The Adversary

The Adversary

Far in the south, on the eastern shores of the Ireb, is a little known land. It lies in a narrow strip running east. Inotih it is named. It is not mountainous as Coricia, yet neither is it flat as the lands of the Hansa delta to the north. It is a land of hills and wild woods. Of trees silver barked and bright leaved. In the warm season the sun falls hard on the hilltops and in the cold season winds blow off the sea bringing rain and baring the branches of the forests and woods and keeping the small fishing boats tied to their harbour moorings. It is a land, its people say, where one is born to learn of one’s secret self, where dreamers wander and can dream their dreams how they will. In Inotih are the small villages one finds all along the western Curusü. Harbours and inlets and beaten pathways scatter the coast. The people of Inotih are great lovers of music and dance: a benefit for a wandering musician. As evening approaches they can be found congregating about a village square to sing and dance. They abandon themselves freely to rhythm and melody. For in Inotih rhythm and melody are as natural as the breeze that moves the leaves of the trees or the tide that breaks the waves upon the shore. It is the fate of the wanderer to leave to chance that which the settled take for granted. The wanderer wonders often where a night will be passed. There is the open road and there are the homes of others. There is arriving and the question that hangs over every arrival. What will a city, a village, a land bring? If the people of Inotih are lovers of music they are also a people that freely open their homes to those who pass through their country. Though little known this place is a reward to those who are persistent enough in their wanderings. It is spoken of with affection by any who have passed time among its people. It was there I met a man who offered me the sanctuary of his home. For upon my arrival I had begun to play my lute for those who gathered to listen. Its strings sang clear beneath the trees, its notes rose and fell as the first stars appeared over the hills. He came from among the onlookers. He was older than I in years: a serious and pensive man with close grey hair and a lined face. We sat often that summer, as evening fell, watching the sunset over a turquoise sea. It became pleasant to me so that I anticipated it with eagerness as the day drew to a close. My host was eloquent and spoke freely of his experience. Being an official he had travelled widely. In the course of his

service he had spent many years in the north. Finding in the colder climate, in the austerity of their beliefs unease, a contracting of life. One evening in particular he spoke of his beliefs. He had a subtlety of mind that has stayed with me since. “Here, in Inotih,” he said, his eyes growing warm, “we do not make of our gods one god. In Inotih the gods are in everything.” I asked him to explain. He told me the people of Inotih believe their gods are everywhere and in everything. There are gods of the forests and woods, gods of the sea, gods of music and dance, gods of the rocks and stones, of the running rivers. There are gods of love, of death, of birth and of transition. “We make a distinction,” he said, “between the greater gods and the lesser gods. And even the greater gods are not one. If you travel through our country you will see altars and temples everywhere and in simplicity. You will see too the altars and temples of the lesser gods. For they are no less loved by the people of this land.” “And,” he added, “what are the gods then but our dreams of ourselves. The gods are the dreams from which we spring and the dreams we become. If there is but one god there is but one dream. And perhaps there is but one dream and yet that dream is the dream of the many gods” He smiled and explained. “When I was in the north I had much opportunity to study the works of their thinkers. The thinkers of the north attribute great power to one they call the adversary. This adversary they claim has the legs of an animal and the torso of a man. And lurks everywhere. He is always ready to waylay the seeker of truth. This belief has gathered such weight with them that their lives are circumscribed by fear. To the adversary they attribute all the works of our lesser gods. So in the abandon of music, or the joy of dance they see not the work of light but a darkness that would keep them from truth. And they contemplate this grave fact until their hearts are heavy and sorrowful. Their contemplations lead them to see the world about them not as a thing of beauty but a thing that opposes them: a thing that opposes their search for truth. Then they come to fear it. They come to despise it. The world is not the playground of the gods but a place of darkness. It is the domain of the adversary.” The corners of his eyes wrinkled and he laughed softly. “I am not a philosopher. But I see that if there is an adversary in this world it is hate and it is fear. So the adversary these thinkers resist so greatly becomes a reality.” “And the people of Inotih,” I asked. I looked to the setting sun. Long shadows fell upon the hillside from which we looked. The sea broke darkly below us. “Ah,” he sighed dreamily. “In Inotih we favour a more subtle understanding. We do not take a blunt instrument to a thing of fineness. Beauty is everywhere, or so we believe.” “You do not believe in this being the adversary?” He leaned back. “No. But we do have one we represent with the torso of an animal, and that of a man. Only we do not name him the adversary. We do not assign to him powers of obstruction and evil intent. To us he is one of the lesser gods. He is the god of nature in its wildness and profusion: nature in the purity of its

untouched places. He is also the god of the sexual embrace: the god of our physical self. He is the god that takes pleasure in the body and the joy of giving pleasure to another. “Here in Inotih we do not distinguish between body and soul as the thinkers of the north do. For here we see the body as part of our dream of ourselves. It is the instrument through which we express our hidden self.” He stood that evening then he turned to me. In the last warm fingers of the sun his face was soft. “It is for this reason we dance,” he said. “This is the reason we love music and the visions of poets. For like the animals we must seek shelter and warmth and that too is part of our dream. Like the animals we are possessed of our instincts and it is through them we bring the longing of our spirits to fruition. Unlike the animals we are guided by spirit and reason. It is only when spirit and reason are clouded with anger, with fear that our instincts drive us and not we them. When the spirit is clouded our instincts are burdens that dull our being. The world about us contains the darkness of the blind self. The blind self, the clouded spirit is the true adversary. “In Inotih we dance, we embrace to forsake our fears. To discover the joy that softens all anger, all hatred. The joy that opens the eyes of the self.” I spent some time in Inotih waiting for the heat of summer to give way to autumn. Waiting for the trees to begin to turn. Then I took a boat that sailed south, crossing to Quryah. I sought the warmth of its islands and heard the whisper of its desert. As I sailed I remembered the words of the man of Inotih. I remembered the wisdom of those who acknowledge the lesser gods and so acknowledge the wisdom of the world about us. To step straight from darkness into full light would be to obliterate the self. It would be to destroy the same self that carries our dreams. The people of Inotih, lovers of music, of dance know this truth. And their affections are free and their hearts open. Their gods are everywhere and their dreams accompany them through life. When I reached Quryah that autumn I too understood this wisdom.

Copyright © Peter Millington 2006