Off course nowhere on the cover of this collection did I see these words but I fear they are now indelibly inscribed on my mind, the bumpier parts of it anyway. Its a weird tale to be sure, this gateway to a Machenesque world of elder gods magics and dangerous folklore. Through him we read things we are not meant to read which in turn makes us see things we are surely not meant to see. Stories delivered in a wordy poetic prose style that those with shorter attention spans may find trying but which lends itself beautifully to a more traditional aural form of storytelling, as in fireside tales of terror. Although Arthur Machen was Welsh he shares much in common with Irish storytellers, whose powers of storytelling were developed in a golden age of magic words, before the power of the storyteller was forever diminished by the arrival of the printed word, one of the great steps forward in the enlightenment and the age of reason. For sure the good endowed far outweighs that which was lost but things were lost for sure, such as the special powers which came with an aural tradition.
The best place to encounter these stories is most definately the hearthside, with hungry flame and crackling wood shifting as it sparkily releases its locked in energies. I read it on a train, on Christmas Eve, traveling on the Enterprise Train between Belfast and Dublin. some one further down the nearly empty carriage was listening to folk music on some portable device and was forlornly singing along to it. I glimpsed a grey haired dark eyed face observing me impassively from across the aisle. It was my own reflection mirrored against the dark countryside which sped by barely glimpsed. Was I watching myself to observe my own reactions to what I was reading and having seen none lost interest?
Just how reliable are our own reflections anymore?
The other stories in this dover Thrift collection were The White People, The Inmost Light and The Shining Pyramid. Great stories birthed in the mystical bracken of more ancient times that feel more real to me than any of the desert religions and faiths which ursurped their position in the lives of the misty past we are rooted in. from a time before magic went to sleep bedded down in mossy imaginings in the true grey havens of our shared subconscious.
