The Binding of Isaac- A Reconsideration of Abraham's Jealous God

Ten years ago, I self-published an ethnography about the emergence of contemporary Western polytheism. I defined the practice as the reification and veneration of multiple levels of divine beings. As a devotional polytheist with time on my hands and no tenure-track position even remotely on the horizon, I had the time. It seemed like it would be a worthwhile thing to do. So, I did it. My main motivation was that at the time, there was a lot of discussion amongst the hard polytheist subset of pagans about the “correct” way to view the Gods (capital G), the correct way to worship Them, and how to establish devotional relationships with Them. 

My mentor at the time, who I’ll call Tracy, had extremely hardcore, authoritarian, and exacting ideas about these things. She also expected those of us in her circle to follow suit- to a T. If we didn’t, There. Were. Consequences. As time went on, I began to realize that I didn’t really agree with her about any part of her practice and wanted to know what others were doing. I imagined a lot of devotional polytheists were in the same boat. So, I spent two years interviewing and writing Walking With the Gods and learned what else was going on. I wanted to help people like myself who were struggling to define their relationship to the Divine and build a practice that would nurture and foster those relationships. 

Like the overwhelming majority of people I interviewed, I eschewed the points of mythology that painted my Deities in bad light, or were open to unkind interpretations. Sometimes, I just “felt” that a particular myth couldn’t be a true depiction of Them, because that wasn’t my experience with them. Until it was. Eventually. Looking back, I am floored by the immense optimism, enthusiasm, good faith, and devastating naïveté of my devotion to various Gods. The harsh reality I eventually faced was that not all of Them reciprocated my good faith or emphasis on clear communication. My experiences with a few of Them were deeply suboptimal, and to be honest, there were instances where my guardians and Ancestors had to intervene because I was flat-out being abused. Unfortunately, some of the Deities to whom I was devoted did not deserve the devotion I gave, and they took me for granted. 

To be fair, a good part of my struggle was because I had refused to heed the myths of these Gods. Not because they are literal truth, but because they give a clear window into a Deity’s character, values, and personality. It is important to heed the insight of the cultures who actually first worshiped these Gods, because they had context and experience that modern people simply have no way to access.  Several myths make it abundantly clear that there are some Gods you shouldn’t engage naively, if at all. 

After a few years of struggling with my contradictory and conflicting experiences, I gained the inner strength and self-respect to walk away. The goodly Gods understood my journey and blessed my departure. The nasty ones were hardly nice about it. Nonetheless, I developed the alliance-building, ritual cleansing, and spiritual negotiation skills to make the separation stick. It was only much later after I had freed myself that I realized that some of the Gods I had venerated were in actuality incredibly evil and nasty beings impersonating Gods. They relied on my inexperience and sincere desire for Divine connection to run me into the ground until I was a total wreck. If it weren’t for my innate conviction that Gods shouldn’t treat people like that, and that it was wrong for Them to do so just because they were GODS–along with the intervention of key spiritual allies–I’d have been sunk. 

In the years since I began that project, I have run into at least a dozen people who ended up in exactly the same situation as I. Thankfully, My nightmare gave me the skills and the resources to help them get out from under their onerous and ill-advised relationships with various Gods and various God-impersonators. Two things really began to stand out in these situations. First, you need to have a strong sense of self and a strong personal moral compass. If your desire to commune with a Deity outweighs your knowledge of self, you will often find yourself pushed out of your moral comfort zone and doing things you’d rather not, because you’ve been led to do it in the name of devotional practice. Fortunately, I’m the type to kick like a mule when this happens. Freedom and decency are worth fighting for. Second, you need discernment, cleansing protocols, and a solid ritual engagement practice in order to recognize when you are dealing with an evil trickster (or an evil God, because there are SEVERAL) and rid yourself of it. 

Prior to my harrowing experiences with Gods, I had equally harrowing experiences with Jehovah. Christianity is not often kind to female-bodied people or queer people, and I’m both of those things. Yet, I still had that yearning desire to connect with the Divine and my utter conviction that somewhere, there had to be a Deity who deserved the sort of devotion Jehovah demanded and was worthy of mine. Fortunately, I’ve finally forged the connections I’ve been seeking: with the land, my Ancestors, the spirits of nature, guardians, guides, and Creator –or Cosmos, or Mother God, as I variously conceive of Her.

I still reify and venerate multiple levels of divinity, but I’m no longer a devotional polytheist. Gods are largely absent from my current practice. Guides, guardians, nature spirits, my Ancestors, Mother Earth, and Creator are my focus now. I learned a lot during that project. I’ve learned even more in the decade since. The biggest thing I’ve learned is how incredibly foolish it is to engage ancient Gods who haven’t been steadily worshiped in millennia with the expectation that they are somehow going to conform to your understanding of what Deity is and not have very specific expectations of those who choose to engage them. 

At this point in my life, I will NEVER worship a male-gendered God as any sort of supreme being. Gender is inherently limiting. The body you are born into heavily determines your social status, role expectations, and reproductive prerogatives. To my mind, a proper Supreme Being is limitless, and it just doesn’t seem logical or reasonable to assume that any sort of Supreme Being would be limited by gender. That said, I innately respond more positively to the divine feminine. When I do engage in any way with a Supreme Being, I see her as Mother God, with the recognition that in all likelihood They are beyond gender and are not at all obligated to conform to my gendered expectations. 

So imagine my surprise when all these years later, I find myself once more turning to investigate the Abrahamic religion of my youth. The state of the world has left most of us in the West revisiting those Abrahamic eschatological narratives. There is a feeling of apocalyptic doom hanging over us. I can’t help but think that the Abrahamic monotheist assumptions that underpin the majority of Western culture have predisposed us to make these sorts of “end times” connections. I decided that I wanted to better understand what is happening, so I gave myself a refresher on the Abrahamic scriptures. Yet, this time, my reading of these scriptures is very different than it was when I was a child. 

Itamar Ben-Gvir’s march on the Temple Mount was a deep motivation to do this reading. On the one hand, it is patently absurd that Jewish people praying at the Temple Mount is an illegal activity. On the other hand, given the sanctity of the site, it’s patently absurd for Ben-Gvir to have marched on the Temple Mount with over 2,000 of acolytes, knowing full well the consequences set down by Hashem (“The Name,” meaning God, whose name is too holy to be uttered aloud) for approaching (and possibly stomping all over) His altar in an unclean state, for the purpose of provoking further bloodshed between nations that both have nuclear weapons. Ben-Gvir offered nothing by hubris and arrogance on the altar of Hashem, during his visit. And if there is one thing I remember well from childhood, it’s how Hashem deals with that sort of hubris.

Still, something deeply moving has slowly been revealed in my studies of the Pentateuch: the spiritual journey of Abraham, When I read about Abraham, what I see is a man whose passionate and all-consuming desire to connect with the Divine led him to forcefully reject the Gods of his people and his ancestors. It drove him to focus his entire being on devotion to El, or as Abraham would come to call Him, YHWH Elohim. At that moment, I viscerally connected with Abraham in a way that never could have imagined I would.  Reading those verses nearly brought me to tears. Abraham’s deep, insatiable yearning to connect with the Divine, and with Divine purpose–I RECOGNIZE that. Viscerally. I understand that. I’ve been negotiating exactly the same compulsion for years. 

From that moment on, I stopped seeing Abraham as a ready-made monotheist who was an all-knowing expert in all that he did. I started seeing him as someone who had to invent, from scratch, the devotional practices and ritual engagement methods for connecting with Hashem. Abraham was someone who had nothing but sincere intentions and ironclad faith that Hashem was guiding him, and nothing but faith to assure him that the voice he heard was always that of Hashem.

Abraham’s journey is the exact inverse of mine. Abraham rejected the gods of his ancestors and devoted himself to Hashem. I rejected his God and went looking at the Gods of my ancestors, and a goddess or two of his ancestors. Yet the exact same gut-wrenching yearning for connection to the Divine drove both of us. Which is also why I believe that his inexperience and lack of established protocols for spiritual cleansing and ritual engagement caused problems for him. These problems had to have been very similar to the problems I had in trying to build my own devotional practices.  

It has been my experience that trying to build (or reinvent, depending on the Deity) the protocols necessary to not only cleanly connect with a Deity in a way that They recognize and enjoy, is difficult and painful.l I’ve had only my own personal gnosis and doggedly determined devotion and faith that I was connecting with Them to guide me.  At the time I wrote my book, others were only beginning to come forward and publish about their own devotional practices, and I very quickly learned that even if you wish to engage the same Deity as another person, what that Deity wants from you might be very, very different from what that Deity wanted from them. The fact that on several occasions I succeeded only in connecting with some monstrously evil spirit masquerading as the Deity I sought is proof that this process is riddled with dangers and disappointments. Though my situation has greatly evolved over the past ten years, there are challenges.  Even now, I’m still perfecting my practice, building my spiritual protections, refining my spiritual cleansing protocols, and strengthening my discernment. It’s a long process and there is more than a little bit of trial and error. 

Thus, it was for Abraham. He had the experience of worshiping the various Canaanite Gods, with the different types of offerings, ritual practices, and devotional proscription attendant to each. Yet it is very, very clear to me as I read through the Pentateuch that Hashem absolutely did not want Abraham to do any of those things. In all honesty, it seems that Hashem wanted to get Abraham as far away from those practices as possible. It was the only way to build the system of devotional practice and ritual engagement Hashem saw fit. Hashem wanted specific things both for and from the people He would eventually choose. Discovering those things was the most important and essential task Abraham could possibly undertake. 

It is worth considering what, exactly, Hashem was guiding Abraham away from. The Canaanites of Abraham’s time had inherited their pantheon from the Ugaritic culture. While the chief god of the Canaanite/Ugaritic pantheon was El, the most popularly worshiped God in the pantheon was the storm god Ba'al–whose name, roughly translated, means “Lord” or “Master”. Ba'al was the rain-bringer. The Levant doesn’t have many rivers or freshwater lakes. Rain was the sole water source for agriculture. Given this, it isn’t surprising that Ba'al was so heavily emphasized in the Canaanite religion. Because of this, the relationship between Ba'al and El could best be described as that of co-regents; Ba'al’s influence was such that El was forced to consider Ba'al’s preferences and desires when making decisions that affected the pantheon. It is Ba'al, not El, who serves as the protagonist of the most prominent Ugaritic myth cycle. His worship was far and away one of the most dominant aspects of Canaanite religious life. 

And yet, what did this worship entail? The Pentateuch outlines any number of hideous perversions, which modern scholars have taken great pains to contextualize as hyperbole. The worship of Ba'al involved drunkenness, sexual licentiousness, bloody animal sacrifice, and gluttonous feasting–and very possibly bestiality as an homage to Ba'al’s escapades in the Ugaritic myth cycle. Yet, it has been well-established that the ancient Carthaginians– the descendants of Phoenicians who worshiped Ba'al–practiced brutal child sacrifice.  The passing of children through the fire as an offering during the ritual worship of Ba'al is well-established. These practices were all common in the Levant during the Bronze age. At best, worshiping Ba'al was a filthy, bloody, mindless act. At worst, it was a depraved abomination. 

I have no desire to demonize sexualized fertility rites, feasting, or any other of the ancient rituals done to honor the ancient Gods. Yet it’s important to point out the peculiarly depraved character of Ba'al worship. Everything about those rites concerns connecting with the animalistic nature of humanity and the animalistic, tempestuous nature of the God in question. The rites of Ba'al are absolutely devoid of spirituality, mindfulness, and engagement with what is highest and best in the human soul. THIS is what Hashem was leading Abraham away from. 

My experience with Ba'al is that he is exactly as violent, jealous, bloodthirsty, abominable, and overwhelming as advertised. I don’t think it sat well with him that YHWH Elohim had chosen to break off from the other Canaanite Deities to nurture a new nation that would be focused on the growth and elevation of the human spirit, and focusing on what was best about humanity. This nation would be rooted in all the things Ba'al was not and would value none of the things Ba'al offered. It is not hard to reckon that Ba'al was very displeased that YHWH Elohim was cutting Him out of getting what He felt was His. Likely, He was motivated IN THE EXTREME to destroy every part of it that He could. Historically, we know he had success in this effort.  For centuries after founding the nation of Israel, the worship of Ba'al was often in direct competition with the worship of YHWH; in Judah, the worship of YHWH was often undertaken with Ba'alist rites in direct contravention of what had been established in the Torah.

 

Into this fraught situation, Hashem led brave Abraham to found a new nation devoted to the uplifting and spiritual evolution of the people of Israel. Only people oriented toward the good and the holy were worthy to worship Hashem and carry out Hashem’s Divine plans. But the building of a solid devotional practice and clean ritual engagement is a lifelong endeavor. Because Abraham was the first person in the Levant to do something like this, he occasionally made mistakes. Hashem countered this. Rather than leave Abraham to rely on his personal gnosis, Hashem brought him the prophetess and seer Sarah to be his wife. Abraham was instructed to do no great undertaking without first consulting Sarah on the matter. But, he was human and he made mistakes. 

Nowhere in Abraham’s story is this more clear to me than in the story of the binding and near-sacrifice of Isaac. I’m not the first person to suggest that centenarian Abraham was misled by an evil spirit whom he mistook for Hashem. And I’m not the first to point out that Abraham committed to this undertaking without first consulting Sarah on the matter. If he had, she would doubtless have seen right through it. And I’m not the first person to recognize that Hashem likely commended Abraham on his devotion rather than berate him for his error because Abraham had always flawlessly followed Hashem’s commands. But to my knowledge, I am the first person to suggest that the evil spirit masquerading as Hashem was none other than Ba'al. 

Ba'al saw a 105-year-old man who had grown accustomed to trusting that his discussions with Hashem were exactly as he took them to be: conversations with Hashem. It would have been incredibly easy to fool Abraham into committing child sacrifice, so long as he did not consult Sarah on the matter first. But it is the nature of the sacrifice commanded by “Hashem” that convinces me Ba'al was involved. Abraham was told to sacrifice his miracle son. Ba'al is well-known for demanding child sacrifice, and what better sacrifice could there be than the one who was destined to carry forth the founding of the nation of Israel? Especially if, as I suspect, Ba'al was consumed with both jealousy and hatred for Hashem and His Divine plans to redeem the Israelites from the baseness and depravity Ba'al demanded from them. 

Another reason to consider the potential role of Ba'al in the binding of Isaac is that it does away with the need to reconcile a cruel God with a loving one. What if Hashem wasn’t proposing a particularly cruel test of Abraham’s faith? What if an evil and depraved Ba'al misled Abraham to nearly commit this atrocity? And if this is possible, then where else in the Pentateuch or the rest of the Old Testament, might that be the case?  What if the cruel and jealous God commanding heartbreaking acts of faith is actually Ba'al impersonating Hashem, and the people in question had no idea, so the story got recorded as if it was truly Hashem? There is ample evidence that Levantine peoples routinely conflated Ba'al and YHWH. Judah was rife with exactly this problem, and it wasn’t eradicated until the Babylonian exile. The possibility that otherwise devout people have been egregiously misled by Ba'al masquerading as Hashem bears consideration. 

And if this is the case, there’s no reason to assume that Ba'al hasn’t intermittently recurred throughout history to cause incredible strife for the Jewish people? Doesn’t Nathan of Gaza’s insistence in 1666 that the heretical Sabbatai Levi was the Messiah make more sense if he was heeding Ba'al unawares? And Levi’s later shenanigans certainly make more sense if we accept the possibility that he, too, was misled by Ba'al. Levi’s rejection of traditional devotional practices, dietary restraint, and ritual purification would have left him open to the influence of evil. His belief–courtesy of Nathan– that he was the Messiah would have left him certain that the voice he heard was Hashem’s, and the ideas he had were divinely inspired. The door was open for evil to enter, and there's no reason to doubt that that evil might well have been Ba'al. 

On the other hand, I have previously discussed the likelihood that the deaths of Nadab and Abhiu were the result of their introduction of elements of Ba'al worship into Hashem’s Tabernacle. I contend that their deaths were not the result of mere disobedience or a giddy passion for serving Hashem. Rather, their entering the Tabernacle unbidden and attempting to force Hashem to accept an unfit incense offering IN HIS OWN HOUSE was an act of contempt and hubris. Their fiery deaths were necessary to purge Hashem’s altar of their abominable actions. It also sent a message to any Ba'al worshipers who had avoided detection till that point: don’t try that here. Perhaps Hashem was a jealous God precisely because Ba'al was actively trying to sabotage and destroy His Divine plan AND his chosen people, and Hashem refused to give quarter to Ba'al’s influence, period. 

Many of the incomprehensibly cruel actions attributed to Hashem might very likely have been those of Ba'al. Some of the overwhelmingly harsh punishments for disobedience might have been a response to the intrusion of Ba'alism into Hashem’s holy spaces. With this in mind, it is easier to reconcile these seeming contradictions. Perhaps they ultimately arose from Hashem’s struggle to preserve his people from Ba'al’s influence. Maybe Hashem is a loving God, who is harsh when necessary, but mistakes were made in attributing to Him the cruelties of Ba'al. 

Endgame- Updated

As I write this, two major things have just not gotten underway. First, Israeli tanks now roll grindingly into Gaza in the initial stages of the ground strike it promised to deliver in retaliation against Hamas for its evil and brutal terrorist attacks on October 7. Second, Hamas and Iranian leaders are meeting in Moscow to discuss Russia as a potential “platform for mediation” in releasing the hostages Hamas took during their attack, and hopefully halting the impending hellfire and brimstone that Israel has been raining upon Gaza. Never mind these three forces met a few months ago in Russia and that to all appearances (but lack of hard evidence) it seems as if Russia…could have had a hand in planning the attack? 

And why wouldn’t they have helped, even if only a little?

Russia pivoted their economy to capitalize on the war, so Russia has no real reason to stop their campaign to seize a sovereign democracy. They know that the entire world is absolutely sick of the situation in Ukraine. It’s dragging on and very likely to continue into a second year. It’s expensive and resource-draining and Ukraine has very little to show for its valiant efforts. Russia reckons that if they just hold out a bit longer, they’ll win what has become a war of attrition. Adding another war front in the Middle East is just a good business strategy for Putin at this point because he knows his economy will stay strong. But you know what an even better strategy is? Creating a nasty situation that forces your biggest military threat to divert resources because of prior and preeminent diplomatic obligations. 

Forcing the U.S. out of the Ukraine conflict will make it that much easier for Russia to finally take the country because instead of treating Putin like the land-grabbing tyrant he is and confronting him directly with full-scale war, NATO has been low-key waging a proxy war against Russia IN UKRAINE. In no way does NATO want an ACTUAL war with Russia, so they’re all-in with propping up the Ukraine war. At least the conflict remains “contained” that way. To Europe’s credit, they know full well that appeasement against such tyrants does not work…of course, it would have been nice for them to have remembered this in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea because maybe things wouldn’t be like they are now. 

The one thing that surprised me in all of this was China. I fully expected Russia to do one last massive shock-and-awe push into Ukraine to crush it utterly and drive NATO WAAAY back, and then immediately deploy naval forces to the Mediterranean to counter the US naval presence that is supporting Israel. But then China said, “hold my Tsing-Dao!” and beat Russia to it. With Russia’s blessing. 

The idea that Russia and China are involved over concerns that Palestine’s rights as a nation are being trampled is laughable. What Russia has been doing to Ukraine is what Israel as longed and lusted to do to Palestine for 74 years, and it’s what China has longed and lusted to do to Taiwan for 77 years. Russia is 100% violating the national rights of Ukraine. China is in the process of 100% undermining the national rights of Taiwan. The reason that the toxic duo of Russia and China have inserted themselves into the war in the Levant is because during the isolationism of the Trump administration, Russia and China finally became the major global power-brokers they had always wanted to be. The U.S. failed to notice that this had been happening until China brokered peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran. THAT finally woke Anthony Blinken’s State Department from its somnambulant state, but he immediately proceeded to act according to America’s 2015 foreign policy playbook, which had yielded us precisely diddly-squat in that region because it is OUT OF DATE.

 Worse than that, actually. On Blinken’s watch, Iran has inched ever so much closer to having nuclear weapons. In fact, Blinken’s state department welcomed the development and along with Office of the Director of National Intelligence refused to countenance the possibility that Iran might possibly be building nuclear weapons and could truly pose an existential threat to Israel EVERYONE IN THE REGION. This is precisely why the US is in the Mediterranean now. We are making sure the fight stays between Israel and Hamas and that Iran and Hezbollah doesn’t even THINK about getting involved. It’s also why Blinders Blinken announced that any attack on US personnel by Iran’s proxies will be considered an attack from Iran, regardless.

As it stands now, the Levant is a frontier honky-tonk, and the US is basically guarding the bathroom door of the bar so that no one can stop our buddy Israel from beating the ever-loving-fuck out of that punk-ass Hamas for their heinous and murderous attack on Israel.  We don’t care who started it. We don’t care that our buddy might have done awful things to Hamas’ lady Palestine, because none of that could possibly justify Hamas’ vicious, evil, and violent assault ON OUR FRIEND. We are standing by our buddy because that is what buddies do. The thing is China is now also in this bathroom, and they have inserted themselves between us and our buddy Israel, to make sure the fight stays just between him and Hamas. If our buddy loses the upper hand, we will have to go through China to help him.

Now, it’s pretty clear that China’s dog in this fight involves protecting their oil investments and their influence, as well as keeping Russia in their back pocket. China would like nothing more than to be the reason that the U.S. fails in its commitment to back Israel’s military operations in the Levant. Russia, too, would like to see this. Which is why, as soon as I saw what China had done, I realized exactly how bad, bad, badbadbad this whole situation is likely to get. 

You see, this honky-tonk bathroom we’re in isn’t a one filthy one-seater. It has stalls. And in those are waiting Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria. Iran burns with the desire to absolutely push the West out of the Levant and come to dominate it or die trying. Lebanon is still incandescent with rage over the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and wants the West gone from the Levant. Syria is absolutely done with Israel bombing them to smithereens every time it thinks Iran is secretly meeting in Damascus to plot Israel’s destruction. We in the West drastically underestimate the degree of hatred some of Israel’ neighbors hold for them, and for us, because the reason Israel is able to protect its national interests in the brutal manner it has is because we have their back–especially and particularly the U.S. But wait. There’s more. 

On the other side of that bathroom door is Russia. It’s likely that North Korea is also tagging along. You know who isn’t on the other side of that door? Anyone in NATO, because they are too busy shoring up their own national protections in case they can’t score a win against Russia in Ukraine and they have to defend their own borders. When all of this finally starts to sink in, one thing is obvious: Hamas isn’t trapped in this bathroom with Israel and the U.S. Israel and the U.S. are trapped in this bathroom with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria, and China is blocking all of us in, with Russia waiting on the other side to keep us all trapped in this nuclear pressure-cooker. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar, “IT’S A TRAP!” 

Plot twist: it was always a trap, and this is the only possible explanation that makes sense. When Hamas attacked Israel, the first thought everyone in the West had was, “Don’t they know what Israel is going to do to them? How could they be so stupid as to think this would work? Are they just suicidal?” The answers to those questions, in order, are, “we were counting on it,” “we have a plan,” and “we have tunnels, we’ll outlast you like Al-Qaeda and the Viet Cong did.” Of Hamas-what they are is fucking angry, fucking violent, and fucking well-allied with and armed by two nuclear superpowers who are eager to dominate the geopolitics of the region even if it means letting a loose cannon like Iran be their top puppet there. Hell yes, they’ve been planning this. They got so tired of waiting for a moment like this that they just bit the bullet and made it happen. And you know who knows I’m right? 

Israel. They ignored Egyptian intelligence reports that Hamas was planning an attack; it was just time to get it over with. What they didn’t realize is that they were baited and have now walked into a trap that they absolutely cannot get out of.

Israeli leadership acknowledged on day one that this is going to be a long war, and one they are determined to win. In the face of international censure over civilian deaths, Israel will strive to temper its righteous rage at Hamas and conduct a slow, thorough, and complete militarized demolition of the Gaza Strip whilst showing restraint towards civilians. The thing is…tunnels. America spent 20 years losing the Vietnam War and 20 more years losing the war in Afghanistan. What two major things do these wars have in common? First, despite being a world-class military superpower, America lost both of them. Second, we lost both of them because we insisted on fighting a conventional war against ideologically galvanized ragtag partisans who struck using brilliant and devastating guerrilla tactics but then retreated back to their network of caves and tunnels before we even knew what hit us. This is precisely and exactly what Israel is facing in the Gaza strip. But wait. There’s more. 

Israel’s only truly well-protected border is along the Mediterranean coast, largely because the U.S. is there, even if we are being dogged by China. The borders with Egypt and Jordan will remain relatively safe for the foreseeable future, because neither Egypt nor Jordan has any desire to tangle with Israel. However, the sovereign kingdom of Jordan absolutely has not forgotten the map of “Greater Israel” that the current regime’s finance minister presented in Paris earlier this year which featured Israel as having taken over Gaza, the West Bank, and THE KINGDOM OF JORDAN. Jordan will not provoke Israel, but they are unlikely to do any favors whatsoever for Israel going forward.

Moreover, it’s true that Israel normalized relations with the UAE and has been moving towards normalization with Saudi Arabia. That is exactly why on the day of the attack, Hamas delivered the message that Israel could not protect its allies with the “we’re looking at you, Saudi Arabia and UAE,” strongly indicated therein. To be perfectly honest, I can’t imagine that Saudi Arabia relished normalizing relations with a nation that had announced earlier this year its plans to annex a key ally (Jordan) into “Greater Israel.” It’s very likely that their motive for normalization was the promise from the U.S. to finally support the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia developing a domestic nuclear program. Taken together, I think we have an explanation of why Saudi Arabia has remained absolutely silent as this slow-moving horror has unfolded. Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE are good enough with Israel to get involved in this. As for Iraq…they have absolutely no love for Israel, but there is a lot of dissent because Hamas acted without the input of the Iran-backed armed militia groups roving the Iraqi countryside. This, combined with a small but significant U.S. military presence in the nation, could stymie any support Hamas would see from that quarter for the foreseeable future. This, by the way, is the best-case scenario.

[Edit: I had not wanted to include this next comment, but thought better of it and so added it later.] Ironically, the least strategically problematic border Israel has to deal with in this quagmire is their border with The West Bank. First off, no part of this border has been left to chance. It is the most well-policed and well-mapped of Israel's borders. Secondly, due to their annexation of the West Bank, Israel effectively controls both sides of this border. Yes, skirmishes with Hamas happen, deadly attacks are planned and executed by Hamas, and rockets are launched by Hamas from the Palestinian side, and far too many of them. Every instance of these is met with crushing and certain retaliation from the IDF. For the duration of the conflict with Hamas, we can expect a greatly increased Israeli presence patrolling the border and more IDF raids on places like Jenin, but...that is to be expected and it's really just a more intense version of what Israel has already been doing. While the situation isn't "stable," it has reached a state of equilibrium and predictability that does not exist along any of Israel's other borders. Regardless of how much the fighting intensifies, Israel will have this border on lock, which is why it is the least strategically relevant border in the entire situation. This could change if Israel decides to go all-in on Palestine rather than Gaza. However, the consequences of Israel taking such an action are so significant that it is doubtful they would take that tack.

This brings us to Israel’s biggest strategic problem: its northern borders with Syria and Lebanon. If Israel goes all in on the destruction of Gaza, they will be pretty vulnerable to incursion from Hezbollah and Iranian militias in Syria. As China is positioned in the Mediterranean to keep the U.S. from influencing the outcome of this regional conflict, Israel will eventually be stuck all alone defending those borders when Hezbollah finally makes their move…which is the whole entire strategy Hamas has come up with. Hamas knows that Israel is committed to a grindingly brutal, long, and punishing ground war in Gaza. The displeasure of the international community at the treatment of Gaza civilians is going to temper the pace and severity of Israel’s actions at first. The best Israel can hope for is that bloody Palestinian civilians recede from the headlines long enough for them to regain the traditional equilibrium they have long observed with the West: Israel does what it must to defend itself, and the West clutches their pearls with one hand while passing heavy artillery to Israel with the other. However. However. This only gets quiet if Hezbollah and Hamas decide that it will, and the odds are, they won’t. Once Israel is good and entrenched in their Gaza campaign, we can expect Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian militias holed up in Syria to start really attacking, which will force Israel to fight on two battlefronts that are on opposite sides of the country from each other. And as has been observed previously, we can expect this to be a protracted and painful war that will force the U.S. to confront our willingness to engage China (and by extension, Russia)  militarily in order to help our ally Israel. 

As Israel works its way through every possible permutation of this impending engagement, the one thing they need is the one thing they can’t find: an exit strategy where they unequivocally win. They cannot find a sequence of maneuvers that puts them in a solidly winning position, keeps their people and their borders safe, and ensures that their ongoing plans to decimate and annex Palestine will proceed unimpeded by international condemnation or their neighbors’ (possibly nuclear) military resistance. They can’t find it because there isn’t one. To engage further in this conflict is to drag Russia, China, and the U.S. into an economically and ecologically devastating proxy war of global proportions and accept, at best, a devastating Pyrrhic victory and significantly weakened standing in the international community. At worst, and however unlikely it seems in light of history…they could lose a nuclear war and in so doing lose the state of Israel; no way will their neighbors tolerate their continued existence if they fail to hold their ground now. Yet to not engage militarily is absolutely unthinkable if Israel is to avoid looking weak and easily trifled with by the terrorists next door. 

Hamas basically set a trap for Israel to walk into, and Israel knows it, even if the West is too full of itself and its outdated theories of global power balance to recognize this fact. Israel is on the horns of a dilemma. They know this, even if we haven’t figured it out just yet. This, more than any other reason, is why Israel is proceeding so slowly in gathering and unleashing their ground offensive in Gaza. The only winning move is not to play. Unfortunately, Hamas enjoyed the privilege of having made the first move and now, there’s no backing out. No matter what they do, Israel’s next move will proceed directly to the endgame, for better or worse. When the dust finally settles, the power balance in the region and the world will be forever altered. 

+ + +

I spent the summer of 2022 documenting America’s descent into Christian Nationalist fascism. Most of the things I was frightened would come about have come about. Right down to the period checks, the widespread stripping of LGBTQ human rights, the catastrophic health impacts of our draconian abortion bans, and the spikes in antisemitism. I don’t like being right about things like this, but that didn’t stop it from happening. This is just something to consider in mulling over what I’ve written here today.

The Lollypop Guild- Short Speculative Fiction

         

FICTION PIECE    

When Al first caught their reflection in the darkened glass of their front door, they didn’t quite recognize who was looking back at them. Their eyes momentarily flashed gold instead of beaming their customary brandy-brown hue. Their unruly bob blipped copper and gold and bold as a lion’s mane before fading to its normal shade of rocksalt-and-pepper. For an instant, four huge wings unfurled from their back jolted like a million volts: the top pair were ravens’ wings, and the bottom pair could have come from an albino bat–a monstrously huge one. The cherry on the sundae of strange was the corona of heavy blue and gold flame that enveloped them. As soon as it appeared, the vision was gone. Al was so shaken that they stared for a full minute at their now normal reflection, daring it to try that nonsense one more time and wondering about their mental health. The image could have come from one of her students’ homebrew manga projects. It was certainly recognizable as such. Maybe, Al thought, they were just feeling tired and imagining things. It hadn’t exactly been an unpleasant sight that momentarily met her gaze. Rather, it was a vehemently unwelcome one. 

Al vigorously shook their head and the vestiges of the image flicked out of their mind and back into the aether where they belonged. The edges of this late September Friday evening bit and snapped at Al’s ungloved fingers as they fumbled with their door keys. With a heavy grunting sigh, Al unbolted and shoved open the heavy oak door before walking into their postwar maroon saltbox of a house. This place was the tiniest thing in the neighborhood to be sure. It had a fantastic yard and a helluva basement, which is what sold them on it. The house itself was kind of a dump and needed a LOT of work. They’d only been in the place a month. It felt great to be home and to know they didn’t have to be anywhere else for the next 30 hours. 

It was with great relief and excitement that Al had taken the job of middle school English teacher for Syracuse Public Schools. They hadn’t wanted to leave their parents in the care of a home health aide, but when their Oklahoma college prep academy told them there had been a student “complaint” over something they had said in class, they knew it was time to resign and move. They’d handled student complaints before, but this one was special: it was an Anti-CRT complaint. An evangelical freshman primed by their deeply bigoted parents had eavesdropped on Al’s lunchtime study group until she’d caught asexual, nonbinary Al advising a gay student on how to find resources for coming out diplomatically to their family. The next day, the complaint was made. As the author of Oklahoma’s Anti-CRT policy lived in the same district in which Al taught, and had several friends on the school board, Al knew they had zero chance of not being fired, of not losing their license, and of not being forced to pay an enormous fine, though they might have avoided the yearlong jail sentence. It was just time to pack up and go, so they did. They lucked into finding this place right after they got the job offer. It had all fallen together so well that Al only had a week between moving into her new place and starting her new teaching job. A tough go, for sure, but Al did it, and felt pretty good about themself for pulling it off. 

Al dropped their laptop case and two Aldi bags of first-draft personal narrative essays onto the floor beside the futon sofa,  then shrugged out of their coat and threw it into the papasan chair situated across the Fjallbo coffee table from the futon. No sooner had Al done so than their white and orange dwarf cat Chesh, hopped onto it and burrowed down for a nap. Slipping out of their dirty gray Ebay Uggs, Al collapsed heavy and hard onto the futon and shooshed Chesh off of their coat. Chesh then hopped onto the sofa next to Al and settled in for a nap. Al gently stroked the sensitive spot between Chesh’s ears and debated on whether to get back up and grab a beer. They really needed a beer, but then, they felt too tired to get back up and go get it just yet. Exhaustion won. The beer would wait. 

En route, Al heard the unmistakable sound of panicked yelping. It suddenly occurred to them that their terrier Oz, hadn’t immediately attacked them upon walking in the door. Al listened intently for a minute before realizing that the sound came from the basement door, on the other side of the kitchen. Al hurried to the basement and opened the door. They were immediately bowled over by an energetic ruff of wiry gray hair and big personality. “I missed you, too.” Al said, as they scratched the dog’s neck and shoulders. Oz licked Al’s face with such glee that they almost forgot about the dire situation at hand. Oz was magick that way–they can lick your cares and worries away. But then again, for not the first time since arriving home, Al had an uneasy feeling. 

The basement door had a mind of its own. Sometimes it was open, sometimes it was closed, sometimes it would open by itself,and sometimes it would collapse closed all on its own. It wasn’t too hard to believe that the door had fallen open, Oz had wandered down to the basement to hunt for lizards, and the door had gotten shut. Al knew they had shut the basement door before leaving for work. As Al got up from the floor, they realized that they had not heard the alarm countdown warning when they opened the front door. Al was certain they had armed the alarm before leaving for school, but if Oz had gotten downstairs, then clearly, they hadn’t. Still, the juggernaut of Oz was a welcome distraction from that odd vision. Al checked and found the auto-feeder was still full, so they closed the basement door and locked it. Then, they went to the fridge, grabbed that beer, and headed back to the den to do some essay grading while watching Tail of the Nine-Tailed, 1938. It had taken a while to finally sit down and binge that kdrama, but the wait had been worth it. Episode four was up next and honestly, Hong Joo was absolutely everything Al loved in a woman.  

Al idly glanced into the Aldi bag closest to her feet and saw the slim pile of junk mail they’d grabbed from the mailbox and shoved into the bag as they headed up the driveway to their house. The edge of a piece in the middle caught their eye. Uneasily, Al reached in and slowly withdrew it. “What the…?” they muttered.

Al stared long and hard at the postcard The front of the card featured a movie still from The Wizard of Oz. The subject matter of the image immediately put Al on guard. They sat up, shoved their glasses onto their face, and took a closer look. The Wizard of Oz held great and heavy meaning for Al; it had been a secret obsession they’d only shared with one other person. Rather, that person had shared it with them, and Al had definitely taken notes. Their spine tingled, their forehead throbbed, and their hands shook as the examined the unexpected mail. 

Emblazoned on the postcard was a photo they’d seen dozens of times: Dorthy and the gang armed to fight the “spooks,” but something felt incredibly off. After a few minutes, Al saw the problem, and blurted aloud: “Who in the fuck gave Scarecrow a gun?” In the scene Al remembered, The Tin Man had an axe, the Cowardly Lion had bug spray and a butterfly net, and Dorothy wielded that basketful of Toto like it contained a hell-hound. Scarecrow was empty-handed because he utterly lacked foresight–which was perfectly in character. This gun addition was insanely out of character not only for Scarecrow, but for the entire film. Nowhere in the original Baum books had scarecrow been a pistol-packer, either. Al had read them all, many times. Something was very out of order here. Al swigged that Hoegaarden bottle for dear life and the drew a ragged breath.  

Al turned the postcard over as carefully as they would have pulled wires to disarm a bomb. What they saw made their heart skip a beat: Curved across the upper third of the field was a rainbow that seemed to have been drawn by a child. At one end of the rainbow was a stick-figure with red hair, yellow eyes, and four wings–a white pair and a black pair–holding a sword emitting blue and gold flames. A tiny orange and white cat sat attentively at the being’s feet. At the other end was a stick figure with purple skin and platinum hair who wore a voluminous cloak and held a blue lightsaber. Behind her, a gray terrier sat at attention. Underneath the rainbow was a yellow path with cross-hatching reminiscent of bricks. A sigil floated in the air between the path and the rainbow. 

Al recognized the sigil; it was a combination of hobo symbols that basically meant “go this way!” They’d learned the symbols from their fabulously wayward, train hopping-aunt and only ever taught them to one other person. The same person who’d been as obsessed with the Wizard of Oz as they’d been with Alice in Wonderland. The same person who had sent this postcard. But it was impossible. Absolutely impossible. First of all, the person who’d sent this postcard had died twenty years ago. Second, this postcard had been sent forty years ago. Third, and most impossible of all, this exact postcard had been sent from a place that is absolutely inaccessible to the United States Postal Service because it doesn’t exist–as such. Last time Al checked–which was surprisingly often–the post office hadn’t yet begun training postal carriers in the dark arts of astral projection and occult psyops. 

Yet, the truly troubling thing was the image on the front of the postcard, not the image on the back. Warily, Al picked up their phone and did an image search. Sure as shit, the entire world knew about Scarecrow’s out-of-place gun. There were several people who were as confused by it as Al was, but the vast majority of Google demonstrated that the world was familiar with this version of the scene. This wouldn’t have hit so hard if they hadn’t watched the film with their a week before; fewer than seven days prior,  the scene was decidedly as Al remembered it. 

“Classic Mandela Effect,” Al muttered. 

A Mandela Effect is when a large part of the population remembers an object, event, or media detail differently than the rest of the world. This group always has exactly the same pseudomemory, though. It is as it they all mis-remembered it en masse as a group. The Mandela Effect is so-named because a sizeable chunk of the population remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison, and were incredibly shocked when a very much alive Nelson Mandela became the president of the African National Congress after being released from prison. Nothing about this mass memory failure makes sense. 

While most of the world chalked Mandela Effect instances up to faulty memory and slight insanity, Al knew for a fact what caused Mandela Effects: timeline redistributions. From time to time, the world experiences existential threats due to human stupidity, naivety, or avarice. For example a threat could be caused by an assassination or the detonation of a nuclear bomb, or a human-caused environmental catastrophe. When the threat threshold is reached, there are forces on the planet that create a duplicate timeline as a sort of backup. Then, the existential threat comes to pass and both versions play out.  Thing is, these aren’t exact duplicates. Sometimes details change. Sometimes people didn’t die. Sometimes the Fruit of the Loom logo has a cornucopia. Sometimes children read the Berenstein Bears books. And sometimes Scarecrow didn’t have a gun in that scene from the Wizard of Oz. Whichever version has the best outcome for the planet is the one that the planetary energies shift into, and then the petty details get redistributed. Folks who “mis-remember” things aren’t mis-remembering anything; their energetic consciousness is just high enough that they retain the memory of the timeline as it was and do not relinquish that to accept the timeline as it now is. The really confusing thing, as far as Al was concerned, was that it's hard to tell exactly which events trigger the timeline shift. The average person realizes no advantage in having one memory or the other–it literally makes no difference whatsoever in their lives. For people like Al, though…it’s hideously portentous. It means that some major energetic shift has happened, and even though the planet is usually spared in the process, other things go absolutely sideways. In that brief interstitial moment during the shift from one timeline to another, portals get opened and things make their way from the astral plane and into the real world. Sometimes it’s postcards. Sometimes it’s elves. Sometimes, it's eldritch horrors. Sometimes, it’s honest-to-god aliens. None of it is ever any good. 

Al stretched their neck both left and right until a ripple of crackling on each side indicated that their upper spine was now aligned. They rose from the futon and headed to their room, postcard in hand. Looking down, Al finally noticed the spookiest thing of all about the postcard. There was no address anywhere on it. This magical artifact knew where to go, forty years after being sent from a candy-striped mailbox on the astral plane. “When you get it, come find me, because it’ll be a matter of life or death” Dorothy had said, as she slid the postcard into the mail slot, “And don’t be late for this very important date.” 

“Well, Dorothy,” Al said softly, “you’re already dead, so I guess it’s me we’re talking about.” Then, they closed the front door, armed the alarm system, and headed into the bedroom.  

* * *

Al’s bedroom was bare except for a bed, a nightstand, several boxes, a suitcase, and a gigantic 6-foot-by-3-foot mirror leaning against one wall. The mirror had been left by the previous owner. It weirded Al out to have it in the bedroom. Mirrors are dangerous objects at the best of times, but big ones are the absolute worst. The idea of having gods-only-know what watching back at you from whatever was on the other side of that mirror was a very unsettling thought, and at their age, Al just couldn’t be bothered to mess with any of it. This is why Al bought a batik bedspread from the thrift store down the block and threw it over the mirror. They hadn’t made enough friends yet to help them move the mirror to the guest bedroom. There are times when you need a giant, full-length mirror, so Al wasn’t against keeping it. But Al was not thrilled at having this particular mirror in their bedroom. 

As Al puttered around and pecked through boxes, it occurred to them that maybe the previous owner’s leaving this mirror here wasn’t a coincidence or an inconvenience. Maybe it was one of those happenstances that linger just beyond the edge of coincidence but are far too pointed and pat to be glib synchronicity. Another way to put it might be, “this is a setup.” What if whatever forces brought Al to this place, this house, and this moment were the same forces that conspired to bring that ME-ridden memento mori to their door? If so, would it really be a good idea to go chasing through gods-know-where looking for a long-dead friend? A friend who had been murdered, no less. By the conclusion of this chain of events, Al had gathered every item they were going to need. Oz was settled into place under the bed, watching . Chesh was settled onto the bed, directly above Oz. Though it had been decades since they’d attempted any such thing as they were about to do, Al knew from experience that their retired familiars had assumed guard duty. Both animals stared intently into the mirror, just beyond Al’s reflection. 

Al spread a beach towel out in front of the mirror and sat down cross-legged in front of it, leaving a foot and a half of space between them and the mirror surface. To their left, they placed the incense and very full ash bowl. To their right, they placed the oil bowl. In front of them, they placed the postcard. Muscle memory had already begun to kick in when the procedure came flooding back into Al’s mind. Al grounded and centered themself, pulled Qi through all of their chakras, and slowed their breathing and heartbeat to a meditative rate. When they were ready, they dipped their right ring finger into the oil bowl and drew the sigil of opening over their third eye. Then, after dipping their left ring finger into the ash, they drew the sigil of unlocking on their right palm. When the sigil was complete, Al lifted their right hand, palm up in front of their face and spoke, “Open. So be it.” On the “it,” Al snapped the fingers of their right hand, sending ash through the air to land on their third eye and on the mirror. 

The mirror surface rippled slightly. The air gained a crackly, electric quality. Something moved in the reflection: Oz trotted out from under the bed to sit on Al’s right side. Chesh hopped off the bed and slinked over to sit on al’s left. Al was perfectly aware that both her pets had fallen asleep in their guard positions, because she could hear them purring and snoring. Al’s reflection in the mirror pet both animals behind their ears, while Al themself remained perfectly still. The reflection nodded. 

Al dipped their ring fingers in the bowls of ash and oil. In oil, Al drew a sigil sentence on the mirror’s surface. First, they drew Dorothy’s old hobo code sigil: a dog-faced girl. Then, Al drew the symbol for “this is the place” enclosing Dorothy, and the symbols for “go this way” and “good road.” Finally, in ash, Al drew the final sigil, “hit the road,”while intoning “take me to Dorothy.”

The world went solid chrome. Al felt the mirror reach out and wrap around her, drawing her into itself. In only a moment, Al was deposited on the reflection side of the mirror. Oz panted happily and Chesh rubbed his face against Al’s arm. Al looked up to see that their body had fallen back, unconscious, arms up and legs akimbo. In truth, Al’s body was sprawled out in such a way that it reminded them of the Hanged Man tarot card. It felt as appropriate as it did uncanny. Al rose from the floor and decided to switch eidelons. An eidelon is the cosplay you wear while walking the ways. You can go as yourself, but if you can be an angel of death, why not be angel of death? The fact that Al had lives long enough to have a menopausal pot belly, gray hair, and hips that were finally almost as wide as their linebacker shoulders make Al feel proud of themself. They had no reason on earth to expect they’d last this long. Even so, The scarier you looked, the fewer were the things that tried to bother you. With a snap of their fingers, Al morphed. Before them stood the very four-winged angel of death who’s greeted them earlier that evening. Al turned to face the opposite wall and stopped cold. It was too late for fear, uneasiness, and anxiety, although Al certainly felt all three. It was time for a new tactic: incredibly nosiness. 

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Al said, “Curioser and curioser.” 

Instead of the opposite wall of their bedroom, Al saw another vast expanse of mirror. They’d forgotten the vestibular phase of waywalking. The mirror reflection of the space where one enters the Ways is the most common way to enter and exit the path. Unfortunately, it’s notoriously difficult to lock this space down. Psychics, remote viewers, astral projectionists, spooks, goblins and honest-to-gods aliens can enter the mirror side of your space–the vestibule– very easily. Once there, they can move things around, harm you, or steal from you–usually while you are sleeping. When people wake up with stuff moved around the nightstand, or strange scratches and scars, or stuff actually missing from their room but nobody else present in the house–this is usually why. The easiest way to combat this situation, as far as Al was concerned, was to buy a cheap bedspread and throw it over the mirror. Things that go bump in the night can’t find you if you don’t have a vestibule for them to invade. This method had worked well for twenty years, and Al swore by it. 

But to see this vestibule so visibly connected to the Ways was disconcerting. Usually you had to exit a doorway or sometimes a window, sometimes even a wardrobe, Narnia-style, to exit the vestibule and encounter the vast, iridescent expanse of the Ways. It was incredibly rare to encounter another mirror. This always meant that the place you wanted to go was being gatekept. By who or what, Al was at a loss to determine, but if the deceased Dorothy did happen to dwell somewhere in the Ways, they certainly had reason for it: Dorothy was easily the most powerful wizard the Ways had ever seen and her power had been as great as her reach. It wasn’t hard for Al to imagine someone somewhere in here wouldn’t dare to risk a being that powerful coming back to haunt the whole entire place. They would certainly lock her up. The surprising thing is that there would be anything left to lock up, here or anywhere. 

Al regarded the mirrored gateway with silence and a raised eyebrow. Then, they  decided to try the universal command that forced gates to reveal all locks.

“Open says me.” 

Immediately, the mirrored surface parted like a sea of liquid chrome and two arched doorways poured forward until they solidified about three feet from the wall.. They were identical except for the sigil series inscribed on the surface of each mirror-sealed portal. 

Al shook their head. They knew what this was. This was the lady-or-the-tiger protocol. One door would take you where you wanted to go, and one door would take you to your doom, or if you were lucky, it’s just spit you out into your body and bar you from ever entering the ways again. Al bent closer to get a better look at the sigils. Only one sigil in each sentence made any sense, because each had clearly derived from the hobo code symbols they’d taught Dorothy. Which was interesting. If those were there, it clearly meant that Dorothy was the one who built this gate and installed the lady/tiger protocol. 

“Curiouser and curioser.” Al said once more, with more than a trace of irony. 

“Are yer batshit CHICKEN JALFREZI,” Chesh intoned in a grating Cockney dialect, “or is only TING yer can think of say?” 

Al was taken aback and cocked their head toward Chesh. “I haven’t heard you talk in 20 years and you’ve decided to start speaking in Cockney rhyming slang.” 

“At least one of us can understand it,” Oz interjected. 

“It doesn’t help that that one of us is Chesh,” Al replied. 

“Oy! Your DOLL Dorothy rigged this game so only yer could play it win,” Chesh huffed, so do us a favor get it on in.” At this he lifted his hind leg and cleaned his hindquarters. 

Still, though, Chesh had a point. Dorothy is the only person who would have encoded that. Al took a closer look at the sigils they knew.

On the left door was a combination of sigils that indicated a courthouse and being watched by police.

On the right door was a sigil combination that indicated a locked safehouse. Either could apply to this situation.

Was Al seeking justice of some sort for Dorothy? Fuck if they knew, but given the circumstances it was definitely a likely candidate. But then again,  was it also likely that whatever they were looking for would be held in a safe and locked location? Yes. Absolutely. Al studied both in silence. The other sigils were two different runescripts, only one of which was passingly familiar, and neither made any sense given the context. 

 After a long while of staring at the portals, Oz scratched his ear with his hindleg and said, “Al?”

“Yeah?” Al answered.

“Do you remember the last thing that my mistress told you?” Oz asked, sadly and quietly.

Al drew in a long breath and breathed it out slowly as they thought.  Yup. They remembered. “Yes.”

“What did she say” asked Oz, “before she vanished into thin air?”

A silent, heavy tear rolled down Al’s cheek. The impassioned, loving, and tortured look on Dorothy’s face as she stole one last look at them was sealed into Al’s memory. Al had toled her there had to be a way, and that they could go back and make different choices to avoid whatever was happening. “She said,” Al replied, “Choice is an illusion.”

Oz cocked his head to the side and said, “I think that’s your answer.”

Al stretched their neck, cracked their knuckles, and took a long look at both portals. “If you believe choice is an illusion,” Al said, “then there is not right or wrong choice because any choice you make leads to the prepatterned outcome.” The very thought of this fewl in the face of everything that Al believed. 

Yet here they all were, being gatekept by a deadwoman whose use of a binary choice protocol was nothing short of absurd givner her personal philosophy. The three of them were going to end up wherever Dorothy wanted them to be and that was the only logical conclusion Al could draw.  Al stepped up to the space between the portals. They put both hands out in a Jesus Christ pose and fell forward, landing at an algae to the gates, with each palm touching a sigil sentence. 

The tunnels immediately began pouring into each other and all three watched as the center began to hollow out. The tunnel turned iridescent. A golden grid of bricks lined the floor of the passageway. The passageway was surprisingly long. Taking point, Chesh entered first, followed by Al. Oz brought up the rear. The portal slowly sealed itself shut behind them. Just as Oz stepped onto the path, a loud voice and an even louder digital ringing. 

“Basement door open! Basement Door Open!” 

Al knew they locked the basement. They turned around and started to run back, but the tunnel stretched just out of reach. They could still see into their bedroom. The sight of a black-blocked intruder entering their room made their blood run cold.

“Oh, yeah,” Oz said, “The reason I was in the basement today was to keep the interloper from coming in the rear window. He tried to bribe me with treats, but I just growled at him.”

“NONONONONO!” Al screamed as the portal sealed shut. It was too late. 

“Luv,” Chesh purred, “The only way forward is through.” 

“And choice is an illusion,” Al said, falling to their knees. They were absolutely trapped in the Ways in a manner they’d only ever experienced once before and nothing good had come of it. In fact, Dorothy had died.