So I was sitting now, my thoughts far from Herodotus and school. But the master’s voice unexpectedly fell on my consciousness like a thunder-crash, so that I started with fright. I listened to his voice, he was standing quite close to me, I thought he had already called me by name. But he did not look at me. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I heard his voice again. Loudly the word “Abraxas” fell from his lips. Continuing his explanation, the beginning of which had escaped me, Doctor Follen said: “We must not imagine the ideas of those sects and mystical corporations of antiquity to be as naïve as they appear from the standpoint of a rationalistic outlook. Antiquity knew absolutely nothing of science, in our sense of the word. On the other hand more attention was paid to truths of a philosophical, mystical nature, which often attained to a very high stage of development. Magic in part arose therefrom, and often led to fraud and crime. But none the less, magic had a noble origin and was inspired by deep thought. So it was with the teaching of Abraxas, which I have just cited as an example. This name is used in connection with Greek charm formulas. Many opinions coincide in thinking it is the name of some demon of magic, such as some savage people worship to-day. But it appears that Abraxas had a much wider significance. We can imagine the name to be that of a divinity on whom the symbolical task was imposed of uniting the divine and the diabolical.” The learned little man continued his discourse with much seriousness, no one was very attentive, and as the name did not recur, I was soon immersed in my own thoughts again. “To unite the divine and the diabolical,” rang in my ears. Here was a starting-point. I was familiar with that idea from my conversations with Demian in the very last period of our friendship. Demian told me then, we had indeed a God whom we revered, but this God represented part of the world only, the half which was arbitrarily separated from the rest (it was the official, permitted, “bright” world). But one should be able to hold the whole world in honor. One should either have a god who was at the same time a devil, or one should institute devil worship together with worship of God. And now Abraxas was the god, who was at the same time god and devil. For a long time I zealously sought to follow up the trail of ideas farther, without success. In addition, I rummaged through a whole library to find out more about Abraxas, but in vain. However, it was not my nature to concentrate my energies on a methodical search after knowledge, a search which would reveal truths of a dead, useless, documentary kind.