THE XIPÉHUZ
A Summary-Translation from the Theosophical Journal
1903
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NOTE |
Next to Jules Verne, the Belgian author J.-H. Rosny, the pen name of brothers Joseph Henri Honoré Boex (1856–1940) and Séraphin Justin François Boex (1859–1948), is perhaps the greatest Francophone science fiction writer. The 1887 novella "The Xipéhuz" is frequently attributed solely to Joseph, under his post-1909 solo pen name of J.-H. Rosny aine, or Sr., though some sources say both writers worked on it. The best evidence suggests that the younger Boex did not begin his partnership with his brother until 1893. The novella anticipates many of the themes found in H. P. Lovecraft, including prehistoric visitation from non-anthropoid extraterrestrial beings, their advanced science and culture, and these beings' indifference to the fate of humanity. These themes also resonated with Theosophists, who saw a reflection of their own "ancient astronauts" in de Rosny's work. Theosophists believed that science fiction writers were subconsciously channeling truths about Theosophy from the astral or etheric plane. The Theosophists made a rough précis of the novella in 1903 for their journal, The Theosophical Review (vol. 31). This translation, covering about twenty percent of the text, and credited only to "A Russian," is reproduced below.
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From the Theosophical Journal
[Among the writings of the now well-known French author, J. N. [sic] de Rosny, there was published, some years ago, a small booklet,* which passed unnoticed as the product of this gifted novelist’s peculiar imagination. On second reading, however, it seems to contain more interesting information and more accurate knowledge than intuitional writers of fiction generally give. If we may venture our own speculation as to the nature of the “beings” which he describes under the name of the Xipéhuz, it would seem that we have to do with creatures of an astral, or at any rate etheric, nature, whom the psychically-gifted early race dwelling on the future site of ancient Babylon, may have been able to see, but not to understand. The colour-language, the shape, the rapid changes of form, the vulnerability by sharp weapons only; the small central star, centre of the higher life-currents—all seem to point to the super-physical nature of the Xipéhuz. M. de Rosny’s speculation is so curious that we have thought the readers of The Review would be interested in a rough résumé of his story.]
* Les Xipéhux, “Société du Mercure de France” (Paris; 1896).
* Les Xipéhux, “Société du Mercure de France” (Paris; 1896).
It was many years before the dawn of the attempts at civilisation from which, much, much later on, arose Babylon, Ecbatana and Nineveh.
A tribe of nomads were camped within the sight of a great forest called Khzur, in those antique realms which still teem with mysteries. They heard that a natural well was hidden in the freshness of its green aisles, and so they arose to go to it. But soon they halted, for a wonderful sight met them on the borders of the forest. This was a great circle of bluish conical forms, transparent, each of a grown man’s size. On their surfaces were a few clear lines, a few dark convolutions. At the base they all had a star. Other forms stood farther off, cylindrical, of a bronze colour, starred with green, all with the mysterious star at the base.
The nomads halted; a strange awe made them unable to stir. Then suddenly there was a noise like the hissing of water poured on fire. The stars trembled; the Forms began to move towards them.
The first who were touched by the Forms fell down as dead. The shock paralysed like lightning, it brought death or a simple swoon. The Forms glided between the trunks of the darkening forest, striking with intelligent choice, with deliberation. The women and children were spared; the men, seized with unspeakable horror, fled and fled. At some distance, however, they perceived that the pursuit had ceased. It was as if a mysterious line had been drawn which the beings could not pass. They were still visible, faintly glimmering under the trees.
Children and wives came running back to them; then one of them took heart and lit a fire and sounded his horn to guide the last stragglers home.
With the first light of day the chief of the tribe went forth to see the peril again. Alone he passed the limit which had stopped the Forms. He saw them still under the forest trees, radiant in the morning sun. Their shapes swayed and changed from disc to spiral, from cone to cylinder. They shone like turquoise and copper and amethyst, and their stars were brighter than the rays of daylight. They saw the chief and stirred. And he, in spite of his courage, had to flee.
The struggle began between the mind of man and the unknown.
Larger and larger grew the area which the mysterious beings could enter in chase of man. At last, all attempts to destroy them failing, man looked into the very face of destruction and awaited the end of his race.
But in the vast desert where later, much later, was to rise Ecbatana, there lived a chief whose name was Bakhun. He had settled down alone, passing his time in the cultivation of the soil, and in meditation on man, the stars and the reality of things. To him, renowned as he was for courage and self-control (some whispered, for magic) the priests and the people went for aid.
He meditated for two days and then went to live near this fatal forest, the Forest of Khzur. There he watched and the story of his watching was written on tablets of stone in ante-cuneiform characters in the “Book of Bakhun.” Therein is written:
The hero said: These beings are the Xipéhuz. They are living ones. They display will and choice; they associate and they act independently. Their mode of progress is a gliding, even as a ray glides, but they direct it as they will. They cannot ascend the trees, but they can kill the birds, drawing them down in some strange way. Birds and beasts they kill, burning them up entirely, without using them for food. They give death for death’s sake, and to every animal indifferently.
Round a big animal they assemble in circles of ten to twenty, and they direct on it the rays of the star that burns within them. The action of that ray is not immediate, so that falling on a human hand it begins to burn on the skin only after a while.
What is marvellous about these beings is the instability of their forms, changing from cone to cylinder or disc in one day, and also the variety of their delicate and radiant colours, which seem to come as their passions play, and to give each of the beings an individual expression. Yet no observation of man enables him to be certain. He only sees that they love and hate, and wish and choose; their wrath is terrible to behold. More than once the hero saw one of them launch his ray on another, so that under the shock the victim shrunk, fell, shrivelled up, and turned to stone. These corpses of the Xipéhuz look like yellow crystals with blue lines, irregular in form and of unknown substance.
At a distance the Xipéhuz cannot kill, and the wide, luminous area surrounding them helps man and animals to perceive their abode or approach in time to take to flight. Thus are other creatures preserved from danger, and also by the strange law that the Forms cannot pass beyond a given distance from their habitat. This limit increases its area with the increase of the numbers of the Xipéhuz, and accordingly diminishes when that number decreases. It seems to be connected directly with the habitat prescribed to the race by mysterious circumstances, and no Xipéhuz can escape the law ruling the whole of his kin, which binds the life of individual and race among them closer than among men or animals.
Their numbers increase only by a kind of procreation—the strangest thing about these strangest of Earth’s creatures. Four times a year, a little before the equinox or solstice, groups of three Xipéhuz assemble and unite till the three creatures form only one, extending like a long ellipse. The whole night they remain thus linked till full sunrise, when they separate, and high up into the morning air one sees new Forms ascending, vague, vaporous, enormous. Slowly these Forms condense, decrease, and after ten days turn into amber-coloured cones still much larger than the adult Xipéhuz. To bring them down to adult stature two and a half months are needed. After that time they become as others, and a few days after their “coming of age” the area of their invasion grows in proportion to the number of births.
Have they senses? They can see things at a great distance, and no absence of light or form deceives them, so as to make them take an animal or a plant one for the other. To kill a bird one Xipéhuz is sufficient; to burn up a large animal there assemble ten, fifteen, twenty, as the case requires. They see through obstacles, and select their victims. They destroy the warriors, the men, but the child, the woman, is safe in almost all encounters.
They also have the gift of language—its form, not its sound—but still they speak. When a Xipéhuz wishes to talk he directs his rays to another Xipéhuz, the latter stops attentive. The speaker traces rapidly, on the surface of the listener, luminous signs by a play of light. They remain visible a few seconds, then fade out. After a short pause the answer flashes back.
For hours and hours sometimes they stand conversing together through signs related to an order of things so out of all human experience that vainly did the wise Bakhun try to unravel the abstract, unknown thoughts they exchanged. Some on the contrary never spoke but sought solitudes; some loved to listen, lingering near the speakers, glowing columns of sapphire or cones of emerald. They seemed to cherish the sunshine, and enjoyed it, especially in its full vigour. And many a time an elder Xipéhuz would stand in the midst of quite young ones and teach them the glowing signs of the light-language, the children repeating every sign till each was perfect.
Yet was it necessary to find the means of destroying them, to extinguish on earth the light of life for that race, for that kingdom of which humanity has lost even the conception. The Xipéhuz, or mankind—one of the two had to go.
And Bakhun made attempt on attempt with his sling, but the enemy did not seem even to notice the stones that struck through their shining surfaces. One day the hero tried an arrow; the Xipéhuz fled. Then they began to chase him, turning so as to hide the star at their base from his arrows. It was a ray of light on the mystery; the star was the life-centre and only the sharp point of the arrow could penetrate there, deep into some unknown focus of life-energy.
One rosy evening the attack began. A hundred thousand men went forth against the Forms. The fire from the Xipéhuz’ stars burned up thousands of warriors, but human ingenuity invented shelters of wood too fresh and too thick to be destroyed by sudden flashes of fire. Soon it was apparent that strong blows dealt under cover could bring the Xipéhuz to the ground and force them to show their stars. Then the man struck and the Form died. Yet Bakhun saw with wonder that such of the warriors as used weapons of brass to strike at the Xipéhuz fell dead themselves as if struck by lightning. Bakhun at once ordered his warriors to take long wooden spears with only a metallic point, thin and sharp, to plunge into the centre of the mysterious stars.
The fight went on and on, till at last, another sunset, crimson with the rubies of the sky, mingled with the earth-red mist, the blood of men that ran from ears and nose and lips from the electric shocks given by the Forms—a sunset” glowing with red rays in the sky and with blushes of anger and triumph on the faces of the warriors. The last group of the Xipéhuz was surrounded, thrown down by the rush of thousands, and slain, leaving only a heap of strange-looking small corpses strewn about like fragments of metal.
The army of men set on fire the forest of Khzur throughout the whole area which had been haunted by the now destroyed Forms, and earth knew no more of the Xipéhuz kingdom; its mystery receded with it into the inner spaces to the Source of all Life. And Bakhun sat under the pale moon of the desert and dreamed of the dead race of the beings that were forms of light and mind, beings of love even, for some were merciful to weak creatures, and many had their loved ones among their kin. And the hero mourned for them because of the law that makes the life of one form the price of the life of another. And those who called him chief he bade worship only the One Life and love only the rule of Wisdom.
A tribe of nomads were camped within the sight of a great forest called Khzur, in those antique realms which still teem with mysteries. They heard that a natural well was hidden in the freshness of its green aisles, and so they arose to go to it. But soon they halted, for a wonderful sight met them on the borders of the forest. This was a great circle of bluish conical forms, transparent, each of a grown man’s size. On their surfaces were a few clear lines, a few dark convolutions. At the base they all had a star. Other forms stood farther off, cylindrical, of a bronze colour, starred with green, all with the mysterious star at the base.
The nomads halted; a strange awe made them unable to stir. Then suddenly there was a noise like the hissing of water poured on fire. The stars trembled; the Forms began to move towards them.
The first who were touched by the Forms fell down as dead. The shock paralysed like lightning, it brought death or a simple swoon. The Forms glided between the trunks of the darkening forest, striking with intelligent choice, with deliberation. The women and children were spared; the men, seized with unspeakable horror, fled and fled. At some distance, however, they perceived that the pursuit had ceased. It was as if a mysterious line had been drawn which the beings could not pass. They were still visible, faintly glimmering under the trees.
Children and wives came running back to them; then one of them took heart and lit a fire and sounded his horn to guide the last stragglers home.
With the first light of day the chief of the tribe went forth to see the peril again. Alone he passed the limit which had stopped the Forms. He saw them still under the forest trees, radiant in the morning sun. Their shapes swayed and changed from disc to spiral, from cone to cylinder. They shone like turquoise and copper and amethyst, and their stars were brighter than the rays of daylight. They saw the chief and stirred. And he, in spite of his courage, had to flee.
The struggle began between the mind of man and the unknown.
Larger and larger grew the area which the mysterious beings could enter in chase of man. At last, all attempts to destroy them failing, man looked into the very face of destruction and awaited the end of his race.
But in the vast desert where later, much later, was to rise Ecbatana, there lived a chief whose name was Bakhun. He had settled down alone, passing his time in the cultivation of the soil, and in meditation on man, the stars and the reality of things. To him, renowned as he was for courage and self-control (some whispered, for magic) the priests and the people went for aid.
He meditated for two days and then went to live near this fatal forest, the Forest of Khzur. There he watched and the story of his watching was written on tablets of stone in ante-cuneiform characters in the “Book of Bakhun.” Therein is written:
The hero said: These beings are the Xipéhuz. They are living ones. They display will and choice; they associate and they act independently. Their mode of progress is a gliding, even as a ray glides, but they direct it as they will. They cannot ascend the trees, but they can kill the birds, drawing them down in some strange way. Birds and beasts they kill, burning them up entirely, without using them for food. They give death for death’s sake, and to every animal indifferently.
Round a big animal they assemble in circles of ten to twenty, and they direct on it the rays of the star that burns within them. The action of that ray is not immediate, so that falling on a human hand it begins to burn on the skin only after a while.
What is marvellous about these beings is the instability of their forms, changing from cone to cylinder or disc in one day, and also the variety of their delicate and radiant colours, which seem to come as their passions play, and to give each of the beings an individual expression. Yet no observation of man enables him to be certain. He only sees that they love and hate, and wish and choose; their wrath is terrible to behold. More than once the hero saw one of them launch his ray on another, so that under the shock the victim shrunk, fell, shrivelled up, and turned to stone. These corpses of the Xipéhuz look like yellow crystals with blue lines, irregular in form and of unknown substance.
At a distance the Xipéhuz cannot kill, and the wide, luminous area surrounding them helps man and animals to perceive their abode or approach in time to take to flight. Thus are other creatures preserved from danger, and also by the strange law that the Forms cannot pass beyond a given distance from their habitat. This limit increases its area with the increase of the numbers of the Xipéhuz, and accordingly diminishes when that number decreases. It seems to be connected directly with the habitat prescribed to the race by mysterious circumstances, and no Xipéhuz can escape the law ruling the whole of his kin, which binds the life of individual and race among them closer than among men or animals.
Their numbers increase only by a kind of procreation—the strangest thing about these strangest of Earth’s creatures. Four times a year, a little before the equinox or solstice, groups of three Xipéhuz assemble and unite till the three creatures form only one, extending like a long ellipse. The whole night they remain thus linked till full sunrise, when they separate, and high up into the morning air one sees new Forms ascending, vague, vaporous, enormous. Slowly these Forms condense, decrease, and after ten days turn into amber-coloured cones still much larger than the adult Xipéhuz. To bring them down to adult stature two and a half months are needed. After that time they become as others, and a few days after their “coming of age” the area of their invasion grows in proportion to the number of births.
Have they senses? They can see things at a great distance, and no absence of light or form deceives them, so as to make them take an animal or a plant one for the other. To kill a bird one Xipéhuz is sufficient; to burn up a large animal there assemble ten, fifteen, twenty, as the case requires. They see through obstacles, and select their victims. They destroy the warriors, the men, but the child, the woman, is safe in almost all encounters.
They also have the gift of language—its form, not its sound—but still they speak. When a Xipéhuz wishes to talk he directs his rays to another Xipéhuz, the latter stops attentive. The speaker traces rapidly, on the surface of the listener, luminous signs by a play of light. They remain visible a few seconds, then fade out. After a short pause the answer flashes back.
For hours and hours sometimes they stand conversing together through signs related to an order of things so out of all human experience that vainly did the wise Bakhun try to unravel the abstract, unknown thoughts they exchanged. Some on the contrary never spoke but sought solitudes; some loved to listen, lingering near the speakers, glowing columns of sapphire or cones of emerald. They seemed to cherish the sunshine, and enjoyed it, especially in its full vigour. And many a time an elder Xipéhuz would stand in the midst of quite young ones and teach them the glowing signs of the light-language, the children repeating every sign till each was perfect.
Yet was it necessary to find the means of destroying them, to extinguish on earth the light of life for that race, for that kingdom of which humanity has lost even the conception. The Xipéhuz, or mankind—one of the two had to go.
And Bakhun made attempt on attempt with his sling, but the enemy did not seem even to notice the stones that struck through their shining surfaces. One day the hero tried an arrow; the Xipéhuz fled. Then they began to chase him, turning so as to hide the star at their base from his arrows. It was a ray of light on the mystery; the star was the life-centre and only the sharp point of the arrow could penetrate there, deep into some unknown focus of life-energy.
One rosy evening the attack began. A hundred thousand men went forth against the Forms. The fire from the Xipéhuz’ stars burned up thousands of warriors, but human ingenuity invented shelters of wood too fresh and too thick to be destroyed by sudden flashes of fire. Soon it was apparent that strong blows dealt under cover could bring the Xipéhuz to the ground and force them to show their stars. Then the man struck and the Form died. Yet Bakhun saw with wonder that such of the warriors as used weapons of brass to strike at the Xipéhuz fell dead themselves as if struck by lightning. Bakhun at once ordered his warriors to take long wooden spears with only a metallic point, thin and sharp, to plunge into the centre of the mysterious stars.
The fight went on and on, till at last, another sunset, crimson with the rubies of the sky, mingled with the earth-red mist, the blood of men that ran from ears and nose and lips from the electric shocks given by the Forms—a sunset” glowing with red rays in the sky and with blushes of anger and triumph on the faces of the warriors. The last group of the Xipéhuz was surrounded, thrown down by the rush of thousands, and slain, leaving only a heap of strange-looking small corpses strewn about like fragments of metal.
The army of men set on fire the forest of Khzur throughout the whole area which had been haunted by the now destroyed Forms, and earth knew no more of the Xipéhuz kingdom; its mystery receded with it into the inner spaces to the Source of all Life. And Bakhun sat under the pale moon of the desert and dreamed of the dead race of the beings that were forms of light and mind, beings of love even, for some were merciful to weak creatures, and many had their loved ones among their kin. And the hero mourned for them because of the law that makes the life of one form the price of the life of another. And those who called him chief he bade worship only the One Life and love only the rule of Wisdom.
