Night? I know about Night. It was before I started to compare things, to measure things, to judge the world by reason. There the universe spoke a different language, the language of Night.

I was floating in the dark sea of Night that went on forever, tideless, sunless, without a ripple. The Great Comet came to me out of the darkness, cleaving the waters of Night with a blade of emeralds. He carried me to the Hall of the Velvet Heavens, where in great splendor amid the Night the High Gods dwell. The Moon God filled my cup with His mother-of-pearl light, and I drank deep. The Thunder God played His anthem for me among the Night-swathed peaks, and my limbs took in His strength. Guided by the Gods of Night I wandered through the lustrous dark meadows of bliss, where all desires are satisfied, where the stars flower on the banks of perennial streams.

Then the Comet whirled me away through the Night to the opposite end of the endless sea, to the Cave of the Tormented Heart, blood-drenched prison of the demons. Nothing grows there but the agony of the tortured, a rank vine that fills the caverns, penetrates the soul, slithers into the will.

In terror and confusion I fled. I set off by myself to discover how Night could both nourish me and lacerate me, how it could contain both a Hall of the Velvet Heavens and a Cave of the Tormented Heart, a place where all is granted and a place where all is taken away.

I sank through endless Night to the bottom of the well of existence, and there was nothing but Night. Through darkness without end, I climbed beyond the outermost galaxies, and there was nothing but Night. At the origin of everything, there was Night. At the end of everything, there was Night. I saw Night filling all space. Her hair was a forest, Her tears were a river, Her open mouth was a bottomless valley, Her breath was the wind that creates everything and that destroys everything. Her eye was the globe of the world.

She called my name. Her voice took hold of me like manacles. I tried to escape, but the chains dragged me onwards. They dragged me past the Hall of the Velvet Heavens and the joys that flourish in the Night. They dragged me past the Cave of the Tormented Heart and the suffering that pullulates in the Night. In the suffocating darkness, I rose on a column of lava to the gates swinging open before me. Only then did I understand that the Hall of the Velvet Heavens was the Cave of the Tormented Heart, that the Cave of the Tormented Heart was the Hall of the Velvet Heavens, that there was only one dwelling-place, only one direction, only one entrance.

And, weeping and laughing, I entered into the Day.