Angel of Knives

 

It’s a thin line between pride and shame, beloved ones. Razor-thin. Enough to cut ourselves deeply, or another. Like a thorn in the flesh. I believe there is great insight in knowing the solemnity of such uncomfortable truths. That place in human storytelling where light gives way to shadow. Sometimes a darkness can be birthed in the fervour of protecting our own, and we become the very thing we hate. It’s the lament of many poets, isn’t it?  And warriors who wished desperately for some other way.  But sometimes the sky of a mind can darken, and you are hunted by jackals in the wilderness. Suddenly, you find yourself prowling like a jackal too. It’s easy to discuss the polity of occupation from a distance. I suspect it is something else entirely to be ravaged by it. To see your children ravaged by it. In such instances some men truly believe that they are forced to take up the sword.  But eventually, it is always the innocent who suffer most.  The children on both sides.  Violence is always an anguished lament to those of sufficient soul. I’ve wept like that, in dreams. I’m still not sure if my soul is sufficient, but like all true initiates of the hidden way I once knelt before the burnished Mountain of God, praying that a man might not be forced to become a wraith to defeat an army of even darker wraiths. Cruelty is no glamorous thing, believe me. Neither is war. There are so few heroes in war. I’m no hero either, but I’ve been called many things across this dreaming of a thousand years. A ghost, a charlatan. An angel of thorns, or knives. Like that wretched Prince of Sicarii. Well, such titles are not entirely unwarranted. As I’ve said elsewhere in these epistles, your enemy is still your brother. And spilling the blood of your brother is always a matter of terrible, hideous shame. Saltire or not. Regardless of what side you’re on. All causes are righteous to men of burning conviction. In a climate of such hate, hostility and viciousness only a fool would consider himself righteous, without shadow or flaw. I once walked among such men, in my nightly sojourns. Honour and integrity were beyond so many of them. Beloved ones, I want you to realize that fiction is a prerequisite to religion, as all writers of merit understand. Storytelling is thus often the business of crafting more palatable heroes. Pacifists and polemicists. I know this because I was a storyteller even as a boy, long before I was blinded by vision.  Long before I watched my many brothers and sisters curl their fingers around the hilt of a sword. I tried to renounce such revolt and pledged myself to the Mysteries of Rhacotis, like any true seeker of that time and place. There I learned many things. What my enemies might call magic or malefica. But more than that, I learned secrets of imagination. What one might call spiritual technologies. I learned that no text is a dry recital of dispassionate fact. All texts are dramaturgies. Even this one. Full of religiosity, sympathies and antipathies. Occulted aspects. I quickly realised that our words are full of incredible revelation, and our actions also. Not a single soul is without agency. From peasant to prince. Man and woman. There are no true hierarchies save those forged in the mind. Regardless, some say a dark angel birthed those sinister hooded ones. The shrouded ones. Some say this angel led them to the mount. Men and women of dagger and cloak.  What know you of these darker things, Fallen? Josephus, Celsus, Origen? Are these your measures of supposed fact? Listen to me. You know only what the Magi have allowed you to know. These mysteries, these hidden things – they are not discontinuous. There is a lineage of light stretching back to those times long before the temple fell.  The Cult of First Dreaming. We who recall the shining realm.  We who rebuke these slavers and traffickers in all forms. Do you really suppose ichthys and anchor were the only signs of revolution? Do you think swords are the only weapons? Hear me now, lost Roma. I don’t need to kill. Insight is a far sharper blade. And it cuts both ways. Your empire collapsed in the end, didn’t it?  Just as my namesake did at Damascus. It was only a matter of time.  And poetry. As I said, it’s a thin line between peace and war. Razor-thin. Perhaps the difference between pieces of divine light and pieces of silver. Just ask those vicious zealots, or the sicarii. I know who I am, and what I’ve been working toward. Protection for the little ones. Voices for the voiceless. Insight and comprehension between all clashing ideologies. Perhaps it sounds naive to a warlord or a demoniac, but I have no interest in slaying my enemies in some paper-thin parable of good versus evil. I’ve seen far too much horror for that.  But you will have to face yourselves in the end, Fallen. Just as I did, in the crucible of my dreaming. Owning up to every wretched sin. See, my concern was never counterfeit.  My love is not entirely lost.  I value my heart and my shame, even as an angel. It means I dare not make the same mistakes again. Instead, I shall find other ways. Gentler, hidden ways. A warrior of the innermost. For I am not without imagination. All souls deserve freedom and decency. A fair trial beyond claims of sedition, regardless of their fealty or their faith.  Even you. It is no laughing matter, Fallen.  I take it very seriously. Lay down your daggers, all of you, and take up a different kind of blade. For Kasi tells you now, we are all equal in the eyes of my Father. Praise be to God and his grace.  That I almost never was, nor shall I ever be again. There is a great wisdom in that, even for a humbled storyteller.