COMMUNICATION - CONSULTANCY - PERSONAL GROWTH - WISDOM TRADITION

AMYDON-EXETER CENTRE 113

"The connection with the Guru should only be based on Enlightenment - the Master is enlightened and we follow His teaching to get enlightened. The connection should not be based on physical and personal conditions. The connection should remain pure, free from emotion and conditions. This is pure devotion." - Gyalwang Drukpa

Mirror of Justice + Abstracts from a Library

A Sequence of Essays I+N Honour of The Nuptial Theology of The Sovereign Lady

Mary Most Holy Help of Christians by Divine Conception Mother of G-d &

Virgin Queen of All That Is

• Preface
• 1. Nature's Mysteries Revealed by Homer
• 2. Children I+N A Library
• 3. Intimacy IS Truth
• 4. Toccata + Fugue
• 5. Open Sesame!
• 6. The Nuptials of G-d
• 7. The King's Secret
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 1

PREFACE

Some writers are journalists, others the authors of literary works, others translators, and any of these may also be called upon to write simply as the chosen instrument of another author, known or unknown, who does not wish personally to undertake the material work of communicating via the written medium.

It was as a writer in one of the more ordinary senses above mentioned that on 25 December 1989 I wrote a Preface to the First Edition of my The Rainbow Cymbal, and it was quite specifically as the privileged instrument of my father in Heaven that I originally commited to paper Levi Hamer's posthumous "GOD", the complete text of which forms part of the research Archives maintained at Creativity House.

Increasingly, therefore, I sense that I am now called not so much to add to my own writings as to be a LibrArian concerned to preserve from oblivion and faithfully to transmit to other inquirers the contents of such books, or portions of books, as best reflect - or better, resonantlly radiate, the constantly changing features of this Library we inhabit…

It has, of course, not been possible to list all references nor to index all contents, but I feel that what is contained in these pages can suffice for its purpose.

The Door stands open; the Way is clear - the Choice is yours.

EXETER - Amydon on the Axius

18 April 1992

NATURE'S MYSTERIES REVEALED BY HOMER

Iman Wilkens, who was born in the Netherlands in 1936 and educated at the Municipal University of Amsterdam, currently both lives and works in Paris. In 1991 Rider published his enthrallingly written and convincingly presented Where Troy Once Stood - The Mystery of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey Revealed, which is certainly not the least important of the relatively small number of books referred to by name on this web-site.

Our world is still suffering the consequences of the erroneous belief, nurtured by St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), and subsequently endorsed by three Church Councils at Carthage (in 411, 417 and 418), as well as by a majority of western Christian theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, that his "saintly" British contemporary, Pelagius (c. 360-4310, was a heretic. In fact, Pelagius and his spiritual ancestors and descendants are the ones who witness most profoundly to the true doctrine of Grace.

The Greek word histor (= 'one who holds knowledge') is related to another Greek word histos, meaning 'loom' or 'cloth', and Homer (floruit c. 1200 B.C.) frequently praises the wisdom of Penelope, who is, however, not the only famous woman weaver he mentions; Circe has "a great imperishable web, such as is the handiwork of goddesses, finely-woven and beautiful, and glorious." (Wilkens, op.cit., p.227.)

• "In Celtic art, human, animal and plant forms are often mixed [or, more precisely, intricately interlaced], because people believed in very close links between all life in the universe. Although Homer does not mention it, the Druids had a name for the invisible force that governed both life and the material universe, Nwywre, symbolized by the serpent, which is a universal symbol already familiar to us from the statues of the Pharaohs, who were believed to represent the divinity on Earth. According to M. Moreau (La tradition celtique dans l'art roman, Paris: Le Courrier du Livre, 1975, p.55), Nwywre 'was the creative power of the physical world. Nothing happened without it. It was the cosmic fluid, the ether, the light and the great creative and divine Principle that linked Heaven and Earth. Its union with the other elements created life, movement and the spirit. A Gallic bard sang that it is smaller than the smallest and bigger than worlds because it is subtleness and power itself'…Writing of the supreme god, known to the Romans as Jupiter, Maximus Tyrius (VIII, 8) relates that, 'the Celts worshipped Zeus, whose effigy was the oak.' The effigy of this god had thus remained unchanged from the Bronze Age - Homer's time - to the beginning of our own era. Homer never mentions statues of divinities, only altars, while his temples were sanctuaries in the open air." (Wilkens, op.cit., pp.46-7.)

This is not pantheism, but panentheism.

• "Plato [c.430-350 B.C.] had very good reasons for his doubts about the Greek origins of Homer's works because not only do the physical descriptions in his poems not correspond to the Greek world, but also the Homeric philosophy is very different from the mainstream Greek. The latter is based on the dualism of two opposing elements (thesis/antithesis, good/bad, body/soul, life/death, form/content) while Homer's philosophy contains a third element that links the two extremes while incorporating certain of their characteristics. Between the body and the soul there is the spirit…, between life and death there is the transformation…, between father and mother there is the child…, and between good and bad there is the specific situation that determines what is to be done at a given moment.
• Homer's philosophy is thus based on three simultaneous determinants, which make it typically Celtic…" (Ibid., p.50.)

"The real reason why Zeus does not want to choose the winner of the Golden Apple among Here, Athene and Aphrodite is not that he is afraid of hurting the losers, but because he knows that they really form a Trinity, three aspects of the same divinity, he himself being part of the [essentially identical] Trinity: Zeus/Poseidon/Hades.

In this context it is interesting to recall the biblical story in which the Lord appears before Abraham in the form of three identical men (Gn 18). Although the text is not explicit on this subject, the generally accepted interpretation is that of the Trinity.

The Christian Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is, of course, well-known, but the concept is found in other religions, even though it has different significance and scope. Examples are:

• The Egyptians - Osiris/Isis/Horus
• The Babylonians - Anu/Enlil/Ea
• The Rig-Veda - Varuna/Indra/Mitra
• The Hindus - Brahma/Shiva/Vishnu
• The Norsemen - Odin/Thor/Baldr
• The Gaults - Lug/Ogmios/Cermunnos…" (Ibid., pp.340-1.)

Wilkens' reference to 'mystery' in the context of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey indicates, therefore, that, like the esoteric teachings of Plato and the acroamatic lessons of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), these great Celtic epic poems are secret books "written in an obscure manner and couched in such terms as to be intelligible only to initiates" (op.cit.,p.56) and hermits, whose "preferred food" was that of the fig-tree (ibid.,p.233. Cf. Jn 1:48 & 51 - " 'How is it that you know me?' Nathanæl asked him. 'Before Philip came to you with his summons,' was Jesus' reply, 'I saw you when you were underneath the fig-tree… You shall see heaven opening wide, with the angels of G-d ascending and descending over the Son of Man.' ")

Another fruit mentioned by Homer is the lotus. In the Odyssey (IX, 82-86) we find this cryptic reference: "Thence for nine days' space I was borne by direful winds over the teeming deep; but on the tenth we set foot on the land of the Lotus-eaters, who eat a flowery food. There we went on shore and drew water, and straightaway my comrades took their meal by the swift ships."

According to Wilkens, the sailors had disembarked "on the beach north of Dakar, probably in the fertile region of the river Senegal… They are well received by the natives of this place, who give them the lotus to eat. This cannot be the Egyptian lotus, which is a water-lily, but a variant of the Provençal micocoulier. In English the three variants of this tree are named the nettle tree, hackberry and lotus tree, this last clearly being the one Homer is talking about. The fruit of the lotus tree resembles the black olive in looks, but not in taste. As the fruit has an intoxicating effect, Odysseus, who wisely abstains from eating it, has great difficulty in getting his euphoric companions back on board." (Wilkens, op.cit., p.173.)

In Book X of the Odyssey (210-15) Circe is mentioned as having bewitched some mountain wolves and lions with evil drugs, so that, instead of rushing wildly upon her visitors, "they prance about them fawningly, wagging their long tails."

However, as Wilkens notes:

• "If the wild animals are not dangerous, Circe is. She drugs the men's food and drink and turns them into swine and puts them in a pig-pen… The only one to escape this fate is Eurylochus, who suspects a trap and remains at a safe distance. When he sees what has happened, he returns to the ship to tell Odysseus, who sets off to see what he can do. On his way to Circe's house the god Hermes comes to him in the guise of a young man and offers to help him by giving him an antidote to Circe's potions…
• 'At the root it was black, but its flower was like milk. Moly the gods call it, and it is hard for mortal men to dig'… This plant, for which both Greeks and translators have always retained the original (probably Celtic) name, moly, is none other than madder, found in temperate climes. It has whitish-yellow flowers and very long roots making it indeed very hard to dig up. It was formerly cultivated in Zeeland in order to produce alizarine, a red dye, whence the botanical name of this plant, Rubia tinctorum. It has become a rare species since the advent of synthetic dyes…
• Armed with the 'moly', Odysseus is able to resist the drug that Circe had used to turn his men into pigs. Although the poet does not specify which drug it was, we can assume that it was the indigenous plant that still bears Circe's name in botanical parlance, Circæa lutetiana. This plant has been associated with witches and is therefore more commonly know as 'enchanter's nightshade'. To heighten the effect of her potion, the goddess may well have added the very toxic Colchicum automnalis, better known as meadow saffron or autumn crocus, which French peasants call tue-porceau, 'pig-killer'. With its white, pink or violet flowers, it must have grown in abundance in the damp meadows of Circe's island, as no doubt also small scabious (Scabiosa columbaria), which gave its name to the adjacent island, Duiveland, 'Land of the Dove(weed)', this plant having a symbolic meaning in the ancient Mysteries. This potion, then, was one of the arms of the 'dread goddess, Circe of the many drugs', whose name was also related to the word circos, not only meaning sparrowhawk… but also hawk-week (Hieracium asteraceæ), no doubt another plant in her collection." (op.cit., pp.188-90. The accompanying illustration on p.191 also shows the Achillea or milfoil, and the Scilla or wild hyacinth.)

Homer himself was not a Greek but a Celt. He "was born and died a stone's throw from Middelburg town-hall… in the centre of Hades' island" (o.c., facing p.161) - now Walcheren in Zeeland. In Homer's day the Druid's chief centre for initiation into the supreme Gnostic mysteries of Circe-Nehalennia, and the Trojan war Homer described as only an eye-witness could, was a war fought between Celts in the Bronze Age, probably about 1200 B.C., ostensibly in order to liberate Helen from captivity in Troy, nowadays known as Wandlebury Ring on the Gog Magog hills near Cambridge in England, but fundamentally in order to establish which grouping of Celtic tribes and their allies would enjoy control of the English Channel, naval supremacy, and priority of access to the tin-mines of Cornwall.

The tin, gold, iron and amber trades were all of great importance during the Bronze Age, "when tin was found virtually only in England, gold in Ireland and amber in the Baltic. In order to make bronze, an alloy of roughly 90% copper and 10% tin, it was necessary to go to Cornwall for tin and then alloy it with copper that the Mediterranean peoples had in Cyprus, the Gauls in France and the Scandinavians in the centre of Sweden. There was thus fierce competition from all sides on the sea-routes leading to Cornwall. Phœnicians, Etruscans, Scandinavians, and others all met in the ports of Europe where, as Homer says, 'all tongues are spoken'." (Ibid., p.163).

However, while the Iliad in its Greek written translation dating from about the eighth century B.C. reliably conveys to us Homer's originally exclusively oral account of a ten-year trade-motivated war, and his Odyssey, although ostensibly about a great mariner's personal adventures, is basically the ancient Druids' equivalent of a modern textbook of nautical maps and related maritime lore, both epics are, nevertheless, also meant to be understood at a deeper level as guidance offered to initiates, as they grow and find their own individual way around Circe's serpentine labyrinth of self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-conquest.

Whether she or he accepts this vocation or not, everyone is invited to become an initiate. "According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology the word 'church' comes from Old English cirice or circe, a word that clearly seems to be cognate with Circe. We also know that the dialectal form of Circe (also found in Greek) was Kirke and etymologists are agreed that the Dutch word for 'church', kerk, the German Kirche, and the Scots kirk all come from the Old Saxon kirika, another word cognate with Kirke or Circe" (Ibid., p.187) and so equally evocative of the universal mystery which encompasses and surrounds us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) wrote: "G-d is length, width, height and depth." Number is of central importance in Jewish mysticism. The Book of Wisdom (11:21) affirms that G-d has "ordained all things by measure, number, weight." An inscription over the entrance to the Temple at Delphi remined everybody that "number [in other words, rhythm, resonance, proportion, ordered vibration, and a lively sense of the unique actuality of each transitory moment] is the Law of the Universe."

According to Wilkens, Delphi was originally located where Delft stands today, north-west of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Also:

• "It was generally believed that Syrus was the inventor of arithmetic. If Syria was the name of Ireland before designating ancient Aram in the Near East, we would have an indication that mathematics was developed in western Europe before it was transmitted by the Druids to Pythagoras…
• [A lot of confusion has resulted from the fact that] a number of countries in the eastern Mediterranean changed names in the Bronze Age or shortly thereafter to be thenceforth called Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Lybia, Crete, Lesbos and Cyprus, due to conquests by peoples from the Atlantic seaboard, just as the descendants of these Sea Peoples gave new names during the colonial era, only a few centuries ago, to a number of countries all around the world as distant as New Zealand." (Where Troy Once Stood, p.154.)

When Homer mentions Athens, he means not the relatively recent Greek city of that name, but Octeville, near Chernbourg on the coast of France. Similarly, Thebes is Dieppe, an important port in the part of France Homer knew as Egypt. Helice is Paris. The Seine is the river Nile. Arcadia is the Vosges region. Mount Blanc is Olympus. The modern city of Troyes is on the site of ancient Mycenæ. Pieria is the Pyrenees. Crete is, in a general sense, the whole of Scandinavia, but also and more particularly south-west Norway. Antron is Antwerp. Ithaca is Cadiz. Salamis is Salamanca. The land of the Læstrygonians is Cuba - Columbus did no more than re-discover America in 1492; like the Phœnician mariners of Venice, Celtic sailors were on familiar terms with the waters of the Atlantic, which they knew as the Ocean, or simply the Great River.

The North Sea, the English Channel, and the Atlantic are also referred to by Homer as the Hellespont. Gereste and Psyria are the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. Thrinacia, the Land of the [sacred] Triangle, is Land's End (in Homer's day an island separated from mainland Cornwall by the river Hayle); St. Michæl's Mount is Scylla, and Carbis Bay Charybdis. Amydon is Exeter, and the river Exe is "the wide-flowing Axius - Axius whose waters flow the fairest over the face of the Earth." (Iliad, Bk II, 849-50). The river Meander is the Severn. Lesbos is the Isle of Wight. Hermus is Chichester harbour. The Temese is the river Thames, Ely stands on the site of ancient Ilium. Adrasteia is Ardrossan, Arisbe is Arbroath, and, as already mentioned, Homer's 'Isle of Syria' is Ireland.

• "We have been so conditioned by the classical tradition in Western education that we have difficulty in believing that there was any civilization or culture worthy of the name in western Europe before the Romans came. The reason for this is, of course, that there are so few traces of this earlier civilization (though each year now brings new archæological finds). And the fault lies very much with the Druids' religious taboo on writing. The conquerors of Celtic territories only had to get rid of a few leaders who held all the knowledge in order easily to hold the annexed lands…
• Militarism and foreign culture have never got on well together, and the occupiers had a very destructive influence from one end of the Empire to the other. For example, in the extreme northwest, the Romans destroyed the Druids' school on Anglesey (off North Wales, where the Gallic Druids also used to complete their studies), and in the east they destroyed the temple of Jerusalem. They were also responsible for the destruction of Carthage and the decline of the universities of Marseille and Alexandria.
• There can be no better summing up of the Roman occupation than the words of the Roman historian Tacitus, who would today be called a 'dissident'. In his memoirs, written in secret in his country house outside Rome, he has this to say about the activities of the Roman army in western Europe: 'They pillage, massacre and rape, and they call that "governing"; they create a desert, and they call that "peace"'…
• A thriving Celtic culture was destroyed first by the Roman army, then by the churchmen, who did all they could to eliminate anything that recalled the Gnostic past. In these circumstances it is an irony of history that a Celt, Lleyn, son of a British king, succeeded St. Peter [as Pope in 67, and] under the Latinized [form of his] name of Linus" presided over the universal Church until 76 as - to employ a more recent terminology - the second of the 264 'bishops' of Rome who have also been 'Popes' to date. (op.cit., pp.265-6. There are also grounds for supposing that Peter, the first Pope, is more properly identified as the second bishop of Rome, Linus being both the first and the third.)

CHILDREN IN A LIBRARY

The uncircumcised but profoundly Jewish Christian Heinz Walter Cassirer (1903-1979) had had the foresight to leave Germany as soon as Hitler had established his dictatorship there in March 1933, and April 3rd 1933, allegedly the nineteenth centenary of the death on Calvary of Jesus of Nazareth, was, therefore, a day which found him and his family living unobtrusively and peacefully in Switzerland.

At that time he would not have regarded himself as being a Christian; indeed, he didn't read a word of the Bible until he was forty-nine years old.

Moreover, as 1934 opened, Heinz Cassirer was still quite incapable of speaking English, but his father, Ernst, was already living in Oxford, and it was there that Heinz joined hnim in January; he spent the next quarter of a century teaching philosophy both in Oxford and Glasgow.

His academic publications include a translation into English of the last play of Sophocles (496-405 B.C.), Oedipus as Colonus, a highly praised study of the treatise, De Anima, by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), commentaries on both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), and also an English translation of Kant's Crituqe of Practical Reason.

Heinz Cassirer never ceased to regard Immanuel Kant as the greatest philosopher of all, and the climate of British philosophical speculation during the years following the end of the Second World War filled him with a sense of intellectual despair.

His deeply experienced need was genuinely to explore the meaning and value of human freedom. This caused him to turn his attention to the Bible, and especially to the New Testament.

One result was his baptism into the Anglican communion in 1955; another was the publication after his death of his own personal translation of the whole of the New Testament - G-d's New Covenant (William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1989), a translation originally made for its author's private benefit, and one which is best savoured when it is read aloud.

Heinz Cassirer's fragrantly fresh English version blends scholarly fidelity to the subtleties of the written Greek text with a richly and sensitively cadenced re-evocation of the Aramaic speech alive within it. Here, for example, is Cassirer's translation of John's account of the raising of Lazarus (Jn 11:17-44):

• "On arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was close to Jerusalem, only about two miles distant from it; and many of the Jews had come from there to Martha and Mary, that they might console them on the death of their brother. On hearing that Jesus had come, Martha went out to meet him, while Mary stayed behind, sitting in the house. And so it was that Martha said to Jesus, 'Master, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yet, even as things are, I know that, whatever you ask of G-d, he will grant it to you.'
• Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise again.'
• 'I know,' Martha replied to him, 'that he will rise again at the resurrection, when the last day comes.'
• 'I am the resurrection and the life,' was Jesus' rejoinder. 'Whoever believes in me will lay hold of life, even though he die, and no one laying hold of life and believing in me will ever die, to all eternity. Do you believe this?'
• 'Yes, Lord,' she said to him, 'I have learned to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of G-d: he who was to come into this world.'
• Having said this, she went away to call her sister Mary, and taking her aside said to her, 'The Master is here and asking for you.' On hearing this, Mary rose up quickly to go to him.
• As for Jesus, he had not as yet come as far as the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been in the house with Mary to console her saw that she had risen quickly and gone away, they followed her in the belief that she was on the way to the tomb to weep there. But Mary, on reaching the place where Jesus was, fell at his feet when she saw him, and said, 'Master, had you been here my brother would not have died.'
• As for Jesus, he was deeply stirred in spirit and greatly shaken at the sight of her tears and the tears of the Jews who had come with her, 'Where have you buried him?' he asked.
• 'Sir,' they replied, 'come and see for yourself.' And Jesus burst into tears. 'See what love he bore him,' said the Jews, while some of their number remarked, 'Could not he who opened the blind man's eyes have prevented this man from dying?'
• Jesus, for his part, found that he was once more deeply stirred within himself when he reached the tomb. (The tomb was a cave with a stone placed against the opening.) 'Take the stone away,' said Jesus.
• 'Master,' Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him, 'the smell of death must be about him by this time, for it is already four days since he died.'
• 'Have I not told you,' Jesus said to her, 'that if you will but believe, you will see G-d glorified before your eyes.' So they took the stone away.
• Then Jesus raised up his eyes and exclaimed, 'Father, how thankful I am to you for listening to me. As for myself, I knew well that you listen to me at all times. Yet I spoke as I did for the sake of the crowd which is standing round me, so that they might learn to believe that it was you who have sent me forth.' And on having spoken these words, he cried out in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth; here to my side!'
• The dead man came out, having his hands and his feet swathed in bandages and his face wrapped up in a kerchief. 'Untie him,' Jesus said to the others, 'and let him go his way.'"

This is an extraordinarily important text.

According to the editors of the Standard Edition of The New Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1985), "tradition almost unanimously" accepts as the author of the fourth Gospel "John the apostle, the son of Zebedee. Before 150 A.D. the fourth Gospel was known and used by Ignatius of Antioch, by the author of the Odes of Solomon, by Papias, by Justin, and probably by Clement of Rome, which makes it clear that the work was already considered to have apostolic authority." (o.c., p.1742.)

• "Topography in the fourth Gospel is also much more detailed than it is in the Synoptics, and this information has been confirmed more than once by recent discoveries (e.g. the pool with five porticos, 5:2). Moreover, throughout the Gospel we meet with factual detail that displays the author's close familiarity with the Jewish religious practice as also with the rabbinic mind and with the casuistry of the doctors of the law. The portrait of Jesus himself as painted by the evangelist represents him as transcending this world but nevertheless as someone real and entirely human: simple and humble even in his risen glory. Finally it may be remarked that if John had not been convinced of the historical truth of all he wrote, his Gospel would remain an insoluble enigma.
• But it is important to realise that 'history' in this context is [as it also was for Homer] very different from the concept of modern historians. The absorbing concern of the evangelist is the meaning of those historical events which were at once both divine and human, events which were at one and the same time both historical and theological; events which flowered in time but were rooted in eternity. The aim of the evangelist is to make his account a faithful one, something which he intends should be believed; his theme is a supernatural event, played out in human history by Jesus Christ, the Word who became incarnate for the salvation of the human race.
• With this in mind, the evangelist has selected his material, carefully choosing events which, it seemed to him, could be presented symbolically. In this way he has deepened their meaning and given them new overtones. The miracles he describes are 'signs': they not only manifest Christ's glory, they are also symbolic of the gifts (the new purification, the living bread, light and life) he has brought to the world." (Ibid.,p.1739.)

• While "in the Synoptic Gospels the revelation of Christ's glory is associated primarily with his eschatological 'coming', his return at the end of time…, in the fourth Gospel… the End here and now… is… an inner principle and not an external event. In this way, the 'coming' of the Son of man is interpreted primarily as the 'coming' of Jesus to this world through his Incarnation… Christ gives his life (see 10:18), he is 'lifted up' on the cross, but willingly, and only in order to enter into his glory (see 12:32), a glory that is made visible even in this world to the confusion of unbelievers and ending in the defeat of Satan once and for all." (Ibid., p.1739.)

Since that passage was written, scholarly opinion in favour of a relatively early date for the composition of John's Gospel has grown rather than diminished in weight, and its authenticity and integrity is not seriously in question.

Although nowhere mentioned in any of the three synoptic Gospels, the raising of Lazarus has never ceased to be a theme for Christian meditation.

• "Among the group ground the grave there was a hush of awe. Then the silence was rent by a loud cry, which, from One who was wont to speak gently, must have utterly thrilled the bystanders. Only once more is He recorded to have raised His voice - when dying on the Cross. The great shout which now cleaved the air and re-echoed inside the tomb like a trumpet-blast was this: 'Lazarus, come out!' It was a triple word of command; we might translate it: 'Lazarus! Hither! Forth!" What a blood-curdling experience it must have been for the sisters to hear One beside them shouting an imperious command to their dead brother! And the dead man heard the voice of the Son of G-d."

According to Alfred O'Rahilly, President of University College, Cork, and author of The Family at Bethany (Cork University Press - Oxford: Blackwell, 1949) from which I have extracted the short passage (pp.58-9) I have just quoted:

• "The subject of the raising of Lazarus was one of the most popular in the art of the Roman catacombs; about 54 examples of frescoes have survived, in addition to 30 representations on sarcophagi and 12 on gilded glass. The earliest occurs in the so-called Greek Chapel of the Catacomb of Priscilla; it is now faded and damaged by stalactite formation. The date of the Chapel has been thoroughly discussed by Wilpert, who attributes it to the early second century. This picture of Lazarus may therefore with considerable confidence be dated 100/125 A.D.…
• This archæological proof of a first century date for the fourth Gospel is reinforced by the discovery of a papyrus A.D. 100/150 which utilizes that Gospel. An even more decisive proof lies in a recently discovered fragment [preserved in the John Rylands library in Manchester] of the 18th chapter of St. John, the earliest piece of Christian writing known, which the critics date 100/150 A.D. It is almost certainly a fragment of a codex which contained the fourth Gospel by itself. It shows that before A.D. 150 the Gospel of St. John was spread in lower Egypt. This confirms what we learn from the catacombs of Rome." (op.cit., pp.76-8.)

The raising of Lazarus also features on the fourth-century Casket of Brescia, in the sixth-century Rossano Gospels, and as a miniature in the Codex Egberti, kept in the Library at Trier, and which dates from 950/1000 A.D.

This miracles is also portrayed in another German illustration (about 1021 A.D.) in St. George's Church on the island of Reichenau, prior to 1100 A.D. in the Church of Sant'Angelo in Formis, near Capua, and, to mention but a few from among the more outstanding, in more recent works by Giotto († 1336), Fra Angelico (1387-1455), Nicolas Froment (1820-1876) and, in our own day, Maurice Denis.

However, the particular aspect of the raising of Lazarus to which I here wish especially to draw your attention is one that is more likely to be perceived by a sensitive ear than it is by an artist's eye.

This is how Heinz Cassirer translated verses 33, 35 and 38 of the passage already quoted from chapter 11 of John's Gospel:

• "As for Jesus, he was deeply stirred in spirit and greatly shaken at the sight of her tears and the tears of the Jews who had come with her… Jesus burst into tears… Jesus, for his part, found that he was once more deeply stirred within himself when he reached the tomb."

In The New Jerusalem Bible we read:

• "At the sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who had come with her, Jesus was greatly distressed, and with a profound sigh he said, 'Where have you put him?'… Jesus wept… Sighing again, Jesus reached the tomb."

Many English-speaking readers will, however, be much more familiar with the rendering offered to us in the King James version of the Bible (cf., e.g., the 5th improved edition of The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, and Indianapolis: B. B. Kirkbride Bible Co., 1988, p.1136):

• "When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled… Jesus wept… Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave."

What are we to make of this bursting into tears, this weeping, this great distress, being troubled, and greatly shaken - this groaning in the spirit, this profound sigh: this being deeply stirred in spirit?

Alfred O'Rahilly's alternative translation (op.cit., pp.31-2) struggles valiantly to convey something of the mystery of the original:

• "When Jesus saw her sobbing, and the Jews accompanying her also lamenting, He was deeply moved and distressed… Jesus was shedding tears… Then Jesus, again deeply moved, came to the tomb."

• "The same verb (klaein)," O'Rahilly explains, "is translated 'sobbing' for Mary and 'lamenting' for the crowd in verse 33. It denotes loud crying, even 'keening' or bewailing the dead, not silent tear-shedding. On such occasions in the East there was (and is) much greater demonstrativeness than with us, especially on the part of women, who were even sometimes hired for the purpose…
• 'He was deeply moved': enebrimesato (Latin vulgate infremuit) in spirit; both brem and frem come from the same root. Some (e.g. Bernard) appeal to the original meaning as the snorting of a horse and suggest that Christ was uttering inarticulate sounds. Others refer to the use of the same verb elsewhere… Christ addressing the leper (Mk 1:43) or the blind man (Mt 9:30); and deduce that the verb expresses anger. It is here assumed that the word expresses strong emotion, or translates such a word from the Aramaic. The same verb recurs in verse 38.
• The Aramaic regaz corresponds to the Greek orgizesthai. But there is a Syrian idiom combining az (in the intensive ethpaal form eth-azaz) with be-ruha (in spirit) or be-naphsha (in soul) with the meaning of being deeply moved. - M. Black, Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 1946, p.174f.
• 'In the spirit': en to pneumati. It is represented in the translation by 'deeply'. The same verb recurs in verse 38, followed by 'in (or within) himself' (en heauto, in semetipso), which seems to mean the same as 'in the spirit.' This suggests that the emotion was not exteriorly expressed, except by His tears.
• 'Distressed': etarexen heauton, Vulgate turbavit seipsum. The reflexive form (He troubled Himself) is probably equivalent to the middle or the passive voice, like the French se troubler. Or it may represent the idiomatic use of the reflexive pronoun in Aramaic: 'for Himself,' ethical dative. There may of course be a nuance of the voluntary or spontaneous character in the emotion." (o.c.,pp.33-4.)

Confronted, as we are, with this complex choice of either the sound of a horse, or silent tears or, perhaps, some natural and emotional amalgam of both, we stand greatly indebted to Cassirer's translation, which he wished to be published as far as possible without the addition of any explanatory footnotes, since "he believed that a translation should be its own commentary." Indeed, "there is a firm, natural instinct that makes one aware of the… construction of the spoken Aramaic, in places where the literal following of the Greek… cannot be insisted upon." G-d's New Covenant, Editor's Preface, pp.xv-xvi.)

Father Prat, S.J., interprets Jesus' emotional sigh as the organic reaction of the compassion He felt (Jésus Christ, 1933, II, p.148).

Mystery is involved. As Pope St. Leo the Great wrote in 449 A.D.:

• "It does not belong to the same nature to weep for a dead friend with a feeling of pity, and to recall that same friend from the dead with a word of power after the removal of the stone which had covered the grave for four days."

St. Ignatius of Antioch had made a similar point, when writing to the Ephesians, some time before his own death in 107 A.D. -

• "He is flesh and spirit, born and unborn, G-d in Man, True Life in death, both from Mary and from G-d, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ Our Lord."

"If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts as you did at the time of the rebellion, during the days when you put me to the test in the desert!" we read in Psalm 95: 7-8, a text also quoted in chapter 3 of the Letter to the Hebrews, and now a prayer which all Roman Catholic monks, priests and religious sisters using The Divine Office are invited to pray on our behalf each day.

Listen to the words of Jesus (Jn 14: 1-6):

• "Set your troubled minds at rest. Believe in G-d, and believe in me likewise. There is many a resting-place in my Father's house. Were it not so, I would have told you, because it is to prepare a place for you that I am going there. And having gone there, preparing a place for you, I shall return and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be too. As for the way which leads to the place where I am going, it is known to you.'
• 'Lord,' asked Thomas, 'We do not know the place to which you are going. How then can we know the way?'
• 'I am the way,' was Jesus' reply; 'I am truth; and I am life. Except through me, no one can come into the presence of the Father.'"

I whole-heartedly accept the traditional Christian claim that Jesus of Nazareth is truly G-d, but in the present context it is not so much to his divinity, but to his very human sigh that I am endeavouring primarily to attract your own individual attention.

One passage I personally have found to be very helpful in this connection can be found in Erik Routley's excellent book, The Gift of Conversion (London: Lutterworth Press, 1957). It deserves, I think, to be pondered long and carefully, even if it does approach our topic from a somewhat unusual angle.

Routley writes:

• "We cannot think of Jesus as offering to diseases the resistance of fear. That is the heart of the matter.
• Is it not possible to fill in this gap in our knowledge of the historic Jesus by reverently suggesting that the bodily health of Jesus was the consequence, not of timid avoidance of 'breaking the law' of nature, but of His love of the G-d who was the origin of the law, His insight into the love that lay behind the law?
• To speak of 'breaking the law' of nature is strictly to speak nonsense, of course; what we mean by that expression is 'incurring the punishments of nature'. But it is wholly in harmony with the picture of Jesus which we do receive from the Gospels to suppose that His obedience and love to G-d had also their physical aspect. He no more incurred the consequences of physical foolishness or obstinacy than He incurred those of moral foolishness or obstinacy; and just as His moral splendour is utterly different from the timid and pernickety righteousness of the Pharisees, so we may suppose His physical health to be as different from the foolish and fugitive fears of the valetudinarian.
• We must still proceed with the utmost caution in this region; but we are on rather firmer ground when we turn back to the Scriptures and see how this affects our understanding of the natural content of the miracles. We have already referred to the pause which often immediately precedes the working of a healing sign. In two places that pause has the almost sinister note of 'deep sighing' or 'groaning in spirit'. At the healing of the deaf-mute in Decapolis (Mk 7:34), where Mark puts in that vivid Aramaic Ephphatha, we read that Jesus 'looked up to heaven and sighed'; and in two places in the story of the raising of Lazarus we read that He was 'deeply moved' in spirit (Jn 11:33 and 38).
• In many other places we are told that He 'was moved with compassion'. All the Greek words that lie behind these translations are strong and picturesque words. We are bound to gather from them that at the time of the performance of such signs there was an open conflict between the pure goodness of Christ and the evil against which He was fighting. These are no merely sentimental touches. There was a physical revulsion, an earthy and bodily horror, in the sight of physical corruption which was the direct consequence of the love of Jesus for the goodness and health of His Father's works. It all added power to the natural part of the sign as it was worked, but unquestionably it was there.
• We may well say that the wrath which He felt at the sight of physical corruption was exactly the same as the wrath He felt at the mental corruption of the Pharisees (Mk 3:5). It is the experience of ordinary men through the ages that no mortal pain is so piercing as the pain with which a man in Christ contemplates that plain and shameless badness which denies Him. It is discernible to the bystander as 'compassion', but there is no compassion without passion. It may have an evangelical aspect, it may cause a man to put forth all his power for the reclamation of a sinner: but at the centre is sheer pain.
• It is one of the indispensable notes in the miracles of Jesus that this pain was turned to power and to salvation (salvation = the giving of health). More often than many would suppose, a failure in evangelical success which is attributed to some minister or some Christian evangelist is the consequence of his being overpowered by this pain. He just cannot face the demons and the corruptions. More often than some suspect, an apparent success in evangelism softens into a long-term failure because there has been no pain, no real confrontation of evil by goodness, in the story of all.
• But in the confrontations of men by Jesus as they stand recorded in the Gospels there is this crisis; and it is the love of Christ for G-d that produces as its inevitable consequence His love for men, and His invincible courage." (loc.cit., pp.98-9.)

It was essentially the same love and the same courage that permitted Paul the Apostle to write (Gal 2:19): "I have been crucified with Christ; I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me."

The silent tears and the human sighs of Jesus of Nazareth witness to his naturally tender and passionate concern for G-d's world as it was originally created, and as in essence it again and again strains with all its being somehow to become. Continuing growth in true freedom is the very heart of this dynamic process.

• "Alchemy," writes Fréderic Lionel (in The Seduction of the Occult Path, Wellingborough: Turnstone Press, 1983, pp.82-40, "is the science of living rhythm. This science sets many riddles which one can only solve by going beyond the mental restraints which our family, social or political background imposes. We may say that alchemy is the science of the transformation of man by himself. This transformation is induced by the Mutant Pulsation of vital Dynamic Radiating Energy. This is also seen in the vortex of elemental particles at the heart of the atom. These particles form the foundation of the matter from which the world is built.
• Today the real and powerfully effective forces of conscious, sub-conscious or intuitive thought is freely admitted… Thought is an element of consciousness. The effective exercise of thought leads to vital energy. This energy maintains both the balance of the essential functions of the body and also mental harmony, which is the key to happiness. Alchemy, which is the science of the laws obeyed by vital energy, demands mastery of the mechanism of thought, which leads to wisdom.
• Heraclitus (floruit about 480 B.C.) said that there is only one wisdom, that of knowing that the spirit is endowed with the power which enables it to act as the supreme ruler.
• Let us then be aware of the power which we must direct to promote a balanced flow of living energy. The resultant serenity reduces on the physical plane the threat of illness. Illness is often the evidence of a block caused by instinctive and impulsive reactions. Amplifying, directing and modulating the free circulation of vital energy leads to the harmonious balance which we call health, health not only of the body but also of the psychic universe.
• This is the essence of the teaching transmitted by the hermetic sciences of which alchemy is one… It is through thought that all initiates have tried to reach the region of the unknowable, those of the universal mystery. They had a certainty about man's predestination, that he was called on to collaborate with full understanding in Nature's great work, also called the Great Work of alchemy.
• These initiates confirmed that the universe is the Athanor or furnace which transforms every thing as it evolves towards final perfection, symbolized by gold.
• Every collaboration requires an action and every action is determined by thought. Thus we can say that vital energy is directed by thought. Muscles react to its impact, but beyond the physical world the power of thought can operate. Knowing how to direct it aright presupposes the finding of answers to the fundamental questions which have aroused since time immemorial a profound urge amongst men to discover the reason for their existence. This impetus led and still leads to mysticism, which differs from philosophical systems in that it discards all rational approaches, giving credence only to attractions beyond the domain of the senses.
• The true light of mysticism shines when the idols are shattered, when certainties waiver, when the candles, lit in honour of false gods, are snuffed out… Mysticism seeks to penetrate the secrets of Life, and hence of Death as well. Having got rid of all mental encumbrances the mystic can free himself from the limits of the conceptual world and unite his personal rhythm with the rhythm of the primordial Breath, which continues its living adventure, being ONE in diversity, so as to assert his Unity.
• The Mystic tunes his personal melody to the polyphony of a symphony which is an expression of world-wide unity. In doing this he makes himself an initiate collaborating with the Cosmic Plan."

There is nothing new about what Lionel has written. Even if we hesitate to agree with Bonnie Gaunt (Stonehenge - A Closer Look, 510 Golf Avenue, Jackson, Michigan 49203, 1979, 2nd printing 1987, pp.207-13) that Jesus Christ was born on the Jewish New Year's day, 29 September, 2 B.C., baptised in the river Jordan by John the Baptist on 14 October, 29 A.D., and died on Calvary on the afternoon of Friday, 3 April, 33 A.D., indeed, even if some of us hesitate to agree that the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth or, for that matter, the past history of G-d's chosen Jewish people as a whole is of any particular significance in the history of human life on planet Earth, there are a number of all too often neglected points which undoubtedly still deserve to be taken into account.

I realise, of course, that the significance any speaker or writer attributes to her or his words frequently differs quite importantly from the interpretation that comes later to be attached to those words by other persons hearing or reading them. Meaning as interpeted does not automatically coincide with meaning as originally signified.

Again, whenever evidence is being considered or examined, it is important always to bear in mind that while the data so far available are one kettle of fish, their interpretation is quite another.

Also, if you will allow me to insist here on one more cardinal point before proceeding further, no map, however detailed, is ever a substitute for the territory and - this needs to be stated - no lifeless map or model of any kind can ever do justice to the living enigma of nature within and around us.

In the words of Albert Einstein (1879-1955): "We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues… The child does not understand the languages in which they are written. He notes a definite plan in the arrangement of books, a mysterious order which he does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects." ( Quoted by Clifford A. Pickover in Computers, Patterns, Chaos and Beauty - Graphics from an Unseen World, Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1990.)

Nevertheless, as Fulcanelli, Master Alchemist, has written in Le Mystère des Cathédrales - Esoteric Interpretation of the Hermetic Symbols of the Great Work (American Edition, Albuquerque: Brotherhood of Life, 1984, p.43): "the fact is that there is neither chance nor coincidence nor accidental correspondence here below. All is foreseen, preordained, regulated; and it is not for us to bend to our pleasure the inscrutable will of Destiny."

Although that statement is, I believe, perfectly true, it still requires to be read carefully, if it is not to be interpreted in a misleading way. 'Fact' is a word that derives from the past participle of a Latin verb meaning 'to make' or 'to do'. Thus, in this present instant, the continuing fact that there is neither chance nor coincidence nor accidental correspondence here below is not something that merely happens to be the case; it is a state of affairs that has been brought about, sometimes not without very considerable pain and self-sacrifice, by the steady application of effective Will. Our personal Freedom as human beings has, I believe, been bought at a great price. Love is a joyful Communion not of indolence and stagnation, but of Service and Glorious Achievement.

The few small samples of evidence I wish to concentrate on here are ones I have selected out of a superabundance of available materials, and they have all been studied in detail and quite intensively by a large variety of field-workers and scholars, but the links between them have not always been attended to sufficiently.

The Sarcen Circle at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, in southern England originally comprised 30 dressed and polished ujpright stones with an average height of about 13' 6", surmounted by 30 smooth-topped lintels with a mean average length of 10.56', joined to each other by a tongue and groove, and to the supporting uprights by a tenon and mortise arrangement, and cut in such a way that, despite the unevenness of the ground and the very considerable difference in height between the uprights, the 30 lintels together formed one continuous and well rounded flat stone disk with a mean circumference of 316.8', which corresponds to the perimeter of a square with sides 79.2' in length. Despite the ravages of time, 18 of the sarsen uprights and many other parts of the original monument are still standing - including 20 blueish-green stones out of a group of perhaps as many as 60 which originally formed a circle inside, and slightly smaller than the Sarcen Circle: this is known as the Bluestone Circle, and it has a diameter of 79.2'. Bonnie Gaunt believes that the building of Stonehenge was completed in 1973 B.C., and that Noah's son, Shem, was its architect.

Chapters 40-48 of the Old Testament book of Ezekiel are given over to a description of what the editors of the New Jerusalem Bible refer to (p.1176) as "the blueprint of a future Temple from which an imaginary river flows through a geographic Utopia." Bonnie Gaunt has also made a close study of these nine chapters and, among other things, she points out that the walls of the city in which Ezekiel's Temple stands have a perimeter of 31680', so that, in other words, they form a square with sides 7920' in length.

The last book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation, also contains the description of a walled city, viz., New Jerusalem. Bonnie Gaunt finds it both interesting and significant that the perimeter of the city-walls of New Jerusalem is 31,680,000', the walls being those of a square with sides 7,920,000' in length.

Planet Earth has a mean diameter of 7920 miles at the equator; this means that if one thinks of it as being encased in a cub-shaped box, the four walls in contact with the Earth at its equator will together have a perimeter of 31680 miles, and will together form a square each side of which is 7920 miles in length.

The Moon has a diameter of 2160 miles. If one were to construct a huge pyramid in the very same proportions as those of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, but of such a size that its base was bounded by a square with a perimeter of 31680 miles, and if this new pyramid were so positioned that this square base ran through the Earth at its equator, then, if the Moon were to be just touching the Earth at the North Pole, the apex of this pyramid would be located in the precise centre of the Moon. As Bonnie Gaunt expresses it:

• "If the diameter of the Earth were used as the base of a pyramid, and the centre of the Moon as the apex, the proportions of that pyramid would be the exact proportions of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, having a base angle of 51° 51'." (The Stones Cry Out, p.18.)

Mention has already been made of some of the amazingly related proportions of Stonehenge, where "the relationship of the Bluestone Circle to the Sarsen Circle is identical to the relationship of the Earth to a square drawn on its circumference. If the circumference of the Sarsen Circle, 316.8', were redefined as a square, the Bluestone Circle would fit tangent to that square." (Ibid.,p.56.)

These same proportions are also, as previously mentioned, part of Ezekiel's vision, and of the topography of New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.

John Michell's City of Revelation (Abacus Books, 1973) discusses these matters in much more detail, and C. E. Street's Earthstars (London: Hermitage Publishing, 1990) makes it quite clear that the whole of London has also been designed in such a way that these proportions are faithfully respected. The general location of the primary energy centres or chakras in every human being is, moreover, also an expression of this same mysterious relationship (cf. Earthstars, pp.82-9.)

The Irish seer, A.E., has written in The Candle of Vision: "The roots of human speech are the sound correspondences of powers which in their combination and interaction make up the universe. The mind of man is made in the image of Deity, and the elements of speech are related to the powers in his mind and through it to the being of the Oversoul." (Quoted by John Michell, o.c., p.34.)

I am not qualified to say what A.E. means by 'Oversoul' and can only wonder to what extent it may or may not properly be identified with the 'Overmind' mentioned by both Edgar Cayce and Sri Aurobindo, but it is noteworthy that practitioners of the ancient art or science of Gematria treat the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Greek text of the New Testament as a sacred mathematical code, with each letter representing a particular number. 3168, a figure already referred to several times, is the number corresponding to the Greek for "Lord Jesus Christ", and 284 is the number corresponding to the Greek word for "G-d".

If we construct a right-angled triangle with a base 284 units in length, and of such a type that its hypotenuse measures 316.8 units on the same scale, the angle between the base and the hypotenuse will be one of 26° 18' 9.7".

The Great Pyramid at Gizeh is the largest building in the world, and contains enough stone to build 30 Empire State buildings, but it is not just a heap of stones; it contains both ascending and descending passages. These passages both diverge from the horizontal by an angle of 26° 18' 9.7". This same angle, and Bonnie Gaunt is not alone in believing that this is not the result of blind chance, also happens to be that by which the straightest route from Gizeh to Bethlehem diverges northwards from due East. If Noah's son, Shem, was also the architect responsible for the construction of all, or at least part of the Great Pyramid, he may have completed his work on it, as Bonnie Gaunt suggests, in 2140 B.C.

Bonnie Gaunt has spent several years studying the Bible, Stonehenge, and the Great Pyramid. As well as writing Stonehenge - A Closer Look, she is the author, publisher and distributor of The Magnificent Numbers of the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge, and of The Stones Cry Out (1991), which also contains some fascinating information about England's Coronation Stone, the famous Stone of Scone, which Bonnie Gaunt believes is, indeed, not only the stone on which the Patriarch Jacob rested his head, while he was having his famous dream of a Ladder between Earth and Heaven, but that it is also the rock which, after Moses had struck it with his rod (Num 20:5-11), miraculously supplied more than 2,000,000 Jews and their cattle with enough water to satisfy their thirst.

Let us pause, then, and refresh our memory of an incident recorded in chapter 4 of John's Gospel (3-26):

• "Jesus again set out for Galilee. To reach it, he had to go by way of Samaria; and so he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, close by the piece of land which Jacob bestowed upon his son Joseph as a gift.
• Now Jacob's well was in that place, and so it happened that Jesus, being tired out by the journey, sat down by the well. The time was about noon. And when a Samaritan woman came there to draw water from the well, Jesus said to her, 'Give me something to drink.' (His disciples had gone off into the city for the purpose of buying food.)
• 'How is it,' the Samaritan woman said to him, 'that you, who are a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?' (The reason for her saying this was that Jews and Samaritans have no dealings with one another.)
• Jesus answered her thus: 'If only you knew the gift which G-d offers, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me something to drink", it would have been you that had done the asking, and he, for his part, would have made you a gift of living water.'
• 'Sir,' replied the woman, 'you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. How, then, is it that you have living water to bestow? Are you greater than our forefather Jacob, who made us a gift of this well and who drank from it, he himself, his sons, and his cattle?'
• 'Anyone who drinks of this well,' replied Jesus, 'will again be thirsty. But he who drinks of the water that I shall give him will never again suffer thirst. No, what will happen is that the water which I shall give him will, within him, become a spring of water which wells up and brings eternal life with it.'
• 'Sir,' the woman said to him, 'make me a gift of this water, so that I shall feel thirsty no more, nor have to come here again to draw water.'
• 'Be one your way,' he said to her, 'and, after having called your husband, come back here.'
• 'I have no husband,' was the woman's reply.
• 'You have spoken aright,' replied Jesus, 'in saying that you have no husband, seeing that you have had five husbands, and that the man you are with now is not your husband. You have told the truth about this.'
• 'I can see, sir, that you are a prophet,' the woman said to him. 'Our forefathers worshipped on this mountain, while you Jews maintain that Jerusalem is the place where men should offer worship.'
• 'Believe me, my good woman,' said Jesus, 'the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship not knowing what you worship, while we worship that which we know; for it is from the Jews that salvation comes. Yet the time is approaching, indeed it is already here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in a spiritual manner and in accordance with the truth. Indeed, what the Father requires is worshippers such as these. G-d is spirit, and those worshipping him must worship in a spiritual manner and in accordance with the truth.'
• 'I know,' the woman said to him, 'that Messiah is to come, the one whom they call the Christ, and that, when he comes, his message will make everything plain to us.'
• 'I am he,' Jesus said to her; 'I, the man who is talking to you.'"

Nobody willing to accept that claim of Jesus of Nazareth at its face-value need experience any difficulty in accepting any of Bonnie Gaunt's claims about the existence of numerous detailed correspondences between biblical texts, the archæological and topographical features of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, and the physical nature and workings of the solar system. On the other hand, it by no means follows that her arguments and those of John Michell are persuasive, their methodological principles valid, or their data accurate.

Bonnie Gaunt is following John Michell when she writes:

• "The ancient units of linear measure, and time, are all related to one another and are, in addition, related to the Bible, Stonehenge and the universe. The modern metric system, on the other hand, is related to none of these. It was contrived by man to represent one ten-millionth part of the length of a quadrant of the meridian through Paris, but it is not, in fact, commensurate with the universe and therefore is totally unsuitable for archæological work and the measuring of antiquities." (Stonehenge… A Closer Look, pp.92-3.).

In addition to noting that it would be prudent to replace the term 'universe' at this stage of the discussion by a more modest reference to 'the solar system', it needs to be clearly stated that Michell's animadversions against the use of the metric system are quite unwarranted. In other words, beware of those who ride hobby-horses. Remember always that we know far less, as well as far more, than we know! A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

John Michell's Ancient Metrology - the dimensions of Stonehenge and of the Whole World as therein symbolised (Bristol: Pentacle Books, 1981) claims to set out for the first time "the exact lengths of the ancient units which measured Stonehenge and other such monuments as the Parthenon and the Egyptian pyramids." In his summary table (p.47) he includes a mention of the Egyptian cubit, to which he assigns a tropical value of 1.718' and a northern value of 1.728'.

1.718' = 52.36cm. An instructive footnote on page 97 of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz's The Egyptian Miracle - An Introduction to the Wisdom of the Temple (New York, Inner Traditions International, 1985 - but the French original was first published in 1963) reads:

• "The Pharaonic cubit measures 0.5236 metres, which is precisely the length of the arc at 60° when the cord of this same angle is equal to the radius, measuring 0.50 metres. Hence, 6 royal cubits will measure the length of a circle whose diameter is 1 metre. Furthermore, the royal cubit comprises 28 finger-breadths. The association on the sacred cubit of the function Pi and of the double of 14 is most curious…"

And the distinguished author refers back to his own discussion of various related numbers. This book deserves to be studied very carefully. So, too, does Bodvar Schjelderup's The Language of Recognition - Book One: Evidence (Trondheim: Forlaget Fredag, 1986).

Another important authority, Peter Tompkins, first published his Secrets of the Great Pyramid in 1971, and the work was re-issued as a large-format paperback in 1978. It is undoubtedly the best single introduction to this particular subject available in English, and the 96-page appendix by Livio Catullo Stecchini, "Notes on the Relation of Ancient Measures to the Great Pyramid", deserves to be read, re-read, and thoroughly digested. Here, it will be enough to quote briefly from the author's Introduction:

• "The astronomical, mathematical, and geodetic science of the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, their cosmology and theology, are only beginning to be appreciated.
• The degree of prejudice that for the past few thousand years has obscured the physical and metaphysical wisdom of the ancients is beginning to dissolve, and their perennial wisdom may still be in time to save a planet rushing headlong to self-destruction…
• Recent studies of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the cuneiform mathematical tablets of the Babylonians and Sumerians have established that an advanced science did flourish in the Middle East at least three thousand years before Christ, and that Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and other Greeks reputed to have originated mathematics on this planet merely picked up fragments of an ancient science evolved by remote and unknown predecessors." (pp.xi-xiv.)

Christopher Chippindale's ambitiously titled Stonehenge Complete (Thames & Hudson, 1983), therefore, although excellent as a general introduction to the author's chosen subject, quite definitely is not to be uncritically relied on. Gerald S. Hawkins' earlier Beyond Stonehenge (Arrow Books, 1977) goes some way towsards correcting the balance, but each reader will still need to learn to think for her- or himself and to accept the responsibility for freely arriving, without undue haste, at an appropriate degree of personal judgment.

Bonnie Gaunt states that the first man, Adam, was created by G-d in autumn 4129 B.C.; John Lightfoot (1602-1675) seems to have been at least equally convinced that Adam was created at 9am on 23 October 4004 B.C. On the other hand, although Professor Edward Hull's Synchronological Chart of Universal History (originally published by C. W. Deacon & Company of London in 1890 or thereabouts, and reissued by Bracken Books as recently as 1988) accepts 4004 B.C. as the date of Adam's creation of the authority of Archbishop Usher and "a large majority of our Histories", the Professor does mention in a note that, although "the Hebrews probably estimated the length of the period before the Flood at something between 13 and 23 centuries, Babylonians estimated it at 4320 centuries." Most contemporary attempts to fix a date for humankind's first appearance on Earth , however, take us back not one but fifty thousand centuries, in other words, about 5,000,000 years.

According to H. S. Bellamy's In the Beginning G-d - a new scientific vindication of the cosmogonic myths in the Book of Genesis (London: Faber & Faber, 1945, p.14):

• "It is not Creation which is described in the early verses of the Book of Genesis, but Re-creation; not a hypothesis about the absolute beginning of life is offered, but a report about a new lease of life given to a chosen, or lucky, minority… The succession of the different myths is certainly not correct… The account of the Deluge, for instance, should precede the story of the Creation, and part of the muth of Lot that of the Deluge."

Bellamy's claim needs to be read in the light of what he wrote in his earlier book Moons, Myths, and Man - a reinterpretation (Faber & Faber, 1936, pp. 18, 30, 32, 36, 46-8):

• "Space is chiefly filled with hydrogen in a state of utmost rarefaction. Though inconceivably thin, this universal medium is nevertheless capable, in the course of astronomical spans of time, of offering an appreciable resistance to bodies moving in it, and to forces using it as a conductor. It slows up, and finally stops, all bodies moving in it in straight lines; rounds out and decreases all orbits, thus causing all revolving bodies to approach their mass-centres in fine spirals, and, at last, to unite with them; and weakens, and ultimately annihiltes, all forces…
• Since the first appearance of great waters on our Earth, bequeathed by unknown primordial satellites, at least six satellites have become united with it, each one of these building up a distinct series of strata, the geological profiles [the approximate dates added in square brackets are those currently accepted by most geologists, and do not, therefore, necessarily conform to Bellamy's account of past events]:
• 1. The Cainozoic Age (Pleistocene and Tertiary Rocks) [66 million until 200,000 years ago]
• 2. The Mesozoic Age (Creataceous, Jurassic, Triassic Rocks) [250-66 million years ago]
• 3. The Permian and Carboniferous Ages [355-250 million years ago]
• 4. The Devonian and Silurian Ages [435-355 million years ago]
• 5. The Cambrian Age [570-435 million years ago]
• 6. The Algonkian or Achæozoic Age [2500-570 million years ago or more]
• Below this last profile the formations can no longer be distinctly separated. [The Earth's core may have been formed about 4600 million years ago.]…
• The [first stage in the] capture of the planet Luna, [viz.,] its conversion into a satellite took place some thirteen to fifteen thousand years ago. When the planet Luna was captured, the realm of Atlantis met its sudden end; Lemuria disappeared; and the land of which Easter Island is the lone and enigmatic remainder was lost. The peoples that lived in the vast basin now occupied by the Mediterranean were wiped out. All over the Earth there was a great setback in the progress of culture and civilization; everywhere man retrogressed, often to the toolless stage…
• [The second and final state in the process of] capture must especially take place when the massy captor is at its aphelion and the weaker trespasser at its perihelion… At a distance of 1.8 Earth radii, the 'month' will have diminished to 3.4 hours, and the 'day' will have reached its shortest duration, probably 18 hours. The Moon will then speed round the Earth more than five times per 'day'. The satellite's tidal lift will reach the tremendous figure of 134,560 [times its present strength], while the centrifugal fling will amount to 20,480. This will not only draw the waters of the Earth into a very narrow and high girdle-tide, but will also distort the Earth into a definite lentoid shape. The whole lithosphere will continually heave under the gigantic lunar pull, in an endless succession of earthquakes. All these phenomena will increase - till the cohesive powers of the Moon will no longer be able to counteract the enormous terrestrial gravitation which, of course, will have grown proportionally. The satellite, which had long taken an ovid shape and had been riven and kneaded, at last will begin to dissolve at both apices…"

Although, as regards the Moon, that last paragraph portrays events which are still far off in the future, it can, of course, also be read as an account of the second stage in the capture of each and every one of the earlier ex-planetary satellities our Earth has, as explained above, already transmuted into parts of its own body.

Scattered and fragmentary traditional teachings utilising our ancestors' memories of these traumatic episodes in our prehistory have been incorporated in myths the world over, and such materials were drawn upon for theological and therefore - because of the holistic approach then taken for granted - also for general psychological and pædagogical purposes by the original compilers of the Book of Genesis, as well as by the writer of the Book of Revelation. These two books of the Bible "are complementary. They never contradict one another, which, however, is not to be wondered at since they ultimately describe the same physical happenings. It is remarkable, however, how carefully they avoid duplicating one another." (In the Beginning G-d, p.19)…

I am grateful to Bonnie Gaunt for drawing to my attention one mathematical inaccuracy in an earlier draft of this essay. Although that blemish has now been removed, most of the text remains unchanged. Bonnie Gaunt herself, however, now doubts the accuracy of 4129 B.C. as the date of the creation of Adam and, while she rejects the traditional arguments in favour of the more recent date of 4004 B.C., currently acknowledges its possible prophetic validity - if two years of innocence in Eden separated the creation of the first parents of the human race from their first sin of disobedience, their expulsion from Paradise in the autumn of 4002 would then have occurred precisely 4000 years before the birth of Jesus in 2 B.C., and 6000 years before his possible return in 1999 A.D., a date allegedly favoured by both Nostradamus and the author of the Secrets of Enoch. As is superabundantly clear from the other contents of this website, the writer of the present essay is markedly disinclined either to accept Bonnie Gaunt's chronology or to agree that Nostradamus made any particular forecasts for the year we call "1999".

The blind author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges mentions in "The Kabbalah" in his collection of lecture-essays, Seven Nights (Faber & Faber, 1987, p.97), that "Spengler points out in his chapter on magical culture in Der Untergang des Abendlandes that the prototype of the magical book is the Koran. For the ulema, the doctors of Moslem law, the Koran is not a book like the others. It is a book - this is incredible, but this is how it is - that is older than the Arabic language. One may not study it historically or philologically, because it is older than the Arabs, older than the language in which it exists, and older than the universe. Nor do they admit that the Koran is the work of G-d; it is something more intimate and mysterious. For the orthodox Moslems the Koran is an attribute of G-d, like His rage, His pity, or His justice. The Koran itself speaks of a mysterious book, the mother of the book, the celestial archetype of the Koran. It is in heaven and is worshipped by the angels."

Borges has also remined us (in "Blindness" in the same collection) that "Democritus of Abdera (460-370 B.C.) tore his eyes out in a garden so that the spectacle of reality would not distract him." Were Borges an English writer, one would, therefore, have to ask whether or not the expression "spectacle of reality" is meant to be taken as a pun.

Also, anyone who has read Umberto Eco's The Middle Ages of James Joyce - The Aesthetics of Chaosmos (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989) is certainly quite entitled to wonder whether or not Finnegan's Wake has any connection with the heavenly book worshipped by angels…

As to Salman Rushdie, my own remarks about his writing - and any personal concern I have expressed about the Gulf War or about the still unresolved Arab-Jewish conflict, all that needs to be interpreted in the fuller context of all the relevant texts - without excluding any portion of whatever has been all too imperfectly expressed or implied in any of the foregoing or ensuing pages!

INTIMACY IS TRUTH

In "Children in a Library" I suggested that the natural sense of revulsion Jesus of Nazareth as a human being invariably experienced in the presence of physical or moral evil was sometimes so intense that it caused him to sigh, that this sigh was, by that same token, itself also an expression of that incessantly renewed life of perfect prayer which united the heart, mind and soul of Jesus as man to the all-creating love-life of the eternal Divine Trinity and, therefore, that this sigh, considered holistically as physical event, communicative symbol and personal expression, was, on occasions, the natural means Jesus as G-d freely and spontaneously used in order miraculously to express his own personal divinely human feelings of love and compassion - e.g., by raising Lazarus from the dead.

If anybody wishes to know the precise musical pitch, timbre and tone with which Jesus needed to modulate his voice in order precisely to produce that effect, I reply, firstly, that just as the B.B.C. is nowadays able to use quite a wide selection of notably different frequencies in order to broadcast its transmissions to different parts of the world, so the personal and communicative efficacy of Jesus' sigh may have been at least relatively independent of the precise physical qualities he happened to impart to it on any particular occasion; secondly, that a thorough investigation and exploration of this topic might very easily involve us in a detailed discussion of many seemingly unrelated questions, questions, for instance, such as those which have been raised about the holonomic register by José Argüelles in The Mayan Factor, about resonance by Richard Sheldrake in A New Science of Life, about mantrams by, e.g., Shyam Sundar Goswami in Layayoga - an advanced method of concentration, or about gematria, the cabala, the apostolic gnosis; thirdly, that a careful reading of J. D. Solomon's The Mind's Ear or of the brief essays I have written as introductions to that enormously helpful book will enable you to situate such an enquiry where it belongs - in a much wider and, indeed, potentially all-embracing frame of reference.

"To pray, it has been said, is to stand before G-d in order to enter into a direct and personal relationship with Him. It is not so much an activity at specific times as an entering into the stillness with an attitude of positive alertness and a continuous state of awareness on the highest level of consciousness one can reach. A Syrian monk, Isaac of Niniveh, wrote: 'Every man who delights in a multitude of words, even when he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in G-d and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance.'" (David V. Tansley, Subtle Body - Essence and Shadow, London: Thames & Hudson, 1977, p.90.)

Notwithstanding the relative frequency on this web-site of specific references to women and to writings by women, a majority of the persons mentioned or quoted appear to be individuals of the male gender. This state of affairs is unlikely to change in the immediate future and is, in any case, one which may be interpreted in quite a variety of different ways. Peter Dawkins, for instance, in the second part of his "Francis Bacon - Herald of a New Age" (Scientific & Medical Network Bulletin, no.40, August 1989, pp.9-10) affirms:

• "The very word 'man' means 'the thinker', and that which thinks is the mind. As Francis Bacon remarked: 'The mind is the man, and the knowlege is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth.' This is a truth conveyed in the esoteric teachings of Hebraic and Christian cabbala, and there is not the slightest doubt but that Francis Bacon was a great master of the cabbala, as revealed throughout his works, open and masked. Cabbala also gives the key to his use of gender in his writings, as the use of male or female gender is symbolically applied according to a traditional scheme of language, and not because Bacon was discriminating against any one sex, as some have charged… Man (male and female) is therefore intended to manifest G-d, the All-Good, and that Goodness manifested is Charity."

It is, therefore, ironic that the apostle St. Paul, who was strenuously opposed to any discrimination being made between male and female prophets in the earliest Christian communities, who publicly commended many women in his Letters, including some, such as Junia, whom he clearly regarded as being themselves apostles, and who has bequeathed to us the most famous eulogy of Charity ever penned (I Cor 13), should sometimes still be accused of having had a patriarchal mentality, or of having manifested a male-chauvenist attitude, and this, so far as one can see, purely and simply on the basis of his having taken the trouble explicitly and forthrightly to condemn such attitudes himself in verses 36-40 of chapter 14 of his First Letter to the Corinthians:

• "If you men have doubts on this, is it perhaps that you suppose that G-d's word came forth from you yourselves, that you are the only people it has reached?!… What I am writing are words of command from the Lord… Make prophesying the object of your strivings, and as for speaking in inspired tongues, do nothing to forbid it. Only see to it that everything is done decently and in an orderly fashion."

In order to place those instructions of his in their pastoral context, St. Paul also quoted immediately beforehand, not without irony, a few ill-judged contrary opinions, viz., "'As for women, they should keep silent, when the congregations are assembled.' 'Utterance is not permitted to them.' 'No, it is their duty to submit themselves, as the law also says.' And, 'if there be any question on which they wish to be informed, let them ask their husbands at home.' 'It is a disgraceful thing that a woman should make her voice heard in a meeting of the congregation.'"

Perhaps it is inevitable that some among the early Christians at Corinth should have entertained such, to us, obviously unchristian ideas. Neither Jewish nor Roman social structures operated in favour of public equality of status for both sexes and, although Paul's opposition to any sort of discrimination had undeniably valid historical antecedents in the example both of Jesus himself and of several Gnostic communities, the Constantinian merger between Church and State did nothing to promote the Christian ideal of personal freedom. (Cf. Robert W. Alison's article in Journal for the Study of the New Testament, no.32, February 1988, pp.27-60).

J. B. Smith's The Guadalupe Madonna highlights the already manifest importance of Mary of Nazareth in the life of humanity, and Meditations on the Tarot anticipates a notable growth in our appreciation of her rôle.

The Catholic Church teaches that when Mary was conceived in the womb of her own mother, St. Anne, she was, despite her being a direct linear descendant of our first parents, Adam and Eve, conceived completely free from any hereditary stain or taint of 'original sin'. Theologians explain that this is a privilege granted to Mary because of her own special vocation and mission the the world as Mother of G-d. In other words, this special quality that Mary enjoys, and the holiness which makes her superior to all the angels and other saints of G-d that accompanies and flows from it, is a gift that comes to Mary from the Holy Trinity through the living heart of our common Redeemer, her son, the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

While the natural infallibility of each and every human intellect is potentially infinite, the official infallibility of the Pope is limited or, to use the technical term, defined by the boundaries of what in the Catholic Christian tradition is called the 'deposit of faith', in other words, the Pope as Pope is less, not more, infallible than the Pope as a man like the rest of us (whether males or females). Unlike Cardinal Newman, Hans Küng never seems to have cottoned on to this truism!

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Catholics are free to hold a variety of opinions on many things, including many which at least appear to be matters of moment, but no Catholic today is entitled to doubt the truth of the defined dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception, as this mystery of the Faith is called. On the contrary, I am very happy indeed whole-heartedly to believe it. Indeed, I am becoming increasingly convinced that many corollaries of this truth have so far remained hidden, and that all Christians needs to grow towards a more mature appreciation of the cardinal position this mystery occupies, and has always occupied - not only in the lives of Christians born more recently than April 33 A.D., but also in the lives of Adam and Eve, the first parents of us all in this dispensation of divine providence.

That was why in "Nature's mysteries revealed to Home" I took issue with St. Augustine of Hippo's mistaken condemnation of the teachings of his saintly contemporary Pelagius - a name, incidentally, which is simply the Latin form of Morgan.

Today we have far less excuse than Augustine may have had for clinging to any sort of narrow, parochial interpretation of what, to be fair, was already his own teaching (in Librum de vera religione, ch. 10):

• "That which is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christianity."

Unfortunately, as is well known, St. Augustine would not have appreciated this essentially innocent, even if ambigiously expressed corollary:

• "Greek philosophy taught that all manifestations of goodness, truth, and beauty were ultimately aspects of the universal good. The highest goal was to mingle spiritual, mental, and phyical values harmoniously. Hence the admiration for beauty of body, the visible sign of this harmony. such admiration was a moral as well as an æsthetic experience. Of course it might have a physical outlet. (Homosexual love was an acceptable part of society.) More important for art, it created an idea of perfection that, waxing and waning with fashion, has remarkably survived more than two thousand years.
• In the Symposium Plato supposes that beauty is a good that all men strive to grasp. 'Those whose creative instinct is physical have recourse to women, and show their love in this way, believing that by begetting children they can secure for themselves an immortal and blessed memory hereafter forever; but there are some whose creative desire is of the soul, and who long to beget spiritually, not physically, the progeny which it is the nature of the soul to create and bring to birth.'
• Among these are artists. But even here, the first impetus in the pursuit of the ideal form of beauty is provided by the physical beauty of real individuals. I was reminded of this, when in the days following the photographic session, I was stirred by the memory of Lydia's glowing golden skin. 'No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling,' wrote that most fastidious critic Kenneth Clark [in The Nude]; 'If it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of our nature, that our judgment of what is known as "pure form" is inevitably influenced by it.' If the spectator's judgment is influenced, at second hand, by the erotic content in the art, [which is, moreover, not without its underlying purely mathematical and symbolic-numeric aspect] what about the artist dealing directly with the source?" (Michæl Gill, Image of the Body - aspects of the nude, New York: Doubleday, 1989, p.27.)

In 1946, in volume 7 of Theological Studies, Father Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904-1984), published a trenchant review of a newly published, controversial, theological, philosophical and historical study by the Mexican theologian, E. Iglesias, entitled De Deo in operatione naturæ vel voluntatis operante. Subsequently, in 1967, this review was reprinted under the title "On G-d and Secondary Causes" as the third in a selection of sixteen of Lonergan's papers published by Darton, Longman & Todd in Collection, a volume edited by his fellow Jesuit, Father Frederick Crowe. Although international conferences were convened during his lifetime to explore and discuss the undoubted contemporary relevance and importance of his various contributions to philosophy and theology, Lonergan's work has not yet achieved the degree of recognition it manifestly deserves - largely, I suspect, because his disciple, David Tracy's The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan (New York: Herder & Herder, 1970) does less than justice to the subtle volte-face represented by his mentor's most mature work, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), even though Father Tracy had had access to this book in manuscript.

I have no wish to deny the value of Tracy's contribution to our understanding of Lonergan. I appreciate that the latter had learned a great deal from his own reading of Cardinal Newman (1801-1890). I readily admit that a personal encounter with the developing mind of Lonergan, as that is disclosed for us in his epoch-making Insight - a study of human understanding (revised student's edition, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1958; posthumous critical edition: University of Toronto Press, 1992) is of primary importance in any attempt to assimilate the essence of his genius. I also acknowledge that some British philosophers and New Age prophets have raised questions which undoubtedly demand serious attention.

Nevertheless, Lonergan's personal priority has been remarkably similar to that of Umberto Eco; he wanted as many persons as possible to familiarise themselves with the growing mind of mediæval Europe and, in particular, of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-1274).

Relatively few Christians would be inclined to dissent from Lonergan's own forthright assertion that "G-d not only gives being to, and conserves in being, every created cause, but also he uses the universe of causes as his instruments in applying each cause to its operation and so is the principal cause of each and every event as event. Man proposes, but G-d disposes." (Collection, p.58.)

Yet, even today, a significant number of Cardinals, Bishops, priests and theologians would probably be quite startled by, or would at least, if challenged, find themselves obliged in all good conscience to admit that they had not so far incorporated into their own way of perceiving and responding to day-to-day situations, this further fundamental truth, which is, for Lonergan, as it was for Aquinas (Declaratio CVIII dubiorum, q.74), no more than a corollary of the first: "G-d really, and not in name merely, is the efficient cause of every event; G-d is the immediate efficient cause in the sense that G-d never is a means, not in the sense that he can never employ a means." (Ibid, p.64.)

That principle is, I believe, one which is of great importance for all of us, and both Aquinas and Lonergan affirmed it in an Aristotelian context - that of their profound realisation that agere est pati quoddam, four Latin words which are impossible to translate, but which together form the most concise expression I know of Christian Metaphysics.

Arguing against Averroes (c. 1126-1198), for instance, in the Contra Gentes (II, 60, par.8), Aquinas had written: "Posse autem intelligeres est posse pati: cum 'intelligere quoddam pati sit,'" and in our own day, in commenting on that and other related passages, Lonergan had concluded: "Lest there be any misapprehension about Aquinas' ideas on the actio manens in agente, I proceed to observe that not only sentire and intelligere but also velle can be a pati. For with respect to the interior act of the will, the grace of G-d is operative and the will of man is 'mota et non movens' (Summa Theologiæ, I-II, q.111, a.2 c.). Though not stated so explicitly, the same is true with respect to the act of willing the end as conceived in the De Malo and the Prima Secundæ; for in these works the will moves itself only inasmuch as it is in act with respect to the end, but to that act it is moved by an external principle, G-d (De Malo, q.6, a.1 c.; Summa Theologiæ, I-II, q.9, aa.3, 4, 6). Finally, what is true of these later works with respect to willing the end is true more generally in earlier works in which there appears no mention of self-movement in the will." (Verbum - Word and Idea in Aquinas, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1968, pp.132-33; this book is an edited re-print of articles originally published 1946-1949.)

Personally speaking, I am absolutely convinced that G-d has given each individual her or his own proper vocation in life, and I have not the least desire to attempt to persuade anybody to become a second Aquinas, or another Lonergan; one of each is quite enough, thank you! So, even though a study of the works I have mentioned, and also of Lonergan's earlier Grace and Freedom - Operative Grace in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (London: Darton, Longman & Todd - New York: Herder & Herder, 1971; a reprint of articles originally published 1941-1942) would, if undertaken for the right motive, undoubtedly be for many readers one excellent way of nurturing their own intellectual and spiritual development, in this paper I am also inviting you to open your mnds and hearts to the wider issues I mentioned earlier; such, as least, was the intention I avowed by my title: "Intimacy is Truth".

TOCCATA AND FUGUE

Dom Henry Wansbrough, a monk of Ampleforth and general editor of The New Jerusalem Bible, states in his foreword that "the translation has been made directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic," and that "accuracy of translation has been a prime consideration," although"the widespread liturgical use of this version has been taken into account." He claims, indeed, that "paraphrase has been avoided more rigorously than in the first edition." (op.cit., London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1985, p.v.)

The New Jerusalem Bible's English rendering (p.802) of Job 38:31 reads: "Can you fasten the harness of the Pleiades, or untie Orion's bands?"

This differs somewhat from the King James' version, allegedly an "exact Translation" "out of the Original Sacred Tongues": "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the mands of Orion?" (The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, 5th improved edition, 1988, p.619. Notes 2663 & 2777 in this "improved" edition simply state that the constellation of Orion and the star-group, the Pleiades are also named in Job 9:9 and Amos 5:8.)

A note appended to The New Jerusalem Bible's 'translation' of Job 9:9 ("He has made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the Mansions of the South.") provides an alternative listing from the Greek, viz., "the Pleiades, venus, Arcturus and the Mansions of the South," and comments: "That these are the constellations referred to is not certain." (pp.766-7.) For Amos 5:8-9a it offers: "He it is who makes the Pleiades and Orion, who turns shadow dark as death into morning and day to darkest night, who summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the surface of the land. Yahweh is his name." (p.1530.)

According to José Argüelles' best-selling and extremely challenging The Mayan Factor (Santa Fe, Bear & Co., 1987) history started in 3113 B.C., will finish in 2012 A.D. Also, "while professional historians have usually presented world-history as what human beings have made of themselves while living on planet Earth… all human events are mainly the result of what the stars in general and Arcturus and the Pleiades in particular have, via the Sun, done to us, probably quite self-consciously and deliberately…"

A less well known work was published by John Westhouse of London in February 1947 - Gods of the People by Denis Saurat, the author of Literature and Occult Tradition. He estimates that in 1946 there were about 10,000 Christadelphians in the world, with about 4,000 of them living in Birmingham, another 2,500 or so in London, and the majority of the others in the United States, from where their teachings had been brought to England by Dr. Thomas, an American ex-Baptist, in about 1850. Their chief prophet, Robert Roberts, wrote Christendom Astray, which was published in Birmingham in 1884. Although the Christadelphians acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Son of G-d who had manifested G-d to the world, and the Holy Spirit as the power by which G-d works His will, they deny that the Holy Spirit is a person, refuse to admit the idea of the Trinity, and hold that the one G-d is a Unity in essence and person, substantially identifiable as Light and as the central Sun in the physical universe (a Sun 19th-century Christadelphians seem to have identified with the centre of our own Solar System, but which their modern-day followers prefer to locate in or near the Southern Cross), who had made all things not out of nothing, but by elaborating all things as so many different irradiations and indwelling embodiments of himself. According to information confided in confidence to Saurat by one or more among his personal acquaintances:

• "Behind the stars of the Plough, the first and the last, there is a sphere where are all the good wishes of the little children. They appear as stars that dance on that sphere. Yeats had just seen the entrance to it - There are no spirits of men there, or animals; just trees and the stars and the fairy people, who take those stars and use them - the fairy people are connected with trees, wherever there are good trees (some trees have gone beyond their purpose, and are not good).
• During the sleep of the little ones, if there is an impulse for good, it registers on a tree leaf, down the vein of the leaf. The fairies see this, and take it, and make it into a coloured star, and take it to that planet the the Plough. Then these are made into a coloured light to help in the work of bringing up children. The fairies bring a star to a sleeping child to calm its fears.
• The fairies are a part of creation, and are not imagination. This is their function. They deal with children's fears by using these lights, by showing them these lights. They are dressed in robes that look like dragon-flies' wings. They are good.
• The spirits that come to Earth as small children are full of fears of the Earth and their fates; they have to be calmed. That is the work of the fairies. It is a mistake to call them fata; they are connected with fates, but in order to take away fear from them, not to make them. They are good; they are favourable." (Gods of the People, pp.30-1.)

Even if materialists feel somewhat uncomfortable when confronted with ideas such as those Argüelles, the Christadelphians and many ordinary people living among us today have put forward, Saurat, surely, is at least equally entitled to be uncomfortable with materialism:

• "What efforts our imagination has to make in order to conceive… of the stars that exist millions of lights years distance away from us! The astronomers must wish they knew more of that mental travel that our poets [he is chiefly thinking of Spencer in the 1580s, John Milton in 1644, William Blake in 1802, and Victor Hugo half-a-century later] practise so easily
• Inanimate matter, whether on the infinitely grand scale or on the infinitely small, has become more incomprehensible than the world of living things - than the world of spirits. Let us quote Marcel Boll (Larousse 1934, La Science, vol.II, p.304): 'Should a proton be represented by a pin's head on the Place de Notre Dame, in Paris, the one electron of the hydrogen atom would be something like an immense soap-bubble, as large as a 60-gallon cask, yet 2,000 times lighter in weight than the pin's head, and travelling round the pin's head, in a circumference that would run through Orleans, Rheims and Rouen.'
• Do not after this maintain that Angels, insects and Emanations are unbelievable because they do not make sense. Science no longer makes sense either. You will have to find another kind of argument against the angels, otherwise the poets will go on writing about them and the people will go on believing in them. The idea of law has disappeared from science as a practical proposition. Here is Louis-Gustave du Pasquier (o.c., p.344): 'In order to study completely the molecular movements that take place in a cubic centimetre of gas, at a temperature of zero, under the ordinary atmospheric pressure, we would have, under the scheme of classical mechanics, to write out a system of 30,000,000 equations (differential and simultaneous), each having 1,000,000,000 × 1,000,000,000 figures representing the mutual action of all the molecules on each other. Physicists have had recourse to probability.'
• We cannot blame them. But, in turn, can they blame us? The idea of thing had disappeared. Werner Heisenberg pointed out in 1927 that all measurements in the intra-atomic world are unavoidably rendered false by the intervention of the measuring act, so Paul Langevin in 1930 suggested that 'we should give up the concept of object, or thing, in the atomic and intra-atomic world.'
• Obviously that soap-bubble, travelling round the pin's head one hundred miles away from it, was too much for Langevin, and much too closely related to pure poetry." (Gods of the People, pp.189-90.)

… And much too closely related, too, to the beliefs of the Christadelphians, as we have seen. These may, however, be read into St. Paul's First Letter to Timothy (6:13-16): "I appeal to you, in the sight of G-d who is the source of life of whatever there is, and in the sight of Christ Jesus who bore witness… who is the sole Sovereign, ever-blessed, who is King of kings and Lord of lords. To him alone immortality belongs; unapproachable light is his dwelling-place; and it is he whom no human eye has ever seen, nor can see."

How, then, does communication between human beings and the Central Sun take place?

José Argüelles' answer to that question has already been mentioned. So, too, has a still widespread and popular, if only rarely expressed, intuitive response. John Milton thought Spenser a better teacher than either John Dun Scotus or Thomas Aquinas, and Spenser's answer is remarkably similar:

• "… … … … … … But O the exceeding grace
• Of highest G-d, that loves his creatures so
• And all his works with mercy does embrace
• That blessed Angels he sends to and fro
• To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.
• How oft do they their silver bower leave
• To come to succour us that succour want?
• How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
• The flitting skyes like flying Pursuivant
• Against foul fiends to side us militant?
• They for us fight, they watch and duly ward,
• And their bright squadrons round about us plant,
• And all for love and nothing for reward -
• O why should heavenly G-d to men have such regard?"

Saurat explains: "We are perpetually attacked by foul fiends… Angels take the brunt of the attack against us. They protect us against superhuman evil forces; yet they do not fight all our fights: they only aid us militant. Because the main battle is within our will. Our will is but of little strength, and of itself could do but badly: yet it is the centre on which all turns. [Notice, that - unless I am very much mistaken - without over-emphasising the point, Saurat here quite deliberately implies that the Unknown Centre of the Central Sun where Jesus presides in Light is, by identity, our will.] When we move our will towards G-d, then - but only then - the Angels can win our victory for us." (Gods of the People, pp.23-4.)

He also relates this teaching to the pantheism or panentheism that underlies it:

• "Personalities exist in a wide range, from G-d, through many varieties of angels and lesser spirits, to man. Below and beyond man are forces, masquerading as spirits, yet no spirits; masquerading as men, yet no men; Victor Hugo calls them 'things', des choses…
• G-d is a Person - or three if you like. Satan is not a Person; he is a force that will be dispersed - though to be gathered again. 'States that are not, but ah! seem to be,' William Blake wails… [And Shakespeare has Hamlet say], when the ghost beckons:
• 'Why, what should be the fear?
• I do not set my life at a pin's fee,
• And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
• Being a thing immortal as itself?'
• Here speaks the consciousness of man's value in the spiritual world: there is nothing to fear for man. 'I see an angel that sees them,' answers Hamlet rapidly when he is asked can he see the thoughts of his interlocutor…
• During the night, while men sleep, the angels, by the power of their music, lift our thoughts to Heaven" according to Milton. (Ibid., pp.25-6, 29.)

José Argüelles prefers to call it 'holonomic resonance', but 'music' will do; Milton is essentially correct:

• "Immediate are the Acts of G-d, more swift
• Than time or motion, but to human ears
• Cannot be without process of speech be told,
• So told as earthly notion can receive."

A more prosaic statement of Milton's teaching may be read in his Treatise of Christian Doctrine (Bohn, vol.IV, pp.27, 30, 185): "So extensive is the prescience of G-d, that he knows beforehand the thoughts and actions of free agents as yet unborn, and many ages before those thoughts or actions have their origin… G-d's general decree is that whereby he has decreed from all eternity of his own most free and wise and holy purpose, whatever he himself willed or was about to do - according to his perfect foreknowledge of all things that were to be created… The foreknowledge of G-d is nothing but the wisdom of G-d, under another name, or that idea of everything which he had in his mind, to use the language of man, before he decreed anything… There is no time without motion."

Because, as Saurat explains (cf. ibid., pp.53-4), no one of us, whether angel or man, woman or child, can reach G-d's speed, "therefore error comes into all our visions - yet also there is in us a shadow of truth."

• "Every being has many personalities in the Cosmos (in G-d, he has only one), a tree, a dog, a sparrow, a worm, an insect, a man: in each case what we see on Earth is only one part of the being. Each has other parts, elsewhere in space, elsewhere in time. And often, the principal part is not the one we see here, now, on Earth… So each man is spread out in time and space, has parts of his being in the past, parts in the future, parts somewhere on Earth, parts in the stars and in spiritual worlds parallel to this physical world. All the while his real identity is in G-d alone; but of those many parts of a man, the most impotant is not necessarily, even at this moment, his physical life on earth." (ibid., p.97.)

While admitting, more freely than the Christadelphians would appear to do, that all he has to offer us is, at best, a shadow of the Truth, Saurat's anonymous contemporary source discloses a few more valuable fragments of helpful information:

• "The six primary qualities are beauty, knowledge, science, wisdom, harmony and light, and are connected with the colours, the sounds, the perfumes. In sound connection, gold is lower in the scale than silver. A strong low sound denotes avidity. An intermittent high sound denotes cruelty and is linked with an excess of red; oscillation on one tone denotes deceit. A half-tone variation is good. A high note plus yellow plus gold connects with a strong tropical perfume. A middle note plus brown (reason) connects with a weak lavender smell. A low note plus violet connects with a smell of strong sweet musk perfume. Shapes also connect…" (Ibid., pp.104-5.)

• But let William Blake speak:
• "Jesus replied: I am the Resurrection and the Life.
• I die and pass the limits of possibility as it appears
• To individual perception -
• But I will prepare a way for my banished ones to return.
• Come now with me into the villages, walk through all the cities
• - though thou seest me not a season,
• Even a long season, and a hard journey, and a howling wilderness
• - Only believe and trust in me - Lo, I am always with thee…
• Displaying the Eternal vision, the Divine similitude,
• In loves and tears of brothers, sisters, sons, fathers and friends,
• Which, if Man ceases to behold, he ceases to exist." (Cf. ibid., p.112.)

• "… By now the abbey was doomed. Almost all its buildings, some more, some less, had been reached by the fire. Those still intact would not remain so for long… Only the parts without buildings remained safe, the vegetable patch, the garden outside the cloister… Nothing more could be done to save the buildings…
• The conflagration of the Aedificium was different… As for the top floor, where once, and for hundreds of years, there had been the labyrinth, it was now virtually destroyed.
• 'It was the greatest library in Christendom,' William said. 'Now,' he added, 'the Antichrist is truly at hand, because no learning will hinder him any more… Jorge, I mean. In that face, deformed by hatred of philosophy, I saw for the first time the portrait of the Antichrist, who does not come from the tribe of Judas, as his heralds have it, or from a far country. The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of G-d or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer… Jorge loved his truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood. Jorge feared the second book of Aristotle because it perhaps really did teach how to distort the face of every truth, so that we would not become slaves of our ghosts. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth… The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless… The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away… It's hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of G-d and His omnipotence. So the freedom of G-d is our condemnation, or at least the condemnation of our pride.'
• I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: 'But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between G-d and primigenial chaos? Isn't affirming G-d's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that G-d does not exist?'
• William looked at me without betraying any feeling in his features, and he said, 'How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?' I did not understand the meaning of his words. 'Do you mean,' I asked, 'that there would be no possible and communicable learning any more if the very criterion of truth were lacking, or do you mean you could no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to?'…
• I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I no longer know what it is about: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus." (Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, Picador, 1984, pp.490-3, 502.)

"Eritis mihi testes." (Acts 1:8.) Adso's very name recalls the traditional Latin affirmation of self-effacing self-commitment whereby each member of a group called to be ordained priests of Jesus Christ publicly declares his personal presence as an instrument and a witness of the One High Priest - "Adsum - Here I am."

Adso's final maxim may be rendered: "Whatever is rosy remains fresh for as long as the name by which it is called lives on; names are quite naked, but we can and do cling to them."

As the film version of The Name of the Rose ends, Adso, as I recall, who, prior to that final, climactic, almost-all-consuming fire, had known for the first time in his life what it is to know a woman in the flesh, confides that he never even knew her name, but experience has already taught me that my memory is not infallible - that "even" may be my own addition.

The New Jerusalem Bible translates the original Greek of Acts 1:18 - "You will be my witnesses," while Heinz Cassirer prefers - "You shall be my witnesses," but St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate undeniably suggests - "You shall be my balls." A trifling detail? Perhaps.

On 14 June 1903 the Sunday Times of Sydney published an article about a new system of numerology which had just been introduced to Australia by a lady music-teacher from the United States of America, and in which A, J, S count as 1; B, K., T as 2; C, L, U as 3; D, M, V as 4; E, N, W as 5; F, O, X as 6; G, P, Y as 7; H, Q, Z as 8; I and R as 9. Having persuaded herself, in virtue of her study of vibration and harmony, that each digit and each letter has a uniform degree of vibration, and that there is no such thing as chance, she claims "that everything is relevant, and signifies, and that a rose by any other name, however sweet it might be, would not be a rose, since a name is of importance."

Isidore Kozminsky, to whom I am indebted for that information, in Numbers - their meaning and magic (London: Rider, 1912; 2nd edition: 1972) makes what may, therefore, prove to be a most important statement in his Introduction, where he writes:

• "I think it necessary to impress on the student the importance of a close and proper study of the Bible, one of the greatest gifts of the ancient masters to this world. That the great Book has lost largely by translation and retranslation is beyond the shadow of a doubt; and many fine passages are altogether inaccurate and misleading. For example, in Job 38:31, 'HATHEQESHER MOLDENUTH KIMAH AD MOSHECOTH KESIL TIPETECH' is freely rendered into English thus: 'Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades or loosen the bands of Orion?' when it should be: 'Canst thou bind the tremblings of heat or loose the seals of coldness?'
• There is nothing here about either the Pleiades or Orion, and it is evident that the old translators lacked sufficient scientific knowledge when endeavouring to render the passage into English. No man of knowledge in the Ancient World would have written of the 'sweet influence of the Pleiades.' Situated in 27 degrees of Taurus, it is known today amongs students of astrology as a dangerous point which has a distinctly adverse influence on the eyes, especially when the Sun, Moon, or planets are afflicted therein.
• To go further into the matter I should be compelled to bring the great science of astrology to my aid, and this, of course, I cannot do at present. I only quote the verse as evidence of bad translation, and the translations we have are full of such examples. With the aid of modern scientific knowledge we know just what is meant by the binding of heat tremblings and the freeing of cold, which ancient scholars knew some ages past. The true occult scholar cannot be included in the ranks of Bible critics; the Book to him is a library of excellence and a treasury of true knowledge. The translators of the Bible have done much harm in attempting too many liberties with the text." (pp.2-4.)

Both The New Jerusalem Bible and Heinz Cassirer offer theologically helpful English renderings of St. John the Evangelist's Book of Revelation, as it is commonly named, but it is best to turn to James M. Pryse's very different translation in his The Apocalypse Unsealed (North Hollywood: Symbols & Signs, 1972), if one hopes to learn anything about the esoteric psychology and apprentice-initiatory teachings it also contains - witness its true title: "The initiation of Anointed Iêsous, which the God conferred on him to make known to his slaves the [perfections] which must be attained speedily…" Again, as with John Milton (who certainly knew his Bible), that mention of speed.

But Bellamy's cosmological comments also need to be remembered, since, if he is right, at some time in the past the influence of the Pleiades may, indeed, have been as sweet as that of Adso's Rose…

In the matter of impressions, both David Hume and J. D. Solomon recommend discrimination.

- Shalom & Welcome! -

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