Our force of character and determination is a valuable protection

On the road from Venice to those plains which he now understands to be the spiritual replica of the plains of Lombardy, Franchezzo's attention is suddenly attracted by a voice calling to him in a pitiful tone for help. Turning back a little way, he sees a couple of spirits lying apparently helpless on the ground and one is making gestures to cause Franchezzo to come to him.  Thinking it is someone in need of his help, he lets Faithful Friend go on and goes to see what he wants. As Franchezzo bends down to lift him up, the spirit holding out his hand to him clutches his legs with his hands and contrives to fasten his teeth in his arm. While the other one, suddenly jumping up, tries to fasten on his throat like a wolf.

With some trouble and a good deal of anger on his part, Franchezzo shakes himself free of them and is stepping back when he half-stumbles. Turning his head, he sees that a great pit has suddenly opened behind him into which with another step backwards he must have fallen.

He remembers the warnings given him not to allow his lower passions to be aroused and thus place himself on a level with these beings and he regrets his momentary burst of anger and resolves to keep calm and cool. He turns towards the two dark spirits again and sees that the one he fancies has been hurt is crawling along the ground to reach him, while the other is gathering himself together like a wild beast about to spring. He fixes his eyes steadily on the pair, whom he now recognises as the man with the withered hand and his friend, who has tried to deceive him with the false message a short time before.  Steadily he looks at them, throwing all the power of his will into the determination that they should not advance nearer to him. As he does so they falter and stop and finally roll over on the ground snarling and showing their teeth like a couple of wolves but unable to approach a step nearer. Leaving them thus he hurries after Faithful Friend – whom he soon overtakes – and narrates to him what has occurred.

Faithful Friend laughs and says –

I could have told you who those were, Franchezzo, but I felt it would do no harm to let you find out for yourself and likewise learn how valuable a protection your own force of character and determination can be. You are naturally strong-willed and so long as you do not use it to domineer over the just rights of others, it is a very useful and valuable quality. In your work in the spirit world you will find that it is the great lever by which you can act, not alone on those round you but even on apparently inanimate matter. I thought as those two are very likely to come across you from time to time you might as well settle now which should be master, which should be the dominant personality. They will be shy of directly meddling with you again but so long as you work about the earth plane, you will find them ready at any chance to thwart your plans if the opportunity comes. 

360 degrees fog bow – Brocken Inaglory (CC-by-SA-3.0)

I am the Light of the world; I am the Truth

Franchezzo is speculating what his next adventure will be when a couple of spirits hurry to him.  They ask if he is not a member of the Brotherhood of Hope, since, if so, they have a message for him from a dearly loved friend on earth and one of his guides has sent them to deliver it.  At first Franchezzo is very pleased as he thinks it is his darling and that they are sent from her, since they do not have the appearance of most of the dark spirits around. Their robes shine with a peculiar blue grey light that is almost like a mist clothing them and Franchezzo has some trouble to make out their faces.  When he does so he cannot help starting and a feeling of distrust creeps over him, for the flickering veil of grey blue gauze that interposes between them becomes so thin that he can see a couple of most repulsive dark spirits under it. Faithful Friend quietly presses his arm as a warning. Franchezzo addresses them with caution and asks what is their message.

In the name of the Prophet, begins one, we are to tell you that your love is very ill and prays that you return to earth to see her without delay, lest her spirit will have passed, before you arrive, to the realms where you cannot follow her.  We are to show you the way to reach her quickly.

How long, he asks eagerly, is it since you left her?

Not two days, is the reply, and we are to bring you immediately. Your Eastern guide is with her and has sent us specially.

Then Franchezzo knows they are lying for his Eastern guide has just left them and he has said no word of his beloved being ill.  But he temporises with them and says –

Give me the secret sign of our Brotherhood, since, unless you do so, I am unable to go with you.

The veil of gauzy mist is fast fading from them and he can see their dark forms growing more distinct beneath.  Franchezzo does not, however, show them that he sees this. They do not answer immediately but are whispering to each other. Franchezzo continues –

If our guide has sent you, you will surely give me the countersign of our order?

Surely yes. Certainly I can. Here it is – Hope is Eternal – and he smiles with an air of great frankness.

Good, says Franchezzo, go on, finish it.

Finish it! Is there more you want? and he stands puzzled.

The other nudges him and whispers something –

Hope is Eternal and Truth is – and Truth is – ha – hum – what, amico?

Inevitable, says the other.

Franchezzo smiles most blandly on them both –

You are so clever, friends, no doubt you can now give me the symbol?

Symbol? Diavolo! There was no symbol we were to give.

Was there not? says Franchezzo.  Then I must be the one to give it to you.

They both raise their arms to make a grab at him. Franchezzo sees one has a withered hand and he knows directly to whom he is indebted for this little plot. As they rush at him he steps back and makes the sign of the sacred symbol of Truth in all ages and all worlds.

At this they cower down on the ground as though he has struck them and rendered them unconscious. They leave them there to ruminate at their leisure.

Franchezzo asks Faithful Friend as they move away what he thinks they will do now.

In a short time, he says, they will recover.  You have given them a shock and for the moment stunned them but they will be up after us again before long with some fresh devilment they will have hatched.  If you had gone with them they would have led you into the morass beyond and left you to wander about half-choked, if they did you no more serious harm. You must always remember that they have great power in their own sphere if you give yourself up to their guidance in any sense.

Saint Augustine – Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674)

Selfish Oppression

Oh, horror! they were my own past misdeeds, my own evil thoughts and desires, which had been prompted by this very man beside me and which nestling in my heart had formed those links between us that held me to him now.

Franchezzo's revulsion causes the waves of magnetic ether on which the music and images are borne to him to waver and break and vanish, leaving him alone with his tempter, with his voice sounding in his ears, pointing out to him how he might enjoy all these delights if he will join him and be his pupil. His words fall on deaf ears, his promises do not allure him. In his heart is only a horror of all these things, only a wild longing to free himself from his presence.

Franchezzo gets up and turns from him but finds he cannot move a step.  An invisible chain holds him fast and with a derisive laugh of rage and triumph, his dark ancestor calls out –

Go, since you will have none of my favors or my promises. Go now and see what awaits you.

Franchezzo cannot move a step and begins to feel a strange alarm creeping over him and a strange numbness of limbs and brain. A mist seems to gather round and enfolds him in its chill embrace, while phantoms of awful shape and giant-size draw near.  To his horror, he recognises these forms as his own past misdeeds, his own evil thoughts and desires, which this very man has prompted and which have formed those links that hold Franchezzo to him now.

A wild, fierce, cruel laugh breaks from him at his discomfiture. He points to these weird shapes and bids him see what he is, who thinks himself too good for his company. The hall grows darker and darker and wave on wave the grim phantoms crowd round him, each growing more fearful as they gather, hemming him in on every side, while below his feet a great vault or pit opens in which he sees or seems to see a seething mass of struggling human forms. His fearful ancestor shakes in wild paroxysms of rage and fiendish laughter and, pointing to the gathering phantoms bids them hurl him into the black pit. Suddenly a star gleams above them in the darkness and from it falls a ray of light like a rope, which he grasps with both his hands. As the folds of light diffuse themselves around him, he is drawn up, out of that dark place, away from that fearful palace.

When Franchezzo recovers from his astonishment (and relief) at his release, he finds himself in the open country with Faithful Friend and his Eastern guide making passes over him, for he is much shaken and exhausted with the struggle.  His guide addresses him kindly and tells him that he has permitted this trial so that his knowledge of the true nature of the man he has just left should be his best protection in future against his wiles and schemes for his enslavement. Franchezzo's guide says to him –   

So long as you thought of this man with pride or respect as an ancestor and one who had any ties to you, so long would his power to influence you continue but now your own sense of horror and repugnance will act as a repelling power to keep his influence away from you. Your will is as strong as his and you need no other protection. In the interview just past, you allowed your senses to be beguiled and your will paralysed by this dark being before you were aware and had I not rescued you, he might, though for a time only, have made you his subject and have done you serious injury. Take heed now while you yet remain in his sphere that you do not again lose the sovereignty over yourself, which is your own and which no man can usurp unless your wavering will allows him to do so. I leave you again, my son, to follow your pilgrimage, which will soon, however, draw to its close and I bid you be of good cheer since your reward will come from her whom you love and who loves you and sends ever her most tender thoughts to you.

Summertime – Anders Zorn

Evil Personified

Closer and closer they gather – a moving mass of evil personified.

As Franchezzo stands watching the crowd, his attention is drawn to a group of spirits who are pointing over at him. Faithful Friend leaves Franchezzo to speak with them alone for they may recognise him as having been there before.

As Faithful Friend moves away, the dark spirits draw near to Franchezzo with every gesture of friendliness.  Franchezzo responds with politeness, though he feels the most violent repugnance to their company – they are repulsive-looking, horrible in their wicked, leering ugliness.

One touches Franchezzo on the shoulder.  As Franchezzo turns to him, with a dim sense of having seen him before, the spirit laughs – a wild horrid laugh – and cries out –

I hail thee, friend – who I see dost not so well remember me as I do thee, though it was upon the earth plane we met before. I, as well as others, then sought hard to be of service to thee, only thou wouldst have none of our help, and played us, methinks, but a scurvy trick instead. None the less for this, we, who are as lambs, didst thou but know us, have forgiven thee.

Another also draws near to Franchezzo, leering with a smile perfectly diabolical and says –

So ho! You are here after all, friend, in this nice land with us. Then surely you must have done something to merit the distinction? Say whom you have killed or caused to be killed, for none are here who cannot claim at least one slain by them, while many of us can boast of a procession as long as the ghosts that appeared to Macbeth, and others again – our more distinguished citizens – count their slain by hundreds. Did you kill that one after all? – ha! ha! ha!

And he breaks into such a wild horrible peal of laughter that Franchezzo turns to fly from them – for, like a flash, the memory of that time when he, too, could have been almost a murderer comes across his mind and he recognises in these horrible beings those who had surrounded him and counselled him how to fulfil his desire – how to wreak his vengeance. Franchezzo recoils from them but they have no thought to let him go.  He is here – drawn down, as they hoped, at last – and they seek to keep him with them that he might afford them some sport and they might avenge themselves on him for their former defeat.

Franchezzo reads this thought in their minds, though outwardly they are crowding around him with every protestation of hearty friendliness.  For a moment he is at a loss what to do.  Then he resolves to go with them and see what they intend, watching at the same time for the first opportunity to free himself from them.  He suffers them to take him by an arm each and they proceed towards a large house on one side of the square which they say is theirs and where they will have the pleasure of introducing him to their friends. Faithful Friend passes close to them and looking at Franchezzo impresses the warning –

Consent to go but beware of entering into any of their enjoyments or allowing your mind to be dragged down to their level.

They enter and pass up a wide staircase of greyish stone, which like all things here bears the marks and stains of shame and crime.  The broad steps are broken and imperfect, with holes here and there large enough, some of them, to let a man through into the black dungeon-like depths beneath.  As they pass up he feels one of them give him a sly push just as they are stepping over one of these and had he not been watching for some such trick he might have been tripped up and pushed in.  As it is he simply draws aside and his too officious companion narrowly escapes tumbling in himself, at which the rest all laugh and he scowls savagely at Franchezzo.  Franchezzo recognises him just then as the one whose hand had shrivelled in the silver ring of fire drawn around his beloved on the occasion when her love had drawn him to her and saved him from yielding to these dark fiends.  This spirit holds his hand carefully hidden under his black cloak, yet Franchezzo can see through it and he sees the shrivelled hand and arm and knows that he might indeed beware of its owner.

At the top of the staircase they pass into a large magnificent room, lighted up by a glare of fire and hung around with dark draperies which are in perfect rags and tatters and all splashed with crimson stains of wet blood, as though this had been the scene of, not one but many, murders. Around the rooms are placed ghostly phantoms of ancient furniture –  ragged, dirty and defaced, yet retaining in them a semblance to an earthly apartment of great pretensions to splendour. This room is filled with the spirits of men and women. They have lost all that could ever have given them any claim to the charms and privileges of their sex. They are worse to look on than the most degraded bedraggled specimens to be seen in any earthly slum at night. Only in Hell can women sink to such an awful degradation.  The men are as bad or even worse and words utterly fail him to describe them.  They are eating, drinking, shouting, dancing, playing cards and quarrelling over them – going on in such a way as the worst and lowest scenes of earthly dissipation can but faintly picture.

Franchezzo can see a faint reflection of the earthly lives of each and knows each alike has been guilty, not only of shameless lives, but also of murder from one motive or another. On his left is one who had been a Duchess in the days of the sixteenth century and he sees that in her history she had from jealousy and cupidity poisoned no less than six persons. Beside her is a man who had belonged to the same era and had caused several persons obnoxious to him to be assassinated by his bravoes and had slain another with his own hand in a treacherous manner during a quarrel.

Another woman had killed her illegitimate child because it stood between her and wealth and position. She has not been many years in this place and seems more overcome by shame and remorse than any of the others, so Franchezzo resolves to get near to and speak to her.

Astronaut photo of ash cloud from Mount Cleveland, Alaska – ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Group, Johnson Space Center

Amusements in a Great City of Hell

As Franchezzo and his companion descend from the tower and enter the city, they find quite a large crowd of dark spirits assembled, listening to some sort of proclamation. Evidently it is one which excites their derision and anger for there are yells and hoots and cries resounding on all sides. As Franchezzo draws yet nearer, he perceives it is one which has been read recently in the earthly counterpart and has for its object the further liberation and advancement of the people – an object which, down here in this stronghold of oppression and tyranny, only provokes a desire for its suppression and these dark beings around him are vowing to thwart its good purpose .

The more men are oppressed and the more that they quarrel and fight against the oppression with violence, the stronger these beings are here below to interfere in their affairs and to stir up strife and fightings among them. The more men become free and enlightened and improved, the less chance there is that these dark spirits will be drawn to earth by the kindling of kindred passions there and thus be enabled to mingle with and control men for their own evil purposes. 

These dark beings delight in war, misery and bloodshed and are ever eager to return to earth to kindle men's fierce cruel passions afresh. In times of great national oppression and revolt when the heated passions of men are inflamed to fever heat, these dwellers of the depths are drawn up to earth's surface by the force of kindred desires and excite and urge on revolutions, which, begun at first from motives that are high and pure and noble, will under the stress of passion and the instigation of these dark beings from the lower sphere become at last mere excuses for wild butcheries and excesses of every kind. By these very excesses a reaction is created and these dark demons and those whom they control are in their turn swept away by the higher powers, leaving a wide track of ruin and suffering to mark where they have been. Thus in these lowest Hells a rich harvest is reaped of unhappy souls who have been drawn down along with the evil spirits that tempted them.

Passage group, Hautecombe Nights, Savoie, France by Yann Forget (CC-by-SA-3.0)

Those awful mysterious dark valleys of eternal night

In his wanderings, Franchezzo describes his arrival at a vast range of mountains whose bleak summits tower into the night sky overhead. There are no regular pathways at the foot of these great dark mountains and its rocks are very steep. After a toilsome ascent of one of the lower ranges of these mountains, Franchezzo sees on either side of him vast deep chasms in the rocks, gloomy precipices and awful-looking black pits. Franchezzo and his companion make a rope from some of the great rank, withered-looking weeds and grass that grow in small crevices of these otherwise barren rocks and they attempt to rescue the spirits that are down in these depths of misery.

These spirits have been caught in their own traps and pitfalls until that time when repentance and a desire to atone should draw rescuers to help and free them from the prisons they have themselves made.  Many are imprisoned in these mountains who may not yet be helped out by any, for they would only be a danger to others were they free. The ruin and evil they would shed around them make their longer imprisonment a necessity.  Yet their prisons are of their own creating, for these great mountains of misery are the outcome and product of their earthly lives and these precipices are the spiritual counterparts of those precipices of despair over which they have driven their unhappy victims.

It is not until their hearts soften and they learn to long for liberty that they may do good instead of evil – only then will their prisons be opened and they will be drawn forth from the living death in which their own frightful cruelties to others have entombed them.

The sun, street light and Parallax by Brocken Inaglory (CC-by-SA-3.0)

The Joy of Heaven

Franchezzo rescues an unhappy spirit whose repentant prayers have reached the higher spheres –

And in this man's heart there had sprung up a desire, hopeless, as it seemed to himself, for better things, for a path to open before him which, however hard and thorny, might lead him from this night of Hell and give him even at this eleventh hour the hope of a life removed from the horrors of this place.

As Franchezzo retreats to the door, grasping firm hold of the poor spirit who had sought to help him, Franchezzo sees four majestic spirits from the higher spheres making magnetic passes over the unfortunate's prostrate form.  Franchezzo beholds the most wonderful sight he has ever seen. From the dark disfigured body which lies as in a sleep of death there arises a mist-like vapour which grows more and more dense until it takes shape in the form of the spirit himself; the purified soul of that spirit released from its dark envelope.  Franchezzo sees those four angelic spirits lift the still unconscious risen soul in their arms as one would bear a child.

At his side stands another bright angel who says to him – 

Be of good cheer, oh! Son of the Land of Hope, for many shalt thou help in this dark land, and great is the joy of the angels in Heaven over these sinners that have repented.

Bouguereau's L'Innocence

Spiritual emanations are attracted upwards or downwards

In the lives of cities as of men spiritual emanations are attracted upwards or downwards according as there is good or evil in the deeds done in them.

A City in Hell

In a city in Hell life is in no way different from the earthly life at the time when it was in the full zenith of is power and when the particles thrown off from its material life were drawn down by the force of attraction to form its spiritual reflection.  This city's buildings are fit dwellings for its inhabitants and we see in its more modern appearance how it has been added from time to time by the same process which is going on continuously.  The spirits here fancy themselves still in the earthly counterpart and wonder why all looks so dark and foul and dingy.  

Franchezzo describes his first impressions of this ancient fortified city of the old Roman Empire –

We were now traversing a wide causeway of black marble, on either side of which were deep, dark chasms of which it was impossible to see the bottom from the great clouds of heavy vapour that hung over them. Passing and repassing us on this highway were a great many dark spirits, some bearing great heavy loads on their backs, others almost crawling along on all fours like beasts. Great gangs of slaves passed us, wearing heavy iron collars on their necks and linked together by a heavy chain. They were coming from the second or inner gate of what was evidently a large fortified city whose dark buildings loomed through the dense masses of dark fog in front of us. The causeway, the style of buildings and the appearance of many of the spirits made me feel as though we were entering some ancient fortified city of the old Roman Empire, only here everything gave one the sense of being foul and horrible, in spite of the fine architecture and the magnificent buildings whose outlines we could dimly trace. 

In like manner this same city has its spiritual prototype in the higher spheres to which all that was fair and good and noble in its life has been attracted and where those spirits who were good and true have gone to dwell. 

And as the deeds done in this city of Hell have in evil far exceeded those which were good, so this city is far larger, far more thickly peopled in this sphere than in those above. 

In the ages to come when the spirits who are here now will have progressed, that heavenly counterpart will be fully finished and fully peopled and its hellish counterpart will have crumbled into dust and faded from this sphere.