
“behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.”
Source: Warrior of the Light
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: "Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres."
Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say:
"Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance in. I cannot wait."
Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space — insect or star or idea — turns into dance.
“behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.”
Source: Warrior of the Light
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.
Introduction
The Madman (1918)
Letter written the night before his duel with Aaron Burr (10 July 1804)
“Our first and final task will be to meditate upon the truest name of God.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations
“All things are but masks at God's beck and call,
They are symbols that instruct us that God is all.”
As translated by Raficq Abdulla
The Conference of the Birds (1177)
Press Conference, September 1 1992 http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/92fs$$.htm
1990s
“I was the first woman to burn my bra - it took the fire department four days to put it out.”