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Hermann Hesse

177 quotes

“It was my destiny to join in a great experience. Having had the good fortune to belong to the League, I was permitted to be a participant in unique journey. What wonder it had at the time! How radiant and comet-like it seemed, and how quickly it has been forgotten and allowed to fall into disrepute. For this reason, I have decided to attempt a short description of this fabulous journey, a journey the like of which had not been attempted since the days of Hugo and mad Roland. p. 4”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The paradox alone must always be accepted that the seemingly impossible must continually be attempted. I agree with Siddhartha, our wise friend from the East, who once said: Words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another. p. 7”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even centuries ago the members and historians of our League recognised and courageously faced up to this difficulty. One of the greatest of them gave expression to it in an immortal verse: He who travels far will often see things Far removed from what he believed was Truth. When he talks about it in the fields at home, He is often accused of lying, For the obdurate people will not believe What they do not see and distinctly feel. Inexperience, I believe. Will give little credence to my song. p. 8”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My tale becomes even more difficult because we not only wandered through Space, but also through Time. We moved towards the East, but we also travelled into the Middle Ages and the Golden Age ; we roamed through Italy or Switzerland, but at times we also spent the night in the 10th century and dwelt with the patriarchs or the fairies. During the times I remained alone, I often found again places and people of my own past. I wandered with my former betrothed along the edges of the forest of the Upper Rhine, caroused with friends of my youth... p. 23”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was one of the triumphant periods of our journey; we had brought the magic wave with us ; it cleansed everything. The native paid homage on his knees to beauty, the lord of the castle produced a poem which dealt with our evening activities. The animals from the forest lurked close to the castle walls, and in the river the gleaming fishes moved in lively swarms and were fed with cakes and wine. p. 26”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long...”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was not for me to convert Lukas, but I gave him some corrected information; for instance...that Zoroaster, Lao Tse, Plato, Xenophon, Pythagoras, Albertus Magnus, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Novalis and Baudelaire were co-founders and brothers of our League. p. 43”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Leo looked at me with a warning glance to be patient, silent and respectful, and disappeared amongst the crowd... I perceived familiar faces, serious or smiling. I saw the figure of Albertus Magnus, the ferryman Vasudeva, the artist Klingsor, and others. p. 68”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I, who could not decipher or understand one thousandth part of those millions of scripts, books, pictures and references in the archives! Humbled, unspeakably foolish, unspeakably ridiculous, not understanding myself, feeling extremely small, I saw myself... p. 76”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His walk was light and peaceful, his robe sparkled with gold. He came nearer amid the silence of the assembly... he climbed through the rows of officials to the High Throne like a Pope. Like a magnificent, rare flower, he carried the brilliance of his attire up the stairs. Each row of officials rose to greet him as he passed. He bore his radiant office conscientiously, humbly, dutifully, as humbly as a holy Pope or patriarch bears his insignia. p. 77”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The defendant did not know until this hour, or could not really believe, that his apostasy and aberration were a test... His suffering became too great, and you know that as soon as suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward. p.83”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side. p.83”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have begun with the easiest tasks which require the smallest amount of faith. Each succeeding task will be increasingly difficult. p. 85”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only slowly did it dawn upon me. Only slowly and gradually did I begin to suspect and then perceive what it was intended to represent. It represented a figure which was myself, and this likeness of myself was unpleasantly weak and half-real; it had blurred features, and in its whole expression there was something unstable, weak, dying or wishing to die, and looked rather like a piece of sculpture which could be called “ Transitoriness ” or “ Decay,” or something similar. p. 92”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I stood there and looked and tried to understand what I saw, I recalled a short conversation that I had once had with Leo during the festive days at Bremgarten. We had talked about the creations of poetry being more vivid and real than the poets themselves. The candles burned low and went out. I was overcome by an infinite weariness and desire to sleep, and I turned away to find a place where I could lie down and sleep. p. 93”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but the home and the youth of the soul, the everywhere and nowhere, the oneness of all times.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journey to the Orient, as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture
“For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“*Mnemonists, people with freakish memories and no other virtues, were capable of playing dazzling games, dismaying and confusing the other participants by their rapid muster of countless ideas. In the course of time such displays of virtuosity fell more and more under a strict ban, and contemplation became a highly important component of the Game. Ultimately, for the audiences at each Game it became the main thing. This was the necessary turning toward the religious spirit.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What had formerly mattered was following the sequences of ideas and the whole intellectual mosaic of a Game with rapid attentiveness, practiced memory, and full understanding. But there now arose the demand for a deeper and more spiritual approach.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After each symbol conjured up by the director of a Game, each player was required to perform silent, formal meditation on the content, origin, and meaning of this symbol, to call to mind intensively and organically its full purport. The members of the Order and of the Game associations brought the technique and practice of contemplation with them from their elite schools, where the art of contemplation and meditation was nurtured with the greatest care. In this way the hieroglyphs of the Game were kept from degenerating into mere empty signs.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pious thinkers of earlier times had represented the life of creatures, say, as a mode of motion toward God, and had considered that the variety of the phenomenal world reached perfection and ultimate cognition only in the divine Unity. Similarly, the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were entertaining, impassioned, or witty lectures on Goethe, say, in which he would be depicted descending from a post chaise wearing a blue frock-coat to seduce some Strassburg or Wetzlar girl; or on Arabic culture; in all of them a number of fashionable phrases were shaken up like dice in a cup and everyone was delighted if he dimly recognized one or two catchwords.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The "music of decline" had sounded, as in that wonderful Chinese fable; like a thrumming bass on the organ its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of the schools, periodicals, and universities, in melancholia and insanity among those artists and critics who could still be taken seriously; it raged as untrammeled and amateurish overproduction in all the arts.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When an orchestra of the Journeyers first publicly performed a suite from the time before Handel completely without crescendi and diminuendi, with the naïveté and chasteness of another age and world, some among the audience are said to have been totally uncomprehending, but others listened with fresh attention and had the impression that they were hearing music for the first time in their lives. In the League's concert hall between Bremgarten and Morbio, one member built a Bach organ as perfectly as Johann Sebastian Bach would have had it built had he had the means and opportunity.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The young people who now proposed to devote themselves to intellectual studies no longer took the term to mean attending a university and taking a nibble of this or that from the dainties offered by celebrated and loquacious professors who without authority offered them the crumbs of what had once been higher education.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now they had to study just as stringently and methodically as the engineers and technicians of the past, if not more so. They had a steep path to climb, had to purify and strengthen their minds by dint of mathematics and scholastic exercises in Aristotelian philosophy. Moreover, they had to learn to renounce all those benefits which previous generations of scholars had considered worth striving for: rapid and easy money-making, celebrity and public honors, the homage of the newspapers, marriages with daughters of bankers and industrialists, a pampered and luxurious style of life.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be capable of everything and do justice to everything, one certainly does not need less spiritual force and èlan and warmth, but more. What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world. Where passion dominates, that does not signify the presence of greater desire and ambition, but rather the misdirection of these qualities toward an isolated and false goal, with a consequent tension and sultriness in the atmosphere.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who direct the maximum force of their desires towards the center, toward the true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example, they will not shout and wave their arms. But I assure you, they are nevertheless burning with subdued fires.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was lovely, and tempting, to exert power over men and to shine before others, but power also had its perditions and perils. History, after all, consisted of an unbroken succession of rulers, leaders, bosses, and commanders who with extremely rare exceptions had all begun well and ended badly. All of them, at least so they said, had striven for power for the sake of the good; afterward they had become obsessed and numbed by power and loved it for its own sake.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How alien our country has become from her noblest Province and how unfaithful to that Province's spirit; how far body and soul, ideal and reality have moved apart in our country; how little they know about each other, or want to know.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classroom, archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys — if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had tasted the bait and knew that there was nothing more attractive and more subtle on earth than the Game. I had also observed fairly early that this enchanting Game demanded more than naive amateur players, that it took total possession of the man who had succumbed to its magic. And an instinct within me rebelled against my throwing all my energies and interests into this magic forever. Some naive feeling for simplicity, for wholeness and soundness, warned me against the spirit of the Waldzell Vicus Lusorum.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sensed in it a spirit of specialism and virtuosity, certainly highly cultivated, certainly richly elaborated, but nevertheless isolated from humanity and the whole of life — a spirit that had soared too high into haughty solitariness. For years I doubted and probed, until the decision had matured within me and in spite of everything I decided in favor of the Game. I did so because I had within me that urge to seek the supreme fulfillment and serve only the greatest master.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ordinarily, when he thought back upon those days, let alone upon his student years and the Bamboo Grove, it had always been as if he were gazing from a cool, dull room out into broad, brightly sunlit landscapes, into the irrevocable past, the paradise of memory. Such recollections had always been, even when they were free of sadness, a vision of things remote and different, separated from the prosaic present by a mysterious festiveness.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was as if by becoming a musician and Music Master he had chosen music as one of the ways toward man's highest goal, inner freedom, purity, perfection, and as though ever since making that choice he has done nothing but let himself be more and more permeated, transformed, purified by music — his entire self from his nimble, clever pianist's hands and his vast, well-stocked musician's memory to all the parts and organs of body and soul, to his pulses and breathing, to his sleep and dreaming — so that he was now only a symbol, or rather a manifestation, a personification of music.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As every flower fades and as all youth departs, so life at every stage, So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,Blooms in its day and may not last forever.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since life may summon us at every ageBe ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor, Be ready bravely and without remorseTo find new light that old ties cannot give.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In all beginnings dwells a magic forceFor guarding us and helping us to live. Serenely let us move to distant placesAnd let no sentiments of home detain us.The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain usBut lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we accept a home of our own making,Familiar habit makes for indolence. We must prepare for parting and leave-takingOr else remain the slaves of permanence.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the hour of our death may sendUs speeding on to fresh and newer spaces, And life may summon us to newer races.So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I take a long look at my life, as though from outside, it does not appear particularly happy. Yet I am even less justified in calling it unhappy, despite all its mistakes. After all, it is foolish to keep probing for happiness or unhappiness, for it seems to me it would be hard to exchange the unhappiest days of my life for all the happy ones. If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless. Even if, as it is decreed by the gods, fate has inexorably trod over my external existence as it does with everyone, my inner life has been of my own making . I deserve its sweetness and bitterness and accept full responsibility for it.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At about the age of six or seven, I realized that of all the invisible powers the one I was destined to be most strongly affected and dominated by was music. From that moment on I had a world of my own, a sanctuary and a heaven that no one could take away from me. Oh, music! A melody occurs to you; you sing it silently, inwardly only; you steep your being in it;it takes possession of all your strength and emotions, and during the time it lives in you, it effaces all that is fortuitous, evil, coarse and sad in you; it brings the world into harmony with you, it makes burdens light and gives wings to to depressed spirits.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a man does not think too much, he rejoices at rising in the morning, and at eating and drinking. He finds satisfaction in them and does not want them to be otherwise. But if he ceases to take things for granted, he seeks eagerly and hopefully during the course of the day for moments of real life, the radiance of which makes him rejoice and obliterates the awareness of time and all thoughts on the meaning and purpose of everything. One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God. Perhaps it is the excessive radiance of these moments that make everything else appear so dark. Perhaps it is the feeling of liberation, the enchanting lightness and the suspended bliss that make the rest of life seem so difficult, demanding and oppressive. I do not know. I have not travelled very far in thought and philosophy. However I do know that if there is a state of bliss and a paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such moments, and if this state of bliss can be attained through suffering and dwelling in pain, then no sorrow or pain can be so great that one should attempt to escape from it.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was no different with my own life, and with Gertrude's and that of many others. Fate was not kind, life was capricious and terrible, and there was no good or reason in nature. But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another, and live to comfort each other. And sometimes, when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us. Out of sounds, words, and other frail and worthless things, we can construct playthings — songs and poems full of meaning, consolation and goodness, more beautiful and enduring than the grim sport of fortune and destiny. We can keep the spirit of God in our hearts and, at times, when we are full of Him, He can appear in our eyes and our words, and also talk to others who do no know or do not wish to know Him. We cannot evade life's course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him — for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood. Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men — each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature — are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, story telling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross. Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves. Each man's life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then came those years in which I was forced to recognize the existence of a drive within me that had to make itself small and hide from the world of light. The slowly awakening sense of my own sexuality overcame me, as it does every person, like an enemy and terrorist, as something forbidden, tempting, and sinful. What my curiosity sought, what dreams, lust and fear created — the great secret of puberty — did not fit at all into my sheltered childhood. I behaved like everyone else. I led the double life of a child who is no longer a child. My conscious self lived within the familiar and sanctioned world; it denied the new world that dawned within me. Side by side with this I lived in a world of dreams, drives and desires of a chthonic nature, across which my conscious self desperately built its fragile bridges, for the childhood world within me was falling apart. Like most parents, mine were no help with the new problems of puberty, to which no reference was ever made. All they did was take endless trouble in supporting my hopeless attempts to deny reality and to continue dwelling in a childhood world that was becoming more and more unreal. I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Certainly you shouldn't go kill somebody or rape a girl, no! But you haven't reached the point where you can understand the actual meaning of "permitted" and "forbidden." You've only sensed part of the truth. You will feel the other part, too, you can depend on it. For instance, for about a year you have had to struggle with a drive that is stronger than any other and which is considered "forbidden." The Greeks and many other peoples, on the other hand, elevated this drive, made it divine and celebrated it in great feasts. What is forbidden, in other words, is not something eternal; it can change. Anyone can sleep with a woman as soon as he's been to a pastor with her and has married her, yet other races do it differently, even nowadays. Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden — forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa. Actually it's only a question of convenience. Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised. Each person must stand on his own feet.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year's secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We ought not to consider the opinions of those sects as naïve as they appear from the rationalist point of view. Science as we know it today was unknown to antiquity. Instead there existed a preoccupation with philosophical and mystical truths which was highly developed. What grew out of this preoccupation was to some extent merely pedestrian magic and frivolity; perhaps it frequently led to deceptions and crimes, but this magic, too, had noble antecedents in a profound philosophy. As, for instance, the teachings concerning Abraxas which I cited a moment ago. This name occurs in connection with Greek magical formulas and is frequently considered to be the name of some magician's helper such as certain uncivilized tribes believe in even at present. But it appears that Abraxas has much deeper significance. We may conceive of the name as that of the godhead whose symbolic task is the uniting of godly and devilish elements.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source