Heinrich Zimmer provides a collection of stories from from Eastern and Western literatures that are linked by a shared concern for the dilemma of our perpetual fight with the powers of evil. This issue is explored in stories from Irish paganism, mediaeval Christianity, the Arthurian cycle, and early Hinduism, beginning with an Arabian Nights storey. Zimmer reveals the meanings inside seemingly unconnected symbols in his retellings of these tales, implying the philosophical coherence of this collection of myth.
With the compelling convincingness of dreams, which are vague yet exact, the ghost voice draws us (to ourselves and all of our component selves), lifts them casually out of the well of the past--the well wherein nothing is lost, the deep well of forgetfulness, and remembrance--and tosses them mockingly on the glassy table surface of our consciousness. There we are forced to consider them. There we are forced to regard, analyze, and re-understand.
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