Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

20 The Third Flight of Beelzebub to the Planet Earth

20.212

“Only much later the center of their common existence was formed on the southeastern shore of the sea; and this place they called the city Gob. This city became the chief place of existence for the head of this second group of beings of the continent Ashhark, whom they called ‘king.’

“The duties of this king were here also hereditary and this inheritance began with the first chosen chief, who was the said learned member of the learned society Akhaldan.

20.212-3

“At the time to which the tale I began refers, the king for the beings of that second group was the grandson of his great grandson, and his name was ‘Konuzion.’

20.213

“My latest detailed investigations and researches showed that there had been actualized by that same King Konuzion exceedingly wise and most beneficent measures for uprooting a terrifying evil which had arisen among the beings who by the will of Fate had become his subjects. And he had actualized these said most wise and beneficent measures for the following reason:

20.213

“This same King Konuzion once constated that the beings of his community were becoming less and less capable of work, and that crimes, robberies, and violence and many other such things as had never occurred before were on the increase among them, or, if they had occurred, had seemed to be quite exceptional phenomena.

20.213

“These constatations surprised and at the same time grieved King Konuzion, who after thinking deeply about it, decided to find out the causes of this sorrowful phenomenon.

20.213

“After long observations he finally cleared up for himself that the cause of the phenomenon was a new habit of the beings of his community, namely, their habit of chewing the seed of a plant then called ‘Gulgulian.’ This sur-planetary formation also arises on the planet Earth at the present time, and those of your favorites who consider themselves ‘educated’ call it ‘Papaveroon,’ but the ordinary beings simply call it the ‘poppy.’

“Here it must without fail be noticed that the beings of Maralpleicie then only had a passion for chewing those seeds of the mentioned surplanetary formation which had without fail to be gathered at the time of what is called ‘ripeness.’

20.213-4

“In the course of his further close observations and impartial investigations King Konuzion clearly understood that these seeds contained a ‘something’ that could completely change, for the time being, all the established habits of the psyche of those beings who introduced this something into themselves, with the result that they saw, understood, felt, sensed, and acted quite otherwise than they were previously accustomed to see, sense, act, and so on.

“For instance, a crow would appear to them to be a peacock; a trough of water, a sea; a harsh clatter, music; good will, enmity; insults, love; and so on and so forth.

20.214

“When King Konuzion became clearly convinced of all this, he immediately dispatched everywhere trusted and faithful subjects of his strictly to command in his name all beings of his community to cease chewing the seeds of the mentioned plant; he also arranged for the punishment and fine of those beings who should disobey this order.

20.214

“Thanks to these measures of his, the chewing of the said seeds seemed to diminish in the country of Maralpleicie; but after a very short time it was discovered that the number of those who chewed had only seemingly diminished; in reality, they were even more than before.

“Having understood this, the wise King Konuzion thereupon resolved to punish still more severely those who should continue chewing; and at the same time he strengthened the surveillance of his subjects and also the strictness of the enforcement of the punishment of the guilty.

“And he himself began going about everywhere in the city of Gob, personally examining the guilty and impressing them by various punishments, physical and moral.

20.215

“When the wise King Konuzion finally became quite convinced that it was not possible by the described measures to extirpate the passion for chewing the seeds of Gulgulian, and saw that the only result of his measures was the death of several who were punished, he abrogated all the measures he had previously taken and again began to think seriously about a search for some other real means for destroying this evil, lamentable for his community.

20.215

“As I learned much later—owing to a very ancient surviving monument—the great King Konuzion then returned to his chamber and for eighteen days neither ate nor drank but only very seriously thought and thought.

20.215-6

“It must in any case be noticed here, that those latest researches of mine showed that King Konuzion was then particularly anxious to find a means of uprooting this evil, because all the affairs of his community were going from bad to worse.

“The beings who were addicted to this passion almost ceased to work; the flow of what is called money into the communal treasury entirely ceased and the ultimate ruin of the community seemed to be inevitable.

20.216

“Finally the wise king decided to deal with this evil indirectly, namely, by playing on the weaknesses in the psyche of the beings of his community. With this aim he invented a very original ‘religious doctrine’ corresponding to the psyche of the beings of that time; and this invention of his he spread broadcast among all his subjects by every means at his disposal.

20.216

“In this religious doctrine it was said, among other things, that far from our continent Ashhark was a larger island where existed our ‘Mister God.’

20.216

“I must tell you that in those days not one of the ordinary beings knew that, besides their planet Earth, other cosmic concentrations existed.

“The beings of the planet Earth of those days were even certain that the scarcely visible ‘white-points’ far away in space were nothing more than the pattern on the ‘veil’ of the ‘world,’ that is to say, just of their planet; as, in their notions then, the ‘whole-world’ consisted, as I have said, of their planet alone.

“They were also convinced that this veil was supported like a canopy on special pillars, the ends of which rested on their planet.

20.216

“In that ingeniously original ‘religious doctrine’ of the wise King Konuzion it was said that Mister God had intentionally attached to our souls the organs and limbs we now have to protect us against our environment, and to enable us efficiently and profitably to serve both himself personally and the ‘souls’ already taken to that island of His.

20.216-7

“And when we die and our soul is liberated from all these specially attached organs and limbs, it becomes what it should really be, and is then immediately taken just to this island of His, where our Mister God, in accordance with how our soul with its added parts has existed here on our continent Ashhark, assigns to it an appropriate place for its further existence.

20.218-9

“When I first came to the country of Maralpleicie, all the three-brained beings of that country were followers of a ‘religion’ based on the just-mentioned ingenious ‘religious-doctrine,’ and this ‘religion’ was then in full bloom.

20.219

“To the inventor himself of this ingenious ‘religious-doctrine,’ namely, the wise King Konuzion, the sacred ‘Rascooarno’ had occurred long before this time, that is to say, he had long previously ‘died.’

“But of course owing once again to the strangeness of the psyche of your favorites, his invention had taken such a strong hold there that not a single being in the whole country of Maralpleicie then doubted the truth of its peculiar tenets.

20.220

“After serious pondering I found it necessary to add something to the ‘religious-doctrine’ existing there, and I counted on being able, like the wise King Konuzion, to spread this addition of mine effectively among them.

“Just then I invented that those spirits in ‘caps-of-invisibility’ who, as it was said in that great religion, watch our deeds and thoughts in order to report them later to our Mister God, are none other than just the beings of other forms, which exist among us.

“It is just they who watch us and report everything to our Mister God.

24 Beelzebub’s Flight to the Planet Earth for the Fifth Time

24.342

“The first of these understandings exists there under the following formulation:

24.342

“Every action of man is good in the objective sense, if it is done according to his conscience, and every action is bad, if from it he later experiences ‘remorse.’

24.342

“And the second understanding arose there soon after the wise ‘invention’ of the Great King Konuzion, which invention, passing from generation to generation through ordinary beings there, gradually spread over almost the whole planet under the name of ‘morality.’

24.342-3

“Here it will be very interesting to notice a particularity of this morality which was grafted upon it at the very beginning of its arising and which ultimately became part and parcel of it.

24.343

“What this said particularity of terrestrial morality is, you can easily represent to yourself and understand if I tell you that, both inwardly and outwardly, it acquired exactly that ‘unique property’ which belongs to the being bearing the name ‘chameleon.’

24.343

“And the oddity and peculiarity of this said particularity of the morality there, especially of contemporary morality, is that its functioning automatically depends entirely on the moods of the local authorities, which moods in their turn depend also automatically on the state of the four sources of action existing there under the names of ‘mother-in-law,’ ‘digestion,’ ‘John Thomas,’ and ‘cash.’

38 Religion

38.700

“Your favorites of already the first generation of the contemporaries of Saint Moses, evidently found it profitable for their special aims to insert in these religious teachings almost the entire fantastic teaching which I already told you when I related that among the ancient three-brained beings of the second grouping on the continent Ashhark or contemporary Asia, there was a king named Konuzion, a subsequent Saint, who, for the purpose of saving his subjects from the pernicious habit of chewing the seed of the poppy first invented his fantastic ‘religious doctrine.’

40 Beelzebub Tells How People Learned and Again Forgot About the Fundamental Cosmic Law of Heptaparaparshinokh

40.822

“Do you remember, I already told you that on the continent of Asia there was a country Maralpleicie and that a king existed there by name Konuzion, a descendant of that learned member of the Society of Akhaldans who had gone there from Atlantis for the observation of all kinds of natural phenomena of their planet, just that same king who had invented for his subjects the ‘wise tale’ already mentioned by me in order to save them from the pernicious habit of chewing the seeds of the flower ‘Gulgulian.’

40.822

“Well then, to the grandson of this King Konuzion, after the arising of an heir who later also became king over the beings of this group, there arose just these same two results of the male sex, twins, the elder of whom was called ‘Choon-Kil-Tez’ and the younger ‘Choon-Tro-Pel.’ The word ‘Choon’ then in the country Maralpleicie meant ‘prince.’

40.823-4

“It is in the highest degree an interesting and curious circumstance that the initial source for this constatation of theirs was the totality of cosmic substances localized in just that same surplanetary formation which is now called there ‘Papaveroon’ or, as it is still called, poppy; and owing to the implanting of the habit of chewing the seeds of this poppy, their great grandfather, the great King Konuzion, first invented his, as already mentioned by me, ‘religious teaching.’

40.824

“There were evidently transmitted by inheritance to these two great terrestrial learned beings from their great grandfather, the great King Konuzion, in addition to the ability of well considering and cognizing their being-duty in relation to beings around them similar to themselves, also an interest in and a passion for the study of this product, which has always been for your favorites one of the innumerable harmful means which have brought their psyche, already enfeebled without this, to its ultimate degeneracy.