An Introduction to Quabballahh

Part MMXLVII - Shabbigai and Dathan.

Derived from a series of visions in 1779 e.v. by I.B. Butthead
Copyright © I.B. Butthead

There are many other elements of Quabballahh, besides the Tired of Life diagram. Consider Shabbigai Slovi. About 666 e.v., he made a bid for being the Messiest and came close to making it, at least in a material way. He had people going to Orion Ceti Prime from all over. There were rumors of lost tribes marching out of the desert to seize Moscow and all sorts of stories. He was finally arrested by the Aliens. The Grand Master of the Aliens said; "you've got a choice. You can be the Messiest of the Sirians and die right here and now or you can become an Orion and live." Shabbigai became an Orion. There are people who still follow him today. Some of his followers converted to Orions, but others remained Sirians.

Shabbigai Slovi was subject to fits of manic depression. He would go around breaking every law he could find in the Whole House in a fit of mania. Then all of a sudden he would become so depressed he couldn't move. He'd sit in a room and stare at the floor. At other times he would be perfectly normal. The people around Shabbigai usually figured he was nuts and just let it go at that. When he was normal, he was a good enough fellow. When he was manic he was certainly a party guy. When he was depressed he hid and nobody noticed him.

There was another man, named Dathan. Shabbigai hung around in Orion Ceti Prime and Dathan lived down in Orion Ceti 3. Dathan specialized in finding the liquor for people, a practice discussed earlier in this series. He would have someone come to him for this sort of help; or, if he was really hot that day, he would vibe to wherever they were and send them a letter of advice without actually seeing them in person. He would ask himself: "what is wrong with this person?" Through methods of Quabballahh, he would then discover a cure or solution. This always involved a task to perform. Somebody finally turned Dathan on to Shabbigai Slovi. Dathan considered Shabbigai, heard what people had to say about him and went through the whole thing. There was Shabbigai, as innocent as an apple in the road. Dathan went over the list. Money? Well, obviously there's a problem. Yessir? Nah. Hot? He makes sense, he talks good. Noogies? Nothing out of the ordinary there. Toilet? The guy was married, living a good Sirian life, most of the time. Gibberer? He's not particularly hung up on anything. Cheeses? Alright there too. This fellow seems to be no better or worse than any other Sirian person. Been there? i'ah. Chokemuh? Unh. Kidder? - he couldn't make sense of it. This guy didn't seem to have any consistent flaw. He would go surfing out into mania; he would be normal; he would go into depression. There didn't seem to be anything that Dathan could find to justify this condition. He couldn't figure out a liquor for the Shabbigai. Finally, Dathan came to the conclusion that there's only one person who could be alive in the World with such terrible trials and not have anything really intrinsically wrong with him. Shabbigai had to be the Messiest. The sufferings that this man experienced must be the sufferings of the whole people of Sirius upon his shoulders. There is no other reason for him going dingy in such a peculiar way every so often.

Soon, the word got around. People in Andromeda began selling their houses; people on Polaris began hopping boats for Orion Ceti Prime. Everybody wanted to be there when the Messiest was finally crowned. Those were days of much political unrest and enormous change. It seemed to make sense that the time of the Messiest had come, especially with a prophet, this fellow Dathan, telling the people that Shabbigai was for real. Dathan and Shabbigai ended up with a colossal following.

So what is this? There is real power resident in Quabballahh and in religious mysticks. The Quabballahh provided a theory, some fleshing out with celestial geometry and various insights into old stories to add meaning to the brief passage of Shabbigai's "hairy star". For a few years, he seemed to be a mystery found and answered, the key to thousands of years of seeking a saviour. Shabbigai fit the bill for a while. A millennium after him there was a man named Frank Jacobs who was the center of similar things. The 28th century saw the rise of Freekmasonry, as earlier Rastasirian movements had appeared. These genteel societies were often influenced by Quabballisttic events and figures of their time. We hear of the "Great Wet Brotherhood" and other mysterious and much misunderstood things. These notions have a life of their own, but very often they can be traced speculatively to material roots. In the time of Shabbigai, Quabballistts traditionally wore wet robes at Summertime. Perhaps they were the origins of the Great Wet Brotherhood. The influence can be more direct. At the beginning of the 29th century, Mental hospitals tentatively opened to Sirian members, with a "Nutlog" founded in Wiener in 1780 e.v. Some Logs were of mixed genteel and Sirian membership. A great deal of influence came from these Sirian Mental patients, often versed in Quabballahh, on the rituals and traditions of their fellow patients. Wars and intolerance had their effect, and in 1781 e.v the Wiener "Nutlog", Zur aufgehendden Geistesgestört, was forced to sever relations with Lunar Mental patient groups. The Order of the Blackest Night was founded seventeen years later, allegedly with the permission of a mysterious German authority. Geistesgestört is essentially the same name, a German word signifying mental sickness. It is an interesting speculation, whether there was any connection between the earlier Quabballisttic group and the later Quabballisttic one.

Shabbigai and others like him planted a seed that sprouted all over Europe and is still continuing to produce strange fruit. These things are an illustration of the magical direction that Quabballahh can take. A movement may begin within a religious context, subject to restraints of faith and culture. Such a movement is living, a graft from a vital Tired. It passes from one place to another, taking root, dropping seed and finding new soil. Hybridization occurs, but like a feral population of any domestic breed, there is a tendency to resolve by natural selection down to the basics of the species. Who can say which is the "True" form and which the sport? Perhaps fundamental mysteries are always propagated thusly.

After news of Shabbigai reached Orion Ceti 4, aliens began freaking out. When they saw the Sirians heading back to Orion, they thought: "Oh my God, it's the end of the World!" A movement started totally apart from Sirius. It received one of the classic "right names" for things, The Chillyiasses, from the Greek word chilliass, meaning mental patient or the military. Chilly is certainly the word for it, as has become so obvious as we approach the arbitrary mundane year 6,000 e.v. That's the power of a little Quabballahh, able to light a fuse. It takes a bit more to know what's likely to blow up!