Primeval and Other Times

In the Seventh World the descendants of the first people wandered together from country to country, until they reached an extremely beautiful valley. “Come on,” they said, “let’s build ourselves a city and a tower reaching the sky, so that we can become a single nation and not let God break us up.” And at once they got down to work, carrying stones and using tar instead of mortar. A vast city was built, in the middle of which a tower rose, until it was so high that from its top you could see what is beyond the Eight Worlds. Sometimes, when the sky was clear, the people working at the highest point raised their hands to their eyes to stop the sun from blinding them, and saw the feet of God and the outlines of the body of a great snake devouring time.

Some of them tried to reach even higher with sticks.

God looked at them and thought in alarm: “As long as they remain a single people speaking a single language they’ll be able to do everything, anything that comes into their heads… So I’ll mix up their languages, shut them inside themselves and make it so one cannot understand another. Then they’ll turn against each other and give Me peace.” And that was what God did.

People were scattered in all directions, and became enemies to each other. But the memory of what they had seen remained inside them. And he who has once seen the world’s borders will suffer his imprisonment most painfully of all.