the Equinox - The Hermetic Library

260
THE EQUINOX
delicious dreams, I had not yet returned to the perfectly
natural state. I now began to experience a law of hasheesh
which developed its effects more and more through all future
months of its use. With the progress of the hasheesh life,
the effect of every successive indulgence grows more perduring
until the hitherto isolated experiences become tangent
to each other; then the links of the delirium intersect, and at
last so blend that the chain has become a continuous band,
now resting with joyous lightness as a chaplet, and now
mightily pressing in upon the soul like the glowing hoop of
iron which holds martyrs to the stake. The final months of
this spell-bound existence, be it terminated by mental
annihilation or by a return into the quiet and mingled facts of
humanity are passed in one unbroken yet chequered dream.
Moreover, through many ecstasies and many pains, I still
supposed that I was only making experiments, and that, too,
in the most wonderful field of mind which could be opened
for investigation, and with an agent so deluding in its
influence that the soul only became aware that the strength of
a giant was needed to escape when its locks were shorn.
Upon William N—— hasheesh produced none of the
effects characteristic of fantasia. There was no hallucination,
no volitancy of unusual images before the eye when closed.
Circulation, however, grew to a surprising fulness and
rapidity, accompanied by the same introversion of faculties
and clear perception of all physical processes which startled
my in my first experiment upon myself. There was stertorous
breathing, dilation of the pupil, and a drooping appearance of