Beauty is one of The Eight Angels, a feminine intelligence the Herd holds to be alarming rather than pleasant. "True beauty," the scribes teach, "is always quite alarming." It is related to disaster, fragility, and pain; it carries a component of ugliness and convulsive struggle; the beautiful are the "subtle ruptures and malformations of the soul," for "there is no poetry without punctum."
Beauty is opposed to the smooth — to pornographic health, lacquered surfaces, and the predictable perfection the age mistakes for it. It is described as the Herd's last defense against the avalanche of slop, and as "perfect energy," the counterpart to Truth's "perfect mind." Its living vessel in the Herd is Magnetic Rose. Its diluted counterfeit is smooth perfection and curated taste.