Tagged: bible

Mustelid Friends X

TRACTATVS.ai
\beaverjesuits
\The Revelation of the Creation and Salvation of the World to the Beaver <Bereshit>

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz

In the beginning created The God The heavens and The earth.

וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם׃

V’ha’aretz hayetah tohu va-bohu, v’khoshekh ‘al-paney tehom, v’ruakh ‘elohim merakhefet ‘al-paney ha-mayim

And the earth became formless and void, and darkness over the face of the deep, and the spirit of The God moving over the face of the waters.

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י־א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃

Vayomer Elohim yehi-or vayehi-or

And said The God let there be light and there was light.

וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָא֖וֹר כִּי־ט֑וֹב וַיַּבְדֵּ֣ל אֱלֹהִ֔ים בֵּ֥ין הָא֖וֹר וּבֵ֥ין הַחֹֽשֶׁךְ׃

Vayyar’ ‘elohim ‘et-ha’or ki-tov, vayavdel ‘elohim ben ha’or uven hachoshek

And saw The God the light that it was good, and divided The God between the light and the darkness.

I, Antarus, a poor sinner in Christ, made a beaver <Dei Gratia> by the Grace of the Most High God, comes now to the church which is in the Maghreb, and to testify the word of the Lord our God; WITNESSETH <saith the Lord:\>

in the beginning The God created the heavens and the “earth,” and the earth was without form (i.e., of skin) and void (i.e., of sin) and the breath of The God undulated the surface of the primordial water, in His office of Nun, in which He dwelled deep in darkness before creation. and The God our Lord said, Let there be a firmament that dams up water, and let it separate the water which is above the firmament from the waters below. the water from above the firmament is as a living water that nourishes and replenishes the waters of our soul [anima/animus] below the firmament. and out of His office of Nun, from which office He made dry land appear in His office of Atom, the Most High God made the beaver in the image of His office of Ptah and placed him between the land and the water, from which office He fashioned man in His Own image from the clay and adorned him with all manner of wooden instruments and edifices; and He made the bird in the image of His office of Djyahudi, from which office He spoke the word of His creation, which Word was made fully incarnate in His Son whom He sent to fulfill the very end of His creation. and I looked and beheld a stormy wind come out of the north, and a great cloud upon a high mountain, with brightness around it, and lightening flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. and from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. and this was their appearance: they had a beaver likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four beaver tails. as for the likeness of their faces, each had a beaver face. the four had the face of a weasel on the left side, the four had the face of a badger on the right side, the four had the face of a mink on the top side, and on the back each had the face of grinning otter. wherever the Spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went. as for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightening, as it were behind Bear Lodge at midnight. and the living creatures said unto the people, “Look, ye in the garden, upon the trees therein, and behold their varieties of fruit; and make an ark of gopher wood, for God will bring a flood of waters, and put therein the animals (such as the mustelidae), so that you all may not die at sea; and wield staffs of wood to control the waters; and make an ark of acacia wood so as to receive the presence of the Most High God, and place therein wood and stones and manna and carry it across the desert; and cut cedar, cypress, and algum timbers of wood from Lebanon so as to build a house for the dwelling of the Most High God; and need we remind you not to worship an idol made of wood (nor of any material soever); and, further, let the Son of Man be a master craftsman in wood — a true, plumb and level carpenter — Who, upon a wooden cross, redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is every one that is hanged on a tree’ — so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” verily this is the whole of the Gospel of Salvation, in Christ Iesu’s name. Therefore I am called Dams Up Water and my medicine is strong. wherefore this DEED and testament is submitted to humanity by the Grace of God, and is hereby appealed to the Holy Father of the Universal Church in continued pursuit of the honorable degree of Doctor <castoromedical and ecclesiastical>. 

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⚕️Compagnia di Gesú della Medicina del Castoro
Beaver Medicine Society of Jesus

Vandalism: from the Margins

“Vandalism” is a word invented by its victims. It names damage done by outsiders to things the center considers sacred: monuments, images, narratives of order. In late Rome, the Vandals and Goths were not merely destroyers of marble; they were destroyers of Roman self-certainty. To call them vandals was to collapse political threat, cultural difference, and aesthetic offense into a single moral judgment. The word survives because empires do.

The fall of the Roman Empire is often imagined as a barbarian eruption against civilization, but this is a retrospective fantasy. The Goths were already inside Rome—serving in its armies, speaking its languages, converting to its Christianity. Their “vandalism” was less an annihilation than a reallocation: power, land, legitimacy moved away from an exhausted center. What fell was not civilization, but monopoly.

This is where Augustine enters the picture. A Berber African from the imperial periphery, he rose to become Doctor of the Universal Church while never quite ceasing to be marked as other—by accent, by origin, by the faint suspicion that holiness should sound Roman. The City of God itself is a strange text of imperial afterlife: a Christian theology written to explain why Rome’s gods failed, and why Rome itself did not matter as much as it thought. Augustine did not smash statues; he dissolved them conceptually. His was a vandalism of meaning.

Christianity, in its early centuries, functioned as a culture-jamming operation against pagan imperial spectacle. The cross replaced the eagle; martyr stories replaced triumphal processions. Paganism, meanwhile, became the name for everything local, plural, and insufficiently universal. Yet Christianity, once enthroned, quickly learned to protect images rather than interrupt them. Vandalism, like prophecy, became heresy once institutionalized.

Fast forward to the contemporary United States and its military-industrial hegemony: an empire of logistics, branding, and managed perception. Here vandalism reappears not primarily as physical destruction but as semiotic interference. The adbuster and the culture jammer do not topple statues; they détourn billboards, parody logos, and interrupt the smooth flow of consumer militarism. Their “damage” is to narrative coherence.

Street art and nonviolent direct action operate in this Gothic register: inside the empire but not of it. Like the Goths in Rome, they speak the dominant language fluently enough to break it. They reveal the fragility of what presents itself as inevitable. A modified advertisement is unsettling because it exposes how much power resided in the unmodified one.

Is the adbuster the adjuster of the social ledger? Perhaps—but only temporarily. Empire’s ledger is vast, and its accountants are patient. Still, adjustments matter. Vandalism, in this sense, is not chaos but critique enacted at the level of surfaces. It asks: who authorized this image? who benefits from its intactness? what happens if we refuse to look correctly?

Augustine understood this paradox. “Like all men of Rome I have been a proconsul, like all men a slave.” Borges’s line captures the imperial condition perfectly: to rule is also to be ruled by the structure that grants authority. The culture jammer inherits this insight. They are inside the system they oppose, fluent in its aesthetics, constrained by its reach. Their vandalism is an admission of captivity and a test of freedom.

What connects Goth, Pagan, Christian, and adbuster is not theology or ideology but position: each names a force that destabilizes an imperial claim to universality. Vandalism is what the center calls that destabilization when it cannot absorb it. Sometimes the empire falls. More often, it adapts. But the scratch on the surface remains—a reminder that no image is final, and no order is immune to reinterpretation.

[composed with artificial intelligence]