They shall take up serpents

When I got up this morning, I found that the wallpaper image on my phone had inexplicably been changed from an astronomical photograph to one of a coiled rattlesnake -- a photo I had found online and saved on October 18. I guess I must somehow have set it to wallpaper while asleep or half-asleep, but I have absolutely no hint of any memory of doing so. Changing the wallpaper would have been a multi-step process -- tapping through several screens in Settings, scrolling through to a not-so-recent photo -- and I don't see how I could possibly have done it without the benefit of full waking consciousness, but I did, obviously.

As discussed in my last post, my thoughts after waking soon turned to Jannes and Jambres, the Egyptian magicians who duplicated some of the miracles of Moses and Aaron -- including turning rods into snakes:

And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, "When Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you: then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent."

And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the Lord had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent.

Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods (Ex. 7:8-12).

This echoes an earlier miracle, the first shown to Moses after he was called by the burning bush:

And Moses answered and said, "But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee."

And the Lord said unto him, "What is that in thine hand?"

And he said, "A rod."

And he said, "Cast it on the ground."

And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.

And the Lord said unto Moses, "Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail" -- and he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand -- "that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee" (Ex. 4:1-5).

Taking a snake by the tail is crazy, suicidal behavior -- but Moses did it, and it became a rod in his hand. Not until today did I think to connect this story with the strange promise in the epilogue to the Gospel of Mark:

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover (Mark 16:17-18).

A few fringe groups like the Church of God with Signs Following take this as an invitation to practice ritual snake-handling as a demonstration of faith. I suppose most "normal" Christians are taught what I was: that the intended meaning was that God could miraculously protect believers from snakebite when necessary (as reportedly happened with Paul in Acts 28), not that we should "tempt God" by intentionally risking it. The Bible does say they shall actively take up serpents, though. The only biblical account of someone doing that is that of Moses -- and in his case what had been a serpent became a rod in his hand.

I think this miracle has a similar symbolic meaning to that of Jesus walking on the surface of the stormy sea: You take something slithery and treacherous, treat it as firm and solid, and it becomes so for you. This is shown in the "King and Lionheart" video, where slithery insubstantial creatures of light become solid enough to climb or run across when treated as such:

I think this may also be related to Samuel's prophecy about all things becoming slippery:

Behold, we lay a tool here and on the morrow it is gone; and behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle. Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land. O that we had repented in the day that the word of the Lord came unto us; for behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them (Hel. 13:34-36).

Isn't this Moses' first miracle in reverse -- or rather the first part of the two-part miracle? Lay a tool down -- a rod, say -- and it comes to life and slithers away. The difference is that the accursed "cannot hold them" again, but Moses can -- provided he has the courage to reach out and take a living snake by the tail.

This connection came to me in a meditative state this afternoon while I was saying my Rosary. It struck me how like a snake the string of beads was, and how when I took it up it became as solid and reliable as the iron rod of Lehi. Then I remembered that very similar imagery had been used in The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet:

And now, to the boys' amazement, Ta drew from around his neck the beautiful necklace of stones and flung it up to them -- and as it came slithering and swerving upward through the green air, it seemed almost like something alive. "You must divide the stones between you," said Ta, "and because of them, you will always remember me . . . . Those stones were taken from our Sacred Hall in the depths of the mountains, and are given only to the kings of our people" (p. 117).

Stones -- more solid and inflexible even than a rod -- slither like something alive. Despite Ta's instruction, the boys never do divide the stones between them; the necklace remains intact.

Back on Earth, the boys believe the necklace has been lost, washed away to sea, but later Chuck produces it, and it is explicitly likened to a serpent:

And like some marvelous rainbow-colored serpent the necklace of Ta poured from his fingers and hung there, swaying back and forth in the bright air (p. 168).

Asked how he had recovered it, Chuck explains:

I looked down into one of those little rock pools, and I thought, 'What a beautiful crab.' And then I thought, 'But there's never been a crab as beautiful as that!' and I got down on my knees and put my hand in the rock pool -- and pulled out Ta's necklace (p. 168).

There's an echo of Moses here, too. Reaching for a crab in a rock pool may be considerably less foolhardy than taking a serpent by the tail, but in ordinary circumstances you would still be risking a nasty nip. When he grasped the "crab," though, it became a necklace of stones in his hand.

Given all the brilliant colors of Ta's necklace, I almost think that the crustacean Chuck saw in the pool must have looked more like this:

Why is being unforgiving an unforgivable sin?

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses (Mark 11:25-26).

Discussions of the "unforgivable sin" usually focus on the sin against the Holy Ghost, but this passage from Mark (also Matt. 6:14-15) seems to indicate that being unforgiving is also unforgivable: If you don't forgive others, God will not forgive you.

Isn't that surprising? Failing to forgive is such a relatable sin, something that comes so naturally to just about everyone, that it is counterintuitive to say that it is less forgivable than other, seemingly more serious, sins. For example, if a rapist repents, he will be forgiven; but if his victim fails to forgive him, she will not be forgiven. Isn't that a bit shocking?

I suppose the most natural interpretation of this passage is that if you want God to forgive you, you have to forgive others, because it's only fair. I don't think that cuts it as an explanation, though. We're talking about forgiveness here, which is by definition not about being fair, but about extending mercy to those who deserve condemnation. "I can't forgive you, because it wouldn't be fair"? But it's never fair. If it were fair, it would be vindication, not forgiveness.

My best guess is that forgiveness is an absolute requirement because Heaven is not an individual state, like Buddhist enlightenment, but membership in the Family of God, and as such it inherently involves relationships with other former sinners. It's not that God views unforgiveness as "the worst sin" and insists on "punishing" it; it's that, as a matter of spiritual and psychological fact, one simply cannot participate in Heaven until one can freely and fully forgive.

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Sync note: Opening up BibleGateway to look up this post's text led to the syncs that resulted in the post "Many sparrows, again, and other sync links." That post prominently features figs and mentions my finding figs growing on the wall of the abandoned restaurant, as related in "Owl time, and cold noodles." In "Owl time," I said that the figs made me think of Mark 11:13. The passage I was looking for for this post also turns out to be from Mark 11.

The 40-day fast

In my December 2 post "Was baptism an ordeal," I mention Jesus' "David Blaine-like 40-day fast" just after his baptism.

A few days later, on December 5, I followed a Synlogos link to the Didactic Mind post "It's not a mystery at all," which linked to a video by one David Wood called "Muslim Scholar Warns about 'Avalanche' of Apostasy." For some reason, I clicked on the link, didn't watch the video, but did scroll down in the comments a bit, and found this: "I appreciate how David is casually open about the fact he is a psychopath and his history but has been healed and exalted through Christ!"

That piqued my interest enough to go to David Wood's main YouTube page and watch the featured video "Why I Am a Christian."

It is, as advertised, a psychopath's story of coming to Christ. Wood casually and unemotionally tells the story of how he attempted to murder his own father with a ball-peen hammer just for the hell of it, and of how he eventually became a Christian after realizing that his narcissism was philosophically incompatible with nihilism (because if nothing mattered at all, then neither did he himself). I take it all with a grain of salt (it is, after all, a tale told by a psychopath), but it's a compelling story.

Before his conversion, Wood had a Christian cellmate who used to fast, and Wood always tried to one-up him by fasting just a bit longer. Finally his cellmate goes for a 40-day water-only fast (because Jesus fasted for that long), and Wood decides to do 42 days. It is at this point that the prison authorities intervene, thinking he is attempting suicide by self-starvation, put him in solitary confinement, and force-feed him.

So the sync fairies are drawing my attention to the idea of a 40-day fast, and how it tests the limits of what the human body can endure. (Wood says something like, "Here I was trying to be like Jesus, and they thought I was trying to commit suicide!")

The general rule is that a person can live for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Fasts longer than that are certainly possible -- David Blaine famously survived for 44 days on nothing but water -- but they clearly belong to the category "death-defying stunt."

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When Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai, "he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water" (Ex. 34:28; see also Deut. 9:9). After seeing the Golden Calf and breaking the stone tables, he did it again: "I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins" (Deut. 9:18). It is not clear whether he ate or drank anything between the first 40 days and the second, so it may well have been a continuous 80-day fast. Either way, Moses' surviving this fast or fasts was strictly miraculous; not even David Blaine can go 40 days without water.

Long after Moses, Elijah would duplicate this feat: An angel having provided "a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water" (1 Kgs. 19:6), Elijah "did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God" (19:8).

As for Jesus, all three synoptic Gospels mention a 40-day period of temptation in the wilderness just after his baptism, but only Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus fasted. Matthew says, "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred" (Matt. 4:2). Luke says, "And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered" (Luke 4:2). Both accounts focus on food and hunger and say nothing about water, so it is possible that Jesus' fast was (just barely) humanly possible, a water-only fast like David Blaine's. Given the obvious parallels to Moses and Elijah, though, it seems more likely that it was a total fast, without even water, and that Jesus' surviving the ordeal was miraculous.

That Jesus should have done something miraculous is scarcely surprising, but the 40-day fast is made puzzling by the immediate context of his temptation in the wilderness. Here is one of the ways in which the devil tempted him.

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, 'He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.'"

Jesus said unto him, "It is written again, 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'" (Matt 4:5-7; cf. Luke 4:9-12).

The essence of this temptation seems to be to do something which would, in the ordinary course of nature, be suicidal, trusting God to intervene with a miracle and save you. And while God may well be willing to intervene with miracles to save your life, it would be a sin to "test" God by deliberately and artificially creating a life-threatening situation from which to be saved.

But isn't that just what Jesus did by choosing to go out in the desert and eat (and possibly drink) nothing for 40 days? Isn't that every bit as suicidal as jumping off the top of the Temple, and doesn't it "tempt God" in the same way? Why was the 40-day fast more acceptable to God than the proposed Temple jump?

One difference, I suppose, is that the Temple is in a public place. If Jesus had jumped off the Temple and been saved by angels, this would have been a public demonstration, "proving" to the people that he was the Son of God. Jesus was generally very careful not to give this kind of public demonstration, working miracles in private and often specifically instructing people not to spread the word. This may be why he chose to conduct his 40-day fast out in the wilderness; he would later tell those that fast to make an effort to "appear not unto men to fast" (Matt. 6:18), which would scarcely have been possible in the case of an extreme fast such as this one. No amount of "anointing thy head and washing thy face" (Matt. 6:17) could have covered up the fact that he was on the point of dying of starvation.

One other possibility is that Jesus never fasted for 40 days at all. Mark, on which Matthew and Luke are dependent, says only that he was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days and says nothing about a fast. We learn elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus and his disciples were specifically noted for not fasting (Mark 2:18, Matt. 9:14). When compared with John the Baptist, who did fast, Jesus came across as "a man gluttonous, and a winebibber" (Matt. 11:19, Luke 7:34). Aside from the temptation story, the only other indication in the Gospels that Jesus ever fasted is when he casts out a devil which his disciples could not cast out and then explains that "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17:21).

The first temptation in the wilderness was for the hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread. Combining this with the fact that he was in the wilderness for 40 days, and that both Moses and Elijah had fasted for 40 days, Matthew and Luke may have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus had done the same.

Satan divided against himself

Disclaimer: My terms are borrowed (by way of Terry Boardman and Bruce Charlton) from Rudolf Steiner, but I cannot claim to be using them in anything like a strictly Steinerian sense. In fact I have read only a tiny fraction of Steiner's voluminous output and assimilated only a tiny fraction of that. However, his demonology has long since taken on a life of its own.

These are just some tentative notes. I neither pretend nor aspire to be an expert on evil.

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Sorath

MEPHISTO:

I am the spirit that negates.

And rightly so, for all that comes to be

Deserves to perish wretchedly;

'Twere better nothing would begin.

Thus everything that your terms, sin,

Destruction, evil represent—

That is my proper element.

-- Goethe's Faust (Walter Kaufmann's translation)

By Sorath I mean the principle of evil at its purest, the devil of all devils, Goethe's "spirit that negates." God is the love-motivated Creator, and Sorath is the hate-motivated anti-Creator, who opposes all creation -- who thinks it "better nothing would begin" and that all that has begun "deserves to perish wretchedly."

Sorath's ultimate goal is that nothing at all exist, including Sorath himself. Does Sorath exist, then? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is not possible that he should. It may be possible to be God, even to be Lucifer, but not to be Sorath. After all, who can fail to see the self-contradictory nature of the statement, "I am the spirit that negates"? Sorath should probably not be thought of as a person at all, but as the hypothetical limit to which evil converges. Appropriately, Sorath is not a name from folklore, not a demon people are actually said to have interacted with, but an artificial creation of Steiner's, made from the Hebrew numerals for 666.

God is, ultimately, a Person -- and, pace Yeats, there is no Deus Inversus, no equal and opposite God of Evil, no Angra Mainyu ("Ahriman" in the original Zoroastrian, non-Steiner sense of that name). Devils who are persons certainly exist, but the devil of all devils is an abstraction, a mathematical limit which none of them can quite reach. And the name we give to this limit, this outer darkness, is also mathematical: Sorath.

We may nevertheless speak, and not altogether figuratively, of "what Sorath wants" and what it means to "serve Sorath."

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What Sorath is up against

Sorath is against creation and against Creator -- that is, against existence, against being as such -- so any understanding of Sorath's battle plan must begin with answering that ever-popular question, Why is there something rather than nothing? (And, yes, I intend to answer that little question en passant and then forge ahead with my demonology. This attitude is, incidentally, why there is something rather than nothing posted on this blog.)

Descartes, meet Berkeley. Berkeley, Descartes. Let's have each of you chuck your most famous Latin catchphrase into this here crucible and see what comes out, shall we? And . . . splendid: Esse est cogitari aut cogitare. "To be is to be thought, or to think." Sorath's enemies are thinkers -- God, the gods, and such humbler beings as ourselves -- and the combined harmonious thought of these thinkers, which is the creative Logos.

New thinkers think themselves into existence, oh, probably all the time -- beginning as "minor presences, riffraff of consciousness" (Iris Murdoch's phrase) and then, some of them, developing from there, some even to the threshold of Godhood itself.

But this is likely a one-way street. Thinkers don't ever think themselves out of existence -- how could they? How could you cease, by an act of will, to have an active will? To say, or think, "I will my own annihilation," you have to say I will. Existence cannot be undone.

Thinkers -- excepting perhaps those dragons and titans and hecatoncheires who came into being before there was a Logos -- have a natural tendency to think and act in harmony with the Logos. At first, at the most rudimentary levels of development, this tendency is almost wholly passive and unconscious. "For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither . . . at the command of our great and everlasting God" (Hel. 12:8) and "even the wind and the sea obey him" (Mark 4:41).

As a thinker develops, though, and becomes increasingly active and conscious, the possibility of deliberately rebelling against the Logos begins to emerge. Sorath wants to persuade as many as possible to choose that path, with the ultimate goal of undoing creation, reducing the cosmos, if not to nothing at all, at least to chaos.

The problem, though, is how to persuade anyone to join you when you have quite literally nothing to offer. The devil of all devils wants everyone "to choose captivity and death, . . . that all men might be miserable like unto himself" (2 Ne. 2:27). Uh, what's the selling point again?

Ultimately, many can and will choose just that -- will say, "Evil, be thou my good!" and walk willingly into hell -- but they must be brought to that point by a circuitous route. That's where Lucifer and Ahriman come in.

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Lucifer

In The Song of the Strange Ascetic (which I discuss here), G. K. Chesterton imagines how he would have lived if he "had been a Heathen" and expresses bafflement at the choice of an actual heathen called Higgins -- a sort of Caspar Milquetoast of heathenism -- not to live that life. Heathenism, we are to infer, is as much wasted on the heathens as youth is on the young.

A heathen Chesterton would have filled his life with wine, love affairs, dancing girls, and glorious military campaigns against the Chieftains of the North. He would have served Lucifer, in other words -- pursued forbidden pleasures -- and doesn't quite get this Ahriman fellow whom the prissy bourgeois Higgins chooses to serve instead.

Lucifer is all about wine, women, and song. Those who follow Lucifer are motivated by pleasure rather than the avoidance of pain, and are willing to embrace risk, danger, adventure, even a sort of heroism, in its pursuit. They do not shy away from violence and may even revel in it. Alcibiades, Casanova, Blackbeard -- Falstaff, even. (Not Epicurus, who, despite the modern connotation of his name, was a consummate Higgins.) This is the most relatable and accessible form of evil, the sort a good man like Chesterton could easily fantasize about embracing. "Gateway drug" is the term, I believe.

Why call this aspect of evil Lucifer? Well, because Steiner did, obviously, but we can also invent an ex post facto etymology for it. Lucifer, "light-bearer," is from the Latin lux, "light," but we can imagine that it derives instead from luxus, "luxury, debauchery." Also, Lucifer was originally a name for the planet Venus -- whose other name is that of the ancient Roman goddess of sex, drugs, and rock-'n'-roll.

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Ahriman

How did Satan become Satan? Joseph Smith, the Prophet, proposes a somewhat novel origin story for this supervillain: One of the angels comes before the Lord and proposes, "send me, . . . and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost." And it is for this offer of universal salvation -- because, that is, he "sought to destroy the agency of man" -- that he is cast out of heaven and becomes the devil (see Moses 4:1-4).

If Lucifer seeks pleasure, Ahriman seeks control. Note that this is not necessarily the same thing as seeking power. Those who serve Ahriman may seek to be in control themselves, but more often their goal may simply be that everything be under control. Hierarchy is of Ahriman, because even those who are far from the top have no objection to it. Even an Ahrimanist who has the ability to control things personally will generally defer these personal decisions to a system or algorithm, personal responsibility being unpleasantly risky. A near-perfect example of Ahrimanic man is the 2020s birdemicist, happy to submit to house arrest, universal surveillance and censorship, and forced medical procedures -- rather than take a chance of catching the flu. "Non serviam" is Lucifer's motto, not Ahriman's; if Ahrimanism were condensed into a two-word motto, it would be, "Safety first" -- or, if more than two words are needed, "None are safe until all are safe" ("that one soul shall not be lost").

Lucifer's motivation is positive: the pursuit of pleasure. Ahriman's is negative: the elimination of risk. Lucifer's focus is personal; Ahriman's, universal. Thus Ahriman, though less obviously "evil" than Lucifer, is actually considerably closer than Lucifer to Sorath, to the pure and universal "spirit that negates."

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Evilution

Suicide has cause and stillbirth, logic; and cancer, simple as a flower, blooms.

-- Karl Shapiro

Conceptually, Sorath is primary, and I have discussed him first. Chronologically, in the evolutionary development of evil, he comes last. The natural progression is from Good to Luciferic, from Luciferic to Ahrimanic, and from Ahrimanic to Sorathic.

First, the good are tempted by forbidden pleasures, and by forbidden means of pursuing good ends, and embrace the ethos of Abbey of Thélème: Fay ce que vouldras, "Do what you want."

This Luciferic playing-with-fire leads to predictable results, people begin to feel that the world has become a chaotic and dangerous place, and they turn to Ahriman. We can see a clear example of this if we look back at the past half-century: As the flower children (those fleurs de mal) blossomed into flower fogeys, a movement that began with free speech, free love, and letting it all hang out evolved organically into the world of PC, sexual harassment prevention training, and a superstitious horror of the "inappropriate."

As Ahriman drains the world of its charm and turns everything into management and bureaucracy, as he extinguishes joy and the memory of joy, as everyone, to one degree or another, is assimilated into his soulless system, mutual respect becomes impossible, more and more people live in a state of barely suppressed rage, and the prospect of burning everything to the ground becomes increasingly attractive. Sorath has arrived.

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The Blood War

When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,

And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death;

When souls are torn to everlasting fire,

And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,

O who can stand?

-- William Blake

In the Dungeons and Dragons cosmology, one of the defining features of the "Lower Planes" (hell) is the Blood War -- the interminable conflict between the chaotic-evil (Luciferic) demons and the lawful-evil (Ahrimanic) devils, with a third class of neutral-evil (Sorathic?) fiends manipulatively playing each side against the other. So -- did the D&D guys get hell more or less right? Was old Gary Gygax privy to one or two of the deep things of Satan?

If the Blood War did not exist, Sorath would have to invent it. Remember what Sorath wants -- for men to hate the good as such and to pursue evil strictly for the evulz -- and how contrary to human nature that is. How to get us humans to sail against the wind of our own deepest nature? By tacking, of course.

• Sorath's goal: Avoid good, pursue evil
• Human nature: Pursue good, avoid evil
• Lucifer tack: Sacrifice the avoidance of evil in order to pursue good (e.g. to seek pleasure)
• Ahriman tack: Sacrifice the pursuit of good in order to avoid evil (e.g. to be "safe")

Clever little devil, right? But so far this is just tacking, and no one ever said tacking was hell. War is hell. That's the next step. Notice that the Lucifer tack and the Ahriman tack are polar opposites and are both evil. With just a bit of nudging, we get this:

• Sorathized Lucifer: Sacrifice the avoidance of evil in order to destroy Ahriman!
• Sorathized Ahriman: Sacrifice the pursuit of good in order to crush Lucifer!

Rage against the machine! Machinate against the rage! Behead those who insult Sorath -- who, for his part, claps his broad wings above the battle and sails rejoicing in the flood of Death. O who can stand?

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La fin de Satan?

And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.

-- Mark 3:23-26

Given what we have discussed thus far, what are we to make of this statement attributed to Jesus? 

Victor Hugo's unfinished poem does not really address the matter; I have pilfered the title because of its ambiguity. La fin de Satan could mean the annihilation of Satan, or it could mean Satan's objective, his telos (which is in fact the word used in Mark) -- and, wait, are those even two different things? Didn't we say that "Sorath's ultimate goal is that nothing at all exist, including Sorath himself"? La fin de Satan est la fin de Satan.

Jesus, in the passage quoted, is responding to the claim that "by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils." The implication is that devils obviously don't work that way, because if they did, the whole enterprise of devilry would have collapsed long ago, torn apart by infighting. The continued existence of Satan is proof that Satan is not in the habit of undermining himself, and thus that the whole idea of a power-of-Satan-compels-you exorcist is inherently implausible.

Everything I've written in this post thus far -- Lucifer vs. Ahriman, the Blood War, all that -- seems to be saying that the kingdom of Satan succeeds by being divided against itself, and thus that Jesus was wrong. Well, as a Christian, I obviously can't leave it at that!

The easy way out would be to point out that this quote from Jesus does not appear in the Fourth and most authoritative Gospel, that Mark consists of notes compiled by a non-witness, and that Jesus may well never have said anything like this. Honestly, though, it sounds quite Jesusy to me, and I believe he probably did say it or something like it.

Another possibility is that Jesus was speaking specifically about exorcism. Back when I still believed the mainstream idea that Mark's was the most trustworthy Gospel and was focusing my studies on it, I went so far as to read an entire book called Demonic Possession in the New Testament, by William Menzies Alexander. Alexander draws a distinction between possession by "demons" or "unclean spirits" (a condition cured by Jesus on many occasions) and possession by "Satan" (attributed only to Judas Iscariot). The latter (which also has the distinction of being the only "possession" mentioned in the Fourth Gospel) is clearly moral in nature and leads to damnation. In contrast, those troubled by "unclean spirits" are treated as victims who bear no moral responsibility for their condition. The other important point that Alexander makes is that the wave of demon-possession described in Mark was a unique phenomenon, localized in time and space. With a few ambiguous exceptions like the case of King Saul, there is scarcely a hint of demon-possession in the Old Testament, nor does demon-possession in the Marcan mold appear to happen much in the modern world. (Satan-possession, in contrast, seems to be at an all-time high.) The demoniacs of first-century Palestine, a bit like the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard centuries later, appear to have represented a sort of spiritual outbreak or epidemic which flared up, spread through the population, and then burnt itself out -- with this last process perhaps expedited by the activity of Jesus and his disciples. If this phenomenon was the "Satan" Jesus' accusers were referring to, it would appear that its kingdom didn't stand, and it did have an end.

Something else to keep in mind is that Jesus' responses to critics or those who tried to catch him in his words generally worked on two levels. At the level of mere repartee, their purpose was to pwn and silence his opponents; at a deeper level, they were "parables" -- riddles -- conveying more substantive truth. For example, Jesus' famous statement about the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost was also a response to accusations that he used demonic power to cast out demons. As rhetoric, its message was, "Be very careful calling something demonic which may actually be from the Holy Ghost" -- but we can hardly conclude that mistakenly thinking a particular "miracle" may be demonic is the unforgivable sin! The deeper meaning of this statement is, well, deep, and a great deal has been thought and written about it -- almost all of which, rightly, departs from the statement's original rhetorical context.

So focusing too much on the conclusion "and therefore exorcisms are never performed by demonic power" may be much too narrow a constraint when it comes to understanding the deeper meaning of "How can Satan cast out Satan?" Rhetorically, it is supposed to work as a reductio ad absurbum: Satan obviously wouldn't undermine his own power; therefore, no exorcist is a servant of Satan. But those who think it out realize at that what it reduces to isn't absurd at all: Satan cannot stand, but hath an end. I mean, what's the alternative, really? That Satan and his works will endure forever? That Satan -- ce monstre délicat -- has eternal life?

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What if they gave a Blood War and nobody came?

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.

-- Matt. 5:39

Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, . . . durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, "The Lord rebuke thee."

-- Jude 9

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight."

-- John 18:36

But Jesus said unto him, "Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead."

-- Matt. 8:22

We are not here to fight in the Blood War. We are not here to contend against Satan and those who serve him. The example of the Messiah conspicuously not overthrowing the Empire should have made that clear enough. We are here to learn, to serve God, and to follow Jesus to eternal life. Anything else is a distraction.

Calm and stars

Around the Matsu Islands -- just off the coast of China, but administered by Taiwan -- the waters are full of a sort of bioluminescent plankton, called by the locals "blue teardrops," which, when disturbed (by a crashing wave, for example), emit a blue-white light. As soon as the water is calm again, the light goes out. This is visible only when it is very dark, and cannot be photographed except with a very long exposure which distorts what it actually looks like, but it is striking. At night, you can take a canoe into an old tunnel once used for hiding warships from Red Mao, and every splash of the paddle into the water creates a momentary swirl of ghostly sparks, as if one were rowing the Styx. Splash a paddleful of water onto the wall of the tunnel, and it erupts in a ghostly fireworks display, with countless pale stars popping into existence and then winking out. The effect reminded me of the Yongsung Kim painting Calm and Stars.

Kim's painting depicts Jesus having calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee, artistic license having reduced the number of disciples in the boat to one.

And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.

And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, "Master, carest thou not that we perish?"

And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, "Peace, be still."

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

And he said unto them, "Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?"

And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, "What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" 

(Mark 4:37-41)

I love that bit at the end: "Why are ye so fearful? . . . And they feared exceedingly" -- not despite the fact that Jesus could calm the storm but precisely because of it! What's scarier, thinking the Master won't do anything about the storm -- or realizing that he will?

The Matsu Islands are named after the sea goddess Mazu, a deified woman who is supposed to be buried there. (Convention transcribes the same sound as ts for the islands and z for the goddess.) There is a colossal statue of Mazu on one of the islands, crowned and holding a lamp and a tablet, almost like a Chinese version of the Statue of Liberty. On her tablet is written the chengyu associated with this goddess: 風調雨順 -- "the winds are tamed, and the rains obey."

Distinctive vocabulary of each of the four Gospels

A reader has provided me with a spreadsheet of all the words in the King James Version of the New Testament, with the number of occurrences of each word in each book. Using this data, I have put together these lists of the most distinctive words in each Gospel.

To be included in the list for a given Gospel, a word had to (1) occur at least 10 times in that Gospel and (2) have a frequency (per 1000 words) at least twice as high as its frequency in any of the other three Gospels.

• Matthew: begat, deliver, end, field, gather, heaven, hypocrites, multitudes, O, prison, reward, righteous, talents, think, wherefore, wise

• Mark: asked, began, hands, immediately, James, looked, ship, straightway, such, themselves, unclean

• Luke: angel, certain, company, named, pass, returned, rich, sight, ten, years, Zacharias

• John: abide, am, answered, bear, because, beginning, believe, believed, believeth, born, die, disciple, doeth, ever, except, Father, feast, flesh, glorified, greater, hast, honour, I, Jews, judge, keep, knew, know, known, Lazarus, life, lifted, light, love, loved, me, might, mine, myself, now, Philip, record, scripture, seek, seen, seeth, sent, sheep, Simon, sin, true, truth, verily, water, whence, whither, whom, witness, words, work, world, yet

There's obviously a lot of noise here, but one can still see the familiar areas of emphasis of each Gospel. Matthew is the most moralistic (righteous, hypocrites, reward, prison). Mark is the fastest-paced (immediately, straightway) and has a special focus on exorcism (unclean spirits). Nothing in particular stands out about Luke. John is, of course, the most distinctive; aside from the familiar themes (believe, know, life, light, love, truth), we can see that it is the Gospel in which Jesus talks the most about himself (I, me, mine, myself, am). It is interesting to note that sin (singular) occurs almost exclusively in John, while sins and sinners are more typical of the Synoptics. This is consistent with the idea (see here) that John means something else by sin than "moral transgression."

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It can also be interesting to look at the words that meet the converse requirements: (1) occurring at least 10 times in each of the other three Gospels and (2) being no more than half as frequent in the target gospel as in any of the other three. No words meet these requirements for the Gospel of Matthew, but here are the lists for the other three.

• Mark: hast, law, light, nor, prophet, then

• Luke: answered, disciples, king, saith, sea, verily

• John: against, began, children, devils, enter, fell, great, house, kingdom, multitude, or, over, pass, scribes, their, upon, wife

We can see here how John differs from the Synoptics in hardly mentioning the kingdom of God, which (with its Matthean variant kingdom of heaven) seems in the Synoptics to be the center of Jesus' whole message. The complete absence of devils (plural; the devil is mentioned about equally in all the Gospels) reflects the fact that there are, uniquely, no exorcisms in the Fourth Gospel.

How "dead" were those raised by Jesus?

Vasily Polenov, The Raising of Jairus' Daughter (1871)

I have been reading Sylvan Muldoon's very interesting book The Projection of the Astral Body (1929), based on the author's own extensive experience with fully conscious astral projection, supplemented by the scholarship of paranormal researcher Hereward Carrington. He explains that the during an out-of-body experience, the astral body is connected to its material counterpart by a "line of force" or "astral cable" -- something like an ethereal umbilical cord -- and that this is what keeps the physical body alive while out of coincidence with the astral body which normally animates it. This is what distinguishes astral projection from death; in the latter condition, the astral cable is severed.

When the astral body is absent for a prolonged period, the physical body enters a state of deep catalepsy something like hibernation, in which its physical needs (for food, water, even oxygen) are minimal, and this state may easily be mistaken for death.

It is obvious that, during an extensive and prolonged projection [of the astral body] the material counterpart might assume the characteristics of a corpse, and the temperature drop exceedingly low -- even to such an extent that the misunderstanding people of the world would pronounce the subject "dead." I have concluded, as the result of a study of this subject, that the heart may actually cease beating for some time, and yet the astral cord may not be disconnected. . . .

Mr. Carrington has . . . summarized many cases of premature burial. "There can be no doubt," says this authority, "that many hundreds of persons have been buried alive, during the centuries which have preceded us. Societies for the Prevention of Premature Burial have actually been formed in England, America, etc. Cases of trance, catalepsy, suspended animation, etc., were mistaken for death, before our modern methods of diagnosis were introduced."

Muldoon cites many examples of people returning from deep, death-like trances (understood by him to be cases of astral projection, whether deliberate or spontaneous), of which the following -- apparently well attested by trustworthy witnesses -- is one of the most remarkable.

Some years ago, a celebrated fakir from the Province of Lahore, India, was buried for a period of thirty days, under the supervision of Prince Ranjeet Singh and Sir Claude Wade. The fakir was placed in a sack -- after entering the state of catalepsy -- which was securely tied. This sack was then placed in a box, which was locked -- the keys being kept by the British General.

The box was then deposited in a brick vault, the door of which was sealed with Ranjeet Singh's seal, and a guard of British soldiers was detailed to guard the vault day and night. At the end of the thirty days, the vault was opened, the box and sack unfastened, and the fakir -- very emaciated, but still alive -- was resuscitated by his friends!

Muldoon then goes on to draw parallels between such cases and biblical accounts of raising the dead.

In the Bible there are several accounts of individuals who were brought back to life. Take, for example, Christ's resurrection of his friend Lazarus [in John 11]. If Lazarus were actually dead and the astral cable disconnected, then Christ did perform a miracle; but it the cable was still engaged, it was an apparent miracle, and the resurrection was merely a resuscitation. 

Christ was a marvellous occultist and seer, the peer of mediums, and was a friend of Lazarus. Might it not be possible that Lazarus was an astral projector? There seems to have been some misunderstanding on the part of the disciples as to whether Lazarus was really dead or not. Christ first of all told his followers that Lazarus was not dead: "This sickness is not unto death." Next He told them that Lazarus was asleep: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go now that I may awake him from sleep." 

Christ next went to the grave where Lazarus lay -- a cave with a stone upon it; He ordered the stone to be removed and with a loud voice cried, "Lazarus, come forth!" And he that was dead came forth. Could not a similar demonstration be given to-day -- by a hypnotist and an astral projector? 

Another Bible instance of resuscitation is the bringing to life of a certain ruler's daughter [the daughter of Jairus, in Mark 5]. "And he cometh to the house of a ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. And when he was come in, he said unto them, 'Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.' And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entered in where the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and he said unto her, 'Talitha-cumi'; which is, being interpreted: 'Damsel, I say unto thee, arise!' And straightway the damsel arose and walked." 

For these few singular demonstrations Christ gained the reputation of being capable of resurrecting the dead; but in every case Jesus himself stated that the subjects were not dead, but sleeping. If the persons were literally dead -- if the line of force had actually been severed -- and still they were brought back to life, is it not a wonder that more were not likewise revived? Surely there were others, begging to be reunited with their loved ones -- innocent children crying for their mothers, lovers begging for their sweethearts who lay in death -- pathetic mourners all about -- and yet only a few were resurrected!

This line of speculation, with its implication that Jesus did not in fact have the power to resurrect the dead, strikes at the heart of Christianity, even suggesting that Jesus' own resurrection -- the Resurrection -- may not have been quite what it appeared to be. It also represents a somewhat unique challenge because it is not based on the assumptions of materialism or on dismissing the gospel accounts as fables. Muldoon accepts the accounts as factual and accepts a "supernatural" explanation of what took place -- but a different supernatural explanation, one that would make Jesus merely a "marvellous occultist and seer, the peer of mediums," able to rectify the occasional astral projection gone wrong, rather than someone who was fully divine and brought genuine salvation from death.

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So, how plausible is the Muldoon theory?

In the case of the daughter of Jairus, I think Muldoon's theory makes perfect sense. Jesus actually says that "the damsel is not dead," and the miracle is not prefaced with any "I am the resurrection and the life" type claims about being able to raise the dead. Jairus had previously said, "My little daughter lieth at the point of death" -- possibly in the cataleptic state described by Muldoon -- and after her resuscitation he "commanded that something should be given her to eat," perhaps suggesting that like the Indian fakir, she was still alive but in a greatly weakened state and required careful nursing back to full health.

What about Lazarus? Muldoon makes much of Jesus' statement that Lazarus was asleep but rather misleadingly elides the two verses that follow this statement: "Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead." He had told the mourners of Jairus's daughter not to weep because she was not dead -- but when he saw Lazarus's grave, Jesus wept -- because he was dead. To Lazarus's sister, he says not, "Thy brother is not dead," but, "Thy brother shall rise again. . . . I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." If Lazarus was not actually dead, such talk can only be interpreted as deliberate dishonesty, as pretending to be able to raise the dead.

Finally, and most importantly, what about Jesus' own death and resurrection? Muldoon doesn't explicitly venture into such controversial waters, but his theory certainly implies that Jesus, too, may have been resuscitated from a cataleptic state rather than raised from the dead. There are, if one is looking for them, hints of this possibility in the Gospels. Mark reports that "Pilate marvelled if he were already dead" -- meaning that crucifixion would not normally have killed a man so quickly. Jesus' legs were not broken (which would have killed him if he were not already dead), and his body was never embalmed (ditto). After coming out of the tomb, he still had his crucifixion wounds, which on the face of it is more consistent with survival in a wounded body than with resurrection in a perfect, immortal body. Against this survival hypothesis we have the fact that Jesus looked different (was unrecognizable) after his resurrection and was also reportedly able to walk through walls and such -- and, of course, explicit claims by Jesus and his disciples that he had died and returned to life.

It is obvious that belief in, or rejection of, Jesus' resurrection must be based on something more substantial than speculations based on the rather sparse accounts that have come down to us all these centuries later. Opinions may differ about Lazarus and the others, but if Jesus himself was not resurrected, Christianity is pointless.

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Traditional Christian opinion is that Jesus himself was the first to be properly resurrected and that those who preceded him -- Lazarus (John 11), the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5), and the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7) -- were merely restored from death to ordinary mortal life (meaning that, unlike resurrected beings, they would still die again). I have slowly brought around (by Bruce Charlton) to the opinion that Lazarus was in fact resurrected in the fullest sense -- that he was the first, and Jesus himself the second -- but what of the others? Muldoon makes a good point: If Jesus had the power to restore the dead to life, why did he so seldom exercise it? He seems to have been willing to heal just about anyone who needed healing, so why are the accounts of his raising the dead so few and far between? Lazarus was Jesus' closest friend (and perhaps brother-in-law), but what was so special about the daughter of Jairus and the young man of Nain? Perhaps, as Muldoon suggests, what was special about them was that they were not actually dead but in the sort of cataleptic state he describes.