Masks of the Illuminati (17 page)

Well, that at least explained why the Rev. Verey had edited and commented upon this libertine volume, although it was still unclear if he truly understood what It was he was condemning. Certainly, if he thought these poems related in any way to “Atheism,” he had missed the target by a mile.

Sir John turned back to the section called “The Alchemist” and searched carefully to see if his speculation about the “elixir of shame” was correct. He found in Sonnet X:

Sheer nausea overcame him. If the elixir or wine was what he suspected, the vile secretions of the organs of shame, the great “king-angels” were not those of heaven but of hell. He read further in the same sonnet:

It was not just perversion that was being described; it was the deliberate use of loathsome Parisian vices for initiation into diabolism. Sir John skimmed some of the Rev. Verey’s footnotes rapidly:

Poor Rev. Verey obviously had no notion at all of what these poems were about. He regarded them as the anti-Christian fulminations of an Atheist, even a Socialist. He was too naïve to recognize the diabolism, the counter-theology that was actually being expressed.

Sir John looked back again at the Preface, and found no clue to the identity of the author of these vile versifications, except that he had died of “a loathsome disease.” Verey added:

Sir John turned to another of the poems and the world seemed to spin with vertigo as he read:

Could it be? Was Lola Levine the paramour who had lured this mad poet into vice and, beyond that, into diabolism? Skimming rapidly, Sir John found “Lola” in poem after poem, but never any last name. But in the very first sonnet he found in the closing line a Latin phrase that froze his blood:

There it was—
Evoe
, one of the two most hidden names of God (which Sir John had good reason to remember was known to Lola Levine);
Iacche
, the vocative form of Iacchus, secret name of Dionysus, god of orgies; and
consummatum est
, last words of the Mass. But this mad poet could only refer to a Black Mass, not a Catholic Mass, in this foul context of Dionysian revelry, perversion and anti-Christian blasphemy. How simpleminded was the Rev. Verey to imagine that these poems merely recorded the destruction of a man drawn away from his lawful wife into an adulterous love affair, when they actually described the step-by-step initiation into the worship of the Horned God of sexual ecstasy—Panurgia, the god worshipped by the pagans before Christianity arose to unmask him (the God of
This World) as Satan, adversary of the invisible True God, beyond the Stars.

Sir John purchased
Clouds Without Water
and took it home for study. This might be a most serious matter. If it were truly what he suspected, he would have to consult Jones for advice.

Memory remembers before remembering has memorized: remembers the unspeakable and forever unthinkable fact of the apotheosis [virtually the cynosure: a moment vivid as the terror in the eyes of that fieldmouse so many years ago: knowing that such terror was the price of consciousness in Uncle Bentley’s universe, but with yet a sense of loathing and holding back from the ultimate revelation, the cataclysmic final horror of that detail so unthinkable as well as unspeakable that mind hesitates to advance toward recognition of it (remembering instead as in a continuous unrolling of time backwards, so that he saw himself picking
Clouds Without Water
from the bookstall, writing the angry letter to the
Times
about Home Rule for Ireland, opening the Bible to the
Epistle of Jude
and the stern warning against the mockers in the last time, the invasive spirit of Her writing through the pen in his hand, the revelation of
Ingenio Numen Replendet Iacchi
, the actual attack in which She appeared in succubus form to drain the Vril energy into Onan’s Sin Against Nature, the chanting of
Pangenitor
and
Panphage
, Pound’s story of poor Victor Neuberg turned into a camel, the thunderous crash that cracked the mirror as the material and astral universes intersected, the poetry reading at which She had first quoted “I adore thee, Evoe! I adore thee, IAO!”, the idiot gnomes chanting “No wife, no horse, no mustache,” the oath of celibacy taken three
times under Jones’ relentless eyes, the first rising of the Vril at the comprehension of
Igni Natura Renovatur Integra
, the first meeting with Jones, the debate with McNaughton in the
Historical Review
, the horrid return of the ugly temptation to actually kill the mouse and have the experience of conscious Sin, Uncle Bentley’s death, the first sense of the caverns of trolls beneath Babcock Manor in boyhood fantasy, the penny-farthing bicycle) but holding back in this state still midway between dream and memory from that one detail, that epicentre of delirium and temptation actually longing to see and touch and kiss again that blue garter, those lascivious thighs, that unspeakable central mystery of creation through corruption.

“There is Good and there is Evil,” Sir John said awkwardly, having trouble finding words at all, feeling numb and drowsy. “We know it intuitively, directly.”

“There is Up and there is Down,” Lola said mockingly. “We knew that intuitively and directly—before Copernicus. It’s all relative, can’t you see?”

Was this a dream, an astral vision or reality? Sir John struggled to remember how he had gotten here, into this vile Parisian brothel. “It isn’t all relative,” he protested, feeling that he was perhaps only talking to himself. “There are Absolutes. Thou shalt not commit Adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, or his maidservant, or their garters. Thou shalt not …” But he could not remember the other Commandments. Was he drugged with opium or hasheesh?

“Behold the hidden God,” Lola said as the Hermit, Death, and Sun cards danced into strange, intricate patterns, chanting
“Yod Nun Resh Yod
. I.N.R.I.
Isis Naturae Regina Ineffabilis
. Creatrix, Feliatrix: Venus Venerandum. Leo Sirtalis. Perditrix naviam, perditrix urbium, perditrix eorem, nupta bellum. Garterius, Pantius, Pussius, Cuntius. Yoni soit qui mal y pense. Eat it with catsup.” Dank things moved darkly. She had taken the Crucifix and
inserted it between her thighs, moaning in nearly raving idiocy, masturbating wildly.

It was a dream, only a dream, after all: such things as we are made of. Turning on the newly installed electric lights, Sir John sat up and wrote it all out carefully, including the jumbled Latin and Norman-French.
Isis Naturae Regina Ineffabilis:
Isis, ineffable queen of nature. Some Egyptologists did claim that the Ankh cross, alleged origin of the Christian cross, showed the
lingam
of Osiris joining the
yoni
of Isis.

The meaning was clear: the Black Brotherhood, after two years, was activated against him again, perhaps because he had purchased
Clouds Without Water
and completed a magickal link. Well, he was no longer an ignorant Probationer; he was a Practicus, fully armed with the weaponry of practical magick, unafraid.

After breakfast, he would plunge directly into the heart of the new mystery. Meanwhile, he would not be deceived by a lying dream. The spirit haunting him was not Isis, although the “virgin mother” symbol was, of course, an allegory on
ain soph
, the limitless light of the white void
behind
matter itself according to Cabala. And Osiris-Jesus, the dead-and-resurrected son-lover of the virgin, Mother Void, was Man himself raised to superhumanity by the disciplines of magick and yoga. But that was all, in this instance, a lying masquerade. The obsessing spirit was carnal, unclean, and therefore an emanation of Ashtoreth, the lust-demon.

Still, the acronym haunted: Yod Nun Resh Yod:
Isis Naturae Regina Ineffabilis
. In numinous rooms incandescent. How many codes could four letters contain or be forced to contain? Is meaning itself the stuff that dreams are made of? Or was it better to return to the pragmatic semantics of Humpty Dumpty’s “When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean”? Could all the king’s
horses and all the king’s men put common sense back together again?

The one hundred fourteen sonnets collected in
Clouds Without Water
told a blood-curdling story when Sir John had time to read them at leisure. The anonymous poet, a married man seemingly in his early twenties and with a university degree, meets the enigmatic Lola, who is then only seventeen. Stealthily and slowly, she seduces him, until he casts aside his wife, his reputation, his good name and all else to live in sin with her. The sonnets continue for quite a while to celebrate the joys of their lawless love, although only a student of Cabala could decode, behind the euphemistic erotic imagery, the actual Satanic practices into which the poet is being led. Lola’s body becomes both God and the priestess and altar of God; the Christian divinity is denounced and mocked in increasingly bitter lines. The clergy are described, viciously, as “blind worms” and “pious swine”—to which Rev. Verey added a footnote, saying, “The poor servants of God! Ah, well! We have our comfort in Him: like our blessed Lord, we can forgive.”

The climax is abrupt and shocking. The poet discovers that he has contracted syphilis—“the recompense of his error which was meet,” as Rev. Verey commented—and plunges into despair, killing himself with an overdose of laudanum. Rev. Verey concludes the volume with a warning to others that Free Love and Socialism lead to countless similar tragedies every day in London, a city which he seemed to regard as being damnable as Sodom itself.

Most shocking of all to Sir John was Sonnet VII of a sequence called “The Hermit,” dealing with a few weeks in which the poet was parted from Lola by relatives and friends who were attempting to end the illicit affair. The poet wrote:

Even Rev. Verey was not so ignorant of occultism as to misunderstand this or attribute it to Atheism and Free Love. His footnote said explicitly, “This disgusting sonnet seems to refer to the wicked magickal practice of traveling by the astral double.” Sir John sighed, remembering his own travels in
“the body of fire”
(as the astral double is technically called) and his own terrifying encounter with Lola Le vine, in which she had dragged his unconscious body into unwilling sin.

For many days Sir John pondered and worried. Finally, he decided that he must act, and he carefully penned a letter to Rev. Verey at the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in Inverness, Scotland. He chose his words most carefully: