"... The Glass Bead Game was so far developed that it was capable of expressing mathematical processes by special symbols and abbreviations. The players threw these abstract formulas at one another, displaying the sequences and possibilities of their different fields of knowledge. This mathematical as well as astronomical play with formulas required great attentiveness and concentration. Some dreamed of a new alphabet, a new language of symbols through which they could formulate and exchange their new intellectual experiences. It became possible to combine astronomical and musical formulas, and to reduce mathematics and music to a common denominator.
The Game was often called by a different name: Magic Theatre. A theme was stated, elaborated and varied. A Game might start from an astronomical configuration, could further explore and expand the underlying motif or else enrich its expressiveness by allusions to analogous concepts.
It represented a symbolic form of seeking a sublime alchemy, coming close to that what lies beyond all images and multiplicities. It was an attitude, also displayed in music, that alluded to order rather than blind chance. Contraries are recognized as such, but also as opposite poles of a unity. One can be a strict logician and at the same time full of imagination, a player while still devoted to rule and order: crystalline logic and creative imagination simultaneously.
In the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Game, everything actually was all-meaningful. Every symbol and combination of symbols led not just to some scattered examples and proofs but into the innermost heart of the world, towards primal knowledge. Though doubt remained: was the Game merely a formal art, a clever skill, a witty combination? Or was this Royal Game a lingua sacra, a divine language...
One might imagine the Game similar to the pattern of a chess game, except that the significances of the pieces and the potentialities of their relationships to one another multiplied manifold and an actual content has to be ascribed to each piece, each constellation of which this configuration was a symbol.
The true and ultimate skill of the Game is mastery over the expressive and distinct forms of the rules of the Game so as to inject in any given figuration individual and original ideas. The Game is neither philosophy nor religion. It is a discipline of its own, in character most akin to art. It is an art sui generis."
Compilation of quotes from Hermann Hesse, ‘The Glass Bead Game’, 1943 (trans. C.C.)
Hermann Hesse