“Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.” Kubla Khan...

I like prefaces as little as my readers can. If this so proverbially unnoticed part of the book catch any eye, the glance that it gives will of course travel no farther to find my apology for making t...

The singular energy and scope of imagination which characterize all Oriental tales, and especially that great typical representative of the species, the Arabian Nights, were my ceaseless marvel from e...

About the shop of my friend Anderson the apothecary there always existed a peculiar fascination, which early marked it out as my favorite lounging-place. In the very atmosphere of the establishment, l...

On reaching the porch of the physician’s house, I rang the bell, but immediately forgot whom to ask for. No wonder; I was on the steps of a palace in Milan⁠—no (and I laughed at myself for the blunder...

The moment that I closed my eyes a vision of celestial glory burst upon me. I stood on the silver strand of a translucent, boundless lake, across whose bosom I seemed to have been just transported. A ...

“You will never take it again, will you?” “Oh no, I never expect to; I am satisfied with my one successful experiment.” It was the fair lady of the crochet-needle who asked me the question as, a few d...

It may perhaps be not altogether a fanciful classification to divide every man’s life into two periods, the locomotive and the static. Restless fluidity always characterizes the childish mind in its h...

In this vision the conception of our human duality was presented to me in a manner more striking than ever before. Hitherto it had been more a suggestion than a proof; now it appeared in the light of ...

It may be thought strange that, after that experience of infinite agony which I have last related, I should ever take hashish again. “Surely,” it will be said, “another experiment with the drug would ...

The judgment that must be passed upon the hashish life in retrospect is widely different from the one which I formed during its progress. Now the drug, with all its revelation of interior mysteries, i...

Once more at the table I was seized by the hand of the hashish genie. Dinner was nearly over, and I escaped into the street without being suspected. Street did I say? Ah no! That conventional synonym ...

It was shortly after the last vision which has been related that I first experienced those sufferings which are generated by a dose of hashish taken to prolong the effects of a preceding one. Through ...

Of all experiences in the hashish state, my indoctrination into spiritual facts through means of symbols was the most wonderful to myself. In other visions I have reveled in more delicious beauty, and...

At what precise time in my experience I began to doubt the drug being, with me, so much a mere experiment as a fascinating indulgence, I do not now recollect. It may be that the fact of its ascendency...

Waiting until the next day at evening I took a moderate bolus, say twenty-five grains, and repaired to the theatre. In the action of the pieces which were performed I lived as really as I had ever liv...

The hemisphere of sky which walls us in is something more than a mere product of the laws of sight. It is our shield from unbearable visions. Within our little domain of view, girt by the horizon and ...

In the agonies of hashish, which now became more and more frequent, a new element began to develop itself toward a terrible symmetry, which afterward made it effective for the direst spiritual evil. T...

Having been threatened many times with an utter isolation from human kind, it now became my practice, the moment that I began to feel the hashish change come over me, to run for sympathy to some conge...

For days after the last-mentioned suffering I adhered sacredly to my vow. Fortified by the sympathy of my friends, nerved by the images of a fearful memory, staying myself on the Divine, I battled aga...

It was during this period that I spent a short time at Niagara. In the hurry of setting out upon my journey thither, I left behind that traveling companion, which was more indispensable than any artic...

One morning, having taken my ordinary dose without yet feeling its effect, I strolled into a bookseller’s to get the latest number of Putnam’s. Turning over its leaves as it lay upon the counter, the ...

During the progress of the events which have hitherto occupied my narrative, I had become a graduate of my college. Willing for a while to defer the prosecution of more immediately professional studie...

At the time of my greatest need, I was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of one man whose sympathy was, for months of trial, one of my strongest supports. Half discouraged in my attempts at sel...

As the months went on, the fervor of my longing toward the former hashish life in some measure passed away, and in general the fascination to return did not present itself so much in the form of pinin...

It is not to be supposed, however, that, with all these expedients, I was now leading a life of quite tolerable calm; on the whole, rather enviable for its ideal diversions, and free from most of thos...

There are those philosophers who, in running the boundary-line between the healthful and depraved propensities of our nature, have left the longing for stimulus on the condemned side. Notwithstanding ...

I am not aware of the existence of any in this part of the world who are now in the habit of using hashish. Those persons to whom, at their request, I formerly administered it, for experiment’s sake, ...

It is the author of “The Golden Dagon,” one of our most original and interesting American books of travel, who gives to Buddha, as the deity of eternal absorption, the most appropriate title with whic...

Gentle reader⁠—not to make this one of my speculations more labyrinthine than nature, for I hate unnatural mysteries⁠—I will not, after the manner of an oracle, leave my title undefined until the sequ...

Of all the infinitely plastic shapes of language, perhaps the most Protean is that word “The World.” Monosyllable as it is, it bears upon its back a load of incongruous meanings immense enough to have...

The work referred to is a monograph upon Trance and human Hybernation, by Dr. James Braid, of Edinburgh, and published by John Church, Princes Street, Soho, London. Besides the copy now in my hands, t...