SIX KEYS TO WRITING - THE SIXTH KEY

THE FIRST KEY

My latest novel The Sixth Key is published and in bookstores and now, as I bask in the warm afterglow of past labours, I find myself turning philosophical. You see, it's my habit to retrace my steps, to search beyond those numerous drafts, sleepless nights, moments of self doubt and, of course, the usual last minute panic, to find the impulse that led to the book: the epiphanic moment – the birth of the idea.

James Joyce was the first to apply this word epiphanic to literature – a moment of insight which briefly illuminates the whole of existence and makes time stand still. For me these moments always come in the middle of life: while I’m on the way to driving my daughter to the mall or when my son is physically moving the house with music - everything is normal one moment, and the next - Eureka!

So what was the epiphanic moment that led to The Sixth Key? It came the morning I had a meeting with my agent and publisher. I was locked in dense Sydney traffic, and all at once the world faded away and three things popped into my head: Hitler, the Grail and the Apocalypse - I had my book!

In reality such a moment is only the tiny peak of an enormous iceberg and the very first key to what lives in an author just waiting to bubble up as an epiphany. As a literary device I will say there were six keys to writing The Sixth Key and in the coming blogs I will explore them with you. Are you ready for an adventure? Bring your rope and your flashlight, because as my protagonist Otto Rahn says, one has to dare to travel to hell if one wants to find heaven – I dare!

Confessions of an Author: My muse, and how the Rolling Stones got it right.

All artists know that enigmatic, mysterious, exhilarating and annoyingly indeterminate moment when inspiration lifts the soul out of the dung heap of mediocrity. 


One can be toiling away for days, weeks, months, years, writing utter rubbish (unfortunately often when a deadline is looming) and then, quite unexpectedly, seemingly undeserved, a word enters into the mind like a whisper, or one comes across a book lying around or someone says something at a supermarket check out that suddenly works like a white brand of light out of a blue sky, shattering the fabric of your world, shinning a light upon the path that you must tread to creative excellence.  


The Goddesses responsible for these moments of inspirational bliss were known to the Greeks as muses, and all good poets, writers and musicians have acknowledged their valuable help. They were ethereal creatures that increasingly embodied real women: the Florentine  Dante had his Beatrice, Orpheus his Euridice, Shakespeare his Dark Lady, Novalis his Sophie, Scott Fitzgerald his Zelda, Ezra Pound his Olga...I could go on and on. 


My muse has, over time, become as tangible and real as a friend,  but there are moments when I, the mortal that I am, have lapses of forgetfulness; moments when I'm too busy with my own thoughts to listen to my friend's gentle urgings.


Last week I experienced such a lapse and this is my confession.


I was going quite mad looking for a book I thought I needed to continue writing the sequel to THE SIXTH KEY. In my heart of hearts I felt that the book was not in the house but my head would not listen! 


Looking for a book is a tiresome activity that, due to my tenacious nature, leads inexorably to a process that must run its course. Firstly I must tear up of the house looking for it. Next there is much blaming and finger pointing, after which comes the inevitable denial of any responsibility on my part, followed by a period of incertitude and palsy that lasts until something happens to break the miasmic spell. 


In this case it was an idea. 


I woke up one morning - 3am -  with the idea that the elusive book must be on our little boat (where I write on and off). So the next day I set off with the uncharacteristically choleric walk of a hunter in pursuit of a valuable prize that must be procured at any cost. But after hours of searching through a wilderness of previously unseen nooks and crannies, I had to sit back defeated, with only a glass of mineral water and the gentle lulling of the waves to calm my nerves. It was over, the hunt for the book had come to grinding halt and I would have to find my way home empty handed, humbled and broken.


During moments of despair, if one is quiet, one can discern the gentle voice, the soft suggestive whisper that speaks in the ear and says: Look!  And if you are obedient as I am when completely deflated, you will do as you are told. I looked but I did not see the book I wanted alas (!) I saw another book that I had quite forgotten about lying around. I grudgingly opened it to any page and on closer inspection was shocked. Elated. Grateful.  


This was exactly what I had been looking for! 


When I got home I took the new book to the bookshelf and inexplicably found the other book I had been looking for sitting on the shelf quite happily! I had not seen it  because it was the WRONG BOOK!


In the end I could have saved myself a lot of trouble just by listening to my muse and trusting that when she doesn't give me what I want it is because she wants to give me something better - she wants to give me what I need!

THE SIXTH KEY Competition

VISIT MY WEBSITE FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A FREE POSTAGE PAID COPY OF THE SIXTH KEY:


http://www.adrianakoulias.com/ADRIANAKOULIAS/Competitions_and_Giveaways.html

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.