There’s a dark lantern of the spirit,
Which none see by but those who bear it,
That makes them in the dark see visions
And hag themselves with apparitions,
Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt
Of their own misery and want.

Samuel Butler quoted in Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

Consider also:

  1. “The Magician, his breast bare, stands before an altar on which are his Burin, Bell, Thurible, and two of the Cakes of Light. In the Sign of the Enterer he reaches West across the Altar, and cries: Hail Ra, that goest in Thy bark Into the Caverns of the Dark!”
  2. “It is also clear from these references that the description and function assigned to the Thrones became a means of accounting for the symbols and metaphysics of the visions of Ezekiel and probably to a lesser degree similar visions of Daniel.”
  3. “but the immortal part makes all his labours vain, and turns his pyramids to ‘grains of sand,’ his ‘pillars’ to ‘dust on the fly’s wing,’ and makes of ‘his starry heavens a moth of gold and silver mocking his anxious grasp.'”
  4. “It is ill to blaspheme the silence with a wicked whispered thought– How still they were, those nights! when this web of things was wrought! How still, how terrible! O my dolorous tender brides, As I lay and dreamt in the dark by your shameful beautiful sides! And now you are mine no more, I know; but I cannot bear The curse–that another is drunk on the life that stirs your hair: Every hair was alive with a spark of midnight’s delicate flame, Or a glow of the nether fire, or an old illustrious shame.”
  5. “He makes them as in Liber Legis, and strikes again Eleven times upon the Bell. With the Burin he then makes upon his breast the proper sign. Behold this bleeding breast of mine Gashed with the sacramental sign!”