The Lost Teachings of Zarathustra: Part 3

III. The Wedding Vows of Nietzsche to Zarathustra

(as inspired by Claudia Crawford's, "To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I Love You, Ariadne!")

Oh Zarathustra, thou canst not lead me wrong -- for thou art but the image of the Image which I long to attain, though it be never accomplished, and yet eternally accomplished. The Great Composer, Richard Wagner, never was a higher man! He had not crossed the Sea, else He would have known the dreadful secret of Dionysus and Apollo: that they are one. That Dionysus is nonetheless All that exists, Apollo being but the willed illusion, a falsehood that is truth only insofar as the inferior mechanism of language and Mind can understand it. Indeed, to be All Dionysus is not (to incur "madness"): to attach reality to Apollo is to admit a Solipsistic, Anthropomorphic Idealism upon the Universe, for which philosophical blundering even such geniuses as Kant become Idiots, and kneel to the God of NO.

I, Friedrich Nietzsche, do hereby take Zarathustra, the Boat of Mother-of-Pearl with which I shall ride across the Sea -- which some hath called the River of Amrit -- as my Bride. I do accept the eternal, immutable, and necessary existence of every veil of my Selves of not-my Self -- which, stripped of every veil, is the veil of a moniker which I have called Dionysus; that these veils, as eternal existences, must eternally relive their lives verbatim; that given a finite amount of energy in an infinite universe, all patterns, all beauty and all chaos, all growth and all putrefaction, all analysis and all synthesis, must recur -- eternally, senselessly, redundantly, vibrantly -- oh how orgastically!

That only having been slain by this true nature of the Universe can one actually accept the Eternal Recurrence in Heart -- for to do so means to Be Dionysus, nothing but Dionysus. For one knows better, and has experienced such, that none is other than Dionysus -- for how can anything exist save Infinity? (The vulgar call this "Love" when finite, and "God" when infinite. Like Set, I teach man to love beyond man; I had to kill "God" to teach them Love -- of the Higher Man). This, this is the Eternal Recurrence that I teach -- to will everything to recur again and again, eternally, to take Joy in this necessary complement to the existence of Life. This is the YES that I teach; it matters not if one says YES or NO; the Eternal Recurrence will go on anyway -- but just as one can be annoyed at being startled by music or rather take Joy in its Beauty -- to share this Doctrine with my fellow companions, those who are fit to eradicate Nihilism and man in the name of Affirming that which is yet to come -- in themselves and in society -- to them do I leave this gift -- my Death."

But Zarathustra could no longer get his "point" across via the monstrosity of language, and the hopelessly limited filter of human reason. For The Birth of Tragedy was the birth of Nietzsche the writer, whilst Zarathustra is Nietzsche's Magnum Opus; and thus necessarily his dissolution, or "Death," and the Becoming of Zarathustra (who strove for Dionysus via the Formulae of the Eternal Recurrence.) It might also be noted that Wagner and the Serpent play identical functions for Nietzsche. (This Serpent is also Apollo, being "Father Wisdom".) However, by the time Nietzsche has wed Zarathustra, they must be left behind. Dionysus of The Birth of Tragedy is a doctrine so powerful that all Apollonian images of Him are necessarily destroyed in that Great Fire which the Phoenix kindleth for itself.

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