Early 1979
Signal decay will occur without feedback. Valis fed three of Dick’s books back to him which strengthened the signal and kept everything moving forward. Dick says a female advisor is breaking into his closed system as this feedback input. He illustrates time as a spiral where more input is required the further we get from the center.
Who is the woman who has been whispering to him? He wonders if it is St. Sophia, his daughter and the granddaughter of Valis. Was he impregnated by the Holy Spirit? He has a vision of the girl, who he thinks is the Savior, in a pink nightgown and slippers. He realizes the girl must be Thomas born again after gestating in the womb of Dick’s brain.
Dick imagines a maze controlled by a Lon Chaney-looking madman he calls Mr. Looney Tunes, and of course we are trapped in this maze… the editors suggest Dick may have been on drugs when he wrote this.
He calls the girl Diana. She also appeared to him as Aphrodite and the Sibyl when he needed her most in 1974. He has a major insight and is initiated into one of the greatest mysteries in the history of religion: the true (but secret) Christ of Christianity is female.