Al-Aziz

[From the Forbidden Room of the library of Cairo. Reading this will make you incurably insane.]

§i. Prolegomena to the discussion of the age of Middle Life.

Heaven and hell, and the worlds beyond this one, are but dreams of dreams. Only the Earth endures. The Earth and the Spheres. This is the first truth.

Through the heart of Earth runs an axis of black stone. So through the moon, the wanderers, the very sun, all are pinned in place by the black stone, and all are thereby protected. Those who are not held are spun about by the winds of history and shattered. After the storm, there are the rooted and the dead. And the storm always comes.

But how long between storms, and how safe we come to feel!

All your gods are false gods, unless they be the fullnesses. They may be an aspect of a fullness glimpsed in part by our limited vision, or they may be a servant of a fullness misunderstood by the ignorant. Many have claimed that the heretic Jew made such a mistake, but know rather that he perceived the second truth. He perceived there are two.

There have always been two, or there have, in all probability, always been two. Each claims primacy, but nothing is known from before the time of Zutiltan, the time that is called the age of Middle Life, 258000000 years ago. Its name alone indicates that it is not the first, that, therefore, recorded time and even the whispers of pre-recorded time are but the tip of a great continent invisible beneath the waves, or as a glimmer of light, perceived through the slats of an oubliette’s trap door, is to the sun.

Whispers are all that remain of the age of Middle Life, whispers that tickle at the ear like the buzzing of a fly. When you listen for them they are gone. The strange and horrible names are mere echoes: Ghatanotoa, Golgorot, Azatot. These are discussed more thoroughly in §ii; their world was destroyed. But the Earth endured.

206000000 years ago there rose up the age of Three Parts, so-called because the earth’s surface was divided between Larasiya and Ghandwana Land and the sea; and because it was the last age in which the Earth and her two moons made a triad. But how can two bear that there be three?

The fullnesses have been called by many names, and let us not multiply them. If they are Marduk and Tiamat they are also Allah and Leviathan, and if they are Apollo and Python they are also [Hebrew]YHWH and [Hebrew]KPSPTN. Above all they are ALIF and BA. ALIF claims to be ALIF and BA claims to be ALIF, but let them be, by custom, ALIF and BA. When they war, nothing can stand against their might. When they war, all others perish, even those standing aside. When they war all life everywhere is snuffed out or driven mad by trauma, heaven and hell are scattered and destroyed, mountains sink and valleys rise. The oceans flow over the earth and the earth fills the oceans. And that’s it. When they stop their contest, there is nothing to do but start again. Only the Earth has endured.

If BA emerges victorious, all is Chaos until they fight again, but if ALIF triumphs, he pins BA with his spear, he makes of her an axis on which to fix creation, and so he fixes creation. And there on Larasiya, and there on Ghandwana Land roam the created. Vast, thundering lizards, and yellow-toothed rats, and crab-men; but here is also the creation of BA, is there not? Here are the octopuses.

For millions of years, Dawn-Girdle-Tooth guided his minions, the lizards of thunder fought the octopuses, empires rose and fell; for millions of years, history as we call history slunk along, and nothing much happened. So it had always been, the creatures struggled like pawns on the vast chessboard of nights and days, each serving the bidding of one master or another. At last ALIF or BA would push this so-called “cold war” too far and things would get very hot. Then would the world be destroyed. And then they would start again. The same two moons would circle in the sky, but all-new eyes would see them.

But the octopuses did not will it thus. On one of the moons sat ALIF on his bejeweled throne, brooding over creation, and it was here that the octopuses struck. For they had waxed in power over the millennia, and they knew terrible magicks such that the world had never seen, eightfold somatic castings of unprecedented intricacy. Moved by devotion to their dark mistress, cloaked by their ink, they struck in secret not at the ALIF but at the axis of his moon. As it shattered the orb fell asunder, and the pieces plunged to earth. There they struck the waters and although ALIF was sorely weakened by the blow BA herself was so pained by the fall that she could not follow up, and what should have been a triumph devolved into another inconclusive melee. The treasure ships and pleasure ships of the octopuses fell to the ground. The oceans flowed over the earth and the earth filled the oceans. Once again the earth was destroyed, 67000000 years ago. The octopuses fled deep into the distant waters encased in eldritch cocoons to protect them from the trauma. There they still slumber. Everything else, with the possible exception of some flukes protected by powerful plexi of ley lines, died in agony.

For the first time, ever, the world was reborn different. On it fell one shadow, not two. The dance that had endured through eternity was no longer a dance; from above and below the fullnesses eyed each other warily. Now they were in it for blood. But it is not for us, unworthy, to speculate on the motivations of the gods of the gods. Perhaps, though, they were cautious; perhaps they did not wish to give affright to each other, and so they created nothing to rival the octopuses. The new Earth was populated by small things of moss and coral; which were ruled over by beings of pure spirit, from whom are descended the djinn. They still recall if nothing else the names of these kings of all the world, Raad, Daki, Gian Ben Gian—the so-called pre-Adamite kings. For now we have entered an age that is not completely unknown to us, although it is glimpsed but darkly, and through a glass.

We know well that ALIF in his new home beyond the sphere of fixed stars spent his energies creating a host of angels, in one of whom he invested more power than was his wont hitherto. But BA tempted him in the form of a water snake, and whispered that he too might be a fullness if ALIF were gone, if he joined her in rebellion. This is very nearly conventional history, that the angel gathered a loyal host and turned against both ALIF and BA, seeking to destroy both at once. Even if it is not written, nevertheless it is still among some known: that this mad gamble was doomed to fail, that the angel was cast from the heavens, that swift he fell upon the Earth’s moonscar with such force that the eschaton was immanentized. There he dwells in darkness, as soon would we.

For in the year 10479 before the Hegira ALIF created the world as we know it; even the most ignorant acknowledge him by letter, and bow to his folly. But after only 1550 years, BA became wary of creation and sought to destroy it by flood. Who does not know this story, in some form? Yet she had made her assault too soon; or she had not gathered enough power. Although the terrain changed and most of humanity was extinguished, some survived, Noah only the most famed. So BA spent her move.

Then did ALIF strive to fix creation by transfixing it with a black spindle through the esoteric axis, through the esoteric poles. But here again he was thwarted, now by Nimrod, who in contention with Pupien the Immortal had built the spindle in the wrong place, for the esoteric poles are not esoteric for nothing, and BA succeeded in destroying the spindle, although some say some remains; the resulting trauma confused the tongues of men, that had once as one sung the praises of ALIF in Arabic, or some say Hebrew.

Such petty sniping between fullnesses must have been unendurable; so ALIF gambled all on a stratagem He made of himself an axis, as the Christians say, by hanging on the cross in the hope that by deeper magic from before the dawn of time in a thousand years his sacrifice would be permanent. But BA knows all and her minions the octopuses will return at that point when ALIF is most distracted and humanity will be doomed. Perhaps the Earth will endure?

Having established that humanity has no future, let us look back before humanity’s past.

§ii. [Here, in the longest section of the book, is a confused and confusing account of the adventures of various great old ones in the time before time, the age of Middle Life. It is almost too much to bear. One name that keeps resurfacing is the black ball. Other names are too bizarre to repeat. But anything more than a cursory reading of this impenetrable section would cause one’s head to explode.]

§iii. It is through long and patient research; through consultation of the most ancient sources; through discussion with ancients and angels and djinn, with the one known as the Wanderer and the one known as the German and the one known by many names other than Mr. Green; through donning the shawls of Job; through selling my soul; and especially through the measuring of every inch of the “triangles of fire” and calculating out the lore hidden in their ratios, that I have come upon this knowledge. I’m not going to lie to you: I wish I hadn’t done it. I have uncovered lore that was covered for a reason. Revelation is apocalypse. Uncovering is doom. What I have learned is what I have learned. Allah, I’ll see you in Hell. [Some mathematical formulae of a most abstruse nature appear. The remainder of the book is made up of the foulest blasphemies, often apparently senseless. The following is not a literal translation, but will give an idea of what kind of things we’re dealing with here:

Thus spake i am that i am, “For the virgin I don’t give a damn. What pleases Me most Is to bugger the Ghost And then be sucked off by the Lamb.”]