Investigations of the Future

by Brian Stableford

  And he promised to one of the two the kingdom of heaven.

  And thirst devours him, but a soldier only offers him gall and vinegar to drink.

  Another soldier opens his side with the iron of a spear.

  He complains of being abandoned by his celestial Father.

  And men say to him. mockingly, that since he can work miracles, he ought to make use of one in order to descend from the cross.

  He commends his mother to his beloved disciple.

  He utters a loud cry, and then, lowering his head, he says that all is consummated.

  And when the Human-God renders the last sight on Golgotha, a groan is heard similar to that which burst forth at the moment of the fall; and that groan immediately becomes a canticle of love and gratitude.

  And the gods of the nations flee, and the oracles of the Romans fall silent.

  Epode

  The unfathomable mystery of the expiation is accomplished.

  The veil of the temple is torn away. Darkness covers the earth. The stones of sepulchers stir.

  The heavens open, and Hebal hears the repercussion of the endless hymn, the hymn of reconciliation, the hymn of the lamb immolated at the commencement of the world.

  The earth is in view of all the celestial spheres.

  And voices among the people say: He was truly the Just.

  And he is taken down from the cross. And lots are cast for his garments, in order to recall the last of the ancient prophecies related to him.

  And he is laid in a new sepulcher.

  A stone is placed on his sepulcher, and soldiers watch in order that the body should not be removed.

  But if the mystery of rehabilitation has been accomplished on earth for living men, and for those yet to be born, it has not been accomplished for the generations that sleep in the tomb.

  Christ goes to Hell to undo the ancient anathema of the generations that have lived on the earth, and the virtue of expiation frees the past.

  Destiny is vanquished in that which is most irrevocable; it is vanquished in death.

  And the human species, from the commencement of time until the end, participates in the rehabilitation.

  And great joy bursts forth in heaven.

  And on the third day, Christ is resuscitated among the dead.

  And the soldiers will have guarded the sepulcher in vain, which will remain empty until the consummation of the centuries.

  And the Resurrected reappears among his disciples, and grants them the gift of tongues, and tells then to go and name his name among all the peoples.

  And he rises up again into the glory of his Father.

  And all of human destiny, in the past and in the future, in time and outside time, is summarized and transfigured in the life of the one who wanted to be the sin in order to be the salvation, to be the fault in order to be the forgiveness, the one who was made in our image in order that we might become his.

  Hebal has the true intelligence of human being, of the universal religion of humanity.

  VII

  Strophe

  The disciples of the Crucified cover the earth in order to spread the accomplishment of the promise, as the forefathers of the human race covered the earth in order to populate it at the commencement of the race.

  And they will have, like them, the gift of tongues.

  And the ancient traditions remain identical to the traditions of the promise.

  Stephen, the first martyr, sees the heavens open while he is stoned by the people; a fanatic keeps his garments.

  And the first martyr is the type of all those who bear witness.

  And the one who keeps the garments of the first martyr will be the apostle of the nations.

  And he fisherman of Judea who had denied his Master three times comes, with a traveler’s staff, to shake the dust of his feet over the gods of the nations, and the gods of the nations fall.

  And the persecutor who was vanquished by the spirit of God on the road to Damascus goes to preach the unknown God in the city of Plato, which has become the city of sophists.

  And Saint John, on the Isle of Patmos, has the revelation that would show him the entire series of human destinies.

  Jerusalem hosts the first Council.

  Seven churches in Asia Minor will found Christian initiation for the Orient.

  It was founded in the catacombs of Rome for the Occident.

  And the fisherman of Judea sealed with his blood the faith that would govern the world.

  And the persecutor who became the apostle of the nations sealed with his blood a religion still devoid of rites.

  And Hebal sensed then the great work of regeneration operating simultaneously throughout a world grown old.

  And the world grown old will renew itself under the name of Christendom.

  And the new humankind has seen what Nicodemus was unable to comprehend, seen in solitude and in the family, in private and public life; unknown virtues will come to astonish the sages of the era.

  And misfortune will no longer be an opprobrium.

  Antistrophe

  Nevertheless, at the edge of the world, which was still the Roman world, in the Northern seas, unknown seas, there is an island conquered by Caesar’s arms; and at the edge of that petty universe, there remains a rock on which the Roman eagle has never been raised. As long as liberty finds a foothold, as long as it can take flight from the smallest eyrie, in order to extend its flight from there over a thousand countries, in order to make its powerful voice resound there and awaken peoples bent beneath the yoke of slavery, it is permissible to hope.

  Three terrible cries resound from the banks of the Tiber to the lakes of Caledonia. The first is to declare the world submissive. The second cry announces that a rock has remained inaccessible to the arms of the masters of the world; and the masters of the world are indignant, and the peoples make vows. And generous sympathies are also a power. Roman grandeur began by means of a refuge; the genius of liberation can commence by means of a refuge. Rome assembles all the energy of its destiny to vanquish a rock. The force that has subjugated the world breaks momentarily against the rock like a vast sea against a grain of and. But the grain of sand disappears at the third cry. Liberty no longer has anywhere to place its foot. Thus, Caledonia was for the entire world what Thermopylae had been for Greece. Sonorous Harp of the Bard, fall silent in the presence of universal despotism.

  Epode

  Undoubtedly, Hebal had his eyes fixed from afar on the mountains of Erin, when he saw such a resurrection of such a glorious past.

  But he is tranquil, for he knows that liberty does not inhabit a rock, and that a new generation has it in its heart.

  Political liberty, one day, will give birth to the liberty that gives birth to regeneration.

  The fatality resulting from the fall will be abolished.

  Thus, firstly, the struggle of humankind against the forces of nature.

  Then, the struggle of human liberty against Destiny.

  Then, the accord of Providence and human liberty.

  Then, finally, charity substituted for solidarity.

  And the universal religious marriage, symbol of symbols, perpetual and endless immolation, peaceful sacrifice that summarizes, completes and annuls all sacrifices, is the great expression of the religion of humanity.

  VIII

  Strophe

  The vanquishers of the masters of the world are hidden in the catacombs of Rome itself.

  And the Tarpeian Rock, which was for so long the Caucasus of the Occident, sees the irons that keep the emancipator captive quietly eroded.

  Three bloody persecutions attest the grandeur of Christian initiation. And the blood of martyrs spilled immeasurably is an immeasurable seeding. And all the martyrs resemble Stephen.

  And Jerusalem falls, as if into a gulf of blood and fire.

  And Palmyra, built by Solomon, disappears into desert.

  And Zenobia has passed through the three great initiations of the human species.r />
  Other events are scarcely noticed by Hebal.

  While Mithridates opposed to the Romans the last resistance of cunning and a will of iron, Odin, followed by his brave companions, launched forth from the shore of the Black Sea to the shores of the Baltic, and created a religion that would be the bloody religion of Scandinavia.

  And the Barbarians who were to renew the face of the Roman Empire increase in ignored climates.

  And Roman corruption is equal to is grandeur.

  Antistrophe

  Hebal finds an immense distraction in the Museum of Alexandria; there he witnesses the entire evocation of a past that is not destined to perish. And all the theurgical philosophies that have stirred human intelligence from Empedocles to Apollonius of Tyana appear to be eclipsed by Christian philosophy.

  And all religions appear to affirm the universal religion of the human species.

  It is at this moment that Hebal sees rising before him a world that he had previously misunderstood.

  It is at this moment that the Orient and the Occident recount their mutual adventures, adventures that are the whole of human destiny.

  The Himalayas, Sinai, the Caucasus, the Taurus and the Tarpeian Rock form the horizon of the old world simultaneously evoked by all the sibyls, all the prophets, all the philosophers and all the beliefs that die and are born, by all the sacerdotes who finish and commence.

  What! The Indian Trimurthi in the Himalayas!

  What! The Thracians of Samothrace fleeing the transparent seas of Greece and coming to settle amid the chaos of ice and fire that is scarcely distinguished in the misty sea of Iceland.

  What! Prometheus lying chained to the steep summits of the Caucasus!

  What! All fables taking on reality! And myth, in the distances of humanity, projecting great shadows equal to dogma!

  “Woe betide him who scandalizes!” says a voice.

  But the Himalayas, the Caucasus, the Taurus and the Tarpeian Rock fade away in the thunder and lightning of Sinai.

  Sinai itself fades away in the ravishing splendors of Tabor,

  Hebal knew the perpetual prophecy of the Hebrew tongue.

  He knew the absolute existence revealed with the name of Jehovah.

  He knew the identity of the human species in all eras, manifest by the intimate sentiment of the Mediator.

  He knew the Old and the New Testament.

  He knew the accord of the Persians with the Hebrews, the Egyptians and the Greeks with the Syrians.

  He saw that Alexander had wanted to reconstruct Syrianism and Hellenism.

  He understood that had Socrates died for the logos.

  Finally, he knew where the insufficiency of various epicisms lay: those of schools founded by human wisdom, those which reposed in ancient sanctuaries and those of which the priesthoods of the gentility were custodians

  And Constantine caused the Christian religion to pass from the status of a secret religion to that of public religion. He enunciated a fact that fallen Roman grandeur had hidden, for he was the one who write the lat regulations of the auguries.

  Hebal sought the labarum in the air; but the cross of the Savior of men projected a divine light from the heights of Golgotha, which illuminated the entire horizon of the human world.

  And Julian wanted to go backwards and attempted a labor beyond human strength. And a fine genius and a noble character fell into opprobrium and absurdity.

  Epode

  Hebal had followed the long struggle between Christianity and Paganism, and that struggle was over; but another was about to begin.

  Humans were in possession of a subjectivity assimilated to their consciousness; they would battle for the forms of the objective.

  Such is the reason for the heresies that divide the empire of mind.

  And the Barbarians come to disperse the debris of the old societies.

  And Mohammed suddenly appears in the world.

  And Africa is erased from the map of civilization.

  And Europe will find itself squeezed between the already-pallid religion of Odin and that of Mohammed, bursting with youth.

  And the religion of Mohamed rolls its waves as far as the fields of Touraine. There it encounters a hero who causes it to retreat, as, much later, the battle of Lepanto will conclude its action in Europe.

  Hebal hears again the splintering of empires, and the entire mythology of the Middle Ages is grouped around Charlemagne, and shines alone in the darkness.

  And while Hebal collects so many things in his mind, the empire of Charlemagne crumbles in the bosom of that same darkness.

  And Pépin, the mayor of the palace—which is to say, the tutor of kings and military leader—and Abbé of Paris, comes to the throne.

  And the successors of the fisherman of Judea protect the people against the strong feudal hierarchy, working at the same time to create a universal monarchy.

  Then was manifest the principle of two powers. Hildebrand, by the ascendancy of faith, wanted to bind the temporal principle to the spiritual principle.

  And the temporal principle resisted; and interminable struggle was engaged for centuries.

  What a task, incessantly suspended and resumed, was that of developing the great French unity, preparing for the government of peoples by means of mores and opinions!

  And the crusades posed the barrier, within the shelter of which Europe was able to constitute itself.

  And St. Louis founded modern civilization.

  And Christian principles reigned briefly in Jerusalem.

  And Constantinople fell to the power of the Turks.

  And the modern world, which already had a spontaneous literature, received from fugitive Greeks the movement of a literature of imitation.

  French unity would have been stifled by implacable divisions if the principle of that unity, necessary to the direction of the new destinies of Europe, had not been marvelously identified by a magnanimous virgin, a providential sibyl, who triumphed and died on a pyre.

  America is discovered; Galileo founds experimental philosophy; two worlds open up, one of commerce, the other of science.

  And pious humanity veils its face before the calamities of a world increased in size by an entire hemisphere.

  And China and Japan, visited by missionary scholars, provide human facts that serve to complicate and clarify the immense question of origins.

  The Iberian peninsula disengages itself from Moorish domination and extends its own over the old and new hemispheres.

  Hebal saw all those things simultaneously, and heard all the discourses at the same time.

  IX

  Strophe

  And Luther’s schism arrives to alarm beliefs already shaken by mores.

  The shadows of those who preceded that powerful heresiarch seem to wake up in their tombs to say: “It was in vain, then, that we have been murdered and mutilated by iron and fire! It was in vain that Gothicism has been downed in the blood of the Albigenses! One can kill entire nations but one cannot kill ideas!”

  And the Jesuits begin a great empire, which has its provinces all over the world.

  And humanity and religion veil their face, for the earth is inundated anew with blood in the name of all that is holiest upon the earth. And still: one can kill people, but one cannot kill ideas.

  And the long reign of Louis XIV shines at first with great brightness, and then fades away in sad misery.

  Kings of Europe, how did you witness without emotion the scaffold of Mary Stuart? Now see Charles I climbing in his turn on to the same scaffold.

  Have Oliver Cromwell and Milton taught you nothing?

  Do you know what Peter I is doing in the construction yards of Amsterdam? Terrible among the terrors of an unknown north, he is about to reveal an empire that will one day menace many empires.

  It is in Constantinople that the keys to Europe and Asia are deposited. The stupid Turk is keeping them for whoever will be able to take them.

  And Descartes and Bacon give birth to the
eighteenth century.

  And the French Revolution comes to complete the mission of the eighteenth century.

  And the cup of misfortunes is poured out over France, and the intoxication of glory is no consolation.

  And a great victim has fallen.

  And a man of old launches himself upon the world stage.

  He reconstructs Charlemagne’s empire, and he wants to take ideas backwards as he has taken the idea of power backwards.

  And the battles he fights are battles of giants.

  And the spirit of the French nation retreats to resemble the one that Julian desired.

  And twice he loses the empire, and twice his fall shakes the world.

  He dies on a rock lost in the immense seas of the Atlantic, a tomb worthy of a Titan.

  And the exile has brought back liberation by expiation.

  And the volitional principle and the fatal principal recommence the struggle that had been suspended by the captive of St. Helena, when he reigned over peoples and kings.

  And the Restoration, unwittingly, has been the age of the emancipation of thought.

  And the Restoration has been completely misunderstood by those who ought to be protecting it.

  And the dynasty was considered as a cause and not as an instrument.

  And the rebellious instrument was broken by a sudden and spontaneous effort.

  And lightning would not have been as prompt. And a multitude acted as one man, like a single intelligence.

  House of France, you have tried to conserve the ancient fatality from which Providence had resolved to free you, because it had resolved to free the world.

  A silence follows: the silence of admiration.

  And the peoples recount in the distance the victory of a great multitude, which was but one man, a wise and powerful man.

  And the old kings have retired into exile, and have excited profound pity, for it has been understood that they were devoid of intelligence and misunderstood their mission.