I toyed with the paper, unfolded it without thinking, and discovered a few words written thereon. I threw a glance at the writing, one word riveted my attention. Terrified, I read on, while my heart seemed to become numb with a sense of destiny.
“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The name of the god is Abraxas.”
I sank into deep meditation after I had read the words through several times. It admitted of no doubt: this was Demian’s answer. None could know of the bird, except our two selves. He had received my picture. He had understood and helped me to explain its significance. But where was the connection in all this? And—what worried me above all—what did Abraxas mean? I had never read or heard of the word. “The name of the god is Abraxas!”
The hour passed without my hearing anything of the lesson. The next lesson began, the last of the morning. It was taken by quite a young assistant master, fresh from the University, to whom we had already taken a liking, because he was young and pretended to no false dignity with us.
We were reading Herodotus under Doctor Follen’s guidance. This was one of the few school subjects which interested me. But this time my attention wandered. I had mechanically flung open my book, but I did not follow the translation, and remained lost in thought. For the rest, I had already several times had the experience that what Demian had said to me in the confirmation class was right. If you willed a thing strongly enough, it happened. If during the lesson I was deeply immersed in thought, I need not fear that the master would disturb my peace. Certainly, if you were absent-minded or sleepy, then he stood suddenly there; that had already happened to me several times. But if you were really thinking, if you were genuinely sunk in thought, then you were safe. And I had already put to the test what he had said to me about fixing a person with one’s eyes. When at school with Demian I had never been successful in this attempt, but now I often realized that you could accomplish much simply by a fixed look and deep thinking.
So I was sitting now, my thoughts far from Herodotus and school. But the master’s voice unexpectedly fell on my consciousness like a thunder-crash, so that I started with fright. I listened to his voice, he was standing quite close to me, I thought he had already called me by name. But he did not look at me. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Then I heard his voice again. Loudly the word “Abraxas” fell from his lips.
Continuing his explanation, the beginning of which had escaped me, Doctor Follen said: “We must not imagine the ideas of those sects and mystical corporations of antiquity to be as naïve as they appear from the standpoint of a rationalistic outlook. Antiquity knew absolutely nothing of science, in our sense of the word. On the other hand more attention was paid to truths of a philosophical, mystical nature, which often attained to a very high stage of development. Magic in part arose therefrom, and often led to fraud and crime. But none the less, magic had a noble origin and was inspired by deep thought. So it was with the teaching of Abraxas, which I have just cited as an example. This name is used in connection with Greek charm formulas. Many opinions coincide in thinking it is the name of some demon of magic, such as some savage people worship to-day. But it appears that Abraxas had a much wider significance. We can imagine the name to be that of a divinity on whom the symbolical task was imposed of uniting the divine and the diabolical.”
The learned little man continued his discourse with much seriousness, no one was very attentive, and as the name did not recur, I was soon immersed in my own thoughts again.
“To unite the divine and the diabolical,” rang in my ears. Here was a starting-point. I was familiar with that idea from my conversations with Demian in the very last period of our friendship. Demian told me then, we had indeed a God whom we revered, but this God represented part of the world only, the half which was arbitrarily separated from the rest (it was the official, permitted, “bright” world). But one should be able to hold the whole world in honor. One should either have a god who was at the same time a devil, or one should institute devil worship together with worship of God. And now Abraxas was the god, who was at the same time god and devil.