“Gumbril, Theodore Gumbril Junior, B.A. Oxon, sat in his oaken stall on the north side of the School Chapel and wondered, as he listened through the uneasy silence of half a thousand schoolboys to the First lesson, pondered, as he looked up at the vast window opposite, all blue and jaundiced and bloody with nineteenth century glass, speculated in his rapid and rambling way about the existence and the nature of God. Standing in front of the spread brass eagle and fortified in his convictions by the sixth chapter of Deuteronamy [for this first Sunday of term was the fifth after Easter], the Reverend Pelvey could speak of these things with an enviable certainty. “Hear, O Isreal,” he was booming over the top of the portentous Book: “the Lord our God is one Lord.” One Lord; Mr. Pelvey knew; he had studied theology. But if theology and theosophy, then why not theography and theometry, why not theognomy, theotrophy, theotomy, theogamy? Why not theo-physics and theo-chemistry? Why not that ingenious toy, the theotrope, or wheel of gods? Why not a monumental theodrome?” Aldous Huxley.
Excerpted from “Antic Hay” author Aldous Huxley. Publisher: A Bantam Book published by arrangement with Harper and Brothers, 49 East 33rd. St., NY 16, N.Y.
And that’s Just the first three paragraphs. If you have not read him and choose to do so, I suggest you have the following at hand. The Old Testament, the New Testament, the Holy Qur’an, and any tome from the Far East of a similar nature. Also, a dictionary-cum-encyclopedia, knowledge of the romance languages of course, ha,ha, and abandon your preconceived notions of anything and everything before you turn a page.
Islander.