Can anyone help me out with this?
Some years ago I read a story set in the future, and one of the characters mentioned more-or-less in passing the legend of the great painter Michael the Archangel, whose paintings had (I think) some sort of magical qualities -- the implication for the reader being that, in this distant future, the memory of Michelangelo Buonarroti had become conflated with religious traditions about the Archangel Michael.
I read very little science fiction, so this should be easy for me to trace to its source, but I'm drawing a blank. If any of my readers happen to remember this story, too, please help jog my memory.
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I thought it might be from Scott Alexander's Kabbalistic sci-fi novel Unsong, so I did a word search for archangel -- not a very smart choice, since one of the main characters is an archangel! One of the search results caught my eye. The Archangel Uriel is conversing with Sohu West. (In the original, archangels speak in all caps. I have spared the reader this annoyance.)
"I run continental drift, and guide the butterfly migration, and keep icebergs in the right place, and prevent people from boiling goats in their mothers' milk. . . . I have never seen anything to convince me that God plays an active part in the universe. His role seems to be entirely ontological."
"You can't be a deist! You're an archangel!"
"I am not a very good archangel."
"What about San Francisco?" [which in the novel has been transformed into heaven on earth]
"God can have a right hand as well as a left hand. I see no evidence that either is controlled by any head. . . . God created Adam Kadmon, the fundamental structure that binds everything together. . . ."
In my October 21 post "
17 years ago our eyes were opened," I mentioned "migrating monarch butterflies."
San Francisco is a link to the Francis syncs in "
The 'Sixteen' Chapel," also posted on October 21. God's right hand is mentioned (in connection with San Francisco), and then the creation of Adam Kadmon; in Michelangelo's
Creation of Adam, God touches Adam with his right hand; in the
Babylon Bee article quoted in that post, Pope Francis (who, like San Francisco, is named after St. Francis), glues himself to God's right hand.
What of the idea of a God with no head? Both of the posts just linked deal with a YouTube video by Galahad Eridanus. Yesterday I watched all the other videos on his channel, including this one:
In this video, Eridanus says:
I've said to a few friends of mine that I see [Aleister Crowley's philosophy of] Thelema as a decapitated version of the same philosophy in my work -- that the two systems bear some philosophical resemblance to each other and that there is a certain resonance between them. However, my ideas find their symbolic head in Christ and the spirit of Christianity. This can be seen in the fact that the head of Abraxas represents Christ in my cosmogram. Thelema, by contrast, has no such authority. . . . Because of this choice of words, "decapitated," it gave me pause when I discovered that the Bornless Ritual which Crowley performed inside the Great Pyramid of Giza was originally called the Headless Rite, and it begins with these words: "I summon you, Headless One!"
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Now here's a really weird coincidence. On October 21 -- the same date I posted two posts linked above -- I read Chapters 9 to 11 of the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon. I noticed that in Chapter 10, three different things were described as lasting "forty and two years":
And when [Riplakish] had reigned for the space of forty and two years the people did rise up in rebellion against him; and there began to be war again in the land, insomuch that Riplakish was killed, and his descendants were driven out of the land (Ether 10:8).
And it came to pass that Levi did serve in captivity after the death of his father, for the space of forty and two years (Ether 10:15).
And it came to pass that Com drew away the half of the kingdom. And he reigned over the half of the kingdom forty and two years (Ether 10:32).
I later did a search and found that the number 42 occurs nowhere else in the Book of Mormon; all three instances are in the same chapter. I made a note to write a post about that later -- but what would the post say? Just that the number 42 shows up three times in this chapter and nowhere else? What would be the point of posting that?
As I was composing this present post, though, the reference to Aleister Crowley made me think of something: Didn't Crowley write something about the "Tenth Aethyr," and haven't I mentioned that on this blog before? Yes. The Tenth Aethyr is mentioned in passing in the June 2022 post "
Choronzon 333." Galahad Eridanus's YouTube username is @Eridanus333.
This Aethyr being accursèd, and the seer forewarned, he taketh these precautions for the scribe.
First let the scribe be seated in the centre of the circle in the desert sand, and let the circle be fortified by the Holy Names of God --- Tetragrammaton and Shaddai El Chai and Ararita.
And let the Demon be invoked within a triangle, wherein is inscribed the name of Choronzon, and about it let him write ANAPHAXETON --- ANAPHANETON -- PRIMEUMATON, and in the angles MI-CA-EL: and at each angle the Seer shall slay a pigeon, and having done this, let him retire to a secret place, where is neither sight nor hearing, and sit within his black robe, secretly invoking the Aethyr.
The juxtaposition of angles and Mi-ca-el seemed synchronistically promising. I had been hoping for something about the number 42, though, and in this I was disappointed. So, wondering if Crowley had ever said anything about that number, I Googled aleister crowley "number 42"; the very first results called it the Great Number of the Curse -- which seemed potentially promising, seeing as how the Tenth Aethyr is said to be "accursèd."
Why a screenshot rather than just a quote? Because check out the header image. That's a picture of the Gnostic god Abraxas, an image which plays no particularly special role in the work of Crowley but is central to Galahad Eridanus's content.
For the sake of later searchability, here is the content of the above screenshot. It is taken from the commentary after the 42nd chapter of The Book of Lies:
This number 42 is the Great Number of the Curse. See Liber 418, Liber 500, and the essay on the Qabalah in the Temple of Solomon the King. This number is said to be all hotch-potch and accursed.
The chapter should be read most carefully in connection with the 10th Aethyr. It is to that dramatic experience that it refers.
There it is: An undeniable link between the number 42 and the 10th Aethyr. The wording even allows it to be read as if "the 10th Aethyr" were a chapter. Incidentally, The Book of Lies is also called Liber 333. In "The Cry of the 10th Aethyr," Choronzon says "My name is three hundred and thirty and three."
Note added:
I finished this post just around lunchtime, and the Crowley-related content put it into my head to have lunch at Café D&D, since their street address is 666. On the way there I passed this restaurant:
Buckskin is a Taiwanese beer brand; its logo is a horseshoe. In writing this post, I had to look up my old post "
Choronzon 333," which features a photo of a "Nazi" soldier from the Fire Nation war, with a horseshoe on his skin, with the number 333:
Just after passing the restaurant, I stopped to get a photo of the horseshoe, but it wasn't visible from that side. (I had to make a U-turn to get the photo above.) What was visible from the other side was this:
A rooster's head. Note that in the "Theophany 2022" video above, Eridanus says that "the head of Abraxas represents Christ" in his system, and that Crowley's philosophy is "decapitated" because it lacks Christ. The head of Abraxas is a rooster's head. This is the first comment under the video:
"Interesting note about abraxas: both snakes and roosters are known for having bodies that seem to 'stay alive' for a while after they are beheaded. Ties into bornless ritual etc."
Having taken the photos above, I went on to D&D and had lunch. While I was waiting for my food, I read the last chapter of Ether, which includes this notorious and widely ridiculed verse:
And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died (Ether 15:31).
Shiz, like a snake or a rooster, seemed to stay alive for a while after he was beheaded. The mention of "his hands" in the verse is also relevant in connection with the Unsong quote about God having two hands but no head.
Further note added:
Several hours after posting this, with its references to slaying pigeons and decapitating roosters, I ran across this on a news-and-views site, showing Netanyahu symbolically decapitating a dove:
October 21 -- a date mentioned three times in this post (now four) -- is Netanyahu's birthday.
