The Nomadic Alternative – Page 214

VII

Hark, hark, the dogs do bark
The beggars are coming to town
Some in rags, and some in tags
And some in a velvet gown.

The Beghards, who gave their name to the words 'beggar' and 'beg'
wandered in late Mediaeval Europe from town to town playing on the
guilt complexes of rich citizens, "a restless fraternity running
about the world like vagabond monks". Their red or particoloured
rags symbolized potency through poverty and were artificially dis-
tressed and patched in imitation of the Muslim dervish's jibba[h],
this costume surviving the Mediaeval period as the uniform of the
jester and indicating his ambivalent attitude to the world, to sex
and to truth. Like the Albigensian perfecti, the Beghards and their
successors the Brethren of the Free Spirit rediscovered through the
impetus of Oriental mysticisms, the ecstatic shamanic ideal, which
had remained latent in the customs of Europe since prehistoric
times. However, the western end of the steppe, where displaced nomad
turned settler, was a favourable breeding ground for such assertions
of freedom, and the mentors of the Albigensian heretics were the
Bogomils of Bulgaria, the home of the original buggers.

"Everything that lives is holy." The Brethren of the Free Spirit
believed the soul divine, autonomous and indestructible. It came
from God and was part of God. It continued part of God even during
its tenure of the body, and when the body collapsed and rotted, God
reabsorbed the soul "as a drop of wine in the sea". In theory every
rational creature was blessed in the unity of love, but in practice
some were lovlier than others. The Brethren distinguished between