No More Learning

The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a
basket, and cut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood
fall into the large bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation,
which was certainly not English, and had a deep guttural sound. Before
he had finished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five,
came in, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my
left hand. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began
to find his eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his
hood, affecting me in a curious way. I struggled hard against their
influence, and my head began to ache. The invocation continued, and
nothing happened for the first few minutes. Then the invoker got up
and extinguished the light in the hall, so that no glimmer might come
through the slit under the door. There was now no light except from the
herbs on the brass dish, and no sound except from the deep guttural
murmur of the invocation.

Presently the man at my left swayed himself about, and cried out, 'O
god! O god! ' I asked him what ailed him, but he did not know he had
spoken. A moment after he said he could see a great serpent moving
about the room, and became considerably excited. I saw nothing with any
definite shape, but thought that black clouds were forming about me. I
felt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and
that the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony
with itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the
black clouds, and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again.
The two sorcerers now began to see black and white columns moving about
the room, and finally a man in a monk's habit, and they became greatly
puzzled because I did not see these things also, for to them they were
as solid as the table before them. The invoker appeared to be gradually
increasing in power, and I began to feel as if a tide of darkness
was pouring from him and concentrating itself about me; and now too
I noticed that the man on my left hand had passed into a death-like
trance. With a last great effort I drove off the black clouds; but
feeling them to be the only shapes I should see without passing into
a trance, and having no great love for them, I asked for lights, and
after the needful exorcism returned to the ordinary world.

I said to the more powerful of the two sorcerers--'What would happen
if one of your spirits had overpowered me? ' 'You would go out of this
room,' he answered, 'with his character added to your own. ' I asked
about the origin of his sorcery, but got little of importance, except
that he had learned it from his father. He would not tell me more, for
he had, it appeared, taken a vow of secrecy.

For some days I could not get over the feeling of having a number
of deformed and grotesque figures lingering about me. The Bright
Powers are always beautiful and desirable, and the Dim Powers are now
beautiful, now quaintly grotesque, but the Dark Powers express their
unbalanced natures in shapes of ugliness and horror.

FOOTNOTE:

[D] I know better now. We have the dark powers much more than I
thought, but not as much as the Scottish, and yet I think the
imagination of the people does dwell chiefly upon the fantastic and
capricious.




THE DEVIL


MY old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come down
the road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would not say
what it was, I knew quite well. Another day she told me of two friends
of hers who had been made love to by one whom they believed to be the
devil. One of them was standing by the road-side when he came by on
horseback, and asked her to mount up behind him, and go riding. When
she would not he vanished. The other was out on the road late at night
waiting for her young man, when something came flapping and rolling
along the road up to her feet.