I feel an immense weariness and, at the same time, curiosity. Are they harbingers of Assja Shotokalungin?
The night that has just passed was the first that I have spent with a clear mind.
No, it was not coincidence that I was overcome with such profound tiredness. But from my tiredness emerged the iron resolve to risk the first sortie. As one combats poison with a counterpoison or antidote, so I determined to combat the sleep that was creeping over me; I called up the “counter-poison”: not Jane but Princess Shotokalungin.
But she did not appear as I had expected. She did not obey me. She was lurking behind the curtain of my senses, I could feel her hidden presence.
Ultimately it was for the best: this waiting for the enemy enabled me to concentrate my forces all the more against her and with each heartbeat I felt the hatred inside me grow, sharpening my “dragon’s eye”. Or, at least, that was what I thought!
In that night I learnt a terrible lesson and I thank fate that I learnt it in time: hate which grows beyond its object is weakened.
It was hate alone that kept me awake during that night. Just as a double dose of a drug will stimulate a flagging body, so the increase of hate kept my senses alive. But the point came when I no longer had the strength to redouble my hatred once more, and my hate began to trickle away like sand through the fingers. And my wakefulness slackened as the mists of mental exhaustion closed in and I fell into an an indescribable weariness where abstinence and lust are indistinguishable. Did Assja come to me? I did not see her!
During the last hour before daybreak I rushed wildy about the apartment. None of the arcane secrets of self-control seemed reliable enough. Wretched and humiliated, my heart racing with fear, I concentrated purely on physical movement to ward off the attacks of sleep, which was constantly trying to slip its mask over my face and to which I must not succumb before daybreak. In a desperate frenzy I ran here and there and back again, in order not to lose control over my body.
And I made it; I managed to save myself from falling defenceless into the net of my enemy.
As the first rays of the morning sun seeped pale yellow through the dusty windowpanes I collapsed in the middle of my frenetic exercise, to awake on the sofa late in the afternoon, my body still fatigued and my over-confident soul drained of all energy. I realised one can be defeated by one’s own excessive resistance.
I have three days to learn the lesson of this night; how I came by this knowledge I do not know, but an inner feeling tells me it is true.
The task once begun must be carried out to the bitter end: that was Lipotin’s instruction.
Lipotin! I spend hours thinking about him and his purposes. Was it as a friend that he gave me his eager advice and pointed me in the direction of the Tantra???
When was it that I wrote that last sentence that ends in three question marks? Where I am now there is no place for time. Men on the sun-lit planet called earth might say: it was three, four days ago. It could just as well be three or four years.
Time has no meaning for me any more, just as writing has no meaning for me. This record, which preserved the past and focused it on its goal in the eternal present of Baphomet, has fulfilled its task. Bathed in the clarity which the end has brought, I now conclude with an account of my final errors on earth:
On the third evening after my inglorious night watch, I was once more “prepared”.
Oh, how cunning I thought I was this time not to wait for the enemy in my “highly explosive armour of hatred”! With arrogant self-confidence I relied on my own will power, toughened by the exercise of Vajroli Yoga and the insights I had gained into the veiled mystery at the heart of this method. I could not yet bring everything into the clear light of consciousness, but I felt that instinct and feeling had grasped the key elements. I was concentrating on thinking of Princess Assja Shotokalungin with equanimity, even with a certain benevolence. I did not peremptorily command her; I invited her, as if to a negotiating table.
She did not come.
I kept my watch. As before, I tried to feel the lurking presence of the temptress behind the curtain of my senses. She was not there. A gentle silence lay over all three worlds.
I remained patient, for impatience, I knew, would quickly lead to hate and that was a battlefield where I could not match her.
Nothing happened. And yet I knew that this night would be decisive.
About the second hour after midnight strange thoughts and images appeared in my mind. As if my soul had become a limpid pool, I saw reflected in it Assja Shotokalungin’s terrible fate; I saw her, too, as a victim and my heart was seized with pity as the scenes succeeded each other: the cheerful hostess, full of bantering good humour, the pampered child of a princely house transformed into a morbidly sensitive young woman by a nerve-shattering flight from the clutches of the Bolshevik Cheka into the insecurity of exile. One among many, to be sure, but what a change in fortune and what fearful experiences! And in spite of it all, a brave woman who loved life; but one who also had a dark side to her character – a legacy of the Shotokalungin blood – leaving her vulnerable to demonic influences which led to her gruesome early death. She had long since atoned for any family guilt which had been passed down to her. At worst, I told myself, she was merely a medium, a victim of that fate which we men are quick to call “guilt”. A great and noble plan pulses through my veins: I will redeem her through the power of my own newly strengthened will! that must be the aim of the mysterious Vajroli Mudra: I will draw her into myself so that she will be purged of all hatred. I will not hate her, neither will I love her: with my own release I will release a suffering soul.
That was the last thought to go through my mind, for immediately after I found Assja Shotokalungin lying by me: looking up at me from the pillows of my bed was the happy, seventeen-year-old, virginal Princess from the Palace at Yekaterinodar. And the innocent child threw her arms around me, her saviour – her saviour from herself, from the Assja within her who had dedicated herself as a priestess to the evil Thracian goddess, Isaïs.
How strange that she does not seem to know that she herself is the other Assja as well. Seeking help from her other self, she abandoned herself completely to me ...
Then just as suddenly the succubus disappeared. My body felt drained and wretched, as if I had participated in unimaginable dionysian orgies which could well have lasted a year as one night. But I forgot my physical state as I was engulfed in melodies from an Aeolian harp; they accompanied words which ran through my blood like some sweet poison. Then, like a childhood song, my veins tingled to a verse which I could no longer get out of my mind:
From out of the waning moon
From the silver black of the night
Look down on me,
Look down on me
Lady, bless me with Thy dark light
Come to me, Lady, o come to me soon ...
The lines were still tripping from my untiring lips when Lipotin appeared at the foot of my bed. He stretched his red-scarfed neck like a thirsty stork, and waited and nodded and smiled.
Then he started to speak, softly; the words in the tube sounded like lead shot dribbling onto a sheet of glass and there was an audible hiss of air from under the scarf:
“Hmm, well, my friend, well well – we were the weaker after all?! I am sorry, sir, I am truly sorry; but I can only serve the strong. You know that is one of my little peculiarities. I regret I must return to the opposing side. All I can do is to inform you of that fact. You will appreciate what that token of loyalty means. I see that according to popular wisdom you are ‘lost’, but nevertheless I congratulate you on your ... hmm ... performance. And now I must say farewell; business calls, I think. The rumour in the coffee house is that some rich foreigner from Chile has bought Elsbethstein. Perhaps there are other old daggers buried there? They say the new owner is someone called Doctor Theodor Gärtner; personally I have never heard the name. And now, dear sir” – he waved – “fare thee ill.”
I w
as incapable of standing up, I was incapable even of answering. He paused in the doorway and I read, rather than heard, the words from his lips: “The Dugpas send their greetings”; then he gave a ceremonial bow and as he disappeared I saw a glint of mocking, satanic exultation in his eyes.
That was the last I saw of Lipotin.
“Theodor Gärtner!” – Those were the first words in my mind when I surfaced from unconsciousness. Theodor Gärtner? But he drowned in the Pacific! Or am I mad and Lipotin named a completely different name? Weak and dizzy, I collapsed back onto my bed several times before I finally managed, with a supreme effort, to get to my feet. I was convinced that I had lost the contest and was damned beyond redemption, destined for some unknown fate – unknown and therefore all the more gruesome to my imagination. For a brief moment I saw the death mask of my cousin, John Roger, hovering over me.
Oh, how easily, how ridiculously easily Black Isaïs had overcome me with her satanic cunning!
There is no need for me to describe the depths of humiliation I felt, the mortification of pride in my manly strength and, worst of all, the consciousness of my own boundless stupidity.
Should I call upon Jane? I felt my own heart pleading to do so, but I mastered myself and remained silent. She might hear me after all, and I felt I should not disturb her in the realm of eternal life. I might wake her from a dream of eternal union with me, my cry for help might drag her from her sphere far down into the misery of finite being, down into the force field of the earth where love is nothing and hate everything.
I sank back onto my bed and lay there motionless, waiting for night. The sun shone into my room for a long time, and more brightly than usual, so that I thought: would I were Joshua and could make it stand still. – –
Again around the second hour of darkness Assja lay with me and everything was as it had been the night before – I even deceived myself that I was her saviour.
My senses belong completely to the succubus. In the desperate battle of my soul and my reason with the seductress of my drugged senses I tasted all the pain and torment that hermits and anchorites submit to, right to the bitter end when either the vessel is shattered, or God himself breaks open the prison. At the very last moment God broke open my prison. I will tell briefly how that happened, but first I went through hell.
Assja Shotokalungin came in all shapes and forms – even by day – with all the seduction of her untamed soul and with all the ravishing power of a majestic nakedness which grew ever more radiant and unearthly.
Assja Shotokalungin was everywhere. After wearisome trials I found the words of exorcism which banished her from my presence and she left me with the sad expression of a misunderstood lover, no reproach, only a mute plea for forgiveness in her eyes. It took me an immense effort of will to harden my heart and ignore the pleading look.
But soon after that she manifested herself in every object in the house which had a reflecting surface: in the varnished wood of the wardrobes, in a glass of water, in a polished brass knife, in the dull, opalescent windowpanes, in a gleaming decanter, in the cut-glass chandelier and in the glaze of the tiles round the stove. My torment increased a hundredfold, for Assja seemed to have withdrawn to another level and yet to be so close the heat of her presence scorched my senses. I had tried to banish her by an exertion of will, but now my will seemed to have turned upon me and I longed for her. I was torn by the tug of contradictory desires: I wanted to be rid of her and I longed for her touch.
Until that point I had kept Lipotin’s green Florentine mirror covered with a cloth and turned to the wall, for fear of seeing Assja step out of it towards me, as Theodor Gärtner once had. Now, overcome with burning, sensual desire, I tore off the cloth and looked into the glass:
She stood there as clear as life, thrusting her naked breasts towards me and at the same time pleading for mercy with the sweet expression of the Holy Virgin. In horror I thought this must be the end.
In one, last, desperate effort I raised my fist and hit out in wild fury at the mirror, smashing the glass into a thousand splinters.
But with each tiny splinter her image ripped through the flesh into my veins, burning in my blood like stinging nettles; and looking up at me from each gleaming fragment on the floor: Assja, Assja, the naked, devouring succubus, Assja, Assja, Assja. Then, like a swimmer from the sea, she rose from the images, and came towards me, a whole army of smiling sirens, enveloping me in the warm scent of her hundred naked bodies.
The air all around me was permeated with the smell of her skin and it was the sweetest, most intoxicating odour I can ever remember inhaling, more intense even than the odours of a warm spring night. – Every child knows how smells can benumb the senses and transport one into contented dreams.
And then Assja-Isaïs began to envelop me in her aura, in her astral body. All the while she gazed at me with the bright, innocent eyes of a reptile that kills because it is the law of the species. She injected the essence of her being under my skin and grew around me, grew through me. What defence had I? How could I resist?
Once more I was bewitched by the melody that wound in and out of my ear:
From out of the waning moon,
From the silver black of the night,
Look down on me – – –
I felt it was a dirge for me ... then a sudden thought pulled me back from the edge of the grave that initiates call the threshold to the “eighth world” and which means complete annihilation – I remembered that I still had the ancestral dagger, the spearhead of Hywel Dda.
Can a thought on its own create fire? There is fire sleeping all around mankind, hidden, invisible but everywhere. A magic word, perhaps, and in an instant it ignites and consumes the whole world.
As if it was the mere thought of the dagger that called up the fire, a huge flame spurted up from the floor in front of me, sizzling like an explosion of powder, so that the whole room was bathed in a flickering glow. I plunged through the middle of it; I must go through the fire, even if I am burnt alive, I must find the dagger and hold it!
I cannot remember how I came through the wall of fire, but come through I did and found myself in my study. I opened the silver box and snatched up the dagger. I clutched the handle just as John Dee did when he was in the coffin, and when Bartlett Greene appeared towering over me and tried to wrest it from me, I repulsed him with one blow in the wall-eye which sent him tumbling back. I raced down the stairs in a shower of sparks and a suffocating blanket of smoke and threw the whole weight of my body at the door so that it gave way with a thunderous crash ...
I felt a waft of cool, fresh night air. My hair and beard were singed, my clothes still smouldering.
Where? Where can I turn?
Behind me I heard the crash of beams collapsing, consumed by the unquenchable supernatural fire. – Away, away from here! I kept the dagger clutched tight in my hand, it was worth more than anything in this world or the next. Suddenly, in front of me, stopping my wild rush, there appeared a vision – the gentle, majestic lady I had seen in the overgrown park at Elsbethstein. I was filled with rejoicing:
It is Elizabeth! The Queen of my blood and John Dee’s Elizabeth, Elizabeth who has patiently awaited this hour! – I sank to my knees before her, oblivious of the fire of the Dugpas that was stretching out its fingers towards me ... Then, as if the blade in my hand had transmitted its sharp clarity to my brain, I saw through the apparition: it was a disguise, a subterfuge, an image stolen by the dark deceivers and projected to drag me down to perdition ...
I close my eyes and dashed through the phantom. I ran as if all the demons of the wild hunt were on my tail and suddenly – my running had direction: Elsbethstein was the goal that lit up my whole being – away to Elsbethstein! I was drawn, held, protected by invisible hands; the blood pounding in my temples blinded me, but wings sprouted on stumbling feet as my headlong rush finally took me to the highest tower of the castle.
Behind me – a bloody sky as if the whole city was burning
with the fires of hell.
Thus too did Mortlake burn as John Dee, my restless ancestor, left behind him his past life with its honours and dignities, its errors and enmities: that was the thought that came to my mind.
But I possessed one thing that he had lost: the dagger! Hail to thee, John Dee, that thou shouldst rise again to live on in me.
The Castle of Elsbethstein
“Have you the dagger?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Theodor Gärtner holds out both hands to me. I grasp them as a drowning man grasps at a rescuing hand. And immediately I feel a current of warmth and goodness flowing from him through me. And the fear that had wrapped itself tight round me like a mummy’s bandages begins to loosen its grip.
I see a faint smile on my friend’s face:
“Well, and have you defeated Black Isaïs?” The question is put in a matter-of-fact way and without any threatening undertone and still it resounds in my ear like the last trump. I bow my head:
“No.”
“Then she will enter our Kingdom, for she always appears where she has a debt to collect.”
Fear begins to pull its bands tight around me again:
“I have tried all that can be expected of a man – and more!”
“I know how you have tried.”
“My strength is all gone!”
“And did you really imagine that the black arts could bring about the transformation?”
“Vajroli Tantra?!” I cry, staring at Theodor Gärtner.
“A farewell gift from the Dugpas, intended to destroy you. If you knew what strength is needed to practise Vajroli Tantra without being utterly destroyed! Only Orientals are capable of that. It is sufficient that you have twice inhaled their poisonous fumes and survived. You did that of your own strength and that is why you are worthy of help.”
The Angel of the West Window Page 39