Fantastic Metropolis

Obsession, from Latin obsessionem—obsidere, to besiege, is a form of insanity caused, according to traditional belief, by the persistent attack of an evil spirit without, this being the opposite of possession, control by an evil spirit from within, both meaning however the usurpation of the individuality and control of the body by a foreign and discarnate entity.

—Lewis Spence, An Encyclopedia of Occultism

Since this is the first essay of the Encyclopedia of Heresies column I’m doing here at Fantastic Metropolis, introductions are certainly warranted. My name is Matthew Rossi, and I’ll be your heresiarch for this ramble through human history, mythology, fiction, occultism and any other odd bit of business we can cram in along the edges of what I hope to be a fun ride in a glass bottomed boat down the rivers Styx and Oceanus, with ports of call in London-on-Thames, Manoa la Dorada, the Desolation Road, Asgard and other fitting destinations for us of the lunatic persuasion. I’ve already made claim to the title heresiarch, and it’s not a bad one: at times I also answer to madman, lunatic, or even worse and most despised, writer, but what I really am is obsessed. I admit to my obsession. Hell, let me be honest here: I admit to multiple obsessions. I’m obsessed with all sorts of strangeness. You could argue that I am ultimately obsessed with strangeness itself and that all my other obsessions are really just smaller manifestations of that original siren song, the call of the crazed and the chthonic, the conspiratorial and the chaotic. I do not feel assaulted by my obsessions, and if they are evil spirits, then they come wearing pleasing enough shapes that, like a certain Dane, I am willing to entertain their proposals. I love all that they show me: the dirty edges of the picture, where the frame meets the canvas and you could swear you see creatures crawling in from the borderland to John Keel’s Goblin Universe. This column will hopefully be a nice set of portolans between destinations in the ultraterrestrial realms where you can meet kings, gods, apes that happen to be both kings and gods, or what have you, these manifold flora and fauna of my happy obsession.

One way that obsession manifests itself is in musing about the Catholic Church, the Roman Empire (including its Byzantine incarnation) and where it all went wrong, not to mention how else it could have done so. Anyway, I find the years between Constantine and Justinian and Theodora some of the more fascinating ones in terms of history, faith, and the final outcome of the Roman sterilization of Jesus’ legacy for its own purposes. Christianity as the theological glue holding together the Empire worked well for the Byzantines (it led to a thousand years reign over the Eastern Empire, after all) but much less so for the Western Empire. Of course, the dissolution of the west was helped along by the Germanic tribes. No one is arguing that. But another problem, to me, was the rivalry between the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople.

What if that problem had been solved?

And those who were free of all this sort of thing, asked each other what would become of the prosperity of the Romans. For some were sure it was already in the hands of the barbarians, and others said the Emperor had hidden it away in his various dwelling places. But only when Justinian, be he man or King of the Devils, shall have departed this life shall they who then happen to survive him discover the truth.

—Procopius, Anekdota

If you’ve read the Anekdota or even heard about it, you know that it’s a fascinating read, filled to the brim with the kind of heated political slander you just don’t get anymore. I mean, sure, Rush Limbaugh can accuse Clinton of having Vince Foster killed in order to deflect the White House travel scandal, and J. H. Hatfield can say that Bush was a major coke fiend whose father bribed or coerced judges into expunging his arrest record, but Procopius actually accuses Justinian of the following:

XVII. How Justinian Killed A Trillion People

That Justinian was not a man, but a demon, as I have said, in human form, one might prove by considering the enormity of the evils he brought upon mankind. For in the monstrousness of his actions the power of a fiend is manifest. Certainly an accurate reckoning of all those whom he destroyed would be impossible, I think, for anyone but God to make. Sooner could one number, I fancy, the sands of the sea than the men this Emperor murdered.

—Procopius, Anekdota

I mean, he accuses the man of being able, and willing, to kill more people than can be counted. Not to mention destroying nations, consulting with an Empress who Procopius describes as the ultimate prostitute (as you might have guessed, the men who pay to have sex with her and the number of atrocities she commits in the book are, of course, without number), using black magic and demons to blight his enemies, murdering or arranging for the murder of senators in order to steal their wealth, deliberately setting the Orthodox Church against the Arians and Montanists and even the Jews in order to distract those who might have seen through his demonic disguise… the list goes on and on and on. He even accuses the General Belisarius (who had served for a time as Procopius’ patron, and who personally destroyed Vandal Africa and invaded Italy, driving the Ostrogoths from Rome and restored Italy to Imperial hands for a time) of being the dupe of his wife, another member of the satanic conspiracy that placed Justinian onto the purple throne. The book is really remarkable, both for the shamelessness of its hyperbole and the hypocrisy of its authorship. Procopius was intimate with the imperial power, he advanced to great positions due to the generosity of Justinian and Belisarius. Without them, he could never have had the success he needed to devote himself to the writing of history at all. It would be like Casper Weinberger writing a book describing how Ronald Reagan sucked the brains out of young babies and Nancy liked to have sex with apes that she first induced demons to possess, or James Carville telling us all about Clinton’s proclivity towards wearing the skin of his mother and sending magical diseases to smite Newt Gingrich. I mean, we’re talking the kind of political rhetoric even Ann Coulter might blush at.