Matt Cardin - To Rouse Leviathan

ToRouse Leviathan

ToRouse
Leviathan

MattCardin

Featuringtwo collaborations with Mark McLaughlin

HippocampusPress

NewYork

Copyright 2019 by Hippocampus Press

Works by MattCardin copyright 2019 by Matt Cardin

Worksby Matt Cardin and Mark McLaughlin copyright 2019
by MattCardin and Mark McLaughlin

PublicationHistory: See p. 373.

Published byHippocampus Press

P.O. Box 641, NewYork, NY 10156.

www.hippocampuspress.com

All rightsreserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or byany means without the written permission of the publisher.

Cover artby Michael Hutter, octopusartis.com
Cover design byDaniel V. Sauer, dansauerdesign.com.
Hippocampus Press logo designed by Anastasia Damianakos.

FirstElectronic Edition, 2019

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

ISBN978-1-61498-270-8 (paperback)

ISBN978-1-61498-271-5 (ebook)

There is hereinvolved [in the phenomenon of weird supernatural horror fiction] apsychological pattern or tradition as real and as deeply grounded inmental experience as any other pattern or tradition of mankind;coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspectsof it.

H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927)

[The]antecedent stage [of religious dread or awe]is daemonic dread... It first begins to stir in thefeeling of something uncanny, eerie, orweird. It is this feeling which, emerging in the mindof primeval man, forms the starting point for the entire religiousdevelopment of history.

RudolfOtto, The Idea of the Holy (1917)

Thecompletest religions would therefore seem to be those in which thepessimistic element is best developed.

WilliamJames, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Letthe day perish on which I was born. That daymay it turn todarkness. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let the blackness ofthe day terrify it. Let those sorcerers who place a curse on dayscurse that day, those who are skilled to rouse Leviathan.

Job3:3, 4, 5, 8

, with Mark McLaughlin

, with MarkMcLaughlin

Now when the sunwas going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror andgreat darkness fell upon him. Then God spoke.

Genesis15:12-13

Hemade darkness his hiding place.

Psalm18:11

The Hebrewscriptures tell us that when God began to create the world, theearth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep(Genesis 1:2). The English word deep is a translationof the Hebrew word tehom, which many scholars have speculatedis a cognate of the Sumerian Tiamat. In the Babyloniancreation epic known today as Enuma Elish, Tiamat is describedas a deity of darkness and watery chaos that was slain by herchildren, the Babylonian gods, who then used the halves of her bodyto create the world: half for the sky, half for the earth.

In light ofthe possible connection between Sumerian mythology and theJudeo-Christian scriptures, the presence of the primeval deepin the Genesis creation story takes on a decidedly sinister aspect.As with Tiamat in the Babylonian story, in Genesis tehom is aprimeval chaos that is fashioned by an anthropomorphic deity into anordered cosmos. As in the Babylonian story, the primeval chaos ofJudeo-Christian scripture is not completely done away with. It ismerely... subdued. It continues to exist in the background ofHebrew thought, eventually becoming associated with the depths of theocean. At one point Yahweh even allows tehom to reclaim thecosmos: in the story of Noah and the flood, the waters come not onlyfrom above but from below: In the six hundredth year of Noahslife, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, onthat day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, andthe windows of heaven were opened (Genesis 7:11). Thus, theflood was not just a flood, but an unmaking, a temporaryreturn of the earth to its original formless state.

For acertain type of person, this all raises the question of whether Godis truly the final power in the universe. Since the deep existed withGod from the beginning, is it not possible to conjecture that it isat least as powerful as he? In light of the link between the Hebrewand Babylonian creation stories, is it not possible to speculatestill further that tehom, like Tiamat, predates God?That God is perhaps the offspring of the deep? If thesespeculations are accurate, then God is living on borrowed time, andwe are left with the disturbing conclusion that both he and hisworldthe world we take for granted, the ordered world of life,light, and logicare merely foreground to a background ofdeath, darkness, and derangement. Eventually, inevitably, the greatdeep will rear its monstrous head and reveal to God and to us thetrue nature of our universe and our selves.

There exista few scattered souls who claim that we can glimpse this reality evennow, while the charade is still up and running. We encounter thedeep, so they say, in the dark mysteries of life: in horror, pain,nightmare, disillusionment, and death; in the places where light andreason seem to be absent, or to have only a precarious foothold; atthe seams of the universe, where sometimes a thread comes unraveledand a ray of darkness shines through, and the light does not overcomeit. But to seek such glimpses is always dangerous, and to ask suchquestions is to court the ultimate disaster, for we can never know inadvance what form the answers will assume. We can only know that theywill arrive as the unexpected, the uncanny, and the inconceivable.And there are, after all, so very many ways, both witting andunwitting, that each of us attempts to divine the deep.

No longer mournfor me, when I am dead,

Than you shallhear the surly sullen bell

Give warning tothe world that I am fled

From this vileworld, with vilest worms to dwell.

WilliamShakespeare

Wretchedman that I am!

Who will rescueme from this body of death?

Romans7:24

It seemed aharmless enough invitation, and in fact a welcome surprise, when myfriend Darby called to summon me to a party at his brick mansion justbeyond the city limits of Terence, Missouri. By his description Iunderstood him to be planning another one of his famousparties that had played so large a part in our early years together.

Wine,women, and song, he announced as the program for the eveningsfestivities. Even through the curious crackle of static in theearpiece of the telephone, I could hear the calm, assured attitude ofmy old college buddy coming through, and I secretly rejoiced that hehad at last seen his way clear of the funk into which he had fallenupon our graduation eight years ago.

Whendid your parties ever involve wine or women? I said. Theywere always more beer and bachelors, as I recall.

Andso it may be again, he cheerfully replied, apparentlyunruffled by my good-natured jibe. You will be there, wontyou, Todd? It simply wouldnt be the same without you.

Youcan count on it, I told him. An invitation from agentleman of your stature must be counted an honor.

He laughedout some pleasantry and we hung up, leaving me to marvel at theunexpected revolution in his mood. After having heard nothing fromhim forGod, how long was it? Three years! And then to have himcall and announce a party just like it was old times? I could hardlyforce myself to wait patiently for the night after next to arrive.Surely we would spend the evening indulging in another of thosewide-ranging and wildly colorful conversations that had always beensuch a heady joy to an intellectual dabbler like me.