below the plane desired. Q. The Diviner now completely and thoroughly formulates his whole judgment as well for the immediate future as for the development thereof, taking into account the knowledge and indications given him by the angelic form. R. Having this result before him, let the Diviner now formulate a fresh divination process, based on the conclusions at which he has arrived, so as to form a basis for a further working. S. Formulates the sides for and against for a fresh judgment, and deduces conclusion from fresh operation. {164} T. The Diviner then compares carefully the whole judgment and decisions arrived at with their conclusions, and delivers now plainly a succinct and consecutive judgment thereon. U. The Diviner gives advice to the Consultant as to what use he shall make of the judgment. V. The Diviner formulates clearly with what forces it may be necessary to work in order to combat the Evil, or fix the Good, promised by the Divination. W. Lastly, remember that unto thee a divination shall be as a sacred work of the Divine Magic of Light, and not to be performed to pander unto thy curiosity regarding the secrets of another. And if by this means thou shalt arrive at a knowledge of another's secrets, thou shalt respect and not betray them. HB:Heh BOOK V ALCHEMICAL PROCESSES. A. The Curcurbite or The Alembic. B. The Alchemist. C. The processes and forces employed. D. The matter to be transmuted. E. The selection of the Matter to be transmuted, and the Formation, cleansing and disposing of all the necessary vessels, materials, &c., for the working of the process. F. General Invocation of the Higher Forces to Action. Placing of the Matter within the curcurbite or philosophic egg, and invocation of a blind force to action therein, in darkness and in silence. G. The beginning of the actual process: the regulation and restriction of the proper degree of Heat and Moisture to be employed in the working. First evocation followed by first distillation. H. The taking up of the residuum which remaineth after the distillation from the curcurbite or alembic: the grinding thereof to form a powder in a mortar. This powder is then to be placed again in the curcurbite. The fluid already distilled is to be poured again upon it. The curcurbite or philosophic egg is to be closed. I. The curcurbite or Egg Philosophic being hermetically sealed, the Alchemist announces aloud that all is prepared for the invocation of the forces necessary to accomplish the work. The Matter is then to be placed upon an Altar with the elements and four weapons thereon: upon the white triangle, and upon a flashing Tablet of a "General" Nature, in harmony with the matter selected for the working. Standing now in {165} the place of the Hierophant at the East of the Altar, the Alchemist should place his left hand upon the top of the curcurbite, raise his right hand holding the Lotus Wand by the Aries band (for that in Aries is the Beginning of the Life of the Year): ready to commence the general Invocation of the Forces of the Divine Light to operate in the work. J. The pronouncing aloud of the Invocation of the requisite General Forces, answering to the class of alchemical work to be performed. The conjuring of the necessary Forces to act in the curcurbite for the work required. The tracing in the air above it with appropriate magical weapon the necessary lineal figures, signs, sigils and the like. Then let the Alchemist say: "So help me the Lord of the Universe and my own Higher soul." Then let him raise the curcurbite in the air with both hands, saying: "Arise herein to action, Ye Forces of Light Divine." K. Now let the Matter putrefy in Balneum Mariae in a very gentle heat, until darkness beginneth to supervene: and even until it becometh entirely black. If from its nature the Mixture will not admit of entire blackness, examine it astrally till there is the astral appearance of the thickest possible blackness, and thou mayest also evoke an elemental Form to tell thee if the blackness be sufficient: but be thou sure that in this latter thou art not deceived, seeing that the nature of such an elemental will be deceptive from the nature of the symbol of Darkness, wherefore ask thou of him nothing "further" concerning the working at this stage, but only concerning the blackness, and this can be further tested by the elemental itself, which should be either black or clad in an intensely black robe. (Note: for the evocation of this spirit use the names, forces, and correspondences of Saturn.) "When" the mixture be sufficiently black, then take the curcurbite out of the Balneum Mariae and place it to the north of the Altar and perform over it a solemn invocation of the forces of Saturn to act therein: holding the wand by the black band, then say: "The voice of the Alchemist," &c. The curcurbite is then to be unstopped and the Alembic Head fitted on for purposes of distillation. (NOTE. ___ In all such invocations a flashing tablet should be used whereon to stand the curcurbite. Also certain of the processes may take weeks, or even months to obtain the necessary force, and this will depend on the Alchemist rather than on the matter.) L. Then let the Alchemist distil with a gentle heat until nothing remaineth to come over. Let him then take out the residuum and grind it into a powder: replace this powder in the curcurbite, and pour again upon it the fluid "previously distilled." The curcurbite is then to be placed again in Balneum Mariae in a gentle heat. When it seems fairly re-dissolved (irrespective of colour) let it be taken out of the bath. It is now to undergo another magical ceremony. M. Now place the curcurbite to the West of the Altar, holding the Lotus Wand by the black end, perform a magical invocation of the Moon in her decrease and of Cauda Draconis. The curcurbite is then to be exposed to the moonlight (she being in her {166} decrease) for nine consecutive nights, commencing at full moon. The Alembic Head is then to be fitted on. N. Repeat process set forth in section L. O. The curcurbite is to be placed to the East of the Altar, and the Alchemist performs an invocation of the Moon in her increase, and of Caput Draconis (holding Lotus Wand by white end) to act upon the matter. The curcurbite is now to be exposed for nine consecutive nights (ending with the Full Moon) to the Moon's Rays. (In this, as in all similar exposures, it matters not if such nights be overclouded, so long as the vessel be placed in such a position that it "would" receive the direct rays, did the cloud withdraw.) P. The curcurbite is again to be placed on the white triangle upon the Altar. The Alchemist performs an invocation of the forces of the sun to act in the curcurbite. It is then to be exposed to the rays of the sun for twelve hours each day: from 8.30 A.M. to 8.30 P.M. (This should be done preferably when the sun is strongly posited in the Zodiac, but it "can" be done at some other times, though "never" when he is in Scorpio, Libra, Capricornus or Aquarius.) Q. The curcurbite is again placed upon the white triangle upon the Altar. The Alchemist repeats the words: "Child of Earth, long hast thou dwelt," &c., then holding above it the Lotus Wand by the white end, he says: "I formulate in thee the invoked forces of Light," and repeats the mystic words. At this point keen and bright flashes of light should appear in the curcurbite, and the mixture itself (as far as its nature will permit) should be clear. Now invoke an Elemental from the curcurbite consonant to the Nature of the Mixture, and judge by the nature of the colour of its robes and their brilliancy whether the matter has attained to the right condition. But if the Flashes do "not" appear, and if the robes of the elemental be not Brilliant and Flashing, then let the curcurbite stand within the white triangle for seven days: having on the right hand of the Apex of the triangle a flashing tablet of the Sun, and in the left hand one of the Moon. Let it not be moved or disturbed all those seven days; but not in the dark, save at night. Then let the operation as aforementioned be repeated over the curcurbite, and this process may be repeated altogether three times if the flashing light cometh not. For without this latter the work would be useless. But if after three repetitions it still appear not, it is a sign that there hath been an error in one working; such being either in the disposition of the Alchemist, or in the management of the curcurbite. Wherefore let the lunar and the solar invocations and exposures be replaced, when without doubt ___ if these be done with care (and more especially those of Caput Draconis and Cauda Draconis with those of the Moon as taught, for these have great force materially) ___ then without doubt shall that flashing light manifest itself in the curcurbite. R. Holding the Lotus Wand by the white end, the Alchemist now draws over the curcurbite the symbol of the Flaming Sword as if descending into the mixture. Then let him place the curcurbite to the East of the Altar. The Alchemist stands between {167} the pillars, and performs a solemn invocation of the forces of Mars to act therein. The curcurbite is then to be placed between the Pillars (or the drawn symbols of these same) for seven days, upon a Flashing Tablet of Mars. After this period, fit on the Alembic Head, and distil first in Balneum Mariae, then in Balneum Arenae till what time the mixture be clean distilled over. S. Now let the Alchemist take the fluid of the distillate and let him perform over it an invocation of the forces of Mercury to act in the clear fluid; so as to formulate therein the Alchemic Mercury: even the Mercury of the philosophers. (The residuum of the Dead Head is not to be worked with at present, but is to be set apart for future use.) After the invocation of the Alchemic Mercury a certain Brilliance should manifest itself in the whole fluid (that is to say, that it should not only be clear, but also brilliant and flashing). Now expose it in an hermetic receiver for seven days to the light of the Sun: at the end of which time there should be distinct flashes of light therein. (Or an egg philosophic may be used; but the receiver of the Alembic, if closed stopped, will answer this purpose.) T. Now the residuum or Dead Head is to be taken out of the curcurbite, ground small, and replaced. An invocation of the forces of Jupiter is then to be performed over that powder. It is then to be kept in the dark standing upon a Flashing Tablet of Jupiter for seven days. At the end of this time there should be a slight Flashing about it, but if this come not yet, repeat the operation, up to three times, when a faint flashing Light is "certain" to come. {Illustration on page 168 partly described and partly approximated: The layout is as shown, but the Receiver is depicted as a cross section with rounded bottom and slightly inward sloping sides, two horizontal lines out to either side at top. In this outline is a circumscribed hexagram with point to top to represent the distillate. The Curcurbite with dead head is represented as two figures, to the left a cross section of a slender container with rounded bottom and slightly inwardly sloping sides, horizontal lines out at top. To the right is a small circle on a long closed shape formed by a half circle at top and a larger half circle at bottom, smoothly connected by long straight sides. There is a line vertically through this shape. In the center of the figure is a symbol of a cup; formed of a crescent moon with horns up at top, a circle in the center and a equilateral triangle with point up as the base. ╔-----------------------------------------------╗ ║ ┌_______┐ ┌_______┐ ║ ║ │Symbol │ -----Sword------╫-- │Symbol │ ║ ║ │of Aqu-│ │ of │ ║ ║ │arius │ ┌_┐ │ Leo │ ║ ║ └_______┘ ┌_┘ └_┐ └_______┘ ║ ║ └_┐ ┌_┘ C D ║ ║ └_┘ u w e ║ ║ Receiver r i a ║ ║ containing Cup c t d ║ ║ distillate Shaped u h ║ ║ Hermetic r H ║ ║ Symbol. b e ║ ║ i a ║ ║ /\ t d ║ ║ ┌_______┐ / \ ┌_______┐ ║ ║ │Eagle │ / \ │Symbol │ ║ ║ │ of │ / \ │ of │ ║ ║ │Scorpio│ /________\ │Taurus │ ║ ║ └_______┘ └_______┘ ║ ╚-----------------------------------------------╝ DIAGRAM 58. The Altar.} U. A Flashing Tablet of each of the four Elements is now to be placed upon the altar as shown in the figure, and thereon are also to be placed the magical elemental weapons, as is also clearly indicated. The receiver containing the distillate is now to be placed between the Air and Water Tablets, and the curcurbite with the Dead Head between the Fire and Earth. Now let the Alchemist form an invocation, using especially the Supreme Ritual of the Pentagram,10 and the lesser magical implement appropriate. First, of the Forces of the Fire to act in the curcurbite on the Dead Head. Second, of those of Water to act on the distillate. Third, of the forces of the Spirit to act in both (using the white end of the Lotus Wand). Fourth, of those of the air to act on the distillate; and lastly, those of the earth to act on the Dead Head. Let the curcurbite and the receiver stand thus for five consecutive days, at the end of which time there should be flashes manifest in both mixtures. And these flashes should be lightly coloured. {168} V. The Alchemist, still keeping the vessels in the same relative positions, but removing the Tablets of the elements from the Altar, then substitutes one of Kether. This must be white with Golden Charges, and is to be placed on or within the white triangle between the vessels. He then addresses a most 10 See "Liber O," THE EQUINOX, vol. i. No. 2. solemn invocation to the forces of Kether; to render the result of the working that which he shall desire, and making over each vessel the symbol of the Flaming Sword. This is the most important of all the Invocations; and it will only succeed if the Alchemist keepeth himself closely allied unto his Higher Self during the working of the invocation and of making the Tablet. And at the end of it, if it have been successful, a Keen and Translucent Flash will take the place of the slightly coloured Flashes in the receiver of the curcurbite; so that the fluid should sparkle as a diamond; whilst the powder in the curcurbite shall slightly gleam. W. The distilled liquid is now to be poured from the receiver upon the residuum of Dead Head in the curcurbite, and the mixture at first will appear cloudy. It is now to be exposed to the sun for ten days consecutively (10 = Tiphereth translating the influence of Kether). It is then again to be placed upon the white triangle upon the altar, upon a flashing Tablet of Venus: with a solemn invocation of Venus to act therein. Let it remain thus for seven days: at the end of that time see what forms and colour and appearance the Liquor hath taken: for there should now arise a certain softer flash in the liquid, and an elemental may be evoked to test the condition. When this softer flash is manifest, place the curcurbite into the Balneum Mariae to digest with a "very" gentle heat for seven days. Place it then in Balneum Arenae to distil, beginning with a gentile, and ending with a strong, heat. Distil thus till nothing more will come over, even with a most violent heat. Preserve the fluid in a closely stoppered vial: it is an Elixir for use according to the substance from which it was prepared. If from a thing medicinal, a medicine; if from a metal, for the purifying of metals; and herein shalt thou use thy judgment. The residuum thou shalt place without powdering into a crucible, well sealed and luted. And thou shalt place the same in thine Athanor, bringing it first to a red, and then to a white, heat, and this thou shalt do seven times on seven consecutive days, taking out the crucible each day as soon as thou hast brought it to the highest possible heat, and allowing it to cool gradually. And the preferable time for this working should be in the heat of the day. On the seventh day of this operation thou shalt open the crucible, and thou shalt behold what "Form" and "Colour" thy Caput Mortuum hath taken. It will be like either a precious stone or a glittering powder. And this stone or powder shall be of magical Virtue in accordance with his nature. Finished is that which is written concerning the Formulae of the Magic of Light. : HB:Aleph HB:Vau HB:Heh HB:Koph-final HB:Vau HB:Resh HB:Bet HB:Vau HB:Shin HB:Dalet HB:Qof HB:Heh {169}