I A O the supreme One of the Gnostics, the true God, is the Lord of this
work. Let us therefore invoke Him by that name which the Companions of the
royal Arch blaspheme to aid us in the essay to declare the means which He has
bestowed upon us!
II
The divine consciousness which is reflected and refracted in the works of
Genius feeds upon a certain secretion, as I believe. This secretion is
analogous to semen, but not identical with it. There are but few men and
fewer women, those women being invariably androgyne, who possess it at any
time in any quantity.
So closely is this secretion connected with the sexual economy that it
appears to me at times as if it might be a by-product of that process which
generates semen. That some form of this doctrine has been generally accepted
is shown in the prohibitions of all religions. Sanctity has been assumed to
depend on chastity, and chastity has nearly always been interpreted as
abstinence. But I doubt whether the relation is so simple as this would
imply; for example, I find in myself that manifestations of mental
creative force always concur with some abnormal condition of the physical
powers of generation. But it is not the case that long periods of chastity,
on the one hand, or excess of orgies, on the other, are favourable to its
manifestation or even to its formation.
I know myself, and in me it is extremely strong; its results are
astounding.
For example, I wrote "Tannhauser," complete from conception to execution,
in sixty-seven consecutive hours. I was unconscious of the fall of nights and
days, even after stopping; nor was there any reaction of fatigue. This work
was written when I was twenty-four years old, immediately on the completion of
an orgie which would normally have tired me out.
Often and often have I noticed that sexual satisfaction so-called has left
me dissatisfied and unfatigued, and let loose the floods of verse which have
disgraced my career.
Yet, on the contrary, a period of chastity has sometimes fortified me for a
great outburst. This is far from being invariably the case. At the
conclusion of the K 2 expedition, after five months of chastity, I did no work
whatever, barring very few odd lyrics, for months afterwards.
I may mention the year 1911. At this time I was living, in excellent good
health, with the woman whom I loved. Her health was, however, variable, and
we were both constantly worried.
The weather was continuously fine and hot. For a period of about three
months I hardly missed a morning; always on waking I burst out with a new idea
which had to be written down.
The total energy of my being was very high. My weight was 10 stone 8 lb.,
which had been my fighting weight when I was ten years younger. We walked
some twenty miles daily through hilly forest.
The actual amount of MSS. written at this time is astounding; their variety
is even more so; of their excellence I will not speak.
Here is a rough list from memory; it is far from exhaustive:
(1) Some dozen books of A.'. A.'. instruction, including liber Astarte,
and the Temple of Solomon the King for "Equinox VII."
(2) Short Stories: The Woodcutter.
His Secret Sin.
(3) Plays: His Majesty's Fiddler
Elder Eel
Adonis . written straight off, one
The Ghouls. after the other
Mortadello.
(4) Poems: The Sevenfold Sacrament
A Birthday.
(5) Fundamentals of the Greek Qabalah (involving the collection and
analysis of several thousand words).
I think this phenomenon is unique in the history of literature.
I may further refer to my second journey to Algeria, where my sexual life,
though fairly full, had been unsatisfactory.
On quitting Biskra, I was so full of ideas that I had to get off the train
at El-Kantara, where I wrote "The Scorpion." Five or six poems were written
on the way to Paris; "The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon" during my twenty-four
hours' stay in Paris, and "Snowstorm" and "The Electric Silence" immediately
on my return to England.
To sum up, I can always trace a connection between my sexual condition and
the condition of artistic creation, which is so close as to approach identity,
and yet so loose that I cannot predicate a single important proposition.
It is these considerations which give me pain when I am reproached by the
ignorant with wishing to produce genius mechanically. I may fail, but my
failure is a thousand times greater than their utmost success.
I shall therefore base my remarks not so much on the observations which I
have myself made, and the experiments which I have tried, as on the accepted
classical methods of producing that energized enthusiasm which is the lever
that moves God.
III
The Greeks say that there are three methods of discharging the genial
secretion of which I have spoken. They thought perhaps that their methods
tended to secrete it, but this I do not believe altogether, or without a
qualm. For the manifestation of force implies force, and this force must have
come from somewhere. Easier I find it to say "subconsciousness" and
"secretion" than to postulate an external reservoir, to extend my connotation
of "man" than to invent "God."
However, parsimony apart, I find it in my experience that it is useless to
flog a tired horse. There are times when I am absolutely bereft of even one
drop of this elixir. Nothing will restore it, neither rest in bed, nor
drugs, nor exercise. On the other hand, sometimes when after a severe spell
of work I have been dropping with physical fatigue, perhaps sprawling on the
floor, too tired to move hand or foot, the occurrence of an idea has restored
me to perfect intensity of energy, and the working out of the idea has
actually got rid of the aforesaid physical fatigue, although it involved a
great additional labour.
Exactly parallel (nowhere meeting) is the case of mania. A madman may
struggle against six trained athletes for hours, and show no sign of fatigue.
Then he will suddenly collapse, but at a second's notice from the irritable
idea will resume the struggle as fresh as ever. Until we discovered
"unconscious muscular action" and its effects, it was rational to suppose such
a man "possessed of a devil"; and the difference between the madman and the
genius is not in the quantity but in the quality of their work. Genius is
organized, madness chaotic. Often the organization of genius is on original
lines, and ill-balanced and ignorant medicine-men mistake it for disorder.
Time has shown that Whistler and Gauguin "kept rules" as well as the masters
whom they were supposed to be upsetting.
IV
The Greeks say that there are three methods of discharging the Lyden Jar of
Genius. These three methods they assign to three Gods.
These three Gods are Dionysus, Apollo, Aphrodite. In English: wine, woman
and song.
Now it would be a great mistake to imagine that the Greeks were
recommending a visit to a brothel. As well condemn the High Mass at St.
Peter's on the strength of having witnessed a Protestant revival meeting.
Disorder is always a parody of order, because there is no archetypal disorder
that it might resemble. Owen Seaman can parody a poet; nobody can parody Owen
Seaman. A critic is a bundle of impressions; there is no ego behind it. All
photographs are essentially alike; the works of all good painters essentially
differ.
Some writers suppose that in the ancient rites of Eleusis the High Priest
publicly copulated with the High Priestess. Were this so, it would be no more
"indecent" than it is "blasphemous" for the priest to make bread and wine into
the body and blood of God.
True, the Protestants say that it is blasphemous; but a Protestant is one
to whom all things sacred are profane, whose mind being all filth can see
nothing in the sexual act but a crime or a jest, whose only facial gestures
are the sneer and the leer.
Protestantism is the excrement of human thought, and accordingly in
Protestant countries art, if it exist at all, only exists to revolt. Let us
return from this unsavoury allusion to our consideration of the methods of the
Greeks.
V
Agree then that it does not follow from the fact that wine, woman and song
make the sailor's tavern that these ingredients must necessarily concoct a
hell-broth.
There are some people so simple as to think that, when they have proved
the religious instinct to be a mere efflorescence of the sex-instinct, they
have destroyed religion.
We should rather consider that the sailor's tavern gives him his only
glimpse of heaven, just as the destructive criticism of the phallicists has
only proved sex to be a sacrament. Consciousness, says the materialist, axe
in hand, is a function of the brain. He has only re-formulated the old
saying, "Your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost."!
Now sex is justly hallowed in this sense, that it is the eternal fire of
the race. Huxley admitted that "some of the lower animalculae are in a sense
immortal," because they go on reproducing eternally by fission, and however
often you divide "x" by 2 there is always something left. But he never seems
to have seen that mankind is immortal in exactly the same sense, and goes on
reproducing itself with similar characteristics through the ages, changed by
circumstance indeed, but always identical in itself. But the spiritual flower
of this process is that at the moment of discharge a physical ecstasy occurs,
a spasm analogous to the mental spasm which meditation gives. And further, in
the sacramental and ceremonial use of the sexual act, the divine consciousness
may be attained.
VI
The sexual act being then a sacrament, it remains to consider in what
respect this limits the employment of the organs.
First, it is obviously legitimate to employ them for their natural physical
purpose. But if it be allowable to use them ceremonially for a religious
purpose, we shall find the act hedged about with many restrictions.
For in this case the organs become holy. It matters little to mere
propagation that men should be vicious; the most debauched roue might and
almost certainly would beget more healthy children than a semi-sexed prude.
So the so-called "moral" restraints are not based on reason; thus they are
neglected.
But admit its religious function, and one may at once lay down that the act
must not be profaned. It must not be undertaken lightly and foolishly without
excuse.
It may be undertaken for the direct object of continuing the race.
It may be undertaken in obedience to real passion; for passion, as the name
implies, is rather inspired by a force of divine strength and beauty without
the will of the individual, often even against it.
It is the casual or habitual --- what Christ called "idle" --- use or
rather abuse of these forces which constitutes their profanation. It will
further be obvious that, if the act in itself is to be the sacrament in a
religious ceremony, this act must be accomplished solely for the love of God.
All personal considerations must be banished utterly. Just as any priest can
perform the miracle of transubstantiation, so can any man, possessing the
necessary qualifications, perform this other miracle, whose nature must form
the subject of a subsequent discussion.
Personal aims being destroyed, it is "a fortiori" necessary to neglect
social and other similar considerations.
Physical strength and beauty are necessary and desirable for aesthetic
reasons, the attention of the worshippers being liable to distraction if the
celebrants are ugly, deformed, or incompetent. I need hardly emphasize the
necessity for the strictest self-control and concentration on their part. As
it would be blasphemy to enjoy the gross taste of the wine of the sacrament,
so must the celebrant suppress even the minutest manifestation of animal
pleasure.
Of the qualifying tests there is no necessity to speak; it is sufficient to
say that the adepts have always known how to secure efficiency.
Needless also to insist on a similar quality in the assistants; the sexual
excitement must be suppressed and transformed into its religious equivalent.
VII
With these preliminaries settle in order to guard against foreseen
criticisms of those Protestants who, God having made them a little lower than
the Angels, have made themselves a great deal lower than the beasts by their
consistently bestial interpretation of all things human and divine, we may
consider first the triune nature of these ancient methods of energizing
enthusiasm.
Music has two parts; tone or pitch, and rhythm. The latter quality
associates it with the dance, and that part of dancing which is not rhythm is
sex. Now that part of sex which is not a form of the dance, animal movement,
is intoxication of the soul, which connects it with wine. Further identities
will suggest themselves to the student.
By the use of the three methods in one the whole being of man may thus be
stimulated.
The music will create a general harmony of the brain, leading it in its own
paths; the wine affords a general stimulus of the animal nature; and the sex-
excitement elevates the moral nature of the man by its close analogy with the
highest ecstasy. It remains, however, always for him to make the final
transmutation. Unless he have the special secretion which I have postulated,
the result will be commonplace.
So consonant is this system with the nature of man that it is exactly
parodied and profaned not only in the sailor's tavern, but in the society
ball. Here, for the lowest natures the result is drunkenness, disease and
death; for the middle natures a gradual blunting of the finer feelings; for
the higher, an exhilaration amounting at the best to the foundation of a life-
long love.
If these Society "rites" are properly performed, there should be no
exhaustion. After a ball, one should feel the need of a long walk in the
young morning air. The weariness or boredom, the headache or somnolence, are
Nature's warnings.
VIII
Now the purpose of such a ball, the moral attitude on entering, seems to
me to be of supreme importance. If you go with the idea of killing time, you
are rather killing yourself. Baudelaire speaks of the first period of love
when the boy kisses the trees of the wood, rather than kiss nothing. At the
age of thirty-six I found myself at Pompeii, passionately kissing that
great grave statue of a woman that stands in the avenue of the tombs. Even
now, as I wake in the morning, I sometimes fall to kissing my own arms.
It is with such a feeling that one should go to a ball, and with such a
feeling intensified, purified and exalted, that one should leave it.
If this be so, how much more if one go with the direct religious purpose
burning in one's whole being! Beethoven roaring at the sunrise is no strange
spectacle to me, who shout with joy and wonder, when I understand (without
which one cannot really be said ever to see) a blade of grass. I fall upon my
knees in speechless adoration at the moon; I hide my eyes in holy awe from a
good Van Gogh.
Imagine then a ball in which the music is the choir celestial, the wine
the wine of the Graal, or that of the Sabbath of the Adepts, and one's partner
the Infinite and Eternal One, the True and Living God Most High!
Go even to a common ball --- the Moulin de la Galette will serve even the
least of my magicians --- with your whole soul aflame within you, and your
whole will concentrated on these transubstantiations, and tell me what miracle
takes place!
It is the hate of, the distaste for, life that sends one to the ball when
one is old; when one is young one is on springs until the hour falls; but the
love of God, which is the only true love, diminishes not with age; it grows
deeper and intenser with every satisfaction. It seems as if in the noblest
men this secretion constantly increases --- which certainly suggests an
external reservoir --- so that age loses all its bitterness. We find "Brother
Lawrence," Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, at the age of eighty in continuous
enjoyment of union with God. Buddha at an equal age would run up and
down the Eight High Trances like an acrobat on a ladder; stories not too
dissimilar are told of Bishop Berkeley. Many persons have not attained union
at all until middle age, and then have rarely lost it.
It is true that genius in the ordinary sense of the word has nearly always
showed itself in the young. Perhaps we should regard such cases as Nicholas
Herman as cases of acquired genius.
Now I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the
alternative, that it is an almost universal possession. Its rarity may be
attributed to the crushing influence of a corrupted society. It is rare to
meet a youth without high ideals, generous thoughts, a sense of holiness, of
his own importance, which, being interpreted, is, of his own identity with
God. Three years in the world, and he is a bank clerk or even a government
official. Only those who intuitively understand from early boyhood that they
must stand out, and who have the incredible courage and endurance to do so in
the face of all that tyranny, callousness, and the scorn of inferiors can do;
only these arrive at manhood uncontaminated.
Every serious or spiritual thought is made a jest; poets are thought "soft"
and "cowardly," apparently because they are the only boys with a will of their
own and courage to hold out against the whole school, boys and masters in
league as once were Pilate and Herod; honour is replaced by expediency,
holiness by hypocrisy.
Even where we find thoroughly good seed sprouting in favourable ground, too
often is there a frittering away of the forces. Facile encouragement of a
poet or painter is far worse for him than any amount of opposition. Here
again the sex question (S.Q. so-called by Tolstoyans, chastity-mongers, nut-
fooders, and such who talk and think of nothing else) intrudes its horrid
head. I believe that every boy is originally conscious of sex as sacred. But
he does not know what it is. With infinite diffidence he asks. The master
replies with holy horror; the boy with a low leer, a furtive laugh, perhaps
worse.
I am inclined to agree with the Head Master of Eton that paederastic
passions among schoolboys "do no harm"; further, I think them the only
redeeming feature of sexual life at public schools.
The Hindoos are wiser. At the well-watched hour of puberty the boy is
prepared as for a sacrament; he is led to a duly consecrated temple, and there
by a wise and holy woman, skilled in the art, and devoted to this end, he is
initiated with all solemnity into the mystery of life.
The act is thus declared religious, sacred, impersonal, utterly apart from
amorism and eroticism and animalism and sentimentalism and all the other
vilenesses that Protestantism has made of it.
The Catholic Church did, I believe, to some extent preserve the Pagan
tradition. Marriage is a sacrament.<<Of course there has been a school of
devilish ananders that has held the act in itself to be "Wicked." Of such
blasphemers of Nature let no further word be said.>> But in the attempt to
deprive the act of all accretions which would profane it, the Fathers of the
Church added in spite of themselves other accretions which profaned it more.
They tied it to property and inheritance. They wished it to serve both God
and Mammon.
Rightly restraining the priest, who should employ his whole energy in the
miracle of the Mass, they found their counsel a counsel of perfection. The
magical tradition was in part lost; the priest could not do what was expected
of him, and the unexpended portion of his energy turned sour.
Hence the thoughts of priests, like the thoughts of modern faddists,
revolved eternally around the S.Q.
A special and Secret Mass, a Mass of the Holy Ghost, a Mass of the Mystery
of the Incarnation, to be performed at stated intervals, might have saved both
monks and nuns, and given the Church eternal dominion of the world.
IX
To return. The rarity of genius is in great part due to the destruction
of its young. Even as in physical life that is a favoured plant one of whose
thousand seeds ever shoots forth a blade, so do conditions kill all but the
strongest sons of genius.
But just as rabbits increased apace in Australia, where even a missionary
has been known to beget ninety children in two years, so shall we be able to
breed genius if we can find the conditions which hamper it, and remove them.
The obvious practical step to take is to restore the rites of Bacchus,
Aphrodite and Apollo to their proper place. They should not be open to every
one, and manhood should be the reward of ordeal and initiation.
The physical tests should be severe, and weaklings should be killed out
rather than artificially preserved. The same remark applies to intellectual
tests. But such tests should be as wide as possible. I was an absolute
duffer at school in all forms of athletics and games, because I despised
them. I held, and still hold, numerous mountaineering world's records.
Similarly, examinations fail to test intelligence. Cecil Rhodes refused to
employ any man with a University degree. That such degrees lead to honour in
England is a sign of England's decay, though even in England they are usually
the stepping-stones to clerical idleness or pedagogic slavery.
Such is a dotted outline of the picture that I wish to draw. If the power
to possess property depended on a man's competence, and his perception of real
values, a new aristocracy would at once be created, and the deadly fact that
social consideration varies with the power of purchasing champagne would cease
to be a fact. Our pluto-hetairo-politicocracy would fall in a day.
But I am only too well aware that such a picture is not likely to be
painted. We can then only work patiently and in secret. We must select
suitable material and train it in utmost reverence to these three master-
methods, or aiding the soul in its genial orgasm.
X
This reverent attitude is of an importance which I cannot over-rate.
Normal people find normal relief from any general or special excitement in the
sexual act.
Commander Marston, R.N., whose experiments in the effect of the tom-tom on
the married Englishwoman are classical and conclusive, has admirably described
how the vague unrest which she at first shows gradually assumes the sexual
form, and culminates, if allowed to do so, in shameless masturbation or
indecent advances. But this is a natural corollary of the proposition
that married Englishwomen are usually unacquainted with sexual satisfaction.
Their desires are constantly stimulated by brutal and ignorant husbands, and
never gratified. This fact again accounts for the amazing prevalence of
Sapphism in London Society.
The Hindus warn their pupils against the dangers of breathing exercises.
Indeed the slightest laxness in moral or physical tissues may cause the energy
accumulated by the practice to discharge itself by involuntary emission. I
have known this happen in my own experience.
It is then of the utmost importance to realize that the relief of the
tension is to be found in what the Hebrews and the Greeks called prophesying,
and which is better when organized into art. The disorderly discharge is mere
waste, a wilderness of howlings; the orderly discharge is a "Prometheus
unbound," or a L'age d'airain," according to the special aptitudes of the
enthused person. But it must be remembered that special aptitudes are very
easy to acquire if the driving force of enthusiasm be great. If you cannot
keep the rules of others, you make rules of your own. One set turns out in
the long run to be just as good as another.
Henry Rousseau, the duanier, was laughed at all his life. I laughed as
heartily as the rest; though, almost despite myself, I kept on saying (as the
phrase goes) "that I felt something; couldn't say what."
The moment it occurred to somebody to put up all his paintings in one room
by themselves, it was instantly apparent that his "naivete" was the simplicity
of a Master.
Let no one then imagine that I fail to perceive or underestimate the
dangers of employing these methods. The occurrence even of so simple a
matter as fatigue might change a LasMeninas into a stupid sexual crisis.
It will be necessary for most Englishmen to emulate the self-control of the
Arabs and Hindus, whose ideal is to deflower the greatest possible number of
virgins --- eighty is considered a fairly good performance --- without
completing the act.
It is, indeed, of the first importance for the celebrant in any phallic
rite to be able to complete the act without even once allowing a sexual or
sensual thought to invade his mind. The mind must be as absolutely detached
from one's own body as it is from another person's.
XI
Of musical instruments few are suitable. The human voice is the best, and
the only one which can be usefully employed in chorus. Anything like an
orchestra implies infinite rehearsal, and introduces an atmosphere of
artificiality. The organ is a worthy solo instrument, and is an orchestra in
itself, while its tone and associations favour the religious idea.
The violin is the most useful of all, for its every mood expresses the
hunger for the infinite, and yet it is so mobile that it has a greater
emotional range than any of its competitors. Accompaniment must be dispensed
with, unless a harpist be available.
The harmonium is a horrible instrument, if only because of its
associations; and the piano is like unto it, although, if unseen and played by
a Paderewski, it would serve.
The trumpet and the bell are excellent, to startle, at the crisis of a
ceremony.
Hot, drubbing, passionate, in a different class of ceremony, a class more
intense and direct, but on the whole less exalted, the tom-tom stands alone.
It combines well with the practice of mantra, and is the best accompaniment
for any sacred dance.
XII
Of sacred dances the most practical for a gathering is the seated dance.
One sits cross-legged on the floor, and sways to and fro from the hips in time
with the mantra. A solo or duet of dancers as a spectacle rather distracts
from this exercise. I would suggest a very small and very brilliant light on
the floor in the middle of the room. Such a room is best floored with mosaic
marble; an ordinary Freemason's Lodge carpet is not a bad thing.
The eyes, if they see anything at all, see then only the rhythmical or
mechanical squares leading in perspective to the simple unwinking light.
The swinging of the body with the mantra (which has a habit of rising and
falling as if of its own accord in a very weird way) becomes more accentuated;
ultimately a curiously spasmodic stage occurs, and then the consciousness
flickers and goes out; perhaps breaks through into the divine consciousness,
perhaps is merely recalled to itself by some variable in external impression.
The above is a very simple description of a very simple and earnest form of
ceremony, based entirely upon rhythm.
It is very easy to prepare, and its results are usually very encouraging
for the beginner.
XIII
Wine being a mocker and strong drink raging, its use is more likely to
lead to trouble than mere music.
One essential difficulty is dosage. One needs exactly enough; and, as
Blake points out, one can only tell what is enough by taking too much. For
each man the dose varies enormously; so does it for the same man at different
times.
The ceremonial escape from this is to have a noiseless attendant to bear
the bowl of libation, and present it to each in turn, at frequent intervals.
Small doses should be drunk, and the bowl passed on, taken as the worshipper
deems advisable. Yet the cup-bearer should be an initiate, and use his own
discretion before presenting the bowl. The slightest sign that intoxication
is mastering the man should be a sign to him to pass that man. This practice
can be easily fitted to the ceremony previously described.
If desired, instead of wine, the elixir introduced by me to Europe may be
employed. But its results, if used in this way, have not as yet been
thoroughly studied. It is my immediate purpose to repair this neglect.
XIV
The sexual excitement, which must complete the harmony of method, offers a
more difficult problem.
It is exceptionally desirable that the actual bodily movements involved
should be decorous in the highest sense, and many people are so ill-trained
that they will be unable to regard such a ceremony with any but critical or
lascivious eyes; either would be fatal to all the good already done. It
is presumably better to wait until all present are greatly exalted before
risking a profanation.
It is not desirable, in my opinion, that the ordinary worshippers should
celebrate in public.
The sacrifice should be single.
Whether or no ...
XV
Thus far had I written when the distinguished poet, whose conversation with
me upon the Mysteries had incited me to jot down these few rough notes,
knocked at my door. I told him that I was at work on the ideas suggested by
him, and that --- well, I was rather stuck. He asked permission to glance at
the MS. (for he reads English fluently, though speaking but a few words), and
having done so, kindled and said: "If you come with me now, we will finish
your essay." Glad enough of any excuse to stop working, the more plausible
the better, I hastened to take down my coat and hat.
"By the way," he remarked in the automobile, "I take it that you do not
mind giving me the Word of Rose Croix." Surprised, I exchanged the secrets of
I.N.R.I. with him. "And now, very excellent and perfect Prince," he said,
"what follows is under this seal." And he gave me the most solemn of all
Masonic tokens. "You are about," said he, "to compare your ideal with our
real."
He touched a bell. The automobile stopped, and we got out. He dismissed
the chauffeur. "Come," he said, "we have a brisk half-mile." We walked
through thick woods to an old house, where we were greeted in silence by
a gentleman who, though in court dress, wore a very "practicable" sword. On
satisfying him, we were passed through a corridor to an anteroom, where
another armed guardian awaited us. He, after a further examination, proceeded
to offer me a court dress, the insignia of a Sovereign Prince of Rose Croix,
and a garter and mantle, the former of green silk, the latter of green velvet,
and lined with cerise silk. "It is a low mass," whispered the guardian. In
this anteroom were three or four others, both ladies and gentlemen, busily
robing.
In a third room we found a procession formed, and joined it. There were
twenty-six of us in all. Passing a final guardian we reached the chapel
itself, at whose entrance stood a young man and a young woman, both dressed in
simple robes of white silk embroidered with gold, red and blue. The former
bore a torch of resinous wood, the latter sprayed us as we passed with attar
of roses from a cup.
The room in which we now were had at one time been a chapel; so much its
shape declared. But the high altar was covered with a cloth that displayed
the Rose and Cross, while above it were ranged seven candelabra, each of seven
branches.
The stalls had been retained; and at each knight's hand burned a taper of
rose-coloured wax, and a bouquet of roses was before him.
In the centre of the nave was a great cross --- a "calvary cross of ten
squares," measuring, say, six feet by five --- painted in red upon a white
board, at whose edge were rings through which passed gilt staves. At each
corner was a banner, bearing lion, bull, eagle and man, and from the top of
their staves sprang a canopy of blue, wherein were figured in gold the
twelve emblems of the Zodiac.
Knights and Dames being installed, suddenly a bell tinkled in the
architrave. Instantly all rose. The doors opened at a trumpet peal from
without, and a herald advanced, followed by the High Priest and Priestess.
The High Priest was a man of nearly sixty years, if I may judge by the
white beard; but he walked with the springy yet assured step of the thirties.
The High Priestess, a proud, tall sombre woman of perhaps thirty summers,
walked by his side, their hands raised and touching as in the minuet. Their
trains were borne by the two youths who had admitted us.
All this while an unseen organ played an Introit.
This ceased as they took their places at the altar. They faced West,
waiting.
On the closing of the doors the armed guard, who was clothed in a scarlet
robe instead of green, drew his sword, and went up and down the aisle,
chanting exorcisms and swinging the great sword. All present drew their
swords and faced outward, holding the points in front of them. This part of
the ceremony appeared interminable. When it was over the girl and boy
reappeared; bearing, the one a bowl, the other a censer. Singing some litany
or other, apparently in Greek, though I could not catch the words, they
purified and consecrated the chapel.
Now the High Priest and High Priestess began a litany in rhythmic lines of
equal length. At each third response they touched hands in a peculiar manner;
at each seventh they kissed. The twenty-first was a complete embrace. The
bell tinkled in the architrave; and they parted. The High Priest then
took from the altar a flask curiously shaped to imitate a phallus. The High
Priestess knelt and presented a boat-shaped cup of gold. He knelt opposite
her, and did not pour from the flask.
Now the Knights and Dames began a long litany; first a Dame in treble, then
a Knight in bass, then a response in chorus of all present with the organ.
This Chorus was:
EVOE HO, IACCHE! EPELTHON, EPELTHON, EVOE, IAO! Again and again it rose
and fell. Towards its close, whether by "stage effect" or no I could not
swear, the light over the altar grew rosy, then purple. The High Priest
sharply and suddenly threw up his hand; instant silence.
He now poured out the wine from the flask. The High Priestess gave it to
the girl attendant, who bore it to all present.
This was no ordinary wine. It has been said of vodki that it looks like
water and tastes like fire. With this wine the reverse is the case. It was
of a rich fiery gold in which flames of light danced and shook, but its taste
was limpid and pure like fresh spring water. No sooner had I drunk of it,
however, that I began to tremble. It was a most astonishing sensation; I can
imagine a man feel thus as he awaits his executioner, when he has passed
through fear, and is all excitement.
I looked down my stall, and saw that each was similarly affected. During
the libation the High Priestess sang a hymn, again in Greek. This time I
recognized the words; they were those of an ancient Ode to Aphrodite.
The boy attendant now descended to the red cross, stooped and kissed it;
then he danced upon it in such a way that he seemed to be tracing the
patterns of a marvellous rose of gold, for the percussion caused a shower of
bright dust to fall from the canopy. Meanwhile the litany (different words,
but the same chorus) began again. This time it was a duet between the High
Priest and Priestess. At each chorus Knights and Dames bowed low. The girl
moved round continuously, and the bowl passed.
This ended in the exhaustion of the boy, who fell fainting on the cross.
The girl immediately took the bowl and put it to his lips. Then she raised
him, and, with the assistance of the Guardian of the Sanctuary, led him out of
the chapel.
The bell again tinkled in the architrave.
The herald blew a fanfare.
The High Priest and High Priestess moved stately to each other and
embraced, in the act unloosing the heavy golden robes which they wore. These
fell, twin lakes of gold. I now saw her dressed in a garment of white watered
silk, lined throughout (as it appeared later) with ermine.
The High Priest's vestment was an elaborate embroidery of every colour,
harmonized by exquisite yet robust art. He wore also a breastplate
corresponding to the canopy; a sculptured "beast" at each corner in gold,
while the twelve signs of the Zodiac were symbolized by the stones of the
breastplace.
The bell tinkled yet again, and the herald again sounded his trumpet. The
celebrants moved hand in hand down the nave while the organ thundered forth
its solemn harmonies.
All the knights and Dames rose and gave the secret sign of the Rose Croix.
It was at this part of the ceremony that things began to happen to me.
I became suddenly aware that my body had lost both weight and tactile
sensibility. My consciousness seemed to be situated no longer in my body. I
"mistook myself," if I may use the phrase, for one of the stars in the canopy.
In this way I missed seeing the celebrants actually approach the cross.
The bell tinkled again; I came back to myself, and then I saw that the High
Priestess, standing at the foot of the cross, had thrown her robe over it, so
that the cross was no longer visible. There was only a board covered with
ermine. She was now naked but for her coloured and jewelled head-dress and
the heavy torque of gold about her neck, and the armlets and anklets that
matched it. She began to sing in a soft strange tongue, so low and smoothly
that in my partial bewilderment I could not hear all; but I caught a few
words, Io Paian! Io Pan! and a phrase in which the words Iao Sabao ended
emphatically a sentence in which I caught the words Eros, Thelema and Sebazo.
While she did this she unloosed the breastplate and gave it to the girl
attendant. The robe followed; I saw that they were naked and unashamed. For
the first time there was absolute silence.
Now, from an hundred jets surrounding the board poured forth a perfumed
purple smoke. The world was wrapt in a fond gauze of mist, sacred as the
clouds upon the mountains.
Then at a signal given by the High Priest, the bell tinkled once more. The
celebrants stretched out their arms in the form of a cross, interlacing their
fingers. Slowly they revolved through three circles and a half. She then
laid him down upon the cross, and took her own appointed place.
The organ now again rolled forth its solemn music.
I was lost to everything. Only this I saw, that the celebrants made no
expected motion. The movements were extremely small and yet extremely strong.
This must have continued for a great length of time. To me it seemed as if
eternity itself could not contain the variety and depth of my experiences.
Tongue nor pen could record them; and yet I am fain to attempt the impossible.
1. I was, certainly and undoubtedly, the star in the canopy. This star was
an incomprehensibly enormous world of pure flame.
2. I suddenly realized that the star was of no size whatever. It was not
that the star shrank, but that it (= I) became suddenly conscious of infinite
space.
3. An explosion took place. I was in consequence a point of light,
infinitely small, yet infinitely bright, and this point was "without
position."
4. Consequently this point was ubiquitous, and there was a feeling of
infinite bewilderment, blinded after a very long time by a gush of infinite
rapture (I use the word "blinded" as if under constraint; I should have
preferred to use the words "blotted out" or "overwhelmed" or "illuminated").
5. This infinite fullness --- I have not described it as such, but it was
that --- was suddenly changed into a feeling of infinite emptiness, which
became conscious as a yearning.
6. These two feelings began to alternate, always with suddenness, and
without in any way overlapping, with great rapidity.
7. This alternation must have occurred fifty times --- I had rather have
said an hundred.
8. The two feelings suddenly became one. Again the word explosion is the
only one that gives any idea of it.
9. I now seemed to be conscious of everything at once, that it was at the
same time "one" and "many." I say "at once," that is, I was not successively
all things, but instantaneously.
10. This being, if I may call it being, seemed to drop into an infinite
abyss of Nothing.
11. While this "falling" lasted, the bell suddenly tinkled three times. I
instantly became my normal self, yet with a constant awareness, which has
never left me to this hour, that the truth of the matter is not this normal
"I" but "That" which is still dropping into Nothing. I am assured by those
who know that I may be able to take up the thread if I attend another
ceremony.
The tinkle died away. The girl attendant ran quickly forward and folded
the ermine over the celebrants. The herald blew a fanfare, and the Knights
and Dames left their stalls. Advancing to the board, we took hold of the
gilded carrying poles, and followed the herald in procession out of the
chapel, bearing the litter to a small side-chapel leading out of the middle
anteroom, where we left it, the guard closing the doors.
In silence we disrobed, and left the house. About a mile through the woods
we found my friend's automobile waiting.
I asked him, if that was a low mass, might I not be permitted to witness a
High Mass?
"Perhaps," he answered with a curious smile, "if all they tell of you is
true."
In the meanwhile he permitted me to describe the ceremony and its results
as faithfully as I was able, charging me only to give no indication of the
city near which it took place.
I am willing to indicate to initiates of the Rose Croix degree of Masonry
under proper charter from the genuine authorities (for there are spurious
Masons working under a forged charter) the address of a person willing to
consider their fitness to affiliate to a Chapter practising similar rites.
XVI
I consider it supererogatory to continue my essay on the Mysteries and my
analysis of "Energized Enthusiasm."
