by Harold Bloom
He glanced down at his feet. In front of him lay the milky flower with its black stem. After he had replaced it in his gauntlet, he began to be conscious of change. He looked ahead and immediately saw that the stone house was gone. It took him a few moments to realize that he was staring once again at a mirror, for the reflection given back to him was only of the wall behind him, in the house of Achamoth.
Hermas, the Eye of Fire
Valentinus examined the temple grounds spread out in the valley below him. Night was coming on, but Valentinus was in no haste to descend. He hoped first to remember just a little more, since he needed to consult an oracle precisely on his difficulties in remembering. But he despised oracles and felt particular scorn for the temple of Hermas, to which he had come.
Memory had been failing in him for a long time. He slept little, because he could not bear his nightmares. In the few hours he had slept since being on Lucifer, he had dreamed again what he knew was a recurrent dream. In this, he wandered in the muddy world of the Kenoma, a wilderness of emptiness and desolation. There, amid the mud, he saw gold shining forth. He ran through the muddy void as rapidly as he could, but when he came up to the gold, he found instead a newly born male child lying peacefully in the mud. The baby spoke, trying to utter his name, but the language was unknown to Valentinus.
“Tell me your name so that I can know,” Valentinus implored. Frowning, the baby spoke again incomprehensibly, and then sank into the mud. Valentinus woke from the dream even as he dug frantically through the mud, unable to locate either gold or child.
Poised above the temple grounds, Valentinus prepared to go down. He had left Olam, knowing they would meet in the West, but sensing that Olam’s presence made his difficulties with memory still greater. Had he been on Lucifer before? Olam clearly had; yet Valentinus had encountered no recognizable places so far, and he suspected that the star was new to him. But a troubled sense of repetition afflicted him, as well as a fear that he had exposed Perscors to dangers in order that he, Valentinus, might recall experiences he had lost.
The temple compound was protected by a high outer wall. There was a light in the gate, and Valentinus moved down toward it. As he came up to the gate, three armed priests of Hermas blocked his path. With three lances only a few feet away from his chest, Valentinus stopped and stood quietly. His pale, semi-albino face was expressionless, and he made no reply to the challenges of the priests. Though unarmed, he was not a person the priests felt safe in attacking. Two remained on guard, while the third fell back to consult authority.
Basilides, high priest of Hermas, came to the gate. A shrewd glance at Valentinus persuaded him of his visitor’s importance. He waved away the armed priests and invited Valentinus in with signs of elaborate courtesy. Facing the high priest during the subsequent meal of welcome, Valentinus ate sparingly and in silence of the roast lamb before him.
They sat afterward, in the cool of the evening, in the high priest’s garden. After an hour had passed in silent meditation, the host abruptly began a chant:
“Poimandres, Shepherd of men, the Mind of the Absolute, comes to whosoever he will and speaks his Word.
“Rolling and twisting, a fearful darkness appears, forcing its way down. The serpent of Darkness falls into a humid nature, a confusion, giving off smoke, and uttering a lament.
“The lament is a cry sounding like the voice of fire.
“Out of the Light a holy Word mounts over the humid nature, the sludge, to the heights. Primal Man is that Word.
“Poimandres is that Light. That which in you sees and hears is the Word I speak.”
The high priest broke off and gazed at Valentinus long and intently.
Somberly and hesitantly, Valentinus spoke as if he were bringing forward a trouble long held back in his being: “Something of this beginning I have heard. My differences with you come after the beginning.”
“Why have you sought us out? We wish no trouble with Olam. We fight no battles with him.”
“A knowledge tells me that you have an art of memory. I think Olam has brought me to this world that I might remember, but nothing as yet has come back to me. Have you seen me before?”
“Never. But I have seen someone who had the look of you, who came with Olam. Three came together that time; one was like you, but the other was a raging warrior who died against the Manichees. Or so they said, but they lie freely. He may have died much farther in the West.”
“What art of memory have you?”
The high priest shook his head decisively. “For such a one as yourself, no art will serve. But try the favor of Hermas. Go at midnight to the Eye of the Fire, and perhaps the Mind will speak to you. There is nothing else we can offer.”
The high priest rose, a little coldly, and departed. Valentinus settled himself to meditation, knowing that a priest would come for him at midnight. But the meditation yielded to sleep, almost immediately, and to another dream of the Kenoma.
There in the great void, Perscors marched through the muddy wastes. He wore black armor and carried two swords. Waiting for him were three ranks of armed men. Between Perscors and his enemies loomed up a figure that seemed to resemble Olam. Perscors charged past him at the waiting enemy. Striking from behind, the Olam-like figure cut Perscors down by a blow to the neck with a huge hammer. The armed men trampled the corpse of Perscors into the mud, while the figure appearing to be Olam shouldered his hammer and strode away.
This scene drifted by, and Valentinus saw himself walking up to the dishonored body of his friend. Bending over the corpse, he beheld again not Perscors but the speaking newborn babe, smiling now and uttering a name unlike any other. But the babe dissolved into the mud, and Valentinus woke to his recurrent torment of forgetfulness.
He walked in the garden until, at midnight, a priest came to conduct him to the compound’s innermost shrine. The guide left him at the door of the pavilion. Valentinus unhesitatingly entered a dark chamber and walked forward. He paused; a flame broke forth some six feet before him, and then above the flame there flared forth an Eye of Fire, the size of a man’s head. Valentinus, little impressed, stared at the Eye and said nothing. The Eye of Fire regarded him a while and then suddenly burned away.
A voice, weary and petulant, whispered to Valentinus, a few inches away from his left ear: “Heresiarch, you fell away from the old gods of your people. What do you expect from the priest of Thoth?”
“What gods?” Valentinus asked, with great bitterness. “And why the Egyptian Thoth? Because Hermas is a name for Thoth? And what people? What have I to do with Egypt?”
The voice whispered again, with increased petulance: “Six times, on six spheres, your material body has dissolved. Six times you have left your character to the demons.
“Six times you have pressed up through the system of spheres. In the first sphere you left your ability to wax and wane; in the second your cunning; in the third sphere your desire for possession; in the fourth your overbearing boastfulness; in the fifth your rashness; in the sixth your need for power.
“You strive upward for the seventh time. Leave behind the malicious lie against the Demiurge and you will possess only your true strength. Then you may enter the eighth world …”
The whisper ceased; the Eye of Fire flamed forth again. Valentinus, more bitter than before, called out against the Eye: “Yours is the malice of falsehood. I have slipped six knots, loosed six bonds, removed six garments. But the seventh knot fastens the soul, and it is the knot of your lying Demiurge, who calls himself the Mind of God. When my spark ignites the seventh knot, I will rise up in my own strength. For I have come to know myself, and I have collected myself from everywhere, and I have not sown children to the Archon but have uprooted his roots and have collected the dispersed members, and I know you who you are: for I am of those from above.”
The Eye burned out again. Valentinus swung about, left the shrine, and, loo
king straight ahead, marched through the compound of Hermas. He did not stop at the outer gate but kicked against it. The priests guarding the gate watched it fall open as Valentinus strode out into the night. He set his face to the west, and confidently moved against the darkness.
Nekbael
Perscors shattered the mirror with a double blow, both swords slashing as one. He turned and found the door to Achamoth’s house. With all his force, he pushed against it and went out into the forest. Though he sensed that his path might lead him to Ruha again and again, his impulse was to seek out Valentinus and Olam. He wandered westward through the wood.
More aware than before that he was neither beast nor god, Perscors felt his solitude. Pondering with his own sad heart, gazing at the boundless forest, he wished he could pray for a sign, but he was acutely conscious of his spiritual confusion. The shadows, as he walked, were everywhere, though it was broad day. His solitude had no part in fear, but he understood that much of his power was identical with the dark flame of his ignorance.
The forest seemed merely blank extension: wide, deep, long, and endless tangle. Against it, Perscors set his slowly clarifying love of his own fate. His shadow self, which he could not bear to define, had died in shame, in a realm out of this maze and down from it. But his sense of identity had survived, and he felt again a confidence that he was on the star Lucifer to some purpose. He kept on.
After an hour he saw a phantasm. The form of a woman, red-haired and tall, floated momentarily above the trees. Perscors judged it to be a premonitory image, an indication that he was not fated to wander on without further misadventure. He had not long to wait, for only a few moments after seeing the apparition he came upon a clearing in the forest.
A veiled woman sat alone. She was tall and red-haired, but not, he thought, the woman of the vision. There had been menace in the phantasm, but not in this figure. He placed both swords upon the ground and then approached her slowly. As he came up to her, she raised her veil and laid aside a stole from her shoulders. Perscors beheld a countenance that seemed to shine as brightly as the sun he had left behind him on earth, and not like the dimmed sun of Lucifer. The shady clearing seemed flooded in sunshine; the shadows of the forest receded.
But some touch of doubt prevented Perscors from addressing this radiant woman. Though she smiled directly at him, she too showed a disinclination to speak. He studied her closely, returning her smile, yet experiencing a sense of confusion. Her rich robes were forest-green, as were her boots and her discarded veil and stole. A necklace of heavy yellow gold encircled her throat. She wore a single ring, with a large black gem, on her left hand. Though he was not as moved as he had been by his first sight of Ruha, who instantly and even now seemed at the center of his cosmic fate, Perscors felt a less ambivalent if also less intense attraction to this woman. Yet his rapt perusal of her face made him gradually aware that he seemed to see two faces at once. Irregular features that had a piercing aura, compelling fascination by astonishing contrasts, were suddenly replaced by hesitant, symmetrical features, curiously clear, fresh, restful, unified. Baffled by this alternation, Perscors felt the necessity of declaring his name and origin, if only to assure this remarkable being that he was a man and not.a demon.
To his great shock, he could not speak. Her smile had turned to a look of grave regard, still benign, and she maintained her silence. Perscors realized that to speak he must avert his gaze from her, but the interplay of her wholly disparate faces was too much of an enchantment for him to look away. At first he felt what seemed the humor of his situation, standing there helpless to speak in front of this beautiful being, who continued to sit and to exchange a grave staring with him. But as his dilemma continued, a growing state of alarm dominated him. Minutes passed into hours, and still he was rapt, still speechless. It became clearer to him that he had stumbled upon sorcery, and that he was in danger, absurd as such an awareness at first seemed. He summoned his formidable will, that he might either turn his head or speak, but he failed. Night came on, but the woman’s radiance only increased, and his enthrallment to her features continued. A familiar fury gathered within him.
As his anger mounted, he gradually realized that the unbroken mutual staring was beginning to petrify his limbs. Paralyzed, unable even to flex his muscles or move a hand or foot, he felt the slowly increasing dead weight of his body. All the strength of his soul could not arrest the hideous change he was experiencing. As the night stretched on, he came to understand that only the power of his anger, the fire of his ignorance, could save him. He concentrated his pride in that power toward the moment of the dawn, knowing that either he would break the enchantment then or else he would perish. Throughout all this battle of the spirit, the paralyzing interchange of glances maintained itself. Despite his anger, the frightening and painful pleasure of admiring both her faces was constant.
Just before dawn, his anger failed him. Perscors felt the oblivion of stone. Who could love such a fate? Unable to break the spell of her stare, he realized that he must listen. He listened, he concentrated all the remnants of his being upon listening, but no call came. In the dull torpor of the rising sun, Perscors approached what he took to be the waning moments of his existence.
Then it began as a rustling in the treetops, so that he thought he heard the wind. Bit by bit, he knew that he heard his own name being called. It was repeated from all sides of the sky and the forest; then he realized, very slowly, that he was staring at vacancy. The woman was gone, and the deadness began to go from his limbs. His name reverberated all about him, and then ceased. Shaking desperately, moaning his own name to himself, he lay upon the grass. Without hearing it spoken, he began to moan another name: “Nekbael. Nekbael.” When he understood that this must be the name of the enchantress, he ceased to moan, and with great difficulty he made himself rise and stagger back to where he had placed his swords. He collapsed next to them, and even as he felt their hilts in his hands, he fell into a saving sleep of total exhaustion.
The Manichees: Doctrine
Perscors woke in late afternoon, to find himself surrounded by an encampment. He had been left undisturbed and unguarded, his weapons in his hands. Only a small boy had been assigned to watch him and to bring him to the chief of this wandering clan when he awoke.
Following the child through the camp, Perscors puzzled over the nature of this peculiar-looking people. Tall and willowy, they seemed set apart from the other inhabitants of Lucifer that he had encountered, including the men and women of the netherworld.
Herakleides, headman of the “True” or “Elect” among the Manichees, greeted Perscors suspiciously, in front of a large green tent. A dull green was the only color visible anywhere in the camp, whether on the armored soldiers or on the few women and children. The disproportion between the many hundreds of warriors and the few score women and children surprised Perscors, but nearly every outward aspect of these people was startling. After his identity and his relation to Olam had been established, Perscors saw that the suspicious unease of Herakleides had been increased. The only relief that the headman manifested was at Perscors’s refusal to declare himself an adherent of the religious outlook of Olam or of anyone else. Concerning his uncanny descent into the underworld, Perscors kept silent.
After a spare supper of vegetables, Herakleides led Perscors for a walk toward the edge of the meadow, just out of hearing of the bowmen posted as guards. Perscors’s curiosity resulted in his abandoning some of his newly developed reserve.
“Why do your people look down on the ground wherever they walk?”
“When someone walks on the ground, he injures the Light mixed in with the earth, even as he who moves his hand injures the air.”
Perscors stared hard at Herakleides and protested: “But then all action whatsoever is sin!”
“So indeed it is,” Herakleides gruffly agreed. Silence ensued.
“But who can live like that? You are surround
ed by your soldiers. When you command them to fight, are you urging them to sin?”
Herakleides motioned Perscors to be silent and to listen. Stepping back, the headman began to declaim, in a quietly controlled but very urgent tone of voice:
“We follow Mani, who revealed the mystery of the Light and the Darkness, the mystery of the great war stirred up by the Darkness against the Light. The beginnings were in the depth of the Darkness, and not in the heights, as Olam asserts. The Darkness desired its better, not out of love for the Light, but out of resentment. The Light loved peace, and so made the soul of man as a sacrifice to the Darkness.”
“Then your God of Light is a coward,” Perscors retorted. “I have no use for a cowardly god!”
Herakleides smiled savagely. “You are a strong ignorance, a mockery of Primal Man. Olam has not been able to teach you his half truths, and how then shall I teach you the full Word? For what are you but a shadow of the First Creation that the Light, Father of Greatness, sent against the Darkness?”
“What happened to that First Creation?” Perscors asked, somewhat chastened.
“Before the cosmos, there was the Primal Man. When he was called forth, he girded himself with an armor of five kinds: the light breeze, the strong wind, the light, the water, and the fire. With the fire as his lance, he plunged speedily down from the Paradises until he reached the corner of the battlefield.”
“That first man was no coward,” Perscors remarked somberly, anticipating a tale of defeat, even as he felt an identity with the pre-cosmic warrior.
Herakleides looked more favorably at Perscors. The headman’s voice softened and a note of lament came into his declamation:
“The Great Father Himself could not lower His Light to the battle, and so He honored us by sending man in His place. But the Archdevil also had his five kinds: the smoke; the dark fire, consuming; the night of darkness; the scorching wind; the heavy fog of waters. Armed with these, the King of Darkness went forth to meet Primal Man in battle. When he saw man, the Archdevil brooded and said: ‘What I sought far off, I have found close by.’ They struggled in the battle for many hours and man was defeated.”
