Dreams and Dream Stories Part 4

I dreamed that I found myself underground in a vault artificially lighted. Tables were ranged along the walls of the vault, and upon these tables were bound down the living bodies of half-dissected and mutilated animals. Scientific experts were busy at work on their victims with scalpel, hot iron and forceps. But, as I looked at the creatures lying bound before them, they no longer appeared to be mere rabbits, or hounds, for in each I saw a human shape, the shape of a man, with limbs and lineaments resembling those of their torturers, hidden within the outward form. And when they led into the place an old worn-out horse, crippled with age and long toil in the service of man, and bound him down, and lacerated his flesh with their knives, I saw the human form within him stir and writhe as though it were an unborn babe moving in its mother's womb. And I cried aloud--"Wretches! you are tormenting an unborn man!"

But they heard not, nor could they see what I saw. Then they brought in a white rabbit, and thrust its eyes through with heated irons.

And as I gazed, the rabbit seemed to me like a tiny infant, with human face, and hands which stretched themselves towards me in appeal, and lips which sought to cry for help in human accents.

And I could bear no more, but broke forth into a bitter rain of tears, exclaiming--"O blind! blind! not to see that you torture a child, the youngest of your own flesh and blood!"

And with that I woke, sobbing vehemently.

--Paris, Feb. 2, 1880

XV. The Old Young Man

I dreamed that I was in Rome with C., and a friend of his called on us there, and asked leave to introduce to us a young man, a student of art, whose history and condition were singular. They came together in the evening. In the room where we sat was a kind of telephonic tube, through which, at intervals, a voice spoke to me. When the young man entered, these words were spoken in my ear through the tube:--

"You have made a good many diagnoses lately of cases of physical disease; here is a curious and interesting type of spiritual pathology, the like of which is rarely met with. Question this young man."

Accordingly I did so, and drew from him that about a year ago he had been seriously ill of Roman fever; but as he hesitated, and seemed unwilling to speak on the subject, I questioned the friend.

From him I learnt that the young man had formerly been a very proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in Rome, but that a year ago he had suffered from a most terrible attack of malaria, in consequence of his remaining in Rome to work after others had found it necessary to go into the country, and that the malady had so affected the nervous system that since his recovery he had been wholly unlike his former self. His great apt.i.tude for artistic work, from which so much had been expected, seemed to have entirely left him; he was no longer master of his pencil; his former faculty and promise of excellence had vanished. The physician who had attended him during his illness affirmed that all this was readily accounted for by the a.s.sumption that the malaria had affected the cerebral centres, and in particular, the nerve-cells of the memory; that such consequences of severe continuous fever were by no means uncommon, and might last for an indefinite period. Meanwhile the young man was now, by slow and painful application, doing his utmost to recover his lost power and skill. Naturally, the subject was distasteful to him, and he shrank from discussing it. Here the voice again spoke to me through the tube, telling me to observe the young man, and especially his face. On this I scanned his countenance with attention, and remarked that it wore a singularly odd look,--the look of a man advanced in years and experience. But that I surmised to be a not unusual effect of severe fever.

"How old do you suppose the patient to be?" asked the interrogative voice.

"About twenty years old, I suppose," said I.

"He is a year old," rejoined the voice.

"A year! How can that be?"

"If you will not allow that he is only a year old, then you must admit that he is sixty-five, for he is certainly either one or the other."

This enigma so perplexed me, that I begged my invisible informant for a solution of the difficulty, which was at once vouchsafed in the following terms:--

"Here is the history of your patient. The youth who was the proficient and gifted student, who astonished his masters, and gave such brilliant indications of future greatness, is dead. The malaria killed him.

But he had a father, who, while alive, had loved his son as the apple of his eye, and whose whole being and desire centred in the boy.

This father died some six years ago, about the age of sixty. After his death his devotion to the youth continued, and as a "spirit,"

he followed him everywhere, never quitting his side. So entirely was he absorbed in the lad and in his career, that he made no advance in his own spiritual life, nor, indeed, was he fully aware of the fact that he had himself quitted the earthly plane. For there are souls which, having been obtuse and dull in their apprehension of spiritual things during their existence in the flesh, and having neither hopes nor aims beyond the body, are very slow to realise the fact of their dissolution, and remain, therefore, chained to the earth by earthly affections and interests, haunting the places or persons they have most affected. But the young artist was not of this order. Idealist and genius, he was already highly spiritualised and vitalised even upon earth, and when death rent the bond between him and his body, he pa.s.sed at once from the atmosphere of carnal things into a loftier sphere. But at the moment of his death, the phantom father was watching beside the son's sick-bed, and filled with agony at beholding the wreck of all the brilliant hopes he had cherished for the boy, thought only of preserving the physical life of that dear body, since the death of the outward form was still for him the death of all he had loved. He would cling to it, preserve it, re-animate it at any cost. The spirit had quitted it; it lay before him a corpse. What, then, did the father do? With a supreme effort of desire, ineffectual indeed to recall the departed ghost, but potent in its reaction upon himself, he projected his own vitality into his son's dead body, re-animated it with his own soul, and thus effected the resuscitation for which he had so ardently longed. So the body you now behold is, indeed, the son's body, but the soul which animates it is that of the father. And it is a year since this event occurred. Such is the real solution of the problem, whose natural effects the physician attributes to the result of disease. The spirit which now tenants this young man's form had no knowledge of art when he was so strangely reborn into the world, beyond the mere rudiments of drawing which he had learned while watching his son at work during the previous six years. What, therefore, seems to the physician to be a painful recovery of previous apt.i.tude, is, in fact, the imperfect endeavour of a novice entering a new and unsuitable career.

"For the father the experience is by no means an unprofitable one.

He would certainly, sooner or later, have resumed existence upon earth in the flesh, and it is as well that his return should be under the actual circ.u.mstances. The study of art upon which he has thus entered is likely to prove to him an excellent means of spiritual education. By means of it his soul may ascend as it has never yet done; while the habits of the body he now possesses, trained as it is to refined and gentle modes of life, may do much to accomplish the purgation and redemption of its new tenant.

It is far better for the father that this strange event should have occurred, than that he should have remained an earth-bound phantom, unable to realise his own position, or to rise above the affection which chained him to merely worldly things."

--Paris, Feb. 21, 1880

XVI. The Metempsychosis

I was visited last night in my sleep by one whom I presently recognised as the famous Adept and Mystic of the first century of our era, Apollonius of Tyana, called the " Pagan Christ." He was clad in a grey linen robe with a hood, like that of a monk, and had a smooth, beardless face, and seemed to be between forty and fifty years of age. He made himself known to me by asking if I had heard of his lion.* He commenced by speaking of Metempsychosis, concerning which he informed

--------- * This was a tame captive lion, in whom Apollonius is said to have recognised the soul of the Egyptian King Amasis, who had lived 500 years previously. The lion burst into tears at the recognition, and showed much misery. (Author's Note.) ----------

me as follows:--"There are two streams or currents, an upward and a downward one, by which souls are continually pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing as on a ladder. The carnivorous animals are souls undergoing penance by being imprisoned for a time in such forms on account of their misdeeds. Have you not heard the story of my lion?" I said yes, but that I did not understand it, because I thought it impossible for a human soul to suffer the degradation of returning into the body of a lower creature after once attaining humanity. At this he laughed out, and said that the real degradation was not in the penance but in the sin. "It is not by the penance, but by incurring the need of the penance, that the soul is degraded. The man who sullies his humanity by cruelty or l.u.s.t, is already degraded thereby below humanity; and the form which his soul afterwards a.s.sumes is the mere natural consequence of that degradation. He may again recover humanity, but only by means of pa.s.sing through another form than that of the carnivora. When you were told * that certain creatures were redeemable or not redeemable, the meaning was this: They who are redeemable may, on leaving their present form, return directly into humanity. Their penance is accomplished in that form, and in it, therefore, they are redeemed. But they who are not redeemable, are they whose sin has been too deep or too ingrained to suffer them to return until they have pa.s.sed through other lower forms. They are not redeemable therein, but will be on ascending again. Others, altogether vile and past redemption, sink continually lower and lower down the stream, until at length they burn out.

They shall neither be redeemed in the form they now occupy, nor in any other."

--Paris, May 11, 1880

---------- * The reference is to an instruction received by her four years previously, but not in sleep, and not from Apollonius, though from a source no less transcendental. (Ed.)

*** Remembering, on being told this dream, that "Eliphas Levi,"

in his Haute Magic, had described an interview with the phantom of Apollonius, which he had evoked, I referred to the book, and found that he also saw him with a smooth-shaven face, but wearing a shroud (linceul). (Ed.)

XVII. The Three Kings

The time was drawing towards dawn in a wild and desolate region.

And I stood with my genius at the foot of a mountain the summit of which was hidden in mist. At a few paces from me stood three persons, clad in splendid robes and wearing crowns on their heads.

Each personage carried a casket and a key: the three caskets differed from one another, but the keys were all alike. And my genius said to me, "These are the three kings of the East, and they journey hither over the river that is dried up, to go up into the mountain of Sion and rebuild the Temple of the Lord G.o.d."

Then I looked more closely at the three royalties, and I saw that the one who stood nearest to me on the left hand was a man, and the color of his skin was dark like that of an Indian. And the second was in form like a woman, and her complexion was fair: and the third had the wings of an Angel, and carried a staff of gold.

And I heard them say one to another, "Brother, what hast thou in thy casket?" And the first answered, " I am the Stonelayer, and I carry the implements of my craft; also a bundle of myrrh for thee and for me." And the king who bore the aspect of a woman, answered, "I am the Carpenter, and I bear the instruments of my craft; also a box of frankincense for thee and for me." And the Angel-king answered, "I am the Measurer, and I carry the secrets of the living G.o.d, and the rod of gold to measure your work withal." Then the first said, "Therefore let us go up into the hill of the Lord and build the walls of Jerusalem. And they turned to ascend the mountain.

But they had not taken the first step when the king, whose name was Stonelayer, said to him who was called the Carpenter, "Give me first the implements of thy craft, and the plan of thy building, that I may know after what sort thou buildest, and may fas.h.i.+on thereto my masonry." And the other asked him, "What buildest thou, brother?" And he answered, "I build the Outer Court." Then the Carpenter unlocked his casket and gave him a scroll written over in silver, and a crystal rule, and a carpenter's plane and a saw.

And the other took them and put them into his casket. Then the Carpenter said to the Stonelayer, "Brother, give me also the plan of thy building, and the tools of thy craft. For I build the Inner Place, and must needs fit my designing to thy foundation." But the other answered, "Nay, my brother, for I have promised the laborers. Build thou alone. It is enough that I know thy secrets; ask not mine of me." And the Carpenter answered, "How then shall the Temple of the Lord be builded? Are we not of three Ages, and is the temple yet perfected?" Then the Angel spoke, and said to the Stonelayer, "Fear not, brother: freely hast thou received; freely give. For except thine elder brother had been first a Stonelayer, he could not now be a Carpenter. Art thou not of Solomon, and he of Christ? Therefore he hath already handled thy tools, and is of thy craft. And I also, the Measurer, I know the work of both. But now is that time when the end cometh, and that which hath been spoken in the ear in closets, the same shall be proclaimed on the housetops." Then the first king unlocked his casket, and gave to the Carpenter a scroll written in red, and a compa.s.s and a trowel. But the Carpenter answered him: "It is enough.

I have seen, and I remember. For this is the writing King Solomon gave into my hands when I also was a Stonelayer, and when thou wert of the company of them that labor. For I also am thy Brother, and that thou knowest I know also." Then the third king, the Angel, spoke again and said, "Now is the knowledge perfected and the bond fulfilled. For neither can the Stonelayer build alone, nor the Carpenter construct apart. Therefore, until this day, is the Temple of the Lord unbuilt. But now is the time come, and Salem shall have her habitation on the Hill of the Lord."

And there came down a mist from the mountain, and out of the mist a star. And my Genius said, "Thou shalt yet see more on this wise."

But I saw then only the mist, which filled the valley, and moistened my hair and my dress; and so I awoke.

--London, April 30, 1882

---------- ** For the full comprehension of the above dream, it is necessary to be profoundly versed at once in the esoteric signification of the Scriptures and in the mysteries of Freemasonry. It was the dreamer's great regret that she neither knew, nor could know, the latter, women being excluded from initiation. (Ed.)