an astonishing speed and silence for beast and man.
That first night, and for three nights afterward, we travel only by the light of the stars and a growing splinter of a moon. On these first three nights, we are more silent than not. It is when we pass the Fortress of Herodian seated atop its man-made mountain that Salome reveals to me her feelings for John of the River. Salome whispers that just as Addai is Tata’s Platonic other half, John is hers. “I shall never know a man,” she quietly declares, “never marry, never birth children, for I have decided to dedicate my life to John. It is done and it shall not be undone.”
When she tells me this I am consumed by a terrible envy of Salome. Where is the man created from the other half of me, as we waited in the treasury of souls to be born?
After these three silent nights, Salome and I fairly burst into chatter. Allowed finally to talk, we live with our heads in the stars. There are times when my neck aches from staring up at the worlds of light. Cicero said, “If anyone cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, he cannot feel at all…if anyone thinks it mindless, then he himself must be out of his mind.” Metrodorus of Chios said, “To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow.”
As for the two who travel with us, we think Dositheus could play nothing but tragedy, for his every movement speaks of studied woe. The hills ring with his doleful voice reciting poetry and declaiming the great speeches of the great characters written not only by Greek playwrights, but by brutal and bloody Roman playwrights, and even a few by Jewish playwrights. And as for Helena, she has about her such a curious air, I have carefully stepped into her mind, and as carefully stepped out for the sorrow and the pain. Salome imagines that Helena allows the doleful Dositheus to “lie in her lap.” Dositheus calls her Ennoia, which he says means First Thought, saying also, “Surely God’s first thought was female.” But Helena gently rebukes Salome. Before coming away with Dositheus, she had been a common prostitute; now she suffers from something she does not name, a thing that sites itself in her female parts.
Ah, think I, this is the darkness within her; this is her pain. Both Salome and I are now fascinated by God’s First Thought—and slightly repelled.
Somewhere after we leave the limestone hills to the west of Idumaea and are traveling south along the shore of the Great Sea on the old Nabataean spice and perfume caravan route, Seth begins speaking of the inner Nazorean. Salome and I exchange looks. Shall we learn the secret teaching now? Will I understand it?
Seth strides along as he speaks and I run behind him, almost tripping him up, Salome close on my heels. “Outwardly, the inner Nazorean, which are the Few, appear as other sects, seem to cleave as close to the Law as other sects, but inwardly this is far from true. If others should know what is really believed and truly taught, we would be seen as deceitful apostates, as spiritually wicked. For what would the priests of the Temple who take in coin and spill blood daily, or the righteous men of the Law who shun other men as unclean, or the fervid Sicarii who shout for death to those God ‘hates’ make of a teaching that placed no blame, nursed no guilt, sought no redress, harbored no hatred, followed no Law, suffered no priests, and looked not to an angry arrogant god, or to a savior king, a messiah, but looked
within
for knowledge of Source?”
This is almost Greek! It seems finer than Greek. But no messiah? I thought the Nazorean believed John to be the Messiah?
Salome is shaking her head. “I have heard what men say John teaches, and it is not this.”
“For all that the Baptizer seems a wild man of rage and repentance,” replies Seth, “he hides from all but the inner Nazorean that
That first night, and for three nights afterward, we travel only by the light of the stars and a growing splinter of a moon. On these first three nights, we are more silent than not. It is when we pass the Fortress of Herodian seated atop its man-made mountain that Salome reveals to me her feelings for John of the River. Salome whispers that just as Addai is Tata’s Platonic other half, John is hers. “I shall never know a man,” she quietly declares, “never marry, never birth children, for I have decided to dedicate my life to John. It is done and it shall not be undone.”
When she tells me this I am consumed by a terrible envy of Salome. Where is the man created from the other half of me, as we waited in the treasury of souls to be born?
After these three silent nights, Salome and I fairly burst into chatter. Allowed finally to talk, we live with our heads in the stars. There are times when my neck aches from staring up at the worlds of light. Cicero said, “If anyone cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, he cannot feel at all…if anyone thinks it mindless, then he himself must be out of his mind.” Metrodorus of Chios said, “To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow.”
As for the two who travel with us, we think Dositheus could play nothing but tragedy, for his every movement speaks of studied woe. The hills ring with his doleful voice reciting poetry and declaiming the great speeches of the great characters written not only by Greek playwrights, but by brutal and bloody Roman playwrights, and even a few by Jewish playwrights. And as for Helena, she has about her such a curious air, I have carefully stepped into her mind, and as carefully stepped out for the sorrow and the pain. Salome imagines that Helena allows the doleful Dositheus to “lie in her lap.” Dositheus calls her Ennoia, which he says means First Thought, saying also, “Surely God’s first thought was female.” But Helena gently rebukes Salome. Before coming away with Dositheus, she had been a common prostitute; now she suffers from something she does not name, a thing that sites itself in her female parts.
Ah, think I, this is the darkness within her; this is her pain. Both Salome and I are now fascinated by God’s First Thought—and slightly repelled.
Somewhere after we leave the limestone hills to the west of Idumaea and are traveling south along the shore of the Great Sea on the old Nabataean spice and perfume caravan route, Seth begins speaking of the inner Nazorean. Salome and I exchange looks. Shall we learn the secret teaching now? Will I understand it?
Seth strides along as he speaks and I run behind him, almost tripping him up, Salome close on my heels. “Outwardly, the inner Nazorean, which are the Few, appear as other sects, seem to cleave as close to the Law as other sects, but inwardly this is far from true. If others should know what is really believed and truly taught, we would be seen as deceitful apostates, as spiritually wicked. For what would the priests of the Temple who take in coin and spill blood daily, or the righteous men of the Law who shun other men as unclean, or the fervid Sicarii who shout for death to those God ‘hates’ make of a teaching that placed no blame, nursed no guilt, sought no redress, harbored no hatred, followed no Law, suffered no priests, and looked not to an angry arrogant god, or to a savior king, a messiah, but looked
within
for knowledge of Source?”
This is almost Greek! It seems finer than Greek. But no messiah? I thought the Nazorean believed John to be the Messiah?
Salome is shaking her head. “I have heard what men say John teaches, and it is not this.”
“For all that the Baptizer seems a wild man of rage and repentance,” replies Seth, “he hides from all but the inner Nazorean that
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