Demian

by Hermann Hesse

Only gradually and unconsciously was a connection established between that exclusively mental picture and the hint about the god I must seek that had come to me from outside. But then the connection became tighter and more intimate, and I began to notice that, in that very dream of premonition, I was invoking Abraxas. Rapture and terror, man and woman combined, the most sacred and the most hideous things interwoven, deep guilt quivering in the heart of the gentlest innocence—such was the image of my dream of love, and such was Abraxas, also. Love was no longer an obscure animal urge, as I had conceived it anxiously at the beginning, nor was it any longer a spiritualized pious worship, such as I had offered to the image of Beatrice. It was both, both and much more still, it was an angelic image and Satan, man and woman in one, human being and animal, the highest good and extreme evil. To experience this seemed to be my lot; to taste of it, my destiny. I longed for it and feared it, but it was always there, always hovering over me.