Note: Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_ and
bold with =signs=. Small capitals have been changed to all capitals.
A more extensive transcriber’s note can be found at the end of this
book.
NIGHTMARE TALES
[Illustration: THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS
Point Loma, California]
NIGHTMARE TALES
_By_
H. P. BLAVATSKY
The Aryan Theosophical Press
Point Loma, California,
U. S. A.
1907
CONTENTS
PAGE
A BEWITCHED LIFE 1
THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES 65
THE LUMINOUS SHIELD 81
FROM THE POLAR LANDS 95
THE ENSOULED VIOLIN 103
[Illustration]
A BEWITCHED LIFE
(As Narrated by a Quill Pen)
INTRODUCTION
It was a dark, chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom had
descended over the streets of A——, a small town on the Rhine, and was
hanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory burgh. The
greater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long day’s work,
had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs, and lay their
aching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the large house; all
was quiet in the deserted streets.
I too was lying in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but of pain and
sickness, to which I had been confined for some days. So still was
everything in the house, that, as Longfellow has it, its stillness
seemed almost audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood,
as it rushed through my aching body, producing that monotonous
singing so familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence. I had
listened to it until, in my nervous imagination, it had grown into
the sound of a distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters ... when,
suddenly changing its character, the ever growing “singing” merged
into other and far more welcome sounds. It was the low, and at first
scarce audible, whisper of a human voice. It approached, and gradually
strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus sounds a voice
speaking across a blue quiescent lake, in one of those wondrously
acoustic gorges of the snow-capped mountains, where the air is so pure
that a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow.
Yes; it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence; of one, to
me, owing to many mystic associations, most dear and holy; a voice
familiar for long years and ever welcome: doubly so in hours of mental
or physical suffering, for it always brings with it a ray of hope and
consolation.
“Courage,” it whispered in gentle, mellow tones. “Think of the days
passed by you in sweet associations; of the great lessons received of
Nature’s truths; of the many errors of men concerning these truths;
and try to add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let the
narrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help to shorten
the hours of suffering.... Give your attention. Look yonder before you!”
“Yonder” meant the clear, large windows of an empty house on the other
side of the narrow street of the German town. They faced my own in
almost a straight line across the street, and my bed faced the windows
of my sleeping room. Obedient to the suggestion, I directed my gaze
towards them, and what I saw made me for the time being forget the
agony of the pain that racked my swollen arm and rheumatical body.
Over the windows was creeping a mist; a dense, heavy, serpentine,
whitish mist, that looked like the huge shadow of a gigantic boa slowly
uncoiling its body. Gradually it disappeared, to leave a lustrous
light, soft and silvery, as though the window-panes behind reflected
a thousand moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky—first from outside,
then from within the empty rooms. Next I saw the mist elongating
itself and throwing, as it were, a fairy bridge across the street
from the bewitched windows to my own balcony, nay to my very own bed.
As I continued gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite house
itself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by the empty rooms had
changed into the interior of another smaller room, in what I knew to
be a Swiss châlet—into a study, whose old, dark walls were covered
from floor to ceiling with book shelves on which were many antiquated
folios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the center stood
a large old-fashioned table, littered over with manuscripts and
writing materials. Before it, quill-pen in hand, sat an old man; a
grim-looking, skeleton-like personage, with a face so thin, so pale,
yellow and emaciated, that the light of the solitary little student’s
lamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high cheek-bones, as
though they were carved out of ivory.
As I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon my
pillows, the whole vision, châlet and study, desk, books and scribe,
seemed to flicker and move. Once set in motion they approached nearer
and nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the fleecy bridge of
clouds across the street, they floated through the closed windows into
my room and finally seemed to settle beside my bed.
[Illustration: “I NOTICED A LIGHT FLASHING FROM UNDER HIS PEN, A BRIGHT
COLORED SPARK THAT BECAME INSTANTANEOUSLY A SOUND. IT WAS THE SMALL
VOICE OF THE QUILL.”]
“Listen to what he thinks and is going to write”—said in soothing tones
the same familiar, far off, and yet near voice. “Thus you will hear a
narrative, the telling of which may help to shorten the long sleepless
hours, and even make you forget for a while your pain.... Try!”—it
added, using the well-known Rosicrucian and Kabalistic formula.
I tried, doing as I was bid. I centered all my attention on the
solitary laborious figure that I saw before me, but which did not
see me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen with which the old man
was writing, suggested to my mind nothing more than a low whispered
murmur of a nondescript nature. Then, gradually, my ear caught the
indistinct words of a faint and distant voice, and I thought the figure
before me, bending over its manuscript, was reading its tale aloud
instead of writing it. But I soon found out my error. For casting my
gaze at the old scribe’s face, I saw at a glance that his lips were
compressed and motionless, and the voice too thin and shrill to be his
voice. Stranger still, at every word traced by the feeble, aged hand,
I noticed a light flashing from under his pen, a bright colored spark
that became instantaneously a sound, or—what is the same thing—it
seemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed the small voice
of the quill that I heard, though scribe and pen were at the time,
perchance, hundreds of miles away from Germany. Such things will happen
occasionally, especially at night, beneath whose starry shade, as Byron
tells us, we
... learn the language of another world ...
However it may be, the words uttered by the quill remained in my memory
for days after. Nor had I any great difficulty in retaining them, for
when I sat down to record the story, I found it, as usual, indelibly
impressed on the astral tablets before my inner eye.
Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it. I failed to
learn the name of the unknown nocturnal writer. Nevertheless, though
the reader may prefer to regard the whole story as one made up for the
occasion, a dream, perhaps, still its incidents will, I hope, prove
none the less interesting.
I
THE STRANGER’S STORY
My birth-place is a small mountain hamlet, a cluster of Swiss cottages,
hidden deep in a sunny nook, between two tumble-down glaciers and a
peak covered with eternal snows. Thither, thirty-seven years ago, I
returned—crippled mentally and physically—to die, if death would only
have me. The pure invigorating air of my birth-place decided otherwise.
I am still alive; perhaps for the purpose of giving evidence to facts
I have kept profoundly secret from all—a tale of horror I would rather
hide than reveal. The reason for this unwillingness on my part is due
to my early education, and to subsequent events that gave the lie to
my most cherished prejudices. Some people might be inclined to regard
these events as providential: I, however, believe in no Providence, and
yet am unable to attribute them to mere chance. I connect them as the
ceaseless evolution of effects, engendered by certain direct causes,
with one primary and fundamental cause, from which ensued all that
followed. A feeble old man am I now, yet physical weakness has in no
way impaired my mental faculties. I remember the smallest details of
that terrible cause, which engendered such fatal results. It is these
which furnish me with an additional proof of the actual existence of
one whom I fain would regard—oh, that I could do so!--as a creature
born of my fancy, the evanescent production of a feverish, horrid
dream! Oh that terrible, mild and all-forgiving, that saintly and
respected Being! It was that paragon of all the virtues who embittered
my whole existence. It is he, who, pushing me violently out of the
monotonous but secure groove of daily life, was the first to force upon
me the certitude of a life hereafter, thus adding an additional horror
to one already great enough.
With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation, I must
interrupt these recollections with a few words about myself. Oh how, if
I could, would I obliterate that hated _Self_!
Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centered the whole
world-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau
and D’Holbach, and educated in a German university, I grew up a
thorough materialist, a confirmed atheist. I could never have even
pictured to myself any beings—least of all a Being—above or even
outside visible nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regarded
everything that could not be brought under the strictest analysis of
the physical senses as a mere chimera. A soul, I argued, even supposing
man has one, must be material. According to Origen’s definition,
_incorporeus_[1]—the epithet he gave to his God—signifies a substance
only more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which, at best,
we can form no definite idea. How then can that, of which our senses
cannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge, how can that make
itself visible or produce any tangible manifestations?
[1] ἀσώματος.
Accordingly, I received the tales of nascent Spiritualism with a
feeling of utter contempt, and regarded the overtures made by certain
priests with derision, often akin to anger. And indeed the latter
feeling has never entirely abandoned me.
Pascal, in the eighth Act of his “Thoughts,” confesses to a most
complete incertitude upon the existence of God. Throughout my life, I
too professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any such
extra-cosmic being, and repeated with that great thinker the memorable
words in which he tells us: “I have examined if this God of whom all
the world speaks might not have left some marks of himself. I look
everywhere, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers
me nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude.” Nor
have I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in precisely
similar and even stronger feelings. I have never believed, nor shall
I ever believe, in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man,
proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed in some
persons as to make them virtually Gods, at them I laugh no more. My
whole broken life is a protest against such negation. I believe in such
phenomena, and—I curse them, whenever they come, and by whatsoever
means generated.
On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, I lost the
greater part of my fortune, and resolved—for the sake of those I loved
best, rather than for my own—to make another for myself. My elder
sister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I accepted the offer of
a rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its junior partner.
For several years my business went on successfully. I got into the
confidence of many influential Japanese, through whose protection I
was enabled to travel and transact business in many localities, which,
in those days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners.
Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the philosophy
of Buddhism, the only religious system I thought worthy of being
called philosophical. Thus, in my moments of leisure, I visited the
most remarkable temples of Japan, the most important and curious of
the ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined in
turn Day-Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell; Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero,
Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi, and many other famous temples.
Several years passed away, and during that whole period I was not
cured of my scepticism, nor did I ever contemplate having my opinions
on this subject altered. I derided the pretentions of the Japanese
bonzes and ascetics, as I had those of Christian priests and European
Spiritualists. I could not believe in the acquisition of powers unknown
to, and never studied by, men of science; hence I scoffed at all such
ideas. The superstitious and atrabilious Buddhist, teaching us to shun
the pleasures of life, to put to rout one’s passions, to render oneself
insensible alike to happiness and suffering, in order to acquire such
chimerical powers—seemed supremely ridiculous in my eyes.
On a day for ever memorable to me—a fatal day—I made the acquaintance
of a venerable and learned Bonze, a Japanese priest, named Tamoora
Hideyeri. I met him at the foot of the golden Kwon-On, and from that
moment he became my best and most trusted friend. Notwithstanding my
great and genuine regard for him, however, whenever a good opportunity
was offered I never failed to mock his religious convictions, thereby
very often hurting his feelings.
But my old friend was as meek and forgiving as any true Buddhist’s
heart might desire. He never resented my impatient sarcasms, even when
they were, to say the least, of equivocal propriety, and generally
limited his replies to the “wait and see” kind of protest. Nor could he
be brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my denial of the
existence of any God or Gods. The full meaning of the terms “atheism”
and “scepticism” was beyond the comprehension of his otherwise
extremely intellectual and acute mind. Like certain reverential
Christians, he seemed incapable of realizing that any man of sense
should prefer the wise conclusions arrived at by philosophy and modern
science to a ridiculous belief in an invisible world full of Gods and
spirits, dzins and demons. “Man is a spiritual being,” he insisted,
“who returns to earth more than once, and is rewarded or punished in
the between times.” The proposition that man is nothing else but a heap
of organized dust, was beyond him. Like Jeremy Collier, he refused to
admit that he was no better than “a stalking machine, a speaking head
without a soul in it,” whose “thoughts are all bound by the laws of
motion.” “For,” he argued, “if my actions were, as you say, prescribed
beforehand, and I had no more liberty or free will to change the course
of my action than the running waters of the river yonder, then the
glorious doctrine of Karma, of merit and demerit, would be foolishness
indeed.”
Thus the whole of my hyper-metaphysical friend’s ontology rested on
the shaky superstructure of metempsychosis, of a fancied “just” Law of
Retribution, and other such equally absurd dreams.
“We cannot,” said he paradoxically one day, “hope to live hereafter in
the full enjoyment of our consciousness, unless we have built for it
beforehand a firm and solid foundation of spirituality.... Nay, laugh
not, friend of no faith,” he meekly pleaded, “but rather think and
reflect on this. One who has never taught himself to live in Spirit
during his conscious and responsible life on earth, can hardly hope to
enjoy a sentient existence after death, when, deprived of his body, he
is limited to that Spirit alone.”
“What can you mean by life in Spirit?”—I inquired.
“Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists call _Tushita
Devaloka_ (Paradise). Man can create such a blissful existence for
himself between two births, by the gradual transference on to that
plane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifest
through his organic body and, as you call it, animal brain.”...
“How absurd! And how can man do this?”
“Contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the blessed Gods, will
enable him to do so.”
“And if man refuses this intellectual occupation, by which you mean, I
suppose, the fixing of the eyes on the tip of his nose, what becomes of
him after the death of his body?” was my mocking question.
“He will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of his
consciousness, of which there are many grades. At best—immediate
rebirth; at worst—the state of _avitchi_, a mental hell. Yet one need
not be an ascetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to
the hereafter. All that is required is to try to approach Spirit.”
“How so? Even when disbelieving in it?”—I rejoined.
“Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbor in one’s nature room for
doubt, however small that room may be, and thus try one day, were it
but for one moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this will
prove sufficient for the purpose.”
“You are decidedly poetical, and paradoxical to boot, reverend sir.
Will you kindly explain to me a little more of the mystery?”
“There is none; still I am willing. Suppose for a moment that some
unknown temple to which you have never been before, and the existence
of which you think you have reasons to deny, is the ‘spiritual plane’
of which I am speaking. Some one takes you by the hand and leads you
towards its entrance, curiosity makes you open its door and look
within. By this simple act, by entering it for one second, you have
established an everlasting connexion between your consciousness and the
temple. You cannot deny its existence any longer, nor obliterate the
fact of your having entered it. And according to the character and the
variety of your work, within its holy precincts, so will you live in it
after your consciousness is severed from its dwelling of flesh.”
“What do you mean? And what has my after-death consciousness—if such a
thing exists—to do with the temple?”
“It has everything to do with it,” solemnly rejoined the old man.
“There can be no self-consciousness after death outside the temple
of spirit. That which you will have done within its plane will alone
survive. All the rest is false and an illusion. It is doomed to perish
in the Ocean of Mâyâ.”
Amused at the idea of living outside one’s body, I urged on my old
friend to tell me more. Mistaking my meaning, the venerable man
willingly consented.
Tamoora Hideyeri belonged to the great temple of Tzi-Onene, a Buddhist
monastery, famous not only in all Japan, but also throughout Tibet
and China. No other is so venerated in Kioto. Its monks belong to the
sect of Dzeno-doo, and are considered as the most learned among the
many erudite fraternities. They are, moreover, closely connected and
allied with the Yamabooshi (the ascetics, or hermits), who follow the
doctrines of Lao-tze. No wonder, that at the slightest provocation on
my part the priest flew into the highest metaphysics, hoping thereby to
cure me of my infidelity.
No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the most hopelessly
involved and incomprehensible of all doctrines. According to his
ideas, we have to train ourselves for spirituality in another world—as
for gymnastics. Carrying on the analogy between the temple and the
“spiritual plane” he tried to illustrate his idea. He had himself
worked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds of his life, and given
several hours daily to “contemplation.” Thus _he knew_ (?!) that after
he had laid aside his mortal casket, “a mere illusion,” he explained—he
would in his spiritual consciousness live over again every feeling
of ennobling joy and divine bliss he had ever had, or _ought to have
had_—only a hundred-fold intensified. His work on the spirit-plane had
been considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore, that the wages of
the laborer would prove proportionate.
“But suppose the laborer, as in the example you have just brought
forward in my case, should have no more than opened the temple door out
of mere curiosity; had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set his
foot therein again. What then?”
“Then,” he answered, “you would have only this short minute to record
in your future self-consciousness and no more. Our life hereafter
records and repeats but the impressions and feelings we have had in our
spiritual experiences and nothing else. Thus, if instead of reverence
at the moment of entering the abode of Spirit, you had been harboring
in your heart anger, jealousy or grief, then your future spiritual life
would be a sad one, in truth. There would be nothing to record, save
the opening of a door in a fit of bad temper.”
“How then could it be repeated?”—I insisted, highly amused. “What do
you suppose I would be doing before incarnating again?”
“In that case,” he said, speaking slowly and weighing every word—“in
that case, _you would have, I fear, only to open and shut the temple
door, over and over again, during a period which, however short, would
seem to you an eternity_.”
This kind of after-death occupation appeared to me, at that time, so
grotesque in its sublime absurdity, that I was seized with an almost
inextinguishable fit of laughter.
My venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at such a result
of his metaphysical instruction. He had evidently not expected such
hilarity. However, he said nothing, but only sighed and gazed at me
with increased benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes.
“Pray excuse my laughter,” I apologized. “But really, now, you cannot
seriously mean to tell me that the ‘spiritual state’ you advocate and
so firmly believe in, consists only in aping certain things we do in
life?”
“Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their repetition; filling
the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruition
of our acts and deeds, and of everything performed on the spiritual
plane of the one real state. What I said was an illustration, and
no doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the mysteries of
_Soul-Vision_, not a very intelligible one. It is myself who am to be
blamed.... What I sought to impress upon you was that, as the spiritual
state of our consciousness liberated from its body is but the fruition
of every spiritual act performed during life, where an act had been
barren, there could be no results expected—save the repetition of that
act itself. This is all. I pray you may be spared such fruitless deeds
and finally made to see certain truths.” And passing through the usual
Japanese courtesies of taking leave, the excellent man departed.
Alas, alas! had I but known at the time what I have learned since, how
little would I have laughed, and how much more would I have learned!
But as the matter stood, the more personal affection and respect I felt
for him, the less could I become reconciled to his wild ideas about
an after-life, and especially as to the acquisition by some men of
supernatural powers. I felt particularly disgusted with his reverence
for the Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the land.
Their claims to the “miraculous” were simply odious to my notions. To
hear every Jap I knew at Kioto, even to my own partner, the shrewdest
of all the business men I had come across in the East—mentioning these
followers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes, reverentially folded hands,
and affirmations of their possessing “great” and “wonderful” gifts,
was more than I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days. And
who were they, after all, these great magicians with their ridiculous
pretensions to super-mundane knowledge; these “holy beggars” who, as I
then thought, purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains
and on unapproachable craggy steeps, so as the better to afford no
chance to curious intruders of finding them out and watching them in
their own dens? Simply impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsies
who sell charms and talismans, and no better. In answer to those who
sought to assure me that though the Yamabooshi lead a mysterious life,
admitting none of the profane to their secrets, they still do accept
pupils, however difficult it is for one to become their disciple, and
that thus they have living witnesses to the great purity and sanctity
of their lives, in answer to such affirmations I opposed the strongest
negation and stood firmly by it. I insulted both masters and pupils,
classing them under the same category of fools, when not knaves, and
I went so far as to include in this number the Sintos. Now Sintoism
or _Sin-Syu_, “faith in the Gods, and in the way to the Gods,” that
is, belief in the communication between these creatures and men, is
a kind of worship of nature-spirits, than which nothing can be more
miserably absurd. And by placing the Sintos among the fools and knaves
of other sects, I gained many enemies. For the Sinto Kanusi (spiritual
teachers) are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes of
Society, the Mikado himself being at the head of their hierarchy and
the members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated men
in Japan. These Kanusi of the Sinto form no caste or class apart, nor
do they pass any ordination—at any rate none known to outsiders. And as
they claim publicly no special privilege or powers, even their dress
being in no wise different from that of the laity, but are simply in
the world’s opinion professors and students of occult and spiritual
sciences, I very often came in contact with them without in the least
suspecting that I was in the presence of such personages.
II
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
Years passed; and as time went by, my ineradicable scepticism grew
stronger and waxed fiercer every day. I have already mentioned an elder
and much-beloved sister, my only surviving relative. She had married
and had lately gone to live at Nuremberg. I regarded her with feelings
more filial than fraternal, and her children were as dear to me as
might have been my own. At the time of the great catastrophe that in
the course of a few days had made my father lose his large fortune, and
my mother break her heart, she it was, that sweet big sister of mine,
who had made herself of her own accord the guardian angel of our ruined
family. Out of her great love for me, her younger brother, for whom she
attempted to replace the professors that could no longer be afforded,
she had renounced her own happiness. She sacrificed herself and the man
she loved, by indefinitely postponing their marriage, in order to help
our father and chiefly myself by her undivided devotion. And, oh, how I
loved and reverenced her, time but strengthening this earliest family
affection! They who maintain that no atheist, as such, can be a true
friend, an affectionate relative, or a loyal subject, utter—whether
consciously or unconsciously—the greatest calumny and lie. To say that
a materialist grows hard-hearted as he grows older, that he cannot love
as a believer does, is simply the greatest fallacy.
There may be such exceptional cases it is true, but these are found
only occasionally in men who are even more selfish than they are
sceptical, or vulgarly worldly. But when a man who is kindly disposed
in his nature, for no selfish motives but because of reason and love
of truth, becomes what is called atheistical, he is only strengthened
in his family affections, and in his sympathies with his fellow men.
All his emotions, all the ardent aspirations towards the unseen and
unreachable, all the love which he would otherwise have uselessly
bestowed on a suppositional heaven and its God, become now centered
with tenfold force upon his loved ones and mankind. Indeed, the
atheist’s heart alone—
... can know,
What secret tides of still enjoyment flow
When brothers love....
It was such holy fraternal love that led me also to sacrifice my
comfort and personal welfare to secure her happiness, the felicity
of her who had been more than a mother to me. I was a mere youth
when I left home for Hamburg. There, working with all the desperate
earnestness of a man who has but one noble object in view—to relieve
suffering, and help those whom he loves—I very soon secured the
confidence of my employers, who raised me in consequence to the high
post of trust I always enjoyed. My first real pleasure and reward in
life was to see my sister married to the man she had sacrificed for my
sake, and to help them in their struggle for existence. So purifying
and unselfish was this affection of mine for her that when it came
to be shared among her children, instead of losing in intensity by
such division, it seemed only to grow the stronger. Born with the
potentiality of the warmest family affection in me, the devotion for my
sister was so great, that the thought of burning that sacred fire of
love before any idol, save that of herself and family, never entered my
head. This was the only church I recognized, the only church wherein I
worshipped at the altar of holy family affection. In fact this large
family of eleven persons, including her husband, was the only tie
that attached me to Europe. Twice during a period of nine years, had
I crossed the ocean with the sole object of seeing and pressing these
dear ones to my heart. I had no other business in the West; and having
performed this pleasant duty, I returned each time to Japan to work and
toil for them. For their sake I remained a bachelor, that the wealth I
might acquire should go undivided to them alone.
We had always corresponded as regularly as the long transit of the then
very irregular service of the mail-boats would permit. But suddenly
there came a break in my letters from home. For nearly a year I
received no intelligence; and day by day, I became more restless, more
apprehensive of some great misfortune. Vainly I looked for a letter, a
simple message; and my efforts to account for so unusual a silence were
fruitless.
“Friend,” said to me one day Tamoora Hideyeri, my only confidant,
“Friend, consult a holy Yamabooshi and you will feel at rest.”
Of course the offer was rejected with as much moderation as I could
command under the provocation. But, as steamer after steamer came in
without a word of news, I felt a despair which daily increased in depth
and fixity. This finally degenerated into an irrepressible craving, a
morbid desire to learn—the worst as I then thought. I struggled hard
with the feeling, but it had the best of me. Only a few months before
a complete master of myself—I now became an abject slave to fear. A
fatalist of the school of D’Holbach, I, who had always regarded belief
in the system of necessity as being the only promoter of philosophical
happiness, and as having the most advantageous influence over human
weaknesses, _I_ felt a craving for something akin to fortune-telling!
I had gone so far as to forget the first principle of my doctrine—the
only one calculated to calm our sorrows, to inspire us with a useful
submission, namely a rational resignation to the decrees of blind
destiny, with which foolish sensibility causes us so often to be
overwhelmed—the doctrine that _all is necessary_. Yes; forgetting
this, I was drawn into a shameful, superstitious longing, a stupid,
disgraceful desire to learn—if not futurity, at any rate that which was
taking place at the other side of the globe. My conduct seemed utterly
modified, my temperament and aspirations wholly changed; and like a
weak, nervous girl, I caught myself straining my mind to the very verge
of lunacy in an attempt to look—as I had been told one could sometimes
do—beyond the oceans, and learn, at last, the real cause of this long,
inexplicable silence!
One evening, at sunset, my old friend, the venerable Bonze, Tamoora,
appeared on the verandah of my low wooden house. I had not visited
him for many days, and he had come to know how I was. I took the
opportunity to once more sneer at one, whom, in reality, I regarded
with most affectionate respect. With equivocal taste—for which I
repented almost before the words had been pronounced—I inquired of
him why he had taken the trouble to walk all that distance when he
might have learned anything he liked about me by simply interrogating
a Yamabooshi? He seemed a little hurt, at first; but after keenly
scrutinizing my dejected face, he mildly remarked that he could only
insist upon what he had advised before. Only one of that holy order
could give me consolation in my present state.
From that instant, an insane desire possessed me to challenge him to
prove his assertions. I defied—I said to him—any and every one of his
alleged magicians to tell me the name of the person I was thinking
of, and what he was doing at that moment. He quietly answered that my
desire could be easily satisfied. There was a Yamabooshi two doors from
me, visiting a sick Sinto. He would fetch him—if I only said the word.
I said it and _from the moment of its utterance my doom was sealed_.
How shall I find words to describe the scene that followed! Twenty
minutes after the desire had been so incautiously expressed, an old
Japanese, uncommonly tall and majestic for one of that race, pale,
thin and emaciated, was standing before me. There, where I had
expected to find servile obsequiousness, I only discerned an air of
calm and dignified composure, the attitude of one who knows his moral
superiority, and therefore scorns to notice the mistakes of those who
fail to recognize it. To the somewhat irreverent and mocking questions,
which I put to him one after another, with feverish eagerness, he made
no reply; but gazed on me in silence as a physician would look at a
delirious patient. From the moment he fixed his eye on mine, I felt—or
shall I say, saw—as though it were a sharp ray of light, a thin silvery
thread, shoot out from the intensely black and narrow eyes so deeply
sunk in the yellow old face. It seemed to penetrate into my brain
and heart like an arrow, and set to work to dig out therefrom every
thought and feeling. Yes; I both saw and felt it, and very soon the
double sensation became intolerable.
To break the spell I defied him to tell me what he had found in my
thoughts. Calmly came the correct answer—Extreme anxiety for a female
relative, her husband and children, who were inhabiting a house the
correct description of which he gave as though he knew it as well
as myself. I turned a suspicious eye upon my friend, the Bonze, to
whose indiscretions, I thought, I was indebted for the quick reply.
Remembering however that Tamoora could know nothing of the appearance
of my sister’s house, that the Japanese are proverbially truthful and,
as friends, faithful to death—I felt ashamed of my suspicion. To atone
for it before my own conscience I asked the hermit whether he could
tell me anything of the present state of that beloved sister of mine.
The foreigner—was the reply—would never believe in the words, or trust
to the knowledge of any person but himself. Were the Yamabooshi to tell
him, the impression would wear out hardly a few hours later, and the
inquirer find himself as miserable as before. There was but one means;
and that was to make the foreigner (myself) see with his own eyes, and
thus learn the truth for himself. Was the inquirer ready to be placed
by a Yamabooshi, a stranger to him, in the required state?
I had heard in Europe of mesmerized somnambules and pretenders to
clairvoyance, and having no faith in them, I had, therefore, nothing
against the process itself. Even in the midst of my never-ceasing
mental agony, I could not help smiling at the ridiculous nature of the
operation I was willingly submitting to. Nevertheless I silently bowed
consent.
III
PSYCHIC MAGIC
The old Yamabooshi lost no time. He looked at the setting sun, and
finding probably, the Lord Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio (the Spirit who darts
his Rays) propitious for the coming ceremony, he speedily drew out a
little bundle. It contained a small lacquered box, a piece of vegetable
paper, made from the bark of the mulberry tree, and a pen, with which
he traced upon the paper a few sentences in the _Naiden_ character—a
peculiar style of written language used only for religious and mystical
purposes. Having finished, he exhibited from under his clothes a small
round mirror of steel of extraordinary brilliancy, and placing it
before my eyes, asked me to look into it.
I had not only heard before of these mirrors, which are frequently used
in the temples, but I had often seen them. It is claimed that under
the direction and will of instructed priests, there appear in them the
Daij-Dzin, the great spirits who notify the inquiring devotees of their
fate. I first imagined that his intention was to evoke such a spirit,
who would answer my queries. What happened, however, was something of
quite a different character.
No sooner had I, not without a last pang of mental squeamishness,
produced by a deep sense of my own absurd position, touched the
mirror, than I suddenly felt a strange sensation in the arm of the
hand that held it. For a brief moment I forgot to “sit in the seat of
the scorner” and failed to look at the matter from a ludicrous point
of view. Was it fear that suddenly clutched my brain, for an instant
paralyzing its activity—
... that fear
When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear?
No; for I still had consciousness enough left to go on persuading
myself that nothing would come out of an experiment, in the nature
of which no sane man could ever believe. What was it then, that
crept across my brain like a living thing of ice, producing therein
a sensation of horror, and then clutched at my heart as if a deadly
serpent had fastened its fangs into it? With a convulsive jerk of the
hand I dropped the—I blush to write the adjective—“magic” mirror, and
could not force myself to pick it up from the settee on which I was
reclining. For one short moment there was a terrible struggle between
some undefined, and to me utterly inexplicable, longing to look into
the depths of the polished surface of the mirror and my pride, the
ferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming. It was finally
so tamed, however, its revolt being conquered by its own defiant
intensity. There was an opened novel lying on a lacquer table near the
settee, and as my eyes happened to fall upon its pages, I read the
words, “The veil which covers futurity is woven by the hand of mercy.”
This was enough. That same pride which had hitherto held me back from
what I regarded as a degrading, superstitious experiment, caused me to
challenge my fate. I picked up the ominously shining disk and prepared
to look into it.
While I was examining the mirror, the Yamabooshi hastily spoke a few
words to the Bonze, Tamoora, at which I threw a furtive and suspicious
glance at both. I was wrong once more.
“The holy man desires me to put you a question and give you at the
same time a warning,” remarked the Bonze. “If you are willing to see
for yourself now, you will have—under the penalty of _seeing for ever,
in the hereafter, all that is taking place, at whatever distance, and
that against your will or inclination_—to submit to a regular course of
purification, after you have learned what you want through the mirror.”
“What is this course, and what have I to promise?” I asked defiantly.
“It is for your own good. You must promise him to submit to the
process, lest, for the rest of his life, he should have to hold
himself responsible, before his own conscience, for having made an
_irresponsible_ seer of you. Will you do so, friend?”
“There will be time enough to think of it, if I see anything”—I
sneeringly replied, adding under my breath—“something I doubt a good
deal, so far.”
“Well, you are warned, friend. The consequences will now remain with
yourself,” was the solemn answer.
I glanced at the clock, and made a gesture of impatience, which was
remarked and understood by the Yamabooshi. It was just _seven minutes
after five_.
“Define well in your mind _what_ you would see and learn,” said the
“conjuror,” placing the mirror and paper in my hands, and instructing
me how to use them.
His instructions were received by me with more impatience than
gratitude; and for one short instant, I hesitated again. Nevertheless I
replied, while fixing the mirror:
“_I desire but one thing—to learn the reason or reasons why my sister
has so suddenly ceased writing to me._”...
Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the hearing of the two
witnesses, or had I only thought them? To this day I cannot decide the
point. I now remember but one thing distinctly: while I sat gazing in
the mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But whether this process
lasted half a second or three hours, I have never since been able to
settle in my mind with any degree of satisfaction. I can recall every
detail of the scene up to the moment when I took up the mirror with
the left hand, holding the paper inscribed with the mystic characters
between the thumb and finger of the right, when all of a sudden I
seemed to quite lose consciousness of the surrounding objects. The
passage from the active waking state to one that I could compare with
nothing I had ever experienced before, was so rapid, that while my eyes
had ceased to perceive external objects and had completely lost sight
of the Bonze, the Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could nevertheless
distinctly see the whole of my head and my back, as I sat leaning
forward with the mirror in my hand. Then came a strong sensation of
an involuntary rush forward, of _snapping_ off, so to say, from my
place—I had almost said from my body. And, then, while every one of
my other senses had become totally paralysed, my eyes, as I thought,
unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more vivid glimpse than they had
ever had in reality, of my sister’s new house at Nuremberg, which I had
never visited and knew only from a sketch, and other scenery with which
I had never been very familiar. Together with this, and while feeling
in my brain what seemed like flashes of a departing consciousness—dying
persons must feel so, no doubt—the very last, vague thought, so weak
as to have been hardly perceptible, was that I must look very, _very_
ridiculous.... This _feeling_—for such it was rather than a thought—was
interrupted, suddenly extinguished, so to say, by a clear _mental
vision_ (I cannot characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that which
I regarded as, and knew to be my body, lying with ashy cheeks on the
settee, dead to all intents and purposes, but still staring with the
cold and glassy eyes of a corpse into the mirror. Bending over it, with
his two emaciated hands cutting the air in every direction over _its_
white face, stood the tall figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I felt
at that instant an inextinguishable, murderous hatred. As I was going,
in thought, to pounce upon the vile charlatan, my corpse, the two old
men, the room itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in a
reddish glowing light, and seemed to float rapidly away from “me.” A
few more grotesque, distorted shadows before “my” sight; and, with a
last feeling of terror and a supreme effort to realise _who then was I
now, since I was not that corpse_—a great veil of darkness fell over
me, like a funeral pall, and every thought in me was dead.
IV
A VISION OF HORROR
How strange!... Where was I now? It was evident to me that I had once
more returned to my senses. For there I was, vividly realizing that
I was rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer, strange
sensation as though I were swimming, without impulse or effort on my
part, and in total darkness. The idea that first presented itself to
me was that of a long subterranean passage of water, of earth, and
stifling air, though bodily I had no perception, no sensation, of the
presence or contact of any of these. I tried to utter a few words, to
repeat my last sentence, “I desire but one thing: to learn the reason
or reasons why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me”—but the
only words I heard out of the twenty-one, were the two, “_to learn_,”
and these, instead of their coming out of my own larynx, came back to
me in my own voice, but entirely outside myself, near, but not in me.
In short, they were pronounced by my voice, not by my lips....
One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge into the
Cimmerian darkness of a (to me) unknown element, and I saw myself
standing—actually standing—underground, as it seemed. I was compactly
and thickly surrounded on all sides, above and below, right and left,
with earth, and _in_ the mould, and yet it weighed not, and seemed
quite immaterial and transparent to _my senses_. I did not realize
for one second the utter absurdity, nay, impossibility of that
_seeming_ fact! One second more, one short instant, and I perceived—oh,
inexpressible horror, when I think of it now; for then, although I
perceived, realized, and recorded facts and events far more clearly
than ever I had done before, I did not seem to be touched in any other
way by what I saw. Yes—I perceived a coffin at my feet. It was a plain
unpretentious shell, made of deal, the last couch of the pauper,
in which, notwithstanding its closed lid, I plainly saw a hideous,
grinning skull, a man’s skeleton, mutilated and broken in many of its
parts, as though it had been taken out of some hidden chamber of the
defunct Inquisition, where it had been subjected to torture. “Who can
it be?”—I thought.
At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar the same voice—_my_
voice ... “_the reason or reasons why_” ... it said; as though these
words were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence of which
it had just repeated the two words “to learn.” It sounded near, and
yet as from some incalculable distance; giving me then the idea that
the long subterranean journey, the subsequent mental reflexions and
discoveries, had occupied no time; had been performed during the short,
almost instantaneous interval between the first and the middle words of
the sentence, begun, at any rate, if not actually pronounced by myself
in my room at Kioto, and which it was now finishing, in interrupted,
broken phrases, like a faithful echo of my own words and voice....
Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming a form, and
to me, but too familiar appearance. The broken parts joined together
one to the other, the bones became covered once more with flesh, and
I recognized in these disfigured remains—with some surprise, but not
a trace of feeling at the sight—my sister’s dead husband, my own
brother-in-law, whom I had for her sake loved so truly. “How was it,
and how did he come to die such a terrible death?”—I asked myself. To
put oneself a query seemed, in the state in which I was, to instantly
solve it. Hardly had I asked myself the question, when, as if in a
panorama, I saw the retrospective picture of poor Karl’s death, in all
its horrid vividness, and with every thrilling detail, every one of
which, however, left me then entirely and brutally indifferent. Here
he is, the dear old fellow, full of life and joy at the prospect of
more lucrative employment from his principal, examining and trying in a
wood-sawing factory a monster steam engine just arrived from America.
He bends over, to examine more closely an inner arrangement, to tighten
a screw. His clothes are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheel
in full motion, and suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and his
limbs half severed, torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted with the
mechanism can stop it. He is taken out, or what remains of him, dead,
mangled, a thing of horror, an unrecognizable mass of palpitating flesh
and blood! I follow the remains, wheeled as an unrecognizable heap to
the hospital, hear the brutally given order that the messengers of
death should stop on their way at the house of the widow and orphans.
I follow them, and find the unconscious family quietly assembled
together. I see my sister, the dear and beloved, and remain indifferent
at the sight, only feeling highly interested in the coming scene. My
heart, my feelings, even my personality, seemed to have disappeared, to
have been left behind, to belong to somebody else.