Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

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And so, my boy!

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“Now listen very attentively to the information concerning the Most Very Saintly, now already Common Cosmic Individual, Ashiata Shiemash and his activities connected with the existence of the three-brained beings arising and existing on that planet Earth which has taken your fancy.

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“I have already more than once told you, that by the All Most Gracious Command of Our OMNI-LOVING COMMON FATHER ENDLESSNESS, our Cosmic Highest Most Very Saintly Individuals sometimes actualize within the presence of some terrestrial three-brained being, a ‘definitized’ conception of a sacred Individual in order that he, having become a terrestrial being with such a presence, may there on the spot ‘orientate himself and give to the process of their ordinary being-existence such a corresponding new direction, thanks to which the already crystallized consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer, as well as the predispositions to such new crystallizations, might perhaps be removed from their presences.

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“It was seven centuries before the Babylonian events I have spoken of, that there was actualized in the planetary body of a three-brained being there a ‘definitized’ conception of a sacred Individual named Ashiata Shiemash, who became there in his turn a Messenger from Above, and who is now already one of the Highest Most Very Saintly common-cosmic Sacred Individuals.

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“Ashiata Shiemash had his conception in the planetary body of a boy of a poor family descended from what is called the ‘Sumerian Race,’ in a small place then called ‘Pispascana’ situated not far from Babylon.

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“He grew up and became a responsible being partly in this small place and partly in Babylon itself, which was at that time, although not yet magnificent, already a famous city.

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“The Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash was the only Messenger sent from Above to your planet who succeeded by His holy labors in creating on that planet conditions in which the existence of its unfortunate beings somewhat resembled for a certain time the existence of the three-brained beings of the other planets of our great Universe on which beings exist with the same possibilities; and He was also the first on that planet Earth, who for the mission preassigned to Him refused to employ for the three-brained beings of that planet the ordinary methods which had been established during centuries by all the other Messengers from Above.

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“The Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash taught nothing whatever to the ordinary three-brained beings of the Earth, nor did He preach anything to them, as was done before and after Him by all the Messengers sent there from Above with the same aim.

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“And in consequence chiefly of this, none of His teachings passed in any form from His contemporaries even to the third generation of ordinary beings there, not to mention the contemporary ordinary beings there.

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“Definite information relating to His Very Saintly Activities passed from generation to generation from the contemporaries of the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash to the beings of the following generations through those called there ‘initiates,’ by means of a certain what is called ‘Legominism’ of His deliberations under the title of ‘The Terror-of-the-Situation.’

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“In addition to this, there has survived from the period of His Very Saintly Activities and there still exists even till now, one of several what are called ‘marble tablets’ on which were engraved His ‘counsels’ and ‘commandments’ and ‘sayings’ to the beings contemporary with Him.

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“And at the present time this surviving tablet is the chief sacred relic of a small group of initiated beings there, called the ‘Brotherhood-Olbogmek,’ whose place of existence is situated in the middle of the continent Asia.

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“The name Olbogmek means, ‘There are not different religions, there is only one God.’

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“When I was personally on the surface of your planet for the last time, I happened by chance to become acquainted with the Legominism which transmits to the initiated men-beings of the planet Earth of remote generations these deliberations of the Saintly Ashiata Shiemash under the title of ‘The Terror-of-the-Situation.’

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“The Legominism was of great assistance to me in elucidating certain strange aspects of the psyche of these peculiar beings—just those strange aspects of their psyche which, with all my careful observations of them during tens of centuries, I had previously been unable to understand in any way whatsoever.”

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“My dear and beloved Grandfather, tell me, please, what does the word Legominism mean?” Hassein asked.

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“This word Legominism,” replied Beelzebub, “is given to one of the means existing there of transmitting from generation to generation information about certain events of long-past ages, through just those three-brained beings who are thought worthy to be and who are called initiates.

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“This means of transmitting information from generation to generation had been devised by the beings of the continent Atlantis. For your better understanding of the said means of transmitting information to beings of succeeding generations by means of a Legominism, I must here explain to you a little also about those beings there whom other beings called and call initiates.

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“In former times there on the planet Earth, this word was always used in one sense only; and the three-brained beings there who were called initiates were those who had acquired in their presences almost equal objective data which could be sensed by other beings.

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“But during the last two centuries this word has come to be used there now in two senses:

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“In one sense it is used for the same purpose as before, that is to say, those beings there are so named who became initiates thanks to their personal conscious labors and intentional sufferings; and thereby, as I have already told you, they acquire in themselves objective merits which can be sensed by other beings irrespective of brain-system, and which also evoke in others trust and respect.

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“In the other sense, those beings call each other by this name who belong to those what are called there ‘criminal gangs’ which in the said period have greatly multiplied there and whose members have as their chief aim to ‘steal’ from those around them only ‘essence-values.’

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“Under the pretence of following ‘supernatural’ or ‘mystic’ sciences, these criminal gangs there are really occupied, and very successfully, with this kind of plunder.

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“And so, any and every genuine member of such a gang there is called an initiate.

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“There are even ‘great-initiates’ among these terrestrial initiates, and these great-initiates especially at the present time, are made out of those ordinary initiates of new formation who in their ‘virtuoso-affairs’ pass, as is said there, through ‘fire-water-copper-pipes-and-even-through-all-the-roulette-halls-of-Monte-Carlo.’

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“Well then, my boy, Legominism is the name given to the successive transmission of information about long-past events which have occurred on the planet Earth from initiates to initiates of the first kind, that is, from really meritorious beings who have themselves received their information from similar meritorious beings.

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“For having invented this means of transmitting information, we must give the beings of the continent Atlantis their due; this means was indeed very wise and did indeed attain their aim.

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“This is the sole means by which information about certain events that proceeded in times long past has accurately reached the beings of remote later generations.

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“As for the information which passed from generation to generation through the ordinary mass of beings of that planet, it has either completely disappeared, having been soon forgotten, or there remains of it, as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin expresses it, only the ‘tail-and-mane-and-food-for-Scheherazade.’

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“Hence it is that when a few scraps of information about some event or other do happen to reach the beings of remote later generations, and the learned beings of new formation there concoct their ‘hotchpotch’ out of these scraps, there then occurs a most peculiar and most instructive ‘phenomenon’; namely, when the cockroaches there chance to hear what is in this hotchpotch, ‘the-evil-spirit-of-Saint-Vitus’ existing there immediately enters their common presences and begins to rage quite merrily.

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“How the contemporary learned beings of the planet Earth concoct their hotchpotch from scraps of information which reach them is very well defined in one of the wise sentences of our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin, which consists of the following words: ‘A flea exists in the World just for one thing—that when it sneezes, that deluge should occur with the description of which our learned beings love so much to busy themselves.’

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“I must tell you that when I used to exist among your favorites it was always difficult for me to refrain, as your favorites say, from ‘laughter,’ when one or another of the learned beings there delivered a ‘lecture’ or related to me personally about some past events, of which I had myself been an eyewitness.

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“These lectures or ‘stories’ there are crammed with fictions so absurd that even if our Arch-cunning Lucifer or his assistants tried to invent them, they could not succeed.”