“If one night we see nothing, we have to offer a sacrifice,” say the priests of Naphta. The priests look at the sky in order to read in it the sign of the sacrifice. And they perform a sacrifice when they cannot read the sky. Sacrifice is the end, sacrifice is the means. Sacrifice is what is read and what makes it possible to read. This is the vibrant circle of the old order.

The subject that escapes death in the sacrifice is a dual subject, just as the subject that had constituted the sacrifice was dual. Akaf is saved only through Far-li-mas, his “companion in death,” the Upaniṣadic bird that contemplates, and here tells stories. And Far-li-mas is saved only through Sali, who finds the “way.” Hierogamy is the seal of the dual subject.

The state of the world cannot be seen during the day, but at night, observing the positions of the stars. And at night Far-li-mas tells his stories: the priests—whose task it is to keep awake and dedicate their vigil to the contemplation of the sky—fall asleep, overwhelmed by the words spoken by Far-li-mas, while his gaze joins that of Sali in perfect wakefulness. The breath of history can be felt in this double course, from sleep to wakefulness and wakefulness to sleep.

The end of the priests killed in the ordeal is just as impressive as the crudeness and swiftness of the ruin of Naphta after Far-li-mas. Envious neighbors overpower and destroy Naphta, which has meanwhile become a prosperous trading center. There is nothing more to say. The old order had ended instead among visions that swelled men’s hearts like the Nile.

Once the priests become victims, at the center of the sacrificial circle formed by thousands and thousands of people, the king’s veil is lifted. Fruit of this last sacrifice are the plants that Akaf and Sali sow after the death of the priests, and which immediately sprout. The veil that is lifted from the king is now the sign of entry into the order of overt, unprotected esotericism, abandoned to the raging flux of events.

The ruin of Kasch takes place after the death of King Akaf. And Akaf, while not sacrificing himself, had maintained the practice of sacrifice until the end. But Far-li-mas cannot perform the sacrifice: he is neither priest nor king: he is just the other part of the last king. The kings have become extinct with Akaf, the priests have had to die in the ordeal. The king who is not sacrificed is the last king. He cannot pass his life on to a successor. It is the reverse of the modern situation: Louis XVI, the first king to be sacrificed (Charles I doesn’t qualify as an example) marks the end of royal sovereignty.

Far-li-mas marks the beginning of another reign: the reign of the word, after that of bloodshed. It is a reign that does not kill by way of ritual, but stirs death through a rapid, indomitable disorder that supervenes. The words of Far-li-mas replace the sacrifice: like the sacrifice, they have the power to command obedience: but they don’t have the power to establish time cycles. Time is now just the swing of the pendulum between one empty flow, devoid of attachments, and the suspension caused by the drug of the word. Far-li-mas’s words have a power of their own, but they cannot reflect the position of the stars.