The two dervishes, unkempt and forlorn though they were, held the door open for us, watchful as mastiffs. They gave the impression of knowing exactly who belonged and who did not, but this must have been an illusion for they did not know us, for example, and yet they signalled us to pass with the rest. A dark narrow stairway led us into the body of the little mosque – into a large central room very dimly lighted by tiny night-lights floating in saucers of olive oil. Because of the darkness the domed ceiling seemed as high as the sky outside, and by consequence our figures appeared diminished, and as if they were rapidly melting back into the darkness from which apparently they had been summoned.
The form of the ceremony was easy enough to discern – it was, as he had said, exactly like a Cairo sheik delivering a theological lecture in a mosque. Akkad was to be seated in the middle of the floor upon a carpet and cushion with a low table of inlaid wood some distance before him. Placed to his right and left were other tables and cushions placed for his two acolytes – one an old blind man in a white robe, the other a swarthy and bearded man of middle age in a crumpled lounge suit, but with no collar. He looked like a retired postmaster. In his hand he held a bundle of texts and a book, which he consulted, and he had the air of a stage-prompter; while the old blind man looked like one of those itinerant “singing” priests, beadles or sacristans, who can always be summoned to chant verses from the Koran in time of need. These dispositions taken up, we the auditors formed a circle at a distance round the trio, being all seated with the greatest regularity upon the ground, and while nobody actually marshalled us in any particular order we felt that an order had insensibly been conformed to: the inner circle consisted of those who were more or less the real initiates of the group and the circles moved outward until they came to us, who were simply “onlookers with intent”, as Akkad called us.
For his part he sat himself down in the sheik’s place, removed his glasses and clasped his hands before him as he gazed dreamily up into the darkness of the mosque. We knelt or sat in silence. The blind man waited with his chin on his breast, breathing softly, his hearing tuned, it seemed, to concert pitch, waiting for a sign. The other scruffy individual consulted a pile of texts and then clearing his throat coldly announced a reading from the Pistis Sophia – but for all the world as if he were announcing a reading from the weather almanac. A further silence followed. Akkad appeared to pray now, for he extended his long fingers and held up his clasped hands. Then he leaned forward and tapped with a fingernail on the little inlaid table. The old blind man drew a joyous slow breath, and with a smile – looking upwards now with an expression of great sanctity – started slowly and melodically to recite. All three smiled at the familiar opening phrases – as musicians might smile as they joined forces to interpret a piece of music long known by all and loved. But the recitation was in Greek – somewhat to my surprise; and while only the old man uttered the words the lips of the other two men moved caressingly over the polished and familiar phrases. If I say I was surprised at the Greek it was because (knowing nothing then of such matters) Akkad had given us to understand that the Pistis Sophia was a Coptic text written in that language. This was indeed so, but the Coptic of which he spoke was itself a translation from the Greek, so that the text we were hearing was the original from which the Coptic translators had worked. Piers, whose scholarship was really quite profound, later claimed to have followed nearly the whole reading with tolerable accuracy. Myself not. But the asides of Akkad were delivered in French or English and served as a quite spontaneous commentary upon the text, uttered with too great an informality to suggest prayer, but with the deep reverence one accords to great poetry or great music. “And it came to pass when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples, and instructing them only up to the regions of the First Commandment, up to the First Mystery, that within the Veil, within the First Commandment, which is the four and twentieth Mystery without and below – those four and twenty which are in the second space of the First Mystery which is above all Mysteries – the Father in the form of a dove.” (Later I came upon the translation of Mead, and others, from the Bruce Codex and similar sources and was so able to document myself a little bit about this weird post-resurrectional history of Jesus.)
The odd thing about it was that it sounded not at all oracular, but in a queer way perfectly intelligible, perfectly sound as sense – when quite obviously if one doesn’t know the terminology, as we did not, it is the purest gibberish. I could not judge either in what precise degree the rest of the sect interpreted this monotonous chanting. Their heads were bowed, except when Akkad broke into the recitation with a dry staccato observation speaking often with a kind of restrained passion which was foreign to his ordinary comportment. Such as “The more you know of man the less can you condone the human situation under the Prince.” A fearful act of duplicity had overturned the rational order or the universe – that is what he meant I afterwards realised. The interloper, who had replaced the original monarch of the ages, had thrown into confusion the workings of cosmic law. Since he came, the Black Prince, everything had to be re-ordered, reapprehended, reshaped; the whole of reality therefore. “The Greeks said ‘All this is untrue but it is beautiful.’ But beauty is no excuse. Beauty is a trap. We say ‘All this is untrue but it is real.’ “
It was much later that I realised what he meant – to be of this persuasion was to remain truthful to the fundamental despair of reality, to realise finally and completely that there was no hope unless the usurping God could be dethroned, and that there seemed to be no way to do that. Had I understood more at this first encounter with the gnostics I should have been filled with the same despair as they presumably were. The implacability of process would have haunted me, as it came to haunt me later. What Akkad himself called “The very death of God”, for the usurping prince had made away with the original king whose reign had been an illustration, not of nature’s discord, but of nature’s harmony and congruence. Under him birth and death had been fully realised, spirit and flesh, animal, insect and man were joined in a creative symbiosis of light and justice – such as we had not dared even to conceive since the date when the Prince of Darkness took his place on the throne.
I cannot say that all this did not confuse me, for it did; yet in a strange sort of way I felt that from time to time things deviated into profound sense. It is as if someone were reading to me in a language I knew but imperfectly; little patches of meaning floated out to me, sandwiched in between long passages of meaningless sound. Akkad’s oracular interventions were often apt and indeed beautiful. “Who are they, then, these people? They are those who are born and reborn again unlike the Many. They recognise each other when they meet without a word being exchanged. They belong to the vertigo of nothingness, having emerged from the root of all dissent. The thrust of their souls is towards the moon of non-being, their God is he who no longer exists. How can they hope to make themselves understood? Reason is powerless – for this kind of understanding can only be soundless, wordless, breathless. Its meaning is as precarious as reality itself.” Strange to read these words many years afterwards and to remember the circumstances of their delivery with such vivid accuracy. Without even closing my eyes I saw him, sitting there in his shabby old abba, looking suddenly very much older and moved almost to tears by the message he had to deliver. All the beautiful women listened, silent as fruit, some in evening dress, some in coloured shawls, all with apple-calm minds.
Part of it was litany and part ritual for once or twice the man who seemed like a prompter blew out the candles and relit them, as if to mark a distinct pause in the proceedings. He also proposed texts, uttering the first line in a solemn twang and waiting until the blind man recognised the passage and then, lifting his head like a dog, joined in on a higher register. Piers was rapt and attentive, and at the same time disappointed, I could see that; while his sister had closed her eyes and let her head fall forward, as if she were listening to music
. “Thereafter there cometh a receiver of the little Sabaoth, the Good, him of the Midst: He himself bringeth a cup full of thoughts and wisdom, and soberness is in it; and he handeth it to the soul. And they cast it into a body which can neither sleep nor forget because of the cup of soberness which hath been handed unto it. But it will whip its heart persistently to question about the mysteries of the Light until at last it find them through the decision of the Virgin of Light, and so inherit the light itself forever.”
I was far away as yet from “seeing” in the gnostic sense that night – of acquiring that penetrating vision which could turn us all to masks and caricatures of reality with names, mere labels; each one of us nevertheless with an “eidolon” or signature, a disposition, a proclivity visible to the naked eye of the intuition only. Within each of us struggled man, woman and child. Our passions were packed in the cool clay of our silences, ready for the oven, ready for the mystical marriage feast. … In this sense, and in this sense only, did I find a perfectly satisfactory rationale which subsumed my double relationship with Piers and with his sister. It was through this experience with Akkad and his sect that I at last managed to gain a foothold in that part of reality which was probably my own inner self. It may sound strange, but I now understood the nature of my love – and also the nature of human love as a whole. I saw quite unmistakably that man had set astray the natural periodicity of sexuality and so forfeited his partnership with the animal kingdom. This was his central trauma, and it also signalled the final loss of his powers over the matter – that was coming …
Yet despite the apparent informality of the proceedings which amounted almost to laxness one could feel underneath the structure of a method. I had the impression that something was being conveyed to me as a sense impression, and not being made rationally explicit in order not to indulge my natural faculty of ratiocination. After all you cannot ask a perfume or a sound to explain itself. By the same token I simply inhaled all this lore without trying my mind on it, trying to reduce it to some sort of canonical formula.
All this and much more was borne in my consciousness on that strange night; despite my misgivings and my distrust of hocus pocus. … The incident of the snake and the mummia and the wine when it came seemed absolutely natural and not a mere seductive folklore to gain adherents or convince doubters. One of the dervishes brought a large flat wicker basket which he placed at the feet of Akkad, who lifted the lid from it and disclosed a very large snake – a species of cobra which I had not seen before. It was very much bigger than the ordinary Egyptian cobra and could have perhaps been Indian. But its colour was extraordinary – a kind of nacreous pink shading into violet underneath its body. It appeared as domesticated as a household pet. It looked about with its forked tongue flicking softly in and out of its cruel white mouth; its hood was not fully inflated. A saucer of milk was placed for it with some dead flies floating in it and it leaned forward delicately to lap like a pet; indeed to facilitate the meal it slipped out of its soft basket giving us a chance to marvel at its great length. Akkad stroked it in familiar fashion, and it accepted his caress as a cat might, flattening its head and extending it for the touch of his palm. After a pause the recitation went on, though all eyes were now on the snake. When the reptile had finished its meal Akkad took it up softly and came towards us holding it in his arms, draped around him, curled, oozing, swaying. We were each of us to stroke its head, so he told us; and in spite of our fear and revulsion we made an effort to do so.
Piers and his sister passed the test easily but in my case and Toby’s the snake appeared to hesitate and ruminate, and when we put out a hand it uttered a slight hiss. “Insist quietly,” said Akkad, “and don’t be afraid of it.” It was easy to say, and we did our best to comply with his instructions, but I did not feel that the perfunctory pat on the head I gave it amounted to very much. When it came to Sabine’s turn Akkad simply emptied it into her arms and snake and woman seemed to sink into a complete embrace. She murmured the sort of endearments one might reserve for a favourite kitten, stroking its head and winding it around her body. It took some time to complete this little ceremony for everyone had to touch it in turn; but when it was completed Akkad took it back to its basket and coaxed it to resume its position inside it – erect and ever-watchful however. Now some batons of incense had been lighted by the dervishes and clouds of aromatic perfume rolled about the dark corners of the mosque, obscuring outlines and transforming faces and forms. The recitation with its melodious but twanging Greek shifted key, moved in the direction of greater emphasis, as if kindled by the waves of perfume on the dark night.
Akkad sat listening, his head now bowed, like a man under a waterfall; but it seemed that he was waiting for a particular passage or a special break in the litany, for suddenly he raised his finger and the reciters paused. “Now let us partake of the holy mummia,” he said in commanding tones and the dervishes advanced towards us humbly bearing large silver trays on which were a number of small bowls with pieces of mummia – or at least I presumed it was mummia. Dried mummy-flesh had been a standby in medicine for centuries, and as a doctor in bud I was curious to taste it. But dark Sylvie shuddered. The little strips of flesh were quite dry, quite dehydrated. The consistency was that of the dried fish known as Bombay duck; but the colour was a dark red, almost crimson, and the taste was faint and tenuous. I tried to place it, and found myself thinking of a faint perfume of celery. It reminded me a little of French froglegs, or the dried locusts I had once eaten in the desert outside Cairo. I despatched a wafer or two of this magic comestible without undue anxiety and watched the quantity gradually diminish as each one of us in the circle took up his portion. Akkad watched it all solemnly; but there was no specially ritual aspect to this part of the ceremony. When everyone had partaken of the mummia the dishes were taken away and Akkad, once more interrupting the recitation said: “Now let us partake of the wine.”
Flagons were now brought made of some strange pottery, and in each flagon there was perhaps a teacupful of a wine mixture which tasted salt and tepid; we waited until the whole company was served and then, in response to the same gesture by Akkad, raised our receptacles in an attitude of toasting before draining them. This was the point at which I realised that some of my misgivings had been soundly based – for the wine was powerfully drugged, and one instantly felt one’s senses sag and falter. Everything now began to mix and flow – what with the clouds of incense and the staccato note of the chanting, you could quite clearly feel the sudden distortion set in as the vision changed focus; yet it was not at all alarming, we were all quite at ease. Perhaps we were reassured by Akkad who said: “It will not last long,” as he saw the obvious signs of our struggle against the drug.
He added, sweeping our faces with his glance: “Keep your gaze on Ophis the snake.” For my part I stared at the snake with all the wild intensity of a pilot seeking a passage across a fog-bound estuary; it was partly due to visibility and partly to the drug we had taken. Everything now rose and subsided, wobbled and merged and deliquesced. The ancient serpent itself appeared to rear up to twice its height in order to present itself more clearly to us, in order as it were to preside more fully over the ceremony. But anything I say about this part of the evening is subject to caution – for we were so obviously and woefully dazed by the potion. I recall the voice of Toby saying, with a kind of triumphant indignation: “Mumbo Jumbo by Jove.” But he said it unwillingly, almost sleepily, as though all but carried away by what he saw despite his native reservations. “The eyes,” cried Akkad sharply, “look at the eyes.”
I looked at the tiny glittering eyes of Ophis, and it gave back my glance with a queer malevolent glitter, an insinuating flicker of that forked tongue. So staring, I felt that I was rushing towards it, its head became enormous, its delicate hinged jaws open to expose long scimitar-like teeth, so white and clean. A wild revulsion rose in me, and I felt all of a sudden as if I were suffocating; I struggled to free my neck from the collar of the garm
ent I wore, to breathe more freely. Then I shook the vision out of my eyes like someone shaking back clear-sightedness after a severe concussion brought about by a blow on the head.
It was something like a battle of will-powers. The serpent was trying to engulf me, like a python with a hare, and I was quite determined to keep myself free. All this rose to the boil, so to speak, and then burst like a bubble, and as it did so I saw what later I was to recognise as our mentor, the usurping Prince, seated in place of the serpent, staring at me with a kind of bloodthirsty jocularity. How difficult it is to describe this sort of vision; yes, we all have the capacity during a dream to fabricate this sort of thing. But this was somehow different, though I cannot for the life of me explain just how. I saw a snake no longer but a kind of huge dung-beetle with the head of a dog; its body was armour-plated like a saurian, with black polished scales, like the body-armour of a Japanese swordsman. A single goat’s hoof was visible outside the snake-basket, standing on the flags of the mosque. This whole vision kept dissolving and reappearing in the vast clouds of incense. Yet it was not quite a vision – it was certainly a Thing of particular consequence to me. I could not just dismiss it as a piece of reality distorted by a drug or a dose of alcohol. I was profoundly impressed and depressed by it, and I had a nagging feeling that nothing would ever be the same again for me. Absurd, of course, absurd.
Looking so fixedly at this strange machine-like animal-bird-insect I felt as if it were talking to me, felt it had the sort of significance which one cannot render clear by words, a deep symbolic significance of something which by-passed causality. The alchemists apparently have to deal with this sort of symbol in their work; but I was no alchemist, and I knew little enough about orders of knowledge which were not rudely scientific. I also shared a good deal of Toby’s dogged scepticism. But there was much of which I was then unaware – and for example, at this very moment I was unaware that I had let out something between a shout and a shriek and tried to leap to my feet and advance on the snake. Toby heard me faintly and told me later on. Yet all movement was impossible – I was paralysed. Moreover I was all of a sudden exhausted, racked with sobs; the current turned itself off with a magical suddenness, and just as if I had depended upon it to sit upright, I found myself falling forward upon my hands. I felt my cheek touching the cold flags of the room as I came to my senses, slowly, trembling all over. When at last I raised my eyes it was to see that almost everyone in the company was in the same case, lying utterly exhausted on their carpets, tremulously breathing and gasping. It had lasted a very short time, the visionary incident. It had drained us of our attention and then left us stranded like objects on a beach at low tide. I have seldom felt so physically exhausted.