PART 1 OF 5
Chapter 21: The Magician [262]
Cap. xxi.
[HI: 139] {I} [1] [263] After a long search I found the small house in the country fronted by a large bed of tulips. This is where [Philemon], the magician, lives with his wife, [Baucis]. [Philemon] is one of those magicians who has not yet managed to banish old age, but who lives it with dignity, and his wife can only do the same. [264] Their interests seem to have become narrow, even childish. They water their bed of tulips and tell each other about the flowers that have newly appeared. And their days fade into a pale wavering chiaracuso, lit up by the past, only slightly frightened of the darkness of what is to come.
Why is a magician? [265] Does he conjure up immortality for himself, a life beyond? He was probably only a magician by profession, and he now appears to be a pensioned magician who has retired from service. His desirousness and creative drive have expired and he now enjoys his well-earned rest out of sheer incapacity, like every old man who can do nothing else than plant tulips and water his little garden. The magical rod lies in a cupboard together with the sixth and seventh books of Moses [266] and the wisdom of [Hermes Trismegitsus]. [267] is old and has become somewhat feeble-minded. He still murmurs a few magical spells for the well-being of bewitched cattle in return for some petty cash or a gift for the kitchen. But it is uncertain if these spells are still correct and whether he understands their meaning. It is also clear that it hardly matters what he murmurs, / [139/140] as the cattle might also get well on their own. There goes old in the garden, bent, with a watering can in his shaking hand. Baucis stands at the kitchen window and looks at him calmly and impassively. She has already seen this image a thousand times -- somewhat more infirm every time, feebler, seeing it a little less well every time since her eyesight gradually has become weaker. [268]
I stand at the garden gate. They have not noticed the stranger. ", old magician, how are you?" I call out to him. He does not hear me, seeming to be stone-deaf. I follow him and take his arm. He turns and greets me awkwardly and trembling. He has a white beard and thin white hair and a wrinkled face and there appears to be something about this face. His eyes are gray and old and something in them is strange, one would like to say alive. "I am well, stranger," he says, "but what are you doing here?"
I: "People tell me that you understand the black art. I am interested in that. Will you tell me about it?"
: "What should I tell you about? There is nothing to tell."
I: "Don't be ill-natured, old man, I want to learn."
: "You are certainly more learned than I. What could I teach you?"
I: "Do not be mean. I certainly don't intend to become your competitor. I'm just curious to know what you are up to and what magic you are performing."
: "What do you want? In the past I have helped people here and there who have been sick and disadvantaged."
I: "What exactly did you do?"
: "Well, I did it quite simply with sympathy."
I: " Old man, that word sounds comical and ambiguous."
: "How so?"
I: "It could mean that you helped people either by expressing compassion or by superstitious, sympathetic means."
: "Well, surely it would have been both."
I: "And that's all there was to your magic?"
: "There was more."
I: "What was it, tell me."
: "That is none of your business. You are impertinent and meddlesome."
I: "Please, don't take my curiosity badly. Recently I heard something about magic that awakened my interest in this bygone practice. And then I came to you because I heard that you understand the black art. If magic were still taught today at university, I would have studied it there. But the last college of magic was closed long ago. Today no professor knows anything anymore about magic. So do not be sensitive and miserly but tell me a bit about your art. Surely, you don't want to take your secrets with you to the grave, do you?"
: "Well, all you will do is laugh anyway. So why should I tell you anything? It would be better if everything were buried with me. It can always be rediscovered later. It will never be lost to humanity, since magic is reborn with each and every one of us."
I: "What do you mean? Do you believe that magic is really inborn in man?"
: "If I could, I would say, yes, of course, it is. But you will find this laughable."
I: "No, this time I will not laugh, because I have often wondered about the fact that all peoples in all times and in all places have the same magical customs. As you can see, I have already thought along similar lines."
: "What do you make of magic?"
I: "To put it plainly, nothing, or very little. It appears to me that magic is one of the vain tools of men inferior to nature. I can detect no other tangible meaning in magic."
: Your professors probably also know just as much."
I: "Yes, but what do you know about it?"
: ''I'd prefer not to say."
I: "Don't be so secretive, old man, otherwise I must assume that you know no more than I do."
: "Take it as you please."
I: "Your answer suggests that you most definitely understand more about it than others."
: "Comical fellow, how stubborn you are! But what I like about you is that your reason does not deter you."
I: "That's actually the case. Whenever I want to learn and understand something, I leave my so-called reason at home and give whatever it is that I am trying to understand the benefit of the doubt. I have learned this gradually, because nowadays the world of science is full of scary examples of the opposite."
: "In which case you could do very well for yourself." / [140/141]
I: "I hope so. Now, let us not stray from magic."
: "Why are you so determined about learning more about magic, if you claim that you have left your reason at home? Or would you not consider consistency part of reason?"
I: "I do -- I see, or rather, it seems as if you are quite an adept sophist, who skillfully leads me around the house and back to the door."
: "It seems that way to you because you judge everything from the standpoint of your intellect. If you forsake reason for a while, you will also give up consistency."
I: "That's a difficult test. But if I want to be adept at some point, I suppose I ought to submit to your request. Alright, I'm listening."
: "What do you want to hear?"
I: "You're not going to draw me out. I'm simply waiting for whatever you are going to say"
: "And what if I say nothing?"
I: "Well, then I'll withdraw somewhat embarrassed and think that is at the very least a shrewd fox, who definitely would have something to teach me."
: "With this, my boy, you have learned something about magic."
I: ''I'll have to chew on this. I must admit that this is somewhat surprising. I had imagined magic as being somewhat different."
: "Well, this shows you how little you understand about magic and how incorrect your notion of it is."
I: "If this should be the case, or that's how it is, then I must confess that I approached the problem completely incorrectly. I gather from what you are saying that these matters do not follow ordinary understanding."
: "Nor does magic."
I: "But you have not deterred me at all; on the contrary, I'm burning to hear even more. What I know up to now is essentially negative."
: "With this you have recognized a second main point. Above all, you must know that magic is the negative of what one can know."
I: "That, too, my dear , is a piece of knowledge that is hard to digest and causes me no small pain. The negative of what one can know? I suppose you mean that it cannot be known, don't you? This exhausts my understanding."
: "That is the third point that you must note as essential: namely, that there is nothing for you to understand."
I: "Well, I must confess that that is new and strange. So nothing at all about magic can be understood?"
: "Exactly. Magic happens to be precisely everything that eludes comprehension."
I: "But then how the devil is one to teach and learn magic?"
: "Magic is neither to be taught nor learned. It's foolish that you want to learn magic."
I: "But then magic is nothing but deception."
: "Watch out -- you have started reasoning again."
I: "It's difficult to exist without reason."
: "And that is exactly how difficult magic is."
I: "Well, in that case it's hard work. I conclude that it is an inescapable condition for the adept that he completely unlearns his reason."
: ''I'm afraid that is what it amounts to."
I: "Ye Gods, this is serious."
: "Not as serious as you think. Reason declines with old age, since it is an essential counterpart of the drives, which are much more intense in youth than in old age. Have you ever seen young magicians?"
I: "No, the magician is proverbially old."
: "You see, I'm right."
I: "But then the prospects of the adept are bad. He must wait until old age to experience the mysteries of magic."
: "If he gives up his reason before then, he can already experience something useful sooner."
I: "That seems to me to be a dangerous experiment. One cannot give up reason without further ado."
: "Nor can one / [141/142] simply become a magician."
I: "You lay damnable snares."
: "What do you want? Such is magic."
I: "Old devil, you make me envious of unreasoning old age."
: "Well, well, a youth who wants to be an old man! And why? He wants to learn magic and yet dares not to for the sake of his youth."
I: "You spread a terrible net, old trapper."
: "Perhaps you should still wait a few years with magic until your hair has gone gray and your reason has slackened somewhat."
I: "I don't want to listen to your scorn. Stupidly enough, I got caught up in your yarn. I can't make sense of you."
: "But stupidity would perhaps be progress on the way to magic."
I: "Incidentally, what on earth do you intend to achieve with your magic?"
: "I am alive, as you see."
I: "Other old men are, too."
: "Yes, but have you seen how?"
I: "Well, admittedly it was not a pleasant sight. Incidentally, time has left its mark on you, too."
: "I know."
I: "So, what gives you the advantage?"
: "It doesn't exactly meet the eye."
I: "What kind of advantage doesn't meet the eye?"
"I call that magic."
I: "You're moving in a vicious circle. May the devil get the better of you."
: "Well, that's another advantage of magic: not even the devil gets the better of me. You're beginning to understand magic, so I must assume that you have a good aptitude for it."
I: "Thank you, , that is enough; I feel dizzy. Goodbye!"
I leave the small garden and walk down the street. People are standing around in groups and glancing at me furtively. I hear them whispering behind my back: "Look, there he goes, old 's student. He spoke a long time with the old man. He has learned something. He knows the mysteries. If only I could do what he is able to do now." "Be quiet, you damned fools," I want to call out to them, but I cannot, since I do not know whether I have actually learned anything. And because I remain silent, they are even more convinced that I have received the black art from ."
***
[269] [2] [HI 142] It is an error to believe that there are magical practices that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. The world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason. / [142/143]
This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically is incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often works magically. One calls incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me. It opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim.
Where reason abides, one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. Only those without reason needed it to replace their lack of reason. But it is thoroughly unreasonable to bring together what suits reason with magic since they have nothing to do with one another. Both become spoiled through being brought together. Therefore all those lacking reason quite rightly fall into superfluity and disregard. A rational man of this time will therefore never use magic. [270]
But it is another thing for whoever has opened the chaos in himself. We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible. We recognized that the world comprises reason and unreason; and we also understood that our way needs not only reason but also unreason. This distinction is arbitrary and depends upon the level of comprehension. But one can be certain that the greater part of the world eludes our understanding. We must value the incomprehensible and unreasonable equally, although they are not necessarily equal in themselves; a part of the incomprehensible, however, is only presently incomprehensible and might already concur with reason tomorrow. But as long as one does not understand it, it remains unreasonable. Insofar as the incomprehensible accords with reason, one may try to think it with success; but insofar as it is unreasonable, / [143/144] one needs magical practices to open it up.
The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. The magical way is not arbitrary, since that would be understandable, but it arises from incomprehensible grounds. Besides, to speak of grounds is incorrect, since grounds concur with reason. Nor can one speak of the groundless, since hardly anything further can be said about this. The magical way arises by itself. If one opens up chaos, magic also arises.
One can teach the way that leads to chaos, but one cannot teach magic. One can only remain silent about this, which seems to be the best apprenticeship. This view is confusing, but this is what magic is like. Where reason establishes order and clarity, magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity. [271]One indeed needs reason for the magical translation of the not-understood into the understandable, since only by means of reason can the understandable be created. No one can say how to use reason, but it does arise if one tries to express only what an opening of chaos means. [272]
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak. But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance.
Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions of life for the well-being of oneself and of the other, otherwise one cannot / [144/145] sufficiently be oneself. A certain slowness of life, which is like a standstill, will be unavoidable. The uncertainty of such a life will most probably be its greatest burden, but still I must unite the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of my life, since the magician is called and his wife . I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell.
When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: "You are I," since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person. Thus the two became one, and through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which lasted until the time of Christ. [273] But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upperworld. If the power of growth begins to cease, then the united falls into its opposites. Christ sent what is beneath to Hell, since it strives toward the good. That had to be. But the separated cannot remain separated forever. It will be united again and the month of the fish will soon be over. [274] We suspect and understand that growth needs both, and hence we keep good and evil close together. Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together. [275]
But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the mountain to the valley, but grow quietly from the valley to the mountain. That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our fruit. The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean / [145/146] that has no outlet, unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from the clouds as rain. While the sea is a death, it is also the place of rising. Such is , who tends his garden. Our hands have been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place. He rises invisibly and falls as rain on distant lands. [276] The water on the ground is no cloud, which should rain. Only pregnant women can give birth, not those who have yet to conceive. [277]
***
[HI 146] But what mystery are you intimating to me with your name, Oh ? Truly you are the lover who once took in the Gods as they wandered the earth when everyone else refused them lodging. You are the one who unsuspectingly gave hospitality to the Gods; they thanked you by transforming your house into a golden temple, while the flood swallowed everyone else. You remained alive when chaos erupted. You it was who served in the sanctuary when the peoples called out in vain to the Gods. Truly, it is the lover who survives. Why did we not see that? And just when did the Gods manifest? Precisely when wished to serve the esteemed guests her only goose, that blessed stupidity: the animal fled to the Gods who then revealed themselves to their poor hosts, who had given their last. Thus I saw that the lover survives, and that he is the one who unwittingly grants hospitality to the Gods. [278]
Truly, Oh , I did not see that your hut is a temple, and that you, , and , serve in the sanctuary / [146/147] This magical power allows itself to be neither taught nor learned. Either one has it or does not have it. Now I know your final mystery: you are a lover. You have succeeded in uniting what has been sundered, that is, binding together the Above and Below. Have we not known this for a long time? Yes, we knew it, no, we did not know it. It has always been this way, and yet it has never been thus. Why did I have to wander such long roads before I came to , if he was going to teach me what has been common knowledge for ages? Alas, we have known everything since time immemorial and yet we will never know it until it is has been accomplished. Who exhausts the mystery of love?
[HI 147] Under which mask, Oh , are you hiding? You did not strike me as a lover. But my eyes were opened, and I saw that you are a lover of your soul, who anxiously and jealously guards its treasure. There are those who love men, and those who love the souls of men, and those who love their own soul. Such a one is , the host of the Gods.
You lie in the sun, Oh , like a serpent that coils around itself. Your wisdom is the wisdom of serpents, cold, with a grain of poison, yet healing in small doses. Your magic paralyzes and therefore makes strong people, who tear themselves away from themselves. But do they love you, are they thankful, lover of your own soul? Or do they curse you for your magical serpent poison? They keep their distance, shaking their heads and whispering together.
Are you still a man, , or / [147/148] is one not a man until one is a lover of one's own soul? You are hospitable, , you took the dirty wanderers unsuspectingly into your hut. Your house then became a golden temple, and did I really leave your table unsatisfied? What did you give me? Did you invite me for a meal? You shimmered multicolored and inextricable; nowhere did you give yourself to me as prey. You escaped my grasp. I found you nowhere. Are you still a man? Your kind is far more serpentlike.
I sought to grab hold of you and tear it out of you, since the Christians have learned to devour their God. And how long will it take for what happens to the God also to happen to man? I look into the vast land and hear nothing but wailing and see nothing but men consuming each other.
Oh , you are no Christian. You did not let yourself be engorged and did not engorge me. Because of this you have neither lecture halls nor columned halls teeming with students who stand around and speak of the master and soak up his words like the elixir of life. You are no Christian and no pagan, but a hospitable inhospitable one, a host of the Gods, a survivor, an eternal one, the father of all eternal wisdom.
But did I really leave you unsatisfied? No, I left you because I was really satisfied. Yet what did I eat? Your words gave me nothing. Your words left me to myself and my doubt. And so I ate myself. And because of this, Oh , you are no Christian, since you nourish yourself from yourself and force men to do the same. This displeases them most, since nothing disgusts the human animal more than itself. Because of this they would rather eat all crawling, hopping, swimming and flying creatures, yes, even their own species, before they nibble at themselves. But this nourishment is effective and one is soon satiated from it. Because of this, Oh , we rise satiated from your table.
Your way, Oh , is instructive. You leave me in a salutary darkness, where there is nothing for me to either see or look for. You are no light that shines in the darkness, [279] no savior who establishes an eternal truth and thus extinguishes the / [148/149] nocturnal light of human understanding. You leave room for the stupidity and jokes of others. You do not want, Oh blessed one, anything from the other, but instead you tend the flowers in your own garden. He who needs you asks you, and, Oh clever , I suppose that you also ask those from whom you need something and that you pay for what you receive. Christ has made men desirous forever since they expect gifts from their saviors without any service in return. Giving is as childish as power. He who gives presumes himself powerful. The virtue of giving is the sky-blue mantle of the tyrant. You are wise, Oh , you do not give. You want your garden to bloom, and for everything to grow from within itself.
I praise, Oh , your lack of acting like a savior; you are no shepherd who runs after stray sheep, since you believe in the dignity of man, who is not necessarily a sheep. But if he happens to be a sheep, you would leave him the rights and dignity of sheep, since why should sheep be made into men? There are still more than enough men.
You know, Oh , the wisdom of things to come; therefore you are old, oh so very ancient, and just as you tower above me in years, so you tower above the present in futurity, and the length of your past is immeasurable. You are legendary and unreachable. You were and will be returning periodically. Your wisdom is invisible, your truth is unknowable, entirely untrue in any given age, and yet true in all eternity, but you pour out living water, from which the flowers of your garden bloom, a starry water, a dew of the night.
What do you need, Oh ? You need men for the sake of small things, since everything greater and the greatest thing is in you. Christ spoiled men, since he taught them that they can be saved only by one, namely Him, the Son of God, and ever since men have been demanding the greater things from others, especially their salvation; and if a sheep gets lost / [149/150] somewhere, it accuses the shepherd. Oh , you are a man, and you prove that men are not sheep, since you look after the greatest in yourself, and hence fructifying water flows into your garden from inexhaustible jugs.
***
[HI 150] Are you lonely, Oh , I see no entourage and no companions around you; is only your other half. You live with flowers, trees, and birds, but not with men. Should you not live with men? Are you still a man? Do you want nothing from men? Do you not see how they stand together and concoct rumors and childish fairy tales about you? Do you not want to go to them and say that you are a man and a mortal as they are, and that you want to love them? Oh , you laugh? I understand you. Just now I ran into your garden and wanted to tear out of you what I had to understand from within myself.
Oh , I understand: immediately I made you into a savior who lets himself be consumed and bound with gifts. That's what men are like, you think; they are all still Christians. But they want even more: they want you as you are, otherwise you would not be to them and they would be inconsolable, if they could find no bearer for their legends. Hence they would also laugh, if you approached them and said you were as mortal as they are and want to love them. If you did that, you would not be . They want you, , but not another mortal who suffers from the same ills as they do.
I understand you, Oh , you are a true / [150/151] lover, since you love your soul for the sake of men, because they need a king who lives from himself and owes no one gratitude for his life. They want to have you thus. You fulfill the wish of the people and you vanish. You are a vessel of fables. You would besmirch yourself if you went to men as a man, since they would all laugh and call you a liar and a swindler, since is not a man.
I saw, Oh , that crease in your face: you were young once and wanted to be a man among men. But the Christian animals did not love your pagan humanity, since they felt in you what they needed. They always sought the branded one, and when they caught him somewhere in freedom, they locked him in a golden cage and took from him the force of his masculinity, so that he was paralyzed and sat in silence. Then they praise him and devise fables about him. I know, they call this veneration. And if they do not find the true one, they at least have a Pope, whose occupation it is to represent the divine comedy. But the true one always disowns himself, since he knows nothing higher than to be a man.
Are you laughing, Oh ? I understand you: it irked you to be a man like others. And because you truly loved being human, you voluntarily locked it away so that you could be for men at least what they wanted to have from you. Therefore I see you, Oh , not with men, but wholly with flowers, the trees and the birds and all waters flowing and still that do not besmirch your humanity. For you are not to the flowers, trees, and birds, but a man. Yet what solitude, what inhumanity! / [151/152]
***
[HI 152] Why are you laughing, Oh , I cannot fathom you. But do I not see the blue air of your garden? What happy shades surround you? Does the sun hatch blue midday specters around you?
Are you laughing, Oh ? Alas, I understand you: humanity has completely faded for you, but its shadow has arisen for you. How much greater and happier the shadow of humanity is than it is itself! The blue midday shadows of the dead! Alas, there is your humanity, Oh , you are a teacher and friend of the dead. They stand sighing in the shade of your house, they live under the branches of your trees. They drink the dew of your tears, they warm themselves at the goodness of your heart, they hunger after the words of your wisdom, which sounds full to them, full of the sounds of life. I saw you, Oh , at the noonday hour when the sun stood highest; you stood speaking with a blue shade, blood stuck to its forehead and solemn torment darkened it. I can guess, Oh , who your midday guest was. [280] How blind I was, fool that I am! That is you, Oh ! But who am I! I go my way, shaking my head, and people's looks follow me and I remain silent. Oh despairing silence! / [152/153] [HI 153]
***
Oh master of the garden! I see your dark tree from afar in the shimmering sun. My street leads to the valleys where men live. I am a wandering beggar. And I remain silent.
***
Killing off would-be prophets is a gain for the people. If they want murder, then may they kill their false prophets. If the mouth of the Gods remains silent, then each can listen to his own speech. He who loves the people remains silent. If only false teachers teach, the people will kill the false teachers, and will fall into the truth even on the way of their sins. Only after the darkest night will it be day. So cover the lights and remain silent so that the night will become dark and noiseless. The sun rises without our help. Only he who knows the darkest error knows what light is.
***
Oh master of the garden, your magical grove shone to me from afar. I venerate your deceptive mantle, you father of all will-o'-the-wisps. / [281] [Image I54] [282]
***
I continue on my way, accompanied by a finely polished piece of steel, hardened in ten fires, stowed safely in my robe. Secretly, I wear chain mail under my coat. Overnight I became fond of serpents, and I solved their riddle. I sit down next to them on the hot stones lying by the wayside. I know how to catch them cunningly and cruelly, those cold devils that prick the heel of the unsuspecting. I became their friend and played a softly toned flute. But I decorate my cave with their dazzling skins. As I walked on my way, I came to a red rock on which a great iridescent serpent lay. Since I had now learned magic from , I took out my flute again and played a sweet magical song to make her believe that she was my soul. When she was sufficiently enchanted, / [154/155] [Image 155] [283] {2} [I] [284] I spoke to her: "My sister, my soul, what do you say?" But she spoke, flattered and therefore tolerantly: "I let grass grow over everything that you do."
I: "That sounds comforting and seems not to say much."
S: "Would you like me to say much? I can also be banal, as you know, and let myself be satisfied that way."
I: "That seems hard to me. I believe that you stand in a close connection with everything beyond, / [155/156] [285] with what is greatest and most uncommon. Therefore I thought that banality would be foreign to you."
S: "Banality is my element."
I: "That would be less astonishing if I said it about myself."
S: "The more uncommon you are, the more common I can be. A true respite for me. I think you can sense that I don't need to torment myself today."
I: "I can feel it, and I'm worried that your tree will ultimately bear me no more fruit."
S: "Worried already? Don't be stupid, and let me rest."
I: "I notice that you like being banal. But I do not take you to heart, my dear friend, since I now know you much better than before."
S: "You're getting to be familiar. I'm afraid that you are beginning to lose respect."
I: "Are you upset? I believe that would be uncalled for. I'm sufficiently well-informed about the proximity of pathos and banality."
S: "So, have you noticed that the becoming of the soul follows a serpentine path? Have you seen how soon day becomes night, and night day? How water and dry land change places? And that everything spasmodic is merely destructive?"
I: "I believe that I saw all this. I want to lie in the sun on this warm stone for a while. Perhaps the sun will incubate me."
***
But the serpent crept up to me quietly and wound herself smoothly around my feet. [286] Evening fell and night came. I spoke to the serpent and said: "I don't know what to say. All pots are on the boil."
[287] S: ''A meal is being prepared."
I: "A Last Supper, I suppose?"
S: "A union with all humanity."
I: "A horrifying, sweet thought: to be both guest and dish at this meal." [288]
S: "That was also Christ's highest pleasure."
"How holy, how sinful, how everything hot and cold flows into one another! Madness and reason want to be married, the lamb and the wolf graze peacefully side by side. [289] It is all yes and no. The opposites embrace each other, see eye to eye, and intermingle. They recognize their oneness in agonizing pleasure. My heart is filled with wild battle. The waves of dark and bright rivers rush together, one crashing over the other. I have never experienced this before."
S: "That is new, my dear one, at least for you."
I: "I suppose you are mocking me. But tears and laughter are one. [290] / [156/157] I no longer feel like either, and I am rigid with tension. Loving reaches up to Heaven and resisting reaches just as high. They are entwined and will not let go of each other, since the excessive tension seems to indicate the ultimate and highest possibility of feeling."
S: "You express yourself emotionally and philosophically. You know that one can say all this much more simply. For example, one can say that you have fallen in love all the way from the worm up to Tristan and Isolde. [291]
I: "Yes, I know; but nonetheless --"
S: "Religion is still tormenting you, it seems? How many shields do you still need? Much better to say it straight out."
I: " You're not tripping me up."
S: "Well, what is it with morality? Have morality and immorality also become one today?"
I: "You're mocking me, my sister and chthonic devil. But I must say that those two that rose up to Heaven entwined are also good and evil. I'm not joking but I groan, because joy and pain sound shrill together."
S: "Where then is your understanding? You've gone utterly stupid. After all, you could resolve everything by thinking."
I: "My understanding? My thinking? I no longer have any understanding. It has grown impervious to me."
S: "You deny everything that you believed. You've completely forgotten who you are. You even deny Faust, who walked calmly past all the specters."
I: ''I'm no longer up to this. My spirit, too, is a specter."
S: "Ah, I see, you follow my teaching."
I: "Unfortunately, that's the case, and it has benefited me with painful joy."
S: "You turn your pain into pleasure. You are twisted, blinded; just suffer, you fool."
I: "This misfortune ought to make me happy."
***
The serpent now became angry and tried to bite my heart, but my secret armor broke her poisonous fang. [292] She drew back astonished and said hissing: "You actually behave as if you were unfathomable."
I: "That's because I have studied the art of stepping from the left foot onto the right and vice versa, which others have done unthinkingly from time immemorial."
The serpent raised herself again, as if accidentally / [157/158] holding her tail in front of her mouth, so that I should not see the broken fang. Proudly and calmly she said [293]: "So you have finally noticed this?" But I spoke to her smilingly: "The sinuous line of life could not escape me in the long run."
***
[2] [HI 158] Where is truth and faith? Where is warm trust? You find all this between men but not between men and serpents, even if they are serpent souls. But wherever there is love, the serpentlike abides also. Christ himself compared himself to a serpent, [294] and his hellish brother, the Antichrist, is the old dragon himself. [295] What is beyond the human that appears in love has the nature of the serpent and the bird, and the serpent often enchants the bird, and more rarely the bird bears off the serpent. Man stands in-between. What seems like a bird to you is a serpent to the other, and what seems like a serpent to you is a bird to the other. Therefore you will meet the other only in human form. If you want to become, then a battle between bird and serpent breaks out. And if you only want to be, you will be a man to yourself and to others. He who is becoming belongs in the desert or in a prison, for he is beyond the human. If men want to become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through Hell.
Why did I behave as if that serpent were my soul? Only, it seems, because my soul was a serpent. This knowledge gave my soul a new face, and I decided henceforth to enchant her myself and subject her to my power. Serpents are wise, and I wanted my serpent soul to communicate her wisdom to me. Never before had life been so doubtful, a night of aimless tension, being one in being directed against one another. Nothing moved, neither God nor the devil. So I approached the serpent that lay in the sun, as if she were unthinking. Her eyes were not visible, since they blinked in the shimmering sunshine, and / [158/160] [Image 159] [296] / {3} [I] I spoke to her [297]: "How will it be, now that God and the devil have become one? Are they in agreement to bring life to a standstill? Does the conflict of opposites belong to the inescapable conditions of life? And does he who recognizes and lives the unity of opposites stand still? He has completely taken the side of actual life, and he no longer acts as if he belonged to one party and had to battle against the other, but he is both and has brought their discord to an end. Through taking this burden from life, has he also taken the force from it?" [298]
The serpent turned and spoke ill-humoredly: "Truly, you pester me. Opposites were certainly an element of life for me. You probably will have noticed this. Your innovations deprive me of this source of power. I can neither lure you with pathos nor annoy you with banality. I am somewhat baffled."
I: "If you are baffled, should I give counsel? I would rather you dive down to the deeper grounds to which you have entry and ask Hades or the heavenly ones, perhaps someone there can give counsel."
S: "You have become imperious."
I: "Necessity is even more imperious than I. I must live and be able to move."
S: "You have the whole wide earth. What do you want to ask the beyond for?"
I: "It isn't curiosity that drives me, but necessity: I will not yield."
S: "I obey, but reluctantly. This style is new and unaccustomed to me."
I: ''I'm sorry, but there is pressing need. Tell the depths that prospects are not looking too good for us, because we have cut off an important organ from life. As you know, I'm not the guilty one, since you have led me carefully along this way."
S: [299] "You might have rejected the apple."
I: "Enough of these jokes. You know that story better than I do. I am serious. We need some air. Be on your way and fetch the fire. It has already been dark around me for too long. Are you sluggish or cowardly?"
S: ''I'm off to work. Take from me what I bring up." [300]
***
[HI 160] Slowly, the throne of the God ascends into empty space, followed by the holy trinity, all of Heaven, and finally Satan himself. He resists and clings to his beyond. He will not / [160/161] let it go. The upperworld is too chilly for him.
S: "Have you got tight hold of him?" [301]
I: "Welcome, hot thing of darkness! My soul probably pulled you up roughly?"
S: [302] ''Why this noise? I protest against this violent extraction."
I: "Calm down. I didn't expect you. You come last of all. You seem to be the hardest part."
S: "What do you want from me? I don't need you, impertinent fellow."
I: "It's a good thing we have you. You're the liveliest thing in the whole dogma." [303]
S: "What concern is your prattle to me! Make it quick. I'm freezing."
I: "Listen, something has just happened to us: we have united the opposites. Among other things, we have bonded you with God." [304]
S: "For God's sake, why this hopeless fuss? Why such nonsense?"
I: "Please, that wasn't so stupid. This unification is an important principle. We have put a stop to never-ending quarreling, to finally free our hands for real life."
***
S: "This smells of monism. I have already made note of some of these men. Special chambers have been heated for them."
I: "You're mistaken. Matters are not as rational with us as they seem to be. [305] We have no single correct truth either. Rather, a most remarkable and strange fact has occurred: after the opposites had been united, quite unexpectedly and incomprehensibly nothing further happened. Everything remained in place, peacefully and yet completely motionless, and life turned into a complete standstill."
S: "Yes, you fools, you certainly have made a pretty mess of things."
I: "Well, your mockery is unnecessary. Our intentions were serious."
S: "Your seriousness leads us to suffer. The ordering of the beyond is shaken to its foundations."
I: "So you realize that matters are serious. I want an answer to my question, what should happen under these circumstances? We no longer know what to do."
S: "Well, it is hard to know what to do, and difficult to give advice even if one would like to give it. You are blinded fools, a brashly impertinent people. Why didn't you stay out of trouble? How do you mean to understand the ordering of the world?"
I: "Your ranting suggests that you are quite thoroughly aggrieved. Look, the holy trinity is taking things coolly. It seems not to dislike the innovation."
S: ''Ah, the trinity is so irrational that one / [161/162] can never trust its reactions. I strongly advise you not to take those symbols seriously." [306]
I: "I thank you for this well-meant advice. But you seem to be interested. One would expect you to pass unbiased judgment on account of your proverbial intelligence."
S: "Me, unbiased! You can judge for yourself. If you consider this absoluteness in its completely lifeless equanimity, you can easily discover that the state and standstill produced by your presumptuousness closely resembles the absolute. But if I counsel you, I place myself completely on your side, since you too find this standstill unbearable."
I: "What? You take my side? That is strange."
S: "That's not so strange. The absolute was always adverse to the living. I am still the real master of life."
I: "That is suspicious. Your reaction is far too personal."
S: "My reaction is far from personal. I am utterly restless, quickly hurrying life. I am never contented, never unperturbed. I pull everything down and hastily rebuild. I am ambition, greed for fame, lust for action; I am the fizz of new thoughts and action. The absolute is boring and vegetative."
I: "Alright, I believe you. So -- just what do you advise?"
S: "The best advice I can give you is: revoke your completely harmful innovation as soon as possible."
I: "What would be gained by that? We'd have to start from scratch again and would infallibly reach the same conclusion a second time. What one has grasped once, one cannot intentionally not know again and undo. Your counsel is no counsel."
S: "But could you exist without divisiveness and disunity? You have to get worked up about something, represent a party, overcome opposites, if you want to live."
I: "That does not help. We also see each other in the opposite. We have grown tired of this game."
S: "And so with life."
I: "It seems to me that it depends on what you call life. Your notion of life has to do with climbing up and tearing down, with assertion and doubt, with impatient dragging around, / [162/163] [Image 163] [307] / [163/164] with hasty desire. You lack the absolute and its forbearing patience."
S: "Quite right. My life bubbles and foams and stirs up turbulent waves, it consists of seizing and throwing away, ardent wishing and restlessness. That is life, isn't it?"
I: "But the absolute also lives."
S: "That is no life. It is a standstill or as good as a standstill, or rather: it lives interminably slowly and wastes thousands of years, just like the miserable condition that you have created."
I: "You enlighten me. You are personal life, but the apparent standstill is the forbearing life of eternity, the life of divinity! This time you have counseled me well. I will let you go. Farewell."
***
[HI 164] Satan crawls deftly like a mole back into his hole again. The symbol of the trinity and its entourage rise up in peace and equanimity to Heaven. I thank you, serpent, for hauling up the right one for me. Everyone understands his words, since they are personal. We can live again, a long life. We can waste thousands of years.
***
[HI 164/2] [2] Where to begin, oh Gods? In suffering or in joy, or in the mixed feeling lying between? The beginning is always the smallest, it begins in nothing. If I begin there, I see the little drop of "something" that falls into the sea of nothingness. It is forever about beginning again down where the nothingness widens itself to unrestricted freedom. [308] Nothing has happened yet, the world has yet to begin, the sun is not yet born, the watery firmament has not been separated, [309] we have not yet climbed onto the shoulders of our fathers, since our fathers have not yet become. They have only just died and rest in the womb of our bloodthirsty Europe.
We stand in the vastness, wed to the serpent, and consider which stone could be the foundation stone of the building, / [164/165] which we do not yet know. The most ancient? It is suitable as a symbol. We want something graspable. We are weary of the webs that the day weaves and the night unpicks. The devil is probably supposed to create it, that paltry partisan with sham understanding and greedy hands? He emerged from the lump of manure in which the Gods had secured their eggs. I would like to kick the garbage away from me, if the golden seed were not in the vile heart of the misshapen form.
Arise then, son of darkness and stench! How firmly you cling to the rubble and waste of the eternal cesspit! I do not fear you, though I hate you, you brother of everything reprehensible in me. Today, you shall be forged with heavy hammers so that the gold of the Gods will spray out of your body. Your time is over, your years are numbered, and today your day of judgment has gone to smithereens. May your casings burst asunder, with our hands we wish to take hold of your seed, the golden one, and free it from slithery mud. May you freeze, devil, since we will cold-forge you. Steel is harder than ice. You shall fit into our form, you thief of the divine marvel, you mother ape, you who stuff your body with the egg of the Gods and thereby make yourself weighty. Hence we curse you, though not because of you, but for the sake of the golden seed.
What serviceable forms rise from your body, you thieving abyss! These appear as elemental spirits, dressed in wrinkled garb, Cabiri, with delightful misshapen forms, young and yet old, dwarfish, shriveled, unspectacular bearers of secret arts, possessors of ridiculous wisdom, first formations of the unformed gold, worms that crawl from the liberated egg of the Gods, incipient ones, unborn, still invisible. What should your appearance be to us? What new arts do you bear up from the inaccessible treasure chamber, the sun yoke from the egg of the Gods? You still have roots in the soil like plants and you are animal faces / [165/166] of the human body; you are foolishly sweet, uncanny, primordial, and earthly. We cannot grasp your essence, you gnomes, you object-souls.
You have your origin in the lowest. Do you want to become giants, you Tom Thumbs? Do you belong to the followers of the son of the earth? Are you the earthly feet of the Godhead? What do you want? Speak!" [310]
***
The Cabiri: "We come to greet you as the master of the lower nature."
I: "Are you speaking to me? Am I your master?"
The Cabiri: "You were not, but you are now."
I: "So you declare. And so be it. Yet what should I do with your following?"
The Cabiri: "We carry what is not to be carried from below to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but sucked out of inertia and affixed to what is growing. We know the unknown ways and the inexplicable laws of living matter. We carry up what slumbers in the earthly, what is dead and yet enters into the living. We do this slowly and easily, what you do in vain in your human way. We complete what is impossible for you."
I: "What should I leave to you? Which troubles can I transfer to you? What should I not do, and what do you do better?"
The Cabiri: "You forget the lethargy of matter. You want to pull up with your own force what can only rise slowly, ingesting itself, affixed to itself from within. Spare yourself the trouble, or you will disturb our work."
I: "Should I trust you, you untrustworthy ones, you slaves and slave souls? Get to work. Let it be so."