VALGARS

Valgars, Part 3 of 91, 3rd of LIL. Zodiacal King: Alpudus. Ministers: 5362. Mundane association: Mesopotamia.

7/19/1994 1:10 p.m.

Recited the Call for LIL and invoked VALGARS by the power of the zodiacal king Alpudus.

The vision opened with an image of the glyph of Pisces as in the previous vision. The glyph was colored a deep ocean blue. Immediately the crossbar of the glyph broke in two places, close to the curves. The remaining part of the bar contracted to a dot between the two curves, the parts of the bar still connected to the curves were absorbed into them.

The two curves rotated about their centers so that their lower ends came together. For a moment a half-moon seemed to grow off of the top of the right-hand curve, so that the whole figure seemed like an Enochian letter “B”. The dot between the curves became a diamond. But the half-moon quickly disappeared and the figure turned blood-red, becoming the glyph of Aries.

The glyph tilted away from me and moved away at the same time. From below an image of the Earth came into view, and the glyph descended, coming to rest with its two arms conjunct with the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The dot between the arms marked the location of Baghdad – actually slightly north and west of there; perhaps ancient Babylon. The point where the arms met did not quite touch the Persian Gulf; it ended in the marshes where the two rivers meet.

The view descended towards the Earth, and I saw that it was indeed Babylon that was depicted. The region surrounding the city was green with growing crops and grassland; not the dry waste of current-day Iraq. Across the river to the west I could see forested hills.

The city was enclosed in a long wall, save for a short stretch of the river bank near the center of one wall. This gap did not seem to be deliberate, but rather the result of erosion undermining the wall. Within there seemed to be a smaller area with high walls as well; perhaps the area of the palace and main temples.

Now the viewpoint rotated around the city to the eastern gate. A long thoroughfare extended west to an unfinished ziggurat. I saw people moving down the avenue towards me; they passed through the gate and dispersed to the four directions.

The Voice spoke:

“The tower you see is of course the so-called Tower of Babel. And the people are dispersing as was said in the biblical myth. But it was not the hand of God which produced this effect, except indirectly, through the power of the Part governing this region. The symbolism of the Tower is of course the symbolism of Mars, ruler of Aries. And it is the characteristics of the sign and its ruler that are here represented in one aspect.

“You know of course that Aries represents the initial outpouring of force that begins any project, any work of creativity. It is the force that overcomes the inertia of matter and moves it into a different state. But this force is short of duration; it gives out quickly, burns itself up. If the work of creation were to continue, it would need to be imbued with the longer-lasting force of Habit or Custom, which maintain the new state. But that is to be seen elsewhere, not here.

“What is shown here is the illusory unity provided by the imposition of force upon disparate, chaotic elements each having their own unique nature. Such unity never lasts; as soon as the force is exhausted, or directed towards a different goal, then it dissolves into its initial elements again. This is as we said in the previous Part, here manifested in its actuality.

“The various cities of the lands between the two rivers at times tried to impose their rule on their surroundings by force. Their rulers sensed in their minds the nature of the power of this Part, and attempted to manifest it. But such rulership was not natural to the area, was imposed upon a pre-existing “culture” in which smaller specialized settlements coexisted in a complex network of trade.

“In this earlier culture, the specializations of each town depended upon the resources available in their area. One being close to clay deposits would engage in the manufacture of pots and bowls. Another having flint would make cutting and digging tools. Yet another might have timber, or medicinal plants, fertile grain-growing lands, or grasslands for cattle. Each of these would make the most of its local resources and trade along the network for the other items they needed.

“This is not unlike the current-day state of the world economy, though in miniature. And the failure of the imposed rulerships of the great cities gives a lesson that might be learned today.

“The early centralized rulerships were initially accepted for the same reason that every government since has been accepted. It seemed advantageous to the people of the towns to give over a portion of their production in exchange for protection from the larger losses to criminals and raiders along the trade routes. But once the principle of centralized rule was accepted, things rapidly went downhill.

“The rulers must draw more and more on the productivity of the towns in order to widen their rule. The wider the borders of the kingdom, the larger the portion of production that must be spent on defense and internal regulation. This is simple geometry. Eventually the point of diminishing returns is passed; the rulers can no longer take enough resources out of the economy to maintain their rule. The hardship for those from whom it is taken increases until they are no longer willing to support the “national” government, and the system collapses.

“In the Babel incident, it is this failure of resources that is the true cause of the disruption. The craftsmen who were building the tower were drawn from many peoples in the area, each of them with their own customs and variation on the regional speech. When the rulers could no longer pay for their services, they perceived this as a sign of divine disfavor; their confidence in the communal project was lost, ethnic tensions increased, and finally they left to return to their home towns.

“This is the failure of every government that seeks to rule by force, from ancient Uruk and Ur to the present day. In those earlier cases, the process was sometimes advanced by deterioration of the climate, or – more commonly – by the failure of crops upon which the city-dwellers were dependent.

“The region of the Earth governed by Valgars shows this tendency with particular emphasis. One after another came conquering rulers; many of them inspired by the imaginary “glory” of the memory of their predecessors. The early cities, the Babylonians, Assyrians, the Baghdad of ancient times and the present, all have sought to rule and each has fallen back into chaos when their power was no longer sufficient to the task. Over and over the same story is replayed. Even now, the ruler of Iraq perceives himself as the incarnation of an ancient Assyrian ruler, dazzled by the vision of restoring ancient glories even as his nation is rent asunder around him.

“Like the flow of the two great rivers, the power of this Part seems mighty in its beginning and continuation, but in the end it collapses into chaos; as the two rivers become lost in the great marshes of their combined delta. When their waters finally reach the sea, they get there through a myriad of tortuous channels, not in the great unified flow that their beginnings promised. And so it ends, always.

“Now we would like for you to continue with these visions; it seems to us that you would be doing a service thereby. But be not concerned if there be interruptions, hiatuses in the work. For this is necessarily a long-term project, and it is certain that other tasks and opportunities will come between at times. Do what thou will, when thou will, and we will be accessible to you. We are done, for today.”

I thanked the Voice for its presentation, and ended the vision.

Seer's comments:

This completes the Parts attributed to LIL. It is too early to speculate on the complete course to be presented, but some obvious connections can be made between these three parts.

First, all three deal in some way with the chaos or disorder that precedes the initiation of a creative act – and which may well be stimulated by the first inflow of creative force. There is an increasing constraint upon the unorganized materia as the visions progress: Occodon defines outer boundaries, Pascomb organizes the content of those boundaries into conflicting elements, Valgars shows the first attempts to bring the materia into conformance with a creative will.

Second, each vision deals with a region that is (loosely speaking) bounded by water on two sides. Egypt by Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, Syria (mundane equivalent of Pascomb) by the Euphrates and Jordan, and Mesopotamia by the Euphrates and Tigris. The repetitive occurrence of opposed curves in the astrological glyphs is probably connected with this.

I get the sense that the “failure of government” theme of the three visions is a reflection of the fall from unity embodied in the Call of the Aethyrs. Were we taking the Parts in the reverse sequence, (as Crowley did with the Aethyrs themselves) it may be that these parts would show the final return to unity in the divine.

The presence of Babylon in the third vision is odd, since Babylon has its own Part later on in the series (number 80, Mathula). The region named Mesopotamia in Liber Scientia is called Upper Mesopotamia today. I suspect that whatever beings were the Voice of this vision were simply using it as a convenient substitute for the city of Sargon the Great, who created the first empire with a true centralized government in upper Mesopotamia circa 2500 BC, and whose empire ended 160 years later in much the way described. The latter name was apparently buried too deep in the silt of my unconscious mind to be dredged up on short notice; it popped into awareness about fifteen minutes after the vision ended.