On Creation...

Sometimes I feel, as I begin to create, as if I am looking into a book with blank pages, a book full of infinite possibilites, a gallery of mirrors, a never ending library of beginnings middles and ends. Pick me! Says one. Pick me! says another. I am lost in the maze of my own making...I look around for the god of my book for guidance - but I find that he is me after all!

I ask him, 'Am I writing you or are you writing me?'

When the answer comes...well, that's when creation truly begins.

Excerpt from Fausto: How Fausto Solves the Riddle of the Stone.

Fausto took in a long breath. “I am ready.”

The words rang out of the monk’s mouth then, as though they were not coming from him but from the great cosmic expanses.

Body soul and spirit are in two contained,
The total Art may well from them be gained
It comes from one, and is one only thing
The volatile and fixt, together bring
It is two and three and yet only one.

He paused looking at Fausto very carefully. "What is the stone and does it live?"

The sum of his experiences since he met this enigmatic man, came flooding back to him and he opened his soul to their diaphanous clarity, pictures, so many in fast succession.....stone, stone, stone, is it alive? Round and round these words whispered, seven voices distinct, harmonies in unison. Does it live? "If I were stone." He told himself. "What would I be? What is a stone, if not earth sand, carbon? What is man if not blood bone and sinews, bundles of nerves, tangled muscles, membranes.......after all carbon? What did the monk once say? 'If you can understand how the stinking dung revolves in the same round as the fragrant flower so that the one may be transformed into the other, you have understood something of the secret arts of nature.' Dung promotes the growth of plants, animals graze on plants, which grow as a result of manure. One thing is transformed into another a circle of becoming the snake that seeks its own tail….Initiation. Since the passo he had understood the elements – what lived in the earth also lived in the quality of fluid which had the tendency to form drops and in it too something of an aeriform nature which tended to spread out in every direction and which lived in man in his breath and speech. And in it the fiery element dissolved separate being, so that from the cleft and scattered parts something new arose. He had sensed that the elements lived in every earthly formation. He thought of his visions in the chair of his dreams. The colours had represented things elemental, things soul-like and things spiritual, so too the triad of ‘it is two and three and yet only one’ the consequence of the Arquaeous, the severing into three; Thinking willing and feeling. Did he not do battle with the wilful knight, whom he vanquished with words - willing, the melancholy knight of the castle, whom he vanquished with the sword - feeling, and the inquisitor who was vanquished by the power of logic - thinking? Were they all then not one, that is, one within him? Were they but external manifestations of his own inner struggles? If so then, the rock could only be, in such a context, himself. The transformation of man, from Charcoal to diamond. From fool to wise man.....What lies at the heart of this difference? A transformation during the course of time, from black to brilliant purity? Transformed by the power of love! If man is a stone, then he must transform his stone, purify it in a crucible before it becomes not merely a stone, but a stone of the wise. Only then, will the cycle close, and man's breath become creatively clean. For it will no longer consist of carbon, whose poison kills, rather, it will be an outpouring of being that owes its existence to a moral deed. In the same way man owes his existence to the exhalation of Jehova, he shall one day in saecula be a creative God! Love, the great catalyst.”

'The stone lives…it lives....!" He cried. "I am the stone!

The Baptism of Jacob - Excerpt from 'Fifth Gospel'

He crossed his hands over his chest as he had seen others do, and the Baptiser immersed him into the water. He held his breath. An instant stretched to eternity, an eternity fashioned an instant. Full of fear, fear and panic, and fear again, he held to his heart, for harder tests had he withstood. Finally, he let go his dread of death and allowed the water to wash over him.

He was dying and in this dying something began to prise open the eyes of his soul, to reveal not the form-dwindling water, but something else – the weaving of his life in picture forms. Everything lay around him: his accomplishments and his many failings; his desires; his passions and his weaknesses; all of his vices and his sins; all the defilement of this life’s journey and the dust of his misplaced hopes and dreams. All the content of his life until now, was added to the river’s many voices. By way of the stream’s sacrifice, these remnants floated away from him, leaving him clean. Now, a vision of profound beauty was granted him, so great and so mighty as to cause him to feel the very ground of his being shaken with love.
He saw, in his mind’s eye, a man carrying a lamb on his shoulder.

Of a sudden, he was lifted out of the water and he gasped for breath. He felt life enter into the dead parts of his soul. He heard a voice, ‘Arise, you have seen the good shepherd!’

Jacob knew his wound was healed, and his pain was eased! He had found harmony in the stream of his life, for in the river’s stream, he had found his salvation.

Prologue in Heaven from my unfinished play: Fausto

Stage: blue and purple light upper stage, red and yellow the lower half.

The divine Sophia stands centre stage, resplendent and sparkling in white. Seven spirits of wisdom arrayed in gold kneel with heads bowed in a circle around her. At the perimeter of this circle twelve spirits of time arrayed in blue, dance, holding incense burners)

The Sophia speaks

SOPHIA:
Oh man!
Made from Saturn’s wisdom-warmth
Sun’s light flaming forges thee
Silver waves of Lunar dwells
In thine own being
The seed of knowing

SPIRITS OF WISDOM:
We contemplate the sacrifice
We venerate the pouring forth
We ponder well the essence of
Cosmic wisdom’s flowing love

SPIRITS OF TIME:
We dance the chanting of the Sun
We sing down songs of radiance weaving
The fire of love moves in our hearts
For man’s created being

(enter Spirits of Space weaving in and around the spirits of wisdom and the spirits of time)

SPIRITS OF SPACE:
How swift the spheres in splendour circuit
Round radiant paths are burning
Their movement flows with Far- flung force
Lengths widths and breadths of Cosmic learning

There is a bright light and Michael Appears from the right.

SOPHIA:
My son!
Thine countenance is radiant
With light-reflecting Sun
Thine sword-iron defiant
Thine steady heart compliant
Toward thine heavenly role

It is time that thou must yield
What thou hast held with heart-fast will
Cast forth intelligence below
In freedom’s will within man’s soul
Will shine thought’s mighty force-filled glow

MICHAEL : (gesturing downwards with grave and solemn expression)
O mother!
When wisdom’s light flames free
From world creative will
And tumbles toward the earth
My sacrifice is sealed

The intelligence of gods
I hereby liberate
What I’ve held fast for aeons now
Is man’s to contemplate


(In a puff of smoke enters Lucifer and Satan, immediately the spirits form a protective circle around Sophia and Michael steps forward brandishing his sword.

MICHAEL:
Who requests your presence!

LUCIFER:
It is the essence of what you speak
That calls our spirits forth
From our abodes above and below
We come to see if there is sport
In what to man you have bestowed

SATAN:
You place such hopes upon these beasts
I really must decry!
Thoughts in their heads
As good as dead
Corpses cold and dry,

LUCIFER:
And as for feeling
Man is lacking
Any studied care
He swings from sadness
To joy and gladness
From laughter to despair

SATAN
In his will, he is fast sleeping
Habit drives his every move
It would not be daunting
Or even demanding
To lead him about in a noose

LUCIFER:
Shall we make thee a wager?
We are at your pleasure
Perhaps it is not so secure

SATAN:
He will take your intelligence
And make it material

LUCIFER;
He will use it for means
Sinful and serial

SATAN:
He will throw in the mud
What you hold so dear

LUCIFER:
Like pearls to a swine
It will not take a year!

MICHAEL:
Away, away! You deplorable ghosts
I trust in the power of spirit inherent
In every man though he may be aberrant.
Error is good when it brings about learning
Inside every man the right question is burning!

SATAN:
He will not ask it!

LUCIFER:
He will look past it!

MICHAEL:
I believe that intelligence leads
To inquiry,
That is my creed.

LUCIFER AND SATAN TOGETHER (to one another):
The sons of earth will ne’er see heaven
Once they’ve tasted of our leaven.
Come let us go to your place and to mine...
The pageant has started there isn't much time!

Grail Sword - Excalibur (Excerpt from Editor's Cut - Fifth Gospel)

THE FIRST TIME Herodias held the sword, she was not taken by it because of the purity of its steel, or the ornate craftsmanship of its pommel, or the breadth of its tang or the trueness of its edge. She was impressed by its history: that its steel was made from a metal fallen from the sky which had claimed to it the powers of earth, air, wind and fire; that it was forged by a Philistine of great knowledge whose ancestry harked back to Tubal Cain himself, the master of all blacksmiths; and finally, but more importantly, that it was tempered in the blood of a dragon.

Thus had it come to Israel through a bloody act and it would continue to seek blood in the same way that like substances attract.

It was young King David who first came by the sword. Having killed the giant Goliath with a sling he had no weapon with which to cut off his head so he used the giant’s own sword. Later, fearing its magic, David had altered its hilt to depict not the dragon emblem of the Philistines but his own star – the Star of David, which became the insignia of the Hebrew people. After that it was given to his son, Solomon the wise, who did not kill with it, but made it speak the truth, for he brandished it against a child loved by two women - to know which one of them was the child’s true mother. Solomon, knowing its powers, sealed over his father’s star a pentagram, transforming the sword into an amulet of great power, able to harness good spirits and evil spirits alike.

The sword descended through the generations and came to rest in the hands of the brother of Judas Maccabbeus, Simon, the warrior who formed the Hasmonean dynasty. Quite naturally it was among the many treasures surrendered to Herod the Great when he took Simon’s daughter, Miriam, for a wife. But Herodias did not come by it through her grandparents but through her half uncle, Herod Antipas, who gave it to her as a gift, a promise of his undying love on the eve of their commitment to marry.

Herod had told her of its occult powers and Herodias’ natural propensity for all things mystical and magical had set her heart to unlocking its secrets with a mighty ambitious greed. But despite all her concentration on it, its secrets eluded her until a vision in the smoke led her to believe that the sword would not work in her hands until Solomon’s bewitchment was reversed, that is, until it shed blood again - not the blood of a Goliath, an evil man of great authority - but the blood of a pure man divested of power.

She waited long for such a man, and she found him at Ainon, preaching repentance.
From that time until now she had sought his death but only now, this night, did it seem as if her plans would finally fall into place.

On Writing my Interpretation of 'Fifth Gospel'

To me every book is a child. No matter how imperfect I love every one with the same deeply felt, passionate, unconditional love.

I conceive it, I take it to full term, I give birth to it, I do my best to educate it and to raise it to perfection and then I let it go into the wide world. A difficult task, and one that must be taken in small steps: first my wonderful team of readers, including my husband and my mother, then next come the publisher/Editor and the Copy Writer, after that the Editor again and the Proof Reader, the typesetter and printer and the bookseller and finally the readers who conceive my child anew into their own souls.

I don't remember exactly the day I conceived Fifth Gospel. But I do remember thinking that it was unthinkable! To bring together the Four Canonical Gospels and then to try to reconcile them with Rudolf Steiner's Fifth Gospel seemed to me to be the height of intellectual, not to mention spiritual, arrogance. Specially considering I had always been more interested in the Gospels of John and Mark and related only a little to Matthew and to Luke.

The journey over a five year period began while I was still editing The Seal. Yes, in the middle of chaos, once again. I recall that the inspiration was gradual, the words spoken by my muse, my conscience were:

'You can do it.'

I countered this with: 'But why should I do it? There are better mothers than me: better writers, better theologians etc...etc...'

And received the answer, 'Because someone should do it and until now, no one has.'

'Ok then...' I said, 'How do I do it?'

One day I walked into a bookshop and found Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. I read the first three lines and I didn't realise that his prose had conceived something in me! (You see that is how I conceive, always through other writers). Something in the prose helped me see how I should approach the Matthew Jesus and the Luke Jesus. Even so, I was still in denial. I did what some women do, I told myself I was not pregnant at all. No I would not conceive this one! Let someone else have this difficult child! But then...there is a point at which one just has to accept that destiny is destiny and that like it or not, the content is already in you, and that now you have to do the hard yards!

I now knew how I should do it, and why I should do it, and so I told myself that after weighing up the consequences and my abilities - I would make a start - this was the 'when' - I would see if this child was viable.

The one question I didn't ask was 'where'!

I should have asked this question. But then again had I, I may not have started Fifth Gospel at all, because shortly after making my decision to do it, I found that our family was moving. We had made a decision to take time out and we moved everything, lock stock and barrel: children, dog, books, house, life, into a 42 foot yacht!

This was the 'where'!

With the wind whistling through the rigging and the cordage creaking, I sat in a postage stamp sized navigation station with my lap top under my chin and a blanket over my shoulders. That is how I wrote the first few lines of Fifth Gospel. Actually, everything began with Cassius Gaius Longinus. I saw him first, I saw him looking out at the rising sun and worshipping Mithras just before he took his legionaires to Bethlehem, to do the bloody work of Herod.

After four months we moved back into our house, (oh the Blessed day!) and it then took me two years of intense study, heart ache and soul searching to get the content of the book down and another two years to edit its six hundred or so pages. The editing took so much out of me because I had to find a way of reducing the weight of my newborn baby without killing it altogether! I am only now recovering from the stress of it, and from the results of sitting in the same spot for ten hours a day!

Right from the start I knew this child would be controversial, it would not be easily understood. People would find it confronting, they would want to change it: those who are fixed in their view of the Four Gospels; those who don't want anything remotely religious; and those who, (and rightly so), would be concerned about the 'integrity' of Rudolf Steiner's Fifth Gospel. It wasn't even my intention to call this child 'Fifth Gospel', but after naming it Secret Gospel and Eternal Gospel during its gestation, I could see that Fifth Gospel just kept coming up, time and again. So, the day of its Christening, I bowed down to what seemed to me to be divine intervention. A name means so much, when rightly given it reflects the inner life of the child, its karma, its destiny - so be it.

There were so many times I just fell on my knees with thankfulness, because I was learning so much from this child! It was teaching me about myself! But I worried about it, scolded it and fussed too much! I fought for its rights, defended it from bullies (there is always one or two), and finally resorted to taking its education into my own hands. Now, I have to let it go. It has taken its first steps out of the house and has made its tentative way into the world. I'll see how it goes. It can always come home again!

I'm reconciled to the fact that it will have its joys and its sufferings and I will feel every criticism and praise as my own responsibility. For I will not say that this child of mine is perfect, how could it be? This, every mother must learn to accept. But if it touches the heart of others, even if only a few, if it stimulates a desire in them to know more, if it brings comfort to those who are in need of it and discomfort to those who have been too comfortable with their own opinions...well then...what more could a mother ask for?

The Way to the Grail Continued...

...Now for the second way – the way of the heights.

A hundred years or more after the death of Christ a man was born who in a cave widowed his soul and met the Being known as Apollo, Osiris and Ormuz; the Being who had come to earth through the stars and had died at Golgotha and had risen again - the Being of Christ.

The Christ was He, Who entered in gradalis into a stone of flesh and bone called Jesus of Nazareth, the first Grail most Holy. And in that cave Christ revealed to young man the dove that hovers from above and overshines the Grail of his soul. The youth was told to prepare the path for the Grail, so that all men might, to the Grail, their own path find. But Christ told him that before all else, there must a marriage be, of old and new within men’s hearts - this was to be his solemn task.

So when the Sun stood in the sign of the Lamb, and King Shapur reigned in the land, this young man taught concerning the primeval light descended into the darkness to overcome evil not through conflict but through love. The words of Christ to men he spoke, and so full of the spirit was his speech that men called him the comforter, the Paraclete - the messenger of the Holy Spirit promised by heaven. His name was Mani – he who is overshone by Manas...Ayeee!

But Mani had many enemies, who poisoned the mind of the king of Shapur. The priests of Zoroaster did not wish to unite the wisdom of Christ with the knowledge of Ormuz. And so it was, in the second year of the Roman emperor Gallus, in that city of Gondhi Shapur, that the priests schemed and plotted and lied...

...and had Mani crucified.

His teachings however were not lost but preserved from mouth to ear. In the meantime, ignorance reigned, for the mystery of Christ was no more understood and the church fathers not pierced by the Word’s holy lance, would hammer from it a second sense. In Councils wise men met and fought like ravenous wolves, full of hunger for their opinions. Discord bred hatred and hatred bred intolerance and from it a dark child of violence spread over their dominions. East and West divided and between them a chasm of confusion, so deep as to touch the fires of Hades! This spread to the minds of simple men and filled them with delusion. They struck down priests and philosophers, seized them in their churches, in their homes or in the streets; tore them apart limb from life or caused them such terrible strife they had to flee.

And so too the followers of Mani.

But with them went the knowledge of the Grail, through the fiery lands of the Capadoccians and to the country of the Slavs where it fell into hands of the Bogomils – the beloved of God. They in turn travelled to land of the Franks, and like the Egyptian book of Thoth and the Emerald Tablet – this knowledge was sealed in a golden box: A box within a silver box, within an ebony box - the hearts of those brave men.

And that is how the two wisdoms, one from the west and one from the east, found their way to the fair southern land of Troubadours and Cathars, the land of courtly a-mor.

And as it is true that God was a maiden’s child, then blessed be the mother whose child doth the summons hear:

This song.

For what does it tell? Of a romance, an adventure, a dream? Heaven or hell? Or is it the tale of a wisdom and knowledge won? To know it we must look for logic where there is none - like fire in water and dew in the midday sun....

Fragment Continued....

It was the Archangel Michael whose flaming sword first struck the stone from Lucifer’s crown. I hear the sound of it - iron against emerald struck from silver! This stone of the greatest beauty and purity, preserved from the fall shines - like an angel! Unlike those angels who sought to ensnare men, this angel did not follow Adam, but took the path from the heights to the depths to shape a vessel of flesh; by whose power it is said that the phoenix burns to ashes and the ashes give him life again; upon sight of which no man can die but waxes youthful if daily he beholds it – the stone all men call The Grail.

Now hearken to the wisdom of this Grail and the two ways that the knowledge of it passed into the world.

Firstly it came into the hands of one of Israel’s race who was able through blood to see the future in the stars. His name was Flegitanis and in the city of Hiram he did give this knowledge to a queen, Sheba, who bore it to her groom Solomon. With this knowledge Solomon then built a mighty temple that observed the maxim as above so it is below; for Solomon’s temple foretold the vessel, the Grail born from a virgin, destined to be present at the cenacle on the night of the Last Supper and to stand before Pilate and hang upon a cross of black wood. This Grail the stars foretold, a Roman soldier would pierce so that the God’s blood - His Sang Real - could fall into the clefts of the earth to redeem the sin of Cain.

This intelligence of the Grail was to Joseph of Arithmathea given, and it found a way to England and by way of St Columba to Spain, where in Toledo, that place of learning, it was made into a book that by chance was brought to France by a man who became my master - Guyot of Provence.

This is the first way...Hearken to the second...

A Fragment ...

From Lucifer’s crown Michael cast a stone.
What is the stone?
A pure spirit that fell
Why did it fall?
To become a vessel
What is this vessel?
It is the Holy Grail
What is the Grail?
It holds the blood of Christ
Who is Christ?
He resides within the Grail
What is the Grail?
It is a vessel
What is this vessel?
A pure spirit that fell
Why did it fall?
Because it was a stone
And what is the stone?
It was what Michael cast from Lucifer’s crown.

Lo with bated breath and fearful do I begin my song which long ago was written in a cluster of stars.

What does it tell you ask?

It is a secret so great as the Sun! So small as a drop of blood!
For never have I met one so wise he did not seek to learn from it; nor one so satisfied he did not yearn to possess it; nor indeed one so idle he did not will to find it. Some have died for it and some have killed for it - but no man may come near to it through desire, it will come to him instead, through lack of it. For he must guard himself against incontinence, in him humility must conquer pride, faith must conquer doubt, love - hatred and courage fear. Only when he has awakened from dullness into doubt shall he be called by God to it and to blessedness, as I have been – and what of you, kind listener?

Are you one of those whom the Grail calls to service? Is your name inscribed upon its lip and does it fade from sight as soon as read? If so, then sooth indeed are these words said:

Here begins the song of thy descent,
Here begins the song of the Grail
Here begins the terror,
Here begins the miracle.

Such is the nature of it, which few understand but many tell.
Let him who has ears, hear it, for what God doeth, he doeth well.

On my Grandmother, the wisdom of Indian women, and Three Magical Words...

My Grandmother was a wonderful story teller. She was a small woman, with gnarled hands and a bent back from years of sewing, but her eyes were young, bright, vibrant. When she spoke the air tingled and the world grew quiet. I think she would have liked this story.


Belem, Brazil

The night was long and the girl, afraid of the mists and the incessant pounding of the rain on the zinc roof, could not sleep. Moreover the pestilential heat had excited the savage gnawing of the mosquitoes, and as usual, the girl got out of bed and made her way through the great dark house full of furniture and books and ancient rugs to the Indian woman's room.

When she opened the door She had to feel her way to the bed. She looked to where the woman lay. She couldn't see her: the cut across the woman’s face, which the girl had imagined to be shaped like a map of the Amazon; or her missing ear that the other servants said had been eaten by rats. As much as she tried, she couldn’t make out the picture of Jesus with the gold heart that hung on the wall next to the door, looming over a tall bureau covered in candles and rosaries and crucifixes. She only knew where they were instinctively, for she had been here many times. When she climbed into bed the leftover smells of lie soap, lemons and hot sun on sheets, the aroma of ripe dirt outside the window, were all mixed with the woman’s musky scent and it comforted her. Now under the sheets, the sounds of the insects, the twitter of night birds, the growth groans of trees made soothing pictures in her heart, not ominous ones, and that is when the woman’s raspy voice came into her ear.
‘Mimosa? What do you want, child?’
‘I can’t sleep,Tutú.’
The woman sighed. ‘As if I haven’t got enough to do looking after you all day and running this big house…do I have to look after you at night too?’
But the girl could tell there was no anger in her voice, so she snuggled into the woman’s ample arms. ‘I want you to tell me the story of the three words.’
‘Now? Why do you wish to hear it child?’ The Indian said.
‘Because I always fall asleep just before you tell me the words.’
The Indian sighed, ‘No. Not again. Go to sleep!’
The Indian woman was not young but she was strong and unlike the other servants of the household could read and write and so she had a stubborn streak, which my Grandmother much admired. She knew she would only take a little cojoling.
‘Come Tutú, please…tell it to me.’
‘Your father will cut off my other ear!’
‘Please Tutú, I won't tell…’
‘The priest will call me a witch and he’ll drag me from the house by my hair and burn me alive in the town square before your eyes, girl!’
The girl shuddered, ‘I won’t let that stupid man do anything to you! I’ll bite him on the hand until he lets go of you and then you can run into the jungle to be free!’
‘Mimosa! Don’t say silly things. I am happy how I am, and the priest is a man of God!’
‘Please Tutú, I promise I won’t tell...’ the girl pleaded.
In the gloom the girl saw the woman’s broad white smile but she did not speak. She paused for a long time, as if the space between telling and not telling was a threshold beyond which perils awaited that only her Indian ways could understand, then she took in a dark breath and said, ‘The day you were born a wind came from the jungle full of voices from the past, full of whispers in my ears.’
‘That’s the day you were worried?’
‘Yes…’ she yawned, ‘I was worried that your birth might not go well, child. In those days there was only one road to this town and with the rain it would take the doctor long to get here. I was the only servant and with these hands I took you from your mother’s belly myself…ah Mimosa! You were so tiny! I covered you and washed you with soap in a bucket and then your mother, Donna Francisca fell to sleep holding you and your father went to see to his books in the study. It was when I was throwing out the bath water that I saw three Macaw feathers on the back step…that is when I knew for sure, something bad would happen, when I came back to check on you and your mother, your mother was so quiet that I put my hand over her face and I saw she wasn’t breathing.’
‘What happened?’ the girl asked.
‘When the doctor came all the family were already around the bed sobbing.’
‘Yes?’
‘But your mother wasn’t dead, child.’
‘She wasn’t.’
‘No.’
‘From a child your mother had always seen things, she had what we call a second eye. The priests tried to take the spirit out of her soul but they couldn’t and so she came to this place with your father, who loved her. On the day she died she saw something. When she came back into her body she told no one what she saw. Her soul was squeezed from so much seeing, child, that she couldn’t bear to see no more and she shut herself up in her room with all her shutters closed and never came out.
‘What did she do in her room all that time?’ the girl asked turning to face the woman.
‘She was writing.’
‘What?’
‘What she saw. She wrote and wrote and wrote…she wrote so much there was not enough paper in the town, not enough ink in the world to feed the hunger of her words. Every week I had to go into the town to buy more paper, more ink, new quills…you see child, words are living things that can eat you up if you haven’t got enough food to feed their hungry mouths when they come out!’
‘My mother didn’t have enough food to feed her words, is that why she died?’
The woman leaned in and whispered it, ‘No child, her time had come.’
‘How do you know what she wrote?’
‘I was leaving lunch outside the door to your mother’s room as usual when she opened it, it was the first time in a long time that I had seen her and she had turned from a young woman to an old woman almost overnight, she asked me to come in and to sit down.’
‘Were you afraid?’
‘No child! Your mother was as gentle as a newborn kitten. No I wasn’t afraid, I was surprised and I was curious too, it’s the Indian blood in me that always wants to know things…’
‘What did she want?’
‘She asked me to help her.’
‘And you said you would?’
‘Yes, child, in this job there’s no such a thing as saying no.’
‘So you helped her to finish the book?’
‘Night and day I helped her, until my hand was all cramped up and the oil ran out in the lantern and had to be filled many times…days and days until it was finished.’
‘What was in it?’ the girl yawned.
'It was something for you.'
'Yes...yes...' her eyes closed and she sighed. 'tell me again.'
'Your mother wrote just three words.'
'How can three words fill a whole book, though?'
'They are magic...that's how.'
'Yes...' the girl said, sleepily.'They are magic.'
'They are her gift to you and she said that one day you will be ready to know them and when that day comes, you will weave them into a great many books.'
The girl yawned and her voice was very faint,'Yes...I will...tell me the words...Tutú, I still don't know what they are...the words...'
The woman drew close and whispered into the girl's ear:
'Your Grandmother told me the right combination of these three words has the power to transform all the evil and injustice in the world...they are...Faith...Love and Hope.'
But there was no response and so the Indian woman leaned in and listened to the girl's soft rhythmic breathing and smiled that white smile to herself.
The girl had fallen asleep again.

On Hermes, Pharaohs and the Art of Writing...

Plato tells that when the God Thoth-Hermes presented the Pharaoh Thamus, with a new technique he called ‘writing’ the Pharaoh was at first full of wonder for it, but then he grew fearful.

‘If you teach my people to write pictures upon a tablet of stone they will no longer look upwards to the pictures inscribed in the stars by the twice twelve elders. They will not need to remember the sacrifices of the gods but will look down instead at twenty-four demons you call letters, which will no longer describe their divine messages, but only the contents of their own souls! They will not, therefore, write truth but only semblance, they will hear many things but learn nothing!’

Hermes explained, ‘The ability to read the words of the gods was a gift to man, but already by degrees, man forgets the speech of the stars. One day,’ he told him, ‘even priests will see nothing but their position and their movement in the heavens. Writing is needed only until men develop, from out of their own souls, the memory power that can read the starry script again.’

'But how long will that be, wise Hermes?’ the Pharaoh asked.

‘First man must come to worship the words of his own creation and build great temples to hold all the words that are written…finally he will construct great devices that will fashion words with great speed, and all men will marvel, and the devil will make man believe that he is a god, that there exists nothing higher than the words he creates.’

The Pharaoh was full of dismay for it. ‘What shall you do, wise Hermes? What will you give to man to help raise his eyes from words to the heavens again?’

‘What shall I give him?’ Hermes said smiling cagily, ‘Well...I shall give the threefold Wisdom of Hermes, to prepare him for the descent of the true Word, Osiris, come down to earth.'

'Osiris will come down to earth?' the Pharaoh gasped in dismay. 'What shall this mean for all the Pharoahs, great Hermes? Shall we who represent His word on earth, the kings and priests, not be needed?'

'When the Word of the kingdom of heaven descends, mighty Pharaoh, a man will become his own king. He will inscribe the pictures of heaven into his heart as if it were an Emerald Tablet. Then, full of the word of God, which is love, he will speak forth his own individual, living sacrifice. Thus will the content of his soul become selfless, for it will be one with the content of heaven. That is how he shall become a creator god by observing the Wisdom of Hermes which is threefold: light,love and life, which illustrates the meaning of 'as above, so is below and as below, so is above.'

The Pharaoh was confused, worried, elated, and amazed. Finally he looked to Hermes who is thrice great and said, 'So be it!'

Interview with Kristen Owenby - on Temple of the Grail 2006

1. Your book, “Temple of the Grail,” takes place within a mountain monastery in 13th century France. What attracted you to this historical setting?

Writing can be a strangely wonderful and mysterious process and it is really difficult to pin point how ideas form themselves and gather together around a central theme from the myriad of nebulous possibilities. It requires a certain amount of rigorous conscious reflection. I guess the physical and historical setting for Temple of the Grail were the first pieces belonging to one very complicated puzzle that began to come together after I had been reading history, philosophy and esoteric texts, in particular the works of Rudolf Steiner, for a long time. In my studies I found myself particularly drawn to the Rosicrucians, the Templars, Cathars and all aspects of the Grail legend, and when I realized I was going to write a book it seemed to me that destiny had inspired these years of study for that purpose. I felt that I was finally bringing to fruition something that I had started many lives before this one.

During the first tentative beginnings I formed imaginations of where I would set the book. I knew that time and again when legends spoke of the Grail they spoke of it being kept in a secluded place, difficult to access, guarded from all sides, a mountainous region away from the cares of everyday life. Because I am an artist at heart I began to draw. I drew and painted what seemed to me like a monastery. I knew its environs and could see it from all angles. In time I came to devise a detailed plan to the point where I could walk around the monastery blindfolded, without going over the edge of a parapet, or without thinking I was in the garden when I was in the graveyard. This was a profound experience, I could see everything very clearly, the vegetation, the trees, the clouds, the mists. I knew there was a connection between Christian Rozencreutz and the Grail but I did not realize until I started writing that there was a connection between Christian Rozenkreutz, the Grail, the Cathars and the Templars until the book developed. I knew then where the monastery had to be situated, in the South of France in a fiercely independent region, whose language, culture and more importantly whose religion, had brought it into conflict with the king of France and Holy Inquisition. Only here in the mid 13th century could the events of Temple of the Grail have transpired. It was at this time around 1250 that Rudolf Steiner states human beings had reached their darkest spiritual hour – the lowest point in their ability to communicate with spiritual worlds.


2. Did you have any concerns going into the project? Were your goals the same throughout the writing process or did you find yourself being “led” by the story?

I have always been led by the story and by my characters who are usually very strong and obstinate and quite uncompromising. They always tell me what they want to do or say. The fact is that in the beginning I had no intention of writing a murder mystery. I would never have thought myself capable of writing in this very difficult genre. I only knew it around seventy pages into the book when Eisik announced that someone would die that night! I resisted it because I was concerned about juxtaposing the Grail with anything as evil as murder, but in the end I was unable to do otherwise - it was what was required of me - and when I finally allowed it to happen the pieces of puzzle fell into place. Now that I can look at Temple of the Grail more objectively I see that it could never have been written any other way. Good can’t exist without Evil; knowledge without ignorance; darkness without light. And interestingly, it is this duality that became a central motif of the book. Now I am always careful not to let my intellect drive the story – anyway, when it begins to creep in I know it because the book doesn’t come together!

3. Which books, in terms of spiritual research, did you glean the most from for this book?

There were so many! I had to read, over time, an entire library of Anthroposophical texts! – I’m really not kidding! But if I must narrow it down to spiritual texts I would have to say, I relied heavily on the works of Rudolf Steiner: Knowledge of Higher Worlds, Occult Science an Outline, Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation and Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rozenkreutz, as well as Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on the Templars in particular the Inner Impulses of Evolution. These were my primary books and lectures.


4. “Temple of the Grail” is a book which many might say would make an intriguing film. Would you ever be open to a cinematic adaptation?

This is an interesting question. It was important to me when I began to write Temple of the Grail that it not be an easy put down, pick up read, because a book that depicts spiritual truths has to be consciously received by the soul, it has to be ‘digested’, the imagination has to be engaged, only through such a conscious effort is the reader left free to take it or leave it depending on his or her readiness to know these truths. If there were a way of achieving something similar through the medium of film it would be a wonderful way of reaching more people.

5. Could you tell us a little about your introduction to Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy?

I came to Anthroposophy eighteen years ago. I was holidaying with my family at my mother’s house and I picked up a book that was sitting casually on her coffee table, it was called The Four Mystery Dramas. I didn’t understand anything in it, though something told me that I had to find out more about its author and because my mother had already been reading Rudolf Steiner’s works for a few months she had some books that she could lend me. To this day I wonder if she didn’t plan the whole thing! I read book after book and I haven’t stopped since. It is only recently that I allowed myself to pick up The Four Mystery Dramas again, and now I discover that I have some understanding of it.

6. Which of Steiner’s books are your favorites?

It is always the book I’m reading at any particular time. They are all my favourites! The book I consult the most, however, would have to be Knowledge of Higher Worlds. My old copy was covered in sticky tape until if finally fell to pieces. Each time I read it I understand something new.

7. What books and writers do you enjoy outside the realm of Anthroposophy?

I loved reading Plato’s dialogues and the works of Aristotle for Temple of the Grail but when it comes to modern day writers Margaret Mitchell was a foremost influence in my teens - after I read Gone with the Wind I knew that one day I would become a writer of historic fiction. Herman Hesse is another favorite, Narcissus and Goldmund in particular. I love the way he can see beauty in the most unexpected things, even in a corpse, which shows me he knows something about positivity. These days I have been enjoying Gabriel Garcia Marquez because in his work all is possible – he has a wonderful ability to suspend disbelief. A Hundred Years of Solitude has set me free.

8. Could you tell us about any upcoming projects?

My second book The Seal has been released here in Australia and is doing very well. It is a very loose sequel to Temple of the Grail and it continues to explore the destiny of the Templars, this time at the hands of Philip the Fair and Clement V. The Seal is a very different book, in that it is not narrated by one character but explores many perspectives. Moving backwards and forwards like a time traveller it opens and ends in the present day but the main body of the book is set in the past and the action begins in 1291 at the fall of Acre in the Holy Land. It follows the Templars as they retreat firstly to Cyprus and then to France where they are arrested. Switching in viewpoints, it climbs into the heads and hearts of the knights, and explores their struggle to cut a path through the ruination of a spiritual ideal in order to safeguard the realisation of a higher task, whose symbolic representation is engraved on the Grand Master’s secret seal. It enters also, conversely, into the tangled darkness of Philip the Fair’s soul, into the scheming minds of his lawyers, into the heart of a torturer - the Inquisitor of France, and into the doubts and fears of the morally corrupt Pope Clement V. The most surprising part for me was realising that Christian de St Armand of Temple of the Grail wanted to make a cameo appearance in it – perfect!

These days I am in the process of writing a third book, which looks like being another loose sequel – but then I’ll just have to see what my characters have to say about it.

Excerpt from Fifth Gospel, chapter entitled, Bread of Life.

One such evening, when the sun was westering, he chose twelve men from among the seventy followers. James, happy to be among them followed him to a mountain whereupon he said he would teach them how to pray.

‘Open your hearts, for I will tell you something…’ he said as night closed about them, ‘once upon a pagan altar, I travelled through these lands, nearby to Caesarea Phillipi. Not far from the township, in a Temple, I heard a voice, it was the Bath-Kol, the thunder of heaven, and I was taken up by it, and it spoke a prayer of lament into my soul, for the downfall of man…now I will give you a reversal of this prayer. A prayer of the hopeful soul that rises up from the fall towards its spirit home.’He began it, ‘Our Father…who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name…’
And oh! What majestic choruses did James hear coming from his words! It was as if all of creation was consumed by light! Yes, praised be God! Reversed was the original darkness of sin, and the fall into degradation, and begun was the ascent towards heavenly, newborn life!

The moment passed, and Jesus, now sitting among them beneath the cedars, said, ‘This prayer tells that what lives in me is the kingdom, the power and the glory of heaven come down to the earth. I have come to bring the heavenly bread, the heavenly teachings that can feed you. Whosoever is fed in life, will not suffer death, for death in the body is only the beginning of life in the spirit, and suffering in one life becomes the seed of joy in the next.’

James puzzled over it, and said to him, ‘Can you tell us, master, what the kingdom of Heaven is like?’

Jesus sat back against the tree, and it seemed that even the calm breeze was paused for his answer. ‘To others I speak in parables but I have chosen you and brought you here because I wish now to speak plain with you…the kingdom is a light, a light that shines into the darkness of your souls,’ he said to them.

On Destiny, Kangaroos and the Sound of Music...

I often wonder about destiny and the torturous turns and twists that led a half Spanish, half Brazilian girl half way round the world to Australia just so she could learn a new language and write about France, Germany, and Austria!

When I was only nine and my parents told me we were moving to Australia, I said, 'Oh great...it's really cold there!'

But my Dad shook his head, 'No! That's Austria...Australia's hot. The Kangaroos have to bounce around a lot so as not to burn their feet, and the people eat lamb at Christmas time.'

I wasn't at all impressed. I liked little lambs and I wanted to go to Austria, where it always snowed and everybody sang on mountain tops about the hills being alive with the sound of music!

Excerpt from Fausto - A book that I have not yet published.

How Fausto meets with Aristotle, and the sage teaches him the argument of non contradiction.

Among those whom he saw, applying themselves to some industry, one in particular stood out from the rest. And it would be difficult to describe him in words that suit form-filled things, except to say that he exuded a kind of supremely logical intelligence, and was in a fashion, motioning him, in a familiar gesture of welcome, or so to him it seemed.

"You were there but now you are here," he said, followed by others, who had now gathered around, as if to hear the words of the sage. "Ten principles are all around you and as Heraclitus once said, no man may dip twice in the same stream....and it was he too who said, only one who views death can view the merits and demerits of life, then even imperfections become justified, for illness makes health sweet, hunger makes food appreciable, toil enjoys rest....the sea contains water that is pure and impure, drinkable and wholesome for fish, and yet undrinkable and injurious for humans. A square longs for a circle and a circle a square. So you wish to redeem the devil? You are brave. Many have tried it, many will continue to do so, but they all have failed at least they have not been entirely successful."

"That was not my desire." Fausto answered worriedly. "I wished only to be a knight and a good poet."

"Yes....I know. But it is all about transformation you see? Even a poet was once a child without words, as you were once a poet without a sword. Compassion, compassion, your poor Benedictine suffers seeing what mankind has to suffer at the hands of the Devil, and he wishes to learn the secret of transubstantiation. It is true, I am the most suited to help you. " He glowed with good humour as did the others, humming to his words. "You must think....think! Thoughts divinely inspired are like water and bread! Juxtapositions of words, numbers, merging philosophies! The harmony of the world arises from opposites held in tension, from odd and even numbers, long and short lengths, as in the lyre and the bow...eternal dualism...notes together to form a unity. One contradicts another like limited and unlimited, even and odd, one and many, right and left, male and female, still and moving, straight and bent, light and darkness, good and bad, square and oblong etc etc....but together! Harmony!" He resonated and all around there was a streaming outwards of sympathetic thought. "I have dealt with Pythagorean philosophy many times, that is, that numbers are the primary constituents of the world. This is what Alcmaeon of Croton also supposed. But then there are also those like Xenophanes who looked up at the whole sky and pronounced that God was one. Plato too sought the truth, but really, how may forms be numbers? It is impossible. What no one realised is that from the union of two thoughts there always arises a third that is higher than the other two, as it is with the union of man and woman."

"Who are you?" He asked.

The spirit warmed, and there was a general sensation of amusement. "You don't recognise me? Today I feel that I am all things at once, and yet in your world I have been called, Aristotle."

Sneak Preview of First Chapter of Fifth Gospel

1

MEETING LEA

Montségur, 1244

I AM not a troubadour and yet I sing. I am a bishop and yet I do not belong to any church. I have come by what I know by way of ignorance, and what I possess is mine because I am dispossessed. That is how I have arrived at who I am – by sacrificing certainty.

But who am I?

I am old. I do not imagine myself old, no, but when I look at my hands I see they are veined, when I feel my face I know it is full of creases, and when I walk I am reminded that my joints are not always prepared to follow. Alas! I have lived long enough, near fifty years without mishap, and I dare say I should have lived many more had destiny allowed it, but it has not, it has set me upon this difficult path and it will lead me on it until I reach that place which you shall know in the end.

Yes, I am old, and growing old means I have had to watch my friends die one by one, the foremost of them being my socio, Guilhabert de Castres. Oh…I miss him as I would miss a leg or an arm! I can still see him so vividly: a short man with small hands and feet, a rounded face that wrinkled when he smiled, close, sharp eyes that saw only the goodness in everything, and a jaw that jutted out as if it were made of steel, a signal of his strong will. A will so determined that even in his later years when I travelled with him all over Languedoc, on our nocturnal rides to secret meetings or on journeys from one village to another, he never tired. He walked always with a certain rhythm, his back as straight as a rod and his head pointing the way. In those days I was tall and muscular, and yet I was ever amazed to see him climb the steep and arduous path to the pog of Montségur with ease, smiling and joyful to arrive at the top, while I puffed and grumbled with every step and trailed behind him, red faced and fatigued.

I think now as I descend that same path, keeping my mortal appointment with God, how fitting it is that Guilhabert has missed this end of ends! When I think of it, tears fall from my eyes. They are falling now and I wipe them with a hand as I pause to look up. The sky is yet dark and I am looking for the sign. It should come from the summit of Bidorta if all goes well. Indeed…if all goes well! I feel a pang in my heart to think on the alternative when the bee that has been buzzing around me for some days comes again to cheer my spirit. That little sun creature leads the way that descends and winds over the frost covered stones. It reminds me of my promise and helps me to sew into my soul the happenings of those days and to weave everything into a song; a song which you shall only know after I have died and returned again to sing it.