THE FOURTH PAPYRUS

Touching the ordeal of the scorching staff, I consulted Amenemhat. He had grave doubts as to whether it was lawful to protect the hand with a magic unguent, or to hold the staff with tongs; and he stood by the injunctions of the well-written papyrus which ordained that the staff must be held in the hand. But, as for me, my dear mind foamed with blood, and my stomach shifted inch by inch, and the gorge of me swang to and fro, at the anticipation of the grievous anguish which I was to undergo: although I knew that, by enduring the ordeal the first time, I had summoned from the dead a master of magic, from whom I was learning ineffable wisdom, and, that, by enduring the same a second time, I should call from the dead a master of masters of magic, from whom I might learn wisdom absolutely illimitable. But, notwithstanding this, the heart in my bosom would take no cheer, but remained dull and spiritless and weighted with premonitions of disaster.

Furthermore, while my mind was thus obliquing brusquely in the manner of a crab, I needs must add to my perturbations by certain thoughts about the gods of my own motherland. And I pondered the question again, asking myself whether what I was meditating actually amounted to apostacy. And I went over much old ground: for the point was a very nice and subtile one. I told myself how that bad hierarchs and far-from-immaculate anointed ones, all the most righteous of men, of my race and age and tongue, had refused to let me serve my gods and theirs in the manner which those divine ones inhabiting heavenly palaces had themselves designed. And I enumerated, one by one, all the occasions when the same blameless persons, out of spite or out of pique or out of merely natural and ungracious cruelty, had chased me from temple after temple with secret anathemas, denied me my rites, and withdrawn from me the very hem of the skirt of fellowship. And I postulated that a well-minded man must have a religion. Therefore, without disloyalty to the gods of my own land, from whose worship my fellow-worshippers cut me off, I pronounced that it was permissible for me, in default of fulness, to use a moiety. Thus, then, I argued with myself, until I was satisfied, that is to say satisfied as nearly as might be.

And anon I addressed myself to my task, placing the crystal orb in the silver cup, and filling the last with Nile-water, while my familiar poured into the thirsty trench below the steps that magic emerald-coloured liquid, whose exact ingredients may not be told at large. Which having been well-done, we prepared to summon a Great One of the Greater Ones out of the Outer Immensity. And, for this cause, that the one whom I was about to summon was coming from so vast a distance of time, I knew that the heat of my magic staff would be immeasurably greater at this second summons than at the first. For movement is heat and heat is movement; and, the faster and longer the movement, the fiercer the heat of the burning.

But, while the priest Amenemhat sprinkled beautiful-smelling gum-tragacanth, I intoned the hymn I am the One among the Forms which the Eye the Only One hath created, and the incantation called Of the Buckle of Red Jasper; and then we both prayed to Ptah the Pain-lessener to make my ordeal as endurable as might be. It is true that I was not to have an additional burning from the fierce clear of the moon, since I was (this time) far beneath the earth: but I ceased not from my pure-minded prayers to Ptah, even when the crystal orb began to glow. For I was convinced that some catastrophe was at hand.

Wherefore, fearing lest the sudden death of his summoner (and I expected no less) should leave Amenemhat to drag out a weary existence for ever on man-breeding earth—for a spirit reincarnated by means of Nile-water must remain incarnate until his own incarnator shall permit him to depart his body—then, indeed, I hastily gave to my familiar the Word of Freedom, saying: “O Amenemhat, it seems that the time of our separation is at hand. But I am loth to part, for thou hast taught and served me well: but I will not help myself at another man’s serious cost. Therefore I free thee from my bond of rule, that thou mayst return to thy place when it shall seem good to thee. And, for thine own sake setting thee free, O Amenemhat, I bid thee farewell.”

But his response came to me very thinly, very reed-like: for his body instantly began to fade away from him; and he was fast becoming an Osirian and a spider’s-web-coloured mist in my sight. And he said: “O Nicholas, Conquistator of Peoples, I indeed thank thee for the respite from the gnawing weariness of Amentet which thou hast granted to me, by summoning me to tread the kindly earth for a space; and, in return, I will unfold to thee some pages of the book of thy destiny. For, having been and being now about to be an Osirian, I can read plainly in that book: yet I may not tell thee all, for the gods have forbidden it. And, ere thou hast lived another moon’s age, thou shalt see me as I used to be: for I and thou are linked together in an unbreakable cycle of nigh two thousand years. And I and thou will meet again in this land of Khem, I the priest of Tanis, and thou: for that awful round of years is——”

Thus he departed, leaving the unfinished phrase lapping against my mind. But I was very grievously perturbed: for, unless I read his prediction awry, I was doomed to die within the month. And I was not ready, having an infinity (an inconceivable infinity) of things to do, of souls to save, of sufferers to soothe, of oppression to remove, of wrongs to put right, of liars and thieves and slanderers to confute and to despoil and to shame, of cruelties to avenge with head-diggings and eye-gougings and revenges and slaughters and maimings and stonings and spine-impalings with much moaning, and many other mind-grieving evils. For which causes I was not ready to die then.

Wherefore, arising with shoutings from my lethargy, I adjured the mind in my dear breast to be very strong, very valiant indeed, very alert to withstand Death’s insidious onsets. For, though I had seen many things, I never yet had met personally beautiful Death the soother of men. And first, I set myself to endure the ordeal in which I was engaged. For lurid gleams were leaping from the emerald liquid in the trench, wafting hot breaths in my direction.

Instantly, stripping off my linen robe and casting it outside the circle, I again ascended to the porphyry altar; and grasped the magic staff with my bare hand. Now that my mind was blazing with firm courage, the staff at first seemed cold. Anon, a gentle wave of warmth flushed through it; and a dart of anguish shot into my flesh. Pang followed pang: stab pierced stab. More swiftly came fiercer thrusts of pain as the heat increased. But I kept my mind fixed and my lips addressed to Ptah the Pain-lessener. Great scorching flames flowed from the staff over my hand and arm. I seemed to be holding a nineteen-times-heated fire; and, yet, amid all the intolerable agony, I was ware that this was but the beginning of my torment.

The heat of the flame was so intense, that I looked for my arm to vanish away in impalpable ashes. Irresistible desire of dropping the staff assailed me; and my fingers loosened a little against my will. Like as the helmsman of a ship, whose rudder is shattered by wintry storms, and who (knowing the right course) is unable to steer his vessel, even so was I then. The staff fell out of my grasp: but the silver chain, which looped it round my wrist, prevented it from rolling away.

Instantly, the flames expired; and the lambent streamers in the divination-cup died down. But I stood, alone, in darkness.

After a space of gloom and silence, I saw tiny golden sparks floating in the vast circumferent void. But I watched them: for there seemed naught else for me to do, nor was my will any longer inclined to force leadlike unwilling limbs to act. And the sparks became spots. And the spots became swiftly-rolling globes of light. I tried to utter a Spell: but voice and hearing had deserted me.

I lay, crouched against the blood-red altar of porphyry. The globes of light changed, taking wonderful forms. All my members were enfeebled; and, indeed, only the mind in my breast was me. For my body had renounced its allegiance to my sway, and had gone apart from me in shocking rebellion, leaving me to die having nothing but my mind and my mind’s eye, which saw and thought the very queerest things, the most terrible, the most unheard-of.

All round me, I saw the spirits of my senses standing. On the left, was my hearing: on his right, was my smell: on his right again, was my sight: on the right of that one was my taste: on his right was my touch. Above these, hovered my life, in the form of a small white bird like a beautifully-crowned hoopoe. Behind them, were my powers of speech and movement, very large, and sudden, and frightful. And the mind in my breast told me that these things were so.

But all these shapes mopped and mowed and sighed at me; and my voice made as though he would have derided me, his fallen master: but the bird of life forbade him. And the shapes wagged and wavered horribly, gesticulating among themselves; and some seemed friendly: but others were undoubtedly hostile. And, suddenly, with a pitiful gesture, my hearing put up his hands and dived cleanly into me; and I heard faint voices, as one hears the whimpering of miners coming up a pit-shaft. For my powers and my senses were arguing against me: but the bird of life argued for me.

“Ye shall not leave him thus:” cried the bird.

“And who can prevent us?” shrieked the rebels.

“I,” said my life, “for I will not leave him; and how can ye wander lifeless through the wide-bosomed earth when I am here refusing to die?”

Then, indeed, the mind in my noble breast spoke unwinged words, saying the Spell of Not Letting the Powers and Senses of a Man be Taken from Him in the Netherworld; and, afterward, I intoned aloud: “How now, rebellious creatures, why dally in idleness when work remains to be done? Know ye your master; and obey.”

And, with shambling gait and visages rueful and ashamed, my senses and my powers obliqued each to his separate task.

But I staggered to my feet; and, seizing the divination-cup, I drained its cool contents, looping my arm through the chain of the crystal orb. And, at the moment, flames began to rise from the summit of the purple altar. Whitish-green they were, ever-increasing in volume, as though some mountain (a forge of the Kyklops) were vomiting from a new vent. And the flames rose higher and higher, till they licked the very apex of the hall ninety men’s heights above me; and there was neither smoke nor vapour: but only fervent flames, humming and buzzing and bounding upward with irresistible leapings. But, changing to violet, they vanished, leaving the place in a violet glare wherein was the whirring of wheels.

But I dismissed inertia; and, having my faculties under order, I began to look upon these happenings with a wholesome curiosity.

In the midst of the wheels were faces and figures and events, faint indeed at first, but growing clearer and firmer and more violent in movement till they displaced the wheels. But I watched very intently; and I saw the histories of mortal men of many different races being enacted before my eyes. For, things (which then were past, and since have been) were done in my sight in that secret subterranean hall of Thebes. Kings and queens and emperors and princes and republicans and patricians and plebeians swept in reverse order across my view, all doing their deeds. Time rushed enormously backward in tremendous panoramas. Great men died before they won their fame. Kings were deposed before they had been crowned. Nero and the Borgias and Cromwell and Asquith and the Jesuits⁠[11] enjoyed eternal infamy and then began to earn it. My motherland, the kingdom of Victory queen of the stalwart stately Anglicans, melted into barbaric Britain: Byzantion melted into Rome; Venice into Henetian Altino; Hellas into innumerable migrations. Blows fell; and then were struck. Bearded men became smooth-skinned boys. Death came first; and birth came last. All things changed save one: silver Sihor’s living waters rolled down through the green streak of Egypt and the sacred Delta to the innumerably smiling sea.

Thus, was I whirled back through the rolling wheels of Time.

At length events were still. The medley of scenes vanished. And I was ware that I was alone with Another, Unknown, in a void of blackness, impenetrable, save where the blood-red altar glimmered obscurely; and, on it, was inthroned a Presence, shapeless, indistinguishable from the murky gloom.

But I was not afraid. And anon a voice spake to me, saying: “O man of many wiles and inquisitive mind, it is permitted to thee to have thy will, seeing that thy will is good and not evil. And, forasmuch as wicked and fatuous anointed ones are minded to neglect thee, wasting thee, throwing thee away as worthless, forasmuch also as the Maker of thy stars will not have His good work spoiled and His keen tool rusted or blunted by disuse or misuse, therefore, employment is granted to thee such as thine energy deserveth and as thy mind desireth. For which cause, thou art put back in time; and several lives are given thee to live, and several deeds to do, and several fountains of wisdom are laid bare to thee, so that (being perfected by much striving) at a favourable occasion thou mayst fulfil thy free and perdurable destiny.”

Thus having spoken, the Voice ceased. But I was alone, in the dark, very alert, inexpressibly elated, hugging huge joys in my superior mind; and my heart was throbbing like the tail of a lambkin in springtime drinking life from the ewe.

But the hall rocked slowly and more rapidly, with lamps and tones and the roaring of hurricanes and waterspouts and the vibrance of unmentioned and unthought-of music. And long tongues of white fire went before; and all the gods of Khem followed after in intolerable procession, Osiris and Isis and Heru the Child, and hawk-headed Ra in his splendour, and well-plumed watery Nu and Nut, and intelligent Ptah excessive in magnitude, and ram-headed Khnemu, and birdlike Khepera, and self-originated Tum, and feathered Shu, and lion-headed Tefnut, and Zeb the cackler, and Heru of the two horizons, and dark Set, and jackal-headed Anpu the way-opener, and ibis-headed Thoth the measurer, and Maat the straight, and Net the lady of heaven, and Sekhet the eye, and cat-headed Bast, and plumed Ansu with his flail, and mistress Ta Urt, and Hapi of the South with the papyrus, and Hapi of the North with the lotus, and Amen the Only One who has no second, and Mother Nut the sky his wife. And, all the while, I heard the shattering shaking of the sacred sistrum, denoting the presence of Divine Mother Isis, the Greatest of the Three.

But the Voice spake yet again to me, saying: “O man of many wiles and inquisitive mind, these are the forms of The Supreme, at this time to which thou art come.”

But I gazed on the assemblage of the gods, until my eyes were blinded; and, for a time, I saw no more.

Such, then, was the manifestation which I gained by magic art at Thebes.

I, Empedokles son of Polypemon, a Rhodian, have written this. My lord the king ceased from dictating these histories, in order that he might lead a squadron of his flying chariots, waging against King Artavasdes, who (audacious) has demanded tribute. And the Divine Herakles has gone with my lord the king. May unconquered Mithra, M.Z.L., P.S.U., D.O.M., S.H.C., M.E.L.F.,⁠[12] prosper this undertaking. And I seal up the scrolls, impressing the wax with my lord the king’s own sigil of the crab and the moon. And these scrolls are written fairly by me, and sealed by me, Empedokles, the scribe, by command of my lord the king.⁠[13]

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