Zarvan, the Spirit of Time and Space, Conducts the Traveller on a Journey through the Upper World

My soul was convulsed by the words that he spoke, every atom of my body trembled like quicksilver.

Suddenly I saw, between the West and the East, heaven immersed in a single cloud of light;

Out of that cloud an angel descended having two faces, one like fire, one like smoke.

One dark as night, the other bright as a meteor, the eyes of one watchful, the other’s eyes asleep.

The hues of his wings were of crimson and gold, emerald and silver, azure and lapis-lazuli;

His temper had the fleetness even of a phantom, he sped from earth to the Milky Way in an instant;

Every moment he was seized by another desire, to spread his wings in yet another sky.

He said, ‘I am Zarvan, I am the world-subduer, alike hidden from sight and manifest am I.

Every plan is bound up with my determining; voiced and voiceless-all alike are my prey.

Through me the bud swells upon the branch, through me the birdie bewails in the nest;

Through my flight the seed becomes a stalk, through my effluence every parting turns to union.

I pronounce both reproach and exhortation; I render athirst, that I may offer wine.

I am life, I am death, I am resurrection, I am the Judgment, Hell, Heaven and Houri.

Man and angel are both in bondage to me, this transitory world is my own child;

I am every rose that you pluck from the branch, I am the matrix of every thing that you see.

This world is a prisoner in my talisman, every moment it ages through my breath.

But he who has in his heart I have a time with God, that doughty hero has broken my talisman;

If you wish that I should not be in the midst, recite from the depths of your soul I have a time with God.’

I know not what it was that was in his glance, it snatched away from my sight this ancient world;

Either my sight opened on another world or this same world took on another form.

I died in the universe of colour and scent, I was born in a world without tumult and clamour;

My thread snapped from that ancient world, a whole new world came into my hands.

My soul trembled at the loss of a world until another world blossomed out of my dust;

My body became nimbler, my soul more adventurous. the eye of my heart was keener and more wakeful;

Veiled things became manifest uncurtained, the melody of the stars reached my ears.