Re: Passage from "The Novel of The White Powder"
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 3 August, 2022 04:09PM
Minicthulhu Wrote:
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> Hello.
>
> Can anybody help me understand a certain passage
> in "The Novel Of The White Powder" by Arthur
> Machen?
>
> Men and women, seduced from their homes on
> specious pretences, were met by beings well
> qualified to assume, as they did assume, the part
> of devils, and taken by their guides to some
> desolate and lonely place, known to the initiate
> by long tradition, and unknown to all else.
> Perhaps it was a cave in some bare and windswept
> hill, perhaps some inmost recess of a great
> forest, and there the Sabbath was held. There, in
> the blackest hour of night, the Vinum Sabbati was
> prepared, and this evil gruel was poured forth and
> offered to the neophytes, and they partook of an
> infernal sacrament; sumentes calicem principis
> inferorum, as an old author well expresses it. And
> suddenly, each one that had drunk found himself
> attended by a companion, a shape of glamour and
> unearthly allurement, beckoning him apart, to
> share in joys more exquisite, more piercing than
> the thrill of any dream, to the consummation of
> the marriage of the Sabbath.
> It is hard to write of such things as these, and
> chiefly because that shape that allured with
> loveliness was no hallucination, but, awful as it
> is to express, the man himself. By the power of
> that Sabbath wine, a few grains of white powder
> thrown into a glass of water, the house of life
> was riven asunder and the human trinity dissolved,
> and the worm which never dies, that which lies
> sleeping within us all, was made tangible and an
> external thing, and clothed with a garment of
> flesh. And then, in the hour of midnight, the
> primal fall was repeated and re-presented, and the
> awful thing veiled in the mythos of the Tree in
> the Garden was done anew. Such was the nuptiæ
> Sabbati.
>
> What I do not comprehend is that the man was
> "attended by a companion, a shape ... beckoning
> him apart," but then there is a mention that "the
> shape was no hallucion but the man himself." It
> makes sense to me so can anybody enlighten me on
> the problem?
This is indeed a tough one--purposely ambiguous, I suspect.
First, we're purposely told that "men and women" were guided to a place where the black mass was to be celebrated. These are first-time initiates.
These guides were well qualified to assume the parts of devils, and I suspect that these are not actual devils, but former initiates, since they're the only ones qualified to guide the initiates, as stated.
A potion was mixed up--water and a white powder--and the initiates drank it, "sumentes calicem principis inferorum" (
"taking the cup of the ruler of the underworld").
This next part, "a shape of glamour and unearthly allurement, beckoning him apart, to share in joys more exquisite, more piercing than the thrill of any dream, to the consummation of the marriage of the Sabbath." is all a mixture of sexual impulse and "glamour" in the old sense of the word, connoting magic. This is not directly identified with the neophyte or sprung from the neophyte; it seems like a spontaneous creation that "attends" the neophyte, "beckoning him apart", and it sounds like a sexual consummation.
Now, it does indeed seem like this being was of the neophyte ("...loveliness was no hallucination, but, awful as it is to express, the man himself."). So it seems like the being was created from the neophyte ("the man himslef"), but did not actually mimic or resemble him.
But what was this being made of? Machen says: "the human trinity dissolved", but what are the parts of the human trinity? We know the divine trinity, but not the human one. What is "the worm which never dies"?
In any case, the neophyte has carnal consummation with this being, sprung from himself in some fashion, repeatin original sin, apparently. I had always thought original sin referred simply to listening to the serpent, but here it sounds like sexual consummation.
Not sure about any of this, however. Very evocatively written, with hints and partial revelations, but strangely elliptical and indirect. Works well as weird fiction.
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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