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I've been reading Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams lately. I had bought it and started to read it because I'd seen someone recommend it to any student interested in traditional witchcraft, not because it directly treated of such (especially since it was first published in 1907), but thematically.
On page 220 of 248 I've yet to see why this is supposed to be particularly good reading for that arena of interest (it seems mostly to have the character of a long, rambling word-painting, as many works from the era do, which has some occult interest but little that I would say was really valuable to the study of witchcraft), but I've come across two passages that had meaning for me.
First, just for amusement:
"[Lucian] recognized that the illusions of the child only differed from those of the man in that they were more picturesque; belief in fairies and belief in the Stock Exchange as bestowers of happiness were equally vain, but the latter form of faith was ugly as well as inept."
Second, for painfully striking home and describing my own feelings:
"Each of these strange houses that he passed was identified in his mind with his own vanished home; all was prepared and ready as in the old days, but he was shut out, judged and condemned to wander in the frozen mist, with weary feet, anguished and forlorn, and they that would pass from within to help him could not, neither could he pass to them. Again, for the hundredth time, he came back to the sentence: he could not gain the art of letters and he had lost the art of humanity. He saw the vanity of all his thoughts; he was an ascetic caring nothing for warmth and cheerfulness and the small comforts of life, and yet he allowed his mind to dwell on such things. If one of those passers-by, who walked briskly, eager for home, should have pitied him by some miracle and asked him to come in, it would have been worse than useless, yet he longed for pleasures that he could not have enjoyed. It was if he were come to a place of torment, where they who could not drink longed for water, where they who could feel no warmth shuddered in the eternal cold."
This latter passage sparked a number of thoughts which I will detail in another post.
On page 220 of 248 I've yet to see why this is supposed to be particularly good reading for that arena of interest (it seems mostly to have the character of a long, rambling word-painting, as many works from the era do, which has some occult interest but little that I would say was really valuable to the study of witchcraft), but I've come across two passages that had meaning for me.
First, just for amusement:
"[Lucian] recognized that the illusions of the child only differed from those of the man in that they were more picturesque; belief in fairies and belief in the Stock Exchange as bestowers of happiness were equally vain, but the latter form of faith was ugly as well as inept."
Second, for painfully striking home and describing my own feelings:
"Each of these strange houses that he passed was identified in his mind with his own vanished home; all was prepared and ready as in the old days, but he was shut out, judged and condemned to wander in the frozen mist, with weary feet, anguished and forlorn, and they that would pass from within to help him could not, neither could he pass to them. Again, for the hundredth time, he came back to the sentence: he could not gain the art of letters and he had lost the art of humanity. He saw the vanity of all his thoughts; he was an ascetic caring nothing for warmth and cheerfulness and the small comforts of life, and yet he allowed his mind to dwell on such things. If one of those passers-by, who walked briskly, eager for home, should have pitied him by some miracle and asked him to come in, it would have been worse than useless, yet he longed for pleasures that he could not have enjoyed. It was if he were come to a place of torment, where they who could not drink longed for water, where they who could feel no warmth shuddered in the eternal cold."
This latter passage sparked a number of thoughts which I will detail in another post.
