anticlockwise [love/loves, she/her]

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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 6th, 2023
  • anticlockwise [love/loves, she/her]@hexbear.nettomarxism@hexbear.net•International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties - New General Megathread for the 21st of October 2023English
    3·
    1 year ago

    A young improvisational musician in London experiences a debilitating depression. Her doctor is unable to help her and sends her off on a holiday where she meets a mystical character by the name of Raffello Cellini, an Italian painter who has rediscovered the secret of vivid, lightfast pigments. Cellini offers her a strange potion which immediately puts her into a tranquil slumber, in which she experiences divine visions, which causes her symptoms of neurasthenia to somewhat abate.

    Cellini directs her to take up residence in Paris under the tutelage of Heliobas, a Chaldean Christian and “electric physician” who performs miraculous feats including prophecy, telepathy and animal magnetism. He introduces her to his sister Zara, a sculptor, with whom she enjoys a close friendship, and to Prince Ivan, a rakish figure who pursues an unrequited attraction to Zara. She witnesses Ivan attempt to assault Zara, who repels him with electric power similar to that of an electric eel.

    From this, the protagonist gleans that the arts practised by Heliobas enable the strengthening of a human organ similar to a voltaic pile, granting health and longevity as well as other powers. Heliobas prescribes plant remedies to the heroine, which cause her health to steadily improve and enable her to cultivate these supernatural powers.

    Under the influence of a psychedelic draught, she meets her unnamed guardian angel, who whisks her through infinite solar systems faster than a shooting star while human spirits fly by like gossamer silk. The spirits share with her the secrets of the universe and the nature of Christ, as well as a premonition that Heliobas’s own salvation is in danger. When she awakes, Heliobas bestows upon her his treatise on the “Electric Principle of Christianity,” which is reprinted in the book, as well as a document on the stewardship of her newfound electric powers.

    She witnesses Zara’s death by lightning, which prompts Ivan to challenge Heliobas to a duel, and persuades Heliobas not to kill Ivan. Heliobas leaves Paris, assuring the heroine that they will meet again. In the conclusion, the heroine reflects on what she has learned from Heliobas since the events of the story, asserting a historical basis for crystal healing and other miracles. She states that she expects her story to be received as a fiction, but reaffirms her belief that the universe is electric in nature.