demian

It is impossible to recount briefly all that Pistorius the eccentric musician told me about Abraxas. Most
important was that what I learned from him represented a further step on the road toward myself. At that time,
I was an unusual young man of eighteen, precocious in a hundred ways, in a hundred others immature and
helpless. When I compared myself with other boys my age I often felt proud and conceited but just as often
humiliated and depressed. Frequently I considered myself a genius, and just as frequently, crazy. I did not
succeed in participating in the life of boys my age, was often consumed by self-reproach and worries: I was
helplessly separated from them, I was debarred from life. Pistorius, who was himself a full-grown eccentric,
taught me to maintain my courage and self-respect. By always finding something of value in what I said, in
my dreams, my fantasies and thoughts, by never making light of them, always giving them serious
consideration, he became my model. "You told me, " he said, "that you love music because it isamoral. That's
all right with me. But in that case you can't allow yourself to be a moralist either. You can't compare yourself
with others: if Nature has made you a bat you shouldn't try to be an ostrich. You consider yourself odd at
times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that. Gaze into the
fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak, surrender to them, don't ask first whether
it's permitted or would please your teachers or father, or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That
way you will become earthbound, a vegetable. Sinclair, our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan
and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. Abraxas does not take exception to any of your
thoughts, any of your dreams. Never forget that. But he will leave you once you've become blameless and
normal. Then he will leave you and look for a different vessel in which to brew his thoughts. " Among all my
dreams the dark dream of love was the most faithful. How often I dreamed that I stepped beneath the heraldic
bird into our house, wanted to draw my mother to me and instead held the great, half-male, half-maternal
woman in my arms, of whom I was afraid but who also attracted me violently. And I could never confess this
dream to my friend. I kept it to myself even after I had told him everything else. It was my corner, my secret,
my refuge. When I felt bad I asked Pistorius to play Buxtehude's passacaglia. Then I would sit in the
dusk-filled church completely involved in this unusually intimate, self-absorbed music, music that seemed to
listen to itself, that comforted me each time, prepared me more and more to heed my own inner voices. At
times we stayed even after the music had ceased: we watched the weak light filter through the high, sharply
arched windows and lose itself in the church. "It sounds odd, " said Pistorius, "that I was a theology student
once and almost became a pastor. But I only committed a mistake of form. My task and goal still is to be a
priest. Yet I was satisfied too soon and offered myself to Jehovah before I knew about Abraxas. Oh, yes, each
and every religion is beautiful; religion is soul, no matter whether you take part in Christian communion or
make a pilgrimage to Mecca. " "But in that case, " I intervened, "you actually could have become a pastor. "
"No, Sinclair. I would have had to lie. Our religion is practiced as though it were something else, something
totally ineffectual. If worst came to worst I might become a Catholic, but a Protestant pastor--no! The few
genuine believers--I do know a few--prefer the literal interpretation. I would not be able to tell them, for
example, that Christ is not a person for me but a hero, a myth, an extraordinary shadow image in which
humanity has painted itself on the wall of eternity. And the others, that come to church to hear a few clever
phrases, to fulfill an obligation, not to miss anything, and so forth, what should I have said to them? Convert
them? Is that what you mean? But I have no desire to. A priest does not want to convert, he merely wants to
live among believers, among his own kind. He wants to be the instrument and expression for the feeling from
which we create our gods. " He interrupted himself. Then continued: "My friend, our new religion, for which
we have chosen the name Abraxas, is beautiful. It is the best we have. But it is still a fledgling. Its wings
haven't grown yet. A lonely religion isn't right either. There has to be a community, there must be a cult and
intoxicants, feasts and mysteries... " He sank into a reverie and became lost within himself. "Can't one
perform mysteries all by oneself or among a very small group?" I asked hesitantly. "Yes, one can. " He
nodded. "I've been performing them for a long time by myself. I have cults of my own for which I would be
sentenced to years in prison if anyone should ever find out about them. Still, I know that it's not the right thing
either. " Suddenly he slapped me on the shoulder so that I started up. "Boy, " he said intensely, "you, too,
have mysteries of your own. I know that you must have dreams that you don't tell me. I don't want to know
them. But I can tell you: live those dreams, play with them, build altars to them. It is not yet the ideal but it
points in the right direction. Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains to be
seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day, otherwise we just aren't serious. Don't forget that! You