Arthur Machen's The Shining Pyramid: A Detailed Summary and Literary Analysis

Dyson, a recurring character in Arthur Machen’s stories such as The Shining Pyramid and The Red Hand, stands as an unusual and reflective figure among the ranks of literary occult detectives. Unlike more pragmatic sleuths like Sherlock Holmes, Dyson is not driven by logic or forensic deduction, but by a deep fascination with the uncanny, the symbolic, and the hidden patterns beneath ordinary reality. He approaches mysteries not as puzzles to be solved but as portals to metaphysical truth, often relying on intuition, literary knowledge, and a sense of mystical resonance rather than empirical evidence. Compared to contemporaries like William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki or Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence—who confront the supernatural with tools and rituals—Dyson is more a philosopher or aesthete than a practitioner. He serves as a kind of foil to Holmes, emphasizing not the triumph of reason, but the limitations of reason in a world where ancient forces and forgotten truths still exert power.

II.

“The Shining Pyramid,” first published in 1895, emerges from a period of growing fascination with folklore, the occult, and the tension between modern rationalism and ancient superstition. Set in the remote Welsh countryside, the story reflects Machen’s deep interest in his native Wales as a landscape steeped in mystery and myth, particularly legends surrounding the “Little People”—an imagined race of pre-human, often malevolent beings surviving beneath the surface of civilized life. Influenced by fin de siècle anxieties about degeneration, hidden knowledge, and the limits of scientific understanding, Machen crafts a tale that blends detective fiction with supernatural horror, suggesting that the past is not dead, but merely concealed. “The Shining Pyramid” stands at the intersection of Gothic tradition and modern weird fiction, offering both a chilling narrative and a critique of the Victorian confidence in reason and empire. Dyson, who is first introduced in "The Inmost Light" and The Three Imposters, returns in another Holmesian, occult mystery. A beautiful country girl has gone missing and while our suspicions are immediately raised, Dyson takes a rational approach to the case until he learns that prehistoric arrowheads have been appearing nearby, arranged in strange (almost crop circle-like) shapes. His interest is won, and the amateur sleuth leaves the bustle of London for the sinister quiet of rural Britain.

III.

Written during a period of growing interest in folklore and the occult, Machen’s tale reflects deep anxieties about the fragility of civilization and the persistence of primal, spiritual forces beneath its surface. Through its eerie atmosphere and gradual unveiling of the uncanny, “The Shining Pyramid” suggests that the past is not dead, but merely hidden, and that true horror lies not in the grotesque but in the return of the forgotten. The case reexplores some of Machen’s favorite themes: corruption of innocence, the dark alleys of the unconscious, vestigial evil, and the proximity of secret cultures of sin. The fairy folk are once again closer to their original models in folklore: stunted, lecherous curs, infamous for kidnapping, raping, and murdering humans who fall foul of their traps. A far cry from the Victorians’ sanitized fairies: butterfly-winged maidens, dressed in gowns of flower petals and spider silk, riding in walnut-shell coaches driven by ladybugs. Machen summons the thuggish dwarves of Welsh folklore once again, symbolizing mankind’s own wickedness: submerged by civilization, yet flourishing out of sight.

SUMMARY

The story opens with Dyson – an antiquarian, writer, and amateur detective who investigates occult mysteries – receiving a visit at his London home from his old friend, Vaughan, whom he hasn’t seen for three years due to the former’s reclusive personality and love of London living. Vaughan resides in his family estate in the hill country north of Newport, Wales. Vaughan reports having been unsettled by a mystery he terms a “haunting,” and invites his friend to shake up his routine by investigating it in situ. Dyson struggles to accept the offer, scoffing at the idea that the Welsh countryside has anything to challenge to seedy mystique of London.

Vaughan replies – without going into his own mystery – that his village has been rather less peaceful than usual recently: a local beauty, Annie Trevor, went missing a couple weeks earlier during a five mile walk through the woods to her aunt’s, and the lack of any clues have led the locals to rampantly speculate that she has been spirited away by the “Little People” – the local fairies. Vaughan writes it off however, to an affair or abduction at the hands of foreign sailors, and moves onto his real issue.

Recalling his success investigating an earlier case (that of the “peculiar yellow spectacles”), Vaughan has come to see if Dyson can interpret a series of sinister signs which have been appearing on a path in the woods near his estate. The first two of these was a set of flint arrowheads arranged like spokes in a wheel, all pointing to the center, and another series stacked in neat lines like a phalanx of soldiers. The following day they were in another arrangement: a pyramid. The next day he saw that they were shaped into a half circle.

None of the children in the area seem to know anything about it, and – indeed – Vaughan takes it to be a coded symbol, like those left by gypsies to direct one another to local resources and perils. He notes that the wheel-shape reminds him of a valuable silver punch bowl he owns – a bowl he keeps in a pyramidical cabinet – and wonders if he is being tagged by robbers. Dyson asks about the local geography and is disturbed to learn that there is no flint native to the area. Vaughan hands him one of them, and Dyson’s attention is utterly hooked: he notes that the design is unique, and seems to recognize it.

They travel to Wales and explore the pathway in question. There, Dyson sees a limestone block in the grass with a fresh chalk drawing on it: an evil eye rendered in a notably almond-shaped (“Mongolian”) style. He observes that local children would be unlikely to know what an East Asian eye looks like, and doubts that they would naturally draw it quite so low (even a child would have had to stoop). Their observations of when it appeared also proves that it was written during the middle of the night (which, he infers, means that the artist likely has excellent night vision).

Days pass and new evil eyes appear in similarly dark places just over three feet from the ground. One day, the two men pass Annie Trevor’s father – weighed down by worry for his missing child – and Dyson asks to be shown the path where she disappeared – a different trail than that behind Vaughan’s country home. Vaughan is curious why he thinks there is any connection, and Dyson exclaims that he hopes to find the “bowl” depicted in the flint arrangement, and declares that there is no chance that it depicts a punch bowl.

Halfway down the trail, he discovers a curious hollow, the sides of which are ringed by craggy stones. It resembles the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, with the limestone chunks appearing like small seats. Here, he decides, is the bowl. Now to find the pyramid. It doesn’t take long…

One the night of the half moon Dyson leads Vaughan into the woods where they stakeout the ruined amphitheater – a hollow which Vaughan recognizes, saying that it is a so-called “fairy castle” associated with many local superstitions… of a particularly sinister nature. He has a theory which he believes he can successfully test tonight, but – for their own safety – they must remain quiet (something he constantly scolds Vaughan for violating). Dyson remains cryptic and the watch in the dark without a word until they hear a revolting, hissing noise that sounds like a distortion of human speech – a hissing coming from dozens of snarling little mouths, and now the dark hollow is alive with a sickly, slithering movement:

“It did, in truth, stir and seethe like an infernal caldron. The whole of the sides and bottom tossed and writhed with vague and restless forms that passed to and fro without the sound of feet, and gathered thick here and there and seemed to speak to one another in those tones of horrible sibilance, like the hissing of snakes, that he had heard.”  

As Vaughan’s eyes adjust to the darkness, he start to recognize the movements as coming from a host of diminutive figures that suggest the human form though they seem utterly soulless: “He looked aghast, choking back sobs of horror, and at length the loathsome forms gathered thickest about some vague object in the middle of the hollow, and the hissing of their speech grew more venomous, and he saw in the uncertain light the abominable limbs, vague and yet too plainly seen, writhe and intertwine.”

The hissing dwarves – whose movements remind him of “a piece of putrid offal stirring through and through with bloated and horrible creeping things” – begin to cluster around a dark pile in the center of the “bowl” where Vaughan begins to see and hear something rather more human lost in their midst. First he hears “a low human moan … that was not that of a man” and then he sees something white flailing its arms in desperation. Then, to his horror, a flame flares at the base of what is now evidently a pyramidical, sacrificial pyre, and bound woman at the center of it is heard shrieking in “utter anguish and terror.”

Fully illuminated by the blaze are “things made in the form of men but stunted like children hideously deformed, the faces with the almond eyes burning with evil and unspeakable lusts; the ghastly yellow of the mass of naked flesh.” Then – as soon as it started – the fire flares up into a burning pyramid and then snuffs out. “That,” Dyson says with relish “is the Pyramid.”

The following day Dyson explores the bowl and finds a steaming ash pile. In its midst is a brooch that belonged to Annie Trevor. Vaughan tries to pretend that what they saw was a delusion or hallucination, but this stifles his hopes, after all, Dyson grimly notes, “we have gone too deep.” They note that the chalk drawings are now gone, and Dyson explains what the four symbols – the Army/Phalanx, the Bowl, the Pyramid, and the Half-Moon – mean, so far as he has interpreted them:  "there is to be a gathering or assembly at the Bowl in a fortnight (that is the Half moon) to see the Pyramid, or to build the Pyramid.”

The chalk-drawn eyes – which appeared daily – served as a count down to the date of the sacrifice. Their appearance resembled the almond eyes of the troglodytes, and the height at which they were drawn lines up with their 3.5-foot stature.

The creatures they saw, he interprets to be the inspiration for the fairy stories that thrive in British folklore: a tribe of savage, cannibalistic troglodytes who “represent a tradition of the prehistoric Turanian [fig. archaic: unevolved/lit.: Central Asian] inhabitants of the country, who were cave dwellers.” Having taken Annie Trevor captive, they have held her prisoner for three weeks in their subterranean lair, before ritualistically sacrificing her in a fiery, Wicker Man-esque fertility rite.

Before closing the book on his latest, strangest case – never, of course, offering to inform Annie’s parents, the local authorities, or even Dyson’s fellow academics – Dyson has this to say about girl whose death by burning they witnessed in silence:

“But there is one thing I must add: I don't regret our inability to rescue the wretched girl. You saw the appearance of those things that gathered thick and writhed in the Bowl; you may be sure that what lay bound in the midst of them was no longer fit for earth."

ANALYSIS

The full horror of what has actually transpired may not have occurred to the reader until the story’s final 150 words, where Dyson – in the callous spirit of The Great God Pan’s Dr Raymond – coldly analyzes the fate of a girl whom he watched die. Indeed, there are many parallels between this tale and the first chapter of The Great God Pan. Just like Raymond’s maidservant, Mary, Annie (whom Dyson callously refers to as “that what lay bound in the midst of them”) is sexually violated by an otherworldly force, written off by her fellow humans as “damaged goods” not worth saving, and dies miserably under the watchful eyes of two privileged males (one horrified, one clinical). When Machen’s Victorian coyness is peeled back, we have a stark picture of what has actually occurred: Annie – “that which lay bound” – has been waylaid on her way home, kidnapped, and imprisoned in the underworld where the troglodytes have been gang-raping her for three weeks before burning her alive in a Wicker Man-esque pyre as a human sacrifice to whatever dark fertility god they worship. While Dyson may not be guilty of victim-blaming (at least he never seems to suggest that Annie asked for it), he certainly steeled himself after watching the vicious gang rape without lifting a finger to help. Having been sodomized by these slithering incarnations of evil for so many days, Dyson considers her life not worth living. Her time in captivity is implied to have been one of intense terror, suggesting near-total psychological collapse from exposure to the inhuman entities and their underground realm. This experience underscores Machen’s theme of spiritual and bodily corruption through contact with primal, non-human forces. Possibly Annie may have agreed – though surely she should have the freedom to choose a quick suicide over a fiery execution. Fear, of course, was the dominant factor in their failure to rescue Annie. I read one scathing critique of this story where the reviewer declared – multiple times – that they undoubtedly would have charged into the bowl to save the day; most of us, however, could not honestly say that we would have rushed, unarmed, into a pit teeming with rapacious, subterranean troglodytes who seem to delight in nothing more than rape and torture. But it is Dyson’s attitude after the sacrifice, rather than his inability to interrupt it, that chills the blood.

II.

It would, however, be a grave mistake to read Dyson’s callous perspective as a stand-in for Machen (or to infer Machen’s approval of Dyson’s words and actions) who was highly critical of the morally-grey, Nietzschean scientists, eugenicists, materialists, and rationalists who were surging in popularity at the turn of the century. Machen viewed them as desensitized to humanity – moral allies of the  and lampooned in the brutal Dr Raymond (and arguably in Dyson). Annie’s hideous sexual violations and her hellish death – all undergone under Dyson’s calculating gaze – certainly put Dyson in Raymond’s role, leaving Vaughan (no confirmed relation to Helen) and the reader in a sort of stupefied awe once they realize the full scope of the atrocity that they have observed (and passively partaken in). Machen uses this stamping out of purity as a proto-Freudian metaphor for the less colorful atrocities that humanity participates in (either through ignorance or through disinterest): the troglodytes represent the very real specters of the human Id – the rapacious voices of the unconscious, urging us to envy, take, and destroy – and their almost supernatural appearances and disappearances (viz., leaving clues in the conscious mind – symbolized by the arrowheads near the house – about what is actually happening in the unconscious mind, symbolized by the woods at night) illustrate mankind’s capacity for hypocrisy, denial, and evil. It is little consolation that while Annie “passes” through the fire to the oblivion of death, the subterraneans merely “pass” into the earth – to slumber, stir, and reawaken who knows when. An unmistakable metaphor for the sinister impulses and desires which we hide during our public performances – either through denial, reaction formation, or intentional deception – but which fester and reproduce, unchecked, in the darkness of our private hearts.

III.

There are also more macrocosmic, societal subtexts to this tale. Drawing upon Celtic legend and the concept of the “Little People,” Machen weaves a narrative that suggests civilization rests atop a fragile crust, beneath which primal forces continue to stir. The story’s structure—a methodical inquiry culminating in a terrifying revelation—echoes the rational inquiry turned spiritual terror found in much of Machen’s work. At the heart of “The Shining Pyramid” is the theme of the persistence of the ancient and irrational. The titular sacrificial pyre serves as both a literal and metaphorical signpost, pointing to a pre-Christian, non-human presence that has evaded history’s cleansing light. Machen juxtaposes the empirical outlook of his protagonists with the inexplicable phenomena they encounter, thereby critiquing the Victorian faith in progress and reason. The Welsh landscape becomes a character in itself: mist-shrouded, remote, and steeped in forgotten ritual. By invoking British folklore about the "fairy folk" or "Little People," Machen reanimates what Victorian science and industry sought to suppress: the superstitions, fears, and mythologies that formed the cultural bedrock of the British Isles. Finally, “The Shining Pyramid” explores the psychological dimension of encountering the uncanny. Though Dyson and Vaughan attempt to approach the mystery analytically, their confrontation with the inhuman forces erodes their confidence and rationality.

IV.

Thematically, “The Shining Pyramid” echoes Machen’s recurring preoccupation with hidden realities and the frailty of empirical reason. The protagonists, especially Dyson, represent rational inquiry, yet their tools of logic and deduction prove insufficient when faced with the Other. Machen contrasts modern skepticism with the visceral power of myth, suggesting that ancient beliefs contain truths that scientific modernity has dangerously discarded. The horror of the tale lies not just in the existence of the "Little People," but in the implication that humanity is not alone at the summit of creation, and that the old gods—or old races—are neither dead nor forgotten. In this way, this story serves as both a supernatural mystery and a philosophical meditation on the unknown forces that persist beneath the surface of modern life. The horror here is not just the survival of a non-human race, but the suggestion that such beings may exist parallel to us, unseen but ever-present, and that our modern ignorance of them is willful rather than innocent. Machen uses the story to challenge the reader’s assumptions about history, knowledge, and perception, suggesting that what we call "reality" is only a partial and filtered glimpse of the deeper truths embedded in place, myth, and blood. “The Shining Pyramid” thus stands as both a gripping supernatural tale and a meditation on the fragility of modern understanding in the face of ancient mystery.

You can read the original story HERE!

And you can find our annotated and illustrated collection of Machen’s best weird fiction HERE!