Why Aasvogels are not naturally good parishioners

Cant... watch... Again. Sides... Split.

So I got into thinking. Of how to write the perfect last chapter for the holy book that would deliver me hordes of pliant wide-eyed followers offering me their bank -account numbers and naked, nubile female bodies in exchange for the insta-mix cup-a-soup spirituality that they crave. Turns out it's harder than I originally estimated.

After all aren't the last books the all important set up? The necessary set change between the antics of your Deity along with his sun-burnt Chosen People and the Act where you, my sweaty pilgrim, are supposed to come in? Would’t you expect a modicum of inspiration? Even instruction? Perhaps a little reaching out, welcoming future bleating flocks to CALL THE TOLL FREE NUMBER and PAY FOR MY TOUPEE, PRAISE Y’ALL.

Maybe even that last chance to insert the suppository of reality lest the discerning notice certain things? Like how so very conveniently, while we weren't around, the divine seems to have been in town walking on water and ordering all the expensive drinks at the bars, having renaissance artists paint elaborate and beautiful portraits of their nights out. Only now, just when the insolent atheists aren’t allowing themselves to be burnt any longer, there isn’t even an autographed beer-mat to throw at them.

I have been getting a lot of inspiration from Zoroastrianism. Clearly this is where all the spiritual oomph is at. If religions were bread, where the Church of England would be, say, Cucumber Sandwiches with the crusts neatly cut off, Zoroastrianism would be Mystical Superbread who’s recipe has been LOST UNTO MAN IN THE EDDIES OF TIME. In Capitals. It’s one of those old untamed religions that takes it’s metaphors seriously. A fire that has been kept alive for 3000 years, their dead left on mountainsides above deep chasms. And if that wasn’t enough imagery and weirdness, apparently crows pecking out the eyeballs of the dead signify a positive outcome in the afterlife. Perhaps the Afterlife is ugly.

Their sacred text the ‘Gathas’ (which turns out to be a set of devotional hymns, giving our own equivalent word an Ancient Iranian birth) has the prophet Zoroaster exploring ideas of Truth, Goodness and devotion to his God: Ahura Mazda in his stanzas. Wholesome, if somewhat formulaic. The final verses? They end with Zoroaster at his daughter’s wedding, gloating how he was right in his faith after all. As religious texts go, I approve muchly. When I am the Omnipotent Omniscient Big Kahuna, my sacred text would have a last chapter that would read:

"When the crowed asked the ascending Aasvogel (May his lightness shine on us) what he bade to the rest of humanity, He spake thus: "HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHA HA HAH AH AHAHAH….[cut to last verse]…. AHAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHA, the rest of you, BURN!"

The Christian Bible itself is a pretty impressive text. Lots of naughty sex, racial violence and a great chariot chase scene. But mostly it’s chock full of fantastic warning and moving lyricism. Orwell gives this extract from Ecclesiastes as an example of good writing in his Politics and the English Language:

“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
BADAAAAAAM! Bang! Home Run! Oncore! Now that’s how you write.

And the Bible just flings it all away at the end. Beasts with seven heads coming out of the water? Wtf? DID MAN, THERE AND THEN JUST DISCOVER CRACK? HAD ALL THE GREAT WRITERS BEEN LURED AWAY TO WRITE SCRIPTS FOR CSI?

In the end I put it down to performance anxiety. I can see the intended writer of Revelations being handed a sheaf of battered yellow parchments (the Sum Total of Thought, Debate and Philosophical Inquiry of the entire Judaeo-Christian movement from the dawn of Language itself) by the dying penultimate author and been told “Son you have the greatest job of us all, you get to write the big finish….gak.” SO NO PRESSURE.

Weeks later, having just put down the crack pipe (Patent Pending), the new author will go “Seven headed water beasts!” And it will seem like a good idea at the time.