7.

The Duel

In the land beneath I come and go and the earth bends over, wraps its legs around darkness. I know the story of creations and the histories of destructions. There were two sons born of heaven and earth and they married beautiful sisters. The world was new then; the fruits of the land were plentiful, the papyrus grew tall and antelope galloped the plains. Through the land a graceful river flowed nourishing all that lay there in it.

The gods said, “I give to you, Osiris and Isis, the land on the northern river; and to you, Set and Nephthys, this land that lies to the south. Go, live in peace and birth sons and daughters. Let them know they are beloved of gods.”

In their land Osiris took up the plow and Isis learned to weave. From the labor of their hands came wondrous things—corn, onion and squash, reed baskets and fine linen. But Set in his land stalked antelope and lion. He chased the elephant. He drank animal blood and sucked the marrow of their bones. He tore lettuce from its roots and left nothing to seed, until one day he found his region barren. That day he coveted the bountiful world of his brother. That day sorrow began.

With perfumed hair, amid the jangle of bells on his feet, he came bearing a chest of gold inlaid with emerald, lapis lazuli and green tourmaline. “Lie in the chest, Osiris,” he said. “If it fits you, it shall be yours.” Distrusting no one, Osiris lay in it. How quickly worked the mind of deceit. Set sealed the chest with his brother in it and carried it to the river. The swift current bore the god away, day grew dark and the night was without stars.

Years passed. Isis found the chest lodged at the core of a tamarisk where the trunk lay thick around it. In a boat she bore the god away, up the Nile far from the marshes to the caves of mountains. There she hid herself, broke open the chest and fell down upon him, chanting spells of love and sorrow. Beneath the long ropes of her hair she worked the magic that conceived the child.

That night Set roamed the mountains hunting jackals by the light of the moon. Stumbling upon the body of his brother in the darkened cave, he shrieked and, enraged, seized the corpse and hacked it into fourteen pieces. Thirteen bits of flesh, bone and sinew—the backbones, the skull, the limbs—he scattered across the Nile, but the tastiest morsel he fed to the crocodile. Lost was the phallus of the god and he would be no more a husband on earth. Hidden and full of form, Isis bore their child in the papyrus swamps. She named him Horus and drew charms of power on his forehead. He grew to converse with his father in dream. He was a mighty son, a golden child, the avenger of his father.

One day the child became a man and that was the day of terror. The battle between gods was waged once in heaven and again and again on earth. When Horus set himself against his uncle, thunder rolled and arrows flashed fire. Beneath the sun's wasting heat, rain fell and dried before reaching the ground. Then the earth rose up like an animal and shook itself. Hot winds blew and stirred the sand into black and red clouds. The sun was blotted from the sky. The two gods seized each other. Blind with rage and stumbling, they fought with magic, with words, with clubs and knives. They fell upon each other with their hands. They wrestled about the earth in the shapes of bears, in the shapes of snakes, in the forms of men and wolves and wild beasts. Swords of iron battered shields of gold. Set buggered the warrior and Horus cut off his balls. They threw vomit and shit in each other's faces.

In heaven the gods wept and looked away, all but Thoth who watched the bloody onslaught for he was unafraid of truth. They might have killed each other, but for the flashing hand of truth which sometimes parted them. They rested. They rose and fought. Years passed. Oh, hideous face of the beast! Looking into his uncle's eyes, Horus saw only himself. The knives thrust into Set came away with Horus' blood. The eye he tore out was the eye of god.

There was a great weeping in the sky. The hair of Ra hung over his face and the world grew blind in the storm. For Ra saw that it was his own flesh, the words he had spoken turned into fists and swords. It was the creation of his own eye that raged against him. The sun fell from the sky and the empty socket dripped blood. Red tears fell scalding the wheat and withering flowers. The sun no longer rose and set. There was no light from it, but neither was there darkness. As the battle waged on even the warrior gods lost strength and they were no more than two angry mists entwined.

Thus, the world was nearly lost until Thoth parted the hair of the sorrowing god and with the fire of his hand brought forth a new eye. It was the living disk of sun—healthy and sound and without defect to its lord, as it was on the first day of the world. It opened and shut and the great wheel turned. The eons to come Thoth inscribed in Ra's blue iris. There he wrote men's fates and of the battles of the gods of dark and light, of Self conquering self.

The heavens are full of eyes—the eye of Horus, the eye of Ra, the eyes of water and of flame. There is the white eye and the black. These are the beautiful eyes of Hathor. These are the eyes of Ptah. Man battles the beast. Order battles chaos. Life strives to conquer death as the eyes of gods and goddesses watch. There are days when a man's own strength is used against him. Even the path of lies can be walked with great persistence. Years passed. Thoth still stands at the river's edge and the battle rages on.

Have you seen it? How the fist of order tries to hold back chaos? How chaos oozes between the grasp of fingers? How the sun is born and dies twelve hours later? How it rises? How the two weights swing in the scale balanced on the fingertip of a god? Envisioned by Ra, Horus and Set were two possibilities, two sparks of a single eye. The world is whole, the eye of Ra is one crystal and the light of the eye within splinters in a thousand directions. In the underworld Osiris gathers together the fragments of himself.

I am like those warriors Horus and Set when my heart opposes my mind. I am like Osiris, my desires fragmented. I am the pieces of myself, a man longing for unity. I am the guardian of my creations, like Ra whose twin children were Shu and Tefnut, the hot dry air and the mist hanging over the river. The heat of the son's mouth burned up mist, and the hand of the daughter cooled the heat of the air. The doubles walked earth together, each necessary for the other, and the creatures below bade the twin gods homage.

My soul is like the soul of Ra, two spirits in a single heart. Blood rushing in and blood rushing out, the animal is sustained. Mine is the double soul of heaven, the dazzling, splintering power of Ra, the gathering power of Osiris. Mine is the double soul of the universe, heaven mingled with earth. I am a creature of light striving for light, battling ignorance, oppression and darkness. I am matter, the backbone of god. I am the cat beneath the laurel tree, dividing and conquering evil.

There was a day when darkness gathered itself into a hungry snake and crawled upon earth. On her belly she crept toward the city of light, swallowing whatever lay in her path: men and women, beasts, vegetables and gods. And no thing that touched her lips escaped her, for all matter was lost in the darkness. That was the day, or rather the night, that Ra left the sky and took his shape in the cat. To fool the snake, he slept under the leathery leaves of the laurel, holding in his strength, stirring only once for a single languid lick of his paws to brush against his whiskers.

Seeing the cat—that tasty bit of flesh, the snake slithered over and opened its mouth. On the other side of her teeth swelled the void, the abyss, the great nothing, and from it issued the cries of all the lost things of creation. Their voices were a wailing wind that beckoned from the darkness.

Then the soul of Ra in the form of a tiny cat leapt up beneath the shade of the laurel and, with teeth of iron and gold, he snapped off the head of the snake and sliced its body into a thousand pieces and swallowed them up. Blood from the snake's mouth spilled onto the ground. In that manner Ra's creations returned to earth. The blood seeped into the ground and was taken up by the thirsty laurel, which burst into bloom with the souls of the dead in the shape of yellow flowers.

Now leaning down from the east edge of heaven, the god of words had witnessed the battle. He had felt each puncture of the snake's teeth upon his own throat and praised the cat which had given its shape to Ra. “How like the god that made him is the radiant cat. How he slew the darkness with his mouth!” And Mau became the cat's name and the god gave him words of power.

I have stood on the eastern bank beneath that flowering laurel—it is old now; its roots gnarled but still bursting with life—and I have gazed at the sky seeing daily the same battle. The sun rises. Light overcomes darkness and the high pink clouds of morning are tinged with the blood of the snake.

I am like that cat, overcoming my own darknesses. The soul duels fear and doubt and inertia, for these are the children of the snake, the worms hidden in the clay of being that would gnaw a man to death even while he lived. I am that cat. I stand up and fight. I struggle with the evils of my own petty insistence. The battle of old gods wages in me. I am a creature of history—human and divine. I am the scroll of numerous myths, one teller of a single story.

Now the sun rises as the gold egg of god, whole light of the world, saffron cake of being. Ra shines from his disk in heaven. He rises up—a golden wonder, a bead on the throat of sky. Gusts of wind issue forth as warm breath of his mouth and drive the boats along the water, sails the sun over a river of sky and enlivens the nostrils of his people. He rises, making plain the two worlds of heaven and earth. I see myself by the light of my becoming.