I slept I knew neither fear nor pain. I certainly didn’t feel trapped. I didn’t know what I was or where. Then Zurvan called me:
” ‘ Azriel, Servant of the Bones, come to me, invisible, your tzelem only, fly with all your might.’ I felt I had been sucked up into the sky. I flew towards the voice that called me and as before, I saw the air full of spirits, spirits in all directions, and spirits through which I moved with great determination, trying not to hurt them, yet deeply dismayed by their cries and the look of desperation in the faces.
The preceding excerpt can be found in Anne Rice’s novel, Servant of the Bones. The copy I hold was published in 1996 by Alfred A. Knopf. Excerpts cited are on page 123, Chapter 9. I can not present a summary any better than the notes located in the flaps of the dust jacket; so I lazily copy most of those to share with you, here.
Azriel, Servant of the Bones.
He is a ghost, demon, angel- in love with the good, in thrall to the evil. He takes us back to his mortal youth in the magnificent city of Babylon. We see Azriel at twenty- a Jew educated, rich, beautiful, fiercely devoted to his captive Hebrew tribe…. Azriel falls victim to a royal plot compounded by his devotion to his Hebrew God- only to be plucked from death by evil priests and sorceresses and transformed into a genii commanded to do their bidding. Azriel embarks on his perilous journey through time- from Babylon’s hanging gardens to the Europe of the Black Death to Manhattan in the 1990’s.
This September I am visiting the late Anne Rice, an author I hold in high esteem along with authors Mary Shelly, Stephen King, Brian Stoker and Edgar Allen Poe. Their creative ability to give birth to Frankenstein, the evil personified in The Stand, Dracula and The Raven.has always intrigued me. Rice’s Azriel, The Servant of the Bones, is equal to the task of producing a concrete mixture of good and evil.
Today, I allow myself to reflect about my understanding of a possible balance between good and bad, light and darkness, or evil and angelic goodness. I am reminded of the age old question. How does a benevolent God, a One Source One Force,(if you will), give birth or produce both goodness and evil. An English poet, William Blake, asked the same question elegantly in his 1794 poem, The Tyger. I ask your patience as I reproduce it here:
The Tyger
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,/ In the forests of the night;/ What immortal hand or eye,/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies./ Burnt the fire of thine eyes?/ On what wings dare he aspire?/ What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art./ Could twist the singers of thy heart?/ And when thy heart began to beat./ What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,/ In what furnace was thy brain?/What the anvil? what dread grasp./Dare it’s deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears/ And water’d heaven with their tears:/ Did he smile his work to see?/ Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright/ In the forests of the night:/ What immortal hand or eye,/ Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
I have read a few scholars who have interpreted Blake’s poem The Tyger as his questioning of why God could produce evil, personified by the Tiger and good as related to the Lamb. He, (God) is shown metaphorically in the poem as the blacksmith, making both good and evil. So I repeat Blake’s question asked over 230 years ago and I finally have an answer.
Ah, the light of my Lighthouse gives me the ability to see through the salt spray and sea foam of this current blow hard Nor’Eastah! When I reached maturity, three decades later than most, I was an old 50 year old. Today I am a young 77 year old. The last twenty seven years I have grown to believe I alone am responsible for the negative unhappy moments and also the positive happy moments in my life. I learned that I am not a victim of any one else’s behavior. I finally took responsibility for my actions and my words became more truthful, in tune with my deeds.
When I was at a low emotional moment in my life, a friend gave me a book that changed my outlook, perspective and delivered me from wallowing in self pity, the negativity of the victim consciousness. I opened that volume, Bridges of Consciousness again this month. This book is authored by Kathy Oddenino RN. She channels an entity identified as H.S., heavenly spirit. Kathy is his scribe. I share here his words as dictated on page 109 of my copy.
Man does not realize that he creates the events of his life by the energy change within his inner self. This understanding is not part of the belief system that he has been taught. Indeed man has been taught to see himself as a victim of circumstance. Circumstance is the energy of created events. Man, and only man is responsible for his own creations of his events of life and living.
On page 118, H.S. sums it up succinctly. God gave man free will which is his Power of Creation.
So there you have your answer William Blake. God is not the blacksmith that chained good and evil together. We all have free will to be negative and or positive in our daily creations. For the last decades I have been attempting to change my energy, my will to the good of the moment. That doesn’t mean I should be blind to the negative around me. That discernment is crucial to learning the lesson of balance. We are living in a time where we have leaders and technology that clearly show us negativity. For me, I can not fall easily into hate, anger, and frustration. They make that trap easy to fall into. Our perceived divisions need to meld into cooperative compromises. I need to listen better and I hope they do too.
Thank you for reading.
Be at peace and joy!
Mark