King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (43 page)

“No, but the Children of Israel mourn for Moses at Pisgah ; and the Lord God, who is veiled lest any man should see his face and die, buries him secretly in a valley of Moab. For so it is written.”

“Not so : for here you cannot refute me. Here at last you see my Mistress in Trinity. My Mistress, the First Eve, white as leprosy ; my Mistress, the Second Eve, black as the tents of my people ; my Mistress, the Third Eve, her death’s-head mercifully shrouded. See, where the spirit of Adam prostrates himself before my Triple Mistress and holds her to her covenant, while Azazel looks on aghast.”

“No, but I refute you! Here Moses complains to the Lord against Miriam his sister and Aaron his brother who have mocked his Ethiopian wife. Aaron prostrates himself before the Lord, who punishes Miriam with leprosy. For so it is written.”

“Not so : your prevarications will not serve you. For see, where my Mistress has granted Adam his plea. His spirit rises from the dry bones of the burial ark and, uttering threats to Azazel, returns once more to the wheel of life. He will be born again to my Mistress, the First Eve, as his own son and twin to the son of Azazel.”

“No, but I refute you. Here King Saul consults the witch of Endor, who raises the spirit of Samuel from the dry bones of Samuel. For so it is written.”

“Not so : have done, in the Mother’s name! Here the red tablet ends, and the golden tablet takes up the story again, with my Mistress, the First Eve, in pangs beneath her palm-tree.”

“You have had my answers. What need to give them again ?”

“They are not acceptable to my Triple Mistress.”

“The Living God in whom I trust is immeasurably stronger than your Mistress. He can create what-is from what-is-not. He can make what-was as though it had never been. Her ancient tables record a covenant of death which the Lord God overturned and set aside at the Well of Kadesh when he swore a new covenant of life with his servant Moses. The Books of Moses record that covenant ; they are stored in the holy ark of every synagogue throughout Jewry and written on the tablets of every loyal heart.”

“Strong as he may be, how can your Living God rescue you from this House of Death which lies in the Valley of Death? No man ever defied my Mistress in her own house and escaped alive. Fool, this place is the end of all venturesome fools. The stopped tunnel is choked with their bones.”

“It is written : ‘Though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death I shall fear no evil, for thou, Lord, art with me.’ Therefore my fate will be as the Father ordains, not as your Mistress ordains. I am released from the jurisdiction of the Female ; I have come to destroy her works.”

Mary the Hairdresser began to comb her long white hair with an ivory comb and, as she combed, invoked the ancient powers of evil one by one to rise against Jesus and overthrow him. She called upon the scaly-footed Shedim and the snouted Ruhim and on the Mazzikim, the harmers, and on the goat-like Seirim of the crags, and on the ass-haunched Lilim of the sandy wastes, and on Shabiri the demon of blindness who haunts uncovered pools of water, and on Ruah Zelachta the demon of catalepsy, and on Ben Nefilim the demon of epilepsy, and on Ruah Kezarit the demon of nightmare, and on Ruah Tegazit the demon of delirium, and on Ruah Kardeyako the demon of melancholy, and on Shibbeta the demon of cramps, and on Ruah Zenunim the demon of sexual madness, and on Deber the demon of pestilence, and lastly on Pura the insidious demon of sloth and forgetfulness of whom God-fearing Jews stand in the greatest dread.

All these powers came flocking about him with fury and terror and whirrings, trying to tear the holy fringes from his garment, and the phylacteries from his arm and forehead. He remained quiet and undismayed, and his lips unfalteringly repeated the “Hear, O Israel”—three times against the First Eve, three times against the Second Eve, and three times against the Third Eve. When he had done, he said : “In the name of the Holy One of Israel—blessed be he—depart, creatures of night and death, to the desolate places assigned to you by the Disposer of All !”

They vanished, gibbering, one by one.

Mary suddenly screamed out : “I know you, Adversary of my Mistress! Are you come here at last, Son of David, apostate Adam ?”

He commanded her to silence, but she stopped her ears and screamed again : “The apostate was driven from the paradise of Eden, which is Hebron. He was driven as a wanderer over the face of the earth, but it
is prophesied that he shall return to Hebron at last to make his reckoning with the Great Goddess. The apostate may deny his mother, the First Eve ; and his bride, the Second Eve, he may reject ; yet the Third Eve, his grandam, will inexorably claim him for her own.”

“If the First Eve be denied for the love of the Living God, and the Second Eve be rejected for the love of the Living God, will the Third Eve find bones to bury ?”

Mary tore at the flesh of her forearm with her dog-teeth and greedily sucked the blood. Then, seizing the death-mask of the Old Adam from its peg in the recess and thrusting it on her head, she began to prophesy in rough hexameters, her voice piping and querulous :

A
DAM
, son of the terebinth, A
DAM
only begotten,
Born at the death of the year from green-eyed Miriam’s birth-stool,
Rapt from Azazel’s fury by wandering shepherds of Hebron :
Your first feats astonishment spread in a region of wonders.
None could divine your secret, you sucked all Solomon’s wisdom.
A
DAM
, son of the terebinth, well you endured your vigil,
Two-score days upon Horeb defying bestial powers.
Now shall the ever-young prophet return once more to anoint you.
You shall be lord of the land, shall enter Miriam’s chamber.
A
DAM
’s path shall you tread, nor fail these covenant tables
Till at the last you hang, by friends and kindred forsaken,
Bound to the terebinth tree with strong green branches of willow,
Suffering there as is right, distressed with odious torments.
Twelve bold shepherds shall drink of your blood, shall eat of your body.
Eve, our mother, shall laugh ; in dreams her pythoness bidding
A
DAM’s
bones to recover, where A
DAM’s
skull lies buried.

As she croaked the final spondees the flame of the lamp sputtered and shook. A clammy drop fell from the dome of the chamber on Jesus’s foot, and after a minute’s pause, another.

He spoke : “What have I to do with the Old Adam who speaks low out of the dust? A New Adam comes in the name of the Most High to make an end, to bind the Female with her own long hair, to fetter God’s Adversary in chains of adamant. In the Old Adam all die ; in the New all shall live.”

“Beware! The beasts that entered the circle which you drew under the thorn-bush of Horeb were four in number. Three you tamed, but did not the fourth paw the ground apart ?”

Trembling, Jesus prayed : “Lord, who can understand his errors? Oh, cleanse me from my secret fault !”

She laid the mask aside, laughed and blasphemed against Jehovah. Jesus seized her by the hair, though she struggled like a hyaena. “In the name of him who is Lord of the heights and depths, come out of her !” he cried.

One by one the unclean familiars issued reluctantly from her mouth. He named them each in turn and forbade them ever again to enter into her ; the first, Alukah the horse-leech ; the second, Zebub the bluebottle ;
the third, Akbar the mouse ; the fourth, Atalef the bat ; the fifth, Tinshemet the lizard ; the sixth, Arnebet the hare ; and the seventh and last, Shaphan the coney. At each expulsion her struggles became the less violent, and at the end she stood trembling, lost, and without power, her mouth gaping.

He released her and spoke the word of peace. “Come, Mary! Let us return to the land of life. Have done now with your villainies.”

She opened the door for him and went before him up the staircase, dizzily swaying from side to side. She opened the second door, the night wind blew out her lamp, and together they stepped out into star-light ; for the moon was obscured by a bank of cloud.

Mary came a little of the way with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem ; then fell and sat weeping great tears by the roadside. In a small voice she cried after him : “Nevertheless, Lord, the end is not yet, and when the Mother summons me to my duty, I will not fail her.”

“The end is as the Living God wills !”

It was a few days before midsummer. Jesus had come to a ford of the Upper Jordan, where the stream runs broad between high crags. He waited meekly on the eastern bank. John, in a white linen garment girded up to his waist, stood in midstream, and nine witnesses were gathered on the other side of the ford.

“Come, Lord !” cried John, “for it is written : ‘The Spirit of the Lord shall descend upon you, and you shall be changed to another man.’ ”

Naked, Jesus entered the water. John filled two pitchers from the flowing stream, one of gold, the other of white clay moulded in spiral form. He poured the double stream over Jesus’s head and body and chanted the antique formula preserved, almost unaltered, in the second Psalm :

I will declare the decree that the Lord has put in my mouth, saying :

Son, I have set you upon my holy citadel in the Wilderness of Zin,

My beloved Son you are, this day have I begotten you.

Ask now of me and I shall give you all nations for your inheritance and the utmost parts of the earth for your possession,

To rule them with a rod of iron, dashing them into pieces like pots of clay.

Then he roared in ecstasy : “Look up, Lord, for your Ka descends upon you in the form of a dove !”

Jesus looked up. At that moment the sun surmounted the eastern crag and shone brilliantly down on the water. The Ka is the weird, or double, of a king, and at the coronation of an Egyptian pharaoh is pictured as descending upon him in the form of a hawk ; but Jesus did not derive his royal title from the Hawk-goddess.

He passed glorified across to the other bank. John, following after, took a phial of terebinth oil and emptied it upon his head. “In the name of the Lord God of Israel, I anoint you King of all Israel !”

Some of the witnesses blew trumpets, others cried : “God save the King !” and shouted for joy.

Then Judas of Kerioth came forward with a seamless linen garment, of the sort reserved for High Priests, saying : “My former master, before he died, instructed me to put this on you at your anointing.” He clothed Jesus in it.

John set Jesus in a covered litter and the nine witnesses carried him northward into Galilee, taking turns at the staves. On the second day they came to the steep slopes of Mount Tabor. John strode ahead through the thickets of kerm-oak, terebinth, myrtle, carob and mountain-olive, the wild beasts fleeing startled away from his path, until he reached the rocky platform at the top. There stands the small town of Atabyrium, formerly the market-place and common sanctuary of the three tribes Issachar, Zebulon and Naphtali.

It was at Atabyrium, in the days of the Judges, that these three tribes rallied under Barak and the priestess Deborah before charging down against Sisera’s chariotry in the valley of the Kishon ; and there in later times the golden calves—“snares to catch the deluded”, as the prophet Hosea called them—were dedicated to Atabyrius, the god of the mountain. The men of Tabor identify Atabyrius with Jehovah ; the Greek mythographers describe him as one of the Telchines, that is to say, as a god of the Pelasgians ; and for the Essenes Atabyrius is a title of their demi-god Moses. Another mountain sanctuary of the same god is Atabyris in the island of Rhodes, where a pair of brazen bulls are said to roar aloud whenever anything extraordinary is about to happen. Atabyrius is credited with the power of transforming himself into any shape he pleases, like Dionysus, or like Pelasgian Proteus, or like the God of Horeb who appeared to Moses in the acacia bush of Kadesh and gave his name as “I am whatever I choose to be”.

In ancient times Tabor was not his only sanctuary in Israel : the Terebinth of Atabyrius on Mount Ephraim was a station through which King Saul passed on his coronation journey. A yearly fair is still held on Tabor, and in the time of Jesus patriotic Galileans would refer to Jehovah as “the Lord of Zebulon”, saying : “Nothing prevented that the Holy City should have been built on Tabor, but that it pleased the Lord to rule otherwise.” “Nothing” was an exaggeration. There is no spring-water on Tabor and the inhabitants are dependent on rain-water for all purposes.

John went to the house of the Essene Watchman of Tabor, whose name was Nikki, that is Nicanor, and roused him from sleep. “The King is coming, Watchman, do you hear? The King is coming ; the only son of Michal, his father a King !”

Nicanor, dizzied with sleep, cried : “Away, man, you speak wildly.”

“I am John of Ain-Rimmon, the prophet who anointed him King, and I declare him to be true-born. As an infant he escaped from the sword of Archelaus at Bethlehem of Judaea, being carried to safety in Egypt by the Sons of Rahab.”

“Are the signs of royalty upon him ?”

“It remains to add the eighth. Already he has endured his vigil and tamed the wild beasts of Horeb. Already the new heiress of Michal has been summoned to the Heel Stone. The contract between the King and her guardian, Lazarus of Bethany, is sealed and witnessed.”

“Where is this King ?”

“He follows behind.”

“Conduct him to the sacred grove, and we shall see how he comports himself.”

As dawn was breaking, John guided the litter-bearers to the sacred grove, in a clearing of the forest, where Nicanor was awaiting Jesus. The litter was set down and Jesus stepped out.

Seven trees stood in a circular plot strewn with sea-sand ; they were the broom, the willow, the kerm-oak, the almond, the terebinth, the love-apple, the pomegranate. Jesus circumambulated the grove, blessing each tree in turn while Nicanor watched him intently. Jesus chanted :

Blessed in the Creator’s Name be the Sun, and the first day of the week, which is the angel Raphael’s. Blessed in his Name be the royal broom, beneath which the prophet Elijah took his rest and was fed.

Blessed in the Creator’s Name be the Moon, and the second day of the week, which is the angel Gabriel’s. Blessed in his Name be the willow, whose water-loving boughs deck the Great Altar on the Day of Willows.

Blessed in the Creator’s Name be the planet Nergal, and the third day of the week, which is the angel Sammael’s. Blessed in his Name be the kerm-oak, whose scarlet dyes the garments of the anointed king, a charm against the Female, the Leprous One.

Blessed in the Creator’s Name be the planet Nabu, and the middle day of the week, which is the angel Michael’s. Blessed in his Name be the almond-tree, whose rod budded for Aaron the wise, whose fruit cups each lamp of the seven-branched candlestick.

Blessed in the Creator’s Name be the planet Marduk, and the fifth day of the week, which is the angel Izidkiel’s. Blessed in his Name be the terebinth, under whose shade Abraham and Sarah his wife were promised increase as the sands on the sea-shore.

Blessed in the Creator’s Name be the planet Ishtar, and the sixth day of the week, which is the angel Hanael’s. Blessed in his Name be the quince-tree, whose goodly fruit sweetens the Feast of Tabernacles.

Blessed in the Creator’s Name be the planet Ninib, and the seventh day of the week, which is the angel Kepharel’s. Blessed in his Name be the pomegranate-tree, on whose bough the Paschal lamb is impaled, whose fruit alone may be fetched into the presence of the Living God.

Blessed above all be the Creator of all things, who is the candlestick to these seven lamps, cupping them with his wisdom, who planted the seven-branched tree of life.

To the Sun be granted the power either to warm or to scorch.

To the Moon be granted the power either to foster or to blight.

To the planet Nergal be granted the power either to strengthen or to make weak.

To the planet Nabu be granted the power either to make wise or to make foolish.

To the planet Marduk be granted the power either to make fruitful or to make barren.

To the planet Ishtar be granted the power either to grant or to withhold the heart’s desire.

To the planet Ninib be granted the power either to make holy or to make accursed.

Blessed be the Disposer of powers, the Lord of the Sabbath. Him only I adore.