- Preface - 

For all the varied and vast centuries of man and their cultures, has there been the great artists and writers among them. The philosophers and poets who transmuted the mysteries of the soul into the touchable and tangible for our eyes to see and minds to explore. We are a creative breed; our world is an ocean of books spanning the rise and fall of empires, down to which every individual is an island of their own life story. 

The truth is that we have been at this for a very long time, and because of that there is yet another truth we must be willing to see. Whatever feelings we have cultivated, whatever creative endeavor or desire we have come to know, it has been felt before. It has been done. The masters have had their lectures on it. The poets have had their plays. The writers have written their books. The artists have painted it. All that has needed to be said, has been said.   

So to that I now say: Let it be written, let it be said again. Let no song nor art be stifled in compare for it must be drawn, and it must be sung. If not by another, then it must be by our will and grace ourselves to breathe life into it again.  

Thus you can now be certain I mean of two things here. One is that we are far more alike than unalike in the ways that matter most. Our stories while unique, will always find a commonality so we are never truly alone in this world. Two is that what I have to say is not the beginning of something, but part of a long line of that which yearns to be known again. It is a set of contemplations as much as it is of contradictions. A gallery of rumination as much diablerie. Here there are spirits, there are devils and gods, and most importantly...there is us.

The thoughts and musings I present here are not simply mechanisms of my own creation, but are an amalgam of views cast from those I have considered my teachers in life. They may never have known one another, nor lived in the same lifetimes, but each chose their separate paths, and it is destiny that all paths shall cross sooner or later.       

So if you come to find there is much or little said here that you agree with, then that is good. Some people do not want to know certain things, and some things do not want to be known by certain people. The profound for one can easily take on the appearance of the profane for another.  

The beginnings of any wisdom however is first to question, and true wisdom is for those willing after to understand.

If anything written here is considered nonsense or wisdom to you then you owe it to yourself above all to search for the reasons why. Reason is the unique gift of man and is not merely logical but emotional. It is prone to bias, both rational and irrational at any given time. If you feel strongly then explore those feelings for in doing so you may learn more about yourself than anything you could possibly read here. Above all, take from this whatever that would please you.

Take of these words as a rat might take of the crumbs. The devoted knows deeply. The cherry picker knows variety. Both are needed for a meaningful life.

This is not doctrine. This is the tome of the rat tail. 
  
- The rat tail stirs - 

I rose to this world with an empty stomach that yearned for what life had to offer. It had much. Every benefit was given to me: A functioning family with many siblings, a proper education, Christian church on Sunday mornings, cartoon violence in the afternoon. The gift of good health and a family doctor. Computers and technology were expanding and accelerating. With each expansion came some new way to simplify every aspect of my days. My studies, my connections, my work, and my life. This for all intents was a privilege the modern age afforded me...and yet given all that time I felt no less filled in this world. 

I even began to feel starved. I wasn't and still am not the only one.

What was it then? What could possibly have been missing in an otherwise privileged life? 

We have lived in-between the walls of this world. Between the borders of the miraculous and mundane. We have crept along the woodworks of society quietly, fed upon the seeds of knowledge, both what we could find and what was given. If things outside our understanding would motion, we would take this as a sign of danger and scurry away back, deeper into the nest where all things are so safe and sure. And yet...we do not stay there. 

We are to creep along again, ever so aware towards the places where the walls appear weak. We stare through holes into the veil and the unknown, the nebulous spaces beyond the very boundaries of the known and certain we have grown to rely upon and perhaps inevitably despise even. We will arrive here throughout our lives, drawn to it again and again. What drives us to this? what could possibly compel us so? Is it in our appetites to tempt the fates when we could do well enough to leave it alone? Are we drawn towards knowledge, towards power, towards answers from the sciences or the spirits and deities to reveal our purpose? Is it that we are starved for something more than what we have been given? 

In the heart of man is the immortal detail of being a scavenger. We seek, for that is part of our nature to survive. Survival of the body with nutrition. Survival of the mind with variety. Survival of the heart with purpose. Our very nature cries out for nourishment of many kinds, some of which can be met most plentifully while others cannot be so abundant. That is to say we seek out both the tangible (The physical possessions of this world. Shelter, food, money, etc.) and intangible. (The vapors of the human condition. Happiness, hope, love, etc.)  

There is for each and every creature of this world a habitat or design that is to them their paradise. The human, at times the most clever creature of all, is not adverse to this design. Nor does their cleverness prevent them from misinterpreting the paths and tools they use towards it as being the paradise itself.

The intangible desires of our nature can sometimes be shadowed by the pursuit of the tangible. The thought becomes that possession of the physical will therefor equate to possession of the metaphysical. That peace and happiness, honor and virtue can all be purchased or exchanged as a currency. Harmony and purpose by that faith can only be found in the wealth of abundance. This is a half truth that has lead man to determine the quality of their life not by its quality but by its quantity. Time is money, and money is power. Power is freedom. These are the dreams of those in a society.

What then does any of this have to do with one feeling unfulfilled in their life? By all means if man can find their happiness in any item or thing, then surely we should be drowning in inescapable bliss each and every moment of the day. We should feel fulfilled at every avenue of a pay raise, or a job opportunity leading closer to financial success. For a time we do! One cannot help but feel they are expanding their horizons whenever something new in their favor begins. That they are "going places" that will lead to something more but of what? More job opportunities, more money or toys however advanced they are to simply distract us? More time to enjoy ourselves and feel happy again? Why are we so desperate?  

Why in this age of potential technology and knowledge is it that we feel far more ignorant? Why is it that in an age where we are most able to connect, we instead feel far more isolated and alone? Why is it that even with all these opportunities for monetary prosperity, and the promise of more and more do we still find ourselves further lacking or starved of something we desperately need? That when we do have that time we crave, we often spend it staring silently at the screens of our televisions and phones to look at images or videos of things, and watch shows ravenously for possible hours on end? Why do we work so hard to chase these dreams and yet once the day of that freedom arrives we find ourselves without any joy or motivation to fulfill them?

We are lost, and we are starved. We hunger for pleasures, we hunger for joys. We hunger for something more than the tangible and physical. Perhaps it is that we hunger for the nourishment of the emotional and spiritual. Not because we are ungrateful, that we have denied all these luxuries and supposed miracles we are surrounded by each and every day, but that we have begun to give more and more for those luxuries to which they give less and less. They have become our vice, and through our lives have less become a distraction and more a need for diversion as our stomach pains grow. So we seek and we keep on seeking for whatever will give us a shadow of validation, or true happiness which we ourselves have grown a dull sense of even remembering. We will continue forward with more things to be offered and less capacity to enjoy any of it. Is all this then, this profound mechanism seemingly created, our divine purpose in the age of industrialism, of progress...of man?

- The rat tail in the age of gods -

In considering some sides of the divine nature in man (Which there are many,) I want us to look towards its past, for there is a commonality in that if one has their past, they can inherit their now and continue wandering towards their future. 

From the primordial chaos of this blackened universe was early man seemingly born. They would inherit this world and all that came with it. Danger lurked in all places and in many forms. Pain of death arrived in disease and pestilence, hunger and starvation. Even the skies and nature itself seemed composed to destroy with the freezing winters, the drought of summers, and terrible storms that could wipe a man away. One can only imagine the terror they must have felt upon such a great world that not only appeared to threaten their existence, but actively did so.

Yet if you believe in destinies as some very well do, then perhaps it was that man did not find their destiny by themselves but beside themselves. In separation one can exist for which all forms naturally do so and are fleeting towards death. In communion one can survive for which survival promises a prolonging and possible evolution. In reconciling our most primal instinctual fears, that which cares only in the preservation of the self, were we able to embrace community and develop the awareness of peace, the preservation of many. Through peace could we further cultivate our understanding of this world and ourselves. We joined, we adapted, we evolved. 

All living things inherit a mind for themselves. They experience the physical sensations of this world through taste, touch, sight, sound, and scent. They also inherit the need for existence, and ours is a kind that yearns deeply for existence for we are not only aware of our surroundings but of ourselves. We obsess in this yearning to the point at times we are shackled by it even. There is a native anxiety in us to abhor the knowledge of death which is the end of all things that yearn. It is also in our instincts to run away from whatever form of it we see and deem a part of it. It is to many an act of supreme cruelty that one can be here a moment and then gone the next; never to return to this world as we know it. So we motion for more and we seek, for that is in our nature to survive in this world. But there is still the great weight of knowledge in death that no matter how much we gather or that we achieve, that however close we are together, alone are we buried and alone shall we enter the void from which we came. Some would even find this loneliness already in their waking lives. Too scared to live, too afraid to die.  

But in their attempts to reconcile this separation from the world, life, death, and each other, the spirits were discovered in everything around them, even inside them. It was as if a great knot had been undone and the line which connected man to nature, and nature to the gods was finally linked. No longer could one find themselves without companionship, for the strange and mythical things they had feared and seen yet still did not fully understand were now something to be sought and learned from in a world that was beginning to reveal its treasures and secrets.

They began to experience changes in their physical and mental values through this awareness. The knowledge of the spirits and gods unraveled the hidden mysteries and purposes of the divine which gave man the sense they too were not without purpose. No longer was man unlinked from one another for they were from the same beginnings and shared a destiny. No longer was there the threat to the self alone but a threat to a society, and the balance of the known world. No longer was there death without hope, for it was another step in the great evolution of the spirit traveling some place else or returning to that which gave it life. The Demiurge: mothers and fathers, the goddesses and gods of our genesis who have come in many stories and many forms. They demanded to be known, and so they became.

We speak of them with many meanings: awe, reverence, skepticism, fear, gratitude, love, amusement, anger, even hate. There is not one way we can look upon them alone for as you may find there is not only one written beginning, nor is there only one god. Yet theirs is a profound existence which captivates the imagination and ignites the soul in many directions both of the faithful and skeptic. They have shaped entire societies whose learnings and teachings reach even into today from the crumbled past.  

Our world is said to have had many beginnings, some believing that it was through a great ignition or explosion, others believing it was in essence an unconscious act or a mistake bred from chaos. For a time it was largely thought to be made so by elusive figures of grand force. We know these things as the Demiurge, or gods. The invisible who have had a hand in all persons and things, and for each and every one there has been a unique impartment for the individual culture that has both risen their visages and worshiped them.

Why do we honor, why do we worship, why do we revere and sacrifice all for them? Why have we done this for so long? Perhaps it is because of that same immortal detail, that need to seek that we beseech them so. It is not always clear the motives of the gods either nor our meaning to them as a whole. Why are we here then, why do we exist? The great and profound existential question for which we desire to know in many acts, many places, many people, and the gods themselves for answers. So we look for an origin for as you may remember, those who know their past can claim their now and inherit their future. 

In one Christian origin, the primeval event that began our creation was the fall of man, or the original sin. The Abrahamic myths of Adam and Eve portray a tale of the first man and woman who at that time are the closest humanity will ever be to God. Devised in God's own image, they are seen as stewards of the grand creation which is all things and are to nurture and protect of them while finding delights and birthing mankind.

Within the garden of Eden, one paradise of God, they know no concept of troubles nor pain. It is here they are told there is only one such boundary to their will, and that is not to eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Though forbidden and warned, it is inevitable that both Adam and Eve in their temptation of curiosity eat the fruit and inherit the knowledge of the God and thus become god-like. They are banished from the paradise for should they stay, they would too be further tempted to eat of the second tree, the Tree of Life and thus live eternally.

In this interpretation the very reasoning for man's existence now in all its ignorance and frailty can be seen as punishment for the olden sin, the original sin committed by both Adam and Eve in their disobedience. 

In the Babylonian origin, the great watery serpent Goddess Tiamat dwells in the corrosive, chaotic depths of the great universal abyss with her mate, Abzu (The mixing of fresh and salt water) to which all things are born of. From them are also born the lesser Deities (Lahmu and Lahamu) who from them are born the even lesser deities (Kishar and Anshar) who bear the god Anu, who eventually births Nudimmud, the greatest of gods.

The gods are now many in this world, many more than spoken here. In their great commotions and rumblings the younger gods stir Abzu who plots to destroy them. Tiamat then warns of this plot to Nudimmud to prevent death. It is however Nudimmud who slays Abzu and creates an abode from his body. This enrages Tiamat who is eventual to wage war on her children alongside her new mate, Kingu, and those of the lesser gods who have joined them. Great and terrifying monsters are made from Tiamat in her anger and despair which serve alongside Kingu in this war. Kingu is also bestowed the tablets of destiny by Tiamat as an emblem of supreme authority over the universe. 

In the end however it is that Tiamat, Kingu, and all their children as well creations that sided with them, are fated to fall against the champion of the younger gods, the youngest Marduk. Born from Nudimmud the greatest of gods, they are even greater than him. It is from the body of Tiamat that is split which we have earth and sky. It is the blood of Kingu however that is mixed together with Earth by Nudimmud which creates mankind.         

In this interpretation the purpose of man's creation then is to be helpers of the gods and to shoulder the burdens of the eternal task that is maintaining worldly order while keeping the rise of chaos at bay for Tiamat will otherwise rise again and swallow the world whole someday.