2,000 Greater & Lesser Mysteries

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THE EQUINOX Vol. I. No. IV 2nd part June 7, 1990 e.v. key entry by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O. --- needs further proof reading (c) O.T.O. disk 2 of 3 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) ************************************************************************ CLASSIFICATION OF DREAMS A. "Depth of Impression." 1. Vivid. 2. Ordinary. 3. Slight. 4. Doubtful. B. "Degree of Memory." 1. Detailed. 2. Outlined. 3. Partially outlined. 4. Central idea only. 5. Incident only. 6. Nothing save fact of dream. C. "Cause." 1. Traceable to thoughts of previous day. 2. Traceable to local circumstances ("e.g." Dream of river from rain falling on face). 3. Not so traceable. D. "Character." 1. Surprising. 2. Ordinary. E. "Character." 1. Rational. 2. Irrational. F. "Character General." 1. Lascivious, ("a") Finished, ("b" Baffled. 2. Of travel. 3. Of litera- ture. 4. Of art. 5. Of magic. 6. Of beauty. 7. Of religion. 8. Of social affairs. 9. Of disgust. 10. Of old friends (or foes). 11. Various. 12. Humorous. 13. Of very definite men not known to P. 14. Of combat. 15. Of money. G. "Character Special." 1. Of losing a tooth. 2. Of beard being shaved off. 3. Of climbing a mountain. 4. Of being taken in adultery. 5. Of Poem or Magical book I have written (in dream). 6. Of being embarrassed. 7. of flying, especially of escaping. {170} ______________┬_______┬___┬____________┬___┬___┬_________________┬___ │ A │ B │ C │ D │ E │ F │ G ______________┼_______┼___┼____________┼___┼___┼_________________┼___ February 8th │ 1 │ 2 │ --- │ 1 │---│ --- │--- " 9th │ 1 │ 1 │ Probably 2 │---│---│ --- │ 1 " 12th │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │---│---│ 1(b) │--- " 13th │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │---│ 6.12 │--- " 14th │ │ │ │ │ │ │ " 15th │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 " " │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 " 16th │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 4.2.8 │ 1 " 17th │ 3 │ 6 │ --- │---│---│ --- │--- " 18th │ 2 │ 2 │ Probably 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 11 │--- " 20th │ 1 │ ? │ ? │ 1 │ ? │ ? │--- " 21th │ 4 │---│ --- │---│---│ --- │--- " 22th │ 4 │---│ --- │---│---│ --- │--- " 23th │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1(a).2.10.9.11 │--- " 24th │ 1 │ 4 │ 1 │ 2 │---│ 1? │--- " 25th │ 2(?1) │ 3 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │--- " 28th │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 3 │ 1.10.11 │4(?) " " │ 2 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 3.7 │--- March 1st │ 3 │ 6 │ --- │---│---│ --- │--- " 2nd │ 1 │ 1 │ 1(?) │ 2 │ 1 │ 8 │ 6 " " │ 1 │ 1 │ 1(?) │ 1 │ 1 │ 5 │--- " 3rd │ 2 │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2.8 │--- " 4th │ 1 │4.5│ 1 │ 1 │---│ 8.10.13 │--- " 5th │(?)all │ │ │ │ │ │ " " │ 2 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │--- " 7th │ 1 │ 1 │ 1.2 │ 2 │ 2 │ 1(b).2.9 │ 6 " 8th │ 1 │ 6 │ --- │---│---│ --- │--- " 9th │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │1(b).2.5.8.10.13 │4.6 " 10th │ 1 │ 1 │ 3 │ 2 │ 1 │ 8.10.13.14.15 │--- " 11th │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 3.5.7.12 │5.7 " " │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1(b) │ 4 " 12th │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 2 │ 6 " 13th │ 1 │ 2 │ 3 │ 1 │ 2 │ 1(b) │ 4 " 14th │ 4 │---│ --- │---│---│ --- │--- " 15th │ 1 │ 1 │ 3 │ 2 │ 1 │ 1.2.8.10.13 │--- " " │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 2 │ 2 │ 2 │--- " 16th │ 1 │ 2 │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 3.10 │--- " 17th │ 2 │ 2 │ 3 │ 2 │ 1 │ 7.8 │--- " 18th │ 1 │ 5 │ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 5.6.11 │--- " 19th │ 2 │ 5 │ --- │---│ 1 │ 11 │--- ______________┴_______┴___┴____________┴___┴___┴_________________┴____ {171} On the 7th of March P. left Calcutta for Benares, arriving there on the following day, and lodging at the Hôtel de Paris he continued his concentration practices., In his diary on this date he writes: "The fear of the future seems practically destroyed, and during the last six months I have worked well. This removes all possible selfishness of incentive (after 4 3/4 years) Maitri-Bhâvana is left, and that alone. Aum! At Benares he visited the temples, and had a long conversation with Sri Swami Swayam Prakashânanda Maithila; and then after three days' sojourn there journeyed to Agra. "I saw the Taj. A dream of beauty," he writes, "with appallingly evil things dwelling therein. I actually had to use H.P.K. formula! the building soon palls; the aura is apparent, and disgust succeeds. But the central hall is of strained aura, like a magic circle after banishing." At Agra P. met Astrologer and Geomancer Munshi Elihu Bux; who told him that by looking hard at a point on the wall constantly and without winking for many days he would be able to obtain an hypnotic power even to Deadly and Hostile Current of Will. On the 16th P. left Agra and went to Delhi, and there on the 23rd he was joined by D. A., and these two with their companions on the following day journeyed to Rawal Pindi and from this city they set out together to travel for five months in the northern and little frequented districts of Baltistan, and to seek that great solemnity and solitude which is only to be found amongst the greatest mountains of earth. With the Dhyâna Visions and Trance we arrive at another turning point in Frater P.'s magical ascent. For several years he had worked by the aid of Western methods, and with them he had laid a mighty and unshakable foundation upon which {172} he now had succeeded in building the great temple of Self- Control. Working upon Eastern lines he had laid stone upon stone, and yet when the work was completed, magnificent though it was, there was no God yet found to indwell it. It was indeed but an empty house. Though we have now arrived at this turning point, it will be necessary before we review the contents of this chapter to narrate the events from the present date --- March 1902, down to the 11th of August 1903; when, by the chance (destined) meeting with Ouarda the Seer, he was eventually enabled to set in motion the great power he had gained, and by wrestling with the deity, as Jacob wrestled with the Angel by the ford of Jabbok, see God face to face and LIVE. For a space of nearly six months P. and D. A. journeyed amongst the vast mountains beyond Cashmir, and through during this period no record of his meditations has been preserved, time was not idled away and exercises in meditation of a more exalted kind, on the vastness of Nature and the ungraspable might of God, were his daily joy and consolation. In September he returned to Srinnagar, and thence journeyed to Bombay where he remained for but a few days before his return journey to Europe. Arriving in Egypt he remained in that ancient land for some three weeks, somehow feeling that it was here that he should find what he had so long now been seeking for in vain. But realizing the hopelessness of waiting in any definite country or city, without some clue to guide him to his goal, he left Egypt at the beginning of November and continued his journey back to England only to break it again at Paris. In this city he remained until April the following year {173} (1903). In the month of January he met his old College friend H. L. From the very first moment of this meeting H. L. showed considerable perturbation of mind, and on being asked by Frater P. what was exercising him, H. L. replied "Come and free Miss Q. from the wiles of Mrs. M. Being asked who Mrs. M. was, H. L. answered that she was a vampire and a sorceress who was modelling a sphinx with the intention of one day endowing it with life so that it might carry out her evil wishes; and that her victim was Miss Q. P. wishing to ease his friend's mind asked H. L. to take him to Miss Q.'s address at which Mrs. M. was then living. This H. L. did. The following story is certainly one of the least remarkable of the many strange events which happened to Frater P. during his five months' residence in Paris, but we give it in place of others because it re-introduces several characters who have already figured in this history. Miss Q. after an interview asked P. to tea to meet Mrs. M. After introductions she left the room to make tea --- the White Magic and the Black were left face to face. On the mantelpiece stood a bronze of the head of Balzac, and P., taking it down, seated himself in a chair by the fire and looked at it. Presently a strange dreamy feeling seemed to come over him, and something velvet soft and soothing and withal lecherous moved across his hand. Suddenly looking up he saw the Mrs. M. had noiselessly quitted her seat and was bending over him; her hair was scattered in a mass of curls over her shoulders, and the tips of her fingers were touching the back of his hand {174} No longer was she the middle aged woman, worn with strange lusts; but a young woman of bewitching beauty. At once recognizing the power of her sorcery, and knowing that if he even so much as contemplated her Gorgon head all the power of his magic would be petrified, and that he would become but a puppet in her hands, but a top to be played with and when broken cast aside, he quietly rose as if nothing unusual had occurred; and replacing the bust on the mantelpiece turned towards her and commenced with her a magical conversation; that is to say a conversation which outwardly had but the appearance of the politest small talk but which inwardly lacerated her evil heart, and burnt into her black bowels as if each word had been a drop of some corrosive acid. She writhed back from him; and then again approached him even more beautiful than she had been before. She was battling for her life now, and no longer for the blood of another victim. If she lost, hell yawned before her, the hell that every once beautiful woman who is approaching middle age, sees before her the hell of lost beauty, of decrepitude, of wrinkles and fat. The odour of man seemed to fill her whole subtle form with a feline agility, with a beauty irresistible. One step nearer and then she sprang at Frater P. and with an obscene word sought to press her scarlet lips to his. As she did so Frater P. caught her and holding her at arm's length smote the sorceress with her own current of evil, just as a would-be murderer is sometimes killed with the very weapon with which he has attacked his victim. A blue-greenish light seemed to play round the head of the vampire, and then the flaxen hair turned the colour of muddy {175} snow, and the fir skin wrinkled, and those eyes, that had turned so many happy lives to stone, dulled, and became as pewter dappled with the dregs of wine. The girl of twenty had gone, before him stood a hag of sixty, bent, decrepit, debauched. With dribbling curses she hobbled from the room. As Frater P. left the house, for some time he turned over in his mind these strange happenings, and was not long in coming to the opinion that Mrs. M. was not working alone, and that behind her probably were forces far greater than she. She was but the puppet of others, the slave that would catch the kids and the lambs that were to be served upon her master's table. Could P. prove this? could he discover who the masters were? The task was a difficult one; it either meant months of work, which P. could not afford to give, or the mere chance of a lucky stroke, which P. set aside as unworthy the attempt. That evening whilst relating the story to his friend H. L. he asked him if he knew of any reliable clairvoyant. H. L. replied that he did, and that there was such a person at that very time in Paris known as The Sibyl, his own "belle amie." That night they called on her; and from her P. discovered, for he led her in the spirit, the following remarkable facts. The vision at first was of little importance, then by degrees the seer was let to a house which P. at once recognized as that in which D.D.C.F. lived. He entered one of the rooms, which he also at once recognized but curious to say, instead of finding D.D.C.F. and V.N.R. there he found Theo and Mrs. Horos. Mr. Horos (M.S.R.) incarnated in the body of V.N.R. and Mrs. Horos (S.V.A.) in that of D.D.C.F. Their {176} bodies were in prison; but their spirits were in the house of the fallen chief of the Golden Dawn. At first Frater P. was seized with horror at the sight, he knew not whether to direct a hostile current of will against D.D.C.F. and V.N.R., supposing them to be guilty of cherishing within their bodies the spirits of two disincarnated vampires, or perhaps Abramelin demons under the assumed forms of S.V.A. and M.S.R., or to warn D.D.C.F.; supposing him to be innocent, as he perhaps was, of so black and evil an offence. But as he hesitated a voice entered the body of the Sibyl and bade him leave matters alone, which he did. Not yet was the cup full. In April he journeyed to London, and the month of May 1903 once again found him amongst the fastnesses of the north in the house he had bought in which to carry out the Sacred Operation of Abramelin. At this point of our history, in a prefatory note to one of Frater P.'s note-books, we hind him recapitulating, in the following words, the events of the last four years: In the year 1899 I came to C ... House, and put everything in order with the object of carrying out the Operation of Abramelin the Mage. I had studied Ceremonial Magic, and had obtained very remarkable success. My Gods were those of Egypt, interpreted on lines closely akin to those of Greece. In Philosophy I was a Realist of the Qabalistic School. In 1900 I left England for Mexico, and later the Far East, Ceylon, India, Burma, Baltistan, Egypt and France. It is idle here to detail the corresponding progress of my thought; and passing through a stage of Hinduism, I had discarded all Deities as unimportant, and in Philosophy was an uncompromising Nominalist, arrived at what I may describe as an orthodox Buddhist; but however with the following reservations. (1) I cannot deny that certain phenomena "do" accompany the use of certain rituals; I only deny the usefulness of such methods to the White Adept. {177} (2) that I consider Hindu methods of meditation as possibly useful to the beginner, and should not therefore recommend them to be discarded at once. With regard to my advancement, the redemption of the Cosmos, etc., etc., I leave for ever the "Blossom and Fruit" Theory and appear in the character of an Inquirer on strictly scientific lines.274 This is unhappily calculated to damp enthusiasm; but as I so carefully of old, for the magical path, excluded from my life all other interests, that life has now no particular meaning, and the Path of Research, on the only lines I can now approve of, remains the one Path possible for me to tread. On the 11th of June P. records that he moved his bed into the temple that he had constructed at C ... House, for convenience of more absolute retirement. In this temple he was afflicted by dreams and visions of the most appalling Abramelin devils, which had evidently clung to the spot ever since the operations of February 1900. On the night of the 16th of June he began to practise Mahasatipatthana,275 274 Till 1906. The theory of the Great White Brotherhood, as set forth in the story called "The Blossom and the Fruit," by Miss Mabel Collins. 275 The practice of Mahasipatthana is explained by Mr. A. Crowley in his "Science and Buddhism" very fully. Briefly: In this mediation the mind is not restrained to the contemplation of a single object, and there is no interference with the natural functions of the body. It is essentially an observation-practice, which later assumes an analytic aspect in regard to the question: "What is it that is really observed?" The Ego-idea is excluded; all bodily motions are observed and recorded; for instance, one may sit down quietly and say: There is a raising of the right foot." "There is an expiration," etc.;, etc., just as it happens. When once this habit of excluding the Ego become intuitive, the next step is to explain the above thus: "There is a sensation (Vedana) of a raising, etc." The next stage is that of perception (Sañña) "There is a perception of a (pleasant and unpleasant) sensation of a raising, etc." The two further stages Sankhara and Viññanam pursue the analysis to its ultimation. "There is a consciousness of a tendency to perceive the (pleasant and unpleasant) sensation of a and found it easy to get into the way of it as a mantra which does not interfere much with sense-impressions, {178} but remains as an undercurrent. After several days of this desultory Mahasatipatthana, he turned his mind once again to the Great Work and decided upon a fortnight's strict magical retirement. Though his retirement culminated in no definite state of illumination, it is most interesting from a scientific point of view, as it has been carefully kept and the "breaks" that occurred in the meditations have been most minutely classified. June. 22nd. 10.20 p.m. Mahasatipatthana for half an hour. (1) Breathing gets deeper, rather sleepier. (I am tired.) (2) Notable throbbing in Ajna and front of brain generally, especially with inspiring. (3) Tendency to forget what I am doing. (I am tired.) (4) Very bad concentration, but better than expected. 23rd. 10.11 a.m. Walk with Mahasatipatthana. I obtained a very clear intuition that "I breathe" was a lie. With effort regained delusion. 11.30 a.m. Entered Temple. 11.33 a.m. Prânâyâma. 10. 20. 30. Resulting in a good deal of pain. 11.40 a.m. Mahasatipatthana. 11.57 a.m. Prânâyâma. 10. 20. 30. I do seem bad! My left nostril is not all it should be. 11.57 a.m. Left Temple. 12.30 p.m. Began Mahasatipatthana desultorily. 1.15 p.m. In Mahasatipatthana. Doing it very badly. Seem sleepy. 1.35 p.m. Went out for a walk feeling ill. Ill all the week. 28th During the night began again meditation upon Ajna, and "Mantra Aum Tat Sat Aum." 30th. Decide to do tests on old principle to see how I really stand. {179} BEGIN. END. OBJECT. TIME. NO. OF BREAKS. 10.21 a.m. 10.23 a.m. Red Cross 2 m. 10 s. Several breaks of the kind, "Oh, how well I'm doing it." Seem quite to have forgotten what very long times I used to do. White tri- 10 m. 20 breaks. angle [This about harmonic of good; 20 m. 10 breaks is a good per- formance.] Apas-Akâsa [Very difficult: slightest noise is utterly disturbing.] 10.55 a.m. 11.1 a.m. Red Cross 6 m. 7 breaks. [But it is to be observed that a break may be of varying length. I doubt if this was as good as White Triangle "supra."] 11.44 a.m. 11.56 a.m. White tri- 12 m. 10 breaks. angle raising of the right foot" being the final form. The Buddha himself said that if a man practises Mahasatipatthana honestly and intelligently a result is certain. [Above observation perhaps unimportant, as limit of variability is more or less constant (presumably) between 1901 and now. It will be useless to attempt to devise any means of measuring the length of a break. The only possible suggestion is to count the links in thought back to to object. But I do not think it is worth the trouble.] Note in White Triangle above: I get considerably toward identification of self and object. This is probably a good result of my philosophy-work. It will perhaps be more scientific if in these tests (and perhaps even in work) to stick to one or two objects and always go on to a special number of breaks --- say 10,. Then success will vary as time.276] July 3.14 p.m. 3.20 p.m. White tri- 6 m. 30 s. 6 breaks. Dis- 2nd. angle turbed by car- penter. 10.40 p.m. 11.9 p.m. White tri- 29 m. 23 breaks. angle [A "break" shall be defined as: "a consciousness of the cessation of the object consciousness." A simple outside thought arising shall not constitute a "break," since it may exist simultaneously with the object-consciousness. {180} It shall be meritorious to perform a rosary upon the Rudrakasha-beads at lest once (at one time) daily; for why? Because 108 is is a convenient number of breaks, and the large number will aid determinations of rate progress. If it be true, as I suppose, that fatigue to a great extent determines frequency, it will then be perhaps possible to "predict" a Geometrical Pro- gression (or Mixed Progression.)] BEGIN. END. OBJECT. TIME. NO. OF BREAKS. July 10.58 a.m. 11.1 a.m. White tri- 3 m. 5 breaks. 3rd. angle [I am in very bad state --- nearly "all" breaks! --- do a little Prânâyâma to steady me.] 11.10 a.m. 11.15 1/2 a.m. White tri- 5 m. 30 s. 4 breaks. angle [Sneezed: totally forgot what I was doing. When I reflected, time as above.] 4th. 9.45 a.m. 9.58 1/2 a.m. White tri- 13 m. 30 s. 20 breaks. angle 10.25 a.m. 10.57 1/2 a.m. Ajna 32 m. 30 s. 20 breaks. [With Mantra. Throbbing at once. "Invaders" nearly all irrational. Strong sub-current of swift thought noted. Quite the old times! Excel- lent: I require less food and less literary work. I wonder if it would be worth while to try irritation of skin over Ajna with tincture of Iodine.] 5th. 11.30 a.m. 11.55 a.m. Ajna 25 m. 20 breaks. 9.36 p.m. 9.51 1/2 p.m. Ajna 15 m. 30 s. 20 breaks. 6th.┐ ├ Ill.277 8th.┘ 9th. 10.57 a.m. 11.4 a.m. Prânâyâma 7 m. Nose not clear. 11.16 a.m. 11.18 a.m. Ajna 2 m. 6 breaks. [Hyperaesthesia of sense. Various sounds disturbed me much.] 10th. Again ill. 11th. 3.38 p.m. 3.46 p.m. Prânâyâma 8 m. Going easier. 3.48 p.m. 3.51 p.m. White tri- 3 m. 5 breaks. 276 This, though a good system is a very difficult one to carry out. 277 N.B. Frater P. did not practise when physically unfit. angle 5.51 p.m. 6.10 1/2 p.m. Ajna 19 m. 30 s. 20 breaks. {181} BEGIN. END. OBJECT. TIME. NO. OF BREAKS. July [Difficult to set the sound Hyperaesthesia. Began to forget Mantra.]278 11th. 10.12 1/2 p.m. 10.19 p.m. Prânâyâma 6 m. 30 s. Very hard. [The smallest quantity of food injures one's power immensely.] 10.21 p.m. 10.44 p.m. Ajna 23 m. 20 breaks. [Used cotton wool in ears.] Thoughts of Ajna go obliquely up (from opening of pharynx about) and direct horizontally forward. This gives an idea to "chase" consciousness, "i.e.", find by the obvious series of experiments the spot in which the thoughts dwell. Probably however this moves about. If so, it is a clear piece of evidence for the idealistic position. If not, "thinking of it" equals "it thinking of itself," and its falsity will become rapidly evident. July 12th. 12.8 p.m. 12.19 p.m. Prânâyâma 11 m. [The best so far: the incense troubled me somewhat.] 12.26 p.m. 12.57 p.m. 31 m. 30 breaks. [Mantra evolved into "tartsano."279 I was not in good form and suspect many breaks of long duration.] I keep Mantra going all day. 4.58 p.m. 5.9 p.m. Prânâyâma 11 m. Perspiration. 5.14 p.m. 5.25 p.m. Prânâyâma 11 m. Wound up with a Grand Prânâ- yâma.280 5.28 p.m. 6.6 p.m. 38 m. 30 breaks. [Very tired towards end and difficult to get settled. to me it seems evident that the first ten breaks or so are rapid.] 6.10 p.m. 6.26 p.m. Prânâyâma 16 m. 8.15 p.m. 8.47 p.m. Ajna with 32 m. 22 breaks. Mantra [Light coming a little, one very long break, and some sound.] 10.5 p.m. 10.17 1/2 p.m. Ajna 12 m. 30 s. 11 breaks. 13th. Casual Mutterings of Mantra. 10.44 a.m. Prânâyâma Quite bopeless. 10.48 a.m. 11.20 a.m. 32 m. 30 breaks. [Went to Edinburgh to meet H. L.]281 {182} The following analysis of breaks which Frater P. deduced from his practices during this retirement is both of great interest and importance. It is the only analytical table of this character we know of, and must prove of very great use to investigator and aspirant alike. THE CHARACTER OF BREAKS 1. Primary centres. 278 Not understood. 279 Om Tat Sat Aum. 280 30. 15. 60. 281 This meeting with H. L., though of no importance in itself, led to cone of the most important happenings in P.'s life; for it was through him that he again met Ouarda the seer, as we shall see at a later date. The senses. 2. Secondary. These seem to assume a morbid activity as soon as the primaries are stilled. Their character is that of the shorter kind of memory. Events of the day, etc. 3. Tertiary. Partake of the character of "reverie." Very tempting and insidious. 4. Quaternary. Are closely connected with the control centre itself. Their nature is "How well I'm doing it," or "wouldn't it be a good idea to ...?" These are probably emanations from the control, not messages to it. We might call them: "Aberrations of control." Of a similar depth are the reflections which discover a break, but these are healthy warnings, and assist. 5. Quinary. Never rise into consciousness at all, being held down by the most perfect control. Hence the blank of thought, the forgetfulness of all things, including the object. Not partaking of any character at all, are the "meteor" thoughts which seem to be quite independent of anything the brain could think, or had ever thought. Probably this kind of thought is the root of irrational hallucinations, "e.g.", "And if you're passing, won't you?"282 {183} 6. Perhaps as a result of the intense control, a nervous storm breaks. This we call Dhyâna. Its character is probably not determined by the antecedents in consciousness. Its essential characteristic being the unity of Subject and Object, a new world is revealed. Samâdhi is but an expansion of this, so far as I can see. The slaying of any of these thoughts often leaves their echoes gradually dying away. Now that we have come to the end of this long chapter, let us turn back on the upward slope and survey the road which winds beneath us, and lose not heart when but little of it can be seen, for the mountain's side is steep, and the distance from our last halting-place seems so short, not on account of our idleness, but because of the many twists and turnings that the road has taken since we left our last camp below, when the sun was rising and all was golden with the joy of great expectations. For, in truth, we have progressed many a weary league, and from this high spot are apt to misjudge our journey, and belittle our labours, as we gaze down the precipitous slope which sweeps away at out feet. In the last two years and a half P. had journeyed far, further than he at this time was aware of; and yet the goal of his journey seemed still so distant that only with difficulty could he bring himself to believe that he had progressed at all. Indeed, ti must have been discouraging to him to think that on the 6th of May 1901 he, in a meditation of thirty-two minutes had only experienced ten breaks, whilst during a meditation of similar length, on the 13th of July 1903, the number of breaks had been three times as many. But 282 These interrupting voice suggestions have been named by P. Telephone-cross-voices on account of their close resemblance to disjointed conversations so often heard whilst using a telephone. A similar phenomenon occurs in wireless telegraphy; chance currents make words, and are so read by the operator. They are called "atmospherics." I propose the retention of this useful word in place of the clumsy "Telephone-cross-voices." like most statistics, such a comparison is misleading: for the beginner, almost invariably, so clumsy is his will, catches {184} quickly enough the gross breaks, but lets the minor ones dart away from his grasp, like the small fry which with ease swim in and out of the fisherman's net. Further, though in twelve meditations the number of breaks may be identical, yet the class of the breaks, much more so than the actual number, will tell the meditator, more certainly than anything else, whether he has progressed or has retrograded. Thus at first, should the meditator practise with his eyes open, the number of breaks will in their swift succession form almost one unbroken interruption. Again, should the eyes be closed, then the ears detecting the slightest sound, the flow of the will will be broken, just as the faintest zephyr, on a still evening, will throw out of the perpendicular an ascending column of smoke. But presently, as the will gains power, the sense of hearing, little by little, as it comes under control, is held back from hearing the lesser sounds, then the greater, and at length all sounds. The vibrations of the will having repelled the sound vibrations of the air, and brought the sense of hearing into Equilibrium. Now the upward mounting filament of smoke has become the ascending columns of a great volcano, there is a titanic blast behind it, --- a will to ascend. And as the smoke and flame is belched forth, so terrific is its strength, that even a hurricane cannot shake it or drive it from its course. As the five senses become subdued, fresh hosts of difficulties spring up irrationally from the brain itself. And, whichever way we turn, a mob of subconscious thoughts pull us this way and that, and our plight in this truculent multitude is a hundred times worse than when we commenced to wrestle with the five senses. Like wandering comets and {185} meteorites they seemingly come from nowhere, splash like falling stars through the firmament of our meditation, sparkle and are gone; but ever coming as a distraction to hamper and harass our onward march. Once the mind has conquered these, a fresh difficulty arises, the danger of not being strong enough to overcome the occult powers which, though the reward of our toils, are liable, like the Queen in her bedchamber, to seduce the Conqueror in spite of his having conquered the King her husband, and secretly slay him as he sleeps in her arms. These are the powers known in the West as the Miraculous Powers, in the East as Siddhis. The mind is now a blank, the senses have been subdued, the subconscious thoughts slain; it stretches before us like some unspotted canvas upon which we may write or paint whatever we will. We can produce entrancing sounds at will, beautiful sights at will, subtle tastes and delicious perfumes; and after a time actual forms, living creatures, men and women and elementals. We smite the rock, and the waters flow at our blow; we cry unto the heavens, and fire rushes down and consumes our sacrifice; we become Magicians, begetters of illusion, and then, if we allow ourselves to become obsessed by them, a time comes when these illusions will master us, when the children we have begotten will rise up and dethrone us, and we shall be drowned in the waters that now we can no longer control and be burnt up by the flames that mock obedience, and scorn our word. Directly we perform a miracle we produce a change: a change is Mara the Devil, and not God the Changeless One. And though we may have scraped clean the palimpsest of our {186} mind, our labours are in vain, if, when once it is stretched out spotless before us, we start scribbling over it our silly riddles, our little thoughts, our foolish "yeas" and "nays." The finger of God alone may write upon it, cleanly and beautifully, and the words that are written cannot be read by the eye or in the heart of man, for alone can they be understood by him who is worthy to understand them. Now, though Frater P. had not as yet proved this, had not as yet accomplished the cleansing of the book of his mind, he had, however, built up on his own empirical observation so invulnerable a theory, that it now only remained for him to obtain that fine proportion, that perfect adjustment, that balancing of the Forces of the Will, which now lay before him like he chemicals in the crucible of a Chemist, before applying that certain heat which would dissolve all into one. He did not wish to rule by the Scptre he had won, but to transcend it; to rule the forces of this world, not by the authority that had been given him, but by his own essential greatness. And just as long before Mendeljeff had propounded the law of Periodicity, and by it had foreshadowed the existence of several undiscovered elements, so now did Frater P., by his law of the Correspondences of the Ruach, prove, not only historically, philosophically, theologically and mythologically the existence of the everywhere proclaimed Jechidah as being one, but in a lesser degree: that when an Egyptian thought of Ptah, a Greek of Iacchus, a Hindu of Parabrahman and a Christian of the Trinity as a Unity, they were not thinking of four Gods, but of one God, not of four conditions but of one condition, not of four results but of one result; and, that should they set out to attain unity with their ideal, the stages {187} they would progress through would be in all cases essentially the same, the differences, if any, being due to the mental limitations of the experimenter, his education and prejudices, and not because the roads were dissimilar. Thus by this law could he with certainty predict that if a certain exercise were undertaken certain stages would be passed through, and what these stages meant relative to the final result, irrespective of the creed, caste, or sect of the practicer. Further, he had proved beyond doubt or quibble, that the terrific strain caused by the Eastern breathing exercises was no whit greater or less than that resulting from The Acts of Worship in an operation of Ceremonial Magic, that Dhâranâ and the Mantra yoga were in effect none other than a paraphrase of the Sacred Magic and the Acts of Invocation; and ultimately that the while system of Eastern yoga was but a synonym of Western Mysticism. Starting from the root, he had by now crept sufficiently far through the darkness of the black earth to predict a great tree above, and to prophecy concerning a Kingdom of Light and Loveliness; and, as a worm will detect its approach to the earth surface by the warmth of the mould, so did he detect by a sense, new and unknown to him, a world as different from the world he lived in as the world of awakenment differs from the world of dreams. Further, did he grow to understand, that, though as a sustenance to the tree itself one root might not be as important as another, yet that they all drew their strength from the self-same soil, and ultimately united in the one trunk above. Some were rotten with age, some dying, some again but feeders of useless shoots, but more sympathetically, more scientifically, they were all of one kind, the roots of one actual {188} living tree,dissimilar in shape but similar in substance, and all working for one definite end. Thus did Frater P. by two years close and unabandoned experiment show, to his own satisfaction, that Yoga was nut the Art of uniting the mind to a single idea; and that Gnana-Yoga, Raja-Yoga, Bhakta-Yoga and Hatha-Yoga283 were but one class of methods leading to the same Result as attained to by The Holy Qabalah, The Sacred Magic, The Acts of Worship and The Ordeals of Western Ceremonial Magic; which again are but subsections of that One Art, the Art of uniting the mind to a Single Idea. And, that all these, The Union by Knowledge, The Union by Will, The Union by Love, The Union by Courage found their vanishing point in the Supreme Union through Silence; that Union in which understanding fails us, and beyond which we can no more progress than we can beyond the Equilibrium set forth as the Ultimate End by Gustave le Bon. There all knowledge ceases, and we like Bâhva, when he was questioned by Vâshkali, can only expound the nature of this Silence, as he expounded the nature of Brahman, by remaining silent, as the story relates: And he said, "Teach me, most reverend Sir, the nature of Brahman." The other however remained silent. But when the question was put for a second or 283 To which may be added Mantra Yoga and Karma Yoga, which correspond with The Invocation and The Acts of Service and represent Union through Speech and Union through Work. third time he answered, "I teach you indeed, but you do not understand; this Atman is silent." P. had not yet attained to this Silence; indeed it was the goal he had set out to accomplish, and though from the ridge {189} of the great mountain upon which he was standing the summit seemed but a furlong above him, it was in truth many a year's weary march away, and ridge upon ridge lay concealed, and each as it was gained presented an increasing difficulty. This Silence or Equilibrium is described in the "Shiva Sanhita"284 as Samâdhi: "When the mind of the Yogi is absorbed in the Great God,285 then the fulness of Samâdhi286 is attained, then the Yogi gets steadfastness.287 Though Frater P. had not attained to this Steadfastness, he had won a decisive victory over the lower states of Dhyanâ as far back as October 1901, which shows that though he was still distant he was by degrees nearing a state in which he would find no more Worlds to Conquer. However, up to this point, there are several results to record, which are of extreme importance to the beginner, in so much that some of them are arrived at by methods diametrically opposed to those held by the dogmatic Yogins. At the very commencement of his Yoga exercises Frater P. discovered, that in so lecherous a race as the Hindus it is absolutely necessary before a Chela can be accepted by a Guru to castrate him spiritually and mentally.288 This being so, we {190} therefore find almost every master of note, from Sankaracharya down to Agamya Paramahamsa, insisting on the maintenance to the letter of the rules of Yama and Niyama, that is absolute Chastity in body and mind amongst their pupils.289 Now P. proved that the strict letter of the law of Chastity had no more to do with the ultimate success of attainment than refusing to work on a Sabbath had to do with a free pass to the Celestial regions, unless every act of chastity was computed and performed in a magical manner, each act becoming as it were a link in one great chain, a formula in one great operation, an operation not leading to Chastity, the symbol, but beyond Chastity to the essence itself --- namely the Atman, --- Adonai. Further he proved to his own satisfaction that, though absolute Chastity might mean salvation to one man, inducing in the lecherous a speedy concentration, it might be the greatest 284 "Shiva Sanhita," chap. v, 155. 285 Atman, Pan, Harpocrates, whose sign is silence, etc., etc. See " "777". 286 The Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel --- Adonai. 287 Equilibrium, Silence, Supreme Attainment, Zero. 288 As for women they are considered beyond the possibility of redemption, for in order of re-incarnation they are placed seven stages below a man, three below a camel, and one below a pig. Manu speaks of "the gliding of the soul through ten thousand millions of wombs." And if a man steal grain in the husk, he shall be born a rat; if honey, a great stinging gnat; if milk, a crow; if woven flax, a frog; if a cow, a lizard; if a horse, a tiger; if roots or fruit, an ape; if a woman, a bear. "Institutes of Manu," xii, 55-67. 289 We find Christ insisting on this absolute chastity of body and mind, in a similar manner, and for similar reasons; for the Eastern Jew if he is not actually doing something dirty, is sure to be thinking about it. hindrance to another, who was by nature chaste.290 {191} He realized that there were in this world she-mules as well as she-asses, and that though the former would never foal in spite of all the stallions of moultan, the latter seldom failed to do so after having been for a few minutes in the presence of a Margate jackass. Discarding Chastity (Brahmachârya) --- a good purgative for the prurient --- he wrote in its place the word "Health." do not worry about this code and that law, about the jibber of this crank or the jabber of that faddist. to hell with ethical pigs and prigs alike. "Do what you like"; but in the name of your own Higher Self wilfully "do no injury to your own body or mind" by over indulgence or under indulgence. Discover your normal appetite; satisfy it. Do not become a glutton, and do not become a nut-cracking skindlewig. Soon after his arrival in Ceylon, and at the time that he was working with Frater I. A. the greatness of the Buddha, as we have already see, attracted him, and he turned his attention to the dogmatic literature of Buddhism only to find that behind its unsworded Cromwellian colossus,291 with all his rigid virtues, his stern reasoning, his uncharitableness, judicialism and impartiality, slunk a pack of pig-headed dolts, stubborn, asinine and mulish; slavish, menial and {192} gutless; puritanic, pharisaical and "suburban" as any seventeenth century presbyter, as biliously narrow-minded as any of the present day Bethelites, Baptists, and Bible-beer brewers.292 290 The reason for this is very simple. Take for example a glutton who lives for his palate and his stomach; he is always longing for tasty foods and spends his whole life seeking them. Let us now substitute the symbol of the Augoeides or Atman for that of food and drink, let him every time he thinks of food and drink push the thought aside and in its place contemplate his Higher Self, and the result is a natural invocation of the Atman, Augoeides, or Higher Self. If the aspirant be an artist let him do the same with his art; if a musician, with his music; if a poet, with his verses and rhymes. For the best foundation to build upon is always to be found upon that which a man "loves" "best." It is no good asking a glutton who does not care a row of brass pins for music, to turn music into a magical formula, neither is it of the slightest use to impress upon a clean-minded individual the necessity of living a chaste life. It is like tapping Samson on the shoulder, just after he has carried the pates of Gaza on to the top of the hill before Hebron, and saying: "My good boy, if you ever intend becoming strong, the first thing you must do is to buy a pair of my four pound dumb- bells and my sixpenny book on physical culture." 291 The Buddha (it is true) did not encourage bloodshed, in spite of his having died from an overfeed of pork, but as Mr. A. Crowley has said, many of his present-day followers are quite capable of killing their own brothers for five rupees. The Western theory that Buddhists are lambs and models of virtue is due to the fact that certain Western vices are not so congenial to the Asiatic as they are to the European; and not because Buddhists are incapable of enjoying themselves. 292 Buddhism as a schism from the Brahminical religion may in many respects be compared with Lutheranism as a schism from the Catholic Church. Both Buddha and Luther set aside the authority of miracles, and appealed to the reason of the middle classes of their day. The Vedas were the outcome of aristocratic thought; and so in truth was the Christianity of Constantine and the Popes, that full-blooded Christianity which so soon swallowed the mystical Christ and the anaemic communism of the "canaille" which followed him. Conventional Buddhism is pre-eminently the "nice" religion of the bourgeoisie; it neither panders to the superstition of the masses nor palliates the gallantries of the The dogmatism of literal Buddhism appalled him. The Five Precepts, which are the Yama and Niyama of Buddhism, he at once saw, in spite of Nagasena and prig Milinda, must be broken by every Arahat each time he inhaled a breath of air. They were as absurd as they were valueless. But behind all this tantalizing "frou-frou," this "lingerie de cocotte," beautifully designed to cover the narded limbs of foolish virgins, sits the Buddha in silent meditation; so that P. soon discovered that by stripping his body of all these tawdry trappings, this feminine under-wear, and by utterly discarding the copy-book precepts of Baptistical Buddhists, the Four Noble Truths were none other than the complete Yoga, and that in The Three Characteristics293 the summit of philosophy (The Ruach) had been reached. The terrific strain of Asana and Prânâyâma, the two chief exercises of Hathavidya, P., by months of trial proved to be {193} not only methods of great use as a sedative before commencing a Magical Operation, but methods of inordinate importance to such aspirants, who, having discarded the Shibboleths of sect, have adopted the fatuities of reason. For it is more difficult for one who has no natural magical aptitude, and one who perhaps has only just broken away from faith and corrupted ritual, to carry out an operation of Western Magic, than it is for him to sit down and perform a rational exercise, such as the Prânâyâma exercises of Yoga, which carry with them their own result, in spite of the mental attitude of the chela towards them, so long as the instructions of the Guru are properly carried out.294 As already pointed out, the mere fact of sitting for a time in a certain position, of inhaling, exhaling and of holding the breath, brings with it, even in the case of the most obdurate sceptic, a natural concentration, an inevitable PPratyâhâra, which develops in the aspirant the Siddhis, those seemingly miraculous powers which distinguish an Adeptus Major from an Adeptus Minor, and entitle the possessor to the rank of 6° = 5°. From this discovery295 Frater P. made yet another, and this time one of still greater importance. And this was, that if the {194} Adept, when once the Siddhis were attained, by a self-control (a still higher concentration) refused to expend these occult powers,296 by degrees he accumulated within himself a terrific force; charged like a Leyden jar, instantaneously could he transmute this power into whatever he willed; but the act brought with it a recoil, and caused an exhaustion and a void which nullified the powers gained. aristocracy; it is essentially middle-class; and this no doubt is the chief reason why it has met with a kindly reception by this nation of shop-walkers. 293 Anikka, Change; Dukka, Sorrow; Anatta, Absence of an Ego. 294 Prânâyâma acts on the mind just as Calomel acts on the bowels. It does not matter if a patient believes in Calomel or not. The physician administers it, and even if the patient be a most hostile Christian Scientist, the result is certain. Similarly with Prânâyâma, the Guru gives his chela a certain exercise, and as surely as the Calomel voided the noxious matter from the intestines of the sufferer, so will the Prânâyâma void the capricious thoughts from the mind of the disciple. 295 By discovery here we mean individual experiment resulting in personal discovery; another person's discovery only begets illusion and comment. Individual discovery is the only true discovery worth consideration. 296 Nearly all the Masters have been cautious how they handled this power; generally refusing to expend it at the mere caprice of their followers or opponents. The Siddhis are like the Gold of the Alchemist. Once discovered it is kept secret, and the more secretly it is kept the more it is hoarded the richer becomes the discoverer, and then one day will come wherein he will be able to pay his own ransom, and this is the only ransom that is acceptable unto God. Ultimately he proved that it was rather by the restraint of these occult (mental) powers than that of the bodily ones that Ojas is produced.297 By now he was beginning to learn that there was more than one way of opening the Lion's jaws; and that gentleness and humility would often succeed where brutality and much boasting were sure to fail. The higher he ascended into the realms of the Ruach the more he realized the irrational folly of performing wonders before a mob of gargoyle-headed apes, of pulling the strings of mystical marionettes and reducing himself to the level of an occult Punch and Judy showman. He had attained to powers that were beyond the normal, and now he carried them secretly like some precious blade of Damascus steel, hidden in a velvet sheath, concealed from view, but ever ready to hand. He did not display his weapon to the wanton, neither did he brandish it before the {195} eyes of the gilded courtezan --- Babylon, thou harlot of the seven mansions of God's Glory! But he kept it free from rust, sharp and glittering bright, so that when the time came wherein he should be called upon to use it, it might leap forth from its sheath like a flash of lightning from betwixt the lips of God, and slay him who had ventured to cross his path, silently, without even so much as grating against his bones. {196} 297 Possibly the restraint of Brahmachârya produced the Siddhis, and that further restraint in its turn produced an accumulation of these occult powers, the benefit accruing from which is again placed to the credit of the bodily powers. PAN TO ARTEMIS UNCHARMABLE charmer Of Bacchus and Mars In the sounding rebounding Abyss of the stars! O virgin in armour, Thine arrows unsling In the brilliant resilient First rays of the spring! By the force of the fashion Of love, when I broke Through the shroud, through the cloud, Through the storm, through the smoke, To the mountain of passion Volcanic that woke --- By the rage of the mage I invoke, I invoke! By the midnight of madness: --- The lone-lying sea, The swoon of the moon, Your swoon into me, The sentinel sadness Of cliff-clinging pine, That night of delight You were mine, you were mine! {197} You were mine, O my saint, My maiden, my mate, By the might of the right Of the night of our fate. Though I fall, though I faint, Though I char, though I choke, By the hour of our power I invoke, I invoke! By the mystical union Of fairy and faun, Unspoken, unbroken --- The dust to the dawn! --- A secret communion Unmeasured, unsung, The listless, resistless, Tumultuous tongue! --- O virgin in armour, Thine arrows unsling, In the brilliant resilient First rays of the spring! No Godhead could charm her, But manhood awoke --- O fiery Valkyrie, I invoke, I invoke! ALEISTER CROWLEY. {198} {Illustration opposite page 199 described: "The Interpreter." (script lettering at base, credited at lower right "Carl Hentschel Ph. Lc.") This is a monochrome color tinted photo of a female violinist. She stands on a white draped block, the background is white, except for the floor which seems to be wooden and is interrupted by the block. She is garbed in a black robe, rose-cross on chest, hood turned back and over hair with eye-in-triangle seen only as three or four points of the glory. Her head is turned in profile to the right until the shoulders and torso --- 3/4 profile. All five toes of her right foot are bare and to be seen jutting out of the robe directly toward the front. She cradles the violin between chin and left shoulder, left fingers holding a chord on the frets and back of left hand toward the viewer and to the side. She holds the bow vertically and tilted away over the strings slightly toward the back. Her right hand lightly grasps the end of the bow about waist high.} THE INTERPRETER MOTHER of Light, and the Gods! Mother of Music, awake! Silence and speech are at odds; Heaven and Hell are at stake. By the Rose and the Cross I conjure; I constrain by the Snake and the Sword; I am he that is sworn to endure --- Bring us the word of the Lord! By the brood of the Bysses of Brightening, whose God was my sire; By the Lord of the Flame and Lightning, the King of the Spirits of Fire; By the Lord of the Waves and the Waters, the King of the Hosts of the Sea, The fairest of all of whose daughters was mother to me; By the Lord of the Winds and the Breezes, the king of the Spirits of Air, In whose bosom the infinite ease is that cradled me there; By the Lord of the Fields and the Mountains, the King of the Spirits of Earth That nurtured my life at his fountains from the hour of my birth; {199} By the Wand and the Cup I conjure; by the Dagger and Disk I constrain; I am he that is sworn to endure; make thy music again! I am Lord of the Star and the Seal; I am Lord of the Snake and the Sword; Reveal us the riddle, reveal! Bring us the word of the Lord! As the flame of the sun, as the roar of the sea, as the storm of the air, As the quake of the earth --- let it soar for a boon, for a bane, for a snare, For a lure, for a light, for a kiss, for a rod, for a scourge, for a sword --- Bring us thy burden of bliss --- Bring us the word of the Lord! PERDURABO. {200} THE DAUGHTER OF THE HORSELEECH A FABLE Tria sunt insaturabilia, et quartum, quod nunquam dicit: Sufficit. Infernus, et os vulvae. ... --- Prov. xxx. 16. THE Great White Spirit stretched Himself and yawned. He had done an honest six day's work if ever a man did; yet in such physical training was He from His lengthy "cure in that fashionable Spa Pralaya that he was not in the least fatigued. It was the Loi du Répos Hebdomadaire that had made Him throw down His tools. "Anyway, the job's finished!" He said, looking round Him complacently. Even His critical eye assured Him that it was very good. And indeed ti must be admitted that He had every right to crow. With no better basis than the Metaphysical Absolute of the Qabalists he had unthinkably but efficiently formulated Infinite Space, filled the said Space with Infinite Light, concentrated the Light into a Smooth-pointed Whitehead (not the torpedo) and emanated Himself as four hundred successive intelligences all the way from Risha Qadisha in Atziluth down to where intelligence ends, and England begins. {201} He took a final survey and again faintly murmured: "Very good! Beautifully arranged, too!" He added, "not a hole anywhere!" It somewhat surprised Him, therefore, when a tiny, tiny silvery little laugh came bell-like in His ear. It was so tiny that he could hardly credit the audacity of the idea, but for all its music, the laugh certainly sounded as if some one were mocking Him. He turned sharply round (and this was one of His own special attributes, as transcending the plane where activity and rotundity are incompatibles) but saw nothing; and putting His legs up, lighted His long pipe and settled down to a quiet perusal of a fascinating "cosmic romance" called Berashith by two pseudonymous authors, G. O. Varr and L. O. Heem --- of ingenious fancy, exalted imaginative faculty, and a tendency, which would later be deemed undesirable, to slop over into the filthiest details whenever the love- interest became dominant. Oh, but it was a most enthralling narrative! Beginning with a comic account of the creation, possibly intended as a satire on our men of science or our men of religion --- 'twould serve equally well in either case --- it went on to a thrilling hospital scene. The love-interest comes in chapter ii.; chapter iii. has an eviction scene, since when there have been no snakes in Ireland; chapter iv. gives us a first-rate murder, and from that moment the authors never look back. But the Great White Spirit was destined to have his day of repose disturbed. He had just got to the real masterpiece of literature "And Adam knew Hevah his woman," which contains all that ever has been said or ever can be said upon the sex-problem in its {202} one simple, sane, clean truth, when glancing up, he saw that after all He had overlooked something. In the Infinite Universe which he had constructed there was a tiny crack. A tiny, tiny crack. Barely an inch of it. Well, the matter was easily remedied. As it chanced, there was a dainty little Spirit (with gossamer wings like a web of steel, and scarlet tissue of silk for his robes) flitting about, brandishing his tiny sword and spear in a thoroughly warlike manner. "Shun!" said the Great White Spirit. "By the right, dress! "Snappers, one pace forward, march! "Prepare to stop leak! "Stop leak!" But the matter was not thus easily settled. After five hours' strenuous work, the little spirit was exhausted,and the hole apparently no nearer being filled than before. He returned to the Great White Spirit. "Beg pardon, sir!" he said; "but I can't fill that there 'ole nohow." "No matter," answered the Great White Spirit, with a metaphysical double entendre. "You may go!" If anything, the crack was bigger than before, it seemed to Him. "This," He said, "is clearly the job for Bartzabel." And he despatched a "speed" message for that worthy spirit. Bartzabel lost no time in answering the summons. Of flaming, radiant, far- darting gold was his crown; flashing hither and thither more swiftly than the lightning were its rays. His head was like the Sun in its strength, even at {203} high noon. His cloak was of pure amethyst, flowing behind him like a mighty river; his armour was of living gold, burnished with lightning even to the greaves and the armed feet of him; he radiated an intolerable splendour of gold and he bore the Sword and balance of Justice. Mighty and golden were his wide-flashing wings! Terrible in his might, he bowed low before the Great White Spirit, and proceeded to carry out the order. For five and twenty years he toiled at the so easy task; then, flinging down his weapons in a rage, he returned before the face of his Master and, trembling with passion, cast himself down in wrath and despair. "Pah!" said the Great White Spirit with a smile; "I might have known better than to employ a low material creature like yourself. Send Graphiel to Me!" The angry Bartzabel, foaming with horrid rage, went off, and Graphiel appeared. All glorious was the moon-like crown of the great Intelligence Graphiel. His face was like the Sun as it appears beyond the veil of this earthly firmament. His warrior body was like a tower of steel, virginal strong. Scarlet were his kingly robes, and his limbs were swathed in young leaves of lotus; for those limbs were stronger than any armour ever forged in heaven or hell. Winged was he with wings of gold that are the Wind itself; his sword of green fire flamed in his right hand, and in his left he held the blue feather of Justice, unstirred by the wind of his flight, or the upheaval of the universe. But after five and sixty centuries of toil, though illumined with intelligence almost divine, he had to confess himself defeated. {204} "Sir," he cried strongly, "this is a task for Kamael the mighty and all his host of Seraphim!" "I will employ them on it," said the Great White Spirit. Then the skies flamed with wrath; for Kamael the mighty and his legions flew from the South, and saluted their Creator. Behold the mighty one, behold Kamael the strong! His crownless head was like a whirling wheel of amethyst, and all the forces of the earth and heaven revolved therein. His body was the mighty Sea itself, and it bore the scars of crucifixion that had made it two score times stronger than it was before. He too bore the wings and weapons of Space and of Justice; and in himself he was that great Amen that is the beginning and the end of all. Behind him were the Seraphim, the fiery Serpents. On their heads the triple tongue of fire; their glory like unto the Sun, their scales like burning plates of steel; they danced like virgins before their lord, and upon the storm and roar of the sea did they ride in their glory. "Sir," cried the Archangel, "sir," cried Kamael the mighty one, and his legions echoed the roar of his voice, "hast Thou called us forth to perform so trivial a task? Well, let it be so!" "Your scorn," the Great White Spirit replied mildly, "is perhaps not altogether justified. Though the hole be indeed but a bare inch --- yet Graphiel owns himself beaten." "I never thought much of Graphiel!" sneered the archangel, and his serpents echoed him till the world was filled with mocking laughter. But when he had left, he charged them straitly that the work must be regarded seriously. It would never do to fail! {205} So for aeons three hundred and twenty and five did they labour with all their might. But the crack was not diminished by an hair's breadth; nay, it seemed bigger than before --- a very gape in the womb of the universe. Crestfallen, Kamael the mighty returned before the Great White Spirit, his serpents drooping behind him; and they grovelled before the throne of that All-powerful One. He dismissed them with a short laugh, and a wave of His right hand. If He was disturbed, He was too proud to show it. "This," he said to himself, "is clearly a matter for Elohim Gibor." Therefore He summoned that divine power before Him. The crown of Elohim Gibor was Space itself; the two halves of his brain were the Yea and Nay of the Universe; his breath was the breath of very Life; his being was the Mahalingam of the First, beyond Life and Death the generator from Nothingness. His armour was the Primal Water of Chaos. The infinite moon-like curve of his body; the flashing swiftness of his Word, that was the Word that formulated that which was beyond Chaos and Cosmos; the might of him, greater than that of the Elephant and of the Lion and of the Tortoise and of the Bull fabled in Indian legend as the supports of the four letters of the Name; the glory of him, that was even as that of the Sun which is before all and beyond all Suns, of which the stars are little sparks struck off as he battled in the Infinite against the Infinite --- all these points the Great White Spirit noted and appreciated. This is certainly the person, thought He, to do my business for me. But alas! for five, and for twenty-five, and for sixty-five, {206} and for three hundred and twenty-five myriads of myriads of myriads of kotis of crores of lakhs of asankhayas of mahakalpas did he work with his divine power --- and yet that little crack was in nowise filled, but rather widened! The god returned. "O Great White Spirit!" he whispered --- and the Universe shook with fear at the voice of him --- "Thou, and Thou alone, art worthy to fill this little crack that Thou hast left." Then the Great White Spirit arose and formulated Himself as the Pillar of Infinitude, even as the Mahalingam of Great Shiva the Destroyer, who openeth his eye, and All is Not. And behold! He was balanced in the crack, and the void was filled, and Nature was content. And Elohim Gibor, and Kamael the mighty and his Seraphim, and Graphiel, and Bartzabel, and all the inhabitants of Madim shouted for joy and gave glory and honour and praise to the Great White Spirit; and the sound of their rejoicing filled the Worlds. Now for one thousand myriad eternities the Great White Spirit maintained Himself as the Pillar of Infinitude in the midst of the little crack that he had overlooked; and lo! He was very weary. "I cannot stay like this for ever," He exclaimed; and returned into His human shape, and filled the bowl of His pipe, and lit it, and meditated. ... And I awoke, and behold it was a dream. Then I too lit my pipe, and meditated. "I cannot see," thought I, "that the situation will be in any way amended, even if we agree to give them votes." ETHEL RAMSAY. {207} THE DREAMER IN the grey dim Dawn where the Souls Unborn May look on the Things to Be; A tremulous Shade, a Thing Unmade, Stood Lost by the silent Sea; And shuddering fought the o'erwhelming thought Of Its own Identity. Is the frenzied form that derides the storm A ghost of the days to Be? And the restless wave but the troubled grave Of Its own dread Imagery? Or merely a wraith cast up without faith From the jaws of a Phantom Sea? To his Love Unborn in that grey dim Dawn Did the Shade of the Dreamer flee; Nor marked he the Flood where the Vision had stood Which mocks for Eternity. For the Soul he would wed was the Hope that had fled In the battle with Destiny. ETHEL ARCHER. {208} MR. TODD A MORALITY BY THE AUTHOR OF "ROSA MUNDI" " ""In Memoriam" LILITH " "Obiit Kal. Mai." 1906 MR. TODD PERSONS OF THE PLAY GRANDFATHER OSSORY ("eighty-one") ALFRED OSSORY ("fifty"), "his son, a shipowner" EMILY OSSORY ("forty-five"), "his wife" EUPHEMIA OSSORY ("eighteen"), "his daughter" CHARLEY OSSORY ("ten"), "his son" GEORGE DELHOMME ("twenty-four"), "of the ministry of Foreign Affairs" DIONYSUS CARR ("thirty-four"), "Professor of Experimental Eugenics in the" " University of Tübingen"; and MR. TODD THOMAS, "a footman" A HOSPITAL NURSE SCENE: "The sitting-room in" OSSORY'S "house in Grosvenor Square." TIME: "Midday." "The persons are in correct morning dress, except the invalid "GRANDFATHER, "who" "is in a scarlet dressing-gown, with gold embroidery, and "CARR, "who affects" "a pseudo-Bohemian extravagance. He wears a low collar, a very big bow-tie" "of gorgeous colours, a pale yellow waistcoat, a rich violet lounge suit" "with braid, patent leather boots, pale blue socks. But the refinement and" "breeding of the man are never in question. His hair is reddish, curly," "luxuriant. He is clean-shaved, and wears an eye-glass with a" "tortoiseshell rim." TODD "has a face of keen pallor; he is dressed in black, with a flowing black" "cape, black motor-cap. He gives the impression of great age combined with" "great activity." ACT I GRANDFATHER "sunk in melancholy in his arm-chair;" MRS. OSSORY "red and weeping;" OSSORY "(a British heavy father) grief-stricken;" EUPHEMIA "sobbing at the" "table;" CARR "and "DELHOMME "cold and hot respectively in their expression of" "sympathy." MR. TODD "is at the door, his cloak on, his hat in his hand." OSSORY. It is kind of you to have so far to break the sad news, my dear sir. I hope that we shall see you again soon under --- under --- under happier circumstances. [TODD "bows very low to the company as if deeply sympathising; but turning" "his face to the audience, smiles as if at some secret jest. The actor" "should study hard to make this smile significant of the whole" "character, as revealed in the complete play; for" TODD "does not develop" "through, but is explained by, the plot." TODD "goes out;" OSSORY " "follows, and returns in a minute. There is no sound in the room but" "that of "EUPHEMIA'S "sobs." OSSORY "[returning, throws himself into a chair near the door]." Dear me! dear me! Poor, poor Henry! DELHOMME. In the very flower of his life. ... CARR ["solemnly"]. Truly, my dear sir, in the midst of life we are in death. {213} [EUPHEMIA "looks up and darts a furious glance at him; for she knows that he" "is mocking British solemnity and cant." DELHOMME. Crushed --- crushed in a moment ---- MRS. OSSORY ["very piously"]. Without a warning. Ah well, we must hope that --- ["Her voice becomes a mumble." DELHOMME. I will bid you good morning; I am sure you will not wish strangers to intrude upon your grief. If there is anything that I can do ---- MRS. OSSORY ["conbentionally"]. Pray do not leave us yet, Monsieur Delhomme. Lunch is just ready. DELHOMME. I really think that I should go. ["He shakes hands." MRS. OSSORY. Good morning. We are so grateful for you sympathy and kindness. ["He turns to the old man."] Grandfather is asleep. [DELHOMME "shakes hands coldly with "CARR, "wondering why he does not offer to" "come with him. He goes to "EUPHEMIA. EUPHEMIA. ["Jumps up and gives her hand, hiding her tear-stained face. She" "has a slight lisp."] Good morning, monsieur. ["He bends over her hand and" "kisses it" DELHOMME. Always my sympathy and devotion, mademoiselle. EUPHEMIA. Thank you -- thank you. ["Her real attitude to him is listlessness bordering on aversion, but" "constrained by politeness; he mistakes it for modesty striving with" "young love."] DELHOMME. Good morning, Mr. Ossory. Anything I can do, of course; anything I can do. {214} OSSORY. thank you, my dear lad. Anything you can do, of course --- I will let you know at once. By the way, you haven't asked her yet, I suppose? DELHOMME. NOt yet, sir. I am rather diffident: I do not care to precipitate affairs. OSSORY. Well, I am really very anxious to see her future assured. And you know our proverb, "The early bird catches the worm." ["Points to him, and over" "his shoulder to her."] There's our scientific friend, eh? DELHOMME. Oh, I'm not afraid of him. A "farceur," no more, though sometimes a pleasant one. OSSORY. "Tu t'en f----, ça, mon vieux chameau? Quoi?" DELHOMME. ["very disgusted at "OSSORY'S "vulgarity, which mistakes "argot "for " chic]. Well, sir, as soon as I can find a favourable opportunity --- OSSORY. Grief is a good mood to catch them in, my boy. I know! I know! I've been a bit of a dog in my time. ["Shakes hands as they go out." DELHOMME. ["returning"]. One word in your ear, sir, if I may. It's purely instinctive --- but --- but --- well, sir, I mistrust that man Todd! OSSORY. Thanks: I believe you may be right. DELHOMME. Good-bye, sir! OSSORY. Good-bye. MRS. OSSORY ["rising"]. Alfred, that man is a devil! OSSORY. What, little Delhomme? MRS. OSSORY. Of course not, Alfred. How can you be so silly? Todd! OSSORY. Why, whatever do you mean? MRS. OSSORY. I don't mean anything but what I say. {215} He's a devil; I'm sure of it. I know it was his fault, somehow. OSSORY. Nonsense, nonsense, my dear! He was not even in the car. MRS. OSSORY. It was his car, Alfred. OSSORY. You're a fool, Emily. CARR. I think Mr. Ossory means that we could hardly hold him responsible if one of his steamers ran down a poor polar bear on a drifting iceberg. MRS. OSSORY. I know I'm quite unreasonable; it's an instinct, and intuition. You know Saga of Bond Street said how psychic I was! ["During the next few speeches" CARR "and" EUPHEMIA "correspond by signs and" "winks." GRANDFATHER. When I was in Australia forty-four years ago there was a very good fellow of the name of Brown in Ballarat. Brown of Buninyong we used to call him. I remember ---- MRS. OSSORY. ["bursting into tears"]. How can you, grandpa? Can't you realise that poor Henry is dead? GRANDFATHER. Henry dead? MRS. OSSORY. Didn't you hear? He was run over by Mr. Todd's motor-car this afternoon in Piccadilly. GRANDFATHER. There, what did I tell you? I always disliked that man Todd from the first moment that I heard his name. Dear, dear! I always knew he would bring us trouble. OSSORY. Well, this doesn't seem to have been his fault, as far as we can see at present. But I assure you that I share {216} your sentiments. I have heard very ill things said of him, I can tell you. MRS. OSSORY. Who is he? Does any one know? A man of family, I hope. How dreadful for poor Henry if he had been run over by a plebeian! OSSORY. Well, we hardly know --- I wonder if his credit is good. ["His" "voice sinks to a whisper as the awful suspicion that he may be financially" "unsound strikes him."] CARR. ["sharply, as if pained"]. Oh, oh! Don't suggest such a thing without the very best reason. It would be too terrible! ["This time "EUPHEMIA "laughs." OSSORY. My dear boy, I deliberately say it. I have the very best of reasons for supposing him to be very deeply dipped. Very deeply dipped. CARR. ["Hides his head in his hands and groans, pretending to be" "overwhelmed by the tragedy. Looks up."] Well, I was told he other day that he held a lot of land in London and has more tenants than the Duke of Westminster! OSSORY. Well, we'll hope its is true. But in these days one never knows. And he leaves a very unpleasant impression wherever he goes. If I were not an Englishman I should say that the feeling I had for him was not very far removed from actual fear! CARR. well said, sir. Hearts of oak in the City, eh? [OSSORY "glares at him suspiciously." EUPHEMIA "both enjoys the joke and is" "angry that her father is the butt of it." EUPHEMIA. Well, I'm not afraid of him --- I think I rather like him. I'm sure he's a good man, when one knows him. {217} CARR. Oh, Todd's a good sort! I think I must be going, sir. EUPHEMIA. I wish you would stay and help me with the letters, Mr. Carr. We shall have a great deal to do in the next day or two. CARR. Well, if you really wish it, I will try and be of what service I can. [CARR, "with his back to audience, laughs with his hands, behind it." MRS. OSSORY. That is indeed kind of you, Professor! [CARR'S "hand-laugh grows riotous." GRANDFATHER. Where is Nurse? I want my whisky and milk. MRS. OSSORY. ["Rings."] I shall go down to lunch, Alfred. lunch when you like, please, everybody. I fear the house will be much upset for a day or two. You must go down to the mortuary at once. I am really too upset to do anything more. CARR. ["Over" L. "To " EUPHEMIA.] She hasn't done much yet! EUPHEMIA. What a brute you are! MRS. OSSORY. And we can't possibly go to the dear Duchess on Friday! CARR. ["almost in tears"]. Forgive my seeming callousness! ON my honour, I never thought of that. "Sunt lachrymae rerum.' ["A nurse and a footman appear. The latter wheels "GRANDFATHER "out of the" "room, using the greatest care not to shake him." {218} GRANDFATHER. Oh, my sciatica! You careless scoundrel, you're shaking me to pieces! Emily, do get a gentler footman. Oh! Oh! Nobody cares for the poor old man. I am thrown on the dust-heap. Oh, Emily, may you suffer one day as I suffer! Oh! Oh! Oh! ["The Nurse comes forward and soothes him." NURSE. You must really be more careful of my patient, Thomas. THOMAS. I humbly beg pardon, miss. I think the balls is gritty, miss. I'll ile 'em to-morrow. GRANDFATHER. There, you see, Nurse is the only one that loves me. I should like to marry you, Nurse, eh? And cut 'em all out? MRS. OSSORY. ["Glares at Nurse in silence, not trusting herself to speak to" "her."] Now, grandpa, don't be silly! You know how we all love you! ["She goes" "to the chair and shakes it, unseen."] Thomas, there you are again! How can you be so thoughtless? GRANDFATHER. Oh! Oh! Oh! ["They get him out of the room." MRS. OSSORY ["returning"]. Good-bye, Mr. Carr. It is so good of you to help. CARR. Not at all, Mrs. Ossory, not at all. I am only too glad. You should try and get a nap after lunch. MRS. OSSORY. I will --- I really think I will. ["Exit." CARR. ["Closes the door, turns to " EUPHEMIA, "executes a quiet hornpipe," "goes to " EUPHEMIA, "holds out his arms."] Sweetheart! EUPHEMIA. How dare you! How can you! With poor Uncle Henry lying dead! {219} CARR. Why have a long Latin name if you mean to play the English hypocrite? Who was poor Uncle Henry? Did you love poor Uncle Henry so dearly as all that? How old were you when your father quarrelled with poor Uncle Henry? About two and a half! The only thing you know about poor Uncle Henry is that poor Uncle Henry once tickled your toes. [EUPHEMIA "gives a little" "scream of horror."] Enough humbug about poor Uncle Henry! ... Sweetheart! EUPHEMIA. Mine own! ["They em brace and kiss with great intensity." EUPHEMIA. Unhand me, villain! ... But one has to be decent about one's relations. Even the humbug of it is rather fun. CARR. There speaks the daughter of Shakespeare's country. I am sure the Bacon imbroglio was a consummate practical joke on somebody's part. As I see the joke, I take no side in the controversy! But we should look on the bright side of things! ["Pompously."] Poor Uncle Henry, dead and turned to clay, May feed the Beans that keep the Bile away. Oh that whom all the world did once ignore Should purge a peer or ease an emperor! EUPHEMIA. But where is the bright side of our love? CARR. Why, our love! EUPHEMIA. Cannot you, cannot you understand? CARR. Not unless you tell me! EUPHEMIA. I can't tell you. {220} CARR. --- Anything I don't know. EUPHEMIA. Oh, you laugh even at me! CARR. Because I love you. so I laugh at humanity: if I took men seriously I sold have to cut my throat. EUPHEMIA. So you don't take me seriously either? CARR. If I did, I should have to cut --- EUPHEMIA. What? CARR. My lucky! EUPHEMIA. What a dreadful expression! Where do you learn such things? CARR. I notice you don't have to ask what it means. EUPHEMIA. Stop teasing, darling! CARR. I'm not teething! That's what I complain of; you always treat me as a baby! EUPHEMIA. Come to him mummy, then! CARR. You're not my mummy! That's what I complain of; you always treat me as a Cheops, ever since that night on the Great Pyramid! EUPHEMIA. ["Hides her head in his bosom."] Oh shame, shame! CARR. Not a bit of it! Think of the infinite clearness of the night --- "The magical green of the sunset, The magical blue of the Nile." The rising of the great globed moon --- the stars starting from their fastnesses like sentries on the alarm --- the isolation of our stance upon the summit --- the faery distance of Cairo and its spear-sharp minarets --- and we --- and we --- EUPHEMIA. Oh me! Oh me! CARR. Shall I remind you ---- {221} EUPHEMIA. Must "I" remind "you?" CARR. No; my memory is excellent. EUPHEMIA. Of what you swore? CARR. I swore at the granite for not being moss. EUPHEMIA. You swore to love me always. CARR. The champagne at the Mena House is not champagne; it is --- the cork of it is labelled "Good intentions." EUPHEMIA. Then you didn't mean it? CARR. ["kissing her"]. Am I, or am I not --- a plain question as between man and man --- loving you now? EUPHEMIA. Oh, I know! But I am so worried that everything most sure seems all shaken in the storm of it! I was glad --- glad, glad! --- when that Mr. Todd came in with his news, so that I could have a real good cry. ["Very close" "to him, in a tragic whisper."] Something has happened --- something is going to happen. CARR. And something has not happened --- I knew it was a long time since we missed a week. By the way, have you heard the terrible news about Queen Anne? Dead, poor soul! Never mind, silly, you told me most dramatically, and it shall be counted unto you for righteousness. EUPHEMIA. I think you're the greatest brute in the world --- and I love you. CARR. How reciprocal of you! EUPHEMIA. Sweet! CARR. On my honour, I haven't a single chocolate on me. Have a cigar? ["Business with case." EUPHEMIA. Be serious! You must marry me at once. CARR. then how can I be serious! I understand from a gentleman named Shaw that marriage is only a joke --- no, not Shaw! Vaughan, or Gorell Barnes, or some name like that! EUPHEMIA. But you will, won't you? CARR. No, I won't, will I? ["Sings."] "I have a wife and bairnies three, And I'm no sure how ye'd agree, lassie!" EUPHEMIA. What? ["She releases herself." CARR. Well, the wife's dead, as a matter of fact. Her name was Hope-of- ever-doing-something-in-the-Wide-Wide. But the bairns are alive: young Chemistry, already apt at repartee --- I should say retort; ,little Biology, who's rather a worm between you and me and the gate-post; and poor puny, puling, sickly little Metaphysics, with only one tooth in his upper jaw! Oh, don't cry! I love you as I always did and always shall. I'll see you through it somehow! But don't talk foolishness about marriage! We are happy because when I come to see you I come to see you. If we were living together you would soon get to know me as the brute who grumbles at the cooking and wants to shut himself up and work --- ["mimicking her voice"] "And I wouldn't mind so much if it were work, but all he does is to sit in a chair and smoke and stare at nothing and swear if any one comes in to ask him if my darling news old rose chiffon moiré Directoire corsets match my eau-de-Nil suede tussore appliqué garters." See? EUPHEMIA. But --- hush! ["She flies away to the other end of the room. The door opens. Enter" THOMAS. {223} THOMAS. Mr. Delomm would like to see you for a moment on urgent business. ["the lovers exchange signals privately." EUPHEMIA. Show him up. THOMAS. Yes, miss. [THOMAS "goes out." CARR. I will go and get a snack. Trust me --- love me --- EUPHEMIA. I will --- I do. ["They embrace." CARR "goes to the door --- turns." CARR. Love me --- trust me. [EUPHEMIA "flies to him, kisses him again, nods." EUPHEMIA. I will --- I do --- I love you --- I trust you. CARR. Sweetheart! ["they kiss, furtively, as if hearing footsteps."] So long! ["She retreats into the room, and blows him a kiss." CARR. ["outside, loudly"]. Good morning, Miss Ossory! EUPHEMIA. ["sinking into a chair, faintly"]. good-bye --- no. no! Till --- when? ["She is almost crying, but sets her teeth and rises." THOMAS. ["opening the door"]. Mr. Delomm. ["Enter" DELHOMME. DELHOMME. I am a thousand times sorry to intrude upon your grief, Miss Ossory, but ---- EUPHEMIA. Uncle Henry was nothing to me. DELHOMME. In any case, I should not have spoken to you, but my Embassy has suddenly called me. I am to go to Constantinople --- I may be a month away --- and --- I want to see you first. EUPHEMIA. Of course, to say good-bye. It is sweet of you to think of us, Monsieur Delhomme. {224} DELHOMME. Of you --- of thee. How difficult is the English language to express subtle differences! You must have seen, Miss Ossory ---- EUPHEMIA. ["dully"]. I have seen nothing. DELHOMME. May I speak? EUPHEMIA. What is this? Oh! DELHOMME. I need not tell you, I see. My unspoken sympathy and devotion ---- EUPHEMIA. Spare me, I pray you. DELHOMME. I must speak. Mademoiselle, I am blessed in loving you. I offer you the sympathy and devotion of a lifetime. EUPHEMIA. I beg you to spare me. It is impossible. DELHOMME. It is the truth --- it is necessary --- I should kill myself if you refused. EUPHEMIA. My father ---- DELHOMME. Your respected father is my warmest advocate. EUPHEMIA. You distress me, sir. It is impossible. DELHOMME. Ah, fairest of maidens, well I know your English coyness and modesty! ["Taking her hand."] Ah, give me this pure hand for good, for ever! This hand which has been ever open to the misery of the poor, ever closed to box the enemies of your country! EUPHEMIA. It is not mine! DELHOMME. I do not understand. I am too worn a slave in the world's market for my fettered soul to grasp your innocence. Ah! you are vowed to OUr Lady, perhaps? Yet, believe me ---- EUPHEMIA. Oh, sir, you distress me --- indeed you distress me! {225} DELHOMME. I would not brush the bloom from off the lily --- and yet ---- EUPHEMIA. My god! --- Monsieur Delhomme, I am going to shock you. Oh! Oh! ["She buries her face in her hands. He starts back, surprised at the turn" "things are taking, and at the violence of her emotion and of its" "expression." DELHOMME. What is it! Are you ill! Have I --- EUPHEMIA. ["Steady and straight before him."] I am another man's --- his --- his mistress. There! ["He reels, catches a chair and saves himself. Her breast heaves;" "swallowing a sob, she runs out of the room." DELHOMME. ["Utterly dazed"]. I --- I --- oh, my god! My father! My God! I thought her --- oh, I dare not say it --- I will not think it. ["On his" "knees, clutching at the chair."] My god, what shall I do! She was my life, my hope, my flower, my star, my sun! What shall I do! Help me! help me! Who shall console me? {"He continues in silent prayer, sobbing"]. ["The door opens;" MR. TODD "steals into the room on tiptoe, bends over him" "and whispers in his ear. The expression of anguish fails from his" "face; a calm steals over him; he smiles in beatitude wand his pips" "move in rapture. He rises, shakes" TODD "by the hand; they go out" "together." [GRANDFATHER "wheeled into the room by" THOMAS, CHARLEY "walking by him. The" "servant leaves them." GRANDFATHER. bitter cold, Charley, for us old people! {226} Nothing right nowadays! Oh, my poor leg! Bitter, bitter cold! I mind me, more than sixty years ago now --- oh dear! oh dear! run and tell Nurse I want my liniment! Oh dear! oh dear! what a wretched world. Sciatics --- like rats gnawing, gnawing at you, Charley. CHARLEY. You frighten me, grampa! Why doesn't Mr. Carr come and play with me? GRANDFATHER. He has gone out with your mother. He'll come by-and-by, no doubt. Run and fetch Nurse, Charley! [CHARLEY "runs off." Oh dear! I wish I could find a good doctor. Nobody seems to do me any good. It's pain, pain all the time. Nurse! can't you tell me of a good doctor? For oh! for oh! ["He looks about him fearfully; his voice sinks to a" "thrilled whisper"] I am so afraid --- afraid to die! Is there nobody ---- ["Enter "TODD, "and stands by his chair, laying his hand on the old man's" "shoulder. He looks up." I wish you were a doctor, Mr. Todd. You have such a soothing touch. Perhaps you are a doctor? I can get nobody to do me any good. [TODD "whispers in his ear. The old man brightens up at once." Why, yes! I should think that would relieve me at once. Very good! Very good! [TODD "wheels him out of the room, the old man laughing and chuckling." "Enter" OSSORY "and" EUPHEMIA, "talking." OSSORY. I want to say a word, girlie, about young Delhomme. {227} Er --- well, we all grow older, you know --- one day --- er --- ah! Nice young fellow, Delhomme! EUPHEMIA. I refused him twenty minutes ago, father. OSSORY. What? How the deuce did you know what I was going to say? Bless me, I believe there may be something in this psychic business after all! EUPHEMIA. Yes, father, I feel I have strange powers! OSSORY. But look here, girlie, why did you refuse him> "Reculer pour mieux" "sauter" is all very well, don't you know, but he gives twice who gives quickly. EUPHEMIA. That's the point, father. If you accept a man the first time he asks you it's practically bigamy! OSSORY. But --- little girl, you ought to accept him at once. He will make you an excellent husband --- I wish it. ["Pompously".] It has ever been the desire of my heart to see my Phemie happily mated before I lay my old bones in the grave. EUPHEMIA. But I don't love him. He's a quirk. OSSORY. Tut! Nonsense! Appetite comes with eating. EUPHEMIA. But I don't care for "Hors d'oeuvre." OSSORY. Euphemia, this is a very serious matter for your poor old father. EUPHEMIA. What have you got to do with it? Really, father ---- OSSORY. I have everything to do with it. The fact is, my child --- here! I'll make a clean breast of it. I've been gambling, and things have gone wrong. Only temporarily, of course, you understand. Only temporarily. But --- oh, if I had only kept out of Fidos! EUPHEMIA. Is it a dog? ["Whistles."] Here, Fido, Fido! Trust, doogie, trust! {228} OSSORY. that's it! they won't trust, those dogs! to put it short --- ["a" "spasm of agony crosses his face"] --- Good Lord alive, "I'm" short! If I can't find a couple of hundred thousand before the twelfth I'll be hammered. EUPHEMIA. And so ----? OSSORY. Very decent young fellow, little Delhomme. I can borrow half a million from him if I want it; but I don't care to unless --- unless things --- unless you ---- EUPHEMIA. I'm the goods, am I? You old bear! OSSORY. I know, Phemie, I know. It's those damned bulls on Wall Street! How could I foresee ---- EUPHEMIA. AT least you might have foreseen that I was not a bale of cotton. OSSORY. But I shall be hammered, my dear child. We shall all have to go to the workhouse! EUPHEMIA. ["coldly"]. I thought mamma had three thousand a year of her own. OSSORY. That's just what I say. The workhouse! EUPHEMIA. My dear father, I really can't pity you. I think you're a fool, and you've insulted me. Good morning! ["She goes out." OSSORY. Oh, the disgrace of it, the shame of it! She little knows ---- How will the Receiver look at that Galapagos turtle deal? Receivers are damned fools. And juries are worse. Ah, Phemie, so little a sacrifice for the father who has given all for you --- and she refuses! Cruel! Cruel! Which way can I turn? Is there nobody whose credit---- Let's think. Jenkins? No good. Maur? Too suspicious --- a nasty, sly, sneaking fellow! Higginbotham, Ramspittle, Rosenbaum, Hoggenheimer, Flipp, Montgomery, MacAn --- no, hang it! {229} no hope in a Mac --- Schpliechenspitzel, Togahening, Adams, Blitzenstein, Cznechzaditzch --- no use. I wonder where I caught that cold! who the devil is there that I could ask? ["Enter" THOMAS --- OSSORY'S "back toward door." THOMAS. Mr. Todd. ["Enter" TODD --- OSSORY "doesn't turn." OSSORY. I can't see him, Thomas. ["Turns."] I beg your pardon, Mr. Todd. The fact is, I'm damnably worried over pay-day. I really don't know you well enough to ask you, perhaps, but the fact is, I've a good sound business proposition which I must put before some one, and I believe you're the very man to help me. Now ---- [TODD "takes him by the shoulder and whispers in his ear." Why, really, that is good of you --- damned good of you! Why, damme, sir! you're a public benefactor. Come, let us arrange the preliminaries ---- ["They go out," OSSORY "clinging tightly to" TODD'S "arm." "Enter" MRS. OSSORY "and" CARR, "dressed for walking." MRS. OSSORY. She cut me! You saw it! She cut me absolutely dead! CARR. Possibly she didn't see you. ["As "MRS. OSSORY "is not looking, he employs a gesture which lessens the" "likelihood of this, by calling attention to her bulk." MRS. OSSORY. I know she saw me. My only Duchess! CARR. There's better duchesses in Burke than ever came out of it, Mrs. Ossory. By the way, unless rumour lies, the jade! you can fly much higher than a paltry Duchess! MRS. OSSORY. Why, why, what do you mean? Oh, dear Professor, how sweet of you! Or are you joking? Somehow {230} one never knows whether you are serious or not! But you wouldn't make fun of my embarrassments --- Society is so serious, isn't it? But, oh do! do tell me what they say! CARR. Well, Mrs. Ossory --- you know our mysterious friend? MRS. OSSORY. Mr. Todd? CARR. Yes. Well, they say that --- he is a King in his own country. MRS. OSSORY. And I've always disliked and distrusted him so! But perhaps that was just the natural awe that I suppose one must always feel, even when one doesn't know, you know. I wonder, now, if we could get him to a little dinner. One could always pretend one didn't know who he was! Let me see, now! Caviar de sterlet royale ---- CARR. Consommé royale, sole à la royale, haunch of royal venison --- can't insult him with mere baron of beef --- pouding royale, glace à l'impératrice, canapé royale --- you'll be able to "feed" him all right! MRS. OSSORY. How clever you are, Professor! Thank you so much. Now who should we ask to meet him? CARR. I rather expect you'll have to meet him "alone!" MRS. OSSORY. "Tête-à-tête!" But would that be quite "proper," Professor? CARR. How very English! --- all you English think that. But --- royalty has its own etiquette. ["Enter" CHARLEY. Come along, Charley boy, and show me how the new engine works! {231} Never mind that old frump of a Duchess, Mrs. Ossory --- perhaps Mr. Todd may call. ["Goes out with" CHARLEY. MRS. OSSORY. I do hope he meant it. But he's such a terrible man for pulling legs, as they call it. --- I can't think where Euphemia picks up all her slang! -- If that plain, quiet man should really be a crowned King! Oh! how I would frown at her! Ah! ah! Somebody coming. ["Enter" THOMAS. THOMAS. Mr. Todd. ["Enter" TODD. MRS. OSSORY. Oh, my dear Mr. Todd, I am so glad to see you! I'm in such distress! You will help me, won't you? [TODD "bows, smiles, and whispers in her ear. She smiles all over. "TODD " "offers his arm. She goes out on it, giggling and wriggling with" "pleasure. Enter" EUPHEMIA. EUPHEMIA. I wonder where mother is! No, I don't want her. I'm too happy. How I love him! How proud I am --- when another girl would be so shamed! I love him! I love him! Oh, what a world of ecstasy is this! To be his, and he mine! to be --- oh! oh! I cannot bear the joy of it. I want to sit down and have a good cry. ["Sits, crying and laughing with the you of it."] Oh, loving Father of all, what a world Thou hast made! What a gift is life! How much it holds of love and laughter! Is there anything more, anything better? I cannot believe it. Is there anything, anybody that could make me happier? THOMAS. Mr. Todd. ["Enter" TODD. EUPHEMIA. Good afternoon, Mr. Todd! So glad to see you! Why, how strange you look! What have you to say to me? [TODD "whispers in her ear." {232} EUPHEMIA. How splendid! You mean it? It is true? Better than all the rest! Come, come! ["She throws her arm round his neck and runs laughing out of the room with" "him." ["Enter" CARR "and" CHARLEY, "a toy steam-engine puffing in front of them; they" "follow on hands and knees. The engine stops at the other end of the" "room." CHARLEY. Oh, my poor engine's stopped! CARR. You must pour more spirit into it. [CHARLEY "goes to the cupboard and gets it, busying himself until" CARR'S " "exit. "CARR "signs heavily, and sits down thoughtfully." Todd's been too frequently to this house. Well, Charley and I must get on as best we can. Life is a hard thing, my god! "Meantime there is our life here. Well?" It seems sometimes to me as if all the world's wisdom were summed up in that one Epicurus phrase. For if Todd has solved all their problems with a word, at least he supplies no hint of the answer to mine. For I --- it seems I hardly know what question to ask! Oh, Charley boy, the future is with you, and with your children --- or, can humanity every solve the great secret? Is progress a delusion? Are men mad? Is the great secret truly transcendental? We are like madmen, beating out our poor brains upon the walls of the Universe. Is there no Power that might reveal itself? ["Kneels."] Who art Thou before whom all things are equal, {233} being as dust? Who givest his fame to the poet, his bankruptcy to the rich man? Who dost distinguish between the just and the unjust? Thou keeper of all secrets, of this great secret which I seek, and have nowise found! This secret for whose very shadowing-forth in parable I, who am young, strong, successful, beloved, most enviable of men, would throw it all away! Oh Thou who givest that which none other can give, who art Thou? How can I bargain with Thee? what shall I give that I may possess Thy secret? O question unavailing! For I know not yet Thy name! Who art Thou? Who art Thou? THOMAS ["opening the door"]. Mr. Todd. ["Enter" TODD. CARR. ["rising"]. How are you? I'm afraid you find me distracted! Listen: all my life I have sought --- nor counted the cost --- for the secret of things. Science is baffled, for Knowledge hath no wings! Religion is baffled, for Faith hath no feet! Life itself --- of what value is all this coil and tumult? Who shall give me the secret? What is the secret? [TODD "whispers in his ear." Why, thanks, thanks! What a fool I have been! I have always known who you were, of course, but how could I guess you had the key of things? Simple as A B C --- or, rather, as A! And nothing to pay after all! "For of all Gods you only love not gifts." ["Ushers" TODD "to the door."] I follow you. [TODD "smiles kindly on him. They go out." ["The child turns; and, finding himself alone, begins to cry." CHARLEY. My nice man has gone away. Old Todd has taken him away. I think I hate that old Todd! ["Enter" TODD. {234} I hate you! I hate you! Where is my nice man? [TODD "whispers in his ear." Oh, I see. It is when people get to be grown-ups that they don't like you any more. But I like you, Mr. Todd. Carry me pick-a-back! [TODD "takes" CHARLEY "on his shoulder, and goes dancing from the room, the" "boy crowing with delight." CURTAIN. {235} THE GNOME LANTERN-LIGHT is over the fells When the sun has sunken low; Lantern-light and the moorland smells, The rain on the good brown soil. Over the moorland we go, we go, Through the wet earth we toil. ... Sunken, sunken was the sun Ere ever the moon uprose, And the tall dark trees cast shadows dun Over the lonely way; Over the moorland the long path goes We trod at the close of day. We sped to reach the dark green hill. The Hill of the Bloody Bowl, And the shadows were watching, watching us still As we crept in the shadowless path, Over the moor to the Mother Troll With the heart that was pierced in wrath. {236} Stumbling over the fallen leaves, sliding over the dew, Staring up at the barley sheaves That nod in the autumn wind, We pushed and jostled the twilight thro', Shrilling to those behind. And ere the night had grown to noon We were under the Bloody Bowl, And then uprose a huge pale moon. Behind the shivering trees; And so we found the Mother Troll Well-skilled in mysteries. She heard our coming, and rose to the door, And we hurried eagerly through; We entered in with a breeze from the moor, And stood by the fading pyre. The air was smoky, the flame was blue, And the face of the Troll like fire. And so we gave her the heart of the slain, That was slain for a dead man's sake; She chuckled low at each blackened vein Gory an brown and torn; She wriggled her sides like a wounded snake As she squeezed the blood into a horn. {237} Far into the fire she cast the blood, And the flames grew twisted and red; Her breast heaved with her passion's flood As a hollow-eyed ghost arose Like a cloud of stench from the rotting dead. When a wind from a pest-house blows. She clasped the ghost to her skinny dugs, --- No other love might she know, --- The dead man squirmed at her panting hugs, But she had her passionate will, And a sobbing breeze began to blow From the top of the lonely hill. And then a dim grey streak of dawn Came, and the sad ghost fled, With staring sockets and jaw-bone drawn, Back to the desolate place; The morning breeze grew still and dead As it played around his face. So we fled from the Mother Troll Under the dawning grey; We left the Hill of the Bloody Bowl; Ere ever the sun uprose, But the dead man's heart till Judgment-day Shall there with the Troll repose. VICTOR B. NEUBURG. {238} REVIEWS DARE TO BE WISE. By JOHN McTAGGART ELLIS McTAGGART Doctor in Letters Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College in Cambridge, Fellow of the British Academy. Watts and Co., 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E. C. Price 3"d". Only the Price Threepence saved my reason. "Dare to be Wise" is startling enough; but when one saw Who it was that advised it ... "Our object," quoth he ("our" being the "Heretics"), "is to promote discussion upon religion, philosophy, and art. ..." These desperate conspirators! What is the Parry-lytic Liar about to allow such things in Trinity? "In seeking truth of all sorts many virtues are needed." This daring thinker! "Happiness and misery have much to do with welfare." These burning words may rekindle the fires of Smithfield. "Here we find the need of courage. For, if we are to think on these matters at all, we must accept the belief for which we have evidence, and we must reject the belief for which we have no evidence. ... And, sometimes, this is not easy." This unworthy right hand! We should not think of calling this Martyr to His Convictions, this Revolutionary Thinker, an ass in a lion's skin. For asses can kick. Shall we say a sheep in wolf's clothing? For the Heretics are too clearly Sheep --- probably descended from Mary's little lamb. If the Dean were to frown, they would all take to their heels, and break the record for attending chapel. In fact, this is what happened, when he did frown! Just like the Rationalists themselves when they disowned and deserted Harry Boulter. I am coming round to the belief that the best test of a religion is the manhood of its adherents rather than its truth. Better believe a lie than act like a coward! And of all the pusillanimous puppies I have ever heard of, there are none to beat the undergraduates who wagged their rudimentary tails round the toothless old hound that yelped "Dare to be wise" on last 8th December. I hate Christianity as Socialists hate soap; but I would rather be saved {239} with Livingstone and Gordon, Havelock and Nicholson, than damned with Charles Watts and John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart Doctor in Letters Fellow and Lecturer Of Trinity College In Cambridge, and Fellow Of the Berritish Ac-ad-em-y. I wonder, by the way, whether "letters" isn't a misprint. If not, did he really qualify at the Sorbonne? ALEISTER CROWLEY. THE ARCANE SCHOOLS. By JOHN YARKER. William Tait, 3 Wellington Park Avenue, Belfast. 12s. net. The reader of this treatise is at first overwhelmed by the immensity of Brother Yarker's erudition. He seems to have examined and quoted every document that ever existed. It is true that he occasionally refers to People like Hargrave Jennings, A. E. Waite, and H. P. Blavatsky as if they were authorities; but whoso fishes with a net of so wide a sweep as Brother Yarker's must expect to pull in some worthless fish. This accounts for Waite's contempt of him; imagine Walford Bodie reviewing a medical book which referred to him as an authority on paralysis! The size of the book, too, is calculated to effray; reading it has cost me many pounds in gondolas! And it is the essential impossibility of all works of this kind that artistic treatment is not to be attained. But Brother Yarker has nobly suppressed a Spencerian tendency to ramble; he has written with insight, avoided pedantry, and made the dreary fields of archeology blossom with flowers of interest. Accordingly, we must give him the highest praise, for he has made the best possible out of that was nearly the worst possible. He has abundantly proved his main point, the true antiquity of some Masonic system. It is a parallel to Frazer's tracing of the history of the Slain God. But why is there no life in any of our Slain God rituals! It is for us to restore them by the Word and the Grip. For us, who have the inner knowledge, inherited or won, it remains to restore the true rites of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, of Set, Serapis, Mithras, and Abel. ALEISTER CROWLEY. {240} THE HERB DANGEROUS PART IV A FEW EXTRACTS FROM H. G. LUDLOW, THE HASHEESH EATER WHICH BEAR UPON THE PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DRUG'S ACTION THE HASHEESH EATER FOR a place, New York for instance, a stranger accounts, not by saying that any one of the many who testify to its existence copied from another, but by acknowledging "there is such a place." So do I account for the fact by saying "there is such a fact." We try to imitate Eastern narrative, but in vain. Our minds can find no clew to its strange untrodden by-ways of speculation; our highest soarings are still in an atmosphere which feels heavy with the reek and damp of ordinary life. We fail to account for those storm-wrapped peaks of sublimity which hover over the path of Oriental story, or those beauties which, like rivers of Paradise, make music beside it. We are all of us taught to say, "The children of the East live under a sunnier sky than their Western brethren: they are the "repositors" of centuries of tradition; their semi-civilised imagination is unbound by the fetters of logic and the schools." But the Ionians once answered all these conditions, yet Homer sang no Eblis, no superhuman journey on the wings of genii through infinitudes of rosy either. At one period of their history, France, Germany, and England abounded in all the characteristics of the untutored Old World mind, yet when did an echo of oriental music ring from the lute of minstrel, {243} "minnesinger," or "trovère?" The difference can not be accounted for by climate, religion, or manners. It is not the supernatural in Arabian story which is inexplicable, but the peculiar phase of the supernatural both in beauty and terror. I say inexplicable, because to me, in common with all around me, it bore this character for years. In later days, I believe, and now with all due modesty assert, I unlocked the secret, not by a hypothesis, not by processes of reasoning, but by journeying through those self-same fields of weird experience which are dinted by the sandals of the glorious old dreamers of the East. Standing on the same mounts of vision where they stood, listening to the same gurgling melody that broke from their enchanted fountains, yes, plunging into their rayless caverns of sorcery, and imprisoned with their genie in the unutterable silence of the fathomless sea, have I dearly bought the right to come to men with the chart of my wanderings in my hands, and unfold to them the foundations of the fabric of Oriental story. The secret lies in the use of hasheesh. A very few words will suffice to tell what hasheesh is. In northern latitudes the hemp plant ("Cannabis sativa") grows almost entirely to fibre, becoming, in virtue of this quality, the great resource for mats and cordage. Under a southern sun this same plant loses its fibrous texture, but secretes, in quantities equal to one-third of its bulk, and opaque and greenish resin. Between the northern and the southern hemp there is no difference, except the effect of diversity of climate upon the same vegetable essence; yet naturalists, misled by the much greater extent of gummy secretion in the later, have distinguished it from its brother of the colder soil by the name "Cannabis indica." The {244} resin of the "Cannabis" "indica" is hasheesh. From time immemorial it has been known among all the nations of the East as possessing powerful stimulant and narcotic properties; throughout Turkey, Persia, Nepaul, and India it is used at this day among all classes of society as an habitual indulgence. The forms in which it is employed are various. sometimes it appears in the state in which it exudes from the mature stalk, as a crude resin; sometimes it is manufactured into a conserve with clarified butter, honey, and spices; sometimes a decoction is made of the flowering tops in water or arrack. Under either of these forms the method of administration is by swallowing. Again, the dried plant is smoked in pipes of chewed, as tobacco among ourselves. ... a pill sufficient to balance the ten-grain weight of the scales. This, upon the authority of Pereira and the Dispensatory, I swallowed without a tremor as to the danger of the result. Making all due allowance for the fact that I had not taken my hasheesh bolus fasting, I ought to experience its effects within the next four hours. That time elapsed without bringing the shadow of a phenomenon. It was plain that my dose had been insufficient. For the sake of observing the most conservative prudence, I suffered several days to go by without a repetition of the experiment, and then, keeping the matter equally secret, I administered to myself a pill of fifteen grains. This second was equally ineffectual with the first. Gradually, by five grains at a time, I increased the dose to thirty grains, which I took one evening half an hour after tea. {245} I had now almost come to the conclusion that I was absolutely unsusceptible of the hasheesh influence. Without any expectation that this last experiment would be more successful than the former ones, and indeed with no realization of the manner in which the drug affected those who did make the experiment successfully, I went to pass the evening at the house of an intimate friend. In music and conversation the time passed pleasantly. The clock struck ten, reminding me that three hours had elapsed since the dose was taken, and as yet not an unusual symptom had appeared. I was provoked to think that this trial was as fruitless as its predecessors. Ha! what means this sudden thrill? A shock, as of some unimagined vital force, shoots without warning through my entire frame, leaping to my fingers' ends, piercing my brain, startling me till I almost spring from my chair. I could not doubt it. I was in the power of the hasheesh influence. My first emotion was one of uncontrollable terror --- a sense of getting something which I had not bargained for. That moment I would have given all I had or hoped to have to be as I was three hours before. No pain anywhere --- not a twinge in any fibre --- yet a cloud of unutterable strangeness was settling upon me, and wrapping me impenetrably in from all that was natural or familiar. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of my own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke, and in another world. I sat and listened; still the voice kept speaking. Now for the first time I experienced that vast change which hasheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first world of the reply occupied a period sufficient {246} for the action of a drama; the last left me in complete ignorance of any point far enough back in the past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation might have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held me when I heard it begun. And now, with time, space expanded also. At my friend's house one particular arm-chair was always reserved for me. I was sitting in it at a distance of hardly three feet from the centre table around which the members of the family were grouped. Rapidly that distance widened. The whole atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces surrounding me on every side. We were in a vast hall, of which my friends and I occupied opposite extremities. The ceiling and the walls ran upward with a gliding motion as if vivified by a sudden force of resistless growth. Oh! I could not bear it. I should soon be left alone in the midst of an infinity of space. And now more and more every moment increased the conviction that I was watched. I did not know then, as I learned afterward, that suspicion of all earthly things and persons was the characteristic of the hasheesh delirium. In the midst of my complicated hallucination, I could perceive that I had a dual existence. One portion of me was whirled unresistingly along the track of this tremendous experience, the other sat looking down fro a height upon its double, observing, reasoning, and serenely weighting all the phenomena. This calmer being suffered with the other by sympathy, but did not lose its self-possession. The servant had not come. {247} "Shall I call her again?" "Why, you have this moment called her." "Doctor," I replied solemnly, and in language that would have seem bombastic enough to any one who did not realise what I felt, "I will not believe you are deceiving me, but to me it appears as if sufficient time has elapsed since then for all the Pyramids to have crumbled back to dust." Any now, in another life, I remembered that far back in the cycles I had looked at my watch to measure the time through which I passed. The impulse seized me to look again. The minute-hand stood half-way between fifteen and sixteen minutes past eleven. The watch must have stopped; I held it to my ear: no, it was still going. I had travelled through all that immeasurable chain of dreams in thirty seconds. "My God!" I cried, "I am in eternity." In the presence of that first sublime revelation of the soul's own time, and her capacity for an infinite life, I stood trembling with breathless awe. Till I die, that moment of unveiling will stand in clear relief from all the rest of my existence. I hold it still in unimpaired remembrance as one of the unutterable sanctities of my being. The years of all my earthly life to come can never be as long as those thirty seconds. Before entering on the record of this new vision I will make a digression for the purpose of introducing two laws of the hasheesh operation, which, as explicatory, deserve a place here. First, after the completion of any one fantasia has arrived, there almost invariably succeeds a shifting of the action to some other stage entirely different in its surroundings. In this transition the general character of the emotion {248} may remain unchanged. I may be happy in Paradise and happy at the sources of the Nile, but seldom, either in Paradise or on the Nile, twice in succession. I may writhe in Etna and burn unquenchably in Gehenna, but almost never, in the course of the same delirium, shall Etna or Gehenna witness my torture a second time. Second, after the full storm of a vision of intense sublimity has blown past the hasheesh-eater, his next vision is generally of a quiet, relaxing, and recreating nature. He comes down from his clouds or up from his abyss into a middle ground of gentle shadows, where he may rest his eyes from the splendour of the seraphim or the flames of fiends. There is a wise philosophy in this arrangement, for otherwise the soul would soon burn out in the excess of its own oxygen. Many a times, it seems to me, has my own thus been saved from extinction. When I woke it was morning --- actually morning, and not a hasheesh hallucination. The first emotion that I felt upon opening my eyes was happiness to find things again wearing a natural air. Yes; although the last experience of which I had been conscious had seemed to satisfy every human want, physical or spiritual, I smiled on the four plain white walls of my bed- chamber, and hailed their familiar unostentatiousness with a pleasure which had no wish to transfer itself to arabesque or rainbows. It was like returning home from an eternity spent in loneliness among the palaces of strangers. Well may I say an eternity, for during the whole day I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was separated from the preceding one by an immeasurable lapse of time. In fact, I never got wholly rid of it. {249} I rose that I might test my reinstated powers, and see if the restoration was complete. Yes, I felt not one trace of bodily weariness nor mental depression. Every function had returned to its normal state, with the one exception mentioned; memory could not efface the traces of my having passed through a great mystery. No. I never should take it again. I did not know myself; I did not know hasheesh. There are temperaments, no doubt, upon which this drug produces, as a reactory result, physical and mental depression. With me this was never the case. Opium and liquors fix themselves as a habit be becoming necessary to supply that nervous waste which they in the first place occasioned. The lassitude which succeeds their exaltation demands a renewed indulgence, and accordingly every gratification of the appetite is parent to the next. But no such element entered into the causes which attached me to hasheesh. I speak confidently, yet without exaggeration, when I say that I have spent many an hour in torture such as was never known by Cranmer at the stake, or Gaudentio di Lucca in the Inquisition, yet out of the depths of such experience "I" have always come without a trace of its effect in diminished strength or buoyancy. Had the first experiment been followed by depression, I had probably never repeated it. At any rate, unstrung muscles and an enervated mind could have been resisted much more effectually when they pleaded for renewed indulgence than the form which the fascination actually took. For days I was even unusually strong; all the forces of life were in a state of pleasurable activity, but the memory of the wondrous glories {250} which I had beheld wooed me continually like an irresistible sorceress. I could not shut my eyes for midday musing without beholding in that world, half dark, half light, beneath the eyelids, a steady procession of delicious images which the severest will could not banish nor dim. Now through an immense and serene sky floated luxurious argosies of clouds continually changing form and tint through an infinite cycle of mutations. Now, suddenly emerging from some deep embowerment of woods, I stood upon the banks of a broad river that curved far off into dreamy distance, and glided noiselessly past its jutting headlands, reflecting a light which was not of the sun nor of the moon, but midway between them, and here and there thrilling with subdues prismatic rays. Temples and gardens, fountains and vistas stretched continually through my waking or sleeping imagination, and mingled themselves with all I heard, or read, or saw. On the pages of Gibbon the palaces and lawns of Nicomedia were illustrated with a hasheesh tint and a hasheesh reality; and journeying with old Dan Chaucer, I drank in a delicious landscape of revery along all the road to Canterbury. The music of my vision was still heard in echo; as the bells of Bow of old time called to Whittington, so did it call to me --- "Turn again, turn again." And I turned. It will be remembered that the hasheesh states of ecstasy always alternate with less intense conditions, in which the prevailing phenomena re those of mirth or tranquillity. In accordance with this law, in the present instance, Dan, to whom I had told my former experience, was not surprised to hear me break forth at the final cadence of our song into a {251} pal of unextinguishable laughter, but begged to know what was its cause, that he might laugh too. I could only cry out that my right leg was a tin case filled with stair-rods, and as I limped along, keeping that member perfectly rigid, both from fear of cracking the metal and the difficulty of bending it, I heard the rattle of the brazen contents shaken from side to side with feeling of the most supreme absurdity possible to the human soul. Presently the leg was restored to its former state, but in the interim its mate had grown to a size which would have made it a very respectable totter for Brian Boru or one of the Titans. Elevated some few hundred feet into the firmament, I was compelled to hop upon my giant pedestal in a way very ungraceful in a world where two legs were the fashion, and eminently disagreeable to the slighted member, which sought in vain to reach the earth with struggles amusing from their very insignificance. This ludicrous affliction being gradually removed, I went on my way quietly until we again began to be surrounded by the houses of the town. And now that unutterable thirst which characterises hasheesh came upon me. I could have lain me down and lapped dew from the grass. I must drink, wheresoever, howsoever. We soon reached home --- soon, because it was not five squares off from where we sat down, yet ages, from the thirst which consumed me and the expansion of time in which I lived. I came into the house as one would approach a fountain in the desert, with a wild bound of exultation, and gazed with miserly eyes at the draught which my friend poured out for me until the glass was brimming. I clutched it --- I {252} put it to my lips. Ha! a surprise! It was not water, but the most delicious metheglin in which ever bard of the Cymri drank the health of Howell Dda. It danced and sparkled like some liquid metempsychosis of amber; it gleamed with the spiritual fire of a thousand chrysolites. to sight, to taste it was metheglin, such as never mantled in the cups of the Valhalla. Hasheesh I called the "drug of travel," and I had only to direct my thoughts strongly toward a particular part of the world previously to swallowing my bolus to make my whole fantasia in the strongest possible degree topographical. There are two facts which I have verified as universal by repeated experiment, which fall into their place here as aptly ass then can in the course of my narrative. First: At two different times, when body and mind are apparently in precisely analogous states, when all circumstances, exterior and interior, do not differ tangibly in the smallest respect, the same dose of the same preparation of hasheesh will frequently produce diametrically opposite effects. Still further, I have taken at one time a pill of thirty grains, which hardly gave a perceptible phenomenon, and at another, when my dose had been but half that quantity, I have suffered the agonies of a martyr, or rejoiced in a perfect phrensy. so exceedingly variable are its results, that, long before I abandoned the indulgence, I took each succcessive bolus with the consciousness that I was daring an uncertainty as tremendous as the equipoise between hell and heaven. Yet the fascination employed Hope as its advocate, an won the suit. Secondly: If, during the ecstasy {253} of hasheesh delirum, another dose, however small --- yes, though it be no larger than half a pea --- be employed to prolong the condition, such agony will inevitably ensue as will make the soul shudder at its own possibility of endurance without annihilation. By repeated experiments, which now occupy the most horrible place upon my catalogue of horrible remembrances, have I proved that, among all the variable phenomena of hasheesh, this alone stands unvarying . The use of it directly after any other stimulus will produce consequences as appalling. I extinguished my light. To say this may seem trivial, but it is as important a matter as any which it is possible to notice. The most direful suggestions of the bottomless pit may flow in upon thehasheesh eater through the very medium of darkness. The blowing out of a candle can set an unfathomed barathrum wide agape beneath the flower-wreathed table of his feast, and convert his palace of sorcery into a Golgotha. Light is a necessity to him, even when sleeping; it must tinge his visions, or they assume a hue as sombre as the banks of Styx. It was an awaking, which, for torture, had no parallel in all the stupendous domain of sleeping incubus. Beside my bed in the centre of the room stood a bier, from whose corners drooped the folds of a heavy pall; outstretched upon it lay in state a most fearful corpse, whose livid face was distorted with the pangs of assassination. The traces of a great agony were frozen into fixedness in the tense position of every muscle, and the nails of the dead man's fingers pierced {254} his palms with the desperate clinch of one who has yielded not without agonising resistance. Two tapers at his head, two at his feet, with their tall and unsnuffed wicks, made the ghastliness of the bier more luminously unearthly, and a smothered laugh of derision from some invisible watcher ever and anon mocked the corpse, as if triumphant demons were exulting over their prey. I pressed my hands upon my eye-balls till they ached, in intensity of desire to shut out the spectacle; I buried my head in the pillow, that I might not hear that awful laugh of diabolic sarcasm. But --- oh horror immeasurable! I behold the walls of the room slowly gliding together, the ceiling coming down, the floor ascending, as of old the lonely captive saw them, whose cell was doomed to be his coffin. Nearer and nearer am I born toward the corpse. I shrunk back from the edge of the bed; I cowered in most abject fear. I tried to cry out, but speech was paralysed. The walls came closer and closer together. Presently my hand lay on the dead man's forehead. I made my arm as straight and rigid as a bar of iron; but of what avail was human strength against the contraction of that cruel masonry? Slowly my elbow bent with the ponderous pressure; nearer grew the ceiling --- I fell into the fearful embrace of death. I was pen, I was stifled in the breathless niche, which was all of space still left to me. The stony eyes stared up into my own, and again the maddening peal of fiendish laughter rang close beside my ear. now I was touched on all sides by the walls of the terrible press; there came a heavy crush, and I felt all sense blotted out in darkness. I awoke at last; the corpse was gone, but I had taken his {255} place upon the bier. In the same attitude which he had kept I lay motionless, conscious, although in darkness, that I wore upon my face the counterpart of his look of agony. The room had grown into a gigantic hall, whose roof was framed of iron arches; the pavement, the walls, the cornice were all of iron. The spiritual essence of the metal seemed to be a combination of cruelty and despair. Its massive hardness spoke a language which it is impossible to embody in words, but any one who has watched the relentless sweep of some great engine crank, and realised its capacity for murder, will catch a glimpse, even in the memory, of the thrill which seemed to say, "This iron is a tearless fiend," of the unutterable meaning I saw in those colossal beams and buttresses. I suffered from the vision of that iron as from the presence of a giant assassin. But my senses opened slowly to the perception of still worse presences. By my side there gradually emerged from the sulphurous twilight which bathed the room the most horrible form which the soul could look upon unshattered --- a fiend also of iron, white-hot and dazzling with the glory of the nether penetralia. A face that was theferreous incarnation of all imaginations of malice and irony looked on me with a glare withering from its intense heat, but still more from the unconceived degree of inner wickedness which it symbolised. I realised whose laughter I had heard, and instantly I heard it again. Beside him another demon, his very twin, was rocking a tremendous cradle framed of bars of iron like all things else, and candescent with as fierce a heat as the fiend's. And now, in a chant of the most terrific blasphemy which it is possible to imagine, or rather of blasphemy so fearful that no human thought has ever conceived of it, both the {256} demons broke forth, until I grew intensely wicked merely by hearing it. I still remember the meaning of the song they sand, although there is no language yet coined which will convey it, and far be it from me event to suggest its nature, lest I should seem to perpetuate in any degree such profanity as beyond the abodes of the lost no pips are capable of uttering. Every note of the music itself accorded with the thought as symbol represents essence, and with its clangour mixed the maddening creak of the for ever oscillating cradle, until I felt driven into a ferocious despair. Suddenly the nearest fiend, snatching up a pitchfork (also of white-hot iron), thrust it into my writing side, and hurled me shrieking into the fiery cradle. I sought in my torture to scale the bars; they slipped from my grasp and under my feet like the smoothest icicles. Through increasing grades of agony I lay unconsumed, tossing from side to side with the rocking of the dreadful engine, and still above me pealed the chant of blasphemy, and the eyes of demoniac sarcasm smiled at me in mockery of a mother's gaze upon her child. "Let us sing him," said one of the fiends to the other, "the lullaby of Hell." The blasphemy now changed into an awful word-picturing of eternity, unveiling what it was, and dwelling with raptures of malice upon its infinitude, its sublimity of growing pain, and its privation of all fixed points which might mark it into divisions. By emblems common to all language rather than by any vocal words, did they sing this frightful apocalypse, yet the very emblems had a sound as distinct as tongue could give them. This was one, and the only one of their representatives that I can remember. Slowly they began, 'To-day is father of to-morrow, to-morrow hath a son that {257} shall beget the day succeeding." With increasing rapidity they sang in this way, day by day, the genealogy of a thousand years, and I traced on the successive generations, without a break in one link, until the rush of their procession reached a rapidity so awful as fully to typify eternity itself; and still I fled on through that burning genesis of cycles. I feel that I do not convey my meaning, but may no one else ever understand it better. Withered like a leaf in the breath of an oven, after millions of years I felt myself tossed upon the iron floor. The fiends had departed, the cradle was gone. I stood alone, staring into immense and empty spaces. Presently I found that I was in a colossal square, as of some European city, alone at the time of evening twilight, and surrounded by houses hundreds of stories high. I was bitterly athirst. I ran to the middle of the square, and reached it after an infinity of travel. There was a fountain carved in iron, every jet inimitably sculptured in mockery of water, yet dry as the ashes of a furnace. "I shall perish with thirst," I cried. "Yet one more trial. There must be people in all these immense houses. Doubtless they love the dying traveller, and will give him to drink. Good friends! water! water!" A horribly deafening din poured down on me from the four sides of the square. Every sash of all the hundred stories of every house in that colossal quadrangle flew up as by one spring. Awakened by my call, at every window stood a terrific maniac. Sublimely in the air above me, in front, beside me, on either hand, and behind my back, a wilderness of insane faces gnashed at me, glared, gibbered, howled, laughed horribly, hissed and cursed. At the unbearable sight {258} I myself became insane, and leaping up and down, mimicked them all, and drank their demented spirit. Hasheesh is indeed an accursed drug, and the soul at last pays a most bitter price for all its ecstasies; moreover, the use of it is not the proper means of gaining any insight, yet who shall say that at that season of exaltation I did not know things as they are more truly than ever in the ordinary state? Let us not assert that the half-careless and uninterested way in which we generally look on nature is the normal mode of the soul's power of vision. There is a fathomless meaning, an intensity of delight in all our surroundings, which our eyes must be unsealed to see. In the jubilance of hasheesh, we have only arrived by an improper pathway at the secret of that infinity of beauty which shall be beheld in heaven and earth when the veil of the corporeal drops off, and we know as we are known. Then from the muddy waters of our life, defiled by the centuries of degeneracy through which they have flowed, we shall ascend to the old-time original fount, and grow rapturous with its apocalytpic draught. I do not remember whether I have yet mentioned that in the hasheesh state an occasional awakening occurs, perhaps as often as twice in an hour (though I have no way of judging accurately, from the singular properties of the hasheesh time), when the mind returns for an exceedingly brief space to perfect consciousness, and views all objects in their familiar light. Awaking on the morrow after a succession of vague and {259} delicious dreams, I had not yet returned to the perfectly natural state. I now began to experience a law of hasheesh which developed its effects more and more through all future months of its use. With the progress of the hasheesh life, the effect of every successive indulgence grows more per-during until the hitherto isolated experiences become tangent to each other; then the links of the delirium intersect, and at last so blend that the chain has become a continuous band, now resting with joyous lightness as a chaplet, and now mightily pressing in upon the soul like the glowing hoop of iron which holds martyrs to the stake. The final months of this spell-bound existence, be it terminated by mental annihilation or by a return into the quiet and mingled facts of humanity are passed in one unbroken yet chequered dream. Moreover, through many ecstasies and many pains, I still supposed that I was only making experiments, and that, too, in the most wonderful field of mind which could be opened for investigation, and with an agent so deluding in its influence that the soul only became aware that the strength of a giant was needed to escape when its locks were shorn. Upon William N---- hasheesh produced none of the effects characteristic of fantasia. There was no hallucination, no volitancy of unusual images before the eye when closed. Circulation, however, grew to a surprising fulness and rapidity, accompanied by the same introversion of faculties and clear perception of all physical processes which startled my in my first experiment upon myself. There was stertorous breathing, dilation of the pupil, and a drooping appearance {260} of the eyelid, followed at last by a comatose state, lasting for hours, out of which it was almost impossible fully to arouse the energies. These symptoms, together with a peculiar rigidity of the muscular system, and inability to measure the precise compass and volume of the voice when speaking, brought the case nearer in resemblance to those recorded by Dr. O'Shaughnessy, of Calcutta, as occurring under his immediate inspection among the natives of India, than any I have ever witnessed. At half-past seven in the evening, and consequently after supping instead of before, as I should have preferred, he took twenty-five grains of the drug. This may seem a large bolus to those who are aware that from fifteen grains I frequently got the strongest cannabine effect; but it must be kept in mind that, to secure the full phenomena, a much greater dose is necessary in the first experiment than ever after. Unlike all other stimuli with which I am acquainted, hasheesh, instead of requiring to be increased in quantity as existence in its use proceeds, demands rather a diminution, seeming to leave, at the return of the natural state (if I may express myself by rather a material analogy), an unconsumed capital of exaltation for the next indulgence to set up business upon. For a while we walked silently. Presently I felt my companion shudder as he leaned upon my arm. "What is the matter, Bob?" I asked. "Oh! I am in unbearable horror," he replied. "If you can, save me!" "How do you suffer?" "This shower of soot which falls on me from heaven is dreadful!" {261} I sought to turn the current of his thoughts into another channel, but he had arrived at that place in his experience where suggestion is powerless. His world of the Real could not be changed by any inflow from ours of the Shadowy. I reached the same place in after days, and it was then as impossible for any human being to alter the condition which enwrapped me as it would have been for a brother on earth to stretch out his hands and rescue a brother writhing in the pangs of immortality. There are men in Oriental countries who make it their business to attend hasheesh-eaters during the fantasia, and profess to be able to lead them constantly in pleasant paths of hallucination. If indeed they possess this power, the delirium which they control must be a far more ductile state than any I have witnessed occurring under the influence of hasheesh at its height. in the present instance I found all suggestion powerless. The inner actuality of the visions and the terror of external darkness both defeated me. And now, in the midst of the darkness, there suddenly stood a wheel like that of a lottery, surrounded by one luminous spot, which illustrated all its movements. It began slowly to revolve; its rapidity grew frightful, and out of its opening flew symbols which indicated to him, in regular succession, every minutest act of his past life: from his first unfilial disobedience in childhood --- the refusal upon a certain day, as far back as infancy, to go to school when it was enjoined upon him, to the latest deed of impropriety he had committed --- all his existence fled before him like lighting in those burning emblems. Things utterly forgotten --- things at {262} the time of their first presence considered trivial acts --- as small as the cutting of a willow wand, all fled by his sense in arrow-flight; yet he remembered them as real incidents, and recognized their order in his existence. This phenomenon is one of the most striking exhibitions of the state in which the higher hasheesh exaltation really exists. It is a partial sundering, for the time, of those ties which unite soul and body. That spirit should ever loose the traces of a single impression is impossible. In the morning he awoke at the usual time; but, his temperament being perhaps more sensitive than mine, the hasheesh delight, without its hallucination, continued for several days. And now a new fact flashed before me. This agony was not new; I had felt it ages ago, in the same room, among the same people, and hearing the same conversation. To most men, such a sensation has happened at some time, but it is seldom more than vague and momentary. With me it was sufficiently definite and lasting to be examined and located as an actual memory. I saw it in an instant, preceded and followed by the successions of a distinctly recalled past life. What is the philosophy of this fact? If we find no ground for believing that we have ever lived self-consciously in any other state, and cannot thus explain it, may not this be the solution of the enigma? At the moment of the soul's reception of a new impression, she first accepts it as a thing entirely of the sense; she tells us how large it is, and of what quality. To this definition of its boundaries and likeness succeeds, at times {263} of high activity, an intuition of the fact that the sensation shall be perceived again in the future unveiling that is to throw open all the past. Prophetically she notes it down upon the indestructible leaves of her diary, assured that it is to come out in the future revelation. Yet we who, from the tendency of our thought, reject all claims to any knowledge of the future, can only acknowledge perceptions as of the present or the past, and accordingly refer the dual realisation to some period gone by. We perceive the correspondence of two sensations, but, by an instantaneous process, give the second one a wrong position in the succession of experiences. The soul is regarded as the historian when she is in reality the sibyl; but the misconception takes place in such a microscopic portion of time that detection is impossible. In the hasheesh expansion of seconds into minutes, or even according to a much mightier ratio, there is an opportunity thoroughly to scrutinise the hitherto evanescent phenomena, and the truth comes out. How many more such prophecies as these may have been rejected through the gross habit of the body we may never know until spirit vindicates her claim in a court where she must have audience. In this world we are but half spirit; we are thus able to hold only the perceptions and emotions of half an orb. Once fully rounded into symmetry ourselves, we shall have strength to bear the pressure of influences from a whole sphere of truth and loveliness. It is this present half-developed state of ours which makes the infinitude of the hasheesh awakening so unendurable, even when its sublimity is the sublimity of delight. We have no {264} longer anything to do with horizons, and the boundary which was at once our barrier and our fortress is removed, until we almost perish from the inflow of perceptions. It would be no hard task to prove, to a strong probability, at least, that the initiation to the Pythagorean mysteries, and the progressive instruction that succeeded it, to a considerable extent consisted in the employment, judiciously, if we may use the word, of hasheesh, as giving a critical and analytic power to the mind, which enabled the neophyte to roll up the murk and mist from beclouded truths till they stood distinctly seen in the splendour of their own harmonious beauty as an intuition. One thing related of Pythagoras and his friends has seemed very striking to me. There is a legend that, as he was passing over a river, its waters called up to him in the presence of his followers, "Hail! Pythagoras." Frequently, while in the power of the hasheesh dilirium, have I heard inanimate things sonorous with such voices. On every side they have saluted me, from rocks, and trees, and waters, and sky, in my happiness filling me with intense exultation as I heard them welcoming their master; in my agony heaping nameless curses on my head as I went away into an eternal exile from all sympathy. Of this tradition of Iamblichus I feel an appreciation which almost convinces me that the voice of the river was indeed heard, though only by the quickened mind of some hasheesh-glorified esoteric. Again, it may be that the doctrine of the metempsychosis was first communicated to Pythagoras by Theban priests; but the astonishing illustration which hasheesh would contribute to {265} this tenet should not be overlooked in our attempt to assign its first suggestion and succeeding spread to their proper causes. I looked, and lo! all the celestial hemisphere was one terrific brazen bell, which rocked upon some invisible adamantine pivot in the infinitudes above. When I cam it was voiceless, but I soon knew how it was to sound. My feet were quickly chained fast to the top of heaven, and, swinging with my head downward, I became its tongue. Still more mightily swayed that frightful bell, and now, tremendously crashing, my head smote against its side. It was not the pain of the blow, though that was inconceivable, but the colossal roar that filled the universe, and rent my brain also, which blotted out in one instant all sense, thought, and being. In an instant I felt my life extinguished, but knew that it was by annihilation, not by death. When I awoke out of the hasheesh state I was as overwhelmed to find myself still in existence as a dead man of the last century could be were he now suddenly restored to earth. For a while, even in perfect consciousness, I believed I was still dreaming, and to this day I have so little lost the memory of that one demoniac toll, that while writing these lines I have put my hand to my forehead, hearing and feeling something, trough the mere imagination, which was an echo of the original pang. It is this persistency of impressions which explains the fact of the hasheesh state, after a certain time, growing more and more every day a thing of agony. It is not because the body becomes worn out by repeated nervous shocks; with some constitutions, indeed, this wearing may occur; it never did with me, as I have said, even to the extent {266} of producing muscular weakness, yet the universal law of constantly acceleration diabolisation of visions held good as much in my case as in any others; but a thing of horror once experienced became a kappa tau nu mu alpha epsilon sigma alpha epsilon iota , an inalienable dower of hell; it was certain to reproduce itself in some --- to God be the thanks if not in all --- future visions. I had seen, for instance, in one of my states of ecstasy, a luminous spot on the firmament, a prismatic parhelion. In the midst of my delight of gazing on it, it had transferred itself mysteriously to my own heart, and there became a circle of fire, which gradually ate its way until the whole writing organ was in a torturous blaze. That spot, seen again in an after-vision, through the memory of its former pain instantly wrought out for me the same accursed result. The number of such remembered faggots of fuel for direful suggestion of course increased proportionally to the prolonging of the hasheesh life, until at length there was hardly a visible or tangible object, hardly a phrase which could be spoken, that had not some such infernal potency as connected with an earlier effect of suffering. Slowly thus does midnight close over the hasheesh-eater's heaven. One by one, upon its pall thrice dyed in Acharon, do the baleful lustres appear, until he walks under a hemisphere flaming with demon lamps, and upon a ground paved with tiles of hell. Out of this awful domain there are but three ways. Thank God that over this alluring gateway is not written, "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate!" The first of these exits is insanity, the second death, the third abandonment. The first is doubtless oftenest trodden {267} yet it may be long ere it reaches the final escape in oblivion, and it is as frightful as the domain it leaves behind. The second but rarely opens to the wretch unless he prises it open with his knife; ordinarily its hinges turn lingeringly. Towards the last let him struggle, though a nightmare torpor petrify his limbs --- though on either side of the road be a phalanx of monstrous Afreets with drawn swords of flame --- though demon cries peal before him, and unimaginable houris beckon him back --- over thorns, through furnaces, but into --- Life! To the first restaurant at hand we hastened. Passing in, I called for that only material relief which I have ever found for these spiritual sufferings --- something strongly acid. in the East the form in use is sherbet; mine was very sour lemonade.1 A glass of it was made ready, and with a small glass tube I drew it up, not being able to bear the shock of a large swallow. Relief came but very slightly --- very slowly. Before the first glass was exhausted I called most imperatively for another one to be prepared as quickly as possible, let the flames should spread by waiting. In this way I kept a man busy with the composition of lemonade after lemonade, plunging my tube over the edge of the drained tumbler into the full one with a precipitate haste for which there were mortal reasons, until six had been consumed. I returned to hasheesh, but only when I had become hopeless of carrying out my first intention --- its utter and immediate abandonment. I now resolved to abandon it gradually --- to retreat slowly from my enemy, until I had passed the borders of his enchanted ground, whereon he warred with me at vantage. Once over the boundaries, and the nightmare spell {268} unloosed, I might run for my life, and hope to distance him in my own recovered territory. This end I sought to accomplish by diminishing the doses of the drug. The highest I had ever reached was a drachm, and this was seldom necessary except in the most unimpressible states of the brain, since, according to the law of the hasheesh operation which I have stated to hold good in my experience, a much less bolus was ordinarily sufficient to produce full effect at this time than when I commenced the indulgence. I now reduced my daily ration to ten or fifteen grains. The immediate result of even this modified resumption of the habit was a reinstatement into the glories of the former life. I came out of my clouds; the outer world was reinvested with some claim to interest, and the lethal torpor of my mind was replaced by an airy activity. I flattered myself that there was now some hope of escape by grades of renunciation, and felt assured, moreover, that since I now seldom experienced anything approaching hallucination, I might pass through this gradual course without suffering on the way. 1 WEH NOTE: Citric acid has a reductive effect on these sorts of intoxications, also Nicotinic Acid and common ethanol in quantity. As lemon-juice had been sometimes an effectual cure for the sufferings of excess, I now discovered that a use of tobacco, to an extent which at other times would be immoderate, was a preventive of the horrors of abandonment. As, some distance back, I have referred to my own experience upon the subject, asserting my ability at times to "feel sights, see sounds," &c., I will not attempt to illustrate the present discussion by a narrative of additional portions of my own case. It might be replied to me, "Ah! yes, all very likely; but probably you are an exception to the general rule: {169} nobody else might be affected so." This was said to me quite frequently when, early in the hasheesh life, I enthusiastically related the most singular phenomena of my fantasy. But there is no such thing true of the hasheesh effects. Just as inevitably as two men taking the same direction, and equally favoured by Providence, will arrive at the same place, will two persons of similar temperament come to the same territory in hasheesh, see the same mysteries of their being, and get the same hitherto unconceived facts. It is this characteristic which, beyond all gainsaying, proves the definite existence of the most wondrous of the hasheesh disclosed states of mind. The realm of that stimulus is no vagary; it as much exists and England. We are never so absurd as to expect to see insane men by the dozen all holding to the same hallucination without having had any communication with each other. As I said once previously, after my acquaintance with the realm of witchery had become, probably, about as universal as anybody's, when I chanced to be called to take care of some one making the experiment for the first time (and I always was called), by the faintest word, often by a mere look, I could tell exactly the place that my patient had reached, and treat him accordingly. Many a time, by some expression which other bystanders thought ineffably puerile, have I recongised the landmark of a field of wonders wherein I have travelled in perfect ravishment. I understood the symbolisation, which they did not. Though as perfectly conscious as in his natural state, and capable of apprehending all outer realities without hallucination, he still perceived every word which was spoken to him {270} in the form of some visible symbol which most exquisitely embodied it. For hours every sound had its colour and its form to him as truly as scenery could have them. The fact, never witnessed by me before, of a mind in that state being able to give its phenomena to another and philosophise about them calmly, afforded me the means of a most clear investigation. I found that his case was exactly analogous to those of B. and myself; for, like us, he recognised in distinct inner types every possible sensation, our words making a visible emblematic procession before his eyes, and every perception of whatever sense becoming tangible to him as form and audible as music. {271} THE BUDDHIST THERE never was a face as fair as yours, A heart as true, a love as pure and keen. These things endure, if anything endures. But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures Us in its silence, the supreme serene Crowning the dagoba, what destined die Rings on the table, what resistless dart Strike me I love you; can you satisfy The hunger of my heart! Nay; not in love, or faith, or hope is hidden The drug that heals my life; I know too well How all things lawful, and all things forbidden Alike disclose no pearl upon the midden, Offer no key to unlock the gate of Hell. There is no escape from the eternal round, No hope in love, or victory, or art. There is no plumb-line long enough to sound The abysses of my heart! {272} There no dawn breaks; no sunlight penetrates Its blackness; no moon shines, nor any star. For its own horror of itself creates Malignant fate from all benignant fates, Of its own spite drives its own angel afar. Nay; this is the great import of the curse That the whole world is sick, and not a part. Conterminous with its own universe the horror of my heart! ANANDA VIJJA. {273} THE ANGOSTIC AN Agnostic is one who thinks that he knows everything. VICTOR B. NEUBURG. THE MANTRA-YOGA I How should I seek to make a song for thee When all my music is to moan thy name? That long sad monotone --- the same --- the same --- Matching the mute insatiable sea That throbs with life's bewitching agony, Too long to measure and too fierce to tame! An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame Is this great ache that grips the heart of me. Even as a cancer, so this passion gnaws Away my soul, and will not ease its jaws Till I am dead. Then let me die! Who knows But that this corpse committed to the earth May be the occasion of some happier birth? Spring's earliest snowdrop? Summer's latest rose? II Thou knowest what asp hath fixed its lethal tooth In the white breast that trembled like a flower At thy name whispered. thou hast marked how hour By hour its poison hath dissolved my youth, {275} Half skilled to agonise, half skilled to soothe This passion ineluctable, this power Slave to its single end, to storm the tower That holdeth thee, who art Authentic Truth. O golden hawk! O lidless eye! Behold How the grey creeps upon the shuddering gold! Still I will strive! That thou mayst sweep Swift on the dead from thine all-seeing steep --- And the unutterable word by spoken. ALEISTER CROWLEY. {276} THE VIOLINIST THE room was cloudy with a poisonous incense: saffron, opoponax, galbanum, musk, and myrrh, the purity of the last ingredient a curse of blasphemy, the final sneer; as a degenerate might insult a Raphael by putting it in a room devoted to debauchery. The girl was tall and finely built, huntress-lithe. Her dress, close- fitted, was of a gold-brown silk that matched, but could not rival, the coils that bound her brow --- glittering and hissing like snakes. Her face was Greek in delicacy; but what meant such a mouth in it? The mouth of a satyr or a devil. It was full and strong, curved twice, the edges upwards, an angry purple, the lips flat. her smile was like the snarl of a wild beast. She stood, violin in hand, before the wall. Against it was a large tablet of mosaic; many squares and many colours. On the squares were letters in an unknown tongue. she began to play, her gray eyes fixed upon one square on whose centre stood this character, N. It was in black on white; and the four sides of the square were blue, yellow, red, and black. She began to play. The air was low, sweet, soft, and slow. It seemed that she was listening, not to her own playing, but for some other sound. Her bow quickened; the air grew {277} harsh and wild, irritated; quickened further to a rush like flames devouring a hayrick; softened again to a dirge. Each time she changed the soul of the song it seemed as if she was exhausted: as if she was trying to sound a particular phrase, and always fell back baffled at the last moment. Nor did any light infuse her eyes. There was intentness, there was weariness, there was patience, there was alertness. And the room was strangely silent, unsympathetic to her mood. She was the dimmest thing in that gray light. Still she stove. She grew more tense, her mouth tightened, an ugly compression. Her eyes flashed with --- was it hate? The soul of the song was now all anguish, all pleading, all despair --- ever reaching to some unattainable thing. She choked, a spasmodic sob. She stopped playing; she bit her lips, and a drop of blood stood on them scarlet against their angry purple, like sunset and storm. She pressed them to the square, and a smear stained the white. She caught at her heart; for some strange pang tore it. Up went her violin, and the bow crossed it. It might have been the swords of two skilled fencers, both blind with mortal hate. It might have been the bodies of two skilled lovers, blind with immortal love. She tore life and death asunder on her strings. Up, up soared the phoenix of her song; step by step on music's golden scaling-ladder she stormed the citadel of her Desire. The blood flushed and swelled her face beneath its sweat. Her eyes were injected with blood. The song rose, culminated --- overleapt the barriers, achieved its phrase. She stopped; but the music went on. A cloud gathered {278} upon the great square, menacing and hideous. There was a tearing shriek above the melody. Before her, his hands upon her hips, stood a boy. Golden haired he was, and red were his young lips, and blue his eyes. But his body was ethereal like a film of dew upon a glass, or rust clinging to an airy garment; and all was stained hideously with black. "My Remenu!" she said. "After so long!" He whispered in her ear. The light behind her flickered and went out. The spirit laid her violin and bow upon the ground. The music went on --- a panting, hot melody like mad eagles in death struggle with mountain goats, like serpents caught in jungle fires, like scorpions tormented by Arab girls. And in the dark she sobbed and screamed in unison. She had not expected this: she had dreamt of love more passionate, of lust more fierce-fantastic, than aught mortal. And this? This real loss of a real chastity? This degradation not of the body, but of the soul! This white-hot curling flame --- ice cold about her heart? This jagged lightning that tore her? This tarantula of slime that crawled up her spine? She felt the blood running from her breasts, and its foam at her mouth. Then suddenly the lights flamed up, and she found herself standing --- reeling --- her head sagging on his arm. Again he whispered in her ear. In his left hand was a little ebony box, a dark paste was in it. He rubbed a little on her lips. And yet a third time he whispered in her ear. {279} With an angel's smile --- save for its subtlety --- he was gone into the tablet. She turned, blew on the fire, that started up friendly, and threw herself in an armchair. Idly she strummed old-fashioned simple tunes. The door opened. A jolly lad came in and shook the snow from his furs. "Been too bored, little girl?" he said cheerily, confident. "No, dear!" she said. "I've been fiddling a bit." "Give me a kiss, Lily!" He bent down and put his lips to hers; then, as if struck by lightning, sprawled, a corpse. She looked down lazily through half-shut eyes whit that smile of hers that was a snarl. FRANCIS BENDICK. {280} EHE! A DROP FROM THE SPONGE OF KNOWLEDGE. a "Characters." SIMPLEX. SIMPLICIOR. SIMPLICISSIMUS. THE MOB OF THE PHILISTINES. SIMPLEX. Behold, O men: a Tree deep-rooted --- A hundred branches from the mighty Trunk, And on each branch a hundred leaves --- An Axe --- a Child --- a Hand --- a Will! THE MOB. Down with the old tree! SIMPLEX. ["Unperturbed."] And Oh, He, Ho, the Will so powerful! (After one million years the tree fell) See the result: Toys, TOys, TOYs, TOYS! SIMPLICISSIMUS. ["Dobmatic."] The Spirit of Persistency unborn. THE MOB. Down with the Lords! {281} SIMPLEX. Behold again: an empty well --- A crystal pure --- a dry sea --- Birds --- a dead bird, a live bird, a phoenix --- A dying immortal harlot-goddess --- A cage (alas! it broke open In the year of the sixteenth Funeral). THE MOB. Down with the birds! SIMPLICIOR. Yet, neither Bird could re-enter it! THE MOB. Beer and Cup-ties! SIMPLICISSIMUS. ["Pointedly."] The Spirit of Persistency conceived! THE MOB. Down with the Spirits! SIMPLEX. Behold again, Impatients, and decide: Two centres I saw, that were but one --- A thick set of hair upon a white skull --- A spider patient (with my qualities), Slowly webbing the slightly soiled cavities --- A lute, a rapturing lute "aux sons clairs," (But Oh, He, Ho, for three weary years The lute hath no song!) --- {282} THE MOB. Down with the foreign bands! SIMPLEX. ["{Pale, but firm."] A rotten corpse, Coming to life again (for it cried) --- A deep, deep hole --- a beardy man --- and Linking, SIMPLICIOR. ["Radiant."] Clearly linking, SIMPLEX. the 6 (or 7 --- The Spider counting as the skull's paying guest) The Stream fro Heaven unto Us poured --- THE MOB. Down with 'em! SIMPLEX. ["Smiling."] Proving our love's old age in a youth renewed! SIMPLICISSIMUS. ["Exultant."] The Spirit of Persistency growing! THE MOB. Hooray! GEORGE RAFFALOVICH. {283} HALF-HOURS WITH FAMOUS MAHATMAS. No. 1 YOGI MAHATMA SRI AGAMYA PARAMAHAMSA GURU SWAMIJI is a certain Punjabi lala, who, on account of his tremendous voice and ferocious temper, has well earned for himself the name of The Tiger Mahatma. My first acquaintance with His Holiness was in November 1906, when he paid his second visit to England. I had seen his name in the daily press, but before calling upon him, I had read up what I could about him in his book: "Sri Brahma Dhara," in the preface of which he is praised as follows: "He seeks to do good, he accepts money from no one, and lives a very simple, pure life ... I ... was much impressed by his great breadth of mind, his sweet charity, and his loving kindness for every living thing. ... These teachings ... breath love and kindness, and dwell upon the joys of pure clean living." Forewarned is to be forearmed, and I had read the same type of "puff" on many a patent pill box! On entering 70, Margaret Street I was shown upstairs and ushered into the den of Tiger Sri Agamya. Besides himself, there were three people in the room, two men and {284} a woman, and as I entered one of the men, an American, was saying: "O Mahatma! I haven't the faith, I can't get it!" To which His Holiness roared out: "You sheep are! ... I no want sheep! ... tigers I make ... tigers tear up sheep, go away! ... no good, get intellect ... get English! ... no more!!" The three then departed, and I was left alone with the Blessed One. Neither of us spoke for about ten minutes, then at length, after a go or two at his snuff-box, he gave a loud grunt, to which I replied in a solemn voice: "O Mahatma, what is Truth?" "No Truth! All illusion," he answered, "I am that Master, you become my disciple; I show you all things; I lead you to the ultimate reality ... the supreme stage of the highest ... the infinite Ultimatum ... the unlimited omniscience of eternal Wisdom --- All this I give you if you have faith in me." As faith is exceedingly cheap in this country, I offered him unlimited oceans of it; and at this he seemed very please, and laughed: "Ha! ha! You make good tiger cub ... you tear sheep up ... all is illusion!" Then after a pause: "De vouman," pointing to the door, "is no good!" And the, without further hesitation, he entered upon a veritable Don Juan description of his earthly adventures. This I thought strange of so sober-minded a saint, and so put to him several questions concerning the Vedanta Philosophy, and its most noted exponents, to see what he really did know. "Do you know Swami Vivekananda?" I asked. {285} Ha, he replied, "he no good, he my disciple, I am the master!" "And Swami Dayanand Sarasvati?" I continued. The same answer was vouched to me, although this latter teacher had died at the age of seventy, forty yeas ago. Thinking it about time to change the conversation, I said: "O Thou Shower from the Highest! Tell thy grovelling disciple what then "is" a 'lie'?" "Ha!" he replied, "it is illusion, this truth that has been diverged from its real point ... an illusive spring in the primo-genial fermentation of 'fee-no-me-non,' in this typo-cosmy apparent to the sense which you call 'de Vurld'!!!" With this, and promises of oceans of blissful reality from the highest eternality of ultimate ecstasy, he bade me sit in a chair and blow alternately through my nostrils; and, if I had faith, so he assured me, I should in six months' time arrive at the supreme stage of the Highest in the infinite Ultimatum, and should burst as a chance illusively fermented bubble in the purest atmosphere of the highest reality. The next occasion on which I saw the Mahatma was at a business meeting of his disciples held at 60, South Audley Street. His Holiness called them tiger-cubs, nevertheless seldom have I seen such a pen full of sheep. A man from Ilfracombe proposed this, and a man from Liverpool second that; at last a London plumber arose, and with great solemnity declared: Gintlemen, hi taik hit 'is 'oliness his really 'oly, hin fact gintlemen hi taik hit 'e his Gawd; ... hand so hi proposes the very least we can do for 'im his to subscribe yearly towards 'im folve shillins!" ("'ear, 'ear" from a comrade in the corner). However, the sheep wouldn't have it, and the {286} little man sat down to ruminate over lead piping, and solder at twopence a stick. During the summer of '07 I had little time to waste at number 60, and had almost forgotten about the Mahatma, who, so I had been told, had let England for America, when I received a card announcing his return, and asking me to be present at a general meeting. This I did, and as usual was more than bored. After business was over the Mahatma entered the room, all his sheep locking round him to seek the turnips of his wisdom. On these occasions he would ask questions and select subjects upon which his disciples were supposed to write essays. One of these, I can still remember, was: "How to help the helpless hands"; another was: "What is dis-satisfaction, and what is true satisfaction?" And the answer was: "Love fixed on mortal things, without the knowledge of its source, increases vibration and creates dissatisfaction ('mortal things' is good!)." In his book, "Sri Brahma Dhara," which contains some of the most astonishing balderdash ever put in print, may be found his philosophy. This is a stewed-up hash of Yoga, Vedanta, and outrageous verbosity. "Love," he writes, "is the force of the magician Maya, and is the cause of all disorder" (it seems to be so even in his exalted position). "This force of love --- in the state of circumgyration in the extended world --- is the cause of all mental movements towards the feeling of easiness or uneasiness: but the mind enjoys eternal beatitude with perfect calmness, when the force of love is concentrated over the unlimited extension of silence" ('silence' is really choice!). {287} "Virtue," he defines as: "the bent of mind towards self-command" (and evidently practises it). His morals are good; but his scientific conceptions really "take the cake!" "there are three kinds of animate creations in the world," he writes: "They are the creations from (1) the womb; (2) Eggs; (3) Perspiration. ..." Another gem: "how is it that some of the bodies are male and some are female?" Answer: "If the male seed preponderates, a male body is produced; and if female, a female. While, when both are equally proportioned, an eunuch is born"(!) At one of his male meetings --- there were also female ones; but mixed bathing in the ocean of infinite bliss was not allowed --- he related to us his pet story, of how he had "flumoxed" the chief engineer and the captain of the liner which had brought him back from America. He informed them that coal and steam were absurd; what you want, he said, is to have two large holes made in the sides of you ship, then the air will blow into them and turn the wheels, and make the ship go. When the captain pointed out to him, that if a storm were to arise the water might possibly flow into the ship and sink it, he roared out, "No! no! ... get English! ... get intellect! see! see! de vind vill fill de ship and blow it out of de vater and take it across over de vaves!" --- Since this now becomes public property there probably will be a slump in turbines! It was towards the close of last October, when I received from a friend of mine --- also a so-called disciple --- a letter in which he wrote: "There was a devil of a row at 60 last night. M: pressed me to come to his weekly entertainments; so I {288} came. He urged me to speak; so I spoke. He then revealed his divine self in an exceptionally able manner; I refrained from revealing mine. His divine self reminded one rather of a 'Navvy's Saturday Night, by Battersea Burns.'" He further urged me to go and see the Mahatma himself on the following Sunday; and this I did. I arrived at 60, South Audley Street at seven o'clock. There were already about twenty sheepish-looking tigers present, and when the Mahatma entered the room, I sat down next to him; for, knowing, in case a scrimmage should occur, that a Hindoo cannot stomach a blow in the spleen, I thought it wisest to be within striking distance of him. The Mahatma opened the evening's discussion by saying: "Humph ... I am Agnostic, you are believers. I say 'I don't know,' you contradict me." And during the next hour and a half more Bunkum was talked in that room that I should say in Exeter Hall during the whole course of the last century. At last it ended, and though I had made various attempts to draw His Holiness into argument, I had as yet failed to unveil his divinity. He now started dictating his precious philosophy, and in such execrable English, that it was quite impossible to follow him, and I once or twice asked him to repeat what he had said, and as I did so I noticed that several of the faithful shivered and turned pale. At length came the word "expectation" or "separation," and as I could not catch which, I exclaimed "what?" "You pig-faced man!" shouted His Holiness, "you dirty fellow, you come here to take away my disciples ... vat you vant vith this: vat! vat! vat! vat! ... You do no exercise, else you understand vat I say, dirty man!" And then turning to {289} his three head bell-wethers who were sitting at a separate table he sneered: "X----" (my friend present at the previous revelation of his divinity) "Send this pig-one ... eh?" "I don't know why ..." I began. "Grutch, butch!" he roared, "you speak to me, you co-eater! ... get intellect," he yealled, "get English," he bellowed, and up he sprang from the table. As I did not wish to be murdered, for he had now become a dangerous maniac, I rose, keeping my eyes on him, and taking up my hat and stick, which I had purposely placed just behind me, I quietly passed round the large table at which his terror-stricken fold sat gaping, and moved towards the door. The whole assembly seemed petrified with fear. At first the Blesséd One appeared not to realize what had happened, so taken aback was he by any one having the audacity to leave the room without his permission: then he recovered himself, and at the top of his tiger-roar poured out his curses in choicest Hindustani. On reaching the door I opened it, and then facing him I exclaimed in a loud voice in his native tongue: "Chup raho! tum suar ke bachcha ho!" With gleaming eyes, and foaming lips, and arms flung wildly into the air, --- there stood the Indian God, the 666th incarnation of Haram Zada, stung to the very marrow of his bones by this bitterest insult. Beside himself with fury he sprang up, murder written on every line of his face; tried to leap across the table --- and fell in an epileptic fit. As he did so, I shut the door in his face. Aum. SAM HARDY. {290} THE THIEF-TAKER SAïD JAELLAL UD DIN BEN MESSAOUD Trusted to Allah for his daily food; And so with favour was the Saint anointed That never yet had he been disappointed. One day this pious person wished to shave His head; a sly and sacrilegious knave Passed; when the good man would resume his prayer, Alas! his turban was no longer there. In rushed Mohammed, Hassan, and Husein: "See! there he goes, the bastard of a swine. Hasten, and catch him!" But the good man went With melancholy pace and sad intent Unto the burying-ground without the wall; And there he sat, stern and funereal, Wrapped in deep thought from any outward sense, A monument of earnest patience! "Sire!" (a disciple dared at length to say) "That wicked person took another way." "Wide is the desert," said the saintly seer: "But this is certain, that he must come here." ALEISTER CROWLEY. {291} SHELLEY. By FRANCIS THOMPSON. With an Introduction by the Rt. Hon. GEORGE WYNDHAM. Burns and Oates. We would rather not refer to the Rt. Hon. George Wyndham in a paper of this character. Let us deal with Francis Thompson. Had he no friend to burn this manuscript? To save him from blackening his own memory in this way? We were content to give him his appointed niche in the temple, that of a delicate, forceful spirit, if rarely capable of cosmic expansion. We did not look for eagle-flights; we thought of him as a wild goose sweeping from Tibet upon the poppy-fields of Yunnan. But the prose of a poet reveals the man in him, as his poetry reveals the god; and Francis Thompson the man is a pitiful thing enough. It is the wounded earthworm cursing the harrow; the snipe blaspheming the lark. Shelley was a fine, pure, healthy man whose soul was habitually one with the Infinite Universe; Thompson was a wretch whose body was poisoned by drugs, whose mind by superstition. Francis Thompson was so much in love with his miserable self that he could not bear the thought of its extinction; Shelley was glad to die if thereby one rose could bloom the redder. This essay is disgusting; we were all trying to forget Francis Thompson, to remember his songs; and here we have his putrid corpse indecently disinterred and thrust under our noses. The worst of it all is the very perfection of the wrappings. what a poet Thompson might have been if he had never heard of Christ or opium; if he had revelled in Venice with its courtesans of ruddy hair, swan gracefulness, and tiger soul! Instead, he sold matches in the streets of London; from which abyss a church meant warmth, light, incense, music, and a pageant of hope. To-day, as in the days of Nero, Christianity is no more than the slum-born shriek of the degenerate and undersized starvelings that inhabit the Inferno of Industrialism. So also Thompson, impotent from abuse of opium, reviles Shelley and Byron for virility. "O che sciagura essere senza cog!" --- Dirt, dogma, drugs! What wonder and what hope lies in the soul of man if from such ingredients can be distilled such wine as "The dream tryst?" Requiescat in pace. Let the flowers grow on Thompson's grave; let none exhume the body! A. QUILLER, JR. {292} THE EYES OF ST. LJUBOV: DE LA RATIBOISIERE'S ACCOUNT OF THE TYPHLOSOPHISTS OF SOUTH RUSSIA BY J. F. C. FULLER AND GEORGE RAFFALOVICH THE EYES OF ST. LJUBOV I "TELL it us! O tell us it!" Elphénor Pistouillat de la Ratiboisière, the Master Magician, hearkened unto his disciples, who sat cross-legged around his incense-bowl. His lips parted in that unapeable grin of his, and he stopped his nostrils awhile with his two forefingers. Then he blew on the charcoal and began. "Yes, I will tell it to you, intellectual infants, I will. Listen. Two hundred and one years ago --- when I was thin and thirty --- I chanced upon a couple, living in South Russia. Boy and girl they were still; but, as it were, they unwittingly founded a strange sect of self-mutilated followers, and, being the only man alive who witnessed the beginnings thereof, I will undertake to keep you interested for more than sixteen minutes with their history." The room was now darkened, and three large globes of crystal, set under the rays of a lamp, stood alone, attracting the eyes. The first globe was limpid and colourless, the second was of the palest amethyst, the third of a rich yellow. Worlds were revolving within. Then Elphénor broke the silence again. "She was a little girl and he was a little boy ..." {295} "She looked like a penny toy," murmured the Neptunian of the party. None of the others smiled, for the Ancient was already beginning: "Per illud nomen per quod Solomo constri8ngebat daemones, et conclusit ..." He stopped short, however, seeing that the irrelevant interruption had found no echo; and he went on with his narrative, moving his arms to the rhythm of his voice, and with his fingers kneading unseen shapes in the air. II "THE boy comes in later. I want you to realize how beautiful was the little girl. Like a thick thread of scarlet were her lips, comely was her countenance, most pleasing to the sight was her earthly body, a temptation to the Angels her soul. Her eyes expressed the Infinite Sweetness, the Love Merciful; the Pure Innocence of the Eternal Equi-balanced. They were like crystalline drops of dew falling on a perfect rock of Carrara marble; eyes that looked upon you and created you holy; eyes clearer than the clearest rivulet, more beautiful than the most royal amethyst; eyes that illuminated the darkest corner of Hell; eyes that set the fashion to the stars of the Celestial Vault of Heaven; eyes that were but the imperfect mirror of the soul behind. Such was the ten-years-old Ljubov of the goodly countenance. When, later on, the usual legend grew around her, it was said that wolves had once entered the village, in the midst of {296} winter, starved to madness, and had begun eating two cows in their shed, when little Ljubov chanced upon them and was discovered half an hour later, surrounded by two hundred of these wolves, which were pushing and kicking one another to lick her hands. On another occasion, extraordinary miracle, one glance from her eyes had stopped the tongue of a drunken pope who was swearing at a peasant in the foulest language. She was, of course, a favourite with all in the village: the simpler and nearer Nature their souls, the more they gave the child her proper place. But it must not be inferred that little Ljubov was either worshipped or freed from such menial works as children of her age are called upon to perform. Nor did her playmates realize her superiority. The alleged miracles and the reported cases of healing were heard of some ten years after her death, when eye- witnesses had all departed from this world. Yet, of course, they were possible, quite possible, quite. III "ALL of you, suckling babes, have read the Russian tale of the Man who bought souls --- or heard of it. Men of a similar turn of mind exist in Russia, and I want you to concentrate your mind upon such a man, albeit his bargains cost him even less, and were of a more physical reality. From town to village he went, in search of treasures ion the shape of eyes. The tools of his trade were a few walnut shells, enamelled within, and a certain magical liquid preparation, which he used to preserve the qualities, freshness and beauty of his acquisitions. {297} On the second day after his arrival in the village where Ljubov lived, he noticed the child and her marvellous beauty. For hours, having retired to the house belonging to a rich lady whose guest he was, he drivelled, with before him the enrapturing vision of Ljubov's priceless jewels. He proceeded carefully; made friends with all the children; and, the seventh day having come, he met her outside the village, by chance --- so she thought --- and made her a present of a few trifling ornaments. Then he placed over his own eyes two empty shells of walnut, and pretended to play some childish game of hide-and-seek. After a few minutes, it was her turn to don the blinding apparel. But there were different from his, the empty shells he fixed under her eyebrows! Ljubov felt no pain, rather an exquisite sensation of physical "bien-être," of wondrous languor. Ay, but a few minutes later, the sun and moon and stars had lost their beauty for her. There were two large cavities under her eye- lids. The force within the nutshells had drawn the eyes out of them. The Man ran away, carrying a treasured little box, and no more was ever heard of him in those parts. IV "What boots it to tell of the long, awful days of darkness through which poor little Ljubov lived before she grew accustomed to her blindness? I am not a medical philosopher; I like home and comfort far too much. If I journey, I must needs travel in state,and my staff includes both a medial {298} man and a philosopher. Therefore, what need is there for me to think, to fathom the depths of childish or human sorrow, to send my brains into a tiring process of elucidation? far more pleasant it is to remain a contemplative individual. There fore, O Mexican Gaucho, pass me thy pellote pouch and let me take a helping of the leaves and root of thy wonderful mescal plant. And without thought and without fatigue, I can then "SEE." Where was I. my little brethren, fathers of larvae, sons of the she-goat? Ah, I know. Well, poor little Ljubov was saved by her magnificent soul from despairing thoughts. She lived, very miserable at first, more resigned later on. And there was a boy, too. He was the blind-born son of an ex-soldier, and because of his father's queer and unsocial manner, few people in the village would condescend to take interest in him. But he was no mean child, nevertheless, and his heart was big. Ljubov had denied herself the pitiful satisfaction of explaining her accident. No one ever heard from her lips the tale of her list eyes. And, as the months passed by, all remembrance of her, as she had bee, died away. Men, women and children passed her by, and took no notice of her. Her parents were kind, but over-worked. Only Piotr, the blind-born child, realized Ljubov's beauty. For if he had no eyes to see with, his other perceptions were sharpened for that very reason. he could not very well understand at first how, and why, it had come to pass that he, alone in the world --- for he was but an ignorant peasant child --- had not received the use of the five operations of the Lord. But the village deacon, who had been in trouble for some cause or another, {299} and was almost a genius in disgrace --- "terribly" "clever" the old men said --- once told the little Piotr what it was to be blind. Fortunately for the child's mental equilibrium, he also spoke of the compensation. "What they mean, boy, when they call you blind, is that you cannot see," he said; "that is, your eyes have been given unto you by the devil, and not by god. Your father must have been rather a bad fellow, you know. when you hear the women singing at the dance, it is that God has given you your ears; if you didn't enjoy the sounds it would mean that the devil has given you your ears, as the Book says, which God wrote in Russian for our people: "They have ears" "and they hear not." However, you hear well, and smell well, and your two other senses are all right. What you miss, it's the colour of things. I cannot explain it to you, and it would do you no good if I did. Your compensation is that you do not see that which is ugly, ugly like old Ivan Semenovich, and also that you hear and feel and smell with more accuracy than we do. Of course, it is nice to see as well, and I will pray Christ for you, especially if you can give me a few coppers with which to buy tapers. You must have plenty of them; people seem to give you very freely." Thus the tiresome brute, who had but a few chances of getting drunk in the place. Happily, Piotr and little Ljubov taught one another a simpler and more natural theory. She was now twelve, and the boy fourteen years old. And I chanced to be staying in the neighbourhood. I met them, as hand in hand they cautiously crossed a lane, close to the spot where I was meditating. The girl I had seen before the accident, and only {300} by her golden voice did I recognize her. I listened to their childish talk, and joined in it, and heard it all from her lips. Then, a few days later, something happened. A lady entered. There Elphénor became silent, for the door was violently shaken from the outside. "Come in," he said. The door was pushed open, then shut again, but no one had entered. The disciples exchange a glance of amusement; one of them said: "Has a lady entered?" They were all made merry by that exhibition of Neptunian spirit of apropos. But Elphénor Pistouillat, like the French Southerner he was, missed the courteous element in life, and began to curse the twelve young men. He was a bad-tempered man, and a very theatrical one. He rose and walked to him who had caused them all to laugh. "I know you, sir," Elphénor said, purple in the face, "I know you, unwholesome monkey. Your father was a dealer in pork sausages and cooked ham, a trader in swine. Nothing better could be expected from you than your pig- like groans." His blood was boiling already, and these few words he uttered were but a preliminary letting out of steam. He walked in the dark to a large cupboard at the far end of his room and took from a shelf twelve little wax figures which he stood on a small table. Rapidly he mumbled an invocation, an incantation, and a depreciation. Then he walked to the fireplace, took the red-hot poker which he kept ever ready for the purpose of lighting his charcoal, and returned with it to the table. {301} The twelve disciples felt that something was going to happen, but knew not what. An awful feeling overcame their will; they dared not move. Then, suddenly, the twelve of them jumped up and fell on the floor, curling themselves, howling with intense pain and agony, all in a sweat, their bodies aching with all the torments of Fire. The could hear the old man, by his table, cursing them and hitting the wax figures with the hot poker, haphazard, careless of the spot where he struck; but he struck them all equally. The contortions of the men on the yellow painted floor were terrible. he took no heed of them, and went on, cursing them each by name and each time hitting one figure, corresponding the the name he was cursing. Finally, the red-hot iron had turned black again; and Elphénor's arm was becoming tired. he gathered all the wax figures and went and threw them all into a large pail of water, pushing them down again and again as they came to the surface. His victims were gradually coming back to their senses. Once more he gathered their waxen images and replaced them on the shelf. Then he turned to his disciples and shouted: "Sit down, ye workers of Iniquity. Did you feel the draught --- or not? do not interrupt me again. And if anyone knocks again at the door, clear ye out of my visual path." They were all trembling with excitement and a mixed feeling of anger and desire for a power equal to his. Elphénor blew on the charcoal and incense, turned out the lamp over the three crystal globes, so that they were now almost in utter darkness, and took up the thread of his narrative. "The Lady who now comes before the footlights fell short {302} of being a great hysterical Countess Tarnowska; she had many lovers who went mad over her body, and whom she "could" drive to drink --- or to murder, but she had not done so; she had only driven some of them to suicide, and some even to the loss of their self-respect. The Man who stole Eyes was one of these. Without going into their respective or joint history let it be simply recorded that the proud collector of ocular jewels made present to the Lady of a pair of magnificent ear-rings --- which were none other than the eyes of little Ljubov set in gold. When the Lady came to stay at the country house on the outskirts of the village, she wore her jewels. The simple peasants fell to gossip. The eyes they took for two weird precious stones resembling lapis lazuli. One of them spoke of his meeting with the Lady before poor blind little Piotr, who listened intently. I will now, my friends, give you --- nay, lend you --- a piece of information of the utmost importance. It's a fine bit of psychology, too. "A" "man is not a wee bit interesting when he speaks of others, but let the beggar" "ride his own horse, expound his own experiences, and "(you can bet your shirt upon it) "he will be worth listening to." Thus the peasant-who-had-met-the-lady. He was usually very dull. But the poor fellow had not had any interesting experience in his life, until he met Her. She was walking in the garden, cutting flowers for the table, and, seeing a moujick digging the soil, summoned him. "When thou hast done digging this hole, cut me some flowers," she said. And he fell to work with all his might, his body seeming {303} young and beautiful in the precision of its mechanical actions. She let her eye fall upon him and wondered. ... Presently he had done digging and set to cut her some flowers, looking at her all the while, already feeling strange and new sensations, sweating in an uncontrolled Sukshma-Pranayama. Alack-a-day, fellows! That was a fine lady for a poor ignorant moujick to behold. She stood, to the end of his days, for a divine apparition. Had he know of OUR LADY HECATE, (blessed be he who murmurs her name with awe! may she gleefully look upon us!) he would have considered his vision to be a visit of the great Goddess (her name be rapidly uttered in the Vault of our beloved Brethren the Ka D Sh Knights of Water P.A...P.P. Water). to cut our tale short, for the time is approaching for our libations, the peasant heard the voice of the Lady. She thanked him, him, a poor peasant, her slave, and left him to his work. Her image, however, remained clear before his eyes and he did not fail in his description of her. Well, little Piotr heard it all. As there was but one woman in the whole world whom he loved, the description of another woman did not in the least attract his attention. Only when mention was made of her magnificent jewels did his ears stand up. "What are ear-rings?" he asked of Ljubov, when he felt her tiny hand in his, a little later. "They are beautiful things, Piotr," she answered. "They are beautiful to the eye." "Hah!" he sighed --- for that was the one thing he could not well realize. "They are stones with fire or water in them." {304} "What, do they burn? do they feel cool to the hand?" "Only to the eye, dear. "I" remember. One sets them in gold and wears them hanging from the ear, or round one's neck." "Would you like to "feel" some, Ljubov?" "Oh yes! ... But, it's no use, dear, I couldn't "see" them." "Perhaps you would like just to pass your fingers over then, and try to imagine what they ... er ... look like?" "I think I would. Then I could explain better to you what I mean." Piotr signed again and soon left her. In the evening he wandered around the house where the Lady was staying. She was walking in the garden and he listened to her voice while she sang softly to herself. Presently she sat down. Piotr was well used to directing his steps without the use of eyes, and he managed to creep behind her. A fixed idea had taken possession of his childish brain. He would take the jewels everyone thought so beautiful, and take them to Ljubov. Suddenly, he sprang forward and his hands searched in the darkness for the ears. A tiny little sound, made by the Lady, as she turned round, helped him to find the place. His fingers closed on each side over the ears and he pulled out with a violent movement. The Lady fell unconscious without having uttered a sound, so acute and sudden had been the pain. Piotr went away slowly, his hands grasping two ear-rings with a little piece of human flesh attached to them. {305} V He sought Ljubov. She, who was like a shoot out of the stem of Jesse, who did not judge after the sight of her eyes, who could stretch out her hand on the den of the basilisk and play on the hole of the asp, without ever coming to grief, fell a-trembling with an unconscious knowledge of that which was going to happen. It dawned upon her that she had come to a point where the road was to become broad under her feet and of an easier walk than the dark path upon which she had of late journeyed. I was hiding behind a tree when Pitr approached her, and so I witnessed their meeting. He, also, was quaking with excitement. Brandishing his two hands, somewhat red with the blood of his victim, he spoke pantingly. "Ljubov, my little sister" he said, "I have two fine jewels for thee. Feel them." But as she put her hand forward he withdrew his; and, instinctively, rubbed the two ear-rings with a corner of his blouse. The particles of flesh fell down during the process. Then he took a step nearer to her and seized her shoulder, endeavouring to place one pendant where he knew it ought to be worn. But his hand trembled much; neither was her own body steady. They both laboured under great nervous excitement." "I could not," Elphénor went on, "tell you how the thing happened, unless I used my imagination --- and the whole pack of you are unworthy of that exertion --- nor will I take the trouble to search the bottom drawers of my reason for any explanation of what I take to be a very scarce phenomenon." {306} Briefly --- for the time is approaching which we must better utilize --- Piotr's hand shook so that he missed touching the lobe of little Ljubov's ear. The jewel he held up to her face touched, instead, one of the empty orbits of his little friend. Our villain, the Man who bought and stole Eyes, must have done his job very properly indeed, for Ljubov, who, in a vain attempt to see that which was shewn her, had open wide the dark cavities under her eyebrows. Well, I suppose the eye touched a still sensitive nerve. No sooner had it done so than she uttered an exclamation. "I see! Piotr, I SEE! I SEE!" And helping herself now, she rapidly unset the eyes from their golden crown and thrust them where they ought to have been all that time. Miracle of Miracles! She saw as you and I do. She saw poor little Piotr who stood before her, almost out of his mind, sharing her excitement. She took his hand, drew him to her and kissed his forehead. Then she wept for a long time. finally, she sat down by him and told him of her new sensations. VI But they were unsatisfactory. The sky she saw was, in spite of the Stars, inferior to the beauty she had endowed it with. The sweet face of her little friend even was less sweet to behold than it had been to her childish fancy. And, gently, with an extraordinary delicacy, she spoke of her disappointment. "Oh! it was more beautiful as we thought it, Piotroushka!" she exclaimed. {307} And, acting upon an impulse, she dropped her eyes in her hand and threw them behind her without a sigh. I picked them up, my friends, while the two children stood, their arms linked together, a sad by resigned expression gradually coming over their faces. Ay, I picked them up, but I won't shew them to you, unworthy foxes. And now, Lights please ... let us take to the ritual. Brother H., fill the Holy Cups ... Holy be the Lamps of Joy! Holy be the Lamps of Sorrow! Let us enter the Ark of Increased Knowledge!" VII A little late one of the Disciples inquired of the Master: "You spoke of a strange sect of self-mutilated followers, O Master, what of them?" "What of them?" Elphénor repeated. "Well, they were those who listened to Ljubov, and took her word for it --- that one sees a better world if one has no human eyes. They put it into practice and their ranks were soon filled. They blinded themselves; they blinded their children almost in their cradles. Oh yes, there were soon hundreds of them who worshipped the Lord our God in that manner; and Ljubov and Piotr were their ministers. Is that all you want to know? "Master, what of the Lady?" "The Lady? Faugh! She went away; the spirits of the Earth prevented her from lodging a complaint; she hid her {308} wounded ears under a thick ornament of pearls and gold. it was not bad with her! Besides, what is she to you, anyhow, billy-goat? "And now, all of ye, clear out, and walk ye all to your rooms with the mantra." FINIS {309} MIDSUMMER EVE FAINT shadows cross the shifting spears of light, Pale gold and amethyst, or warmly white, Till velvet shod, unseen, the wizard hours Hold thus their elfin court amid the flowers, That wake to wingèd music of the night. And silken signs scarce stir the amorous bowers Where 'passioned sleep his poppy garland showers, In dreams which mock the hastening moments flight. Up soars the moon, and higher still and higher The dancers leap to catch some fairy fire to steal and 'prison in the glow-worm's tail, For pixie torches should the starlight fail; Reflecting gems which deck the elfin choir, Melting like snowflakes at the daybreak pale. ETHEL ARCHER. {310} THE POETICAL MEMORY AN ESSAY I AM one of those silly people (there are a lot of them --- quite enough to make it pay) who are so irritated at the arrival of a bill that I nearly always throw it on the fire. For all that, I had been humbly proud of my memory, and it was an awful shock to me one morning when I received this bill, {Facsimile on page 331 described: This is a statement of account due from J W Benson. Ltd., Jewellers, goldsmiths, silversmiths and watch & Clock Makers, 25 Old Bond St., (Steam Factories Ludgate Hill)., established 1749. The letter head carries five arms of royal houses with supporters and draperies: King of Greece, King of Portugal, Late Queen Victoria, Emperor of Russia and King of Siam --- all "by appointment to's or purveyors to's. Prize medals of London 1862 to left and of Paris-Dublin to right, two each --- these not described in detail here, lacking as they do any particular significance beside identity. The place and date in mixed hand and print is: London Xmas 1908. The following text is written in hand (as best I can decipher it): "E A Crowley, Esq. 21 Warwick Road, L{?} 1614 Kensington W. 1907 April " To repairing. Coffee Pot 4 6 Sep. 7 " new glasses to gold keyless 1/2 hunting Watch 2 . 1907 Oct. 30 " relining and refitting lid of Crocodile┐ Suit Case pigskin, stuffing two new │ pigskin pockets and new tooth brush │ bottle: repairing and supplying two ├ 8 10 - plated clips to side standards --- │ removing bruises and polishing all │ silver mounts --- also cleaning and │ renovating all leather fittings ┘ 28 " repairing and cleaning gold keyless┐ half hunting Watch ├ 13 6 ┘_________________ £ 9 10 - =================} for I had a very clear impression in my mind that the contract was for £5. {311} Indeed, I wrote and said so. But ala! my poor memory was most certainly at fault. Messrs. Bensons replied: {Facsimile on page 332 described: Same letterhead as that on page 331. Text follows: "London January 21st 1909. "Sir, In reply to your letter respecting your account we bet to enclose statement here with, from which you will see that the £5 you handed to our Assistant was in payment of your old account, the various items of which ranged from October 1906 to September 1907, and statements of which had been rendered to you each quarter. This payment of £5/-/- left a balance of 6/6, and with the 13/6 charged for repairing the gold Watch and £8/10/- for repairing Suit Case, the total of your account to date is £9.10/-. With regard to the item of £8/10/- we cannot understand how you come to be under the impression that it should only be £5, as we are certain are Assistant did not quote this latter price for doing up the Suit Case. Trusting that this explanation will make the matter quite clear to you, We get to remain, Sir. Your obedient...{?} E.A. Crowley, Esq., J. W. Benson Ltd. 21 Warwick Road for J.B. Kensington W. ----------- ----------- } {312} this explanation "did" make the matter quite clear to me; for I had all the time in my possession --- not thrown in the fire after all! --- their original account. {Facsimile on page 333 described: Same letterhead as that on page 331. Text follows: "London 30. 10. 1905 "E A Crowley Esq 21 Warwick road 125 Kensington. To Relining and refitting with pigskin case of ..... Suit Case new Pigskin pockets & new cut glass tooth brush bottle supplying two plated clips & refinishing side standards, removing bruises & repolishing all Silver mounts cleaning & repairing a gold Keyless 5 Half Hunting English ... Watch 13 6 Balance of old a/c. 6 6 --------- £ 6 - - } ALEISTER CROWLEY1 {313} 1 WEH NOTE: I suppose A.C. liked the numbers... ADELA Jupiter Mars P Moon VENEZIA, "May" 19"th", 1910. JUPITER'S foursquare blaze of gold and blue Rides on the moon, a lilac conch of pearl, As if the dread god, charioted anew Came conquering, his amazing disk awhirl To war down all the stars. I see him through The hair of this mine own Italian girl, Adela That bends her face on mine in the gondola! There is scarce a breath of wind on the lagoon. Life is absorbed in its beatitude, A meditative mage beneath the moon Ah! should we come, a delicate interlude, To Campo Santo that, this night of June, Heals for awhile the immitigable feud? Adela! Your breath ruffles my soul in the gondola! {314} Through maze on maze of silent waterways, Guarded by lightless sentinel palaces, We glide; the soft plash of the oar, that sways Our life, like love does, laps --- no softer seas Swoon in the bosom of Pacific bays! We are in tune with the infinite ecstasies, Adela! Sway with me, sway with me in the gondola! They hold us in, these tangled sepulchres That guard such ghostly life. They tower above Our passage like the cliffs of death. There stirs No angel from the pinnacles thereof. All broods, all breeds. But immanent as Hers That reigns is this most silent crown of love, Adela That broods on me, and is I, in the gondola. They twist, they twine, these white and black canals, Now stark with lamplight, now a reach of Styx. Even as out love --- raging wild animals Suddenly hoisted on the crucifix To radiate seraphic coronals, Flowers, flowers --- O let our light and darkness mix, Adela, Goddess and beast with me in the gondola! Come! though your hair be a cascade of fire, Your lips twin snakes, your tongue the lightning flash, Your teeth God's grip on life, your face His lyre, {315} Your eyes His stars --- come, let our Venus lash Our bodies with the whips of Her desire. Your bed's the world, your body the world-ash, Adela! Shall I give the word to the man of the gondola? ALEISTER CROWLEY.1 {316} 1 WEH NOTE: This is a hyperbole of sexual intercourse, "viz." "The old man in the boat", etc. THE THREE WORMS IN the great vault is a coffin. In the coffin is the corpse of a very beautiful woman. The vault is deep under the ground and very still. Above its bricks is a layer of earth, and if any sound at all percolates into this chamber of death, it is only the delicate tremor and rustle of things growing, of the grass seed pushing its tiny way through the mould, to break at the last into its narrow slip of bright green flame. This, and the weak whisper of trailing rose-roots in whose brown and ugly stems glow such a tender sap and noiseless fervour of exquisite perfume. At intervals, maybe, this dark blue silence is wounded by strange creakings and indescribably tremors: noises that are really the wastings and settlings of decaying bone and flesh, just as if Death were feasting his lips at last with murderous kisses on the flesh of his latest mistress in the secret peace of his terrible bridal chamber. All around the vault are hung great blue-black carpets of shadow, and the floor is damp, and wriggling with the spawn of low life. Let us look into the coffin of the beautiful dead woman, look into it as we would have strangers look into our own with the child eyes of fancy and imagination, rather than with the cold and scaly eyes of knowledge. Only to vulgar and brutish eyes is there any horror, for {317} the sweet process of life is at work in every cell and particle of the dead. Truly, there is no such thing as death. Lips grown tired of speech, and outhonied of the honey of all kisses fade and whisper away into something else. The crude utterances of human language fail them, and they win instead the subtle perfumed conversation of flowers and vegetation. Thus their dust comes to lie about a rose-root, and with the lovely chemistry of earth they tremble back to the surface once more as crinkled and crimson perfume, or a frail flutter of yellow longing. Like flags, like tender waving pennons or messengers of hope and greeting from those beleaguered ones dissolving in the fastnesses of earth. Every rose, every lily is a message from our dead: a sigh or a smile: something simple like the daisy from a simple heart, something of weird and oppressive beauty from some poet's brain, like the passion flower or the fuchsia. In the coffin of the beautiful dead woman, there are three worms, sweet, clean, wavy, little maggots that will one day carry all the charm and delight of the dead back into the world again, will quicken and nourish seeds and roots, so that in the pink glamour of an April almond tree, the glory of the dead woman's hair shall be returned again. One of these creatures is poised over her mouth, which again, to vulgar in unseeing eyes, looks ugly, though it is really more beautiful now than ever it was, for it is quick with frail seeds of countless existences, and is become a very factory and warehouse of Life Itself. Another worm is coming out of the dead right eye of the woman, coiled, as it were, like a little pink amethyst from the stuff of her brain. And yet another peers from the mysterious {318} citadel of her heart, which like a faded and extinguished censer, rusts in the decadence of its scented memories. The three worms dispose themselves and begin to talk. The little worm which is issuing from her mouth begins: "I am her mouth, her beautiful mouth, that sweet frail chalice where her soul delighted to dissolve itself and to lie. That mouth of hers, so nervous, so intimately sensible, that it is pleasant to think of it as the fragile rim of the holy and wonderful amphora of her strange exultant being. "I am --- since I was fed on them --- all that litany of kisses which passion flung like a storm of wet rose-leaves on to her mouth --- am, am I not? --- all those dreams and pale blue shimmering fantasies that love drew like mists out of the hearts of all her lovers to expire in the stained fervour of an instant's rapture. "I am --- forgive it to me! --- all the lies which floated from her lips as sweetly as caresses, all those lies which fled like arrows barbed with gall into the ravished brains of her adorers. One I sent to America, and another to pick out the green glint of Death's eye in the lustre of a glass of poison. I tore husband from wife with my wingèd scented words, redolent of the very nudity and flesh of love, yellow, crocus-tinted, opalescent, murderously sweet. "I pricked the souls of little children with the crystal toys of speech that fell from the melting coral of my curvèd lips. "I was East and West, and North and South, and sun and moon, and shuddering flight of stars to more than one, and it seems to me, as one of her heirs and sons, that she was not a good woman. {319} "I fear she was bad, for from me were twisted such devious messages, such various, unalike reports, that yes and no became counters of speech almost indistinguishable to my thinking. Once, I remember, there trickled from me a vagrant little flow of words, so bitter and so inviting, so poisonous and yet so intoxicating, that the soul for whom they were meant held up the silver goblets of hearing for its own destruction with trembling, greedy hands, covetous and anxious, hungry and afraid. her voice that purled and rippled and sang through me -- ah! it was like a kiss caged in her throat, and to hear it made a man a father in longing. There are voices like that, and when men hear them, they live a lifetime in an instant, mate, rear children, are widowed, or have their eyes closed for them for the last time by these women whose souls they thus secretly and inviolately espouse." After a little silence the worm which issued from her eyes then spoke: "I am her eyes, and she was bad, bad as her mouth says. Some of that mouth's warm tribute came indeed to me, and I was shut from seeing with the close lips of men beating time to the superb madness of their love music and rhythmic kisses. And I saw --- O what I saw! --- mountains that bowed to her, and stringed necklaces of stars that flashed in ecstasy on Eternity's bosom from the very sight of her. Seas over which she passed on a sensuous errand as live and tremulous as the heave of their own great hearts --- heaves that are the world's sighs for the little brood that teases it, and festers the green and waving glory of its skin and hair. {320} "Much have I looked upon --- I, the now crawling, damp and sightless evidence of her sight. "I am her eyes. "Empires shone in me: suns set, moons arose, and were drowned like lovely naiads in the waters of the sky. I knew wild flowers so beautiful, that one dared not touch them lest their beauty start to mere ugly life. "I am that quiver of fragile and delicious expectation that shone in the virgin eyes of here when ... O happy hour! "I am that greediness, that terrible woman's greediness, fierce as drought, relentless as Death, which devours its own portion in the feast of life. "And I too, like her mouth, witness to it that she was evil. The senses are the person in so much as they are the sweet janitors to all that come and go. Through our five portals life only flows, and the flavour of its tides is with us always. I sit in judgment on myself --- I where the world could gather itself in one, little, humble, focus-point of curiosity and pep into the garden of her soul --- I --- where seas could be held calm and captive in a little pool of blue --- I --- who could consume mountains in a flash, and devour the dawn, I who could bit the moon trail her white limbs for my pleasure through the windy bagnios of the sky. "I sit in judgment and condemn, for often I was a sword when Truth was a little child, and the breasts of my beauty I gave to Worthlessness in the stinking lupanars of Treachery and Deceit. "Brothers, like the afterlight of day, I the light of her life consort with the shadows of evening, and I say it softly, {321} gently, ever as Spring's flying feet touch with unaccustomed primroses the wood, I say it --- She was bad." Then the third worm, which came from the woman's heart, turned to the other two, and said: "I am her heart ... her beautiful, beautiful heart. "What do you know of the deeds of the Queen who were never in her council chamber? "When you were bold, I was perhaps afraid, and when you exulted, there was I know not what trouble of sadness throbbing within me. All that you were I sustained: all your pleasure stirred through me, and you but harvested that which I sowed. "When you were all aflame, it was I who lit you, and you could not even be sad without me. "Not less tender than the inviting curl --- like a curled and fluffy feather of coral --- with which you who were her lips made welcome to some man, was the slow hypnotic wave of my thurible with whose essence I drenched ever cell of her body. I say that she was good, for she was human and she loved, oh! so sweetly, so delicately, so tenderly. "What you did, you, her lips, her eyes and her other senses, was but to make vain effigies of our interior delight, to shatter in the broken shards of translation the mysterious silent beauty of the vase itself. "I, the woman's heart of her, was like to a cave were thousands of voices of unborn children cried softly in the dark, where one felt their outstretching hands in pale and piteous appeal, as one may hear the early lilies break through the encompassing earth. In me were the seed of kisses that could only burst to flower in a hundred years to come. {322} "I am her heart, her ordinary, commonplace woman's heart. Commonplace! Ah! nothing is so mysterious as the commonplace, for it is only Subtlety sleeping and holding its hands a little while. A country clod is more interesting than the most awake and magnetic of geniuses, even as the veiled and cloistered odours of Spring with which one knows the earth is tingling in Winter are more delirious and exciting than the naked bosoms of May. "Will you believe me, that, but I know not what exquisite contradiction, the sweetest kiss was ever a pang to her, and yielding was only less terrible than denial? "On my small insistent beat have lain heads that were heavy with great dreams: men of action and men of fancy who loved her and were loved, it may be, a little of her too. I have been the couch of treaties and the pillow of financial strifes, and on me much uncoined gold has slept through dreamless transparent nights. "Once a poet received her favours, and his head, bowed and weighted with its spongy amorphous magic, rested on me like a honeycomb, all giddy and vibrant with perfume and emotion. "And once an old mother's head, gray and weary with its long rolling down the years, found on me the unexpected peace and happiness of the old. For the old are so lonely, and no one is their friend. ... So, my brothers, I give you the key of all her secrets except that secret which she shares with Time and herself. "I can make all plain except my own mystery, which is the tragedy of everyone, worm, or man, or God. "Blaspheme no more in such childish, imitative fashion! {323} You are nearer the world than I, and its weak vanity has stained you. The eye looks at the world, and the world looks at the eye, and though each learns from the other, it is not often an even bargain and exchange. ..." Then, as the heart-worm ceased to speak, the other two, the eye-worm and the mouth-worm, drew closer to where during all his talking they had been magnetically moved. And all those years which they had passed unconsciously as the lips or the eyes of a woman became suddenly revealed, most vividly different to them. They could not speak, the two detractors, for they had learnt the wisdom and merit of sin. They knew that good and evil are the same thing, that in a world of illusion he who has the most illusions is the richest man, that to be wise unto ignorance is the fairest counsel, that they knew nothing and yet all, that ... And the heart-worm, whose judgment and reasonings had been so readily accepted by the others, grew in his turn a sceptic, since faith cannot live without doubt, and truth is only co-existent with untruth, as day with night, as life with death, as, O beloved! my heart with thine, as vain and coloured chatterings like this with noble and involate silence. EDWARD STORER. {324} THE FELON FLOWER AS the sighing of souls that are waiting the close of the light, As the passionate kissings of Love in the Forest of Night, As the swish of the wavelets that beat on a cavernless shore, Or the cry of the sea-mew that echoes a moment or more, So the voice of thy spirit soft-calling my soul in its flight. As the breath of the wind that is borne from the island of Love, As the swift-moving cloudlets that sail in the heaven above, As the warmth of the sunlight that breaks on the shimmering sea, And the sweetness that lurks in the sting of the honey-fed bee, So the joy of thy kiss, the dread offspring of serpent and dove. As the trail of the fiery lightnings which gleam in the dark, As the light from the measureless Bow of the sevenfold Arc, As the fires which glance o'er the face of the treacherous deep, When none but the furies may rest, and the nereids weep, --- So thy meteor eyes, brightest sirens alluring Love's barque. When hid in the wonderful maze of thy whispering hair, Alone with the shadows and thee, and away from the glare {325} Of the burning and pitiless day, and the pitiless light, --- Thee only beside me, above me the mystical night, No dream so created in darkness was ever more fair. For then was thy touch as the light of a life-giving fire, Which kindles, and scorches, and burns, with unsated desire, Thy breath the warm essence of myrtle, the fragrance of pine, The languorous smoke of a temple obscene yet divine, Which gladdens the soul of a god in his passionate ire. So silent those nights, I could fancy the uttermost deep Engulfed us for ever, --- for ever in silence to keep The tale of our wooing: till sweetly the murderous hours Had lulled us to rest; and the magical poison of flowers Had stolen our brains, and our eyelids were heavy with sleep. Ah love! They are banished, yet not so the strength of the spell Which holds both our beings in bondage, a bondage so fell That even the angels above cannot alter its power; It lives in the memory yet of one passionate hour, When from the dark bosom of Hell sprang a fair felon flower. ETHEL ARCHER. {326} THE BIG STICK COUNTERPARTS. Vol. XVI of THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE NEW LIFE. An Epitome of the Work and Teaching of Thomas Lake Harris. By RESPIRO. 2"s". 6"d". net. A New Edition. C. W. Pearce and Co., 139, West Regent Street, Glasgow. If we are in any way to shadow forth the Ineffable, it must be by a degradation. Every symbol is a blasphemy against the Truth that it indicates. A painter to remind us of the sunlight has no better material than dull ochre. So we need not be surprised if the Unity of Subject and Object in Consciousness which is Samadhi, the uniting of the Bride and the Lamb which is Heaven, the uniting of the Magus and the god which is Evocation, the uniting of the Man and his Holy Guardian Angel which is the seal upon the work of the Adeptus Minor, is symbolized by the geometrical unity of the circle and the square, the arithmetical unity of the 5 and the 6, and (for more universality of comprehension) the uniting of the Lingam and the Yoni, the Cross and the Rose. For as in earth-life the sexual ecstasy is the loss of self in the Beloved, the creation of a third consciousness transcending its parents, which is again reflected into matter as a child; so, immeasurably higher, upon the Plane of Spirit, Subject and Object join to disappear, leaving a transcendent unity. This third is ecstasy and death; as below, so above. It is then with no uncleanness of mind that all races of men have adored an ithyphallic god; to those who can never lift their eyes above the basest plane the sacrament seems filth. Much, if not all, of the attacks upon Thomas Lake Harris and his worthy successor "Respiro" is due to this persistent misconception by prurient and degraded minds. When a sculptor sees a block of marble he things "How beautiful a statue is hidden in this! I have only to knock off the chips, and it will appear!" This being achieved, the builder comes along, and says: "IO will burn this, and get lime for my mortar." There are more builders than sculptors in England. {327} This is the Magic Mirror of the Soul; if you see God in everything, it is because you are God and have made the universe in your image; if you see Sex in everything, and think of Sex as something unclean, it is because you are a sexual maniac. True, it is, of course, that the soul must not unite herself to every symbol, but only to the God which every symbol veils. And Lake Harris is perfectly clear on the point. The "counterpart" is often impersonated, with the deadliest results. But if the Aspirant be wise and favoured, he will reject all but the true. And I really fail to see much difference between this doctrine and our own of attaining the Knowledge an Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, or the Hindu doctrine of becoming one with God. We may easily agree that Lake Harris made the error of thinking men pure-minded, and so used language which the gross might misinterpret; but sincere study of this book will make the truth apparent to all decent men. ALEISTER CROWLEY. [We print this review without committing ourselves to any opinion as to how these doctrines may be interpreted in practice by the avowed followers of Harris. --- ED.] "No. 19." By EDGAR JEPSON. Mills and Boon, Ltd. Arthur Machen wrote fine stories, "The Great God Pan," "The White People, etc. Edgar Jepson would have done better to cook them alone; it was a mistake to add the dash of Algernon Blackwood. A.C. RAINBOWS AND WITCHES. By WILL H. OGILVIE. 4th edition. 1"s." Elkin Mathews. A great deal of Mr. Ogilvie's verse rings true, an honest sensitive Scots heart in this brave world of ours. If he rarely --- perhaps never --- touches the summit of Parnassus, at least he is always on the ridge. A.C. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE KABALAH. By W. WYNN WESTCOTT. John M. Watkins. It is difficult to find words in which to praise this little book. It is most essential for the beginner. Lucid and illuminating, it is also illuminated. In particular, we are most pleased to find the correlation of the Qabalah with the philosophical doctrines of other religions; a task attempted by ourselves in {328} "Berashith" and "777," perhaps not so successfully from the point of view of the beginner. There is of course much beyond this elementary study, and the neophyte will find nothing in the book which he does not know; but the book is addressed to those who know nothing. It will supply them with a fine basis for Qabalistic research. ALEISTER CROWLEY. THE PRIESTESS OF ISIS. By EDOUARD SCHURÉ. Translated by F. ROTHWELL, B.A. W. Rider and son. 3"s." 6"d." net. Books I and II. I have been trying to read this book for a week, but the rapidly recurring necessity to appear on the stage of "Pan, a comedy," in the name-part, has interfered, and I have not yet finished it. But it speaks well for the book that I have not been too bored by it. I like both Hedonia and Alcyone, for I know them; but Memnones seems to lack cleanliness of line, and one understands Ombricius so little that one loses interest in his fortunes. Books III and IV. Book III did rather cheer me. But of course one knew all along that the Eruption was to be the God from the Machine. A great pity; why not another city and a less hackneyed catastrophe? But it's as well done as possible within these limits. The translation might have been better done in one or two places --- Bother! here's Hedonia coming for lunch. What a wormy worm Ombricius was! D. CARR. PETER THE CRUEL. By EDWARD STORER. John Lane. This admirable story of a little-known monarch dresses once more the Middle Ages in robes of scarlet, winged and shot with a delicate impressionism. Mr. Storer wields a pen like the rod of Moses; he has struck the water of Romance from the Rock of History; such scenes have rarely been so vividly described since de Sade and Sacher-Masoch passed on the the Great Reward. CALIGULA II. MORAG THE SEAL. By J. W. BNRODIE-INNES. Rebman. 6"s." One must wish that Mr. Brodie-Innes' English were equal to his imagination. Again and again a lack of perfect control over his medium spoils one of the finest stories ever thought. All the glamour of the Highlands is here; all love, {329} all magic --- which is love --- and Mr. Brodie-Innes' refinement avoids the crude detective solution of the mystery. And that mystery is enticing and enthralling; Morag is delicious as dream or death, enticing, elusive, exquisite. One of the subtlest and truest women in literature. Not many men have imagination so delicate and --- dictame! --- but Mr. Brodie-Innes writes "with authority, and not as the scribes." Why he allows Mathers to go about saying that he is a Jesuit and a poisoner will be revealed at the Last Day. Perhaps, like us, he can't catch him. Or perhaps it is that he is contented to be a great novelist --- as he is, bar the weakness of his English and an occasional touch of Early Victorian prunes-and-prismism. He has every other qualification. God bless him! BOLESKINE. IN THE NAME OF THE MESSIAH. By E. A. GORDON. KEISERSHA. Tokyo, N.D. N.P. The only way to read this book is to run at it, shouting a slogan, and to stick a skean dhuibh in it somewhere and read the sentence it hits. Thus, perhaps, with perseverance and a lot of luck, one may find a coherent paragraph in the porridge of disconnected drivel, defaced with italics and capitals and inverted commas like a schoolgirl's letter. And this is the coherent paragraph. "There are 3 apocryphal descriptions of the man Christ Jesus. ... All "agree" in describing Him as 'strikingly tall,' '6 ft. high,' and with curled or wavy locks. "This, to my mind, established the Identity of the Daibutsu with the curl- covered head and colossal stature." This, to my mind, establishes the Identity of Mrs. Gordon with Mr. J. M. Robertson. A. C. OLD AS THE WORLD. BY J. W. BRODIE-INNES. 6"s." Rebman. A rattling good novel, with hundreds of incidents on every page, a hero and heroine who seldom talk in anything meaner than capitals, and a happy ending: "Wherever you are, there is my kingdom," he murmured, as he folded his beloved close against his heart. Mr. Brodie-KInnes belongs to what one may call the Exoteric Occult School {330} of novelists; one feels throughout that his occultism is the result of study and not of experience. That is why I say exoteric. Although the style of the book is comparatively undistinguished, and sometimes lapses into actual slovenliness, Mr. Brodie-Innes frequently attains beauty, and beauty of a positive and original kind. Some of his sea-picture are quite fine. But the magic of style that renders Arthur Machen so marvellous is lacking. "Old and the World" is always interesting; it is never enthralling. "Old as the World" is much better than "Morag the Seal," and there is a marked improvement in the style. V. B. N. BLACK MAGIC. By MARJORIE BOWEN. Alston Rivers. 6"s." Marjorie Bowen knows nothing of the real magic, but she has learnt the tales spread by fools about sorcerers, and fostered by them as the best possible concealments of their truth. Of these ingredients she has brewed a magnificent hell-broth. No chapter lacks its jewelled incident, and the web that she has woven of men's passions is a flame-red tapestry stained with dark patches of murder and charred here and there with fire of hell. Marjorie Bowen has immense skill; has she genius? How can a stranger say? so many nowadays are forced by sheer starvation into writing books that will sell --- and when they have taken the devil's money, find that it is in no figure that he has their souls in pawn. I am told that it is the ambition of W. S. Maugham to write a great play. A. C. THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL. By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD. Macmillan and Co. 6"s." I read this book on the Express Train from Eastbourne to London (change at Polegate, Lewes, Hayward's Heath, Three Bridges, Red Hill, and East Croydon --- they ought to stop to set down passengers at Earlswood), and though it's a beautiful story, and I like Nixie, I must confess to being rather bored. Rather with a capital R and a sforzando "er." I wanted George Macdonald's "Lilith," and Arthur Machen's "Hill of Dreams" --- they have blood in them. And I was not in my library, but in a stuffy, dog-returneth-to-his-vomit- scented microbe-catcher labeled 1st Compo. Then, too, Algernon Blackwood began to remind me of Maeterlinck. There was too much bluebirdiness, and it gave me the blue devils. And then, again, though I've never read J. M. Barrie, I felt sure {331} that he must be responsible for some of the oysters in the stew. And where was Sidney Blow? Yes: it's a silly book; a book elaborately and deliberately silly; even laboriously silly with that silliness which cometh not forth but by prayer and fasting. ... And as I continued to read, it grew monotonously silly. Paul "slipped into the Crack" in several different ways, but there wasn't much difference in the result. I began to wonder if Mr. Blackwood has been drinking from the wisdom- fount of Ecclesiastes and Don Juan! And oh dear! the conversations. Children don't talk bad metaphysics, nor do repatriated lumbermen. But Mr. Blackwood must dree his weird, I suppose. And then, on a sudden, the monotony breaks up into a mixture of "La Morte Amoureuse," "Thomas Lake Harris," "The Yoke" (Mr. Hubert Wales' masterpiece), and "The Autobiography of a Flea told in a Hop, Skip, and a Jump." But I prefer Mr. Verbouc to Uncle Paul, and Bella to Nixie. From the point of view of pure literature, of course. The book then slobbers off into Gentle-Darwin-meek-and mild Theosophy. Victoria at last, thank God! I think I'll slip into the Crack, myself! ALEISTER CROWLEY THE LITERARY GUIDE. Messrs. Watts and Co. 2"d." The Journeyings of Joseph. Joseph has gone a-wandering; and, as he cannot even on the billowy waves keep his mouth shut, we are treated in the above official organ to an account of his itinerary as if he were the real original Vasco de Gama. He reminds us rather of the Shoreditch lady who went for her first country walk, as an old song tells us: "I've been roaming, I've been roaming Where the meadow dew is sweet; And I'm coming, and I'm coming With its pearls upon my feet." For, if he brings back with him "cockle shells from distant lands" like a certain Roman Caesar, akin to the information which now gushes from his pips, his pearls will indeed be from the land of Gophir, and must I am afraid be trampled by us with other flash fudge Parisian ware back into the gutter whence they came, the gutter of phylogenic-ontogeny. There was no other Joseph or Josephina aboard, no "helpmeet" worthy of Him, all Potiphar's wives --- by the way, a Second Joseph would have been rather a tall order for either Mrs. Potiphar or Ernst Haeckel --- so the Great and Only {332} One was intensely bored as he had to restrict himself to his own society. And the more he restricted himself the more bored he became, and the more bored he became the more boorish did he grow, and the ruder did he become to his fellow passengers, who evidently had not sufficient "rationalism" to believe that Erasmus Darwin was born in 1788, or that the water upon which they floated was composed of HO2 {sic, s.b. H2O, WEH NOTE}. He wondered, "If it were they who were fools, or I myself," --- we, being mystics, don't; we know! Their conversation was "trivial chatter," so evidently it had nothing to do with ontogenic-phylogeny. The chaplain was "insufferable" twice over, and so were his prayers. "The heavy mask of revelry was still on the faces of the men whom curiosity drew to the open rail: men in gay pyjamas and flaunting shirts, men with ends of cigarettes in their lax mouths, men whose language, up to a few hours before, had been too archaic for the dictionary. With open mouths they jostled each other to get a good view of the plunge of the white sewn outline of a man." Now, Joseph, draw it mild; don't put the sugar in your tea with a trowel! we have seen many burials at sea, more than we should care to count, but we have never seen the corpse surrounded by "fag-ends" and a gay pyjamaed mob. Perhaps one of the passengers was on his way to the bath-room, in a Swan and Edgar "sleeping suit," when you went to have your own little peep -- or have you borrowed a leaf from your former Jesuit brothers and write all this for the greater glory of God RPA? We are travellers as well as mystics, we have been a score of journeys as long as yours and longer, right round the world twice --- think of that, Jo! and all the cockle shells you could have collected! We know that the conversation "on board" is trivial, "very naughty," as a little Cape Dutch girl once said to us, "but rather nice," and that the ozone of the air and the brine of the waves make the ladies most charming on the boat deck. We are mystics and are never bored; we are mystics and are just as happy on board a Castle liner as behind Fleet Street in Johnson's Court. If we back a winner we ask our friends to come and have a "night out" with us; and if the wrong colours go by, well, we don't pawn our breeches to buy a revolver. It it were possible for boredom to descend upon us we should not say "sucks" to it, like Philpotts, but should retire into Dhyana or Samâdhi. You would call this "Self-induced-hypophlomorphodemoniacal-auto-suggestion." Well, well, never mind! we will pass the words, we don't care a "tinker's curse" about them; it is the message we look for and not the special patents act under which the wire which conveyed it to us is registered. And if I say "hocuspocus" and down come a good dinner and a pretty girl, eat the one and don't be rude to the other --- or she will run away, Joseph, she really will: and please, Josy, don't turn to me and say: You "insufferable" fool, you are not Ramano's; what business have you to produce {333} a "Pêche Melba"? You are not a "trivial" Mrs. Warren; what do you mean by "Plumping down" before me this "little bit of fluff"? Now don't be too bored or too serious, Joseph, be a good fellow ever towards those who are unlike you, for a good heart is worth a dozen good heads and heaven only knows how many bad ones. Eat your "scoff" and enjoy it; give the girl a kiss --- even if among the boats; and shake hands with the Chaplain --- after all he probably agreed with you over the Boulter Case. Here surely is a link between you! Drop the "insufferable" and the "christmas-card- curate" description of him, use your tea-spoon like an ordinary decent Christian and don't empty the sugar basin, shake hands with him, my boy, shake hands with him, and try and be a real good fellow, Joseph, a real good fellow, as well as an indifferent evolutionist! A. QUILLER. WITH THE ADEPTS. By FRANZ HARTMANN. William Rider and Son. If you have never been to "The Shakespeare" or "The Elephant and Castle" please go; for, for the same price that you would pay for this book you will be able to obtain at either a good seat. Go there when they are playing "The Sorrows of Satan," and you will have no need to be "With the Adepts" of Franz Hartmann. Besides, if you are not amused by the play the back of the programme will surely never fail you. There you will learn the proximity of the nearest "Rag Shop" where old bones, scrap iron, india rubber and waste paper may be sold; and should you, like us, be so unfortunate as to possess a copy of this story, may with a little persuasion induce the ragman to relieve you of it. Besides, it will also tell you where you can obtain "Sausage and mash" for two pence --- and who would not prefer so occult a dish to a "bun- worry" with Sisters Helen and Leila? From page one to one hundred and eighty this is all warrented pure, like the white and pink sugar mice on a Christmas tree --- quite wholesome for little children. Not only can you meet the Adepts but the Adepts' "lady friends"; you might be in Bloomsbury, but no such luck. Polite conversation takes place upon "advanced occultism," which strongly reminds us of the pink and paunchy puddings of Cadogan Court. The lady adepts are bashful and shy, but always very proper. The Monastery might be in Lower Tooting. The hero asks silly questions so as to give the Adept the requisite opportunities of making sillier answers. "I was rather reluctant to leave the presence of the ladies ... the ladies permitted me to retire." Outside bottles full of this sort of occult Potassium Bromide, this novelette is eminently suited as a moral sedative for young girls when they reach sixteen or thereabouts and are beginning to wonder how they got into this funny world. {334} THE DEVIL: "Let us giggle." THEODORUS: "Hush, you have committed a horrible black magical act, you have slept with" ... LEILA ["a creamy girl"]: "Good heavens, Sir, I faint; call a policeman," THEODORUS: "Become acquainted with the Queen of the nymphs." ... SISTER HELEN ["nursing expert"]: "A douche, smelling salts, eau de Cologne, quinine ...!" THEODORUS: "From the abode of ... Brotherhood you are expelled ["sobs"], to the British Museum you must go ["snuffles"], and read ["pause"] 'The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians'!" THE DEVIL: "Tut, tut. ... Dear Sisters, the train has stopped, we are at Streatham Hill --- let us get out." ALICIA DE GRUYS. ON THE LOOSE. By GEORGE RAFFALOVICH. Publishing Office of THE EQUINOX, 124 Victoria Street, S. W. 1"s." net. The author of the Man-Cover is well-known to the readers of THE EQUINOX. His charm lays principally in the independence of his thought, the delicacy of his touch, in his spirit of pure joy, in his most holy childishness. He shows certainly a great lack of literary experience, an accumulation of various contradictory feelings which seem to fight one another for the conquest of his spirit. The scientific training of our order will give him that Mastery over self which alone can bring forth the full blossom of his rich imagination. There is every reason for us to expect much of Mr. Rafflovich. Is he not a Gemini man, with Jupiter and Saturn culminating? Somewhat Neronian, probably, as will be seen in his work. We recommend especially the reading of the two sketches entitled "Demeter" and "A Spring Meeting," and we look forward to any future work of the author. There is more in his work that is met at first glance. Let him forget that he writes for English readers and subscribers to libraries! GEORGE RAFFALOVICH. HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. By SIR EDWARD THORPE. Watts and Co. Vol. ii. As excellent as vol. i. what is Sir Edward doing amongst this brainy goody lot? H2S. HISTORY OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. By ARCHIBALD DUFF, D.D. Watts and Co. 1"s." net. An interesting little volume, as complete as can be expected for 146 pages. Duff, D. D., does not understand Qabalah. We can assure him it is not a "fancied philosophy wherein everything was in reality brand new," as Zunz {335} says. He does not understand it, but he is not alone in this. Few understand the Qabalah; and therefore few talk sense about the Pentateuch. We recommend Duff, D. D., to study "A Note on Genesis" in vol. i, No. 2, THE EQUINOX, after which if he still considers it "fancied" we shall be ready to discuss it with him. B. RASHITH. THE SACRED SPORTS OF SIVA. Printed at the Hindu Mission Press. Annas 8. The editor in his preface does not see the objection to Gods and especially to Siva holding sports, neither do we. But you must play square, even if you are a God; it is not cricket to slay the whole of the opposing eleven each time you are bowled. But perhaps Siva had a reputation to keep up; we'll ask Kali. VISHNU. RITUAL, FAITH, AND MORALS. By F. h. PERRYCOSTE. Watts and Co. If you should be so depraved as to desire to become a rationalistic author, you must buy a pair of sissors, some stickphast, and a parcel of odd vols. at Hodgson's containing: Buckle, Draper, Gibbon Lecky, and old dictionary or two of quotations and some of the Christian Fathers. The process then is easy; it consists in cutting these to pieces and in sticking them together in all possible combinations, and publishing each combination under a different name. For fifteen years Mr. Perrycoste has been snipping hard, and the above work consists only of Chapters III and IV of one volume of a series of volumes. We are charitable enough to hope that Mr. Perrycoste may be spared to produce the rest, so long as we are spared reviewing them. ELIAS ASHMOLE. THE ANCIENT CONSTITUTIONAL CHARGES OF THE GUILD FREE MASONS. By JOHN YARKER. William Tait, 2"s." 6"d." net. This is a most learned work; the author holds Solomon only knows how many exalted degrees; but besides the title-page there is much of interest to Masons in this little volume. Some of the ancient charges are quite amusing. "That no Fellow go into town in the night time without a Fellow to bear witness that he hath been in honest company" seems, however, a bit rough on the girls. F. PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY. By J. a. FARRAR. Watts and Co. 6"d." A good book which makes us wish we had been born before Christ. A. Q. THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC. Published at the Offices of M. A. P. 6"d." At one time I was acquainted with many of our London demi-mondaines, and many a charming girl and good-hearted woman had I the pleasure of meeting {336} --- and clean-minded withal. To say that all end in the Lock or the river is to say that you know nothing about the subject; for many marry, as Mayhew points out; in fact, Mayhew, in his classic "London Labour and the London Poor" is the only author I know --- always excepting Charles Drysdale --- who in any way saw the modern London hetaira as she really is. Drysdale in his courageous work, "the Elements of Social Science," also points out that the life of the ordinary prostitute is a very much healthier one than that of the average factory girl. The authoress of this work seems to understand this in a way, for in spite of "the awful degradation" which she harps upon, she contradicts herself by writing: "I may here remark that the girls I come in contact with, if they marry happily, make excellent wives" (p.66). The cure for the present degradation associated with prostitution is a common-sense one --- one of not supposing that we are good and others are bad, of carting away our own manure before writing to the sanitary inspector about other people's dung, and to cease hatching mysteries between the sheets of our family four-poster. If unions were sanctioned outside the marriage bond, even if such unions were only of an ephemeral nature, there would be no necessity to procure young girls, for natural love-making would take the place of state-fostered abduction. The root of the evil lies neither in the inherent lust of man after woman, which is natural, or of woman after gold, which shows her business-like capabilities; but in the unhealthy point of view adopted by the general public. There is nothing more disgusting in the act of generation, or even in the pleasures associated with it, that there is in alimentation, with its particular enjoyments. Dessert is quite a superfluous course after a good meal, and yet it is not considered degrading to eat it; and so, as it is not considered a crime to eat for the pleasure of eating, neither should it publicly (privately of course it is not) be considered a crime if unions take place without offspring resulting. This double-faced attitude must have the bottom knocked out of it as well as the front; it must utterly perish. From the natural, that is, the common-sense point of view, there are no such things as moral or immoral unions, for all nature demands is healthy parents and healthy children, healthy pleasures and healthy pains. The Church, the Chapel, and the Registry Office must go; for, so long as they remain, prostitution will spell degradation, and marriage falsehood and hypocrisy. Chaos will not result when Virtue weds with Vice, for what is possible to the savage is possible for us, and the children will be looked after better than eve. Once teach our children the nobility of love, and the pimp, the pander, and the puir-minded presbyter will simply be starved out. Continue to foster the present unhealthy aspect with its "unfortunate," its "fallen," its "awful," its "degradation" and its "doom," and, in spite of a million Vigilance Society men on every {337} railway platform in the Kingdom, the White Slave Traffic will continue to flourish the more it is presecuted, and become more criminal and degrading than ever. Money is not the basis of this so-called evil, as suggested, and public indignation will not work a cure any more than public indignation against the Metropolitan Water Board will stop people drinking water. We must cease globe-polishing virtue and sand-papering vice. Away with out moral Monkey Brand and our ethical Sapolio, and back to a little genuine common-sense elbow-grease. When a girl ceases sowing her "wild oats" and can enter any phase of life without being spat upon and "chucked out," degradation will cease. And when such women as are "born" prostitutes are utilized by the State for the benefit of men who are not monogamists by nature, procuring will vanish. But, if these women be so used, it behoves the nation to care for these talented girls, just as she cares, or should care, for her soldiers; and when the time was expired, she should pension them off, and award them a long service and good-conduct medal should they deserve it. this is a clean-minded book so far as it goes. We have no humbugging Horton, D. D., swooning at the thought of lace, frills, and a pretty ankle. But the remedies suggested are worse than the disease. Exalt the courtesan to her proper place, bracket her name with sweetheart, wife and mother, names which are rightly dear to us, and you will find a tender heart beneath the scarlet dress, and a charming lovable woman in spite of public opprobrium. Neglect this, and all other propositions of reform spell --- Muck! A QUILLER. I like the legislation proposed by the blackguards of "vigilance"; who, never having met a gentleman, think that everybody is an avaricious scoundrel --- though sometimes in another line of business. And this attack by M.A.P. on its trade rivals in the filth-purveying business (for all journalism is filth --- must we exclude this White Slave "copy" from the indictment and class it as literature!) is only what is to be expected. Anyhow, even our government is hardly likely to pass the suggested Act, which thoughtfully provides that you may be arrested without a warrant for offering your umbrella in a shower to a strange lady, and makes it felony to raise your hat in the street. I once had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Coote, well-groomed in ultra- respectable broadcloth, and flaunting Three Virtues in his button-hole. I looked for some others in his heart, but drew blank. If he had any others, too, I suppose he would have worn the appropriate ribbons. The truth about Coote-Comstock crapulence is this. Manx Cats subscribe to the Society for the Suppression of Persian Cats. These funds go to support {338} a lot of holy souteneurs in idleness --- and they find it pays to foam at the mouth from time to time against the other souteneurs who live on poor prostitutes instead of wealthy virgins. I should like, too, to ask Mr. Coote a rather curious question. We were talking about paternity. His then secretary, Mr. Hewston, had given me to understand that the Vigilance Society made a practice of paying (on behalf of and at the expense of the fathers) allowances to the mothers of illegitimate children, of caring for the mothers, helping them to get work,and eventually marrying them to honest fellows of their own class. This seemed too sensible to be true. Mr. Hewston's honest heart had let him to misunderstand. Mr. Coote indignantly corrected this view of the society's work. They never did that sort of thing, he said, "except in a few very special cases." Now I want to know about these very special cases. Are they by any chance those in which the fathers are reputable and pious persons, highly esteemed for their Evangelicalism and philanthropy? ... There have been some ill-disposed persons who were not ashamed to assert that some of the methods of Vigilance societies remind them of blackmail. Is there another side to the medal? A. QUILLER, JR. THE CANNON. An Exposition of the Pagan Mysteries perpetuated in the Cabala as the rule of all the arts. Elkin Mathews. This is a very extraordinary book, and it should be a fair "eye-opener" to such as consider the Qabalah a fanciful concatenation of numbers, words, and names. Also it may come as rather a rude shock to some of our "fancied" knowalls, our "cocksureites," who are under the delusion that knowledge was born with their grandmothers, and has now reached perfection in themselves, for it proves conclusively enough by actual measurements of existing monuments and records that the ancients, hundreds of years ago, were perfectly well acquainted with what we are pleased in our swollenheadiness to call "the discoveries of modern science." Every ancient temple was built on a definite symbolic design and was not a haphazard erection of brick and mortar dependent on the "£ s. d." On the contrary, it closely followed the measurements of the body of Christ or of a Man which it was supposed to represent. The three great canonical numbers are 2,368 (IESOUS CHRISTOS), 1,480 (CHRISTOS) and 888 (IESOUS), Numerous other numbers also occur but most hinge on these three. Here is an example. 888, 1,480 and 2,368 are to each other in the ration of 3, 5 and 8. 358 is numerically equal to Messiah, and 358 1/2 x 6 = 2,151 which is again a symbol of the Hebrew Messiah. Alpha {339} and Omega = 2,152; and a hexagon described round a circle having a circumference of 2,151 has a perimeter of 3,368. 2,151 also is the sum of 1,480 (Christos) and 671 (Thora the Bride). A vesica 358 board is 620 long, and 620 is the value of Kether, etc., etc. (see p. 124). This book is a veritable model of industry and research, but in spite of an excellent index, and index in the ordinary sense is almost out of place in a work of so complicated a character as this; what is really needed is a table of the numerical correspondences, similar in type to those we have already published in our "777". then at a glance the student can see the various numerical values and what they refer to. J. F. C. F. KANT'S ETHICS AND SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM. By M. KELLY. swan Sonnenschein and Co., 2"s." 6"d." Last year we had the pleasure of review in Major Kelly's "Kant's Philosophy as Rectified by Schopenhauer," and we hope that if the future further volumes are to appear, and if they are as interesting as the present one, we may "continue the motion." Kant's categories are in type similar to the Sephiroth of the Qabalah emanations from an unknown "x" sing or God, and whether this sign is called "à priori," "autonomy" or "categorical affirmative" matters no whit. Kant's ethics are futile, and to an intellect like Schopenhauer's absolutely childish. Kant never could understand "morality" because he never transcended the reason, practically, or even theoretically. If there is a moral law in the Formative World it is probably the line of least resistance. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and fixed laws of heteronomy and of autonomy are absurd, and if Kant had once transcended the Reason he would have had direct experience of this fact. On p. 126 Schopenhauer sets him right as follows: "The essence of the world is will. ... the only way of salvation is by negation of the will, or by self-denial and renunciation. ..." And again: "...life is the attainment of self-consciousness, in order that the will may acquire a right knowledge of its own nature. ..." (p. 157). "Evil and pleasure are but different manifestations of the one will to live" (p. 177). "The tormentor and the tormented are one." ... "Therefore what is good for one person may be just the opposite for another ... all suffering is nothing but unfulfilled or crossed willing" (pp. 178-182). "When a man has so far got rid of this veil that it no longer causes an egoistical distinction between his own person and that of another, he will recognize his innermost and true self in all beings, regard their endless suffering {340} as his own, and so appropriate to himself the pain of the while world" (p. 184). Here the "true-self" is the Higher Self, Atman or Augoeides, unity with which is what we have called the Great Work of the A.'. A.'. When a soldier turns philosopher we always expect good work, and Mayor Kelly has not failed us; and to all such as would understand Kant as well as Schopenhauer's great work, "The World as Will and Idea" --- of which an excellent English translation is published by Messrs. Paul, Trench, Trübner, we heartily recommend this masterful little volume. F. THE SIGNS AND SYMBOLS OF PRIMORDIAL MAN. By ALBERT CHURCHWARD. Swan Sonnenschein. 25"s." net. The first thing one has to do is to compose oneself in a comfortable position, for this book is large and weights I don't know how many pounds; the next to remember that the author has an axe to grind, a\or at least has constituted himself leading counsel for his client Egypt, and in a learned and most convincing argument not only proves the undoubted antiquity of his client's claim, but that it was from Egypt, or rather Central Africa, that the human race originated, and that it is to Egyptian symbolism, and more particularly to the Ritual of the Dead, that we must go if we would rightly understand the temples, rites, ceremonies, and customs of mankind past and present. From Egypt they came and to Egypt must we go. The book is in every sense a great book, and, by the way, it forms an excellent seventh volume to Gerald Massey's monumental work. Brother Wynne Westcott is very rightly condemned as displaying a peculiarly acute ignorance of both Freemasonry and Egyptology, and further on so is that chattering journalist, Mr. Andrew Lang --- the Paul Carus of the British Isles. Dr. Churchward is a Freemason of a very high degree, but yet not high enough to understand that secrets that need safeguarding are no secrets at all. "l. H." for left hand is excusable because it saves printers' ink; but "these need no explanation to R.A.M.'s" etc., etc., is ridiculous because R.A.M.'s need not be told about it, and if you are not going to divulge this frightful secret about a "Tau" why bother to say so? Remember that "an indicible arcanum is an arcanum which "cannot" be revealed," even by a R.A.M.! The Hebrew throughout is very faulty; either Dr. Churchward knows none, or else the proofs have been sadly neglected. But now let us turn to the subject over which he must have spent years of labour. Man he traces back to the Pygmies of Central Africa, these or beings very like them hundreds of thousands of years ago emigrated all over the world --- they were Paleolithic man, and whether these ape-like little beings had a Mythos {341} or not would appear to be doubtful, but the next great exodus, that of Neolithic man, carried with it the Stellar Mythos, --- that of the Seven Stars and the Pole Star, and the varied quarters to which these primitive men travelled is carefully indicated on the map at the end of the book. Though it may seem strange that they crossed vast oceans, it must be born in mind that the configurations of the globe have changed since those remote periods; besides, primitive man did get about the world in a most extraordinary way, as such islands as Madagascar and Easter Island prove. The inhabitants of the former are Polynesian and not African, of the later, seemingly Melanesian, judging by their skulls, and the Solomon Islands, the nearest Melanesian islands to Easter Island, are thousands of miles away. Ducie Island, the nearest island to Easter Island, is many hundred miles away, and the coast of South America is no less than 2,300 miles distant. And yet in this tiny island we find proofs of very high civilization, and it is curious that Dr. Churchward has not mentioned the numerous hieroglyphics found there concerning which a very full account is given in the Smithsonian Reports of 1889. After these came another exodus, carrying with it the Lunar and Solar Mythos, and Horus became under varying names the supreme world-god, and his four sons, or emanations, the four quarters. It is impossible here to enter into the numerous entrancing speculations that Dr. Churchward draws, or to give any adequate idea of the vast number of proofs that he marshals to convince us --- they are quite bewildering. In fact, they completely reverse our conception of polytheism; for it is we who are the idolators, and not our ancestors; it is we who sacrifice to many gods, and not those little Bushmen who felt and saw and lived with the One Great Spirit. Let us therefore mention that the chief points, a few out of a score, that have struck us are --- The Custom of the Mark Sacred Stone; the universality of Horus worship; the startling identity of hieroglyphics, all over the world, with the Egyptian; and the symbolism of the Great Pyramid, and its use as a Temple of Initiation. A few others, however, do not understand. On p. 80 Dr. Churchward traces the "Bull Roarer" back to Egypt. But we can find no proofs of these ever having been used there. In Australia, as he states, they were used, and so also in New Zealand and New Guinea and over most of Europe; in Sussex, country boys to this day use them as toys. Again, the Egyptian throwing-stick (p. 67) is not a boomerang at all; it was made of thick rounded wood and will not return when thrown. It is as perfectly distinct from the Australian weapon as the Australian is from the throwing-clubs of Fiji. The double triangle symbol(?) is so common in the Pacific Islands that it is to be found on nearly every club and utensil; in some cases it represents figures of men with bent knees and arms akimbo. There are many combination of it. In small details the author fails, {342} he is so keen to find proof of Egyptian antiquity in everything. On p. 228 he quotes as an example of original sign-language that he "watched with interest our bluejackets leaning over the side of a man-of- war talking to one another" by means of their hands and fingers. Of course what they are really doing is semaphore signalling without flags after the official signalling with flags has ceased. In spite of these small over-eagernesses, this book is a revolutionary volume, a work that should stimulate argument and comment; and we hope that it will induce others to collect and discover the secrets of the past before they are devoured by our Minotaurean Civilization. It is a melancholy fact that though amongst the rudest of rude savages secrets have been kept and great systems maintained for hundreds of thousands of years, the "clever" children of the present with all their arts and crafts are only destroyers of the past. we defame antiquity, annihilate those who still venerate it --- mentally we destroy their minds with a corrupt and idolatrous Christianity, a veritable haggis of guts and blood, and their bodies with gunpowder and loathsome diseases. In a few years all will have gone; but (say you?) all will be saved, stored in our libraries and museums. But, we answer, even these in a few centuries will be dust and ashes; the very paper of this book which we are reviewing, beautiful though it be, will, like a girl's beauty, vanish before forty years are past. Our inventions are our curse, they are our destruction. What was coagulated in the minds of barbarians for thousands and tens of thousands of years we shall have destroyed utterly, utterly, in as many days and nights. Civilization has driven her plough over Stellar and Solar mythology, wantonly, and at haphazard, and in their place she has cultivated the Unknowable and Andrew Lang! If the Utilitarian progress in the next few years as he has in the last, soon we shall have some socialistic fellah depriving the world of its last great monuments, and building labourers' cottages out of the stones and bricks of the Pyramids, because they are so very much more useful. "solve" is the cry to-day; the Sabbatic finger of the Goat points upwards, yet on the clouds of darkness does it scrawl a sigil of light. A new God stirs in the Womb of its Mother; we can see his form, dim and red, in the cavern of Time. Dare we pronounce his name? Yea! It is Horus, Horus the Child, reborn Amsu the Good Shepherd, who will lead us out of the sheepish stupidity of to-day. How many understand this mystery? Perhaps none save those who have seen and subscribed to the Law of Thelema. J. F. C. F. THE LOST VALLEY. By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD. Nash. 6"s." It is the penalty of factitious success that the need of fuel increases like the dose of a drug-fiend. Instead of clothing his with with silk from the loom of life {343} and embroidering it with gold thread drawn from the observation of things around him, the slave of popularity wears it threadbare. Morphia won't replace bread after the first month or so! Now we see Mr. Blackwood and Nemesis. He gets a reputation by marketing his tiny scrap of knowledge of the inner World; the public cries out for more, and the poor wage-slave, bankrupt in invention, does his best to fake --- and fails. It is the male equivalent of the harlot who has drifted from Piccadilly to Waterloo Bridge Road. So here we see him, the shy smile changed to the open coarse appeal, the tawdry apparatus of his craft seen for what it is --- rabbit-skin ermine! --- and himself unmistakably the fifth-rate writer, like Baudelaire's "Old Mountebank" --- surely no more pitiful --- tumbling for no kindlier laugh than that of contempt. (And he might have been so fine!) This is why success must in the nature of things spoil everybody. Make a hit with one arrow; you must never dare to do more than change the colour of the feathers --- till your quiver is empty. And how empty is Mr. Blackwood's! When it comes to a father hating his twin sons because (why?) he wanted one son very badly, going mad, and after his death turning the two into one in spite of a clergyman's reading aloud of Job ---- Well, hang it, Mr. Blackwood, the woman has the best of it yet. It is a very foolish girl who cannot hold her own for ten years. But you who have been writing hardly half the time are only fit for the LIterary Lock Hospital. JONATHAN HUTCHINSON, Natu Minimus. AMBERGRIS. A Selection of Poems by ALEISTER CROWLEY. Elkin Mathews. 3"s." 6"d." Printed by Strangeways and sons, Great Tower Street, Cambridge Circus, W. C. We don't like books of selections, and you can't make a nightingale out of a crow by picking out the least jarring notes. The book is nicely bound and printed --- as if that were any excuse! Mr. Crowley, however, must have been surprised to receive a bill of over Six Pounds for "author's corrections," as the book was printed from his volume of Collected Works, and the alterations made by his were well within the dozen! [Yes; he was surprised; it was his first --- and last --- experience of these strange ways. --- ED.] If poets are ever going to make themselves heard, they must find some means of breaking down the tradition that they are the easy dupes of every --- [Satis. --- ED.] {344} Just as a dishonest commercial traveller will sometimes get a job by accepting a low salary, and look for profit to falsifying the accounts of "expenses," so --- [Here; this will never do. --- ED.] We have had fine weather recently in Mesopotamia --- [I dare say; but I'm getting suspicious; stop right here. --- ED.] All right; don't be huffy; good-bye! S HOLMES. SECRET REMEDIES. British Medical Association, 429, Strand, W. C. 1"s." Every person who has the welfare of the people at heart should buy this book for free distribution among the poor. The major portion of the Press (which lives corruptly on the advertisemnts of the scoundrels exposed in this book, knaves who sell ginger at the price of gold) has done its best to boycott the book. The public --- the helpless, ignorant section of it --- spends nigh 2 1/2 millions sterling every year on these quack nostrums. We must safeguard them. We must register all "patent" remedies, insist on the ingredients and their cost being printed clearly on each box, and appoint a committee with funds at its disposal from the Treasury to recompense adequately and generously anyone who really should discover a cure for human affliction. The Chancellor of the Exchequer need not worry about his third of a million yearly from the stamp duty. No country ever yet lost money by driving out its bloodsuckers, and saving its citizens from the penalties of ignorance. A. C. THE MAGNETIC MIRROR. By DR. CAROLUS REX. 1"s." This little work is very skillfully written; it is intended to induce members of the higher grades of the Universal Order of B.'. F.'. to pay "Dr." "Carolus" "Rex" sums of from Two to Twenty Guineas for "Magic Mirrors," which we hope are worth as many pence. PROFESSOR JACOBUS IMPERATOR. {345} GLAZIERS' HOUSES: or, THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT I will write him a very taunting letter. --- "As You Like It." IN these latter days, when (too often) a newspaper proprietor is like a Buddhist monk, afraid to scratch his head lest he should incommode his vermin, it is indeed a joy for a young and nameless author to be presented with a long sword by a cordial editor, with the injunction: "There , my lad, sweep away, never mind what you hit --- I'll stand the racket." Whoosh! off we go. One, two, three --- crash! what's that? "Aere perennus"? Or a perennial ass> Let us see --- a very curious problem. A problem not to be solved by mere surface scraping. Well then? A thankless and invidious task it may seem to pierce deeper than the "wolf in Dr. Jaeger's clothing" of our wittiest woman and most alluring "morphinomane." That task is ours. For last night in the visions of mine head upon my bed I beheld, strangely interwoven with this striking picture, the scene between Little Red Tiding Hood and her sick grandmother --- how perverted! For in my dream it seemed that the old lady had devoured the wolf and that the scourge of the {346} Tories was but a bed-ridden and toothless hag, mumbling the senile curses and jests which she could no longer articulate. True it is that the Word of Shaw is quick and powerful, sharper than a two- edged sword. Yet the habit of sword-swollowing is probably fatal to the suicidal intentions of a Brutus, and it has certainly grown on him until he can no longer slay either himself or another. A dweller in the glass houses of Fad, he has thrown stones at the fishy god. A Society Shimei, he has spat against the wind, and his beard is befouled. True, every thought of Shaw is a great thought; and so equable and far- seeing is the artist, that its contradictory appears with it. His births are all Siamese twins; his god is Janus; his sign is Gemini ... but his end is (I fear) not to rise above the equilibrium of contraries by a praeter-Hegelian dialectic, but to sink wearily between his two stools, a lamentable loon. ... This Nulli Secundus, inflated with fermenting Grape-Nuts! For in all that mass of analysis lucid and terrible I cannot recall a single line of beauty, rarely a note of ecstasy; with one exception (John Tanner), hardly a hero. Even he not a little absurd. He has seen through the shams of romance, and marriage, and free love, and literary pose, and medical Ju-Ju, and religious rant, and political twaddle, and socialist Buncombe and --- every phase of falsehood. ... But he has hardly grasped that each such falsehood is but a shadow of some sun of truth. He does not perceive the ineffable glory of the universe in its whole and in each part. He has smitten at the shadow of a shadow: it falls --- the world is filth. Let him {347} rather new-edge his sword for a deeper analysis, and cut away the veil from the face of our Mother. 'Sdeath, man, is there nothing we may love? He is wrong, anyway, to gibe at Scripture. For, like Balaam, I came to curse, and appear to be blessing him! (with scarce a monitory word). And, like Balaam, too, I have been reviewed by G. K. Chesterton. To pass from this painful subject. ... Let me rouse myself to a really resolute effort to denounce Shaw as a niddering. Aha! I have it. The man is a journalist after all. We have to thank him for semi-educating a few of our noodles, for applying the caustic Of Ibsen (right) and Wagner (wrong --- the book's drivel) to that most indolent of ulcers, the British Public, but for nothing more. His own work, bar "Man and Overman" (why the hybrid Superman?), is a glib sham. If it proves anything, it proves nothing. But are we to writhe in the ecstasies of Pyrrhonism? For this prophet claims to be Zoroaster. Can we be sure even of that? He has educated the British goat to caper to his discordant Pan-pipe, so that without the nuisance of crucifixion he may scourge the money-changes from the temple. Yet is this true cynicism? doth he delight, the surly Diogenes, in his solitary gambols --- that insult both Lydia and Lalage? Or is he doing it to tempt them --- to coquette with them? Is he a man deadly serious in positive constructive aim, yet so sensitive to ridicule that he will always seek to turn it off as a jest --- and so a stultifier of himself? A Christ crucified, not upon Calvary, but upon Venus berg, and so no redeemer? If so, "ave atque vale," George Bernard Shaw, for a redeemer {348} from the Overmen we want, and we will have; another we will not have. Rather than your mock-crucified castrato-devilry, Barabbas! But if it be your serious livelong purpose to slay all ideas by ridicule. ... then we must claim you as an adept, one fit for the scourge and the buffets, for the gives and the slaver of the lick-spittle English, whose only notion of a jest is a smutty story. There is room for another hand at my bench. See! if thou be indeed Achilles, why should we be in doubt? The gilded arms of Pandarus --- the speech of Thersites. Sir, these things trouble us! Thou seest it! If thou art journalist, the very journalists may rise from their slime, bubbling with foul breath,and suck thee down to their mother ooze unspeakable; but if not, then I too (no journalist, God knows!) must praise thee. Thee --- not thy work. For the manner thereof is wholly abominable. What have all we done, that for Pegasus we have this spavined and hamstrung Rosinante, for Bucephalus this hydrocephalic hydropath? Even as god Gilbert begat the devil-brood musical comedy, so hast thou begotten the tedious stage-sermons to which our priest-loving, sin-conscious slaves now flock. Refinement of cruelty! Thou hast replaced the Trappist cell by the Court Theatre! For this, I, who prefer the study to the theatre, forgive thee; for I love not the badger-reek of Suburbia and Bohemia in my nostrils. But for this also I praise thee, that lion-like thou turnest at last upon the jackal-crowd at thy heels. That ungainly dragon, the Chesterbelloc, hast thou ridden against, {349} good St. George Bernard Shaw! With a spear thou hast pierced its side, and there floweth forth beer and water. Turn also, gramercy, upon the others, even unto the lowest. As Ibsen hawked at carrion birds with a Wild Duck, so do thou create some harpy to torment them. Who is this that followeth thee? Behold this mumbler born to butcher the English language, and educated to hack it with a saw! This stuttering babbler, this Harpocrates by the compulsion of a Sloane Square Mammurra! Who is this hanger-on to the bedraggled petticoats of thy lousy Thalia --- this beardless, witless filcher of thy fallen crab-apples? This housemaid of the Court theatre, the Gittite slut whose bleary eyes weep sexless crocodile tears over the crassness of the daughters of the Philistines? Arise, and speak to this palsied megalomaniac, this frowsy Moll Flanders of a degenerated Chelsea, this down-at-heel "flâneur" on the outer boulevards of a prostituted literature, this little mongrel dog that fawneth upon the ill-cut trousers of thee, O St. Pancras Pulchinello --- this little red-coated ;person that doth mouth and dance upon the kakophonous barrel-organ of New thought fakirs and Modernity mountebanks. Speak to this parasite --- itself unspeakably verminous --- of the long- haired brigade, who has "got on" for that it had neither sufficient talent to excite envy, nor manhood enough to excite apprehension, but wit well to comprehend the sycophancy of the self-styled court and the tittle-tattle of the servants' hall. It is an Editor --- dear Lord my God! it is an Editor; but he who employs it has an equally indefeasible title to employ the pronoun "We." {350} It hat never had aught to say; but, then, how affectedly it hath said it! ... Will not the late "New Quarterly" take note of this? O these barbers, with their prattle, and their false expedients --- and scarce even a safety razor among them! For let each one who worships George Bernard Shaw, while ignorant of that magnificent foundation of literature and philosophy --- the Cubical Stone of the Wise, on which a greater than Auguste Rodin hath erected the indomitable figure of Le Penseur --- take these remarks individually to himself, and --- oh! Thinker, think again. Let not posterity consider of this statue that its summit is no Overman, but a gibbering ape! Not filth, not sorrow, not laughter of the mocker is this universe; but laughter of a young god, a holy and beautiful god, a god of live and light. And thou, since thou hast the ear of the British ass at thy lips, sing to it those starry songs. It can but bray. ... But why, as hitherto, shouldst thou bray also? Or if bray thou must, let us have the virile and portentous bray of the Ass of Apuleius, not (as hitherto) the plaintive bray of the proverbial ass who hesitated so long between the two thistles that he starved to death. I warn thee, ass! We who are gods have laughed with thee these many years; beware lest in the end we laugh at thee with the laughter of a mandrake torn up, whereat thou shouldst fall dead. A. QUILLER, JR. {351} IN THE TEMPLE THE subtle-souled dim radiant queen Burns like a bale-fire through the mist; The slender earth is bright and green, Emerald, gray and amethyst; The wavering breeze has slowly kissed The way between Her zone and wrist. Pale guardian of the altar-flame, Syren of old, perfidious song, A murmuring runnel lately came In streaming hate of mortal wrong. Wait, for, my goddess, not for long The snake is tame. ... See! He is strong! The wide-set temple-pillars gleam, As marble white, and tall as pines; The doorway to immortal dream Lies through the temple's purple shrines. Behold, pure queen, the magic signs. Let words out-stream As mingled wines! ... VICTOR B. NEUBURG. {352}