The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE EQUINOX nobody else might be affected so.” This was said to me quite frequently when, early in the hasheesh life, I enthusiastically related the most singular phenomena of my fantasy. But there is no such thing true of the hasheesh effects. Just as inevitably as two men taking the same direction, and equally favoured by Providence, will arrive at the same place, will two persons of similar temperament come to the same territory in hasheesh, see the same mysteries of their being, and get the same hitherto unconceived facts. It is this characteristic which, beyond all gainsaying, proves the definite existence of the most wondrous of the hasheesh disclosed states of mind. The realm of that stimulus is no vagary; it as much exists as England. We are never so absurd as to expect to see insane men by the dozen all holding to the same hallucination without having had any communication with each other. As I said once previously, after my acquaintance with the realm of witchery had become, probably, about as universal as anybody’s, when I chanced to be called to take care of some one making the experiment for the first time (and I always was called), by the faintest word, often by a mere look, I could tell exactly the place that my patient had reached, and treat him accordingly. Many a time, by some expression which other bystanders thought ineffably puerile, have I recognised the landmark of a field of wonders wherein I have travelled in perfect ravishment. I understood the symbolisation, which they did not. Though as perfectly conscious as in his natural state, and capable of apprehending all outer realities without halluci- nation, he still perceived every word which was spoken to him 270