Alexx's Patreon Update: June, 2023

[alexxkay]

Annotated chapters 13 and 14 of Jerusalem. Further details below:

• Annotated chapter 13 of Jerusalem, Upstairs. Highlights:
  • General: Book Two begins with three-year-old Michael Warren dying and going to... Upstairs, a very strange place indeed. Here he meets a bossy, grubby girl who takes him under her (metaphorical) wing, and begins to explain his circumstances to him. Unfortunately, Michael then gets lost, and meets possibly the worst possible person...
  • “those tricky pictures […] on school chalk-boxes” – These would be the boxes sold by Cosmic Crayon Co Ltd. The cover featured a trio of cubes in a classic configuration where “you couldn’t tell if they went in or out”. See image.
  • “the Second Borough” – Perhaps connoting “the borough above The Boroughs”. Though it is interesting to note that Third Borough seems to be a name for God (for example, P6p5-6ff). Perhaps spaces “fold up” in a way similar to people; compare with the important refrain in the second half of the book: “You fold up into us. We fold up into Him.”, expressing the relationship of humans to Angels to God.
  • “Know eye doughnut! Late me grow black square eyewash be four” – This translates as “No I do not! Let me go back where I was before”. Within this are enfolded references to: seeing/knowing (know eye); a torus (doughnut); Michael’s currently deceased state (late me); his transition between corporeal and corporeal states (grow black); a possible reference to Through the Looking-Glass, with its chess motifs (black square); revelation (eyewash = clearing of vision); his current four-dimensional state, or possibly the age he has almost attained (be four).
  • “like the lettering in a stick of rock” – Traditional rock candy in the UK is made with shapes of letters (and sometimes other images) running through the inside.
  • “Wiz this play seven?” – This translates as “Was/is this place heaven?” Alternately, this is a place where the 3-year-old Michael can “play” at being much older, like seven. (See also P380p3.)
  • “up the wooden ’ill” – “Wooden hill” is a poetic way of saying “stairs”. A saying (and song) common at children’s bedtime in the 1930s was “up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire”, meaning “upstairs to bed”.
  • "Esperanto" - One of the best known invented languages, though it seems unlikely three-year-old Michael would be aware of it. Which may, of course, be the point -- that he has access to new vocabulary and thoughts while Upstairs.
  • "the character don’t run a mile before the author’s writ a while" - Good writing advice! "Author" here refers to both God and Alan Moore. (If, in the context of Jerusalem, they can be considered distinct!)
  • The Emporium Arcade, located at the north side of Market Square, is described by a local librarian: “It opened in 1901, and contained 150 shops, or rooms. It was demolished in the early 1970s – lots of people had opinions about whether it should be saved or not. That’s perhaps not for me to comment!”
  • “six flat squares of paper joined together in a Jesus-cross” – In a section discussing higher mathematical dimensions, the reference to Jesus reminds me of the 1954 painting by Salvador Dalí, “Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)“, which depicts Christ upon an unfolded hypercube.
  • “headgear worn by Spanish priests” – An entirely subjective note - In my head, Asmodeus is "played by" Moore's friend, the musician Tom Hall (mentioned throughout Jerusalem, and with an important plot role in the chapter Forbidden Worlds). An album cover features an image of Hall wearing a similar hat.See image below.
    • 
  • “Choke & Joy shop.” -Almost a spoonerism of”Joke & Toy shop”. Also, of course, referring to Michael’s choking to death, and the joy that the toys gave him. Possibly also an allusion to the fact that, back in the 1950s, many children’s toys were what we would now consider to be dangerous choking hazards.
  • "The trailing triangles of cloth that formed his coat suddenly fluttered upward [...] although Michael had felt no gust of wind" - This reminds me (as so much of Jerusalem does) of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Shortly after meeting Jacob Marley's ghost, the text notes:

    There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. […] though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.

• Annotated chapter 14 of Jerusalem, An Asmodeus Flight. Highlights:
  • General: The Demon Asmodeus teases an archangel. Meeting Michael Warren, the devil shows him many things which are technically true, several things which are false (though most seem to be honest mistakes on Moore's part), and tricks him into a Faustian bargain.
  • "over-egg the lily [...] gild the pudding" - "over-egg the pudding" and "gild the lily" are both idioms meaning to go father than necessary, to do too much. Asmodeus is switching them around as wordplay, and possibly joking about the origin of the phrase "gild the lily", which is similarly switched-around. It comes from a Shakespeare phrase: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily".
  • "he was more or less compelled to answer any direct question and to do so truthfully" - According to The Lesser Key of Solomon, Asmoday "giveth true and full answers unto thy demands." Note that while the reader is told this, Asmodeus doesn't volunteer that information to Michael.
  • "he would generally employ some form of code, or else engage human interrogators in a guessing game" - Referring again to the 2009 interview in which Moore describes "meeting" Asmodeus:
    

    I said "You are a fine and mysterious creature. What might you be exactly?" And this voice inside my head which didn't seem to be my voice, although maybe it was part of my personality that was, um, somehow personified as a separate voice, or maybe it was some sort of external entity, but this voice said, "I am one of the Nine Dukes." [...] And I said, "Okay, which one are you?" And this kind of rich, amused voice said, "You'll have to guess."
    

  • "mixed-up Sam O’Day" - In the English style of crossword puzzle, a word or phrase like "mixed up" hints at an anagram. "Sam O'Day" is "Asmoday", another name for Asmodeus. ("Asmoday" is also the specific name that Moore's demon finally admitted to.)
  • "Shakespeare gives me credit where it’s due. He talks about a kind of trip I can take people on. It’s called ‘Sam O’Day’s Flight’" - And here we begin to discuss the phenomenon that this chapter is named after. The Asmodeus flight is a real (literary) phenomenon, much as described below -- but has nothing to do with Shakespeare, originating in 1641, and only reaching the English language in 1708. Shakespeare does have two brief references (both in King Lear) to "Modo" as a "fiend" or "The prince of darkness". Some scholars see Modo as an abbreviation for Asmodeus. Others, however, trace the name Modo to A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (Samuel Harsnett, 1603), which does include several names of "devils" that are very similar (though not identical) to names that Shakespeare uses in Lear. Regardless of whether Modo means "Asmodeus" or not, the two appearances of the name in Lear are exceedingly brief, and make no mention whatever of a "flight". Possibly Moore confused the "Modo" reference with a reference to a (much later) theatrical adaptation?
  • "Richard the Lionheart [...] set off on [...] the third crusade" - I can't find any solid justification for this claim. Northampton: 5,000 Years of History (Mike Ingram, 2020) claims that Richard was in Northampton "often", but gives no details or sources. Ingram cites a charter that Richard sold to Northampton in 1189 as part of his efforts to raise money for the Crusade, but does not mention anything about "setting off" from Northampton.
  • "the western world’s first parliament, the National Parliament raised in 1131" - Ingram (see above) says that on 8th September 1131, Henry I summonsed "a council of the nobility of England" in order to help Henry reconcile with his wife, Matilda. This doesn't sound much like a Parliament to me. The official histories of Parliament are more generally held to start at either 1215 with Magna Carta establishing the idea, or at 1236, when the first Parliament was actually held.
  • "some kind of zombie from a voodoo film" - In popular culture, the term "zombie" is widely used for anyone who "returns from the grave" as a (usually mindless) monster. The term has its roots in the religion of Voodoo, though both voodoo and zombies have changed a lot in popular culture (hence the reference to voodoo film). At the time of this incident, "zombies" would have very recently appeared in the movie Plan 9 From Outer Space (April 1959), though it's unclear whether it had made it to Britain.
  • "a portrait of the Fifth Infernal Duke" - Alan Moore has painted such a portrait, see image, right.
  • "[Lilith] walked out on her husband in the first celebrity divorce, with incompatibility as the main reason cited" - The story is first cited in the c.9th century Alphabet of Ben Sira, where Lilith refuses to "lie below" Adam, but "only on top". When they could not come to agreement, Lilith "pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air."
  • "fornicated with abominations" - There are numerous accounts of Lilith giving birth to abominations, monsters, and/or demons. Many of these appear to have been either the children of Adam himself, or of random humans whom she mates with in their sleep. References to her fornicating with abominations (plural) are far fewer (and mostly later in origin). The only examples I've found are:
    • The Kabbalistic text Treatise on the Left Emanation (c.1270) has Lilith married to the fallen archangel Samael. [Note that this is usually considered a separate being from the Lilith that marries Asmodeus.]
    • In the Arabic Sun of the Great Knowledge (13th century), Lilith mated with Iblis (who may well be a counterpart of Samael).
    • According to R. Ya'aqov and R. Yitzhaq (?), "The demon whose name is Qaftzefoni, on rare occasions, when permission is granted him, has intercourse with, and attaches himself to, and loves, a creature whose name is Lildtha [Lilith]". (And is this even the same Lilith as the one we've been talking about?)
    • Lilith's Cave: Jewish tales of the supernatural (1988) quite vaguely mentions Lilith having "demon lovers".
    • Perhaps most significantly, in Neil Gaiman's Sandman issue #40, the story of Adam's three wives is briefly recounted. This recounting includes the phrase "They say [Lilith] copulated with demons". In the script (as reported in The Annotated Sandman), Gaiman claims: "Everything here can be explicitly referenced, Biblically or Talmudically," but I believe that for this particular phrase, he was incorrect. (A bit later, Asmodeus uses the phrase "copulate with monsters" about Lilith, notably similar to Gaiman's phrase.)
  • "one compartment of his Chinese Box intelligence" -It's not 100% clear what the referent is here. Puzzle Boxes (sometimes associated with China) are intricate and difficult to open, sometimes containing one or more hidden compartments in addition to the main one. The geometric, puzzling nature of these would certainly fit Asmodeus's character. On the other hand, this could be a reference to the Chinese Room, a thought experiment devised by John Searle in 1980, as a means of arguing whether or not a computer could ever be truly "intelligent". Since demons in Jerusalem are "lesser" than humans, this could be indicating that Asmodeus is not fully sentient, but just following mechanical rules.
• Integrating reader comments on various projects.

Projected for next time: Jerusalem, chapters 15 and 16.