by Janet Devlin
TANATA co-editor

JULY 5, 2008 — Errors found in Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” which a Tennessee Bible researcher says are mirrored in all four New Testament gospels, have led Randall Carter Gray to identify all of these “errors” to be “edits,” even as his study of the mysterious “disintegrated masterpiece with a door in it” have yielded intriguing insights about the life and family background of the painting’s patron Ludovico Sforza, a ruthless man who has something in common with Hannibal Lector: membership in the House of Sforza, a royal Italian dynasty, a duke of Milan, whose murderous ways Gray said “might have made Dr. Lector squeamish.”

Beyond pointing up errors in the New Testament “meant to obscure,” Gray’s research revealed Ludovico, “The Last Supper’s” patron, to be the grandson of Flippo Maria Visconti, who commissioned the first deck of Tarot cards, used in the occult for divination, more commonly known as fortune-telling. Consequently the mother of the patron of “The Last Supper,” Bianca Maria Visconti-Sforza, came to be known as “Lady Tarot.” Equally intriguing is how Bianca, a name which means “white” and “modesty,” became illicitly pregnant and gave birth, not by her husband Francesco Sforza I, to a bastard son whose nickname, “il Moro” or “the Moor,” identifies Ludovico Sfroza as a child born with African features.

Ludovico Sforza, oddly enough the protagonist’s name in The Duke of Milan, written by Shakespeare wanna-be Elizabethan playwright Philip Massinger, suggests that the patron of “The Last Supper” may have been the inspiration for the Bard’s tragic play “Othello, the Moor,” about a jealous black man and the object of his love, who happens to be white.

The apparent African features of “The Last Supper’s” patron provided Gray with a valuable clue, one which tied together Leonardo’s sacred “masterpiece” and an absent “thirteenth disciple” named John and the obscuring of the same man within the context of the gospels. “Not surprisingly, the lion’s share of the obscuring edits” to be found appear in the gospels of John and Mark — “because our mystery thirteenth disciple is none other than John Mark, of Cyrene, which is now known as Libya.” Gray said John Mark founded the Coptic Orthodox Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, and also wrote the Apocalypse of John, the book of Revelation.

The obscuring of John Mark, or St. Mark, whose contributions to the spread of Christianity in his native Africa make him the Christian Bible’s “most unsung hero, if not a black sheep, second only to Jesus, has been perpetrated purely for racial purposes,” Gray says, by enemies of Christianity, some of whom have existed and still exist in the Roman Catholic church.”

Answers to the question of why, with “an uncertain spiritual future looming ahead,” Gray says, are imperative to non-believers as they are to believers. If John Mark and Jesus have been hidden due to race, we ought to know why. I believe the best answers have an eschatological basis.”

It is here, says Gray, a former intelligence specialist assigned to Ethiopia and the Middle East in the mid-70s, where the plot truly thickens and spreads out even beyond this untapped aspect of Renaissance history, not to mention the life of Leonardo, and how it dovetails with the errors found not only in the New Testament, he says, but in the telling of the story of the Queen of Sheba and her alleged son by King Solomon, Menelik I, whose reign initiated a 3,000-year-old line of Ethiopian kings, which Gray said ended abruptly with no messiah with the 1974 deposing of proclaimed Lion of Judah, messianic figure Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, an event which Gray says he witnessed. As a result, says he, there have been some casualties along the course of his research since 2002, namely two women also presumably of African descent, the Queen of Sheba and the woman known as Mary of Magdala, a Ethiopian name which once identified the location of a mountain fortress from which the British and the Scots looted the nation’s national archives and treasures in 1868.

“There’s a reason why the English and the Scots in London, the British Museum, and others,and the University of Edinburgh don’t wish to give these materials back,” said Gray, a man with a “not-too-distant” Cherokee ancestry who considers himself an anglophile. “The reason is, shall we say, Edenic, Adamic,” which forms the foundation of Gray’s “house of cards.”

“Once the first card fell,” he said, “as part of a much larger picture containing more than just a fictional code, the whole house fell, at least for me — and where it has taken me has left me stunned, back to the beginning, back to the time of the Crusades, back to the first century, all the way back to Eden. “

The former daily newspaperman, who was drafted in 1972 and approached during testing in
boot camp about intelligence work, everything from being an air-traffic controller to a Navy SEAL, credits his discoveries to his year’s tour in the Ethiopian Highlands which he almost didn’t survive.”Being drafted ended my college and marital plans at one time,” he said. “It’s only by God’s grace that I’ve been able to get back to square one after a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately, now I’m 54 years old, with no agent, living in the middle of nowhere,” says Gray, who makes his home on the Cumberland Plateau in southeast Tennessee with his wife and a dog named Harley.

Noah built his ark big
To carry all the big beasts
Which the goblins missed
At their orgies and feasts

Life was so corrupted
Noah must start again
Debauchery disrupted
When it started to rain

Heaven judged their violence
And their bestiality
Beastly heads, human bodies
Coming for you and for me

I’ll never be your pet
Instead I’ll try to forget
Call down Yahweh the false
No need to check your pulse

Truman had a problem
What’s that S in his name?
He listened to the goblins
And Vincent got the blame

In the Norfolk shipyards
Once sat the Forrestal
From a room in Bethesda
An angel had a bad fall

There’s a weeping bush
Not for Argentina weeping
But all the lives it crushed
Would Jesus hear him sing?

Had great times in Herndon
Hope your day’s going well
If you’ve got photos, burn them
Don’t remind me of hell

Take the wheel back now
Before he plows anymore
If he starts his tractor, boys
You won’t believe all the gore

I’ll never be your pet
So sad for those who don’t know yet
I’m not in … screw the deal
The Lions roar … and the pigs squeal

How did it get this bad?
Freedom’s a two-edge sword
Even the angels falling are free
Till Papa gives us the Word.

— rcg. … Virginia, is still for lovers

JULY 4, 2008 —What do Solomon and the Queen of Sheba have to do with the United States, more specifically Washington, D.C.? It was the offspring from their reported sexual union — a son, Menelik I — who gave rise to the prophecy that their son would initiate a line of Ethiopian kings which would result one day in a “Lion of Judah,” a messiah reserved only for Ethiopia. But that did not happen. Ethiopia, despite the prophetic material in the Kebra Negast (the Book of the Glory of Kings), which was found and translated questionably by an English translator of Egyptian and Coptic languages in 1920, would not have a parallel messiah, one to rival Jesus.

Where do people get this stuff? Why did this messianic prophecy come from England, apart from the fact that the Kebra Negast fell into English hands? Why did the Ethiopians themselves have no such accounts and prophecies supplemental to the Kebra Negast? And what is it about Ethiopia, from whence came the Queen of Sheba, presumably Bathsheeba, the mother of Solomon, the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip evangelized, before departing in a cloud (yes, a cloud, but hold on), and the Presbyter John, or Prester John, a mystical, mythical king with magical powers who ruled over a type of Eden in Ethiopia?

And, lest we forget, there’s a place in Ethiopia where its stolen archive and treasures were once housed (stolen by the English and Scots in 1868), which bears the name of Magdala — or did, before somebody changed it.

Meanwhile, the scientific evidence is continuing to build that Ethiopia, which is the source of the Nile River, while Ethiopia itself is parched by drought, is in fact the locale of something resembling Eden if not Eden. Geneticists, archaeologists, paleographers, linguists and migration scientists all continue to point to Ethiopia, the most ancient nation in Africa, the only Christian nation in Africa, and second only to Egypt in the number of times Ethiopia is mentioned in the Bible.

Furthermore, the Ark of the Covenant is alleged to be resting in Aksum (Axum) in the Ethiopian Highlands, not far from where I was stationed to perform intelligence work for the U.S Navy in the mid-70s. I knew Ethiopia, though dreadfully impoverished, was a special place while I was there, but it was only after 9/11 that I returned to my military years and my African home and began to research the significance of Ethiopia. I discovered that Abrahamic passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest it was here, in Ethiopia, along the Red Sea, that Abraham began a trip around Eden, and it is from ancient Ethiopia that some believe the first Hebrews came, not Babylonia, and not Sumeria, which have not panned out as likely candidates at all for Eden. Let’s be reasonable, if mankind originated in Ethiopia, it only stands to reason that the first Hebrews would have come from there. So, is the Bible in error? In edit … is a better way of saying it, we contend.

Why have we ever considered Babylonia and Sumeria to be the cradle of human civilization, when it is Ethiopia which increasingly is being singled out in so many ways as a place of human origins, from which scientists are confident the first homo sapiens sapiens went on the populate the rest of the earth? If Babylonia and Sumeria have been wrongly and deceitfully imposed on us as the location for Eden, who made the determination, and when, to tout the far southeastern portion of the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia, as the originating garden of God (or rather gods)? And why? To distract us from Ethiopia … to the Persian Gulf, where these “gods” may wish for us to think it is they who created us. They taught us time in increments of 60, math, how to keep the books, but that’s it, I suspect; and I say time, because time equals aging and death — and it may very well be that our so-called creators by imposing time upon the earth … became our killers and not our creators by any stretch of the word.

Do heaven and hell and life on earth exist all in the same space, but only in different dimensions? Different frequencies? The presence of ghosts or watchers would seem to suggest this. Have you ever seen a watcher watching you? It’s cool, they watch me all the time. But I’ve been seeing them since I was a small child, including the bad ones. Resist them, however, and they will flee. They don’t possess us, but they telepathically communicate to us, they and other sources. Just a hunch.

If Eden is in Ethiopia, if humanity began there, we’re not all Ethiopians, so from whence came all the races? Where did all the races of mankind come from? A geneticist working for National Geographic, his name escapes me, but I’ll get it (Fletcher?), says … from just one man. And from him just one tribe in Ethiopia, which still exists, by the way.

If there was an Adam, then there must have been an Eve, made from a rib bone … which would make her white, which would fill all the racial gaps, if Adam possessed a composite blood type or DNA pool within himself. That’s where we believe all the many races came from, over time. If this is correct, then so is Genesis … and evolution was never in effect, only the evolution of races, as successive generations were born. Hmmm. Well, the jury is still out for us, there’s a lot of work yet to do. But Ethiopia is obviously a good starting point to answer the question we have posed … what do Solomon and a queen from Ethiopia have to do with the United States via Freemasonry, apart from a silly story about Hiram Abiff?

We believe all of this is subterfuge … meant to hide the truth about Jesus.

So what about a key of Solomon, by Solomon, found by Solomon, proclaimed by Solomon? Is the key that he was dark-skinned, a mixed-race son of David, since Bathsheba, which means “daughter of Sheba,” was an ebony-skinned beauty? Is there perhaps a key to be found in this false claim, the fact that this prophecy was not fulfilled, as I witnessed first hand during a year’s tour in East Africa from 1973 to ‘74?

Perhaps the key of Solomon is the intent to hide the fact that Solomon, a son of David, the king of wisdom who built the Temple of God, had an Ethiopian mother, which made Solomon dark skinned. Perhaps that needed to be covered up … and the best way to do that, is to fabricate a story that Ethiopian kings came from Solomon and a Queen with no first name from Sheba, or Saba, i.e. ancient Abyssinia, which today is Ethiopia. Perhaps it was important to obscure the fact that Solomon was dark skinned because of his Ethiopian mother, because the messianic son of David would also be dark … like Solomon, like Adam. And, we have to ask, if Bathsheba means “daughter of Sheba,” if Solomon slept with the Queen of Sheba, was he sleeping with his grandmother? Doubtful. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba mean nothing to the Freemasons, except it is a nice story to detract away from Jesus, a racist story, a story of deceit and trickery, as is the Kebra Negast.

Though July the Fourth was mentioned as a possible release date for the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, which has or had the working title of The Solomon Key, that day has come and gone, now, with no book, as did the original release date set in 2006, with nothing tangible to help us understand what this unusual connection might there be to the United States, which TDVC sequel will focus upon, apart from a cockamamie story that the Freemasons tell, which seemingly has nothing to do with anything but building stuff.

…

Glibness, as I define it, is how a person speaks when that person is discussing a serious subject or matter in a very inappropiately casual way. All of us have been glib — intentionally nonchalant, saying that something doesn’t hurt, when it really does. To be glib was to joke over the notion that the Soviet Union led by former Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev might decide to hit all the major cities on the eastern seaboard with atomic warheads. Where there is glibness, sarcasm and cynicism, there is repressed anger, fear and pain.

“Ah,we ain’t scared of him,” someone might have said in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “we got us a little spot down in the basement where we’ll be just fine. Took my checkerboard down there. Good time to get a little revenge.”

I tried to be glib and accept the destruction of the planet, which appeared to be inevitable, though I could not, and I imagined that as I ducked and covered in my third-grade classroom beneath my desk that all I was accomplishing was pulling myself into a tight little ball which would make cleaning up my charred ashes a little bit easier. I had seen the footage of the atomic blast on a big projector in school, which was of course a brilliant way to settle down the kiddies. Life seemed hellish for a time, and I was not surprised when JFK backed Khrushchev and Castro down, because he seem resolute and intelligent. Although years later, 46 years later, still today, I wonder why the Soviet Union had gone to all that trouble to bring 75 nuclear warheads and launchers to Cuba … only to have the Soviet Union and Cuba completely lose face.

I suspect that though it could have been disastrous and treasonous, there were people on the inside who hated Kennedy so much … that they hoped he’d make a mistake and ruin himself in the eyes of those who adored him along with his princess bride. But it didn’t happen. And when it didn’t the greenlight must have been given to end Kennedy’s presidency because it appeared he was headed for a second term … and that did not sit well with the cabal of elite military industrialists, which has been reported to exist, and which we can’t argue with or confirm.

What changed the minds of our arch enemies during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Fear that we would bomb their cities? Khrushchev must have known that was an option as soon as troops began loading up Russia’s atomic weaponry and heading for Cuba … if Russia in fact ever went to all that trouble. What?! you might be saying, why would you be so glib about that; it was a crisis that very nearly resulted in thermo nuclear war?

Was it? Just as the Bay of Pigs was legitimate, when what it very much appears to have been was a botched effort planned by renegades within the government to embarrass Kennedy and make him a one-term president or less.

Because of the failed Bay of Pigs, which was doomed from the beginning thanks to U.S. operatives who planned and staged the embarrassing rout. I believe the Bay of Pigs may have been orchestrated, so a certain future president with a piece of Zapata Oil in Cuba might protect his interests and those of those people who were backing him, including his father, Plus, gambling in Havana was a money maker presumably for some Americans, the very rich and powerful ones who dreamed about getting rid of a president who was too soft on communism, his enemies said, too good-looking, too much of a playboy, and who was also soft on the idea of the military-industrial complex forming, the fraternal secrecy it involved, and against withholding information about UFOs from the American people.

He was not in the pockets of these military-industrialists, who reportedly wanted the war in Vietnam for no other reason than social engineering, fear mongering, thinning out a generation of young American men and making a profit. If the conflict in Vietnam, which was never sanctioned by Congress, was to hold off a Chinese-driven domino theory as one nation in Southeast Asia after another was expect to fall, how do we now account for the war which may have been foisted upon us by elite Americans upon their own American countrymen, the depleting of a “dangerous” new youth movement on the horizon, being led by former beatniks who now called themselves hippies.

Some parents, adults could do that, and did, and it always made me angry as a child, when I was having nightmarish images of mushroom clouds in my dreams, glowing orange as they rose over my mother’s rose garden in the back yard where Ilived on the coast in Virginia with my family. I was a kid, and so I couldn’t at all process the sort of anger which turned a whole nation of people against the United States of America. We were who they wanted to be, and they couldn’t be it. Richard Nixon very adroitly pointed this out in his famed “Kitchen Debate” at an industrial expo with Khrushchev in which the smooth one only poured salt in the wounds by drawing comparisons and mocking the Russians approach to washing clothes and entertaining themselves without washing machines and TV sets.

Statesmanship by making fun of a nation of people and its leader, with your middle finger in their faces. Such cockiness brought disaster to the Kennedy administration when the Bay of Pigs, launched clandestinely in part by operatives of the United States who were possibly more interested in embarrassing JFK than cleaning of Havana’s gambling which was funding Castro. The names Khrushchev, Russia, Cuba and Castro struck terror in our hearts, speaking for the kids. Watching commercials on TV for U.S. Bonds, depicting Khrushchev on film as he banged his shoe on his desk at the United Nations, while the action faded to black and the words in reversed white appeared: “We will bury you.”

I’m a kid throwing water balloons and playing baseball, for crying out loud, why would you bury me? Why would you scare the hell out of me, you crazy man. Because Khrushchev seemed to be every bit as crazy as he was angry, especially in this one TV spot that sent shivers up my spine every time I saw it, I believe it was only a matter of time before the angry crazy man pushed the button. But that never happened. Instead, President Johnson pressed the button, for no good reason, via the Tonkin Resolution, which launched Vietnam, Profits in the Pacific. Or almost.

Something doesn’t seem right about all of this. And there’s more. It is wrong, perhaps, to be so glib about these things, which might cause some people to have nightmares, especially children. But we could become light-hearted to the point of being absurd, or we could get angry that evil has egged on probably all the wars, appearing only to those people with the power to wage them, those people willing to keep secrets. If ill Uminotty did order the Vietnam and Iraqi wars, for which there was no provocation,which makes them bogus wars, did they err, since we have lost so much, or is the killing just about what evil was expecting?

And where does B.O., Sen. Obama, fit into all of this? If he would oppose Jesus, if he would declare himself to be a messiah, on what grounds would he or could he make such a claim? He’s the right color … and he’s in their pockets. And they must know Jesus is coming.

— rcg … to be continued

Appealing to their arrogance,
They call our leaders “tops.”
Reminding them how well they’ve used
Assassins, special ops.

Explaining to our leaders:
“Your wealth was meant to be
“Of course you’ve got all that it takes …
“Money and stupidity.”

Who are they using our governments
To drain the poor man dry? … …
And boost these new age robber barons,
Who think they’ll never die?

The robber barons think they’re it
They’ve thought it all their lives
But there’s one step above them
And fallen angels lie

In truth, they’re too small-minded
To think that this is it
To think God flies around through time
God’s in a piece of lint

God’s in perfect machines
Never breaking down
Always perfect orbit
In Atoms, round and round

Round and round like time is
Like our solar system
The robber barons have bought the lies
Do we risk trying to save them?

The fallen angels tell them:
“Look at the death, disease.
“God must be mad at man.
“The thorns, insects, snakes, bees.”

But the prophet Isaiah said this:
That one day on a whole new earth
The animals evil corrupted
Will have their own second birth.

They’ve told them God’s “ambivalent
“It’s hard to pin him down.
“And so unpredictably mean …
“And that’s why we’re around.

“We have to stand together
“To prove that we can win
“If we can prove that we deserve it
“We get earth back again.

“And this time we will rule it
“No laws of the jungle here
“But efficiency, divisions of labor
“The future is quite clear.

“Continue as you’re going
“We’ve shown the future to you”
If we weren’t God, could we do that?
“That’s better, here’s what you do:

“Since the melting pot
“Has served it purpose, and
“Is marked for earthquakes, floods
“A broken, desolate land …

“Now fly two planes into buildings
“So people will scream, No more!
“And piss their lives and futures away.
“In profit-making wars.

“Deplete your military.
“Kill off all the grunts.
“By wiping out the Army and Marines
“Civilians are easier to hunt.

“This will immanentize the eschaton!
“Make it happen quicker.
“Destroy the economy sooner.
“Make the sickly sicker.

“Look at those deformed children
“See all the bugs and pests
“Cruel how God has done these things
“All things that we detest.”

But if the truth be known
They’ve done it all themselves
And blamed their sins on God
War, poverty, bad health

Joshua lingered at the tent
After Moses left that place
And then himself went in
To meet who face to face?

“Slaughter the people of Canaan!
“If you won’t then we will.
“Or say we did and write it …
“We must make believers kill.

And Moses and the Ten Commandments,
When God showed them “his back” …
That was them, the fallen angels!
The Bible’s torn and hacked!”

They tricked those they could trick
The wealthy and powerful
By appealing to their pride and arrogance
Their hatred has cost us all

They’ll tell the world they’re gods
And when this thing is done
They’ll hail their messiah Lucifer
The final battle won.

But that’s not true for some
That’s not true for all
The bigger that they come
The harder that they fall.

— rcg

Chapter 0: The Creation .
1: The Old Testament .
2: The New Testament: The Family .
3: The Birth .
4: Time before Baptized .
5: John the Baptist .

1:0:0. The Creation . .
1.0.1. Fall of the Angels .
1.0.2. Creation of the Earth .
1.0.3. Adam and Eve .
1.0.4. The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge .

The Old Testament.

1.1.1. The Fall
1.1.2. The Promise of the Redeemer
1.1.3. Adam and Eve Driven from Paradise
1.1.4. The Family of Adam
1.1.5. Cain. The Children of God. The Giants
1.1.6. Noah and His Posterity. Horn and Dsemschid, Leaders of the People
When the ark rose on the waters
1.1.7. The Tower of Babel
1.1.8. Derketo
1.1.9. Semiramis
1.1.10. Melchisedec
1.1.11. Job
1.1.12. Abraham
1.1.13. Melchisedec Sacrifice of Bread and Wine
1.1.14. Abraham Receives the Sacrament of the Old Covenant.
1.1.15. Jacob
1.1.16. Joseph and Aseneth
1.1.17. The Ark of the Covenant

The New Testament: The Family

1.2.1. Genealogy, Birth and Marriage of St. Anne
1.2.2. The Holy and Immaculate Conception of Mary
1.2.3. Symbols of the Mystery of the Immaculate Conception
1.2.4. Symbolical Vision
1.2.5. Eve of Marys Birth
1.2.6. Birth of Mary
1.2.7. The Child Receives the Name of Mary
1.2.8. Preparations for Marys Presentation
1.2.9. The Journey to the Temple
1.2.10. The Entrance into Jerusalem
1.2.11. Marys Entrance into the Temple and Her Offering
1.2.12. A Glance at the Obduracy of the Pharisees
1.2.13. John Promised to Zachary
Healing by the Essenians
…

The Birth .

1.3.1. Mary Espoused to St. Joseph .
1.3.2. The Holy House of Nazareth .
1.3.3. Marys Annunciation .
1.3.4. Marys Visitation .
1.3.5. Feast Pictures .
1.3.6. The Blessed Virgins Preparations for the Birth of Christ. Journey to Bethlehem .
1.3.7. The Arrival in Bethlehem .
1.3.8. Birth of the Child Jesus .
1.3.9. Adoration of the Shepherds. Devout Visits to the Crib .
1.3.10. The Circumcision .
1.3.11. Journey of the Three Kings to Bethlehem .
1.3.12. Genealogy of the Kings .
1.3.13. The Kings before Herod .
1.3.14. The Kings Arrive at Bethlehem .
1.3.15. The Second Day of the Kings at the Crib. Their Departure .
1.3.16. The Return of St. Anne .
1.3.17. Marys Purification .
1.3.18. Feast Picture .
1.3.19. Death of Holy Simon .
1.3.20. Return of the Holy Family to Nazareth .
1.3.21. The Flight into Egypt .
1.3.22. The Holy Family among Robbers .
1.3.23. The Balsam Garden .
1.3.24. The Holy Family Reach Heliopolis .
1.3.25. The Murder of the Innocent Children .
1.3.26. The Holy Family Go to Matarea .
1.3.27. The Return of the Holy Family from Egypt .
1.3.28. John as a Child Growing up in the Desert .
1.3.29. Feast Picture of John the Baptist .
1.3.30. The Holy Family at Nazareth. Jesus at the Age of Twelve in the Temple of Jerusalem .
1.3.31. Death of St. Joseph. Jesus and Mary in Capernaum .

Time before Baptized .

1.4.1. Jesus on His Way to Hebron
1.4.2. The Family of Lazarus
1.4.3. Jesus in Hebron, Dothain and Nazareth
1.4.4. Jesus Journeys over Libanus to Sidon and Sarepta
1.4.5. Jesus in Bethsaida and Capernaum
1.4.6. Jesus in Sephoris, Bethulia, Cedes and Jezrael
1.4.7. Jesus among the Publicans
1.4.8. Jesus in Kisloth-Tabor
1.4.9. Jesus in the Shepherd Village of Chimki
1.4.10. Jesus in a Shepherd Village Near Nazareth
1.4.11. Jesus with Eliud, the Essenian
1.4.12. Jesus Discourses with Eliud, the Essenian, upon the Mysteries of the OldTestament and the Most Holy Incarnation
1.4.13. Jesus and Eliud Walking and Conversing Together
1.4.14. Jesus in Nazareth
1.4.15. Jesus Rejects Three Rich Youths. He Confounds Many Learned Men in the Synagogue of Nazareth
1.4.16. Jesus with Eliud in the Leper Settlement
1.4.17. Jesus Transfigured before Eliud
1.4.18. A Glance at the Disciples Going to the Baptism
1.4.19. Jesus in Gophna
1.4.20. Jesus Condemns Herods Adultery. The Journey of the Holy Women
1.4.2. Jesus in Bethania
1.4.2. Jesus Interview with Silent Mary. His Conversation with His Mother
1.4.2. Jesus Journeys with Lazarus to the Place of Baptism

John the Baptist .

1:5:1. John Leaves the Desert .
1:5:2. Herods Soldiers. Deputies from the Sanhedrin. Crowds of Neophytes Come to John .
1:5:3. John Receives an Admonition to go to Jericho .
1:5:4. Herods Interview with John. The Celebration of a Festival at the Place of Baptism .
1:5:5. The Island upon which Jesus Received Baptism Rises out of the Jordan .
1:5:6. New Embassy from Jerusalem. Herod Again Seeks an Interview with John .
1:5:7. Jesus Baptized by John .
1:5:8. Jesus Travels over Luz and Ensemes to Visit the Two Inns at which the Holy Family Rested on Their Journey to Bethlehem and Their Flight into Egypt .
1:5:9. Jesus in the Valley of Shepherds near Bethlehem .
1:5:10. The Crib Cave, a Place of Devotion among the Shepherds .
1:5:10b. Jesus Visits Certain Inns, the Halting Places of the Holy Family on Their Flight into Egypt .
1:5:11. Jesus Goes toward Maspha to Visit a Relative of St. Joseph .
1:5:12. Jesus Visits an Inn at which Mary Stopped on Her Journey to Bethlehem .
1:5:13. “Behold The Lamb of God” .
1:5:14. Jesus in Gilgal, Dibon, Socoth, Aruma and Bethania .

LIFE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST

THE CREATION..

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Of the visions of her childhood She tells us: When in my sixth year I reflected on the first article of the Apostles Creed, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth,” there passed before my soul innumerable pictures of the creation of Heaven and earth.

I saw the Fall of the angels, the creation of the earth and Paradise, that of Adam and Eve and the Fall of man. I thought everyone saw this as we do other things around us, and I spoke of it freely to my parents, brothers, sisters and playmates. But they laughed at me. They asked me whether I had a book containing all these things, and so I began to keep silence concerning them. I thought, though without much reflection, that perhaps it was not proper to speak on such subjects.

I had these visions by night and by day, in the fields, in the house, sitting or walking, and when engaged in all kinds of employments. One day at school, I happened to speak of the Resurrection, describing it differently from what we had been taught. I felt certain that everyone knew it just as I did. I did not dream that there was anything peculiar in my account of it. But the children gazed at me in wonder and laughed, while the master reproved me gravely, and warned me not to indulge such imaginations.

My visions continued, but I kept them to myself. I was like a child looking at a picture book, explaining the pictures in its own way, but not thinking much about their meaning. They represented the saints or scenes from Sacred History, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. They produced no change in my faith, they were merely my picture book. I gazed upon them quietly and always with the good thought: All to the greater glory of God!

In spiritual things, I have never put faith in anything but what God the Lord has revealed to the Catholic Church for our belief, whether it be written or not. I have never believed so firmly what I have seen in vision. I looked upon the latter as I devoutly regard, here and there, the various Cribs at Christmas. I feel no annoyance at their difference in style, for in each I adore the same dear little Infant Jesus. And so it is with those pictures of the creation of Heaven, earth and man. In them I adore God the Lord, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and earth.

1. FALL OF THE ANGELS

I saw spreading out before me a boundless, resplendent space, above which floated a globe of light shining like a sun. I felt that It was the Unity of the Trinity. In my own mind, I named It the ONE VOICE, and I watched It producing Its effects. Below the globe of light arose concentric circles of radiant choirs of spirits, wondrously bright and strong and beautiful. This second world of light floated like a sun under that higher Sun.

These choirs came forth from the higher Sun, as if born of love. Suddenly I saw some of them pause, rapt in the contemplation of their own beauty. They took complacency in self, they sought the highest beauty in self, they thought but of self, they existed but in self.

At first all were lost in contemplation out of self, but soon some of them rested in self. At that instant, I saw this part of the glittering choirs hurled down, their beauty sunk

in darkness, while the others, thronging quickly together, filled up their vacant places. And now the good angels occupied a smaller space. I did not see them leaving their places to pursue and combat the fallen choirs. The bad angels rested in self and fell away, while those that did not follow their example thronged into their vacant places. All this was instantaneous.

Then rising from below, I saw a dark disc, the future abode of the fallen spirits. I saw that they took possession of it against their will. It was much smaller than the sphere from which they had fallen, and they appeared to me to be closely crowded together.

I saw the Fall of the angels in my childhood and ever after, day and night, I dreaded their influence. I thought they must do great harm to the earth, for they are always around it. It is well they have no bodies, else they would obscure the light of the sun. We should see them floating around us like shadows.

Immediately after the Fall, I saw the spirits in the shining circles humbling themselves before God. They did homage to Him and implored pardon for the fallen angels.

At that moment I saw a movement in the luminous sphere in which God dwelt. Until then it had been motionless and, as I felt, awaiting that prayer.

After that action on the part of the angelic choirs, I felt assured that they would remain steadfast, that they would never fall away. It was made known to me that God in His judgment, in His eternal sentence against the rebel angels, decreed the reign of strife until their vacant thrones are filled. But to fill those thrones seemed to me almost impossible, for it would take so long. The strife will, however, be upon the earth. There will be no strife above, for God has so ordained.

After I had received this assurance, I could no longer sympathize with Lucifer, for I saw that he had cast himself down by his own free, wicked will. Neither could I feel such anger against Adam. On the contrary, I felt great sympathy for him because I thought: It has been thus ordained.

2. CREATION OF THE EARTH

Immediately after the prayer of the faithful choirs and that movement in the Godhead, I saw below me, not far from and to the right of the world of shadows, another dark globe arise.

I fixed my eyes steadily upon it. I beheld it as if in movement, growing larger and larger, as it were, bright spots breaking out upon it and encircling it like luminous bands. Here and there, they stretched out into brighter, broader plains, and at that moment I saw the form of the land setting boundaries to the water. In the bright places I saw a movement as of life, and on the land I beheld vegetation springing forth and myriads of living things arising. Child that I was, I fancied the plants were moving about.

Up to this moment, there was only a grey light like the sunrise, like early morn breaking over the earth, like nature awakening from sleep.

And now all other parts of the picture faded. The sky became blue, the sun burst forth, but I saw only one part of the earth lighted up and shining. That spot was charming, glorious, and I thought: There’s Paradise!

While these changes were going on upon the dark globe, I saw, as it were, a streaming forth of light out of that highest of all the spheres, the God-sphere, that sphere in which God dwelt.

It was as if the sun rose higher in the heavens, as if bright morning were awakening. It was the first morning. No created being had any knowledge of it, and it seemed as if all those created things had been there forever in their unsullied innocence. As the sun rose higher, I saw the plants and trees growing larger and larger. The waters became clearer and holier, colours grew purer and brighter everything was unspeakably charming. Creation was not then as it is now. Plants and flowers and trees had other forms. They are wild and misshapen now compared with what they were, for all things are now thoroughly degenerate.

When looking at the plants and fruits of our gardens, apricots, for instance, which in southern climes are, as I have seen, so different from ours, so large, magnificent and delicious, I often think: As miserable as are our fruits compared with those of the South, are the latter when compared with the fruits of Paradise. I saw there roses, white and red, and I thought them symbols of Christ’s Passion and our Redemption. I saw also palm trees and others, high and spreading which cast their branches afar, as if forming roofs.

Before the sun appeared, earthly things were puny; but in his beams they gradually increased in size, until they attained full growth.

The trees did not stand close together. Of all plants, at least of the largest, I saw only one of each kind, and they stood apart like seedlings set out in a garden bed. Vegetation was luxuriant, perfectly green, of a species pure, sound, and exempt from decay.

Nothing appeared to receive or to need the attention of an earthly gardener. I thought: How is it that all is so beautiful, since as yet there are no human beings! Ah’! Sin has not yet entered. There has been no destruction, no rending asunder. All is sound, all is holy. As yet there has been no healing, no repairing. All is pure, nothing has needed purification.

The plain that I beheld was gently undulating and covered with vegetation. In its centre rose a fountain, from all sides of which flowed streams, crossing one another and mingling their waters. I saw in them first a slight movement as of life, and then I saw living things.

After that I saw, here and there among the shrubs and bushes, animals peeping forth, as if just roused from sleep. They were very different from those of a later day, not at all timorous. Compared with those of our own time, they were almost as far their superior as men are superior to beasts. They were pure and noble, nimble, and joyous. Words cannot describe them. I was not familiar with many of them, for I saw very few like those we have now.

I saw the elephant, the stag, the camel, and even the unicorn. This last I saw also in the ark. It is remarkably gentle and affectionate, not so tall as a horse, its head more rounded in shape. I saw no asses, no insects, no wretched, loathsome creatures. These last I have always looked upon as a punishment of sin. But I saw myriads of birds and heard the sweetest notes as in the early morning. There were no birds of prey that I could see, nor did I hear any animals bellowing.

Paradise is still in existence, but it is utterly impossible for man to reach it. I have seen that it still exists in all its splendour. It is high above the earth and in an oblique direction from it, like the dark globe of the angels fallen from Heaven.

3. ADAM AND EVE

I saw Adam created, not in Paradise, but in the region in which Jerusalem was subsequently situated. I saw him come forth glittering and white from a mound of yellow earth, as if out of a mould. The sun was shining and I thought (I was only a child when I saw it) that the sunbeams drew Adam out of the hillock. He was, as it were, born of the virgin earth. God blessed the earth, and it became his mother. He did not instantly step forth from the earth. Some time elapsed before his appearance. He lay in the hillock on his left side, his arm thrown over his head, a light vapour covering him as with a veil.

I saw a figure in his right side, and I became conscious that it was Eve, and that she would be drawn from him in Paradise by God. God called him. The hillock opened, and Adam stepped gently forth. There were no trees around, only little flowers. I had seen the animals also, coming forth from the earth in pure singleness, the females separate from the males.

And now I saw Adam borne up on high to a garden, to Paradise.

God led all the animals before him in Paradise, and he named them. They followed him and gambolled around him, for all things served him before he sinned. All that he named, afterward followed him to earth. Eve had not yet been formed from him.

I saw Adam in Paradise among the plants and flowers, and not far from the fountain that played in its centre. He was awaking, as if from sleep. Although his person was more like to flesh than to spirit, yet he was dazzlingly white. He wondered at nothing, nor was he astonished at his own existence. He went around among the trees and the animals, as if he were used to them all, like a man inspecting his fields.

Near the tree by the water arose a hill. On it I saw Adam reclining on his left side, his left hand under his cheek. God sent a deep sleep on him and he was rapt in vision. Then from his right side, from the same place in which the side of Jesus was opened by the lance, God drew Eve. I saw her small and delicate. But she quickly increased in size until full-grown. She was exquisitely beautiful. Were it not for the Fall, all would be born in the same way, in tranquil slumber.

The hill opened, and at Adams side arose a crystalline rock, formed apparently of precious stones. At Eves, lay a white valley covered with something like fine white pollen.

When Eve had been formed, I saw that God gave something, or allowed something to flow upon Adam. It was as if there streamed from the Godhead, apparently in human form, currents of light from forehead, mouth, breast, and hands. They united into a globe of light, which entered Adams right side whence Eve had been taken. Adam alone received it. It was the germ of Gods Blessing, which was threefold.

The Blessing that Abraham received from the angel was one. It was of similar form, but not so luminous. Eve arose before Adam, and he gave her his hand. They were like two unspeakably noble and beautiful children, perfectly luminous, and clothed with beams of light as with a veil.

From Adams mouth I saw issuing a broad stream of glittering light, and upon his forehead was an expression of great majesty. Around his mouth played a sunbeam, but there was none around Eves. I saw Adams heart very much the same as in men of the present day, but his breast was surrounded by rays of light.

In the middle of his heart, I saw a sparkling halo of glory. In it was a tiny figure as if holding something in its hand. I think it symbolized the Third Person of the Godhead. From the hands and feet of Adam and Eve, shot rays of light. Their hair fell in five glittering tresses, two from the temples, two behind the ears, and one from the back of the head.

I have always thought that by the Wounds of Jesus there were opened anew in the human body portals closed by Adams sin. I have been given to understand that Longinus opened in Jesus’ Side the gate of regeneration to eternal life, therefore no one entered Heaven while that gate was closed.

The glittering beams on Adams head denoted his abundant fruitfulness, his glory, his connection with other radiations. And all this shining beauty is restored to glorified souls and bodies. Our hair is the ruined, the extinct glory; and as is this hair of ours to rays of light, so is our present flesh to that of Adam before the Fall. The sunbeams around Adams mouth bore reference to a holy posterity from God, which, had it not been for the Fall, would have been effectuated by the spoken word.

Adam stretched forth his hand to Eve. They left the charming spot of Eves creation and went through Paradise, looking at everything, rejoicing in everything. That place was the highest in Paradise. All was more radiant, more resplendent there than elsewhere.

4. THE TREE OF LIFE AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

In the centre of the glittering garden, I saw a sheet of water in which lay an island connected with the opposite land by a pier. Both island and pier were covered with beautiful trees, but in the middle of the former stood one more magnificent than the others. It towered high over them as if guarding them. Its roots extended over the whole island as did also its branches, which were broad below and tapering to a point above.

Its boughs were horizontal and from them arose others like little trees. The leaves were fine, the fruit yellow and sessile in a leafy calyx like a budding rose. It was something like a cedar. I do not remember ever having seen Adam, Eve, or any animal near that tree on the island. But I saw beautiful noble-looking white birds and heard them singing in its branches. That Tree was the Tree of Life.

Just before the pier that led to the island, stood the Tree of Knowledge. The trunk was scaly like that of the palm. The leaves, which spread out directly from the stem, were very large and broad, in shape like the sole of a shoe. Hidden in the forepart of the leaves, hung the fruit clustering in fives, one in front, and four around the stem.

The yellow fruit had something of the shape of an apple, though more of the nature of a pear or fig. It had five ribs uniting in a little cavity. It was pulpy like a fig inside, of the colour of brown sugar, and streaked with blood-red veins. The tree was broader above than below, and its branches struck deep roots into the ground.

I see a species of this tree still in warm countries. Its branches throw down shoots to the earth where they root and rise as new trunks. These in turn send forth branches, and so one such tree often covers a large tract of country. Whole families dwell under the dense foliage.

At some distance to the right of the Tree of Knowledge, I saw a small, oval, gently sloping hill of glittering red grains and all kinds of precious stones. It was terraced with crystals. Around it were slender trees just high enough to intercept the view. Plants and herbs grew around it and they, like the trees, bore colored blossoms and nutritious fruits.

At some distance to the left of the Tree of Knowledge, I saw a slope, a little dale. It looked like soft clay, or like mist, and it was covered with tiny white flowers and pollen. Here too were various kinds of vegetation, but all colorless, more like pollen than fruit.

It seemed as if these two, the hill and the dale, bore some reference to each other, as if the hill had been taken out of the dale, or as if something from the former was to be transplanted into the latter. They were to each other what the seed is to the field. Both seemed to me holy, and I saw that both, but especially the hill, shone with light. Between them and the Tree of Knowledge arose different kinds of trees and bushes. They were all, like everything else in nature, transparent as if formed of light.

These two places were the abodes of our first parents. The Tree of Knowledge separated them. I think that God, after the creation of Eve, pointed out those places to them.

I saw that Adam and Eve were little together at first. I saw them perfectly free from passion, each in a separate abode. The animals were indescribably noble looking and resplendent, and they served Adam and Eve. All had, according to their kind, certain retreats, abodes and walks apart. The different spheres contained in themselves some great mystery of the Divine Law, and all were connected with one another.

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The Fall

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

1. THE FALL

I saw Adam and Eve walking through Paradise for the first time. The animals ran to meet and follow them, but they appeared to be more familiar with Eve than with Adam. Eve was in fact more taken up with the earth and created things. She glanced below and around more frequently than Adam. She appeared the more inquisitive of the two. Adam was more silent, more absorbed in God.

Among the animals was one that followed Eve more closely than the others. It was a singularly gentle and winning, though artful creature. I know of none other to which I might compare it. It was slender and glossy, and it looked as if it had no hones. It walked upright on its short hind feet, its pointed tail trailing on the ground. Near the head, which was round with a face exceedingly shrewd, it had little short paws, and its wily tongue was ever in motion.

The color of the neck, breast, and lower part of the body was pale yellow, and down the back it was a mottled brown very much the same as an eel. It was about as tall as a child of ten years. It was constantly around Eve, and so coaxing and intelligent, so nimble and supple that she took great delight in it. But to me there was something horrible about it. I can see it distinctly even now.

I never saw it touch either Adam or Eve. Before the Fall, the distance between man and the lower animals was great, and I never saw the first human beings touch any of them. They had, it is true, more confidence in man, but they kept at a certain distance from him.

When Adam and Eve returned to the region of shining light, a radiant Figure like a majestic man with glittering white hair stood before them. He pointed around, and in few words appeared to be giving all things over to them and to be commanding them something. They did not look intimidated, but listened to him naturally.

When he vanished, they appeared more satisfied, more happy. They appeared to understand things better, to find more order in things, for now they felt gratitude, but Adam more than Eve. She thought more of their actual bliss and of the things around them than of thanking for them. She did not rest in God so perfectly as did Adam, her soul was more taken up with created things. I think Adam and Eve went around Paradise three times.

Again I saw Adam on the shining hill upon which God had formed the woman from a rib of his side as he lay buried in sleep. He stood alone under the trees lost in gratitude and wonder. I saw Eve near the Tree of Knowledge, as if about to pass it, and with her that same animal more wily and sportive than ever. Eve was charmed with the serpent; she took great delight in it. It ran up the Tree of Knowledge until its head was on a line with hers. Then clinging to the trunk with its hind feet, it moved its head toward hers and told her that, if she would eat of the fruit of that tree, she would no longer be in servitude, she would become free, and understand how the multiplication of the human race was to be effected. Adam and Eve had already received the command to increase and multiply, but I understood that they did not know as yet how God willed it to be brought about. I saw, too, that had they known it and yet sinned after that knowledge, Redemption would not have been possible. Eve now became more thoughtful. She appeared to be moved by desire for what the serpent had promised. Something degrading took possession of her. It made me feel anxious. She glanced toward Adam, who was still quietly standing under the trees. She called him, and he came.

Eve started to meet him, but turned back. There was a restlessness, a hesitancy about her movements. Again she started, as if intending to pass the tree, but once more hesitated, approached it from the left, and stood behind it, screened by its long, pendent leaves. The tree was broader above than below, and its wide, leafy branches drooped to the ground. Just within Eves reach hung a remarkably fine bunch of fruit.

And now Adam approached. Eve caught him by the arm and pointed to the talking animal, and he listened to its words. When Eve laid her hand on Adams arm, she touched him for the first time. He did not touch her, but the splendor around them grew dim.

I saw the animal pointing to the fruit, but he did not venture to snap it off for Eve. But when the longing for it arose in her heart, he broke off and handed her the central and most beautiful piece of the clustering five.

And now I saw Eve draw near to Adam, and offer him the fruit. Had he refused it, sin would not have been committed. I saw the fruit break, as it were, in Adams hand. He saw pictures in it, and it was as if he and Eve were instructed upon what they should not have known. The interior of the fruit was blood-red and full of veins. I saw Adam and Eve losing their brilliancy and diminishing in stature. It was as if the sun went down. The animal glided down the tree, and I saw it running off on all fours.

I did not see the fruit taken into the mouth as we now take food in eating, but it disappeared between Adam and Eve.

I saw that while the serpent was still in the tree, Eve sinned, for her consent was with the temptation. I learned also at that moment what I cannot clearly repeat; namely, that the serpent was, as it were, the embodiment of Adam and Eves will, a being by which they could do all things, could attain all things. Here it was that Satan entered.

Sin was not completed by eating the forbidden fruit. But

that fruit from the tree which, rooting its branches in the earth thus sent out new shoots, and which continued to do the same after the Fall, conveyed the idea of a more absolute propagation, a sensual implanting in self at the cost of separation from God. So, along with disobedience, there sprang from their indulgence that severing of the creature from God, that planting in self and through self, and those selfish passions in human nature. He that uses the fruit solely for the enjoyment it affords, must accept as the consequence of his act the subversion, the debasement of nature as well as sin and death.

The blessing of a pure and holy multiplying out of God and by God, which Adam had received after the creation of Eve was, in consequence of that indulgence, withdrawn from him; for I saw that the instant Adam left his hill to go to Eve, the Lord grasped him in the back and took something from him. From that something, I felt that the worlds salvation would come.

Once on the Feast of the Holy and Immaculate Conception, God gave me a vision of that mystery. I saw enclosed in Adam and Eve the corporal and spiritual life of all mankind. I saw that by the Fall it became corrupted, mixed up with evil, and that the bad angels had acquired power over it. I saw the Second Person of the Godhead come down and, with something like a crooked blade, take the Blessing from Adam before he had sinned. At the same instant, I saw the Virgin issuing from Adams side like a little luminous cloud, and soaring all resplendent up to God.

By the reception of the fruit, Adam and Eve became, as it were, intoxicated, and their consent to sin wrought in them a great change. It was the serpent in them. Its nature pervaded theirs, and then came the tares among the wheat.

As punishment and reparation, circumcision was instituted. As the vine is pruned that it may not run wild, may not become sour and unfruitful, so must it be done to man that he may regain his lost perfection. Once when the reparation of the Fall was shown me in symbolical pictures, I saw Eve in the act of issuing from Adams side, and even then stretching out her neck after the forbidden fruit. She ran quickly to the tree and clasped it in her arms. In an opposite picture, I saw Jesus born of the Immaculate Virgin. He ran straight to the Cross and embraced it. I saw posterity obscured and ruined by Eve, but again purified by the Passion of Jesus. By the pains of penance must the evil love of self be rooted out of the flesh. The word of the Epistle that the son of the handmaid shall not be joint heir, I always understood to mean the flesh and slavish subjection thereto, typified under the figure of the handmaid. Marriage is a state of penance. It calls for prayer, fasting, alms - deeds, renunciation, and the intention to increase the Kingdom of God.

Adam and Eve before sin were very differently constituted from what we, poor, miserable creatures now are. With the reception of the forbidden fruit, they imbibed a material existence. Spirit became matter; flesh, an instrument, a vessel. At first they were one in God, they sought self in God; but afterward they stood apart from God in their own will. And this self-will is self-seeking, a lusting after sin and impurity. By eating the forbidden fruit, man turned away from his Creator. It was as if he drew creation into himself. All creative power, operations, and attributes, their commingling with one another and with all nature, became in man material things of different forms and functions.

Once man was endowed with the kingship of nature, but now all in him has become nature. He is now one of its slaves, a master conquered and fettered. He must now struggle and fight with nature - but I cannot clearly express it. It was as if man once possessed all things in God, their Creator and their Center; but now he made himself their center, and they became his master.

I saw the interior, the organs of man as if in the flesh, in corporeal, corruptible images of creatures, as well as their relations with one another, from the stars down to the tiniest living thing. All exert an influence on man. He is connected with all of them; he must act and struggle against them, and from them suffer. But I cannot express it clearly since I, too, am a member of the fallen race.

Man was created to fill the choirs of the fallen angels. Were it not for the Fall of Adam, the human race would have increased only till the number of the fallen angels was reached, and then the world would have come to an end. Had Adam and Eve lived to see even one sinless generation, they would not have fallen. I am certain that the world will last until the number of the fallen angels has been filled, until the wheat shall have been reaped from the chaff.

Once I had a great and connected vision of sin and the whole plan of Redemption. I saw all mysteries clearly and distinctly, but it is impossible for me to put all into words. I saw sin in its innumerable ramifications from the Fall of the angels and from Adams Fall down to the present day, and I saw all the preparations for the repairing and redeeming down to the coming and death of Jesus. Jesus showed me the extraordinary blending, the intrinsic uncleanness of all creatures, as well as all that He had done from the very beginning for their purification and restoration.

At the Fall of the angels, myriads of bad spirits descended to earth and into the air. I saw many creatures under the influence of their wrath, possessed by them in many ways.

The first man was an image of God, he was like Heaven; all was one in him, all was one with him. His form was a reproduction of the Divine Prototype. He was destined to possess and to enjoy earth and all created things, but holding them from God and giving thanks for them. Man was, however, free; therefore was he subjected to trial, therefore was he forbidden to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. In the beginning, all was smooth and level. When the little mound, the shining hill upon which Adam stood arose, when the white, blooming vale by which I saw Eve standing was hollowed out, the corrupter was already near.

After the Fall, all was changed. All forms of creation were produced in self, dissipated in self. What had been one became many, creatures no longer looked to God alone, each was concentrated in self.

Mankind at first numbered two, then three, and at last they became innumerable. They had been images of God; but after the Fall, they became images of self, which images originated in sin. Sin placed them in communication with the fallen angels. They sought all their good in self and the creatures around them with all of whom the fallen angels had connection; and from that interminable blending, that sinking of his noble faculties in self and in fallen nature, sprang manifold wickedness and misery.

My Affianced showed me this clearly, distinctly, intelligibly, more clearly than one beholds the things of daily life. At the time, I thought that a child might comprehend it, but now I cannot repeat it. He showed me the whole plan of Redemption with the way in which it was to be effected, as also all that He Himself had done. I saw that it is not right to say that God need not have become man, need not have died for us upon the Cross; that He could, by virtue of His omnipotence, have redeemed us otherwise. I saw that He did what He did in conformity with His own infinite perfection, His mercy, and His justice; that there is indeed no necessity in God, He does what He does, He is what He is!

I saw Melchisedec as an angel and a type of Jesus, as a priest upon the earth; inasmuch as the priesthood is in God, he was an angel priest of the eternal hierarchy. I saw him preparing, founding, building up, and separating the human family, and acting toward them as a guide. I saw too, Enoch and Noah, what they represented, what they effected; on the other side, I saw the ever-active empire of Hell and the infinitely varied manifestations and effects of an earthly, carnal, diabolical idolatry. And I saw in all these manifestations similar pestiferous forms and figures leading, so to say, by a secret, inborn necessity and an uninterrupted process of dissolution to sin and corruption. In this manner, I saw sin and the prophetic, foreshadowing figures of Redemption which, in their way, were images of divine power as man himself in the image of God. All were shown me from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to the Prophets, also the way in which they were connected and their reference to similar types in our own day. Thus, for instance, with these visions of the Old Testament was connected the instruction I received upon the reason priests no longer relieve or cure, why it is either not in their power, or why it is now effected so differently from what it used to be. I saw this gift of the priesthood possessed by the Prophets, and the signification of the form under which it was exercised was shown me. I saw, for example, the history of Elijah giving his staff to Giezi to lay upon the dead child of the Sunamitess. In this staff lay spiritually Elijahs mission and power. It was, as it were, his arm, the prolongation of his arm. And here I saw the interior signification and power of a Bishops crozier and a monarchs scepter. If used with faith, they unite both Bishop and monarch in a certain way with Him from whom they hold their dignity, with God, marking them out at the same time as distinct from all others. But Giezis faith was not firm, and the mother thought that only through Elijah himself could help be obtained; and so between Elijahs power from God and his staff, the questionings of human presumption intervened, and the staff cured not. Then I saw Elijah praying arid stretching himself, hand to hand, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, upon the boy, and the soul of the boy returned to his body. It was explained to me that this manner of healing referred to and prefigured the death of Jesus. In Elijah, by faith and the power conferred by God, were opened again in man all the avenues of grace and expiation that had been closed after the Fall: viz., the head, the breast, the hands, and the feet. Elijah stretched himself as a living, symbolical cross upon the dead, closed cross of the boys form, and through his prayer of faith life was restored. He expiated, he atoned for the sins the parents had committed by their head, heart, hands, and feet*ins that had brought death to their boy. Side by side with the above, I saw pictures of the Wounds of Jesus and of His death upon the Cross, by which I traced the harmony between Jesus and His Prophet. Since the Crucifixion of Jesus, the gift of healing and repairing has existed in full measure among the priests of His Church and in general among faithful Christians; for in the same proportion as we live in Him and are crucified with Him, are those avenues of grace, His Sacred Wounds, opened to us. I learned many things of the imposition of hands, the efficacy of a benediction, and the influence exerted by the hand, even at a distance all was explained by the staff of Elijah, which symbolized the hand. That priests of the present day so seldom cure and bless, was shown me in an example significant to that conformity to Jesus upon which depend all such effects. I saw three artists making figures of wax. The first used beautiful white wax, and he was both skillful and intelligent. But he was self - conceited, the image of Christ was not in him, and his work was of no value. The second used wax not so white as that of the first, and his indolence and self-will spoiled all. He did nothing at all. The third was awkward and unskillful; but he worked away in his simplicity and with great diligence on common yellow wax. His work was excellent, a speaking likeness, although the features were coarse. I saw renowned preachers vaunting their worldly wisdom, but effecting nothing; while many a poor, unlettered man exercises by the priestly power alone the gift of healing and blessing.

It seemed to me, while all this was shown me, that I was in school. My Affianced made me see how He had suffered from His conception to His death, always expiating, always satisfying for sin. I saw this in distinct visions of His life. I saw too that, by prayer and the offering of sufferings for others, many souls that have done no good upon earth may be converted and saved at the hour of death.

I saw also that the Apostles were sent over the greater part of the earth to crush the power of Satan and to scatter benedictions. It was just those regions into which they went that had been most thoroughly infected by the evil one. Jesus, by His perfect atonement, acquired that power against Satan for such as had received or such as would receive His Holy Spirit, and He secured it to them forever. I was given to understand that the power to withdraw various regions of the earth from Satans dominion by means of a blessing, is signified by the words: “Ye are the salt of the earth.” For the same reason is salt one of the ingredients of holy water.

I saw, too, in this vision that the punctilios of sensual, worldly life are most scrupulously observed. I saw the malediction following the reversed blessing. I saw the pretended miracles in the kingdom of Satan. I saw that the worship of nature, superstition, magic, mesmerism, worldly arts and science, and all the means employed to smooth death over, to make sin attractive, to lull the conscience, are practiced with rigorous exactitude, even with fanaticism by the very men who regard the ceremonies of the Holy Church as superstitious forms, for which any other may be indifferently substituted. And yet these men subject their whole life and all their actions to certain ceremonious observances. It is only of the kingdom of the God-Man that they make no account. The world is served with perfection, but the service of God is shamefully neglected!

2. THE PROMISE OF THE REDEEMER

After the Fall of Man, God made known to the angels His plan for the restoration of the human race.

I saw the throne of God. I saw the Most Holy Trinity and a movement in the Divine Persons. I saw the nine choirs of angels and God announcing to them the way by which He would restore the fallen race. I saw the inexpressible joy and jubilation of the angels at the announcement.

I saw Adams glittering rock of precious stones arise before the throne of God, as if borne up by angels. It had steps cut in it, it increased in size, it became a throne, a tower, and it extended on all sides until it embraced all things. I saw the nine choirs of angels around it, and above the angels in Heaven, I saw the image of the Virgin. It was not Mary in time; it was Mary in eternity, Mary in God. The Virgin entered the tower, which opened to receive her, and she appeared to become one with it. Then I saw issuing from the Most Holy Trinity an apparition which, likewise, went into the tower.

Among the angels, I noticed a kind of ostensorium at which all were working. It was in shape like a tower, and on it were all kinds of mysterious carving. Near it on either side stood two figures, their joined hands embracing it. At every instant it became larger and more magnificent. I saw something from God passing through the angelic choirs and going into the ostensorium. It was a shining Holy Thing, and it became more clearly defined the nearer it drew to the ostensorium. It appeared to me to be the germ of the divine Blessing for a pure offspring which had been given to Adam, but withdrawn when he was on the point of listening to Eve and consenting to eat the forbidden fruit. It was the Blessing that was again bestowed upon Abraham, withdrawn from Jacob, by Moses deposited in the Ark of the Covenant, and lastly received by Joachim, the father of Mary, in order that Mary might be as pure and stainless in her Conception as was Eve upon coming forth from the side of the sleeping Adam. The ostensorium, likewise, went into the tower.

I saw too, a chalice prepared by the angels. It was of the same shape as that used at the Last Supper, and it also went into the tower. To the right of the tower, I saw, as if on the edge of a golden cloud, grapevines and wheat intertwining like the fingers of clasped hands. From them sprang a branch, a whole genealogical tree upon whose boughs were little figures of males and females reaching hands to one another. Its highest blossom was the Crib with the Child.

Then I saw in pictures the mystery of Redemption from the Promise down to the fullness of time, and in side pictures I saw counteracting influences at work. At last, over the shining rock, I saw a large and magnificent church. It was the One, Holy, Catholic Church, which bears living in itself the salvation of the whole world. The connection of these pictures one with another and their transition from one to another was wonderful. Even what was evil and opposed to the end in view, even what was rejected by the angels as unfit, was made subservient to the development of Redemption. And so, I saw the ancient Temple rising from below; it was very large and like a church, but it had no tower. It was pushed to one side by the angels, and there it stood slanting. I saw a great mussel shell (Symbol of pagan worship and mythology) make its appearance and try to force its way into the old Temple; but it, too, was hurried aside.

I saw appear a broad, lopped-off tower (An Egyptian pyramid) through whose numerous gateways figures like Abraham and the children of Israel entered. It was significant of their bondage in Egypt. It was shoved aside, as well as another Egyptian tower in staircase form. The latter was symbolical of astrology and soothsaying. Then appeared an Egyptian temple. It was pushed aside like the others, and remained standing crooked.

At last, I saw a vision on earth such as God had shown to Adam; viz., that a Virgin would arise and restore to him the salvation he had forfeited. Adam knew not when it would take place, and I saw his deep sadness because Eve bore him only sons. But at last she had a daughter.

I saw Noah and his sacrifice at the time in which he received from God the Blessing. Then I had visions of Abraham, of his Blessing, and of the promise of a son Isaac. I saw the Blessing descending from firstborn to firstborn, and always transmitted with a sacramental action. I saw Moses on the night of Israels departure from Egypt, getting possession of the Mystery, the Holy Thing, of which none other knew save Aaron. I saw It afterward in the Ark of the Covenant. Only the High Priests and certain saints, by a revelation from God, had any knowledge of it. I saw the transmitting of this Mystery through the ancestry of Jesus Christ down to Joachim and Anne, the purest and holiest couple that ever existed, and from whom was born Mary, the spotless Virgin. And then I saw Mary becoming the living Ark of Gods Covenant.

3. ADAM AND EVE DRIVEN FROM PARADISE

After some time, I saw Adam and Eve wandering about in great distress. They were no longer beaming with light, and they went about, one here, the other there, as if seeking something they had lost. They were ashamed of each other. Every step they took led them downward, as if the ground gave way beneath their feet. They carried gloom wherever they went; the plants lost their bright colors and turned gray, and the animals fled before them. They sought large leaves and wove them into a cincture for their loins. They always wandered about separate.

After they had thus fled for a considerable time, the region of refulgent light whence they had come began to look like the summit of a distant mountain. Among the bushes of a gloomy-looking plain, they hid themselves, but apart. Then a voice from above called them, but they would not obey the call. They were frightened, they fled still further, and hid still deeper among the bushes. It made me sad to see that. But the voice became more imperative, and, in spite of their desire to flee and hide, they were compelled to come forth.

The majestic Figure shining with light again appeared. Adam and Eve with bowed head stepped from their hiding places, but they dared not look upon their Lord. They glanced at each other, and both acknowledged their guilt.

And now God pointed out to them a plain still lower than the one on which they stood. On it were bushes and trees. On reaching it, they became humble, and for the first time, rightly understood their miserable condition. I saw them praying when left there alone. They separated, fell on their knees, and raised up their hands with tears and cries. I thought as I gazed upon them how good it is to be alone in prayer.

Adam and Eve were at this time clothed in a garment that reached from the shoulders to the knee, and which was girded at the waist by a strip of the inner bark of a tree.

While our first parents were descending lower and lower from the place of their creation, Paradise itself appeared, like a cloud, to be mounting higher and higher above them. Then a fiery ring, like the circle sometimes seen around the sun and moon, came down from Heaven and settled around the height upon which was Paradise.

Adam and Eve had been only one day in Paradise. I now see Paradise far, far off like a strip of land directly under the point of sunrise. When the sun rises, it mounts up from the right of that strip of land which lies east of the Prophet Mountain and just where the sun rises. It looks to me like an egg hanging over indescribably clear water which separates it from the earth. The Prophet Mountain is, as it were, a promontory rising up through that water. On that mountain, one sees extraordinarily verdant regions broken here and there by deep abysses and ravines full of water. I have, indeed, seen people climbing up the Prophet Mountain, but they did not go far.

I saw Adam and Eve reach the earth, their place of penance. Oh, what a touching sight - hose two creatures expiating their fault upon the naked earth! Adam had been allowed to bring an olive branch with him from Paradise, and now he planted it. Later on, the Cross was made from its wood. Adam and Eve were unspeakably sad. Where I saw them, they could scarcely get a glimpse of Paradise, and they were constantly descending lower and lower. It seemed as if something revolved and they came at last, through night and darkness, to the wretched, miserable place upon which they had to do penance.

4. THE FAMILY OF ADAM

It was to the region of Mount Olive that I saw Adam and Eve come. The country was very different from what it is at present, but I was assured that it was the same. I saw Adam and Eve living and doing penance on that part of Mount Olive upon which Jesus sweat Blood. They cultivated the soil. I saw them surrounded by sons. They were in great distress, and they implored God to bestow upon them a daughter, for they had received the Promise that the womans seed should crush the serpents head.

Eve bore children at stated intervals. After each birth a number of years was always devoted to penance. It was after seven years of penance that Seth, the child of promise, was born of Eve in the Grotto of the Crib, where, also, an angel announced to Eve that Seth was the seed given her by God in the place of Abel. For a long time, Seth was concealed in that Grotto, likewise in the cave in which Abraham was afterward suckled, for his brothers like those of Joseph sought his life.

Once I saw about twelve people: Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, two sisters, and some young children. All were clothed in skins thrown over their shoulders like a scapular and girded at the waist. The female dress was large and full around the breast where it served as a pocket. It fell down around the limbs, and was fastened at the sides and once under the arm. The men wore shorter dresses, which had a pocket fastened to them. The skins from which their dresses were made were, from the neck to the elbow, exceedingly fine and white. They all looked very noble and beautiful in their clothing. They had huts in those days, partly sunk in the earth and covered with plants. Their household was quite well-arranged. I saw orchards of low, but tolerably vigorous fruit trees. There was grain also, such as wheat, which God had given to Adam for seed.

I do not remember having seen either grapevines or wheat in Paradise. None of the productions of Paradise had to be prepared for eating. Such preparation is a consequence of sin and, therefore, a symbol of labor and suffering. God gave to Adam whatever it was necessary for him to sow. I remember having seen men who looked like angels, taking something to Noah when he went into the ark. It appeared to me to be a vine branch stuck in an apple.

A certain kind of grain grew wild at that time, and among it Adam had to sow the good wheat. That improved it for awhile, but it again degenerated and became worse and worse. The wild grain was excellent in those early times. It was most luxuriant further to the east, in India or China, where as yet there were but few inhabitants. It does not thrive where wine is largely made and fish abound.

The milk of animals was drunk in those days, and they likewise ate cheese dried in the sun. Among the animals, I noticed sheep in particular. All that Adam had named followed him from Paradise, but afterward they fled from him. He had to entice them back with food, that is the domestic animals, and familiarize them to himself. I saw birds hopping about, little animals running around, and all sorts of bounding creatures, such as antelopes, deer, etc.

The household order was quite patriarchal. I saw Adams children in their separate huts, reclining around a stone at meals. I saw them also praying and giving thanks.

God had taught Adam to offer sacrifice; he was the priest in his family. Cain and Abel also were priests. I saw that even the preparations for their sacrifice took place in a separate hut.

On the head, they wore caps made of leaves and their stalks woven together. They were shaped like a ship and had a rim in front by which they could be raised from the head. Those first human beings had beautiful skin of a yellowish tinge, which shone like silk, and their hair was reddish-yellow like gold. Adam wore his hair long. His beard was short at first, but later he let it grow. Eve at first wore her long hair hanging around her; but later on she wound it around her head in a coil like a cap.

Fire I always saw like a hidden flame, and it appeared to be in the earth. It was given to man from Heaven, and God Himself taught him the use of it. They burned for fuel a yellow substance that looked like earth. I saw no cooking going on. In the beginning. the food was merely dried in the sun; and the wheat after being crushed, was exposed under twisted covers to the heat of the sun to dry.

God gave them wheat, barley, and rye, and taught them how to cultivate them. He guided man in all things.

I saw no large rivers in the beginning as, for instance, the Jordan; but fountains sprang forth whose waters were conducted into reservoirs.

Flesh meat was not eaten before Abel’s death.

I once had a vision of Mount Calvary. I saw on it a prophet, the companion of Elias. The mount was at that time full of caves and sepulchres. The prophet entered one of the caves and from a stone coffin filled with bones he took up the skull of Adam. Instantly an angel appeared before him, saying: “That is Adams skull,” and he forbade its removal. Scattered over the skull was some thin yellow hair. From the prophets account of what had occurred, the spot was named “The Place of Skulls” (Calvary). Christ’s Cross stood in a straight line above that skull at the time of His Crucifixion. I was interiorly instructed that the spot upon which the skull rests is the middle point of the earth. I was told the distance east, south, and west in numbers, but I have forgotten them.

5. CAIN. THE CHILDREN OF GOD. THE GIANTS

I saw that Cain conceived on Mount Olive the design to murder Abel. After the deed, he wandered about the same spot frightened and distracted planting trees and tearing them up again. Then I saw a majestic Figure in the form of a man refulgent with light appear to him. “Cain,” He said, “where is thy brother Abel?” Cain did not at first see the Figure; but when he did, he turned and answered:

“I know not. He has not been given in charge to me.” But when God replied that Abels blood cried to Him from the earth, Cain grew more troubled, and I saw that he disputed long with God. God told him that he should be cursed upon the earth, that it should bring forth no fruit for him, and that he should forthwith flee from the land in which he then dwelt. Cain responded that everywhere his fellow men would seek to kill him. There were already many people upon the earth. Cain was very old and had children. Abel also left children, and there were other brothers and sisters, the children of Adam. But God replied that it would not be so; that whoever should kill Cain should himself be punished sevenfold, and He placed a sign upon him that no one should slay him. Cains posterity gradually became colored. Hams children also were browner than those of Shem. The nobler races were always of a lighter color. They who were distinguished by a particular mark engendered children of the same stamp; and as corruption increased, the mark also increased until at last it covered the whole body, and people became darker and darker. But yet in the beginning there were no people perfectly black; they became so only by degrees.

God pointed out to Cain a region to which he should flee. And because Cain said: “Then, wilt Thou let me starve?” - (the earth was for him accursed) - God answered no, that he should eat the flesh of animals. He told him likewise that a nation would arise from him, and that good also would come from him. Before this men ate no flesh.

Cain went forth and built a city, which he named after his son Enoch.

Abel was slain in the valley of Josaphat opposite Mount Calvary. Numerous murders and evil deeds took place there at a subsequent period. Cain slew Abel with a kind of club that he used to break soft stones and earth when planting in the fields. The club must have been of hard stone, for it was shaped like a pickax, the handle of wood.

We must not picture to ourselves the earth before the Deluge as it is now. Palestine was by no means so broken up by valleys and ravines. Plains were far more extensive, and single mountains less lofty. The Mount of Olives was at that time only a gentle rising. The Crib Cave of Bethlehem was as later a wild cavern, but the surroundings were different.

The people of those early times were larger, though not out of proportion. We would regard them with astonishment, but not with fright, for they were far more beautiful in form than people of a later period. Among the old marble statues that I see in many places lying in subterranean caves, may be found similar figures.

Cain led his children and grandchildren to the region pointed out to him, and there they separated. Of Cain himself, I have never seen anything more that was sinful. His punishment appeared to consist in hard, but fruitless labor. Nothing in which he was personally engaged succeeded. I saw that he was mocked and reviled by his children and grandchildren, treated badly in every way. And yet they followed him as their leader, though as one accursed. I saw that Cain was severely punished, but not damned.

One of Cains descendants was Tubalcain, (Genesis 4:22.) the originator of numerous arts, and the father of the giants. I have frequently seen that, when the angels fell, a certain number had a moment of repentance and did not in consequence fall as low as the others. Later on, these fallen spirits took up their abode on a high, desolate, and wholly inaccessible mountain whose site at the time of the Deluge became a sea, the Black Sea, I think. They were permitted to exercise their evil influence upon men in proportion as the latter strayed further from God. After the Deluge they disappeared from that region, and were confined to the air. They will not be cast into Hell before the last day.

I saw Cains descendants becoming more and more godless and sensual. They settled further and further up that mountain ridge where were the fallen spirits. Those spirits took possession of many of the women, ruled them completely, and taught them all Sorts of seductive arts. Their children were very large. They possessed a quickness, an aptitude for everything, and they gave themselves up entirely to the wicked spirits as their instruments. And so arose on this mountain and spread far around, a wicked race which by violence and seduction sought to entangle Seths posterity likewise in their own corrupt ways. Then God declared to Noah His intention to send the Deluge. During the building of the ark, Noah had to suffer terribly from those people.

I have seen many things connected with the race of giants. They could with ease carry enormous stones high up the mountain, they could accomplish the most stupendous feats. They could walk straight up trees and walls just as I have seen others possessed by the devil doing. They could effect the most wonderful things, they could do whatever they wished; but all was pure jugglery and delusion due to the agency of the demon. It is for that reason that I have such horror of every species of jugglery and fortune telling. These people could form all kinds of images out of stone and metal; but of the knowledge of God they had no longer a trace. They sought their gods in the creatures around them. I have seen them scratch up a stone, form it into an extravagant image, and then adore it. They worshipped also a frightful animal and all kinds of ignoble things. They knew all things, they could see all things, they were skilled in the preparing of poisons, they practiced sorcery and every species of wickedness. The women invented music. I saw them going around among the better tribes trying to seduce them to their own abominations. They had no dwelling houses, no cities, but they raised massive round towers of shining stone. Under those towers were little structures leading into great caverns wherein they carried on their horrible wickedness. From the roofs of these structures, the surrounding country could be seen, and by mounting up into the towers and looking through tubes, one could see far into the distance. But it was not like looking through tubes made to bring distant objects into view. The power of the tubes to which I here allude, was effected by satanic agency. They that looked through them could see where the other tribes were settled. Then they marched against them, overcame them, and lawlessly carried all before them. That same spirit of lawlessness they exercised everywhere. I saw them sacrificing children by burying them alive in the earth. God overthrew that mountain at the time of the Deluge.

Enoch, Noahs ancestor, opposed that wicked race by his teachings. He wrote much. Enoch was a very good man and one very grateful to God. In many parts of the open fields, he raised altars of stone and there the fruits of the earth flourished. He gave thanks to God and offered sacrifice to Him. Chiefly in his family was religion preserved and handed down to Noah. Enoch was taken up to Paradise. There he waits at the entrance gate, whence with another (Eliot) he will come again before the last day.

Hams descendants likewise had similar relations with the evil spirits after the Deluge, and from such connection sprang so many demoniacs and necromancers, so many mighty ones of the world, so many great, wild, daring men.

Semiramis herself was the offspring of demoniacs, consequently she was apt at everything save the working out of her salvation.

Later on, there arose another people esteemed as gods by the heathens. The women that first allowed themselves to be ruled by evil spirits were fully conscious of the fact, though others were ignorant of it. These women had it (the principle of possession) in them like flesh and blood, like original sin.

6. NOAH AND HIS POSTERITY. HAM AND DSEMSCRID, LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE

I saw Noah, a simple-hearted old man, clothed in a long white garment. He was walking about in an orchard and pruning the trees with a crooked bone knife. A cloud hovered over him and in it was a human Figure. Noah fell on his knees. I saw that he was, then and there, interiorly instructed upon Gods design to destroy mankind, and he was commanded to build an ark. I saw that Noah grew sad at the announcement, and that he prayed for the punishment to be averted. He did not begin the work at once. Again the Lord appeared to him, twice in succession, commanding him to begin the building, otherwise he should perish with the rest of mankind.

At last, I saw Noah removing with all his family to the country in which Zoroaster, the Shining Star, subsequently dwelt. Noah settled in a high, woody, solitary region where he and his numerous followers lived under tents. Here he raised an altar and offered sacrifice to the Lord. Neither Noah nor any of his family built permanent houses, because they put faith in the prophecy of the Deluge. But the godless nations around laid massive foundations, marked off courts, and erected all kinds of buildings designed to resist the inroads of time and the attacks of an enemy.

There were frightful deeds upon the earth in those days. Men delivered themselves up to all kinds of wickedness, even the most unnatural. They plundered one another and carried off whatever suited them best, they laid waste homes and fields, they kidnapped women and maidens. In proportion to their increase in numbers, was the wickedness of Noahs posterity. They even robbed and insulted Noah himself. They had not fallen into this state of base degradation from want of civilization. They were not wild and barbarous; rather, they lived commodiously and had well ordered households - but they were deeply imbued with wickedness.

They practiced the most shameful idolatry, everyone making his own god of whatever pleased him best. By diabolical arts, they sought to seduce Noahs immediate family. Mosoch, the son of Japheth and grandson of Noah, was thus corrupted after he had, while working in the field, taken from them a poisonous beverage which intoxicated him. It was not wine, but the juice of a plant which they were accustomed to drink in small quantities during their work, and whose leaves and fruit they chewed. Mosoch became the father of a son, who was named Rom.

When the child was born, Mosoch begged his brother Tubal to take it, and thus hide his guilt. Tubal did so out of fraternal affection. The child, with the stalks and sprouts of a certain viscous root, was laid by his mother before Tubals tent. She hoped thereby to acquire a right over his inheritance; but the Deluge was already at hand, and so her plans were fruitless. Tubal took the boy and had him reared in his family without betraying his origin.

And so it happened in this way that the child was taken into the ark. Tubal called the boy Rom, the name of the root whose sprouts lay near him as the only sign. The child was not nourished with milk, but with the same root. If that plant is allowed to grow up straight, it will reach the height of a man; but when it creeps along the ground, it sends up shoots like the asparagus, hard with tender tops.

It is used as food and as a substitute for milk. The root is bulbous, and from it rises a crown of a few brown leaves. Its stern is tolerably thick and the pith is used as meal, cooked like pap or spread in thin layers and baked. Wherever it thrives, it grows luxuriantly and covers leagues of ground. I saw it in the ark.

It was long before the ark was completed, for Noah often discontinued it for years at a time. Three times did God warn him to proceed with it. Each time Noah would engage workmen, recommence and again discontinue in the hope that God would relent. But at last the work was finished. I saw that in the ark, as in the Cross, there were four kinds of wood: palm, olive, cedar, and cypress. I saw the wood felled and hewed upon the spot, and Noah bearing it himself upon his shoulders to the place of building, just as Jesus afterward carried the wood of His Cross. The spot chosen for the construction of the ark was a hill surrounded by a valley. First the bottom was put in.

The ark was rounded in the back and the keel, shaped like a trough, was smeared with pitch. It had two stories supported on hollow posts, which stood one above another. These posts were not round trunks of trees; they were in oval sections filled with a white pith which became fibrous toward the center. The trunk was knotty, or furrowed, and the great leaves grew around it without branches. (Probably a species of palm.) I saw the workmen punching the pith out with a tool. All other trees were cut into thin planks. When Noah had carried all the materials to the appointed spot and arranged them in order, the building was begun.

The bottom was put in and pitched, the first row of posts raised, and the holes in which they stood filled up with pitch. Then came the second floor with another row of posts for the third floor, and then the roof. The spaces between the posts were filled in with brown and yellow laths placed crosswise, the holes and chinks being stuffed with a kind of wool found on certain trees and plants, and a white moss that grows very abundantly around some trees. Then all was pitched inside and outside. The roof was rounded.

The entrance between the two windows was in the center of one side, a little more than halfway up. In the middle of the roof likewise was a square aperture. When the ark had been entirely covered with pitch, it shone like a mirror in the sun. Noah went on working alone and for a long time at the different compartments for the animals, as all were to be separate. Two passages extended through the middle of the ark, and back in the oval part, concealed by hangings, stood a wooden altar, the table of which was semicircular.

A little in the front of the altar was a pan of coals. This was their fire. Right and left, were spaces partitioned off for sleeping apartments. All kinds of chests and utensils were carried into the ark, and numerous seeds, plants, and shrubs were put into earth around the walls, which were soon covered with verdure. I saw something like vines carried in, and on them large yellow grapes, the bunches as long as ones arm.

No words can express what Noah endured from the malice and ill will of the workmen during the whole time that the ark was building. They mocked him, they insulted him in every way, they called him a fool. He paid them well in cattle, but that did not prevent their reviling him. No one knew why he was building the ark, therefore did they ridicule him. When all was finished, I saw Noah giving thanks to God, who then appeared to him. He told him to take a reed pipe and call all the animals from the four corners of the globe.

The nearer the day of chastisement approached, the darker grew the heavens. Frightful anxiety took possession of the whole earth; the sun no longer showed his face, and the roar of the thunder was unceasingly heard. I saw Noah going a short distance north, south, east, and west, and blowing upon his reed pipe. The animals came nocking at the sound and entered the ark in order, two by two, male and female. They went in by a plank laid from the entrance to the ground. When all were safe inside, the plank also was hoisted in.

The largest animals, white elephants and camels, went in first. They were restless as at the approach of a storm, and it took several days for them all to enter. The birds new in through the skylight and perched under the roof on poles and in cages, while the waterfowl went into the bottom of the vessel. The land animals were in the middle story. Of such as are slaughtered, there were seven couples.

The ark, lying there by itself on the top of the hill, shone with a bluish light. At a distance, it looked as if it were descending from the clouds. And now the time for the Deluge drew nigh. Noah had already announced it to his family. He took with him into the ark Shem, Ham, and Japheth with their wives and their children. There were in the ark grandsons from fifty to eighty years old with their children small and large. All that had labored at its construction and who were good and free from idolatry, entered with Noah.

There were over one hundred people in the ark, and they were necessary to give daily food to the animals and to clean after them. I must say, for I always see it so, that Shems, Hams and Japheths children all went into the ark. There were many little boys and girls in it, in fact all of Noahs family that were good. Holy Scripture mentions only three of Adams children, Cain, Abel, and Seth; and yet I see many others among them, and I always see them in pairs, boys and girls.

And so too, in I Peter 3:20, only eight souls are mentioned as saved in the ark; viz., the four ancestral couples by whom, after the Deluge, the earth was to be peopled. I also saw Ham in the ark. The child was fastened by a skin into a bark cradle formed like a trough. I saw many infants cradled in a similar way, floating on the waters of the Deluge.

When the ark rose on the waters, when crowds of people upon the surrounding mountains and in the high trees were weeping and lamenting, when the waters were covered with the floating bodies of the drowned and with uprooted trees, Noah and his family were already safe inside.

Before he and his wife, his three sons and their wives entered the ark, he once more implored Gods mercy. When all had entered, Noah drew in the plank and made fast the door. He left outside near relatives and their families who, during the building of the ark, had separated from him.

Then burst forth a fearful tempest. The lightnings played in fiery columns, the rains fell in torrents, and the hill upon which the ark stood soon became an island. The misery was great, so great that I trust it was the means of many a souls salvation. I saw a devil, black and hideous, with pointed jaws and a long tail, going to and fro through the tempest and tempting men to despair. Toads and serpents sought a hiding place in the crevices of the ark. Flies and vermin I saw not. They came into existence later to torment men.

I saw Noah offering sacrifice in the ark upon an altar covered with red over which was a white cloth. In an arched chest were preserved the bones of Adam. During prayer and sacrifice, Noah laid them on the altar. I saw on the altar, likewise, the Chalice of the Last Supper which, during the building of the ark, had been brought to Noah by three figures in long white garments. They looked like the three men that announced to Abraham the birth of a son.

They came from a city that was destroyed at the time of the Deluge. They addressed Noah as one whose fame had reached them, and told him that he should take with him into the ark a mysterious something that they gave him, in order that it might escape the waters of the Deluge.

The mysterious thing was that Chalice. In it lay a grain of wheat, large as a sunflower seed, and a vine branch. Noah stuck both into a yellow apple and put it into the Chalice. The Chalice had no cover, for the branch was to grow out of it. After the dispersion of men at the building of the Tower of Babel, I saw that Chalice in the possession of one of Shems descendants in the country of Semiramis. He was the ancestor of the Samanenses, who were established at Canaan by Melchisedec. Hither they took the Chalice.

I saw the ark driving over the waters, and dead bodies floating around. It rested upon a high rocky peak of a mountain chain far to the east of Syria, and there it remained for a long time. I saw that land was already appearing. It looked like mud covered with a greenish mold.

Immediately after the Deluge, fish and shellfish began to be eaten. Afterward, as people multiplied, they ate bread and birds. They planted gardens, and the soil was so fruitful that the wheat which they sowed produced ears as large as those of maize. The root from which Ham received his name was also planted. Noahs tent stood on the spot where, at a later period, was that of Abraham. In the plain and in the surrounding country, Noahs sons had their tents.

I saw the cursing of Ham. But Shem and Japheth received from Noah on their knees the Blessing. It was delivered to them with ceremonies similar to those used by Abraham when giving over the same Blessing to Isaac. I saw the curse pronounced by Noah upon Ham moving toward the latter like a black cloud and obscuring him. His skin lost its whiteness, he grew darker. His sin was the sin of sacrilege, the sin of one who would forcibly enter the Ark of the Covenant. I saw a most corrupt race descend from Ham and sink deeper and deeper in darkness. I see that the black, idolatrous, stupid nations are the descendants of Ham. Their color is due, not to the rays of the sun, but to the dark source whence those degraded races sprang.

It would be impossible for me to say how I beheld the nations increasing and extending and, in many different ways, falling into darkness and corruption. But with all that, many luminous rays streamed forth from them and sought the light.

When Tubal, the son of Japheth, with his own children and those of his brother Mosoch, sought counsel of Noah as to the country to which they should migrate, they were fifteen families in number, Noahs children already extended far around, and the families of Tubal and Mosoch also dwelt at some distance from Noah. But when Noahs children began to quarrel and oppress one another, Tubal desired to remove still farther off. He wanted to have nothing to do with Hams descendants, who were already thinking of building the Tower. He and his family heeded not the invitation received later to engage in that undertaking, and it was declined also by the children of Shem.

Tubal with his troop of followers appeared before Noahs tent, asking for directions as to whither he should go. Noah dwelt upon a mountain range between Libanus (Lebanon) and Caucasus. He wept when he saw Tubal and his followers, for he loved that race, because it was better, more God - fearing than others. He pointed out a region toward the northeast, charged them to be faithful to the commands of God and to the offering of sacrifice, and made them promise to guard the purity of their descent, and not to intermingle with the descendants of Ham. He gave them girdles and breast pieces that he had had in the ark.

The heads of the families were to wear them when engaged in divine service and performing marriage ceremonies, in order to guard against malediction and a depraved posterity. The ceremonies used by Noah when offering sacrifice, reminded me of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There were alternate prayers and responses, and Noah moved from place to place at the altar and bowed reverently. He gave them likewise a leathern bag containing a vessel made of bark, in which was an oval golden box enclosing three other smaller vessels. They also received from him the roots or bulbs of that Ham plant, rolls of bark or skins upon which were written characters, and round wooden blocks upon which signs were engraved.

These people were of a bright, reddish-yellow complexion, and very beautiful. They were clothed in skins and woolen garments girdled at the waist, the arms alone bare. The skins they wore were scarcely drawn from the animal when they were clapped, still bloody, on the limbs. They fitted so tightly that my first thought was: Those people are hairy. Not so however, for their own skin was smooth as satin.

With the exception of various kinds of seed, they did not take much baggage with them, since they were departing for a high region toward the northeast. I saw no camels, but they had horses, asses, and animals with spreading horns like stags. I saw them, Tubals followers, on a high mountain where they dwelt one above another in long, low huts like arbors. I saw them digging the ground, planting, and setting out trees in rows. The opposite side of the mountain was cold.

Later on, the whole region became much colder. In consequence of this change in the climate, one of the grandsons of Tubal, the ancestor Dsemschid, led them further toward the southwest. With a few exceptions, all who had seen Noah and had taken leave of him died in this place, that is, on the mountain to which Tubal had led them. They who followed Dsemschid were all born on the same mountain. They took with them the few surviving old men who had known Noah, carrying them very carefully in litters.

When Tubal with his family separated from Noah, I saw among them that child of Mosoch, Ham, who had gone with Tubal into the ark. Ham was already grown, and later on I saw him very different from those around him. He was of large stature like a giant, and of a very serious, peculiar turn of mind. He wore a long robe, he was like a priest. He used to go alone to the summit of the mountain and there spend night after night. He observed the stars and practiced magic.

He was taught by the devil to arrange what he saw in vision into a science, a religion, and thereby he vitiated and counteracted the teaching of Enoch. The evil inclinations inherited from his mother mingled in him with the pure hereditary teachings of Enoch and Noah, to which the children of Tubal clung. Ham, by his false visions and revelations, misinterpreted and changed the ancient truth. He studied and pondered, watched the stars and had visions which, by Satans agency, showed him deformed images of truth.

Through their resemblance to truth, his doctrine and idolatry became the mothers of heresy. Tubal was a good man. Hams manner of acting and his teaching were very displeasing to Tubal, who was greatly grieved to see one of his sons, the father of Dsemschid, attach himself to Ham. I heard Tubal complaining: “My children are not united. Would that I had not separated from Noah!”

Ham conducted the waters of two springs from the higher part of the mountain down to the dwellings. They soon united into one stream which, after a short course, swelled into a broad torrent. I saw Dsemschid and his followers crossing it at their departure. Ham received almost divine homage from his followers. He taught them that God exists in fire. He had also much to do with water, and with that viscous root from which he derived his name. He planted it, and solemnly distributed it as a sacred medicine and nourishment. This distribution at last, became a ceremony of religion.

He carried its juice or pap around with him in a brown vessel like a mortar. The axes were of the same material. They got them from people of another tribe that lived far away in a mountainous country and forged such implements by means of fire. I saw them on a mountain from which fire burst forth, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. I think the vessel which Ham carried around with him was made out of the melted metal or rock that flowed from the mountain, and which was caught in a mold. Ham never married nor did he live to be very old. He published many of his visions referring to his own death.

He himself put faith in them as did also Derketo and his other followers at a later period. But I saw him dying a frightful death, and the evil one carried him off body and soul; nothing remained of him. For that reason his followers thought, that, like Enoch, he had been taken up to a holy dwelling place. The father of Dsemschid had been a pupil of Ham, and Ham left him his spirit in order that he might then be the one who would succeed him.

On account of his knowledge, Dsemschid became the leader of his people. They soon became a nation, and were led by Dsemschid still further south. Dsemchid was very distinguished; he was well-educated, and had embraced Hams teachings. He was unspeakably lively and vigorous, much more active and better also than Ham, who was of a dark, rigid disposition. He practiced the religion formulated by Ham, added many things of his own thereto, and gave much attention to the stars.

His followers regarded fire as sacred. They were all distinguished by a certain sign which denoted their race. People at that time kept together in tribes; they did not intermingle then as now. Dsemschids special aim was to improve the races and maintain them in their original purity; he separated and transplanted them as seemed best to him. He left them perfectly free, and yet they were very submissive to him.

The descendants of those races, whom I now see wild and barbarous in distant lands and islands, are not to be compared with their progenitors in point of personal beauty or manly character; for those early nations were noble and simple, yet withal most valiant. The races of the present day are also far less skillful and clever, and possess less bodily strength.

On his marches, Dsemschid laid the foundations of tent cities, marked off fields, made long roads of stone, and formed settlements here and there of certain numbers of men and women, to whom he gave animals, trees, and plants.

He rode around large tracks of land, striking into the earth with an instrument which he always carried in his hand, and his people then set to work in those places, grubbing and hacking, making hedges and digging ditches. Dsemschid was remarkably strict and just. I saw him as a tall old man, very thin and of a yellowish-red complexion. He rode a surprisingly nimble little animal with slender legs and black and yellow stripes, very much like an ass.

Dsemschid rode around a tract of land just as our poor people go around a field on the heath by night, and thus appropriated it for cultivation. He paused here and there, plunged his grubbing axe into the ground or drove in a stake to mark the sites of future settlements. The instrument, which was afterward called Dsemschids golden plough share, was in form like a Latin cross.

It was about the length of ones arm and, when drawn out, formed with the shaft a right angle. With this instrument, Dsemschid made fissures in the earth. A representation of the same appeared on the side of his robe where pockets generally are. It reminded me of the symbol of office that Joseph and Aseneth always carried in Egypt, and with which they also surveyed the land, though that of Dsemschid was more like a cross. On the upper part was a ring into which it could be run.

Dsemschid wore a mantle that fell backward from the front. From his girdle to the knee hung four leathern naps, two behind and two before, strapped at the side and fastened under the knee. His feet were bound with leather and straps. He wore a golden shield on his breast. He had several similar breastplates to suit various solemnities. His crown was a pointed circlet of gold. The point in front was higher and bent like a little horn, and on the end of it waved something like a little nag.

Dsemschid constantly spoke of Enoch. He knew that he had been taken away from the earth without undergoing death. He taught that Enoch had delivered over to Noah all goodness and all truth, had appointed him the father and guardian of all blessings, and that from Noah all these blessings had passed over to himself. He wore about him a golden egg-shaped vessel in which, as he said, was contained something precious that had been preserved by Noah in the ark, and which had been handed down to himself.

Wherever he pitched his tent, there the golden vessel was placed on a column, and over it, on elegant posts carved with all kinds of figures, a covering was stretched. It looked like a little temple. The cover of the vessel was a crown of filigree work. When Dsemschid lighted fire, he threw into it something that he took out of the vessel.

The vessel had indeed been used in the ark, for Noah had preserved the fire in it; but it was now the treasured idol of Dsemschid and his people. When it was set up, fire burned before it to which prayers were offered and animals sacrificed, for Dsemschid taught that the great God dwells in light and fire, and that He has many inferior gods and spirits serving Him.

All submitted to Dsemschid. He established colonies of men and women here and there, gave them herds and permitted them to plant and build. They were now allowed to follow their own pleasure in the matter of marriage, for Dsemschid treated them like cattle, assigning wives to his followers in accordance with his own views. He himself had several.

One was very beautiful and of a better family than the others. Dsemschid destined his son by her to be his successor. By his orders, great round towers were built, which were ascended by steps for the purpose of observing the stars. The women lived apart and in subjection. They wore short garments, the bodice and breast of material like leather, and some kind of stuff hung behind.

Around the neck and over the shoulders they wore a full, circular cloak, which fell below the knee. On the shoulders and breast, it was ornamented with signs or letters. From every country that he settled, Dsemschid caused straight roads to be made in the direction of Babel.

Dsemschid always led his people to uninhabited regions, where there were no nations to expel. He marched everywhere with perfect freedom, for he was only a founder, a settler. His race was of a bright reddish yellow complexion like ochre, very handsome people. All were marked in order to distinguish the pure from these of mixed descent. Dsemschid marched over a high mountain covered with ice.

I do not remember how he succeeded in crossing, but many of his followers perished. They had horses or asses; Dsemschid rode on a little striped animal. A change of climate had driven them from their country. It became too cold for them, but it is warmer there now. Occasionally he met on his march a helpless tribe either escaping from the tyranny of their chief, or awaiting in distress the advent of some leader. They willingly submitted to Dsemschid, for he was gentle, and he brought them grain and blessings.

They were destitute exiles who, like Job, had been plundered and banished. I saw some poor people who had no fire and who were obliged to bake their bread on hot stones in the sun. When Dsemschid gave them fire, they looked upon him as a god. He fell in with another tribe that sacrificed children who were deformed or who did not reach their standard of beauty.
The little ones were buried up to the waist, and a fire kindled around them. Dsemschid abolished this custom. He delivered many poor children, whom he placed in a tent and confided to the care of some women. He afterward made use of them, here and there, as servants. He was very careful to keep the genealogical line pure.

Dsemschid first marched in a southwesterly direction, keeping the Prophet Mountain to the south on his left; then he turned to the south, the mountain still on his left, but to the east. I think he afterward crossed the Caucasus. At that period, when those regions were swarming with human beings, when all was life and activity, our countries were but forests, wildernesses, and marshes; only off toward the east might be met a small, wandering tribe.

The Shining Star (Zoroaster), who lived long after, was descended from Dsemschids son, whose teachings he revived. Dsemschid wrote all kinds of laws on bark and tables of stone. One long letter often stood for a whole sentence. Their language was as yet the primitive one, to which ours still bears some resemblance. Dsemschid lived just prior to Derketo and her daughter, the mother of Semiramis. He did not go to Babel himself, though his career ran in that direction.

I saw the history of Ham and Dsemschid as Jesus spoke of it before the pagan philosophers, at Lanifa in the isle of Cyprus. These philosophers had in Jesus presence spoken of Dsemschid as the most ancient of the wise kings who had come from far beyond India. With a golden dagger received from God, he had divided off and peopled many lands, and had scattered blessings everywhere.

They questioned Jesus about him and the various wonders related to him. Jesus responded to their questions by saying that Dsemschid was by nature a prudent man, a man wise according to flesh and blood; that he had been a leader of the nations; that upon the dispersion of men at the building of the Tower of Babel, he had led one race and settled countries according to a certain order; that there had been other leaders of that kind who had, indeed, led a worse life than he, because his race had not fallen into so great ignorance as many others.

But Jesus showed them also what fables had been written about him and that he was a false side picture, a counterfeit type of the priest and king Melchisedec. He told them to notice the difference between Dsemschids race and that of Abraham. As the stream of nations moved along, God had sent Melchisedec to the best families, to lead and unite them, to prepare for them lands and abiding places, in order that they might preserve themselves unsullied and, in proportion to their degree of worthiness, be found more or less fit to receive the grace of the Promise.

Who Melchisedec was, Jesus left to themselves to determine (I (Jan Wind) believe he is God the Father); but of one thing they might be certain, he was an ancient type of the future, but then fast approaching fulfillment of the Promise. The sacrifice of bread and wine which he had offered would be fulfilled and perfected, and would continue till the end of time.

7. THE TOWER OF BABEL

The building of the Tower of Babel was the work of pride. The builders aimed at constructing something according to their own ideas, and thus resist the guidance of God. When the children of Noah had become very numerous, the proudest and most experienced among them met to resolve upon the execution of some work so great and so strong as to be the wonder of all ages to come and cause the builders to be spoken of as the most skillful, the most powerful of men.

They thought not of God, they sought only their own glory. Had it been otherwise, as I was distinctly told, God would have allowed their undertaking to succeed. The children of Shem took no active part in the work. They dwelt in a level country where palm trees and similar choice fruit grow. They were, however, obliged to contribute something toward the building, for they did not dwell so far distant at that period as they did later. The descendants of Ham and Japheth alone were engaged in the work; and because the Semites refused to join them, they called them a stupid race.

The Semites were less numerous than the children of Ham and Japheth, and among them the family of Heber and the ancestors of Abraham studiously refrained from encouraging the enterprise. Upon Heber who, as we have said, took no part in the work, God cast His eyes; and amid the general disorder and corruption, He set him and his posterity apart as