Matthew 26: 17-75

 

Guido Reni, Saint Peter’s tears (particular)

Christ is the one who, having endured suffering, is “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2).
Pope Francis

Every day, every hour, every minute of our lives, resurrecting, resuming, recommencing must set our path, must be the law.
Luigi Giussani

 

Your friend comes with the world to betray
in the darkness the life and its meaning.
In that garden. In that garden I sleep

You were one of his too. It’s not true!
It’s not true! I perjure, scream and lie
one more time, once again. For three times.

Maybe it’s dawn and it crows anyway.
You knew it, you said it. I did it.
Let my tears gush out when roosters crow

 

Holy Thursday: April, 6th 2023

Italian version

Lent Friday

 

Sieger Köder, Jesus is given his cross. I found it here

Well, yesterday I was at that concert: a meditation about Lent made by music and art images.

It was very moving. To cry. I did it.

While I was listening to the chorus, my fingers wrote this too much long stuff.

 

Empty church listens to you through verses
of the old and the new, moved by
looking at You: both love and dismay

Every niche resonates with songs
of supreme beauty and highest pain
Ineffable nevertheless obvious

Death and joy and salvation and sorrow
tightly encircle my heart and my mind
You fill my misery with your love

You are a gift to each and to all
and the scourge consumes you for my good.
Look: I offer you the crown of thorns

You see me and save me, me so little
flesh pervaded by evil and pride.
I am dry earth and you are mourning me

All world history does not end here
I do not end here, caught by my evil
And You colour my so pale poor face

Tell me: did I strike you just now, there?
on this day and in the years I saw
I hide myself and there: Eve, the snake

Give me water that gushes from bones
that the spear broke, outrageous, insolent.
I want to drink You, You are not offended

You resurrect all death into full beauty
senseless things are so changed to hope.
Come fast and take me, take me just now

A sigh tears off my mind where the life
came forever here, into the world
I’m a disgusting beast; You save me

The death silence now cries out hard pain
and denounces the crime of all times
“I am to decide, to will, to do”

Now I see: I am the way of the cross
and its substance; I condemn to death
in my heart You, my God, who saves me

My soul is seeking and needing salvation
while time quickly corrodes my flesh
I want to be born adult to love You

I recompose my face in your one
while the world fast corrodes my hope.
On my knees I adore You. On my knees

Empty heart listens to You through verses
of the old and the new and I’m moved.
I look at You, You love and dismay.

March, 25th 2023

 

Italian version

Need

 

Photo by Lux

 

When dark congeals itself
into forms
eager of young girls, sensual too
and I think of myself pretty and
also taken and owned till to
I can get living spasms of my flesh

and you sleep

on my skin I want you, skin to skin.
You on this my skin to be my spasm

and my comfort

March, 12th 2023

 

Italian version

 

Eve dream. Chapter three. Adam – part four: epilogue

Masaccio, Cacciata di Adamo ed Eva. Detail

Eve dream first episode (Lilith part one)

Previous episode (Adam part three)

 

IV. Epilogue

So, it happened.
That’s how it happened.
In Eden, it happened.
It happened thus.
Adam was also a good man, because Adam was a good man.
Adam was a good man who loved Eve.
Tenderly.
He was a gentle man.
And Eve.
And Eve was a beautiful woman who enjoyed Adam’s love.
Eve loved Adam.
Eve loved Adam far beyond the flesh. Beyond all possible instincts.
They loved each other.
Eve and Adam loved each other and one of them was a part of the other. And vice versa.
Eve was part of Adam and so she conceived herself.
Adam was part of Eve and he knew himself to be empty, useless, incapable of anything without Eve.
Adam had desired Eve to be.
Adam had asked Him for a companion so that he would not be alone and Eve had been given to him.
And Eve cuddled up in Adam’s arms at night, her head on his strong chest, and fell asleep cradled by his breath.
They used to fall asleep in the warmth of the other, the other her and the other him, and so, each morning, they awoke gladly to life again.
Yes: they had both been wanted.
They had been willed to be together. For him to be delighted with her, the other. For her to be delighted with him, the other.
So that one would complete the other and he would complete her and she would complete him.
They were created for each other: she for him and he for her. They were created to be one.
Eve was Adam’s flesh, but Adam was Eve’s flesh.
They owned each other.
Both of them.
They were naive, they were perhaps unsophisticated, you would say today. They were naive until that day.
Then, they knew it.
They recognized it.
They were aware of it.
They experienced it.
They wanted to mold themselves beyond what was logical and rational. Beyond what was right. Even beyond what was obvious.
Beyond their evidence of being created. Of being made. Of being creatures. Of having had a definite beginning, notwithstanding what such a consideration should have highlighted with the utmost clarity.
They knew and should have remembered that they depended on Others.
On an Other. On the One. On their Creator, on the Creator of everything and each thing.
Certainly: they knew this, but they succumbed to the deception and shared in the nefariousness of the Unholy Being. They succumbed to the temptation to be God. They succumbed to the temptation to need nothing but self. To be sufficient to self. Against all evidence.
So, immediately, Eve thought she was enough for herself and perversely loved her own dark image, cutting off the rest of the world.
So, immediately, Adam saw the whole world as his own right of possession, a proof of his own power, and he humbled Eve to be a thing and enjoyed her as if she were a toy. No: not “her.” He enjoyed her body. She had nothing to do with it.
So, they knew it. They did it. They were foolish and suffered it, believing they were actors, protagonists, all-powerful wills, when in fact they were nothing but puppets operated and manipulated by the Serpent. They were obtuse, stolid, evil.
They did it.
And with them, through them, evil invaded the world.
Evil, sin, pain, disease.
Death.
All this burst into the world and was overpowering.
Because Adam was a good man and Eve was a good woman, but that is not enough to be good.
To be good is not enough to be righteous, nor to be wise.
For what really matters is obedience to what we are called to.
The right response to what we are called to.
The adherence to that for which we exist.
Volitional adherence to that which has called us to life. To what only can make and does make us.
We need the right response and adherence to the destiny prepared for us all, First or Second we are. To the good destiny designed for all free creatures.
One is born as one is: perhaps one is born good. Adam was born good; he was made good.
Eve was good.
One is born as she and he is: one can be born good or bad.
One is born as she and he is, but it is what he and she chooses that builds him and her adult ones.
What he or she chooses, not even what he or she does.
One can be born good and die damned.
Another.
No one is saved alone, not even the good.
And He wanted man and woman to be complete, because He loved them. And He made them free. He thought them free. He made them free.
So the Seconds also knew freedom and had freedom, but it was misinterpreted. It was misused.
Because freedom is a great gift, a gift second only to His love, but it is not given to be guarded, buried like that famous talent: freedom is given to be used, so that it bears fruit.
So that it bears eternal life.
For freedom must be freedom to adhere to truth and justice, otherwise it is evil.
A wolf cannot be imputed malice when it disembowels a lamb, for it is not free and can only follow its own nature. Its own innocent nature.
Of course, you can suppress the nature of your cat or your dog by chastising it and forcing it not to do certain things or to do other things. In many cases, your animal will obey you. But you cannot ask it to understand why.
You, on the other hand, are free.
You can understand, so you must understand.
And you must choose.

Finally, one more thing. Have in mind: we, the First Ones, are also free. However, there is a huge difference between us and you: we have such knowledge of things that it enables us, in the immediacy of a moment not even perceptible or measurable by you, to make choices that are always final. Irrevocable. Perhaps we are obliged to do this. However, this is who we are and this is our nature.
When I chose good, I did it once and forever and that decision of mine cannot be changed or revoked. Never.
When the Fallen chose rebellion and evil, they were damned forever. Irrevocably. By their own unquestionable choice.
So are the Firsts.
The Seconds, Humankind, men and women, are different in this and, compared to us, are similar to your children. You need time to grow, to understand, to know, to grasp, even though confusedly and partially the meaning of things. You are like children and proceed tentatively. You have eyes, but you are often blind to what really matters: this is your nature.
After all, you are born children.
This slowness and nearness of yours may be considered a disadvantage, and indeed it is. However, it brings with it the possibility of an additional gift: forgiveness.
You can evolve, improve, change your choices.
Of course: you can become evil, wicked, bestial, horrible. Depraved.
But you can repent of your evil.
No wickedness of yours, not even the most wretched and hideous, has the seal of finality.
You can repent.
And He forgives you.

 

(The end)

Thank you so much to Lizzie Gudkov for her revision af my bad English

 

Eve dream. Chapter three. Adam – part three

Masaccio, Cacciata di Adamo ed Eva. Detail

Eve dream first episode (Lilith part one)

Previous episode (Adam part two)

 

Eve spread her arms wide on the lawn. She found a stone. She clutched it in the fist of her right hand and struck Adam’s face with all her strength; Adam collapsed with a groan, rolling to the side and freeing her.
Eve got up and ran away, stumbling over stones and roots, falling repeatedly. The low branches of the trees scratched her face. Her feet hurt on the stones, which, like everything now, were hostile to her.
The rustle of her footsteps sounded like noise produced by something hitting dry grass.
Dead grass.

Adam knew pain, for his first time. He brought his hand to his swollen lips and sensed his blood gushing from them. He tasted it for the first time. He reviewed with his mind Eve’s wounded knees, her blood, vermilion.
In the comparison, he understood everything.
He saw now clearly what had happened. What he had done.

Adam was a good man.
Adam was the Man, and the Man was good. He had been made good.
He had been made good before Evil was in Eden.
Because He created Man in His image; in His own image he created him;
male and female he created them.
So Adam was good, simple. Today, you would say naïve, indeed.
Adam was a kind man, happy with life and with the work assigned to him.
Adam was the keeper of Eden.
Adam was very sweet to his partner and loved Eve tenderly.
Because Eve was his equal, yet different.
Because Eve was the light of his eyes and the meaning of every smile.
Because Eve was the peace of the night and the breath of the day.
Because since Eve was, he knew no more solitude.
Eve was the most wonderful gift he had been given, an unimaginable gift.
A gift that had filled his life with joy, because it is not good for man to be alone and Eve was flesh from his flesh and bone from his bones.

Yet, the horror had happened and Adam had been its instrument, like Eve before him was.
Worse than Eve: because Adam had offended Eve.
He had treated Eve worse than a beast.
He had been a beast.
No: not a beast, because everything in Eden was good.
He had been a demon.
He had tasted the fruit and transformed it into the fruit of Evil.
He could see the deception clearly, while the horrible laughter still echoed everywhere.
He had turned love into violence, good into evil, light into darkness.
He had turned his beloved into prey, in helpless plaything for the satisfaction of his underbelly.
What was supposed to be the culmination of the purest love and the perfect gift had changed into oppression, hatred, violence. Offense.
Lucifer’s victory could not have been more complete: now the Seconds were his, his property.
Man was lost.
The horror had happened and the Ancient Serpent was laughing now.
He laughed and with that laughter, within that laughter, because of that laughter, the horror spread everywhere.
That laugh that Adam had made possible.
That rotten laughter corrupted everything.
Death had come into the world.
Everything became dangerous, ugly, hostile. Deadly.
The man got up, slowly, because he now knew the fatigue.
He too, like Eve before him, burst into tears.
He wrapped branches around his crotch, as Eve had already done, and he understood everything.
All things.
What could Adam do at this point?

He began to walk aimlessly, and with each step he saw change grafted into everything; the meadows became stained with rusty and dry grass, the pool of cool, perfect water had become muddy, stagnant, and smelly.
Dead branches hung from the trees.
The she-wolf was devouring a fawn and the blood soiled the ground.
He felt with his bare foot an object yielding under his weight and break: the zuffolo.
He hoped to find Eva, the only company now possible.
He saw her. He walked toward her, but kept his distance, dejected with shame.
She, still crying, looked at him and saw him crying. She saw the weeds around Adam’s groin.
Now they were the same. Lost. Both of them.

While they cursed the Serpent, the horrible laughter echoed even louder, mocking, victorious.
They had to flee away from Eden, away from Him.
He, perhaps, would have forgiven them, for He was Love, but pride had been instilled in their hearts. Pride, son of shame for one’s own inconsistency.
Because after a fall you can rise again, but often the fall is shame too great to be accepted.
Because fragility, fallibility and inconsistency are within men and women.
Because, above all, they do not endure such characteristics.
Because fear and scandal over one’s own frailty are the mothers of pride, of hatred, of violence.
Of war.
So they had to flee.
They had to flee, forever.
Away from there.
Away from Him.
They had to hide.

Silence was born that day.
The silence between the Seconds and Him.
That day, indeed, properly, the Seconds became the Men and Women.

 

(to be continued)

 

Eve dream. Chapter three. Adam – part two

Masaccio, Cacciata di Adamo ed Eva. Detail

Eve dream first episode (Lilith part one)

Previous episode (Adam part one)

 

Adam felt silent, speechless, while Eve looked down, as to count her toes. The zuffolo fell to the floor and, once again, everything was only silence.
Neither of them knew what to say, what to do. Nobody wanted to talk.
They walked at random, slowly, absorbed in different thoughts, joined by the same embarrassment. By the same fear.
They climbed a hillock, then walked over a meadow and through a grove of maple trees, until they proceeded near to the edge of a pool filled with beautiful, cool water. That pool.
Dusk was almost giving way to evening and yet there was still no star or moon in sight.

They did not know how they came there and certainly they had no intention in it, but when they reached the clearing the tree was there, magnificent in the exuberance of its fruits, that curved its lower branches almost to the ground. The air was filled with the sweet and penetrating aroma of ripe pomes. Some fruits, fallen down to the ground, were filled with worms and insects that poured out onto the grass like a black vomit which slithered in the black shadow of the incipient evening.
That living mush seemed governed by a precise purpose, because it grouped and headed towards an Adam’s foot, going up it.
The man felt a sort of itch on his calf; he looked at it and saw worms and insects coming up. Disgusted, he shook his leg violently to make that thing fall down, but doing so he unbalanced, lost his equilibrium and fell. While this was happening, he tried not to fall to the ground and therefore to hold onto something, he flailed in the air with his hands and one of them closed on a ripe fruit, tearing it away from the thin branch and taking it with him.

Eve was motionless, rigid, standing upright, her arms and hands left at her sides. Her eyes, wide open, stared at the inevitable while the sky turned red, a dark red, sanguineous and uniform.

As Adam stood up, he thought he noticed something unusual and different about Eve. Something strange. Her legs stoke a pose as to highlight sinuosity and curves of the female body and her pelvis was protruding to her left. Her hands ruffled her long hair, giving it volume. Her own hair looked wavy, almost curly, not straight like the Eve he knew.
The movement of her hands and her arms, folded overhead, highlighted the prominence of her breasts, turgid and beautiful, heaving.
Then, above all, her eyes! There was something weird into them, like the flashing of a green light; her eyelashes were black and thick and her eyebrows, very dark and unusually inclined towards the bridge of the nose, gave her face an upsetting expression of malice.
Really, Adam see Eve as described above, even if Eve, still motionless and petrified, likewise really, was almost terrified seeing the Adam gaze on her body.
In Adam’s mind, something even more strange and never seen arose. A warm and persuasive voice, a woman’s voice, began to creep into his thoughts. It whispered: “Look at her, the pervert one. She disobeyed His command by craving the pleasures of the flesh. She took pleasure from herself, the bitch! Look at her now, enjoying her body by flaunting it in front of you, as if she herself were the forbidden fruit. She is teasing you. Do you feel your bowels shake? They desire her. You desire her. She has already bitten the fruit, she has already taken her pleasure… so why should all this be denied to you, just you, only you? It’s not right! You have the same rights as her has… how someone can deprive yourself of what that fragile woman has already taken? Look at her! She is offering herself to you but at the same time she is denying you herself. She’s bitch and that bitch must be punished. I know you are acquainted with the truth of what I am telling you, and for the rest I am saying it only for your sake, for the sake of truth. I want your good. Listen to your bowels, satisfy them, ssatisfy them, sssatisfy them…”. Gradually, the voice had changed tone and sound and the last words sounded like the hiss of a snake. Adam’s mouth found the apple, still held in his right hand. He bit it. It was delicious. So He had lied to him and kept him away from the truth, from knowledge, from what was rightfully his. The voice of the Serpent spoke the truth. After all, Adam was taller, bigger, more muscular, stronger than Eve. He could have her. If he wanted to have her, he could have her. If he could have her, it was his right to have her for his amusement, as an helpless little animal, as an alive flesh toy, as a proof of his power.
Adam moved towards Eve, almost touching her.

The black tangle of putridity, leaking from hundreds of decomposed fruits, surrounded the two in a circle of evil that emanated the sickening yet at the same time sweetish smell of rotten flesh.
Eva was terrified yet helpless. Motionless.
She still sensed Lilith inhabiting her and she could do nothing.
She did not want to do anything.
She awaited what could now no longer be avoided.
Perhaps, even, a remote part of her wanted it.
Certainly she wanted him.
Indeed.
As the man clung tighter and tighter to her, so much so that the woman felt his gasping breath on her face, finally, Eva shook herself: she managed to shake herself, found strength and will to shake herself and reject Lilith away from her, out of her.
Eva shook herself in an awakening of awareness. An awakening of reason.
It was late.

Adam squeezed her shoulders with his strong hands and drew her to him, pressing his chest against hers and delighting, with a thrill of pleasure, in the contact of her pulsating breasts against his skin.
“Adam, no! What are you doing? Please, I beg you: don’t! Don’t do it! Don’t do it or we’ll both be permanently lost, No! No! No…“
Adam felt rejected. Unfairly rejected. Wounded in his right of possession.
How could she dare?
Along with desire, increasingly violent, mounted in the man a delirium of omnipotence and an unbridled, enormous, irrepressible rage.
“Satisfy yourself… Ssatissfy…Sssatysssfy… Sssss“
He ripped off her fragile sedge belt with a decisive gesture and threw it away.
Immediately, he threw the woman to the ground, supine, and was on her, on the softness of her warm yet reluctant flesh.

And behold: darkness came upon the whole earth. The dark blood-red twilight instantly yielded to utter darkness, without the smile of the stars, without the whiteness of the moon. Eden was thrown into darkness, into silence, into loneliness. In despair.

Eve, moaning and begging, tried to resist. She pressed both her hands on the man’s chest in a desperate attempt to free herself from the nightmare made reality. Everything was useless.
She began to hit him on the chest with his small fists, with unconscious and useless movements.
“No, please…no…no…“
“Shut up, female. I want some too.“
Then Adam forcefully grabbed Eve’s wrists, until they hurt, and pressed them to the ground in the still soft grass, holding them roughly at her head height.
Eve pointed her feet to the ground and tried to arch, to push him away, to get the man off of her, now her worst and only enemy: a monster devoid of sweetness and compassion.
The man was too heavy, too strong, too determined to have his satisfaction.

That was how he got her.
That was how Eve was taken.
The first time the flesh of woman and man came together was because man abused her.
Without love.
In anger.
As if she was a thing.
That was a rape.
Adam’s pleasure finally came like a muddy flood wave that filled Eve with its ichor.
Immediately thereafter, an unholy laughter spread through the still dark air that ran through Eden and every living being and inanimate object, altering their purity and innocence irreparably.
Eve wept profusely, filled with shame, now feeling guilty even of the offense she had suffered, the crime of which she had been the object.
Dirty.
She had been defiled.
She had defiled Adam.
They had lost each other.

 

(to be continued)

 

Eve dream. Chapter three. Adam – part one

Masaccio, Cacciata di Adamo ed Eva. Detail

Eve dream first episode (Lilith part one)

Previous episode (Halved part three)

 

3 Adam – part one

Now, on the bank of the river there were only the Man and the Woman. The Man, the Woman and an oppressive silence. Looking at her, Adam saw the sedges entwined around her waist.

“But what is that? A very strange basket! What is it for? Isn’t that annoying to you?“

With a broken voice, with a thread of voice accompanied by trembling and sobbing, Eve said:
“I knew evil.”
“Evil? E-vil? I don’t know that word. What is evil? And why are your cheeks wet? What happens? What happened to you?“
“It’s evil. It’s the pain. It’s the weight of remorse.”
“Eve, please, explain… What is it that you are saying? What is evil?”
“Evil is following a path other than His will.”
“You are raving. There is no such possibility. He is everything. He runs out of reality. He is that to whom the uni-verse tends.”
“There is a different path. Do you remember that tale of the rebel angel, the fallen angel, the Serpent?”

Adam stood thoughtfully. After a few moments he resumed:

“Yes, maybe… vaguely. I seem to remember something, but they are such distant stories, from another era. They are stories of the Firsts…”
“Adam…”
“Tell me, Eve, please.”
“…Adam, now I know it’s not a fable.”
“But Eve… Eve… What are you talking about?“

Now Eve was very near to him. He took a closer look at her and saw some red, wet spots on her knees, as if there her skin had broken in. Adam’s expression now reflected disbelief, awe, surprise. Worry. He asked again:

“Eve, please tell me. Explain yourself. Explain yourself better, please, I beg you. How can you say that?”
“Now I know it’s not a fairy tale. I know it. Now I know.“
“But what do you know? How can you tell I know it? Where does this knowledge come from?”
“Do you remember that tree with those red, round, large, beautiful and fragrant fruits? Do you remember the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?”
“Yes. The tree from which comes the temptation against which we have been warned by Himself.”
“I have eaten its fruit.”
“You!…”

 

(to be continued)

 

Eve dream. Chapter two. Halved – part three

Picture by Beth Hokhmah, found here

Eve dream first episode (Lilith part one)

Previous episode (Halved part two)

 

2 Halved – part three

Eve was naked.
Eve found herself naked and fragile.
Weak.
Eve blushed with shame, also for this.
Eva blushed, ashamed of herself, prey to an immense remorse.

It was thus. So, the Woman felt her need to somehow shelter from her malice, or at least to distract herself from it; she therefore gathered flexible sedge leaves around her, intertwined them in a sort of loose and bottomless basket and with it she encircled her pelvis and what she herself had profaned first.
She tied the interweaved sedges around her waist, above her hips, to cover her nakedness: as a matter of fact, if she looked at her groin, she felt stir into her intimate the excitement and lust of the Serpent and of her own obscene, unspeakable parody: Lilith.
As she was prey to an almost unbearable melancholy, she resumed wandering around the garden. She knew the abundance of her tears.

The cursed voice, however, did not abandon her and gave her no respite. At this point, almost hissing, she insisted on putting forward her thesis: “Now you are finally free. Now you know. Now you have seen and heard and experienced an ecstasy that you never even imagined existed. Now you know yourself and you know you are enough for yourself. You know you can be enough for yourself. The deception of the Creator has been exposed. Now you are finally one, black and white together. Light and Shadow. Eve and Lilith. Now you are whole. Now you know that I am your true creator. Now you will adore me”.
Whole…
Whole!…
How unbearably false all this was!
Despite the insinuating and insistent hisses of the Snake, the Woman clearly perceived the exact opposite. The sensation of having been drastically reduced, diminished, halved was so acute that it made her pant, till it painted her chest.
She had gained nothing, but on top of that she had lost a lot. First of all, she had forever ruined and abandoned the purity of the gaze, the peace of her heart, the crystalline clarity of the perception of oneself, of the Mankind, of the whole Universe.
Moreover, now it would have been much more difficult to identify the direction of Time and the Meaning of things.
Each path, each way would have cost pain and error.
She had generated the fatigue of existing.
Her solidity faded.
By doubling and acquiescing to the worst of herself to exist without any control, not being able and unwilling in any case to become her own evil and destructive Shadow, she had in fact halved.
We could already see in it the tangible, sad and terrible possibility of taking advantage of Man and others who would come to seek one’s own satisfaction. To plunder nature for one’s own benefit. To feel hatred and resentment whenever others opposed their own lives and needs to the total self-fulfillment and satisfaction.

Eve therefore knew the most terrible aspect of freedom: the rejection of the Good. The rejection of the Beauty. She had rejected the truth of herself, the truth of the whole world.

She had rejected the Truth.
Innocence was lost.
Eve had confused Love with the instinct of the flesh.
She had disrupted her own being, exchanging the total gift of herself with the demand of satisfaction.
Sin had imbued humanity.
Sin had imbued humanity to its deepest roots.
Everything was about to change.
Everything had changed, perhaps forever.

No, not forever. Only for a long time, for millennia, until Mary, the New Woman, appeared.
The real woman.
The Immaculate Conception.
The one who would collaborate in the salvation of the Seconds.
She who would have had countless titles, countless attributes.

No, not forever. Just for a long time, for millennia, until the New Woman would appear. The real Woman. Mary.
She, the Immaculate Conception.
The one who would help to save the Seconds.
She who would have countless titles, countless attributes.
Because, there! The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son.
לָכֵן יִתֵּן אֲדֹנָי הוּא לָכֶם אוֹת הִנֵּה הָעַלְמָה הָרָה וְיֹלֶדֶת בֵּן וְקָרָאת שְׁמוֹ עִמָּנוּאֵל

The little girl, a little girl.
A poor ignorant young woman.
The wisest of all humanity and not only so: the Queen of Angels.
Sedes sapiéntiae, Regína angelórum.
The little girl who would be the Refuge of Sinners.
Refugium peccatórum.
The source and seat of wisdom.
Sedes sapiéntiae.
The Mirror of His holiness.
Speculum iustitiae.
The Cause of our joy.
Cáusa nóstrae laetítiae.
The Gate of Heaven.
Iánua cáeli
The Morning Star.
Stella matutina.
The Queen of Angels!
Regina angelórum.

She, who would have made redemption possible, even generating the Son of Him.

The Son, who would descend among men, into the world.
The Son, who would once again show Love, Good, Beauty.
The One who would restore the path to salvation.
Thus, in the fullness of time, the True Woman would suffer her unspeakable pain close to her Son, the Son of Man, the Son of God.

She would have seen the Son, her son, to be erected upright like a criminal, like an outcast, but she would have understood that in such abjection the poor bones of Adam would once again have been elevated toward the sky. The earth, putrid by sin, the earth that smelled of death and shame would be lifted once again and definitively even beyond Eden, towards Heaven.

Because, there! An incurable enmity arises between the Woman and the Serpent, between the progeny of the Woman and the progeny of the Serpent.
And the Serpent will attack the heels of the Woman’s lineage.
And the seed of Men will bruise the head of the Serpent.

All the Seconds would have a new chance, yet Eve didn’t know that this would happen.

Thus, the Woman fell to her knees on the peaty ground and, quite unusual, she injured herself by hitting a hard, sharp stone. Drops of red blood dyed the grass in Eden for the first time. Evil generated pain. She collapsed, trembling with shame, remorse and fear, hiding her face in her hands, wincing in violent and inconsolable sobs.

 

(to be continued)

Partial Italian version here

 

Eve dream. Chapter two. Halved – part two

Picture by Beth Hokhmah, found here

Before to continue, I absolutely need to thank again my friend Shyla; when I asked her to critically read and review my translation into English of this “Eve dream”, I did not expect the enthusiasm, passion and precision that my poor words are benefiting from her work. Thank you Shyla!

Eve dream first episode (Lilith part one)

Previous episode (Halved part one)

 

2 Halved – part two

The Woman did not yet know the inebriation given by the fermented juices of the grapevine, however we can say that she felt something similar to the ailment that so often follows with such inebriation. As each moment passed away, in addition to the recovery of awareness, a strange malaise increased: a malaise due to the perception that something wrong, definitely wrong had happened: an abomination arose.

She had not yet given her body to the Man. She either did not know the existence of such a possibility, even not knowing that such a possibility was a source of joy.  She, placed in front of herself and only herself, doubled as she was in front of a mirror, she had freed her Shadow, a dark and evil being who populated his unconscious; she had begotten or, rather, freed, Lilith. She had become Lilith herself and therefore she had enjoyed herself in solitude, she had generated and loved her own dark and perverse side and she was delighted in it, in an unhealthy solipsistic idyll that cried out against Heaven: “I am enough!“.

This had happened almost unconsciously or, better, without her being fully aware of it, cheated by the Enemy, by the Ancient Serpent which at this point she identified and recognized with absolute certainty. However, his own weakness and the absence of full awareness, took very little away from the crime committed, which remained so and – now she knew it – would remain for a long time, would remain forever, would have gone through all the passing of time and would have reached the end of time itself, until the end of the time given to her and to all her offspring. Until the last twilight of Men and Women. She had damned not only herself, but her entire lineage, upsetting it irremediably. She had started an almost infinite chain of crimes, of oppressions, of pretensions, of presumptions, up to the most horrendous wars. All this, in fact, presupposed the reference to a supposed absolute freedom that identified the other not in the beloved, but in the adversary.

 

She had succumbed to a bestial impulse, to an instinctive one, to an unreasonable one, which had degraded love to simple pleasure. Moreover, there was something even worse and perhaps more serious: this drive had involved only herself, in an impetus of onanism, in a fit of selfish hedonism, to a further betrayal of love which is always the absolute opposite: relationship with diversity, relationship with other by herself. Gift of herself to others. Gift of herself to Other.

 

Albeit on a smaller scale and in detail, the malign essence of the rising of the Shadow traced what had already happened with Lucifer in the implementation of his rebellion. The fall of Lucifer, which had already corrupted multitudes of angels, now also dragged the mankind away from the Creator, away from the Reason of everything. Away from God.

 

The alternative plan continued, following the desire to kill Love.

To deny the Reality.

To convince himself and convince others that it was possible to do better: here is the temptation.

Once again, He had allowed it, because He respected free will to the highest degree.

Because He loved Men, just as he loved the Firsts, the Angels, among which Lucifer himself had been a part.

Because He is immensity of Love.

Because He is first of all Love.

Eve was satisfied with an empty pleasure, a senseless and meaningless pleasure, and she perceived that, doing so, the malice had inevitably and irrevocably settled deeply into herself.

.

 

(to be continued)

 

Eve dream. Chapter two. Halved – part one

Picture by Beth Hokhmah, found here

Eve dream first episode (Lilith part one)

Previous episode (Lilith part four)

2 Halved – part one

Everything came back to her memory with such vivid colour and such meticulous detail that the hypothesis of having been prey to a dream – or a terrifying nightmare – was not likely.

Nevertheless, it seemed paradoxical and impossible that it really happened as she remembered.

Did what she kept in such a richly detailed memory, therefore, really happen or was it carried out within the limits of a delirium, when heat and sleep and tiredness made her unconscious?

She analysed again what appeared to be the facts.

As much as she found herself alone now and how what happened appeared to be far-fetched and absurd, her Shadow had detached from her or, rather, had gone out of her. Coming from a remote and unknown recess of her deep self, for some incomprehensible and unknown reason, her Shadow had emerged into the light of day, had taken on its own shape and flesh and movements, rising to a life of its own, and had enjoyed her.

Eve now saw clearly that the dream had such real features that it really could not be merely relegated to the dream range; she ran her red tongue over her lips and she felt that they were still impregnated with the aroma of the fruit and that they retained – or seemed to retain – even traces of another aroma, the aroma of the other one.

She looked down at her chest and thought she saw some small yellow or black scales on it, but they quickly dissolved and dripped to the ground.

A phrase, still whispered by that voice which had however become low and hoarse, persistently overflowed in her mind, as though it wanted to trap her: “Why are you thinking about a nightmare? At night we do not have our own self, or, better: it is as if we did not own it. During the night, when we lose any control, we are not only one woman, but many women… during the night we are lost in our bright and inner splendour, which the light and the normality of the day reject. At night we are what we really are, free from any constriction and pleonastic components. The night we can really be what we are, which is not only light but also darkness. At night we can pretend to be and to dare everything. At night we have the true knowledge of good and evil, because we can look at them both, without trembling. The Shadow is part of you and there is nothing wrong with knowing it, admitting it, allowing it to be. To truly be yourself and not just a part of who you are meant to be, you need to welcome your dark side. You have to let her out, giving her your body. She must emerge from you so that you can truly express yourself and express your gifts, your beauty, your desire for love, your ability to give love.”

She was bewitched and at the same time terrified by that phrase, which seemed to be injected into her mind by others and certainly not by the Creator. She thought back to the Serpent, she saw him again. She almost seemed to touch him and she felt him cold, slimy, deadly. She shivered. She knew that in that sentence and in that presumed better awareness there was something out of tune, something wrong. Something perverse and hopelessly bad.

Finally, she recognized in those words the spell and the evil power of the Enemy and then her self-awareness became more strong-willed: she raised her arms to the blue sky, screaming desperately: No!

She had been duped.

She had certainly been duped.

Once again, the Enemy had imposed on sentient creatures, on herself, his own will and his own vision of the universe, weaving a plot of falsehood so captivating as to deceive, convince and pervert the Woman, dragging her into another life, into a second life, that is into a different and weird yet possible life; however, doing thus, he contradicted the reality or, better, he defined a new reality where he promised to the Woman emancipation from all obligations and laws. By designing, building and proposing an alternative reality made solely by right to pleasure, to powerful self-realization, to absolute freedom.

Yes: he promised the knowledge of good and evil.

The possibility to choose always and in any case, in spite of every possible link.

In spite of Love.

In spite of the truth.

She thought she heard that recommendation, that one recommendation with which the Creator placed the Woman and the Man in the garden, in the magnificent core of Eden: “Do not delude yourselves that you know Good and Evil according to yourselves, because otherwise your weakness it will lose you and you will become slaves of yourselves and your desires, losing your peace and hastening your death. In fact, you are not at the centre of the Uni-verse, whose everything points to Me and only to Me, the One who did it. Therefore, do not feed on the fruits of that tree, which also exists, because you would not be able to bear the consequences. That tree and its fruits are necessary to allow your freedom. But trust in Me, entrust Me, trust in My Love. In any case, whatever you do, I will respect your choice and your freedom, because I wanted you and I love you”.

.

 

(to be continued)