IIm. "The Man Who Lost His Magic": The Vertical Axis

“I am ancient Og who rode the ridgepole of the ark all through the deluge, and who held the umbrella over the ark.”— Not to Mention Camels (1976)

[Noah] was a Magician even as I am. Is that scrap of a tale in the folk tales you've examined?” — "The Man Who Lost His Magic"

“Og, the giant, was a descendent of one of the fallen angels. He lived for many, many years. At the time of the flood, he came to Noah and asked him to admit him into the ark. One look at his gigantic stature convinced Noah that the waters of the flood would only reach up to the knees of the giant.”— Mendel G. Glenn, Jewish Tales and Legends: Supplementary Readings to the Torah (1929)

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life . . .”— Deuteronomy 30:19

In this second post on "The Man Who Lost His Magic" (1987), I want to shift from the issue of the Commonwealth to the questions of salvation and judgment, and begin that turn by looking at Lafferty’s novel Not to Mention Camels., which might seem an odd choice.

Camels is a lot of things. It’s gnostic theater. It’s a parody of sixties and seventies occultism. It’s a black comedy and a critique of media. It is also a meditation—through Lafferty’s complex symbolic system, which frequently returns to Noah—on the mystery of divine judgment. It is thundering on hubris, cagey on grace. In this light, Noah Zontik is not just a side figure, but central to what the book is really about. Noah is just as essential to the logic of Not to Mention Camels as Pilgrim.

The Noah Zontik character, whose name means “umbrella” in Slavic languages, is a fallible guardian in the book, a divinely appointed surety assigned to watch over the undeserving Pilgrim. The umbrella becomes an image for the mystery of grace. Just how strong is grace? Is it a flimsy, precarious shield? This question points to the novel’s metaphysical mystery, which is whether there is salvation for a soul like Pilgrim, and who or what might secure it.

Lafferty thought hard about this kind of thing. In a letter, he tells of a legend about salvation. Once past the General Judgment and in eternity, everyone will know everything everyone else said and did, with a handful of exceptions. These exceptions will be black boxes, and one will not know whether the end was damnation or salvation in a handful of cases. Into this category, Lafferty speculates, one may find King Saul and Lucifer himself.

Pilgrim is not like that. He does not possess the complexity of a Saul or a Lucifer, and Camels peels back his spiritual hollowness like a grape. It is a morality play in the guise of speculative fiction, a tale about the limits of grace and the nature of faith. It warns that transcendence is something we are capable of rejecting. At one point, Lafferty considered the titles Trammels of the Flesh and Anchor of the Flesh for the book. He wrote, “the best symbol of plain grotesque flesh I could come onto is the humpbacked and burlesque flesh of the camel.” At the center of the book is the question: Can a man ever really jump out of his own sinful flesh?

“The Man Who Lost His Magic” looks nothing like Not to Mention Camels on its surface. The story is light; the novel is dark. But they are related works. Both Pilgrim and Jacob end up un-fleshed, and the importance of Noah and judgment is paramount.

When Lafferty uses biblical language or draws on sacred tradition, he rarely treats the reference as something decorative, something set down on the floor. It is the floor. In "The Man Who Lost His Magic," this appears in the character of Jacob, who, unwilling to fly, inevitably brings to mind his namesake, the biblical Jacob, an envious brother who wrestled with an angel after years of estrangement from his own brother, and who once saw, with the eyes of faith, a ladder set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it. That brotherhood theme in the story goes deeper, back to Genesis and the story of Cain and Abel, the first brothers, and to words that Lafferty tiles into his story.

Here is some of the tiling from Sacred Tradition that Lafferty uses in “The Man Who Lost His Magic”:

Genesis 4:10

And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

“Oh damn you and your black arts! My brother's blood cries out to me from

a jagged and murderous place.”

“Then I'll find him there. His blood cries to me from that bleak place."

Genesis 32:24-30

24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day... 28 And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

“I am a rationalist, and every sort of superstition, such as flying, makes me \

froth at the mouth."

"Swearing and fuming, Jacob Grim fought against the grotesque things that

now had him in their coils. But, grotesque or not, the more he struggled with them the higher he rose into the air. With a banging and rattle of wings he

was flying, much against his will."

"I'm having trouble with the unsubstantiality of your Meadows and of

yourself, twinkling man,” Jacob stated. "You people must now take on the

responsibility of substantiality and of anxiety so as to become of some

good to the Commonwealth.”

Genesis 28:12

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

“Good Jacob Grim,” this magic-man said this day. “The World of the

Commonwealth that you think you come from does not exist on the same

plane as the Magic Meadows here. One is only a metaphor of the other.

Which?”

“Wizard, our great world of Science and Technology is the great and real

world," Jacob maintained solidly. “And the Meadows must become more

than a metaphor."

Selections from the account of the Great Flood

Genesis 6:8-9 

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD... Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations...

Genesis 7:11-12 

. . . the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

"Out of curiosity, I spent three days on the Ark with Noah. When I got there,

the Giant Gog was sitting astride the beanpole of the ark and he intended

to ride out the flood that way."

"Let's try another tale and see whether it will fly. Methuselah, the longest

lived man ever, was on the Ark for a while... He got on, but he didn't

officially get off. 'I always wanted to be buried at sea,' that old man said,

‘me, who had never seen a sea.'"

"The most massive pile of bones in the Valley of the Talking Bones were

those of the Giant Gog... I was riding on the ridgepole of the Ark, and the

Ark bucked me off. So I drowned and ended up here."

Ezekiel 37:1-14

1 The hand of the LORD was upon me... and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones... 4 Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones... 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

"Oh, I can take you to your brother's bones, Good Jacob. They don't look

very vital, but they're conscious and they talk very entertainingly.”

"It's also called The Valley of the Talking Bones. The bones of the dead

people there talk to each other. Sometimes they sing. They have a good

time.”

"Their bones were half of Germany away from there, in a queer place

sometimes called the Valley of the Unbelievers and sometimes the Valley

of the Talking Bones. The two dead brothers talked to each other and to

other boney people there. And they taught the other boney people folk

songs and led them in the singing."

Ezekiel 38:1-3 & Revelation 20:7-8 (The Prophecies of Gog)

Ezekiel 38:2 

Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog . . .

Revelation 20:8 

And shall go out to deceive the nations... Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle...

"When I got there, the Giant Gog was sitting astride the beanpole of the ark and he intended to ride out the flood that way. But he was already very

seasick."

"The most massive pile of bones in the Valley of the Talking Bones were

those of the Giant Gog. 'I am the biggest and oldest of all of you,' he told

the other boney people..."

"There are enemies in Gog's bones' tales. There are problems and conflicts

in them. A giant who has been rubbing people and bones the wrong way

for five thousand years will have plenty of enemies, plenty of troubles,

plenty of conflicts."

Matthew 8:26 & Matthew 14:31

Matthew 8:26 

And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?

Matthew 14:31 

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

"Oh they of little faith,” Jacob said sorrowfully.

"But what if I still don't believe I'm flying?” he croaked. / "You'd better

believe it,” jibed the chimney swift that was flying circles around him in the

air, "or you'll fall, and it's a thousand feet down."

“I do take it,” Jacob howled in his anger. “I abjure the whole idea that I am

flying high in the air. I refuse the whole double-damned superstitious

illusion!"

"He took his choice, and his wings fell clear off him. He fell down and down,

faster and faster, to crash — / 'Not if I don't believe it!' he roared in his

stubborn voice. / 'Especially if you don't believe it!' roared a voice even

more stubborn than his own."

Revelation 20:4-6

4 ...and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.

“Oh, not too long, Jacob,” a piece of his brother William called out in a

happier tone. “Oh, I am glad to have you here with me! It'll be about a

thousand years before we regain it, but we have plenty of time here."

"And the thousand years that it takes for the two brothers to regain their

lost magic isn't really such a long time. A hundred years of it has already

elapsed, and it only took a hundred years to do it."