The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE HERB DANGEROUS I “The girders of the Soul, which give her breathing, are easy to be unloosed.” “Nature teaches us, and the oracles also affirm, that even the evil germs of matter may alike become useful and good.” ZOROASTER. CoMPaRABLE to the Alf Laylah was Laylah itself, a very Tower of Babel, partaking alike of truth both gross and subtle inextricably interwoven with the most fantastic fable, is our view of the Herb—Hashish—the Herb Dangerous. Of the investigators who have pierced even for a moment the magic veil of its glamour ecstatic many have been appalled, many disappointed. Few have dared to crush in arms of steel this burning daughter of the Jinn; to ravish from her poisonous scarlet lips the kisses of death, to force her serpent-smooth and serpent-stinging body down to some infernal torture- couch, and strike her into spasm as the lightning splits the cloud-wrack, only to read in her infinite sea-green eyes the awful price of her virginity—black madness. Even supreme Richard Burton, who solved nigh every other riddle of the Eastern Sphinx, passed this one by. He took the drug for months “with no other symptom than increased appetite,” and in his general attitude to hashish- II c 33