Welcome back to the Book of Gleanings, being a part of The Kolbrin. The last section looked at the rather strange circumstances surrounding the birth of an almost messianic style character called Hurmanetar. This next passage comes from the scroll of Pakhamin who was, apparently, the scribe of the excitingly named Firehawks. It starts off with the general lament that humanity had lost its way so badly that The Lord of Light had totally withdrawn and ‘hidden’ himself away, with the result that mankind forgot all about him. Oh, and by the way, if you read the actual passage of The Kolbrin this webpage refers to, you’ll find that the language employed by the scribe is rather pompous and affected – almost like the epic style of the Aeneid or Iliad or the heroism of old Anglo-Saxon poems like Beowulf – but that doesn’t matter too much as it’s a ripping yarn. Also, it’s worth reminding ourselves where we are geographically at this point in the scrolls (if they are, indeed, genuine and not a modern concoction) because that gives us some idea of what may be influencing them (or, from the other perspective, what they may have influenced). Taking previous chapters into account, we are obviously somewhere in the region comprising the Caucasus Mountains southwards; so, an area from between the Black and Caspian Seas – modern day Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia – down through Eastern Turkey to Iran and Iraq. I expect if we try hard enough, we’d find some quite close matches between places mentioned in The Kolbrin and regions and towns that are still to be found on the map today (although we don’t have time for that here) or even with some places mentioned in texts like The Bible.
So, we left Hurmanetar being carried into the land of Kithis in the manner that all good messiahs are, on the back of an ass. He grew up in a hill-shepherding community and was quite the child prodigy; able to read and write at age 5, teaching at the temple by age 7, indulging in a nifty piece of geo-engineering at age 12 by diverting the course of a river through his mother’s lands (his father having died two years previously) so that she became rich. As if all that wasn’t enough, he was ‘overflowing with manly powers’. Wow! At age 13 he was sent to the city, trained and became mighty in arms, until, after killing the King’s right-hand man at age 17, he fled to the mountains of Akimah, where he became a bit of an outlaw bandit, attacking and robbing any travelers that happened to pass his way.
In total contrast to Hurmanetar, the mountains were home to another dude, Yadol by name, who couldn’t have been more different in temperament and nature. This Radagast The Brown-like proto-hippy, lived on wild honey and herbs (that is, he was a vegetarian), detested violence, and was an animal friend whose companion was a wolf he’d tamed as a cub. Wherever Yadol found Hurmanetar’s animal traps, he’d vandalise them and set free whatever animal was ensnared. This made Hurmanetar mad. He tried in vain to hunt down Yadol but just ended up fatigued; so much so that he was repulsed by the next band of wayfarers he attempted to rob and ended up being struck in the leg by a couple of arrows. I’m going to suggest, a bit later in this installment, that Yadol plays the part of Hurmanetar’s conscience in this story. The wrecking of the animal traps is the conscience prodding the baser man, and Hurmanetar’s later continually hankering after Yadol’s company is a metaphor for the good part of ourselves that longs to be at one with what our consciences are saying.
Hurmanetar’s wounds became infected and he would have died but Yadol’s wolf found him, brought his master, and the good Samaritan nursed Hurmanetar’s wounds and fed him until he recovered his strength. The two men became companions and lived together in a cave, but it was a bit awkward because Yadol was a strict veggie tree-hugger while Hurmanetar liked his meat and seems to have slipped back into his old ways of robbing passers-by for anything nice they had about them. Again, this I liken to our trying to become better people – it’s not an easy journey and there are bound to be at least some slip-ups along the road.
Eventually, tales of this wild-man bandit came to the ears of the king who became intrigued and organised an expedition to take Hurmanetar alive. Knowing that Hurmanetar’s bush-craft skills would be too much for his hunters alone, the king took the advice of one of his wise men and sent a temple-prostitute, one Hesurta, along with them so that they could use her feminine wiles as a lure. Arriving at a watering-hole in the mountains, the hunters had the woman strip off and sit siren-like by the waters. Sure enough, Hurmanetar, who was unskilled in the ways of love and lust, fell for it. He and Hesurta had a fine old time but the hunters were unable to spring their trap because there was no opportunity to take the mountain man unawares.
What Hurmanetar didn’t realise was that lying with the prostitute had made him impure in Yadol’s eyes so the proto-hippy had made himself scarce when Hurmanetar tried to return to the cave. Neither Yadol’s wolf nor any other animal would go anywhere near the defiled man while he remained unpurified. After searching for his mate for a day and a half, Hurmanetar returned to the prostitute. She worked him over with her love-expertise for 3 days and then suggested Hurmanetar return with her to the city where, she said, the king would honour him and that she, herself, would become his servant. But Hurmanetar was not so sure. Remembering his former time in the city, he countered that the king was a proud, arrogant man, who practised droit du seigneur, or the right to sleep with the bride of a newly wed couple on the wedding night. But, playing on Hurmanetar’s manly pride and talking up the delights and pleasures of the city big time, Hesurta, convinced him to return with her.
Just as Hesurta had promised, the king acted favourably towards Hurmanetar. The former mountain man became a city man; drinking booze, anointed with unguents, dressed in fine robes. He was given servants and even became Captain of the Guards. Meanwhile, Hesurta, having carried out her task, was given golden bracelets and sent back to the temple, but Hurmanetar missed her and went to seek her out. It appeared, however, that the gold had turned the other temple women against Hesurta and she’d been driven out, and ended up as a wharf-side whore, which was where Hurmanetar eventually found her and took her back to his own home. That, as it turned out, was a bad move because living with a harlot was considered bad form and everyone turned against the two of them, finally forcing the pair to quit the city for a farming life outside its walls.
By now, Hesurta, thoroughly in love with Hurmanetar, had moved on from her old life as a prostitute and, seeing the sadness in his eyes, suggested he return to the mountains to seek out Yadol while she waited for him in the farming community. Hermanetar went, but he took Hesurta with him. Still avoided by beast and bird, they searched in vain for Yadol. Their wanderings took them to a city where the chief man was about to get married. Received as guests, Hurmanetar got drunk and passed out. While he was comatose, another man, recognising Hesurta as a prostitute, offered her money for sex, and then, when she refused, tried to take her by force, at which point she killed him with a knife.
Hurmanetar and Hesurta were put on trial. In an attempt to save Hesurta’s life, Hurmanetar claimed her for his wife, but she failed on account of the fact that, since leaving the protection of the prostitute-temple and taking up with Hurmanetar, seven years had not passed. The punishment was horrible. Hesurta was strangled with a cord then strapped back-to-back with Hurmanetar. He was then forced to carry the body around within the ‘Enclosure of Death’ for seven whole days. Not very nice at all. If he survived that, which he did, he would be given three handfuls of corn and a gourd of water and set free. Escaping the irate relatives of the slain man, Hurmanetar eventually wound up at the very Game-of-Thrones sounding Temple of the Seven Illuminated Ones which must be the same as the Temple of the Seven Enlightened Ones which was the one in which, if we recall from the previous passage, Hurmanetar’s mother, Nintursu, came from.
The temple had fallen into decay but Nintursu still dwelt there along with one old servant woman. Hurmanetar stayed there for a further two years but he was always thinking about Yadol and eventually went off to look again for his old mate. This time around, he found Yadol within half a day. Funny that, but Yadol explains that he wasn’t able to reveal himself on the previous occasions Hurmanetar had sought him (even though he knew he was being tracked) because of the defiling presence of the harlot, Hesurta. Anyway, they made up and returned to the temple where they lived for a time disguised as priests and being mentored by Hurmanetar’s mum.
Now, I’m going to butt in on the narrative for a few seconds here and suggest that, although Yadol’s behaviour seems a tad extreme, especially by modern day standards, we have to understand that we are looking at allegory here. Hurmanetar is the human sullied by ‘earthiness’ which he must throw off – or be rid of – before he can approach the pureness of advanced being which is represented by Yadol and his vegetarianism and animal whispering and so on. It’s just another way of articulating the familiar trope of refinement to spiritual betterment familiar through parallels like the alchemists’ turning base metals to gold and other metaphors of a similar kind.
So, Nintursu, Hurmanetar’s mum, it turns out, is none other than the last line of King Sisuda, he who had commissioned the Flood-surviving ark 100 generations before. The Kolbrin now brings in a little temporal perspective by telling us where we are in history (from this passage’s own perspective of course). We are, it says, at a point 10,000 generations from the initial arising of humanity (The Kolbrin says that a single human lifespan used to be 20 years but is now 70 years, however doesn’t say if that changed suddenly or over time, so it’s impossible to hazard a guess what 10,000 generations pans out to in actual years). The Children of God and Children of Men we read about in earlier chapters have all gone, and only Men remain. It’s been 100 generations since the ‘Great Deluge’ which, I am assuming, was the one involving King Sisuda and the Ark of the Noah-like Hanok. The next comment, though is puzzling, and deserves a little investigation, because it concerns ‘The Destroyer’. The Kolbrin says ‘One hundred generations had passed since the overwhelming deluge and ten generations since The Destroyer last appeared.’ BUT, in the passage on Hanok and Sisuda, we were told that The Destroyer either immediately heralded or was directly responsible for the Great Flood (Eh? What?) and, way back in the earlier books, we were told that The Destroyer wrecks civilisation only once every 104 Great Years which we worked out to be 5,408 normal years. So what’s this new information all about then?
Well, we can, of course, simply suggest that The Kolbrin is a load of cobbled together old hokum and not to be taken seriously. If, however, we want to be a tad more charitable, we might put it down to a copyist’s error (which, I’m afraid, happens an awfully lot more often than you’d think where it concerns ancient texts). Or we can throw all caution to the wind and take the comment here in this passage at face value. Now, if we do opt to take it at face value, the emphasis must be on the word appeared; that is, the author of this passage is saying that The Destroyer’s appearance in Earth’s skies once every 5,404 years does not always bring it close enough to do any (or much) damage. Only when its orbit (which would have to vary) reaches a certain extreme does it approach Earth closely enough to cause the damage it is blamed for in The Kolbrin. So, assuming a human generation to be at the higher end of the scale (70 years) when this passage was written, it seems to be telling us that The Great Flood (with its attendant Destroyer) occurred 7000 years previously and the last appearance of the Destroyer occurred 700 years previously. Apart from the time discrepancy of nearly 1000 years (6300 years minus 5404) between the two accounts of The Destroyer’s appearance – but, again, let’s be charitable and say the difference is due to human life spans being shorter the further back in history we go – the scribe, here, seems to be implying that the last visit of The Destroyer some 700 years prior to the events described in this passage, did not result in the downfall of civilisation. Of course, if the scribe is not equating a human life-span with a ‘generation’ then these calculations are meaningless and the timing becomes even more difficult to calculate, but the point I am making is this: It is highly likely that The Destroyer is a comet whose trajectory brings it dangerously close to Earth. It’s obviously not Halley’s comet because, even though that celestial object’s trajectory can vary, and bits and pieces of it occasionally break off and go spinning out through space, it reappears every 76 odd years. No, The Destroyer is more likely something along the lines of the Hale-Bopp comet which last visited Earth in 1997. Although not officially confirmed, that comet is due to return to the inner solar system in around 4,300 years time. What is rather disconcerting about heavenly bodies of this type is that their orbits are vulnerable to deflection by too close encounters with larger objects: for instance Hale-Bopp’s trajectory is thought to have been altered by a close fly-by with Jupiter in around 2215 BC. Considering the comet’s nucleus is 60 km in diameter, that’s one hell of a lot of destructive potential whizzing around the Sun in a negotiable orbit.
Back to the narrative, and this little, but important, paragraph also tells us that the One God whom humanity originally worshiped had got completely hacked off and withdrawn so that He/She/It could only be discerned through considerable effort on mankind’s behalf. And then there’s another, really cryptic, but important little comment slipped in as if it’s an aside. Although, writes the scribe, humanity had now turned to an uncountable number of alternative gods, something which he calls the Great Key or the Great Key of Life was still kept guarded at the Temple of the Seven Illuminated Ones. It is described as a ‘secret thing, something exceedingly great’ and it was something which, during his stay there, was given into the keeping of Hurmanetar. The scribe then goes on to say that this Great Key was not subsequently lost but had come down to, and was known in, his own times.
Hmmm . . . all very interesting. So what was or is this Great Key of Life? A physical object, some esoteric device to open the gateway to a higher consciousness and understanding of being? Or something less tangible, like a secret stream of knowledge? The Kolbrin lets on a bit more about this mysterious object or concept later on in the work, but, for now, I’ll leave it up to you to have a think about it.
Back to the story of Hurmanetar and Yadol: One day a stranger, desperately seeking help, chanced on the Temple of the Seven Illuminated Ones. It transpired that the bad king of the great city was going to practise his right of droit du seigneur and have first go at the poor old traveler’s betrothed on his forthcoming wedding night. The king could only be challenged in this respect by ‘one sanctified’. Stand up Hurmanetar! Our hero refused to accept any reward for doing the right thing, summoned his mate, Yadol, and headed back to the big city with the traveler. Having been sanctified, Hurmanetar ‘claimed the protection of Erakir’ (his god, presumably) and then they all offered prayers in ‘the antechamber between Heaven and Earth’. Whether this place was a physical construction or the metaphorical realm of heightened spiritual awareness is not made clear, but it may, conceivably, be a space (whether physical or metaphorical) Hurmanetar had access to thanks to the Key of Life.
There seems to have been a strict ritual connected with the droit du seigneur because, when the time came, the King walked past the new husband who was supposed to wait in an antechamber while the King had his way with the new bride in the bedroom next door. It’s the type of behaviour to really make the modern person’s blood boil. To the King’s consternation, however, Hurmaneter was standing there, blocking his way at the door to the bedroom, with his right hand on the pillar and in his left, some reeds (only in this pose, apparently could he legitimately challenge the King). The King was allowed one champion before he, himself, had to fight, so he chose his Captain of the Guard who, despite being an accomplished warrior, had a weakness that Hurmanetar remembered from his previous time in the city. Hurmanetar slew this guy by stabbing up into his left armpit. Next came the King. He and Hurmanetar were pretty evenly matched and had an almighty stausch. Having smashed each others weapons and shields to smithereens, they went for it unarmed but it appears that when a contest reached that stage, neither was permitted to actually kill the other. Hurmanetar eventually slam-dunked the King to the floor, breaking his breastbone and ending the fight. He then handed the right to the new bride over to her husband and, because everything had been performed according to ritual, Hurmanetar and Yadol were allowed to depart unharmed. Their deed, however, meant that the country was now closed to them, so they departed – again, messiah-like on asses – on ‘the way of Anhu’ (whatever or wherever that is).
The two of them crossed the plains to the ‘stream of bitter waters’ (Dead Sea?) and came by Machur ‘close by the forest of Cedars’ (modern Lebanon?) and that’s where they stayed. In this place, too, was a temple to a being called Humbanwara the Guardian. And that’s where we have to leave Hurmanetar and Yadol for the time being. The next passage deals with the death of Yadol but we’ll get there when we come to it.
So, what do we make of all that? Well, for starters I guess we can say that the story (and a good ‘un it was) is all about the trials and tribulations and coming to holiness of a Great One. Hurmanetar, if we remember, started off well when young but then, after he was sent to the city (and cities have always been metaphors for soul-polluting places) he went to the bad for a while as a bandit. He seems to have retained a kind of honour because he tried to do right by the prostitute, Hesurta, but it was only when he ‘reunited’ with Yadol who appears to play the part of Hurmanetar’s conscience/higher self and found a kind of guru in his mother that he fully took up the arms of righteousness. His refusal to accept any reward for helping out the husband-to-be shows he had overcome his desire for material reward (i.e. his banditry) and his difficult defeat of the King (who is earlier portrayed as an ‘equal’ to Hurmanetar) is probably symbolic of Hurmanetar overcoming his baser self and instincts (epitomised by the droit du seigneur) after a serious struggle. I’d even suggest that the symbolic final overthrow of the King happened when Hurmanetar was stripped naked of all outside encumberments (his baggage in life). Simply put, Hurmanetar and the King were two halves of the same person vying for supremacy, a contest that the more righteous half (Hurmanetar) finally won but only after a big battle and after he was in continual contact with his conscience (Yadol) and had been guided by a guru (his mother) to a higher and more stable level of consciousness (the Key to Life). You could even stretch it further and suggest that the fact the King was vanquished but, importantly, not killed, is a warning that one’s baser self remains lurking there in the background, which is why it is important that, once your better self has gained the mastery, you distance yourself as far from your ugly side as you can (as Hurmanetar did by journeying far away). Or perhaps I’ve just read too much into a ripping yarn.
The self-help aspects contained in this passage are pretty good ones. Surmounting the odds to find your spirituality is what this passage is all about. If you can somehow find the strength to struggle through all the crap life throws at you, it is possible to find your equilibrium and get back on track. Just like with Hurmanetar, the system will often be against you, and it’s an unfortunate fact of life that you’ll always come up against greater and lesser people, and both good and bad types of both to boot. But if you stay true to your conscience and take good advice when it’s offered, you can move on to a new future. Just keep calm, carry on, and back yourself to pull through.
I hope to see you in the next installment of The Kolbrin.
