The Order of the Twilight Star, by Arthur Machan

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 10 of the second of Arthur Machen's autobiographical works Things Near and Far (Alfred Knopf, 1923), pp. 208-218. The passage concerns a strange period of Machen's life in 1900, when he felt as though he was living out episodes and meeting characters which he had created in his earlier novel The Three Impostors (1895). It is also the passage in which he describes his involvement with the Order of the Golden Dawn (the Order of the Twilight Star), and his own opinions on the about its origins.

I have retained the original pagination in brackets in the text. I have added a few notes identifying some of the characters mentioned, if known. I have also silently corrected several obvious misprints, but have avoided any correction of English spellings.

It is interesting to compare this account with those contained in the "Introduction to The Three Impostors" (1923).

It was some time earlier in this year that I became conscious of a very odd circumstance. It will perhaps have been noticed that I have become insensibly Stevensonian in my diction, as I have spoken of the Incident of the Bulldog, or of this or of that. That is because the atmosphere in which I lived was becoming remarkably like the atmosphere of "The Three Impostors," which, as I have remarked, is derived from the "New Arabian" manner of R. L. Stevenson. Not only did strange and unknown and unexplained people start up from every corner, form every cafe table, and engage me in obscure mazes of talk, quite in the Arabian manner, but I presently became aware that something very odd indeed [end 208] was happening: certain characters in "The Three Impostors" showed signs of coming to life, a feat which, perhaps they had failed to perform before. I was once talking to a dark young man, of quiet and retiring aspect, who wore glasses -- he and I had met at a place where we had to be blindfolded before we could see the light -- and he told me a queer tale of the manner in which his life was in daily jeopardy.⁽¹⁾ He described the doings of a fiend in human form, a man who was well known to be an expert in Black Magic, a man who hung up naked women in cupboards by hooks which pierced the flesh of their arms. This monster -- I may sat that there is such a person, though I can by no means go bail for the actuality of any of the misdeeds charged against him -- had, for some reason which I do not recollect, taken a dislike to my dark young friend.⁽²⁾ In consequence, so I was assured, he hired a gang in Lambeth, who were grievously to maim or preferably to slaughter the dark young man; each member of the gang receiving a retaining fee of eight shillings and sixpence a day -- a sum, by the way, that sounds as [end 209] if it were the face value of some mediaeval coin long obsolete. I listened in wonder, there are some absurdities so enormous that they seem to have a stunning effect on the common sense, paralysing it for the moment and inhibiting its action. It was only when I got home that it dawned upon me that I had been listening to the Young Man in Spectacles, and that he came out of "The Three Impostors." And soon Miss Lally,⁽³⁾ another character from the book, appeared, and like her prototype, discoursed most amazing tales, was the heroine of incredible adventures, would appear and disappear in a quite inexplicable manner, relating always histories before unheard of, a personages wholly diverting, enigmatic and enchanting.

And the odd thing is that it was as if these two had parts to play for a season, and played them -- till the prompter's bell sounded, and the curtain fell and the lights went out. Both Miss Lally and the Young Man in Spectacles still live; but they have become useful members of society and eminently successful, as I believe, in their several employments. Thus [end 212] do the King and Queen in the play go home to their flats or their lodgings after the show and enjoy cold beef, pickles and a comfortable bottle of beer.

And now I am going to at last to say a good word for literature. I have said, again and again, even to tedium that the only good I can see in it is that it is one of the many ways of escaping from life, to be classified with Alpine Climbing, Chess, Methylated Sprit and Prussic Acid. The way I have always seen it is like this: I go out on a Sunday afternoon in March with the black north-easter blowing to take a walk up Gower Street. I say to myself: "O come! I can't stand this," and go home and write -- or try to write -- a chapter in "The Hill of Dreams." Many people will say that the chapter is much worse than the street, and I daresay that they are right; but, anyhow, it was different: it was, for me, the nearest way out of Gower Street and the black north-easter. But I believe that there may be a little more in literature than this. It is certainly the escape from life; but perhaps it is also the only means of realising and shewing life, or, at least, [end 211] certain aspects of life. Here is an example to my hand. Here am I, not trying to write literature, but doing my best to tell a true tale, and I find I can make nothing of it. I can set down the facts, or rather such of them as I remember, but I am quite conscious that I am not, in the real sense of the word, telling the truth; that is, I am not giving any sense of the very extraordinary atmosphere in which I lived in the year 1900, of the curious and indescribable impression which the events of those days made upon me: the sense that everything had altered, that everything was very strange, that I lived in daily intercourse with people who would have been impossible, unimaginable, a year before; that the figure of the word was changed utterly for me -- of all this I can give no true picture, dealing as I am with what are called facts. I maintained long ago in "Hieroglyphics" that facts as facts go not signify anything or communicate anything; and I am sure that I was right, when I confess that, as a purveyor of exact information, I can make nothing of the year 1900. But avoiding the facts, I have got a good deal [end 212] nearer to the truth in the last chapter of "The Secret Glory," which describes the doings and feeling of two young people who are paying their first visit to London. I never bolted up to town with the housemaster's red-haired parlour-maid; but the truth must be told in figures.

There is an episode of this period which I may say a little more, that is the affair of the Secret Society. Putting two and two together, a good many years after the event, I am inclined to think that it was a mere item in the programme of strange and Arabian entertainment that was being produced for my benefit: the Secret Society was of the same order as the Incident of Mr. O'Malley and the Adventure of the Young Man who always left by the Spiked Wall,⁽⁴⁾ only of a more gorgeous and elaborate kind. And I must confess that it did me a great deal of good -- for the time. To stand waiting at a closed door in a breathless expectation, to see it open suddenly and disclose two figures clothed in a habit that I never thought to see worn by the living, to catch for a moment the vision of a cloud of incense smoke and certain dim [end 213] lights glimmering in it before the bandage was put over the eyes and the arm felt a firm grasp upon it that led the hesitating footsteps into the unknown darkness: all this was strange and admirable indeed; and strange is was to think that within a foot or two of those closely curtained windows the common life of London moved on the common pavement, as supremely unaware of what was being done within an arm's length as if our works had been the works of the other side of the moon. All this was very fine; an addition and a valuable one, as I say, to the phantasmagoria that was being presented to me. But as for anything vital in the secret order, or anything that mattered two straws to any reasonable being, there was nothing of it, and less than nothing. Among the members there were, indeed, persons of very high attainments, who, in my opinion, ought to have known better after a year's membership or less; but the society as a society was pure foolishness concerned with impotent and imbecile Abracadabras. It knew nothing about anything and concealed the fact under an impressive [end 214} ritual and a sonorous phraseology. It had no wisdom, even of the inferior or lower kind, in its leadership; it exercised no real scrutiny onto the character of those whom it admired, and so it is not surprising that some of its phrases and passwords were to be read one fine morning, their setting one of the most loathsome criminal cases of the twentieth century.⁽⁵⁾

And yet it had and has an interest of a kind. It claimed, I may say, to be of very considerable antiquity, and to have been introduced into England from abroad in a singular manner. I am not quite certain as to the details, but the mythos imparted to members was something after this fashion. A gentleman interested in occult studies was looking round the shelves of a second-hand bookshop, where the works which attracted him were sometimes to be found.⁽⁶⁾ He was examining a particular volume -- I forget whether its title was given -- when he found between the leaves a few pages of dim manuscript, written in a character which was strange to him. The gentleman bought the book, and when he got home early eagerly examined [end 215] the manuscript. It was in cipher; he could make nothing of it. But on the manuscript -- or perhaps on a separate slip laid next to it -- was the address of a person in Germany. The curious instigator of secret things and hidden counsels wrote to the address , obtained full particulars, the true manner of reading the cipher and, as I conjecture, a sort of commission and jurisdiction from the Unknown Heads in Germany to administer the mysteries in England. And hence arose, or re-arose, in this isles the Order of the Twilight Star. Its original foundation was assigned to the fifteenth century.

I like the story; but there was not on atom of truth in it. The Twilight Star was a stumer -- or stumed -- to use a very old English word. Its true date of origin was 1880-1995 at the earliest. The "Cipher Manuscript" was written on paper that bore the watermark of 1809 in ink that had a faded appearance. But it contained information that could not possibly have been know to any living being in the year 1809, that was not known to any living being till twenty years later. It was, no doubt a forgery of the early 'eighties. [end 216] Its originators must have some knowledge of Freemasonry; but so ingeniously was this occult fraud 'put upon the market' that, to the best of my belief, the flotation remains a mystery to this day. But what an entertaining mystery: and, after all, it did nobody any harm.

It must be said that the evidence of the fraudulent character of the Twilight Star does not rest merely upon the fact that the Cipher Manuscript contained a certain piece of knowledge that was not in existence in the year 1809. Any critical mind, with a twinge of occult reading, should easily have concluded that here was no ancient order from the whole nature and substance of its ritual and doctrine. For ancient rituals, whether orthodox or heterodox, are found on one mythos and on one mythos only. The are grouped about some fact, actual or symbolic, as the ritual of Freemasonry is said to have at its centre certain events connected to the building of King Solomon's Temple, and they keep within their limits. But the Twilight Star embraced all mythologies and all mysteries of all races and all ages, and 'referred' or [end 217] "attributed" them to each other and proved that they all came to much the same thing; and that was enough! There was not the ancient frame of mind; it was not even the 1809 frame of mind. But it was very much the eighteen-eighty and later frame of mind.

I must say that I did not seek the Order mere in quest of odd entertainment, As I have stated in the chapter before this, I have experienced strange things -- they still appear to me strange -- of body, mind and spirit, and I supposed that the Order, dimly heard of, might give me some light and guidance, and leading on these matters. But, as I have noted, I was mistaken; the Twilight Star shed no ray of any kind on my path. [218]

1. . The poet W. B. Yeats; see Roger Dobson, Godrey Brangham and R.A. Gilbert, ed., Arthur Machen: Selected Letters, p. 81.

2. . This is surely Aliester Crowley, who also accused Yeats of similar Black Magical dealings in his novel Moonchild. For the reasons for the magical rivalry between Yeats and Crowley ,see Ellic Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, pp. 219-232.

3. .Dobson, Brangham and Gilbert, ed., Arthur Machen: Selected Letters, p. 200: "She was in fact the Bensonian actress Hilda Wauton (1880-1957), who later married Carl Leyel, Frank Benson's secretary, founded a chain of herbal shops and became a successful cookery writer."

4. . A reference to two strange events which preceded this passage in Chapter 10 of Things Near and Far.

5. . Probably a reference to Horos trial of 1901-1902, which exposed how bogus Golden Dawn rituals were used to draw young girls into sexually compromising positions; see Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, pp. 237-40.

6. . R. A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn Companion, p. 10: "Machen's version of the discovery of the cipher manuscripts -- they were found in a second hand bookshop -- was probably widely accepted in the Order, as it derives from a source which every member would have been familiar: Bulwer Lytton's novel Zanoni, first published in 1842."

Thanks to William Max Miller (with some help from a guy named Bosch) for his weird modification of the cover of The Three Impostors, (Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, 1973). The original cover art was by Robert LoGrippo.

Back to OTS Page.

The Great God Nodens Arthur Machen Gallery Golden Dawn Gallery Introduction to The Three Impostors by Machen Introduction to The Three Impostors by Lin Carter. Arthur Machen on the Kabbalah The Black Fool's Speech by W.B. Yeats. Reader Feedback about Arthur Machen