The Vision and the Voice

THE VISION AND THE VOICE the music is, but it is so wonderful that one only lives in one’s ears; one cannot see anything any more. Now he stops playing and moves with his finger in the air. His finger leaves a trail of fire of every colour, so that the whole Aire is become like a web of mingled lights. But through it all drops dew. (I can’t describe these things at all. Dew doesn’t represent what I mean in the least. For instance, these drops of dew are enormous globes, shining like the full moon, only perfectly transparent, as well as perfectly luminous.) And now he shows the tablet again, and he says: As there are 49 letters in the tablet, so are there 49 kinds of cosmos in every thought of God. And there are 49 interpretations of every cosmos, and each interpretation is manifested in 49 ways. Thus also are the calls 49, but to each call there are 49 visions. And each vision is composed of 49 elements, except in the roth Aethyr, that is accurséd, and that hath 42. All this while the dewdrops have turned into cascades of gold finer than the eyelashes of a little child. And though the extent of the Aethyr is so enormous, one perceives each hair separately, as well as the whole thing at once. And now there is a mighty concourse of angels rushing toward me from every side, and they melt upon the surface of the egg in which I am standing in the form of the god Kneph, so that the surface of the egg is all one dazzling blaze of liquid light. Now I move up against the tablet,—I cannot tell you with what rapture. And all the names of God, that are not known even to the angels, clothe me about. All the seven senses are transmuted into one sense, and that sense is dissolved in itself. . . . (Here occurs Samadhi.) Iv ad 33