Dear diary,
So the one known as “the volcano of potential,” a goat-eyed wild man whose body was brown like rusty iron and whose hair hung over his face down past his feet, persuaded the entire workforce to abandon the Empire; then he took those people on a worldwide tour, and they mixed and mingled with all the nations. He led these multitudes through blissful interactions, in each new land, and they had a wonderful time parleying with the inhabitants. They danced and played; they met no enemies; they befriended everyone. The volcano of potential fixed fate so that every place on the planet that they visited favored these outcasts.
He started out this journey with Moses as his co-pilot; then the Volcano took over the captainship himself, after the people got rid of Moses. From that point forward, Yeshua the Zealot served as his muscle.
Now, when Yeshua was on his last legs, the Volcano had not yet completed the full adventure that he had planned for his caravansary. In fact, there were still so many places left to visit, and so many deeds left to do, that if a scribe were to try to list them all, it would doubtlessly fill up nine chapters of any bible.
And yet, on a certain level, not a single point failed of all the good things that the Volcano had promised to his wayfaring multitudes – as it is written: all came to pass.
Actually, to step back for a moment and be totally honest, it has never been clear whether the Volcano’s plans were realized fully, or only in part. And I say the following sotto voce: Perhaps every detail of the history went wrong.
Whatever the case, the present volume will cover the next portion of the saga. We will start where our previous book left off: at the death of Yeshua.
Next Episode:
ELOHIMS
“Thou shalt not revile the gods”
—Exodus 22:28
Now Yeshua the Zealot died, being an hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in a tomb in Palestine, where he remains to this day.
Also, that whole generation likewise expired. And a new generation rose up in its place, which of course had no memory of the workforce’s escape from the Empire, or of the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, or of their parents’ journeys throughout the surrounding lands. These new people had only been infants when the Volcano performed his miraculous exploits for the multitudes; for instance, some of them had never even witnessed when he turned the Great Basin Desert into a rainforest.
But even though they did not know the Volcano well, they still liked him, and they accepted him as their compadre.
Now, the inhabitants of the nations that their parents had mixed and mingled with, and the natives of the countries in which many of the travelers had settled, worshipped God, whom they called by various titles.
Ghostwriter’s Note: in those people’s language, the word “Baal” means “Lord”; and, to make a word plural, instead of adding an “s,” like we do in American, they add the suffix “-im”: thus, “Baalim” means “Lords”; but I personally prefer to be redundant and add an extra American “s” to every term that is already plural, so that, for instance, the singular “cherub,” whose plural should be “cherubim,” becomes the redundantly plural “cherubims” (as it is rendered in the King James Bible’s translation of 2nd Chronicles 5:8, among many other places). This is like saying “Godses” for “Gods.” The point is to bring out the silliness in plurality, so that it no longer feels so scary to monotheistic deities.
Alright, so, now, I repeat: the Volcano’s multitudes adopted the forms of worship that the surrounding peoples practiced. Since each country followed the LORD (BAAL), our newcomers accepted each respective Lord into their own pantheon, and they collected them until they possessed a legion of lordses.
But when his multitudes, the offspring from that original workforce that he had rescued from the Empire, invited so many new gods into their ever-growing religion, did it bother the Volcano? No, it did not.
And yet, to see his people accepting into their celestial assemblage Asherah and Ashtaroth and Ashtoreth and Astarte, and allowing all these Goddesses to couple their Baalims, as consorts or paramours or “helps meet for them” — did this inflame the Volcano’s jealousy? Not in the least.
The Volcano was happy to see his fellow-travelers acquiring fresh knowledge from alien cultures. He helped them as they continued to tour, or as they settled in the lands; and he favored their efforts, everywhere they went. And these descendants of the workforce were pleased with the Volcano; they all got along well.
Now, one of the ideas that the Volcano began to experiment with, at about this time, was the origination of elohims. Just to offset the ill effect of the self-styled mentors who occasionally rose up from the mass of the people – those natural bossy ones who called themselves gurus and yogis – the Volcano would raise up elohims.
Each individual elohim was not quite a king, a captain, or president, but rather something like a mensch, a charismatic champ, an all-around good guy, a real man, a true soul, a person of integrity whom you would certainly want on your team.
So the Volcano drew up a contract stipulating that he would pay thirty caesar coins to Enoch Metatron of Genesis 5:24 in return for the use of a dozen elohims over the course of one book. For Enoch owned a surplus of such things. And they both agreed to these terms, thus the following elohims were leased to the Volcano for the duration of the present scripture: (Pretend that I listed them all, right here; although I’ll refrain from doing so, since I’d rather not bore you or spoil the surprise of hearing each name for the first time.)
As we shall see in the coming pages, the Volcano began to sprinkle these elohims throughout his adventure, into various predicaments and places, amid the multitudes of his workforce. He put them wherever he desired, for whatever reason. It wasn’t too big of a deal, but it sometimes caused events to feel more interesting.
So we now have a wandering populace, a portion of which has grown rooted to certain countries; and they have adopted all manner of foreign deities, and their Volcano has blessed them with role models.
Elohims are better than angels, in my opinion.
Do you remember how the Volcano interacted with Moses? He occasionally treated him as a medium, but sometimes Moses was his own man. The boundary between prophet and god ranged from rigid to fluid; most aspects of the deity were man-proof, but all aspects of his prophet were god-permeable. Now, with these elohims that the Volcano started employing, the divine line was further blurred: they were like even freer Moseses. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived from that time in history until the present moment. Basically, the spirit of the Volcano was in these heroes.
The elohims helped their people, by easing tensions and facilitating friendships; they always promoted the general welfare and social harmony. In a word, they were peacemakers.
And whenever the mission of an elohim would conclude, the people were able to take the lessons learned from that exemplar and continue to apply them into the future. So existence grew steadily better and better. The masses proved malleable: ugly instincts and habits were augmented and became beautiful. It was a very good era.
No comments:
Post a Comment