Copyright (c) 1995 Sholder Greye

This electronic manuscript may be freely copied and distributed,
but credit, acknowledgment, and copyright must remain always with 
me - that is, the entity called "Sholder Greye."  Notice the (c) 
above: this is a potent magical symbol.  If you defy it, you will
be doomed.  You have been warned.

Comments may be mailed to: yp972@bard.edu


		      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 sufferin