Q4a. In Rick's exit scene (p. 178) he tells Cerebus "WE'LL see each other only once more after today" - goodbye. Cerebus says: "take good care of yourself." Rick tells Cerebus what he told Joanne: "Go to hell." Note that Rick say's "we'll" see each other - so Cerebus' vision of Rick in Going Home would NOT appear to satisfy this prophecy, or was Cerebus' vision interactive and Rick was seeing him too?
DAVE: Yes, it was interactive-they both saw each other.
Q4b: Was the statement "Go to hell" tantamount to a secondary curse, reminiscent of Astoria's final words for The Lion (i98), and Cerebus' final words for Weisshaupt (i76)?
DAVE: Yep. Those were the Big Three.
Q4c: The Lion of Serrea agreed he would go to Hell, and Weishaupt replied "I shall" - but Cerebus does not respond. Why would he be angry with Cerebus? Because he now saw Cerebus as a Godless heathen? Is it a reference back to his holding Cerebus responsible for his advice? Has Cerebus somehow died symbolically here to mirror the deaths of Weisshaupt and the Lion?
DAVE: This gets really complicated, but you DID ask, so here goes. He was angry with Cerebus because Cerebus "lied" about Jaka by saying that he was once married to her. Rick is pretty much in full prophet mode at this point, but Jaka is still really the only Achilles Heel that he has. He's still the only one that Jaka was ever married to and that perception of himself-as Jaka's only husband-is so central to his nature that he seriously snaps when Joanne tells him that Cerebus claimed to have been married to Jaka as well. Rick has developed this pristine "stained-glass-window" view of himself by this point that isn't accurate. It will be accurate but at this point it isn't. The appropriate God-fearing reaction to Joanne telling him about Cerebus and Jaka being married would've been "Cerebus wasn't married to the harlot" followed by "I am a follower of God, harlots don't concern me anymore." Instead the reaction was to see this as an intrinsically evil attack upon him and upon the core reality he still clung to (unbeknownst to himself) by Joanne and Cerebus. Which it wasn't. Not an intentional or conscious attack, anyway. To Joanne, Jaka was just a name. Joanne was just making conversation. Cerebus had no idea that Rick was going to turn up and that he would have to account for his treating the alternate reality I put him into as this reality. On the one hand Cerebus had experienced being married to Jaka, but no he had never actually married Jaka. But having this core attribute that his entire personality was hunched around-I was Jaka's only husband-wrenched away so casually hurtles Rick over to the "other side" and he comes up with this magic spell (which is clearly not "of God") that has suddenly thrust up from his unconscious awareness (his on-going proximity to Cerebus' magnifier nature and his own focus on larger doings having thrust him into the larger context that Cerebus' magnifier occupies). His impulse to lash out at and to hurt Cerebus as badly as he can for the way he thinks Cerebus has hurt him is the trigger and the Adversary, of course, is pleased to take advantage of it. Picture St. Francis of Assisi suddenly getting really steamed as a wounded boyfriend and inwardly calling for assistance from anyone to help him inflict a reciprocal wound. Presumably the Adversary would be tickled to death to oblige the request. This will be a "a good one" on God. And of course the God-fearing part of Rick would just shut down and submerge at the prospect of what the God-fearing nature knew he was about to do-"All that progress and now he's going to make use of a magic spell to hurt someone? Oy. Excuse me, I think I have to lie down until this is over."-even while his God-fearing nature would be looking at the long term likelihoods and the bright side that is probably going to result: Rick leaving the tavern from his God-fearing nature's point of view is a very, very good idea. Telling the harlot and Cerebus to go to hell is a very good idea. Assuming he can just cut and run and get away from Joanne and Cerebus, his God-fearing nature can "hatch out" unimpeded by them and their ungodly natures. Of course, Rick going over to the sinestram side that abruptly, it gets complicated, which I think happens to the Adversary a lot in those cases. You use Joanne and Cerebus against Rick and then suddenly Rick turns Aleister Crowley on you. As George says in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf "By God, you need a pig to show you where the truffles are." Who is on whose side?
At the core moment of the invocation: "Branch breaks branch/the one branch is now two/One branch is me/One branch is..." Well, obviously the word-Adversarially inspired-is intended to be "you". But Rick is supposed to be punishing Cerebus, wounding him. How does he accomplish that by making the two of them co-equal branches? The Adversary has over-played his/her/its hand and Rick's God-fearing nature asserts itself and breaks free of his unconscious choice which had been to call on the Adversary to help him hurt Cerebus and to break free of the Adversary's attempt to use that base desire to make Cerebus and Rick into one divided prophet, a broken branch. The God-fearing part of Rick, when he hesitates and sees the actual "you" he almost invoked surrenders control to God and God then moves the spell from infernal-two co-equal branches-to godly, the three (the Adversary) and the One (God) "For the three at the table/and the one at the door." Of course when the revised spell hatches out, the one at the door will end up being Jaka (the three at the table Marty, Bear and Harrison) so the Adversary, looking that far ahead, sees the trade-off God is offering him/her/it through Rick. Let Rick go and you can use Jaka to get Cerebus.
Is Jaka Cerebus' God? It's a bit of a stretch, but the Adversary has worked with less auspicious material. Rick has broken free of the idolatry and paganism inherent in the branch itself and, inadvertently, has thereby broken free of Jaka as well. She will be the one at the door, but he won't be there if the Adversary takes the bait God's offering. Rick is basically (through divine inspiration) giving Jaka to Cerebus, something he wouldn't consciously be able to do if he knew that that was what he was doing. God is making use of the fact that Rick is leaving and has severed his connection with Cerebus and Joanne and to make Jaka Cerebus' problem instead of Rick's. The trade-off for the Adversary is that he/she/it gets Cerebus potentially while losing Rick. Since the prophecies in the Book of Rick are about Cerebus, that seems like a fair trade. Let Rick go, and count on the fact that Jaka will lead Cerebus so far astray from a God-fearing life that the prophecies will never come true. What the Adversary forgets is that Rick has captured Cerebus or has captured the Adversary part within Cerebus-the Adversarial/pagan/Tarim-worshipping/he/she/it inside Rick's book. If the Adversary lets Rick go, the Adversary lets Rick's book go which means, if you're the Adversary, part of you is going with Rick one way or the other trapped inside his book by the spell, even while you have traded to stay with Cerebus. Essentially you have to allow yourself to be torn in half or one third/two thirds or one quarter three quarters. Which is God's joke on the Adversary knowing that he/she/it will forget that part in his/her/its eagerness to "get" Cerebus.
At the critical moment of separation-Cerebus inhabited by the Adversary is staying, Rick's book with the Adversary trapped inside it is leaving and Cerebus is enacting Bear's parting line of dialogue from Guys-"You take good care of yourself"-but a substantial part of what Cerebus considers to be him is already trapped in Rick's book and is pulling more of him out of him as the book is going away. The Adversary realizes this too late so when Cerebus starts to say "Take good care of yourself" he gets as far as "Take..." and the Adversary tries to change it into "Take Cerebus/Usss With You" as a means of avoiding getting divided. And as the futility of that becomes apparent it changes into "Take good care of Usss". Which is kind of funny if you have a really bizarre sense of humour that delights in so-esoteric-it's-verging-on-opaque-for-everyone-except-me things like this (which, obviously, I do). Rick will definitely take care of the Adversary but not the way the Adversary intends it. And of course, subsequently, Cerebus is severely diminished as we can see by his severe state of disorientation, the reduced size of his medallions and his inability to figure out if he should leave or stay. It becomes an opportune time for me to show up. This is the best he's ever going to be. He's missing a substantial evil part of himself which means at least potentially he can be filled with something good. If I can't get through to him this last time, Jaka is going to show up and he's going to have to go through that whole nightmare of a roller-coaster. Which, of course, is the choice he makes.
October 15 and October 26-29.
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| Uh...old pic, and I'll be back Saturday. You SHOULDN'T notice an interruption of service...as long as the plane doesn't crash... |
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