And also like a cursed tome, much of what drives you mad isn't the magic spells and alchemical sigils, but the secret histories, the sudden awareness of a world of agony and nightmare roiling just inches beneath the placid surface of our social pond, and the callous alien god-thing lurking beneath that even now feeds on us all (it's capital).

I have definitely used this to explain how it feels when learning about newly comprehensible man made horrors that have existed or are going to, back during year 1 of covid

But more or less the knowledge gained weighing heavily and making one mad, not so much the outsider peering in.