Chapter 194

Minerva’s satanic doctrine of temptation

Cado’s effective style

1. Cado now turns to Minerva, saying: “For how much longer do you Satan intend to abuse our patience? Do you yourself plan to do nothing but evil and wickedness? Had the Deity created a diamond whose diameter between the poles would take lightning a million Earth years to cross, and had It also created a hummingbird for flying to this globe just once every thousand years to hit it with its beak, then the tiny bird would have ground up the globe therewith long since. Thousands of such epochs were already spent on you, yet you are still exactly the same you were at the beginning of all times! No spirit is able to grasp the patience the Deity has lavished on you, and what paths tried out for your purification!”

2. Says Minerva: “What may I have ever done contrary to your divine order? You consistently talk about some divine order yet have no inkling what that entails! If I as the separated impure part represent the contrary to the pure part in the Deity, and that unalterably, just as the Deity remains unalterably within its purity – is as all that then something other than God’s order in aggregate? And am I doing something that could be described as something wrong, evil and wicked before God? It is true that I always probed mankind for its capacity to withstand its fire-test of virtuousness before God and His love; where they passed it -well there my temptations were at an end, for good. If not then they were through my temptations given another chance to gain consistency in true virtue.

3. The proud one I make more so, that through such vice would be humbled within himself. For nothing heals this vice better than its own excess – if not already upon the material test world then certainly over here afterwards – as a certain Cado may have already experienced himself! Thus I also make sensual rams progressively more so, to the point where their vice has entangled them to their last life fibre, turning their backs on such vice, hitting upon the road to chastity. I have already, through certain physical diseases set limits to lust. Where these don’t help I have yet much more effective means here in the spiritual world, to make their vice contemptible to such souls.

4. Thus I proceed with every vice. Granted that I appear to be a promoter of vice. I sound out every job. But never have I rewarded vice unless the sinner was still insufficiently vice-riddled to abhor vice. There I had to of course make the vice-prone more so through all kinds of temptations, pushing him to the peak, whereupon he had to recognize and discard vice as such, to then part with it forever. I and the Deity always pursue the same aim – namely the purification of the created souls, to make them suitable for carrying the uncreated, purest and mightiest spirit of God.

5. God is the potter, but I the fire! But just as no pot is ready for cooking until it has itself achieved consistency through fire, just so no soul can withstand the fire of divine love until made fire-proof by me. If however I do what I must, how dare you say that I don’t live and act according to God’s order, to which I am subject, like all other things? But if you can indeed prove that I ever rewarded vice, then you would be right! If however I am the inexorable punisher of vice, then your talk is blind and scratches upon the shell, never hitting upon the kernel.

6. Or can you furthermore think of an activity consisting only in positive movement? Must not one foot always rest so that the other can meanwhile make a positive movement? Wherefore one foot always has to sin against movement so that from resistance to movement and the movement of the other foot, a perfect movement can come about. Must there not be night so that the sighted may learn to appreciate light? Must there not be apparent death, so that life can be glorified thereby? And what would be the meaning of bliss to a spirit not also imbued with the potential feeling of sadness! If there were no pain, how would the feeling of wellbeing associated with health fare? And if there were not at least apparent malice, what prospects for goodness? Behold, everything must have its opposite for enduring! And if I am the foundation of all contrariness, how am I against divine order?”

7. Says Cado: “My dear Minerva, had you given such anointing talk on the divine order of your satanic nature at a university you would have verily aroused much sensation with the learned committees! But if you thought to favourably impress me with your being, then you are ridiculously wide off the mark; that way you only show that you had never yet understood yourself and hence are not capable of knowing your own nature, and in which direction you should be heading towards the divine order. And secondly, you don’t know me even by name if you come to me with such foolishness! ’

8. Interrupts Minerva: “Your name is Cado!” Continues Cado: “That is the name of the coat I am wearing. But I bear a different name. Tell me, how could you ever entertain the idea that God wants to reform a soul through vice, or permit it through cumulative vice to become pure, strong and forceful for bearing His Spirit? To show up your stupidity, I ask how is a garment improved by adding a tear to it every day? Or would an out of tune harp produce more harmonious sound if instead of tuning it one forces it still more out of tune? If nothing but whoring, cursing, stealing robbing, looting and murder are taught at a school, will pure, gentle, honest to goodness, loving and morally sound people graduate there? Will a sick person get better if one helps him with poisonous medicines and mighty punishments?

9. Look, you most stupid and blind person, I could cite ten thousand examples when just one will show up the crass stupidity of your talk! What did you intend proving therewith, perhaps your innocence on account of simply not making vice pay? How would you reward a stone for serving you through its natural heaviness under judgment? Or what reward for a roasted bird for allowing itself to be caught, roasted and eaten by you?

10. In this way how can you make out to act strictly in accordance with God’s order, trying to say that you and God pursue one and the same goal? Oh you most miserable creature! You want to make yourself equal to God and even put yourself ahead as preferable to Him?! This takes the cake, my dearie! This cannot be tolerated henceforth, wherefore your apparent freedom shall henceforth be again considerably restricted. For you have brazenly helped yourself to God’s rights and are also doing so upon Earth through your servants of Baal, who pretend to serve God with gold and silver! And you have also stretched forth your hands after the rights of kings and their peoples, wherefore they shall soon cut you off! You will have no choice but to soon share the notorious swine fodder with some of them! But see to it that you take off now, because your presence has become obnoxious to me!”