A poignant vapor materializes that twirls and whirls like dancing ghosts who still carry the aroma of their decay: Dying, dying figures-- Smiling, smiling a delight! These phantasms, a miasma, rush to seize us as partners, like a mist rising up over the grates of hell to cling upon our paling figures and pull us into the River Styx. Here we remember nightmares, and our noses wrinkle back into our faces as all our senses are momentarily blighted by the odor of death. The ghostly figures before us sound the notes of a deep, far place. We hear the disjunctive cacophony of a chant carried to our ears like infertile seeds torn and tossed in the uneven tempest of a desert storm.

       At length, we come to a chamber door. Inside, we hear a curious cackling as if the old hags of Macbeth are talking and laughing while brewing a witchly fate for some event in the affairs of history. A massive door now before us, we could never have opened it, had it not on its own, swung loose to welcome us. Inside we see, but dimly, two figures nearly touching heads in the exchange of conversation.

       To the right stands the hearth, but it affords little benefit to us since only dying embers remain to give light and heat within the chamber. With his back to the hearth, and so as to conceal the features of his face, sits the Magician. Facing this dark lord we see the rebel and lord of the house as the fading embers glow within his eyes and he bends his ear to the whispers of his guest. The rebel's christened name would be unlike any present, past, or future offspring of Adam. It is a name that speaks of his unique creation. As a son of Adam, his surname would be Will, his residence the heart of hearts, and his arena of activity, human history.

       On the far wall there stands another door heavily barred from the inside. Piercing through the edges of the door, and through its every crack, there breaks a radiant light as if heaven itself were just outside and waiting to enter. And as we listen, we hear an inviting knock as it sifts through the cackle and chant of the Magician and the rebel.       

       We must open our hearts to the Light. Only with hearts fortified in Him dare we consider again the words of the Magician and the rebel. The Magician is neither heard nor seen clearly. He works in the hour of twilight within the interfusion of light and darkness. He has come to me. I could have been a captive, but in Christ I saw, yet only in the Magician's fleeting shadows, the danger I had faced. The Magician also has come to you. His footsteps are sounding, even now, outside your door.

       O yes, he will come to you and seek to bar your heart to heaven. He has sought this in your past, and still he comes to you as a sweet lover to seduce you from the Light. Like Aphrodite, he takes on any form to please your reason or senses. You would never suspect, though I tell you plainly, that the thousand faces of your many mistresses are really the one, formless, darkness which looks out from the blank

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