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
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