The Vision and the Voice

THE EQUINOX And I answered and said: I am a creature of earth, and ye would have me swim. And the voice said: Thy fear is known; thine ignorance is known; thy weakness is known; but thou art nothing in this matter. Shall the grain which is cast into the earth by the hand of the sower debate within itself, saying, am I oats or barley? Bond-slave of the curse, we give nothing, we take all. Be thou content. That which thou art, thou art. Be content. And now the lion passeth over through the Aethyr with the crowned beast upon his back, and the tail of the lion goes on instead of stopping, and on each hair of the tail is some- thing or other—sometimes a little house, sometimes a planet, at other times a town. Then there is a great plain with soldiers fighting upon it, and an enormously high mountain carved into a thousand temples, and more houses and fields and trees, and great cities with wonderful buildings in them, statues and columns and public buildings generally. This goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on—all on the hairs of this lion’s tail. And then there is the tuft of his tail, which is like a comet, but the head is a new universe, and each hair streaming away from it is a Milky Way. And then there is a pale stern figure, enormous, enormous, bigger than all that universe is, in silver armour, with a sword and a pair of balances. That is only vague. All has gone into stone-gray, blank. There is nothing. AIN EL HajeEL. November 25, 1909. 8.40-9.40 p.m. 24