Saint Rhizic Natterjacks

Traditional Account: Cycles of Martyrdom

As recorded in the official chronicles of Pennsylvania's faithful, compiled from testimonies across generations

Proem: The Mystery of Perpetual Return

The traditional account identifies Saint Rhizic Natterjacks as a unique case in Christian hagiography—a saint who dies and is reborn, not in heaven but on earth, condemned (or blessed) to serve Pennsylvania through every generation. He is recognizable in each incarnation by his manner of speech—slurred as though intoxicated, though he touches no spirits—and by the mark upon his tongue, which bears the sacred residue of the natterjack toad, whose venom grants not death but holy visions.

The First Life: Colonial Foundations (1682-1701)

Birth and Early Signs

In the year of Our Lord 1682, when William Penn first set foot upon the banks of the Delaware, there was born in a modest dwelling near what would become Philadelphia a child of most peculiar aspect. His mother, a Quaker woman of simple faith, noted that the babe emerged tongue-first from the womb, already licking at the air as though tasting invisible mysteries.

They named him Rhizic, from the Greek rhiza, meaning "root," for his father proclaimed: "This child shall be rooted deep in this new land." The surname Natterjacks came later, when the boy of seven summers was found in the marshlands, his tongue pressed to the warty back of a great toad, his eyes rolling with visions. When he spoke thereafter, his words came forth nattered and tangled, yet pregnant with truth.

First Martyrdom

In his fortieth year, during a dispute over land boundaries, Rhizic intervened to prevent violence between settlers and the Lenape. Speaking in his nattered tongue, he mediated a peaceful resolution, but a zealous colonist, believing Rhizic to be drunk and blasphemous, struck him down with a musket blow.

As he died, Rhizic's last words were: "I sssshall return when you need me mossst." His body was buried beneath a willow tree, and from that spot, natterjack toads appeared each spring, though none had been seen in those parts before.

The Second Life: Revolutionary Witness (1750-1777)

The Miracle of the Cracked Bell

In 1776, as the Liberty Bell rang out for independence, Rhizic stood in the State House yard, tongue pressed to a toad he'd brought in his pocket. The bell cracked mid-ring, and Rhizic cried out: "Jusssst asss this bell breaks in joy, ssso too shall this new nation crack and mend and crack again! But the sssound shall echo forever!"

John Adams himself recorded this incident in his diary, calling Rhizic "that perpetually soused Pennsylvania prophet whose words, though delivered as from a drunkard's lips, possess an eerie prescience."

Valley Forge and Second Martyrdom

During the terrible winter of 1777-1778, Rhizic wandered the frozen encampment at Valley Forge. On the night before the Battle of Brandywine, he was discovered by British soldiers while licking a toad near Chadds Ford. Believing him to be a spy using coded signals, they bayoneted him. His blood soaked into Pennsylvania soil, and witnesses claimed that the toads in that creek sang mournfully for three nights thereafter.

The Third Life: Industrial Prophet (1850-1889)

The Fourth Life: Steel and Struggle (1920-1954)

Born again in 1920 in Pittsburgh's Hill District, Rhizic grew up amid the steel mills and jazz clubs. During the Depression, he operated an illegal soup kitchen, somehow multiplying food supplies in ways no one could explain. During the McCarthy era, accusations of Communist sympathies led to his beating by vigilantes in 1954.

The Fifth Life: Modern Witness (1985-2023)

Rhizic returned in 1985 in Erie. In 2013, he prevented a bridge catastrophe in Pittsburgh through his warnings. In 2023, he was struck by a car while intervening in a domestic violence incident. His ashes were scattered in the Susquehanna, where natterjack toads now breed in unprecedented numbers.

Theological Reflection

The Toad as Sacramental Sign

The natterjack toad, whose venom grants visions when touched to tongue, serves as Rhizic's perpetual sacrament. Just as Christ transformed bread and wine, Rhizic transforms poison into prophecy. His "drunken" speech—the nattered, slurred words—is not intoxication but the human tongue struggling to speak divine truth filtered through toad-venom and love.

Patronage

Saint Rhizic is patron of:

• Fools and drunkards (who are not actually drunk)
• Prophets who are dismissed
• Mediators and peacemakers
• The forgotten and overlooked
• Toads and all despised creatures
• Pennsylvania itself and all who love her

Discordian Transmission: Esoteric Circuit 6

The Hatching

According to Discordian tradition, Saint Rhizic Natterjacks hatched, not born, during a thunderstorm over the Monongahela when a bolt of pale gold lightning struck an abandoned steel mill and rewired a cluster of raccoons into a collective oracle. Out of their synchronized chittering came a single syllable: "Natterjacks."

And so the Commonwealth gained a saint.

The Fivefold Gospel

Rhizic wandered Pittsburgh barefoot, chanting the Fivefold Gospel beneath overpasses:

The First Church of Cognitive Dissonance

He opened the First Church of Cognitive Dissonance in an old PNC ATM vestibule. Followers came to be dislodged from their Thinker/Prover grooves. He taught them to shift centers:

• Intellect into belly
• Belly into heart
• Heart into crown
• Crown into the neon buzzing just beyond the corner of your eye

The Rude Miracles

His miracles were never flashy. They were rude.

• A man asked for healing; Rhizic handed him a parking ticket. The man meditated on unjust systems of control and was cured of his obedience disorder within a week.
• A woman begged for enlightenment; he took her phone and replaced it with a single sesame seed. She achieved satori in under a week.
• A politician sought Rhizic's blessing. The Saint licked a toad and vomited on the man's Italian leather shoes. The politician lost the election but found his soul.

The Great Working: PennDOT's Sacred Day

His greatest act came on PennDOT's sacred Day of Endless Construction. When the highways froze in gridlock for nine hours, the Saint climbed atop a Jersey barrier and proclaimed:

Hundreds of commuters attained enlightenment-by-irritation. Three became Discordian Popes. One became a sandwich (witnesses disagree on whether this was metaphorical).

Verified Sidebar Miracles

The Doctrine of Bridges

The Ascension

When he finally ascended, it wasn't into heaven but into a pothole so deep it led into the Akashic Records. All that remained was his vest: a patchwork of transit passes, protest flyers, and one Maxo Vanka mural fragment.

Sacred Geography: Seven Sites of Cognitive Disruption

1. The Point (Pittsburgh): Where three rivers meet and three realities collapse
2. The Liberty Bell (Philadelphia): Cracked on purpose to let the Light get in
3. Centralia: The fire that never stops, the town that dreams itself
4. Gettysburg: Where the dead still argue about who won
5. The Pennsylvania Turnpike: The longest temple to forward motion and recursive frustration
6. Ringing Rocks Park: Where stones sing if you know how to listen
7. Any PennDOT Construction Zone: Portals to the Eternal Now (because time doesn't exist there)

Liturgy of Inconvenience

Rhizic's followers practice the Liturgy of Inconvenience:

• Take the long way home
• Pay parking meters for strangers
• Leave cryptic but encouraging notes on windshields
• Feed parking meters that have expired
• Speak truth to traffic cones

The Gentle Account: Patron Saint of Crossroads and Humble Toil

From the Historia Pennsylvanica Sacra, emphasizing pastoral care and the sanctity of humble labor

The Vita: Of Humble Origins

In the years when the great forests of Penn's Woods were still deep and the rivers ran thick with the promise of industry, there lived a child named Rhizic. He was born not in a city of stone, but in a small, soot-streaked town in the Allegheny Valley. His mother, a weaver of great skill, claimed he was born not crying, but with a low, chuffing sound, like the steam from a mine elevator. His father, a mender of boots and harnesses, said the boy's hands, even as an infant, seemed to understand the grain of leather and the strength of stitch.

The name "Rhizic" was not a family name, but one given by the local children. He was a quiet boy, often found not with other children, but sitting at the base of great oaks or by the edges of tannery ponds, perfectly still. He seemed to be listening to the slow, patient workings of the world—the spread of fungal threads through the soil, the gurgle of water in culverts, the creak of growing wood. The other children, seeing him surrounded by the common toads of the region—the natterjacks—dubbed him "Rhizic Natterjacks," and the name stuck.

The Ministry of Connection

As a young man, Rhizic did not become a preacher or a scholar. He became a pathfinder and a fixer. He had an uncanny gift for finding the best routes through the tangled hills, not the grand roads for wagons, but the forgotten paths that connected one hamlet to another, one farm to the next mill. He was said to never get lost, because he felt the land not as a map, but as a living network—a great, breathing mycelial mat of roots, streams, and animal trails.

The Three Great Miracles

The Great Revelation and Passing

Rhizic grew old, his back bent like a weathered root, his hands gnarled like old bark. He had spent a lifetime connecting the disconnected, mending the broken links between person and person, and between people and the land they inhabited.

On the eve of his passing, he gathered his few followers on a high ridge overlooking the rolling hills of the Commonwealth. He spoke his final sermon, which consisted of a single sentence: "Behold the Keystone."

He did not point to a building or an arch, but to the land itself. As he spoke, his followers saw, with a clarity that was both physical and spiritual, how the forests held the hills, how the hills channeled the rivers, how the rivers fed the valleys, and how the towns and farms were nestled within it all, each part—from the greatest mountain to the smallest natterjack toad—holding the others in place. They saw that Pennsylvania was not just a place, but a perfectly balanced entity, a Keystone in the great arch of creation.

With this vision upon them, Saint Rhizic Natterjacks laid down upon the earth and returned his spirit to the network he had always cherished. It is said that where he lay, a new species of hardy, rhizomatic plant took root, its flowers the color of iron ore and forest moss.

Teachings of the Saint

• The Humility of the Toad: Glory is not in being seen, but in being essential to the ecosystem. Find purpose in your station.
• The Patience of the Root: True connection and strength grow slowly and silently, not with haste and noise.
• The Strength of the Keystone: Your unique position is what holds the entire structure together. Honor your place.
• Listen to the Forgotten Path: Wisdom is often found not on the main road, but on the trails less traveled, in the stories less told.

Scholarly Analysis

From the Journal of Apocryphal American Hagiography, Vol. 47, No. 3

Historical Context

The official hagiographic tradition identifies Saint Rhizic Natterjacks as an apocryphal figure emerging from mid-21st-century Pennsylvanian Discordian subculture, with roots in earlier folk traditions. His cult is characterized by deliberate epistemic sabotage, symbolic vandalism, and what scholars term "mildly inconvenient miracles."

The Historia Discordia Pennsylvanica (c. 2025) provides the earliest comprehensive documentation, though fragmentary references appear in local Pennsylvania folklore as early as the 1970s.

Core Theological Attributes

1. Territorial Subversion

Rhizic reframed the Commonwealth not as a political district but as a psychic habitat, invoking Robert Anton Wilson's Thinker/Prover model to critique local identity formation. This approach mirrors other regional American saints (such as Saint Expedite in New Orleans) who serve as liminal figures between official religion and folk practice.

Scholars link this to RAW's argument in Prometheus Rising that authority is "socially sanctioned hallucination," suggesting Rhizic's cult deliberately undermines conventional power structures through humor and absurdity.

2. Liturgical Disruption

His rituals parody Catholic and civic ceremonies, replacing sacraments with infrastructural metaphors (bridges, tunnels, turnpikes). This reflects the tradition of "sacred parody" found in medieval feast days and carnival traditions, adapted to contemporary American civil religion.

The choice of infrastructure as sacred symbol is particularly relevant to Pennsylvania's identity: the Commonwealth has more structurally deficient bridges than any other state, making the bridge a potent symbol of both connection and decay.

3. Pedagogical Paradox

Rhizic taught via contradiction, a standard Discordian technique derived from Zen Buddhism's koan tradition and G.I. Gurdjieff's "intentional shocks." Cognitive dissonance was not a flaw but a tool, similar to Gurdjieff's intention to shock disciples out of "mechanical thinking."

The practice of giving seekers parking tickets instead of blessings exemplifies what religious studies scholar Catherine Bell termed "ritualized resistance"—using the forms of authority against themselves.

The Problem of Multiple Hagiographies

The existence of four contradictory canonical accounts presents unique hermeneutical challenges. Traditional approaches to resolving contradictory texts (harmonization, historical criticism, source theory) are explicitly rejected by the cult itself.

Professor Erica Jameson of Temple University argues that this represents a form of "postmodern sanctity" in which truth is understood as perspectival rather than absolute: "Rhizic exists in superposition, neither wholly real nor wholly fictional, until the act of belief collapses the waveform."

Ritual Practice and Contemporary Devotion

Modern devotees practice what they call "The Liturgy of Inconvenience," which includes:

• Feeding expired parking meters
• Taking inefficient routes as spiritual discipline
• Leaving cryptic encouraging notes on windshields
• Observing PennDOT construction zones as meditation sites

The cult regards his pothole-ascension not as literal but as a commentary on civil engineering budgets and the state's perpetual infrastructure crisis.

Comparative Hagiography

Saint Rhizic shares characteristics with several hagiographic traditions:

• Holy Fools (yurodivye): Like Russian Orthodox holy fools, Rhizic speaks truth through apparent madness
• Trickster Saints: Similar to Saint Simeon Salus and other trickster figures who used absurdity for spiritual teaching
• Regional Folk Saints: Comparable to Juan Soldado, Maximón, and other Latin American folk saints who exist outside official canonization
• Bodhisattva Figures: The cycle of voluntary return mirrors Buddhist bodhisattva vows

Academic Reception

The cult has generated significant scholarly interest in fields including:

• Religious Studies (vernacular religion, lived religion theory)
• Folklore Studies (ostension, legend-tripping, belief performance)
• American Studies (regional identity, post-industrial spirituality)
• Internet Studies (meme culture, collaborative mythology)

Verification and Evidence

No historical evidence supports the literal existence of Rhizic in any of his purported incarnations. However, devotees argue this is irrelevant, citing the dictum that "the map is not the territory, but a useful map is just as good."

Archaeological investigations have failed to locate any of the claimed miraculous sites, though several parking meters in Shadyside do exhibit unusual behavior that PPA engineers describe as "inexplicable but non-threatening."

Sociological Function

Beyond theological speculation, Rhizic's cult serves several identifiable social functions:

• Community Building: Provides shared mythology for Pennsylvania residents across urban/rural divide
• Coping Mechanism: Transforms frustration with infrastructure and bureaucracy into spiritual practice
• Identity Formation: Offers Pennsylvania-specific spirituality distinct from both coastal urban culture and Rust Belt decline narratives
• Political Commentary: Critiques state governance without explicit partisan alignment

Contemporary Relevance

In an era of declining institutional religious affiliation, particularly among younger Americans, Rhizic represents what sociologist Nancy Ammerman calls "Golden Rule Christianity"—a focus on ethical practice over doctrinal belief. His cult requires no institutional affiliation, no financial commitment, and no public declaration of faith.

The saint is invoked whenever a Pennsylvanian says, "Why is this lane closed again," and secretly meditates on the void—transforming daily frustration into contemplative practice.

This article is about a figure of contested historicity. Content may reflect contemporary mythology, folklore, or spiritual belief systems rather than verifiable historical facts.

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