bolts, showers of feathers, and then we shall dissolve into . . . into a putrid mass, the agamous mass from which we originated, neither male nor female, with only a glowing eye, a great eye, radiating intelligence out of its midst. Then Astaroth himself (I shall call Astaroth, because his inferiors in the descending hierarchy, Sargatanas and Nebiros, dwell in America) will appear, in one of his forms, perhaps refulgent and beautiful, perhaps ugly and tortured and hideously deformed, perhaps black or yellow or blue, but assuredly not white or green. He may be entirely covered with hair or entirely covered with eyes, or he may be eyeless. Mayhap, he will be lean and proud and sad, and he will probably limp, for you know he is lame. His feet will be cloven, he will wear a goat's beard, and you may distinguish him further by the cock's feather and the ox's tail. Or, perhaps, he may arrive in the shape of some monster: the fierce flying hydra called the Ouranabad, the Rakshe who eats dragons and snakes, the Soham, with the body of a scarlet griffin and the head of a four-eyed horse, the Syl, a basilisk with a human face. . . . But, however he may appear, in his presence you shall learn the last secrets of all the worlds.
And then what will happen?
Then I shall speak the magic formula and we will resume our proper shapes but from that moment on we shall hover—literally, not pathologically—between life and death. We shall know everything.
