There is much of interest in Christian and especially Catholic mysticism, I find - the latter especially; there are many mansions in the house of the Bishop of Rome, and some of them are strangely inhabited indeed.

Thomas Merton is a good example. Back when Ratzinger still ran the CDF, you'd sometimes find Merton's books shelved in Catholic bookstores in shrinkwrap, bearing an orange warning label cautioning the devout reader against being led astray by the contents.

He seemed to favor a Gnostic view of Christianity in particular. He talks a lot about it in VALIS and the Exegesis. There's quite a bit about the Demiurge, and how we're stuck in something called the "Black Iron Prison".

The Empire Never Ended. We live upon a very detailed map that was crafted in the millennium following the Bronze Age collapse — not in the “real” world, by any stretch.

Perhaps the Plasmate will reveal the true nature of reality to us eventually.

I thought about getting "The Empire Never Ended" as a tattoo once. Also considered a Ubik tattoo. I can never actually commit myself enough to actually getting a tattoo though.

Lol. We can be tattoo brothers. I actually got a temporary tattoo to see how it looks and still thinking about if i should pull the trigger and get it done.