The Magic of the Middle Ages

by Viktor Rydberg

In the mean time the magician had seized the blood-stained sword, and drew, murmuring a prayer the while, a threefold magical circle around the pentagram. Between the circumferences he wrote the names of the angels of the year, the season, the day and the hour. Towards the east he made the sign of Alpha, towards the west of Omega. Then he divided the circle by a cross into four fields. He assigned two of them, those behind him, to me and my companions. They were large enough to kneel upon. We were strictly enjoined not to leave them, not to allow even a fold of our mantles to wave outside the circle. Forgetfulness in this respect would cost us our lives. The magician put aside his sword in a triangle outside of the circle. He sprinkled himself and us with holy water, read formularies over the incense and the thorn twigs, and kindled them. This was the sign for us to give ourselves to prayer. We must not cease praying until we had heard the first word of the incantation. The incense spread, as it were, a dim transparent veil over the room. Here and there it was condensed into strange figures: now human, now fantastic animal shapes arose against the vaulted wall and sank again.

There must have been something narcotical in those vapory clouds. I looked at them in a half dreaming state while my lips repeated inaudibly the enjoined prayers.

I was aroused from this condition by the first word of the incantation which struck my soul like a thunder-bolt, and awakened me to full consciousness of my position and of the significance of the hour. The blood in my veins seemed changed to ice.

The magician stood before me, tall, erect and commanding. He had taken the incantation-book and now read from it with a hollow voice the first citation, which begins with a long formulary invoking the different mystical names of God.

I can not repeat the quotation. The highest and the lowest, the divine and the infernal, that for whose sacredness we feel an irrepressible reverence and that for whose impiety we experience the deepest horror, were united here in the most solemn and the most terrible words that human tongue has ever stammered. Now first I began to form an idea of the power of words.

The name of the demon was not yet uttered. The nearer the moment for its pronunciation approached, the deeper became the voice of the magician. Now came the formula of invocation, and now—resounded the name Tekfael.

It appeared as if a thousand-fold but whispering echo from the vault above, from the corners of the room, from all the skulls and from the very incantation-book itself, repeated that name.

The magician became silent, the incense was condensed and assumed a reddish tint which gradually became more and more diffused. We seemed to hear the thunder rolling, at first from a distance, then nearer, finally over our heads. It was as if the tower had been shaken and the vault over our heads been rent. My knees trembled. Suddenly a flash of lightning shot through the red mass. The magician extended his staff, as if he had wished to stop it. He raised his voice anew, strong and powerful amidst the continued peals of thunder. The smoke grew thin again; from its wreaths there appeared before the magician in the immediate vicinity of the circle, and at the opposite end of his staff, a dim apparition, a figure whose first aspect bereft me of my reason. I felt as if I had fallen to the floor,—as if I had been lost....

I awakened with the perspiration of agony on my forehead, but fortunately in my own bed and in the nineteenth century. The view from my window is cheerful and enlivening. I see a river which bears proud ships, quays swarming with men, and broad streets with houses in a graceful and light renaissance style. I lived again in the present which pleased me the best, next to dreaming of the future....

They strove for something great, however, those learned magicians of the Middle Ages. Theirs was a mighty imaginative creation. It lies in ruins never to arise again; but the crumbled debris testify to the belief in an all-embracing human power and knowledge.