by James Reese
Though I was much distracted by the Temple décor, still I was conscious, quite, of a quickened heartbeat, of perspiring profusely. And still my thoughts churned. Was I a seeker like these others, and, if so, what was it I, nay we, sought amongst the secrets of ancient Egypt? The promise of a purposeful life? The path towards it? Or, to sign God’s name to the letters of our lives? No answers came, of course; but the questions were brought into stark relief by what next I noticed:
A panel depicting that same Weighing of the Heart of the deceased, whereby a life’s merit is assessed. What would be the merit of my life? What would be its worth? And if I wondered thus on Friday the 1st, I wonder all the more now.
The depiction was true to the 125th chapter of The Book of the Dead, wherein the scales of Anubis are described. Upon these the deceased has his heart weighed against Maat’s truthful feather, Osiris standing by to despatch the deceased either to Paradise or its opposite. If the latter, he will first feed the worthless heart to the baboon-like Devourer seen slavering beneath the scales. This ritual—the Weighing of the Heart—was familiar to me from my studies; but oh, how hard it hit me then with Whitman’s admonition foremost in my mind and the deities in array all around me and the adepts watching on as well. Indeed, it was to the adepts I then turned, yet aside from Constance—whom I knew only by the red of her shoes—I could but wonder who the others were.
Upon the temple floor, there’d been painted a compass rose, and so I can situate the adepts. On a dais to the east sat three hoodless men, Billiam being one. Their situation set them apart, but so, too, did their garb: they alone were hoodless, yes, but over their white robes they wore coloured cloaks, or mantles. Each had a headdress coloured in kind: a fold of cloth which rose up from the forehead to fall back over the head and onto the shoulders.43 Upon their breasts, these three wore plates depicting the deities to whom, presumably, they were allied: left to right, I recognised Nephthys, Isis, and Thoth.44 He on the left held a red sword; he in the middle, a blue wand topped with the Maltese Cross; and on the right, Yeats had at his side a yellow, hexagram-topped wand, though he did not hold his implement as the others did, for evidently he’d been set the task of recording all that passed.45 The two other men upon the dais I did not know. Both were senior to myself by some years, and both were bearded—greatly, brushily so—with the one in the middle wholly bald. Still I do not know who they are; for, since the day in question, Constance has twice refused me at Tite Street, and when finally I forced my way before her, she would neither admit to having seen anything…untoward nor tell me through her tears the names of those whose testimony I might seek. And to interview the Yeats boy would avail me little, for Speranza—in whom I’ve yet to confide all this—says her Irish poet finds demons and divinities in the everyday.46
Seven other adepts, hooded all, sat strategically placed throughout the Temple. One was dressed as I was: Another neophyte? And a second wore white as well: the hoodless Hierophant who would lead the rites.47
The others were clad in black and indistinguishable one from another save for the implements they held or the symbols they showed. Constance carried a censer now, and swung it round from her position on the south side of the temple.48 Beside Constance—at the southwestern wall, near the panel painted with a red False Door like that common to Egyptian tombs and through which the spirits of the deceased are said to freely pass—there sat two adepts, identifiably male and female. He, showing the Eye of Horus upon his pectoral plate, was unknown to me.49 She, however, I knew from the first of her many declamations: F.F., it was, holding high—for reasons still unknown to me—a red lamp.50
The identities of the others I cannot venture to guess at.51
Oh, but I know too well, too well indeed, who the other white-robed neophyte was: kneeling beside me before a long table chockablock with I-knew-not-what, and separating us from the dais beyond, was Francis Tumblety. I knew him by his mien, by that haughtiness he cannot hide, and by those eyes of jet—veined with strangeness: the eye-fire—that shone darkly through his hood. He had come. How dared he? And who had he charmed to access the Order? Constance, whom he’d startled so when first she’d seen him outside Speranza’s scullery? Doubtful. What about Billiam? I think not. The boy wants women in the Order, says Speranza, and only seconded me at her insistence. Who then? Regardless, the deed is done. He was there. And of said fact I was equally certain and displeased, the more so as the occasion—viz., the ritual into which we soon launched ourselves, quite fatefully, I fear—allowed for no discussion. I’d waited long days to confront the man, and now I could not, though I admit it: I did consider damning all the adepts and falling to fists with Tumblety.
Instead I knelt silently at the man’s side. And before I knew it, our double-induction had begun. In this Tumblety took the lead, doing, dog-like, all the Hierophant bade him do. I was to follow in my turn. Meanwhile, I’d naught to do but kneel and watch. And watch I did, so that here I can record—in language plain and purposeful—all, all, as it passed. Impossibly passed.
The Hierophant—tall, lean, and rather handsome despite a scar running from the corner of his mouth high onto his left cheek52—came to where we two knelt. He spoke, but did so at such length that I cannot here commit his words to paper. I can say only that his speech circled the notions of Purification and Judgement, and those rites by which we would soon submit to same, undergoing the metaphoric weighing of our own hearts, i.e., Induction into the Order. Rather, it was all meant to be metaphor, transpiring upon the astral plane and imperceptible upon the physical. The neophyte need only submit to the ritual for the metaphoric work of the Weighing to be achieved; whereupon, I suppose…No. I cannot suppose anything at all, can only record what I was witness to when the astral and physical planes collided and metaphor was made manifest in a man, the American, Tumblety.
We—myself and Tumblety—had been told to kneel upon the priedieux by F.F., as Kerykissa. This we did. Before us was that table-cum-altar upon which was spread tools of sundry sort: a golden scales, shabti dolls, sistrums, &c.53 The Hierophant expounded upon the symbolism of our surrounds and the tools. (He was, for the most part, accurate.) Upon the scales, Feathers of Truth would be laid on each of our accounts. Billiam stood by to record the foregone result. Happily, no Devourer of Hearts attended, ready to eat our vitals should either of us be deemed unworthy and despatched to Tartarus.54
It all came to seem rather silly, I must say. And as the marriage of so many myths and so much metaphor boggled my mind, I was relieved when the Hierophant turned to the ritual proper. A ritual, said he, of Purification: the Bornless Ritual.55
The Hierophant readied the Temple. The adepts knew their positions and assumed them in silence. The Stolistes progressed clockwise round the Temple, sprinkling water with her fingertips. Constance, as Dadouche, went deosil with her incense. The two bowed as they passed, whereupon the Kerykissa, standing west of the altar, cried out:
“Hekas Hekas Este Bebeloi”; and the purifiers with their water and incense sped round the Temple thrice more.
The Hierophant came nearer Tumblety and me. Turning to the cardinal points of the compass, in succession and beginning with the East, he opened a leather-bound text of some heft and read from its pages:-
“Holy art Thou, Lord of the Universe”; and turning to the south, “Holy art Thou Whom Nature hath not formed”; whence to the west with, “Holy art Thou, the Vast and the Mighty One”; and, finally, finding north, “Lord of the Light and of the Darkness.” Turning again to the east, he made the Qabalistic Cross overhead and said:-
“Thee I invoke, the Bornless One,” and the other adepts joined in, chorally, so:
“Thee that didst create the Earth and the Heavens.
“Thee that didst create the Night and the Day.
“Thee that didst create the Darkness and the Light.”
The others falling silent, the Hierophant went on:
“Thou art Osorronophris, whom no man hath seen at any time. T
hou art Iabas. Thou art Iapos.”
The adepts rejoined the invocation, and with one voice proclaimed:-
“Thou hast distinguished between the Just and the Unjust.
“Thou didst make the Female and the Male.
“Thou didst produce the Seed and the Fruit.
“And thou didst form men to love one another and to hate one another.”
Movement ensued, but as I know neither its point nor purpose, I do not detail it here. Humming, too, was heard; in this the adepts joined, serially, till the Temple verily thrummed. By now I was perspiring well past comfort. My knees and back ached. Tumblety, beside me, sat in a perfect, well nigh prayerful pose. If he, too, were uncomfortable, I saw no sign of it. However, I did notice the American’s cologne: the scent of violets issued from him, and strongly so. Here was one more reason to dislike and disdain the man. I thought little more of it then.
Now the Hierophant dropped his voice to deified tones—showily so—and declaimed, “I am thy Prophet unto whom Thou didst commit the Mysteries, the ceremonies of the Magic of Light…. Hear me Thou…. Let me enter upon the Path of Darkness, and peradventure there shall I find the Light. I am the only being in an Abyss of Darkness; from an Abyss of Darkness came I forth ere my birth, from the silence of a Primal Sleep. And the Voice of Ages answered unto my Soul: ‘I am He who formulates in Darkness the Light that shineth in Darkness, yet the Darkness comprehendeth it not.’”
Tumblety’s broad, white-cloaked shoulders began to heave. Was he sniggering at this holy show? No. It seemed he had fallen to tears. I adjudged him a fool.
Meanwhile, the Hierophant and the Kerykissa busied themselves. What seemed but a dervish-like dance I can now identify as their tracing on the air the Spirit Pentagram of Actives and the Invoking Pentagram. Progressing round the Temple from the east, they thusly invoked the deities depicted on its walls; and though it seemed to me they merely flailed their arms about, they were in fact drawing those astral portals, as it were, through which the invoked deities could come. Did come.
This invocation took some time, and ended with all the adepts—save the three Chiefs upon the dais—joining in similarly; and so it was to the beating of their black sleeves that I attributed a sudden down-drop in temperature within the Temple. Or perhaps it was the up-draught from a cellar? Regardless, it was welcome until it set to swirling Tumblety’s too-strong cologne. I turned my head from the scent, from its source, but I only dared turn so far, lest I offend the Hierophant. In truth, I did not fear offending him so much as I did not wish to draw his attention to me, for he focused now on Tumblety whilst yet addressing the Unseen.
“Hear me,” said he, “hear me, and make all Spirits subject unto me, so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether, upon and under the Earth, on land and in water, of the Whirling Air and of the Rushing Fire, and every Spell and Scourge of God the Vast One may be obedient unto me”; whereupon he…In fact, I know not what he did.56 But I liked not at all the words with which he ended, for their effect was such that Tumblety shuddered, visibly shuddered to hear:-
“I invoke Thee, the Terrible and Invisible God Who dwellest in the void place of the Spirit…. The Bornless One. Hear me and make all Spirits subject unto me.” There were uttered more words of power, more names unknown to me. Acts were committed which I cannot accurately describe. Oh, but the cloying scent, the stink of violets seemed somehow to redouble as this was said in summation:-
“I now set free those Spirits that have come. Show yourselves.”
Tumblety had fallen deeper in thrall to the Hierophant: from mere nodding to tears, and now whimpering. It was pathetic. I thought to leave. I could only hope that the Hierophant would busy himself with Tumblety whilst I sought the door; but I could not see the door by which I’d come. It might have sat behind any of the seven screens.
The Hierophant spoke now in a basso profondo, such that I assumed he’d ascended, if you will, from addresser to he—He?—whom formerly he had addressed. “Hear me now. This is the Lord of the Gods. This is the Lord of the Universe. This is He whom the Winds Fear. This is He who is Lord of all things, King, Ruler, and Helper.”
“Who cometh down? Who?” This from the Kerykissa, addressing not the Hierophant but rather…Alas, she addressed her words to the Temple’s walls, to its tent-like top. It is more precise, I suppose, to say she spoke to Those painted upon same. “Who?” she asked again; but I cannot aver that the Hierophant was answering her when next he said:-
“I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Osiris, then? “He that believeth in me, though he be dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die. I am the First and I am the Last. I am He that Liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and hold the Keys of Hell and of Death.” If not Osiris, then Isis, surely; for who else would speak so of reincarnation? “For I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the Earth. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. I am the Purified.” At which last all the adepts hailed the Hierophant, huzzah, huzzah.
It was then I saw the Phylax fall back from the False Door. As he did so, there came again that cold, violet-stinking current. This combined with the Hierophant’s words to chill me to my core; for his voice fell lower as he said:-
“I have passed through the Gates of Darkness unto Light. I have fought upon and under the Earth, and come now to finish my Work, for who dareth banish me to the sands? To do this I shall pass unto the Invisible.”
Odd, now, that I saw the adepts turning to one another; though I could not see their faces, of course, there was something…worrying in the swivelling of their hoods this way and that. As for the Hierophant himself, I saw, or rather thought I saw, his eyes back-roll to their whites and the scar upon his cheek redden and twist till…till it appeared like lips, lips threatening to split apart and speak. Horrid, this; and I attributed the vision to the hood I wore, to the sweat now running into my eyes, to…I knew not what.
The Heirophant was none too steady upon his slippered feet as he shuffled nearer the altar. I feared he’d fall upon it. Instead he gripped its edge, hard, and set to swaying the golden scales. Leaning over same—his head bowed, his back turned to us two neophytes—he continued to read. No: not read; for there the book lay atop the altar, closed. All present hung upon his every word as he continued extempore in a voice seeming not his own.
“I am He, the Bornless Spirit. I am He, the Truth. I am He, who hath wrought Hate and Evil in the world. I am He who casteth Lightning and Thunder. I am He whom the Showers of Righteousness shall not douse. I am He whose mouth ever flameth. I am He who hath come back from Condemnation. I am He who refuseth Exile. I am He who riseth from the sands Vengeful. I am He whose Heart was wrongly Weighed.” Set? Could it be Set the Hierophant had sought to invoke? Surely not. To do so would render him a Satanist. Yet these were the words I heard—sure as I record them here—from the Hierophant, who now faltered in his speech as he turned round to show his handsome self gone horrid: skin of a milky white to match that of his back-rolled eyes, the long scar split wide and suppurating. When he spoke again, he did so nearer a trembling Tumblety.
“I am the Usurper. The Heart Girt with a Serpent is my Name. I am Set, risen for Revenge, risen to Right the Scales of Maat.” Most extraordinary, this; and lest I doubted it, down from the dais came the three Chiefs. Billiam, I’d remarked, had stopped keeping his record. Now the Imperator and Praemonstratur came to the Hierophant, arriving only to catch him as he fell, crumpling to the Temple floor. He convulsed atop the compass rose. The adepts broke from their stations, but the Imperator stilled them with a risen hand; they returned whence they’d come, and watched in silence. As did I, knowing not what to do. My action, however, was soon decided for me.
I was leaning nearer the stricken Hierophant, desperate to determine if my eyes had deceived me yet again—for I’d have sworn his scar had now closed—when Tumblety came tim
bering toward me, falling off his prie-dieu onto mine, onto me, such that suddenly we two fell, entwined, onto the Temple floor. He shuddered, and the stench of him was sickeningly sweet as he lay atop me; but somehow it came not as a smell but rather a taste. I knew that it was the scent of violets, yet it came to me as a taste upon the tongue, a taste bearing no relation to the actual flower. I can only compare it to the bitterest of fruits.57
I was horribly disoriented, owing to the confusion of my senses, yes, but also my hood had twisted round in the fall and all was silken shadow now. I ripped the hood from off my head, and Tumblety’s, too, just in time to see him return to consciousness: his eyes righted, and his jetty pupils focused on mine as he said my name, its two syllables eerily distinct, “Sto-ker.” His head was nearly in my lap. Looking down, I saw that his left-side moustache was darkly wet; this I attributed to something having seeped from his nose or mouth, nothing more. “Sto-ker,” said he again, this time with a palsied twitch of his lips that revealed opened flesh running from behind that same moustache onto his cheek. Here—impossibly!—was the Hierophant’s scar.
To young Billiam, hovering overhead, I said “stroke”; for I had immediately sought a saner explanation of all I’d seen and had now arrived at one: Tumblety had suffered a Rossetti-like stroke. “He has suffered a stroke and…” And I left off speaking as Tumblety, of a sudden, rose, albeit as awkwardly as a newborn foal, to announce:-
“It is nothing, gentlemen. I am prone to minor seizures, is all.” His eyes were steady. The scar, gone. And as he refitted his hood and adjusted his robe, he added, most astonishingly, “Let us resume.” These last words seemed to echo through the Temple.
The Hierophant had come to consciousness some moments prior. He sipped now from the Stolistes’ cup of consecrating water. The three Chiefs helped him to his feet. And as the shaken Hierophant came briefly out of character to offer an apology, to say that he was well and had merely over-worked of late, Tumblety interrupted to repeat:-