GENERISIS
presents THE GOLDEN DAWN
Episode 16 - MY HERMETICAL ERRAND!
My
summons being, indeed, to Bedford Park; I arose early but Crowley had flown
already, nor would Bennett tell me the nature of his errand. Whistling the
p'liceman's melody, but in a minor, venomous key, I proceed by train and coach
to the salon of John Butler Yeats where a full contingent of Isis-Uranians had
gathered to prepare me for my journey; Yeats (the only nonbeliever of the
bunch), his son Willie and daughter Lily, Dr. Westcott, and Crowley's
witches... Farr, Annie Horniman and Maud Gonne.
These
fairly crawled upon one another in haste to expand my Hermetical education;
whereby the lives of Adepts and their Secret Masters were rendered rather as
sordid as Tammany officers... over whom the shade of Blavatsky loomed as a sort
of Boss Tweed (both being of a similar girth) with Annie Besant as her occult
Croker.
"So,
Altius," declared Florence Farr, outshrieking her fraternals for the
moment, "Baron von Hund brought the New Temple out of the shadows where it
had pined since the death of Christian Rosenkreutz... he influenced Levi in
France who tutored Blavatsky in Russia and everywhere else, so the Germans are
inordinately sensitive about the line of possession of the ancient doctrines.
They feel a sort of national superiority... quite unjustified, since Madame HPB
clearly identifies the abode of the Secret Masters as Tibet... so you shall
have to deal carefully with them...
"Mr.
Crowley, if he is not still sulking, would be able to offer some help by that
direction," spoke up Cancellarius. "Some years ago I chartered a Herr
Reuss and Dr. Hartmann who was, at that time, Coroner of Vienna. We are a
different sort of brotherhood, you know... we Coroners of Europe! Hartmann
retired to write books and operate a private sanitarium; he and his chemist
initiated this List, whose mind is wide-ranging but narrow... he is a
Wotanist..."
"A
what?" I interrupted.
"A
jumbler of Masonry with Eddas and with other legends of ancient Saxony,"
Westcott replied. "A Nationalist... of the sort of that philosopher whom
Nordau so despises, who steals from Lord Lytton's Majnour; the one with the
name that sounds like a sneeze..."
"My
son is not amused by Herr Nordau," I was informed by the elder Yeats,
"though I find him refreshing..."
"He
calls you Americans sycophants," Willie replied, "corrupt
vote-buying, official-bribing dollar-democrats... Whitman morally insane, a
cringer to arrogant Yankee conceits... have I left anything out, father?"
"He
has worse to say about the French. Anyway, these German supermen are all
yahoos, the real struggle shall be how to get rid of them; they are of the
clumsy and brutal side of things..."
"They
are naturists, father... pagan Germans were lovers of freedom, like the Gaels
who only killed in self-defense. Their only error has been unwonted
capitulation to Israelism..."
"We
disagree here about Dreyfuss, Balfour and other matters," remarked Yeats'
sister Lily.
"You
will probably be asked to stand for one faction or the other if you go to
Paris, where I was among the last be received by Verlaine in that tenement full
of his mistresses and their canaries," Frater DEDI boasted. "He was
the servant of a great demon... and Jeanne gave Maud a birdcage, we found out
later that it was because the occupant had died... like those flower sellers
whose wares are purchased wholesale from corrupt undertakers."
"Well
if you do go to Paris," advised Gonne, "you must look up this
remarkable Assyrian, a protege of d'Aurvilly who traipses about the streets and
markets garbed as a King of old Babylon."
"Peladan?"
Annie Horniman sat up. "The Sar is a fixture at Bayreuth... his passion,
as mine, for Wagner..."
"Not
Vestigia?" Florence Farr remarked, and rather tipsily in my estimation."
"Well
here come the Mathers couple," Maud sighed, "I suppose we couldn't
have gotten through the evening with mention of them..."
"Nor
should we omit the Praemonstrator and his wife," said Willie. "He
was, after all, our colleague in better days..."
"That
was a very, very long time past," corrected Soror FER. "Why Mister
Cameron here would have been only a small American in knee pants, doing what it
is tiny Americans will..."
"He
told me to meditate on the symbol of great stone Negro head in the
desert," remembered Yeats.
"And
I," said Farr, "was given a seagull, first, then a woman archer
shooting at the stars... he said I grieved for my child when..."
"We
all have losses to number," Gonne broke in.
"And
crosses to bear?"
"That
sot Chesterton does have one point in that Willie is not quite yet your
equal," Gonne remarked to John Butler Yeats. "Both of you talk and
write floridly but at least your sentences are correct!"
I
had obviously betrayed my ignorance, for Willie chose not to respond to the
goading, but rather to educate me upon certain murky tenets of the Golden Dawn.
"MacGregor... as he now prefers to be called... was my friend and teacher
once, MacKenzie was his, and Lytton his."
"MacKenzie
always was the weak link," suggested Annie Horniman. "If the Cipher
Manuscript is a forgery, only he would have been able to convince
Woodman..."
"But
is not a forgery!" DEDI protested.
"Dear
boy!" Florence humoured me with a wink, "do you see now the outline
of the web we Hermetics are spinning for you?"
"If
Altius can cut through this thicket," the younger Yeats suggested, "I
think he should be promoted up to the third degree, at least... Coroner?"
"The
way Mathers doles out promotions, I might even say the fourth!"
By
ten that evening, a sort of rudimentary plan had been settled upon. I was first
to seek Frau Sprengel in her admitted haunts; Nurnberg, Stuttgart and Ulm...
also to make inquiries of the authorities in Bavaria and Austria, thereafter to
follow such leads as arose to Italy or France, depending on their
substantiality. Gonne alone advised I continue east to Russia, where the trail
of Blavatsky might prove worthwhile, but the elder Yeats and Annie Horniman,
who impressed me as the realists of the society, objected... travel through
lands of the Czar being perilous, even in good weather, and I having set myself
a deadline to return to London before the commencement of the holidays.
It
was further agreed that half of my expenses should be reimbursed, although this
source of funding remained without name there seemed to be an understanding
that it would be derived from the purse of Annie Horniman. Of course Crowley
and/or his patron Mathers should at least have borne part of the cost, but it
seemed likely I would do well enough simply to have gained the consent of the
irascible Frater Perdurabo. In plain fact, I even dreaded my moment of return
with the proposal.
"I'll
walk you to the Circus where there ought to be a hansom," Florence
volunteered, "not too many are on these streets at this hour."
"We
did linger rather long," I answered once the door had closed behind us,
"didn't we Miss... oh... I didn't mean to, I've made another mistake. The
foolish American, still in his mental knickers, isn't that what you must
think?"
"Not
foolish, maybe a little bit innocent, or less guilty than the rest of us; that
can be noble..." suggested Soror Sapienta, taking my hand, as if to prove
that no offense was meant.
"Are
you... you seem to have known Yeats for the longest time."
"Only
a decade but that's, of course, eternity when one is in his twenties. Willie
lived with his family so many years... except once he had a place subletted
near the British museum when he was researching Blake, shared by a psychologist
whose obsession was undinism." I must have exhibited great puzzlement, for
Florence laughed and said "...female urination, Altius. What a strange,
yet ultimately boring fellow! So Willie went back to his father. He's dear but
useless in many ways. At least a widow of nobility is devoted to him..."
"Annie
Horniman?" I suggested.
"What...
no... why, you are an innocent! Annie and Moira... well let's leave that be; I
speak of Lady Gregory... she and Olivia Shakespear, no relation to the
playwright that I'm aware of. And Maud, and I, all head over heels for a
befuddled Catholic boy... but you aren't so religious, are you?"
I
replied that I sought to treat people as I would be treated and waved in the
direction of a carriage waiting at the Circus. Blythe Road lay on the way to
Chancery Lane, so it was determined Florence be taken there but, as we
approached Notting Hill, she took my arm with a pronounced shudder.
"Arthur...
dear... I had the strangest premonition. I would not have you leaving for the
Continent believing we were aliens to one another... listen, had you and
Aleister come to me in private to share the documents, not to seize them... why
I should have gladly obliged." This should have been fair warning that my
assumptions about Miss Farr and Crowley were correct, but I was a younger man
then, foolish and probably the better for it.
"It
is such a tangled situation I scarce know where to begin. Maud and I, we owe an
obligation to Annie, Soror FER, for Willie's sake... after what that vile Moore
did to his Countess Cathleen, the success of Willie's Dublin venture requires
the greatest tact. You see? Annie so detests MacGregor Mathers for Moira's
sake, as Willie despises Crowley for what he is, that the rest of us must play
our roles."
"Do
you mean that there is any merit to Mathers?" I wondered. "Even
Crowley dismisses him as a dead hand."
"Envy
inevitably stalks in the wake of genius," Florence replied. "See for
yourself! I shall allow you access to the papers... on your oath that you tell
neither Soror FER, nor Willie, nor especially Aleister Crowley. Depart with me
now... you can make your way back to Chancery Lane later with no other one
wiser."
"If
you think it right," I hesitated, then threw the matter over and got out
with Florence Farr - together we entered the Temple of the Isis Uranians that
served, also, as her flat. Without the hindrance of a mask nor other such
distractions, I observed a number of Egyptian vessels, many books, of course,
and dominating the room of the Temple, an Irish harp which I had somehow failed
to notice during the tumultuous visit in the presence of Crowley and Bennett.
Florence
Farr unlocked a cabinet and withdrew a six sided tabernacle which opened at the
touch of a golden key; she raised it upwards so only a pair of mischievous eyes
overlooked the documents offered to me.
"This
paper seems old enough," I ventured.
"A
man who makes skepticism his profession suggested that Dr. Westcott simply
bought up old paper from Napoleonic days on which to commit forgeries."
"Well
I am no such expert," I declared. The aged parchment was covered with occult
symbols in very close proximity to one another and I gave these back to
Sapienta.
"It
is in code, of course... a simple cypher that was broken by Mathers at the
Arsenal, then by Willie at the British Museum upon his instructions. Beneath is
a translation."
This,
however, proved almost equally illegible... whatever ocular disability
afflicted Yeats had evidently manifested some years previously. There were
several Latin words, a few Greek characters... and these were among the most
recognizable; what remained seeming to be a lengthy listing of ritual calls and
responses, like stage notes to a minstrel show. Here and there were invocations
for the summoning of demons which, Florence Farr assured me, Willie referred to
as 'daimons' in the Socratic sense - spirits largely benevolent or, at the
least, indifferent. They gave me a headache and I replaced them in the six
sided box.
"Did
Crowley tell you that the tabernacle is a reduction of the hexagonal tomb of
Kristian Rosenkreuz?" Florence asked. Seeing that I was in some distress,
she directed me to recline on a divan, placed her fingers to either side of my
neck, massaging the inflamed arteries until the pain subsided and I could close
my eyes.
"That
difficulty between Crowley and Yeats," I asked while in such condition of
repose, "is it of a Hermetical nature?"
"Mostly,"
Farr admitted, "it arises because Aleister is what he is, and Willie...
for all his pretensions as a freethinker, bears the soul of Leviticus in his
bosom..."
"What...
then you do believe those stories about that Madam deRougy or whatever she...
it... was?"
"Don't
you? I mean... being invited into Crowley's household I should think..."
And
suddenly, recalling the workmen who seemed to follow one another into and out
of Crowley's suite on Chancery Lane, his smooth references to their
'renovations' or the intervals at which he and a certain dealer in antiquities
examined this or that item behind the locked door... I was inspired, and
offended. "Surely you do not account me as... as one of those..."
"Evidently
not," Florence said. "Close your eyes again, you must not strain
yourself." And she massaged my temples, then extinguished all of the lamps
save one. "A strong young man such as you must have many lovers in
America..."
"A
few," I said, and that was rather an exaggeration.
"But
they are over the ocean... and you are here." And, enclosing my abdomen
between her thighs, facing me in the dusk and breathing against my face,
Sapienta whispered entreaties and invocations; I took her arms and then all of
that wisdom given to the wise as a gift... on the divan, before the ruptured
tabernacle of Rosenkreuz and then again... and once more on her bed. "In
darkness and in stealth Archetypal forms are conceived and the forces of nature
generate," Florence sighed, then spoke no more, nor did I until I rose
many hours later, throwing the curtains open to confront the golden dawn.
"Imagine,"
I said cheerily, "and to think that it all began in that silent circus; we
Americans tend to think of the circus as a busy place..."
"Draw
the drapes!" Florence cried, recoiling from the light as a spider pinioned
by the p'liceman's lamp.
I
did so, though perplexed, adding that I believed her lovely but... "with
all this rouge and powder, if I could only wipe it off..."
"Dear
boy!" Soror Sapienta replied, leaning her chin upon an elbow.
"Haven't you listened to the whispers, the jokes... poor Florence losing
her looks. The ointments and veils, and so many wrinkles. Poor, vain
Florence..."
"I
don't think like that," I protested, "... I think, rather, that time
reflects character..."
"Poor
Arthur! It is not character... it's the cancer... nothing that one can catch
contagiously but soon enough there will be nothing more of me and before
that... well, I may be have to be eaten alive but I shall not be pitied. Let
them make their little witticism about wrinkles... I have a plan. But... are
you repelled?"
"No,
you are very brave and... and..."
"And...
what?" she taunted.
"I
think Bernard Shaw the fool for giving you up..."
Florence
fell back upon the bed, laughing. "Oh Altius!... O gemmy arse, I see
everything now; you are not half so innocent as acquisitive, like Bernard...
you may come out of this pilgrimage with your skin and maybe even with an
education! And we presumed that we were sending you into the void! Dear, dear
boy!"
After,
when I asked Crowley how it was that Farr and Maud Gonne did not come to blows
over their affections for Willie, my landlord confirmed that the production of
the Irishman's play "The Countess Cathleen" had been quite
disastrous. "It was the fault of Farr's niece, Dorothy Paget... that vixen
who needs only a little more seasoning ere she shall stride across the Irish
sea like Boadicea with the skulls of suitors for her girdle. Poor Willie!"
and Crowley began to laugh and would not cease before he began rubbing his
thinning tresses, tears flowing down his great, rubbery cheeks, "... he's
not the first Dorothy led down the Mome Raths... were you aware that Mr.
Carroll's rhymes for children are only that sort of slang employed in the
Parisian underworld? The early bird catches the worm and the child prostitute
pinches her Ambassador. Keep that in mind the next time you find yourself down
on Bedford Park!"
"Look,"
I protested, "Yeats may be your Hermetical rival but he's not the sort to
commit such... such..." so repulsive was the consideration I could not
even bring myself to name it.
"And
why should he be excused from those instincts that arise in men such as we are?
In India, girls is quite suitable for marriage at the age of twelve, and your
America states like Maine, and Arkansas too, I hear. Yeats is a different man
when drunk... frankly, a better man, he composes jingles that are presentable,
though inferior to my own. Moore was a different sort... he fired Dorothy and
then, for good measure, he fired Maud Gonne, so that whole Blythe crowd must
dance to Annie Horniman's ancient dugs that she might buy for them a bauble,
some theatre in the Irish slums. Farr's father was a rather wealthy
doctor," Crowley mused, "Bernard Shaw contends he lost quite a
fortune through senile speculations, else she might have financed "Arms
and the Man" instead of Annie. Still," he allowed, "Shaw wrote
the role of Louka for Florence, one of his more believable females."
Now,
to correct a possible misperception, I must not leave the impression that
Florence Farr's husband, Edward Emery, was quite the layabout that most of
occult London represented him as being. He may not have been outstanding,
intellectually, but had a competent career on the American stage and a son of
his... not by Florence, of course... married the actress Talullah Bankhead. As
I have said I'm terrible with dates... I recall Florence having gone to the
Orient, but I think she returned for while to marry an Irish-American or
Americanized Irishman who died or divorced her, I'm not certain of that,
either. After that she did return to her Isle of Serendip to do good works,
then to die... it must have been around this time she learned of the birth of
John Emery. As Crowley asserts she was desperate to bear an infant... mine,
Willie's or, to be sure, his own... that may be plainly gleaned from the rhyme
she left me with on the docks, where the Golden Dawn had gathered to see me
off.
|
"Above
- a stone, below - a bone, |
|
I pass the
gate alone. |
|
I was a
toy; I am - the world." |
Of course this was a private message; out of so many counsels it
was one I cherished most. Crowley, of course, arrived full of pomp and vinegar
despite the grayness of the morning... "Cancellarius and I agree you must
look up Hartmann when in Germany. Rudolf Steiner is loyal to Blavatsky's
memory, this Dr. Haeckel tends to Besant." The novelists Stefan George and
Meyrinck were mentioned with observations that the latter had co-founded a
lodge in Prague with the composer Bruckner, whose private secretary was rumored
to be exalted in the Masonic hierarchy whose Grandmaster, however, remained as
unknown as his counterpart in England.
"But
as all English Masonry derives from Buckingham Palace," objected Maud
Gonne, "it is nothing but a device of the Crown to keep Ireland
enchained."
Willie
Yeats also had come with Maud, the playwright full of Parisian anecdotes.
"When I met Verlaine we could not have smoked had I not matches in a tin;
I admitted that French poetry might still hold sway, but pointed out to him the
superiority of English lucifers. He's gone now, as is Villiers, the formidable
deGuaita died two years ago... but ask Mathers about surviving Martinists. A
Dr. Encausse may also be of use, if he has returned from Moscow."
The
young initiate Sarsfield-Ward, having learned of my mission through some
inadvertence of tongue, had also come to see me off, fairly hopping like a
puppy for attention. "Beware of Russia!" he warned, "... my
editors attribute the whole Dreyfus case to Czarist and counter-Czarist intrigue."
"That
is ridiculous," replied Lily, who I recalled from Bedford Park as the
liberal in that large, perplexing family.
"A
plague upon all their castles!" Aleister Crowley scoffed.
"Proletarian pince-nez or aristocratic monocle... all Europe is the same
for suffering deficiency of vision."
But
Sarsfield-Ward would not be suppressed by his Hermetic superiors. "My
editors believe that, if the Czar expresses designs upon Germany, it is but to
pass through, ravish France and seize England for the double headed golden
cockerel. The dark side of the Cipher, Frater Altius, shall be found in Moscow
or in Petersburg."
I
thanked all with a wave as the channel steamer sounded the horn for visitors to
leave. "Pray for me... pray to God or Satan if you will, or to Pan... but
give me strength..." The Adepti crowded round with well wishes, and the
Captain's men were extended to shoo them off. When they were gone, I took out
the gift that Arthur Machen had left for me... a copy of his Pan, the good
edition illustrated by poor Beardsley... the Villierist having directed me to
its closing passage:
|
"... that, when the house
of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for which we have no
name, and human flesh may become the veil of a horror one dare not
express." |
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