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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Franchezzo

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"This is as a … house of mouldering bones and dead skeletons, but now you are come to join me we shall see if we cannot, combined, do something to make ourselves feared, if not obeyed, by the dwellers of the earth.

“I have had many a disappointment in you, oh! son of our noble race, and I feared you would escape me at last. I have tried for years to draw you down, but was ever baffled by some unseen power. Once and again when I deemed I had beyond doubt made all things sure, you would shake me off and break away from all control, till I had well nigh abandoned the struggle.

“But I do not yield readily to anyone … and so here you are at last, and by my faith you shall not again leave me. Behold how fair are the pleasures I have prepared for you."

He took my hand—his seemed as though burning with more than the fire of fever—and led me to a seat beside himself. I hesitated, then resolved to sit down and see this adventure out, but prayed in my heart to be kept safe and from temptation. — I noticed he did not offer me wine or food—(his instinct and knowledge told him I should only despise them)—but he caused a most lovely strain of music to sound in my ears … which ever appealed most strongly to my senses.

A wild weird sensuous strain, such as a siren might have sung when she sought to lure her victims, swelled, died away, and rose again. No music of the earth could have been at once so beautiful and so horrible —could at the same time intoxicate and inflame the brain and heart, and yet fill my soul with so intense a feeling of fear and repugnance.

like the mirror of Dorian Gray

And then before us rose a great black mirror in which I saw reflected the earth and its life, and myself swaying the minds and the thoughts of thousands through the fevered fascinations of such music which I could make mine, and through its spell waken the lowest yet the most refined of passions, till those who heard should lose themselves and their souls under its potent witchery.

Then he showed me armies and nations dominated to ambitious ends by himself and his influence, so that he should reign again as a despot through the [mortal] organism of an earthly tyrant. Here, too, he said, I should share his power.

the false glamour

Again, I saw the power in intellect and in literature which I could control and influence through the imaginative descriptive faculties of mortals who, under my prompting, would write such books as appealed to the reason, the intellect, and the sensual passions of mankind, until the false glamour thrown over them should cause men to view with indulgence and even approval the most revolting ideas and the most abominable teachings.

He showed me picture after picture, illustrating how man on earth could be used by spirits, who possessed sufficient will power and knowledge, as mere tools through which to satisfy their lust for power and sensual enjoyments of every sort.

Much of this I had known before but had never fully realised the vast extent of the mischief possible to such a being as the one before me, were it not for the checks imposed upon him by those higher powers whose wills are as strong as his. Them he only knows as an unseen force opposed to him, which baffles his efforts at every turn, unless he can find in man a medium of so congenial a nature that they can truly work together as one. Then indeed do sorrow and devastation follow in their train and then do we see such monsters of triumphant wickedness as have disgraced the annals of all times…

Last of all there appeared before us a woman's form, of such surpassing loveliness, such seductive charm, that for one instant I arose to look more closely at her and see if she could be real, and in that moment there came between me and the black magic mirror, the mist-like form of an angel with the face of my beloved. And beside her this woman seemed so coarse and material and revolting to me that the momentary illusion of the senses was gone and I knew her for what she was, what all her kind are, in truth, sirens that betray and ruin and drag men's souls to Hell while they themselves are all but soulless.

temptation on the mount: ‘if only you would join with me’

This revulsion of feeling in myself caused the waves of magnetic ether on which the music and these images were borne to us, to waver and break and vanish, leaving me alone with my tempter once more, with his voice sounding in my ears, pointing out to me how all these delights might still be enjoyed by me if I would but join him and be his pupil.

But his words fell upon deaf ears, his promises allured me not. In my heart was only a horror of all these things, only a wild longing to free myself from his presence. I rose and turned from him, and sought to go forth, but found I could not move one step. An invisible chain held me fast, and with a derisive laugh of rage and triumph he called out to me ironically,

"Go, since thou wilt have none of my favours or my promises. Go forth now and see what awaits you."

I could not move one step, and began to feel a strange alarm creeping over me and a strange numbness of limbs and brain. A mist seemed to gather round and enfold me in its chill embrace, while phantom forms of awful shape and giant size drew near and yet more near.

Oh, horror! they were my own past misdeeds, my own evil thoughts and desires, which had been prompted by this very man beside me and which nestling in my heart had formed those links between us that held me to him now.

But suddenly, above me, in the darkness gleamed a star and from it fell a ray of light like a rope, which I grasped with both my hands and as the folds of light diffused themselves around me I was drawn up, out of that dark place, away from that fearful palace.

When I recovered from my astonishment (and relief) at my release, I found myself in the open country with Faithful Friend and no less a spirit than my Eastern guide himself ... for I was much shaken and exhausted with the struggle.

if there was no one to rescue, why did the Guides allow this kind of severe danger and unpleasantness to occur

My guide, in the most kind and tender manner, addressed me, and told me he had permitted this trial in order that my knowledge of the true nature of the man I had just left should be my best protection in future against his wiles and schemes for my enslavement.

"So long," said he, "as you thought of this man with pride or respect as an ancestor and one who had any ties to you, so long would his power to influence you continue, but now your own sense of horror and repugnance will act as a repelling power to keep his influence away from you. Your will is quite as strong as his, and you, did you but know it, need no other protection.

“In the interview [with him] just past, you allowed your senses to be beguiled and your will paralysed by this dark being before you were aware, and thus, had I not rescued you, he might, though for a time only, have made you subject to him and, while you were so, have done you serious injury.

the sovereignty over yourself

“Take heed now while you yet remain in his sphere, that you do not again lose the sovereignty over yourself which is your own and which no man can usurp unless your wavering will allows him to do so.

“I leave you again, my son, to follow still your pilgrimage which will soon, however, draw to its close, and I bid you be of good cheer since your reward shall come from her whom you love, and who loves you, and sends ever her most tender thoughts to you."