Black Books
Truly, I am the sacrifice. Completion is the sacrifice.
Completion is joy and foreseeing of the shadow.
Completion is the end.
The end means the beginning, and hence completion is smallness and beginning in the smallest.
Everything is incomplete, and completion is hence solitude. But solitude seeks community.
Hence completion means community.
I am perfection itself, but only he who has attained his limits is complete.
I am the never-dying light, but complete is he who stands between day and night.
I am eternal imperishable love, but complete is he who has placed the sacrificial knife beside his love.
I am beauty itself, but complete is he who sits against the temple wall and mends shoes for money.
He who is complete is simple, solitary, and unanimous. Hence he seeks diversity,
community, ambiguity. Through diversity, community, and ambiguity he advances toward simplicity, solitude, and unanimity.
He who is complete knows suffering and joy, but I am the bliss beyond joy and suffering.
He who is complete knows light and dark, but I am the light beyond day and darkness.
He is who complete knows up and down, but I am the height beyond high and low.
He who is complete knows the creating and the created, but I am the eternal parturient image beyond creation and creature.
He who is complete knows loving and being loved, but I am the love beyond embrace and mourning.
He who is complete knows man and woman, but I am the man, and of the man his father and son beyond masculine and feminine, beyond child and the aged.
He who is complete knows rise and fall, but I am the center beyond dawn and dusk.
He who is complete knows me and hence he is different from me. ~Phanes, The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 193-194
