It was as I lay on the cellar floor, feeling the blood on my back become sticky and cold, that the angel first spoke to me. She filled the air with the scent of metal and surrounded me with a circle of blue flame, and I was frightened.

“Don’t be afraid,” she told me. “I have come to speak to you, and through you. At the command of the god-machine you shall hear my words and know them to be true.” Her voice was like the notes of a flute and their vibrations calmed my fear. And that was how I learned the secret history of the world.

Rick Chillot, “Voice of the Angel”, The God-Machine Anthology [Amazon, DriveThruFiction]

Hermetic quote Chillot Voice of the Angel The God-Machine Anthology angel first spoke circle blue flame dont be afraid words true learned secret history of the world

Consider also:

  1. “Ah! day So soon to dawn, delight to snatch away! Damned day, whose sunlight finds us as with wine Drunken, with lust made manifest divine Devils of darkness, servants unto hell”
  2. “Mine eyes had fixed them on the sphinx, the sky. ‘Is then this quest of immortality?’ And echo answered from some unseen caves: Mortality! I shrink, and wonder why. Strange I am nothing tainted with this fear Now, that had touched me first. For I am here Half-way I reckon to the field of salt, The pillar, and the bones—it was a fault I am cured of! praise to God!”
  3. “O little root of nobleness left thus Dead since it has no power to grow, to bloom; Live, since I may not bury it within The gaping tomb Where virtue lies, that I, imperious, Long since interred with hope, and all life’s joy save sin.”
  4. “In that desire their hands are strained and wrung; In that most infinite passion beats the blood, And bursting chants of amorous agony flung To the void Hell, are lost, not understood, Unheard by evil or good.”
  5. “There have been men who loved the future like a mistress, and the future mixed her breath into their breath and shook her hair about them, and hid them from the understanding of their times.”