Chapter 26. Fifteen Years Later
Ever since we got the Internet, we have seen it not only as a source of information and a means of communication, but also as a means of talking to the world about the most important topic for us. That is, as an opportunity to bring the Teaching to people. I think I would not be wrong if I said that this was our goal in the first place. That is why we immediately began to work out the idea of creating a website dedicated to the Teaching. It was not possible to publish a book yet, but it was possible to make the pandect freely available so that everyone could read it.
The desired website appeared a few years later, a little after my "La vita altra". Fortunately, Hantur already had some experience in site-building.
The first Internet resource of the Teaching was very simple. The main page, categories, subcategories with texts. No additional functions. No graphics, except for the header and the page background. The latter, by the way, was designed by Hantur and was an ornament based on the symbolism of the Teaching. Our symbolism at that time was very scanty. It represented one single symbol: what we call the sign of white fire. It was this symbol that was stylised for the background. Why am I emphasising this point? Because it was the first case of artistic treatment of an image related to the Teaching. In fact, the beginning of our visual arts. Unless, of course, one considers the symbol itself, created according to Emere's instructions, as such.
We did not invent any particularly artistic or profound variants of the name of the site. The header read: "The Genuine Teaching of Hermes". As in the case with the first variant of the book, we wanted the name to be not simply speaking, but eloquent, immediately introducing.
According to the idea, all three books of the pandect, and some other materials, — articles, answers to some questions, and even translation of some texts into English were placed here. The content was small in volume, but not in importance. It was the most important and valuable thing we could offer to people.
Actually, that was how the next task was formulated. We had to offer. We had to attract the audience's attention to the Teaching's website. How to do this?
Social networks were not so popular at that time, communication was mostly on forums. By that time we had seen quite a few such sites on subjects close to our own — although we ourselves did not participate in the discussions, only read — and we already possessed a certain arsenal of observations that allowed us to make certain generalisations and conclusions. One of them was that it hardly makes sense for me to appear on forums. People who claim to be the founders of spiritual teachings, and even more so as prophets, are very disliked there. Yes, prophets on the Internet were much more common than one might assume. We counted half a dozen of them in a fairly short time. Some of them had pages where they presented their teachings, and all or almost all of them tried to speak at forums, to address their visitors. And, as they call it, they got a lot of trouble. The public was not interested in what they taught. They were pissed off by the very fact that someone claimed to know the Truth. That is why nobody, as a rule, even tried to understand, to delve into what they wanted to convey, to criticise thoughtfully and reasonably. They were just simply mocked, insulted, and only a lazy man did not wipe his feet on them. Just for the way they positioned themselves. Of course, I couldn't take these people seriously either — but it was painful to watch them being mocked, and I felt sorry for them. At the same time, there was no doubt that if I went there, I'd get the same reception, and there would be no sense in it. Having thought it over and weighed it all up, we decided that it was not worth it.
Another obvious way to promote the site was advertising. We didn't understand such things at all, and we didn't have the money to hire a specialist, just as we didn't have the money for a web designer. Looking for what can be done with our modest means, we decided to try advertising in search engines such as Google. Scraped up some money and paid for a few days. Monitoring site traffic showed that such advertising is useful, but not that much. The number of visits to its pages slightly increased — but as a one-time event it could not give a tangible result. It was necessary to do it periodically, over a long period of time. Preferably permanently. But there was no money to pay for it. We could not even dream of another advertisement that would be more effective, but also more expensive.
Here we quite expectedly reached an impasse. And we returned to the idea of forums, but with the amendment that it was not me as its founder who would try to tell about the Teaching, but Hantur as a follower. That is, as a person who has already tested this spiritual path and can tell what it is good from the point of view of someone who has chosen it for himself. There was a faint hope that it would not cause such attacks.
Hope was not fulfilled. As soon as Hantur mentioned the Teaching in one of the forums, a storm of real anger was unleashed on it. "On it" — that is on the Teaching, and also on me, in absentia. Some people were just plain rude. Others called the Teaching stupid and meaningless — without, however, giving a single argument, quote or anything else. It was clear that they had never read any of the materials. The third went further. From them we learnt that we lure people into our sect and then take away their money and flats. Some made such accusations and others immediately picked up on them. In response, Hantur asked for the names and addresses of at least two of the victims, or to stop hurling unsubstantiated accusations. Strangely enough, it worked, and no more of this sort of thing was written. But at the same time we were informed that the Teaching was financed by Western intelligence services. After all, we must have had someone's money to create and maintain the website, as well as to carry out other activities. However, no one could explain what kind of activity and what was the intention of the Western special services acting through us. After that, they simply went back to insulting the founder of the Teaching, piling up one accusation after another for a long time, and wrapped it up by comparing me to Hitler.
At that the scolders more or less calmed down. Apparently, their imagination had run out, and they couldn't think of anything more horrible. We also decided that nothing more interesting would happen, and Hantur closed the topic. A day later, the forum itself was closed. It was large and very actively visited — but suddenly disappeared as if it never happened. Someone mystically inclined would have seen some kind of sign; we just noted an interesting coincidence.
Another interesting point was that the swearing on the forum served as an advert for the site. At the time, it was reaching several thousand people daily. This was orders of magnitude more than advertising in search engines.
About the same time we made the third and last attempt to communicate with the hermetists. We have chosen a forum of corresponding subjects, Hantur has made the brief message that there was ateaching restoring the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus in its true, not distorted form, and has given the link to the site. Here we could expect at least an attempt to analyse the material, discussion and criticism with at least some justifications. However, there was nothing of the sort. There followed a brief, sluggish discussion, to which we did not even think to be involved, and the conclusion that our texts have nothing to do with Hermeticism, because they are not based on the "Hermetic Corpus". No one simply paid attention to the original message, the essence of the whole matter — that the Teaching was originally stated to be inconsistent with the known Hermetic texts, and that this is its value. It is the restored teaching of Hermes, and therefore it does not have to conform to them. Otherwise what would have been the point of its appearance? Of course, we did not expect that everything would be perceived in this way. On the contrary: we expected denials, objections, refutations — but with arguments that could be discussed. Not such a superficial reaction. It seems that they did not even realise what they were talking about, that they were not being offered another interpretation of the old texts, but an alternative to replace them. We were surprised at this short-sightedness and did not even bother to explain. What for? In memory were fresh hermeticists, who started to check Hermes through questions on which it would be impossible to catch a man, and other hermeticists, in response to the offer of communication sent a price tag. And we agreed that further attempts at such contacts were hardly worthwhile.
Our resource was visited, — sometimes very actively, as it has already been told — but for all time nobody has shown desire to become a disciple or even simply to learn more about the Teaching. But one day we received a letter from a man who had his own concept of the world. He expressed it in a short essay, accompanied by scientific calculations. I do not know to what extent he had familiarised himself with the Teaching, but, in his opinion, his theory of the Universe had no contradictions with our picture of the world. In his letter he expressed this conviction and asked me to familiarise myself with the attached essay. Having familiarised myself with it, I saw that there is practically no similarity — only contradictions. I informed him of this. He was perplexed and demanded to give at least one example of a contradiction. I did not go far and quoted the very first sentence of his essay, which contained a statement, radically contradicting the Teaching. This person never wrote to me again.
After about three years of the site's existence, I came to the conclusion that it was obsolete in its current form and decided to close it down.
A few years later, I saw a curious confirmation that it did have an audience, and an audience that cared. On one of the largest question-and-answer platforms I came across the question "Why has the site of the prophet Atarkhat disappeared?" The person who asked it was perplexed: why was the site banned, who was it bothering? After all, excellent texts were published there, especially some messages, where a lot of truth was written. Another user reasonably replied, "That's why they banned it." Then he advised to look for it, because nothing can be irrevocably banned on the Internet, and the things you are looking for are out there somewhere. I mentally sympathised with the seeker. He won't find anything anytime soon. Why didn't I send him a message? Because if he wanted to communicate, he would not just read the texts, but would have written to us himself. And since he didn't contact us, it would be wrong to impose.
Closing the site did not mean that it was no longer needed. There were two reasons for that. The first was the need to rework it, from design to content. The second was to continue trying to publish the book.
I decided to revisit the idea of a collection. Only now it could be a more solid collection than the one we started with. A careful selection was made from our materials, and the result was that it included 12 texts from the "Evor", 11 from the "Doron", 4 epistles, an exhortation entitled "From the Heart" and 2 articles. Plus a short preface by the author. In terms of volume, the book was about a third of the pandect. It was decided to do everything properly, with logions numbering. This made the layout more complicated, but the texts looked the way they were supposed to look according to the original plan. The title was left from the first collection: "Revival of the Teaching of Hermes". Hantur, acting as the artist-designer, designed the cover.
What was the connection to the website? Such as if there was a publisher, he would inevitably demand to remove the texts included in the collection. I didn't want to put out a cut-down pandect. That's why it was decided to start searching for a publisher again, and in the meantime to develop a new website. If we don't find a publisher, we will launch it. If we found one, we'd postpone the launch.
By that time, we had already searched through, it seems, all the suitable and almost suitable Russian publishers. But now we had another offer, so we started a new round. Especially since several new publishers had turned up. We selected a few at a time and made a mailing with a description of the book and some texts as samples.
Things did not go quickly. Some responded with a rejection almost immediately, others a little later, others told us what they thought and rejected it after a while, many did not respond at all. The reasons for rejection, if they were explained at all, were the same as before. We would send out a proposal, wait for a response or make sure there was none, then repeat the process with another group of publishers. Along the way, more options were discovered.
This went on for about two years. Our mailing was received by those we knew and those we found in the process. All to no avail. But the new website was slowly developed and almost ready. I felt it was time to stop mailings and get it up and running. And with the newsletters, I'll try again in a few years. Maybe something will change. Although it's unlikely to be for the better, but who knows... We've run out of resources for today anyway. Hantur, however, disagreed. He thought that we should continue, and the site could wait a little longer. Especially since we had just managed to find a few more small publishers that had not been covered before. We argued for a long time. In the end we decided that he would do one more mailing — I didn't believe in its success — and if there was no positive result, then we would do the website.
To my great surprise, a positive result followed. One of the publishing houses was interested, then received the full text of the book, and offered to publish 1000 copies. At that time and under the condition that it was the first publication of an unknown author, and even on such a specific subject, such a circulation was not bad. When they talked about the fee, I said that I was ready to refuse it. They replied that they were legally obliged to pay at least something. In the end we agreed on a minimum percentage of sales. This amounted to a ridiculous sum of about $120. But there was really no fee for the cover designer. However, I was offered to illustrate texts, — honestly said that illustrations would have approximately nothing to do with the text, but just something to be. I suspected something wrong and asked to send examples of their in-house artist's work. At one look at them it was clear that the book would be published without illustrations. The only thing I didn't understand was what their artist was getting paid for.
We were sent a standard author's contract, and we rewrote it as we saw fit. Among other things, we set the minimum term of the contract — a year and a half. This was the time for which the launch of the site was now postponed.
At that point, I was physically unable to even sign my name, so I had to call a notary and issue a power of attorney to Hantur, allowing him to sign documents on my behalf. Anyway, the necessary paperwork was signed and the book went live.
I informed my parents. My father only looked surprised and cursed. He couldn't get his head round the fact that the kind of rubbish I was doing, which he had always despised, seemed so interesting to someone that it was even being published. Mum was delighted and nearly cried. I asked her not to tell anyone about the book — at least not until it was published — and Mum promised to keep quiet. But still she couldn't stand it and told her relatives who had come to visit from Russia. The others didn't know until the book was published. When my mother told them and showed them the copy I had given them, they were incredibly surprised, or even didn't want to believe it, because some incomprehensible Atarkhat was written on the cover. Well, and some are not aware of it to their day.
The book came out in 2013. After fifteen years of trying and effort. And it was a credit to Hantur. He travelled to Minsk to negotiate, collected information about Russian publishing houses, called and contacted them, made mailings, insisted on that last attempt, and even gave the book a beautiful cover. He worked for many years, on pure enthusiasm. And now — success.
It changed the general appearance of the situation considerably. Because some teaching of some unknown person, someone's fantasies — that's one thing. And the teaching with a book published, and not at the expense of the author, is another. This is a certain solidity, even, in a certain sense, recognition, because some people found the material worthy of publication, took a risk and published it, others found it worthy of attention, buy and read it. It is clear that publication itself is not a sign of quality. They publish all sorts of rubbish. But nevertheless, the publication of the book as if transferred the Teaching into another weight category — both for publishers and for the public. That is why it really became a serious achievement for us.
The creation of the first website and the release of the book were two important steps forward for the Teaching. Not in terms of profit, not in terms of money or fame, but in terms of becoming. It was as if a top had been reached — not the highest, but a fundamental one — and from it a new landscape opened up. The life of the Teaching began to feel different.
...As far as domestic affairs were concerned, one could not note any particular eventfulness. My grandmother died of a cerebral infarction before the book was published. On the one hand, she doubted that the Teaching came from me, but on the other hand, when I mentioned that we were trying to publish the book, she said, "I wish I had lived to see it." It didn't work out. My parents retired. My father was less tempted to drink, because he used to drink constantly with his friends, with whom he was connected by his work. Since he began to drink less and less, there were fewer and fewer friends. When he stopped working and almost stopped drinking, there were none left at all. Which speaks volumes about the quality of these "friendships" that were sustained solely by the bottle.
Every day my mother went out for a couple of hours to sit on the bench at the entrance, to chat with the neighbours. To make it more entertaining, I would find spicy jokes and various stories on the Internet, tell them to her, and she would share them during her bench gatherings. Everyone laughed so much that people from neighbouring entrances would come up, wondering what was going on, and join in the fun. If she didn't come out on a certain day, someone would call her on the phone and say, "When will you come out? It's boring without you."
My mum and I watched Brazilian serials, which we liked very much, played backgammon on my computer, and one day, quite by accident, we discovered snooker. Switching TV channels, we came across some guys near a billiard table, stopped to watch, and still couldn't tear ourselves away. The 2005 World Championship was on. I was never interested in sport, and she was mostly indifferent to it — but we fell in love with snooker. Over the following years, we never missed a single tournament. We knew all the snooker players, who had been a champion and when, what prize they won at which tournament, what rule they had broken and how they were penalised. We even knew the biographies and family situations of many of them, and so on. I even registered (under the name Digenis, of course) on the Russian-language portal of Eurosport and for a while I chatted in snooker threads there. This was something out of the ordinary for me.
The family's unexciting everyday life was somewhat enlivened by rare events like the aforementioned arrival of guests. Or the sudden arrival of the police — now for my sake. There were still occasional protests in the country, which were brutally suppressed. After one of them, our doorbell rang. Mum opened the door and there were two very determined-looking policemen standing on the threshold, saying that they wanted to talk to me. When she asked, "What's the occasion?" they replied that it was about my participation in the protests. The astonished and indignant Mum said, "Do you know that he is a group 1 disabled person, confined to a wheelchair and doesn't walk anywhere? What protests?!" Just then, a neighbour came out of his flat. Hearing this conversation, he ironically asked, "Have our police already taken on the disabled?" The policemen were embarrassed, said, "Apparently, there must have been some mistake" and left.
In a way, however, they were in the right place. I would definitely participate in the protests if I could physically do so. Unfortunately, I didn't have that opportunity. The only thing left was to act with words on the modest scale available to me, explaining the situation in the country to those who had not yet been reached. Fortunately, my mother did not need to explain anything. She understood everything correctly. And just like me, she did not take part in the elections, believing that there was no point in it. The last time she went to the polling station, she threw into the ballot box not a ballot paper, but a photo of Lukashenko cut out of a newspaper, on whose forehead she and I had written "executioner" in Belarusian.
And at that time, by the way, tapping of home phones had already become commonplace. Officially, of course, it was denied, but everyone knew. Sometimes it was done very openly. For example, there was the following case. One of our acquaintances was talking to her relatives living abroad and complained to them that life in Belarus was getting more and more difficult. Then a strict male voice interrupted the conversation and informed that it was forbidden to speak badly about the state when talking to foreigners. The poor woman hung up the phone in horror.
Not everyone had mobile phones back then. My father, for example, was given such a gift by his colleagues in 2010, seeing him off for retirement.
...I said above that the book was published thanks to the efforts of Hantur. And it is all the more honourable if we take into account that at that time he was going through a very difficult ordeal in his personal life. He met a woman he fell in love with. She already had a child, but that didn't bother him. Everything was going towards him finally being able to start a family. Hantur is a very homemaker, a man who likes to do everything with his own hands, from repairs to assembling furniture. He needs a wife, a family, children. However, this woman had, to put it mildly, a very difficult character. He endured a lot, and I can not talk about it. I will only say that one of the stumbling blocks in their relationship was the Teaching. She wanted him to give up the Teaching and stop visiting me. She demanded that he set her up with me so that we could sort everything out on the spot. But she was not a mild and intelligent cohabitant of Saveli, and my comrade realised that a big scandal would break out. So he didn't do it. Soon she decided to put the question in a sharp turn and offered him to choose between her and the Teaching. They broke up. Hantur was in a state of prostration for weeks afterwards. He had to literally reassemble himself from the shards. But he managed to do so and to return to normal life and to our affairs.
As for the latter, among other things, we developed the emblem of the Teaching — a symbol of the white flame framed by a chain of 27 rectangular links, corresponding to the number of revelations. And also the symbol of the Teaching — a flower of white fire bursting through the stone it hacked. In one of the pandect texts, the Teaching is spoken of as the flower of Amra, extracted from the bowels of oblivion. This image became the basis for the symbolic image we commissioned from an artist we knew. It is this image that can be seen on the cover of the published book.
The fact that the Teaching was then beginning to acquire its own symbolism was also important. Our emblem and our symbol will have to pass through centuries and millennia, linking today and the distant future. I don't have the slightest doubt about that. If I do, I don't know how I would live... Probably not at all.
Of other events of that time, I will mention the burning of manuscripts. I had accumulated a whole pile of them over the years, since the eighties, from all sorts of humorous writing of the time and fiction to manuscripts of the pandect and the latest poems. We filled a large bag with them, and then Hantur took them all to the village and set them on fire. Why? Because I don't want any digging into my papers after my death or any speculation about it. We don't need that. And since I haven't written anything by hand since then, there are no more samples of my handwriting. Unless something got lost somewhere... Or someone kept some old letters, which is unlikely. Or a couple of books and photographs with gift inscriptions, given to someone in youth. There's no signature even on the last passport.
I think the less of these traces I leave behind, the better.
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