I have always hated Jacob for this cheat and considered him a weasel, and I suspect that every observant sectgoer shares this secret opinion as well, but, as we will see, the Torah is SCOURED BY COWS just a very smart thing while also winking at the terrible predicament of wearing all those awful man-clothes.

Let’s review the scriptural evidence and see what we can make of it in light of my position that Judaism is really about making the transition between hunter-gatherer life to farmer and Christianity about the muck of LARGE.

Here is the text in the King James Version of my youth, starting with Genesis 25. I was educated by those most excellent language hounds, the Mormons, and we always spoke in verse:

Esau is described as follows: “The first to come out was reddish and covered all over with hair, like a coat.” Anthropological science has decided that Neanderthals had red hair. I am going to speculate that this reference to Esau is, in fact, perhaps describing what in myth, legend, and perhaps phenotype would relate to an older type of human, possibly even legendary at this point, but preserved in ideas of what hunter-gatherers with more Neanderthal ancestry were like. Anthropology has speculated that the agricultural set dependent upon wheat systematically drove out and killed the other hominids. This happened in waves over thousands of years, and it might have taken thousands of years for the genetic mix to winnow out to our contemporary situation of 3% Neanderthal DNA. Legends carry over from thousands of years. Are we here seeing homo sapiens and not just Israel?

If the cubicle-like structure of the religion of Judaism were a way of winnowing out the Neanderthals, that would make sense. They get run off in a world WITHOUT RECESS AND KICKBALL. Now Judaism has inadequate genetic variety and we would like a few of them to come back and heal things.

And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.

28 And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.

29 And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:

30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.

31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.

32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.

34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright. . . . .

27 And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I.

2 And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death:

3 Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison;

4 And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.

5 And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son. And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it.

6 And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying,

7 Bring me venison, and make me savoury meat, that I may eat, and bless thee before the Lord before my death.

8 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command thee.

9 Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he loveth:

10 And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee before his death.

11 And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man:

12 My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing.

13 And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them.

14 And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved.

15 And Rebekah took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son:

16 And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck:

17 And she gave the savoury meat and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.

18 And he came unto his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son?

19 And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy first born; I have done according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me.

20 And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the Lord thy God brought it to me.

21 And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not.

22 And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.

23 And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau’s hands: so he blessed him.

24 And he said, Art thou my very son Esau? And he said, I am.

25 And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son’s venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him, and he did eat: and he brought him wine and he drank.

26 And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son.

27 And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed:

28 Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:

29 Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

30 And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting.

31 And he also had made savoury meat, and brought it unto his father, and said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son’s venison, that thy soul may bless me.

32 And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn Esau.

33 And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.

34 And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.

35 And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing.

36 And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me?

37 And Isaac answered and said unto Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him: and what shall I do now unto thee, my son?

38 And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept.

39 And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above;

40 And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.

The Bible is very clear. Isaac preferred Esau, the cunning man of the field, the hunter-gatherer, over the other guy.

A hunter-gatherer is a manly man who is fun to watch in movies. He runs. He leaps. He shoots up the place, and he always ends up with the girl.

Unless he is the bad guy, then we have BOO BOOs.

In other words, he lives in his body like an animal facing situations with aplomb that are really mostly about the male animal. Ladies are interferers in these worlds. I AM NOT ON VIDEO GAMES.

This is a better man in concept, but in reality, it is an EPIC ideal that usually results in a lot of fraternity worlds violence, female infanticide, broken furniture, and general mayhem, so this person is politely allowed to be in the Army and come home twice a year: “And by the sword shalt thou live.”

At least, when we have the luxury of agriculture: our Torah-prescribed hero is a plain man who dwelt in tents.

He is an accountant, maybe. He tends his flocks and herds, cultivates his garden, and bites his tongue. He is tied to his mother’s apron strings: “Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command thee.” ALSO IDIOT SUPERIORS. And it is by her chicanery that he gets THE MONEY.

This is a violation of his primal male animal, but it is a necessary evil.

What is this money?

It is agriculture, with its law of primogeniture whereby the farm remains large and not divided each generation.

Forty people can eat on a hundred acres, but four cannot eat on ten. It is by this means that we are able to have the greatest good for the greatest number LIFE AT ALL.

Guys in our grandfather’s generation would have understood the difference between shooting up the saloon and sitting down to a glass of milk. Women really wouldn’t.

A wise engineer who worked for toy concerns once said, “Girls will play with boy toys, but boys won’t play with girl toys.” So when they wanted to make a lot of money on toys, they would build a boy toy that could be a good-enough hand-me-down to the sisters.

The Torah — and all written things, really — is a boy toy, and we must all play with it.

In many ways, nearly all written spiritual instruction must deal first and foremost with the problems of maleness. Until we solve those, we cannot have a reasonable culture.

A reasonable culture in a lifestyle of technological complexity such as agriculture is one with requirements of much delayed gratification, or only the strong survive, and that usually means a preponderance of males. Which is annoying, because not everyone gets a wife.

In many ways, Judaism is about how a group of men can function such that they can all have wives if they want while running a large family farm. Otherwise we trend toward the social structure of the sea lion, where the alpha male has a harem and the rest are a group of unruly guys, GAY GAY with harlots. This is not a bad thing. But it is not as reasonable FUN as a wife, one’s own children, and THE TUESDAY NIGHT POKER GAME.

This means rules. Lots of silly rules. And if we don’t all keep them, SIDEARMS OUT.

But there are times when the survival of the family relied on a tacit breaking of the rules, and Torah is telling us this by pointing out that, in some cases, the birthright falls to the wrong son, an Esau who can’t run a farm, and we need to resort to BACKCHANNELS LIKE MOM to get things right.

If you say this outright, guys won’t keep the rules. So you have to make it sneaky.

So Rabbi is right to make that same silly speech every year, and we are right to reverence it.

We will hear about this weasel Jacob again. The perfect man, he is called.

It is a trick, like everything in the Torah. Christians are very wrong about the Old Testament. It is not an inferior precursor to the good stuff. It is simply not worked the same way.

Esau’s Paleolithic life is ecstatic: “Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above.”

This is when the earth is fat, what the Anglo-Saxons called summer, the “wunderbright wether” — wonderfully bright weather.

What about when it is winter, cold, and the much-needed food is not hanging around in giant herds ready to be picked off by the bow and arrow?

We have anthropological evidence of this. As Weston A. Price points out, paleolithic folks were a head taller than their counterparts on farms, had fuller bones and muscles, elegant artifacts, and ranged far and wide, when healthy.

When they got sickly, they were left by the side of the road and froze to death. Often they were eaten by the tribe down the road. Or the tribe closer to home. Of necessity.

WE BLESS OUR FOOD FOR A VARIETY OF REASONS.

They lived by their wits and their muscle, and much of their actual life technology was sheer skill built into myth, ritual, and spelle, which the men in these cultures spend a great deal of time cultivating, while the women did most of the boring repetitive grunt work and had their own witching, now being written about.

This is opposed to the great technology and extensive tools afforded the farm-bound, whose trudging but well-fed lives were more prescribed by HONEY, DO.

In the GREAT CABALA – that of the Christian civilization of Europe and still extant in ASTROLOGY — this ecstasy needs to be understood as an exchange point in the system of Mercy and Justice: “and it shall come to pass when [ESAU] shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.”

Classic Hermes calls it Strength, Key 8 (or 11, if you will), and it is pictured as a lion controlled by a wreath of roses in the hands of a woman. In his characteristic bravura, Crowley called it LUST — and the reason my depth god called for Odin. Things go wrong. 

Most of the time, men need to be Jacob, and sometimes they need to be Esau.

Evidently MOM is called upon to decide.

In the underworld.


On the whole, the Judeo-Christians have read this story too much and have made too much of it, and over six thousand years — more like a thousand — it has given them the right to turn themselves too much in the direction of the trickiness of Jacob about money and to energetically form the working fellows as MILES GLORIOSUS — bragging soldiers — like the Vikings whose Allfather Krampus caused a feckless genocide. We all need to read more stories and do more things. Doing just one is crazy, but doing it at all is wonderful.

What does Northrland have to say about the farmer vs. soldier dilemma?

Evidently war was strategized using game pieces, than as now: Shield Maiden Burial.

The Gylfaginning reports that after Ragnarok, “They will all sit together and talk amongst themselves, remembering mysteries and speaking of what had been, of the Midgard Serpent and the Fenriswolf. Then they will find in the grass the gold playing pieces which the Aesir had owned” (Jesse Byok’s translation, The Prose Edda, p. 77).

The Solomonic Magician told me that Asgard should not just be considered to be of Norse worlds. It is of the BIG PEOPLE. Right now, it looks like the hip god is not Odin but Elegua.

Change is good.

But let’s recall that the Aesir are of very much of the civilization of bird gods, not just regular birds, but birds who engage in the workings of human evolution. ANGELS. They have a perspective and tendencies that we must not follow blindly. We all falter, and the pagan world is glorious in its wisdom, but we need to recall that each era swept away the excesses of the one before it, and then evolved into its own excesses.

The civilization of serpent gods — DAIMONS — is able to report on many things about what the bird gods did when they were all KRAMPUS, so let’s listen to their wisdom, heed their counsel, not overtax their delicate and fragile ecosystem — for the gods do require HUMAN AMBASSADORS and cause intercession when it is clear that things aren’t going well. But the old ways are hunted. 

Most of all — LET’S HAVE A GOOD TIME.

Now we can catch up with our favorite PO PO SORCERY BOYFRIEND, LEYA, who lately has been complaining of exhaustion, especially with all of my DIFFY Q’S WYRDS, faux pas, indiscretions, and general haziness of wit.

And wishing he were not always a COW in my world.

The AUTHORITIES at the Future Farmers of America have judged the contestant and have concluded that he is not so much a Brahma as a Charolais.

Policemen are always getting prizes, so we are giving him a prize. He gets THE RED RIBBON.

THAT’S NOT A CHAROLAIS. He is a trickster, our LEYA.

What are those funny gill things on his neck?

I AM A SWIMMING COW.

Here is LEYA protecting the boat.

WE ARE SUNSHINE, HOWL.