The two-faced Emperor

"Sacred what?" Vix was sitting in the coffee-shop with Mr. Friend, looking a bit bewildered. The opening had taken him by surprise, making him choke on his coffee. Without stopping Mr. Friend handed Vix a paper napkin.
”Sacred geometry, I said."
"As in a mix between Maths and Religion classes? Are you gonna go all Dan Brown on me now?"
"Quite. Take the Pyramid, for example, unlike anything you’ve seen in nature except in some crystal structures. As a symbol it sits on the far opposite end of chaos. It is indeed a most fascinating structure. Four sides at the base square. Four triangles merge in a fifth point at the summit. The perfect geometrical figure to express the number five. Made up of threes and the square root of four, which I take even your slumbering brain deep, deep within knows is two, which together with three, makes...”
”Five.”
”There’s a reason one uses ’he can’t even put two and two together’ as the perfect example to describe the ultimate stupidity, and not ’he can’t even put two and three together’. It would be too close to the core of the philosophy of five, where we find the pyramid as the central symbol, and for obvious reasons some people don’t want us to go there. At least not yet.”
”The philosophy of five?”
”Yes. Haven’t you noticed the amount of fives that surround you?”
”Not really, but all I have in my pocket is a fiver, if that’s what you mean?” Vix could tell Mr. Friend wasn’t up for much two-way communication today, as he was already mid-way throught his next sentence:
”Well, take the Pentagon building for starters, since you are so interested in power.”
”I’m not interested in power!”
”Yes you are. And it’s all penta-this and penta-that when it comes to the rulers of the New World, though no-one have really bothered to make any ’official’ explanation as to why they’re so obsessed with it. Then you have the five-pointed star - The Pentagram. ’Every man and woman is a star’, it has once been claimed. Visualise a human being standing upright with legs apart and arms outstreched. There’s your living, breathing five-pointed star. The five pillars central in the Muslim faith. The five most commonly known senses; sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste.”
”But hey! Isn’t this what weird people do? If you start seeing patterns of five everywhere, next thing you know it’s the funny-farm with a padlock?”
”You would be amazed at how many bright people are brought into custody on the background of a mental-health excuse.”
Vix wondered how Mr. Friend knew this, but got cut off before had the chance to make a comment.
”Then you can go on and spell the name Joshua in Hebrew for me.”
”You’re joking. How would I know how to do that?”
”If schools had the faintest interest in educating children and passing on real and valuable knowledge of our history, you would have had no problem with that. But I’ll do it for you; Yod, Hé, Shin, Vau, Hé.”
”Aha. Five letters. It’s a kind of magic! Who’s Joshua?”
”Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
”The Messiah dude? Get outta here! I wouldn’t have guessed that he would turn up here.” Vix tried to sound surprised in the most superficial way possible.
”You don’t seem to be taking this very seriously. Maybe you would like to take one of your five fingers on your right hand and pick your snotty little nose with it instead? It might be a more suitable illustration.”
”But hang on. You’re telling me Jesus Christ is in on the ’philosophy of five’ thing? Firstly I don’t even believe such a figure ever existed, it’s all hype. And secondly you’re sounding a bit too much like a spooky weirdo now. I preferred it when you talked about mass-media manipulation and world politics.”
”Divide and conquer.”
”Why do you say that?”
”They are all aspects of the same thing, and as long as you regard politics as separate from all this, you’ll never understand what is going on. There are even five aspects of the great power-machine you’re so in love with, too. Five great tools to obtain total control and keep people like you detatched from yourself and hold up the great illusion of this world.”
”Really? And they are?”
”Law, Military Force, Communication, Religion and Money.”
”And they’re all connected, of course?”
”They are all different faces of the same head. They are the tools you need in order to build the world pyramid. Would you like me to tell you more about the inner workings of religion without too many protests now?”
”For sure.”
”Christ is said to be representing the four elements of man; Spirit (Yod), Soul (Hé), Intellect (Vau) and Heart (Hé).”
”I might not be the sharpest of knives, but according to my mathematical skills that makes only four.”
”Ahh. The Brain. Such a useful tool. You see, these four letters alone make up the word Jahve, or Yehova if you’d like. Which I guess you’ll recognise as the god of the Old Testament.”
”Don’t know about that, but I do recognise him from ’Life of Brian’. Hilarious, that stoning scene.”
”Well, I’m glad Monty Python took upon themselves the responsibility of filling in the holes the educational system left out.”
Vix smiled, satisfied with de-railing Mr. Friend’s freight-train of thought.
Mr. Friend frowned and went on:
“But if we insert the letter Shin, representing the human free will, in the middle of Yehova, and thereby balance out the four elements of man with a guiding fifth, we’re left with the name Joshua – or Jesus. The Christ.”
”Dammit!”
”And this is where it all starts getting really interesting.”
”Really? I’m already quite entertained.”
”I haven’t got the faintest intention of entertaining you, Victor. You know how I feel about entertainment in general.”
Vix could see steam building, and added:
”Sorry. Info-tain me, then.”
”Whatever. The core of the knowledge that got mashed together with the whims of those who wrote the manuscript of what we call Christianity today, stems from what can faintly be viewed as natural mythology, or the so-called pagan beliefs of the past. The spiritual science of old.”
”Mashed together?”
”Let’s go back and talk about the Romans for a bit, and the way they built their regime of power.”
”Please.” Vix felt that he had to make himself as comfortable as possible to endure what was about to come.
”The Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar was the most powerful political and military figure in our part of the world during the first century. It was under him that the old Roman Republic expanded into what history refers to as the Roman Empire. Much like we know from other empires of the past, the Emperor was given the status of a demi-god - the Divine Being’s core representative on Earth. This usually worked in the way that not only did the masses underthrow themselves to the sovereign military and political power of their ruler, but also accepted him as their spiritual leader, a position that - at times when pure brutality and law-enforcing met resistance in the public - proved extremely useful to keep things under control."
”So the same Emperor who laid down the rules of society also acted as the God of the people?”
”Which gave them a much harder time standing up against him, as it was a matter of standing up against their own beliefs – an inner force - not the external force of a dictator of flesh, blood and unjustified greed for power. Such a purely mortal force would have been much easier to disagree with, and for people to gather together and pick a fight with.”
"But all this kept people quiet and obedient?"
"When people realize injustice is being done to them they will sooner or later revolt against any oppression and violent law-enforcing, but when it comes down to challenging their own faith they tend to hesitate a whole lot more.”
”Makes sense.”
”This model had already proven to work very well. For the Chinese rulers, for example; the endless respect and fearful admiration that people had for their Emperor as both celestial and earthly ruler extended his power into the wildest dimensions. You can say that Julius Caesar had a few hundred years of political history to draw inspiration from already.”
”So why didn’t he just pass this power on, making his followers the new Gods? Didn't he run into trouble with his family also?”
”Faith. People slowly but steadily lost their faith in him. And in emperors in general.”
”You mean they were wisening up?”
”Sort of. You can only surpress the masses for so long, until their inner feeling of injustice pushes out of their bodies and into society, and then they most certainly will start organising themselves and eventually revolt against you. The struggle for power is always one of manipulating people to believe that what you tell them is more important than what they feel deep within their hearts is right for themselves and their surroundings. And in order to do this you need more than one tool.”
”So as people’s belief in the emperor as half-god deteriorated, he lost his power.”
”He did. And as a lot of people returned to their numerous versions of the small and simple belief-systems that had lived on in the shadows, the Empire started getting into a lot of trouble controlling the masses by law-enforcing alone. In addition, these alternative roads for enlightenment were systems that for the most part stemmed from man’s early observations of Nature – old pagan beliefs. Everything from the knowledge of the healing powers of herbs to the study of the movements of the celestial bodies that told them when to sow, when to harvest, and when to look for shelter when the storms started building up, once again became people’s guidelines.”
”They started listening to the Weather again, instead of listening to the Roman Emperor?”
”Exactly! The Weather, and a whole lot of other natural phenomena.”
”I guess it seems obvious that it got more difficult to rule when people moved away from worshipping the state leader and connected with nature and themselves instead. But I thought the Roman Empire lasted far longer than Caesar?”
”The Roman Empire actually started, or at least expanded into an Empire with Caesar. Before that it was merely known as the Roman Republic, and covered a far lesser geographical area with far less citizens. But they started getting into trouble keeping it all together as they expanded.”
”It was very big?”
”At its peak a few hundred years later the Roman Empire streched from Northern Africa through Egypt into the Middle east via Lebanon and Syria. It covered areas around the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Europe south of the Alps and all the way to Spain, Portugal, France, England and Wales. Most of the people living in this vast area were considered Romans, but when no-one was looking, most people proved very relaxed when it came to their loyalty towards Rome. It wasn’t a question of doing anything extra to stand up for their Emperor. And they all had different religious beliefs.”
”So it wasn’t a scenario of total, centralized control?”
”Not at all. Most people detested the prescense of the Roman soldiers, as most written documentation of the era testfies. And this left a lot of openings for spiritual and political revolutionaries to spread their ideas - the man historically referred to as Jesus from Nazareth being the most famous one today. For several reasons that I will get to in a moment.”
”So already Julius Caesar was struggling to keep it all together, but still you say they managed to keep their power for a few more hundred years, and even expand it?”
”Oh, they’ve managed to keep their power for far longer than that.”
”What do you mean?”
”As an example, let us fast forward into the early fourth century, when Emperor Constantin the 1st ruled from the city of the old Greek city of Byzantium."
"Never heard of it. Are they big on charter-tourism today?"
"Byzantium was re-baptised Nova Roma, soon to be called Constantinopel and today plainly referred to as Istanbul.
”That’s a lot of names for one city.”
”Constantin's predecessor, Emperor Diocletian, had spent almost a decade trying his best to eradicate the rapid growth of Christianity within the empire, as well as another big religion widespread in those days called Manichaeism.”
”Never heard of it, either. Kind of like the Scientology of the times?”
”Not really. I don’t think Manichaeism was a result of a wager between two pennyless science fiction authors.”
”Yeah, I heard about that. The guy who started Scientology did it to prove that he could start his own religion, and his mate put a bet on that he couldn't. I thought that story was just a myth, though.”
”Maybe it, as most myths go, is intended to illustrate the underlying workings of the subject in discussion by the use of more dramatic means. Anyway, let’s leave the bets between Hubbard and his pal Heinlein for now. Back to the Romans. The religious map of the great realm that the poor bugger Diocletian had his hands full with keeping together, was one of great fragmentation. In addition to Christianity and Manichaeism you had Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism and a lot of other, far smaller religions and belief-systems existing throughout the population of the Empire.”
”Much like a massively huge old-school New Age convention?”
”I guess you could call it that. It was a question of fragments of the same universal spiritual guidelines put into many different contexts for different purposes and intents. The only problem was that this made the gap between the state and people’s inner lives broaden, and this gave many small groups the courage to gather and stand up against Rome, something that gave the Emperor a really bad headache. A headache that in addition to his syphilis felt quite unbearable. So he tried, like simple people do, to use force to get rid of the problem.”
”He sent the po-lice on them?”
”Absolutely. But his police were licensed to kill and slaughter – as was the habit in those days.”
”Aren’t they still?”
”Not while people are looking, Victor. We’re not barbarians any longer.”
”Aha. Progress.”
”Progress.”
”But did it work out the way he wanted? Were people scared by his soldiers?”
”Certainly not. This approach never works, as history has shown us time after time. But it worked very well for Christianity. It spread like a fire. Not only was it now fuelled by the success of the uproar by the figure Jesus from Nazareth, who spoke freely of the need to revise and re-vitalise religion and start opposing the church and the Roman occupants, but it also grew stronger by the fact that by trying to destroy Christianity the Emperor seemed to be very afraid of it in the public’s eye. Quite like when President Nixon admitted to feeling so threathened by John Lennon and Yoko Ono by putting them under the surveillance of the FBI and trying to deport them from the US prior to the campaign of his second presidental election.”
”Did he, now? Never heard of that before.”
”You’ve probably never looked for it, then.”
”Not really, no. I only know Nixon from his other crimes.”
”Anyway, our soon-to-be emperor Constantin, who was a bright young fellow, saw all of Diocletian's troubles from the sideline and decided he wanted to become far more successful than his predecessor, as most young people decide when they realize their elders don't have full control. So when Constantin's time came, the first thing he did was to get rid of the competition, to put it simple.”
”What competition?”
”The other Emperor.”
”There was another one?”
”Oh, there were several emperors at times. The Empire of Rome almost fell to pieces towards the end of the third century, as there were around twenty emperors all claiming power of the Empire. But it ended up merely split in half through a system called the Tetrarchy back then. Diocletian ruled the eastern part, and Maximian ruled the western part. It was the intention to keep it this way, but when Diocletian resigned, the power was seized by one Galerius who basically held Constantin hostage for some time to prevent him from claiming power. Maximian still ruled the west at this point."
"Sounds as confusing as the politics of today, only there was more direct killing and torture going on."
"Not much has changed. The media are our new gallows and the game is less clumsy, but the inner workings have stayed the same. But enough of that."
"OK. Go on."
"Constantin managed to flee Galerius' arrest on the excuse of going to England to assist his own father in battle. Galerius let him go, hoping he would fall in battle while away. But Constantin succeeded in England and stayed there, continuing to work his way up to more and more power in the western Empire - by all means necessary. From forging his new titles when reporting back to Galerius on the status of things, to letting a couple of Frankish kings be ripped apart by wild beasts in the amphitheatre to everyone’s entertainment.”
”We’ve come a long way from that to Pop Idol, though. Don’t you think?”
”Have we, now?” Mr. Friend frowned, paused to sip his coffee, which must have gone ice cold bu now. Then he continued: ”By his hard work Constantin soon reigned most of the western part of the Empire. He changed his title to Augustus, which is latin for "majestic", and in this power also controlled one of the largest Roman armies. He eventually got rid of the western ruler Maximian by ordering his suicide, and also quite effectively got rid of another potential obstacle by killing Maximian’s planned successor, his son Maxentius while he was at it.”
”Sounds like an efficient guy.”
”Oh, he was. He had kept on building alliances all along the way by means of a couple of strategic marriages, one of them being Maximians’ daughter Fausta. When he felt his power had expanded sufficiently, he went on and did something of great genius; he teamed up with Galerius’ second in command Licinius, who he – needless to say - later went and had killed. But before this they put together ’the Edict of Milan’, a proclamation that all religions – including Christianity – was now allowed within the Empire.”
”So then I guess he got quite popular. At least more popular than the Emperor before him?”
”Of course. When he saw the effect this declaration had on his popularity with the people, he eventually went on and claimed that he himself also had become a true Christian now, something history has been quite insistent on making us believe was true in hindsight. He even declared that from now on Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire.”
”It wasn’t true?”
”Far from it. The ’first Christian Roman Emperor’ Constantin was a true follower of Sol Invictus, as most Roman Emperors before and after him had been.”
”I think I've read about that on the Web. Wasn’t that some kind of sun worshipping cult? Or do you mean the record label?”
”Sol Invictus was more like three sun-worshipping cults thrown into one. Although it could hardly be called a cult at all, as the ’official’ religion of the Roman Empire up till that point had been all such forms of Roman Paganism, in addition to the Imperial Cult that had held the Emperor himself divine. You can find a lot of mythical imagery from these religions printed all over the money of this period.”
”Oh, I thought we were talking kind of occult stuff?”
”Occult only means ’hidden’. And that’s central to the whole scheme of what happened later.”
”Sol Invictus went into hiding?”
”Not really. They just got adapted to the new popular ideas emerging amongst people. And that’s the true genius of it all. Sometimes you can hide things in front of people's own eyes. You just tell them to not look for it.”
”What do you mean they adapted?"
"They shuffled things around a bit. Made sure it looked like they were doing something else than what they actually did, but kept all the main ingredients intact."
"Like a re-edit?”
”Most probably like a re-edit. Whatever that is.”
”So why would Constantin pose as a Christian, if he really was a follower of Sol Invictus? He was the Emperor, he could still have done as he pleased for his personal beliefs.”
”Oh, he did. As I said the basic doctrine of Sol Invictus was based around three divinities thrown into one. Followers of the deities Mithras, El Gabal and Sol all were all associated with the cult, but all three of these beliefs were just based around basic ancient sun-worship and paganism, with all the sacrifices and rites that go with it. This is nothing new, just activities mankind have been pre-occupied with throughout the ages. Ever since the first individual on the planet started recognising the warming sun as its saviour and the night, filled with its predators and dangers, as the great darkness, this has been with us. It’s at the core of all the great ancient eastern religions, the meso-american ones, and in the belief-systems of ancient Egypt. It is at the core of our very beings.”
”The sun as the saviour. Might have been very different if we were nocturnal creatures, then. I almost never saw the sun during my teens, and only listened to dark and heavy music.”
”And that’s funny, but also quite essential here. If you are a predator you’re more likely to worship the night, as it will give you the cover you need in order to sneak up on your prey before you attack it, rip it apart and devour it. Your natural place in this world will give you a set of needs, and you’re very likely to be thankful to the universal mechanisms that fulfill those needs.”
”And the Roman Emperor Constantin, where was he in all this?”
”He was a man seeking power, and like all other power-seeking creatures he had to find the means of getting it, and then make sure he could keep it. The greatest power is held by the sun. At least that's how it seems when you're a mortal man with your feet on the ground."
"But everybody loves the sun."
"Yes. Most of the time. But the sun is also ruthless. It would be sure to kill you if you approached it. The sun is the sun, and no place for man. So for Constantin, when you had a new religion - Christianity - based on compassion and non-violent co-existence with your fellow man spreading like a fire among the people. The same people he intended to reign over, it was not good news at all.
"I guess it would be like launching the idea of fair trade to a unscrupulous stock-broker and expect him to say ’oh, that’s great, I’ll just stop chasing profit and start concentrating on justice immediately’.”
”Which would be not very likely. Unless this would be an unnaturally gifted stock-broker, who instead would say ’great idea’, and then start figuring out how he could make the most profit out of people’s hunger for justice.”
”So you embrace the idea...”
”And start making it work for your own means.”
”You do a re-edit, and fill the floor with some old junk tune.”
”If you say so. So now we had the great new ’Christian’ Emperor, who – in the same year as he launced the ’Edict of Milan’ and declared himself a true Christian – also poisoned his own son Crispus and killed his wife Fausta by throwing her alive into boiling water.”
”Ah, the compassion.”
”The same compassion with which he then made some very smart adjustments to the new official religion of Rome. Firstly, he changed the celebration of the birth of Christ from January 6th to December 25th – coincidentally the same day he and all followers of Sol Invictus already celebrated the winter solstice. He changed the Christian Sabbath – which up until now had followed the jewish one on Saturday – to Sunday - the holy day of Sol Invictus. Then he sent his mother Helena around the Empire restoring churches and giving back treasures that had been seized when Christianity was outlawed, to show his newfound kindness of heart.”
”Ahh. The generousity.”
”He also had his mother bring back pieces of ’the True Cross’ from the Holy Land, the very cross on which Jesus had allegedly been crucified, and erected it in his Nova Roma as a relic of protection.”
”This guy makes artists like Bill Drummond look like total amateurs.”
”He then chose the Labarum as the symbol of this new official Roman religion, a symbol he had his soldiers engrave on their shields when they went into battle with his aforementioned competitor to power, Maxentius, many years earlier. He claimed that he had had a dream or vision from his Christian God that told him that ’under this symbol you will reign’. It consisted of the ancient cross of the Zodiac, where the sun is the center and the two lines represent the equinoxes, with the letter P inserted above it – all enclosed in a circle.”
”Like that P-X thing on the Pope’s forehead?”
”The very same symbol. The P represented the Patriarch, in this case the Emperor himself, reigning with the power of the sun. All within a closed circle, probably to symbolize the fact that all the power should be restrained to the Patriarch and his circle of power.”
”Wow. If all this is true, why didn’t people see it?”
”Do people see anything at all? Ever? They were probably too busy watching an execution or some other form of entertainment of the times.”
”You really don’t like entertainment.”
”No I don’t. I prefer the Truth anytime.”
"So what happens next?"
”Well, now Christianity is the official religion of Rome and everyone is happy. The concentration of military power, political power, financial power, and not least spiritual power is limited to the Emperor once again. The only difference is that instead of being both God and head of state himself, he is only head of state but is now seemingly following the same God as his people."
"With a few minor, or should we say quite major adjustments?”
"I'd say major."
”So that’s why the most brutal leaders of today all make sure they praise the lord before they announce that they’re going to send some poor kid off to shoot even poorer families in the Middle East?”
”Of course. You can bet that their true spiritual loyalties lie a lot closer to the more nocturnally orientated directions of faith, like with any true predator. But that is all kept safely within the disclosure of night, of course.”
”So it looks like they are all true Christians in public, but their private practises are of the darker arts?”
”They surely are.”
”Smart.”
"And once again everything is in its right place. The predators prey while the prey is busy praying.”
”Fancy sentence. Have you ever tried rapping?”
Mr. Friend just smiled.
They were walking from the coffee shop now. It was a beautiful, but cold day. They said goodbye, and Vix felt that his head was filled to the max with strange stories. Stories that might be great information, or just a heap of bollocks from a twisted old man.

Back at the Shelter he made his notes for the day. He felt far too knackered to do much of anything else, so he decided to keep the blogging short.
He logged in, and posted a picture he took of a sticker-piece on a lamppost down the road. It was an image of a holy-looking dude making some kind of announcement while holding up his right hand as if to make a warning. In his left hand he held a book. Underneath the image were the words:

THE APOCALYPSE HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Then he wrote:

Most probably, the Apocalypse has been cancelled.