Letter 15: THE DEVIL

"Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: they struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person." (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago)

"The famous "temptations" of St. Anthony were not, truth to tell, only temptations where it was a matter of the salvation and progress of his soul, but rather they were, in the first place, acts of healing the humanity of his time from demonical obsession. They were acts of sacred magic, bringing demons to the light of consciousness illumined from above, through which they were reduced to impotence. St. Anthony drew demons from darkness to the light of the consciousness of the "son of man". He rendered them visible, and thus impotent." --VT

"Solzhenitsyn"
pencil  12"x16"