Part 17 (2/2)
”There are two things in the outer creation, which, according to the great Hermes, suffice for the operation of all that is wonderful and glorious--Fire and Earth. Even so, my child, there are in the human mind two powers that affect all of which our nature is capable--reason and imagination. Now mankind,--less wise in themselves than in the outer world--have cultivated, for the most part, but one of these faculties; and that the inferior and more pa.s.sive, reason. They have tilled the earth of the human heart, but suffered its fire to remain dormant, or waste itself in chance and frivolous directions. Hence the insufficiency of human knowledge. Inventions founded only on reason move within a circle from which their escape is momentary and trivial. When some few, endowed with a just instinct, have had recourse to the diviner element, imagination, thou wilt observe, that they have used it only in the service of the lighter arts, and those chiefly disconnected from reason.
Such is poetry and music, and other delicious fabrications of genius, that amuse men, soften men, but _advance_ them not. They have--with but rare exceptions--left this glorious and winged faculty utterly pa.s.sive in the service of Philosophy. There, reason alone has been admitted, and imagination hath been carefully banished, as an erratic and deceitful meteor. Now mark me, child: I, noting this our error in early youth, did resolve to see what might be effected by the culture of this renounced and maltreated element; and finding, as I proceeded in the studies that grew from this desire, by the occult yet guiding writings of the great philosophers of old, that they had forestalled me in this discovery, I resolved to learn, from their experience, by what means the imagination is best fostered, and, as it were, sublimed.
”Anxiously following their precepts--the truth of which soon appeared--I found that solitude, fast, intense reverie upon the one theme on which we desired knowledge, were the true elements and purifiers of this glorious faculty. It was by these means, and by this power, that men so far behind us in lesser lore achieved, on the mooned plains of Chaldea and by the dark waters of Egypt, their penetration into the womb of Event;--by these means, and this power, the solitaries of the Gothic time not only attained to the most intricate arcana of the stars, but to the empire of the spirits about, above, and beneath the earth; a power, indeed, disputed by the presumptuous sophists of the present time, but of which their writings yet contain ample proof. Nay, by the constant feeding, and impressing and moulding, and refining, and heightening, the imaginative power, I do conceive that even the false prophets and the evil pract.i.tioners of the blacker cabala clomb into the power seemingly inconceivable--the power of accomplis.h.i.+ng miracles and prodigies, and to appearance belie, but in truth verify, the course of nature. By this spirit within the flesh, we grow _from_ the flesh, and may see, and at length invoke, the souls of the dead, and receive warnings, and hear omens, and girdle our sleep with dreams.
”Not unto me,” continued the cabalist, in a lowlier tone, ”have been vouchsafed all these gifts; for I began the art when the first fire of youth was dim within me; and it was therefore with duller and already earth-clogged pinions that I sought to rise. Something, however, I have won as a recompense for austere abstinence and much labour; and this power over the land of dreams is at least within my command.”
”Then,” said Lucilla, in a disappointed tone, ”it is only by a long course of indulgence to the fervour of the imagination, and not by spell or charm, that one can gain a similar power?”
”Not wholly so, my daughter,” replied the mystic; ”they who do so excite, and have so raised the diviner faculty, can alone possess the certain and invariable power over dreams, even without charms and talismans; but the most dull or idle may hope to do so with just confidence (though not certainty) by help of skill, and by directing the full force of their half-roused fancy towards the person or object they wish to see reflected in the gla.s.s of Sleep.”
”And what means should the uninitiated employ?” asked Lucilla, in a tone betokening her interest.
”I will tell thee,” answered the astrologer. ”Thou must inscribe on a white parchment an image of the sun.”
”As how?” interrupted Lucilla.
”Thus!” said the astrologer, drawing from among his papers one inscribed with the figure of a man asleep on the bosom of an angel. ”This was made at the potential and appointed time, when the sun was in the Ninth of the Celestial Houses, and the Lion shook his bright mane as he ascended the blue mount. Observe, that on the figure must be written thy desire--the name of the person thou wishest to see, or the thing thou wouldst have foreshown: then having prepared and brought the mind to a faith in the effect--for without faith the imagination lies inert and lifeless--this image will be placed under the head of the invoker, and when the moon goeth through the sign which was in the Ninth House of his nativity, the Dream will glide into him, and his soul walk with the spirit of the vision.”
”Give me the image,” said Lucilla, eagerly.
The mystic hesitated--”No, Lucilla,” said he, at length; ”no, it is a dark and comfortless path, that of prescience and unearthly knowledge, save to the few that walk it with a gifted light and a fearless soul.
It is not for women or children--nay, for few amongst men: it withers up the sap of life, and makes the hair grey before its time. No, no; take the broad suns.h.i.+ne, and the brief but sweet flowers of earth; they are better for thee, my child, and for thy years than the fever and hope of the night-dream and the planetary influence.”
So saying, the astrologer replaced the image within the leaves of one of his books; and with prudence not common to him, thrust the volume into a drawer, which he locked. The fair face of Lucilla became clouded, but the ill health of her father imposed a restraint on her wild temper.
Just at that moment the door slowly opened, and the Englishman stood before the daughter and sire. They did not note him at first. The solitary servant of the sage had admitted him; he had proceeded, without ceremony, to the well-remembered apartment.
As he now stood gazing on the pair, he observed with an inward smile, how exactly their present att.i.tudes (as well as the old aspect of the scene) resembled those in which he had broken upon them on the last evening he had visited that chamber; the father bending over the old, worn, quaint, table; and the daughter seated beside him on the same low stool. The character of their countenances struck him, too, as wearing the same ominous expression as when those countenances had chilled him on that evening. For Volktman's features were impressed with the sadness that breathed from, and caused, his prohibition to his daughter; and that prohibition had given to her features an abstraction and shadow similar to the dejection they had worn on the night we recur to.
This remembered coincidence did not cheer the spirits of the young traveller; he muttered to himself; and then, as if anxious to break the silence, moved forward with a heavy step.
Volktman started at the sound; and looking up, seemed literally electrified by this sudden apparition of one whom he had so lately expressed his desire to see. His lips muttered the intruder's name, one well known to the reader (it was the name of G.o.dolphin) and then closed; but Lucilla sprang from her seat, and, clasping her hands joyously together, darted forward till she came within a foot of the unexpected visitor. There she abruptly arrested herself, blushed deeply, and stood before him humbled, agitated, but all vivid with delight.
”What, is this Lucilla?” said G.o.dolphin admiringly: ”how beautiful she is grown!” and advancing, he saluted, with a light and fraternal kiss, her girlish and damask cheek: then, without heeding her confusion, he turned to the astrologer, who by this time had a little recovered from his amaze.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE EFFECT OF YEARS AND EXPERIENCE.--THE ITALIAN CHARACTER.
G.o.dolphin now came almost daily to the astrologer's abode. He was shocked to perceive the physical alteration four years had wrought in his singular friend; and, with the warmth of a heart naturally kind, he sought to contribute to the comfort and enjoyment of a life that was evidently drawing to a close.
G.o.dolphin's company seemed to give Volktman a pleasure which nothing else could afford him. He loved to converse on the various incidents that had occurred to each since they met; and, in whatsoever G.o.dolphin communicated to him, the mystic sought to impress upon his friend's attention the fulfilment of an astrological prediction.
G.o.dolphin, though no longer impressed with a belief in the visionary's science, did not affect to combat his a.s.sertions. He had not, in his progress through life, found much to shake his habitual indolence in ordinary affairs; and it was no easy matter to provoke one of his quiet temper and self-indulging wisdom into conversational dispute. Besides, who argues with fanaticism?
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