natural manner, admitted the Luciferian Fakirs as visitors, the
Luciferian Fakirs admitted the members of the York Rite to their
conventions, and they all bedevilled one another.

It would be idle to suppose that F... Campbell was not at Pondicherry on
business when the doctor chanced to arrive, and in the course of the
afternoon the latter was taken by Ramassam to a house of ordinary
appearance, into which they were admitted by another Indian, who, of
course, like the guide, spoke good French. Through the greenery of a
garden, the gloom of a well, and the entanglement of certain stairways,
they entered a great dismantled temple devoted to the service of Brahma,
under the unimpressive diminutive of Lucif. The infernal sanctuary had a
statue of Baphomet, identical with that in Ceylon, and the
ill-ventilated place reeked with horrible putrescence. Its noisome
condition was mainly owing to the presence of various fakirs, who,
though still alive, were in advanced stages of putrefaction. Most people
are supposed to go easily and pleasantly to the devil, but these elected
to do so by way of a charnel-house asceticism, and an elaborate system
of self-torture. Some were suspended from the ceiling by a rope tied to
their arms, some embedded in plaster, some stiffened in a circle, some
permanently distorted into the shape of the letter S; some were head
downwards, some in a cruciform position. It was really quite monstrous,
says the doctor, but a native grand master explained, that they had
postured for years in this manner, and one of them for a quarter of a
century.

Fr... John Campbell proceeded to harangue the assembly in ourdou-zaban,
but the doctor comprehended completely, and reports the substance of his
speech, which was violently anti-Catholic in its nature, and especially
directed against missionaries. This finished, they proceeded to the
evocation of Baal-Zeboub, at first by the Conjuration of the Four, but
no fiend appeared. The operation was repeated ineffectually a second
time, and John Campbell determined upon the Grand Rite, which began by
each person spinning on his own axis, and in this manner
circumambulating the temple in procession. Whenever they passed an
embedded fakir, they obtained an incantation from his lips, but still
Baal-Zeboub failed. Thereupon the native Grand Master suggested that the
evocation should be performed by the holiest of all the fakirs, who was
produced from a cupboard more fetid than