Universal Brotherhood – October 1898

A FRAGMENT — Zoryan

Some children, poets and mystics of recent years show by the most unmistakable signs, that they feel the coming of the new, better, nobler and wider life. The unavoidable spring is approaching. The wide, wide spaces are opening. Many a heart has the sensitiveness of a flower, which turns towards the sun and seems to know its ways upon the skies. A flower, which was, when a small bud, above the will o' wisps and apparitions of the night, a flower which felt the darkness of the night and knew how to sing upon the black lyre of sorrow for mankind, when it was time to do so, such a flower is now well prepared to meet the dawning day. Those who have not seen the blackness, shall not see the light; those whose heart was not lonely and deserted, as though a heart of an orphan, shall not experience the immeasurable sweetness of the universal brotherhood. For who was it longing in the night, if not that divine germ of light, which shines in darkness and which the darkness cannot overtake? Better still, — it regains in darkness its ideal purity, its invisible visibility, and when later comes the day, it takes from itself whiteness and colors, and from the night it takes shadows and outlines, and with these contrarieties it paints the raiment of the day. For every color is the light shaded in its quality, and every form is the light outlined in its quantity, and stronger are the lines and shadows upon the white divine back-ground of the world, greater is the world, more diverse, more powerful.

The blackest spot of the picture has, perhaps, the greatest meaning, if this meaning is merged in the idea of the whole scene. A whiteness without black lines is only a background and nothing more. Ormuzd is not able to create the world without Ahriman. Ahriman is the interpreter of Ormuzd and his best helper, though seemingly he is at war with his twin brother. The proud and indomitable Lucifer is yet a bright and morning star. Better still, — through this darkness and loneliness and by being itself left therein, the spirit of a man reaches that self-consciousness, which alone can show to him its immortality. Indeed, deeper and deeper we look there, more than whiteness we see in that darkness, and more than Ormuzd. In this darkness dwells an invisible whiteness, hidden in the night, and rocking, as though in a cradle, a new ideal day; in this darkness is that super-ideality, from which comes out every being and existence; there reposes an invisible power, higher than Ormuzd, there rests the infinite and never comprehensible mystery of the light and shadow, joy and sorrow, beginning and end, alpha and omega; there is the inexpressible Zeruana Akerne (1) before which alone we are permitted to bow our heads and which can be worshipped only in silent adoration.

FOOTNOTE:

1. The cycle of infinity, the circle, the zero, of which contains in it the All, the plenum, the pleroma. (return to text)



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