Mystic Fiction

[Nightspore]

One of the most profoundly mystical of Machen’s works is his vignette “The Rose Garden,” the first piece in Ornaments in Jade. This vignette references the Babi religion of Persia, using a quote from the nineteenth century female poet and mystic Tahirih as a sort of refrain:

The Kingdom of I and we forsake
And your home in annihilation make.
—Tahirih

Machen himself sheds some light on the sources he used for "The Rose Garden" in an essay titled “Ars Artium,” published in the July 1908 issue of The Academy.

[T.E. Grau]

Daniel Mills is another contemporary writer able to capture the mystic and darkly pastoral.

Reading both is like listening to a favorite piece of classical music.

[nihilsum]

Quote Originally Posted by T.E. Grau

Daniel Mills is another contemporary writer able to capture the mystic and darkly pastoral. Reading both is like listening to a favorite piece of classical music.

What is your favorite story by Mills?

[T.E. Grau]

Quote Originally Posted by nihilsum

Quote Originally Posted by T.E. Grau Daniel Mills is another contemporary writer able to capture the mystic and darkly pastoral. Reading both is like listening to a favorite piece of classical music. What is your favorite story by Mills?

It's difficult to pick a favorite, but for the benefit of theme, I'd say "House of the Caryatids," which always reminded me of Machen and Bierce.

The White People, The Great God Pan, Black Seal and White Powder are works of dark genius, but much of Machen's non-horror work is superb mystic fiction. The Secret Glory is sorely underrated and underread, while The Great Return is easily the best of his journalistic pieces, though I am also partial to The Happy Children. When it comes to his slim output of horror stories that people rarely seem to mention, Change is quite good. It's a rejigging of his older themes, but it is a successful one.

We have our philosophical differences, but I think what I admire most about Machen was his desire to allow his mind to stay within the realms of the utterly unacceptable. Fans looking for similar fiction from the period would so well to read M. P. Shiel's Shapes in the Fire collection. Some of the pieces are Poe pastiches, but others are sincere attempts at mystic fiction, and the collection as a whole ties together into something more magnificent than the sum of its parts.

[nihilsum]

So I have just read three of W.B. Yeats' mystical short stories - "The Alchemical Rose," "The Tables of the Law," and "The Adoration of the Magi". All three stories are related.

"The Alchemical Rose" marks the narrator's first experience with "The Order of the Alchemical Rose" and its leader of sorts, Michael Robartes. This order seeks to evoke all pagan gods and usher in a new age - the means by which are quite horrific and Machenesque.

"The Tables of the Law" concerns the encounter with another mystic, who is an unorthodox Christian rather than a pagan. He becomes obsessed (to his spiritual doom) by his acquisition of a copy of a heretical doctrine created by an obscure 12th century abbot that defies the 10 commandments and substitutes its own.

In "The Adoration of the Magi", our narrator meets three wise men who tell him a tale. They have met the enigmatic Robartes of the Order of the Alchemical Rose, who tells them that the old gods are returning to earth. Years later when Robartes has past, one of the wise men are possessed by a certain god who tells them to make for Paris to receive a revelation that will finally usher in a new age of the gods.

Overall, the stories are very challenging, and steeped in complex symbolism, references to alchemy, history, mythology and Yeats' own beliefs. A fascinating mix of pagan and Christian themes. There is much to wrap your head around, but thus there is much mystery to ponder over, and the first two culminate to unsettling supernatural ends. Regardless, the prose is beautiful and evocative still and I believe fans of Machen and Blackwood would enjoy them.

[Ibrahim]

& Machen's "N" , of course.

Mark Samuels, "The Tower" & "In Eternity- Two Lines Intersect" (only just now listened to it as read by qcrisp)

What would properly classify the Samuels pieces as mystic is not the mention of other realities or a higher power, or a sense of longing to attain these, but the fact that they describe the experience of a transpersonal consciousness, which i'd argue is the experience at the core of all mystical traditions. It's something that even Machen's best tales don't achieve, i think; they remain too rooted in the characters for that. In that sense i perfectly understand mr. Samuels' 'apprenticeship' under the sign of Ligotti, culminating in something like 'the Black Mould,' which unmoors the pov from humanity altogether; chez Ligotti characters and events dissolve or crumble into meaninglessness, in Samuels' mystic tales, they dissolve no less, but into Meaning.

Anyone who has spoken to, or read, the mystics, will recognize that they are often the most practical & down-to-earth of men & in this regard, too, these pieces are eminently mystical, in that their concise, clear & matter-of-fact style considerably adds to their effectiveness. Anyone else writing about the voice of the wind in the trees would have succumbed to poetic overelaboration but Samuels gets a lot out of a few words. Which is, i guess, his job.

Or, his Job.

[nihilsum]

More on Machen: his short story "The Spagyric Quest of Beroaldus Cosmopolita" is entirely based upon the tropes of alchemy and mysticism. While its sort of a witty satire on the obscure language and dogmas of esoteric orders (the Grand Master alchemist our protagonist meets is mostly concerned with the "transmutation of juice into laughter", or getting drunk), within the story we are brought to strange and fantastical places through its imagery.