More about shapes and structures

”But let's go back to those Pyramids again.”
Vix was sitting at the window table in the coffee shop with Mr. Friend. They both had their freshly topped-up coffees on the table in front of them, and Vix felt very comfortable about the situation.
”Yes. What more about them?” Mr. Friend asked.
Vix could feel that he was getting nervous again, as always whenever he tried to close in on this subject.
”You never seem to get around to tell me anything specific about them when they turn up in a conversation. You always mention them briefly, but then you move away from the subject into something else. I want to know more.”
He wondered why this topic would always build up such emotion in him. He could vaguely remember his dreams, but had more than once woken up in the middle of the night, sweating, with his mind fixed on a pyramid-shaped figure.
It didn’t make sense. He’d never even been to Egypt.
When he’d googled ‘pyramid’, he would get 35,400,000 hits ranging from food-pyramids to Meso-American architecture to wild theories from scary-looking, right-wing biased websites in the south of the USA.
”You’re really interested in those things, arent you?” Mr. Friend looked at Vix with an inquisitive look on his face. “For any specific reason, may I ask?”
”It’s just that I keep seeing them in the strangest places, that’s all.”
He didn’t feel like being too specific about it to Mr. Friend.
“Any particular pyramid that catches your fancy?”
“Umm... Not really. Let’s see… What about the one with an eye near the top?”
He made it sound as if he chose this one for no particular reason, which was somewhat weird, as he actually did choose it for no specific reason.
”Ah, that one. If you look at it from one angle, that one’s just an extension of Constantine’s Labarum mixed with some old Egyptian ideas.”
”I don't really follow you. It’s just some kind of symbolic mash-up?”
”If that makes more sense to you, please think of it as just that.”
“It sounds a bit coincidential put like that.”
“Oh, far from it. The Labarum is meant to symbolize the monopolization of faith – the transfer of all spiritual power from the people to the self-appointed keepers of the truth, who themselves continued to practise all the pagan arts and techniques behind closed doors in order to keep in touch with the sources of life, and thereby being able to sustain their own personal power.”
”So you’ve told me. And as the masses lost touch with Nature and their own spirituality because of this, the ones at the top expanded theirs. Blah, blah. And so it goes.”
”I’m glad you do your homework. It proves that I’m not just talking to an open window. There's enough people in my position doing just that."
"There's a lot of people in your position?"
Mr. Friend didn't answer his question, but just continued talking, "This strategy proved so successful to our old friend the Emperor Constantine that things couldn't look better. But it didn't stop there. The next thing on the agenda was that all religions but Christianity started getting persecuted and outlawed within the Empire. After Constantine’s two sons came to power, they immediately started persecuting all religions other than the new ‘official’ and heavily moderated version of Christianity, and in 391 Emperor Theodosius the 1st declared that anyone caught practising any other religions would face the death penalty.”
Vix’ mind started wandering, and he was weighing the thought wether or not it was possible that Mr.Friend had been working for the Discovery channel or something similar in the past.
He snapped out of it and posed a question to keep him going: "But why turn around and outlaw simple beliefs?"
"Any spiritual practice based upon natural science, like meditation, herbalism, ritual and affirmation of the forces of nature do actually work as tools to vitalise people’s personal powers and their relation to the world around them. That’s why anyone, like our Emperor, who set out to build a hierarchial system of monopolised power still had to get rid of all such practises among the masses.”
”To weaken people? So you're saying all this could also be the reason for everything from the witch-hunts in the middle ages to the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese government today?”
”That’s exactly what I’m saying. Those in power want to keep these practises to themselves, while the masses project all their spiritual powers through external sources like The Church, and thereby get weakened and start losing faith in their own creative powers - the same powers that they would actually need to run their own lives in a healthy and satisfactory fashion."
Maybe – just maybe – Mr. Friend had been working for the Discovery channel, then gone mad after a trip to the Amazonas to cover a lost tribe who’d fed him their most potent hallucinogenic? Yes, that was possible. That would explain the mutant-like nature of the old man. He was a perfect mix between a very articulate gentleman and a rambling madman. He was careful to not reveal his thoughts, and threw in another comment to keep the conversation flowing: ”But that's how Christianity got treated by the same people in the beginning. Wasn’t it an actual threat to them?”
Mr. Friend became very pleased with the way this comment did nothing but underline what he himself had just said.
"Exactly! Instead of trying to eradicate these new ideas, they just hijacked them, re-wrote them, and released their own version. And this was the very end of Constantine and Licinius’ ’Edict of Milan’, the one that declared total religious freedom within the Empire - and let Christianity into the warmth only a few decades before.”
”And then the shit really hit the fan for 'independent' wizards and witches, I guess?”
”That was the start of more than a milennium of blodshed in the name of the now copyrighted God of the Roman Catholic Church.”
Or – it could be that he came from a religious background, maybe had been a minister or priest? After all, he had a total hangup in religion. Maybe that was it? He’d set up a missionary in Brazil, and gotten kidnapped by the same lost tribe as in the Discovery channel theory, fed the same lethally potent hallucinogenic - and lost his marbles.
Only - that would not explain his TV-presenter-like skills.
”Amazing.”, Vix said, irritated about the way his theory didn’t add up.
”Oh, it’s very fascinating indeed. And this time they had a more long-term plan. When the whole Roman Empire fell to pieces from the late fourth to the late fifth century, the Church already had their first ’Vicar of Peter’ or ’Bishop of Rome’ in place, with a new kind of power rapidly expanding.”
”What kind of Bishop was that?”
”The figure also known as The Pope”
”Ah. That explains how the Labarium-thing ended up on his hat, too.”
”Among other things. As the position of the Church had cemented itself solidly within most of society by now, it had no real borders anymore. It had spread its tentacles all over the European continent. It didn’t even suffer much from the Empire being split into smaller pieces through small wars and uproars. This fact rather strengthened its position as a gathering point for people. After some time the power of the Church exceeded that of the political leaders and little regional Kings.”
Evangelist-TV!
That was it!
Of course. Mr. Friend had been a presenter in those dreadful Evangelist programmes where they pull the savings from old ladies through the TV-screen. That explained it all. TV-Preacher, missionary, potent hallucinogenic and 'bang', the cultural Frankenstein that is Mr. Friend was born out of a cloud of smoke.
”This must have been very effective, as they even managed to bring those crazy Vikings in on it. To make these guys turn their back on Thor and Odin to join the crusade sounds like a real miracle. That’s plainly quite impressive.”
”Well, yes, they did manage this, but only after the Norse Viking King Olaf Tryggvason had been in some very shady negotiations over in England. There are even two contradictory ‘official’ historical explanations to his conversion to Christendom. One is that he met a hermit from the Isles of Scilly who convinced him to betray his Gods of old and start following the cross. Another one is that he received a nice slump of money from the King of England - of which a large part were money paid to the king by the so called Danelaw in the North of England. The Danelaw also paid some kind of 'protection' money in order to be left in peace from Norwegian Viking raids. Whatever really happened, when Olaf returned to Norway, he was on fire and slaugthered every living soul that tried to oppose his newly embraced doctrine, burned the temples and made a right mess.”
Perfect TV-pundit styling again.
”Charming. And it worked? The Norsemen all became good Christians?”
”I’m not sure of how deep it really stuck, but yes, he was quite successful. Not only did he enforce his newly won compassion for his fellow man on the people of Norway by efficient use of his sword, but he also succeeded in bringing the people of Iceland, Shetland, the Faroe Islands and the Orkney Islands to their knees.”
Damn! The Historian didn’t fit the theory that well. He’d forgotten all about the museum aura that surrounded Mr. Friend. He knew far too much about history far beyond the narrow view that a man with a Evangelist background would have known.
Back to square one.
He almost fell out out the conversation, but threw in a last minute comment: ”No wonder Norwegian black metal artists were so eager on burning churches.”
”Well I guess it's quite an explainable reaction if you dig into history on a deeper level than they let you in on in school, only it’s about a thousand years too late, and anyway as I said this is still just one aspect to the story.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that probably a lot of great things came out of all these changes, too. However gruesome they seemed, and however cunning their enforcers were, this was still a step on the evolutionary ladder, still just a part of an ever-expanding universe for mankind to dwell in.”
“That sounds like a mix of some silly hippie fodder and a cynical fascist excuse.”
Vix realised he had no idea who or what Mr. Friend was.
No idea at all.
“If you wish. But anyway, if you'd like to direct your anger towards anything today I'm not sure the Church is the right thing to aim at. Do you really regard the Church of today as an institution that can reach into people's lives and keep any kind of control on anyone? In my experience those taking refuge in it these days are either those who are hiding from the immigration authorities, those who honestly believe in human compassion, or those who have too much to hide on a personal level and is scared to death of being exposed.”
"Could be, but from all you've told me it's unlikely that these people would let go of such power."
"They would never let go of any power, but they're clever people. Why would they keep on steering a sinking ship? No, they move where the real power is. You'd be more likely to find the darkest priests at board-meetings or running governments these days."
Vix was so disappointed about all his own theories on Mr. Friend’s background falling to pieces that he realised he’d lost interest in the whole conversation. In a sulky teenager-like way, he snapped: “Ok. That's all fine. Interesting. But still no pyramid-talk?”
“This is all ‘pyramid-talk’ as far as I’m concerned.”
”But you’re started saying the eye-pyramid thing came out of the Labarum? Why would the Catholic Church’s secret power-elite of Emperors and the like in the early first century, or whoever is behind this, pick such an ancient figure as a pyramid as part of their new symbol of power? I thought the pyramids were over 3000 years old, at least the Egyptian ones. This doesn’t make much sense as this whole story about the Labarum came more than a thousand years later.”
“Oh, the pyramids are a lot older than that. But the point is that this specific power-elite we’re talking about had now put a lot of effort into centralising political, economic and military power so they could keep it all at their own hands. They had also succeeded in “hermeticising” spirituality and the natural sciences to only be available to the chosen few, and they'd presented a watered-down variation through the Church that they controlled themselves. But they still had one more thing up their sleeve that needed to be expressed symbolically in their new seal.”
“Which was?”
“To show that they were now also controlling history.”
Maybe Mr. Friend was just plain mad. Full stop.
“Controlling history?”
“Yes. History. You know? The most rightful heritage of our species apart from the very globe we live on. The ancient wisdom and experience of our predecessors that is to be freely passed on from generation to generation to teach us all where we come from, where we might be going, and why some moves and choices in life might be smarter than others.”
“Sounds kind of a big deal.”
“Oh, it’s probably the biggest deal there is.”
Or a dangerous political extremist. With ties to the old regime of South-Africa? And Nazi-Germany? And the Communists?
"How?"
“Imagine if the people on this planet knew their history correctly? Do you think they'd be as easy to mislead? What if all this mindless entertainment got replaced by the real stories of what happened to The library of Alexandria, or the real story behind the ancient wisdom of the cosmos encoded in the Mayan pyramids, knowledge that had the Catholic church so worried that they made sure all Mayan writings ended up on the fire. Or the real history behind the modern banking system? Do you think people would accept all this bollocks happening to them now if they had their history-lessons right?"
Vix got worried that Mr. Friend would burst, or have a heart-attack. He really wound himself up to the point that a ranting red-faced old man with gleaming eyes had replaced his usually oh-so-smug appearance.
"Whoa! Take it slow here. That's a lot of information at once."
Mr. Friend dried his forehead with a napkin, slowly sipped his coffee, and like a cat that had just tripped on its own tail in front of your very eyes, he had restored the elegance like nothing ever happened, at least nothing that he didn't want to happen - in a matter of seconds.
"So they've stolen history, and to symbolise this they've made a sign that has a pyramid representing history, or knowledge with an eye at the top, representing the insight of the chosen few who sits at the top of society's pyramid, right?"
"Right."
“But if this is all true, why this obvious use of symbols? Anyone could break the code at any time, and then it would all be out in the open.”
“Oh, but vanity is often extraordinarily present among the power-hungry. And they love their symbolism. And what they really have a habit of utilising, is symbolism that usually mean nothing to the uninitiated, but that still manages to show off their success to those of their opponents who understand all this symbolism, the people they would want to know about their superiority.”
“To piss them off.”
“Probably. But also to make them feel conquered and powerless. To send a signal that there is no point to try opposing their will.”
Mr. Friend gazed out the window, and Vix wondered whether he felt conquered and powerless.
”Just one more thing.”
”Yes?”
”What if there actually exists living creatures, or living structures like that?”
"Like what?"
"Like a pyramid."
”Like a living pyramid?”
“With an eye near the top.”
“Pray you never meet one.”
”I think I might have already.”
”Well, then you’ll just have to put your faith in the weather.”

He ended up playing Pong for a couple of hours back at the Shelter. It was a nice thing to get lost in this evening, he thought. As he started having real trouble keeping his eyes open, his playing reached such poor standards that he decided it was much better to give up for the night.
"Strange thing." he thought. Why would people like to change their games all the time, to make them more complicated? Wasn't life complicated enough? Leisure should be just that. The challenges of life were constantly queuing up, anyway. There was no stopping them, as much as he ever tried.

As he fell asleep, he soon dreamed that Nikola Tesla came to him. Tesla told him not to worry, that he was all right where he was now. He also informed Vix that he held no grudge against Thomas Edison, should he wonder. He insisted that his life's work had been much more successful due to the fact that he didn't have to deal with too much public attention and fame when he lived, but rather had the luxury of being able to concentrate on his inventions.
This made Vix feel much at ease, as it was something that had bothered him all his life. At least ever since he had developed a special interest in Tesla and gotten very angry on his behalf, due to the terrible lack of recognition history had offered him and his fantastic work. Tesla assured him that his support was much appreciated still, and to show his gratitude he had designed a very special gift for him. The inventor had then presented the most beautiful machine for him. It was an old-fashioned black&white computer screen mounted on a varnished wooden base. All the electronic components were openly exposed, but the whole construction had the kind of elegance and finesse about it that only true craftsmanship could provide.
The machine was mounted on four long metal spikes, and at the front end a brass sign with swirly lettering read: "Pong".