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Ever since they were introduced to the Western world, The Books of Terror and Longing have held a certain type of person in fascination. They've served as inspiration for poetry, music, even a film (the ill-conceived and unsuccessful "The Devil Sings Softly", 1954, now almost impossible to find). They've been the subject of several books and innumerable senior theses. None less than Aleister Crowley makes an allusion to Antiocheanism in his Book of Lies ( Chapter 29: "The Abyss of Hallucinations has Law and Reason; but in Truth there is no bond between the Toys of the Gods. This Reason and Law is the Bond of the Great Lie. Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations - Death is Truth, and Truth is Death!"). Why, then, does knowledge of Antiochus and the sect he founded remain almost entirely within the academic realm? In other words, why does practically nobody know who he is?
There are multiple reasons. The narrative presented in the Books, ending with Antiochus burnt at the stake and awakening to find himself in a grim, frozen afterlife, is hardly an uplifting one. The texts themselves are maddeningly incomplete, and the parts we do possess are often ambiguous and difficult to decipher. Then there is the mystery of the author himself - is his name a reference to the biblical city of Antioch, or to Antiochus IV, who forced the Jews to make additions to the Old Testament that made it seem as if there was no heaven beyond earth? Did Antiochus himself even exist? If he did exist, why is historical mention of him so rare, especially considering the size of the cult that sprang up around him?
And then, of course, there is the message of the text, perhaps the deepest mystery of all - alternatively one of a seemingly infinite, universal nihilism, and of a just existence containing both this world and the next, with the invisible grinding of the gears of law shuddering away just below the surface of our awareness. The modern mind finds itself both attracted and repelled by Antiochus' unintelligible world, perhaps more so because the incompleteness of what we see today allows us to project our own hopes and fears onto his teachings.
That which is incomplete can't help but seem modern.
With these books the mysteries will always be greater than the actual material. We can only attempt to lay out what we know, only be content with the outline we've been given by chance. The rest is up to the reader; only the individual can decide what it all means, or if it means anything at all.
We start at the very beginning, but here the fog is already thick. We do not know when Antiochus was born, or where. It is impossible to verify even his existence through documentation from the time, but then, he is hardly alone in this; Jesus of Nazareth wasn't exactly given a birth certificate. Some scholars have claimed that Antiochus must be taken as a symbol, an entirely metaphorical character, that is to say, the vessel for the message, not its author. The theory is intriguing, but without further evidence we must follow what we have (almost all of which is from the Books themselves), and accept him as a living, breathing, mortal man.
We have mention of Antiochus living in Italy in 1215. We are not told this directly, but rather deduce it from references made to Antiochus as "The Italian Sorcerer" during a story that appears much later in the text ( Much of the "facts" we know about Antiochus must be deduced in this way. The text's overwhelming vagueness is legendary. It is as if the reader were assumed to be already familiar with the specifics of the story, and the author simply wanted to get on to the "good parts". This has been explained in terms of everything from general incompetence, to cultural cohesiveness, to a method of escaping persecution, to a belief in the sacredness of the facts of the Prophet's life. Much of it is also a result of the strange manner in which the books emerged in the West - see the discussion of the Poetic Translation for more detail). The Books do not name Antiochus' mother or father, but instead refer to them as "The smith and his wife". Antiochus leaves home very early on to seek work in Rome, and nothing is said of his parents after that.
Much has been made of this apparent familial disconnect, but it would not have been uncommon for a boy of Antiochus' age to go off in search of work. The Fourth Crusade had brought riches from the East to Rome and Venice; the economy, kept afloat by an influx of looted gold and silk, was booming, but only in cities. The life of a farmer, vacillating in and out of a state of serfdom, would have seemed grim compared to the opportunities in Rome.
We know nothing of Antiochus' youth, and it is not discussed in the text outside of an apocryphal story of a 10-year-old Antiochus foretelling the deaths of several townspeople by talking with gore-crows. The crows reveal to Antiochus that 15 villagers, including the "Townshead" (a position similar to that of mayor in the modern day), will plummet to their deaths off a jagged cliff named Via Privare (A veiled reference to " se vita privare ", a Latin term denoting suicide). The villagers, terrified, quickly form a search party and begin exterminating any crow they can find, setting them ablaze, crushing them with rocks, even crucifying them on doorways and tree-trunks (The Crucified Crow has become a symbol, much like the "Jesus Fish", used to identify other Antiocheans during their many years of persecution, and is still used today). The mob, half-mad with terror and rage, finally came into a clearing in which a Congress of Crows has gathered (Crows have long been held in folklore to have human-like powers of cognition, and nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the belief in the Crow's Congress, a political organization existing alongside human society, in which animals can bear grievances both against each other and against human beings. The actions of the Congress are fodder for several Chechen and Georgian children's tales, the most famous of which being that of the Crow And Bear War, in which a young child is drafted to fight in an apocalyptic animal war. The popular version of this tale, written in verse by Apti Bisultanov, great-grandfather of the popular modern author of the same name, is one of the best-selling Chechen children's books to this day), and, vision clouded by hatred, rushed at them with all their might, brandishing their knives and shovels, torches and nails. The crows, on command, suddenly evaporated into the sky, so many in number that they blocked out the sun. In the fumbling darkness the villagers plummeted off the cliff, which the crows had disguised with grasses and twigs, and were dashed to bits on the rocks below.
This story is widely accepted to be an invention of Sabrus the Younger, an Antiochean poet of the 15th century (An interesting figure in his own right, Sabrus is the best-known Antiochean poet. A Prussian born in Poland to parents of an unorthodox and persecuted religious sect, he did not have an easy life. A frail and thin child, he was given an education by the local Christian monastery - his family were Cryptonarlists, and so hid their religious affiliations from those around them [more on Cryptonarlists later]. It was through this affiliation that Sabrus became involved, unexpectedly, with the famous Battle of Grunwald. When the cry for reinforcements went up, Sabrus was one of the many peasants who were suddenly conscripted into the battle. Being Christian, the Teutonic Knights felt assured that the denizens of the monastery would fight alongside them, against the Pagans, for Christ, especially seeing as their presence had been ordained by a Papal Golden Bull. Sabrus, terrified and armed only with his father's pitchfork, was quickly lost within the tide of the battle, frantically stabbing anyone he could find, regardless of which side they were on. In this way he found himself, at the end of the fighting, within a huge group of other peasants surrounding the last remaining Teutonic Knights, the peasants singing their anthems as they mercilessly cut the armored invaders to pieces. The wild slaughter continued all night, and according to some involved Pagan blood rituals and Devil Worship, though this can safely be attributed to latter-day Christian revisionism. Sabrus returned home, practically comatose, and was never the same. The fighting was officially ended by the Peace of Thorn on February 1st, and the next day Sabrus began work on what would become his magnum opus, the Sheol Cycle, a bizarre and moving account of one mortal's descent to Helgrind, the corpse-tower at the mouth of Hell, to retrieve the head of his beloved, which he has learned has been planted in the ground and is now mother to a tree of white flowers. Sabrus maintained that the story was autobiographical, and entirely true. After his completion of the work Sabrus disappears from the historical record, and we hear no more of him).
It is in Rome that Antiochus' story truly begins. Much is made, in the Books, of Antiochus' first impressions of the city, entering through it's massive gates for the first time, and leaving behind, forever, the simple world that his parents inhabited. The images of Rome, the undeniable center of the world, throne of western Christianity, burned themselves into his mind; with it's "crawling arms of mortar and stone", Antiochus felt he was being consumed, devoured by "a monstrous mouth into which men struggle and are carried...a throat that never closes and never breathes". He was at once affronted and mesmerized by the sheer weight of the human presence around him. Rome was the pinnacle of all that man could accomplish.
Rome was also, however, a dead civilization; the seeds of it's destruction had been sown ages ago, and were slowly bearing fruit. Antiochus sensed this intuitively, and he made his feelings abundantly clear; however, we must remember that the Books were most likely written many years afterwards, when Antiochus had been expelled from Rome and then returned preaching his new gospel. His views on the city, and on Roman society, were irrevocably shaped by his persecution there. It is hard to believe that young Antiochus, fresh off the farm, would not have been at least a little awed by the grandiosity that was Rome.
Whatever the truth may be, Antiochus' revulsion to Rome came to form a central part of his belief system in the doctrine of "New Rome", the sprawling, dehumanizing city that would one day "overtake all lands, making space itself only an expression of it's own being...there will not be anywhere that is not Inside it, there will not be anywhere that is not Within it". New Rome can be seen as the theological opposite of Christ's "Kingdom of Heaven"; a literal, physical expression of the inevitable loss of grace on Earth.
About 5 years after his arrival, Antiochus was forced to leave Rome, ostensibly because of his involvement with a high-born woman (the wife of a Roman Senator) who died shortly after meeting him (This story was given a modern treatment in George Carn's _The Mistress and The Glass,_ 1987). The relationship alone, if it existed, would have been enough to force Antiochus into hiding for a time (Antiochus must have been extremely charismatic, even at this early stage, and the idea if a romantic liaison above his station is hardly as far-fetched as some scholars, Roger Hareaut first among them, have suggested), but it is rather the woman's death that seems to be the real reason for his exile. Though there is no documentation of Antiochus' involvement, we do have historical record of the woman's death: Joan of the Orsini, dead in 1225, of an apparent slashing of the throat (Here we run into a difficulty of translation. "Slashing" is the word most commonly used, but some have argued that a more accurate translation, utilizing eyewitness accounts as evidence, would be "tearing. Though the argument may seem academic, it actually has great influence on how we view Antiochus' involvement. The general modern interpretation of the event has been that Joan, her lover forced into hiding and herself publicly shamed, killed herself in a fit of grief by raking a sharpened coin across her neck. This version is generally backed up by the fact, noted in the death papers, that her personal chamber, where she was found found, face down, was securely locked. However, if her neck was, in fact, not "slashed" but rather "torn open", as one eyewitness put it, the probability of a suicide becomes considerably less likely. It is rare that a person, particularly a noble-born Roman woman, is capable of ripping her own throat open. It is interesting to note that all parties, at the time, apparently considered it to be a case of murder. The story of suicide was most likely circulated later to cover up rumors of the affair. Authorities continued to pursue Antiochus, unsuccessfully, for several years afterwards. The sharpened coin was never found, and legends were later to attest that, with her final act of strength, she lifted the coin to her bloodied lips and swallowed it. On a lighter note, the trick of sharpening a coin into a weapon became known as "Sharp Caesering" in Latin, and was a popular trick among Rome's less savory populace).
Antiochus himself only mentions the event briefly, and then in cryptic language describing his general exile. He writes:
" And I waited in Rome for that sun to go down, that never-setting sun,
for it to disappear upon the city,
but it never fell, like there was a wall around me, and I could not move for it's closeness, blocking out not light but dark, and there was nowhere I could go to cover my face, to rest my eyes from it's glaring,
and every stone was hot, and I could not stand still,
and the fire that heated it was deep within the city, deep under all the earth they used to dig their trenches and their sewers and their cemeteries,
and I moved back and forth and lifted my feet and shook my shackles
but it sent it's fingers into me
every second of every day all the same
and I left that place where
they will never stop, they will never, ever stop
naked but for my pain, with nothing but horror and burning skin and innocence around me."
Almost nothing is known of what happened to Antiochus in his exile. Certain things can be deduced by his actions on his return to Rome, however. He must have spent a great deal of time developing his religious beliefs. When he walked back into Rome 25 years later, he was a completely different man: confident, charismatic, and charged with the zeal possessed by those who believe the have discovered the One True Faith.
What caused this change? There are many theories, but most center on the region he eventually ended up in, the Caucuses. We know he lived with a group of ethnic Armenians, though where exactly this settlement was is unknown. He claimed to have spent time in what is known today as Poland. It is unlikely that he engaged in any structured religious training- his belief system became so different, so unorthodox, that it is doubtful he would have been long tolerated even if he had entered a religious institution.
Many scholars postulate that some incredibly traumatic event must have affected Antiochus during this time, especially considering the tone of his later teachings. If so, Antiochus never mentioned it. The closest we have to a remark on this subject is a reply he once made to a Roman poet: "The only tragedy," he said, "is life, and that is more than enough."
The most interesting theory on these "lost years" (Christians should note the similarity to the "missing" years of Christ's life. Jesus more or less disappears from the Bible during his teenage years, only to return full-grown for the bulk of the New Testament. It has proven, even with an army of Christian scholars desperate to find a definitive answer, nearly impossible to come to any conclusion about these lost years. It's even been claimed, by Nicholas Notovich in his 1894 book "The Unknown Life Of Jesus Christ", that Jesus visited India and spent many years in Tibet. The similarities between Jesus and Antiochus are proof to some that Antiochus himself was an invention, with a life designed, from the beginning, to mirror that of Jesus) stems from an interesting event in the Caucasus region during this time. The story comes to us as part of the folkloric tradition of the Avars, in modern day Dhagestan, It centers on a small village, nestled at the foot of the Bazardyuzi Mountain (the tallest point in the Caucasus; Dhagestan itself means "Land of Mountains"). A wandering sorcerer made his way to the town, and the inhabitants, superstitious and believing the wandered could foretell the future, gave him a place of honor and invited him to stay. He lived there for 2 years, and became a very respected man. His predictions always came true - he knew when it would rain, how the crops would turn, could predict eclipses and even who would live and die. He prophesied with such unerring accuracy that the villager's respect came close to worship, and the wanderer ruled the town in all but name.
One night, a restless villager spotted the prophet at the edge of a high cliff, looking out onto the rocky landscape. On his shoulder there was a crow, and the crow seemed to be whispering into the prophet's ear (The parallels between this story and that of Sabrus the Younger are clear. It is possible that Sabrus knew of this tale, and used it as inspiration for his own, though considering the barriers of both time and language, it is unlikely). When the prophet learned that this man had seen him in conversation with the bird, he pronounced that the man would be dead by nightfall, and so it was: He dropped dead in only one panicked hour, seemingly for no reason.
For 5 days and 5 nights, the prophet did not emerge from his tent. The people anxiously wondered what would happen - would he leave them? Could he no longer see the future? They worried for their crops, for their trade, for the continued existence of their beautiful village at the foot of the mountain..and, in a deeper sense, they worried that they had crossed some boundary; that they now knew too much about the dark, inner workings of the true world.
At the end of the 5th night, just as the sun was rising, the prophet left his tent. The villagers had gathered outside, keeping vigil in case he might need something from them. When he finally emerged, however, the villagers gasped in horror: over the prophet's entire body there was now bristled pitch-black crow's feathers. His head was a horrible mockery of bird and man; a jagged beak jutted from his face, and his eyes were deep and black and did not reflect the weakened sunlight. His hands, still human but long and curled, grasped at the air again and again, as if seeking something to hold on to but finding nothing but the empty morning darkness.
With a terrifying, croaking voice like that of a crow and a dog and a man bent together, the prophet announced that the crops would no longer grow, that the women would no longer give birth, the children would fall asleep and never wake up; that the men would lose their sight, and then their legs, lie limp on the ground without being able to see what was around them, powerless to move away as the animals came down the mountain to devour them; that the women would have all protruding pieces of flesh removed, breasts, ears, noses, lips, fingers and toes, that their hair would grow long and would be trampled under their own feet, constantly tangling their legs and forcing hem to shuffle slowly from place to place, that they would lose their memory and not be able to remember where their homes were, who their husbands were, would no longer recognize the face of their children to bury them; that only one among them, only one would live, unharmed; and that that person would be chosen by simple, random chance. That there would be no reason to it at all; that there was noway to affect the outcome.
And with that, the prophet disappeared, simply vanished into thin air.
The story of the village at the foot of the mountain came to a nearby town with the arrival of the person they referred to as "yaşh adam", roughly translated as "old timer" (the man reportedly lived to be over 100, and said he could not be killed). When he came to the village, however, he was only 10 years old. He rode an old donkey, trudging laboriously over the rocks and hills. In his hands he carried a large flag, struggling to keep it aloft, skinny and malnourished from the journey. The flag was stiff and solid black. The story he told terrified the townspeople. The flag, the boy said, had been white; it was black with dried blood, the blood of his parents, brothers and friends; he had done his best to bury them, but the birds were on them now, and all he could do was bear the banner, the black banner, to remind himself of them.
It is interesting to note that modern Antiochean communities in the Caucasus occasionally use the Black Banner in religious ceremonies, although it is impossible to tell whether the use of the Banner stems from Antiochean ritual, or from one of the many other cultural strains running through the region: The Black Banner plays a prominent role in certain sects of Islam as well - and the people who received the young boy were not Avars themselves, but Kumyks, a group of Sunni muslims. Imam Shamyl, hero of the Caucasus Liberation movement, was also from this region, and also used the Black Banner as the symbol of his jihad against Russian domination. The symbolism of the Black Banner is so complicated that, though it is tempting to connect this story with the exiled Antiochus, and through him, modern Antiochean ritual, it is impossible to be certain as to where its use actually comes from.
And we are no closer to understanding anything about Antiochus' lost years.
Antiochus could never have known this, but his return to Rome would be the cause of centuries of anguish, torment, and oppression. In a way, his belief in himself, his very existence, was the catalyst to the apocalypses he foresaw.
Antiochus returned to Rome in the year 1250. Why he returned, why he chose that moment, is uncertain. The years prior had been relatively peaceful ones for the medieval world; Roger Bacon has just published the first major work detailing the chemical properties of gunpowder, setting in motion a series of events that would later lead to inestimable death and misery - but for the time, all was quiet. It is possible that Antiochus felt this would be an opportune time to return to Italy, or that he felt that his philosophy had reached a point of completion, and was now ready for dissemination to the outside world; it's possible he simply did it on a whim.
When Antiochus walked once more through the gates of Rome he was a very different man than he had been 27 years earlier. He was gaunt, no longer possessing the sinewy muscles of the smith's son. His beard had grown long, and stretched over his face and down his chest like patch of briars. He carried everything he possessed on his back - a black and gray robe and a satchel with some food. His eyes had not changed - they were still dark gray, still piercing, still intriguing and cold.
The main portion of the Books deals with the period between when Antiochus first stepped through those massive Roman gates, and when he was burned alive, withering on a stake, outside them. It is, first and foremost, the tale of Antiochus' martyrdom, the death of a man who had come to possess dangerous ideas. The parallels to the New Testament are clear, and it would have been natural for later Antiocheans to perceive Antiochus as belonging to the religious prophetic tradition that included Jesus (Whether or not Antiochus, and thus the Antiocheas, were Christians is a matter of considerable debate. Modern Antiocheans clearly perceive themselves as being within the Christian tradition - Antiochus is seen not as a son of god, but rather an Earthly prophet come to clarify and elaborate the message found in the Bible. They view the Books of Terror And Longing as a necessary and important commentary on the Bible. Antiochus, on the other hand, occupied less clear theological territory. He mentions or makes reference to Jesus often in his teaching; he uses biblical imagery and discusses biblical stories. However, many interpret his teachings to be opposed to Christian beliefs, even atheistic. He presents versions of history that directly conflict with Biblical history, though we can't be sure as to whether he meant these literally, or as elaborate metaphors. Antiochus lived in a time when Christianity was not only the most common religion, but the official religion of the Roman State. Not comforting to the Christian mainstream could have meant punishment or death - indeed, Antiochus' life ended when he strayed too far from the accepted philosophies of the time. We live in an age when intellectual freedom is prized, when invention and exploration of the self are admirable. This was not the world Antiochus lived in; the medieval mind was a constrained, limited organ. All around him were philosophical areas that were not to be traveled in, Terra Mentis Incognita, Here Be Monsters of the Soul - to travel in those strange lands meant the destruction of the self and the death of the body. Not many of us would have the strength of will necessary to make those voyages. Comparatively, we are weak philosophers; not many of us would be able to walk into the Lion's Den). At the same time, the story of Antiochus, as it has come down to us, is very different, both in substance and tone - so much so that the casual reader is forcefully struck, not by their similarities, but by their differences.
Antiochus immediately began teaching upon entering the city. He simply stood on street corners, not shouting his message, but rather stopping individuals in the crowd, pulling them aside and speaking to them, one on one. Antiochus insisted that he chose these people because God told him to, that it was not random; he knew which of those in the crowd would accept his message, would truly "hear" him. From what we know, his success rate was extremely high - by the end of his first night in Rome he has almost 15 devoted followers.
Antiochus continued recruiting in this way for several weeks, and his intense preaching style, unorthodox beliefs, and, perhaps most importantly, visibly growing crowds, quickly caught the attention of the authorities.
All around him dark clouds were gathering, and every step he took carried him deeper into them.
(Taken from _The Books Of Terror And Longing, the Poetic Translations,_ Book 1, Part IV, translated by William Shelley, All Stars Aground Books)
On the 14th day of Antiochus' teachings in Rome
he was approached by a young boy
who had long scars on his face and neck
like serpents intertwined, they held him
they stroked his face and chin, like a mother they comforted him
and his voice was low and dark
like the earth, a grating sound
and all the men grew silent
though they were learned
and knew many philosophies
and knew of the aethers and the elements
and let the boy speak
regardless of his clothes, which were torn
to show him their generous spirits
"All these questions you ask"
the child began
"are only comments, they dance around the problem
but you circle your real desire, arms locked at your sides
as children circle in our games
hands over eyes in giddy enjoyment
you do not wish to find
that which is obscured
you wish to not find it."
At this, Antiochus closed his eyes
and rolled his head
as if looking upon something both high and within
and withdrew his arms into his cloak.
Cassius, the doctor
who tended to those with sores
and lesions and poured into their wounds
foul salts
grew angry and replied with a harsh voice
"We seek Truth
only that we seek, and we spend our lives in searching
with words we reveal that which is covered
we root out that which is false
those whose falseness is discovered in the contradictions of their language
there are none here who avoid truth
we are honest men, all
all that we wished to ask we have asked."
And some of the men muttered, and nodded
but many more rested their eyes on the boy
on his scars, on his deformity
and they were uneasy.
And the child spoke
"Then why has no one asked the question?
Why has no one said the words that we all long to hear
Why have I not heard those words on your lips, that you whisper in your sleep
when you are restless and your heart cannot stop pounding
inside your chest to be set free of its relentless tasks
of the prison that is your life, to which you enslave all the parts of your body?"
Cassius began to sweat,
and was angry,
and said
"You are only a crippled child,
what question could you ask
that I could not?"
And Antiochus spoke.
His voice was a cold breeze
and quickly silenced the assembly,
and they pressed their hands to their stomachs
and quickly drew their robes around them
and shuddered
as if they knew not where they were or where they were going
and were lost on a foreign road with no stars to guide them
all stars dead in the ground
"He wants to know,"
Antiochus said,
"what happens when we die."
And he said, then:
the universe is dark around us
a mass of stars and air
but as thick as the wood of the trees
and it is into it that we go
when our bodies are killed
and we are only killed
only killed
killed by time and killed by life
i promise you, i promise you this!
that there is no such thing as a natural death
and being born is a sentence of death
and giving birth is an act of murder
every one of you have murdered your sons
you have murdered all of them.
and that is what being human means
and it is the physical shock of this
being born as what you are
the unbearable trauma
that forces the soul from its shell
as a man who clings desperately
to the edge of a cliff
may be made to release his hands
by a fierce wind.
There have been many that have said
that death is like a deep sleep
but it is not peaceful and it is not restful
and the ones that have told you this
seek only to make themselves feel better
better about what life is
but I do not care for your feelings
because your feelings are meaningless, completely
and utterly
meaningless
weightless.
Death is a great horror:
immediately upon leaving the body
the decease human being becomes the sole spectator
of a marvelous panorama of hallucinatory visions
all things became the cloudless sky
and a mountain of clearest glass
opes up from the blackness
and punctuates the air above it with it's fingers
and causes pure death to rain towards him
and there are no words to describe
what it is truly like
you cannot know it
it as if god himself
had bled out onto the ground
and everywhere, everywhere
is the stain of it
we are soaked in it
and it all smells of copper
but this is false!
it is a spectre
it is a phantom
anguish of a writing spirit
reflected against the purest backdrop of nothingness
because, oh, the death of a god! the pain of his blood!
that would give meaning.
But there is no god in death!
you will not see him, you will not find him.
god is deathless.
what use does god have for death?
that father of all things
what use has he for a broken toy? what use has he for the shattered vase,
the broken vessel?
what use has god for death?
and what use has god for the dead?
when you die you pass out of god's realm.
you pass from his sight.
and the spirit stays
cocooned in the glass mountain
rapped in those beautiful un-lights
until, whispered into his ear
those cold, nothing words
shudder downwards in a spiral
and, like earth spinning into water
broken apart into pieces unlimited in number
their very force causes deep lines of fracture
to appear in the very face of the mountain
those awe sounds and radiances
first pitch upwards
rising screams and calls
and then finally cease altogether
the silence echoing everywhere
lingering in space
and through every time
and the visions of the Afterdeath stop
and in one clean perfect moment
of absolute, impenetrable nothingness
everything simply
stops.
But in grief we do not claw our chests
we do not tear our clothes
we do not gnash our teeth, for though it lasts as long as it possibly can
there is no suffering
and there is no lack of suffering.
No joy
no lack of joy
there is no cause
and no cause of causes,
God, the Great Pitier,
is not present to keep the tally or to write your name.
There is no death.
Because there is no life.
This is the question
and this is the answer.
We are all wrapped together
we are all piled together,
with no order
just a pile of limbs and faces and legs and fingers
and you may cry out
please, please, please release me
please let me breath
please let me stand
but there will never be any reply
as there was never any cry to reply to.
Once you have the answer
your life is over
all of you here
if you have heard my voice then
your life is over
your life is over.
Because you sought truth
and now you have it.
Death is Truth
and Truth is Death.