“Deem not, my sister, that I could stray at chance and disturb the harmony of the spheres. God has traced for me my path, as thine for thee, and if my course appears to thee uncertain and erratic, it is because thy rays cannot reach so far as to embrace the outlines of the great ellipse which has been given me for my career. My burning tresses are the banner of God; I am the messenger of the Suns, and I bathe me in their fires that I may distribute them on my path to those young worlds which have not yet sufficient heat, and to the declining stars that shiver in their solitude. If I court fatigue in my long journeyings, if my beauty is less mild than thine, if my attire less virginal, I am no less than thee a worthy daughter of the sky. Leave in my hands the awful secret of my destiny, leave to me the horror which encompasses me, and slander me not if thou canst not understand me. None the less, shall I fulfil my appointed task. Happy the stars that take their rest and shine like young queens in the stately concourse of the Universe; for me, I am cast out, a wanderer, and claim the Infinite as my only fatherland. They accuse me of setting on fire the planets which I warm, and of terrifying the stars which I illume. I am reproached with disturbing the harmony of the worlds, because I do not revolve round their own fixed points, and because I bind them one to the other, setting my face alone toward the only centre of all the Suns. So rest assured, thou fairest star, I will not deprive thee of one ray of thy so peaceful light; the rather, I will squander on thee my warmth and my own life. Who knows, but I may vanish from the sky when I have consumed myself? My lot will still have been a noble one! For know that in the Temple of God the fires that burn are not all one. Ye are the light of the golden torches, but I, the flame of sacrifice. Let each accomplish her own destiny!” Her words scarce uttered, the comet shakes her tresses loose, covers herself with her burning shield, and plunges once more into infinite space, where she appears to vanish for evermore. It is thus that Lucifer appears and disappears in the allegories of the Bible. One day, so says the book of Job, the sons of God had assembled in the presence of their Lord, and among them came Lucifer. To him the Lord said: “Whence comest thou?” And he replied: “I have journeyed round the world and travelled throughout it.” This is how a Gnostic gospel, re-discovered in the East by a learned traveller, explains, in treating of the symbolical Lucifer, the genesis of Light. “Truth which is conscious of itself is living Thought. Truth is the Thought which is contained within itself; and formulated Thought is Speech. When the Eternal Thought sought for a _form_ it said: ‘Let there be Light.’ Therefore this Thought that speaks is the _Word_, and this Word says: ‘Let there be Light, because the word itself is the light of the _spirit_.’”