GENERISIS presents THE GOLDEN DAWN

 

  Episode 17 - DEATH, CHOCOLATE and the WALTZ!

 

          Three days after my departure from London I arrived at the Hotel Marquardt, whose Portier disclaimed knowledge of either the Fraulein or her intermediary, Herr Enger. The Stuttgart polezei informed me, politely but firmly, that no such personages had come to their attention, nor... as I proceeded to Ulm, finally Nurnberg, did further official entreaties produce any result. As a consequence, I was thrown back upon such advice as the Continental Hermeticists had provided.

          In a theatre not so far from the Palace of Justice, where Justice Biddle and the allied judiciary team are to hear evidence against Rudolf Hess and Goering and the rest of Winnetou's tribe who did not, like Eva Braun and Goebbels, follow him into the Azur, Rudolf Steiner was lecturing - that heir to Blavatsky whose name I had recorded in my book as recommended both by Yeats and Crowley. Probably that theatre has been destroyed; most of Nurnberg, I hear, has been bombed into oblivion... like Berlin, like Stuttgart. Yesterday was the Fourth of July... Liesel brought the boys up from the city, promising that the next occasion of the holiday would certainly see the return of fireworks. Mark writes from Potsdam that he expects promotion to Lieutenant Colonel by August; the Soviets have invited his team into Poland to tour some of Winnetou's uglier prisons where the teachings of the great Enchanter of Boleskine were put into practice, ego always furthered at others' expense, "Life always lives at the expense of other life."

          But back to Steiner then: he was one of those tall, sharp-featured fellows, thirty or thereabouts, full of a virtuous confidence of self quite knocked out of Europeans these days, be they on the winning or losing side. The topic of his discourse was the Tower of Babel and, of course, it was entirely in German. By my training in engineering and frequent recourse to my dictionary, I gleaned that Steiner believed ancient Sumerians to have been the first of mortal men to have "halted" the act between seeing and thinking, thinking and speech or action, making a sort of clockwork of human faculties to stand over the flow of stimulation and response that is the province of animals. A sub-segment of his discourse was political... as I gathered, purity of thought and motive declined as one crossed the Balkans and reached a nadir in Russia, despite the brave efforts of Blavatsky and her cousin, Finance Minister Witte. Only where the Russian swamps and prairies gave way to the heights of Himalayan peaks was primacy of wisdom over bestial urgings restored. Steiner, like most German sophists... whatever the prefix they take... had an uncommon attraction to high, distant places.

          With the public presentation at end, I presented Westcott's letter to Steiner's manager who soon bade me come behind the stage to meet the occultist. "Herr Doktor Steiner?" I began, rather inconclusively, "mein numen est Arthur Cameron... spreichen de, busca... no, Erwarfen! der Fraulein Sprengel..."

          "I speak some English..." Steiner replied warily.

          "Ja! Yes... that would be comfortable..."

          "You are American?" Steiner deduced and I nodded, perhaps over-vigorously... "Ach! in the old days we did not have such difficulties; all spoke the mystery language of Babylon."

          "That seems an awfully long time ago! Anyway, being from a London society of Hermeticists..."

          "Yes," Rudolf Steiner interrupted haughtily, "a novice, as I gather. No person is qualified to form judgments on the conduct of schools who has not acquired... through the school itself or in a manner recognized by the hermetic order, the requisite preliminary knowledge. I respect Dr. Felkin and so tolerate Westcott, but he has offended by sending a mere Neophyte and, at any rate, no Fraulein Sprengel shall be found here..."

          "Not here?" I asked. "Then where has she gone?"

          "Where those go who have attained the Higher Order, mein jugen Einfaltspinsel... (which I would later be given to know was a predictable insult for the sort of simpleton moved about by circumstance, an "impulse-pencil" when translated exactly)... to the Moon! Fifteen thousand years ago the moon split off from Earth taking die Meisteren into orbit, from whence they judge the living and the dead. Only the loftiest pass to Sun-beingship, the rest disposed of according to their racial origins. Die Schwarzer go to Mercury, which governs the sexual faculties, Malays inhabit Venus, of the nerves, Mongols and Semites to Mars, the planet of blood." I fear my incredulity showed for Steiner's nose elevated markedly as if I were some unpleasant aroma arising from a plate of Bedford Park mash set before him. "We Europeans ascend to Jupiter... lungs of the cosmos... while you Americans, in fact all mongrels, go to die in Saturn... where is to be found eternal, blind oblivion..."

          "Quatsch!" I replied, using that term with which German scientists and engineers dispose of unsound, unscientific rubbish."

          "So someone has taught little dirty-mouth how to swear..." Blavatsky's disciple sneered. "Such comments will be in so far disregarded as I refuse to take them as a basis for further discussion. Kammerer!"

          The manager appeared at Steiner's summons with a pair of burly, unsmiling policemen and, at a gesture from the Moon-master, I was bum-rushed to the back door and kicked downstairs. The sharpness of cobble-stones was only slightly mitigated by a thin snow that had begun falling as I stood in that Nurnburg street, unfolding my list of three names... making a thick mark through that of Steiner.

          "Haeckel or Hartmann," I pondered "... Berlin or Vienna? Heads or tails?"

          My resolution may not have had the poetic thrust of Hamlet but did have the benefit of promptness; the eagle on the American dollar I tossed, aiming my feet south into the Habsburgs' domain.

          Intending to pass several days in Vienna, unless the trail of Fraulein Sprengel were to grow warm again, I checked into an inconspicuous hotel and made local inquiries which, at length, disclosed the whereabouts of Dr. Hartmann.

          No longer Coroner, Hartmann had taken over management of the Tollenstein Sanitorium, a private facility on the North bank of the Danube, by the road to Linz. This Sanitorium seemed a most unsanitary refuge when I arrived; Hartmann himself aged beyond his years... hair and clothes greasy and, as he inspected Westcott's documents, I thought I saw flecks of blood spattered upon his cuff. He handed the papers back with a most unhealthy smile, but Dr. Hartmann was, at least, of a more ingratiating character than had been the officious Steiner.

          "American Adept, how is my dear colleague Dr. Westcott..." asked the former coroner in clear, though somewhat accented English.

          "Very well, save for this unfortunate matter... his trade, well you could not call it thriving but..."

          Also unlike Steiner, Hartmann appeared to have a sense of humor. "I became Coroner in Wien," which he pronounced "Vane", "because the Madame convinced me I was such a bad physician. Therefore, I made up my mind not to lose any more patients."

          "But you have retired..." I pointed out.

          "After many years, I reached the conclusion that to write as one must when one has aged sufficiently to know something worth the reading, I should seek a less hurried occupation. Too many people die in Wien, whether in duels or from its wines, pastries and sausages that render the body gross and corrupt. Material thoughts, young man, quickly decompose and putrify the spirit, causing it to sink into darkness and, ultimately, into death. You, I gather, are neither temperate nor a vegetarian..."

          "Guilty as charged," I shrugged.

          "And so you will pay the penalty in forty years, if not earlier," Hartmann declared and in this, at least, he has proven prescient. "You already have slowness of thought, dreams..."

          "I have been bothered by dreams of late..." I acknowledged.

          "Dreams are quite a commerce of the Viennese decadence. The most degenerate of our Hebraic dream doctors now infests the Suhnhaus on Bergstrasse. In English, that would be the house of Atonement, it draws its name by virtue of being on the site of a theatre that burned eighteen years ago with many fatalities whose remains were my unfortunate responsibility. This doctor so rejoices in trampling the psychic mausoleum of so many Gentiles he willingly pays its exorbitant rents. Dreams, I say, are of the digestion, not the mind, and Death... why it is everywhere in Wien. Death, chocolate... the waltz! I presided at the autopsy of Prince Rudolf, did you know?... but retired before the Empress was finally assassinated last year. Another madwoman!"

          "The assassin?" I inquired.

          "The Empress! Now I consult to other private clinics as far as Weimar north and south to the mountain saniotoria of the Tyrol and write books on medicine and romances... have you read any?"

          And Dr. Hartmann pushed a pile of books in my direction with a desperation that intimated sales hadn't been very fruitful.

          "My gift, I to you." So like Crowley was the greasy coroner in his eagerness to be read, and appreciated, I considered my suspicions quite confirmed. "In my romance of gnomes, young Baron Burkart von Tollenstien sells his hair to Pypo, King of Gnomes, for the treasure of Untersberg, mountain of the lower world which overlooks the town of Salzburg. Pypo... whose name recalls that of a dishonest Spanish doctor who travels in occult and Martinist circles of Paris... neglects to tell the young Baron that, in selling his golden hair, he has also sold his potency but gives Tollenstein back his locks in the form of a golden braid with which to hang himself...

          "I have heard a tale like that..." I said, "but I can't recall where..."

          Of course I knew the source - none other than Machen's own Pan... whose villainess, given a rope by the heroic Villiers, hanged herself and immediately decayed into hideous protoplasm.

          "What?" replied the astonished Hartmann, "you have? Do you think me a plagiarist?"

          "No..." I replied cautiously, "...perhaps I was thinking of Samson and Delilah. Everything written today goes back to the Bible in one form or another, doesn't it?"

          "I suppose." The retired coroner pushed aside a greasy forelock that had slipped across his eye, weighing the fruits of presumed offense against those of gratifying his opinions, settling for the latter. "In The Physician of the Future, I cite Paracelsus, who enjoyed nothing in heaven or upon the earth so much as Jesus, and Him crucified. Haeckel's political biology does not admit miracles. For example he maintains Christ's father was a Legionnaire and Mary no virgin but, rather, a slattern who invented the whole myth to conceal her sin. Now Mr. Crowley doesn't much like Paracelsus, I presume..."

          "He is more partial to Pantagruel," I admitted.

          "He and Mathers are the puppeteers behind most of the German lodges so I'd be safer holding my tongue, do you see? Even ours! What I shall tell you is that Geschaftesfurher Kellner, the wealthy ironmonger, met with a person from the East three years ago and, subsequently, purchased a charter from a seedy Masonic fellow whom, I suspect, was less than he represented. Nonetheless Kellner and myself and Herr Reuss... a police agent in London for the time being... established the Memphis branch of the Oriental Temple in Berlin.

          "But is there no Temple here?"

          "Tollenstein is a village of simple-minded folk," Hartmann replied pityingly, "useful for, well, for certain experiments of mine, but poor stuff for a Hermetic Order! All disease, you see, is psychic... emanating from the Elemental plane and so, to cure disorder, one first empties the vessel by magnetism or electric shock. If there is no mind, there can be no mental disease! Then the vessel may be restored from donor sources, rather as a fish pond may be stocked with pike or carp..."

          "That does sound fascinating," I answered, "...have you tested this theory?"

          Hartmann made a show of gnawing on his knuckles, then lifted his snout, inspired. "I recall one instance of an Italian madman taken to Paris and cured in this very manner," he remarked. "Unfortunately the poor lunatic was returned to Italy and so regressed. But you are here to discuss..."

          "Fraulein Sprengel..." I reminded Westcott's brother Coroner.

          "Of course!" And he cracked those damp, filthy knuckles, slouching in his chair as if to emphasize the unimportance of this matter. "All I know is what has washed back from Mathers and Crowley... though rather before Crowley's time. Mathers would be the one to question... but as he is still in Paris, you should begin here with Guido List, von List as he insists upon being called. Everyone in Wien seeks titles or, if they have one already, promotions. List was a theatrical producer before he lost his vision, an authority on runes and tarot, 'die rota' as it is called hereabouts..."

          My attention was diverted by a rat, sniffing at Hartmann's door as if called forth by name, and the Sanitorium Direktor, roused from his languid pose, hurled one of his self-published books at the pest, which darted back into the corridor of weeping madmen with a wounded squeal. The incident reminded me of my father's office and, inevitably, Vartanian.

          "List draws connections between words as some Qabbalists do," continued Hartmann with somewhat more animation, "though he is quite hostile towards Jews. They have been accounted quite fallen from God's favor since well before the Crucifixion... all the way back to Solomon's treachery against his gentile mason. I have, myself, taken Hiram's revenge through the invention of the financier Moses Abraham Scalawag," the Coroner proudly declared, "in my romance. List... he was a contemporary to Blavatsky and Lord Lytton, but survives them both... surely you have heard of that Englishman?"

          "Didn't he write books about certain Overbeings who lived underground," I asked quite innocently, "...or was it, rather, about Untermensch in high places?"

          "That's the man!" Hartmann said hurriedly. "Germany has always trailed England, France... even the Russians, sometimes, in its hospitality to the universal philosophies; Austria has stagnated, too, since Mozart lost the protection of the liberal Count Thun and the patriotic Thurn und Taxis. The result is that our seekers of illumination have had to survive under conditions more difficult here than in London and so are of a strong, but suspicious constitution. Oh, a sort of tolerance has been re-established these past four decades, but that has mostly benefitted student fraternal orders dedicated to Fechtzwang, Farbenzwang und Kneipzwang...

          "Fighting, drinking and wearing the colors!" I declared, such societies having had their place at my University and I having heard, in fact, these same words out of the mouth of Vierick.

          "Yes they are not seekers, only criminal gangs. List tutors a few of them, but knows far more than he lets on..."

          "So where would I locate this gentleman?" I asked, hoping that I did not betray my urgency to be away from Tollenstein.

          "Where all idle Viennese seeking titles congregate... the judicial palace annex we call the Vonhaus!" Hartmann sniggered. Accepting, as my price for departure, the Direktor's book on gnomes, I thanked him rather more profusely than he deserved and quite literally fled for the railway station so as to be back in Vienna before sundown.

          The following morning, well refreshed by rolls and several cups of strong Viennese coffee, I proceeded to the Vonhaus - one of those rococo halls of marble thrown up by the Habsburgs to mimic, in earth, what the Parisian architects have accomplished with air. Making inquiries at the desk, I was directed to a blind man seated on a nearby bench - a bearded old patriarch with an entourage consisting of several young fellows of a Thuggish disposition wearing Schonerer's blue cornflower in their buttonholes, a stunningly beautiful woman and a young man in the dull brown robes of a monk.

          "Herr List? I am Arthur Cameron, American disciple of an English society. Dr. Hartmann has recommended me to you as the Coroner Dr. Westcott of London recommended me to Dr. Hartmann.

          I unfolded the letters from Hartmann and the others with what must have seemed visible trepidation. The monk intercepted these credentials, scanned them with a patently worldly eye, then whispered to List.

          "I am Lanz von Liebenfels of the Cistercian order," he replied in presentable English, "...you say you are American? And of the grade of... Novice?" I nodded. "Here is Anna Wittek von List, the Master's wife."

          Frau Wittek took my hand with a cunning smile as the monk whispered again to the blind man, shaking his head at the reply.

          "These other fellows are the mater's Dynamosophists," said the Cistercian of List's entourage who, hearing their name uttered, stamped their feet and balled their fists as if anticipating orders to smash in my face. "The master does not wish to speak at this time. Go away!"

          "But Doctor Hartmann..." I protested.

          List shouted one of those German words that sounds rather like a cough; Lanz whispered to Anna Wittek and two of the Dynamosophists placed their palms upon my shoulder and began to guide me, politely but firmly, towards the door to the Vonhaus.

          "The master is not receptive today," declared Liebenfels, with an appearance of regret. "The Oberlandesgerichstsrat... that is, the Emperor's Commissioner of titles and honorifics... delayed his petition... and then you had the poor American sense not to honor him with the "von" he believes he deserves. Perhaps it seems trivial... but we Viennese set great store by our rank, men have been killed for less than what you have done."

          I explained that it was hardly my intention to offend the worthy von List, but remarked also that I was down to he and Haeckel, after which "there certainly are a lot of folk about..."

          "Die volk are sheep," scoffed Lanz, with rather less charity than one would expect from a man of God, however youthful. "Above the Jews and Gypsies, yes, but words are not quite used in your language as in ours. As for Hartmann, I choose not to translate what the master thinks of him, as Dirty Franz has not pledged to support our claim as do most of Vienna's occultists and Schonerites... Baron von Pickl, even Karl Lueger, our Mayor.

          Anna Wittek approached, exchanging whispers with Lanz.

          "It seems the master has changed his mind," sighed the monk. "He has noticed your references to Haeckel, a right-minded man, so will speak to you, through me."

          So in the company of the young monk and the still-alluring Anna, I returned to the bench to receive the counsel of Guido von List.

          "The master has been married only three months and they are greatly devoted to each other," added Liebenfels in a tone I chose to interpret as a warning, however polite. "He suffers from cataracts and so has had an operation... it is hoped that his sight shall return but only the Old Gods may say when. The Emperor... Wotan wring out his putrid essence... seeks to pacify us with bagatelles... with contemptible honors even a cobbler would reject; he will not give either of us the "von" that is our right because we are pan-German and click our heels so!" And Liebenfels demonstrated upon the spot... it rather unnerved me that he wore the high boots of a Prussian officer under his robes rather than the sandals of piety. At the time I did not, however, think to associate the curious contour of his monkish robes with the sword and pistols beneath. "Besides," young Lanz continued, "this Habsburg court is rotten with Jews and Parisians as a consequence of Germany's misguided clemency - embracing the poison as opposed to burning it to the ground."

          "Are you speaking of Paris?" I asked, scarcely believing what I was hearing.

          "Paris... the rest of France... and there are other places besides even more worthy of incineraation. Did you know that our society dates back nearly twelve centuries in opposition to der Teufel... Charlemagne... that it was a shell fired by Napoleon that slaughtered Haydn in his garden?"

          By now, the pale face of Liebenfels had reddened with outrage, and I hardly knew what to expect should the monk wholly lose his reason but Guido von List uttered a few sharp words that caused God's representative to grovel at his master's knee.

          "The master knows of no person named Sprengel but perhaps it is an alias," suggested Lanz, holding out this faint hope like a handkerchief. "On Sunday next our New Temple raises the flag at the master's castle of Wergenstein on the Danube at Grein, forty American miles east of Linz. All we Iatro-chemists shall attend and we shall summon Knights of the Invisible Temple to read the Book of Varieties... he extends to you his invitation and permission to question the master's guests. Perhaps one of them may hold more useful information about this old woman."

          Something in the monk's answer startled me, but without recognizing it at the time, I merely accepted Liebenfels' offer of a card, on the back of which a few words of invitation had been scribbled.

          "The Sphinx Reading Society," Liebenfels anticipated my question, "is a forum at which literature and astrology are discussed. It is one of many paths into Untersberg..."

          "But that is the mountain Hartmann spoke of. Do you also explore caves?" I asked.

          "Hartmann is a pitiful thief... sometimes useful however," the monk allowed, "which is why the master suffers him to live. We are no London table-tappers, no!" Liebenfels took me into his confidence, "but wholesome men of nature; you shall see no women at Werfenstein save Mistress Anna, but a fine choir of boys from a society I direct. Do not expect altars to cavilling saints, only to healthy Christian pagans. Until Saturday!"

  

Click upon the visage of Pere Ubu to go back to THE GOLDEN DAWN homepage:

 

Click Mr. Beast to return to previous Episode: