In A Gadda Da VidaThe reason I said Daniel Peterson was more akin to Isocrates than Socrates is fairly clear, or so I thought Jaxon. Socrates was an intensely religious man who also happened to be brilliant while Isocrates was merely a competent technician of language. Socrates was trying to help us understand our true natures while Isocrates was merely interested in persuading us of this proposition or that one. Daniel was uninspired. An anatomically correct man without a religious bone in his body, who excelled at the common day to day duties required of academic bureaucracy. What gift did he leave us Mormons with? Did he use his considerable abilities with language to render us a clever or grand translation of Islamic wisdom? Where is his careful meditation on the human condition seasoned with his familiarity of Neoplatonism? Did he create something of worth or did he merely and unfaithfully masticate the labor of others only to condescendly regurgitate it for a crowd of admirers in Sandy Utah? We should always take care Jaxon about what issues forth from our many orifices because that is what defiles and not what is ingested.
Of course I sound bitter Jaxon, that was the point. I was not the Iscariot as is claimed, I was the one who was betrayed! Ohhh Jaxon, if you had asked me if I reckoned Daniel a Socrates or an Isocrates the morning I left for my Cassius Orientation I surely would have given you a much different account. The world was much different then and I was a different man. [FRAGMENTARY]
One always needs a guide Jaxon. To refuse a master is a refusal to be instructed and so one who refuses to submit in all things will find themselves disqualified. It may seem harsh but the obstinate will suffer the same fate as Pentheus if their hardened hearts cannot be replaced by ones of flesh. Knowledge is a gift from the Divine and we all need a guide in our journey to that knowledge. Are you familiar with Genesis 28 Jaxon? No? BYU has changed. Don’t bother looking it up, I can simply tell you about it.
Isaac summons his son Jacob and commands him to visit the house of an Aramean by the name of Bethuel, a relative of theirs, to find a wife. Jacob was not to take a Canaanite woman as a wife and then Isaac blessed him and sent him on his way. During his travels Jacob stops at a particular site to sleep and props his head up with a rock and is soon dreaming. What Jacob saw in his dream was a ladder with one end here on earth and the other end leading to heaven, and he saw angelic beings going up and down the ladder. Jacob suddenly realizes that Jehovah was standing over him who identified himself as Elohim of Abraham and Elohim of Isaac his father. Jehovah more or less repeats the blessing that Isaac spoke at the start of his journey, but adds that he will not abandon his promise to Abraham which now includes Jacob. When Jacob awakens he is quite disturbed and he says aloud...let me see if I can still remember how the King James puts it:
How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
Check to see if my memory holds true. Excellent Jaxon! Well I had to utter those exact words to Daniel before the sun made its appearance on the day I was to leave for Cassius. What if I told you there was ladder to the Empyrean in Utah? I’ll give you a hint, it is within the zipcode of 84102. I suppose “ladder” is actually incorrect, the word being translated is a hapax legomenon afterall. It means that the word occurs only once in the Hebrew text Jaxon. I will tell you this though [CENSORED] thought that it should be translated as “ramp” instead and that the language of this particular passage was more in keeping with a Mesopotamian ziggurat.
So like Jacob I was to be a traveler, a true liminal being. A week prior I had been given a piece of limestone which I was put next to my head every night before going to sleep. On the sixth night I bed down before a free standing arch and shortly after midnight I was awoken by a figure wearing a white suit with an animal mask hiding his visage. White shoes, white slacks, white shirt, and a white dinner jacket, though I cannot say what animal in particular the mask was. When I got to my feet I was treated to a lesson about the arch, but I must warn you I cannot divulge the true substance of the lesson for I am bound by a most sacred oath to keep this knowledge a secret. I can, however, provide a summary of the less important aspects of those divine doctrines.
You see Jaxon the church is the church. Except when it is not. Knowing the difference is what divides the common folk from the more cunning folk. The Brethren often speak in soft tones when they address the keys of the priesthood and when the Brethren do so many millions of Mormons think of the famous iconography of Peter holding keys, the kind that are made to go into locks. Ah, but what if what is really being referenced is keystones? Yes indeed and the keystone of that particular arch was very large. I wonder even now how many people travel to that arch and don’t notice that keystone held aloft by seven stones on each side.
Do you find that number significant Jaxon? You should. There are seven days in a week. Our music is composed in heptatonic scale. Elohim and Jehovah resting on the seventh day. Joshua and the Israelite army marched around Jericho for seven days in the company of seven priests with seven trumpets, and on the seventh day they circled seven times and shouted. That is what Daniel did. Clothed in white he circled me six times in a clockwise fashion and then once counterclockwise before removing his mask in a flourish.
Even though it was a new moon, his cherubic face was shining to me. Though this was a momentous moment for me. For us. He still managed to have an impish smirk as he begun to reveal to me all that I was to know. All that Nibley had meant us to know. Did you know that the Mopologist has a different canon of scripture than you? Their standard works includes a very curious text known in English as ‘The Ladder of Jacob’ that you would do well to acquaint yourself with. It is a particularly inspired piece of writing that adds important details to the dream Jacob had that evening at Bethel. If we could consult it, you’d have read that the “ladder” that Jacob saw had twelve steps to it and the arch where I fell asleep and woke under was just one of twelve stations I was to receive instruction that morning from more masked figures [FRAGMENTARY]
It was before that dreadful sphinx that I formally met the Old Man. Even those who were older than Gee still referred to him as Old Man. When Oedipus defeats the Sphinx the poor creature dives into the abyss, this symbolizes that the elements are not actually Gods, but powers to be mastered and harnessed by us. When one begins to understand the celestial evolution the material evolution of the scientist becomes a farce best performed by the puppets of the industrial-science complex. When that certain principle is learned and recited, the scales fall away from your third eye and the blindfold is removed. The 12th Apostle had removed his mask and it the was the Old Man with his trademark taciturn scowl. I can tell you honestly I was seized with terror as he advanced toward me to welcome me with the holy kiss and I could still find traces of him on my lips when I glanced in the rearview mirror to see the Salt Lake skyline growing smaller behind me. I was set apart by those who know and given a very special calling while I was studying at Cassius.
OIC MISSIVE # N/A
[FRAGMENTARY] The Welch estate has requested that all references to John Woodland Welch before censored from the records.