YESHUA AND JESUS - Excerpt from Fifth Gospel

THE two boys sat on the grass. The priestly child, Jesus, was only twelve springs and fair, for he was a Galilean of mixed blood. The older boy, Yeshua, was fourteen springs and from the lineage of kings, as a Judean of pure blood he was of darker of complexion.

Jesus played a plaintive song on his flute. At one moment, the song wafted downwards, over the ridge of the mountain, floating over the Nazirite township below with its rows and rows of houses scattered among figs and pomegranates and grape vines. At another moment the song soared upwards to the sun’s jewel whose gleaming fell over the world and came to rest on the squat fig tree beneath which they sat.

Before them plump, white sheep stood silent and obedient in the grass. From the wide spaces there came a sharp breeze, herb-scented and cool, carrying the sound of a flock of doves flapping their wings in time to the dying and becoming of the soul-full tune.

Yeshua was restless.

He held a stick in his hand. He made figures with it among the cyclamen and the anemones and in a moment he threw the stick away and fell to watching the rustling leaves of the small tree.

He told himself, I see all created things because they are; and they are because God sees them, and because God sees them, I see them in the world, and because they are perfect, I see them in my heart.

But this did not content him.

He looked beyond to where the clouds melted into the heavens. The flute’s song would have calmed him enough to make him fall to sleep except that a dream in the night still lingered in his heart and filled him with puzzlement and concern. Jesus would know its meaning but he was taken with his flute. Yeshua would have to wait, for he did not wish to interrupt him.

Years ago when Yeshua and his parents had arrived in Nazareth Jesus’ family had been the first to befriend them. Discovering a shared lineage had added to their kinship and soon the two households seemed to have no distinction between them. This meant that he and Jesus passed season after season in each other’s company and in time developed a particular understanding between them.

From the beginning, the Essene teachers had singled them out from the other village boys and had sent for the Chazzan, the officer from the synagogue to come and instruct them. The Chazzan had schooled them on the Torah and the Mishnah and had given them instruction on the unity of the Law and the Faith. But the teacher soon discovered that a great gulf divided the two of them. Yeshua loved reading, singing and praying. The rituals of the festivals, all that could be learnt from papyrus and from the word resounded in his soul and gave clarity to his mind. In truth, the older he became the more he felt one with the destiny and the trials of his people upon whom he knew lay the destiny of all peoples of the world. Yeshua understood that Jesus was different. He was not one for the things of the world. His mind could not take up the teachings that the rabbis prized so highly, for his mind was flown away with the song of birds or the flight of a butterfly or the angle of the sun as it fell on a leaf. There seemed to be no space in his memory for knowledge and his vision of the world seemed, to Yeshua, like a soft-spoken dream dusted with the pollen of heaven.

The rabbis were knowledgeable but they were not wise for they could not fathom his friend’s soul. They could not see his capacity for love with their hardened minds. They did not realise, therefore, how with one touch of his hand, one look from his far-seeing eyes, one word spoken soft and rounded from his lips, he could awaken truth and undo all manner of harm, illness and worry. They could not see it, and so they thought him ‘addled’, a child that could not be taught - they called him. And so it was they concentrated instead on Yeshua and let go their training of Jesus allowing him to spend his days as he would spend them, with his sheep, playing his flute song.

The flute song came to its end and the silence of afternoon invaded the empty spaces of the day. Yeshua looked at Jesus and Jesus in turn let his eyes – not blue nor green nor brown, but all three in equal measure – meet Yeshua’s dark ones.

Feeling like a boy and forgetting for a moment that he was more knowledgeable than the priests in their synagogues, he said, ‘I wonder what the sheep are thinking?’ 


Jesus wiped the spit from his flute and looked at it. ‘Sheep do not have thoughts, Yeshua!’ 


‘Maze!’ Yeshua said, surprised. ‘No thoughts?’ 


‘No.’ 
‘What do they feel?’ 


Jesus gazed out at the sheep, measuring, or so it seemed to Yeshua, what lived in them. ‘They long for warmer days and greener grass...also...’ His face lit up in a smile. ‘They do not have sympathy for the goats...’

Yeshua smiled himself at the thought of it. ‘They do not like the goats?’

‘The goats annoy them and they smell bad.’

Yeshua laughed. ‘Yes, they smell bad and they are stupid!’ He turned to look at Jesus. ‘You are right! What am I thinking then, what do you see in my head?’

Jesus’ gaze touched Yeshua. ‘Your thoughts are too complicated for my reckoning,’ he told him. ‘They are knotted up, one with the other, and made of sharp corners.’

‘Well...if they are made of sharp corners...' Yeshua threw a clump of grass at Jesus. ‘How can they be knotted? Knots are rounded!’

More grass was thrown and soon the two boys were covered in green and dirt and laughing like anything.

They fell on their backs then and Jesus turned over on his belly, contented, cupping his chin with his hands.

Yeshua looked to the leaves on the tree again, chewing on a blade of grass. ‘Last night I dreamt I was an eagle,’ he said.

Jesus looked at him, ‘How high did you fly?’

Yeshua threw him a speck of a glance. ‘I flew so high that I reached the sun, that’s how high!  After that something strange happened.’

‘What?’

‘The sun turned into a beautiful woman, who stood on the moon and wore a crown of stars. She told me her name was wisdom and she showed me things in a deep well: strange things, terrible wars, fearful sights! She told me it was the future and that it would be grave but that I would perform a task that would save the world, but first I had to remember something, and then I had to forget it again! But I can’t remember what I had to forget!’

‘That is because you have forgotten it!’

‘That is true!’ he said, with a sigh.

‘What happened after that?’

‘The woman moved her hand over the well and showed me something more...she showed me an image of you.’

‘Me?’ Jesus turned his head all smiles and frowns at him. ‘What was I doing?’

‘You were climbing steps, carrying something on your back...when I looked closer, I could see that it was me you were carrying, and that I was heavy. And you told me that I would be light if I let go of my treasures...that I would find them again, but that for now they were heavy. When finally I threw off all that I possessed I was light, like pollen in the wind! I knew that from that time there would be no need for words between us.’ He looked at Jesus, ‘I do not know what it means, this dream!’

Jesus nodded, thoughtful. ‘This is a difficult dream.’

Yeshua sat up to look at the heart-form of his friend’s face and the wide set eyes full of colours, ‘Not for you! You always know what my dreams mean!’

Jesus shrugged his shoulders.

‘Will you not tell me?’

‘Perhaps, you know too much already?’ Jesus teased.

Yeshua let his gaze roam over the sheep and the long view of the world, ‘I always tell you what I know!’

‘Yes.’ Jesus frowned. ‘You know many things.’

‘Come...brothers tell each other everything!’

‘We are not brothers, Yeshua,’ Jesus corrected him resting his head on the crook of his arm.

Yeshua scowled, feeling querulous. ‘Why not?’

‘Jacob and Simon and Jude and Jose...they hide behind corners to throw stones at me, they do this because they love you, because they are your brothers, not I.’

Yeshua felt the blood rise in his face. His brothers were mean spirited and ignorant. ‘If I could swap them for you - I would do it a thousand times over!’ he said.

‘That is why they throw stones,’ Jesus pointed out, with a simple clarity that cut at the roots of Yeshua’s anger.

There was a long thoughtful moment and something occurred to Yeshua. ‘Where is your knife...the one you carry for cutting rope? Come...give it to me.’

Jesus hesitated. ‘It is sharp, I am told never to take it from its sheath unless I have to.’

‘The sharper the better...come on...I’ll show you.’ He gestured full of impatience.

Jesus complied, but with caution. Yeshua took it and in a moment had made a cut in the palm of one hand.

Jesus grew alarmed to see blood, but Yeshua ignored it, and said to him, ‘Do you remember how the rabbis taught us that the body of a man, his flesh, Tzelem, is the image of God, and that his blood is Demut, the likeness of God. Do you remember? This blood is the likeness of God because in it flows the soul. Look at it! Don’t be afraid!’ He showed him his bloodied palm. ‘This is my soul you are looking at...now give me your hand.’

Jesus sat up and made a weak smile of hesitation. ‘Come Jesus, don’t you trust me?’

‘I trust you!’

‘Then give me your hand!’ Jesus put out his palm and winced. ‘The knife is sharp, it will not hurt.’ Yeshua made a swift cut and the boy stared at the blood now flowing from the wound with appreciation. ‘It did not hurt!’ he said amazed. ‘Your blood,’ Yeshua told him with a serious voice, ‘is also Demut, the likeness of God...Now, when I bring my blood, my soul, together with your blood, your soul, like this...’ He joined his hand to Jesus’ hand in a clasp and held it firmly. ‘It means that we are the same. Do you understand? We share the same likeness of God in our bodies. This means more than just brothers in the blood of Abraham, Jesus! Even though I share in the same blood with my brothers, my soul is not in Jacob, nor is it in Jude, or Simon or Jose, and theirs is not in me. But you and I, we are one now, and this means they can never come between us. Do you know what else, Jesus?’

‘What else?’

‘It means that if I die, my soul will still live in you...because we now share the same likeness of God, the same soul.’

They let go.

Jesus’ eyes grew soft and distant, and he seemed to be fitting this idea to his mind as he nursed his wound. Yeshua wiped the blood away from his hand and watched it ooze from the cut and spread into every crevice and line. He sucked the wound and said, 


‘Now you must tell me the meaning of my dream, because we are brothers.’

Jesus looked at him with a blank face. ‘I would tell you, because we are brothers, Yeshua, but in becoming brothers the meaning has winged away from my mind!’

Yeshua sighed and rolled over on his back again. ‘You goose! You have lost too much blood!’

The freshening breeze came and Yeshua felt a strangeness creep over him. He turned his eyes to the old road, and saw a caravan making its slow way in the valley. ‘I feel something will soon change, Jesus. Perhaps this is the meaning of the dream? It may happen when we go to Jerusalem, to celebrate our coming of age ceremonies...Do you know the first thing that I shall do in Jerusalem?’

Jesus took up his flute. ‘What will you do in Jerusalem?’

‘I will go to the priests and I will ask them why they shed the blood of sheep and goats and doves, and why they burn them for sacrifices, when Isaiah and David tell us we must not bring burnt offerings to God...’

Jesus began to play and Yeshua was not surprised, for talk of cruel things, of priests and temples and kings, never entered into his knowing. They were like the breezes that moved over this ridge on which they sat. They did not go deep, but brushed past and moved on towards other mountains, and other boys sitting with their sheep.

Yeshua watched the shivering leaves. ‘I think we shall be awakened at the Temple to something new, you and I.’

Jesus paused. ‘When our eyes open, because we are one, shall you see through mine and I through yours?’

These words made an impression on Yeshua. All day his dream had made him feel something in his heart and now that something sat on the lip of his mind, perched just so - near enough for him to taste, but too far from his reach to be grasped. It was tantalising and frustrating, this remembering, and he was so taken with it that he barely noticed Jesus begin to play another tune. And in this way they remained for a time, listening to God in the wind that carried the spring-song, God in the bleating of the sheep and in the chewing of the goats, until the sun began to fall towards the mountains and from below there came the sound of a woman’s voice, calling them for dinner.

They stood together then, as one, and descended the hill to their homes, arms over shoulders.

They spoke no more of their newly won brotherhood, or of the future that awaited them.

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.                                            

Unabridged Excerpt from Fifth Gospel: THE AGE OF GEMINI

ZARATHUSTRA, the Prince of Princes, stood upon the flat temple terrace of the great ziggurat and raised his arms in supplication.

It was the midnight hour near the spring equinox and above, the vaults of heaven were unroofed and spread open to the eyes was a sea of star-fire. The prince of princes looked to the horizon where lightning struck a thought into the mind of God. This was a signal for him to begin the hymn to the super-sensible sun that even now passed unseen through the region of the goat on the other side of the world.

The four shivering acolytes heard the sound of his voice ring out to the spirits of the planets and the sprits of the stars, to the lords of the world in the east and west and north and south, beckoning all creation to listen:

Praise to the immortal, radiant, swift-footed horse, the sun!

We pay homage unto thee! Nemase-te Ahuramazda!

May the lord of wide pastures,

Mighty, triumphant, worthy of worship and adoration,

Forgiver of sins and dispenser of justice,

Listen to our prayers!

When he was finished he beckoned his chosen ones to come to the stone that marked the southern corner of the terrace and bade them to stand in the semi-circle, which in the day formed the great cosmic clock. At their feet were marked the hours, at the centre stood the great shadow-thrower. Here it was that the priests of the Sun observed the solar rising points for the seasons and calculated the four cardinal points of the earth.

The Prince of Princes, said to them,  ‘Look up! See the Twins, the constellation of our age! Before that were ages lost in mists known only to the guardians of beginnings and endings,’ he told them. ‘There!’ He pointed. ‘Beyond the stars live the possessors of the eternal knowledges and intelligences, the keepers of hidden things who inscribe upon the airs of their heavens the past, the present and future of man. Feel the power of their speech! Do their words not shine into your heads? Do you not sense it also in your hearts and in the strength of your limbs? This night what they shall tell will quicken your souls to your tasks...so listen, sons of fire, hear now of the lament of the gods!

‘When man fell into the shadows of Tiamat the light of the spirit began to darken in their souls. After that the ages increased and both sun souls and moon souls; souls of fire and water; kings and priests, began to forget the fathers in heaven. In the future the sanctuaries of the mysteries shall lie deserted, their altars broken and forsaken. A time is near when kings shall no longer look to the heavens to hear the language of the stars and when priests shall not know how to evoke the forms of the gods in their rituals. In those days darkness of night shall hold sway and selfishness shall run free!’

He spread his arms to encompass the visible and invisible heavens and his pupils, following his movements looked, and they felt it in the rhythm of their blood how these words lived in the forms of the stars. They saw the desecration of the sacred places and the evil of man, and they trembled with anguish.

‘But the gods are wise! They have sent the spirit light of heaven down to the womb of darkness! The radiant and glorious, the greatest and the best, the most beautiful, the most firm, the wisest, whose body was the most perfect, who attained his ends the most infallibly, who disposed of the minds of men aright, who sent his joy-creating grace afar, who made man, and fashioned him, and nourished and protected him; the most bounteous Spirit of the sun. He will come into the body of a man to kindle in men a memory of the gods! A new people will build a temple body for the Sun God Ahuramazda! Their exalted leader shall have two sons: to his sun-born he will give the Kingdom and to his moon-born he will give the Priesthood. From the line of kings will come the first child, a wise old sun-soul. From the line of priests will come a young moon-soul unspoilt by sin. Two children destined to become one for the salvation of the world!  

‘Feel the interval from Twins to Ram! Inscribe it in your hearts! See how this night two stars collide: Wisdom-radiating Jupiter and spirit-recollecting Saturn!’

They looked and they did see.

‘See the pattern of the stars! Remember it! In a far off age of the Fish, when the sun rises in the constellation of the Virgin, these stars shall shine like one again. When you see this pattern you must start your journey to the centre of the world to find a child, your re-born master! For I will be that first child, born from the line of kings and you will come to awaken me from my sleep!’  

From the night there came a wind no w, sweeping over the plains and rushing over the land of the Twin Rivers Euphrates and Tigris. It awakened the wheat in the fields and disturbed the animals in their beds; it curved its back over the houses of the sleeping populace and snaked over the polished stones of the temple ziggurat. Strengthened, it made dust rise to sting the eyes of the acolytes and gathered up the yellow silk robe studded with gold and silver stars worn by their prince. Rapid came their breath and hard did pound their hearts and struck with terror and panic and awe their souls were loosened and whisked up into the heavens.

Amid this terrible splendour they saw a child crowned with stars, whose eyes were like suns. A pulsing stream of light moved from those eyes into their hearts and the stars on his head began to form and melt into a script, which they could read. It described a name, and they knew it meant ‘salvation’. A name that would become forever branded onto the mettle of their souls:

YESHUA

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.

Excerpt from Fifth Gospel: Leave Taking

Lea fell quiet. Her words were spent.

I went to the window, for I could see the sun was rising, throwing a gold mantle on the world beyond Montsegur. For a moment, the entire Gospel stood before my eyes in the awakening clouds that were spread over the skies above the valleys and mountains, rivers and streams of the world.

‘Yes…it is magnificent!’ I said.

She pointed to the dawn and she seemed to grow tall, and white, and fair before my eyes. I trembled, for her voice was grave, ‘Look there! Do you see a world full of wonders and marvels?

I looked, and I saw a twilight land of strange buildings and contraptions.  

‘That is the future…do you see, pairé, how there are castles that fly, carriages that go at great speeds without horses, and torches that have no flame! In this future, pairé, the thoughts of men will travel like lightning, from one end of the earth to the other, and a man will be able to hold all the books in the world in the palm of one hand!’

‘All the books in the world!’ I smiled to think on it. ‘This is truly remarkable!’

‘Yes, but every light casts a shadow.’ She looked at me, cold and solemn and said, ‘The greater the light of goodness, the darker the shadow of evil. Wars will continue…there are dark times ahead, and it will grow darker still, for you see pairé, in the past, men fought over their misunderstandings of Jesus and Christ, now, they battle because they no longer understand the Spirit, but in the future the battle will be for the human Soul, pairé. It shall be more heinous and violent than any other battle that has come before! In those far flung days what is written in John’s Apocalypse shall come to pass again: the woman with the sun in her belly and the moon at her feet shall come to give birth to the spirit of Christ in the clouds, the soul of humanity will give birth to the spirit and the dragon will try to kill it as soon as it is born in the same way that Herod tried to kill Yeshua. That is when this gospel shall be needed pairé; before the end of the fifth age.’

I was breathless, caught in the swirl of images which she had shown in the sky before my eyes. Fear and dread entered into my heart and a sudden thought came. ‘Soon I will descend this pog, Lea, and what you have had me write down on those parchments,’ I pointed to them, ‘will turn to dust. It has all been for nothing! No man will know the Fifth Gospel!’

‘There is no accident in the universe pairé, nothing is ever lost. What you have written will come to you again, though differently, and you will remember.’

‘What must I remember?’

‘Look at me, pairé, what do you see?’

Before my open gaze her face seemed to change: one moment I saw the evening star, the next she was Demeter the mother of nature; again she was the lady who steals into the heart of every troubadour, the ideal woman, the good and beautiful and true in the soul of every poet. When her face paused in its transformations, I realised with a sense of wonder and awe that I was gazing at a countenance that I had only seen in my imaginations...I had been in the company of Wisdom all along... 

Nostradamus and the Acquisition of Wisdom

‘How long have you been with me now, Chavigny?’ Nostradamus said to Jean, with an expectant eye.

‘Ten years or thereabouts.’

‘How many hurdles did Dorat place in your way when you said you wanted to be my pupil?’ he said, setting the box down.

‘It took me near a year to convince him and then he gave me no letters of introduction.’

‘That’s right, and you made the two month journey south to my home and arrived empty handed at my door. What did I tell you then?’

‘That if I intended to become a student of the mystic arts I would have to be prepared to do those tasks you set me.’

He nodded.

‘But in all this time there have been no tasks and no instruction! Only menial jobs have you set me that any fool might be capable of doing!’

‘Really?’ he raised one bushy brow, ‘Do you think so? Have I told you the story of Antonius?’

‘Antonius?’

‘Antonius was a teacher. A simple man named Paul arrived at his door one day, much like you, and said he wanted to be his pupil. Antonius accepted him and caused him year after year do such menial tasks as seemed to have no reason. For instance he had him carry water from one place to another in perforated buckets, he asked him carry rocks up a hill and had him roll them back down again on the other side. He had him stitch and unstitch clothes. This he did year after year! Why? Because the simple man Paul who had come to him, in the process of these tasks, year after year, underwent a tremendous deepening of his soul.'
'By doing menial tasks he deepened his soul?'
'Oh you are still a fool Chavigny, for you do not know how gratitude even for menial tasks, reverence for the master who sets them and devotion which becomes a habit in the soul is what changes a man -  a thousand books will not do the same! You see, that is how Paul the Simpleton became Paul the Wise. '

Excerpt from Fifth Gospel: Bath-Kol

Jesus looked about him at the expectation on the faces of the men and women and children. He was no priest, how could he give them what they desired? Looking at them he saw all the pagan peoples that he had met in his travels gathered together into one great corpse made from unwashed bodies and wild faces; a corpse of human suffering overflowing with wickedness and with desperation and disease. He sensed the smell of rotted flesh, of darkness, stagnant, dank – the odour of human degradation. The world whirled around him and in that moment he felt the universal suffering of humanity as if it were his own. It streamed into him like a rush of white fire from all the faces that looked up to him for comfort and he could not take a breath for the immensity of its weight.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like my handiwork?’ said the being.

Jesus shouted at it, ‘Who are you? Why do you do this?’

When the people heard his words they seemed to grow afraid, for they sensed an open traffic with evil and began to push and shove to flee from the temple.

But Jesus felt a pain, a dart of poisoned ice; it burst into a thousand lighted candles, each shimmering in the air ahead of his eyes. He was removed then, from that place and the people and the evil being.

In this realm of nothingness, he heard these words:

‘Listen Jesus.’

Aum

Evils hold sway

The ego of man struggles free

And guilt is incurred at the expense of others,

Which is experienced in the daily bread

Wherein the will of the heavens does not rule

Because man has separated himself from your realms,

And forgot your names

You fathers in the heavens!

Jesus recognised this voice! He shouted into the open vaults of the deserted temple, ‘Yes…evil holds sway because men have wanted freedom from the gods but now everything falls into ruin, the world is old, how can the people rise up to remember the gods again?’

The voice said.

‘Watch and wait Jesus, soon comes my Son and He will make the old new again!

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

A warm, love-giving radiance, entered into his heart.

‘I am knowledge and ignorance, I am shame and boldness, I am shameless; I am ashamed, I am strength and I am fear and I am war and peace, I am the truth and the speech that cannot be grasped. I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name; I am the sign of the letter and the designation of the division …I am Bath-Kol, the voice of So-ph-ea, the Wisdom that is All.’