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Chapter 2: Rhipidon Society
199_.
They were the lazy 90’s generation, in their early twenties. But at least they were intelligent. Most of them lived with their parents, or went through the moving out and moving back in ritual. It was very rare for most of them to have real girlfriends. They would work part-time and take one or two useless classes at the local university. And they would hang out at Scotterson’s at 1:00 AM debating. This was their little subculture.
The Scotterson’s smoking section always had a dark green feel to it at night. It was a family style full-service restaurant but was open twenty-four hours. Tonight almost the whole usual gang was there. Damion Gilmore you have heard much about so we’ll skip his bio. Raymond Elder you have heard some about, but he was not present so far tonight, suffice to say he was doing something evil.
Milo Jacob was black. He did not talk with a black accent, so black people did not seem to like him much. He was also too smart for most of them. A passion for comic books was something he shared with Damion. This was the main thing they had in common that kept them friends throughout high school. Plus he could draw, and they used to make their own comics together. Milo was the funniest one in the group, he brought a lighthearted approach to topics that kept them not too dark and pessimistic. An intense conversation between two others would be in full swing, and humoristic Milo would suddenly say something very smart that no one else thought of. The biggest guy sitting in the window booth, and he let everyone else know he could kick some ass. Though he really couldn’t.
Randall Bloomberg was a bit off. He was shy and afraid of girls. He had that overweight and unshaven, ungroomed look, and wore with glasses. As of now he had a full head of hair, but one could tell that he would eventually go bald. Probably the most suburban and middle class, although he wasn’t a WASP. His accountant dad, whom he still lived with, was Jewish. That only made him half Jewish and he wasn’t the practicing religious-type, but that didn’t stop the Jew jokes from the others. The main thing that defined Randall was that he was extremely knowledgeable. He read more than anyone else and did not waste his valuable reading time on comics. Damion was in competition for who was smarter, and they competed over who could learn religious/occultic philosophies faster. They were meme racing, toying with and discarding new unified field theories of everything. With Damion, who was more skeptical, it was for a twisted social status; he only half-believed what he was learning. Randall was spiritually starved and would experiment with religion and philosophy at an extremely rapid rate. For example, after he read Dianetics he would annoyingly relate any and everything for the next month with engrams and the reactive mind. He almost got into Scientology but luckily learned about its brainwashing and hypocrisy and the fact that it and Dianetics simply did not work. He would still got plenty of mail from those people. The goal, if any, for Randall and Damion was to know everything.
Alexis Jacob was the only girl that came around with any sort of regularity. She was Milo’s sister. He was a bit antagonistic towards her, being that she went to real college full time with scholarships and was going to do something with her life, while two years younger. Milo felt inadequate about the fact that his little sister was surpassing him. For this reason she didn’t respect any of the guys, no matter how egotistical they acted. They were just dorks. She lived in a dorm while Milo had just moved back in with mom due to financial difficulties. She was quite attractive, a skinny black girl with glasses she sometimes wore. Right now she had a shorter hair style. No one was nervous around such an attractive young girl since she was Milo’s sister and most had known her when she was littler, going back to high school and farther. She spoke the least and just observed the phenomenon of this group of people. There were probably more book smarts to her and less of a self-taught quality, but in college with the kind of classes she took this could still account for plenty of intelligence. Of everyone there she liked Damion the best, he actually had his own apartment, and was the hottest.
There were a few others but they don’t matter.
“You know what, we should record or write down our conversations. They’re so interesting, it seems a shame to just let them disappear,” Randall said.
“That’s a terrible idea,” disagreed Milo. “No one would want to read or hear our conversations. What medium would it be? A novel? Nobody would like it because it wouldn’t even be a real novel.”
“But it would be like the old Greek philosophies. Plato wrote his philosophies in conversation. Socrates is so famous but not for writing things himself, but he was oftened featured in Plato’s works,” said Randall.
“You know Socrates was black,” Milo felt he had to say.
“So you say.”
“It’s true,” said Alexis, in defense of her race.
Randall had to continue the original point, “Galileo also wrote in conversations. Much of Taoist philosophy is that way too. There is also that other David Bohm book, Unfolding Meaning, it’s a book format of intellectual conversations he had. The Talmud is also filled with that.”
“The easiest to read parts of fiction are always the parts in quotation marks. The descriptive parts are boring, the dialogue is what flows. If I wrote a book it would be mostly in conversations,” Damion had actually been dabbling in writing lately.
“So what would the name be?” asked Milo.
“I don’t know what the book or recording would be called but I have an idea for the name of our group, if it needs one. The Rhipidon Society,” said Damion.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“We should have some Christian connotations, and the Greek word for fins that fish have, as in the super-mystical Jesus fish symbol, is rhipidos. We all know the Jesus fish from the bumper sticker.”
“But does the Jesus fish refer to the two meta-universes, heaven and hell, intersecting to create this universe, or does it refer to a DNA helix? Which is it?” pondered Randall while sipping on the endless supply of coffee.
Alexis all of a sudden jumped in, “I don’t know about that but where did Damion all of a sudden get that term? You don’t know Greek.”
“I happen to know everything and am very classically educated. I’m lying. Well actually I got it from the Philip K. Dick novel VALIS. That book is also about people having weird-ass mystical conversations and they ended up calling themselves the Rhipidon Society. Real good book, a classic.”
“Aha! I caught you plagiarizing. You can’t just steal someone else’s ideas.”
“No it’s not plagiarizing if you say where you got it from. It’s honoring the source, in reverence.”
“But you only admitted it after I caught you.”
“Well at least I did.”
There was an uncomfortable pause for the next few moments. Now what?
Milo spoke up, “well what should we talk about that’s so deep, huh?”
“How about the horror of enlightenment,” said the ever depressive Randall, “In Buddhism when you are enlightened you break the wheel of karma and you don’t have an afterlife. They don’t say what happens to you then. Various disciplines want you to merge with the Godhead and no longer have an individual soul, just be one with the infinite soul. I think that’s the equivalent of your soul dying, which is much more terrifying then your body dying. You have absolute assurance that there is nothing after if your soul does not exist.”
“I could go on about wanting to be an individual soul and not one with the superorganism or the Godhead, but I’ll stick to the topic,” said Damion, “Kabbalah and Jewish mystism says that in the next six thousand year cycle we will be like angels and have no free will. You are supposed to follow God’s commandments to make sure the world is repaired and this comes about. My interpretation will be to purposely not follow God’s commandments so that this won’t come about.”
“Did someone mention the Kabbalah?” said a certain Raymond Elder. He had just shown up unexpectedly, as they all often would. Since four people already filled the booth he took a chair from a nearby table and sat on the end. By his grace of showing up he now had to dominate the conversation.
“Ray! Well now the gangs all here, what have you been doing tonight?”
“Something evil. Let’s just leave it at that. What’s this about the Kabbalah?”
“We were talking about the horror of enlightenment and I cited a Kabbalistic example.”
“You are now talking about Kabbalah,” Raymond condescendingly said as he took out a ‘Port and lit it.
This annoyed Alexis, even though she wasn’t part of the conversation, and she rolled her eyes. She did not like Raymond’s treatment of women or any of his attitude at all, and let him know it. Unlike most women, she was not a hypocrite and genuinely disliked misogynistic men.
“Actually I don’t even believe in Kabbalah anyways. If anything I have concluded that if you make any system complicated enough you can see God and the universe in it. That’s all it really is. Complexities for the sake of being complex, and through that you can see the whole of the universe. Of course, maybe I only think that because it’s too complex for me to get most of it, but that’s what I’m at so far,” said Damion.
“So you agree that you don’t believe in it because you are a fool,” Raymond was not the most knowledgeable in the group on various topics like politics, but one thing he was an expert on was the Occult. He wanted it for power, and admitted it. He gave no respect to the Eastern mysticm unlike the rest. ‘Buddhism is stupid’ was a favorite quote of his. “Is it not the ultimate example of those system theories that you love? Everything in the universe and everyone follows the patterns of Keter to Hochma to Binah through Daat, to the Chesed/Giburah/Tifiret, to the Netzach/Hode/Yesode, finally through the universal receiver of Malkoot. It is the structure of reality, of science, of the mind. We are all combinations of each, we all have the lines of Judgment, of Lovingkindness, and of the balancer Mercy.”
Randall, who went through his Kabbalah phase long ago, had to weigh in, “I do agree that there are a few parallels of the Tree of Life with other universal truths. Most specifically the idea of God’s ultimate reality, ratzon, which is the same as quantum potential that levels and lowers itself down to our dirty reality. Just like the Greek philosophy too with the similar theme of the world being just a shadow of the god’s reality. David Bohm, him again, had his Implicate Order of Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Action that was the unfolding meaning.”
“You two have lost everyone,” said Alexis.
Damion himself was struggling to keep up. “Speaking of ratzon, isn’t it interesting that in the Kabbalah it is forbidden to know the highest level of ultimate knowledge, the Creator’s ratzon? It means concealed nothingness. But doesn’t that make it all the more enticing to learn it? In all of this occult knowledge the highest level is what you want to know first. Are secret societies right when they hide real mystic knowledge from the low levels, does that slow system of not skipping degrees really work? Maybe they’re just hoarding knowledge for themselves to control everyone. Knowledge is power. How can you really trust them with that?”
“Of course you should listen to the elder masters. The secret society initiation is the only true path to enlightenment. If they are hoarding the knowledge for power you had better play the game to get the power for yourself,” said who else but Raymond.
Alexis was happy to snap back and contradict, “Hypocrite. You have to be a forty-five year old Jewish rabbi to even discuss Kabbalah if you listen to what Judaism says. Your definitely not close to that.”
“Not according to Crowley,” said Damion. “Let’s ask our resident Jew what he thinks of the Gentiles usurping his ways.”
“But Ray has still caught himself in a contradiction,” Alexis said before Randall could say anything. “Crowley published his books so that’s skipping. Him and other white mystics that studied Kabbalah sure didn’t follow the Jewish order in learning it. Why don’t you convert to Judaism and be patient, become a rabbi if the order is so important?”
“Hmm… I’ll have to concede,” Raymond apprehensively said. “Some element of the main themes of true knowledge needs to be obtained just to know what you are studying and to choose a path. There is so much information in modern time anyways you have to know enough to know what works with your goal,” he was most displeased to agree with Alexis. “I will still take the Scottish Rite or Golden Dawn over senile Jews who do nothing with their life save study other Hebrew texts exclusively. To isolate yourself only studying the same few themes would be most idiotic in this world of infinite knowledge. You can cross-reference with other occultic forms, for example. And isn’t that necessary for evolution Damion?” he asked, referring to the previous conversation.
“Don’t inbreed your occult systems. But hey, you sure told him Alexis.”
“You’re not off the hook yourself. I caught you with an inconsistency as well,” she was acting more playful with him than she was when being spiteful with Raymond. He played back and acted surprised. “Remember your Tao interpretation?”
one week ago
“In Taoism you can see the world be never leaving your house. I think there is an inherent order you must reach to know that, a point that I am not at. I say you must travel the world and then learn that you don’t need to travel the world. It is a process you aren’t supposed to skip. I think I will be materialistic and effortful until I am wise enough to truly know on an instinctive level that I don’t need to be. That is how you learn not to put forth effort to get what you need, not what you want. Does that make any sense?”
“Oh yeah. Oh well, what do I know? But back to Kabbalah, if there is anything I particularly liked it was more of the stories and mythologies from the Zohar and the Talmud.”
“Zohar would be a kick-ass name for a Norwegian Death Metal band. Metal!” shouted Milo to the astonishment of anyone else left in the restaurant at this hour. Damion responded with the metal hand sign.
“Metal! But I digress. What I was going to say was I like the doctrine of Adam’s soul having all the souls in the present world in him. The Fall was the breaking of the vessels and were all exiled. So maybe Adam is the Godhead to lose your individuality over, not actually God Himself,” Damion started back up. “Well, there are a lot of different mythologies with these similar views of the universe. I think when dealing with unknown mysteries it is smartest to go by truths that different peoples and cultures coincidentally agree on. There lies the deeper objective truth. In Nordic mythology the Yggdrasil World Ash tree connects the realm of the gods, Asgard, and lowers down to the Earth, Midgard, and its roots are the lower levels or reality. Just like the Tree of Life, leveling up and down to the various states of reality.”
“Yeah, but you only know that from reading Thor comics,” said Milo.
“Shut up, you know it from that source too.”
“But I’ll admit it right off the bat. You’re too pretentious. And don’t say shut up to me. I’m black, I’ll kick your ass.”
“Whatever.”
Randall spoke up, “But when you do look at quantum physics and David Bohm and Plato’s archetypes with our reality being a shadow of the God-reality, I think a pattern emerges. It’s not just collective unconscious, it is Truth. There is quantum archetypes and quantum potential. When it comes down to it, science and spirituality are telling us that the universe is equivalent to computer code. The Tree of Life is a glimpse of this cosmic programming. Mathematicians and Greek philosophers say that the world is made out of numbers, what’s the difference? The holographic universe. The ancient shamans new of this and now modern science is rediscovering it.”
“… Well I think the true mystery of the universe is the correct spelling of Kabbalah. Is it with a K or a Q? Or the rare C spelling?” asked Milo.
“You should try keeping up with the multiple spellings of every other terms. Every book has a different spelling of the spheres. It’s annoying.”
Raymond started talking and an ominous tone overtook the room. “That is a commonly held misusage that they are called spheres. The Tree of Life is made up of sefirot, which sounds like the word ‘sphere’ but in Hebrew it means lights. Now then. Do you want to talk about cross-references in multiple spiritual disciplines, for the sake of learning what the ultimate truth is? Do you want to know?”
For unknown and mysterious reasons everyone stopped talking. The Muzak faded away, there didn’t seem to be any of the restaurant noises, there was none of the background chatter of other parties.
The light grew dimmer all around them, or so it seemed. With one possible exception of a solitary light directly above Raymond Elder. He paused in a pose that multiplied his presence so potently that even Alexis froze. His most bitter adversaries could not help but respect and be intimidated by him this one time.
He spoke. All was silent, save his voice. “Sefirot, as we have said, does not mean spheres, it means lights. The energy forces of God are represented by light rays. ‘Chakra’ literally means ‘wheels of light.’ Now we can use the term ascension or we can use the term enlightenment. You see the pattern here, I’m sure. I need to evolve above all of you. So who should I trust to teach me? You people? Please. Eastern hermits who seem incapable of managing there own life, yet alone mine or even the world’s? I will put my faith in those who have shown such resolve to earn it. So who else could I study under but high masters of the illuminated? My soul needs illumination.
“What kind of a pathetic existence are we living? Day in, day out of endless wastes of time. I can’t take it! There must be things in this world that we can’t even yet dream of, just beyond our grasp because of this placid lifestyle. Gentlemen, it is time for me to get out of this loop. My aspirations are too high for me to be tied down by the likes of you. Illumination is the key. There are those who would take me so much farther than this group of failures could ever hope to. And of course I must be referring to my hopeful new circle, the Illuminat--! Oh, excuse me. It appears I’ve lost track of the time.” He checked his watch, stood up, and took out a dollar and some change for the tip. While placing them on the table he peered directly into Damion.
“I have real business to attend to. Destiny beckons,” he said specifically to Damion, as though he was the only one who mattered. Raymond always said that he was particularly important in comparison to who he often referred to as the two-dimensionals. With a charm he rarely showed the man who was usually only joked of being evil put on his trenchcoat and walked to the doors and through them, into the bitter cold of night, towards his mysterious business.
Everyone was confused. Ever so slowly the energy returned at Scotterson’s restaurant The bustle of the waitresses, the distant conversations of strangers, the dull elevator music, these sounds gradually got louder as the atmosphere returned to normalcy. Heartbeats slowed back to the ordinary rate.
Milo was the first to speak.
“Uhm… what the fuck was that? I thought Evil Ray was all about the darkness, not light.”
* * *
Milo was the first of the group still sitting down to speak after the confused pause. Then they noticed that Damion was gone.
He followed Raymond out. They stood in the cold parking lot. There was a strong wind blowing their hair, and it made it a little harder to hear what was said.
“Ray, what did all that mean? All of that ‘illumination is the key’ stuff. Hey, do I deserve to know?” He put his hand on his shoulder.
“... You’ll find out soon enough,” he smiled. “My friend, you are the only one with any potential. Don’t worry, you’ll see.” |
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