Every time a new city is dug up, the boundaries (in time) are grudgingly shifted back a couple of hundred years perhaps, half a millennium. On a plateau in Turkey part of a top layer of a city has been laid bare, which takes a high form of human living (one dare not say civilisation) back ten thousand years, and underneath that layer are many other layers, still unexcavated but do the specialists say: We cannot make any pronouncements at all about human history, because our knowledge (or our guesses) is limited to the last site we have (partly) dug? No, no, not at all, what their present knowledge is is knowledge, for this is how they always go on, it seems they have to, it is how their unfortunate brains are formed.
Well, it is at least possible that astronomers of ten thousand, or even twenty thousand, or even thirty thousand years ago were as clever as ours are; it is at least possible that the evidence for this lies easily available in easily excavated cities available to people whose minds are less bound by the prejudices of our time.
We may suppose that ancient astronomers did not necessarily believe that the world was created on a certain day four thousand odd years before their own time, and by God in person. That they understood that words had to be used for their benefit and understood what the words were symbols for.
That long before the Roman Gods and the Greek Gods and the Egyptian Gods and the Peruvian Gods and the Babylonian Gods, astronomers listened to Jupiter and his family, or to Saturn, and knew that Thoth (however he was called then) served Amen the Father, (and here again comes in the idea of deputy, of substitution, for Thoth created the world with a word); and that there were names for planets, suns, stars, and crumbs, blobs, and droplets of earth and fire and water; and that their patterns and sounds and colours were understood, and tales were told of them, instructive of Times and Events why not? For no one knows what lies under the sands of the worlds great deserts. No one knows how many times poor Earth has reeled under blows from comets, has lost or captured moons, has changed its air, its very nature. No one knows what has existed and has vanished beyond recovery, evidence for the number of times Man has understood and has forgotten again that his mind and flesh and life and movements are made of star stuff, sun stuff, planet stuff; that the Suns being is his, and what sort of events may be expected, because of the meshings of the planets and how an intelligent husbanding of humanitys resources may be effected based on the most skilled and sensitive of forecasting, by those whose minds are instruments to record the celestial dance.
Father, says Jupiters efficient and bossy daughter, why dont you send down Mercury to do something about that poor voyager, stranded there on his drugged island? He could ask Neptune to let up a bit. Its not fair, you know. Its not just.
Well you see to it then, daughter, says Jupiter, a busy man, Suns deputy, and with all those bounding children, tugged this way and that like a busy housewife and mother with her large brood. You just see what you can do, but mind you, dont forget that We, Jupiter, are not the only influence on the travellers journey. No, its a harmony, its a pattern, bad and good, everything in turn, everything spiralling up but yes, its the right moment for a visit to Mercury. It is the exact time thanks for reminding me.
Timing is everything, murmurs Minerva the Flashing-Eyed, bustling off to find Thoth, or Hermes, and finding him speeding around the sun in an orbit so dazzling and so lively and so gay and above all so many-sided and accomplished that it was hard to keep up with him.
Ah, says he, its time again, is it? I was thinking it must be.
You sound reluctant, said Minerva.
Ive just been visiting Venus.
Everyone always likes her best, says Minerva, drily. As everyone knows, she and I dont get on. Shes so sillythats what I cant stand. People say Im jealous not at all. Its that damned stealthy dishonesty I cant tolerate that appalling hypocrisy. Ive never been able to understand how it is that intelligent men can put up with it but there you are. And I didnt come to talk about Aphrodite. Im here about poor Earth, poor traveller!
Ah, says he, its time again, is it? I was thinking it must be.
You sound reluctant, said Minerva.
Ive just been visiting Venus.
Everyone always likes her best, says Minerva, drily. As everyone knows, she and I dont get on. Shes so sillythats what I cant stand. People say Im jealous not at all. Its that damned stealthy dishonesty I cant tolerate that appalling hypocrisy. Ive never been able to understand how it is that intelligent men can put up with it but there you are. And I didnt come to talk about Aphrodite. Im here about poor Earth, poor traveller!
Your kind heart does you credit. But dont forget, it was partly their fault.
Stealing the fire?
Of course. If that fellow hadnt stolen the fire, then they would never have known what a terrible state they are in.
You, Mercury, God of letters and of music and of in a word, progress, complaining about that! You wouldnt want them still in that dark and primitive state, would you?
They dont know how to use it.
That remains to be seen.
All Im saying is that knowledge brings a penalty with it of course, it was enterprising of him whats his name, Jason, Prometheus, that fellow in his place I might have done the same. Eating the fruit when I was told not to
Stealing the fire, says Minerva, always with a tendency towards pedantry.
Come now, dont be so literal-minded, thats to be like them, says Mercury.
And theres the other thing, says Minerva, rather stern at her tone Mercury began to look irritated. For Minerva was also a bit of blue-stocking; her feeling of justice and fair play (regarded as childish by some of the Gods who regarded themselves as more advanced, philosophically) usually led her to the question of womens rights, and mens vanity.
All right, says Mercury, understood.
But is it? says she, severe. His mother was an earth-woman, certainly, but who was his father? Well?
Oh dont start, please, says Mercury. You really are a bore, you know, when you get on to that.
Justice, she says. Fair play. Im my fathers daughter. And who was his father? With such blood, or rather, fire, in his veins, he was not to be expected to live like a mole in earth knowing that Light existed, and yet never reaching out after it.
There was reason to believe, says Mercury, that he was in it all the time. He walked in the Garden with God.
And then he ate what he should not have done. He stole the Apple, dear God of Thieves. And paid for it.
And in short everything is going as was expected, and according to plan, and with Our assistance.
Progress has to be seen to be made.
All right, Im ready to leave when the Time is Ripe.
Are you quite sure of your mandate?
Dear Minerva! Is it any different this time?
It is always the same Message, of course
Yes. That there is a Harmony and that if they wish to prosper they must keep in step and obey its Laws. Quite so.
But things are really very much worse this time. The stars in their courses, you know
Fight on the side of Justice.
In the long run, yes. But what a very long run it must seem to them, poor things.
Partly through their own fault.
You sound very severe today. Sometimes we even seem to change roles a little? You must remember that you are God of Thieves because you inspire, if not provoke, curiosity and a desire for growth, in such actions as stealing fire or eating forbidden fruit or building towers that are intended to reach Heaven and the Gods. Punishable acts. Acts that have, in fact, been punished already.
Perhaps it isnt always easy to take responsibility for our progeny? Is it, dear Minerva? For acts can be our children tell me, is it easy for your Father, or for you, to recognise as kith and kin acts of justice that are in fact the results of your influence can in a sense be regarded as you, though in extension of course? Justice is Justice still, in the sentencing of a thief to prison and the thief has stolen books because he has no money to buy them. In such a drama both you and I are represented and theres little doubt which of us appears more attractively? Are you sure you arent finding my celestial role rather more attractive than yours, and it is that which accounts for your concern which I very much value, of course.
I should have known better, says Minerva. Only an idiot gets into an argument with the Master of Words. Well, I cant really wish you an enjoyable visit, when things have never been so bad.
But one hopes, and indeed expects, that they have a potentiality for good in proportion to the bad for that is how things tend to balance out.
The sort of remark that I usually make, if I may say so and which tends to irritate you, dear Messenger. But you are right. This particular combination of planets will be really so very powerful the equivalent of several centuries of evolution all in a decade or so. I dont think I am exceeding my mandate if I say there is anxiety. After all, no one could say they have ever been distinguished by consistency or even ordinary common sense.
I am sure the anxiety is justified. But I expect therell be the usual few who will listen. Its enough.
So we must hope, for everyones sake.
And if the worst comes to the worst, we can do without them. The Celestial Gardener will simply have to lop off that branch, and graft another.
Charmingly put! Almost, indeed, reassuring, put in such a way! But so much trouble and effort have already been put into that planet. Messengers have been sent again and again. The regard of Our Father (as of course it comes down to us through his Regent, my own Father) is surely expressed by the long history of Our concern? And there was that Covenant the fact they continuously disregard it, is not enough reason to abandon them altogether. After all, when all is said and done
You are tactfully referring to that ancestry business again? Well, whatever the stark and dire nature of the shortly-to-be-expected celestial configurations, and whatever mans backslidings, the fact that I am about to descend again (yes, I grant that I say that with a bit of a sigh) shows that our respective fathers are well aware of the situation. And more that there is confidence in the outcome.