And it was the flight of ecstasy that he sought to achieve in his symphonic poems. He had made for himself a curious personal religion, a bizarre mixture of theosophy and neoplatonism and Bergsonian philosophy, a faith that prescribed transport; and these works were in part conceived as rituals. They were planned as ceremonies of elevation and deification by ecstasy, in which performers and auditors engaged as active and passive celebrants. Together they were to ascend from plane to plane of delight, experiencing divine struggle and divine bliss and divine creativity. The music was to call the soul through the gate of the sense of hearing, to lead it, slowly, hieratically, up through circle after circle of heaven, until the mystical gongs boomed and the mass emotion reached the Father of Souls, and was become God. With Jules Romains, Scriabine would have cried to his audiences: "Tu vas mourir tantot, sous le poids de tes heures: Les hommes, delies, glisseront par les portes, Les ongles de la nuit t'arracheront la chair. Qu'importe! Tu es mienne avant que tu sois morte; Les corps qui sont ici, la ville peut les prendre; Ils garderont au front comme une croix de cendre Le vestige du dieu que tu es maintenant!" In "Prometheus" he introduces a _clavier a lumiere_ into his orchestra, vainly hoping to induce the ecstasy through color as well as sound, and after his death there was found among his papers a sketch for a "Mysteria" in which the music was to be conjoined not only with light, but with dance and perfume as well. It is a pity it was not granted him to achieve this work. The theosophic programs of his orchestral works are, after all, innocuous. Much of the half-mystical, half-sensual coloration of his orchestra is due them. And had the score of the "Mysteria" been as much an improvement over that of "Prometheus" as "Prometheus" is over the other symphonic works, Scriabine might indeed have proved himself as eminent a writer for the orchestra as for the piano.