THE VISION AND THE VOICE
(Note.—You do not come back in any way dazed; it is like
going from one room into another. Regained normal con-
sciousness completely and immediately.)
Tue Cry OF THE 21ST AETHYR, WHICH IS CALLED ASP
A mighty wind rolls through all the Aethyr; there is a
sense of absolute emptiness; no colour, no form, no substance.
Only now and then there seem, as it were, the shadows of
great angels, swept along. No sound; there is something
very remorseless about the wind, passionless, that is very
terrible. In a way, it is nerve-shaking. It seems as if some-
thing kept on trying to open behind the wind, and just as it
is about to open, the effort is exhausted. The wind is not cold
or hot; there is no sense of any kind connected with it. One
does not even feel it, for one is standing in front of it.
Now, the thing opens behind, just for a second, and I
catch a glimpse of an avenue of pillars, and at the end a
throne, supported by sphinxes. All this is black marble.
Now I seem to have gone through the wind, and to be
standing before the throne; but he that sitteth thereon is
invisible. Yet it is from him that all this desolation
proceeds.
He is trying to make me understand by putting tastes in
my mouth, very rapidly one after the other. Salt, honey,
sugar, assafoetida, bitumen, honey again, some taste that I
don’t know at all; garlic, something very bitter like nux
vomica, another taste, still more bitter; lemon, cloves, rose-
leaves, honey again; the juice of some plant, like a dandelion,
I think; honey again, salt, a taste something like phosphorus,
honey, laurel, a very unpleasant taste which I don’t know,
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