"Something is added which gives vastness and a certain splendour and immensity fo the material universe in all its parts, so that when I came down the stairs in this house, I did so with the sense that I passed through immense distances, as if I came down the stair of a cathedral spire. And when I went out into the street, it seemed to me that I saw in a happy and shining air, a new, glorious and unknown city, builded of radiant and living stones." -- Filius Aquarium, a thinly-fictionalized Arthur Machen in The House of the Hidden Light (p. 35)
Finally available again in a beautiful but affordable paperback edition from Tartarus Press, The House of the Hidden Light (1904) is a cryptic tome of metaphysical symbolism, which the introduction, by editor and annotator R.A. Gilbert, plausibly interprets as describing the social lives of its two mystically-inclined authors.
Arthur Machen was a Welsh author of influential weird fiction, most famous for the fin-de-siecle horror tale "The Great God Pan," and for accidentally creating the urban legend about angels appearing above a battlefield in the First World War. A.E. Waite would become one of the most famous occultists of his age, immortalized by his work on the Rider-Waite Tarot, now the "standard" deck, the template of which has been copied by thousands of other artists and writers.
The two men became lifelong friends, with Waite encouraging Machen to join the then-new Order of the Golden Dawn. Characteristically, Machen would be inspired by its rituals to create a drinking club as a similar mock order, and that sort of behavior is on display in Hidden Light. When his wife died after a lengthy battle with cancer, Machen was devastated, and found a welcome distraction in the Golden Dawn and long conversations about metaphysics.
While Waite was offering support and companionship to his grieving friend, he was living a storyline ripped from the kind of Victorian novels I read. He was in love with a woman he thought of as a soulmate and intellectual equal, who married a wealthy older man instead of him. On the rebound, he married her sister, but eventually the two began meeting again in secret. (The introduction implies that this began as an emotional affair that probably turned into a physical one, until they finally broke it off to make a go of it with their spouses). Meanwhile, Machen met a woman in their social circle who made him believe that he could love again. And yes, all this soap opera is necessary exposition, because apparently the four of them used to meet up for dining and drinking until all hours, with a strong suggestion that the couples went off to enjoy themselves privately.
The literary collaboration contains faux letters making veiled references to these meetings and their relationships with the two women, layered with occult terminology, and focused on the search for a divine Light, an infusion of spiritual joy and meaning strong enough to permeate one's mundane existence. They reframe their experiences into a kind of mythical symbolism, attempting, in a way, to create what contemporary writer Hakim Bey would later call a Temporary Autonomous Zone.
Or, in the words of Waite's stand-in, Elias Artista: "two poor brothers of the spirit, friends of God and members of the sodality, having dwelt after the common manner of men in the desert of this mortal life, understanding ill enough what manner of distinction there is between stars that speak and stars that sing, conceived between them the ambition to get on int he world by a right ordering of the mind in respect of the real interests and true objects of life" (3). With that, you probably already have a good idea of whether you'd want to read this.
The romances didn't last, but the experience created a sense of the way love (and probably physical pleasures) can color one's perceptions. After this project of rendering that reality in a divine light, everyday life begins to reassert itself: "the signs are no longer visibly afforded to us ... the lights have waxed dim within the holy place" (93). But since it was an elaborate metaphor to begin with, the insights are not really been lost. Waite continued to dedicate himself to mystical experiences, and Machen's ideas about deeper spiritual realities would remain with him throughout his life, vividly expressed in his series of memoirs.
Machen, Arthur and A.E. Waite. House of the Hidden Light. Leyburn, North Yorkshire: The Tartarus Press, 2017.
Finally available again in a beautiful but affordable paperback edition from Tartarus Press, The House of the Hidden Light (1904) is a cryptic tome of metaphysical symbolism, which the introduction, by editor and annotator R.A. Gilbert, plausibly interprets as describing the social lives of its two mystically-inclined authors.
Arthur Machen was a Welsh author of influential weird fiction, most famous for the fin-de-siecle horror tale "The Great God Pan," and for accidentally creating the urban legend about angels appearing above a battlefield in the First World War. A.E. Waite would become one of the most famous occultists of his age, immortalized by his work on the Rider-Waite Tarot, now the "standard" deck, the template of which has been copied by thousands of other artists and writers.
The two men became lifelong friends, with Waite encouraging Machen to join the then-new Order of the Golden Dawn. Characteristically, Machen would be inspired by its rituals to create a drinking club as a similar mock order, and that sort of behavior is on display in Hidden Light. When his wife died after a lengthy battle with cancer, Machen was devastated, and found a welcome distraction in the Golden Dawn and long conversations about metaphysics.
While Waite was offering support and companionship to his grieving friend, he was living a storyline ripped from the kind of Victorian novels I read. He was in love with a woman he thought of as a soulmate and intellectual equal, who married a wealthy older man instead of him. On the rebound, he married her sister, but eventually the two began meeting again in secret. (The introduction implies that this began as an emotional affair that probably turned into a physical one, until they finally broke it off to make a go of it with their spouses). Meanwhile, Machen met a woman in their social circle who made him believe that he could love again. And yes, all this soap opera is necessary exposition, because apparently the four of them used to meet up for dining and drinking until all hours, with a strong suggestion that the couples went off to enjoy themselves privately.
The literary collaboration contains faux letters making veiled references to these meetings and their relationships with the two women, layered with occult terminology, and focused on the search for a divine Light, an infusion of spiritual joy and meaning strong enough to permeate one's mundane existence. They reframe their experiences into a kind of mythical symbolism, attempting, in a way, to create what contemporary writer Hakim Bey would later call a Temporary Autonomous Zone.
Or, in the words of Waite's stand-in, Elias Artista: "two poor brothers of the spirit, friends of God and members of the sodality, having dwelt after the common manner of men in the desert of this mortal life, understanding ill enough what manner of distinction there is between stars that speak and stars that sing, conceived between them the ambition to get on int he world by a right ordering of the mind in respect of the real interests and true objects of life" (3). With that, you probably already have a good idea of whether you'd want to read this.
The romances didn't last, but the experience created a sense of the way love (and probably physical pleasures) can color one's perceptions. After this project of rendering that reality in a divine light, everyday life begins to reassert itself: "the signs are no longer visibly afforded to us ... the lights have waxed dim within the holy place" (93). But since it was an elaborate metaphor to begin with, the insights are not really been lost. Waite continued to dedicate himself to mystical experiences, and Machen's ideas about deeper spiritual realities would remain with him throughout his life, vividly expressed in his series of memoirs.
Machen, Arthur and A.E. Waite. House of the Hidden Light. Leyburn, North Yorkshire: The Tartarus Press, 2017.
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