As a reader of thebooklight will know, Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic congregation leader, has written many books. Several of his works have been reviewed by the same. His latest work is called The Avatar and seeks to explain how the patterns which he has noted in some of his previous work have expanded. Specifically, he endeavors to explain how the lives of many pagan gods have patterns which have been appearing on the stage throughout his life. For this, he offers some testimony about his experiences in India, Cuba, and Africa that he has not previously disclosed in his former works. The narrative is shaped, then, by what “the gods” have been doing on the national stage for the past sixty or so years and Cahn has specific testimony in his experiences to add the flavoring of what this means practically speaking.
The parts concerning Cahn’s testimony and experiences in India and Cuba and Africa are fascinating. A short synopsis of this content would be “Things got wild”, in the sense that literal demons are involved doing demonic activities that Cahn and his entourage must battle.
Then, by about mid-book, we switch into an analysis mode of who the “gods” are, and who they correlate to. This is after we discover who they are typifying in the Bible, which, it turns out, is one mask they are wearing. Some of these people, like Trump, are not featured with a pagan mask–probably because Trump appears to be motivated by the Bible in his actions although not necessarily perfectly. It turns out there is a Biblical example for another person who did this very thing, and Cahn does an excellent job of noting the parallels.
Where Cahn loses the script, perhaps, is that he goes on about the pagan gods for most of the middle of the book. This, plus the fact that he relies on time measurement that is Babylonian and Roman to correlate certain events happening make it seem more like he is in alignment with the Roman Emperor than with God. It’s not, of course, that the Torah readings across the world cannot be used to understand something of events unfolding, but one could ask the question why those specific verses are read. Who decided it? Same thing with the calendar for events. We know Rome decided that the Roman calendar had to be instituted.
In fairness, most of Cahn’s readership is probably Roman Christians who identify as Messianic. There is a good chance he knows this and so has to use this kind of writing style to move books since his readership likely will not respond to much else. Fine. A writer has to write in a way that sells books if he wants to have his message spread. What is confusing, though, is why Cahn feels the need to spend so much time on the pagan god templates? His readers probably are not familiar with these entities, so by saying their name so frequently, is he not causing his readers to think about the very gods he is warring against? It seems like this work loses focus in this regard. Yes, there are pagan gods. Yes, on the national stage they have been named. Yes, their worship does thus and so, but who cares what they are doing in certain specific ways? Their end is always the same. Sooner or later, the idols are destroyed. Cahn makes this point, but it is not as solid of a thesis as one might hope for from the work. The ending quickly touches on it, and tells us we should pray and America is at a spiritual crossroads. Fine. Which name does America need to hear more of, then? YHVH? The Hindu pantheon of gods? It is an odd move. Perhaps Cahn felt like he had to prove his case, and so felt compelled to show his work. Maybe he has another book in mind.
Whatever the case, Cahn suggests America is in some twilight between these ancient gods and the Bible and that it hangs in the balance. One could make the same critique of this book. The scholarship is excellent. The connections are solid. The testimony is phenomenal and one yearns to hear more of what God did in Cahn’s ministerial adventures. One, however, gets to hear instead about much evil for entities one ought not be serving as a Messianic while using a calendar that was instituted, in no small way, to punish early Christians. This makes this a peculiar work, although given the body of Cahn’s other books, one can forbear final judgment on this piece until more time has elapsed. Cahn introduced us to the pagan gods. What is he going to do about that, now? Tell us to pray? Okay. Were not people doing that before this book emerged?
Cahn shows us the battlefield and the war, but leaves us with little idea concerning actionable steps to take. At the very least, he could have said 1. Get a prayer shawl. 2. Get a shofar. 3. Get out of Egypt. Discussing these steps would have been a good follow up. Again, perhaps a future book has this in mind, but the war is now, not later. Steps taken to fight after main battles are over are of no use. If the purpose is color commentary and a rallying to pray, okay. Make the book shorter and say that in the first twenty pages, and move on. That is, after all, a part of how these “gods” are defeated.
Here is how a conversation might have happened with the publisher and the author of this book, Winifred Gallagher:
Publisher: So we are looking for a top-notch academically researched piece on the United States Post Office and what you have submitted here looks good!
Author: Awesome!
Publisher: Just one thing though, we are gonna need you to cover the history of Black Americans in the US Postal service, and make sure to talk also about women.
Author: Er..kay?
Publisher: Look, in 2016 liberal bookstores and publishers want to hear about Black Americans and women because they are the oppressed despite Women’s Lib, and despite the Civil War.
Author: Well…okay…I think I can make that happen…
The short outcome, of that hypothetical conversation, is that Gallagher did do that, but she did it in such a way that it is distracting. There are easily three other books within this book, and the identity crisis shows. The two other books should respectively be African Americans in the US Postal System, and Women and Their Role In the US Postal System. Or, it might have been better to divide the subject into the US Postal System previous to 1940 and then 1940 going forward. Why? Because this book, while offering a lot of awesome history, seeks to beat you across the face with the other two works when the narrative format does not support these excursions. There are moments where it does–where Postmasters are being discussed broadly and the discussion of the first woman Postmaster makes perfect sense. There are other times where it is more like, “So now we are going to talk about women because we must.” The change in focus is forced and unjustified. It makes the reading choppy and disconnected.
On the other hand, this book does an excellent job of showing how the early US Postal system was the glue that held the nation together when it came to educating citizens on the events of the day. There were those like Benjamin Franklin who figured out how to game the system and use their free franking privileges to make themselves wealthier. Of course, he also helped significantly improve the delivery of the mail by offering refinements to the postal system at large.
From these early origins we are ushered into the pre-Civil War US Postal System which is rough and tumble. Roads are in poor shape, and the job is dangerous in ways that directly imperil a person’s life–whether that be through Native American attacks–or natural phenomena like rivers that are flooding or hard to cross. Oh yeah, there are also thieves on the journey, who like stealing mail because there might be something worth stealing since the mail is the main way things are sent–like money or even later the Hope Diamond. This is where the Pony Express exists, and it was, indeed, a dangerous job that advertised that it preferred orphans who would not be missed should they not make it back home. Far from deterring applicants, it seemed to embolden them.
At the point we find ourselves in the company of Andrew Jackson, we begin to understand something about the spoils system and how politics began to interleave itself into the mail system via governmental appointments which typically paid well and had the perk of retirement–especially as the system became more modern.
As we move forward into the Civil War, we find another gutting by Lincoln of the US Postal Service which, more or less, removed many people who had held on from the time of Jackson. In the meantime, trains are beginning to become a dominant force for faster delivery of mail, and are starting to replace the horse. Of course, there are not trains available everywhere, so the horse delivery system must be kept for those areas that lack any other kind of means of delivery. The trains begin to act more like private carriers, and in addition to their efforts to make money as kinds of postal businesses, there are other places who, like the Pony Express, try to discover an angle to either make money doing private deliveries with priority, or to be awarded contracts by the US government by becoming a part of the US Postal system.
As things start to head into the 1900’s, we start seeing the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the turn toward mechanization. The Postal Service becomes behind the times due to infighting in the government about who can deliver what, and when. Everyone is after the money aspect of the situation, and no one wants to fund changes that are necessary to keep the system functional for contemporary usage. Everyone is depending, however, on the mail to run. Pulp kinds of books and magazines have specific rates that the publishers do not want to see change. Some of these are political newspapers, and some, according to the book, are little better than smut.
Eventually we are aloft in the air and we are introduced to the pilots who risk the early dangers of aviation that perform feats that would still be risky today with modern planes. We find ourselves, by the Great Depression, surrounded by some barnstormer pilots, and a postal system on the brink of collapse which causes New Deal economic forces to start construction programs on Post Office buildings. Fixing the Post Office up as a kind of cultural heritage of a region becomes the new reinvigoration though there still are massive problems with regard to labor forces and how the government can deal with a system that must run and yet is being simultaneously crippled.
It is around this juncture that another hypothetical conversation must have happened:
Publisher: You really, really need to focus on MORE women and MORE Black Americans! Turn the knob up from about a 3 to something like a 7!
Author: Okay, I think I can do that!
The author yanks off the knob and cranks the effort up to a 12, fearing the publishing contract will be nullified if the black/woman quota is not met.
So, naturally, there are many more references to black men and women in general in the more modern US Postal Service. At this point, a time-traveler arrives from the year 2025 and shakes the author by the shoulders and utters one word and only one word: FATIGUE!
The rest of the book, on a less flippant note, takes us right on up to the 60’s and 70’s where mail stops being delivered and Postal Workers begin to strike because they have had enough. Nixon, we discover, adopts the eagle as the US Postal logo in part because the horse used before as the symbol was hard to recognize. We learn about a system introduced in the 40’s that goes extinct in the 60’s which is a successful parallel US banking system which is run through the Post Office. Also, mechanization begins to assert an ever-increasingly more powerful grip on how the mail is run.
We take some forays into stamps and their value, and how collectors can get mad when the government does not let them purchase stamps they think will be valuable. We learn also, that releasing stamps of events is kind-of-a-big-deal and if it they commemorate someone in the modern time, it is usually the case they are dead since if they are still alive they can screw up their reputation in a way that reflects negatively on the Post Office.
What shines throughout the work, and invites comparison, is how the development of the internet mirrors closely that of the US Post Office. From centralized hubs, to the eventual hub and spoke systems, every kind of network architecture is discussed with regard to the postal system. The book concludes with the statement that the US Postal System failed to see the impact that the internet would have on mail and the US Postal System in general, and that failure was not for want of Postmasters who understood what was going to happen. Though the book does not say it, it is probably the case that many understood the problem, but who wanted to again assume the cost of changing the postal system? While the amount of letters may have dropped, the text notes that the increase in packages from shopping is sharply up. It turns out that to get goods from digital shopping, you still need someone to saddle up their horse, and actually take the package to the customer. Who knew?
It is toward the end of this book that I suspect the new book idea emerges as a conversation between author and publisher:
Publisher: All right, you got plenty of black people in there, and great job on the women. It reads smooth as butter. We need you to release a new book though. What we are thinking, and we are just spit-balling here, is that maybe you can cover the gay-trans-vampire contribution to the US Postal System. That, and people who identify as furries. Can you work that into a narrative on the history of the US Postal Service?
Author: Well, that is going to be difficult, but I suppose I could just always transition with the subtext of “Furries who never failed,” or “How Edward glittered his way into my mailbox even though I don’t know what pronouns to use.”
Publisher: Great, GREAT! I’m looking forward to it! Send it along when you work it up!
Rest assured, if this happens, thebooklight will review the copy, mercilessly.
Plebpoet is the alter ego of Jana Kelsay who has become a poet through a more unconventional means– through the ranks of a crypto-powered news network called stacker.news.
Plebeian is a Roman term that refers to the common people, which is what cryptocurrencies are, ideally, supposed to be serving as the “banking elite” have things the way they want them in the normal world of paper currency. These crypto solutions can also offer independent artists like Plebpoet a chance for expression and eventual publication, which is what Plebpoet has accomplished.
The body of poetry that Plebpoet has as an initial offering starts the reader off with the author observing that she is nothing special and has nothing to offer, though at one point she thought she did. Her poetry is aimed instead at those who are reading the work who are, instead, the extraordinary ones. The equation of what is or is not extraordinary is the ability to turn one’s gifts into currency, which one supposes Plebpoet has not done, and so is therefore not recognized as extraordinary–though poetry and financial success have seldom courted one another through time.
This idea of destroy the self-specialness in favor of the reader is a clever way to introduce the idea of cryptocurrency and its themes, where Plebpoet actually has some existence such that she has a voice.
The forward to the work proves to be a kind of foreshadowing, perhaps.
I’ll pay attention long enough
to one day suck in my breath
and close my mouth around
the whole wide world.
The line brings to mind the Garden of Eden and eating the forbidden fruit, only this time, the poet is attempting to eat or digest the world. The factor that causes the inability to do this is one’s attention in the verse. It could be, though, that the world is made to be a distraction so that one craves a higher nutritional food. That theme is not explored here, but the insinuation is there in this opening salvo.
The work then breaks in with the classical approach of one making love with one’s muses, which in this case is identifiable in theory with Sophia. As sex and knowledge have a long association with one another through many kinds of literature, the metaphor is not lost and does not imply a Sapphic desire in a carnal sense. The relationship bears no fruit, in the verse, because the page is left blank. When one eats the world, what fruit is there to give?
We move along to a more scientific sounding theme which has one eating the fruit of going to work via labor. Naturally, this is an unfulfilling prospect to a poet, and hearkens back to the 60’s Beatniks who also took up the theme at length. (Bob Dylan has made a whole career nearly on that point alone)
Soon we are facing an existential crisis as the world is stripping away the idealism of youth. If one were to characterize Plebpoet’s work as a whole, one could probably say it is filled to the brim with an existential angst and what remains when one is gone.
The interlude between poems has some good photography interspersed among different pieces rather like wasabi eating before various pieces of different sushi. It is better experienced than commented upon, and so nothing more on that point will be said here.
The yearning for an awakening becomes poignant and intense within the themes further metamorphosis, and instead of the world the author is desiring to bite into her own life and devour it for the rest of her life. The Ouroboros is left no meal but its own tail. It is not surprising then when death follows on the heels of that lyrical exploration and what becomes of poems or life when those who lived it are now gone?
A type of “steam” comes after the death, in the sense that the sensation of rising begins through the next passage, and my personal favorite of Plebpoet’s work manifests:
sitting idly by
my brother welcomed his son into the world yesterday
this morning I saw a train pulling along
a hundred tanks
his lungs weren’t clearing on their own,
he’s got tubes through his nose
someone is mobilizing some effort, somewhere, but I
can’t know it for certain
I know it’s his care in mind, this tiny baby,
but the tubes in his nose make me wretched
everyone along the path of the train slowed down, I
wonder if they thought of war as I did
What makes this specific poem compelling is how life and war are connected and considered in the same verse. The baby is fighting to breathe, and somewhere someone needs some tanks to feel like they can breathe in whatever effort it is that the tanks will be utilized concerning.
It makes the poet feel wretched since the tubes are a reminder of the struggle that is life, and this is reflected in the manner in which everyone slows down as the train slows down. For Plebpoet, she speculates that they might all be thinking about war and what it means or at least poses the thought. On the other hand, it could simply be that something about that moment in life is touching on something sacred and fragile all at once and the only answer is a kind of stillness.
There are still many themes left within the work for the reader to explore, but the analysis for the review ends here in that from this point forward, there are multiple paths forward and it is interesting, as an individual who has not read the full work, to consider what direction you might take from this juncture should this body of poems be yours up until now.
In a very bird’s-eye view way, we are all busy dying, living, birthing, living, yearning and growing in every breath. Why do we identify with one of those states in a given breath when all of them are present? Extremes can generate them, yes, but then, a train passing on a track with tanks in tow is not inherently extreme. A birth perhaps, is. Tanks in a museum, for instance, are not on their own extreme, but they can be the tools of those who are. Are the historical? Evil? A force for good? Maniacal? It all depends on how you breathe.
For what seems to be a first published work, not many poets get the chance to touch the sky–even if briefly. Plebpoet gets there and knocks on the heavens for a second. How she is greeted describes her descent that follows from that lofty journey. Or does it? Again, it depends on how you breathe.
ISBN: 978-1636415208
ISBN: 978-0143130062