The Red Book, page 47
A black form condenses before me out of the air, Satan, with a scornful laugh. He calls to me: “See what comes from the reconciliation of opposites! Recant, and in a flash you’ll be down on the greening earth.”
I: “I won’t recant, I’m not stupid. If such is the outcome of all this, let it be the end.”
Se: “Where is your inconsistency? Please remember this important rule of the art of life.”
I: “The fact that I’m hanging here is inconsistency enough. I’ve lived inconsistently ad nauseam. What more do you want?”
Se: “Perhaps inconsistency in the right place?”
I: “Stop it! How should I know what the right and the wrong places are?”
Satan: “Whoever gets on in a sovereign way with the opposites knows left from right.”
I: “Be quiet, you’re an interested party. If only my white bird came back with help; I fear I’m growing weak.”
Se: “Don’t be stupid, weakness too is a way, magic makes good the error.”
Satan: “What, you’ve not yet once had the courage of weakness? You want to become a complete man—are men strong?”
I: “White bird of mine, I suppose you can’t find your way back? Did you get up and leave because you couldn’t live with me? Ah, Salome! There she comes. Come to me, Salome! Another night has passed. I didn’t hear you cry, but I hung and still hang.”
Sal: “I haven’t cried anymore, for good fortune and misfortune are balanced in me.”
I: “My white bird has left and has not yet returned. I know nothing and understand nothing. Does this have to do with the crown? Speak!”
Sal: “What should I say? Ask yourself.”
I: “I cannot. My brain is like lead, I can only whimper for help. I have no way of knowing whether everything is falling or standing still. My hope is with my white bird. Oh no, could it be that the bird means the same thing as hanging?”
Satan: “Reconciliation of the opposites! Equal rights for all! Follies!”
I: “I hear a bird chirping! Is that you? Have you come back?”
Bird: “If you love the earth, you are hanged; if you love the sky, you hover.”
I: “What is earth? What is sky?”
B: “Everything under you is the earth, everything above you is the sky. You fly if you strive for what is above you; you are hanged if you strive for what is below you.”
I: “What is above me? What is beneath me?”
B: “Above you is what is before and over you; beneath you is what comes back under you.”
I: “And the crown? Solve the riddle of the crown for me!”
B: “The crown and serpent are opposites, and are one. Did you not see the serpent that crowned the head of the crucified?”
I: “What, I don’t understand you.”
B: “What words did the crown bring you? ‘Love never ends’—that is the mystery of the crown and the serpent.”
I: “But Salome? What should happen to Salome?”
B: “You see, Salome is what you are. Fly, and she will grow wings.”
The clouds part, the sky is full of the crimson sunset of the completed third day.337 The sun sinks into the sea, and I glide with it from the top of the tree toward the earth. Softly and peacefully night falls.
[2] Fear has befallen me. Whom did you carry to the mountain, you Cabiri? And whom have I sacrificed in you? You have piled me up yourselves, turning me into a tower on inaccessible crags, turning me into my church, my monastery, my place of execution, my prison. I am locked up and condemned within myself. I am my own priest and congregation, judge and judged, God and human sacrifice.
What a work you have accomplished, Cabiri! You have given birth to a cruel law from the chaos that cannot be revoked. It is understood and accepted.
The completion of the secret operation approaches. What I saw I described in words to the best of my ability. Words are poor, and beauty does not attend them. But is truth beautiful and beauty true?338
One can speak in beautiful words about love, but about life? And life stands above love. But love is the inescapable mother of life. Life should never be forced into love, but love into life. May love be subject to torment, but not life. As long as love goes pregnant with life, it should be respected; but if it has given birth to life from itself, it has turned into an empty sheath and expires into transience.
I speak against the mother who bore me, I separate myself from the bearing womb.339 I speak no more for the sake of love, but for the sake of life.
The word has become heavy for me, and it barely wrestles itself free of the soul. Bronze doors have shut. fires have burned out and sunk into ashes. Wells have been drained and where there were seas there is dry land. My tower stands in the desert. Happy is he who can be a hermit in his own desert. He survives.
Not the power of the flesh, but of love, should be broken for the sake of life, since life stands above love. A man needs his mother until his life has developed. Then he separates from her. And so life needs love until it has developed, then it will cut loose from it. The separation of the child from the mother is difficult, but the separation of life from love is harder. Love seeks to have and to hold, but life wants more.
The beginning of all things is love, but the being of things is life.340 This distinction is terrible. Why, Oh spirit of the darkest depths, do you force me to say that whoever loves does not live and whoever lives does not love? I always get it backward! Should everything be turned into its opposite?341 Will there be a sea where ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ’s temple stands? Will his shady island sink into the deepest ground? Into the whirlpool of the withdrawing flood that earlier swallowed all peoples and lands? Will the bottom of the sea be where Ararat arises?342
What repulsive words do you mutter, you mute son of the earth? You want to sever my soul’s embrace? You, my son, do you thrust yourself between? Who are you? And who gives you the power? Everything that I strove for, everything I wrested from myself, do you want to reverse it again and destroy it? You are the son of the devil, to whom everything holy is inimical. You grow overpowering. You frighten me. Let me be happy in the embrace of my soul and do not disturb the peace of the temple.
Off with you, you pierce me with paralyzing force. For I do not want your way. Should I languidly fall at your feet? You devil and son of the devil, speak! Your silence is unbearable, and of awful stupidity.
I won my soul, and to what did she give birth for me? You, monster, a son, ha!—a frightful miscreant, a stammerer, a newt’s brain, a primordial lizard! You want to be king of the earth? You want to banish proud free men, bewitch beautiful women, break up castles, rip open the belly of old cathedrals? Dumb thing, a lazy bug-eyed frog that wears pond weed on his skull’s pate! And you want to call yourself my son? You’re no son of mine, but the spawn of the devil. The father of the devil entered into the womb of my soul and in you has become flesh.
I recognize you, ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, you most cunning of all fraudsters! You have deceived me. You impregnated my maidenly soul with the terrible worm. ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, damned charlatan, you aped the mysteries for me, you lay the mantle of the stars on me, you played a Christ-fool’s comedy with me, you hanged me, carefully and ludicrously, in the tree just like Odin,343 you let me devise runes to enchant Salome—and meanwhile you procreated my soul with the worm, spew of the dust. Deception upon deception! Terrible devil trickery!
You gave me the force of magic, you crowned me, you clad me with the shimmer of power, that let me play a would-be Joseph father to your son. You lodged a puny basilisk in the nest of the dove.
My soul, you adulterous whore, you became pregnant with this bastard! I am dishonored; I, laughable father of the Antichrist! How I mistrusted you! And how poor was my mistrust, that it could not gauge the magnitude of this infamous act!
What do you break apart? You broke love and life in twain. From this ghastly sundering, the frog and the son of the frog come forth. Ridiculous—disgusting sight! Irresistible advent! They will sit on the banks of the sweet water and listen to the nocturnal song of the frogs, since their God has been born as a son of frogs.
Where is Salome? Where is the unresolvable question of love? No more questions, my gaze turned to the coming things, and Salome is where I am. The woman follows your strongest, not you. Thus she bears you your children, in both a good and a bad way.
{7}[1] As I stood so alone on the earth, which was covered by rain clouds and falling night, my serpent344 crept up to me and told me a story:
“Once upon a time there was a king and he had no children. But he would have liked to have a son. So he went to a wise woman who lived as a witch in the forest and confessed all his sins, as if she were a priest appointed by God. To this she said: ‘Dear King, you have done what you should not have done. But since it has come to pass, it has come to pass, and we will have to see how you can do it better in the future. Take a pound of otter lard, bury it in the earth, and let nine months pass. Then dig up that place again and see what you find.’ So the king went to his house, ashamed and saddened, because he had humiliated himself before the witch in the forest. Yet he listened to her advice, dug a hole in the garden at night, and placed a pot of otter lard in it, which he had obtained with some difficulty. Then he let nine months go by.
“After this time had passed he went again by night to the place where the pot lay buried and dug it up. To his great astonishment, he found a sleeping infant in the pot, though the lard had disappeared. He took out the infant and jubilantly brought it to his wife. She took it immediately to her breast and behold—her milk flowed freely. And so the child thrived and became great and strong. He grew into a man who was greater and stronger than all others. When the king’s son was twenty years old, he came before his father and said: ‘I know that you have produced me through sorcery and that I was not born as one of men. You have made me from the repentance of your sins and this has made me strong. I am born from no woman, which makes me clever. I am strong and clever and therefore I demand the crown of the realm from you.’ The old king was startled at his son’s knowledge, but even more by his impetuous longing for regal power. He remained silent and thought: ‘What has produced you? Otter lard. Who bore you? The womb of the earth. I drew you from a pot, a witch humiliated me.’ And he decided to let his son be killed secretly.
“But because his son was stronger than others, he feared him and therefore he wanted to take refuge in a trick. He went again to the sorceress in the forest and asked her for advice. She said: ‘Dear King, you confess no sin to me this time, because you want to commit a sin. I advise you to bury another pot with otter’s lard and leave it to lie in the earth for nine months. Then dig it out again and see what has happened.’ The king did what the sorceress advised him. And thenceforth his son became weaker and weaker, and when the king returned to the place where the pot lay after nine months, he could dig his son’s grave at the same time. He lay the dead one in the fosse beside the empty pot.
“But the king was saddened, and when he could no longer master his melancholy, he returned yet again to the sorceress one night and asked her for advice. She spoke to him: ‘Dear King, you wanted a son, but the son wanted to be king himself and also had the power and cleverness for it, and then you wanted your son no more. Because of this you lost your son. Why are you complaining? You have everything, dear King, that you wanted.’ But the king said: ‘You are right. I wanted it so. But I did not want this melancholy. Do you have any remedies against remorse?’ The sorceress spoke: ‘Dear King, go to your son’s grave, fill the pot again with otter’s lard, and after nine months see what you find in the pot.’ The king did this, as he had been commanded, and henceforth he became happy and did not know why.
“When the nine months had passed, he dug out the pot again; the body had disappeared, but in the pot there lay a sleeping infant, and he realized that the infant was his dead son. He took the infant to himself, and henceforth he grew as much in a week as other infants grow in a year. And when twenty weeks had passed, the son came before the father again and claimed his realm. But the father had learned from experience and already knew for a long time how everything would turn out. After the son had voiced his demand, the old king got up from his throne and embraced his son with tears of joy and crowned him king. And so the son, who had thus become king, was grateful to his father and held him in high esteem, as long as his father was granted life.”
But I spoke to my serpent: “In truth, my serpent, I didn’t know that you are also a teller of fairy tales. So tell me, how should I interpret your fairy tale?”
Se: “Imagine that you are the old king and have a son.”
I: “Who is the son?”
Se: “Well, I thought that you had just spoken of a son who doesn’t make you very happy.”
I: “What? You don’t mean—that I should crown him?”
Se: “Yes, who else?”
I: “That’s uncanny. But what about the sorceress?”
Se: “The sorceress is a motherly woman whose son you should be, since you are a child renewing himself in you.”
I: “Oh no, will it be impossible for me to be a man?”
Se: “Sufficient manhood, and beyond that fullness of childhood. Which is why you need the mother.”
I: “I’m ashamed to be a child.”
Se: “And thus you kill your son. A creator needs the mother, since you are not a woman.”
I: “This is a terrible truth. I thought and hoped that I could be a man in every way.”
Se: “You cannot do this for the sake of the son. To create means: mother and child.”
I: “The thought that I must remain a child is unbearable.”
Se: “For the sake of your son you must be a child and leave him the crown.”
I: “The thought that I must remain a child is humiliating and shattering.”
Se: “A salutary antidote against power!345 Don’t resist being a child, otherwise you resist your son,346 whom you want above all.”
I: “It’s true, I want the son and survival. But the price for this is high.”
Se: “The son stands higher. You are smaller and weaker than the son. That is a bitter truth, but it can’t be avoided. Don’t be defiant, children must be well-behaved.”
I: “Damned scorn!”
Se: “Man of mockery! I’ll have patience with you. My wells should flow for you and pour forth the drink of salvation, if all lands parch with thirst and everyone comes to you begging for the water of life. So subject yourself to the son.”
I: “Where am I going to take hold of the immeasurable? My knowledge and ability are poor, my power is not enough.”
At which the serpent curled up, gathered herself into knots and said: “Do not ask after the morrow, sufficient unto you is the day. You need not worry about the means. Let everything grow, let everything sprout; the son grows out of himself.”
[2] The myth commences, the one that need only be lived, not sung, the one that sings itself. I subject myself to the son, the one engendered by sorcery, the unnaturally born, the son of the frogs, who stands at the waterside and speaks with his fathers and listens to their nocturnal singing. Truly he is full of mysteries and superior in strength to all men. No man has produced him, and no woman has given birth to him.
The absurd has entered the age-old mother, and the son has grown in the deepest ground. He sprang up and was put to death. He rose again, was produced anew in the way of sorcery, and grew more swiftly than before. I gave him the crown that unites the separated. And so he unites the separated for me. I gave him the power and thus he commands, since he is superior in strength and cleverness to all others.
I did not give way to him willingly, but out of insight. No man binds Above and Below together. But he who did not grow like a man, and yet has the form of a man, is capable of binding them. My power is paralyzed, but I survive in my son. I set aside my concern that he may master the people. I am solitary, the people rejoice at him. I was powerful, now I am powerless. I was strong, now I am weak. Since then he has taken all the strength into himself. Everything has turned itself upside down for me.
I loved the beauty of the beautiful, the spirit of those rich in spirit, the strength of the strong; I laughed at the stupidity of the stupid, I despised the weakness of the weak, the meanness of the mean, and hated the badness of the bad. But now I must love the beauty of the ugly, the spirit of the foolish, and the strength of the weak. I must admire the stupidity of the clever, must respect the weakness of the strong and the meanness of the generous, and honor the goodness of the bad. Where does that leave mockery, contempt, and hatred?
They went over to the son as a token of power. His mockery is bloody, and how contemptuously his eyes flash! His hatred is a singing fire! Enviable one, you son of the Gods, how can one fail to obey you? He broke me in two, he cut me up. He yokes the separated. Without him I would fall apart, but my life went on with him. My love remained with me.
Thus I entered solitude with a black look on my face, full of resentment and outrage at my son’s dominion. How could my son arrogate my power? I went into my gardens and sat down in a lonely spot on rocks by the water, and brooded darkly. I called the serpent, my nocturnal companion, who lay with me on the rocks through many twilights, imparting her serpent wisdom. But then my son emerged from the water, great and powerful, the crown on his head, with a swirling lion’s mane, shimmering serpent skin covering his body; he said to me:347
{8} [1] “I come to you and demand your life.”
I: “What do you mean? Have you even become a God?”348
He: “I rise again, I had become flesh, now I return to eternal glitter and shimmer, to the eternal embers of the sun, and leave you your earthliness. You will remain with men. You have been in immortal company long enough. Your work belongs to the earth.”
I: “What a speech! Weren’t you wallowing in the earth and the underearth?”
