by Dion Fortune
CHAPTER XXI
THE moon was two days off her full and the barometer was falling, so I knew the halcyon days could not last for ever. After the evening meal we went out on to the point and watched the shadow of Bell Head shorten over the sea as the moon rose higher and higher. One could only go out along the rocks in single file, and Morgan was on ahead of me; she was paying no attention to me and I saw she wanted to be alone with her thoughts, so I did not follow her out to the end, but sat down on the remains of the balustrading, smoking and watching her. She stood for a long time looking out over the moonlit sea till the shadow of the down drew in to her feet; then she turned and looked up at the moon with the moonlight full upon her. She was like a statue, so still and so perfectly formed. Then she raised her arms to the sky till they looked like the horns of the moon, and began to sing one of her strange songs that she had been singing to me on and of? for the last few days, and that had, I think, contributed not a little to my restless and disturbed state, but this time she was singing with the power of evocation-- "0 Isis, veiled on earth, but shining clear In the high heaven now the full moon draws near, Hear the invoking words, hear and appear-- Shaddai el Chai, and Ea, Binah, Gc."' Impelled by what power I do not know, 1 rose and walked ' Pronounced Eeah, Beenah, Ghee. towards her, and as I got close enough to see her face in the moonlight, I saw that it was not Morgan Le Fay at all, and that' the eyes were strange and wide and inhuman, not even thcj eyes of the sea-priestess, but of the sea-goddess herself. She I raised her arms like the horns of Hathor and she sang to the moon and the sea-- "I am she who ere the earth was formed Was Ea, Binah, Ge I am that soundless, boundless, bitter sea, Out of whose deeps life wells eternally. "Astarte, Aphrodite, Ashtorcth-- Giver of life and bringer-in of death; Hera in Heaven, on earth, Persephone; Levanah of the tides and Hecate-- All these am I, and they are seen in me. "The hour of the high full moon draws near; I hear the invoking words, hear and appear-- Isis Unveiled and Ea, Binah, Ge, I come unto the priest that calleth me." And I knew that whether I liked it or not, I was cast for the part of Priest of the Sea. Morgan's arms came slowly down from the sign of the horns of the moon till they were horizontal, and then they began to work backwards and forwards with a curious stroking motion to which the long loose sleeves lent the appearance of slowly- beating wings. The wailing, humming rhythms, rising and falling by quarter-tones with their recurrent rhymes, held me as the bird is held by the snake, and step by step I came towards her till my outstretched palms were pressed against hers and I suddenly realised that I had not got a woman's hands in mine, but the two poles of a powerful battery. The vibrations of all the ancient rituals by which men have ever invoked the gods had awakened in that strange singing voice of hers, and I knew that with the touch of her hands she had indeed brought something down from heaven that passed from her to me and so to earth. The tide was rising and the ground-swell was washing softly over the rock where we stood, touching the foot, touching the ankle, threatening danger. A cloud passed over the moon and we were in darkness. A cold breath of wind from the north-west came soughing over the water, and I knew that the weather had broken. Following the wind a wave ran in and broke on the rocks, and another and another. I saw Morgan's drapery afloat on the water, and drew her towards me, she following like a sleep-walker. It was a risky business bringing this blindly-moving woman through ankle-deep water over the broken rocks in the dark with the waves breaking white behind us and the wind rising; but foot by foot I did it, and got her safely to the steps. I was too busy thinking about our mutual safety to think about myself, but as I got her down into the forecourt, where the light of the windows shone out and we could see what we were doing, she suddenly opened her eyes and looked at me like one aroused from deep sleep, and I knew that something very strange had passed between us. Next day it all seemed like a dream. Morgan Ie Fay did not refer to it, and neither did I. There are some things that are broken if one speaks of them. The wind rose and cold rain fell and we did not go out on the point or up on the down all that day, but sat over the fire and read and had very little to say to each other. But towards bed-time, as we were sitting over the dying fire, I had a sudden impulse to take the reading-lamp that stood at my elbow and go down to the far end of the long room and study the design I had roughed in across the wide expanse of plaster broken only by a door in the corner. The design was that of the deep sea-palaces, with their iridescent domes like bubbles in the foam and the crests of waves curled over them for a sky; sea-snakes twined arou their pillared porticoes and the treasure of sunk galleons scattered about their courts. In the centre, seated on the throe of the kings of the sea, was a figure in silvery drapery like breal ing waves, which I had planned should be Morgan Ie Fay whc the inspiration came to me to paint her face. But it had n< come yet, and only the shadowy outline of features was faintly indicated. But as I stood there, holding the lamp in one hand and pick ing over my brushes with the other, I knew that the time ha come when I could do that face. Morgan Ie Fay was hal asleep over her book at the other end of the big room, paying no attention to me, and I got to work, holding the lamp in one hand and painting with the other in the uncertain wavering light as best I might. I needed no model, for I knew her so well, every line and curve of her. But as I painted, I saw that it was not the face of Morgan lc Fay that was taking form under my brush, but a man's face-- fine-featured, ascetic, not of this world; and the eyes were the most marvellously living eyes that I have ever seen on canvas, although I painted them myself. They looked straight at me, and I looked straight back at them. Then, I know not what impulse possessed me, but I painted Morgan Ie Fay's great crystal between the hands. A crystal is a very difficult thing to paint, but I did it, and it caught the light as if it were lit up from within. As I finished and stepped back to look at the result, not knowing what to make of it, I heard a sound behind me, and there was Morgan Ie Fay. She looked at what I had done for a long moment, and then she turned to me and said: "That is the Priest of the Moon I"
CHAPTER XXII
IT is very difficult for me to convey any idea of what it meant to me to get into touch with the Priest of the Moon. I have already told of my experience in contacting the invisible reality behind appearances, which is to their outward form as the personality of a man to his body. I have told of the power that had come to me to see the past living again. It is not for me to deal with the metaphysics of these tilings; I only know that they were experiences like none other I have ever had, and that they had far-reaching effects on my life. It is by this last I judge them, and not by the arguments that can be advanced pro or con. That they represent the workings of the subconscious I am quite prepared to agree, for they are entirely beyond the range and scale of the normal scope of consciousness. That they are such stuff as dreams are made of, I am equally prepared to agree, for they are more akin in their nature to the life of sleep than the life of action. But having said this, have we written them off as a bad debt? Have we not still to define what we mean by sleep and subconsciousness? I am not prepared, not in these pages, anyway, to say what I mean by them, because I do not know; to me they arc finger-posts, not labels; when I am satisfied that I have got the soul safely done up in brown paper with a bit of string round it, then I will tie a label to it, but not before. Until then, I think sign-posts are safer and less likely to let one in for foolishness; for they point the direction, which is helpful, but set no limits, which is a futile thing to do in the present state of our knowledge. I will therefore be content to describe, and leave it to other folk to classify according to taste. There was an old dame, near us who for many years replied to all inquiries about her son that he was in Bristol Infirmary. Finally someone goti suspicious, and asked her which ward he was in, and elicited s the information that he wasn't in a ward at all, but in the museum. So I can at least serve as a specimen, if not as a I tutor, instructing by what I am rather than by what I say. ; I have seen a lot of inspirational pictures in my time, and they are all right as long as the artists
stick to clouds and drapery, but as soon as they try and do figures and faces, it makes one pin one's hope to total extinction. Knowing this, I had the sense to keep my figures shadowy, for say what you like, the soul cannot transcend the hand when it comes to craftsmanship. The features of the Priest of the Moon were therefore but dimly seen, and the imagination had to build up the completed picture. I did not represent my priest, but evoked him. There is a whole theory of art in that, but it is not my business at the moment. The outward eye saw coloured shadows; it was out of one's knowledge one completed the picture. If one knew nothing, one saw nothing. If one knew something, one saw a lot. It is not for me to judge my pictures. They have interested competent judges, we will leave it at that. Old Whittles said it was a pity I did not finish them. The vicar said they were depraved. My sister said they were silly. Scottie said he wouldn't have one if you paid him. My Bond Street pal wanted me to go in for painting professionally, but it is too much like hard work to suit me, and one cannot take a partner. Whatever may be said of my pictures, and they always evoke violent partisanship, it has been a liberal education to paint them. But the thing that mattered was not the aesthetics of the business, but what came of it. Through those pictures the Priest of the Moon came into my life, and he was a very curious person to know; even more curious than Morgan Ie Fay, and God knows, she was odd enough. It may seem a strange thing to say, but for the shadowy figure that had come up to the surface in my drawing I had the same kind of feeling that I have for any dynamic personality. I have not met a great many in my life, Dickford not being prolific of such, or if they appear, driving them to drink and the devil early in their career. I have met one or two among the barristers, and some of the old judges must have been pretty potent in their day, though the kick has usually gone out of them by the time they get to the bench. My Bond Street pal was a personality in his way. My sister, too, in her way, if you call it a way. Those, I think were all. No one else I ever met could see much beyond the next meal. I judge a personality not so much by what they say, or even by what they do, but by the way they affect you. For a person may do a lot in the world by virtue of the start he has been given in life, or because he has got something that is wanted at the moment, but that does not constitute a personality as I use the word. A personality fetches a reaction out of you of one sort or another, and it need not necessarily be a pleasant reaction--anything more unpleasant than my sister you would go a long way to find; and I stir up a good deal of dislike too, especially locally, because I go my own way and pay no attention to anybody, and a country town hates that. A personality stimulates you--whether to save your soul or lose it is immaterial to my definition. The Priest of the Moon had personality in a very marked degree, and if he was the product of my subconscious, I am proud of it. There were times, not infrequent, when I used to wander what he was, and whether I was deluding myself, or whether I was loopy; but each time I met him afresh I knew what he was, beyond all doubting, and he left his mark on me. At first I thought he was the sea-priest who had been so wroth over my impertinence when I was being sacrificed; and I was scared because I reckoned that an enemy had picked up I my trail; then I began to see that this was not so, but that he I was something altogether bigger than that. It seemed to me I that this was the priest who was behind Morgan Ie Fay, who i had brought her away from Atlantis when his knowledge told ' him that the final catastrophe was due. ; I could see the scene clearly, as if it were a picture vividly i stamped on memory--the sacred city built around the mountain that had been a volcano, just as Pompeii and Herculancum were built within historical times. I could see the wide alluvial plain that stretched away to a far range of mountains--land laid bare by the receding sea just as the marshes stretch towards Dickford and the hills behind; and at the very verge of land and water rose the great cone, as it might be Bell Knowlc. The cone was flat on top, not pyramidal, because in some previous cataclysm it had blown off its crater, as volcanoes do. And on this level crest were the white buildings of the sacred clan--the great sun^temple with its open court paved with the black and white of alternate marble and basalt, and its two pillars that were the twin gnomons of a time-dial vast as the court, one for the sun, and one for the moon, and calculations were made upon the way the shadows crossed the squares. It was the prototype, Morgan told me, of the Temple of Solomon the King, and all other temples of the Mysteries take after it. Around the temple were buildings with porticoes and colonnades, beam-spanned, for the Atlanteans, though they knew much wisdom, had not got the secret of the arch any more than the ancient Egyptians had; these were the houses of the priests and scribes that served the temple, and beyond them was the House of the Virgins, built around a court, with no windows looking outwards. It was there that Morgan Ie Fay grew to womanhood. Within were courts leading one into another and surrounded by rooms and colonnades. And there were sunken stone tanks, with steps leading down to them, where the sacred lilies grew; and over them leant trees not unlike mulberry trees, ancient and gnarled, from whose bark oozed the fragrant resins they burnt in the temples. The young priestesses sat under the trees spinning with the spindle and whorl that arc more ancient than the wheel. I think that they had not the use of the wheel in Atlantis, any more than they knew the arch. From the House of the Virgins an underground way led to the temple, and priests from whom all passion had gone watched over the up-bringing of the young priestesses in the care of the wise women. By this way they were brought into the temple as occasion required, never setting eyes on the outside world nor any undedicated man; and by this way they returned when their work was done, not always virgin. Beneath the temple a way led by the path of the lava to the very heart of the ancient volcano, and herein was hollowed out a crypt where a rising jet of flame burnt continually, telling those who had eyes to see that the mountain was not dead, but sleeping. This flame, lit by the Earth herself, was to them the symbol of their faith, for all fires are one in nature, though after three kinds--volcanic, solar and terrestrial. It was the leaping of this flame that warned the Priest of the Moon that the catastrophe long foretold was at hand. Now the Priest of the Moon was other than those who served the flame, though as a young man he had been taken and trained as they had been. He had seen that the worship had fallen on evil days, and had gone back, as men must, to an older and purer faith, tracing the river to the rill till he came to the pure source; and he worshipped the Great Mother under Her forms of moon and sea, and in this he was wise, for with Her are hidden the secrets of human life, though with the Allfather are the keys of the spirit. In his prime he set out to seek a land where life might be lived unsullied by the decay of a dying race, and he travelled with the tin-ships to the Islands of the Sea, where the marts of the sea-kings' trade were established--far marts, where men brought strange things, the blue and the purple dyes, and medicinal plants, and silver. And when the time came that the leaping flame gave warning, the ancient Priest of the Sun, too feeble for that far journey yet knowing what drew near, prepared to die with his temple. And he gave into the hands of the younger man the secret scrolls and sacred symbols. And they went by night by the underground way to the House of the Virgins, and looked at the young girls as they slept in the moonlight, and chose one who had been prepared to serve their purpose, and roused her and led her away wrapped in a dark cloak while the others slept. And she saw for the first and last time by moonlight the wide spaces of the plain where the spearmen and javelinthrowers learnt their skill and horsemen rode the two-toed horse; and she went down the winding processional way to the shore, and so to sea. And the land-wind, blowing at dawn, filled their sails and they went swiftly. For a day and a night and a day they went, the rowers toiling till they met the trades. Then, upon the third morning, in the hour between dark and dawn, three great billows heaved their ship as the sea-floor shook, and when the sun rose they saw a dark pillar of smoke and cloud where once was Lost Atlantis. And the Priest of the Moon, travelling by way of "thricevexed Bcrmoothes" and the Azores, brought the young girl
who was to be his priestess to a place he had prepared in the Holy Isle that is off the Isle of Druids, looking towards the Isle of Saints, which is Ireland. And there he left her in the care of wise women, to be trained in the terrible discipline of the priesthood, he himself coming and going about the wild land, watching its ways, men calling him Merlin. And when the time came that the summons was sent, they brought the young priestess, now grown and trained, to the priests who had their sacred college on Bell Knowle. And there befell that of which I have already told, so that the sacrifice was in vain, and the sea came in and took the land. And by all the water-ways of the marshes the tide rose, and meadow and field fell back to the sea, and men that had ploughed and sown became fishers and hunters again, living in huts on piles among the reeds who had known stone-built forts and timbered palaces. And Morgan Ie Fay, priestess of the sea and half-sister of the king, sat in her palace in the island valley of Avalon and watched in the magic well the things to come unfolding. And she saw her brother the king betrayed by his faithless queen; and the wise Merlin led by the young witch Vivien; and all the evil that comes to lands and men when the sacred hearth-fires die untended.