The Emin

Last year, around Thanksgiving or so, I made these delicious pumpkin-chocolate chip pancakes found here. Today, I bought some canned pumpkin (which is thankfully sold even when it’s not pumpkin season) and made the pancakes again, this time omitting the chocolate chips. I also made the cinnamon syrup. Here’s a recipe for it.

 When I was in college, a friend of mine, Eszter, and I went to a lecture by the Emin Foundation. Eszter, who was Hungarian, was into all esoteric things, and the Emin Foundation was one of those mysterious New Age movements that sprung up everywhere back then. I was sort of clueless but thought “why not?” The flyer promised three free lectures (or maybe they were called lessons, I don’t remember) after which you had to either stop coming or become a paid member.

There were two men heading the Emin Foundation in Lund, Sweden, where I lived then. The leader of the two was a British man named Lance. Lance was tall and slender with a longish face and a light brown beard. I especially remember his hands, which were also long and had monkeylike, sensitive fingers.

The other man was a shorter, dark young man who was always smiling as if he knew something you didn’t. Which I guess he did. His name was Constantine. Both Lance and Constantine wore black pants and full, white, fluid shirts, like the ones Cossack dancers wear. Lance and Constantine weren’t their real names. Once you became a proper member of Emin, you were given (or could pick) a new name.

Only English was spoken.

There was something spooky and forbidding about the whole thing, which I guess is why we were drawn to it. The lecture-lessons were held in a deserted part of the public library, a bit too clinical for mystic stuff to take place, which it nevertheless did. I don’t remember much, but I remember we always sat in a circle. Lance either talked or conducted experiments, while Constantine stood aside smiling. One such experiment was called “the aura”.

Lance showed us photographs of ancient Egyptian art and asked us to look closer at the heads of the people in these pictures. Most of them had some sort headgear, strange structures, or just a huge, red circle on their heads. I hadn’t thought about that before, though obviously I had seen pictures of Egyptian art.

“These are not hats,” Lance explained. “These are auras. The Egyptians could see them clearly, which is why they were manifested in their art. We’ve since lost the ability to clearly see the aura of a person, the way the Egyptians did. Yet, it is still there, and it has many different colors. For instance, what color do you think the aura of an angry person has?”

“Red,” some smarty-pants piped up.

“Exactly,” nodded Lance. “And from there we get the word ‘hatred’, which is a combination of the words ‘hat’ and ‘red’. A red hat, or aura. Hatred.”

Next, he had us all line up in front of an empty wall. And sure enough, as I watched the others parade in front of that wall, I saw a faint sort of light emit from their heads. I suppose “shadow” would be the word. I left that lecture-lesson filled with awe, and proceeded to tell everyone I knew about the root of the word “hatred”.

“I saw it myself,” I whispered, baffled at the non-believers who just shook their heads at my naiveté.

The next time, Lance had an even better trick up his Cossack-sleeve. This time he was going to demonstrate his heat.

“Heat radiates from our bodies,” he explained. “And if you practice, you’ll be able to conduct that heat through various body parts.”

Since we had no clue what he was talking about, Lance asked us to stand up and hold out our palms. Then he went around and above every open palm he held his slender magician fingers. One after the other, everybody quickly withdrew their hands as if they’d been burnt by fire. Some even yelped “Ouch!”

I decided that I wouldn’t fall for this particular trick. I would not withdraw my hand and I would not scream. But when it was my turn and Lance stood in front of me and held his fingers over my palm, I felt a burn as if from a laser beam, and just like the others I pulled back my hand quickly.

I never went back for my third and last free lesson-lecture. I am not sure why. Eszter did though. She became a real member of the Emin. She even got to pick her new name: Spring.