Art

“Now listen why I used the expression ‘almost,’ when I said that at the end of three of their centuries after the Babylonian period there ‘almost’ entirely ceased to exist every kind of conscious and automatic reproduction of the being-Afalkalna and Soldjinoha.

“The point is that two branches of the conscious hand- productions of the beings of the Babylonian period chanced upon favorable conditions and some of them passed from generation to generation partly consciously and partly automatically on the part of the transmitting beings.

“One of the said two branches recently ceased to exist; but the other has even reached certain beings of contemporary times almost unchanged.

“This branch which reached beings of contemporary times is called there ‘sacred dances.’

“And thanks to this branch alone, which survived from the period of the Babylonian learned beings, a very limited number of three-brained beings there now have the possibility, by means of certain conscious labors, to decipher and learn the information hidden in it and useful for their own Being.

“And the second mentioned branch which recently ceased to exist was that branch of the knowledge of the Babylonian learned beings which they called the ‘combination-of-different-tonalities-of-color’ and which the contemporary beings now call ‘painting.’

“The passing of this branch from generation to generation proceeded almost everywhere but, though gradually disappearing also everywhere with the flow of time, it yet proceeded in quite recent times at a still quite regular tempo both consciously and automatically only among the beings of the community called ‘Persia.’