CHAPTER 13
“Here I stand. I can do no other.” The hissing of these arrogant, nay, these words that ring with an echo of Lucifer’s defiance! Words of beguiling magnitude and consequence which could have been spoken by Adam himself as he lied to God in the Garden! Such is Luther in the Friar’s mind. Not only an anti-Christ but an anti-Adam, for underneath Luther’s disobedient stance is a contorted theology that tells lies as Adam did when he said that the woman made me do it! Whereas, as the Friar has learned after decades of torturing the truth out of witchy bodies, male and females, what he has heard spoken by the privy mouth is that it was Adam’s passionate desire to have Her, to hold Her, to embrace Her. Truly, it was Adam who spoke with the Serpent and said, “I want her!” Adam the liar, the idolater...such is Luther.
“ I can do no other.” Ah, how the phrase seeks to lay claim on that defense of ignorance which the Dominican Inquisitors of blessed memory continue to denounce, now through the preachments of Friar Otto. As the Friar preached on the first Sunday after reading Luther’s theses, by using this phrase, Luther repeats the lie that he is not in control, that as Eve seduced Adam so has he been seduced. But by what daughter of Eve? Who else but Eve’s reincarnation through Botticelli’s Venus! This Venusian Eve set about seducing the males of this Age just two years after the Bull had warned all about the witches! It is She who has fired up the collective imagination of the times—making present in daylight through the artist’s enchantment—the image of Her that was previously only seen with dreamy eyes and made present through Lucifer’s bewitching succubi. Verily, as Eve seduced Adam in daylight...when he ultimately consented to be naked with her!...so is Venus seducing in daylight all sons of Adam. They, as Luther, consenting to be naked with her!
“Katherina,” Luther’s sweet one, spouse, wife...ever-present succubi. Katherina who is Her incarnated in the flesh—Luther’s own intimate Venus! Ah, how the Friar prays that Divine Providence arranges for the day he can capture and torture Katherina, and in doing so destroy Luther.
Here I stand—these conceited and egotistical words plague the now graying Friar Otto like a single, solitary pestering fly which eludes capture and death, absorbing all of one’s conscious energy. Who can deny that Luther is a minion of the Evil One? “Luther has put into theology everything which Botticelli lied about in his Venus!” As such was the apostate, Martin Luther, now at odds even with the watery-brained Erasmus! Ah, there was some justice, however small, in the warfare of these days—truly End Days. Now a span of more than thirty-four years, a period that the Friar marks as opening in 1484 with the Bull that provided the inspiration and soon thereafter the Malleus in 1487 which provided the guide for the journey, a period that is now coming to closure through Luther’s embrace of the Goddess in the flesh of his Katherina.
Who then could deny that the times were apocalyptic? The revolutionary signs of upheaval were boldly evident in every sector of society, religious and secular, obvious even to the simple-minded. These are days of peasant uprisings, the unfrocking of monks, and, most significantly, this arrogant, flaunted and demonic disobedience of that once Augustinian monk, Luther, shamelessly spouting, “Here I stand. I can do no other!”
As the Friar preaches time and again, he fears Luther not for his adept intellectual skills, regardless of his erroneous conclusions, no, like observing the Botticelli, what he fears is what others do not see, namely, how he worships Her! Not only allows Her to live but Katherina to thrive, providing for her every household need, satiating her every wanton sexual desire. His marriage is a denial of Christ’s way, of his apocalyptic message. For she is not just companion, but spouse. It stymied the friar that how he understood Luther was still a difficulty for so many other clerics and theologians, even those of his own Order. What was Luther’s disobedience to the Pope but a venial sin? In comparison, like Adam, what should be the righteous punishment for his sexual coupling with Her in her? Exile! Cursed! Cast out!
Yet, this message disagree with, even among his own, including Dominican theologians at Cologne. Some even condemning the Inquisition’s use of torture as a spiritual tool. But the friar is undeterred. Luther worships Her! so he has hammered home during what turned into not too fraternal and cordial debates with Luther’s intellectual and doctrinal prodigies. Driven—impassioned and tirelessly—the friar travels mostly from University town to University town so that he can publically debate the apostates and then preach to the larger crowds of common folk who fill the pews in the majestic cathedrals in such prosperous towns. Courageously, he fears not their words, which he finds easy to prove as sinfully self-absorbed. “With Herr Luther all is I and I and I...the prideful sin of Lucifer! So should we not cast him back down to sit with Lucifer, to burn in the everlasting fire and brimstone of hell?!” Amen.
Ironically, in bitter moments of exhaustion when he contemplates how little he has achieved...admitting how strong the Adversary is!...he wonders why others cannot see as clearly as he does that Luther’s sin is one of idolatry. “Why can’t you see how he worships the Goddess?”
This mystical insight has been his for most of his lifetime but especially here in his elder years. A half-century and a few loving you oh Father! This insight comes to possess and obsess him. “All that you should be about my fellow friars, revered priests, holy religious is to preach this simple truth...that the presence of Her....this Venus...is to seduce the faithful and have them violate the First Commandment, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” With all that he has learned from the torture of witches, he reminds them...hoping to scare them, terrify them, have their souls quake...that “One who mocks God should not be allowed to live.” And, “You mock God—Hear me, you mock God!—when you do not believe, do not proclaim his Good News that you are no longer a slave to your privy parts! Hear me, What is the land of Egypt but the bondage to false gods—their whore house list of male and female gods and goddesses. That is what Moses fled...the worship of Her!”
Shocking as the friar’s denunciations of Luther as an idolater are to so many of his fellow religious and common folk—often these leave the room or exit the Church before his sermon is completed—he is not deterred. He presses forward and exposes Luther most nakedly. “What does the mighty Luther worship as he stands naked in front of his concubine, his harlot— Katherina? Does he wag his revolting rooster’s tongue at her and bellow her name as Holy Word? Does he worship Katherina as he does Jesus? As he once had Mary, Mother of God?” Then there arises the anticipated rumblings from his listeners, who at times some shout, “You blaspheme!” The friar is actually inspired by such a charge. “True,” he fires back, “It is a matter of blasphemy! That is why Luther must suffer the Inquisition!”
Further indicment: “As priest Luther once consecrated the bread and the wine, and he delivered to you, worthless sinner, the Lord’s blessed sacrament, the real and present body and blood of Christ! But now, he no longer consecrates at the altar...but upon the bed! He no longer places the host upon your tongue...but his tongue upon her flesh! He is no longer anointed and consecrated as a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek...but after the order of Katherina!”
Friar Otto declaims that “These so-called protestants are not protesting against the sins of the Church”—he, himself, accepting the need for drastic reforms—“but protesting for Her.” It is clear as a sunlit summer day that the heretical issue at hand is not so much intellectual or theological but practical. Luther, through his marriage, calls the sons of Adam to return to Egypt. There, to celebrate the sacred sexuality rituals of the pagan gods and goddesses. “How else to understand the true import, not so much of his words but, of Luther’s actions? If he had remained celibate, if he had maintained his priestly witness to the revealed truth that men do not need women—as Adam lived in the Garden alone with the Father, as Jesus lived among us without a spouse—but that women need men for their redemption and salvation...if he hel
d true to his anointment and consecration as priest, then all we would be arguing would be theology. But, as the Devil so cleverly plots—as Lucifer calls us to bow down and worship him!...so is Luther calling us to bow down and worship Her. No longer is Herr Luther one with us in the Body of Christ, no, no, never! He has chosen to worship another goddess. He does so every night as he lies down in his bed next to her in the flesh, Katherina...and dreams with her satanic dreams!”
All of his preaching and teaching, the friar constantly reminds them, is summed up in the words of the faithful sons who guide the Inquisition through the Malleus.
“Now the wickedness of women is spoken of in Ecclesiasticus XXV: There is no head above the head of a serpent; and there is no wrath above the wrath of a woman…All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. Wherefore, St. John Chrysostom says on the text, It is not good to marry.”
Who to doubt Divine Providence? That what seems so much the triumph of the Devil is but the mystery of the Father’s Divine Will?
But know, as only suffering purifies, Friar Otto shivers deep in a recessed cave of his aging, weary heart. For he is troubled by his own weakness, his own inability to counter these devils—Is Luther a more powerful warlock than I can counter ?
Aarrgghh! The agony which is Friar Otto! How many had fallen before the serpentine cleverness—True, he admits, he has his own type of brilliance—this Luther. Coolly had Erasmus rationally and logically jousted with him, but this was not the Friar’s way.
Why has God chosen such a weak vessel as myself? The Friar’s endless lament is both confessional and resigned.