The Vision and the Voice

THE EQUINOX coffee, then a burning taste, then a sour taste that I don’t know. All these tastes issue from his eyes; he signua/s them. I can see his eyes now. They are very round, with perfectly black pupils, perfectly white iris, and the cornea pale blue. The sense of desolation is so acute that I keep on trying to get away from the vision. I told him that I could not understand his taste-language, so instead he set up a humming very much like a big electric plant with dynamos going. Now the atmosphere is deep night-blue; and by the power of that atmosphere, the pillars kindle to a dull glowing crim- son, and the throne is a dull, ruddy gold. And now, through the humming, come very clear, bell-like notes, and farther still a muttering, like that of a gathering storm. And nowI hear the meaning ofthe muttering: Iam he who was before the beginning, and in my desolation I cried aloud, saying, let me behold my countenance in the concave of the abyss. And I beheld, and lo! in the darkness of the abyss my countenance was black, and empty, and distorted, that was (once) invisible and pure. Then I closed mine eye, that I might not behold it, and for this was it fixed. Now it is written that one glance of mine eye shall destroy it. And mine eye I dare not open, because of the foulness of the vision. Therefore do I gaze with these two eyes throughout the aeon. Is there not one of all my adepts that shall come unto me, and cut off mine eye- lids, that I may behold and destroy? Now I take a dagger, and, searching out his third eye, seek to cut off the eye-lids, but they are of adamant. And the edge of the dagger is turned. 38