You who would learn the wisdom of hidden things and traverse the avenues of shadow beneath the stars, heed this song of pain...
Turn not your mind from night fears, but embrace them as a lover. Let terror possess your body and course through your veins with its headyintoxication to steal your judgment, your very reason. A man sure of himself, confident in his strength, aware of his rightful place, remainsforever ignorant. His mind is closed. He cannot learn in life, and after death there is no acquisition of knowledge, only unending certainty.His highest fulfillment is to be food for the things that burrow and squirm, for in their mindless hunger they are pure, undefiled by reason,and their purity elevates them above the putrefying pride of our race.
By writhing on your belly in abject terror you will rise up in awareness of truth; by the screams that fill the throat unsought is the mindpurged of the corruption of faith. Believe in nothing. There is no purpose in birth, no salvation of the soul in life, no reward after death.Abandon hope and you shall become free, and with freedom acquire emptiness.
With hope utterly abandoned, all else will leave you, save only fear. Your name forgotten, your memories bereft of meaning, without desire orpurpose and having no regret, you would cease utterly to exist and would become one with the greatness of the night were it not for fear. Letyour terror be your standing place amid the ocean of darkness. From it you cannot retreat for it is all that you are become. Pure fear isundifferentiated, a smoothness without line or color; hence a man in the extremity of terror is united with all other terrified men; morethan this, in the purity of terror he becomes one with all fearful creatures in this world or other worlds, both in this moment and indistant aeons of time, and in that unity wherein dwells the wisdom of all, his mind is opened, and the night things speak.
Pain is the terror of the body, and as the body is but a pallid reflection of the mind, so is the pain of the flesh no more than a distantecho of the terror of dreams. Even so, do not despise your pain, for it has its function. Pain anchors the mind to flesh. In the absence ofpain, the mind would fly up and become lost in the spaces between the stars, and darkness would consume it. Just as the mind can lose allaspects of itself, but will never cease to fear, so can the body lose all strength and sensations or longing, but will always feel pain.While there is life, there is pain, and fear continues even when life is no more.
Of all pains, hunger is the most useful since it gnaws unceasingly, like the worm in the tomb. It is the gateway upon an emptiness vast andendless; no matter the quantity or kind of food, it is never filled up. All living creatures are but embodiments of hunger. Man is a hollowtube, ingesting food at one end and excreting waste at the other. How is it possible for man to be other than empty? As it is for the body,so it is also for the mind. The natural condition of the mind is emptiness. All efforts to fill it are temporary diversions that fail to denythis truth.
To learn arcane wisdom is the simplest of tasks. Purge the mind with terror; purge the body with pain and hunger. Take yourself out into theempty spaces of the world that express in their limited way the same qualities as the empty spaces between the stars. The things that dwellthere are ever watchful. They exist only to teach. After terror comes despair, and in despair the language of the shadows is intelligible. Asyou empty your mind of self, the night creatures fill it with their wisdom.
