The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HASHISH tration into a single symbol of the Despair and Terror of the Universe and of the Self. Yet on all the paths is He, ready to smite whoso falters or swerves, though he have attained almost the last height. How many have I known, like Childe Roland and his peers, who have come to that Dark Tower! One young, one brave, one pure—lost! lost! penned in the hells of matter, swept away in the whirling waters of insane vision, true victims of the hashish of the soul. What poignant agony, what moaning abjectness, what self- disgust! What vain folly (of all true hope forlorn !) to seek in drugs, in drink, in the pistol or the cord, the paradise they have forfeited by a moment’s weakness or a moment’s wavering ! This “two-handed engine at the door stands ready to smite” each one of us who has not attained to Arahatship, admission to the Great White Brotherhood. Is it not enough to make us throw away our atheism and exclaim, ‘“‘O God be merciful to me a sinner, and keep me in the way of Truth!” Nay, for those of us who know what triple silver cord of moonlight binds the red blood of our heart to the Ineffable Crown of Brilliance, who have seen what Angel stands in the moon-ray, who have known the perfume and the vision, seen the drops of dew supernal stand on the silver lamen of the forehead—for us is neither fear nor pride, but silence in the one thought of the One beyond all thought. The world of phantoms has no terror left ; we can take the blood of the Black Dragon for our Red Tincture. We under- stand the precept Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenias Occultum Lapidem; and harnessing to our trium- phal car the White Eagle and the Green Lion we voyage at 63