The Pit and the Pendulum

I was given a copy of the above Arthur Rackham painting by Ali Reeves, over thirty years ago now.  The painting was created in 1919 to illustrate a short story by Edgar Alan Poe called "The Pit and the Pendulum". I still have the painting after all these years and I've long pondered its significance but it was only tonight that I decided to do some investigation into it on the Internet. It didn't take long to track down the painting and the associated story. Given my recent preoccupation with time, the title and content are interesting. Here is a description of the prisoner's first sight of the pendulum.

Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention . It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what at a casual glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks.

Prior to this, the prisoner, awakening in his unlit cell, describes the experience of "mere consciousness of existence, without thought, a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, THOUGHT". The final word is capitalized in the story, the gist of which is that the pendulum is actually a swinging, razor-shape blade that is slowly descending on his bound and supine body. A movie, starring Vincent Price, was made that seems to be rather loosely based on the Edgar Alan Poe story.

The content of the story is highly symbolic. We come into the world as "mere consciousness of existence, without thought" but then suddenly acquire it. As our thought processes become clearer, we begin to see and understand our situation. We are trapped in a very circumscribed world and we know full well that the Sword of Damocles is descending on us. If we remain bound by time, it will eventually kill us but in the story the prisoner breaks free of his bonds with the help of a horde of rats that are eating their way through a sort of straight jacket that is holding him down.

The rats are intent on eating him of course but they have to gnaw through his straight jacket before they can start on him. With the pendulum of death beginning to graze him, the prisoner breaks free and tosses off the devouring rats. He has evaded the pendulum and it then ascends again. However, the walls become red hot and devilish faces and forms on the wall leer at him as he is forced ever closer to the pit. The pit he has tested out earlier but dropping something into it. He knows it is very deep and what is at the bottom is unknown.

In the light of my current reading, I'd say that having attained stillness by escaping time, the prisoner needs to have his remaining ego attachments burnt away before he can enter the realm of pure Being. The pit is terrifying to the ego because it symbolizes its extinction. In the final scene, he is rescued as he teeters on the brink of the abyss: "I struggled no more, but the
agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and
final scream of despair". In letting go (of his ego), he finds himself although in the story the ending is quite mundane. He is rescued by General Lasalle of the French army that has entered Toledo and overthrown the agents of the Spanish Inquisition.

I'd been looking at the pit in the painting recently because I'd been having some experiences of my own regarding disappearing into bottomless pits. A couple of times now, as I've been meditating on my breathing and not attending to any thoughts that arose, a mild sense of panic has arisen due to a sense of nothingness. My instinct has been to cling on to a passing thought in order to get a handle on things. This is the ego panicking of course when it doesn't have anything to think about and fears that it is disappearing (which it is). I think this is a good sign but the panic pulls me out of the meditative state and I start thinking about what just happened. I have to go beyond that and sink into the panic. Over the years, I've been drawn to Rackham's painting and now I can use it as a source of spiritual inspiration.