In the earlier volumes of this survey of the historical transformations of those imagined forms that I am calling the "masks" of God, through which men everywhere have sought to relate themselves to the wonder of existence, the myths and rites of the Primitive, Oriental, and Early Occidental worlds could be discussed in terms of grandiose unitary stages. For in the history of our still youthful species, a profound respect for inherited forms has generally suppressed innovation.
In the Presence of the Enemy is an insightful novel about ideals corrupted by self-interest, about the sins of parents visited upon children, and about the masks that hide people from each other and from themselves.
Various kinds of masks obscure our view of our galaxy, the Milky Way, as well as of other galaxies. Masks of interstellar dust affect our measurements within galaxies, on scales ranging from individual supernovae to the galaxies themselves. The “mass mask” (our inability to image mass rather than light) gives astronomers a very incomplete picture of the size and structure of galaxies themselves, because we cannot image the dark matter which provides most of the galactic mass. Another mass is the “dynamical mask” ng.
R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet tells the tale of the scholar-priest Cadderly, who is plucked from the halls of the Edificant Library to fulfill a heroic quest across the land of Faerun. The assassins of the Night Masks stalk the shadowy streets of the city of Carradoon, led by the sinister killer known as Ghost. Cadderly struggles against the dreaded Chaos Curse in these dark, evil-haunted alleyways, with a silent death around every corner.
Kahlil Gibran's The Madman"You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives, I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me..."
