Paschal Beverly Randolph - A Very Strange Story—Ettelavar! lyrics

“On the appointed evening a select party of us met pursuant to agreement; but not one had reached a solution of the mystery. In those days the impostor Davis had not foisted his blasphemous absurdities on the world; nor had his peculiar system of morals made rogues of the one half of his deluded followers, or shameless harlots of the other; nor had lunatic asylums then been packed, as they have since, with sufferers ruined by his teachings; nor were graveyards dotted with the mounds raised by weeping friends over loved ones driven to suicide by his doctrines. In those days a man's wife was comparatively safe, nor were divorces half so common as they have since become. In those days husbands did not sneak off to Indiana, and by blank perjury procure divorce in order that they might revel in barefaced, shameless, open lust with their worthy paramours. In those days spiritualism had not broken in on the world, nor had the goblin philosophy made millions of fools and idiot fanatics out of material that God created for better purposes. In those days Joe Smith had not convinced thousands that harlotry is the straightest road to heaven; nor had Noyes founded his huge religious brothel in the centre of the State, contaminating the country for leagues around; and the handy system of ghostology, with its hundred truths and thousand falsehoods, had not then afforded a ready explanation of mysteries such as those I have recounted; nor had any man dared claim to be the confidential secretary of Almighty God. “On the night in question our conversation became, if possible, more interesting and absorbing than on the first occasion, owing to the novel fillip it had then received. So absorbed did I become during the evening, that on one or two occasions I partially lost myself in a sort of semi-mesmeric coma, which gradually deepened as the discussion waxed warmer, until my lower limbs grew cold, and a chilling numbness crept upon me, creating such a terror that I resolved to make my condition known, even at the risk of interrupting the discussion. “I made the trial, and found, to my consternation, that I could not utter a syllable—I could not move an inch. Horror! The company were so engrossed with the matter before them, that no notice was taken of any change that might have been perceptible in me; nor did one person there suspect that I was not attentively drinking in the discourse. “With inexpressible alarm, I felt that life itself was fast ebbing from me, and that d**h was slowly and surely grasping, clutching, freezing my vitals. I was dying. Presently—it appeared as if a long interregnum had occurred between the last previous conscious moment, and the present instantaneous, but positive agony—a sudden, sharp, tingling pang, like that of hot needles thrust in the flesh, shot through my brain. This was followed by a sinking sensation, as if the body had resigned itself to pa**ive dissolution, and then came, with electric rapidity, a succession of the most cruel agonies ever endured by mortal man. When it ceased consciousness had ceased also, and I fell to the floor as one suddenly dead, to the amazement of the company, as was afterwards declared. “How long this physical inanition lasted, I cannot now say, but during it the spiritual part of me was roused to a tenfold degree of activity, consciousness and power; for it saw things in a new and cryptic light, and far more distinctly than it ever had through the bodily eyes. An increase of hearing power accompanied this accretion of sight, and I heard a voice, precisely like that heard when my mother died, and when about to throw myself into the sea, which said, ‘Awake! a lesson awaits you;' and with this there came a partial rousing from the lethargy, and I was led upstairs and threw myself upon a sofa, mechanically, at the same time fixing my eyes upon the bald white face of a rare old Flemish clock that occupied the entire southern angle of the room. Here I was left alone by my friends, who again resumed their conversation in the parlor below. “Gradually the old clock-face seemed to clarify and expand, until, no longer obstructed by substance, I gazed out, and down, and up, through an avenue of the most astonishing light I had ever beheld. It seemed to me that I no longer occupied my body, but that, freed from flesh and time, I had become a denizen of Eternity; and on a fleecy vapor I was sustained in mid-air by the potent arm of a strange-looking old man—the veritable and precise image of him who, ten days before, had occasioned us such a fright by his mysterious conversations and evanishment. He told me not to fear, but to repose implicit confidence in myself and him; that he would not injure me, but do me good; that his name was Ettelavar; that his years were ages long; that he was the companion of those who die—who die, and live again—and of those who never taste of d**h. All this, and more, he told me; and he said that his design was to serve both himself and me; that he was familiar with certain mighty secrets, that had been claimed to be possessed, through many ages, by the wise and learned of earth—the Narek El Gebel, the Hermetists, the Pythagoreans, the three temples of the Rosie Cross, the mediæval and modern Rosicrucians, and the scattering delvers after mystery in all ages, times, and places. He said that among the things that I might learn from him, were the priceless secret of compounding the Elixir of Life, the drinking of which, by mortals, would confer perpetual youth and surprising beauty. Then there was the Lethean Draught, and whomsoever drank thereof, forthwith forgot all care, was oblivious to all that concerned the Future, and lived intensely in the Present. Then there was the Water of Love, and whoever drank thereof became irresistibly magnetic to the opposite s**, and could kindle affection in the heart of ice by mere personal presence. Then there was the Wondrous Stone of the Philosophers, not capable of transmuting, by a touch, whole tons of grossest substance into solid, shining gold, but of making it chemically. Then there was the Magic Crystal Ball, in which the gazer could behold whatever he wished to, that was then transpiring on this earth, or any of the planets. ‘All this knowledge,' said he, ‘I will expound to you, on certain conditions to be hereafter mentioned.' “I relate these things in the briefest possible manner, and make no allusions to my feelings during the time I listened to the strange being, Ettelavar, further than to remark, that during the—temptation, shall it be called?—I seemed to be hovering in the aërial expanse, and realized a fullness and activity of life never realized before, and knew for the first time what it was to be a human being. My freed spirit soared away into the superincumbent ether, and far, very far, beneath us rolled the great revolving globe; while far away in the black inane, twinkled myriads of fiery sparks—the starry eyes of God, looking through the tremendous vault of Heaven. Picture to yourself a soul, quitting earth, perhaps forever, and hovering over it like a gold-crested cloud, at set of sun, when all the winds are hushed to sleep on the still and loving bosom of its protecting God, and thine! “By the exercise of a power to me unknown, Ettelavar arrested our motion, and the cloud on which we seemed to float stood still in mid-air, and he said to me, ‘Look and learn!' “Like busy insects in the summer sun, afar off in the distance I beheld large ma**es of human beings toiling wearily up a steep ascent, over the summit of which there floated heavily, thick, dense, murky, gloom-laden clouds. Crimson and red on their edges were they, as if crowned with thunder, and their bowels overcharged with lightnings; and their sombre shadows fell upon the plains below, heavy and pall-like, even as shrouds on the limbs of beauty, or the harsh critic's sentence upon the first fruits of budding and aspiring genius. ‘It is nothing but a crowd,' said I; and the being at my side repeated, as if in astonishment, ‘Nothing but a crowd? Boy, the destinies of nations centre in a crowd. Witness Paris. Look again!' Obeying mechanically, I did so, and soon beheld a strange commotion among the people; and I heard a wail go up—a cry of deep anguish—a sound heavily freighted with human woe and agony. I shuddered. “On the extreme apex of the mountain stood a colossal monument, not an obelisk, but a sort of temple, perfect in its proportions, and magnificent to the view. This edifice was surmounted by a large and highly polished golden pyramid in miniature. On all of the faces of this pyramid was inscribed the Latin word Felicitas; I asked for an explanation from my guide, but instead of giving it, he placed his air-like hand upon my head, and drawing it gently over my brow and eyes, said, ‘Look!' “Was there magic in his touch? It really seemed so, for it increased my visual capacity fifty-fold, and on again turning to the earth beneath me, I found my interest almost painfully excited by a real drama there and then enacting. It was clearly apparent that the great majority of the people were partially, if not wholly blind; and I observed that one group, near the centre of the plain below the mountain, appeared to be under much greater excitement than most of the others, and their turbulence appeared to result from the desire of each individual to reach a certain golden ball and staff which lay on a cushion of crimson velvet within the splendid open-sided monument on the mountain. In the midst of this lesser crowd, energetically striving to reach the ascending path, was one man who seemed to be endowed with far more strength and resolution—not of body, but of purpose—than those immediately around him. Bravely he urged his way toward the mountain's top, and, after almost incredible efforts, succeeded. Exultingly he approached the temple, by his side were hundreds more; he outran them, entered, reached forth to seize the ball and sceptre—it seemed that the courageous man must certainly succeed—his fingers touched the prize, a smile of triumph illumined his countenance, and then suddenly went out in the blight of d**h, for he fell to the earth from a deadly blow, dealt by one treacherous hand from behind, while others seized and hurled him down the steep abyss upon which the temple abu*ted, and he was first dashed to pieces and then trampled out of existence by the iron heels of advancing thousands—men who saw but pitied not, rather rejoicing that one rival less was in existence. “ ‘Is it possible,' cried I, internally, ‘that such hell-broth of vindictiveness boils in human veins?' “ ‘Alas, thou seest!' replied Ettelavar, by my side. ‘Learn a lesson,' said he, ‘from what you have seen. Fame is a folly, not worth the having when obtained. ‘Felicitas' is ever ahead, never reached, therefore not to be looked for. Friendship is an empty name, or convenient cloak which men put on to enable them to rob with greater facility. No man is content to see another rise, except when such rising will a**ist his own elevation; and the man behind will stab the man in front, if he stands in his way. Human nature is infantile, childish, weak, pa**ionate and desperately depraved, and as a rule, they are the greater villains who a**ume the most sanctity; they the most selfish who prate loudest of charity, faith and love. I begin my tutelage by warning, therefore arming you, against the world and those who constitute it. If you wish to truly rise, you must first learn to put the world and what it contains at its proper value. Remember, I who speak am Ettelavar. Awake!' “Like the sudden black cloud in eastern seas, there came a darkness before me; my eyes opened, and fell upon the old clock face. Its hands told me that it was exactly thirteen minutes since I had marked the hour on the dial. Since that hour I have had much similar experience, and it is this that affords ground for the unusual powers in certain respects, not claimed by, but attributed to me.” ... Such was the substance of the young man's narrative, in answer to questions propounded to him long before the date at which he is introduced to the reader.