Tom Foran Clark

I

It was all quite heavy. Born and raised in Narrburyport, Massachusetts, I'd worked as printer's helper, freelance graphic artist, and reference librarian in neighboring Marmorac's public library while moonlighting as an oil and watercolor painting teacher and life-drawing sessions overseer at the Marmorac Arts and Science Center. I'd been engaged to a Jewish heiress from New York City then living north of Boston in a hovel in the woods but, getting cold feet, had gone on alone, backpacking in the Acadia, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite national parks. I'd hiked sections of California's John Muir Trail and the Appalachian Trail from Virginia to Maine before taking a freighter from North Carolina to Holland. I'd then hitchhiked first to Paris, then to Munich where I'd worked in advertising doing photographic typesetting, copy preparation, artwork, lay-out, and final paste-ups for magazine and newspaper ads. On the side, I'd tutored students in English three nights a week and had eventually traveled to Switzerland to earn formal certification in teaching English as a Second Language from an international school of language having its headquarters in Berne. I'd written and translated assorted articles for the German magazine Schadenfreude, had been involved through three years in setting up booths at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and had been for two years the lead singer and banjo player in a folk music band that played in everything from concert halls and night clubs to coffee shops and book stores throughout Europe. Abruptly I had left all that in order to return to America to get a Master's degree in Library Science in Boston, where I'd interned at the Museum of Fine Arts while working in the corporate library of the Houghton Mifflin publishing house prior to becoming, on graduating, the director of, first, a public library in western Massachusetts (where I married a quick-nesting ruby-throated paper marbler) then in the MetroWest area just outside Boston (where my wife took flight), meanwhile moonlighting as an Internet entrepreneur, posting and selling books online when the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. This had led to my staking out territory in the then emerging electronic book industry, gathering up company shares while doing proofreading, copy editing, and quality assurance for seven separate booming eBook firms that all eventually went bankrupt. From a former library school colleague I learned of an opening at the Houghton Library, the rare books and manuscripts library of Harvard University. They needed somebody to come in and evaluate, organize, and conserve certain nineteenth century papers about which I'm not at liberty to speak which had long been decomposing in a deep far corner of the Houghton's basement. I'd got the job and basically just thought very well of myself -- that I was a very nice person of some standing who'd done a lot of good in the world and now had landed at the top of it, at Harvard, and that, in short, I, Ben Fisk, was quite a guy.

Then I met Lew Carley, a former Boston Public Library fine arts librarian and public library director, retired, who'd hardly traveled anywhere outside of Boston and Easthaven. He was then hard at work, he said, on finishing a book having the working title The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers, the title alone of which impressed me terrifically (I had tried to write a book about my adventures, tentatively titled Gypsy Scholar but, try as I might to breathe life into that project, it had not got off the ground).

Born Lewis Oachum Edwards on September 31, 1933 in Northampton, Massachusetts, Lew was the son of Duncan Lewis Carley, once a Professor of Philology at Wellelsey College who'd turned from teaching to carpentry, and Harriet Carpenter Carley, who'd died at childbirth, on bringing Lew into this world. As his father could not afford to keep him, six-month-old Lewis had been adopted, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Joseph and Marge Miner. He'd been officially placed into the custody of the Miners on March 24, 1934. Joseph Simon and Marge Miner had been married on July 16, 1932, in Concord, Massachusetts four years after their first meeting and three months after their engagement. Joseph and Marge renamed their adopted son Lew Lewis Carley Miner. The Miners got involved, on moving to Boston, in an occult group, the Order of the Companions of the Rising Light in the Morning -- Stella Matutina -- the Morning Star. Lew grew up in an atmosphere of occult seances, elaborate rituals, and often bizarre ceremonies amid shelves everywhere stuffed with books in more than half a dozen different languages on hermetic and masonic rites, history, and lore.

Lew's step-father, Joseph, had been a prominent architect who'd spent long days in Bertram Goodhue's offices. His step-mother, Marge, had been a socialite who'd chaired community council meetings and had volunteered at a range of organizations from the Children's Home Society of Massachusetts to the Worcester County Council of Wives of Architects. In the little-over-a-year between their marriage in 1932, and the adoption of Lew in 1934, Joseph and Marge Miner had lived variously in Northampton, Concord, Cambridge, and Boston.

In 1950, at the age of 17, already proficient in English, French, and German, Carley had already written and published "On the Rescuing of Manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Norwegian" and had authored, he said, the entries for Canada, Denmark, and Japan for the 1952 World Book Encyclpedia. In 1953, having enlisted in the army, he began his study of civilizations and their libraries, intially titled The Great and Everlasting Significance of Libraries in Civilization from Earliest Times to the Present Day, years later revised (and re-titled), The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place. After a psychiatric discharge from the army in 1954, Lewis, having dubbed himself Lew, entered Boston College to study art, also working evenings and weekends in the B.C. library.

In 1958, Lew's real father, Duncan Lewis Carley, moved to Montreal, Canada and apparently never returned to the U.S. His step-parents, then approaching their late 50s, also departed Massachusetts, re-locating to Eugene, Oregon. That same year, 1958, Lew got a job in the congested, damp, dank, and dark Fine Arts Department of the Boston Public Library, located on the third floor of the old McKim Building, where tissue-like eggshell-colored paint was everywhere peeling from the ceilings and walls.

The Fine Arts Collection of the Boston Library was a non-circulating research resource of more than 125,000 books. The circulating art book collection was on the second floor of the Johnson building. The collection included works of biography, criticism, history and philosophy of art, art education, manuals on technique, journals and patternbooks, major studies of artists and periods, catalogues raisonnes, oeuvres catalogues, collectors' manuals and many valuable early imprints, as well as major art indexes and abstracts, encyclopedias, dictionaries, bibliographies and auction records. There was a picture file consisting of mounted and unmounted photographs and clippings about Boston buildings, parks, monuments, streets, etc. Material in this file has been indexed in the Boston Architecture Reference File. A postcard collection of c. 1,500 items depicting Boston buildings is also part of this pictorial archive. The Boston Art Archives/New England Art Information File had been started in 1885 as a vertical file of ephemera on Boston artists. Materials later included were exhibition announcements, calendars of events, gallery/organization newsletters, press releases, reviews of exhibitions, checklists and small exhibition catalogs, obituaries, illustrations, gallery histories, bibliographies on artists, and miscellaneous biographical information. The index also absorbed the exhibition record of individual artists at shows of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts, the Boston Society of Independent Artists, and the Boston Art Club.

The Library, on Copley Square, designed by McKim, Mead, and White, was completed in 1895. The new wing, designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee, was completed in 1973. A planning grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission in 1980 enabled the Trustees to undertake an initial feasibility study for the restoration and renovation of the original building. The Trustees hired Stull Associates, who prepared A Restoration Program for the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library and A Handbook to the Art and Architecture of the Boston Public Library, completed and presented to the Trustees in August, 1981. By 1983, the Trustees had approval on a loan.

In 1985, the firm of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott, working closely with Carley and other librarians in going over the library's functional needs, in addition to historical considerations. In 1989, Carley had left Boston to take the job of Director of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library, the public library of Easthaven, Massachusetts. He retired at sixty-five in 1998.

I met up with Lew, seventy-two, in Boston in mid-October, 2005 at his favorite restaurant, Jacob Wirth's.

Wirth's was on Stuart Street between Tremont and Washington Streets in the theater district at the edge of Chinatown, an easy walk from the Public Gardens and the Common area. The fine old smoot-black nineteenth century fascade sported a clock jutting out sideways over the front sign lettered in gold on black. Wirth's, advertised as Boston’s second-oldest restaurant, had been in business since 1868 when Jacob, from a long line of wine growers in Kreuznach, Prussia, had arrived in America. Ten years later, he'd moved his restaurant across the street. Jacob Wirth, who died in 1892, had been succeeded by his son, also Jacob Wirth, an earnest and light-hearted drinking man, mixer, mingler, conversationalist, and Harvard dropout. Despite Prohibition and deep anti-German sentiment through two world wars, Wirth's had flourished through the years.

In 1975, ownership of Wirth's had passed to an Irishman, William Fitzgerald. It was said he didn't change the unique ambience of the place much, until a major restoration in 1987 when the the place was purged of its dark, smudged, smokey ambience. Fitzgerald's children later restored the exterior of the building so that it looked again almost exactly as it had looked when the first Jacob Wirth had opened it. Inside, the dining room retained its original simple mahogany tables. There was still a big clock and a portrait of the founder in a circular medallion over the long mahogany bar, which was well equipped for dispensing draught beer. Above the bar, under the portrait of the first Jake Wirth, was still posted the Latin motto proclaiming Suum Cuiqce which, translated, meant “Each his own.”

Carley was a slight, thin haired, sweet voiced old man, someone obviously incapable of any cruelty or coarseness. I saw at once that he was cross-eyed. He claimed he saw saw double. He said there was a twinning of objects in his sight, which he insisted were "emblematic" of the "dual realities of sight and imagination."

He'd brought along with him the sole extant copy of a manuscript he'd written, which he wanted me to proofread and perhaps even edit, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place.

After we'd been seated, Lew set the papers carefully under his chair. Lew then studied the menu intently. Its holdings ranged from traditional German specialties to Jake's award winning New England Clam Chowder. Along with several special dishes each day, the menu featured sausages, pig’s knuckles, boiled bacon, hams, herrings, and cheeses. Lew ordered grilled petite filet mignon with marinated shrimp, lemon butter, red potatoes, and garlicky spinach with a glass of dark beer-- "Jake Wirth's Heart of Darkness," Lew called it. I had a salmon filet on pea tendrils with chow mein noodles, and also a pint of the Heart of Darkness. For dessert, we had each a pint of Guiness Stout.

Wirth, Lew explained -- leaning toward me across the table, speaking very softly -- was the German word for innkeeper, derived from Wirt, host. "This place," he whispered ominously, "is very special. It has been said the founder, Jacob, was related to Oswald Wirth, the nineteenth century Swiss occultist, kabbalist, magician, and designer of Tarot cards. Surely we are sitting in one of the ultimate of great, dark, mysterious manmade places." Lew brought out from under his chair the manuscript he'd brought with him, his book, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place.

Lew set the stage for speaking of his book by way of telling me, first, about how, as a child, through his youth, and even into manhood, what had mattered to him was clover -- moss -- rocks -- studying lichen on boulders and trees -- just being out, sleeping out under the stars. He said it was amazing to him how society -- people -- "the building of the Tower of Babel, the intrigues of twisted, scheming people, as if they had nothing better to do" -- had intruded on his life the way they had. He mentioned the village of Easthaven and one of the town's library's Trustees, Cal Horan who, according to Lew, had two ruling passions: "the occult and Schadenfreude." I knew what Schadenfreude was, me having written and translated articles for a German magazine by that name and having twice set up, for the magazine's publisher, a booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Basically, Schadenfreude is one's perverse and mischeivous delight in the trials, sufferings, and downfall of other people; everybody's ready for a laugh, especially when it comes at somebody else's expense.

This man Horan, Lew went on, claimed he'd received from a band of gypsy Rosicrucians certain documents detailing the magical methods, techniques, and rituals of the so-called Order of the Morning Star. In his dingy, cramped Easthaven apartment kitchen, translating the rites of his order, Horan had been accustomed, Lew said, to dressing up in ornate Scottish Highlander garb. Later, living in still more abject poverty with his new bride, Minnehaha, in Boston, Horan had taken to wearing even more spectacular Egyptian garb.

Lew did not elaborate further on Horan's Order of the Morning Star, saying only that it had offered "exotic, marvelous, convoluted esoteric Knowledge. But you must recall what ancient Heraclitus said, 'Knowledge is not intelligence'."

Now Lew suddenly turned pale. "Hah!" he cried out, staring cross-eyed at the entry door. "Here it is!"

I looked over my shoulder and saw three men dressed comically in black three-piece suits, wearing dark glasses and carrying canes, as if for a Halloween party who, on entering the eatery, walked briskly past the piano toward us. Lew set down his papers gently, peering blankly into my eyes. In slow motion, he keeled over. He laid himself down lightly on the ashen, gray, unvarnished wooden floor.

It was the waiter who called over to the barman to phone 911. I looked all over the place for any sign of the three men, but they had vanished.

In my ear, the waiter whispered, "He's dead, your friend."

II

That is how I met Valerie Carley, Lew Carley's daughter, granddaughter of Duncan Lewis Carley and Harriet Carpenter Carley -- step-granddaughter of Joseph and Marge Miner, married on July 16, 1912, in Concord, Massachusetts -- into whose custody her father had been placed in September, 1919.

Here was Lew's obituary, as published in the Boston Globe: "Lew Lewis Carley (January 3, 1919-September 24, 2005) born Lewis Oachum Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, was the son of Duncan Lewis Carley and Harriet Carpenter Carley, who died in labor, giving birth to Lew. At six months old, he was adopted, in Cambridge, by Joseph and Marge Miner. In August 1932, at the age of thirteen, his family moved to Boston. Lew, an art student interested in Hindu philosophy, was often to be found at the Boston Public Library, conducting his own studies. He served in the U.S. Army until the end of WWII. After leaving the army, he returned to Boston to attend Simmons College. After graduating, he became a Boston Public Library fine arts reference librarian. He contributed articles to various library journals. In 1960, he became embroiled in a sensational libel case in which he sued Hannah Cramer, a sculptress. Lawyer's fees forced him into bankruptcy. Mr. Carley was appointed Director of the Easthaven, Massachusetts Public Library. He was married to Olivia Burton Carley, who died in Newport, California in 1982. He is survived by a daughter, Valerie Emma Carley of Cambridge. Mr. Carley died of a heart attack on September 24, 2005 while dining at one of his favorite restaurants in Boston, Jacob Wirth's."

After Lew had keeled over at Jacob Wirth's pub, near the bar over which hung the sign having the motto “To each his own,” it was in no way clear if it had been the Filet Mignon, the potatoes, or the spinach that had killed him -- or Jake's Heart of Darkness beer. Perhaps his pint of Guiness Stout had been poisoned -- that, too, was never proved. All we knew, Val and I, was that in the commotion that had followed Lew's slumping to the well-waxed floor, her father's manuscript The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers had gone missing, apparently abducted by the three men who may or may not have murdered Lew.

It was ridiculous -- this intrigue. The Order of the Morning Star, Freemasons, Rosecrucians -- all that. At the time, a book had come out called The Four Codes -- it was all the rage. Everybody was saying how the author had just made up the whole thing. Well, duh. It had been advertised all along as being fiction.

Now Val contacted me saying she was sure her father had been involved in some big esoteric secret society intrigue leading to his having been murdered -- for real. Well, I wanted to go out and get a yacht and sail out of this country to Myanmar or Newfoundland or get a job in a bank and go to sleep for a thousand years. The last thing I wanted was to be around people who felt you weren't really alive unless you knew some secret handshake or had experiences killing people on the side.

But I could not get it out of my mind: my looking back over my shoulder at Jake Wirth's that night, seeing those three men dressed in black three-piece suits, wearing dark glasses and carrying canes as if for a Halloween party who, on entering the eatery, had walked briskly past the piano toward Vals' Dad and me, just prior to Lew's keeling over.

So I agreed to meet with Val and go over what had happened at Jake Wirth's and what her father had told me. He'd left a back-up disk in her safekeeping which did not hold the contents of the book itself, but rather the working notes that he'd compiled for it. She'd printed it out, and I agreed we could go over it together with a fine tooth comb.

Lew's work-in-progress, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers, was dedicated to ancient Heraclitus ("Knowledge is not intelligence"), Thomas Merton ("He is a business man. He is full of ideas. He breathes notions and new schemes. He generates books in the silence that ought to be sweet with the infinitely productive darkness of contemplation"), and the author of the Book of Ephesians ("For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms").

On the front page was the book's title, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

On the second page was the book's title and subtitle, the author's name, the author's copyright, and a disclaimer ("All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews"), followed by another blank page. Then came the dedication Page ("To Val"), followed by an Acknowledgements page ("Special thanks to Randy Anson, Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the School of Humanities at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Tyrone Schorer, undergraduate in the Rechtswissenschaften/Jurisprudence Program at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany; Susannah Yorick, Librarian, Harvard University’s Houghton Library Department of Manuscripts, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Marissa Bantano of the Fine Arts Department of the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts") followed by another blank page, then the page with quotes from The Book of Ephesians, Heraclitus, and Thomas Merton. Then came the Table of Contents page, followed by another blank page, and then the Introduction.

"Most of my life has been spent in libraries," Lew's book began.

III

Introduction, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

Most of my life has been spent in libraries.

As a child, venturing into the halls, aisles, and seemingly endless ranges of bookstacks of the Boston Public Library, hushed and entombed in paper, I could not get over the majesty of those shelves and shelves full of books, extending miles and reaching high skyward. This was a temple, the heart of all history and memory, the core of all civilization, as precious as the inventions of writing and printing themselves. In awe, I fell in love -- not only with the library, but with a woman, too.

On May 15, 1958, at twenty-five, I married Monica Denton, twenty-four. The ceremony took place in Concord, on the splended grounds along the banks of the Concord River, very near the Old North Bridge. We got an apartment on Park Place, near the rose garden on the expansive lawns adjacent to the Museum of Fine Arts, and we were very happy.

That summer, I got work in the Fine Arts Department of the Boston Public Library -- up on the third floor of the old McKim Building. I worked with the Boston Art Archives/New England Art Information File mainly, which had been started in 1885 as a vertical file of ephemera on Boston artists. Later materials included were exhibition announcements, calendars of events, gallery/organization newsletters, press releases, reviews of exhibitions, checklists and small exhibition catalogs, obituaries, illustrations, gallery histories, bibliographies on artists, and miscellaneous biographical information. The index had also absorbed the exhibition record of individual artists at shows of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts, the Boston Society of Independent Artists, and the Boston Art Club.

In 1989, my wife Monica, our daughter Valerie, and I left Boston to move into a new home in the town of Easthaven, Massachusetts. Not that I was suspicious, still I felt I'd made the purchase under a good sign: a bank had lent me the money. I'd been appointed Director of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library -- just about as perfect a setting as you can get, I think, for the telling of a story about the infinitely productive darkness of a clean, well-lighted place.

IV

Chapter One, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

In the beginning Easthaven was a poll-parish, incorporated March 23, 1802 under the name The First Religious Society in the Town of Shorehaven. It was incorporated as a town on March 18, 1814. The first Town Meeting was held April 17, 1817, and the officers elected were representative "citizens whose descendants held a high place in the esteem of their fellows." One of Easthaven's most prominent early citizens was Marshall Cook Hamperdon, born in 1797 in Shorehaven, in that part of it which is now Easthaven. After early success as a businessman, pioneering water power, saw mill, and grist mill in Easthaven, Marshall Hamperdon organized Hamperdon Mills, erected in 1822 (burned to the ground, 1845). He was the first president of the Easthaven Savings Bank. At present, there are five banks and eight churches in Easthaven. Two of the churches are Congregational; two Roman Catholic; one each Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, and Universalist. All occupy substantial edifices. The Easthaven Fire Department, consisting of two engine and two hook and ladder companies is well-equipped and manned, with Edmund Gripps as Chief. The Easthaven Public Library, whose collection consists primarily of books left to it by Mr. Lucius Hamperdon of New York City and Easthaven, located in the Hamperdon Building on Main Street and is supported wholly at the public expense.

The Massachusetts Public Library Law was enacted on May 24, 1851, enabling municipalities to raise and appropriate funds for the support of public libraries, establishing the Commonwealth as a pioneer in the public library movement in America. One hundred years later, Massachusetts Governor Paul A. Dever proclaimed the third week in May "Public Library Week," designating May 24, 1951, "Public Library Day." He singled out Easthaven for special praise, it having been among the first to take an interest in public libraries, the forerunner of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library having been established in 1871 when Lucius Hamperdon, a wealthy New Yorker and a native of Easthaven, built the Hamperdon building, setting aside three rooms on the second floor for library purposes. In his will, Hamperdon left his entire personal book collection to the library.

In 1902, another town native, Martin Conwell of Boston, seeing the need for a larger and better library for the growing community, had offered a sum of $75,000 to the town to build a new library building, also donating land at the corner of Main and Conwell Streets for that purpose. Construction of the building had begun in 1904, a year after the death of Martin Conwell. Miss Miriam Welch served as librarian until the library was opened for circulation purposes in 1915. Miss Effie Purchase served as librarian from 1915 until 1939. Conwell's three children all gave liberally to the support and perpetuation of their father's library. Expenditures for the library were financed partially from the Town budget and partially from Trustee funds.

Miss Norma Van Allsted was librarian throughout the 1940s. In the February 20, 1951 minutes of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library, Miss Van Allstead had announced her resignation as of March 1. The Board "preferred" to think of her resignation as "temporary," voting to increase her salary to $2,300 a year. The March minutes showed "the Board presented the librarian with a pen and pencil set, and again expressed their hope that she might change her mind and return to the Library in the near future. A request was made that the Library staff should have one Saturday morning off a month, and the matter of arranging this was left to the Acting Librarian."

The September 18, 1951 minutes told of "the resignation of Miss Farrar, the Children's Librarian, the Board granting her a bonus of $50.00 as an indication of their gratitude for her fine work as Acting Librarian since March." On October 23, 1951, the Board of Trustees appointed its first library director to have a library services education and degree, Mrs. Ellie Lanning, as well as a new Children's Librarian, Miss Hortense Charlemagne, the former to be paid $3,200 annually and the latter $2,600. The Janitor Mr. Othello Hartwell's annual salary was set at $3,400. "The possibility of putting an article in the Town Warrant requesting an addition to the Library for a children's section was also discussed."

A new card catalog arrived in the spring of 1952. In May, there was talk, across Massachusetts, of the formation of a statewide Library Trustee Association. Easthaven's library trustees, in their minutes that summer, formally rejected joining any such association and requested of Mrs. Lanning that she "have a talk with Othello in an endeavor to learn why he refused to clean table tops and what his other varying difficulties may be. Mrs. Lanning reported that waxing the floors weekly was unnecessary, and that if properly sealed the floors would not require a waxing more often than every three months." On December 23, 1952, the minuted revealed "Mr. Hartwell does not feel he can handle any snowfalls this year, so the Board has agreed elbert Hutton should be given the job to sweep away with his snowplow any appreciable amount of snow that may fall at a price previously agreed upon."

In the spring of 1953 library minutes showed "Mr. Hartwell is back in the hospital again and reports he will not be back to work at the library. the Board, therefore, approved Othello's being removed from the payroll as of April 1, 1953. The Board also recommended an ad seeking a new individual to fill the post should be placed in the Easthaven Daily News and that, in the meantime Mrs. Lanning should contact the firemen now doing Othello's job and ask that they take care of the furnace until such time as a new janitor is hired.

That summer, mention was made of the boiler being cracked. "The Arthur Hachette Company recommends the installation of a larger boiler than called for by the specifications. After considerable discussion it was voted to award the heating contract to the Arthur Hachette Company, Inc., for $3,115." It was reported that "bills for electricity have gone up much more than originally estimated by the Electric Company. The Board directed the Secretary to write a letter to the Electric Company on this matter." The minutes noted the new janitor, Mr. Herbert Mercurian, was working out well. The librarian, Mrs. Lanning, reported to the Trustees that "the gift of a photograph of several unidentified men wearing Scotch tartans, and Masonic aprons had been given to the library, with only a note scribbled on the back saying the photograph had been taken in 1868 in London. It was agreed that the librarian should send the photograph on to the British Museum."

On December 12, 1953, "The Chairman asked Mrs. Lanning if she cared to make any statement as to the severing of her duties at the Library. She stated that she had no intention of resigning 'under fire.' She wished to know whether or not this would be a preliminary hearing with another hearing to follow, at which time she could know the nature and names of the complaints and complainants as to the conduct of her duties. She was informed that no such hearing was contemplated. She then pointed out that the American Library Association advocates certain rules of tenure, as outlined in the November 1946 bulletin of the Association. She advised the Board that the American Library Association would not recommend the library to a new librarian unless theyare assured the Board pursued an appropriate process in deliberating her dimissal from her duties. Mrs Lanning then abruptly left the meeting, muttering under her breath something unintelligible to others present. It was agreed by the Board that it was unfortunate Mrs. Lanning felt as she did and, worse, that she did what she did in the first place at a meeeting of the Chamber of Commerce, which need not be recorded here. It was agreed the Board will make an investigation into complaints that Mrs. Lanning' behavior was incompatible with the expectations of many patrons of the library and most staff, but it was agreed unanimously that her dimissal would be final. The Board together composed a letter to Mrs. Lanning, the text of which follows: 'After full consideration of the statement which you gave at the meeting at the Chamber of Commerce on December 12, and after consideration of all factors pertinent to the case, the Board of Library Trustees of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library cannot change its decision as to your status. We, as agents of the Town and of the Trusts from which the library derives its income, must base our decision on the very numerous complaints that we have received from time to time pertaining to your contacts with the public. Therefore, if your resignation effective November 21, as requested, is not forthcoming immediately, the Board has no alternative but to consider that you have been dismissed as of that date. It would be appreciated if you would return your key to the Library if you have not already done so'."

In the minutes of the December 22, 1953 Trustees meeting, after agreeing to allow the Easthaven Music Appreciation Association to use its downstairs room for music appreciation courses, "The Board carefully considered the letter from Mrs. Lanning and unanimously agreed that her suggestion as to a token reinstatement with later resignation is out of the question. The Board directed the Secretary to write Mrs. Lanning to this effect: to tell her that if she wishes to resign now her resignation will be accepted as a resignation and she will not be draggged into a court of law, but if she perists in her folly of believing she may yet keep her job another second, the Board will energetically pursue a course of action to secure that she shall never again be a librarian in this great state of Massachusetts, nor in any other state for that matter." A new budget was proposed for the Library for 1954, and it was voted "the Library will close at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve."

In early January, Easthaven's Town Counsel, Mr. Ebenezer T. Johnson, told an Easthaven Daily News reporter he expected to present a ruling soon on Mrs Ellie Forrest Lanning, dismissed from her post as librarian of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library, to the Board of Selectmen by the middle of the month. "After the former librarian told Selectmen at their last meeting that the Library Board refused to give her a hearing concerning her dimissal from the Library, Selectmen asked Johnson to make a ruling on the advisability of a hearing, which Mrs. Lanning requested. The letter sent by Mrs. Lanning to the Chairman of the Selectmen: 'Dear Sir, As a public official of a public institution, I protest against my summary dismissal from the position of Librarian to the Martin Conwell Memorial Library. The Library board, in neglecting to giveme any warning of alleged complaints acted in disregard of a common business practice. The Library board first agreed to a hearing, then when they learned that reporters wished to be present announced that they would not give a hearing, but were willing to listen. It is evident that they did not listen with open, unprjudiced minds. Such meetings are always open meetings, except when cases of embezzlement or moral turpitude are involved. but the meeting was held behind locked doors, with the reporters barred in a method reminiscent of a police state. The Library board, appointed by you, has acted in an unjust and unethical manner in refusing to look at the records or heed the facts. No specific charges have ever been made, and I have never known the names of the complainants or the nature of the complaints. Tenure is an elementary right of any professional person, and the professional library associations are taking a deep interest in this violation. I feel that the Library board by their actions have disregarded the wishes of the majority of the people of Easthaven, and this has caused widespread resentment. Therefore, as a Town employee, I ask for an open hearing before the Board of Selectmen, in order that proper inquiries may be made into the matter'."

After Easthaven's Town Counsel advised against the Selectmen granting Mrs. Lanning a hearing, the Library Trustees made no further mention of the matter, noting in the minutes of their June 22, 1854 meeting only that they had established "a formal publicity committee for the Library, to publicize the work and facilities of the library through the media, as well as through word of mouth." Pinned to these minutes was a small note written longhand in pencil, noting "Charles and Ellie surfaced three months later. Moved to Laguna Beach, California."

On April 26, 1955, the Board of Trustees of Easthaven's Martin Conwell Memorial Library approved the hiring of Miss Teresa Arnson Burns as their new Library Director, at the salary of $4,400 a year, "and the Library will pay $100 toward her moving expenses. Miss Burns will arrive some time in August." She in fact arrived in September of that year, as was noted in a May, 1962 Library Journal magazine "Salute to Librarian Teresa Burns" -- an advertisement featuring a full-page photo of the librarian, paid for by the Martin Conwell Memorial Library Publicity Committee: "Forty seven years ago," the ad began, "Martin Conwell, the donator of a costly and pretty modern library building at Main and Conwell Streets in Easthaven, Massachusetts, opened the Martin Conwell Memorial Library to the public. Conwell, a native of Easthaven and one of its prominent merchants for years, was born November 12, 1815, the son of Samuel and Muriel (Portman) Conwell. He attended Easthaven public schools and entered the employ of Edward and Lucius Hamperdon, shoemakers, where he worked until the spring of 1836. On venturing into his own business, realizing Easthaven could not support yet another shoe store, Conwell opened a General Store, which was successful. In 1852 Conwell moved to Boston, where he became senior member of the firm of Conwell, Smith, and Roberts, which engaged in the wholesale and jobbing business of dry goods. Conwell and his partners were altogether successful in this venture. In 1878, Conwell accepted the treasureship of the Sampson Manufacturing Company in Lewiston, Maine, where he remained 12 years. He was particularly interested in banking, and was for 23 years president of the Easthaven National Bank, serving from 1877 until ill health caused him to decline re-election. For 29 years he served as director of the Easthaven Trust Company. He resigned in 1902. He was married to Elma (Spears) Conwell. He died at home on November 24, 1903. On April 26, 1955, the Board of Trustees of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library, as agents of the Town and of the Trusts from which the library has so long derived much of its income, hired its first professional library director, Miss Teresa Burns, and have not regretted it."

The Minutes through the next fourteen years, with Teresa Burns acting as Recording Secretary to the Board of Library Trustees, were excellent -- models of brevity, precision, and clarity.

On June 24, 1969, Teresa Burns resigned abruptly. As she herself recorded it: "The librarian submitted a resignation effective early September. Resignation accepted. Librarian will enthusiastically recommend this position and remarked on her rich fourteen years here. Teresa Arnson Burns, Secretary pro tempore."

V

Chapter Two, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

With Hortense Charlemagne installed as Acting Director, the library Directorship remained vacant through nearly two years. On February 29, 1972, the minutes showed the Trustees had met with one Vincent Thorson Caldwell, at which time his salary was agreed on, at $11,000 a year. Then "the Board requested Mr. Caldwell put his acceptance in writing, indicating he will begin his duties on May 1st. It was moved and seconded that expenses for moving Mr. Caldwell's home from Cambridge to Easthaven will be paid from Library Trustee accounts."

On March 28, 1972, "Mr. Caldwell reported he was packing on the 17th and moving to Easthaven on April 18th, and he also stated he would be lecturing in Arizona from April 12th to the 16th. On July 11th, Vince Caldwell submitted a report on his "attendance at the Annual Meeting of the American Library Association in Chicago, Illinois, June 26 to July 1. My accomodations were satisfactory, if a bit removed from the centers of activity. I attended numerous committee meetings and workshops and visited the exhibits area on more than one occasion. One sad note: One of the great librarians of our time, Clifford Warner, former President of the American Library Association, passed away recently. His death represents a grievous loss to the profession."

Then there was this surprising Easthaven Daily News headline (October 25, 1972 ): "Vincent Thorson Caldwell, Head Librarian, Dies" -- "EASTHAVEN. The 57-year-old head librarian at the Martin Conwell Memorial Library died yesterday at Hamperdon Memorial Hospital. Vincent T. Caldwell of 37 Cornhill Road, had been hospitalized for the past three days. Caldwell had only been working at the helm of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library since May of this year. Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, Mr. Caldwell worked for nine years as a librarian at Boston College before becoming Head Librarian at the Essence Institute, Narrburyport. Mr. Caldwell, the author of a book on esoteric orders and freemasonry, had finished writing his book in Narrburyport prior to taking the post of Library Director in Easthaven. In addition to his wife Marsha, he leaves one sister, Sarah Norse of Provincetown, and several nephews and nieces."

VI

Chapter Three, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

Hortense Charlemagne, once more appointed Acting Director, noted in the October 31, 1972 Board meeting minutes that "The Librarian position will be advertised with an explanation of Mr. Caldwell's untimely death. The Trustees will work with the assorted library agencies to procure a new Librarian.

The post was not filled until mid-August, 1973, when a Michigan bookseller, Karen Horton, agreed to leave Detroit to move to Easthaven. Her first item of business as Conwell Library Director was to defend the library against Selectmen claims that, in light of revelations about enormous secret hidden trust fund wealth stashed away in assorted area banks, all funding from the town to the library should cease. Miss Horton made an appeal to the new Town Counsel, Richard Ming, who advised her and the Board that, in his opinion, "the Martin Conwell Memorial Library is indeed a public library, established and maintained for its citizens pursuant to Section 6, Chapter 78, General Laws of Massachusetts. I am attaching documentation showing the establishment of the library as a public facility, the Town's past formal acceptance of the bequest made for the benefit of the Library Trustees and the condition thereof that a majority of said Trustees be appointed by the Easthaven Savings Bank and Trust Company, and the Town's past practice of recognizing the library as an institution maintained primarily through public funds raised at town meetings and supplemented, in part, through bequests and gifts of private citizens. The care and management should and must therefore remain in the care of the Library Board of Trustees, and it shall remain the duty of the Town to provide for the free use of its citizens a public library and that for such purpose an annual appropriation shall be provided from year to year through taxation."

Horton stayed aboard for an otherwise uneventful four more years, resigning on June 28, 1977. Hortense Charlemagne, once more appointed Acting Director, died on the job at the Circulation desk that fall, a week before the "soft-spoken, pipe-smoking, flute-piccolo-concertina-daudhran-banjo-fiddle-guitar-mandolin-playing new library director" (Easthaven Daily News, September 27, 1977), Kevin Storey arrived. Storey served from that day on through to January 8, 1981, when the anonymous recorder of the Board's minutes noted, "Our excellent Circulation Assistant Whitney Charlemagne has been appointed Acting Director. The Board at once drew up an advertisement for a new director."

That new Director was one John Stanhope who, according to Board minutes, had "recieved the call on February 27th and accepted on March 2nd. He has been invited to attend the next meeting of the Board on April 28th." Stanhope started work late in May, going right to work in automating the library, bringing in new photocopiers and a fax machine, acquiring both free and coin-operated pay-per-use computers, tossing out the old card catalog, making the facility handicapped accessible, adding bookstacks, weeding books, installing upstairs and downstairs anti-theft and burglar alarms, renovating the staff lounge, redesigning traffic flow for more ease and security of operation, forming committees, planning for expansion of the edifice, and on and on.

Generally, things went very well for John Stanhope. The first hint of approaching disarray came on November 23, 1981, the Director reporting in the minutes of the Board, "The library was robbed again last week -- a small sum was taken from the circulation desk." Another first arose, a Director's report addressing "some of the problems the library has had with unruly young adults. It was suggested the Director work go over this with the chief of police." After meeting with the police chief, Mr. Stanhope initiated another first: he demanded a contract from the town for his services. Easthaven had recently switched from having a Selectmen/Town Meeting form of government to having a Town Manger/ Town Council form of government, and the new Town Manager, one Roger D. Gardner, very effectively delayed the deliverance of said contract through perpetually introducing language changes to the document.

In January, 1983, the Director eported to the Board that "a budget freeze on non-emergency expenses had been imposed by town manager, which would prohibit the purchase of new books. The Board felt that the materials budget should be treated as a contractual agreement between the Board and the Town, and should be exempt from the freeze, and instructed Mr. Stanhope politely to discuss the Board's perspective with the Town Manager." The Town Manager said there was no such existing contractual agreement, but that he was at work on creating one, contingent on his ironing out certain wrinkles he saw as inherrent in trying to get the language just right for such documents.

On May 24, 1983, the Board, having met with the Finance Subcommittee of the Town Council (who'd recommended to the full council that the Town Manager's budget should be accepted), agreed to accepting "substantially less" money from the Town than they'd previously been counting on for the coming fiscal year. The Director reported he'd been appointed Chairman of the Public Relations Committee of the P.N.E.M.R.L.S., the Provisional Northeastern Massachusetts Regional Library System.

On December 23, 1985, Stanhope reported on "talks with the Town Manager and the Chief of Police regarding the parking lot ptoblems. The Manager contends it is a municipal lot and that restrictions for library patrons against the general use of the lot by other citizens could not be placed. The Police Chief disagreed. The Department of Public Works has agreed to paint lines on the lot to assure more efficient placement of cars."

When, on January 20, 1986, a car bomb was exploded in the red Volkswagon then owned by John Stanhope, which also took out the windows of the Children's Room and set the library building partially on fire, the minutes of the January 21st meeting of the Board of Library Trustees showed "The Library is adequately covered by insurance for the losses, but the Board comes up short in understanding how so violent and destructive an act came to pass."

On June 30, 1987, the Director informed the Trustees that, though he had been planning to build a home for himself and his family not in Easthaven, but rather in Westhaven, "the outrage expressed by the Board at such a plan of action" had instead led him to decide he would not build a house anywhere in the area at all. He next mentioned his having been "named in a discrimination complaint filed by Whitney Charlemagne with M.C.A.D., the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Ms Charlemagne had resigned from library employment on June 1st. Stanhope noted that a fact finding conference was scheduled for July 10, and that he would be represented there by either the Town Attorney or an attorney from the Town's insurance company. The details of the complaint were briefly discussed."

For one thing, Stanhope told the Board in confidence, Whitney Charlemagne, through the first five months of 1987, had been arriving at work each morning in her sleeping gown, and in bedroom slippers, and with her hair still in curlers. Then she'd got pregnant and had taken to showing up for work only intermittently, if at all. On June 1st, after Stanhope had reminded her of (1) the library's formal Dress Code; (2) her work schedule; and (3) her job description. She'd promptly, but not quietly, resigned. Harsh words had rained down from her on him.

The minutes of the October 24, 1989 meeting of the Board of Library Trustees revealed the recent formation of the Friends of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library, stemming from independent action taken by Library Trustee Cal Horan, who'd been instrumental in seeing to it that John Stanhope's plan to build a home not in Easthaven, but rather in Westhaven, died on the vine. Horan had appointed himself President of the fledgling Friends organization, which was front page headline news in Easthaven the next day, with no mention of John Stanhope's having reported the previous evening "that he was submitting his resignation to the Board, effective December 10, to accept a position in a different community."

He visited the offices of the Easthaven Evening News and saw to it personally that someone there wrote it down: "John Stanhope has announced his resignation form the Martin Conwell Memorial Library, effective December 10," which appeared as a tiny notice in the bottom right corner on page seven the following day. In his final message to the Board and staff, Stanhope wrote, "Thank you for your many loving messages saying how much you will miss me. With much love, John."

VII

Chapter Four, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

On December 10, 1989, at the age of fifty-six, I left Boston to go to work in Easthaven.

The Board of Trustees of the Martin Conwell Memorial Library in Easthaven, Massachusetts had been seeking, according to the ad that had caught my eye, "a new Director who is self-motivated and enthusiastic, with a past of proven leadership for building support for the library in Easthaven, population 13,000. Director must be able to communicate effectively with Board of Trustees, staff, Town Manager, and Town Council. Candidate will be responsible for the efficient operation and direction of all activities within the library, including collection development, programming, facilities management and community outreach. This library has a children’s room and an adult section, and has computers. It is open six days a week, Monday and Thursday evenings, and Saturday mornings."

On December 11th, in the morning, at a local coffee shop, by previous arrangement, I met Cal Horan. Though it was dazzlingly clear and sunny out, pleasantly warm, he wore a big, old-fashioned seaman's pea-coat, dark blue -- almost black -- in which his skinny self was enveloped. Horan's face was gaunt, weather-worn, chafed, red --sunburned. Over coffee and blueberry muffins he told me all about the library, then eventually worked his way toward unsubtly mentioning he'd known my name prior to my having applied for the library job, and had been "instrumental" in my landing the job ("You're welcome").

In December 1961, in Boston, I had met an extraordinary man named Manuel Suarez (1910-1975), author of a book first published in 1956 in Mexico City, in Spanish, having the title (in English), Libraries and Other Holy, Magical Places. Suarez agreed to pay me luxuriously if I would translate his book into English, contingent on my doing so anonymously -- as a ghost writer. The two of us visited several times more over the course of that winter and, in the end, I'd agreed to do it. In his book, Suarez had drawn diverse but "deathly certain" links between Mexico's earliest libraries and the Kabbalah. I took my time, trying to get it all just right. By the summer of 1962, I had a manuscript in hand, which I'd turned over to Manuel Suarez in Boston on the Fourth of July.

Now Cal Horan, on December 11, 1989, was telling me, over coffee in Easthaven, that in December 1961 it was he who had traveled to Boston to visit Manuel Suarez -- to fetch from him a manuscript outlining the nine grades of attainment of a new Hermetic Order called the Order of the Morning Star. Horan insisted he'd been initiated by Suarez into a new Massachusetts branch of Suarez's order. He, Cal Horan (Cal Horan said), had translated Libraries and Other Holy, Magical Places. And if I doubted that, I could ask Manuel Suarez's wife (Suarez had died of a heart attack in Mexico City in 1975).

I knew a lot about the far-fetched esoteric claims Suarez had made in his book, but had only really bought into that part of his teaching that illuminated his deep love of libraries. My translation surely had that slant. Cal Horan had a different slant. At the time my translation of Magical Places came out, one reviewer had written, "Here is a brilliant book meticulously crafted, brimful of insight and sensitivity. Suarez does a splendid job of weaving together historical, cultural, and biographical resources, allowing both his sympathy for and knowledge of libraries in societies to shine through without pouring buckets of false enthusiasm and authority on it, which to my mind too many other recent illuminators of the social fabric have succumbed to." (Hardy Butler, Secretary, Northeastern U.S. History and Culture Association.)

Now here was Cal Horan in 1989, telling me how his translation included what mine had left out: the nine grades of the Order of the Morning Star and all that far-fetched hoop-te-doo and rigamorole having nothing to do with libraries. Horan's version of Manuel Suarez's Libraries and Other Holy Magical Places placed its emphasis on Horan's "New Rites of the Order of the Morning Star" (and not Suarez's), which included: (1) Initiation; (2) Admission of a Mute; (3) Passing a Mute to an Auditor; (4) Advancing an Auditor to Scribe; (5) Passing a Scribe to Herald; (6) Consecrating a Herald as a Minister; (7) Entrusting a Courier; (8) the Ceremony of Relegation; and (9) Ceremonies of Perfection.

I met Eliza Boudreau, a Circulation Desk Assistant who was not one of "Horan's Girls," rather having an almost opposite mission: to redeem mankind through her rose-colored-lense utopian ideal of public library services. Eliza's studies of Hopedale, Brook Farm, Northampton, and Montague had led her to recognize the library as necessary to man's redemption.

Jamie Culotte at the Circlation Desk was openly the most devoted -- the worst -- of "Horan's Girls."

Trustee Terence Stevens, Easthaven's favorite millionaire, liked to condemn Easthaven as the greatest haven of poverty in Massachusetts. As a libray trustee, he had been a big supporter of Easthaven's foward looking library director, John Stanhope, but when Cal Horan had turned against Stanhope, Stevens had pulled out all the stops. He now seemed to be working behind the scenes at all hours, making sure everybody in town was stirred up all the time, though it never seemed to matter to him, really, what anybody ever actually got riled about. Just so long as there was chaos, he seemed always smugly pleased.

VIII

Chapter Five, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

I considered myself unaffected, a man of moderate competence who took the greatest pleasure in just answering reference questions. I courted no publicity. Of course Cal Horan grew very quickly tired of me.

Horan was an actor. And a thief, a liar, a prankster, a sadist. He was mistakenly taken by the trownspeople and his trustee colleagues and most library staffers as a "philanthropist," doing them and everyone good somehow. His droll practical jokes were usually brutal, occasionally obscene. Horan meant to get back at society for a wrong, or wrongs, done him in childhood. He needed to demonstrate his superiority over his stupid and pretensious fellow townsmen (and everyone else) -- mocking and satirizing all mankind, and all institutions. Harsh, hurtful, he victimized anyone -- innocent or deserving. He tormented the dishonest, harsh, cruel, stupid, conceited, obnoxious, boring, and pretentious and the naive, the gullible, and the innocent alike. He was bent on deceit. When artful shrewdness was insufficient, Horan resorted to outright lies.

Some said Cal Horan had been born under a special star. As a child, he'd been free as a bird, but never idle. He kept busy practicing card tricks and doing all kinds of acrobatics. He recited tongue twisters for hours, also tying his legs in knots over his head and walking on his hands. One day he'd been showing off in the town park. Having turned himself into a human pretzel, he'd been jumping up and down on a tiny portable trampoline when two men had run up and thrown a big wooden plank across the apparatus. All the townspeople had just stared, doing nothing. Then they'd broken into laughter. Horan obviously never forgot that -- how they'd just laughed at him, even after he'd been rushed to the hospital with a serious back injury. It was then perhaps that Cal Horan had first vowed he'd show them.

By 1990, Horan was openly proclaiming my library career had completely run to ground. For an Easthaven Eveneing News reporter (August 11, 2003), he would recall, "I am reluctant even to mention the name Lew Carley. When first I made his acquaintance, he was no more a young man by any standard, yet he was the freshly appointed library director of our Public Library here in Easthaven, where I was long since a proven Trustee in good standing and held in high esteem. It is true that Mr. Carley, when sober, was one of the nicest people you could ever want to meet. Unfortunately, his drinking problem brought me cause to reprimand him more than on one occasion. He once so grossly insulted me in a letter that I cannot even begin to say how deeply I was hurt by it. I regretted the lapse in our communications which followed."

Despite later claims made by Horan, I had not applied for membership in the Rosicrucian Society at that time. And, despite Cal Horan's claims regarding my alleged drinking habits, I did not have a drinking problem. Of course Cal Horan did -- it was in fact well-known that he was a closet-drinker, except for when he was well-known as an outright full-blown raging drunk.

The millionaire, Stevens, described Horan as "a shining light of occultism hidden in a bushel of secrecy" with "a tendency to envelop everything in a cloak of mystery." He insisted that "if a ceremony is not a beautiful one -- if there is not an air of mystery thrown over it -- then it will not, to use a common expression, go down."

On September 18, 1991, Horan invited me to become a Freemason. He treated me to dinner at Jacob Wirth's, in Boston, telling me it was the one hundredth anniversary of the day Jacob Wirth, a Harvard dropout also named Jacob Wirth, took over the establishment, Jacob Wirth's, from his father, Jacob Wirth. Horan then told me all about how he'd been developing, from assorted translations of the writings of Manuel Suarez, rites for his Order of the Morning Star, with neophyte ceremonies and rites of magic, and on and on -- "including invocation, talisman consecration, transformations, divination and alchemy -- you know, the Rituals of Light."

In fact, at that time, I didn't know -- didn't have a clue.

I must have got drunker than Cal Horan that evening at Jake Wirth's, because I agreed to go with him, the following evening, to a "temple meeting." For several years prior to moving to Easthaven, Horan and his wife Minnehaha had lived in Boston and, two years after they'd originally arrived in the city, they'd established an "Order of the Morning Star, Qetesh Temple #1."

At that initial meeting, the costumes, rites, ceremonies, magic, and shenanigans of the Order of the Morning Star were "taught" to me -- much adoration, with liberal unveilings, of Cal Horan's beautiful wife Minnehaha, portraying the goddess Qetesh, elaborately dressed in a luminous gold-and-diamond-studded blue, black, orange, and purple Egyptian gown. The men wore silly maroon hats, red vests, blowsy black satin slacks, and bejewelled codpieces and, basically, leapt about clumsily. Horan alone had wrapped around his shoulders a purple wool or cotton shawl or scarf. The men -- including the millionaire library trustee Terence Stevens -- all but Horan -- began to chant in high and whiney voices, rising and falling as they circled Minnehaha. Horan, all smiles, pouring out the charm, now simply walked around the room, quite nonchalantly, shaking all the men's hands -- as if the ceremony had ended before it ever actually got started, thank you for coming out. Each man ceased to sing the moment Horan's hand touched them. Now Minnehaha received a special acknowledgment from him. Horan touched Minnehaha's forehead and, at once, Minnehaha began to convulse, tearing at her clothing. She fell among the men, where she was supported by many hands. She lurched forward from the room, spinning. Then, within just a minute or so, she returned to the room completely calm -- very poised and self-assured and topless. Going around the room, she shook the hands of all the men, somewhat as Horan had done. Now Horan walked up to her with a three-pronged iron poker, a so-called "magic weapon." Several men began laughing. Exactly nine men encircled her menacingly; Minnehaha aggressively pushed the nine away. Now all of the men again started singing that high, thin, nasal chant. This was unlike any ceremony I had ever seen or read about or even heard of. It was not Occultist, Hermetic, Masonic, or anything else. Like Cal Horan, it was stupid. Just plain nuts. I walked out.

The next day I let Cal Horan know that kind of thing was nothing for me. That was fine with him, he said. Over coffee, in Easthaven, he now suggested I should have another go at it -- should attend their, his and Minnehaha's, other temple, the Morning Star Thme Temple #2, right there in Easthaven. Again Cal told me all this stuff I already knew -- how Thme was an Egyptian goddess who, stationed between the Pillars of Hermes and Solomon, reconciled the forces of light and the forces of darkness. In the ceremony of Thme, Cal said, Minnehaha simply turned her face turned toward the Cubical Altar of the Universe, communicating in silence with what were called the four figues in the east. Cal said he assumed I could stand that, no? He said I could be in the ceremony, communicating with the four figues too, if I wanted. I apologized, declining, thanking Cal politely but firmly.

On November 16th, I got, in the mail, a Qetesh and Thme ceremonies unifom -- a maroon hat, red vest, blowsy black satin slacks, and leather-belted athletic cup or codpiece. Right away I sent these back to the sender, Cal Horan, with a letter in which I made it quite clear that I wished to resign -- if it was thought I had joined in the first place -- from the Order of the Morning Star, Qetesh Temple #1. The Secretary to the Temple (Minnehaha Horan) wrote back to say my tendered resignation was accepted, contingent on my making payment, in full, of my annual membership fees.

I knew now for sure I'd entered la-la land.

In denial, I began taking down from the library's shelves, one after the other, every sort of book on psychology I could lay hands on: Out of the Blues; The Anxiety Cure; Fighting Fear; Noonday Demons; Awakening From Depression; Unholy Ghosts; No More Sleeples Nights; Overcoming Insomnia; The Courage to Heal; Conquering Your Brutal Inner Idiot; Jeanne La Claire's You Can Get Out of Any Trouble; Coping with Rape; Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Avoiding Suicide; Arturo's Surefire Guide to Self-Repair; How to be Whole Again; and on and on.

But finally -- it was unavoidable -- I had to go back and look into the horrid, mangled face of all that bizarre stuff that in my youth I'd shunned. I'd been trying to forget my step-parents' crazy occult rituals and ceremonies -- them and their friends in my face all through my childhood, mingling their blood and body fluids and not a little alcohol. They'd just totally turned me off from "magic" of all kinds -- had totally freaked me out. But now I had to go among them once more -- among people like my step-father and step-mother; among people like Cal and Minnehaha Horan.

IX

Chapter Six, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

Sebastian Brant, German author of The Ship of Fools, was born in 1457. His contemporary, Thomas Murner was born in 1475, near Strasbourg. In 1490, at sixteen, in delicate health, Murner had entered the Franciscan Order and had taken orders as a Franciscan friar in 1491. After his ordination, he began his restless and unsettled life, visiting the most celebrated universities either as a student or as a teacher. He studied theology at Paris, philosophy and mathematics at Cracow, and law at Freiburg-in-Breisgau, where he was awarded the degree of bachelor of Theology in 1500. In 1506, when again at Freiburg, he was made Doctor of Theology. The emperor Maximilian I crowned him in 1505 poeta laureatus; in 1506, he was made Doctor Ikeologiae. Murner wrote the humorous Chartiludium logicae (1507) and the Ludus studentum Friburgensium (1511), in which Murner explained the rules of prosody and quantity after the fashion of a game of chess and backgammon -- a method he had already employed four years before at Cracow in his "Chartiludium logicæ", but his application of it to jurisprudence provoked the derision of lawyers. While critical of the corruption in the Catholic Church, he was passionately opposed to the Lutheran Reformation. His sympathy with Humanism did not save him from the resentment of the Alsacian Humanists, when he attacked Wimpfeling's Germania, which aimed at proving that Alsace had never belonged to France. Murner's defense of his position was suppressed by the Strasburg authorities. His opponents distorted his name into "Murnar" (growling fool). Murner showed a sharp eye for his opponents' weaknesses. There was little human kindness in his satires, directed against the corruption of the times, the Reformation, and especially against Martin Luther.

Regarding the Wittenberg monk at first as a well-intentioned ally in the battle against the evils afflicting the Church, Murner addressed to him in 1520 an appeal entitled Christliche und brüderliche Ermahnung an den hochgelehrten Doctor Martin Luther, which was followed by other pamphlets refuting and warning him and beseeching him to abandon his ruinous undertaking. In his Neues Lied vom Untergang des christlichen Glaubens (1521), Murner gives feeling expression to his sorrow over the destructive tendencies of the religious innovation. But, when the sole effect of his attempts at conciliation was to bring upon him a shower of lies and calumnies, Murner dealt Luther a crushing blow in his work, Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren wie ihn Doctor Murner beschworen hat. Murner rose to heights of satire elsewhere unattained during his whole epoch. All the reformatory endeavours are embodied in the Great Fool, and the newly-founded church is treated allegorically as Luther's daughter Adelheid, who "has a shocking scald-head."

Murner made enemies wherever he went. In 1513, he was made custodian of the Franciscan monastery in Strasbourg. In Cracow, he lectured on literary æsthetics; in Freiburg, on Vergil. His translation of Virgil's Aeneid (1515) was dedicated to the emperor Maximilian I, in token of gratitude for his having been appointed poet-laureate in 1505. In 1518, he began the study of jurisprudence at the University of Basel, and in 1519 he graduated, Doctor of Laws. His book Die Gäuchmatt ("Fools' Meadow," 1519) illuminated the follies of enamored fools. Die Mühle von Schwindelsheim und Gretmüllerin Jahrzeit, severely criticized a special kind of fool, the "fool of love." There is no station, either clerical or lay, that is spared from his castigation. He made a translation of Justinian's Institutiones in 1519. From 1519 he took part in the controversies which began with the appearance of Luther as a reformer. In 1523 he went to England and was cordially received by Henry VIII ("King Hal the Bluff"), whose anti-Luther book on the sacraments Murner had translated into German the previous year. On his return to Strasburg, he found himself compelled to fly before the rebellious peasants and seek refuge at Lucerne. Here he became the most determined adversary of Zwingli. Together with Dr. Eck, he took part in the religious discussion at Baden in 1526. He went into exile at Lucerne in Switzerland in 1526. When Lucerne was taken in the first War of Kappel (1529), Murner was to have been given up. He managed, however, to escape, and, after many wanderings, was appointed pastor in his birth-place, where he spent the rest of his days.

In 1493, Fraçois Rabelais was born in France. Like Thomas Murner, Rabelais was a Franciscan. later a monk at Fontenay-le-Comte, where he studied Greek and Latin as well as science, philology, and law. In his book "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (1532), Rabelais told of the founding of his fictional "Abbey of Thelema" (Greek word 'Te??µa' meaning will, or intention), an institution for the cultivation of human virtues, which Rabelais identified as being squarely opposite prevailing Christian proprieties. The sole rule of the Abbey of Thelema was "Do what thou wilt." Though "Thelema" was sometimes referred to as a religion, it accommodated a full range of beliefs, from atheism to polytheism. The main factor was, each person had the right to fulfill themselves through whatever beliefs and actions were best suited to them, so long as they did not interfere with the will of others -- and only they themselves were qualified to determine what these were: Love was the law -- love under will.

There were no clocks at the Abbey of Theleme, but there was a swimming pool, and maid service. One of the verses of the inscription on the gate to the Abbey of Theleme says: "Grace, honour, praise, delight, / Here sojourn day and night. / Sound bodies lined / With a good mind, / Do here pursue with might / Grace, honour, praise, delight." Below the humor was a very real concept of utopia and the ideal society. Rabelais gave this description of how the Thelemites of the Abbey lived, and the rules they lived by: "All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed -- 'fay çe que vouldras' [French for 'do what you will'] -- because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us."

In the eighteenth century, an English gentleman's society called the Hell-Fire Club ("the Friars of Medmenham") -- founded in England by Sir Francis Dashwood on the grounds of his country residence not far from London (and at the former Cistercian abbey at Medmenham on the banks of the Thames near Marlow) -- put the motto "Do What Thou Wilt" over the entrance to the abbey. John Wilkes, a fiery radical parliamentarian, was one of the society's most active members, who indulged not in virtuous action but rather in obscene parodies of the rites and ceremonies of the Christian religion. (In the twentieth century, the once scandalous Abbey would become something of a tourist attraction.)

I loved to contemplate the Hell-Fire Club, ever spinning out fresh stories from its premises. In one such tale, I had Cal Horan in Sir Francis Dashwood's shoes. I put Horan in a country residence not far from Boston, and had him indulging in obscene parodies of the rites and ceremonies of the Christian religion. In the next chapter, I had him being led to the gallows. The clamoring multitude, instead of mocking him and spitting on him, called on Horan to save himself. If he was as he claimed a magician in the Order of Hell Fire, the horde was shouting, then surely he would be able, with the aid of demons, to rescue himself.

X

Chapter Seven, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

Horan was a complex, difficult figure whose nature was difficult to pin down and describe. It was said Horan was a recovering alcoholic, but I could see Horan definitely was not recovering. I could not stand the threat to rational sense I saw the man stood for. It was inevitable we clashed.

The thing with Horan was, he knew well the game -- he was a master at the game -- "Villain and Victim," and if the victim did not know the game, so much the worse for the victim. Montaigne, who could see "our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things," warned against doing what Ctesiphon did -- "Ctesiphon undertook a kicking match with his mule." As library trustee Terry Stevens advised -- that pathetic old man, wise in this instance -- "Just don't do it."

But I wanted justice, fainess, rightness. I wanted order, decency, honesty, service to the community. I was more than disturbed by Horan's cult -- I was repulsed by "his" women doing whatever he told them to. But they were just too far gone already. The perks and benefits and powers he'd bestowed upon these female cohorts were terrible and totally intoxicating. They were completely under his spell, these fervent believers in and followers of Horan.

I felt good men shouldn't let bad men use women like that. I figured I'd fix him.

Horan had revenge on his mind. Revenge for my not having joined his Order of the Morning Star. Revenge for something that had happened between his father and someone else in the town in the past. And it was said his mother had died after being hit by lightning, and Horan had said someone was going to pay someday for that. Everyone was going to have to pay for whatever it was that had gone wrong with Horan.

He wanted the authority of the single sovereign, adamantly refusing me any power whatsoever as director of the library. I resolved I would resist this tormentor -- would revolt against the torturer, would kick up against the kicker. Now there was utterest futility. "In the face of such stubborn and stupid severity," Dostoyevsky saw, "you can only gnash your teeth and pull your hair."

Horan was the prototypical devotee of Schadenfreude. His Mephistophelean ecstasy in causing mischief, harm, and ruin was deeply, seethingly entrenched. His fertile brain kept busy conceiving always some awful new plan -- ever something even more racy, hurtful, debilitating, or crushing than before. "The perverse, frivolous, revenge-seeking man loves only the process of the game," Dostoyevsky warned, "not the end of it. This insulted, crushed, capricious, stupid man, in the hell of his unsatisfied desires, rushes headlong toward revenge like an irritated bull with its horns down. Nothing but a wall will stop him."

Stevens made my blood boil even more, him insisting I accept Horan's power ("It is madness to oppose him"). Without this job my financial prospects were dismal, and I knew it. And Stevens knew it. Horan had me by the balls.

Horan was busy preparing an early prototype of his Order of the Horan Star, and he knew that I could help him -- and he knew exactly how I could help him, right down to even the most miniscule, ethereal, falsified hairy details.

Horan's new Order was going to be "practical," mingling Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Masonry. Horan declared it would be "a society of work, with intimate studies of The Stone." Horan had me outline assorted rituals for the new order in Cipher form, going along the lines of the 15th century code originated by the Abbott Trithemius in his Polygraphiae.

There was a copy of Trithemius' Polygraphiae at the library. In the basement.

In the library cellar were remnants of a museum that once had been part of the collections, among which were a copy of Circe's magic bowl, a copy of the the cup out of which Socrates drank his hemlock, a copy of Nero's fiddle, of Arria's sword, of Don Quixote's lance, of Saladin's cimeter, of Miltiades' helmet , of the bow of Ulysses, of several of Robin Hood's arrows, and of the pen with which Faust signed away his salvation. Here was also a stuffed wolf (preserved by one N. P. Willis) having fierce glass eyes in its crafty-looking head. Near the stuffed wolf was a stuffed lamb with still a most delicate, snow-white fleece. On one shelf, by an owl, there was a vulture, a pigeon, an albatross, a parrot, and several stuffed cats. In locked cabinets were kept rolls of papyrus and boviously ancient tomes. The most valuable books in this collection were probably a copy of the Book of Hermes and of Cornelius Agrippa's book of magic (with flowers, ancient and modern, pressed between its leaves) and the copy of Trithemius' Polygraphiae.

Knowing a thing or two about encryption disks and decoder devices, I formulated quite a complex steganographic cipher, outlining a series of esoteric intitiation ceremonies through codes derived from Trithemius's Polycraphiae, having letters represented as words taken from a substitution table imposing changing alphabets for each letter. Horan then further "translated" these, making use of the blank versos of other ancient hermetic Rite summonses. It was this fictional cipher manuscript that indeed led to the creation of Cal Horan's Hermetic Order of Horan's Star, which he cast upon the winds at the end of that that year.

Ciphers are broken into two main categories; substitution ciphers and transposition ciphers. Substitution ciphers replace letters in the plaintext with other letters or symbols, keeping the order in which the symbols fall the same. Transposition ciphers keep all of the original letters intact, but mix up their order. The resulting text of either enciphering method is called the ciphertext.

Julius Caesar had invented a cipher, the Caesar Substitution Cipher, which replaced every letter in the alphabet with one three places down in position. To regain the original message, the recipient would just reverse the process. The Caesar cipher, and all like it, are called "monalphabetic" or "simple" substitution ciphers, because throughout the message each character is always replaced by the identical cipher character.

In the 5th century B.C., the Spartans devised a transposition cipher called a scytale to encrypt and send messages. The scytale, a transposition machine, was comprised of a cylinder and a parchment, similar to a ribbon, which was wrapped helically around the cylinder from one end to the other. The message to be encrypted was written across the coiled ribbon. The letters of the original message would be rearranged when the ribbon was uncoiled. Only someone with an identical diameter cylinder could re-wrap and read the message. The message could be decrypted only when the ribbon was rewrapped on a cylinder of the same diameter as the encrypting cylinder. In this case the diameter of the encrypting cylinder would be the key to encrypting and ultimately decrypting the secret message. The diameter of the cylinder determined how the ribbon coils on the cylinder and so how the letters in the plaintext message would be rearranged. The scytale depended on a piece of hardware, the cylinder, which if captured by the enemy, compromised the whole system. Also, the receiver could lose or break the cylinder and therefore lose the ability to decipher any message. It would be better if the method were completely "intellectual" and could be remembered and used without resorting to a physical device. Both the sender and receiver of a transposed ciphertext had to agree on and remember the algorithm or method for enciphering and deciphering. Since geometrical figures were easy to remember, they served as the basis for a whole class of transposition ciphers.

Born Johann Heidenberg in Trittenheim on the Mosel in what is now the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz on February 1, 1462, the Benedictine Abbot called "Trithemius" had an early and abiding love for learning. The chancellor of the University of Heidelberg was so impressed with young Johann that he'd waived the entering student's tuition fees. At the university, Johann and two others formed the Rhenish Literary Society, choosing Latin and Greek names for themselves. Johann chose Trithemius. On graduating from Heidelberg University, Trithemius entered the novitiate Benedictine Abbey of Saint Martin at Spanheim, Germany. Upon his taking his final vows, he was elected abbot. He published a book of sermons that was widely successful. His 1494 Liber de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, listing some 7,000 theological writings by 963 authors, earned him the title, "the Father of Bibliography."

Prior to the arrival of Trithemiushis, the non-bookish monks at the Abbey of Saint Martin had sold off almost completely the monastery's collection of books. Within twenty years, Trithemius would restore and increase the collection. By 1505, the collection would grow from an initial forty books to more than two thousand, becoming one of the best-stocked monastery libraries in Europe. Trithemius collected texts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and several other European languages, with both handwritten and printed manuscripts and books.

Trithemiushis wrote Steganographia, a book praising not only mortal scribes but also planetary angels, providing readers with instructions on performing "thought transference" with them, and De Septum Secundeis -- The Seven Secondary Causes of the Heavenly Intelligencies Governing the Orbes under God. The books led to Trithemius' being cast as an occultist in league with dark forces and black arts. Accused of associating with magical and even demonic powers, Trithemius, something of a publicity hound, agreed to an extent -- denying only the part about the demons.

The monks at Saint Martin's mutinied, locking Trithemius out of the monastery. Trithemius at once requested a transfer to the monastery of Saint Jacob in Wurzburg, where he was appointed Prior. In 1508, he there began the writing of a series of six books under the single heading, Polygraphia. The work was finished very quickly, but wasn't published right away. Trithemius died at Saint Jacob's, Wurzburg, in 1516. In 1518, the descendants of the Heidelberg University Chancellor who'd first championed Johannes paid for the publication of his Polygraphia. Though many copies of the book were destroyed, Polygraphia was eventually acknowledged as the first published book about cryptology.

In 1515, at the age of twenty-eight, Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, a student of Thrithemius, was at the University of Pavia, Italy, lecturing in Medicine, Philosophy, and Metaphysical Philosophy (the occult). Born in Cologne, September 14, 1486, he'd already served, between1501 and 1507, as a Captain in the Army of Maximilian the First, Holy Roman Emperor. He was in Pavia until 1518, when he was appointed to the post of Public Advocate in Metz, Germany. There, in his defense of an accused witch (Agrippa maintaining the woman was innocent as there was no such thing as a "witch"), he brought down upon his head the wrath of the Dominicans and the Inquisitors. He discreetly departed for Cologne, where his first wife died (he would marry three times and have seven children). In 1524, Agrippa went to Lyons to take a position as physician to Louise of Savoy, Dowager Queen of France, departing in 1527. In 1531, he was thrown into prison for criticizing Louise of Savoy for not having ever actually paid him. In 1534, he got into an argument with the Inquisitor of Cologne, and was only saved from execution by Cologne 's Elector Prince-Archbishop, who voided the sentence. In his book De Occulta Philosophia, Agrippa illumianted his Doctrine of the Three Worlds -- the elements, the stars, and the spirits, corresponding to the physical world, heavenly world, and the world of the mind. Agrippa had also postulated a fifth element -- quintessence -- "presiding over" the four elements -- Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Declared a confidant of the Devil, the living prototype of Doctor Faustus, Agrippa was banished from the Roman Catholic Church. He died on February 18, 1535 in Grenoble, France.

In 1914, in his booklet "Parsifal," Theodor Reuss, later the German co-founder with Austrian Carl Kellner of the Ordo Templi Orientis cult, provided (he claimed) "a proof" for the existence of "the Adamites" (a sect of the Manichaeins) that had existed (he said), in the middle of the 19th century (in Austria), and had enjoyed a power equal to that of the Roman Catholic Church. "The Adamites got their name because they celebrated their church ceremonies and feasts completely naked," Reuss said. "Their Maria festival, especially the one held in May (the "May Devotion"), corresponded to the Bacchanlia of the festival of Ceres Libera, the Eleusinian orgies. The Adamites were believers and followers of the primal-mystery of generation, the inexhaustible source of life's joy and enthusiasm. The cultus encouraged religious ecstasy, the holy Maria enveloping hearts and senses and the holy Phallus impregnating the fruitful womb. During the ceremonies, in the sacred places (temple and groves), the men and youths had the right (and duty) to complete the sex-act with any of the women or young maidens present in the temple or groves." The issue of these festivals, the children, were treated equally in the society, the father being responsible for their support.

In Massachusetts in the fall of 1844, tens of thousands of Millerites, the followers of William Miller, had donned white robes and climbed up mountains and trees, desiring to speed their ascension into heaven. Since 1818, Miller had been proclaiming the date of Jesus's second coming: October 22, 1844. In 1818, using a strictly literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis and other prophetic events in the Bible -- aligning events with the prophetic numbering systems in the Books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelations -- the devout Baptist had calculated the exact period of time between the birth of Jesus, the fall of Jerusalem, and the return of the Messiah. Most "Millerites," numbering 50,000 to 100,000 in 1844, lived in central and eastern Massachusetts. As the year of the apocalypse neared, believers began giving away their belongings, abandoning their crops, and selling their land. On October 22nd, believers donned their robes. In Concord, a man confronted Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was out walking with Theodore Parker. Didn't they realize the world was going to end that day? he asked. Parker said, "It does not concern me, for I live in Boston." Emerson said, "The end of the world does not affect me. I can get along without it."

In 1848, in Massachusetts, the state General Court had enacted legislation granting the City of Boston the right to establish a public library, the first such legislation in the world. In 1851, the Massachusetts legislature had extended the authority to establish and maintain libraries with public funds to all Massachusetts cities and towns.

At Yale University in 1856, Daniel Coit Gilman, just back from Europe, incorporated a secret society, Skull & Bones, as a legal entity under the name of The Russell Trust Association. William H. Russell, the cofounder, was President; Gilman was Treasurer. Gilman (class of '52) would be the first President of the University of California, the first President of the Johns Hopkins University, and the first President of the Carnegie Institution. (Gilman would train John Dewey, who would dominate American education in the 20th century. Gilman would also train Richard Ely, who in turn would train Woodrow Wilson, who gave the United States the Federal Reserve System, the income tax, and WWI). Gilman's Skull & Bones co-founders were Timothy Dwight and Andrew Dickson White. All three had been educated at the University of Berlin, where they'd been indoctrinated with Hegelian Deteriminism, which stated that everyone had to be programmed and controlled to achieve predetermined goals. Timothy Dwight (class of '49) would be Professor in the Yale Divinity School and then 12th President of Yale University. White (class of '53), would be U.S. Minister to Germany (1879–1881), the first U.S. ambassador to Russia (1892-1894), first U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1897-1902), and first President of the American Historical Association. He would advise Herbert Hoover to set up the Hoover Institution. In 1865, White and Western Union tycoon Ezra Cornell would found Cornell University on Cornell's estate in Ithaca, New York, with White as its first president.

In 1861, in Paris, the author of Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (1856), Eliphas Lévi (i.e. the Abbé Alphonse-Louis Constant, born 1810), was celebrated as an authority on Magic (an expert on the mysteries of the Tarot). Levi had been the Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis of Europe (with the exception of England) for over sixteen years, and would continue two more years, until his death in 1875.

In January, 1865, The Eminent and Perfect Illustrious Brother F. G. Irwin formed the first Council of the Knight of Constantine at the St. Aubyn Lodge, Devonport. Several eminent Masons were entrusted with the secrets of the Order, and were elevated to the degree of Knights of Constantinople. That same year, 1865, in Anglia, a group of Freemasons formed a new Rosicrucian group, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (the S.R.I.A.), made up of master Masons only -- including the Rev. A.F.A. Woodford, Robert Wentworth Little , W. Wynn Wescott, and S.L. MacGregor Mathers.

Mathers had been born January 8, 1854, in Hackney in London. His father, William M. Mathers, had been a commercial clerk; his mother was known only as “Miss Collins.” His father had died during his early childhood after which his mother had moved from London to Bournemouth where they'd lived until her death in 1885. Mathers developed an interest in boxing, fencing and military strategy. On October 4, 1877, he was initiated into the “Lodge of Hengest - No. 195” in Bournemouth. His sponsor was E.L.V. Rebbeck a well-known real estate agent in the area. Mathers quickly progressed through the grades of Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft, and was raised to Master Mason on January 30, 1878. A fellow member of the lodge was a student of Hebrew philosophy and Qabalah called Frederick Holland and it was he that introduced Mathers into occult studies.

Frederick Holland and Mathers had met as neighbors while living in Bournemouth. Holland, extremely well versed in Ceremonial work and the Tarot, had encouraged Mathers in his studies of Alchemy and the Kabbalah. A leader of the occult revival in the late 1880s, Mathers became expert in ceremonial magic, occult philosophy, esoteric languages, and Celtic symbolism. In departing Freemasonry, Mathers had taken up the Rosicrucian motto S Rioghail Mo Dhream (Gaelic for “Royal is my Race”). He was soon a member of the society's High Council, and on his way to helping found the Order of the Golden Dawn.

It was said the founder of the Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt, operating incognito in London in the late 1700s, had been commanded by the Rothschild family (who'd often been accused of being Satanists) to unite the many and various occult groups, at which time Weishaupt reputedly had created the original Order of the Golden Dawn -- reputedly one of the Rothschild family's "covens."

XI

Chapter Eight, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

The founder of the Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt, had been born in 1748. He'd been raised in Ingoldstadt, Bavaria by Jesuits after his father, a Jewish rabbi, died in 1753, when Adam was five. Converted to Catholicism by his Godfather, Baron Johann Adam Ickstatt, he eventually became first a priest, then an atheist. In Ickstatt's private library, the young Weishaupt studied philosophy, history, economics, law, and politics. He studied in France, where he made friends with members of the French Royal Court, where he was introduced to Satanism. He graduated from the Bavarian University in Ingolstadt in 1768, where he then taught Civil and Canon Law. Though Weishaupt's Godfather denounced him in 1773 for getting married, Weishaupt was made Dean of the Faculty of Law in 1775. When the Jesuits started plotting against him, Weishaupt began planning a secret coven, the "Perfectibilists," to be modeled on the structure of the Jesuit hierarchy. Weishaupt studied the Manicheans, the Pythagoreans, the Eleusinian mysteries, the Essenes, and the Kabala. Immersing himself in esoteric Masonic teachings, he finally concluded Masonry was far too open, lacking the depth of intrigue and mystery he desired. On May 1, 1776, Weishaupt founded the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, eventually known as the Order of the Illuminati, derived from Luciferian teachings, meaning The Enlightened Ones -- The Keepers of the Light.

The Illuminati regarded themselves as inheritors of an ancient occult tradition. Though the new organization was modeled on the structure of the Jesuit hierarchy, the rites and ceremonies were based on those of the Masons. However, though he'd joined the Eclectic Masonic lodge "Theodore of Good Counsel" in Munich in 1778, Weishaupt decided against bringing his organization into the fold of the Masons, instead penetrating the Munich order, secretly to reorganize it under the influence of the Illuminati.

"Let us beware of telling them our secrets," Weishaupt warned. Privately, he revealed his aims: "to deliver the human race from all religion," and "complete mastery of the world." On the one hand, people "must be made to nibble at the bait," but, on the other, "We must speak sometimes one way, sometimes another, so that our real purpose will remain impenetrable." On the surface, Weishaupt's organization was to appear Christian. "The great strength of our Order," Weishaupt wrote, "lies in its concealment."

The headquarters in Munich was known as the Grand Lodge of the Illuminati -- or Lodge of the Grand Orient -- code-named "Athens." The Ingolstadt lodge was called Ephesus; the Heidelberg lodge was called Utica; the Bavarian lodge was called Achaia; and the Frankfurt lodge was called Thebes. Weishaupt called himself Spartacus; his right-hand man, Xavier von Zwack, was called Cato; a bookseller named Nicolai was called Lucian; other members were dubbed Pythagoras, Marius, Diomedes, Mohomed, Sylla, and so on.

The Illuminati spread into the Upper and Lower Rhenish provinces, Suabia, Franconia, Westphalia, and Upper and Lower Saxony, also reaching into Austria and Switzerland, claiming a membership of over 300 members from all walks of life: students, merchants, civil officers, professors, bankers, doctors, lawyers, judges, and social ministers. Both men and women were enlisted.

In 1780, the Illuminati recruited Johann Wolfgang von Goethe into their ranks. He was initiated in Lodge Amalia, at Weimar (When Goethe died in 1832, his last words were, "More Light!"). That same year the Illuminati also recruited a less known luminary, lawyer-author Baron Franz Friedrich von Knigge. They called him Philo. Knigge had been been sending out clear signals, letting it be known he wished to see Masonry reformed. The Marquis of Constanza, one of the most notorious of the Illuminati, had informed him that the Illuminati had already done it. As the new head of the Westphalia Circle, Knigge supported members of the Areopagite insisting Weishaupt's supreme authority should be delegated to others. On his pushing for a still higher level merger between the Illuminati and the Masons, a secret 1781 meeting attended by Masons, Martinistes, and representatives from other secret organizations from Europe, America and Asia was held. The alliance was sealed. The first three degrees of Masonry were granted the Illuminati. Though everyone attending the meeting was under oath never to reveal any of it, Baron von Knigge was soon complaining bitterly of Weishaupt's Jesuitry, ruses, despotism, and cunning: "I abhor treachery and profligacy, and I leave him to blow himself and his Order into the air."

In 1781, for financial reasons, the Illuminati moved their headquarters to Frankfurt, a stronghold of Jewish finance, membership was opened to Jews. They saw there was much money to be had from leading Jewish families like the Rothschilds, Wertheimers, Oppenheimers, Schusters, Speyers, and the Sterns.

By 1783, there were over 600 Illuminati. In 1784, membership soared to nearly 3,000. By 1786 there were lodges all across the various German provinces, Austria, Hungary, England, Scotland, Poland, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Spain, Sweden, Russia, Ireland, Africa, and America.

In the book "World Revolution," author Nesta Webster said of the 18th century Illuminati, "The art of Illuminism lay in enlisting dupes as well as adepts, and by encouraging the dreams of honest visionaries or the schemes of fanatics, by flattering the vanity of ambitious egotists, by working on unbalanced brains, or by playing on such passions as greed and power, to make men of totally divergent aims serve the secret purpose of the sect."

Baron von Knigge, on discovering Weishaupt was in no wise a Christian, but rather an unrepentant Satanist, quit The Illuminati in the spring of 1784, signing an agreement promising he'd return to Order all documents in his possession and keep quiet on what he knew about their plans and activities. Knigge, "a worshipper of Priapus," felt all esoteric traditions were based on identical facts. The phenomena observed in Nature were the same everywhere. All the festivals of spring around the world alike suggested the story of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The theory that Christ was a Yogi was correct. The cross itself was the lingam, a phallus, the vesica piscis. Christ himself was the fish, the yoni. The vesica piscis, the foundation of Christian architecture, was the female member lying open, awaiting impregnation by the male. The bride of Christ was represented by the early Christians as a lasciviously grinning naked female offering with her hands, obviously to the first comer, a vulva of the shape and size of a horse collar.

When Duke Karl Theodore Dalberg, the Elector Palatinate of Bavaria, was informed of the Illuminati goal -- "to rule the world" -- the Duke at once ordered all their Lodges closed.

Weishaupt fled to Gotha, where he took refuge with the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, an Illuminati member. There, Weishaupt jotted down plans for a French Revolution, slated to begin in 1789. The book, a history of the Illuminati, also contained ideas for their expansion and dominion.

A horseback courier departing Frankfurt with a copy, was struck and killed by lightning. The document was turned over to the government. Leaders of the Order were arrested and formally interrogated, then forced to renounce the Illuminati. The government published "Original Writings of the Order and Sect of the Illuminati" and circulated it to every government in Europe, warning of impending danger.

In 1787, Duke Dalberg issued his final proclamation against the Illuminati. Anyone found guilty of recruiting members would be executed; those who were recruited would be deported. Dalberg died quietly in 1799, believing the Order defunct. But Weishaupt was already cooking up other plans. "We shall direct all mankind," he insisted. "I have considered everything, and prepared it, so that if the Order should this day go to ruin, I will in a year re-establish it, more brilliant than before."

Weishaupt moved the Order's headquarters to London. He told his followers to infiltrate the lodges of Blue Masonry, there to form secret Illuminati circles of The Fraternity of the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn.

It was said Robert Wentworth Little (1840-78) who'd appointed himself Supreme Magus of the S.R.I.A., had "found" the old Rosicrucian Papers with which he established the organization. Dr. William Wynn Westcott implied Robert Wentworth Little had fabricated them.

The earliest Rosicrucian manuscripts had begun circulating in Germany around 1610. They were first published in 1614. In a lecture on the Order of the Golden Dawn, V.H. Frater Sapere Aude (Dr. W. Wynn Westcott) wrote, "The Order of the G.D. in the Outer is a Hermetic Society whose members are taught the principles of Occult Science and the Magic of Hermes. During the early part of the second half of the 19th Century, several adepti and chiefs of this order in France and England died, and their deaths caused a temporarily dormant condition of Temple work... The Hermetic Science of the Higher Alchemy [reached back] to the Fratres Rosae Crucis of Germany, which association was founded by Christian Rosenkreuz about 1398. He and the theologian, Valentine Andrea, have left us, in the works published about 1614, an account of the exoteric arrangements of the Rosicrucian Society. It seems likely it was Andrea who published in 1614 the Fama Fraternitatis, or Theory of the Society, which must have been derived from the old records of the pupils of Christian Rosenkrawz. But even this arrival of mysticism was a new development of the older wisdom of the Qabalistic Rabbis and of that very ancient secret knowledge of the magic of the Egyptians into which Moses had been initiated. Through the Qabalah, indeed, Europe became possessed of the ancient Wisdom more than from any one other source, for the Hebrews were taught at one time by the Egyptians and later by the Chaldees of Babylon. It is a curious fact that the classic nations, the Greeks and Romans, have handed down to us but slight glimpses of the Ancient Magic, and this is more notable because Greece succeeded to the mastership of Egypt, and Rome to the Empire of both the Greeks and Jews. Greece did indeed succeed to a share in the mysteries of the Egyptians for the Eleusinian Mysteries were copies of the ancient ceremonies of Isis, Osiris and Serapis; but they lacked true magic. And further, the classic writings contain but faint glimpses of even the Eleusinian Mysteries, and these disclose the fact that the pupils were partly ignorant of the true mysteries, a notable example of which is seen in the use of the words Konx Om Pax, of which they knew not the meaning, the words being the Greek imitation or translation of really ancient Egyptian words, whose meanings has been kept secret for centuries...."

In 1865, in Massachusetts, abolitionist and "free love" advocate Ezra Heywood, of Princeton, married feminist Angela Tilton of Worcester. Heywood's heroes were Jesus and John Brown. With his wife as partner, Heywood started up a publishing company that produced a monthly journal and pamphlets promoting radical reforms, especially reforms to marriage laws. Although they had themselves had got married, Angela and Ezra were against the subjugation of women as "sexual slaves," advocating for "free love" and the abolition of marriage as a legal contract. Love, they insisted, had to be voluntary, and every sexual act engaged in by both parties freely and willingly. (In 1878, Ezra was arrested for mailing illegal matter -- "obscene literature" re. marriage and birth control -- and sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor. On emerging from prison, he'd promptly fallen dead.)

William Gladstone, leader of the Liberal Party, favored increasing the number of people who could vote. The Conservative Party opposed any attempt to introduce parliamentary reform. In 1867, Benjamin Disraeli proposed a new Reform Act. The Act gave the vote to every male adult householder living in a borough constituency. Male lodgers paying £10 for unfurnished rooms were also granted the vote. This gave the vote to about 1,500,000 men. For poet Coventry Patmore, who despised the common people, 1867 was "The year of the great crime / when the false English nobles and their Jew / by God demented, slew / The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong." His one consolation was that, since the working classes were drunk most of the time, they would not succeed in exploiting the new political power they enjoyed.

In 1867, Charles Wheatstone introduced a substitution cipher used for polyalphabetic messages which he'd dubbed the Cryptograph. An automated cipher disk, it had two hands -- like those on a clock, one long and one short -- connected by gears. When the larger hand pointed to a letter, the incremented smaller hand would point to its cipher equivalent, which changed at each following instance, due to the arrangement of the gears.

In 1868 came the first prosecution under England's Obscene Publications Act (the test for "obscenity" was any publication's "tendency to deprave or corrupt." (Also in 1868: the last public hanging, at Newgate; the Telegraph Act nationalized telecommunications in Great Britain.)

In 1868, in Boston, immigrant Jacob Wirth (from a family of wine growers in Kreuznach, Prussia) opened his restaurant, Jacob Wirth's.

Frederick Hockley (1808-85), an accountant by profession, was well known in circles which cultivated 'Rejected Knowledge'. He experimented with crystals and so-called 'Magic Mirrors', used to induce trance states. He was a diligent copyist of old magical manuscripts. He became a Freemason rather late in life in 1864 (at 56), but his career in the Craft was not without distinction.

The Royal Oriental Order of Sikha (Apex)" and the "Sat B’hai," purportedly imported from India, were invented and controlled by Jonathan Yarker, known for spawning bogus -- or at least very irregular -- Masonic Orders. The new order would admit women.

Unfortunately, a 34th degree of the Sat B'hai' rite was known already in existence, called the "Apex," thus corresponding with the 90the degree of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Misraim. In The Freemason of February 18, 1871, "a very serious mistake," was reported to have appeared in the previous issue of the Freemason, "in which it is affirmed that 'there are only three holders of the Apex in the world, who exist by a succession of triplicate warrants from Frederick the Great', and that the symbols of the degree are a 'Cord and Dagger'. Now, brethren should not be precipitate in their revelations on the subject of this climax of our Grand Historics-Masonic mysteries, for I am in a position to assert, most emphatically, that the warrants in question were not promulgated by Frederick the Great, and that the three so-called Apexes were, in fact, no other than the three sponsors of the ONE SUPREME APEX, whose very style proclaims his crowning and solitary grandeur, and the succession of whose high office comes by an Act of Grace on the part of the existing Apex, who, under circumstances of the strictest solemnity, and himself strictly veiled, transmits to his successor (if practicable, in the presence of one or more of the sponsors) the rituals of all other orders (some of which are scarcely known in England), contained in an antique leaden casket cased in cedar of Libanus (or Lebanon). By this means the Apex-elect is, if of one of the lower degrees (but in no case under that of a P.M.) under a peculiar dispensation."

The letter continued: "True enough, the Cord and Dagger are the symbols of the Sponsors, but not of the one unapproachable Apex, for he has seven (hence the con-fraternity [sic] known in the East as the Sat-bhae, seven brothers), but which failed under a secret suspension of the then (1845) Sublime Climax Apex, who, at that period, happened to be on one of his tours of secret inspection in India. From the nature of the office of the Grand Climax Apex, 81 °, it has been a time immemorial law that his name should never be divulged nor his actual identity be known to any but a Sponsor. Sometimes it happens, where Apex dies in any remote locality, his successor cannot be known to the Sponsors, but the latter can always identify the true Apex by the seven symbols which lead to the leaden casket that crowns the mystic edifice, and which, with reverence, I venture to assert I have seen, but it is not fitting that I should say more. There is a remarkable painting, of small size, called 'The Dream of Apex.' It represents a man in a gloomy appartment, startled at the appearance of a serpent; but for reasons inconvenient to mention, the locality cannot be indicated. As your correspondent is perhaps aware, the one Supreme Apex takes in regular succession, as his symbol, one of the starry signs; but these are not numbered as amongst the seven occult symbols. Allow me to add, that 'the Frederick the Great' is not a warrant of authority. The Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa certainly did issue one, but under the superior inspiration of the Veiled Apex, who, at that period, is supposed to have been a Venetian."

The Royal Oriental Order of Sikha (Apex) and the Sat B'hai, to give it its official title -- was the brain child of Captain James Henry Lawrence Archer (or Lawrence-Archer), Indian Army. John Yarker briefly referred to the Order's founder and origins in The Arcane Schools, 1909, P. 242: "This is a Hindu Society organized by the Pundit of an Anglo-Indian regiment, and brought to this country, about the year 1872, by Captain J. H. Lawrence Archer."

Lawrence Archer had been born on July 28, 1823. He'd been gazetted Second-Lieutenant in the 39th Foot Regiment in December 1840 (at 17) and served with the 24th Foot Regiment throughout the Punjab Campaign in 1848-1849. He went on half pay as a Captain on January 1, 1869 and remained on the half pay list until his death in February 1889. He was initiated in Masonry in India in 1851 (at 28) and later became a joining member of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 at Edinburgh. The British Museum catalogue lists the titles of a dozen books by him, e.g. genealogical studies, military histories, memoirs of Indian campaigns, a work on the Orders of Chivalry etc.. As far as the Sat B'hai was concerned he remained in the background.

In Hindi the word pundit or pandit means a learned man, one versed in philosophy, religion and jurisprudence, alternatively a learned expert or teacher. In military usage it meant a native civilian who was employed to teach the British officers of Indian regiments the Hindi language and to read the Devanagri script. Nothing is known about the Pundit's "Hindu Society" or the nature of Archer's notes, MSS. etc. Archer must have had private means. Somewhere in Scotland, not to be found, he was playing at being a Hindu in an English Masonic order hoping, somehow, to make money, someday, out of the Sat B'hai.

XII

Chapter Nine, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

The philosopher Kant had distinguished between representation and the thing-in-itself. Representation was the type of knowledge that one retrieved from one's senses. The thing-in-itself was outside the realm of human understanding -- we could not access this knowledge; we could only go by our intuition and instinct. Arthur Schopenhauer had disagreed. For Kant, the thing-in-itself was inaccessible to our body of knowledge. For Schopenhauer, the thing-in-itself was accessible by the will. Schopenhauer reinterpreted Kant’s notion of the thing-in-itself as the will, while retaining the general idea of representation as the relationship between subject and object. Schopenhauer had argued that everything we understand must have a cause and purpose. We are in direct contact with reality, with the thing-in-itself. The sexual drive we have, Schopenhauer insisted, was a blind energy with constant turning and motion not only concerned with human consciousness but the whole physical world. Schopenhauer claimed the whole world, like man himself, was through and through will and through and through representation and, beyond this, he said, there was nothing.

By going down into the depths of one's own nature, a man may become conscious that he is all in all -- the only real being. He is the thing-in-itself. This real being perceives itself again in others, who present themselves from without, as though they formed a mirror of himself. This man recognises himself as identical with another individual, who exists in complete separation from him. It is true, or at least possible, that our self can exist in other beings whose consciousness is separated and different from our own. So entirely is the individual consciousness a phenomenon that even in the same ego two consciousnesses can arise of which the one knows nothing of the other. That one and the same being can exist in different places at the same time and yet be complete in each of them seems impossible -- absurd, nevertheless, it is true -- of the thing-in-itself. Phenomena assume forms in accordance with the principle of individuation. For the thing-in-itself, the will to live exists whole and undivided in every being, even in the smallest, as completely as in the sum-total of all things that ever were or are or will be. Every being, even the smallest, says to itself, So long as I am safe, let the world perish. If only one individual is left in the world, and all the rest perish, the one remaining would still possess the whole self-being of the world, uninjured and undiminished, and would laugh at the destruction of the world as an illusion.

The first edition of Albert Mackey's massive Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry was published in the U.S.A. early in 1874.

F. G. Irwin was in Paris during the autumn of 1874, visiting Eliphas Lévi. Unfortunately, Irwin forgot to ask Lévi about the Hermetic Order of Egypt, an occult fraternity from ancient times, immersed in studies of the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and the art of invisibility.

In 1886, John Yarker published what he described as a revised edition of the Sat B'hai Code, the Rite of Apex, or the Sat B'hail, containing information about the Order's structure and its rules. The Sat B'hai would evolve into The Order of Ishmael -- also called The Order of Esau and Reconciliation. Yarker got the order going -- and kept it going -- with help from William Wynn Westcott, a co-founder of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, as one of its Grand Officers.

The Order of Ishmael, or Order of Esau and Reconciliation, had eighteen degrees divided into four classes. The government of the Order was vested in three supreme and equal powers, respectively known as Patriarch, Priest, and King. The Chiefs of the Order resided habitually in the East; two of the three chiefs were required to live east of Jerusalem. The consent of each had to be obtained before the admission of any candidate. Postulants had to be of "a mature age, of good breeding and education," and "could not be Roman Catholic." It was not necessary, on the continent, that a postulant should be a Freemason. Branches of the Order, operating under the authority of Under-Arch-Chancellors, existed in Russia, Turkey, Greece, Austria, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Portugal, Africa, and the United Kingdom.

"The Beast," occultist Aleister Crowley, was born in 1875, the year Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society.

Taking his cue certainly from Yarker, Westcott, Crowley, and Blavatsky, Cal Horan took the esoteric intitiation ceremonies embedded in the cipher I'd created, derived from Trithemius's Polycraphiae, and he ran with them.

Essentially, Horan developed not a cult of the sun, but a cult of the moon. I'd often heard that the moon rules over the sexuality of women. The moon was the Great Eternal Mother. St. Augustine had berated women for their dancing "impudently and filthily all the day long upon the days of the new moon."

Of course, yes, I wanted to see the women reveling.

The first ritual display of Cal Horan's new esoteric order took place in a wild setting, in the primal woods just outside Easthaven. Old Terry Stevens encouraged this, and even talked me into dressing up as a woman, to go and witness the session, incognito, firsthand -- apparently also telling Horan that I'd be there, because now, that night, Horan was hollering out to his girls, "There he is! Bring him down!" I had climbed to the top of a fir tree and was watching. Now the women were demanding I come down. When I refused, they pulled the tree down to the ground with their bare hands.

The Horanians went completely nuts, celebrating insanely. Ultimately, an apparently hallucinating, totally crazed Jamie Culotte killed Eliza Boudreau with her bare hands. She tore Eliza Boudreau's eyes right out of their sockets and stabbed her in the heart with an ornate gold and silver dagger Horan had probably lent her for the purpose. Hurricane strength winds and rain came up suddenly. And lightning.

The library caught fire that night, even as the floodwaters rose.

So soon as Jamie Culotte showed up on the grounds of the devastated library, the old millionaire rabble-rouser Terence Stevens had her take a look at the head she was carrying in her hands. Jamie seemed to have no idea whatsoever as to how she came to be walking around with Eliza Boudreau's eyeless head in her hands. Stevens explained. Jamie Culotte stared horrified at the mutilated remains, though it took about five minutes or more to finally get her to release them from her clutches.

The Easthaven Daily News carried only a brief report of these events, quoting Terence Stevens telling of a wild bear loose in the woods -- which Eliza had herself, as a hobby, been foolishly trying to tame -- that had turned on her. No one -- not her mother or father or brother -- not her neighbors -- not anybody anywhere in Easthaven -- took exception to Terence Stevens' version (which protected Horan) of what had transpired. I went to Eliza's mother and father -- and to her brother -- and I told them what I knew. They told me to stay away from them -- "Don't make any more waves." Imagine --"Don't make any more waves"!

As for the library, it was insured and so was salvaged and brought back, for the time being, from both fire and flood.

XIII

Chapter Ten, The Infinitely Productive Darkness of the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Vigilantes, Anarchists, and Sleepwalkers.

We, the Carley family, now moved from our quite nice home in Easthaven to a far more modest address, 21 Straten Road, Previnville. By August, 1977 we'd left that address to live in a junk-heap on Trapper Road in Tarrenton. There we remained until November, 1980, when we moved into an even more dismal rat-trap on Trapper Road. We three then re-located to 44 Codelyn Terrace, Tarrenton, living in a damp, decrepit, nearly disintegrated Queen Anne style manse having fourteen rooms, not including the three bathrooms or the pantry, all built back in 1891, the year Madame Helena Blavatsky died.

Back in 1875, in New York City, Blavatsky and Colonel Henry S. Olcott had founded the Theosophical Society. Theosophy ("Divine Wisdom") had offered an alternative to material science, which was busy debunking spiritual ideas. Theosophy claimed to represent an archaic secret tradition. Its aim was to bring the esoteric knowledge of the ancients to the modern world, and to study comparative religions, the laws of nature, and humanity's spiritual faculties. "HPB" (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 1831-1891), a native of southern Russia, had come into the tenets of her Theosophy through occult masters she claimed she'd met in Tibet. She identified her Secret Chiefs as non-physical masters from an Egyptian Order that was carrying on the work of Zoroaster and Solomon. Blavatsky's western masters were called Serapis Bey, Polydorus Isurenus, and John King. It was only years later that Blavatsky and Olcott would convert to Buddhism. The Theosophical Society would then shift to an Eastern orientation. Blavatsky would give up her Western Secret Chiefs for three oriental Masters -- Koot Hoomi, Morya, and Djwal Khul. There was not a single representative of the Eastern Mystical Tradition among the founding Spiritualists, Qabalists, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians of the Theosophical Society. Theosophy ("Divine Wisdom") offered an alternative to material science, then busy debunking spiritual ideas. Theosophy, carrying an archaic secret tradition into the modern world, would promote brotherly and sisterly love, studying comparative religions, the laws of nature, and humanity's spiritual faculties.

The first complete performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen was performed at Bayreuth in 1876.

In 1878, Jacob Wirth moved his restaurant (Jacob Wirth's) into larger quarters across the street. (Jacob Wirth Co. had been established as a bottler in Boston, Massachusetts in 1868 and had begunn bottling lager beer at 160 Broad Street in Providence sometime in 1880 while residing in Boston.) The dining room was made up of simple mahogany tables with a few large steins and bottles for decoration. The floor was covered with sawdust; the tables were bare. The establishment’s most notable feature was its bar, a long mahogany structure well equipped to dispense draught beers. Above the bar, a Latin motto proclaimed Suum Cuiqce, generally translated to mean “Each his own.” A clock and a portrait of the founder-- in a circular medallion -- added the finishing touches. Along with several special dishes each day, the menu featured staples that included sausages, pig’s knuckles, boiled bacon, hams, cheeses and herrings. The customers included the rich and famous of the day. Boxing champion John L. Sullivan was among them. (Legend is that he suffered a rare knockdown when he was hit by a beer barrel rolling off a brewer’s wagon into the restaurant.)

John Yarker later ingeniously amalgamated the Ceremony of Perfection from the Order of the Sat B'hai with the ritual of a recent novelty called the Order of Light.

In April 1877, the Swedenborg Rite needed a Supreme Grand Chaplain. The Rev. William Stainton Moses (1840-1892), seemed the best candidate. One of the most prominent personalities in the spiritualist movement, Moses had co-founded, in 1881, the spiritualist journal, Light. He now wanted to form a Lodge, in London, entirely composed of Spiritualists, and "to seek for communion with the world of spirit thro' the solemn ritual of the Swed. Rite. I am afraid I shall not do it: but I want badly to try.... I desiderate for this purpose something rather different from the ordinary Lodge, which meets four times a year to work a stereotyped ritual, or to eat a heavy dinner." Nothing came of those wishes, however. Moses resigned from the Rite in April 1879, by which time there were about a dozen lodges, all with probably very small memberships. Only a handful more were founded during the next few years. The Rite of Swedenborg lingered on in England until the early 1900s, by which time it was merely an item in John Yarker's stock of rites he deemed ripe for exporting overseas.

The Rite bearing Swedenbourg's name had been founded in the U.S. in 1859, and had soon after been exported to Canada. It possessed six grades: 1. Apprentice, 2. Fellow Craft, 3. Master Neophyte, 4. Illuminated Theosophite, 5. Blue Brother, 6. Red Brother. The third degree was, in fact, that of a Master Mason but, since the Rite did not initiate Freemasons, only the last three degrees were worked. The Rite reached England by virtue of a Canadian charter, dated July 1, 1876, granted to John Yarker, Francis George Irwin, and Samuel Petty Leather, "to hold a subordinate Lodge and Temple in the City of Manchester to be called the Emanuel Lodge and Temple No. 3, and therein to confer the degrees of Enlightened, Sublime, and Perfect Phremasons upon such lawful Master Masons as they may deem worthy."

The Swedenborgian Rite was introduced to England in a letter from Yarker that appeared in The Freemason, July 29, 1876. Yarker wrote that he'd just recenly received "a warrant for a lodge and temple of the Swedenborgian Rite, styled Emmanuel Lodge and Temple, No. 3, to confer the degrees of Enlightened, Sublime, and Perfect Phremason upon lawful Master Masons. The lodge and temple consist at present of only four members, but if any of your readers would like to enter the Rite they can do so by sending their names and the fee of £1 to Bro. S. P. Leather, Burnley, Lancashire, the J.W. of said body. We pay the Supreme Grand Lodge and Temple of the Dominion of Canada £5 5s. for our warrant and ritual."

According to the warrant, Emmanuel Lodge and Temple of The Primitive and Original Rite of Freemasonry otherwise known as the Swedenborgian Rite was to be at Manchester, with Yarker as Worshipful Master, Francis George Irwin as Senior Warden, and one Samuel Petty Leather as Junior Warden. It was signed by McLeod Moore, confirmed by two fellow rulers, and c