Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

31 The Sixth and Last Sojourn of Beelzebub on the Planet Earth

31.545

“Whereat, with a good-natured smile, he answered me, ‘Of course sugar has no part in this prescription, but instead it does contain a certain percentage of “opium.”’

31.546

“‘Many hundreds of thousands of packets of powder are used here daily all over the country and the opium this powder ought to contain is, as you know, no cheap thing and if real opium were put into this powder, the opium alone would cost us pharmacists six or eight kopecks a packet, and we have to sell this powder for three to five kopecks. Besides, even if all the opium from the whole of the globe were collected the position would be the same, there would not be enough for our Russia alone.

31.546-7

“‘Of course not,’ laughingly replied this good acquaintance of mine. ‘These things can be detected only by sight and taste; and this Dover’s powder which we make, however you turn it and under whatever microscope you examine it, is in color the same as it should be according to the genuine prescription of this Doctor Dover. And as to taste, it is absolutely impossible thanks chiefly to the proportion of quinine which we put into it, to distinguish it from the genuine powder made with the real opium.’

31.551

“‘For instance, according to the prescription of Doctor Dover himself opium must enter into the composition of his powder.

31.551

“‘And you know the properties of opium? If a man takes it often enough even in small doses, his organism soon gets so accustomed to it that later, if he ceases dosing himself, he suffers intensely.

31.551

“‘But from the powder made from our prescription this would never happen, since it contains none of that opium or any other substance harmful to the organism.

31.553

“One of these three medical means which does sometimes nevertheless produce a useful reaction is that substance, or, more strictly speaking, those active elements entering into it, which the beings of Maralpleicie learned how to obtain from the plant poppy and which they were the first to call opium.

33 Beelzebub as Professional Hypnotist

33.582

“One of these pernicious organic habits was what is called there the ‘smoking of opium,’ and the other was the ‘chewing of anasha,’ or, as it is otherwise named, ‘hashish.’

33.582

“They obtain this opium as you already know from the plant poppy, and hashish from a surplanetary formation there called ‘Chakla’ or ‘hemp.’

33.582

“Here among the beings of Russian Turkestan, one of the said pernicious habits’ or as they themselves call them ‘vices,’ namely, the smoking of opium, was very rare, and the chewing of anasha was even rarer, but on the other hand, the use of what is called ‘Russian vodka’ flourished luxuriantly there.

33.583

“From the use of the said vodka, not only does the psyche of the ill-fated three-brained beings there become, just as from ‘opium’ and ‘anasha’ also, utterly ‘nonsensical’ but in addition certain important parts of their planetary body also gradually completely degenerate.

“Here I may say, my boy, that it was just then, at the beginning of these activities of mine among your favorites, that I instituted for the purpose of better conducting my investigations in the domain of their psyche, those ‘statistics’ of mine which later on gradually interested certain most Very Saintly Cosmic Individuals of a higher gradation of Reason.

40 Beelzebub Tells How People Learned and Again Forgot About the Fundamental Cosmic Law of Heptaparaparshinokh

40.825-6

“They then began to investigate that totality of cosmic substances which still before this your favorites had learned to obtain there from the mentioned Polormedekhtian plant, and which they named opium, which then denoted in the speech of the beings of that group ‘dream-maker.’

40.826

“These two great brothers then began to investigate this opium in consequence of the fact that they as well as many other three-brained beings of that time noticed that, on the introduction into themselves of a certain species of this mass, every painful sensation temporarily disappeared.

40.826

“During these researches of theirs, they first of all noticed that this same opium consists of seven independent crystallizations with definite subjective properties.

40.827

“Many centuries after the period of the planetary existence of these terrestrial great learned beings, now the Saints Choon-Kil-Tez and Choon-Tro-Pel, when I happened for one of my elucidations to become acquainted in detail with the history of their activities, it appeared that when they had become convinced beyond doubt that such a totality of cosmic substances as is named Opium consists of a whole range of compounds with seven ‘diversely-subjectively-propertied-active-elements,’ they then began with the same aim to investigate many other ‘cosmic results’ or, as is said there, ‘phenomena,’ which proceeded in their environment. But later, in these investigations of theirs, they confined themselves only to three, namely, to this same Opium, to what is called the ‘white-ray’ and to what is called ‘sound.’

40.829

“And for the definition of the active elements of the Polormedekhtian product called opium, they added only the number of their, what is called, ‘specific gravity.’

40.832

“By means of this apparatus Alla-attapan, they then clearly proved to themselves and to others that in the very essence of all these three ‘transitory results’ of cosmic processes, and, namely, in the Polormedekhtian product called there opium, in the white-ray and in sound there are the same properties, and, namely, there are in all these three outwardly quite different cosmic phenomena precisely the same what are called ‘actualizing constructions,’ that is to say, for their manifestness there are in them precisely the same ‘mutually-acting-law-conformablenesses,’ and in all three of these outwardly different apparently independent manifestations the functioning of these ‘mutually-acting-law-conformablenesses’ have precisely the same action on each other as they have in their own manifestations, that is to say, the Dooczako of any one result acts on the corresponding Dooczako of another, precisely the same as it functions in that Dooczako which is one of the seven aspects of this whole cosmic result.

40.836

“On the lower, smaller ball just opposite that part of the Loosochepana through which the positive colored rays had already passed, a cavity of a special form was made, into which either the whole of the said Polormedekhtian product named opium or single active elements required for the experiments were placed during the experiments.

40.840

“For instance, a corresponding colored ray directed upon any active element of opium transformed it into another active element which corresponded in its newly acquired vibrations to the vibrations of the colored ray which had acted on the given active element.

40.840

“Further, if any colored ray were made to pass through any active element of opium, then, passing through it, this same ray took on another color, namely, that color the vibrations of which corresponded to the vibrations of this active element; or if any colored ray were made to pass through the manifested what are called ‘wave-of-sound-vibrations’ still acting at that given moment from any corresponding string of the Dzendvokh, then, passing through this wave, it took on another color corresponding to the vibrations manifested by means of the given string.

40.840

“Or finally, if a definite colored ray and definite sound-vibrations from the strings were simultaneously directed upon any active element of opium from among those composing this Polormedekhtian product and which had a smaller number of vibrations than the totality of vibrations of the colored ray and of the said sound, then this active element was transformed into such another active element of opium the number of whose vibrations exactly corresponded to the totality of the numbers of the said two differently caused vibrations, and so on and so forth.

40.844

“Among those unimportant fragments which automatically reached most of the contemporary favorites of yours there are, firstly, several methods of separating from the Polormedekhtian product named opium certain of its independent active elements; secondly, what is called ‘the law of combination of colors’; and thirdly, what is called the ‘seven-toned scale of sound.’

40.844

“As regards the first of the enumerated three fragments of the practical results attained by the Reason of three-brained beings of this ancient China and which reached to your contemporary favorites, it is necessary to tell you that in consequence of the fact that certain of the constituent parts of this whole product called there opium came from then on—thanks to the special properties of their agreeable action on the abnormal general-psyche of the beings—to be continuously used by them, therefore the knowledge of many methods of getting certain of its independent active elements began to be transmitted from generation to generation and reached down to your contemporary favorites.

40.845-6

“Of the number of nearly four hundred active elements of opium which then became known to the great brothers, knowledge of how to obtain only forty-two active elements has reached the contemporary ‘chemists of the Earth’ and these active elements have now the following names there:

[1] Morphine
[2] Protopine
[3] Lanthopine
[4] Porphiroksine
[5] Opium or narcotine
[6] Paramorphine or thebaine
[7] Phormine or pseudophormine
[8] Metamorphine
[9] Gnoskopine
[10] Oilopine
[11] Atropine
[12] Pirotine
[13] Dephteropine
[14] Tiktoutine
[15] Kolotine
[16] Khaivatine
[17] Zoutine
[18] Trotopine
[19] Laudanine
[20] Laudanosine
[21] Podotorine
[22] Arkhatozine
[23] Tokitozine
[24] Liktonozine
[25] Makanidine
[26] Papaverine
[27] Krintonine
[28] Kodomine
[29] Kolomonine
[30] Koilononine
[31] Katarnine
[32] Hydrokatarnine
[33] Opianine (mekonine)
[34] Mekonoiozine
[35] Pistotorine
[36] Phykhtonozine
[37] Codeine
[38] Nartzeine
[39] Pseudocodeine
[40] Microparaine
[41] Microtebaine
[42] Messaine

40.846

“The last time I was on your planet I heard that the contemporary learned beings of the community Germany found, as it were, methods of separating several other independent active elements from opium.

41 The Bokharian Dervish Hadji-Asvatz-Troov

41.917

Note: If anyone is very interested in the ideas presented in this chapter, I advise him to read, without fail, my proposed book entitled The Opiumists, if, of course, for the writing of this book there will be sufficient French armagnac and Khaizarian bastourma.

THE AUTHOR

42 Beelzebub in America

42.987

“‘And every normal Persian—normal in the sense of not being under the influence of tambak, alcohol, or opium, the consumption of which has in recent times been unfortunately spreading among us ever more and more—can always unmistakedly tell which woman represents a “woman-mother” and which a “woman-female,” that is, a prostitute.

42.987

“‘For example, even suppose it should happen somehow or other that the youngest and most beautiful woman of any district should find herself in the same bed with a man of the same district, this Persian man, even with all his willingness, provided, I repeat, that he were not under the influence of opium or alcohol, would be organically unable to treat her as a female.