"This is power politics," Julius Brass explained it to James Tyrone. (They still talked together sometimes.) "I don't look like a Jew. I'm tow-haired and light-skinned and pug-nosed and freckle-faced. I'm an Anglo if there ever was one. And since my father changed the name from Messing to Brass we don't even sound Jewish. The kids don't recognize hardly any of us as Jews. But they know the niggers when they see them. And they know the Catholics because they go to the Catholic schools. It's you or us, kid. Hey, am I glad it's you!" Hiram Brass, the father of Julius, had much the same attitude. He made money out of the thing. "A klan robe and hood sells for fifty dollars," he told Francis Tyrone, "and I can get them made for two dollars and a half each. There have been ten thousand of them sold in Tulsa already, and that's only a start on the market. I don't sell all of them, of course, but I sell more than a third of them. Why, I've sold four hundred and fifty robes and hoods for horses, and they go for two hundred and fifty dollars each and cost me seven dollars. I tell you that there's money to be made out of the klan thing." — In a Green Tree "No, no, no," Julius Brass took exception to one of the items. "These things are not comparable at all. One of them was a borning, not an enslaving. Free Israel was born, created, out of chaos. We have it on the word of William B. Ziff and other reputable historians and observers that the Palestinian Arabs were the lowest form of human life on Earth." — In a Green Tree Arnold Stein and Julius Brass are Lafferty’s most fully developed Jewish characters, with his most extensive representation of Jewish Zionism centered on Julius. This post compiles key information about the character for reference in future posts.

“But the fact is, Paul, that I write as clearly as I am able to. I sometimes tackle ideas and notions that are relatively complex, and it is very difficult to be sure that I am conveying them in the best way. Anyone who goes beyond cliché phrases and cliché ideas will have this trouble. It's a little bit like polarized glass. It's all clear enough looking out from my viewpoint; but it may be opaque from the other side to eyes different from mine. It can't always be helped, though.” — Lafferty, interview Paul Walker “But you are the hypnotized ground bird, Drumhead, and I am the snake,” came the voice of J. Palmer Cass. “The ground bird never finds courage enough to shoot the snake. It just doesn't work that way. Why am I blue-eyed now, you wonder? Oh, it is only the contact lenses. It takes big ones though to blot out the big friendly brown eyes of Jack. I always take off his old hornrims with regret. That slight crack in the corner of the glass, that sloppy winding of small copper wire to hold the frame together. Who wouldn't trust a slob wearing such homely glasses? Who wouldn't trust him to be a slob forever? Those touches were sheer art. And ’twas myself, not Jack, who thought of it.” “Ah, but you only beat me because I am not at my best today. I'm not really ever at my best any more. Junkyard, what are you doing? What is that blue horror that you're fumbling in your paws? What are you doing to your eyes?” “Putting in a set of those blue contact lenses that J. Palmer Cass wouldn't have been J. Palmer without. They've oversized contacts. They had to be oversized to cover the brown pupils of Jack Cass, and my own eyes are almost twins of Jack's. I want to see what the lenses do for my aura. What do they do for my aura, Drumhead?” “Gah, they turn me into a trembling ground bird, and you into a hypnotic snake. Take them out, Junkyard.” Like “ Camels and Dromedaries, Clem ,” “Junkyard Thoughts” is a deep exploration of the schizo-gash. The story has dark wit and shows Lafferty being virtuoso in his off hours, working tonal tricks he perfected and that no one else replicates, which is say that it achieves its dissociative effect through the techniques he developed as a writer of radical originality. To me, it feels like the unpublished mystery-oriented stories from the pre-nucleation phase of 1958 to the early 1960s. It is what they might have looked like had Lafferty already developed his storytelling tools and thought the story might sell. By 1983, the market situation was entirely different and unwelcome to him, so this also looks like Lafferty simply having fun with his craft, and it's one reason I enjoy it so much. Below, I’ll offer a brief plot summary, followed by my interpretation of what’s really happening, alongside a way to unify its dissociative logic. There are really only two characters in this one, and one doesn’t appear until the final page. Our point-of-view consciousness for most of the story is detective Drumhead Joe Kress. He confronts Jack Cass, a pawnbroker and junkyard operator, in Cass’s pawn shop on Polder Street. Kress is investigating the disappearance of J. Palmer Cass, an elegant swindler whom he believes is Jack's cousin. Kress says he can almost feel the fugitive hidden nearby, "looking at me with those hard blue eyes of his, those snake eyes." Pawnbroker Jack is a genuine All-American Slob with a rough voice and gap-toothed grin and a checkbook with a jackass (Jack Cass) with a gap tooth under him. Jack flatly denies any family connection. When Jack steps out of the pawn shop, Kress searches the place, full of all kinds of clutter, a place that "always seems much larger on the inside than on the outside." He finds no physical trace of the fugitive. The investigation continues over a game of chess played on an old nail keg between two valuable Queen Anne chairs. Kress gives the baffling details of J. Palmer's escape from the law a few hours ago. Palmer somehow slipped away from his townhouse. Men saw him go in. No one saw him go out. Kress says the man's powerful magnetism scared him, making him feel like a shivering ground bird before an elegant snake. As they play, Jack’s big dog, Junkyard, gives him valuable coaching, advising him on moves. Kress’s suspicion deepens when he recalls seeing the names Cass/Cass listed together in a police directory and, for the first time, notices a distinct physical resemblance between the two men: they both have a powerful "bull neck, and bull necks are hard to disguise." Kress moves to arrest Jack, but Jack reacts with surprising, reflexive strength. He throws the captain across the room, then apologizes. Now held at gunpoint by Kress, Jack breaks down. He says his real name is John Palmerworm Cass. He was named for his father’s belief that the biblical palmerworm was "the devil inside me, the devil that was sometimes my other appearance." Then there is a change. Jack’s demeanor transforms. He becomes the cruel and articulate J. Palmer Cass. The new personality mocks Kress and gives some details about how he pulls it off: "Oh, it is only the contact lenses. It takes big ones, though, to blot out the big friendly brown eyes of Jack." This, along with a partial dental bridge and a blond hairpiece, lets him exist as two identities. With the J. Palmer personality seizing control, Jack/Palmer leads Kress through a secret tunnel while the submerged Jack personality begs, "Shoot us, Drumhead!" All this happens through the same mouth. Then J. Palmer outlines a plan to force Kress into a suicidal public confession, calling him the "hypnotized ground bird." Lafferty uses a scene cut at the most dramatic moment, and the reader later learns that the dog Junkyard attacked the Cass creature, causing Kress to accidentally fire his revolver. The shot did not kill the body, but instead killed the Jack Cass personality, leaving only the J. Palmer alter, who was then captured by the authorities. This is what we are told, at least. The story ends after all these events where the reader learns that Drumhead Joe Kress is currently a patient in the Bethlehem Institute for the Mentally Disturbed. His new reality consists of daily visits to the deserted pawn shop, where he hallucinates playing chess and conversing with his "'invisible dog,' as they call you." An attendant, representing objective reality, sees only Kress in an empty room with "neither Queen Anne chair nor chess board here, nor visible dog either." The story ends from within Kress's hallucination, as Junkyard, pleased about winning their game, warns that what Kress "had better worry about is his end game." Obviously, this is a story about the four alters of one dissociated identity—or perhaps three, depending on how one understands Junkyard. Lafferty loved this story, as he told Dan Knight. The ambiguity here is around the blue contacts. On one hand, the contacts with the Kress-focalized version of the narrative support a purely rational, criminal interpretation of the events. J. Palmer Cass calls them a simple prop, just something to complete his disguise and blot out the "big friendly brown eyes of Jack," and the "hypnotic" power is just expert psychological manipulation. On the other hand, there is the palmerworm aspect of the story, the spiritual corruption, and the story’s tie to the Book of Joel, where the contacts are a bit like the canker that cannot be avoided. They’re like instruments of dissociation at its most malevolent. The effect they have on the stablest of the alters is insane, and there is something genuinely terrifying about how Lafferty has Junkyard go from being savior to sadist on a dime. I read Junkard at the end of the story to be a remanifestation of the palmerworm, which successive layers of devouring: That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.— Joel 1:4 The ambiguity centers on the blue contacts, the story's image of the palmerworm’s appearance. In the Kress-focalized version of the narrative, these lenses are just things, one element in J. Palmer Cass's rational, criminal interpretation of events: "I might be insane, but there is method to my madness, and I am in control." J. Palmer Cass calls them just a prop, a practical element of disguise meant to obscure “the big friendly brown eyes of Jack.” On the other hand lies the palmerworm  aspect of the story, in which the blue contacts are like the plague animals of the Book of Joel in which four insects eat through everything, in the sequence of palmerworm, locust, cankerworm, and caterpillar. Here, the contacts are the recycling center of dissociation at its most malevolent, consumptive axis of the alters. By the end of the story, Jack Cass has been eaten by his own psyche, with Lafferty giving us something unforgettable in the portrayal of his dog Junkyard, who shifts from man’s best friend to a sadistic palmerworm in an instant, becoming a primary alter. Kress is up for consumption next. Such is my reading of the story. Much of its brilliance comes from just having to read it on parallel tracks and arrive at a reading as one works out the dozens of uncanny moments Lafferty creates. An example to show how this works. On the unreliable narrator track, Kress is weirded out by “two men” speaking through one mouth, as in the following: “Shoot us, Drumhead! Oh, do shoot us now!" the pleading Jack Cass personality begged from a corner of the complex mouth. "Pay him no mind, Captain," the J. Palmer Cass personality said from the center of the same mouth. "He’s a mawkish slob. The passage is this way." On the panoramic track, a narratively induced dissociation is happening within the reading experience by way of Kress’s focalization, for the reader knows that “three men” are speaking through a single mouth, the “third man,” Kress, being no more aware he is in the mouth with the other two.

There are few direct personal statements on this blog, although everything here probably reveals something about me. About Lafferty’s Holocaust denial, I want to be on record with maximum clarity. I read Lafferty with a kind of double vision, and I believe two things about him are equally true: R.A. Lafferty was a literary genius of unparalleled imagination and insight. R.A. Lafferty was a crank on aspects of conspiratorial history who embraced a grotesque and evil lie. Critics who write about him need to face the issue directly. If they do not, they are just talented fans. That is not necessarily a problem. But fandom is not the same as scholarship. Academic writing imposes constraints on how one engages with a subject. Those constraints do not apply to publicists, or to what people in public relations call flacks. This site is my hobby blog. It includes elements of both fandom and flack. I understand why someone might see my approach to Lafferty’s traditionalism as being flackish, but I try to call it as I see it. I also have some academic training, and that training carries a particular ethos, even in informal settings. It is poor judgment, weak ethics, and intellectual vanity to think that major facts about a subject such as Holocaust denial should be withheld until the right frame is in place. The honest move is to state the fact clearly. The interpretations will follow. That is the correct order. The Modern Language Organization puts it this way: "As a community valuing free inquiry, we must be able to rely on the integrity and the good judgment of our members." Knowing that a writer you specialize in was a Holocaust denier, and choosing not to say so for a decade, or a half decade, or just years, is not good judgment. It does not support free inquiry. It means in this important area you have failed your subject, your colleagues, and your profession. In seeking to understand Lafferty and Holocaust denial, I inevitably situate my reflections within my own experience as a reader. This process is personal and associative—something that offers me a small point of purchase. One of the writers I think about most when reading Lafferty is the nonconforming Protestant and visionary William Blake, with whom I have long thought about as an eighteenth-centuryist. Like Blake, Lafferty has a cosmological imagination. There are aspects of Blake’s character I find deeply off-putting. He was a celebrant of the French Revolution, which I regard as a cultural catastrophe; yet he was such a visionary genius that it would be madness not to recognize the vastness of his artistic and religious imagination.Blake spoke of fourfold vision , a complicated scheme when put into practice in works such as The Four Zoas and Jerusalem , but, in essence, a not so complicated way of understanding how our perception of reality falls into four aspects: Jerusalem, Beulah, Generation, and Ulro. These can be summarized as follows: Jerusalem Represents the divine city of imagination and vision. A symbol of unity, spiritual freedom, and creativity. Often personified as a female figure (the emanation of Albion, Blake’s archetypal human). The opposite of slavery, materialism, and division. Beulah A state of dreamlike repose and mutual forgiveness. A peaceful, imaginative realm where contraries can coexist without conflict. Not the highest state (it remains a dream world), but a gentle resting place of the soul. In biblical terms, “Beulah” (from Isaiah) means “married,” signifying harmony and union. Generation The world of physical existence: sex, birth, and death. Bound to time, cycles, and material nature. For Blake, this is the fallen condition of humanity, trapped in mortality’s repetition. In sharp contrast to the eternal imaginative states (like Jerusalem). Ulro The lowest state: hellish materialism, mechanization, and spiritual death. A world of despair, where imagination is denied and only cold reason or material gain remains. Associated with Blake’s figure Urizen, the tyrant of law and sterile rationality. In Ulro, humans are enslaved to selfhood and blindness. Once one has a grip on this scheme, Blake becomes legible in ways otherwise impossible. One begins to see why he detested Locke as a demon straight out of Ulro. Like Blake, Lafferty was an enemy of Ulro. His sacramental imagination allowed him to see everything above Ulro in endlessly transformative ways. I think of Lafferty as a kind of folk classicist, yet one infused with a distinctly Catholic Romanticism unlike anything else in literature. That, more than anything, is why I find him so compelling. It elevates him from being a figure in science fiction history to a writer who deserves to be read as literature. What he did not see is that the Holocaust was one of the triumphs of what Blake called Ulro, an extension of the instrumental logic of the factory system, which reduced persons to units of production and, in its darkest turn, to units of destruction.

“Oh sure, you're loaded with weird stuff. You couldn't function otherwise. It's an essential enzyme in you. It will replace itself as rapidly as it's used, and it's meant to be used. The whole world is there in caricature, and something is busy there solving the problems and fictions of the world. Or else it is the prime stuff in there, and it is the world that is the caricature of it.” — “It’s Down the Slippery Stairs” A few quick notes on being totalizing: I believe readers need a total Lafferty, if only to argue with it. They hardly have a partial one. Let’s say you think totalization is a problem, even a dead end. Fair enough. But in Lafferty’s case, you lose something essential by ignoring it outright. You might also think Freud was wrong—a dead end in his own way. To a large extent, I agree with critics like Frederick Crews who said as much for decades. Yet I don’t think we can stop reading Freud anytime soon. Too many artists took him seriously for us to ever ignore him; he’s baked into our literature in a way Jung never will be. If you don’t know how to totalize the world—at least like a second-rate Freudian—most of Modernism and what followed will simply pass you by. Good luck to you. In the same way, Lafferty totalized because he was an old-fashioned Catholic—and Catholic  means universal, which is to say, total. The irony is that people haven’t yet assembled enough of the logocentric Lafferty even to deconstruct him well. Frederic Jameson was one of my favorite literary critics. Two of his credos are invaluable: always historicize and always look for the totality . Jameson championed totalization as a Marxist critical method, arguing that to understand any social, economic, or cultural phenomenon, one must situate it within the broader, interconnected totality of the social system. Since ours is a capitalist system, he argued that we must place any art produced under its regime in that context. What Jameson says about totality is something I take to be apodictic about totality, if not about capitalism. It is the reader’s task to discern how disparate elements interact to form unified (if contradictory) wholes. Jameson acknowledged that late capitalism makes the project of totalization profoundly difficult. Everything makes it difficult. Lafferty, as we know, disliked Marxists. For him, the difficulty of totalization lay not in late capitalism, reification, commodity fetishism, or any of the Marxisant candidates, but in spiritual and cultural amnesia, which had become an enabling condition of our social system and its mores. He seemed to recognize that Marxists on this side of Adorno , at least, possessed a desire for totality. It was an enemy image—that idolatrous totality—but one that mirrored his own relentless drive to historicize and to comprehend the whole.

“People are easily fooled. But there are tests for reality. If a thing is burned up, then there will be a residue of ashes and gasses. But if there is not such a residue, and the things appears to be unchanged, then it is not acting as if it were burned up.” — The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny , p. 357 “But if indeed six million Jews were killed (between a third and a half of the Jews in the World, and more Jews than were in the maximum area ever controlled by the Germans) then they should have left a big hole in the total Jewish World Population, but they didn’t.”— Lafferty, Letter, January 24, 1990 The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny  is one of Lafferty’s major works, and if he ever receives the scholarly attention he deserves, it will be studied closely. There is far more to the book than its homologies to the paralogical fantasies of Holocaust denial. Still, the book cannot be adequately understood until that issue is addressed. This is an interpretive post, not one that I particularly wanted to write. Its purpose is to limn a series of parallels, each open to quibble, while pursuing a line of inquiry whose relevance to the structure of Lafferty’s thought is hard to dismiss. In his dissertation, Glyn Morgan remarks that "almost the only thing certain about 'The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny' is that it is the story of its titular character." Even setting aside Lafferty’s Holocaust denial, I would disagree. Too often, Lafferty readers abandon puzzles in his work that, while difficult, nevertheless incline toward resolution. What follows is not intended as a formal academic argument, though it carries academic implications. I encourage readers interested in this issue to at least consider it through the concept of family resemblance. Lafferty’s novella creates a world in which wars and genocides become variants that never cohere into settled public facts. Archives and testimony are downgraded to a secondary status. Canons of the historical method are displaced by a behavioral litmus test (“if it had happened, people would act differently”). Records become games, maneuvers, or bureaucratic residues. Holocaust imagery, including that of ovens and cremation, appears as present-tense spectacle. At the same time, Jewish victims are transfigured into allegory, and Hitler is cataloged mainly as an artist within the chronology. The cumulative effect, though certainly not the novella's only one, is to reduplicate within the fiction strategies that real-world denial employs to make twentieth-century atrocities, including the Holocaust, disappear. One of the most important sections in this regard is 10.2: “A Square-Headed Answer” by Brig. General George Dredgefellow, in the Deactivated Army Review , June, 1970, which is worth rereading for any Lafferty fan. The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny  is a complicated book, but in essence, Enniscorthy Sweeny uses his genius to create a fictional account— Armageddon II —of a devastating conflict, World-Wide War Two, with the specific intent of preventing it from ever having happened. By trapping the catastrophe within an art form and convincing billions that such wars simply did not occur, he generates a vast, pervasive ambiguity about the war’s reality. This provides a context for considering its inverse: what Lafferty saw as the creation of the Jewish Holocaust—an artistic (propagandistic) fabrication of an “Armageddon” that most people believe did happen, but which Lafferty denied. Someone might argue that the novel’s homologies can be read as sophisticated irony apart from Holocaust denial. I call this secular quarantine because I believe it misinterprets Lafferty's religious motivation while making him more palatable to secular readers. How might this work? The argument might say that World War II did happen , that Lafferty knew it happened, and therefore the homologies undermine denialism because Lafferty is simply pointing them up. I find this weak with the external context of Lafferty’s real-world Holocaust denial. In my reading, the book is a masterclass in ideological self-sabotage, showing how one can construct a gnostic world of falsified history by carefully deploying its strategies. In other words, Lafferty shoots himself in the foot. The key to this reading is the deep-seated paranoia inherent in denialism; it operates through projection. The tactics the narrative embodies—downgrading evidence, shifting burdens of proof, reframing archives—are the same ones real-world denialists accuse mainstream historians of using to manufacture the Jewish Holocaust but use themselves. Lafferty, then, is not just being ironic, though irony is the dominant mode. Just as real events can be erased, false ones can be manufactured. That is the bridge between the fictionally gnostic Enniscorthy Sweeny and the Holocaust-denying Lafferty. What follows are provocations for additional thought: “Second-class evidence . . . minority reports… newspaper… army records… survivor pensions… nine million affidavits… ‘my own memories.’” (354-355)   This re-labels the entire documentary record as inherently weaker.   Denialist homology: Evidence, demotion, and taxonomy fog.  Actual archives and witness memory are downgraded so they can be set aside.   “Some of the evidence is very ‘convincing’ . . . there are ways to bury it . . . lack of popular interest indicates they are not valid.” (356) This grants strength, then nullifies it by appeal to public indifference.   Denialist homology: Social-proof dodge. In other words, if the crowd doesn’t care, it didn’t happen.   “If a thing is burned up . . . people of the world do not act as if there had been wars . . . That is the test.” (357)   This substitutes a behavior test for historical method.   Denialist homology: Impossible standard & burden shift. Demand a civilizational behavior change as proof. When absent, negate events.   “So, on all counts, we come down to the straight hard-headed answer: the wars did not happen.” ( 358)   This is a flat verdict after redefining the evidentiary game.   Denialist homology: Certainty theater. ‘Just Asking Questions’ ->  categorical denial.   “Names of the five hundred battles . . . were only the names of army games and maneuvers. I named some of them myself.” (356)   This reinterprets battle records as titles for games.   Denialist homology: Reframing archives as play-acting/hoax.   Lists WWI sites, then: “why is there pretense that the battles were real?” (297)   This performs incredulity in the face of the archive.   Denialist homology: This is motivated incredulity posing as critique.   “Nothing of the Armageddon Variant is given . . . it does not appear anywhere as facts or events . . . They are not removed. They simply are not available to be put in.”  (281)   This builds erasure into the ‘history’ section itself.   Denialist homology: Archive gating/record erasure via editorial frame.   Chronology item: “‘The Brown Danube,’ oil painting, A. Hitler. Hung in Alte Pinakothek, Munich.”  (285)   This recasts Hitler principally as an artist in the official timeline.   Denialist homology: Deflection & normalization. It minimizes the importance of a principal perpetrator.   “To the second of the beasts they offered the flesh of Gypsies and Jews.” (355)   This substitutes mythic bestiary for concrete genocide.   Denialist homology: Mythic displacement. As Lafferty does in his Holocaust denial letter, atrocity is abstracted into allegory.   “Assassinations and Group Exterminations were all on TV” . . . permits . . . “consensus leaders.” (370)   This turns mass killing into omnipresent spectacle and bureaucracy.   Denialist homology: Spectacularization that trivializes/commodifies violence.   “There were furnaces on every corner . . . ‘Let’s decide this at the Furnace’s Mouth’ . . . toss the weaker in.”  (371)   This shifts cremation imagery into present-tense street sport. Denialist tactic mirrored: Grotesque relocation. Here we have atrocity signs displaced from WWII to deny their historical referent.    “We lived those war games . . . they seemed more than games . . . paper army.” (357)   Here, experience is admitted, then reclassified as game.   Denialist homology: Retroactive neutralization of testimony.

Who was Arpad Arutinov? We may never know, but he left us with a puzzlingly heterodox work, The Back Door of History , the definitive version of which is the magisterial Second Revised Edition. Arutinov effected an epistemological break with conventional historiography and the natural sciences, his thesis being that consensus reality is almost invariably a lie and that the front door of empirical evidence and rational analysis will always be insufficient for comprehending phenomena. Although he founded no school, he taught his readers to look for a back door hermeneutic, a mode of inquiry that leads into a hidden, metaphysical reality where one finds the real motor of history. Mainstream historiography will never sufficiently appreciate him. His was not a linear history but a metahistorical polemic intended to dismantle the reader's own participation in consensus realities. Did he succeed? That Arutinov goes unmentioned in every contemporary consensus history is the measure of his success. His The Back Door of History pursues its agenda through a deconstructive method, taking a hammer to accepted narratives to expose their impossibility. A case study for this method can be found in the early Islamic expansion. It is an absolute mystery, he writes. The desert Arabs were inferior to their Byzantine and Persian adversaries in every material respect, from military technology and organization to demographics and physical health. The conquest of Damascus, for instance, was for Arutinov a logical absurdity. He brought the same skepticism to the natural sciences, dismissing all orthodox geological theories for the formation of coal and petroleum by contending that the requisite thermal conditions would have vaporized the planet. Alfred North Whitehead wrote that all philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato; it is perhaps typical of Arutinov that those footnotes are misguided, nothing short historical myth. His account of Socrates' death tells us that the hemlock of ancient Greece was non-toxic and that Plato’s narrative was a literary device. Socrates living for centuries is far more plausible than the accepted story. Having demonstrated the failure of conventional explanation and the limits of consensus reality, Arutinov posited an elaborate metaphysics to account for these phenomena. He wrote of a non-locational, causal realm of ransom and recompense where events such as the formation of carbonaceous deposits are patterned and planned. This reality, he argues, is concealed through a principle of cosmic camouflage, exemplified by his Australian Paradox: a landscape composed of unique flora and fauna that nevertheless mimics the 'big picture' of its northern hemisphere counterparts. This substratum is further populated by a host of crypto-zoological and demonic entities—the Shoga-Kobalds manipulated by rock rituals, giants altering cliff-face edicts, and the 'children of Ahriman' mingling with human bloodlines—all of which act beyond the view of a humanity blinded by its “disease of abstraction and generalization.” Integral to Arutinov's cosmology is his radical reconceptualization of temporality . For at least a dozen years, Arutinov writes, “history has indeed begun to run backwards,” a phenomenon he recognized and symbolically mirrored by adopting a reversed, left-handed script. Referring to the well-known Hawkins' Principle of Re-Entrant Time, he suggests that the present moment is perpetually “within seven minutes of the beginning of the world.” Furthermore, he introduces the concept of extra-dimensional bonus days, accessible to a select portion of humanity in pleasant places outside of ordinary time. This temporal insight is perhaps connected to his historical claim that the eschatological prophecies of the 10th century were literally fulfilled, and that the world did, in fact, end at dawn on April 1, 1000. Is The Back Door of History a gnostic text? Perhaps. Some have dismissed it as a hoax. It is full of aphoristic pronouncements on topics ranging from the aerodynamic necessity of tails for angels to the predictable national character of the English. Whoever the man was in real life (the fictional accounts are not to be trusted), his authorial persona is that of the lone initiate revealing esoteric truths to a profane world. Through his case studies and metaphysical assertions, he consistently argues that what you and I perceive as history is the shadow play of deeper, occulted forces. Arutinov’s admirers will always be those who believe that legend, paradox, and personal intuition are more reliable guides to reality than what historians pass off as truth.

“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 Mago g . . . 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."

Hatchet Face (1785-1863) In the earliest times to which authentic history extends, the law will be found to have already attained a fixed character, peculiar to the people—like their language, manners, and constitution. Nay, these phenomena have no separate existence; they are but the particular faculties and tendencies of an individual people, inseparably united in nature, and only wearing the semblance of distinct attributes to our view. That which binds them into one whole is the common conviction of the people—the kindred consciousness of an inward necessity, excluding all notion of an accidental and arbitrary origin. Friedrich Carl von Savigny Lafferty liked to tell people that he stopped writing on his seventh birthday, dating the end of his career to November 7, 1984. This was only partly true, since some of his most interesting work and thinking came after that date. Originally titled "The Men Who Didn't Believe in Magic," "The Man Who Lost His Magic "  was completed on October 13, 1987. Lafferty’s interest and proficiency in German is a part of his work that continues to intrigue me, so I’ve decided to write a series of blog posts on one of his final pieces of fiction and its importance. I’ve written before about how, for Lafferty, the largest hermeneutic circle is metaphysical—how he wanted to explore the relationship between history and eternity, ringing changes on the theme from his earliest stories to his last. The academic lives of the Grimm brothers offer a fascinating way into this side of Lafferty. They began as Romantics and ended as hardened German scholars, still Romantic, changed from the young men who learned from Friedrich Carl von Savigny (important to the role of the Commonwealth in the story) and and their early intellectual circle friends, which brought into their thought and lifelong project the influence of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805), They helped both mystify and demystify culture. It’s no surprise they caught Lafferty’s attention, and perhaps no surprise either that, as he closed down his writing shop, he made a final fictional statement about them. Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779–1861) In the story, the importance of the Magic Meadows—and the relationship between word and world, as both nature and metaphor—is as significant as the writing on the wizard’s robes and what Jacob can read and cannot read. In this first post, I’m sharing a translation I made of the Grimm brothers’ entry on Nature  from their opus Deutsches Wörterbuch .  Their treatment of the term includes over thirty shades of meaning, many of which speak directly to the Magic Meadows. Future posts will explore more of what is at work in the story. Pretty obviously “The Man Who Lost His Magic” deconstructs the rationalist worldview embodied by Jacob Grimm by juxtaposing it against the magical reality of the Meadows. The Meadows are not sustained by empirical laws but by belief and storytelling. Jacob's "loss of magic" is presented as a tragic consequence of his rigid adherence to a singular, objective reality, ultimately leading to his forcible and eternal assimilation into the very world of folklore he sought to control. The historical Grimm who composed the Natur entry bears on this in a number of ways. Grimm's Dictionary Definition of "Natur" “The Man Who Lost His Magic” A. Nature as Creative Force (Active Sense) 1. Nature as World-Force:  The generative, formative, transforming power in the universe; a quasi-personal, active force. "I do believe it, and my believing makes it so. And I'll trick you into believing and you'll fly also." 1.a. Innate Endowments:   Natur  denoting the innate physical or mental characteristics given to a living being. "Yes, he had a hatchet face... Jacob, however, was a kind and considerate man. It was only an accident of mismatching that he had a hatchet face." 1.b. Personification of Nature:  Nature spoken of as an explicit, human-like entity (e.g., Mother Nature) with whom one can interact. “‘What are you, a fairy godmother, to grant wishes?’ / ‘Oh, Jacob, it's now known that any good person can grant a wish to any other good person.’” 2. Nature as Order or Law:  The regularity and law-governed course of natural phenomena; the "order of nature." "That was why he was sent from the Commonwealth to regularize the irregular people of the Meadows..." B. Nature as Created World (Passive Sense) 1. Nature as Universe:  The totality of what exists; the whole visible creation, conceived as a dynamic whole. "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." 3. Nature vs. Artifice (Natur vs. Kunst):  The contrast between the natural state of something and what is artificially made or altered. "It is only Schwarzkünstler the Sorcerer repairing wings for persons who will fly tonight... And the Sorcerer is making a new set of wings for somebody." 3.b. Pristine State:  The imagined "state of nature" before society or law; a pure, innocent, or uncorrupted state. "You people must now take on the responsibility of substantiality and of anxiety so as to become of some good to the Commonwealth.” AA. "Nature" as Life Principle in the Individual 5. Innate Disposition (Nature of a Thing or Person):  The inherent quality, character, or fundamental constitution of a person or thing. "Then 'all ways' is mistaken. I was the hatchet-faced man, young and old. He was always pleasant and handsome." 5.d. menschliche Natur (human nature):  The innate characteristics of human beings collectively. “An unbeliever has got to believe in his unbelief,” he cried out. ... "I abjure the whole idea that I am flying high in the air. I refuse the whole double-damned superstitious illusion!" 5.e. Personal Nature or Temperament:  An individual's inborn disposition, character, or habit ("second nature"). "Swearing and fuming, Jacob Grim fought against the grotesque things that now had him in their coils." BB. A Natural Being (Creature, Individual) 2. Human being as "a nature":  A person, with emphasis on their character type (e.g., "a good nature," "a false nature"). "Among the investigators who had disappeared was Jacob's own brother. Jacob, however, was a kind and considerate man." 2.e. Higher beings as Naturen  (natures):  Poetic use for angels, spirits, etc. "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... Concept Role Character Quote Note 1. The Dichotomy of Reality: Rationalism vs. Magic Jacob's mission from the Commonwealth to regularize the irregular people of the Meadows. Jacob Grim:  He sees the world through what he takes to be science, logic, and order. Magic is "nonsense," "silliness," "superstition," or a "regional illusion." His goal is impose the Commonwealth's objective reality, which links him to the historical Grimm’s tie to Savigny and Romantic nation building.   Magic Meadows Residents:  They perceive their world as authentic. The Commonwealth's reality is questioned as a mere metaphor or a "dank conspiracy to dream such a world. Jacob:  "...a bladed brain that would cut through every sort of nonsense.""...to regularize the irregular people of the Meadows...""It was only a local glob of magic, which is another word for silliness or superstition."   Schwarzkünstler:  "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?" This sets up the story's central ontological conflict. It is not just a story of a man encountering magic, but a war between two mutually exclusive realities.   Jacob’s failure is preordained because his tools of 19 th -century logic and reason are incompatible with the physics of the Meadows. 2. The Power of Belief as a Creative Force Here we have one reason why the original title Lafferty gave the story is superior to the published version. Sometimes he got unlucky this way as when “The Long Afternoon,” a major Lafferty work, was renamed “Among the Hairy Earthmen”   The ability to fly and the summoning of gold. These acts are contingent not on physical laws but on the practitioner's and observer's belief. This is a bit like what I have written on the importance of Wittgenstein and seeing aspects in Lafferty. Interestingly, Lafferty himself did a dive into Wittgenstein, something he writes about in a letter. Jacob Grim:  He these events as illusions and refuses to grant them the legitimacy of belief. His active disbelief becomes his defining, and finally fatal, characteristic.   Zauberei:  She says that belief creates reality. She is confident she can "trick" Jacob into believing and thus enable him to fly. This is an ongoing theme in Lafferty, his interrogation of consensus reality in some of his most difficult fiction. Zauberei:  "I do believe it, and my believing makes it so. And I'll trick you into believing and you'll fly also."     Jacob (during the fall):  "An unbeliever has got to believe in his unbelief... I abjure the whole idea that I am flying... I refuse the whole double-damned superstitious illusion!" The story sets up belief as an active, world-shaping force, a recurring theme in Lafferty Jacob's tragedy is ironic: he is not destroyed by a lack of belief, but by the fierce, dogmatic power of his belief in disbelief . He makes a conscious choice based on his rationalist faith, and that choice has tangible, physical consequences—his wings vanish, and he falls. The passages in “Poor Man’s Guide to Hell” about what happens when you don’t have an sense of up are relevant here: one enters Flatland. This makes the story another comment on Lafferty’s exploration of Flatland. Jacob Grim’s metaphysics make him a resident of it. 3. Storytelling as Reality and Truth The competing narratives of Schwarzkünstler's eyewitness accounts of biblical events versus Jacob's dismissal of his own collected folktales. Jacob Grim:  Devalues storytelling as a product of elongated boyhoods. This is ironic because of the Grimm Brothers’ work on Kinder und Hausmärchen . Lafferty’s Jacob prioritizes his "significant scientific work" and service to the Commonwealth over the tales that made him famous.     Schwarzkünstler:  Presents his tales not as fiction but as lived experience ("I spent three days on the Ark with Noah... I was an eyewitness."). Story is a primary mode of being and knowing. Jacob:  "As to the tales that my brother and I collected... I'd disown them now and withdraw them, except that they still pay me very well."   Schwarzkünstler:  "Think how much better it would have been if the tales had been the central thing to you, and if the philological games had seemed the recreation." This is a late and intellectually mature version of Lafferty meta-commentary, this time a meta-commentary on the historical Brothers Grimm. The story critiques Jacob for abandoning the magical world of his own collected stories in favor of rationalism. His fate—to become a "talking bone" telling tales in a valley—is a complete, ironic reversal. Everyone who rejects “Up” will be forced to inhabit the world he disowned. Again, this is the ultimate metaphysical horizon in Lafferty. 4. The Fluidity of Identity, Life, and Death Characters and states of being defy the rigid categories of the rational world. Jacob Grim:  Demands clear, binary definitions. He cannot comprehend a state between life and death or an identity that is both singular and dual.     Magic Meadows Residents:  They exist in a state of flux. Life and death are not opposites; a mother and daughter can be the same person; the dead possess "greater mobility." This is related to comments in In A Green Tree that a character makes about life and death not being for Catholics what it is for other people Jacob:  "My brother, is he alive or dead?"     Schwarzkünstler:  "‘Dead’ and ‘Alive’ are not such opposites as you might think..."     Narrator/Crone:  "[Dorothy] died several years ago." / "In her case, that only gives her greater mobility."     Narrator:  "Both the mother [Zauberei/Enchantment] and the daughter [Täuschung/Illusion] said that they were the same person. And no one had ever seen them together." The magical reality of the Meadows dissolves the fundamental binaries that structure rational thought. It’s like the “draw” in Barnaby’s backyard in “Animal Fair.” The names Zauberei (Enchantment) and Täuschung (Illusion) being one person suggests that in this world, reality and illusion are inseparable. Jacob's inability to accept this fluidity is a core aspect of his intellectual and spiritual failure. 5. The Nature of Magic: Innate vs. Acquired/Lost Magic is an inherent state of being that can be lost through the adoption of a rationalist worldview. This being Lafferty, magic is an analogue of religious reality. Jacob Grim:  He "lost his Magic." This loss is equated with his service to the Commonwealth and his embrace of rationalism. It makes his forced flight "bumpy."     Magic Meadows Residents:  Possess magic as their natural state. It is the air they breathe and the ground they walk on. Sorcerer:  "Happy flying tonight, Jacob. But you have lost your Magic. That means that it will be a bumpy flight for you. You lost your Magic."   Jacob (in response):  "But I found a Commonwealth that will engulf the whole world." The magic Jacob lost is not just the ability to perform tricks, but a fundamental way of perceiving and interacting with the world. He traded a participatory, enchanted worldview for a detached, analytical one. The story frames this not as a gain of knowledge but as a profound and crippling loss, a trade of soul for system. 6. The Consequence of Unbelief: The Valley of the Talking Bones The fate for those who, like Jacob and his brother William, refuse to believe in the reality they inhabit. Jacob Grim:  Experiences it as a horrific end—a splattering of his body and a loss of everything he stood for. He is made permanently "irregular."   William Grim & Others:  A state of eternal, communal existence. They are still but differentially bodied and conscious, laughing, singing folk-songs, and telling tales. It is a form of afterlife defined by the oral traditions of the lebensnwelt that Jacob lost. Chimney Swift:  "Just the bones of unbelievers who fell from the great height."     Zauberei:  "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."   William:  "It'll be about a thousand years before we regain it, but we have plenty of time here." The Valley is the story's ultimate verdict. It is not oblivion, but a forced reintegration into the world of myth. The rationalists are stripped of their old bodies, things that can be primary objects of scientific inquiry—and reduced to their essence: a physically bounded voice and story. It is the final triumph of the religious worldview over the scientific one. The thousand-year sentence is a mythological timescale, dwarfing the historical progress of the Savigny/Grimm dream of the Commonwealth as the pinnacle of Volksgeist.

Lafferty drew on ideas from Gnosticism for many of his most important short stories, from "Snuffles" to "The All At-Once Man" to "In the Turpenine Trees": The gaps in historians' knowledge about Gnosticism were grist for his metaphysical imagination throughout his writing career. I’d like to have a post on this blog where I can keep updating my understanding of this side of Lafferty’s work. That’s the purpose of this space. It will include a timeline of how the West has understood the Gnostic tradition. I will add updates over time, along with a running list of Lafferty stories where Gnosticism plays a significant thematic role. This will be my hub post for Gnostic Lafferty. "Plato and Snuffles" Pulling the Hole in After You Civil Blood (1962) "The All At-Once Man" (1970) "The Carnivalesque" "Noetic Darkening" "Power Structures in Not to Mention Camels " "Crocodile" "Why Epiktistes" " Thou Whited Wall" (1974) "The Only Tune That He Could Play" (1976/1980) "The Man Who Lost His Magic" Ancient Era (1st–4th Centuries) Late 1st–2nd Century:   Origins and Early Gnostic Sects.  Gnostic ideas coalesced in the late first and early second centuries, likely around cosmopolitan centers like Alexandria. Diverse sects emerged, e.g. the Basilideans and Valentinians, emphasizing personal mystical knowledge ( gnosis ) and mythic cosmologies that distinguished a remote supreme God from an ignorant creator (the Demiurge ). These groups saw themselves as Christian, offering esoteric teachings about Jesus and salvation through hidden knowledge. Their worldview was typically dualistic: the material world is flawed or evil, and salvation comes by awakening the divine spark within through revealed knowledge. Gnostic teachers like Valentinus (active c. 150 CE) even operated within the early church, though proposing unorthodox cosmologies. The movement’s exact origins remain debated. Scholars have traced influences to heterodox Jewish mysticism, Middle Platonic philosophy, and Persian dualism. 2nd Century: Orthodox Reaction “Heresy” Identified. By the mid-2nd century, Gnostic Christians were significant enough that emerging orthodox leaders reacted. In 180 CE, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon penned Against Heresies , a massive refutation of what he called “knowledge falsely so-called,” targeting Gnostic doctrines. Irenaeus catalogued Gnostic systems (Valentinian, Sethian, etc.), preserving their myths second-hand while condemning them as heretical distortions of apostolic teaching. Other early heresiologists (Hippolytus of Rome, Tertullian of Carthage, and Epiphanius) wrote polemics portraying Gnostics as dangerous sectarians. These Church Fathers uniformly interpreted Gnosticism as a deviation from Christianity, emphasizing its rejection of the material world and the Hebrew Creator. By identifying Gnostics as heretics, orthodox authorities justified restricting the transmission of Gnostic documents; indeed, few original Gnostic writings survived the concerted effort to destroy them in antiquity. What little was known of Gnostic theology for centuries came only through the hostile (and often biased) summaries in these patristic sources. 3rd Century: Gnosis in New Guises . Even as many 2nd-century Gnostic groups waned, new religious movements carried forward esoteric and dualist tendencies. In the mid-3rd century (c.240 CE), the prophet Mani in Persia founded Manichaeism , a syncretic faith drawing on Christian, Gnostic, and Zoroastrian ideas. Mani’s religion taught a cosmic dualism of Light and Darkness and the salvation of the soul from matter, themes similar to earlier Gnostic cosmology. Manichaeism spread widely (from the Roman Empire to China), and later observers called it a form of “Persian Gnosticism.” Around the same time in Alexandria, Christian theologians like Origen grappled with Gnostic ideas: Origen’s theology addressed concepts of pre-existent souls and allegorical scripture interpretation, partly in debate with Gnostic thought. In the pagan philosophical sphere, Plotinus (founder of Neoplatonism) took notice of Gnostic metaphysics, In the Enneads (c.270 CE), he critiques unnamed Gnostics for denigrating the material cosmos. This unique instance of a non-Christian rebuttal shows that Gnostic cosmology had permeated intellectual circles enough to provoke a philosophical controversy. Plotinus and his circle attacked the Gnostics’ pessimism about creation, defending the beauty of the world against the Gnostic notion of an ignorant creator. 4th Century: Decline and Marginalization.   By the late 3rd and 4th centuries, Gnostic sects in the Roman Empire dwindled under external pressures. The ascendant orthodox Church, now backed by Imperial authority (after Constantine), intensified efforts to root out heresy. In 325 CE the Council of Nicea defined orthodoxy in a way that implicitly excluded Gnostic Christologies. Gnostic and dualist communities either went underground or were stamped out; by the end of the 4th century, organized Gnostic churches in the Greco-Roman world had largely disappeared. An important example is Manichaeism: condemned by Imperial edicts, its followers were persecuted within Roman territories. (Notably, Augustine of Hippo (later a Church Father) spent his youth as a Manichaean hearer before converting to orthodox Christianity; he later wrote extensively against Manichaean doctrines, further solidifying the heretical reputation of Gnostic-style beliefs.) By suppressing these movements, orthodox Christianity successfully made Gnosticism a short-lived, misguided offshoot of the true faith. But a few embodied reminders of ancient Gnosis persisted beyond the Empire: the Mandaeans of Mesopotamia, for example, continued practicing baptismal, dualistic religion (with roots in Judeo-Gnostic tradition) into late antiquity and beyond. In general, however, by 400 CE the primary era of Gnosticism had ended, surviving mainly in distant lands or in scattered texts hidden away, awaiting future discovery. Medieval Era (5th–15th Centuries) Survival on the Margins:   After antiquity, classic Gnostic cosmologies largely vanished from the mainstream, but related currents survived at the fringes of the Christian and Near Eastern world. Eastern dualist sects kept Gnostic-style ideas alive. Manichaeism endured for centuries in the East: Manichean communities persisted in Central Asia (a Manichean Uighur kingdom flourished in the 8th–9th c.) and even in China before dying out in the late Middle Ages. In the Mesopotamian wetlands, the Mandaean religion (often seen as a Gnostic offshoot of early Christianity or Judaism) quietly continued its rituals of light versus darkness; remarkably, the Mandaeans survive to this day as a small Gnostic-style sect practicing rituals of purification. Within the Byzantine Empire and its borderlands, new heresies with “Gnostic” traits appeared: for example, the Paulicians (Armenia, 7th–9th c.) and later the Bogomils (Bulgaria, 10th c.) preached a form of Christian dualism reminiscent of Manichaeism. These groups taught that the material world was the devil’s creation or that two gods (one good, one evil) ruled the universe. ideas echoing earlier Gnostic doctrines of an evil world-creator. Such sects often used parts of the New Testament but rejected the orthodox church hierarchy, which led the Byzantine state and Orthodox Church to brand them heretics. Medieval Byzantine sources recount debates and imperial persecutions against the Paulicians and Bogomils; the Bogomil leader Priest Bogomil was denounced and perhaps burned as a heretic by Emperor Alexios I. This shows Gnostic-like dualism remained a theological issue for Christians well into the Middle Ages. 12th–13th Century: “Gnosis” in Western Heresies.   Gnostic thought had a notable resurgence in high-medieval Western Europe with the rise of the Cathars (also called Albigensians) in the 12th–13th centuries. The Cathars, centered in southern France, embraced a stark dualist theology: an evil god (Satan) created the material world, whereas a good God ruled the spiritual realm. a cosmology similar to ancient Gnostic and Manichaean teachings. Scholars believe Catharism was influenced by the older Bogomil dualism coming from the East. Cathars claimed to preserve a “pure” apostolic Christianity, but their rejection of the material sacraments and the Church’s authority led Rome to condemn them. The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) was launched by the papacy to exterminate this “Gnostic” heresy; the crusade and subsequent Inquisition destroyed the Cathar movement. Some contemporaries referred to Cathars and other dualists as “Manichees,” explicitly linking them to the ancient Gnostic-Manichaean tradition. Thus, during the Middle Ages the idea of Gnosticism survived chiefly as a label for heresy , applied to any radical dualist sect that arose. Orthodox theologians of both the Eastern and Western churches continued to use the memory of Gnostic/Manichaean heresy as a cautionary tale and an object of refutation. In the medieval Jewish world, elements of Gnostic cosmology found their way into Kabbalistic mysticism (e.g. themes of divine emanations and cosmic repair), though direct influence is debated. Likewise, certain strains of Islamic esotericism (such as Ismaili cosmologies) mirrored Gnostic dualism and emanation theories. These parallels suggest that the intuitive appeal of Gnostic ideas, a hidden truth about divine light trapped in darkness. transcended cultural boundaries, even as the formal Gnostic sects of antiquity had long since vanished. Late Middle Ages: By the 14th–15th centuries, open dualist movements in Europe had been crushed, and the Renaissance was dawning with a renewed interest in pre-Christian antiquity. Knowledge of the original ancient Gnostics at this time was extremely limited; it survived only in the preserved writings of the Church Fathers. Intellectuals and clergy who studied those patristic texts were aware of figures like Valentinus, Basilides, and Marcion as ancient heretics with esoteric doctrines , but no primary Gnostic writings were available to give their own perspective. Gnosticism’s historical reputation by 1500 was uniformly negative in orthodox circles. The name connoted deceptive heresy. Yet the Renaissance’s fascination with Hermetic and Neoplatonic writings (e.g. the Corpus Hermeticum discovered in 1460) showed a broader curiosity about mystical knowledge from antiquity, a climate that would soon also rekindle interest in Gnostic ideas when the time was ripe. Enlightenment Era (17th–18th Centuries) Reintroducing the Term “Gnosticism”:   During the Reformation and Baroque period, the term “gnostic” re-entered discourse. initially as a polemical insult. Scholars and theologians of the 16th–17th centuries drew parallels between their opponents and ancient Gnostics: for example, Erasmus of Rotterdam in the 16th century and later Protestant polemicists accused various Catholic thinkers of being “gnostics,” and vice-versa. The word came to signify someone claiming elitist spiritual knowledge or deviating from accepted doctrine. In this context, Henry More (1614–1687), an English theologian and philosopher, made a pivotal contribution: he coined the actual term “Gnosticism.” In his 1669 commentary on Revelation, More used the neologism “Gnosticisme” to describe the heretical sect at Thyatira mentioned in the New Testament. This appears to be the first systematic use of “Gnosticism” (-ism) as a category encompassing the ancient heresies of the early church. Thus, by the late 17th century, Gnosticism was identified in scholarly language as a distinct historical phenomenon, essentially, an umbrella term for a whole range of early heterodox sects focused on secret gnosis. 18th-Century Scholarship – First Histories of Gnosticism:   The Enlightenment brought a more analytical (and sometimes sympathetic) approach to the study of heresy. Church history scholars began the first modern attempts to chronicle Gnostic movements in a less polemical manner. Notably, the German historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1694–1755) included the Gnostics in his influential ecclesiastical histories. Mosheim proposed that Gnosticism might have developed independently in the East (in Greece and Mesopotamia) before blending with Jewish and Christian elements, rather than being simply a Christian deviation. Enlightenment thinkers, with their emphasis on reason and anti-authoritarianism, sometimes reinterpreted  the ancient Gnostics in a positive light. A few intellectuals began to admire Gnostics as early freethinkers. For instance, some writers portrayed Gnostics as enlightened mystics who valued inner experience over external dogma, drawing a parallel between Gnostic insistence on personal knowledge and the Enlightenment’s valorization of reason and individual insight. Historian Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714) exemplified this trend: in his Impartial History of the Church and Heretics  (1699), Arnold controversially praised various heretics (including Gnostics) for preserving true spirituality oppressed by the institutional church. By the late 18th century, “Gnosticism” was established as a subject of inquiry in its own right. French scholar Jacques Matter carried this further in the early 19th century (1828) with the first full-length Histoire critique du Gnosticisme , but the groundwork was laid in the Enlightenment era’s willingness to catalog and reassess all historical beliefs. This period expanded the geographical perspective  on Gnosticism: scholars began to speculate that Gnostic ideas might owe much to “Eastern” (Persian or oriental) sources, not just Greek philosophy. For example, early theories by J. Horn and E. F. F. Ledrain (later 18th–early 19th c.) suggested Persian (Zoroastrian) origins for Gnostic dualism. Meanwhile, esotericists and Romantic-era mystics at the turn of the 19th century (late Enlightenment into Romanticism) adopted the term “gnosis” in a more mystical sense. By the Romantic period (circa 1800), “gnosis” was sometimes used to signify an inner, emotional spiritual insight, a state of mystical awareness that the Romantics found intriguing. In short, the Enlightenment and its aftermath not only systematized the historical study of Gnosticism but also subtly transformed its image: from a reviled heresy to, in some circles, an almost noble quest for truth against dogmatic tyranny. Modern Era (19th – Early 20th Centuries) 19th-Century Theories and Discoveries: The 19th century saw major developments  in understanding Gnosticism, fueled by both theoretical frameworks and new textual evidence. Scholarly opinion split over Gnosticism’s origins and nature. The influential History of Religions  approach ( Religionsgeschichtliche Schule ) argued that Gnosticism was essentially a pre-Christian phenomenon – a syncretistic religion that only later intersected with Christianity. For instance, scholars like Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920) and Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931) posited that Gnosticism drew from ancient Iranian, Mesopotamian, and other oriental cosmologies, which then infiltrated early Christianity. They emphasized themes like the cosmic battle of light and dark as evidence of Persian influence in Gnostic dualism. On the other hand, prominent church historian Adolf von Harnack offered a contrasting interpretation: he saw Gnosticism as an internal evolution of Christianity under the influence of Greek philosophy. Harnack famously dubbed Gnosticism “the acute Hellenization of Christianity,” implying it was an extreme, premature mingling of the Gospel with Platonic and philosophical concepts. In Harnack’s view, Gnosticism sprouted within the church itself (in the 2nd century) as a kind of premature theology, rather than being an import from Persia. These debates marked the first major scholarly controversy over Gnosticism: Was it essentially an exotic foreign import that corrupted Christianity, or a native Christian heresy sparked by overzealous intellectualism? Even as scholars debated, archaeological discoveries were beginning to provide new data. For over 1,500 years, nearly all knowledge of Gnostic literature came second-hand. But in the late 18th and 19th centuries, a few precious Gnostic manuscripts resurfaced: In 1769, the Scottish explorer James Bruce acquired a Coptic codex (now called the Bruce Codex ) in Upper Egypt, which contained mysterious texts like the Books of Jeu . This was one of the first direct glimpses of original Gnostic writings in modern times. Around the same time, the Askew Codex  (purchased by physician Anthony Askew) came to light. a Coptic manuscript eventually obtained by the British Museum in 1785. It contained Pistis Sophia , a lengthy Gnostic dialogue. For the 19th-century scholars, Pistis Sophia  became a key work for understanding Gnostic cosmology and ritual (it was translated into Latin in 1851, providing the scholarly world a rare firsthand Gnostic scripture). In 1896, the Berlin Codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502) was purchased in Cairo. This 5th-century Coptic manuscript included the Gospel of Mary , the Apocryphon of John , and other texts. It offered direct evidence of Sethian and Valentinian lore. Though published only in the early 20th century, its discovery in 1896 signaled that more “lost” Gospels might still be found. Additionally, scholars in the late 19th century discovered fragments of Gnostic gospels in the original languages; for example, Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas were unearthed at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (1897–1903), though at the time they were not fully identified as Thomas’s gospel. These finds, though limited, energized academic Gnostic studies. For the first time, researchers could read some Gnostic teachings in their own words, not just through hostile patristic quotations. It became clear that Gnostic literature was rich and complex. By 1900, a few critical editions of Gnostic texts (like Pistis Sophia ) had been printed, and scholars such as G. R. S. Mead compiled translations and commentary ( Fragments of a Faith Forgotten , 1900) to make this arcane material more accessible. Early 20th Century – Gnosticism as a “Religion”:   In the early 20th century, scholars began synthesizing the available evidence into overarching interpretations of Gnosticism. A landmark figure was Hans Jonas (1903–1993). In the 1920s–30s, Jonas studied Gnostic texts (his 1934 dissertation was on Gnosticism), and after World War II he published The Gnostic Religion (1952). Jonas’s work was groundbreaking in that he treated ancient Gnosticism as a coherent religious worldview in its own right, not merely a Christian heresy. He analyzed the existential angst in Gnostic myth – the alienation of the soul in an evil cosmos – through the lens of modern existential philosophy (in dialogue with Heidegger). Jonas highlighted the radical dualism between the true God and the material world as the essence of Gnostic thought. His approach was phenomenological and philosophical, emphasizing how Gnosticism answered deep human feelings of alienation (geworfenheit, being “thrown” into a hostile world). Jonas effectively “rewrote” Gnosticism as an ancient religion of salvation, comparable to other religions, rather than a deviant sidebar of Christianity. This had a lasting impact: subsequent generations often spoke of the Gnostic religion or Gnostic tradition as a distinct phenomenon encompassing certain myths and doctrines. Around the same time, other scholars like Walter Bauer (who in 1934 proposed that so-called heresies like Gnosticism might represent original forms of Christianity in some regions) were challenging the orthodox-centric view of early Christian history. Meanwhile, interest in Gnosticism was not confined to historians and theologians. Figures in psychology and esoteric studies found Gnostic ideas alluring. Carl Jung, the famed depth psychologist who influenced Lafferty, drew heavily on Gnostic symbolism. He saw in Gnostic myths profound archetypal truths about the self. In 1916 Jung privately wrote Seven Sermons to the Dead  under the name of the Gnostic teacher Basilides, and in the 1950s Jung collaborated with scholars (including Gilles Quispel) to obtain and study a Coptic codex from Nag Hammadi (the Jung Codex). Jung regarded Gnosticism as a kind of early psychology of the soul’s journey, and he viewed gnosis  as analogous to individuation, an inner awakening to Self. His follower Quispel went on to be a major scholar of Gnosticism, advocating that gnosis represented a third stream of Western thought (besides faith and reason) that emphasized direct inner experience. By the eve of World War II, the academic community had mapped out the contours of Gnosticism fairly well (identifying sects, mythological themes, and historical spread) but still relied on limited sources. There was an air of mystery around Gnostic studies – a sense that many texts were lost and much remained speculative. All of this was about to change dramatically with a discovery in Egypt that would revolutionize the field. Contemporary Era (Mid-20th Century – Present) A page from Codex Tchacos  (3rd–4th century C.E.), containing the Gospel of Judas . The rediscovery and publication of such ancient Gnostic manuscripts in the mid-20th and early 21st centuries profoundly expanded scholarly knowledge of Gnosticism. 1945: The Nag Hammadi Library – Revolution in Gnostic Studies.   In December 1945, a collection of twelve leather-bound codices sealed in a clay jar was accidentally discovered by farmers near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. This trove of Coptic manuscripts, dating to the 4th century, turned out to be a library of Gnostic writings – over fifty texts, most of which were previously unknown or known only by name. Among the texts were the Gospel of Thomas , The Secret Book of John , The Gospel of Philip , The Apocalypse of Adam , and many more works representing Sethian, Valentinian, and other Gnostic schools. The significance of the Nag Hammadi discovery is hard to overstate: before 1945, scholars knew Gnosticism mainly through the hostile filters of the Church Fathers . Suddenly, there was a wealth of primary sources (mythological gospels, mystical teachings, dialogues attributed to Jesus) offering an uncensored window into what Gnostics themselves believed. Over the next two decades, scholars (notably in France, Egypt, and the US) undertook the laborious task of conserving, transcribing, and translating these documents. By 1977, a complete English translation ( The Nag Hammadi Library in English , ed. James M. Robinson) was published, making these texts widely accessible. The Nag Hammadi codices confirmed some previously reported teachings (for example, Irenaeus’s descriptions of the Apocryphon of John  proved fairly accurate), but they also revealed unexpected diversity. Gnostic cosmologies were not monolithic – some texts were strongly dualistic and anti-cosmic, others (like the Valentinian Gospel of Truth ) were more moderate. The early Christian landscape appeared far more varied than the traditional orthodox-versus-heretic narrative suggested. Scholars realized that what we call “Gnosticism” encompasses a broad spectrum of groups and doctrines, from radical dualists to more philosophical mystics. A poignant detail: none of the newly found writings actually called themselves “Gnostic”; the ancient authors saw their beliefs as true Christianity or true philosophy, not as a separate “Gnostic religion” per se. This underlined that “Gnosticism” is largely a modern scholarly construct, applied retrospectively. Mid/Late 20th Century: New Perspectives and Public Interest.   The flood of new material from Nag Hammadi invigorated scholarship and also captured the public imagination. In the 1970s, scholars convened to reassess definitions: a conference at Messina (1966) attempted to narrowly define gnosis  vs. Gnosticism  – proposing “Gnosticism” be reserved for those 2nd-century systems featuring a Demiurge and secret knowledge for an elite. This definition, however, proved too narrow and was later abandoned, as the Nag Hammadi texts showed that the boundaries of what counts as Gnostic were fuzzy and that such movements bled into earlier and later periods (e.g. pre-Christian or medieval phenomena). Instead, scholars began classifying the texts by specific traditions : Sethian, Valentinian, Thomasine, etc., rather than assuming one grand Gnosticism. Important compilations and analyses were published: e.g. Bentley Layton produced The Gnostic Scriptures (1987) with translations, and Kurt Rudolph wrote Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism  (1977, Engl. 1983) summarizing the state of knowledge post-Nag Hammadi. Perhaps the most famous work to emerge was Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels  (1979), which brought the discussion to a popular readership. Pagels tried to show how early Church authorities suppressed these alternative gospels and theological viewpoints to solidify a singular “catholic” doctrine. Traditional Christian apologists and clergy criticized the elevation of Gnostic texts, arguing that these were late fabrications or theologically dangerous interpretations. This controversy mirrored the ancient dispute: once again, Gnosticism was seen by some as a threat to orthodoxy, while others saw it as an enlightening alternative voice from early Christianity. The late 20th century also saw additional textual finds. Though nothing matched Nag Hammadi in scale, a notable discovery was the Codex Tchacos, which surfaced on the antiquities market and was published in 2006. This codex included the Gospel of Judas  – a text mentioned by Irenaeus but lost for 1700+ years. When unveiled, the Gospel of Judas made headlines worldwide: it portrayed Judas not as a villain but as Jesus’s trusted disciple who understood the true gnosis. Such finds further deepened public interest in Gnosticism and underscored the richness of the early Christian archive beyond the New Testament. By the end of the 20th century, “Gnosticism” had become a familiar word, inspiring novels, films, and spiritual movements (some New Age groups even claimed to revive Gnostic practices). Yet within academia, this popularity came with a more critical scrutiny of the term itself. Debates over Definition – Rethinking “Gnosticism”:   In the 1990s and 2000s, a shift occurred regarding the category of Gnosticism. Scholars questioned whether “Gnosticism” is too blunt a label to accurately describe the myriad sects and ideas it has come to encompass. In 1996, Michael Allen Williams published Rethinking Gnosticism , which argued that the term “Gnosticism” is a scholarly construct that might be hindering understanding. Williams pointed out that many traits scholars ascribe to Gnosticism (such as radical dualism, anticosmic pessimism, elitist knowledge) are not present in all so-called Gnostic groups, and conversely many of these traits appear in groups not traditionally labeled Gnost. He noted that gnosis  (knowledge) was a widespread concept in antiquity, present in various religious traditions, not just the ones we label Gnosti. Williams provocatively suggested scrapping “Gnosticism” as a taxonomical category and replacing it with a more precise descriptor like the Biblical demiurgical tradition  (focusing on movements that taught a subordinate creator figure). In 2003, Karen L. King published What Is Gnosticism? , which traced how scholars (beginning with the ancient heresiologists and up through modern times) effectively created the notion of a monolithic Gnosticism by defining an “other” to a pure orthodoxy. King argued that this process distorted the evidence – early Christian diversity was cordoned into orthodox vs. Gnostic in a way that may be more reflective of later power dynamics than of actual first-century realities. Both Williams and King urged caution: rather than assuming a fixed entity “Gnosticism” warring against “orthodoxy,” historians should study each group in its specific context (Syrian Christian, Egyptian, Jewish-Christian, etc.) and be mindful of biases inherited from the polemical labels of the past. The impact of this critique has been substantial. Many academic publications now avoid the term “Gnosticism” in their titles, preferring to speak of, say, Nag Hammadi studies  or early Christian apocrypha . Some scholars have indeed limited “Gnosticism” to a narrow set of sects (e.g., the Sethians and Valentinians of the 2nd century). sometimes calling these the “classic Gnostics.” Others have proposed new categories altogether. For instance, scholars working on the Mandaeans or Manichaeans often treat those as separate religions, related but distinct from the Christian-oriented Gnostics. A number of experts continue to use “Gnosticism” in a qualified sense, finding it useful as long as one remembers it’s an umbrella term. The debate itself has become a major part of contemporary scholarship: examining how our understanding of Gnosticism has been shaped by the agendas of ancient heresy-hunters and modern historians alike. 21st-Century Global and Theological Perspectives:   Today’s understanding of Gnosticism is more global and nuanced. Academics from a variety of traditions (Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, secular) contribute to Gnostic studies, each sometimes bringing different emphases. For example, Eastern Orthodox writers often approach Gnosticism as an archetypal heresy that highlights by contrast the Orthodox emphasis on the goodness of creation. Comparisons are drawn between ancient Gnostic ideas and modern spiritual trends: some theologians warn of a “New Gnosticism” in contemporary society (for instance, seeing transhumanism or radical individualism as denying the goodness of the body, a classically Gnostic trait). Such analogies are controversial, but they show the lasting theological  interest in Gnosticism’s legacy. In the academic realm, interdisciplinary research flourishes. The Nag Hammadi texts are now studied not only for their theology but also for what they reveal about social history (e.g., the status of women in Gnostic groups, since some texts have female divinities like Sophia), about interactions with Judaism (many Gnostic works re-imagine Genesis and other biblical stories, often inverting their meaning,and about the diversity of early Christian literature. Scholars like Birger Pearson, David Brakke, and April DeConick in recent decades have continued to refine our picture of Gnosticism’s varieties, including proposing that some Nag Hammadi writings represent an originally non-Christian (perhaps Jewish or Platonic) Gnosis that was later “Christianized.” On the other hand, experts like Simon Gathercole have reasserted the later dating and derivative nature of Gnostic gospels vis-à-vis the New Testament, keeping the controversy over their historical value alive. Major archaeological work also continues – for instance, efforts to locate where the Nag Hammadi books were used or buried, and analysis of newly found fragments (with modern imaging techniques sometimes recovering unreadable text from damaged codices). The field has specialized sub-areas such as Mandaean studies , Manichaean studies , and Hermeticism , but all contribute to the broader puzzle of Gnosticism’s place in world religious history. Crucially, modern scholarship recognizes Gnosticism not as an isolated Christian deviation but as a cross-cultural phenomenon: it interacted with Platonism, with Second Temple Judaism, with Egyptian religion, and later with Islam and medieval thought. This global perspective has even led to comparisons outside the West, e.g. parallels between Gnostic myths and certain Buddhist or Hindu concepts (suggesting perhaps universal psychological motifs).

"Rita, did you know that the Jews believe that the Jews are a handsome people," Cecelia Ching Brass jibed. "Really. And how odd it is. I found it out, quite by accident from a chance remark of Julius here. The implications of it open up an entirely new fantasy world, a world in which the Jews really are handsome, and everything likewise is upside-down." "I'm not sure what the Chinese think about the Chinese," Julius said, "but I have heard that the Irish really do believe that the Irish are handsome. But then the Irish have always lived in a fantasy world in which indeed everything is upside-down. But the belief that the Irish are handsome is the origin of the golden lie, that blatant falsehood. Odd, odd, odd, that such a delusion should take hold of a people, and how odd that you should abet it, Rita." In a Green Tree I continue to reflect on Belloc and to think about the nature of Lafferty's antisemitism. What is proving to be useful are academic frameworks. One of the best recent books on the history of topic is Ivan G. Marcus's How the West Became Antisemitic (Princeton UP, 2024). "Chapter Nine, Antisemitisms: Medieval and Modern" is worth reading and can be found here: I’ll wrap up by outlining the chapter and explaining how I’d contextualize the quote from In a Green Tree that begins this post. Also helpful are academic typologies of antisemitism, one of the best being Deciphering the New Antisemitism  (Indiana UP, 2015). It offers the following typology: Category Manifestation Description Theorist Examples I. The "New" Antisemitism (Post-Holocaust / Post-1948) Ideological Anti-Zionism / Israel as the "Collective Jew" Defines contemporary antisemitism as an ideology that projects traditional antisemitic concepts of "the Jew" onto the State of Israel, which is treated as the "collective Jew." This framework analyzes how hostile beliefs about Jews are manifested culturally in myth, folklore, and imagery directed against Israel, urging its restriction, exclusion, and suppression as a solution to the "Israel problem." Kenneth L. Marcus The demonization of Israel in international forums, accusations of dual loyalty against diaspora Jews, and the application of classic antisemitic tropes (e.g., control of media, finance) to the State of Israel. Competitive Victimhood / Inversion of the Debt Argues that a key feature of the new antisemitism is the equation of Islamophobia with historical antisemitism, positioning Muslims as the "new Jews" and, consequently, Jews/Israelis as the "new Nazis." This dynamic operates on three principles: 1) The Inviolability Principle:  Islam is framed as a protected category beyond criticism. 2) The Equivalence Principle:  Hostility toward Islam is presented as morally and structurally identical to antisemitism. 3) The Substitution Principle: The Muslim replaces the Jew as the world's primary victim, appropriating the historical uniqueness of Jewish suffering (the Shoah) to claim a moral debt from the West. Pascal Bruckner Young Muslims in Grenoble protesting a headscarf ban by wearing armbands with crescents, evoking the yellow star. Tariq Ramadan's claim that the situation of European Muslims is similar to that of Jews in the 1930s. Left-Wing Antisemitism Manifests not necessarily as overt hatred but through a set of discursive practices within the contemporary political Left. Central features include: a disproportionate focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over all other global issues; the trivialization or denial of antisemitism as a relevant political problem ("antisemitism denial"); and the use of anti-Zionism as a subcultural code for belonging within the progressive milieu. Sina Arnold The Occupy Wall Street movement, where overt antisemitic signs were present but the issue was largely dismissed. The Livingstone Formulation, where any accusation of antisemitism is reflexively dismissed as a bad-faith tactic to silence criticism of Israel. II. Intellectual & Cultural Antisemitism Virtuous Antisemitism A form of anti-Judaism that exists "beyond hatred" and is characterized as a phenomenon of "high culture." It is not expressed through vulgar racism or violence but through sophisticated, intellectualized discourses that perpetuate antisemitic ideas from a position of supposed moral or intellectual superiority. Elhanan Yakira Historical figures like Blaise Pascal, whose theological writings expressed admiration for the Jewish people's endurance but also justified their suffering as divine punishment. Ernest Renan, whose philological and historical work, while not hateful, created a framework of Jewish spiritual and cultural inferiority. Benign / Negative Virtuous Antisemitism Consists of nonviolent, often implicit negative attitudes reflecting fictionalized images of the Jew. It manifests as a silent, semi-aesthetic discomfort in dealing with Jews, which is considered "harmless" in direct impact but contributes to a pervasive cultural murmur of antisemitism. Elhanan Yakira Jean-Paul Sartre's depiction of the "gentle antisemite" who would never commit violence but harbors a vague repulsion based on stereotypes, justifying it through mauvaise foi  (bad faith). Positively Virtuous Antisemitism Describes anti-Judaism originating from the "heights of culture" and "high moral grounds." It is an antisemitism created and propagated by intellectual, spiritual, and cultural elites who frame their views not as prejudice but as authentic moral or philosophical positions. Elhanan Yakira The long tradition of anti-Jewish discourse among major Western intellectual figures (e.g., Kant, Voltaire, Hegel) whose ideas provided the sophisticated underpinnings for later, more virulent forms of antisemitism. III. Antihistorical Antisemitism Holocaust Denial, Evasion, and Minimization Defined as a "war against memory" and a continuation of the Nazi assault on the Jews. This form is not a genuine historical dispute but an ideological project rooted in antisemitism that seeks to deny the ethical and metaphysical testimony of Judaism by erasing its ultimate historical trauma. David Patterson, Bernard Harrison, Aryeh Tuchman The work of deniers like Robert Faurisson and Ernst Zündel, and state-sponsored denial from Iran. The "Uniqueness Debate," in which attempts to universalize the Holocaust can serve to de-Judaize it and strip it of its specific historical meaning. Radical Denial The explicit, pseudo-scientific claim that the Holocaust did not occur, focusing on denying the existence or function of gas chambers and questioning the number of victims. David Patterson The activities of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which promotes revisionist history, and the claims of figures like Fred Leuchter who produced fraudulent "engineering" reports on Auschwitz. Evasion (Psychological & Intellectual Denial) Subtle forms of denial that manifest as trivializing, relativizing, or de-Judaizing the Holocaust. This includes avoiding the term "evil," focusing exclusively on non-Jewish victims, or framing the Holocaust as just one of many genocides without acknowledging its unique characteristics, thereby relieving it of its "weightiest moral and intellectual demands." David Patterson Holocaust museum boards that speak of "victims and trauma" in general terms but speak "less and less about the Jews." Left-wing academics who relegate the Holocaust to a secondary concern behind colonialism or other crimes. IV. Traditionalist & Religious Antisemitism Radical Catholic Traditionalist Antisemitism A form of "political religion" that rejects the theological reforms of the Second Vatican Council, particularly the Nostra Aetate  declaration, which repudiated the charge of Jewish deicide. This movement restores classical Christian theological antisemitism and fuses it with a right-wing political agenda against modernism, liberalism, and Zionism. Mark Weitzman The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) and its leaders, who have engaged in Holocaust denial (e.g., Bishop Richard Williamson) and espoused classic anti-Jewish theology. The influence of antisemitic theologians like Denis Fahey on contemporary extremist Catholic movements. Given this, I would characterize Belloc’s antisemitism in the following manner: Category Manifestation Placement & Explanation I. The "New" Antisemitism (Post-Holocaust / Post-1948) Ideological Anti-Zionism / Israel as the "Collective Jew" Anachronistic and Ideologically Distinct.  Belloc's major writings on this subject predate the full emergence of the "New Antisemitism." His worldview was shaped by the pre-1948 European political landscape. He was anti-Zionist for antisemitic reason, seeing the Zionist movement as proof of his core thesis: that Jews were an alien, unassimilable nation within Europe whose loyalties lay elsewhere. He argued in The Jews  (1922) that Zionism confirmed the "alien character" of Jews and would create a conflict of loyalty for diaspora Jews, making the "Jewish problem" in Europe even more acute. This stands in stark contrast to the "New Antisemitism," which often projects antisemitic tropes onto the State of Israel itself, treating it as the "collective Jew." Belloc's focus was on the Jew in Europe, not the Jewish state. II. Intellectual & Cultural Antisemitism Virtuous Antisemitism Definitive and Primary Placement.  Belloc is an example of the "virtuous antisemite." As a prominent historian, essayist, and Catholic intellectual, his antisemitism was articulated not as vulgar prejudice but as a sophisticated, reasoned analysis of what he termed the "Jewish problem." He presented his book The Jews  as a reluctant but necessary warning to both Jews and Gentiles about a looming, inevitable conflict. This framing of antisemitism as a matter of high-stakes political and historical analysis, conducted from a position of intellectual authority, is the hallmark of this category. Positively Virtuous Antisemitism Direct and Primary Fit.  Belloc's antisemitism originates from the heights of culture and what he considered high moral grounds—the defense of Christian European civilization. His arguments were not based on racial biology but on what he saw as an irreconcilable conflict between the "Jewish spirit" and the "European spirit." He framed his position as one of historical realism and intellectual honesty, arguing that ignoring the "problem" was a greater folly. This intellectualized framework, propagated through influential books and essays, defines this subtype. III. Antihistorical Antisemitism Holocaust Denial, Evasion, and Minimization Anachronistic / Not Applicable.  Hilaire Belloc died in 1953. While the Holocaust occurred during the final decade of his life, the organized, pseudo-scholarly movement of Holocaust denial and revisionism, as analyzed in Deciphering the New Antisemitism , emerged and gained prominence long after his death. There is no evidence that he was a Holocaust denier. IV. Traditionalist & Religious Antisemitism Radical Catholic Traditionalist Antisemitism Foundational and Primary Placement.  Belloc's work is a cornerstone of 20th-century traditionalist Catholic antisemitism. His views were deeply rooted in a pre-Vatican II theological and political framework. Key elements include: Supersessionism:  A theological worldview in which the Catholic Church is the true successor to Israel, and Judaism is an anachronistic and spiritually defunct religion.   Jews as an "Alien Body":  His central thesis was that Jews constituted a separate, unassimilable nation and an "alien body" within Christian societies, leading to inevitable friction and conflict. Conspiratorial Tropes:  He attributed disproportionate and nefarious influence to Jews in finance (especially international finance), politics, media, and the promotion of both Bolshevism and Capitalism, seeing them as a secretive power working against the interests of the Christian world.   Political Program:  His antisemitism was not merely a belief but a political concern. In The Jews , he advocated for a "solution" to this "problem," proposing a policy of official recognition and segregation (a form of apartheid) as the only way to avoid violence. This desire to translate theological animosity into a political structure is a key feature of this category. Here is how I currently situate Lafferty: Category Manifestation Placement & Explanation I. The "New" Antisemitism Ideological Anti-Zionism / Israel as the "Collective Jew" Not explicitly addressed.  While I can reconstruct some of Lafferty’s views, extending from antiquity through the Dreyfus Affair to modern times, his specific opinions on post-1948 issue of Israel as a state are not something I know II. Intellectual & Cultural Antisemitism Virtuous Antisemitism Partial but significant fit.  Lafferty's antisemitism presents as intellectual and contrarian rather than based on vulgar prejudice, though some of the things he wrote about Jews are vulgar. He framed his Holocaust denial in terms of logic and evidence, arguing it was irrational for Europe to destroy its intellectual capital. This fits with the "virtuous" subtype, which operates from a position of perceived intellectual rigor and moral clarity, even while arriving at antisemitic conclusions. His admiration for Jewish intellectual achievement alongside his denialism reflects the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of this category. III. Antihistorical Antisemitism Holocaust Denial, Evasion, and Minimization Direct and primary placement.  Lafferty's views fit squarely with this category. The archival evidence reveals:   Radical Denial:  He explicitly stated in a 1990 letter, "I myself never did accept the idea of the Holocaust in the context of The Six Million," and argued against its demographic and logistical possibility.   Adoption of Denialist Literature:  He embraced and endorsed materials from the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a central organization in the Holocaust denial movement. A box in his archives contains IHR journals alongside his handwritten timeline of denialist books.   Evasion in Fiction:   The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny , which is concerned with 20th-century history and trauma, conspicuously omits the Holocaust. Without knowledge of his denial, a reader is far less able to grasp the significance of this absence, as I have elsewhere argued. IV. Traditionalist & Religious Antisemitism Radical Catholic Traditionalist Antisemitism A contextual fit.  While not a member of a formal movement like SSPX, Lafferty's antisemitism is deeply intertwined with his identity as a devout Catholic and with many traditionalist leanings. His views intensified alongside his disillusionment with the post-Vatican II Catholic Church. This is why I would argue for the Theological/Continuity Thesis, situating his remarks within a framework of Catholic traditionalism, including anti-modern polemics and historical skepticism. It also has the virtue of explaining how some of Catholic characters behave and talk. His denial of the Holocaust, a pivotal event in Jewish history and its relationship with Christianity, is an unfortunate manifestation of certain attitudes attached to this traditionalist worldview. Outline, How the West Became Antisemitic , Chapter 9: Marcus argues that modern, racial antisemitism is distinct from medieval, religious Jew-hatred yet not discontinuous with it. He identifies a persistent, three-part structure—the binary of an inverted hierarchy, the Jew as the inner enemy, and the permanence of Jewish identity—created in medieval Catholic Europe and uniquely capable of transformation and secularization. That is what enabled it to persist and evolve into its modern, racial form. The continuity lies not in specific stereotypes, often applied anachronistically, but in the underlying ideological structure. I. Introduction: The Central Problematic and Historiographical Landscape A. The Core Question:  Establishing the relationship between medieval Christian Jew hatred and modern, racial antisemitism, particularly in the context of the Holocaust. B. The Scholarly Divide: Two Primary Approaches The Teleological View:  Posits a direct causal connection between medieval and modern forms of Jew hatred. Proponents:  Jules Isaac, James Parkes, Joshua Trachtenberg, Léon Poliakov, Robert Chazan, Gavin Langmuir. The Discontinuity / Contextual View:  Argues that medieval and modern forms are fundamentally different and should be treated as distinct phenomena. Argument:  The term "antisemitism" is anachronistic for the pre-modern era, as it was coined in the 1870s/1880s for a modern, racist ideology. Author's Critique:  This position risks suggesting a "complete discontinuity," which is problematic. C. Analysis of Key Scholars and Concepts David Nirenberg: Communities of Violence  (Initial "Contextual" Position): Argued against teleology, viewing medieval violence as ritualized, symbolic, and potentially stabilizing. Author's Critique:  Nirenberg's case studies (Southern France, Iberia) fail to address the more virulent hatred in Northern Europe (German Empire), the more likely precursor to modern German antisemitism. Anti-Judaism  (Later "Modified Teleological" Position): Proposes continuity of "anti-Judaism," but redefines it as a Western mode of thought against all  victimized groups ("imaginary Jews"). Author's Critique:  This redefinition evades the specific question of the historical relationship between Christian anti-Jewish thought and modern antisemitism targeting real Jews . Hannah Arendt:  Advocated for a sharp distinction ("Pauline dichotomy") between: Medieval "religious Jew-hatred" (conflict between creeds). Modern "anti-semitism" (secular, nineteenth-century ideology grounded in nationalism and pseudoscience). Author's Critique:  Arendt's framework fails to explain why Jews became the specific target of modern antisemitism. The Term "Anti-Judaism": Usage by Dahan, Cohen, Abulafia:  Used to denote theological criticism of Judaism, implying a discontinuity with modern, racial antisemitism. Langmuir's Controversial Definition: "Anti-Judaism":  Rational critique of actual Jewish beliefs and practices. "Antisemitism":  Irrational, chimerical accusations against Jews for things they never did (beginning in the 12th century). Author's Critique of Langmuir:  His view is anachronistic, apologetic (absolving the Church), and reliant on unverifiable psychohistory (e.g., "projection" of Christian anxiety). D. The Author's Terminological Position: The term "anti-Judaism" is misleading because Christian hatred was directed at Jews  (people) rather than Judaism  (theology), which Christianity itself depends upon. The author advocates for using the term "antisemitism"  (or "medieval antisemitism") for premodern Jew hatred, arguing it is more accurate and that scholars should move past the "technical issue of when the term was coined" to enable a more nuanced understanding of continuity. II. Deconstructing the Continuity Argument: A Critique of the "Stereotype" Approach A. The Stereotype Thesis:  The argument that continuity between medieval and modern antisemitism can be traced through the persistence of anti-Jewish tropes and images (e.g., Novikoff's list of stereotypes; the Vienna exhibition comparing medieval images to Der Stürmer ). B. The Author's Rebuttal: The Problem of Anachronism Qualitative Difference in Perceived Threat:  Modern antisemitism is uniquely concerned with "the rise of the Jews" and their imagined global power. This was not a significant medieval concern. Example:  Thomas of Monmouth's 12th-century ritual murder narrative imagines a Jewish conspiracy to end their exile, not to achieve world domination like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion . Misreading Historical Figures:  Characters like Shakespeare's Shylock are Renaissance creations, not direct products of medieval stereotypes. Scholars anachronistically "read back" the characteristics of these later figures into the Middle Ages. C. Conclusion of Critique:  A focus on stereotypes is insufficient and misleading. A deeper structural connection is required to explain the relationship: "Something other than shared stereotypes enabled medieval Christian antisemitism to develop into its modern form." III. The Author's Thesis: The Three-Part Structure of Antisemitism A. The Core Argument:  Medieval Christian culture created a three-part "scaffolding" for its "imagined Jew." This structure, while originally religious in content, was translatable into modern, secular, and racial terms. B. The Three Interlocking Structural Factors: The Binary of Inverted Hierarchy:  Rooted in the theological rivalry over divine chosenness, this created a worldview where Christians believed they must be socially and politically superior to Jews, and Jews must be subordinate. Jewish assertiveness or success was seen as a violation of this sacred order. The Jew as the Inner Enemy:  This concept crystallized during the First Crusade. The Jew, living within Christian society, was imagined as a proximate and dangerous threat, leading to accusations of: Poisonous usury Ritual murder Host desecration and well poisoning A fundamental motivation of hatred and revenge against Christians. The Permanence of Jewish Identity:  A belief that Jewishness is an essential, unchangeable condition, regardless of conversion. This nascent "racial" idea became prominent in late medieval efforts to convert Jews, which revealed their resistance and were interpreted as proof of an immutable nature. C. The Mechanism of Transformation: The Asymmetry of Hatred The author posits a crucial asymmetry: "Jews hated Christianity, not Christians, and Christians hated Jews, not Judaism." Because Christian antisemitism was directed at the Jewish people , it was not dependent on a religious framework. This focus on the person  of the Jew allowed the three-part structure to survive the secularization of European society. Had the hatred been purely theological ("anti-Judaism"), secularization might have ended it. "Instead, it got worse." IV. Conclusion: Implications for Today A. Applying the Three-Part Structure to Contemporary American Antisemitism: Inverted Hierarchy:  White supremacists resent successful, assimilated ("white") American Jews because they violate the expected hierarchy where Jews are subordinate. Inner Enemy:  Jews are read as a dangerous internal force that must be "contained or eliminated." Permanence:  Nativist groups adopt a racial essentialism, viewing Jewishness as a permanent, threatening identity. B. The Enduring and Transportable Nature of Antisemitism: The medieval structure of antisemitism has proven to be resilient and adaptable, transportable from its European origins to other cultures like American nativism. C. Final Statement:  Awareness of this deep, historical structure is essential for any attempt to overcome modern racism and antisemitism. The West must acknowledge the unique history of this prejudice to combat its contemporary manifestations effectively. ---- How should we read the exchange from In a Green Tree ? Well, it's a near-perfect illustration of what Elhanan Yakira calls "Virtuous Antisemitism," an intellectualized discourse that traffics in ethnic generalizations not as vulgar hatred, but as a kind of high-cultural observation. It is the sort of cultural murmur that normalizes the thinking upon which more virulent prejudices are built. The murmur itself is not disconnected from the more extreme views found in Lafferty's archives, namely in the IHR materials; instead, it is sustained by the same deep history that Ivan Marcus describes. Seen through Marcus, Lafferty's Holocaust denial is another manifestation of the "inverted hierarchy" principle. What does this mean? In a post-Holocaust world where Jewish suffering was granted a unique moral authority, Holocaust denial attempted to shatter that authority and invert the hierarchy back to a traditionalist framework where the Jew does not occupy that central, victimized position. A character's jibe about a fantasy world and its creator's belief in historical revisionism are facets of the same ideological project, aimed at reordering reality along the lines of an ancient prejudice, one that the Catholic Church has now unequivocally condemned.

Oh, as to details, the music of the opera, though rotten, is superbly rotten. The costuming and staging is splendid. And all the singing is powerful. The plot has all the unhinged unity of any shipwreck. And there is movement and force and power. Power above all! This is Destruction as pageant and presentation. One has the feeling that something very large will come out of all of this. Yes, like the destruction of the world. . . . The story lines, although the world is conforming itself to them, are silly. People coming out from seeing and hearing the opera Armageddon II  have the Sweeny look on their faces. There are disturbing photographs of such emerging crowds, in Europe for a year now, and at this Chicago opening the other night, to prove this. Sweeny is a pleasant-looking, cheerfully ugly man. Sweeny, millions of times duplicated, is not. He is not the face that the whole world should wear. Old newspaper cartooning in The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny  fascinates me. Part of that comes from my love of early cartooning and the loss of the newspaper cartoon as an art form—one of the few art jobs where someone could punch a clock for decades and still reach a wide American audience. Like much of Lafferty’s work, Three Armageddons  is about memory—its fragility, and how easily it can be manipulated or erased. In his detailed twentieth-century timeline, Lafferty includes cartoonists—men and images already fading from public memory. By placing them alongside high art and major historical events, he creates a unique aesthetic effect, one I’ve never encountered in any other writer. In The Three Armageddons , cartooning becomes a metaphor for the creation and control of reality itself. Enniscorthy Sweeny is a cartoonist at one point, but more importantly, he is a god-like figure who “draws” the world around him. He alters people like you and me. He changes events with the freedom of an artist who has become a kind of demiurge. The book’s world runs on cartoon logic. Characters are larger than life, stubborn giants. Events break the laws of physics and probability. A heavyweight champion is knocked out by a thin reporter. And think about the aesthetics of cartooning. Lafferty blends horror with absurd comedy. He fills the story with slapstick violence. Grotesque murders and end-of-the-world events are told with a surreal, farcical tone that makes them both frightening and ridiculous. At the heart of it is a kind of critique, one focused on how we understand the past. In this story, cartooning is shown to have as much power as history in shaping what people believe. The Three Armageddons  timeline deliberately places the debut of comic strips like Mutt and Jeff  alongside presidential elections and major scientific discoveries. These comic strips help define the age. That idea is central to the "Armageddon Cults," groups of people who choose to believe in and live inside the paranoid, comic-strip-style realities that Sweeny creates. By using the yellowed pages of old newspaper cartoons, Lafferty shows that what we accept as real is often just the dominant story being told—whether it's from Smithsonian or the little man riding Spark Plug. Title Creator “The Katzenjammer Kids” Rudolph Dirks “Hairbreadth Harry” Charles W. Kahles “Mutt and Jeff” Bud Fisher “Toonerville Folks” Fontaine Fox “Andy Gump” Sidney Smith “The Bungle Family” Harry J. Tuthill “Barney Google” Billy DeBeck “Moon Mullins” Frank Willard “Li’l Abner” Al Capp

Andrew Ferguson’s view of how L.H. fits in Lafferty’s early career development as a writer seems right to me on all the key points. This kind of bibliographic work is Ferguson’s strength. Lafferty also made it easy for us because often wrote on his MS his submission histories with dates, and he kept note cards . By 1961, he had written Dotty  and Archipelago , though Archipelago  had not taken final form. He was starting to think about how to bring characters scattered across manuscripts into his version of the human comedy (pinpointing this in L.H. is smart archival work). L.H. is ghost story material from before his professional identity as a genre writer (one that never fit his genre) achieved its nucleation . One interesting detail in the manuscript is that Lafferty went back and wrote new final lines by hand on short, unfinished chapters to keep it from busting, his term for when a writing project stalled. These last-line additions bring in mystery elements and shift the book’s center of gravity, from a philosophical novel with low mimetic characters to a philosophical murder mystery. But they are bluffwork. If you were to read a hypothetically retyped manuscript without knowing about the handwritten additions, you would sense that a larger structure is there. Lafferty never worked it out. I’ll summarize the abandoned novel first, then say a few interpretative things about the Job elements and what Lafferty seems to have been doing with them. L.H . opens with its main character, Leo Hughes, a thirty-year-old man in 1959, thinking about the nature of luck, not providence. We know that Leo was meant to die because Lafferty penciled in a birth and death date for him, placing his death in 1960. Leo calls himself as “a mediocre man for whom everything had come right.” He sees his life as a long streak of luck. The plot begins with Leo asking the gruff hotelier John Bender, “I wonder how long a run can go, John?” Bender believes that “if a real run is broken, then . . . that man is broken for good.” This rattles Leo. His own approach to life is to make a go of it as a gracious fake, but he feels his luck is about to sour. They talk about Job. Leo says Job got into trouble by bragging. Bender correct him. It was not Job who bragged, but God, and that was what brought the trouble. So the first chapter, we get the line that sets the tone for everything that follows: “I’ve been on a real run, John, and now I feel that it’s over.” Next comes the dismantling. While swimming in the always dirty and always rough Gulf of Mexico in Galveston—a setting shared with Dotty , and one Lafferty planned to connect with other Galveston characters, according to his notes—Leo is struck by a “large, blue-green, whiskered creature.” It is not a shark. It is not a walrus. It is the mysterious Peter Wund, a strange beggar-apostle. After the collision, Wund brushes Leo off as “Not a thing. As empty a man as I ever met.” Leo then meets Eva, a woman of “much style and no wealth at all,” known both as a “saint” and as the “hottest cat in town.” Together, they rescue a starving, “almost-blond” girl named Judy. They do this from time to time. Here Leo begins to encounter a raw and chaotic world that his long run of luck had kept at a distance. Lafferty then introduces Leonard Schiefer, a wealthy industrialist who offers Leo a rare Maryland Rye, the “essence of the essence.” If Leo’s luck were not about to collapse, this would still feel like his future, for Schiefer is a man whose luck never broke. What survives in the manuscript shows Leo’s descent from his earlier stability. The hard break begins with the collision in the Gulf, when Leo tells Peter, “I just feel that the run’s over. Anything might happen to me now.” His time with Eva and the confused, half-starved Judy (whom he helps shower and who was to be murdered in the unwritten part) pushes him further. He niw sees suffering that he cannot stay detached from. This contrasts with his earlier indifference toward the death of a young prostitute he had known from past visits to Galveston. For him, she has been an aesthetic object. When Eva tells Leo to practice clinical detachment with Judy, he lies to himself: “Never had any.” The turning point comes when Leo again speaks with John Bender, who has been trying to reach him. Bender’s eyes are ice gray. He calls Leo an “Irish crud,” and hands him a check stamped “Account closed.” Leo calls home in a panic and gets the truth from the maid, Lela. His wife, Angela, has emptied their joint bank account and skiped with one little bag and one big bag. Leo is broke and stranded in Galveston, and that is where Lafferty left him. The most interesting character in all this is is Peter Wund, the devil. His last name means wound in German, and he wounds Leo, busting his mouth open, when he careens into the swimming Leo, far out and seemingly alone in the Gulf of Mexico: Blue, or blue-green, with the water shining on it, it was large and noisy, seeming flesh-colored on the fore and snout, and whiskered like a walrus. That had been only a glimpse from the top of a swell, but it was coming very fast and bearing down on him. Leo swerved, angled off in the water, and started under; but he had misjudged the direction of the creature. It hit him with stunning force, bowled him over and over in the water. Confused, Leo fought for depth, turned at bay below it, and found that it had stopped and was hovering over him on the surface. He had not filled his lungs. He had to come up, and did so as distantly from it as possible. But it slid to him with a great water roar and had an iron grip on him. Leo hadn't been able to identify it from that first glimpse from the top of the swell, and he had been blinded from the blow when it struck him, and unable to comprehend. Looking at it from below he had felt that the shape was of something that he should recognize, knowing at the same time that it was an exaggeration of its species. Yet Leo knew that species well enough, or thought that he did. It was shaking his hand now, and near drowning him in the act, jerking him under with every downstroke. "Peter Wund," said the thing. "It's been sudden, you'll have to admit. You're bleeding bad about the mouth. We'd better go in. It's not over a mile. Can you make it?” Wund helps Leo back to shore, and it becomes clear that Leo has completely misunderstood what is happening. One can imagine Peter Wund appearing in the water just after some version of Job 1:6–11 has taken place. Back on land, Wund is direct about the situation. And here Lafferty does something remarkable. After the intensity of the sea scene, he manages to make what happens to this Job-like figure both physical comedy and something more. Leo looks at Wund, who is standing there in soaking wet overalls. Then Lafferty gives us his version of the line: “Have you considered my servant Job?” “Have you a job, Peter Wund?” “I am a beggar by profession, and I have a job to do that doesn’t pay.” “I ought to give you a little something. You did run me down, and smash in my mouth, it’s true; but you swam in with me, and I might not have made it without you. You’ve heard of the small island that had only two automobiles on it, and their head-on collision. There couldn’t have been anyone within a mile of us, and yet we collided. It was against the odds.” “No it wasn’t. I ran you down on purpose.” “Why, Peter?” “It’s one way of meeting people. Just wanted to see if there was anything in you.” The clearing out of Leo’s bank account is the moment when Wund’s role as ha-satan really begins. John Bender takes on the role of the messenger in Job 1:14, delivering the bad news. So it's intersting that Lafferty gives us the physical wounding of his Job but then begins the attack on property only at the end. This shows a profound change in direction. In the original plan, it looks to me like the testing begins when Wund injures Leo. It then has another start with Angela's betrayal. These two blows against Leo are story attractors. The first pulled toward a text that was leisurely and philosophical, the the other colored by the conventions of the thriller. I would like to know what happens next, but it’s clear that Lafferty wrote himself into a structural bind. First, what survives is very talky. On one level, that was by design. The Book of Job is very talky. It begins with conversations between spiritual powers, moves through dialogues between Job and his comforters and Elihu, and ends with a lesson about where all conversation must stop. To keep his characters talking long enough to get there, Lafferty needed a plot device. So he brought in a murder mystery. But once L.H.  becomes a murder story, how can the rest of the Job pattern still hold together? Does the murder of another person draw too much attention away from Leo? I doubt that was the real problem, though. Getting out of structural binds was part of Lafferty’s genius. It seems more likely that a few things were happening. The first was modal . L. H. reads like Dotty , not like a genre work. Lafferty had to go in to stitch on the genre chapter endings on rereading what he had done. Second, he probably knew that Peter Wund was right about Leo Hughes because even Leo Hughes is right about Leo Hughes. He is an empty man, closer to Candide than Cassandra. That might work for a breezy absurdist murder mystery, a fit for the kind of character Leo is imagined to be in the notes Lafferty made as he was reworking the material into a mystery novel. It does not work for a Job stand-in—unless the point is to parody Job. In considering what Lafferty produced here, I do not believe he had an interest in writing a parody, as evidenced by the philosophical approach he took and the way the conversations were intended to build upon one another. Nor was Lafferty going to put God on trial the way James K. Morrow did decades later in  Blameless in Abaddon . Finally, there was the fact that one of America's best-known writers had recently done a popular retelling of the Job story, this being Archibald McLeis h and his pretty rotten but much celebrated at the time  J.B . (1958) . Retelling Job  was fresh on the minds of  American middlebrows. So Lafferty moved on to other things.