THE DEVIL AND THE DOCTOR
§ 1. _Le Diable au XIX^e Siècle_
Although the New and Reformed Palladium is said to have been founded so
far back as the year 1870, it will be seen that at the close of the year
1891 very little had become public concerning it. It is difficult to
conceive that an institution diffused so widely should have remained so
profound a secret, when the many enemies of the Fraternity, who in their
way are sleepless, would have seized eagerly upon the slightest hint of
a directing centre of Masonry. Moreover, an association which initiates
ladies is perhaps the last which one would expect to be unknown, for
while the essential matter of a secret is undeniably safe with women, it
is on condition that they are known to possess it. When the first hint
was provided in 1891, Leo Taxil certainly lost no time, and Mgr. Meurin
must have written his large treatise almost at fever speed. On the 20th
of November in the same year, another witness came forward in the person
of Dr Bataille, who speedily made it apparent that he was in a position
to reveal everything about Universal Masonry and diabolism in connection
therewith, because, unlike those who had preceded him, he possessed
first-hand knowledge. If he had not himself beheld Lucifer in all his
lurid glory, he had at least seen his messengers; he was an initiate of
most secret societies which remotely or approximately are supposed to
connect with Masonry; he had visited Charleston; he had examined the
genuine Baphomet and the skull of Jacques de Molay; he was personally
acquainted with Albert Pike, Phileas Walder, and Gallatin Mackey; he
was, moreover, an initiate of the Palladium. He was evidently the
missing witness who could unveil the whole mystery, and it would be
difficult to escape from his conclusions. Finally, he was not a person
who had come out of Masonry by a suspicious and sudden conversion;
believing it to be evil, he had entered it with the intention of
exposing it, had spent ten years in his researches, and now stepped
forward with his results. The office of a spy is not usually clean or
wholesome, but occasionally such services are valuable, and in some
cases there may be certain ends which justify the use of means which
would in other cases be questionable, so that until we can prove the
contrary, it will be reasonable to accept the solemn declaration of this
witness that he acted with a good intention, and that what he did was in
the interests of the church and the world.
But, unfortunately, Dr Bataille has seen fit to publish his testimony in
precisely that form which was most calculated to challenge the motive;
it is a perfervid narrative issued in penny numbers with absurd
illustrations of a highly sensational type; in a word, _Le Diable au
XIX^e Siècle_, which is the title given to his memoirs by the present
witness, connects in manner and appearance with that class of literature
which is known as the "penny dreadful." Some years ago the slums of
London and Paris were inundated with romances published in this fashion
and continued so long as they maintained a remunerative circulation; in
many cases, they ended abruptly, in others they extended, like _Le
Diable au XIX^e Siècle_ to hundreds of issues; they possess special
characteristics which are known to experts in the by-ways of periodical
literature, and all these are to be found in the narrative of Dr
Bataille. No one in England would dream of publishing in this form a
work which was to be taken seriously, nor am I acquainted with any
precedent for it abroad. It is therefore a discreditable and unfortunate
choice, but seeing that a section of the clerical press in France has
agreed to pass over this point, and to accept Dr Bataille as a credible
witness, and seeing also that he has been followed by other writers who
must be taken into account and stand or fall with him, we must not
regard his method as an excuse for refusing to hear him. Apart from him
and his adherents there is indeed no first-hand evidence for Palladian
Masonry. The present chapter will therefore contain a summary of what
was seen and heard by Dr Bataille in the course of his researches.
§ 2. _Why Signor Carbuccia was Damned._
In the year 1880, Dr Hacks, who makes, I believe, no attempt to conceal
himself under the vesture of Dr Bataille, was a ship's surgeon on board
the steam-boat _Anadyr_, belonging to the _Compagnie des Messageries
Maritimes_, and then returning from China with passengers and
merchandise. On a certain day in the June of the year mentioned, he was
to the fore at his post of duty--that is to say, he was extended idly
over the extreme length of a comfortable deck-chair, and the _hotel
flottant_ was anchored at Point-de-Galle, a port at the southern
extremity of Ceylon, and one of the reputed regions of the terrestrial
paradise. While the doctor, like a good Catholic, put a polish on the
tropical moment by a little gloss of speculation over the mystery of
Eden, some passengers presently came on board for the homeward voyage,
and among them was Gaëtano Carbuccia, an Italian, who was originally a
silk-merchant, but owing to Japanese competition, had been forced to
change his _métier_, and was now a dealer in curiosities. His numerous
commercial voyages had made them well acquainted with each other, but on
the present occasion Carbuccia presented an appearance which alarmed his
friend; a _gaillard grand et solide_ had been metamorphosed suddenly
into an emaciated and feeble old man. There was a mystery somewhere, and
the ship's doctor was destined to diagnose its character. After wearing
for a certain period the aspect of a man who has something to tell, and
cannot summons courage to tell it--a position which is common in
novels--the Italian at length unbosomed himself, beginning dramatically
enough by a burst of tears, and the terrific information that he was
damned. But the Carbuccia of old was a riotous, joyful, foul-tongued,
pleasure-loving atheist, a typical commercial traveller, with a strain
of Alsatia and the mountain-brigand. How came this red-tied scoffer so
far on the road of religion as to be damned? Some foolish fancy had made
the ribald Gaëtano turn a Mason. When one of his boon companions had
suggested the evil course, he had refused blankly, apparently because he
was asked, rather than because it was evil; but he had scarcely regained
his home in Naples than he became irreparably initiated. The ceremony
was accomplished in a street of that city by a certain Giambattista
Pessina, who was a Most Illustrious Sovereign Grand Commander, Past
Grand Master, and Grand Hierophant of the Antique and Oriental Rite of
Memphis and Misraïm, who, for some reason which escapes analysis,
recognised Carbuccia as a person who deserved to be acquainted with the
whole physiology and anatomy of Masonry. It would cost 200 francs to
enter the 33rd grade of the sublime mystery. Carbuccia closed with this
offer, and was initiated there and then across the table, becoming a
Grand Commander of the Temple, and was affiliated, for a further
subscription of 15 francs annually, to the Areopagite of Naples,
receiving the passwords regularly.
Impelled by an enthusiasm for which he himself was unable to account, he
now lent a ready ear to all dispensers of degrees; Memphis initiates of
Manchester allured him into Kabbalistic rites; he fell among occult
Masons like the Samaritan among thieves; he became a Sublime Hermetic
Philosopher; overwhelmed with solicitations, he fraternised with the
Brethren of the New Reformed Palladium, and optimated with the Society
of Re-Theurgists, from whom he ultimately received the veritable
initiation of the Magi. Everywhere lodges opened to him, everywhere
mysteries unveiled; everywhere in the higher grades he found spiritism,
magic, evocation; his atheism became impossible, and his conscience
troubled.
Ultimately his business led him to revisit Calcutta, where his last
unheard-of experience had overwhelmed his whole being, just eight days
previously to his encounter with Doctor Bataille. He had found the
Palladists of that city in a flutter of feverish excitement because they
had succeeded in obtaining from China the skulls of three martyred
missionaries. These treasures were indispensable to the successful
operation of a new magical rite composed by the Supreme Pontiff of
Universal Freemasonry and Vicegerent of Lucifer, General Albert Pike. A
séance was about to be held; Brother George Shekleton of immortal
memory, the hero who had obtained the skulls, was present with those
trophies; and the petrified quondam atheist took part, not because he
wished to remain, but because he did not dare to go. The proceedings
began, the skulls were placed on the tables; Adonaï and his Christ were
cursed impressively, Lucifer as solemnly blessed and invoked at the
altar of Baphomet. Nothing could be possibly more successful--result,
shocks of earthquake, threatened immediate demolishment of the whole
place, confident expectation of being entombed alive, terrific burst of
thunder, a brilliant light, an impressive silence of some seconds, and
then the sudden manifestation of a being in human form seated in the
chair of the Grand Master. It was an instantaneous apparition of
absolute bodily substance, which carried its own warrant of complete
_bona fides_. Everyone fell on their knees; everyone was invited to
rise; everyone rose accordingly; and Carbuccia found that he had to do
with a male personage not exceeding eight and thirty years, naked as a
drawn sword, with a faint flush of Infernus suffusing his skin, a
species of light inherent which illuminated the darkness of the
salon--in a word, a beardless Apollo, tall, distinguished, infinitely
melancholy, and yet with a nervous smile playing at the corners of his
mouth, the apparition of _Aut Diabolus aut Nihil_ divested of evening
dress. This Unashamed Nakedness, who was accepted as the manifestation
of Lucifer, discoursed pleasantly to his children, electing to use
excellent English, and foretold his ultimate victory over his eternal
enemy; he assured them of continued protection, alluded in passing to
the innumerable hosts which surrounded him in his eternal domain, and
incited his hearers to work without ceasing for the emancipation of
humanity from superstition.
The discourse ended, he quitted the daïs, approached the Grand Master,
and eye to eye fixed him in deep silence. After a pause he passed on,
without committing himself to any definite observation; yet there seems
to have been a meaning in the ceremony, for he successively repeated it
in the case of every dignitary congregated at the eastern side, and
finally of the ordinary members. When it came to the turn of Carbuccia,
he would have given ten years of his life to have been at the Galleys
rather than Calcutta, but he contrived to pull through, without,
however, creating a favourable impression, for _adversarius noster
diabolus_ passed on with contracted brow, and when the disconcerting
inquiry was over, returned to the centre of the circle, gave a final
glance around, approached Shekleton, and civilly requested him to shake
hands. The importer of missionary skulls complied with a horrible yell;
there was an electric shock, sudden darkness, and general
_coup-de-théâtre_. When the torches were rekindled, the apparition had
vanished, Shekleton was discovered to be dead, and the initiates
crowding round him, sang: "Glory immortal to Shekleton! He has been
chosen by our omnipotent God." It was too much for the galliard
merchant, and he swooned.
Now, this is why Signor Carbuccia concluded that he was damned, which
appears to have been precipitate. He has contrived, by the good offices
of his lay confessor, to square matters with the hierarchy of Adonaï,
who belongs to the Latin persuasion; he has changed his name, adopted a
third profession, and is so safe in retreat that his friends are as
unlikely to find him as are the enemies who thirst for his blood.
Doctor Bataille, faithful to his rôle of good Catholic, perceived at
once that the Merchant's Story of these new Arabian Nights was
characterised by extreme frankness, was devoid of a sinister motive, and
was not the narrative of a maniac. A physician, he adds sententiously,
is not to be deceived. He determined thereupon that he himself would
descend into the abyss, taking with him a mental reservation in all he
said and did as a kind of discharge in full. The Church and humanity
required it. Behold him then presently at Naples, making acquaintance
with Signor Pessina, and outdoing Carbuccia by expending 500 francs in
the purchase of the 90th Misraïm grade, thus becoming a Sovereign Grand
Master for life! "I will be the exploiter and not the accomplice of
modern Satanism," said the pious Doctor Bataille.
§ 3. _A Priestess of Lucifer._
Fortified with the purchase of his Memphis sovereignty, and the
possession of various signs and passwords communicated by Carbuccia,
which, by some interposition of Providence, must be assumed to have
remained unchanged in the intervening period, Dr Bataille entered on his
adventurous mission, bedewed with many tears, and sanctified by many
blessings of an old spiritual adviser, who, needless to say, was at
first hostile to the enterprise, and was afterwards as inevitably
disarmed by the eloquence and enthusiasm of his disciple. Having regard
to the fact that Masonry and Diabolism abound everywhere, according to
the hypothesis, it obviously mattered little at what point he began the
prosecution of his design; all roads lead to Rome, and the statement is
equally true of the Rome of Masonry and the Vatican of Lucifer. As a
fact, he started where Carbuccia may be said to have left off, namely,
at Point-de-Galle in Southern Ceylon. There he determined to acquaint
himself with Cingalese Kabbalism, a department of transcendental
philosophy, about as likely to be met with in that reputed region of the
Terrestrial Paradise as a cultus from the great south sea in the back
parts of Notting Hill. Signor Pessina, however, had provided him with
the address of a society which operated something that the doctor agrees
to term Kabbalah, after the same manner that he misnames most subjects.
But he was not destined to Kabbalize.
Repairing to the principal hotel, he there witnessed, through one of
those fortuitous occurrences which are sometimes the mask of fate, a
sufficiently indifferent performance by native jugglers, the chief of
whom was exceedingly lean and so dirty as to suggest that he was remote
from godliness. During the course of the conjuring this personage held
the doctor by a certain meaning glance of his glittering eye, and when
all was over the latter had a private information that Sata desired to
speak with him. The naïve mind of the doctor regarded the name as
significant in view of his mission; Sata was assuredly a Satanist. He
consented incontinently, and was greeted by the juggler with certain
mysterious signs which showed that he was a Luciferian of the sect of
Carbuccia, though, by what device of the devil he divined the doctor's
adeptship, the devil and not the doctor could alone explain at the
moment.
A miscellaneous language is apparently spoken by the Cingalese
jugglers--Tamil, including a little bad French, not less convenient than
needful in the present case. It was made clear by some brief
explanations that the medical services of Dr Bataille were solicited at
the death-bed of a personage named Mahmah, for which purpose the two
entered a hired conveyance, while the rank and file of the jugglers
followed at a brisk trot. In this manner they traversed a frightful
desert, plunged into a forest of brushwood, finally forded a stream, and
after two hours arrived at an open clearing, in the centre of which was
a hut. An ape occupied the threshold, a vampire bat hung from a
convenient beam, a cobra was curled underneath, and a black cat welcomed
them with arched back. The ape spoke Tamil freely and then marched off,
reflecting upon which circumstance, the doctor thought that it was quite
the strangest thing in the world.
The hut was the covering of a species of well, down which, with some
quakings for the safety of limbs and body, our adventurer was persuaded
to follow his guides, and they reached, at the end of a long flight of
steps, an immense mortuary chamber. There, on a bed of cocoa-nut fibre,
he found his patient, from whose mummified and hideous appearance he at
once concluded that she was entirely given over to Satan and had long
been a lost soul. As spiritually, so also physically, she was past all
human aid; indeed she seemed dead already, and he gave his medical
opinion to that effect. The countenance of this opinion was apparently
the warrant required for the proceedings which immediately followed, and
it is difficult to understand why fakirs in league with Satan--for such
we are told they were--and possessed, no doubt, both of ordinary native
and occult methods of diagnosis, could not have discovered this for
themselves, more especially as the lady, who seems to have been a
pythoness by profession, and commerced with a familiar spirit, had
already reached the ripe age of 152 years.
To shorten a long and peculiarly noisome story, the astounded doctor
ultimately beheld the dying woman revive suddenly, and crawl to the end
of the chamber, where there was an elaborate altar surmounted by a
figure of Baphomet; the fakirs crowded round her; the ape, the bat, the
snake, the cat, all appeared on the scene; a brilliant illumination was
produced by means of eleven lamps suspended from the ceiling; the woman
drew herself into an erect position; the fakirs piled resinous branches
round her; amidst invocations, mysterious chants, and yells, she
permitted herself to be burned to death, her body slowly blackening, her
face turning scarlet in the flames, her eyes starting from her head,
and so she passed into ashes.
Why was the doctor privileged to be present at these proceedings?
Because an agent of the fakirs had previously investigated his
portmanteau on the hotel premises, and had discovered his Memphis
insignia, which they returned to him in the mortuary chamber. As to the
Baphomet, it is very fully described, and is identified with similar
images of Masonic lodges in America, India, Paris, Rome, Shanghai, and
Monte Video. The doctor says that it is the god of the occultists. The
venerable Sata quoted Latin as intelligently as the ape spoke Tamil; he
overwhelmed his benefactor with acknowledgments, and instead of a fee
presented him with a winged lingam, by means of which he would be
received among all worshippers of Lucifer in India, China,--in fact, as
Sata said, _partout, partout_.
So did Dr Bataille make his first acquaintance with practical occultism,
and these things being done, he returned to his hotel and departed
thankfully to bed.
§ 4. _A House of Rottenness._
Who would possess a lingam which was an _Open Sesame_ to devildom and
not make use thereof? By effecting an exchange with another ship's
doctor, the exploiter of Lucifer found himself presently at Pondicherry,
with three months of comparative freedom before him to explore the
mysteries of the oriental peninsula. Need I say that he had scarcely
landed at the French seaboard town when he at once made acquaintance
with the very person who of all others was most suitable to his scheme?
This was Ramassamiponnotamly-palé-dobachi--quite a short name, he
assures us, for the natives of this part. All Pondicherry more or less
abounded in lingams and Lucifer, but as he carried his right hand
clenched, the doctor at once suspected the half-naked Ramassam to be
more than commonly devoted to the persuasion of perdition; nor was he
mistaken, for the latter promptly inquired: "What is your age?" "Eleven
years," said the doctor. "Whence do you come?" "From the eternal flame."
"Whither do you go?" "To the flame eternal." And to their mutual
satisfaction they agreed the sacred name of Baal-Zeboub, the doctor
producing his winged lingam, at which the other fell down in the open
streets and adored him. The exhibition of the patent of a Sovereign
Grand Master _ad Vitam_ of the Rite of Memphis inspired further respect;
it was evidently a document with which Ramassam had long been familiar;
and he began to talk glibly of tyling. Like the horrors of Udolpho, the
explanation was of course very simple: Mr John Campbell, an American,
had instituted a lodge of the York Rite at Pondicherry which, in the
most natural manner, admitted the Luciferian Fakirs as visitors, the
Luciferian Fakirs admitted the members of the York Rite to their
conventions, and they all bedevilled one another.
It would be idle to suppose that F.·. Campbell was not at Pondicherry on
business when the doctor chanced to arrive, and in the course of the
afternoon the latter was taken by Ramassam to a house of ordinary
appearance, into which they were admitted by another Indian, who, of
course, like the guide, spoke good French. Through the greenery of a
garden, the gloom of a well, and the entanglement of certain stairways,
they entered a great dismantled temple devoted to the service of Brahma,
under the unimpressive diminutive of Lucif. The infernal sanctuary had a
statue of Baphomet, identical with that in Ceylon, and the
ill-ventilated place reeked with horrible putrescence. Its noisome
condition was mainly owing to the presence of various fakirs, who,
though still alive, were in advanced stages of putrefaction. Most people
are supposed to go easily and pleasantly to the devil, but these elected
to do so by way of a charnel-house asceticism, and an elaborate system
of self-torture. Some were suspended from the ceiling by a rope tied to
their arms, some embedded in plaster, some stiffened in a circle, some
permanently distorted into the shape of the letter S; some were head
downwards, some in a cruciform position. It was really quite monstrous,
says the doctor, but a native grand master explained, that they had
postured for years in this manner, and one of them for a quarter of a
century.
Fr.·. John Campbell proceeded to harangue the assembly in ourdou-zaban,
but the doctor comprehended completely, and reports the substance of his
speech, which was violently anti-Catholic in its nature, and especially
directed against missionaries. This finished, they proceeded to the
evocation of Baal-Zeboub, at first by the Conjuration of the Four, but
no fiend appeared. The operation was repeated ineffectually a second
time, and John Campbell determined upon the Grand Rite, which began by
each person spinning on his own axis, and in this manner
circumambulating the temple in procession. Whenever they passed an
embedded fakir, they obtained an incantation from his lips, but still
Baal-Zeboub failed. Thereupon the native Grand Master suggested that the
evocation should be performed by the holiest of all the fakirs, who was
produced from a cupboard more fetid than the temple itself, and proved
to be in the following condition:--(a) Face eaten by rats; (b) one
bleeding eye hanging down by his mouth; (c) legs covered with gangrene,
ulcers, and rottenness; (d) expression peaceful and happy.
Entreated to call on Baal-Zeboub, each time he opened his mouth his eye
fell into it; however, he continued the invocation, but no Baal-Zeboub
manifested. A tripod of burning coals was next obtained, and a woman,
summoned for this purpose, plunged her arm into the flames, inhaling
with great delight the odour of her roasting flesh. Result, _nil_. Then
a white goat was produced, placed upon the altar of Baphomet, set
alight, hideously tortured, cut open, and its entrails torn out by the
native Grand Master, who spread them on the steps, uttering abominable
blasphemies against Adonaï. This having also failed, great stones were
raised from the floor, a nameless stench ascended, and a large
consignment of living fakirs, eaten to the bone by worms and falling to
pieces in every direction, were dragged out from among a number of
skeletons, while serpents, giant spiders, and toads swarmed from all
parts. The Grand Master seized one of the fakirs and cut his throat upon
the altar, chanting the satanic liturgy amidst imprecations, curses, a
chaos of voices, and the last agonies of the goat. The blood spirted
forth upon the assistants, and the Grand Master sprinkled the Baphomet.
A final howl of invocation resulted in complete failure, whereupon it
was decided that Baal-Zeboub had business elsewhere. The doctor departed
from the ceremony, fraternising with Campbell, and kept his bed for
eight-and-forty hours.
§ 5. _The seven Temples and a Sabbath in Sheol._
It was in the month of October 1880 that, in the course of his
enterprise, Doctor Bataille reached Calcutta. Freemasonry, he informs
us, invariably affects the horrible, and as he invests Calcutta with the
sombre hues of living death and universal putrefaction, it naturally
follows that the Indian city is one of the four great directing centres
of Universal Freemasonry. Everywhere the pious Doctor discovered the
hand of Lucifer; everywhere he beheld the consequences of superstition
and Satanism; cataclysms, floods, tornados, typhoons, plagues, cholera,
representing the normal state of health and habit, and the consequences
of universal persuasion in favour of the fiend. A corpse, he testifies,
is met with at every step, the smoke of burning widows ascends to
heaven, and the plain of Dappah, in immediate contiguity to the city, is
a vast charnel-house where innumerable multitudes of dead bodies are
flung naked to the vultures. The English Mason will at once recognise
that of all places in the world Calcutta is most suited to be a Mecca of
the Fraternity and the capital of English India. The Kadosch of the
Scotch Rite, the Sublime Chosen Master of the Royal Arch, the Commander
of the White and Black Eagle of the rite of Herodom, the perfectly
initiated Grand Inspector of the Scotch Philosophical Rite, the Elect
Brother of the Johannite Rite of Zinnendorf, and the Brother of the Red
Cross of Swedenborg, a thousand other dignitaries of a thousand
illuminations, gather in the Grand Masonic Temple, and, as the Doctor
gravely tells us, are employed in cursing Catholicity. By a special
conjunction of the planets, the Doctor, on reaching head-quarters, had
immediate intelligence that the great Phileas Walder had himself
recently arrived on a secret mission from Charleston. There also he made
acquaintance with another luminary of devildom, by name Hobbs, who
presided at the important proceedings which resulted in the damnation of
Carbuccia. Brother Hobbs, possessed of much experience in Lucifer, gave
many assurances concerning the incessant apparitions of The Master of
Evil to all worthy persons. Now the Doctor, by virtue of his Misraïm
patent, was as much a priest for ever according to the Melchisedeck of
Masonry, as if he had been born without father or mother, but at the
moment he had not received the perfect initiation of the Palladium;
technically, therefore, he had no right to participate in the Supreme
Mysteries. However, it is needless to say that he had arrived in the
nick of time to be present at a ceremony which takes place only once in
ten years, provided that he was willing to undergo the trifle of a
preliminary ordeal.
On the same evening a select company of initiates proceeded in hired
carriages through the desolation of Dappah, under the convoy of
initiated coachmen, for the operation of a great satanic solemnity. At
an easy distance from the city is the Sheol of the native Indians, and
hard by the latter place there is a mountain 500 feet high and 2000
long, on the summit of which seven temples are erected, communicating
one with another by subterranean passages in the rock. The total absence
of pagodas make it evident that these temples are devoted to the worship
of Satan; they form a gigantic triangle superposed on the vast plateau,
at the base of which the party descended from their conveyances, and
were met by a native with an accommodating knowledge of French. Upon
exchanging the Sign of Lucifer he conducted them to a hole in the rock,
which gave upon a narrow passage guarded by a line of Sikhs with drawn
swords, prepared to massacre anybody, and leading to the vestibule of
the first temple, which was filled with a miscellaneous concourse of
Adepts, from officers and tea-merchants even to tanners and dentists. In
the first temple, which was provided with the inevitable statue of
Baphomet, but was withal bare and meagrely illuminated, the doctor was
destined to pass through his promised ordeal, for which he was stripped
to the skin, placed in the centre of the assembly, and at a given signal
one thousand odd venomous cobra de capellos were produced from holes in
the wall and encouraged to fold him in their embraces, while the music
of flute-playing fakirs alone intervened to prevent his instant death.
He passed through this trying encounter with a valour which amazed
himself, persisted in prolonging the ceremony, and otherwise proved
himself a man of such extraordinary metal that he earned universal
respect and received the most flattering testimonials even from Phileas
Walder. That the serpents were undoubtedly venomous was afterwards
proved upon the person of one of the natives present, who, delivered to
their fury, fell, covered with apparently mortal bites, but was
subsequently treated by native remedies and carried before the altar of
Baphomet to be cured by the special intervention of the good God
Lucifer. This ceremony was accomplished by the intervention of a lovely
Indian Vestal, by the prayers of the Grand Master, a silk-mercer by
commercial persuasion, and by the mock baptism of a serpent, after which
the sufferer rose to his feet and the inconvenient venom spurted of
itself out of his wounds. From the Sanctuary of the Serpents the company
then proceeded, with becoming recollection, into the second temple or
Sanctuary of the Phoenix.
The second temple was brilliantly illuminated and ablaze with millions
of precious stones wrested by the wicked English from innumerable
conquered Rajahs; it had garlands of diamonds, festoons of rubies, vast
images of solid silver, and a gigantic Phoenix in red gold more solid
than the silver. There was an altar beneath the Phoenix, and a male and
female ape were composed at the altar steps, while the Grand Master
proceeded to the celebration of a black mass, which was followed by an
amazing marriage of the two engaging animals, and the sacrifice of a
lamb brought alive into the temple, bleating piteously, with nails
driven through its feet. This was intended to symbolize an illuminated
reprobation of celibacy and an approval of the married state, or its
less expensive substitutes.
The third temple was consecrated to the Mother of fallen women, who, in
memory of the adventure of the apple, has a place in the calendar of
Lucifer; the proceedings consisted of a dialogue between the Grand
Master and the Vestal which the becoming modesty of the doctor prevents
him from describing even in the Latin tongue.
The fourth temple was a Rosicrucian Sanctuary, having an open sepulchre,
from which blue flames continually emanated; there was a platform in the
midst of the temple designed for the accommodation of more Indian
Vestals, one of whom it was proposed should evaporate into thin air,
after which a Fakir would be transformed before the whole company into a
living mummy and be interred for a space of three years. These were
among the events of the evening, and were accomplished with great
success without much disturbing the mental equilibrium of the doctor,
though he confessed to a certain impression when the Fakir introduced
his performance by suspension in mid-air.
The fifth temple was consecrated to the Pelican and was used by an
English officer to deliver a short discourse on Masonic charity, which
the doctor regarded as vulnerable from a moral point of view and
suggestive of easy virtue.
The sixth temple was that of the Future and was devoted to divinations,
the oracles being given by a Vestal in a hypnotic condition, seated over
a burning brazier. The doctor was accommodated with a test, but another
inquirer who had the temerity to be curious as to what was being done in
the Vatican received a severe rebuff; in vain did the spirit of the
Clairvoyante strive to penetrate the "draughty and malarious" palace of
the Roman Pontiff, and Phileas Walder, mortified and maddened, began to
curse and to swear like the first Pope. The experiment disillusionized
the assembly and they thoughtfully repaired to the seventh temple,
which, being sacred to Fire, was equipped with a vast central furnace
surmounted by a chimney and containing a gigantic figure of Baphomet;
in spite of the intolerable heat pervading the entire chamber this idol
contrived to preserve its outlines and to glow without pulverising. A
ceremony of an impressive nature occurred in this apartment; a wild cat,
which strayed in through an open window, was regarded as the appearance
of a soul in transmigration, and, in spite of its piteous protests, was
passed through the fire to Baal.
And now the crowning function, the Magnum Opus of the mystery, must take
place in the Sheol of Dappah; a long procession filed from the mountain
temples to the charnel-house of the open plain; the night was dark, the
moon had vanished in dismay, black clouds scudded across the heavens, a
feverish rain fell slowly at intervals, and the ground was dimly lighted
by the phosphorescence of the general putrefaction. The Adepts went
stumbling over dead bodies, disturbing Rats and Vultures, and proceeded
to the formation of the magic chain, which consisted in high-grade
Masons, provided with silk hats, sitting down in a vast circle, every
Adept embracing his particular corpse. The ceremony included the
recitation of certain passages borrowed from popular grimoires, the
object in view being the wholesale liberation of Spirits wandering in
the immediate neighbourhood of their bodies. This closed the proceedings
and the doctor confesses that the distractions of the evening occasioned
him a disturbed sleep accompanied by nightmares.
§ 6. _A Palladian Initiation._
Before leaving Calcutta our adventurer purchased from Phileas Walder,
for the sum of two hundred francs, the serviceable dignity of a
Palladian Hierarch, "fortified with which he would be enabled to
penetrate everywhere." Regarding all English possessions as peculiarly
productive in the Dead Sea fruit of diabolism, Singapore was the next
scene of his curious researches. The English as a nation are criminal,
but Singapore is the yeast-house of British wickedness, where vice
ferments continually; there man masonifies naturally and most Masons
palladise. The doctor states plainly that one thing only has preserved
the place from the doom of the cities of the plain, and that is the
presence of certain good Christians, otherwise Catholics, in what he
terms the accursed city. For himself he tarried only to witness the
initiation of a Mistress-Templar according to the Palladian rite, which
took place in a Presbyterian Chapel, the Presbyterian persuasion, as he
tells us, being one of the broad roads leading to avowed Satanism. The
password was appropriately the name of the first murderer, and the
doctor was greeted to his great astonishment by an old acquaintance, an
English pastor, whom he had frequently seen upon his own magnificent
steam-boat, who also rejoiced in the nick-name of the Reverend Alcohol,
being, like the majority of Englishmen, almost invariably drunk. The
ceremony of initiation, which is described at great length in the
narrative, is a variation from that of Leo Taxil; the doctor, in mercy
to his readers, suppressing a part of the performance. Speaking
generally, it was concerned, as we have previously seen, with an
anti-Christian version of Gospel history and some commonplace outrages
of the Eucharistic elements, during which proceedings our witness
perspired freely. So, as he tells us, did one more Protestant pass over
to the worship of Lucifer.
The operations of the ritual were followed by a "divine solemnity,"
which had something of the character of an ordinary spiritual séance,
supposing it to have been held in a mad-house. I need only say that when
the lights were turned up at the end, every article of furniture,
including a large organ, was discovered hanging from the ceiling. As a
final phenomenon, the Master of the Ceremonies detached his shadow from
his substance, arranged it against the wall in the shape of a demon, and
it responded to various questions by signs. There was a burst of loud
applause, the proceedings terminated, and the Masonic Temple became once
more a Presbyterian Chapel.
§ 7. _The San-Ho-Hei._
The doctor informs us that China is the gate of Hell, and that all its
inhabitants are born damned; child-like and bland in appearance, the
Chinaman is invariably by disposition a Satanist, having tastes wholly
diabolical. As to the religion of Buddha, it is simply Satanism _à
outrance_. Chinese occultism is centralised in the San-Ho-Hei, an
association "parallel to high grade Masonry," having its head-quarters
at Pekin, and welcoming all Freemasons who are affiliated to the
Palladium. It does not, however, admit women, and has only one degree.
Its chief occupation is to murder Catholic missionaries. When a
Palladian Mason seeks admission for the first time to one of its
assemblies, he betakes himself to the nearest opium den, carrying on his
person the documents which prove his initiation; he places his umbrella
head downwards on his left side, and stupefies himself with the divine
drug. He is then quite sure that he will be transported in a comatose
condition to the occult reunion. When the doctor reached Shanghai, he
experienced some hesitation before he attempted an adventure so
uncertain in its issue. He remembered, however, that he was possessed of
a miraculous medal of St. Benedict, which he regarded as his trump
card, a species of passport or return ticket, available at any date and
by any line of Devildom. He determined to get drunk accordingly; but
even as he entered Masonry with a becoming reservation of conscience, so
he entered the drug-shop with a reservation as to the degree of his
drunkenness, in spite of which he fell, however, into a deep sleep, and
awoke in the assembly of The Secret Avengers, one of whom, to facilitate
proceedings, had a good knowledge of English, and a perfect familiarity
with all Charleston passwords. The Baphomet, of course, presided, but it
appears that the Chinese have certain conscientious scruples on the
subject of Goats, and hence a Dragon's head was substituted for that of
the ordinary image. The doctor was not the only European present at the
proceedings of the celestial assembly; but while he was the sole
representative of his own nation, it goes without saying that there was
a fair sprinkling of the abominable British.
So complete is the unanimity which obtains between the initiates of
China and Charleston that the bulk of the proceedings takes place in
the English language; but for this disposition of Providence, the doctor
would have been at a serious disadvantage. The first object of the
company was to encompass the destruction of missionaries, and for this
purpose a coffin was presently brought in, containing the skeleton of a
deceased brother, who had so far diverged from duty that he had entered
in league with the Jesuits, and had dared to act as a spy upon the
august proceedings of the Sublime Society of Avengers. The first act may
be regarded as somewhat bizarre in character; it consisted in evoking an
evil spirit to animate the skeleton, and to answer certain questions.
This was accomplished with absolute success. The bones of the departed
brother had, however, been so consecrated by his Jesuitical proclivities
that, even when animated by a devil, they discovered extreme reluctance
in disclosing the number and quality of certain Franciscan zealots who
had just started from Paris to convert the Empire. Ultimately, however,
it was admitted that they were now on the high seas, which information
given, the bony oracle could no longer contain its rage, but pursued an
English Mason of the 33rd degree from end to end of the assembly, and
succeeded in inflicting some furious bites and blows. The second act
commenced by uncovering a species of exaggerated baptismal font, filled
to the brim with water, and representing the great ocean over which the
missionaries were passing. The assembly crowded round it, and by means
of magic rods and other devices, succeeded in evoking a minute figure of
a steam-ship containing the adventurers. Their magic also raised up a
perfect tempest of wind in the closed apartment, but by no device could
they effect the slightest disturbance upon the placid bosom of the
water. The ceremony had, in fact, to be abandoned as a failure in its
desired intention. Too well did the Spirit Yesu protect His
missionaries. The assembly accordingly repaired into a second apartment.
There the officiating dignitaries assumed the vestments of Catholic
priests. They produced a wax figure, designed to represent a missionary,
amused themselves with a mock trial, inflicted imaginary tortures, and
returned the dummy to a cupboard, after which they proceeded to the
crucifixion of a living pig. The third act was an agonising experience
for the doctor, being nothing less than the sacrifice of one of the
brethren, the selection being determined by lot. The doctor, in his
quality of visitor, was, it is true, spared the chance of being himself
the victim, but he nearly became executioner. One of the Chinese adepts
having been chosen, to his intense satisfaction, and approved by some
mechanical movements on the part of the dragon-headed Baphomet,
permitted his limbs to be removed, and then earnestly invoked the
assistance of the "Charleston brother" for the purpose of severing his
head. It was an honour invariably accorded to the visitor of the highest
grade. The doctor, who could not bring himself to the point, was saved
at the last moment by the miraculous levitation of Phileas Walder from
an immense distance, this occult personage having become transcendently
cognisant of what was going forward in China, and being anxious to
interrogate the severed head as to the possible recovery of his
daughter, who was then seriously ill. In virtue of his superior dignity,
he claimed the privilege of the execution, and the doctor modestly
retired.
Such were the adventures of our witness in the assembly of Holy
Avengers. He enumerates at great length the evidence against
hallucination as a result of his excess in opium, but I suggest to
observing readers that there is a more obvious line of criticism.
§ 8. _The Great City of Lucifer._
It was in March of the year 1881 that Doctor Bataille proceeded for the
first time to Charleston, to make acquaintance at head-quarters with the
universal Masonry of Lucifer and its Pontiff Albert Pike. Charleston is
the Venice of America, the Rome of Satan, and the great City of Lucifer.
Always enormously prolix, and adoring the details which swell the flimsy
issues of cheap periodical narratives, our witness describes at great
length the city and its Masonic temple, with the temple which is within
the temple and is consecrated to the good God. My second chapter has
already provided the reader with sufficient information upon the persons
alleged to be concerned in the foundation of Universal Freemasonry and
in the elaboration of its cultus. Nor need I dwell at any length upon
the personal communication which passed between Doctor Bataille, Albert
Pike, Gallatin Mackey, Sophia Walder, Chambers, Webber, and the rest of
the Charleston luminaries. Miss Walder explained to him the great hope
of the Order concerning the speedy advent of anti-Christ, the abolition
of the papacy, and the destruction of the Christian religion. She also
related many of her private experiences with the infernal monarchy,
being acquainted with the exact number of demons in the descending
hierarchy, and with all their classes and legions. She confidently
expected to be the great grandmother of anti-Christ, and in the meantime
possessed the transcendental faculty of becoming fluidic at will. Mr
Gallatin Mackey exhibited his _Arcula Mystica_, one of seven similar
instruments existing at Charleston, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Monte
Video, Naples, and Calcutta. To all appearance it resembled a
liqueur-stand, but it was really a diabolical telephone worked like the
Urimm and Thummimm, and enabling those who possessed it to communicate
with each other, whatever the intervening distance. The Doctor, in his
quality of initiate, was, of course, taken over the entire premises; he
examined the head of the great templar Molay, deciding by his
anthropological knowledge that the relic was not genuine, and that it
was not the skull of a European. As to the templar Baphomet, situated in
the Sanctum Regnum, and before which Lucifer is supposed to appear, it
is sufficient to say that Doctor Bataille, who invariably treads
cautiously where it is easy for other steps to follow him, has no
personal testimony to furnish upon the subject of the apparition, and
the relations of other persons do not concern us at the moment.
§ 9. _Transcendental Toxicology._
The memorials of Charleston are not entirely favourable to the true
strength of our witness; it was requisite to "lie low" in America, but
the Doctor bristles in Gibraltar; he is once more upon British soil.
Does not the Englishman, consciously or otherwise, put a curse on
everything he touches? Doctor Bataille affirms it; indeed this quality
of malediction has been specially dispensed to the nation of heretics by
God himself; so says Doctor Bataille. Since the British braggart began
to embattle Gibraltar, having thieved it from Catholic Spain, a wind of
desolation breathes over the whole country. An inscrutable providence,
of which our witness is the mouthpiece, has elected to set apart this
rock in order that the devil and the English, who, he says, are a pair,
may continue their work of protestantising and filling the world with
malefice. To sum the whole matter, the Britisher is an odious usurper
"who has always got one eye open." Now, having regard to the fact that
out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation a proportion to be
numbered by millions is given over to devil-worship and Masonry, and
that consequently there is an enormous demand for Baphomets and other
idols, for innumerable instruments of black Magic, and for poisons to
exterminate enemies, it is obviously needful that there should be a
secret central department for the working of woods and metals and for
Transcendental Toxicology. To Charleston the dogmatic directory, to
Gibraltar the universal factory. But so colossal an output focussed at a
single point could scarcely proceed unknown to Government at a given
place, and any nation save England might object to this class of
exports. The cause of Masonry and the devil being, however, dear to the
English heart, it would, of course, pass unchallenged at Gibraltar, and
at this point an anglo-phobe with a remnant of reason would have
remained satisfied. Not so our French physician, who affirms that the
exports in question do not merely escape inquisition at the hands of
civil authority but are in fact a government industry.
"Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray--
Here and here did England help me, how can I help England, say?"
These are the words of Browning, and his question has well been
answered by the institution of the secret workshops and the secret
laboratory; as in most other cases England has helped herself, unless,
indeed, it should occur to the doctor that the poet was a Satanist, like
Pike, who himself was a poet, and had a chief finger in the pie.
Now the great historic rock is tunnelled by innumerable caverns, which,
our deponent witnesses, have never been explored by the tourist, and in
the most impracticable portions of the great subterranean maze,
whosoever has the audacity to penetrate will discover for himself the
existence of the industrial department of diabolism, but he must not
expect to come back unless he be a Sovereign Grand Master _ad vitam_,
and an initiate of Lucifer. The doctor has explored these caverns, has
seen the factory in full working order, has exhaustively described the
way in, has returned from the gulf like Dante, and has given away the
whole mystery. Possessed of his key to the labyrinth the wayfaring man
shall not err therein, and it will, no doubt, be a new curiosity for the
more daring among Cook's tourists. The workshops are supplied with
mechanics by a simple expedient; hopeless specimens of English
malefactors, condemned to penal servitude for the term of their natural
life, are relegated to this region, a kind of grim humour characterising
the selection. The most hideous convicts are chosen, and those most
corresponding in outward appearance to the favourite devils of the
hierarchy, under whose names they pass in the workshops, where they
commonly communicate with each other in the language of Volapuk. The
reason given is that this language has been adopted by the Spoeleic
Rite, which I confess that I had not heard of previously, but I venture
to think that the doctor has concealed the true reason, and that Volapuk
has been thus chosen because it is a diabolical invention; a universal
language prevailed previously to the confusion of Babel, and the new
language is an irreligious attempt to produce _ordo ab chao_ by a return
to unity of speech.
The Toxicological Department is worked by a higher class of criminals,
as for example, absconding trustees, who are there comfortably settled
in life, enjoying many modern conveniences. It produces poisons which
usually cause death by cerebral hemorrhage; but each has its special
antidote, possessed of which the initiated poisoner can eat and drink
with his victim; on this subject the doctor pursues, however, a policy
of masterly reticence. But such, in brief, is the deep mystery of
Gibraltar, such is the Toxicological department of universal
Freemasonry.
§ 10. _The Doctor and Diana._
It would be impossible to follow the doctor through the entire course of
his memoirs, not that they are wholly biographical, exclusively
concerned with modern diabolism, or with the great conspiracy of Masons
against God, Man, and the universe; one of his subsidiary and yet most
important objects is to fill space, in which respect he has almost
eclipsed the great classics of the penny dreadful in England. I must
pass with a mere reference over his dealings in spiritualism; it is
needless to say that in this branch of transcendental investigation he
witnessed more astounding phenomena than falls commonly to the lot of
even veteran students. His star prevailed everywhere, and the world
unseen deployed its strongest forces. At Monte Video, for example,
falling casually into a circle of spiritualists, he was seated,
surrounded by a family of these unconscious and amateur diabolists,
before an open window at night time; across the broad mouth of the river
a great shaft of soft light from the lamp of the lighthouse opposite
shone in mid-air, over the bosom of the water, and as it fell upon their
faces he discerned, floating within the beam itself, the solid figure of
a man. It was not the first time that the apparition, under similar
circumstances, had been seen by the rest of the household, but for him
it bore a message of deeper mystery than for these uninitiated
spiritualists; although in man's clothes, his observant eye recognised
the face of the spirit; terrible and suggestive truth, it was the face
of the vestal Virgin, who, far off in Calcutta, had fluidified in the
third temple, and he uttered a great cry! He has now decided to void
the virginity of the vestal, and to assume that she was in reality a
demon, and not a being of earth. At the same time, my readers must
thoroughly understand that the doctor, when he meddles in spiritualism,
is a man who is governed in his narratives by an intelligent faculty of
criticism which borders on the purely sceptic; he delights in the
display of instances where an element of trickery may be detected; no
one better than himself can distinguish between bogus and bogey, and he
takes pleasure in directing special attention to his extraordinary good
judgment and sound common-sense in each and all these matters. Hence no
one will be surprised to hear that at the house of a lady in London, an
ordinary table, after a preliminary performance in tilting, transformed
suddenly into a full-grown crocodile, and played touchingly on the
piano, after which it again changed into a table, but the gin, the
whisky, the pale ale, and the other intoxicants which are indispensable
at séances in England, had been entirely consumed by the transcendental
reptile to fortify him on his return journey to the mud-banks of the
Nile. Nor has the spontaneous apparition been wanting to complete the
experiences of Dr Bataille. He was seated in his cabin at midnight
pondering over the theories formulated in natural history by Cuvier and
Darwin, who diabolised the entire creation, when he was touched lightly
on the shoulder, and discovered standing over him, in his picturesque
Oriental costume, like another Mohini, the Arabian poisoner-in-chief of
the Gibraltar Toxicological Department, who, after some honourable
assurances that the Bible was not true, departed transcendentally as he
came. This personage subsequently proved to be the demon Hermes. Even
when he merely masonified, the doctor had unheard-of experiences in
magic. For example, at Golden Square, in the west central district of
this wicked city, an address which we have heard of before, at the
conclusion of an ordinary Lodge meeting, there was an evocation of the
demon Zaren, who appeared under the form of a monstrous three-headed
dragon completely cased in steel, and, endeavouring to devour his
evoker, was restrained by the magical pentagram, ultimately vanishing
with the peculiar odour of Infernus.
In connection with various marvels the doctor has much to tell us
concerning two sisters in Lucifer who have long been at daggers drawn,
and considering their supernatural attributes, it is incomprehensible in
a high degree that they have not destroyed one another like the Magician
and the Princess of a more credible narrative of wonders in the "Arabian
Nights." Diana Vaughan, much heard and little seen, has since become
famous by her conversion to the Catholic faith. Honoured with her
acquaintance for a considerable period, the doctor invariably testifies
the utmost respect for this wealthy, beautiful, and high-placed
Palladian lady, so long protected by a demon, of the superior hierarchy,
and enjoying what he somewhat obscurely terms an obsessional
guardianship. On the 28th of February, 1884, at a theurgic séance of
Templar Mistresses and Elect Magi of Louisville, the ceiling of the
temple was riven suddenly, and Asmodeus, genius of Fire, descended to
slow music, having in one hand a sword, and in the other the long tail
of a lion. He informed the company that there had just been a great
battle between the leaders of Lucifer and Adonaï, and that it had been
his personal felicity to lop the Lion's tail of St Mark; he directed the
members of the eleven plus seven triangle to preserve the trophy
carefully, and, that it might not be a lifeless relic, he had
thoughtfully informed it with one of his minor devils until such time as
he himself should intervene to mark his omnipotent favour towards a
certain predestined virgin. The vestal in question was Diana of the
Charlestonians, elect sister in Asmodeus, who at that time was not
affiliated to Palladism. When the doctor subsequently drew her on the
subject of this history, she replied, after the manner of the walrus,
"Do you admire the view?" For himself, the good doctor dislikes the
narrative, not because it does violence to possibility, but because it
did violence to St Mark; there is evidently an incomplete dignity about
a tailless evangelist. As to the tail itself, he has no personal doubt
that it was the property of an ordinary lion, and that it has since
become possessed of a devil.
At the risk of offending Miss Vaughan, the doctor expatiates on her
case, and learnedly demonstrates that her possession is of so
uninterrupted a kind that it has become a second nature, and belongs to
the 5th degree; however this may be, he establishes at great length one
important point in her favour, which has occasioned all French Catholics
to earnestly desire her conversion. I have stated already that the grade
of Templar-Mistress is concerned partly with profanations of the
Eucharist. For example, the aspirant to this initiation is required to
drive a stiletto into the consecrated Host with a becoming expression of
fury. When Miss Vaughan visited Paris in the year 1885, where Miss
Walder had sometime previously established herself, she was invited to
enter this grade, and accepted the offer. A séance for initiation was
held accordingly, but Miss Vaughan would have none of profanation, and
refused blankly to stultify her liberal intelligence by the stabbing of
a wheaten wafer. She did not believe in the Real Presence, and she did
not wish to be childish. A great sensation followed; her initiation was
postponed; appeal was made to Charleston; and the formality was
dispensed with in her case by the intervention, as it was supposed at
the moment, of Albert Pike's authority, even as her Father's
intervention had excused her beforehand from another ordeal which could
not be suffered with propriety. This episode implanted in the breast of
Sophia Walder an extreme form of Palladian hatred for the Diana of
Philalethes. Now, Sophia was in high favour with all the hosts of
perdition, yet her rancorous relations with her sister Adept did not
make Diana less a _persona grata_ to the peculiar intelligence which
governs the descending hierarchy. In the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky the
Palladian Magi and the Mistress Templars decided one day to have a
little experiment with the Undines, so they shouldered their magical
instruments; but the eager elementaries, habiting the dark abysses, did
not wait to be evoked; the water bubbled in the Lake, the roof was
constellated with stars, and who should appear but Asmodeus, on the bank
opposite, in all his infernal glory! With open arms he loudly called on
Diana, and that lady, suddenly transfigured, walked calmly over the
water, and kissed the feet of her demon, who incontinently vanished.
Inspired by a sense of deficiency, the doctor says that the visit to the
Mammoth Cave terminated without any further incident. He was not an
ocular witness of what he relates in this instance, but he received it
from the lips of Diana, and the lips of Diana, in the opinion of all
honourable men, would be preferable to the eyes of the doctor.
But the doctor had the testimony of his eyes upon another occasion; it
is known that Miss Vaughan's celebrity began with her hostility to the
Italian Grand Master, Adriano Lemmi. When the seat of the Sovereign
Pontificate, as deponents testify, was removed from Charleston, the
great city of Lucifer, even unto the Eternal City, and many adepts
demissioned, there was a doubt in the rebel camp as to the continued
protection of Lucifer. If Diabolus had gone over to Lemmi, they were
indeed bereft. Miss Vaughan, however, remained calm and sanguine:--"I am
certain of the celestial protection of the Genii of Light," said Diana,
and, producing her talisman, she bent her right knee to the ground,
turned a complete somersault without falling, flung her tambourine into
the air, which descended gently and remained suspended a yard from the
ground, while she herself, passing into a condition of ecstasy, also
rose into the air in a recumbent posture. She remained in this state for
the space of fifteen minutes, the silence being only broken by the
distant rumbling of thunder. Many of the spectators could not believe
their eyes. At length very gently her body assumed a vertical position,
head downwards, but as a concession to polite feeling the remaining laws
of gravity were suspended, like herself, and her skirts were not
correspondingly inverted. Slowly the ecstatic lady continued to
circulate, the assembly stood at gaze "like Joshua's moon in Ajalon,"
and presently she was in the vertical position of a swimmer, the
phenomenon concluding by her restoration to _terra firma_. This wonder
was accomplished by the magic power of a diabolical Rose which the lady
carried in her bodice.
On yet another occasion the doctor witnessed the prodigy of the
bilocation of Diana by the assistance of a simple magical process, when
to his most certain knowledge she was hundreds of leagues away; but the
recitations of Doctor Bataille have reduced bilocation to a banality,
and a mere reference will suffice.
A monograph of Miss Vaughan's miracles would, however, be incomplete if
it failed to exhibit her in her capacity as a breaker of spells;
whatsoever has been bound by devildom can be loosed by Diana. At the
height of the commotion occasioned by her persistent refusal to
participate in sham sacrilege, there was one member of the Paris
Triangle who manifested peculiar acrimony in demanding the expulsion of
a delinquent who had dared to impeach the ritual. As a punishment for
his own presumption, and in the presence of the assembled adepts, his
head was suddenly reversed by an unseen power, and for the space of one
and twenty days he was obliged to review the situation face backwards.
This severe judgment dismayed all present; Miss Walder had recourse to
an evocation and discovered that it had been inflicted by Asmodeus, the
protector of her rival, who furthermore would not scruple to visit with
violent disaster any person who discovered an evil design against so
elect a sister as Diana. If the present culprit desired to be set free
from his grotesque position, he must humbly have recourse to her. Miss
Vaughan was in America at the moment, but she generously came to his
rescue as soon as steam could carry her, and restored him his lost front
view by a jocose imposition of hands. I should add that on the very day
when this misadventure took place at Paris, Miss Vaughan was defending
her standpoint in person before the Triangle of Louisville; opinion was
divided about her, and the result appeared uncertain, when the demoniac
tail of St Mark, evacuating the minor devil, who had hired it on a
repairing lease, accepted Asmodeus as a tenant, and violently
circumambulating the apartment belaboured all those whose voices had
been raised against his Vestal. Finally the tassel of the tail turned
into the head of the demon and vowed his devotion to Diana so long as
she remained unmarried; did she dare, however, to desert him for an
earthly consort, he was commander of fourteen legions, and he would
strangle the man of clay.
It would be unkind to Miss Sophia Walder if I let it be supposed for a
moment that the palm of prestige is borne away by her rival. I have
already noted that this lady occasionally fluidifies to the satisfaction
of a select audience, but, like the materialising medium, she finds it a
depleting performance which usually confines her to her room, and her
price, therefore, is five thousand francs. She is first Sovereign in
Bitru, and is defined by the doctor to be in a state of latent
possession, having a semi-diabolical nature and the gift of
substitution. It was possibly at Milan that he witnessed the most
persuasive test of her occult powers. She took him confidentially apart
and explained to him that she had been in a condition of "penetration"
for about three hours. "At dinner the food of which I partake becomes
volatile in my mouth; wine evaporates invisibly the moment it makes
contact with my lips; I eat and drink in appearance, but my teeth
masticate the air." Now this was due, not to the voracity of Bitru, but
to the keen appetite of Baal-Zeboub; the magnetic lady did not, however,
explain this point after the common method of speech; she fixed her
blazing orbs upon the doctor, and he saw flames everywhere; a moment
more and her feet were free from earth; she stretched out her left hand,
and on the open palm he beheld the successive apparitions in characters
of flame of the ten letters which constitute the great name. With a
touch of internal collapse he commended himself to the Virgin Mary, the
ecstatic paroxysm passed, and they wandered down another lane, for they
were in the midst of leafy umbrage. Presently a tree gracefully arranged
a portion of its branches in the form of a fan, and bowed with profound
reverence. Still more fantastic, a paralysed branch produced a living
human hand, which in the accompanying engraving is ornamented with an
immaculate cuff, and that hand presented a bouquet to Sophia. By reason
of these matters the doctor became pensive.
A Palladian séance followed. The litany of Lucifer was chanted, and the
prodigy of "substitution" was effected. The ceremony took place in a
grotto with a stalactite roof; Miss Walder produced from a basket the
serpent which was an inseparable companion of all her travels; it
immediately genuflected in front of her, swarmed the wall, and assumed a
pendant position attached to one of the stalactites. It was a reptile of
no ordinary kind, for it began to develop an interminable length of
coils till it had spread itself circlewise over the entire ceiling, and
its head was joined to its tail. The doctor says that he was now
prepared for anything. The serpent gave forth seven horrible hisses, and
in the dim light, for the torches which illuminated the place were
successively giving out of themselves, each person became conscious of
an unseen entity blowing with burning breath in their faces. When at
length there was complete darkness, Sophia herself became radiant, and
brilliantly illuminated the grotto with an intense white light; five
enormous hands could then be seen floating in space, also intensely
luminous, but emitting a green lustre; each hand went wandering in
search of its prey, ultimately seizing a brother, whom it drew
irresistibly forward in the direction of Sophia. Moved by a mysterious
influence, two of them grasped her arms, two clutched her by the
shoulders, one placed his hand on her head. The serpent again hissed
seven significant times, and in place of the solid Sophia the third
Alexander of Macedon was substituted in phantom guise. When he faded
Sophia reappeared and continued going and coming with a phantom between
each of her appearances, so that she was in turn replaced by Luther,
Cleopatra, Robespierre, and others, concluding with the Italian patriot
Garibaldi, who eclipsed all the others, for his bust was converted into
a bronze urn from which red flames burst forth. The flames took a human
form, and gave back Sophia to the assembly.
Such is the gift of substitution, which follows penetration, and such is
the substance of the memoirs of M. Bataille, ship's doctor, who, in the
year 1880, undertook to exploit Freemasonry and has come forth unsinged
from Diabolism. There is one maxim of the Psalmist which the experience
of most transcendentalists has taught them to lay to heart, and to
repeat without the qualifications of David when certain aspects of
supernatural narrative are introduced--_Omnis homo mendax!_ But lest I
should appear to be discourteous, I should like to add a brief dictum
from the Magus Éliphas Lévi. "The wise man cannot lie," because nature
accommodates herself to his statement. In a polite investigation like
the present, there is, therefore, no question whether Doctor Bataille is
defined by the term _mendax_, which is forbidden to literary elegance;
it is simply a question whether he is a wise man, or whether nature
blundered and did not conform to his statement.
The credibility, in whole or in part, of Dr Bataille's narrative will
involve some extended criticism, and I purpose to postpone it till the
remaining witnesses have been examined. We shall then be in a position
to appreciate how far later revelations support his statements. Setting
aside the miraculous element, which is tolerably separate from what
most concerns our inquiry, namely, the existence of Palladian Masonry
attached to the cultus of Lucifer, it may be stated that the most sober
part of Dr Bataille's memoirs is the account of his visit to Charleston;
here the miraculous element is entirely absent. He confirms by alleged
personal investigations the existence of the New and Reformed Palladium;
he is the first witness who distinguishes clearly between the Luciferian
Order and the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite of
Charleston. That distinction is made, however, at one expense; it
assumes that the Supreme Council preserved the Baphomet idol as well as
the reputed skull of Molay for nearly seventy years, and then
surrendered it to another order with which it had no official
acquaintance. Under what circumstances and why did it do that? The
Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite is connected by its legend with the
Templars, and for the Charleston Supreme Council to part with the
trophies of the tradition seems no less unlikely than for a regiment to
surrender its colours.