The Red Book, page 40
He who has the luck and misfortune of a particular talent falls prey to believing that he is this gift. Hence he is also often its fool. A special gift is something outside of me. I am not the same as it. The nature of the gift has nothing to do with the nature of the man who carries it. It often even lives at the expense of the bearer’s character. His character is marked by the disadvantage of his gift, indeed even through its opposite. Consequently he is never at the height of his gift but always beneath it. If he accepts his other he becomes capable of bearing his gift without disadvantage. But if he only wants to live in his gift and consequently rejects his other, he oversteps the mark, since the essence of his gift is extrahuman and a natural phenomenon, which he in reality is not. All the world sees his error, and he becomes the victim of its mockery. Then he says that others mock him, while it is only the disregard of his other that makes him ridiculous.
When the God enters my life, I return to my poverty for the sake of the God. I accept the burden of poverty and bear all my ugliness and ridiculousness, and also everything reprehensible in me. I thus relieve the God of all the confusion and absurdity that would befall him if I did not accept it. With this I prepare the way for the God’s doing. What should happen? Has the darkest abyss been emptied and exhausted? Or what stands and waits down there, impending and red-hot? [Image 117]222
117/118 Which fire has not been put out and which embers are still ablaze? We sacrificed innumerable victims to the dark depths, and yet it still demands more. What is this crazy desire craving satisfaction? Whose mad cries are these? Who among the dead suffers thus? Come here and drink blood, so that you can speak.223 Why do you reject the blood? Would you like milk? Or the red juice of the vine? Perhaps you would rather have love? Love for the dead? Being in love with the dead? Are you perhaps demanding the seeds of life for the faded thousand-year-old body of the underworld? An unchaste incestuous lust for the dead? Something that makes the blood run cold. Are you demanding a lusty commingling with corpses? I spoke of “acceptance” —but you demand “to seize, embrace, copulate?” Are you demanding the desecration of the dead? That prophet, you say, lay on the child, and placed his mouth on the child’s mouth, and his eyes on its eyes, and his hands on its hands and he thus splays himself over the boy, so that the child’s body became warm. But he rose again and went here and there in the house before he mounted anew and spread himself over him again. The boy snorted seven times. Then the boy opened his eyes. So shall your acceptance be, so shall you accept, not cool, not superior, not thought out, not obsequious, not as a self-chastisement, but with pleasure, precisely with this ambiguous impure pleasure, whose ambiguity enables it to unite with the higher, with that holy-evil pleasure of which you do not know whether it be virtue or vice, with that pleasure which is lusty repulsiveness, lecherous fear, sexual immaturity. One wakens the dead with this pleasure.
Your lowest is in a sleep resembling death and needs the warmth of life which contains good and evil inseparably and indistinguishably. That is the way of life; you can call it neither evil nor good, neither pure nor impure. Yet this is not the goal, but the way and the crossing. It is also sickness and the beginning of recovery. It is the mother of all abominable deeds and all salutary symbols. It is the most primordial form of creation, the very first dark urge that flows through all secret hiding places and dark passages, with the unintentional lawfulness of water and from unexpected places in the loose soil, swelling from the finest cracks to fructify the dry soil. It is the very first, secret teacher of nature, teaching plants and animals the most astonishing and supremely clever skills and tricks, which we hardly know how to fathom. It is the great sage who has superhuman knowledge, who has the greatest of all the sciences, who makes order out of confusion, and who prophesies the future clairvoyantly out of ungraspable fullness. It is the serpentlike, perishable and beneficial, the dreadfully and ridiculously daimonic. It is the arrow that always hits the weakest spot, the spring root which opens the sealed treasure chambers.
You can call it neither clever nor stupid, neither good nor evil, since its nature is inhuman throughout. It is the son of the earth, the dark one whom you should awaken.224 It is man and woman at the same time and immature sex, rich in interpretation and misinterpretation, so poor in meaning and yet so rich. This is the dead that cried loudest, that stood right at the bottom and waited, that suffered worst. It desired neither blood nor milk nor wine for the sacrifice of the dead, but the willingness of our flesh. Its longing paid no heed to the torment of our spirit which struggled and tortured itself to devise what cannot be devised, that hence tore itself apart and sacrificed itself. Not until our spirit lay dismembered on the altar did I hear the voice of the son of the earth, and only then did I see that he was the great suffering one, who needed salvation. He is the chosen one since he was the most rejected. It is bad to have to say this, but perhaps I hear badly, or perhaps I misunderstand what the depths say. It is miserable to say as much, and yet I must say it.
The depths are silent. He has arisen and now beholds the light of the sun and is among the living. Restlessness and discord rose up with him, doubt and the fullness of life.
Amen, it is finished. What was unreal is real, what was real is unreal. However, I may not, I do not want to, I cannot. Oh human wretchedness! Oh unwillingness in us! Oh doubt and despair. This is really Good Friday, upon which the Lord died and descended into Hell and completed the mysteries.225 This is the Good Friday when we complete the Christ in us and we descend to Hell ourselves. This the Good Friday on which we moan and cry to will the completion of Christ, for after his completion we go to Hell. Christ was so powerful that his realm covered all the world and only Hell lay outside it.
Who succeeded in crossing the borders of this realm with good grounds, pure conscience, and obeying the law of love? Who among the living is Christ and journeys to Hell in living flesh? Who is it that expands the realm of Christ with Hell? Who is it that is full of drunkenness while sober? Who is it that descended from being one into being two? Who is it that tore apart his own heart to unite what has been separated?
I am he, the nameless one, who does not know himself and whose name is concealed even from himself. I have no name, since I have not yet existed, but have only just become. To myself I am an Anabaptist and a stranger. I, who I am, am not it. But I, who will be I before me and after me, am it. In that I abased myself, I elevated myself as another. In that I accepted myself, I divided myself into two, and in that I united myself with myself, I became the smaller part of myself. I am this in my consciousness. However, I am thus in my consciousness as if I were also separated from it. I am 118/120 [Image 119]226 119/120 not in my second and greater state, as if I were this second and greater one myself, but I am always in ordinary consciousness, yet so separate and distinct from it, as if I were in my second and greater state, but without the consciousness of really being it. I have even become smaller and poorer, but precisely because of my smallness I can be conscious of the nearness of the great.
I have been baptized with impure water for rebirth. A flame from the fire of Hell awaited me above the baptismal basin. I have bathed myself with impurity and I have cleansed myself with dirt. I received him, I accepted him, the divine brother, the son of the earth, the two-sexed and impure, and overnight he has become a man. His two incisors have broken through and light down covers his chin. I captured him, I overcame him, I embraced him. He demanded much from me and yet brought everything with him. For he is rich; the earth belongs to him. But his black horse has parted from him.
Truly, I have shot down a proud enemy, I have forced a greater and stronger one to be my friend. Nothing should separate me from him, the dark one. If I want to leave him, he follows me like my shadow. If I do not think of him, he is still uncannily near. He will turn into fear if I deny him. I must amply commemorate him, I must prepare a sacrificial meal for him. I fill a plate for him at my table. Much that I would have done earlier for men, I now must do for him. Hence they consider me selfish, for they do not know that I go with my friend, and that many days are consecrated to him.227 But unrest has moved in, a quiet underground earthquake, a distant great roaring. Ways have been opened to the primordial and to the future. Miracles and terrible mysteries are close at hand. I feel the things that were and that will be. Behind the ordinary the eternal abyss yawns. The earth gives me back what it hid. 120/123 [Image 121]228, 229, 230 121/123 [Image 122]231, 232 122/123 [Image 123]233 123/124
The Three Prophecies
Cap. xviii
[HI 124]234 Wondrous things came nearer. I called my soul and asked her to dive down into the floods, whose distant roaring I could hear. This happened on 22 January of the year 1914, as recorded in my black book. And thus she plunged into the darkness like a shot, and from the depths she called out: “Will you accept what I bring?”
I: “ ‘I will accept what you give. I do not have the right to judge or to reject.”
S: “So listen. There is old armor and the rusty gear of our fathers down here, murderous leather trappings hanging from them, worm-eaten lance shafts, twisted spear heads, broken arrows, rotten shields, skulls, the bones of man and horse, old cannons, catapults, crumbling firebrands, smashed assault gear, stone spearheads, stone clubs, sharp bones, chipped arrowhead teeth—everything the battles of yore have littered the earth with. Will you accept all this?”
I: “I accept it. You know better, my soul.”
S: “I find painted stones, carved bones with magical signs, talismanic sayings on hanks of leather and small plates of lead, dirty pouches filled with teeth, human hair and fingernails, timbers lashed together, black orbs, moldy animal skins—all the superstitions hatched by dark prehistory. Will you accept all this?”
I: “I accept it all, how should I dismiss anything?”
S: “But I find worse: fratricide, cowardly mortal blows, torture, child sacrifice, the annihilation of whole peoples, arson, betrayal, war, rebellion—will you also accept this?”
I: “Also this, if it must be. How can I judge?”
S: “I find epidemics, natural catastrophes, sunken ships, razed cities, frightful feral savagery, famines, human meanness, and fear, whole mountains of fear.”
I: “So shall it be, since you give it.”
S: “I find the treasures of all past cultures, magnificent images of Gods, spacious temples, paintings, papyrus rolls, sheets of parchment with the characters of bygone languages, books full of lost wisdom, hymns and chants of ancient priests, stories told down the ages through thousands of generations.”
I: “That is an entire world—whose extent I cannot grasp. How can I accept it?”
S: “But you wanted to accept everything? You do not know your limits. Can you not limit yourself?”
I: “I must limit myself. Who could ever grasp such wealth?”
S: “Be content and cultivate your garden with modesty.”235
I: “I will. I see that it is not worth conquering a larger piece of the immeasurable, but a smaller one instead. A well-tended small garden is better than an ill-tended large garden. Both gardens are equally small when faced with the immeasurable, but unequally cared for.”
S: “Take shears and prune your trees.”
[2] From the flooding darkness the son of the earth had brought, my soul gave me ancient things that pointed to the future. She gave me three things: The misery of war, the darkness of magic, and the gift of religion.
If you are clever, you will understand that these three things belong together. These three mean the unleashing of chaos and its power, just as they also mean the binding of chaos. War is obvious and everybody sees it. Magic is dark and no one sees it. Religion is still to come, but it will become evident. Did you think that the horrors of such atrocious warfare would come over us? Did you think that magic existed? Did you think about a new religion? I sat up for long nights and looked ahead at what was to come and I shuddered. Do you believe me? I am not too concerned. What should I believe? What should I disbelieve? I saw and I shuddered.
But my spirit could not grasp the monstrous, and could not conceive the extent of what was to come. The force of my longing languished, and powerless sank the harvesting hands. I felt the burden of the most terrible work of the times ahead. I saw where and how, but no word can grasp it, no will can conquer it. I could not do otherwise, I let it sink again into the depths.
I cannot give it to you, and I can speak only of the way of what is to come. Little good will come to you from outside. What will come to you lies within yourself. But what lies there! I would like to avert my eyes, close my ears and deny all my senses; I would like to be someone among you, who knows nothing and who never saw anything. It is too much and too unexpected. But I saw it and my memory will not leave me alone.236 Yet I curtail my longing, which would like to stretch out into the future, and I return to my small garden that presently blooms, and whose extent I can measure. It shall be well-tended.
The future should be left to those of the future. I return to the small and the real, for this is the great way, the way of what is to come. I return to my simple reality, to my undeniable and most minuscule being. And I take a knife and hold court over everything that has grown without measure and goal. Forests have grown around me, winding plants have climbed up me, and I am completely covered by endless proliferation. The depths are inexhaustible, they give everything. Everything is as good as nothing. Keep a little and you have something. To recognize and know your ambition and your greed, to gather 124/126 [Image 125]237 125/126 your craving, to cultivate it, grasp it, make it serviceable, influence it, master it, order it, to give it interpretations and meanings, is extravagant.
It is lunacy, like everything that transcends its boundaries. How can you hold that which you are not? Would you really like to force everything which you are not under the yoke of your wretched knowledge and understanding? Remember that you can know yourself, and with that you know enough. But you cannot know others and everything else. Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself, or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know himself. That is his limit.
With a painful slice I cut off what I pretended to know about what lies beyond me. I excise myself from the cunning interpretive loops that I gave to what lies beyond me. And my knife cuts even deeper and separates me from the meanings that I conferred upon myself. I cut down to the marrow, until everything meaningful falls from me, until I am no longer as I might seem to myself, until I know only that I am without knowing what I am.
I want to be poor and bare, and I want to stand naked before the inexorable. I want to be my body and its poverty. I want to be from the earth and live its law. I want to be my human animal and accept all its frights and desires. I want to go through the wailing and the blessedness of the one who stood alone with a poor unarmed body on the sunlit earth, a prey of his drives and of the lurking wild animals, who was terrified by ghosts and dreaming of distant Gods, who belonged to what was near and was enemy to the far-off, who struck fire from stones, and whose herds were stolen by unknowable powers that also destroyed the crops of his fields, and who neither knew nor recognized, but who lived by what lay at hand, and received by grace what lay far-off.
He was a child and unsure, yet full of certainty, weak and yet blessed with enormous strength. When his God did not help, he took another. And when this one did not help either, he castigated him. And behold: the Gods helped one more time. Thus I discard everything that was laden with meaning, everything divine and devilish with which chaos burdened me. Truly, it is not up to me to prove the Gods and the devils and the chaotic monsters, to feed them carefully, to warily drag them with me, to count and name them, and to protect them with belief against disbelief and doubt.
A free man knows only free Gods and devils that are self-contained and take effect on account of their own force. If they fail to have an effect, that is their own business, and I can remove this burden from myself. But if they are effective, they need neither my protection nor my care, nor my belief. Thus you may wait quietly to see whether they work. But if they do, be clever, for the tiger is stronger than you. You should be able to cast everything from you, otherwise you are a slave, even if you are the slave of a God. Life is free and chooses its way. It is limited enough, so do not pile up more limitation. Hence I cut away everything confining. I stood here, and there lay the riddlesome multifariousness of the world.
And a horror crept over me. Am I not the tightly bound? Is the world there not the unlimited? And I became aware of my weakness. What would poverty, nakedness and unpreparedness be without consciousness of weakness and without horror at powerlessness? Thus I stood and was terrified. And then my soul whispered to me:
The Gift of Magic
Cap. xix.
[HI 126]238 “Do you not hear something?”
I: “I’m not aware of anything, what should I hear?”
S: “A ringing.”
I: “A ringing? What? I hear nothing.”
S: “Listen harder.”
I: “Perhaps something in the left ear. What could it mean?”
S: “Misfortune.”
I: “I accept what you say. I want to have fortune and misfortune.”
S: “Well, then, raise your hands and receive what comes to you.”
I: “What is it? A rod? A black serpent? A black rod, formed like a serpent—with two pearls as eyes—a gold bangle around its neck. Is it not like a magical rod?”
S: “It is a magical rod.”
I: “What should I do with magic? Is the magical rod a misfortune? Is magic a misfortune?”
S: “Yes, for those who possess it.”
I: “That sounds like the sayings of old—how strange you are, my soul! What should I do with magic?”
