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.