Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The last child was a boy of nearly three—his parents had prayed that the years had passed when he might be taken—and he was old enough to understand what was happening, so with frightened eyes he drew back from the priests, and when they lifted him to the god he screamed, trying to hold on to the stone fingers and save himself, but the priests pulled away his small, clutching hands, and with a violent push sent him tumbling into the flaming mouth.

As soon as the boy had disappeared, wailing in fiery smoke, the mood of the temple changed. The god Melak was forgotten; his fires were allowed to die down and his priests turned to other important matters. Drums resumed their beat—this time in livelier rhythms—and trumpets sounded. The people of Makor, satisfied that their new god would protect them, left him smoking by the monoliths and gathered about the steps of the temple itself, where a sense of excitement replaced the terror that had recently held sway. Even the mothers of the eight boys, numb with pain, were moved into new positions, and although they must have longed to flee that place and grieve in silence, they were required as patronesses who had pleased the god with their first-born to remain in locations of honor. They were permitted neither to comment nor to look away, for this was the tradition of their society and would be forever.

When a community like Makor dedicated itself to a god of death like Melak and to a goddess of life like Astarte, the believers entered unknowingly upon a pair of spirals which spun them upward or downward—as one judged the matter—to rites that were bound to become ever more bizarre. For example, during the long centuries when the town confined itself to worshiping the original monolith El, the priests were satisfied if the town praised its god with libations of oil or food set out on wooden trays, for the inherent nature of El was such that he demanded only modest honors. And, when the three additional monoliths were added, their natures required no extraordinary honors; as for the humble baals of the olive grove and oil press, they were satisfied with simple rites: a kiss, a wreath of flowers draped over the pillar, or a genuflection.

But when the god Melak was imported from the coastal cities of the north, a new problem arose. The citizens of Makor were eager to adopt him, partly because his demands upon them were severe, as if this proved his power, and partly because they had grown somewhat contemptuous of their local gods precisely because they were not demanding. Melak, with his fiery celebrations, had not been forced upon the town; the town had sought him out as the fulfillment of a felt need, and the more demanding he became, the more they respected him. No recent logic in Makor was so persuasive as that of the priests after the destruction of the town: “You were content to give damaged sons to Melak and in return he gave you damaged protection.” Equally acceptable was the progression whereby Melak’s appetite had expanded from the blood of a pigeon to the burning of a dead sheep to the immolation of living children, for with each extension of his appetite he became more powerful and therefore more pleasing to the people he tyrannized. What he might next require in way of sacrifice no one could predict, least of all the priests, for when the new demands were announced they would not be something forced down upon the people by the priests: they would be rites insisted upon by the people, who within limits received the kinds of gods they were able to imagine.

Furthermore, the cult of human sacrifice was of itself not abominable, nor did it lead to the brutalization of society: lives were lost which could have been otherwise utilized, but the matter ended in death and excessive numbers were not killed, nor did the rites in which they died contaminate the mind. In fact, there was something grave and stately in the picture of a father willing to sacrifice his first-born son as his ultimate gift for the salvation of a community; and in later years, not far from Makor, one of the world’s great religions would be founded upon the spiritual idealization of such a sacrifice as the central, culminating act of faith. At Makor it was not death that corrupted, but life.

For in the case of Astarte things were different. To begin with, she was a much older deity than fiery Melak and perhaps even older than El himself, for when the first farmer planted wheat intentionally he bound himself like a slave to the concept of fertility. Without the aid of some god to fructify the earth the farmer was powerless. It was not what he did that insured prosperity, but what the god chose to do; and it required only a moment’s reflection to convince men that the force behind fertility must be feminine. Even the crudest representation of the female form could be recognized as a symbol of fertility: her feet were planted in the soil; her legs carried the receptacle into which the seed must be placed; her swelling womb reflected the growth that occurred in the dark earth; her breasts were the rains that nurtured the fields; her bright smile was the sun that warmed the world; and her flowing hair was the cool breeze that kept the land from parching. Once men took the cultivation of their fields seriously the worship of such a goddess was inevitable. In principle it was a gentle religion, paralleling man’s most profound experience, regeneration through the mystery of sex. The concept of man and goddess working hand in hand in the population of the world and in the feeding of it was one of the notable philosophical discoveries, both ennobling and productive; of only a few religious patterns could this be said.

But ingrained in this enchanting concept was a spiral more swift and sickening than any which operated in the case of Melak, the god of death. The homage that Astarte demanded was so persuasive, so gentle in its simplicity, that all were eager to participate. Once a goddess guaranteed a town’s fertility, certain rites became inevitable: flowers rich with pollen were placed before her, white pigeons were released and then lambs which had finished weaning. Beautiful women who wanted children but were denied them came to seek her intervention, and maidens who were to be wed gathered to dance seductively before her. Her rites were especially attractive because they were conducted by the fairest citizens of the town and the strongest farmers. A spell of beauty encased the goddess: she saw only the largest bunches of grapes, the most golden barley, and when the drums beat for her their rhythms were not martial. The spiral of Astarte was a succession of the loveliest things man knows, except that any sensible man could see where it must end, for once Makor gave itself over to worshiping the principle of fertility it became inevitable that the rites must finally be celebrated in the only logical way. And sooner or later the citizens would insist that this be done publicly. It was neither the priests nor the girls nor the men involved who demanded these demoralizing public rites: it was the people, and the inevitability of this sickening spin was about to be demonstrated anew in the person of Urbaal the farmer, who had just offered his first-born to the flames and who would, in any normal society, have been burdened with grief, as his wife was at that moment.

But in Makor, Urbaal switched easily, almost with joy, from death to life, waiting for the next celebration which had been cunningly arranged by the priests for that purpose. With mounting excitement he listened as the drums beat joyously, accompanied by a flurry of trumpets which brought the music to a vivid crescendo. It was halted by a priest who came from the temple, raising his arms above his head and crying, “After death comes life. After mourning, joy.”

A group of singers, including both old men and young girls, began chanting happily of the seasons through which the year passes. Their words spoke of growth and the fertility of animals which abided in the fields. It was a song as pristine in thought as one could have devised and it summarized in ideal form the basic elements of the fertility rites: man was able to live because the earth and things thereon increased, and anything that spurred this increase was automatically good.