The room temperature should be comfortable but a bit on the cool side to insure the full development of the castle and each of the respective pawns and moats of the areola. Success is best accomplished in a pleasant atmosphere: quiet music; a bed sufficiently hard, but comfortable; and the subject prone, drugged, thoroughly asleep, or unconscious to insure silence and stillness throughout the entire operation. This is a mass, a service, and should be approached and undertaken with a sense of reverence.

If the breasts are encased in the likeness of bowls, cups, or sponges, these must be removed. Here a scissor works fine, or if no scissor is handy, a steak knife carefully handled suffices. Place the scissor (or knife) in the southerly-most opening of the cleavage, if any, and make the incision upward, toward the chin, to open and free the darkness. After the strap is severed lift the respective cups as a magician does, hoping to find little nuts or coins, absentmindedly asleep beneath them. And yes, there they are — cocoons full blown, hatching, floating, gazing out like tiny gods from their clouds. The ritual should begin with an external massage, again working in a northerly direction, from the chest up. After a timely and thorough kneading (say, fifteen to twenty minutes is a good investment), one may begin the more precious and precise, the second station of the cross, so to speak. Here the inexperienced parishioner is warned to proceed with caution, to remain impeccably faithful to this creed.

Prior to beginning the hands should be well washed and the fingernails trimmed and free of protruding cuticles. Unscrew the nipple as though opening a safe, or carefully turning the dial of a combination lock, counterclockwise, beginning with the right breast. It is important that only one breast be uncapped at a time. When the nipple is fully detached from its base place it in your mouth, the areola braced between the inner-lips and your teeth (so as not to swallow it), and the nipple pointing inward toward your tonsils, while you gently suck to maintain its erection, and insure the simplicity of screwing it back, of safely resealing the bosom. As in all religions, one must sacrifice in order to please one’s god, and indirectly oneself, and the pains endured during these self-givings are trivial in light of the bliss which, in turn, is rewarded. Removal of the eye is difficult, and painful, but most rewarding. Dream of a grape, cabernet sauvignon, of the likeness between your eye and her nipple.

The eye may be removed quickly and simply with the forefinger, by inserting the finger in the inside corner, in the valley of the northerly-most ridge of the nose, and at the same time applying a firm but steady pressure downward, and inward, until a murmured plucking sound is heard, and removal is apparent. Be sure, during this ectomy, to maintain a gentle in-sucking pressure on the nipple, lest it return to its relaxed, inert, putty-like existence. Place the eye carefully in the breast’s socket, there in the mother-of-pearl, the down, the white and sacred chamber of the heart, the observatory and conservatory, the eleemosynary temple for worship of the moon. When the eye is secured in place, resting in the crest above the heart of the mammary, massage the breast to insure proper settling of the eye and milk-solids, and replace the nipple which should be firm enough to rescrew if proper sucking has been maintained. Be careful not to crossthread the nipple in the process of rescrewing, as it may become permanently irremovable at the expense of one’s eye, and cause leakage problems later, during pregnancy. When the nipple is properly restored to its breast, again gently massage, bend, and flex the breast — rotate it in a circular motion, point it toward the moon and the stars, toward the one eye left in your head which, seeing it, sees Christ.

The mammary magnum opus, which follows, should be attempted only by the experienced devotee who, having accustomed his eye to the mirror world, has prepared his heart for the leap of vision. The lips should be wrapped firmly around the nipple and areola, rotating the tongue to massage the eye, and at the same time aid in its adjusting to the darkness, to the cave in which it has been sealed. As the pupil expands, the inside of your mouth will slowly become visible, revealing the tongue, the beefy hieroglyphic walls of your cheeks, the tonsils, the watersack blister on the roof of your mouth (from eating that pizza too quickly), and then, in moments, your life will appear like a tunnel before you — the blood and motive of each of your thoughts, each of your acts; up through the throat your essence rises, like Greek words lifting off a pond. One should take care to preserve this knowledge, to reseal the nipple on the mirror world, and, as your eye returns from its flexible church, it is important to recall that revelations are transient — that it would be foolish to turn and look backward.