GENERISIS
presents THE GOLDEN DAWN
Episode
21 - UNTERSBERG!
Liebenfels
and I passed the evening enjoying the hospitality of Lambech and its erudite,
well traveled Father Hagn and, making good time on the following day, skirted
Mozart's city of Salzburg before turning westward (and upward) at Hallein. Late
in the afternoon, we reached a tiny village on an Alpine promontory where shops
and houses above us seemed to veritably hug the summits rising westwards.
"We
shall have to proceed the rest of the way on foot," the Cistercian
declared, "...if you feel up for a walk?"
"Yes,"
I'd replied, "...I'm inspired! The air here... like biting into one of
those Viennese pastries!"
"You
have reminded me," Lanz chuckled, "there's nothing to eat up the Jagdhaus...
in fact, all the way between this village and Berchtesgaden over Untersberg
there..." he pointed, "...unless your palate runs to a wild sheep.
We'd better try this grocer's."
The
small shop served, also, as a bakery whose wares brought smiles to our faces as
Lanz scooped up bread and eggs and wine and I marveled at a barrel of enormous
crayfish.
"In
heroic times, I've heard the master used to hold bacchanalias in these mountains
where wines were buried in runic patterns for the celebrants to dig up, thus to
edify their minds as their tongues. Blindness has made an ascetic of von
List... but it is all part of the plan of the ancient gods; everything in these
mountains is symbolic, Arthur... do you see these rolls?"
He
smiled at the bakery mistress, favoring her with a few words after which she
placed a tray on the counter...
"What
a heroic past is baked into Aryan bread. This little fellow.." and Lanz
pointed to a breakfast roll, "is die Wecken, that which is below..."
And
the hand of the monk brushed my groin... I started and Lanz rewarded me with a
soft smile...
"Politics
and history... distant as the so-called dark ages of Saxon liberty, usurped by
Charlemagne, are also memorialized in bread. Croissants, found all over France,
are the horns of the moon which we condemn as devil's food, even to this day.
Here is a five pointed roll, for the pentagram is the Stelle-Vehm or
Truthenfuss... even the humble pretzel derives from sexual conjunction...
bretze, to bear and tze, to make. Once it was holy... sex food that preceded
the making of warriors but, now..."
"Only
a snack?"
"But
we are to correct that, no?"
At
the little village, upon my guide's recommendation, I also purchased a rucksack
and a pair of sturdy boots, suitable for climbing mountains. The Jagdhaus... in
German, a sort of hunters' lodge usually owned in common by societies... was at
an elevation of twelve hundred meters, snow of about three inches' depth
crunching as we made our final ascent. Here Untersberg was visible... if
Hartmann was to be believed there were caves in the vicinity of its summit, one
of which was the entrance to the subterranean world of the gnomes.
To
go down in this world, one must, at times, go up.
The
Jagdhaus was untenanted... I gathered wood and Lanz built a roaring fire before
which we sat, talking, smoking, finishing our meal. By midnight we were
surrounded by empty bottles, crumbs and eggshells.
"When
I am a master," said the monk, "I shall be perfectly ascetic too but,
in the spring of life, it is well enough to eat and to drink, to fight for the
honor of the Red Courts, to learn and promote the truth."
"Which
means becoming vegetarian is a way station upon the path to selflessness?"
I'd asked, "...I understand but why, then, is an egg permissible? Is not a
bird also alive?"
"They
live," said Liebenfels, "but the Red Path does not so much mortify
the spirit as potentiate it. The egg is life's essence concentrated, also
pure... why Master List contends that fowl, no less than animals and men, are
capable of sin, and of redemption. By consuming elementals... fruits, eggs,
seed... one's palate never shall be crossed by sins that follow birth. And
Guido is above all in knowing such things."
"Then
do you believe," I asked, "that no other above Guido von List exists
in all of Austria and Germany... maybe the world..."
"Here...
no..." the Cistercian replied, after a short deliberation, "there are
the men of finance who support him, but recognize his superiority, as that of
Haushofer who is coequal in the Oberworld as we are of the Unter... but one
does stand above all. I have not head the pleasure of meeting him, and it may
be no pleasure to do so without ritual preparation. He is the Fuhrer Tarnhari,
the hidden lord who, in turn, is the emissary of Starke von Oben, the strong
one from above..."
"They
are what you said... the lords justice?..."
"Oberstulherren..."
translated Lanz...
"...
of the Holy Vehm? In New York one hears of Illuminants but not always so
kindly... some of our Founding Fathers were regarded as such but I am afraid
the term has more recently become associated with the followers of
Marx..."
"Marx,"
scoffed Lanz, "was only a borrower from Hegel, who was a reduction of Nietzsche."
"I
have heard that name..." I replied, "he is evidently disliked by
quite a few old men in London."
"Reason
for you to learn better German in order to form an opinion for yourself."
"Well,
what I have heard is that he's a madman... worse, that his condition is the
consequence of a life of loathsome vice."
"Ask
your old men of London about loathsome diseases," Lanz answered harshly.
"There is a secret garden in every soul... and some of its blooms are
poison to an unwary insect. Nietzsche is no ranter, rather an enchanter... he
has walked with the Starke von Oben... so has no more need to commune with
inferior souls. He has taken his dagger to the veil of Socratic condescension,
rending it to reveal the Dionysian chaos beneath."
"Speaking
of daggers," I suggested, "wasn't the Holy Vehm known for leaving its
dagger in the hearts of the accused?"
"The
Stuhlherr's Dag!" Liebenfels answered, and with a surprising quickness,
"...but only if they become fugitives, children of the noose... elsewise
it is left by the tree of their hanging or approximate to any other instrument
of judgment. Sometimes, rarely, one is... was, I say... broken on the wheel,
crushed by stones... can we admit, though, that this was any more cruel than
forcing a criminal to languish in prison? There are many currents in this
world... some virtuous but many more duplicitous... existing for their own gain
or, worse, the degradation of Aryans. Even Nietzsche had a fatal failing that
left him at disadvantage in the presence of the Starke von Oben... he was far
too forgiving of the Jews. Jews financed Adam Weishaupt's heresy a century and
a quarter ago, specifically through Mendelssohn and the Rothschild family whose
tool, the Ishmaelite Alexander Hamilton, was providentially liquidated by your
patriot, Burr. Even further back, Jews killed not only Frauja-Cristos but
Hiram, the true architect of Solomon's temple! What an example they set for
covetous Frankish kings and rotten popes to set Knightly Orders against one
another... the Crusades failed for corruption with Arab Adepts. Look to
Russia!"
"Why?"
I shuddered. "It is a cold place and desolate, of little
importance..."
"Such
places are often where great troubles begin. Madame Blavatsky's cousin Witte,
an intriguer with persons associated with French Martinism... who pretend
friendship with God's chosen Inquisitors... keeps Marxism in check through
secret alliance with the Black Hundreds. These fanatics, who would bring back
the days of such Castrators as surface every few centuries, are, in turn,
pinioned only by a madman whose power over the Czar derives from a dispensation
of Tarnhari that may be justice itself, or the enlistment of an ancient
wickedness to provoke a rising of right-thinking fellows. And you believe your
mission to be the finding of a little old lady of Ulm! You should think of
Russia... the Russians do not pass a night without thinking of you!"
With
that there was no other recourse save sleep... a sleep of such profundity that
today I still entertain my suspicions about my companion and his wine. My
dreams were of horrible aspect... I rode as a Grail Knight guiding his horse
through a forest of hanged men... looked into the eyes of monsters... until the
morning sun scourged my brow and I woke in a sweat despite the mountain chill.
"Liebenfels?"
I called. "Brother Lanz..."
There
was no reply; the Jagdhaus was quite empty. Pulling on clothes and boots I
wandered through it, crunching eggshells, munching a cold penis-pastry...
presuming the Cistercian to have departed, perhaps to find wood for a fire over
which we could boil coffee. Suddenly there came a thump on the doorstep and I
opened the door... no man waited there, only a bale of straw in which a dagger
had been implanted.
I
pulled it from its rest... it was of Vehmic origin... a brother to the first
two, although curiously smudged with black.
"Noose...
stone..." I recited to myself, "grass..."
Something
within the straw gave a mechanical click.
And
in that moment I understood... without giving the matter further thought I
vaulted over the bale, thrashing through knee-deep snow. Thirty meters from the
door came the explosion which tossed me ten meters further towards Untersberg,
the front of the Jagdhaus disappeared in a cloud of flying sticks and the rest
began burning fiercely. A length of charred wood bounced off my shoulder, a few
coals sizzled on my back... I brushed these off and promptly spied three
figures approaching on skis... men whom I briefly thought must be from the
village fire brigade until relieved of illusion by a rifle shot and bullet
whizzing by my ear, a winter's hornet.
So
I began to run or, rather, flounder through the snow... my pursuers reached the
remains of the Jagdhaus, circling its still-blazing wreckage. Abruptly, yet
another figure appeared out of a hollow perpendicular to the riflemen, crossing
my path with a wave and a shout...
It
was Aleister Crowley!
Crowley
braked to a stop, sending a spray of snow into my eyes. "Those fellows
mean business!" he pointed. "Hop on back! Hurry!"
A
bullet striking the tree behind which I had intended to hide convinced me of my
lack of alternatives so I mounted the skis of the British occultist; grasping
Crowley round the waist as he dug his poles into the snow with powerful
shoulders and skiied off towards Untersberg with a ferocious cry.
"What
are you doing here?" I demanded to know.
"Why
I was headed down to Sicily to look at some property and thought I'd do a spot
of climbing on my way." My landlord glanced over his shoulder at our three
pursuers. "Lucky for you that I did! Look out..."
The
three skiers behind them had been joined by two ahead of us, one firing wildly
as he approached.
"Hold
on!" my landlord warned.
Crowley
swerved sharply, evading the bullets of his inexpert pursuers, one of whom I
now recognized as Viereck. The Frater of the Skull, cutting us off, raised his
rifle but Crowley knocked him over with a pole, catching his rifle as it sailed
through the air and, with it, drilling the second antagonist through the heart.
"Excitable
fellow," Crowley allowed "...did you know he is considered a poet of
promise. He's written verse about sex in the balloons of Baden where this
Count, a favorite of the Kaiser, has been constructing them flattened out...
rather like a cigar. Huge devices with this gondola beneath, our pripapic boy
took one up for a spin with an Englishwoman quite without the Count's
permission."
We'd
crossed down out of the forest into a treeless plain where an occasional shot
was fired by our three pursuers. In the distance I saw railroad tracks winding
round Untersberg and sensed inspiration near at hand... near as the prospect of
death. Crowley, however, had commenced singing... a ditty inspired by Viereck's
poetry...
"We
heard St. Peter's violin," he chortled, "for Heaven's Gate drew near
us there! We rode upon the zeppelin, that strong- ribbed dolphin of the
air..."
"They
are shooting at us..." I protested.
"I
said Viereck was promising, not that he was equal to myself." And Crowley
twisted his head back to face our pursuers. "Sorry!"
"I
don't think they care... and they are gaining! I think they might be
Russians," I felt compelled to add, "...Lanz said something about
Blavatsky and her cousin..."
"It
may be a bad time to say so," Crowley declared, his words thrown back
against me with the wind, "but what Mathers and I assumed to be the German
order was actually chartered in Petersburg. If you can believe so, they
obtained their charter from a Negro who used to advise your Mister John Brown
and President Lincoln... another representative tutored by the Secret Chiefs!"
"And
who are they?"
"Cameron,"
my landlord replied pityingly, "...the Secret Chiefs are, above all,
secret!"
"Tell
it to them," I said as another wild shot kicked up a puff of snow before
us, "... not to me!"
"Don't
worry," scoffed Frater Perdurabo, "... all Germans are miserable
shots, clumsy oafs! I had to rescue Kellner from Baphomet a number of times,
the bloody novice couldn't even cleanly kill a tethered goat or cat, kept
breaking the magic circle to retrieve his screaming, bleeding beasts..."
"Watch
out!" I cried and Crowley swerved to barely avoid a tree. Our three
pursuers had gained considerably when, feeling a lump at my hip, I recalled
that I had pocketed there my gift from the Italian Imagnifico... Marinetti's
grenade. How it had failed to go off in the heat and the shock of the Jagdhaus
explosion quite escapes me... I thought it certainly defective, but also
reckoned the mere sight of it might slow down the Vehmgericht on our tail.
"See
what I have for you!" I cried, waving the grenade in my left hand then,
pulling the plug, hurled it back at the marksman. As I had anticipated, the
sight of it caused them to dig in their heels and swerve but, as it fell some
ten meters short, it exploded with a vehemence somewhat less than that of the
bale of "grein"... but with force sufficient to cause one to tumble
in a heap whilst the others in detouring... one left, the other to our right...
lost all of that ground they had made up, and more besides.
Just
then I also observed a train on the tracks chugging away from its station
towards us and, looking beyond the station, the little village in Paget's
basement came back to me in its entirety..
"Crowley,
that is the train from Berchtesgaden... make for those tracks..."
"We
sought the secrets of the ninth order together but Reuss kept imploring me to
join this or that useless German cult... what did you say?"
"The
train! They'll overtake us otherwise, we're too heavy!"
"Sometimes
you do have a good idea," Crowley admitted, "...for an
American."
"See
where the tracks curve towards the pass of Untersberg? The train will have to
slow and I can jump on. With luck it will be going all the way to Berlin."
"About
those Secret Chiefs Cameron... I can say that they were tutors of Rosenkreuz in
the fourteenth century... a Greek, a Hindu and a Copt. Be sure to look up
Haeckel for me there!"
"I
will... coming up, now, here!"
I
fell, rather than leaped from Crowley's back, rolling in the snow. Rising, I
flailed through drifts towards the track anticipating, all the while, a bullet
in the back. As the great engine braked to take the curve I jumped and snatched
a rail between two passenger cars. Relieved of my weight, Crowley sped off with
the quickness of a hare, a final bullet pinged off the railway car above my
head and then the engine gained more speed coming out of its turn, leaving my
two remaining pursuers behind.
Well
enough! My gloves had been blown to bits with the rest of the Jagdhaus and my
hands were nearly frozen to the rail... I breathed upon them, pulled myself
upright, then stepped into a coach of the second class, but one with sleeping
compartments. Halfway down I spied a cabin only partly occupied and entered,
nodding to an evasive-looking, balding fellow with a pointed goatee and a
dignified old gentleman in the company of a young lady I found myself hoping to
be a daughter, not his mistress. I rewarded the both of them with warm smiles
and asked "What is the destination of this train?"
The
goateed man drew a newspaper across his face with unbidden contempt... its
characters were Cyrillic-Russian, not German. The others looked at one another,
trading short German phrases so I tried pointing and sign language, for my
dictionary had also been exploded.
"Berlin?"
I asked.
"Ja..."
the man pointed forward, "Berlin!"
So
it was the Prussian capital I was bound towards after all!
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