The Equinox (Volume I, Number III)

THE HASHEESH EATER of producing muscular weakness, yet the universal law of constantly accelerating diabolisation of visions held good as much in my case as in any others; but a thing of horror once experienced became a «ria & dei, an inalienable dower of hell; it was certain to reproduce itself in some—to God be the thanks if not in all—future visions. I had seen, for instance, in one of my states of ecstasy, a luminous spot on the firmament, a prismatic parhelion. In the midst of my delight of gazing on it, it had transferred itself mysteriously to my own heart, and there became a circle of fire, which gradually ate its way until the whole writhing organ was in a torturous blaze. That spot, seen again in an after-vision, through the memory of its former pain instantly wrought out for me the same accursed result. The number of such re- membered faggots of fuel for direful suggestion of course increased proportionally to the prolonging of the hasheesh life, until at length there was hardly a visible or tangible object, hardly a phrase which could be spoken, that had not some such infernal potency as connected with an earlier effect of suffering. Slowly thus does midnight close over the hasheesh-eater’s heaven. One by one, upon its pall thrice dyed in Acharon, do the baleful lustres appear, until he walks under a hemi- sphere flaming with demon lamps, and upon a ground paved with tiles of hell. Out of this awful domain there are but three ways. Thank God that over this alluring gateway is not written, “ Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’ entrate !” The first of these exits is insanity, the second death, the third abandonment. The first is doubtless oftenest trodden, 267