The Ladomir Publishing House presents a collection of selected works by the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink (1868 - 1932). “Bats” are eight bewitchingly mysterious masterpieces of small form, continuing the tradition of fantastic realism of the master’s early grotesques. “The giant adit is going down steeper and steeper. The flights of stairs, lost in the darkness, run down into the abyss in myriads of steps...” There, in utter darkness, the human Self acquired “new light” and a new true name, and only after that, transformed, began its ascent into the abandoned bodily shell. This inhumanly painful katabasis is called in Kabbalah “dissolution of shells”... “Walpurgis Night”... A mirror from which only the dark reverse side remains - what can it reflect other than the “darkness of the outer” infernal periphery?.. But if a miracle happens and there, in the focus of hermetic darkness, the “morning star” of the royal ruby suddenly flashes, then know, wanderer, “sleeping in reality,” that you are in the sanctuary of the Master, in the Empire of the real middle, and the “light” you have found in the pitch-black abyss of the cosmos Walpurgis Night, truly “new”!.. “White Dominican”... The initiatory journey of Christopher Taubenschlag to the origins of traditional yogic practices of Taoism. “The hour will strike, and the gorgon, blinded by rage, will rush at you with such satanic fury, my son, that, like a poisonous scorpion stinging itself, it will perform an act beyond the control of mortals - it will erase its own reflection, originally imprinted in the soul of fallen man, and, having lost his sting, will fall in shame at the feet of the winner. Then you, my son, “trample down death upon death,” will rise to eternal life, for the Jordan will truly “turn back”: it is not life that will give birth to death, but death will be freed from the burden of life!..” All previously published translations by V. Kryukov , included in the presented collection, were thoroughly edited by the translator. To date, after numerous pirated editions and poor-quality amateurish translations, this is the most serious attempt to present the work of the famous Austrian master in its true light.