Following on from The Legends of the Fall retold, to discover Péladan’s Luciferian visions and Orphic dreams, where better to look than the original sources? An introduction such as this may point the way and summarise the ideas underpinning his work, but it cannot encapsulate the “Idea” in the same way as Péladan’s symbolic expression.
The following excerpts are the first translations of Péladan’s work into English (published in 2013), and have been selected to reflect the preceding discussion. Although they represent only a fraction of his oeuvre, they should nonetheless offer a fleeting glimpse into the forms he attempted to give to these monumentally complex questions, in his own attempt to clothe the Idea in Form.
These translations are (c) Sasha Chaitow 2013-2022 and written permission is required to use them. They were first published in The Fenris Wolf 6, (Stockholm: Edda, 2013) and on www.peladan.net. All artwork by Jean Delville.
The Legend of Incest
In the Ether, where the giant stars circle, there was a small world – insubordinate to the Sun – a small, vagrant world.
The Ancients of Days and the Watchers know the sin of the planets.
The Sun, is the heart of Satan who burns without reviving his wife, Sina, frozen in punishment; but the smallest world committed the greatest sin: incest.
Here it is.
I
It is the Deluge! The wrath of God swallows Atlantis; the waters have covered everything, only the heights[48] remain unsubmerged.
Bené Satan stands there, his sons and his daughters around him. Already the green flood is about to soak the edges of their tunics, foaming silver on the golden armlets of the women. Lightning crashes and swirls around these haughty ones whose pride did not demand grace, like a fearful executioner, holding back and not daring to strike the sublime, guilty ones.
Yet, a terrifying cyclone is about to swallow the heights.
“Maria!” Satan said.
II
“Maria!” And the waterspout exploded in the distance.
“Maria!” And the flood moved away from the rock.
“Maria!” The thunder ceased baying.
“Maria!” The Ocean, immobile under the clearing sky.
After this fourfold invocation, he said: “Lord, I repent for my father’s sin; he was wicked to dare deny your Word and to attempt for himself that which only you can do; I humble myself before you, Lord, to save my family”.
And the son of Satan bent his beautiful knees: “Oh, you, who are conceived without sin, who conceived God, my forehead, which I have never bowed, salutes you! Future mother of the Saviour, save Bené Satan and his sons, who bow down to you seven thousand years before your birth. Avé, Maria!”
Then Michael appeared in dazzling glory:
“Your homage to the Virgin saves you, immensely guilty one, and the Most-High wishes to commute your damnation to exile on a vagrant world.”
And all of the Bené Satan were borne up by clouds; with feet of fire and revived hearts they landed on the wild crest of the small, vagrant world.
III
The son of the great, fallen one, orbited the planet and soon brought it to order. Then he rested; a child awoke:
“Father, there are earthlings there, along with us saved ones”.
“How hasty they are!”
As he slept again, a girl came to him:
“Father, I am moved, the earthlings are begging, they are servitors, slaves, and God has mixed them with us, he has had his will; this irritated him, this was wise, oh father!”
“That they may thus be supported.” And Satan slept with this merciful thought; but he dreamt an atrocious vision, that his daughters coupled with the Kalibans, birthed bastards, and that his lustful sons would scour the earthly lands for sensuality; and his race of archangels would be cross-bred with brutes.
He gave such a cry of wrath and rage that returned appalling echoes from the sky. Awaking, his children ran to him.
“Go back to sleep, a dream haunted me, a detestable dream; he said faintly. Children, I shall watch over you; sleep is bad for my eagle eyes, but you must sleep in peace!”
IV
Night fell. Satan the dreamer strode majestically across the fields and the shores. Suddenly, he saw his favourite daughter Izél, teasing some oaf.
He snatched up a sapling and with a single blow felled the audacious youth.
Bené Satan’s daughter wept: “He spoke to me of love, this was sweetness, in killing him you have struck your daughter.”
Satan was silent, and continued on his way.
In the shelter under a rock, his son Rouna was stealing kisses at the breast of a female Kaliban.
Faced with his father’s wrath, the rebellious lover cried:
“Do you not know the past, and how since you fell from the sky you are a son, as am I, of a simple mortal, greedy for kisses, spasms, and giddiness? When you conceived me, it was in the nude, on the perfumed bed of Ereck. Why do you reproach others for your sin?”
Bené Satan was silent, and continued on his way. That night, he watched his race sleep. The adolescents writhed on their beds of ferns, fondling phantoms, and the virgins kissed their own flesh. The scent of love grew, and the father wept.
V
On the mountain he waited for dawn, and with the first ray of light he incanted:
“Michael!”
And the archangel appeared.
“Oh, you who were my brother and whose intellect has not been obscured, counsel me. My admirable daughters are gasping with love and my sons resemble furious bulls.
They may not dare join their flames in incest, and love will mix the blood of the Kalibans with my blood! This is sacrilege!”
“It is God’s design! Bené Satan! Your father wanted to become the Messiah, his demon’s heart was no less than the heart of a prince; he had beauty, genius: but charity was lacking and everything was confounded. God left him his glory when punishing his crime: the soul of the false Jesus is the fuel of the sun, resplendent over the world, in his realisation of his Word and the Laws.
For you, Bené Satan, and for your race, I know only one solution: That your sons and your daughters must live out their human lives without love, without kisses, your hybrid race must not reproduce, and so you will be received into the second atmosphere, still punished, but less humiliated.”
“You are joking Michael, the daimonic life is that of love.”
“All right then! Lower your pride, allow the Kalibans to approach your daughters and let the women of the earth conceive with your sons. Know that the good God, whose enviable role crushed the shoulders of the great, fallen one, wills that through the force of love, the brute will be elevated and that with understanding focused on the idiot, genius will penetrate their ignorance. Show solidarity forever, do the works of Christ, be faithful to the one who anticipates divine mercy. Come on! Bené Satan, your pride hears this beneficial advice dictated by the bonds of our common essence.
“Angel,” the rebel said, “I am outraged by both these tortures, whether to sterilise my race or to prostitute it to mortals, and to mix the star that once fell from the red firmament, with vile and filthy dust, and you can tell God that Satan does not want to do either.”
“Take care, angry spirit, there are no more words that can save you anew, only the name of the Madonna was able to change your destiny, and that only once.
Are the Arcana not known to you? Science alone suffices to confirm to you that no humanity can live in incest, and that God has willed it that the one will redeem the other, and that the great will extend their bounty to the small.”
Bené Satan crossed his arms across his chest:
“Then this is our last meeting, Michael, speak my damnation.”
“You will be reunited, mind and soul, with your damned father on the Sun, and your offspring will be thrown to earth, they will even forget the name and will of Satan. As they have chosen the path of incest, they will know no love except between themselves, and they will seek out their own blood.”
“How marvellous, so the word of God follows the Word of Satan.”
Michael exorcised the blasphemy by the sign of the cross:
“Poor, pitiful, arrogant Satan, you speak like a man; have you lost all celestial knowledge? As soon as this world, lost through your sin, rejects your offspring thrown on the earthly shores, they will find misfortune without respite. Scattered among a hostile human race, in a hundred years no brother will be able to find his sister: and your daughters will be trampled by the brutes, and your sons will forget themselves in red and heavy embraces; mixing your blood with earthly blood, it will be salvation… What should I say to God?”
“You can tell God that Satan does not want this.”
Bené Satan descended to the foot of the mountain, all his children were anxious, waiting, knowing very well that he brought an inescapable verdict, the terrible word he had demanded from the skies. He took the hands of the virgins.
“Oh my sons! Here are your wives.”
And he put them in the hands of their brothers.
“Oh my daughters” Here are your husbands.”
And, sacrilegiously, he blessed the sin that would conserve his race.
VI
Never had flesh burned so hot since the night of Ereck, when the two hundred celestials fell into mortal ecstasy that incestuous midnight.
The rustling of bodies sounded like wheat bending in the wind, and the groans of love emerging from their chests drowned out the clamour of the sea.
Sinister lights illuminated the seas, dancing on the edges of the rocks; then the flames appeared and the ground split open under the guilty palpitations.
So Satan, for one last time, blessed the mad incest. Tirelessly, furiously, conserving his race; this world cracked, scattering islands, demons, and humans, into the air.
In the ether, where the giant stars circle, there is a small world – insubordinate to the sun – a small, vagrant world.
The Ancients of days and the Watchers know the sin of the planets.
The Sun is the heart of Satan that burns without reviving his wife, Sina, frozen in punishment, but the smallest world committed the greatest sin: incest!
Here it is!
And since that time, with unearthly equality, love has mixed the poet with the chisel and the queen with the valet. The Oelohites, glorious sons of Satan, did not know how to close their hearts; hungry for love, thirsty for tenderness they flocked to the vulgar ones, and from puberty to the pale moment when death came to deliver them, the greatest hearts were taken into the coarsest hands, like fine birds in the hands of peasants.
Thus God wished the word of the elder insubordinate and arrogant one to follow the whole race: and Socrates, and Dürer and The Great Dante himself, damned to never receive sacrament, fornicated below them.
Bené Satan said to God: “I do not want this,” and his sons obeyed the will of a fool, his daughters the desires of a cad.
Lamentable sin, a more lamentable condemnation that imprisoned the great ones in the blackest of vessels, cloaked with indignity.
But there were Orphic deniers of base pleasures, who, fleeing from the Maenads, knew how to live for a name and die for a dream: Eurydice.
There are patient hearts that persist and search, conscious of their fate, the only joyful being.
Hail to those haughty ones who, disdainful, look differently upon the dancing below them.
Hail to the obstinate ones who do not drink to intoxication except from cups stamped with the insignia of their rank.
Hail to the watchers, who know the arcana and respect the paths of ideals; these are the Oelohites, the daimons of light, who, for God’s work, militant and faithful, prefer to be sterile rather than fertilized by evil.
Kneel on the earth before the decrees of the Most-High, and Glory to the aspirants of sublime incest!
II
THE OELOHITE RECONNAISSANCE
Sitting nobly on the divan amongst magnificent, creased silks, Istar held the incestuous pages of the novelist loosely in her hand; she wore a white cloth dress, and around her neck the leather necklace of Rabbi Ben Isdubar: and this simplicity, this colour worn by an elegant woman who had been so criticised for her love of bright colours, symbolised a state of mind fit for a bride.
Capimont would come to say that he had married her only to keep her for Nergal, and let them beatify themselves at the Gloriettes, this had gladdened, though not greatly surprised this woman, whose virgin heart beat as it had when she was twenty.
The Oriental woman believed in destiny, in the faith which Isocrates and Racine showed us in Helen and Iphigenia. Lucrezia Borgia, the princess defiled by Victor Hugo, offers a modern example of these great ones, resigned to historical life, who accept misfortune or fault with such royal disdain. Wicked though this conception was, she had lived with extraordinary souls since Sophocles, and we rediscover her today in these words of a very noble woman: “I was too tired to resist, and I found it less unpleasant to give in than to defend myself. Providence should not put us in these situations; it responds!”
Istar believed Nergal’s words: that he could lie and hide ordinary desire behind brotherly hypocrisy, but her spirit didn’t believe it for a minute.
Her state of mind as she waited was almost unspeakable, neither fearful of her duty, nor shaking her illusion. The Oriental fatalist had received this word of love like the host that was not of flesh. She did not reproach herself for trembling during the Brahms performance. The force of attraction that had crushed her in that moment, seemed to her like the force of Necessity would seem to a pagan. Her thought, if she had believed herself guilty, would have accused the gods, like a heroine of Euripides, or Malin in the manner of an attempted medievalist. Guilty? Certainly the word was stupefying and revolting; she had said to M. Capimont: “I would enjoy a fraternal afternoon with Nergal”. What she would hear and what she would reply she had said and heard before the universe itself. Only one sensation embarrassed her, that of being suddenly happy; and the joy made her resplendent like a blooming flower. Her skin, when she felt repulsion and humour, went grey, bristling slightly with chicken-bumps: the open heart, on the contrary, cleared the skin, smoothened it as it turned pale.
There is something of the vegetable nature in women, flourishes and torpors more beautiful to contemplate than the most marvellous sights. The dawn of the heart reflected in the eyes, the morning coquetries of the hand, full daylight ending in agitated throats, and those gentle twilight things, poses that unfurl, those dead and trailing arms like abandoned scarves.
Nergal had not yet been dazzled by these splendid mirages; Did Istar herself know it?
Childishly, as if she had already been waiting too long, she said: “We are seeking something that could be unpleasant, and the lover will find nothing. The beloved is never seen except through his love, and that prism recolours hell to look like heaven. To love is to still play with dolls, and just as the rich or poor child sees in the toy whatever they hold most precious, the soul in love clothes his beloved with all the splendours of his own dreams.
Had he been clairvoyant, Nergal would have been able to hold up against this examination, provided that bizarreness was admissible. To eyes accustomed to general respectability, he seemed a bit of an actor. As soon as he resembled those who resembled nothing more, his expressiveness imaginatively evoked a memory of the beautiful past; the world condemned him with a single adjective: “theatrical”, or summarised all the drama in a word: “eighteen-thirty”. To his critics Nergal appeared to have just emerged from the Pimodan hotel; his antique elegance and his unusual manner were always distracting, but unexpected and ornate, and despite his flexible humour, he tired quickly of the constant immediacy of people used to daily routines. Almost grandiose, flexible and with a shifting allure, earlier he had stiffened with inner thoughts, earlier he was expansive with an almost nervous tenderness, his countenance was inconstant, this glorious habit of always looking to himself like a Mérodack; a passion almost always sealed his words and his gestures, though less frequently, signifying an anxious, but haughty leniency.
Without his genius, he would be no more than a sentimental adventurer, and if a crown were to land on his head he would be less embarrassed than surprised; all major issues seemed simple and easy to him, but the details of life, the pebble that could overturn the chariot, he never saw, in this he was incomplete, ignorant or wanting to ignore defiance, opening his soul without care of treachery, and like Istar, he was Chaldean, going through life without joy; like a sacred cow, following the furrow marked with clogs, furious at this path, with a little white rage at having lost the great eagle’s wings.
He opened the door without knocking; Istar was resting in her pose of happy reverie, she stretched out her hand to Nergal; he, in a blue velvet jacket, quite resembled the character of Musset, the poet of Nights, who he played in costume that was half ordinary and half poetic. He bent over her extended hand and touched his lips. The skin returned the kiss.
In a voice veiled with emotion:
“This first hand-kiss will be the last, my brother.”
The novelist made a gesture in protest:
“The whole soul is yours.”
And as Nergal’s face grew sad:
“We no longer understand each other Nergal! When the sister is married, there is no more incest, there is adultery; and I don’t know any half-measures. It is, I tell you, the last hand-kiss.”
Nergal bowed, did not object, and took a low seat by Istar’s feet.
They looked at each other. For how long? Through which eyes?
With effort, shaking from this sweet magnetism:
“The… vertigo of Brahms, must be the last.”
In fact, the silent contemplation of each other had intoxicated them too much, and they talked so as not to hear their thoughts, putting out the sound of their heart with the sound of words. They were not, however, in vain.
“Since the greeting at Bellecour square,” began Istar, “I have nourished black defiance expressed as bitterness against you: however in these meetings so palely expressed where so little of my heart springs from my lips, faith has come to me. I now believe; I open a soul to you where almost nothing rebels. All that I am, I give to you, Nergal.”
“The most noble words that a being can say to another being: “To you, blindly.”
“Your light has forced the eyes of my prudence to shut. Your nobility has revealed itself to me, so evident, so solicitous, that I want to offer you an act of faith.
“Higher than sex, much beyond desire, there resides a religious sentimentality, we are two exemplars of it.
“Only you have seen, proclaimed my supernatural nature.
“Thus only you deserve me. Life has confronted us to late to conflate our two existences; we each respect each other’s destiny and carry it like a Eucharist, a balm and an aegis, you, my heart, I, am yours.”
A profound emotion muted the young man’s voice.
“Oh, my dear one, sad, but beautiful and faithful, always be the clearest mirror in which to see yourself. This is not Nergal, stronger than love, stronger than the life that you love; no more someone who descends to you, this is a prideful one who discovers that you are as high as him, and who loves his blood in your veins.
“Your hands are the most worthy, the most noble of this plaintive confession, there I place my dream.”
“It would be better,” she continued, “to feel the pain of betrayal and deception, than to feel the remorse for not having recognised the only being according to my heart.”
Both of them reached out their hands, and in another movement, pulled them back. The attraction to each other was so great that the slightest contact would have been a luxury.
“Oh! The contract granted by our hearts,” Nergal cried, “grander than that of kings, will make us live a masterpiece of sentiment above those of the spirit.”
“To cast without failure, that amphibian that ceaselessly spins and falls, is that not the work closest to the divine?!
“Love so great is nothing but an eagle, and this sky-leaper feeds itself in a vile way; our androgyny will anticipate the skies.”
“Grand exiles of the ether, we do not demand this false happiness from life, made of the vulgarity and vertigo that makes barbarians rejoice; our royalty will be our suffering desire. Let us place our hearts side by side, suffering with two souls…”
“My sister, whom obscure disasters have long removed from my tenderness, I have found you again, alas, married, and a mother. Let us accept what life has poorly done, it is for the Oelohites to carefully accomplish their duty to mortals. Only the free have the right to sacrifice themselves…
“On the sea of life, each one is the harbour of the other…
“Oh! All that I have given of my heart to the tiny ones in need of love, I regret; and yet, I have not wronged you, even in ignoring you.
“Spasms, words, beyond the gravity of the sun, elbow upon elbow in the indefinite climb that leaves time behind, always sad and incomplete, to extend into eternity.”
“Yes,” Istar cried, “with you I tremble higher than in fiction.”
“Higher than in fiction you say; so there is yet a fair Providence. My artist’s dream, you have realised it.
“Hail, Diotima, seraphic Jioconda! It is your heart that pushes mine and raises it…
“I believe in you, Istar, like in the sun…”
And he stood up, eager and handsome like an ancient incanter.
She closed her eyes, clenched the fabrics in her hands; her beating throat the only answer.
“You are silent, Istar; by what magic does your silence prevail in every word and how can I see your soul living the most intense marvels in your stillness? I am assisting, a distraught spectator, in this divine comede that is playing itself out in you for me alone. Oh the delicacy of your contemplation!”
He continued:
“The sentiment that silences me is royal and worthy of its object, since it is substantiated by this sight, recovered. You see, this is a thousand times more gentle to have, than anything else.
“This hold that you unconsciously have over me, is greater than sexual attraction, goddess, and not by perfections, goddess with the force of humanity. By my comparative analysis as a savant and bon viveur, you do so well alone that I would like to inspire in you the religion of yourself.
“Be proud, you are the most womanly of women. Oh! How proud I am of my sister…
“Devote yourself, soul and spirit, like you do your body. I would have you so infatuated that your foot would believe itself profaned were it to touch the ground.
“If your ascent distances you from me, it doesn’t matter: I will have exalted you!
“Let me be the one to climb the path of the stars; when you are blasphemed by life and unknown to the world, look you to Nergal to find your pride again.
“Noble falcon, rest a moment on my hand, before flying for our planetary sisters.
“Good companion of the ideal path, I offer my heart for you to try your wings: I want you great, greater than mine.
“Climb, climb, climb, even climb on me!”
Istar stood up in turn, and as she did so she stood almost directly opposite Nergal. Interrupting his eruption of tenderness, she turned towards a Madonna, whose height overshadowed the other statuettes.
“Holy Virgin! My spirit, my soul, and my body resonate with him! I belong to him, I am his into eternity!”
“Into eternity,” the young man repeated. “Sublime words! That she may rise to the ears of the angels, who will help me to accomplish it in us both.”
“I have just seen a reflection of God and you are no longer yourself, but you are a flame, and immortal; Love, like a Holy Spirit, has descended onto the beauty of your body and made it divine. Love has descended into the beauty of your heart to sublimate it.”
After a palpable silence, Istar said:
“Oh! The splendour that is possible in our serene radiance, climbing into the blue, and my repose in joy.
“Yesterday I contemplated the dull movement of the Rhone, similar to the vain flow of human existence.
“A reddish glow, alone in the shadow of the river, and I saluted it in your name. Far away, some lamp scintillated, like my thoughts about the vanity of life radiating towards you.”
“Oh, be so!” Nergal cried. “A driver of the nave that carries you, I will watch, gloriously, instead of sleeping, sadly on my deck, an Argonaut without faith.
“The flood of ages and of peoples have brought us to each other, you, great Istar, and I am the pontiff of hearts.
That this same flood, in its reflux, brought us together – before God it is salvation – before life, grandeur.
Oh, give me your hand for immortality.”
“I believe in you Nergal, and you work miracles upon me. Only! Oh my brother, I am climbing thoughtlessly onto the pedestal that you are offering me: it would be terrible to fall from it.”
“In time, perhaps you will discover pettiness in me. I let myself be called Daughter of Gods, what will happen if I style myself Daughter of Eve? With what violence then, destroying the work of your hands, will you trample the poor idol with feet of clay, but a heart of flesh….
“This fear prevents me from abandoning my heart to the gentle seductions of your words…”
“I’ll never be harsh with you, Istar, you will always find me as it pleases you for me to be, and without ever remembering the clouds that you will dissipate, you who have gathered them.
“Only, my perpetual gentleness is not the noble part that you deserve: remember that I have elevated you supremely within my spirit; do not descend from that throne; the brother cannot be lost, but the admirer… I will always extend the same hand to you , but if I do not see you with the same eyes, it would be sad for your glory and for my heart.”
“If you always see me with your heart I will never deceive you Nergal; there, everything is still pure and simultaneously, ablaze. For my part, let me doubt you a little, and ask whether you will keep your heart for Istar – beyond the other women whom I foresee and whom I accept; since I am no more than the sister: is a constant heart sufficient to secure yours?”
Nergal cried out again:
“There is only one constant intoxication in life, that is the security in the possession of another; an absolute security that nothing can deny… I have been searching for this like an alchemist seeks perfection.”
“My work can bring pleasure to others; but to me, it is better to be able to say: “by my side, or at the end of the world, there is someone who only hears the Mass of my thoughts, for whom my indifference would be a bolt of lightning, who at my signal would respond to my desire and in dying would regret losing nothing in the world but me.”
“Having met me, is this the projection you have made, my brother? But what bitterness our adventure holds: I have given my life to see you; and yet I am frightened of what we are both going to suffer. One can resign oneself to misfortune when happiness is out of sight; but to touch it, and yet not take it…”
“The myrrh and the laurel are bitter: love and glory are spasms, but the spasm is the beginning of ascent. Wear high and proud this closed crown that I have given you, an invisible helmet of a worldly Clorinde.
Grand words from a brother such as I to a sister such as you:
I am your living conscience, sometimes troubled, always sincere; and I do not consider events, but your soul! May your pride, comforted by my solicitude, increase, oh princess!”
“Why do you call me princess?”
“Because you are my sister; and you belong to a race whose breastbone covers a heart worthy of a crown.”
“Your legend of incest speaks the truth.”
“The sons of Prospero and Ariel are searching for each other among the swarm of Bené-Caliban.
“Ah! You strike me with such admiration – Nergal; a man whose love can smooth over such weaknesses.
… Would you bless me…”
“I bless you, my sister, with a benediction more august than that of any priest, because my hand may shake, but it holds firm in its action.”
Collecting herself briefly, she lay down, and in a deep voice, intoned:
“Children of the Orient, let us exchange an eternal pledge of faith. Give me the jewel of fire that shines at your neck, and take this leather necklace, a relic of my nourishing father, Rabbi Ben Isdubar, who brought me in his mantle from the far reaches of Bactria.”
She unfastened it and handed it to him with a solemnity that Nergal imitated in presenting her with the pentagram from around his neck.
“King Solomon made the same gift to the queen of Sheba. It is the sign of the spirit that rules over the four elements, the most powerful of all symbols after that of the cross.”
They stopped looking at each other to examine the items: he, the leather necklace; she, the star of fire with five diamond points.
Suddenly Nergal stood up.
“Sister, did you know that there is writing on this?”
“Alas!” she said, “my misfortune. There is…”
“It is a little naïve of me to ask you… Who can decode this? Fewer than twenty living people.”
“M. Capimont is the twenty-first.”
“Him? Don’t make fun… these are hieroglyphs of the Hebrew zodiac with numerical points; no linguist has heard of them. If M. Capimont can read this – he would be a mage!”
“If he hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t be married to him: Rabbi Ben Isdubar made me swear that only the Oedipus who could solve this enigma would become my husband.”
“Infamy” cried Nergal, shaking the necklace, “it is a combination of XIII and the sephiroth. Do not tell me Capimont’s version. Here is mine;” and collecting himself, he spoke in a deep voice. Istar gazed at him, her whole body leaning forward, unspeakably anxious.
“Here,” he said, “and without errors, the inscription on the necklace:
I am Kether, the admirable Tiphareth in Malkuth. Geburah guards me: no other Netzach than Hod before me, no other Hod than Yesod: Chokmah destines me to the supreme Chesed of Binah – Ischtar, Sara de Sour, I.”
He then translated the sephiroth:
“I am the Crown. For I am the Beauty of Forms.
The Hierarchy defends me; one cannot triumph over me except through the Spirit.
I obey none except the Mage of the supreme Arcade.
Eternal wisdom has destined me to console Genius.
I, Istar, queen of Heaven.”
Such a stupor came over the unfortunate woman that Nergal was frightened. Haggard, passing her hands over her forehead, as if to part the veils obscuring her understanding.
“Good God, Istar, what a strange illness! Are you in pain?”
“No… Listen to me, my brother,… do as I say.” Reaching out her hand:
“There, at that desk, write down what you have read on the necklace… Do not interrogate me… Do not look at me… Ah! Just this once, let me be despotic; I must.”
Nergal sat at the ebony desk.
“Would you like me to restore the hieroglyphs to modern Hebrew?”
“Yes, yes, that’s it: the version on the side, the two versions … that you read to me.”
With one hand, she pressed her forehead, with the other, she pressed on her heart, for the long moment that the writing lasted, because Nergal, conscious that he was writing out a death warrant, took care despite his fervour.
“I have obeyed you,” he said finally, and with one knee on the ground, presented it to her.
She took it with one hand, crumpling it almost brutally as she touched it, and raised him to his feet. Fatefully, unconsciously, she walked towards the red curtain, and then stopped, lost in thought. Nergal, almost frightened, followed her every move. The most foolish ideas were crossing his mind. M. Capimont, a liar, for love! Istar had believed that she was fulfilling her destiny by accepting him as a husband!
The translation of a few signs had reversed the whole lives of four people. If he had foreseen the frightful effect of this revelation, he would have swallowed the truth rather than speak it.
In the interconnections of his impressions, the man of letters, used to seeing things in literary terms, as an actor, through his pain, he perceived more effects, he was still dizzy from the ornate magnitude that the adventure hid; he could perceive the lyricism in these moments, while the living admired this beautiful chapter of life.
With a regal gesture Istar pulled aside the red curtain. From the lock she took a small golden key, which she placed in her corsage with the version of the necklace. Then, she turned to her brother, with a voice soft with tenderness and pain; with a voice so loving that nothing could withstand it; with a voice that says to the beloved a supreme: “come”:
She murmured:
“Go, Nergal, my brother, my master, my king. Go…”
He obeyed; and, hardly had the door shut behind him, than Mme Capimont, with determination, stifled a cry and fell fainting on the red settee, from where nobody in the world could ever raise her.
III
The Pangs of Memory
“If virtue consists in resistance, women are greater than us,” and so said the author of Don Juanisme, expressing the moral code for women.
From boarding school where spontaneity is reprimanded, to the salon where again, games of wordplay and double meanings are forbidden to her, the modern woman obeys negative commandments.
To wait, to refuse, to retreat and to be silent, there is the entire expected behaviour: and society which is more selfish than anyone, because it is made of general selfishness, overwrites the individualism of souls as if with a State decree.
Here is an instructive example to serve as the proof of universal stupidity; scientific progress has not made the walls oscillate. Opinion, in our time, where the nervous system has begun to be understood a little more, sees nothing stupid in condemning two beings to the same bed for their whole lives, even when they have had no other physical contact beyond hands touching through gloves.
“My son is an honest man,” says the serene mother as she hears her daughter, tomorrow a woman, entering the house.
There are indeed good moral qualities to be found in palpation; it is not with righteousness or honour that one touches; but with skin, and where there is repulsion, there is suffering.
Do women have a superior nature? Then, they are martyrs.
Now this was a martyrdom Istar had lived through: everything that is not consensual turns to rape, and Capimont, despite his immense love, produced in her a frightful nausea. Imagine a rose condemned to the slime of the most adoring of slugs; instead of softening the horror, the enthusiasm in this matter aggravates anything. Very few men are voluptuously attractive, and the damage is not lessened if palpation is not preceded and followed by caresses. Anyone who has heard women’s confessions knows all too well that total possession that is stripped of preliminaries and contexts is mostly that that frightens them the least.[49] The torture of Istar was atrociously complicated by Capimont’s naïve good faith, always hoping to animate the statue, and to overwhelm her with his grabbing caresses of the Beloved, of an infernal disgust sustained by unattractiveness.
She should have denied him her lips on a nervous pretext, then refused his own: she underwent repulsive contacts almost twenty years ago, and suddenly a kiss on her hand almost caused her convulsions.
He brought her to a cataclysmic point: there was a kind of pleasure, and the being that contained this intoxication, she had the courage to depart from her flesh that had suffered enough.
Only on that evening did she not pray; her pride whispered that with this renouncement she adorned the earth: for a few hours she experienced this intoxication of the victory over herself, the highest one of all because you confront the face of God himself.
Before going to sleep she upended all the shelves, searching for a old issue of the Revue where Nergal’s name had appeared to her for the first time. When her husband came in with a visible desire to enjoy her:
“I am tired, dearest,” she said, “let me finish my reading and rest.”
Leaning over to kiss her goodnight, Capimont read the title: Marche sentimentale.
IV
Sentimental Walk
On a lost path where the mandrakes sing, I wanted to spend the night – their naked feet disturbed the ferns – unreal beings!
They gave their name in a plaintive voice:
“Oh Sina!”
“Cyllene, hé!”
“Vo, Kypris!”
“Orphéa, hé!”
And the four phantoms often turned their heads towards a young black man following in prayer.
Sina was dressed in a long ray of moonlight, leaving a trail of silver in her wake, nonchalant and her hands full of swooning flowers.
Fevered Cyllene had a forehead pleated by an artist in search of work, and her hands waved spectral paintbrushes.
Skipping Kypris, flirting with the night, gifting swarms of glances and smiles.
Orphéa, her blonde mane a golden helmet, gazed at a brilliant, fixed point in the sky: immortal songs spinning on her lips.
Sina hummed:
“Floating and creeping ivy drags on bare soil, wandering, disoriented sweetheart, unquiet vagabond seeking rest, my soul is searching for a great soul to give itself to; my slender waist, a strong arm to hold me; my changing eyes, loyal eyes to admire.
So where is the sunlight of love hiding? Who will warn me with intimate words and kiss my sulky lips.
Appear to me, oh my Eros! Before my long wait, appear, master! Before my prostated tenderness.
Bring your shoulder to my tired head, wrap your arms around my weakened waist that I may finally sleep, a happy rest on your noble and fiery breast where sentiment, once born, flowers always the same, and always pure.
My sisters, after your efforts, do you see a dawning, you who march for art, for glory and for the kiss?
My heart, for me, alas, hopes for nothing.
“Cyllene, hé – Vo Kypris! – Orphéa, hé!”
Cyllene hastily spat out her words:
“I want! I want! I want!
When I called for tender love, I was deceived every time, and my brothers who could have cherished me are far away.
I will not weaken; the basilisk of my pride hisses and watches, around my kidneys decorated with the girdle of Venus. Nobody was worthy enough to remove my girdle, and I buried a dagger in my throat, renouncing the destiny of women, Hermes, my father, gave me hermaphroditic tendencies and the divine Helios was favourable.”
Transformed into an artist, the beloved severed herself from kisses, and walked with a road of virility and immortality with a proud step.
Voluntarily sterile, I increased my desire for chimeras. Fecund of spirit and with a closed lap, I applied Plato’s serene words, a mystical androgyne enamoured of beautiful work.
Following my lead, cease your vain tears, Work my sisters, because your heart will not sense anything coming, alas.
Oh Sina! – Vo Kypris! – Orphéa, hé!”
Kypris murmured, cooing:
“Adonis is not dead; the kiss of his breath reaches me on the breezes, and at the spring a little of his reflection trembles; he passes by there, I tell you, we will join him before the opaline dawn.
My moaning languor that does not want to heal cherishes the untiring hope, dreaming of the tardy Beloved who with one embrace will erase even the memory of waiting.
My duty with each step is to adorn the earth with a soft beat of the soul.
I am the living ideal of the forms that you are seeking, Cyllene, and my noble patience, sister to your own, Sina, does not brood on the fever of the Orphics.
To wait for love, oh sisters! I look at myself and my heart smiles with my charms, if no-one else is to enjoy them.
Hé! Sina! – Cyllene, hé! – Orphéa, hé!
Orphéa sang, ecstatically:
“Glory, oh Cyllene, is the balm that heals the breathless wounds of love.
“Yes, glory, oh Sina, is a radiance which dissolves the shade of isolation forever, and which on the illuminated front, the Hero’s lamp, will bring us to Leandre.
“Glory, oh Kypris! Is a gem that adorns beauty itself. If our too haughty hearts have not been able to find a master, let us make a potent destiny for ourselves.
Love eludes us; we follow enthusiasm, if we have not been able to admire a mortal, let us make ourselves admirable and return to God our hearts that have been deceived on earth.”
Under the laurels, one day perhaps an unknown joy waited for the androgynes, under the myrtles, Kypris, and Sina, under the willows.
“My sisters, have you felt anything coming?
Oh Sina! – Cyllene, hé! – O Kypris?”
The apparitions marched towards the dawn; and when the cock crowed I saw them stopped in a clearing where the paths formed a cross.
“We should go our separate ways, my sisters,” said the young black man.
“Adar! We are thirsty for love.”
“Adar! We are hungry for mystery.”
“Adar! We are afraid of the day.”
“Adar! We are cold of heart.”
“Weep, for comfort.”
The black youth struck the eyes of the travellers: their tears fell heavy and glistening. Then he raised the vase of lead as a chalice, and, a miracle! Vermillion blood, royal blood bubbled to the suddenly sparkling edges.
Soon the four sisters knelt as Adar spoke in a solemn voice; he seemed like a chaplain performing Mass.
“Thus you, Clement father, through your son, our God, we entreat you to bless this bitter sacrifice, a devotion of humility.
Instead of the luciferian diamond, our chalice is of base lead, and I, Bené Satan, instead of solar vestments, wear the funeral habit of fatalism. Denied holy communion forever, our obstinacy maintains our audacity, similar to the excommunicated who must pray before the portals of churches.
We want to take communion, and under the only species allowed in our damnation; my Word for the host, for wine the tears of these women, queens of hell, demon angels who carry for life the regret of peaceful skies.
The pain of my thoughts mixes with these tears that we drink for salvation.
Purification of the man who appeases the wrath of the Father.
Purification of the androgyne who appeases the wrath of the Son.
Purification for the demon who appeases the wrath of the Holy Spirit.
Lord, I am unworthy to drink your precious blood, here I heal the lesions of sin with the water of pain.
He leant the chalice four times towards attentive lips, saying:
“Tears of the passions, wash us for eternal life.”
Having blessed the roads four times, Adar kissed each forehead. Sighing, the sisters lingered, hand in hand.
“Adar, walk with us; with the four of us.”
But the young black man shook his head sadly.
“If you are together, you will not suffer, and I, a lost Saturnian, am condemned to solitude.”
“O Sina! – Cyllene, hé! – Vo Kypris! – Orphéa hé!”
In the clearing all was silent after that, and when the last star died in the opaline sky, the spectres disappeared.
I constantly see them, in spirit, those four phantoms passing, turning their tired heads towards a young black man who follows them in prayer.
Long have I travelled, a nocturnal pilgrim, the most deserted trails, my eye has seen the moon dissolve, but on the calm autumn nights, I can hear a faint echo.
“O Sina! – Kyllene, hé! – Vo Kypris! – Orphéa hé!”
Are those the damned ones, or is it the purgatory of penitent souls? But when I saw them, didn’t I cross myself?
These seekers of love, Sina the languorous one, Cyllene demanding an expression of Art; Kypris, the sad turtledove; and the one from Cithaeron with feverish accents, they seemed to me, when I dreamed of them, like august demons, followed by a melancholy almoner and fatalist priest.
Sina wore a long ray of moonlight, leaving a trail of silver in her wake, nonchalant and her hands full of swooning flowers.
Fevered Cyllene had a forehead pleated by an artist in search of work, and her hands waved spectral paintbrushes.
Skipping Kypris, flirting with the night, gifting swarms of glances and smiles.
Orphéa, her blonde mane a golden helmet, gazed at a brilliant, fixed point in the sky: immortal songs spinning on her lips.
On a lost pathway where the mandrakes sing, I wanted to spend the night – their naked feet disturbed the ferns – unreal beings!
They gave their names in a plaintive voice:
“Oh Sina!”
“Cyllene, hé!”
“Vo, Kypris!”
“Orphéa, hé!”
To the Devil
By the lowest of names they have inflicted on you: Satan, Lucifer, – Demon, Devil, I salute you with my pity. How art thou fallen, Lucifer? Regardless of your crime, it is not of those that man can judge. Regardless of your damnation, it is not something that man can conceive. Whatever you have become by your sin, you were the most perfect of created spirits: and that is enough for me, respecting your ancient brilliance, to approach you with compassion.
Having suffered more insult in my petty sphere than anyone else of this century, I have sometimes dreamed of clearing the mountain of calumny that humanity has heaped on your name; and three lines from the Areopagite have sufficed to render your figure guilty, moving me to pity without frightening me.
In plain terms, we send to the devil what bores us; in sacred terms, alas! We attribute to the Demon all of human malice.
Oh! Why have you paid, through the centuries, the sad price of unworthy humanity? It has been said that you push the assassin’s hand: do you also push armies? It has been said that you pour all poisons: so you inspire Gréard[50] and all the teachers of atheism.
Ah! Poor Lucifer, man has attributed to you, through his villainy, all his stupidity.
It is you who speaks through tables, it is you who commands all the crooks of spiritism. Father Ventura[51] has said that no magnetist can work without you,[52] and the abbé Le Canu[53] has written your history, and that of the war that you have made against God (sic) and man.
So obscured are you in your principality of spirits, that you have managed to deceive yourself and lose yourself, but you have not deceived yourself about your Creator. The rage of the insult, in touching you, goes so far as to blaspheme against God.
When Christianity was founded on pagan ruins, there was such a habit of pantheist thought, and a conception of spiritomorphism of nature, that the first Fathers with great urgency, attributed to deviltry every superstition that was too hard to explain, and you inherited a discredited paganism; the lyricism and comedy of the middle ages drew you into a caricature. But the brutish villains conceived the idea of an evil God and you had scoundrels, crime, and ignorance for your faithful, you, ancient prince of spirits.
Now you are forgotten: science, little by little, is discovering illness where for four hundred years they had seen your claws.
And I, a lucid Platonist and fervent Catholic, I visit you in my thoughts, as it is said in the works of mercy, imprisoned spirit, punished spirit; and as I feel the daemonic blood palpitate within me, I try to clean your face of the mud that human wickedness thrown there.
If you are nothing but a villain deprived of all intelligence, I do not fear you: what is a spirit that has become an idiot, is it wicked? If you are, as I believe, a great sinner, but lucid in your atonement, then receive the consolation of my thought and the refreshment of my charity.
Humanity is that son of Noah who turned away in derision from their father’s decline; I am Shem, I respect you in your misfortune, as I admire you in the splendour of your origins.
The Bené-Oelohim were the sons of your will and I would like to believe that I am descended from them, this one here, who is seen as the confused élan of the most humble, to the grandest, and to the most unlucky of the same race.
Arcanum of Lucifer, or of Birth
Before the horned, clawed, terrible devil of the medieval imagination, the smile of St. John and the Vanity of Leonardo [da Vinci] suffice.
But I am doing more than rejecting the grotesque from religion as from aesthetics: because in this, each individual conceives of God and the devil, in their own image.
I deny demonology as it is taught in the seminaries…. and I deny it, based on my faith in a Greek, and Orthodox too: my authority, oh naïve curates, is His Majesty Saint Dionysius the Areopagite.[54] “Absolute evil does not exist; evil is an accident of goodness.”
Demons are not essentially evil, they have lost angelic goodness, but they maintain their natural forces.
Were they evil to themselves, they would corrupt themselves. If they are evil for others, then who do they corrupt?
Substance, power, or operations: they corrupt that which is susceptible to corruption.
THEN, EVIL IS NOT THERE FOR EVERYTHING AND IN EVERYTHING, they weakened in upholding their principle, they forsook divine goodness in habit and operation: they were named evil, due to the debilitation of their natural function.
Evil is not among the demons in the form of evil, but as a defect and lack of perfection in their attributes.
Finally, [according to] St. Thomas Aquinas:
“The demon wants to obtain this similarity with God that comes from grace by virtue of its nature, and not with divine help.”
That the ignorant Sulpicians should struggle against St. Dionysus and St. Thomas. These Fathers of the Church authorise me to pity those who are cursed to bear the load of human sin, an easy and ridiculous way to flatter mankind; I have never seen in my sins, or in those of others, any other explanatory necessity beyond the malice of the individual.
Onto this serious and healthy notion of the demon, [as] obscured angels, I have grafted the occult idea of involution and evolution; there are here below two series: beings who, born of the earth, tend to rise, and others, born of the spirit, for whom earthly life is a fall and an expiation of some mysterious crime of the beyond.
True to the Bereschit [Genesis] and to the sepher of Enoch, in the genius of a Plato, of a Dante, of a Wagner, I see a daimonic descent: psychologically I find them in the intimacy of a Litz, of a d’Aurevilly, to note personalities I have penetrated, [this is] the conflict of angelic nature enclosed within the human condition.
I believe, along with Pythagoras and Plato, that the genius is never a man, but a demon, that is to say, an intermediary being between the spiritual and the earthly hierarchy: and it would take a papal bull, ex cathedra, to change my opinion.
“The enchanters, the egregores of all times, of all lands, mages, saints, artists, poets, aristes, mystagogues, are all the obscured or shining offspring of angelic descent.” (Istar, p. 41, 1887).
Comment on devient fée, pp. 2-3
To the grandmothers
I have manifested your glory, oh Ereckian[55]; by virtue of my art, Latin thought has leapt at the thought of your mysterious adventure. Oh Daimons, I have proclaimed and defended your precedence, I have thought of it night and day, behold how I raise the second enclosure and the second terrace: the Amphitheatre of Dead Sciences.
As a poet, I have spoken of the night of love when two hundred angels fell into the ecstatic mortal bosom.
I have shone the light on you, Satan, great and guilty one. That your heart – daimonic race, race of the tiara and the lyre, supports my effort for it to beat faithfully. That your heart – filled with such temerity – should counsel, comfort, and enlighten me. The church has pronounced upon you, daimons, words of nothingness, words that kill and bury you.
But see how the blood of Jesus has coursed on the Luciferian diamond, and by the crucified Almighty, by the name and the sign that will save the world: in the name of the Grail, you condemned angel, you spirit weeping with repentance, rise up and march, convert or confound mortals who are stuck in reality.
I have done the work of restoration; and as I have dispersed the vain phantoms who obscured the clear star of magic, I have ruined the temple of Woman with this work – and through me several spirits will see God – so that he is forgiven by my race.
And you, sublime bull, symbol of powerful thought! Stand on the threshold of this truly masculine work!
Spirit of earth, remember yourself!
Spirit of sky, remember yourself!
