In addition to these, various spices and perfumes were used. Cinnamon bark, sandalwood, cardamom, and even ambergris and musk. The influence of scent upon the emotions is well known and the Egyptians favoured the use of ambra and musk as definitely aphrodisiacal perfumes. To-day pure essence of patchouli is used in the Orient to serve the same end, and anybody who has ever smelt a vial of the pure oil will recognize the instant disturbance of certain nerve centres that it produces. The clue to the secret of the ancient incense lies not in what we have been able to recover from the papyri, but in the word itself. Kyphi is recognizable to-day in “keef,” the popular name for the smokable variety of the herb cannabis indica. Cannabis indica is none other than our old friend hashish, the haseesh of the writers of the time of the Crusades, who gave us those descriptions of the Old Man of the Mountains and his Hasch-hassins. From them we get our commonplace word--assassin. It is not, after all, a far cry from the mysteries of Osiris in Egypt to the Thammus or _Dumuri-absu_ of Syria and Babylon. “Thammuz came next behind Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer’s day,” says Milton. Osiris and Thammus “died” annually, and mimicry of the symbolic event was the basis of all ritual. In the mysteries the initiates “died,” too, but the death was no mere formula, but an actually induced state of stupor of deep trance brought about by the fumes of the “keef.” These secrets lingered long in Lebanon, where to this day the Crypto-christianity of the Druses may be identified with many of the actual practices of magic. The master of the Assassins was a master hypnotist, using the dark knowledge of certain parts of the mechanical ritual of magic to gain his mastery over the Moslem youths he sent as fanatics to do his bidding. There in the Lebanon he created his artificial paradise of sensuous delight, drugged dreams and slumber. His commands laid upon his slaves were no ordinary commands--but spells as black as any weaved by sorcery. The master lodge of this cult of the Assassins was at Cairo and the mysteries were only transferred to their new setting in the Lebanon by Hassan ibn Sabbah at the end of the eleventh century. Outwardly Moslem, the inner mysteries had no connection with either Mohammedan or any other religion, and indeed the cult seems to be in many ways a kind of bastard Masonic organization. Nominally a Moslem sect of Ismailites, the organization was under a commander, the _Sheik-al-Tebel_, or Chief of the Mountains, who was served by minor chiefs or priors--the three _Dai-al-kirbal_. Following these came the _Dais_ or adepts, and below them three minor grades, _Refigos_, _Fedais_, and _Lasigos_.[35]