The Violet Apple

This is about a tree grown in modern times from a pip of an original apple of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil from the Garden of Eden. The tree yields extraordinary violet coloured apples that have a profound effect on anyone who eats them.

"…he extricated a small but exquisitely constructed piece of coloured glass, in the form of a coiled serpent, with its head lifted to strike. The glass was as brittle and delicate as Venetian. Its beauty was in the colouring - so superior to anything modern that it suggested a lost art. Twenty, or rather an unanalysable range of greens, all merging into one another, from sea-foam to jade, from beech to sycamore, and from emerald to olive, gave the artificial reptile, which measured no more than five inches by three, an appearance of vivid, beautiful and hateful life, while the illusion was completed by the eyes, gleaming with animation like opals according to the light in which it was held. Moving freely in the interior, from tail to neck, was what resembled a black seed, of the size of an apple-pip, but wrinkled with desiccation."

A crusading ancestor of the present owner of the enigmatic artefact brought it to England from Damascus. When Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden for their disobedience, Adam still held the core of the fateful apple in his hand, and one of the pips was preserved inside this serpent ornament. The glass serpent is broken in an accident and the ancient seed liberated. As an experiment, the seed is planted and from it grows a dwarf tree bearing two tiny, violet-coloured apples.

The two people who eat the apples (a man and a woman) are taken into a deeper dimension of reality. The man and the woman are betrothed to others, but have unspoken feelings for each other.

They realise that their souls are written nakedly on their faces (just as Adam, after eating the fruit, realised for the first time that he was naked), and that they can read the true nature of others on their faces.

In the case of the man, he realises that the woman to whom he is engaged is bland and banal, not at all what he was seeking. In fact, he now sees, the person with whom he is madly in love is the other woman, the fiancée of his friend. She is the only person who has any meaning for him. She too has eaten one of the apples and has had the same experience and feels the same way towards him, despite the difficulties and obstacles.

When the man meets the woman, he sees her as a beautiful angel, but she does not feel the same way towards him any longer. The effect of the apple wears off after a time, and now the woman has fallen back into a state when she can no longer see and feel the true nature of things. Her earlier profound insights have gone, and she has lost her sense of the world's beauty and magnificence.

After a number of hours have passed, the man, in turn, loses his overpowering feeling that the woman is a goddess. He becomes dissatisfied with the work he does as an artist. It's as if he is getting pulled back into the ordinary world he inhabited before he ate the apple and entered the mystical, higher world.  

A while later, the man and woman accidentally meet at a place where the intertwining upper branches and foliage of two trees form the clear shape of a cross…a place of destiny.

The couple are sad at the loss of the amazing feelings they once had for one another when they ate the violet apples of Eden, and their failure to maintain their existence on a higher plain of heightened reality. But then the woman suggests that they can start a proper relationship and work at trying to regain the paradise they briefly enjoyed. "And then it will be ours, not a free gift this time, but ours."

This is a story about the need for us to find our higher selves, where we see and feel more clearly, where we perceive the true nature of the world, where our relationships are far more intense and satisfying and where we are able to find our ideal partners rather than those we just stumble into on our chaotic journey through life.

(Note that it is said that the wood of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the symbol of the fall of man, was the same as that of the Cross, the Christian symbol of man's redemption. In the teachings of Gnosticism, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden is the agent of the True God, and the eating of the apple of the Tree of Knowledge is the first step towards Gnosis, and liberation from the prison of Jehovah, the Demiurge.)

The Old World Order arrange the world so that we are mired in tedious, soul-destroying jobs, trapped in a global shopping mall of consumerism, reduced to brain-dead zombies shuffling towards the grave. Where are our violet apples, our fruit of the higher world, to wake us up? We have slept too long.

The Haunted Woman

A story about a magical stairway to a higher reality.

A woman and her fiancé visit a house that they might be interested in buying. The owner is a distinguished older man, to whom the woman finds herself strangely drawn. In the house, the woman undergoes a mystical experience. A phantom staircase appears, leading to an upper storey that seems to exist in another dimension. There are three mysterious doors leading to equally mysterious rooms. From the upper storey, the views from the house are completely different and the world seems a century older. Upstairs, the woman feels more alive, more vibrant, in touch with her true self. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she sees someone more beautiful, more sophisticated, more alluring. She feels that a higher version of herself is awakening. When she goes back downstairs, she struggles to remember what happened.

She visits the house again and has the same mystical experience. This time she encounters the distinguished owner in the magical upper storey. He is younger and more handsome. They recognise each other as soul mates and fall deeply in love. Up there, in the upper storey, they can bare their souls, tell the absolute truth, feel sublime emotions. But when they return to the lower storey, they cannot remember anything that took place above. They are stilted in each other's company, their conduct distorted by stifling social conventions and all the petty rules that obstruct honesty between people.

The same thing happens again on other visits - they meet upstairs in the higher plane, and their love intensifies - but they forget it all downstairs. They try desperately to hang on to the passion they feel for each other upstairs, but downstairs the powerful emotions simply vanish. They write each other notes upstairs, but the notes become indecipherable when they are taken back downstairs.

Allegorically, the upper storey represents the sublime world of the higher self, while downstairs is the dreary and uninspiring ordinary world where the glory of the higher self is dissipated. The vast majority of us inhabit this dull shadow world, and only on the rarest of occasions do we glimpse the higher world. If only we could live in that elevated realm all of the time, we would be so much more alive than we are now, but few of us can ever discover the staircase that leads us to paradise, to the world where we are the best we can be, where we may fulfil our maximum potential.

In the lower world, we see a distortion of who we really are. Our true selves are revealed only in the higher world. Our tragedy is that we find it so difficult to communicate with that higher world, to find the staircase that leads us there.

The Old World Order seek to keep us locked in the lower world, to deny us the chance to find our higher selves and enjoy the life that would make us feel energised and infinitely more alive. The Illuminati's mission is to lead those who are capable of a higher existence up the staircase to the heightened reality of our higher selves. The Old World Order, and their vile religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, seek to make us slaves of the dark, inferior world, to keep us enslaved in the kingdom of Rex Mundi, the Demiurge.

A Voyage To Arcturus

This is one of the strangest yet most powerful books ever written. To many people, it appears as incomprehensible fantasy gibberish, but for those with an awareness of higher things, it can lead them on a mystical path where profound insights into a different reality are possible.

The book begins on earth, but the protagonists soon find themselves on a planet called Tormance, orbiting the star Arcturus. Here, the main character, Maskull, embarks on an extraordinary, mystical odyssey, to find the source of spiritual light. He travels through different lands, encountering stunning landscapes and an assortment of remarkable people and creatures who furnish him with information relating to his quest. He often hears a strange and disturbing drumbeat. ("The sound appeared to him to belong to a different world from that in which he was travelling. The latter was mystical, dreamlike, and unbelievable-the drumming was like a very dim undertone of reality. It resembled the ticking of a clock in a room full of voices, only occasionally possible to be picked up by the ear.") He learns that the God of the world is called Crystalman, but he starts to doubt that this God is everything he is claimed to be.

Many of the people he meets die in various ways, and their corpses take on a mocking, twisted leer known as the "Crystalman grin". It seems to indicate to Maskull that what he is going through is a kind of sick joke that Crystalman finds amusing. When he is shown three idols that are also worshipped in this world, they take on the disfiguring Crystalman grin too, hinting that even the holiest and most sacred things are fake and illusory.

Maskull is determined to discover the truth behind Crystalman. He wonders if he is connected with the mysterious, spectral "Muspel" light that he is seeking and of which he catches glimpses from time to time. It seems to originate in another dimension. (It is reminiscent of the mystical central fire of Pythagoras.)

In this world, men are brutal and ugly while women are ethereal, almost formless. They entice and tempt the men like enchanting Sirens, seeming to promise extreme sexual delight. Men pursue them in a kind of frenzy, a feverish pursuit that unfailingly ends in death.

Maskull accompanies a man called Haunte on his quest for a woman called Sullenbode. Haunte meets the usual fate when he finds her, but in Maskull's presence, she becomes seemingly human. She says that she can live only as long as Maskull's love for her endures. When Maskull is overcome by a vision of Muspel-light, he becomes distracted and Sullenbode is dislodged from his thoughts. She immediately dies at his feet. Even love is seen to be fleeting and unreliable.

Maskull meets Krag who is regarded almost as the Devil of this world, and Krag promises to take him to the mysterious Muspel. Maskull has been expecting to die for some time - his whole journey seems to have been leading towards that fate - and Krag confirms that he will die that very day. Maskull is strangely stoical. He does indeed meet his death just before they arrive at Muspel, but he is reborn as "Nightspore". (This represents the shedding of his old self and his rebirth as his higher self, capable of achieving gnosis.) 

After passing through a deep and dense dark fog, they come to a tiny, rocky island with an ancient high tower on it. Nightspore is amazed when he learns that this is Muspel itself.

Krag does not accompany Nightspore as the latter ascends the tower. Through the tower's windows, Nightspore sees a series of disturbing visions of Crystalman's world as it appears from Muspel. Crystalman is revealed as a monster that feeds off human souls that originate from Muspel. To ensure his supply of fresh food, Crystalman lures Muspel souls with the promise of ultimate pleasure.

Muspel is surrounded on all sides by the monstrous presence of Crystalman that seems to be devouring Muspel bit by bit, reducing it to this final beleaguered little rock on the precipice of extinction.

The inhabitants of Crystalman's world are oblivious to the truth. Only Krag, paradoxically regarded as the Devil, knows the reality of what is happening. Now Nightspore, too, knows the truth. He vows to return to Crystalman's true world - the Earth - to fight on behalf of the truth, to wake up those who are asleep. Their mission is to bring pain to the world, as the means of freeing souls of the petty pleasures that keep them in thrall to Crystalman.

Maskull detained him. "Say just this, before we part company-why does pleasure appear so shameful to us?"

"Because in feeling pleasure, we forget our home."

"And that is?"

"Muspel."

Lindsay's vision is that of classical Gnosticism. Souls have been tempted out of the realm of light by the pleasures of the material world. Once there, they realise their terrible error, but how can they return to their home? Only through an arduous journey of self-discovery can they acquire the special knowledge - gnosis - that will allow them to escape Satan's world. He uses every trick to deceive them and keep them imprisoned. He creates false religions that promote "faith" as the path to salvation when, in reality, they are the road to perdition.

"What am I doing in Tormance, then?" he asked.

"You came to steal Muspel-fire, to give a deeper life to men-never doubting if your soul could endure that burning."

Despite its literary flaws, Lindsay's book represents the best attempt yet to provide a vivid fictionalisation of the Gnostic worldview, including the attempts of the Demiurge - the Biblical Creator - to seduce, manipulate and con the souls of the human race, and the struggle, long and hard, of an individual soul to escape the veils of delusion and find his way back to the spiritual light whence he came. For all of those who wish to immerse themselves in the mindset of someone pursuing the ultimate quest, A Voyage To Arcturus presents a unique opportunity.

The key section of the final, climactic chapter is shown at the foot of this page for those who want to glimpse Lindsay's extraordinary vision of the true nature of existence. (The book can be downloaded free of charge from Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org).)

Lindsay wrote other intriguing books:

The Sphinx

"This legendary novel, first published in 1924 in a tiny edition and virtually unobtainable ever since, is a fascinating exploration of the links between the world we know and other, unseen regions." (The Xanadu edition)

"Surely the Egyptian Sphinx was a personification of Nature?" she said, not looking at her sister, but at Nicholas. "The question which she asks, and which no one can answer, is, 'Why are you living in the world?' As none of us can answer it, we all have to die."

The Witch

The witch lives in a mysterious house that is unearthly and magical. A man is invited there and receives a remarkable vision of the soul's journey after death.

Devil's Tor

A great rock called the Devil's Tor is cracked open by a massive lightning strike, uncovering the tomb of an ancient goddess. A broken half of a mysterious stone, split thousands of years ago, is recovered from the tomb, and then an earthquake buries the tomb once more. The other half was stolen from a monastery in Tibet and has the mystical property of showing a breathtaking panorama of distant stars. It also provides premonitions of death. Fate is determined to reunite the broken parts. When the two halves are rejoined, it activates an ancient prophecy about the birth of a saviour from an avatar of the goddess.

*****

MUSPEL (Final chapter of A Voyage To Arcturus)

The light glared so vividly that he was no longer able to look at it. It had the startling irregularity of continuous lightning, but it possessed this further peculiarity-that it seemed somehow to give out not actual light, but emotion, seen as light.

The staircase was cold, dismal, and deserted, but it seemed to him, in his exaltation of soul, like a ladder to heaven.

After he had mounted a dozen steps or so, he paused to take breath. Each step was increasingly difficult to ascend; he felt as though he were carrying a heavy man on his shoulders. It struck a familiar chord in his mind. He went on and, ten stairs higher up, came to a window set in a high embrasure.

On to this he clambered, and looked through. The window was of a sort of glass, but he could see nothing. Coming to him, however, from the world outside, a disturbance of the atmosphere struck his senses, causing his blood to run cold. At one moment it resembled a low, mocking, vulgar laugh, travelling from the ends of the earth; at the next it was like a rhythmical vibration of the air-the silent, continuous throbbing of some mighty engine. The two sensations were identical, yet different. They seemed to be related in the same manner as soul and body. After feeling them for a long time, Nightspore got down from the embrasure, and continued his ascent, having meanwhile grown very serious.

The climbing became still more laborious, and he was forced to stop at every third or fourth step, to rest his muscles and regain breath. When he had mounted another twenty stairs in this way, he came to a second window. Again he saw nothing. The laughing disturbance of the air, too, had ceased; but the atmospheric throb was now twice as distinct as before, and its rhythm had become double. There were two separate pulses; one was in the time of a march, the other in the time of a waltz. The first was bitter and petrifying to feel, but the second was gay, enervating, and horrible.

Nightspore spent little time at that window, for he felt that he was on the eve of a great discovery, and that something far more important awaited him higher up. He proceeded aloft. The ascent grew more and more exhausting, so much so that he had frequently to sit down, utterly crushed by his own dead weight. Still, he got to the third window.

He climbed into the embrasure. His feelings translated themselves into vision, and he saw a sight that caused him to turn pale. A gigantic, self-luminous sphere was hanging in the sky, occupying nearly the whole of it. This sphere was composed entirely of two kinds of active beings. There were a myriad of tiny green corpuscles, varying in size from the very small to the almost indiscernible. They were not green, but he somehow saw them so. They were all striving in one direction-toward himself, toward Muspel, but were too feeble and miniature to make any headway. Their action produced the marching rhythm he had previously felt, but this rhythm was not intrinsic in the corpuscles themselves, but was a consequence of the obstruction they met with. And, surrounding these atoms of life and light, were far larger whirls of white light that gyrated hither and thither, carrying the green corpuscles with them wherever they desired. Their whirling motion was accompanied by the waltzing rhythm. It seemed to Nightspore that the green atoms were not only being danced about against their will but were suffering excruciating shame and degradation in consequence. The larger ones were steadier than the extremely small, a few were even almost stationary, and one was advancing in the direction it wished to go.

He turned his back to the window, buried his face in his hands, and searched in the dim recesses of his memory for an explanation of what he had just seen. Nothing came straight, but horror and wrath began to take possession of him.

On his way upward to the next window, invisible fingers seemed to him to be squeezing his heart and twisting it about here and there; but he never dreamed of turning back. His mood was so grim that he did not once permit himself to pause. Such was his physical distress by the time that he had clambered into the recess, that for several minutes he could see nothing at all-the world seemed to be spinning round him rapidly.

When at last he looked, he saw the same sphere as before, but now all was changed on it. It was a world of rocks, minerals, water, plants, animals, and men. He saw the whole world at one view, yet everything was so magnified that he could distinguish the smallest details of life. In the interior of every individual, of every aggregate of individuals, of every chemical atom, he clearly perceived the presence of the green corpuscles. But, according to the degree of dignity of the life form, they were fragmentary or comparatively large. In the crystal, for example, the green, imprisoned life was so minute as to be scarcely visible; in some men it was hardly bigger; but in other men and women it was twenty or a hundred times greater. But, great or small, it played an important part in every individual. It appeared as if the whirls of white light, which were the individuals, and plainly showed themselves beneath the enveloping bodies, were delighted with existence and wished only to enjoy it, but the green corpuscles were in a condition of eternal discontent, yet, blind and not knowing which way to turn for liberation, kept changing form, as though breaking a new path, by way of experiment. Whenever the old grotesque became metamorphosed into the new grotesque, it was in every case the direct work of the green atoms, trying to escape toward Muspel, but encountering immediate opposition. These subdivided sparks of living, fiery spirit were hopelessly imprisoned in a ghastly mush of soft pleasure. They were being effeminated and corrupted-that is to say, absorbed in the foul, sickly enveloping forms.

Nightspore felt a sickening shame in his soul as he looked on at that spectacle. His exaltation had long since vanished. He bit his nails, and understood why Krag was waiting for him below.

He mounted slowly to the fifth window. The pressure of air against him was as strong as a full gale, divested of violence and irregularity, so that he was not for an instant suffered to relax his efforts. Nevertheless, not a breath stirred.

Looking through the window, he was startled by a new sight. The sphere was still there, but between it and the Muspel-world in which he was standing he perceived a dim, vast shadow, without any distinguishable shape, but somehow throwing out a scent of disgusting sweetness. Nightspore knew that it was Crystalman. A flood of fierce light-but it was not light, but passion-was streaming all the time from Muspel to the Shadow, and through it. When, however, it emerged on the other side, which was the sphere, the light was altered in character. It became split, as by a prism, into the two forms of life which he had previously seen-the green corpuscles and the whirls. What had been fiery spirit but a moment ago was now a disgusting mass of crawling, wriggling individuals, each whirl of pleasure-seeking will having, as nucleus, a fragmentary spark of living green fire. Nightspore recollected the back rays of Starkness, and it flashed across him with the certainty of truth that the green sparks were the back rays, and the whirls the forward rays, of Muspel. The former were trying desperately to return to their place of origin, but were overpowered by the brute force of the latter, which wished only to remain where they were. The individual whirls were jostling and fighting with, and even devouring, each other. This created pain, but, whatever pain they felt, it was always pleasure that they sought. Sometimes the green sparks were strong enough for a moment to move a little way in the direction of Muspel; the whirls would then accept the movement, not only without demur, but with pride and pleasure, as if it were their own handiwork-but they never saw beyond the Shadow, they thought that they were travelling toward it. The instant the direct movement wearied them, as contrary to their whirling nature, they fell again to killing, dancing, and loving.

Nightspore had a foreknowledge that the sixth window would prove to be the last. Nothing would have kept him from ascending to it, for he guessed that the nature of Crystalman himself would there become manifest. Every step upward was like a bloody life-and-death struggle. The stairs nailed him to the ground; the air pressure caused blood to gush from his nose and ears; his head clanged like an iron bell. When he had fought his way up a dozen steps, he found himself suddenly at the top; the staircase terminated in a small, bare chamber of cold stone, possessing a single window. On the other side of the apartment another short flight of stairs mounted through a trap, apparently to the roof of the building. Before ascending these stairs, Nightspore hastened to the window and stared out.

The shadow form of Crystalman had drawn much closer to him, and filled the whole sky, but it was not a shadow of darkness, but a bright shadow. It had neither shape, nor colour, yet it in some way suggested the delicate tints of early morning. It was so nebulous that the sphere could be clearly distinguished through it; in extension, however, it was thick. The sweet smell emanating from it was strong, loathsome, and terrible; it seemed to spring from a sort of loose, mocking slime inexpressibly vulgar and ignorant.

The spirit stream from Muspel flashed with complexity and variety. It was not below individuality, but above it. It was not the One, or the Many, but something else far beyond either. It approached Crystalman, and entered his body-if that bright mist could be called a body. It passed right through him, and the passage caused him the most exquisite pleasure. The Muspel-stream was Crystalman's food. The stream emerged from the other side on to the sphere, in a double condition. Part of it reappeared intrinsically unaltered, but shivered into a million fragments. These were the green corpuscles. In passing through Crystalman they had escaped absorption by reason of their extreme minuteness. The other part of the stream had not escaped. Its fire had been abstracted, its cement was withdrawn, and, after being fouled and softened by the horrible sweetness of the host, it broke into individuals, which were the whirls of living will.

Nightspore shuddered. He comprehended at last how the whole world of will was doomed to eternal anguish in order that one Being might feel joy.

Presently he set foot on the final flight leading to the roof; for he remembered vaguely that now only that remained.

Halfway up, he fainted-but when he recovered consciousness he persisted as though nothing had happened to him. As soon as his head was above the trap, breathing the free air, he had the same physical sensation as a man stepping out of water. He pulled his body up, and stood expectantly on the stone-floored roof, looking round for his first glimpse of Muspel.

There was nothing.

He was standing upon the top of a tower, measuring not above fifteen feet each way. Darkness was all around him. He sat down on the stone parapet, with a sinking heart; a heavy foreboding possessed him.

Suddenly, without seeing or hearing anything, he had the distinct impression that the darkness around him, on all four sides, was grinning.... As soon as that happened, he understood that he was wholly surrounded by Crystalman's world, and that Muspel consisted of himself and the stone tower on which he was sitting..

Fire flashed in his heart.... Millions upon millions of grotesque, vulgar, ridiculous, sweetened individuals-once Spirit-were calling out from their degradation and agony for salvation from Muspel.... To answer that cry there was only himself... and Krag waiting below... and Surtur-But where was Surtur?

The truth forced itself on him in all its cold, brutal reality. Muspel was no all-powerful Universe, tolerating from pure indifference the existence side by side with it of another false world, which had no right to be. Muspel was fighting for its life-against all that is most shameful and frightful-against sin masquerading as eternal beauty, against baseness masquerading as Nature, against the Devil masquerading as God....

Now he understood everything. The moral combat was no mock one, no Valhalla, where warriors are cut to pieces by day and feast by night; but a grim death struggle in which what is worse than death-namely, spiritual death-inevitably awaited the vanquished of Muspel.... By what means could he hold back from this horrible war!

During those moments of anguish, all thoughts of Self-the corruption of his life on Earth-were scorched out of Nightspore's soul, perhaps not for the first time.

After sitting a long time, he prepared to descend. Without warning, a strange, wailing cry swept over the face of the world. Starting in awful mystery, it ended with such a note of low and sordid mockery that he could not doubt for a moment whence it originated. It was the voice of Crystalman.

Krag was waiting for him on the island raft. He threw a stern glance at Nightspore.

"Have you seen everything?"

"The struggle is hopeless," muttered Nightspore.

"Did I not say I am the stronger?"

"You may be the stronger, but he is the mightier."

"I am the stronger and the mightier. Crystalman's Empire is but a shadow on the face of Muspel. But nothing will be done without the bloodiest blows.... What do you mean to do?"

Nightspore looked at him strangely. "Are you not Surtur, Krag?"

"Yes."

"Yes," said Nightspore in a slow voice, without surprise. "But what is your name on Earth?"

"It is Pain."

"That, too, I must have known."

He was silent for a few minutes; then he stepped quietly onto the raft. Krag pushed off, and they proceeded into the darkness.