Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/213

208 prepared for use within the ensuing forty-nine days, by similar persons on the eve of actual marriage, as it is supposed certain properties of a magical nature attach to it when handled by such persons under such circumstances. Of course I, with my western habits of thought and European education, could but laugh at this, which seemed so very palpable and gross a superstition; and yet, strange to relate, when I expressed my sceptical views to the old Sheikh, he laughed, shook his head, handed, me two parts of the shell of a large nut, and requested me to fill one with the crude material, and the other with the same after it had been prepared. I did the first, and reserved the empty shell for the other, taking care to hold both in my hand well wrapped up in a brown bandana. … The circle had a pile of stones in the centre, upon which coals were brightly burning; and over this fire—which, by the way, is the Eternal sacred Fire of the Garoonahs, which is never allowed to go out from one year's end to the other—was suspended from a tripod of betel rods a coarse earthen vessel, into which the four expectant marriagees poured about one-fourth of the contents of the simla gourds already mentioned; amid the din of an hundred tom-toms or native drums; the clashing of rude cymalos (cymbals) and wild, clarion-like bursts of the strangest, and, shall I, a staid Briton, confess it?—most soul-stirring and weird music that ever fell upon my ears, or moved the man within me! After this was done, the Sheikh's servitors erected a pole near the fire, around which pole was coiled the stuffed skins of the dreadful hooded snake of India,—the terrible Naga, or Cobra; while on top was an inverted cocoa-shell, and two others at its base—understood by the initiated as symbolizing the Linga,—the male emblem, or creative principle of Deity; while the suspended vessel over the fire represented the Yoni, or female principle; the tripod emblematizing the triple powers or qualities of Brahm—Creation—Preservation—Perpetuation;—the fire below corresponding to Love, or the Infinite Fire which is the Life of All! … And now began a strange, weird dance, to the wild melody of five hundred singing devotees of that wonderful Phallic, or sexual religion; mingled with the mellow breath of cythic flutes, the beating of tambours, the