The vast desert regions were mainly overseen by Baal and Ashteroth who were gods of male strength and female fertility. Domination, honour codes, and obedience, were big among their travelling tent-dwellers, and also erotics. Under them were Mollech, killer of children, Dagon the former fish-tailed god of Hamar’s youth, Rephan the star-god, all requiring sacrifice and lewd practices. Tribal pride ruled the people under them, enough to cause killings even of their own family members when rules were broken.
He never got used to the Indus one that waved its spider arms as the female Kali. Nor, to their elephant-headed monster who stomped the rebellious under his feet, both entities empowering themselves on human deaths in the natural. There seemed no end to the awful destructions in it all. The belief systems under those Indus ‘gods’, like the belief systems under all the ‘gods,’ lulled their followers with common-sense rules and lofty ethics of behaviour, and with promises of blessing and protection to those who followed well, death and ruin to those who didn’t. Few human adherents ever seemed to press the other aspects of the systems all the way to their horrible ends.
In fact, on this the Indus system went furthest of all, getting people to readily make peace with spirits of death as if those spirits were something benevolent, beneficial, even as something for some cultists to dedicate their lives to in murdering innocent travellers for them. Hamar recalled a few adherents he’d met in the Academy. “’Hashasheen,’ he mused, Aktiarh adding, “ Smokers of the sacred Hashash weed that sends them obediently off to kill”.
He assured Hamar, “In regions of their Indus lands there are whole colonies of lesser demi-gods under the main one, far more than those entities accessed in the school, tens of thousands of them busy as any army.” He seemed impressed with the sight of so many hundreds of ornate temples carved for them in those regions, but Hamar stiffened, ‘Getting people to see death and hopelessness as the rule of life?’
How could any believers want that! The people even fashioned fanged and bug-eyed demon statues in worship of them, later called down spirits of death to come for the dying. He grimaced as he watched unloved beggars dying lost and alone and reaching out in pain, deemed bound by their karma to die miserably down alleys, even as kindly mothers and holy men alike saw them and left them behind.
Yet again Hamar was hammered with the dismal lesson no one was having to teach him, that some awful law of destruction and human degradation was ever with arcane powers, and that no dealers in spiritual things, superhuman beings or not, ever reckoned what they were behaving like in carrying it out, or cared about those who got done over in the process. Death ruled as being supreme over them all in Indus. He watched yogis ritually bathe in their Ganges, ordinary folk rinsing out their mouths in its greasy ash-grey water alongside stiff corpses all dark green and mould-patched bobbing upright past them in its flow. Others cupped up the urine of sacred cows to drink, – beliefs under their gods brought about degradations of human beings without end. Even Aktiarh’s face looked lascivious as he watched devotees worship via contorted sex acts in front of giant stone carvings of sex organs in the Indus temples, – humanity ever reckoning the bliss moment of sex as the highest thing they could ever know and serve, until death ended their lifetime.
Hamar whispered to himself, “Worshipping their own bottoms,” but not loud enough for Aktiarh to hear. In one sense it was showing him his separateness was still there. In another, that that was pointless.
Nor was there an end to the relentless draw on Hamar to nevertheless see all that could be seen, despite himself, – the mystic wine did its work. And also Aktiarh’s superior knowledge did its work, which, above all else, Hamar was intent on surpassing.
Inevitably, relentlessly, the draw and the challenge became part of him, a personal vice. Now Hamar was allowed free access to the refectory and special Dionysian wine any time he felt like ascending to the higher realm, a special privilege recognized by all the others as he kept ducking out of lessons to do it, grandly reappearing back into them with a flushed face and an even more superior air.
In the end he risked playing a small part in the politics of the gods’ celestial courts all on his own. He thought he only did it so he’d be able to work with them better when his time came, or to be ready for wielding greater powers than the Academy possessed, – and for their part the ‘gods’ accepted him amongst them as the Watcher Majus, a harmless and appreciative presence under Aktiarh. None of their hidden ways were denied him, and so the privilege of knowing highest vileness worked its charm. On one of his returns to the earthly plane a purple diamond shape was tattooed under the red star on his forehead.
Supposedly he didn’t value more decorations or special knowledge of their ways for their own sake; after all, when he had the supreme power those things wouldn’t matter. But in reality he’d become enmeshed at last, and worst of all, denied to himself how much he liked his position among them, – even needed it.
And so he became even more desperate to be free for awhile back out onto the sunny Earth by himself for a spectacular partying amongst his own people before his long seclusion with the Master, and their many long decades before the high transition. He hadn’t realized that taking his place among the spiritual rulers of the air, with less and less objection to their ways and habits, had put him in a middle-ground without any real moorings at last,
– fully readied for his final stage!
Leave a Reply