“Of being being deceived by – let’s call it your own imagination. Using hallucination for the purposes of clairvoyance often becomes a kind of spiritual drug addiction. Unless ...”
“Unless ...?”
“You pass over.”
“What do you mean.”
“You leave your body behind.”
“How?”
“With this!” Lipotin had the red sphere in his hand again, rolling it between his fingers.
“Give it to me! I have asked you for it once.”
“Oh no, my dear sir, I cannot hand the sphere over to you. I have just remembered why it is impossible.”
I was becoming annoyed: “What’s all this nonsense again?”
Lipotin put on his serious face. “You must forgive me. There is one small detail I had forgotten. I see that I owe you an explanation. This sphere is hollow.”
“I know.”
“It contains a certain powder.”
“I know.”
“How on earth do you ...” – Lipotin feigned astonishment.
“Stop all this play-acting. I have already told you that I know precisely what booty Master Mascee took from St. Dunstan’s grave! Now give it to me!”
Lipotin retreated a step.
“What is all this about St. Dunstan and Mascee? I can’t understand a word of it. This sphere has nothing at all to do with the venerable Mascee. It was given to me as a present, many years ago. By a monk of the red-hooded order in the caverns of Ling Pa on the mountain of Dpal bar.”
“Are you deliberately trying to annoy me, Lipotin.”
“Not at all; I am completely serious. You don’t think I would try to pull the wool over your eyes?! – It happened in the following way: several years before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War I was on a special mission for one of my patrons in northern China, on the border with Tibet; the purpose was to obtain some fabulously valuable Tibetan temple pictures: ancient Chinese silk paintings and the like. But to the point: first of all, it was essential I gain the friendship of my putative business partners before there could be any question of a deal; of, amongst others, the remarkable inhabitants of Dpal bar skyd. They are a sect that call themselves the ‘Yang’. They have the most bizarre rituals; it is very difficult to find out anything about them. Even I, fairly well-informed as I am about magic in the Far East, did no more than scratch the surface. They have special initiations and one of the initiation rituals is the ‘Magic of the Red Sphere’. Just once they allowed me to attend the ceremony – how I managed to attend, is irrelevant. The neophytes perform the rite of thurification with a powder that is kept in red ivory spheres. There is no point here is going into the details of how they do it, but the rite is led by the abbot and it enables the young monks, who have newly been admitted to the order, to achieve ‘Yang Yin’ or to experience the ‘Marriage of the Perfect Circle’. What they mean by that is another thing I was never clear about, and it is something I prefer not to talk about. They claim that inhaling the red smoke enables them to ‘step out’ of their bodies and cross the threshold of death; there, through marriage with their female ‘other half, which in their earthly existence almost always remains hidden, they acquire unimaginable magic powers such as personal immortality as the wheel of birth comes to a standstill; in short, they achieve a kind of divine status which is denied other mortals as long as they are ignorant of the secret of the blue and red spheres. Clearly there are ideas behind this superstition which appear in graphic form in the Korean coat of arms: the male and the female principles in an intimate embrace within the circle of immutability. – But, of course, you are more familiar with all that than I am.”
There was dismissive irony in Lipotin’s last sentence. He presumably has a fairly low opinion of my knowledge of Far Eastern mysticism, but he is wrong. At least I am well aware of the reverence in which the Yin-Yang symbol is held out there.
It is represented as a circle which a curving line makes into two parts, two pear shapes – the one red, the other blue – nestling against one another: the geometrical sign of the marriage of heaven and earth, of the male and the female principle.
I just nodded my head. Lipotin continued:
“The Yang sect believes that the secret meaning of the sign is the conservation of the magnetic force of the two principles instead of its waste through the separation of the sexes. The idea behind it is something like a hermaphroditic marriage ...”
Again it was like a bolt of lightning striking directly in front of me; so blinding was the brightness of its light I felt I must blaze up myself. – That I should wait so long for this illumination: Yin Yang – Baphomet! One and the same! ... One and the same!! – “That is the way to the Queen!” a voice within me called so loud that it was as if I could hear it with my external ear. At the same time a marvellous calm settled over all my excited thoughts and senses.
Lipotin had observed me closely; obviously he could see the change within me, could see my shock and the smile of certainty that illuminated my features, for he smiled, too.
“I see you are acquainted with the old belief in the mystery of the hermaphrodite”, he said, after a pause. “Well, in the Chinese monastery they told me that the contents of this red sphere induce the union with the female principle within us.”
“Give it to me!” I shouted – I commanded.
Lipotin became solemn.
“I must repeat that there is one strange circumstance connected with the gift of this sphere which, for reasons that I cannot understand, only came back to me a few moments ago. The monk who gave it to me insisted that I should destroy it if I
