The First Tale
— J. Chr. de Vries
Sometimes — though certainly (and fortunately) not very often — I receive fan mail. Most of it consists of polite attempts at drawing attention, but now and then it concerns something else entirely, such as the following text from Tresa Sioris, a lady of presumably Italian descent, temporarily residing in the hamlet of Cucugnan, a stone’s throw from the Château de Quéribus: an abbey where, in the summer of 1167, a Cathar trial took place centering on the so-called ‘Apostate Heretic’ — the L’Imparfait Parfait, or the Impure Pure One, Tharákaz de Nouvière. 1)
Sioris writes that after reading my text The Last Tale, 2) she began searching for The First Tale, a subject I also mention in that piece. The beginning of her text seems to allude to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous statement in his Tractatus. It seems she attempted to subject that statement to critical inquiry, thereby stepping outside the bounds of conventional spoken and written language — an endeavor as intriguing as it is doomed. Her paraphrasing suggests a certain discomfort in this regard.
She chose the path of dreaming — a process hard to schedule and harder still to control — because the language in our dreams is not subject to the everyday laws and principles of spoken or written language. I will present the most important passages from the two parts of her text below, and will, of course, leave the judgment to the reader. I will, however, say this: I believe that Sioris’s aim was nothing less than to write down The First Tale. As for whether she succeeded or not — I shall not pronounce on that. On that matter, a patient silence befits me.
The Silence of the Gods
What one cannot shit out, one should not eat. What one cannot drink, one cannot piss out. Only in our dreams need there be no connection between what we take in and what we excrete. I shall explain.
Your ‘Last Tale’ piqued my curiosity, for you speak in it also of ‘The First Tale’. That tale, argues the blind Hsiang, takes two forms: either all possible combinations of the alphabet, or a blank book. All or nothing. I first decided to delve into various theories of language, but soon found that this was not the right path toward The First Tale. In my search, I stumbled upon a curious account of a trial in the summer of 1167 against a Cathar accused of heresy. The trial took place at the castle of Quéribus. What intrigued me, however, was not so much the Cathar himself, but his beloved, Filège de Kazharát. She was said to possess prophetic gifts — visions and oracles that came to her through dreams. I was so struck by her that, twenty days ago, I left my home in Rome and traveled to the little village of Cucugnan, where I rented a gîte. The village lies near that Château de Quéribus.
In a report of one of her dreams, Filège de Kazharát describes a meeting she had therein with the Egyptian goddess Aset. According to her, it was a mutual dream — a meeting outside of time. That sounded, I must admit, implausible. But on the other hand, if it were in some mysterious way true, it would offer unimaginable possibilities.
I decided to see whether I, too, could realize such an encounter within a dream. I believed that the castle, which had served in the twelfth century as a Cathar abbey, might assist me in this, acting as a kind of catalyst. I walked for hours in and around the castle, absorbing all the images, scents, and sounds, imagining myself present at the trial inside its walls. I was convinced the castle would appear in my dreams, and I hoped that Filège de Kazharát would play a role in them. Excited, I fell asleep. It was a dreamless night.
Despite my disappointment, I did not give up. The next day I returned to the castle, this time armed with a sleeping bag. That evening, I found a sheltered spot within the ruins, and after tossing and turning for a long while, I finally fell asleep. This night was not dreamless. At some point, I dreamed of a shrieking woman — surely Filège de Kazharát — who was crying out during the trial of her beloved. I awoke; it was the middle of the night, pitch-dark. The moon showed only the thinnest of crescents. The shrieking, as it turned out, came from an owl.
— Tresa Sioris, Cucugnan, 25 December 2022
I decided to take a different approach to my quest: I would visit all the earth’s extreme places — starting with the roof of the world. I would climb Mount Everest; one could go no higher. It turned out to be a bitter disappointment. The path upward was strewn with heaps of waste: frozen food scraps, plastic bottles, empty gas canisters, broken sleeping bags, torn tents, and corpses. It was a tourist garbage dump.
My journey then led me to the Korean island of Jeju, where I sought the depths by submarine. I managed to persuade the owner of a submersible — with a hefty bag of money — to dive to a depth of 568 meters. I wanted to induce a dream at that depth, but it came only during the ascent. That is, it was more a forced sleep: the submarine captain (if that’s an adequate term) brought the vessel up too quickly, and I lost consciousness. It yielded no usable dream, only a 48-hour stay in a hospital.
Afterward, I traveled to Antarctica, to the Mayan temples in Mexico, the Inca temples in Peru. I experimented with coca leaves and other drugs, pulling out all the stops in search of a timeless dream. I also spent a night precisely on the Equator, hoping my slightly lower body weight there compared to Europe might influence my dreams.
Then I sought out the hottest place on earth and ended up in Las Vegas, where I rented a car and drove to Death Valley. The next stop was the North Pole — an icy yet dreamless experience. My final destination was Marrakesh, near which lies the cave of Jebel Irhoud. Here, bones were found belonging to the oldest known Homo Sapiens, estimated at 300,000 years old. Neither the highest, lowest, hottest, nor coldest places on earth, nor those steeped in history, gave me the dream I sought. Disillusioned, I returned to Rome. Exactly 865 days after I had departed, I stepped back into my home.
I slammed the front door shut, dropped my luggage in the hall, and staggered straight to my bedroom. I undressed and crawled naked beneath the blankets. I immediately fell into a deep sleep. And finally, I dreamed my dream.
First, I appeared in a dream of Filège de Kazharát. She was dreaming of the Egyptian goddess Aset — who, in turn, was also dreaming. Through Filège’s dream, I entered Aset’s dream, and I could see what she was dreaming. I felt myself being pulled into her dream — it was not a choice, nor an invitation, but like being sucked into a black hole. Through Filège and Aset, I saw the Great Garden, though I didn’t understand the description — there was no boundary, and it seemed infinitely vast. I walked through the grass and came to a vast pond. The water was a deep blue.
I bent forward and looked into a brilliant face with almond-shaped eyes — intelligent, resolute, and curious — shifting in color from green to brown to blue. A straight nose, high cheekbones, a sensual mouth, and black hair falling over finely shaped ears. I couldn’t determine whether it was a man or a woman. But I heard Aset whisper their name: Chavādam.
A soft breeze skimmed the water. Chavādam’s face was distorted by the ripples. I straightened up and turned around. My eyes fell on a strange tree. I was surprised I hadn’t seen it before. The tree was colossal in both girth and height — but its most astonishing feature was its fruit: they resembled Hebrew letters.
The Tree of Knowledge, I suddenly understood. Of course! And naturally, the fruit were neither apples nor pears — the fruit was language! I had found The First Tale! But what was this tale? The creation of the earth? The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Where were Adam and Eve? And where was the Tree of Life? And what role did that Egyptian goddess have in all this?
When I awoke, I had no idea how long I had slept. The dream had seemed to last at least an hour, but a glance at my clock revealed it could not have been more than a few seconds — or half a minute at most. I got up and walked to the kitchen to make a mug of instant soup and get myself some water. As I stirred the soup with a dessert spoon to let it cool, I pondered the meaning of my dream. The miracle of a dream within a dream within a dream dawned on me quite quickly. It felt like a film I had seen some time ago. Could I have imagined it all, and was it simply a projection of that film?
After cautiously slurping my soup, another thought occurred to me: there had been only one tree, and only one human — a being whose gender I could not discern. Was the first human perhaps genderless? And might the very concept of gender have been formed only after that Garden of Eden? And if so, did the same apply mutatis mutandis to the Egyptian divine pair, Aset and Aser?
According to Kabbalistic theories, the Torah changed in form and meaning after Eden, especially into binary form: commandments and prohibitions, positive and negative, great and small, love and hate, life and death — and thus also: man and woman. From that perspective, ‘The First Tale’ would be the tale of creation — naturally in its various existing versions, which are nonetheless quite comparable. When I had crawled back into bed, a final thought pressed itself upon me: all those ‘First Tales’ lay atop another tale — one perhaps in the form of that Tree of Knowledge. A tale that had not yet taken material shape, a tale whose form consisted solely of the infinitely possible combinations of the letters of Scripture — including the perfectly blank variant. That would have to be the true ‘First Tale’ — though the proper title, in that case, should be The Zeroth Tale. But on that matter, the gods are silent in all tongues.
— Tresa Sioris, Rome, 18 April 2025
Postscript
Three months later, I received a short letter from the notary of Tresa Sioris. The envelope bore several crossed-out and thus illegible addresses, but finally also — clearly written — my current address. It had evidently taken considerable effort and time to get the letter to me. The notary wrote that he regretted to inform me that Tresa Sioris had passed away unexpectedly on April 20th, 2025. During a walk, halfway up Monte Cavo — a medium-sized mountain in a nature reserve south of Rome — Tresa Sioris was bitten by a venomous snake. Since no one had been near her at the time, she was only found several hours later, and by then, it was too late to save her.
— J. Chr. de Vries, Bonnemort, July 21, 2025