Dear diary,
The problem with trying to give a comprehensive report about all the Angels that Tara and I sorbed, along with our friend Joseph Smith as Enoch Metatron (I don’t mean that we conquered Metatron too — I mean that he helped us exterminate the Angels and then shared in the absorption of their powers), is that there’s always going to be a few names that I forget to mention. In this way, it’s much like writing an acceptance speech for a Best Motion Picture Award, or for the Nobel Prize in Pataphysics — there’s always someone deserving of thanks who slips your mind; and oftentimes it’s your most intimate collaborator: like the Highest God, or one of your wives.
It is in this vein that I mention the demon Huwawa, who was the scariest Angel of all (I believe that he was actually King of the Angels, till we usurped his crown) — we made short work of him, and Joseph Smith gave me the honor of sucking the spoils: He made the gesture that means “Be my guest, dear comrade in spiritual arms, and partake of the remains of this Chief Devil,” and I bowed in gratitude and made the sign that means “Thank you for your kindness and generosity,” then I absorbed all the evil of Huwawa into my psyche.
And the same type of thing happened when I allowed Smith to sorb the Angel Christ, and even the much stronger Angels of Moses. Note that I must use the plural and say “Angels of Moses” instead of “Angel that is Moses” — this is because nobody knows whether Moses actually ever became one or more Angels, and whether this would have occurred either on earth or in the heavens, before or after he delivered the law. Just look at the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatians (3:19), where he sez: “The law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.”
Speaking of Paul, as I said earlier: despite being our sibling, he is the common enemy of Enoch and me; so when Joseph Smith and I were finished clashing with and stealing all the Angels’ virtues, when we wanted to test out these newly acquired superpowers, we went to Paul’s tower and called him out, and teased him for a while. We fashioned succubi to seduce him.
Also I allowed Metatron to kill and eat Sammael the Death-Angel, and he let me have the Angel of the LORD. Now, some people say that these two last-mentioned Angels are the selfsame being, and all I can say is that neither Smith nor I have any argument against that theory, tho there’s little we can say that will persuade anyone in any direction. He and I discussed this issue at length while we were siphoning their energies, because we knew that there would be controversy surrounding our deed (as Metatron and I were the last hypostases to see either of the aforesaid immortals alive), but since we both would rather expand than limit the dwelling-place of possibility, we agreed that it’s best to pass over this crucial truth in silence.
So now Tara honks the horn of the car from Detour (1945), and Joseph Smith and I hasten over and hop inside.
“Would you mind driving?” I ask my assistant. “I’m a little sore from battling all those Angels.”
“Sure, I can pilot this heap,” replies Tara. “Is Mr. Smith coming with us, by the way? We have a show in Cincinnati.”
I turn to Joseph Smith who is Enoch Metatron and say: “Do you wanna join us? It’s just magic. The crowds are very nice.”
“What time is the show?” asks Joseph Smith.
“It’s in the evening,” replies Tara, as she begins to drive while looking at Joseph instead of minding the road. “Either six or seven o’clock, I think. — I have it written down somewhere…” with one hand still on the steering wheel, she reaches into her blouse and caresses around as if seeking a note-to-self that she had stored there — her face displays a very serious expression, and the car keeps moving forward.
“I better get back to my galaxies,” Joseph Smith interrupts Tara’s search. “Let me take a rain check — I’ll join your routine some other time. I had a lot of fun today. Thanks for making a fire so that I could visit you.”
“No!” I now pipe up, in a friendly passion: “you MUST do the show with us — I insist! C’mon, it’ll be amusing, and you’ll have another good story to tell all your celestial soul-mates in the heavens. Please, don’t leave now!”
“OK, I’ll stay,” sez Joseph Smith, laughing at my childish insistence (his personality has noticeably exuberated after sorbing those dead angels). “But what can I contribute to the act? It’s been a long time since I practiced sorcery…”
“Oh, don’t worry about your part,” sez Tara, still determinedly searching within her blouse; “you’ll be our guest of honor — all you need to do is stand there looking majestic: Bryan and I will take care of the trix.”
“Alright, sounds easy enough,” sez Joseph Smith.
We make it to Cincinnati with extra time, so we grab a bite to eat before the show starts. Then the night transpires perfectly. We introduce Smith to wild applause, and the audience is mesmerized by all the gorgeous virgins that I reveal were sleeping within our Death Bag. (Smith, after all, contributes this bonus trick to our act, allowing us to draw from his pool of spouses, very generously.) — Next I do our famous “Turkey Trick”, where a priest from the audience is invited to step onstage, and I chant a spell which causes the fellow to become a real turkey, which Tara then chases around the stage with a machete and eventually beheads. (During intermission, the cooked result of this last trick is served within the lobby as an hors d’oeuvre.)
Being that our previous Liberty Statue Trick went over so well, we decide to improve on that act by adding the element of audience participation. So our routine’s grand finale is making the Statue of Liberty appear in the parking lot outside of the venue: All the vehicles that were parked there are now trapped beneath the vast green robe that has fallen from her person.
This trick is good to use as a closer, because it lures the audience outside before the show has officially ended, so you don’t need to wait around afterwards for half an eternity while everyone trudges out of the arena. — However, its drawback is that nobody can ever get their automobile out from under the discarded Liberty Robe, cuz the thing’s made of genuine copper that is many meters thick. — Thus, what I’ve found works best is to use this tragic outcome as an opportunity to demonstrate for your paying fans the proper way to to disassemble and reassemble the Statue of Liberty for standard maintenance and state-to-state transport, in case they ever decide to become magi of their own and move a green giantess between performances in the Americas. Then, during the halftime show of this teaching moment, feel free to ditch the class and cruise off in whatever next new train or plane proves commandeerable.
P.S. (footnote)
I wanted to work into the above text another quote from Michael Hudson, but I forgot; so I'll just put it right here:
Modern American society retains many iconographic references that can be traced back to ancient Babylonia. One of the nation's most familiar symbols of freedom, the Statue of Liberty, recalls vestiges of an ancient tradition that has been all but lost since imperial Roman times: liberty from bondage and from the threat of losing one's home, land and means of livelihood through debt.
To a visitor from Hammurabi's Babylon, the Statue of Liberty might evoke the royal iconography of the important ritual over which rulers presided: restoring liberty from debt... To "raise high the Golden Torch" signaled the annulling of agrarian debts and related personal "barley" obligations.
Unlike today's business cycle economists, Bronze Age societies had no faith in the spontaneous equilibrating forces of modern-style market mechanisms, nor did they believe that all debts should be paid. ...Instead of letting "the market" resolve matters in favor of foreclosing creditors, rulers saw that if cultivators had to work off their debts to private creditors, they would not be available to perform their public corvée work duties, not to mention fight in the army.
By liberating distressed individuals who had fallen into debt bondage, and returning to cultivators the lands they had forfeited for debt or sold under economic duress, these royal acts maintained a free peasantry willing to fight for its lands and work on public building projects and canals. ...By clearing away the buildup of personal debts, rulers saved society from the social chaos that would have resulted from personal insolvency, debt bondage and military defection.
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