| The kingdom of the inferior male, energy in service of greed and power, finally falls -- but only when men are ready to walk away from them, to sever their dependencies, to trust with their very lives. "The madness of becoming/what one was never meant to be" criticized in "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" is cured. Christ casts the last demon from possessed Man. While the "liberation" of women translated to enormous monetary gain for many sectors of the culture -- has become in fact a chief American "industry," along with prisons -- the liberation of men translates to the death of commercialism and of unconscious, ungrateful materialism. That's why feminism's social engineering was, and is, fully underwritten by the American government, while masculism is suppressed, ridiculed, and denied at least peep. When men turn away from materialism and blind obedience to the feminine, the house of "marked cards" crumbles. The narrator's union with the Sister raises perception to prophecy. His �shove it� rap isn't rancorous, just blunt. The barricades of infinity and grace are crumbing, he just remembered who he really is, Eden blazes all around him, and still they expect him to stand at the copy machine, shuffling and nodding, inhaling toxics, cranking out fakes of himself. Even in the glory of victory, though, he is compassionate and genuine, providing his former masters with the parting advice that when the New Guards take over, it will be heart, flayed open, that determines who leads and who follows, who lives and who dies. Stanza Nine Peace will come, with tranquility and splendor, on the wheels of fire but will offer no reward when her false idols fall and cruel death surrenders, with its pale ghost retreating between the King and the Queen of Swords. peace will come, with tranquility and splendor, on the wheels of fire As with most epic tales ending in transformation, the prophecy's coda is brief. Bliss is wonderful to live, boring to witness. First War over, the dominoes of hostility fall. Most collective, extant prophecy predicts planetary change by fire to end this age, or this dream as the Hopi put it. Thrones, an angelic order, have been described in biblical text and elsewhere as "wheels of fire." Water was the medium of the last cleansing. Our earliest writing -- Sumerian cuneiform -- contains many references to the Great Flood. How will the upcoming conflagration manifest? Not even Foozler Sage Obi wan Aboinker knows. It could as well be the flame of Holy Spirit as a thermonuclear bomb, as likely the arson of cultural overthrow as a stupendous coronal mass ejection. It could even be -- dare we reveal it? -- a first strike by them pesky Klingons. but will offer no reward when her false idols fall That peace and the ecstasy of renewal bring no reward is a curious concept, ringing true. What may be hinted at here is a cosmology and material reflection in which reward is moot or antithetical. Potlatch culture, widespread in the aboriginal Pacific Northwest of America, is an example of an exchange system in which ideas and structures of debt, reward, and profit are nonsensical. By extension, there is no boon or reward comparable to love of the Queen of Heaven, given or received. The "false idols" are here gendered in the feminine, probably denoting the demise of materialism, avarice, and self-serving power � kingdoms and queendoms. and cruel death surrenders, with its pale ghost retreating between the King and the Queen of Swords The "pale ghost" of death is carried off between two famous, and potent, figures from the minor arcana of Tarot. In an earlier episode from the apocalyptic narrative, "All Along the Watchtower," these entities may be the "two riders approaching" that caused the chiliastic wind to scream. Both figures are armed entities of secular power, tending in aspect toward authoritarianism, assertion, primacy of law, expansion, and order. They are departing energies, changed guards, of the past age. Humanity has passed beyond organization by gender power, by matriarchy and patriarchy. Power has been exposed and cleansed by fire, its shells of deception charred away. The exhausted King and Queen escort mortality from the human scene, and with uncharacteristic subtlety, themselves bow out. Their swords of cold iron bound fall to the new militia, who bear the blades of angels. Departing death might be viewed two ways. Death may be read as �cruel� in itself, and a riddance to humankind. Death and life, however, are the same gift, equal in beauty and worth. Only the naive lust for immortality, in a static sense. Human psychic frameworks disintegrate at the full impact of immortality, much less the reality of living it. The face of god is terrible indeed. Most human beings die because they wear down in their spirits within a space of seventy or so years. Immortality would freeze their souls. Another reading is available. It may not be death itself, but only the cruel variety, which is dragged to hell by warrior royalty. Death is no burden to any creature on this planet, but cruel death -- tortured suffering, agony -- that is quite another matter. One need only look down the well of fear in the eyes of animals to see this. Removal of this threat under conuinctio may be partial fulfillment of biblical prophecy that "the lion will lie down with the lamb." That is, death itself remains as transitional and recuperative device, but in surrendered form, fear transformed into ... but you remember the name of fear's bright shadow. If you forgot, ask the Captain and his Bride. Then let's not forget again, ever. |
| Part twelve of twelve |
| "Coniunctio: Changing of the Guards" |