Someone Please Stop Me Before I Fanfic Again

Mourning angel in Florence, Italy. Photo by Mark Voorendt, April 2001.

I have a serious problem and I must be stopped. I turned to The Good Book for help, and I saw that it said:

"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."

(Genesis 6:1-4, in the beautiful archaic English of the King James Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, Genesis is called Bereshit, Hebrew for "In the Beginning.")

Interpretations of this odd ancient passage vary, but it seems to be about male angels having sex with human women. However, it's male angel-human man sex that I can't seem to get out of my mind. But really, if human-angel sex is allowed by the Bible, it should be an acceptable subject for me to write about, right?

Even if it's Destiel fan fiction? Because after yesterday's video, I did another thing, in the paper-bound notebook:

Immediately after Cas tells Sam and Dean about having sex with April (this video), Dean leaves the room. Sam tells Cas that Dean is upset, but Cas can't understand why.

Photo by Gage Skidmore. Cropped. 

"You mean you really don't know?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Sam."

"The bond between you and Dean - it makes him feel a certain way about you. He can't stand the thought of you with someone else."

Cas is shocked. "Dean has...romantic feelings...for me?"

Sam claps a hand over Cas's shoulder. "He loves you."

Their eyes meet. "I didn't mean to hurt him, Sam. April is a wonderful woman: she's beautiful, kind, and so unselfish. I felt lonely, she wished to comfort me, and this body reacted to her."

Sam nods. "I get it, Cas, but Dean won't. He only knows how he feels about you, and right now he feels like you betrayed him."

"I would never."

They hear the door slam, and Cas realizes Dean has heard their whole conversation. He runs out after him, into the night. [Okay, it's day time in the video. I used some creative license. It's more dramatic in the late evening, after sunset.]

"Dean!"

Dean stops midway to the Impala, but doesn't turn around. "Leave me alone, Cas."

"Dean, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

Dean turns his head, his green eyes narrowed in anger. "After all this time, how could you not know?"

"I've never been human before. Your feelings are all new to me."

"Yeah? Well, it sounds like you figured them out with April."

"Dean, I like April as a person, but she and I can never have the bond you and I have."

"I know, Cas! That's why it hurts! How could you be with her and not me?"

Silence hangs in the air between them. Dean's breath leaves him in puffs of steam. Cas closes the space between them, but he knows better than to touch Dean. He does force Dean to look him in the eyes, though.

Photo by Gage Skidmore. I cropped it at PicMonkey. 

"Dean Winchester, I did not mean to hurt you, but I will not do so again. I vow to you that as long as you live, I will not make love with another being, human or angel. I will not ask you to make the same vow. I would not take away your freedom."

Dean's eyes are filled with tears. Cas longs to wipe them away, but he doesn't dare touch the other man.

"You don't know what you're saying, Cas."

"I do. I'm an angel of the Lord, Dean. I don't know how to lie."

In a quiet voice, Dean asks, "You would be my lover, Castiel?"

"Yes, Dean. I would like to know how your lips would feel against mine. This body reacts to you. It likes the way you walk and the way you smell. April allowed me to taste her. The scent of her body was...there are no words for the pleasure." He exhales as Dean rolls his eyes. "I would like to taste you. I would like to take you in my mouth and give you pleasure until your release, and then taste your essence. I would burn for you, and I hope you would let me inside you. April's body yielded to mine - would you do the same, warrior? Could you allow yourself to be so open?"

"Stop." Dean's chest heaves, his breathing hard.

Cas nods. "I'll leave you alone. I will keep my vow, and I hope you can accept my apologies." Cas turns back toward the house.

"Castiel." The angel turns, looking into Dean's eyes once more. The anger has softened. "I won't be your experiment. If we make love, it has to be because you care about me."

"I have always cared about you, Dean, body and soul."

Dean closes his eyes. His voice has a husky catch to it. "Not tonight," he says.

Cas nods. "Not tonight."

"I'm still angry with you."

"I know."

All at once, Dean takes Cas's face in both hands, caresses his cheeks, pulls him in, and kisses him deeply. Despite his dull human senses, every cell in Cas's body seems to react, and the evening's cold disappears. He is suddenly, desperately aware of how badly his body longs for Dean's.

They separate. Dean gets in the car and drives away. Cas skips dinner with Sam. Instead he takes a long shower and lies down to sleep.

When he wakes in the middle of the night, Cas is aware of Dean's body on the bed beside him, close but not touching him. He longs to pull Dean into his embrace, but he must wait for Dean's anger to cool first. He leans his face in toward Dean's, slightly, hoping to feel the warmth of his body.

***

Send help before I progress from angsty, suggestive fanfics to explicit angel buttsex. I really enjoy the phrase "angel buttsex," mind you.

I have been on Tumblr too long. Halp.

'Breaking the Da Vinci Code' by Darrell L. Bock and the Gnostic "Gospel"

On Saturday I went to the discount bookstore, as I may have mentioned. I picked up three books in Nalini Singh's Psy Changeling series, as well as a stack of magazines (they sell them for $1 each) and, for only $1.40, Breaking the Da Vinci Code by Darrell L. Bock, Ph.D.

This last one is a 2004 book about Dan Brown's book that was first published in 2001. I know this is a subject that was popular 100 years ago in pop culture time, but if you've been reading this blog very long, you know I love to read about books I've read. This isn't the first time I've read a book that supplements The Da Vinci Code. I already own Da Vinci Code Decoded by Martin Lunn (which I've read) and The Unauthorized Dan Brown Companion edited by John Helfers (2006 - I have skimmed it, but not read it the whole way through).

Now I've read Breaking the Da Vinci Code. I very much enjoyed it. Bock is a Protestant Biblical scholar, and his book looks at various ancient texts mentioned in Dan Brown's book to show systematically, using the original source material, that 1) the books of the Bible are as authentic a historical source as any other ancient text, and probably much more so, and 2) the ancient texts show very clearly that the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene was understood by witnesses of their time to be teacher/student, not sexual or a marriage relationship.

One of the sources that Bock addresses is Against Heresies (Adversus Haereses in Latin), a second-century work by Irenaeus, considered one of the "church fathers" and a Catholic saint. Irenaeus, a bishop of what is now Lyons, France, but which was then part of the Roman Empire, wrote in part to combat the Gnostic writings of Valentinus, which were popular in Lyons at the time. Valentinus was a Hellenic Egyptian; he or his followers wrote The Gospel of Truth, which was rediscovered in modern times at Nag Hammadi in 1945.

Bock quotes Frederica Mathewes-Green, an Eastern Orthodox Biblical scholar, in her magazine article "What Heresy?" (Books and Culture, November-December 2003). Mathewes-Green wrote:

"The version attributed to Valentinus, the best-known Gnostic, is typical. Valentinus supposedly taught a hierarchy of spiritual beings called 'aeons.' One of the lowest aeons, Sophia, fell and gave birth to the Demiurge, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. This evil Demiurge created the visible world, which was a bad thing, because now we pure spirits are all tangled up in fleshy bodies. Christ was an aeon who took possession of the body of the human Jesus, and came to free us from the prison of materiality.

"'Us,' by the way, didn't mean everybody. Not all people have a divine spark within, just intellectuals; 'gnosis,' by definition, concerns what you know. Some few who are able to grasp these insights could be initiated into deeper mysteries. Ordinary Christians, who lacked sufficient brainpower, could only obtain the Demiurge's middle realm. Everyone else was doomed. Under Gnosticism, there was no hope of salvation for most of the human race."

Bock explains that "demiurge" is simple a Greek word that means "maker" or "builder," referring to the making of the material world.

If the story of the cosmic spirit-being Sophia giving birth to evil sounds vaguely familiar, it may be that you, like me, are a fan of Lady Gaga. It's the bones of what Lady Gaga wrote in "The Manifesto of Mother Monster" in the full-length "Born This Way" video.

This is the text of the manifesto:

This is the manifesto of Mother Monster: On G.O.A.T, a Government Owned Alien Territory in space, a birth of magnificent and magical proportions took place. But the birth was not finite; it was infinite. As the wombs numbered, and the mitosis of the future began, it was perceived that this infamous moment in life is not temporal; it is eternal. And thus began the beginning of the new race: a race within the race of humanity, a race which bears no prejudice, no judgment, but boundless freedom. But on that same day, as the eternal mother hovered in the multiverse, another more terrifying birth took place: the birth of evil. And as she herself split into two, rotating in agony between two ultimate forces, the pendulum of choice began its dance. It seems easy, you imagine, to gravitate instantly and unwaveringly towards good. But she wondered, “How can I protect something so perfect without evil?”

That the text represents Gnosticism is not my idea, but rather something I read at MKCulture (which you may remember from last year's conspiracy theory post), an inactive blog that is, as of this writing, still able to be accessed. The blogger doesn't elaborate much in the blog post "Descendants of Sophia," but writes, "In my last post I explored the ever-present theme of the Goddess archetype within the context of pop culture. That inquiry ended with 'Born This Way,' the latest [as of April 2011] music video from pop star Lady Gaga. In the video Lady Gaga embodies Gnostic Goddess Sophia." The rest of the post veers off into Kate Bush's album, Elliot* Page's career, and then goddesses associated with the owl and the peacock.

The blogger has a YouTube account as well, on which this video can be found. It explains the Gaga-as-Sophia concept in a little bit of detail. 

If you want the full "Illuminati" explanation of this same video, visit Vigilant Citizen's "Born This Way" post. I'm not much for Illuminati conspiracy theories. I don't doubt that a small group of people has far more power than it should in this world, and that they probably have some screwed-up ideas about how the world should run, but I also believe pop culture is run more by a quest for increased profit than by some sort of ideological (Masonic/Luciferian/Satanic - depends on who you ask) cabal. But it's there to read, if you want it. Madonna may be the Material Girl, but Lady Gaga-as-Sophia gave birth to the creator of the material world. Maybe that's why "Born This Way" subtly samples Madonna's "Express Yourself," according to some listeners. My trusty Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets has more than two pages on Sophia, under the heading "Saint Sophia."

Barbara J. Walker describes Sophia (the name literally means "wisdom" in Greek) as "God's mother" but also the shakti, or female soul/power source, of God. Her symbol was the dove, as some of her incarnations include Aphrodite, Isis/Hathor, and "The Holy Ghost." She writes: "Some said Jesus became Sophia's spouse and his glory depended on this sacred marriage; for he was only one of the Aeons, a minor spirit, the 'common fruit' of the Pleroma [the Gnostic "one true God," a transcendent being]. "Some said Sophia was also Jesus's mother, for she was the Virgin of Light whose spirit entered into the body of Mary to conceive him...Some said Sophia was to God as Metis was to Zeus, his 'mind.'" Walker goes on to report that when the Church of Hagia Sophia was constructed in Constantinople in the 6th century, it was a shrine to Sophia the Goddess, but to cover up the appearance of goddess worship, Christians made up the "virgin martyr" Saint Sophia. Walker cites the 8th and 9th chapters of the Biblical book of Proverbs as having an ambivalent attitude toward Sophia, or wisdom.

In one passage, following Wisdom is to be praised, but in another, "she sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city [her temple]," calling to passersby to turn toward her, but if anyone turns into her temple "he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell." Walker sees this as two factions - one in favor of worshiping the Goddess Sophia and another that worships only the male God - having a debate. If Sophia is thought of as the mother/spouse of Jesus, and she's associated with the "high places of the city" (the temple or watchtower, magdala in Hebrew), it's possibly Sophia is also associated with Mary Magdalene.

Perhaps this is another reason why Lady Gaga appears as a Mary Magdalene figure in her "Judas" video, which came out after "Born This Way." (However, after having watched a little video about Kenneth Anger and Hollywood Babylon the other day, I learned about Anger's experimental film Scorpio Rising. In it, Anger intercut clips of a Biblical drama featuring Jesus with footage of a leather-clad biker, set to 1950s rock 'n roll. The "Judas" video may be an homage to Scorpio Rising. Now, Kenneth Anger - he was openly a Satanist, and would proudly have told you he followed the teachings of Aleister Crowley.)

Neo-Gnosticism is a favorite topic of a blogger I mentioned yesterday, Christopher Loring Knowles. He seems to genuinely believe there is a world of spiritual or energy beings, hidden from us most of the time in the material world, but which seems to break through at times and communicates with us in a language of symbols and coincidences (synchronicities). VISUP will occasionally mention Gnosticism as well. In one post, VISUP mentions that some Gnostics referred to the Demiurge as Samael, which VISUP says means "blind idiot." Where have I read that name before? In Devil's In the Details, where Samael is the name of Satan's fiance. Synchronicity? Maybe. Dog days of summer weirdness? It's a little early for that, but perhaps.

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/

 *Updated from "Ellen" to "Elliot" in 2023.

Even More Tales of Biblical Terror: Dybbuk Press Plans 'King David and the Spiders From Mars'

This is my 665th post on this blog. You know what that means - the next one will be #666. It's too bad I couldn't get THIS to be the 666th post on account of its Biblical theme.

In 2010, I read and reviewed the Dybbuk Press horror anthology She Nailed a Stake Through His Head. It's an awesome read. I liked the book so much, editor Tim Lieder decided to use my review as the editorial review that appears on Amazon and Goodreads.

Now, Dybbuk Press is getting ready to publish a second anthology on the same Biblical horror theme. A short blurb by Dybbuk Press publisher/editor Tim Lieder reads:

"I am both the publisher and the editor of the anthology. This book and the previous Bible-themed horror collection - She Nailed a Stake Through His Head - are inspired by my love of the literary Bible studies as pioneered by Robert Alter and Erich Auerbach. When I first started publishing books through Dybbuk Press, I knew that I wanted to edit a book of Bible-themed stories because regardless of one's faith or lack thereof, the Bible is a great literary work with tight plotting, an economy of language, sudden bursts of violence and poetry as well as some of the most memorable characters in Western literature."

The authors and tales are all lined up - the small press is now seeking a little crowdfunding assistance. If you care to, please watch this short video from Tim.

Also, I think you should follow Tim on Facebook because, well, I think he's awesome. You won't see him around on the Sabbath or on Jewish holidays, because he's observant.

Tales of Biblical Terror: She Nailed a Stake Through His Head

You don't need to be Jewish or Christian to appreciate She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror. Still, you may find yourself groping for a religious icon for protection given the unholy places these weird tales will take you.

The anthology opens with Gerri Leen's eerie reversal of the tale of Ruth and Naomi, wherein Ruth's devotion to her mother-in-law is not a blessing but a monstrous curse. Not all of these stories are set in the ancient Middle East, though, as Daniel Kaysen's "Babylon's Burning" proves.

Meandering between desert sands and skyscrapers, between past, present and alternate timelines, She Nailed a Stake Through His Head is a gallery of horrors inspired by the most nightmarish images of Near Eastern cultures. There are wild-eyed, drug-crazed prophets, witches drawing the dead from the depths of the Underworld, sacred prostitutes with one soul in two bodies, an English Delilah trapped in a house falling down around her, epic beheadings, and a living tomb in the foul and slimy body of a whale driving the prophet deeper into insanity.

The collection is bookended with a tale inspired by the New Testament: a vampire's take on the body and blood of the Christian savior. Regardless of religion (or lack thereof), lovers of speculative fiction will swallow up these provocative stories.