The Devil Aspect

by Craig Russell

I could see how her insanity had been more complex, more persuasive, more convincing than my sanity.”

“You have to understand—it’s the nature of the Devil to disguise his presence. The truth is that the Devil comes into all of our lives, at least once, at one time or another. Everyone encounters him, but most don’t know he’s there. They blame the evil in others, or in themselves, for anything bad that happens to them. The truth is nobody really believes in him anymore, which is his most powerful weapon.

Mořic and I married to save each other from loneliness, but all that happened was that we were lonely together.

“The greatest danger in seeking out the Devil, my dear Doctor, is that you might find him.”

“Good people become mentally ill just as much as bad people. And they aren’t responsible for the crimes they commit—they inhabit a different world, a world of hallucination and delusional beliefs.”

You can’t chain curiosity, Doctor. The inquiring mind does not wither in confinement, it merely adjusts its scope of inquiry to a smaller segment of the universe.

Have you ever looked past your reflection in the mirror? Angled your view to see the room and the world your reflection inhabits and wondered if that is the real world, and yours is the reflection?”

“What science can’t yet explain rationally, superstition explains irrationally. That doesn’t make phenomena any less real.

“It was then they realized that the Devil is just God in his night attire.”

Maybe, she thought, madness would soon become so commonplace it wouldn’t be recognized as madness anymore.

“Everyone,” Dr. Jung had told his eager student, “sees him- or herself as a statement: a declaration to the world. ‘This is what I am. This is who I am.’ The truth, however, is that every human being, every consciousness, is not a statement at all. It is a question.