I am a mask, concealing the real. Behind me, hidden, actuality goes on, safe from prying eyes.

Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Dick The Man in the High Castle mask concealing real behind hidden actuality safe from prying eyes

Consider also:

  1. “The chant shattered and repeated like the diabolic designs in the pagan mosaics that snared the eyes and mind—forms without images, the ghosts of flowers and fruit, the convolutions of the brain.”
  2. “They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humanity; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountainhead.”
  3. “We intend to dance for Dionysos, yes. It’s the right thing to do. You must be out of your mind to go to war with a god like this. “
  4. “You may say the question aloud,” Hawthorne said. “We have no secrets here.”
  5. “This is all it takes for people to plunge into insanity: one night alone with themselves and what they fear the most.”