Petra Mundik - 'Striking The Fire Out of The Rock' - Gnostic Theology in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian PDF

''Striking the Fire Out of the Rock":
Gnostic Theology in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian
Petra Mundik, University ofWestern Australia
There is no such thing as life without bloodshed.
- Cormac McCarthy1
The powerful, disturbing and above all enigmatic nature of Cormac Mc-
Carthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West springs
not so much from the novel's graphic portrayal of violence as from the
problematic role that such violence plays within the larger context of
McCarthy's work. Unlike certain genres of popular literature that portray
violence purely for its own sake, Blood Meridian does not read like some
gratuitous foray into blood-fuelled carnage and mayhem. Quite simply,
McCarthy's writing is far too complex, too charged with esoteric sym-
bols, mystical insights and passages of intense, poetic defamiliarization
for Blood Meridian to be dismissed as a piece of postmodern gorenog-
raphy? Critical opinion concerning McCarthy's work tends to divide
into two camps: namely, that of the nihilists, who agree with Vereen M.
Bell's statement that McCarthy's novels "are as innocent of theme and
ethical reference as they are of plot"; and that of the moralists who, like
Edwin T. Arnold, argue that the novels contain "moral parables" and
"a conviction that is essentially religious." However, both camps agree
that McCarthy's work exhibits strains of mysticism; Bell concedes that
despite some nihilistic tendencies, "there can be no doubt that McCarthy
is a genuine - if somehow secular - mystic," while Arnold suspects that
although McCarthy "makes compelling use of western Christian symbol-
ogy [. . .] his own belief system embraces a larger and more pantheistic
view."3 So is Blood Meridian a nihilistic portrayal of the human condition,
or is there redemption to be found among all that carnage and destruction?
How are we to reconcile the novel's seemingly senseless brutality with
its use of Christian symbology and profound mystical insights?4
Perhaps the answer lies in McCarthy's inclusion of an excerpt from
the works of the seventeenth-century mystic, Jacob Boehme, among the
epigraphs to Blood Meridian'.
© South Central Review 26.3 (Fall 2009): 72-97.
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"STRIKINGTHE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK" / MUNDIK 73
It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sun

and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. F
a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and
the very life of the darkness.5
Boehme6 possessed a heretical, Gnostic brand of

enabled him see the world as we are made to see it in Blood Meridian.
Gnosticism is characterized by a deeply pessimistic world-view, a pre-
occupation with evil, mystical insights, and reinterpretations of Judeo-
Christian mythologies - all of which can be found throughout Cormac
McCarthy's novels.7 The problem of evil, which is absolutely central to
Gnostic thought, is not only "a pervasive theme" in McCarthy's novels,
but "perhaps the issue of human existence that he is most interested in
confronting in his fiction."8 Leo Daugherty recognises the Gnostic vi-
sion in Blood Meridian in his perceptive essay "Gravers False and True:
Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy." Daugherty points out that while
"most thoughtful people have looked at the world they lived in and
asked, How did evil get into it?, the Gnostics have looked at the world
and asked, How did good get into it?" He goes on to explain that for the
Gnostics "evil was simply everything that is, with the exception of the
bits of spirit emprisoned here," asserting that what the Gnostics saw is
precisely "what we see in the world of Blood Meridian."9
According to Gnostic theology, the entire manifest cosmos was created
by a hostile (or at best, ignorant) force of darkness and is thus a hideous
aberration. This force of darkness usually takes the form of a creator-
God known as the demiurge (William Blake's 'Nobodaddy'), identified
as Yahweh of the Old Testament. The demiurge rules over all that he has
created, sometimes with the assistance of evil angels known as archons,
while the real or alien God remains wholly transcendent and removed
from the created world. Some Gnostic texts claim that the demiurge is
merely ignorant and genuinely believes that he is the only God, while
other texts claim that he purposefully conceals the existence of the alien
God in order to maintain his sole dominion over the manifest cosmos.
Humanity has a divided nature, composed of a body and soul, which
were created by and belong to the demiurge, but also a spirit, or pneuma,
which belongs to the alien God. The pneuma is actually a fragmented
spark of the divine which has fallen into, or in some cases, been mali-
ciously trapped in the evil manifest cosmos. Thus people are composed
of both mundane and extra-mundane principles and carry within them
the potential for immanence as soul and flesh, or transcendence as pure
spirit. Hans Jonas explains that: "In its unredeemed state the pneuma thus
74 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW
immersed in soul and fles

or intoxicated by the poiso
awakening and liberation i
Knowledge of the true state
God is referred to as gnos
refer to themselves as the
the spirit, or pneuma, to b
the created world, and reu
state of Enlightenment en
thought. Although a vision
first glance appear nihilist
logical; evil is perpetuated
attained through knowledg
Blood Meridian is absolu
concepts, one of the more
Glanton's gang sleeping "w
pilgrims exhausted upon th
with the aid of the Oxford
to "Anareta" in the follow
naissance to be 'the planet
caused' when the 'malific
entry, 'anareta') [. . .] the im
retic."12 McCarthy's evocat
in which "death seem[s] th
read as Gnostic portrayals
to Christopher Douglas, M
of Blood Meridian to quest
places. Douglas writes th
McCarthy believes that th
interesting about the char
rthy is not comforted by
universe. For McCarthy, t
creator whose dark purpos
empty landscape."14 Indee
malevolent and Anaretic, pre
bloodshed and violence tha
into the sunset.' Consider
rose out of nothing like th
the unseen rim and sat squ
(44-5). Such a description
"STRIKING THE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK1 7 M UNDIK 75
the life-giving properties of light and warmth, sug

of existence extends well beyond our planet.
The Gnostics were all too familiar with such
dismayed by the spatial and temporal enormity
Gnostic world extends not just to our universe, bu
and galaxies - the entire multiverse is manifest ev
"the vastness and multiplicity of the cosmic system
to which man is removed from God" and the "terror of the vastness
of cosmic spaces is matched by the terror of the times that have to be
endured."15 The terrible enormity of the universe is a concept prevalent
throughout McCarthy's work, Blood Meridian being no exception.16 John
Sepich counts over ninety direct and indirect references to a "hallucina-
tory void" and writes that "the scale of the landscape often leads into
passages in which a greater 'void,' beyond the earth, is the intended allu-
sion." He goes on to add that "[t]he landscape of McCarthy's Southwest
is composed not only of deserts and mirage effects, but also of heavenly
phenomena. The novel begins and ends on nights of meteor showers. It
is the sun that powers the book's hallucinatory mirages."17 The follow-
ing passage provides a typical example: "the sun when it rose caught
the moon in the west so that they lay opposed to each other across the
earth, the sun whitehot and the moon a pale replica, as if they were the
ends of a common bore beyond whose terminals burned worlds past all
reckoning" (86). Not only does the universe extend forever outwards to
infinite numbers of other worlds, but this terrible infinitude also extends
forever downwards, albeit in more metaphysical sense, into "the awful
darkness inside the world" (111).
The Gnostics' only source of comfort was the thought that although
the manifest cosmos may be dark and infinite, it is also ultimately imper-
manent and illusory. Only the alien God, and by implication the divine
sparks, were deemed to be 'real' in the profound sense of the word. The
demiurge merely relies on these trapped fragments of the divine to keep
his hideous creation running, but he is ultimately doomed because every
pneuma that returns to the alien God contributes to the inevitable end
of manifest creation. Although the Gnostic 'Gospel of Truth' states that
"those who live in [the world] experience 'terror and confusion and insta-
bility and doubt and division,' being caught in 'many illusions,'" Gnostic
texts also teach that the world "is a thing wholly without substance [. . .] in
which thou must place no trust" because "all works pass away, take their
end and are as if they had never been."18 In Blood Meridian, the "surreal
nightmare of violent lightning storms,"19 which persists throughout the
novel, serves to reveal the true nature of the manifest world: "All night
sheetlightning quaked sour

derheads, making a bluish da
sudden skyline stark and b
out there whose true geolo
fear might be more real th
that is frightening and host
Similarly, Judge Holden -
as an archon - seems aware o
of the material world when he describes it as "a hat trick in a medicine
show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having nei-
ther analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow
whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field
is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning" (245).
Critics of McCarthy's works have noted that hostile landscapes are
among his "favourite motifs," but they are especially prevalent in Blood
Meridian, where "man reflects the violent character of a brutal environ-
ment."20 Few novels have attempted such a devastatingly honest portrayal
of the depths of depravity to which human nature can sink. Arnold
describes Blood Meridian as "a delirious book, an extended nightmare
of history. To read it is to enter the darker places of the imagination, to
witness the malignity of humankind at its worst."21 The novel begins
with the words: "See the child" (3), which effectively evoke an image
of archetypal innocence through simple storybook language; however
this effect is almost immediately subverted by the reminder that in this
little child "broods already a taste for mindless violence" (3).22 Bloodlust
lies at the very core of human nature; it is something that comes from
within, not without. Evolving in a harsh, brutal environment where the
rule was 'kill, or be killed,' human beings had to compete with each
other as well as with wild predators in order to survive as a species. Our
remarkable penchant for brutality and mayhem has sustained us since
the beginning of human history, as McCarthy's epigrammatic reference
to the 300,000-year-old skull which "shows evidence of having been
scalped" demonstrates.
The judge, looking at our species from an outsider's perspective, talks
about the immense influence that war has had on the history of human
development and even suggests that humanity did not invent war, but
was created to take part in it: "It makes no difference what men think
of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of
stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The
ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was
and will be [. . .] War is god" (248-9). The world of Blood Meridian
"STRIKING THE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK' 7 M UNDIK 77
is one drenched in violence and bloodshed and the jud

opportunity to remind the gang that human life has
way.23 According to Sepich, "Blood Meridian looks lik
pages of grotesque evidence, derived from McCarthy'
support Judge Holden 's claim that war and violence d
lives."24 For example, while the men sit amongst the r
ment of the Anasazi,25 the judge proclaims: "All prog
higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and myst
of nameless rage" (146). It is this "nameless rage" whi
history and the world of Blood Meridian is not some p
normal state of things, but rather human nature allowe
and unchecked. As an old hermit tells the kid: "You can fin
the least creatures, but when God made man the devil
(19), a variation on the Gnostic idea that a benevolent
have created such malevolent creatures. The various atrocities described
in vivid detail throughout the novel confirm the hermit's words. On one
occasion, Glanton's men attack an encampment of Gileños in order to
sell their dark-skinned scalps, indistinguishable from those of the Indians
that they were hired to kill. The men are depicted knee-deep in blood-
red water, "hacking at the dying and decapitating those who knelt for
mercy" (156), while others lie "coupled to the bludgeoned bodies of
young women dead or dying on the beach" (157). Not content with the
bounty collected for the scalps, the men also make belts and harnesses
from the skins of the slain.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect oí Blood Meridian is that there is
nothing unusual about the behaviour of the Glanton gang. Bill Baines
notes that "McCarthy's book focuses on cruelty, perhaps man's most ap-
parent quality in the world the author creates. The book's inhumanity is
not - as is often the case in Westerns - the cruelty of white to Indian or
Indian to white, but the cruelty of human to human perennial to literature
and to other affairs of mankind."26 Indeed, Glanton's men frequently
stumble upon atrocities committed by other equally depraved kindred
spirits, such as a bush hung with dead babies: "These small victims, seven,
eight of them, had holes punched in their underjaws and were hung so
by their throats from the broken stobs of a mesquite to stare eyeless at
the naked sky. Bald and pale and bloated, larval to some unreckonable
being" (57). The horror of this image does not rely solely on the portrayal
of the slaughter of innocence; the babies themselves are hideous and
"larval," as if they were the spawn of some "unreckonable being."27 Such
a scene evokes a very Gnostic question: What kind of a deity would call
such creatures as men his children? According to Hyppolytus' account
of the Peratae, the Gnostics

nature when he rejected the
bloody sacrifice of Abel: for
As the judge asks: "If God m
kind would he not have don
What other creature could?
yet?" (146). McCarthy's pre
in the degeneracy of manki
has no desire to alleviate hum
slow self-destruction, as he
manifest world is his sadist
The demiurge is responsible
which are condemned to suff
text demonstrates, it is the f
things, to the teeth of pant
devour, consumed by them th
bound in all that is, impriso
because human suffering an
it is quite easy to miss the s
itself is cruel, as McCarthy
of a "snakebit" horse:
this thing now stood in the compound with its head enormously
swollen and grotesque like some fabled equine ideation out of an
Attic tragedy. It had been bitten on the nose and its eyes bulged
out of the shapeless head in a horror of agony and it tottered
moaning toward the clustered horses of the company with its
long misshapen muzzle swinging and drooling and its breath
wheezing in the throttled pipes of its throat. The skin had split
open along the bride of its nose and the bone shone through
pinkish white and its small ears looked like paper spills twisted
into either side of a hairy loaf of dough. (115)
The other horses show no compassion for the crazed animal, instead it
frightens and infuriates them and it is clear that they would like to kill it:
"A small mottled stallion [. . .] struck at the thing twice and then turned
and buried its teeth in its neck. Out of the mad horse's throat came a sound
that brought the men to the door" (115). The suffering of the horse is as
senseless as the suffering of the victims of Glanton's gang, and yet it is
entirely natural. Blood Meridian establishes no dichotomous opposition
between the natural and moral evil, suggesting that the condition of all
life on earth is one of violence, suffering and brutality.33
Apart from revealing the metaphysics behind M

of violence, a Gnostic reading of Blood Meridian a
on the much-debated enigma that is Judge Holden.
tioned, Daugherty has ingeniously identified the ju
Gnostic theology, the archons "collectively rule ov
in some cases, "are also creators of the world, exc
is reserved for their leader, who then has the name
deed, the judge is described as seeming "much satis
as if his counsel had been sought at its creation" (
serve the demiurge as angels serve the biblical Go
govern what is essentially an evil place, they are c
character. It is quite appropriate, then, that Judge
attributes commonly associated with Judeo-Christ
of the devil.36 The judge is portrayed as a charmin
of high-intelligence and good breeding, he is a tric
smiling when nobody knows the joke,"37 he dances
favorite" (335) at parties, and delights in mayhem
we are first introduced to the judge, a priest cries
is him. The devil. Here he stands" (7).
Similarly, the ex-priest Tobin's account of the ga
with the judge abounds in supernatural overton
meridian ofthat day we come upon the judge on hi
wilderness by his single self. Aye and there was n
Irving said he'd brung it with him [. . .] And there
him and his legs crossed, smilin as we rode up. Lik
us [. . .] He didnt even have a canteen [. . .] You cou
come from" (125). It is clear that the judge is no m
ordinary human being survive in the wilderness w
or shelter? Like the devil in fairytales, the judge ap
strike a bargain with the desperate gang, saving th
for their allegiance by leading them to the rim o
transmutes a "devil's batter" (132), composed of su
guano and urine into much-needed gunpowder. Ho
the devil comes without some heavy price and indee
of "Faustian bargain between the Judge and Glanton
Sepich argues that "Holden 's gift of gunpowder h
phistopheles's gift to Faust and incorporates an ent
theological and historical issues."39 Within the nov
that there is a "secret Commerce. Some terrible cov
Glanton and the judge. When the kid tells Tobin t
judge in Nacogdoches before he joined the gang, T
man in the company claim

cal in some other place" (12
the judge joins the gang of
parody of Jesus and the tw
The judge is perfectly at
Blood Meridian, while his s
the fact that he is not human
"inn" to emphasize its tempo
from our real home - a sta
return to when our pneum
God. This idea is also conv
of Glanton's men watching t
"which does contain within
they are less without it and
(244). The archons can be t
though their relation to it is
inhabit the realm of the ma
walks among men, but is no
Meridian "explores the fla
the Christian God" and the
it." Arnold also notes that
rather "of a supernatural k
"cannot be adequately expl
Sepich states that "Holden
of the judge within the no
human form: "He shone lik
seen anywhere upon that vas
bores of his nose and not u
all above his eyes nor to t
albino creature - which sta
300 pounds - evokes the si
Dick; at one stage the jud
manatee" (167). The judge's
childlike" (6), which make
"Antaean set of juxtaposed
wise, barbaric yet cultured
deceives; it is a smug, Ches
unlimited powers."43 Sitting
described as a "great pale
"like a great ponderous djin
in some way native to thei
"STRIKING THE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK" / MUNDIK 8 1
Most disturbingly, he seems to possess no beginning a

fit of feverish delirium, the kid experiences a revelation ab
"transcendental absence of origins":
Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly oth

their sum, nor was there system by which to divide h
into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek
history through what unravelling of loins and ledgerboo
stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without
terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear
upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia
will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to
reckon his commencing.44 (309-10)
The origin of the judge can only be traced back to a "void without ter-
minus or origin" reminiscent of the original state of things before the
creation of the manifest world. Similarly, the judge has no final destina-
tion; in the final paragraph of the novel he is dancing an eternal dance,
reminiscent of Shiva's cosmic dance of creation and destruction: "His
feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die.
He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never
sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die"
(335). The archon-judge "never sleeps" and claims that "he will never
die" because the forces of darkness are ever vigilant and eternal. The
idea that evil always was and always will be corresponds to the dualistic
Iranian school of Gnostic thought, most notably to that of the Manicheans
who believed that good and evil exist as separate and opposing forces of
light and darkness which can never be reconciled. After the collapse of
the manifest world, "the Archons shall henceforth dwell in their nether
regions, but the Father [the alien God] in the upper regions after he has
taken back unto himself his own."45 Thus even when the last divine spark
escapes to the alien God and the manifest cosmos draws to an end, the
eternal forces of darkness will continue to exist in a great void, totally
separate from the divine realm of light.
The archons must fight a constant battle to keep sparks of the divine
trapped in the manifest world, because if all spirits, or pneuma, were to
attain gnosis and return to the alien God, the forces of darkness would be
left with nothing over which to exercise their dominion. Judge Holden's
desire for such dominion is made apparent by his peculiar habit of sketch-
ing pictures of flora, fauna, and historical artifacts in his notebook, and
then destroying the original objects. When questioned as to why he does
this, the judge replies:
Whatever in creation exists w

my consent [. . .] Only natu
the existences of each last ent
naked before him will he be
The judge placed his hands
inquisitor. This is my claim,
it are pockets of autonomou
tobe mine nothing must be
my dispensation. (198-9)
The judge, like the demiurg

succumb to his will - auton
As Daugherty points out, th
earth" will never be complet
escaping to the alien God. In
rule" is called heimarmene o
the archons through which t
[planets and stars], the ange
come under its bond and it [Fa
words, heimarmene was crea
man," whether through the
and enforcements of Mosaic
of heimarmene by performing
makes a coin circle the fire as
away into the night where it
a "faint high droning" (247).
is determined by the length o
coins" or "men" (245-6). The
of destiny, which is always as
judge's heimarmene controls
of earthly objects through
men's lives through the laws
case, it is the Judge that "hold
Daugherty argues that as a
the "characteristics of Yahw
he is vengeful, he is wrathfu
possesses, and is possessed b
tence or any act outside that
judge, despite his frequent u
upholding the law; rather hi
notions of divine judgement
Yahweh [. . .] judges things s
"STRIKING THE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK1 7 M UNDIK 83
their being inside or outside his will."50 In fact, one o

zling episodes in Blood Meridian, namely the judge's f
with the kid, begins to make perfect sense when viewe
divine wrath of the judge. At the end of the novel the
the judge, much like the 'lukewarm' souls stand before
tions: "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot
were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and n
hot, I will spew you out of my mouth" (John 3:15-16). T
the kid of the same sin of neutrality: "No assassin [. . .]
either. There's a flawed place in the fabric of your hea
I could not know?" (299). The judge, like the demiurge
his disciples give themselves wholly to him and abando
will and judgement in the greater will and judgement o
is precisely what the kid has failed to do:
You came forward [. . .] to take part in a work. But y

a witness against yourself. You sat in judgement on y
deeds. You put your allowances before the judgements
tory and you broke with the body of which you were p
part and poisoned it in all its enterprise. Hear me, man
in the desert for you and you only and you turned a de
me [. . .] For it was required of no man to give more
possessed nor was any man's share compared to another
each was called upon to empty out his heart into the
and one did not. (307)
The judge "seems to be playing God, or Jesus, to the kid-as

condemning the kid in suitably biblical terms for his failu
Just before he takes the kid's life, the judge proclaims,
soul may be required of thee" (327). Sepich points out
words are a slight revision of the biblical verse: 'But Go
Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee:
these things be, which thou hast provided? (Luke 12:20
wanted the kid to give himself wholly to him; deman
blind, unquestioning faith that the biblical God demand
However, the kid refused to yield to the judge's will, attem
tain a degree of autonomy in the face of heimarmene.
Other critics have commented on the fact that the k
seems to be a part of the gang, remaining aloof during
though he were refusing to partake whole-heartedly in the
ment of violence. As Brian Evenson writes: "In Blood M
one who refuses to enter into the spirit of the pack itse
seems to remain passive. In the

wanderings, his character see
implicating him in the violence
not in body." Daugherty argu
to the judge because he "feels
through the call of what seem
Certainly, the judge include
"You alone were mutinous" h
soul some corner of clemency
members of the gang, the ki
alien God, a feeling typically
explains, this sense of aliena
recollection of his own alien
for what it is, is the first st
beginning of the return."54 It
symptoms of Gnostic awaken
the true nature of his sense of
into the cult of violence. He tel
to that feeling, the emptines
arms against, is it not? Is not
which bonds?" (329).
The feeling of emptiness and
from living in a world where
kidto drown this feeling in a
that although the kid has par
ficientlyin wisdom"55 and is
heimarmene that the judge e
that the kid never fully suc
allow autonomous life to exis
destroy the kid as he destroy
insult" to him (199). The kid is
the night, appearing to escap
unable to break free from the
coins and men. So just as the
his hand, he smiles as he gather
and terrible flesh" (333).
The kid pays a terrible price
the wrath of the archon-judg
hearted worship from his sup
ship any other gods. 'The Apocr
of the Syrian-Egyptian branc
"STRIKING THE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK" / MUNDIK 85
that the demiurge cannot be the one true God: "An

the creation beneath him and the multitude of ang
him which had sprung from him, and he said to t
god, besides me there is none' - thereby already ind
beneath him that there is another God: for if there
should he be jealous?"56 Thus the demiurge obscures
alien God, keeping the divine spark imprisoned with
to further his dominion over the manifest cosmos.
initiated by powers of darkness and perpetuated b
man's spirit imprisoned within his soul and body, both
by the tethers of heimarmene. Those who worship
know the true nature of the universe and are lulled bac
promises of salvation; those who do not worship him
have not yet attained gnosis, must endure his terrib
In Blood Meridian, the truth of this cosmic consp
the kid during a state of fevered delirium:
In his delirium he ransacked the linens of his palle

but there were none. The judge smiled. The fool w
there but another man and this other man he could never see
in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal.

The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but
he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps
under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammer-
ing out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of
his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is
this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor
with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in
the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this
residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this
is the judge judge and the night does not end. (310)
The Gnostics did "not dismiss visions as fantasies or hallucinations," but

rather respected and revered such experiences "through which spiritual
intuition discloses insight into the nature of reality."57 Arnold describes
McCarthy's use of dreams in Blood Meridian as "portentous" and "para-
bolic," arguing that they are made up of "the sort of mysterious biblical
'dark speeches' that must be interpreted, puzzled out."58 The kid, in his
altered state of consciousness, seems to be witnessing the creation and
dissemination of organised religion among men.59 The "false moneyer"
is no friend of mankind, working in "exile from men's fires" and thus
lacking the spark of the divine which these fires represent; his false coins
represent the false teaching

to devalue the legitimate curr
through esoteric mystical in
lies of exoteric religion.60 Ar
the identification suggests,
deceiver (one who forges, im
significant that the artisan
"not be," suggesting that t
salvation - such as the comin
purpose is to keep mankind
is imprinting these coins w
only true God is the alien God
effort to represent such a c
a lie. The image on the coin
that will pass," but the artisa
rent in the markets where m
of the archons is transient,
Thus the artisan "seeks fav
among men, much as Glanto
bloodshed and mayhem. The
judge"62; namely, it is the jud
of the false currency that ke
and ignorance, represented b
The false promises of orga
peated motif of desecrated r
images such as the "carved s
child" (27), or the crucified
from the crosstree with its
the massacres in Blood Mer
suggesting that the so-calle
fering no sanctuary against
stumble upon the remains o
church and the stone floor
partly eaten bodies of some
this house of God against th
in the slaughter of the cong
ning toward the church wh
this refuge they were dragg
were slain and scalped in th
the kid comes upon a simila
their deaths praying to the cr
The company of penitents lay hacked and butchere

stones in every attitude. Many lay about the fallen cr
were mutilated and some were without heads. Perh
gathered under the cross for shelter but the hole i
had been set and the cairn of rocks about its base showed how it
had been pushed over and how the hooded alter-christ had been
cut down and disembowelled who now lay with the scraps of
rope by which he had been bound still tied about his wrists and
ankles. (315)
The message is clear - organized religion "has proved to be as insubstan-

tial as the support of the now-collapsed cross, and as empty as the disem-
bowelled 'alter-christ.'"64 However, the kid, having partially awakened
to the call of the divine, is in desperate need of spiritual redemption and
continues to search for answers in this desecrated wasteland. He finds
"an old woman kneeling in a faded rebozo with her eyes cast down." The
kneeling figure, with "figures of stars and quartermoons" (315) woven
into the fabric of her shawl, is strikingly reminiscent of the Holy Mother
of God. The kid approaches her with a due sense of sanctity and "im-
pulsively confesses to the penitent in rhetoric reminiscent of a questing
Christian knight in thrall to the Holy Virgin."65 "He spoke to her in a low
voice. He told her that he was an American and that he was a long way
from the country of his birth and that he had no family and that he had
traveled much and seen many things and had been at war and endured
hardships." After confessing, he tries to redeem himself by offering to
"convey her to a safe place," but when he touches her arm he finds that
she is "just a dried shell" and that "she had been dead in that place for
years" (3 1 5). The mummified penitent is revealed to be just another piece
of false currency, an empty shell of meaningless religious iconography,
thwarting the kid's genuine search for redemption.66 Shaw writes that
"[t]he kid's epiphanic miscalculation vis-à-vis the penitent mummy is
literally momentous beyond words, for immediately thereafter he dis-
appears for seventeen years."67 It is precisely through the propagation
of such hollow religious symbols that the archon-judge, with the aid of
his "false moneyer," hopes to silence the call of the divine in those that
have partially awakened. For such early strivings for gnosis can easily
be discouraged if one is lead down the wrong path.
Though the novel ends with the death of the kid, and the judge in
celebratory dance, the final conclusion is to be found in the italicized
epilogue, which reads like a mystical revelation arrived at through an
altered state of consciousness. The mystical overtones of this final para-
graph are emphasised by t

esoteric symbolism.
In the dawn there is a man

of holes which he is making
with two handles and he chu
the stone in the hole with st
the rock which God has pu
the wanderers in search of
and they move haltingly
movements are monitored
they appear restrained by a
no inner reality and they cr
track of holes that runs to t
seems less the pursuit of so
of a principle, a validation
round and perfect hole ow
there on that prairie upon w
of bones and those who do n
and draws out his steel. T
On the surface level, this

Sepich explains, "the nove
ging postholes using a thro
of open range." He also rev
of bones" are merely bone
that "[w]hen the use of bon
discovered in the nineteent
cant commodities in the ec
symbolic quality of McCart
epilogue than can be glean
though it may be. Daugher
that led to his first glimp
specifically Manichean, f
central to a Gnostic under
the "man progressing over
the divine, working to fre
corporeal) messenger, in p
good, 'alien God.'"69 In Gn
Salvator Salvatus, or the 'S
world of light who penetr
archons, awakens the spirit
"STRIKINGTHE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK"/ MUND/K 89
the saving knowledge." Because the alien god is "un

concepts" and cannot be discovered by empirical m
him can only come through mystical revelation and
tive to such knowledge one must first be 'awaken
divine. As Jonas writes: "The goal of Gnostic stri
the 'inner man' from the bonds of the world and his r
realm of light. The necessary condition for this is
the transmundane God and about himself, that is, a
as well as his present situation, and accordingly als
the world which determines his situation."70 The d
is essentially one with the alien God, descends to t
order to impart gnosis to the other slumbering spirit
ter. He is known as the Saved Saviour because he t
in the manifest world and was saved after hearing
The task of the Saved Saviour is reminiscent to that of the Bodhisattvas
in Buddhist thought, who, after attaining Enlightenment choose to remain
in the world of manifest illusion, refusing to enter Nirvana until the last
spirit has escaped from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
The man in the epilogue is described as "striking the fire out of the
rock which God has put there" suggesting that he is freeing sparks of
the divine "fire"71 trapped in matter - or "rock" - by the "God" of this
world, the demiurge. The fact that he is followed by "wanderers in search
of bones and those who do not search" suggests that those who have not
attained gnosis can be divided into two groups - those who search for
answers in the wrong places, and those who do not search at all. Those
who search for "bones" are followers of religions that claim that all will
be revealed in the afterlife. These wanderers look to the empty promise
of death for salvation, worshipping the relics of dead saints, not realizing
that without gnosis one will be cast back into the manifest world, life
after life. The ones who "do not search" are the materialists; tranquillising
themselves with the trivialities of everyday life, content with the acquisi-
tion of wealth and earthly delights. They are even less awakened than
those who search for answers in bones. Both parties move "haltingly in
the light like mechanisms" because they are in the grips of heimarmene
and do not posses free will, which can only be attained through gnosis.
Thus they live their lives like sleepwalkers, never fully awake to the true
nature of reality. In fact, such "resistance to gnosis" is often described
as "the desire to sleep or to be drunk - that is, to remain unconscious."72
Their movements are "restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which
has inner reality" because the manifest world in which they move is
illusory and impermanent. Similarly, they misunderstand the holes left
behind by the pneumatic,

owes "its existence to the
tribute causality to our un
discoveries of quantum ph
into the nature of reality, in
hopelessly flawed and illog
pursuit of gnosis "engages
This difficult process is on
sparks dispersed througho
to the alien God. The pne
each spark that dies witho
into the manifest realm, t
presumably until the last bit
the sleepwalkers have been
Despite the fact that the k
continues in his eternal da
conclusion of Blood Merid
McCarthy's novels to date
is certainly among the blea
niscent of the divine spark
in Blood Meridian is to be
is possible even in times of
argues that this "man strikin
in regard to the evening red
which symbolises the decli
gests that though the judg
"a new Prometheus may be
assures us that there is on
the forces of darkness. The
imagining, but he cannot sto
and as long as there are su
will never be "suzerain" of the earth.
NOTES
1 . From Richard B. Woodward's interview with McCarthy, published as "Cormac

McCarthy's Venomous Fiction," New York Times Magazine, 19 April: 28-31+. 36.
2. As Mark Royden Winchell writes: "The greatest literature enables us to look
into the very heart of darkness by making of the intolerable a thing of beauty. By giving
coherence and articulation to human experience, art can make the fate of an Oedipus,
Kurtz, or a Benjy, an object of sublime contemplation, an occasion of catharsis. In the
hands of a clumsy or indifferent artist, the materials of tragedy degenerate into soap opera
or pornography. This is clearly not the case with Cormac McCarthy." ("Inner Dark: Or
The Place of Cormac McCarthy", The Southern Review 26.2 (1990): 293-309. 296.
"STRIKINGTHE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK" / MUNDIK 9 1
3 . Vereen M. Bell, The Achievement ofCormac McCarthy (Baton

State University Press, 1988), 31; Edwin T. Arnold, "Naming, Know
McCarthy's Moral Parables," in Perspectives on Cormac McCar
Arnold and Dianne C. Luce (Jackson: Mississippi University Press
Bell, "Between the Wish and the Thing, the World Lies Waiting," So
( 1 992): 920-927. 926; Arnold, "The Mosaic of McCarthy 's Fiction," i
A Reader s Companion to Cormac McCarthy, ed. Wade Hall and Ric
Texas University Press, 1995): 17-23. 22.
4. John Sepich's impressively researched Notes on 'Blood Mer
based on the premise that there is more to Blood Meridian than initi
As Edwin T. Arnold writes in the Forward to Notes: "For [Sepich
magical, revelatory text in the sense that it contains secrets [. . .] O
reading Notes on 'Blood Meridian ' that Sepich is searching for so
hidden in the guise of this western novel. He may be right. Certainly
a mysterious grip on many of its readers." ("Foreword," in John Sep
Meridian ' [Austin: Texas University Press, 2008]: xix-xviii. xiv).
5. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in
reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1 992). Further references to Blo
this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text.
6. Boehme writes: "For I had a thorough view of the Univer
wherein all things are couched and wrapped up, but it was impossibl
the same." (Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism [New York: E.P. Dutton, 1
7. Sven Birkerts has argued that: "McCarthy has been, from the st
strong spiritual leanings. His orientation is Gnostic: he seems to view
below as a violation of some original purity." ("The Lone Soul State,"
July 1994:38-41.38).
8. William C. Spencer, "Cormac McCarthy's Unholy Trinity
in Outer Dark," in Hall and Wallach, eds., Sacred Violence: 69-76.
review of Blood Meridian for the Los Angeles Times Book Review,
"McCarthy's screed is a theological purgative, an allegory on the natur
as Goya's hallucinations on war, monomaniacal in its conception and
and achieves the vertigo of insanity, the mad internal logic of a noon-t
refuses to end. Abandon hope, all ye who open this one." ("A Revi
ian, or the Evening Redness in the West," Los Angeles Times Book Re
2).
9. Leo Daugherty, "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy,"
in Arnold and Luce, eds., Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: 159-174. 162. Although
this article owes a great deal to the initial inspiration afforded me by Professor Daugherty,
nevertheless there are differences in emphasis in our respective interpretations. Firstly,
I do not see Blood Meridian as adhering to Aristotelian conceptions of tragedy, partly
because I believe that the conclusion of the novel offers the reader no catharsis, and
partly because the kid lacks a tragic flaw, or hubris, and thus his death is not tragic in the
classical sense. Secondly, though I am in complete agreement with Professor Daugherty
as to the Gnostic foundations of McCarthy's vision in the novel, I have taken the liberty
of developing these seminal ideas more fully by pointing out additional Gnostic motifs
and elaborating on those already covered by Professor Daugherty. Furthermore, in my
treatment of the key passage of the 'cold forger' or 'false graver,' I diverge from Profes-
sor Daugherty 's interpretation altogether and offer an entirely new reading.
1 0 . Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Rel

nings of Christianity (Boston: Be
11. As Elaine Pagels explains: "
ultimate reality are called agnosti
to know such things is called G
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 19791, x
12. Daugherty, "Gravers False a
13. John Lewis Longley Jr. wr
landscape on the moon, or like the
winter when everything is dead. O
simply the Great American Desert
men. Its abiding characteristic is i
hope, travail, terror, death. At a
of Hell - the inevitable configurat
of Cormac McCarthy," The Virg
14. Christopher Douglas, "The F
Momaday's House Made of Dawn
45.1 (2003): 3-24. 11.
15. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion
16. The vast, indifferent, and o
topic of contemplation in McCar
cast about among the stars for som
look that Ballard did not trust"
In Suttree, we find descriptions of
their tracks and mitered satellites a
black of space" (1979; reprint, N
of the universe" fills Suttree "wit
John Grady feels that this is a wor
or rich or dark or pale or he or she
Nothing for the living or the dea
Crossing, perhaps McCarthy's m
of the she- wolf and sees a "world
construed out of blood and blood'
because it was that nothing save
threatened hourly to devour it" (1
The Road continues in this Gnostic
stood and he saw for a brief momen
circling of the intestate earth. Da
running. The crushing black vacuu
Books, 2006), 130. In fact, it seem
in The Road, for all to see: "Out o
died and the bleak and shrouded ea
trackless and as unremarked as the
beyond" (181).
17. Sepich, Notes, 160.
18. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 125; Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 84.
19. Barcley Owens, Cormac McCarthy s Western Novels (Tucson : Arizona University
Press, 2000), 5.
20. Ibid., 5, 7.
21. Edwin T. Arnold, "'Go To Sleep: Dreams and Visions in
in Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne C. Luce, eds., A Cormac McC
Border Trilogy (Jackson: Mississippi University Press, 2001)
22. McCarthy uses "the child" to make an ironic allusion to W
to "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Ear
McCarthy's: "All history present in that visage, the child the f
Meridian 3) to Wordsworth's: "The Child is father of the Man
days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety." (The Co
William Wordsworth [London: Macmillan, 1 888]).
23. The idea that the world has always been an evil place is
favourite themes. In Outer Dark, the tinker tells Rinthy: "
humans till I don't know why God ain't put out the sun and g
New York: Vintage Books, 1993], 192). In Child of God, the d
he thinks "people was meaner then than they are now." The o
I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first m
the derelict railroader complains that he "never knowed such
this world, but when Suttree asks if it was "ever any different?,
not" (180). In All the Pretty Horses, Alfonsa proclaims: "What
greed and foolishness and a love of blood" (239). However, McC
in No Country for Old Men, making Sheriff Bell wonder if per
of evil among men: "I thought I'd never seen a person like that an
if maybe he was some new kind" ([2005; reprint, New York:
Or, as he tells Torbert: "I aint sure we've seen these people b
know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they'd h
to hell" (79).
24. Sepich, Notes, 1 .
25. In Blood Meridian, the judge's words at the site of the ruins of the Anasazi
predict the fate of the human race which we find depicted in The Road: "When Judge
Holden gestures toward the Anasazi ruins and describes them as the end result of empire
building, he prophesises America's future" (Owens, Western Novels, 119).
26. Bill Baines, "A Review of Blood Meridian," Western American Literature, 21.1
(1986): 59.
27. The concept of such a parasitical 'being' dwelling in the heart of the world is a
reoccurring theme in McCarthy's writing. In All the Pretty Horses, there is "[something
imperfect and malformed lodged in the heart of being. A thing smirking deep in the eyes
of grace like a gorgon in an autumn pool" (71). John Grady imagines "the pain of the
world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls
wherein to incubate" (256). In The Crossing, a blind man tells Billy that the world is
"sentient to its core and secret and black beyond men's imaginings" (283).
28. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 94.
29. According to Douglas, Blood Meridian 's
reverse-agnosticism, that perhaps God does exist, is not a cause for hope
for McCarthy, but a cause for terror. There are patterns of evil in our world.
God's silence is no longer seen as indifference, but as the possibility of his
malice [. . .] McCarthy accepts evolutionary violence and historical violence
as givens and explores what kind of designer might have structured the world
in that way. He sees two possible explanations for the designer's silence. The
first is a disinterestedness of o
a disinclination to get involved
the Christian God. The second
McCarthy's fiction. It is that
man misery - brought on in p
of evolutionary violence - as
Flawed Design," 12)
30. McCarthy's novels often cal
Child of God, the cross-dressing
as a "child of God much like yo
the entire human race in the atr
same set of questions, as the pro
in the realms of dementia, what
phobia could have devised a keep
worm-bent tabernacle" (1 30). Lat
he asks, "what could a child kn
ragpicker says it best, telling Sut
did like him" (147). In The Cross
for the hand of God in the world" and that he had "come to believe that hand a wrathful
one" (142). Similarly, recounting the tale of a heretic, he states: "It was never that this
man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things
of Him" (148). In The Road, the 'man' cannot bring himself to believe that the world he
finds himself in could be the will of a benevolent God: "He raised his face to the paling
day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which
to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he
whispered. Oh God" (11-12).
3 1 . A sentiment also expressed by Ernest Becker in his brilliant work, The Denial of
Death (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1973):
What are we to make of creation in which the routine activity is for organ-
isms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types - biting, grinding flesh,
plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet
with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organisations, and then
excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to
incorporate others who are edible to him [. . .] Creation is a nightmare spec-
tacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions
of years in the blood of its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could
make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three
billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. (282-3)
32. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 86-7.
33. Although McCarthy's novels often contain passages of nature mysticism, such
visions are always tempered by a Gnostic awareness of the horrors of creation. It is pre-
cisely this struggle between McCarthy's simultaneous love and repulsion for the natural
world that creates such fascinating dialectic tension in his novels. Even in All the Pretty
Horses, a novel in which nature mysticism predominates, we find disturbing reminders of
the cruelty of nature, such as the powerful image of little birds impaled on cactus spines
after a terrible storm: "Gray nameless birds espaliered in attitudes of stillborn flight or
hanging loosely in their feathers. Some of them were still alive and they twisted on their
spines as the horses passed and raised their heads and cried out but the horseman rode
on" (73). Animals also suffer in The Orchard Keeper, a novel also replete with nature
"STRIKINGTHE FIRE OUT OFTHE ROCK11/ MUND/K 95
mysticism, where the young John Wesley Rattner tries, but fails, t
in a well and later a sparrowhawk with a broken wing (1 965; repr
Books, 1993), 64,77.
34. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 43^1
35. Douglas draws attention to McCarthy's frequent use of "
examples. According to Douglas, the words are McCarthy's "gestu
chanted natural world. His "as if draws our attention away from
landscape portrayed to another landscape, a spiritual, apocalyptic o
are [. . .] the "as if marks the failure of traditional realist langu
theological design behind the events of the novel and the imposs
imagining the design that McCarthy suspects must lurk behind
of the world" ("The Flawed Design," 13).
36. This is not the first time McCarthy has employed archon-l
novels. The three figures in Outer Dark have much in common
Culla Holme first meets the "grim triune" (130), their leader s
the fire itself, cradling the flames to his body as if there were s
all warming" (179). Just as the judge and the gang are a dark par
Disciples in Blood Meridian, the evil trio in Outer Dark serves as
Holy Trinity: "The three marauders of Outer Dark comprise a triple
the bearded leader symbolizing lawless authority and destruction
ing violence, and the idiot corresponding to ignorance. Evil, then
includes violence and ignorance under the control of malevolen
operation under a deceptive guise" (Spencer, "Cormac McCarthy's
This form of malevolent authority occupied in the perpetuation of v
corresponds perfectly to the Gnostic understanding of the role of
37. Owens, Western Novels, 16.
38. Ibid., 15.
39. Sepich, Atotes, 121.
41 . Arnold, A Cormac McCarthy Companion, 45, 46.
42. Douglas, "The Flawed Design," 17; Arnold, A Cormac McC
45-^6; Sepich, Notes, 142.
43. Owens, Western Novels, 17.
44. Dwight Eddins, "'Everything a Hunter and Everything H
and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian," Critique 45.1 (2003
45. Opposed to this is the monistic Syrian-Egyptian school of
typified by the Valentinians, which believes that evil and darkne
downward movement of the divine: a guilty 'inclination' of the
tity) toward the lower realms, with various motivations such as cu
desire, or in some cases, ignorance" (Jonas, The Gnostic Religio
40. Jonas, me unostic Keiigion, zud.
47. Jonas goes on to explain that heimarmene is an "unenlightened and therefore
malignant force, proceeding from the spirit of self-assertive power, from the will to rule
and coerce. The mindlessness of this will is the spirit of the world, which bears no rela-
tion to understanding and love. The laws of the universe are the laws of this rule, and
not of divine wisdom. Power thus becomes the chief aspect of the cosmos, and its inner
essence is ignorance" (ibid., 227-8, 205, 43).
48. Owens, Western Novéis, W.
49. Daugherty, "Gravers False an

50. Ibid.
5 1 . Tim Parrish, "The Killer Wears the Halo: Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor,
and the American Religion," in Hall and Wallach, eds., Sacred Violence: 25-39. 37.
52. Sepich, Afotes, 176.
53. Brian Evenson, "McCarthy's Wanderers: Nomadology, Violence, and Open
Country," in Hall and Wallach, eds., Sacred Violence: 41-48. 46; Daugherty, "Gravers
False and True," 164. Similarly, Sepich notes that McCarthy twice associates the kid with
the four of cups, "a card whose symbol suggests a divided heart" (Notes, 107). The kid
notices "a gypsy card that was the four of cups" pinned to a wall (59) and later draws
the "quarto de copas" from a gypsy fortune teller (94). The Four of Cups augurs a time
of "boredom and dissatisfaction. A time for re-evaluation of a too-familiar environment
or lifestyle. A need to seek new goals, or more stimulating way of life." Reversed, it
represents a time of "satiety and excess. A seeking after novelty and excitement for its
own sake that brings little or fleeting pleasure. A low threshold of boredom." (Emily
Peach, The Tarot Workbook: Understanding and Using Tarot Symbolism, [Somerset: The
Aquarian Press, 1984], 52). Either reading suggests that the kid is not entirely satisfied
with his way of life, a dissatisfaction which prevents him from becoming a whole-hearted
disciple of the judge. Sepich also points out that:
As the kid's card was displayed to the men, The judge was laughing silently'
[. . .] Very little escapes Judge Holden's understanding. His silent laughter
indicates that at the very least he understands the card's significance, or that
perhaps he has in some way predetermined its selection. The presence of this
card in the novel as the kid's emblem is an appropriate validation of the judge's
otherwise inexplicable accusations of the kid's 'clemency for the heathen.'
And the judge, when he can, exacts vengeance" (Notes, 94, 107).
55. Daugherty, "Gravers False and True," 165.
57. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 12.
58. Arnold, A Cormac McCarthy Companion, 44.
59. For an alternative interpretation of this passage, see sub-heading "IV. The False
Graver" in Daugherty 's "Gravers False and True" (166-168).
60. The kid's dream of the false moneyer is strikingly reminiscent of a passage in
Underhill's Mysticism, where she writes of how the true mystics "ever seek, like the
artists they are, some new and vital image which is not yet part of the debased currency
of formal religion, and conserves its original power of stinging the imagination to more
vivid life" (114).
61 . Arnold, A Cormac McCarthy Companion, 48. Arnold also points out that Mc-
Carthy's false moneyer evokes various mythical and literary characters:
There are echoes of other figures in the image of the coiner, ranging from Pluto,
god of the underworld, to Spencer's melancholy gnome-like Mamon, who
lives in hell making money (Fairie Queen, 2, vii), to Blake's mythic Los, the
smithy who works at the command of Urizen [i.e. 'You reason' P.M.] just as
the coldforger works to please the judge. Although there are important differ-
ences between Urizen and Holden, both wish to control the world by denying
or obliterating mystery through logic and science [. . .] Los (who has been
torn from the side of Urizen) helps this powerful demon to forge the chains
that will bind man through the limitations and assumpt

which confines and organizes and thus diminishes the w
62. Earlier in the novel the kid asks "What's he a judge o
"Hush now. The man will hear ye. He's ears like a fox" (135).
63. It is clear that the judge possesses insight into the nature of the created world,
which he as archon understands better than any other character in the novel, but it is also
clear that it is in his best interest to deceive rather than to impart real knowledge. Thus,
he tells the men, "Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that
there is no mystery" (252), but of course, the greatest mystery is the judge himself. As
Tobin remarks: "As if he were no mystery himself, the bloody old hoodwinker" (252).
64. Diana Curtis, "McCarthy's Blood Meridian" The Explicator 63.2 (2005):
112-113. 113. Note that the reference to the "alter-christ" is McCarthy's pun and not a
typing error.
65. Patrick W. Shaw, "The Kid's Fate, the Judge's Guilt: Ramifications of Closure
in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" The Southern Literary Journal 30.1 (1997):
102-119. 110.
66. Sepich points out that: "In pre-Reformation Faust tales, a last-minute plea to the
Virgin for her intercession in the breaking of a devil compact is successful"; however,
"[i]n Blood Meridian, McCarthy underscores divine unresponsiveness to human pleas"
(Notes, 123).
67. Shaw, "The Kid's Fate," 1 1 0.
do. òepicn, Notes, oo, o /.
69. Daugherty, "Gravers False and True," 168-169.
70. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 45; 42-3, 44.
7 1 . McCarthy uses "fire" to represent the divine spark in The Road. The father
reminds the son throughout the journey through the apocalyptic wasteland that they are
"the good guys" because they are "carrying the fire" (120). Similarly, in No Country for
Old Men, Sheriff Bell dreams of his father "carryin fire in a horn [. . .] And in the dream
I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out
there in all that dark and all that cold" (309).
72. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 126.
73. Ibid.
74. Harold Bloom, Bloom s Modern Critical Views: Cormac McCarthy, New Edition
(Infobase Publishing: New York, 2009), 7.

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Petra Mundik - 'Striking The Fire Out of The Rock' - Gnostic Theology in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian PDF

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''Striking the Fire Out of the Rock":

Gnostic Theology in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

Petra Mundik, University ofWestern Australia

There is no such thing as life without bloodshed.

© South Central Review 26.3 (Fall 2009): 72-97.

It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sun

Boehme6 possessed a heretical, Gnostic brand of

immersed in soul and fles

the life-giving properties of light and warmth, sug

sheetlightning quaked sour

is one drenched in violence and bloodshed and the jud

of the Peratae, the Gnostics

Apart from revealing the metaphysics behind M

man in the company claim

Most disturbingly, he seems to possess no beginning a

Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly oth

Whatever in creation exists w

The judge, like the demiurg

their being inside or outside his will."50 In fact, one o

You came forward [. . .] to take part in a work. But y

The judge "seems to be playing God, or Jesus, to the kid-as

seems to remain passive. In the

that the demiurge cannot be the one true God: "An

In his delirium he ransacked the linens of his palle

in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal.

The Gnostics did "not dismiss visions as fantasies or hallucinations," but

represent the false teaching

The company of penitents lay hacked and butchere

The message is clear - organized religion "has proved to be as insubstan-

graph are emphasised by t

In the dawn there is a man

On the surface level, this

the saving knowledge." Because the alien god is "un

behind by the pneumatic,

1 . From Richard B. Woodward's interview with McCarthy, published as "Cormac

3 . Vereen M. Bell, The Achievement ofCormac McCarthy (Baton

1 0 . Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Rel

49. Daugherty, "Gravers False an

that will bind man through the limitations and assumpt

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