Page 164

(1) "I think (writes Professor  Dhorme) that the pseudo- hieroglyphic texts of Byblos date from the period of Amenopsis IV ( that is to say, ca. 1375 B.C. - D.D.).

Page 165  

" (7)  The engravers or scribes of Byblos gave to the hieroglyphic signs meanings proper to their tongue, without taking  into consideration their origin. The texts are in pure Phoenician.                  
( 8)  My starting- point was the last line of the tablet c (here, Fig. 82, 2), in which the last sign written seven times is a numeral (3 + 40 or 3 + 4 ), preceded by the word b sh n t,"in the years." Hence, nkh sh, "bronze," in the first line: mzbh, "altar," in the 6th line; btmz, "in Tammuz," in the 14th line, etc., etc.

Page 166

"Durer's engraving 'Melancholia' shows the angel of Saturn,symbolizing an individual suffering from acute
melancholia. On the wall behind the angel is a 'magical square' made up of 16 separate numbers in four rows of four.
A 'magical square'is one in which the numbers in any particular row, whether across, perpendicular or diagonal, add up to the same figure. In the case of the square shown in Durer's engraving the signifi-cant number is 34. The reason for this is explained below."



"The four rows across are:

4 9 5 16

+ + + +

14 7 11 2

+ + + +

15 6 10 3

+ + + +

1 12 8 13

= = = =

34 34 34 34

"Similarly the four perpendicular rows are:

                                                                                                                 
"And the two diagonals are 16 + 11 + 6 + 1   ( = 34 )  and  13 + 10 +  7 + 4  ( = 34)
The fact that all the rows of figures in this 16-figured square add up to 34

/ Page 167/

is not the only interesting thing about it from the point of view of the numerologist. Thus,
the 16 figures
In the square add up to 136, and 1 + 3 + 6 = 10,which becomes one (1 + 0 ),"
"...Again the totals of the four perpendicular, four, four horizontal, and two diagonal rows add up to
340, which reduces to 7 ( 3 + 4 + 0), a number which has, for millenia, been thought to possess
mystical properties.
    The square which has been analysed above and which was incorpor-ated by Durer into his
'Melancholia engraving is, in fact, referred to by some numerologists as 'the magical square of Jupiter'..."
"Albrecht Durer included this square in his engraving as a reflection of the belief that its mere presence
in the room occupied by a person suffer-ing from depression would help to lift that person's spirits.
Similarly - but conversely it was believed that the magical square of Saturn
(signifi-cant number, 15) shown below:"
                                                                                                                    
4        9       2
3        5       7
8        1       6

would 'bring down to earth' someone suffering from maniacal exalta-tion.
      In the present day the idea that figured squares may possess occult powers seem very odd indeed to
most of us, but three or four centuries ago such beliefs were commonplace among those who concerned
themselves with the mystic power of numbers."

There are three letters in God said ZedAliz and four in Gods and four  +  three are seven

Page 166

"A 'magical square'is one in which the numbers in any particular row, whether across, perpendicular or
diagonal, add up to the same figure. In the case of the square shown in Durer's engraving
the signifi-cant number is      34.."

The point of no return writ the scribe



      34
    3 + 4 = 7
The number of letters in 34
 Thirty Four
     6        4
     6 + 4 = 10
Number of letters in 3 and 4
 Three  Four
     5   +    4   = Nine

Penguin Classics Rear page comment /

"...The Magic Mountain is in Mann's own words 'a dialectic novel'.
'The setting'... 'is a sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps; and it is into this rarefied and extra-mundane
atmosphere, devoted to and organized in the service of ill-health, that young Hans Castorp comes,
intending at first to stay for three weeks but remaining seven years. With him are a cosmopolitan
collection of people: an Italian liberal, a Jew turned Jesuit, a doctor, a seductive Russian woman, and
his cousin Joachim who desperately longs for action and returns to the 'lower realities' of the world, only coming back to the sanatorium to die. Their occupation is discussion, and in this they indulge relentlessly and with an Olympian arrogance and detachment from the outer world..."

Page 10

Page 653

"...Edhin Krokowski's lectures had in the swift passage of the years taken an unexpected turn His researches, which dealt with psycho-analysis and the dream-life of humanity, had always had a subterranean, not to say catacombish character;but now by a transition so gradual that one scarcely marked it, they had passed over to the frankly supernatural, and his fortnightly lectures in the dining-room - the prime attraction of the house, the pride of the prospectus, delivered in a drawling foreign voice, in frock coat and sandals from behind a little covered table, to the rapt and motionless Berghof audience-
these lectures no longer treated of the disguised activities of love and the retransformation of the illness into the conscious emotion  - these lectures no longer treated of the disguised activities of love and the retransformation of the illness into the conscious emotion. They had gone on to the ex-traordinary phenomena of hypnotism and somnambulism, telep-athy, "dreaming true" and second sight; the marvels of hysteria, the expounding of which widened the philosophic horizon to such an extent that suddenly before the listener's eyes would glitter

/ Page 654 /

darkly puzzles like that of the relation of matter to the psychical, yes even the puzzle of life itself, which it appeared, was easier to approach by uncanny, even morbid paths than by the way of health..."
"... The field of his study had always been those wide, dark tracts of the human soul, which one had been used to call the subconsciousness, though they might perhaps be better called the superconsciousness, since from them sometimes emanates a know-ingness beyond anything of which the conscious intelligence is capable, and giving rise to the hypothesis that there may subsist connexions and associations between the lowest and least illumined regions of the individual soul and a wholly knowing All-soul. The province of the subconscious,"occult" in the proper sense of the word, very soon shows itself to be occult in the narrower sense as well, and forms one of the sources whence flow the phenomena we have agreed to characterize But that is not all. Whoever recognizes a symptom of organic disease as an effect of the conscious soul-life of forbidden and hystericized emotions, recognizes the creative force of the psychical within the material - a force which one is inclined to claim as a second source of magic phenomena. Idealist of the pathological, not to say patho-logical idealist, he sees himself at the point of departure of certain trains of thought which will shortly issue in the problem of existence, that is to say in the problem of the relation between spirit and matter. The materialist, son of a philosophy of sheer animal vigour can never be dissuaded from explaining spirit as a mere phosphorescent product of matter; whereas the idealist, proceed-ing from the principle of creative hysteria, is inclined, and very readily resolved, to answer the question of primacy in the exactly opposite sense. Take it all in all, there is here nothing less than the old strife over which was first, the chicken or the egg - a strife which assumes its extraordinary complexity from the fact

/ Page 655  /

that no egg is thinkable except one laid by a hen, and no hen that has not crept out of a previously postulated egg.
      Well then, it was such matters as these that Dr. Krokowski discussed in his lectures. He came upon organically, legitimately - that fact cannot be over-emphasized. We will even add that he had already begun to treat of them before the arrival of Ellen Brand upon the scene of action, and the progress of matters into the empirical and experimental stage.
      Who was Ellen Brand? We had almost forgotten that our readers do not know her, so familiar to us is the name. Who was she? Hardly anybody,at first glance. Asweet young thing of nineteen years a flaxen haired Dane,..."  
"...Now this little Fraulein Brand, this friendly-natured little Danish bicycle-rider and stoop shouldered young counter jumper, had things about her, of which no one could have dreamed,..."
"...and these it became Dr. Krokowski's affair to lay bare in all their extraordinariness.
      The learned man received his first hint in the course of  a general evening conversation. Various guessing games were being played; hidden objects found by the aid of strains from the piano, which swelled higher when one approached the right spot, and died away when the seeker strayed away on a false scent. Then one person went outside and waited while it was decided what task he should perform;
as, exchanging the rings of two selected persons; inviting someone to dance by making three bows before
her; taking a

/ Page 656 /

designated book from the shelves and presenting it to this or that person - and more of the same kind. It is worthy of remark that such games had not been the practice among the Bergof guests. Who had introduced them was not afterwards easy to decide;certainly it had not been Elly Brand, yet they had begun since her arrival.
     The participants were nearly all old friends of ours, among them Hans Castorp. They showed themselves apt in greater or lesser degree - some of them were entirely incapable. But Elly Brand's talent was soon seen to be surpassing,striking unseemly. Her power of finding hidden articles was passed over with ap-plause and admiring laughter. But when it came to a concerted series of actions they were struck dumb. She did whatever they had covenanted she should do, did it directly she entered the room; with a gentle smile, without hesitation, without the help of music."
"...She had been listening.
      She reddened.With a sense of relief at her embarrassment they began in chorus to chide her; but she assured them she had not blushed in that sense. She had not listened, not outside, not at the door, truly, truly she had not!
      Not outside not at the door?
      "Oh, no" - she begged their pardon. She had listened after she came back in the room she could not help it.  
      How not help it?
      Something whispered to her, she said it whispered and told her what to do, softly but quite clearly and distinctly.
      Obviously that was an admission. In a certain sense she was aware, she had confessed, that she had cheated. She should have said beforehand that she was no good to play such a game, if she had the advantage of being whispered to . A competition loses all sense if one of the competitors has unnatural advantages over the others.In a sporting sense, she was straightway disqualified - but disqualified in a way that made chills run up and down their backs. With one voice they called on Dr.Krokowski, they ran to fetch him and he came."

Page 657 /

" ...He asked questions and they told him. Ah there she was - come my child, is it true, what they are telling me?And he laid his hand on her head, as scarcely anyone could resist doing. Here was much ground for interest, none at all for consternation..."
"...Immediately there-after he expressed his opinion that everything was in perfect order, and sent the overwrought company off to the evening cure, with the exception of Elly Brand, with whom he said he wished to have a little chat
     A little chat. Quite so. But nobody felt easy at the word,it was just the sort of word Krokowski the merry comrade used by preference, and it gave them cold shivers..."                
Like everybody else, Hans Ca-storp had at his time of life, heard this and that about the mys-teries of nature, or the supernatural.
"... But the world of the supernatural, though theoretically and objectively he had recognised its existence, had never come close to him, he had never had any practical experience of it.

Page  658

"... But the "placet experiri"planted in Hans Castorp's mind by one who would surely and
re-soundingly have reprobated any experimentation at all in this field, was planted firmly enough. By little and little his morality and his curiosity approached and overlapped, or had probably always done so;
the pure curiosity of inquiring youth on its travels, which had already brought him pretty close to the forbidden field,what time he tasted the mystery of personality, and for which he had even claimed the justification that it too was almost military in character, in that it did not weakly avoid the forbidden,
when it presented itself. Hans Castorp came to the final resolve not to avoid, but to stand his ground if it came to more developments in the case of Ellen Brand.
    Dr Krokowski had issued a strict prohibition against any fur-ther experimentation on the part of the laity upon Fraulein Brand' mysterious gifts. He had pre-empted the child for his scientific use, held sittings with her in his analytical oubliette, hypnotized her, it was reported, in an effort to arouse and discipline her slum-bering potentialities, to make researches into her previous psychic life. Hermine Kleefeld, who mothered and patronized the child, tried to do the same; and under the seal of secrecy a certain num-ber of facts were ascertained, which under the same seal she spread throughout the house, even unto the porter's lodge.She learned for example, that he who - or that which - whispered the answers into the little one's ear at games was called Holger. This Holger was the departed and etherealized spirit of a young man, the familiar, something like the guardian angel, of little Elly."

Page 659  

"...It was learned further, that from her childhood up Ellen had had visions, though at widely
Separated intervals of time; visible and invisible...."  

Page 660

"...Hans Castorp, when Frauleinl Kleefeld related this to him, ex-pressed the view that there was some sort of sense in it: the apparition here, the death there - after all, they did hang together.And he consented to be present at a spiritualistic sitting,a table tipping, glass-moving game which they had determined to undertake with Ellen Brand, behind Dr Kronowski's back, and in defiance of his jealous prohibition.
     A small and select group assembled for the purpose, their theatre being Fraulein Kleefeld's room. Besides the hostess, Fraulein Brand, and Hans Castorp, there was only Frau Stohr,  Fraulein Levi, Herr Albin, the Czech Wenzel,and Dr.Ting-Fu. In the evening, on the stroke of ten, they gathered privily, and in whispers mustered the apparatus Hermine had provided, consisting of a medium-sized round table without a cloth, placed in the centre of the room, with a wine glass upside-down upon it, the foot in the air. Round the edge of the table, at regular intervals, were placed twenty-six little bone counters, each with a letter of the alphabet written on it in pen and ink.Fraulein Kleefeld served tea, which was gratefully  received, as Frau Stohr and Fraulein Levi,despite the harmlessness of the undertaking, complained of cold feet and palpitations. Cheered by the tea, they took their places about the table, in the rosy twilight dispensed by the pink-shaded table-lamp, as Fraulein Kleefeld, in concession to the mood of the gath-ering, had put out the ceiling light; and each of them laid a finger of his right hand lightly on the foot of the wineglass. This was the prescribed technique.They waited for the glass to move.
     That should happen with ease ,The top of the table was smooth, the rim of the glass well ground, the
pressure of the tremulous fingers, however lightly laid on, certainly unequal, some of it being exerted
vertically, some rather sidewise, and probably in sufficient strength to cause the glass finally to move from its
posi-tion in the centre of the table. On the periphery of its field it would come in contact with the marked
counters ; and if the letters on these, when put together, made words that conveyed any sort of sense, the
resultant phenomena would be complex and contaminate, a mixed product of conscious, half-conscious,
and unconscious elements; the actual desire and pressure of some, to whom the wish was father to the act,
whether or not they were aware of what they did ; and the secret acquiescence of some dark stratum in the soul
of the generality, a common if subterranean effort toward seemingly strange experiences, in which the sup-

/ Page 661 /

pressed self of the individual was more or less involved, most bly, of course, that of little Elly.
This they all knew be- forehand - Hans Castorp even blurted out something of the sort ,after his fashion, as
they sat and waited. The ladies palpitation and cold extremities the forced hilarity of the men, arose from
their knowledge that they were come together in the night to embark on an unclean traffic with their own
natures, a fearsome prying into unfamiliar regions of themselves, and that they were awaiting the appearance
of those illusory or half-realities which we call magic. It was almost entirely for form's sake' and came about
quite conventionally, that they asked the spirits of the departed to speak to them through the movement of
the glass. Herr Albin offered to be spokesman and deal with such spirits as mani-fested themselves - he had
already had a little experience at seances.
     Twenty minutes or more went by. The whisperings had run dry, the first tension relaxed. They supported
their right arms at the elbow with their left hands. The Czech Wenzel was almost dropping off. Ellen Brand
rested her finger lightly on the glass and directed her pure, childlike gaze away into the rosy light from the
table lamp.
     Suddenly the glass tipped, knocked,and ran away from under their hands. They had difficulty in keeping
their fingers on it. It pushed over to the very edge of the table, ran along it for a space, then slanted back nearly
to the middle; tapped again and remained quiet  
     They were all startled ; favourably, yet with some alarm. Frau Stohr whimpered that she would like to stop,
but they told her she should have thought of that before, she must just keep quiet now. Things seemed in train.
They stipulated that, in order to answer yes or no the glass need not run to the letters, but might give one or two
knocks instead.
     Is there an Intelligence present? Herr Albin asked, severly directing his gaze over their heads into vacancy. After some hesitation, the glass tipped and said yes.
" What is your name?" Herr Albin asked, almost gruffly, and emphasized his energetic speech by shaking his head.
     The glass pushed off. It ran with resolution from one point to another, executing a zig zag by returning each time a little distance towards the centre of the table. It visited H, O,and L, then seemed exhausted; but pulled itself together again and sought out the G, and E, and the R. .Just as they thought. It was Holger in person, the spirit Holger, who understood such matters..."

Page 662

"...He was there, floating in the air, above the heads of the little circle. What should they do with him? A certain diffidence possessed them, they took counsel behind there hands, what they were to ask him.
Herr Albin decided to question him about his position and occupation in life, and did so, as before, severely, with frowning brows; as though he were cross-examining counsel.
       The glass was silent awhile. Then it staggered over to the P, zigzagged and returned to O. Great suspense.
Dr. Ting-Fu gig-gled and said Holger must be a poet. Frau Stohr began to laugh hysterically; which the glass appeared to resent, for after indi-cating the E it stuck and went no further. However it seemed fairly clear that
Dr.Ting-Fu was right.
       What the deuce, so Holger was a poet? The glass revived, and superfluously, in apparent pridefulness, rapped yes. A lyric poet, Fraulein Kleefeld asked? She said ly - ric, as Hans Casorp in- voluntarily noted. Holger was disinclined to specify. He gave no new answer, merely spelled out again, this time quickly and un-hesitatingly, the word poet, adding the T he had left off before.
       Good, then a poet. The constraint increased. It was a con-straint that in reality had to do with manifestations on the part of their own inner, their subjective selves, but which, because of the illusory, half-actual conditions of these manifestations, referred itself to the objective and external. Did Holger feel at home, and content, in his present state? Dreamily the glass spelled out tranquil. Ah tranquil. It was not a word one would have hit upon oneself, but after the glass spelled it out, they found it well chosen and probable. And how long had Holger been in this tranquil state? The answer to this was again something one would never have thought of, and dreamily answered;it was "A hastening while" Very good. As a piece of ventriloquistic poesy from the Beyond, Hans Castorp, in particular, found it capital. A "hastening while" was the time element Hol-ger lived in: and of course had to answer as it were in parables, having very likely forgotten how to use earthly terminology and standards of exact measurement. Fraulein Levi confessed her curi-osity to know how he looked, or had looked, more or less. Had he been a handsome youth? Herr Albin said she might ask him her-self, he found the request beneath his dignity. So she asked if the spirit had fair hair.
" Beautiful, brown, brown curls" the glass responded, deib-erately spelling out the word brown twice. There was much merri-

/ Page 663 /

ment over this. The ladies said they were in love with him. They kissed their hands at the ceiling. Dr. Ting-Fu, giggling said Mister Holger must be rather vain.
    Ah, what a fury the glass fell into! It ran like mad about the table, quite at random, rocked with rage, fell over and rolled into Frau Stohr's lap who stretched out her arms and looked down at it pallid with fear. They apologetically conveyed it back to its station, and rebuked the chinaman. How had he dared to say such a thing - did he see what his indiscretion had led to? Suppose Hol-ger was up and off in his wrath, and refused to say another word! They addressed themselves to the glass with the extreme of cour-tesy. Would Holger not make up some poetry for them? He had said he was a poet, before he went to hover in the hastening while.Ah, how they all yearned to hear him versify! They would love it so!
    And lo, the good glass yielded and said yes! Truly there was something placable and good-humoured about the way it tapped. And then Holger the spirit began to poetize, and kept it up, circumstantially, without pausing for thought, for dear knows how long . It seemed impossible to stop him. And what a suprising poem it was, this ventriloquist effort, delivered to the admiration of the circle - stuff of magic, and shoreless as the sea of which it largely dealt. Sea-wrack in heaps and bands along the narrow strand of the far flung bay; an islanded coast, girt by steep, cliffy dunes. Ah see the dim green distance faint and die into eternity, while beneath broad veils of mist in dull carmine and milky radiancethe summer sun delays! to sink. No word can utter how and when the watery mirror turned from silver into untold changeful colour-play, to bright or pale, to spreading, opaline and moonstone gleams or how, mysteriously as it came, the voiceless magic died away. The sea slumbered  yet the last traces of the sunset linger above and beyond. Until deep in the night it had not grown dark: a ghostly twilight reigns in the pine forrest on the downs, bleaching the sand until it looks like snow. Asimulated winter forest all in silence, save where an owl wings rustling flight. Let us stray here at this hour - so soft the sand beneath our tread , so sublime, so mild the night! Far beneath us the sea respires slowly and murmers a long whisperings in its dream. Does it crave thee to see it again? Step forth to the sallow, glacierlike cliffs of the dunes, and climb quite up into the softness, that runs coolly into thy shoes.The land falls harsh and bushy steeply down to the pebbly shore, and still the parting remnants of the day haunt the edge of the vanishing sky. Lie down here in the sand! How cool as death it is,

/ Page 664 /

how soft as silk, as flour! It flows in a colourless, thin stream from thy hand and makes a dainty little mound besides thee. Doest thou recognize it this tiny flowing ? It is the soundless, tiny stream through the hour-glass, that solemn, fragile toy that adorns the hermit's hut. An open book, a skull, and in its slender frame the double glass, holding a little sand, taken from eternity, to prolong here as time, its troubling, solemn, mysterious essence...    
     Thus Holger the spirit and his lyric improvisation, ranging with weird flights of thought from the familiar
sea-shore to the cell of a hermit and the tools of his mystic contemplation. And there was more; more, human and divine, involved in daring and dreamlike terminology - over which the members of the little circle puzzled endlessly as they spelled it out ;
Scarcely finding time for hurried though rapturous applause, so swiftly did the glass zigzag back and forth, so swiftly the words rollon and on. There was no dis-tant prospect of a period, even at the end of an hour. The glass improvised inexhaustably of the pangs of birth and the first kiss of lovers; the crown of sorrows, the fatherly goodness of God; plunged into the mysteries of creation, lost itself in other times and lands, in interstellar space;even mentioned the Chaldeans and the zodiac; and would most certainly have gone on all night, if the conspiritors had not taken their fingers from the glass, and expressing their gratitude to Holger, told him that must suffice them for the time, it had been wonderful beyond their wildest dreams, it was an everlasting pity there had been no one at hand to take it down, for now it must inevitably be forgotten, yes alas, they had already forgotten most of it, thanks to its quality which made it hard to retain, as dreams are. Next time they must ap-point an amanuesis to take it down, and see how it would look in black and white, and read connectedly. For the moment how-ever, and before Holger withdrew to the tranquillity of his hasten-ing while, it would be better, and certainly most amiable of him, if he would consent to answer a few practical questions. They scarcely as yet knew what, but would he at least be in principle inclined to do so, in his great amiability?
     The answer was yes. But now they discovered a great perplex-ity what should they ask? It was as in the fairy- story, when the fairy or elf grants one question, and there is danger of letting the precious advantage slip through the fingers. There was much in the world much of the future, that seemed worth knowing, yet it was so difficult to choose. At length, as no one seemed able to settle, Hans Castorp, with his finger on the glass, supporting his cheek on his fist, said he would like to know what was to be

/ Page 665 /

the actual length of his stay up here, instead of the three weeks originally fixed.
     Very well since they thought of nothing better, let the spirit out of the fullness of his knowledge answer this chance query. The glass hesitated then pushed off. It spelled out something very queer, which none of them succeeded in fathoming, it made the word , or the syllable Go, and then the word Slanting and then something about Hans Castorp's room. That was to say, through number thirty-four. What was the sense of that"