Excerpt - Author's Cut Fifth Gospel - A Novel

EVIL COUNTERPARTS

‘He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good

and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’

Matthew 5:45

AT THE MOMENT the mother of God was receiving the essence of virgin-hood from the far-spread dominions of the Divine Sophia, leagues away upon an Island that faced Vesuvius called Capri, Caesar Tiberius was making room in his soul for a demon.

Some time ago, fascinated by the occult, Tiberius had become addicted to the pagan cults and rituals of the mysteries belonging to his conquered peoples. Ill prepared for the accelerated initiations to which he had subjected himself, his ignoble nature, already impetuous and prone to indulgence, became unfettered through a loosening of the mind from the heart and the will.

This loosening caused his thoughts to become crowded with hallucinations and delusions. He saw enemies around every corner, he heard of conspiracies, all men lay in wait to put a dagger into his back. Having succumbed to madness and fury, he plunged into a chaotic program of revenge. In the night his men seized unwary men, women, sometimes children, those whom his disordered mind suspected of treachery and in the day, loved ones would drag the countless bodies with hooks from the Tiber River, afraid to burn their loved ones or even to grieve, lest it be seen as a sign of treason. Some poor victims were made to drink poison, others were strangled and those young virginal women, who were protected by the law while inviolate, were first raped by his torturers before Tiberius’ sentence was carried out.

Not only delusions but also fits of excitement seized him, where his self love soared upwards in grand overestimations of his divine powers, of his status as a superhuman being whose surroundings in Rome could not hope to match his intoxicating grandness! In Capri he abandoned himself to sensual excesses, treating his deviant guests to grand orgies of food and wine that lasted days, with scores of naked dancers engaging in multiple lurid unions for entertainment, or with romps in the woods and groves where, in feverish stupor, his guests could find those boys and young women who, dressed as Pans and nymphs, would solicit their attentions in any way they desired.

At other times he experienced a pitching of his gloom into an abyss of despair. Unfettered by clarity of thought, he fell into states of anguish and hopelessness, which he sought to console through acts of cruelty against others. More and more did a depraved delight in suffering surface from out of the depths of his volcanic temper, whose volatile hungers increased with the distortions of his deranged thoughts and the fire of his disordered passions.

One day, he was taken by a stroke of genius, he ordered his guards to drag the half living and tortured carcasses of his imagined enemies and their supporters to the high cliffs where he had them cast headlong onto the rocks below. He was surprised and elated when he experienced the profoundest sexual raptures on observing his men break the bones of the dead with boathooks and oars!

Thus was his Satanic empowerment accomplished while at the same time two other events were occurring, side by side in Judea - the sublime spirit of the Sun was entering into the soul of Jesus, and not far off, in the province of Perea, the son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, friend and admirer of Tiberius, was taking his demonic sister in law, Herodias for a wife.

It was a resplendent wedding, followed by a feast to rival those feasts on the isle of Capri. Midway through the banquet, whose excess could have fed an entire village for months, Herod stood, with a goblet in hand and made a toast.

‘To Caesar Tiberius! The noble Wolf!'

The Twelve Holy Nights - Pisces/Fishes

The Twelve Holy Nights 

Two festivals stand at opposite poles at this time of the year: Christmas and Epiphany. They mark two births.  Christmas celebrates the birth of the Son of Man - Jesus, and Epiphany marks the birth of the Son of God - Christ. We could say that the twelve nights are those nights that fall between these two festivals and which  mark, on the one hand, an earthly path from Jesus to Christ, and on the other, a Cosmic path from Christ to Jesus. Two paths, one of a man towards Godhood and the other of a God towards manhood.

From Jesus to Christ:

The man's journey is a veiled one. We know something of the birth of Jesus but not much is written about his life thereafter. Why is that? Because it was far too complicated. Only recently, since the Renaissance,  have we developed a consciousness capable of understanding it.

In order to understand the path that Jesus took to become Christ we have to know that there were two Jesus children. The first being of the line of Solomon - I call this child Yeshua. Yeshua was a native of Bethlehem and his birth is depicted in the Matthew Gospel.

The second child, which I call Jesus, is the younger child from the lineage of Nathan and a native of Nazareth and his life is depicted in the Luke Gospel.

We know these are separate individuals because not only do Matthew and Luke give different genealogies in the bible, but the Matthew Jesus and the Luke Jesus are shown to have had different experiences: the Matthew child was born earlier, in the time of Herod and is visited by Magi and thereafter journeys to Egypt; while the Luke child is born at the time of Quireneus and the Census and travels to Bethlehem where he is visited by Shepherds and thereafter returns to live a quiet life in Nazareth.

Rudolf Steiner was the first modern human being to recognise this mystical fact and he has many lectures devoted to the understanding of this mystery.

The younger years in the live of the two Jesus children are similarly veiled, but we do know that the Luke Child unites with the Matthew child when the Luke child is twelve and the Matthew child is around 14. This mysterious unification occurs at the Temple in Jerusalem and is depicted in the Bible in that part where Mary loses her son and finds him speaking 'uncharacteristically' to the rabbis. This is because her quiet child is now united with the wise child who subsequently dies.

In his lectures entitled the Fifth Gospel, Rudolf Steiner gives an account of this mystery and the years that follow.

From Christ to Jesus:

The journey of  Christ through the spiritual world and His descent into a human being is also veiled.  There are various lectures in which Rudolf Steiner gives account of this journey - a journey that is sacrificial and encompasses the entire cosmos and various Zodiac constellations as he descends towards the earth and into the body Jesus of Nazareth.

During Christmas and Epiphany we celebrate Jesus' individual's outer journey in the physical world, the inner revolution occurring in the body and soul of a human being who is being prepared to accept a god into his body and soul, and paradoxically, a god's journey through the outer cosmos which is really a contraction of His heavenly nature and a sacrifice of His various exalted members through the regions of the 12 Zodiacs, in order that he might enter into the body of that prepared human being.

So, when we look at the twelve regions (the circle) of the Zodiac during those twelve Holy Nights we can find a memory of that momentous parallel path which forms a kind of cosmic ladder from human depths to spiritual heights and from spiritual heights to human depths - and for the man Jesus, it begins with the Zodiacal region of the Fishes.

    FISH/PISCES 
The first Holy Night

The path symbolised by the Fishes is the path taken by every human being who is born on earth. It is so because long ago it was taken by the first human beings who descended from the realm of the spirit to the earthly realm. They descended by  relinquishing their connection to the outer light of the spirit, in order that the unification with darkness might eventually teach them how to kindle, through their own efforts, the light within their own hearts.

This descent was experienced by the two Jesus children, who both entered into the womb of their respective mothers in order to be born into the darkness of matter - the physical world.

This descent was also experienced in a higher way, by the second Logos, the Son, who had much earlier journeyed from the heights of the Trinity into the realm of the zodiac and the Sphere of the Sun as a star. Thus was Christ born into the Spirit womb of the divine Sophia, the Sun as a star.

We can see how the two images are a wonderful unification of Christ with the realm of the Fishes and the realm of the Virgin which both stand at opposite positions in the starry sky.

In the future this unification will be a practical experience - a conscious one - undergone by the prepared human soul (Virgin/Fish) with the Spirit of Christ. This is what is mean by the Second Coming.

Within ourselves we have two fish - one swims upwards and the other downwards - one part of us is male, outward striving, individual, wise and fiery  like the Matthew Jesus, and the other part of us is feminine, inward gazing, communal, calm and loving like the Luke Jesus. The two must come together inwardly in the same way that outwardly the two Jesus'  children united in Jesus of Nazareth - if we are to find the inward and outward Christ.

It was understood in the age of the 'Twins', that is, in Persia, that the realm of the Fish and Virgin would one day unite to prepare two human beings (twins) so that they could make ready the womb for a God. For this reason the Fish has always been synonymous with Jesus Christ. He not only called Himself the 'fisher of men' but many of his disciples were 'Fishermen'. This knowledge was carried  in the soul of the early Christians who always associated Jesus Christ with the sign of the Fish until it was replaced by the Catholic Church with the sign of the black cross. On the other hand, the Vesica Pisces, the womb of the Fish, is the ancient symbol which signifies the birth of the spirit of Christ - Fish - into the womb of the soul.

John the Baptist was the initiator of the Fish initiate - Jesus. He initiated Jesus of Nazareth and facilitated the release of the Matthew Jesus from the Luke Jesus by Baptising Jesus of Nazareth with water. He could do this because he was an 'Aquarian' initiate, one who has been initiated from the region of the starry realms which was later called after him: Waterman. John the Baptist spoke of one who would come to Baptise not with water but with the Fire of the Holy Spirit. This is Christ.

So, when we look upwards to the realm of the Fish on this Holy Night, may we see what has been in the past as a sign of what is now happening within our souls so as to pave the way for what will be the experience of all men on earth - the birth of the child...the Christ within the human soul.

Mariam

The dream had come again and as always she could not remember it very well.  In the dream she always woke to the howling of a wolf and found herself in a house among a number of sleeping women. In her heart there was always a feeling of agony, a despair and horror for something that had not yet come to pass and a longing to be with someone – someone she did not yet know. But it was only a dream and awake now she searched the darkness for her child, and found him sleeping soundly on his rush mat in their family tent. 


On their journey to Egypt three years ago, fleeing from Herod and his madness, she had taken to dreaming such a dream, and upon coming to Heliopolis–that island of green calm in the middle of the barren desert–the dreams had made a pause. They had only come again lately, upon this return journey to her homeland, and she did not know what it meant but it seemed to her that it was a portent of peril.

She lay in the darkness listening to her husband’s soft breathing and recalled those years in Egypt with a fond eye. She saw Yeshua walking in the ruins of the fallen temples, his skin browned by the sun; she saw him bathing in the cool waters of the oasis for the holy ablutions, or sitting in the shade of the sycamores eating dates. She longed for the peace and safety she had felt then. For the priests had sequestered them and at the appropriate time, had even begun to instruct Yeshua. 


In the cool, dark, depths of their sacred places he was taught many things: how to listen to what wafts on the warm breezes, to what resounds in the songs of birds and to what lives in the harmony of growing grass. He was taught how to see behind the shapes of twigs and branches and to know what lay behind cloud, sky and storm –  the thoughts of God. She knew this because she had always been with him and she was with him again on the day the priests took him to see an old anchorite.

The anchorite lived on a limestone hill not far from the great city of Alexandria. Having retired to a contemplative life he now spent his days in a holy room, a sanctuary, wherein he celebrated all the mysteries of the holy life. He never admitted anyone to his house and yet he had wanted to see Yeshua.

On the appointed day, Mariam was sat with her son feeling anxious for what he would say. But the old man said nothing for a long time. Instead, he inspected Yeshua from below his wrinkled brow, making soft noises to himself. When it seemed that he would never speak, he smiled suddenly and began to laugh with merriment, as if relieved of some great burden. Surprised, Mariam said nothing, but watched and waited for it to stop, knowing that old sages were known to have a peculiar wisdom. When he addressed her, his face was as unwrinkled as a child’s might be and his eyes were as clear as a stream. 

‘Long ago,’ he told her, ‘there was a teacher whose name was Melchizedek. Old Melchizedek had a favourite pupil to whom he taught all the mysteries of the sun. You see this pupil, my dear, was destined to incarnate many times, and a long line of ancestors had to be prepared to make a body suitable for him. So Melchizedek tutored another pupil, Abraham, and he taught him all the secrets of the moon, the secrets of the blood and the creation of the perfect body. So you see forty-two generations have prepared your ancestors so that you could be here today with the fruit of your loins. My pupil is come again, and I am rejoicing! For my task is near done, and I must now remind him of his past and bring to him all that he has left behind in order that he might perform a special task.’

He reached out and passed both hands over Yeshua’s eyes and immediately her son fell asleep in her arms. The old man closed his own eyes and uttered many prayers over her boy. When it was over and her son was returned to his senses the old man looked at her with kindness and familiarity.

‘Soon you will give birth to another child,’ he told her.

Instinctively she moved a hand over her flat belly. Not even Joseph knew that her bleeding was late. 

         

‘Herod is dead; soon you will be too big with child to travel. You must go. Take your husband and journey by way of the Sinai desert in the direction of your homeland, but do not take this child to your Temple in Jerusalem for the hope of your priests will nurture him towards earthly and not heavenly ends. There is a safe place to which you can go, called Nazareth. The people who live there are not so different from us, they are called Essenes and you may live among them, untroubled, until the time comes.’

She wanted to ask him when that time would be and what Yeshua was destined to do, but could not bring herself to say anything. 

He told her, ‘A mother must love her son, but you must love the Son of God, even as you love your own son…for the love of a mother can make all things taste sweet.’

Now as she lay upon the rush mat, she wondered what the old sage had meant and wished with all her heart that she had asked the questions that continued to plague her. What was to be her son’s task? When would it come? And how must she love the Son of God as her own? Her vexation with herself made the child in her belly give her a kick and it took away her breath. The child reminded her that by the time they reached Nazareth, she would be a mother twice over.

She did not know what she would find in Nazareth among the Essenes, the pure ones. She only knew what she remembered of her Temple days, that these ascetics were more strict than the Therapeutae of Egypt, more strict even than the Nazarites, for they wore only white and sequestered themselves in their Mother Houses for fear of defilement. What would become of Yeshua’s task in such a place as Nazareth? Could the heir of David be made a king of Israel in such a place, among men whose faces were turned away from Jerusalem? Nothing good had ever come out of Nazareth–that was the saying and she worried that it was true. 

She turned over to hold her husband, who seemed to be older by the day. In truth, the memory of her former life at the Temple had become distant to her eye and the details had lost their clarity and distinction. She remembered how she had been taken to the Temple as a child and how the miracle of the greening staff had proved to the priests the eligibility of an ageing Joseph as a choice of husband. She had not wanted to marry but the priests had reminded her of the duty of every person of sovereign lineage to further their ancestral lineage. She had consented as a service to her people and in time she had grown to love her husband, and if the love she felt was not that young love she had seen in others, it was weighty and costly and she was glad of it. She only hoped he would live long enough to see his son’s task accomplished. 

Outside, the night deepened. Tomorrow would be another long day’s march and she put away her thoughts and fears and resolved to sleep.

She closed her eyes and sleep did come, but it was not peaceful.                                            

Excerpt from Fifth Gospel: MARY

MARY

F

ORTY generations after Abraham, and some months after the birth of that first child, a young woman called Mary accompanied her husband on a journey from Nazareth. It was the era of Caesar Augustus. Herod the Great had died and his cruel, sadistic son and successor, Archelaus, was deposed and Syria was made a Governorship of the Roman Senator Quirenius.

Under his rule a census was announced for the purpose of taxation and the people of Judea were required by law to travel to the seat of their ancestors to be counted. Mary’s husband, Joseph, was of the lineage of David and so he and Mary had to make the journey to Bethlehem, the town of his forebears, even at this difficult time.

For Mary of Nazareth was long with child.

Nine months earlier the seed had been sown in her belly. That night, the Essene priests had called her and her betrothed, Joseph, to the veiled place. They had given them both a cordial, after which all had fallen into nothingness. So it was with surprise and anxiety that Mary herself greeted the news of her conception, for she could remember nothing of her union with Joseph. It was only the warmth and protection of that radiant angel of God that had calmed her worried heart. For the angel’s soft whispers had announced the birth of her child in these words:

Ave Maria! Blessed are you among women! To you will be born a child and you will name him Jesus, and he will be called the Son of God.

This was the same voice which had compelled her to travel to her older cousin Elisabeth’s house to help her with the imminent birth of her child.

Since her youth, the world had seemed a recent thing to Mary, and she had felt like nothing more than a dust mote drawn upwards by the breezes and the winds of heaven, a dust mote that rarely falls down-to-earth. But on her journey to Elisabeth she found that an awakening was taking place in her soul. As she walked through the cold southlands, among the sadness of the mountains and the misery of the desolate trees, among the mocking face of the unforgiving brown coloured sky of Judea, she found that she was not only on the threshold of Elisabeth’s house, but also on the threshold of her own life.

It became clear to her, that she was coming down to earth, and only now did she truly understand what she must give up.

That had been six months ago and now as she cast a glance at her husband, the young carpenter with the soft brown eyes and hair like charcoal from the fires, she knew her descent was near complete and she put her trust in Joseph, who saw to all her needs and pulled the animal gently on the road, so as not to cause her unnecessary discomfort. He toiled over the frozen hills and mountains, with his feet blue and blistered and his hands callused and frigid, and made no complaint, as others did, of the Romans and the census. 

Joseph did not squander his words.

She remembered his face when he had seen, upon her return from Elizabeth’s house, how she was grown with child. No memory lived in his heart of the union brought about by the ministering of the priests and yet, in his dream-full eyes, she had seen no recrimination; from his mouth, no harsh words had come. When the township gathered to call her to account and she feared the people would stone her, Joseph remained steadfast in his love for her, refusing to shun her, making it possible for the priests to keep to themselves their workings.

She looked out of her thoughts and realised they were nearing Bethlehem. Darkness was fast descending over the highland wilderness of Judea and only a red outline remained in the west where the road to Hebron made a thread through the valleys and hills that separated Bethlehem from Jerusalem. The last of the sun was touching the pinnacles of a mighty palace. She looked to the east, to where a star-like moon was rising behind purpling clouds; a strange moon, a moon unlike any moon she had ever seen, and at that moment, the dusk was pierced by the howling of a wolf. It filled her with dread, and she was glad when they arrived at the outskirts of the town of Bethlehem.

It was cold, but the fields that swept upwards to the heights along which the city stretched, were rich with terraced vineyards and gardens well tended. Lights flickered in the houses, full with guests. The sound of merry talk and laughter reached them even here and it cheered her heart, which until now had been heavy with the bitter knowledge that she was homeless and may not have a warm place to bring forth her child.

She bent over to hold her belly for the pain that came then, and she told her child,

‘Not yet!’

Her husband, having heard this, grew concerned. He hastened through the ruined gates of the city, going from house to house in search of accommodation, but no one had room. Joseph asked those on the crowded streets if they knew of any small space wherein they might spend the night, since his wife, he showed them, was great with child and her hour was at hand. They told him the little town was much burdened by visitors, who had come from near and far to be counted. Every house was full, perhaps they should try the Inn?

The Inn was also full to the brim, but the innkeeper took pity on them and told Joseph of a rocky grotto outside the city walls. He warned him that it had once been a place of sinful ritual and that part of it was used now as a stable, because Bethlehem was so full that even those places reserved for animals in the township had been taken by people as lodgings.

The young couple, having no other choice, made their way to it. And thus it was that Mary entered into that grotto where two years before, Herod had performed a black ritual with the blood of the children of Bethlehem. And in that dark space surrounded by animals, fragrant with dung and straw, she sat. Above her, a cleft in the rock allowed a little of that sun-like moonlight to enter. It brought her peace. Here, she was away from the chattering noise-some crowds and could make herself comfortable, to wait for the onset of the more painful spasms that would soon come again and in the meantime, her young husband would go and find help.

When he returned he was accompanied by two women, a midwife and her young attendant, a girl called Salome, whose dark round face and clear eyes made a gladness in Mary’s heart. The midwife told her that the girl had a withered hand from birth, but that it would not prevent her from collecting the water and folding the cloths and cleaning the knife with wine.

It was many hours later, as Mary lay exhausted with her child suckling at her breast, that the old midwife sent Salome to fetch more water. When she returned, Mary noticed that the girl’s malformed hand was now made well and Salome, following her gaze, noticed it also. She dropped the water vase, and fell to the ground and gave thanks.

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.