Google’s mission, don’t forget, is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful – to bring order to the chaos with its system of ranking and retrieving search results.
What's in the cellar door?
Like all the men of the Library, in my younger days I traveled; I have journeyed in quest of a book, perhaps the catalog of catalogs. . . . They were spurred on by the holy zeal to reach – someday, through unrelenting effort – the books of the Crimson Hexagon – books smaller than natural books, books omnipotent, illustrated, and magical.
. . .
"That's right," said Xenophilius. "You haven't heard of them? I'm not surprised. Very, very few wizards believe. Witness that knuckle-headed young man at your brother's wedding," he nodded at Ron, "who attacked me for sporting the symbol of a well-known Dark wizard! Such ignorance. There is nothing Dark about the Hallows - at least not in that crude sense. One simply uses the symbol to reveal oneself to other believers, in the hope that they might help one with the Quest." . . .
“If the Deathly Hallows really existed, and Dumbledore knew about them, knew that the person who possessed all of them would be master of Death – Harry, why wouldn’t he have told you? Why?”
He had his answer ready.
“But you said it Hermione! You’ve got to find out about them for yourself! It’s a Quest!”
. . .
The design on the reverse of the Great Seal is even more definitely related to the Order of the Quest. The pyramid and the all-seeing eye represent the Universal House surmounted by the radiant emblem of the Great Architect of the Universe . . .
But, as man has locked within him, hidden from the public gaze, this diviner part, so it is true that human society has within itself concealed from our common view a nobler part composed of the idealists and dreamers of all ages and of all races who have been bound together by their common vision of man's necessity. This is the secret empire of the poets, this is the order of the Unknown Philosophers, this is the Brotherhood of the Quest. (Manly P. Hall)
. . .
This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade 'Know Thyself!' and taught Initiation. He is 'The Devil' of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection... He is therefore Life, and Love. But moreover his letter is ayin, the Eye, so that he is Light; and his Zodiacal image is Capricornus, that leaping goat whose attribute is Liberty. (Aleister Crowley)
(what's the 411 re Heaven/Hell?)
. . .
"The Elder Wand," he said, and he drew a straight vertical line on the parchment. "The Resurrection Stone," he said, and he added a circle on top of the line. "The Cloak of Invisibility," he finished, enclosing both line and circle in a triangle, to make the symbol that so intrigued Hermione. "Together," he said, "the Deathly Hallows." (Rowling)
Be silent, Babe in the Egg of Blue, that thou mayest grow to bear the Lance and Graal! Wander alone, and sing! In the King's Palace his daughter awaits thee. (Crowley)
"The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum." ~PKD
"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
I guess this troll never visited Voldemort . . .
The force will be with you, always . . .
collige, virgo, rosas
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
- Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
- To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
- The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
- And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
- When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
- Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
- And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
- You may for ever tarry.
- Life in Pink(no regrets)
* * * * *
"Feeling sad, Greta girl, because you'll never understand what's
happening to us all," Illy asked me, "because you'll never be anything
but a shadow fighting shadows--and trying to love shadows in between the
battles? It's time you understood we're not really fighting a war at
all, although it looks that way, but going through a kind of evolution,
though not exactly the kind Erich had in mind.
"Your Terran thought has a word for it and a theory for it--a theory
that recurs on many worlds. It's about the four orders of life: Plants,
Animals, Men and Demons. Plants are energy-binders--they can't move
through space or time, but they can clutch energy and transform it.
Animals are space-binders--they can move through space. Man (Terran or
ET, Lunan or non-Lunan) is a time-binder--he has memory.
"Demons are the fourth order of evolution, possibility-binders--they can
make all of what might be part of what is, and that is their
evolutionary function. Resurrection is like the metamorphosis of a
caterpillar into a butterfly: a third-order being breaks out of the
chrysalis of its lifeline into fourth-order life. The leap from the
ripped cocoon of an unchanging reality is like the first animal's leap
when he ceases to be a plant, and the Change World is the core of
meaning behind the many myths of immortality.
"All evolution looks like a war at first--octopoids against monopoids,
mammals against reptiles. And it has a necessary dialectic: there must
be the thesis--we call it Snake--and the antithesis--Spider--before
there can be the ultimate synthesis, when all possibilities are fully
realized in one ultimate universe. The Change War isn't the blind
destruction it seems.
"Remember that the Serpent is your symbol of wisdom and the Spider your
sign for patience. The two names are rightly frightening to you, for all
high existence is a mixture of horror and delight. And don't be
surprised, Greta girl, at the range of my words and thoughts; in a way,
I've had a billion years to study Terra and learn her languages and
myths.
"Who are the real Spiders and Snakes, meaning who were the first
possibility-binders? Who was Adam, Greta girl? Who was Cain? Who were
Eve and Lilith?
"In binding all possibility, the Demons also bind the mental with the
material. All fourth-order beings live inside and outside all minds,
throughout the whole cosmos. Even this Place is, after its fashion, a
giant brain: its floor is the brainpan, the boundary of the Void is the
cortex of gray matter--yes, even the Major and Minor Maintainers are
analogues of the pineal and pituitary glands, which in some form sustain
all nervous systems.
"There's the real picture, Greta girl."~The Big Time
Snow came into the cabin, glanced around, then looked at me again. I went over to the table:
"You wanted me?"
"Haven't you got anything to do? I could give you some work . . . calculations. Not a particularly urgent job . . ."
"Thanks," I smiled, "you needn't have bothered."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I was thinking a few things over, and . . ."
"I wish you'd think a little less."
"But you don't know what I was thinking about! Tell me something. Do you believe in God?"
Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction: "What? Who still believes nowadays . . ."
"It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new — do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an . . . imperfect god?"
"What do you mean by imperfect?" Snow frowned. "In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considering that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals . . ."
"No," I interrupted. "I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a . . . sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that served specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat."
Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:
"There was Manicheanism . . ."
"Nothing at all to do with the principle of Good and Evil," I broke in immediately. "This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot . . ."
Snow pondered for a while:
"I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been . . . necessary. If I understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? It is man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking."
I kept on:
"No, it's nothing to do with man. Man may correspond to my provisional definition from some points of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve his age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a single human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom — apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being — the being I have in mind — -cannot exist in the plural, you see?"
"Oh, then in that case . . ." He pointed out of the window.
"No, not the ocean either. Somewhere in its development it has probably come close to the divine state, but it turned back into itself too soon. It is more like an anchorite, a hermit of the cosmos, not a god. It repeats itself, Snow, and the being I'm thinking of would never do that. Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while . . ."
"We already have," Snow said sarcastically. "Novas and supernovas. According to you they are the candles on his altar."
"If you're going to take what I say literally . . ."
"And perhaps Solaris is the cradle of your divine child," Snow went on, with a widening grin that increased the number of lines round his eyes. "Solaris could be the first phase of the despairing God. Perhaps its intelligence will grow enormously. All the contents of our Solarist libraries could be just a record of his teething troubles . . ."
". . . and we will have been the baby's toys for a while. It is possible. And do you know what you have just done? You've produced a completely new hypothesis about Solaris — congratulations! Everything suddenly falls into place: the failure to achieve contact, the absence of responses, various . . . let's say various peculiarities in its behavior towards ourselves. Everything is explicable in terms of the behaviour of a small child."
"I renounce paternity of the theory," Snow grunted, standing at the window.
For a long instant, we stood staring out at the dark waves. A long pale patch was coming into view to the east, in the mist obscuring the horizon.
Without taking his eyes off the shimmering waste, Snow asked abruptly:
"What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?"
"I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfils no purpose — a god who simply is."~Solaris
