Devil-Worship in France; or, The Question of Lucifer

by Arthur Edward Waite

§ 10. The Doctor and Diana.

It would be impossible to follow the doctor through the entire course of his memoirs, not that they are wholly biographical, exclusively concerned with modern diabolism, or with the great conspiracy of Masons against God, Man, and the universe; one of his subsidiary and yet most important objects is to fill space, in which respect he has almost eclipsed the great classics of the penny dreadful in England. I must pass with a mere reference over his dealings in spiritualism; it is needless to say that in this branch of transcendental investigation he witnessed more astounding phenomena than falls commonly to the lot of even veteran students. His star prevailed everywhere, and the world unseen deployed its strongest forces. At Monte Video, for example, falling casually into a circle of spiritualists, he was seated, surrounded by a family of these unconscious and amateur diabolists, before an open window at night time; across the broad mouth of the river a great shaft of soft light from the lamp of the lighthouse opposite shone in mid-air, over the bosom of the water, and as it fell upon their faces he discerned, floating within the beam itself, the solid figure of a man. It was not the first time that the apparition, under similar circumstances, had been seen by the rest of the household, but for him it bore a message of deeper mystery than for these uninitiated spiritualists; although in man’s clothes, his observant eye recognised the face of the spirit; terrible and suggestive truth, it was the face of the vestal Virgin, who, far off in Calcutta, had fluidified in the third temple, and he uttered a great cry! He has now decided to void the virginity of the vestal, and to assume that she was in reality a demon, and not a being of earth. At the same time, my readers must thoroughly understand that the doctor, when he meddles in spiritualism, is a man who is governed in his narratives by an intelligent faculty of criticism which borders on the purely sceptic; he delights in the display of instances where an element of trickery may be detected; no one better than himself can distinguish between bogus and bogey, and he takes pleasure in directing special attention to his extraordinary good judgment and sound common-sense in each and all these matters. Hence no one will be surprised to hear that at the house of a lady in London, an ordinary table, after a preliminary performance in tilting, transformed suddenly into a full-grown crocodile, and played touchingly on the piano, after which it again changed into a table, but the gin, the whisky, the pale ale, and the other intoxicants which are indispensable at séances in England, had been entirely consumed by the transcendental reptile to fortify him on his return journey to the mud-banks of the Nile. Nor has the spontaneous apparition been wanting to complete the experiences of Dr Bataille. He was seated in his cabin at midnight pondering over the theories formulated in natural history by Cuvier and Darwin, who diabolised the entire creation, when he was touched lightly on the shoulder, and discovered standing over him, in his picturesque Oriental costume, like another Mohini, the Arabian poisoner-in-chief of the Gibraltar Toxicological Department, who, after some honourable assurances that the Bible was not true, departed transcendentally as he came. This personage subsequently proved to be the demon Hermes. Even when he merely masonified, the doctor had unheard-of experiences in magic. For example, at Golden Square, in the west central district of this wicked city, an address which we have heard of before, at the conclusion of an ordinary Lodge meeting, there was an evocation of the demon Zaren, who appeared under the form of a monstrous three-headed dragon completely cased in steel, and, endeavouring to devour his evoker, was restrained by the magical pentagram, ultimately vanishing with the peculiar odour of Infernus.

In connection with various marvels the doctor has much to tell us concerning two sisters in Lucifer who have long been at daggers drawn, and considering their supernatural attributes, it is incomprehensible in a high degree that they have not destroyed one another like the Magician and the Princess of a more credible narrative of wonders in the “Arabian Nights.” Diana Vaughan, much heard and little seen, has since become famous by her conversion to the Catholic faith. Honoured with her acquaintance for a considerable period, the doctor invariably testifies the utmost respect for this wealthy, beautiful, and high-placed Palladian lady, so long protected by a demon, of the superior hierarchy, and enjoying what he somewhat obscurely terms an obsessional guardianship. On the 28th of February, 1884, at a theurgic séance of Templar Mistresses and Elect Magi of Louisville, the ceiling of the temple was riven suddenly, and Asmodeus, genius of Fire, descended to slow music, having in one hand a sword, and in the other the long tail of a lion. He informed the company that there had just been a great battle between the leaders of Lucifer and Adonaï, and that it had been his personal felicity to lop the Lion’s tail of St Mark; he directed the members of the eleven plus seven triangle to preserve the trophy carefully, and, that it might not be a lifeless relic, he had thoughtfully informed it with one of his minor devils until such time as he himself should intervene to mark his omnipotent favour towards a certain predestined virgin. The vestal in question was Diana of the Charlestonians, elect sister in Asmodeus, who at that time was not affiliated to Palladism. When the doctor subsequently drew her on the subject of this history, she replied, after the manner of the walrus, “Do you admire the view?” For himself, the good doctor dislikes the narrative, not because it does violence to possibility, but because it did violence to St Mark; there is evidently an incomplete dignity about a tailless evangelist. As to the tail itself, he has no personal doubt that it was the property of an ordinary lion, and that it has since become possessed of a devil.

At the risk of offending Miss Vaughan, the doctor expatiates on her case, and learnedly demonstrates that her possession is of so uninterrupted a kind that it has become a second nature, and belongs to the 5th degree; however this may be, he establishes at great length one important point in her favour, which has occasioned all French Catholics to earnestly desire her conversion. I have stated already that the grade of Templar-Mistress is concerned partly with profanations of the Eucharist. For example, the aspirant to this initiation is required to drive a stiletto into the consecrated Host with a becoming expression of fury. When Miss Vaughan visited Paris in the year 1885, where Miss Walder had sometime previously established herself, she was invited to enter this grade, and accepted the offer. A séance for initiation was held accordingly, but Miss Vaughan would have none of profanation, and refused blankly to stultify her liberal intelligence by the stabbing of a wheaten wafer. She did not believe in the Real Presence, and she did not wish to be childish. A great sensation followed; her initiation was postponed; appeal was made to Charleston; and the formality was dispensed with in her case by the intervention, as it was supposed at the moment, of Albert Pike’s authority, even as her Father’s intervention had excused her beforehand from another ordeal which could not be suffered with propriety. This episode implanted in the breast of Sophia Walder an extreme form of Palladian hatred for the Diana of Philalethes. Now, Sophia was in high favour with all the hosts of perdition, yet her rancorous relations with her sister Adept did not make Diana less a persona grata to the peculiar intelligence which governs the descending hierarchy. In the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky the Palladian Magi and the Mistress Templars decided one day to have a little experiment with the Undines, so they shouldered their magical instruments; but the eager elementaries, habiting the dark abysses, did not wait to be evoked; the water bubbled in the Lake, the roof was constellated with stars, and who should appear but Asmodeus, on the bank opposite, in all his infernal glory! With open arms he loudly called on Diana, and that lady, suddenly transfigured, walked calmly over the water, and kissed the feet of her demon, who incontinently vanished. Inspired by a sense of deficiency, the doctor says that the visit to the Mammoth Cave terminated without any further incident. He was not an ocular witness of what he relates in this instance, but he received it from the lips of Diana, and the lips of Diana, in the opinion of all honourable men, would be preferable to the eyes of the doctor.

But the doctor had the testimony of his eyes upon another occasion; it is known that Miss Vaughan’s celebrity began with her hostility to the Italian Grand Master, Adriano Lemmi. When the seat of the Sovereign Pontificate, as deponents testify, was removed from Charleston, the great city of Lucifer, even unto the Eternal City, and many adepts demissioned, there was a doubt in the rebel camp as to the continued protection of Lucifer. If Diabolus had gone over to Lemmi, they were indeed bereft. Miss Vaughan, however, remained calm and sanguine:—“I am certain of the celestial protection of the Genii of Light,” said Diana, and, producing her talisman, she bent her right knee to the ground, turned a complete somersault without falling, flung her tambourine into the air, which descended gently and remained suspended a yard from the ground, while she herself, passing into a condition of ecstasy, also rose into the air in a recumbent posture. She remained in this state for the space of fifteen minutes, the silence being only broken by the distant rumbling of thunder. Many of the spectators could not believe their eyes. At length very gently her body assumed a vertical position, head downwards, but as a concession to polite feeling the remaining laws of gravity were suspended, like herself, and her skirts were not correspondingly inverted. Slowly the ecstatic lady continued to circulate, the assembly stood at gaze “like Joshua’s moon in Ajalon,” and presently she was in the vertical position of a swimmer, the phenomenon concluding by her restoration to terra firma. This wonder was accomplished by the magic power of a diabolical Rose which the lady carried in her bodice.

On yet another occasion the doctor witnessed the prodigy of the bilocation of Diana by the assistance of a simple magical process, when to his most certain knowledge she was hundreds of leagues away; but the recitations of Doctor Bataille have reduced bilocation to a banality, and a mere reference will suffice.

A monograph of Miss Vaughan’s miracles would, however, be incomplete if it failed to exhibit her in her capacity as a breaker of spells; whatsoever has been bound by devildom can be loosed by Diana. At the height of the commotion occasioned by her persistent refusal to participate in sham sacrilege, there was one member of the Paris Triangle who manifested peculiar acrimony in demanding the expulsion of a delinquent who had dared to impeach the ritual. As a punishment for his own presumption, and in the presence of the assembled adepts, his head was suddenly reversed by an unseen power, and for the space of one and twenty days he was obliged to review the situation face backwards. This severe judgment dismayed all present; Miss Walder had recourse to an evocation and discovered that it had been inflicted by Asmodeus, the protector of her rival, who furthermore would not scruple to visit with violent disaster any person who discovered an evil design against so elect a sister as Diana. If the present culprit desired to be set free from his grotesque position, he must humbly have recourse to her. Miss Vaughan was in America at the moment, but she generously came to his rescue as soon as steam could carry her, and restored him his lost front view by a jocose imposition of hands. I should add that on the very day when this misadventure took place at Paris, Miss Vaughan was defending her standpoint in person before the Triangle of Louisville; opinion was divided about her, and the result appeared uncertain, when the demoniac tail of St Mark, evacuating the minor devil, who had hired it on a repairing lease, accepted Asmodeus as a tenant, and violently circumambulating the apartment belaboured all those whose voices had been raised against his Vestal. Finally the tassel of the tail turned into the head of the demon and vowed his devotion to Diana so long as she remained unmarried; did she dare, however, to desert him for an earthly consort, he was commander of fourteen legions, and he would strangle the man of clay.

It would be unkind to Miss Sophia Walder if I let it be supposed for a moment that the palm of prestige is borne away by her rival. I have already noted that this lady occasionally fluidifies to the satisfaction of a select audience, but, like the materialising medium, she finds it a depleting performance which usually confines her to her room, and her price, therefore, is five thousand francs. She is first Sovereign in Bitru, and is defined by the doctor to be in a state of latent possession, having a semi-diabolical nature and the gift of substitution. It was possibly at Milan that he witnessed the most persuasive test of her occult powers. She took him confidentially apart and explained to him that she had been in a condition of “penetration” for about three hours. “At dinner the food of which I partake becomes volatile in my mouth; wine evaporates invisibly the moment it makes contact with my lips; I eat and drink in appearance, but my teeth masticate the air.” Now this was due, not to the voracity of Bitru, but to the keen appetite of Baal-Zeboub; the magnetic lady did not, however, explain this point after the common method of speech; she fixed her blazing orbs upon the doctor, and he saw flames everywhere; a moment more and her feet were free from earth; she stretched out her left hand, and on the open palm he beheld the successive apparitions in characters of flame of the ten letters which constitute the great name. With a touch of internal collapse he commended himself to the Virgin Mary, the ecstatic paroxysm passed, and they wandered down another lane, for they were in the midst of leafy umbrage. Presently a tree gracefully arranged a portion of its branches in the form of a fan, and bowed with profound reverence. Still more fantastic, a paralysed branch produced a living human hand, which in the accompanying engraving is ornamented with an immaculate cuff, and that hand presented a bouquet to Sophia. By reason of these matters the doctor became pensive.

A Palladian séance followed. The litany of Lucifer was chanted, and the prodigy of “substitution” was effected. The ceremony took place in a grotto with a stalactite roof; Miss Walder produced from a basket the serpent which was an inseparable companion of all her travels; it immediately genuflected in front of her, swarmed the wall, and assumed a pendant position attached to one of the stalactites. It was a reptile of no ordinary kind, for it began to develop an interminable length of coils till it had spread itself circlewise over the entire ceiling, and its head was joined to its tail. The doctor says that he was now prepared for anything. The serpent gave forth seven horrible hisses, and in the dim light, for the torches which illuminated the place were successively giving out of themselves, each person became conscious of an unseen entity blowing with burning breath in their faces. When at length there was complete darkness, Sophia herself became radiant, and brilliantly illuminated the grotto with an intense white light; five enormous hands could then be seen floating in space, also intensely luminous, but emitting a green lustre; each hand went wandering in search of its prey, ultimately seizing a brother, whom it drew irresistibly forward in the direction of Sophia. Moved by a mysterious influence, two of them grasped her arms, two clutched her by the shoulders, one placed his hand on her head. The serpent again hissed seven significant times, and in place of the solid Sophia the third Alexander of Macedon was substituted in phantom guise. When he faded Sophia reappeared and continued going and coming with a phantom between each of her appearances, so that she was in turn replaced by Luther, Cleopatra, Robespierre, and others, concluding with the Italian patriot Garibaldi, who eclipsed all the others, for his bust was converted into a bronze urn from which red flames burst forth. The flames took a human form, and gave back Sophia to the assembly.

Such is the gift of substitution, which follows penetration, and such is the substance of the memoirs of M. Bataille, ship’s doctor, who, in the year 1880, undertook to exploit Freemasonry and has come forth unsinged from Diabolism. There is one maxim of the Psalmist which the experience of most transcendentalists has taught them to lay to heart, and to repeat without the qualifications of David when certain aspects of supernatural narrative are introduced—Omnis homo mendax! But lest I should appear to be discourteous, I should like to add a brief dictum from the Magus Éliphas Lévi. “The wise man cannot lie,” because nature accommodates herself to his statement. In a polite investigation like the present, there is, therefore, no question whether Doctor Bataille is defined by the term mendax, which is forbidden to literary elegance; it is simply a question whether he is a wise man, or whether nature blundered and did not conform to his statement.