How Can One Disentangle From Their Tapestry Web The Different Threads
Of A Spell?
And even if one could, if one could hold them up, and
explain, "The cause of the spell is that this comes in contact with
this, and that this, which I show you, blends with, fades into, this,"
how could it advantage any one?
Nothing could be made clearer, nothing
be really explained. The ineffable is, and must ever remain, something
remote and mysterious.
And so one may say many things of this painted chamber of Philae, and
yet never convey, perhaps never really know, the innermost cause of
its charm. In it there is obvious beauty of form, and a seizing beauty
of color, beauty of sunlight and shadow, of antique association. This
turquoise blue is enchanting, and Isis was worshipped here. What has
the one to do with the other? Nothing; and yet how much! For is not
each of these facts a thread in the tapestry web of the spell? The
eyes see the rapture of this very perfect blue. The imagination hears,
as if very far off, the solemn chanting of priests and smells the
smoke of strange perfumes, and sees the long, aquiline nose and the
thin, haughty lips of the goddess. And the color becomes strange to
the eyes as well as very lovely, because, perhaps, it was there - it
almost certainly was there - when from Constantinople went forth the
decree that all Egypt should be Christian; when the priests of the
sacred brotherhood of Isis were driven from their temple.
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