Thus Spake Zarathustra

At a party several women, many of them Parsis, decided to ask me about God, and not succeeding in unsettling me, decided to declare that, "Okay. God or not, we can prove to you that spirits and ghosts exist." I merely smiled, indicating, "Don't even begin to try to prove it." They conferred among themselves, and decided to persist. They gathered six empty glasses of wine, kept them inverted on a table, and began some mumbo-jumbo ritual to summon the "spirit of the glass." It exasperated them that I was paying no attention, and finally they were unbearably frustrated that no spirit turned up, even after they found out, by conferring in a separate room secretly, that none of them was menstruating (which would have kept the spirit away – don’t ask me why). So, in affectionate rage, they cursed me that "the Satan in me should burn in the fires of hell," among a number of other curses. I responded by writing the following, and sending it to all of them:

IGNORANT CHILD, KNOWEST NOT THOU BETTER
THAN TO INVOKE ME IN VAIN
WITHIN AN EMPTIED INVERTED GLASS

HOW DOST THOU PRESUME
THAT MY SPIRIT WOULD TRAVEL
FROM THE STOPPERED BOTTLE WHERE IT DWELLETH
TO AN EMPTY GLASS HELD BY FINGERS
WHOSE OWNERS HAVE FIRST EMPTIED THEIR WISDOM
AND VERILY THEN DIVORCED ALL COMMON SENSE

I ORDAIN THEE TO FIRST UNCORK THE BOTTLE
AND FILL THE GLASS TO THE BRIM
AND HARK MY VOICE WHICH SPEAKETH CHEERILY
THROUGH THE BREATH OF THOSE WHO FIRST FILL THEMSELVES
WITH THE ELIXIR

AND IF THOU CRAVETH AUDIENCE WITH ME
LOOK INTO THE EFFULGENCE OF THEIR EYES
AND IF THOU STILL CANST NOT BEHOLD ME
IMBIBE THEE MORE OF THE SPIRITUOUS DISTILLATE AND
WITNESS MY PRESENCE IN ALL THY LIMBS

-- THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
TO THE SORCERESS

(Note: Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Man and Superman, were magnum opus of the then widely-popular German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who, like many other thinkers, became insane in his later years, and is now almost forgotten, as much as also is his contribution to the field of philosophy. Hitler was credited with being profoundly influenced by Nietzsche, which is a historical error: Hitler was not educated, let alone capable of curiosity or ability to analyse thought and intellect. Similarly, Hitler was also credited with having been influenced by Wilhelm Richard Wagner, while in fact, what happened was that Hitler wanted to be identified with art and music of some form, and he made Wagner very popular, and therefore currently almost banned in Israel. Richard Strauss, a great composer of the time, came actually under the influence of Nietzsche's work, and named his most-remembered music Thus Spake Zarathustra, which gained its ultimate fame when Stanley Kubrick decided to use it very extensively in what will remain an all-time epic in cinema, 2001: A Space Odyssey.)