Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel

by Edward M. Erdelac

  “The truth? What truth do you serve?” the Rider hissed. “The tzadikim were right. You poisoned my learning with your alternative paths to God. You tried to corrupt me.”

  “By the truth you serve, perhaps,” Adon said. “I never tried to corrupt you. I led you down the path I knew to be true. You are a seeker, Rider. You were turned from the Throne, I believe, because Metatron knew you would find what I found, because you had an interrogative mind. You knew that the absolute, unquestioning dogma of the Order was flawed. You saw the glory of the hekhalots and yet still you wondered about the hand that built them. So did I, two thousand years before you were born. So did I.”

  The Rider tensed. His curiosity was getting the better of him now. Adon knew it well. So many questions. And he knew it was true, somehow, that Adon would answer everything he thought to ask. Unlike Faustus. Unlike Kabede. Unlike the angel. Whether what he said was true or not, the Rider couldn’t know. But he did want to know what Adon believed. He wanted a reason for all his former teacher had done.

  “You ascended to Heaven with Rabbi Akiba.”

  “Yes. I first heard mention of the Old Ones in my studies of the Olam-ha Tohu.”

  That which preceded Creation. A forbidden area of study.

  “I learned of the gate to the Olam-ha Tohu which lay beneath the Throne, and so I dedicated myself to the study of Merkabah, so that I might see it. After years of work, I successfully navigated the upper reaches and the hekhalots, alongside Akiva ben Joseph, Ben Azzai, and Ben Zoma.”

  “When you descended upon the Throne…what did you find?”

  That damned smile slipped wider across his face, and he leaned in once more. He had him, he believed. It was all over his damned face. What could he possibly think he knew that would entice the Rider?

  “When we descended upon the Throne, Rabbi Akiba was content to bask in God’s glory.”

  God, the Rider noticed. Not HaShem. He no longer feared the Lord then.

  “I looked upon Belimah beneath the Throne, into the Olam ha-Tohu. I did not understand what I saw at first. It was a power, an intelligence above and beyond Heaven. A power greater than the God I served. I declared what I saw to my fellows. Rabbi Akiba would not look, but Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma did. Ben Zoma’s mind was blasted away, and the seraphim swarmed over Ben Azzai and I with flails of fire. Ben Azzai was destroyed. To escape them, I severed my tie to this world.”

  “The root,” the Rider said. Not the root of his faith, as Kabede had interpreted, though he had destroyed that as well.

  “The root,” Adon nodded. “That silvery etheric tendril which connected me to Creation.”

  The Rider had heard of such a thing, but it was supposed to be imperceptible by all but the Angel of Death. It was like the soul’s umbilical chord, which connected it both to the infinity of Creation and to its physical form, that invisible lifeline of will, which a Merkabah Rider followed instinctively back to his physical form. It was supposed to extend from the crown of the head. He had heard of eastern yogic masters who had supposedly learned to perceive it somehow.

  “But how?” the Rider asked.

  “I had suspected I would be punished for seeking the Belimah. I made preparations for escape. I taught myself to perceive the chord well before I made the journey. It took many years of meditation and Oriental techniques. It was a desperate measure, but I did not want to suffer the same fate as Ben Zoma or Ben Azzai. I was nearly obliterated anyway. I plunged into the fiery fall, down into Gehenna. But because I had never died, I was not bound to Gehenna’s torments, nor even its boundaries. I found myself able to pass between the spheres of Creation, even into the world of dreams, which borders all, even the Olam ha-Tohu. The demons and punishing angels could not perceive me. I could not affect them either, so I explored that place. I learned things there in its depths and more at its boundaries.”

  “What things?” the Rider pressed. “From who?”

  “From one called Adam Belial.”

  “Nyarlathotep.”

  “Yes. You did meet him recently, didn’t you? He alone could see me, and I him. Like two thieves meeting in a dark house, we knew each other for what we were.”

  “What lies did you learn from that one?”

  “No lies, Rider. Nyarlathotep helped me to understand all I had seen. For a thousand years I traveled with him, to the borders of Gehenna, and Creation, to his own court at Sharnath. For the thing I observed was not above and beyond Heaven, it was beyond Creation itself. I, the master, became the pupil. Just as when I brought you to the borders of the material world and showed you the Yenne Velt, Nyarlathotep showed me the true nature of the universe in which we live. Or rather, the lie of it all.”

  He was excited now, and he rose from his chair.

  “The Great Old Ones do not come from an older universe created by God, Rider. We are forbidden from studying that which came before Creation. That is because what came before Creation, Rider, is the natural state of all things. Chaos. Unfettered, roiling, nuclear Chaos. And in the murky water of Chaos are the Great Old Ones. Just as we are taught that God existed always, so have the Old Ones. The God who made this universe is an abomination, Rider. An anomaly. A flaw in the perfection of Chaos, who imposes an unseemly, unnatural Order upon everything.”

  The Rider winced to hear these blasphemies, but still he listened. Was this true? Were his innermost fears realized? Were the Lord and The Great Old Ones of one family? Chaksusa had told him the Old Ones were of an earlier universe, created by God. That wasn’t true then. He had also said the Great Old Ones gnawed on the edge of Creation. Could the country of Chaos be greater than Creation?

  “The Old Ones are matter,” Adon went on. “Chaos is matter. The primordial stuff, the thick, black embryonic fluid of the universe. It surrounds Creation, Rider. The God you serve is a thing of spirit. A mutant. A blank spot among the endless matter, crammed into an infinitesimally small corner of All That Is. The Great Old Ones shunned Him, and left to His own devices, He made His Heaven and His angels, and soon after, this universe, much as we are told He did, with the powers of words and numbers. There was another ingredient, Rider. Words were but the catalyst.

  “Not content with the dream-like realms He inhabited, God stole bits of matter from the unending Chaos and infused it with spirit. He even trapped some of the Great Old Ones themselves as they lay dreaming, cutting His ingredients from them and reshaping it like he did Eve from Adam. The legends of sea monster Rahav, and of Tanin’iver, the blind dragon of which Cordovero wrote, are not legends at all. The Blind Black Dragon is one of the Spirit God’s prisoners. Others, you have already seen.”

  Shub-Niggurath, the Rider thought. Ossodagowah, others mentioned in the Book of Zylac. Nyarlathotep himself. And this Blind Black Dragon. Chaksusa had mentioned him. That Which Strains Against Against Its Chains, he had called it, and Sheardown had mentioned it too. He had said it would swing wide the doors for The Great Old Ones, once its fetters were broken. He remembered the dragon-like statue beneath Red House too.

  The legends of Tanin’iver and Rahav came from Kabbalah and the Talmud. Tanin’iver was the spiritual steed of Lilith, a colorless intermediary by which her joining with Samael could become possible. The Treatise On The Left Hand Emanation said that were he ‘created whole in the fullness of his emanation he would have destroyed the world in an instant.’ The very name meant Blind Dragon. Long had the Rider puzzled over that passage.

  As for Rahav, it was supposed to be a sea monster, thought to be the great Leviathan, slain or imprisoned by the Lord for refusing to aid in Creation. His carcass beneath the waves was said to give the sea its smell.

  Adon went on.

  “Land was created, and space, and stars, and most blasphemous of all, human souls. Bastard things born from an unholy fusion of chaotic flesh and pure spirit. And this last abomination made God stronger.

  God thrives upon refined souls, Rider. He needs them to expand His influence, to form His universes and encr
oach upon Chaos. And He has at last gained the attention of the Others. To keep them out, He made a great armor, a wall of human souls, that strange substance forged in flesh and sin and baked in the experience we know as life, fired at last in the furnace of hell. He girded Himself with it, encased His universes within it. So the Great Old Ones batter against it even now, seeking a way in.”

  Adon came to stand over him, leaned on the arms of the chair in which the Rider sat, eager. His eyes were blazing with the truth he spewed, like a raving alcoholic alight in the throes of sickness.

  “There is a way, Rider. Those trapped within this universe, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Krefth Daal-Zuur, they have found the chink in the armor, and given it to men through inspiration and dreaming, seeded it throughout Creation. The knowledge is there, waiting for men. After ages of wandering the cosmos I returned to earth, moving through the world of dreams and through body after body. I found it myself at last in the 1600’s, in the Sepher ha-Sha’are ha-Daath.”

  “The Book of the Gates of Knowledge,” the Rider intoned. He remembered the name from his studies under Adon.

  “Yes. It was to be our course of study just prior to your leaving for that foolish war. It was a commentary on two chapters of the Book of al-Hazred. The Kitab al-Azif.”

  Al-Hazred again. The Kitab al-Azif. The grimoire Professor Spates had mentioned to him. The Necronomicon. That was why it had sounded familiar, and yet also why he had never learned of it. Only the war had saved him from pursuing the forbidden studies that would have led him to The Great Old Ones. Adon had been preparing the Rider for that study gradually with his pagan talismans and alternative teachings. But why?

  He realized how much he owed his late friend Abe Lillard then. Adon had always hated him. The Rider had thought it was because his father was a Christian. Adon would complain that he was a constant distraction, tempting him away from his studies. It was true, of course. Abe had always been a rambler and a malcontent, forsaking both his Christianity and Judaism for a life of pleasure, free from higher meditations. How many times had Abe enticed him out the yeshiva window to play street games and watch girls? After the disappointment of being turned away from the Throne and seeing the forces of Heaven and Hell amassing, he had been so willing to run off with Abe to fight.

  So, possibly he had been saved from total spiritual corruption by an avowed atheist. He silently blessed Abe’s memory now, and hoped his time in Sheol had not been too harrowing.

  “Why did you have to return? Why didn’t Nyarlathotep just give you this knowledge directly?”

  “The stars were not right,” Adon said. “So I was sent back to spread the word, to bring others to the cause through dreams and dissemination, and always to prepare the way. I had to prove myself.”

  “What is it?” the Rider asked, hoping to catch him in the heat of the moment. He knew when, he was learning why, but he still did not know how. “What’s the knowledge you found?”

  Adon retracted, shaking his head and smiling.

  “If you don’t know yet, it’s not for me to say. Yes, I must break my rule, there. For we have gone different ways, my friend. It’s not for you to know, but to learn for yourself.”

  He turned, and put his hands behind his back, recovering himself.

  The Rider looked at the pistol lying on the desk.

  “Why side with them?” he asked. He had to keep him talking. “The Great Old Ones? I’ve encountered them. They don’t have humanity’s best interests in mind.”

  Adon laughed.

  “And God does? Don’t you see that that’s the point? Truth, Rider. Real truth. And Power. Why would I serve a God who is but a shadow of the True Power that exists beyond the rickety walls of this paltry Creation? It is like choosing to stay in a condemned house in the face of an oncoming hurricane. The Chaos, Rider. I’ve seen it. It’s overwhelming. The Great Old Ones will break into this Universe. It is inevitable. The Hour of Incursion is nearly at hand.”

  “And you think these things will make you master of the Earth?”

  “That is a fairytale I tell my disciples,” he said, fixing the Rider with a meaningful stare. “The truth is, those who open the gate for them will be spared the suffering to come.”

  “By…being devoured first?”

  “Yes. You have faced the weakest of them. Cut off from the source of their strength as they are, they are but shadows of their former power. Yet you barely survived. There are worse things yet. There is an unnamable Thing at the center of it all, an amorphous, bubbling blight which sleeps in a fevered, violent dream. When it turns in its restless slumber, Creation quakes. When it awakens, this great sham of a universe will collapse and burn like a false front. As its chief herald among man, I will meet that oblivion first.”

  He turned toward the Rider again, and now his eyes seemed to be filled with tears.

  “You hate me, Rider, because in your mind, I was the father who turned from you. Can you see that you are the son who turned from me? I would spare you the tribulation to come, Rider. I would have you beside me, my boy. At the end of everything.”

  He moved to the Rider then, holding out his hands. The Rider flinched, but Adon gently took the Rider’s head in his hands, leaned forward, and lightly kissed his eyes, first one, and then the other. It was the old gesture of the master to the student, when the student had attained knowledge.

  He released him then, and stepped back. His eyes were glassy and brimming with emotion.

  The Rider stared, his lips parted.

  He remembered something Adon had said to him once long ago then.

  ‘Anyone who teaches you, loves you.’

  He seemed to be saying it now, with his eyes.

  He was insane.

  The Rider smirked.

  “This is what you have to offer? First crack at oblivion?”

  Adon’s brow furrowed, and he brushed away a sliding tear.

  The Rider lunged then, operating on a reserve of strength that surprised even him. He pushed past Adon and fell on his elbows to the desk, snatching up the revolver.

  It was empty.

  He flung it away into the corner of the room.

  Adon smirked.

  The door opened behind them. It was O’Doyle again. He cleared his throat.

  “Time for you to leave,” Adon said, returning to his chair behind the desk.

  “You said you’d answer my questions,” said the Rider. “All of them. You said you wouldn’t lie, my master.”

  “In a universe that is itself but a lie, can there be lies, my student?” said Adon. “We’ll talk again. But next time, it will be your turn to answer me.”

  Then, to O’Doyle, he said in English,

  “Take him back to his cage, Croc. We’re through for now.”

  It was early evening, and now that his eyes were used to the light, he surveyed the layout of the yard. The Dark Cell lay behind the main cell block. He could clearly see the iron door set into the stone. They skirted the cell block building, and he assumed O’Doyle was leading him back there, but they turned right to a row of exposed iron cages, each with one cot and a pot. There were six of them, two occupied with mangy looking prisoners, one to a cage.

  “What’s this?” the Rider asked as O’Doyle unlocked the furthermost cage.

  “Your new home,” said O’Doyle. “You made it pretty clear you weren’t up to sharing a cell. That makes you an Incorrigble. Incorrigibles get the privilege of their own accommodations. With a view.”

  The banded iron cage was just like the ones set in stone, but entirely open and exposed.

  “Watch out for snakes,” O’Doyle leered, pushing him inside and locking the door.

  The Rider spent the night in sleepless misery, shivering in the cot, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, nose tucked between them.

  When the sun was down, the depths of the night grew as cold as the depths of the ocean. The thin blanket he had been issued offered little comfort.

&nbs
p; He thought of all that Adon told him and wondered if it was true. He thought perhaps it was.

  He thought about Adon’s claim that HaShem had trapped certain of the Great Old Ones within Creation, to form the universes from their flesh. That meant that all men were part of these things, just as they were part of the Lord.

  He considered how the flesh tempted and begged for ease, overpowering the will of the spirit as it had even in himself. It all made sense then. In every individual, the microscopic echo of a greater cosmic conflict. As above, so below.

  What was the purpose though? Why did the Lord oppose the Outer Gods? Was He a conqueror, seeking to rule All That Was?

  Worlds within worlds, and wars within wars.

  He was not sure of HaShem’s motives, but he knew something. He knew there was good in the world. There were good people. They surely did not come about from any act of the Great Old Ones, and so whether by reason or by chance, they had come from the acts of the Lord.

  Like Kabede had told him, nothing had really changed. The scope was larger, yes, but the stakes and the allegiances were basically the same.

  Instead of simply opposing evil and corruption, he was now facing the even greater and more insidious force of entropy and chaos.

  The Lord’s house could fall, yes. But not if humanity held it up. Not if they fortified it against the attacks of the Great Old Ones.

  He was terrified by Adon’s revelations, yes. But he was also invigorated. To court the Chaos that encroached (or was encroached upon?) was utter madness to him. Adon was lost. He lost himself not to evil, but to his own fear. Fear, like the lesser fear of the inevitability of death.

  Adon had fallen prey to the most basic pitfall the Sons of the Essenes had taught him to avoid; the appeal of death, or in his case, the appeal of oblivion.

  To Adon, existence was simply too terrible. Life was a greater horror than death. Already for Adon there was no death, only the long wait for oblivion. So he sought to rush the cataclysm. Bring it upon himself and everyone, simply to be done with the dread of it.