Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/55

50 triumph. We will be proud that we are disciples of Hermes Trismegistus, that thrice-sealed Lord of Mind,—the Mystical Mal-Kizadek [Melchizadek] of Bible repute; but let us not forget to be proud that we are disciples of the viewless God. . . . Twine the laurel wreath for the victor, but add the cypress for the victim. . . . Let us go, then, to the land of romance and of dream,—the land of the Holy Byblus, and the Sacred Ganges. Standing upon their shores, our minds will revert back in the dim ages, to the days of our childhood, and the birth of the mystical reign of Ahrimanes. We will behold in our mind's eye a succession of kingdoms, like the succession of seasons, a rise and fall of dynasties, like the sowing and reaping of grain. We will count the number of patricians who live in idleness and luxury, and shudder at the multitude of plebeians who die in agony and want. Behold those monsters of selfishness and cruelty, whose insatiable appetite of ambition and pride, wealth and power, could not appease, and for whose maw the quivering flesh and trickling blood of a people became food. Here and there, we will find men struggling against oppression as we have struggled; people teaching virtue and charity as we have taught,—reviled and scorned as we have been. We will discover that others have borne our burdens who had no hope of receiving our reward; that knowledge is universal, and has no royal road; and that they were as wise in the wisdom of their generation, as we are in ours.

And now tread softly. We are entering the dark realm of the slumbering ages. The dust of a million years has gathered here, and no voice has awakened its echoes since the days when the Indian Bacchus consorted with the daughters of men.

We have left the land of the probable, and are journeying in the regions of the possible. The footprints here and there are of mortals, but of those who have beheld the hidden mysteries of Eulis, who are familiars of the Cabbala, who have raised the veil of Isis, and revealed the Chrishna, the— or the

Behold in the distance, shining from the east as the sun from the sea, the unquenchable torch of her who is nameless; observe the stars that circle round her, as she kneels to write upon the sand.