THE INSTALLATION OF A TWIN-SOUL.
The sacred musicians of the temple surrounded the throne in solid
circles each arrayed in lordly attire.
They flourished instruments of gold, that rang out music of such depth
and clearness of tone as to melt every soul in that vast audience into
one thrilling whole. The sounding song was the incarnation of all
things majestic and glorious. In its breathless measures were born the
spirits of conquest, pride, inspiration, love and sympathy. The
thrilling climax was wrought of passages eloquent of love, tenderness,
reverence, joy, adoration and poetry.
Again, with the music becoming more refined, a choir of singers in the
high cloister in the walls sang as they walked a refrain of purifying
sweetness. It was a wail of fidelity and love, and both song and music
moved in perfect accord.
Thereafter music alone was heard, when the high priest Hushnoly, and
the high priestess Zooly-Soase stood before us on the silver pavement
beneath the throne.
The blue-black hair of the high priestess fell around her olive face
and shoulders like a cloud of darkness. She wore a robe of coral-red
silken gossamer, that with its foldings shivered like quicksilver,
revealing a figure of olive marble beneath. Her shoulders, arms and
breasts, soft and heavy in mould, were dimly seen beneath their coral
veil. Her profile was perfect. Her eyes were jewels of swart fire. Her
eyebrows made perfect arches above them, enhancing the beauty of her
face. Her mouth was fine and tender, and her lips red with kisses. The
high priest, whose noble features were olive-green in hue, wore a
splendid opaque silk burnous of camellia-red, of heavier texture than
that of the priestess. He wore boots of scarlet lacquered leather.
Both wore diadems of kragon, the precious stone.
A stone altar curiously carved, on which stood a green bronze turtle
of large size, occupied one side of the front of the pavement. The
turtle held its head stretched upward, and through its open mouth a
thin stream of blue smoke ascended. On the wide flat back of the
turtle lay an open volume, the sacred book of Egyplosis.
The priest and priestess stood beside the altar, each reading an
alternate stanza from the ritual of the goddess. While reading, the
priests with loud voice followed the intoning of the high priest, and
the priestesses that of the high priestess, as follows:
THE RITUAL OF HOPELESS LOVE.
PRIESTS.
Harikar is the supreme soul, and the goddess Lyone his
supreme incarnation. Equally free from asceticism and
indulgence, she treads the golden path.
PRIESTESSES.
Let us joyfully obey our adorable goddess, who commands us
in all manner of spiritual joys; let us follow her glorious
example, preserving purity of heart and life.
PRIESTS.
Let us adore a cupid agonized, worshipping the goddess of
hopeless, tender, romantic love. Let us, with our
counterparts, the most lovely of maidens, become twin-souls
for evermore.
PRIESTESSES.
Let us love the shapely and active youths, the young men of
soul and intellect, likewise those of courage and daring,
whose hearts and minds are in complete unity.
PRIESTS.
Let us add splendor of body to greatness of soul. May we
excel in the chase, the dance and the race. Let us drink
ambrosial wine, and eat the juiciest of meats, and clothe
ourselves with the finest and strongest of tissues.
[Illustration: THE PRIEST AND PRIESTESS STOOD BESIDE THE ALTAR, EACH
READING AN ALTERNATE STANZA FROM THE RITUAL OF THE GODDESS.]
PRIESTESSES.
Let us have a beautiful companionship with our counterpart
souls. Let us rejoice in the sun, in the free winds of the
sky, in the glory of flowers, in the pride of horses and
elephants richly caparisoned. Let us treasure jewels. Let us
possess emeralds, turquoises, diamonds and rubies. Let us
array ourselves with marvellous stuffs, dyed with the
richest colorings.
PRIESTS.
Let us here in search of the ideal find an ever-increasing
Nirvana of blessedness. Goddess of souls, lead us to imagine
higher and holier exaltations; keener and more blessed
raptures!
PRIESTESSES.
Sweet mother of souls! teach us to cultivate consoling
friendships with sympathetic hearts. Give us longings for
the utmost depths of love and tenderness; let us possess
fervid and impassioned souls.
PRIESTS.
Let us create a paradise wherein life is one long
intoxication of love, beauty and soul-culture, found in the
fascinating converse of soul with soul and intellect with
intellect.
PRIESTESSES.
May rapturous energies spring from hopeless loves! May the
yearning for inaccessible pleasures fill us with blessed
extravagance and holy madness.
PRIESTS.
May we, firmly poised on virtue, become possessed of noble,
delicate, enormous souls. May the meeting of spirit with
spirit be too ecstatic for words to express. May vows be
written in each other's hearts. May the jewelled ring bind
soul and soul, and in the commingled life may the holy
compact be known, that a perfect circle of souls has been
consummated.
PRIESTESSES.
Secure by our compact and our vows from tasting of the
forbidden fruit, may we always possess the happy
intemperance of never-satiated souls.
PRIESTS.
May the sorcery of love procure for us the shuddering
sensibility of sorrow, without its agony, as we possess the
perfect delight of day without the cold and lugubrious
shadows of the night.
PRIESTESSES.
Contact with life begets love, and love begets sensation,
and sensation desire, but reason and culture control desire
and so preserve the endless sweetness of our joy.
PRIESTS.
The real mortal, the ideal divine. The real awakens desire,
the ideal feeds it. The real is the maimed, the halt and the
blind; it is the sepulchre of faith; the poor, the tawdry,
the miserable, it is the measure of our imperfect attainment
of the ideal.
The ideal is the supreme made possible by love and charity.
It is wide as imagination, perfect as love, calm as death.
It is the unchangeable and the immortal.
The real with its disappointments is soul shattering, but
the ideal is perennial life.
The more inaccessible the pleasure, the keener the delight
in its pursuit.
In love, accessibility is death.
PRIESTESSES.
By losing the real we obtain the ideal. What others strive
for we possess. Praise to Harikar for the most glorious of
men, for precious viands, odoriferous wines, rare and costly
jewels, marvellous stuffs, and the hundred temples and
gardens of Egyplosis! Praise to Harikar for our counterpart
souls!
PRIESTS.
Praise to Harikar for the loveliest of women, noble,
cultured and tender, with whom Nirvana is ecstasy.
PRIESTESSES.
Nirvana is the consummate gift of Harikar, the one
everlasting sweetness!
* * * * *
During the intonation of the ritual, the twin-souls put into practice
the manifestations of those endearments prayed for, and which they
certainly seemed to possess.
Throughout the entire congregation, priest and priestess, enfolded in
each other's arms, swayed caressingly together and rapturously kissed
each other. The fondest sighs were heard amid the recitations, and the
faces of lover and beloved were flushed the color of rosy flame. A
tempest of restrained passion shook the entire congregation.
What wonder, that, ruled by such a faith, each twin-soul splendidly
apparelled, in such an edifice, should grow rich and strange, bold and
delicate, and exhibit the intemperance of emotion excited by
sensations so multiplied and extreme? I then saw a new meaning in the
grandeur and efflorescence of the sculptures of the temple. I saw in
the profuse decorations, in the arabesques so fantastically entangled
and unrolled, a manifestation of the delicate sensibility that created
them.
Not only were real or natural objects idealized in art, but also
conventional art, or the record of what nature suggests, as well as
how she appears, to the soul of the artist. And what must have been
the infinite wealth of suggestion to such souls as these to account
for such mouldings and traceries on wall and roof, and such wealth of
color in attire, reflected and duplicated in the jewelled windows of
the dome. Here were souls fitted by nature and art to fuse and create
the suggestions of nature into shapes of eternal beauty. These
flamboyant shapes and mystical colors presuppose the strange
illuminations that had pierced tender and extravagant hearts.