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Now I tell what is very strong magic. I woke in the midst of the night. When I woke, the fire had gone out and I was cold. It seemed to me that all around me there were whisperings and voices. I closed my eyes to shut them out. Some will say that I slept again, but I do not think that I slept. I could feel the spirits drawing my spirit out of my body as a fish is drawn on a line.
Why should I lie about it? I am a priest and the son of a priest. If there are spirits, as they say, in the small Dead Places near us, what spirits must there not be in that great Place of the Gods? And would not they wish to speak? After such long years? I know that I felt myself drawn as a fish is drawn on a line. I had stepped out of my body — I could see my body asleep in front of the cold fire, but it was not I. I was drawn to look out upon the city of the gods.
It should have been dark, for it was night, but it was not dark. Everywhere there were lights — lines of light — circles and blurs of light — ten thousand torches would not have been the same. The sky itself was alight — you could barely see the stars for the glow in the sky. I thought to myself "This is strong magic" and trembled. There was a roaring in my ears like the rushing of rivers. Then my eyes grew used to the light and my ears to the sound. I knew that I was seeing the city as it had been when the gods were alive.

 

Stephen Vincent Benet

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It is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.
Nevertheless, we make a beginning. it is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now — there are the books and the writings. They are hard to learn. And the magic tools are broken — but we can look at them and wonder. At least, we make a beginning. And, when I am chief priest we shall go beyond the great river. We shall go to the Place of the Gods — the place newyork — not one man but a company. We shall look for the images of the gods and find the god ASHING and the others — the gods Lincoln and Biltmore and Moses. But they were men who built the city, not gods or demons. They were men. I remember the dead man's face. They were men who were here before us. We must build again.

 

Stephen Vincent Benet

 

The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods...' There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for the screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and the slopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am plunging... Hei! Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!

 

H. P. Lovecraft

 

He could not sing for them a sweet song, or create a "thing of beauty" which should be "a joy for ever," or touch their hearts, or fire their spirits, or deepen their reverence or their fervour. He was not a Poet, a Priest, or a Prophet, but only a cold, clear, Intelligence, raying down pure white light, which brightened everything on which it fell, but warmed nothing—a Star of at least the second, if not of the first magnitude, in the Intellectual Firmament.

 

Henry Cavendish

 

It was as if he sat in cross currents from many eternities — some with a grey cold light over them, others completely in darkness. Was it the agony of Gethsemane? The disintegration of his body was in full swing. He remained sitting there, remembering something he had experienced one night last winter. It seemed to him that the great silence, which only comes when a human being has drawn his last breath, enveloped him. And suddenly Kathryn was standing beside his bed. She took his hand in hers and smiled sadly. "Do you wish, Husband, that I shall pray for you, that you may still live?" she asked. "Here, from where I now am, it is not such a long way to God as from the place where you are." Her voice was without reproach, and all fear and suffering had left her face.
"Oh, my dear," he had said. "Do not intervene in the wise counsels of God. Don't you hate me, Kathryn?"
She smiled again. "There is no hate here. No, Husband, I love you more dearly now than when I lived — but it is with another love, a love purified of all self-love." But he couldn't quite decide whether this was a dream or a vision. Now, when his earthly happiness was in ruins, his spirit became more and more liberated. The eyes of his soul had the land of Canaan in sight. He had come closer now. He noticed it in so many things.

 

Johan Falkberget

 

"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars — points of light and reason. ...And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything."

 

Stephenie Meyer