Exodus Inward

From CerebusWiki

When the Grand Inquisitor of the Church is killed by the Cockroach, the Church begins withdrawing all Church officials back into its inner sanctum.

Discussed in issue 39 by Harmon Blakely: "My loyalty is to his Holiness and the Church of Tarim. Though it would seem they are gone forever. . .all the high priests and chruch officials sealed up in the sacred cathedral. . .every day, another prophecy is fulfilled. Our leaders are in disrepute. Our legions are diminished by two thirds. Our debts grow unchecked. And the church destroys itself."

Mentioned in issue 42. And issue 108 by the Judge.

From The True History of the 1413 Election:

'Unless one understands the sequence of events, in context, which led to the election it becomes difficult to appreciate the profound chaos the city-state of Iest lived through in those tumultuous days. The legislature had never been intended as a governing body, the church of Tarim instituted it when it became apparent (some hundred years earlier) that a disproportionate amount of his Holiness' time was being spent adjudicating economic matters. his solution was to allow each district of the city-state, in proportion to their contribution to the economy, to send representatives to debate and form economic policy for the mother church. these representatives were appointed by the local churches and then elected by the local people to serve either as conservative or libertine economists in Iest. It was strictly a matter of evolution which led to Prime Minister Gatson's corrupt regime; the borrowing of millions of crowns; the inter-connected house of cards that was Iest's international trade balances; all discretely hidden from papal authority and overview by several tons of obfuscating paperwork. It was his sense of something being horribly amiss and his inability to discover just what it was which led his holiness to institute an inquisition into corruption in the legislature. and it was the appointed Grand Inquisitor who, after a series of meeting s with the Prime Minister, decided that the source of the problem was demons inhabiting many members of the business community. Undoubtedly, the had been offered and had accepted a bribe to leave the Prime Minster alone and had generally overlooked that all of the wealthy merchants and traders who were broken on the rack were "stripped of their world goods" (to quote the edict), these worldly goods were then split three was - one share for the Prime Minister, one for the Grand Inquisitor and one for the papal vaults where it could be used as solid evidence that the inquistion was having a positive effect on Iest's economy. This continued until the Grand Inquisitor demanded and received (from a very relieved Pontiff) the title of Earth Born Messenger, which technically placed him above the pontiff in the religious (though not the political) infrastructure of the church. The position, however, was a dangerous one to hold, because it figured in no less than fifty sacred texts. The Grand Inquisitor became the focus of an immense charismatic cult within the church. If he sneezed, it meant this; if he spilled a glass of water, it meant that. when he was assassinated, it was this cult which persuaded hi Holiness that the apocalypse was at hand and which convinced him to initiate the "Exodus Inward" predicted several hundred years before which required the church to "seal its doors against the horror" and to sever all connection with the outside world. All of the tripe written about irresistible political forces at work and Lord Julius' master plan is so much romantic hogwash. When the church sealed itself up in the scared cathedral, Iest became a body without a head and naturally turned to the coming election as the only means of restoring some manner of governing authority....' p. 333, High Society

From the Judge's Monologue, Issue 108

"At this point, alerted by the military outposts of New Iest - shortly to be given its present name, New Sepra - Clovis the Ninth, last in a long list of dangerously in-bred popes to inherit the papacy of the Eastern Church, a hemophiliac with a cleft palate and an unsavory interest in young boys, decided that betrayal was the better part of indecision, invoked the exodus inward, instructed his personal guard, by means of surgical rock slides, to close all avenues to the upper city, thereby leaving the lower city to the non-existent mercy of the invading forces..."

Dave Speaks about it

From the Cerebus Yahoo!Group Q&A session:

Q2. Please clarify the Exodus Inward.

DAVE: Oh, heavens. I haven’t thought about the Exodus Inward in twenty years. Well, first of all it’s an oxymoron and at the same time it might not be an oxymoron. You have to go out to come in. It’s also a good ass-covering term for any kind of escapism. At the time, like a lot of guys in their twenties and thirties I really thought that drug abuse was a means of accessing other layers of consciousness and all that rot. Exodus Inward is a good way of describing it if you don’t like to think of yourself as smoking your brains out for no good purpose. Under the influence of the writings of people like Robert Anton Wilson and Aleister Crowley and Tim Leary and that whole crew it becomes very easy to perceive of yourself as being part of an historical trend and tradition and to envision yourself as having a core societal presence rather than having intentionally shuffled yourself off to the margins. Mental masturbation for those people for whom physical masturbation just isn’t enough. Those human beings whose lifestyle most closely resembles laboratory rats with electrodes hooked up to their brain’s pleasure centers.

Q2: What caused it?

DAVE: See, I had extrapolated from that construct—that drug abuse was a means of accessing larger inner awarenesses and higher states of consciousness—that history was the result of a series of interventions by individuals along the lines of the Merry Pranksters who would—at opportune moments—introduce concepts like the Exodus Inward, in this case by burrowing within the Church. A good analogy would be the Galileo fiasco. Had the Church had a mechanism in place (went my theory) to essentially retreat into itself in a universal state of mortal embarrassment, all aspects of its behaviour in the Galileo case—most particularly the extent to which they attempted to suppress the self-evident truth and the length of time it took them to admit they were wrong—would have certainly fit the bill. Of course, what I misunderstood is that people like the Merry Pranksters get pushed to and also choose to gravitate to the margins. A Robert Anton Wilson or an Aleister Crowley or a Tim Leary is never going to “burrow within” anything except easily duped young women. There was a kind of grandiose conceit to it, that as a drug abuser I was capable of viewing my own interior in an unflinching fashion which would cause societal structures founded upon lies to collapse under their own weight, if they attempted the same thing. Of course what I missed was that I was looking inward only hypothetically and not literally. Had I been looking inward in a literal way, the most obvious question would be “Why am I smoking, snucking and snorting all of these drugs? This is like washing your windshield with mud so you can see better. What is my concept here?” And, of course, I misunderstood the nature of a church which is incapable, structurally, of retreating inward. The whole point of a church is the improvement of itself, its congregation, its society and its future. Like so many people I misconstrued what I took to be Pope John Paul II’s disinterest in doing a bong hit as being an inability to see how necessary it is to examine himself inwardly. At the same time there is a glimmering of value that was entirely accidental. In order to extricate yourself from an unsolvable problem, it is well worth going inside yourself to try to figure out what the problem actually is. It took me years to figure out that it works best when you eliminate all of the things that you’ve convinced yourself you need that you’ve grafted onto yourself over the years. If you’re still smoking pot, looking inward is only going to tell you that you really want to roll a joint. If you’re still drinking beer, looking inward is only going to tell you that you’d really like a beer. And of course, once you’ve eliminated all or most of your self-evident garbage, there’s no real need to look inside yourself in that navel-gazing fashion familiar to the drug abuser and the alcoholic.. When you eliminate the external garbage your inside is the same as your outside at that point and then you can start working on making real progress.

Obviously John Paul II was way ahead of me on that one.

Q2: Why does the Exodus Inward end?

DAVE: Usually because you spent last night picking roaches out of the ashtray and rolling your last two incredibly rank and raunchy-tasting joints with them and then find you’ve spent all of your money on ju jubes and barbecue potato chips and chocolate bars and Kentucky Fried Chicken over the last three days so, unfortunately, you’ve got no way to Exodus Inward until you can rustle up 60 or 100 dollars for another baggie.