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Copyright © 2004. All rights reserved.

I. Crowned In The Garden

I was twenty-one the first time someone made me aware of the society. Even then in the early years of our friendship, the society found some atavistic quality it needed for its own political ambulation in Bellah Barabas and I, Jacobin Church. Where they (I would have once said “we”) were going, none can say: Like its destiny, the society’s origin is the reason for asking the question about its origin. Perhaps it just circumambulates the Earth, and we are the spokes of its wheel.

For Bellah and I, initiation began in the Mission, but for many others it began in the temples of Gaza, in Addis Ababa, Toulouse or Houston, in Morocco, Singapore, or Sydney, Jonestown – or Rosslyn, where for us it will end, where the dragon bites its tail; and where it begins again for the Other, the Object, the Truth and Light of Immortality.

Like a seagull grazing in the refuse of the streets of the Mission District of San Francisco, the café we frequent, “L’Boheme,” seems to move from storefront to storefront, like a gutter punk sleeping on a different couch every night. When our group gathers, just so and by synchronicity or summons, the clientele forces us to disappear by ignoring us so completely that we cease to exist in their real world. There, Bellah and I were found introspecting with witches over the bones of tested alchemies and finely engraved doctrines. It was there that Bellah and I met the eight Keiths, the sons of Esau, the Edomites, Lords of the Earth, the Others. And L’Boheme was the last place I saw Bellah, before he disappeared.

We didn’t know it two months ago, or even last week, but our gatherings didn’t go unnoticed. Indeed, only today while I wait for Bellah do I know that they must’ve watched for some time. Had I known that power was the boon awaiting us – the gold of the grail of these knights – I would have forsworn our quest before today. Now, though I will rule the world, no one shall remember my name.

Now the content and humble people who offer me food and laughter will only offer me the gifts of phantoms, and I, like a Sidhe – the fairie of the Celts – will live eternally in the real world; I who am real only in the otherworld. Like two monks on one horse, Bellah and I will circumambulate forever, the modus operandi of every crime, and the utopia of every holy war – like Comte d’Saint-Germaine. And Ona will blaze our trail like Serafina. This will be the curse.

II. A Forest of Eyes

I was an art student, and Bellah was a local journalist, but poor at what he did. His passions, like fates, dictated his course, and my curiosity made me complicit in what, at first, was a game to relieve boredom. Together with Ona, we manifest a will, and that will enfolded us until we were our freedom. That was our truth.

For three months one summer, he and I holed up in our flat, glad for a roof, our pads of paper filling with Euclidian schema, Gematria, and Hebrew letters. He rarely worked. While he climbed into the halls of the temple with Temurah – attributing the manifest to the unmanifest – I devoted myself to Torah – and tremblingly stretched my hand toward the traditions of Kabbalah – attributing the unmanifest to the manifest. In the end, we realized, both were true at the same time. In our barren room, the light of a green bulb placed us outside the edge of waking, and suddenly there before us was Ezekiel’s Wheel, with a thousand eyes in every eye — the eternal presence and infinite perception of the cosmos enfolded into the most ancient animal and mineral urges of being.

Our path was no game, like Hesse’s glass beads – here in the room with Bellah and I were the serpents of Hermes, Cernunnos and Shiva, the serpents of Eve and Asher, Lilith and Kali, with eyes beyond number. To the seeker of Truth, there is no greater binding power or temptation than this. Here was the brazen serpent, the Leviathan, the World Dragon eating its own tail — and it was Yin-Yang, Mercy and Judgment united, Binah and Hokhmah crowned. That summer, a wet heat blowing from the sea, we didn’t understand that the wheel conceals such power. We had walked like fools through the first gate, with little thought of temptations, like so many others. We came willingly, eager for wisdom, and now, we are bound to rule forever — karma’s most severe retribution for the faithless sins of hypocrites.

The Rabbis say four Rabbis entered PRDS – Paradise – the Garden of Eden in Heaven: “Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher and Rabbi Akiva. Ben Azzai glimpsed and died. Ben Zoma glimpsed and went mad. Aher cut the plants. Rabbi Akiva emerged in peace.” To these we may add Barabas and I, Jacobin. Barabas has disappeared; perhaps he’s dead (I pray not). As for me, much remains to be seen. Perhaps I will cut the plants, cast myself from the garden, and rebel from fate. Or perhaps I will die. And maybe, though I fear not, I will emerge in peace.

III. Incidental Initiation

Of the customers today in L’Boheme, Adams was the last person I would have chosen to talk to. He hovered like a dragon, breathing the breath of the mouth of the cave, as if deep within it his lungs were concealed. His long black hair was carefully groomed into a ponytail, and his clothes looked new and naive compared to mine (in black leather and silk with boots, or torn shirts with sandals).

When I first saw him, I was alone, sitting at a table outside L’Boheme, drawing three-dimensional models of the Tree of Life. As he walked out to find a seat for himself, a worn leather case in one hand, he saw my illustration and stopped to look.

“Interesting,” he said. “I see you’ve drawn several variations.”

“Yes, they represent modalities of a correlative methodology.”

“Yes, the kabbalist Tree of Life, I know it. Mind if I sit down?”

Bellah has an infectious sense of humor, and a grin that makes anything he does seem mischievous, but innocent. Adams is like a viper, ready to strike, convert, convince and cajole. Perhaps he is an initiate, but I don’t believe it – they needed him to lure us, and for that, they had to lure him, too.

No, Adams was no initiate, but was what he seemed then – a computer scientist, and a curious, ambitious man bent on achieving greatness. He has achieved it, and now he is hidden in the Prisons of the former Masters, I’m sure. It’s not for me to judge, but I don’t believe he’ll enter the Garden. No, he’s a Tyler hewed to the Gate — judge, jury and executioner.

He was, he said, convinced that the Torah had an encoded document hidden within, and said God had guided him to ask for my help. Like a cardsharp, he dealt me diagrams of dodecahedrons, computer source code, and photocopies of Egyptian papyruses. I was once a computer nerd, and fascinated (and envious) as I was by his discovery, I rushed to offer him my help.

“I’m a student,” I said, “I can afford the luxury,” and we shook hands. I felt his forefinger jabbing into my palm, almost urgently, and past Adams I saw Bellah tramping down the cracked sidewalk. With his usual bravado, he spun a chair around at my table, and squatted on it like Spider-Man. His goatee magnified an impish grin. The buckles and polished toes of his engineer boots shone.

“Hey, Adams, this is my pal Bellah. Man, you should tell him what you just told me. About the Temurah program,” I said to Adams.

He took Bellah’s hand, and said, “Of course. Where should I start? I’m not used to the spotlight.” He looked at me like I’d betrayed him.

Bellah’s pride took over. He said, “You don’t have to…”

“No, no: It’s okay. There’s something I didn’t tell you, Jacobin.”

IV. The Tough Love Society

This made Bellah curious. He leaned in eagerly. Adams began again, but this time he spoke of a society of mystics who didn’t know they were bound to weave a fate, a society without a name, without a holy land, and without a membership. Anyone who claimed to be a member, like the Rosy Cross, was certainly not a member. I felt akin.

Just then as Adams leaned over the table, drawing our attention into his eyes and the throb of his voice over noisome Mission District, Ona approached with a gait of practiced nonchalance.

In those days she was the Goth queen of Folsom Street, and wandered the neighborhoods of “Taqueria” and “24 Hour Checks Cashed” ignoring the whispers of “black tar opium,” and offers of money for blowjobs from drunks. Her leather, chains, black makeup and nails, and sneer of disapproval were the accessories of her flair. As she walked toward our table I thought, “She’s Bodaccia incarnate.”

“Planning to rule the world, punk?” she said to Bellah.

I looked where she was looking: She’d noticed our notes spread all over the street-side table, and the diabolical look of Adams, who leaned back, and said, “Well, hello. Who’s this beautiful lady?”

She snorted, and said, “Are you for real?” Then she sat down to find out. I stood to refill my coffee cup.

As I walked inside to the carafe at the counter, Bellah trotted up behind me across the black and white checkered floor, dodging tables. He came close and whispered, “Did that guy do jab you with his finger when he shook your hand? Did he shake your hand?”

Even as he said the words, I felt a chill. Bellah must’ve known by my expression, but I had to say something. “He’s an initiate, or knows their secrets, and he thinks we are too,” I said.

Bellah nodded toward an alcove behind the stairs, where two closet doors face each other, and we ducked in. “If this guy’s for real, we can play along a little and see what he knows, and he’ll think he’s getting the best of the deal – if we tell him what we know.”

“Great,” I said, “but what do we know?”

“We know the secret of the society.”

“What? What is it?”

“If we could say, then we wouldn’t be members anymore, because then the society wouldn’t be secret. Without the secret, there is no society,” Bellah said. His face was fiendish, and I had to quietly laugh at his absurdity. He wasn’t serious at all.

“Let’s play along,” I said.

“Ona will have him warmed up,” he said.

“He’ll be leaking like a sieve.”

V. The Balance of Power

When Bellah and I converged like ravens, coffee and cigarettes tucked into our claws, Ona was sitting close to him, rapt. We sat and listened as he lectured, occasionally punctuating his monologue with questions, as if quizzing us. We would shake our heads and murmur, “I don’t know,” and he would tumble on.

“The secret society,” he said, “is like any society: Any choice a secret society makes is a choice that the universe makes, just as our choices vibrate through society. What is power? Like the hub of a wheel of fire, the society conducts waves of power into the world, and, being secretly determined to rule the world, they do.

“The Others are the first, but after them, there’s Another, you see? They are part of the momentary unfolding of Creation; the Others know time is a psychosis of sorts, which turns people into spokes of a great wheel of fire. So why do they want my computer program?”

Then Ona was bored, “Come off it, why would they talk to you?”

Adams jerked his head, ego affronted. “I’m very knowledgeable in…”

“Knowledge is of nothing, Ayin, Auo. Experience and its return to experience is power,” said Bellah.

“What were you saying about that computer program?” I asked Adams, leaning toward him with a conspiratorial air. I shuffled some of my own papers into a folder. Adams came out of the sulk Ona gave him.

“Hm? Oh yes. It’s quite interesting, a project I’ve taken on for the Others,” he said. Bellah and I wanted him to dig himself deeper, then we could console him, and he would talk openly. “In essence, my program performs Biblical numerology on the Old Testament. With this program, I’ve found that hidden information is encoded throughout the Old Testament when the Hebrew Torah is geometrically mapped.”

“That’s already been done, though. The Bible Code, right?” Bellah said, looking at me. I smiled, playing along. Adams was ingenuous.

“Yeah. They predicted the death of Yitzhak Rabin with that program,” I said.

Ona said, “Really? Why didn’t he avoid it, then?”

“He wouldn’t listen to them,” Adams interjected. There’s nothing like an interruption to get a talker rolling.

Adams leaned in, getting his second wind. “But my program does more than just skip letters in a word search, that’s two dimensional. This program maps the Bible in three dimensions. It models any geomantic shape of letters perfectly, and then casts a shadow of them, a normative value, on a plane, and searches them for sensible phrases. I’ve found sentences and paragraphs hidden within the multifoliate grammars of God. I’ve found maps and charts of the stars.

“With the right arrangement, I will find another book, a parallel Bible; one that repeats the secret in plain language, ad infinitum. I’ve studied Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin. I’ve visited libraries and made myself known at bookstores in Jerusalem, Cairo, Provens and Rome, and this is the fruit of my labor.” He patted his worn leather case, lying flat on the table. “Now there is only one thing I need to complete the pattern.”

VI. The Power of Balance

“Well, out with it!” Ona piped in, as if on cue. He laughed in her face, his chin out, his spine curved. Bellah sipped casually from his cup. I glanced from face to face, confused.

“I need to know why the program works, and I don’t. That’s what the Others don’t understand,” Adams said. He looked guiltily at Ona. Noticing his weakness, she leaned forward, acting interested.

“You mentioned the ‘Others.’ Are they dangerous?” Bellah said.

“How would we know?” Adams said. “The Others are like us, hidden until needed, like sleeper agents in the CIA. Are you dangerous?”

Ona snorted again. “Bellah, dangerous? No way.”

I said, “The group can’t exist without keeping the secret. If it identifies itself with the secret, and refuse to speak it, then the secret of the secret alone identifies it?”

Bellah said, “So the dialectic is encoded in normal dialogue? Questions and answers meet and join, bringing their own intent to act? Our everyday conversations hide messages that bind us with tacit ideas? Do we speak a universal language lacking object, subject or verb – only adverb? It must be true then, if simply for symmetry.”

“Symmetry with what, you idiot?” said Ona.

“With itself of course,” Adams said.

I said, “What your program needs is a feedback equilibrium, so you can create a holistic pattern from any geometry. Look,” I pulled out a page from his notes, a sphere of letters. “Don’t just cast a shadow of linearity, let each letter attract the others. This way, the fractal creates meaning through feedback. This geometry describes the microcosm of Deity, so it needs no architect to order it. It’s the unfolding rose.

“All of our dilemmas regress into infinity, and the sorrows of life restate into joy. Infinity is the teacher; and it’s lesson? We are the teachers. You want to understand the Torah? Then let it map itself. Don’t seek perfection, seek imperfection in infinite variety: There is the gate. Through the trial of that gate lies paradise.

“Teach your program that the center is everywhere, and the Torah will map itself. Your program a virtual Golem, and you need the first letter of its name to give it life. Teach it what I told you, and the Golem will spit out infinite varieties of meaning.”

Adams was reticent. He thought all my talents were on the table. “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” he said. “How did you know that?”

I smiled, and said, “Well, if we could meet the others, Bellah and I could modify your program. Do you have the source code?”

“Of course,” he said, looking doubtful. “It’s written in Perl.”

“I know it,” Bellah lied. “So does Jacobin.”

“Well,” he started to say.

“I won’t modify it,” I said, “that was the wrong word. I won’t tinker with the fundamentals, just the math.”

“Why the sudden interest in the Others?” Adams said.

I glanced at Bellah and said, “We can’t say.” I gave Ona a benign smile, hoping they’d catch on.

“You two are up to something here, aren’t you?” he whispered. “Who are you?” The sky was darkening and opaque, and Adams looked transparent in the twilight.

VII. A Secret Within A Secret

“Look,” Bellah lied. “If we say who we are, then we are not that. If we can help you, then why not in this way: By adding our knowledge to yours? Isn’t that the higher purpose of the fraternity of humanity?”

“Then there is a secret,” Adams said, quiet and serious. The humidity chilled the air. I wanted coffee.

I looked at Ona. She said, “You’ve both said it already, the secret is hidden in everyday phrases. You tell everyone the secret all the time, without revealing that you’re revealing it.” She leaned back, as if she had just played her hand in a card game.

“In the initiation,” Bellah said, “it’s stated outright. But the initiation is hidden so well in everyday life that you don’t notice it. Then one day something clicks, you remember the secret, and every detail of the moment when it was given. It’s said once as paragraphs between sentences, and after, as sentences between words. This is how the secret is kept and revealed at once, which is how the mystic saves himself from sinking into the mere occult.”

Bellah was on a roll, but we were novices – we’re like the court jester who is killed for his bad taste and fed to the boars, then served as a dish at the King’s Feast.

“Stay with me to meet the Others, all of you. Tell me that you’ll stay and help me explain it to them,” Adams said.

“I thought you knew the Others,” Ona said, squinting. Adams relaxed at the sound of her voice.

“No, I’ve only talked to them on the phone,” he said. “They said they’d buy the program and finance my research, and I do need the money. And I hoped to learn something from them, or at least about them.”

“In case you wondered,” Bellah said, “we’re not the Others, Adams. But I bet if we claimed we were, you wouldn’t believe us. Still, it’s the truth.”

Adams smiled, and said, “I do believe you, though I don’t know what you are.”

Bellah said, “And we don’t know what you are. Just the way it should be, right?” Adams laughed quietly, looking into Bellah’s eyes.

“Then wait with me here tonight. The Others will convene here within three hours after dark, and it’s been dark for a half hour now. We can present the program to them together, and take strength from our secret to face their trials,” said Adams.

“Grow up,” said Ona. Adams blushed. Now that he’d taken the bait, and hedged his bets, she would be merciless.

A homeless man came to our table and presented a worn yellow card that read, “I’m deaf and homeless. Please help.”

Bellah gave him a dollar.

VIII. The Death of Fantasy

Ona didn’t wait, but went ahead to our flat. That’s why, when the Others came, there were eight of them – they didn’t expect Ona to leave. Did they want only a mystic number? Perhaps if she’d stayed I wouldn’t now be wondering where Bellah is, but she did leave.

Maybe it would be worse if Ona had stayed – Bellah could end up trapped by the Others forever. Together, we’d be too valuable, and too weak. As it is, Ona might still save us, if I can warn her.

About seven hours ago at L’Boheme, the evening rush started. Some in the crowd were people we knew, but the Others were hidden in their midst. I went back to drawing my multidimensional Trees of Life, working in the dim light cast from inside. Bellah waited like a falcon for coming of the Keiths.

After about forty-five minutes of silence from Bellah, I looked into the café through the pane glass and said, “Isn’t it odd how many redheads are in there, all of a sudden?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah,” Bellah said.

It was late then, almost closing time. A blond man stood and left the café, and the barista disappeared into the kitchen. Then the last customers stood in unison, and we knew the Others had come. In turn, as if timed to a rhythm, each of the redhead men stood up from their chairs and filed out the door. Each dropped a card on our table. Each card had a single word written on it.

We waited until each man filed past. The first Keith was noble-looking; the second Keith was tired; the third Keith was an old man; the fourth Keith was a black man with hair like a sunset; the fifth Keith was Arabic or Jewish; the sixth Keith was definitely an Irishman; the seventh Keith had the effeminate look of Apollo; the eighth Keith was imperious, with eyes like Rasputin. None of them smiled.

We took the pile of cards and put them together. They said, “I’m” “Keith” “Eight.” “Bellah,” “Adams.” “Midnight,” “Goldengate” “Park.”

Adams murmured, “I’m Keith Eight. Bellah, Adams. Midnight, Goldengate Park.”

“They don’t want me to come,” I said.

“Why not?” Bellah said. He could be an asshole when annoyed, and the Others annoyed him on principle.

Adams said, “Look, it says, ‘Keith Eight.’ Obviously, the number of the group was determined by the number in our group.”

“And until they started arriving, Ona was here. That would be… twelve of us, if she had come to meet them,” I said.

“They obviously don’t want eleven at a meeting, so someone had to stay behind,” Bellah said. “That’s normal for secret societies.”

“But why me?” I asked. I was disappointed, but also relieved.

Bellah shrugged. Adams introspected. He was obviously more worried about his own skin. “So we’re supposed to meet the Others in Goldengate Park at Midnight. That’s a big park, how are we supposed to find them?”

“I’m sure they’ll find us,” Bellah said.

IX. A Rebirth For Fools

That was seven hours ago. Now I’m sitting in my car at Haight and Stanyon, watching the entrance to the Park. In the east, the sun is threatening to rise, but mists still haze the park and city streets.

I need help. It’s time to face Ona, asleep in Bellah’s bed back at the flat. I drive the streets waking to newspaper deliveries and early morning radio. The trees in their sidewalk planters sway as a breeze carries the mist away.

Ona, who was sleeping when I showed up, is getting dressed. I tell her everything, but she just says, “Give me a minute, I’m coming with you.” She doesn’t seem worried; she wouldn’t let on if she were.

I park down a side street, and we walk briskly into the park. Ona finds a trail, and leads me up the hill, skirting the eves. I don’t know how Ona knows the way, but I trust her, and follow her into a cave-like hollow in the trees. Walking in deeper, the trees close in on us, and on hands and knees, we crawl through a tunnel of foliage. Ona grabs me and freezes, then pulls me forward. I crawl up next to her and see dawn.

Then I notice the circle of standing stones in the glade beyond. Sculpted like a men in robes performing an ancient ceremony, they stand as still as the terracotta Sino army. We’re so close I can see lichen growing in the cracks of a granite skull through a window in the leaves.

“They’re beautiful,” I whisper to Ona. She turns her face to give me a scathing, reproachful look and puts her finger to her lips and mouths, “Shut up, shut up.”

And when I look again, I notice they are moving, that their robes are gray wool, and that their faces are painted with Woad. Furthest from us stands Bellah, embracing Adams, who holds his head with one hand, whispering in his ear. He seems lost in a haze, or deep in thought, his brow furrowed with branches of sorrow.

Ona leans toward me, and, with spit, whispers “You got him into this, now you get him out! I don’t want him to join this.”

“It’s not your choice,” I say, “he volunteered.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want a man like that,” she says, waving one hand vaguely at the men in robes. The other hand, I notice, clutches a handful of grass.

“Okay okay,” I say. “I’ll do something.” Without thinking I get ready to stand, and now I’m standing.

X. The Secret Rulers of the World

The branches of scrub oak grab my clothes, but no one hears me because Bellah rages in their midst. I have known Bellah for many years, and I warn folks all the time that he’s not what he appears. Oh, he’s erudite and whimsical, but he’s punk to the core. He wears one kind of footwear – the steel-toed boot.

Apparently, Adams said something Bellah didn’t like, because now he’s clubbing two of the Keiths with him.

I jump out of my hiding place to help him cast the Others out of power, and hurl one Keith into another; they both fall. I drop a third Keith with a blow from my forearm to his neck. Bellah is swinging punches, and I see another Keith fall. Then I notice Adams sprinting away from us. We have vanquished the Others. Ona crawls from the bushes, then stands and wipes the dust from her jeans.

“What did they say that set you off?” I ask Bellah.

He looks at me, then with a grin, says, “Oh he was muttering some fucking Egyptian ritual. But what set me off was, ‘You are now the Secret King of the World.’”

“Same old bacon, different pack of boars,” I say.

“You two are fucked up,” Ona yells, then laughs. “You just kicked their ass over nothing! That’s fucked up.”

“It’s a living,” I say, holding in a wizard’s cackle.

“Besides, it wasn’t over nothing,” Bellah says.

“What did they ever do to you?” Ona says. “Nothing.”

“Wrong. They’ve done everything to me,” he says, and then walks away toward a trail in the west end of the clearing. Ona follows.

I want to follow, but I can’t. My days of hanging out with Bellah are finished. Nothing is left of my former life except to have my every movement judged, weighed and metered out by the universe.

Like a gyroscope, Bellah, Ona and I are bound to rule the world. By throwing down the Others, we freed the universe from the tyranny of hidden motives. Now we are at the center of all conspiracy. I am alone and looking at the world through the window in a secret so dangerous knowing it is a burden. To know it is to accept a freedom so complete that it includes other people. It’s a curse.

On the ground, against a tree, is a worn briefcase. I pick it up and look inside: Adams’s Golem. After we trashed them, they fled without looking back.

Vengeance is mine, and I, like Adams, could still arrange a coup d’etat, and save Bellah, Ona, and I. But should I? I don’t have it in me to lure someone the way that Adams lured us. Or did Ona lure us?

But no, Ona said it in the bushes. I lured them all. “It’s true,” I think, “I lured them all to destroy power, and now we are cursed with it. Now we can’t escape the center of attention; now wherever we walk alone is the center. Now people won’t let us be together. They’ll devour us, as we devoured the Others.”

To save each other, we must be the Others, then find Another. It’s a trap: Accept Adams’ scepter of power and draw out our own usurpers.

Could I rule alone, in secret, and save my friends? I could steal their power by following them and binding them inside some idea. But they too are the secret rulers of the world; their ways are interwoven with mine in patterns that none of us can see.

Or I could give my crown to the Earth, and let everyone rule, and no one will rule. We could each rule as Melchizadok, the King-Priests. Each will rule the Earth, only through the Earth – filled with God’s Glory. Then the Earth will rule itself through both the each and all.

Then when we all rule it won’t be given to the Others to rule, and we’ll be saved from our curse without damning Another.

Of course we were given a cruel path: We were cruel, and must be humble to pass the first gate.

Here’s some shots:

I've never seen so many white people in one place in Taos before (80% Hispanic/Indian population).

Dressing like Indians in Indian country. Classy.

Food Not Bombs got there first to leave the Teabaggers a love note.

Then this Hispanic lady showed up to add some diversity.

Hard to tell, but the lady with the sign and ponytail boyfriend is Asian-American...

... and this is her car. Notice the Texas plates!

Written and illustrated
by Joseph Edwards VIII

Copyright © 10/19/2004

Washington the Freemason

Lately (thanks to Obama’s comment in Turkey that the U.S. is not a Christian nation) the question of the originating philosophy of the U.S. Republic has emerged from our collective closet.

For a decidedly different take on this topic, download and read the attached MS Word DOC. If  I’d had more time to write this, I’d have brought even more information to bear on the subject, especially about what’s happened SINCE 18th century Hermeticists founded the United States. This is about roots, not fruits.

DOWNLOAD “Transmuting Lead Into Gold: The Hermetic Origins of the USA”

NOTE: Thanks to a comment made by a reader, this version has been corrected.

For more information about Masonic involvement in the American Revolution, I recommend The Temple and the Lodge by Baigent and Leigh.

And here’s a Christian website, Watch Unto Prayer, that agrees: the U.S. Republic was founded on Masonic, not Christian, principles.

“Whatever we once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers,” Obama said during a June 2007 speech available on YouTube.

At the speech, Obama also seemingly blasted the “Christian Right” for hijacking religion and using it to divide the nation:

“Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it’s because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us,” he said.

Asked last year to clarify his remarks, Obama repeated them to the Christian Broadcast Network:

“I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism. Whatever we once were, we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers,” Obama wrote in an e-mail to CBN News senior national correspondent David Brody.

“We should acknowledge this and realize that when we’re formulating policies from the state house to the Senate floor to the White House, we’ve got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community,” wrote Obama.

Obama did clarify his statement about the “Christian Right.”

“My intention was to contrast the heated partisan rhetoric of a distinct minority of Christian leaders with the vast majority of Evangelical Christians – conservatives included – who believe that hate has no place in our politics.

“When you have pastors and television pundits who appear to explicitly coordinate with one political party; when you’re implying that your fellow Americans are traitors, terrorist sympathizers or akin to the devil himself; then I think you’re attempting to hijack the faith of those who follow you for your own personal or political ends,” wrote Obama.

Written and illustrated
by Joseph Edwards VIII

Copyright © 10/19/2004

CARL STOOD ON THE BRIDGE above the Rio Grand Gorge, the railing cold, numbing his fingers inside the thin wool gloves. “Bracing,” he thought, but he didn’t feel braced. He looked over the Gorge yawning below – an open gash of red rocks and arroyos – to the tree-lined ridges behind which hid who knows what. “Black widows, no doubt. Snakes. Rattlesnakes. Coyotes. Tarantulas. Scorpions. Mountain Lions. Wolverines. Lizards.”

It wasn’t just a hole that he looked across, however. It was a big down, and he felt like he was flying as he gazed across the mesa’s fractured surface. He felt the sky beneath him, a strong wind, and a tremble.

East toward Taos, a semi approached, its engine changing pitch as the driver shifted down. The semi’s wheels touched the bridge, and the tremble beneath Carl’s hands turned to a vibration. As the truck rushed by, the bridge quaked and he looked at his feet. Cold wind and snow sprayed his right cheek. He wiped it off with his sleeve and looked at the back of the semi on the far end of the bridge, and felt the sense of flying.

“Vertigo,” he thought, and immediately the black-and-white movie came to mind. “Kara loved that movie. All those old Cary Grant, Clark Gable movies, before Mark got his slimy hands on her.” He spat, and leaned over the frosty railing to watch it fall toward the river, a white band no wider than a shoelace, far below. “I wonder how many feet that loogie will fall before it freezes out here, and with wind chill.”

“Nine-point-eight meters per second per second times the number of feet in one meter times the number of seconds until it freezes,” he thought.

Carl looked down the highway at the Sangre de Christo Mountains, snow covered Taos Mountain looming in the front like a sentinel. A group of cars was coming, and the bridge started vibrating as their wheels rolled across the boundary between solid earth and steel suspended in sky. The last car in the cluster turned into the parking lot before the bridge and Carl heard rubber crunching on gravel as it parked. He watched as the car door opened and a woman stepped out in a long camelhair coat, started walking toward the bridge past his tired Chevy pickup.

“Shit,” he thought. “I shoulda done it.” He watched her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye as she walked along the sidewalk toward him. Her gait was confident and sensual as she came nearer. He tried not to look at her. “Now I’ve got to wait.”

The woman passed behind him. “Hello,” she said.

He nodded at her, glancing. She had earmuffs on, and a deep red and ochre scarf. Curly blond hair fell across her shoulders, and her hands were stuffed into the pockets of the camelhair coat. Carl started upon looking into her face: she was ugly. Not just ugly, but grotesque, maybe sick. “Maybe it’s just me, but that’s the ugliest person I ever saw.” He thought, “God, I wonder if she has Elephantitis!” Her face was white as snow, and she looked him in the eye and smiled under her elongated, hooked nose. Her nose looked like the witch’s nose from the Wizard of Oz, except that it wasn’t green or plastic, it was real.

“Hello,” she said again, pausing to consider Carl. He was gaping, now. Astounded at the woman’s ugliness. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” he said.

“Yes, you look pale. Like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I… I,” Carl said, stupidly.

“Oh, I see. You’ve never seen an ugly person before, is that it?”

“No, I…”

“Here I thought you were going to jump, you looked so distraught. I came to talk to you, but I guess you wouldn’t want to talk to someone as ugly as me. Never mind.”

“No, I wasn’t going to…”

“Sure, whatever. You pretty people are all the same: you think you’re the best and brightest, the chosen ones, but you’re idiots. You can’t read people like I can. You don’t know what people really are, so you’re always confused. You live in boxes. Pretty little happy-boxes with nipples on the walls. Well, I can tell a jumper when I see one.

“So jump then. Go ahead. I’m leaving.”

Camelhair coat turned and started walking to the parking lot.

“Shit,” Carl said, hanging his head. Far below, the river waited. A ribbon of water touching glaciers in Northern Colorado and the Pacific Ocean at the same time, the Rio Grand cut through stone slowly over millennia. Carl’s life was short, and he would get cut on those stones, his body washing to the sea with the timeless river, nameless again.

He swung a leg over the railing and pushed up onto his tiptoe, teetering. “Flying,” he thought, and he looked up. “One last look at the world, before my life flashes by.”

Camelhair coat was in her car trying without luck to back out of the icy parking area. The car lurched backward ten feet then the wheels would start spinning on the ice. Then it rolled slowly forward, and she tried again. He watched, the feeling of sky beneath him. Camelhair’s car rolled back to the edge of the parking lot, paused. Then Carl heard the clutch pop, and the engine die.

Camelhair’s little blue Honda lurched forward, over a rock, through a chain link fence, and over the edge of the gorge.

Carl watched it freefall for a hundred feet, growing smaller in his vision, until it hit a ledge nose-first. It tumbled backwards and spun in the air another twenty-five feet to a long slope of loose rock. Carl heard the sound of the first crash. The car slid down the escarpment and stopped against a jumble of snowy boulders. It looked like a toy car lying in a ditch. He heard the sound of the second crash: a long scraping noise and a crunch.

Carl pulled his leg off the railing and walked to his truck. He backed onto the highway and started driving to town to get help.

This short story was originally published in BENT Zine #0.