Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment
Chapter 4: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 2
Introduction: The Hermetic art demands a pure and disciplined mind to unlock its sacred wisdom. This section explores the mental qualities needed and the obstacles to avoid, emphasizing faith, reason, and moral integrity as keys to divine transformation.
The Path of the True Adept
The Hermetic art, as Norton declares, is a “divine cure” to transform base metals into gold, granted only to those blessed with God’s grace and a virtuous heart. Success requires a stable, rational mind, free from avarice or pride, as Geber warns against those who chase wealth, unable to quicken the “aurific seed” of divine wisdom. The adept must pursue truth with unwavering faith, guided by reason to discern the sacred from the profane.
Eirenaeus illustrates this with a parable of seekers lost in “Cimmerian darkness,” mistaking false lights (ignorance, fantasy) for truth. Only those with disciplined intellect and pure intent can perceive the Hermetic light, aligning their will with divine purpose to unlock nature’s secrets.
The Dangers of Skepticism and Greed
Skepticism, especially the fashionable kind that dismisses the unfamiliar, is a major impediment. Geber condemns those who deny the art’s validity, presuming their limited reason sufficient, as Norton likens them to blind men attempting to paint. Such skeptics, lacking faith, block the path to truth, while the covetous, driven by Mammon, defile the divine light, risking spiritual ruin, as Job warns: “If I have made gold my hope, I have denied God.”
The Hermetic art requires sacrifice—abandoning selfhood for divine truth. Those who cling to greed or fleeting opinions fail to endure the fiery ordeal of wisdom’s purification, as Eirenaeus notes: “The art vanishes from impure hands.”
The Call for Disciplined Faith
The adept must cultivate a serene, diligent mind, as the Tractatus Aureus advises: “Be good, just, and ready to help mankind.” This disciplined faith, rooted in reason, aligns the soul with divine wisdom, transforming it into a radiant vessel. Norton emphasizes secrecy, taught “mouth to mouth” with a sacred oath, to protect the art from misuse, ensuring only the worthy wield its power.
Closing: This chapter unveils the mental requisites of faith and reason, and the pitfalls of skepticism and greed, for mastering the Hermetic art. The journey into its practical secrets deepens in our next post, unveiling further wonders of this sacred pursuit.
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
XII.
“Now you must go to Geißler and arrange everything with him, then we can leave the day after tomorrow.”
Falk stood thoughtfully for a while. “Yes, yes… we will leave soon.” He smiled distractedly.
“You love him very much, didn’t you?” he asked suddenly. “Who?”
“Well, Geißler of course. If something should happen to me, you could marry him, couldn’t you?”
He looked at her smiling.
“Die first, then we will see,” Isa joked. “Well, then goodbye.”
“But don’t come back so late again. I have such fear for you now. Think of me: I will go mad with unrest if you stay out long again today.”
“No, no, I will come soon.” He stepped onto the street.
It was just quitting time, the workers streamed in large crowds from the factories.
Anxiously he turned into a side alley. It was generally strange what everything now became fear for him; his heart was in constant fever activity.
If he heard a noise at the door, he started and could not calm down for a long time; he heard little Janek cry and started in highest fear: he could not remember for a long time that he had a son, no, now he even had two: little Janek and little Erik, two sweet, wonderful children…
Oh, this splendid father idyll! If only it were not so infinitely comical.
He walked thoughtfully along the empty street.
The events of the last days whirred through his head and blurred into a feeling of an unspeakable sadness. It seemed to him as if he must suffocate: he breathed deep and heavy.
What would it help if he fled? Not travel, only flee, flee, so that his lies would not be discovered? He could no longer live with all the disgusting lies, now he could no longer look Isa calmly in the eyes: her trust, her faith tormented him, humiliated him, he felt disgust for himself, tormenting shame, that he would most like to have spat at himself.
Strange woman, this Isa. Her faith has hypnotized her. She walks like a sleepwalker. She sees nothing, she hardly suspects that he suffers. The awakening will be horrible. It cannot go on: her faith will now be broken sooner or later anyway.
“So I am a double criminal. I broke the marriage and its condition, faith. Actually I am only a criminal against myself, for I cut the roots of my existence. I cannot live without Isa after all. However I think and consider: it does not go. And because I am I, because I am thus God, for God is everyone who makes everything around him his thing—and everything around me is my thing—, so I have sinned against God, thus committed a sacrilege.”
He spoke it half-aloud with deep reflection to himself, suddenly noticed it and stopped.
That could not be his seriousness, he knew no crime after all. No, whatever he might think about his heroic deeds, the concept of crime could not be constructed. Crime postulates a state of mind that is precisely no coziness… He, he, he, coziness!—I actually wanted to say heartlessness. Well, the devil knows, I am anything rather than heartless. I have more pity in me than our whole time together. So I am no criminal.
He lost himself in the subtlest investigations.
“But perhaps a state of feeling is now forming that did not exist before, and for which something counts as crime that was by no means crime before. A feeling of offense against civilizational developments, e.g. against monogamy.”
But his brain was so exhausted that he could not pursue the thought further: it was also indifferent; the brain with all its lawyer tricks was quite powerless against the feeling. Why brood further then?
He suddenly got the sure, immediate certainty that now everything would be in vain, whatever he did, that the terrible would now surely, unavoidably, with iron necessity break over him.
He shuddered and his knees became weak. He looked around: no bench nearby.
With difficulty and despair he dragged himself further.
His brain now became quite distracted, he could no longer concentrate it. Instead he saw with uncanny clarity the slightest details. So he saw that a letter hung crooked on a sign, that a bar was bent outward on a grating, that a passer-by had the characteristic gait of a person whose boots fit badly.
His brain exhausted itself in these trifles. Suddenly he cried out softly.
The thought that he had heard working all day in the lowest depth, and that he had tried so hard to stifle, broke through.
He had to follow Grodzki!
He had so often considered suicide theoretically, but this time it was like a huge compulsion suggestion: he felt that he could not resist it. It did not come from outside, no, it came from the unknown: a domineering will stifling every contradiction.
He trembled, staggered, stopped and supported himself against a house.
He had to do it! Just as Grodzki had done it. Train the brain will for it, force it to obey the instinct will.
Suddenly he felt a peculiar numb calm. He forced himself to think, but he could not, he went further and further thoughtlessly, sunk in this numb, inner death silence.
He stumbled and almost fell. That shook him up. No! it was not hard, why should he torment himself longer.
He thought what would not be torment, but he could find nothing. Then he thought what would not be lie, but there was nothing that it was not, at most a fact, but what is a fact, said Pilate and washed his hands. No! Pilate said: what is truth? and only then did he wash his hands.
He began to babble.
But when he came to the house where Geißler had to live, he became very restless.
He had completely forgotten the house. But here he had to live. He read all the signs, among them especially attentively: Walter Geißler, lawyer and notary, but he could not orient himself.
He went into the hallway, stepped out onto the street again, read the signs again, came to his senses and became half unconscious with fear.
Should he go mad? That was after all a momentary confusion of senses. Oh God, oh God, only that not!
He collected himself with difficulty, a morbid shyness to show no one what was going on in him began to dominate him.
He directed the greatest attention to his face, made the strangest grimaces to find out the expression of indifferent everydayness, finally felt satisfied and went up.
“One moment!”
Geißler wrote as if his life depended on it. Finally he jumped up.
“I namely have insanely much to do. I now want to hang my law practice finally on the nail and devote myself entirely to literature. That is after all a charming occupation, and I work now to unconsciousness…”
“But first you will arrange my affairs?” Geißler laughed heartily.
“There is nothing more to arrange. You also have not a glimmer of your circumstances. Your whole fortune is at most three thousand marks.”
“Well. Then I will come to you tomorrow; you can give me the money tomorrow, can’t you?”
“I will see.”
Falk suddenly thought.
“You actually need to give me only five hundred, the rest you will send monthly in hundred mark installments to this address.”
He wrote Janina’s address. “Who is that?” asked Geißler.
“Oh, an innocent victim of a villainy.”
“So, so… You probably want to go into the desert now and fast?” “Perhaps.”
Falk smiled. He suddenly remembered his role and began to laugh with exaggerated cordiality.
“Just think, I asked very eagerly for you.” “Where then?”
“In a completely strange house. I wanted to mislead a spy and so I asked very loudly and with great emphasis for you on the second floor… But that is not interesting at all.”
Homo Sapiens by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
“Strange, strange… the doctor said you should lie at least three days, and I have seen this expression of strength and energy in your face for a long time. You are different from all people.”
“Yes, yes, that is the new strength. Drink, drink with me… I was so little with you… Drink the whole glass out.”
They drank out and Falk filled the glasses anew.
He sat down beside her, took her both hands and kissed them. “We have not spoken together for a long time,” he said.
“Now everything is good, isn’t it?” she asked tenderly.
“It will become good. We will travel away from here… What do you think of Iceland?”
“Are you serious?” “You make so many new plans…”
“This time I am serious, because it is namely no plan. It occurred to me today, yesterday, I actually don’t know when, but I must away from here.”
Isa beamed. She did not want to tell him, but she found it unbearable in this boring city.
“Think, such a small fisherman’s house by the sea. Isn’t it? Wonderful! And the autumn nights when the waves play this terrible eternal music on the beach. But you will not be bored?”
“Did I ever get bored with you? I need no person, nothing, I need absolutely nothing if I only have you.”
“But I will often be away from you, very often. I will go out with the fishermen for entire nights, I will go into the mountains. And when we are together, we will lie in the grass and stare at the sky… But drink, drink then… Oh, you can no longer drink as before.”
“See then!” She drank the glass empty.
“And in this twosomeness: you and I, and you a piece of me, and we both a revelation of the immanent substance in us…” He stood up. “Isa! we will seek the God we lost.”
She was as if hypnotized.
“The God we lost,” she repeated half unconsciously. “You don’t believe in God?” he asked suddenly.
“No,” she said thoughtfully.
“You don’t believe one can find him?” “No, if one does not have him in oneself.”
“But that is what I mean: to find God, that means to feel God, to feel him in every pore of one’s soul, to have the immediate certainty that he is there, to possess the wild supernatural power that the God-feeling gives.”
“Do you want to seek another God, a God outside? What do you want this God for? I don’t want him. I don’t need him. I have the immediate certainty of the God-feeling, I feel him as long as you are there. I need nothing higher… And I will not tolerate such a feeling in you either. Then I will not go with.”
He looked at her long.
“How beautiful you have become now. As if a light had suddenly bloomed in you…”
Suddenly he lost balance and came into a strange rapture.
“Yes, yes, I mean the God who is you and I. I mean the holy, great My-You! Do you know what my you, my dark you is? That is Jahveh, that is Oum, that is Tabu. My you, that is the soul that never prostituted itself in the brain. My you, that is the holy soul that rarely comes over me, perhaps once, as the Holy Spirit came only once over the apostles. My you, that is my love and my doom and my criminal will! And to find my God, that means: to explore this you, to know its ways, to understand its intentions, so as not to do the small, the low, the disgusting anymore.”
Isa was carried away. They grasped each other violently by the hands.
“And you want to teach me to find and explore it in me?” “Yes, yes…” He looked at her as if he had never seen her before.
“And you will be in me?”
“Yes, yes…”
“I am yours, your thing and your you… Am I it?” “Yes, yes…” He began to become distracted.
“We are poor, Isa,” he said after a while, “I lost the whole fortune.”
“Throw the rest away too,” she cried laughing to him and threw herself on his breast.
Fear suddenly rose in him.
“You, you—if it is over tomorrow? I have such mistrust of myself.”
“Then I will pull you with.”
“But is it perhaps not only an over-fatigue, an over-excited mood that whips us into this ecstasy?”
He started.
“I lie, I lie,” he said suddenly hoarsely, “I have lied too much… Now…”
He broke off. The thought to tell her now everything, to tell everything in detail, shot through his head and grew into a great, maniacal idea.
“Isa!” He looked at her as if he wanted to bore into the ground of her soul… “Isa!” he repeated, “I have something to tell you.”
She started frightened.
“Can you forgive me everything, everything I did evil?”
The confession forced itself with irresistible power over his lips. Now he could no longer hold it back. He grasped her hands.
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
“But you are fighting windmills. Do you believe that Napoleon is a great person for me? He is only that for you because he showed you with what ruthlessness and brutality one may proceed when it comes to satisfying one’s greed…”
Falk stared at him with feverish tension. But he did not grasp what the other said. And suddenly he saw Czerski’s face as if he had never seen it before!
“Strange, strange,” he murmured, staring incessantly at Czerski. He moved quite close to Czerski and spoke quite softly.
“See, you will commit crimes, no, no! don’t get upset. Understand me correctly, I mean what our society calls crimes. I know it. I suddenly saw it now. I believed you were sick or ate opium, now I know it. How? Suddenly. All at once. All political criminals get the same expression. I saw Padlewski in Paris, you know, he murdered the Russian ambassador… I saw him three hours before…
Falk sat down again. For a moment everything went dark before his eyes. But it passed immediately.
When you murder, you naturally have motives for it. Yes, I know, you have great love and great pity. And in what do the roots of your great pity stick? Only in the greed to realize the purpose you have before your eyes. In what does your greed differ from mine? Ha, ha, you don’t even listen to what I say, your
gaze is a thousand miles from here… Ha, ha, you don’t need to listen to it at all, but just tell me, in what will your crime then differ from mine? In that my crime remains unpunished, and you are punished with death. But I have the torment, and you have the happiness of sacrifice, yes—of sacrifice, Falk cried out.
Czerski started.
“What did you say now?”
“You have the happiness of sacrifice! And I have the torment.” Falk fell exhausted back into the chair.
“Naturally you will say I got all that from Nietzsche. But that is not true. What Nietzsche says is as old as the bad conscience is old…”
He straightened up again, his state bordered on ecstasy.
“You said you spit on all this. Didn’t you say so? Well, approximately so. And I agree with you! This with the overman… Ha, ha, ha… Nietzsche teaches that there is no good and no evil. But why should the overman suddenly be better than the last human? Ha, ha, ha… Why is the criminal more beautiful than the martyr who perishes out of pity? Where does the valuation between beautiful and ugly suddenly come from? Why? Oh, I love great suffering beauty, I love ascetic beauty… Ha, ha; I perhaps loved Janina because she is so extraordinarily thin… What do I know? Everything is nonsense! I spit on all that, I spit on the overman and on Napoleon, I spit on myself and the whole life…”
He looked around confused and suddenly became very serious, but then he began to speak again, quickly, hastily; he tumbled over himself, it seemed to him as if he could not say enough.
“I have told no one what I tell you. I admire you, I love you. Do you know why? You are the only one who has ceased to be himself… Yes, you and Olga—you both. I love you both for the sake of your love. And I love great love. That is the only feeling I love and admire. Don’t you hear how my heart beats, don’t you feel how my temples throb… But to love, one must have your faith, yes, the faith that has no purpose, only love, love, love is!.. He, he, he… I love, I admire, I crawl on my knees before this love that is the great faith. It is
so strange that precisely you, you levellers, you compassionate ones are the overmen! Faith, love makes you so mighty and so strong. I am the human on the extinction list. I am the last human. See: in the Polynesian archipelago there is a wonderful human race that will no longer exist in thirty, fifty years. It is dying out from physical consumption. My race is dying from physical phthisis. The lung of the brain, faith is rotted, eaten away…
Falk suddenly began to laugh.
“Ha, ha, ha… I had a friend. He was also such an overman as I. He was not as strong as I, and so he died from the debaucheries. When he was dead, I went to a café to think about death and to make clear to myself that he was really dead. I met there a fat and greasy medic who had muddled with us. I said to him: Gronski is dead. He thought a little. Then he said: I could imagine that. Why? I said. One must have principles, was the answer. One must have principles. If one has principles, one does not perish. But to have principles, one must believe, believe…
He suddenly straightened up and stood long almost unconscious. “It is my despair that speaks through me,” he finally said…
You are right, Czerski—the whole life, this disgusting life of the worm that eats in the flour, the life of small love… You are the first I have seen who has thrown that away, who has forgotten that… For you there are not these commandments for whose sake I suffer, because you are too great for that…
Falk suddenly seized his hand and kissed it. Czerski jerked violently and tore his hand away.
Falk looked at him long without saying a word, then sat down again. It seemed to him as if the fever had suddenly left him. He also didn’t quite know exactly what he had said or done.
Czerski was unusually pale. “Why did you come here?”
His voice trembled.
Falk looked at him calmly. They looked into each other’s eyes for probably a minute.
“I swear to you,” he finally said, “that I came for no small motives.”
“Is it true?”
“Yes, it is true.”
Czerski walked uncertainly back and forth a few times.
“I retract everything unpleasant I said to you—his voice was very soft, he seemed to have great difficulty fighting down his excitement. You are no scoundrel, Falk. Forgive me that I wanted to insult you.”
He went to the window.
A long pause ensued. Suddenly Czerski turned around.
“I didn’t know you,” he said harshly, “I believed you were unscrupulous… I wrote everything to Janina’s brother because I had promised him to watch over her. And now I have something else to think about.”
“You wrote to Stefan Kruk?” “Yes.”
Falk looked at him indifferently.
“Hm, perhaps you did well… But now farewell Czerski. I am glad that we do not part as enemies.”
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
Sacrifice was ridiculed because it is so infinitely hard to sacrifice oneself, because it costs so much struggle and despair. You say: I! But what is your I? Is it not perhaps an antidote against a bad conscience? Your I is only there so that you can transgress the small law that regulates your small desires… You, you, Falk, you are despite your self-glorifying individualism a small person. In what has your life exhausted itself if not in debauchery and sexual desire… Well, I do you wrong, you have done much, but was it not because you found a kind of atonement in it, tell me Falk, was it not to calm your bad conscience?
He stood almost threateningly before him, but sat down again immediately. “Why I you concerned about me?. I have nothing to do with you. I sit here ten hours and think that I have nothing more to do with you all. I have nothing personal about me anymore. My soul has widened, infinitely widened… You naturally don’t know what humanity is, because your lying brain, this flexible instrument in the service of your digestion, has made a concept of humanity, yes a concept, to be able to conveniently dissect, unravel and dispute it away. I don’t know this concept, but I know humanity as the root of my soul, I feel it with every beat of my heart, as the basic feeling that the sacrifice I bring to millions from my self is something else than the crawling and sweating and running after a woman. But now go Falk, I want to be alone before my departure. Just think that you are a small person, and you should have been one of the greatest. You, yes, you; you should have become one.”
Falk felt deeply shaken. But in the same moment a cynical shame overcame him that he let himself be shaken, it seemed to him as if his brain grinned at his helplessness.
“Do you eat opium?” he asked half unconsciously. Czerski looked at him seriously.
“Your brain is shameless,” he said slowly and almost solemnly. “Shameless!” Falk ducked under this look and these words. He stared at Czerski ashamed, he clearly felt two souls stretching up against each other.
“Yes, my brain is shameless.”
But immediately he regained his superiority. The cynical soul triumphed. He adjusted himself, smiled scornfully and said:
“It is very beautiful what you said there. Your criticism of our society was very good, although you did not go beyond what Nietzsche says in his *Zarathustra*, yes, the Nietzsche you so despise.”
He was silent for a moment to see how that would affect Czerski.
But Czerski seemed not to listen to him at all. He turned his back to him and looked out the window.
Falk was not surprised at all about it, he even brooded that he was not upset about it. He suddenly became sad and serious.
When he began to speak again, it was only to hear himself speak.
“You are right, my brain is shameless because it cannot grasp that your feeling ‘humanity’ has no causes, no causes that are not grounded in some experience. But that is how my brain is, it takes your soul state under the magnifying glass and analyzes it. You sat in prison. The woman you loved treacherously forgot you. Your loneliness, your bitterness, your pain and your despair finally produced this selfless surrender. So is your humanity not a lie, a great lie to save yourself from despair, is that not a lie to break the pain that caused these terrible torments, a lie of your physique in need of rest and recovery? You are now happy with your great lie and I am unhappy because my lie is small. But what does great mean? What small? My God, the concepts are lost to me, I usually don’t judge from a logical standpoint either. I know very well that the soul does not follow logical principles… But what did I want to say?… Yes, right…
Czerski suddenly turned around. “Do you want tea?”
“Yes, give tea, much tea… Yes! You condemn me, you called me a scoundrel. Isn’t that so, you did it? Why did you call me that? Because in my destructions sex was a motive. I speak destructions because the case with Janina is not the first. No…
He drank the tea hastily. The fever began to dominate him.
“Sex was the motive. Good! But—” again he lost the thread of thought; he thought long, then suddenly started triumphantly.
“Look at Napoleon. He is a classic example for all such cases.”
His face shone.
“You smile! No, I don’t want to compare myself with Napoleon at all. I only weigh motives against each other. What were his motives?… He, he: some say he was like the thunderstorm that cleans the air. But it is a ridiculous comparison. That the thunderstorm cleans is only accidental, if it weren’t, we would have to assume a providence, a pre-established harmony. He, he… those are only false conclusions. Give me another glass of tea.
Napoleon had to have motives though. Well: ambition for example. But what is ambition? You don’t believe that ambition is a fact… but—does that interest you?
“Speak only, that seems to calm you.”
“Yes, you have a splendid psychological eye. It actually calms me. So ambition is something enormously composite. A thousandfold parallelogram of forces, if you want. It is no basic drive like hunger and sex are. It is something that has developed from the basic drives. All these motives have the common root in the basic drives. They are only derivations, development and differentiation phenomena…
Falk laughs nervously.
“So see, see: all emotional motives have biologically and psychologically the same value because they come from the same root. He, he… those are special theories, they don’t have to be correct at all. I only wanted to prove to you that my action motives do not lag behind Napoleon’s in value at all.
In most cases, however, the motives are unknown, one doesn’t know why one does this or that… Well yes…
Falk had great difficulty concentrating. He literally suffered from thought flight.
Yes, so, the motives from which Napoleon destroyed can also only be derived sex drives… Isn’t that so? We can assume that as probable. But then you will say there is a great difference, to conquer a world and to make a girl unhappy… He, he, he… So you reproach me that I am too small a criminal? For to conquer a world one must destroy a world, and I have only destroyed a few girls. Now you will naturally say: Napoleon made a world happy. But in his thoughts, God knows, there was no intention to make a world happy. He did everything because he had to do it. In the psychic fact there is no purpose of consciousness at all. The brain only lies that in afterwards…
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
“That’s why it must be eliminated, just as one eliminates madmen who commit crimes without knowing it.”
“So only the harmful consequences decide about crime?” “Yes.”
“But suppose you blow up a factory for the sake of the idea and thereby plunge hundreds of families into misery, then you commit a crime because the consequences are criminal.”
“No! For thereby I bring my idea closer to realization and I bring millions happiness. When Christ spread his teaching, he knew very well that thousands of his followers would be sacrificed, so he delivered them to certain ruin to bring millions salvation.”
“You believe in God?” Olga asked absentmindedly. Czerski suddenly fell into great excitement.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, the God-man… But don’t interrupt me. I have the right to it, nature taught it to me. What decides about the pleasantness of a feeling? Not that it is pleasant in itself.
The habituation to opium is very painful at first, only in length becomes pleasure. So only the duration of the same decides about the final nature of the feeling. It is self-evident that the first consequences of a factory explosion are unpleasant, but…”
“So you will shrink from no crime?”
“No, no crime,” he interrupted her eagerly, “I will shrink from no action that guarantees my idea victory.”
“And if your idea is false?”
“It is not false, for it is built on the only truth we have: love.”
“But if your means are false?”
“They cannot be false, for their motives are love. By the way, I don’t want to resort to these means at all, even if I should hold it necessary. I have no program like the anarchists. I want to commit no act of violence so as not to be counted to a party that has violence in its program.”
“Out of vanity?”
“No; out of caution, only out of caution, so that the anarchists, thus a party, do not believe they have the right to regard my act as the consequence of their program.”
“You are ambitious.”
“No! But I am only in my act. I have only one right, and that is: to be. And my being is my act. Yes, I have an ambition if you want to call it so: to be, to be through my act. I am not as soon as I execute foreign commands.”
“Those are old thoughts, dear Czerski.”
“I don’t know if they are old, I got them in prison and so they are my own. I thought them out with great effort. I was not used to thinking as long as I was in the party. Now I have detached myself from everything to be alone and determine my act with my own thoughts.”
“And if you hadn’t got the money from Falk, would you have taken it?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you want to do now?”
“I want to teach people to sacrifice themselves.”
Olga looked at him questioningly.
“To be able to sacrifice oneself: that is the first condition of every act. I will teach the enthusiasm of sacrifice.”
“But to sacrifice oneself, one must first believe in the purpose of sacrifice.”
“No! The sacrifice does not spring from faith, but from enthusiasm. That is it precisely. See, all previous parties have faith but no enthusiasm. No, they have no faith, they have only dogmas. Social democracy has died in dogmatic faith. Social democracy is what every religious community is: it is faithful without enthusiasm. Is there a person who would go into the fire for his God? No! Is there a social democrat who would plunge into ruin without reservation, without hesitation, for his idea? No! They all have the calm, comfortable certainty of faith; their dogmas are iron truths for whose sake one, God knows, need not get excited. But I want to create the fiery, glowing faith, a faith that is no longer faith because it has no purpose, a faith that has dissolved in the enthusiasm of sacrifice.”
He suddenly fell into an ecstatic state. His eyes shone and his face transfigured itself peculiarly.
“So you speculate on the fanaticism of hate in the masses.”
“Fanaticism of love,” he said radiantly, “fanaticism of love for the infinity of the human race, love for the eternity of life, love for the thought that I and humanity are one, inseparably one…”
He varied the thought in the most diverse expressions.
“I will not say: Sacrifice yourselves so that you and your children become happy, I will teach anew the happiness of sacrifice in itself. Humanity has an inexhaustible capacity to sacrifice itself, but the fat church and fat socialism destroyed that. Humanity has forgotten the happiness of sacrifice in the fat, disgusting dogmatic faith. The last time it tasted it in the great revolutions, in the Commune—purposeless, only out of love for sacrifice, to enjoy once more the infinite happiness of purposeless selflessness… And I will bring this happiness back to memory through my act…”
He suddenly stopped and looked at Olga suspiciously.
“You probably believe I am a mad fantasist?”
“It is beautiful, very beautiful what you said there—I understand you,” she said thoughtfully.
He was silent long.
“Yes, you are right that those are old thoughts,” he said suddenly. “They touch in many ways what Falk expressed at the congress in Paris. I would have liked to kiss his hand then…”
He suddenly became very restless.
“But it did not become a life matter for him. His brain figured it out. His heart caught no fire… No, no—how is it possible to have such thoughts and not perish with shame that one can say all that cold and calm… See, that is the shamelessness of his brain, that it cannot shudder at it. His brain is shameless… He is a—an evil person. He is not pure enough for his ideas. One must be Christ, yes, Jesus Christ, the God of humans, the holy source of willingness to sacrifice.”
“You have changed very much, Czerski. By the way, I didn’t know you. Kunicki slandered you. I will think much about what you said…”
Olga stood up and looked at him shyly.
Over his face lay a transfigured glow. She had never seen anything like it.
“Take care of yourself, Czerski. You look very sick.” “No, I am not sick. I am happy.”
He thought long.
“Yes, yes,” he said suddenly, “yesterday I was still a small person. But now it is over, it is past…”
Part II: A More Esoteric Consideration of the Hermetic Art and Its Mysteries
Chapter 4: The Mysteries Concluded, Part 4
Introduction: The ancient mysteries reach their pinnacle as the soul ascends to divine union, becoming an intellectual beacon of eternal wisdom. This section unveils the final Theurgic rites, uniting the soul with the divine through love, faith, and harmony.
The Divine Union Through Theurgic Rites
Theurgic rites transcend mere intellectual thought, uniting the soul with the divine through sacred media. Iamblichus explains, “Divine union is not achieved by thought alone, as theorists might assume, but through ineffable rites and symbols known only to the gods. These Synthemata, divine aids, perform their work autonomously, moved by the gods’ will, not our intellect.” The Chaldaic Oracle declares, “I revolve these in my mind’s sacred temples, extending sparkling fire to put the symbol of variety into the mind, guiding it to the incorruptible pattern of the divine.”
These rites awaken the soul’s latent wisdom, transforming it into an “Intellectual World.” Porphyry notes, “When the soul’s inferior powers align with reason, they venerate it, dissolving their own motions in its presence.” This harmony, unlike the anarchy of natural life where selfish motives dominate, establishes a divine monarchy where all faculties follow the rational will, mirroring the cosmic order.
The Fire of Divine Wisdom
Sendivogius describes fire as the purest element, infused with divine majesty, carrying the soul’s rational essence. “God created the soul as a tree of knowledge, clouded by oblivion. Only through purity can it approach the divine fire, which no mortal eye can penetrate without dissolution.” This fire, calm and vital in its divine state, moves only by God’s will, stirring the soul’s faculties into universal harmony, as a king’s court moves with his command.
The alchemists’ “Salt of Wisdom” and “Mercury of Philosophers” is this purified essence, the soul’s hidden light. Morien tells King Calid, “This mastery is God’s secret, entrusted to prophets whose souls rest in paradise.” The soul, purified through rites, becomes a radiant vessel, reflecting the divine unity that sustains all creation.
The Final Contemplation
The initiated, perfected through Theurgic rites, contemplate the divine unity, the “Paternal Port.” Proclus explains, “The soul, assimilated to the intelligible universe, meets the Maker, united through intellectual vision, not opinion or syllogistic thought. This is the discovery of the Father—light conjoined with light, more beautiful than Elysium’s visions.” The soul, shedding multifarious knowledge, rests in silent faith, love, and hope, uniting with the ineffable One.
Plato’s method of divine intuition—through love, hope, and faith—guides the soul to this unical silence. Proclus urges, “Remove all variety, let the universe be still within, and commune with the Ineffable.” This is the alchemical stone, the soul’s radiant essence, seated in its divine throne, harmonizing all creation in eternal light.
Closing: Chapter 4 concludes the mysteries, uniting the soul with the divine in a radiant intellectual vision. The journey’s transformative implications unfold further in our next post, revealing new depths of the Hermetic art.
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
In short, even if the comparison limps and makes absolutely no claim to exactness, the brain is deceived and lied to and learns only later, after it has summed up what happened, that it was deceived.
But with that the refined cruelty is not yet at an end.
With the poorly functioning brain is still connected a cute stuff of conscience, trained for millennia to cause torment for the sins that nature commits.
He, he, a quite unbelievable refinement… But with that the thing is not yet at an end.
Through a peculiar trick nature has drilled into the fool of a human that it is a tremendous advantage to have brain and conscience.
For what distinguishes the human from the animal? The human knows what he does…
Falk listened. Won’t a laughing fit soon overwhelm him?
The human got the brain so that he might recognize God namely nature, thank him for his benefactions…
No! I must stop. Otherwise I really run the risk of getting laughing cramps.
By thunder! What a refined rogue trick. To be thanked for the brain, and on top of that for the conscience, this beautiful dung heap on which nature dumps its villainies.
No, no! I thank you for the brain, the conscience and such knowledge apparatuses. Oh, I would rather descend to the bacillus.
He destroys without torment and without pangs of conscience.
The clever Herr Professor who wanted to teach the human the overman! Well! he would go under on the second day from his excess of brain and conscience!
Falk actually saw himself on a stage, he found that not at all strange, on the contrary: very pleasant. He loved to be noticed. Then he had the pose of a significant person, no, no pose: only a quite natural appearance of a significant person, just as the audience wishes to see a significant person.
By the way, esteemed audience, I commit the nonsense of personifying nature, and that is the first step to forming a God. He giggled. The God, ha, ha, ha, that the liberal, free-thinking bourgeoisie had abolished. The free-thinking audience—oh God, I suffocate,—German free-thinking with twenty seats in the Reichstag.
No! How he could amuse himself royally!
He suddenly started. Otherwise he used to calm himself with such self-conversations, to forget, but this time it didn’t succeed. On the contrary: the unrest seized him anew, surprisingly, from behind, with new violence.
But to the devil, what then? What will, what can happen?
He had to absolutely prevent it. He must not go under. Not yet. No, he had to hold Czerski back, explain the whole thing to him in detail, prove with reasons, set forth with invincible arguments that he was completely in error if he wanted to hold him responsible. That was ridiculous. If he wanted to punish the lie, he had to somehow get at nature and damage her… Yes, he had to convince the stupid Czerski that he had indeed acted as a knowing tool, but absolutely without any responsibility, something like a bacillus or something similar.
Yes, make clear, convince… perhaps in the following way:
Falk coughed. He clearly saw Czerski opposite him. Strange this hallucinatory quality of his thoughts. That is naturally the beginning of the end. Diagnostically very valuable these pronounced hallucinations that do not disturb at all. See, dear Czerski, I am now a thousand times calmer than a few hours ago… Yes, naturally.
Again he drank a full glass.
Are you impatient, Czerski? Well, we can begin. I am not in a hurry because I must touch on certain intimate things that thinking about is absolutely no pleasure.
You wrinkle your forehead. But my God, don’t you have any interest in psychological analyses? Regret, regret… I am a quite engaged soul researcher… He, he, he… I believe I committed all my villainies, as you like to call my actions, out of a certain psychological curiosity, a curiosity that for example distinguished the illustrious spirit of the liberal bourgeoisie, Herr Hippolyte Taine. You know, the gentleman who wanted to set up a distillery for virtues. Splendid idea, to produce virtues in the same masses as vitriol. He, he, he… That’s how the liberal spirits are!… Oh, oh, what they don’t all know and can do! But please, sit down, otherwise your knees will dissolve, as Homer says. A cigarette perhaps? Maybe a glass of cognac? You don’t drink? Yes, naturally, you are a philanthropist, and as such you walk on the highest heights of humanity, thus disdain the bodily pleasures. Ha, ha, ha… Now excuse me, don’t take it badly. I just cannot understand how a person who has a brain can get along without alcohol… You violate a natural compensation duty.
Why? Why? But that is quite clear. The primeval human, the brainless human, thus a Homo who is not yet sapiens, and consequently not capable of regulating his feelings, is subject spontaneously to certain emotional outbursts that one calls enthusiasm, ecstasy, suggestibility etc. It is a process that has certain similarity with so-called pathological processes, thus for example a mania. Something seizes the brain with terrible violence, makes blind to all reasons, incapable of any calculation, one becomes like a bull with a blinker tied on. But this ecstatic blindness gives an unheard-of power that actually created our civilization. See, this fanatical, straight-line blindness drove the masses to Jerusalem, it kindled the religious wars, it stormed Bastilles, won constitutions, it erected barricades and secured impunity for the roguish press pirates… That is the enthusiasm of rage that gave a Samson the power to put a whole army of Philistines to flight with a donkey’s jawbone and on the other hand brought Herr
Ravachol to the idea of transporting pious bourgeois souls to Abraham’s bosom: the bourgeois love the almighty Lord, they should thank Ravachol that they so suddenly get to behold the face of God in joy… Oh, oh—you laugh, Herr Czerski, one didn’t suspect you of anarchistic hobbies for nothing.
So this enthusiasm is an extremely important factor in nature’s household, but we are no longer capable of it. The sober reason of the free-thinking bourgeoisie has killed it. But we, yes we have the obligation to be guardians of this holy enthusiasm. But how to produce it if it is not there? Naturally through alcohol. See, Suvorov, he understood it. His armies got as much to drink before every battle as they wanted, that’s why they performed miracles of bravery… the Prussian war ministry should consider this circumstance.
I babble, you say? That is very stupidly said. You are probably also such a liberal brain to whom the small things appear ridiculous? But we came off our main theme. So Herr Taine, isn’t it? He has quite the same psychological curiosity as I… Do you know how he does it? He is in a society. He sees a person who has a character head, character head I read namely twice daily in the Berliner Tageblatt. The organ of the liberal bourgeoisie says it of every minister, provided he resembles a sheep. Otherwise it only says sharply cut profile, as if carved from marble, sometimes also antique etc. Herr Taine sees the sheep face. He immediately becomes distracted. He wanders around like a lunatic until he suddenly steps on the feet of the character head in question. But one knows that it is Herr Taine, and one is very pleased about it. Herr Taine notes in his notebook. First quality: great gentleness. Actual milieu: end of the eighteenth century.
That bores you, Herr Czerski? Well I only wanted to prove to you that my psychological method differs essentially from Taine’s.
So I am a married man. Happy? No! Unhappy? No! What then?
But do you really not want to drink a glass of cognac? It is good when one is nervous. That dampens the depressive states, increases the life energy, makes the whole organism more capable of performance.
“You don’t want to? Well, then your health.”
Falk drank.
“Hm, hm… How should I even begin?” He walked up and down.
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
IV.
Falk entered his study, sat down at the desk, propped his head in both hands and groaned loudly.
All the calm he had so laboriously maintained with Isa was gone and again he felt the throbbing and drilling of his torment. The unrest coiled like a pointed sharp funnel into his spinal cord, a feeling as if he must now fall apart, grew foaming up in him; he jumped up, sat down again, he knew no way out.
It seemed to him as if everything around him must now collapse, break down, sink in; he felt an orgy of destruction and downfall ecstasy around him.
And the sultry heat of the summer night crushed him, spread stiflingly in his lungs, he became so sensitive that he could hardly breathe.
He tore open the window and almost recoiled in horror.
The sky! The sky! He had never seen it like that. It was as if he had suddenly perceived the astronomical distance. He saw the stars as if they had been moved a million times further away, larger, fierier, like huge, gangrenous burn spots. And the sky seemed so terribly alive to him… Sweat broke out on his forehead, and he felt his eyes painfully bulge.
Then he pulled himself together again.
And in a moment his whole life crashed down on him with visionary clarity. One period unrolled after another with raging speed. All the terrible, horrific of his life: one downfall after another, one destruction after another… He had seen his life like this only once, yes, back then when he destroyed the poor child, this dove-soul of Marit… ugh, Marit, that was the most hideous. This pointless destruction, this murder…
He suddenly came to consciousness and laughed maliciously.
To the devil! Am I going senile? What does a murder concern me that nature commits? Ha, ha, ha… That she had the kindness to use my humble self as a murder instrument by chance, for that I should now suffer!? No! no! that won’t do.
He got heated.
Esteemed and by me especially highly valued audience—by the way, I wouldn’t mind spitting on all your heads, but I may only do that in parentheses—God how tasteful! So incredibly highly honored audience: I teach you a new trick, an extremely useful trick… It is an unmasking, a disavowal, a new testament, a new salvation… In the beginning was the cunning, malicious, devilish nature… You have been told she is mighty, unconcerned, cold and proud, she is neither good nor bad, she is neither dirt nor gold… Lie, esteemed audience, infamous, ridiculous lie! Nature is malicious, refinedly malicious, lying, insidious… that is nature! He, he, he… Naturally the esteemed audience opens its chewing tools as if a four-horse hay wagon should drive in… A slick smart aleck is nature, a malicious, villainous devil… What am I? Do you know? Does he know? Naturally! The individualists, the clever people who throw out their chests and shout: I am I! Oh, they know… the individualists!
Falk laughed scornfully.
I am nothing, I know nothing either! Oh! it is terrible! Terrible it is! Isn’t it, Isa? You are the only one who can appreciate the terrible… I see my movements combine into actions, I hear myself speak, I feel certain processes in the sexual organs, and an act is accomplished! What happened? A misfortune happened! Hi, hi, hi, do you hear the devil grin? Who did it? I?! I?! Who am I? What am I?
He fell into a despair fever.
I didn’t do it! My God, how can I prevent something that was… that was prepared in me long ago and only waited for an opportunity to break out and bury everything under its lava! Did I know anything about it? Can I prevent a glance sinking into my soul and calling forth forces there, forces of whose existence I had no idea? And for that, that something unknown in me instigated a misfortune, I should atone, for that I should be tortured by my conscience?
Dear nature, try your malicious, insidious tricks on other people; I know your tricks and wiles too well—no! to torment me, you will never succeed—never!
He poured himself a large glass of cognac and emptied it in one gulp.
How wonderfully He had figured out the thing! He will go to my Isa and simply say: Gracious lady, your husband is a scoundrel, he has with a foreign woman given the impetus to a new genealogical line, to an illegitimate Falk line. You, gracious lady, will naturally divorce him so that your husband can marry the girl, whereby both lines attain a genealogical unity. Ha, ha, ha…
But, dear Czerski, I have no intention of having two legitimate lines.
Well, then I will tell your wife anyway, for I want to free you from the lie, I am a Tolstoy, a Björnstjerne-Björnson, I fight for truth…
But, dear Czerski, don’t you understand that the two gentlemen are senile philosophers, don’t you understand that truth becomes an idiotic lie as soon as it destroys people? Don’t you understand that it would be infinite happiness for me to go to Isa and tell her everything, don’t you understand that this lie causes me infinite torment, but truth would cause me a thousand times greater, and besides destroy Isa? Don’t you understand that truth in this case would be an idiocy, a nonsense, a disgusting cruelty?
These narrow brains naturally don’t understand that. And the disaster will come. Isa? Yes, Isa will go. That is certain. She will simply disappear… no, she will still shake my hand in farewell, no—perhaps not, because I have soiled her with the other. Yes, that’s exactly how she will say it… But what then, what then?
He racked his brain as if he had to necessarily find the philosopher’s stone.
His knees had grown weak, he fell exhausted onto the sofa.
It was undoubted. The Other in him had ruined him. He felt endlessly slackened, weak and powerless:
The power of circumstances has destroyed the knowing Herr Falk, precisely because he was knowing. But when Herr Falk goes under, it is quite different from when, for example, little Marit throws herself into the water because she didn’t want to become mother of a Falk side line. It is thought crudely, very crudely, but this crudeness hurts, and that is a pleasure… But yes, when Falk goes under, he can control it, follow the collapse from stage to stage, note, register…
He, he, he… he had now thoroughly unmasked nature. He had also completely overcome conscience…
Do you want to know why, you truth-fanatics? Just open your ears well so you can at least somewhat survey the unspeakable extent of your stupidity… Just listen to my reasons, the reasons of the knowing one who has unmasked nature.
Nature destroys. Good, very good! To destroy, she uses various means, namely first the so-called forces of nature. In this category fall her moods in the form of lightning, storms, water and wind spouts etc., etc.
Second, she has chosen the bacilli as an outstandingly effective murder tool, a splendid and unbelievably villainous invention…
Third, no! no third! I am no classifier, I am philosopher, consequently I skip a cute number of the cutest murder and torture tools against whose most convulsive inventiveness the Inquisition must appear tame and pleasing to God, and go immediately to the human…
The human! Just allow me to take a deep breath, refresh my dry throat with cognac and feed my stomach a little nicotine.
So the human! Homo sapiens in Linnaean systematics: a self-acting apparatus equipped with a registration and control clock in the form of the brain!
Wonderful!
Now, please, just listen well. I continue my gospel, my great work of salvation.
Nature was ashamed of her eternal, pointless murders. Nature is lying and cowardly, she wanted to shift the guilt for her pointless murders from herself and gave the human a brain.
Do you know what a brain is? A very bad, discarded, unusable apparatus. Imagine a poorly functioning blood wave recorder. It will of course record the rise and fall of the pulse, but wrong, quite wrong. One will only see from it that a sinking and falling is present, but nothing more. See, in this way the brain also learns that something is happening in the soul, but what? it learns nothing about that.
Madame Bluebeard by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel
No one knows about it. We’ve a cracking tip. You take a 33⅓ percent stake.” Helmina had returned to her tabouret, sitting higher than the men, sunk in soft cushions. She looked down at them. “I’ve no money. How am I to invest?” she said mockingly. “What’s your divine husband for?” “You know, Anton, we agreed on separate assets. He covers the household, gives me a monthly sum for clothes and trifles. But otherwise, we each do as we please. There’s no joint purse.” “You’ll bring him around.” “You think it’s easier than it is. He’s stubborn. He took it badly, for instance, that I’m fighting for Kestelli’s inheritance.” “Idiot!” Sykora muttered into his cognac. A white cuff flashed as he swirled the cognac with a connoisseur’s steadiness. “Ruprecht’s a peculiar man. Catching him was hard. He’s not as dumb as the others. I wrote him in Abbazia, invited him to a rendezvous. He sent his servant to say he wouldn’t come. I realized I had to approach him differently.” “You got him in the end.” “Yes… but it was tough. Not a cookie-cutter job. I had to get psychological.” Sykora roared with laughter. “Oh… that psychology… it’s simple… all nature’s built on it…” He downed a cognac, shaking. “By the way, this cognac’s truly excellent—yes!” He rose, lumbering across the Afghan rug, arms dangling. “Well—if he won’t give in willingly… we’ve got the mutual inheritance clause, thank goodness.” The stove drew him. He pushed aside the screen, yawned, and warmed his back. Helmina stared ahead. “He’s the fourth,” she said. “Yes, yes!” Sykora smiled genially. “The fourth, not counting the others—the ones no one knows about.” Lorenz removed the Havana from his teeth, half- opening his eyes. “Helmi’s in love with him.” Helmina snapped at him. “That’s not true. It’s absurd. I wouldn’t dream of falling for a man.” Her green eyes flashed. “Now, now,” Sykora soothed. “You like him, that’s plain. But we’ve given you enough time. You might be tired of this new wedded bliss. You didn’t make such a fuss before when we asked you to finish things. I repeat, we need money. And another thing— I’ve got a hunch. I’m worried the ground’s getting too hot here. That Dr. Edelstein acts like he knows something. He supplied some of your candidates back then. Must’ve noticed they vanished, never resurfaced. Now he’s getting nosy.” Lorenz opened his eyes fully. “Then it’s time to move on. Diamant’s useful, but not trustworthy. The Galician petroleum deal must be our last here. We agreed, in that case, we’d go to America. You’re only getting lovelier, Helmi; your best years are ahead. In America, we can run the game on a grander scale. They don’t pry into your business or homes there.” As Lorenz spoke, Sykora nodded approvingly, beaming with paternal pride. He swept his broad hand through the air, as if drawing a thick line under a ledger. “Quite right,” he said. “You must decide, Helmi. Time’s short. Herr von Boschan’s hurt himself with that marriage contract. His caution’s his worst enemy. Why give us such a golden opportunity upon his death? The others had it better, especially Dankwardt, who prolonged his life, as if he knew his will was his death sentence… Well, am I getting no food today?” “I’m going,” Lorenz said, pulling in his legs, slapping his knees, and rising. “Let’s see what’s cooking.” With a self-assured lackey’s poise, he left. Sykora watched with a fond, amused smile. “Hear that, Helmi: ‘Let’s see what’s cooking’… like the German chancellor… sapperment… the lad’s come into his own… a real joy. He knows what he wants and can do it… ‘Let’s see’… that’s a tone that says you’re dealing with someone. A fine fellow. You two show what upbringing can do. He was such a frail child… a breeze could’ve toppled him. Now he’s a bear. I reckon he’s almost as strong as I was. His sailor years did him good, the weak little brother.” Sykora rambled on, praising Lorenz like a smitten lover—his courage, resolve, demeanor, wit. Helmina, meanwhile, toyed with the gold-embroidered cloth’s fringes on a fauteuil’s armrest, silent. He paused, chewed his massive jaws, snorted, and asked, “So, Helmi, when do we start with the Galician petroleum?” Helmina shrugged. “It’s up to you. You must get us the money. Don’t forget, I made you what you are. You’d have rotted in the gutter if I hadn’t found you. I think I can count on gratitude. You’re a landowner now, a ‘von.’ Who knows what awaits across the ocean?” A bell shrilled. Helmina rose. “No need to remind me. I know we’re bound for life and death. It’ll be done as you wish. But I’ll try first to persuade him to part with the money willingly. How much do you need?” “Half a million.” “A tidy start. I’ll try. But you must give me time.” “Not too long… please. Let’s go. My stomach’s rebelling.” Before the castle’s lady and her guest, Lorenz slid open the dining room door, standing in haughty deference as a flawless lackey until they passed. Neither glanced at him. He closed the door and joined Johann to serve. The leisurely table talk, dominated by Sykora, first touched on Helmina’s late husband. Herr Dankwardt had been Sykora’s friend. With deep emotion, the survivor recounted his nobility, warmth, and philosophical calm. Mentioning a line from Dankwardt’s last letter, his voice broke, unable to continue. Old Johann’s tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping into the mayonnaise he served. He longed for a handkerchief, a need growing urgent. The conversation then turned elsewhere. The Karl Borromaeus Society in Vorderschluder planned to dedicate a new church banner. Collection lists circulated through the countryside; donation baskets jingled at doorsteps. One had to contribute to the good cause. Frau Helmina recounted how resistance had arisen in Vorderschluder itself. The paper factory workers, stirred by a rebellious spirit, had been roused by Social Democratic agitators. They’d organized, aiming to push through a socialist rag’s editor at the next provincial election. Meanwhile, they took pleasure in railing against those rallying around the Karl Borromaeus Society. Anton Sykora pledged to bolster their efforts from Vienna. After the third glass of Gumpoldskirchner, as his cigar burned low, the guest rose, kissed the hostess’s hand, and took his leave with heartfelt thanks. Lorenz led the way with a candlestick. On the second-floor corridor, a brown-skinned man passed them. A white turban and belt gleamed briefly before a door clicked shut. “Who’s that?” the Fortuna chief asked. “A Malay servant of Herr von Boschan.” “Dangerous?” “I doubt it. He can be handled.” Entering his bedroom, Sykora paused, listening. A howling chant rose from the courtyard, like the voice of a darkness filled with terrors, a voice from the depths. “That old hag still alive?” he asked, irritated. Lorenz set down the candlestick, drawing back the tulle curtain from the guest bed. “Helmi says she’s harmless,” he replied. “And what do you think of her—of Helmi?” “I said it already… she’s in love. Won’t last long, I hope.” “We don’t have much time. You’ll need to nudge things along.” “Once he becomes a nuisance, he’s done for. But you can’t push her too hard.” “Working with women…” Sykora grumbled, “always a risky business. Go now, Lorenz—people will wonder why you’re lingering. Good night.” The two giants shook hands, the floor trembling faintly. Sykora undressed slowly, sat pensively on a chair, and, feeling the chill, climbed into bed. He extinguished the light, chewed contentedly, and fell asleep.
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