Soul Matters Volume Six: Bondage Battleground

Once more he blended with the rune and his eyes drifted open. Now Sammael appeared, bowing as he said, “Job seems a loyal servant, my lord, but you never really know. Shall I test him for you?”

“How can a man be just before God?” Phil blurted out. Then he remembered this question was Job’s question, not God’s -- and it looked like Phil was in God’s point-of-view for this segment of the ordeal. Yet it was God’s real question. He demanded Job prove himself, but Job knew it was impossible. Either God trusted Job or he didn’t. This was a leap of faith God had to make.

Was the answer to Job the answer to the question: How can a man be just before God? If so, the answer was, he can’t. Either God believed in man, or he didn’t.

Sammael spoke again, “You can do all things, and no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”

Phil recognized this statement as one God spoke in the biblical text rather than Satan. Phil stepped out of the script to answer, “So, too, any force in Nature does what it may without thought or insight. Is this your plan: to herd the whirlwind to your own ends?”

“It has worked before. Destruction provides evil with fertile ground. Man’s nobility is one tragedy away from the raging animal,” Sammael pointed out with a smirk.

“It is said: ‘Wisdom is better than might.’ Yet you say, no one can stand against God’s might, but where stands Wisdom?”

“Sophia delights in your might. Why should she not?”

“Your argument runs in a circle, Sammael. In truth Sophia delights in creation. All destruction serving creation is allowed, if not welcomed. She would make God a man, then bring him home again to the Godhead. You serve that purpose by forcing man to his full potential. Yet you do delight in his destruction.”

Sammael retorted with some heat, “I delight in the career you gave me: to tempt man to the worship of false gods. It’s easy because man can never set a true course to you. It is man, then, who runs in circles. If I need chase after man to become his Adversary, I will appear to go in circles as well. My logic is not circular, the game is. You can find no fault in me, my lord. The creature, man, is faulty by design.”

“God made man in his image and likeness.”

Sammael struggled to find an answer, but finally said, “From red earth you made him. What substance are you made of? Not dirt; not even fire, which you used to make the angels. Man may be in your image, but he is a counterfeit nonetheless, because you formed him from lesser elements than you.”

“It matters not if the vessel is clay or burnished silver. What matters is God’s true self is carried therein. God breathed his soul into man.”

“Yet man clings to the vessel as evidence of his unique existence,” Sammael pointed out. “Break the vessel and watch him weep, clinging all the tighter to his broken form.”

Phil paused to regain perspective, refusing to counter Sammael’s latest point. Indeed, the repartee was no more than sophistry -- a futile exchange leading nowhere. Sammael had baited Phil into an intellectual distraction.

Perhaps, in the end, the answer to Job was to refuse to answer. For how could a man stand against God? The only way was to refuse to take a stand.

Or man must stand with God. But where was the common ground? Phil calmed his mind and stayed with this new question: What was the common ground where man and God stood together?

The answer was slow to come, and Phil’s mind batted it away a few times when it did come. The answer insisted on being recognized: righteousness.

God and man shared the value of striving to behave according to some kind of moral code. The code may evolve over time, and neither man nor God could always live up to the code, but they held themselves to it.

Phil looked at Sammael who patiently waited. Behind the demon stood an empty cross planted on a lone hill. Another quaternary, the cross indicated four roads, four Judeo-Christian methods for righteousness: praise, prayer, supplication, and defending the faith. Man labored in the works of each, but so did God.

They praised each other, prayed to and for each other, and sought relief for all others. They mounted staunch attacks on the Adversaries who guarded each level in Creation against man ascending to God and God descending to man. This was the link and bond. This was righteousness, the common ground. This, Phil realized in a rush of flooding awareness, was his center.

And Job’s question was answered.

“Sammael, God and man have the destiny of knowing one another. The path we walk to find each other is righteousness. Man begins the journey on Earth. God begins his journey beyond the Clouds of Mystery. Neither can see the other. Countless paths confuse our sense of direction. Innumerable hurdles, barricades, and detours block our progress. So be it. We shall prevail. Be gone, Satan.”

The scene dissolved. The cell walls returned. Phil once again closed his eyes and regained his calm by becoming the warrior rune.

When he opened his eyes this time, Manuel appeared. They were seated at the marble bench in his patio. Phil knew he was still in jail and wondered what the archangel was doing here.

Manuel was saying, “There’s a subtext to Job’s story.”

“Imagine my surprise,” Phil chuckled with sarcasm. “You haven’t talked at all about the Mystery schools during this adventure. Is that it?”

“It is,” Manuel allowed. “What do you think Job meant when he says, ‘Oh that I was as in times of old, when God watched over me, and his lamp shone on my head’?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s referring to the Lamp of Osiris -- the third eye. With the development of language, the seat of intuition closed.”

“But you’re using the word intuition to mean direct communication with the gods.”

“I am, and that’s what Job’s reward was for. He recognized what was lost. His reward included three daughters returned to him. They brought three golden girdles. These represented three gifts: understanding the secrets of creation, the language of angels, and the language of the Cherubim.”

“The Cherubim weren’t angels back then?”

“Think of them as representing the four cardinal points of the zodiac.”

“Okay. What about Job? Is he a marker for an evolutionary jump?”

“You got it. During the Age of Heroes, mathematics, language, music, and astrology were invented and developed. The price humankind paid was the loss of an intimate connection to the gods — the lamp of Osiris.”

Phil remembered the strange paradox between the Laws of Involution and Evolution. As Spirit devolved deeper into Matter, it became less conscious of itself. By contrast, Man became more self-aware through the agency of the developing ego as it was the agency that climbed the ladder of evolution.

As the ego awakened, however, it wanted the immortality denied to it because of the ego’s illusory nature. The ego was the mechanism that allowed embedded Spirit to remember itself. If that fact was forgotten, which it frequently was, the ego embarked on its immortality projects.

Manuel was reading Phil’s mind as he processed this, and now the angel said, “Puts a whole different spin on Job. Doesn’t it?”

“It makes better sense this way.”

Manuel laughed and the scene dissolved.

The cell walls returned. Phil once again closed his eyes and regained his calm by becoming the warrior rune. This time, though, when he merged with the rune nothing happened. The cell walls remained solid. No scenes emerged. Instead he and the rune were all there was -- for a long time.

The door-bolt slammed and the cell door opened. Abbadona walked in.

“You’re free.”

Phil stood and looked the angel in the eyes. Abbadona still carried sadness there, but he didn’t break eye contact.

“Will Jehovah give me my reward?” Phil wondered.

“Of course not,” Abbadona’s face twisted into a half smirk. “Your reward is you’re free. You beat the game.”

“I did it with your help. I owe you one.”

“I’ll probably collect.”

The dark angel led Phil up the stairs to street level. Then he pointed the way to the pearly gates.

“Your friends await you. Watch your back. And thank you for giving me hope.”

Phil bowed and turned to the gate. He set the intention to fly and was pleasantly surprised when he did.