The Vision and the Voice

THE EQUINOX does mean I cannot tell at all. He slightly emphasized the word “there.” And now all is suddenly blotted out, and instead appears the Angel of the Aethyr. He is all in black, burnished black scales, just edged with gold. He has vast wings, with terrible claws on the ends, and he has a fierce face, like a dragon’s, and dreadful eyes that pierce one through and through. And he says: O thou that art so dull of understanding, when wilt thou begin to annihilate thyself in the mysteries of the Aethyrs? For all that thou thinkest is but thy thought; and as there is no god in the ultimate shrine, so there is no I in thine own Cosmos. They that have said this are of them that understood. And all men have misinterpreted it, even as thou didst misin- terpret it. He says some more: I cannot catch it properly, but it seems to be to the effect that the true God is equally in all the shrines, and the true I in all the parts of the body and the soul. He speaks with such a terrible roaring that it is impossible to hear the words: one catches a phrase here and there, or a glimpse of the idea. With every word he belches forth smoke, so that the whole Aethyr becomes full of it. And nowI hear the Angel: Every particle of matter that forms the smoke of my breath is a religion that hath flourished among the inhabitants of the worlds. Thus are they all whirled forth in my breath. Now he is giving a demonstration of this Operation. And he says: Know thou that all the religions of all the worlds end herein, but they are only the smoke of my breath, and I am only the head of the Great Dragon that eateth up the Universe; 130