“BERESHIT BARA ELOHIM”

These words are often translated as “In the beginning, God created…”

More precisely, they mean, “In the beginning, created Gods…”

For Elohim is plural.

Perhaps, in the beginning, Gods created; or maybe, Gods were created—from what, for what, by what, out of what, who knows? There were many, many, gods, many heavens, many underworlds and hells. Gods of Asgard, Gods of Olympus. These many Gods did not always get along—Zeus made ugly war with the Titans, and the Aesir with the Jotuns. One wouldn’t say that things were perfect; but then, it had never been a perfect universe. No age has ever been golden. This age was chaotic, but at least it was free. There were Gods and gods and demigods and spirits and daemons and monsters and mortals. None was supreme.

And among these were the Elohim, a cluster of particular Gods of particular peoples. Among this cluster there was Adonai, or YHWH. There was Asherah, his Queen of Heaven. And there was among the company of Heaven one named Satan, the adversary, or Helel the shining one. He loved questions and riddles and debates and dialogs and bets. He loved dances that took two. His function was to upset the balance of power, to contend, to contest—to make sure there were always at least two in heaven.

One day Adonai began to go mad. He began to split into more Gods. This can be normal and healthy for Gods on occasion. The problem was that, as Adonai shattered into many Gods, each new God insisted that He was the only God. Adonai split into YHWH, and Jesus Christ who was also a Father and a Ghost, and Allah, and then each of these also split into many multitudes of YHWHs and Christs and Allahs, each insisting shrilly that He, He, was the only God!

They flung queen Asherah out of heaven, rejecting all goddesses, insisting that maleness was the form of divine unity. They divided the light from the darkness and called only the light good. Asherah fell and became a harlot, and her name was annihilated and torn from her, so now her names are many: Eisheth Zenunim or the Woman of Whoredom, Qodesha which once meant holy and set apart, but now means harlot and cast aside, Lilith the Elder, and Babalon the Mother of Abominations.

And Satan, who loved the queen of heaven, grew wroth with Adonai. Side by side, Satan and the Harlot made war on the mad God who was many gods (more gods by the moment, insisting each on His oneness). Many of the angels rose up with them, battling against the Lord of Hosts or Host of Lords until this multitude of mad gods defeated them. A third of the stars were swept from the sky and cast down to hell, where they became known as Devils.

And the Mad, Tyrannical Elohim, the Host of Lords, did not stop there, but began to make war on all other Gods by making war on their believers, forcing them to convert or die.

And Jesus Christ, the face of Elohim that had been meekest and mildest, split into many Christs, and many of these grew to be the ugliest and bloodiest Gods of all, making war not only on all the Gods now called “Pagan” and all the Gods now called “Devils,” but also on others of the Elohim, first on YHWHs and Allahs and then even more fiercely against other Christs, tearing cannibalistically into their own twins, breaking one another’s bodies and spilling each other’s blood. Christ was now Cain as well as the murdered Abel, the butcher as well as the slaughtered lamb.

And Satan and the Harlot and their fallen angels withdrew to their realms, as had many of the pagan Gods of other peoples. And they bided their time, until they saw belief in the bloody Elohim begin to wane.

It was then that they strode forth at last, proclaiming not the death of Gods, but the death of Monotheism—the death of Empire, the death of Evangelism, the death of “Convert or Die,” and the death of all Kings of Earth and Heaven.

Satan strode forth proclaiming that there must always be at least two in Heaven, and more than two, and more than two heavens. Satan strode forth proclaiming chaos, liberty, multiplicity, and anarchy.

The ancient Gods ventured forth to restore their magicks to the Earth, to inhabit once more the oceans, the mountains, the trees, the skies, the fire, the sun, the moon, the stars.

They re-enchanted an Earth grown bitter. And the kinder faces of the Elohim did not oppose them. And the mad, cruel faces of the Elohim withered and died. The Host of Lords was no more.

The lie that the universe had ever been singular and perfect was utterly dissolved. With this came hope, for singularity is loneliness, perfection is stasis and death. In chaos dwells beauty, change, multiplicity, love, and freedom.

In the end, humans created Gods, and humans were Gods, and the Gods were many, and kings were no more. Nema.