William Richard Bradshaw

“ Certainly Harikar with his beloved attributes required a fit home for his complete development.
I had praised their oasis of love, of refinement, of rest, and of beauty, and even ventured to assert that such a paradise was the outcome of the love and purity of twin-souls. I forgot in my enthusiasm the possibility of the soul being satiated with pleasure, that life is a warfare ever seeking but never gaining repose, and that we are led more by our passions and illusions than our judgment. I forgot that while man resists pain he always yields to pleasure. ”

“ I continually long for something sweeter yet. It seems the greater the joy the more enormous the capacity, and no joy completely fills the ever-expanding soul."
"You think," said I, "that even the rapture of a goddess is not wholly adequate to create a feeling of repletion of satisfaction in a soul such as yours?"
"It is contrary to our laws to think so, yet at times I know I could forego even the throne of the gods itself for the pure and intimate love of a counterpart soul."
"You are not so desirous of the human soul in its collective form as you are of individual soul wholly yours?" ”

“ Was it possible for her to continue worthy of worship, a human being, intoxicated, as she must be, by the ceaseless adoration of millions? In other words, can a woman be a veritable goddess and live? These ideas rushed through my soul like quicksilver. My brain reeled with this discovery of the secret of Atvatabar! What to me were its never-setting sun, its want of gravity, its flying wayleals and [85] bockhockids, its sculptured cities, its sacred locomotive, its miracles of mechanism and art, compared to a real live goddess with warm blood and a beating heart! ”

“ We soared over mighty ranges of mountains and swept into wide valleys with the ecstasy of birds. What a splendid fact to communicate to the outer world—that man, denied for untold ages the power of flight, may now inhabit a world of incomparable beauty, where it is easier to fly than to walk and a thousand times more enjoyable! The powers of the body and the raptures of the soul are not in themselves limited. It is simply a question of environment. ”

“ We were again completely surrounded by a single globe of wayleals, in the centre of which moved the yacht with fearful speed. The globe moved as fast as we, and the living shell obliterated both earth and sun from, sight. Then, with a roar of artillery, the globe exploded, and lo! before us the infinite golden dome of the Bormidophia, the marble city of Calnogor, and dense multitudes of excited people!
The city was decorated with the conquering flag of Lyone and with flowers; and the inscriptions on the triumphal arches were: "Long live Lexington and Lyone, King and Queen of Atvatabar!" ”

“ I remarked.
"Greatest, for he embraces all other gods," said the king. "But the greatest individual god is the Supreme Goddess, the symbol of the Holy Soul."
I felt a strange desire to learn everything about so singular a divinity as Lyone. It was a weird, awful, yet terribly entrancing thought, that amid a thousand gods of dead and silent gold one only should be alive, and that one a beautiful woman. Was it possible that a live goddess could exist, and be both young and handsome? I was anxious to ask a thousand questions concerning this mysterious being, but it seemed a sacrilege to ask them. ”

“ That sweet and perishable affection that fills the breasts of lovers, which has been for ages conserved, expanded, and wrought into an enduring fabric of religion in the sacred temple of Egyplosis, is about to utterly perish by a mad act of apostasy on the part of the deity herself. Whither now will tender and faithful hearts turn to find a refuge for all that makes the life glorious? Our ideal soul has sunk into degradation! She has flung herself from her proud and happy throne, wounding our faith with impious sacrilege! ”

“ Supreme General Hushnoly and generals of the army of Her Majesty Lyone, Queen of Atvatabar, you are aware of the nature of the crisis that calls us together and the cause to which we devote our lives and fortunes. Our beloved queen, for whom we fight, is in the hands and at the mercy of a cruel tyrant. We may hear of her death at any moment. Such an event would crush our hopes and blast our cause beyond hope of recovery. We must be both bold and prudent. We must concentrate our forces to withstand the onset of the enemy. ”

“ In each divan sat a winged twin-soul, priest and priestess, the devotees of hopeless love. On the throne itself sat Lyone, the supreme goddess, in the semi-nude splendor of the pantheon, arranged with tiara and jewelled belt and flowing skirt of sea-green aquelium lace. She made a picture divinely entrancing and noble. Supporting the throne was an immense pedestal of polished marble, fully one hundred feet in diameter and twenty feet in height, which stood upon a wide and elevated pavement of solid silver, whereon the priests and priestesses officiated in the services to the goddess. ”

“ Art is the emotion within made splendid by imagination that clothes everything with perfection. Like color it dwells only in the soul, but the cause of the sensation is without. In all art, the artist seeks to reproduce the cause of his ecstasy, that he may communicate to others a similar delight. He is like a god, he always gives but never receives, for fame, not money, is his recompense. ”

“ What will be thought of Lyone, who was lately our beloved and adored goddess, who has treasonably allowed herself to be proclaimed Queen of Atvatabar, and who is the prime cause of all this deluge of crime, treason and apostasy by encouraging a heretical affection for a desperate criminal, and who dares to abuse her holy office by seeking matrimony with a murderer? It would be impossible for this cowardly and desperate assassin to visit our country with such destruction were it not that she who was our goddess sympathizes with his inhuman and infernal work. ”

“ With trembling exultation I saw at the further end of the spacious apartment a royal seat of violet velvet whereon sat Lyone, the supreme goddess of Atvatabar.
As my eyes rested upon the goddess she appeared still more divine than before. It seemed an unhallowed act that rough sailors should venture into such spiritual precincts. We were awe-struck with the presence before us. As the grand chamberlain called out our names, we bowed low to that majestic spirit that seemed much more a deity than human flesh. ”

“ Let us here in search of the ideal find an ever-increasing Nirvana of blessedness. Goddess of souls, lead us to imagine higher and holier exaltations; keener and more blessed raptures!
PRIESTESSES.
Sweet mother of souls! teach us to cultivate consoling friendships with sympathetic hearts. Give us longings for the utmost depths of love and tenderness; let us possess fervid and impassioned souls.
PRIESTS.
Let us create a paradise wherein life is one long intoxication of love, beauty and soul-culture, found in the fascinating converse of soul with soul and intellect with intellect. ”

“ Never before in the history of the world has the treachery of a goddess been manifest; we have had occasion hitherto only to mourn the apostasy of the worshipper. Now what avails our worship, if the object of our adoration fails us in the hour of need? Who is to console the bereavement of millions, when their consoler has hopelessly abandoned them? We say to both his majesty the king and government, follow the iconoclasts with the sword of justice; no punishment is too severe for such perfidious workers of iniquity! ”

“ Not only were real or natural objects idealized in art, but also conventional art, or the record of what nature suggests, as well as how she appears, to the soul of the artist. And what must have been the infinite wealth of suggestion to such souls as these to account for such mouldings and traceries on wall and roof, and such wealth of color in attire, reflected and duplicated in the jewelled windows of the dome. Here were souls fitted by nature and art to fuse and create the suggestions of nature into shapes of eternal beauty. ”

“ Her every gesture was at once heroic and beautiful. [127]
"Tell me what your poets say of nature, life and love," said she; "do they ever sing the delights of hopeless love?"
As the goddess uttered this last question I felt within me a strange delight. There sat beside me, floating on that mysterious wave, the idol of a great nation, the deity of its universal faith, a divinity of power, glory and beauty, laying aside spiritual empire to become the companion of a simple explorer of the internal world, her discoverer and her friend, by a most happy chance of fortune. ”

“ All the abandon of great and strong birds are ours. We can imitate the sonorous sweep of the seemorgh, who plunges with supreme majesty in the abyss of air."
"These elaborations of flight," said Lyone, "are not pursued merely for physical pleasure, but in a mysterious way they are the moulders of the soul itself. That essence, re-enforced with such subtle and powerful enthusiasm, develops sensibility and assumes a grandeur and ecstasy unknown to those who merely travel on the earth. ”

“ The harbor of Kioram was a bay fully fifty miles in diameter, and here lay the royal fleet, whose hulls of gleaming gold shone on the blue water, while beyond rose the brilliant whiteness of the sculptured city.
Captain Wallace had the ship ready for action. Every soul knew it was a life-and-death struggle. The sailors knew that success meant wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. For myself, the prize was something more worthy of our desperate courage—it was the priceless Lyone, possessed of a divine personality. ”

“ I knew nothing but that ideal love might be eternal. It is the passion that makes a goddess human and the mortal divine. Within a month after entering the temple walls I discovered the very reality of the image I had seen years before. He was my twin-soul, my lover, my god. At our first meeting we simultaneously burst into tears. It was an ecstasy in which the body did not participate to any marked extent, but belonged purely to the region of the soul. ”

“ The final blessedness is a beatific absorption into the ocean of existence which pervades the universe."
"That is a different creed to that of Harikar in Atvatabar," said the goddess, "which is worship of body, mind, and soul. We believe with your Greeks in perfection of body and also with your Hindoos in perfection of soul. We re-enforce the powers of body and mind by science and invention, and the soul powers by art and spiritual love. ”

“ I value the idea that every intellect shall enfold a soul. You practise the doctrine that hopeless love is that phase of the passion that contains the most delirious possibilities of joy, yet, allow me to ask, have you never discovered that there may be disappointments for even such guarded emotions as yours? Are your neophytes perfectly happy? We find, in the outer world at least, that no state or condition in life is perfectly pleasurable. Their joys die of their own ennui if for no other cause. We find happiness like a flower ”

“ We believe in magic and sorcery. Our religion is a state of ecstatic joy, chiefly found in the cultured friendship of counterpart souls, who form complete circles with each other. Enduring youth is the consummate flower of civilization. With us it lasts one hundred years, beginning with our twentieth birthday. There is no long and crucial stage of bodily abstinence from the good things of life; there is only abstinence from evil, from vice, selfishness, and unholy desire. Our religion is the trinity of body, mind, and spirit, in their utmost development. Such is the faith of Atvatabar. ”

“ Your very system creates just such a love as this. Here souls are required to meet in rapture, and yet to stand balanced, as it were, on the thin edge of naked swords, and fall neither this way nor that. The development of a purely romantic love effeminates the race. The example of Egyplosis if carried out universally would obliterate the nation in one generation. The nation is wiser than its creed. Let us therefore choose the wiser path."
"It was the dream of your noble parents," said Hushnoly to Lyone, "to see you supreme goddess of Egyplosis. When you obtained this peerless honor they died. ”

“ Our sudden good fortune unveiled to us the splendors of power, and riches, and honor. The people themselves, enchanted with the product of their own abnegation, made their obeisance to us as to gods.
Lyone grew perceptibly paler with the intensity of her excitement; her breast rose and fell more rapidly, as the soarings of song told her that her supreme realization of life and fortune as goddess had not wholly died with her apostasy, but that a new life no less glorious had begun. ”

“ We had reached at last the holy of holies of ideal attainment, a retreat of bewildering beauty. The weird and splendid proportions of the palace, with its domes and towers ornamented with sculptured arabesques, rising from the soft waters of the lake, a veritable Fountain of Youth, all surrounded by the green and gleaming forest and gardens without end, filled our souls with a new rapture. Everything was so perfect and peaceful, so rich with life and beauty, so fresh and sparkling, so unspeakably happy, that I said, "This is the end of all toil and ambition, this is the perfect flower of life. ”

“ Standing erect for a moment, as if to assure the vast congregation of her presence, she then slowly sat down on a broad divan of aloe-green silk velvet, holding in her right hand the terrelium sceptre of spiritual sovereignty, whose head bore two hearts formed of flaming rubies.
I was entranced with the appearance of the divine girl, the object of the adoration of Atvatabar. Every feature of her face was carved with a full and ripe roundness, exhibiting repose and power. Her eyes, large and blue and lustrous, were sorcery itself. ”

“ Do you no longer value the secrets of magic and sorcery? Do you renounce initiation into the secrets of nature to possess creative force to taste the elixir of life, the secret of the transformation of metals, and, above all, the blessedness of Nirvana? Knowing that love dies in possession do you desire to step forth from paradise into a hard, cold, realistic world, where every experience is a spear driven into the flesh? ”

“ As for myself, I remained at the palace of Tanje, the residence of the goddess, to assist Lyone in preparing her manifesto to the people.
It was a painful crisis for her, who was the symbol of ideal love, to be the first to renounce its delights for the sake of an every-day union with a beloved soul.
For days her decision trembled in the balance. Her avowal of being led captive by human love would be a national catastrophe. She trembled for her ten thousand devotees in Egyplosis. ”

“ Circles of the fairest girls, arrayed in the most ravishing costumes, made the brain whirl with their gyrations. The oblation to the dancing gods wound up the performance, and the chorus of a thousand voices blended with the triumph of drums and explosions from musical artillery.
The incomparable girl goddess then rose to her feet and waved the blessing of Harikar over the multitude. The girdle of gold that clung to her figure blazed with a thousand jewels. Her tiara sparkled with enormous diamonds that were blue as sapphires, amber as topazes, green as emeralds and red as rubies. ”

“ It is the quintessence of existence, the rarest wine of life, the expressed sweetness of difficulty and repression and long-suffering, the choicest holiday of the soul. We are willing to pay the price of hopelessness to taste such nectar. In the every-day world such joy only rarely exists. Interest, indulgence, ambition, fortune, time, temper and marriage destroy it. Youth, captivated by a beautiful face or a winning smile, thinks it has discovered its true counterpart, and so takes possession of the prize. ”

“ In time I hoped to see the Christian faith rule the souls of those who had so recently worshipped themselves under the guise of Harikar, the universal human soul. I was anxious to see men and women possessing that serene poise of passion that alone can sustain virile action. Lyone herself was the first to be convinced that the human soul, with its limitations, its narrowness, its impatience, its selfishness, its arrogance, its cruelty, was a very inferior deity. ”

“ Men say my flesh is smooth as marble, soft as velvet, and bright as gold, even as the forms of our priests and priestesses are sculptured and colored by the thoughts of love.
"Only a goddess knows such thoughts as hers that burn in the soul like fluid gold. Imagination fills me at times with vast and phantasmal splendors. Adoration glorifies me like light raining on the palms and palaces. ”

“ Know ye, my people of Atvatabar, that the desperate barbarian who commands the alien ship, the Polar King, has not only alienated the affections of the Goddess Lyone, thereby insulting our holy religion and our laws, but has destroyed forty of our ships of war, and induced the remainder of our fleet to follow his fortunes, thereby giving him power to destroy our commerce, blockade our harbors, and burn our cities. His success has encouraged many who have hitherto been our faithful subjects to flock to his standard, and the terrors of treason and insurrection devastate our beloved country. ”