The Red Book, page 58
In the following night, I heard the voice of ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ again and he said:40
“Draw nearer, enter into the grave of the God. The place of your work should be in the vault. The God should not live in you, but you should live in the God.”
41These words disturbed me since I had thought before precisely to free myself from the God. But ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ advised me to enter even deeper into the God.
Since the God has ascended to the upper realms, ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ also has become different. He first appeared to me as a magician who lived in a distant land, but then I felt his nearness and, since the God has ascended, I knew that ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ had intoxicated me and given me a language that was foreign to me and of a different sensitivity. All of this faded when the God arose and only ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ kept that language. But I felt that he went on other ways than I did. Probably the most part of what I have written in the earlier part of this book was given to me by ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ.42 Consequently I was as if intoxicated. But now I noticed that ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ assumed a form distinct from me.
{4}43Several weeks later, three shades approached me. I noticed from their chilly breath that they were dead. The first figure was that of a woman. She drew near and made a soft whirring sound, the whirring of the wings of the sun beetle. Then I recognized her. When she was still alive, she recovered the mysteries of the Egyptians for me, the red sun disk and the song of the golden wings. She remained shadowy and I could hardly understand her words. She said:
“It was night when I died—you still live in the day—there are still days, years ahead of you—what will you begin—Let me have the word—oh, that you cannot hear! How difficult—give me the word!”
I answered dismayed: “I do not know the word that you seek.”
But she cried: “The symbol, the mediator, we need the symbol, we hunger for it, make light for us.”
“Wherefrom? How can I? I do not know the symbol that you demand.”
But she insisted: “You can do it, reach for it.”
And precisely at this moment the sign was placed in my hand and I looked at it filled with boundless astonishment. Then she spoke loudly and joyfully to me:44
“That is it, that is HAP, the symbol that we desired, that we needed. It is terribly simple, initially stupid, naturally godlike, the God’s other pole. This is precisely the pole we needed.”
“Why do you need HAP?”45 I replied.
“He is in the light, the other God is in the night.”
“Oh,” I answered, “what’s that, beloved? The God of the spirit is in the night? Is that the son? The son of the frogs? Woe betide us, if he is the God of our day!”
But the dead one spoke full of triumph:
“He is the flesh spirit, the blood spirit, he is the extract of all bodily juices, the spirit of the sperm and the entrails, of the genitals, of the head, of the feet, of the hands, of the joints, of the bones, of the eyes and ears, of the nerves and the brain; he is the spirit of the sputum and of excretion.”
“Are you of the devil?” I exclaimed full of horror. “Where does my flashing godly light remain?”
But she said: “Your body remains with you, my beloved, your living body. The enlightening thought comes from the body.”
“What thought are you talking about? I recognize no such thought,” I said.
“It crawls around like a worm, like a serpent, soon there, soon here, a blind newt of Hell.”
“Then I must be buried alive. Oh horror! Oh rottenness! Must I attach myself completely, like a leech?”
“Yes, drink blood,” she said, “suck it up, get your fill from the carcass, there is juice inside, certainly disgusting, but nourishing. You should not understand, but suck!”
“Damned horror! No, three times no,” I cried in outrage.
But she said: “It should not irritate you, we need this meal, the life juices of men, since we want to share in your life. Thus we can draw closer to you. We want to give you tidings of what you need to know.”
“That is horribly absurd! What are you talking about?”
46But she looked at me as she had done on the day I had last seen her among the living, and on which she showed me, unaware of its meaning, something of the mystery of what the Egyptians had left behind. And she said to me:
“Do it for me, for us. Do you recall my legacy, the red sun disk, the golden wings and the wreath of life and duration? Immortality, of this there are things to know.”
“The way that leads to this knowledge is Hell.”
47From this I sank into gloomy brooding since I suspected the heaviness and incomprehension and the immeasurable solitude of this way. And after a long struggle with all the weakness and cowardice in me, I decided to take upon myself this solitude of the holy error and the eternally valid truth.48 And in the third night I called to my dead beloved and asked her:
“Teach me the knowledge of the worms and the crawling creatures, open to me the darkness of the spirits!”
She whispered: “Give blood, so that I may drink and gain speech. Were you lying when you said that you would leave the power to the son?”
“No, I was not lying. But I said something that I did not understand.”
“You are fortunate,” she said, “if you can say what you do not understand. So listen: HAP49 is not the foundation but the summit of the church that still lies sunken. We need this church since we can live in it with you and take part in your life. You have excluded us to your own detriment.”
“Tell me, is HAP for you the sign of the church in which you hope for community with the living? Speak, why do you hesitate?”
She moaned and whispered with a weak voice: “Give blood, I need blood.”50
“So take blood from my heart,” I spoke.
“I thank you,” she said, “that is fullness of life. The air of the shadow world is thin since we hover on the ocean of the air like birds above the sea. Many went beyond limits, fluttering on indeterminate paths of outer space, bumping at hazard into alien worlds. But we, we who are still near and incomplete, would like to immerse ourselves in the sea of the air and return to earth, to the living. Do you not have an animal form into which I can enter?”
“What,” I exclaimed horrified, “you would like to be my dog?”
“If possible, yes,” she replied, “I would even like to be your dog. To me you are of unspeakable worth, all my hope, that still clings to earth. I would still like to see completed what I left too soon. Give me blood, much blood!”
“So drink,” I said despairingly, “drink, so that what should be will be.”
She whispered with a hesitant voice: “Brimo51—I guess that’s what you call her—the old one—which is how it begins—the one who bore the son—the powerful HAP, who grew out of her shame and strove after the wife of Heaven, who arches over earth, for Brimo, above and below, envelops the son.52 She bears and raises him. Born from below, he fertilizes the Above, since the wife is his mother, and the mother is his wife.”
“Accursed teaching! Is this still not enough of the horrifying Mysterium?” I cried full of outrage and abhorrence.
“If Heaven becomes pregnant and can no longer hold its fruit, it gives birth to a man who carries the burden of sin—that is the tree of life and of unending duration. Give me your blood! Listen! This riddle is terrible: when Brimo, the heavenly, was pregnant, she gave birth to the dragon, first the afterbirth and then the son, HAP, and the one who carried HAP. HAP is the rebellion of the Below, but the bird comes from the Above and places itself on the head of HAP. That is peace. You are a vessel. Speak, Heaven, pour out your rain. You are a shell. Empty shells do not spill, they catch. May it stream in from all the winds. Let me tell you that another evening is approaching. A day, two days, many days have come to an end. The light of day goes down and illumines the shadow, itself a shadow of the sun. Life becomes a shadow, and the shadow enlivens itself, the shadow that is greater than you. Do you think that your shadow is your son? He is small at midday, and fills the sky at midnight.”53
But I was exhausted and desperate and could hear no more, and so I said to the dead one:
54“So you introduce the terrible son who lived beneath me, under the trees on the water? Is he the spirit that the heavens pour out, or is he the soulless worm that the earth bore? Oh Heaven—Oh most sinister womb! Do you want to suck the life out of me for the sake of the shadow? Should humanity thus completely go to waste for divinity?55 Should I live with shadows, instead of with the living? Should all the longing for the living belong to you, the dead? Did you not have your time to live? Did you not use it? Should a living person give his life for your sake, you who did not live the eternal? Speak, you mute shadows, who stand at my door and demand my blood!”
The shadow of the dead one raised its voice and said: “You see—or do you still not see, what the living do with your life. They fritter it away. But with me you live yourself, since I belong to you. I belong to your invisible following and community. Do you believe that the living see you? They see only your shadow, not you—you servant, you bearer, you vessel—”
“How you hold forth! Am I at your mercy? Should I no longer see the light of day? Should I become a shadow with a living body? You are formless and beyond grasp, and you emanate the coldness of the grave, a breath of emptiness. To let myself be buried alive—what are you thinking of? Too soon, it seems to me, I must die first. Do you have the honey that pleases my heart and the fire that warms my hands? What are you, you mournful shadows? You specters of children! What do you want with my blood? Truly, you are even worse than men. Men give little, yet what do you give? Do you make the living? The warm beauty? Or joy perhaps? Or should all this go to your gloomy Hell? What do you offer in return? Mysteries? Will the living live from these? I regard your mysteries as tricks if the living cannot live from them.”
But she interrupted me and cried: “Impetuous one, stop, you take my breath away. We are shadows; become a shadow and you will grasp what we give.”
“I do not want to die to descend into your darkness.”
“But,” she said, “you need not die. You must only let yourself be buried.”
“In the hope of resurrection? No joking now!”
But she spoke calmly: “You suspect what will happen. Triple walls before you and invisibility—to Hell with your longing and feeling! At least you do not love us, so we will cost you less dearly than the men who roll in your love and patience and have you make a fool of yourself.”
“My dead one, I think you are speaking my language.”
She replied to me scornfully: “Men love—and you! What an error! All this means is that you want to run away from yourself. What do you do to men? You tempt and coax them into megalomania, to which you fall victim.”
“But it grieves me, pains me, howls at me; I feel a great longing, everything soft complains, and my heart yearns.”
But she was unsparing. “Your heart belongs to us,” she said. “What do you want with men? Self-defense against men—so that you walk on your own two feet, not on human crutches. Men need the undemanding, but they are always wanting love to be able to run away from themselves. This ought to stop. Why do fools go out and preach the gospel to the negroes, and then ridicule it in their own country? Why do these hypocritical preachers speak of love, divine and human love, and use the same gospel to justify the right to wage war and commit murderous injustice? Above all, what do they teach others when they themselves stand up to their necks in the black mud of deception and self-deceit? Have they cleaned their own house, have they recognized and driven out their own devil? Because they do none of this, they preach love to be able to run away from themselves, and to do to others what they should do to themselves. But this greatly prized love, given to one’s own self, burns like fire. These hypocrites and liars have noticed this—as you have—and prefer to love others. Is that love? It is false hypocrisy.56 It always begins in yourself and in all things and above all with love. Do you believe that one who wounds himself unsparingly does the other a good deed with his love? No, of course you don’t believe it. You even know that he only teaches the other how one must wound oneself, so that he can compel others to express sympathy. Therefore you should be a shadow since this is what men need. How can they get away from the hypocrisy and foolishness of your love if you yourself cannot? For everything begins with yourself. But your horse still cannot refrain from whinnying. Even worse, your virtue is a wagging dog, a growling dog, a licking dog, a barking dog—and you call that human love! But love is: to bear and endure oneself. It begins with this. It is truly about you; you are not yet tempered; other fires must yet come over you until you have accepted your solitude and learned to love.
“What do you ask about love? What is love? To live, above all, that is more than love. Is war love? You are bound to see what human love is still good enough for—a means like other means. Therefore, above all, solitude, until every softness toward yourself has been burnt out of you. You should learn to freeze.”57
“I see only graves before me,” I answered, “what cursed will is above me?”
“The will of the God, that is stronger than you, you slave, you vessel. You have fallen into the hands of the greater. He knows no pity. Your Christian shrouds have fallen, the veils that blinded your eyes. The God has become strong again. The yoke of men is lighter than the yoke of the God; therefore everyone seeks to yoke the other out of mercy. But he who does not fall into the hands of men falls into those of the God. May he be well and may woe betide him! There is no escape.”
“Is that freedom?” I cried.
“The highest freedom. Only the God above you, through yourself. Comfort yourself with this and that as well as you can. The God bolts doors that you cannot open. Let your feelings whimper like puppies. The ears on high are deaf.”
“But,” I answered, “is there no outrage for the sake of the human?”
“Outrage? I laugh at your outrage. The God knows only power and creation. He commands and you act. Your anxieties are laughable. There is only one road, the military road of the Godhead.”
The dead one spoke these unsparing words to me.58 As I did not want to obey anyone, I had to obey this voice. And she spoke unsparing words about the power of the God. I had to accept these words.59 We have to greet a new light, a blood-red sun, a painful wonder. No one forces me to; only the foreign will in me commands and I cannot escape since I find no grounds to do so.
The sun, appearing to me, swam in a sea of blood and wailing; therefore I said to the dead one:
“Should it be the sacrifice of joy?”
But the dead one replied: “The sacrifice of all joy, provided that you do it yourself. Joy should neither be made nor sought; it should come, if it must come. I demand your service. You should not serve your personal devil. That leads to superfluous pain. True joy is simple: it comes and exists from itself, and is not to be sought here and there. At the risk of encountering black night, you must devote yourself to me and seek no joy. Joy can never ever be prepared, but exists of its own accord or exists not at all. All you must do is fulfill your task, nothing else. Joy comes from fulfillment, but not from longing. I have the power. I command, you obey.”
“I fear that you will destroy me.”
But she answered: “I am life that destroys only the unfit. Therefore take care that you are no unapt tool. You want to rule yourself? You steer your ship onto the sand. Build your bridge, stone upon stone, but don’t think of wanting to take the helm. You go astray if you want to escape my service. There is no salvation without me. Why are you dreaming and hesitating?”
“You see,” I answered, “that I am blind and do not know where to begin.”
“It always begins with the neighbor. Where is the church? Where is the community?”
“This is pure madness,” I cried out indignantly, “why do you speak of a church? Am I a prophet? How can I claim such for myself? I am just a man who is not entitled to know any better than others.”
But she replied: “I want the church, it is necessary for you and for others. Otherwise what are you going to do with those whom I force to your feet? The beautiful and natural will nestle into the terrible and dark and will show the way. The church is something natural. The holy ceremony must be dissolved and become spirit. The bridge should lead out beyond humanity,60 inviolable, far, of the air. There is a community of spirits founded on outer signs with a solid meaning.”
“Cease,” I cried, “that doesn’t bear thinking about, it’s incomprehensible.”
But she continued: “Community with the dead is what both you and the dead need. Do not commingle with any of the dead, but stand apart from them and give to each his due. The dead demand your expiatory prayers.”
And when she spoke these words, she raised her voice and evoked the dead in my name:
“You dead, I call you.
“You shades of the departed, who have cast off the torment of living, come here!
“My blood, the juice of my life, will be your meal and your drink.
“Sustain yourself from me, so that life and speech will be yours.
“Come, you dark and restless ones, I will refresh you with my blood, the blood of a living one so that you will gain speech and life, in me and through me.
“The God forces me to address this prayer to you so that you come to life. Too long have we left you alone.
“Let us build the bond of community so that the living and the dead image will become one and the past will live on in the present.
“Our desire pulls us to the living world and we are lost in our desire.
“Come drink the living blood, drink your fill so that we will be saved from the inextinguishable and unrelenting power of vivid longing for visible, graspable, and present being.
“Drink from our blood the desire that begets evil, as quarrel, discord, ugliness, violent deed, and famishment.
