Masks of the Illuminati

by Robert A. Wilson

  And Pan, ithyphallic and terrible, arose in the midst of them, Lola bending to present his vile gigantic organ with an obscene kiss.

  “Charing Cross, Jeering Cross!” the conductor shouted. “All mystics off at Charing Cross!”

  But on the platform, everybody was staring and Sir John realized he was wearing his mother’s skirt.

  “Sonly a beach of a pair to plumb this hour’s gripes,” muttered the fox, but John Peel lit a great flashing light with a goat sow gorm in the morning and Sir John blinked, shuddering into wakefulness as warm sunlight flooded his bedroom. It was dawn and the night and night’s black agents had vanished into air, into thin air.

  Sir John ate a very subdued breakfast. “A war between the great powers,” Viscount Greystoke had said, extremely worried, only a few weeks ago, “might destroy European civilization, or throw us back into the Dark Ages.” Was it possible that the dark, chthonic forces of the ancient pagan cults, the beings that Lola and her friends were trying to unleash again upon the world, intended such a frightful transformation of what had been an age of enlightenment and progress? Or was he taking the chaotic symbolism of the dream, a feverish blend of the worst in Gothic fiction and black magick, too literally?

  He decided to take a long walk around his estate, meditating on one of his favorite lines from the Golden Dawn Probationer ritual: “We worship thee also in the forms of bird and beast and flower through which thy beauty is manifest even in the material world.” His eyes opened as he repeated the phrase over and over: every bird call seemed to remind him that God was truly good, that even on the plane of accursed material existence the divine radiance showed itself to those with spiritual vision. The deer were the gaiety of God, the trees His mercy, the stream His ever-flowing love.

  A strutting robin came pecking the ground near him and he watched it with affection. It was a creature, he suddenly realized, more alien to himself than the Martians imagined in the fantastic fiction of H. G. Wells, and yet sentient as he and with its own intelligence. How can we live among so many wonders and be so blind to them? Sir John remembered the great Psalm: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth sheweth His handiwork.”

  Then he saw two foxes copulating and blushed, turning his eyes away from the temptation to lewd thoughts. We must love the beauty of this world, which is Gods gift, he reminded himself, but we must never forget its fallen nature nor let it seduce us from seeking the beauty of the spiritual world of which this is the grossest shadow. For to worship nature as it is was to fall into the error of the sensualists and Satanists, of “Helen” in The Great God Pan.

  Sir John returned to the volume when he was back in his library and had read two more of Machen’s macabre tales, “The Black Seal” and “The White People.” Both dealt with the ancient Celtic lore of the faery-people, but not in the sentimentalized manner which Shakespeare had established in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest and which has been naïvely copied by writers ever since. Rather, Machen followed the actual lore of the peasantry of Ireland and Wales, to whom the “little people” were not benign beings at all but a terrifying inhuman race of malign tricksters who lured men with vistas of beauty and sublime wonder only to lead them into a realm of unreality, changing chimerical shapes, formless forms, time distortions and nightmare, from which few returned totally sane. Sir John, who had studied this lore in his investigations of medieval myth, realized that Machen’s picture of faery-folk was far truer to peasant belief than the charming fantasies of other writers on the subject. The Irish, Sir John remembered, called the faery “the good people,” not out of real love or respect, but out of terror, because these godlings were known to punish most terribly those who slighted them. The faery, Machen obviously understood, were denizens of Chapel Perilous unleashed somehow from the astral realm into temporary appearance in our material world. In fact, “Helen” in The Great God Pan was first reported to Clarke as a small child in Wales allegedly seen playing with one of these terrible creatures.

  Sir John pondered much on all this; but when the days mail arrived, he saw that it contained a letter from Rev. Verey, Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, Inverness, Scotland. He opened the envelope with a quick, nervous rip and read:

  Sir John Babcock

  Babcock Manor

  Greystoke, Weems

  My Dear Sir John,

  I must thank you sincerely, as a Brother in Christ, for the concern and compassion expressed in your letter of recent date. Needless to add, our theological differences do not matter—I am no old-fashioned fanatic, I hope—and I recognize all true Christians [which does not include, of course, the accursed Papists] as fellow toilers in the vineyard for our Blessed Saviour.

  To come to the point at once, I am neither astonished nor incredulous about your claims concerning the vile sonnets in Clouds Without Water. Indeed, I am only astonished at my own blindness in refusing to see, at first, the full extent of the horrors there uttered. You will, I am sure, understand my original inability to accept the obvious when I confess that the poet who wrote those lascivious verses was [alas!] my own younger brother, Arthur Angus Verey, whose total depravity I was long loath to admit, even while confronted with the terrible evidence of his apostasy and heresy.

  It is all too true—Arthur mocked our holy religion continually after attending the damnable university of Cambridge [which is staffed almost entirely, as you must be aware, by men whose Socialism and Atheism are concealed barely enough to avoid public scandal]—but I, God forgive me, I was too fond, too forgiving a brother to admit even to myself that Arthur’s youthful rebellion had carried him far beyond the superficial Free Thought of most “intellectuals” of our time, into the very pits of Diabolism. Even after his suicide, when the poems came into my hands through our family solicitor, I refused to see that the mockery of Jesus [and of the clergy of our holy religion] was not merely that of a skeptic but of a Satanist. If you have a younger brother of keen intellect and wayward nature, you may perhaps understand my folly, my sentimental blindness.

  Well, sir, that is old business, and now I am paying the price of my delusion, and paying at usury. There is no doubt that diabolical forces have mounted an attack against my church, my family and myself. Things have happened around these parts lately that would cause all “advanced thinkers” to laugh me to scorn, and alienists to commit me to an asylum, if I were so foolish as to speak of them in this materialistic age. The huge, bat-winged Creature in particular—but no, I wish not to alarm you but to reassure you.

  While I am admittedly under siege, I am not afraid. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” [Psalm 23] There are nameless things loose in our world once again, not just in the sinks of London but even here in the pure air of Scotland itself, but I am confident that all protection lies in the rock of my Faith and in the eternal presence of our Lord. I am too attached, sentimentally, to this old church and this lovely highland landscape [in which I have spent all sixty-two years of my life] to turn and run from these forces which rise up against the Almighty; and is not their doom clearly predicted, as is the final triumph of Christ, in Revelations itself? I pray; I remain steadfast in faith; and I will not give way to panic, however they may vex and haunt me.

  I do, however, thank you for your offer of help, and I hope that you will remember me in your prayers.

  Most sincerely yours,

  Rev. C. Verey

  P.S. I do not think it altogether wise for Christians to meddle in the Jewish [and therefore un-Christian] arts of Cabala. Perhaps you may need more help than I.

  “The perfect damned fool!” Sir John cried aloud. But he re-read the letter more slowly and found himself strangely touched by the old man’s simple faith and unpretentious bravery. Vexings, hauntings and that “bat-winged” Creature could not make very comfortable living in a lonely old church on Loch Ness.

  Sir John sat down, calmed himself, and then wrote
a most unrestrained and tactful second letter to the Rev. Verey. He pointed out that his offer of help was somewhat presumptuous; he acknowledged the power of faith to hold at bay the agents of darkness and Old Chaos; he praised the courage of Verey, not too unctuously, so as to evade any suspicion of flattery; and then he got down to business. He explained his interest in Verey’s problems as part of a larger research project, in which he was attempting to learn the scope and powers of the cults of black magick in the contemporary world; he waxed rhetorical, declaring that a book on this subject, which he hoped to write, might “awaken Christendom to the ever-present activities of the Old Enemy it is currently inclined to forget”; he begged for specific details on the problems besetting the Verey household and environs.

  When Sir John took this out to the box to post it, he felt a sudden cold bite in the air and his mood abruptly turned against him. It was not really wise, perhaps, to plunge into matters of this sort without Jones being around to advise him. Why, if anything too serious resulted, he had no way of contacting the higher officials of the Order, except through that post office box in London, which might not be picked up more than once in a fortnight. It would certainly be humiliating to have to consult with Yeats, for instance. That would reveal him as a bumbling beginner who had become involved in matters so murky that he was forced to violate the rule against socializing between known members of the Order to obtain help. Standing at the box, mulling in this morose manner, Sir John suddenly began to think he himself was under psychic attack at the moment, and the voice inside telling him to abandon this matter was a presence from outside seeking to frighten him away from his plain duty. “Fear is failure,” he reminded himself, one more time, and dropped the letter into the postal box.

  Thunder crashed immediately overhead.

  Coincidence, he told himself; coincidence …

  But he already knew that “coincidence” was a word used by fools to shield themselves from recognition of the invisible world that so often intersected and altered our visible universe.

  DE CAECITIA HOMINUM

  ACTION SOUND

  INTERIOR, JOYCE’S KITCHEN. MEDIUM SHOT.

  BABCOCK telling his story. JOYCE and EINSTEIN listening, fascinated. Crash of thunder.

  EXTERIOR, PRE-DAWN SKY.

  Dark clouds. Thunder roars again.

  INTERIOR, JOYCE’S KITCHEN. CLOSE-UP.

  JOYCE terrified. Faint voodoo drums.

  The fear of thunder as the origin of religion: Vico’s theory two hundred years ago. The first men, huddled in caves, trembling before the angry roaroaroar of a force they cannot understand. Fear of the Lord: the hangman God of Rome and this Rev. Verey. And, from childhood, Mrs. Riordan’s voice: “The thunder is God’s anger at sinners, Jimmy.”

  Signore Popper in Trieste asking why I still tremble at thunder: “How can a man with so much moral courage as you be frightened by a simple natural phenomenon?” Put that in the book. Have Einstein or Hunter, whatever I’ll call him, say it to Stephen: natural phenomenon. F.I.A.T.

  What did I answer Popper? “You were not raised an Irish Catholic.” Agenbite of inwit.

  Thor’s hamer: the Norse feared it, also. Roaring growlruinboomdoom. “God’s anger at sinners, Jimmy.” Merde. Le mot juste de Canbronne. Conbronboomruinboom doom.

  A nightmare from which humanity must wake. Beginning when the first ape-like Finnegans or Goldbergs hid in awe from He Which Thundereth From On High. “Fear is the father of the gods”: Lucretius. Panphage, indeed. I have said: I will not serve. Brightstar, son of the morning, hawk-like man ascending from the labyrinth:

  Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed

  I stand, the self-doomed, unafraid

  No: they will not terrify me into submission. To the devil with pangenitor, panurgia and panphage: may the great panchreston, Natural Phenomenon, stand me now and forever in good stead.

  I tried to love God once, in adolescence, and failed. I tried to love a woman, when I put away childish things, and I succeeded. Read me that riddle, ye seekers after mystery.

  But: out of the Loch, across Europe, ancient Tempter, to seek me here. Worldlines, crossing, intersecting: Horned monsters: Shakespeare, me, the greengrocer down the street. Out of the Loch. “The vicar said ‘Gracious’”?

  Have Einstein or Hunter or whatever I’ll call him meet the Sirens in a workingman’s bar. “It’s Brother Ignatius”?

  Two. Three. Four. Fräumünster chimes telling us in linear time the morning is passing. Hans leaving the bed of his wife’s lover’s lover: many a civic monster.

  Perhaps I see more because my eyes are weak. Blindness the highest form of vision: another paradox. Inexhaustible modality of double-viewed things. Paradox, pun, oxymoron: and all Irish bulls are pregnant. Ed eran duo in uno ed uno in duo, who stirred up wars eight centuries ago: caught forever in Dante’s words. Two in one, one in two. Bloog ardors: blue garters.

  The Gospel According to Joe Miller. Thou art Petrified: Rock of Ages. A riddling sentence from one who did not speak Latin, yet on this pun stands the old whore, rouged with metathesis. There are wordlines as well as worldlines.

  DE CLAVICULA SOMNIORUM

  ACTION SOUND

  EXTERIOR. SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. TRACKING SHOT.

  CAMERA pans through heavily wooded mountain area. Film is edited to give jerky, nervous effect, by removing every tenth frame. Lola’s voice [singing]: “Up the airy mountain Down the ferny glen We dare not go a-hunting

  EXTERIOR. TIGHT CLOSE-UP.

  Grinning face of the statue of Pan. Lola’s voice-over: “For fear of little men.”

  Semple Solman, mid nuked gorals and nu derections, mud blocked boxes and blewg orders, temptler orion, met apehighman going through his fur. Sssaid ssnakey Soulman, primate of owl laughs that dour not spook the gnome, his trees sank acht in minor’s bush, “Let my teste you war.” But Urvater, who’s arts uneven, war wild and sad, for only a maggus or a nightruebane or a furgeon honey-frayed can wake One-Armed amid the fright of the double’s minsky-raid.

  And the fool were laughted (booboo treesleep) and Sir Joan peeled apauled at the pith of garmel, the musked priestess, through the faundevoided lickt of Garther, the clown, the everlusting One, with that night holy behind him. The caps were in the cups and the cubs were in the cabs and the cubherds were bear. And Sir John awoke to Sol, to sunshine in the window, to the wake world again.

  He reached for his Magick Diary, the daily routine of recording each dream a habit by now, and then found that he could not verbalize any of the fragments still in memory. He wrote:

  A very strange dream, which seems to be blaming myself for my fathers death and yet also suggests that such patricide is, symbolically at least, part of initiation. All mixed up with Mother Goose and the Order of Saint George.

  When he went down to breakfast he found the morning post had already arrived and contained a letter, in shaky handwriting, from the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth. He opened it immediately and read:

  My Dear Sir John,

  “Pride goeth before a fall.”

  How much more profound do the words of Holy Writ appear to me each year, and how dim and undependable my own weak human reasonings!

  I admit that I am truly afraid at last.

  To confess such fear is more of a humiliation than you can imagine; at least, it is so for a stubborn old Scotsman like myself.

  To provide the chronological narrative you requested: I suppose, in some sense, the whole evil cloud began to gather about me as soon as I printed that accursed volume of my young brother’s blasphemous verses. For instance, our local monster—“Nessie,” as the farmers call her—has never been so active as in the four years since that book appeared. Where, in earlier times, this gigantic serpentine form was only reported rarely, and usually by persons whose sobriety was at least questionable, in these recent years the monster in the Loch has been seen increasingly often, and by many persons, and groups of persons, who must be regarde
d as of the highest probity and sincerity of character. As you are perhaps aware, the matter of Nessie is no longer an obscure rumor among us Highlanders but is increasingly discussed in the newspapers throughout the U.K. and, I hear, even on the Continent. Since my church faces directly toward the Loch—being situated where River Ness empties into Loch Ness—it is not wholesome, I assure you, to lie awake nights and wonder what is out there and why it has become so active lately.

  Then, in 1912, came the appalling case of the Ferguson boy—young Murdoch Ferguson, age ten, who was quite literally frightened out of his wits, returning home around twilight. I am saddened to say that the lad has never been the same since this experience, although his parents have taken him the round of many doctors; he still has frequent nightmares, seems abstracted or lost in thought most of the time, and refuses absolutely to go out of the house after dark. I tell you all this because otherwise I fear you might smile at what the lad claims he saw. It was one of those creatures which we Celts call the wee people or the faery. Young Murdoch insists that it had green skin, pointy ears, was no more than three feet high, and that its eyes glowed with an eerie phosphorescence of malignancy. So terrific was that malign stare that the evening of the experience the lad was unable to stop trembling until the family doctor gave him a very strong sedative [opium, I believe].

  ACTION SOUND

  EXTERIOR. SCOTS FARMLAND, LONG SHOT.

  MURDOCH running. Voodoo drums.

  EXTERIOR, SAME. MEDIUM SHOT.

  Tiny figure, back to camera, watching MURDOCH run. Voodoo drums.

  EXTERIOR, SAME. CLOSE-UP.

  Tiny figure turns suddenly toward camera; we see only glowing eyes in a dark face. The Merry Widow Waltz.