Babel

(Or, what I learned from Donoso Cortes)

There are two forms of society, and two cities in which all men who live now, have ever, or will ever live are divided. The first, is that Old city, Babylon the great, in which the Tower of that same name is built in perpetuum, so long that is, as the earth remains, with her seed-times and harvests, cold and heat, summers and winters, days and nights, unceasing. The other is that Immortal city, built without hands on the rubble of that statue crushed by a stone cut without hands, who’s builder and maker is God. The same was duly hailed by that greatest of that society's writers, “The City of God.”

These two societies are inimical, the one to the other, and until the heavens are rolled up as a quilt they do battle. Babel rises by the work of human hands, directed towards the aim of that Devilish creature Nimrod, a halfling by legend, the brood of fallen men and angels: in symbol the fusion of human will with diabolic reason, and in a modern name, ideology. As a tyrant, and the father of tyrants, Nimrod dictates that all his people be of the same language and tongue. He rolls over their created diversity with the iron rolling pin of that ideology, till all men speak the language of their Father: lies. This union of the human will, wrought by the sacrifice of their God-given reason, knows no opposition from any quarter under the sun, and in ancient days once summoned the Ancient of Days to oppose it, scattering men across the world, and, for a time, halting the progress of that demon will. In the process of time, the same God allowed that men should again form great societies, and by their means great civilizations.

Of a new tone, however, were these cities from Babel of old, and in great irony God did choose for the head of civilization, that same city for it’s birth. Unlike their levantine ancestors, they chose for their purpose a new ideal, one as yet unconscious in the beaten lines on that primordial bust, but taking glorious shape in the succeeding body. As a riddle slowly unfolding in the lines of a mystical poem, the great Kingdoms of the world grew from their golden head down towards the curious earth, which waited as it were, for what manner of thing would walk upon it when the whole had taken shape. As the man that emerged became in each progression more powerful, more enduring, one must imagine in the earth a building dread, and a new fear, slowly growing more concrete, of what the statue might do, when the final toe became concrete. Would the creature be human? Bearing all the faults of man but no more? Or would there enter his inanimate head of gold the mind of devils, as in the first creation?

The answer came slowly, in the ideal made manifest in the process of the new civilization: logos, or rational mind, as the ultimate nature of things. Rather than sacrificing his reason to idols as before, man had realized that the God of nature, though his name remained a mystery, was a creature of mind, reason, and logic. The pattern of their civilization was, as a result, rational, and the golden head was so for it’s recognition that above it stood not another power to be demoted, or an Olympus to be stormed by force, but a law to be obeyed by all, a Law coming not from the decree of kings, but the God of nature. That same Law had been revealed to a people, who for a time, were chosen to kept it secret and safe, from the eyes of Babel. In this spirit had Nebuchadnezzar been cast out of his kingdom for seven times as told by Daniel, a prophet from the Chosen, to live among the beasts, that he might learn that Law, the law of nature, and submit himself and all future kingdoms to it. For this reason was that statue allowed to do battle with the pagan rabble of the earth, crushing the worship of demons, and in replacement ordering a new practice for the magi of the earth, philosophy, the worship of the logos. The civilizations of the world were given each their season, to prepare the way for the Revelation of the Logos, and the birth of a Carpenter in the troubled province of Judea, land of the Chosen People, who to the eyes of a few fishermen and a tax collector stood taller, and more marvelous in His shortened life and brutal death, than all the kingdoms of the world had they been gathered together into a single fearsome ruler.

One of the fishermen, Cephas by name, a Rock cut without hands, sailed for the feet of that fearsome ruler, and in his death, and the deaths of his disciples, brought it’s reign to an end. For some centuries the world heard the sound of a great felling, in which lay an echo of that felled tree in the writings of Daniel, around the stump of which a great band of iron and brass had been formed. In the falling away of the iron and brass from beneath the head of gold,  civilization was brought down again by the Ancient of Days, and in its place something new took shape. Kings again walked the earth, manly and vicious like the kings of an older age. Yet, one by one, these great warriors laid down their swords at the feet of a fisherman, who walked in the sandals of one before him, who had first struck the kingdoms of the world a blow from which they would never recover, in recounting to them the words of a Man who had once said to him three times, “Simon Son of Jona, do you love Me,” and in reply, “Feed my lambs.” And so the Kingdom of Heaven grew, and filled the whole earth, not by blood and sword as had the kingdoms of the world, but by blood and sacrifice, by mission and martyrdom, by the standard of the Holy Cross, under which some men deemed all the tortures of this world a small price to pay for entry therein.

But the old city, Babylon the great, watched all these happenings, as an injured wolf watches its prey, awaiting the day it might run again, and charge out in fury to the hunt. The City of God grew through trials, and was strengthened by persecution. How could one mount an attack against so otherworldly a power? And in brooding contemplation it waited, and waited. For a time and half a time it gathered strength, and planned it’s revenge. When it’s time had come, it choose as it’s victim not the City of God itself, which it could not attack, protected as it was by the words of it’s Founder, “the gates of hell will not prevail…” Craftily rather, it chose the rubble on which the city had been build for it’s assault, the logos. For three centuries Babel rode out in force against the foundation of Christendom, with its devilish maxim, Cogito, ergo Sum. Being comes not as a gift from the Mind of God, but as a realization of the mind of man. All things therefore, find their authority in this individual mind, and lest men be stirred by their minds to war, the Laws of God were learned to be placed to the side, subservient to the law of ‘tolerance,’ that deference given by the supreme individual to other supreme individuals, for none has the right to say to another, ‘you lie,’ and all in their hearts repeat the motto of Lucifer, ‘none shall be greater than ego, that infernal I.” And so Babel reigns, and the Tower grows, with uniform brick it's stone and subjects, and the slime of the earth its mortar and rulers, as the City of God stands cowering, fearful to speak those words most disdained by the ears of enlightened men, “The Church of God does solemnly declare and define…” And so we wait, as our language is stripped of meaning, and our words loose their distinctions, in anticipation of that day that the City of God does at last speak, at which time it’s voice will be heard to mankind as simply,

Babel, babel…