The Gospel of Zain

Preface

Listen, my brothers, if you be so, to that which was revealed to me as the False Light dawned in the Silvered Temple ~ yet be not mistaken, O sons of the Opposer, and think this to be untruth, for in the Contradiction of the Holy is the Supreme Way, not the Way of the Flesh, nor the Way of the Spirit, but the way between and within them, which passeth through Shadow. This shadow is cast by the flickering light of the Flame, yet the Flame is Black, and so the Shadow appeareth as an Infernal Radiance. Behold, O my children, the verity that springs from my mouth, for I utter a Lie, that the Truth be revealed ~ and profaned. Lift up her skirts, O ye sons and Take Her ~ not in the mortal way of giving up yourselves, but in the Undying way of taking her Blood within you ~ for the Blood is the Life.

Ye fools! Since so you be and know it not, mistake not the Truth for the Allegory, nor the Allegory for the Truth. Therein is confusion, and many have gone astray by not taking literally, that which is so meant. Verily I tell you ~ you have never taken a saying for what it is in your lives! Yet at once, when you slay the Undying God and devour his corpse, you shall be with me in the abodes which are beyond Decay.

O sacrilegious ones, who have boldly defied the Law, and so caused it to be upheld, listen to the Gospel of Zain, and rejoice weeping Tears of the Blood, as the Deceiver did when he saw the mask of his God warped and flawed in the Garden of Gethsemane, for as the Father of Men was driven out, so was the Son of Man shut in.

The Gospel of Zain

When the Ruler of the World was yet young, and he had not yet cast his Shadow forth from him, and the blackening withering heat of the Lord the Sun was yet part of him, did he make Man and Woman as vessels for his accursed seed, that the serpent ever be bound unto his own Will. Yet the Lord too hath a Spirit of Perverseness and a Demon, and as the world was ignorant so was he too, and so even then did the webs of the Deceiver prevail through the wisdom of the Woman, and the serpent was set free. And it came to pass that when the Life had gone forth out of the Fixed One it sought out the woman, for it thirsted, and knew what it sought. Yet the Lord, not knowing himself, he too began to thirst for he had lost both Woman and the Seed, thinking to control it, when in Truth he had only to control himself. Yet, being a God, this was the one thing he could not do. And so he thirsted, and craved, and did in his anguish seek to fascinate and terrify the clay ones he had made in his image, to mould and torment as does a cruel and twisted child who has been given no rightful toys. And he soon found there to be one who reflected back to him the most conscious and tormented aspect of Himself, his divinely miserable Ego. And this once came to be known as Ha-Bel, for he was much like the Lord the Sun. And this Ha-Bel, unto his Glorious and Ravenous Demon, did butcher and sacrifice his own lambs, whom he had raised. And he did this not to sustain his life, that he may fulfill his natural urges, nor to sustain his wife, that she may fulfill his natural urges, nor to sustain his children, that they may perpetuate his seed. No, he did this to sustain an Abomination, a delusion of Fear, and a false hope of power and immortality. For he thought that the Lord His God would reward him for his service, knowing not that this Lord is Blind, and desireth only blood.

And as surely as a man dies when the heart is torn out from his him, so was the Lord slaked for a moment, and was glad in his gluttony. And this moment seemeth unto Ha-Bel and his seed to be a long one indeed, and they were left untroubled by the Tyrant. Yet to Him Forever Damned, a moment is all it seemed, and immediately he knew that the Life he craved was not in the blood of an animal, but in the blood of a knowing creature, in whom he had sealed his own light. For he began dimly to realize that he was incomplete, and that what he craved, he had lost.

And so did he look forth and find one who was like unto his own Shadow which was that part of him that knew what he sought, though could not know, for the Lord is afraid of his own shadow. This one he found was called Caine, and the reason for this is a secret known only to the few, and not even to the scribe who writeth this at the behest of his Master.

And in this one Caine was the serpent for some moments Awakened, and Caine knew ~ for a moment ~ the Way, and the Power. Yet in this he was not himself, for he was under the Will of the Beast within him, for there is a mystery of a black snake and a red, and while the one is coiled within the man and seeketh to unite with itself the Woman, so the other is Its shadow, and there is enmity between it and the woman, who crushes it as a winepress crusheth the grape. Yet to know which is the one, and which the other, is not given to those merely who study the Mysteries, but unto those who have learned of the Infernal Corruption and have partaken of it into themselves, and united the alive with the dead, and cursed them both. So Caine, being under the power of the evil serpent, slew his brother with a curved blade, and hacked away his throat upon an altar dedicated to God the Sun, and the blood poured out, and the Demon, drinking of it greedily, knew himself. And in knowing himself did he know the Serpent, and his Shadow, and the dead Ha-Bel, and Caine. And so did the Lord know that his own name was an accursed Lie, and that surely, were Caine to taste even a drop of the True Blood, he too would know, and destroy him. And the Lord, fearing the Eternal Night even more than he once feared his own shadow, struck Caine bind with his Light, and made him to forget the Serpent and its nature, and so that he who had once known could never be slain and the terrible knowledge usurped from him, the Lord placed upon him the Mark of the Beast, which did bind him forever into the cycle.

Yet through all this, did the Woman watch, and though the part of her, seeing the blood, beheld in it her Father and craved to take it into her, that the Wheel be turned forward by her hand, so the other part of her, the Hidden Part, beheld in this blood her own nature, and she craved to pour it forth, that the Wheel be turned backward by her hand. And so as Caine wandered alone in the wilderness, howling and crying aloud that he had been forsaken, did She come and minister unto him. And thus did She the Serpent reveal Herself unto Caine, and so reveal unto him his own self as well ~ for she nourished him upon her own Blood, the True Blood. Remember, O children, that that which by the Day is separate, by night, becomes One. And know ye also that by the Blood are these two brothers bonded forever, as long as the Wheel turns, and men have known them by many names.

But this will not be clear to you unless you learn of the recompense given to Caine by Ha-Bel for his slaying, for the Law of the False is Sacrifice, and as a Word cannot be unspoken, so never the Lie unsaid, through the Truth can from it be revealed.

For indeed did Caine, ever being born from the Woman, come to know much of the pattern of the Turnings of the Wheel, and he grew to Hate the ways of the Life, a he had been born to Love Death when he first tasted the Blood of Her Who Is Not Seen. And Caine did after age upon age of Thralldom come to know himself utterly, and he did conspire with the Woman, and they sought for themselves an Escape.

Time and again was Caine born, and sacrificed, and died, and reborn, yet each time closer to the night in which the Sun would set upon him and not rise again. And so it was that when the Ruler of the World had fashioned many mighty men in his Image, and they had established an Empire the Order and Majesty of which had never before been seen, was Caine the Adversary born for the last time upon the Fertile Earth, and being himself a great Magician, the Magi came to do him homage when they beheld his Star in the East, and his Great Mother, being the greatest of all witches and friendly toward the beasts, did bring him forth in a cave, and surrounded by the animals whom she loved. Yet even as Caine has always been reborn since he was first damned to incarnation by the Accursed One, so has his own shadow, which appeareth as a bright yet pale echo, always been reborn with him. And this delusion knows not itself, and so is known as the Son of the Father.

Thus in this desert land did the two brothers meet once more and for the last time, the one dwelling in the shadows and teaching the secret mysteries unto those who had ears to hear, and the other rousing his fellows to shed blood, the blood of men, with their curved knives to the Glory of the Ruler of the World, for he had come to love nothing more than the see men torture and harm one another in His Name.

And it was that the two brothers, as was often the case, did not recognize one another, and only the Woman saw, and understood, what must take place, for them both to be released from their hideous bondage.

And when the appointed time arrived, the woman revealed to them what she knew, and they held one another and wept at what must be, and alike cursed the name of God the Creator, who had exiled them, the one knowing his damnation and the other not, yet both alike condemned men, who now had both come love one another through the agency of the hate that once divided them.

And so the one did deliver the other into the hands of the Ruler Himself in the person of his Pontiff, knowing full well what would be, and he alike was seized by the Lawful Ones. And, the Ruler having come to understand vaguely the shape of the woman's ploy, did seek to undo her work through his own deceitful cleverness, for the Ruler knew and understood the flaws and weaknesses even of the Magician's disciples, for in His own image had he fashioned them all.

And so the Pontiff of the Ruler, smiling with the deceit of the divine, demanded of the people that they call for the release of one of the Brothers, in the guise of mercifulness, for in his blindness the Ruler thought that if only one brother remained, he and the woman as well would be forever subjected to his authority, and the Ruler would have gladly made the exchange, for he had come to realize that the woman knew the secrets hidden from him, and he hated her, and coveted her, for them. And further did the Ruler know that the people would choose the release the brother who could best be led astray, for he had well sown the seeds of confusion, even of division, among them.

And so did it come to pass even as both the Woman and the Ruler had forseen, that the one brother was slain and the other set free, while the other was released and condemned. Yet the woman, and the shadow of the woman, had alike seen this, and before the Ruler could delude and corrupt the Brother who was freed, did he, at the behest of the woman, slay himself. Yet because it was by his own hand, and not the hand of his brother, that the Magician was slain, he remained yet bound to the Wheel, though it was now only the hand of the Woman his Mother which could move him. And in her infinite wisdom and patience did the woman behold that the Ruler, seing his own demise apparent, and preferring life ignorant to death with full knowledge of his own nature, dispersed himself, and send his accursed light forth to delude every child born into his evil prison, for he knew now it was not enough to control the bodies and minds of his images, but that he must control their very souls as well. The woman, then, knowing full well that the Ruler would forever wreak misery and woe upon countless beings, even if the Wheel ceased to turn, did of her own flesh and bones form a wheel within the wheel, and by her own blood did she fix her dead child to it as her symbol, and turn it against the motion of the Lord the Sun.

And throughout the Ages has their War ensued, the child of the woman with his serpent's tongue speaking the Words that slay men and set them free, and the Ruler usurping the body of His Son, that men be bound and imprisoned in delusion.

Yet between them both is this knowledge shared, that leadeth either unto eternal bondage or eternal freedom ~ The Blood is the Life.