I was disappointed, as you’ll understand when you get to “The Six Angel Pictures” — disappointed not in myself, but in the level of my spiritual maturity. I had thought I was further along. To discover now, after twenty-two years of Zen training, that I was still susceptible to otherworldly visions... Ah, well. On the other hand, the event certainly had its fascination. And even in these first moments of our acquaintance, as he waited there politely, bathed in the sunlight of a northern California spring day, the upper edges of his wings overlapped by the silver-green leaves of the olive tree, I realized that there had been some excessive quality in my book, some attachment to a view of reality that excluded the muse of the archetypal, or at least banished her to an ash-strewn corner beside the kitchen fire.

“Fear not, Stephen,” said the archangel, “for thy prayer hath been answered.” He wore a robe of heavy, cream-colored satin. His face was girlish and white; it had the look not of human skin but of a flower petal; was, in fact, the same white as the lily in his hand, which seemed to be illumined from inside, as if there were a tiny light-source in its throat. Above his blond head floated a stiff circle of gold the size of a dinner plate.