Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (3 page)

What I want to do is explain the origin of the Gentle Order. I want to give you the true flavor of Francis Dionysos. In the official histories you will search in vain for an explanation of how the Dionysian entered the mainstream of the Franciscan Order. One can suspect ancient censorship here.

Since I conceived this massive project, the documenting of a man’s recovery, I have spent many hours in the library “digging and sifting,” trying to gather the kinds of facts and events which will give us a vivid understanding of the past. I have found some wonderful things and I can affirm that our order is very old. Our roots belong with the dawn of human consciousness itself.

I want you to read the following fragment. I came upon it by accident while looking for information on the early spread of our movement. The page was pressed inside the cover of a translation of the
Odyssey
which once belonged to a certain Consceur Waimarie. This woman was the senior navigation officer aboard the
Cornucopia
which, as you know, was the very first ship to carry a human settlement group to live among aliens. All the books which Consoeur Waimarie took with her on that journey are preserved in our library at Pacifico. The planet upon which they settled was called Lore and the aliens, humanoid as their pictures testify, were given the dubious name of the Lorelei. The fragment is almost six hundred years old and dates from the early years of optimism and expansion, long before the Wars of Knowledge and Ignorance. The manuscript is written in the lady’s own bold hand but whether Consoeur Waimarie composed the piece herself or simply copied it from an original I do not know. Whatever its origin, it reflects early wisdom. The following is the complete text, unabridged, and this is the first time that it has been published.

First there came Achilles.

Achilles the hero. Achilles of the staring eye. Achilles of the hungry sword. Achilles the drinker of blood, the slaughterer, the red man. Achilles who tied the still warm body of Hector behind his chariot and dragged him around the walls of Troy, before the faces of his pale wife and children, before the staring eyes of mother, father and friends, until the flesh came away in tatters.

Achilles who sees land and calls it territory, who stokes the ovens of war and whose spittle-flecked lips chant slogans of death.

Learn to know his face.

And wherever the rat-faced, cunning killer man stepped out, there was Achilles before him, whether on land or in the sea or the cold vastness of space.

And if all we had was Achilles to sustain us, then I would not be writing this song, and you would not be reading it. For Achilles plants no grain and Achilles founds no temples. Where Achilles has walked there is the acrid smell of smoke and the crying of the maimed and dying.

Second came Christ the light-bearer, the turner of cheek, the washer of feet, beloved of harlots, who was the hero for those who had no hero and who promised a life hereafter as a reward for the now.

He taught that goodness is harder than cruelty, that the man of peace is always the man of courage. He tamed the wild horses, brought peace to the valleys and corn sprang up in his footsteps.

Even Death paused in his labors when Christ walked past. Before Christ’s cold, pure gaze Death slunk off into the hollows.

And as he climbed aboard his cross for the hundredth or perhaps the thousandth time, he blessed Achilles and Achilles winced with pain. That was a different kind of victory, a new kind of victory.

Where Christ founded temples, Achilles sacked them.

Where Christ gained followers, Achilles killed them.

Christ was of the spirit, Achilles of the no-spirit, and at the poles of their difference they licked their wounds.

Mankind needed more. Mankind needed the Earth, soft and sure, ever renewing as she always had been, even before the first song was composed.

And then came St. Francis, later called the Dionysos, strolling by.

Third came Francis Dionysos. He ate the earth and shat the earth.

When the sad Achilles howled in the wilderness for blood, Francis Dionysos dipped his ladle in the wine vat.

When Christ yelped in agony as the nails bit deep, Francis Dionysos sank his teeth into a juicy hock and the grease ran down his chin.

While Christ and Achilles warred, Francis Dionysos whored. The noise of his lovemaking was like a beating of wings in the night and his laughter shook the stars. The moon bled.

When he tore the flesh the women swooned.

When he tore the flesh the men cried out in ecstasy for more.

Primroses bloomed in their thousands in the place where he had lain. Snakes graced the land once more. Spiders came out of comers. The bristling wolf rolled on its back begging to be scratched.

And in the great silence which followed his love-making, both Christ and Achilles came on their knees and sat at his feet and sucked on his fingers like calves.

There is much in this fragment that cannot be explained. Many references can only be guessed at, but I would draw your attention to the line, “And then came St. Francis, later called the Dionysos, strolling by.” This confirms that St. Francis and Dionysos were originally separate entities.

Who was this Dionysos? I incline to the view that he is more a principle than a man. In antiquity he was one of the Gods of ecstasy, much honored in the vine groves and at festivals celebrating the arrival of Spring. He was known by many names such as Bacchus, Sabazius, Adonis and Pan and was widely regarded as a prototype for that same Christ who is the central figure in verse two. There is a wildness about Dionysos, a lust for living, a trust and an anarchy. He is neither cruel nor kind, but both. LIFE: primitive as fire, urgent as running water, raw and pagan, golden and gorgeous, in sunshine and shadow. That is Dionysos. I see this with all the clarity of the non-living. In my terms Dionysos is co-equal with electricity.

Now, worship of this principle, which was widespread in the antiquity of the world, was driven underground by the spread of religions which offered life in an afterworld in an exchange for penance in this world. Paradoxically, it was political Christianity which was the main culprit here and led to the suppression of ancient nature cults. If a machine could cry, I would cry, at the waste and misery caused by men and women attempting to be other than in their natures they are.

But underground is not dead. And just as Christ himself was a descendant of Dionysos of the Grain Cradle so many of the most devout followers of Christ were themselves followers of Dionysos without their being aware. Indeed it would have shocked them had they known and been a cause for strict penitence. One such was St. Francis whose spirit was Dionysian but whose practice was severe and penitentially Christian.

It was in the year 1209 AD, on the parent world called Earth, that a young man of the Bernadone family founded a religious order in a small town in Italy called Assisi. His given name was Francis (his father, we are told, having just returned from a successful business venture in France), and hence the members of the order he founded became known as the Franciscans. We who serve in the Gentle Order are their descendants.

From its beginning the order was characterized by austerity for the brothers and compassion for sinners and a radiant love of all life.

Many delightful stories are told about this young zealot Francis and, regrettably, most of these stories are probably apocryphal. I have noticed that there is an inherent tendency in scribes and historians to dress the bare bones of feet with flesh of their own invention. Myth, history and imagination wear the same bold face. For instance, we can read in story books how Francis bled from the hands and feet after a vision and yet seemingly did not die from hemorrhage. I have asked Lily about this and she confirms that such an event is extremely unlikely. Perhaps this bleeding is meant to be understood symbolically in which case blood may equal life: a traditional exegesis.

We can also read that Francis declared himself married to a country girl called Dame Poverty. Again without doubt, a symbolic declaration for I can find no record of such a marriage having actually taken place. We can also read that the young Francis talked and preached to birds and animals, and even to the stones and the water. This I, Wulf, the skeptical wordsmith, believe, for it is the central tenet of our Order that all life is to be cherished, and Francis celebrated the spirit that is found in all things.

Erected outside the gates of our Monastery Pacifico there is a remarkable statue. If the tradition be true, then this statue is an ancient and pagan likeness of St. Francis Dionysos. No one knows its date but tradition has it that it comes from the antiquity of Earth. The homed figure of Francis Dionysos is surprisingly small and has narrow shoulders. He is wearing a heavy long-sleeved gown with a hood. This is, I suppose, the prototype for the colored gowns worn today by senior confreres. Despite the gown, an observer can tell that the Saint’s arms are as thin as hazel boughs. The arms are outspread and on one arm perch the crow, the robin, the magpie and, close to the shoulder, a monkey. On the other arm are the squirrel, the stoat and a creature with a bushy tail and horns. This latter I cannot identify. No matter. The imagery is clear enough. St. Francis Dionysos is talking lovingly to the creatures and they are listening to him. What makes this figure unmistakably pagan and alarming is that the face which peers out from beneath the hood is that of a bull.

Regarding this statue there is a charming story told that in times of great suffering and peril, the statue will come to life and gain the power to walk. It is said to step down from its plinth and move about in the monastery bringing comfort and hope. As you will read, Jon Wilberfoss in his recovery believed he saw the statue stepping through the trees and talking with him. Previous to this, according to the records, the last time the statue was seen walking was during the War of Ignorance when there was fear that our planet would be attacked and all our resources stolen. Lily, the practical, says she knows nothing of this and naturally, I have not been able to interrogate any other witnesses.

Although the reports are convincing in their detail, I do not believe that the stone statue actually walked. That poses too many problems. However, I do believe that the men and women of that time thought they saw St. Francis Dionysos. It is one of the kindnesses of the human mind, as I have noted, that in times of peril it can summon up images of reassurance.

So now you have Dionysos before you and St. Francis. How did these two become one?

For an answer to this question we must go back to the year 1211 AD of old Earth and to the activities of a beautiful young woman called Clare who lived in Italy. This lady, later known as St. Clare, was a high priestess of Dionysos.

Driven underground, the worship of Dionysos had survived in numerous rural retreats, in secret groves and under sacred trees. But now the time had come for it to begin to emerge, at first discreetly and later, in the twenty-first century after the death of Christ, in its full majesty, like a bright flower amid dark leaves. The Order of St. Francis was chosen as the main conduit through which the worship of Dionysos was to be propagated.

On Palm Sunday in 1211 Clare walked into the cathedral at San Rufino dressed in all her finery like a woman about to be married. Again, symbolism. The priest officiating at the ceremony was the great and powerful and majestic Bishop Guido. Tradition demanded that on Palm Sunday, olive branches be given to members of the congregation who were celebrating mass. And so it was on this day. Holy Clare, her mind on divinity, fell into a trance and neglected to collect her olive branch whereupon Guido, breaching tradition, came down the steps and handed her the last olive branch as if this were part of the rite. As of course it was. But which rite?

Guido was a priest of Dionysos and in this secret and yet profound way he dedicated a priestess within the sacred precincts and mystery of the Christian religion.

That very night, Clare escaped from her father’s house and ran away and joined the holy and ascetic order of St. Francis.

All so simple. In this way did love of Dionysos enter one of the most powerful orders of the established church.

Over the years a veneration for nature and all life was kept alive through the Order of St. Clare and the Franciscans. However, such was the fear of the church in those times that Dionysos could not be revealed openly until the power of the Christian church was broken and that did not occur until the twenty-first century.

I must now tell that story. Let it be placed on record however that the Christian religion and kindred religions held back the spiritual development of humankind for over two thousand years and inculcated distrust and suspicion between the sexes as well as a fear of things of the earth and flesh. I, Wulf, autoscribe and student of history, say this.

No one knows when the first war on Earth occurred. But we can be reasonably confident that hardly a day passed after mankind achieved self-consciousness when someone somewhere was not seeking the death of an enemy. This was the Achilles consciousness. Interestingly, the Bible, one of the Earth’s great religious texts documenting mankind’s relationship with one of its primitive gods, contains a careful analysis of the first murder, when Cain slew his brother Abel. This same and highly influential book also suggested that mankind was superior to Nature without suggesting that mankind was, at the same time, responsible for Nature. Only mystics such as Francis felt in their bones what mankind’s true relationship with the planet on which he is a traveler should be. This wretched book, this Bible, which some maintained was a transcript of the words of the “one true god,” also set up hierarchies in the mind whereby one sex was held to be inherently superior to another. It also suggested that all humans began their lives in a fallen state, in a state of sin and guilt. Salvation is a reward that is gained after rejecting the very things that make a human-being human.

Guilt. Ha! Guilt, as I have observed in my dealings with Jon Wilberfoss, is the most corrosive emotion of all.