Soul Matters: Book 4, Monocracy Managerie

The crowd of elders continued to shout their questions at Moses, who couldn’t answer any of them because of the confusion. He signaled the bodyguards, and they waded into the crowd and started thumping heads. Rather quickly, the ruckus subsided.

Moses brought his stocky frame to its full height and answered, “You argue for idolatry.”

Simon shouted back, “I argue for clarity.”

Phil could hear the proto-Donna in the remark. Predictably, it produced the same effect in Moses as it did in Phil when Donna was a recalcitrant teen arguing for a different kind of clarity -- as in, why couldn’t she go with her friends to the mall.

“Who will stand with me?” Moses bellowed. “Who will stand for the One God and stand against idolatry?”

Judah was ready to take up the challenge, but Manas grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.

“You flirt with death,” Manas said.

“He cannot prevail against all of us,” Judah answered.

Manas stopped to consider the point. Meanwhile, Phil was screaming impotently in his mind to stand with Moses.

Morrigan intervened, “He must choose the unknown.”

“It’s a known thing,” Phil retorted. “It is a higher order of balance.”

“Show it to him,” Morrigan said.

“How?” Phil returned. “And what? What can I show him?”

“Moses was the Noah who did not get drunk,” Morrigan answered. “He rode the ark in his infancy to actually save his people.”

Phil could see this scene, or movie, in his mind: Moses, the infant in the reed-basket; Moses, the young man in Midian called by God; Moses, at the head of the column of refugees; Moses, on Mt. Sinai conversing with Yahweh and the sun gods. Phil pushed these images into Manas’ mind. They flared into Manas’ consciousness.

Manas’ grip on Judah tightened, “We must stand with Moses.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Manas answered. “I need to think. But now is not the time to challenge him.”

Simon was next to them and added, “Something is happening here I do not understand, but I agree with Manas.”

The crowd around them was agitated and confused. Some elders hurried to stand with Moses. Others backed away. Most of the others in the crowd were milling around in indecision.

“Kill the idolaters!” Moses shouted.

The sons of Levi pulled their swords and advanced. The confusion turned to panic. Some elders ran. Others pulled their own knives to defend themselves.

As Manas reverted to more indecision, Phil could exert more influence. He called Morrigan to once again fill Manas with calm; then, he seized control of Manas’ mind.

Grabbing Judah more firmly, Manas said, “Put away your knife. We go to stand with Moses. Today is not your day to die.”

Judah allowed himself to be dragged up the mountain to the plateau where Moses and the others stood. Simon followed along. Behind them, the killing had begun.

Moses noted their approach, “You dare come to me, Judah?”

Manas retained his grip on Judah and answered for him, “We’re not idolaters, but we do have questions, Moses. There is a new covenant. You spent a month on the mountain studying it with Yahweh, but we don’t know all it means. Stop this killing and let us study it so we may understand.”

Moses seemed to soften, and soon he relented, “Stop. Put up your swords. Return to your tents. Tomorrow we will finish this.”

Phil sighed his relief. It was over. However, the scene before him didn’t change. He expected to be released from this lifetime and returned to at least Manuel’s patio.

Green Man voiced the obvious, “Apparently, it’s not over.”

Moses approached the trio and said, “Come with me.”

The remaining elders started up the mountain. It was a moonlit night. The full moon hovered in the sky. Earlier it was the beacon for their Spring celebration. Now it lit their way up the winding mountain path.

They hiked for over an hour. A few of the sons of Levi trailed them with torches. Once they reached the plateau where the seventy met with the sun gods and Yahweh, Moses halted.

“We will fashion two new tablets,” Moses said. “We will inscribe on the tablets the Law Yahweh gave to me. As we do so, we will be in communion with the One God.”

Moses stopped and stood completely still. He lifted his head to gaze at the heavens, and slowly turned to the four directions and silently prayed. Ghostly shapes drifted in. Phil could see them, but he wasn’t sure Manas could.

The shapes touched down, and they began to solidify. Now Manas was seeing or sensing them. The shapes solidified enough so Phil could recognize the sun gods and Yahweh.

Green Man spoke to Phil, “This was the important moment in our history.”

The group of deities gathered into a tight circle. The men stood at a distance, awestruck. For even though they could only see the backs of these deities, the effect of their presence was humbling. Then a rumbling sound began, as if distant thunder.

“Out of One, there are Many. From the Many, there is only One. I will be what I will be.”

It wasn’t a voice they heard. It was the Presence announcing its Beingness. It spoke again, “You cannot see my face, because my true face cannot be seen. I bring you Yahweh as he may now embody all the sun gods. He is the One God of your people. All other gods are false for you. Inscribe his Law on your tablets and know the covenant between us is for all time.”

Phil wasn’t sure he caught the full meaning of these statements, because they came through as impressions or disembodied thoughts. Once they stopped their communication, though, the group of deities evaporated into light. Then the darkness returned.

After a long moment, Moses asked them, “Do you understand? Are all your questions answered?”

Judah stepped up, “How can anyone understand this? If God will be what he will be, we will need the Law for our lives to make any sense.”

“Exactly,” Moses agreed.

The tension built over many weeks as Moses kept the scribes busy fleshing out what would become Mosaic Law. Much of it, Manas knew, was a rehash of Egyptian morality straight out of the Book of the Dead. A spirit upon dying was required to stand before Osiris and answer to a series of questions: did you kill, did you steal, did you bear false witness, and so on.

The dietary laws made sense to Manas. There was logic in the definition of what was clean and unclean. The tension didn’t come from that. It came from Moses doing all the work. He was claiming to be the only one who knew what Yahweh wanted.

Hadn’t they all been there? Weren’t they all prophets? All the elders? They went through the ordeal of Yahweh’s transformation, and they were transformed as well. They could speak with clarity and with the authority of knowing Yahweh’s will. Why, then, was Moses leaving them on the sidelines and doing it all himself? Had he become that self-important?

Phil looked out through Manas’ eyes to the bleak desert landscape as Manas mulled over his resentments. Tents and cook fires filled the rocky expanse. It was a more orderly camp now, a true nomadic operation with people practiced at the routine of subsistence living. They were camped around a series of springs, and palm trees decorated the unrelieved desert landscape.

Manas caught sight of Miriam and Aaron headed to Moses’ tent. He headed to join them, as did Judah and Simon and some other elders. It looked like it was time for a showdown.

Moses sat on a rug, dictating more of the law to scribes. They scribbled on papyrus scrolls. Miriam wasted no time and started right in on her brother.

“You are not consulting with us, Moses.”

Moses looked up, perplexed at the charge. He answered, “I wake up and the words are there. I have to get them written down before I forget them.”

“I know,” Miriam replied. “We, too, awake with inspiration filling us. We should be working together to fashion the code that organizes our people.”

Aaron, the middle child and the diplomat, softened Miriam’s challenge by saying, “You are first among equals, my brother. We know Yahweh favors you, but any law we must live by is an easier yoke if we helped in its construction. A plan born of agreement and consensus is a plan more easily followed.”

Moses frowned in thought. In the silence, they sat around him. They were doing a lot of that these days, Manas reflected -- sitting together in silence. Their shared experiences bound them beyond words.

Soon Moses said, “Is it not possible I am speaking for all of us?”

“It is,” Aaron agreed and glanced to Miriam for her comment.

“But we must be included as you speak,” Miriam added. “We need to verify what you say so we know you are truly speaking for us.”

Manas jumped up, “You’ve got the priests to do Yahweh’s bidding and minister to the people. We are the prophets, inspired by Yahweh. Miriam leads the women. But you sit outside the communal circle and dictate what we will do. It’s not right.”

“I hear you,” Moses replied. “I think I have a kind of god-madness. I can think of nothing but the law, and I feel compelled to get it written down. I have not thought about anything else. It’s like I’m alone in a dream.”

“Bring us into the dream with you,” Miriam said. “So we may help.”

Moses nodded his head. Then he said, “We must pray on it, and see how Yahweh answers.”

The answer came the next day. Miriam emerged from her tent stricken with what looked like leprosy all over her body. Manas and some of the other elders hurried to where she stood before Moses.

“I must go into the desert alone,” Miriam told them. “My initiation will not be a return to the tomb. Mine is a return to the land. The female face of God beckons me.”

So saying, she took her supplies and walked steadfastly into the Wilderness of Sin. Through Manas’ understanding of initiation, Phil gathered that the usual process for initiation into the mysteries was in a cave. An initiate spent days in a trance until he broke through the boundaries of death to stand in the spirit world. Once there, he communed with the gods and learned of the mysteries.

Miriam’s ordeal would be different. She would wander between Mother Earth and Mother Sky. Manas wondered what her conversation with the goddesses would reveal.

Morrigan, quiet until now, told Phil, “Prophets in these days did not foretell the future. They spoke with inspired words. In a sense, the gods spoke through them as a result of their initiations. Women were not initiated in the same way. They relied on the blood rites. The Goddess has called Miriam to this initiation so that she may also become a prophet as well as a priestess.”

In seven days, Miriam returned. Her skin was clear, and her eyes bright with the intensity only an encounter with the Divine can create.

Moses ran to his sister, and Aaron wasn’t far behind. They talked briefly then led her to a tent.

Manas approached. When Moses exited the tent he told Manas, “She is to be anointed on ear, thumb and toe.”

“She brought the sin offering then.”

“She did.”

“What does this mean, Moses? What is Yahweh telling us with these strange signs?”

“I’m not sure. We will have to wait until Miriam can tell us, but I am sure the Divine Feminine has spoken.”

Manas shook his head, “It is strange. Yahweh is our one god, but he is made up of many. Do you think he can sort himself out?”

Moses laughed at that, and the laughter followed Phil all the way back to Manuel’s patio.

The scene shifted in the dramatic way Phil remembered. He plummeted through darkness for a long while until he found himself lying on the grass of Manuel’s patio. He lay there letting his mind recover from the disorienting trip through time and space. Donna and Pastor Mike were sprawled alongside him. They appeared to be unconscious.

As Phil sat up, Manuel said, “I guess you passed the test.”

“Some test,” Phil grumped. “I’m not even sure what was resolved.”

“Balance. The One God was understood as coming from the Many.”

Phil nodded his head. The paradox of the One and the Many was one of the necessary fulcrums or points of balance in Creation.

“Moses passed onto the people the principles he learned in the mystery schools.”

“What principles?” Phil asked.

“The problem the Mystery schools faced was how to preserve the wisdom of when the gods walked the earth,” Manuel answered. “As the material world condensed, it squeezed out the divine. The Mystery schools sought to maintain a link to the divine, but they had to do so within the current stage of human development. Moses pushed for abstract thinking, morality, and a simple and predictable one god. If you remember, El is the moon god representing man’s self-reflection, and once the Hebrews were capable of that he retreated to the moon. With Yahweh to take over as the one God of the Hebrews, Moses enabled that self-reflection to deepen into guilt.”

“And with guilt, man could keep himself in balance.”

“It didn’t last, though,” Manuel snickered. “People forget and have to learn the same truths over and over.”

“What truth might it be this time?” Donna asked as she sat up.

Pastor Mike was stirring but not fully conscious yet.

Manuel answered, “Listen to the crying of a dog for its master. The barking is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the name of. Give your life to be one of them.”

Pastor Mike rolled to his side, “That’s from a poem by Rumi.”

“You’re a Christian pastor,” Manuel shot back. “How is it you know a Sufi poet?”

“Beside the point, Manuel,” Pastor Mike responded. “The point is you are telling Donna the truth we found in our disturbing sojourn in Egypt is found in the howling dog.”

“Each dog has a different master,” Manuel said. “And each master is the One.”

“And idolatry?” Donna pressed on.

Manuel shrugged, his blond locks bouncing, “Self-projection.”

“Explain,” Phil directed the angel.

Manuel smiled, and the brilliance of it forced Donna and Pastor Mike to avert their eyes. The angel went on, “You know the pompous evangelicals who shout about ‘My God is a just or compassionate or whatever God?’ Well, you can own a projection. No one can fathom the One God.”

“We know,” was Phil’s laconic response. “How does any of what you’re saying help us?”

Manuel continued to smile, “Isaiah said, ‘Behold. I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling.’ It’s in Isaiah 51:22, and the whole passage gives you a fuller answer than I’m going to give.You can piece the rest together for yourselves.”

Donna jerked towards Phil, “The Holy Grail.”

“He replaced the trembling cup,” Pastor Mike elaborated, “not by removing it, but by filling it.”

“With Divine Presence,” Phil concluded.

“A Presence already present in your souls,” Manuel added. “Moses gave the people the tools, the Law, to maintain awareness of the God-within -- the Goddess.”

The Holy Grail, Phil surmised, was the symbol of the Divine Marriage -- not just the Divine Feminine. It was the cup, the containment field, within which the Divine Marriage consummated and sustained itself. And the howling dog was the separate ego-self seeking this fulfillment. It all made sense. When a man remembered this, the patriarchy was in balance.

“Now what?” Phil asked the angel.

“Now you can go back to your bodies,” Manuel laughed.