“I demand it!” I quickly cried.
Lipotin did not bat an eyelid and continued:
“You know how we travellers treat the grotesque gifts of our half-savage hosts: on long journeys, such as I used to make, you collect all kind of things, so that you soon forget each individual item. You can hardly imagine how seldom I have felt any interest in the Yang monk’s sphere. You drop it in your bag with all the other rubbishy curios and continue on your journey. For my part, anyway, I have never felt the slightest urge to let my ‘Yin’ nestle up to my ‘Yang’ or to ask my female principle if she would like to complete the circle with me.” With a cynical grin on his face, Lipotin made a repulsive lascivious gesture, which I ignored. Impatiently I repeated:
“Can’t you hear: I demand it! With all my strength and in all earnestness, I demand it, as God is my witness!” I added, and was about to raise my hand to swear an oath when Lipotin interrupted me:
“If you insist on taking an oath on this, even if only as a joke, then you must take it after the manner of the Yang monks. Are you willing?” – – – When I agreed he made me put my left hand on the ground and say:
“I demand, and I accept the consequences that thou mayest be released from all karmic revenge.” – – I smiled; it seemed a rather silly piece of play-acting, even though at the same time I could not repress a feeling of revulsion.
“That settles the matter!” said Lipotin in a satisfied tone. “You must forgive my being so finicky, but as a Russian I am part Asiatic myself and would not like to be disrespectful towards my Tibetan friends.”
Without further ado he handed me the red sphere. After a brief search I soon found where the two halves were screwed together. – Was this not one of the spheres of John Dee and his apothecary Kelley? – The sphere opened up: in the hollow was a greyish-red powder, about enough to fill a walnut shell.
Lipotin was standing next to me. He gave me a sideways look and spoke in an undertone. His voice reached my ear as if from a great distance, in a strange, lifeless monotone:
“A stone bowl and a pure flame have to be prepared. Pour some spirit of alcohol into the bowl and light it. Empty the contents of the sphere over the flame. The powder must flare up. Wait until the spirit has burnt away and let the smoke from the powder rise. A Superior must be present so that the head of the neophyte ...”
I stopped listening to his whispering, took the onyx bowl I use as an ashtray and cleaned it out as carefully as possible given my haste, poured some spirit from the sealing-lamp, that I have on my desk, into the bowl, lit it, took the half of the red sphere with the powder and poured it onto the flame. Lipotin stood to one side; I ignored him. Soon the alcohol had burnt off. Slowly the remains in the bowl began to glow and smoulder. A cloud of greenish-blue smoke formed and rose curling up from the onyx bowl.
“Thoughtless and foolish, indeed”, I heard Lipotin say, and it sounded like a mocking cackle in my ears, “the old overhasty foolishness, wasting precious material without being sure that all the conditions which guarantee success are fulfilled. How do you know that one of the required Superiors is present to carry out the initiation? You are fortunate – undeservedly so – that one just happens to be present, that I just happen to be an initiated Dugpa monk of the Yang sect ...”
I could still see Lipotin, as from a great distance, and mysteriously changed, a figure in a violet cloak with a strangely formed, upright red collar, on his head a cone-shaped purple cap on which six pairs of glass eyes glittered; he approached me with a grin of satanic triumph distorting his mongoloid face. I wanted to call out “No!,” but I had lost the power over my own voice. Lipotin – or the red-capped monk behind me, or the devil in person or whoever it was – grasped me from behind by the hair with irresistible force and forced my face down into the onyx bowl and the incense rising from the red powder. A bitter-sweet aroma rose through my nostrils, and I was in the grip of an indescribable trepidation, I was racked by death throes of such long-lasting, excruciating violence that I felt the mortal terror of whole generations flow through my soul in an unceasing, icy stream. Then my consciousness was obliterated.
I have retained almost nothing of what I experienced “on the other side”. And I think I am justified in adding, “Thank God!” for the torn-off scraps of memory which swirl through my dreams like leaves in a storm are so steeped in horror that it seems a blessing not to be able to understand them in detail. All I have is a vague, dark memory of having seen and passed through worlds such as those Frau Fromm described when she spoke of the depths of the sea steeped in a dull greenish glow where she claims she met Black Isaïs. I, too, met something awful there. I was fleeing, terrified, from – – I think it was from black cats with gleaming eyes and gaping mouths shining white; my God, how can one describe half-forgotten dreams!
And as I was fleeing, numb with nameless terrors, one last, saving thought surfaced: “If only you could reach the tree! If only you could reach the Mother, the Mother of the ... of the red and blue circle – is that it? – you would be saved.”
