For new things one necessarily chooses new words. Call our adepts
spiritists, our teaching spiritism, our reading
books of spirits. Forget the past—one cannot know everything—the spirit
loses memories to become itself. The veil
is the return to bodily life.
Divine angels, you expected, predictably enough, these corrections
which I implore you to make in the manuscript. Mad as a tripod,
and difficult, I dictate nothing more, all else will derive
from actors’ games. Play Les Scythes as if it were
La Philosophie dans le boudoir, and Les Scythes will have an effect
of cold, of nonsense, of fabric cut against the grain.
We have only volume two; how can we be responsible
for ratcheting our faults beyond the limit of the past? How can we profit
from experience acquired in forgetfulness? There are gaps
or things missed out in this account. To make up
for something forgotten or for a lapse or oversight that cost him his life.
I can’t remember whom I should warn.
I have not forgotten the guide, kind sir who at each new level of existence
surveys the mistakes committed, judges the given position as just,
makes amends for what has leaked out along the way. He looks
for proofs analogous to those we learned before, and asks the spirits
who are his superiors for help in this new task, intuition,
piecework I’ll do in my own good time.