THE TRICKSTER:

THE HERETIC:

No one remembers when it was that William Sawtrey was borne. It is only known when he died, for it was his death that he was known for. The Roman Catholic priest was the first heretic to be burnt on behalf of Lollardism, an early Reformation movement predating Protestantism and founded by John Wycliffe. His outspoken difference of opinion with the Roman Catholic Church was chiefly negative. A reductionist before Reductionism was a trend, he rejected the Eucharist, going so far as to burn alive rather than to admit that the consecrated bread was not in fact anything more than material. A determinist, he rejected free will as a concept, a choice (devoid of personal accountability, by its very nature) that would explain why he so easily fell into the hands of his critics and executioners, only ever putting up enough of a fight to be called stubborn to the death. Lacking imagination, he condemned the worship of images as idolatry. Lacking energy, and of a lazy temperament, he likewise criticized the tradition of religious pilgrimage.

Sawtrey was not unclever. He had a peculiar skill for riding the shoulders of giants. Though it’s not known whether or not he pawned off the work of others as his own, when it came down to his trial and his own life on the line he did not hesitate to present the works of Saint John, Saint Paul, and Saint Augustine as his Ethos, quoting them to the point of name-dropping (if in fact he gave them credit) with precision and persuasion. Nonetheless, his refusal to accept that the bread on the table was none other than the Body of Christ resulted quite fatalistically (and fatally) in his death upon the stake in March of 1401.

That same year saw the birth of Adolphus VIII, Count of Holstein. A descendant of the House of Schauenburg, he was by default a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire. Ironically enough, dying at the hands of the Holy Romans, on behalf of the spiritual world (and largely a rejection of its incarnation in the flesh), allowed him to grab those same, helping hands and to use them as a ladder to the top of the material world. Despite his having been the mightiest vassal of the Danish Realm, his life of privilege was uneventful and complacent. On the Fifth of March, 1435, he married Margaret of Hollenstein, and they had one child, but that child died young and Adolphus VIII passed in 1459 without any descendants, on the fourth of December.

THE PRETENDER:

Eighteen days later, a man was borne in Edirne who came to be known by no other name except for “Sultan Cem”. He was the son of Mehmed the Conqueror and Cicek Hatun. Cem’s older half-brother, Bayezid, was supposed to be the proper descendant to the throne, but at the death of Mehmed there were no formal records found endowing the proper successor, leaving us to wonder what became of them or why they were never brought into fruition by the time of Mehmed’s death. Perhaps the answer lies in this fact: that Mehmed did not die a timely death, and it was doubtful that he died of “natural” causes. He was ostensibly poisoned, and usually the eldest brother is suspected of having done so.

A bitter but lackluster sibling rivalry erupted over the Ottoman throne. The battle began under the table, in secrecy. The late Mehmed’s Grand Vizier was on Team Cem, apparently, for he used sleight of hand and stealth in an attempt to enthrone Cem and to marginalize Cem’s half-brother. Both brothers governed provinces; Bayezid ruled Sivas, Tokat, and Amasya, whilst Cem ruled Karaman and Konya. Mehmed II was buried in Constantinople, despite an Islamic law that strictly prohibits the unnecessary delay of any human burial. The Vizier had hoped that, since Konya was situated closer to Constantinople than was Amasya, Cem would arrive in time for the coronation party earlier than his brother would. But this was not to be so. When the Janissary corps, a network of influential pashas working for Bayezid, learned of the death and of the Grand Vizier’s plans, (BOTH of which had been covered up with much greater care and ritual than had the body of Mehmed Himself) the show was over and the battle began. The Janissary rebelled, broke into the capital, and lynched the Vizier. But that did not stop the stubborn Cem. Bayezid finally showed up on the scene and was declared Sultan Bayezid II, but no more than six days later Cem captured the city of Inegol with an army of 4000. Bayezid retaliated, trying to kill his brother, but Cem survived and declared himself Sultan of Anatolia upon May 28, only a week after Bayezid arrived in Constantinople and took the throne. Cem tried to strike a deal between the brothers, but Bayezid was either too headstrong or too wise to Cem’s scheming nature. Bayezid marched on Bursa, Cem’s new capital of Anatolia. On June 19^th, 1481, a decisive battle lost Cem the throne of the Ottoman Empire, so that he went down in history as a “pretender”.

As tends to be the case with pretense, however, it is contagious. A Mamluk Sultan by the name of Qa-it Bay took Cem in with honour to Cairo. It was not long thereafter that the karmic descendant of William Sawtrey, who in a past life had condemned the entire concept of pilgrimage, became the only Ottoman Prince to have ever made a pilgrimage to Mecca. To add spice to an existing irony is that Cem was never peculiarly religious, failing to convert to Christianity in later life and showing no real regard for his given faith in Islam. (The hint being that he could have allowed the Grand Vizier to keep his own father’s body unburied for the time it took to transport it from Gebze to Constantinople. But then: let’s not forget that Cem might have had nothing to do with all that, as evidenced by the remorse it must have taken to exploit the ensuing war for his own power and benefit.)

In Cairo, a letter from Bayezid found Cem, offering the younger brother one million akces in order to stop competing for the throne. Ever the radical, Cem refused, electing instead to spite Bayezid by launching a campaign in Anatolia. Under the support of Kasim Bey, the Lord of Ankara and heir to the ruling house of Karaman, Cem took back Konya on May 27, 1482. His success was short-lived. Bayezid forced Cem to retreat to Ankara, cornering Cem by blocking all roads back to peace in Egypt. Cem decided that the time for diplomacy had finally come, and so the brothers might have resolved their feud under the conditions that Cem live quietly in Jerusalem, collecting a stipend from his older brother. This was of course Bayezid’s idea. It was so appealing to Cem, especially the part where he had to agree to never divide the Ottoman Empire, that he fled to France instead.

Cem had no shortage of helping hands in Rhodes, making Cairo look by contrast like a celebrity roast. Cem arrived in Rhodes on July 29 with a head full of imperialistic dreams, and he was welcomed with honour. Bold and assuming as ever, he asked for protection by Pierre d’Aubusson, Captain of Bodrum Castle and Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, a religious order also known as The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and an egregious number of other names and variations. Cem’s offer in exchange for Bayezid’s head was peace eternal between the Ottoman Empire and Christendom. Pierre was a little too smart for him, however. In secret, the Knight approached Bayezid, concluded a peace treaty without any help from Cem, and had the Knights of St. John betray Cem. The catch was that Bayezid had to pay 40,000 ducats a year just for Cem’s maintenance. Even in prison, Cem was still treated like a prince. This became the leitmotif of Cem’s life. A priceless treasure as a hostage, Cem remained a thorn in his older brother’s side, even though he spent most of his remaining life being moved about like a pawn from one padded cell to an other. The pampered prisoner finally croaked in Capua on February 25, 1495. During his last years, he had frequently the opportunity to die a Christian, owing to the patronizing plaints of Pope Innocent VIII, but Cem refused. The Papacy also failed to convince Cem ever to involve himself in another crusade. His use was chiefly as bait for his brother, for threats of releasing him gave him the weaponizing potency of a poisonous asp. Bayezid kept trying to control Cem furiously, even sending assassins a few times. But we may never know whether Cem died of poison or of pneumonia. He was not known for his health.

Even to this day, Cem is treated with pity and sympathy by historians who ask: “Was he murdered?” with a tone of tragedy.

THE USURPER:

When Tuman Bey II was killed in 1517 A.D, Egypt fell into the hands of the Ottoman Empire, and so fell the Mamluk Dynasty. The resulting power vacuum in many parts of the Middle East opened up the floodgates for a number of impostors to usurp the throne.

Pargli Ibrahim Pasha, sometimes referred to as “The Westerner” or as “The Favourite”, and finally “The Executed”, was borne in 1495 and lived to become the first Grand Vizier appointed by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. He was enslaved for being Christian in his youth, but by a twist of luck it was at that same time that he met Suleiman, who was only one year his senior, and they became childhood friends. Suleiman took Ibrahim out of the jurisdiction of his captor, Iskender Pasha, and shortly thereafter ascended to the Ottoman Throne in 1520 A.D. Suleiman granted so many positions of prestige to his best friend that Ibrahim at one point had to beg Suleiman to slow the ascent, for fear of arousing jealousy from other viziers. Suleiman was so moved by this display of modesty that he swore that, under the reign of Suleiman, Pargli Ibrahim would never be put to death. On June 27, 1523 A.D, little more than six years after the fall of Tuman Bey, Pargli Ibrahim assumed his post as Grand Vizier. He served for thirteen years, growing by leaps and bounds. In 1523, he married Muhsine Hatun, the granddaughter of his former captor Iskender, in what was a luxurious display of political prowess that grew over the years, with gentle coddling, into a loving marriage. In 1525 he reformed the Egyptian civil and military system. It was not long before his power rivaled that of Suleiman Himself. He won diplomatic victory upon victory in service to the Empire, chiefly by posturing himself as the TRUE leader. Tragically, he did not know when to stop. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent grew wary when his Grand Vizier began to refer to himself as a “Sultan”, and the people were calling Ibrahim all the while “Ibrahim the Magnificent”. Jealousy became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and eventually Suleiman acquired a Fatwa from a local cleric, allowing him to break his vow to protect Ibrahim’s life, in exchange for building a mosque. Pargli Ibrahim Pasha was executed on March 14, 1536. His childhood friend regretted the choice for twenty years, writing poetry about friendship that was highly suggestive of its reference to the tragedy. But at least Pargli died rich. He owned about 1300 slaves and had seized the estate of rival Iskender Celebi. It’s good to be the Vizier.

A RUBBER SHOGUN.

Miles from the heat in the Middle East, our hero decided to reincarnate as Ashikaga Yoshiteru on March 31, 1536, just seventeen days after his stint ended so tragically in Constantinople.

The name was of course none other than the clan Ashikaga, whose primary founding shogun was Ashikaga Takauji, the reincarnation of Count Guy of Dampierre and Twin Flame of Stefanus Dusan the Mighty.

Yoshiteru, the thirteenth shogun in line, was not quite so impressive.

Historians would come to describe him as a “rubber stamp”. The eldest son of the Twelfth Shogun in the Ashikaga line, Yoshiteru slid in at the tender age of eleven. He was never given a second name, but in what was probably an imitation of Imperial custom he changed it from “Yoshifushi” to “Yoshiteru” in 1554. His name in childhood was “Kikubemaru”, the first part of which means “Chrysanthenum”.

Like his father, Yoshiteru was a political puppet. It was not long after his confirmation as a shogun that the family was driven out of Kyoto by war with the Hosokawa. In 1552, Yoshiteru finally did something right by securing a truce with Nagayoshi, allowing himself to return to Kyoto. But such glorious triumph clearly got the best of Yoshiteru’s fragile ego. Within the year he and Harumoto turned on Nagayoshi in an act of war. Friends came to help, and as had been the case in previous lifetimes they won the battle and lost the war. For five years Rokkaku Yoshikata had Yoshiteru’s back and all went well, but in 1558 Nagayoshi drove Yoshiteru from Kyoto yet again with the obstinacy of a tide. But Nagayoshi did not push his luck. Killing a shogun was very unwise and disreputable, so Yoshiteru’s birth-right (read: privilege) spared him his life. He was even allowed to return to Kyoto under Nagayoshi’s supervision, acting the part of the leader whilst Nagayoshi retained all the real power. What luck!

Nonetheless, what little Yoshiteru could do, he did well. Many daimyos and samurai made their way to Kyoto to pay respects to this puppet shogun, including heavy-hitter Oda Nobunaga. He was known for his “inner strength” and for his skills with a kitana, earning the name “Kengo Shogun”. Scholars compare him in this way to Takauji.

But then he got greedy. When Nagayoshi died of illness in 1564, Yoshiteru made a run from the throne. The Council of Miyoshi was ahead of him, though, and they beat him to the seat of power faster than you can say “Janissary”. Yoshiteru was killed on June 17, 1565. His squire, Odachidono, whom a Jesuit missionary described as having been madly in love with Yoshiteru, slit his own throat and belly with near immediacy afterwards.

The loss and death wiped clean what positive repute Yoshiteru had managed to accrue for himself and for the daimyo.

THE MUTINOUS AND THE INNOCENT:

Circa 1565 Henry Hudson, after whom Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay are named, was borne in England. A curious fellow, in both the sense that he is curious to examine and was himself prone to examine curiously, Henry became known for his explorations at sea. Ambitious to the point of idiocy and idiotic to the point of redundancy, he tried to do what no man had done before: to find a Northeast passage to China on behalf of the English merchant class. Rather than taking the traditional (and only physically possible) approach of circumventing Russia, he wound up in North America, in a feat of misdirection that would have made Columbus blush in envy. In 1611, having spent the winter on the shore of James Bay, he decided it was time to press onwards, to the West (the closest route of course having been to the East from whence they had come). The crew did not see eye-to-eye with his counterintuitive genius, and they arranged a mutiny. The poor soul was damned to die at sea, alongside his son and seven other people who were stupid enough to support him. He is rumoured to have died that very year.

Speaking of 1611:

In May 16^th of the year 1611 A.D. Pope Innocent XI was borne. You will remember him as a brief patron for Raffaello Fabretti, the antiquarian who was a other incarnation of Count Dampierre and Ashikaga Takauji. A devout preacher who did not hesitate to use his station to enlighten the masses, Pope Innocent XI had a very hands-on style of papacy. Leading by example, in what could be called a Cult of Personality, he squared the annual deficit and even attained a papal income that surpassed its expenditures. In civilian life, he was a cultural hero in the sense that he closed all of the theatres in Rome and put Roman opera on hiatus, dismissing these trivialities as sources of vice. Though he had nothing against Miguel de Molinos personally, he represented the will of his fellows in condemning the Quietist Mystic as heretical. In regards to the Jews, Pope Innocent was quite compassionate. His edict to abolish Jewish money-lending was delayed twice, despite the tremendous monetary benefits he would have gleaned from a speedier application of the process.

Innocent XI was innocent where women were concerned as well. A papal bull he issued in 1679, entitled Sanctissimus Dominus, asserted the value of all human life at the fetal stage. He needed build nothing up; the bull was only designed to tear down an existing sixty-five propositions in favour of abortion. The chivalry did not end there. Not only did he put an end to gambling and raised attendance at Holy Communion, but he all so forbid women to sing on stage in theatres and opera houses.

At 10:00 P.M, on August 12, 1689 A.D, kidney stones finally caught up with Pope Innocent XI. He was beatified two years later by his successor, Pope Innocent XII. For those of you who don’t know: beatified does not have anything to do with being beaten. Innocent XII called Innocent XI a true “Servant of God”.

He was never canonized, (an other honour, nothing to do with being fired from a cannon) though the Holy Roman Church thought twice about that in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His successes in having prevented Turks from overrunning Christendom made him a sort of Christian Saviour for all gentile peoples who feel the very REAL threat of Islam in their lives. How quaint it is, therefore, to consider his previous incarnations.

THE ORGANIST.

You are probably wondering now what the writer is wondering: why does this screwball bother to keep reincarnating? As it turns out, there was in fact ONE talent that had been repressed throughout the lifetimes but hat finally found its expression once that repression had reached a papal fever pitch:

Music.

Having died of kidney stones in a previous life, Josep Prades i Gallent, borne 1689 A.D, decided to devote his fresh new life to health and pleasure. He lived to be Sixty-eight, an age surpassing most of his previous incarnations (though still trumped by the one with the kidney stones and the dour asceticism). This prosperity was owed to the health and healthiness of his only occupation: as an organist and composer at the Valencia Cathedral in Spain. The Baroque composer found a tremendous sense of inclusion within the Roman Catholic Church, which treated him like an old friend and patronized him like an even older benefactor. During his Inspired gig he composed 11 Masses, 24 Motets, 56 Psalms, 1 lonesome Lamentation, 9 Songs,  Antiphon, 2 Versos, 3 Passions, 299 Castilian Villancico, 4 cantates, etc. Never a self-employed man, he finally asked to retire after twenty-nine years of labour in his craft, and promptly thereafter dropped dead of apoplexy. He died in the same tiny village wherein he was borne, having lived an ostensibly harmless life, for once.

But such lives are regrettably short-lived.

THE MASON.

Thomas Telford, a Leo at birth, lived from August 9, 1757 to September 2, 1834 A.D, dying at the age of 77. He was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and Stonemason, which meant that he had probably been at one point or another inducted into the Masonic Cult and granted a magickally long life (77 is a number that should sound familiar to readers of the Story of the Broken Spear, especially in relation to the witch Ela of Salisbury).

It is hard to say that the Mason was a bad guy. The “Colossus of Roads” had designed dozens of bridges and aqueducts, as well as having written some very well-structured poetry, by his death in 1834. His tendency to remain on the British Isles did not mitigate his greatness nor his popularity. He even managed to acquire 50,000 pounds in 1823 for the building  of churches in neighbourhoods that had none, christened the “Telford Church”. Given his karmic past, this was a fortuitous thing to happen in the year ’23.

It is not that a Soul cannot live a productive life. But karmic habits die hard. And sometimes the vanity of success is only seen to its logical conclusion across two lifetimes, the latter representing the failure without which the former could not prosper.

THE ASSASSIN.

On August 23^rd, 1834, Thomas Telford was reported “seriously ill of a bilious derangement”, and on September 2^nd he past away. Four days later, in Georgetown, a district of Washington, D.C, Samuel Brand Arnold was borne.

In 1865, six men conspired to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln on the United States. He was intended to be held captive in a hostage exchange for all Confederate prisoners held in Washington, D.C. at the time. Not unlike Captain Hudson’s pursuit of the  Northeast Passage, it was attempted twice, and failed both, and not unlike that other fluke, it failed because of a spatial confusion; Lincoln never happened to be where they thought he would be, any moreso than China had been in Canada.

Arnold had learned his lesson about perseverance. He and an other conspirator dropped out of the conspiracy fairly early on. When one of the remaining four, a Taurus by the name of John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Lincoln, Arnold was arrested, to his own relief. As it turned out, he got off lucky. In 1869 he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, and he spent the remaining half of his life reflecting, quite publically, on his experiences in prison at Fort Jefferson. Most of his records have probably been lost, though we cannot say for certain how many there were.

THE JAZZ MASTER.

Arnold the Traitor died on September 21, 1906. Four days later, the world gained an other musical prodigy. Jaroslav Jezek was borne in Prague, “to the family of a tailor”. His work as a composer, conductor, and pianist pushed into the avant-garde whilst remaining grounded and rooted firmly always in his Czechoslovakian roots, even after Nazism obligated him to move to New York City. The first half of his career was influenced directly by Stravinsky, Les Six, and Arnold Schonberg, whereas the second half was a style of his own. He composed jazz, classical, and film music. Of all his lifetimes, this Libra could be rivaled only by Josep the Organist in terms of success and harmlessness. Jezek brought a certain human-heartedness to the tradition of orchestral music that elevated the trashiness of modernity to an exalted human virtue, almost to such a degree that one forgot the possibility of being human without it. “Rubbish Heap”, “Tiger Rag”, “Chinatown, My Chinatown”, and the catchy “Bugatti Step” all capture the emotion of a human being that has embraced its own machinery as part of its organism. He died on January 1^st, 1942.

THE COSMONAUT.

Ukrainian pilot cosmonaut Aleksandr Yakovlevich Petrushenko must have been on something good when he was borne, because his life was one long synchronicity, beginning on the first day of the year 1942 and ending no more or less than fifty years, ten months and ten days later.

On October 23^rd of the year 1965, on the cusp of Drama and Criticism, and the Day of Synchronicity, he was one of only seventeen cosmonauts selected for an elite training program.

Inexplicably, however, he left the team in 1973. He never flew in space.

Due to lung cancer, probably as a complication from the Russian Cigarette Habit, he died on November eleventh, 1992.

Yet again, Hudson was thwarted, and, as always had been the case, by his own impatience and disloyalty.

In 2015, it was this same tragic flaw that dissolved the Suburban Shamans. Kresten Xavier Taylor (whose name means “A Christian Saviour, of the Family of a Tailor”) continued to pursue a fairly lackluster musical career. His hobbies to this day include drugs, poker, mysticism, reading my blog, and gossip at the expense of his old benefactors and present rivals. He was of course borne in November of 1992.

Dm.A.A.