Chasing Shadows!: A Dream
Page 11
Chapter 1
The puzzling poem perplexed the professor. Six weeks went. Yet, he was unable to unravel it.
It was 8 A.M. and he had already taken half a dozen energy drinks. He was now on the seventh. He adjusted himself in his seat and read the first line for the umpteenth time:
The Flood came and swept the tree of life away, even Eden+o
Well, that was pretty straightforward. The Hebrews were gifted poets and sometimes their poems could be frank to a fault.
However, it was not all that simple when he read the second and the last line of the poem:
Yet, the tree and the garden remain, as God decreed at the beginnin’+o
There was no clue to the present location of Eden and the tree of life. But that was the message he must urgently pass on to Mr. Mark Catcher, the director of the FBI, when he comes at midday.
The professor put the two lines together trying again to understand the contradictory lines:
The Flood came and swept the tree of life away, even Eden+o
Yet, the tree and the garden remain, as God decreed at the beginnin’+o
Intriguing, he thought, rising and looking out of the window into the misty Washington morning.
The White House had given him this lavishly furnished house with living rooms, a catering staff, a library of poetry books, and a handsome life salary for the sole purpose of cracking the poem.
Who else could have been entrusted with such an onerous responsibility? After ten years at the University of California in Los Angeles, fifteen years at Emory and Harvard Universities, and a Nobel Prize in literature, Professor Muse Letterman was most suitable to explain the ancient poem and say the location of Eden and the tree of life.
Only a few remember that his first name was Jones. He earned the moniker, Muse, after interpreting a sonnet that had baffled his colleagues at Harvard by just reading the first and the last fourteenth lines.
But now, the Muse seemed to be failing him.
Where-was-the-tree-of-life?
The answer depended in knowing where Eden was. He looked at the Hebrew version of the poem to determine if some letters that could provide a hint to the meaning were missing:
השיטפון בא, וטיאטא את העץ של חיים הלאה, אפילו עדן+o
עדיין, הגן והעץ נשארים, כ/כפי שאלוהים פסק בהתחלה+o
He was not an authority in the language, but he found no missing lines. They were just two Hebrew lines ending with the same mystic symbols. A team of professors at Stanford University had done the Hebrew-to-English translation. So there could be no fault in the English rendering. Hebrew must be the language of equivocators, he thought.
And they call this the Methuselah poem? He might just as well be living in Methuselah house! House of mystery. House of secrets. He shrugged his shoulders.
The professor now decided to reread the cryptological interpretation accompanying the poem by the cryptologists. He did not know how many times he had read it. He sat and read it again:
An Interpretation of the Symbol of the Methuselah Poem by Cryptologists, Dr. Lipson Divine and Mr. Sayer Oracle
The +o symbol following the Methuselah poem is a pointer to the location of the Garden of Eden and the tree of life. The + sign stands for the pagan cross, originating from Tammuz, the deified Nimrod. Worshipers of the Babylonian gods used the symbol, which was later adopted in modern religious worship.
The o sign represents the sun which rises from the East, and could be a reference to ancient worshipers of the sun god, Mithras. However, the circular symbol can be found on church windows of today.
When we looked at the composite sign +o, we think it might mean a sex symbol used in worship at the temple of Ishtar, goddess of love and war. Also, the complete symbol could represent the cross and circular signs on church windows.
We looked at it again in conclusion and think that the whole sign suggests a reference to a pagan temple or a church.
The above is the interpretation of the symbol +o with reference to the poem.
Signed by: Dr. Lipson Divine and Mr. Sayer Oracle
The professor laughed for the first time after rereading this, and stood up again. That was the vaguest report that he had ever read! Why? An interpretation of the symbol should assist him in explaining this baffling poem. But it seemed that even the renowned symbologists were more confused.
They were doing permutation—simple guesswork. Either North or South. Heaven or earth. Land or sea. Black or white. They were not sure of anything. Just shuffling cards.
They should have been conjurers!
Talk of sex symbol. Is this supposed to be a love story? Were they suggesting that the tree of life is in the temple of Ishtar or Cupid? Or which pagan god or goddess for that matter was housing Eden and the tree of life? Ridiculous!
Also, which church were they talking about? Is it the old Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, or the Egyptian Coptic Church? Is it the Anglican Church, the Church of God, the New Jerusalem Church, the Mormon Church, or the Church of Christ Scientists?
He wanted to search on-line for names of churches, but he gave it up. That would only compound the problem. He would get one million results!
How could Eden and the tree of life be in one of those places? And who could undertake the task of finding it? They were talking from two sides of the mouth!
It reminded him of Croesus, the stupendously wealthy king of Lydia. The king had gone to the oracle at Delphi to inquire if he would win a war against King Cyrus the Great of Persia. “If Croesus crosses the Halys, he would destroy a mighty empire,” the oracle had told him.
The all-believing King Croesus went to war against King Cyrus but he was randomly routed by the Persians and chained as a prisoner. The punch line was that the oracle later told him that it was his fault because when he heard the prophecy, he didn’t ask whose kingdom would fall.
King Croesus was done in by double talk. Not for a professor like Muse.
It was not the cryptologists but the Nobel laureate who had the answer.
Now, where was the original garden of bliss?
As the professor stood contemplating, the FBI director drove in. He quickly sat, waiting . . .
Knowing the meaning of the poem was crucial. It would open the way to the location of the lost tree of life in Eden. America and China needed it to make an elixir of life in a new world superpower game.
In the Bible book of Genesis chapter 2, it said that God made Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, and put them in Eden. This was a garden of eternal bliss, with a river of four tributaries and abundant fruit trees.
God had commanded the pair to eat of every fruit of all the trees of the garden except one. In chapter 2 verse 17, it clearly says:
“But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it for in the day you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Well, Adam and Eve, deceived by the Devil, ate the forbidden fruit, fell under the sentence of death, and died. But they would have lived on if they had gotten hold of the fruit of another tree in the same garden: the tree of life.
To prevent them from reaching this tree, God did something according to Genesis chapter 3 verse 24:
“And so he drove man out and posted at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubs and flaming blades of a sword that was turning itself continually to guard the way to the tree of life.”
It is that way to the fruit tree that gives eternal life that America and China were searching for. The first country to reach it would remain the undisputed world superpower throughout eternity.
The fruit of the tree would be used to develop a panacea for sickness, aging, and death. Adam and Eve would have reversed death if they had braved the cherubs and the flaming swords and eaten of the fruit.
Next to the long life that the citi
zens of the discoverer would enjoy is the economic power. The elixir would generate massive income from patients around the world, and the country has the right to save or allow the rest of the world to perish.
There were indications that the two contending nations would discover Eden and the tree of life because of stories of lost golden ages—a reference to that perfect beginning.
Of the Persians telling of the perfect world of the fair Yima created by the god, Ahura Mazda . . .
The Persians tell of the fair Yima or the good shepherd. He was created by Ahura Mazda and given charge of the world. His race was beautiful, they lived perfectly, had excellent health and lived among sweet-smelling trees and pillars made of gold.
Of the Greeks narrating their happy beginning before beautiful Pandora was given in marriage to Epimetheus by the Olympian god, Zeus . . .
In the golden age of ancient Greeks, men lived a happy life free from pain, suffering, and death. This tranquility ended after Zeus, the Olympian god, gave beautiful Pandora in marriage to Epimetheus. Then one fateful day, Pandora opened the lid of her box and there came out woes of every kind to plague humankind forever.
Of the Chinese remembering the lost golden ages of the ancient Chinese emperors . . .
The Chinese had a golden age, a legend, and a character that reminds us of the early history of man. In their golden age, they had a Yellow Emperor called Huang-Ti who ruled for a hundred years.
During this time, there was superlative development in China with peaceful people, hospitable weather and friendly birds and animals that never killed humans. A legend in that same land tells of the age of the “Period of the Great Ten” emperors, which ended in a Flood. One of the ancient rulers, Yu, called the conqueror of the Great Flood, was said to have resettled his people by diverting the Flood waters into rivers and seas.
In Chinese writing, the character for “ship” is a combination of vessel, eight, and persons—a representation of Noah’s eight family members in that floating ark.
Of the Kikuyus of Kenya and their creation story of Gikuyu by the god, Ngai, who put him and his wife in the beautiful land of Mukurwe wa Gathanga by Mt. Kirinyaga . . .
The Kikuyus of Kenya have a fable about Ngai, the God of the universe and their creator who lived at Mount Kenya called Kirinyaga. The story goes that Ngai took Gikuyu, their tribal father, and apportioned him a land with rivers, valleys, forests, rich fruits, and animals, and retired to Kirinyaga.
One day, Ngai, while examining his beautiful earth, took Gikuyu to the peak of Kirinyaga. From there, he pointed out to Gikuyu a place in the middle of the country where wild figs abounded called Mukurwe wa Gathanga.
When Gikuyu went to this exquisite land, he found a beautiful woman called Mumbi, meaning Molder or Creator. He married her and they had children.
Of South African Zulus and their Unkulunkulu- chameleon-lizard story . . .
The Zulus of South Africa say that Unkulunkulu, the Creator, sent the slow-moving chameleon to give mankind the message: “You will not die!” But the chameleon delayed on the way. So Unkulunkulu reversed the errand through the lizard saying: “You will die!” Since the fast lizard made the journey first, death has been the destiny of man ever after.
Of the bizarre Inca story of underworld resurrection . . .
The Incas of South America say that the creator, after giving each nation a separate language, commanded them to sink under the earth. Passing underground, they then came to their different assigned places.
These mythical accounts all point to humankind’s perfect beginning in the Garden of Eden before they lost life and paradise. To regain life and that golden age is the reason for the search of the life-giving tree of life.
However, there is a troubling scripture about the Garden of Eden and the tree of life.
“Whom have you come to represent thus in glory and greatness among the tree of Eden? But you will certainly be brought down with the trees of Eden to the land down below.”—Ezekiel 31:18
That was a warning to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, of his impending treelike fall.
There were other nations mentioned in that prophecy, which included pagan nations like Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, and Tyre. These lands were rejoicing over the fall of Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E. in the hands of the Babylonians. They were all marked for destruction.
“. . .brought down with the trees of Eden to the land down below.”
What does that part of the prophecy mean?
It is generally interpreted by some Bible scholars that Eden is no more—has been destroyed. But when and why it was “brought down,” nobody knows.
Yet, others say that Eden still exists, but not in the original location. This view was popularized by the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who held that nothing perfect could exist on earth. A reading of the Scripture however says that everything that God has created including the earth was very good—a synonym for perfection.
So, where are the suggested locations of Eden?
The Garden of Eden is in heaven.
Man has long believed that heaven is in a state of perfect bliss—without troubles and the gamboling demons. The Bible describes heaven in superlative terms, of God in His exalted throne, and of multitude of worshipful angels.
However, there is no mention of land surface in heaven, or of verdant vegetation. Yet, this paradise setting seems to man, the perfect location of Eden.
These believers forget that the Bible says that Adam and Eve were created and put in a well-watered garden—the names of the waters are rivers on earth, not in heaven.
The Garden of Eden is on a high mountain.
The altitude of high mountains has equally fascinated humankind as a place of bliss compared to their troubled terrain. It is no wonder then that humans have taken to the dangerous pastime of mountaineering to escape the drudgery of life in the lower land. There must be something of interest to discover up there, and that includes Eden and the tree of life.
But they did not remember that Eden was enclosed by mountains—it was not on top of a mountain.
Besides, trees don’t grow on mountains.
The Garden of Eden is in the North Pole.
The North Pole is the northernmost part of the earth. It is an uninhabited cold part of the earth, only perfect for polar bears, some fish, and birds.
Also called the Geographic North Pole, or the Terrestrial North Pole, the North Pole is perhaps one of the strangest places on earth. In that place, all directions face south, all longitudinal lines merge there, there is no time in the North Pole, and sun rise and sun set take place once a year.
The geographic oddity of the North Pole might have led to the supposition that the Garden of Eden resides there.
There are, however, forbidding factors for such a claim. The North Pole is covered with ice—trees don’t grow on ice. And the nearest land to the North Pole is Kaffeflubben Island, 700 kilometers off the northern coast of Greenland.
The Garden of Eden is in the South Pole.
The South Pole, situated in Antarctica, is antipodal to the North Pole. Known as the Geographic South Pole, or the Terrestrial South Pole, it is the most southern part of the earth.
The South Pole is icy, formless and dry, and without any human, animal, or plant habitation. All longitudinal lines converge there and point north, time is absent in the South Pole, and half of the year is covered in darkness.
It is therefore foolhardy for anyone to suggest this inhospitable terrain as the traditional location of the Garden of Eden and the tree of life. Just as no one can survive there, Adam and Eve could not equally have lived there.
The lack of plant and animal life is also a minus in the theory.
The Garden of Eden is in the Moon.
Earth’s only satellite, the moon, has been fingered as a possible location of Eden.
It has inspired the muses and myths, which include the Man in the Moon, the witch with the sticks, including rabbits, hare, frog, and
dragon tales.
These stories persisted until two American astronauts landed there in 1969. They saw no humans, animals or trees, but mountains, craters, molten lava, and without weather or an atmosphere.
Eden or the tree of life was not there. Adam and his wife couldn’t have lived there.
But this tree of life can only be found if it ever existed and if the Flood of Noah was not a myth.
Of skeptics of the Deluge the Bible says:
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And the downpour upon the earth went on for forty days and forty nights. And the waters overwhelmed the earth so greatly that all the tall mountains that were under the whole heavens came to be covered.”—Gen. 7:11, 12, 19
What an apocalyptic description of Noah’s Flood. And what provoked God to break “open the floodgates of the heavens”?
The earth was filled with wickedness. Angels had left heaven to marry beautiful women on earth. They begot giants called Nephilims, who perpetrated violence on earth.
So God decided to destroy the world with water and asked Noah to make a rectangular three-story ark, which took him about 50-60 years to build. Noah and his wife, his three sons—Shem Ham, and Japheth—and their wives, including a pair of every land animal and flying creature with a sufficient supply of food, were to be inside the ark.
Noah did as told and God made it rain “forty days and forty nights” so that the tallest mountain on earth was 6.5 meters below water. Every land and flying creatures outside the ark died!
Noah’s ark rested on Mount Ararat five months after the cataclysm. Noah first sent out a raven and later a dove, which came back with a twig in its beak, a confirmation that the water had receded. Therefore after 370/371 days in the ark—over a year—Noah and his family and the birds and animals stepped out of the ark onto dry ground.
Noah made a sacrifice to God who later made a covenant with him that He would not destroy the world again with water. A rainbow which had appeared in the sky was the sign of the covenant.
Fact or fiction?
There is secular evidence of the Flood outside the Bible history.
Archaeologists have found animals that were quickly frozen and fossils of different other animals in the same strata! And the frozen animals had fresh food in their mouths and bellies.
Also there were primitive people in times past who celebrated a “Feast of Ancestors” or a “Festival of the Dead” on or about the seventeenth of November. This corresponds to the second month of the year when the Deluge commenced. And these lands are as far apart as Australia and Mexico.
The most supporting proof of the Flood, however, is the over 270 Flood stories in almost all tribes and nations, told and retold to several generations. The legends have a common narrative: destruction by a Deluge, few survivors, saved in a vessel. Some of the myths go back to the days of Adam and the destructive giants.
Like the Hindu myth of Matsya the fish who saved Manu the man during a flood . . .
The Hindus believe that while Manu, mankind’s foremost ancestor, was washing himself, Matsya the fish came around and said that if Matsya reared him he would save him from a great flood in a ship. Matsya did and during the flood the fish pulled the ship northward to a mountain where he asked Matsya to fasten it to a tree and to gently descend after the water resided.
Like the Akkadian fable of the frustrated man Gilgamesh who sought eternity advice from Utnapishtim, a flood remnant . . .
The Epic of Gilgamesh told of the demi-god, Gilgamesh, who built temples for gods and caused a great discomfort for the natives of Uruk by ravishing women and virgins. The people cried to the gods, and Aruru the goddess, made the man, Enkidu, to challenge Gilgamesh. But instead of becoming rivals, they both became close friends so that when Enkidu died, the distraught Gilgamesh roamed the land in dread of death. Not wanting to die, he sought and found the immortal Utnapishtim, the flood survivor. Utnapishtim recounted to him the pre-flood instructions given him to build a ship to save his life and all living things.
Like the Aztec story of giants and men who turned fish to survive a flood . . .
The Aztecs of Central Mexico believed that in the first of the four ages of man, giants lived on earth. At that time Tlaloc the god of rain caused the tears of sacrificed victims to stimulate rainfall and the world became one big ball of water. During the reign of Chalchiuhtlicue, the water goddess, in the fourth era, the world was eclipsed with water and men survived by becoming fish!
The Flood caused major changes on earth today.
One is a drastic reduction in life expectancy resulting from harmful radiation after the earth lost its protective water shield. People lived longer before the Flood: Methuselah, (969 years); Noah, (950 years); Adam, (930 years); Kenan, (910 years); Enosh, (905 years); Mahalalel, (895 years); and Lamech, (777 years). Life is so short now.
In addition, there is more water on earth today than land. The earth is 70% covered with water, much of which is locked in continental ice shelves.
Furthermore, the Flood affected the geology of the earth. Mountains rose, sea basins deepened, and coastlines were born as continental plates moved. The land was shallower before the Deluge but has risen today to contain the excess water.
Now, since the Flood caused such colossal changes on earth, could it have affected the location of Eden and the tree of life?
America and China will figure this out in the epoch-making and titanic adventure.
The first country to nurse the elixir ambition was China. The early Chinese searched for an elixir of life. The modern Chinese wanted to continue from where their ancestors stopped and take it to the next level.
However, the Chinese quest was leaked through an intelligence report to President Bill Godsend of the United States of America who swore to beat China to it. And it was proving true. Although China was the first country to send an exploratory mission to Turkey, the supposed location of Eden, it was America, which came later, that was making progress.
The Americans saw no Eden, but chanced on a report concerning an ancient tribe that worshiped a stone by the Aegean Sea. The legend had it that there were two large stones on which were inscribed a mystic two-line poem about Eden.
One of the stones, according to the myth, was placed in the original Garden of Eden, where the four rivers flowed, while the second was in the land where Methuselah lived.
Tradition had it that Noah’s Flood buried Eden and the stone in the garden, but that the other stone was washed into the neighboring Aegean Sea.
No one knew who wrote the words on the stone and why they did, but since the second stone was in Methuselah’s land, it came to be called the Methuselah poem.
America invested personnel and resources to find this stone in the Aegean Sea and were making progress.
When the Chinese found that the Americans had taken the lead in the golden quest, they changed their game plan. They deployed a spy satellite to watch the Americans.
They were no longer actively searching, but spying.
The Chinese destroyed the stone when the Americans found it in the sea, only to later discover that America already had the photo of the poem.
Yet, there was no winner or loser. Because the Americans who had the poem did not still know the meaning of the contradictory lines.
Time flies. It had taken a year for the Americans to track the stone and find the poem. Only the nine sisters could tell how long it would take Professor Muse (UCLA, Emory, Harvard, and Nobel laureate) to interpret it and say where Eden was. His meeting with the FBI director didn’t produce results. The professor was lecturing the director on Hebrew semantics. But he hadn’t come to listen to lectures.
However, the director knew that the professor wouldn’t disappoint. Professors of the top world universities do not fail. Nobel laureates are Nobel l
aureates.
So Mr. Catcher, who had been to see the professor so many times before, had quietly gone back. Hopeful. Confident that Professor Muse will find answer to all the biblical and mythological maze by interpreting the defying poem. He has been patient and his patience will pay off someday.
The director knew that interpreting poetry was like solving crossword puzzles in mysterious crime scenes. The Nobel laureate’s Eureka moment will come.
Meanwhile, the volumes of poetry books and works on poetry appreciation have not helped the professor. All those academic exercises on versification, syllabication, rhyming and the rest have come to nothing. Why are teachers teaching these things anyway if they cannot lead to the interpretation of a two-line poem?
Not even the energy drinks have been helpful. He gazed at the bottles and the empty glass in front of him. Why did they make these drinks? Or was it all energy without an ounce of inspiration?
He would solve this poetry problem the old way—the innocent way. He remembered decades ago when he was a young schoolboy. When faced with a difficult class work, he would close his eyes for inspiration and open them again. Sometimes he got answers, sometimes nothing. He would do that now!
He closed his eyes. Darkness. After a long while he opened them. No clues. No answers. He was staring at the ceiling. Embarrassing.
Then he tried another school boy approach: Slow reading.
He read the poem slowly indicating each word with his index finger as if he had never seen it before:
The-Flood-came-and-swept-the-tree-of-life-away- even-Eden+o
Yet,-the-tree-and-the-garden-remain- as-God-decreed-at-the-beginnin’+o
Did it work? No inspiration. So what would he tell the president?
Crossroads. Disgrace. Infamy.
On the face of it, it was a simple poem that he was mandated to interpret. Why? Simple things can sometimes be difficult.
Suddenly, he got a hunch. Yes, an epiphany, a bright idea. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He wondered. What a shame! Sometimes the human brain plays games. He would compose an ode to the brain after this, and call it Cerebral Song. Each stanza of the poem would be devoted to eulogizing each part of the brain. How many parts were there in the human brain? He wouldn’t remember that now.
The professor realized that keys to knotty questions were not always found in faraway Timbuktu. Or in down under Australia. It could be close home—at one’s finger tips.
He smiled, gave himself a high five accompanied with a couple dance steps, dialed a telephone number, and listened to the phone ringing at the other side.
What a jig! Interesting times!
Why is there no ukulele for celebrating in this secretive and mysterious Methuselah house of his?
Away with the mystery! Away with the secrets! Because he was simply speed of sound away to the signification . . .
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About the Author
Arthur Zulu is a novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, and essayist. He is also a ghostwriter, editor, and blogger.
The author’s published works are available in various reading formats and in most online bookstores.
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Thank you for reading this book!
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