B1027 <=> B1029 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1028]

“I repeat, my boy, there exists at the present time on that continent Asia a great many similar customs.

“I personally saw hundreds of them which seemed at first sight no less strange and barbarous but, upon a serious and impartial study of their hidden meaning, always revealed one and the same aim, namely, either the destruction of the noxious carriers of various diseases, or the strengthening of moral shame.

“But on the continent of Europe I scarcely found a single custom specially created either for purposes of hygiene or for instilling morality among the masses.

“It cannot be denied that various customs also exist on the continent of Europe, even thousands of them, but they are all established only in order that beings may have the possibility of pleasing each other, or to conceal the real state of affairs, that is to say, to disguise the undesirable forms of one’s exterior – undesirable of course only according to subjective understanding – and to conceal the nullity of one’s own inner significance.

“These customs existing there progressively increase year by year the ‘duality’ of the personality and mind of the beings there.

“But the principal evil lies in this, that at the present time there, all the ‘Oskianotznel’ of the rising generation, or the education of the children, is rendered and reduced only to the adoption of these innumerable customs which exist among them and engender only immorality. Hence it is that year by year the data crystallized in them by tens of centuries for the Being ‘of an image of God,’ and not simply, as they themselves would say, ‘of an animal,’ are on the one hand decrystallized, and on the other hand their psyche is already becoming almost such as our dear Teacher defines by the words: