The Persian King covered himself with the mantle of Light, of Ahura Mazda. The Christian Church will cover itself with the mantle of reborn Osiris. Both have to lie continually to deny that they’ve put the mantles over machinery and to keep the mantles from slipping off.

The fire that spews out of Leviathan’s jaws is a stolen fire. It is stolen from those who come to burn the monster. Neither lives nor fire are freely given to the monster; both fall into it as a trap, and once inside they try to find a way out, to burn their way out.

The reign of Octavian Augustus the first Emperor of Rome is not a time of first things but of last things, it is not dawn but dusk. It is the time when the fourth beast, the beast with great iron teeth and ten horns, has already devoured the whole earth, has already tread it down, has already broken it in pieces.

O ye hypocrites, ye discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

We will be trained. We will see the colossal architectural monuments rising up in the metropolis and will think they are beautiful, they are the signs of the times. We will hear the demented outcries of the idol-worshipers abandoning themselves to uncontrolled orgies and will think they are an abomination.

But there’s sorcery in the air, for suddenly the orgies grow beautiful and the architectural monuments turn into abominations.

Anatolians once abandoned themselves to Cybele, Earth, mother of all Life. Greeks of Anatolia and Acheae once took part in orgies around Earth’s daughter Demeter, the Grain that sprouts yearly from Cybele’s womb, and around Persephone, Earth’s granddaughter who caught and cradled the seeds in the nether world. The dance with Cybele and her brood was all that was real to them, all that had meaning. When the Greeks hurled themselves into war and commerce they tried to forget Cybele, but they still remembered her son the spear thrower and her daughter the huntress with the arrows, and they built shrines to Cybele’s grandchildren, and they ornamented the shrines.

Roman legions carried off Greek builders and ornamentors, and now shrines rise up in Rome — but look closely: the ornamented shrines rising in Rome are not shrines to Cybele or to any of her grandchildren. Cybele’s daughter Ceres-Demeter is remembered in Rome only by slaves, and not well remembered even by them. The copies rising up in Rome, copies on a colossal, intimidating scale, are absolutely empty. They are not shrines. They are nothing but monuments to the victories of Rome’s legions, colossal monuments to colossal massacres. Rome’s architecture is a celebration of human sacrifice. It is an abomination.

Roman celebrants of Death are raising their abominations in every provincial capital from the Nile to the Ebro. But the plazas in front of the rising monuments are becoming desolate. Only dead souls stay in the vicinity of the abominations and only bribes and circuses keep even the dead souls from abandoning the plazas. Living people are withdrawing. They sense in their guts that “This generation shall not pass.”

On the Nile, people rush into their Temples to protect their gods from Roman architecture. It is a wonder there are still people in Egypt with such strength in them. They were bent by the weight of Persian tribute, emaciated by the burden of Greek Ptolemy’s plunder, utterly destroyed when Roman generals grabbed all that was left and sent it to Rome. They have abandoned fields that were fertilized by the Nile since before the first Pharaoh, and rather than forcing the Nile to feed Rome, they are letting the fields revert to sand. Once the world’s envy for their wealth of grain, they are beggars now; they barely eat.

Yet here they come, carrying dead Isis and her twin Osiris and the twin’s double Serapis out of the Temples. It is the first time those stifled gods have been out in fresh air since the first wall was built around them.

And then the emaciated beggars perform a feat that seems superhuman for people in their condition. They begin to dance around the dead gods, they go on dancing, and the dance itself seems to give them strength, for they stop feeling the exhaustion and the misery, they feel weightless and free. And the eyes of the calf-like Isis seem to come alive, and her nostrils seem to breathe — surely this is a delusion; the goddess has been dead for a hundred and twenty generations.

Delusion or not, others who are less emaciated also see the gleam and feel the breath. Roman soldiers weighed down by their armors rush into the Temples that have not yet been turned into architecture, and they too rush out carrying Isis, Osiris and Serapis into the fresh air.

The soldiers carry the Egyptian deities to every region where Roman legions march, to every region from which soldiers are recruited; North Africa, Gaul, Italy itself, Greece, Anatolia, the Levant.

And everywhere people recognize in Isis their own abandoned past, their golden age. And they too withdraw from the architectural monuments, they too abandon the plazas, they too join the circles of dancers and feel strength returning to their limbs and meaning to their minds. They discover beauty far from the architectural wonders which are places of desolation.

Can ye discern the signs of the times?

Isis is neither an idol nor a cult, and she is not a stranger to any of the people who welcome her. Wherever she is carried, the people recognize her as Earth, abandoned and betrayed Earth, the mother and the daughter, the soil and the grain. The recognition brings people alive, and their life brings her alive.

It Italy Isis is recognized as Earth’s daughter Ceres — we will still call her Cereal, but we will be trained to think farmers or agricultural zeks make the grain; some of us will think machines make it.

In Greece and Anatolia, Isis is recognized as Cybele’s daughter Demeter, and her twin brother Osiris or Serapis is obviously and alter-ego of Demeter’s daughter Persephone, the one who went underground, the one Demeter tries to bring back up.

And of course Isis is familiar to everyone on the Levant, even in Judaea. She’s the one the fleeing Israelites danced around as soon as they reached the desert — until Moses chained them to his Law.

The reborn Osiris is also familiar on the Levant: he’s the Babylonian Tammuz, the Anatolian Attis, the Greek Adonis. He rises every spring and descends every fall. He’s all vegetation.

Just as new vegetation rises every spring, the dancers will rise renewed after the long night. They know this because they feel it in their limbs as they dance. A vanished strength is in their emaciated limbs. It is a strength which will vanquish all of Rome’s legions.

Soldiers themselves are removing their armor. Those who don’t find Osiris in Egypt find Mithras on the borders of Parthia, and they carry Mithra to every part of the realm. This Mithra was a minor light at the time of Zarathustra, but ever since Darius seized and extinguished the light of Ahura Mazda, people have been seeking the one who still carries the light. The Roman soldiers call him Mithras, the reborn, the carrier of Ahura Mazda’s light. They take him as far as the British Isles. In many places Mithra merges with Osiris. Those who celebrate with Mithra acquire the fire with which to bring the new dawn.

Soldiers overthow their commanders; at times they desert in mass. Peasants leave their lands untilled in order to keep food from Roman tax gatherers. Urban people move to the country so as to avoid all participation in official activities. The well-known Jewish dropouts called Essenes stay away from Roman as well as Judean burdens and obligations.

The forms vary. The withdrawal is vast and it keeps on growing. We would call it a generalized resistance with revolutionary overtones.

Unlike the first Persians, these resistors are not storming the Leviathan from outside. They are insiders; many but not all are zeks. Unlike the Israelites in Egypt, these resistors are not heading to a place outside, for they think there is no outside; the fourth beast has devoured the whole earth. Unlike Moses, these resistors are removing their armor before the great event, so as not to find themselves in the desert with nothing inside them but another Leviathan. Rome reveals all of Leviathan’s qualities, and none are preparing to walk into a fifth beast’s jaws. This is communicate in many ways; one way is: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Whatever else “the kingdom of heaven” may mean, it does not mean Babylon, Persia, Rome, nor any other Leviathan. And it does not mean Death — not yet. An ode quoted by Turner says,

And I became like the land which blossoms and rejoices in its fruits.

People are joyous, not because their end is at hand, but because its end is at hand. They’re joyous because the new day will bring something as different from Leviathan as day is from night. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” for the living, and as a living paradise, an Eden, a golden age, a community of free human beings in harmony with Isis and Osiris and all of Cybele’s children: plants as well as wolves, birds and fish as well as insects. Such a “kingdom” is a new dawn; it is the end of His-story, the end of Leviathanic time.

Furthermore, people are not waiting for the dawn. They are dancing already. They are recovering the lost community before the last day. They’ve stopped recognizing distinctions between masters and slaves; “neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things in common” as the later Book will say. They’ve started sharing while in the Leviathan’s entrails. Sharing is the heart of the lost community. It is antithetical to Leviathan’s very existence, as Shang Yang knew so well. By having all things in common, the resistors are melting the beast from within its entrails.