grown into the semblance of
tattered beggars flying with bent heads towards the east, that we were approaching the
western coast. Then immediately I saw the sea between the low hills upon the left, its dull
grey broken into white patches and lines.
When we left the train we had still, I found, some way to go, and set out, buttoning our
coats about us, for the wind was bitter and violent. Michael Robartes was silent, seeming
anxious to leave me to my thoughts; and as we walked between the sea and the rocky side
of a great promontory, I realized with a new perfection what a shock had been given to all
my habits of thought and of feelings, if indeed some mysterious change had not taken
place in the substance of my mind, for the grey waves, plumed with scudding foam, had
grown part of a teeming, fantastic inner life; and when Michael Robartes pointed to a
square ancient-looking house, with a much smaller and newer building under its lee, set
out on the very end of a dilapidated and almost deserted pier, and said it was the Temple
of the Alchemical Rose, I was possessed with the phantasy that the sea, which kept
covering it with showers of white foam, was claiming it as part of some indefinite and
passionate life, which had begun to war upon our orderly and careful days, and was about
to plunge the world into a night as obscure as that which followed the downfall of the
classical world. One part of my mind mocked this phantastic terror, but the other, the part
that still lay half plunged in vision, listened to the clash of unknown armies, and
shuddered at unimaginable fanaticisms, that hung in those grey leaping waves.
We had gone but a few paces along the pier when we came upon an old man, who was
evidently a watchman, for he sat in an overset barrel, close to a place where masons had
been lately working upon a break in the pier, and had in front of him a fire such as one
sees slung under tinkers' carts. I saw that he was also a voteen, as the peasants say, for
there was a rosary hanging from a nail on the rim of the barrel, and I saw I shuddered,
and I did not know why I shuddered. We had passed him a few yards when I heard him
cry in Gaelic, 'Idolaters, idolaters, go down to Hell with your witches and your devils; go
down to Hell that the herrings may come again into the bay'; and for some moments I
could hear him half screaming and half muttering behind us. 'Are you not afraid,' I said,
'that these wild fishing people may do some desperate thing against you?'
'I and mine,' he answered, 'are long past human hurt or help, being incorporate with
immortal spirits, and when we die it shall be the consummation of the supreme work. A
time will come for these people also, and they will sacrifice a mullet to Artemis, or some
other fish to some new divinity, unless indeed their own divinities, the Dagda, with his
overflowing cauldron, Lug, with his spear dipped in poppy- juice lest it rush forth hot for
battle. Aengus, with the three birds on his shoulder, Bodb and his red swineherd, and all
the heroic children of Dana, set up once more their temples of grey stone. Their reign has
never ceased, but only waned in power a little, for the Sidhe still pass in every wind, and
dance and play at hurley, and fight their sudden battles in every hollow and on every hill;
but they cannot build their temples again till there have been martyrdoms and victories,
and perhaps even that long-foretold battle in the Valley of the Black Pig.'
Keeping close to the wall that went about the pier on the seaward side, to escape the
driving foam and the wind, which threatened every moment to lift us off our feet, we
made our way in silence to the door of the square building. Michael Robartes opened it
with a key, on which I saw the rust of many salt winds, and led me along a bare passage
and up an uncarpeted stair to a little room surrounded with bookshelves. A meal would be
brought, but only of fruit, for I must submit to a tempered fast before the ceremony, he
explained, and with it a book on the doctrine and method of the Order, over which I was
to spend what remained of the winter daylight. He then left me, promising to return an
hour before the ceremony. I began searching among the bookshelves, and found one of
the most exhaustive alchemical libraries I have
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the
Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.