Posts Tagged ‘bible’

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 240- 245

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, books, fantasy, fiction, writing on January 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

“At the risk of disturbing your meditations, I would like
to ask you, with your kind permission, a few more serious
questions, the answers to which I am very anxious to hear.”
With a quiet unwillingness I tried to recognize the facial
features of the interrupter. But I could only determine that he
was no longer young and that his white and very narrow hands
were folded around his knee.
“I am glad to be at your service,” I said quietly, so as not
to disturb the deepening silence.
The unknown man moved with his stool close to me and
whispered, as it seemed to me, in some agitation:
“All of us, who are here, so far as human calculation is
correct, will be sentenced to death in a few days. In the
certainty that our life, which would lead anyway to annihilation
will now be completed more quickly than nature demands,
there is nothing frightening for me. Another question worries
me, my lord. What happens, when the path of life, which leads
from the brain to the most distant and smallest parts of the body,
is cut by the axe?”
“Any doctor can tell you,” I answered.
“What happens is what we call death.”
“What we call it!” hissed the stranger close to me. “But
have you never heard that the severed heads are still alive? Do
you know that they move the eyes, the hairs stand up straight
against the walls of the basket? That they look in the direction
of the caller, when their name is called, and form clearly
recognizable words with their lips when they are asked? How?
Come to me, esteemed one, but not with Doctor Galvani’s frog.
Here we are talking about the ability to think, to be conscious–
“
“The problem is idle in a higher sense,” I said, “even if
we assume that the cut-off head still thinks and tries to act, this
lasts only a few seconds as a result of the lack of blood supply.
Then the standstill is there.”
The man slid his stool even closer.
“Good, good,” he said excitedly. “Let’s not bother with
that. It is indeed of little importance. What however, is death?
Is it the death of the body and the freedom of the soul, or are
the body and the soul so much together that one dies with the
other? Can you give me a comforting answer?”
The last words sounded like a plea. It had become
completely quiet in our dungeon, and nothing could be heard
but the stomping of the guards in front of the windows and a
soft whistling, the breath of the sleepers.
“Since you seem to be interested in the opinion of a
stranger, I will answer you. Now then, my dear Herr, I believe
that after death, the soul is separated from the body and enters
the eternal life from which it comes,” I said in a muffled voice.
He shook his head vigorously.
“The priests of all creeds say such things. But no one can
imagine what they are really saying. What do you mean:
Return to eternity? Without the artful apparatus of the brain,
the soul is incapable of expressing itself. What becomes of it?
A vortex of air, a cloud of smoke, transparent ether? Where
does it go?”
“It goes into a new vessel.”
I felt as if someone else was speaking out of me. I had
never thought this thought, and yet now it was there as if I had
always carried it within me.
The other laughed unwillingly.
“Into a new vessel, that is, a new body! Here is already
the absurdity. The number of departed are so great that not
even a thousand of them can find a new home.”
I listened to the inner voice.
“Whoever can preserve the consciousness of his earthly
existence beyond death will be reborn in a human body. That is
my belief.”
“And if it succeeds – how often would such a return have
to take place?”
“As often as needed until the soul is purified,” I replied,
moved.
“And then?”
“Then the soul rests consciously in God.”
The man struck his knees with his fist.
“Always the same old stories! Purified! Pure! And the
hatred? The burning greed for revenge, the rage beyond the end,
the hope to retaliate a thousand fold?”
“These are all impurities that must fall off,” I repeated
what my inner voice said. “In the purification of purgatory -“
“Purgatory?” he cried out. “You talk like a Catholic priest.

Where is it supposed to be, this fabulous purgatory?”
“Here, it is life. Life in human form or -“
“Or?”
“Or in the body of an animal,” I said, and saw in my
mind’s eye how tears were streaming from the parrot’s ugly
spherical eyes.
“But these are theories. I want certainty -“, my late
companion insistently demanded.
“There is only one certainty: that of feeling.”
“Faith, then, my lord.”
It was I who spoke thus.
“Fairy tales, my lord, fairy tales. I will tell you what is
after death: nothing is. And that’s the terrible thing, this
extinction of being. To have never been! It is horrible. And I
don’t need to believe in it. I know it.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you more comfort,” I said, and
was seized with intense pity.
“It is my fault,” he defended me politely. “A few days
ago I spoke to ‘Abbe Gautier before he was executed. An old
man with white hair, a worthy priest. He was struggling to find
a hunchbacked quack- who had been convicted of common
crimes, and pointed him to the infinite, eternal goodness of
God. But the Italian with the hump would have nothing of it
and kept shouting:
“Niente! – Finito -nulla. Nix immortalita – o Dio, Dio!”
“Then why did God call upon him?” I asked.
“Out of habit, I guess. That good Abbe Gautier said about
the same thing as you. I envy him and you. Sleep well!”
He slipped into a dark corner with his stool. I heard him
sigh deeply.
A bunch of keys jingled. The iron door creaked open.
The sleepers groaned unwillingly, turned around, and muttered
unintelligible words.
A turnkey, carrying a large, dimly burning lantern,
entered, and followed by a commissar with a tricolor sash.
Carefully he examined the paper that the official had handed to
him, and then called out half aloud:
“Citizen Dronte!”
I stood up and saw the commissar make a violent
movement of surprise or of joy. He took the lantern from the
overseer’s hand, motioned for him to stop at the door, and came
quickly towards me.
“I am Commissar Cordeau!,” he said hastily and quietly.
It was Magister Hemmetschnur whom I had taken from
Krottenriede.
“I can only stay for a minute,” he repeated in a
monotonous, indifferent voice, while the lantern in his hand
clinked and trembled.
“I went to all the prisons when I found your name on the
list. This is the last one. I know everything. As many of the
cursed Aristocrats I have sent to the Orkus. I would go back to
being the poor miserable Hemmetschnur on Krottenriede if I
could save your noble life, which is so dear to me. Do not
move, do not speak. There are spies in every dungeon, even
here. I’ve spoken to the chairman of your tribunal. The charge
is false. It was not your intention to free Lamballe, but rather as
a loyal supporter of the Republic, you wanted to prevent the
ignorant people from a rash act through which the discovery
and exploration of the dangerous plans in which the princess
was involved are now forever impossible to determine. They
will believe you. You were providing an important function
that will protect you forever. Do not move your head. You must
accept. Otherwise, you will be lost. If you have not understood
me, clasp your hands together as if pleading. You don’t? So you
have understood everything. Now a necessary comedy begins.
Do not be frightened of me, who would like to kiss your hand.”
And with a loud voice he continued, “So you refuse? You want
to know the whereabouts of the escaped traitor? Good. You will
stand in front of your judges tomorrow. Don’t forget that the
lictors’ bundle also contains a hatchet.”
Seemingly angrily, he stomped up and waved at the
turnkey.
“Citizen Gaspard! You’re liable to me for this dangerous
person!”
The turnkey shone his light in my face and grinned:
“This head is loose! I’m getting the hang of this thing,
Citizen Commissar!”
Laughing, the magister slapped him on the shoulder, and
they both left the dungeon. The door slammed shut with a thud,
the key rattled.
“Francois!” scolded one in his sleep. “See, which of the
cursed peasants drives over the inner yard.”
Then there was silence. The darkness dripped down like
pitch.
Before me in the darkness I saw the face of Isa Bektshi.
The kind gaze was directed at me. The narrow scar between the
eyebrows shone like the dawn.
“I will not lie,” I said to myself.
I saw nothing but the black night and I stretched out on
the thin straw of the floor to rest a little. After breakfast, which
the turnkey brought in on his board, a commissar appeared
with several soldiers and brought three of us, including me, to
the court session.
A young, pretty woman, who had mostly been sitting on
a cot, crying, and had received little notice by the ladies in my
prison, was brought in with me and a tall, very haughty looking
man in a dark blue, gold-embroidered jacket and white
stockings was led away. The name of my fated companion I
had not understood when I was introduced yesterday. The only
thing that struck me was the deference with which the
aristocratic prisoners had treated him, and his careless,
condescending manner with which he had spoken a few words
to this one, then to that one, while he hardly noticed me. I was
walking behind these two, the woman and the haughty man; I
was walking alone between two soldiers who had been
specially commanded to guard me. We were led through a
narrow, terribly dirty alley, in which all kinds of garbage rotted,
to an old building, over the archway of which fluttered the
three-color flag. Then we reached a corridor into a low, very
large room, and had to pass behind a freshly painted cabinet,
smelling of fresh oil paint and then stopped.
The inner elevation, in which I had spent yesterday
evening, was gone from me. The thought that this day was to
be one of my last lay heavy as lead on me and filled me with a
dull ache. Even the inanimate objects around me took on a
strange and unfamiliar ghostly form, and even the early
morning light that shone through the dirty windows had a
mysterious reddish glow.
When a soldier motioned for us to sit down, I was given
the seat between the young woman, who from time to time
sobbed violently, and the gentleman in the blue jacket, who
looked before him with a stern and unapproachable face,
without paying any attention to anyone. Now and then he
would pull out of his pocket a gold can in the shape of a pear
and sniffed it with an extremely affected movement. In front of
us stood a heavy table with carved legs, on which everything
necessary for writing was piled up. On the walls lolled pale,
long-haired soldiers, some of them wearing wooden shoes on
their bare feet, and blowing foul-smelling tobacco smoke from
their lime pipes. They only changed their comfortable position,
when a rumbling drum roll outside the door announced the
entrance of the revolution tribunal.
We were compelled to stand and wait until the judges
were seated at the large table. I looked at the men who
presumed to decide on the duration of the lives of others. The
first at the table on the left was a craftsman with badly cleaned,
hands, whose imprint was visible on the rim of his red cap. In
the middle between him and a constantly coughing, obviously
sickly person with pointed, gray-yellow face, was enthroned a
black-haired young man of peculiarly impudent, but not
unhandsome appearance. His restless, dark eyes sparkled under
strong brows, and his long, carefully stranded hair under the
two-cornered hat hung down to his shoulders. He stretched his
legs, clad in white pants and boots with cuffs, far under the
table, waved to an acquaintance in the densely packed area in
the back of the room, and then rummaged with a pile of files
that lay in front of him. Then he spoke a few half-loud words to
the sitters and to the skinny clerk at the narrow end of the table,
propped his elbows on the tabletop, rested his chin on his
clasped hands and looked at us in turn with a look that seemed
to command the highest respect.

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 205- 209

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, faith, god, jesus, writing on January 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

With that, he stood up, told me to eat the meal he had
ordered, a chocolate pudding with jams, and then to go to sleep.
I saw him slowly leave the room, with a friendly face,
holding a stick with a golden pomegranate daintily pressed to
his chin. After a few days I got up, and this all the more gladly,
as in the last days various noises, coming from the outside,
such as shouts, whistles and voices, had disturbed the silence of
my room.
With the help of the servant of the inn, I dressed and had
my hair done, during which I perceived that the silver hoop of
old age had fully descended on my head during my illness. The
good-natured servant told me many horror stories from France,
where blood flowed in streams and a human life was not worth
three pennies. The plague of the frenzy for freedom was
already spreading, and even in this otherwise calm and quiet
old-fashioned little town, all kinds of disgusting and unpleasant
things had happened in the last few days, which had been of
the journeymen and the erection of a liberty tree. However, the
city council had wisely submitted a petition to the highest
authority for cavalry and a battalion of infantry, which, as the
princely book keeper Gailer had informed him confidentially,
should be complied with as soon as possible.
When I had finished, I slowly descended to the dining
room and found there at the common table, to my great delight,
Doctor Schlurich, who immediately left his place and sat down
next to me.
We naturally got into a conversation about the exciting
events in the city, which had become like a faint flame to the
immense blaze of purple in France, but still seemed worthy of
attention. I said that I felt a great desire to go to the city of
Paris, to study the immense changes there at close quarters and
observe them. I could not conceal from him that the movement
that had begun there was of great interest to me, was
meaningful for the whole of mankind and downright promising.
Doctor Schlurich looked at me with a very thoughtful
look and said that he was somewhat surprised to see a
nobleman from an old and famous lineage see anything but
cheap disgust in these events. The profound upheaval which
was only in its infancy could not possibly be welcomed by a
caste whose privileged existence rests on an artificial nimbus
and a carefully sanctified tradition. He asked me, however, not
to misunderstand him. Because his initial astonishment about
my behavior was a thoroughly joyful one.
I replied that I had suffered a self-inflicted humiliation in
my youth that had given me the opportunity to go to school
among people of the lowest classes, which, whether it was
good or bad, had given me the opportunity as a student of
freeing myself from all arrogance and conceit of status. In
addition, I had gained the valuable awareness that the so-called
differences in standing were created by artificially erected and
easily removable barriers, which had arisen and were
maintained, to deprive the children of the poor from any better
education and the cultivation of their noble feelings, which
later on resulted in their crudeness and ignorance. The
undeniable merits of the society to which the nobility and the
refined bourgeoisie enjoyed, were only the result of a carefully
conducted education. If this could only once be shared not just
with the privileged classes, but with all members of the human
race, humanity would not only protect itself with the noblest
weapon, but it would also bring an immeasurable abundance of
talents and abilities into a new light that has never existed
before. Indeed those places, where they shyly blossom in spite
of all the pressure, and are suppressed as dangerous to the state
without any knowledge.
“You are a nobleman in the inner sense of the word,” said
the doctor and bowed.
I felt the blush of shame rise to my face, and silently I
thought of many things in my life, which were of an ugly
nature and would always remain as stains on me.
“However, cher haran,” the doctor continued, “I don’t
know whether, if you were to ask for my advice, I would advise
you, to witness the great upheaval in the immediate vicinity,
that is to say, in Paris. Consider:
If one cleans a neglected place in his garden, in order to
grow useful and lovely plants, and removes the old stones and
debris, ugly worms, woodlice, centipedes and all kinds of nasty
creatures, which now crawl from their dark places, run around
and fall on each other in sudden greed. So it is also with those
social changes that are called revolutions. Until the noble core,
the light of freedom, shows itself, there is abominable work to
be done, which perhaps people can only see who look back
after many years, but to those who experience it, their souls are
filled with such horror that they no longer recognize anything
else, and even lose hope. Revolutions are filled with filth,
blood, shouting, evil deeds, wild development of the animal
instincts and base greed, and it takes a long time for the jet of
fire that shoots up to become pure and free of filthy cinders,
and the dominion of the senseless to move into the hands of
sensible men.”
A wild yelling and screaming outside the windows
interrupted him. In the dining room there was a hurried pushing
back of the chairs and jumping up. One saw people outside
walk by on the street, first individually, then dense masses, and
behind them came a closed united front of dragoons, which
struck with the flat of their swords and thus cleared the street.
All this passed quickly, the shouting and the clattering hoof
beats on the cobblestones disappeared, and in a few minutes
the street was quiet again, covered with lost hats, sticks and
other things.
“Our good Germans are slowly maturing,” Doctor
Schlurich returned back to the table. “And many a thing will
still pass over our people, until they are able to assert inner and
outer freedom, from which, by the way, even the French will
still be without. The merit, however, of having made a start
could be left to them, if one did not have to concede it from the
standpoint of higher justice from the English viewpoint.
Nevertheless, Herr Baron: The Germans will, after much
suffering and hardship be the chosen ones, from whom the
salvation of the world emanates. This is my belief.”
We were silent for a long time, and our conversation
turned to other things. I learned that Doctor Schlurich, born in
Köllen, had settled here, not so much to earn money, which in
his circumstances was not necessary, but in order to calmly
work on unknown phenomena of a psychical nature, with
whose research he was mainly concerned. Here he had made a
very special find. Namely, in a house of the city lived a
Demoiselle Köckering, who, in the company of various doctors
was often put into a magnetic sleep and in this state was asked
questions about the past and the future, as well as the most
diverse things to which she answered completely and correctly.
If I happened to be interested in such secrets of nature, which
only the unintelligent can connect with ghosts and devils, it
would be easy for him to introduce me there. Since the person
must be kept secret and lives from her art, it is, however,
customary to give a douceur in gold at the first entrance.
I was immediately ready to be led by him into the house,
and thanked him for his trust.
When it began to dawn, we went on our way.
A cool, damp wind was blowing from the Rhine. The wet
air penetrated chillingly through our coats. In several streets we
were stopped by patrols on horseback with loaded carbines, but
were allowed to pass as persons of distinction.
After some wandering we found the house “Zum
silbernen Schneck”, in which the demoiselle lived.
Only after knocking several times was the door opened to
us by a man, who was finally able to hide his hesitation for fear
of the craftsmen and ship’s servants, who, together with the evil
folk from the taverns, hooting “Ca ira” and hammering on the
gates, had raged in the alley a short while ago to get the
prostitutes living in the house next door and take them with
them. Soldiers would have quickly driven the screamers away
and then would themselves have gone through the door with
the red lantern.
We climbed the narrow staircase by the light of the
tallow candle that dripped between his fingers, and after a
special kind of knock, were led into a bright, octagonal
chamber, whose windows were tightly curtained. There was
nothing to be seen in it but an armchair upholstered in worn
brocade, next to which, on two small tables, burned many-
armed candlesticks, and in front of it a row of ordinary wooden
armchairs, on which some men sat waiting. They turned their
heads toward us. Both could be easily classed among the
scholars by their dress and the expression of their faces.
Doctor Schlurich and I approached the waiting people
and gave our names, which was answered in the same way.
“-especially the prophecies of the demoiselle should be
strictly examined,” one of the gentlemen, who was addressed
as “Spectability” continued his speech, which was interrupted
by our entrance.
“All the more so, as the man who pretends to put her into
a magnetic sleep collects one louisdor per person. My esteemed
colleague Professor Fulvius, who watched the demonstration
was not satisfied in all respects. Those bluish efflorescence’s
which you could observe perfectly, on the hands of
Emmerentia Gock in Ebersweiler, who is said to be possessed
by the devil, are completely absent, and everything that is
going on is just limited to some at times certainly astonishing
messages about the lives and fates of the people present.”
“Whereby it is respectfully to be noted,” said a small,
skinny man with a reddish wig in the highest falsetto “that the
prophesies of the woman, in so far as they refer to the future,
are completely worthless scientifically, because at present they
are unverifiable.”

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 195- 199

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, christianity, faith, god, jesus on January 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

I remained mute with amazement. It seemed to me as if I
were standing in front of an open gate, which I had carelessly
passed, without knowing that behind it was hidden the solution
to all questions.
“Understand me, brother. I’ll show you the way.”
“The wish at the moment of death –“, I said to myself.
“To take the consciousness beyond death — to save the memory
–“
“You have understood. Farewell!”
Slowly glittering in the twilight, his figure became
indistinct, only his face still shone.
“Stay, stay with me -” I wanted to call, but no sound
came out of my mouth.
Then he said slowly and clearly words, whose meaning I
no longer understood:
“Hamd olsun -tekrar görüschdüjümüze!”
I was awake, didn’t see him anymore.
“Isa bektschi!” I shouted. “Stay with me!”
But only my own hoarse voice echoed in the wide space.
Why had I understood him before and now I didn’t? And
it had been the same language – I remembered it as one
remembers a blown note whose tone, the sequence of which is
fading more and more from memory.
Hastily I spoke the unknown words to myself twice, three
times, until they were indelibly burned into my memory like
the words of a prayer recited a thousand times.
Why did my heart ache so much?
How many questions I still had to ask! How I would have
liked to ask him about Aglaja, about Zephyrine, about the
haunting of the night of hell.
Didn’t he say we were one?
“I am you?”
He was in me, and only from me could the answer come.
From the depths of consciousness, when the hidden would
awake. When the state occurred, in which all riddles spread out
legibly, like clear writing.
So calmly my heart beat, free from all fear, free from
expectation, and so safe and happy was I as a child in a
mother’s arms.
“Death, where is thy sting?”
Like distant, comforting ringing these words from the
holy book came to me. There was no death for the one who
wanted to live. Life for all eternity, life until complete
purification, until the purification, until the glorious emergence,
until the conscious being in God. Tears of joy ran down my
cheeks.
Everything was only a wandering in the darkness, and to
me shone a faint glimmer of the inextinguishable light that
shines at the end of the path through the eternities. As far as it
might be, as much fear and hardship still lurked at the sides of
the path – which led to the goal. Isa, the guardian, had shown it
to me. What could happen to me, and who could harm the
immortal part of me?
The door opened. The Magister Hemmetschnur came to
my bed, holding in his hand a silver cup with a cool potion of
mint and sugar water.
“You must have met a strange monk on the stairs,” I said
quickly. “A man in a brown robe with a black turban, and
yellow beads around his neck.”
“The fever is rising -” he grumbled peevishly to himself.
“No, no,” I implored him. “The stranger was with me just
now, standing there before my bed. He could not have gone
unnoticed.”
And I described Ewli to him once again and urged him to
call him back in a hurry.
“Baron,” said the magister. “You have had a dream. For
half an hour I’ve been sitting on a chair by the corridor window
reading in front of your door. No one has entered your room, so
no one could have come out of your room. That’s what
common logic says.”
Exhausted, I sank back into my pillows.
“Dreamed -?”
Like a bitter taste it came to my tongue. But then I started
up again up.
“Hemmetschnur, you have been in Stambul for a long
time, and many languages are known to you. What does the
sentence I am about to recite to you mean?”
And slowly, emphasizing word by word exactly, I recited
to him the last sentence which had reached me:
“Hamd olsun tekrar görüschdüjümüzel”.
The magister’s eyes snapped open. His mouth remained
open. Then he wiped his face with his hand, looked at me again
and shook his head:
“By the diamond of the Great Mogul! Baron -it is the
purest Turkish!”
“What does it mean? I want to know what it means!”
I demanded in my impatience.
He drew a deep breath, looked at me with a shy look and
spoke:
“It means, thank God, we will meet again!”
“Thank God!”
I repeated with a sigh. I laughed with joy and patted his
haggard hand that held the cup.
“Strange things are happening in this witch’s room this
day,” he nodded at me. “The man, that you have seen, Baron
Dronte–that’s what the Islamic dervishes look like and no
others. This is stranger than strange!”
“I also want to give you the means so that you can escape
from this house, Herr Magister”, I said quickly. “You have had
to stay until now, I can see that. But since it is for my sake that
you martyred yourself here, it is also my duty to help you!”
Then he fell to his knees before my bed, so that the cup
fell to the ground and spilled its contents.
“God bless you deeply, you great and kind man!” he
sobbed and kissed my hand. “A little longer and I would have
escaped in another way, hanging from the window cross, and
rather in the deepest underworld than in the mill of the
miserable days here.”
He picked up the cup.
“I hasten to bring another drink, gracious lord!” he cried,
laughing and crying and ran out.
My eyes fell closed.
Delicious languor held me embraced.
“Thank God – we shall meet again!”
Thank God! Thank God!
Now, whatever would come, would come. And nothing
of what had been in my life, neither good nor bad, had
happened without a reason.
Thank God!
It was mostly quiet around me, and only the thanks came
and went. I preferred that to when the old man stomped in, sat
down on my bed, sprinkled everything with snorting tobacco
and started to tell dirty stories, or told adventures from his and
my father’s old days.
The one I got along best with was the magister, who was
busy and ready to serve me. I felt his grateful look. Most of all
I was pleased that he did not want to leave, although he had
been given good travel money, but thought to wait until I was
undoubtedly well and in good health.
He provided me with all the necessities, and when it
became too bad with the beard, he barbered me with great skill.
When I was alone again, I took the hand mirror that he had left
on the bedside and looked into it. Yellow and haggard my face
looked out of it and silver frost lay on my hair. Yes, I had
grown old, old and tired. With melancholy I looked at the
leafless crowns of the poplars in front of my windows, which,
like me, seemed doomed to die soon, but this melancholy was
mixed with a joyful confidence. With strong hope I thought of
the stone that I had seen in the graveyard of my homeland, the
stone that bore the saying of Herr Thomas More: Non omnis
moriar, I will not die completely.
Again I held with an uncertain hand the round mirror in
front of my face, and as I held the glass a little obliquely, a
sweet woman’s face with red hair appeared, which was only a
little darker than the gold hood that adorned it. It was the
portrait hanging on the wall of Lady Heva Weinschrötter,
which had been reflected back. The gray eyes looked at me half
questioningly, half knowingly, around the mouth seemed to
play a secret smile but it changed under my gaze into a heart-
broken expression. I could no longer turn my eyes away from
her; I could not resist the compulsion that was pressing in on
me.
The roundness of the mirror widened, shrouded
everything like a fine moon mist, and drew me under its spell.
Gradually, I felt as if I were among people of another time and
was one of them.
Wasn’t it this room-? A table stretched out on the wall,
and I was sitting there myself in a black coat trimmed with
narrow strips of fur. Two equally dressed people were to my
right and left, and at the narrow end of the table the deeply
stooped and blinking Magister Hemmetschnur wrote. It was
him, even though he was wearing a white monastic habit and
over it a black throw-over. And in front of the table, with
loosened, copper-gold hair, stood Lady Heva Weinschrötter –
no, for God’s sake, it was Zephyrine in the dark gray, blood-
encrusted torture shirt, from which her snow-white skin shone.
She looked at me with crazy eyes; her ankles were blue, her
hands were tied to a black leather rope, which ran through the
top of the bare iron ring in the vaulted ceiling, and its other end
was held by a human being in his coarse hand, who gazed with
small, treacherously puffy eyes out from the holes of a dull red
girdle that covered his face and broad shoulders.

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 145- 149

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, christianity, faith, god, jesus on December 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

“Never again -,” he groaned, leaning on his brother.
“Terrible — I had – already crossed the – threshold.”
“What’s the matter with you, Eusebius?”
“The hunchback -” he cried out. “Two heads – two
children’s heads -.”
And without consciousness he collapsed, saved from a
heavy fall by his brother’s arm. He looked at me helplessly,
spat bloody sputum and stammered:
“Enough, Lord – enough! Have mercy!”
I pressed a large gift into his hand. His poor, gaunt face
beamed with joy for a moment, and then he held out the gold to
the fainting man and shouted:
“Look here, Eusebius – look here!”
He let go of the body of the brother, who twitched softly,
gently let it slide to the ground and pointed to the gap in the
wall of the tent.
“It took a lot out of him this time,” he whispered. “The
day is already coming up. – Was the Lord pleased?”
Full of compassion for these poor people, inwardly
stirred in my innermost being, and yet with a bright glow of
supersensible hope in my chest, I walked through the gray,
rain-soaked morning towards the awakening city.
For a long time I lived quietly and absorbed only in the
memory of happy days in a small, secluded place and thought
to end my life there.
One morning, however, in front of the baker’s shop, a
casserole appeared which became of great importance for me.
A foreign artisan, who had wanted to buy bread, was accused
by the baker of trying to cheat him with fake money, amidst a
large crowd of curious people. The poor fellow, well
acquainted with the cruel punishments that were set for such
misdemeanors, fought back with all his might, when he saw me
coming, cried out with a loud voice:
“Lord, help me! Protect me!”
The people, all of whom knew me and had come to me
for the insignificant good deeds I had done to one person and
another, but especially to the children, held affection for me,
made room for me, and some of them said:
“That’s right! The Lord Baron shall decide whether it is a
gold piece or merely a bad penny, which the lad has put on the
baker’s table.”
I looked at the gold piece. It was a Turkish Zechine like
the five I had kept from the treasure in the ruin. The curly
writing on the coin appeared not only to the baker, but also to
the other people as so nonsensical that they ignored the weight
of the gold, but took it as a false ducat and the fellow for a bag
cutter.
When the people were enlightened and we weighed the
piece on the baker’s gold scales, and for greater certainty tested
it against a stone the poor wandering cloth shearer still had a
number of silver and copper coins change in addition for his
bread. I asked him how he had come into possession of the
coins, which were certainly an extremely rare type of coin. And
then I received an answer, which completely and forever
destroyed my hitherto quiet life like a fiery bolt of lightning.
A nearby stranger had given him the money, said the lad,
and told him to go to this place, where he would learn more.
Half-starved, he was trudging along the street, when a
handsome man with a black cloth around his forehead, had
come towards him. He denied trying to cheat anyone and had
gotten the money from him. Breathlessly I asked whether he
had been dressed like some kind of monk. But the lad
remembered only a black headscarf and the beautiful, dark eyes
of the mild benevolent man. He had turned around and looked
after the stranger, but he had completely disappeared from the
long, straight road.
This information, together with the certainty that the
mysterious man from the Orient was not even three days
journey from here and had shown himself in the flesh, excited
me to such an extent that I ordered a special mail coach for the
next day, to possibly follow his trail, until I would be face to
face with him and find answers to all the questions that had
occupied me for many years, indeed all my life. When I
gathered together money for the journey, I also got hold of the
Turkish zechins. I was amazed and frightened. There were only
four left. A strange feeling came over me, a search for a
memory. But it sank again, and a new mystery remained.
The next day I was already riding merrily along in the
coach and with changed horses had reached the large forest,
late in the afternoon, through which the road led to the village,
not far from the place where the honest cloth shearer had come
to his golden zechine. But just as we passed the village and the
coach driver was merrily singing the “Jäger aus Kurpfalz” on
his horn, the wheel broke and the poor musician was torn off
the seat by the reins wrapped around his left hand by the falling
horse to such an extent that he could only rise with a groan and
with a pained face explained that he needed to put cold
compresses on his sore shoulder before he could hold the reins
again. Also the fallen bay, who had skinned his knee, needed
rest and treatment. If the coach didn’t want to become a wreck
between the village and the town both people and animals
needed to be treated.
Indecisively, I stood in the midst of the astounded village
youth by the badly battered coach, when an old woman came
up to me and said:
“Your quarters are ready, as we were told, and also the
postman can get a bed and a bite to eat. There is room for the
nags in the reverend gentleman’s stable!”
I was very surprised at this reception and asked who had
announced me and whether the whole thing wasn’t a
misunderstanding? There was certainly an inn in the village
where one could stay if necessary.
“No, Herr,” the woman continued and went ahead of me
as a guide without further ado. “We have no inn here, and
strangers of repute whom chance brings here, are accustomed
to stay in the parsonage, which is in the vicarage, which is built
on a large scale and contains enough furnished rooms. The
preparations for the lord, however, have been ordered by the
Reverend. Nothing else is known to me, other than that the
parish priest, who is currently with a dying man, instructed me
to keep a watchful eye on the road and not to miss the
announced guest.”
In the meantime we had arrived at the stately house next
to the church, and I stepped through the door, above which
hung, on iron chains, the bones of extinct animals on iron
chains, into a hallway paved with gray bricks, and from there
into a vaulted, white-painted room, in the middle of which
stood a large table with leather chairs. On the wall was a rack
with many books, among which I noticed the works of
Paracelsus. On top of them were stuffed birds of a rare kind, as
the storm sometimes brings them here from foreign zones, and
all kinds of minerals and fossilized ammonium horns. On the
simple desk by the window was enthroned the figure of a
woman holding a child in her arms, and in my opinion was as
much the mother of our Lord and Savior as a pagan goddess.
Above a black painted prayer stool hung with arms
outstretched, the face of a silent suffering person, the Savior on
the cross.
After a while the old woman put a brass lamp on the
table and the room was filled with a friendly yellow light, the
priest entered almost at the same time.
He was a tall man with gray hair and a face, from which
smart and thoughtful eyes peered out. Friendly, he offered me
his hand, looked at me attentively and asked me to be his guest
at the table. After the meal he wanted to solve for me the riddle
that the knowledge of my arrival had thrown me into. Also the
mail coach driver had already been accommodated and the
carriage was at the blacksmith’s, and the horses, were safe in
the stable.
Immediately, the table was set and the food was served,
which consisted of a larded pike in cream. We drank a light
currant wine with it. When we were finished with the meal the
priest asked if he might be allowed to smoke tobacco, and lit a
pipe.
I must confess that, in spite of the inner calm I had
learned to regard everything that happened as an unchangeable
providence, and a great curiosity seized me, in which way the
clergyman could have been informed of my imminent arrival,
and I requested him to enlighten me about this strange matter,
after my name and state had been pronounced.
“It is indeed, as you say, strange- worthy enough,” he
replied and blew blue smoke in great clouds away from himself.
“Three days ago I went down the village street according to my
habit to pray my breviary.
A couple of people who came toward me astonished me
so much at the sight of them, that I stopped and let them
approach. I knew the woman. It was eighty year old Nenin,
who, in spite of her old age and her weakness at this time of the
day, gathered together a large bundle of brushwood. It had
always been a sight, to see the weak old woman, who was still
active in such a way, swaying under her load. And not
infrequently, I had unceremoniously asked some loitering,
partying lad to take the burden from the poor woman and carry
it home. This time, however, she came without the usual
piggyback and seemed to me upright, almost as if rejuvenated
next to her companion, who, as she said, had voluntarily taken
the burden from her and loaded it effortlessly on his shoulders.
The man, however, with whom she went, had in any case an
appearance that would astonish anyone in this country. Namely
he wore-“
“A brown robe and a black headscarf or a turban of such
color and amber beads around his neck –“, I finished,
quivering with expectation.
The priest looked at me without astonishment and said:
“So then the following miracle partially dissolves into
nothing. I say partially, for it remains wonderful that neither the
old woman nor the tailor who happened to come from the field,
who loaded the bundle of brushwood onto his handcart and
drove Nenin home with it, seemed to see anything special or
conspicuous in the man dressed so strangely. Through later
questions I became convinced that the two people had not even
been aware of the unusual costume. But the other thing, namely
that this man informed me of your arrival and predicted it for
today is now explained by the fact that you obviously know
him and have certainly spoken to him of your journey.”

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 135- 139

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, books, fiction, jesus, writing on December 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

The performance, which began with a few rough slaps
for the harlequin, was as I had much expected with the
magician, dressed as on the figurehead. With his beard hung
around his neck he performed a series of quite artful sleight-of-
hand and card tricks, baked an omelet in a hat, which a fat
citizen hesitantly offered, fetched endless ribbons, white
barnyard rabbits and a glass jar with floating little fishes from
it and finally crushed a golden watch in a mortar, only to find it
unharmed in the purse of an embarrassed giggling girl.
Then he moved on to the more difficult arts and tore off
the heads of a white dove and a black dove and healed them in
the twinkling of an eye, so that the black bird had a white head,
and the white bird now had a black head. But this showpiece
produced such a violent nausea in me that I wanted to get up
and leave the room. But since I would have had to fight my
way through the crowded rows of people sitting and would
have had to make everyone get up, I closed my eyes for a while
until I felt that the discomfort was subsiding.
When I looked up again, through murmurs of applause
and the admiration of the spectators, I saw the well-done
picture of a moonlit cemetery on the stage. A slender, beardless
man, wrapped in a black cloak, walked up and down between
the grave crosses and told in his soliloquy, that a ghost often
appeared here, and that he wanted to find out who the evil doer
was that was certainly behind the appearance of such spirits.
Behind the stage the midnight hour was signaled by
twelve tinkling bells, and after the fading of the last stroke,
which was followed by an artificially generated whirring of the
wind, a being wrapped in white shrouds floated between the
crosses and approached the man. This man seemed to be
frightened at first, but then he swiftly drew his sword and
stabbed the ghost. One saw clearly, how the flashing blade
went through the body of the ghost, without doing him any
harm. But now the boastful one threw the sword away and fled,
whereupon the white creature performed a triumphant dance
and the curtain rushed down. The performance was over, and
the audience departed highly satisfied.
I also stood up and approached the stage. My guess was
correct. The invulnerable apparition was a mirror image,
through a slanting glass plate, in front of which, lying on a kind
of platform, an actor made the ghost, whose image was thrown
onto the stage. The glass plate was made of three equal pieces,
set together, and the two dark, vertical stripes of shadow, which
had been visible on the stage during the performance, had
immediately led me to this assumption.
I now thought of leaving and noticed that there was no
one left in the audience but me. But nevertheless I was not
alone. Inaudibly a person had crept up to me, probably unaware
of my intentions, and even though I faced him so unexpectedly,
I recognized in him the sleight of hand magician in a robe as
well as the cemetery fencer.
I apologized and told him that I only had a scientific
interest in how it was done and was fully satisfied with it. In no
case was it my intention, to retell what I had discovered, which
by the way had been known to me for a long time, to impair his
success.
“The gentleman is obviously a connoisseur,” the man
said very politely and bowed. “Perhaps I have the honor of
seeing a master of white magic before me?”
“Not this one,” I replied. “I only wanted to know whether
the excellent effect produced by the phantom was created with
the help of large concave mirrors or with the sloping glass plate.
Glass plates of such size are, as far as I know very precious and,
as I understand it, are made only in Venice”
“I see that the gentleman is excellently instructed,”
replied the magician. “The three plates are our most valuable
possessions and require a great deal of caution when traveling.”
I thanked him with a few words and went toward the
curtain, in front of which the harlequin was once again making
noise and shouting.
“If, however, the gentleman wished to make use of my
actual art,” said the other, falteringly, and made a gesture with
his hand toward the ground on which we were standing.
A foreboding seized me.
“What you see here,” said the other, “serves only the
curiosity of the uneducated people and the acquisition of the
bare necessities of life. For the deeply initiated, I am the
necromancer Magister Eusebius Wohlgast from Ödenburg, and
I have indeed already been honored with the name of the
Hungarian Dr. Faust. I would have to be very wrong, if the
wishes of the gentleman, whose outward appearance already
announces the deepest and unhealed sorrow, not to offer the
most glowing reunion with a beloved person who had been torn
from him by cruel death.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You think I am more simple-minded than I am, Herr
Magus Wohlgast,” I returned. “With the smoke of poisonous
herbs, which completely cloud the clear mind, and with a
hidden laterna magica, one can show gullible people what they
wish to see.”
The man shook his head with a smile and replied gently
and modestly:
“People of my standing, who live in moving wagons,
must put up with being counted among the great crowd of
wandering jugglers and swindlers. To dispel this suspicion, I
expressly declare to you that I do not claim any salary if you
want to accept my services in this respect. It is entirely up to
you whether or not you want to give me a reward after the
work is done, or under the impression of having been duped, to
refrain from such. I also know very well in whose service I put
my art, and remain unconcerned about profit, as much as I have
to reckon with a net income. Incidentally, I recently enjoyed
the extremely high honor of receiving such a request from His
Imperial Roman Majesty in the rooms of the Masonic Lodge
“To the Three Fires”. Although His Majesty, as a result of a
very gripping apparition which moved him to the other world,
was frightened and had to spend a few days in bed until his
insulted mind had calmed down again. I was granted a very
handsome reward. It may serve as a testimony to you that
neither His Majesty nor the noble gentlemen present regarded
me as an impostor, but rather left the temple of the Freemasons
very moved and in silence. Yes, it was even said to protect me
from the persecution that Her Majesty the Empress ordered to
be instituted against me, when she discovered through an
informant gentleman the cause of the illness of her husband.”
Contradictory feelings stirred in me. The man seemed to
me to be honest and sure of his rare abilities. But my distrust
could not be eliminated so quickly.
“Whom or whose spirit did you make appear before His
Majesty?” I asked.
“To speak of that to anyone, even a trustworthy cavalier,
I am neither permitted, nor is it in my habits,” he declined. “I
would also decline to communicate with third persons about
apparitions which might come to the Lord if my most humble
services were to be called upon.”
My desire to experience this man’s art grew at his words
and I spoke:
“If it would be possible for you to call back a person,
who has departed from this life and is very dear to me, I would
be more than grateful to you.”
He made a dismissive movement.
“That is left to the discretion of the Lord, who is, in spite
of all the negligence of his exterior caused by his grief, is a
distinguished nobleman.”
“So how should I behave, and when should this
summoning go ahead?” I asked quickly, because two people
had already entered the tent and forced us to speak quietly.
“I ask the Lord to be here in three days, half an hour
before midnight. On the day when the work is to take place, the
Lord must abstain absolutely from all food and drink, with the
exception of pure water. Then a purification of the body and
fresh, clean clothes are needed. In addition, an object should be
brought that was the property of the deceased person, if
possible, something that was worn on the body. Strictest
secrecy against anyone, whoever it may be, is a commandment,
the non-observance of which makes all in vain.”
“I have understood and will observe all this,” I said.
“Nothing else is required?”
“Nothing more for the gentleman.”
“And you?”
“I, my lord, must fast from today, a full three days, fast.
My brother and our assistant will hold the performance here. I
must prepare myself in solitude until the hour of the
invocation.”
I looked at him doubtfully, but the place was so filled to
such an extent that further conversation was not possible. The
Hungarian Magus did not pay any further attention to me, but
walked right away toward the curtain. I saw him speaking
some hasty words with the colorfully dressed harlequin, who
nodded seriously.
“So in three days -” I said in passing.
“Around midnight,” he replied, and disappeared into the
crowd in front of the booth.
When I deliberately passed by after a while, the harlequin
had disappeared, and the man, who until then had attracted the
public with his multicolored costume, was now standing in the
robe in front of the entrance and invited the audience to enter.
In deep thought, I started on my way home to my inn.
God himself had annealed my soul in the furnace of pain.
I felt it deeply in the loneliness of the day, on which I prepared
myself fasting for the evening with the Magus. How different
my whole being had become since that hour, when my beloved
had slipped away into the realm of shadows. The old
irascibility which had still sometimes flashed up in me, the
arrogance, of which I often enough made myself guilty, the
addiction to the pleasures of the table and diversions of various
kinds, the tendency to lust – all this had fallen away from me
and seemed to me void and stale. The glamour, with which life
presents itself to a man, was extinguished for me under the
gray dust of transience.

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 65- 69

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, faith, fiction, god, jesus on December 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Ronde came.
Kregel had been missing for a week, and no one knew
more than that he had received a letter from home, about which
he was visibly offended and upset. He was one of the
abandoned Germans who lived in the stolen land of the area of
Kolmar.
One day a royal forester came to the Colonel and
reported that children had found a soldier hanging in a tree.
They had however, immediately ran away in fright and now no
longer knew where the place was. And so he thought one or
two companies should search the forest so that the dead man
could be buried in the ground.
So we went in search of Kregel and roamed through the
large pine forest. As we slipped through the thickets and sticks
it happened to me that I got completely lost from the others and
when I shouted for the others as commanded in such cases
received no answer.
When I was so alone with myself, I had to think about
Kregel, who was now freed from all torture and torment. How,
was it not most clever, to put this dog’s life behind him? I
thought how yesterday an eighteen-year-old boy, the Squire
von Denwitz, had stabbed me with a rapier, the tip of which
had lead embedded in it, because there was a chalk stain on my
coat from cleaning the white stuff; how the corporals beat us to
their hearts’ content, how miserable the food was that was served
to us like sows in large tin buckets; how the bread crunched
with sand when it was cut. All this would have been bearable.
But that no hope showed itself, how and when it could ever get
better, that one day after another was filled with curses and
sorrow, to allow another, just as gruesome, to rise, that was the
bad thing. For man must have some hope, if he is not to wither
and wilt.
In this hard school, which God’s hand had thrust me into,
I learned to force myself. I didn’t make a face when my breast
ached from burning pity for the unjustly mistreated, and I kept
silent about the most severe insults which I received by anyone
who was elevated by a braid or finer cloth. Perhaps it was a
punishment that had come to me. But then it could also be an
eternal justice, but how was that possible when far worse than I
could live in joy and glory until the end of their lives. So why
did this burden of suffering fall on me? What purpose could
higher powers, if there were any, have pursued with me by
placing on me burdens of my own and other people’s torment,
to endow me with the finest sensibility for every injustice that
happened to others and gave me more sensitive feelings than
probably all my comrades? They cracked their jokes even when
the worst and most unbearable of arbitrariness had happened to
them, and found full consolation with a glass of schnapps and
in the arms of their soldier’s wives.
I was mad at everything that had hitherto been upright
and consoling of my being and I could not believe what was
happening in front of me day in and day out, I could not
believe in a divine meaning of all these events. What does a
person do who lives in a chamber with hostile, crude, violent,
bad, cowardly, false, and evil people and sees no one in the
whole circle, who wants to create order and justice and has the
ability to do so? One leaves such a chamber. He closes the door
behind him and rejoices, to have escaped the abominable
existence in such a room.
So I now thought to act. Kregel, the poor lad from Alsace,
had shown me the way. And there were enough trees all around;
I wanted to attach my trouser belt to some branch.
I prepared to walk across the small sunlit clearing to
finish my last deed in the deciduous wood when I had to stop,
because in the middle of the open space sat someone, and I was
not alone.
It was the man in the robe with the black turban. He was
resting on a tree stump and his walking stick lay beside him in
the forest moss. His noble hands held the string with amber
beads. It was Ewli.
Once again the strange man, whose small image was
under the high glass dome in my children’s room, stepped in
my path in an intangible way. How did the stranger in his
unusual dress get everywhere? Unmolested, and not even
noticed by the children, he had been sitting at the wayside
shrine, when the Prussian recruiters came for me and my
companions of fate, until the recruiters took me and my
comrades away on their wagon.
At that time I could not connect him with myself any
more than I could about his mysterious interest with my person
in the prayer-filled church. And just as I did not find him in
front of the church anymore, he had disappeared from my view
at the lime trees of Distelsbruck. This time, however, he was to
speak to me before I started the work of self-destruction.
Nevertheless, I could not put one foot in front of the other.
Because the man from the Orient was not alone. In front of him
stood a deer, which rubbed its narrow head flatteringly against
Ewli’s knees. In his hand, which held a birdcage, perched a jay
with a pinkish-grey head and blue wing feathers, and in the
bramble bush to his right chirped uncounted colorful balls of
feathers. Two squirrels, chasing each other, a reddish-brown
one and a black one, went up onto his body, hiding themselves
in the folds of his robe, rolling and chattering, and to my horror
the reddish brown one suddenly disappeared into his robe, as if
it had melted into the same color of the coarse fabric, while the
second one crawled onto the black turban, lost its outline and
did not appear again. I looked at the face of Ewli, overcome by
the radiance of his eyes. Was he looking at me? Were the dark
stars directed into the far distance? I did not know, I just felt
how warm, divine love enveloped me.
Slowly, however, he stood up, walked across the clearing
and disappeared between the tall trees.
Then I came to and was able to move. I ran. Where were
the animals? Not a bird, not a deer was to be seen. Where was
Ewli? I ran into the middle of the high wood and suddenly
stood among my comrades. They had just found Kregel and cut
him down. Horrible to look at, black-blue and green spots on
his face, the swollen ink-colored tongue stretched out, with
open, complaining eyes, he lay on the ground, the rope in the
furrow of his neck. Nobody paid any attention to me.
They had spades with them and dug in the deep, soft
forest soil, where the mouse tunnels ran crisscross and root
snakes crawled.
It was late when we were finished.
In the evening-red sky an endless train of crows flew
silently.
“That means war!” said Wetzlaff and looked at me.

How long had we been in the field? Nobody reckoned
anymore, nobody knew.
I was camped with four comrades in bitter winter. We
had found makeshift quarters in a burned-down farmhouse. All
we had were two piles of rotten, damp straw and a blanket
singed by campfires. And this miserable property we had to
protect and guard, so that not even more miserable ones stole it.
The rifles had to be constantly cleaned without stopping.
After a day they were red again with rust. Zulkov had frozen
the toes of both feet. They were black and stank like the plague.
I had to treat Repke with gun powder and a residue of brandy
to wash out a graze on his back because no one else would do it,
and he screamed so loudly that I took pity on him. Wetzlaff had
gotten severe diarrhea and every five minutes he walked on
wobbly legs in front of the house. Where he had squatted the
snow was bloody all around from his stool. In the night he
moaned so much, that no one could sleep. And although we all
endured, they threw everything at him in the dark that they
could grab with their hands. Then he limped out again to
relieve himself with convulsions. The quietest of us all, a
gloomy person named Kühlemiek, read in a small, tattered
hymnal next to the fire and sometimes murmured:
“O Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!”
Repke was happy when I had bandaged his back again
with old rags, and put dry nut leaves in his pipe.
“The king has said -” he wanted to begin.
But Wetzlaff interrupted him snorting:
“He has said! He has said! If the King lets one go, you
miserable wretches are blissful with doglike awe. Oh, you
starving ribs, you cannon fodder! What is it then that makes
such a king so great?”
“Fridericus Rex is the greatest war hero of all time, you
poisonous toad!” roared Zulkov. “Dare not to insult His
Majesty!”
“Dear brothers in Christ,” pleaded Kühlemiek, “turn your
thoughts to the One who has entrusted all of our lives in His
grace-giving hands!”
“Shut up, old pietist!” Repke shouted at him, “Let
Wetzlaff speak!”
“Oooh!” he groaned, and hurriedly ran out again. We
heard the sound of his discharges and his groaning all the way
into the house. Then he came back again, white as lime, and let
himself fall on the straw.
“As I say, a man must edify and revive himself in the
Lord and King,” Zulkov said after a while. “But there are some
who forget the oath…”
“Do you mean me?” asked Wetzlaff, straightening up
with difficulty. “Refresh yourself, as much as you can with that
cold fire that you have on your hind claws. Yes, you sheep’s
head, so that Friederich can be a great war hero, you must keep
your toes in your shoes, my intestines have to bleed out, a
thousand have to be shoveled into the pits. I ask one, when all
around, with the Austrians over there and us over there, if there
were such guys as me, there would be no more king and
empress, but also no war and no people-beating. But you are in
general too stupid to understand such things. And from this
stupidity of yours all kings and generals, princes and counts
and barons down to our squire with the ass face live equally in
glory and joy and sit enthroned like peacocks in all majesty,
while we are kept as cattle and are driven to the slaughter with
the trilling of pipes and the beating of drums. O you damned,
thick-skinned fool, you horse-apple brains…”

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Alraune: Finale, pages 373- 375

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, christianity, faith, god, jesus on December 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel

Finale
It is late in the summer, the hollyhocks now raise their heads
away from the stalks. The mallows scatter their dull tones in tired
colors, pale yellow, lilac and soft pink. When you knocked my love,
the spring was young. When you entered through the narrow gate into
my dream garden the swift little swallows were singing their welcome
to the daffodils and the yellow primrose.
Your eyes were blue and kind and your days were like heavy
clusters of light blue wisteria dropping down to form a soft carpet. My
feet walked lightly there through the sun glistening pathways of your
arbor–Then the shadows fell and in the night eternal sin climbed out
of the ocean, coming here from the south, created out of the glowing
fires of the desert sands.
She spewed forth her pestilent breath in my garden strewing her
rutting passion beneath her veil of beauty. Wild sister, that’s when
your hot soul awoke, shameless, full of every poison. You drank my
blood, exulted and screamed out from painful tortures and from
passionate kisses.
Your marvelous sweet nails that your little maid, Fanny,
manicured grew into wild claws. Your smooth teeth, glowing like
milky opals, grew into mighty fangs. Your sweet childish breasts, little
snow-white kittens, turned into the rigid tits of a murderous whore.
Your golden curls hissed like impassioned vipers and the lightning
that unleashed all madness reposed in your soft jeweled eyes which
caught the light like the glowing sapphire in the forehead of my
golden Buddha.
But gold lotus grew in the pool of my soul, extended themselves
with broad leaves upon the vast shallows and covered the deep
horrors of the whirling maelstrom. The silver tears that the clouds
wept lay like large pearls upon their green leaves, shining through the
afternoons like polished moonstones.
Where the acacia’s pale snow once lay the laburnum now throws
its poisonous yellows–There, little sister, I found the great beauty of
your chaste sins and I understood the pleasures of the saints.
I sat in front of the mirror, my love, drank out of it the over
abundance of your sins while you slept on summer afternoons, in your
thin silk shift on white linen. You were a different person, my dear,
when the sun laughed in the splendor of my garden–sweet little sister
of my dream filled days. You were an entirely different person, my
dear, when it sank into the sea, when the horrors of darkness softly
crept out of the bushes–wild, sinful sister of my passionate nights–But
I could see by the light of day all the sins of the night in your naked
beauty.
Understanding came to me from out of the mirror, the ancient
gold framed mirror, which saw so many games of love in that wide
turret room in the castle of San Costanzo. The truth, which I had only
glimpsed in the pages of the leather bound volume, came to me from
out of that mirror. Sweetest of all are the chaste sins of the innocent.
That there are creatures–not animal–strange creatures, that
originate out of villainous desires and absurd thoughts–that you will
not deny, my love, not you.
Good is the law; good are all the strict rules. Good is the God
that created them and good is the man that carefully observes them.
But there is the child of Satan who with arrogant hands brazenly
rips the eternal laws from their appointed place. The Evil One, who is
a mighty Lord, helps him–that he might create out of his own proud
will–against all nature.
His work towers into the heavens– and yet falls apart and in its
collapse buries the arrogant fool that conceived it–
Now I write this for you, sister, this book–I ripped open old, long
forgotten scars, mixed their dark blood with the bright and fresh
blood of my latest torments. Beautiful flowers grow out of such soil,
fertilized by blood.
All that I have told you, my love, is very true–yet I take it from
the mirror, drink out of its glass the realizations of my latest
experiences and apply them to earlier memories and original events.
Take this book sister. Take it from a wild adventurer who was an
arrogant fool–and a quiet dreamer as well–Take if from one, little
sister, that has run closely alongside such a life–

Miramar–Lesina–Brion
April–October 1911

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Hermetic Mysteries: The Six Keys of Eudoxus, Part 4

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, god, philosophy, religion, spirituality on December 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A Modern Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery

Part IV: The Hermetic Practice

Chapter 3: The Six Keys of Eudoxus, Part 4

Introduction: The Six Keys of Eudoxus unlock the philosopher’s stone, a divine gift that transforms and heals through sacred wisdom. This section concludes with the stone’s universal blessings, uniting material and spiritual realms in divine harmony.

The Divine Physician’s Blessings

The philosopher’s stone, as Helmont describes, is a universal medicine wielded by the divine physician, chosen by God to heal with compassion. It fills life with health, riches, and divine favor, as Solomon declares: “Honor the physician, for the Lord created him.” This radiant essence, purified through the Six Keys, expels diseases and curses, bringing consolation and eternal life, as promised in Revelations: “To him that overcometh, I will give the Tree of Life.”

The adept, guided by charity and faith, becomes a vessel of divine light, transforming souls and bodies with the stone’s miraculous virtues, as Van Helmont’s cures of thousands attest.

The Fall and Restoration of Wisdom

Helmont laments the decline of the healing art, where ambition and sloth extinguished charity, separating physicians from surgeons and burying truth in confusion. Yet, the stone’s wisdom, rooted in the “Universal Spirit,” remains accessible to those who seek it with faith, as the Wisdom of Solomon affirms: “Wisdom preserved the righteous, guiding them through trials.”

Mesmerism, a first step toward this ancient wisdom, hints at the divine temple’s foundations, awaiting the adept’s will to resurrect the “Corner Stone” of divine light through persistent inquiry and love.

The Promises of Divine Wisdom

The stone’s blessings, as Revelations promises, include the “hidden Manna” and “White Stone,” granting power, purity, and eternal union with God. Wisdom, as Solomon declares, is “better than rubies,” offering riches, honor, and strength to those who embrace her. The adept, aligned with divine will, wields this universal treasury to uplift humanity, fulfilling the ancient creeds of love and truth.

Closing: This chapter unveils the philosopher’s stone’s divine blessings, uniting material and spiritual realms. The journey into its modern applications deepens in our next post, unveiling further secrets of this sacred art.

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The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: Chapter 1, pages 25- 29

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, fantasy, fiction, short-story, writing on December 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

I went back again. Dark yellow light fell out from the
chamber; a coffin stood on black-covered trestles, on which
was a cross of silver, and a high funeral crown, with flitters,
colored glass and mirrors. The wax ran and dripped, the
candles flickered. The flowers smelled of earth. Muhme knelt
by the coffin.
“O my Aglajele! My Aglajele!” she cried. That her little
face is never to be known! – Is it raining already?” she asked,
turning her puffy eyes toward me.
“I don’t know.”
And then I cried out and cried so wildly that Muhme put
her arms around my shoulders and spoke to me.
“You must not, boy, you must not – the people are
coming!”
One could hear feet trampling. People were coming,
murmuring. The finch in the hallway jumped from rung to rung
in its cage and kept shouting:
“Look – look – look – the travel gear!”
I stood up.
The priest came. He had the sniffles and often pulled out
his handkerchief. He had baptized Aglaja and blessed her.
Carriages drove up: the Sassens came, the Zochte, the
Merentheim, the cuirassiers from the city, Doctor Zeidlow, the
old Countess Trettin, the Hohentrapps.
A bell rang in the village, tolled; bing – bong – bing –
bong. Schoolchildren.
Muhme waved to the teacher. I heard how she said,
sobbing:
“He makes me sing the same song as he did with my
blessed little Hans, even though she was already blessed. But
she is in white innocence, as it were like a newborn child – God,
oh God!”
Ursula Sassen and Gisbrechte Hohentrapp embraced her
and led her. Then the servants picked up the coffin and carried
it out into the rain.
It was not far to the cemetery. Crows were sitting in the
weeping willows. Crooked old crosses leaned on both sides of
the gravel-strewn path. The iron gate of the hereditary burial
ground stood open with rust-red insides. Above it was a marble
skull with two crossed bones. In its open yawning mouth birds
had built a nest. It stood empty and abandoned. On top of the
head grew moss like woolly hair. I saw everything.
They put the coffin on the ground, and the school sang
again. As Muhme had wanted it, a song that is usually only
sung for very young children. My cousin Hans was two years
old when he died.
When little heirs to heaven
Die in their innocence,
So you don’t forfeit them.
They are only there
Lifted up by the Father,
So that they may not be lost.
Then the priest blew his nose and spoke. The old man
cried. The eighty-year-old Countess Trettin raised her lace
shawl upwards.
“Dust to dust -,” said the priest.
They carried the coffin down. The footsteps sounded
hollow, there was a terrible echo. Voices came from the depths.
Something fell with a thud down there in the darkness.
The rain rushed harder and harder. The carriages drove in
puddles of water. The men tied red handkerchiefs over their
hats, and the women put their skirts over their heads when they
were outside.
My father looked sternly on all sides. The sexton brought
him the key to the crypt.
“There – now have a drink!” said my father, and the
sexton, wet and chattering with his teeth, bowed low. He made
a face and ran his hand to his shoulder. He suffered from acute
Rheumatism.
“Aglaja is freezing -” said a disconsolate voice inside me.
“Aglaja-“
The big house was empty when I got home, the corridors
silent. There was a whispering in the corners, and the clocks
ticked. The stairs creaked in the night, and the wind cried in the
chimney. It was a very strange house. So big and so empty.
On the dark corridor of the second floor was a Dutch
clock with a polished face, on which the moon, sun and stars
moved. Above it, the ornate hands went their way. The
pendulum swung back and forth with a muffled, wham – wham.
After every quarter of an hour, the striking work let its three-
note sound be heard as if from far away:
Gling-glang-glong. At the end of each hour chimes
announced their number. Then a door above the dial opened,
and a small brown rooster slid out of it, moving its wooden
wings with a groaning sound. His voice was lost. Always an
invisible force took him back and closed the door again. At
noon, however, an angel with a blue, gold-edged robe appeared
instead of the cock and in three stiff jerks lifted a green palm
branch.
At twelve o’clock at night, however, a dead little girl
would appear in place of the angel. So we were told when
Aglaja was still alive.

I was standing in this corridor one night. It smelled of
apples and the strange wood of the wide linen cupboards on the
wall. Deer heads carved from wood hung there. They held
white turnips in their mouths and wore antlers that father and
grandfather had captured. Certainly a hundred such deer heads
were distributed throughout the entire house. One of the deer
had been kept tame, held in a fenced area and then released.
Later it had killed a fodder servant and the maids said that the
blood of the servant still stuck to the antlers. The paint had
peeled off the eyeballs of the wooden head, and so he looked
down on me with a ghastly white and blind glare.
Old Margaret, shuffling through the corridors with her
cane and enjoying the bread of mercy, had told me that at the
midnight hour of the day the dead walked in the house where
they had liked to be during their lifetime. I held in my hand a
candelabrum with one of the wax candles that had burned at
Aglaja’s coffin a year ago, and waited for her to come.
The cupboards cracked, there was a throbbing in the wall,
and then it was like a sigh. The wind went over the roof, so that
the shingles rattled. When the hour strike was about to begin,
the door above the clock face opened, and sure enough out
came out a little dead man with hourglass and scythe, turned
his skeleton once to the right and once to the left and raised the
tiny scythe to strike.
“Wham – wham -,” went the pendulum in the pauses of
the hoarse chime of the bell.
“Aglaja” I called softly and peered down the corridor.
Then silently the door of the closet opened, I was
standing nearby, and in the uncertain light of the candle I
thought I saw an ancient woman with a wrinkled brown face
and a large white hood. I staggered to the wall, but when I
forced myself with all my courage to look once more I could
not see anything but the closed door.
Then there was a cough and shuffling footsteps.
Something gray and stooped. The candlestick rattled in my
hand. But it was only old Margaret who was worried about me
and came to see if I was really up there. I held on to her sleeve
like a child and told her what I had encountered. She giggled
and nodded.
“It was the old woman- The great-grandmother of Aglaja
Starke, the daughter of the mayor, who had twisted the family
tree – on the Krämer side. You have seen rightly, my Melchior,
quite rightly. It’s just that she came instead of the young one.
She grabbed me by the jacket. I tore myself loose and stumbled
down the stairs.
In the afternoon Heiner Fessl was executed. He had
overheard the magistrate harass his wife, and since he noticed
that his wife had given in to the powerful man, he had run from
the workshop into the room and had shoved a red-hot iron that
was lying in the fire, through the body of the magistrate, so that
the strong man had to perish and die miserably. He had cruelly
beaten him and likewise the woman. She was dying, people
said. – Powerful helpers, who would have taken care of him-
were not there, and so they broke the staff for him.
At dawn, the man of fear had gone out into the field and
had announced it to the ravens, that the flesh of the sinner
would be available before sunset. So the executioner’s pigeons
were sitting on all the roofs and waiting.
Father told me to put on the silk, lavender-grey coat and
go with him.
“You’re a wimp and a whiner, but you’re no Dronte,” he
said. “I’m going to take you to the spa, boy!”
I felt sick with fear when I heard from a distance the
muffled beat of the drum and the roar of the crowd. All the
alleys were full. They had all travelled to see Fessl on the
executioner’s cart, and now he was to return. To my comfort,
we had to stop quite a distance from the scaffolding, because
the crowd did not move and did not take into consideration the
rank of my father.
“There you see how bold the scoundrels are when there
are many of them together,” said my father loudly and angrily.
He was appeased, however, when the baker, who had his store
there, hurriedly brought us two chairs, so that we could rest for
the time being.
“What you see will be very wholesome for you,” my
father said after a while. “Justice does not work with rose water
and sugar cookies. If it did, we noble folk could pound gravel
on the roads and give our belongings to the rabble.”
In the trees that stood in front of us and lined the square,
many people were sitting. Just in front of us squatted an
abominable fellow, dressed in the manner of Hessian cattle
dealers, in the crown of a linden tree. The sight of him was so
repulsive to me, that I had to look again and again.

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Hermetic Mysteries: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 4

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bible, god, jesus, philosophy, spirituality on November 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A Modern Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery

Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment

Chapter 4: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 4

Introduction: The Hermetic art demands a disciplined mind, suitable tools, and a pure heart to unlock divine wisdom. This section explores the practical and spiritual preparation needed, from choosing the right instruments to cultivating charity, to transform the soul into a radiant vessel of truth.

The Philosophic Vessel

The Hermetic art requires a suitable “vessel” to manifest its divine work, as Norton advises: “Ordeyne Instrumente according to the werke.” Vessels vary—small for separation, broad for circulation, narrow for correction—made of lead, clay, or glass, each chosen to harmonize with nature’s processes. Glass, especially the “morning stuff” vitrified from ashes, is prized for containing spiritual essences without leakage, as Vaughan notes: “The glass is one, simple, and easily carried.”

The adept must guide the crafting of these vessels, ensuring they align with the work’s intent. Norton humorously recounts the need for skilled assistance, as careless servants disrupt the delicate process. A faithful, diligent helper, as Solomon suggests, is “like thine own hearte,” essential for success.

The Ideal Environment

The Hermetic work thrives in specific environments, as Norton explains: “Places convenable” vary—dry and windless for some operations, bright or moist for others. Secrecy is crucial, shielding the work from disruptive influences like strong winds or corrupt impressions, which Agrippa warns can pollute the spiritual ether. The adept must choose locations that resonate with the art’s subtle energies, much like Virgil’s serene settings for his bees.

Vaughan emphasizes that the true furnace, or “Athanor,” is simple, requiring minimal effort, yet it holds the secrets of corruption and generation. The right environment ensures the “Central fire” of the work burns harmoniously, avoiding chaos.

The Heart of Charity

Success demands a “charitable seraphic mind,” as Vaughan instructs, rooted in faith and piety. The adept must avoid destructive passions, which disrupt the “sweet spirit of Peace” and cause division in the chaos. A heart aligned with divine love, as Agrippa advises, ascends in piety and descends in charity, uniting with the divine to open the “Door of Nature.” Without this, the work fails, as Zeno’s wisdom reminds: “Hear much, speak little.”

Closing: This chapter unveils the practical and spiritual requisites—vessels, environments, and charity—for mastering the Hermetic art. The journey into its operational secrets deepens in our next post, unveiling further wonders of this sacred pursuit.

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Posts Tagged ‘bible’

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 240- 245

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 205- 209

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 195- 199

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 145- 149

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 135- 139

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 65- 69

Alraune: Finale, pages 373- 375

Hermetic Mysteries: The Six Keys of Eudoxus, Part 4

A Modern Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery

Part IV: The Hermetic Practice

Chapter 3: The Six Keys of Eudoxus, Part 4

The Divine Physician’s Blessings

The Fall and Restoration of Wisdom

The Promises of Divine Wisdom

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: Chapter 1, pages 25- 29

Hermetic Mysteries: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 4

A Modern Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery

Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment

Chapter 4: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 4

The Philosophic Vessel

The Ideal Environment

The Heart of Charity

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