The mystic bell

[randy_byers]

Lately I've been reading Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint's "different" novel, The Blind Spot, originally published in Argosy All-Story in 1921. I've also just watched William Cameron Menzies' 1932 adventure film Chandu the Magician, which is very pulpy in its own right. Both stories are heavily influenced by a hoaky Eastern mysticism, and both make use of the trope of a bell sound accompanying a mystic event. This is used to very dramatic effect in the movie, where it always signals the mystic arrival of a yogi. Look out behind you!

Does anybody know where this trope comes from? Is it just a pulp invention, or is it based on actual mythology or religious belief?

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but here's a Thinking Machine story by Jacques Futrelle about sinister Japanese gongs and murder. Futrelle was last seen refusing to board a lifeboat on the Titanic, insisting that his wife go instead, so that puts the story in or before 1912.

The story's also at Project Gutenberg, I believe.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

That trope deserves to be investigated by someone expert in comparative religion. If memory serves, a small hand-bell is sounded in the Roman Mass at the moment of Consecration of the Host, and I asssume that this stems from earlier & even more Eastern practices.

[spikeiowa.livejournal.com]

A single tap/ring on a bell is used in meditation sometimes, and here my experience is Buddhist practice. It's used to help a practitioner focus. There probably are other purposes, with levels of meaning. The movie maker may simply have chosen a sound that has a connection to Eastern traditions.