Cartography is a 52 week essay series mapping the interior life.
I was in a printing-house in Hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation. William Blake, “The Marriage Of Heaven & Hell”
In Paradise Lost, on his journey to the newly created world, Satan must have the gates to Hell opened for him by Sin, his daughter sprung from his head like Athena. She is a beautiful woman to her waist, below a writhing pile of serpents constantly giving birth to hounds. These are the result of her ongoing love affair with her formless son, Death, who is himself the product of Sin and Satan. Together, Sin & Death provide Satan passage out of his Hell.
When I was a child, Sin was to be feared because she carried with her Death.
When I was a child, a condemnation to an eternity of dark torment amounted to the only promise available to me.
So like the Devil, I sought to know my sins intimately.
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy. ibid
Pride
When I saw myself as something to be proud of, as a being of achievement, I could stand up straight. I had a position to stand and a fulcrum on which to move the world.
The world is a constantly humbling place; there should be a refuge, an oasis from all deserts.
Envy
My pride would not allow me to see myself as “less than”. There is nothing anyone has in this world that is out of my reach, by hook or by crook.
If a system frustrates me, then I will frustrate that system until I have what I want.
Greed
My pride and envy know the space of an empty cupboard. They remember hungry nights. I will always have enough for myself and those around me, at any cost.
Those who have always had enough do not know how important it is to have more than enough.
Wrath
I did not learn Wrath from my sins but from God himself. Wrath is a sword of gold to set the world right. Wrath is the construction of a Hell, the opening of a storm cloud for forty days. Wrath is the genocide of first born children in the name of a people’s liberation.
Given the chance, I would lock the doors to all the slaughterhouses and prisons of the world and set them ablaze with their stewards inside. This is an unequivocal moral good.
Lust
Through the satisfaction of my desires, I refine my desires. I transmute them from fire into action. The generative force of my desire lets me shape the world again; the refinement of my desire lets me refine the world.
Pursuit of any desire will give birth. It may not be the birth you dreamed of, but that’s why lust refuels itself.
Gluttony
The world has bounty enough for everyone, for every creature. My desires are endless and the world is endless as well.
A circle has no beginning and end. A cycle of intake and excrement, birth and death and rebirth, is not suffering, but a reconstitution.
Sloth
My rest is essential to start the cycle again. I remember the Sabbath is holy, but I do not count to seven the same way every time. I am proud of my rest; I am proud of my restoration. I will not be lessened by my recovery.
When I am slow, when I take my time instead of allowing time to take me, I have carved out my place in eternity.
The Angel hearing this became almost blue, but mastering himself he grew yellow, and at last white-pink and smiling, and then replied: “Thou idolater, is not God One? and is not He visible in Jesus Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given His sanction to the law of ten commandments? and are not all other men fools, sinners, and nothings?”
The Devil answered: “Bray a fool in a mortar with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him. If Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love Him in the greatest degree. Now hear how He has given His sanction to the law of ten commandments. Did He not mock at the Sabbath, and so mock the Sabbath’s God? murder those who were murdered because of Him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery, steal the labour of others to support Him? bear false witness when He omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when He prayed for His disciples, and when He bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.” ibid.
When we love our Sin, we can leave the hells built for us. When we love ourselves, we are the masters of our own resurrections.