The Visions of Hasheesh.
"Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse's painting."
Collins.
During my stay in Damascus, that insatiable curiosity which leads me to
prefer the acquisition of all lawful knowledge through the channels of my
own personal experience, rather than in less satisfactory and less
laborious ways, induced me to make a trial of the celebrated
_Hasheesh_--that remarkable drug which supplies the luxurious Syrian with
dreams more alluring and more gorgeous than the Chinese extracts from his
darling opium pipe. The use of Hasheesh--which is a preparation of the
dried leaves of the _cannabis indica_--has been familiar to the East for
many centuries. During the Crusades, it was frequently used by the Saracen
warriors to stimulate them to the work of slaughter, and from the Arabic
term of "_Hashasheën,"_ or Eaters of Hasheesh, as applied to them, the
word "assassin" has been naturally derived. An infusion of the same plant
gives to the drink called "_bhang_," which is in common use throughout
India and Malaysia, its peculiar properties. Thus prepared, it is a more
fierce and fatal stimulant than the paste of sugar and spices to which the
Turk resorts, as the food of his voluptuous evening reveries. While its
immediate effects seem to be more potent than those of opium, its
habitual use, though attended with ultimate and permanent injury to the
system, rarely results in such utter wreck of mind and body as that to
which the votaries of the latter drug inevitably condemn themselves.
A previous experience of the effects of hasheesh--which I took once, and
in a very mild form, while in Egypt--was so peculiar in its character,
that my curiosity, instead of being satisfied, only prompted me the more
to throw myself, for once, wholly under its influence. The sensations it
then produced were those, physically, of exquisite lightness and
airiness--of a wonderfully keen perception of the ludicrous, in the most
simple and familiar objects. During the half hour in which it lasted, I
was at no time so far under its control, that I could not, with the
clearest perception, study the changes through which I passed. I noted,
with careful attention, the fine sensations which spread throughout the
whole tissue of my nervous fibre, each thrill helping to divest my frame
of its earthy and material nature, until my substance appeared to me no
grosser than the vapors of the atmosphere, and while sitting in the calm
of the Egyptian twilight, I expected to be lifted up and carried away by
the first breeze that should ruffle the Nile. While this process was going
on, the objects by which I was surrounded assumed a strange and whimsical
expression. My pipe, the oars which my boatmen plied, the turban worn by
the captain, the water-jars and culinary implements, became in themselves
so inexpressibly absurd and comical, that I was provoked into a long fit
of laughter. The hallucination died away as gradually as it came, leaving
me overcome with a soft and pleasant drowsiness, from which I sank into a
deep, refreshing sleep.
My companion and an English gentleman, who, with his wife, was also
residing in Antonio's pleasant caravanserai--agreed to join me in the
experiment. The dragoman of the latter was deputed to procure a sufficient
quantity of the drug. He was a dark Egyptian, speaking only the _lingua
franca_ of the East, and asked me, as he took the money and departed on
his mission, whether he should get hasheesh "_per ridere, a per dormire?_"
"Oh, _per ridere_, of course," I answered; "and see that it be strong and
fresh." It is customary with the Syrians to take a small portion
immediately before the evening meal, as it is thus diffused through the
stomach and acts more gradually, as well as more gently, upon the system.
As our dinner-hour was at sunset, I proposed taking hasheesh at that time,
but my friends, fearing that its operation might be more speedy upon fresh
subjects, and thus betray them into some absurdity in the presence of the
other travellers, preferred waiting until after the meal. It was then
agreed that we should retire to our room, which, as it rose like a tower
one story higher than the rest of the building, was in a manner isolated,
and would screen us from observation.
We commenced by taking a tea-spoonful each of the mixture which Abdallah
had procured. This was about the quantity I had taken in Egypt, and as the
effect then had been so slight, I judged that we ran no risk of taking an
over-dose. The strength of the drug, however, must have been far greater
in this instance, for whereas I could in the former case distinguish no
flavor but that of sugar and rose leaves, I now found the taste intensely
bitter and repulsive to the palate. We allowed the paste to dissolve
slowly on our tongues, and sat some time, quietly waiting the result. But,
having been taken upon a full stomach, its operation was hindered, and
after the lapse of nearly an hour, we could not detect the least change in
our feelings. My friends loudly expressed their conviction of the humbug
of hasheesh, but I, unwilling to give up the experiment at this point,
proposed that we should take an additional half spoonful, and follow it
with a cup of hot tea, which, if there were really any virtue in the
preparation, could not fail to call it into action. This was done, though
not without some misgivings, as we were all ignorant of the precise
quantity which constituted a dose, and the limits within which the drug
could be taken with safety. It was now ten o'clock; the streets of
Damascus were gradually becoming silent, and the fair city was bathed in
the yellow lustre of the Syrian moon. Only in the marble court-yard below
us, a few dragomen and _mukkairee_ lingered under the lemon-trees, and
beside the fountain in the centre.
I was seated alone, nearly in the middle of the room, talking with my
friends, who were lounging upon a sofa placed in a sort of alcove, at the
farther end, when the same fine nervous thrill, of which I have spoken,
suddenly shot through me. But this time it was accompanied with a burning
sensation at the pit of the stomach; and, instead of growing upon me with
the gradual pace of healthy slumber, and resolving me, as before, into
air, it came with the intensity of a pang, and shot throbbing along the
nerves to the extremities of my body. The sense of limitation---of the
confinement of our senses within the bounds of our own flesh and
blood--instantly fell away. The walls of my frame were burst outward and
tumbled into ruin; and, without thinking what form I wore--losing sight
even of all idea of form--I felt that I existed throughout a vast extent
of space. The blood, pulsed from my heart, sped through uncounted leagues
before it reached my extremities; the air drawn into my lungs expanded
into seas of limpid ether, and the arch of my skull was broader than the
vault of heaven. Within the concave that held my brain, were the
fathomless deeps of blue; clouds floated there, and the winds of heaven
rolled them together, and there shone the orb of the sun. It was--though I
thought not of that at the time--like a revelation of the mystery of
omnipresence. It is difficult to describe this sensation, or the rapidity
with which it mastered me. In the state of mental exaltation in which I
was then plunged, all sensations, as they rose, suggested more or less
coherent images. They presented themselves to me in a double form: one
physical, and therefore to a certain extent tangible; the other spiritual,
and revealing itself in a succession of splendid metaphors. The physical
feeling of extended being was accompanied by the image of an exploding
meteor, not subsiding into darkness, but continuing to shoot from its
centre or nucleus--which corresponded to the burning spot at the pit of my
stomach--incessant adumbrations of light that finally lost themselves in
the infinity of space. To my mind, even now, this image is still the best
illustration of my sensations, as I recall them; but I greatly doubt
whether the reader will find it equally clear.
My curiosity was now in a way of being satisfied; the Spirit (demon, shall
I not rather say?) of Hasheesh had entire possession of me. I was cast
upon the flood of his illusions, and drifted helplessly whithersoever they
might choose to bear me. The thrills which ran through my nervous system
became more rapid and fierce, accompanied with sensations that steeped my
whole being in unutterable rapture. I was encompassed by a sea of light,
through which played the pure, harmonious colors that are born of light.
While endeavoring, in broken expressions, to describe my feelings to my
friends, who sat looking upon me incredulously--not yet having been
affected by the drug--I suddenly found myself at the foot of the great
Pyramid of Cheops. The tapering courses of yellow limestone gleamed like
gold in the sun, and the pile rose so high that it seemed to lean for
support upon the blue arch of the sky. I wished to ascend it, and the wish
alone placed me immediately upon its apex, lifted thousands of feet above
the wheat-fields and palm-groves of Egypt. I cast my eyes downward, and,
to my astonishment, saw that it was built, not of limestone, but of huge
square plugs of Cavendish tobacco! Words cannot paint the overwhelming
sense of the ludicrous which I then experienced. I writhed on my chair in
an agony of laughter, which was only relieved by the vision melting away
like a dissolving view; till, out of my confusion of indistinct images and
fragments of images, another and more wonderful vision arose.
The more vividly I recall the scene which followed, the more carefully I
restore its different features, and separate the many threads of sensation
which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing
its exceeding glory. I was moving over the Desert, not upon the rocking
dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded
with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my
keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with
excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most
delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such as Beethoven may have heard in
dreams, but never wrote, floated around me. The atmosphere itself was
light, odor, music; and each and all sublimated beyond anything the sober
senses are capable of receiving. Before me--for a thousand leagues, as it
seemed--stretched a vista of rainbows, whose colors gleamed with the
splendor of gems--arches of living amethyst, sapphire, emerald, topaz, and
ruby. By thousands and tens of thousands, they flew past me, as my
dazzling barge sped down the magnificent arcade; yet the vista still
stretched as far as ever before me. I revelled in a sensuous elysium,
which was perfect, because no sense was left ungratified. But beyond all,
my mind was filled with a boundless feeling of triumph. My journey was
that of a conqueror--not of a conqueror who subdues his race, either by
Love or by Will, for I forgot that Man existed--but one victorious over
the grandest as well as the subtlest forces of Nature. The spirits of
Light, Color, Odor, Sound, and Motion were my slaves; and, having these, I
was master of the universe.
Those who are endowed to any extent with the imaginative faculty, must
have at least once in their lives experienced feelings which may give them
a clue to the exalted sensuous raptures of my triumphal march. The view of
a sublime mountain landscape, the hearing of a grand orchestral symphony,
or of a choral upborne by the "full-voiced organ," or even the beauty and
luxury of a cloudless summer day, suggests emotions similar in kind, if
less intense. They took a warmth and glow from that pure animal joy which
degrades not, but spiritualizes and ennobles our material part, and which
differs from cold, abstract, intellectual enjoyment, as the flaming
diamond of the Orient differs from the icicle of the North. Those finer
senses, which occupy a middle ground between our animal and intellectual
appetites, were suddenly developed to a pitch beyond what I had ever
dreamed, and being thus at one and the same time gratified to the fullest
extent of their preternatural capacity, the result was a single harmonious
sensation, to describe which human language has no epithet. Mahomet's
Paradise, with its palaces of ruby and emerald, its airs of musk and
cassia, and its rivers colder than snow and sweeter than honey, would have
been a poor and mean terminus for my arcade of rainbows. Yet in the
character of this paradise, in the gorgeous fancies of the Arabian Nights,
in the glow and luxury of all Oriental poetry, I now recognize more or
less of the agency of hasheesh.
The fulness of my rapture expanded the sense of time; and though the whole
vision was probably not more than five minutes in passing through my mind,
years seemed to have elapsed while I shot under the dazzling myriads of
rainbow arches. By and by, the rainbows, the barque of pearl and jewels,
and the desert of golden sand, vanished; and, still bathed in light and
perfume, I found myself in a land of green and flowery lawns, divided by
hills of gently undulating outline. But, although the vegetation was the
richest of earth, there were neither streams nor fountains to be seen; and
the people who came from the hills, with brilliant garments that shone in
the sun, besought me to give them the blessing of water. Their hands were
full of branches of the coral honeysuckle, in bloom. These I took; and,
breaking off the flowers one by one, set them in the earth. The slender,
trumpet-like tubes immediately became shafts of masonry, and sank deep
into the earth; the lip of the flower changed into a circular mouth of
rose-colored marble, and the people, leaning over its brink, lowered their
pitchers to the bottom with cords, and drew them up again, filled to the
brim, and dripping with honey.
The most remarkable feature of these illusions was, that at the time when
I was most completely under their influence, I knew myself to be seated in
the tower of Antonio's hotel in Damascus, knew that I had taken hasheesh,
and that the strange, gorgeous and ludicrous fancies which possessed me,
were the effect of it. At the very same instant that I looked upon the
Valley of the Nile from the pyramid, slid over the Desert, or created my
marvellous wells in that beautiful pastoral country, I saw the furniture
of my room, its mosaic pavement, the quaint Saracenic niches in the walls,
the painted and gilded beams of the ceiling, and the couch in the recess
before me, with my two companions watching me. Both sensations were
simultaneous, and equally palpable. While I was most given up to the
magnificent delusion, I saw its cause and felt its absurdity most clearly.
Metaphysicians say that the mind is incapable of performing two operations
at the same time, and may attempt to explain this phenomenon by supposing
a rapid and incessant vibration of the perceptions between the two states.
This explanation, however, is not satisfactory to me; for not more clearly
does a skilful musician with the same breath blow two distinct musical
notes from a bugle, than I was conscious of two distinct conditions of
being in the same moment. Yet, singular as it may seem, neither conflicted
with the other. My enjoyment of the visions was complete and absolute,
undisturbed by the faintest doubt of their reality, while, in some other
chamber of my brain, Reason sat coolly watching them, and heaping the
liveliest ridicule on their fantastic features. One set of nerves was
thrilled with the bliss of the gods, while another was convulsed with
unquenchable laughter at that very bliss. My highest ecstacies could not
bear down and silence the weight of my ridicule, which, in its turn, was
powerless to prevent me from running into other and more gorgeous
absurdities. I was double, not "swan and shadow," but rather, Sphinx-like,
human and beast. A true Sphinx, I was a riddle and a mystery to myself.
The drug, which had been retarded in its operation on account of having
been taken after a meal, now began to make itself more powerfully felt.
The visions were more grotesque than ever, but less agreeable; and there
was a painful tension throughout my nervous system--the effect of
over-stimulus. I was a mass of transparent jelly, and a confectioner
poured me into a twisted mould. I threw my chair aside, and writhed and
tortured myself for some time to force my loose substance into the mould.
At last, when I had so far succeeded that only one foot remained outside,
it was lifted off, and another mould, of still more crooked and intricate
shape, substituted. I have no doubt that the contortions through which I
went, to accomplish the end of my gelatinous destiny, would have been
extremely ludicrous to a spectator, but to me they were painful and
disagreeable. The sober half of me went into fits of laughter over them,
and through that laughter, my vision shifted into another scene. I had
laughed until my eyes overflowed profusely. Every drop that fell,
immediately became a large loaf of bread, and tumbled upon the shop-board
of a baker in the bazaar at Damascus. The more I laughed, the faster the
loaves fell, until such a pile was raised about the baker, that I could
hardly see the top of his head. "The man will be suffocated," I cried,
"but if he were to die, I cannot stop!"
My perceptions now became more dim and confused. I felt that I was in the
grasp of some giant force; and, in the glimmering of my fading reason,
grew earnestly alarmed, for the terrible stress under which my frame
labored increased every moment. A fierce and furious heat radiated from my
stomach throughout my system; my mouth and throat were as dry and hard as
if made of brass, and my tongue, it seemed to me, was a bar of rusty iron.
I seized a pitcher of water, and drank long and deeply; but I might as
well have drunk so much air, for not only did it impart no moisture, but
my palate and throat gave me no intelligence of having drunk at all. I
stood in the centre of the room, brandishing my arms convulsively, an
heaving sighs that seemed to shatter my whole being. "Will no one," I
cried in distress, "cast out this devil that has possession of me?" I no
longer saw the room nor my friends, but I heard one of them saying, "It
must be real; he could not counterfeit such an expression as that. But it
don't look much like pleasure." Immediately afterwards there was a scream
of the wildest laughter, and my countryman sprang upon the floor,
exclaiming, "O, ye gods! I am a locomotive!" This was his ruling
hallucination; and, for the space of two or three hours, he continued to
pace to and fro with a measured stride, exhaling his breath in violent
jets, and when he spoke, dividing his words into syllables, each of which
he brought out with a jerk, at the same time turning his hands at his
sides, as if they were the cranks of imaginary wheels, The Englishman, as
soon as he felt the dose beginning to take effect, prudently retreated to
his own room, and what the nature of his visions was, we never learned,
for he refused to tell, and, moreover, enjoined the strictest silence on
his wife.
By this time it was nearly midnight. I had passed through the Paradise of
Hasheesh, and was plunged at once into its fiercest Hell. In my ignorance
I had taken what, I have since learned, would have been a sufficient
portion for six men, and was now paying a frightful penalty for my
curiosity. The excited blood rushed through my frame with a sound like the
roaring of mighty waters. It was projected into my eyes until I could no
longer see; it beat thickly in my ears, and so throbbed in my heart, that
I feared the ribs would give way under its blows. I tore open my vest,
placed my hand over the spot, and tried to count the pulsations; but there
were two hearts, one beating at the rate of a thousand beats a minute, and
the other with a slow, dull motion. My throat, I thought, was filled to
the brim with blood, and streams of blood were pouring from my ears. I
felt them gushing warm down my cheeks and neck. With a maddened, desperate
feeling, I fled from the room, and walked over the flat, terraced roof of
the house. My body seemed to shrink and grow rigid as I wrestled with the
demon, and my face to become wild, lean and haggard. Some lines which had
struck me, years before, in reading Mrs. Browning's "Rhyme of the Duchess
May," flashed into my mind:--
"And the horse, in stark despair, with his front hoofs poised in air,
On the last verge, rears amain;
And he hangs, he rocks between--and his nostrils curdle in--
And he shivers, head and hoof, and the flakes of foam fall off;
And his face grows fierce and thin."
That picture of animal terror and agony was mine. I was the horse,
hanging poised on the verge of the giddy tower, the next moment to be
borne sheer down to destruction. Involuntarily, I raised my hand to feel
the leanness and sharpness of my face. Oh horror! the flesh had fallen
from my bones, and it was a skeleton head that I carried on my shoulders!
With one bound I sprang to the parapet, and looked down into the silent
courtyard, then filled with the shadows thrown into it by the sinking
moon. Shall I cast myself down headlong? was the question I proposed to
myself; but though the horror of that skeleton delusion was greater than
my fear of death, there was an invisible hand at my breast which pushed me
away from the brink.
I made my way back to the room, in a state of the keenest suffering. My
companion was still a locomotive, rushing to and fro, and jerking out his
syllables with the disjointed accent peculiar to a steam-engine. His mouth
had turned to brass, like mine, and he raised the pitcher to his lips in
the attempt to moisten it, but before he had taken a mouthful, set the
pitcher down again with a yell of laughter, crying out: "How can I take
water into my boiler, while I am letting off steam?"
But I was now too far gone to feel the absurdity of this, or his other
exclamations. I was sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of unutterable
agony and despair. For, although I was not conscious of real pain in any
part of my body, the cruel tension to which my nerves had been subjected
filled me through and through with a sensation of distress which was far
more severe than pain itself. In addition to this, the remnant of will
with which I struggled against the demon, became gradually weaker, and I
felt that I should soon be powerless in his hands. Every effort to
preserve my reason was accompanied by a pang of mortal fear, lest what I
now experienced was insanity, and would hold mastery over me for ever. The
thought of death, which also haunted me, was far less bitter than this
dread. I knew that in the struggle which was going on in my frame, I was
borne fearfully near the dark gulf, and the thought that, at such a time,
both reason and will were leaving my brain, filled me with an agony, the
depth and blackness of which I should vainly attempt to portray. I threw
myself on my bed, with the excited blood still roaring wildly in my ears,
my heart throbbing with a force that seemed to be rapidly wearing away my
life, my throat dry as a pot-sherd, and my stiffened tongue cleaving to
the roof of my mouth--resisting no longer, but awaiting my fate with the
apathy of despair.
My companion was now approaching the same condition, but as the effect of
the drug on him had been less violent, so his stage of suffering was more
clamorous. He cried out to me that he was dying, implored me to help him,
and reproached me vehemently, because I lay there silent, motionless, and
apparently careless of his danger. "Why will he disturb me?" I thought;
"he thinks he is dying, but what is death to madness? Let him die; a
thousand deaths were more easily borne than the pangs I suffer." While I
was sufficiently conscious to hear his exclamations, they only provoked my
keen anger; but after a time, my senses became clouded, and I sank into a
stupor. As near as I can judge, this must have been three o'clock in the
morning, rather more than five hours after the hasheesh began to take
effect. I lay thus all the following day and night, in a state of gray,
blank oblivion, broken only by a single wandering gleam of consciousness.
I recollect hearing François' voice. He told me afterwards that I arose,
attempted to dress myself, drank two cups of coffee, and then fell back
into the same death-like stupor; but of all this, I did not retain the
least knowledge. On the morning of the second day, after a sleep of thirty
hours, I awoke again to the world, with a system utterly prostrate and
unstrung, and a brain clouded with the lingering images of my visions. I
knew where I was, and what had happened to me, but all that I saw still
remained unreal and shadowy. There was no taste in what I ate, no
refreshment in what I drank, and it required a painful effort to
comprehend what was said to me and return a coherent answer. Will and
Reason had come back, but they still sat unsteadily upon their thrones.
My friend, who was much further advanced in his recovery, accompanied me
to the adjoining bath, which I hoped would assist in restoring me. It was
with great difficulty that I preserved the outward appearance of
consciousness. In spite of myself, a veil now and then fell over my mind,
and after wandering for years, as it seemed, in some distant world, I
awoke with a shock, to find myself in the steamy halls of the bath, with a
brown Syrian polishing my limbs. I suspect that my language must have been
rambling and incoherent, and that the menials who had me in charge
understood my condition, for as soon as I had stretched myself upon the
couch which follows the bath, a glass of very acid sherbet was presented
to me, and after drinking it I experienced instant relief. Still the spell
was not wholly broken, and for two or three days I continued subject to
frequent involuntary fits of absence, which made me insensible, for the
time, to all that was passing around me. I walked the streets of Damascus
with a strange consciousness that I was in some other place at the same
time, and with a constant effort to reunite my divided perceptions.
Previous to the experiment, we had decided on making a bargain with the
shekh for the journey to Palmyra. The state, however, in which we now
found ourselves, obliged us to relinquish the plan. Perhaps the excitement
of a forced march across the desert, and a conflict with the hostile
Arabs, which was quite likely to happen, might have assisted us in
throwing off the baneful effects of the drug; but all the charm which lay
in the name of Palmyra and the romantic interest of the trip, was gone. I
was without courage and without energy, and nothing remained for me but to
leave Damascus.
Yet, fearful as my rash experiment proved to me, I did not regret having
made it. It revealed to me deeps of rapture and of suffering which my
natural faculties never could have sounded. It has taught me the majesty
of human reason and of human will, even in the weakest, and the awful
peril of tampering with that which assails their integrity. I have here
faithfully and fully written out my experience, on account of the lesson
which it may convey to others. If I have unfortunately failed in my
design, and have but awakened that restless curiosity which I have
endeavored to forestall, let me beg all who are thereby led to repeat the
experiment upon themselves, that they be content to take the portion of
hasheesh which is considered sufficient for one man, and not, like me,
swallow enough for six.