THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

A Preface to Hagar’s Circle

 Bill Wagner

Straight words seem crooked. Lao Tse
 Learn to recognize what you are looking at and what is hidden will become apparent. CHIASMUS I

g MULTIPLYing/MULTIPLYing

 f YHVH has HEARd your AFFLICTion

Now Sarai, (the) woman of Abram (had) not born any (children for him).
But she had a servant girl; an Egyptianess: her name (was) Hagar.

“Abram” is a simple Hebrew construction of the roots AB (father) and RM (aurochs [reem]: wild bull). In keeping with his destiny to be the sire of a multitude of goyim (nations): BullFather. “Sarai” is a sobriquet, from SR-, the direction or oversight of affairs; “executrix” would be one way of putting it. The same term, four chapters before this, is translated as “princes” (who were executives or administrators of the ruler, Pharaoh).

These perhaps come as surprises, but this is no good reason to dismiss them; sometimes one must first clear the ground of what occupies it before building can begin.

SaraH did obey AbraHam, calling him adoni (“my lord;” Gen.18:12). But this was after their names (and thus identities) were changed. In this first part of the story of Hagar (and later, where she is concerned), Sarai is clearly “calling the shots.” Even back in Egypt Abram had been obliged to ask her, as a favor (“Say – won’t you?”) that she present herself there as his sister (or friend), rather than telling her to do so. Details like these are one doorway into the interior of the deceptively “simple” accounts scripture presents.

“Hagar” (HGR) has disappeared from Hebrew, surviving only in recombinant form (GRH); in Arabic (like Coptic and Aramaic, a “sister language” of Hebrew), Hagar is Hejireh -- “Exodus.”

An Exodus is a flight; into the wilderness; to escape affliction; undertaken in haste; culminating in an encounter with an angel. Not surprisingly, her life illustrates this in every one of its details. Hagar is an illustration in practice of the meaning of her name -- just as Sarai (executrix) oversees affairs and bosses her around, and Abram (BullFather) fathers her son. Names in scripture (among other things) reflect destinies and explain functions. (This is one of many ways in which, as one wag has observed, “Scripture is full of itself”).

Having introduced the cast of characters, we could go on to the next verse. But we have begun in the middle of an ongoing drama, of which this is an episode -- and that out of context.

We “know” to some extent, from having read the Bible, who Abram and Sarai are -- their origin and doings, conversations and so on are recounted in it. But Hagar appears to have come into it out of nowhere to take up what is really quite a lot of space and time, given the almost algebraic compression with which scripture is written. Either she or something of which she is emblematic is clearly important (or both).

Just as history is made “behind the scenes,” with visible results the outcome of the play of hidden forces interacting, so is scripture, in some of the many “levels” on which it communicates to those able, through study, to follow it. (Those who are able to follow a fugue by Bach with some measure of comprehension of what is happening and when will have a valuable intimation of how this works).

Abram, for an example, is blessed by “Melchizadek,” a mysterious figure who is both (Gen.14:18-19) a King and a Priest. He, like Hagar, appears to have just “come out of nowhere,” only to disappear again, leaving more questions behind him than answers.

Scripture, it will (or, should) have been noticed, uses “puns” or assonances, in Hebrew, to establish connections between words (i.e., concepts). It does this consistently. In one familiar example of this, it is careful to point out that the man called the name of his woman “Eve” because she was the mother of all living (ones). This is a pun, in Hebrew (if not one of its “better” ones). That these are puns makes such connections very easily and naturally memorable -- so that they can be “mined” for meaning by pondering them while about one’s daily tasks.

In the case of Melchizadek (“Righteous King”), the addition of aleph to the spelling of his name (almost inaudible in speaking) makes him “Melechizadek” -- “Righteous Angel” or “Angel of Righteousness.” And now it becomes comprehensible. For, as we know, angels are fully capable of assuming human form and function. Those who “fell” (arguably, a third of them) fathered hybrid humanoids on terrestrial women (a violation of the “Kind after [its own] Kind” law intrinsic to Creation), which provoked the deluge. Several of them ate a meal with Abraham, and so on. That an un-fallen angel of God would be both a King and a Priest of God Most High on earth would only be natural, given who he was to begin with. And since he were here for some reason (possibly “minding the place” for Abram until his descendants could take actual possession of it), the people with whom he was dealing would never have known he was an angel, even, unless he had revealed this to them (Hebrews 13:2).

The immediate background of the story of Hagar, the affair of (Abram and) Sarai in Egypt, begins a long “dysfunctional rela­tionship” between Israel {such as it is at this point) and the Egyptians. Over time in this, who started it comes to be im­material, as revenge elicits revenge in turn. And not sense­lessly or at random either, but in the patterns of elegant symmetry which characterize the events in, and organization of scripture.

On the crudest of several levels, it begins when Pharaoh takes the sister-spouse of Abram, Sarai. On the principle of an eye for an eye, Abram will thus come to take the sister-spouse of Pharaoh, Hagar. (Which is what he does, and who she is).

But nothing, apparently, can just be simple: Sarai ups the ante by taking Hagar with her as a slave girl. In consequence of Hagar’s having been (as repayment) sold into slavery by her own brother, Joseph, in turn, will come to be sold into slavery by his own brothers, ending up in Egypt (and reversing the direction of Hagar’s leaving Egypt in similar bondage).

Through recognizing reciprocity as the basis on which these mat­ters proceed, further aspects of them open into view in their significance. It thus only makes sense that Joseph, in turn, reduces all of Egypt (except for its ruling/sacerdotal stratum) to slavery. Following suit, the Egyptians repay the favor by reducing all of Israel (Moses correspondingly excepted) to identical slavery. (This is reciprocity with a vengeance!).

Nor is this the end of the matter, by any means. But to follow it adequately, it will be necessary to abandon the pose of (feigned) superiority to the appeal of “sex and violence” (while avidly consuming it at second hand as “entertainment”). The story of Hagar in particular abounds with what Idries Shah called “impacts” addressed to various aspects of human nature; to study these while, at the same time, pretending that one is not “human” is a waste of their potential value. Life is not really all that complicated -- it just only works the way it works.

By analogy, it is an absurdity to concern oneself solely with the upper stories of a house (“spirituality”) which both needs and has a foundation (“carnality”). Nature -- within which we exist -- is the design of the Creator. And any time you fight nature, nature wins.

Reduced to melodrama (which is the way people generally “take it”): secretly furious at her husband for his having pimped her to Pharaoh, the sister-spouse of Abram demands the sister-spouse of Pharaoh in exchange -- tit for tat. (Hell hath no fury like an angry woman).

Obliged to come up with some way of remedying her barrenness, she gives Hagar to Abram as her surrogate -- the first in a long line of these to come (Ruth being one example). Being a woman though, she of course changes her mind; seeing Abram and Hagar happy together, all the old resentments come flooding back. So, from jealousy, she takes it out on Hagar -- blaming her and Abram for an outcome she herself has engineered in the first place. Very woman-like. (All the old cliches are true. That's why they're cliches).

With this kind of “bad karma” impending, then, it comes as no surprise that when Joseph comes to pay for his fore-mother's “sins,” Potiphar's wife (another sexually frustrated angry woman) takes it out on him, as Sarai had on Hagar.

Joseph, as the wheel of fortune turns, takes the finest woman (Arsenath) Egypt has to offer (sex) and, having reduced Egypt to slavery, sets up taskmasters over the Egyptians to afflict them (violence). Naturally, then, by the time the second act opens, the Egyptian taskmasters are afflicting the Israelites (violence) and having a field day with their Israelite slave girls (sex) -- as a result of which, Israel leaves Egypt “a mixed multitude.”

As far as intricacy and elaboration of corresponding details go, this is still only the tip of the structural iceberg: much more is “there” in it to be found. Hagar's two Exodi, for example, are not unrelated to Jacob's (from Esau and from Laban), David's (from Saul and from Absalom) and others (Moses', e.g. -- first from the police, then from the army, making him, as it were, the patron saint of criminals and enemies of the state).

Dinah was, in Egypt, the widow of her consort, Shechem, who had been murdered, treacherously, by her maternal brothers Simeon and Levi. There, she was in need of a husband, and her brother Joseph was in a position to secure a fine one for her, to everyone's advantage and satisfaction (later, it would not have been considered expedient to make much, if anything, of this -- or even to mention it).

Actually, Joseph was obligated to do so through his having inherited one “portion” above his brothers from Jacob. The Hebrew word (unusually) translated “portion” here is shechem -- the name of both Dinah's murdered consort and of the city he ruled (which Joseph later receives as well, as later events show). (An echo of this returns with the Crusaders from the Middle East as the scapular [“shoulder blade”] in medieval Roman Catholicism -- far from the only echo of the matters we are, and will be, considering).

Dinah, then -- the woman who had been “one flesh” with Shechem – is settled on an Egyptian nobleman, clearing the estate (Shechem) of obligations for Joseph to come into possession of it (the city of Shechem – the role of which, in the early history of Israel in Canaan, is important).

Levi, Dinah's younger (and therefore less responsible) brother comes to atone for the murder of Shechem via his descendants' assuming the priesthood -- to which was due the shoulder (shechem) portion (and being denied inheritance of land thereby).

Simeon, her elder (and therefore more responsible) brother, in the person of his descendant(s), later reaps what he has sown in Numbers 25. Thus Zimri, prince of the Simeonites, is slain by Phinehas (the founder of an order of priesthood today considered inexpedient to even notice), in delayed but exact reciprocity. I.e., in the very hope of a promised covenant; in his moment of greatest vulnerability; with no suspicion that anything might be amiss; and for having dealt, in fact, with a zonah (Cozbi), as Simeon had (falsely) alleged that Shechem had done (with Dinah).

(Despite the Authorized Version's deliberate mistranslation, Shechem had humbled Dinah [i.e., bared her bottom]; exactly what Sarai later does to Hagar, incidentally), taking her both procreationally and recreationally [Bereshith Rabbah, ad loc.] - a standard nuptial act of possession anywhere in the ancient Mediterranean. Although arguments from silence are moot, it is noteworthy that Dinah does not object to this very strenuously -- if at all. (Compare in this regard Deuteronomy 21:10-14 and 22:28-29. This is the tip of yet another iceberg).

Obviously, there is a lot more to all this than simply “sex and violence,” however ingeniously crafted the account of it. Were there not, few would find scripture the source of lifelong fascin­ation and profound significance. Yet, and by the same token, with­out a rather detailed familiarity with the data it presents with such care (and the suspicion, at least, that these may be “speaking a different language,” or an ambivalent one), there is no real point to looking for additional dimensions of meaning in it. Details are not supplied in order for them to be ignored, or dismissed as not “the important part.” (What, for heaven's sake, is “the important part of an automobile which has hundreds of them -- quickly real­ized when one of them breaks or malfunctions?!).

So we indeed “know” to an extent who Abram and Sarai are from having read the Bible. Yet as far as what is really involved in their various doings, and the actual import of some of the words they spoke, we haven't a clue -- which is why the word “know” was put in quotation marks a few pages back. We sense intuitively that there are mysteries encoded in scripture but we obscure the linkage to their possible recognition by not paying even the simplest attention to it.

Take Abra(ha)m for an example. Because we know that he was to “be a blessing,” we paint our notion of what this must have (to our way of thinking) been, or involved, over the story itself -- a practice known as eisogesis -- as if it were a billboard. Because it is all too easy to imagine Abraham staging evangelism crusades, inspiring the Canaanites amongst which he lived to lead lives of moral decency and reverence for God, this is what we do. We don't even so much assume this as presume it. This is an example of, in the computer slanguage of a generation past, “GIGO” -- garbage in, garbage out.

According to the record, Abra(ha)m does no such thing as this. Ever. When he comes into rightful possession of hundreds (if not thousands) of them, as spoils of war by right of conquest, he categorically rejects the very idea of owning them with manifest contempt. He will not even be civil to their king, let alone add any of them to his retinue (household).

Note that this “attitude” is not only part and parcel of his blessing by Melchizadek, but scripturally a well founded one (Canaanites being the eponymous descendants of Canaan, whom Noah cursed to an inconceivably -- to us -- subhuman moral nature). Abra(ha)m was a “role model” all right, but not of “the brotherhood of man”.

Why are we going off in this into such tangents? For two reasons. One is to provoke some realization of our actual (versus imagined) condition: we have eyes, but we see not. And until we acknowledge and address this problem, we shall simply daydream on, in oblivion. The second is because there are two possible approaches to the problem of incomprehension: to multiply data, or to improve some of the defects in our handling of such of it as we have already. If these were as evident to us as they are to others, we would be well advanced in this effort by now -- we simply wouldn't stand being so dysfunctional in the way we think. Or assume that we think.

Thus, when we do come to genuine difficulties in scripture, we have almost no basis on which to come to grips with them; we can only overlook them (a procedure actively encouraged) or “rationalize them away” (generally, by what is called “theology”). Thus the very mysteries that we seek to come into awareness of remain hidden secrets, because the clues and beginnings of evidence trails which could lead us to them go unrecognized. Learning is a matter of detail -- line upon line; precept upon precept; here a little, there a little. (Note here that there were two pillars in Solomon's Temple). With attention, details combine spontaneously into mosaics, along lines of natural affinity: scripture explains itself. But although points of departure into this pursuit are coming into view, here and there, we must first grapple with coming into an authentic relation with the plain sense of the text -- no one wise builds a house upon the sands of opinion.

How, for one thing, could Abram and Sarai be both brother-and-sister and man-and-wife?

Descent, in the time of the patriarchs (and well beyond this) was reckoned from the mother -- not (although this is the pattern into which the data came eventually to he organized) paternally.

This does not necessarily imply “matriarchy” (at least as we imagine it -- the automatic “either/or” assumption is one way we cripple our comprehension) as “the alternative.”

What we take to be the great marital norm -- that a man leave his father and mother in order to cleave to his wife -- is the precise opposite of patriarchy: in which a man causes a girl to leave her parents in order to cleave to him or to his son.

Laban thus says, after he and his posse have caught up with Jacob (in effect), “And just where might you be going with MY daughters and with MY grandchildren?!” Which, by law, they were. Jacob himself had been free to leave any time he wished. But he had absconded with his wives and their children -- and whether they had come along of their own volition (as the record points out) or not was irrelevant. They were, in the stock phrase, not their own “heads;” Laban (their ranking male kinsman) was their head. They were Jacob's to have (in usus, to enjoy) but not to hold (in manus, as chattel property).

The record shows that, in practice, descent continued to be in the female line in Israel as late as the Monarchy. In which, if we go by conventional assumptions, we come to another impasse when (2 Sam.13) Tamar implores her (paternal) brother Amnon to first ask their father David for her (assuring him that he would surely give her to him), rather than simply taking her, as he would one of the servant girls.

These things are not so much hidden (occult) as simply not noticed, or incomprehensible from trying to force them into conformity with patterns alien to what they are expressions of.

Another such matter is that the Bloodline of the Promise runs, from Genesis 3:15 onward, in the female line -- and this notwith­standing that the various toldoth (“generations” lists; feminine plural, incidentally) are accounted from father to son.

Another conceptual roadblock arises in the “sister-spouse” union of Abram and Sarai (and the cousin-spouse unions of their des­cendants) involving “prohibited degrees” (Leviticus 18).

In the interim between Genesis and Leviticus, Israel had come out of Egypt “a mixed multitude.” Before, the overriding concern had been the preservation of the holy bloodline in an environment full of genetic garbage. Later, being of a mixed nature, it was to prevent the concentration of recessive traits through too-close breeding, debasing it still further.

The import of both is clearly the preservation of genetic quality. The apparent “contradiction” arises from the expressions taken by this same principle in altered circumstances.

Had God in fact made (as alleged) of one (blood) all nations of mankind, Abra(ha)m would not have needed an heir -- and not only the whole story, but the whole Bible would have an absurdity for a plot line. He could simply have adopted an orphaned Canaanite boy and “raised him,” through training, to be his heir and succes­sor. Precisely as a hunter can pick up a mongrel pup at the animal shelter and “train him” to be a world class bird dog. (“Race-ism” -- the insistence that goats are not sheep -- is a direct attack on the core dogma of State Christianity. The ideal of which is one world: in which there are no remaining Jews or Greeks -- only consumers. And according to the “theology” of which a Thorn Tree is a Fig Tree with bad morals and in need of “conversion”).

“Kind after (its own) Kind,” however, is a principle intrinsic to the very design of (re)Creation (found ten times in Genesis 1). Everything which follows in scripture is predicated on this. Even Pharaoh knew this, from The Book of Akihar:

They decided to teach the wolf to read, so they sent him to school. The teacher said, “Repeat after me: A, B . . .” The wolf said, “Lamb and goat in my belly!!!”

In one pivotal aspect of it, the story of Abram and Sarai is “about” genetics -- it hinges on this.

Abram -- the promise notwithstanding (he never “owned” all of the Promised Land either, except in an arcane sense) -- was in dire need of an heir. And Sarai was barren.

Adoption (as we have hopefully come to recognize) was out of the question. This left natural offspring -- by someone.

Shortly to be elevated to the office of Father of a Multitude of Nations (goyim -- each with its own distinct and distinctive mentality, character, culture and genetic make up; eventually extending to language and homeland as well), BullFather had, obviously, a large harem of concubines (as the bull has cows). The record states this -- in order to produce such a variety (and quality) in one lifetime, it could hardly have been other­wise. He was as rich in shiphchot (female slaves, concubines) as he was in flocks, herds, precious metals and retainers -- so much so that Lot had to separate from him since the same place could not support both of them.

By the time Hagar enters the story explicitly, he had any (large) number of concubines or “deputy wives.” Scripture details that these came from two sources -- from Haran (the “family seat”) and from Egypt. (Later, he acquires still more at Gerar). Knowing (from his speech and actions) what he thought of Canaanites, it is significant that none of these were Canaanitesses -- those for whom his grandson Esau developed a “taste.”

Given such a harem (and destiny), Abram certainly would have had no shortage of what are called, in the stock phrase, “children of the household.” One such (and doubtless an outstanding man), Eliezar, he had in fact already nominated as his heir (the motion failed, for lack of a second).

It is the very failure of this nomination that “sets up” the introduction of Hagar into the story of Abram and Sarai.

Abram -- a veritable King among ancient potentates -- had no shortage at all of natural sons. And, with Abram as their father, their level of quality would have been an assured one. But a son equal in quality equal to Abram himself was another matter entirely -- and the critical difference was in the quality of the mother of that son.

It was time to play the trump card.

And he [arguably, God; presumably, Pharaoh] dealt well with Abram for her [Sarai's] sake; and he came to have sheep, and oxen, and jackasses, and male-slaves and female-slaves, and jennies [she-asses] and camels. Genesis 12:16

These are the possessions of Abram -- his own. They do not include Hagar as one of the female slaves. How so?

But she [Sarai] had a servant girl . . . . and she [Sarai] gave her [Hagar] to Abram . . . . I [Sarai] gave my handmaid . . . . Your [Sarai] handmaid is in your hand

People simply do not pay attention to what they read. Here scripture, in narrating, says that Hagar was Sarai's -- not Abram's. Sarai says that Hagar was hers. Abram acknowledges that Hagar is Sarai's. And the angel of YHVH even adds his voice:

Hagar -- handmaid of Sarai. . . .

as does Hagar herself:

From the face of my mistress [Sarai -- not my master, Abram] I am fleeing. . . .

Hagar was on loan to Abram from Sarai, her mistress; his to have but not to hold.

A similar failure (or refusal) to acknowledge the obvious is at the root of the erroneous notion that, in relation to Isaac, Ishmael was some type of factory “second;” defective or inferior.

On the contrary. Both Ishmael and Isaac stand in relation to God by virtue of the same covenant -- that of circumcision. They are different in that they are assigned different destinies, and thus have different roles to play. Functionally they are different, as the left hand is from the right -- and to this extent. And only to it.

Rabbi Saul's mischievous exegesis of Hagar and Sarai as types (to show that Greeks are Israelites and Judaeans are Edomites) confuses those unable to follow his argument in its own terms (those who elect to believe him rather than studying him are in for a rough ride indeed). It is not a blanket explanation of the matter, and was never intended to be. As should be obvious from Genesis 21:13 –

And the son [Ishmael] of the Amah [the same term is generally translated as “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14] I will assuredly make a nation [goy] because he is your seed [singular].

To belabor the obvious, this is the same “seed” in the singular that the Rabbi uses as his point of departure.

“In Isaac shall thy seed be called” has a rather different bearing on the matter than seems to be imagined by those advancing it as “the difference.”

“Call” (qra) is one half of the fundamental dyad of relationship (qra & anh - “call” and “respond”). It is by virtue of entering into relation that one goes from the status of “nobody” to the standing of being “somebody” -- somebody being one half of an ongoing relationship. A dialogue, for a start. Interaction.

And it will come to pass that [even] before they call I will answer [them]; and while they are [still] talking I will hear [them -- rather than making them wait until an appointed time]. Isaiah 65:24

[T]hey shall call on my name and I will hear them: I will say, “It is my people” [Ami -- the reversal of Hosea 1:9] and they will say, “YHVH my God!” Zechariah 14:9b

Those who have studied Martin Buber's I and Thou will have an avenue of approach into this.

Scripturally (as in familiar affairs), “Biology is Destiny” insofar as a fruit tree has a genuine choice (“free will”) in the matter of bearing fruit (i.e., how much, and how good); a thorn tree, in con­trast, has none whatsoever. Yet, because the fruit tree has a choice, its biological destiny is, at the same time, a potential. Thus, “Whomsoever will” is an invitation to a discrete class of people -- those to whom it is extended: who, because of previous events, stand (at least potentially) in relationship. “Family,” as it were, rather than “strangers” (outsiders).

When scripture says that “In (by virtue of) Isaac shall thy seed be called” (in one sense, “accosted”), this is a promise which will begin to come into fulfillment many years later: the prophets of Israel were (and are) “called” by virtue of their descent from Isaac's son Jacob (later re-named “Israel”), through whom this “invitation to relationship” was (and is) extended. This potential is their heritage -- something they have inherited.

Yet even before this came to pass, Ishmael and Hagar stood in this same relationship -- and not more than a day or so later.

And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of the heavens and said to her, “What ails you, Hagar? Fear not -- for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.”

This “calling” was extended to Ishmael thirteen years earlier -- before he was even born -- through Hagar, his mother:

And the angel of YHVH said to her, “Behold! You are pregnant and will bear a son: you are to call his name 'Ishmael' [God Hears Man] because God has heard your affliction [i.e., your crying as Sarai was whipping you].” Genesis 16:11

This is the first annunciation in scripture, incidentally; in the last, an angel tells Mary

And Behold! You will conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and will call his name 'Yahshua' [god's Salvation].”

The relation involved is, as it were, “up and running” with the Hagar-Ishmael dyad while still, where Isaac and his progeny are concerned, in embryo. It is not so much a relation differing in intrinsic quality as it is in dispensation, or destiny -- as if one man were assigned to be a secret agent in another land, while another were appointed ambassador to it. Both have their respective tasks, and are working toward the same end, while being careful not to acknowledge each other in daily affairs, for a long time to come. When the history comes to be written, in the end, the operation will be explained.

Demonstrations of the fundamental equivalency of Ishmael and Isaac are apparent by means of gematria. (Hebrew letters are also numbers. This being the case, scripture communicates in an arithmetic, as well as a grammaric, dimension. Formal acknow­ledgement of this comes relatively late in history; this has no bearing, however, on it as demonstrable fact: the tree is known by its fruit -- not by what the Bible Dictionary says about it.)

In the prophecy to Abraham of Ishmael's destiny, the key phrase is “[And the son of the amah] I will assuredly make a nation.” This phrase, adding its letters as numbers, totals 456.

Not surprisingly, then, the sons of Ishmael (Gen.25:15) include

Hadad = 16 and Naphish = 440 456

Because, at the time of the prophecy,

Abraham = 248 Hagar = 208 456

Compare now

Abraham = 248 Isaac = 208 456

and

Jacob = 182 Leah = 36 Rachel = 238 456

There is no “accident” or “incredible coincidence” about this to those familiar enough with it from experience to realize the extent and consistency with which it functions. Having made somewhat of an issue out of paying attention, some will perhaps have noticed in the above that Hagar = 208 = Isaac. Hagar (one form of 208) thus occupies Abra(ha)m's tent until the time appointed for the other (208 = Isaac) to come along. Then, since there is only room for one of them, she departs - carrying that “208” intrinsic to her abroad to begin the matter there also. The purpose of this? Genesis 16:10 --

“I will multiply” = 208

Shiphchah (feminine gender) has reference to stretching out: “stretcher-out” or “stretched-out” would be a literal way of rendering the sense of it. And as with the “why” of Sarai's actions, what it “means” depends on the perspective from (and in) which it is viewed (Hebrew is ingenious in this ability to, through utter simplicity, communicate on a number of levels. What a passage of scripture in it means depends, in the final analysis, on who one “is” -- as does life).

Slavery is, ultimately, a term of relationship, because it is, at root, a mode of relationship.

And the crucial variable in this is: relationship with whom, or with what ?

In this country, the factory/finance system in the North paid the laborers it exploited as little as it could get away with, and cast them out into the street to perish whenever, due to old age, injury or “the business cycle” it was no longer profit­able to exploit them. In the south, save on the largest plantations (generally owned by “overseas interests” and managed by employees of it), slaves were people. To whom their owners were, because in relation, humanly obligated. The aged, the injured and the infirm were cared for; all, after the yearly harvest was in, enjoyed long winter vacations -- there being no real work until spring came. And because the price of an able bodied slave might reach $1,000 or more (a terrific sum then), dangerous work, like bridge building, was contracted out to immigrant and poor whites. The great majority of the actual (versus purported) horrendous abuses of slavery were, as can be documented, in Jamaica, the Barbados, and elsewhere in the Caribbean -- colonies owned or controlled by the City of London -- where “indentured servitude” served as the legal ruse (as it did in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas before the Revolution) by which white slavery operated. In the South, negroes were people, and treated as such. To London, people were things of commercial utility; objects. In Buber's term, “it.” Which is the mother of what is now called. “de-humanization.”

One sense of Hagar as shiphchah appears on Genesis 16:6, in which she is stretched-out, lying on her stomach, as Sarai whips her -- “slave girl.” The second begins here: the woman who extends (“stretches out”) the household through childbirth -- “concubine” (Her number 208 = “I will multiply”).

In both of these roles, she is a member of the family: she (in a dual sense) belonged. As did slaves, in Mosaic law: eating the passover with their household, as contrasted with the “hired hand,” who did not -- who, while present, did not belong.

The terms of this belongingness were, in effect, perpetual childhood. But the bonds which developed were, as with children, personal ones; often of genuine love. And, since there are no doors to close in a tent, necessarily of intimacy -- what we call “privacy” is a very modern idea.

The idea of slavery or servanthood so incites us because we are vain to the point of obsession. In seeking to “improve” upon this we fail to consider that if some improvement upon it as a mode of relationship in the actual world in which we live had been possible, this would have been effected long ago by such people as Abram. Everything, as an abstraction, is possible, but not necessarily available. This is why all the old cliches are true. Plus ça change, plus la meme chose.

Slavery is the container; intimacy is the content: those who prefer substance to appearance will choose accordingly. As did David --

Far a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. Psalm 84:10

servanthood here (and menial employment) being contrasted with the freedom of tent life (moving about at will) without the intimacy of the household, and accordingly rejected.

The lower is a reflection of the higher beyond the level of mere analogy (abstraction); this is why Moses was instructed to make the furnishings of the tabernacle according to the patterns of their eternal originals -- the (if one will) “Platonic Archetypes” of which they are replications in this dimension. As above, so below -- made so because there is an intrinsically possible linkage on this basis.

As Hagar was a servant in the household of Abram and Sarai, so Abram himself was in the household of God.

O ye seed of Abraham his servant, ye children of Jacob his chosen. Psalm 105:6

This basic model of reality, strongly developed in Psalms, is presented at greatest length and detail in the Gospel of John. As those to whom they are sent are in the apostles, so they, in turn, are in Christ. Who is, in turn, in the Father. Along which continuum a transmission exists. Alignment is the key to it as a practical fact.

Alignment depends, in the first place, on being of the seed of Abra(ha)m -- on descent from him. This is not some airy abstraction (which, because divorced from concrete reality, can be manipulated at will via Pharisaic hermeneutics -- which have since come to be called, in part, “Hegelien Dialectics” -- into yielding any conclusion desired) but a practical fact.

It is only by virtue of descent from Abra(ha)m, along whatever line, that one is a child of the household. One who stands in relation by virtue of the Covenant. Thus the apostles were sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel -- not to pigs, dogs, turkeys, jackasses or other barnyard animals.

By virtue of (genetic) inheritance, both the promises and the obligations intrinsic to it are realities in practical fact. A further potential exists within this: adoption.

Children of the Household (and, because genetic inheritance is a prerequisite, only children of the household) can be (and are) selected (chosen) for elevation to the status of legitimacy -- to acknowledgement and adoption as legitimized offspring; sons and daughters in contrast to children of the household (who, since they inherit their status from their mothers, remain in bondage: perpetual childhood even though of the family).

Blessed is that man whom thou choosest, and causeth to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts! Psalm 65:4

And he said, “Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my father.” John 6:65

And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the son abideth ever. If the son therefore shall make you free, ye shall he free indeed. John 8:35-36

Bearing in mind that the context of this last passage is the matter of descent from Abraham, compare now “In Isaac shall thy seed be called” with “For many are called but few chosen.”

In far from the only intimate parallel between the story of Hagar and the Book of Hebrews, Hagar's elevation is perceptible as an example of, or type-forming illustration of

For whom[-ever] YHVH loves, he corrects, and whips every child he receives [into the relation of Son or Daughter]. Hebrews 12:6

or legitimizes as his own through adoption. Such a one is elevated from being a natural offspring with a certain further potential, by means of training and discipline, to the realization of that potential. In this, the fact of relation (being of the household) does not change; what is altered is the mode of rela­tionship in it: from (as a servant) perpetual childhood to the basis of eventual adult status -- “maturity.”

Both Pharaoh (from having been one flesh with whom Hagar entered the household in his elevation, by proxy) and Abimelech are (how­ever strange the idea) prophets. Pharaoh comprehends the “how” and “why” of his affair with Sarai without needing this explained to him; God comes to Abimelech in a dream of the night. Everyone involved speaks the same language, acknowledges the same reality and is on the same page of the same script.

From this perspective, the junction with later matters can be effected fairly easily. Pharaoh speaking, the next morning:

“Why said you, 'She is my sister, ' so that I took her to me as a woman?” [This, to Abram].

“Now, therefore, behold your woman [in exchange, Hagar] -- take her and go away.” [This, to Sarai]. Genesis 12:19

Nor were Abram and Pharaoh the only prophets present at this transaction. Sarai was a prophetess, in her own right, and a most important one:

Then smote YHVH Pharaoh great strokes [as of a rod], and his house, al dabar Sarai -- at the word of Sarai. Genesis 12:l7

Recall that it is precisely such strokes of the rod which are the lot appointed to any child of the household who is legitimized through adoption (Hebrews 12:6). Recall also, from your reading, that salvation in scripture always comes to entire households, small or large (e.g., the household of Cornelius, the house of Jacob). It is at Sarai's (spoken) word that this happens here in Egypt -- as it was at Elijah's word that YHVH withheld rain from Israel for about three years' time.

Abram and Sarai are, as it were, secret agents of the adoption agency. This takes place on Abram's initiative, through Sarai.

Through realizing this, it becomes more nearly comprehensible that Sarai should be the “Executrix,” overseeing affairs and issuing instructions -- and that God should “back her up” when, (as in sending Hagar and Ishmael away) she does so.

We are not making too much of too little here; God (in Gen. 20) goes even further than this:

But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night and said to him: “Behold You will die because of the woman you have taken, for she is ba'alat ba'al -- the Goddess of a God [or, Lady of a Lord.” Genesis 20:7

(Arguments on this point are referred to John 10:33-36).

Such a death was similarly appointed to “Adam” in Genesis 3 -- following which he lived 930 years. As with the initiation of adoptees into greater intimacy in the household through spankings, there is more “to this” than would appear to be the case: absent some sort of preliminary death, being born again (or, from above) would hardly be possible.

On one level, slavery, lust and violence. On another, the transmission of data having to do with the organization of reality itself. Behind, or beyond, the immediate is the eternal. Which does not deny or gainsay the legitimacy of the concrete, but puts it into perspective from above it.

                
HAGAR

Names in scripture explain functions, and are important for this reason. “Hagar” (HGR) survives in Hebrew only in recombinant form (GRH) -- a female sheep (ewe) chosen, because without blemish, as an acceptable offering (sacrifice). This, on a more profound level (to which we shall come), she is. But her name has a much more general significance.

Hagar (arguably, Hejar) survives in Arabic (along with Aramaic and Coptic, a “sister language” of Hebrew) with the sense that her life illustrates in the scriptures: EXODUS.

An Exodus is: a) a Flight b) into the wilderness c) undertaken in haste d) to escape affliction e) resulting in an Encounter

And the Bible is full of these (as is the subsequent outworking of it in history).

The first of Jacob’s exodi, for example, is from Esau to Beth El; the second is from Laban to Mahanim. Both culminate in encounters with angels.

Moses flees twice from Pharaoh (from his police, then his army -- making him thus the patron saint of criminals and revolutionar­ies); both times to Mt. Horeb, in Midian. David flees from Saul, and from Absalom, etc. Women are always involved; their roles in events, and the points at which they appear in them are hinges. Exodi (once recognized) abound with interior correspondences (as in Elijah’s return to Mt. Horeb - the source of the Torah he was to instaurate, the significances of “stone” and “Israel” in the exodi of Jacob and Moses, and so on). It will suffice here to point this out.

Hagar’s first exodus, in Genesis 16, is the archetype, or proto­type, or antetype, or type-establishing (or what have you) Exodus in scripture; this chapter would be of profound significance in this aspect of it alone (the initial appearance of anything is of exceptional importance in that it illustrates, in practice, what subsequent reappearances of it will involve)

This, however, is only one level of a complex synergy of mean­ing, presented along a number of independent lines. By way of illustration, an Exodus is, as noted, “into the wilderness.” This phrase, in Hebrew, is B'MiDBaR. Since letters, in Hebrew, are also numbers, we can “read” this as, arithmetically: B = 2 M = 40 D = 4 B = 2 R = 200 248

Perhaps curiously and surprisingly, but significantly, “Abraham:” A = 1 B = 2 R = 200 H = 5 M = 40 248

“And YHVH said” (V'IaDaBaR YHVH) V = 6 I = 10 D = 4 B = 2 R = 200 I = 10 H = 5 V = 6 H = 5 248

And so on, in as many additional examples as may be required. The three cited above, even, outline Abra(ha)m's having been “called” (accosted - an encounter) “in(to: B- covers both) the wilderness” where he has a full-blown “encounter,” in the chapter previous to Hagar's appearance; the “Encounter” being the culmination of the procedure. Self-referencing of this sort insures the message of scripture against all but the crudest of perversions at the hands of transmitters and fabricators of “authorized versions.” For, as “P.B.A.” pointed out, “the type of mind that would alter them could not understand them.”

The account of Hagar's life also introduces a number of additional elements, all of them of importance; these will be examined as they come up in the course of things.

Her second exodus is, taking her son by Abra(ha)m with her, to Arabia. Here, later in time, their descendant Mohammed restored the religion of his forefather, styling it Islam (surrender to the will of God) after his foremother's illustration of this in prac­tice. Islam reckons time from the exodus of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD - the Hejireh (this being the Arabic original of “Hagar”).

       
ABRAM

“Abram” (ABRM) means, literally, “Bullfather,” being a compound of AB (father, ancestor, source) and reem (RIM), wild bull, Au­rochs. This is not to overlook or downplay room (RUM), high, elevated, difficult of access, lifted up, as another important aspect of him. But as with Jacob's ladder (a spiral stair), one reaches the higher by means of the lower, beginning with the immediate.

In an age when wild cattle still roamed the pastures of Eurasia, the aurochs was proverbial for his generative vigor (the calves of his herd were his offspring, their mothers being his mates), for his untamable disposition, and for his fierceness in defense of his herd from molestation.

His powerful protective function is shown in the rescue of his nephew Lot, taken captive by a combined force of four kings who had already defeated an alliance of five others. Abram delivered him (the scriptural archetype of “salvation”) not only as soon as he came to hear of it, but without outside assistance. (As the colloquial proverb has it, “When you fool with the bull, you get the horn”).

His untamability (intractable independence) is apparent from the fact that, in an age of cities and kings, Abram (and his children after him) lived in tents, roaming freely at will -- neither taxed nor ruled by anyone, as shepherds.

His wealth in flocks and herds alone was so great that, by the end of the second chapter of his life, his nephew could not pasture in the same county with him. And the bride-price he paid for a girl of requisite quality for Isaac would likely have been the gross national product of any of the kingdoms around him in Canaan.

The generative vigor of one appointed to be the Father of a Multitude of Nations (goyim -- each with a distinct physiology and mentality), to have offspring like the stars of the heavens for multitude (and so on) should be self-evident. As should be that, nations being in view, this would necessarily have been via a harem of women which was - like everything else connected with him -- huge. Texas-sized.

The women of Abra(ha)m came, as scripture notes, from three places: from Haran (Gen.12:5), from Egypt (12:16) and from Gerar (20:14). Conspicuously absent are women of Canaan, where he lived. Their eponymous ancestor, Canaan, had been cursed by Noah, and his offspring ran (and run) true to type. Finding himself in possession of any number of them by right of conquest in the War of the Kings, Abram rejected even owning them as slaves with flagrant contempt (Gen.14:22-4).

Nor does the plausibility of his having been wheedled into dynastic alliances with the daughters of the kings around him call this into serious question. Archaeology demonstrates, for instance, that the nobility of the Hittite nation was Aryan, ruling a substratum of “natives” -- a pattern which obtains also in other parts of the world at that time, such as Egypt and Syria: the principle of selective breeding among these, via the exchange of princesses among kings, was a well-established and documented one. Abra(ha)m spoke with such people without requiring a translator, and had dealings of far-reaching (if deeply disguised subsequently) consequence with them.

Along with the automatic “either/or” assumption, people disable themselves with the “important part” fallacy (What, for heaven's sake, is “the important part” of an automobile which has hundreds of them?). Yet, except in his rescue and sharing where Lot is concerned, examples of Abra(ha)m “being a blessing,” as instructed are suspiciously hard to find -- at least by conventional reckoning.

He has encounters with angels and conversations with them; on one occasion he fixes them dinner. He moves around from here to there and back again. He builds some altars. He digs some wells. He tithes to Melchizadek, visits kingdoms in the west, nearly sacrifices his firstborn son (who, despite the re-write, was clearly Ishmael), and so on. If he has been a blessing in this, he has done so without attracting much attention to it.

At this point, we encounter a paradigm-shift. In it, Abram remains Bullfather, but in an altered valence, through extension along one of his dimensions.

Making neither more nor less of it than the account itself does, by the time the first chapter of his life concludes, Abram has pimped his sister-spouse to Pharaoh for him to have carnal re­lations, by putting her on display before the (assembled) princes of Egypt (according to the Genesis Apocryphon of the Dead Sea Scrolls, au natural). Back in Canaan, he nominates Eliezar, one “born in his household” (via his carnal relations with his mother) as his heir and successor. (The motion fails for lack of a second). Then his sister-spouse gives him her handmaid to have carnal relations with -- which he does. After this latest son is born, he is re-named “Father of a Multitude,” and given renewed virility with the promise of a son via carnal relations with “Princess” Sarah -- this by angels on their way (after his having fixed them a meal to eat) to investigate reports of irregular carnal relations at Sodom. The outcome is that Lot ends up having carnal relations with his daughters. Around this time Sarah bears Isaac, and everyone gets his organ of carnal relationship circumcised. Then Hagar secures a wife for Ishmael to have carnal relations with, Abraham secures a wife for Isaac to have carnal relations with, and pimps Sarah to Abimelech for him to have carnal relations. Still going strong, he has six additional sons via carnal relations with Keturah, and dies. Directly, indirectly and tangentially, his entire life has been “about” -- on one level -- carnal relations, with he himself the protagonist and ultimate referent of it.

“The very idea” of an elderly woman being an arrestingly beautiful “sex goddess,” and of a man well past the age of 120 still “going strong” is the “tip-off” to the account's having taken us, by imperceptible degrees, from the concrete into a more rarefied dimension. Not into the realm of abstraction, but of principle. Which is to say, of function.

       
SARAI

“Sarai” in Hebrew is a masculine plural noun, having to do with the oversight or direction of affairs. Such grammatical reversals of expected sense are surprisingly frequent in Genesis. Rebekka (while Eliezar is negotiating for her) is pointedly and repeatedly called a na'ar (“youth,” masculine gender); Sarah is called “a Lord's Ladies” (plural), and so on, even in the area of our immediate focus alone. If anyone knows “why” this is, I have not encountered his explanation of it as a general principle (although particular instances of it can “be made sense of”).

Sarah did obey Abraham, calling him Adoni (“my lord”), as Peter observes. But she did so only after their changes in names (and thus in relationship) in Genesis 17. Previously to this, the I (yod), of initiative valence, had been hers alone. With the name change, the yod (I =10) was removed from her name, divided in half (H=5+H=5), and shared between them. Bullfather Abram thus became AbraHam, “father of a Multitude,” and Lady (probably the best one-word equivalent of her name, if not Ladies) Sarai became “Princess” SaraH. Thus, in Genesis 12, Abram had been obliged to request of her, as a favor (“Say, won't you?”) that she appear to the Egyptians in the aspect of his sister rather than instructing her, as her head, to do so.

Other possible connotations of Sarai, such as “dominatrix,” “muse,” “goddess” and (in practice) “priestess” or “intercessor” are both implicit and germane; this is better shown than told.

After he has had carnal relations with her,

Then YHVH struck Pharaoh mighty strokes, and his household, at the word of Sarai, woman of Abram. Genesis 12:17

YHVH -- who delights in justice -- is not “punishing” Pharaoh here because Abram has been successful at “duping” him into having carnal relations with his “wife” (“wife” and “woman” in Hebrew are the same word -- ishah):

1) These strokes come on Sarai's orders (al Dabar Sarai).

2) Such strokes as these are precisely what are promised, in Hebrews 12:6, to natural Children of the Household by birth who are legitimized through formal adoption:

For (every one) whom YHVH (who delights in quality) loves he chastises, and whips every child (of his) he receives (adopts) (Syriac: “with whom he is pleased”). Fundamental identity through natural generation (having been born “in the household,” as Eliezar had been) is a commonsensical pre­requisite necessary for formal adoption (legitimization), which is initiated (and “validated”) by the inception of corrections: the tangible evidences of the father's love (however paradoxical this may seem at times) and of acceptance into an intimate, reciprocal relationship:

For if you be without correction, you are bastard offspring -- not (accepted into relation as) children

(a difference immediately recognizable as Buber's ich und du [the reciprocity of love and submission] in contrast to ich und es).

To return to our model: Carnal relations with Sarai bring, in consequence, adoption by YHVH. These relations, albeit with Sarai as mediatrix, are nevertheless initiated (or instigated”) by Abram. These two function as the secret agents of the transcendental adoption agency: finding and bringing an originally and still essentially homogenous super-stratum back into connection with its source.

Any number of essentially valid generalizations can be drawn as tangents from this basic data as it is constellated in scripture. Such as, e.g., that the modus operandus of this procedure involves the arousal, concentration, and employment of an innate (inborn) capacity; one elicited by natural means, and functioning as a reciprocal response to a uniquely developed expression of an otherwise commonplace phenomenon operating in a parallel dimension.

Later, after (now as Sarah) Abimelech has had carnal relations with Abraham's sister-spouse, God comes to him in a dream of the night (elevating him thereby to the status of prophethood), saying:

Behold ! You shall die because of the woman you have taken, for she is Ba'alat Ba'al (“Ladies of a Lord”). Genesis 20:3

1) The word “Behold!” always, on examination, turns out to signal the introduction of something previously unknown.

2) This phrase in its usual (and certainly in its historical) context would be “goddesses of a god” - ba'al (arguably, bel) having been, generically, “God” in Israelite usage for centuries.

3) It would not be wholly unreasonable to see in this death the necessary prerequisite (“dying to self”) to being “Born again” (or “Born from Above”).

4) In the earlier parallel, YHVH had told The Man that, in the day he ate of the tree, he would surely die. Yet he did so and lived 930 years after eating. (Then again, a day with YHVH is 1,000 years).

5) “Because of the woman” is, by now, self-explanatory.

“Because of the woman” also brings us to the heart of the matter of Sarai (in the perspective we are operating from): Horasis.

        * * *

In ancient Eurasia, when relatively few people could read but those who could were also capable of thinking as they did so, The Epic of Gilgamesh (the last king of Uruk in Sumeria whose life -- like Abraham's -- exceeds modern notions of plausibility) enjoyed an extraordinarily widespread and continuous popularity, from the time of its composition down through the overthrow of Nineveh. (Gurdjieff, in Meetings with Remarkable Men, reports his having heard it recited by an illiterate bard in Anatolia in the 19th century).

Copies of Gilgamesh known today come from two places: from Ur (Mesopotamia) and from Anatolia (Turkey).

The historical iconography of the Bullfather figure Abram and Sarai illustrate (and are based on) is notably found in two places in Eurasia: Ur and Anatolia.

The two locations with which Abram and Sarai (who would have been familiar with it, as a matter of course) are identified in scripture previously to their emigration to Canaan are: Ur and Anatolia (Haran).

The two places, in scripture, with which the descendants of Noah (who preserved and transmitted ancient knowledge) are associated are: Ur (from which Abram was called) and Anatolia (Mt. Ararat, in the general area where the ark landed).

At one point in the Epic, a hunter comes to Gilgamesh, reporting that he has seen “a wild man” drinking at a spring with the animals of the plain.

Gilgamesh, in reply, tells the hunter to take a Temple Maid with him to the spring, in order to capture him through her.

He does this, instructing her, when they arrive, to Make free your breasts; disclose to him your nakedness: that he may seek your favors. Do not fear; lay hold of his soul. He will see you and draw near. Put aside your clothes, that he may lie upon you, and yield to him the rapture of your woman's art. His beasts that grew on the plain will desert him when he is knowing you in love.

The woman did as told: made bare her breasts, revealed her nakedness. Enkidu came and took possession. She was not afraid but, having put aside her clothes, welcomed his ardor; and for six days and seven nights Enkidu remained, mating with that temple maid's abundance -- after which he made a move toward the beasts. But on seeing him, they ran off, and Enkidu was amazed. His body stiffened, his knees froze -- the animals were gone! It was not as before!

Enkidu returned to the woman and, sitting at her feet, gazed up into her face; and as she spoke, his ears gave heed. “You are beautiful, Enkidu, like a very god,” she said to him. “Why do you run with the beasts of the plain? Come. I will take you to the ramparts of Uruk, the holy temple city of Anu and Ishtar, where Gilgamesh dwells, unmatched in might; who, like a wild bull wields power over men.

Enkidu leaves the spring a changed creature – “a new man.” No longer a “beast of the field,” he is now Ish – “but little lower than the angels.” In its Greek parallel, he has been transformed from anthropos (resembling a man) to, having become sapient (knowing -- through knowing the temple maid), Homo Sapiens: Aner.

“Sex” in this patently does not precipitate any sort of “loss of innocence and unity with nature” (as alleged by commentators conditioned by Rousseau’s imaginary “noble savage” fantasy); the same animals which now fled from Enkidu themselves rutted madly every autumn. Rather, the distinguishing feature of his carnal knowledge of the woman (and Pharaoh's with Sarai, and Abimelech's with Sarah) is the “woman's art” -- horasis: regenerative generation (allowing for the inadequacy of English); “through knowledge to knowing.” An elevation through, and by means of, an elevation.

In the archetypical vocabulary with which both express matters, Enkidu now has “ears that hear,” as he gazes upward, enraptured (nabat) at (as Israel at the “brazen seraph” made by Moses for this purpose) the instrument of his deliverance. Who has, like Tamar, “put aside her clothes,” enabling him (like Judah) to see (as she did). (All vision is reciprocal, by nature). As in the garden, the point of transformation has been reached through six days and seven nights, through the separation and re-combination of ruined, concatenated elements left over from a previous mode of existence. His transformation effected, Enkidu is now off, hand in hand with the woman, to be Bullfather's friend and share in his adventures -- enabled to do so by the Woman's Art exercised on his behalf, by proxy, at Bullfather's initiative.

She took in hand her clothing and with one part covered Enkidu, and with the other part covered herself; and holding, then, his hand, led him like a mother, to Uruk. She taught him there how to eat and drink, to anoint himself with oil -- to become Human.

       
THE TWILIGHT ZONË

With the realization that the authors of both Gilgamesh and Genesis were “speaking the same language” -- presenting the same ideas from within the same conceptual framework, using the same vocabulary with the same significance -- the task of getting to a (if not “the”) bottom of the matter becomes easier.

The conjugal norm of HaAdam is that “for this cause (woman) shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his mate” (the opposite of patriarchy, in which a man causes a girl to leave her father and her mother in order to cleave unto his son).

Marriage sine manus -- “to have (consortium with) but not to hold (as chattel property)” is metronymy. In this both duration and exclusivity were negotiable. (In parts of Iran today, such a marriage can be contracted for the duration of a business trip, bringing Rahab HaZonah, as an “innkeeper” [“all the comforts of home”] closer to recognition).

The Hebrew term for a woman married in this form was zonah, a word that came over time to have an increasingly pejorative con­notation until, by the first century A.D., it had become a synonym for “prostitute.” Notwithstanding this, however, “From the beginning it was not so.”

Rahab excepted, scripture carefully avoids describing the matriarchs of Israel as zonat. Yet this is the pattern their lives illustrate in actual practice. Thus when Laban catches Jacob (who was free to go) with his wives (who had absconded with him), he angrily asks him, in effect, “And just where might you be going with MY daughters and with MY grandchildren?!” Which, in law, they were (only Jacob's trump card -- that YHVH had witnessed his afflictions -- saves him and secures their release)

The analogue in Greek to Zonah is Zone. “A woman's girdle (loin-wrapping),” it is also, by extensions, “to undress (by unwrapping) a woman (in Hebrew, “humbling” her),” “the nuptial act of penetration and therefore “marriage.”

One of the universal symbols of the Bullfather-and-Consort dyad was the zone-like Spiral. Early coins from Crete, for example, feature coiled, spiraling mazes -- the insignium of the Bull-Man Minotaur. In Greece itself, the famous oak grove at Zone would likely have been (given that earlier “Greek” culture was essen­tially Mycenaean) similar, or identical in form.

In Ireland (because invariably omitted from considerations of this sort by a conspiracy of silence, particularly noted here) survived the clearest memory of the Caer Sidhi -- the Spiral(ing) Castle “behind (or above) the north” (where Psalms places Mount Zion, and the Greeks posited Hyperborea), under which the earth revolved like a millstone.

Here also, the Finnians (“Phoenicians;” Hebrew-speakers), who were the master artisans of antiquity made great quantities of lunullæ (so called from their superficial resemblance to crescent moons); these were widely distributed through trade abroad (as are the so-called “Egyptian” faience beads of ca. 1,250 BC found on the plain of Salisbury [the site of Stonehenge], made by these same people in Egypt during that era; their presence there revolutionized Egyptian artistic design and craftsmanship -- this is historically documented).

Lunullæ are small golden bull horns, worn as jewelry by consorts of the Bullfather as emblems of their calling (the exercise of the “wo­man's art”). Had their intent been to represent the crescent moon itself (and thereby the sort of anti-male female-centered cultus conjectured by poets) they would have been made of tin -- a white metal (later, once the technology was mastered, of silver, as are the cow horns of the Queen at Ur, corresponding there to the King’s of gold). On the contrary: Bullfather is, everywhere, a noble white bull with golden horns -- whether as the Zeus who abducted Europa to Crete, the Egyptian Aphis (a calf in the springtime -- which Israel regarded as its ancestral totem, and with good reason. Aaron made the first of them in the desert, at the foot of Mt. Horeb in Midian, where Bull petroglyphs survive to the present day) and so on.

Gilgal (“revolving,” wheel-like) in Palestine, an early shrine, is one parallel there. Another is Beth Hoglath (“Shrine [or Daughter] of the Hobbler”) another, and associated with Jacob (who, lamed in wrestling with the angel, hobbled) and Rachel (“hobbling or fettering:” one fettered by the cord of love to the ashera would, in revolving, trace the outline of a spiral as he drew ever closer to the center). This, like that of Atad, would have been a threshing-floor (particularly associated with zonat and places of revelation [appokalypse: “unveiling”]; David saw the angel of YHVH at the threshing floor of Atad and bought it for the site of Solomon’s Temple).

Similarly, anyone (say, a bridesmaid) wrapping a zone around someone (a bride) would, in doing so, describe a similar spiral by, holding the end of it, circling around; anyone (the friend of the bridegroom) unwrapping her would describe a similar spiral, in reverse.

The “infidelities and licentiousness” of Aphrodite, the “goddess of love” (whose magic girdle -- zone -- cast an irresistible spell) were a matter of notable indifference to her husband, the lame “god” Hephaestus (thought to be a contraction of hemeraphaestos -- “shining by day,” sun-like) whom the Romans called Vulcan (cf. Chaldean Bol Kahn -- “sun priest”). Taurus (“bull” in Latin) may or may not have come, by some obscure route, similarly, from Chaldean Tor (“revolving” [around an axis, as the sun seems to do]).

By this point, having traveled rather far afield, we are into matters (such as Revolving and Limping) which properly belong to a later stage in the out-working of Abram and Sarai than concern us (our reference point being matters which concern Hagar). Still, in returning to our topic proper, it would not be irrelevant to note, for example, that the hierophant (priest or prophet) who anointed someone (as high priest or king), making him thereby a messiah (“anointed one”), did so by pouring olive oil upon his head from a golden bull horn. The oil itself was, in Hebrew, shemen, the feminine of which is shi­monah: “superabundance, especially in fertility” (an obvious Bullfather attribute).

And that Jacob must have carried such a golden horn with him in his first exodus, in the course of which he set up a standing stone (a stone “erection”), anointing the head of it with oil. (The Beth El “symbolism” is patent, and in the context of not only El meaning, in its most basic sense, “power” but the horn of the bull being the instrument of its expression. Ephraim and Manasseh -- YHVH’s favorites -- each inherited one, later, with which they pushed Israel to the ends of the earth. As for the stone, the assonance of eben with ben, “son,” is a notable conjunction: the anointed here being the means through which heaven and earth were connected. That the “Marriage Feast of the Lamb” draws upon, or extends this should be apparent)

In more than a general sense, then, the power (horn) of Bullfather is instrumental in the union of man with God.

       
MORE TASTELESS ZONAH STUFF

Zonat (p1.) of course could, and did, bear children; it was two of them that appealed to Solomon over the dead child. The unwillingness of his clan to accept Jepthah as their leader was due to his having been the son of one, and Jesse's relegation of young David to the wilderness as a shepherd while his other sons remained at home is, given the (by “contemporary community standards”) “irregularities” in the family genealogy, suggestive (at least).

Still, given the transience of many metronymous unions (even in the context of descent, as late as the time of David, having still been reckoned as in the female line -- as evidenced by Tamar's otherwise inexplicable assertion that their father would surely give her to her brother, would he only ask), that there would have been zonat without sufficiently prosperous families to undertake the raising of numerous children, and that near-continual pregnancy would not have been a desideratum, it would hardly be surprising if some way around this were found and employed.

At this point, as in others (previous, and to come), a number of considerations converge into a reasonably coherent picture, provided one is prepared to acknowledge them.

One obvious example is the matter of the Beautiful Captive in Time of War (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). It is fairly apparent that one is not to take such a one “home to thy house,” on acquiring her -- if this were the case, no successful army on campaign could stay in the field for more than a few weeks without melting away. Rather, one is to take her (penetration both establishing possession, by fiat, and rendering her contaminated to her former husband) “in a place apart” (i.e., not “make a spectacle of doing so” -- another point raised by Maimonides). Then, after fulfilling her month of mourning -- celebate, in strange clothing, with hair cut short and nails pared (curiously identical to the rules prescribed by the Romans for the priestess of Juppiter during Lent -- she can be co­habited with. Or, if, on acquaintance, unappealing, sent away free and clear. One may not “make merchandise of her,” because, in order to have taken her, one must first (of necessity) have humbled her. Which, in the convergence of scriptural examples of this in practice, is to say, because one has bared her bottom.

Nearly identical in force is Dt. 22:28-29, in which an Israelite who has carnal knowledge of an un-betrothed girl is obliged to keep her as his wife, durante vita: because he has humbled her (i.e., bared her bottom -- an act proper only to her head; to her father or husband. Having done so, he has made himself her head, by fiat, (and “in a sign”) and is “stuck with” the consequence of having done so).

That this is the proper interpretation of the term (anah) is self-apparent from it being used also in the context of the reception of correction (with a switch or rod); its various extensions (“pay attention,” “respond properly”, “learn,” etc.) proceed from this.

That it was construed in this sense in our immediate context (possessive penetration) can be established from the commentary Bereshith Rabbah (final recension ca. 600 AD of earlier material) on Genesis 34:2 --

“He laid with her” (coitus normalis) “and humbled her” (coitus contra natura).

This is neither as bizarre nor “sick minded” as it may seem: coitus a tergo is the oldest form of “birth control” on earth, and (as nearly as can be determined today) a universal constant in ancient cultures in the Middle East. Additionally, and very much “to the point,” this is the only presupposition which, in fact, would allow the Beautiful Captive to have been taken, yet go away free, unburdened by pregnancy.

Both Seneca the Elder (Controversitæ 1.2.22) and Martial (Epigrammaton 11.78) state that the act of possession by a Roman groom on his wedding night was, being an ancestral custom of normative force, in this manner; the Casina confirms it.

The Greeks, in light of Aphrodite Callipegia alone, need not be further examined. In the Babylonian Talmud this flies under a number of colors (“rolling over,” “turning sideways,” etc.) with notes (Tractate Ketuboth) that this was a commonplace among women who did not want to become pregnant (for whatever reason), and that their women in Babylon (the headquarters of Pharisaism, even while the temple [which it regarded as an embarrassing anachronism for which it could find no good excuse] was still standing) were expert at it.

Strangely indeed, the oldest explicit reference to this is in the Baraitha of Joseph Kephar Sekanya, a first century (ca. 60 AD) follower of Christ who may (conceivably) have been “James” (i.e., Jacob the Righteous). He is recorded (BT: Abodah Zara 16b,17a) as having told Rabbi Eliezer the Great, in the course of pilpul (exegetical debate), that the donations to the temple of zonat, notwithstanding the Deuteronomic prohibition (Dt. 23:18), were acceptable provided these were used to build or maintain a privy for the high priest, on the basis of Micah 1:7 --

Since from the place of odure they (i.e. their earnings) have come, so to a place of odure (a privy for the high priest) they can go.

Or, “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

It could not possibly, as we have seen, have been procreative carnal knowledge of the Temple Maid which had alienated the animal companions of Enkidu from him, and altered (or realized) his destiny. This being the case, we are poised on the brink of yet another paradigm shift.

Before making this transition, one might note with interest an intriguing bit of evidence in the opening pages of The Second Appology of Justin Martyr (ca. 165 AD). In them, a (nameless) “good christian woman,” with Justin's obvious approbation, divorces her husband because he will not, as she has (in conformity with having “gotten religion” -- specifically that version of “christianity” which obtained in mid-second century Rome) renounce that species of carnal knowledge which characterized Enkidu's union with the Temple Maid, Pharaoh's with Sarai, Shechem's with Dinah, and so on (which, because “in a manner contrary to nature,” might in a way of speaking, be thought of as uniquely Human). (I.e., non-animal; non-instinctual).

That she could have done so comes as a needless surprise to many: that same financial leverage which had secured and maintained the uniquely privileged status of Judahists throughout the empire as an exceptional culta licta (and withheld this from its competing adversaries) had, by the second century BC, managed to overthrow the normative force of the Roman marriage in manus (in which the father of the bride handed her over to her husband and washed his hands of her), forcing, as the Orantes emptied into the Tiber, legalization of marriage sine manus (broadly characteristic of “the east”). Under this ægis, a woman (or her tutor) retained the right to institute divorce and to control her own assets; recovering them by breaking the estate if need be.

That she should have done so is of profound significance: one reads ad nauseum that the spread of “christianity” through the Roman world precipitated a wave of divorces; this is the only instance of which I am aware in which the actual point-at-issue is specified. Taken at face value, “christianity” (of greater appeal to women than men in this “version” of it at any rate) had outlawed coitus contra natura.

And “version” is used advisably; Justin's own pupil Tatian later veered from the “true faith” into “heresy” after having come into contact with Baptistic traditions now recognized as having been, if not intrinsic to, at least the milieu of, its original formulation. Although writing from ca. 150 to 165 in Rome, Justin himself betrays no apparent awareness of Rabbi Saul or his teachings; similarly, although he had come from Ephesus to Rome, he seems likewise unaware of the Gospel of John (although the Logos Spermaticos doctrine, which informs Matthew, John and the Middle Platonism of the age is prominent in his thinking).

One wonders how “christianity” could have come to this conclusion.

At this point we return -- yet again -- to some loose ends, in order to weave our band (or cord) of love.

To have humbled a girl (or woman) is to be bound to her for life if she is an Israelitess, and by honor (at least) if not. Only marriage necessitates that one do so; having done so, however, being inflamed by love, one is bound. The unwinding of the zone that binds a zonah binds one to her -- via her zonë: the connection which, as we saw, united Enkidu to the Temple Maid.

In Genesis 34 Dinah (daughter of the hobbler) is humbled by Shechem, son of Hamor (Red Ass); having done so he is infatuated with her, and submits to be circumcised, with all his house, in order to enter the covenant as her husband. He is treacherously murdered, however, by Simeon and Levi (her maternal brothers), because he had “dealt with her as a zonah.”

For this crime, Jacob all but disowns them in his valedictory: “Into their council let not my soul come” (note here the impli­cation of Jacob having spoken this as Israel) “for in their anger they hamed an ox.”

“Justice” (one hallmark of YHVH) “is done” in Numbers 25 when Zimri, prince of the Simeonites (Simeon had been the older of the two, thus responsible) has carnal knowledge of Cozbi, princess of Moab in this same manner at Peor (Hebrew “gap” or “gape;” a yawn serving as a polite example -- cf. Erse Pier, “buttocks”). They are slain in flagrante by Phinehas, who skewers both in a manner best not described -- earning thereby (for having done the Law) an eternal priesthood (such as that of the Hasmonaeans).

Both the crime and the retribution exacted for it share a sur­prising number of correspondences. Both were slain in their mo­ment of greatest weakness. Both died in the very hope of a covenant. Both slayings were unexpected. In the first, Simeon was the slayer; in the second, the slain was prince of the Simeonites (who, after this, shrink and disappear from the record). And both were for having dealt with a zonah -- because a pretext on the first occasion, the crime on the second (even though not, in and of itself, a crime by any means). Shechem (“Shoulder,” the Levitical portion; in Gen.48:22, the portion of the Firstborn) had married Dinah by fiat (in a sign); he had not (as the King James Version deliberately mistranslates it) “defiled her.”

Obviously, the analogical “level” with which we are dealing displays the same discontinuity (e.g., bull/ox) between the concrete and the typological (or archetypological) as will (by now) have been noticed in the zonah matter. “Below,” a union temporal to the point (at times) of being temporary; “above,” without end (figured by the indissolubility of the union of humbler with humbled, and intrinsically a revelation -- an apokalupsis: the removal of a covering [zone], with overtones of illumination). Scripture presents things “in the round” -- not as Sunday school lessons. Thus between the Pentateuch and the Prophets, the rôles become reversed: Israel goes from the male who humbles to the Bride of YHVH who is humbled (carried over into the Gospels as the Bride of Christ in the Marriage Feast of the Lamb -- a union not destined to be a sterile one)

That Dinah is here “appearing in the role of Sarai” is additionally indicated by her having gone out to see (ayin -- vision); in doing so she is (all vision being reciprocal) seen (a matter sometimes called “the meeting of the eyes”) by the son of Red Ass (Hamor; notable for prominent red buttocks). Since Deuteronomy 25:1-3 specifies that the judged one be publicly whipped, and the meaning of Dinah is “judged woman (or girl),” this was arguably “a match made in heaven.”

Shechem, in Gen. 34:2 is called a Hivite; Gen. 48:22 implies that he was an Amorite -- both were Canaanite devotees of the Egyptian ass-god Set (cf. the much later capture, by Jannaeos, of the ass mask of gold from Edomite Dora, carried to Jerusalem as a trophy but stolen back again by guile -- a profound embarrassment to Josephus in Contra Apion).

These are the probable historical originals of the ass-haunched lilim (wilderness demons) of later myth, as is Lilith, purportedly the original wife of “Adam.” These are (as might be expected) both plurals (masculine and feminine) of Lilah (? or Layla?). Once it is realized that the “Adam” of myth is a mis-transcription of “Edom” (spelled identically) (innocent or otherwise), from whence the ass mask had come, the historical fly in the archetypical amber is easily identified.

But the interior is “other than” the exterior. Gematriacally, Dinah is identified at her birth (Gen.30:21)

And afterward she bore a daughter = 666

predictably corresponding with

Shechem, son of Hamor = 666

In simple mathematics, 666 ÷ 666 = 1 (echad -- re-union), which is “why” Shechem was so utterly “smitten with” Dinah after he humbled her -- the entire icon is a fugue on the theme “buttocks,” in their various aspects, by implications.

Leah -- mother of Dinah, and consort in carnal knowledge of Reubel -- may possibly be a singularization (LH) of Lilah (LLH); if so, this would bring her (LLH = 65) into congruence with the “13” common denominator of all matters Yahwistic (e.g., YHVH = 26 = 13 x 2).

This factor (“13”) is as consistent as all such are; for our pre­sent purpose it is enough to note that, for example, Adoni (Lord) = 65. Their common factor is, as the Shema notes (Dt.6:4), echad (oneness/unity/union) = 13. (This is the perspective “from above;” from below it is ahabah -- love -- which also totals 13).

More immediately to Dinah, the one judged (Dt.25:3) is to receive, in open court, 39 (= 13 X 3) lashes -- this being the total of HaGoel (Erse Gael, from which “Gaelic:” to “scotch the bottom” of someone is to inflict a proverbially severe correct­ion), The Redeemer (properly, the Redeeming Kinsman, or Head).

And such are some of the matters involved, by implication, in the Affair of Dinah with Shechem, who “humbled her.” (Arguments from silence are notably tenuous, but it may be of note that scripture does not record that she objected to this very strenuously -- if at all).

That such matters were known and understood among us is demonstrated by the renaissance woodcut (above), which is not a “picture” in the conventional sense (to be looked-at and “enjoyed”), but an icon (to be, in the ancient convention of this genre), “read” (icons are not “painted;” they are “written”).

Note in this, first, that the mountain (Zion, a.k.a Eden, from which the underground stream emerges) is divided into zones -- itself a clue in several dimensions, or “levels.” One of these is that, counting the days backwards, from the top (Sabbath -- Saturday), the scene in the foreground occurs on a Wednesday -- a point of importance in its relation to the seven-day cycle. Another is that, being zoned, the mountain is spiraled (scriptural time is figured as a gyre) -- not walled concentrically (obviously, since in the con­centric model, the center can be, depending on whether the micro- or macro­cosm is in view, either in the center or the periphery [“God is a circle -- the center of which is nowhere and the circumference everywhere”]. In neither of these is, as we have here, the point of re-union in media res). And not the least signification of the mountain in zones is the confluence of the spiraling zone, the zonah unwrapped (zone), and the resulting union (zone).

The girl at left, being about thirteen years of age, is obviously Dinah (the 13th child in the 13th generation: 13 + 13 + 13 = 39: the Redeemer) who, appropriately, is “humbled” (bare-bottomed, as any one “Judged” must be -- “Judged” being the meaning of her name).

Around her neck she wears the golden lunulla -- Bull Horns -- identifying her as a Consort of Bullfather; a priestess (or practitioner) of the “woman's art.” To her lips she holds the ninth apple (that 9 x 8 [on the tree] 72 is of significance), with a knife (recall Zipporah's circumcision of Moses' son at the frontier of Midian).

At the right, Shechem is making the sign of the cross -- as Jacob (whose daughter Dinah was) did in blessing Ephraim and Manasseh. With his right hand, he covers his membrum virilum (with her right she holds the knife - together these point to that genital “modification of nature” of which circumcision is an emblem, via which transformation occurs) With his left hand he points -- at one and the same time -- to both the apple and the head of the serpent (which spirals around the tree, repeating the zone -- “girdle” -- motif), which is crowned (stephanos, as was the high priest of Israel).

The serpent himself - the insignium of Israel in the wilderness -- is a Seraph (SR [from which “Sarai”], “overseeing; directing,” + APh [cf. Aphis, the White Bull of Memphis with golden horns -- the “golden calf” whose emblem the girl wears: both relate directly back to Bullfather, the ancestor of Israel]).

The Girl, although young (a na'arah) (and a “dedicated one” [kedoshab) is, Eve-like, pregnant with twins -- a matter which Shechem (as “Adam”) signs obliquely, by pointing “in a left-handed manner” to her “eating” while covering (hiding) the significance of it with his other hand.

In isolation, the hands/arms of the man form the (square Aramaic) “Hebrew” letter “A” (aleph); the form of the serpent hints at “B” (beth); the girl's posture “signs” “G” -- reading (as in Hebrew) from right to left, the scene in view is the “A B G” of the matter (these being the initial letters of the alphabet).

“G” is also “3” (a reference to the Girl and the twins she carries). And so on and so on . . . .

         IT ALL ADDS UP

Those who have not already run, screaming, to the exit at the notice taken of the factor “666” in both Dinah and Shechem may note with profit that this is, in fact, the gematriacal “ear-mark” of the bloodline of the promise.

The Seed of Abram -- Gen.13:16

as the dust of the earth = 666

The Sons of Ishmael -- Gen.25:13-15

Include: Nebajoth = 462 Dumab = 55 Kademah = 149 666

A Wife for Isaac -- Gen.24:15

(Abraham's brother) Nahor = 264 (his wife) Milkah = 95 (their granddaughter) Rebekah = 307 666

The Seed of Jacob -- Gen.28:14

as the dust of the earth = 666

Wedding Party

Jacob = 182 (Groom) Leah = 36 (Bride) Zilpah = 122 (Bridesmaid) Rachel = 238 (Bride) Bilbab = 42 (Bridesmaid) Levi = 46 (Priest) 666

Maid Service I -- Gen.30:3

Behold my maid Bilhah = 42 go in unto her = 49 for children = 64 666

Maid Service II -- Gen.30:7

Bilhah = 42 to Jacob = 212 a second son = 412 666

The Baby Contest

36 = Leah (Rachel's handmaid) Bilhah = 42 122 = Zilpah (Leah’s handmaid) (Bilhah's son) Dan = 54 7 = (Zilpah's son) Gad (her other son) Napthali = 570 501 = Asher (her other son) 666 666

The Tie Breaker -- Gen.30:21

And afterward she bore a daughter = 666

What's in a Name ?

Jacob = 182 Rachel = 238 Gad = 7 Reubel = 239 (His original name according to Josephus et al.) 666

What's in a Name II

Asher = 501 Levi = 46 BenAni = 119 (His mother Rachel’s dying name for him.) 666

The Chase Scene -- Gen.31:23

And he took his brothers with him = 666

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch -- Gen.43:8

we = 115 thou = 406 our little ones = 145 666

Removing Issachar’s Burdens -- Gen.49:14

Issachar = 830 (minus) -164 Zebulon (95) + Dinah (69) 666

One Portion Above his Brothers -- Gen.48:22

Joseph = 156 Asenath = 511 (his wife; Gen.41:43) 667

And further note as well that, via the Hebrew canon and the Evan Bohan Matthew, every name in the bloodline of the promise from “Adam” to Christ is demonstrably a member in just such a calculation coming to “666.” There is no accidental “coincidence” in it.

The examples given above are a small representative sample only, for the purpose of demonstration.

Copyright Bill Wagner 2006