CHAPTER XX.
THE WORSHIP OF LYONE, SUPREME GODDESS.
The worship of the goddess began with the appearance on a revolvingstage between the nearest worshippers and the base of the throneitself of a veritable forest of trees about one hundred feet in width.There were trees like magnolias, oaks, elms and others splendid infoliage, and amid these there was an undergrowth of beds of the mostbrilliant flowers.
It was the work of the magicians and sorcerers!
There were thickets of camellias and rhododendrons, amid which bloomedflowers like scarlet geraniums, primroses, violets and poppies. Whatappeared to be apple, peach, cherry and hawthorn trees, all in fullbloom, tossed their white and pink foam of flowers.
They were real trees and flowers, made to exist for a time by thesorcery of the masters of spirit power. They had never before knownthe outer air. The priests of Harikar had made them, and woulddissipate them as living bodies are dissipated by death.
A sacred opera was chanted by the priests of invention, art, andspirituality, on their terraces of silver above the trees and flowers.As the music continued, groups of singers would at times sweep forthon wings and float in wheeling circles around the throne. Theirdelightful choruses swelling upward were like draughts of rich wine,keen and intoxicating. The priests and spiritual powers marchingbeneath filled the vast building with broad recitatives, full ofvividly descriptive passages and finely contrasted measures, until thesoul seemed melted in a sea of bliss.
The throne was bathed and caressed by a blue vapor of incense, whilefrom the great dome above, filled with figures formed of enamelledglass, there streamed lights of all mysterious colors, thatilluminated its gleaming sides and lit up the amphitheatre withineffable effects.
A warm, rosy beam, falling perpendicularly, enveloped the goddess likea robe of transparent tissue. She sat, a living statue, the joy ofevery heart, the embodiment of a hopeless love that kept theworshipper in a fever of delicious unrest. Wherever the eye wandered,it always came back to the goddess; whatever the soul thought, itslast thought was of her.
Amid a tempest of music and the thundering song of two hundredthousand voices repeating a litany of love, the throne itself began torevolve upon the silver cone that supported it. A fresh rapture tookpossession of the multitude.
In the soul of the goddess what must have been the joy of beingsurrounded by such an ocean of adoring love?
As I mused on the scene, I thought of the Coliseum at Rome raised tothe glory of barbaric force, of empire founded on the blood of itsvictims, and, being such, has necessarily passed away, becoming a heapof ruins.
Here, thought I, is a temple founded on a nobler idea, the glory ofthe human soul, its ingenuity, art, and spiritual forces.
Many in the outer world would say it was an idolatrous attempt on thepart of the creature to usurp the throne of its Creator. Yet it wasstrangely like the religion of such people themselves. There, as here,I thought, is the same worship of gold, the same dependence on thematerial products of man's invention, the same worship of art, thesame idolatry of each other's souls between the sexes. There is thisdifference, however: in the outer world men pretend that they worshipsomething else other than such objects; here they have the honesty tosay what they do actually worship.
Apart from the idea of attempting to realize a friendship that canonly exist in a realm that knows neither interest, fortune, time,ambition, temper, nor sensual love, their idolatry had one splendidtruth to unfold, viz., the necessity of a soul for an arid andmechanical civilization. "Every intellect shall enfold a soul" wastheir motto, and there was this sanity in their creed that sentimentwas the breath of its life. Science abhors sentiment; it is the coldinvestigation of that which once thrilled with the passion of life.
While the singing continued, a band of neophytes of occult forceperformed marvellous feats of magic, led by the Grand Sorcerer,Charka, chief of the magicians of Harikar. The people sat enrapturedas miracle after miracle was performed. At the waving of fans by theadepts, plants issued from the hands of every god of gold, clothingthe throne in one endless wreath of brilliant crimson blossoms andgreen foliage. The fans again waved and that crimson mass of flowersturned to a pale green, while again the green foliage changed to avermilion color. The throne appeared like one enormous Bougainvilleaglabra, whose leaves are flowers.
Again the fans were waved and the flowers changed to bloom allsnowy-white, while the foliage became blue.
The adepts disappeared at a given signal and thereupon entered anotherband of beautiful girl adepts, who seated themselves, each body in acrouched mass with flowing drapery, around the base of the throne.These priestesses were in a state of catalepsy. The ego, or soul, ineach case had been separated from the body, which floated in a stateof apparent death. They had so developed their will by thinkingenormous thoughts, yearning for spiritual power, that they couldsuspend the functions of the body and give all their existence to thesoul. Thus hypnotized, it was stated their souls were floating freelyin the dome above, in blessed converse, and that their reincarnationwould afterward take place.
The organ rolled a blessed monotone, with variations exquisitelysweet. The light in the dome faded perceptibly by the magicalshadowing of its windows until the rapt audience sat in completedarkness. A circle of electric lights burned around the goddess on thetop of the throne, illuminating her figure. The lights faintly lit upthe dome, and presently appeared as nude spectres the fifty souls ofthe priestesses who crouched beneath.
The organ, re-enforced with the wailing of a hundred violins, produceda storm of the most delirious music, while the souls flashed with astrange phosphorescence like a circle of fire. They wheeled with theirarms extended horizontally, each aura lying at an angle of forty-fivedegrees with the horizon. Then, with hands clasping each other's feet,they became a vertical circle like the wheel of fortune, and thus wentround and round. Again, they revolved in a circle faces downward, witharms and hands stretched in an attitude of worship, forming for thegoddess a wreath of souls. Presently each soul sought its own bodyfloating beneath. The bodies expanding themselves absorbed each itsown soul. With the returning light of the outer sun the forest beneaththe throne had disappeared and the circular stage was occupied by aband of sorcerers--each having balls of jelly of various colorsfloating before him. At the command of the grand sorcerer the ballswould transform themselves into strange animals resembling cats, dogs,monkeys, serpents, geese, wolves, and eagles. This was a tableaurepresenting man's supremacy over inferior life.
A company of twin souls of the greatest beauty and splendor of raimenttook possession of the circular platform beneath the throne andthereupon danced in rhythmic circles wonderfully entrancing andinvolved, chanting, in harmony with the movement of their bodies, thefollowing hymn to Lyone:
TO LYONE.
I.
Oh goddess, oh deity glorious, With golden wan face, and the bloom Of spirit and figure victorious! Oh jewel that lighteneth gloom, Men call thee the soul of a lover, Invested with purest of clay, A chrysalis, eager to hover And fly from thy prison away!
II.
A nautilus, blown on the tide-lave; So naked a pearl and so pure, Or coral, that sucks from the sea wave Those marbles that ever endure! Thus float on the ocean of being, Or fathom its deep-flowing sea, That feeling, believing, and seeing Thy glory, will worshipped be!
III.
With sense of the body made captive, While that of the soul is complete. For love of pure being, receptive, So blessed, extravagant, sweet. Oh victim, thy joys are Meresa's, Who died on the bosom Divine. Her madness of rapture appeases The hunger of soul that is thine!
IV.
Inflammable impulse of beauty, The breath of whose ardor is grief; The God, in fulfilment of duty, Hath stamped thee in hi
ghest relief! From pots of auriferous metal, Made pure by the torment of flame, He pressed thee in fearful begettal, A coinage too perfect for shame.
V.
He made thee, most splendid, a flower, A heavy sweet rose, to unfold Some petals immortal, and shower Their fragrance on earth frozen cold. Oh golden-hued rose, in such fashion, By the love of the world thou art sought Thus flushed with the triumph of passion Or pale with the splendor of thought!
VI.
Oh soul, that inhales from the blossom Delight in the rapture of breath, A goddess aflame with her passion, Ere beauty is wedded to death! Oh virginal soul of the fountain, Alive with the water of Youth, All these, on the golden high mountain, Thou dwellest, the image of Truth!
What followed was an intoxicating medley of dancing, song and magic.Circles of the fairest girls, arrayed in the most ravishing costumes,made the brain whirl with their gyrations. The oblation to the dancinggods wound up the performance, and the chorus of a thousand voicesblended with the triumph of drums and explosions from musicalartillery.
The incomparable girl goddess then rose to her feet and waved theblessing of Harikar over the multitude. The girdle of gold that clungto her figure blazed with a thousand jewels. Her tiara sparkled withenormous diamonds that were blue as sapphires, amber as topazes, greenas emeralds and red as rubies. Accompanied by the wailing of music,the chant of megaphones, and the song of the enraptured people, shesank into the heart of the throne, glorious as she rose, herself itsmost precious jewel.