SATANIC VERSES FO BONES BANEZ: With Visionary Illustrations

Some analysis, however, will be helpful, so herein follow some things to keep in mind. Bones is working within a theological tradition of the fortunate fall, or felix culpa, a view that God not only foreknew man’s fall but in some mysterious sense foreordained it! Satan thus becomes not just the adversary of God but also God’s instrument, and in that narrow sense even deserves admiration. The devil is therefore God’s paintbrush of the world! And Bones dares to take that brush in hand and color the world in revealing the fallen glory, like stained glass windows in hell, of what he, in a bold poetic conceit, calls our “666-World,” the Tribulation Era spoken of in the Bible’s final book, The Revelation of Saint John the Divine.

Read therefore what that last book has to say, but extend your reading to Genesis, Job, and the entire scriptural record, and expand your reading to include John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s Faust, and perhaps even my own diabolical story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to which Bones himself alludes in his poem! One would also do well to look into Terrance’s art and essays, which play with many of the same themes found in the art and verses by Bones. And in your advised reading, take the words not literally, but rather literarily.