TRUE N🧭RTH

José Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher, talks of the release of spirits that the spilling of blood brings. Blood is a frightening mystery, he says. It carries life. When it is spilled and the ground stained, the whole landscape is maddened and excited. Oculists know that humans can be killed in a particular way so that the human spirit is harnessed. We saw how great initiates like Elijah fashion their vegetable and animal selves in such a way that they can become chariots with which to travel through the spiritual worlds. In occult circles, it is also known that black magicians can use the souls and spirits of others, their sacrificial victims, as chariots.

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company. Be careful, however, that there is no element of discursiveness and desultoriness about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they find hospitality but no real friendships. The same must need be the case with people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying visits to them all. Food that is vomited up a soon as it is eaten is not assimilated into the body ...