![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/mitharmummy.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When I was writing Postsingular<\/a><\/em>, I thought it would be interesting to have the dominant Western religion of the Hibrane be slightly different from Christianity. So I wrote:<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe like to eat them [cuttlefish],\u201d\u009d said Azaroth. \u201cI thought you knew that. Thanks to teeping and omnividence, we fished our own cuttles extinct. Since then, the planetary mind has taught us to be more careful. In any case, our people especially dig eating the Lobrane cuttles since they\u2019re so dense and chewy. I should also mention that cuttlefish symbolize a certain holy cuttlefisherman of ancient times. He rose from death on the triangle to found one of our great world religions.\u201d\u009d This change seemed cute and funny at the time, but now it\u2019s coming back to haunt me. Because Hieronymus Bosch\u2019s art is loaded with Christian iconography, and the time he lived in was dominated by the Roman Catholic church.<\/p>\n So I need to think of a Hibrane religion that fits with the cuttlefish\/triangle thing and is close enough to Christianity so that my envisioning of Bosch can be comfortably close to my goal, which is our own historical Bosch.<\/p>\n First of all, as a fabulist (and setting aside whatever my realworld religious beliefs might or might not be), I find it interesting to suppose that our religions were indeed founded by otherworldly beings—and I take this class to be a very broad one, extending to higher dimensions as well as to divinities.<\/p>\n In this case, the appearance of Christ wouldn\u2019t simply be an inevitable historical stage, on a par with the emergence of the alphabet. It would, rather, a somewhat arbitrary and unpredictable irruption of a higher reality in our mundane world. On a par, if you will, with the three-dimensional A Sphere choosing to manifest himself to flat A Square in Flatland<\/em>.<\/p>\n Or, closer to my novel Hylozoic<\/em>, it might be that some aktualized higher being like the harp or the pitchfork made an appearance as a religious savior in human form, with motives that might be altruistic and benevolent, although the motives might instead be arcane and obscure.<\/p>\n If we take Christ\u2019s life as being the unpredictable intervention of a higher being into human history, then there\u2019s no absolute necessity for a Christ to have appeared in an otherwise identical parallel Earth. Things very much like puffballs and oak trees must evolve, but a monotheistic religion based upon the Beatitudes and clinched with the prophet\u2019s execution and resurrection\u2014maybe that\u2019s not inevitable.<\/p>\n This said, if some higher being is motivated to meddle with our timeline, the same kinds of reasons might drive the being to poke into the parallel line as well. But they might happen to do it a bit differently there. So we can suppose that the Hibrane has something like Christianity, only different.<\/p>\n In other words, I\u2019m supposing that the harp or the pitchfork or some other aktualized higher being did in fact incarnate themselves as a Lord and Savior and founder of a world religion in the Hibrane. Maybe at some point the aktuals will in fact tell us about this.<\/p>\n And, on the evidence of Postsingular<\/em>, I know that this avatar was a man who was a cuttlefisherman, and who was executed on a wooden triangle. <\/p>\n What was the Hibrane savior\u2019s name?<\/em><\/p>\n Jude Christ. According to an online Catholic Encyclopedia, Jesus had four \u201cbrothers,\u201d\u009d <\/a>although the orthodox view is that these were in fact cousins. Their names were Joseph, James, Simon, and Jude. I think I\u2019ll use Jude because of the dissonance caused by the echo of Judas the Betrayer, and the positive energies of the Beatles, \u201cHey Jude,\u201d\u009d Hardy\u2019s Jude the Obscure<\/em>, and my deceased Mondo 2000 <\/em>friend St. Jude Milhon<\/a>, \u201cThe Saint of Hopeless Causes, Dubious Cases, and Children’s Aspirin.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n It\u2019s similar to crucifixion. They nailed together three boards to make an isoceles triangle with its narrow vertex down. Possibly the construction was backed by a cross\u2014indeed many crucifixes have slanting props. In the Hibrane, people just happened to focus on the triangle.<\/p>\n [Photo of a model of the Common European Cuttlefish Sepia Officinalis<\/em>, to be found in the Mediterranean off the Holy Land.]<\/p>\n How can cuttlefish be made a warm and fuzzy religious symbol like the lamb? He embraces everyone. He reaches out.<\/p>\n Oh, that\u2019s too scary a picture, I’m just kidding with that. \ud83d\ude42
\n***
\nRelative to little Thuy, the single-story shops and houses were as tall as office buildings. The buildings looked to be assembled from naturally grown components as well. Overhead, shells and shiny seedpods hung upon lines stretched across the street; they\u2019d been crafted into representational forms: a star, a candy cane, a cuttlefish holding a triangle\u2014Thuy recalled Azaroth\u2019s mentioning that the cuttlefish was a symbol for a Hibrane religious figure. Perhaps these were ornaments to celebrate a holiday.
\n***
\n\u201cWhat!\u201d\u009d exclaimed Gladax, taking the bait. \u201cI told those flowers they have to stay red right through to the end of the Cuttlemas holidays.\u201d\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/undermybed.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/boschman.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/camelherders.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/vagueblur.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/trianglechrist.jpg\")
\nHow exactly was Jude Christ executed on a triangle?
\n<\/em><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/medcuttle.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI have this thing for cuttlefish…<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/postsingularcover.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n