“At what precise moment does an individual cease to be the person he—and everyone else—believes himself to be? Answer: at the moment when an individual becomes conscious that he has been trapped in a paradox of identity and there is no way out for him as long as he believes himself to be something he is not.” – Thomas Ligotti
The silver-tongued Mr. Reed invites two Mormon missionaries (Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton) into his home where he proceeds to question them about their faith. His ploy appears to entrap the young women through a series of deceptions, all along giving them the false impression that they are free to leave his house at anytime they wish. Things don’t go as planned and only Paxton gets out alive. Yet she is not the same naïve person that entered the premises upon her escape. She had to face and overcome her fear of the unknown in order to break from the constraints of her paradox.
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Once outside, a butterfly seemingly lands on her hand. She is completely entranced with the insect, even though it’s not possible for it to be outdoors during the dead of winter. Her hallucination means the world to her, partly because the butterfly symbolizes her loved ones. Now upon closer inspection such serendipitous encounters are but our brains way of manufacturing illusions that keep us comfortably numb to a much larger simulation at play. Tis absolutely amazing what the human animal will do for the sake of control.
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Lies for life or what underlies our life can be likened to a series of compartmentalized rooms in the basement of a house containing histories (or his stories) that help us to conceptualize the world. These old metaphysical constructs largely go unnoticed for the majority of us and yet we paint our existence with its colourful palette. For example, here in the ‘continental world’ most of us have become secularists; i.e., we no longer subscribe to some blueberry pie in the sky. God is dead and we have killed him said Nietzsche. But that doesn’t mean that these centuries-old-beliefs have simply vanished; in fact, they are still here, resting under the cover of silence. We have stored it away in the lowest, darkest dungeons of our mind. Even the sternest of atheists call out to him while on their death beds like wounded soldiers writhing on a blood filled battlefield.
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It’s not my intent to get you down on your knees in the way Mr. Reed tried to conform the missionaries, even though some intellectual humility may be required at some point in your life if you want to truly give your house a good old fashion sweeping with the sort of straw broom that only a witch can muster. Oh no, my satin laced knotted cord would keep your beauty intact, so what is the catch; why did Sister Paxton walk through a series of rooms filled with occult symbols in Mr. Reed’s basement; was it simply a matter of creating an ambiance of dread or did it interject a more significant yet subtle clue.
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The story in question doesn’t spell it out, unless of course it was meant for a chosen few, which is in essence an overarching feature of the occult. Jesus himself had his own inner circle with teachings that could only be understood by his closest disciples. Why do these religious figures feel the need to keep their tenets shrouded in mystery; alas, many of the Christian Heretics couldn’t breathe the air long enough to tell the tale. Either way, Mr. Reed anticipated that Sister Paxton would walk through these rooms to discover several docile women locked up in cages, none of whom even pleaded to be released. It was in this dank and dreary chamber that Paxton realized why she was trapped:
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“Because you wanted me to know, that the only reason I am standing here, right now, is because it is exactly where you want me to be standing. [It is as though Paxton is speaking to God himself.] There is not a single moment of this evening that you didn’t orchestrate. I’m not here because I chose to be, I’m here because you made me choose to be. Because you believe the one true religion is… control.”
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It is because of this desire for control that anyone of us is here to begin with. For the longest time we believed that some almighty God especially chose us to be here, that all the dominion, power and glory belonged to him and him alone, and only by his special elect that he could be approached and understood. Our manmade invention of Godhood is no different from Sister Paxton’s fabrication of a butterfly, which is a meaningful symbol of sorts but more or less a contrivance to cope with the existential dread that abounds. We humans, all too humans, have carved out a bubble-reality that doesn’t belong here and neither can it last without imploding, or perhaps exploding if Chomsky got it right.
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Our self-perpetuating lies for life or that which underlies our existence has no intrinsic-value or innate-meaning except for what we imbue and/or impose from our prideful and prejudicial corner of the universe, so the longer we go without expunging what lies deadly still in the dark recesses of our psychology; i.e., what fetters us to our unchangeable past and prevents us from overcoming ourselves, the more slimy we become as human creatures. Only the heretic gets to walk away from it all, but not necessarily intact, whereas the believer keeps himself imprisoned in the beliefs that he so rightfully defends.
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Religion, or more accurately, re-legend, keeps us enamored with re-living the same old story without end amen. It keeps man ensnared in his past, rigidly held into a well spun cast. Orthodoxy in a seashell, submerged in a Holy See, generating a ‘lowly me’, plus one God in three, all wrapped up with a bowtie they call a mystery. Bewitched with an inflated and unintelligible faith. “So they trust in the deity of the Old Testament, an incontinent dotard who soiled Himself and the universe with His corruption, a low-budget divinity passing itself off as the genuine article. (Ask the Gnostics.) They trust in Jesus Christ, a historical cipher stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster out of parts robbed from the graves of messiahs dead and buried—a savior on a stick.”
– Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror
