GNADENTHAL

We all seek the way into Gnadenthal, into Aulie-Ata — that place where, for a moment, the eternal light vanquishes the earthly and one can feel the universe and marvel at its vastness and beauty. The ways in are various, and attainable only to a few, yet in every age people have sought entry: in the archaic rite and in the animal sacrifice, in the mystery-cults of antiquity, in the eternal flame of the Zoroastrians, in the smoke of the thuribulum, in the dance of the dervishes, and in the artificial paradises of the Décadence. The world is full of the ruins of the attempts of past epochs: we find their traces in the Alhambra and on Mount Lykaion, in the fire-shrines of the Atash Behram, in the caves of the desert fathers, in the red of the Kali altars, and in the sighs from the sketes.

The seekers go by many names: they are called Akhenaten and Mani, Rumi and Elagabalus, the Areopagite and al-Hallaj, and later John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Huysmans and Seraphim Rose — yet these are only names for one and the same principle. To some, perhaps, the way was granted, and we could once breathe the other air; but at some point the gates close, and we shall spend the rest of our earthly existence seeking the way back into Aulie-Ata. The world turns cruel and indifferent to us, and other people strangers: they will speak of our overwrought sensibility and of our mystical aberrations, uncomprehending — for they do not know Gnadenthal.

Johannes von Ohrid,
Editor