Interview with BAAL

"When does desire cease to love and begin to rule?"

There is a temple of stone where the air is warm and the silence weighs like a multitude-as though a thousand unseen voices were waiting, holding their breath, for a single sign to kneel. There is no bronze idol there; at the center of the hall lies a hungry emptiness, waiting to be filled by the desire of whoever enters. There dwells Ghoreb Zereq, the ravens of dispersion, the shadow of Netzach, the pillar of affection that enables the soul to love, desire, and persevere. The name this desire without freedom takes, when it opens its arms not to embrace but to encircle, is Baal-the king who conquers not by force, but by making the multitude beg to be conquered.

In the ninth volume of The Tree of Death, Frater Eisenheim sits before the intelligence of belonging-the one that does not flatter like Belphegor, but seduces: it welcomes, understands, and promises that at last you have found where you belong. Baal does not command knees to bend by decree; he teaches the soul to desire to bend them of its own accord, for he knows that man fears belonging to no one more than he fears being ruled by someone. Every embrace within that temple is a siege-until the interviewer understands, through the water he clenches in his palm only to see it slip between his fingers, the sole difference between possessing and loving: the closed fist loses what it tries to retain; only the open hand allows it to remain of its own free will.

This is not a manual. It is an open hand-and what it reveals is the exact distance between the love that sets one free and the desire that seeks only to possess.

The Tree of Death - Interviews with the Adverse Sephiroth · Book IX