Masks of the Illuminati

by Robert A. Wilson

  “There is Good and there is Evil,” Sir John said awkwardly, having trouble finding words at all, feeling numb and drowsy. “We know it intuitively, directly.”

  “There is Up and there is Down,” Lola said mockingly. “We knew that intuitively and directly—before Copernicus. It’s all relative, can’t you see?”

  Was this a dream, an astral vision or reality? Sir John struggled to remember how he had gotten here, into this vile Parisian brothel. “It isn’t all relative,” he protested, feeling that he was perhaps only talking to himself. “There are Absolutes. Thou shalt not commit Adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, or his maidservant, or their garters. Thou shalt not …” But he could not remember the other Commandments. Was he drugged with opium or hasheesh?

  “Behold the hidden God,” Lola said as the Hermit, Death, and Sun cards danced into strange, intricate patterns, chanting “Yod Nun Resh Yod. I.N.R.I. Isis Naturae Regina Ineffabilis. Creatrix, Feliatrix: Venus Venerandum. Leo Sirtalis. Perditrix naviam, perditrix urbium, perditrix eorem, nupta bellum. Garterius, Pantius, Pussius, Cuntius. Yoni soit qui mal y pense. Eat it with catsup.” Dank things moved darkly. She had taken the Crucifix and inserted it between her thighs, moaning in nearly raving idiocy, masturbating wildly.

  It was a dream, only a dream, after all: such things as we are made of. Turning on the newly installed electric lights, Sir John sat up and wrote it all out carefully, including the jumbled Latin and Norman-French. Isis Naturae Regina Ineffabilis: Isis, ineffable queen of nature. Some Egyptologists did claim that the Ankh cross, alleged origin of the Christian cross, showed the lingam of Osiris joining the yoni of Isis.

  The meaning was clear: the Black Brotherhood, after two years, was activated against him again, perhaps because he had purchased Clouds Without Water and completed a magickal link. Well, he was no longer an ignorant Probationer; he was a Practicus, fully armed with the weaponry of practical magick, unafraid.

  After breakfast, he would plunge directly into the heart of the new mystery. Meanwhile, he would not be deceived by a lying dream. The spirit haunting him was not Isis, although the “virgin mother” symbol was, of course, an allegory on ain soph, the limitless light of the white void behind matter itself according to Cabala. And Osiris-Jesus, the dead-and-resurrected son-lover of the virgin, Mother Void, was Man himself raised to superhumanity by the disciplines of magick and yoga. But that was all, in this instance, a lying masquerade. The obsessing spirit was carnal, unclean, and therefore an emanation of Ashtoreth, the lust-demon.

  Still, the acronym haunted: Yod Nun Resh Yod: Isis Naturae Regina Ineffabilis. In numinous rooms incandescent. How many codes could four letters contain or be forced to contain? Is meaning itself the stuff that dreams are made of? Or was it better to return to the pragmatic semantics of Humpty Dumpty’s “When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean”? Could all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put common sense back together again?

  The one hundred fourteen sonnets collected in Clouds Without Water told a blood-curdling story when Sir John had time to read them at leisure. The anonymous poet, a married man seemingly in his early twenties and with a university degree, meets the enigmatic Lola, who is then only seventeen. Stealthily and slowly, she seduces him, until he casts aside his wife, his reputation, his good name and all else to live in sin with her. The sonnets continue for quite a while to celebrate the joys of their lawless love, although only a student of Cabala could decode, behind the euphemistic erotic imagery, the actual Satanic practices into which the poet is being led. Lola’s body becomes both God and the priestess and altar of God; the Christian divinity is denounced and mocked in increasingly bitter lines. The clergy are described, viciously, as “blind worms” and “pious swine”—to which Rev. Verey added a footnote, saying, “The poor servants of God! Ah, well! We have our comfort in Him: like our blessed Lord, we can forgive.”

  The climax is abrupt and shocking. The poet discovers that he has contracted syphilis—“the recompense of his error which was meet,” as Rev. Verey commented—and plunges into despair, killing himself with an overdose of laudanum. Rev. Verey concludes the volume with a warning to others that Free Love and Socialism lead to countless similar tragedies every day in London, a city which he seemed to regard as being damnable as Sodom itself.

  Most shocking of all to Sir John was Sonnet VII of a sequence called “The Hermit,” dealing with a few weeks in which the poet was parted from Lola by relatives and friends who were attempting to end the illicit affair. The poet wrote:

  I will visit you, forlorn who lie Crying for lack of me; your very flesh

  Shall tingle with the touch of me as I

  Wrap you about with the ensorcelled mesh

  Of my fine body of fire: oh! you shall feel

  My kisses on your mouth like living coals

  Even Rev. Verey was not so ignorant of occultism as to misunderstand this or attribute it to Atheism and Free Love. His footnote said explicitly, “This disgusting sonnet seems to refer to the wicked magickal practice of traveling by the astral double.” Sir John sighed, remembering his own travels in “the body of fire” (as the astral double is technically called) and his own terrifying encounter with Lola Le vine, in which she had dragged his unconscious body into unwilling sin.

  For many days Sir John pondered and worried. Finally, he decided that he must act, and he carefully penned a letter to Rev. Verey at the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in Inverness, Scotland. He chose his words most carefully:

  Babcock Manor

  Greystoke, Weems

  July 23, 1913

  Dear Rev. Verey,

  I have recently acquired a copy of your sad and terrible book, Clouds Without Water, and was very moved by the tragedy recounted therein.

  Before proceeding further, I must in honesty inform you that I am not, as you are, a Presbyterian; but I am a fellow Christian and I hope [and pray] a devout and pious one. What I have to tell you will be shocking and perhaps incredible to you but I beg you to think deeply and ponder long before rejecting my most somber warning.

  I know not how you came into possession of those terrible poems, and can understand [although some bigots would not] why you considered it proper to print them, with a running commentary showing the dreadful results of the life and philosophy celebrated by the unfortunate poet. However, I do not think this book should ever have been published, and I fear that you have touched upon an evil far worse than you realized.

  Briefly, I am a student of Christian Cabalism, and, although loathing with all my heart the perversions of Cabala employed by diabolists, I have of necessity learned a few things about their beliefs and practices. You may find this hard to credit, but the poet is not describing merely an adulterous love affair; he is, in fact, depicting—in a kind of code, but in a manner clear to students of these matters—the horrible practices of what is called Left-Hand Tantra or sex-magick; the devices, in short, of the Black Mass and of Satanism.

  I am writing to you because it is obvious that the wicked woman who led the poet into these fiendish paths [called only Lola in the text] must be an initiate of a cult of black magicians. Such groups, I assure you, do not relish having their secrets published, even in code—especially when the code is, as in this case, quite transparent to any student of Cabalistic occultism. Without wishing to alarm you unnecessarily, I think it possible that this cult may wish to suppress the book, even though your Society circulated it only to ministers of religion, since it is now beginning to appear in the used bookstalls [which is where I found my copy]. It is even possible that they may seek revenge upon you.

  If you do not dismiss this letter as the ravings of a superstitious fool, I wish to offer you my friendship and aid, in case such black magick action against you is being taken or plotted.

  Until I hear from you, I can only conclude: May the blessings of our Lord be upon you, and surround you, and protect you.

  Sincerely,


  Sir John Babcock

  After posting this missive, Sir John began to have serious doubts about whether a Scottish Presbyterian would, or would not, credit the continued existence of Satanic lodges in the modern world. He also wondered if he had acted prematurely; but Jones was on holiday in France and Sir John had no one else to advise him.

  A few nights later, Sir John visited his cousins, the Greystokes, and met again the aged Sicilian, Giacomo Celine, who seemed to be related to a South European branch of the family. Somehow, the conversation turned to ghost stories after the brandy and cigars were circulating.

  “Lewis’ The Monk is still the most blood-curdling book ever written,” Sir John ventured at one point.

  “But that’s technically not a ghost story at all,” Viscount Greystoke remarked. “It’s a story of demons.”

  “Of course,” old Celine said. “Ghost stories really are quite dull, actually. Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein is not a ghost story, either, and I think it at least as terrifying as The Monk. And that young Irishman from Sir Henry Irving’s theatrical corporation—what’s-his-name—Stoker—he has written the most frightening book ever: Dracula. And that doesn’t deal with ghosts, either. Ghosts are comparatively tame compared with the real horrors a lively imagination can conjure up.”

  “That reminds me,” old Greystoke said, “there’s a novelette around that is more terrible than anything we’ve discussed, and it has no ghosts, either. Ghosts, after all, are only dead humans, and humans can be wicked enough as we all know, but it’s the non-human creature of evil that really makes the blood run cold, as the saying goes. The non-human is not limited by the traits which even ghosts share with us.”

  “Quite so,” Sir John agreed. “And what is the name of this novelette?”

  “Oh, here it is,” Greystoke replied, prowling among his bookcases. “If you want a bad night, try reading this before bed.” And he handed Sir John a slim volume of stories entitled The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen.

  DE MONSTRIS

  ACTION SOUND

  EXTERIOR. BABCOCK MANOR, MEDIUM SHOT

  The penny-farthing bicycle in a garden. Sir John, age six, with a little girl, same age, he with pants down, she with skirts up, comparing genitalia. Sir John’s voice: “Oh, God, Jones, that thing …”

  EXTERIOR. BABCOCK MANOR, CLOSE-UP.

  A grinning statue of Pan above Sir John’s head. Voodoo drums.

  EXTERIOR. CLEAR SKY, CLOSE-UP.

  Hawk shrieking. Hawk shriek; voodoo drums.

  EXTERIOR. CLEAR SKY, CLOSE-UP.

  The eyes on the statue of Pan turn and look at Sir John. Voodoo drums.

  Voice: “There is an evil power behind it all …”

  BABCOCK MANOR. INTERIOR, DINING ROOM.

  MEDIUM SHOT.

  Dr. BENTLEY BOSTICK BABCOCK and VISCOUNT GREYSTOKE dining. SIR JOHN, age twelve, at far end Of table. Voice [Dr. Bentley B. Babcock, continuing]: “Just look at the record: 1900, King Humbert of Italy assassinated; 1901, Bogolyepov, the minister of education assassinated in Russia and President McKinley assassinated in the United States; 1903, King Alexander of Serbia assassinated.”

  INTERIOR. BABCOCK MANOR, DINING ROOM.

  CLOSE-UP.

  SIR JOHN listening to the adults with horror. Dr. Babcock’s voice-over: “It has to be an international conspiracy, I tell you.”

  Pan To:

  At the far end of the room, in a huge overstuffed red chair, GIACOMO CELINE, smiling privately. He is reading Not the Almighty with the eye-in-triangle design on the Cover. Voodoo drums.

  Sir John retired to bed with Machen’s The Great God Pan around eleven and indeed he had a bad night. He quickly became convinced that he had discovered another member of the Golden Dawn and one who knew a great deal about the dark Satanic lodges working in opposition to the Great Work. “There are sacraments of Evil, as well as of Good,” Machen wrote, and his title story was a most daring approach to almost describing the sacraments of Evil explicitly.

  Even worse for Sir John’s peace of mind, Machen recounted, as fiction, a weird and terrible story of which Clouds Without Water might actually be a missing chapter or a sequel. The Great God Pan tells of two men, Clarke and Villiers, who share a common interest in the bizarre and mysterious side of London life. Although Clarke and Villiers do not join forces until the climax of the story, each of them finds, working independently of the other, parts of the history of a most strange and dangerous woman, called “Helen” in the text. In each chapter, either Clarke or Villiers encounters a victim of this woman, or hears a yarn of incredible events which seems to relate to her mysterious doings. When Villiers and Clarke finally intersect each other’s investigations and begin to compare notes, most of the truth begins to emerge, although not all of it, since Machen restricts himself to hints and euphemisms. What is clear, however, is that “Helen” is a worshipper of the Horned God, who has lured countless men and women into unspeakable erotic practices—sexual excesses leading at first to ecstasy and then to a chain of nervous breakdowns and suicides.

  It could almost be the story of Lola Le vine; and Sir John wondered if it were, in fact, her story.

  How much of Machen’s terrifying tale was fiction, and how much fact? Why had Machen published, even as fiction and even with the worst of it veiled in vague hints, so many dreadful secrets which the world was better not to know at all? Why had the Secret Chiefs of the Order allowed Machen to publish this dreadful tale, for that matter? Sir John found himself thinking, without humor, of the Rev. Verey’s dark warnings that the world was entering the last days and the final conflict between Good and Evil would soon be upon us all. The Grey stokes, who had family connections in every branch of the government, it often seemed, were worried more and more lately about the possibility of a greater war than the world had ever known….

  Sir John uneasily climbed out of bed and looked again at the most disturbing passage in Clouds Without Water, in which the Rev. Verey said:

  Unblushing, the old Serpent rears its crest to the sky; unashamed, the Beast and the Scarlet Woman chant the blasphemous litanies of their fornication.

  Surely the cup of their abominations is nigh full!

  Surely we who await the Advent of our blessed Lord are emboldened to trust that this frenzy of wickedness is a sure sign of the last days; that He will shortly come …

  Could it be that the true purpose of the Golden Dawn was not merely to raise the human mind to communication with the divine, but to train warriors of God to do battle against the forces of diabolical magick threatening the planet? Why did the first teaching say so harshly, “Fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure,” if the members were not expected, eventually, to confront the most fearful evils and do battle against them?

  Sir John performed a most earnest banishing ritual, drank a double shot of cognac, and crept back to bed, severely troubled in his mind. His dreams were not pleasant.

  The Hermit carrying a rotlantern was leading him down a Naranhope alley in some low, disreputable neighborhood of London. Orofaces out of Hogarth’s etchings and Doré’s illustrations of Dante’s Inferno glared gorm on all sides; Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas rose up from a violet cellar muttering incoherently, “the love of Jesus and John … the love of David and Jonathan … the love that dare not speak its name.” The Hermit began to fondle Sir John on the rougeway carriage again and a terrific explosion shook the vertetrain. “They are dropping bombs from monoplanes!” somebody shouted. “The Anti-Christ is coming: Night, the Almighty. London is aflame!” Voices sang the Internationale and looters ran through the streets carrying indigo garters and boxes with moving pictures on them. “It’s probably a magnetic phenomenon,” old Celine said reassuringly. “I Never Risk Inquiry.”

  And this is the horror, said Eutaenia Infernalis, and this is the Mystery of the great prophets that have come unto mankind, Moses, and Buddha, and Lao-Tse, and Krishna, and Jesus, and Osiris, and Christian Rosycross; for all these attained unto Tr
uth, and therefore were they bound with the curse of Thoth, so that, being guardians of Truth, they caused the proliferations of countless lies: for the Truth may not be uttered in the languages of men.

  Lola sang in clear, lark-like soprano:

  The harlot’s cry from street to street

  Shall weave old England’s winding sheet

  Sir John, seven years old, hid in the closet. They were playing hide-and-seek. The Cuntease of Salisbury entered the room. He backed farther into the rear of the closet, behind his mother’s skirts. The Cuntess opened the door and groped him by the throat. He tried to tell her to stop, but he was choking and could not speak. Then he knew it was Lola again.

  “You’ve been a bad boy,” she said, “playing with blue garters and your mother’s skirts.” She flung him to the floor, where Count Draculatalis leaned over him to whisper in his ear, “The true Eucharist is the Eucharist of blood, the lunar force unleashed upon earth once a month. Take ye and drink.”

  Hooded, red-eyed figures crouched around the garden chanting, “Io Io Io Sabao Kurie Abrasax Kurie Meithras Kurie Phalle. Io Pan Io Pan Pan Io Ischuron Io Athanaton lo Abroton lo IAO. Chaire Phalle Chaire Panphage Chaire Pangenitor. Hagios Hagios Hagios IAO!”

  Oscar Wilde, wearing Sherlock Holmes’ deerstalker cap, bent to examine Sir John’s penis through a magnifying glass. “It is very, very long,” he pronounced solemnly, “but very, very beautiful.”

  A form was crystallizing in the dank air: a dark blue ribbon edged with gold, a mantle of blue velvet, a collar of gold consisting of twenty-six pieces, Saint George fighting the dragon …