Copyright (c) 1995 Sholder Greye

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                     The Mad Philosopher:
              Confessions of an Eccentric Old Man

                              by

                    Sholder Greye (c) 1995



                           FOREWORD
    I present this volume as a curiosity.
    A compendium of one man's madness, if you will.
    You will find within its pages no profound wisdom, as its
narrator would have you believe, and you will discover no
original thoughts, no inspired poetry, no insight into the human
condition.  Indeed, if it does provide any shred of sagacity or
penetrating vision, it tends, in my humble opinion, to do so in
entirely a negative manner.  That is, if one desires to be led
blindly, then one must, in almost all instances, follow the
direction opposite to that indicated herein.  Perhaps this advice
seems extreme, or prejudiced, or even extremely prejudiced, and
perhaps it is, but nevertheless, it is earnest and well-taken.
    I believe that the narrator is (or _was_, I should say; he
died soon after completing these confessions) insane, for during
the months that I met with him, and transcribed exactly the words
that issued from his mouth, I do not think he ever directly
acknowledged my existence, or recognized my presence in the room
any more than he might have registered a speck of dust on the
bureau in the corner.  He was entirely absorbed within himself,
and frankly, I am amazed that he found the energies necessary to
speak with such vigor as he did.  Sometimes, he would mumble, and
I could hardly discern what he was saying; then, with frightening
suddenness, he would burst into wild, intense, staccato, almost
incoherent passions, and the words would flow from his mouth,
seemingly disjointed, but in the final analysis, surprisingly
relevant.  I admit, I found it all to be rather spooky.  In the
midst of his diatribes and rantings, nothing seemed to make
sense, but when I went back over the recordings, and wrote the
words down to paper, somehow they came together into a
recognizable pattern - like those pictures one sometimes
encounters, which at first glance seem utter chaos, but upon
further, minute investigation, when viewed from just the right
angle or under precisely the right circumstances of slightly
skewed perception, one discovers that there is hidden within the
randomness a scheme and a delicate proportion previously
unsuspected.  That is the sort of man who wrote these so-called
"Confessions."
    I never did find out his name; he would not tell me.  I
asked him a great many questions, in fact, but he never answered
directly: only obliquely, and after much rambling discourse.  I
would give up on the possibility of receiving an answer to my
queries, and then I would realize that he had just spoken the
answer I desired, after about half an hour of babbling and
seeming irrelevance.  He verged on the autistic in his relations
with me, and I do not imagine he differed in this respect in his
relations with anyone else, if indeed he carried on relations
with anyone else.  Well, I know that he had at least one
acquaintance, as will be seen.
    When I first saw him, I must say I was taken frightfully
aback, enough so that I considered running in terror, for I had
never seen anyone with such an appearance of extreme and terrible
age.  He seemed so frail that he would crumble into dust upon
arising from his bed; of course, he never did arise from his bed
- he was too frail!  His skin was hard and brittle, moulded into
a million tiny wrinkles, and his eyes could hardly be seen
through the mass of twisted yellow flesh that was his face.  His
hair was in white wisps which wafted about his head like floating
clouds around a mountain peak.  When he spoke, his voice seemed
to travel through a thousand parched channels before finally
emanating from his throat in a whistling croak.  I don't think
there was a drop of saliva in his mouth, nor a single tear in his
ducts.  He constantly drank glasses of water, which I supplied
him at the rate of six or seven an hour, yet he never could
quench that illimitable thirst.
    The time I spent in that ancient house was utterly dreadful.
I detested the man, I found the smell repulsive and the
atmosphere oppressive, and I saw no value or quality in the
material he dictated.  Most of the time was wasted, anyway,
constantly fetching his glasses of water, listening to him rant
about this or that, cajoling him into speaking of his
"Confessions" rather than the "damnable cat" which haunted the
alleyway outside his window and kept him awake at night.  I was
lucky if I could extract a single page's worth of manuscript in a
several hour session.  Fortunately, when he finally did direct
his attention to the dictation, he was incredibly focused and did
not swerve from his narration to irrelevant topics, as might be
expected from his more general behaviour; and he always seemed to
know exactly what he planned to say.  Then, when he was done with
the day's narration, he would return to speaking of the "damnable
cat" or some such other nonsense.  For months it was like this,
and misery was my lot.  Why did I do it?  I honestly cannot
answer that, for I simply do not know.
    The circumstances under which I came into contact with the
man are rather curious, and I will attempt to describe them,
though paltry be my literary skills: I am only an editor - no
artist I!
    Two volumes, which I edited, achieved some small amount of
success, and were well-received by both the critics and the book-
buyers, and so I was, as can be expected in our diverse and
multifarious society, deluged with manuscripts and book
proposals, phone calls and query letters; in short, every
conceivable manner of approach was utilized, by every conceivable
manner of author or agent, to solicit my editorial services.
This grew rather wearisome after the initial novelty wore off,
and at times, I longed for my former obscurity, if only to be
relieved of the massive daily sacks of mail and manuscripts which
flooded my desk.
    One day, I received a visitor of the most curious sort, and
in the most curious way.  I was writing a critique of a promising
book proposal, when I became aware of a presence in the room.  I
glanced up, and there, standing gawkily and awkwardly before my
desk, stood (or I should say, _swayed_) a tall gangly man dressed
in a long black trenchcoat buttoned all the way up the front, and
a dark fedora hat, like those seen in hard-boiled detective
movies of the Humphrey Bogart school.  Needless to say, I was
astonished, for I had no appointments scheduled, and my secretary
had not announced any visitors, and I could not imagine how such
a conspicuous man could sneak into my office without being
noticed or causing a commotion.  I stared, speechless for a
moment, and I thought I heard a child giggling somewhere far
away.
    "Mr. Renault?"  The speaker's voice was high-pitched and
nasal, quite extraordinary, for I have never heard its like issue
from any man's throat, before or since.  His accent was
unplacable: it sounded neither Eastern nor Western, nor, for that
matter, from any other place in the world.
    "Yes?"  In my surprise, I could but stare and respond purely
by rote.
    "Business with thee, prithee?  Business?"
    "Business?"
    "Indeed, sir, indeed!  Business of most the urgentest sort,
I beg thee pardon!  Urgentest!?"
    I found this man almost unintelligible, and at times, he
seemed to double over - with pain or with laughter, I could not
tell.
    "What sort of business?"  I was beginning to collect myself,
and I was considering the possibilities of escape - door or
window?  I was certain I was dealing with a deranged case, and I
was unwilling personally to ascertain his capacity for violence,
or for that matter, any other psychotic tendencies.
    "Oh!  The most urgentest, sir!  It is thy interest which
concerns us!  Thy interest, and ours as well!  For we mutually
can all be beneficial in this matter!  Mutually!"
    The exchange continued thus for several minutes, the man's
garbled language becoming more obscure and more incoherent as
time progressed, his stature and posture becoming even more
awkward and unstable.  I felt that soon, either he would fall to
the ground in a seizure, or he would run screaming into the
street.
    Throughout the conversation, I heard tittering and laughter,
as of children playing, but I could not place its source.  It
seemed distant, but at the same time from close quarters.
    Finally, we came to the crux of the matter.  "Mr. Renault,
sir!  We must bring thee!  We must show thee to where our master
does inhabitate, and there thou can discover to whom the matter
relatest in the utmost degree of authenticenship and
scrupulousness!"
    "I'm afraid that would be impossible.  I'm a very busy man,
you see, and I cannot take time out from my schedule.  Perhaps if
you would tell your 'master' to schedule an appointment with my
secretary, I might be able to squeeze him in."
    "No, sir!  Thou required art!  It is necessary that
followshipment must occur at this moment, and not later, for
required by master it is that this must happen!"
    I cannot explain what motivated me to cancel my appointments
for the rest of the day, and to allow this almost surely insane
visitor to bring me to his "master's" home.  Never before have I
done such a foolish or dangerous thing, and I can not imagine
ever doing it again.  Perhaps if that visitor had come on another
day, I would not have followed him.  Or perhaps, there is
another, more sinister explanation - hypnotism, for example, or
some other form of subconscious coercion, although I prefer not
to believe that I am that suggestible.  _Something_, external or
internal, prompted my unusual behaviour, and it makes me
uncomfortable that I can not, even now, uncover what it was.
    As it happened, I was quite safe all the time, and, as you
can see, the incident ended in the production of this volume.
When the strange, lurching visitor brought me to the Mad
Philosopher's house (for I came to call him that, for lack of a
name), he disappeared with a flutter of cloth and a last burst of
that uncanny, childish laughter.  I looked about for him, but I
never saw him again, and the Mad Philosopher never mentioned him,
and never answered my questions concerning him.  At some point in
your reading of this book, you might form some conjecture as to
the nature of that visitor, and I do not discourage this, but
again, I advise you to take everything mentioned in this volume
with a strong grain of salt, indeed with as many grains of salt
as you can manage.
    I will delay you no longer from your perusal of this volume.
Please, take pleasure in it, for you will find a certain,
perverse sort of satisfaction in it.  In places, it is quite
subversive and evil; in others, it is surprisingly eloquent and
rises above the general roughness and shoddiness of style which
is apparent everywhere else.  The narrator has an odd
amalgamation of rhetorical styles, which I am not sure I have
ever encountered in another author, and so in spots, it is tough
going, but I trust the reader will make it through these
unscathed, or at least minimally scathed.  Sometimes, the
constant addresses to the "dear gentle reader" become a bit
wearisome and tedious, and we begin to rankle at the narrator's
oversolicitous concern for our approval and understanding; in
fact, I will admit to some editorial intrusion, in that I omitted
some of these addresses at times when they seemed overly
abundant.  I trust that our dear gentle reader will not object!

                                              Ichabod P. Renault







                           PART ONE


                      PREMISE AND APPEAL
    I am a dabbler, I admit.  I cannot find it within myself to
commit.  My interests are wide and varied - so much to do, to
see; so little time to do, to see it in.  I devote immense
energies to each of my pursuits, but before I am finished, long
before in most cases, my interest wanes, my energies lose focus,
the project fades from consciousness and then existence.  Ah,
such is my fate!  The vast reservoirs of genius which reside in
my humble figure will never be discovered to the world at large:
the only beings privy to my greatness - myself and those within
an extremely limited coterie.  These shall be elucidated in due
course, fear not gentle reader!  The path of my life is
convoluted and devious and bears closest scrutiny lest it slither
and squirm like the slick ocean eel from thy most firm grasp.  So
take heed now, oh gentle reader!  Be prepared for most unsettling
revelations!  My confessions, delivered on my death-bed, do not,
in the slightest, deviate from Truth; I have nothing to hide,
dear reader, nothing to protect.  I lay bare the most dark, most
secret regions of my heart; to the judgment of a stern and
unforgiving world; so that I may be relieved of any such guilts
that may have accumulated during the course of this, my life.  So
perhaps, it may be divined from my words thus far, I depart with
these confessions merely to relieve the anxiety of my approaching
oblivion and with the hope of reconstituting my spirit so that it
might be suitable for a more exalted experience in that
transEarthly state which might or might not incurr upon the
dissemblance of my corporeal essence; but let me assure thee,
gentle reader, that my motives in delivering these confessions
are more noble in spirit than that.  Indeed, it is true that
perhaps a small amount of selfish insight motivates the chronicle
I am about to embark upon, yet mayhap this little transgression
may be forgiven?  On the most part, I assure thee, it is with the
hopes of _education_ that I endeavor to communicate to the world at
large the varied escapades of my earthly life; it is with the
hope that those who may consider to engage themselves in similar
pursuits to mine might by some chance or contrivance be in the
position to read of _my_ life, and afterwards reconsider the course
of _theirs_.  Is this vain hope, dear reader?  Perchance, is such a
one as I have described - _thee_?  That question is one, who may
answer but each individual to himself, and no other in his stead,
unless he be idiot or woman.



                   TREATING OF MY CHILDHOOD
    It would indeed be a long and arduous task to illuminate all
those incidents of my childhood which might bear some influence
on the later transactions of my life.  Let it be said that the
Childe is Father to the Man, and I believe that with every grain
of my being.  I shall begin my discourse with the elements of my
earliest memories, incoherent and nonchronological and uncannily
fragmented as they may be.  Nevertheless, it is my duty, for I
fear that any shirking of such on my part, especially at early
date such as this, would impend doom, disaster, and insincerity
upon the remainder of this work.  I shall begin, of course, with
the earliest image I can conceive; and that would be at the
moment of my conception.  Ah verily, that moment I remember well,
as must all who are conceived by man upon woman in this world!
That blissful, floating ecstasy which followed so immediately
from the sundering spasms - it is a sensation which often I
return to when contemplating the serenest aspects of my life.
For eternity, it was, this immersion in liquid, conforming
warmness, and darkness supreme, there was no need of that light
from above, neither yellow nor waxen - nea, verily, 'twas the
utmost antithesis of such repellent notions.  For now, would I
not dispense with the light if not I needed it for the reception
of glyphs on paper to mine eyes, or the direction of mobility for
my limbs?  For is not the light but an ugly distraction from the
pure and most sublime thoughts of my head?  For is not the light
a distraction from the holiness of Man, casting its doubt upon
every object in the Realm of existence, giving pause and molasses
to the freewheeling thoughts of soul and intellect?  For is not
the light a deceiver, showing that which is not and casting
shadow upon that which is?  Yea, and more pronouncedly, YEA, the
light is all of these things and more!  And I, on the brink of
eternal Darkness, am not afraid to speak on the Truth of life!  I
give warning to all generations of philosophers to pass after
mine own passing: heed well these words!  I forecast the Truth of
all life in these pages, and it is not simple!  The peace and
tranquility of the interior of my mother's woman's belly was the
formative experience of my life, I tell thee, and it would do
thee well to look back on thine own memories of that time and
recall the wisdom thou didst possess then, before the intrusion
of the light.  Ah how I envy thee, oh blind man!  Didst the Lord
cure thee, oh beggar, when he smeared the Mud into thine eyes; or
didst he indeed cast thee into the garish falsity of illusion and
deception that is the light?  Boon or curse I ask thee oh blind
man!  Boon or curse that delivered thee into the mediocrity of
Vision which so afflicts thy fellow Man?  Ah well, there is no
telling the foolishness of a Man!  Let it be known, however, that
upon my emergence into the light of this world didst my wisdom
fade before the vividity of Sun and the ghostly pale of Moon.  I
do remember the wisdom, but not in its particulars; strictly in
its vaguest outlines and shadowy figures.  I benefit not from its
numbers but rather from its structures.  Return!  Return, I, to
the floating Between Void of the Nether-womb!  Soon!  Soon!  This
my hope! this my salvation! this the thread to which I cling in
these, my last hours!  Soon!



               TREATING FURTHER OF MY CHILDHOOD
    It is not the end of my childhood experience, that I emerged
into this unKnowing light-filled world.  Indeed, it is merely the
beginning.  For let me treat of the Crib.  Rock, rock abye Baby!
Indeed, those were confusing times!  For these were the times
that I was to unlearn every bit of wisdom which I had hitherto
possessed in rich abundances.  Every language of the world, of
the Universe, known and unknown, I possessed in fullest capacity.
Yet the constraints of this locality, this limited sphere of
peoples and communities, restricted my vocabularic development,
so that I must cast away all former knowledges of all known
languages in order to conform to the petit, inferior squawks and
squabbles of those people who were my parents and neighbors.
Like the shavings from a mould, or the rough marble from a
statue, must I sweep aside and disregard and misplace my former
command of Total Language, leaving only the tiniest, corpuscular
husk which is English.  Indeed, I may be grateful even for this -
what if, by some misfortune, I had been required to shave even
further and descend to Italian or German, or even French!  _One_
small favour, at the least, I was granted by being born into
England soil!  (Although, I must admit, I have often speculated
as to the mysteries of China.)  The Cradle, the Creche - this
indeed was a distressing time.  Accustomed only to darkness and
spiritual unphysicality, I could not manage to maneuver my
material body in such deft fashion as those large creatures which
perpetually loomed above me and swooped down upon me to lift me
into soft, heaving bosoms; and so they, interpreting my
incommodation to indicate inferiority in all other aspects, of
which I could assure them the opposite, if only they understood
Total Language rather than their own inferior brand of crude
communication, treated me according to the provisions of
relations with idiots and half-wits, only with less respect than
_that_ for _my_ intelligence!  Even though I possessed tracts and
vast estates of knowledge which only they could dream of - if
even that - I was in no capacity to relieve them of their trivial
notions and most fallible observations.  Imagine the frustration
I discovered!  Even further to my frustration was the gradual,
steady _loss_ of wisdom which accrued during that period of
exposure and adaptation to the light.  The light did outshine the
wisdom until I was left almost the mewling, piteous babe which
these creatures did perceive!  How humiliating!  For although I
was bereft of these knowledges and wisdoms, I was not relieved of
the feelings associated with them; I still felt the keenness of
my former wit and superiority to the common man, indeed the
uncommon man as well, and with this feeling came bitterness and
despair, for I could no longer be worthy of it!  Wretched,
wretched was my state!  I cried, and my mother took me to her
breast - and the suckling did for small times relieve my
acrimony, returning me even briefly to the gushing warmth of that
Before-time, but then the suckle did end and the light returned
to me and the darkness fled, and the despair returned!



             TREATING EVEN FURTHER OF MY CHILDHOOD
    Perhaps, gentle reader, I grow tiresome in my lament for
those early years of loss and depravity, of descent into the
world of Man from some pre-Earthly state of bliss and full
wisdom?  Is this the case, then forgive me.  But, pray, I must
continue, for there is further to treat of in these early years
of my life.  Words were used to describe me as a child, words
which came from the lips and minds of my parents and neighbors -
precocious, devious, disturbed, cold, loathsome, unrepentant,
blasphemous, fiendly, Truthfull, insidious, ill-mannered,
insubordinate, incorrigible, destructive, corrupted, demented,
obscene, &c., &c..  These words were often uttered with a hushed
voice, a troubled brow, a swift genuflection, a beseeching glance
_upwards_.  Even as a Childe, I was not understood properly by my
fellow Men.  They did not comprehend the spirit which I brought
into this world, which I succeeded in saving from the corrosive
power of the light, which I managed to keep within myself
uncorrupted and unprofaned, that small darkness which I
maintained and assiduously tended within the garden that was my
heart.  The taint of light never reached there, and I state
verily that it never did, and that during my lifetime that dark
flower grew and flourished within me, so that now I am closer to
that divine darkness of my preBirth than I was during my
childhood.  Proudly, unshrinking I say this, and I defy the
Church or the God it represents to make me wilt before the light!
My explorations of the world were performed with the most noble
aspirations in mind; I desired not more than to understand that
which had destroyed my happiness and well-being in the first
place; in the second place to contrive a means whereby I might
cast away the light which ruined the perfect Before-state and
return to that ever-remembered bliss.  Dear gentle reader,
perhaps thou laughest mildly to thyself, remarking that I was but
a foolish lad - for is not the state of Death that which I
sought?  Well, let it be known, dear reader, that I was never
convinced of this notion, still am not even on my death-bed, for
why should it be so, other than that it is unknown, unfathomable,
and therefore associated with the type of transcendence which I
remember from the womb.  Well, let it be known that the end of
corporeal existence does not, by no means, prove that
transcendence!  For hearken to this little logic - my memories
extend back to a finite point - the moment of Conception - and
that moment represented the inauguration of my corporeal
existence - and it was in this time that I possessed the wisdom
of which I have spoken - therefore, if Death represents the end
of this corporeal existence, then it will surely not return me to
that childhood being which I seek.  It may deliver me into
unknown realms, of which I may have possessed knowledge while in
the darkness of my mother's woman's womb, but these are mere
speculations and unworthy of incorporation into the memoirs, the
confessions of such Eminence as mine.



       INVESTIGATING YET MORE MINUTELY INTO MY CHILDHOOD
    There is much to be said of this period in my life.
Although my fellow children didst fear me and keep considerable
distance betwixt themselves and myself in their play, I did not
return the sentiments.  Indeed, I barely considered their
existence at all, except when it suited my needs, as when I was
performing my investigations into the nature of this crude,
corporeal world.  My parents did fear me as well, and they were
wise to let me roam unhindered, both in mind and body, as I
explored the furthest reaches and realms of philosophy,
mathematics, geography, astronomy, astrology, magick, alchymie,
literature, aquatics, demonology, religion, politics, science,
and a host of other pursuits, some more arcane and undiscovered
to the largest host of humanity, others most familiar to almost
every man in the world, including even the most primitive
tribesman of woolly Afrique.  Sometimes, a child would disappear
from the neighborhood, and although it was never spoken in
publick places or uttered within hearing distance of my presence,
speculation as to the disposition of such a child would often
include my person in its reasoning; indeed sometimes such
speculation came quite close to the Truth of the matter, for
indeed, I did often, in order to elucidate some point or query in
my studies, abduct a child or a goat from the neighborhood and
investigate the material or psychological workings with some
great detail.  Aware of the delicacy which such operations would
require, keeping in mind the disposition of the neighborhood
towards my person and towards the persons of the various
children, I performed the abductions with the utmost in secrecy
and professional subtlety.  I left not one single clew in any
case which might represent that I had been the person responsible
for what they dubbed a Crime.  Let it be known, dear gentle
reader, in case thou dost smile to thyself and think of the title
of this manuscript and confidently assert that I feel guilt for
such actions as I have described; let it be known that my guilt
runs an entirely divergent, indeed parallel, course to that for
which the common man may feel guilt.  The taboos of an artificial
construction, that many are mistaken to believe the limits of
human consciousness, are as nothing to me - I ignore them as the
Crocodile ignores the perching birds upon its back: mere trifles,
nuisances hardly to be bothered with.  What is the life of an
ignorant mortal - who will die soon in any case, most likely in
even more ignorant a state than that in which I snuff him!  If
anything, this is a mercy, not a horror!  Unfortunately, such is
understood by few; most will rely on the arbitrary morality and
uninformed doctrine of their Church or community.  I am here to
say: rely on no one thing but thy self!  For thy self is the one
True Verity in thy life, the only constant companion which thou
canst trust and upon whose confidence and judgment thou canst
rely!  Thy Self!  Remember - if all other matter from these pages
should leave thy brain, at least keep this one Thing; Thy Self!
Thy Self!  Thy Self!



                 TREATING OF THE AGE OF REASON
    There is a point in childhood which the world concurs and
demands that the child has reached that level of understanding
which is requisite in preparing himself for the life of an adult.
This is the Age of Reason.  Perhaps my parents and neighbors
expected that my early endeavors into the mysterious realms of
knowledge, those thresholds which they feared to step beyond yet
through which I with tremulous breath and frenzied spirit did
verily _run_ with all excitement in my step; that these might
recede and that I might gradually morphate my consciousness to
become like unto them.  Their hopes were not to be realized, for
I was only still on the very earliest verges of that Countrie
which I longed to explore in its fullest extents and boundaries -
if indeed such boundaries existed.  It was my most full intention
to embark upon such adventures as even their most vivid, most
vibrant, most fantastic, most poetical imaginations could not
conceive.  But so varied and so ecstatic these adventures may be
that my short material existence on this Earthly plane could not
possibly contain even the merest fragment of them!  Imagine the
desperation of such lad as I - who dares to dream the immortal
thoughts, and yet is constrained to the lowliest humble vessel of
mortal life!  Oh despair is not the word, neither despond, nor
defeat, nor gloom, nor misery, nor doom, nor melancholy, nor
grief, nor sorrow, nor wretchedness, nor tribulation, nor ordeal,
nor terror, nor hideousness - but instead is the accumulation of
all these words and all those words unspoken which may also cast
understanding upon my state!  This was the Age of Reason: the
realization that all was not, could not be, for me; that cursed
implacable time was mine enemy and that this enemy could not be
overwhelmed or defeated or even bargained with or pleaded with;
that only the smallest portion of experience was mine to be had,
and that I may enjoy it only for the briefest, numberless moment;
that I might live my life in splendor, sating every desire and
appetite I could conceive, but that these would be nothing
compared to the vast, infinite ocean that lay at mine and the
world's disposal, and that I might dip only the puny, piddling
cup of my hand into this ocean and drink of it, and fill up my
being with it, and yet be the most pathetic creature imaginable
in comparison with He whose hand could cup this entire ocean and
have room for another and another of comparable size.  Why I
beseeched the World?!  Why not I?!  Why this accursed light to
fade away and outshine the tremendous knowledge which I felt
within my reach yet which danced perpetually and sprightly just
_beyond_ my reach?  Why could I not speak the Total Language and
commune with True Nature?  Torment, anguish, woe!



          TREATING OF MY REJECTION OF HOPE FOR WISDOM
    Yes, gentle reader, any and all of thy conceptions of my
distress would be but shadows of the true Beast.  So far did I
descend into despairing that I came to the conclusion one day
that if wisdom could not be had in total by myself in this short
lifetime, then wisdom was not worthy to be had!  Why should I
bend myself into tortuous, crooked conceits, when the bits of
wisdom they provided were but bitter, taunting, teasing hints at
the greater wisdom that lay beyond and behind, but never within!
I decided that I would indeed reject all pursuit of such wisdom
and direct the recourse into the body which I could master with
little difficulty here on Earth.  Turning my face from the Stars,
I stared into the Mud, and proclaimed the Mud more satisfactory
to my senses!  Yea, I verily dived into it, wallowed and wiggled
with glee and madness!  Bare fourteen summers had my body
witnessed, and already had I perceived the limits of my petit
existence in this insignificant speck of dust that is the Earth.
I settled for these limits, for I despaired of exerting effort
for a fruitless purpose.  Why not give myself to the forces which
the world would happily provide?  So indeed did I.  Women, women,
women.  What easy fulfillment of bodily delights they provided!
The merest appetite would appear, and they would fall over
themselves in order to service it!  My appendage would increase
in proportions, and their eyes would widen with apprehension, and
they would position themselves most skillfully in order to sate
that organ's insistent demands for pleasure.  My hunger for food
would grumble itself from my stomach, and they would jump to the
kitchen to prepare a full repast, the grandest meal which they,
with their unlimited abilities in manipulating the fruits of the
earth, could conjure, and they would leap to serve it to me on
silver platters and pour drinks within golden chalices, and feed
me by their hands, and clean after me by their hands, and bask in
the glow of my pleasure at having been served by them.  My eyes
would droop with the onset of drowsy slumber, and these women
would charge ahead to prepare the bed for my impending torpor and
sleep; and they would coo and sing and pave the road to peaceful
dreams with the golden bricks of their purring voices.  Women
were indeed the foundation of all my material indulgences in this
period of my life.  Women were the Earth, and they were
persistent in their wiles to lure me into a premature burial
within that Earth.  Their wombs were the early sustenance of
wisdom, and I remembered that, I still remember that, but they
are, at heart, the Earth Mother, and they will attempt to bring
down the Sky to them, for they desire to drape themselves in the
Sky.  I was the Sky, the boundless Spaces of Eternity, but yet I
felt the urgent need and desire to bind myself to the Earth.  Did
I fear to float away; did I feel afraid without the anchor?  If
so, then Woman was the anchor, and I did not fear, at least not
for a little while.



         TREATING OF MY RENEWAL OF THE HOPE FOR WISDOM
    Oh, how I wallowed in thy Mud, oh Earth Mother, oh Woman!  I
drank thy Wine; I lay my head on thy silken Pillows; I inhaled
the fragrance of thy Perfumes; I seethed and pulsed and swooned
within the velvet enclosure of thy Womb; I became as the wanton,
and reveled as the toper, and laughed as the jester, and
soliloquized as the philosopher, and expostulated as the fool.
But what of wisdom?  Have I deserted thee?  Oh no!  Never!  This
was but the briefest interlude.  My quest shall not end here!  My
quest shall be eternal, and this shall be but the smallest smirch
on that grand canvas.  I awoke to this reality after the passing
of my thirtieth summer on this Earth.  Hence, I shaked away the
women which clung to me like fleas unto the scalp of the hairy
dog, and cleansed myself of the dirt of the Mud in which I had
wallowed, and embarked again upon the search for wisdom.  That
dark flower within my heart, dangerously close to wilting away
forever, I again carefully diverted my attention to, and cared
for it as never before, nursed it into healthful bloom.  The
infinite vastness of Space awaited me, and the power of that
flower would provide the source and the germinating will which I
would need to explore that eternitude.  The women crept back to
me, creeping, wily, beckoning me unto their bosoms, hoping to
crush the dark flower between their breasts, but I merely laughed
and brushed them aside to flutter away on the wind like seeds of
the poppy.  Their velvet caresses did mean nothing to me any
longer.  I would fain pursue higher objects now.  I would turn
mine eyes from the Mud, back up to the Stars.  I would reascend
into the Sky, my Home, and dance there with the Angels of Heaven.
For there did wisdom abide.  In the Earth, in the domain of
Woman, I exhausted all inquiries almost instantaneously; too
easily were resolved the questions of the flesh: the simple
answer to it all was, if it does grow hungry, then feed it!  If
thy belly does grumble, then feed it!  If thy appendage does
swell, then feed it!  If thine eyes do grow drowsy, then feed
them!  Feed!  Feed!  Feed!  The questions of Sky are infinitely
more subtle and diverse, and it was my intention to discover the
source and possibility of every _question_; thence to divine the
_answer_ of each!  That I may not within my material lifetime
achieve this goal bothered me not; no longer.  I resolve to
achieve as much as I may within these limits, and perhaps I may
discover a way which I heretofore had not considered.  The world
rebirthed anew with fat possibilities.  I felt the prospect of
knowledge swell within my heart and within my mind, and pride in
my own apprehension of that knowledge.  I buzzed with
anticipation and fluttered with certainty as to the outcome of my
life.  Great would be my fate; great!



TREATING OF MY FIRST FORAY INTO REALMS PREVIOUSLY DENIED TO MAN
    Oh, giddy were those first days!  Renewed faith in my Self -
that most important of worldly commodities; renewed faith in my
pursuit of Knowledge; renewed faith in the existence of Wisdom.
I could perceive no limitations on my desires for freedom.  I
would conquer the world if need be.  I would hold emperors
between my thumb and fingers if need be!  No Earthly force could
hold me back from my goal.  Enemies would cringe and tremble
before my might, and melt from the path to wisdom like cubes of
ice under the lamp of my Self.  I decided that strength, perhaps,
lay in numbers.  If I could convince enough people to join me in
my quest for wisdom, then perhaps together we might accomplish
what one, alone, could not.  Perhaps we could discover
independently, then share with the rest, and so increase our
knowledge exponentially more quickly than would be possible if
each must find all for himself.  So I created the Society of
Equals.  We met yearly in the Sheridan Castle, secret, hidden in
the mountains of Scotland.  Each year, we would gather together
and hear the reports of our comrades; we would learn from them
all the knowledge which they had acquired during the previous
year.  Men from around the world belonged to my Society, and each
brought to it his own unique perspective.  Much I learned in
those years, much indeed.  Oh that I could impart but a fraction
of the wisdom I acquired into these pages; but it would be
useless to do so, for each must come into it on his own, and will
not believe it when he reads it in the pages of a book,
especially in the pages of a confession such as this.  Before, oh
gentle reader, thou dost give voice to several doubts which must
arise within thy mind concerning the aforesaid, let me do resolve
thy concerns.  Although it cannot be communicated through mere
words, we were able to share with each other, within the Society
of Equals, the wisdom we accrued throughout the year, through a
special means of transference, which I developed in my youth, and
which I call Thought-Weave.  There is a way to rearrange the
structure of mind so that the gaps between individuals may be,
albeit only for short times, woven together, so that all
knowledge may be shared between the component minds.  I will not
enter into the technical details for fear it may drive those who
attempt its mysteries without the proper precautions into madness
and spiritual dissolution and disintegration.  It is not a simple
matter; only those properly initiated may attempt such a thing.
Pray do not, gentle reader, take it into thy head that thou art
prepared for such undertaking; I assure thee, thou art not!  In
any case, great wisdom did I amass from my experiments with the
Society of Equals.  As judged from the name, all within that
Society, in principle, considered themselves as equals to each
other, in the respect of spiritual and intellectual development,
and superior to the rest of the world in that respect; as evinced
by the phenomenon of Thought-Weave, in which all individuals were
but components of the greater Weave.  Of course, although they
did not realize this, I alone was superior to them all, for I
could keep out of the Weave whatever wisdom I so desired, and
this I did, not wishing to share _everything_.



           TREATING FURTHER OF THE SOCIETY OF EQUALS
    I would speak of the various, enlightened experiments which
those members of the Society of Equals did perform in order to
attain that wisdom which we so yearned for.  Perhaps the common
man would shudder and make the sign of the Cross to hear of such,
as he would refer them, "horrors."  But the enlightened man will
understand the necessity and defer to the requirements of the
pursuit of wisdom.  In order to nourish that dark flower within
our hearts, we must needs do things which perhaps our flesh would
revolt from doing.  Women were a great fund of information
regarding wisdom, for although they represent the Earth, that
Earth doth reflect and absorb much from the Sky, and by observing
the darkness within Woman, we may discover the darkness within
our own hearts, and thus rejoice.  Many investigations were
conducted: one explored the fertility of Woman.  A man abducted a
woman from her home and opened up her womb while still she lived,
so that he may witness the mechanisms by which that creature doth
incurr the first sprout of life.  With luck on his side, this man
did discover that the woman which he abducted was several months
in the way of Childe, and he was afforded with a most wondrous
view of that child in the making.  Although, it may be considered
a tragedy, in a sense, because that poor entity was forced to be
admitted to the light long before it ever needed to be, and
perhaps because it was not yet ready to handle the stress of such
experience, such deadening of the world of mind, that it did die
within moments of its illumination.  The woman did soon die as
well, but not before we had uncovered much invaluable information
as to the processes of life and its conception.  Another
investigation discovered to us the reason for hunger.  Again, we
did abduct a woman and open her up, this time to reveal her
stomach.  Whilst we did closely observe this organ, we did feed
food down her throat and watched to see exactly how it did enter
into the stomach.  After this, we did subtly alter the mechanism,
and watched to see how this did affect the hunger of the woman.
Much did we learn - that hunger is not necessary if one does but
bind the energy of one's body into a self-rejuvenating circle,
such that the fuel and energy that earthly sustenance does
provide is not necessary; that one may draw from the fund of
infinite soul and spirit, and that no debt will result therefrom,
that indeed all the unities of the universe are enriched by such
an action.  Numerous were the mysteries into which we of the
Society of Equals delved.  Uncounted and invaluable; much I owe
to that institution which I founded singly and by myself at
first, but drawing greater and greater numbers to my banner as
the promise of wisdom is most alluring to very many men in this
world, for the man is naturally attracted to the Sky, and
naturally wishes to partake of its glory.  I promised such - and
did deliver!



     TREATING OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE SOCIETY OF EQUALS
    After a certain number of years, I grew weary of the Society
I had created.  Grateful as I was to this means by which I had
procured much knowledge and wisdom, I was yet dissatisfied with
it.  For a long time, this dissatisfaction was felt rather than
acknowledged, and I roamed the Earth with a vague sense of unease
in my belly.  I could not attribute a cause, and I could not
discern a reason for such an occurrence.  Then one day it came
clear: the Society of Equals, although lofty were its goals,
still descended, in its methods, to the level of the Earth, of
the Woman.  Indeed, most of its experiments dealt with women and
the mechanisms by which they kept men constrained to the Earth.
In treating such this way, the Society became as of the Mud from
which it attempted to escape.  It searched for wisdom within the
bodies of the Earth, and squeezed only a few drops thereof, when
it should look Skyward for its answers, and there find a greater
treasure than ever it could discover in the Mud.  Freshened by
this new understanding, I approached the Society and conveyed to
them the gist of what I have just described, although in much
greater detail and subtlety and accuracy; for, gentle reader,
thou couldst not conceive the language used in Thought-Weave.  At
my revelation, the Thought-Weave trembled, then crumbled.  The
other members of the Society could not accept the Truth I brought
them.  They rejected it and desperately dug deeper, deeper down
into the Mud which I denounced.  Their wisdom was not as great as
mine, because of that which I withheld from the Thought-Weave,
and so they could not comprehend the Truth of my thoughts.  So I
and the Society of Equals parted ways.  The Society still does
meet, and perhaps, thou, dear gentle reader, art a member of that
esteemed, illustrious body of men, and perhaps thou dost scoff at
what I reveal in these pages, but be warned, I know greater
wisdom than a thousand Societies of Equals all put together, and
I foresee thy doom if thou dost continue along that dead-end
path.  Thou dost, all unknowingly, follow the way of Woman in
seeking wisdom among the dirt, and thou must _become_ woman in the
end if thou dost continue in this way.  I say again - be warned!
But then, I know the futility of this: no one will listen to the
advice of another, for no one, if he is truly to trust his Self
above all others, will appoint another's forbearance higher
office than his own.  He will heed only the callings of his own
soul, as I in my life have done, and regardless of mistakes or
wrong turns, as indeed I have done.  So I do not judge thee, oh
Society, indeed I sympathize; for I recall the difficulties which
I suffered in removing myself from the fleshly Earth of Woman and
Mother.  It is so much easier to compromise in one's search for
wisdom, to allow grains of earth to seep into one's sensibility
and rot there and poison all.  Yes, I do sympathize!  For I, too,
have spent my life amidst the Dirt.



                     TREATING OF THE KING
    My wisdom was great by this time, and although I kept to
myself, my renown was wide and shrouded in mystery.  Across the
world, I was known, and spoken of in hushed voices, much as my
parents and neighbors had spoken of me when I was younger, and it
was said of me that I had access to worlds unknown, and that I
commanded legions of demons who were at my disposal to commit
whatever foul deed my whimsy happened to muse upon.  My powers of
magick and demonology were widely exaggerated, I assure thee, and
my reputation far exceeded my reality.  This however was not
known to the King of England, who hearing of my powers, summoned
me to his Court to meet with him concerning a private matter.  I
was much dismayed, as thou mightst imagine, dear reader, for I
preferred to keep myself detached from worldly things, especially
such Muddy pursuits as politics.  Kings bored me, wars,
diplomacy, nationhood - it was all so much la-de-da as far as I
was concerned.  Alas, one could not disobey the summons of one's
King, so I swallowed my apprehensions and journeyed to meet the
King.  I was received and presented with utmost haste, and the
King appeared very much disturbed when he spoke with me.  He cut
a grand figure, I will concede, and did indeed befit his station
well, at least in the physical attributes one would expect the
bearer of such title to possess.  He beseeched me to help him,
for his daughter, the princess, was not well, and none of his
doctors or court physicians could even diagnose her malady, let
alone cure it.  He told me that if I did not cure her, I would be
executed.  This did not sit well with me, as thou mayst imagine,
and I informed the King of this as graciously as I could, but he
remained firm.  He declared that he would go to any length, no
matter how extreme, to secure the health of his only beloved
daughter.  If it be required that he behead every physician in
the land, then so be it.  He showed me to a room where there was
an array of pikes, each adorned with a human head, each head
experiencing a different stage of decay.  There were dozens such
heads.  This display, I suppose, was intended to impress upon me
the urgency of my situation, and perhaps even to intimidate me,
but let it be known that I am not easily intimidated.  My wisdom
was advanced enough at this time, that I did not fear for my
life, no matter what the outcome of His Majesty's daughter's
life.  I was confident, nonetheless, that curing her of her
malady, whatever it may be, would be of little difficulty, for
had I not devoted twenty years of my life to the investigation of
matters of the Body?  The Society of Equals, under my tenure, had
achieved tremendous knowledge pertaining to the female body and
its various functions, such that almost every aspect of its
operation was known to me.  I assured the King that curing his
daughter would be but small matter, and he took heart from this
communication.  Thus, he led me to the chambers of his daughter,
the Princess.



            OF MY TREATMENT OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER
    I insisted upon being left alone with the Princess, for I
knew that my attempts to diagnose her illness would not be met
with congenially by any lookers-on.  My methods would be
considered quite unconventional by any other practitioners of
that ancient art, Medicine.  Thus, I stood and looked upon the
figure of the Princess, lying delicately upon her satin pillows,
beneath her lace coverlets, rosy cheeks, luxuriant flowing locks
billowed beneath her porcelain skull, thin transparent lips, eyes
gently shut.  Her breast heaved slow and almost imperceptible.
She lay in deep coma, and according to the King, had been thus
for a year and a day.  I advanced to her side and removed the
coverlets.  Then I quickly removed her night dress so that she
lay unencumbered upon the bed, easily accessible to my proddings
and investigations.  I thence proceeded upon a methodical
examination of her body and its mechanisms.  I lay my ear close
to her stomach to hear the workings therein, and also her heart
and her lungs and her womb.  I discovered that the problem lay in
the heart, that that organ did fail to circulate properly the
feelings and emotions which are so essential to the governance of
a female Earth body, that instead, that organ kept contained
within itself every ounce of what it did produce in way of Earth
properties.  Thus did her body languish, its enemy a jealous
heart.  It would be simple matter to suck the coveted fluids from
out that mean, misguided vessel and to distribute them to the
various starved nodes of lymph and juice throughout her body.  I
summoned to the bedside a tarantula spider, through means which
some uninformed people might attribute to magick or supernatural
contrivance or somesuch other nonsense, but in reality are very
much elemental to Nature and the unexceptional, indeed
commonplace, workings of the World.  Simply because they are not
personally acquainted with these processes, people will insist
that they do not exist, and therefore any person who does
demonstrate the veracity and True existence of such phenomena is
summarily persecuted, and often even executed, for merely
discovering Truth!  The tarantula spider I summoned was a large
and hairy beast.  It possessed eight legs, which it manipulated
to very complex effect, merely to ambulate in the same fashion
which humans can accomplish with but two - thus displaying in
quite visible fashion its inferiority to Man.  Black beads for
eyes, it did have, and most crucially, sharp pincers and
mandibles, with which to suck the life from its victim-prey.  In
this case, it would be utilized to suck the closely guarded Earth
elements from the miserly heart of the Princess, and to
distribute those elements to the deprived reaches of her anatomy.
I grasped the tarantula spider up - it was the size of my hand -
and I programmed into it the necessary knowledge for it to
perform its function correctly and with exactitude, for there was
little room for error in an operation such as this.  Then I
spread apart the King's daughter's nether lips and allowed the
tarantula to crawl within, the map to her heart inscribed in its
tiny, but adequate to the purpose, brain.  In a desperate
defense, her heart directed her legs to close, to deny me access,
but she was malnourished and weak, and it was but a simple matter
to keep them pried apart, and soon the tarantula began its
journey.



 OF THE RECOVERY OF THE PRINCESS AND OF MY APPOINTMENT TO THE
                         KING'S COURT
    Several hours passed before the tarantula spider managed to
crawl to the Princess's heart.  In open space, the tarantula
might have completed the journey in seconds, but the interior of
a woman's body is far from being open, indeed is crammed full of
organs and blood vessels and various other appurtenances to the
Earthly life process, so that the journey of the tarantula spider
must have been a long and exhausting one.  I could see its
progress by the bulge which its mass did effect to produce
against the interior surface of her skin.  This appeared on
cursory examination to be a static, unsightly lump, for it did
not appear to move, its progress was so gradual, but if one were
to watch it for a more protracted period, one would discern that
its position has indeed altered, that although not one indication
of movement has been apparent, its position is markedly different
than it was upon first glance.  I waited patiently, and watched,
and eventually, the tarantula did reach its destination, and
enacted the program which I had set to it.  I could envision
within my mind's eye, the actions of that furry creature.  First,
it would plunge its mandibular array into the meat of the
rebellious organ.  Then, satisfied that its grip was firm and
would hold, the creature would begin to suck the vital juice from
that heart until it was but a shriveled husk of tissue, all its
components now transferred into the body of the spider.  Now, the
tarantula would resume the duties of the heart, meting generously
that which its predecessor had been so stingy to distribute.
Soon after the tarantula had succeeded in its task, the eyelids
of the Princess began to flutter, and it was clear that my cure
had proved efficacious.  She gradually came into awareness and
consciousness until finally she opened her eyes to behold my
visage gazing down upon her.  She started and shook her head
mildly in bewilderment and confusion, as would be normal after
having slept for a year and a day and awakening to discover an
apparently young man looking down upon thee (for although I had
seen fifty summers pass during my lifetime, my visage remained
that of a youth, for I had from the Thought-Weave, and from my
own pursuits, learned many secrets of prolonging the attributes
of youthfulness, as well as the stamina and the spirit).  She,
blushing, attempted to cover her nakedness, but I assured her I
was a physician, and that she must remain unencumbered for now,
for the process of her cure was not yet complete.  There remained
but one step.  After waiting an hour, that step did take place:
the yellowed, transparent, eviscerated, pus-filled husk of her
former heart evacuated from the same place where did the
tarantula begin its journey.  Now, the Princess's cure was done,
and I did allow her to pull her night dress upon her.  She
expressed desire to stand up and move about, but I insisted that
she remain abed, for a period of rest amounting to a week would
be required before her new heart would be strong enough and
experienced enough in its required duties to support her in more
strenuous circumstances than those of lying motionless under warm
covers.  When the King beheld his daughter alive and well, his
gratitude was so overwhelming that he commanded me to take the
place of his Court Physician (whose rotted skull adorned the very
first spike in that before-mentioned room).



            CONCERNING MY TENURE AS COURT PHYSICIAN
    As often occurs in cases where a young maiden is cured of
some terrible malady by a handsome, young physician, the Princess
developed quite a powerful attachment to me, deemed herself in
love with me, no less.  I being the Court Physician and she being
the King's daughter, our proximity remained close, and so I was
unable to escape the darting glances, the blushing encounters in
the halls of the castle, the hand-clasped bosoms whene'er I
passed, &c. &c.  Perhaps the feeling that she owed her life to me
motivated her infatuation, or perhaps she felt some genuine
attraction for me, not an unheard of proposition, or perhaps the
spider that was her heart felt a kinship with me, I being he
responsible for its present program and position in the bosom of
the daughter of the King of all the land of Ing.  Whate'er the
reason may be, it is certain that my life as Court Physician was
not the most comfortable or propitious that may be imagined.  For
it would not befit the daughter of a King to marry or carry on a
relationship of less than wholesome quality with the lowly Court
Physician, who although revered as the healer and saviour of the
Princess herself, nonetheless did not carry within his veins the
thick, divinely originated blood of Royalty, which may not be
corrupted by mixing with the thin, watery juices of common folk
such as I.  If such a thing were to be suspicioned, then it might
prove dangerous to me, and my head might join those of my fellows
in the Pike Room.  I, of course, would never let such a thing
happen if it should come to that, but there is little wisdom in
allowing things to come to that in the first place, so I
attempted to deflect those unhealthy attentions which the
Princess found it necessary within her Woman's Earth Bosom to
direct my way.  My days of swimming in the muck were long over,
as I have stated, and so I was not trapped by feelings for her -
a situation which would inevitably have complicated matters
considerably.  As time progressed, however, it became
increasingly difficult to avoid her less and less subtle
entreaties.  She would discover all kinds of excuses to see me:
her head ached so, and could I prescribe some salve or pill to
ease her pain? her arm, there was a twinge, could I massage it
perhaps, with some soothing ointment? her thighs, they ached
terribly, could I perhaps examine them, for she was certain she
could overcome her modesty in lifting her dress to improve my
medical access to that region? her bosom, it itched, &c. &c.  She
contrived all manner of ailments to encourage my explorations of
her body, which provided no small amount of pleasure to her, for
when she was sure I was not looking, she would recline her head
and dissolve into her pleasure at the touch of my hands on her
body.  She being the Princess, I could find no way of disobeying
her commands to examine her, and so I did as she wished, although
I knew that no good could come of it.



       TREATING OF MY DISCONTINUANCE AS COURT PHYSICIAN
    Thus grew the amorous Princess's advances until one day, the
entire affair came to dramatic conclusion.  I sat at my desk in
my Physician's Office, reading over an ancient, only recently
unearthen manuscript pertaining to the divers ways in which the
"magickal doorways to heathen realms" may be accessed and
utilized, when in burst the Princess, her bosom heaving mightily.
Tears streamed down her cheeks and adorned like dewy droplets the
extreme ends of her lashes.  Her hair was in much disarray, and
she appeared to have been exercising heavily, most likely in
running from her chamber to mine, no small distance.  She let her
true feelings in an outburst, and made known to me in no
uncertain terms that she had been enchanted with my figure and
form ever since first she opened her eyes to a newly coloured
world and beheld me dancing with the light like a magickal
fairie, and that she wished more than anything in the world that
she might feel my hands caressing her, not with the touch of the
clinical doctor, but rather with the touch of the rapturous
lover.  To this end, of seducing me into complying with her
fervent, voracious demands, she brushed aside the cloak which she
had been wearing to reveal that there was nothing beneath but the
rosy, pliant skin in which she was born.  I was little surprised,
for I had been quite well aware of the Princess's feelings for
me, but nevertheless, the bald directness of this advance I could
hardly have expected.  She had already embraced my face into her
bosom before I was ready to react, and it was at this state of
affairs that the King himself burst into my chambers, prepared to
complain of some minor malady which had been bothering him for
some little time.  The sight which greeted him, as thou mayst
imagine dear gentle reader, was one which struck him into the
veriest core of his being: here was the roseate, supple flesh of
his daughter, all exposed to the world and defiled by the touch
of a man, and not merely a man, but less than a man, a common
man, a man whose blood did not run thick with the divine grace of
God.  The Princess screamed upon sight of her father and ran to
snatch the cloak up and drape it about her body, but the King's
rage prevented her.  He grasped her by her arms and yelled with
all the force of his lungs into her face, and she trembled and
quaked with fear and desolation.  In his eyes, she was defiled
forever, whether or not she had been consummated in her passion
with me, and therefore he must perform the symbolic act of that
horror.  He hauled her by the hair to my desk and hurled her down
upon it, unbuttoning his trousers and emerging his Man-Dragon,
swollen not with desire but with revulsion, he plunged it into
her quivering Womanness.  She screamed with pain, and much blood
flowed forth, and then she fainted or collapsed, but her head
became limp, and her breathing stopped.  The King, oblivious,
continued to pump his anger into her still, unresponsive form
until he himself screamed with agony more extreme than even thou,
dear gentle reader, canst imagine in the recourse of thy most
potent nightmares.  For he withdrew his Man-Dragon post-haste,
and, attached to its scarlet, swollen nose, pincers sunk in deep
and fast, was the tarantula spider which the King's passion had
driven from its home in his daughter's heart.



      INTRODUCING MY NASCENT ADVENTURES IN THE EARTH MUD
    A great period of physical activity was thus inaugurated in
my life.  Always previous a Man of mind alone, I had never
embarked on much in the way of adventures, for such did not, in
any sense, interest me.  I was content to read of the adventures
of others, as set down in travel books and memoirs (such as thou
readest now, gentle reader!), but I felt no longing to experience
them for myself.  They represented to me the Mud of Earth, and I
must reject all such.  Even during my debauchment in the time of
my late youth, I did not travel or enjoy the world in that way; I
stayed with my women and ate of their pleasures solely, for that
was enough to satisfy me then.  Then, in my days as founder and
supreme leader of the Society of Equals, I performed many
investigations into Nature and Earth, but again, I did not engage
in any particular adventures.  Now, however, having renounced the
physical life, a great many adventures befell me.  Life is
strange that way: whatever it is that thou may wish to denounce
and reject, that will be what will plague thee all thy livelong
days!  Having no desire to experience adventures in the human
realm of Mud, the Mud splashed upward of its own volition and
grimed me as if I had dived in myself with all greediness.  I do
not bemoan my fate, if that be what thou believest, dear reader;
no, I accept all that life has brought and all that I have
approached life with, for I know that it could be no other way -
if 'twould, then why didn't it?  The world is as it is, and thou
must be accepting of that, or thou mayst find that thy outlook on
the world, and thy view of thy Self, will be poisoned and
corrupted and in general unhealthy.  Be ever vigilant and ever
careful of that dark flower in thy heart, as I have been of mine,
for it will direct and guide thee, even if that which thou dost
not wish to come True does come True, for if thou doth but follow
its guidance, then thou shalt end thy life True.  I was always
careful to tend and preserve my dark flower, and now I near death
with a lightness of being that few on Earth have ever achieved.
In my youth, that flower was almost extinguished, but I was
fortunate enough to come to my senses before it was too late, and
I was able to revive that flower to its former glory and beyond.
It remained with me in the adventures I am shortly to relate,
although its glory waxed and waned with circumstance, and if not
for it, I am sure I should have perished long ago.  As I have
stated, to thy Self be True, and then thou shalt find Grace in
Death.



           OF MY ADVENTURES IN A TRAVELLING CARAVAN
    After I had fled the castle, I found myself joining a
caravan of performers who roamed the countryside and put on shows
to dazzle the simple sensibilities of the common folk.  There
were two jugglers of firebrands; a swallower of swords; a person
who was neither man nor woman, but both, that is, who possessed
the appropriate organs of both sexes, and therefore could engage
in sexual relations with itself, for the amusement and
titillation of all; an acrobat who could also contort himself
into positions which defy the human form, making himself into
creatures that, if one were to come across them in the woods, one
might kill them to relieve them of their misery - legs sprouting
from heads, arms dangling from crotches, heads emerging from feet
and hands; and of course, there were the requisite freaks which
all travelling caravans must possess - the dwarves and
abominations and hideous creatures from the wombs of diseased
cows, which almost resembled humanity, but which were a horrible,
atrocious parody of it.  I joined on as a magician, capable of
performing feats of illusion such as making things disappear and
sawing people in half.  Of course, my brand of magic was quite
different from the normal illusionist's.  My studies endowed me
with the ability actually to perform these miracles without the
need of pretend.  If I wanted to make something disappear from
sight, I merely transported it to some other realm, perhaps a
WayStation of Nourishment or an inverted Tower of Discipline.  If
thou, gentle reader, art familiar with such concepts, perhaps as
a member of the Society of Equals, then thou wilt understand the
ease with which I could perform such "miracles" and baffle the
spectators who wished to divine the mechanism by which I
practiced this "illusion."  If I wished to cut some person in
half, I merely coated the serrated blade of the saw with Elixir
of Semintention, and the person's halves would continue to live
and operate as if there was another half attached, when in fact
there wasn't.  It was a simple matter to suture the halves back
together, and the person continued life as if he was a whole
organism, in fact never knew the difference, when in fact, he was
two halves in symbiotic communication with each other, but
nevertheless separate.  Such tricks were easy enough to manage,
and my performance was unilaterally successful.  My reputation,
albeit under a new name (I was a wanted man under my previous
identity) and with a new face (I changed my appearance so that no
person could recognize me as my True Self, even my own mother),
grew and grew, and I was several times approached by fellow
practitioners of my trade, hoping to apprentice themselves to me
and learn my secrets, but I always refused such entreaties, for I
did not wish to divulge the fruits of my lifetime's endeavor to
discover the Truth of the Universe.  So they would turn sadly
away, and I prospered in my new identity.  It afforded me plenty
of opportunity to pursue my true vocation, for the performance
was only part of the greater carnival of the caravan, and so I
would put on perhaps three or four shows a day, an hour long
each, and then have the rest of my time free to dispose with as I
pleased.  And as I had but little need of sleep, my days were
long and fruitful.



        TREATING OF THE END OF MY CAREER IN THE CARAVAN
    After several years of peace and success with the caravan,
things came to a dreadful and unceremonious end when we entered a
particularly superstitious, religiously oriented community to
perform our acts.  Several people in the audience of my show were
so convinced that what I did was magick, and not mere illusion,
that they convened a secret conference of townsfolk in the night,
the purpose of which was to discuss the possibility of my being a
wizard or a warlock, and especially whether I was in communion,
perhaps even league, with Satan.  The accusations, of course,
were nonsense, but the people of this township took them quite
seriously and approached the owner of the caravan with their
suspicions and threats.  I was a very profitable property for the
caravan owner, and he was quite reluctant to allow these ignorant
fellows access to me, but their daggers and pitchforks and
shrewdly malignant eyes convinced him, and he handed me over
without much argument.  They brought me into their courthouse and
put me on trial for crimes against God and Nature.  Of course,
there was no chance that I would be found other than Guilty, so I
did not even present a defense.  They tried to torture
confessions out of me, as this method had proved quite
efficacious in worming confessions from all the other witches and
wizards which they had put on trial in similar fashion in the
past, but with me it did not work, for I was above their mucky
methods.  They could cut me with razors and prick my eyeballs
with needles; they could crush me with stones and squeeze my
skull in their vices; they could pour liquids down my throat and
insert daggers in my nether regions: I was above the Mud.  My
body could withstand their meager oppositions, and healed rapidly
of all their inflictions.  This phenomenon had the effect of
frightening and confirming them further in their belief that I
was a powerful wizard and so it was deemed that I must be
executed by fire immediately.  The caravan was outraged, but
there was nothing those performers could do but watch as I was
led to the scaffold and tied to the beam and sprinkled with holy
water; then dry kindling and firewood set about my feet, then set
ablaze; and they watched as my shrieking body was burned to
cinders and ashes.  Of course, what they watched was not me, but
an effigy of me, for the night before my execution was to take
place, I traded places with my guard, gave him my appearance and
assumed his appearance for myself, and prevented him from
speaking or acting as if he was any other but myself.  I watched
the execution, and it was quite a sight to see that physical body
which I associated with myself go up in flames.  But I suppose
this only goes to prove that the Mud means nothing, it is but
clothing and drapery for the true form of one's Self, which
remains constant and True no matter what the material
circumstances.



       TREATING OF MY ADVENTURES IN THE DARKLAND WOODS
    The town in which my doppelganger was burned as a wizard was
located in a clearing of the Darkland Woods, a mysterious forest
which perhaps was partly responsible for encouraging the
superstitious unreason of the inhabitants of that town, for it
was haunted by a great many elemental personalities and
spontaneously generated demonic presences.  My knowledge of these
creatures of Mud was always limited because they are so very rare
and difficult to get a hold of, that the Society of Equals never
really achieved much research into their nature and means of
existence.  They are more of Mud and Earth even than Woman, for
while Woman possesses, in however little quantity, many of the
Astral qualities and attributes of Man, these creatures possess
none of them.  They arise purely from the Mud, and they descend
back into it, having achieved nothing in their brief spans of
existence but a cheerful, mindless play.  They romp about the
forests, chattering and chittering, chasing after each other,
pursuing carnal oblivion, and clothing themselves in the leaves
and sticks of surrounding Nature.  The Darkland Woods was
thronged with such elementals, and I began an investigation of
them that was to last for several years.  I successfully
disguised myself as one of their kind and pursued much of the
same mindless games as they did, hoping to gain some
understanding of how these games related to the Earth from which
they came and the Sky under which they were played.  I examined
the internal structures of these creatures and found them to be
grossly aberrant from those of sublimer Man: organs incomplete
and distorted from the divine image of their counterparts in Man;
hearts black and charred and pumping but weakly, only enough to
nourish the body, but too weak to survive for long, hence their
shortened lifespans; brains smooth and whole, without the
convolutions and folds and the division between Sky and Earth
which thou wilt find in the brains of Man, their brains were all
Earth.  These traits were peculiar, and they gave rise to
speculation, some of it quite exciting.  I wondered if perhaps,
there were counterparts to these elementals of Earth, if there
were elementals of Sky, undiscovered as of yet, but whose brains
would be wholly devoted to Sky, and whose hearts would be white
and pure of Earth's dirt, whose material would be the Cloud and
air of Sky rather than the Mud and feces of Earth.  I jumped for
joy within my heart at the prospect of such creatures, for such a
creature, I was certain, would be the ultimate goal and
transcendence of Man, that if Man could achieve what such a
creature possessed, then Man would have attained perfection.  I
decided that I would attempt to discover these creatures out, if
it would take all of my remaining lifetime to do it in.  I knew
it would be an arduous task, but little did I know just _how_
arduous!



         OF THE ELEMENTALS AND THE HOUSE OF PLEASURE
    One of the most curious aspects of the elementals of the
Darkland Woods was their unceasing fascination with humans.  They
loved to observe the townsfolk and play at imitating them in
their games.  They would watch for hours as a woman came to wash
her family's laundry at the river.  Then, when she had gone, they
would crowd down to the very spot where she had been working, and
proceed in grotesque parodies of her actions.  They could not
seem, no matter how hard they tried, to grasp the subtle
mechanisms by which humans performed their tasks with the
greatest of ease.  What for a woman was the routine task of
dipping her clothes into the water, wringing them and scrubbing
them with lye, and then rinsing them and folding them, &c. &c.,
for the elementals was a difficult, unnatural effort, which
required the exercise of muscles they simply did not possess.
Oh, gentle reader, would that thou wert there to witness their
exertions!  They flopped about like marionettes on strings,
lifting mattes of leaves, which represented the cloth, and
dunking them in the river, then falling in after them, and
emerging frustrated and laughing to scrub dirt and rocks into
them until the leaves crumbled apart and drifted away to the
winds and waters.  They just could not manage it.  If they could
not master the simple art of scrubbing clothes, then imagine,
dear reader, how they must have fared when they donned disguises
and trod into the world of humans to attempt to interact with
them on an equal basis.  Their greatest goal was to enter a house
of pleasure and perform with the ladies there just as eloquently
and professionally as any Man, or better.  Of course, such a
thing was far beyond their reach, but nothing would prevent them
from trying.  The town was accustomed to receiving a certain
strange visitor from out of town at random times during the year,
who would enter the town and deliver himself straight to the
house of pleasure, and afterwards, leave in great and stumbling
haste.  This visitor was composed of three elementals standing on
the shoulders of each other and trying to keep a good balance at
such an ungainly stature.  They would enter the house and demand
the most beautiful whore that there was to be had.  They had with
them much gold, which they had spirited from the homes of various
villagers, and they spread it about liberally.  The whores were
quite amused by this strange visitor, for he fumbled and troubled
so much, that in his visitations, he never did so much as draw
out a stiff member before falling flat on his face and cursing
and swearing, and making post haste away from that place, vowing
that the next time, he would be the suave and debonair human
which he envisioned himself.  Then he would break apart and
wrestling and laughing elementals would hop about into the
forest, ready to play whatever new games caught their interest.



                    TREATING OF DRAGONS
    I left the Darkland Woods after a time, full with knowledge
and wisdom of that curious breed, and travelled to distant parts
because I was curious about another form of Earth creature, which
I had never before encountered personally, but of which I had
heard many tales told.  This was the Dragon.  Dragons did not
spring up merely of Mud, but rather that which is _beneath_ Mud!
Such a phenomenon perplexed me, because I could not conceive of
what such material could consist of.  Flowing liquid rock?!  The
concept boggled even my expansive imagination, and I was eager to
discover what knowledge I could.  I travelled far, and it took
many years for me to find a _volcano_, that is a fissure in the
Earth itself, from which such liquid flowing rock flung itself at
intervals, to harden in the coolness of the air above the Mud
(for in order for rock to become fluid, it must first be
subjected to heat and pressures of extreme degree).  Dragons are
constructed of such hardened material, and thus they are very
tough and difficult to kill, hence their prize status as game.
The knights of many realms roamed the Earth in search of such
dragons to kill, and that is why they are nearly extinct today.
Dragons are very long-lived, and they aren't born often, for it
takes a peculiar set of circumstances to occur within the heart
of the volcano for a dragon to shape itself from the molten rock
known as magma.  Even today, I am not completely knowledgeable on
this subject, for the mechanisms are so subtle as to be
invisible.  I believe that there may be a connection here to Sky,
and there is some evidence in support of this in the fact that
dragons are equipped with wings to fly, and that is why it is so
difficult to discover it out.  The dragon I found was very
ancient, dating back to the times when Man lived in caves and
trees.  The vast intelligence of this creature astounded me, for
it seemed superior even to me in its wisdom, and I sorrowed at
the brutality and ignorance of Man, that he should extinguish
such antiquity and wisdom from the Earth, simply for the pleasure
of presenting a large, fierce-looking skull to his friends and
comrades in the Courts of Royalty and Honour!  I spent many years
in communion with this Dragon before a ruffian from my homeland
of England found it and destroyed it.  Thou mayst question the
veracity of this, for how could such an ancient, tough creature
of rock be so easily defeated by a tiny, delicate creature such
as a Man?  But let it be known, that there is a weak spot in the
belly of every Dragon, for just as the navel of Man is the fount
of his life, so is the navel of Dragon the fount of its life, and
if a sword were to be plunged accurately into this spot, the
interaction of metal and rock would be disastrous, and the Dragon
would fall.  Normally, a Dragon will be extremely covetous and
protective of this region, but if a Man could sneak up on it
during its period of rest, it would not be a difficult matter.  I
wept - one of the few times in my life that I have done so.  For
I mourned the loss of such wisdom from the face of the Earth
forever.  It had taken millennia to build, and a second to wreck.
I looked inward and spread protective fingers over my dark flower
in my heart.  I must preserve it well, and I felt that Truth more
than ever upon the death of the Dragon.



                   TREATING OF A PROPHET
    I was far from my home at this time, and thou canst imagine
how everything seemed foreign and new.  Never had it occurred to
me how strange and even exciting the fruits of Earth could be.
Mud, I thought, Mud Mud Mud.  But Mud can take many forms, and
those of England are but a small subset of a greater infinity
that spans the World and the Universe.  In foreign lands, I came
across a Prophet.  Here was a strange case, because considering
myself to be a superior brand of Man, I had never encountered my
equal - even in the Society of Equals which I had founded.  Yet
here was a Man who, being a Prophet of God, by all rights, should
be even _my_ superior.  I was curious, therefore, to discover
whether this was True.  If so, then I would accept that he was a
True Prophet.  If he be inferior, however, then I know that
either he be no Prophet (as I am not), or that if he be a
Prophet, then even God should be inferior to me.  That second
choice not sounding vericacious, I would most likely assume the
first.  So I tested him in a battle of wits, wills, talents, and
prowess.  As for wits, well I had him beat from the start.  He
could prove not one Theorem of the Universe, indeed, he could not
even understand the concept!  As for wills, it took mere days to
stare him down into the muck.  In the category of talents, he
proved to be greater equipped than I, producing paintings of
wondrous beauty and poetry of character divine - and as for my
talents in that field of writing, thou mayst judge for thyself:
not the most lucid or flowing, rather stilted and wooden and
jumpy.  (I am not unwilling to come to a True account of my Self
- as I advise thee to do in all matters!)  As for prowess, he
also had me beat, for he could wrestle a Lion into submission and
beat a formless stack of marble into a beauteous statue with his
fists.  It may seem that we were tied, two against two, but I
consider it won by my Self, for consider this: I won in the
categories pertaining to Sky, he in those pertaining to Earth; so
what achievement his?  If he be emissary of divinity, then he
should dominate in all categories, for he represents the eternal
and the perfect and the infinite.   So I classified this Man as
False Prophet, and he became angry, for I dismissed him in front
of his followers, and they became doubtful of his Mandate.  He
attacked me with his fists, and fists that can pound rock can
equally pound flesh!  Remember, he won readily in contests of
Earth, so I retreated with much haste, and also with much aide
from those doubters who decided that _I_ must be the True Prophet,
having defeated their former idol in those areas of True import.
They took me to a cave outside their city and left me there,
presuming that I would emerge with Words of wisdom to guide them
in their lives.  Pathetic fools, they, for they could not
discover wisdom for themselves, but must look to another to find
it for them, and having received it, they do not follow its
guidelines anyway!  I concocted some Words to satisfy them,
proclaiming Visions from Angels, and then went on my way.



                      OF THE DESERT
    My adventures continued into Deserts.  The desert is a
wondrous place, for it is very close to Sky in its attributes.
It is featureless, except for the millions and uncounted
particles of sand which blow about in coordinated, roving masses,
which appear almost to be organic.  In fact, they are organic, as
I discovered, for these dunes, as they are called, are not merely
conglomerates of objects, as they would seem, but are in fact
endowed with a glimmering form of consciousness.  I grant thee,
it is not nearly as advanced as that of Man, or even that of
elementals, but nevertheless, it is to some degree intelligent
and aware of itself.  At first, I thought perhaps I had
discovered the elementals of Sky which I sought, thus far in
vain, but soon I realized that these were mere creatures of Mud,
and very inferior at that.  But still, they possessed some
striking qualities.  For one, since the constituency of their
composition constantly changed and shifted, as particles of sand
moved into and out of the roving dune, the essence of Self was
evanescent and fleeting.  The creatures possessed no memory,
could not recall the past beyond a few hours or days, however
long it took for the last particle of sand from a particular
period of time to leave the dune and find another.  Also, of the
future, these dunes could not conceive.  They merely flitted
about the desert, following the winds, and only conscious of a
sensation of weightlessness and euphoria.  I entered the world of
the dunes for a short while, and it was indeed a wondrous
experience, for it felt almost like I imagined Sky to feel -
almost without body, without static form, almost without mass of
Mud.  But the vacuousness of the existence soon grew weary for
me, accustomed as I was, and still am, to the pursuits of
intellect and discovery.  So I left the dunes and wandered across
the desert with the Sun forever above my head.  The Sun is a
curious object, and this is most noticeable in the desert, for
there it is forever naked and unhindered by weather.  It is
perpetually round, unlike the Moon which endures endless cyclings
of shape, and it is perpetually hot.  One wonders whence such
unfathomable energies could originate.  It is one of the great
mysteries of Sky.  There are those who claim that the Sun will
someday run out, that its tremendous output consumes gargantuan
amounts of fuel and that when these reserves run out, so will the
Sun.  I do not agree, for in the desert, I found that the Sun
does not draw on fuel reserves to sustain its eternal inferno,
but rather draw on the substance of Sky itself, and since Sky is
infinite, the Sun's portion cannot be even the size of a flea in
the grander scheme of Reality.  This is _my_ speculation, of
course, for I have never achieved ultimate wisdom as I so
desired, but I have come closer than any that have come before
me, so that should bear _some_ magnitude in thy considerations!  I
tired of the desert after some years, and I moved on.



          OF THE TASTE OF FLESH AND OF WOMEN OF SKY
    I entered into jungles from the desert.  There I met with a
curious group of humans who practiced cannibalism.  I had never
tasted the meat of human flesh before, indeed I had never
seriously considered the matter.  Here was my opportunity to
rectify this situation.  Gentle reader, perhaps thou dost not
approve of such a practice?  Does it revulse thy senses, raise
thy gorge?  Well, perhaps that is good, for if many of our
species went about eating their fellow humans, then we would not
long survive upon this Earth.  It is sensical enough that there
exist innate protective systems to guard against such a
possibility.  There are those, however, who have learned to
bypass these biological safeguards, and they are the cannibals.
I joined their group as they went out to hunt a suitable person
for their feast.  They do not eat men regularly, understand, but
only on annual holidays, and it is considered a holy ritual, not
taken lightly, not in the least.  They do this to celebrate the
Spirit of Life which inhabits their bodies and allows them to
move about and hunt and dance and laugh.  They revere this
Spirit, and would do nothing to upset it, for if such were to
occur, why then they would not be allowed to live in this
paradise, Earth.  So they hunt down their feasts from neighboring
tribes of people, and they prepare them to be eaten by every
member of the community.  I partook, myself, of a section of
thigh, and it was a curious sensation, human muscle and skin
rumbling peristaltically down into my stomach.  It was sickening
and pleasurable all at once.  I felt the urge to vomit, and at
the same time I felt heady and light, and I wished to dance and
sing with all the air in my lungs.  For a moment, I felt as if I
had partook of Sky itself, as if I had become Sky, and I thought
perhaps I had discovered the secret, but then I was back in
Earth, and I knew that it was but an illusion of my senses.  What
was curious about this tribe, even more so than the cannibalism,
was the reversal of Man and Woman.  Men were of the Earth, Women
of the Sky!  I was shocked and bewildered by this phenomenon.
How could such an abomination occur?  The men perfumed themselves
and were pleasure seekers, while the women were the thinkers and
the stern lawmakers.  I have not resolved the difficulty even now
upon my death bed.  In my travels, I have encountered several
more tribes like this one, each in isolation from the world, each
practicing cannibalism, and it makes me think that perhaps the
eating of human flesh causes this reversal, except that when _I_
ate of the flesh, I did not experience Earth, as thou might
expect, me being Man, but instead did become closer to Sky.  So
that I cannot explain this strangeness, but must leave its
mystery to the World and, with utmost regret, never comprehend
for myself.



                      OF THE OCEAN
    I have not mentioned the ocean in any great detail, and
there is much reason, I assure thee, for I do not know of its
mysteries, and I have never even discovered the questions.  If
Man is Sky and Woman is Earth, then What is Ocean?  Ocean defies
every attempt of mine to define it, to examine its properties, to
understand its contained boundlessness and molasses fluidity.  It
is not Earth, for it flows like air, but it is not Sky, for it is
massive like Earth.  Sometimes, I think it must be Earth, for
after all, without Ocean, could there be Mud?  But then I think
it must be Sky, for without Ocean could there be Cloud?  Where
does it fit?  Sky and Earth are diametric and easily defined from
each other.  Ocean does not.  It belongs to both, yet it also
belongs to itself.  The creatures of Ocean are unfathomable.
They bear some resemblance to the creatures of Earth, but beyond
that superficial relationship, they are quite alien and
unnatural.  The bulging eyes, the shimmering scales, the
quivering gills and slits, the flapping tails, the slithering
glidings: these strangenesses defy my wisdom to this day.  I am
eternally confronted with mine own ignorance, even in my exalted
state over all other human beings!  The elementals of Ocean, why
they are a sight to see!  They are huge, gigantic.  They spread
across the depthless waters like ephemeral nets of flesh.  They
curl and quiver and move in graceful arcs and loops and spheres.
Thou must needs see them to understand of what I speak!  And
sharks!  Such creatures!  They prowl the waves smelling for
blood, and no other creature is their equal.  They detect even
the elementals, and rip through them like the softest tissue, all
for pleasure!  They are even fiercer than the lions and tigers of
the savannas and jungles of woolly Afrique!  They hunger for
flesh, and they care not what form that flesh doth come in.
Ocean, I simply cannot comprehend thy mysteries!  Art thou
inferior to Sky, as I do believe?  Art thou superior to Earth, as
also I do believe?  Art thou the medium to connect the two
spheres, to bring together the Earth and the Sky and to give
birth to the Mud and thence life?  Art thou the intermediary
between extremes?  These are my conjectures, although I offer no
proof to stand behind them.  I fear that which I do not know, and
especially that which defies all my efforts to know.  Wisdom, as
the years pass, and more of it accumulates, becomes increasingly
difficult to separate from folly; the line doth grow dimmer and
more vague.  It is too easy to follow lines of reason which seem
perfectly logical, but which will lead thee into folly soon
enough.  I have learned to be conservative as my wisdom has
become greater, and so I don't stand as authoritatively on many
issues as I did when I was younger.  I step back and question
them a bit, and do not accept easily, and as a result, unless the
basic assumptions and postulates of my philosophy are wrong, I do
believe that the strength of my wisdom is near invincible, and
shall be a terrible loss to the world when I am soon gone from
it.  For even in all my wisdom do I not know what is to come
after; all my effort may prove futile in the end.



                    TREATING OF TEATS
    I mentioned earlier that in infancy, soon out of the womb,
that sucking at the teats of my mother provided me a connection
with that dark, worldless womb from which I had been so recently
mercilessly wrenched.  While sucking in that warm milk into my
body, I would close my eyes, and be lost in Spaces unknown,
floating in the worlds of darkness which constitute a much firmer
and more resolute reality than this, and it would be almost as if
I had never left that dark place I had known since the moment of
my conception.  But then, my mother would take me away from her
teats, and I would cry bitterly to be allowed back into that
sublime world, where I possessed not merely a dark flower in my
heart, but indeed, a dark infinity of flowers.  I became curious,
for a long while, about the possibilities of utilizing the
sucking of teats to access that elusive Sky for which I longed so
desperately.  I found women who had given birth recently, and
abducted them so that I might suck on their teats, and drink that
milk of paradise, and perhaps even reach the summits of reality.
Indeed, I felt the soothing darkness, and the embracing warmth,
and the infinite Spaces, and the morphating shapes of a higher
reality, and the longer I sucked, the more I became at one with
this full emptiness and empty fullness and influxive darkness,
but something was missing which it took me a long time to grasp,
something that had been there when I was a babe, and which was
absent now.  I could feel its lack, and it took years for me to
discover what it was.  Finally, I realized what was missing from
my experiments: propriety.  These were not _my_ mother's teats.  In
order to come into contact with the peculiar darkness that was _my_
embracing womb, I must needs suck at the teats of that womb, and
no other.  These substitutes worked to some degree to bring me
into contact with a universal darkness, but there was a singular
darkness that was my own, and I could not access that easily.  My
dark flower in my heart sprang from this particular darkness, and
was nourished by it, and so I must seek it out if I truly wished
to rediscover that connection which I had missed for so long.  Of
course, my mother was long dead; indeed, I had seen the passing
of a hundred and fifty-seven summers by this time, and so several
generations had passed on _since_ my mother's death.  I felt
despair at this, for although I had felt no particular emotion
concerning either parent - indeed, the only entity ever I had
cared for other than myself had been my mentor, the Dragon I have
spoken of, and his death had been the only occasion at which I
had wept - I wept for the second time in my life at the
realization that I could not again suck at my mother's teats.  My
tears created Mud in the Earth, and this made me laugh with
bitterness, for to me, it represented in the physical plane that
abject failure which I was making of myself in the intellectual
plane.  Thus, I realized that I must stand tall and resolve my
despair.  I must not give up; I must forever march forward and
never count my losses, but count my victories, and indeed count
my losses among my victories, for every loss was but a paving
stone to a greater triumph.  And so I set to.



                TREATING OF MOTHER'S TEATS
    Thou mayst laugh if that be thy wish, dear reader, but I was
determined to suck at the teats of my mother, for I was sure that
therein lay the path to Sky.  The problem that lay before my was
monumentous: my mother was long dead, a pile of bones under six
feet of Earth.  No longer _had_ she any teats to suck at!  Even if
I dug her out the Earth, how would it be possible to restore her
teats to function as they did before?  Well, gentle reader, I
pondered these questions and a great many others for a great long
time, and I decided that I would risk anything to try, for if not
to try, then how to succeed?  After all, I could try, and it
could be a failure, but what of that?  I had encountered numerous
failures along the road of my life; if this be one more to add to
my list, then so be it.  So I traveled the great distance to my
native land of Ing, and I found the graveyard into which my
mother's bones had been interred several months of summers ago.
I found the family crypt, and descended its depths to discover my
mother's bones, decaying disinterestedly in a pile in some
forgotten corner.  Carefully, I gathered together every single
bone into my arms, and brought them up into the day, and laid
them out upon the ground in the precise pattern which they had
occupied during life.  Where had been my mother's teats, were now
mere rotted ribs, and I entertained some doubts as to my plan,
but I stowed them away and began the painful process.  Now,
gentle reader, I will tell thee of my plan: I had my mother's
bones; what was needed was her flesh.  Well, what does it mean,
flesh?  Hast thou ever heard the phrase, "flesh of my flesh?"  I
considered that my flesh was the flesh of my mother's flesh, so
perhaps if I restored to these bones mine own flesh, then 'twould
be the same as restoring the original.  Thus, I flayed the flesh
from my own body and draped it across the bones; and it was agony
beyond all measure of suffering; but I endured it for the sake of
the possibility, however dim, that I might attain infinite
wisdom, finally.  I called an elemental to inhabit the flesh and
bones I had constructed, so that animation might grace the body,
and then I began the suckle.  I cannot describe the horrors that
ensued.  Suffice it to say that it was a bitter mockery of the
womb experience; it was the antithesis of warm, loving darkness;
it was corrupted and fetid and dank and cold and without
direction upward or downward and full of hate and woe and scorn
and dismal destruction and chaos and forgetfulness and beast
feelings and malformed humanity and freakish villainy and hints
of evil more profound than the religions of the world have yet
conceived.  I was almost destroyed, and I believe that I sunk to
a lower point than in my days of debauchment.  After this, I
spent years wandering the Earth, without purpose or care, without
thought or wisdom, and my dark flower in my heart wilted in the
new bed I had constructed of sandy, ashen soil and darkness of a
quality which provided no nourishment.  I began to age.



                 OF DESPAIR AND WANDERING
    Oh, those long years of wandering the Earth, an aging husk,
a mindless, slathering, idiotic parody of humanity!  Thou canst
not imagine the desolation, the loneliness, the weariness.  I was
poisoned with the vilest, most putrid, most rancid milk of
mother's long dead teats.  I had consumed the destroyer of mind
and heart, and in tremendous quantity, and it was to heal that I
roamed the Earth.  I searched for what sustenance I could find,
hoping to discover the antidote to the destruction I had brought
upon my Self.  Remember - to thy Self be True.  In that frenzied
moment of reckless hope, I had forgotten this credo, this maxim
of Life, and I had betrayed my body to my ambition.  So across
the mountains and the oceans and the grasslands and the forests
and the deserts and the jungles and the icelands and the islands
of the Earth did I wander, searching, searching for what might
cure me of my Despair, and I did not know what that might be, but
I felt that it was out there somewhere, and meanwhile I wandered,
a mindless hulk a mindless hulk a mindless hulk, a zombie with
eyes of coal and granite stone, with heart of sandy, ashen soil
from which sprouted the dying, wilted dark flower of my youth and
hope and ambition, with dragging, mutilated flesh, with diseased,
miasmic entrails, with heavy, pain-embedded limbs, with hanging,
mangled testes, with smooth, fleshless brow.  I searched, and my
hope pulled me along and did not allow me to drop into the Earth,
my hope soared high, and it was all that I possessed which did
not falter, which did not stumble, which did not rot away; it was
the center of my dark flower which did not disappear, and it
pointed the way to wellness and healing and antidote.  Hope kept
a grain of my Self within my flesh, so that I, however
unconscious and flickering, still looked out through those eyes
and still directed the motion of my steps, however faltering and
unsure.  For somewhere in the world was a Center of Healing, a
place where I could go to redeem myself, and somehow I knew this,
and somehow I made my feet move, so that I might someday stumble
across it.  And so a hundred summers passed by, and I dragged my
weary feet across the globe, without looking to either side,
without seeing aught but the path before me and forgetful of the
path I left behind.  Through farms and battlefields, through
swamps and cities, through lakes and scenic campuses I walked,
and those who saw me shuddered and made the sign of the cross or
prayed to whatever gods they worshiped, for I was the living,
ambulating corpse, and I stank of the grave, and my flesh clung
only by strands to my bones.  But I walked on.  And Despair never
defeated me, for one day, I came to an Ocean I had never seen
before, nor have ever seen since.  I do not believe that any
other Man has ever discovered this Ocean; if eyes other than mine
have looked upon it, then their number may be counted on the
fingers of one hand.  And standing on the shores of that serene
Ocean, I knew that Hope had led me True.  So I walked into the
warm, lapping waters, and let them envelop me over my head, and
so I entered the Ocean of Healing.



               TREATING OF DREAMS OF HEALING
    The time I spent in that Ocean of Healing was sublimity and
bliss.  My body was renewed, although not rejuvenated; the age I
had acquired during my wandering remained with me, and doubtless
my death-bed would be summers and summers away right now if not
for that, but I am not bitter on that account, for indeed,
without that aging, much wisdom would be denied me.  For
remember, even in failure do we learn wisdom, even in folly, but
only if we know how.  I know how, for my wisdom is great, and
this is what I fain would give to the world through these
confessions: how to learn wisdom from folly, and thus how to be
True to thy Self.  Perhaps thou doth believe I harp too much upon
the subject of Self; well let it be known that never can enough
be preached upon the subject; there is always more to say of
Self, and if thou dost grow tired of Self, then thou mightst as
well end thy life right here and now, for thy Self is all that
thou doth Truly possess in all the Universe.  Everything else,
all thy worldly possessions, all thy relationships and knowledge:
it is all mere illusion in the end, next to the terra reality
that is Self.  I almost lost this Self, and it frightens me
beyond measure even now to think on it; how close I came to
letting my dark flower die; how close I came to letting the spark
of my existence be extinguished.  Shudder, dear reader!  Shudder,
if thou dost understand of what I speak!  For only if thou doth
possess this understanding wilt thou be capable of such an
action.  In those Healing Waters did I regain my Self anew, did I
cultivate my dark flower in my heart back into health, did I
replace that sandy, ashen silt with moist, fecund soil, did I
restore into bloom that dark flower so that my hope and ambition
might soar ever higher, so that I once more might seek the
ecstasy of Sky and Cloud and Man and reject the lowly Earth and
Mud and Woman.  That Ocean of Healing was not the womb feeling,
dear reader, so if such thought entered thy mind, then divest
thyself of it right away.  It was quite a different feeling
altogether.  Whereas womb immersion was heavy, ocean immersion
was light; where womb was dark, water was without experience of
colour or darkness; where womb was transcendent and beyond body,
water was all body, was body divine.  After all, the Ocean of
Healing was with the purpose of restoring body and mind, and so
it must comprehend body, whereas womb was before body and
therefore need not consider it more than as a speck of flesh.
From this Ocean of Healing I emerged new and whole and fresh and
full of Hope and Life and Self.  Although I never returned there,
I know it is still where it was, for it is eternal, and if thou
dost truly possess the need and the desire and the True Hope,
then mayhap thou shalt find it in _thy_ wanderings.



                    TREATING OF DRUIDS
    All my life had I heard tell of the ancient order of priests
and wizards known as the Druids.  Great in Astronomy and
Prophecy, famed for their darkened faces and inwardly lit eyes,
their robes to keep away the folly and the light, their monuments
to bring to Earth the holy and the dark and the Sky.  Always had
I dismissed them, as I had dismissed all religion, but now I
decided that perhaps some amount of wisdom could be obtained if I
would investigate their murky reservoirs of primeval knowledge.
So I journeyed back to my home land of Ing and went up into
Scotland, and even passed close by the Sheridan Castle,
headquarters for the Society of Equals, and soon I came upon the
large stone monuments which signified that I had entered a realm
of magick and Druid mystery.  So I became a Druid for a time,
immersed myself in the secrets and knowledge of their ageless
clan, and discovered horrors of the past never before considered.
Monsters, beasts, hideous deformed things which existed before
the rise of Man; the Druids kept their legacy alive, maintained
the primordial freaks and bizarre mutations of an oozing, not yet
fully conceived world.  Their prize possession was a terrible
beast from eons past, which they kept alive in a small lake in
the northern central region of the country.  They would feed the
beast with human flesh, for that, they believed, was the
nourishment upon which future generations of beasts such as this
might be founded.  They hoped to breed the monster so that
someday, the world would return to its original state, and the
abominations of the past would rise again out of the Oooooze that
came before Mud.  As yet, they had met with no success, but they
possessed great stores of patience, and they would wait until
Doomsday if they had to.  They were confident that their efforts
would be rewarded, hence their order, ancient as it was, would
continue until the present day be considered antiquity, and it
would continue even beyond that.  Truly, they did not question
their Mandate, they merely proceeded according to the rules
handed down by Druids past, and Druids future, doubtless, would
proceed as well, in this way.  I found little wisdom here; it was
reverse wisdom; a doctrine of regression and static anti-Life and
anti-Man; of Woman, pure, untouched by Sky, untouched by Ocean
even, just utter Woman, utter Oooooozing femininity.  There was
no hope here, not even in their astronomy, for it was predicated
on the notion of obliteration, that is, they deemed it necessary
to destroy the corruptive Sky, which threatened their goal of
predominating Earth Oooooze, so they studied the stars carefully,
with the notion of discovering a means by which they might bring
them down and sink them into the Mud.  Indeed, I learned little
wisdom but folly here, and it was with sorrow that I left them,
for they were ultimately backwards, and they would never realize
or admit it.



                    TREATING OF SPHERES
    My adventures of the Earth continued with my discovery of
spheres.  I detected these almost purely by accident.  Unlike
elementals, spheres did not bear any relationship to humans at
all.  They came of Ocean, Sky, and Earth together, and I do not
know if they bear consciousness or not.  I am of the opinion that
they do, but I may be wrong.  Mayhap, thou, gentle reader, canst
discover the Truth of the matter.  Spheres arise from bubbles in
the Ocean, when Sky dips into water and forms a tiny replica of
itself within the depths of Ocean.  Usually, the bubbles rise to
the surface and disintegrate, the air escaping to the possession
of Sky, the water splashing back into Ocean; but sometimes, a
bubble will form near enough to the floor of the ocean so that a
speck or two of Earth will be trapped within the Center of the
bubble.  Slowly, with monumental effort, this bubble will rise to
the surface, and when it exits the Ocean, it remains cohesive -
it becomes a sphere.  A thing of all three: Ocean, Sky, Earth.
Earth, Sky, Ocean.  Sky, Ocean Earth.  It ambulates about,
unnoticed by every living thing, and it seems without purpose in
its flight, but who can say?  At the Center is that speck of
Earth, and I suspect that the sphere is consciousness, for this
reason: we, humans, are creatures of the Three - we are Mud and
we are Ocean, and we are Sky - and we are conscious as a result;
the mingling of the Three produces Life, and Life, at some level,
must be conscious of itself.  Thus, a sphere, however dim and
ephemeral and lacking in substance, must contain within it the
spark of dark, else why would it continue to be?  I have never
seen a sphere pop like the bubble that is its ancestor template.
If they die, it is in a way unknown to me, and if thou, dear
reader, dost know of such a thing, then perhaps thy wisdom is
greater than mine after all.  This is not likely, however, and I
say it with humour and irony, for I am well aware that no Man has
achieved greater wisdom than my Self!  And perhaps no man will
until long after my bones are dust and my confession ashes of
bygone civilization.  It is my hope that future generations of
Man will ascend to Sky, and perhaps my confession will not be
lost forever, and perhaps it will play some small role in
forwarding Man to his ultimate destiny with somewhat greater
conviction.  As for spheres: I tried to follow spheres whene'er I
discovered them, but they flit and bob so, that I cannot line
them easily.  One, I managed to follow for two years, but I lost
it in a Sunless cave.  Never once, in those two years, did it
cease to bob and flit, nor did it pause to rest (and neither did
I as a result - I was verily _grateful_ that I lost it in that
cave!), nor did it seem to bear towards any destination.
Aimless, without mind, but possessing darkness nonetheless.  And
so did my wisdom grow.



                  OF GENIUSES AND PRODIGIES
    In my travels, I sometimes came across Men that seemed to
transcend Earth almost completely, to live among the clouds and
Sky from birth, Men who seemed never to have lost the darkness
within their heart, Men whose dark flowers were in greater
cultivation than even mine own.  I sought these Men out with
great eagerness, for I hoped to learn wondrous wisdom from them.
I will tell here of several which I encountered.  But I will tell
of several that I met in those earlier times.  One made great
music.  It was divinely inspired, it came straight down from the
heaven after which he was named.  He created music such as the
world has never known before nor since.  There was a veritable
garden of darkness within his fecund heart.  The third time I
ever wept was the first time I heard this Man's Music.  As I
listened, I was transported into the womb, and I felt the Sky as
I never had since the day of my birth.  I wept openly, and people
watched, and they did not understand, for his Music affected them
as well, but not in the way that it would have had they possessed
the wisdom and knowledge which I did.  Dear reader, I bid thee
listen to his Music, and if thy wisdom is great enough, then thou
wilt be transported as I was, and thou wilt feel the ecstasy of
Sky, if only for a brief instant of time.  I shall treat of this
Man later, in more detail, when I treat of Music.  Another Man of
wisdom, although not as great as the first, came earlier, and he
wrote works that surpassed anything written since antiquity and
anything written since.  His words transcended mere language, in
fact, as far as is possible within the scope of a single,
unsatisfactory language, his words approached the divinity of
Total Language, that language which is all the languages of the
Universe in One and which is husked away when thou art but an
infant so that thou mayst know the single language of thy
country.  This man, he somehow kept that Total Language within
his heart, and tended it as the darkest flower, and it sprouted
most magnificently.  I shall treat of him further as well, when I
treat of Poetry.  Another genius did I find, and this one never
was known to the world.  The others I have mentioned achieved
fame and success from their genius, but this, this did not.  He
was a painter, and his paintings were surely inspired from the
Clouds and Sky themselves, for never on Earth had such
representations come to Life.  He was able to create Sky out of
Earth by setting brush to canvas, and his genius was unsurpassed;
yet he never did show his paintings to any but me, and he did
live alone and far from civilization, and every one of his
paintings perished in the fire which destroyed his home, his
life's work, and his own Life.  I have always mourned the loss of
those paintings, for I would liked to have collected them and
looked upon them every day, for they were straight out of the
darkness of that Man's heart.  Oh, these Men had the potential
for wisdom far surpassing my own, but each of them burned too
brightly, and died too soon for the accumulation of their
knowledge and wisdom to grant them the immortality they deserved.
They died in ignorance, and I mourn, for what wisdom may I have
gained by following in their paths of glory?  I shall never know.



                     TREATING OF ALCHYMIE
    It was said widely, and with hushed voices of reverence and
fear, that the alchymists were discovering the secrets of the
Universe, that they possessed systematic methods by which to gain
wisdom, that they developed reason and magick together to create
and reveal knowledge.  Although I had always been disappointed
with the efforts of Men in the past, it was still with the
greatest excitement that I sought out these alchymists with the
hope that they had discovered the means by which I could rapidly
acquire wisdom.  I was eternally sanguine and optimistic in
matters of wisdom, and this, perhaps, is the reason why I have
lived for such a long time, and am only on my death bed now,
decades of centuries after the moment of my Conception.  So I
sought them out, and found them eventually, though they hid
themselves well, not wanting the ignorant bulk of humanity to
impinge upon their delicate processes.  I discovered that the
wisdom these Men sought was not the wisdom that I sought.  Like
the Druids, and like every other group I had ever encountered,
including the one I myself founded, the Society of Equals, these
Men shrunk from confronting the true fount of Wisdom, Sky, and
instead retreated back to Mother, back to Earth.  They searched
for the Philosopher's Stone, which they conjectured would convert
all baser metals into gold, a substance which, for reasons I
could never understand, they coveted and prized above all other
materials in the Earth.  What they would do with this gold after
they had it in the large quantities which, apparently, they
desired, I am to this day at a loss to answer.  In any case, they
developed all sorts of methods and protocols, and in the process
of trying to change metal to gold, they discovered many Earth
reactions that today have been classified under the Science of
Chemistry, a descendant of that more ancient art, Alchemy.
Another thing which the alchymists attempted to produce, and
which was much more in line with mine own goals, was the Elixir
of Life, which would grant immortality to whomsoever would drink
of it.  The alchymists in the Western Countries of Europe were
not as advanced in this branch of the Art as were the alchymists
in the Asian countries, especially in China.  The Chinese
alchymists were well on their way to achieving immortality, but
unfortunately events beyond their control, political and social
events, prevented them from achieving it.  I was much impressed
with them, however, for they were much more Sky-oriented than any
other group of Men I had yet come across.  I made it my business
to study their philosophies, all the way back to the beginnings
of their culture, which had its roots in the dimmest ages of
prehistory.  They were indeed an advanced race, and I devoted
enormous tracts of time to studying their wisdom.  I would
recommend to thee, dear reader, that thou shouldst study them as
well, if thou wishest to improve thy knowledge by leaps and by
bounds.  They Truly were on the road to success before they were
sidetracked by the invasion of the West.  While the West, which
has overrun the globe with its Womanly civilization, dealt in
trivialities and irrelevancies, China, truly a Man-Sky culture,
searched for wisdom.  It is a sad, sad thing indeed, the triumph
of the West, and I mourn the loss of their wisdom from the Earth.



                       OF THE HOLY GRAIL
    I had high hopes of the Holy Grail.  It was the legacy of a
Man who had come directly from the Sky, if legend told correctly,
and if one were to drink from this relic, then one would attain
not only immortality, but also transcendent wisdom.  I was not
interested in the immortality so much as I was in the
transcendent wisdom.  Surely, this wisdom must come of Sky, being
of the Cup which contained the blood of He who was born of Sky.
So, I searched for the Grail, as did many knights before me,
although none of them had ever found it.  Indeed, it took me
several decades of summers to pass before I found it - hidden
away in a long-buried altar room in the deserts of the Near East.
It was guarded jealously by an Ogre with a single eye, a very
advanced elemental form, more advanced, in fact, than any I had
ever before encountered.  He could almost have been human, except
he possessed only one eye naturally, and thus only half-Vision.
I found this discovery intriguing and hope-inspiring.  If this
Chalice be worthy enough to be guarded by such high power, then
surely it must be what I seek!  Overcoming the Ogre was a simple
task.  The Holy Grail may be reached only by those who are dark
of heart, and I possessed the darkest heart ever to be born onto
the Earth.  I brushed the Ogre aside with ease, and entered the
cave in which resided the Grail.  It was a small chamber, and the
Cup a simple one, unadorned, chipped from age, and containing a
goodly quantity of Blood.  Amazingly, that Blood had ne'er
decayed nor rotted, but remained fresh through all the millennia,
and this gave me even greater hope than I already had.  Eagerly,
I quaffed a large portion of the contents of the Grail.
Instantly, I regretted it.  This was no Sky potion.  This was
pure Earth.  In corporating Himself into the figure of a human,
this Sky creature had apparently been corrupted by the
fleshliness of Woman Earth.  He was all Love and Mud, none of the
Intellect and Clouds.  He was all light, no dark.  The liquid in
that Cup nearly drowned my poor dark flower in my heart.  I had
to fight and fight and struggle mightily in order to preserve my
Self from the onslaught of that light and Earth.  Oh, what an
illusion that Grail was!  No wisdom there - only anti-wisdom,
anti-Man, anti-dark, anti-Sky.  I do believe that the legends are
inaccurate surrounding this figure: he did not come from the Sky,
but directly from the bowels of the Earth.  He was no Sky-Man, he
was Woman-Man.  The single fact that he was born solely of Woman,
through Virgin Birth, should signal that his origin was not from
Sky, but from Earth.  Indeed, his influence has been mighty in
history, and it is a sad thing, for he has misled Western
Civilization into the path of the Woman, and it continues to
follow that path to its Doom.  I only hope that people might
realize the folly soon, that Men might come into greater wisdom
and reject the doctrine of that ancient Man.



                           OF POETRY
    Poets were said to possess wisdom.  Theirs was a wisdom,
purportedly, of which they could not themselves be consciously
aware.  Theirs was said to come from some secret source, which
they could not locate exactly, but which provided them with a
direct connection to the divine; this connection being called the
Muse.  I searched for the Muse, for I wondered if not this Muse
was of the Sky; as indeed it seemed to be from all accounts I
heard of it.  So I found poets, and they taught me of their Art,
and indeed, they were wise in many respects, although a great
many of them tended to fall prematurely back to Earth, just as
they were about to scale the heights.  One poet, however soared
high always, and he was Truly of the Sky, and his heart was Truly
Dark, and I admired him almost as much as ever I admired any man,
almost as much, even, as I admired the Dragon from my youth.  I
have spoken of this Man before, when I treated on geniuses and
prodigies.  He was such a great Man, that if he had known of the
wisdom, perhaps he could have grown greater and faster than even
I, and there are few in all of History to whom I would attribute
greater capacity for wisdom than my Self.  His words were words
of the Total Language, the language of pre-Birth, which includes
all the languages of the World combined and all the languages
that were never created as well.  It is the language of Creation,
and this Man knew the Total Language, had not lost it when he
learned to speak English, the tongue of his native land, but
instead discovered how to infuse the Total Language into the
limited vocabulary of English.  I would not have thought it
possible, but this Man managed it, and I stand forever in awe of
him for it.  Mine own command of the Total Language is almost
nil, as indeed, my command of mere English is almost nil!  As I
have mentioned, the Muse was the supposed direct channel to Sky,
through which one could access the universal wisdom of Sky which
I sought.  So I listened for this Muse, and I witnessed the
creations of this Muse through the artistry of the poets I
communed with, but I never was able to communicate with it.  No
matter how hard I tried, it just would not happen, I listened and
listened, but the Muse remained to me mute.  It seems that the
Muse will speak only to those who were born to hear it, and all
else are on their own when it comes to creating from language.  I
suspect that the Poet I admire was not a product of the Muse, for
his creations were more transcendent than anything I ever saw
come through the Muse.  I suspect that this Man was tapped into
some power greater even than the Muse, and I suspect that this
power was none other than the overwhelming darkness of his Self.
To thine own Self be True!



                           OF MUSIC
    Music, as well as poetry, was supposedly subject to a power
similar to that of the Muse.  This Muse, however was different in
several important respects from that of the Poetry.  For one
thing, it was more pure; that is, it did not need to be filtered
through the medium of language; it came directly from the dark
flower of the heart, and only needed a physical instrument on
Earth to find voice.  Thus, when Music was made, it struck deep
into the dark heart of whomever was listening to it.  As I have
mentioned, the third time in my life that I wept was when I heard
the music of he of the heavens.  I spoke of him in my treatment
of geniuses and prodigies.  His music touched directly the dark
flower of my heart, and indeed made it bloom into transcendent
Sky for just a brief span.  I was transported into the womb of my
Conception again, and felt close to me the wisdom for which I
longed and searched all my life.  Then, the Music stopped, and I
was back in the world of mundanity and illusory light.  Music was
almost entirely a product of Sky.  It was transmitted through the
air; it was a product of intellect and mind; it made Beauty an
abstract form, which is the ultimate goal of Beauty - to be
shapeless and physically indistinguishable, to be a product
purely of mind and Sky.  Indeed, Music provided such Beauty in
abundance, and I was enamoured of it for quite a great while.  I
spent years and years learning how to produce the sounds, and how
to compose them together so that they became a whole greater than
the sum of its parts, and which sounds were the ones to touch
which notes within the human brain, so that the mind might be
transported as I had been transported when listening to that
sublime Man's Creation, and I attempted to create such Music, but
the craft was beyond my powers.  I tried extensively, for I
sensed that in Music lay potential for wisdom untapped even by
that greatest master of them all, but apparently that potential
would remain untapped, by me at least, for much like Poetry,
there seemed to be those who possessed the gift, and those who
did not, and those who did not could try and try until their
faces turned blue, but they would ne'er produce the divine Music
which they sought so desperately.  I fear that in present times,
the Art of Music has been lost, I hope not forever, but only
temporarily; but nowadays the Art consists of loudness and
simplicity, not the divine sort of simplicity, but the simple-
minded sort, the unimaginative sort.  The great master certainly
has not yet been matched; no one has come anywhere near close to
doing such a thing.  Perhaps thou, gentle reader, shalt be the
one to surpass that Man's genius.  Perhaps not.



                       TREATING OF SEED
    My adventures on the Earth continued, and I saw no end to
them in sight.  Hundreds of summers had I witnessed, and still
the wisdom eluded me.  I remembered back to that fateful day when
I had drunk of my dead mother's milk, and I was struck with
another thought: what about the seed of Men?  Surely, if anything
should deliver wisdom, it should be the very essence of Man
himself!  His seed!  Eagerly, I produced seed and fed it to my
Self, and waited for the results, but surprisingly, little wisdom
flowed forth.  'Twas a mere trickle, really, not gushing and
abundant like the product of the womb's teats.  Perhaps, I
thought, it is the amount; I need to drink in much larger
quantities, and so I embarked to procure large quantities of that
item.  Thou must marvel at the effort required in such an
endeavor.  I travelled the world over, drinking the seed from as
many Men as I could find; I had never abducted Men for my studies
before, Women and Children, yes, but never Men.  It was a
different experience with them.  They resisted much more
aggressively and fiercely than the Women or Children had.  The
Women and Children had almost accepted their plight as simply
another obstacle on the path of life, but the Men, they could not
accept anything.  They bucked and screamed to no end, so that it
was much more difficult to collect the seed than it had been to
collect the milk all those centuries ago.  I managed it, though,
with my great reserves of patience and optimism, as well as time,
and I derived some interesting and unique wisdom from my
consumption of the Seed of Man.  I discovered that this seed was
really nothing more than Earth, mixed with a little bit of Sky.
The Sky it was that provided the possibility of fertilization,
but it was Earth which drew the seed to the feminine, which like
a magnet attracted the seed into the womb of Woman where it could
mingle with her Earth eggs and produce her Earth babies.  Within
the seed, there was a perpetual battle between the opposing
forces of Sky and Earth.  They were equally matched, and it was
even odds which one would triumph.  If Sky was victorious, then
the Childe produced of that particular seed would be a Man; if
Earth, then a Woman.  In some rare cases, neither Earth nor Sky
were victorious, and peculiar in-betweens were produced, or else
combinations of both.  These abominations were safely ignored,
though, for they were rare enough that they might as well be
nonexistent.  In general, the battle between Sky and Earth raged
on.  What was most interesting about the seed was that it tasted
of the Sea.  In its form, it was some hybrid of Ocean, but I
could never discover exactly by what mechanism it was produced,
nor why it was produced in such a peculiar manner.  These
understandings I leave to thee, dear gentle reader, to undertake
after I am gone.



                       TREATING OF PAIN
    I joined a group of penitents who claimed that only through
worldly pain and suffering could transcendence be reached.  I
thought this promising because if thou mightst pain thy Earthly
body enough, perhaps thou wouldst pay more attention to
nonEarthly things, just to avoid the pain.  So I acquired a long
board with a nail hammered through the end of it, and smacked
myself with it all over my body, leaving hundreds of agonizing
bleeding wounds.  I took a razor blade and sliced my skin so that
every inch of my surface was coated with blood.  I took white-hot
pins and plunged them into my eyeballs.  I stood on my head for
weeks on end.  I introduced angry red ants into my fundament and
let them crawl about my intestines devouring as they swarmed
through.  I stuck pins through my cheeks and through various
other muscles throughout my body.  I peeled the skin from my face
and poured acid on the bare muscle that was thus exposed.  I set
fire to my fingertips and toes.  I performed every action
imaginable which might cause me intensest pain and suffering.
For years I proceeded thus, each year experiencing greater and
more profound pain than the previous year, and indeed, often I
was sent into states of consciousness which I never before had
explored, for my Earthly body, when it discovered a pain it was
not equipped to deal with, would eject my consciousness into
alien stratospheres where the concept of Self became extremely
malleable and almost untenable.  I felt my mind stretch, and my
intellect quiver, and images would race past, inchoate, unformed
images that nevertheless would produce a deep, yet passionless,
reaction in me.  There would be shapes, strange floating
geometries which did not follow any formal laws of shape as had
been formulated on Earth in ancient times.  There would be
bouncing triangles and rotating circles and green squares and
fuzzy rhombuses and irregular shapes of all kinds and they would
all be whizzing about and buzzing and tootling and choking and
coughing and chortling, &c. &c.  This chaos belonged entirely to
Sky, yet there was some quality to it that did not fit in, that
implied some other existence, some alien energy that, rather than
being helpful to my wisdom, was instead detrimental.  I still am
not sure from what source came those chaotic forms, but I suspect
that it defies rational analysis, at least any that could be
constructed within the framework of this reality.  The pain, I
decided, sent me to realms that I did not desire to explore, that
indeed frightened me uncomfortably, and so I rejected it in the
end.  Extremes - pain, pleasure; they did not produce desirable
results.  Neutrality, it seemed, was the key to unlocking the
mysteries of Sky - nonemotion, nonfear, nondesire.  I attempted
to achieve these attributes, and if thou doth think them easy to
acquire, then I challenge thee to do it for thyself, and then
perhaps thou wilt discover just how difficult it can be!



                          OF RELIGION
    Most of humanity seemed to be involved in some religion or
another, and many religions promised Heaven, which was another
way of referring to Sky.  I always investigated a religion
whenever I discovered it, but usually, it would turn out to be a
secret worshiper of the Mud and the Earth, and not Heaven, as it
proclaimed, not Sky, not Cloud.  The Christian Church,
especially, was a complete illusion in this respect.  It spoke
continually of Heaven, of that which comes after death, after
life, it proclaimed that Sky would come, but only _after_.
Meanwhile, one must worship the Earth, one must satisfy oneself
with the Mud, indeed, one must wallow in the Mud, and although it
was not pleasure nor pain that one sought, it was something worse
- abnegation of Self.  This, of course, is the exact opposite of
everything that I know to be True.  My wisdom is quite firm in
its foundation of Self as the most important concept in the
Universe.  What I sought was Sky, _during_ life, not _after_, and so
Christianity, I knew almost from the beginning of my life, was
not the way to wisdom.  The purpose of religion, I divined over a
long period of time, is to deflect the questions of Sky because
its proprietors cannot find satisfactory answers within a short
period of time; and people want to know, they want the wisdom
within their lifetime, they want it handed to them on a silver
platter; they believe that the ancients possessed the wisdom, and
all they have to do is to listen to the ancients and they, too,
will be endued with that wisdom.  People require assurance that
their lives are not meaningless, that the things they do on this
Earth will not fade to nothing after they are gone from the
Earth.  People want to hear that they are immortal, that this
Earthly existence which they enjoy so much is only the beginning
of a long cycle of Life, which will continue beyond material
death.  They do not want to have to exert effort within their
lifetimes, to have to find wisdom for themselves; they want to
believe that the wisdom will be handed to them, as soon as they
have hurdled the mystery of death.  People are basically lazy;
they don't tend to their dark flower in their hearts, and they
let it wilt in favor of light, which flows from religion.  They
learn to associate light with sky, rather than its True
affiliate, darkness.  I, being wiser than any man who ever trod
the Earth, can assure thee that if thou art religious, then thou
hast been swindled, and that if thou doth Truly desire to gain
wisdom, then thou must search thy heart for some shred of
darkness, and if thou canst find it, then thou must needs tend to
it carefully, to preserve it, and let it bloom into a dark flower
like mine.  Then wilt thou develop an independent Self, one that
does not rely on false religion to validate its existence, one
that verily answers only to thee, one that will guide thee True
in times of crisis and of peace, in times of joy and of sorrow,
in times of company and of solitude.  To thy Self be True, and
thou wilt prosper, and perhaps even discover some goodly amount
of wisdom.



                     TREATING OF ASTROLOGY
    I had a great and voracious interest in Astrology, for this
was the science which deal with the positions and influences of
the Stars themselves.  Much wisdom did I discover within tomes of
astrology.  According to the astrologers, Men were governed by
the alignments and positions of the Stars, their Earthly emotions
and behaviours determined by the interactions of heavenly bodies
and crystal spheres.  I roamed the globe, and where'er I
discovered indications of astrological investigations, I would
stop and, with much enthusiasm, inquire into the local
methodologies and protocols, to see if they had found out
anything about the Stars which astrologers the world over had not
yet noticed.  I found that the Chinese astrologers, as with the
alchymists, were far more advanced and superior in their thinking
to their Western counterparts.  Their imaginations were not
confined to the petit worldly arguments and aspirations to which
the Western astrologers devoted so much of their time and
energies.  These Chinese, they were interested in the Sky for the
sake of the Sky itself.  Of course, they were equally interested
in Earth for the sake of Earth herself, and that did not sit well
with my philosophy - as thou canst imagine, dear reader!  I did
pay special heed to their Sky teachings, however, and learned
much wisdom from them in that respect.  Although, to be fair,
there were several aspects of their philosophies which I found to
be inferior with respect to the Western mode: they waxed much on
the uses of astrology in divining the future, while the Western
astrologers utilized the stars to investigate the properties of
Man and his personality; a much superior application.  For the
future of the world is but an inconsequential and insignificant
thing to know, for indeed, we know that _something_ will happen,
and what matter the particulars?  But the study of mankind, that
is noble and purposeful, and truly of benefit, for Man is
universal and perpetual, and always a mystery ripe for
explication.  I found that I could derive the greatest benefit by
approaching the stars from the Chinese viewpoint, but then
apprehending their meanings in the Western way.  Thus, I learned
much wisdom from the stars, for they directed my explorations
into unexpected paths and byways, and provided insight into
questions which I had heretofore considered unanswerable, and
also into questions which I thought I had answered, but
discovered to be more complex and subtle in their manifestations
than I had previously understood.  Thou might find much wisdom in
the stars, dear reader, but I advise thee to be careful, for they
can mislead as well, if thou dost not interpret their strange
ambiguities correctly.  If thou canst keep thy head and not let
thyself wander afield into obscurity and arcana, then thou wilt
be successful in astrological dealings, but remember - the
influences of the stars are complex and subtle, so be sure to
check thy calculations several times, or the wisdom thou wilt
collect will be false and misdirecting.



                    TREATING OF PHILOSOPHY
    I, of course, am not the only person in history to attempt
to define and describe the Universe.  Many people feel the
irresistible urge (and let me assure thee, irresistible it be!)
to expand their minds into the cosmos and see if they can
encompass it all within the scope of their intellects and powers
of consciousness.  I have succeeded in this beyond the wildest
dreams of all the philosophers of history, and indeed, their
efforts have only rarely, if ever, proved insightful and worthy
of my attention.  More often, their theories and speculations
have been worthy of naught else but a good laugh.  For example,
and this be but an extreme case, one man declared that the human
babe, upon entering into the world from the land of womb, is
absolutely devoid of knowledge, that the babe is, as he called
it, "a blank slate" upon which may be writ all the experience of
the world which that babe doth encounter throughout its lifetime,
the slate accruing in information only that which it should sense
with its five Earthbound, material senses!  So far from the Truth
is this, that it is indeed the exact opposite!  As I have already
described, we are conceived with all the wisdom and knowledge
that there is to be had, within the darkness of the womb, and it
is only upon entry into the world that the great bulk of this
wisdom is lost to the elements of Dame Earth.  Childhood is the
process of losing information about the Sky in order to gain
information about the Earth.  In order to reacquire as much of
this Sky wisdom as can be discovered in his lifetime, the babe
must learn to seek knowledge beyond that which he can receive
with his five Earthly senses.  The analogy of the slate is more
appropriate as follows: the babe is born into the world with a
slate filled with dark Sky wisdom, which is then erased by the
light of Sun and Moon and replaced with Earth knowledge.  Another
philosopher projected an even more absurd, and truly bizarre
theory of existence: he proclaimed that there is no possibility
of proof, that the existence of anything in the world is merely a
convenient construction built from Man's need to perceive the
world in terms of space and time, that this structure is merely
an interpretation, purely subjective, and, if Man's perceptual
faculties were to change in some fundamental way, then the nature
of reality itself would change as well.  What balderdash!  Man
belongs to the Universe, not the reverse, and if a man's
perceptions are distorted, it has no effect on the objective
reality of those things which he perceives!  The world could care
less how a man perceives it.  The world merely _is_, and if a Man
desires to discover what the nature of _is_ is, then that is his
business, and it is his business to clarify his own perception of
that _is_.  The _is_ I speak of, if thou canst not see it, is wisdom,
and it is this which I seek, and it is the existence of this
which the philosopher of whom I spoke denied.  Many philosophers,
finding hindrances and blockades in the path to wisdom, give up
the fight, strike on meaningless, yet convenient, conceptions
such as this, and exalt them as Truth so that they may deceive
themselves into believing that they have achieved the wisdom they
sought.  I pity them.



                      TREATING OF SCIENCE
    The scientists are a peculiar bunch of philosophers.  They
seek knowledge in backward fashion, and turn to the exact wrong
source, and thus are one of the most dangerously ignorant groups
in the world.  First, they believe, and I have never been able to
understand the convoluted logic which motivates this strange
conception, that in order to attain wisdom, thou must observe the
_effects_, and from them, deduce the _causes_!  What addlebrained
reasoning is this?!  From _effects_, thou mayst deduce any system
thou doth wish to deduce, for any of a great number of various
causes may be responsible; it is simply a matter of choosing
which cause is the most convenient and comfortable for thee to
contemplate.  If thou dost wish to know the _causes_ of phenomena
that thou dost observe, then thou must go directly to the source
itself, not dance and skirt about its edges like shy, uncertain
schoolchildren!  The other folly of Science, as thou mightst have
guessed by now, is that it venerates the Earth as the source of
wisdom, which is totally backwards and the exact opposite of
Truth.  The Sky is the fount of all True wisdom, and Men are
misled and guided away from wisdom by the wiles of feminine
Earth.  Scientists devote every bit of their attention to
material phenomena, and ignore all knowledge which comes their
way of Sky or darkness.  They believe that light is the medium by
which wisdom is gained, and thus they subject everything to light
in order to elucidate meaning.  It must be examined in light
rather than understood in dark, and of the caprice of light they
know nothing.  They do not realize that light is subject to
shadow, and therefore trickery and illusion, and they draw
conclusions from the events they observe in light, which are
dangerously inaccurate.  For example, they discover the minutest
forms of organic organization, and decide, quite arbitrarily,
that these forms are the "blueprints" for life, and they start to
monkey with these forms, hoping to alter the nature of life
itself, and eventually to apply these principles to Man, and to
improve Him through "enlightened" manipulation of Nature.  Of
course, what they fool with could easily destroy them, and all of
mankind as well, but they heed this possibility not.  Whereas the
philosophers are content to observe and speculate, the scientists
burn with the wish to _change_ the world.  They do not attempt to
understand.  They have barely understood a principle before they
are already mucking around with it, smearing it with Mud, and
hoping that this will "improve" upon it.  What do they think is
going to become of the world if they exert so many changes upon
it?  Earth, even if inferior to Sky, is nonetheless stable.  It
plays host to Man's body, but if Man introduces instability into
the system, then he is playing with fire, for Earth may decide to
reject Man in order to regain its former balance with itself.
The Scientists, with their clumsy, backwards logic and foolish
disregard for the consequences of their methods, are indeed a
dangerous breed, and it would behoove us all if they should
disappear from the Universe forever.  I am all in favor of their
expurgation.



                    FURTHER OF PHILOSOPHERS
    Although the materialists and the scientists did direct
their imaginations in misguided fashions, there were a few men
who did speak of some Truth.  These were the men who pondered on
the nature of Man, and the purpose of Man, and the wisdom of Man.
Throughout the ages, there have been lone voices such as these,
and recently, their words have been gaining notice and attraction
on the Earth, so that I am glad to see that not all is doomed to
Mud and degeneration.  These voices speak of the wonder of Self,
the magick that must not be suppressed, the far reaching
possibilities of transcendence, the infinite range of wisdom
which may be contained in the human spirit.  These men took to
their bosoms that which I have spoken of throughout these
confessions: if nowhere else, at least to thy Self be True!  If
thou dost perpetrate falsity upon thine own Self, then thou art
on a sure path to annihilation.  This concept was grasped by
these thinkers of whom I speak, and they played with them and
manipulated them in the worldly way which men seem hard put to
avoid (for the wiles of Woman Earth are many and splendoured and
near impossible to flee - even I, who am so aware of Her dangers,
have spent most of my existence entranced with Her products and
Her Mud, as thou, dear gentle reader, hast seen clearly, and wilt
see yet further, in these, my last confessions!), and in the end,
they produced some remarkable ideas, remarkable in that they were
the wildest departure from Woman Earth yet seen in human history.
They proclaimed that Man is the triumphant creature of Self, that
no other creature can boast of such awareness and consciousness
of Self as He, and that therefore, He is capable of transcendence
beyond the mere Mud and dirt of Earth.  This of course, I was
happy to hear; finally, were my fellow Men learning to separate
themselves from degeneration and ignominy among the Women and Mud
of Earth, to raise themselves up to the level of Sky, to dream of
higher existence and more profound reality.  Of course, their
newfound wisdom was not all free of folly; for still, they
persisted in associating transcendence with light, when truly it
is associated with dark, and they did not look into their hearts
to find their wisdom, but into their brains.  Instead of tending
the dark gardens of their hearts, they sprinkled the dewy lawns
of their moralities; and they failed to see the most transcendent
bit of wisdom of them all, even though it slept in their very
beds: Woman, sensual pleasure, Mud, all the products of the
Earth; these are the blocks in the roads to Sky and Self.  It is
ironic, whene'er I think on it: that the philosophers were half-
right when they looked to Self for wisdom; the religions half-
right when they looked to Sky for wisdom.  Yet no Man but me ever
found the Truth, which is that Self and Sky must be combined if
thou wilt discover the True path to wisdom.







                           PART TWO


      DELVING FINALLY INTO THE MEAT OF THESE CONFESSIONS
    Perhaps thou hast thought me wandering the Earth, dear
reader, without base or direction, with only my limited wisdom
and knowledge to guide me.  Well, thou art correct.  This is
exactly the condition I existed in for most of the years of my
life.  I have described some of the progressions and meanderings
of my thoughts during these years of wandering, so that I might
prepare thee for the True Meat of these confessions.  What? thou
dost ask!  The _True_Meat_?  Here we are so far into this tome, and
it was all merely a preliminary to the _True_Meat_?  I assure thee,
if thou art not already convinced by the thinness of the volume
which thou must hold in thy hands, that this True Meat, although
forever long in life, will prove brief in these, my confessions.
I will not elaborate too fully, but only enough to convey the
heart and soul of the Confessions, enough to achieve my Purpose
in writing these memoirs of my life, and no more than that.  I
wish the world to understand, to some degree, the condition of my
life.  If perhaps, some small wisdom may be imparted from me to
the rest of mankind, then my Purpose will be vindicated and I
will rest content.  I beg thee, gentle reader, that when thou
dost come to parts of my story that do make thee laugh with
incredulity, or scoff with scorn that I would try to swindle thee
of thy good faith, please do hold back thy most immediate
reaction, and do reserve thy harsh judgment; for I declare, with
every reservoir of integrity, honesty, and candor in my rich,
abundant, dark soul, that every thing which I say is Truth, and
nothing less nor more, but simple Truth.  Hear me, oh World!  I
tell thee Truth: do not shrink from it!  I bear thee Wisdom: do
not close thy head to it!  I bring thee the Fruit of ageless
wandering and endless toil: do not let it rot!  For the course
thou art currently embarked upon will end inevitably in Doom, and
thou wilt be much clearer in this knowledge after I have imparted
the True Meat of my Confessions; after I have related to thee the
substance of the Hundred Year Dream, which I fell into for
reasons soon to be elucidated.  I die; and the choices of Man _now_
will have much impact and importance in the _future_.  Therefore,
it is good to take stock of thy wisdom, and to discard that folly
which has been so dangerously accumulating over centuries and
millennia of history.  But let me tell thee of the Hundred Year
Dream That Was No Dream.



  OF THE HUNDRED YEAR SLUMBER AND THE DREAM THAT WAS NO DREAM
    Ages had I wandered the Earth, gathering wisdom and
knowledge of the world, and there came a time when I began to
feel that I was nearing the point of exhaustion - not mine own,
but rather of the resources of the world.  I was nearing the
limits of Earthly wisdom, and I began to wonder what lay beyond,
or if I would ever be privy to such a thing.  It was at this time
that I descended into that Sleep which was to last for a hundred
years, and which would reveal to me, in the form of a Dream, many
secrets of the Universe which it would be impossible to gather on
this Earth.  I would also learn of Other things, as thou wilt
soon discover.  At first, I was frightened of the drowsiness
which began to depress, urgent and incumbent, upon my senses:
always had I been a master of mine own body, except in those rare
and extreme cases where control was lost, and to be subject to a
force such as this, alien and invasive, was the greatest affront
to my sensibilities and understandings.  It could not be helped,
however, and I soon succumbed.  I awoke within a Dream, and I
knew it was a Dream, and yet, _this_was_no_Dream_; and so it was a
Dream, and simultaneously it was not a Dream, and within its own
context, this seeming dichotomy remained perfectly logical and
reasonable, and there was no conflict betwixt the two realities.
Within this Dream, I arose from deep Slumber and found myself
upon a path which led into dense fog and swirling mist.  The
world around me I could not discern, for there was me and there
was the path, and all about these two items eddied and whorled
the restless, whitely turbid, impenetrable vapors.  I trod many
steps along this path, and it never bent nor diverged from its
course nor forked into decision: straight and true to its purpose
did it remain, the efficient and unwasteful connection of two
points in space.  Finally, I came to a great staircase, which
ascended beyond the scope of my vision, disappearing amongst
thick, billowing clouds.  Standing before this staircase was a
little man with golden buttons on his trousers and silver buttons
upon his hat.  He greeted me with stern disregard and presented
me with the terms of gaining access to the staircase.  I was to
solve the riddle which he would recite, and then I would be
deemed worthy to ascend and allowed to pass.  If I answered
incorrectly, then I would be turned back, and must make my way
upon the Earth once more, until my wisdom proved great enough
that I might return and try again.  Here is the riddle he
spoke:
         It is dark, yet light;
         It shines at night -
         Yet beyond sight,
         When light is might.
Hast thou solved this riddle, gentle reader?  Indeed, thou hast,
for it be absurdly simple, like those of my childhood youth.  I
inquired from the guardian of the staircase why this might be,
but he merely repeated the riddle and awaited my answer.
Promptly, I replied (and correctly, too): The Moon.



                  OF THE STAIRWAY TO THE MOON
    And thus did I gain access to that Stairway which leads to
the Moon.  The guardian of the Stairway informed me that it
consisted of a million and one steps, and so my journey up would
be a long and arduous one.  Also, as I ascended, the steps would
disappear behind me, so that there would be no way back down; I
could never rest, either, or the step upon which I stopped would
disappear, plummeting me back down to Earth and likely breaking
my body into splinters and fleshly strips.  Nevertheless, I
mounted the stairs with eagerness and anticipation, for I
perceived that here, finally, I would come into True Wisdom, of a
kind I never before had encountered.  The steps were wide enough
to admit my feet, but not much wider than that, and there were no
walls on either side, nor railings, nor support of any sort.
There was void, empty, infinite abyss, and if I should lose my
balance or trip, I should not have much margin within which to
rectify my clumsiness.  Despite this, I remained ebullient and
joyful, and I trod extremely careful to avoid accident, and I
counted each step, and was forever subtracting this increasing
number from the total number of a million and one, and forever
taking the percentage of my progress up the stairway, and always
energetic and sanguine and full sure of the inevitability of Full
Wisdom, which I felt was to come almost immediately upon my
attainment of the million and first step.  I envisioned a parade
of grandeur awaiting me at the summit, headed by a mighty
celestial being, who upon my arrival, would produce a Crown of
Knowledge and place it upon my head, and pronounce me into the
pantheon of immortal gods.  I would sit upon my Eternal Throne,
and all would be darkness; not one errant ray of Sunlight nor one
stray beam of Moonlight would e'er besmirch my perfect world, and
I would bask in the bliss of eternity....  As thou canst see
clearly, I had constructed quite a great number of fantasies for
myself!  These, of course, were to be ultimately disappointed;
for they were the dreams of an imperfect being, and as such, were
imperfect in themselves, and therefore, they were not
representative of True Wisdom, but rather of a misguided and
unworthy perception.  I did stumble but once during my climb, and
that was on the five hundred and seventy-two thousandth step; a
fall from such an exalted height would have taken many minutes to
terminate, and thou canst imagine the seething oils and acids
within my bowels after that incident!  In any case, eventually I
reached the top of that illustrious stairway, and did gaze out
upon the alien vista of the Moon, and it was like no Earthly
landscape I had e'er before seen.



                 OF THE LANDSCAPE OF THE MOON
    'Twas dark and eerie on the Moon, and the horizon seemed
distant and desolate, with infinite blackness rising from the rim
of the world.  The stars did not twinkle in the Sky; instead,
they sat stony and silent in their celestial niches, watching
sullenly from above, devoid of all the personality they did pour
down upon the surface of the Earth.  I did wonder something
marvelous about this; for, why should the stars change character
from one world to another?  Perhaps when they did look upon the
Earth, they did sparkle with merriment, yet when they turned
their eyes Moonward, they did lose their amusement and did
suddenly feel serious.  The ground was barren and of greenish
tinge, dusty, spongy and still.  I walked across this ground, and
I felt almost floating and quite giddy, for the Moon does pull
thee to its center with much less insistence than does the Earth.
Silence shrouded this place, and gloom, and loneliness.  Even in
the deepest, darkest caves of Earth, thou wilt feel the presence
of something - some immense, formless personality which permeates
the atmosphere and even the rock; the collective, feminine soul.
Here, on the Moon, all was solitude and silence, and if ever thou
wouldst feel truly alone, it would be here.  I felt an instant
kinship and attachment to this place, for this isolation from all
ego and all alien consciousness, this seclusion from all company
but Self, this dark void and expansive abyss; this was what I had
sought on Earth for centuries and centuries of years, and never
had found, except within the dark womb of my mother before she
did spit me out into the light.  I walked upon this lonely
surface and pondered deeply concerning my purpose here, the
meaning of this unique environment, the wisdom to be found in
such barren landscape.  After all, here was something close to
darkness, and close to featureless, and close to unpopulated; and
yet I did not feel comfortable here.  I felt a growing sense of
unease, as if something important was wrong, something
fundamental was out of alignment with the way it should be, and I
could not discern what it was, no matter how urgently I directed
my perception.  And then I understood: this place lay outside all
Spheres of Nature.  There was no Earth (of which I rejoiced), and
yet there was no Sky, either.  There was no Ocean, for that
matter.  Somehow, this Moon existed without any of these: the
ground on which I walked was not Earth; the black dome in which
the stars glowered was not Sky; and the thick fog through which I
had ascended was left behind, now not a trace of moisture.  There
was no air to breathe, no life to commune with, no sense of the
Unity of the Universe.  This was the landscape of the Moon, and
it did chill my soul from the inside to the out.



                 OF THE TRIUMVIRATE OF TOWERS
    Since the stairway to this place had disappeared with every
step upward, there was no way to descend back to Earth, and so I
was trapped here forever, or until I could devise a way out.  So
I wandered for ninety-nine years, and did cross the desolation
that was the Moon over much of its surface.  Sometimes, I did
fancy that I heard sounds, but I could not be sure, and besides,
how could there be sounds when there was no atmosphere in which
they could be transmitted to my ears?  The sounds, I learned the
reason for at a later time, and will tell thee of them in due
course.  I did become paranoid and just a bit mad during this
time because the darkness of this place did confuse me mightily.
I had always thought of dark as the exaltation of Self, but this
dark was of a different mode, that is, it represented the
annihilation of Self.  I could feel it constantly, working on me,
eating away at the edges of my sanity, nibbling tirelessly and
with perpetual hunger at my very identity; worming into my brain,
parting its matter like cheese and squeezing it of its vital
juice.  I felt desperate indeed, for I feared for the safety, not
merely of my wisdom and knowledge, but of my soul.  I will not
tell thee of the torment I suffered, nor of the gnawing anguish,
nor the searing agonies in my eyes and in my guts, nor the
continual thirsting of my dark flower in my heart for the
nourishment of Self which was instead being drawn steadily away
by that invasive anti-dark that was the Moon.  Thou canst imagine
such things for thyself, and simply let it be known that this was
not a happy time for me, and indeed it was a time of serious
questioning as to the desirability of wisdom if its pursuit would
lead me into such dire circumstances as these.  (And indeed, I
did curse and furie, trying to awaken from this Dream That Was No
Dream, but being impotent to do so - I knew, somehow, that the
only way to wake up was to return to Earth and revisit my body.)
In any case, after ninety-nine long years of wandering across the
Moon, I did finally come upon an immense structure: a triumvirate
of towers.  I would have been shocked at the sight if not I had
been so apathetic due to that erosion of my soul and Self by the
oppressive anti-dark of the Moon.  Nowhere in this entire world
was there any evidence of intelligence or habitation (except for
the sounds I sometimes imagined I heard), yet here I was looking
upon the massive, magnificent belier of all I had seen or
conjectured.  I stood for a long time considering these towers
(the processes of mind were slow in this thought-nullifying,
entropic Moon), and finally, I decided to investigate.



                      OF THE FIRST TOWER
    Each tower was exactly the same as its companions in its
outward appearance, there being no distinguishable difference
either in volume, mass, height, or ornamentation.  Each stood
tall and mighty, and was the size of an Earth mountain, except
that these were clearly of artificial design - no random Nature
here.  Utterly featureless and smooth their walls were, without
decoration or embellishment of any kind.  The triumvirate formed
an equilateral triangle, with the vertices being approximately
twenty miles apart from each other.  Set at the base of each
tower there was a door, and to the nearest one I strode, and
tried the handle.  It turned with ease and admitted me into the
interior with not one groan of displeasure or insolence emitting
from its hinges.  I will attempt to describe what I found in
there, but Truly, such defies the mechanical abilities and finite
understandings of mere speech: not even the painted whores of
Babylon could comprehend the cacophony and frenzied tumult I
discovered therein.  Whirling chaos; flashing, glimmering, harsh,
garish, soft, sweeping, varicoloured light light light; screams
of pain, screams of delight, high-pitched screams that shattered
the ear-drums, low, pitiful moans that split the heart; laughter,
shrill and discordant, sweet and melodic, unrestrained, pitiless,
relentless, implacable; cries of pain and suffering, screechings
beyond despair; perverted and unholy ululations from the deepest
founts of bloody lungs; sweet, cloying, sickening smells and
scents, perfumes and sweats, fecund and rotting flower petals;
sounds of weeping and distress, sounds of exaltation and pleasure
beyond reckoning; slurping sounds, snortings, groanings,
wallowings, swarmings, buzzings, chortlings, sizzlings; swooping
winged bats, birds with heads of men, men with heads of insects,
insects with heads of women, women with heads of black flowers;
copulating, fornicating, unions between beast and woman, man and
babe, beast and babe, couplings of every imaginable permutation
and position; above all the shrieking madness, the anarchy, the
confusion, clamor, uproar, bedlam, pandemonium, tempest, muscled
winds, whirling, swirling, swimming, curling, snapping, clapping,
slamming, cramming, breath-stealing, forced kneeling, breast
revealing, without ceiling; infinity up and infinity down, no end
in sight, no end in mind, eternal corruption, eternal delight,
eternal Mud, eternal Earth, eternal disgust, eternal damnation,
eternal swill, eternal nectar, Eternity and Horror.  I cannot
describe this Tower; its sensations were too varied, too
profound, too much of word_less_ and too little of _word_.  Let it be
known simply that this Tower was the Tower of Earth, and its
treasures (if that what they be called) were of the kind to make
my gorge rise to my throat and sunder my head in twain in effort
to splatter upon the ground of this harlot Babylon; this
purified, undiluted, most potent extract of Earth; this odious
prototypical paradigm of light, Woman, Mud.  I cried out in
anguish and desolation, for here was the stuff of all my
nightmares, condensed and refined into wretched, wicked,
apocalyptic insanity.



                   OF THE HORRORS OF EARTH
    The door which had closed behind me of its own volition
would not let me out again.  I was trapped in this nightmare,
this vivid unreality which was in fact the concentration of
everything that _is_ reality, the accumulation together of that
which normally would exist far apart and unrelated.  Whores
commingled with priests, oxen with fairies, straw with wheat,
corpulence with want, piety with demonism, long with short,
single with many: opposites and natural born enemies were here
cheerful companions; for explicit, known to all, and therefore
acceptable, was the knowledge that they every one was sprung from
the same source, that their individual corporeal manifestations
were but window dressing, superficial and unimportant surface
distinctions, and that really they all were Mud Mud Mud, Earth
Earth Earth; and they all therefore were perfectly happy, indeed
grateful, for their adversaries and their allies, alike.  The
whirlwinds of chaos and depredation swirled blithe and unabated,
secure in the knowledge of their safety and uninterrupted
frolicsome amusements and pleasures here in the bowels of the
Tower of Earth.  A woman with heavy applications of kohl about
her dark eyes and powdered rouge upon her cheeks approached me
and leered seductively and did brandish her teats at me, and not
in a mammary fashion, but rather in a degenerate Earthly fashion;
and all my disgust and all my horror at the cosmopolitan
corruption and wickedness in which I found myself immersed came
surging up within me like the gorge I had so recently dispelled
upon the sandy floor of this Tower; and I drew back my hand and
swiped it with all musterable force across her gaping, sneering
maw and broke in twain the delicate bones of her cheeks and
spilt, to mingle with my gorge on the floor, much blood from her
head.  Suddenly, the swirling chaos halted and abrupt silence
echoed through the Tower, perhaps the first such instance since
the moment of its inception.  Every depraved Earthly thing in
that Tower did look upon the profanity I had perpetrated within
those sacred walls of this Tower of Earth.  And for the first
time in my life did I know True Fear, for the preternatural
silence of these creatures of Mud and Earth, who normally were so
boisterous and without pause for thought or feeling other than
that of pleasure or pain or whatever took hold for the passing
moment; this purpose-filled silence did more than unnerve me, for
it derived absolutely against the grain of their existence and
consciousness: even _they_ held something sacred, and that one
thing I had ground beneath my contemptuous heel.  That moment of
silence seemed to me to stretch out for ever and for ever, and it
seemed to me that I saw into the eyes of every creature that did
inhabit that enormity of space that was the interior of the Tower
of Earth, and it seemed to me that I saw in those eyes the
purest, vilest hatred.  And then, the silence ended, and they all
descended upon me at once; and they had _teeth_.



                        OF THE LUNATIC
    If this had not been a Dream, surely I would have perished
here, for all the concentrated fury of Earth was being poured
upon me without mercy or relent; but instead, it was a Dream, and
so I suffered the torments thus inflicted without the relief of
Death or loss of consciousness (for thou knowst that one cannot
Truly sleep within a Dream, and that I had not once paused for
sleep nor rest in all my Moonly wanderings these past ninety-nine
years); and I moaned and pleaded and disregarded every shred of
my dignity, for it seemed to me that never, in all the future
history of the Universe, would this sharp-toothed agony desist
nor diminish in intensity, and that indeed, the tortures would
only grow worse and more horrible with the passing of Time upon
this barren, lifeless Moon.  And for what seemed an eternity, I
did writhe and spasm under the weight of Earth which did press
despicably and with razor malice down and up and from the sides
and all around me.  And then I was no longer in the Tower of
Earth, but rather in a dark, dark chamber, which was hollow and
echoed silence so that it reverberated in my eardrums and did
make them ring with continuous, piercing tones.  The demons of
Earth were nowhere to be seen nor heard, and I felt raptures to
match the pains which now were eliminated.  There was, sitting on
a throne in this room, a large man; not a man, but something
else; not an elemental, not an Angel, not a man nor woman; but I
will call him man, for that was what he resembled most.  I will
describe him in great detail, for thou wilt never (and _hope_ that
this be, dear reader! _hope_!) meet this man, and this will be a
blessing for thee.  He was large, magnificent in bearing and in
stature.  His shoulders hulked and bulged beneath the cloak which
ornamented his frame.  His chest heaved massive, his arms flexed
like bands of toughest rubber, and he did sit upon his throne
with erectest posture.  His head appeared of a Skull, but not the
skull of a man, but rather that of a Vulture, and sprouting broad
and awesome from his head were antlers, the likes of which I had
never before seen, nor since.  These antlers were like those of
the male deer, which do branch and diverge and mingle with each
other like the limbs of the tree, yet they were more mighty, and
more solid, and more deadly than any ten deer combined.  The
man's head was white and smooth and burnished, as that of the
Vulture Skull, and above his long, narrow beak, within those
dark, hollow sockets, there gleamed pinpoints of a darkness so
terrible and terrifying: they were like unto the densest
singularity of a dark and collapsed star, from which no light nor
dark may e'er escape once entrapped within its subtle and
expansive fields of influence.  I found that I could not look
into these eyes for more than the briefest instance, or I would
be drawn into their infinite oblivions myself, and never again to
know the individuality of Self, and never again to know the
freedom of dark nor the oppressive regime of light, both of which
I had encountered within my lifetime.  Looking into this man's
eyes, I saw the ultimate and the quintessence and the perfection
of Moon; for within them lay the eternal forges of nullity and
annihilation.  The man's beak did open, and he did speak.  Here
was the Lunatic.



                       FROM THE LUNATIC
    "Thy wisdom is folly.  Know that from the beginning.  Thou
art a sniveling dog from Earth, and thou dost bear many
pretensions to greatness in the Universe, but still thou art a
wretched example of consciousness.  Know this, that there are
incredible vistas of knowledge and experience which thou hast
ne'er even considered, and doubtless ne'er will.  Know this, that
thine ideas and conceptions of Nature are wrong and foolish, all
of them.  Thou hast rejected part of thy world, embraced another
of which thou dost know little, and nearly ignored yet another,
which thou dost not comprehend, and therefore dost not consider.
I tell thee, that thou must know minutely of all aspects of
Nature, and thou must not hold one above the other, merely
because it does suit thy fancy to do so.  Also, thou art a
hypocrite, for thou hast professed thy yearning and desire for
wisdom of the Sky, and yet thou hast spent thine innumerable
years upon the Earth investigating of its mysteries, while
simultaneously degrading and despising them; and yet, thou didst
persist in pursuing their wisdoms.  If the Earth and the light do
so terrify thee, then why dost thou bask thy Self and immerse thy
Self within their influences?  And why do they terrify thee so,
in the first place?  Art thou so afraid for thine innate
darkness, is thy darkness so fragile and delicate, that thou
canst not allow even a little light to shine upon it without
running for fear that it will fade away?  If thou wert strong,
thou wouldst know that thy darkness will sustain any amount of
light which might shine down upon it, that it is within its very
nature to absorb unlimited amounts of light, and indeed to
prosper thus.  Only if thou dost protect and coddle it so, and
make it weak from lack of nourishment in the world; only then
wilt thy darkness find itself in danger of fading away from
existence and wilting like the flower which thou dost imagine it
to be within thy heart.  Thou dost fertilize thine own soil with
thine own thoughts and desires, and thou dost reap what thou dost
sow.  If thy thoughts are poison, then poison it will be that is
scattered upon the fields of thy heart; and if thy desires are
covetous and overshadowing, then no flower will grow under their
canopies, for the flower needs the light if it is to grow; and by
light, I mean the sun that is the source of thy consciousness,
which does shine down upon the fields of thy heart and does
nourish that dark flower, which thou dost so revere.  Thou dost
scurry and scamper thus upon the Earth, to and fro, without
direction for thy investigations, nor insight into thy
motivations, nor understanding of the larger scope of the matters
into which thou dost enquire.  Thou dost devote immense energies
and efforts to individual pursuits, then thou dost leave them off
when it seems to thee that the wisdom accrued does not equal the
value of the time spent accruing it, or more likely if thine
interest in the project wanes.  My contempt for thee knows no
bounds nor limits.  It makes me wretched that thou art in my
presence.  It demeans my sensibility that I must look upon thy
form and know the wastrel and scoundrel which thou art.  Know
this verily: thou art no seeker of wisdom; thou art a dabbler.



                   FURTHER FROM THE LUNATIC
    "Still, thou art here, and that does indicate that thou hast
reached a level of wisdom adequate to permit thee access of
realms, to which few in the history of Man have been allowed
entry.  So, although I am sickened by thee, and do retch at the
thought of thine access to this darkest place, I must allow thee
the opportunity which awaits all those who find their way to this
place.  For I am not, even in my great exaltedness, empowered to
deny the edicts of the greater exaltedness, from which did this
Creation spring.  Therefore, I will indoctrinate thee into the
wisdom of the Moon, and prepare thee with all that it is required
that thou must know, and then thou wilt possess all that thou
wilt need to supplant me from my Throne, and replace me upon it.
All those few who have succeeded in discovering this Countrie
out, have failed in this final, supreme effort, and I do not
believe that thou wilt succeed where they did fail; for
Truthfully, thou art quite inferior to each and all of thy
predecessors, and I do wonder at the future of thy race, if thou
art the breed which nowadays does ascend to this majestic state.
And heed, for I will give thee a chance to return to thy
corporeal body back down on thy native Earth, and not have to
hear the True wisdom which I am about to impart thee.  Before
thou dost answer in most negatory haste, know this: the wisdom I
shall reveal to thee is not what thou dost think it is.  It is
something far more terrible and infinite and outside that which
thou dost deem sanity.  The True wisdom of the Universe will not
satisfy thee in thy hopes: thou shalt wear no crown of laurel,
but a mantle of horns, as do I; thou shalt inhabit no blissful,
womblike darkness, but stare out at the world with the unblinking
infinities of endlessly sucking sucking sucking madness which are
the eyes of the Lunatic.  For know, that if thou wilt replace me
on this Throne, then thou wilt brandish my antlers, and thou wilt
feel their weight heavy on thy head for all of eternity, and thou
wilt feel undying torment and agony, for thou wilt truly know,
Truly _know_ what it is that composes the Universe, and what it is
that _means_ the Universe.  These are not matters to be taken
lightly, as I know thou hast done for all of thy piddling,
mewling, pathetic existence on thy home the Earth.  These are
matters of the greatest import, indeed nothing in the Universe is
greater than the Universe itself.  Thus, if I were thee, I would
consider long and hard before I gave my answer.  Dost thou Truly
Truly _Truly_ desire the ultimate wisdom of the Universe?  In thy
heart of hearts, in the deepest, most Truthful recesses of thy
darkest soul: what is it that cries out; what is it that demands
either wisdom or ignorance?  For remember, it is an aphorism
among the men of thy language that ignorance is bliss, and I
assure thee that this is far greater and more important wisdom
than that which thou wilt discover from me.  So think on it, and
then tell me thy choice: Wisdom or Ignorance?"



                        OF MY DECISION
    Dear reader, bear with me, but I feel it incumbent upon me
to make most clear the nature of the True Meat of these, my
Confessions.  Where before I gave thee a quite superficial
overview of my life, so merely to give thee some idea of what my
experiences were; and what their _character_ took precedence to
what their _substance_.  Here, however, substance matters, so I
must tell thee every little detail.  The Lunatic did fall silent
and awaited my reply, and of course, I would tell him that I
preferred wisdom, for who would choose folly over wisdom?  I
could not fathom it, and therefore I did not try.  But I did not
give my answer right away, for I desired time to prepare myself
mentally for what was to come.  So I asked the Lunatic of the
other Towers; if they, as I suspicioned, represented the
concentration of Sky and Ocean, as the Tower of Earth did.  He
confirmed my conjectures, and suggested that if I did wish it, I
might visit these Towers before I made my decision concerning my
acquisition of True wisdom.  I leaped at the opportunity; for now
I would finally see with claritude and vision the things which I
could not see on Earth; it would all be before me, in a wondrous
pageant of wisdom, and I would learn from these revelations as if
reading them from a book.  The Lunatic merely told me that when I
wished to return to his dark chamber, that I need only think of
it, and it would be so.  Then, I was transported to the center of
the triangle which the triumvirate did form, and I walked to the
Tower which represented Sky.  I opened the door and walked in,
and there was nothing there!  It was all empty.  The Tower was
hollow and echoed silence, and not a Cloud did float, nor a star
twinkle, nor an elemental frolic.  Gasping in that airless place,
I did stumble out the door in pure horror and sat for a long time
upon the peculiar, spongy ground, contemplating.  Then, I did
stand and walked to the Tower which would represent Ocean.  This,
too, was empty and devoid.  Shrieking my frustration, I returned
to the Lunatic's chamber and demanded an explanation for these
abominations, and he did answer slowly, and I think, with most
malicious delight.  He told me that my wisdom knew much of
Earthly things, and so I was able to observe some small fraction
of the things within the walls of that Tower; but because I knew
almost nothing of the Sky nor of the Ocean, I could but discern
almost nothing within that Tower.  It was simple, really.  I
inquired if _he_ was privy to the secrets of these Towers, and he
replied that yes, indeed, he knew every single mystery of the
Towers, for was he not all wise and knowing?  This decided me.  I
declared loudly and with no reservation whatsoever, that I must
be told of the True Wisdom.  He nodded, and said that he had
thought as much.  Then he began to speak.  (And keep in mind,
dear reader, that I paraphrase and greatly abridge from memory,
and that his True oratorical and rhetorical styles were much
greater and more convincing than mine, and that the substance of
his words were much more intricate and fat with detail than the
crude, broad-sweeping ones which I present here, and that much of
what he did communicate was conveyed to me through the mechanism
of Thought-Weave, which I have described in earlier chapters.)



         THE LUNATIC SPEAKS: OF QUIDDITY AND HAECCEITY
    "_In_the_beginning,_there_was_Quiddity;_then_came_Haecceity._
If thou wouldst condense the entire history of the Universe into
one single statement, then this would be it.  Quiddity is the
unity which is defined from with_in_; Haecceity is the disparity
which is defined from with_out_.  It seems a subtle distinction -
within and without - but it is all the difference between the
whole and the parts.  For there still remains, even through all
the ages of Time which have passed between the beginning of
Haecceity and the present, within each member of the Triumvirate
of elements, the pure and sublime initiatory state of Quiddity;
for while the outward individuation of features distinguishes the
Triumvirate, the inward, most essential element of reality and
substance remains the same from which they all three sprang.
Nevertheless, it is True that the Triumvirate are distinct and
most unique from each other.  How did this come about?  Why and
how did there exist unified Quiddity, and why and how did this
Quiddity become corrupted, and eventually disrupted into the
Triumvirate of Haecceity?  These are the essential questions of
wisdom, and it is in order to answer these that I will speak.
All things relate back to these questions, for they are the
springboards for all philosophy.
    "First, I shall describe the conditions of Quiddity, so that
thou mayst understand from whence thine origins derive.  In the
Quiddity, all is one.  The concept of consciousness does not
exist as such, for indeed, all flows together and neither
differentiates nor fragments into individual clusters of thought.
Instead, there is contentedness.  For, if thou wert to define
consciousness in terms of the capacity to produce thought, from
whence does thought discover impetus but from the seeds of
discontent?  Thought and reason follow from dissatisfaction with
a set of conditions, or from a desire for improved or degraded
circumstances; never from contentedness.  For when one is
content, one is without _need_ for thought; one is serene and at
peace with all aspects of self and surroundings; one is devoid of
need or expectation, for all need and expectation have been met;
one simply _is_, and there is no question of that _is_, there is no
need to defy or condemn that _is_, for it belongs to a realm of
peace and non-thought.  Since there is no environment, the
Quiddity questions not its contentedness in that respect, and
since there is no consciousness of self, at least, not as thou
dost understand it, the Quiddity questions not its contentedness
in that respect, either.  Therefore, there is contentedness, and
not consciousness.  All Quiddity is one, as I have mentioned.
Its substance is uniform and fills neither space nor time.  Its
substance is not solid, as the term is defined in present times,
but it is not etheric either; it is different, and there is no
parallel in modern reality, yet I will attempt to make thee
understand what it was, for it does still exist, even today, just
as Quiddity does still exist, for it is still the basis of all
reality, even if that basis is hidden from view or sense.  The
substance of Quiddity is such that if thou wert to fold it upon
itself, it would not change shape, nor would its surfaces meet as
thou hadst hoped to make happen; instead, it would change the
perspective of _thine_own_hands_, to make them perceive that they
indeed had achieved their objective, for they would move in all
the manners required for the project, and thine eyes would
perceive the folding as if it had occurred, but what _really_ would
have happened was that thy retinas themselves would have been
warped such that they perceived what thou didst desire them to
perceive.  Thus, the substance of Quiddity is such that it does
not change, but rather that the observer or actor, if such could
exist in Quiddity (which it could not), should change; for it is,
after all, the observer which does wish for change to take place,
and why should that change occur anywhere but in the mind of the
observer?  After all, the desire does not originate elsewhere!
It exists solely within the mind of this observer.  Thus, the
observer perceives what he wants to perceive, and for all intents
and purposes, what he perceives is the reality, but the _true_
reality is the changeless formless foundation that is Quiddity.
As I have said, Quiddity is still the most essential nature of
the Universe, but it is different now, for Haecceity is also
involved, and that, as shall be shown, is the introduction of an
all-encompassing observer, one that, for all intents and
purposes, is infinite to the infinite degree - that is, as
infinite as infinite can be; the infinity which contains all
other infinities, with room for infinity more of them - and as a
result, there can be no valid argument that the event perceived
is _not_ the event occurred.  In due course shalt thou understand
this seeming paradox.
    "I have stated that in Quiddity, there is contentedness and
not consciousness (at least, as we of Haecceity understand the
term).  This is not to say that there is not _awareness_, for
indeed there is; awareness more profound than can be understood
in the Haecceity.  Thou mayst object that there is but little
distinction between consciousness and awareness, but let it be
known that the difference between the two is not merely subtle,
but it is mighty.  For consciousness derives from discontent,
whereas awareness derives from contentedness.  Yet, at the same
time, it may be said that _consciousness_is_an_awareness_of_
environment,_while_awareness_is_a_consciousness_of_self_.  Perhaps
this seems enigmatic, as indeed it should, for the Universe deals
in paired enigmas at every opportunity: it is a rule of existence
that all opposites are paired so that, if viewed in light of
Truth and Quiddity, it can be seen that the opposites are indeed
the same.  So how is this enigma resolved?  Here: consciousness
derives from discontent, and discontent derives from knowledge of
environment and dissatisfaction with that knowledge; whence
consciousness, content with itself (else it cannot be, for no
thing can exist unless it sanctions its own existence!), must be
content with that discontent, and therefore content with that
environment from which it derives, and therefore _aware_ of it!
Perhaps this seems but specious foolery to thee, but it is Truth.
The second half of the paradox, explained: awareness derives from
contentedness, and contentedness derives from oblivion from all
matters of environment or self; and since Quiddity exists, it
must possess self; and therefore, there arises the spectre of
discontent between oblivion of self and existence of self, and
since from discontent springs consciousness, it is a simple
matter of syllogism to relate this consciousness to the original
awareness of the equation.  Thus, while they be opposites, they
remain dependent on each other for definition, like a great
circle of reality, which never can collapse unless is torn the
very fabric of reality itself.
    "Quiddity, aware yet not conscious, was all that there was;
and all was as one, and one was as all, and there could be no
distinction between singular and plural.  Similarly, there could
be no difference between animate and inanimate, alive and dead,
joy and misery.  Instead, there was the great neutrality of
nonDimension, the simultaneous exaltation and abnegation of Space
and Time; for, if it were possible for thee to unravel the time-
line of Haecceity, and trace the threads back to the beginning of
Time and the Quiddity, thou wouldst never find what thou seekest,
for in observing, in possessing perception, in possessing
_consciousness_, thou wouldst create Haecceity from all Quiddity
that thou didst come upon.  It would be impossible not to, for
this is inherent in the nature of Haecceity and its relationship
to Quiddity.  As a creature of Dimension and Perception, thou
canst not exist in a continuum of nonDimension and nonPerception.
This is simple to understand, no?  So, the question thou must be
burning to discover the answer to is this: how, if Quiddity
denies consciousness, and therefore the possibility of Haecceity,
did this Haecceity come about in the first place?  Well, this
remains one of the mysteries of the Universe.  To a certain
degree, it can be explained, but there is a hard kernel shell at
the core of this explanation, which cannot be cracked, and within
which resides the darkest wisdom ever to be woven into the fabric
of existence, a wisdom more profound even than that of Quiddity.
I know this wisdom and guard it, but no other in the Universe
does know it.  I will tell thee of the perplexity, and then pose
the riddle.
    "Quiddity persisted for eternity as I have described, and
one day, something came to disrupt it forever.  I have told of
how it is required, if one wishes to create Haecceity out of
Quiddity, thou must needs introduce an observer or an actor into
the system, such that expectations are aroused, thoughts
produced, and consciousness initiated.  From some Place beyond
Quiddity came an observer; not just a finite observer, for if it
had been finite, then it would have sparked for an infinitesimal
of time, and then it would have been snuffed by Quiddity, for
Quiddity is too powerful to tolerate consciousness within itself.
No, this observer was infinite, and not just infinite, but the
_most_ infinite; for there are hierarchies of infinity, as thy
wisdom may tell thee, and infinity is not necessarily all-
inclusive.  It is quite possible for something to be infinite,
and another thing to be infinite, and for neither infinity to
share a single element; take, for example, the circle: it is
infinite, for the points of its circumference can infinitely be
measured and the difference divided to reveal yet further points
between them; and yet, even in this infinity, there is the
infinity of the space within the circle, and the infinity of the
space without the circle, and neither infinity shares points
either with the circle or with each other.  The infinity of which
I speak, which was introduced from a mysterious beyond Place, was
not merely such as the circle, but rather the infinity which
contains all possible infinities.  This is the great Haecceitas.
There is not one principle or thought which is not contained
within this infinity.  The Haecceitas is the ultimate
consciousness, for it is every thought and probability and
potentiality, all brought together, and therefore, there can be
no greater observer than it.
    "When confronted with this strange visitor from beyond,
Quiddity could not sustain itself as a nonconscious,
dimensionless void, and it collapsed instantly into Haecceity.
The Haecceitas could manipulate Quiddity, and form physical
things with it, things of matter and energy, things with solidity
and volume and substance, but of course, in the most profound
sense, none of these things were aught but illusions, for as I
have told, if an observer attempts to govern and measure
Quiddity, he will be confronted with the illusion satisfactory to
fool his senses into believing that they perceive what they wish
to perceive.  This is the True nature of things, but since we,
physical objects, exist within the framework of this infinite
observer - this Haecceitas - we are real, so do not fool thyself
on that score.  If thou wert to look at reality from the angle of
Quiddity, nothing is real, even now in Haecceity, for Haecceity
is constructed from Quiddity; yet, thou canst do not _but_ look at
reality from the angle of Haecceity, for that is what thou art -
Haecceitas incarnate.  Things for thee are individuated, made
separate from each other, disUnified, fragmented, mutually alien.
Bodies and spheres are for thee (and for me) things apart, and
things which affect each other in an arena of Space and Time, and
which interact with each other as individuated Selves.  Some
things gravitate toward each other, others impel themselves
apart; some things shine brightly, whilst others wax dark; some
things float serene, whilst others struggle in turbulence.  The
Universe under Haecceity is wide and varied, and indeed infinite
in permutation.  The reason for this is that every infinite
possibility of that infinite observer's mind is played out within
the Haecceity.  Humanity is but another of these infinite
possibilities.
    "There is some peculiar wisdom in the construction of
Haecceity.  When Quiddity collapsed into Haecceity, it did so in
the following manner: where Quiddity was an infinite Unity of
Self, Haecceity interpreted it into infinite individuated Selves.
That is, it created infinite tiny packages of consciousness which
could combine in infinite ways to produce infinite thoughts.
These tiny packages, which in thy vocabulary might be referred to
as "quanta," are the fundamental building blocks of reality under
the aegis of Haecceity.  When thou dost construct an original
thought in thy brain, what thou art doing is organizing
infinitudes of these quanta into patterns heretofore unseen in
the Haecceity.  The complex interaction of these quanta of
consciousness is the intrinsic operation in the formulation of
all Haecceitic reality.  These quanta are the tiniest containers
of consciousness possible within the Haecceity, as they are
infinitely small - the equivalents of points on the circumference
of the circle.  These quanta are not particles, if that be what
thou doth suspect, for they are not entities of physicality or
material, nor do they fill Space, but rather, they are the stuff
of Space itself, the raison d'etre for Space; it is their
interaction which creates Space and Time and the Triumvirate as a
secondary product, as a result of the thoughts which these
packages of consciousness enact and embody.  They are the True
components of Haecceity, the purest forms, the sublimest moulds.
    "Now, the eternal mystery of the Haecceity is this: from
whence did the Haecceitas come?  I have said that it came from
beyond the Quiddity, but the paradox lies in the fact that there
_is_ no other than Quiddity.  Now, thou mayst smile to thyself and
say, Well, obviously there _must_ be else than Quiddity, for the
proof is in the pudding, to make use of an Earthly aphorism.
Smile not, for I assure thee that there can be naught else but
Quiddity; if there was, then there could not _be_ Quiddity - in
that case, there would be Haecceity.  For remember the
definitions I gave thee before: Quiddity is defined from with_in_,
Haecceity from with_out_.  Quiddity is Unity, Haecceity is
Disparity.  If there had been another than Quiddity, then it
would have been Haecceity from the beginning; for to say there is
two, is to individuate.  I think thou canst see that clearly
enough.  It does not take the most encompassing wisdom to
understand this.  So I put it to thee again - from whence did
this thing, this Haecceitas, come?  I know this wisdom well
enough, but if thou art to depose me from my throne, then thou
must display even greater wisdom than mine.  Then, thou wilt
possess the greatest wisdom in the Universe, and thou wilt be
charged with guarding this knowledge for Eternity, or until
another such as thyself proves of mettle extraordinary enough to
depose _thee_.
    "I will not tell thee how I came to be here, how I came to
possess this wisdom, how I came to crack that kernel which
contains the darkest heart of wisdom imaginable in either
Quiddity or Haecceity.  These are things which thou mayst guess
at by peering into mine eyes, and perceiving the darkness there:
that darkness is of the ultimate wisdom, and I can see that thou
dost not find this darkness to thy taste.  Thou art fond of the
superficial, blissful embryo state within Mother's womb, which
provides thee with sustenance of spirit which thou hast not
earned, but rather have leeched and sucked from another.  I see
thy piddling attempts to return to that former state of being,
and thou canst not find the appropriate wisdom to do so.  I
assure thee, thou hast been pursuing the wrong ends.  The Sky
will not provide thee with what you seek.  Thou hast been
ignoring the most obvious and most direct route to the state
which thou seekest, and if thou wilt think on it, perhaps thou
canst discover this for thyself, without having to grovel to a
superior wisdom to hand it to thee.  Now, as for thy precious
Triumvirate of elements - the Earth, the Sky, and the Ocean -
these are but one of a myriad of infinite permutations of
Haecceity; and they all three spring from the same source,
Quiddity.  Thy world is one of many, and thy humanity is but one
of many.  The Universe is the sum of all things possible, and
thou art but a minuscule speck in that greatness, and so is thy
Sky, for which thou dost so yearn, and so is thine Earth, which
thou dost so disdain, and so is thine Ocean, which thou dost not
even consider within thy philosophies.  The Triumvirate is but a
localized function of Haecceity - there be others, indeed,
infinitudes of them.  And as for thy truly amusing and perverse
distinctions between the feminine and the masculine, remember
what I said earlier: all things opposite are in fact the same.
    "But I will lecture thee no longer, for this bores and tires
me.  If thou dost deem thyself worthy, then tell me: from whence
came the infinite observer?  _From_whence_the_Haecceitas_?"



            OF MY ANSWER TO THE LUNATIC'S RIDDLE
    Know this, dear reader, that the Lunatic did speak for many
days, utilizing both the Total Language and Thought-Weave in his
explications, and that what I have relayed to thee is but the
barest bones of his argument, the most fragile and spindly gist
of his wisdom.  He spoke in much detail concerning innumerable
matters.  I could never, in a lifetime of dictating, write
everything he said, especially in a Confession such as this,
which would not be served by such detail; for it is _my_ life and
_my_ sins and _my_ mistakes which I relate, not the Lunatic's.  In
any event, finally he stopped with that last question - _From_
whence_the_Haecceitas_? - and the silence which descended upon the
chamber was striking, for only the sound of the Lunatic's
depthless voice had hitherto been known for days and nights on
end.  He stared at me from out those hollow pits of infinity that
were his eyes, and I was forced to turn my face, lest I be
dragged helplessly into them like the insect into the vortex.  I
pondered the riddle for a long time, and plumbed the depths of my
wisdom, seeking in vain for an answer.  I suddenly felt very
weary.  I knew that my wisdom was no match for this riddle, that
it required a subtlety of logic and an understanding of Quiddity
and Haecceity which, even with all the Lunatic's patient
instruction, I simply did not possess.  I understood that these
Truths were powerful and awesome, but my wisdom still revolved
about such trifling notions as Earth and Sky and Ocean and Male
and Female, &c., &c..  The Lunatic did not pester me for an
immediate answer; he was prepared to wait for as long as it took
for me to formulate the solution.  Thou canst see the state I was
in.  For the first time in my life, I was faced with mine own
_smallness_.  Even in the period after the drinking of my dead
mother's teat, I had not felt this particular sensation.  It was
as if I was less than a speck in the _eye_ - the dark inescapable
infinity that was the Lunatic's _eye_.  I felt without foundation,
without philosophical basis for any thought or justification for
any action.  I felt alone, alien, pariah from mine own heart and
the dark flower within.  Gradually, and then faster and faster, I
felt myself churning and whirling within, shrinking and folding
in on myself, becoming a dark singularity like the eyes of the
Lunatic.  I realized what was happening to me, and I admit it - I
panicked.  I grasped for the last shreds of my sanity and clung
with every ounce of strength that my weakening Self could
provide.  I pulled myself out of that diminishing vortex,
reclaimed my wisdom, the hard-wrought sensibilities of a
lifetime.  I can not explain why I did what I did, gentle reader.
All my life, I sought greater wisdom, yearned for ultimate
knowledge; and then, on the brink of such knowledge, I pulled
back and I refused it.  For that was what had been happening: I
had been accelerating towards the answer to the riddle, towards
the very source of whatever infinity contained the origination of
the Haecceitas.  Knowing this, I gave this triumphant answer to
the Lunatic: _From_whence_Haecceitas?__From_HERE!_  And I pointed
at my heart.



                  OF THE LUNATIC'S LAUGHTER
    Needless to say, however True this answer may have been for
_me_, it was not the Truth.  Insane laughter greeted my
declaration.  Endless, debilitating laughter.  The Lunatic's
Vulture skull did not betray emotion, for it was solid bone and
without flux or flow, but from the eyes, those impenetrable
depths of voidness and nullity, there emanated overpowering,
suffocating waves of derision and hatred more profound than is
conceivable within any man's conglobed, encased brain.  I have
spoken of certain sounds, which I heard periodically as I
wandered the barren surface of the Moon, the airless waste of
darkness and decay and spongy, dusty ground; and I had never
discovered a causation or source for these sounds, these
titterings and chatterings and distant snortings, like swine
rooting in scraps with rippling, chortling snouts.  Now, these
sounds became evident in overabundance.  The room became utterly
dark, and I could see neither walls nor floor nor Vulture scowl,
but I felt the presence of eyes, eyes which could see in this
dark, eyes which did not need the reflections and illusionary
distortions of light and colour to discern the targets of their
demented scrutinies, eyes which watched me now, eyes which
derided every surface of my being, eyes which dissected every
minute tissue and organ of my Earthly form.  And I heard the
gibbering, the mad rantings, the gasping, choking sighs, the
chortling chortling chortling, the snortling snortling snortling,
the squizzling squizzling squizzling: and the laughter, it grew
in proportion to my own madness, it grew and grew, and became
hysterical and frantic and high-pitched.  At times, it sounded
like the gurgling joy of an infant child, and at times it sounded
like the giddy, single-minded hilarity of a depraved and deviant
debaucher, and at times it seemed like the low, sonorous ridicule
of a sarcastic, mean-spirited father, and at times it sounded
like the shrill, mindless, rolling cachinnations of a hyena, and
at all times it sounded like the unholy Lunatic, antlers
shimmering with energy, eyes glittering with infinity, Vulture
beak slicing the air with incomprehensible solidity.  The
laughter, and the snortings of pigs, these things drove into my
consciousness until my mind was almost distracted from itself.
These sounds; they were driving my Self away from me, replacing
it with their ludicrous inanity, their all-consuming insanity.
And I glimpsed pale faces, emerging from the darkness, then
slipping silently and seamlessly back into its voidness, faces of
swine with beady, greedy eyes, and of fish with staring, scaly,
lidless glassiness, and of sniffing rats, and of shrieking
monkeys.  These faces they swam through the darkness, and my
glimpses of them were unsatisfactory; each glimpse impressed me
with terror and immeasurable power, but I could not discern with
clarity; I could only shrivel and wither within my shrinking
sanity, and feel these beasts and squealing demons press closer
and closer in on me until there was no where for me to go but to
squeeze out of existence like a bubble of air.  And then, from
some inward reserve of Self, which I never had been aware of, but
from what little life remained in my dark flower in my heart, I
snarled and bit and screamed and frothed and cursed and howled;
and I _flew_up_ out of the grasp of these greedy, reaching swine,
and through the ceiling, and into the dark, indefinite sky.



                    OF MY RETURN TO EARTH
    Upwards, through the ceiling and into the sky, falling
falling falling, for ever and for ever, all the long distance
back to Earth.  It took days, and I do not exaggerate, dear
gentle reader!  When I finally hit the Earth, I awoke from my
Hundred Year Sleep.  When I had fallen into the endless slumber,
my physical appearance had been that of an attractive man in the
middle years of his life.  In the time of my slumber, I had aged
considerably; so considerably, in fact, that for each year of my
slumber, my body had aged a year.  I had now the appearance of
one who is a hundred years _beyond_ the robust, healthy period of
his life!  Thou canst imagine my disturbance at this
apprehension, for I knew then that I had not long to live, for
the human body is a fragile thing, and once it has decayed past a
certain point, there is no hope of rejuvenation.  So, depressed
about my impending death, but at the same time, overjoyed beyond
any joy that I had ever before experienced, I made my way into
the world.  And thus, I came into my final wisdom, and I cried
for the fourth and final time in my life; tears not of misery and
woe, but rather of regret and wistful hindsight perception.  For
I came to realize that all my journeyings, all my wayfarings upon
the Earth; my investigations into the nature of reality and the
nature of the elements; my questionings of mankind's institutions
and societies, his magick systems and philosophies: all these
were for naught, for connecting them all had been a single
strand, one which I had been aware of, but which I had never
recognized as the unifying factor of all things: this was _To_thy_
Self_be_True_.  I had mouthed the words, and had followed its
superficialest interpretations, but the core of its injunction I
had ignored, opting instead to study Other rather than Self.
Now, at the end of my Earthly Life, only now did I become Truly
wise to this maxim, but it was too late, for my life was nearly
at its end, and I would have no time to explore the hidden
reaches of Self, which hitherto I had neglected.  Thus did I
embark upon setting down for posterity the story of my Life, so
that my wisdom might not be lost to the ages.  Mayhap, some One
who reads of my experience might be diverted from similarly
unwise pathways as I have travelled.  Do not wallow in the Mud of
Earth as I have done, all unknowingly, for the greatest part of
my Life.  Do not search for Sky or Womb; for by looking without
for such things, did I ignore the Truth which lay in my heart.
Look within for Self, and thou wilt find all things which thou
dost desire: I guarantee this.  Care for thy dark flower in thy
heart, as I have not, and mayhap thou wilt surpass even me in thy
wisdom and understanding of the Universe.  This is unlikely,
however, for none before have ever done so, and it is not a good
bet that thou wilt heed the sage advice I leave thee.
Nevertheless, I leave it, and if but One doth take it to His
heart, then these confessions will not have been writ in vain.
For hear my Last Confession, World!- _I_have_not_been_True_to_my_
Self._

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