cloud-phantoms

Updated: May 1, 2025

I could not but think of that old formula for an anthropomorphic Deity 'the Brocken-spectre of the human spirit projected on the mists of the Non-ego. Even like those cloud-phantoms are the gods made in the image of man, who have been worshipped through successive ages of the world, gods dowered with like passions to those of the races who have crouched before them, gods cruel and malignant and lustful, jealous and noble and just, radiant or gloomy, the counterparts of men upon a vast and shadowy scale.

John Addington Symonds - Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, First Series