Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

3 The Cause of the Delay in the Falling of the Ship Karnak

3.62

“During its motion this peculiar little planet often approached very near to our planet Mars and sometimes during whole ‘Kilprenos’ I took great pleasure in observing through my ‘Teskooano’³ in my observatory the process of existence of the three-brained beings upon it.

3.65

¹ “Teskooano” means “telescope.”

9 The Cause of the Genesis of the Moon

9.81

“Only after a considerable time had passed and when the said stink had gone, did we recover and gradually make out what had happened.

“We understood that the cause of this terrible phenomenon was just that same planet Earth which from time to time approached very near to our planet Mars and which therefore we had possibilities of observing clearly, sometimes even without a ‘Teskooano.’

10 Why “Men” Are Not Men

10.90-1

“Yes, I must note that by the time to which my tale refers, my first Teskooano had already been set up in the observatory which I had constructed on the planet Mars and I was just then devoting myself entirely to the further organization and development of this observatory of mine, for the more detailed observation of the remote concentrations of our great Universe and of the planets of this solar system.

“Among the objects of my observations, then, was also this planet Earth.

18 The Arch-preposterous

18.151

“Here it will do no harm to remark that I also, thanks only to his learning, had later in my observatory on the planet Mars that Teskooano which, when it was finally established, enabled my sight to perceive, or as is said, ‘approach-the-visibility’ of remote cosmic concentrations, 7,000,285 times.

18.151

“Strictly speaking, it was owing to just this Teskooano that my observatory was afterwards considered one of the best constructions of its kind in the whole Universe; and, most important of all, it was by means of this Teskooano that I myself thereafter could, even while staying at home on the planet Mars, relatively easily see and observe the processes of the existence occurring on the surfaces of those parts of the other planets of that solar system which, in accordance with what is called the ‘common-cosmic Harmonious-Movement,’ could be perceived by being-sight at the given moment.

18.172

“‘This metal red-copper which I have placed in the sphere of my proposed artificial actualization of the action of the active parts of Okidanokh, has at this moment what is called a “specific-density,” reckoning from the unit of density of the sacred element Theomertmalogos, of 444, that is to say, the atom of this metal was 444 times more dense, and as much less vivifying, than the atom of the sacred Theomertmalogos.

18.173

“‘Now see in what order its artificially accelerated transformations will proceed.’

18.173

“Having said this, he first fixed before my organ of sight the automatically moving Teskooano and then turned on and off various switches in a certain sequence; and as I looked through the Teskooano he explained to me as follows:

18.173

“‘At this moment I admit the “influx” of all three parts of Okidanokh into the sphere containing this metal; and as all three parts have the same “density” and, hence, the same “force-of-striving,” they reblend into a whole in this sphere without changing anything in the presence of the metal; and the Omnipresent-Okidanokh thus obtained flows in its usual state through a special connection out of the Hrhaharhtzaha and is reconcentrated in the first container which you have already seen.

18.173-4

“Although, my boy, I then looked very attentively at everything proceeding, and everything I saw was impressed in my essence ‘Pestolnootiarly,’ that is, forever, yet nevertheless, not even with my best wish could I now describe to you in words a hundredth part of what then proceeded in that small fragment of a definite intraplanetary formation.

“And I will not try to put into words for you what I then saw, because I have just thought of a possibility of soon actually showing it all to you when you also can be an eyewitness of so strange and astonishing a cosmic process.

18.174

“But I will tell you meanwhile that there proceeded in that fragment of red copper something rather like those terrifying pictures which I occasionally observed among your favorites on the planet Earth through my Teskooano from Mars.

18.174

“I said ‘rather-like’ because what occasionally proceeded among your favorites had a visibility only possible of observation at its beginning, whereas in the fragment of red copper the visibility was continuous until the final completion of transformation.

18.174

“A rough parallel can be drawn between the occasional proceedings on your planet and the proceedings then in that small fragment of copper, if you imagine yourself high up and looking down upon a large public square, where thousands of your favorites, seized with the most intense form of their chief psychosis, are destroying each other’s existence by all kinds of means invented by them themselves, and that in their places there immediately appear what are called their ‘corpses,’ which owing to the outrages done to them by the beings who are not yet destroyed, change color very perceptibly, as a result of which the general visibility of the surface of the said large square is gradually changed.

22 Beelzebub for the First Time in Tibet

22.262

“Here I must say something about an exceedingly strange thing, which I constated, closely connected with just that part of the surface of your planet which is now called Tibet.

“At that period when I was passing through Tibet for the first time, its heights were indeed also unusually far above the surface of the Earth, but they did not differ particularly from similar elevations on other continents and on the same continent Ashhark or Asia, of which Tibet was a part.

“But when during my sixth and last personal stay on the planet Earth there, my way again took me through those, for me, extremely memorable places, I just then constated that in the interval of the few score of their centuries, the whole of that locality had projected so far from the planet that no heights on any of the other continents could even be compared with them.

22.262

“For instance, the chief range of that elevated region through which we had then passed, namely, the range of elevations which the beings there call a ‘mountain-range,’ had in the interval projected so far from the planet that some of its peaks are now the loftiest among all the abnormal projections of that vainly-long-suffering-planet. And if you climbed them, you could possibly with the aid of a Teskooano ‘see clearly’ the center of the opposite side of that peculiar planet.

22.262-3

“When I first constated that strange phenomenon occurring on that remarkably peculiar planet of yours, I at once thought that in all probability it contained the germ for the arising of some subsequent misfortune on a great common cosmic scale, and when I afterwards collected statistics concerning that abnormal phenomenon, this first apprehension of mine very soon more and more grew in me.

“And it grew chiefly because, in my statistics, one item concerning that phenomenon there showed an increase in every decade.

“The said item concerning those Tibetan elevations referred just to this: which of the terrestrial, as they are called ‘planetary tremors,’ or as this is expressed by your favorites, ‘earthquakes,’ occur to that planet due to these excessively lofty elevations.

22.265

“Through that region now called Tibet, we then continued our route, encountering hardships of every kind, and finally came to the source of the river called the Keria-chi and a few days later, sailing down to the Sea of Beneficence, we came to our ship Occasion.

22.265

“Although after this third descent of mine to your planet Earth, I did not go there in person for a considerable time, nevertheless, from time to time I attentively observed these favorites of yours, through my big Teskooano.

22.265-6

“And I had no reason for a long time to go there personally on account of the following:

“After returning to the planet Mars I soon became interested there in a work which the three-brained beings of the planet Mars were just then carrying out on the surface of their planet.

22.267

“By the courtesy of the kind Martians I then spent nearly all my time at these works, and that is why during that period I very seldom descended to the other planets of that solar system.

22.267

“Only sometimes I flew to the planet Saturn to rest, to Gornahoor Harharkh, who, during this time, had already become my real essence-friend, and thanks to whom I had such a marvel as that big Teskooano of mine which, as I have already told you, brought remote visibilities 7,000,285 times nearer.”

23 The Fourth Personal Sojourn of Beelzebub on the Planet Earth

23.268

“I have already told you that after my third personal descent to your planet, I occasionally for a rest ascended to the planet Saturn to this friend of mine.

“When during these flights to him I had become convinced of his great learning, the idea once arose in me to invite him to descend on our ship Occasion to the planet Mars, in order there, on the spot, to help me personally with his knowledge in the details of arranging my observatory which was just then being completed.

23.269

“Here I might as well emphasize the fact that if this observatory of mine afterwards became famous and indeed the best of all the constructions of its kind in the whole of the Universe, I am chiefly indebted to the learning of this same essence-friend of mine.

23.269

“Well, then, when I spoke to Gornahoor Harharkh about this, he, without thinking long about it, agreed, and together we immediately began to deliberate how to carry out our intention.

“The problem was that our route from the planet Saturn to the planet Mars would cross such cosmic spheres as did not correspond to the presence of Gornahoor Harharkh, a being who had as yet the possibilities only for an ordinary planetary existence.

23.269

“The result of our deliberations, then, was that on the following day his chief assistant began, under his direction, to arrange a special compartment in our ship Occasion itself, and to furnish it with every kind of adaptation and apparatus for elaborating those substances of which the atmosphere of the planet Saturn consists, and to which Gornahoor Harharkh was adapted by Nature for existence.

23.269

“When all these preparations had been completed, we one Hrkh-hr-hoo later set out on our journey in the direction of the planet Mars and descended there at my house.

“And there, on the planet Mars, which had almost the same atmosphere as the planet Saturn, my essence-friend Gornahoor Harharkh very soon became acclimatized and began to exist almost freely.

23.269-70

“It was just during his stay on Mars that he devised that Teskooano, or, as your favorites call it, a ‘telescope,’ thanks chiefly to which, as I have already said, my observatory afterwards became particularly famous through the whole of the Universe.

“The Teskooano he constructed is indeed a marvel of being-Reason, as it increases the visibility of remote cosmic concentrations up to 7,000,285 times, during certain processes in cosmic substances proceeding in the atmospheres surrounding almost all cosmic concentrations, as well as during certain processes in the cosmic Etherokrilno of interspatial spheres.

23.270

“Thanks to this Teskooano I was sometimes fully able, while seated in my house on Mars, to observe almost everything that proceeded on those parts of the surface of other planets of this solar system which, in the process of what is called the general-system-movement, were at the given time within the sphere of vision of my observatory.

23.282-3

“You remember I told you that my first descent in person upon the surface of that planet of yours took place on account of one of the young beings of our tribe, who then had no desire to stay there any longer but returned with us to the planet Mars, where he later became a very good chief over all the beings of our tribe existing on that planet, and who is now already the chief over all the beings in general of our tribe who for various reasons still exist on certain planets of that system Ors.

23.283

“Well then, my boy, when I left that system, I presented my famous observatory to him with everything in it, and in gratitude for this he promised to report every month, according to the time-calculation of the planet Mars, all the more important events occurring on the planets of that system.

“And now this chief keeps me very accurately informed of the most important events proceeding on all the planets on which there is a being-existence; and, knowing my great interest in the three-brained beings breeding on the planet Earth, he does his best, as I now see, to elucidate and send me information concerning all those manifestations of theirs which can give me now also the possibility of being constantly informed of the whole process of the ordinary existence of these three-brained beings, even though I find myself already inaccessibly remote even for their featherweight thoughts.

23.283

“That chief of our beings who remains there collects the various kinds of information he communicates concerning the three-brained beings of the planet Earth, either by means of his own observations of them through the great Teskooano which I left him, or from reports which, in their turn, are communicated to him by those three beings of our own tribe who chose to exist forever on the planet Earth, and all three of whom have at the present time on the continent of Europe different substantial independent undertakings indispensable for everyone existing there under the prevailing conditions.

23.284

“One of them has in one of the large cities, an ‘undertaker’s business’; the second, in another large city, has a bureau for what are called matchmaking and divorce; and the third is the proprietor of many offices founded by himself in various cities for what is called ‘money exchange.’

23.306

“Here it is very opportune to repeat one of the profound sayings, seldom used there, of our Mullah Nassr Eddin, which very neatly defines the given case, that is, this degree of the limitation of the perception of visibility of your contemporary favorites.

“This wise saying of his, seldom used there, consists of the following words:

23.306

“‘Show me the elephant the blind man has seen, and only then will I believe that you have really seen a fly.’

23.306

“Well then, my boy, thanks to that artificial adaptation which I had then seen for the observation of other cosmic concentrations, and which was being constructed in that future Egypt on the initiative issuing from the Reasons of the remote descendants of the member beings of the learned society Akhaldan, any one of these unfortunate favorites of yours, in spite of the Koritesnokhnian sight which had long before become inherent to them, could nevertheless acquire the ability to perceive freely at any time, as they say, ‘of the day and night,’ the visibility of all those remote cosmic concentrations which in the process of the general ‘cosmic harmonious movement’ come within the sphere of the horizon of their observation.

23.306-7

“In order to overcome this limitation of their organ of the perception of visibility, they then invented the following:

“Their Teskooano or telescope, the construction of which, it must here be said, passed to them also from their remote ancestors, they did not fix on the surface of their planet, as was usually done there and is still done now—but they placed this Teskooano very deeply within the planet, and they carried out their observations of the cosmic concentrations found beyond the atmosphere of their planet through specially bored, pipelike hollows.

23.307

“The observatory, I then saw, had five of these hollows.

“They began, in relation to the horizon, from different places of the surface of the planet occupied by the observatory, but they all met at a small underground common hollow which was something like a cave. From there, the specialists, then called Astrologers, made their observations for the purpose of studying, as I have already told you, the visible presences and results of the reciprocal action of other cosmic concentrations belonging to their own solar system as well as to other systems of the Great Universe.

23.307

“They made these observations of theirs through any one of the mentioned hollows which looked out in different directions onto their horizon, according to the given position of their planet relative to the cosmic concentration observed in the process of the ‘common cosmic harmonious movement.’

23.307

“I repeat, my boy, that although the chief peculiarity of the observatory constructed there by the three-brained beings of the future Egypt proved not to be new to me, since this principle had also been utilized in my observatory on Mars, with only this difference, that my seven long pipes were fixed not within the planet but on it, nevertheless all their innovations were so interesting in detail that, for any case that might arise, I even made, during my stay there, a detailed sketch of everything I saw, and later even used something of it for my own observatory.

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

24.315

“After my fourth sojourn on the surface of the planet Earth many years again passed.

24.315

“During these years I of course, as before, sometimes attentively observed through my Teskooano the being-existence of these favorites of yours.

24.315

“During this time their number considerably increased and they had already populated almost all the large and small terra firma parts of the surface of this planet of yours; and of course there also continued to proceed among them their chief particularity, namely, from time to time they destroyed each other’s existence.

24.318

“And the causes of my descent there in person were the following events:

24.318

“I must first tell you that the chief peculiarity of the psyche of your favorites, namely, the ‘periodic-need-to-destroy-the-existence-of-others-like-oneself,’ interested me more and more with every succeeding century of theirs, and side by side with it the irresistible desire increased in me to find out the exact causes of a particularity so phenomenal for three-brained beings.

24.318

“And so, my boy, in order to have more material for elucidating this question which interested me so intensely, I, in the interval between my fourth and fifth sojourn on the planet Earth, organized my observations through the Teskooano from the planet Mars of the existence of those peculiar three-brained beings in the following way:

24.318-9

“I deliberately kept under observation quite a number of their beings from among your favorites and during many of their years either I personally or somebody whom I commissioned observed them attentively, trying as much as possible not to miss anything, and to clear up from every aspect all the particularities in their manifestations during the processes of their ordinary existence.

24.319

“And so, during these observations of mine from the planet Mars through my Teskooano, it once flashed upon me that the length of their existence was, century by century and even year by year, becoming shorter and shorter at a very definite and equally uniform rate, and this served as the beginning of my further quite serious study of the psyche of these three-brained beings who have taken your fancy.

24.319

“Of course when I first noticed this, I at once took into account not only the chief particularity of their psyche, that is their periodic reciprocal destruction, but also the innumerable what are called ‘illnesses’ which exist exclusively only on that planet, the majority of which, by the way, arose and continue to arise owing to the same abnormal external conditions of the ordinary being-existence established by them, which help to make it impossible for them to exist normally up to the sacred Rascooarno.

24.320

“And so, my boy, since, at the time when I suddenly constated such a fact there, I had no special business on the planet Mars and it was quite impossible to try to probe this novel peculiarity by means of the Teskooano, I therefore decided to go there myself in order perhaps to clear up for myself there on the spot the causes of this also.

24.321

“This time our ship Occasion alighted on what is called the ‘Persian Gulf’ because we had ascertained through the Teskooano before our flight that for our further traveling, that is, to reach the town of Babylon and also for the mooring of our ship Occasion itself, the most convenient place would be that same Saliakooriapnian space of the surface of your planet now existing there under the name of the Persian Gulf.

24.321

“This water space was convenient for my further traveling because the large river, on the banks of which the city of Babylon stood, flowed into it, and we proposed to sail up the stream of this river to get there.

27 The Organization for Man’s Existence Created by the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash

27.381

“And, that these data of this Divine being-impulse are still crystallized and their manifestations still continue to participate in the process of their being-existence, was, apart from the said investigations, further confirmed by the fact that I frequently had a good deal of difficulty on account of it, during the periods of my observation of them from the planet Mars.

27.381

“The point is, that, through my Teskooano from the planet Mars, I could freely observe without any difficulty whatsoever, the existence proceeding on the surfaces of the other planets of that solar system, but making my observations of the process of the existence proceeding on the surface of your planet was, owing to the special coloration of its atmosphere, a real misery.

27.381

“And this special coloration occurred, as I later ascertained, because there appeared from time to time, in the presence of this atmosphere, large quantities of those crystallizations which were frequently radiated from the presences of these favorites of yours, owing to that particular inner impulse which they themselves call ‘Remorse-of-Conscience.’

31 The Sixth and Last Sojourn of Beelzebub on the Planet Earth

31.525

“You must know that after my fifth visit to the surface of that planet of yours, I continued likewise, as before, to observe from time to time the existence of those three-brained beings who please you.

“I observed them particularly attentively at those periods when there proceeded among them their chief particularity, namely, their processes of ‘reciprocal destruction.’

31.525

“And I observed so attentively at these periods because I wished to make unquestionably clear to myself the causes of the periodic manifestations of such an exceptionally terrible need of their strange psyche—strange to the point of the phenomenal.

31.525

“When I happened to be a little freer I would at times follow for almost a whole Martian day or night every kind of their manifestations during these processes.

31.525

“Well, thanks to these special observations of mine, both from the planet Mars and during my former personal sojourns there among them, I had a more or less definite understanding concerning all the ways and means used by them for a more effective destruction of each other’s existence.

31.525

“Well, my boy, once while watching as usual this process of theirs from the planet Mars through my big Teskooano I suddenly noticed that which served as the initial cause impelling me to undertake my sixth descent; namely, I saw this time that, without moving from their place, they did with a certain thing something which resulted in a tiny puff of smoke, whereupon a being from the opposite side immediately fell down either totally destroyed or with one or other part of his planetary body mutilated or destroyed forever.

31.527-8

“Well, this same new means of theirs for the destruction of each other’s existence just strengthened in my essence the need to make indubitably clear and to understand all the genuine causes of this phenomenally strange psyche which had become proper to the presences exclusively of those peculiar three-brained beings.

31.528

“As I had nothing particular to do at this time on the planet Mars, I decided to wind up without delay my current affairs and personally to descend to your planet, and there, on the spot, at any cost, to elucidate this question which had always troubled me, in order that having solved it I might no longer think about these phenomena of our Great Universe.

31.528

“Several Martian days later I just flew there, as always on the same ship Occasion.

31.528

“We decided to descend this time onto the continent Asia near the locality called Afghanistan,’ since before we had flown off, we had made it clear through our Teskooano that the ‘turn-of-the-process-of-reciprocal-destruction’ was proceeding at that time in just the said country.

34 Russia

34.640-1

“Well, I was a witness of how a crowd of ordinary Egyptian beings began to string onto one of these sacred cables—just like an Asiatic shashlik—the beings, without distinction of sex or age, who up till then had belonged to the ruling class.

34.641

“And the very same night, with the help of forty pairs of buffalo, this original ‘skewer’ was dragged and thrown into the river Nile.

34.641

“I saw such punishment meted out in this spirit, both during my stay personally on the surface of this planet of yours, as well as through the large Teskooano from the planet Mars.

34.641

“And these contemporary favorites of yours, naïve already to the nth degree, grew sincerely indignant that these contemporary ‘Bolsheviks’ of theirs shot a certain Tom Brown.

34.641

“If we compare the actions of the former three-brained beings there, who were subject to this ‘psychic state,’ with the actions of these contemporary Bolsheviks, then they, i.e., the contemporary Bolsheviks, ought even to be given praise and thanks that in spite of the fact that the various consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer are infallibly completely crystallized in their common presences—as in general in the presences of contemporary three-brained beings—they, in the very heat of that period when they were entirely ‘puppets’ under the influence of the inevitable cosmic law Solioonensius, manifested themselves with these consequences in such a way that the dead body of the person shot by them could at least be recognized as whose it was, namely, ‘Tom Brown’s and nobody else’s.’”