I haven't altered my opinion. It is the most beautiful _statue_ I
have ever seen, just as Debussy's l'Après-midi d'un Faune is the most
beautiful music I have ever heard, just as The Hill of Dreams is--have
you read it?
At that time, I had not, and I admitted it. I was even ignorant of the
name of the author.
Now Peter, as he sat on the bench beside me, began to speak of Arthur
Machen: The most wonderful man writing English today and nobody knows
him! His material is handled with the most consummate art; arrangement,
reserve, repose, the perfect word, are never lacking from his work
and yet, at the age of fifty, he is an obscure reporter on a London
newspaper. There are, of course, reasons for this neglect. It is a
byword of the day that one only takes from a work of art what one
brings to it, and how few readers can bring to Machen the requisite
qualities; how few readers have gnosis!
Machen evokes beauty out of horror, mystery, and terror. He suggests
the extremes of the terrible, the vicious, the most evil, by never
describing them. His very reserve conveys the infinity of abomination.
You know how Algernon Blackwood documents his work and stops to explain
his magic orgies, so that by the time you have finished reading one
of his weird stories, you completely discount it. On the other hand,
although Machen writes in the simplest English concerning the most
unbelievable impieties, he never lifts the crimson curtain to permit
you to see the sacrifice on the Manichean altar. He leaves that to the
imagination. But his expression soars so high, there is such ecstasy
in his prose, that we are not meanly thrilled or revolted by his
negromancy; rather, we are uplifted and exalted by his suggestion of
impurity and corruption, which leads us to ponder over the mysterious
connection between man's religious and sensual natures. Think, for
a moment, of the life of Paul Verlaine, dragged out with punks and
pimps in the dirtiest holes of Paris, and compare it with the pure
simplicity of his religious poetry. Think of the Song of Songs which
is Solomon's and the ancient pagan erotic rites in the holy temples.
Remember the Eros of the brothels and the Eros of the sacred mysteries.
Recall the Rosicrucian significance of the phallus, and its cryptic
perpetuation in the cross and the church steeple. In the middle ages,
do not forget, the Madonna was both the Virgin Mother of Christ and
the patron of thieves, strumpets, and murderers. Far surpassing all
other conceivable worldly pleasures is the boon promised by the
gratification of the sensual appetite; faith promises a bliss that will
endure for ever. In either case the mind is conscious of the enormous
importance of the object to be obtained. Machen achieves the soaring
ecstasy of Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn or Shelley's To a Skylark,
and yet he seldom writes of cool, clean, beautiful things. Was ever a
more malignantly depraved story written than The White People (which
it might be profitable to compare with Henry James's The Turn of the
Screw), the story of a child who stumbles upon the performance of the
horrid, supernatural rites of a forgotten race and the consequences
of the discovery? Yet, Machen's genius burns so deep, his power is
so wondrous, that the angels of Benozzo Gozzoli himself do not shine
with more refulgent splendour than the outlines of this erotic tale,
a tale which it would have been easy to vulgarize, which Blackwood,
nay Poe himself, would have vulgarized, which Laforgue would have made
grotesque or fantastic, which Baudelaire would have made poetic but
obscene. But Machen's grace, his rare, ecstatic grace, is perpetual and
unswerving. He creates his rhythmic circles without a break, the skies
open to the reader, and the Lord, Jesus Christ, appears on a cloud,
or Buddha sits placidly on his lotus. Even his name is mystic, for,
according to the Arbatel of Magic, Machen is the name of the fourth
heaven.
Machen does not often write of white magic; he is a negromancer; the
baneful, the baleful, the horrendous are his subjects. With Baudelaire,
he might pray, Evil be thou my good! Consider the theme of The Great
God Pan, a psychic experiment, operation, if you will, on a pure young
girl, and its consequences. Again a theme which another writer, any
other writer, would have cheapened, filled in with sordid detail,
described to the last black mass. But Machen knows better. He knows so
much, indeed, that he is able to say nothing. He keeps the thaumaturgic
secrets as the alchemists were bidden to do. Instead of raising the
veil, he drops it. Instead of revealing, he conceals. The reader may
imagine as much as he likes, or as much as he _can_, for nothing is
said, but he rises from a reading of one of these books with a sense of
exaltation, an awareness that he has tasted the waters of the Fountain
of Beauty. There is, indeed, sometimes, in relation to this writer, a
feeling[3] that he is truly inspired, that he is writing automatically
of the eternal mysteries, that the hand which holds the pen is that of
a blind genius, and yet....
More straightforward good English prose, limpid narrative, I am
not yet acquainted with. What a teller of stories! This gift,
tentatively displayed in The Chronicle of Clemendy, which purports
to be a translation from an old manuscript--Machen has really been
the translator of the Heptamaron, Béroalde de Verville's Moyen
de Parvenir, and the Memoirs of Casanova--, flowered in The Three
Imposters, nouvelles in the manner of the old Arabian authors.
This work is not so well-known as The Dynamiter, which it somewhat
resembles, but it deserves to be. Through it threads the theme, that
of nearly all his tales, of the disintegration of a soul through an
encounter with the mysteries which we are forbidden to know, the
Sabbatic revels, the two-horned goat, alchemy, devil-worship, and the
eternal and indescribable symbols. The problem is always the same, that
of facing the great God Pan and the danger that lurks for the man who
dares the facing.
And one wonders, Peter continued, his eyes dilating with an expression
which may have been either intense curiosity or horror, one wonders
what price Machen himself has paid to learn his secret of how to keep
the secrets! He must have encountered this horror himself and yet he
lives to ask the riddle in flowing prose! What has it cost him to learn
the answer? Popularity? Perhaps, for he is an obscure reporter on a
London newspaper and he drinks beer! That is all any Englishman I have
asked can tell me about him. Nobody reads his books; nobody has read
them ... except the few who see and feel, and John Masefield is one of
these. This master of English prose, this hierophant, who knows all the
secrets and _keeps_ them, this delver in forgotten lore, this wise poet
who uplifts and inspires us, is an humble journalist and he drinks
beer!
Peter paused and looked at me, possibly for corroboration, but what
could I say? I had never, until then, touched upon Machen, although
I remembered that Mina Loy had included him in her catalogue of
protestants in the symposium at the Villa Allegra. Later, when I sought
his books, I found them more difficult to arrive at than those of any
of his contemporaries and today, thanks to the fame he has achieved
through his invention of the mystic story of The Bowmen, the tale of
the Angels at Mons, a story which was credited as true, for returning
soldiers swore that they had really seen these angels who had led
them into battle, thus arousing the inventive pride of the author,
who published a preface to prove that the incident had never occurred
except in his own brain, his early books command fantastic prices.
Eight or nine pounds is asked for The Chronicle of Clemendy and forty
or fifty pounds for his translation of Casanova. But on that day I said
little about the matter, because I had nothing to say.
Now we were walking and presently stopped before Peter's door, a
house on the south side of Stuyvesant Square, conveniently near,
Peter observed, in sardonic reference to Marinetti's millennium, the
Lying-in-Hospital. He unlocked the door and we entered. The hall was
painted black and was entirely devoid of furniture. A lamp, depending
on an iron chain from the ceiling, shed but a feeble glow, for it
was enclosed in a globe of prelatial purple glass. We passed on to
a chamber in which purple velvet curtains were caught back by heavy
silver ropes, exposing at symmetrical intervals, the black walls, on
which there were several pictures: Martin Schongauer's copperplate
engraving of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, in which the most obscene
and foulest of fiends tear and pull and bite the patient and kindly
old man; Lucas Cranach's woodcut of the same subject, more fantastic
but less terrifying; two or three of Goya's Caprichos; Félicien Rops's
Le Vice Suprême, in which a skeleton in evening dress, holding his
head in the curve of his elbow, chapeau claque in hand, opens wide
an upright coffin to permit the emergence of a female skeleton in a
fashionable robe; black ravens flit across the sky; Aubrey Beardsley's
Messalina; Pieter Bruegel's allegorical copperplate of Lust, crammed
with loathsome details; and William Blake's picture of Plague, in which
a gigantic hideous form, pale-green, with the slime of stagnant pools,
reeking with vegetable decays and gangrene, the face livid with the
motley tints of pallor and putrescence, strides onward with extended
arms, like a sower sowing his seeds, only the germs of his rancid
harvest are not cast from his hands but drip from his fusty fingers.
The carpet was black and in the very centre of the room was a huge
silver table, fantastically carved, the top upheld by four basilisk
caryatides. On this table stood a huge egg, round which was coiled
a serpent, the whole fashioned from malachite, and a small cornelian
casket, engraved in cuneiform characters. There were no windows in the
room, and apparently no doors, for even the opening through which we
had entered had disappeared, but the chamber was pleasantly lighted
with a lambent glow, the origin of which it was impossible to discover,
for no lamps were visible. In one corner, I noted a cabinet of ebony
on the top of which perched an enormous black, short-haired cat, with
yellow eyes, which, at first, indeed, until the animal made a slight
movement, I took to be an objet d'art. Then Peter called, Lou Matagot,
and with one magnificent bound, the creature landed on the silver table
and arched his glossy back. Then he sharpened his claws and stretched
his joints by the aid of the casket scratched with the cuneiform
symbols.
Lou Matagot, Peter explained, signifies the Cat of Dreams, the Cat of
the Sorcerers, in the Provençal dialect.
There were a few chairs, strangely modern, Ballet Russe chairs,
upholstered in magenta and green and orange brocades in which were
woven circles and crescents and stars of gold and silver, but Peter
and I seated ourselves at one end of the room on a high purple couch,
a sort of throne, piled with silver and black cushions, on which was
worked in green threads an emblem, which Peter explained was the
character of Mersilde, a fiend who has the power to transport you
wherever you wish to go. Now, he pulled a silver rope which hung from
the ceiling, the lights flashed off and on again, and I observed that
we were no longer alone. A little black page boy in a rose doublet,
with baggy silver trousers, and a turban of scarlet silk, surmounted
by heron's plumes, sparkling with carbuncles, stood before us. He had
apparently popped out of the floor like the harlequin in an English
pantomime. At a sign from Peter, he pressed a button in the wall, a
little cupboard opened, and he extracted a bottle of amber crystal,
half-full of a clear green liquid, and two amber crystal glasses with
iridescent flanges.
I am striving to discover the secrets, said Peter, as we sipped the
liqueur, the taste of which was both pungent and bitter.
Not in this room! I gasped. Unless you mean the secrets of Paul Poiret
and Léon Bakst.
No, he laughed, as the cat leaped to his shoulder and began to purr
loudly, not in this room. This is my reception-room where I receive
nobody. You are the first person, with the exception of Hadji, to enter
this house since I have remodelled it but, he continued reflectively,
I have a fancy that the bright fiends of hell, the beautiful yellow
and blue devils, will like this room, when I call them forth to do my
bidding.
Again he warned me, Not one word to Edith, do you understand? Not one
word. I must be alone. I have told you and only you. I must work in
peace and that I cannot do if I am interrupted. This room is my relief.
It amuses me to sit here, but it is not my laboratory. Come, it is time
to show you. Besides, I have my reasons....
We did not rise. The lights were again mysteriously extinguished and
I felt that the couch on which we sat was moving. The sensation was
pleasant, like taking a ride on a magic carpet or a taktrevan. In a
few seconds, when light appeared again, instead of a wall behind us we
sat with a wall before us. Facing about, I perceived that we were in
another chamber, a chamber that would have pleased Doctor Faust, for it
was obviously the laboratory of an alchemist. Nevertheless, I noted at
once a certain theatrical air in the arrangement.
This, I said, seems more suitable for the performances of Herrmann the
Great or Houdini than the experiments of Paracelsus.
Peter grinned. It was clear that he was taking a childish delight in
the entertainment.
It is fun to do this with you. I've had no one but the black boy and
the cat. There are moments when I think I would like to bring Edith
here, but she would spoil it by getting tired of it, or else she would
like it too much and want to come every day and bring others with her
to see the show. Well, look around.
I followed his advice. It was the conventional alchemist's retreat.
There were stuffed owls and mummies and astrolabes. Herbs and bones
were suspended from the ceiling. Skulls grinned from the tops of
cabinets. There were rows and rows of ancient books, many of them
bound in sheepskin or vellum, in a case against one wall. A few larger
volumes, with brass or iron clasps, reposed on a table. Lou Matagot,
who had been carried into the room with us, presently stretched his
great, black, glossy length over the top of one of these. There were
cauldrons, retorts, crucibles, rows of bottles, a fire, with bellows,
and a clepsydra, or water-clock, which seemed to be running. There was
an Arcula Mystica, or demoniac telephone, resembling a liqueur-stand.
Peter explained that possessors of this instrument might communicate
with each other, over whatever distance. There were cabinets, on the
shelves of which lay amulets and talismans and periapts, carved from
obsidian or fashioned of blue or green faience, the surfaces of which
were elaborately scratched with hermetic characters, and symplegmata
with their curious confusion of the different parts of different
beasts. There were aspergills, and ivory pyxes, stolen, perhaps, from
some holy place, and now consecrated to evil uses. There were stuffed
serpents and divining rods of hazel. There were scrolls of parchment,
tied with vermilion cord. In fact, there was everything in this room,
that David Belasco would provide for a similar scene on the stage.
Here, said Peter, I study the Book of the Dead, hierograms,
rhabdomancy, oneiromancy, hippomancy, margaritomancy, parthenomancy,
gyromancy, spodanomancy, ichthyomancy, kephalonomancy, lampodomancy,
sycomancy, angelology, pneumatology, goety, eschatology, cartomancy,
aleuromancy, alphitomancy, anthropomancy, axinomancy, which is
performed by applying an agate to a red-hot ax, arithmomancy, or
divination by numbers, alectoromantia, in which I lay out the letters
of the alphabet and grains of wheat in spaces drawn in a circle and
permit a cock to select grains corresponding to letters, belomancy,
divination by arrows, ceroscopy, cleidomancy, astragalomancy,
amniomancy, cleromancy, divination performed by throwing dice and
observing the marks which turn up, cledonism, coscinomancy, capnomancy,
divination by smoke, captoptromancy, chiromancy, dactyliomancy,
performed with a ring, extispicium, or divination by entrails,
gastromancy, geomancy, divination by earth, hydromancy, divination
by water, and pyromancy and æromancy, divination by fire and air,
onomancy, divination by the letters of a name, onychomancy, which is
concerned with finger-nails, ornithomancy, which deals with birds, and
chilomancy, which deals with keys, lithomancy, eychnomancy, ooscopy,
keraunoscopia, bibliomancy, myomancy, pan-psychism, metempsychosis,
the Martinists, the Kabbalists, the Diabolists, the Palladists, the
Rosicrucians, the Luciferians, the Umbilicamini, all the nocuous,
demonological, and pneumatic learning, including transcendental
sensualism. At present, I am experimenting with white mice. I dip
their feet in red ink and permit them to make scrawls on a certain
curious chart.
I have dabbled in drugs, for you know that the old Greek priests, the
modern seers, and the mediæval pythonesses, all have resorted to drugs
to assist them to see visions. The narcotic or anæsthetic fumes, rising
from the tripods, lulled the old Greek hierophants and soothsayers into
a sympathetic frame of mind. First, I experimented with Napellus, for I
had read that Napellus caused one's mental processes to be transferred
from the brain to the pit of the stomach. There exists an exact
description of the effects of this drug on an adept, one Baptista Van
Helmont, which I will read you.
Peter, here, went to the shelves, and after a little hesitation, pulled
out an old brown volume. He turned over the pages for a few seconds and
then began to read: Once, when I had prepared the root (of Napellus) in
a rough manner, I tasted it with the tongue: although I had swallowed
nothing, and had spit out a good deal of the juice, yet I felt as if
my skull was being compressed by a string. Several household matters
suggested themselves and I went about the house and attended to them.
At last, I experienced what I had never felt before. It seemed to me
that I neither thought nor understood, and as if I had none of the
usual ideas in my head; but I felt, with astonishment, clearly and
distinctly, that all these functions were taking place at the pit
of the stomach: I felt this clearly and perfectly, and observed with
the greatest attention that, although I felt movement and sensation
spreading themselves over the whole body, yet that the whole power
of thought was really and unmistakably situated in the pit of the
stomach, always excepting a sensation that the soul was in the brain
as a governing force. The sensation was beyond the power of words to
describe. I perceived that I thought with greater clearness: there was
a pleasure in such an intellectual distinctness. It was not a fugitive
sensation; it did not take place while I slept, dreamed, or was ill,
but during perfect consciousness. I perceived clearly that the head was
perfectly dormant as regarded fancy: and I felt not a little astonished
at the change of position.
Well, continued Peter, closing the book and regarding me with great
intensity, you will admit that would be a sensation worth experiencing.
So I tried it ... with horrible results. Will you believe it when I
tell you that I became wretchedly ill in that very centre which Van
Helmont locates as the seat of thought? I suffered from the most
excruciating pains, which were not entirely relieved by an emetic.
Indeed, I passed a week or so in bed.
My next experiment, he went on, was made with hashish, Cannabis Indica,
which I prepared and took according to the directions of another adept,
who had found that the drug produced a kind of demoniac and incessant
laughter, hearty, Gargantuan laughter, and the foreshortening of time
and space. He could span the distance between London and Paris in a few
seconds. Furniture and statues assumed a comic attitude; they seemed
to move about and become familiar with him. He was literally aware of
what the Rosny have called the "semi-humanité des choses." I took the
drug, as I have said, exactly as he directed, but the effect on me
was entirely dissimilar. Immediately, I was plunged into immoderate
melancholy. The sight of any object immeasurably depressed me. I also
noted that my legs and arms had apparently stretched to an abnormal
length. I sobbed with despair when I discovered that I could scarcely
see to the other end of my laboratory, it seemed so far away. Mounting
the stairs to my bed-chamber was equivalent in my mind to climbing the
Himalayas. Although Hadji afterward assured me that I had been under
the influence of the drug for only fourteen hours, it was more like
fourteen years to me, which I had passed without sleep. At the end of
the experiment, my nerves revolted under the strain and again I was
forced to take to my bed, this time for four days.
My third experiment was made with Peyote beans, whose properties are
extolled by the American Indians. After eating these beans, the red
men, who use them in the mysteries of their worship, suffer, I have
been informed, from an excruciating nausea, the duration of which is
prolonged. After the nausea has passed its course, a series of visions
is vouchsafed the experimenter, these visions extending in a series, on
various planes, to the mystic number of seven. Under the spell of these
visions, the adepts vaticinate future events. I have wondered sometimes
if it were not possible that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with
the properties of these beans, that William Blake was under their
influence when he drew his mystic plates.
Be that as it may, I swallowed one bean, which I had been informed
would be sufficient to give me the desired effect, and without
interval, I was carried at once on to the plane of the visions, which
concentrated themselves into one gigantic phantasm. Have you ever seen
Jacques Callot's copperplate engraving of The Temptation of Saint
Anthony? The hideous collection of teratological monsters, half-insect,
half-microbe, of gigantic size, exposed in that picture, swarmed about
me, menacing me with their horrid beaks, their talons and claws, their
evil antennæ. Further cohorts of malignant monstrosities without
bones lounged about the room and sprawled against my body, rubbing
their flabby, slimy, oozing folds against my legs. After a few more
stercoraceous manœuvres, some of which I should hesitate to describe,
even to you, the monsters began to breathe forth liquid fire, and the
pain resulting from the touch of these tongues of flame finally awoke
me. I was violently ill, and my illness developed in the seven stages
traditionally allotted to the visions. First, extreme nausea, which
lasted for two days, second, a raging fever, third, a procession of
green eruptions on my legs, fourth, terrific pains in the region of
my abdomen, fifth, dizziness, sixth, inability to command any of my
muscles, and seventh, a prolonged period of sleep, which lasted for
forty-eight hours. Nevertheless, I came nearer to success in this
experiment than in any other.
My fourth experiment was made with cocaine, which I procured from
a little Italian boy, about eleven years old, who was acting in a
Bowery barroom as agent for his father. Laying the white crystals on
the blade of an ivory paper-cutter, I sniffed as I had observed the
snow-birds themselves sniff. Immediately, my mind became clear to an
extent that it had never been clear before. My intellect became as
sharp as a knife, as keen as the slash of a whip, as vibrant as an E
string. I seemed to have a power of understanding which I had never
before approached, not only of understanding but also of _hearing_,
for I caught the conversation of men talking in an ordinary tone of
voice out in the Square. Also, I became abnormally active, nervous,
and intense. I rushed from the room, without reason or purpose, with a
kind of energy which seemed deathless, so strong was its power. When,
however, I endeavoured to make notes, for my mind seethed with ideas,
I was unable to do so. I scratched some characters on paper, to be
sure, but I found them wholly undecipherable the next day. They were
not in English or in any language known to me. Finally, I ran out of
the house and, encountering, on Second Avenue, a fancy woman of the
Jewish persuasion, I accompanied her to her cubicle, and permitted her
to be the subsidiary hierophant in the mystic rites I then performed.
That, concluded Peter, with a somewhat sorry smile, was the last of my
experiments with drugs.
This story and, indeed, this whole phase, amused me enormously.
An ambition which had persuaded its possessor that in order to
become the American Arthur Machen, he must first become an adept in
demonology seemed to me to be the culmination of Peter's fantastic
life, which, indeed, it was. But I said little. As usual, I let him
talk and I listened. There seemed, however, to be a period here and
I took occasion to look over the books, asking him first if he had
any objection to my copying off some of the titles, as I felt that it
might be possible that some day I should want to make some research in
this esoteric realm. He bade me do what I liked and, advancing towards
the book-shelves with the small note-book which I carried with me at
that period in order to set down fleeting thoughts as they came, I
transferred some of the titles therein.
I stopped at last, not from lack of patience on my part, but from
observing the impatience of Peter, who obviously had a good deal more
to say. On my turning, indeed, he began at once.
I have made, he said, some tentative minor experiments but my final
experiments are yet to be attempted. Nevertheless, I have found a
spring-board from which to leap into my romance. Let me read you a
few pages of Arthur Waite's somewhat ironic summary of Dr. Bataille's
Le Diable au XIXe Siècle. Naturally I shall treat the subject more
seriously, but what atmosphere, what a gorgeous milieu in which to
plunge the reader when he shall open my book!
Peter now took from the shelves a small black volume, lettered in red,
and turned over the leaves. First, he said, I shall read you some of
the Doctor's experiences in Pondicherry, and he began:
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 a 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. 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 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 and kept his bed for eight-and-forty
hours.
Peter looked up from the book in his hand with an expression of ironic
exultation which was very quaint.
What do you think of that? he asked.
Very pretty, I ventured.
Very strong for the beginning of my romance! he cried. You see, I
shall commence with this failure and work up gradually to the final
brilliant success. Let me introduce you to another passage from Waite's
summary of Dr. Bataille's masterpiece: He turned a few more leaves and
presently was reading again:
A select company of initiates proceeded in hired carriages through the
desolation of Dappah, under the convoy of the 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 makes
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. 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, and 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. From the Sanctuary of the Serpents, the
company then proceeded into the second temple or the Sanctuary of the
Phœnix.
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 Phœnix in red gold more solid
than the silver. There was an altar beneath the Phœnix, and a male and
female ape were composed on 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.
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.
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 company
into a living mummy and be interred for a space of three years. The
fakir introduced his performance by suspension in mid-air.
The fifth temple was consecrated to the Pelican.
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 assembly now 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 statue of Baphomet;
in spite of the intolerable heat pervading the entire chamber,
this idol contrived to preserve its outlines and to glow without
pulverizing. A ceremony of an impressive nature occurred in this
apartment; a wild cat, which strayed in through the 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 stumbled over dead bodies, disturbing rats and vultures,
and proceeded to the formation of the magic chain, sitting in a vast
circle, every Adept embracing his particular corpse.
Well? asked Peter, closing the book. Well?
Kolossal! I shouted, in German.
Isn't it, and there's ever so much more, wonderful stories,
incantations and evocations in the works of Arthur Waite, Moncure
Daniel Conway, Alfred Maury, J. Collin de Plancy, François Lenormant,
Alphonse Gallais, the Abbé de Montfaucon de Villars, J.G. Bourgeat, and
William Godwin. Have you ever heard of The Black Pullet or The Queen of
The Hairy Flies?
This time, Carl; he spoke with great intensity and earnestness, I am on
the right track. I am convinced that to give a work of this character
a proper background one must know a great deal more than one tells.
That, in fact, is the secret of all fine literature, the secret of
all great art, that it conceals and suggests. The edges, of course,
are rounded: it is not a rough and obvious concealment. You cannot
begin not to tell until you know more than you are willing to impart.
These books have given me a good deal, but I must go farther--as I am
convinced that Machen has gone farther. I am going through with it ...
all through with it, searching out the secrets of life and death, a few
of which I have discovered already, but I have yet to make the great
test. And when I know what I shall find out, I shall begin to write ...
but I shall tell nothing.
Peter was flaming with enthusiasm again. It wasn't necessary for me to
speak. He required an audience, not an interlocutor.
Why not now? he demanded suddenly. Why not now and here, with you?
What do you mean? I queried.
Why not make the great experiment now? I am prepared and the moon and
the planets are favourable. Are _you_ willing to go through with it? I
must warn you that you will never be the same again. You may even lose
your life.
What will happen? I asked.
The earth will rock. A storm will probably follow, thunder and
lightning, balls of fire, thunderbolts, showers of feathers, and then
we shall dissolve into ... into a putrid mass, the agamous mass from
which we originated, neither male nor female, with only a glowing eye,
a great eye, radiating intelligence out of its midst. Then Astaroth
himself (I shall call Astaroth, because his inferiors in the descending
hierarchy, Sargatanas and Nebiros, dwell in America) will appear, in
one of his forms, perhaps refulgent and beautiful, perhaps ugly and
tortured and hideously deformed, perhaps black or yellow or blue, but
assuredly not white or green. He may be entirely covered with hair or
entirely covered with eyes, or he may be eyeless. Mayhap, he will be
lean and proud and sad, and he will probably limp, for you know he is
lame. His feet will be cloven, he will wear a goat's beard, and you may
distinguish him further by the cock's feather and the ox's tail. Or,
perhaps, he may arrive in the shape of some monster: the fierce flying
hydra called the Ouranabad, the Rakshe who eats dragons and snakes, the
Soham, with the body of a scarlet griffin and the head of a four-eyed
horse, the Syl, a basilisk with a human face.... But, however he may
appear, in his presence you shall learn the last secrets of all the
worlds.
And then what will happen?
Then I shall speak the magic formula and we will resume our proper
shapes but from that moment on we shall hover--literally, not
pathologically--between life and death. We shall know everything. ...
and eventually we shall pay the price....
Like Faust?
Like Faust ... that is, if we are not clever enough to outwit the
demon. Those who practise devilments usually find some means to
circumvent the devil.