The barrier between divine and human things is frail but inviolable;
the artist and the bourgeois are only divided by a point of view - "A
hair divided the false and true."
I am watching the opalescence of my absinthe, and it leads me to
ponder upon a certain very curious mystery, persistent in legend. We
may call it the mystery of the rainbow.
Originally in the fantastic but significant legend of the Hebrews,
the rainbow is mentioned as the sign of salvation. The world has been
purified by water, and was ready for the revelation of Wine. God
would never again destroy His work, but ultimately seal its perfection
by a baptism of fire.
Now, in this analogue also falls the coat of many colours which was
made for Joseph, a legend which was regarded as so important that it
was subsequently borrowed for the romance of Jesus. The veil of the
Temple, too, was of many colours. We find, further east, that the
Manipura Cakkra - the Lotus of the City of Jewels - which is an
important centre in Hindu anatomy, and apparently identical with the
solar plexus, is the central point of the nervous system of the human
body, dividing the sacred from the profane, or the lower from the
higher. ...