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In the beginning was the word
The language of angels has no words for cock or cunt. The word for body means encumbrance and the word for sex means sin. The word for the bodies of humans or demons means meat, and is especially rude; it is the same thing, in that tongue, to fuck or to eat or to shit, all things that angels claim that they do not do.
The fruit of that forbidden tree
This is the shape of the universe: there are seven heavens and seven hells and between them is Assiah, the material world. In the books of Heaven, artists represent Assiah as a sphere and the heavens and hells as flat circles above and below it, growing larger as they move farther away from Assiah. Draw a curve through the circles, and then another going opposite, and you have a double-helix.
(In the books of Hell, it says the universe has a different shape; but who would believe the scholars of Hell over the sages of Heaven?)
The highest heaven is called Aziluth, and in Aziluth there is a garden; you already know its name. In this garden there is a Tree, but it is not quite what you've heard. Deep below the ground, its roots grow from the body of Adam Kadamon, the mother of angels, and all its fruit bear her face, or would, if they did not grow too heavy for the branches and fall. Among the green leaves and the pink blossoms sway endless plump baby faces, their eyes screwed closed and their lips pursed in soundless cries; some of them are green and some of them are ripe, orange-yellow and red-pink and ivory-gold, and on the ground some of them are juicy and half-rotted, and some are hollow masks as hard and brown as hazelnuts. They smell sweeter than peaches and mangoes and apricots, sweeter than pomegranate and melon and honey, sweeter than the knowledge of God's love or the hope of his forgiveness.
They are poison and their taste is bitter.
For those rebellious, here their Prison ordain'd
Eden is warded by all five elements: sky above, ocean below, rings of fire and steep rock walls around, and a globe of ether encircling the whole. It is the last that is most important, for Eden is a prison, and ether is the only proof against its prisoner. The Organic Angel Alexiel commands earth, water, fire, and air; ether is her twin's.
The gates of Eden admit and discharge more visitors than stories have probably led you to expect. The Organic Angel is attended by sisters, young girls with sly eyes and covered hair, changed every now and then so that none of them will grow too fond of their charge; her brother Rosiel, best beloved of God, comes to plead for her love; and there is the other visitor, too, who should not be in the heavens at all.
Their fruits like honey to the throat, but poison in the blood
The sisters serve her and retreat. The slices of fruit glisten with juice. Alexiel leaves them untouched; the raven asks her favor and then plucks slices delicately from her palm. She's licking the juice from her fingers when the raven chokes, thrashes, falls. The plate shatters on stone; slices spill out in a neat semi-circle. As she watches, ants crawl on them and slow, then stop.
The flesh of angels is forbidden to angels, and poison to all other creatures. The fruit of the Tree is the flesh of Adam Kadamon, and to eat it is the foulest of all sins.
She is still kneeling there, staring at the dead bird in the shadow of the Tree, when the Morningstar finds her for the first time.
With these hands I'll profane God's daughter and kill her, he says then, kneeling over her, with a sword still in one hand, and the other trailing down her cheek, her lips. His eyes are colorless and cold, but his fingers are lighter than breath.
Twynned shalbe throughe my mighte the lighte from thesternes
When her brother comes, Alexiel may not look at him. She may not speak to him, or may only speak lies. She must make his pleas and sobs nothing more to her than birdsong or the whisper of the sisters' skirts as they pass by. She will wonder, later, if he realized this; if that's why at the end he greets her over the corpses of sisters and songbirds, blood and feathers still on his hands.
Gates of burning Adamant Barr'd over us prohibit all egress
Come with me, Lucifer begs, over and over, flee this place, and she arches her back and gasps and sometimes she says No and sometimes she doesn't answer at all, which means the same thing. She won't go, and she won't tell him what keeps her here, and even when he's inside her body and watching a red flush blotch the ivory perfection of her throat, he's no closer to holding her than he was on that first day when she overturned him and held his own sword to his neck.
Men will call him serpent later, but she's the only thing he ever crawled for.
Else't had been sin and foul to share one beauty to a double soul
Sometimes when they're fucking she calls out her brother's name.
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow
The air is heavy with fruit and blood; he is not surprised to find her surrounded by corpses. Birds peck at the eyes of the dead. His footsteps don't scare them into flight: crows are his now, and ravens, and other carrion eaters.
Will you help me escape? she asks. Will you ally with me to rebel against Heaven? Will you kill Rosiel if I fail?
Yes, he says, and yes and I will.
And what is your price?
That you keep me by you always, he tells her, and holds out his hand to her. She takes it and lets him draw her close. He bends his head and presses a kiss to her breast and she stiffens with the pain but doesn't cry out. His crest rises blood-red on her skin: a dagger in a compass rose. Their alliance is signed in her flesh; since the day they met, all their bargains have been sealed with kisses and blood.
Our soul, whose country's heaven
She will find him when he's stripped of power and bound to steel and stone. He'll still know her when he doesn't know himself.
The fortunate fall
This is how it starts:
The language of demons is the languages of angels: language and longing were all they could take with them in their fall. So they have no words for this but corruption: I'll defile you, he murmurs against her breast, I'll consume you, and he presses his open mouth against her skin, heat and wetness and he might do it, might bite, might eat her alive, make her part of him, never to leave him, never.
(This was his father's blessing: You are the child of darkness, the incarnation of despair and death.) He wants to taste variation in her skin, drink down every sweat and slickness and cry she makes, swallow every sword-sharp thought in her head. (And this was how she set him free: I wish you would awaken and escape this blood-stained destiny of yours.) He wants to be the blood in her veins, the breath in her lungs, the beat of her heart. (Or you'll struggle and die just like this bird.) God his father named him Lucifiel and fallen; he named himself Lucifer and defiant; she gave him no names, and set him free. She marked him first, and his cut palm smears blood on her pale skin; she marks him again, bites and bruises, and I've already eaten angel flesh, she says, and closes her teeth very gently on him as their wings rustle and shake and spread, a canopy of glimmering whiteness blocking off Garden and Tree and world, locking them into the universe of each other's skin.
The books of Heaven say the shape of the universe is the double helix, the shape of life, but in the books of Hell, it's written differently: they say that the root of Tree of Life is holy suffering, and the universe that it creates is the shape of profane desire.