“Man's experience tells him that wherever there are signs of life, death is in the offing. The more alive this life becomes, the nearer death draws, until the supreme moment - the enchanted moment when something new is created - when death and life meet in an embrace of mad ecstasy. The rapture and terror of life are so profound because they are intoxicated with death. As often as life engenders itself anew, the wall which separates it from death is momentarily destroyed. Death comes to the old and the sick from the outside, bringing fear or comfort. They think of it because they feel that life is waning. But for the young the intimidation of death rises up out of the full maturity of each individual life and intoxicates them so that their ecstasy becomes infinite. Life which has become sterile totters to meet its end, but love and death have welcomed and clung to one another passionately from the beginning.”
― Walter Friedrich Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult
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