Crowley v Crowley, part six
The Satanic Version
In which your author risks a lifetime banged up under guard with Salman Rushdie. The things you do for Fanfic… still, Rushdie might be a bore, by all accounts, but he does attract classy women. Maybe if I hang around him long enough some'll drop my way..
4th September 476 AD. Rome.
Crowley and Aziraphile were strolling together in the gardens of the Roman senator Marcellinus Vallesianus. Late-summer flowers were in full bloom, and it was a clement Mediterranean day. Apart from the smell of smoke and the occasional scream, it was almost idyllic.
"Well, this just wraps it up for fifteen hundred years." Crowley remarked, if only to make conversation. "Do you think Julius would have tried so hard to be Caesar five hundred years ago, if he could see this coming?"
The Angel shrugged, lost in his gloom. Rome had been his base for nearly seven hundred years now. But at least his collection of early Christian religious scrolls was hidden away in safe keeping.
"I mean, " Crowley said, to press his advantage home to a depressed and disillusioned Angel, "Romulus Augustulus packed it in this morning, poor kid. And I don't see anyone queuing up to be Emperor of Rome the way they used to when there was a vacancy at the top. What's the betting he's going to go down in history as the last one?"
"In the West, anyway." said Aziraphile. "Constantinople's still strong."
"For now, anyway. Funny how it all ran so well, before your lot took over."(1)
Aziraphile was not going to let that one slip. "Now see here, Crowley. You know and I know that pantheistic religion is an outmoded anachronism in the modern world. Religion had to rationalise, get rid of all its surplus minor deities."
"Yeah, and you should have seen the queue to negotiate with Downstairs for a comfortable retirement berth in the First Circle. I didn't see your lot offering retraining or Welfare to unemployed gods and deities!"
"We took our share!" Aziraphile said, hotly. "The ones who saw the Light and humbly requested reassignment under new terms and conditions."
"Yeah. Sacking people and then making them reapply for their old jobs under less advantageous terms and conditions. Then you tell them that being made redundant was their own fault, welfare benefits only sicken the soul, and they should therefore get on their flying chariot and look for work. Good old muscular Christianity, eh, Angel? You got… let me see, Brigid of Ireland. And who else?"
Aziraphile fell silent. The newly minted Saint Brigid had formerly been the rather licentious Celtic Irish goddess of sexual freedom, fertility and generally having a good time. Her more chaste reinvention, after Columbus and Patrick had twisted her arm a bit, was as Patron Saint i/c planting of crops and seeds of all sorts, and agriculture in general.
"We gave them a home in the First Circle. Only condition is they consider themselves retired from active politics and don't try, for e.g., to unseat Lucifer."
"But, Crowley, Rome got to a point where monotheism was inevitable. The only question was whether it was Mithras or…" the angel mouthed a Name (possibly in deference to Crowley's sensitivities, he was considerate enough not to speak it out loud) and pointed a finger upwards. "Do allow me my moment of triumph for steering Rome in the correct direction. I even got a commendation for that!"
"Yeah, so did I!" breathed Crowley, happily. Hell could sometimes see long-term detail better than Heaven. It had looked at what it could see of the later history of the Catholic Church, and given Crowley a demerit in recognition of his part in bringing it about.
"Ah, they're coming." Aziraphile said, to change the conversation. His angelic eyes passed, in mingled compassion and disdain, over the Roman senator and his family who were crowded in the darkened atrium, shivering with cold and fear.
Lower down the path, a group of disgruntled-looking Visigoths, with their vividly yellow-blond facial hair, were climbing the hill. They were brandishing almost empty sacks alongside their fearsome native weaponry, and were grumbling among themselves as to how piss-poor this sodding city was in terms of easily looted gold, gems, cash, et c.
A couple more were walking on behind admiring the civic statuary, and speculating on how they could clean up in the long run, if your cousin Alaric has still got that ship available, nicking all this stuff and selling it on to the Byzantines – you know, a piece of Old Rome in your garden, a snip at ten thousand tremisii. While all these other barbarians are focused on what they can easily grab, we clean up on what they're not noticing, what do you say, Malodoric?
The Visigoths found the Senator and his family. Marcellinus Vallesianus lost any pretence to Roman superiority that he might ever have had, and sprawled on his knees screaming "Don't kill me! Take my wife, take my daughters, anything, but don't kill me!"
The Visigoths looked at each other and shook their heads. The lead visitor looked over the Senator's distinguished and noble wife, shook his head, and said
"Nice offer mate, but nah thanks, if it's all the same to you. Nothing against the lady, she's kept her looks, I have to say that, but on the whole I prefer it if they act as if they're glad to see me. I mean, you tend to lose the old urge if she's trying to claw your eyes out and screaming in your face, ain't that right, lads?"
"Yeah, Dead right!" agreed the Visigoths.
"Besides, we was in the legion till last Thursday, and there's strict orders about that sort of thing. You can loot and pillage the enemy town, that's allowed, but unless the legate declares "atrocitas", right, you leave his women alone."
Marcellinus Vallesianus looked relieved. Then he realised the hard glares he was getting from his wife and daughters. They were not exactly comforting.
The lead Visigoth smiled. "So just hand over yer rings, your cash, your easily portable valuables, right, and we'll be on our way. Put' em in the collection sack as my friend Dubelboric is holding out to you, and we'll be on our way? You gets to keep your house, by the way, as Patrician Odoacer(2), the new boss, don't want too many fires. So jewels, money, give, chop chop."
"Well, it was bad enough after the Huns sacked the city in 410…" the Senator said, trying to bluff on a bad hand.
"So?"
"And then the Vandals, er, vandalised the City in 455…"
"You've still had thirty years to recover. Cough up!"
Knowing what was to come next, Crowley and Aziraphile, who'd seen it in Ur and Sumer and Jericho and Jerusalem and Syracuse and Athens and a dozen other places, moved on, exploiting the psychic ether to move unseen.
"Not much of a sack, is it?" grumbled Crowley. "A bunch of… barbarians, yes, but barbarians who until fairly recently have been under Roman Army discipline, going around in small well-ordered respectful gangs with sacks and hopeful looks on their faces."
"There's not much left to sack." Aziraphile replied, reasonably. "The Huns got the best of it in 410. The Vandals got the leftovers in 455. Those poor bloody Visigoths are scraping the barrel."
"So you did a minor grace and put a few things where they'll find 'em?" demanded Crowley. "So they'll leave that poor sap and the women alone afterwards?"
"A few easily overlooked small and portable things that may or may not have been there before, yes." the angel admitted. "Do feel free to lay a curse or a sting in the tail as you will."
Crowley grinned. "After he tried to buy his own freedom by giving them his wife and daughters? They'll all want a quiet word later! Couldn't think of a better Hell, could you, Angel?"
They found War and the others by the Forum. In the main, listless Romans slouched past in the streets and were trying to avoid catching the eye of dispirited Visigoths. Although a mixed group of impoverished lootees and would-be looters had together broken into a wine bar and were sharing its contents, singing some of the old Legion marching songs together.
Red shook her head.
"Fall of a mighty Empire, my bum!" she said, derisively. "I mean, the standard two options are bang or whimper, and this isn't even a short sharp squeal… (3) for one thing, they all look so tired!"
"Well, they've been running the world for six hundred years, so what do you expect at the end? And six hundred years is a pretty good lifespan for an Empire, from birth to death. No wonder they look tired. And they'll all look a lot worse than that at the end of the winter." said Black, reassuringly. "I would also suspect in all the turmoil not many farms have planted anything very much."
"And then I take over." said Pestilence. The white-haired one smiled beatifically.
"So thank you, Red, for bringing this about. It's ours now, I think!" said Black.
"Ah well, there's always the Project, downstairs." she said, philosophically. "Crowley, you have to come and see it! I keep sending you invitations, after all!"
Crowley knew when he was beaten.
"See you down there, Red. " he said. "Hey-ho."
500 AD. The fields of Mars, just outside Pandemonium City, Hell.
The two armies clashed in a screaming exultation of weapons and armour. A few half-interested demons, their ultimate keepers, lounged about on the sidelines watching, but in the main the population of Dis had seen it all before and it had lost a lot of its novelty and entertainment value.
Crowley noted that the men had kept a sort of cohesion, even after death. Men had re-organised themselves after death into squads and companies, even regiments, of those who had arrived in the same nationality and approximate time-band. A semblance of their original uniforms had passed over too, and, as they were only human, they had tried to retain the tried and trusted weapons, formations and tactics, even those so hopelessly outmoded and outclassed and which had patently drawn them to death in the first… last…. place.
War's innovation, the Legions of the Damned who would fight for Hell in the Armageddon, was taking shape. Not every soldier arrived here: but Hell got its fair share, of those with a penchant for cruelty, rape, atrocity, and all the lesser Hells to which the process of War is prone. Heaven got the good guys, the clean fighters, the military saints(4), and would field its own Legions on the Day.
"I'm proud of these guys, Crowley!" Red said, as he toured the battlefield with her. "They're really getting the hang of it! And it's a good package we offer…"
They paused to let a charging Macedonian phalanx by. Its First Spear saluted Red, courteously.
"They know they've come to Hell. But as skilled professionals, we offer them absolutely no eternal torture, save as a disciplinary thing, or if they really want it, and the chance to fight all day, every day, with a period of untroubled oblivion by night to allow wounds to heal."
"Er…. Speaking of which?" said a corpse near Crowley's feet.
Crowley looked down.
"Ah. Is this your liver I'm standing on?" he said, politely. The damned, a member of the ill-fated Roman expedition that had gone into Germany in 4 AD and had been slaughtered by the Teutonic horde under King Hermann, grinned up at him.
"Just kick it over here would you, sir, so I've got all the bits? Thanks."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Crowley asked, politely.
"Twinges a bit, sir. But it's a time-out from fighting and it all regenerates after a few hours, thank you for asking."
As Queen Boudicca and Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, led a wing of chariots to decimate a group of Sumerian spearmen, Red smiled blissfully.
"I love it here, Crowley. I get a free pass to go Above and look in on their Legion of the Blessed, obviously, but somehow it's not quite the same – compulsory prayers before the training battle starts, and mandatory forgiveness of one's foes afterwards. Hey, Setanta!"
Ireland's great mythological hero, in his chariot festooned with spikes, swords, spearheads and other sharp bladed things, slowed down and acknowledged her.
"Hey, Macha!" he called. Then, to his charioteer:- "Cormac, will you put a brake on this feckin' thing so I can talk to me Goddess? Thank you!"
"How's it hanging?"
"Faith, I have not had so much fun in years!" Cuchulain Setanta said to her. He nodded at a nearby demon. "After your bloody sister and that double-bloody fecken' Queen Medhbh got me kilt, do they did, coming down to this place full of Fomorians was a shock, so it was."
"A Fomorian is?" Crowley asked, politely.
"Well, you're one, but at least you have got the common decency to wear a human body!" the Hound of Ulster said. "Not like that bloody ugly Fomorian bastard over there, the one who'd make Balor of the Evil Eye look like the Princess of the May.."
"I'm bloody warning you, Paddy…" said an affronted demon, of the sort who looked like a reassembled explosion in a restricted biolab.
"Oh yeh? You just try it, y' diseased gobshite.."
"Fomorians are, or were, a primitive monstrous race who tried to take Ireland for themselves." Red explained. "The Irish stitched them up a treat. Personally, I think they were Nephilim who'd gone wrong and started interbreeding. They still exist in Scandinavia, Crowley, only they're called trolls and giants up there." Then she went very stern. War could also prevent fights breaking out, if she really concentrated, and a fight wasn't desirable at that particular moment in time. "Setanta, don't provoke him. Urgglefloggah, aren't you meant to be on shift soon at the Gate?"
The huge demon lumbered off, muttering about giving weapons to the bloody damned, he didn't know, give the sods ideas…
"So tell your sister I haven't bloody-well forgotten or forgiven, and if you see Medhbh, tell the auld bitch that if I've got anything to do with it, she's going the way of the Seven Sons!"
"She's heaving rocks in the Fourth Circle." Red said, "But I'll tell her you were asking after her. And speaking of the Seven Sons, they're fighting for a warband over on the other side of the field."
With a whoop, the spiked chariot sped off.
Crowley turned to Red.
"Sister?"
Red grinned. "The Irish worship, or used to worship, a triple Goddess of War. It's where Christians get their idea for the Holy Trinity, three in one, you know? The Celtic idea of the Triple, Three in One? In Ireland, that was me. He knew me as Morrigan upstairs. Black wig and different makeup, basically."
"So you stitched him up?"
"Mythically, my dear Crowley. Right to the moment where he strapped himself upright to the pillar, so that the saga of the Flame over Cooley(5)could say truthfully that he died on his feet, and not on his knees. When I turned into a raven and perched on top of the pillar, that was the final courtesy detail, really."
Red laughed. It was not a nice laugh.
"Now let me show you what I've got in mind for the next five hundred years, now Rome's fallen."
She showed him a vision, of a primitive long-hall, where a vast space was enclosed underneath the hull of a long thin ship that had been raised and over-turned. Yellow-haired barbarians were gleefully fighting in and around the vast structure. Periodically, flying horses steered by beautiful almost-angels in battlearmour would fly down, and deposit more warriors.
"Valhalla." she said. "The after-life of the warrior from the far north of the European continent. I've started putting it into their minds that if a good warrior falls in battle, he ends up here, to fight by day and feast and do something else beginning with "f" all night. It's catching on!"
"Only it's built here…" mused Crowley.
"Up in the First Circle, yes. The Romans and the Greeks are complaining about the neighbours already, but it can't be helped, and anyway this is Hell."
"But how can they… I mean, fighting and feasting is all very well, but if they're all men, how can they do the third "F"? I mean, not without it coming as a very big surprise to a lot of macho Vikings and Saxons?" Crowley objected.
"I thought about that, Crowley. We train succubuses here, do we not? Call it practical training and a bit of a treat for them, a break from servicing fat flabby politicians and priests." She said, impatiently.
"They get the Afterlife they want, we're respecting the Agreement in that people from non-or pre-Christian civilizations get a light sentence in Hell for their Afterlife, we get to recruit more Legions of the Damned – they're going to think it's for their Day of Judgement, not ours - and everybody's happy! Oh hello, did you want something, General?"
A commanding officer from one of the Damned Legions was cleaning his sword, diffidently. Crowley spotted something familiar about him. A memory from thousands of years ago stirred.
Oh, shit! It's…..
Crowley took in the unhealthy jet-black armour and chain-mail, heavily ornated with silver. He recognised the power-mad bloodthirsty crazy psychotic eyes of his own son by the Sumerian woman Bellana, now long since in Heaven.
Kro'Li, the Sumerian warlord.
"Father! Against all hope it is you!"
The General dropped to his knees.
Crowley winced. What did you say?
Hello, son. It's been… ooh… a little over four thousand years now, my, doesn't time fly?
"Thank you, Father! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! You who made me more than just human! You who made me half-demon! You, who made this damnation into a whole new life!"
"He's right, guv." said a bored guard-demon from somewhere nearby.
"Just humans, see, you can do what you likes to them. But the General's halfway to bein' one of us, in'e? That's earned him privileges!"
YOUR SON IS MY SON, CROWLEY! said a voice only Crowley heard. HALF-HUMAN THOUGH HE IS, HE HAS A VICIOUSNESS AND A CALLOUSNESS AND A NATURE THAT MAKES HIM TRULY DEMONIC. HELL HAS ROOM FOR SUCH AS THIS! I HAVE ADOPTED HIM!
Crowley did not doubt it. He made the usual embarrassed sort of small-talk with his son for a while, discovering with horror and distaste that the demon-spawned half-human Nephilim who had arrived Below had virtually all been singled out as having potential, and indeed comprised an order of demi-demons all of their own.
"I can see you have a lot to talk about, Crowley!" Red said, with a laugh. "I'll just leave you to catch up with your son and heir. Family business, Crowley! I won't intrude!"
Crowley shuddered, inside, but learnt from Kro'Li that his seed persisted in the world still, and no doubt he would catch up with it every so often to hear what sort of disgusting deeds they were perpetrating in Hell's name.
Crowley did not doubt this. He wondered where he would see his family likeness next.
629 AD. The mountain of Jabal-al-Nur, near Mecca, in the Arabian peninsula.
It was sweltering down on the plains near the city. On the way to the Mountain, the Prophet had made one of his very few jokes. Granted it wasn't all that funny by Earthly standards, but it could have come direct from God, which therefore allowed the humour to become transcendent and ineffable, so you had better laugh at it.
Climbing the mountain, it became cooler. A thousand or so feet up they found the cave.
"This is the place" the Prophet had directed. "Set up my writing table and keep prayerful watch."
Inside the mountain, even though the cave wasn't very big and could only accommodate about six people comfortably, it was actually quite cool and clement. The desert traveller Chro-al-ih settled himself into his flowing Tuareg robes to watch and observe as the Prophet seated himself at the writing table, ready for the visitation of his Angel and for the Allah-given ecstacy to fall upon him, in which he would Recite.
Cross-legged and outwardly unreadable, the black-garbed desert traveller tried to recall his operational briefing from Hell.
As Christianity had spread across Europe, the Olympus Protocol had been agreed between Heaven and Hell. In its essentials, the Protocol had accepted that in the absence of divine direction or inspiration from the Two Powers, or in cases where the actions of the Two had cancelled each other out, leaving humans to their own resources, the human race had developed portfolios of Gods and deities of its very own.
Pantheism, in fact, was a default position for humanity.
And like it or not, thousands upon thousands of God-like entities had been called into being by the humans and had attained a remarkable degree of sentience and power (although neither ineffably nor diabolically so.)
It was agreed that Heaven and Hell had a responsibility towards these God-like lesser entities. Therefore both sides were completely free to make presentations and offers to win over the standalone and potentially renegade lesser divinities to call them in as fully-fledged loyal servants of Heaven or Hell. Once chosen the choice on the part of the former divinity was unchangeable; but they had absolute right to chose freely. Heaven or Hell?
As the unwashed, stinking, and hair-shirted fanatics of the Orthodox Church rampaged through Hellenos, throwing down temples, cutting down sacred groves, burning witches and generally establishing Christianity, the old Gods of Olympus had felt their power waning and fading. With little time to lose, they had turned down sainthood (with one or two exceptions) and a honoured place in the Third Circle of Heaven. They elected to merge with their long-passed Roman cousins in that lenient prison for all eternity which is the First Circle of Hell, set aside for virtuous pagans and those who, while living blameless lives, never heard the word of Christ. (6) Hordes of lesser immortals also elected to bid a sad farewell to blessed Hellenos and follow their Lords and Ladies into what, if they had the words to describe it, amounted to eternal captivity on an Indian reservation, provided by the real powers in the world. (7)
Other pantheons similarly surrendered to the Judeo-Christian viewpoint, seeing the writing on the wall as their human worshippers abandoned them for {{Look reverently up, raising a reverend finger to indicate where your prayer is going, breathe name}} The Celtic gods of Ireland came in after a tense stand-off at Moytura and a last stand at Tara. St Patrick had a tougher time with Cromm-Cruach, the half-dragon half-serpent Lord of the Mound, Lord of Death and Hell, and the only significant renegade to hold out in Ireland. The three-day combat between saint and serpent is today only half-remembered in Ireland, as a folk-memory about the blessed Saint Patrick driving the snakes out, so he did too. In truth there was only ever one snake in Ireland. But holy Jayzuz, 'twas one big difficult fella to shift.
Today, Cromm-Cruach is a contented servant of Satan, whose fiery breath helps stoke the furnaces of the Eighth Circle.
Heaven and Hell had seen this as a necessary tidying-up, as the valency of the world shifted and Imperial Rome crumbled into sand and dust. It got everything back on track and took a lot of added complication out of things, so that once again there was a clean and visible two-cornered combat, Heaven versus Hell in a strictly Judeo-Christian dichotomy. Nice, simple, clean, easily understood, and everyone knew where they were.
But in the early six hundreds, it had become clear to observers of the human condition that something unplanned and unlooked for was happening down there.
And it centred on Arabia.
"There's a random factor somewhere" said the Metatron, as he briefed Aziraphile. "Forget your second-hand scroll business in Constantinople, go and look. Find out."
THERE'S A RANDOM FACTOR SOMEWHERE, CROWLEY. I DON'T KNOW, JUST WHEN WE'RE SORTING OUT ALL THE LOOSE ENDS AND GETTING THINGS NEAT AND TIDY FOR THE ARMAGEDDON… GO AND FIND OUT, WILL YOU? ALL WE KNOW IS, IT'S IN ARABIA.
Reluctantly, Crowley had gone to Arabia, which if he had his way would be not only Godforsaken but Demonforsaken. He was all in favour of staying clemently warm while he worked, which explained why his visits to Scandinavia had been few and far between. (He had once been suckered by an old shaman called Ilmarinen to partner an apprentice shaman called Lemmenkainen to the dark and desperate and above all cold Lake of Tuonela, with its guardian swan-maiden. Talk about a Swan Lake where one buffet from a swan's wing could do a lot more damage than a mere broken arm…)
But you could have too much warm. The Arabian Peninsular, in the early 600's, in summer, could have had denizens of Hell begging them to turn the heating down, it was too high. In fact it did – one specific denizen of Hell was still uncomfortably hot, even in flowing desert-robes. No wonder even the Romans had taken one look, and apart from occasional necessary pacification, had left the place well alone… well, they had to take the upper bit so that Europe and Africa remained connected by land. And they spread out down the sides a bit where the weather's cooler, so as to secure the sea passages to India and beyond. But generally, like Alexander before them, they thought of it as an overheated camel's armpit of a country that was of no conceivable value to anybody anywhere and they left it well alone.
The Byzantines keep a couple of small garrisons here and extract tribute from the Arabs. I remember they get some sort of petroleum oil from here that occurs in natural black springs. An essential ingredient of their Greek Fire bombs, apparently. But that's all the country's got: sand, some bloody inflammable oil that's otherwise useless to anybody, and blastfurnace heat.
So what's brewing under these wide open skies?
Crowley had tagged onto a caravan, after persuading the Tuaregs not to sacrifice the wanderer in the desert as a gift to a particularly vicious Moon Goddess. The gibbering Arabs had realised a man who can call a djinn at will is the sort of man you keep happy.(8)
They had been persuaded, and had escorted him to Mecca, one of the two great cities of Arabia. Here, talk in the souk had been of a mad prophet who was claiming to channel the word of a God called Allah. The sophisticated and cosmopolitan inhabitants of Mecca had of course driven him out of town, lest his ranting provoked the dread Moon Goddess, the three-part Gharaniq who could drive men to death and insanity and truly demoniac nightmare.(9)
Apparently, those hicks and rednecks over in Medina had taken this Prophet in and were tending to believe him, gullible bumpkins, but you know what they're like in Medina, squire. And the worst of it is, he's raising fanatical fighters to attack our bloody caravans and capture their goods, isn't he!
It hadn't taken long before Crowley realised the Prophet was the disturbance. Summoned to the Cave of Hera to witness the growing Holy Book, the life's work of the Prophet, Crowley had been told that this was a high honour. And one that would remain with him for the rest of his life.
Crowley had set about locating, earning the trust of, and tagging on with this Prophet, sensing the centre of the disturbance was near him. He had ridden with the Prophet on the raiding expeditions that he assured his followers were necessary to finance the Work. He had been impressed with the way he prevented un-necessary bloodshed, such as the murder or torture of captured enemies or the rape of their women – this was not the cultural norm in the Arabia of those times. Indeed, the Prophet quite often talked his prisoners round into joining his growing band of followers, using what Crowley recognised belatedly was a Nephilim-level of charisma and presence.
Crowley had even been a guest at the Prophet's home, listening to Recitations of the written work so far, noting the genuine warmth and happiness that existed between the Prophet and his wife, who must have been a good twenty years older. Deciding the man was fundamentally more good than evil, Crowley listened, non-committed, to the claim that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him in person and dictated the recitals to which he, Mohammed, was merely the scribe.
"My friend, is it not the case that Allah set the Jews aside as the first people of the Book, chosen to demonstrate His love and justice in the world and to be a shining light to the infidel, that the infidel learn by example and become as they?
"But the Jews failed. And Allah thought. And through the Prophet Jesus and His mother, he made a new covenant, that the Christians be the second people of the Book, whose lives are chosen to demonstrate His love and justice in the world and to be a shining light to the infidel, that the infidel learn by example and become as they?
"But look around you. There is a Patriarch in Constantinople presiding over a church which is a corrupt whitened sepulchre, a mere echo of a corrupt Emperor and Court.. There is a Pope in Rome whose reach is growing wider, but making only slow headway among the infidel and the heathen of Europe. The Christians too have failed Allah.
"Now Allah, the most merciful and the most compassionate, is calling His faithful to become the third and final People of the Book. Through the Angel Gabriel, He is reciting the Book for my poor fingers to transcribe. I have fought it, I have wished for the burden to be taken away from me, but I decided I must be Moslem, I must submit entirely to the will of Allah and allow him to work through me as His last and greatest Prophet!"
The Prophet's eyes settled approvingly on Crowley.
"Lucky for you, my friend, that you are present and alive on this day, to witness the revelation of Allah to his people!"
Crowley reported this diligently back to Hell, along with his suspicion that Heaven was behind this. He almost added that in his experience, Archangels were haughty bone-idle buggers who needed a good kick up the wing-roots before they'd condescend to have anything much to do with the human race - then realised, just in time, that Lucifer was (strictly speaking) still an Archangel Of The Presence who would not be pleased with such candour. He substituted this with archangels generally have little to do with direct manifestations unto humanity, having earnt by their exalted rank the ability and the right to delegate such action to lesser Angels as directed.
Hmmm. he thought. He read his own diplomatically-chosen words back to himself. "having earnt by their exalted rank both the ability and the right to delegate such action to lesser Angels as directed."
A suspicion formed.
"Aziraphile, you devious bastard!" he muttered to himself.
If Crowley, on his first visit to the Cave of Wisdom, expected to see his almost-old-friend materialise to dictate a religious book to Mohammed, then he was disappointed. He'd listened to the first few suras, and while he conceded Arabic was a great language for above-average poetry, the lines being recited didn't sound as if Aziraphile had written or even channelled them.
To his ears, it sounded as if Mohammed ibn'Abdullah, merchant and occasional bandit of Mecca, had read both the Jewish scripture and the Christian Holy Bible, and was carefully weaving selected stories together as the basis for a third religious narrative that would take over where the first two had failed. Crowley nodded at the shrewdness of this – from Day One, the Book of the Recitals would have a lineage and an authority derived from far older writings still, ones that were already reverenced by the known world's religious people.
But wherever it was coming from – and Hell had ordered him to make absolutely sure of this point – it certainly wasn't coming from Heaven. He, Crowley, had seen Old Testament prophets at work, fulminating and ranting, beards and eyes ablaze with righteousness, as scribes hurried to get their words on paper. Ezekiel, for instance, eyes swivelling in their sockets after a diet of desert cacti and mushrooms. Or old Jeremiah proclaiming woe and dismay upon Israel, in the slightly triumphant voice of one who really wants to say I told you so! But you wouldn't listen, would you?
Crowley had even hidden discreetly at the back, when ordered to report back, as a matter of drop-everything-else prior urgency, on the preaching of a man called Jesus. He'd watched Joshua binYoussef deliver his wisdom in voices ranging from friendly ease, through exasperation, right across to thundering anger. He'd seen divine inspiration at work there, as well as the hand of the Metatron. And a sense of humour, too, that was notoriously lacking in the divine: Jesus had registered his presence at one of his public appearances, and had grinned and winked at him, in an almost accepting sort of way. Glad to see you attended, Crowley. Keep turning up and you might learn something.
But all he saw here was Mohammed, going strangely still and quiet, saying "it is time again, friends", nominating close associates to ride with him and bear witness, and then the trek up to the Cave. Mohammed would go into what his human witnesses would call an "ecstacy", jerk and thrash a little, and then his head would slump. He would rouse and say "Behold! The most Holy Angel is present! Do you not see him?" , to which his companions would shout joyous assent, looking at the room made in the cave for a seventh.
Crowley would look, expecting to see a slightly consternated Aziraphile, recognising him, Crowley, and knowing he'd been rumbled. . But he saw nothing. Not a glimmer of divine light, nor the robes of a mighty golden Archangel.
So wherever it's coming from, it's not coming from Heaven, Crowley thought. And that state of ecstacy… I'm sorry to be the party-pooper, but that looked damn like frontal-lobe epilepsy to me(10). So this is amazing, this is a sublime human achievement, but I'm very sorry, it isn't a divine revelation. But it's incredible that it's coming out of this chap's head, all the same. And does it matter where it came from, so long as it's basically accepted by people as a valid religion?
Crowley also wondered about the sort of mind-set that retreated to a cave in the desert as a place to meditate, have visions, and issue writings and instructions that had the power to change the world. Would this be a recurring default feature of the new world religion?
He shrugged, and rode back to his own house in Mecca.
He caught up with Aziraphile at a cantina in Mecca. They agreed to freely trade all they knew about the new religion and the key players within it. Aziraphile freely admitted it was worrying Heaven and they were keeping an Eye on developments.
"So it isn't your lot." Crowley conceded. "I've seen that beyond all possible doubt. And it isn't my lot either. They're just as puzzled."
"Perhaps the epilepsy is down to us" Aziraphile admitted. "It's one of those things we bless a person with when their natural psychic or spiritual abilities get too near the truth. Like that Irish lad, St Malachi. When his visions got too close for comfort, we steered him to the poteen still and reminded him of First Timothy, Chapter Five, Verse Twenty-Three." (11)
"It was good enough for Noah!" Crowley said, remembering.
"How do you think they make this arak, anyway?"
"Well, they start with fermented dates…" Aziraphile said, doubtfully.
"Look, cards on the table time. Ideally, both our sides want this Islam thing stopped. It's just too much of a wild card, when we've almost got it down to a straightforward face-off between Heaven and Hell. We've shut down most of the European pantheon operations, for one thing. The only holdout is the Nordic one, and that'll come in time."
"But it is impeccably Judeo-Christian in its origins and source material." Crowley objected. "It honours the Prophets, pays homage to Jesus's Mum, and they even want everyone to eat and drink according to kosher law."
"Halal." the angel corrected him. Crowley shrugged.
"In its essentials, angel, it's another sort of reform Judaism that gives Christianity a respectful nod. You can't find anything here to object to, very much, that Jews and Christians don't already believe in. And it occurs to me that it's too far advanced to suppress, now. And what were the Arabs doing otherwise? Worshipping a psychotic Moon Goddess and ripping human sacrifices to shreds to appease her. You said it yourself that some sort of better religion could only be an advance! So the only other alternative we've got is to…"
Aziraphile nodded.
"Steer it, you mean? Incorporate it into the Ineffable Plan?"
"Well, it's one they've come up with all on their own without any advice or guidance from us in any way. So it's bound to be popular. What if you and I just… nudge it… every now and again…"
"We'll have to take guidance" Aziraphile mused. "But I don't think wither of our sides has thought of doing it your way. Now if I get in there and emphasise the qualities of peace, and wisdom, and pacifism, and submission before God…."
"And I tell them the odd jihad here and there keeps the swords ready for war…"
They reached, simultaneously, for the Arak flask.
Permission to shape and form the new Islamic religion was not long in coming. With little else to do in a desert, Crowley rode alongside the Prophet, discussing political and theological ideas, and generally being Crowley at his most persuasive. Crowley had fought in both the Battle of Medina and the Battle of the Trench, in which non-Muslim Arabs had sought to destroy the dangerous new religion. He had been seen to scatter his foe in all directions(12), and this had led him to the Prophet's inner circle.
Now, after their triumphant conquest of Mecca, he and he mysterious half-Greek Aleksandr had been left alone with the half-written Recitation, the Prophet having lapsed into a longer still silence than usual. Crowley eyed Aleksandr thoughtfully. The Greek was in his middle forties, totally bald, and powerfully built, although running to fat.
He had a disconcertingly feminine sensual mouth, a great eagle's beak of a nose, and two of the deepest-set, most penetrating eyes Crowley had ever seen. Crowley knew he'd seen that face before and undoubtedly would again. He knew he was in the presence of one of his distant grand-sons, their demonic blood coming down the line from Bellana and the warlord Kro'Li.
He was fairly sure Aleksandr had no knowledge of who he was, but decided it would not be wise to explore this. Leave well alone!
And he had a mission to fulfil. Hastur and Ligur had delivered it. In their usual charmless style, they had communicated to him that a surefire way to hobble this new Islamic faith would be to ensure a schism or two happened fairly quickly after it began. This had nobbled Christianity, although not fatally, unfortunately. And the Christians had been so bloody profligate with their holy books that it took no time at all to get twenty or thirty competing heresies off the ground, more intent on fighting each other than on spreading the Word. With so may variant Gospels this was a dead cert.
So what you got to do, Crowley, right, is get a few variant Korans up and running. Tamper with the scriptures so that more than one is in existence. Introduce doubt. Get 'em fighting among themselves. Right? Oh, and if you should fail…
Crowley was unsure how to do this. The Recitals were kept under firm lock and key when completed. Copies were few, Mohammed being determined to avoid the error of the Christians. He had a few ideas, but this meant getting past Aleksandr. And would his imitation of the Prophet's flowing Arabic script be good enough, so that on wakening, he would look in perplexity at the words, but announce them as his, as who else could have written them?
Aziraphile had failed in a bid to imitate Gabriel: the Prophet, on seeing a second Angel in the Cave, one over and above the Angel provided by the inside of his own head, had screamed that Shaitan was trying to invade the process! You are not of Allah, therefore you must be of Shaitan! Begone, foul demon !
Aziraphile had looked disgustedly over to where a real manifestation of Hell was undetectably sitting and grinning at him, said "Well. I say!" in a peeved voice, then winked out.
So it had to be down to him now…
Crowley watched a fly, as it pecked and leapt around the writing table. Surely… Arabic depended on dots and superscripted iotas, did it not. Perhaps I can change the meaning of a line already written…
Crowley crept into the fly's mind, trying not to shudder at the basic "uggh!" of it, and persuaded its tiny insect mind to do as it was told.
Now just walk through this patch of spilt ink… thank you. Take wing. Hover above the page. Ah. I see it now. Juust land here, with four feet, and this letterscript becomes "Al'Huzat", an aspect of the Moon Goddess…. And two more inky little dots here turns another word into her sister, Al'Lat…
Through the compound eyes of the fly, Crowley glimpsed the finger and thumb closing. He leapt back to his own body just in time. Aleksandr the half-Greek flicked the crushed fly away and said
"Very clever, oh my many-times great grandsire."
There was a cold, silent, moment of eternity in the cave.
"How did you know?" Crowley asked, eventually.
"It is given to me to recognise demons." he said, shrugging. "And so much easier to recognise the demon who passed his seed into my family thousand upon thousand of years ago. I hail thee, longfather."
Crowley looked into the deep dark eyes of the half-Arab, half-Greek. Kro-li to the life.
Crowley decided to come clean.
"I was tasked with altering the sence of a Recital or two. Just enough that there may be true doubt among the Faithful as to its meaning. And argument. And schism."
Aleksandr Kroulious looked back at his long-time great-grandfather. Then, after an eternity of not speaking, he said
"That is my task also. From the Sekretariat in Constantinople. The Emperor is an effete fool who eats and slurps and whores. The Patriarch is incompetent and complacent. Both do not take this new religion seriously. But it has the fire to sweep the Empire away with the dirt of history. Imagine the Visigoths, who threw down the Western Empire, with a fanatical religion? They would not have stopped at Rome. But our goals are the same. Let me suggest a whole new verse to the current sura:"
And Crowley's great to the many times great-grandson took up a pen. And he imitated the hand of the Prophet. And he wrote
Have ye thought upon Al-Lat and Al-'Uzzá
and Manāt, the third, the other?
These are the exalted gharāniq, whose intercession is hoped for.
"Clever" said Crowley. "he's going to wake up, he'll be a little bit confused, but he'll have to admit that as it's in his own writing, he must have put it there. After all, who else would dare?"
"A demon sent from Shaitan, aided by a Byzantine spy?" asked Aleksandr, rhetorically. "They will remove it, of course, An invocation to the old Goddess will be spotted as un-Koranic straight away. Besides, it offers hope to the priesthood of the Goddess, that the new religion will allow them to carry on as before. Mohammed will not allow that. No doubt he will cross it out and substitute another line, but this will be the first time ever. It will allow doubt to enter at the truth of the whole."
They shook hands.
"It was good to meet you, longfather. You will be returning to the Place of Darkness soon, with your job complete?"
Crowley shook his head.
"I have to see it out here first." he said. "And report back."
Hr looked down at the unconscious Mohammed. He was a man Crowley could like and respect. Even if he was a lot more good than evil.
Mohammed Ibn'Abdoullah (pbuh) died in 632 AD. He had succeeded in uniting the whole of the Arabian peninsula under the new Islamic religion. He survived what later came to be called "The Satanic Verses" without too much trouble. It was generally assumed that in writing an invocation to the Moon Goddess, the Prophet had had a rare off day, and lines more in keeping with the spirit of the whole, condemning women in general and the goddess in particular, were substituted. But people wonder about it to this day…
Despite the efforts of Byzantine double agents like Aleksandr Kroulious, Islam then ravaged through the Eastern Empire like the end of the world, taking North Africa and the Middle East for its own and extending far to the East, into Persia and India. The new religion then took hold in Iberia, making sure Spain and Lusitania were ever lost to the Roman Empire. And giving it a European footing that threatened France and England. The French hero Roland rallied his country and set about forcing the Moors back over the Pyrenees. It was also not lost on Western Christians that the Holy Land had been taken by the heathen Saracen…
And schism, despite Mohammed's best efforts, happened. Within years of his death, Islam was divided into the Sunni and the Shi'a. For the prophet had not expected to die so quickly and the order of succession had not been sorted out to everyone's satisfaction.
And there was also the hidden Islam. The secret, esoteric, teachings of the Sufi and the Ba'Hai. From the Sufi would come the Hashishim, the Order of Assassins….
And for various reasons, Aziraphile and Crowley received due recognition of their seeking to steer the course of Islam, be it demerit or commendation.
And sometime in the 1980's, Crowley was forced to attend one of those stuffy literary dinners and awards nights where various pompous bores and pretentious luvvies slap each other on the back, use the world "darling" a lot, and get really head-up-arse about literary theory.
Crowley relieved the tedium by chatting to a young Anglo-Indian author called Salman Rushdie. What was said has not been disclosed, but subsequent events earned Crowley another Depreciation.
AND IN THE NEXT BEWILDERING INSTALMENT:
Taking tea with the Borgias, an everyday Italian family, in their classy Roman pallazio. Aziraphile and Crowley get to see Rome again and have fun with the crazy affable laugh-a-minute Italian man of honour and discretion who is currently Pope. Coming soon, always assuming I haven't been fatwa'd.
(1) The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire remains a historical battlefield and controversy. In 1986, an eminent historian catalogued 210 different theories advanced to explain how once-mighty Rome fell. This now included one event that had been hitherto overlooked by the historical profession, as previously every commentator from Gibbon onwards had taken it as axiomatic that the advent and supremacy of a palpably superior and correct religion (ie, ours) had been a Good Thing, full stop. The societal changes and disruption and resentment caused by Rome's adoption of Christianity and rejection of its old gods played a major part in the Empire's collapse. Indirectly, Aziraphile brought about the Decline and Fall of Rome.
(2) Odoacer, the Visigoth general who rebelled from Roman Army service and overthrew the last Western emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476AD, took over a more-or-less fully functioning Rome and installed himself and his heirs as its ruling Patricians….
(3) This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper… poet T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men.
(4) Although the careers of St Ignatius Loyola or St Francis Xavier might not bear witness if examined closely… the great fighting warrior saints of the Counter Reformation were both mercenary condottieri before hearing the Call and had at least condoned plundering, rape, cruelty, yet c, among their men. Then again, the same might be said for those Crusader leaders who, inconveniently for Heaven, had been given a free pass to Paradise by assorted Popes despite their greed and ruthlessness. King William of Orange got into heaven too – he won the Calvinist lottery of predispensation – and Oliver Cromwell made it, despite what he did in Ireland. Belisarius, Vespasian and other great and generally restrained Roman generals, alas, went to Hell because they had opted for paganism. Things can get a bit blurry in the afterlife.
(5) TheTaìn Bo Cuilhagne, the part of the Irish mythos dealing with a long-ago war where Ulster set itself apart from the rest of the Kingdoms of Ireland and much bloodshed and sorrow followed on. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it…
(6) Urglefloggah, the Gatekeeper of Hell, contemptuously dismisses the First Circle as "a bleedin' holiday camp… talk about bein' soft on the buggers… bleedin' soft option, innit!"
(7) Although many others chose to renounce their old Gods and remain in the world, following a different sort of Lords and Ladies. One day, Crowley and Aziraphile would be tasked with faerie-hunting, just to tidy things up a little.
(8) The djinn, or genie, is the terrible spirit of the deep desert. After researching the habits of the natives with regard, for eg, to skinning hapless prisoners alive in homage to the moon Goddess, Crowley had asked for an assistant demon, (one of inhuman aspect), to assist in terrorising the natives. They had rehearsed a routine where Crowley, threatened with his life, summoned up his terrible djinn, allowed it to loom and threaten for a while, then, at Crowley's command could be banished to a…. small portable thing…. Crowley had compromised with an oil-lamp. Size is optional for demons.
(9) She sounds oddly like the CelticMorrigan, who also came as three-in –one, and whose alternates, Macha and Badhbh, were goddesses of fear and nightmare and insanity . The Gharaniqwas apparently dominant Goddess in Arabia prior to Islam and she also had three faces – Al'Lat, Al'HuzarandManat. Gharaniq is an Arabic word meaning a group of birds – it has variable associations to cranes, eagles, and to crows and ravens – the tutelary birds of the Morrigan.
(10) This has seriously been advanced as a reason for Mohammed's visions and the voices in his head that later cohered as a major – and internally consistent – work of religious writing.
(11) I Tim. 5:23:- Drink not only water, but take also a little wine for thy stomach's sake. Crowley would observe that technically, this makes the entire Methodist Church heretical.
(12) Crowley had not really needed a sword. He had just employed his intrinsic demonic nature to render the enemy's horses and camels terrified and unrideable. Any human coming near him with a sword had received a grin and the full force of his unshielded demonian eyes. This had earnt him a reputation as a determined fighter in the cause of Islam.
