Seanfram Manor

VIII

Which comes first is a subject of theology. God made the heavens and the earth, but one of them was made first. If the heavens came first, good is preeminent. Good was the first clear form of existence. But earth existed before it was illuminated. So, on earth, there was at least a time before good. It depends on where you start to tell history. The absence of good does not evil make, but it left earth vulnerable to the problem of evil, those who tell history starting from earth's darkness state. The tree of knowledge contained the knowledge of good and evil, both existed before man and woman ate its fruit, the first violation of the law, these specimens were good until they disobeyed, and good is unbreakable, if good is original evil cannot be explained but with an agent. In The Inception, this agent is a serpent, but later books reminisce of a source of evil that predates the creation of humankind. Revelation names it Sathanas. An entity that leads away from the path of good. Sathanas was an angel victim of its pride, and for that it was cast out of heaven. The angel did not fall, for that is a fabrication of Milton. This idea need not be dismissed, as it suggests something important about the obscure. The fallen angel characterizes evil as a failed good. Every manifestation of evil has its spark of light within it. There is never complete darkness.

How can one fear something that does not exist? Something is feared when it is unknown. Another question. How can one know something that does not exist? To stop fearing the unknown, it must be known. This sort of knowledge can only be explored through anti-intellectual means. Some things do not exist - there is a contradiction there. How can something be a thing and not exist? Phenomenology teaches that existence is not exclusively physical nor temporal. An idea cannot not exist, it pleas, it begs, it cries out in rage to be, to be born. The idea of something potentially frightening cannot be stillborn. If the unknown known thing is to be studied, the means to know it must be invented. Hence the pagan studies on ghosts and other research of the supernatural or paranormal. But the Church practices the protosciences, such as alchemy and the study of those goblins. When King Azar forbade religious practice in Deneb, the books of alchemy from the times of the Holy Roman Empire that had been zealously kept secret were made public, which infuriated the Church. The texts were in Latin, therefore the Denebian population could not read them. But everyone was free to try.

Two men walked, one wrapped in a coat and a cape, the other wore a long tunic, at night in the forest. They were leaving Deneb. The first one had long black hair that hung over his ears. The other one had a large forehead but was not at all bald. Selenium was an intrepid explorer who was interested, following the steps of Humboldt, in the taxonomy of his natural surroundings, and he financed his passion by working several construction jobs and even serving as a guard in dangerous boroughs. At night, free of burden, he felt the closest to nature, and he would perform personal rituals to liberate his spirit such as speaking with animals and planting the seeds of fallen fruit. During nights of full moon, he would go to the nearest body of water, step in it and pose in silence, for hours under the moonlight, completely nude. Tungsten was a demonologist. The once unlucky locksmith translated the sacred Roman books when they became widely available, and the passages on shadowy beings caught his interest. The scriptures offered minimal but very valuable information, and after he acquired a manual on demon sighting from a passing merchant he was convinced that he had found his new occupation. He bought grimoires from travelers and compiled them into a volume, he added notes from field discoveries until he ran out of space, then he bought parchment to add original writings to it until he became an expert on the discipline and dedicated full-time to hunting goblins. The books had taught him that small creatures were the most that he would work with as a field worker, but he was curious about whether he would encounter a real Sathanas. Dark spirits were more likely to be found near religious edifices, none of which remained active, every house of prayer had been emptied and repurposed into either a workshop or a museum of the royal family. In his eight years of demon hunting, he had never heard of a successful invocation attempt, therefore the methods of the esoterics were not reliable, demons are not summoned, they just appear. But that hypothesis had yet to be proved, too. All he had to believe in it was an anecdote from a villager he met in Songan, which included the only credible description of Sathanas that he knew of. It goes like this.

It was afternoon. The sky was painted in pink hues by the setting sun. The father was farming, the mother was picking up dry clothes outside. The child sat in a chair, observing the fire cracking underneath the cauldron, the flames were the brightest light in the house, barely any sunlight entered through the front windows. Psst. A voice loudly said "psst", causing him to turn around quickly and then look back at the fire underneath the cauldron, the steam that escaped it, the brew that boiled inside. Psst, the same voice said, causing him to turn around slowly this time, he examined his entire field of view from left to right, but the house was just as dark and just as quiet. Psst, he heard again but from afar, so he thought that it was going away and he needed not worry further. The next Psst was a loud hiss, and the child sensed that it was calling him from the door, no, from outside. He stood up, unsure. Since his mother was outside, it could have been her all along. He stepped outside without thinking. He was there. In absolute silence, taller than any man he had ever seen, in no small part due to his hair, it was long and raised as if it grew upwards. The color of his skin contrasted delicately with the pink sky, it was bright red. He wore peasant clothes of the same color. He stared at his face for one second, he could not make out an expression of anger or sadness or joy or mischief, it was a mixture, and his eyes were vermillion too, with no visible pupils. He was a man. The mother found the child frozen and unable to articulate a sound, she wailed and called for help, but a neighbor was the only one to come, they did not know whether to shake the child or leave him be, she tried to breathe and calm down but could not help herself from screaming questions like what happened, where were you, how are you, how do you feel at her son, whose only response had been to urinate in his trousers. Once she had collected herself, she noticed that he was able to lock eyes with her and follow her with his gaze, it was the beginning of regaining movement. She placed her hands on his forehead, his face, his chest, his abdomen, she opened his mouth and examined his teeth. The child was agitated but safe. The neighbor did not help in the slightest, but he listened to the full account of the incident that the child gave. He also reported a stark change in attitude in the boy, he used to be disobedient, lie, mix the crops of the farmers' boxes, steal from the neighbors' harvest, answer back at the parents and bite other children he played with, now he was attentive, honest, careful, and he helped tidy the house.

"That story sounds like a tale to scare children," said Selenium teasingly.

"It might be," Tungsten grumbled. "But I believe it over the best empirical evidence available."

"Even that of the Codex Gigas?"

"He looks like a frog there."

The most realistic evidence in the archeological record of the likeness of the Sathanas is registered in the most complete theological illuminated manuscript in the world, the Codex Gigas, Tungsten's unrealizable dream was to see it in person, he had read bootleg pocket copies and the contents were, disappointingly, the Gospels, historiographical accounts of the Jewish people and medical treatises, the vendors always insisted that the last chapters were missing and he was convinced that those contained the truly important information that gave the Codex its name, it would be very different to slide his hands across the ninety-two-centimeter long cover and confirm which books were part of the original manuscript and just maybe find the unpublished pages with the true secrets of the essence of evil and, in contrast, good, more real than any of the fantasies of the esoterics and their childish games, but the authentic copy was in a monastery crossing the sea.

"Wait," Selenium held up a finger, "I can see something. I can see a woman...purple dress...young woman, purple dress, long, black hair...strong lips and beautiful dark skin..."

"Is she not the daughter of Ytterbium?"

"She...she is! She is...sleeping."

"Sleeping? Why would you see that she is sleeping?"

"And she is headed to where we are at this moment." Selenium looked at his stoic companion and he bit his lip to refrain from laughing. "Do not interrupt me."

Tungsten shook his head.

"And I can detect the number thirteen. No relation to the axiological outcome of her future."

"Sleeping is what I should be doing at this moment. Let us accelerate the pace so we can soon get to the lodge."

They both went silent and the atmosphere of the night took the baton, conducting the cues of the winds, the pizzicato of the footsteps, the rhythm of fidgety leaves, the string arrangements performed by crickets, the choir of amphibians, and the growl of a small creature hidden in a bush accompanying the melody of the forest.