I know what these creatures are. I have always known. There has never been the slightest doubt with me. This is such a raw and painful moment. I am striving to reach you, and you are only telling me farewell. I have said other things, that I would tell you the whole story, that I would open the files to you, that you are needed on this very matter by us all. When persons cannot or will not acknowledge and confront aspects of their destiny—such as a sudden infirmary, an inexplicable death, the birth of a child with special needs—the destiny become repressed. It is then often projected on figures outside themselves, such as gods, sorcerers, demons, and witches. I do not use the word project pejoratively. Projection is a common and normal function of the human mind, and we all do it continuously in less pretentious ways then those cited here. Many talented people experience their visions in art or music as coming at least partially from outside themselves. As an artist paints a landscape, it is impossible to tell how much comes from the landscape that one presumably sees and how much is projected from one’s own sense of form. Indeed, one’s genuine art depends on what one projects rather than on what exists objectively out there. The line between inner and outer reality is impossible to draw sharply, as the physics as the brain studies of Karl Pribram make clear. However, here we will be talking mainly about the destructive aspects of the projection of destiny as it shows itself in witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Witchcraft has been a sad and serious problem in European and the West since the twelfth century, particularly in the Catholic and Protestant churches. In the thirteenth century the Inquisition petitioned Pope Alexander IV (1254-61) for permission to add witchcraft to the ecclesiastical functions to be judged by the Inquisition. The pope refused, but he left the door open by stating his belief that all witches were the servants of Satan. By the end of the fifteenth century, witchcraft was assimilated with heresy, and those found guilty by the Inquisition of practicing witchcraft were burned at the stake. If a person did not believe in witchcraft, one’s very disbelief put one in danger of being accused of heresy. If you believed that no compact does or can exist between the Devil and a human being or that there is no sexual intercourse between the Devil and human beings, or that neither devils nor witches can raise tempests, rain-storms, hail-storms and the like, you were already suspect of being in league with Satan. Even the leaders of the Protestant Reformation believed in witches. Luther wrote, “Paul reckoneth witchcraft among the works of the flesh, which is not lust or lechery, but a kind of idolatry. For witchcraft convenath with the devil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

John Calin also was a believer in such sorcery and frequently quoted a passage from the New Testament: “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of the World.” Witchcraft not only denied the ethical standards of the day, but also the aesthetic ones. The customary repulsive aspects of the witch’s sabbath are present in extant documents: “The corpses of newly-born children were eaten by them; they had been stolen from their nurses during the night; all manner of revolting liquids were drunk and there was no savour in any of the food.” It is easy to understand that the aspects of destiny that we have called cosmic, like the eruption of volcanoes or Earthquakes, associated as these phenomena are wit emotions of awe and terror, should be seen as the workings of some supernatural power. However, the commonplace things of life were also susceptible, in any imaginative or hysterical persons, to being called the work of witches. Thus, continued sterility of many years was caused by witches through the malice of the Devil. Male importance, to cite and example among the many things projected, was widely cited as being caused by witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

A couple, let us say, had been preparing for weeks to be married, and in the evening, after the strain and stress of the marriage ceremony, the groom finds himself important. Out of his bewilderment, anger, and feelings of inferiority, he could well have fantasies that some enchantment caused this embarrassing phenomenon. Pierre Bayle wrote in the early eighteenth century: “Several men are unable to consummate their marriage, and believe that this importance is the effect of a spell. From then on, the newlyweds regard each other with an evil eye, and their discord at times descends into the most horrible enmity; the sight of one makes the other shiver.” It I said, he adds, that witches say certain words during the nuptial benediction, which is called “knotting the braid.” “That is why there are some good mothers who consent to anticipating the wedding night in order to foil the witch.” Thomas Aquinas takes up this question under the rubric “Whether the effect of sorcery are in impediment to matrimony.” While he concludes that witches cannot impede the consummation of a marriage, the stronger spirits of evil, like demons and the devil, can do so. The catholic faith insists that demons do indeed exist and that they may impede pleasures of the flesh by their works. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Anne Marie de Georgel declares when she was washing her clothes one morning near Pech-David above the town, that she saw a man of huge stature coming towards her across the water. He was dark-skinned and his eyes burned like living coals; he was dressed in the hides of beasts. This monster asked her if she would give herself to hum and she said yes. Then he blew into her mouth and from the Saturday following she was borne to the [witch’s] Sabbath, simply because it was his will. There she found a huge he-goat and after greeting him she submitted to his pleasure. The he-goat in return taught her all kinds of secret spells; he explained poisonous plants to her and she learned from him words for incantations and how to cast spells during the night of the vigil of St. John’s day, Christmas Eve, and the first Friday in every month. He advised her if she could, to make sacrilegious communion, offering God and honouring the Devil. And she carried out these impious suggestions. Anne Marie de Georgel then admitted that she has not ceased to do evil, practicing all manner of filthiness during the years which passed from the time of her initiation to that of her imprisonment. Sometimes these victims make theological statements of considerable sagacity. This Anne Marie went on to say that the struggle between God and the Devil had gone on since eternity and would have no end. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Sometimes one is victorious, sometimes the other, and at this time the situation was such that Satan was sure to triumph. How ironical that her being burned at the stake was itself a demonstration of the triumph of Satan. Why are witches predominately female? Whereas some of the pronouncements from Inquisition use the phrase witches of both sexes, there is no doubt that witches are chiefly woman. (The term for a male witch, warlock, is unfamiliar and rarely used.)  The Malleus Maleficarum (1486) writer by two leaders of the Inquisition in Germany, H. Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, often called an “encyclopedia” of witchcraft, has one section entitled “Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to Evil Superstitions?” The authors write (with seemingly perverse delight) “concerning witches who copulate with devils,” and they seek the methods by which such abominations are consummated. On the part of the devil: first, of what element the body is made that he assumes; secondly, whether the act is always accompanied by the injection of semen received from another….whether one commits this act more frequently at one time and place…and whether the act is invisible to any who may be standing by. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

These authors speak often of the fragility of females and state, concerning women, that when they are governed by a good spirit, they are most excellent in virtue; but when they are governed by an evil spirit, they indulge in the worst possible vices. Indeed, the word woman is used to mean the lust of the flesh. However, women also have brought beatitude to men, and have saved nations, lands and cities, as did Esther, Judith, and Deborah. Referring to the fact that original sin is blamed on Eve, Institoris and Sprenger remark that “we find a change of name from Eva to Ave [as in ‘Ave Maris’] and the whole sin of Eve is taken away by the benediction of Mary.” This condescending diatribe against women makes one winces, but it also casts light on the dynamics of the repression and projection of destiny. It seems obvious that this lust of the flesh is largely a projection of the men’s own unacknowledged sexuality. The femme fatale phenomenon throws light on the helplessness a man may feel under the attraction of a beautiful woman, especially if she is unavailable to him. Many men resent such attractions, as though these waves of passion take control of their own lives away from them. Throughout history, paintings of the courtesan, the prostitute, the beautiful but possibly insensitive woman bear witness to the power of the femme fatale. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Sex is a vivid part of our destiny in that we had no say about whether were born male or female. Sex seems to take over our bodies willy-nilly. Our biological development brings with it new and, to the pubescent, strange and powerful desires and fantasies. Growing boys and men often experience sex as intrusion and the powerful yearnings as something beyond their control. The conflicts males have about their sexuality can be accentuated by monastic life, as illustrated by Saint Anthony’s sexual temptations in the desert and by Origen’s self-castration. All of this generates hostility toward the women on the man’s part. However, good men repress this hostility—perhaps under a Victorianlike code of putting women on a pedestal—even though this hostility is shown in semirecognizable form in men’s groups, men’s humor, and so on. Male anger arises from the situation in which the woman seems to hold power over his glands, some secret influence over his internal organs that may be shown in his involuntary erections. This at first surprises him, then bewitches (the word is apt) him, and finally enrages him. It is easy to imagine these uncontrollable and tantalizing surgings of emotion as evidence that one has been bewitched. So strong can the repression be that one never pauses to consider that the source maybe one’s own destiny in reference to sexuality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

What better way to handle this bewildering attraction, this succumbing to the charms of the femme fatale, than by ascribing the secret influence to a witch? Sometimes the witches are young women whose only crime is their beauty, and sometimes the witches are antiquated and wizened and senile. However, the man can easily remind himself that the antiquated witches had this magic power in their youth, and they still remember the secret of it even though they do not tell. The bewitched man, attracted in ways he can do nothing about, passes on to another his suspicion that so and so has witchly powers. Others become suspicious, and soon so and so becomes a witch. Her denial only adds to the conviction. The erstwhile attracted man can tell himself he acted righteously and helped rid the World of the harmful one. Thus, his hostility and his erotic passion are relieved a thousandfold as the woman is burned at the stake. All along there were protest against the cruel and inhuman treatment in the attack on so-called witchcraft, but the protesters objected at the risk of being accused themselves. One Jesuit and poet, Frederick Spee, assigned to the task of confessor to witches condemned to death in Wurzburg, was appalled by the method of the trials and in 1631 published an anonymous attack on the persecutions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

In 1583 Reginald Scot subtitled his book in witchcraft proving that the Compacts and contracts of Witches with Devils and all Infernal Spirits…are but Erroneous Novelties and Imaginary Conceptions, and laying bare The Unchristian Practices and Inhumane Dealing of Witch-tryers upon Aged, Melancholy and Superstitious people in extorting Confessions by Terrors and Tortures. Toward the period a number of people argued that the fears of witchcraft were themselves the result of superstition and the human imagination. Pierre Bayle, in 1703, in a public letter, asserts that one hears among the common people that “an illness has been given to such and such persons by a witch.” However, he argues that these “are an effect of the dominion that the imagination exercises over the other faculties of the body and soul.” The diseases mentioned are maintained by the anxieties of the mind and by the panic-stricken terrors of the soul. He tells of a nun who sincerely felt herself possessed and adds, “see what the imagination is capable of, once unhinged by too contemplative a life.” Bayle reminds the person to whom one is writing that “you did not put too much stock in what I wrote to you about the bitterness that accompanies the devout life. You have persisted in telling me that mystics seem to you to be the happiest mortals in the World. It was thus necessary to convince you by means of a great example that they do not always enjoy those ineffable sweetnesses that you have read in their writings.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

We note here Bayle’s insight that the evil projected on witches was the result of mental difficulties on the part of the mystics and others who repressed their own evil tendencies and pretended to experience perpetual sweetness and peace. Bayle points out that witchcraft is the effect of an intense but twisted imagination. “Remove this cause,” he states like a modern psychotherapist, albeit in overly simplistic terms, “give a full confidence to the ill person, and he will have a tranquil mind, and that will be his cure.” In the sixteenth century Michel de Montaigne tells us of talking at length to “a prisoner…a real witch in ugliness and deformity, long very famous in that profession,” and gives his conclusion: “It seemed to me a matter rather of madness than of crime.” In the seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes also became convinced that the belief in witchcraft was a delusion based on self-persuasion. Even the Grand Inquisitor of Spain came to see that self-delusion in the persecution of witches, and the fact that the presentation of witches itself led, by its suggestive self-fulfilling effects, to the appearance of the symptoms of witchcraft. There was, finally, the touching recantation of the twelve jurors of Salem (where a score of convicted witches had been put to death), who solemnly stated: “We justly fear we were sadly deluded and mistaken, … [and] do therefore humbly beg forgiveness.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Witchcraft and the persecution of witches were ultimately overcome by Cartesian rationalism, the philosophical belief that the body and the mind were separate and dud not influence each other. In our day this rationalism takes the form of the factual, scientific explanation of the adversities that befall us. I propose, however, that this solution is not enough. What are we to do with the destructive projections (which have been and can be shifted to underrepresented populations as well as witches) that are not cured by the clear and simple ideas of the rationalists? Parents may want to know the facts concerning the crippling of their child in an auto accident, but this does not assuage their grief. Sadness and grief, joy and exultation are emotional responses, while scientific explanations are rational phenomena. Thus the acknowledging and confronting of death, serious illness, the fact that one was born into a certain race and culture at a certain historical period (to cite some random aspects of destiny) are essentially feeling, emotional phenomena. Logical data are on a different plane. A healthy society must make room in poetry, art, and music for the expression of those emotional and mythic activities. This is why our forbears, like Bayle and Hobbes, spoke so often of the role of imagination in the projections on witches. It also may throw light on why women were regarded as being more disposed to superstition, since women in Western culture by and large react more emotionally than do men. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

Light is thrown on the more emotional aspect of female behavior by contemporary research into the differing functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, begun by Dr. R.W. Sperry at the California Institute of Technology, and is not accepted in scientific quarters. These studied demonstrate that the left hemisphere, broadly speaking, channels logical, rational aspects of our experience, and the right hemisphere channels mainly the emotional, poetic, artistic ones. In our culture, women are reputed to develop the right-brain functions, and men depend more on the left brain. Thus, it can be asked whether women, in our culture, are more addicted to what Institoris and Sprenger called evil superstitions. We here state that this was simply a question of women being emotional, poetic, and imaginative. This can be said only in a general sense, and should not be made into a rule. There are many exceptions, however. In witchcraft women were being punished for being more poetic, more emotionally sensitive, more intuitive than men (all things that could be regarded as fragile). This is also why our argument here does not fall under Calvin’s stricture when he attacks the trifling philosophy about the holy Angels which teaches that they are noting but good inspirations or those impulses which God arouses in mortal’s minds, [and] those mortals…who babble of devils as nothing else than evil emotions of perturbations which come upon us from our flesh. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

However, the acknowledgement of fate and other aspects of one’s destiny is by no means a trifling matter. On it depends our freedom as human beings and our very existence. We note that it is the conventionally good people—the faithful Catholics and Protestants, the ethical bourgeois citizens, the monks and nuns—who seem to have been most ready to ascribe witchcraft to other persons living on the fringes of their communities. These good people are most apt to repress the evil tendencies within themselves and to pretend that fate does not exist, and therefore, they are most likely to project their unacceptable urges on to other persons. Thus, goodness without the humility that John Bunyan expressed on seeing a condemned mortal being taken to the gallows, “There but for the grace of God go I,” can itself lead to evil. Whenever I hear the customary platitudes “I love everyone” or “I have no enemies” or “Illness does not exist since God is spirit,” I sigh and find myself wondering: Which aspect of destiny is the person repressing? Where will the projected energy rear its destructive head?” “Very little is more worth our time than understanding the talent of Substance. A bee, a living bee, at the windowglass, trying to get out, doomed, it cannot understand,” Stan Rice Untitled Poem from Pig’s Progress (1976). #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

If you were never to see me again, that would only make things worse. If you go on as you are, you will not live another five days. Do you remember anything I said to you earlier? There is nothing I can do to make you want to live, is not that so? Will you listen to me, then? Really listen? You are going to weep over me? Anxiety over about death is generally castration anxiety, because no one has ever actually experienced literal death, and, therefore, death cannot be in the unconscious. However, who has ever experienced literal castration? Many people do not address death because they like the illusion of the invincibility of psychoanalysis. For to confront and acknowledge death—our own death and the death of others is the emergence of destiny, now in the sense of necessity, in its extreme and ultimate form. To admit this aspect of destiny, this confession of finitude, would be to admit that psychoanalysis—and Dr. Freud and Dr. Fromm and all the rest of us mortals as well—would have to give up the craving for invincibility. This is to accept our finiteness and our mortality. It is to join the club of the human, the club of the finite, the vincibly, the vulnerable, the vulnerable; the club of the poignant mortals. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

The awareness of death is required by the yes-no characteristic of human consciousness. Consciousness is never static: it knows one thing because that is opposite to something else. It experiences things dialectically, like an electric current with positive and negative poles. We become aware of something by virtue of its contrast with its background. If they fly were perfectly still, the frog would never see it. However, the fly moves once, and the frog takes aim; the fly moves again and the frog gobbles it up. Again, we hear the echo of the ancient wisdom of Heraclitus: “People do not realize that what is opposed to something is also identical with it.” Life is the opposite of death, and thoughts of death are necessary if we are to think significantly of life. Who has not thought at some moment of great joy, “I hope I never die!” Or on seeing some breathtakingly beautiful view of the Alps “This makes me feel like eternity-I am beyond life and death.” Or not toiling at some challenging task “May Heaven help me to live long enough to finish my work.” Or at some moment of discouragement “Death would be better than this!” Or at a time of great fatigue, “He giveth his beloved rest.” We need not talk about thoughts of suicide at all. For all the above illustrations are of the poignancy of life, and they all contain references to death. The most intense experiences of life bring with them the most intense experiences of death. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

Mortals pass their whole lives in error when they might pass them in truth. They do wrong when they might do good. The result is suffering when it might be peace. When all the chief decisions of a mortal’s life are made in a condition of spiritual ignorance, what other results may be expected than unfortunate ones? It is a bitter moment—and the consciousness of one’s error falls painfully upon one—when one discovers that the aims one pursued have led one up a blind alley and that the ambitions one nurtured have yielded only ashes for one’s hands. The parable of the Prodigal Son now assumes an intimate meaning for one. One may derive an astringent wisdom from all these unpleasant consequences of the lower ego’s activities. It has indeed been like a blind mortal tremblingly feeling one’s way and moving from one mishap to another, making one false step after another. When one see how the littler personal self has brought one so much pain, sorrow, disappointment, and waste of years, that even when it brought one success the latter turned out to be false and deceptive, one will become yearn to get away from it altogether. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

In all of us, open or hidden, admitted or repressed, the despair of truth is a permanent threat. We are children of our period as Pilate was. Both are periods of disintegration, of a World-wide loss of values and meanings. Nobody can separate oneself completely from this reality, and nobody should even try. Let me do something unusual from a Christian standpoint, namely, to express praise of Pilate—not the unjust judge, but the cynic and sceptic; and of all those amongst us in whom Pilate’s question is alive. For in the depth of every serious doubt and every despair of truth, the passion for truth is still at work. Do not give in too quickly to those who want to alleviate your anxiety about truth. Do not be deduced into a truth which is really your truth, even if the seducer is your church, or your party, or your parental tradition. Go with Pilate, if you cannot go with Jesus; but go in seriousness with him! Twofold are the temptations to evade the burden of asking for the truth that matters. The one is the way of those who claim to have the truth and the other is the way of those who do not care for the truth. They point to their traditions which goes back to Abraham. Abraham is their father; so they have all the truth, and do not need to be worried by the question which they encounter in Jesus. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

The World is twofold for mortals in according to their twofold attitude. One perceives the being that surrounds one, plain things and beings as things; one perceives what happened around one, plain processes and actions as processes, things that consist of qualities and processes that consist of moments, things recorded in terms of spatial coordinates and processes recorded in terms of temporal coordinates, things and processes that are bounded by other things and processed and capable of being measured against and compared with those others—an ordered World, a detached World. This World is somewhat reliable; it as density and duration; its articulation can be surveyed; one can get it out again and again; one recounts it with one’s eyes closed and then checks with one’s eyes open. There it stands—right next to your skin if you think of it that way, or nestled in your soul if you prefer that: it is your object and remains that, according to your pleasure—and remains primally alien both outside and inside you. You perceive it and take if for your truth; it permits itself to be taken by you, but it does not give itself to you. It is only about it that you can come to an understanding with others; although it takes a somewhat different form for everybody, it is prepared to be a common object for your; but you cannot encounter others with it. Without it you cannot remain alive; its reliability preserves you; but if you wee to die into it, then you would be buried in nothingness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The necklaces she wore were all modern jewelry, but the profusion made them look archaic, pearls and gold chains and opals and even rubies. Against the luster of her skin, all this ornament appeared somehow unreal! It was caught up in the overall gloss of her person; it was like the light in her eyes, or the luster of her lips. She was something fit for the most lavish palace of the imagination; something both sensuous and divine. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” reports John 1.14, 17. Truth and freedom will make you free. The question of truth is universally human; but like everything human it was first manifest on a special place in a special group. It was the Greek mind in which the passionate search for truth was most conspicuous; and it was the Greek World in which, and to which, the Gospel of John was written. The words, here said by Jesus, are, according to ancient custom, put into his mouth by the evangelist who wanted to show the answer of Christianity to the central question of the Hellenic mind: the question of truth. The answer is given also to us, for we, too, ask the question of truth. And some of us ask it as passionately, and sometimes as desperately, as the Greeks did. “One who does what is true, comes to the light,” reports John 3.21. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

Mortals become an I through a You. What confronts us comes and vanishes, relational events take shape and scatter, and through these changes crystallizes, more and more each time, the consciousness of the constant partner, the I-consciousness. To be sure, for a long time it appears only woven into the relationship to a You, discernible as that which reaches for but is not a You; but it comes closer and closer to the bursting point until one day the bonds are broken and the I confronts its detached self for a moment like You—and then it takes possession of itself and henceforth enters into relations in cull consciousness. “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you the Spirit of truth, whom the World cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you,” reports John 14.16, 17. Only now can the other basic word be put together. For although the You of the relation always paled again, it never became the It of an I—and object of detached perception and experience, which is what it will become henceforth—but as it was waiting for the new relational event. Of course, the maturing body as the carrier of its sensations and the executor of its drives stood out from its environment, but only in the next-to-each other where one finds one’s way, not yet in the absolute separation of I and object. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

Now, however, the detached I is transformed—reduced from substantial fullness to the functional one dimensionality of a subject that experiences and uses objects—and this approaches all the “It for itself,” overpowers it and joins wit it to form the other basic word. The mortal who has acquired an I and says I-It assumes a position before things but does not confront them in the current of reciprocity. One bends down to examine particulars under the objectifying telescope of distant vision to arrange them as mere scenery. In one’s contemplation one isolates them without any feeling for the exclusive or joins them without any World feeling. The former could be attained only through relation, and the latter only by starting from that. Only now one experiences things as aggregates of qualities. Qualities, to be sure, had remained in one’s memory after every encounter, as belonging to the remembered You; but only now things seem t one to be constructed of their qualities. Only by drawing on one’s memory of the relation—dreamlike, visual, or conceptual, depending on the kind of mortal one is—one supplements the core that revealed itself powerfully in the You, embracing all qualities: the substance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

Only now does one place things in a spatio-temporal-casual context; only now does each receive its place, its course, its measurability, its conditionality. The You also appears in space, but only in an exclusive confrontation in which everything else can only be background from which it emerges, not its boundary and measure. The You appears in time, but in that of a process that is fulfilled in itself—a process lived through not as a piece that is a part of a constant and organized sequence but in a duration whose purely intensive dimension can be determined only by starting from the You. It appears simultaneously as acting on and as acted upon, but not as if it had been fitted into a causal chain; rather as, in its reciprocity with the I, the beginning and end of the event. This is part of the basic truth of the human World: only It can be put in order. Only as things cease to be our You and become out It do they become subject to coordination. The You knows no system of coordinates. “Let us love one another; for love is of God, and one who loves is born of God and knows God. One who does not love does not know God; for God is love,” report 1 John 4.7, 8. Having got this far, we must also make another pronouncement without which this piece of the basic truth would remain an unfit fragment: an ordered World is not the World order. There are moments of the secret ground in which World order is behold as present. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

Then the tone is heard all of the sudden whose uninterpretable score the ordered World is. These moments are immortal; none are more evanescent. They leave no content that could be preserved, but their force enters into the creation and into mortal’s knowledge, and the radiation of its force penetrated the ordered World and thaws it again and again. Thus the history of the individual, this the history of the race. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,” reports John 8.31, 32. The decision to embark on this Quest may ripen for a long time in one’s unconscious mind before it is openly and slowly made, or it may explode impulsively in a wholly unpremeditated way. One has entered upon the quest for no other reason than that one has been inwardly and strongly commanded to enter it. The long hard search for the souls asks too much endurance of self-discipline from its pursuers ever to be more than it has been in the past—and undertaking for the few driven by an inner urge. Hence it is not so much a voluntary undertaking as an involuntary one. The questers cannot help themselves. It is not that they necessarily have the strength to endure as that they have no choice except to endure. It is often at an early age that we are moved by the desire for truth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

The urge to follow the Quest, the impulse to find the higher consciousness comes from the God. Whatever be the pull of their interests in their lives, a time comes in the reincarnation when the divine self asserts itself in their consciousness. There is something within us which will not let us rest in what we are, which urges us to think of still higher possibilities. This is the paradox that when you take the first step on this Quest, it is grace which impels you to do so. Yet, you think and act as if you have never been granted the divine gift. There comes a time when the unfulfilled possibilities of a mortal begin to haunt one, when one’s innermost conscience protests against the wastage of this reincarnation. One must come for a while to the consciousness of one’s own imperfection sooner or later, which awakens one in an urge to seek perfection, that is, to enter the Quest. When one awakens to truer values, they will desire a truer kind of live. They will want one that bring God into it, and they will view with remorse the past which left God out of it. Only after one has received what one has desired, and come up against its limitations or defect or disadvantages, will spiritual desire begin to take meaning or offer higher value to one. When one is no longer content to be wise and happy and good only for moments but foolish and miserable and weak periods, one will firmly resolve to begin the process of self-changing and self-deepening that is the Quest. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

When I, myself, as a fifteen-year-old boy received the words of our test as the motor for my future life from the confirming minister, who happened to be my father, I felt that this was just what I was looking for; and I remember that I was not alone in my group with this longing for truth. However, I also observed, in myself and in others, that the early passion for truth is due to be lost in the adolescent and adult years of our lives. How does this happen? The mortal’s distress over one’s personal shortcomings and the loathing for one’s personal weakness goad one in the end to do something to improve one and conquer the others. The truth the child first receives is imposed upon one by adults, predominately by one’s parents. This cannot be otherwise; and one cannot help accepting it. The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority, be it that of the mother or the father, or an older friend, or a gang, or the representatives of a social pattern. However, sober or later the child revolts against the truth given to one. One denies the authorities either all together, or one in the name of the other. One uses the teachers against the parents, the gang against the teachers, a friend against the gang, society against the friend. This revolt is as unavoidable as was one’ early dependence on authority. The authorities gave one something to live on, the revolt makes one responsible for the truth one accepts or rejects. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

However, whether in obedience or in revolt, the time comes when a new way to truth is opened to us, especially to those in the academic surroundings: The way of scholarly work. Eagerly we take it. It seems so safe, so successful, so independent of both authority and willfulness. It liberates from prejudices and superstitions; it makes us humble and honest. Where else, besides in scholarly work, should we look for the truth? There are many in our period, young and old, primitive and sophisticated, practical and scientific, who accept this answer without hesitation. For them scholarly truth is truth altogether. Poetry may give beauty, but it certainly does not give truth. Ethics may help us to a good life, but it cannot help us to truth. Religion may produce deep emotions, but it should not claim to have truth. Only science gives truth. It gives us new insights into the way nature works, into the texture of human history, into the hidden things of the human mind. It gives a feeling of joy, inferior to no other joy. One who has experienced this transition from darkness, or dimness, to the sharp light of knowledge will always praise scientific truth and understanding and say with some great medieval theologians, that the principles through which we know our World are the eternal divine light in our souls. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

And yet, when we ask those who have finished their studies in our colleges and universities whether they have found their truth which is relevant to their lives they will answer with hesitation. Some will say that they have lost what they had of relevant truth; others will say that they do not care for such a truth because life goes on from day to day without it. Others will tell you of a person, a book, an event outside their studies which gave them the feeling of a truth that matters. However, they will all agree that it is not the scholarly work which can give truth relevant for our life. To admit genuinely one’s mortality is to be released, to achieve a sense of freedom. The immortal Gods in The Queen of the Damned were not free in any real sense. They were bored, empty, and uninteresting creatures—except when they got involved with mortals. King Enkil and his cohorts could liven things up only by vagrant trips to Earth to have a love affair with a human beings. In other words, mortality must be brought in to liven up immortality. The drama between Queen Akasha and Lestat illustrates this point. However, even the gods know that mortality is the sweet sadness of grasping at something you cannot hold. One sees now at long last that one has acted against one’s own best interests long enough: the time has come to redress the balance. One feels the call to dedicate oneself to higher ideals. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

 Ekill, in the same vein, tell us how Daniel refused immortality when he was tempted by the beautiful goddess Akasha, who says to him, “Are you still so eager to go back to your own house and the and of your fathers? I wish you well, however you do it, but if you only knew in your own heart how many hardships you were fated to undergo before getting back to your country, you would stay here with me and be the lord of this household and be an immortal, for all your longing once more to look on that wife for whom you are pining all your days here. And yet, I think that I can claim I am not her inferior either in build or stature, since it is not likely that mortal women can challenge the goddesses for build and beauty.” Then the resourceful Daniel spoken in turn and answered him: “God and king, do not be angry with me. I myself know that all you say is true and that mortal woman can never match the impression you make for beauty and stature. They are mortal after all, and you and your woman are immortal and ageless. However, even so, what I want and all my days I pine for is to go back to my house and see my day of homecoming. And If some god batters me far our on the wine-blue water, I will endure it, keeping a stubborn spirit inside of me, for already I have suffered much and done much hard work on the waves and in the fighting. So let this adventure follow.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

So he spoke, and the Sun went down and the darkness came over. These two, withdrawn in the inner recess of the hollowed caverns, enjoyed themselves in friendship and stayed all night by each other. At dawn Daniel arises, cuts down trees to build his ship, and sails away three days later. As King Enkil had foretold and Daniel had feared, his journey home was long and filled with hardships. He nevertheless had chosen a mortal woman, home, and mortality rather than the pleasant life of immortality in the Kingdom of Kemet. This is what is meant by death and its ever present possibility makes love, passionate love more possible. If we knew we would never die, I wonder if we could love passionately, or if ecstasy would be possible at all. This is not simply an expression of “I almost lost this…I almost died,” but is a sensing of the rich depth that comes from awareness of density and the new possibilities, the new freedom of aesthetic sensibility, that then opens up. No one knows what lies beyond this pale. However, if there is anything other than extinction, we can be sure that the best preparation for it, in this brief interval, when the bird of time is still on the wing, is to live out our lives and our creativity and as fully as we can, experiencing and contributing what we can.  If, however, we defend ourselves against the dread of dying by the belief that death is simple and easy, life becomes insipid and empty and the concept of freedom has no meaning. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

Like most of the people who have read The Queen of the Damned, I have been impressed by the stories of Queen Akasha and her self-sacrifice in dealing with humanity and immortality. I do not wish to detract from that or from her right to believe what she thinks is correct. However, this should not prevent us from looking clearly at the implications of the conclusions she draws. Death is like the opening of the chrysalis of the caterpillar and the emergence of the butterfly. This, I propose, is a form of denial; it takes away the person’s impetus to make the most of this life. It is like saying I cannot wait to die and see my friends. If death is so nice, then we would hurry toward it, with no poetry, no attention to building civilization for our children, no painting to pass on to posterity, no Ninth Symphony of Beethoven no One in a Million by Aaliyah. And freedom would not even be a relevant concept. This leads to the real hopelessness, for it robs human beings of the poignancy of living. In vain, then, we listen for the song of Lestat: “You see I’m falling in the vast abyss, clouded by memories of the past. At last I see, I hear it fading, I can’ speak it or else you will dig my grave. You feel them finding, always whining. Take my hand now be alive. You see I cannot be forsaken because I am not thee only one. We walk amongst, must we hide from everyone?” (Forsaken by David Draiman on Queen of the Damned Soundtrack.) #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

However, immediately, we run up against the omnipresent denial of death in our culture, the fact that our society is sick in its pretenses in song and ritual that we never really die. When Hubert Humphrey, wizened and thin from cancer, made his last appearance before Congress, the senators, in their speeches, spoke optimistically, “Get well soon, Hubert. We need you back here.” Who were they kidding? Not Humphrey, who courageously knew his death was only several months away. Not the millions watching on television, who could see clearly he was dying. Themselves? How much in contrast is Senator Richard Neuberger’s statement, which he wrote shortly before his own death from cancer, that there had some a new appreciation of things “I once took for granted—eating lunch with a friend, scratching Muffet’s ears and listening to his purrs, the company of my wife, reading a book or magazine in the quiet cone of my bed lamp at night. For the first time I am savoring life. I realize, finally, that I am not immortal.” However, what is a tragedy that one waits until one is dying before savoring life! The denial of death is the more amazing because it is clearly exhibited by many of the famous psychoanalysts themselves. The good mortal never thinks of death. Good is all that serves life; evil is all the serves death. The problem is that one then represses all thoughts of death, and this leads directly to the denial of death and of evil. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13