ICONOCLASM ~ The Uglier Apparition of All Religions
Metaphysical
ICONOCLASM ~ Religion's Uglier Apparition
August 2025
I think I have an understanding of something, and write. I’ll write directly in response to a current event. Palmyra 2015 ~ Let Us Beware (below) is an example.
With time’s passage, I continue my journey.
Reading a book about the Cathedrals and Abbeys of the British Isles, as I read the history of each cathedral, each abbey, I experience a long succession of “Palmyras”. None more so than in the 1500s and the 1600s. Iconoclasm runs amok throughout these islands. Monasteries are demolished, ransacked and the contents either destroyed as being offensive to their god or more often the source of revenue to fill the coffers of Henry Tudor, otherwise known as Henry VIII.
The pendulum swings, and across two hundred years protestants burns catholics at the stake and catholics burn protestants at the stake. Then, both denominations fall foul of the Puritans. All of that is but the iceberg’s tip.
If ever anyone suggests that I should cease reading a particular book or that I should change my religion, or that I should destroy artefacts as being offensive to their concept of a deity, I say little, I continue the conversation politely and hasten its conclusion. Pleasantries are exchanged. I bid my leave.
Weeks, months, years go by. That is how I deal with iconoclasts.
To all who enjoy visiting our cathedrals and abbeys, I recommend the superb work by Stephen Halliday. My visits have taken on new meaning, as I view every religion, every denomination, at arms length.
Kenneth Thomas Webb
August 2025
© 2025 Kenneth Thomas Webb
Cathedrals and Abbeys
A superb work by Stephen Halliday and robust enough and compact to fit into one’s ordinary bag.
The book’s rear cover
It is also superbly cross-referenced, and whilst I’ve become very aware of iconoclasm in our history, Stephen Halliday has enriched my visits, too.
We are surrounded by beauty.
Palmyra 2015 ~ Let Us Beware
2015
In 2015, Daesh overran Palmyra.
The Curator of that Ancient Site was imprisoned.
He withstood them.
The world watched, then the destruction started.
Millennia, trashed by soiled baggy-panted maniacs
so cowardly, they cover their faces
to convince themselves it is so their non-existent god
cannot see their ugliness.
The curator was then beheaded.
A gentle person, of great humility, intellect, and understanding.
You have scored a victory. A great victory.
Who are you to question us?!
No one in particular …
Then shut your gob! Where are you from?
It is good to see that you follow Our principles. That you ask questions, rather than making statements.
What are you talking about? You dare to question US?
I’ll have you decapitated merely for even daring to speak.
Yes, I know. You do that often. It displeases Us.
The knife is wielded. Grubbed hands full of excreted faeces and nose snot
force the Man down,
An even greater force strikes
through every sinew, fibre, and blood vessel.
The brain boils.
The knife falls to the ground.
Molten metal sizzles in the desert sun,
curiously not out of place in the ruined colonnade.
Palmyra is alive.
Myriad souls of past lives.
A very present unseen Life.
Eyes shrouded behind the black.
Not the black of Daesh,
not the stench of Taliban.
The indescribable brilliance and beauty
Reverent, Unimagineable, Untouchable
Jihadists slither like snakes across sand and rock
too hot to walk or even stand upon,
away
nursing their wounds
fatality immient
cursing the ground
cursing each other
slinking without dignity,
a mess from their holes
dribbling hot and stinking
down their unwashed legs,
staining the white sand
in full view of their victims.
You have gone quiet. Why so?
Don’t speak to me.
To any of us.
A silent thought,
the ability to speak has long departed.
Oh? Why so?
I will speak with whomever I choose.
That is the Sovereign Prerogative of Us,
The Triune Being,
Three in One.
I have only to speak
And it is.
20 July 2025
All Rights Reserved
Liverpool
© 2025 Kenneth Thomas Webb
Written 10 June 2015
The image of Palmyra is Courtesy of AI Google Images
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
