De Quincey’s opium dream plunged him into a monotheist-pagan terrorscape of Asiatic gods.

Evidence

I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos, I ran into pagodas: and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the iblis and crocodile trembled at. I was buried, for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 458

Categorization

• XREF: The dream’s blending of Brama/Vishnu/Seeva with Isis/Osiris and iblis shows how the Romantic East fused Indian, Egyptian, and Islamic imagery into one undifferentiated monstrous East.