They wept together in silence.

The ciphers were said to have been used by Greek philosophers and others who predated Islam such as the Sabeans, Nabateans, Chaldeans and the Hermesians. The Hermesians were Gnostics whose mythical leader was Hermes Trismegistos (meaning “Mercury, the Thrice Great”).

[…]and what a nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her humours, &c. &c.[…]

Whatever contradictions fuelled, or at this time failed to fuel my cartooning, I would have been better throwing in my lot with overt rudery and dysfunction, rather than trying to gain acceptance from the effete mob that ran the New Yorker.