John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"In Heav'n's name, Henry, what are these riddles thou'rt flooding me with?"

"Anon, anon," Burlingame said. "Your H portrays the same happy union of two into one: 'tis the zodiac sign for Gemini; the bridge 'twixt the twin pillars of light and dark, love and learning, or what have you; 'tis also the eighth letter, and inasmuch as 8 is the mystic mark of redemption (by virtue of its copulating circles), 'tis no surprise that H is the emblem of atonement — the making of two into one."

"Again this mystery of twos and ones!" the poet protested.

" 'Tis no mystery when you know about I and O," said Burlingame. "In every land and time folk have maintained that what we see as two are the fallen halves of some ancient one — that night and day, Heaven and Earth, or man and woman were long since severed by their sinful natures, and that not till Kingdom Come will the fallen twain be a blessed one. 'Tis this lies 'neath the tale of Eve and Adam, and Plato's fable, and the fall of Lucifer, and Heav'n knows how many other lovely lies; 'tis this the Lord Himself refers to, in the second epistle of Pope Clement: He declares His Kingdom shall come When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female. Thus all men reverence the act of fornication as portraying the fruitful union of opposites: the Heavenly Twins embraced; the Two as One!"

Ebenezer shivered.

"Your I and O are plainly then discovered," Burlingame said with a smile: "the one is male, the other female; together they are the great god Io of Egypt, the ring on the maidens' merry Maypole, the acorn in its cup, the circumcised prepuce of the Jew, the genital letters P and Q — and the silver seal ring Anna slipped upon your finger in the post-house!"

"I'God!"

"As for the others, your M is the twin mountain breasts I spoke of; S is the copulation of twin C's face to face, and is sprung as well from the sacred Z; W - the double-vow, as M is the double-we — W, I say, is a pair of Vs sack a sack: 'tis thus the sign of the Heavenly Twins of India, called Virtrahana, and the third part of the Druids' invocation to their god, the whole of which was I.O.W. X, like A and H, is the joining of Two into One, and as such hath been venerated since long ere the murther of Christ; Z is the zigzag lightning flash of Zeus, or whatever god you please, and is ofttimes flanked, in ancient emblems, by the circles of the Heavenly Twins — "

"Enough!" the poet cried. "This dizzies me! What is the message of't, and what hath it to do with Anna and me?"

"Why, naught in the world," Burlingame responded, "save to show you how deep in the marrow of man runs this fear and reverence for twins, and their connection with coitus and the weather. All over Africa the birth of twins is followed by dances of the lewdest sort: sometimes 'tis thought to prove the mother an adultress, since husbands generally get one babe at a time; other folk think the mother hath been swived by the Holy Spirit, or that the father hath an inordinate lingam. In sundry isles of the western ocean 'tis common for the salvages to throw coffee beans at the walls of a house where twins are born; they believe that otherwise one must die, inasmuch as twins break the laws of chastity while still embraced in their mother's womb! In divers lands no living twins can be found, for the reason that one is always slain at birth; but murthered or not, they are worshipped in every place, and have been since time out of mind. The old Egyptians had their Taues and Taouis, the twins of Serapeum at Memphis, as well as the sisters Tathautis and Taebis, the ibis-wardens of Thebes; in India reigned Yama and Yami, and the holy Asvins I spoke of earlier, that drew the Heavenly Chariot; the Persians worshipped Ahriman and Ormuz; the ancient myths of the Hebrews tell of Huz and Buz, Huppim and Muppim, Gog and Magog, and Bne and Baroq, to say naught of Esau and Jacob, Cain and Abel — or as the Mohammedans have it, Cain and Alcimand Abel and Jumella — "

"Ah!" Ebenezer exclaimed.

"Some held," Burlingame went on, "that Lucifer and Michael were twins, as are most gods of Light and Darkness; and for the selfsame cause the old Edessans of Mesopotamia, who erst had worshipped Monim and Aziz, were wont to regard e'en Jesus and Judas as hatched from a single egg!"

"Incredible!"

"No more than that God and Satan themselves — "

"I don't believe it!" Ebenezer protested.

" 'Tis not a question of your belief," laughed Burlingame, "but of the fact that other wights think it true; 'tis but a retelling of the tale of Set and Horus, or Typhon and Osiris, whom some Egyptians took for twins and others merely for rivals. But I was coming to the Greeks. ."

"You may pass o'er them," sighed the poet. "I know of Castor and Pollux, the sons of light and thunder, and as well of Helen and Clytemnestra, that were hatched with 'em from Leda's eggs."

"Then you must know too of Lynceus and Idas, that slew the Dioscuri; of Amphion and Zethus, that sacked and rebuilt Troy; of Heracles and Iphikles, that are twins in this tale and half-brothers in that, and of Hesper and Phosphor, the morning and evening stars."

"And now you'll go to Rome, I'll wager, and speak of Romulus and Remus?"

"Aye," said Burlingame, "to say naught of Picumnus and Pilumnus, or Mutumnus and Tutumnus. 'Twas the great respect accorded these classic twins that carried them into the Christian Church, which had the good sense to canonize 'em. Hence the Greek and Roman Catholics pray to Saints Romolo and Remo, Saints Kastoulos and Polyeuctes, and e'en St. Dioscoros; the fonder amongst them go yet farther and regard as twins Saints Crispin and Crispian, Florus and Laurus, Marcus and Marcellianus, Protasius and Gervasius — "

"A surfeit!" cried the poet. "There is a surfeit!"

"You have not heard the best," Burlingame insisted. "They will hold Saints John and James to be twins as well, and e'en Saints Jude and Thomas, inasmuch as Thomas means 'a twin'. I'll not trouble you with Tryphona and Tryphosa, that Paul salutes in's Epistle to the Romans, but turn instead to the Aryan heroes Baltram and Sintram, or Cautes and Cautopates, and the northern tales of Sieglinde and Siegmunde, the incestuous parents of Siegfried, or Baldur, the Norseman's spirit of Light, and his enemy, dark Loki, that slew him with a branch of mistletoe!"

" 'Tis a hemisphere o'erridden with godly twins!" Ebenezer marveled.

Burlingame smiled. "Yet it wants twin hemispheres to make a whole: when Anna and I turned our eyes to westward, we found in the relations of the Spanish and English adventurers no less a profusion of Heavenly Twins, revered by sundry salvages; and the logs of divers voyages to the Pacific and Indian Oceans were no different. Old Cortez, when he raped the glorious Aztecs, found them worshipping Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, as their neighbors reverenced Hun-hun-ahpu and Vukub-hun-ahpu. Pizarro and his cohorts, had they been curious enough to ask, would have found in the southern pantheon such twins as Pachakamak and Wichoma, Apocatequil and Piquerao, Tamendonare and Arikute, Karu and Rairu, Tiri and Karu, Keri and Kame. Why, I myself, enquiring here and there among the Indians of these parts, have learnt from the Algonkians that they reverence Menabozho and Chokanipok, and from the Naked Indians of the north that they pray to Juskeha and Tawiskara. From the Jesuit missionaries I have learnt of a nation called the Zuñi, that worship Ahaiyuta and Matsailema; of another called Navaho, that worship Tobadizini and Nayenezkani; of another called Maidu, that worship Pemsanto and Onkoito; of another called Kwakiutl, that worship Kanigyilak and Nemokois; of another called Awikeno, that worship Mamasalanik and Noakaua — all of them twins. Moreover, there is in far Japan a band of hairy dwarfs that pray to the twins Shi-acha and Mo-acha, and amongst the gods of the southern ocean reign the great Si Adji Donda Hatahutan and his twin sister, Si Topi Radja Na Uasan. ."