MSTed: Aleister Crowley on Atlantis-3
M Sampo
>they, or Universal Substance (which some strove to identify with
>Hyle, others with the Luminiferous Aether) is the two-in-one,
>liquid and solid, the former part being also twofold, fluid and
>gaseous, and the latter earthy and fiery.
MIKE: And another being spicy and chunky.
> The combination of
>these four phases of Zro accounted for the universe.
CROW: The universe has an accountant?
> This
>quintessence is Zro in some state unknown and incalculable.
>Some expected to find it in its twelth state, some in a
>seventeenth, others in a thirty-seventh: all this was pure
>guesswork.
TOM: Like this post.
> Some tradition to this effect appears to have
>reached Plato; and the neo-Platonists combined with those Jews
>who had preserved fragments of the Egyptian tradition to form a
>new initiated hierarchy, the echo of whose teaching is found in
>Paracelsus. At one period, too, missionaries (not colonists, as
>has been ignorantly asserted;
MIKE: I'm not mentioning any names...
> there was no trouble of over-
>population in Atlantis) were sent to the four quarters and
>parties landed in Mexico, Ireland and Egypt.
CROW: Hey, that's only three quarters!
> The adventures of
>the party who travelled South form an astounding chapter in the
>history of Atlas. It was they who discovered the Magnetic
>South, and whose observations rendered possible the theory which
>resulted in the piercing of the Earth by Zro.
TOM (slacker): Kewl! The Atlantean dudes were into piercing, man...
>
>There were also preparations of Zro which increased the size of
>the user,
CROW: What about just one PART of the user?
> and others which diminished it. In general use among
>the lower classes, until the very end, was that composition
>which made the body light. Careful adjustment would equalize
>its weight with that of the displaced air, and movements of the
>limbs would then permit flying.
MIKE: You WILL believe an Atlantean can fly...
> In this way the overseers
>visited the plains and returned. The other and earlier art of
>flying needed no apparatus, but I am forbidden to disclose the
>method, except to hint that it is connected closely with the art
>of 'dreaming true'.
TOM: Oh, well, THAT hint gave it away!
>These are but a few of the magic powers so-called of the
>compounds of Zro; but they will indicate the power of Atlas by
>shewing
CROW (Sullivan): right here on our stage...a really big shew...
> what it could afford to neglect. Yet all these powers
>were implicit in the process of 'working'.
>The art of prediction was in the same unsatisfactory state as it
>is in England today.
MIKE: Well, they don't have the Psychic Friends Network!
> Nor was its practice encouraged. A
>magician makes the future, and does not seek to divine it. All
>true prediction was therefore necessarily catastrophe. The
>greatest good fortune seemed worthless to an Atlantean, since it
>was accident, and if accidents are to happen,
TOM (singing, Elvis Costello): Oh, I just don't know where to begin....
> one of them may be
>fatal. They believed themselves to be equal to the whole
>tendency of things, and proudly gazed on Nature as a man might
>upon a virgin captive to his spear.
CROW: I never want to know ANYBODY who can relate to THAT simile...
> Everything that was being
>was Zro; everything that was Energy was 'working for Zro'.
>Outside this was but by-product and waste-heap.
MIKE: ...including this post. Oh man...
>The arrangement of the houses was in accordance with the magical
>theory. There was first the High House, then four (later six,
>last ten) 'Houses of Houses'; and to each of these was attached
>a varying number of ordinary houses. The High House was the
>central shrine of the whole archipelago, and must be separately
>described.
TOM: By Buckminster Fuller.
>V. OF THE HIGH HOUSE OF ATLAS, OF ITS INHABITANTS, AND OF THEIR
> MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, AND OF THE LIVING ATLA.
>The High House was separated from its nearest neighbor by over
>twenty miles of sea. Its diameter was about an half-mile and
>its height four miles.
MIKE: Its cost...no man can say...
> It had no plains at the base, and its
>cliffs went absolutely sheer and smooth into the water. It was
>in shape a flattish cylinder, but the top broadened into a
>pointed knob,
(They clear their throats nervously)
> somewhat in the style of St. Basil's at Moscow.
>There was not a trace of vegetation, which by the way was
>despised by the Atlanteans.
CROW: They just get more and more likable, don't they?
> A child would pick a flower
>contemptuously thinking "You cannot even move about", or pet it
>as an English degenerate woman does a dog.
MIKE: Aleister, Aleister....you really need to see somebody about this
problem
you have with women...
> The only entrance
>was by an orifice at the top. But the base was tunneled so that
>from every house was a channel for the Zro which having been
>brought to the highest perfection was thus transferred to
>headquarters.
TOM: Over 20 miles of open sea...this just keeps getting better...
> The receptacle at the base being far below the
>earth, and the Zro further heated by friction, it seethed
>continually into a bluish or purplish smoke.
CROW (holding breath): That's high-grade Zro, man...
> This was the sole
>sustenance of the inhabitants of the High House. In early days
>the old High House, in an island since destroyed by order of the
>Atla, had been called the House of Blood, the inhabitants
>subsisting only on blood sucked from the living. The
>improvements in Zro had changed all that;
MIKE: Oh, you're no fun anymore!
> but the idea was the
>same, to live on the Quintessence of Life. Hence while the
>'houses' ate and drank Zro, the High House drank its vapour. No
>children were born in it, and none below the rank of High Priest
>dwelt there. Except for one matter which was never thought of,
>though constantly spoken,
TOM: Is this another one of nonsensical comments we're supposed think is
"deep"?
MIKE: I think this guy has been subsisting on too much bluish-purple
smoke...
> the inmost mystery of the High House
>was the 'Living Atla'. This had many names, 'Wordeater',
>'Unshaven' (because the razors of Zro were turned on its hair),
>'Fireheart', 'Beginning and End' and so on: but especially a
>word I can only translate as 'To Her', a defective pronoun
>existing only in the dative.
CROW (repairman): Yep, yer pronoun's defective...gonna take two weeks to
order a new one...
> What the Living Atla really was,
>is a secret of secrets. We know it only from its epithets, its
>veils. Thus it was 'That Black which makes black white'. It
>was 'twenty-six feet high and fifteen feet across--Oh my Lords,
>it is the essence of the Incommensurable!'
TOM (singing): Ohh sweet mystery of life, at least I've found you!!!
> It was 'the wife of
>Zro', 'the heart of Zro', 'desire of Zro', 'the Atla that eats
>Atlas', 'the swallower up of her own house', 'the pelican',
MIKE (Count Floyd): Ooh! The pelican!! Scaaary, boys and girls....
> 'the
>fire-nest of the Phoenix', according to the greatest of the
>poets. And the burden of his hymns of worship was that it must
>be destroyed.
>It was impossible to approach the Atla without being instantly
>sucked up and devoured by it.
MIKE: I think I went out with her in college...
> This was the greatest death, and
>ardently desired by all. The favour was accorded only to those
>who discovered improvements in Zro, or otherwise merited signal
>and supreme recognition from the state.
TOM: Better than the phosphorus factory, I guess...
> Hidden men listened to
>the cries of the victim, and thus learned the nature of the
>death. It appears that the black suddenly broke into a fiery
>rose, 'the only luminous thing in Atlas', and a shooting
>forward enclosed him.
CROW (low, mean voice): Feed me, Seymour!! I'm hungry!!!
> For some reason which was never even
>guessed the Atla refused women. Those who had seen Atla were
>however useless to instruct. They came forth from the Presence
>smiling, and even under the most fearful tortures that the
>magicians could devise, continued to smile.
MIKE: Hey, they got to see men devoured! What's not to smile about?
TOM: Yeah, I think it's a girl thing...
> This smile never
>left them during life, and the conscious superiority of it was
>so irritating, and so contrary to the harmony of life in Atlas
>that the women were killed, and their companions for the future
>forbidden to approach the Atla.
CROW (western voice): A race so ornery they killed women just fer smilin'!
>Whatever theories as to its nature may have been formed by the
>magicians were upset by a famous experiment. A most holy high
>priest, a man who at puberty had insisted on immediate marriage
>with all the women of his house,
TOM: Poom! Go buddy!
> a magician who had formed four
>new compounds of Zro, and discovered how to pass matter through
>matter, was honoured by the great death. On reaching the last
>corridor, where the concentrated spirals of Zro vapour whirled
>up into the Presence of Atla, he bade farewell to the appointed
>listeners in the manner suitable to his dignity,
MIKE: So long, suckers!
> and then,
>taking a last deep draught of Zro into his lungs, rushed into
>the antrum. They heard him cry aloud "O!" with surprise, and
>then with inexpressible rapture the words "Behind Atla, Otla!"
TOM (Wilfred Brimley): Quaker Otla!
>which were, and still are, completely unintelligible. Their
>surprise was greater, when, seven days later he came striding
>past them without greeting. He went to his 'house' and shut
>himself up, was never seen or heard again,
CROW: Something, I don't suppose we could get Aleister to do....
> but was assuredly
>living at the time of the 'catastrophe'. This man founded a
>school of philosophy, or rather, it founded itself on what it
>supposed him to have discovered; and this school disputes with
>the orthodox the credit of the final success.
MIKE: ...and they have a HECK of a football rivalry!
TOM: I need a drink...Time to go...
(they rise and leave)
MIKE (as he's leaving): Yikes, this one stings!!
COMMERCIAL
(Out of Commercial)
[SOL]
(Mechanical factory-like sounds in background. The desk is gone and in its
place is a vertical post with three horizontal handles sticking out of the
top. Tom, Crow and Gypsy are at each of these handles are trudging around
the post in a circle, moaning and groaning.)
CROW: Geez, you guys, I don't think this is going to work!
TOM: Yeah, I mean I'm as willing to try to make zro as the next guy, but
robots can't sweat! What does Mike think--
(Whiplash sound).
MIKE (offstage, cruelly): Quiet, serviles!!! (He enters and he now has on
a green lab coat.) Don't you see? I will create my own zro and when I do,
I WILL RULE THE WORLD!! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! (He rushes off again.)
GYPSY: Hey Crow, have you noticed something different about Mike, lately?
CROW: D'oh!! Gypsy, where have you been? Mike's being transformed into Dr.
Forrester by an insidious odorless, colorless gas, and there's nothing we
can do about it!
GYPSY: Well, um, have you tried shutting off the gas?
(TOM and CROW stare blankly at each other.)
TOM: I thought YOU tried to shut off the gas!
CROW: I thought YOU did!
GYPSY: D'oh! I have to do everything around here! (She rushes off.)
(Mike re-enters)
MIKE: What happened to the other servile? We can't stop now. We've got to
make the zro, we've got to conquer the world...
(Movie sign lights and buzzers go off)
M&TB: Ahhhh!! We've got usenet Sign!!!!
(they rush off)
6.....5.....4......3......2.....1.....
(and they're taking their seats, Mike is still dressed as Dr. F.)
MIKE: I think I'm not myself today...
CROW: You can say THAT again!
MIKE: I think I'm not--
CROW and TOM: D'oh!
MIKE (chuckling): Just kidding, guys.
>Subject: Aleister Crowley on Atlantis 2/2
>From: dens...@aol.com (Density 4)
>Date: 24 Apr 1995 16:06:14 -0400
>Message-ID: <3nh0bm$l...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
TOM: Some...thing...is...wrong...on Density 4
>[continued]
>The lesser mysteries of the High House were concerned almost
>entirely with the creation of life, and the bridging of the gulf
>between Earth and Venus. These were connected intimately; the
>theory was that if Atlantean brains could exist in bodies
>sufficiently subtle to traverse aether, the task was done. Some
>of the experiments were crude enough, and, to our minds,
>horrible.
TOM: Couldn't be worse than Fu Manchu...
> They attempted to breed a new race by crossing with
>snakes, swans, horses and other animals. The Greek legends of
>such monsters as Chimaera, Medusa, Lamia, Minotaur, the
>Centaurs, the Satyrs
MIKE: Gino Vannelli...
CROW: The Oak Ridge Boys...
> and the like are mere filtrations of the
>Atlantean tradition. The only theory behind such experiments
>was that they were contrary to the natural order, and so worth
>trying.
CROW: I like that attitude!
>Men of more scientific mind more plausibly passed Zro
>vapour through sea-water; but they only created serpents of vast
>size, which they cast into the sea about the High House as
>guardians. The sea-serpent, whether legend or fact, is derived
>from this experiment.
TOM (singing): A Bob Clampett cartooooooooon!
> It is quite possible that some such
>survive. Another school, objecting strongly to the sex-process,
>"which must be transcended as the Lemurians overcame gemmation"
>vivisected men and women, taking various parts of the brain,
>especially the cerebellum, the pineal gland, and the pituitary
>body, and cultivated them in solutions of Zro under the
>invisible rays of black phosphorus.
MIKE (Bela): I vill create a race of zupermen!!!
> The best results of this
>work was a race of translucent jelly-folk of great intellectual
>development;
(All burst into uproarious laughter)
CROW: Good evening, ladies and jelly-folk!
> but so far from being able to travel through space,
>they could hardly move in their own element. Another school
>argued that as Zro in vapour combined the virtues of the liquid
>and the solid Zro, so a fiery state might be produced which
>would so impregnate their bodies as to make them 'mates of the
>aether'.
TOM (singing): You say ether and I say aether...
> This school held that fiery Zro already existed in
>Nature, "in the heart of the Living Atla", and asserted that
>those who died by absorption into Atla passed straight to Venus.
MIKE: The people who felt this were thrown into the phosphorus factory.
>Many of them therefore tried hard to obtain messages from that
>planet. Familiar with Newton's first law of motion,
CROW: WHAT???
TOM: I call no way!!
> they
>further held it possible to prepare Zro in such a state that a
>current of it could never be deflected or dissipated, and so, if
>it could be made in sufficient quantity, a bridge to Venus might
>be built by which they might travel. They therefore tunneled
>through the planet, as previously explained, to have a sort of
>cannon for the Zro.
MIKE: Not unlike our modern day "tunnel of chili"
> But as their supply was pitifully
>insufficient, they endeavoured also to prepare a Zro which would
>have the power of multiplying itself. Alchemical tradition has
>some record of this problem.
>Yet another group of magicians argued that as Nature had cast
>off the planets from the Sun--a disputed point, some thinking
>this due to magic, which if so completely destroys the argument--
it would be contrary to Nature to cause the planets to fall back
>into it. They busied themselves with attempts to increase the
>Earth's gravitational pull, and (alternatively) to check her
>course.
CROW: These guys were apparently NOT familiar with Newton's first law of
motion...
>Their schemes were generally regarded as Utopian--yet
>they could boast of the discovery of the Zro that lightened
>bodies, and of a kind of aether-screen which generated
>mechanical power in inexhaustible quantities by making matter
>slightly opaque to aether.
TOM: Why didn't *I* think of that?
> This engine only worked on a very
>small scale. A screen two inches long would tear itself from
>fastenings that would have held an earthquake, while the rocks
>in its neighbourhood would melt in a few minutes, and the sea
>boil instantly where its rays struck.
MIKE: And that tended to lower property values.
> The most brilliant of
>this school asserted "Matter is a strain in the aether." He
>explained gravitation in this way. Place two ivory spheres in a
>rubber tube; the strain on the tube is least when the balls
>touch. The tendency is therefore for them to come together.
>Friction alone checks them. Now aether is infinitely elastic
>and without friction. From these data he calculated the Law of
>Inverse Squares.
TOM: Which eventually evolved into the game "Twister."
>A more mystic school saw life everywhere. It knew all that we
>know, and more, about ions and electrons; it saw every
>phenomenon as a manifestation of will. The crowning glory of
>this school was the discovery that Zro in its ninth stage, eaten
>and drunken with concentrated intention, produced the desired
>result, whatever (within wide limits) that result might be.
CROW: Which explains the career of Joe Piscopo.
>This went far to supersede the use of all specialized forms of
>Zro, and so to unify the magical practice.
>It seems curious with all this magic, Magic itself should be the
>thing most deplored.
TOM: Well, it's very addicting--but the cards are so cool looking!
> But it was the means, and, as such, "that
>which is in particular not the end". The word for Magic,
>'Ijynx', was the only dissyllable in the language, for Magic was
>the essentially two-fold thing, more two-fold (in a way) than
>the number two itself. It is interesting here to sketch briefly
>the mathematics of Atlas. The task is not easy, as their minds
>worked very differently from ours.
MIKE (Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford): I was told that that there would be no
math...
>The number 1 was a fairly simple idea;
CROW (scientist): We've provem scientifically that it's the loneliest
number that you'll ever do...
> but two was not only two,
>but also 'the result of adding 1 to 1' and 'the root of 4'. The
>numbers grew in complexity out of all reason. Seven was 6 plus
>1, and 5 plus 2, and 4 plus 3, and so on; as well as 'the root
>of 49', 'half 14' and the like. They even distinguished 4 plus
>3 from 3 plus 4.
TOM: Um...much in the same way WE do?
> Each number also represented an idea or group
>of ideas on all sorts of planes. It would have been quite
>possible to discuss dressmaking in terms of pure number.
CROW (lisping): Darling that dress is so fabulously 7!
> To
>give an example of the way in which their minds thought,
>consider the number three. Three, in so far as it gives the
>first plane figure, suggests superficies; with regard to the
>dimensions of space, solidity.
MIKE: ...it also suggests grizzly bears...I have no idea why...
> Three itself is therefore 'that
>ineffably holy thing in which the superficies is the solid'. Of
>course hundreds of other ideas must be added to this; and to
>grasp and harmonize them all in one colossal supra-rational idea
>was the constant task of every mathematician.
TOM: And the answer, of course, was "42."
> The upshot of
>this was that all numbers above 33 were regarded as spurious,
>illusionary; they had no real existence of their own; they were
>temporary compounds, unreal in very much the same sense as our
>square root of 1.
CROW (Shatner): Our Civil War...Our World War I and World II...
> They were always expressed by graphic
>formulae, like our own organic compounds. To take an example,
>the number 156 was regarded as a sort of efflorescence of the
>number 7; it was never written but as 77 plus [(7+7)/7] plus 77.
>Again 11 was usually written 3 plus 5 plus 3. It was always
>the aim to find symmetry in these expressions, and also 'to find
>an easy way to 1'. This last is difficult to explain.
TOM: Oh, and it's been easy up to now?
>Eleven was their great 'Key of Magic'. It is a twofold number
>in 'the act of becoming 1'. Thirty-seven was the essence of 1
>inasmuch as multiplying it by 3 gives 111, three ones, which
>divided again by 3 in another manner, yield 1. "One would
>rather think of 48 as 37 plus 11 than as 4 times 12" is the
>statement of an elementary text-book dating from the earliest
>days of Atlas. It was a sort of moral duty to teach the mind to
>think in this manner.
CROW: "Sort of a moral duty"...stirring words.
>The number 7 was the 'perfect number' with them as with us, but
>for very different reasons. It was the link between Earth and
>Venus, for one thing; I cannot explain why.
MIKE: I can! You're a loony!
> It was 'the number
>of Atla', and the 'house of success' (two being the 'house of
>battle').
TOM: And the House of Style!
> It was also grace, softness, ease, healing and 'joy
>of Zro' as well as 'play of phosphorus'.
CROW: And naughty rubber novelty items!
> Many mathematicians,
>however, attacked it with rigour; there was at one time an
>almost general consent to replace it by 8,
MIKE: I never liked 7 anyway...
TOM: I'll have an 8 and 8 on the rocks, please...
> and its 'rapture-
combination' 31, by 33. Despite the intense preoccupation with
>such ideas, mathematics as we know them had reached a perfection
>which if it does not surpass that of our own civilization, fails
>principally because of its theorems, handed down to Euclid and
>Pythagoras, although imperfectly, formed a springboard whence we
>might leap.
CROW: ...into sanity.
>The initiation of children was also a matter reserved for the
>High House. Weaned at three months, the children were tended by
>the lower classes until the age of puberty, an occurrence which
>fitted them at once for initiation. A legate from the High
>House was sent for, and in his presence the child was brought,
>acquainted with Zro by its father and mother, and full
>instruction in 'working' was further conferred by any member of
>the 'house' who chose to do so, this in practice meaning by
>everybody.
TOM (pained): Thank you sir, may I have another!
> The ceremonies were frequently long and exhausting;
>children often enough died in the course of them. This was not
>regarded as a serious calamity; some schools of magicians even
>pretended to rejoice. The representatives of the High House had
>a prior right to the parents of the child; at times he conducted
>the initiation in person, a high honour, but invariably fatal.
MIKE: Atlantis really sucked, okay? Let's just all agree to that.
>On rare occasions male children were sent over to the Atla to be
>devoured. The parents of so fortunate a child were advanced in
>rank on the spot, and had special privileges conferred on them,
>sometimes even being transferred to a 'House of Houses'.
CROW: Oooh, I love Led Zepplin!
MIKE: That's "Houses of the Holy," Crow.
CROW: Ah.
> All
>those who dwelt in the High House were veiled whenever they
>appeared, in order to prevent it being known that they were
TOM: Ugly as a mud fence.
> of
>the same appearance in all respects as their inferiors. This
>ordinance had been made after the Great Conspiracy, with which I
>shall deal in the chapter on History.
MIKE (dryly): I'm a-tingle with expectation.
>VI. OF THE UNDERGROUND GARDENS OF ATLAS, AND OF THE ALLEGED
> COMMERCE OF THE ATLANTEANS WITH INCUBI, SUCCUBI, AND THE
> DEMONS OF DARKNESS.
>I have referred to the contempt with which the Atlanteans were
>prone to regard the vegetable kingdom. Animals, including man,
>shared their scorn. The idea may have been that with their
>advantages they ought to have done much better for themselves.
CROW: C'mon, you're perfectly good head of lettuce! Get a job!!
>Minerals, however, were regarded as helpless; and hence the
>extraordinary attention paid to them.
TOM: This is Fluffy, my pet zinc.
> Beneath the houses the
>rock had been tunneled out into grottos, some in odd fantastic
>forms, but most in immense polyhedra or combinations of curves.
>Each 'house' had some twenty of such gardens. Three reagents
>were used in the cultivation; the 'seed of metals', 'the seed of
>Light', and the seed of '', an untranslatable idea approximating
>to our mystic's interpretation of 'Alpha and Omega'. The two
>former produced simple effects, the first formed jewels, self-
>luminious, which yet grew like flowers, the second similar
>effects with metals; while the third brought any mineral to
>flower in the most extravagant combinations of colour and form.
MIKE: And then the evil vegetable fairies came! (Tom and Crow laugh.)
>All such conditions as texture, hardness, elasticity, and
>physical attributes in general, were considered worthy of the
>profoundest attention.
>As an instance of these, I may describe particular gardens.
>One would have a roof of softly-glowing sapphires, foxglove,
>bluebell or gentian, and between these champak stars of ruby.
>The walls would be covered with tendrils of vine within whose
>depths lurked tiny blossoms of amethyst. The floor would be of
>malachite, but alive, growing as a coral does, softer than any
>earthly moss and more elastic to the tread. On every darker
>leaf might glow dew-drops of self-strung diamond formed from the
>carbon dioxide of the air by the action of the 'seed of Light'.
TOM: It's the big rock candy mountain!!
>Another grotto would be a monochrome of blue, various copper
>salts being 'planted' everywhere, and growing in incrustations
>and festoons of every shade of blue from the faintest tinge of
>coerulean azure and green and grey, in whose abyss would be seen
>shapes of anemonies, perhaps of such hues as iron oxide, silver
>chromate, and cupramonium cyanurate. All this floor would in
>all respects resemble water but for its greater solidity, and
>floating on it would be giant lilies, great green leaves of
>emerald with cups of pearl not less than twelve feet in
>diameter, with corollae of pure gold, so fine that they
>glimmered green, with pistils of platinum on whose tops trembled
>great pigeon-blooded rubies.
CROW: Okay, Aleister, what's in the pipe?
> Another might be wholly of metal,
>a mere bower of jasmine, with its floor of violets. The law of
>growth of these creatures of wisdom was not that of plants or
>animals, or even of crystals; it was that of the earth.
>Constantly growing as the planet approached the sun, they as
>steadily shrank as she departed to aphelion. This was not
>growth and decay, but the rise and fall of an eternal bosom.
TOM: Oh wow!
> It
>is probable, too, that this is one of the reasons why Atlas
>neglected the higher kingdoms; they had learned to grow, but on
>wrong lines, and it was too late to endeavour to correct the
>error.
>These gardens were the principal places of working. It was
>hardly possible to pass from one place to another without coming
>upon one of them, so cunningly were they distributed; and in
>every garden would be found, joyful and noble, parties of
>workers intent on their beloved task. The passer-by would
>gladly join one of such parties, engage in the work for so long
>as he wished, and then proceed upon his private business.
CROW: I still say this is about sex...
To be contined...
Sampo
=======================================================
I've undergone a complex personal evolution wherein painful confusion has
given way to what I like to think of as some degree of wisdom, culminating
in my current Zarathustrian sense of self. Is that it?
=======================================================