well.â His hand stole across the page and made a few squiggles in the margin. Quegan could hear the faint gasp of breath as he prepared to speak again. âI would appreciate it, if we are to work together, that you refrain from indulging in what passes for sarcasm. It can be very tedious.â
âAs can boorish behaviour,â said Queghan, unsmiling, though his tone was not harsh.
It wasnât a promising start to the collaboration. Queghan wasnât prepared to be accepted under suffrance â implicit in Dagonâs attitude. The project interested him but not enough to be treated with such brusque indifference, nor to have his intelligence called into question. He had entered worlds Dagon had never dreamt of.
Dagon seemed to overcome his sour disposition, for he took the trouble to explain in considerable detail what he hoped the experiment would achieve. It was a complex story, and began, as Blake had said, when Dagon had first come across the name Dagon ben Shem Tov, author of the 13th century text
Sepher-ha-Zohar
. This comprised three books of ancient knowledge which were part of the esoteric teachings of Judaism as contained in the Kabbalah â a word derived from the Hebrew
QBLH
meaning âthat which is receivedâ. Further research revealed a whole series of texts which together made up a corpus of traditional knowledge: the Aramaic
Cremona Codex
, the Latin
Kabbalah Denudata
and the much later English translation,
Kabbalah Unveiled
, published in 1892 Pre-Col.
Queghan began to understand the immensity of the task Dr Francis Dagon had set himself, and he was impressed. Thelinguist had had to translate and transcribe the texts of five different languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, Spanish and English. They all dealt with roughly comparable periods, dating from 1000 years before the birth of Christ up to and including the 13th century. Much of the material was religious dogma and propaganda but there were certain passages in each of the texts which made reference to a god called the âAncient of Daysâ. What intrigued Dagon was the fact that this god consisted of a male part and a female part and that, according to the description, it could be broken down into pieces and reassembled again. What kind of god was this, Dagon asked himself, whose âbodyâ was divisible and could then be put together again like a do-it-yourself assembly kit?
So he began a painstaking line-by-line investigation of the 2173 verses of
The Book of Splendours
, based on the Latin and Aramaic texts, and found in the book called
HADRA ZVTA QDIShA
(the
Lesser Holy Assembly)
a detailed description of the god âAncient of Daysâ. In part it read:
âThe top skull is white. In it there is no beginning or end. The hollow thing of its juices is extended and is made to flow. From this hollow thing for juice of the white skull the dew falls every day into the small-faced one. And his head is filled, and from the small-faced one it falls to the field of [untranslatable]. And all the field of [?] flow from the dew. The Ancient Holy One is secret and hidden. And the upper wisdom is concealed in the skull which is found and from this into that the Ancient One is not opened. And the head is not single because it is the top of the whole head. The upper wisdom is inside the head; it is concealed and is called the upper brain, the concealed brain, the brain that appeases and is quiet. And there is no son of man that knows it. Three heads are hollowed out: this inside that, and this above the other. One head is wisdom; it is concealed from that which is covered. This wisdom is concealed, it is the top of all his heads of the other wisdoms. The upper head is the Ancient and Holy One, the most concealed of all concealed ones. It is the top of the whole head, the head which is not a [untranslatable] head, and is not known. And because of this, the Ancient Holy One is called ânothingâ. And
âAs can boorish behaviour,â said Queghan, unsmiling, though his tone was not harsh.
It wasnât a promising start to the collaboration. Queghan wasnât prepared to be accepted under suffrance â implicit in Dagonâs attitude. The project interested him but not enough to be treated with such brusque indifference, nor to have his intelligence called into question. He had entered worlds Dagon had never dreamt of.
Dagon seemed to overcome his sour disposition, for he took the trouble to explain in considerable detail what he hoped the experiment would achieve. It was a complex story, and began, as Blake had said, when Dagon had first come across the name Dagon ben Shem Tov, author of the 13th century text
Sepher-ha-Zohar
. This comprised three books of ancient knowledge which were part of the esoteric teachings of Judaism as contained in the Kabbalah â a word derived from the Hebrew
QBLH
meaning âthat which is receivedâ. Further research revealed a whole series of texts which together made up a corpus of traditional knowledge: the Aramaic
Cremona Codex
, the Latin
Kabbalah Denudata
and the much later English translation,
Kabbalah Unveiled
, published in 1892 Pre-Col.
Queghan began to understand the immensity of the task Dr Francis Dagon had set himself, and he was impressed. Thelinguist had had to translate and transcribe the texts of five different languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, Spanish and English. They all dealt with roughly comparable periods, dating from 1000 years before the birth of Christ up to and including the 13th century. Much of the material was religious dogma and propaganda but there were certain passages in each of the texts which made reference to a god called the âAncient of Daysâ. What intrigued Dagon was the fact that this god consisted of a male part and a female part and that, according to the description, it could be broken down into pieces and reassembled again. What kind of god was this, Dagon asked himself, whose âbodyâ was divisible and could then be put together again like a do-it-yourself assembly kit?
So he began a painstaking line-by-line investigation of the 2173 verses of
The Book of Splendours
, based on the Latin and Aramaic texts, and found in the book called
HADRA ZVTA QDIShA
(the
Lesser Holy Assembly)
a detailed description of the god âAncient of Daysâ. In part it read:
âThe top skull is white. In it there is no beginning or end. The hollow thing of its juices is extended and is made to flow. From this hollow thing for juice of the white skull the dew falls every day into the small-faced one. And his head is filled, and from the small-faced one it falls to the field of [untranslatable]. And all the field of [?] flow from the dew. The Ancient Holy One is secret and hidden. And the upper wisdom is concealed in the skull which is found and from this into that the Ancient One is not opened. And the head is not single because it is the top of the whole head. The upper wisdom is inside the head; it is concealed and is called the upper brain, the concealed brain, the brain that appeases and is quiet. And there is no son of man that knows it. Three heads are hollowed out: this inside that, and this above the other. One head is wisdom; it is concealed from that which is covered. This wisdom is concealed, it is the top of all his heads of the other wisdoms. The upper head is the Ancient and Holy One, the most concealed of all concealed ones. It is the top of the whole head, the head which is not a [untranslatable] head, and is not known. And because of this, the Ancient Holy One is called ânothingâ. And
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