<center>https://media.comicbook.com/2018/08/web-of-venom-carnage-1128687-1280x0.jpeg
[Image Source](https://media.comicbook.com/2018/08/web-of-venom-carnage-1128687-1280x0.jpeg)</center>

Or a subtitle : Donny Cates is obsessed with the word abyss.  Why do I think such a thing?  The word abyss was used no less than 9 times in his *Web of Venom : Carnage Reborn #1*.  That is quite a bit, and trust me, I know, as the word abyss has always been a word that catches my eye.  When it’s used, I tend to notice.  That being said, what do you think of the word abyss?

<center>https://assets.boundingintocomics.com/content/uploads/2017/08/Carnage-vs-Venom1.jpg
[Image Source](https://assets.boundingintocomics.com/content/uploads/2017/08/Carnage-vs-Venom1.jpg)</center>

My initial thoughts, years ago, would be that of gigantic mountain crevice, or a place in the ocean that harbored the might Kraken or even sea monsters.  Then of course, there was the movie by James Cameron, which to be honest, I don’t really remember.  As time moved on, and I learned of folks like Charles Stansfeld Jones and Marvel Whiteside Parsons, the abyss took on a different meaning.  I thought of the word as a construct to depict some type of dimensionless void or gap between whatever the Godhead is and whatever this reality is.  It is the separation between the real and the material; the veil that keeps all of us in matter.  Throw on the idea of that Gnosticism, and suddenly the Abyss, to me, was accidentally created when Sophia fell from the Pleroma; in turn, it became the building blocks utilized by the Demiurge and his archons to construct this simulation we live in.  The abyss, to me at least, is the basic programming code utilized by the Demiurge; it exists alongside the collective unconscious and has a hidden link to the Pleroma.  New code cannot be generated; old code can continued to be reworked and reprogrammed, but the Demiurge is constrained by the existing information available. 

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Yet that is just my personal history with the word.  That is neither here or now.  Let’s review the word’s origin to get to a better, possible understanding of where Cates is going with his Carnage/Knull mythology.
 
# Where Did the Abyss Come From? #

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[Image Source](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-irC6bht3OzU/VfeOvdGq4CI/AAAAAAAABr4/LUFBk5Gf3uE/s1600/529%2B-%2BNature%2527s%2BAbyss.jpg)</center>
 
The Google machine has many old books available to the public.  Whether there is any value to the books the Google machine deems worthy to release to the public is a question all of its own.  To begin a minor Google machine literature review, we start with Freemasonry legend Charles Mackay and his *The Gaelic Etymology of Languages of Western Europe*.  the word abyss is derived from the Greek words :
 
ά - without
βυσσος - bottom
 
Or άβυσσος; a “bottomless profundity.”  Profundity, by the way, according to what the alleged oldest English dictionary available online (Sam Johnson’s *Dictionary of the English Language*), came by way of Milton and means:
 
* Depth of place
* Depth of knowledge
 
This same said dictionary also states the word ABYSS means :
 
* Bottomless
* A great depth or gulf
* A depth without bottom
* That in which anything is LOST
* The body of waters at earth’s center
* In the language of the Divines, hell

**Quick Sidenote:** For you Greek Isopsephy fans reading, the numeric value of άβυσσος is equal to that of the Greek words for the bisexual, hermaphrodite name of God, favorable/auspicious, and buttock.  I feel like that could be graduate paper all in itself...
 
<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Lost_main_title.svg/1200px-Lost_main_title.svg.png
[Image Source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Lost_main_title.svg/1200px-Lost_main_title.svg.png)</center>   

So far so good, right?
 
Curiously enough, our favorite Freemason, Mackay, found a propensity towards the Shakespearean version of the word: Abysm.  Abysm, from the old French word abysme, coincides with “a gulf.”  It may have an origin in the Celtic word abym; abym is a corruption of the world *aibheis* and *uime*. *Uime* infers “around,’ whereas *aibheis* entails immense or unfathomable depth, profundity.  You can think of it as some type of depth that exists completely around and all sides of the observer.  A real “nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land” type situation, if one catches the reference.

<center>http://images.45cat.com/the-beatles-nowhere-man-1966-2.jpg
[Image Source](http://images.45cat.com/the-beatles-nowhere-man-1966-2.jpg)</center>

Nathan Bailey then defines ABYSS in his *An Universal Etymological English Dictionary* similarly to Johnson, but adds the following :
 
* A prodigious deep, where no bottom exists or can be found; it exists in the enclosed bowels of the Earth.

So we have something without out bottom, yet below the surface of the Earth.  Interesting...
 
# Where is Cates In the Abyss? #

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[Image Source](http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/x_large/nprshared/201804/599138010.jpg)</center>
 
I’d dare reference the ending of *2001:A Space Odyssey* to give one an artistic visualization of the Abyss.  You know the part, near the end, where Bowman is plunging into the ethereal waters of Jupiter in a quest to deny AI, find the Godhead, or maybe a little bit of both.  Well you can skip that thought, as Cates flatly uses Carnage to state that the imagery is nonsense.  The Cates’ Carnage, after all, is the entity strangling the baby in that film of “rubbish.”

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[Image Source](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/d/db/Web_of_Venom_Carnage_Born_Vol_1_1_Bederman_Variant.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20181116185529)</center>
 
So where does that leave us?  What other clues might exist? Curiously, Cates references the number 1938 twice in this work. Cletus Kassady died 19 minutes and 38 seconds after his birth, only to be resurrected by the entity known as Knull.  This number is mentioned twice in two pages.  One researcher pointed out a possible passage to the Luke 19:38; as transcribed with the assistance of the free online Greek New Testament and the Google machine:
 
*“Say, Behold, the coming king, in the name of the lord, in the holy place, and glory to the high.”*
 
Curiously enough, Genesis 19:38, using same methodology with the free online *Septuaginata*, states:
 
“Neither did he yet, nor his new son, and called the name of this Amman the son of my father, the father of the Ammanites, unto this day.”

<center>http://i.imgur.com/TEwQz.jpg
[Image Source](http://i.imgur.com/TEwQz.jpg)</center>
 
As fate would have it, the Ammanites, or Ammonites, paid much tribute to their deity Milcom.  Milcom is thought by some much smarter than myself (and much more versed in the ways of academic study), to be none other than Moloch.  Moloch, of course, is the alleged profane deity of the *Leviticus* in the *Old Testament.*  The one that required child sacrifice in its honor (or a chicken, if one is more modern).  

 Oddly enough, when I work through the same process as above, I get old Greek passages translated into “seeds being passed onto the woman of my neighbor being not fit for the Lord…the seed being an abomination in the womb”  No mention of Moloch, but the seed of the abomination of Carnage seems to fit.  If one reads between the lines, there is almost an offspring of an illegitimate consummation that is abhorrent; not so much a “thing” known as Moloch.  A child sacrifice (abortion?) required for the impurity of life creation?  If only I could time travel, read Hebrew, and read old Greek, and talk to whoever put *Leviticus* together…. 
 
# Carnage of Chaos #

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[Image Source](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dp9G16sVsAAjRTO.jpg)</center>
 
The *Web of Venom* doesn’t have a whole lot of substance aside from some curious images.  I did find the following images fascinating  There is the “seed” of Carnage being ejected from (what I can gather is) the Abyss: 

<center>![IMG_20181212_200209.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmd3jMxaT3oYeunyqmz7n5tjuEm5HEHjs1fzMYU16goR1B/IMG_20181212_200209.jpg)</center>

The Abyss, the dimensionless void that implies a space with a) no bottom, b) a lost existence, c) a great gulf in time/space, d) the Christian idea of Hell, or e) the body of waters at the center of the Earth. Let’s assume Cates isn’t a Hollow Earth Theorist, so one or all of a->d may apply.
 
At the very least, once the seed of Carnage manifests from the Abyss, it moves. The seed then burns upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, forming an almost phallic type shape in the panels below, to finally be buried into the womb of the Earth.  

<center>![IMG_20181212_200224.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeAdneMbsPfqNWbEwTs2jJXBAmSrM4S5X8gFAZmBmGUfE/IMG_20181212_200224.jpg)
![IMG_20181212_200232.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTCHX4gXAVJ78wnzP932Z79omSPZZ1h24VjQfsY26p7UZ/IMG_20181212_200232.jpg)
![IMG_20181212_200241.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVD1HDqyqk3FUDadWTGgmm4iW7uE3KfgiJfMayZr9Fq8B/IMG_20181212_200241.jpg)</center>

Seed meet womb, seed meet rebirth. Carnage meet (re)birth. Cates knows his stuff, and given the crowd he likely gets to hang out with (Alan Moore, anyone?), is using some very old mythological archetypes to give Carnage resurrection. 
 
All that said, these are simply my random thoughts on this NCBD Wednesday.  What did you think of the issue?  Where do you think he is taking his Knull and the Abyss storyline?  Is there an esoteric element involved?  Or am I once more connection the imaginary, pink traceries of an entertaining story line designed to sell more comic books for Disneycorp?  As always, please drop a line and some feedback.  Thank you so much for reading.