THE SOPHIA OF THREE LIVES - A Fictional Exploration of karma.

The man is an Egyptian priest. He is a priest because he is one of the few still capable of communing with the upper Gods collectively called - Osiris. When he stands before the stars and observes the patterns of light they make, he looks into his soul to find understanding, into that part of him that still remembers the language of God, this he knows is the Isis in his soul, which the Greeks call Theososophia - the wisdom of God.

Though he cannot see Isis, like the priests of older times, he has always been able to hear her interpretations, and because he is unclouded by personal feelings he has been made the chief of all priests. Isis helps him and his priests to know many things of great importance for the guidance of his people and while ever he can read the words in the stars and understand them through Isis selflessly, he is able to lead the priestly circle to direct the people in a way that is wise and just and fruitful.


One day something creeps into his nightly ritual, when with the other twelve he looks up to what the stars would say. A longing rises in him for something other than the words of the gods, he desires to speak out his own words, what lives in his own thoughts and instead of intoning the 'We' he intones the forbidden word - 'I'! Immediately there rings out a stern and awful warning which shakes him and the other priests to their very foundations. He has mingled his own self into the prayers and this has polluted the ritual. He has to leave the circle and never return and he is shunned from the temple forever. He is too egoistic to be a priest.


In his next life the Egyptian priest returns again with a certain attitude of soul which longs for nature. He wants to be a farmer but his life has led him into that army which follows the God of the Sun, the young Alexander, into Egypt.

He is an honourable man and a good soldier, and his common sense leads Alexander himself to take note of him on more than one occasion, and so he is given many responsibilities. He is outwardly honoured but inwardly sad for he does not like this foreign land they call Egypt and he does not trust the decadence of its priests.


To all he seems an ordinary man but he has a special gift. At certain moments, unbidden by him, he is able to dream into nature and to observe there the workings of the lower gods collectively called Dionysus. In those moments he sees Demeter and although she never speaks he discerns her intentions in relation to those gods, in that part of his soul that is one with nature, that part that Aristotle is said to have called, Philosophy.


At a certain point upon the army's march in the south lands they begin to traverse a narrow beach close by a hard cliff wall. Here he sees the Goddess and she points to the tide and he understands that the army will not reach higher ground before it turns again. He hesitates, for surely this is only a dream! It is plain to see that higher ground is near and they will have time to reach it. He will not bother the generals with a dream and entice their ridicule!


But the cart carrying provisions loses a wheel in the sand and by the time it is repaired the tide has turned. Many men and horses perish and the soldier realises with bitterness and sorrow his mistake and decides that he has failed the Goddess and her consort Alexander - the God of the Sun - the image of Apollo on earth! He tells himself he is too cowardly for Revelation and so he closes his eyes to his dreams and the world of nature loses its colour. When he returns home he does not buy a farm but turns his eyes to books and becomes very learned about the natural world though no one could guess it, for on the surface he seems just a simple man.

In his next life he returns again, this time as a teacher. One day this teacher, now a woman, learns about biodynamic farming and she takes herself to a conference being given locally about it. She finds that she is drawn to the speaker because he is a great philosopher, a clear thinker like Aristotle, who speaks about the spirit in nature and the language of the stars without a trace of dreaminess or priestly dogma. She feels he is enchanting memories from the depths of her soul of things she has always known in a different way. These fill her heart with warmth and enthusiasm, but most of all a desire to learn more about this Anthroposophy he teaches, and so she embarks on a deep study. 

She finds that the more she studies, the more she senses in her soul an impression, in that place where she is used to sensing what is right and what is wrong during quiet moments of reflection. This part of her is that part that helps her to understand herself and now she realises that something lives there and that it is a being called Anthroposophia - the wisdom in the human being. She realises that she has always felt the guidance of this being in her heart. And she knows that although Anthroposophia lives in all human beings only those who are truly conscious of her can call themselves Anthroposophists, just as those who were once conscious of her could call themselves priests and philosophers. She also realises that because this being is a part of her, its life is dependent upon her own consciousness. This fills the teacher with a great urgency. She must teach young children in such a way that they will become conscious of this being. So she goes to the great lecturer and he gives her the task of teaching in the first Waldorf School.

Here she meets those priests from whose circle she was once banished, these are her peers; she meets those soldiers who died on that beach in Phoenicia because she was afraid of being ridiculed, these are her pupils. More and more when she walks in nature she begins to see the spirit behind everything in the world, and when she gazes out at the stars she begins to understand the pattern-language of the gods. She can say 'I' and she is not in a dream! She knows she can do this because many lives have prepared her to find within her the Wisdom, the Isis/Sophia of Christ.