Baal
The Desire to Dominate
'“When does desire cease to love and begin to rule?”'
There is a temple of stone where the air is hot and the silence weighs like a crowd — as if a thousand invisible voices waited, holding their breath, for a single sign to kneel. There is no idol of bronze there; there is a hungry emptiness at the center of the hall, waiting to be filled by the desire of whoever enters. There dwells Ghoreb Zereq, the ravens of dispersion, the shadow of Netzach, the pillar of affection that makes the soul love, desire, and persevere. The name this freedomless desire takes, when it opens its arms not to welcome but to encircle, is Baal — the king who conquers not by force, but by making the multitude beg to be conquered.
In the ninth volume of The Tree of Death, Frater Eisenheim sits before the intelligence of belonging — the one that does not flatter like Belphegor, but seduces: it welcomes, it understands, it promises that you have finally found where you belong. Baal does not demand knees by decree; he teaches the soul to wish to bend them on its own, for he knows that man fears belonging to no one more than being ruled by someone. Every embrace in that temple is a siege — until the interviewer understands, in the water he grips in his palm and that runs out between his fingers, the one difference between possessing and loving: the closed fist loses what it tries to retain; only the open hand keeps it, of its own free will.
This is not a manual. It is an open hand — and what it reveals is the exact distance between the love that sets free and the desire that only wishes to possess.
Subscribe to read View the full seriesReading protected by subscription. Digital format (e-book).