CHAPTER XXIX.
THE INSTALLATION OF A TWIN-SOUL.
The sacred musicians of the temple surrounded the throne in solidcircles each arrayed in lordly attire.
They flourished instruments of gold, that rang out music of such depthand clearness of tone as to melt every soul in that vast audience intoone thrilling whole. The sounding song was the incarnation of allthings majestic and glorious. In its breathless measures were born thespirits of conquest, pride, inspiration, love and sympathy. Thethrilling climax was wrought of passages eloquent of love, tenderness,reverence, joy, adoration and poetry.
Again, with the music becoming more refined, a choir of singers in thehigh cloister in the walls sang as they walked a refrain of purifyingsweetness. It was a wail of fidelity and love, and both song and musicmoved in perfect accord.
Thereafter music alone was heard, when the high priest Hushnoly, andthe high priestess Zooly-Soase stood before us on the silver pavementbeneath the throne.
The blue-black hair of the high priestess fell around her olive faceand shoulders like a cloud of darkness. She wore a robe of coral-redsilken gossamer, that with its foldings shivered like quicksilver,revealing a figure of olive marble beneath. Her shoulders, arms andbreasts, soft and heavy in mould, were dimly seen beneath their coralveil. Her profile was perfect. Her eyes were jewels of swart fire. Hereyebrows made perfect arches above them, enhancing the beauty of herface. Her mouth was fine and tender, and her lips red with kisses. Thehigh priest, whose noble features were olive-green in hue, wore asplendid opaque silk burnous of camellia-red, of heavier texture thanthat of the priestess. He wore boots of scarlet lacquered leather.Both wore diadems of kragon, the precious stone.
A stone altar curiously carved, on which stood a green bronze turtleof large size, occupied one side of the front of the pavement. Theturtle held its head stretched upward, and through its open mouth athin stream of blue smoke ascended. On the wide flat back of theturtle lay an open volume, the sacred book of Egyplosis.
The priest and priestess stood beside the altar, each reading analternate stanza from the ritual of the goddess. While reading, thepriests with loud voice followed the intoning of the high priest, andthe priestesses that of the high priestess, as follows:
THE RITUAL OF HOPELESS LOVE.
PRIESTS.
Harikar is the supreme soul, and the goddess Lyone his supreme incarnation. Equally free from asceticism and indulgence, she treads the golden path.
PRIESTESSES.
Let us joyfully obey our adorable goddess, who commands us in all manner of spiritual joys; let us follow her glorious example, preserving purity of heart and life.
PRIESTS.
Let us adore a cupid agonized, worshipping the goddess of hopeless, tender, romantic love. Let us, with our counterparts, the most lovely of maidens, become twin-souls for evermore.
PRIESTESSES.
Let us love the shapely and active youths, the young men of soul and intellect, likewise those of courage and daring, whose hearts and minds are in complete unity.
PRIESTS.
Let us add splendor of body to greatness of soul. May we excel in the chase, the dance and the race. Let us drink ambrosial wine, and eat the juiciest of meats, and clothe ourselves with the finest and strongest of tissues.
THE PRIEST AND PRIESTESS STOOD BESIDE THE ALTAR, EACHREADING AN ALTERNATE STANZA FROM THE RITUAL OF THE GODDESS.]
PRIESTESSES.
Let us have a beautiful companionship with our counterpart souls. Let us rejoice in the sun, in the free winds of the sky, in the glory of flowers, in the pride of horses and elephants richly caparisoned. Let us treasure jewels. Let us possess emeralds, turquoises, diamonds and rubies. Let us array ourselves with marvellous stuffs, dyed with the richest colorings.
PRIESTS.
Let us here in search of the ideal find an ever-increasing Nirvana of blessedness. Goddess of souls, lead us to imagine higher and holier exaltations; keener and more blessed raptures!
PRIESTESSES.
Sweet mother of souls! teach us to cultivate consoling friendships with sympathetic hearts. Give us longings for the utmost depths of love and tenderness; let us possess fervid and impassioned souls.
PRIESTS.
Let us create a paradise wherein life is one long intoxication of love, beauty and soul-culture, found in the fascinating converse of soul with soul and intellect with intellect.
PRIESTESSES.
May rapturous energies spring from hopeless loves! May the yearning for inaccessible pleasures fill us with blessed extravagance and holy madness.
PRIESTS.
May we, firmly poised on virtue, become possessed of noble, delicate, enormous souls. May the meeting of spirit with spirit be too ecstatic for words to express. May vows be written in each other's hearts. May the jewelled ring bind soul and soul, and in the commingled life may the holy compact be known, that a perfect circle of souls has been consummated.
PRIESTESSES.
Secure by our compact and our vows from tasting of the forbidden fruit, may we always possess the happy intemperance of never-satiated souls.
PRIESTS.
May the sorcery of love procure for us the shuddering sensibility of sorrow, without its agony, as we possess the perfect delight of day without the cold and lugubrious shadows of the night.
PRIESTESSES.
Contact with life begets love, and love begets sensation, and sensation desire, but reason and culture control desire and so preserve the endless sweetness of our joy.
PRIESTS.
The real mortal, the ideal divine. The real awakens desire, the ideal feeds it. The real is the maimed, the halt and the blind; it is the sepulchre of faith; the poor, the tawdry, the miserable, it is the measure of our imperfect attainment of the ideal.
The ideal is the supreme made possible by love and charity. It is wide as imagination, perfect as love, calm as death. It is the unchangeable and the immortal.
The real with its disappointments is soul shattering, but the ideal is perennial life.
The more inaccessible the pleasure, the keener the delight in its pursuit.
In love, accessibility is death.
PRIESTESSES.
By losing the real we obtain the ideal. What others strive for we possess. Praise to Harikar for the most glorious of men, for precious viands, odoriferous wines, rare and costly jewels, marvellous stuffs, and the hundred temples and gardens of Egyplosis! Praise to Harikar for our counterpart souls!
PRIESTS.
Praise to Harikar for the loveliest of women, noble, cultured and tender, with whom Nirvana is ecstasy.
PRIESTESSES.
Nirvana is the consummate gift of Harikar, the one everlasting sweetness!
* * * * *
During the intonation of the ritual, the twin-souls put into practicethe manifestations of those endearments prayed for, and which theycertainly seemed to possess.
Throughout the entire congregation, priest and priestess, enfolded ineach other's arms, swayed caressingly together and rapturously kissedeach other. The fondest sighs were heard amid the recitations, and thefaces of lover and beloved were flushed the color of rosy flame. Atempest of restrained passion shook the entire congregation.
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p; What wonder, that, ruled by such a faith, each twin-soul splendidlyapparelled, in such an edifice, should grow rich and strange, bold anddelicate, and exhibit the intemperance of emotion excited bysensations so multiplied and extreme? I then saw a new meaning in thegrandeur and efflorescence of the sculptures of the temple. I saw inthe profuse decorations, in the arabesques so fantastically entangledand unrolled, a manifestation of the delicate sensibility that createdthem.
Not only were real or natural objects idealized in art, but alsoconventional art, or the record of what nature suggests, as well ashow she appears, to the soul of the artist. And what must have beenthe infinite wealth of suggestion to such souls as these to accountfor such mouldings and traceries on wall and roof, and such wealth ofcolor in attire, reflected and duplicated in the jewelled windows ofthe dome. Here were souls fitted by nature and art to fuse and createthe suggestions of nature into shapes of eternal beauty. Theseflamboyant shapes and mystical colors presuppose the strangeilluminations that had pierced tender and extravagant hearts.
The Goddess of Atvatabar Page 32