We three, it came upon me, were acting out some omitted detail of a
great world-purpose. The fact that _she_ forgot, that I was ignorant,
that Julius LeVallon seemed guilty of unmoral things--these were but
ripples upon the deep tide that bore us forward. We were uttering a
great sentence we had left unfinished. I knew not exactly what was
coming, only that we had begun its utterance ages before the present,
and probably upon a planet nearer to the sun than our younger earth.
The verb had not yet made its appearance in this sentence, but it would
presently appear and explain the series of acts, and, meanwhile, I
must go on acting and wondering what it all could mean. I thought of
a language that first utters the nouns and adjectives, then adds the
verb at the end, explaining the whole series of unmeaning sounds. Our
“experiment” was the verb.
Then came the voice of Julius suddenly:
“Fate is the true complement of yourself; it completes your nature. By
doing it, you become one with your surroundings. Note attitude and
gesture--of yourself and of everything. They are signs. Our attitudes
must coincide with that of the earth to the heavens--possible only
at the Equinox. We must feel with her. We then act with her. Do not
resist. Let this valley say to you what it will. Regard it, and regard
our life here at the moment, as a symbol, clothed in a whole story of
information, the story varying with every hour of the day and with the
slightest change of the earth in relation to the universe.”
It seemed I watched the track of some unknown animal upon the ground,
and tried to reconstruct the entire creature. Such imprint is but a
trace of the invisible being that has made it. All about this valley
there were tracks offering a hint of Beings that had left them--that
any moment might reveal themselves. Julius talked on in his calm and
unimpassioned way. I both understood and could not understand. I
realised that there is a language for the mind, but no language for the
spirit. There are no words in which to express big cosmic meanings.
Action--a three-dimensional language--alone could be their vehicle.
The knowledge must be performed--acted out in ceremony. Comprehension
filtered into me, though how I cannot say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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