The First Week: The Second Exercise

Is a meditation concerning estrangement; comprehending, after the preparatory prayer and two preludes, five articles or points, with a colloquy at the end.

The preparatory prayer is the same as above.

The first prelude requires the same construction of the place as in the preceding meditation.

And the latter will be made by asking what we here seek; that is to say, intense grief concerning estrangement and alienation, with abundant weeping.

Let the first point be, a certain inquest by which all the ways in which one has felt alienated or estranged from the world and all the ways in one's whole life by which one has reinforced that state are recalled into the memory, the person going through, step by step, and examining the several years and spaces of time. In which thing we are assisted by a threefold summing up, by considering, that is to say, the places where we have lived, the various modes of intercourse we have had with others, and the different kinds of offices or occupations in which we have been engaged.

The second is, to weigh the alienation and estrangement themselves, how great is the pain and how damaging the effects of it.

The third is, to consider myself, who or of what kind I am, adding comparisons which may bring me closer to the world; as if I reflect how little I am when compared with all humanity; then what the whole multitude of mortals is, as compared with all beings everywhere, pervading space and time: after these things I must consider what, in fact, this world is in comparison with the vastness and variety of all the worlds floating serenely through the obsidian mirror of outer space: what, now, can I, one mere human being, be? Lastly, let me look at the damaging nature of my relations, the tightened hardness of my soul, and the pollution of my body and the world.

The fourth is, to consider what the world is, which I have thus refused and rejected, collecting the glories and beauties which are ever-present around me (reminding myself, with Tlazolteotl's name, that they are more ever-present than I tend to recognize, and working to correct that unfortunate habit) and comparing them with my beauties and glories (invoking Hermaphroditos's name for the same reminder); also to see how the world comports itself and asking Antinous Nauigator to help me find the same paths in my own life.

The fifth, to break forth into exclamation, from a vehement commotion of the feelings, admiring greatly how all creatures (going over them severally) have borne with me so long, and even to this time preserved me alive; how the angels and the spirits and the gods, bearing their magicks and their knowledges, have patiently borne with me, guarded me, and even assisted me with their prayers; how the ancestors have aided me; how the sky, the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies, the elements, and all kinds of animals and productions of the earth, in place of the vengeance due, have helped me; how, lastly, the ecosphere and its immune system have yet to wipe me from the earth's face.

Lastly, this meditation must be concluded by a colloquy, in which I extol the infinite wisdom, planning, and sight of Antinous Nauigator, and in which I give thanks to the best of my power (again, to whatever god or force I might care to thank or to none at all) that I live up to this day; whence proposing for the future the amendment of myself, I shall intone once again the Antinoan Coming Forth by Day.