[An excerpt from the section “Steganographia” in John Crowley’s novel FLINT AND MIRROR:]
The lesser legions of heaven, those assigned to the earth’s business, are gatherers and bearers of messages and news, passing all that they learn here below to the ranks above, where it is transmitted to the highest places, the seats of judgment and foreknowledge. No active interference in earthly things issues from those seats; the will of God had in the beginning made it a law that the children of Adam and of Eve must be free in the choices and elections they make, no matter the consequences: for the singular soul of each one, but also for the life of all in the time to come. The pious could believe that their prayers and appeals to the saints, the Virgin, and God could change the course of things for the better, or bring about the destruction of their enemies and the supposed enemies of God, but the actual calculus of heaven is simple and easily understood: every earthly alteration produced by Man is at the same time and equally a work of God; every appeal to the powers of darkness or of light is fulfilled by the actions of human souls and hands.