Not too long ago, I was introduced to The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith (Found here at Eldritch Dark! ) in which a great fire in the center of a flame emits beautiful musical sounds, so alluring that it draws creatures from all walks to come and throw themselves into the fire.
The narrator of the story visits the site, feels the allure and resists the urge to join all the many others sacrificing themselves in the flame, but soon he realizes the allure of the flame, eventually coming to realize it presents a better destiny than any other he might imagine in his mundane life.
I’m not quite there yet, unable to tell the difference between making an existential choice for myself, or being drawn to it via an external controlling mechanism (say a parasite in my brain, or a stimulus tapping into some primal fail-deadly urge), but left to my own devices my own journey is likely to be wholly unremarkable.
A sense of the cosmic sublime, maybe?
Not too long ago, I was introduced to The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith (Found here at Eldritch Dark! ) in which a great fire in the center of a flame emits beautiful musical sounds, so alluring that it draws creatures from all walks to come and throw themselves into the fire.
The narrator of the story visits the site, feels the allure and resists the urge to join all the many others sacrificing themselves in the flame, but soon he realizes the allure of the flame, eventually coming to realize it presents a better destiny than any other he might imagine in his mundane life.
I’m not quite there yet, unable to tell the difference between making an existential choice for myself, or being drawn to it via an external controlling mechanism (say a parasite in my brain, or a stimulus tapping into some primal fail-deadly urge), but left to my own devices my own journey is likely to be wholly unremarkable.