A.W. Hill

November 18:

The laptop’s screen came up with a file icon flashing against the Moorish desktop pattern. He opened it to a hypertext version of Revelation 14, with underlined passages linking him to pages of exegesis by scholars and theologians from the 5th century on. The passage Monica had highlighted in red was from Verses 1-4:

"AND I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads."

"And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the Elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth."
"These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins."

He clicked on the hyperlinked word, virgins, and was taken to a display of related passages from Revelations, as well as a quote attributed to Jesus in Matthew 19:12:

Hearing his pronouncement against divorce, the Pharisees had protested to Jesus—in so many words—“if we’re not free to dump our wives, maybe it’s not such a
great idea to get married in the first place,” to which Jesus replied in cryptic agreement:

“All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. There are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heavens’ sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

Raszer read the passage repeatedly and with increasing speed, until its archaic syntax morphed into a kind of non-verbal vernacular, a direct feed from page to brain. It was a technique for reading sacred texts he’d been introduced to when first undertaking his study, and now he did it automatically. The fact was that unless you read the original Greek or Hebrew, Sanskrit or Arabic, everything was bastardized by the translator’s biases, and even in the maiden tongue, most scripture and sutra was secondhand news and at least twice-removed from meaning. The real meaning was esoteric. As Jesus had said time and again in the Gnostic Gospels: “He who has ears, let him hear.” If this was not the case in the matter of eunuchs, it was surely true of an even stranger quote Monica had pulled in from the Gospel of Saint Thomas:

“When you make the male and the female be one and the same, so that the male might not be male nor the female be female—then you will enter the Kingdom.”

In just two degrees, Raszer’s separate queries about the identity of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ “Little Flock” of 144,000 and the history of sacramental castration had been drawn together in a way that put a new spin on Aquino’s virgin sex ring theory. Suppose virginity—of one sort or another—was a factor, but suppose it wasn’t about the lust of middle-aged men for young girls. Suppose it was about devotion. Or control.

He left the thought there, reminding himself only of what he’d already learned on so many previous cases: that given half a chance, the predators would always use the tools of religion to augment their power over the prey. It was the same story with every clique that deserved the pejorative of “cult,” whether it was Manson’s Family or Jim Jones’s Temple or L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology. There was always an agenda, and if it wasn’t about personal power it was about power on a broader scale.

The castration material was more extensive and more eye-opening than he’d expected, and there would be a few nights’ work in digesting it. Several items, however, jumped out of Monica’s hastily assembled list of bullet points:

• The earliest evidence of ritual castration was found in Sumerian texts from the temple of goddess INANNA at Uruk in present-day Iraq. A sample quote from high priestess Enheduanna, dated to 2300 BC: “Inanna turns a man into a woman and a woman into a man.”
• The priests of the cult of Phrygian mother goddess Cybele, instituted around the time of King Midas (725-675 BC) and fashionable in Rome of AD 295-390, were known as the Galli, and castrated themselves in imitation of her divine son/lover Attis, who had done so in penance for his betrayal. According to myth, the birthday of Attis was December 25. Unlike other pre-Christian Mother-Son cults, the cult of Cybele and Attis was a cult of abstinence.
• Origen, the great scholar and theologian of the early Christian church, also “made a eunuch of himself” for the kingdom of heavens’ sake.
• In the mid-18th century, an ecstatic Christian sect known as the Skoptzy or Skoptji arose in the Oryel region of Russia, with ritual self-castration as its badge of membership. The sect attracted military officers, merchants and the nobles of St. Petersburg, and by 1874, counted 5,444 members (incl. 1,465 women) and tens of thousands of sympathizers. The Skoptzy claimed that they were following Christ in Matthew 19:12, but that their mission would not be complete until their numbers had reached the 144,000 of Revelation 14:3-4.
• Just as castratis had guarded the harems of the caliphate, the Holy Ka’aba of Islam and its black meteorite are to this day secured by an elite guard of eunuchs.

Raszer poured himself another glass of wine and lit a cigarette. The business about the gelded priests of Cybele he’d vaguely recalled, and it had been on his mind since seeing the morgue photo of a neutered Henry Lee laid beside the black “baitylos” rock on Aquino’s desk. But Raszer hadn’t been able to make the connection to Iraq until seeing that the Sumerian Inanna had also demanded the family jewels. And the gospel passages with their bizarre echo in the Russian sect seemed to suggest a trail of cognitive cookie crumbs that led right to the door of the Witnesses by way of their belief in the special status of the 144,000.

Could a cult of sexual negation born at the dawn of history have survived, like a viral spore, into the twenty-first Century? Monica’s accompanying weblinks seemed to hint that it could have, because there were sites—many related to the transgender community—with names like alt.eunuchs.com and Men Without Balls. He who has ears, let him hear. Sex and gender had always been big issues in religion.

August 9

This just in: Counterpoint Press, the Berkeley-based imprint headed by former Avalon chief Charlie Winton, has picked up NOWHERE~LAND, the new Stephan Raszer Investigation, for a Spring 09 hardcover publication.



THE KNOCK AT 2 A.M.

It's 2 A.M. and the doorbell just rang. What the hell's that about? My wife and child are safe in bed, and I have no kin in this part of town. I live in an old, multi-unit co-op and the doorbell is interior, which means that whoever is outside my door is inside the building. It should be of some comfort to know that this means they'd have had to get past the building's security system, but it isn't. People do it all the time. In all likelihood, it's not someone I want to see at 2 A.M. or any other time, but then again... We have friends in the building. Suppose one of them is hurt, or ill, or simply desperate for one reason or another. If that were me, wouldn't I want someone to come to the door?

I did open the door at 2 A.M. once, a long time ago. I was 22 and living in a Greenwich Village walk-up, having recently graduated from NYU. My girlfriend from Georgia had come for an extended visit and was in my bed.
I was up working on a piece of music when the knock came. "Who is it?" I asked, going to the door with an unlit cigarette in my fingers. "Your downstairs neighbor," came the answer with a quaver of desperation. "Can you open, please?" I did. It was a light-skinned black man, maybe 24, possibly of Caribbean origins. He was slender, shaven, and well-dressed. ("A clean and articulate black man," as Sen. Joe Biden famously described Barack Obama.) Reassured, I opened the door. My visitor kept a respectful distance. In fact, he never crossed my threshold. He didn't have to. "I'm so very sorry to disturb you at this time of night. I live in the apartment right below you and could hear that you were up. My girlfriend is hemmorhaging and I need to get her to the hospital. Do you have a car?"



He gave me the time and space I needed, seeming to appreciate that it was a difficult thing he was asking of me. Maybe not if you live in a small town and actually know your neighbors, but in New York City, yes. I did have a car, and it was securely parked for the winter, wedged into a tiny spot on Sullivan Street which I had attained at great expense of time and chrome and which would no longer be mine if I moved. But how could I not? I looked, briefly, at the man. His eyes teared up at my softening. Maybe it was the opening of his tearducts that made me think about the word "hemorrhaging." I couldn't know exactly what it meant in this situation, but at the least it meant an unremitting flow of blood. Would there be blood in my car? On the seats? A stranger's blood. And then my thoughts went to this: had he stabbed her?

"Or fifty dollars for a cab," he said, as if acutely tuned in on my distress.

"Is that what you need?" I asked.

"What's the nearest hospital?" he asked.

I didn't know. I had only moved in a few weeks before.

"That's all right. The cabbie will know. I'm sure fifty dollars will do it."

"Okay," I said. "I'll be right back."

I turned my back on him and left the door open, but he did not come in. He gave me absolutely no cause for suspicion other than his blackness, and that was a prejudice he somehow knew I would never allow to drive my actions. All I had was three twenties. I fanned them out of my wallet and stared at them. "Would forty--" I began to say. Then, and only then, did he make physical contact. He touched my hand and said, "That's all right. I'll bring back your change. You can trust me. I'm not one of those..." The money was suddenly in his hands, not mine. Like magic. He put a hand on the door frame, sighed, and said, "Listen...when this is all over and we're back in the apartment, I'll give three knocks on the ceiling with a broom. You and your lady can come down for wine and cheese. It's the least we can do."

The door closed, and my wallet was empty. The instant his spell was broken, I knew it'd been a con. I tore down the stairs, but he was gone like a wraith. I stood outside the building, listening to the jazz drifting from the Village Gate, and experienced the not entirely unpleasant feeling of having been fucked well and left in thrall. Of course I was pissed off, but I was also impressed. In hindsight, there had been any number of red flags, but I had missed every one.

A classic big city con, right? A life lesson. A cop on the street, to whom I eagerly recounted my tale the next morning, said, "It happens. You won't get burned again. I'm glad you told me your story, kid, but do yourself a favor: don't tell anyone else. They'll take you for an easy mark." So the question--the only one that matters--is: did I learn my lesson? After all, even white rats can be taught not to pull the red string. The thing is, though, that a rat's brain doesn't work like a human's. Rats want peace and quiet, and safety. A rat will never acquire a liking for the thrill of the possibility of getting shocked again.

The doorbell rang again. I was concerned that it would wake my wife. I saved my work on the computer before getting up, based on the twisted logic that if whoever was at my door was there to kill me, at least my book would survive. I went upstairs and padded across the hardwood floor to the door. I leaned in to the crack. "Who is it?" I asked, flipping the deadbolt.

So the question for discussion is: why does the moth seek the flame?



For those interested, the new book, "NOWHERE-LAND" (formerly "The Left Hand Of God"), is finally finished and in the hands of my agent. Google "Ka'ba Stone" or "Black Stone of the Ka'ba" for a taste of its central mystery. If you'd like to see a synopsis, write me at: awhillpubs@sbcglobal.net.