The Gods Look Down by Trevor Hoyle Page A

all those hairsand all those cords from the brain are concealed, and are all smooth in the carrier. And all of the neck is not seen. There is one path that flows in the division of the hairs from the brain. And from this path there flows all the rest of the paths that hang into the small-faced one.’
    Comparison with other texts wasn’t much help. Dagon showed Queghan a similar passage from the Kabbalah which began:
    â€˜Macroprosopus has two skulls, one above the other, enclosed within an outer skull. The upper skull contains the upper brain, which distils, and the lower contains the heavenly oil. Macroprosopus has four eyes. The hairs are soft and the holy oil runs through them. There is fire on the other side and air on the other …’
    The mythographer was totally perplexed. ‘Is it supposed to make sense? What’s all this about heads and skulls and brains? And what’s this “holy oil” it refers to? Blood?’
    Dagon said in his soft hissing voice, ‘I think the god they speak of as the “Ancient of Days” is a machine. What kind of machine, or what its purpose is, I don’t know. Perhaps you, Queghan, can discover the secret. Blake tells me that Myth Technology is a wondrous science.’
    He even speaks like an ancient text, Queghan thought. He was completely bemused by it all. He said, ‘Which period are we talking about exactly?’
    â€˜One thousand BC , give or take two hundred years.’
    â€˜So the texts were written over two thousand years after the events they describe.’ He shook his head hopelessly. ‘There could be a dozen explanations. Over that length of time the simplest, most commonplace occurrences could be made to seem miraculous. What credence can we give to ancient rumour and superstition?’
    Dagon said, ‘None at all – if the several texts didn’t happen to agree. There are five independent sources which all mention the god “Ancient of Days”. Are they all the result of rumour and superstition?’ He unrolled a scroll of parchment and pointed to a row of symbols which Queghan couldn’t decipher.‘What do you make of this: “She is conjoined to the macroprosopus. On the Sabbath a trance falls upon the macroprosopus and the woman is removed from his back. The parts are laid separately and washed.”’
    Queghan squinted into the light. ‘I don’t know what to make of it. But a machine one thousand years BC  … where did it come from?’
    â€˜I’m hoping that you will tell us that, eventually,’ Dagon said, allowing the parchment to roll itself up with a hollow rustling snap. He inspected his white hairless hands under the light; it seemed to Queghan that the wrinkles in them had been made artificially. ‘Perhaps you will also be able to tell us what kind of experiments my namesake was conducting.’
    â€˜Blake tells me he was an alchemist.’
    â€˜A philosopher-scientist would be more accurate. Elsewhere in the
Sepher-ha-Zohar
he speaks of transmuting base metal into gold by the “master principle of nature”. Unfortunately he doesn’t say what methods were used. I do know that it derived from Islamic alchemy and that the process was divided into seven stages: calcination, putrefaction, sublimation, solution, distillation, coagulation, and tincture. In those times the natural sciences were regarded as an extension of philosophy and metaphysics. No proper distinction was made between them because it seemed there was a unity in all things, a symbolism which permeated the physical, mathematical and spiritual disciplines. Truth was indivisible and they believed in a precise and exact correlation between macrocosm and microcosm – “As above, so below” to quote the belief.
    â€˜They had also a penetrating view of the cosmos. The Islamic text
The Quran
specifies a model of the universe which, although it employs