by Dion Fortune
“There now, wodjer think o’ that, sir?” said my gentleman char, surveying me with pardonable pride.
Malcolm's eyes met mine for a brief second which was all that either of us dared risk.
“Fine,” said he. “I couldn't have done it better myself.”
“An’ that's praise from a expert,” said Meatyard, preening himself. “I seen you do some fine jobs while I was goin’ to the clinic.”
“Not so bad,” said Malcolm. “Each to his trade. How's the leg serving you?”
“Does me orl right. Mightn't suit a beauty chorus, but then I ain't thinkin’ of joinin’ one.”
He gathered up my toilette articles and took himself off.
“Like me to powder your nose for you?” said Malcolm.” I will, if you say the word.”
“You wretch!” said I, completely taken aback at such a remark from Malcolm, for I should never have believed he had it in him.
“There's your report,” said he, dropping a sheaf of papers into my lap. “you can read it while I do your hands.”
I turned over the pages as best I could. On the first was a beautifully drawn diagram of my temple, complete in every detail, duly annotated with all the information I had given him.
Next, in neat, formal handwriting, came a practically verbatim account of the astral journey I had taken him. Finally came an account of his subjective experiences.
“From the beginning of the whole transaction I have had the sensation of being sucked down by a whirlpool. The sensation has been extremely painful when I resisted it; extremely pleasurable when I yielded to it.
When Miss L.F. proposed to make a start on the work, I felt great anticipatory nervousness. Respiration hurried and shallow. Heart rapid and irregular. Mouth dry. Unpleasant sensations in epigastrium. Sweating. This continued till she left me alone when she went to dress, when I succeeded in getting myself in hand and calmed down a little.
“I got myself in hand by telling myself that there was nothing in the whole business. That she was self-deluded, and that I was merely amusing myself.
But when I saw her come down the stairs in her robes, I knew it was real. My nervousness, however, left me. Or, to be more precise, my agitation changed into a keyed-up feeling which was not unpleasurable. I knew, as soon as I saw her in her silver head-dress, where I had seen her before. She was the woman I had always seen in my temple dreams.
“I knew now that Miss L.F., the woman in the temple, the body in the dissecting-room dream, and the cloaked woman were all one and the same person, and I recognised that this fact must have significance.
“I had a very curious sensation when Miss L.F. held up the curtain for me to get through the doorway. I felt as if more than a physical curtain was being drawn back—as if a curtain were being drawn back in my mind.
“The room was absolutely familiar, though smaller than I had expected. It seemed perfectly natural for me to walk up to the altar and stand there with my hands on it. My hands tingled all the time they were on it as if an electric current were coming through them.
“The mirror had a very curious effect on me. I kept on seeing things in it. I had thought for a moment it was an archway leading into another, and more elaborately equipped room. Then I saw in it the temple I have always seen, where I met the woman.
“Then Miss L.F. made me lie down on the couch and began to describe things to me. These I saw in the mirror as she described them. Finally I had the sensation of being on the other side of the mirror.
“I omitted to say that it upset me for a moment when she put her hands on either side of my head. I got the whirlpool sensation again. When however I gave myself up to the pleasure of it, I passed straight through the mirror and found myself in the temple on the other side in her company. I then re-lived with great vividness, much pleasure and much agitation, my usual dream. In this instance, however, I had a peculiar sensation that instead of impersonating the priest, I was myself the genuine priest, and that in doing what I did, I was playing my proper part in a regular ritual. In consequence, instead of the dream concluding in shame, terror and self-loathing, I had a profound sense of satisfaction and fulfilment, as if my life had in some way opened up, like the opening of a door that led me through into wide spaces. So great was the sense of relief and gratitude that I with difficulty restrained my tears. Although entirely restored to normal consciousness myself, Miss L.F. continued to appear to me as I had seen her in my vision.”
I gathered the papers together as best I could.
“Thank you,” I said. “If there is one thing I respect more than another, it is the courage to be honest with oneself.”
“I have never found it difficult to be honest with myself,” said Malcolm, starting on the second hand. “My nature has never left me in the slightest doubt as to what was there and what it was like. I find it very difficult to be honest with you, however. I know, theoretically, that I can speak to you as man to man, and that you will understand, but I find it extraordinarily difficult to deal with a woman like that in actual practice. Do you know the kind of dream in which you are climbing about among girders or on a precipice, but are sufficiently awake to know that you are dreaming, and that you can throw yourself down with impunity?
“And then, as you are just about to throw yourself down, comes an awful feeling that it mayn't be a dream after all, but a kind of risky reality? That's how I feel when I start to let myself go with you. I know it's all right. I know you know what you're about. And then there comes the awful feeling—my God, supposing it isn't anything out of the ordinary, and we're just making a mess of things! I tell you, I simply go cold all over.”
During all this recital Malcolm, with a perfectly calm face and perfectly steady hands, was massaging my fingers.
“You will lose that fear as you get habituated to the forces,” said I.
“Well, I hope I shall,” said Malcolm, “for it is very unpleasant. As a matter of fact,” he added, “I think I have cleared a lot of it in telling you about it. That was why I did it, in fact. I hope you don't mind these goal deliveries. You are, I take it, a woman with a pretty wide experience of life. There was a time when I resented that, but now I am thankful for it. Bend those hands at the wrist and move them about. They are suppling nicely.”
“What do you generally do on Sundays?” said I, for Malcolm appeared to be hanging around at a loose end, rather like a stray dog, and I did not want him on my hands all day till the evening, when I would be ready to work with him again.
“I always used to go down to my wife one week-end and catch up with arrears of work the next. Nowadays—I don't know. I go for a walk in the Park if it's fine and if it's wet, go to a concert—I don't care for the pictures. I don't care for concerts much, either, for that matter. I suppose I generally end by working, same as week-days.”
It was not difficult to guess at the dreary emptiness of life for that man. He had nothing but his work and his duty to his wife, and now that last had been reduced to the bare minimum of supporting her.
I had not the heart to turn him away completely, so sent him out to take his walk while I got dressed and attended to such few things as required my attention.
In due course Malcolm reappeared, and ate his lunch with such gusto that I wondered what his landlady fed him on, or if, in fact, she fed him at all. Then I put him into my big chair with a selection of Sunday papers, and he went peacefully to sleep and slept till tea-time. Malcolm as a visitor was really no trouble at all.
“I thought you said you suffered from insomnia,” said I when he was finally roused by Mr. Meatyard bumping him with the tea-trolley.
“So I do, as a rule,” said he, “but not when you're around. I always go straight off to sleep then.”
“Do I take that as a compliment?” said I.
“You would,” said he, “if you knew what a luxury it is for me to feel relaxed.
We made a Yorkshire high-tea of it, as I knew it would be late before we got another meal
. Malcolm enjoyed it all like a schoolboy home for the holidays. I discovered that I was developing a soft spot in my heart for him, and liked giving him pleasure. Magic makes a curious bond of sympathy between the people who practice it together; and conversely, if things go amiss with the magic, the personal ructions are correspondingly vigorous.
After tea I tried to entertain Malcolm with comments on the contents of the Sunday papers, but he brushed me aside. Desultory conversation was a thing he had no use for.
“I am going to ask you a question,” he said, “which you may say I have no business to ask. Of course you need not answer it if you don't choose, and I shall make no attempt to draw conclusions. In fact, with a person like yourself, so far out of the ordinary run, one couldn't draw conclusions that would be likely to be anywhere near the mark. You made a remark to me once that you had had a pretty wide experience of men—what exactly did you mean by that remark?”
“What you really want to know is exactly how far I go,” said I.
Malcolm reddened. “Well, yes, I suppose so. But not with any personal reference, mind you. I think you know me well enough to know that. I suppose it is a thing every man wants to know about any woman who interests him. I want to know it, partly so that I may understand you, and partly so that I may be sure that you understand me, for if you do not, I could be damn dangerous to you.”
“I will give you excerpts from my emotional history,” I said. “Not the whole of it for that would bore you, being too long and too repetitive. As a girl I was plain, severe, serious-minded, critical and sharp-tongued. I was strictly virtuous, both by inclination and necessity, having, as you will understand from that catalogue of qualities, no opportunity to be otherwise. Later in life, after I touched the invisible side of things, I changed considerably, both in outlook and appearance.”
“You certainly must have, if you were a plain girl,” said Malcolm. The invisible side of things, thought I, was evidently not without effect on Malcolm, either.
“When I came to study comparative religion I found that there were many different kinds of morality in the world, both ancient and modern; some worked well, and some did not, if one judged them by the happiness or otherwise of the societies they ruled. Ours, I soon came to the conclusion, was one of those that did not work well. I wondered, therefore, whether it was necessary to accord it more than the politeness it is always well to give to such an influential person as Mrs Grundy, and concluded that it was not, for I saw its rules scrupulously observed, and yet result in misery and destruction.”
Malcolm stirred uneasily in his chair.
“I saw them systematically defeat their own ends. I also saw them disregarded, not only with impunity, but with, in many cases, excellent results. I concluded, therefore, that although a code of some sort there had to be if human beings were to associate together, it need not necessarily be the code we had got; for that appeared to be most lamentable in its workings. I therefore dropped Mrs Grundy a curtsy whenever I saw her looking my way, for no individual is strong enough to defy openly the social code under which he lives, and set to work to formulate a code of my own that should really be effectual for the purposes it was intended to serve.
“It seemed to me that the trouble lay in the fact that sex was a dualpurpose contrivance—so many dual-purpose gadgets give trouble, don't they?—it had to provide for the continuation of the race and at the same time for the happiness of individuals, and the two purposes were mutually antagonistic—what one gained on the swings, one lost on the roundabouts—and the real problem was to balance the rival claims.”
“And how did you strike an adjustment?” asked Malcolm.
“Like the Hindus do, my friend, by allocating the rival claims to different ages. Why should I reproduce my race before or after my prime? Why should I, in fact, reproduce it at all in a densely populated country if I have other contributions to make to the common welfare? Distinguish, like the Greeks did, between sex for reproduction and sex for happiness, and I think you have the key. I, for my part, am a free woman and a priestess of the most ancient gods—that gives you the key to me.”
“I can understand your studies changing your viewpoint,” said Malcolm, “but what was it changed your appearance? Study doesn't do that; if anything, it makes you plainer than you naturally are because you don't get enough exercise.”
“The thing that changed my appearance,” said I, “was learning to know the Old Gods in the ancient Mystery teaching, for They give fullness of life, and I, who had been starved of life, suddenly began to feed upon Them. I changed, I grew young again, I grew vital; and men who had never looked twice at me, looked, and looked again, and I fed on their feeling for me. You may think me a vampire, but a vampire is one who takes too much or who takes all and gives nothing. I never did that. For remember, human beings feed each other magnetically and emotionally all the time—you have only to look into your own life to see that.”
“And what happens to you if you go hungry?”asked Malcolm.
“Then you are restless, depressed or quarrelsome according to temperament.”
“I'm all of them.”
“But in my company you go to sleep like a baby that has had its bottle.”
“You are a highly magnetic woman, Miss Le Fay, any one can see that a mile off; then why is it that instead of stimulating me, as one would expect, you calm me?”
“Because I know how to use my magnetism, how to turn it on and off at will. You will never find me guilty of the cruelty of increasing the pressure where there is no adequate outlet.”
“I have discovered that, and I appreciate it. It means that I can be happy with you without having the life worried out of me, and I am deeply grateful to you. You have a terrific emotional effect on me, as I am afraid I have been unable to conceal, but you do not stimulate me sexually—no, not even when circumstances compel me to hold the end of your pigtail!”
I laughed, and Malcolm curled his lips in the grim smile that did duty with him for mirth.
Dusk had fallen and I was ready for work, for I do not work, if I can help it, during daylight.
I took Malcolm up to my robing-room.
“As soon as my hands are better,” I said, “you shall have your robes.”
“You make them?” said he.
“One can hardly expect to buy them ready-made,” said I.
“Yes, I make them, and I make them entirely by hand, and I magnetise them as I make them.”
“I should like to wear the robes you made me,” said Malcolm.
“I can't make your sandals, though,” said I. “You will have to get those yourself—ordinary bathing sandals, and I will gild them for you.”
I left him there, and went on up to my temple to robe myself; I could hardly do so in front of Malcolm, for we strip when we robe. Nothing of mundane wear is worn in magic. He, for his part, would not get the full scope of the experience until he, too, was properly dressed; so perhaps it was just as well his robes could not be ready at once.
I stood before the altar, my hands upon it, and gathered myself together. There are times in magic, at the start of an operation, when cold fear takes me by the heart at the responsibility I am incurring. I am deliberately, guided by no other light than that of my human judgment, setting machinery in motion that will manipulate cosmic forces. I do not mind when I alone am concerned, but when another person comes into it, it is another matter. I spend long hours in meditation; I count time as nothing; I wait and watch for the signs to come along and will not move without them. Finally, feeling as if I were going to my own execution, I lay my hand on the invisible lever and engage the gears, and always, as I do so, I say the words of the Eastern pledge; I am thy sacrifice.
There are times in every magical operation when I ask myself if I am self-deluded—am I really what I think I am? This is due to the discrepancy between the two modes of consciousness—the normal brain consciousness, and the higher consciousness that includes subconsciousness and transcen
ds it, for it contains not only the memories of this life, but of all past lives and all their knowledge. In trance work we disconnect the normal con-sciousness and use ultra-consciousness only; in magic we use both modes of consciousness simultaneously. We have to use the psychological analogue of double de-clutching, and inevitably there is a loss of power as the gears disengage and re-engage. It is at that moment that the horrible doubts and fears come in. They pass again as the power comes through and the magic picks up speed, but they are bad moments while they last. Usually we swing over them on the momentum of the ritual, but I had not yet come to the point when I could use ritual with Malcolm, and I had to make my transitions in cold blood. However, I survived—
The elements rage, the fiend voices that rave
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall cease. Shall become first a peace after pain, then a light—
It is claimed by initiates that Browning was one of us, and on the evidence of those lines I believe it, for I have passed through that gate so often.
I have passed out by the path of fear so often that I have almost ceased to fear it. I know it will be unpleasant, but I know it will be brief. The shadows began to close round me as I stood at the altar in my robes, but I set my teeth and went to fetch Malcolm. I do not mind when I am alone. It is when I am responsible for others that I get this fear. But I am the sacrifice!
It is to that thought I cling. If anything goes wrong, I am first in the line of fire.
Malcolm came eagerly in answer to my summons. He had passed through his gate of fear the previous day and the fascination of the Unseen was upon him. He followed me up the dark stair, and again I lifted the curtain for him, both literally and metaphorically, and we stood together upon the floor of Isis.
“Do I get on the couch?” he asked in a low voice.
“No, I replied. “You stand at the upright altar today.”
I placed him facing the mirror at the side of Earth, and took my place opposite him with the mirror behind me. The hanging lamp shed a pyramid of shadow over us, and in the shadow the lamp upon the altar threw a cone of light upwards, bringing out in strong relief Malcolm's heavy jaw and beetling brows. His eyes were on my face, and I knew from the look in them that my features had changed even as his had in that revealing light. His was the face of the butchering priest; what mine was I could only guess from his startled, reverent eyes.
