Radiance 31 - He set the heavens in place

    In a time beyond time, Asher is suspended beyond all things. In no space at all, he floats in infinite blackness, the only substance in an eternal nothing.
    And Emma is there, smiling at her son, proud and full of joy, rare laughter creasing her face. They embrace, and laugh, and cry.
    “Mum,” says Asher, “I’ve messed everything up.”
    “No, no,” she answers, stroking his hair as she did when he was young, “everything is going to be okay.”
    “The Leviathan is free, my friends are dying, and it’s my fault.”
    “We only do our best,” she answers him, “but now you must set it right.”
    “How?” he asks, trembling in the black.
    “You already know,” she answers, “the father creates the mother, the mother crowns the daughter.”
    “Yes,” he says, “I do know.”
    And he does.
    His song still whispers in his ears, whirling around the cosmic emptiness all around, and deep within he finds the spark, the trace of holiness that burns within him.
    And just as the turning of the key creates the lock, and the door, and the palace, the seed creates the womb.
    In the palm of his hand, the shards of crystal begin to hum and vibrate, glowing with the inner light that is starting to shine in a time beyond time. As the fractal goes down and down without ending, so too the crystal shards contain the spark of all there is, each fragment has the DNA of the whole, and now Asher pours the energy of life through it.
    Radiance, emanating all around. A spark engraved in a ring of no colour at all, and the Palace of Understanding begins to be reborn. Crystal sprouts like grass, bursting all around and spreading and not spreading to the ends of all things.

Samael vs. Satan

Chapter 28 of Radiance, with its vision of Divine Justice, raises the question of Jewish views of Satan, especially as compared to Samael or Ashmedai. While in my story, Satan is a member of the heavenly court not the Sitra Achra, in the tradition things aren't quite so simple.

So what can we say about Jewish views of Satan, and how do they compare to Samael and other more obviously villainous characters from Jewish mythology?

SaTaN
In Hebrew, words are generally built out of three letter roots that are then conjugated in different ways to produce multiple meanings. The three base letters of Satan are שטן which means to oppose or to be an adversary against.

Now the Bible uses the root of the Satan 4 times in reference to some kind of divine being, in Numbers 22, Zechariah 3, Job 1-2 and 1 Chronicles 21. But to understand these references we should bear in mind that the word is also used for human characters (for example 1 Samuel 29) - because in the human sphere, the word Satan has two distinct but related uses, one is a military opponent, and the other is a more formal court prosecutor.

Its the use of Satan as a formal court prosecutor that really interests me, an aspect that is really played up in Zechariah 3 and Job 1-2, where Satan seems to be a role that angels sometimes play in the divine court, rather than the personal name of a particular creature. 

Radiance 28 - Proclaim Liberty

    By the time Emma finally reached the inner sanctuary, the court was already in session. Angels lined the viewing gallery, standing raised above the ground, hovering on wings upon wings. Scrolls and leather-bound volumes were strewn across marble floors and wooden tables, with parchment and paper coloured by age and long use. Candles over ten feet tall stood haphazardly around the room, shedding flickering but brilliant light and dripping golden wax. On the left, at the front of the court, an angel dressed in black stood at a lectern, consulting a dozen tomes, his face contorted deep in thought, while on the right an identical lectern was dark and empty. In the middle sat a divine being, neither angel, nor mortal, upon a chair of inlaid wood, a half-smile upon his shining face, while behind him, far at the front and wreathed in shadows, a colossal throne glittered dully, overseeing the entire court. And seated upon the throne, impossible to make out in the gloom, seemed to be something like a human figure, crowned and enthroned.
    As Emma timidly strode into the chamber, the room was bursting with song, snatches of Hebrew verse and prayer, but as she walked down the central aisle and approached the centre of the court, a hush fell on the angelic host. Myriad eyes followed her footsteps across the marble.
    How long she had been walking, Emma could not say. She had long since forgotten the taste of food, the feel of breath entering the lungs, all washed away in a haze of fire and ice. But it was the eyes that burned in her mind, all the angels she had passed with their near-unpronounceable names and roles, whose gaze had burrowed through her skin and to the very depths of herself. It seemed that she had not always been alone but could not trawl the memories from her mind. Amid the heat and the cold, something had been lost forever, and Emma could not even say what it had been.

Radiance 15 - Good to give thanks to the Lord

1] A Psalm, a Song. For the sabbath day.
2] It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;
3] To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness at night,
4] With the ten-stringed harp; with the melody of the lyre.
5] For You, Lord, made me glad through Your work; I will rejoice in the works of Your hands.
6] How great are Your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep.
7] A simple man does not know, neither can a fool understand this.
8] That when the wicked spring up like grass, and when all the workers of sin flourish - it is so that they may be destroyed for ever.
9] But You, O Lord, are on high for evermore.


    On her left was a river of fire - scorching, burning, dancing. On her right was a river of ice - freezing, flowing, shifting. In between walked Emma, half burnt, half frozen, remaining on the one path between the two that seemed tolerable. Her hair was beginning to singe, the smell filled her nostrils. Her right hand was turning blue, her left turning black. But she could not stop, the ascent, the descent, must continue. With a great effort of will she forced her right leg forward, then her left, on and on, each step carrying her a tiny fraction of the infinite path.
    Yet Emma knew that at the same time she was sitting in a small flat in Netanya, ‘The Book of the Chariot’ open before her. She did not know how long it had been since she last ate or drank anything, her own name seemed but a distant memory. Emma’s mind was full of ice and flames. But she had to keep moving.
    A wall rose up before her eyes, a wall of sapphire stones, refracting the light into a million shards of green and blue. And Emma was standing at a wooden gate that must have stood over a hundred feet tall and fifty feet wide.  On either side of the gate stood a monstrous creature with four faces - an eagle faced backwards, an ox head faced to the left, a lion to the right, and vaguely human eyes glared down at her. Silvery wings wrapped around these creatures, moving so fast they could barely be seen, and in their hands were enormous swords, black flames licking their razor edges, barring her way. These were true cherubim, she thought, absently turning the page of the book in her Israel apartment. Why couldn’t they look more like Raphael’s chubby babies?