I cannot relate in brief all that I learned from the singular musician
Pistorius about Abraxas. The most important result of his teaching was
that I made a further step forward on the road to self-realization. I
was then about eighteen years old. I was a young man rather out of the
ordinary, precocious in a hundred things, in a hundred other things
backward and helpless. When from time to time I used to compare myself
with others, I was often proud and conceited, but just as frequently
I felt depressed and humiliated. I had often looked upon myself as a
genius, often as half mad. I could not share the pleasures and life of
the fellows of my age, and often I heaped reproaches on myself and was
consumed with cares, thinking I was hopelessly cut off from them, and
that life was closed to me.
Pistorius, himself full-grown and an eccentric, taught me to preserve
my courage and my self-esteem. In constantly finding some value in my
words, in my dreams, in the play of my imagination and in my ideas, in
taking them seriously and discussing them, he set me an example.
“You have told me,” he said, “that you like music because it is not
moral. Well, all right. But you should be no moralist yourself! You
should not compare yourself with others. If nature had created you to
be a bat, you ought not to want to make yourself into an ostrich. You
often consider yourself as singular, you reproach yourself with going
ways different from most people. You must get out of that habit. Look
in the fire, look at the clouds, and as soon as you have presentiments,
and the voices of your soul begin to speak, yield to them and don’t
first ask what the opinion of your master or your father would be, or
whether they would be pleasing to some god or other. One spoils oneself
that way. In doing that one treads the common road, becomes a fossil.
Sinclair, my dear fellow, the name of our god is Abraxas. He is God
and he is Satan; he has the light and the dark world in him. Abraxas
has no objection to urge against any of your ideas or against any of
your dreams. Never forget that. But he deserts you if you ever become
blameless and normal. He deserts you and seeks out another pot in order
to cook his ideas therein.”
Of all my dreams, that dark love-dream recurred most frequently. Often,
often have I dreamed of it; often I stepped under the crest with the
bird on it into our house, and wished to draw my mother to me, but
instead of her I found I was embracing the tall, manly, half-motherly
woman, of whom I was afraid, and yet to whom I was drawn by a most
ardent desire. And I could never relate this dream to my friend. I kept
it back, although I had opened my heart to him on everything else. It
was my secret, my retreat, my refuge.
When I was depressed, I used to beg Pistorius to play me the
Passacaglia of old Buxtehude. I sat in the dark church in the evening,
engrossed in this singularly intimate music, which seemed to be
hearkening to itself, as if entirely self-absorbed. Each time it did me
good and made me more ready to follow the promptings of my inward self.
Sometimes we stayed awhile in the church after the strains of the organ
had died away. We sat and watched the feeble light shine through the
high lancet window; the light seemed to lose itself in the body of the
church.
“It sounds funny,” said Pistorius, “that I once did theology and almost
became a parson. But it was only an error in form that I committed.
To be a priest, that is my vocation and my aim. Only I was too easily
satisfied, and gave myself to the service of Jehovah before ever I knew
Abraxas. Ah, every religion is beautiful! Religion is soul. It is all
one whether you take communion as a Christian or whether you make a
pilgrimage to Mecca.”
“Then really you might have been a clergyman,” I suggested.
“No, Sinclair, no. I should have had to have lied in that case. Our
religion is so practised, as if it were none. It is carried on as if it
were a work of the understanding. A Catholic I could well be, if need
were, but a Protestant clergyman--no! There are two kinds of genuine
believers--I know such--who hold gladly to the literal interpretation.
I could not say to them that for me Christ was not a mere person, but a
hero, a myth, a wonderful shadow-picture, in which mankind sees itself
painted on the wall of eternity. And what should I find to say to the
other sort, those who go to church to hear wise words, to fulfill a
duty, in order to leave nothing undone, etc.? Convert them, you think,
perhaps? But that is not at all my idea. The priest does not wish to
convert. He only wants to live among the believers, among those of his
own kind, so that through him they may find expression for that feeling
out of which we make our gods.”
He broke off. Then he continued: “Our new faith, for which we have now
chosen the name of Abraxas, is beautiful, my friend. It is the best we
have. But it is still a nestling. Its wings have not yet grown. Alas, a
lonely religion, that is not yet the true one. It must become an affair
of many, it must have cult and orgy, feasts and mysteries....”
He was sunk in reflection.
“Can one not celebrate mysteries alone, or in a very small circle?” I
asked hesitatingly.
“Yes, one can,” he nodded. “I have been celebrating them for a long
time past. I have celebrated cults for which I should have been
imprisoned for years in a convict station, if they had been found out.
But I know it is not the right thing.”
He suddenly clapped me on the shoulder, making me jump. “Young friend,”
he said impressively, “you also have mysteries. I know that you must
have dreams of which you make no mention to me. I don’t wish to know
them. But I tell you: Live them, these dreams, play your destined
part, build altars to them! It is not yet the perfect religion, but
it is a way. Whether you and I and a few other people will one day
renew the world remains to be seen. But we must renew it daily within
us, otherwise we are of no account. Think over it! You are eighteen,
Sinclair, you don’t go with loose women, you must have love-dreams,
desires. Perhaps they are such that you are frightened by them! They
are the best you have! Believe me! I have lost a great deal by doing
violence to these love-dreams when I was your age. One should not do
that. When one knows of Abraxas, one should do that no more. We should
fear nothing. We should hold nothing forbidden which the soul in us
desires.”
Frightened, I objected: “But you can’t do everything which comes into
your mind! You can’t murder a man because you can’t tolerate him.”
He pressed closer to me.
“There are cases where you can. Only, generally it’s a mistake. I don’t
mean that you can simply do everything which comes into your mind. No,
but you shouldn’t do injury to those ideas in which there is sense, you
shouldn’t banish them from your mind or moralize about them. Instead of
getting oneself crucified or crucifying others, one can solemnly drink
wine out of a cup, thinking the while on the mystery of sacrifice. One
can, without such actions, treat one’s impulses and one’s so-called
temptations with esteem and love. Then you discover their meaning, and
they all have meaning. Next time the idea takes you to do something
really mad and sinful, Sinclair, if you would like to murder someone
or to do something dreadfully obscene, then think a moment, that it is
Abraxas who is indulging in a play of fancy. The man you would like to
kill is never really Mr. So and So, that is really only a disguise.
When we hate a man, we hate in him something which resides in us
ourselves. What is not in us does not move us.”
Never had Pistorius said anything to me which went home so deeply as
this. I could not reply. But what moved me most singularly and most
powerfully was that Pistorius in this conversation had struck the same
note as Demian, whose words I had carried in my mind for years and
years past. They knew nothing of one another, and both said to me the
same thing.
“The things we see,” said Pistorius softly, “are the same things which
are in us. There is no reality except that which we have in ourselves.
For that reason most people live so unreally, because they hold the
impressions of the outside world for real, and their own world in
themselves never enters into their consideration. You can be happy like
that. But if once you know of the other, then you no longer have the
choice to go the way most people go. Sinclair, the road for most people
is easy, ours is hard. Let us go.”
A few days later, after I had on two occasions waited for him in vain,
I met him late one evening in the street. He came stumbling round a
corner, blown along by the cold night wind. He was very drunk. I did
not like to call him. He passed by without noticing me, staring in
front of him with strange, glowing eyes, as though he were moving in
obedience to a dark call from the unknown. I followed him down one
street. He drifted along as if drawn by an invisible wire, with the
swaying gait of a fanatic, or like a ghost. Sadly I went home, to the
unsolved problems of my dreams.
“Thus he renews the world in himself!” I thought, and felt instantly
that my thought was base and moral. What did I know of his dreams?
Perhaps in his intoxication he was going a surer way than in my anxiety.
* * * * *
In the intervals between lessons it struck me once or twice that a
boy who had never before attracted my notice was hovering about in
my proximity. It was a little, weak-looking, slim youngster with
reddish-blond thin hair, who had something peculiar in his look and
behavior. One evening as I came home he was on the watch for me in the
street. He let me pass by, then walked behind me; and remained standing
in front of the door of the house.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked.
“I only want to speak to you,” he said timidly. “Be good enough to come
a few steps with me.”
I followed him, observing that he was deeply excited and full of
expectation. His hands trembled.
“Are you a Spiritualist?” he asked quite suddenly.
“No, Knauer,” I said, laughing. “Not a bit. How did you get hold of
that idea?”
“But you are a Theosophist?”
“No again.”
“Oh, please don’t be so reserved. I feel with absolute certitude there
is something singular about you. It is in your eyes. I thought it
certain you communed with spirits. I am not asking out of curiosity,
Sinclair, no! I am myself a seeker, you know, and I am so lonely.”
“Tell me, then!” I encouraged him. “I know absolutely nothing of
ghosts. I live in my dreams: that is what you have felt about me.
Other people live in dreams as well, but not in their own, that is the
difference.”
“Yes, perhaps so,” he whispered. “Only it depends on the sort of dreams
you live in. Have you ever heard of white magic?”