FRAGMENT FROM BASRA

--the title of an 18th-century transcript of an Arabic text presumed to have been part of Joannes Daubmannus' lexicographic edition. Published in Prussia in 1691 as The Khazar Dictionary, the edition was immediately destroyed, and it is therefore impossible to verify the above assertation; nor is it known exactly where the fragment might have appeared the dictionary. The fragment reads:

"Just as your soul holds your body in its lowest depths, so Adam Ruhani, the third angel, holds the universe at the bottom of his soul. Now, in 1689 after Isa, Adam Ruhani is on the descending curve of his orbit and is approaching the point where the orbit of the moon crosses that of the sun, the hell of Ahriman; hence, we do not, as we might, pursue you dream hunters and readers of the imagination, who follow him and try to assemble his body in the form of a book. But when in the end of the 2oth century after Isa, he follows the ascending orbit of his wanderings, his state of dreams will approach the Creator, and then we shall have to kill you, you who recognize and collect parts of Adam's body in people's dreams and compile on earth a book of his body. For we cannot permit a book of his body to become a state. Do not think, however, that only a few of us insignificant shaitans and demons concern ourselves with Adam Ruhani. At most you will form his fingertip or the mole of his hip. And we are here to stop his fingertip or the mole of his hip from being shaped. Other devils handle people who try to assemble his other extremities. But do not live in illusion. Not one of you has even touched the bulk of his immense body, the state of your dreams. The job of spelling out Adam Ruhani is only in its infancy. The book that is to incarnate his body on earth is still only in people's dreams. It is partly in the dreams of the dead, and it is impossible to draw out as water from a dry well.