THE EQUINOX Vol. I. No. III 3rd part
May 19, 1990 e.v. key entry and July 6, 1990 e.v. first proof reading
against the First Edition by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O.
(further proof reading desirable)
(c) O.T.O. disk 3 of 3
O.T.O.
P.O.Box 430
Fairfax, CA 94930
USA
(415) 454-5176 ____ Messages only.
Pages in the original are marked thus at the bottom: {page number}
Comments and descriptions are also set off by curly brackets {}
Comments and notes not in the original are identified with the initials of
the source: AC note = Crowley note. WEH note = Bill Heidrick note, etc.
Descriptions of illustrations are not so identified, but are simply in
curly brackets.
(Addresses and invitations below are not current but copied from the
original text of the early part of the 20th century)
************************************************************************
THE COMING OF APOLLO
RED roses, O red Roses,
Roses afire, aflame,
O burgeon that discloses
The glory of desire ___
Hush! all the heart of fire
Is mingled in Thy name,
O roses, roses, roses,
Red roses of desire.
The golden-shafted sunlight
Beats down upon the sward;
The pillared serpent's one light
Is a flame of red desire;
O snake from out the mire,
I slay thee with the sword,
The strong sword of the sunlight,
The sword of my desire!
The still strong bird of sorrow
Keens through the golden blue,
And many a bitter morrow
Is borne upon his wings; {281}
The glory that he brings
He brings, O King, to you,
The wonder-song of sorrow
In the flapping of his wings.
The flaming day grows olden
As the youth of glory wanes;
And the sun-bird grows more golden
And narrower his wings;
He swirls around in rings;
He bears the bloody stains
Of all the sorrows olden
Upon his bright gold wings.
And scarlet-rimmed and splendid,
The wide blue vault is spanned
With golden rays wide-bended
From the green earth to the skies;
The hush of noontide dies,
Song rises from the land ___
And scarlet, naked, splendid,
Glow out the radiant skies.
A cloud of huge hushed laughter
Shakes all the listening boughs,
And a sudden hush comes after,
Dropped from the silent skies;
A myriad laughing eyes
Flash in a still carouse,
And shake with silent laughter
The blue vault of the skies. {282}
A breeze ___ a leaf ___ a shadow ___
The falling of a bud ___
The wind across the meadow ___
A flash of light ___ a call ___
A patter on the wall ___
The air is bright as blood;
A moment stands a shadow,
A moment sounds a call.
Awake! the spell is broken,
And hushed the sense of noon;
What silent word was spoken
In answer to the Call? ...
Hush! See the rose-leaves fall;
Ah! see the pathway strewn
With tender rose-leaves, broken
In answer to the Call.
How still it lies, the garden,
Now the red flash is gone;
The brown soil seems to harden
Now the strange spell is fled;
And the earth lies cold and dead,
And the hot hours hurry on.
It is only a quiet garden
Now that the spell is fled.
But the hour, the hour and the token,
Have passed as a dream away,
Now that the spell is broken,
And the moment's flash is fled. {283}
When the secret word was said,
Ah! what remained to say?
No word, but silence' token
That the golden God had fled.
And the roses, roses, roses
Flame in their red desire,
And every bud uncloses
To mark the sign that fled;
The wonder-word hath sped
To the far Olympian fire:
The spell of the crimson roses
Has passed from earth and fled.
But still the old silent garden
Remember the golden flush
When the heavens seemed to harden
For a moment that came and fled;
When the whole green earth grew red
In a breathless spell and a hush,
And the world grew young in the garden,
And trembled, and passed, and fled.
VICTOR B. NEUBURG
{284}
REVIEWS
THE OCCULT REVIEW. Monthly. 7"d."net.
Still, as before, the best and brightest of the periodicals dealing with
transcendental subjects. It hears all sides and has no axe to grind. C.
SELECTED POEMS OF FRANCIS THOMPSON. Fifth thousand. Methuen and Co.,
and Burns and Oates. No price.
Long years ago, in 1898, I was one of the very few admirers of Francis
Thompson. His wealth of thought and pomp of diction more than atoned for
the too frequent turgidity of his music.
Now, it seems, I am but one of five thousand just persons. So much the
better for them! The more the merrier! ALEISTER CROWLEY.
SCIENTIFIC IDEALISM. By W. Kingsland. Rebman, Limited. 7"s." 6"d." net.
Science and Idealism have laboured long, and have at last brought forth
a book worth reading and rereading, a book worth studying and restudying.
Mr. W. Kingsland is to be congratulated; the "Forward" alone is worth the
price asked. Here are a few quotations:
"The individual must ultimately claim not merely his relationship to the
Whole, but his "identity" therewith."
"Thus the individual ... finds that reality ever appearing to evade him
... in proportion as this is realized, he must necessarily revolt against
any and every system which would "limit" him."
". . Nothing can be accepted on mere authority."
As old as the Vedas is the question "What am I?" Ay! older, for the
first man probably asked it, and yet it crouches ever before us with
enticing eyes like some evil Sphinx. This question Mr. Kingsland tries to
narrow down by a theoretical reconciliation of Science and Idealism.
"Where we do not really know we must be content with a working hypothesis."
But the following citations are those of a man who is, if still in the
twilight, yet no longer in the dark:
"... Evil as well as that which we call good, are part of and essential
to that fundamental underlying Unity by and through which alone the
Universe can be conceive of as a Cosmos and not a Chaos."
"Our apparent failures are necessary lessons. We often learn more by
failure than by success. The only real failure is to cease to endeavour."
"Could we but realise this Truth in our life and consciousness, it would
be to us the end of all doubt and of all strife, for it would be the
realisation of our own inherent and inalienable divine nature, the
realisation of the Infinite Self, the attainment of which is the end and
goal of our evolution."
Drop the conditional tense, Mr. Kingsland. Say no longer "if I could,"
{285} but "I will!" And then write for the nations yet another book, not
one based on "Belief," but on "Knowledge," a book of Realisation, a book of
Truth. "Then will the health of the daughter of my people recover"; and
"in thy market will be sold the wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey,
and oil, and balm." F.
EUSAPIA PALLADINO AND HER PHENOMENA. BY HEREWARD CARRINGTON,
T. Werner Laurie.
We remember Mr. Hereward Carrington as the author of "Fasting, Vitality,
and Nutrition."
In six hundred odd closely printed 9 in. x 6 in. pages the author proved
that Eating Is All A Mistake. Food supplies no nourishment, but only
causes disease; if you only fast long enough, you cure cancer and
consumption and everything else.
Now when a man who can print drivel of this sort comes forward and
testifies to the wind that blows from the top of a medium's head, it is
unlikely that any serious person will take the trouble even to read his
statement.
Worse, the presence of such a person at a sitting entirely invalidates
the testimony of his fellow-sitters, even be they such presumably competent
persons as Mr. W.W.Baggalay and the Hon. Everard Feilding.
"Le grande hyst‚rie," such as must play no small part in the constitution
of a person who can persuade himself that the best athletic training is
stark starvation, that tobacco is poison, alcohol fatal in doses of three
drops, and the use of the reproductive faculties under any circumstances
tantamount to suicide, "la grande hyst‚rie," I say, is sufficient to explain
anything. A sufferer is capable of assisting the medium to cheat, and of
throwing dust in the eyes of his fellow-observers, entirely unconscious
that he is doing so, under the spell of his morbid perversity.
We hope shortly to publish studies, not of the phenomena alleged to be
produced by mediums, but of the mental make-up of those investigators who
allege them to be genuine.
We must be understood to refer only to material phenomena; we have no
doubt concerning the mental and moral phenomena. Spiritualism leads in
every case that we have yet investigated to mental spermatorrhoea,
culminating in obsession and complete moral and intellectual atony.
ALEISTER CROWLEY.
{286}
THE BRIGHTON MYSTERY
THE mind of the Wise easily shunts to strange speculations before taking
again to the main line of severely controlled thoughts. Associations of
ideas ___ your name is Harpy. How you do catch unheralded the mortal
uncautious! The Wise knows you; he is aware of your jumpy step; he makes
ready; he fights and ... "vae victis!" he yokes you. But the fool ... !
However, we digress and progress not. I ought to be relating a personal
experience. One night, one sleepless night, I was allowing my eternal
enemies, the harpies to whom I have already referred, the following of
their fancy for a while. They were poachy enough for me not to fear them.
Earlier in the evening I and a few friends had been discussing
affinities and mysteries, among other subjects, and as I lay in bed one of
the recent mysteries gave mental food to the harpies. My thoughts were of
course utterly passive and need no record. But something which
subsequently happened causes me to mention this. Let me recall the main
facts of the Brighton murder.
On the night of the crime there had been a dinner-party at the house of
Mrs. Ridley. Towards midnight the hostess remained alone with her
servants: a butler, two footmen, a {287} cook and two maids. Mrs. Ridley's
apartments have a full view of the sea, as has also the room of her maid
Jane Fleming. The cook and the other maids, as well as the three men,
slept in rooms at the back of the house.
At the inquest James Dale, the footman, and the butler deposed that they
heard no noise whatever during the night. Now, Harry Carpenter, the other
man, had been found murdered in the first-floor bathroom. And it has been
ascertained that he could not possibly leave his room without being heard
by the others, who slept one on each side of him, as neither of them "did"
sleep on that particular night, for some reason or another. But of course
this is public knowledge, The police and the papers have received scores
of anonymous letters denouncing Jane Fleming, the butler, and Dale as the
authors of the crime. They have not been arrested. Why?
I am certain that they are entirely innocent; yet the police cannot be
aware of the reasons which lead me to this certainty, and in the absence of
these proofs they ought to be suspected.
Mrs. Ridley's bed stood with the foot towards the fireplace, a door
being on either side of the head, the window on her left hand.
When her maid entered the room in the morning she found the body of her
mistress lying at the foot of the bed, the head towards the window. It was
entirely naked. Near the body was a shift, and over the neck a white shawl
had been carelessly thrown. It had upon it in various parts as many as
sixteen wounds, cuts and bruises of various importance. The most serious
and only mortal one was behind the left ear; the great vessels of the neck
were destroyed and the skull much injured. The most ugly wound to the
sight was under the {288} nose, which had been so entirely damaged that it
rendered the whole face almost unrecognisable. Yet there has been, I must
say, no doubt as to the identity. The wounds had been inflicted with an
instrument edged but blunt, used by a very weak person, possibly a woman.
The bedclothes were not disarranged, and there was some strangeness in the
fact, for the maid swore to having seen her mistress in bed, while after
the discovery of the murder the bed was found made as if no one had either
lain in or even sat on it. The police took it as a proof that Mrs. Ridley
had some connection with the murderer or murderers, and, after her maid's
departure, had been preparing herself to go out. She was known to be a
most tidy and cautious lady. Had she obeyed an instinctive need of leaving
everything in order?
But let us turn to the bathroom. There also was a murdered body.
Carpenter, the footman, had been killed with the same or with a similar
instrument. Not without a severe conflict, however. How was it that his
left hand held tightly hidden in its grasp a small piece of lace which was
recognised as belonging to Mrs. Ridley? It had been torn from a
handkerchief belonging to her. The strangeness of the discovery was all
the more striking because the handkerchief referred to was found later on
by the maid in a drawer between many others, neither on top nor at the
bottom. The piece of lace found in the hand of Carpenter corresponded
exactly.
So much for the victims. Now for the motive. Mrs. Ridley was a wealthy
widow, and possessed many valuable pictures. She had a well-known dislike
for cheque-books; and a firm of London bankers came forward at the inquest,
having written a private letter to the coroner to the effect that {289} the
deceased lady was their client, and deposed that on he morning before the
murder she had received the sum of œ1200 in banknotes and gold, which sum
was to be handed over to Mr. ___, a representative of a well-known firm of
art dealers, in payment for a certain picture.
Well, the police and the public knew that too; it had leaked out
somehow. But beyond this they knew little. That is, they had forgotten.
Because there "were" other facts. These facts, however, could not help a
detective to realise their importance because they were loose facts ___
events, that is, which were in contradiction with one another. Yet still
they afforded a clue. The murderer might be a criminal thief, a temperance
reformer, a madman, a clergyman, a novelist, or a devil-worshipper ___ any
person, in fact, in the whole world whose hand is weak or unsteady. But
the whole world is comparatively too large to allow of any certainty in
picking out the murderer of Mrs. Ridley. I say comparatively, because to
the Wise the world is small. ... "Passons!"
Some time before her sudden death Mrs. Ridley had had a guest in her
house whose unaffected manners had much offended the dignity of the male
servants. He was said to be a distant relation of the late big-gun maker,
James Ridley. But he was "not." The late Ridley had no relations whatever
on earth ___ at least among human beings. I happen to know that the so-
called relation was a spiritualist. This sounds bad enough. Was Mrs.
Ridley in agreement with him or was she not? It is nothing more than a
question. Suppress the query, give the mere words another place in the
sentence and you have two affirmations: "She was" or "She was not." How {290}
infinitely clearer is the point! Any intellectual bloodhound ought to find
out which is "the" affirmation. That is, if the so-called relation was the
murderer. I say he is, though I have no human proofs whatever to offer.
The police ___ that is, my friend Inspector Bennet ___ tell me he is not,
but he may know something. One of our great dailies has (alone) come very
near the truth on the matter. It was given as an editorial opinion that
the widow of the gun-maker was a little out of her mind and had committed
suicide, with the help of some one, in spite of her footman, who had been
attracted by the noise. Curious blend of truth and imagination!
A few hours after I had allowed the furies to play havoc with my brains
I received the following letter; and that is why I know so much. For the
very reason of its strangeness I felt at once that it could be the work of
no practical joker. The mysterious part of the adventure can, I believe,
be solved without much difficulty.
"Dear Sir," it ran, ___ "You do not know me; but I know you. I have
followed you through the world with the eyes of my spirit. I once saw in
the window of a Paris photographer a portrait of yours which arrested my
attention, and since that day your personality has been the constant,
though not unpleasant, obsession of my life. I am perfectly acquainted
with you and your life, your work and moods and ways of living. I came to
England a few weeks ago and I saw you. To-day I write. I am aware that
you are interested in the strange happenings which are to be studied in
this world. My last adventure will cause you to be interested in the
Brighton murder. I have been nearer than any one else to be the criminal
author of that murder. Only, when I arrived {291} it was too late. Had I
not been already a madman during the years 1897 and 1898, and eventually
cured, this strange adventure would certainly have sent me into a state of
complete insanity. As it is, I am in a certain way vaccinated against
madness.
"Monsieur, as true as I am a Frenchman born in America of a German
mother by a poor Spanish hidalgo who forgot to give her his address ___ you
see, I am French by naturalization (I wanted to make up for their declining
birth-rate) ___ the footman of Mrs. Ridley has been murdered by that lady
herself because he tried to save her life. I don't know her past, but I am
certain that she had been a near relation of mine in some former existence,
and that she was much interested in spiritualism. "Voil… la clef du"
"mystŠre!"
"Se¤or, you will realise that a crime is composed of a great number of
circumstances extending over a long or short period of time and different
in their importance. If a woman is seen to stick a stiletto into another
person's breast, that is a stronger circumstance than if she is seen
pulling it out; and this would be stronger than if she were standing over
the dead man with a bloody knife. Two of the cases at least are compatible
with innocence. Evidence, you understand it also, is nothing more than
grounds for reasonable guesses, and crimes are collections of circumstances
connected together, the proof of any one of which is a reasonable ground
for guessing that the others existed. But, "pocos palabras!"
"Sehr geehrter Herr!" Nine times out of ten an innocent man does not
know the strength of his own case, and he may, real "Schafskopf," by mere
asinism allow suspicious circumstances to pass unexplained which he could
explain perfectly {292} well. How much more so, then, when the innocent is
no more among the living ___ or when, being alive, he stands in a blessed
ignorance of the suspicions to which some unexplained circumstances have
given birth!
"To the point, sir! One lives again in order to complete, or improve,
an action which in a previous life has been left incomplete or inferior;
and also to make a fresh attempt at mastering, in very similar
circumstances, some powerful original tendency. It's fierce, but it's
true. Had you previously been a packer of canned meat, or a guard on the
railroad, or a Wall Street man, there would have been in your life some
incidents, causing certain thoughts in your brains, and eventually actions.
Yes, it would have been so, and you would to-day probably be doing your
best not to improve upon the action which was the resultant of those
thoughts. I say '"not to improve,"' because we are human, all of us.
"As it is, you were a Redskin in North America, your name was 'Faim de
loup,' and you are placed in such circumstances that you must find it
difficult not to fall again into your old uncivilised ways.
"Now, Mrs. Ridley was a spiritualist. And she was not a widow! Her
husband was not dead! He was the great gun-maker whom you know, and whose
obsequies you may remember. His coffin contained but another man's
remains. ...
"Love, my dear sir, is a much-mistaken phenomenon, which only perhaps
the most loutish among us could understand because of its very simplicity.
Love belongs to the spiritual world; it is an attraction, based on
affinities. There were such affinities between Mrs. Ridley and her
husband. {293}
"Of course, you know something about wireless telegraphy. A wireless
message can be intercepted by some one for whom it is not meant, even if
that some one had no inclination towards that kind of French game. He
unwillingly receives the message which is for another, and it may so happen
that he obtains a similar knowledge of the answer. Such is the case also
in the spiritual world: such was the case of Mrs. Ridley. Her love-
thoughts went to her husband; her husband's love-thoughts went to her, but
...
"Have you ever taken into your field of consideration how many 'buts'
there come into the field of our actions? I submit to you that every
painful, or sinful, or harmful, or simply unpleasant incident of our lives
is the outcome of the best intentions ___ relatively best, at all events,
"our best" ___ and I am sure that you agree with me. There were two 'buts'
in the case of Mrs. Ridley.
"The first was of a personal character. Mrs. Ridley had nothing more
than love-thoughts to give to her gun-maker husband. She was deprived of
temperament ___ as the French understand the word ___ and her husband was
like the candle which has never seen itself aflame, and is in consequence
unaware of what it misses through its having had no acquaintance with a
lighted match. Their love was not of this world, and the Powers which rule
'here-below' resented what they considered to be a contempt of their
Majesty; and no children were sent to the couple. It was an ethereal love
which they both knew to be somewhat incomplete. Mr. Ridley had little
experience of the world, and still less conversation. Apart from his gun-
making business and his spiritual bride, he cared in his own words, not a
shell for anything. Nevertheless, in {294} his semi-conscious anxiety, he
attempted to devise some alterations in the appearance of his future widow.
Did he see a hat which he thought somewhat suggestive of earthy sentiments,
he would at once buy a similar one for Mrs. Ridley. Alas! with as without
it his wife looked the ethereal spirituality that she was. He went to
Paris on business, and, finding himself in that materialistic city, bought
a complete set of befrilled and dainty underlinen; Mrs. Ridley etherealised
even the appearance of that "lingerie de cocotte."
"We are far from the crime, you think. "Carajo," I guess not! We cannot
be any nearer. Who killed Mrs. Ridley? I don't know. I was very near
doing it.
"Why was she killed? The murderer did not know.
"Who killed the footman? Mrs. Ridley.
"Why did she kill him? Because he tried to prevent her from being
murdered.
"Here, in a nutshell, my dear sir, you have all the crime and its
explanation. When I say that I do not know who killed Mrs. Ridley I mean
at the same time that it matters not. "The murderer is innocent."1 Listen
to what happened to me.
"I saw a man. He had the most wonderful eyes I ever saw; they could at
times brighten one's face by merely looking into it; yet they chilled me,
drying my blood and sending a cold shiver all over my bones. They
reflected the sky as an ape imitates man, in a way inferior, poorly,
servilely. And a certain uncanny look which never quite left him made that
man an undesirable neighbour to me. Had I not seen him I would refuse to
admit the reality of his existence. {295}
"I met him during a journey. Comfortably seated in a corner of the
railway compartment, I was reading a book of the sixteenth century in
France merely to occupy my mind, so that I should not be tempted to look
through the window at the too commonplace scenery.
"We had just passed a station, as I knew by the disturbing voice of a
porter; and, on resuming my journey, I felt sorry that no companion of
travel had entered the lonely carriage. I attempted another perusal of my
book, when, without any opening of the door or of the window, I noticed a
stranger seated in the opposite corner. His eyes were on me. He left me
no time for much thinking, speaking almost immediately.
"'May I beg you to forgive a stranger, sir?' he said, 'but I cannot
endure this temperature. Will you allow me to open the windows?"
1 Underlined with red ink in the original letter.
"I like fresh air myself; but it was so very cold on that day that I had
carefully shut both windows. Something in his appearance and his look,
intensely heavy on me, led me to refrain from answering. I merely nodded,
grunted, gathered my rug higher around me, and resumed my reading.
"He thanked me profusely, opened the windows, both of them, as wide as
they could be, and, without taking any notice of my evident displeasure,
addressed me anew.
"'Your are wondering, no doubt, sir, as to the way by which I came in.
Well, I do not mind telling you I came through this hole.'
"He pointed at the ceiling with his hand, and I raised my eyes. The
only aperture to which he could be referring was a tiny little hole in the
glass which protected the imaginary {296} light provided by the railway
company. I shrugged my shoulders, grunted again, and plunged back into my
book.
"'You do not believe me, I see,' he went on, 'yet I speak the truth. I
came through this broken glass to you ___ to you, sir, on purpose to see
you, to speak to you. I came from the sky. Now, do not look at the alarm
bell. My message is a pleasant one. You are chosen for a mission.'
"I thought I had borne enough, and expressed at once the idea that my
strong desire was to be left alone. The stranger laughed in a queer
manner, and as my eyes met his once more, I felt a peculiar sensation of
mixed sympathy and fear. It was then that I noticed how brightening to
any one his eyes could be. He spoke in a gentler tone.
"'I am going to explain to you the object of my coming. You are going
back to Brighton to-morrow night, are you not?'
"'Yes, I am; but that is no concern of yours.'
"'Be silent. Look at me. All right. Listen now!'
"I heard no more his human voice. As I raised my head a feeling of lost
consciousness overcame me. I was unable to control my brains, my will, my
movements. He spoke again and at great length, but I could neither answer
nor interrupt him. I could not say that I was in a subconscious state, but
neither would I care to say that I was in a normal one. He took my hands
and held them in his own. I could not move.
"'It is necessary that a certain person be freed from the material
envelope which gives apparent shape to her ethereal spirit. Mrs. Ridley
lives at 34 ____ Street, Brighton. By the way, my name is Ridley.' {297}
"Here I tried to speak, but found it impossible. He went on:
"'You seem to be surprised. I thought you would. But remain in the
state of receptivity! I am Ridley, the late Ridley, as they say, though I
am very much alive. Some stories have been told of how I died suddenly,
600 miles away from England. But I only disappeared. The wicked spirits
tempted me, and I fell into their trap. Time passed, and the love messages
which the spirit of my wife sent all over the earth succeeded in reaching
me after a period of burning knowledge. She claimed death as a right,
though she knew well enough that, dead or alive, I could not help her in
that way. We must die both at the same time if we are to enjoy in an
after-life the joys of spiritual love, which I found on this earth but too
mild for my burning and anxious curiosity. I have chosen you for the deed
because you have been at times the recipient of some thought messages which
were addressed to her by me. Besides, in a former existence you were kin
to my ... to Mrs. Ridley.
"'To-morrow night you will go to _____ Street, and my wife will await
you as the promised liberator. Some one else will "do" for me at the same
time, but in another part of the world. I shall be far by then. No one is
to see you, and Mrs. Ridley will open the door to you. KILL HER, man!
Kill her at 9.30 P.M. When you have done, GO! Go away; and when a whole
week has passed, REMEMBER! And now, my dear sir, good-bye for the
present.'
"As he spoke the last words I was again conscious; but my head felt so
heavy that I did not make any motion. I could not. It was as if I had
just awakened from a profound sleep. {298} The stranger disappeared,
seeming through the hole in the glass.
"When I had collected myself I tried hard to make out whether I had seen
or hear any one. But I could not remember what had been said to me, save
the few words of preamble about opening the windows and the ironical words
of the parting: 'Good-bye for the present.'
"I shut the windows, and presently arrived at my destination. The cold
air on the platform finished waking me up. I dismissed the conversation as
a dream due to the discomfort of the journey; and set out towards the hotel
where I usually stay when in Bristol.
"I must here remind you, sir, that I had no other recollection than a
few words, which were so absurd, especially those about coming from the sky
through a hole, that they must have been dreamt by me. Such were my
thoughts; and I went to sleep thinking no more about my supposed nightmare.
"On the following morning I attended to my business and started on my
journey back to Brighton, though I was asked by a very dear friend to stay
another day, and though I had no reason whatever to refuse him and myself
such a pleasure as we always derive from our mutual company.
"The journey passed without incident. My carriage was never empty; and
I could not in a full compartment indulge in such weird dreams as I had on
the previous day. On my arrival at Brighton I went to the hotel. At least
I thought I did. I am not so sure now. How is it that I remember to-day
that part of the stranger's discourse which I could not recollect after his
departure? But I anticipate.
"I awoke in the morning with a strong headache; and {299} proceeded to
clean my coat; which (I remember) I had soiled on the previous evening
during my meal, while waiting for my train in London. I was perfectly
certain about that stain; I knew where it was. I COULD NOT FIND IT. This
is a trifle, no doubt, and I took it as such, at first. I do not ... now
... now that I REMEMBER. I must have washed my clothes according to the
orders.
"Yet I am not the murderer, monsieur. If you could see me you would
dismiss all doubts. My eye is a truthful organ. But of course you cannot;
and there is an end of the matter.
"Shall we go back to the beginning? Well, suppose we do. Who is that
human creature "qui languit sur la paille humide d'un cachot?" A neighbour!
The very man who ought not to be suspected. Does ever a neighbour kill a
neighbour in that way, for such a vague reason? It is sheer madness ...
Madness ... MADNESS!
"And I will tell you something else. The man they have arrested has
probably been a witness to the murder. He may have some secret longing for
a period of suffering. He may want a cure for his soul; and that may be
the reason why he does not do anything against the mountain of evidence
which is slowly being heaped against him. ..
"I have just had to leave this letter in order to see that a couple of
nice crisp cabbages do not during their ebullition throw too much water
over the gas-stove. And as I return to you it occurs to me that you may
know the great masterpiece of Dostoievsky. I have only read it in the
French. 'Crime et Chƒtiment' they call it. Well, there is a similar case
in that terrible story. MIKOLKA confesses to the {300} murder of the old
female moneylender and her sister Elizabeth, when the real murderer is
Rodion Romanich Raskolnikoff. Mikolka is longing for expiation; he wants
to atone for a wasted life; he is neither a madman nor an insane, but a
mystic, a fantast. You will object that he is a Slav. ... Quite so, but
there might be some Anglo-Saxons with a similar turn of mind.
"What of the theft? What if there has been no theft? if Mrs. Ridley had
hidden or destroyed the money? if she had burned the banknotes? What are
banknotes to a woman who is going to die?
"The police have made a great point of the fact that Harry Carpenter
could not come out of his room without being heard. Fools! Mayhap he did
not enter his room that night. Maybe he was in love with some lady fair.
Maybe he went out and was killed by Mrs. Ridley when, returning, he had
come to her assistance and struggled with Mr. Ridley's messenger.
"The dinner-party! Here we come to the most foolish, silly, ridiculous,
absurd, and preposterous example of the preposterousness, absurdity,
ridiculousness, silliness, and foolishness latent in the brains of your
C.I.D. members. I believe that all the guests who attended that party have
been shadowed, that their entire families have been watched and followed
about, that their correspondence has been ransacked and their whole past
raked into. They have of course no connection whatever with the case.
Mrs. Ridley thought of a party as of the thing most likely to "donner le"
"change." Of course she did not want people to think of anything else but of
an ordinary unforeseen murder. {310}
"All the rubbish talked about with regard to her lace handkerchief and
the piece in her footman's hand shows still more the folly of all
scientific systems of investigation. She put it there after having killed
the footman.
"I have but one incident to mention; and it is once more a personal
recollection. But as it is the last you will forgive me. I am sure you
appreciate my goodwill and believe in "Wahlverwandschaften."
"When, after a week had elapsed and my memory was allowed to resume its
work, I became conscious of the deed which had been commanded to me, I
entered into a state of mixed feelings. If I would indulge in psychology,
I should now retrace step by step the mental journey which I then took. I
think I can spare you this; and I now come to the evening which concluded
the ninth day after the murder.
"For my personal edification I was murmuring the words of the Clavicula
Salomonis; and had just arrived at the invocation, 'Aba, Zarka, Maccaf,
Zofar, Holech, Zegolta, Pazergadol,' when a gentle breeze caressed my
forehead. I must tell you that I had not placed in my left hand the
hexagonal seal, but held instead at intervals a well-dosed 'rainbow.' By
the way, have you ever tasted that scientific and picturesque mixture of
liqueurs?
"The breeze spoke. At least I heard its voice, which recalled somehow
the voice of the late ____ very late now ___ Mr. Ridley.
"'"We are here."'
"A buzzing sibilation; "un susurrement." Then the voice again. 'We have
come together, man, to set your mind at rest, if indeed it is restless.
Your are not the liberator of a longing soul, as you thought. A nearer of
kin has been {302} found ___ that is, a man whose spirit was in a previous
life the spirit of a dear brother. He was ordered to kill at 9.20. But
you came at your own appointed time and went through the ___ er ___
process, unaware that all had been done before. We chose that man because
he was a nearer parent. We are now happy ___ happy beyond your actual
comprehension. Adieu!'
"That's what I call "laver son linge sale en famille." And the part I
played in that affair reminds me of that other expression: "enfoncer une"
"porte ouverte."
"That is all, my dear sir. You know as much as I do. And I must return
to my cabbages.
"Your illuminating
"PEDRO PIERRE PETER SCAMANDER."
Is there anything to be added? For my part I took the word of Mr.
Scamander for the candid expression of real happenings, without trying to
explain any theory. More curious still is the fact that I heard from
Inspector Bennet. He said that the evidence against the arrested man was
built on moving sand, utterly impossible and unexistent; and they will have
to release him, in spite of apparent elements of certainty which have for
so long misled the public ___ aye, and even the police.
From "to-day's" papers:
"The man arrested in connection with the Brighton murder has confessed.
He will be tried at the next assizes."
Well! maybe he is a new Mikolka. But where is the absent relative, the
spiritualist?
GEORGE RAFFALOVICH {303}
REVIEWS
THE CLOUD ON THE SANCTUARY. BY COUNCILLOR VON ECKARTSHAUSEN.
William Rider and Son.
We shall be very sorry if any of our readers misses this little book, a
translation from the French translation of the German original into the
pretty broken English of Madame de Steyer.
It was this book which first made your reviewer aware of the existence
of a secret mystical assembly of saints, and determined him to devote his
whole life, without keeping back the least imaginable thing, to the purpose
of making himself worthy to enter that circle. We shall be disappointed if
the book has any less effect on any other reader.
The perusal of the notes may be omitted with advantage. N.
THE BUDDHIST REVIEW. Quarterly. 1"s."
Unwilling as I am to sap the foundations of the Buddhist religion by the
introduction of Porphyry's terrible catapult, Allegory, I am yet compelled
by the more fearful ballista of Aristotle, Dilemma. This is the two-handed
engine spoken of by the prophet Milton!1
This is the horn of the prophet Zeruiah, and with this am I, though no
Syrian, utterly pushed, till I find myself back against the dead wall of
Dogma. Only now realising how dead a wall that is, do I turn and try the
effect of a hair of the dog that bit me, till the orthodox "literary"2
school of Buddhists, as grown at Rangoon, exclaim with Lear: "How sharper
than a serpent's tooth is it To have an intellect!" How is this? Listen
and hear!
I find myself confronted with the crux: that, a Buddhist convinced
intellectually and philosophically of the truth of the teaching of Gotama;
a man to whom Buddhism is the equivalent of scientific methods of Thought;
an expert in dialectic, whose logical faculty is bewildered, whose critical
admiration is extorted by the subtle vigour of Buddhist reasoning; I am yet
forced to admit that, this being so, the Five Precepts3 are mere nonsense.
If the {304} Buddha spoke scientifically, not popularly, not rhetorically,
then his precepts are not his. We must reject them or we must interpret
them. We must inquire: Are they meant to be obeyed? Or ___ and this is my
theory ___ are they sarcastic and biting criticisms on existence,
illustrations of the First Noble Truth; "reasons," as it were, for the
apotheosis of annihilation? I shall show that this is so.
THE FIRST PRECEPT.
1 "Lycidas," line 130.
2 The school whose Buddhism is derived from the Canon, and who
ignore the degradation of the professors of the religion, as seen
in practice.
3 The obvious caveat which logicians will enter against these
remarks is that Pansil is the Five Virtues rather than Precepts.
Etymologically this is so. However, we may regard this as a
clause on my side of the argument, not against it; for in my view
these are virtues, and the impossibility of attaining them is the
cancer of existence. Indeed, I support the etymology as against
the futile bigotry of certain senile Buddhists of to-day. And,
since it is the current interpretation of Buddhistic thought that
I attack, I but show myself the better Buddhist in the act.
This forbids the taking of life in any form.4 What we have to note is
the impossibility of performing this; if we can prove it to be so, either
Buddha was a fool, or his command was rhetorical, like those of Yahweh to
Job, or of Tannh„user to himself:
"Go! seek the stars and count them and explore!
Go! sift the sands beyond a starless sea!"
Let us consider what the words can mean. The "Taking of Life" can only
mean the reduction of living protoplasm to dead matter: or, in a truer and
more psychological sense, the destruction of personality.
Now, in the chemical changes involved in Buddha's speaking this command,
living protoplasm was changed into dead matter. Or, on the other horn, the
fact (insisted upon most strongly by the Buddha himself, the central and
cardinal point of his doctrine, the shrine of that Metaphysic which
isolates it absolutely from all other religious metaphysic, which allies it
with Agnostic Metaphysic) that the Buddha who had spoken this command was
not the same as the Buddha before he had spoken it, lies the proof that the
Buddha, by speaking this command, violated it. More, not only did he slay
himself; he breathed in millions of living organisms and slew them. He
could nor eat nor drink nor breathe without murder implicit in each act.
Huxley cites the "pitiless microscopist" who showed a drop of water to the
Brahmin who boasted himself "Ahimsa" ___ harmless. So among the "rights"
of a Bhikkhu is medicine. He who takes quinine does so with the deliberate
intention of destroying innumerable living beings; whether this is done by
stimulating the phagocytes, or directly, is morally indifferent.
How such a fiend incarnate, my dear brother Ananda Metteya, can call
{305} him "cruel and cowardly" who only kills a tiger, is a study in the
philosophy of the mote and the beam!5
Far be it from me to suggest that this is a defence of breathing,
eating, and drinking. By no means; in all these ways we bring suffering
and death to others, as to ourselves. But since these are inevitable acts,
since suicide would be a still more cruel alternative (especially in case
something should subsist below mere Rupa), the command is not to achieve
the impossible, the already violated in the act of commanding, but a bitter
commentary on the foul evil of this aimless, hopeless universe, this
compact of misery, meanness, and cruelty. Let us pass on.
THE SECOND PRECEPT.
The Second Precept is directed against theft. Theft is the
appropriation to one's own use of that to which another has a right. Let
us see therefore whether or no the Buddha was a thief. The answer of
course is in the affirmative. For to issue a command is to attempt to
deprive another of his most precious possession ___ the right to do as he
will; that is, unless, with the predestinarians, we hold that action is
determined absolutely, in which case, of course, to command is as absurd as
it is unavoidable. Excluding this folly, therefore, we may conclude that
if the command be obeyed ___ and those of Buddha have gained a far larger
share of obedience than those of any other teacher ___ the Enlightened One
was not only a potential but an actual thief. Further, all voluntary
action limits in some degree, however minute, the volition of others. If I
4 Fielding Hall, in "The Soul of a People," has reluctantly to
confess that he can find no trace of this idea in Buddha's own
work, and calls the superstition the "echo of an older Faith."
5 The argument that "the animals are our brothers" is merely
intended to mislead one who has never been in a Buddhist country.
The average Buddhist would, of course, kill his brother for five
rupees, or less.
breathe, I diminish the stock of oxygen available on the planet. In those
far distant ages when Earth shall be as dead as the moon is to-day, my
breathing now will have robbed some being then living of the dearest
necessity of life.
That the theft is minute, incalculably trifling, is no answer to the
moralist, to whom degree is not known; nor to the man of science, who sees
the chain of nature miss no link.
If, on the other hand, the store of energy in the universe be indeed
constant (whether infinite or no), if personality be indeed delusion, then
theft becomes impossible, and to forbid it is absurd. We may argue that
even so temporary theft may exist; and that this is so is to my mind no
doubt the case. All theft is temporary, since even a millionaire must die;
also it is universal, since even a Buddha must breathe. {306}
THE THIRD PRECEPT.
This precept, against adultery, I shall touch but lightly. Not that I
consider the subject unpleasant ___ far from it! ___ but since the English
section of my readers, having unclean minds, will otherwise find a fulcrum
therein for their favourite game of slander. Let it suffice if I say that
the Buddha ___ in spite of the ridiculous membrane legend,6 one of those
foul follies which idiot devotees invent only too freely ___ was a
confirmed and habitual adulterer. It would be easy to argue with Hegel-
Huxley that he who thinks of an act commits it ("cf." Jesus also in this
connection, thought he only knows the creative value of desire), and that
since A and not-A are mutually limiting, therefore interdependent,
therefore identical, therefore identical, he who forbids an act commits it;
but I feel that this is no place for metaphysical hair-splitting; let us
prove what we have to prove in the plainest way.
I would premise in the first place that to commit adultery in the
Divorce Court sense is not here in question.
It assumes too much proprietary right of a man over a woman, that root
of all abomination! ___ the whole machinery of inheritance, property, and
all the labyrinth of law.
We may more readily suppose that the Buddha was (apparently at least)
condemning incontinence.
We know that Buddha had abandoned his home; true, but Nature has to be
reckoned with. Volition is no necessary condition of offence. "I didn't
mean to" is a poor excuse for an officer failing to obey an order.
Enough of this ___ in any case a minor question; since even on the
lowest moral grounds ___ and we, I trust, soar higher! ___ the error in
question may be resolved into a mixture of murder, theft, and intoxication.
(We consider the last under the Fifth Precept.)
THE FOURTH PRECEPT.
Here we come to what in a way is the fundamental joke of these precepts.
A command is not a lie, of course; possibly cannot be; yet surely an
allegorical order is one in essence, and I have no longer a shadow of a
doubt that these so-called "precepts" are a species of savage practical
joke.
Apart from this there can hardly be much doubt, when critical exegesis
has done its damnedest on the Logia of our Lord, that Buddha did at some
time {307} commit himself to some statement. "(Something called)
Consciousness exists" is, said Huxley, the irreducible minimum of the
pseudo-syllogism, false even for an enthymeme, "Cogito, ergo Sum!" This
6 Membrum virile illius in membrana inclusum esse aiunt, ne
copulare posset.
proposition he bolsters up by stating that whoso should pretend to doubt it
would thereby but confirm it. Yet might it not be said "(Something called)
Consciousness appears to itself to exist," since Consciousness is itself
the only witness to that confirmation? Not that even now we can deny some
kind of existence to consciousness, but that it should be a more real
existence than that of a reflection is doubtful, incredible, even
inconceivable. If by consciousness we mean the normal consciousness, it is
definitely untrue, since the Dhyanic consciousness includes it and denies
it. No doubt "something called" acts as a kind of caveat to the would-be
sceptic, though the phrase is bad, implying a "calling." But we can guess
what Huxley means.
No doubt Buddha's scepticism does not openly go quite as far as mine ___
it must be remembered that "scepticism" is merely the indication of a
possible attitude, not a belief, as so many good fool-folk think; but
Buddha not only denies "Cogito, ergo sum"; but "Cogito, ergo non sum." See
"Sabbasava Sutta," par. 10.
At any rate Sakkyaditthi, the delusion of personality, is in the very
forefront of his doctrines; and it is this delusion that is constantly and
inevitably affirmed in all normal consciousness. That Dhyanic thought
avoids it is doubtful; even so, Buddha is here represented as giving
precepts to ordinary people. And if personality be delusion, a lie is
involved in the command of one to another. In short, we all lie all the
time; we are compelled to it by the nature of things themselves ___
paradoxical as that seems ___ and the Buddha knew it!
THE FIFTH PRECEPT.
At last we arrive at the end of our weary journey ___ surely in this
weather we may have a drink! East of Suez,7 Trombone-Macaulay (as I may
surely say, when Browning writes Banjo-Byron8) tells us, a man may raise a
Thirst. No, shrieks the Blessed One, the Perfected One, the Enlightened
One, do not drink! It is like the streets of Paris when they were
placarded with rival posters: {308}
Ne buvez pas de l'Alcool!
L'Alcool est un poison!
and
Buvez de l'Alcool!
L'Alcool est un aliment!
We know now that alcohol is a food up to a certain amount; the precept,
good enough for a rough rule as it stands, will not bear close inspection.
What Buddha really commands, with that grim humour of his, is: Avoid
Intoxication.
But what is intoxication? unless it be the loss of power to use
perfectly a truth-telling set of faculties. If I walk unsteadily it is
owing to nervous lies ___ and so for all the phenomena of drunkenness. But
a lie involves the assumption of some true standard, and this can nowhere
be found. A doctor would tell you, moreover, that all food intoxicates:
7 "Ship me somewhere East of Suez, where a man may raise a
thirst."
R. KIPLING.
8 "While as for Quilp Hop o' my Thumb there,
Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum there."
BROWNING, "Pachiarotto" (said of A.
Austin).
all, here as in all the universe, of every subject and in every predicate,
is a matter of degree.
Our faculties never tell us true; our eyes say flat when our fingers say
round; our tongue sends a set of impressions to our brain which our hearing
declares non-existent ___ and so on.
What is this delusion of personality but a profound and centrally-seated
intoxication of the consciousness? I am intoxicated as I address these
words; you are drunk ___ beastly drunk! ___ as you read them; Buddha was a
drunk as a voter at election time when he uttered his besotted command.
There, my dear children, is the conclusion to which we are brought if you
insist that he was serious!
I answer No! Alone among men then living, the Buddha was sober, and saw
Truth. He, who was freed from the coils of the great serpent Theli coiled
round the universe, he knew how deep the slaver of that snake had entered
into us, infecting us, rotting our very bones with poisonous drunkenness.
And so his cutting irony ___ drink no intoxicating drinks!
When I go to take Pansil,9 it is in no spirit of servile morality; it is
with keen sorrow gnawing at my heart. These five causes of sorrow are
indeed the heads of the serpent of Desire. Four at least of them snap
their fangs on me in and by virtue of my very act of receiving the
commands, and of promising to obey them; if there is a little difficulty
about the fifth, it is an omission easily rectified ___ and I think we
should make a point about that; there is a great virtue in completeness.
{309}
Yes! Do not believe that the Buddha was a fool; that he asked men to
perform the impossible or the unwise.10 Do not believe that the sorrow of
existence is so trivial that easy rules easily interpreted (as all
Buddhists do interpret the precepts) can avail against them; do not mop up
the Ganges with a duster: or stop the revolution of the stars with a lever
of lath.
Awake, awake only! let there be ever remembrance that Existence is
sorrow, sorrow by the inherent necessity of the way it is made; sorrow not
by volition, not by malice, not by carelessness, but by nature, by
ineradicable tendency, by the incurable disease of Desire, its Creator, is
it so, and the way to destroy it is by the uprooting of Desire; nor is a
task so formidable accomplished by any threepenny-bit-in-the-plate-on-
Sunday morality, the "deceive others and self-deception will take care of
itself" uprightness, but by the severe roads of austere self-mastery, of
arduous scientific research, which constitute the Noble Eightfold Path.
O. DHAMMALOYU.
JOHN DEE. BY CHARLOTTE FELL SMITH. Constable and Co. 10"s." 6"d." net.
It is only gracious to admit that this book is as good as could possibly
have been produced on the subject ___ the publishes are cordially invited
to quote the last fourteen words, and now I can finish my sentence ___ by a
person totally ignorant of the essence thereof.
Dee was an avowed magician; Miss Smith is an avowed intellectual prig.
So she can find nothing better to do than to beg the whole question of the
9 To "take Pansil" is to vow obedience to these Precepts.
10 I do not propose to dilate on the moral truth which Ibsen has so
long laboured to make clear: that no hard and fast rule of life
can be universally applicable. Also, as in the famous case of
the lady who saved (successively) the lives of her husband, her
father, and her brother, the precepts clash. To allow to die is
to kill --- all this is obvious to the most ordinary thinkers.
These precepts are of course excellent general guides for the
vulgar and ignorant, but you and I, dear reader, are wise and
clever, and know better.
validity of Dee's "actions," and that although she admits that the Book of
Enoch is unintelligible to her. Worse, she retails the wretched slanders
about me current among those who envied me. I was certainly "wanted" for
coining. I happened to have found the trick of making gold at a very early
age, but had not the sense to exploit it properly; and when I got any sense
I got more sense than to waste time in such follies. The slander that I
deluded Dee is as baseless. Again and again I tried to break with him, to
show him how utterly unreliable it all was. Only his more than paternal
{310} kindness for me kept me with him. God rest him; I hear he has been
reincarnated as W. T. Stead.
For one thing I do most seriously take blame, that my training was too
strong for my power to receive spiritual truth. For when the Holy Angels
came to instruct me in the great truths, that there is no sin, that the
soul passes from house to house, that Jesus was but man, that the Holy
Ghost was not a person, I rejected them as false. Ah! have I not paid
bitterly for the error? Still, the incarnation was not all loss; not only
did I attain the Grade of Major Adept, but left enough secret knowledge (in
an available form) to carry me on for a long while. I am getting it back
now; with luck I'll be a Magister Templi soon, if I can only get rid of my
giant personality. You may say, by the way, that this is hardly a review
of a book on my old master, silly old josser! Exactly; I never cared a
dump for him. He was just a text for my sermon then; and so he is now.
EDWARD KELLEY.
STRANGE HOUSES OF SLEEP. BY ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE. William Rider
and Sons, 12"s." 6"d." net.
I have always held Arthur Edward Waite for a good poet; I am not sure
that he is not a great poet; but that he is a great mystic there can be no
manner of doubt.
"Strange Houses of Sleep," conceived in the abyss of a noble mind and
brought forth in travail of Chaos that hath been stirred by the Breath, is
one of the finest records of Mystical Progress that is possible to imagine.
I may be biased in my judgment by this fact, that long ago when first my
young heart stirred within me at the sound of the trumpet ___ perchance of
Israfel ___ and leapt to grasp with profane hands the Holy Grail, it was to
Mr. Waite that I wrote for instruction, it was from him that came the first
words of help and comfort that I ever had from mortal man. In all these
years I have met him but once, and then within a certain veil; yet still I
can go to his book as a child to his father, without diffidence or doubt;
and indeed he can communicate the Sacrament, the Wafer of his thought, the
Wine of his music.
And if in earthly things the instructions of his Master seem contrary to
those of mine, at the end it is all one. Shall we cry out if Caesar for
his pleasure commandeth his servants to take one the spear and the other
the net, and slay each other? Is not service service? Is not obedience a
sacrament apart from its accidents?
However this may be, clear enough it is that Mr. Waite has indeed the
key to certain Royal Treasuries. Unfortunately, just as to face the title-
page he gives us the portrait of a man in a frock-coat, so within the book
we have the {311} Muse in a dress-improver and a Bond Street hat. Never
mind; even those who dislike the poetry may love to puzzle out the meaning.
Detailed criticism is here impossible for lack of two illusions, time
and space! I will only add that I was profoundly interested in the final
book, "The King's Dole." No mystic who is familiar only with Christian
symbolism can afford to neglect this Ritual.
Vale, Frater! A. C.
THE CLEANSING OF A CITY. Greening and Co. 1"s." net.
"Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for
she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven,the same loveth little."
JESUS CHRIST.
"But this German woman, pretending to defend the cause of virtue, and to
warn women against the perils of the day, produces a book ('The Diary of a
Lost One') which is defilement to touch. ... Before I had skimmed fifty
pages I found my brain swimming; I nearly swooned."
REV. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
This book should be printed on vellum and locked up in a fire-proof safe
in the British Museum, Great Russell Street W.C.; so that future
ecclesiastical historians and ethicists may learn into what a state of
mental menorrhagia the adherents of the Christian Church had fallen at the
commencement of the twentieth century.
The "cleansing" part of the business seems to consist in pumping filth
into everything that is clean. We are not allowed to talk of leg because
every leg adjoins a thigh: soon we shall not be able to put a foot into a
boot without first looking to see if some nasty mess has not been deposited
in it, and why? Because foot adjoins leg! Moreover, foot suggests
walking, and walking, like the name of the Ref. Horton, D.D., suggests
prostitution ___ at the thought of this we swoon.
Most of the contributors to this cesspit, like Rev. Horton, have "D.D."
after their names. Dr. Bodie has informed us that "M.D." stands for "Merry
Devil"; perhaps he can also enlighten us as to the true meaning of these
two letters?11 ANTOINETTE BOUVIGNON.
THE LIFE OF JOHN DEE. Translated from the Latin of DR. THOMAS SMITH
by WM. ALEXR. AYTON. The Theosophical Publishing Society. 1"s." net.
Wm. Alexr. Ayton's preface to this book deserves a better subject than
Dr. Thomas Smith's "Life of John Dee," which is as dreary dull as a life
crammed so full of incidents could be made. In fact, if Dr. Smith had
collected all Dr. Dee's washing bills and printed them in Hebrew, the
result would scarcely have been more oppressive; anyhow it would have been
as {312} interesting to read of how many handkerchiefs the famous seer used
when he had a cold as to ponder over the platitudes of this rheumy old
leech.
Never since reading "Bothwell" and "Who's Who" have we read such
ponderous and pedantic pedagogics. The translator in his preface informs
us that Moses and Solomon were adepts; verily hast thou spoke, but thou,
Wm. Alexr. Ayton, art greater than either, to have survived such a leaden
task as this of putting Dr. Smith's bad Latin into good English; at the
completion of it you must have felt like Jacob when "he gathered up his
feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost!"
MATTER, SPIRIT, AND THE COSMOS. By H. STANLEY REDGROVE. William
Rider and Sons. 2"s." 6"d."
Big fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em;
Little fleas have smaller fleas,
And so "ad infinitum."
This book consists of reprinted articles from the "occult Review," and
some of them are quite entrancing, especially chapter i. "On the Doctrine
of the Indestructibility of Matter," and chapters v. and vi. "On the
Infinite" and "On the Fourth Dimension."
In the first chapter Mr. Redgrove tries to prove that though matter
"cannot" be destroyed, its form can be so utterly changed that it can no
longer be treated as such. He illustrates his theory by quoting Sir Oliver
11 WEH NOTE: pos. "Devil's Disciple"?
Lodge's "knot tied in a bit of string." So long as the knot is, matter is;
but when once the knot is untied, though the string remains, the knot
vanishes. This, however, is a most fallacious illustration, for, as
Gustave le Bon has shown, the destruction of matter implies more than a
mere change of "form"; it is an annihilation of gravity itself, and
therefore of substance as we understand it. Matter, he shows, goes back
unto Equilibrium. But what is Equilibrium? "Nothingness!" this eminent
French man of Science declares: "Absolute Nothingness!"
In chapter v. the author points out that as there is an infinite series
of infinities, to make Space the "absolute infinite" is the merest of
assumptions; he follows up this assertion by declaring that each dimension
is bounded by a higher. Thus, the Second Dimension is contained in the
Third, and so the Third in the Fourth, "ad infinitum;" each dimension being
infinite in itself, and yet contained in a higher, which is again infinite.
Thus we get infinity contained within infinity, just as .7' is contained in
.8', and .8' in .9'; and yet .7' is infinite, and .8' is infinite and .9'
is infinite, yet there are not three infinites but one infinite, &c. &c.
J. F. C. F. {313}
THE MANIAC. A realistic study of Madness from the Maniac's point of view.
Reebman Limited. 5"s." net.
Only maniacs are recommended to read this book; its dulness may being
them to their senses. For the first chapter is like the second, and the
second like the third, and the third like the fourth, which almost proves
the Athanasian Creed; for all chapters are but one chapter, which is
infinitely dull and dismal. In fact this "realistic study" might well have
been translated from Dr. Thomas Smith's "Life of John Dee," and goes a long
way to prove Mr. Stanley Redgrove's theory of concentric infinities.
The heroine is a lady journalist, unmarried,and on the wrong side of
thirty ___ there's the whole tragedy in a nutshell. Stimulating work, and
thirty years of an unstimulating life. Cut off the first syllable from
"unmarried," and this unfortunate lady, in spite of Karezza and the Order
of Melchisedec, would never have imagined that she had been seduced by a
fiend, or have afflicted us with her dreary ravings.
Therefore we advise ___ Marry, my good woman, marry, and if nobody will
have you, well then, don't be too particular, for anything is better than a
second book like this!
BATHSHEBAH TINA.
I found "The Maniac" both entertaining and instructive, a very valuable
study of psychology. It is so far as I know the only really illuminating
book on madness; and I strongly recommend its perusal to all alienists,
psychologists, and members of the grade of Neophyte. It throws an
admirable light on the true nature of Obsession and Black Magic.
Two things impressed me in particular. (1) The statement that the
arguments held with a patient never reach his consciousness at all, despite
his rational answers. This phenomenon is true of my own sane life. I
sometimes chat pleasantly to bores for quite a long time without any
consciousness that I am doing so. (2) The statement that medical men have
no idea of the real contents of a madman's mind. I remember in the County
Asylum at Inverness ("Here are the fools, and there are the knaves!" said
an inmate, pointing to the city) a man rolling from side to side with an
extraordinary regularity and rhythm of swing, emitting a long continuous
howl like a wolf. "Last stage of G.P.I." said the doctor; "he feels
absolutely nothing." "How interesting!" said I; and thought "How the deuce
do you know?" I shall be very glad when it is finally proved and admitted
that the consciousness is independent of the senses and the intellect.
Hashish phenomena, madness phenomena, magical and mystical phenomena, all
prove it; but old Dr. Cundum and young Professor Cuspidor, who can neither
of them cure a cold in {314} the head, say it isn't so! The "Imbecile
Theologians of the Middle Ages" are matched by the imbecile cacologians of
our own. I repeat, a very valuable book; a very valuable book indeed.
FRA: O. M.
SELF SYNTHESIS. A means to Perpetual Life. By CORNWELL ROUND.
Simpkin, Marshall and Co. 1"s." net.
This is a suggestive little book by a man who revolves a matter in his
mind before he writes of it, and whose common sense never quits the hub of
his thoughts. Mr. Round never rolls off down a side street, but always
keeps to the high road between them all. He does not, so at least we read
him, wobble more towards mysticism than towards materialism. He believes
that a perfect equilibrium between the Subjective mind ___ S, and the
Objective mind ___ O, produces the Individual mind, which he symbolises as
being neither round nor square, but a simple I or line, connecting the S
and O. This I is the self-renewing link between these two, which, when it
is truly balanced, renders death the most unnatural, in place of the most
natural event, that we may expect once we are born.
METHUSELAH.
THE CASE FOR ALCOHOL. Or the Actions of Alcohol on Body an Soul. By
ROBERT PARK, M.D. Rebman Limited. 1"s." net.
Dr. Park is an old friend of ours; we enjoyed his masterly translation
of Ch: F‚r‚'s "The Pathology of Emotions," and his various writings in the
days of the old "Free Review" and "University Review," when J. M. Robertson was
worth reading, a review (by the way) which was assassinated by the prurient
pot-scourers who would put a pair of "pants" on Phoebus Apollo, and who
presumably take their bath in the dark for fear of expiring in a priapic
frenzy at the sight of their own nakedness.
Dr. Park in this most admirable little treatise declares that Alcohol is
one of "the good creatures of God"; and that Alcohol is a poison is only
true relatively.
"It is not true of the stimulant dosage. It is true of it as a
narcotic, in narcotic dosage." ... "So the objection to the use of Alcohol,
because in overdosage it is a poison, is not only futile, but stupid."
Further, Dr. Park writes:
"The burden of responsibility must lie upon the person who so misuses
his means. Tea, tobacco, coffee, and beef-tea are frequently so misused,
but we hear of no socio-political organisations for interfering with the
liberty of individuals in regard to the use of these, or trespassing on the
rights of traders and purveyors thereof." {315}
"Alcohol," Dr. Park declares, "is a food," and not only a food, but an
excellent one at that. Put that in your pipes and smoke it, ye Baptist
Bible-bangers ___ but we forget, you do not smoke, in fact you do nothing
which is pleasant; you spend your whole lives in looking for the Devil in
the most unlikely places, and declare that the only remedy against his
craft and his cunning is total immersion in tonic-water and pine-apple
syrup. F.
AN INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS. By THEODORE POWYS.
This is a most mystical interpretation of the most beautiful of the
books of the Old Testament. It consists of a dialogue between the Lawgiver
of Israel and Zetetes, who is not exactly the disciple, but rather the
Interpreter of the Master's words. Thus it commences:
"The Law-giver of Israel:"
"In the beginning the Truth created the heaven and the earth."
"Zetetes:"
"The life that is within and the life that is without, are not these
the heaven and the earth that the Truth created?"
Whether the author intends to weave into his interpretation the
doctrines of the Qabalah we are not certain, but time after time we came
across curious allusions. Thus on p. 3: "Within myself when the truth
divided the light from the darkness wisdom arose" ... "and I knew that
every atom of our great Mother giveth light to other atoms ...". P. 4:
"The truth in man is the light of the world. Thus we have known from the
beginning, and we shall know it unto the end ... and the Mother gave unto
man her breasts. And man guided by the light within him did eat and was
glad." P. 6: "The tree of Life belongeth unto the Father, it groweth in
the Mother, but because darkness is still in man he may not eat thereof,
but the Truth of the Father that is within man, that Truth may eat and
live."
The philosophy of this little book shows that Darkness alone is not
evil, and that neither is Light good. Both are beyond: but the mingling
twilight begets the illusion of duality, the goodness and wickedness of
things external.
It is a little volume which one who reads will grow fond of, and will
carry about with him, and open at random in quiet places, in the woods, and
under the stars; and it is a little book which one learns to love the more
one reads it, for it is inspired by one who at least has crept into the
shadow of God's Glory.
J. F. C. F. {316}
EVOLUTION FROM NEBULA TO MAN. By JOSEPH McCABE. Milner and
Co. 1"s."
Mr. McCabe has written another little book on evolution: how many more
of these small, small, small volumes are to appear? The subject seems a
tall order for 128 pages. However, let us be thankful there are not more.
The most interesting fact that we can discover in it, or at least the
only one really original, is, that Erasmus Darwin was born in 1788. This
makes him only thirty years younger than his son Charles; and yet these are
the good people who make such a fuss about Ahaziah being two years older
than his father Jehoram!
THE R. P. A. ANNUAL, 1910. 6"d." net.
From the cover of this review we learn that it contains "A striking
Poem" by Eden Phillpotts, whose name evidently tokens his true occupation:
it is called "From the Shades," and might well remain there. Phillpotts
informs us that it was "inspired (!!!) by the spectacle of Paul's statue
which now stands on the triumphal pillar of Marcus Aurelius at Rome." We
have read of many crimes attributed to this unfortunate saint by modern
freethinkers, but none equal to this.
Poor Faustina! We can imagine any self-respecting girl taking to drink
and the street to save herself from such an ethical prig of a husband as
the Phillpottian Marcus. Listen. The Emperor is ousted by the Saint, the
statue of the latter being reared upon the pedestal of the former; this
evidently annoyed the Stoic, for we find his hero worming about in his
shroud ___ where Paul evidently could not get at him ___ and saying: "sucks
to you," or to quote:
"A man named Paul
Now darkles where aforetimes they set me,
. . . . .
Keep thou my pillar, Paul; I grudge it not,
Plebeian-hearted spirit ..."
just as if Paul could help it!
Outside sudden jars on the ears like "my eyes" and "a euthanasia," and
platitudes like "Now Pontifex is Caesar, but no more is Caesar Pontifex";
and esoteric jabs presumably at poor Faustina, such as: "that biting thing
is only precious in the tart ..." we find some masterly twaddle, regular
Phillpotts:
"Two thousand years of fooled humanity,
Christ, they have prostituted thee and raped {317}
Thy virgin message till at last it stands
No more than handmaid to their infamy."
(Phillpotts really means harlot, but he is afraid of shocking the
inhabitants of Torquay.)
"Some flight of years
And the inevitable, tireless hand
Gropes and grips fast, and draws it gently down ___
. . . . .
To sublimation. ..."
What in the name of Narcissus is this all about?
And yet Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer takes for one of his recent texts: "We
have not got a great Poet." Well here at least is one, who, if he can do
nothing else, can Phillpotts!
THE MARTYRDOM OF FERRER. By JOSEPH McCABE, R. P. A. 6"d."
One of the most remarkable points about this interesting brochure is,
that no sooner was Se¤or Ferrer dead than out it came as speedily as if it
had been blown from the muzzle of one of his executioner's rifles. It is a
true and straightforward account of a man who did not support the blasphemy
laws, and who would not have sneaked and shuffled about the Boulter
prosecution.
On finishing this book we almost exclaim: "Bravo, Ferrer!" but our
enthusiasm was seriously damped when on opening the "Literary Guide," we read
that Miss Sasha Kropotkin has stated in the "The Westminster Gazette" that
Se¤or Ferrer's books on comparative religion "are quite similar in thought
and tone to those published in England by the Rationalist Press
Association." If so ___ "Viva Alfonso!"
THE HAND OF GOD. By GRANT ALLEN. 6"d."
Grant Allan is always exciting, and this posthumous volume of essays
quite keeps up his reputation of being the G. A. Henty of Rationalism. We
remember reading "The Woman who Did" a dozen and more years ago now,
shortly after having closed "A Child of the Age" ___ both in the delightful
Keynote Series. And what a difference! Rosy Howlet, a lazy rosebud, a
little sweetheart and nothing else, but Herminia Barton ___ Lower Tooting
with a dash of Clement's Inn. "As beneath so above."
HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. By SIR EDWARD THORPE, R.P.A. Vol. I. 1"s."
HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY. By GEORGE FORBES, R.P.A. 1"s."
Excellent! In every way excellent! After munching through all this
heavy pie-crust, we are beginning to feel like little Jack Horner when he
pulled out the plum. If only schools would adopt these most interesting
little histories, {318} in place of cramming a lot of ridiculous formulae
and equations down children's throats, they might become places where time
is not altogether wasted.
Twenty years ago I remember learning some two hundred chemical formulae,
the only two which I can remember now being
H2S, because I emptied a bottle into my tutor's desk, and H2SO4 , because I
poured some on his chair to see if it would turn his trousers red, with the
result that what lived beneath mine turned very pink shortly after he had
discovered who the miscreant was. How I should have learnt to love
Chemistry instead of hating it, if I had been taught from Sir Edward
Thorpe's little book! There is more elementary education in chapter iv.
___ The Philosopher's Stone ___ than ever I learnt in five years with Newth
and Thompson; and after all, should not school teach us to love knowledge
instead of hating it? should not school teach us the pretty little fables
of great men's lives that we can use them in our conversation afterwards,
rather than scores of musty dry-as-dust facts, which can only help us to
pass dry-as-dust and useless examinations?
Give us more of these, Mr. Watts, dozens more, and we will forgive you
"From the Shades." Best wishes to these little volumes, may you sell a
million of each, but "in the sunlight," please.
A. QUILLER.
THE SURVIVAL OF MAN. By SIR OLIVER LODGE. Methuen. 7"s." 6"d." net.
One of the most unfortunate results of the divorce between Science and
Religion has been the attempt of each of the partners to set up
housekeeping for itself, with the most disastrous results. I shall not run
my simile to death, but I shall explain how this train of thought began in
my mind.
Sir Oliver's book is mainly a defence of the Society for Psychical
Research, and a plea for more scientific investigation of psychic or
spiritistic phenomena; and it seems to the reviewer that a scientific
society that needs a defence at all, after nearly thirty years' work, has
confessed itself to be largely a failure.
Sir Oliver Lodge, and indeed Spiritualism generally, suffer enormously
from their lack of knowledge, from their being devoid of theory.
Phenomena! Phenomena! Phenomena! Until the noumenon behind is
obscured and disbelieved in and explained away.
This is what makes modern spiritualism so hideous and Qliphothic a
thing, and "psychic researchers" such bad mystics.
There is nothing in the book under review that is fresh ___ nothing that
was not known forty years ago ___ see Emma Hardinge Britten's "Modern
American Spiritualism"; nothing that was not commonplace yesterday ___ see
the current issue of "Light."
The real Occult knowledge of Plato, of Paracelsus, of Boehme, of Levi,
{319} was based upon theories whereby all the phenomena of modern psychism
had their place, and were awarded their proper value.
The pseudo-occultism and watery mysticism of the modern spiritualistic
philosophers ___ we call them by this noble title by courtesy ___ is due to
their complete lack of knowledge.
What serious student of religion and occultism cares for the vapourings
of Ralph Waldo Trine, the philosophising of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, the
poetry of Ella Wheeler Wilcox? The prototypes of these people are utterly,
or almost utterly, forgotten. One recalls now with how much difficulty the
names of the Rev. H. R. Haweis, of A. H. Davis, of Lizzie Doten! For there
is no virtue in those who have strayed from the path to linger among the
Shells of the Dead and the demons of Matter.
The line of tradition is unbroken, and the way is straight and hard; too
hard for "mediums" and New Thoughtists, whose spiritual capital consists of
falsehood, and sentimentality, and sham humanitarianism.
Sir Oliver Lodge is always careful and painstaking and entirely honest;
he is probably as well fitted to carry on his S.P.R. work as any student in
England.
And to those who are unacquainted with the phenomena of spiritualism,
"The Survival of Man" is as useful a book as could be read. But to the
student of religion its value is "nil," because the occult knowledge is "nil."
In fairness it should be added that this review is written from the
point of view of a mystic; to spiritualists the book will be welcome as yet
another "proof" of "spirit-return," "thought-transference," and so on.
V. B. NEUBURG.
This book is a singularly lucid and complete statement of the work of
many noble lives. We believe that the S.P.R. has taken up a most admirable
position, and wish greater success to their work in the future. If they
would only train themselves instead of exercising patience on fraudulent
people, whose exploits no sane person would believe if God Himself came
down from heaven to attest them, they might get somewhere.
A. C.
THE KEY TO THE TAROT. By A. E. WAITE. W. Rider and Sons, Limited.
Mr. Waite has written a book on fortune-telling, and we advise servant-
girls to keep an eye on their half-crowns. We have little sympathy or pity
for the folly of fashionable women; but housemaids need protection ___
hence their affection for policemen and soldiers ___ and we fear that Mr.
Waite's apologies will not prevent professional cheats from using his
instructions for their frauds and levies of blackmail. {320}
As to Mr. Waite's constant pomposities, he seems to think that the
obscurer his style and the vaguer his phrases, the greater initiate he will
appear.
Nobody but Mr. Waite knows "all" about the Tarot, it appears; and he won't
tell. Reminds one of the story about God and Robert Browning, or of the
student who slept, and woke when the professor thundered rhetorically, "And
what "is" Electricity?" The youth jumped up and cried (from habit), "I know,
sir." "Then tell us." "I "knew," sir, but I've forgotten." "Just my luck!"
complained the professor, "there was only one man in the world who knew ___
and he has forgotten!"
Why, Mr. Waite, your method is not even original.
When Sir Mahatma Agamya Paramahansa Guru Swamiji (late of H. M. Prisons,
thanks to the unselfish efforts of myself and a friend) was asked, "And
what of the teaching of Confucius?" ___ or any one else that the boisterous
old boy had never heard of ___ he would reply contemptuously, "Oh, him? He
was my disciple." And seeing the hearer smile would add, "Get out you dog,
you a friend of that dirty fellow Crowley. I beat you with my shoe. Go
away! Get intellect! Get English!" until an epileptic attack supervened.
Mr. Waite, like Marie Corelli, in this as in so many other respects,
brags that he cares nothing for criticism, so he won't mind my making these
little remarks, and I may as well go on. He has "betrayed" (to use his own
words) the attributions of some of the small cards, and Pamela Coleman
Smith has done very beautiful and sympathetic designs, though our own
austerer taste would have preferred the plain cards with their astrological
and other attributions, and occult titles. (These are all published in the
book "777," and a pack could be easily constructed by hand. Perhaps we may
one day publish one at a shilling a time!) But Mr. Waite has not
"betrayed" the true attributions of the Trumps. They are obvious, though,
the moment one has the key (see "777"). Still, Pamela Coleman Smith has
evidently been hampered; her designs are cramped and forced. I am
infinitely sorry for any artist who tries to draw after dipping her hands
in the gluey dogma of so insufferable a dolt and prig.
Mr. Waite, I believe, is perfectly competent to produce indefinite
quantities of Malted Milk to the satisfaction of all parties; but when it
comes to getting the pure milk of the Word, Mr. Waite gets hold of a wooden
cow.
And do for God's sake, Arthur, drop your eternal hinting, hinting,
hinting, "Oh what an exalted grade I have, if you poor dull uninitiated
people would only perceive it!"
Here is your criticism, Arthur, straight from the shoulder.
Any man that knows Truth and conceals it is a traitor to humanity; any
{321} man that doesn't know, and tries to conceal his ignorance by
pretending to be the guardian of a secret, is a charlatan.
Which is it?
We recommend every one to buy the pack, send Mr. Waite's book to the
kitchen so as to warn the maids, throw the Major Arcana out of window, and
play bridge with the Minor Arcana, which alone are worth the money asked
for the whole caboodle.
The worst of it all is: Mr. Waite really does know a bit in a muddled
kind of way; if he would only go out of the swelled-head business he might
be some use.
But if you are not going to tell your secrets, it is downright schoolboy
brag to strut about proclaiming that you possess them.
Au revoir, Arthur.
ALEISTER CROWLEY.
It is an awkward situation for any initiate to edit knowledge concerning
which he is bound to secrecy. This is the fundamental objection to all
vows of this kind. The only possible course for an honest man is to
preserve absolute silence.
Thus, to my own knowledge Mr. Waite is an initiate (of a low grade) and
well aware of the true attribution of the Tarot. Now, what I want to know
is this: is Mr. Waite breaking his obligation and proclaiming himself (to
quote the words of his own Oath) "a vile and perjured wretch, void of all
moral worth, and unfit for the society of all upright and just persons,"
and liable in addition to "the awful and just penalty of submitting himself
voluntarily to a deadly and hostile current of will ... by which he should
fall slain or paralysed as if blasted by the lightning flash" ___ or, is he
selling to the public information which he knows to inexact?
When this dilemma is solved, we shall feel better able to cope with the
question of the Art of Pamela Coleman Smith.
Pi .
THE VISION. By MRS. HAMILTON SYNGE. Elkin Mathews. 1"s." 6"d." cloth.
It was with no small degree of pleasurable anticipation that we picked
up a volume by the distinguished authoress of "A Supreme Moment" and "The
Coming of Sonia." The first vision, alas! was an atrocity after Watts,
R.A., but we persisted.
Chapter i. is jolly good.
Chapter ii. might have been better with less quotation. {322}
Chapter iii. is first rate. Mystics can only conquer the Universe when
they can prove themselves better than the rest of the world even in worldly
things, and that by virtue of their mystic attainment.
We cannot, however, subscribe to her doctrine of the agglutination of
the Virttis to the Atman, save only in due order and balance in the case of
the adept. Yet we would not deny the possibility of her theory being
correct.
In chapter iv. she puts a drop of the Kerosene of Myers into her good
wine.
In chapter v. we begin to suspect that the authoress's brain is a mass
of ill-digested and imperfectly understood pseudo-science; yet it ends
finely ___ our task is to learn "how to love" ___ and we refer the reader
to Mrs. Synge's other books.
Chapter vi. is more about James. We love our William dearly, but we
hate to see dogs trotting about with his burst waistcoat-buttons in their
mouths. But the clouds life. We get Ibsen, and Browning, and Blake; and
end on the right note. Oh that Mrs. Synge would come and take up serious
occultism seriously; leave vague theorising and loose assertion, and her
"larger Whole" for our "narrow Way!"
CHRISTOBEL WHARTON.
THE TRAGIC LIFE-HISTORY OF THE MAN WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By
FRANK HARRIS. 7"s." 6"d."
It has always been a source of harmless amusement, in our leisure hours,
to watch our learned men grappling with Shakespeare. To study him, the
Knower of man's heart, they have withered their own; to interpret the
Witness of Life, they have refused to live, and, surrounded by a thousand
foolish folios, have sat gloomily in the mouldering colleges of Oxford, or
walked the horrid marshes of Cambridge, and produced uncounted pages of
most learned drivel.
Frank Harris had another way than that. He took life in both hands and
shook it; he made his own study of the heart of man, enlarging, not
restricting, his own; and many a night has he lain under the stars on the
savannah or the sierra, with Shakespeare for his pillow.
His result is accordingly different. His knowledge of Shakespeare is a
living, bleeding, Truth; there is no room in his great heart and brain for
the lumber of the pedants.
More, Frank Harris is himself a creative artist, a Freeman of the City
of God, and knows that as there is no smoke without fire, so is there no
speech without thought.
Whenever a poet writes of something that he does not know, he makes a
{323} botch of it; whenever a poet gives detail, and gives it right, he has
probably observed it directly. There is nothing in "Hamlet" which need make
us think that Shakespeare was ever in Denmark; but from the description in
"King Lear" it is likely that he knew Dover.
In the hands of an acute critic this method is perfectly reliable; and
Mr. Harris's familiarity with the text, his power of concentration and his
sense of proportion, have made it possible for him to see Shakespeare
steadily and see him whole.
We are perfectly convinced of the truth of the main theory which Frank
Harris presents, the enslaving of his gentle spirit by the bold black-eyed
harlot Mary Fitton, and we are even shaken in that other hypothesis which
attributes to Shakespeare the vice of Caesar, Goethe, Milton, Michael
Angelo, and of so many other good and great men that time and space would
fail us to enumerate them.
Yet Mr. Harris only shakes the fabric of proof; he cannot the foundation
___ instinct.
And it is strange that he, the friend of Oscar Wilde through honour and
dishonour, has not perceived the amazing strength of the theory propounded
in "The portrait of Mr. W. H." Surely this theory should have been lashed
and smashed, had it been possible. For where there is no definite
evidence, we must accept the theory which contains least contradiction in
itself.
Now, there is nothing monstrous in the supposition that Shakespeare was
great enough to understand and feel all the overmastering passions which
enrapture and torment, enslave and emancipate mankind; it would have been
astonishing had he not done so. Oscar Wilde's theory does not explain
Rosalind and Tamora and the dark lady of the Sonnets; but Frank Harris
forgets the ambiguous Rosalind and Viola and Imogen, or at least fails to
attach to them the immense importance which they are bound to possess for
any one who is capable of emotional sympathy with such modern writers as
Symonds, Pater, Whitman, FitzGerald, Burton, Wilde, Bloomfield, and a
hundred others.
Everything is significant to sympathy, nothing to antipathy; and if
sometimes sympathy o'erleaps itself and falls on the other, seeing a camel
where there is only a cloud, the error is rarely so great as the opposite.
We cannot help thinking that in this one instance Frank Harris has emulated
Nelson at Copenhagen.
He will forgive us for dwelling on the one point of disagreement where
the points of agreement are so many, where we gladly welcome his book as
the sole real light that has ever been shed upon the life and thought of
Shakespeare, the light of Frank Harris's soul split up by the prism of his
mind {324} into wit, style, insight, intelligence, pathos, history, comedy,
tragedy, that adorn his book.
As for Staunton, Sidney Lee, Raleigh, Garrett, Bradley, Haliwell-
Phillips, Fleay and the rest, their learning is lumber and their theories
trash.
A. C.
The "English Review" was enlivened in November by a brilliant article on
The Law of Divorce from the fascinating pen of Mr. E. S. P. Haynes.
While sympathising to a large extent with the writer's learned views so
lucidly expressed, we are of opinion that there is no middle course between
the extreme position of the Catholic Church, that marriage is so holy a
bond that nothing can break it, and to accept and even to encourage
fornication rather than tamper with it, and the other extreme of allowing a
marriage to determine as soon as the parties desire it, proper provision
being of course made for the welfare of any offspring.
The problem is really insoluble so long as sexual relations give rise to
bitter feeling of any sort. Polygamy is perhaps the most decent and
dignified of the systems at present invented.
But the present degrading and stupid farce must be ended.
As things are in these islands to-day, nine-tenths of all divorces, at
least in good society, are the result of cheerful agreement between the
parties. Adultery on both sides is so common that a genuine grievance is a
rare as a truthful witness.
In a case that recently came under my notice, for example, the nominal
defendant was really the plaintiff. He had compelled his wife ___ for
sufficient reason ___ to divorce him by the threat that unless she did so
he would break off friendly relations with her. Next came a weary struggle
to manufacture evidence, the plaintiff's lawyers keeping up the irritating
wail: "Lord ____ is so strict. "We must have more adultery." So the"
"already overworked defendant was kept busy all the summer faking fresh"
"evidence to satisfy the morbid appetite of a Scotch judge, while at the"
"same time he was obliged to hold constant and clandestine intercourse with"
"his own wife, lest she should lose her temper and withdraw proceedings!"12"
" This may have been an exceptional case ___ we hope so. But that any"
"such mockery can take place anyhow and anywhere is a scandal and a reproach"
"to the nation whose laws and customs make it possible."
" We hope to hear much more from Mr. Haynes, and that he will throw"
"fearlessly the whole weight of his genius and energy into the cause of"
"radical reform of these monstrous and silly iniquities."
" ARIEL. {325}"
"THE QUEST. No. II. J. M. Watkins. 2s." 6"d."
This periodical is the dullest and most sodden slosh possible. No one
should fail to buy a copy; a perfect bedside book.
R. N. W.
12 WEH NOTE: This is Crowley's account of his divorce from Rose.
See "CONFESSIONS."
We beg to apologise for having referred in our last number to
G.R.S.Mead, Esquire, B.A., M.R.A.S., as Mr. G.R.S.Mead, B.A. B.A.
(Baccalaureus Artium) is indeed the proud distinction awarded to our
brightest and best intellects. M.R.A.S. does not mean Mr. Ass; but is a
mark of merit so high that dizzy imagination swoons at its contemplation.
We grovel. A. C.
PARACELSUS. Edited by A. E. WAITE. Two vols. Wm. Rider and Son. 25"s."
The only edition of the great mediaeval occultist, the discoverer of
opium, hydrogen, and zinc. Mr. A. E. Waite in this as in his other
translations is altogether admirable, adding a delightful wit to ripe
scholarship, and illuminating comment to rational criticism.
A. C.
THE OPEN ROAD (Monthly. C. W. Daniel) is apparently the organ of Mrs.
Boole. We leave it at that. A. QUILLER.
THE BLUE BIRD. Translated by ALEXANDER TEXEIRA DE MATTOS.
Methuen. 1"s." net.
Was it merely an unfortunate accident? As I opened the book my eye fell
on these words: "They are my apples and they are not the finest at that!
... They will all be alike when I am alive." ... My memory of the play ___
sole comrade of my wanderings in the Sahara ___ said no! no! So I turned
up the passage, and read ___ "Toutes seront de mˆme quand je serai vivant."
My memory was right, and Mr. de Mattos had completely failed to grasp
the sense of a simple sentence of eight easy words.
I did not continue my inquiry. A. C.
AN APOLOGY FOR PRINTING HONEST
REVIEWS
THE Editor of THE EQUINOX is well aware of the tendency of modern
journalism to print only favourable reviews of books, and to praise on the
recommendation of the Advertisement Manager rather than that of the
Literary Adviser. But he believes that this policy defeats its own end,
that praise in THE EQUINOX will really sell copies of the book receiving
it, and that appreciation of this fact on the part of publishers will
result in the enrichment of his advertising columns.
{326}
THE SHADOWY DILL-WATERS
OR
MR. SMUDGE THE MEDIUM
"'Tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon."
"As You Like it."
IN our investigation of the trumpery tin Pantheon of Aunt Sallies which our
courtesy calls "literary gents," one of the most striking figures is a
certain lame duck that suggests a mixed ancestry of Brigand manqu‚ and the
Ghost in the Bab Ballads.
Historically, too, the subject has its advantage, for not only does the
work of Weary Willie suggest primal Chaos, but himself recalls the Flood.
He seems to have desired to emulate Noah, but the modern tendency to
specialisation has led him to confine his attentions to the Insect World,
and the remarkable jumping qualities of some of his specimens have their
correspondence in the metre of those treacly emulsions which it is our
present purpose to study.
Come with me! Behold the scene of action. What? You can see nothing?
Of course not. It's out of focus, and the limelight is but a farthing dip.
Never mind; take the {327} slide, and hold it to the light! Ah! there's a
well ___ a druid well; a wood ___ a druid wood; a boat (druid) on a druid
sea. Why Druid? Because Willie is not a British workman. The expletive
is harmless enough. Look! more wells and woods and boats and apple-
blossoms. When in doubt, play apple-blossom. Try and scan it as a dactyl.
You can't? He can.
Oh! there are some people in the boat. Druid people. A queen with
hair like the casting-net of the stars. What's that? Never mind. There's
nothing rude or offensive about the casting-net of the stars? Very good,
then; let's get on. What are they doing? Drifting. That's dead sure,
anyway. Drifting. Drifting. That's the beautiful Celtic glamour of it.
Druidically drifting Druids on a druid sea of apple-blossom in the middle
distance. Foreground, a well in a wood. Background, a casting-net of the
stars. Dotted about, hounds of various colours, usually red. Let's have
another slide. Same thing, with a fairy floating about. Tired? Yes.
Well, sit down and talk about it. Tut! Tut! ...
How on earth does anybody ever deliberately produce this sort of thing?
He doesn't. It just happens. All the Gregory Powder in the world won't
produce it; it's true Asiatic Cholera, and you can't imitate it. I didn't
mean dill-wates; I meant rice-waters.
Now let no one think that we object to an atmosphere in Art.
Maeterlinck is doubtless just as misty in his symbolism; equally he uses a
leitmotiv; equally he relies on mystery to shroud his figures with
fascination, terror, or glamour. {328}
But the images are themselves perfectly clear and precise. In the
mistiest of all, "Les Aveugles," one can condense the plot into a single
phrase of simplest English. On this clean model, Greek in its simplicity,
the master has thrown draperies of cleanly woven fabric, delicate and frail
as spiders' webs ___ and as silvery and strong as they.
This is a craftsmanship exquisitely subtle and severe, a style of almost
superhuman austerity.
In our shadowy choleraic we have the imitation of this, its reflection
in a dull and dirty mind.
Smudge.
When Ruskin reproached Whistler for his ability to distinguish between
colours less violent than vermilion and emerald, he was no doubt a
Philistine. But how much worse is the Bohemian who thinks ___ "Since I
cannot see anything but muddiness in these silver-grey quarter-tones, I can
easily rival Whistler." Forthwith he mixes up all the colours in his box,
daubs a canvas with them and ___ ? Certainly he deceives Ruskin, but he
deceives nobody else.
Genius, O weary one, is not an infinite capacity for taking pains; but
genius has to take pains to express itself, and expression is at least half
the battle. You, I think, have neither genius nor application; neither a
healthy skin nor the soap-travail which might reveal it. Still, one can
never be sure; you might give a trial to the soap.
If we had not a sufficiency of hard work before us in interpreting the
masters of old, we might be tempted to waste more time on you; but there is
Blake. Blake is more obscure than you are; but we have this guarantee,
based on experience, that when we do attain to his meaning, it starts up
{329} luminous, Titanic, splendid. With you, we discover only commonplace
___ the commonplace of a maudlin undertaker replying to the toast of the
Ladies at the Annual Dinner of the Antique Order of Arch-Druids.
Blake fashioned his intricate caskets of symbol to conceal pearls; you
pile up dead leaves to cover rotten apples.
You are Attis with a barren fig-leaf.
It is true that a sort of dreary music runs monotonously through your
verses, only jarred by the occasional discords. It is as if an eternal
funeral passed along, and the motor-hearse had something wrong with the
ignition ___ and the exhaust.
It is as if a man were lost upon a lonely marsh in the flat country and
constantly slipped and sat down with a splash in a puddle. These be
ignoble images, my masters!
The fact is that you are both myopic and tone-deaf. You peer into the
darkly splendid world, the abyss of light ___ for it is light, to the seer
___ and you see but "unintelligible images, unluminous, formless, and
void." Then you return and pose as one who has trodden the eternal snows.
You are like a man who puts a penny into a mutoscope that is out of
order; and, rather than admit that he has been swindled, pretends to have
enjoyed it. You are like a parvenu with an ill-cooked chop at a swagger
restaurant who eats it rather than incur the frown of the waiter.
Better abandon mysticism outright than this. But we suppose it is
impossible; you must trim, and compromise, and try to get round the Boyg, O
Peer Gynt without his courage and light-heartedness, O onion with many a
stinking sheath, and a worm at the heart! {330}
Yes, if nothing else were wrong with you ___ and everything else "is"
wrong ___ you would still be damned for your toadying to Mrs. Grundy and
the Reverend Robert Rats.
We thought to sum you up on a page, and that page a page of but four
corners; on mature consideration we think it could be done in a word, and
that word a word of but four letters.
A. QUILLER, JR.
{331}
LIBER DCCCCLXIII
"SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT"
A.'. A.'. Publication in Class B
Issued by Order of
D.D.S. 7ø = 4ø Praemonstrator
O.S.V. 6ø = 5ø Imperator
N.S.F. 5ø = 6ø Cancellarius
LIBER
Theta Epsilon Sigma Alpha Upsilon Rho Omicron Upsilon 'Epsilon Iota Delta Omega Lambda Omega Nu
SVB FIGVRA
DCCCCLXIII
HB:Heh HB:Resh HB:Tet HB:Tzaddi HB:Taw HB:Resh HB:Tet HB:Tzaddi
Corona, Corolla;
Sic vocatur Malchuth
quando ascendit usque
ad Kether.
"The Kabbalah."
(The Probationer should learn by heart the chapter
corresponding to the Zodiacal Sign that was rising at
his birth; or, if this be unknown, the chapter "The
Twelvefold Unification of God.")
Ú___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___Â___¿
³ 93³108³123³138³153³168³ 1 ³ 16³ 31³ 46³ 61³ 76³ 91³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³107³122³137³152³167³ 13³ 15³ 30³ 45³ 60³ 75³ 90³ 92³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³121³136³151³166³ 12³ 14³ 29³ 44³ 59³ 74³ 89³104³106³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³135³150³165³ 11³ 26³ 28³ 43³ 58³ 73³ 88³103³105³120³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³149³164³ 10³ 25³ 27³ 42³ 57³ 72³ 87³102³117³119³134³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³163³ 9 ³ 24³ 39³ 41³ 56³ 71³ 86³101³116³118³133³148³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³ 8 ³ 23³ 38³ 40³ 55³ 70³ 85³100³115³130³132³147³162³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³ 22³ 37³ 52³ 54³ 69³ 84³ 99³114³129³131³146³161³ 7 ³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³ 36³ 51³ 53³ 68³ 83³ 98³113³128³143³145³160³ 6 ³ 21³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³ 50³ 65³ 67³ 82³ 97³112³127³142³144³159³ 5 ³ 20³ 35³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³ 64³ 66³ 81³ 96³111³126³141³156³158³ 4 ³ 19³ 34³ 49³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³ 78³ 80³ 95³110³125³140³155³157³ 3 ³ 18³ 33³ 48³ 63³
Ã___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___Å___´
³ 79³ 94³109³124³139³154³169³ 2 ³ 17³ 32³ 47³ 62³ 77³
À___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Á___Ù
{Illustration facing page 4 of supplement partly described and partly
approximated:
"FIG. 1. The Triangle of the Universe."
"Three veils of the Negative ___ not yellow; not red; not blue: but
therefore symbolised by the 'flashing' colours of these three; purple (11);
emerald (12) and orange (13). Within their triangle of Yonis is the Lingam
touching and filling it. Positive, as they are negative; in the Queen
Scale of colour, as they are in the King Scale. Ten are the Emanations of
Unity, the parts of that Lingam, in Kether, TARO = 78 = 6 x 13, the
influence of that Unity in the Macrocosm (Hexagram). The centre of the
whole figure is Tiphereth, where is a golden Sun of six rays. Note the
reflection of the Yonis to the triad about Malkuth. Also note that the
triangle of Yonis is hidden, even as their links are secret. From Malkuth
depends the Greek Cross of the Zodiac and their Spiritual Centre (Fig. 2).
For Colour Scales see 777."
/\
/ \
< 11 >
\ /
\/
Ú______¿
³ Rho ³
³1Alpha Omega ³
Ã______´
³ ³
³2 ³
Ã______´
³ ³
³3 ³
Ã______´
³ * ³
³6 ³
Ã______´
³ ³
³9 ³
Ú______Â______Å______Å______Â______¿
³ ³ ³ \ / ³ ³ ³
³4 ³8 ³ /10\ ³7 ³5 ³
_______ À______Á______Á______Á______Á______Ù _______
/ / \ \
/13 / \ 12 \
/______/ \______\
"*" represents a six-fold star, points to top and bottom. The star is
formed by a line inside which are six diamond shapes making a pointed petal
star to the center.}
A.'. A.'.
Publication in Class A
A NOTE UPON LIBER DCCCCLXIII
1. Let the student recite this book, particularly the 169 Adorations,
unto his Star as it ariseth.
2. Let him seek out diligently in the sky his Star; let him travel
thereunto in his Shell; let him adore it unceasingly from its rising even
unto its setting by the right adorations, with chants what shall be
harmonious therewith.
3. Let him rock himself to and fro in adoration; let him spin around his
own axis in adoration; let him leap up and down in adoration.
4. Let him inflame himself in the adoration, speeding from slow to fast,
until he can no more.
5. This also shall be sung in open places, as heaths, mountains, woods,
and by streams and upon islands.
6. Moreover, ye shall build you fortified places in great cities;
caverns and tombs shall be made glad with your praise.
7. Amen.
{5}
THE TREASURE-HOUSE OF IMAGES
Here beginneth the Book of
The Meditations on the
Twelvefold Adora-
tion, and the
Unity of
GOD.
{Symbol of the } The Chapter known as
{crescent Moon,} The Perception of God
{horns to right} that is revealed unto man for a snare
I
adore
Thee by the
Twelvefold Snare
and by the Unity thereof.
000. In the Beginning there was Naught, and Naught spake unto Naught
saying: Let us beget on the Nakedness of Our Nothingness the Limitless,
Eternal, Identical, and United: And without will, intention, thought, word,
desire, or deed, it was so.
00. Then in the depths of Nothingness hovered the Limitless, as a raven
in the night; seeing naught, hearing naught, and understanding naught:
neither was it seen, nor heard, not understood; for as yet Countenance
beheld not Countenance.
0. And as the Limitless stretched forth its wings, an unextended
unextendable Light became; colourless, formless, conditionless, effluent,
naked, and essential, as a crystalline dew of creative effulgence; and
fluttering as a dove betwixt Day and Night, it vibrated forth a lustral
Crown of Glory.
1. And out of the blinding whiteness of the Crown grew an Eye, like
unto an egg of an humming-bird cherished on a platter of burnished silver.
2. Thus I beheld Thee, O my God, the lid of whose Eye is as the Night
of Chaos, and the pupil thereof as the marshalled order of the spheres. {7}
3. For, I am but as a blind man, who wandering through the noontide
preceiveth not the loveliness of the day; and even as he whose eyes are
unenlightened beholdeth not the greatness of this world in the depths of a
starless night, so am I who am not able to search the unfathomable depths
of Thy Wisdom.
4. For what am I that I durst look upon Thy Cou | | |
