Brotherhood – the sense of companionship between a band of men
sharing in a commitment to the death – has been my obsession from childhood. I
know now this is why I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, why I listened
to the Wu-Tang Clan in their early days, why The Goonies is a lifetime memory, and why I keep three books on
King Arthur and his Knights on my shelves. What I never expected, after turning
thirty, was that it would lead me to the Brotherhood begun by the enigmatic Son
of Man. Growing up I had no interest in the man, or his legacy, and certainly
no care in the world for religion.
Religion in my immediate family is a nominal occupation.
Spirituality and caring for each other is our religion, if it can be called
that. The Word of God is always overridden by the Love of the Heart. I was very
much surprised and pleased to discover that is in fact the only commandment of
the Son of Man. My parents were very much in the vein of the disillusion of
their time. My mother is Italian and grew up Roman Catholic. Her abuse at the
hands of both nuns and parents led her quickly to rely upon her heart and the
joy of singing to live her life—a decision that may have been her salvation,
but did not shield her from much suffering. My father is Puerto Rican (or
Nuyorican, having been born in New York City) and grew up Seventh Day
Adventist. He, too, was the victim of abuse and developed a keen wit and sassy
sense of humor with which to cope with the many hardships of his life. Both of
them came from nothing and etched lives for themselves with no assistance, but
by using those talents they were born with. My mother’s remarkable voice made
her a sensation in the Hispanic music industry; my father’s intelligence and
diligence earned him a doctorate and he became a neurosurgeon. It sounds like a
happy ending; it is far from it. Both have been denied practicing their crafts
for years now and robbed of the fruits of their labor. In light of this, and
the hardships it has thrust upon all of us, I have been forced to seriously
reevaluate my view of this world, and of the American Dream.
Going back to the subject of religion, my parents were very
much “with it” in their time, when the cult of Krishna and the New Age Movement
swept youth culture in the West. I wouldn’t say they subscribed to any one
belief system; their approach to faith and spirituality has always been
organic, even if misguided. My father has a voracious appetite for all
knowledge, and my mother feels compelled to committing simple gestures of
affection as vital expressions of her spirituality. Therefore I was fortunate
to grow up in a very lax, undisciplined environment where I was allowed to be
insular in my attentions, which like most kids since the nineties involved
video games and action figures, then music, fashion and self-image. The
exception was that I also loved stories and books, and had a natural affinity
for language and storytelling. Therefore it is no surprise that between ages
six and nine I was already writing short stories and my own newspaper entitled
Stuper News. Early on I exhibited a propensity for passionate emotions about
the most miniscule things, which of course were a big deal to my insular mind.
From the beginning, reading and writing were the most exciting
experience for me. This is because as a reader I have a very active
imagination, and even in school this was further fecundated by creative writing
projects. This tool is lost to the current youth culture. They are never
encouraged to imagine, because it is constantly demanded of them to be
spectators, not co-creators of their reality. They are distracted by their
iPhones, tablets, social media, and now video games are more and more
time-consuming and mind-engrossing, always being shown the world as they are
told to see it, never encouraged to imagine how it could be. I feel the need to
explain this so that you may grasp how magical the experience of writing is to
me personally. It is a spiritual, supersensual experience to me that I can
easily engross myself in for hours if allowed. When I sit down to write I don’t
know really what is going to happen. I may have an idea or an outline of what
the story I intend to write might be, but it never turns out quite as I expect
it. The story unfolds itself before me, the way it did before you as a child
when you saw Star Wars for the first
time and had your mind blown. That is what writing is like for me: it is like
sitting down at a secret preview of your favorite film before anyone else has
seen it, and you have no idea how it will end, only that it will change you
forever. So the question for me, once I was old enough to self-reflect on this
level, was who is writing the story then? Aye, there’s the rub.
When I turned twelve, my father made a decision that seriously
impacted my life. I understand now it was a tactical decision, one that he gave
himself to wholeheartedly with honest intentions, even if it did not bear the
intended fruit. He decided to reconnect with his supposed Sephardic Jewish
roots on his mother’s side, and takes us all to a quaint synagogue in Long
Beach, New York, on Saturdays. This undertaking was monumental to my
upbringing. It is a surreal experience to be injected into another people’s
culture, have to absorb it and make it your own, during your teenage years, when
you don’t even understand who you are or what is happening to your body. Do
this to an artistic Piscean with an acute sensibility and you are guaranteed
nasty aftereffects well into young adulthood. This is what happened with me. I
went from dedicated Talmid, ardently wishing to please a father too busy
putting food on the table to give me the sort of recognition I felt I deserved,
to anti-Semite who drowned himself in Kurt Cobain’s self-pity rebel music and
in the exploration of anything so long as it was not Judeo-Christian or
religious. So I turned to Celtic paganism and world mythologies.
I did also read about Sikhism, Buddhism and attempted to read
the Quran, but quickly lost interest. In the opening chapters of the Quran I
felt I was being yelled at by the narrator: “You can’t trust anyone! Even if
they say they believe, they don’t. They are infidels!” This may not be the entire
message of the Quran, but I did not care to go further. A brotherhood based on
assuming the worst of those outside your circle does not appeal to me. I prefer
to prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.
Like most teenagers to this day, I felt I knew better than everybody,
especially my parents. This disconnect is a symptom of the dysfunctional family
dynamic generated by the post-Industrial Revolution paradigm. “Dad is too busy
to pay me attention; he doesn’t know what it’s like to be me; he doesn’t care
what I go through. Well then, screw it; I’m gonna ‘do’ me.” But who am I
really? And so the ceaseless angst of standing out in the world by doing… what
every other kid is doing. Pick one of the fashionable cults of the day and
follow their ideology until your youthful exuberance is expended chasing after
a spectre, and the real world catches up to you.
During this dark period, I emulated Kurt Cobain. My disgust at
hypocrisy was so obsessive, that the moment I whiffed its scent on myself, I
chucked out everything I thought represented “me.” In retrospect, this was a
necessary self-purge for an all-or-nothing personality such as I. If I really
wanted to finally discover who I am, I needed to keep cutting scabs open and
digging out the mire until that person emerged. I don’t encourage being so
brutal with yourself, but the process is a necessary one. I wanted to know the
truth: who am I? What is wrong with this world?
At age nineteen I had begun to formulate my suspicions, but I
was keenly self-conscious of how “crazy” they made me sound. This quickly
transmuted into a pattern of self-torture that I have only recently succeeded
to turn around. Indeed the truth shall set you free. The one glimmer of hope in
all this maelstrom of timidity and self-loathing came with having read The Silmarillion. In that book I
experienced lore of such breadth and scope that I wanted to match it someday.
Somehow Tolkien had struck upon something true and genuine about the world and
the peoples inhabiting it, and it was filled with pathos and a longing for
something lost that I shared. I began my work in earnest, without having
anything genuine to contribute, so I did what any faithful admirer does:
imitate his mentor. I got pretty far with that first draft and even managed to
achieve some moments of candor, heroism and pathos. However, of that first
effort, all that remains is a name: Fysga,
a proud and noble race, progenitors of mankind, representing a bygone Golden
Era.
As I wrote that first draft, I came across the word Amarantus: a flower that never fades.
Upon learning its definition I quickly discovered that that one word could represent,
both through its imagery and sound, the truth I was desperately seeking. For a
long time I got nowhere in my work. There was even a period in which I couldn’t
write at all. I spent the time absorbing as much information as I could,
bemoaning my celibate existence, and attempting to write short stories again. I
was done with restraint, with fearing the backlash of speaking my
impressionable mind, and so spewed venom into a book I wrote and self-published
entitled White Man’s Inferno. A
veritable Frankenstein monster that little book is, and I’m now forced to
recant much (but not all) of what I said in it. My intention was honest, but my
mind was not altogether in the right place. I did come out of it at least with
a name to call myself that has endured: Wrias.
The truth-seeker had begun his journey.
I don’t wish to get into the play-by-play developments of my
life since, suffice to say, tragedy struck my father’s medical career and he
was left destitute, which forced me to get a job to help support the family.
The hardship and responsibility of such a desperate situation forced me to
mature faster than might be expected, not without a lot of kicking and
screaming. It also compelled me to focus my valuable free time molding this
legendarium. I knew it would have three branches: Mythological, Historical and
Eschatological. But the road it would lead me down I had no clue.
During my college years, my frail, brittle heart had been
broken and in my refusal to move on, I denied that love could be possible while
at the same time desperately craving it. For this reason I believe I was
answered in a poem written by a Wiccan priestess while in trance. It is my
contention that the entity channeled in the poem was a Goddess, the Lady of the
Lake, whom I call Nyykys (the only
name ever given to me in a dream). Be that as it may, the message rings true: “Love
is the key/ to bring you back to me.” I fell in love with a woman who doesn’t
exist, and in the interest of getting to know her, I pressed on with my story.
Somehow I became infatuated in the legends surrounding Merlin.
I discovered that Tolkien’s friend C.S. Lewis had written a book about Merlin’s
return entitled That Hideous Strength and
read it eagerly. What he revealed there about the machinations of a nefarious
secret circle convinced me my suspicions were not insane. News and media are
manipulated; events don’t “just happen.” Finally I could move past anti-Semitism to
identifying the true enemy: this nameless sponge-mold that manipulates
everything to maintain the tactical advantage, and which exists despite
religion because they created it. Lewis had caught my attention; then I found
out he was a born-again Christian. How could a logical man so aware of the
truth fall for such a ridiculous concept as a virgin-born Son of God? I decided
there must be a kernel of truth in it if Lewis, a scholar so keenly aware of
the enemy, could so resolutely change his stance on the question of Messiah.
This line of questioning sent me down a path I never expected
to take and eventually set me face-to-face with the Son of Man. This face-off
is inevitable—the outcome of which will affect the rest of your life whether
you acknowledge it or not. I came full circle and found in the words of the Son
of Man a message and comfort unlike that found in the religion that claims to
honor him. I knew, at last, I had found my brother. And brothers die for each
other, no questions asked. But then, does that mean I must accept the words of
the Gospels wholesale? That is not my way.
It turns out there are more than four Gospels, all cryptic
pieces of a puzzle. It turns out early Christianity was much broader and invited
discussion and argument concerning theological subjects. It was more a discipline of thought than a religion
of faith. But it was squashed early on by the same inner circle C.S. Lewis has
readily identified; and so those who remained ostracized from this new religion
were labeled heretics, and are known today as Gnostics. This inner circle has
always preyed on humanity’s frailty, embodied in the seven sins, so we must
strengthen our resolve and arm ourselves against temptation through discipline
of thought.
It turns out Love is the key after all, and it leads you
eventually, by all roads, back to this Son of Man, if you follow it sincerely,
purging yourself of all doubt and self-loathing. How that comes to be I can’t
say. It’s personal for every individual. As for me, I set out on this arduous
journey seeking the truth about humanity. In the process I have been given a
people, a name, a Goddess and now, the firstborn among many Brethren. Most
importantly I am disciplining myself to not just understand but to embody the following
maxim:
“Find in yourself that which will save you; fail to do so and
you will surely die.”
