Gilgamesh was not really fond of the little Canaanite wanabe storm deity, one of El’s seventy sons, one not all that important.  The kid was Baal’s shadow, always following him around, mimicking his gestures behind his back, envious and enthralled concurrently, ambivalent, apparently without much of a future (although past, present and future as well as time in general were considered irrelevancies to deities, even very minor and insignificant deities).  Anyway, in the little deity’s opinion, all of his siblings shared the ichor derived from El’s semen so, in a sense, they were all sort of avatars, a form of equality; at least that’s what the little deity kept telling himself, at least then. 

Gilgamesh was a Kengirian from the city of Uruk who loved to wander, even though as Uruk’s king he had serious responsibilities.  He had a decent, well trained staff though and they knew better than to disappoint him. 

His wanderings not infrequently took him to the lands of the Canaanites, no big deal really, but also, given that he was at least a demigod, on occasion they also took him to the divine court of El, the elder and ruler of the El-ohim.  The El-ohim were the Canaanite’s complex pantheon, in some ways, an incubator for other pantheons although certainly not for the much older pantheon of the Anunnaki to which Gilgamesh was sort of pledged. 

Gilgamesh interacted with the members of the El-ohim, perhaps a bit too proudly, but with the exception of El and his spouse Athirat, they tended to defer to him.  Sort of.  Sort of fearfully.  But with their dignity at least superficially sort of preserved.  They’d heard stories.  And it was, of course, at the court of El that he’d encountered the minor deity some referred to as “the pest” (as in pest-ilence).  If he had a name, it was too much trouble to worry about remembering.  Gigamesh just thought of him, when he thought of him (which was very infrequently), as “he-that-was-whatever-he-was”.

Gilgamesh was not a full, one hundred percent deity, that was true, although he was a son of Ninsun, a goddess, and of Lugalbanda, who although born a mortal was eventually deified.  Lugalbanda had been a great king, albeit of a small city by today’s standards, but the largest and most powerful then existing (boasting of between 40,000 and 80,000 inhabitants, depending on how its boundaries were interpreted).  Even so, Gilgamesh was and had always been (and would always be) unique.  Like his father, he tended to be the best at everything he tried.  Something the little Canaanite divinity, taken with him, unsuccessfully sought to emulate, … at the time. 

The very minor divinity (at least then), had a very vivid imagination.  While his principal role in the pantheon of the El-ohim merely involved smelting and metallurgy, not such a small thing as future events would indicate, it seemed just a craft to him, and he sometimes fantasized about eliminating his father and then his sixty-nine brothers, especially Baal, and perhaps even his mother and sisters, although perhaps the latter could serve in a divine harem.  When he was in a more generous mood, his fantasy was a bit less bloodthirsty, perhaps he might just someday dethrone them all and rule over, but not merely as a primus inter pares.  While time did not really exist for divinities, at least not as it did for mortals, he felt that someday, his time would come. “Just wait and see”.

Given his insignificance among the El-ohim, the little Canaanite deity tended to wander alone in lonely desserts in the mortal realms rather than sitting around, ignored at court.  He loved basking in the heat, learning to wield lightning and thunder, and even assuming the form of fire as a burning shrub from time to time, frightening the inhabitants.  He loved playing in the giant sandstorms that appeared out of nowhere but which did him no harm.  Indeed, he considered himself a sort of storm god rather than merely a patron of metalworkers.   Deism had its privileges, even for insignificant, minor deities.  And of course, he experimented with melting rocks and extracting the metals they hoarded, especially the shiny yellow one that seemed to capture the essence of the sun and which was so easy to mold into interesting shapes.

Sometimes when visiting the El-ohim, Gilgamesh, unobserved, would watch the pompous little deity at play and laugh to himself, recalling his own infancy at court.  And his own apparently bloated aspirations at the time as he fantasized about what kind of king he might be when his time came.  Sometimes Gilgamesh even speculated on what might become of the young and obviously insecure deity.  Insecure with good reason.  But divine insecurity tended to breed unpredictability and ruthlessness, both of which interested Gilgamesh (he was prone to neither but fascinated by both).  And sometimes, albeit not that often, Gilgamesh too fantasized, longing for the challenge of an equal, imagining that a real challenge might be fun.

Interestingly, after a time, a pretty long time for those forced to deal with that messy concept, the little deity (no longer quite so little, in fact, he’d be best referred to as a “young” deity), decided to find out more about Gilgamesh, a sort of reversal of roles, but stealthily, by following Gilgamesh to his own domain, Uruk. 

And he did. 

He was fascinated, not only by the cosmopolitan nature of the city and its people, but by all of the area that surrounded it, and he wished that rather than having been born among the El-ohim, he’d been born into the Anunnaki.  Charmed by the area, a sort of league of cities, the young Canaanite deity took to wandering there instead of in the Canaanite dessert and eventually, after a millennium or so, he started spending more and more time in a Kengirian city not all that far from Uruk, one called Ur.  And he sort of started hanging around there, but sort of incognito, especially careful to avoid being noticed by the local deities who might take it into their heads, as a sort of diplomatic courtesy, to suggest to El that he might want to have a sort of census of his progeny.  And then El might take it into his head to have proud Baal come and collect him, which would be even more humiliating than usual.  And so, while wondering around the land known to its inhabitants as Kengir (but by others as Sumer), and from time to time slipping into the abode of their local pantheon (after all, fair was fair, and if Gilgamesh, not even a full deity, could visit his pantheon, why shouldn’t he visit theirs), the young Canaanite deity learned a good deal more about his childhood hero, who, it seems, was everybody’s hero.  Indeed, much later, he would be acknowledged by many as the first superhero of the human race, although, as we know, he was not fully human.

He learned many interesting things, but a few stood out.

It turned out that Gilgamesh had had two true friends, … well sort of.  Maybe only one.  And that one for only a time.  The first and foremost had been Enkidu, called by most “the hairy man”, unkempt and uncouth, but very strong and very loyal.  He’d passed on to the underworld, and Gilgamesh had tried to save him, battling and defeating both monsters and divinities along the way, but to no avail.

The other had been Inanna, a beautiful and all too amorous goddess with a terrible temper.  She may have been a member of the Anunnaki that the young deity admired, the pantheon in which Gilgamesh played a much more direct role, but the issue seemed confusing, at least to him.  Inanna had once unsuccessfully sought to seduce Gilgamesh, then, a while later, had begged a favor only he could perform and which he’d granted.  Superficially it seemed a minor favor, one involving a beautiful but vexing tree which Inanna had found drifting in the great river Euphrates, one of the many that flowed into the nearby sea (really, just a gulf).  It was not just any tree though, no indeed.  For one thing, it was immensely thick, thicker than several houses combined, thicker even than it was tall.  And its trunk seemed made of silver, which, as a metallurgist of sorts, was of interest to the young Canaanite deity; and its leaves seemed made of gold, his favorite metal.  And rather than just one variety of fruit, it produced two, but only during alternating seasons, each large and juicy.  One was yellow and the other red.  Under the proper astral and atmospheric conditions and subject to appropriate invocations and incantations, the fruit could grant the person that consumed it either knowledge (the yellow fruit) or immortality (the red), or if, with patience, both were eventually consumed, then omniscience and immortality. 

It was a tree with its own very special name, one it had given itself (it was capable of communing, at least with deities).  It called itself Huluppu.  After salvaging it, Inanna had replanted it in her own garden and had nursed it and cared for it as her own.  For very personal reasons but not exactly altruistic reasons.  She had definite plans for the tree but needed for it to attain a specific level of maturity before they could be implemented.  Plans that required sacrifices, specifically, one sacrifice not at all to the tree’s liking.  But then, what the hell could a tree do when a deity, or even a human had designs on it?  Still, according to legend, it could not be forced to assume other shapes as long as it was inhabited.  And rules were rules.

Fortunately for the tree (at least for a while), while it was both unique and special (the two things are not exactly synonymous), there were a few beings who had, over time, nested in its branches and in its roots and eventually, for brief period, even in its trunk.  On the down side, unfortunately their cacophony robbed Inanna of the sleep which, while not something which, as a goddess, she required, was something she enjoyed, especially when accompanied.  Like the tree, the three who called it home were special.  The first, an incarnation of the South Wind, had originally uprooted the tree from where divine Enki, Inanna’s grandfather and the avatar of Wisdom, had planted it as a seedling in Dilmun, the Anunnaki’s garden by the shores of the great river.  He’d planted it and endowed it with a “backup” copy of all his vast wisdom and knowledge deeming it prudent, as he planned a sojourn to the underworld to visit his granddaughter Ereshkigal.  One never knew what awaited one there or how easy it would be to return with everything one had had when one arrived.  He recalled all the fuss when Inanna had made that seven layered trip.

As told above, Inanna had found the tree floating near the juncture where the great river flowed into a nearby sea (actually, just a gulf) and with divine prescience, recognizing that it might someday prove essential for certain rites and rituals necessary for her to come fully into her attributes, she’d rescued it, re-planting it in her own garden.  Unfortunately for Inanna, she’d done so somewhat carelessly, somehow not noticing that the South Wind had incarnated in avian form as the divine Anzu bird, and had nested along with its young in the tree’s branches.  And the Anzu bird had not been alone.  In the tree’s roots, long before it had been uprooted, resided a very special serpent, perhaps the very first serpent, one who could not be charmed and who called itself Nin-gish-zida.  Somehow, when replanting the tree, Inanna had not noticed it either.  But then again, the tree was huge!

Nin-gish-zida was not a slithering tube, as future serpents were to become, but rather, had the body of a well formed man but with chameleonic skin that blended with its surroundings making it virtually invisible.  And it was endowed with both great wisdom and knowledge, both inadvertently obtained from Enki’s backup due to the serpent’s long association with the tree.  In a sense, it was knowledge gained by physical proximity and osmosis, something lazy but creative students in the far future would unsuccessfully intend to duplicate by placing books they’d failed to read under their pillows prior to final exams.

The third and most recent denizen, she’d moved in after Inanna had transplanted it, was a beautiful virgin, at least then.  One known to Inanna.  After all, she was Inanna’s personal handmaiden.  But, seeking a secret refuge of her own, one away from prying eyes (who knew why), Lilitu (that was her name) had had made a place of her own in the tree’s trunk, a trunk (as we’ve noted) so vast that the entrance to Lilitu’s hideaway was safely hidden from even a divinity’s inquisitive eyes.

Of course, after Huluppu had been safely replanted in Inanna’s garden, the noise from the three interlopers made their presence obvious to Inanna, but for some reason, perhaps the Anzu bird’s divinity, or Nin-gish-zida’s camouflage, or Lilitu’s stealth, Inanna was unable to dislodge them, nor did it seem essential, at least for a time.  But, after many, many years (as reckoned by mortals), Inanna, determined that the time had come to harvest the tree and use its flesh for her existential, coming of age rites.  She’d finally attained the level of maturity at which she needed to undertake special rituals involving vessels made from Huluppu’s flesh (a bed and a throne to be specific), but according to the rules of the rituals involved (who knows why), she could not dismember Huluppu unless it had first been vacated. 

Unable to dislodge the tree’s tenants on her own, not yet having attained her full powers, she’d begged the assistance of her twin brother and sometimes paramour, Utu, the sun god, (as she was goddess of the moon, among other things) in ridding the tree of its “vermin (her word, not mine), something she felt would be relatively simple for him given the fact that as he circled the mortal realms, shining light on everything, everything was visible to him and the unwelcome guests would be unable to hide from him.  But for reasons he did not disclose but which we can surmise, he’d declined.

So, surmising: as we’ve already suggested, Inanna needed the throne and bed made from the wood of the Huluppu tree in order to complete the ritual required before she could fully attain her divinity, making her Utu’s equal, and perhaps that was threatening to Utu.  On the other hand, perhaps not.  The three siblings in that particular branch of Enki’s progeny did not always get along.  Ereshkigal, was the eldest and with her husband Nergal, ruled Kur (sometimes called Irkalla), the underworld and abode of those who’d passed beyond the veil.  She was usually the most difficult, being envious of Inanna’s beauty and fearful of her ability to seduce most males, and jealous of Utu’s ability to dwell in the sky, at least during the day, while she was forced to dwell beneath the ground.  On the other hand, Utu felt that while not the eldest of the three, as a male (he was a chauvinist among very feminist sisters) he should have primacy over Inanna as, in his opinion, the sun should always outshine the moon.  So perhaps it was not surprising that Inanna had been unable to seduce Utu into assisting her, although seducing him was usually not all that difficult (incest among divinities was not universally proscribed). 

Sibling rivalries often prove very problematic, even after the siblings have purportedly matured.

The young Canaanite deity had become privy to the foregoing and followed developments with interest, especially when Inanna, despite her prior history with Gilgamesh (as we’ve written, she’d been unsuccessful in attempts to seduce him), had turned to him for help after Utu had declined her request.  Gilgamesh had been taken by Inanna’s beauty, but had refused to be seduced by her because his pride was greater than his lust. And he was all too aware of Inanna’s fickle nature and reputation of disdain for former lovers (including her husband Dumuzid, the timid shepherd divinity and perhaps, patron deity of cuckolds).  To be eventually cast off by Inanna, as always occurred, would impact his reputation for invincibility in a very negative manner and his reputation meant a lot to him.  In fact, he may have been the first person to have had his own biographer, one who was working on a series of clay tablets describing Gilgamesh’s epic exploits.  There were no photographers then but Gilgamesh, somewhat vain about his appearance, also had a court sculptor who specialized in bass reliefs meant to assure Gilgamesh’s immortality, whether or not he managed to avoid eventual exile to Ereshkigal’s realm.

Anyway, notwithstanding the foregoing (as lawyers, even then, were wont to say) Gilgamesh was aware that a woman scorned was a dangerous thing and helping her in the matter of the Huluppu tree seemed just the thing to ameliorate her antagonism.  Thus, eventually, perhaps with the help of his friend, Enkidu, or perhaps alone, Gilgamesh did as Inanna had requested and not only evicted the Huluppu tree’s sort of tenants but also personally crafted both her throne and her bed (which, as we noted, he declined to share), thereby assuaging her enmity, although, in doing so, he secured the everlasting antipathy of the Anzu bird, of Nin-gish-zida, and of Lilitu as well. 

Oh well he’d thought, inventing a saying that would become famous in many different languages, “you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs”. The young Canaanite deity, who was busy taking all of the foregoing into account, especially liked that saying, and all too quickly appropriated it as his own.  Somewhere, another divinity watched and snickered, he’s known by many names, one being Murphy, and he’s a legislator of sorts, even today.  His two most famous legislative achievements are the Law of Unintended Consequences, and a more negative variant thereof which bears his name and provides that “whatever can go wrong, will.  “Snicker, snicker, snicker” (and not the delicious future candy bar variant).

The prying young Canaanite deity, well, not quite as young by that time, more a sort of an elder adolescent, being aware of all the foregoing, had already made excellent albeit somewhat duplicitous use of that knowledge, all the while chuckling about the eggs and omelet metaphor.  As we’ve discussed, he’d been very taken by the Anunnaki, and especially, by their garden, Dilmun, and saw an opportunity to start working on realizing his long held and now much more complex fantasies.  For some reason, thinking of omelets and eggs breaking led him to think about starting his very own pantheon, and he had some clever ideas now on just how to begin, although it meant “borrowing”, not only ideas, but a few other things as well.

“Borrowing” appealed to him.  He couldn’t help it; kleptomania was part of his nature, something of which his many siblings had constantly accused him.  So he started his new project by stealing (in his mind, “salvaging”) two of the shadows cast by the Huluppu tree (the morning shadow and the afternoon shadow) just before it had been felled by Gilgamesh, and from those shadows, the young Canaanite deity crafted special trees of his own, but, unbeknown to him, shades of Nin-gish-zida inhabited them both, moving from one to the other in the darkest dark of night.

The formerly little Canaanite divinity also eventually sort of “borrowed” Lilitu.  Some would claim he’d stolen her from Inanna (not all that hard as her eviction had caused hard feelings), and had eventually placed all of the foregoing in his own garden, modeled on the plans for Dilmun that he’d somehow “acquired”.  But he’d been very careful to first carefully wipe Lilitu’s memory clean so that she’d not repent of her escape and confess.  Inanna, her former mistress, was, after all, not only the patron goddess of carnal love (perhaps lust would be more accurate), but of war as well.

The no longer little (as we’ve made abundantly clear) Canaanite divinity had special plans for Lilitu, being a voyeur at that stage of his emotional and sexual development.  Perhaps he’d devolved into voyeurism, as sometimes happens with males after a divorce or two, because his own prior direct experiences with female deities had not turned out well.  He’d had more than a few unsuccessful relationships with, among others, Anat-Yahu, Aholah and Aholibah, Asherah, Anatha of the Lions and Ashima of the Doves (ones he’d married and then divorced, but, had used his best efforts to wipe away any records of the divine judicial proceedings involved).  For some reason, he preferred to be thought of as sexually abstentious rather than as a cuckold.  An aversion he perhaps shared with Gilgamesh.

It’s said that for a time, he’d gifted Lilitu to a fellow whose name was Adam who the once little deity claimed to have created from dust.  Perhaps dust from one of the dessert storms he’d so loved.  But the Anzu bird, once again in the form of the South Wind, had managed to escape his clutches, having been terrified when he kept snickering about omelets (the Anzu bird having an obvious aversion to broken eggs).  Being able to shift forms between bird and wind, by the same means it had managed to escape the avaricious clutches of Inanna and Gilgamesh too.  As would Lilitu, eventually.  Unfortunately, Nin-gish-zida’s fate was not as positive.

But that’s another tale.  A rather tall tale at that.

Anyway, the young Canaanite deity, now no longer all that young, in fact, sporting long hair and a luxuriantly full beard which he’d copied from Gilgamesh, decided to leave his garden and, like Gilgamesh, go exploring.  Attaining his fantasies still required a good deal of work and even more luck, so he decided to return to Kengir, of course, avoiding at all costs, for the time being, until he could build up his strength, returning to the court of the El-ohim.  He’d, in fact, renounced his allegiance to the El-ohim and no longer even considered himself a Canaanite.  He was out on his own, an explorer, an innovator, a revolutionary, one with the wind (albeit not the South Wind), although he was not yet quite ready to make that public.  He’d need to build up his following before his coming out party.  He still needed a bit of patience, but time (which usually did not impact deities) was on his side.

So, smiling at the term, tempus fugit, he took his time and sort of loitered in Uruk and its environs for several centuries, perhaps even a millennium, learning everything he could about the Anunnaki and the Kengirites, their histories and rites and rituals.  Carried away with his “research, the now former Canaanite divinity, still a divinity of sorts, just not a Canaanite divinity, at least in his mind (which was all that mattered to him), lost touch with his original objective, Gilgamesh, until, eventually, it became clear to him that his hero (or perhaps now, former hero), had permanently departed for parts unknown.  Most people suspected that he’d become a denizen of Kur, although whether as a subject or ruler was unclear.  Or that perhaps he’d retired to Dilmun joining the Anunnaki side of his family there, but again, whether as a subject or ruler was unclear.  The fact though was that Gilgamesh was no longer in Kengir, other kings having replaced him in Uruk.  Consequently, the now middle-aged Canaanite deity spent less and less time in the environs of Uruk and more and more in nearby Ur and, while stealthily wandering in Ur, sort of stumbled onto a pair of angry, petulant and very dissatisfied siblings.

He liked them at once, they reminded him of, … well, … of himself, .. way back when.  One was a petulant young man whose name was Abram, and the other a very attractive young girl whose name was Sarai (or something like that).  Anyway, they were very unhappy because their parents were very opposed to their aspirations for intimacy (given that they were brother and sister).  And in fact, the priests of the religion of which they were a part were demanding that they, or at least Abram, be sacrificed as a form of atonement for their amorous aspirations.  That was not something Abram was really interested in, at least not in a positive manner, nor, to be honest, was Sarai.

Up to that time, despite his success with his garden and Adam and Lilitu, perhaps because of the unwelcome intervention of that busybody, Nin-gish-zidam the wandering former Canaanite divinity had not really acquired many worshippers of his own, and worshippers were, as all deities knew, the key to increasing their power.  He had Adam, and a replacement for the escaped Lilitu, a pleasant girl he’d convinced Adam that he’d made especially for him from one of Adam’s ribs (Adam tended to be somewhat gullible), and then, after he’d thrown Adam and Eve out of his garden (one he’d named Eden) in a temper tantrum over dietary transgressions (the now mature former Canaanite deity was strict on dietary rules and rituals, although even he didn’t fully understand why).  they’d had children, all but one of whom had acknowledged him as a deity.  But the one who got away had caused quite a bit of trouble (perhaps taking after the formerly Canaanite deity), as had his descendants.  So he needed a new strategy with updated tactics, and he had what he felt was a brilliant idea.

He just needed a few new adherents to start the ball rolling (so to speak), and if he managed to talk Abram and Sarai into escaping from Kengir, hopefully collecting additional followers along the trip, hell, he might finally be able to attain the aspirations that had seemed so improbable way back when he’d been a kid (in case you’ve forgotten, supplanting his parents and siblings, perhaps even all the other deities in all the other pantheons as well).  There’s probably a related psychological syndrome associated with the foregoing, with a fancy name, or there will be when Freud, Jung and company show up.  Or perhaps Joseph Campbell, or Robert Graves.

Anyway …

Adding a touch of silver to his beard, hair and mustachios, in order to disguise himself and make himself appear more mature and more powerful, he appeared to Abram in his divine aspect (rather than in the disguised from in which he’d met first met him and Sarai), and, feeding on his dissatisfaction and fear (who really wants to be sacrificed), promised him that if he and Sarai would worship him, and only him, he’d give them and any of their family members they selected (and who’d agree with a few minor rules and conditions which the now former Canaanite deity might suggest) a land of their own.  A place where they could fornicate or do whatever they wanted to their hearts content, although, as indicated above, they’d have to adhere to his commandments and rituals.  He did warn Abram that it might take them a while to get to the land he’d promised them (and which he didn’t actually control, he was, interestingly enough, thinking of Canaan) and that they might encounter some problems along the way.  But he also promised that he’d be with them always (and that part was true; you may remember that he had a penchant for voyeurism). 

Well, neither Abram nor Sarai had ever, to their knowledge, met a deity before and thus, after Abram shared with Sarai his discussion with the former Canaanite deity, she was very impressed at the interest taken in Abram, making him even more special in her eyes, and she also felt that it was obvious that if a deity was willing to help them, then their parents’ prohibition against incest and the priests’ demand that Abram be sacrificed were just old-fashioned and incompatible with the changing mores of the time, and that neither their parents nor their priests understood anything concerning the exigencies of true love (especially when coupled with irresistible lust), and that this new deity was much more hip than the deities their parents and their priests worshipped so, after talking it over (as usual, Abram did most of the talking and Sarai the listening, plus all the real work), they both agreed to follow the former Canaanite deity and, in the dead of night, with the former Canaanite deity’s help, drugged their parents and escaped with most of their parent’s goods and flocks (not stealing they assured themselves, just an advance on their inheritances, as the former Canaanite deity had explained to them).  And as the former Canaanite deity had hoped, they’d been joined by a number of their siblings, including Haran, Nahor and Abram and Sari’s nephew Lot.  A great start to the former Canaanite deity’s plot.

And away they went, the formerly young Canaanite god snickering (sort of like Murphy), thinking, “man this is going to be fun”.  And it wasn’t really stealing he thought, not for the first time.  He didn’t steal!  He just sometimes borrowed things other deities were not really using, and Abram and Sarai certainly fit that pattern, as had the shadows of the Huluppu tree (he’d actually saved them from becoming shadows of mere furniture) and Lilitu (who, as he saw it, Inanna had discarded).  He just loved omelets!  And he had already become very fond of gardening as well.

Of Nin-gish-zida he had nothing to say.  That had proved awkward, but it involved a sort of collateral damage situation, or perhaps an “adoption”, certainly not a kidnapping.  Anyone can make a mistake he thought.  Admitting that he could err was, however, another matter.

Good thing that Gilgamesh had not been immortal though, he thought to himself.  That might have proven awkward, at best.  And that damned Lilitu, where the hell had she disappeared to?

Now to erase all those other pesky deities!  And to remake Canaan in his image.

“Pest” was he? 

They didn’t know the half of it.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.