Chapter 21: The Door to the Garden
(Priestess, Daleth)
PREV HOME NEXT"There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked. . . . Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice's first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but alas! Either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time around she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door, about fifteen inches high. She tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
"Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway."
"Thy temples are like a pomegranate split open behind thy veil. . . .
"This thy stature is like to a palm-tree. . . .
"If she be a wall,
We will build upon her a turret of silver;
And if she be a door,
We will enclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall,
And my breasts like the towers thereof;
Then was I in his eyes
As one that found peace.
. . .
"Awake, o north wind
And come thou south, blow upon my garden,
That the spices thereof may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat his precious fruits."
Our dip in the stream invigorated us, but when we came back onto the grass, the kiang had settled down for a nap. So, after nibbling on some nan, we joined them, stretching out naked on our bed rolls in the early afternoon sun. The fresh dry air and the sun's rays tingled our exposed genitals and spread warmth through our whole bodies. The sky continued bright blue and cloudless. Blue and gold. The universe was blue and gold.
In about twenty minutes the asses stirred and left us behind, moving off at a swift trot over the next ridge. Rivah and I dressed and prepared the camp. She milked the yaks and I started the dung fire. We ate early and filled in the details of events since our separation. Rivah had had a similar confinement, followed by an interview with Sabutai. He spoke to her in Arabic, and then sent her out with the same quest and equipment I had. She described in detail her adventure with the wolf and her discovery that wolves were not nearly as dangerous as people made them out to be. Her eyes glistened as she spoke.
"On my third day out I met a large male, who started to follow me. By evening I had enticed him to share some dried meat with me. Afterwards he walked away from my campsite and made a large circle around it, marking every ten yards or so with his pee. He had amazing bladder control, and must have squirted the rocks at least thirty times as he circumambulated our sacred space.
"Then he came back and lay down beside me on the bedroll I had spread out. I stripped. The evening air felt cold on my skin, so I snuggled close to his body lying on my side to share his animal warmth. He was no longer at all shy of me.
"Soon he started to lick and nuzzle me, placing a paw gently on my shoulders, and then on my waist. I sensed that he was getting aroused, and that doggie style was the way to go, so I crawled onto all fours and arched my back to spread my love lips for him. He started sniffing all around my hair and in my armpits and then he stuck his cold wet nose into my crotch and started rasping my rosebud with his tongue. That really sent shivers up my spine.
"Next thing I knew he had mounted me from behind. His hot red spike thrusting into me contrasted oddly to his cool paws on my back. As he jerked his tool around in me he made muffled growls and whines. Then abruptly his body stiffened. He arched his head up and howled a long wail. His powerful pointer poked me at a spot that sent a bolt of white lightning through my whole body, radiating out of every pore. My body collapsed onto the blanket, and rolled over. It was trembling with shock and shivering from cold. But the light was no longer in my body. It had expanded into an endless black velvet void sprayed with countless silent sparks of cold diamond fire.
"My eyes closed, the shivering passed, and my body lay there immobile in the vast expanse. I became a dark, cold stillness. And it was good if that was all. But then a soft glow crept into my hollow awareness. Suddenly, from a distance I heard the wolf give a long howl. I opened my eyes and turned my head to see him sitting on a ridge, silhouetted by the rising full moon.
"At that moment I realized that I had just experienced an initiation into a very special sisterhood of the Wicca. Then I rolled up in the blanket and fell asleep.
"This morning I followed the stream looking for more signs of life. I rounded a bend, and there off in the distance were you and your yak and the wild asses rolling around in the grass. I walked right up to you, but you were too busy to notice me, so I figured I might as well join in the fun."
I then recounted to her my growing awareness of the punning wordplay in the Bible and my surprise that Sabutai knew a lot of Hebrew and seemed to consider it important. (Since many Central Asians were Muslims, it did not surprise me that he spoke Arabic.)
Sitting by the stream we continued our discussion into the evening. I told her about Tamar and the secret code and how I had found that the names of many Biblical personages, plants, and animals often seemed to carry a symbolic meaning related to the abstract spiritual ideas of the Hebrews. Rivah agreed and pointed out that this practice is most obvious in Genesis and the Song of Songs. She recited a couple of lines (6.7, 7.8) from the Song: "'Thy temples are like a pomegranate split open behind thy veil. This thy stature is like to a palm-tree.' Do these lines mean something more to you now that you have explored the deeper aspects of Tamar?"
I nodded in recognition, and she continued.
"The Song is the key to the Bible." She quoted Rabbi Akiba to prove her point. "Heaven forbid that any man in Israel ever disputed that the Song of Songs renders the hands unclean. For the whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Writings are holy, and the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies."
She told me that scholars like Phyllis Trible and Francis Landy had already arrived at a theory that the Song is an inversion of the Genesis story of the Fall of Man. The Song sings the path of man's redemption.
But Rivah went one step further. She said that the Biblical punning code in the Canticles is the linguistic device for revealing the details of that path to redemption. And the whole system came right from Shem, the Hebrew name game that I had stumbled onto and that she had unveiled through her own researches.
The key, she said, is right in the title and opening phrase of the Song. She leafed through the JPS to the beginning of Canticles and translated the first few lines: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For better is thy love than wine. As for scent, thy ointment is better. 'Ointment Poured Forth' is thy name; therefore do the maidens love thee.
"The pronoun references really shift around here like quicksilver. Also, see where it says, Ointment Poured Forth is thy name. In Hebrew 'name' is SheM and 'ointment' is ShaMeN. The name and the ointment are linked by wordplay in the original text. Shamen suggests not only the herbal ointments, but also semen, the ointment of love, and the magic of the Tantric shaman.
"The translation of the word TVuRaQ as 'poured forth' is just a guess. The scholars don't know what it means. From our study of the alphabet symbolism TV-RQ could refer to the power R of the tongue or language Q in intimate contact or making marks (TaV). RaQ is saliva. Parsed as TVR-Q, it could refer to licking all over the body, a tour with the tongue. I also think it may be a reference to the wild Turks or Tuaregs, many of whose tribes have an ancient practice of keeping their women heavily veiled. The phrase may mean something like: 'Your name is Simon (Shaman/Semen/Salve) the Turk,' or maybe 'The Fat Turk,' or 'The Greasy Tuareg.' ("Just joking," she chuckled.) In the wild wordplay here there also may be a veiled reference to making love or communicating through the veil of the Genesis firmament (RaQYO), to exotic spices and perfumes (RaQa#), and to the secret kabbalistic code of notariqon, The Veil of Nut.
"Remember we talked before about the Hebrew ciphers (CheRVPhaH), and I told you how notariqon technique is a 'residual' or 'refined' seed code, usually in the form of a first-letter acrostic or a last-letter acrostic. The Greek-sounding word, 'notariqon' probably is a Latin-Greek hybrid term meaning a set of notarial shorthand codes, just like a lexicon is a set of word glosses. But 'nou-tarikhon' in that language could also mean 'mental mummy maker,' a pretty good gloss for a mnemonic code device. Or it could be Nauto-Archon, a captain of sailors. Or it could be neutero-eikon, 'a new image.' Neter means 'god' in Egyptian. So Neteri-Khem would be the Gods of Egypt, which we have discovered often represent letters of the alphabet.
"In Hebrew NVTaR means 'remainder', and KeN means 'yes,' 'thus,' 'honest,' or 'upright.' Maybe that gives us, 'The remainder is honesty,' something like a true quintessence. On the other hand, NV@ is a pilot or navigator, and RaQ is saliva, or the tongue's power; but RiYQ or ReYQaN means 'emptiness.' So 'notariqon' also may be analyzed as NV@-RYQN.' That could mean an astronaut (the man N connected to V the steering wheel @) who roams Nut's Emptiness of Naught, or one who plays a divine game with linguistic seed codes, or who roves about with his tongue on his beloved's body. And, just for fun, we can note that N is the letter for a testicle, so in 'notariqon' the TV-RaQ or TV-RiYQ, the symbol-spit or symbol-space, is nicely placed between two nuts.
"But let's get back to the code in the Song. The word 'scent,' or ReYa#, is the code for RVua#, the 'Spirit.' The phrases, better is thy love than wine, and as for scent, thy ointment is better are parallel and chiastic. They couple 'scent' or 'spirit' with 'wine' and 'love' with 'ointment.' But then the text says, Thy name is Ointment. This is like saying, Thy name is Love, since the 'love' and 'ointment' have already been equated. Now the Hebrew word for 'love' in the text is DVoD, a code for David, the father of Solomon, in whose honor the Song was dedicated. Solomon's name SLMH means peace SLM, which is SheM with a phallic Lamed in the middle. The King of Peace is the expression of Love, embodied for Christians in Christ. But traditionally the Name (HaSheM) is an oblique reference to God.
"The word ShiYR, or Song, is a pun on the word ShaR the ancient word for Lord, and ShaOaR is a gate, and ShiOVuR is a lesson, and ShoR is the navel. God is the Lord of Lords, and the Song is the Gate of Gates into the Garden of God's Kingdom, and it is the Lesson of all Lessons, and the Navel of all Navels. Another meaning of the word SYR is 'residue' or 'remainder,' which may be a clue to look for notariqon in the title. It is the Remainder of all Remainders.
"This notion of a residue often refers to the alchemy of immortality, and to the quickening of the light of life in the womb, which is the power of semen - hence, S-Y-R. If we take the initial-letter notariqon of the Song's full title (ShiYR Ha-ShiYriYM AsheR Li-ShLoMoH) we get SH-AL, the Lamb God."
"Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata Mundi, dona nobis pacem," I muttered. "O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the World, grant us Peace."
"And that," continued Rivah, "is Solomon. That's what his name means - Peace. Reading the last-letter notariqon backwards gives us HR-MR, the Mound of Myrrh, or a Heap of Bitterness. The judgment on Adam and Eve when God expelled them from the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eternity, was the bitterness of death. The redemption of man through the magic of David's Psalms and Solomon's Wisdom is purification from sin and return to the garden of peace through erotic love and communion with Nature.
"Now let me show you some of the other code words used in the Song and you'll get the whole picture when you read it. First let's look at the ointments and spices." She took a pen and wrote a list on a sheet in my notebook.
[Rivah's List]When she had finished listing the images and explaining them to me, she summarized her understanding of the Song.
"Another important clue to the code is the passage (2:6,7) where the lady says of her lover: His left hand is beneath my head, and his right hand penetrates my vulva. O Daughters of Jerusalem, I warn you: by the gazelles and by the does of the field, never awaken love when you are wearing a mask.
"This strange oath occurs three times in the Song, making it a refrain. The usual swearing of an oath in Hebrew is to God, but in the Song the oath is made twice to wild animals, gazelles and does. The 'gazelles' (CheBvAVoTh) are a punning code for the heavenly hosts or the nation of Israel, and 'does' (AaYLaOTh) is the punning code for the Elohim, the Creator(s) of Heaven, Earth, and Man in Genesis. 'Field' (ShaDaH) is the punning code for ' breast' (ShaD) and The Almighty (ShaDaY) meaning that the love must come from within your heart, that is from God through your heart, with no pretense or masking. It is traditional to swear oaths before God, the Nation or with your hand on your breast. So these puns are like a Rosetta stone unlocking the way the whole system connects aspects of Solomon's Garden to fundamental Hebrew beliefs.
"The gesture of the lover embracing his lady as he swears his love for her is a very ancient tantric mudra going back to the Sumerians and probably much earlier. With his left hand (SMAL) Thoth/Tehuti places the seed names (Shem) of God (AL) into the brain through the Mouth of God, which is just below the occipital protuberance. This enlivens the visual cortex and cerebellum, enabling man to recognize written symbols and relate them to his world. The letters SMA are the Mothers of the Alphabet Rose in the exoteric Kabbalah tradition. The word 'head' echoes the first words of Genesis: 'In the first place,' which means literally, 'in the head.' The lamed (L) directs the energy from the genitals to the third eye.
"The right hand (YiMiN) echoes the creation of the great ocean (YaM) and the fishes (N) in it, like the semen with sperm in it, and the mind with ideas swimming in it. It is also the hand that you hold your sex with Ya(D)- MiYN. T#B means 'to insert,' and QaNaH is a hollow shaft, here the vagina, or cunt, or, in tantric terms, the channel up the spinal column. The word #BQ means 'to embrace'. #BB is 'to love,' and is a variation of AHB, which also means 'to love.' The first is the binding together of two bodies. The second is the divine breath in the body. Thus #BQ is binding the body by penetration of lingam into yoni. The prefixed T adds the idea of intercourse, interaction. The three letters #BQ are the esoteric three Mothers of the Alphabet Rose, as I showed you back in the hot spring purification room."
As she stood there speaking I embraced her and placed my left hand behind her head and my right hand on her vulva. Then I kissed her. Even in a standing posture the whole gesture felt very natural and spontaneous.
After a long pause to enjoy our connection, she continued her discourse unveiling the mysteries to me.
"The symbols we've just played with are from the Song. But there are many more throughout the Bible. You already have noticed how Noah and his three sons represent the subjective and objective aspects of experience. Ham is direct physical experience of a creation. Shem is the symbolic name that man attaches to that creation in his language. Japheth is the subjective appreciation of the creation's beauty. And Noah is the silence of pure awareness that underlies and holds all creations in seed form without judgment in the ocean of chaos.
"Adam's Fall from the Garden of Eden comes from a judgment or DiYN (actually several judgments) which is really the beginning of the creative process. The ancient symbol for this step is the letter Aleph and the image of the bull, especially the bull's horn. It is depicted on the Tarot card of Judgment as we discovered back in Telluride. Adam begins his life innocently in the Garden of Eden. With God's assistance and permission, he assigns names to the plants and animals, then he derives abstract notions about them. But then he goes one step further and eats the 'forbidden fruit' of judging things as good or bad, thereby alienating himself from his world. He feels guilt and even becomes ashamed of his own body and hides it with fig leaves.
"The key point here is that Adam and Eve decide that their sexuality is bad and embarrassing and start trying to hide it. The Biblical text doesn't really explain how they come to that odd judgment. But in Hebrew 'sex' is MiYN, and MiN is where you come from, your Source. The Egyptian God of the Source or foundation is also called MiN, and he's usually shown ithyphallic, with a stiff erection. Hey, remember when I squatted down to look at the bottom of the mummy door to Pandora's Box? Set was holding his Staff of Power upright and pointing his Ankh at the candidate's dick, and the candidate was throwing his hands up in the air and getting a very Minnish hard-on.
"Rejection of Sex is the predictable outcome of rejecting one's Source. If you are not living in the Source, which is the Cause, then by default you are living in the world of Effects. The apparent experience for Adam and Eve is that God, or Source, expels them from the Garden of Eternity into the World of suffering in time. When you reject your own physical experience of unity as the Creative Source, you find yourself in the endless maze of alienation, separation, and resistance.
"We often think of judgment as a negative thing, something that a judge does that usually leads to punishment. But God apparently has no problem making decisions, as when he judges Adam and Eve. In the Tarot cards "Judgment" is a depiction of the Day of Judgment in which the Angel of the Lord blows a horn and awakens all the dead in the world. The awakening of consciousness from unconsciousness is a pretty creative act, whatever the final outcome. What does it feel like when you wake up, or when you suddenly understand something?
"Solomon was the greatest Judge of the Hebrews, famed for his wisdom. The Song of Songs is dedicated to him and presumably expresses his wisdom, showing us how to reawaken our dead souls and redeem them. The Song starts from mankind suffering. Self is separated from the world like the separation of lovers. The Song links the abstract ideals of Genesis to the minerals, plants, and animals of the natural world to create a man-made pleasure garden that reunites the lovers with each other and with God's Paradise with no barriers of pretense. Through uninhibited erotic dalliance the lovers unify the human body, the natural world, and the mental world. When Man experiences the beauty of this sensual garden without getting stuck in judgments, God's Garden of Eden and Man's Garden of Solomon become one, and Mankind is thereby redeemed. The acrostic of the Lamb-God of Abraham and Isaac and the symbol of Christ, becomes the Lamb-Ram or Lamb-Hart (SheH-AYL) in the Garden of Solomon."
"That's an amazing insight," I commented, "But it is still just a mental construction, a theory you have cooked up."
"No, no. It doesn't have to be," she said, and stooped to pick up a wet rock. "Look at this rock. Do you see here the image of an old man with a white beard and a cloak?"
As I held the rock dripping in my hand, suddenly the pattern flashed into my awareness. There he was - a white-bearded old man in a gray cloak. Rivah picked up several more stones and handed them to me one by one. "Here's one showing a pretty girl with flaxen yellow hair and large boobs. . . . And see on this other one, the serious looking Mayan Indian with the jeweled headdress. . . . Oh, look! Turn the girl this way and you get a puppy dog. And that one there is 'very like a whale.' See its funny baleen mouth, and its eye?
"These images that you see in the rocks are real. The stones are like little mirrors reflecting structures in your own consciousness back at you. Someone with a different cultural orientation and viewpoint might see different images in the same rocks. What you see are your judgments that carry emotions and hold you to a particular interpretation of an object or event.
"Now take off the interpretations and appreciate the rock just as a rock, with no commentaries, funny faces, or other personal stuff intervening. Just see the rock, hold it, feel its texture, its sharpness, hardness, smoothness, and wetness. . . . You see it is what it is. That has no name. But we can call that experience HaM. Structure and flow. Just feel it.
"Rock, Tsur, that's its name. Girl-rock, Mayan-rock, whale-rock, Rivah-rock, Mother-Earth-Rock - that's adding a name onto a name to tag a specific rock. That's hierarchical classification. That's Shem - connecting one creation to another, to create a context.
"Now put your attention on the beauty you see when you appreciate the rock just as itself without the identifying tags, or on the beauty of the tags - either one or both. That's Japheth."
I looked at the rock, and it appeared much more bright and colorful. I looked at Rivah and she was glowing in that same beautiful way as when I first met her and looked into her eyes back in Iowa City and saw camel caravans moving across the boundless desert.
"Now just let it be, without defining the rock as anything in particular. It could be anything. It just rests there silently as potential, undefined possibilities - whatever you like it to be or become. That's Noah floating with his ark of complementary pairs in the ocean of all possibilities. That's all there is, ever was, ever will be. That's the key to the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eternity."
Since the encounter with the kiang, it seemed that I no longer resisted seeing things and interacting with them just as they were. That heightened state of perception was now present wherever I looked, not just when I looked into Rivah's eyes. I was getting to know Noah by getting deeper into Rivah's life.
That night we made love in the bedroll, floating under a canopy of countless diamonds strewn over black velvet.
The next day we wandered in a leisurely fashion back to the cliff barn, integrating our experiences, enjoying sand, grass, rocks, sky, and each other. Then we put all our attention into climbing up the narrow cliff trail, pushing and pulling the yaks to urge them up the steep slope. It was early afternoon of the next day by the time we reached the rock barn door.
Once again I was perched up high on a ledge looking out over the valley with the sun poised over the peak of the Ice Mountain Ancestor. But this time I had Rivah with me, and we faced the door, back from our quest. We no longer worried about how we would deal with Sabutai, or even how we would get inside the door to find our companions, Noah and Ky and Kara and Phyllo.
We did not tarry there long. They must have monitored our arrival with hidden cameras or from our collars. The door cracked inward and creaked open, letting the bright afternoon sunlight flood into the dimmer interior. Ayup and another Kyrgyz, Rivah's escort, were there to meet us and to guide us to the waiting shuttle. I bade Elsie an affectionate goodbye and we boarded. As the car moved off down the tunnel, Ayup mentioned casually that we could take off the collars, since they were now deactivated. I reached over and unsnapped Rivah's collar and then undid my own. Ayup took them from us and deposited them in the side pocket of his embroidered jacket.
As he did this, a thought flashed through my awareness that perhaps the collars were a sham threat from the beginning. But now it was too late to find out by inspection. I suddenly recalled that when Rivah and I shouted during our rut with the kiangs, we felt no bark-collar shock. On the other hand maybe we were so far blasted in bliss at that moment that we didn't even feel the shock.
After about a half-hour ride, our shuttle-car pulled into a parking bay. We stepped out into a high-ceilinged hallway lined with pillars carved from the living rock and ornamented with rosebud-shaped capitals. The rock walls and pillars on the left side were of the darker rock we had seen along the valley with the stream, and the walls and pillars on the right side were of the more yellow hue we had seen in the valley of the cliff barn. At the end of the hallway was what looked like a huge wall-rug elaborately woven with a brightly colored stylized design of green palm trees and bright red bursting pomegranates. The tapestry was suspended between the two last pillars in the rows that extended down the hall.
Ayup explained that we were now deep inside the Buz-dag^-ata. Here he and his companion would leave us. The tapestry, he told us, formed the entrance to Sabutai's garden. Sabutai would meet us there and decide our fates. The two Kyrgyz bowed, returned to the shuttle, and departed. The feeling was quite different. They treated us with an air of respect and deference, more like honored guests than prisoners.
We looked at each other and at the giant cloth hanging at the end of the hall. Rivah breathed deeply.
"This is strange. Doesn't it remind you of the Arcanum of the Priestess? The design of this place resembles Solomon's Temple that he built on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. That site was the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite where David met the angel of the Lord who at the time was meting out a horrible pestilence on the people of Jerusalem because of David's foolish ways. In that meeting David simply acknowledged responsibility for his actions, and the angel agreed to lift the plague.
"David then set up an altar to mark the site, and his son Solomon later erected the great Temple of Jerusalem there. Moriah is derived from MR, which means the aromatic resin, myrrh, and bitterness, after myrrh's bitter taste. The derivation Moriah means 'terror.' So Mount Moriah means about the same as what you told me Tash Kurghan means in Turkic: Mount Terror, Terror Rock. Moriah is also a razor, and Moreh is a teacher, so maybe we're talking about Occam's Razor here. MaRaH is to anoint, MRA is to fly, and MaRaE is vision, optics, and mirrors."
"Yeah," I agreed. "We're back on the subject of Fear again. You know the original epic of the Turkic peoples is called Dedi Korkut. That means 'Grandpa Fear.' And Dedi or Dodi in Hebrew you've taught me means 'my beloved', or my David. The temple was built at a site of terror that was dedicated by David as the place where he faced his fear. And here we are in the land where that epic tale of Dedi Korkut took place."
Rivah walked up to the pillars to inspect them closely. "When Solomon built the Temple," she said, "the pillar on the right was called Jachin (Ya-KeN), which means 'God's Confirmation,' or something like 'Say Yeah to Ya.' The pillar on the left was called Boaz (B-OZ), which means 'In Power.'"
"That's funny," I picked up on her train of thought. "In Turkish the same words also have meaning. Yak/n means 'nearby' and bog^az means 'neck.' However, there's clearly some Turkish wordplay here also. Yag^-kin means 'oiled scabbard.' The cunt is the archetype of the oiled scabbard. And bog^a-aza means 'bull's member.' That certainly captures the pictographic meanings we discovered for the two Hebrew letters Aleph-bull and Lamed-member, a Judgment that is Just. The two letters together spell AL, the other Hebrew name for God. It sounds to me like these are secret tantric symbols for the lingam and the yoni, AL and YHVH, both used as totems for God."
I walked over to the tapestry and touched its bright patterns. Rivah continued weaving the threads of our thoughts. "Add to that the iconic symbols Solomon used to decorate the Temple: your friend the palm tree (TaMaR) and the pomegranate (RiMoN), symbols of the phallus and the womb. RM and MR are the same root permuted, and NTN means to give, or yield fruit."
"Say, does this mean that Sabutai has rebuilt the Temple of Solomon right here as a site for secret tantric rituals? Is he really another Old Man of the Mountain?" I asked.
"Maybe that, and maybe much more. I don't know. The notariqon of the pillars is B-Y, 'in me' or 'my interior.' That's shorthand for 'Entrance.' 'Enter me.' 'The secret is in your hands.' It's a 'House of God.' The only way to find out for sure is to go in and see for ourselves."
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