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Who Wants To Live Forever?

"Verily, I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, until they
see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."
-- Matthew 16:28

But prior to the Second Coming, immortals race around lopping each others' heads off with
katanas. Or ruling the world through compound interest. Or serving as moral lessons on the
nature of Faith and Penitence. Or, most importantly, cropping up in roleplaying games.
Herewith, then, a look at the most famous immortal in European legend, the Wandering Jew --
and, in the spirit of ecumenicism, a bunch of his aliases, avatars, and fellow-travelers. With their
help (or opposition), he can turn up anywhere -- we already know immortals can turn up
anywhen, of course. So follow the path back in time to 29 A.D., or at least to 1228, and let's get
ready to ramble.

"Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall in Pilate's service, as Jesus was going out of the door,
impiously struck Him on the back with his hand, and said in mockery, 'Go quicker, Jesus, go
quicker; why do you tarry?' and Jesus, looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to
him, 'I am going, and you shall tarry until I come again.'"
-- Matthew Paris, Historia Major (1256)

So, what's the deal with the Wandering Jew, then? First off, according to the 1228 Chronicle of
St. Albans, his first-ever appearance in writing, he might very well be a Wandering Gentile; he's
a Roman procurator's doorkeeper with a Greek name. (Also, of course, he's a tropical
house-plant of the genus Tradescantia, but that's really pushing it, Swamp Thing parallels to one
side.) And even if he was a Hellenized Jew, Matthew Paris goes on to quote the eminent "Bishop
of Greater Armenia" as affirming that Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias as "Joseph," which
would make him a Wandering Christian. Confusing the issue even further, "Cartaphilus" means
"most loved," which ties in with Jesus' implication (in John 21:22-23) that John, "the disciple
whom Jesus loved," would also "tarry" until the Second Coming.

For a different kind of Wandering Gentile, he may also have been one of the legionaries
(possibly named Lacedion) who scourged Christ before the crucifixion, or who diced for His
clothing on Golgotha. Eventually, though, the most common version of the tale settled on a Jew,
one Ahasuerus the shoemaker (and don't ask me what a Jew is doing with a variant of the Persian
name Khsrish, since nobody knows) who mocked Christ when He paused near Ahasuerus' house
carrying the cross. (Another Jewish potential Wanderer is the temple guardsman Malchus, whose
ear Peter cut off at Gethsemane.) The Wandering Jew serves as an eyewitness to the historical
truth, therefore, of the Gospel -- and the Wandering Jew's popularity in Protestant countries
serves to contrast the Protestant doctrine of the "living Gospel" with the Catholic one of

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apostolic transmission. (One common element of the Wandering Jew story has Ahasuerus telling
a skeptical Mohammed that he personally witnessed Christ's crucifixion, in contrast to Muslim
belief that the Prophet Jesus was never executed.) Less pleasantly, some tales painted him as the
rootless cosmopolitan vagrant of anti-Semitic legend -- not for nothing is one of the viler pieces
of Nazi propaganda a film entitled The Eternal Jew. Mythology is a double-edged sword.

"Reviving, after a time, he siezed the hands of Agrippa, and said, 'Oh many and boundless
thanks to you, learned Agrippa -- thou Prince of all the Magicians! I pray you receive this purse
of costly jewels.' ... 'No! -- No!' exclaimed Cornelius Agrippa. 'Keep thy jewels, of whatever
worth ... but tell me, I do implore thee, who thou art?'"
-- David Hoffman, Chronicles of Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew (1853)

Thus as Cartaphilus, or Joseph, or Ahasuerus, or Malchus, the Wandering Jew began to appear in
European tales and chronicles. In the earlier versions, he was mentioned as living in the
Mandevillian East; in Greater Armenia, or with Prester John, or in Jerusalem. (In one version, he
can't wander at all, and is condemned literally to tarry on the same spot in Jerusalem for all
eternity.) The teller of the Jew's tale is often the "Armenian bishop," who bears a strong
resemblance to another enigmatic well-traveled immortal, le Comte de Saint-Germain. This
tends to bolster the theory that the legend was imported from the Christian communities in the
East around the time of the Crusades. An Italian legend of 'Giovanni Bottadio' (John
God-Striker) shows up in Novara in 1267, and in Florence in 1415. In 1602, however, one
'Christoff Crutzer' of Leiden published A Short Description and Hitory of A Jew Named
Ahasuerus as a pamphlet describing the encounter of the Wandering Jew with the Lutheran
bishop of Schleswig, Paul von Eitzen (sadly dead by 1598) in Hamburg in 1542. This began a
whole series of reported sightings, both retroactive (most notably an encounter with Agrippa in
Florence in 1525, but also in Madrid and Brussels in 1575 and Hamburg again in 1564) and
current (Reval, Krakow, and Prague in 1602; Lübeck, Munich, and Paris in 1604). More than
forty documented sightings followed, most notably by "a Turkish spy" in Paris (under the name
of Paul Marrane) in 1644, in Stamford, England in 1658 (where he cured a man's tuberculosis),
in Frankenstein (speaking of cursed wanderers) in 1678, Munich again in 1721, Brussels again in
1772 (under the name Isaac Lacquedem) and in London between 1818 and 1830.

"I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;
The moment that his face I see
I know the man that must hear me;
To him my tale I teach."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

By the 19th century, the Wandering Jew had gotten a makeover as the Gothic Wanderer
Melmoth, still cursed by God, but far more romantic. The Byronic ethos of wandering rebellion
played off the legend of Cain (cursed to roam the Earth) and Shelley's poem Queen Mab made
the Wandering Jew the heroic embodiment of individualism. This, of course, fed off the
Protestant conviction that the Wandering Jew's real role was to bear witness, which itself echoes
the Jewish legend that the Prophet Elijah (or, in some versions, Enoch) wanders the world
waiting to announce the coming of the Messiah.

Still more mythically, the Wandering Jew got tangled up with Herne the Wild Huntsman, who
drives the devil's hounds across the sky (the legend this time naming him Hubert, and claiming
that he refused Christ a drink from a trough, but told Him to drink from a hoofprint) and from
thence to the Man in the Moon, exiled there for theft on the Sabbath outside the jurisdiction of
Death. (The Moon, the Wild Hunt, and the Wandering Jew are all strongly correlated with

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storms.) A whole city outside Death's control, the City of Luz, shows up in some tales of
legendary India -- but if an immortal leaves its gates, he dies instantly. Perhaps Luz is a suburb
of Shangri-La, or the Lunar Embassy to Prester John. Mormon belief goes John "the beloved"
two better with the story of the Three Nephites, who followed Christ on His ministry in America,
and greeted Columbus on the beach. (There are people who identify Kulkulkan, Quetzalcoatl,
and Viracocha as the Three Nephites, which is only slightly sillier than identifying them as
Vikings, I suppose.) The Wandering Jew repaid the Mormons for their kindness by visiting
Muddy Valley, Utah in 1870, the latest report of his appearance I've found.

" I am immortal and I am not alone."

-- Duncan MacLeod, opening narration, Highlander: the Series (first season)

Between all the various incarnations of the Wandering Jew, plus the Three Nephites, plus the
Prophet Elijah, and Joseph of Arimathea (also identified as the "Joseph" baptized by Ananias,
and kept immortal by the Holy Grail), and Cain, and Saint-Germain (and Flamel and Cagliostro
and Münchausen, who share his legendary immortality), and Lazarus (whom a particularly
unsavory legend insists that Christ brought back from the dead permanently), and Herod's wife
Herodias (the Wandering Jew's girlfriend in many of the legends), and Marconi, there's a
veritable plethora of immortals out there. But don't order yet, there's more Wandering Masters:

Aristeas

This legendary Greek poet (of the 9th, or 6th, century B.C.) wandered (both astrally and
physically) through the lands of Hyperborea, Scythia, India, Aethiopia, and other realms of
legend. He dropped dead in his home city of Proconnesus, but his body disappeared, only to
reappear on the road to Cyzicus. Seven years later, he showed back up in Proconnesus and wrote
an epic poem, the Arimaspea, about the land of the giants, only to vanish yet again. 340 years
later still, he reappeared in Metapontum in Italy to insist that the locals erect a statue to him near
Apollo's altar. He could still be wandering around as herald to Apollo, who may have granted
him immortality.

Artephius

A famed Hermetic magician, Artephius wrote De Vita Propaganda (On Propagating Life)
around 1150 at the age of 1,025. If he was actually the famed magus Apollonius of Tyana (as
rumor has it), he was being modest by about a century. Like so many immortals, he used
alchemy to prolong his existence.

Wei Po-Yang

A famous Taoist alchemist (fl. 142 A.D.) of the later Han dynasty, he tested his students by
preparing a poison and killing a dog with it. He then took the poison himself, but only his loyal
pupil Yu took the drug also. The rest left to report failure and prepare Wei Po-Yang's funeral,
upon which Wei revived Yu and the dog with the True Medicine and departed for the West like
the other Taoist immortals.

"But my choice and constant companions shall be a set of my own immortal brotherhood, among
whom I would elect a dozen from the most ancient down to my own contemporaries. . . [We]
would mutually communicate our observations and memorials through the course of time,
remark the several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every
step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind . . ."

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-- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

Now that we've got the cast of characters straightened out, what's the story? Hey, what isn't the
story? Immortals offer plenty of scope for roleplaying, both as guest stars and as player
characters. So, until we get GURPS Immortals, here's a few possibilities. First, there's a legend
that the Wandering Jew, the Flying Dutchman, and the Wild Huntsman meet once every century
to revel in their wickedness -- which would make quite an In Nomine event, no doubt about it.
Riffing on that, one could build a party of immortal PCs (including mayhap vampires, mummies,
living statues, parrots, and what-have-you) meeting once a century to battle evil, or each other,
or rival immortals -- and run from GURPS Ice Age to GURPS New Sun with it. Such a party (or
its enemies) might be the nucleus of a secret society of Illuminati, which jealously (or prudently)
guards the secret of immortality, whatever it is, like the Nine in Philip Jose Farmer's "Lord
Grandrith" novels. The Elixir Vitae might lurk within Warehouse 23, or be accidentally
re-invented by a white-coated Professor in Atomic Horror -- who (along with his lab assistants
and their dog Sparky, with a nod to Wei Po-Yang) gets hurled into the Time War of The
Immortal Masters! Who themselves, of course, might have been alien Nordics, or their
genetically-engineered superhuman agents, all along. Against the Immortal Space-Demon Nazi
Reptoids, then, our only hope is the primordial technomagic of the Seal of Solomon, abstracted
from the ruined Temple by one Ahasuerus -- the Wandering Jew, who by continuing to live
holds off the end of the world. L'chaim! To life!

Past Columns

Article publication date: June 16, 2000

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