Seventh Voice

The Seventh Voice

2007-05-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

A Light from the Darkness of Memory

I woke to feel myself stretched long, my arms above my head, nailed through the wrists; hands numb with cold and pain throbbing down into my arms and shoulders. My ankles were shattered, broken, the splinters of bone protruding through my skin. My breath came in ever shortening gasps as the blood filled up my lungs. I understood, dimly, even in those earliest days, that the swiftness of my death was a gift from one who had nothing else to give.

The first time I watched the holes in my wrists heal within seconds, leaving the bed splattered with blood. I washed the sheets and said nothing. Three days later it happened again. It happened over and over again.

I lived a divided life, the one drew me into a past I could not face, the other was no longer my own. I was changed.

I knew without knowing, saw, felt and sensed. I accepted the impossible, saying nothing to my family and friends. In this way I died again and again, at first frightened and alone and then eventually, with the fullness of time, filled with gladness.

While my life drained from me as if I was a cup being sipped, my eyes sought the figure which filled my mind and my spirit, who sustained and comforted me even in the moment of my death by His acceptance, His Gift, and His absolute Love.

In dying I wept with joy.

The visions started in small spurts, lengthening and strengthening in clarity until I could smell the stale bodies of the Roman soldiers, their leather armor, well worn, burnished with time and use, and feel their hands on me. I felt myself becoming someone else, knowing pain that was not mine and yet part of me.

Over and over I returned to experience that time; not understanding; afraid to discuss it with my family and friends, most of who were atheists. In secret I washed the blood from the sheets. The marks on my body, the stigmata of death and hope, healed within the span of a few breaths each time. I first feared I was insane, and then hoped it.

But with the passage of months I came to accept what was happening to me; to know that I was not losing my mind, but finding a precious, forgotten part of myself. The pain was not a punishment but a promise and surety of my identity and immortality.

The words and images of a time long gone became more real than my own life. I knew them as truth, they were the history of my people, The Children of God.

So much is distorted now, by time and by that change of perspective I have undergone. At first it was only in the quiet times, the early morning and in the dark abyss of the night's womb when I could remember that past in more than tiny flashes, impressions and images superimposed on my present life. But then I came to know that what was essential to me had never died and never could die. I accepted the Master I had served, discovering that I had never stopped serving Him. I found myself in that distant time, in the work that had engulfed my life and in the Love which had lit the world, for all time to come, from a place within. It was a work still undone and was now passing into other hands.

Something of what I had thought to be myself was gone. But I found that what was lost was not me but my illusions. What was found turned me towards a wholeness that I had not imagined possible.

This is our story. This is what I remembered. It flowed out of my mind life like a spring of remembering I could not stop. The woman who remembered merged with the person I was and there was no longer a division.

I knew what it was to be known and loved absolutely. I knew myself.

The darkened centuries have been filled and known. This is the telling. All that was remembered and forgotten; the sustaining of hope through the abyss of despair, the joining of wills that creation, love and humanity might have a continuing, all of these are here. It is the testament of Judeth, Jeremiah, John, Jeptha, Joab, Jacob and Jesus. The Seven, Voiced and speaking into the Light.

Judeth, Voiced

The Book of the Captivity

2007-05-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

The Voice of Ezekial

They were carried away into a captivity that was to own them and their children and their children's children. With them they took nothing but the skills they had learned and the word of God, which were inscribed in their minds and in the deepest parts of their beings for they knew themselves to be the people of God. Their old, who they venerated, died and were left along the way. They were like the cattle which borne the booty and no time was given for their grief or for their weakness.

Their children sickened and died, still clasped in the arms of their mothers. The bodies were ripped from their arms and left as food for the vultures and other carrion eaters. Mothers looked behind them, past the mighty caravan and the soldiers who bore them away, and saw the vermin gathering to eat. The keening filled the air with a tangible grief which deadened their limbs and made breathing almost impossible. The air around them was overhung always by the haze of dust thrown up by their passing. They coughed it up from their lungs, wiped it from their eyes with their clothes, and tasted it on their tongues when they ate the scant rations apportioned to them.

Their ears were filled with the sounds and the smells of their grief. The hours of the day were filled with the trembling of the earth, which was never still while the caravan moved. The air was choked with a confusion of voices shouting and the groans of men in pain; the sobs of children and the infirm were an undertone to this. And always the rumble of men moving, driving animals that ached with the weight of booty. The smell of men and animals, straining against the heaviness of their lives, lay like a pall over them and there was no relief from it. They smelled of sweat and death and of their despair. They were broken one from another and were lost and did not know their past or their future. With them was taken their king and also his mother but they and their servants were kept separate. The rest were bound together in their servitude.

Babylon rose up in front of them, looming over their lives as a portent that was to mark them down through the generations. They felt this and mothers clutched their children and wept. Men clenched their fists against their helplessness.

In this way they entered into the city which their captors called Babylon but which they called the place of dying. Their eyes were assaulted with the blasphemy of dragons and lions standing, frozen in stone. It was a city that filled the world with a cacophony of voices and the creaking of wheels and rumble of mankind in commerce and all the acts of living. They were nothing,. The eyes of the curious told them this was so. Jerusalem had been a village set beside Babylon; they were peasants to the aristocracy that lived within these walls. They shuddered and cast their eyes down. To walk with eyes open was to see blasphemy. Idols were set up in rows, standing taller than any man and vivid with color. They stood as if frozen in the act of killing.

Their king and those about him were lodged in a place which was raised up into the very clouds and still it was a prison. He had been powerful in the trappings of royalty. Now he was shamed and reduced and brought low, and with him they all were forced to make obeisance to those who would now be their masters. The others were shared out and given to the labor for which they were suited.

There was one among these whose name was Ezekial and he remembered the greatness that was Israel and the promise that had made them the Children of God. Even in the desolation of his shackles he remembered. It had been given into his hands to renew the Covenant with God where others hadn't the strength to endure or the eyes to see. He was touched by God, chosen in the womb to sustain them. It was he who was to give them back their past and affirm their future and the work which was still to be done. For what they remembered dimly as fading words he made real to them even in their captivity.

He was of the House of David, descended from the same root as the king who was carried into captivity. But still he had been made a slave. He stood taller than most men and his eyes held the surety that is left when all agony has been burned out through a suffering too terrible for a man to bear.

He was alone, for all others of his family had been slain. He had seen them die; His father standing at the door of the Temple, his eyes burning with anger and righteousness. Ezekial was the youngest of four brothers, not yet a man when the Temple fell. Yet he knew that it was in him to be a chalice for the Word of God. He had always known this. Along with the earliest memories of suckling, the softness of his mother's breast, he saw the times which would come and the captivity of his people. Once he had cried, standing in front of the temple, saying that it burned and was falling. His father had punished him, whipping him until his back ran with blood, shocked at the disrespect Ezekial showed. Ezekial soon learned to still the visions, keeping them to himself.

When he was six he found that he could see into the minds and thoughts of those around him and while he lazed one hot afternoon in the cool of the kitchen, watching his mother with the maid servants, he saw her death, carried in her womb, like darkness. He cried and ran to her clinging and weeping, for his mother was a bright sun in his life. She held him, surprised and troubled. His body trembled and he told her of what he saw. Cradling him against her shoulder she bade the maids to their work and carried him out into the sun. As they came out of the dimness of the kitchen, the sun fell on them like a benediction, binding them close.

Here she had held him when he took his first steps, catching him when he fell as they both laughed. The place was aromatic with herbs blending to a rare perfume in the sun. A pigeon cote exuded the trilling and fluttering sounds of birds. Sitting on a low stone bench she looked into his face. Gently, she stroked a tear from his cheek and traced the line it had left on his face and tasting its saltiness by kissing it from her finger.

She was quiet for a long moment, stroking his hair and combing the tendrils with her fingertips. ``Little lamb, there is nothing random in the ways of God with those who are like us. You know what I mean," Ezekial tried to look away, ``No, look at me. Little man, you do know. Your dreams are not just dreams; they are like the visions of the Prophets." He looked up into her face, afraid to have her say it. ``I know because I also See. But not like you. When you were inside me still I knew what you would be. That bound us. I know that you were born to do some wonderful thing." She pressed him close to her, breathing deeply. ``Do not grieve for me. The end will not be more than I can bear." She sat silent for a moment. She had already suspected what was to come. They sat there, locked in a moment of time, bound by love.

This was a time out of time for Ezekial and in the days and weeks that followed his mother poured out into him the visions what she had kept to herself. Hearing them, Ezekial knew that his own were true for he had known before. When she died she carried him with her to the Place of Cleansing and he returned to know that life was only a mantle assumed for a while and was at peace.

His life after that was lonely and he turned to the animals of the stable for comfort, finding comfort in healing their small injuries. In this way he found within him the Gift of Healing. The shepherd brought in a lamb, half dead. It had been a twin and rejected by its mother. It teetered on its legs, shaking like a flurry of leaves raised by the wind. Rohrab, the shepherd, was a quiet man who had often seen Ezekial watching the flock from a distance. He pitied the boy who was left to the inattention of his father and brothers.

``Here, boy. The lamb needs milk and warmth."

The lamb grew through the hot months until Horsea ordered Ezekial to take the animal back to the flock. But after, Ezekial visited the animal there and was with her for her first birthing.

The visions that were within Ezekial grew to be an ever larger part of his life. But, with time, be found the strength to control them and to understand them in the ways that his mother has taught him. But he said nothing of this to his father. Not even on the day the temple fell.

Ezekial grew towards manhood watching his father send his praises up to heaven in the temple. The prayers and the word of the Torah were as familiar to him as the inside of his own mouth or the skin of his hands.

Ezekial could not open his mouth to warn his father and brothers of the future. Even when they stood at the door of the temple and were consumed in fear he could not tell them, for he had seen that they would die and was bound by his visions to say nothing. He had seen that this must be if the Covenant was to endure.

The soldiers came. Like a wave washing over the lower court and then spilling into the temple, his father and brothers could not even slow their rush into the interior. So they died, defending the Holy Place of the People of God; all died. They were cut down in less than the time it took to draw air into his lungs. His father standing with hands raised in defiance had not uttered a single word. His sons died, their heads struck from their bodies before his body had fallen to the ground. They were not warriors but died as men.

They had given their blood to be spilled upon the stones. Ezekial had been taken although he struggled. He was a young man, just past his thirteenth year. He was made a slave but a slave who came to be highly valued. In those first days he was kept as a pawn, easily controlled. But later he was valued for what he was.

This came about after the captives were shared out in Babylon. He had fallen to the lot of one close to the King, a man named Rachinazzus who was ambitious and eager to rule some part of the empire in the name of its King. He took Ezekial for his kinship with the priests of the Temple but also because of his healing touch with animals.

Ezekial could enter the mind of an animal and so know the maladies that otherwise could not be healed. He said this to no one, but during the long march back had delivered a mare of foal, turning the colt in the womb so that it and its dam lived. The handler who watched him deferred to him in the care of the horses after that. The horses which were in his charge were rare and valuable and he trembled to think what his fate would have been if the mare had died.

The animal was tended every night; even when there was no water for the people, she drank. She was of the lightest grey with touches of black on her muzzle and deep brown eyes. Her price was set in chests of gold and jewels because when she ran it was as if she had taken flight, not touching the ground. She was called Swallow’s Flight.

So Ezekial was sought as a handler of horses and was taken to the place of Rachinazzus, to his stable.

Ezekial refused to sleep in the place of the slaves saying that by morning it would be blackened and filled with death. He cried aloud when they tried to force him for his nose smelled the bodies already blackened and his eyes saw the hideousness of their fate; their faces twisted in pain and mouths caught gaping and straining for breath. For refusing he was thrown into a pit and left there to die. But in the blackest hours of the night a fire took the building that held the slaves and also a part of the house. In the morning Ezekial still lived and his master walked among the blackened bodies and remembered what he had said. Ezekial was taken from the pit. The Master, whose name was Rachinazzus, had him brought to him and he questioned Ezekial and asked him about the Sight which allowed him to know the future. Ezekial answered him saying that this Gift had been his as long as he could remember. This he told Rachinazzus but he reserved from telling that which was given him by God. Instead he told Rachinazzus of the death which was harbored in the womb of his mother as she ripened with child when Ezekial was in his sixth year. This was true, but it was the smaller truth for Ezekial had seen the coming of the Captivity in his twelfth year although he had said nothing. God had spoken to him then saying that this was to be a time of trial and proving, and that from the fire which was the captivity would arise those people who were invested with the Covenant of God. For the People of the Promise had defiled the trust of God and so would be delivered up to judgment. Ezekial would be the Voice of God and bring to Him those in whom the Word of God still lived. Ezekial had pledged the days and the years of his life to accomplish this before he was even a man.

Rachinazzus asked him to See for him and this Ezekial did. The Gift of Ezekial made Rachinazzus a man among men in Babylon.

So Ezekial traded the use of his Sight in these things but did not then tell them of all that he saw. With time they came to respect and fear him. This gave him the freedom that he needed and he drew to him the children of Israel by the ones and by the tens until all who were held in captivity might hear the words of hope and prophecy he spoke. He was as a light out of the darkness for these and gave them hope. They acted covertly for to move openly would have brought their deaths.

He who was their king, called Jehoichin, was in high favor with their captors and was well treated. But they who were not of his birth were cast down utterly. While they were in captivity sons and daughters were born to the king. These grew to adulthood in a foreign world and were tempted to move away from the ways of their people. Ezekial had a vision which was given him by God and he was told that it was God's will that he take to wife the daughter of Jehoichin. That from her womb would come forth that which was the fulfillment of the Covenant. Ezekial went to the king and the king was frightened, for he had also heard the words of the Lord and the name of Ezekial had caused murmurings to simmer and seep through Babylon. The king feared Ezekial. But he was loath to give his daughter to him in marriage for to do so would diminish his kinghood in his own eyes.

So the king refused, even though he feared Ezekial. Soon after this his eldest daughter, whose name was Miriem, came to him, saying that she has been given a vision which filled her and ran over into the night which was the captivity. She told the king, her father, that she was the wife of Ezekial and that she must go to him.

Miriem was in her fifteenth year when she was given in marriage to Ezekial.

And with the marriage of Miriem came the peace between the Breathe of the Sacred, unspoken Rites of Woman, and the Image of God. For it was on the turning away that the Covenant had been broken utterly, and only in its restoration would it be made whole.

Miriem was the first child born in the captivity, and she was named Cup of Bitterness. But this was a bitterness that was like that of the fruit which is not yet ripe. For from her womb would spring that which was the fulfillment of the Covenant.

Miriem was fertile and she brought forth three daughters, which had also been foretold. These daughters were called Miriem Zabedda, Miriem Rabena, and Miriem Elizabeth. Ezekial had been given to know by God that the mother of the Messiah would be called for Miriem and have the name Mary, and from that time all daughters and grand-daughters of Ezekial and Miriem were given the name even if it was not used for the Vision had showed that it was from the unbroken line of the daughters that held the seed which was the fulfillment. And the families knew this, although it was never spoken.

Ezekiel’s words became the beacon that sustained them. They were the promise which became the buttress and the foundation for their return to their homeland. He was the living Voice and was the first to be called Voice. His words were true and all who heard them knew them to be true. He saw that they would return to the land that had cast them out and would again be free. He hungered for this all of the days of his life and died without having known it even as Moses had struggled and died without having tasted the light and the breath of the Promised Land. Ezekial was touched by God and he spoke and gave them the future which would be theirs.

The Children of God carried these words within their minds and gave them to the children who were born in bondage and these in turn gave them to their children.

They labored under the oppression of masters and knew the bitterness of men who are less than men. In the grinding misery of their servitude they remembered the words of Ezekial. Ezekial had called them to forget that they were cut off from that which had been their Tribes and gave them in its stead the House which was the House of Ezekial and was from the root which was the House of David. And in this way he gathered them together and made them one. When he died he left them with the promise that was from God that they would be restored and made whole. To achieve this they were to remember what he had taught them.

At the time of the death of Ezekial there were thirty-six families which were from the root of David through the womb of Miriem.

Before his death he showed them this and offered the means by which it might be done. He also promised them that from their suffering would blossom a greatness that would shine before the nations of the world. This had been his Vision which had unfolded and become clear to him in the years of the captivity. He told them that another would come to them in the time after the Return and give them that means which it was not his to give. And these were the last words he spoke before he died in his seventy-third year.

From the fifth year of the captivity there arose those who were pledged to remember the words which Ezekial spoke and who gave the captive people the comfort of the Spirit and who could Speak in the Spirit with that which was from God. Ezekial himself had taken those who had these Gifts from God into his training. Ezekial gave them the words and they heard and remembered. With time the words were also heard by their conquerors. For the Voices spoke and with the Sight they saw the people of Babylon brought low by the God of the people they held. The conquerors laughed at first and then they grew uneasy.

Ezekial had given them a vision of the sacred city, Jerusalem. For God bore him there in the Spirit and he saw and told them what he had seen, and hearing what he had said they were gladdened and lifted up and also cast down into the abyss of despair. He saw the Temple which was the Temple of God and held the Ark cast down utterly. But then Ezekial saw it rise again. And he knew that he was looking into those ages yet to come and saw the Temple rebuilt to suffer destruction at the hands of many nations. But always it was rebuilt and rose like the phoenix, brilliant in its beauty. Then the city which was Jerusalem was abandoned and none of the Children of God were within it. The winds howled through the empty streets and over the bodies which lay unburied. It was a place of the dead and smelled of a charnel house. Ezekial wept to see this. But this was by the hand of God, and Ezekial bowed to the will of God for he had seen the future and heard the words of the Lord. What he saw made him fear for his soul and also for the souls of the Children of the Promise. But in the Spirit Ezekial found that peace within himself that also was a harbinger of what was to come. It was given to Ezekial to see the Promise of the Messiah. The children of the Light did as Ezekial had bid them and kept themselves clean and pure, permitting no daughters to marry into the people who held them or with any who were not descended from the issue of Miriem and Ezekial. They did not eat what was forbidden for the Children of God to eat and kept the word in all ways.

Although they had been taken from their homes and lives they remembered the words of Ezekial. The Law of Moses was inscribed on their hearts and in their minds. They had held on to their faith as their greatest jewel and it was more precious than their lives or the air they breathed.

The increase of Miriem multiplied with the generations. But the promise of the child of Mary was withheld from all who were not of the House of Ezekial.

Miriem was the vessel and also the wisdom which is in the Mother. While still a child she had been visited by God and she was greatly gifted and saw the future He had given to them. She bowed her head to God willingly seeing the greatness which she might nurture. Miriem was moved by the Spirit and was taught to know the Truth and this she passed on to the children of her womb. So with Miriem started the Rites of Women which returned to them the dignity they had lost.

They remembered. The image of their old, grandmothers and grandfathers dying under the burden, used up like cattle. They brought children into this world trusting always in the words of Ezekial and they passed their faith on to them and these had died in their turn, used up and exhausted in the body and in the spirit. Their faith was all they had had to give them. They had nothing and were nothing but what they carried within themselves and the Promise of the Spirit which came to them through the Voiced. For in the darkness that was their captivity their voices intoned the words which they had committed to memory. The voice might crack with fatigue or with age, but still it filled them with the word and changed the night of their degradation into Light. And, in the end, this was enough.

After the passing of generations the fear of the visions of the Voiced penetrated into the heart of Babylon and they were vomited up from the belly of the beast and allowed to return to the country of the Promise.

In returning, they had thought to find the homeland which had been, for generations, a dream of salvation. But instead they found depravity and sloth. When they carried back to the homeland that precious faith that had sustained them they found that all had changed. They met those who had not been burned in the furnace of the captivity and pounded on the anvil of despair and they did not know them. These were not within the Covenant and were cut off. The words of Ezekial had sustained them during the generations of the captivity. Now they found themselves shackled to a people who denied them. The words of Ezekial gave them the strength to endure. They remembered the promise of Ezekial and there was a will forged in them to find the means to fulfill the vision he had given them. They found the seeds of this in the teachings of Ezekial. For he had told them that from them would arise that which would become the New Ark of the Covenant of the Faith, the Vehicle of the Messiah. From that time they knew that in them the Promise of God continued.

They were few in numbers. But they were the issue of the thirty-six families and so of the root of David and of the House of Ezekial. Their daughters were called Mary and their sons were given names which marked them as the keepers of the Covenant, carrying in their pronunciation the sound of God. They gave themselves and their lives to the vision that came to them from Ezekial. They permitted no owning of slaves or trading in slaves, for this was a shameful thing. When it became known that one among them had traded in slaves he was cut off from them and denied henceforth.

They permitted no intermarriage for those who were without the Families were not of the Covenant. They gave themselves to the work of Ezekial and continued the training of those among them who were Gifted with that which might, in time, be the Voice and so could give them the vision and strength that Ezekial had offered them as his gift.

Then came the generations of the Return. Judea and Israel were rent with war. There was no nation, no union of nations, for the people were ruled over by foreign princes. None stood against them. The people had either turned away from the covenant of God or turned inside themselves, fearing to see their infamy. But the Families endured. They reached into themselves and found the means to prosper so that the vision might not be lost. They did what Ezekial had asked of them.

It was not a time of prophecy. No Voice arose to guide them. They clung to the vision of Ezekial and endured and grew stronger. They did as they had done in their captivity. They passed the vision to their children; teaching them to love and honor the words of Moses, the Prophets and of Ezekial even as the women breathed the Sacred Breathe of the Most Revered into the days and acts of their lives. They bent the hours of life given to them to this end and did not look aside.

They had changed. They became a people of trade. Establishing them in every port they traded and sold, bartered and worked. They grew rich, creating a far flung net of commerce which sent wealth back to their home, which would always be Jerusalem.

With the fullness of time the Community, called for by Ezekial, was established and the growing wealth of the Houses of the Families were spent to accomplish all that was to be done. But it was a house empty of the Spirit, for none among the first dedicated to service were Voiced.

It was in this time that they were first called Essene. This name marked them as the spiritual branch of the word of Ezekial and of the root of David, born into the Breathe of the Sacred. For God had said that through them would the spirit of man be healed and made whole. They were practiced in the arts of healing. So they were marked as tempered by the fire of the Captivity. They used all of what they had become to forge the Cradle of Him Who was Promised.

There was only one Community, but there were many communities of those who were called Essene. The Community was as a mother is to many daughters, and within the Community was the essence of Ezekial. For only the Community was Voiced, and so only the Community was the Voice of God, cradle of the Sacred Breath. During the years when the Community worked to create the Design which would sustain the work of the Messiah their line stretched to eight generations. From the time of Ezekial the line had been numbered in twenty-three generations.

The Community existed for a generation without finding a Voice to speak. For it had been foretold that there would arise a line of Voices who would be more and greater than even Ezekial, and that there would be not one Voice, but many. But the Community waited the advent of the Voiced and some grew fearful and others despaired.

Then one came as if out of the darkness and the Gift was in him. From that time the Community was as Ezekial had said it would be. Of the first Voice of the Community little was known before his teaching began. But the vision and the memory and the promise of Ezekial had been fulfilled. None living then were told from what House he arose. But now it may be known that he was of the house of Judas of Maccabees and was the eldest son. He escaped the death that overtook his father. He saw both the futility and the promise of what Judas of Maccabees had done. He grieved for the father he had lost and for what was still to be lost. For he was Gifted with that which is from God and Saw. But he turned his back and walked away from the battle in which his brothers and uncles and cousins still fought. He was Called by the Lord and he gave to the Lord his entire life. His name was Jaboaz, and he was called Boaz before he was Voiced. It was said that in him Ezekial was reborn. But this he denied. He was a tall man with eyes of cobalt blue that saw into the soul of a man and a fire burned in him and he could not be denied. He gathered to him disciples who undertook the Study. He moved swiftly and with utter surety to find those who were Gifted. He knew them before meeting them in the flesh and Called them to serve and be dedicated. And this was accomplished before he had entered his twenty-third year. Around these few grew up the Community and many were added and gave themselves to the service of what was to be. But no other who was Voiced arose until the coming of Jachin.

Jachin was of the Families, of the House of Jacob, and came to the Community already giving full weight to the Gift which was his. He was also tall, as tall as Jaboaz. But where Jaboaz burned with a fire that seemed to have consumed his flesh, Jachin was muscled. He moved with the strength and weight of a lion. Jachin needed no training in the ways of the Spirit. These two became as two pillars and there were three others who were trained between them. This was the first generation dedicated to the Community who were Voiced. But they were the second generation dedicated to the service. And in that generation there were five Voices.

In was in this time that the Ritual was begun from that which was left them from Ezekial. The Voiced spoke the words and were joined by the discipled. Their words and voices and movements defined the Covenant and were forbidden to any who were not of the Covenant.

In the second generation, while Jaboaz was an old man and Jachin was a man in his prime, having entered his forty-first year, a man came to them. He was not of the Families or even of any House or of the people of Israel. He was called Ornibas and was from the country and people of Babylon. Knowing this caused some to shrink from him and others to threaten him.

He had been born a prince in that country and had come to his manhood and married and had two wives. But in his thirty-second year he was taken by a vision and heard the voice of God which commanded him to go from his people and his nation and do the work which was set for him by God. The voice of God had entered into him and Illuminated him. He saw where others were blind and knew the weight of the Spirit and felt the joy of serving the Lord. The Lord spoke to him and the future was opened to him as if it was painted as a mural. He understood who he was.

Ornibas had been born hungry in the spirit. And in the Sacred Breath of the Holy he was fed. He made himself ready, abdicating all claim of Royalty and divorcing his wives. His family and those who owed him allegiance were shaken and rent their clothes and begged him to stay. But he could not for he had heard the word of the Lord. He took with him, from the life that he left, only the Cup of Righteousness. This had been shown him by the Lord and he had taken it from the place where it lay in the temple of the Egyptians, buying it for four times its weight in gold.

The Cup had rested in the Temple and been taken when it was razed. It had passed through many hands to come to Babylon. It was beautifully wrought. The cup was six sided and delicately fluted. It was old, older than the memory of any man, and carried within its making the forgotten promises of a world which had given birth to all humankind. The cup had come with Moses from Egypt and from there it had rested in the Temple of Isis. But it was old when it came to Egypt. None remembered this, but in its time one would drink from the cup and speak out its mystery.

It was of the white metal which is more precious than gold and it was chased with gold threads which made an intricate pattern on the outer sides. In these could be seen the words of the Covenant which was given by God, disguised in the work. He kept the cup near to him for so he had been commanded by God.

He came among the Called of the Community and neither Jaboaz or Jachin could deny him but welcomed him for they had seen his coming and knew that this was the man who had been foretold by Ezekial in the days of the Captivity. He was called the Teacher of Righteousness or the Teacher of Truth. He recalled to them the sayings of Ezekial which he knew even as if he had been one with them in the time of the Captivity. For God had given him the words of Ezekial. He was like a man and a master to their childhood. And he became one among the Voiced.

With his coming much was changed. The Community became larger in that age, and the number of those discipled to the Teaching grew. In that time the division between the Gifted and the dedicated began. Before there was an openness and all knew of the Work. But after that the Work and the Design of the Work was kept by the Voiced.

The work became the Great Work and it was broken and made whole and more than whole, for it was now larger than the life of any man. The Houses of the Families had prospered in the generations since the Return and they sent their young men to the service of the Community and there grew a place for the study of the scripture and their history as a people. The Families sent their sons from every part of the world, for they had spread themselves across the world like the stars that shine in the night sky. Their wealth also grew and many who were of the Families were powerful in the cities where they had settled.

But in the core of the Community was the foundation of the Work, and this was the Voiced and the work that they kept only to themselves. Those who were not Called never knew of the great reach of the Design or the power of they who worked in the Spirit.

There were thirty-two generations from Ezekial until the end. And in those generations there were thirty-five Voices, and a thirty sixth.

It had been foretold by Ezekial that he who would come forth from the beast to become the fount of truth would go forth into the precincts of the Great Temple and speak the Truth in the hearing of all of Israel and Judea and the tribes. So in the twenty-second year after his Mantling Ornibas went into Jerusalem and fulfilled the word of Ezekial.

The death of the Teacher of Righteousness came about by murder, and he was murdered by a Priest against whom he spoke. Ornibas had spoken in the confines of the Temple and the priests were offended at what he said and threatened him, shaking their fists and shouting to drown out his words. But they could not prevail, for Ornibas spoke with authority and was heard. One among the priests was caught up in his anger and hate. His name was Saul and he was determined that the Speaker of Truth must die. The Priest did not kill the Teacher himself but had him set on by paid assassins while he was returning from Jerusalem whence he had gone. The Teacher had spoken against the priest, whose name was Saul, saying that the man was corrupt and exposing the dealings of Saul with the Romans. This threatened Saul and he acted. The Teacher was struck again and again by the assassins when he left the greater road for the lesser and was alone. Yet he rose up and fought against them. But in the end he was killed. When they found him and brought him back his body was riddled with wounds and his body was drained of blood, for his blood was splattered and had soaked the earth for great distances around him. With him laid the bodies of two men who had died by his hands. After the Teacher's death Jachin opened the scroll which was left in his keeping and found that Ornibas had left a full accounting of his life and Work and it was complete even to the manner and time of his death.

The cup of Righteousness was given into the keeping of the Voiced. From it they were to drink when they broke the bread that was the symbol of unity and the Covenant between them and God. The Teacher left the cup to be passed to him who had this Design within his keeping. So the cup remained with the Voiced until, with time, it was passed to the One who followed them and took up their Work.

Jachin was like a man taken by death. His hands gripped the scroll and grew white with the pain which he kept within. For he had loved Ornibas who had given him clarity and vision in the Spirit and the understanding he had not known from any other man. Ornibas thus became the first of the Voiced to die and also the first to give the accounting. In the accounting was also the prophecy of what was to come. From that time all of the Voiced gave this recounting to the ages to come. When the time of their death was upon them, they knew and they called a scribe to them if they were too weakened to write themselves. Those who were left read in this the lesson which the death of Ornibas taught them. They understood that the Sight was not given to use for the self but to further the Work and the Design. And this became a part of the pledge they made at their Mantling.

Jachin read the accounting and was angered by the manner in which the Teacher had died. He was sickened by what the Teacher had endured. Jachin was not bid to act for vengeance but to do what was right. So in choosing to become the Sword of Righteousness he acted in accordance with his views alone. The assassin did not benefit from what he had done. For in a month the killer of the Teacher of Righteousness was dead in his own bed, having been killed by a growth in the stomach which ate out his liver.

From that time there were Priests in the Great Temple who understood the power that was invested in the Voiced. And from that time they went in awe of those who wore the Mantle. Saul had confessed his act to some among his fellows and although they did nothing they knew that the death was an act of vengeance. The Teacher had left one who was trained to replace him and on the first Sabbath after his dying the Ceremony of Cloaking was performed and the man took the name of Jesse when he assumed the Mantle.

Soon after this Jaboaz also died and was replaced in his turn by Isaac of the House of Jacob who took the name of Jacob. The Work grew and endured and as each Voice died it became their trust to leave one who was trained to continue the Work. When they came to know that their death was upon them they gave Testimony and left the body that had held them having given a fair and objective accounting of their life and work.

Every year disciples came among them and from these arose those who were then Voiced in their turn if they gained the use of their Gift and were Illuminated. Those who were Voiced gave themselves to the training and the Searching and to the Great Work which was the Design which was like clay upon the wheel of the potter.

When Jachin died in his turn in the fifth generation he chose to replace him Joab, who became in his stead the Sword of Righteousness. So it fell to Joab to do that which was needful but which was hid from the eyes of all but the Voiced.

In each generation there was one or two who overshadowed the years and one such was Jeptha. Jeptha who was born into the forth generation and lived until the Community was no more, and died with the Community. For the Community was but the Voiced although many did not know this since it was large and complex in its later days.

In the days of the sixth generation it came to be within the Design that there should be established in the far-flung places where the Houses of the Families had settled, copies of the Library, called daughter libraries. There were to be six of these and they were to go out in the time of the Coming of the Promised One and at his bidding. So there was built a great library and scriptorium and many came to give themselves to this work which was a part of the Great Work. In this time those who were of the laity came into their own, having a thing which was theirs to rule.

In those days there were two who lived past the time of most men and who marked the generations which passed in their sight. These two, Joab and Jeptha, were to the later years as Jachin and Jaboaz had been to the early days, and it was given to them to witness the Coming of the Promised One. In the time of the Promised One there were four others who were Voiced and the most skilled of these was Judeth. The Mantling of Judeth had sent tremors into the fabric of the Order for Judeth was a woman. The fact of her Mantling was hid from the sight of all who were not within the Community for the Mantling of Judeth had been foreseen in the time of the Teacher of Righteousness and it was a foreshadowing of the Coming of the Promised one. The three others who were then numbered among the Voiced were Jacob and Jeremiah and John. All were greatly Gifted and trained by the Teaching of Ezekial and also of the Teacher of Righteousness.

Then in the time of the Fulfillment all was brought down and also made whole, and they died all in the same day. But their deaths were within the Fabric of the Design which was the product of the Great Work and this lived after them.

For 200 years the Brotherhood, which was the Community, awaited the Coming. Then, in the space of one generation, they were gone and none were to remember their passing. And this was as it was meant to be. For the Design called for a silence to be drawn over their lives and work. So they did not Testify and give their accounting. For that which is written is not safe from the eyes of the profane.

But the time has now come and this can be accomplished. This is their history as it was taught by those who lived in that time. Now the ages have passed and the time is come that the history might be known for the time is now upon us that was foretold. That which was promised will bring forth the fruit of the Promise. For what was started in those days is now whole, and in this time will we taste the sweetness of the fruit. So they have come to Testify in the way of those who are Voiced. For what has been carried in the Spirit may now be said in the hearing of all humankind. What will now be made known is both their Testament and the precious Truth of the time which is past and the time which is yet to come.

The Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

It was a rich life; Rich in the Spirit. I knew, having left a life rich in things of the world, that to those who observed it my life was austere, even by the simple standards of that age. My family had not approved of my dedication to the Brotherhood. They had supported the Order financially for generations, for they were one of the original Sacred Numbered, one of the thirty-six.

It had been expected that I would marry and that my husband would take the name and the work of our House. This fell instead to my cousin, Rebnac, who held it for my children, should I have them.

The family had traded in fine cloth of all kinds. Then, when Uncle took the trade from my Grandfather, Uncle experienced problems with shipping and so went into partnership with a man who was of another of the Families and whose trade had been in fishing. They bought more ships and this was the foundation of the fleet that was to carry their goods to every port of size on the Sea. His partner's name was Arabas. Together they had forged a powerful presence in the world of commerce. From this partnership among others sprang the practice to send the younger sons to establish homes and shops in foreign ports and cities. This had been true since the Return. All among the Families were easy and familiar with the ways and speech of foreign nations, having dwelt among them. This inclined them to use this skill and so they went forth and established outposts, daughter Houses. The pattern arose from necessity but it served our purposes so well that soon it was an accepted part of our identity. Such Houses were maintained in almost every port city along the sea. Samuel continued the practice in his time.

I often went with my Uncle to the port to watch the unloading of the ships. Anything I wanted was mine for the asking, and I did not hesitate to ask if I saw something that interested me. The port was exciting when the ships docked. There was a din of voices blended with the clash and groaning of the movement of goods. It was all color and conflict, and I loved it.

On one of these occasions, when I was in my eighth year, I saw something that shocked me. It was a small child, younger than I, who was chained and dragged from my Uncle's ship. She was being sold, and her new owner was examining her there in front of my eyes, exposing her to the curious even as she lay seemingly numb under their handling. She seemed to have drawn back into herself, trembling and yet somehow distant. I was stunned and for a moment said nothing, and then I found voice and screamed for my uncle to stop this. He came to me then and took me up in his arms. He saw what was happening and then his face grew red and, still holding me, he strode over to the two men who knelt with the child between them like two dogs worrying a piece of meat.

One of the men was the agent of Uncle's partner. Uncle grabbed his arm and swung him around to face him. ``What can you mean by defiling this ship with a trade in human flesh?" The man, named Kameral, looked at him, defiant and yet frightened. Slavery was a fact of life in the world but those of the Essene persuasion took oath not to own or trade in the lives of men. He said nothing, but his face worked as if trying to find answer. The second man grew impatient and spoke. ``You make too much of this. Trade is trade. The girl isn't worth what I paid for her. I paid for a virgin and she's plainly been broached. If you object, I'll sell the slut to you cheap." Uncle looked at him and his face frightened even me, who had never known a harsh word from him. The man quailed at the threat he felt, but stood firm, eager for his money.

The child was bought and freed in the same day. And I had acquired a maid and a friend. Her name was Ruth and she was the only female friend of my childhood, and one of the few for the length of my life.

As a result of that day the Kameral lost his place with Arabas, who had known nothing about the trade he was establishing. Kameral was of the Families and was ostracized for what he had done. This angered him and both Uncle and Arabas came to know that they had made an enemy. Kameral went into the employ of a seller of slaves and rose in this trade until, at the death of the Moabite who owned it, he was able to have it for himself.

I was raised in a house run by my distant cousin, Gobertha, the daughter of my mother's mother's brother, who took service with Uncle when she was left undowered and unmarried. The house was on the outskirts of Jerusalem and was built in the roman fashion. It was a series of courtyards and rooms around a central court and it held baths and all amenities. I loved the mosaics best. Those in the central entry were especially lovely, inlaid with colored marble in muted tones. Most mosaics were in black and white and so this made it especially fascinating to me.

Many of the roman-style villas were gaudy with color and this offended me. But our home was subtle in its beauty. I would lie with my face upon the cold stone in the summer and look at the pattern from every possible angle. The marble was polished so that it shined and I could scarcely feel the joints that held the stones together. I imagined that I was a part of the pattern; that I could sink into the stone.

Gobertha was a bustling soul, busy with the day to day minutiae of the household, never noticing aught else. But her rigorous industry concealed a loving heart and she did love me, as I did her though two people could not have been more different. She was a soft pillow of a woman, strong but richly plumped with the generosity of the kitchen - and the warmth of her spirit. Her laugh was vigorous as was her outrage when she uncovered my many acts of naughtiness.

Gobertha was shocked at the condition of my new maid and took her straight away into the baths to be cleansed. After she was clean and fed we two retired to my rooms to find her some cast-off clothes to wear. She spoke my tongue, although with an odd accent. Ruth scarcely remembered her parents, but Uncle thought they must have been Hebrew for she spoke nothing else. Ruth was quiet and, for a long time, uneasy among us. I don't think she believed that she was truly free and could have left if she chose. But with time and love her spirit was healed.

Ruth acted as my maid for a time but soon I came to consider her a sister. She was my accomplice in crime. For I was not a child to be ruled easily, and Ruth quaked with fear at the things she was bullied to do with me.

I did not confine myself to the kitchen and the home. I snuck out to play with the children in the street, mostly boys, taking Ruth with me when I could bully her into it. We made a nuisance of ourselves. This was doubly naughty for I was born of wealth and was also a girl. There was a covered passage over the street nearby and we would hide and throw mud balls and dung on those passing below. The dung must not be too fresh, was the rule, for if it was it broke up too easily and did not arrive at its target intact. We carried it in some rag - or once a heavy piece of linen which crime cost me dearly when the heinousness of my act was discovered.

Swift escape was a necessary skill, and one for which I was well endowed, for I was never caught, being supple and quick. And I was careful to know all avenues of escape well before time. Several of my comrades were captured though, and on one occasion, Malchi, the little snitch, told his father I was among them.

He would have been beaten twice as a liar as well as a rowdy if I had not admitted the prank, for confronted by Malachi’s father, Uncle would not admit I was anyplace but at home that afternoon. I was confined for a month as Uncle would not have me beaten, and after that I limited my activities to those that did not render me liable to such consequences.

Ruth did not enjoy this at first, but later came to laugh and, sometimes, devise pranks of her own. I had a cousin named Sarah, who lived nearby. Sarah was often brought over by her maids and when this happened we were forced to confine ourselves within the house. Sarah was everything a daughter should be. She was eager for the coming of her womanhood and marriage and had already planned the weddings of her yet unborn children. She spent her time also wondering who would be chosen as her husband. This choice would certainly be among one of the Families, and most likely a family in Jerusalem. Sarah made sure to know all who her father might consider and schemed to see them when she could. Gobertha often opined to herself aloud wishing I was more like her. And I would in return say that I thanked God I was not.

For a time Ruth was entirely taken with Sarah, imitating her mincing ways and graces, and I confess this hurt me. But Sarah, who was a genuinely good person, still was uncomfortable with Ruth because she knew the circumstances surrounding her coming to us. Sarah never said an unkind word, but Ruth felt her coolness and, hurt, she turned to me and Gobertha for comfort.

I was whippy thin, exuding energy and restless movement, never still. My hair was brown with a crown of red-gold and my eyes were dark. In the way of a child I was discontent with this, envious of the cobalt blue eyes of my cousin, Sarah. Ruth was plain as a child but when she came to approach her womanhood this changed, and her face filled out to a nubile beauty and her body developed, shooting up to top me by a head. Her eyes were black and almond shaped, and her coloring gave the appearance of the use of expensive cosmetics, although she used nothing.

She came to her first bleeding a full two years before me, although she could not have been more than a year older, and we had thought her to be younger at first. My uncle bid me to come to him one evening without Ruth and, when I entered his study, he asked me to sit and then showed me the dowry he had prepared for her and the marriage he had found. I could hardly swallow. I knew that this was generous of him, and done for her benefit. But I grieved to think our time together, almost as sisters, was to end. I insisted that Ruth be called and asked if this was her wish, and this he did immediately.

Ruth was entirely delighted. The young man was of a good family, although not well off, and he was a younger brother. The dowry had, of course, made the match. But he seemed taken with her. He was of the Families, a poor branch of the House of Jacob. And although I thought I was losing my friend, and we wept together before she left, I later found that this was not so.

Ruth was married from our house as a daughter of our House. Uncle would have it no other way. This was also for Ruth; To establish her relationship with us. The wedding was attended by most of the Families in Judea, and all who were resident in Jerusalem. This was a measure of the respect that my Uncle merited with them. Arabas was among them and gave the couple a gift of furnishings for their home. We gathered after at the house and all were served from the generosity of Uncle's hospitality. There was a surfeit of food and also flowers strewn upon the floors and couches.

There I first had inkling of what awaited me. For among those gathered was Jacob. He was a two years younger than I, and spent his time with the other boys of his age. I was thirteen and full of my new womanhood, for I had not bled but I had been the mistress of the House since my thirteenth birthday. I caught them pilfering the wine while passing by the entrance to the cellar on my way to the kitchen. Forgetting my dignity I grabbed him by the hair, threw him to the floor and sat on him. This finished the unauthorized debauchery, for the rest scattered to the winds. Jacob looked up at me and groaned. He was actually larger than me but I had learned to fight while still throwing dungballs and he stayed down until I gave him leave to rise.

He did apologize for the predations visited on the wine, and forgave me my vigor in defending it. We agreed that this matter was best left private since it would trouble our elders to know of it. I was startled by something I saw in him then. It was as if a window had opened for a moment and I had seen a familiar face. Then it was closed and I was left staring, open mouthed, at him. I recovered my composure and abruptly left him standing there. I had not met him before and was not to meet him again for some years.

There were several cousins there from the Houses of Samuel and Jeptha and Jachim and all from our House who lived in Jerusalem attended. Some I had known all of my life, and others for only that day. But the celebration lingered on into the night long after the new couple had been seen to their chamber.

We were a gathering of cousins. All among the Order were related and we normally had little intercourse with others. The family, divided and multiplied for well on to nine generations, offered a wealth of cousins, first, second, third, fourth, with first and fourth together in one person. Every mixture you can imagine. We contented ourselves with `cousin' at most times. But the complexities of our relationships were not forgotten.

I think after the marriage of Ruth from our home that Gobertha started planning for my marriage. But I was not to be married from my Uncle's home. I had always been different from other children, and more different that they, my family, imagined.

Sometimes while the bread was rising in the kitchen in the calm of morning lifted into full light, Gobertha would take me up in her arms to hold and cuddle, even when I was close to my womanhood. This time was for just us two, and Ruth would absent herself for those moments, knowing that I loved my cousin, no matter how I tormented her. I loved the warmth of her, and the smell of her reminded me of the bread she baked, and the small yellow flowers that she loved, and grew always in the kitchen garden between the house and shop. The smell of the bread, rising and baking, always spoke to me of love because of her. I think now she held me in her heart as the child she would never have and I wish that I had been kinder, more loving, and that I had seen her love then and answered it as an adult when she was feeble. For I went off into the intensity of my life and forgot her entirely, remembering only when Sarah mentioned her passing at the end of a letter. She had gone into the service of another cousin at my uncle's death, and so I had lost track of her. Her dying was, ironically, the event that taught me my own mortality, for although I had by then guided many through this passage, her death was the first that moved me so. She left me all her small portion, the chief value of which was a copper anklet set with garnets. It had been given her by her mother and was beautifully made. I wore it ever after as my only ornament in memory of her and of my failing in forgetting her.

I was the first child of the house Called to serve - a daughter - and an only child at that! To be Called was looked on as both a blessing and a curse. The family gave up a child to the Brotherhood and took back a patina of holiness and merit. But the child was then dedicated to that service and although some returned home, having failed, they that were truly Called were known to be changed utterly by their disciplehood. Stories of the Voiced were a source of both pride and fear for those of the Families. The work of the Community was not truly understood but the stories carried back were used to terrify children into obedience on occasion. But more than that there was a pride that such holiness and trust from God resided within us. The men of the Families kept the religion of our Fathers but kept apart in their practice from those who were not of the Families. For these were less than us.

I came upon my Illumination all unknowing. I had not yet reached the age of womanhood, though this was to happen within months. The Light came on me when I slept and suddenly I knew that I was not alone but there were with me two others who watched with me, and I soared. It was as if I had lived my life behind a fence never suspecting that it was even there and suddenly I was raised to see over it and what I saw was beautiful and more than beautiful because I saw how all was One and yet less simple than it had seemed. I found that I could move in the Spirit and I cherished the spirits of those I loved and saw within them and also saw within those things I had thought to be like rock. For a wall was no longer a surface but all those things of which and all it would ever be. This was also with me when I woke and I found I could not only See and Hear and Speak but that I could move within the physical and change what was. It was power and it was intoxicating. Those who Watched were with me strongly then and warned me and taught me things which I had not thought to know, having not realized they could be. I understood then the hunger I had known all of my life, even as a small child, to know the Truth in all things; More, to find myself in the Truth. I had been chastised for my curiosity over and over and had taken to hiding this hunger from my family. I had not quenched it though.

Women were not permitted to read. But I had hungered for this and taught myself a little when I was still small. When my uncle found this he was troubled but then undertook my teaching himself. I discovered a world I had not dreamed of. This led me to question and search further. I took to questioning the Family's Elders on points of religion and philosophy and this also caused comment. I had determined to discover the entire Truth of God and the world and Gobertha forbade me to speak of it in her hearing. But with my Illumination I understood for what I hungered and was able to feed this need.

I did not speak of it to Ruth. She was puzzled and troubled by this need in me. She was then betrothed and so was less conscious of my every movement, but she was curious, and once frightened.

While this was new upon me I went into the kitchen garden where animals and foodstuffs were brought. The butcher was there preparing a lamb for the slaughter. It was white and bleated loudly, panicking at being lifted by its hind quarters. It struggled in his grasp and almost leapt free, but he throttled it again. Before I even thought about it I had reached into the beast's mind and stilled it. Ruth was beside me and saw it. She knew that I had done this and sprang back away from me. It hung limp before the knife touched it, and this disturbed the butcher as well. He looked at me with fear in his eyes, the knife in his hand, and I turned and ran back in the house. I hated the killing of lambs, for they were all trust and innocence. I gave it a peaceful death without pain or more fear.

The actual Illumination continued for three days as I surged with the power and lapsed into exhaustion and sleep. And then it was finished and I was left with that and the knowledge that I would never be alone again. They Who Watched were with me, and I could always find them. Shortly after the close of the third day Jeptha Found me in the Spirit and I knew him. It was then that I learned of the Gifted and that my place was among them.

My family and Ruth knew I had changed and this bothered them. Ruth had said nothing about the lamb, but she changed towards me after that. She had started to fear me. I no longer ran with the children but kept quiet within. That which had drawn me to games and mischief was gone. They came to believe this was my womanhood and were cheered by the change in me.

It was not usual for a woman to be among the Gifted, but my Gift was strong. It owned me. Even my Uncle, who raised me after the early death of my parents, could not deny it. Always before the Gift had fruited on other branches, leaving our family barren.

Our Lineage was inscribed in the bright metal which is precious to men and that does not decay or tarnish with time. All of our most precious records were set in this form. The plates of gold were linked, one to another when there was need. I saw one Lineage which had no less than five linkings. The careful marks were both a record and a talisman and remained always in the House of the Family, who represented the family in all its branches, although with time what this was for any one of us became confusing. Cousins married cousins and, in those last days, it was said from the many we had become One Family and should, perhaps, have One Voice. But this was said in jest, and the irony and truth of it was lost on us.

So it came to some few of us, man or woman, it mattered not how it came or when, only those given the Gift were Called. They, it was said, were Called by God, and this could not be denied. But it was a terrible shock to him, my Uncle, good and gentle as he was.

I remember him, sitting there at table when I first ventured to speak of this matter. I told him of my Illumination and of what I had Seen. Then I said that I was Called and must go. He did not move for so long that, if I had not, even unschooled as I was, been able to see his spirit in turmoil and thus unconscious of the body, I would have feared for his life. He had seen the signs and ignored them. To give a child to the Order gave the Family the patina of holiness and great honor, but the child was lost to the Family and lost to those who loved them. Most who were dedicated did not marry and so the line died with them. Those who did marry were lost in the sense that they were changed utterly. The Families were given to the things of the world. And the Order was given to the things of the Spirit.

I saw these things in his mind but did not answer them then. Instead I went to him and took his hand and sat silently with him.

In the summer of my 14th year, when I was full a woman he came to accept, not with recriminations and bitterness, but as a gift, that I would go. This happened in way that is worth telling, perhaps. My Uncle loved beautiful things, and used his wealth for this purpose among others. He had bought a statue which was from Athens and it was consummately beautiful; A thing of grace and perfection. He wondered idly one night about the man who had carved it, and since I loved him, I told him of the man. I spoke to him in the flesh, since he was blind in the spirit, and showed him the passion of the man for beauty and for his craft and also his anger and grief brought on by the circumstances surrounding its making. For the pleasure and triumph of its carving had been tainted for him. The statue was not perfect. I showed my Uncle the flaw. Then I told him that it was carved in the form of he who the carver loved more than his life. He had thought to make his lover, who was perfect in the body, thus immortal. But before the statue was finished the lover was gone to the arms of another, and the craftsman built the flaw into the statue and sold it. He had thought to destroy it but could not. Too much of himself was also in it. I showed him the grief of the man who was an artist among artists and who could not have the only thing he wanted. Uncle was quiet after that. He knew this was not the product of my imagination, but the Truth. And when he looked into my eyes saying, ``If you want it you have my leave to go, although I know now that this permit was never mine to withhold." After that it was changed between us, and I wondered at this for I knew he had suspected for some time. It seemed the speaking of a fact or the demonstration of it changed something for those unsighted when for those such as myself, the saying meant far less.

Gobertha grieved as if to die when she was told I was to leave. She came to call it, `this solemn yammering' when I told her I tried to explain how I was Called. She believed it to be a product of a fevered mind and was bewildered and grieved with my leaving. I could see her grief and the loss she felt for my children who she would not hold and care for in the years to come. She would not embrace me that last day, but turned her back on me and ordered me to go from her. I started out the door and found myself engulfed in her arms and I clung to her and cried. Then she turned away and, speaking low, bid me to go. I went without another word. That I would have children I could not tell her, for how was she to believe when the world of the Spirit was nothing to her?

But I had Seen and could not be turned from my course. And I also knew that my life ran beside that of He Who was Promised, ending on the same day. Although this troubled me as the Promised One should live long since he is not bound by the Law of the Dance. I had first seen and known of the Dance when I experienced Illumination. The Dance was accomplished within the body of the woman when the seed of the father found that of the mother. There, in that close protected place, which pulsed with life, the Spirit came and the stuff from which life is molded took its form. This appeared, to those who Watched, like a dance and so it came to be called.

My uncle arranged to take me himself to the Community. And although I told him, which he already knew, that it was not permitted to take wealth into the Community, still he insisted that I go with the best he was allowed to give me. The garments worn by men and women were simple and of white linen. But the first Uncle had made for me were of silk and in all of the colors in the rainbow. I begged him to understand, and he had them made anew.

Lineage was counted through the mother's womb. My mother had been an only sister to him, and he her only brother. There were cousins from both my father and mother, but they those closest in blood were not close in the spirit. The fear was with my Uncle, himself childless, that with me, if I remained childless, would end his line. But I knew because I had seen in the radiance of the future, that I would twice bring forth young. I told him this and it seemed to bring him some comfort.

We were allowed a chest and all that the chest might hold. He had it built for me and it came almost to my breasts. The top opened on chastened hinges in several parts. All of the metal work was silver. The chest itself was carved from a dark wood and was a work of art. On the top was engraved the return from the Captivity, and on the sides, the founding of the Order and the image of Jachin and Jaboaz standing like two pillars holding the world of the Spirit and the Earth in their grasps. Also portrayed were the entire Houses of the Families gathered. The inside was lined with cedar and had trays that set in and could be lifted out. These held ointments in ivory and glass bottles and casks, enough to last for years. And the garments; They were of the finest linen I had even seen, almost sheer to the touch. Others were thicker and warming. The lower part hid two drawers that slid out and these held linen for bedding. The pulls of these were disguised in the carving, and the drawers were secured during travel with dowels of wood set in on the side. He gave me also a rug brought from the east into which was woven flowers and birds in rose and blue and green and white. The chest could be taken apart and the bottom was then the platform for a bed. The top became a table. Moving it took ten strong men. I thanked him inadequately, in the way of youth.

Before I left I visited the new home of Ruth and bid her farewell. I told her then of my Calling. She also was upset and disbelieving. She was just filled with a child and I wished her an easy birth without thinking. She paused; she had hoped but was not yet known she was filled. She then asked me if the child would be a boy and I told her no, it would be a daughter this time. It was some moments before either of us spoke. She looked long and earnestly into my eyes and then she said that I had chosen rightly and embraced me.

Those within the Community had awaited my coming for many months and I was welcomed gladly by the Voiced and especially Jeptha. My uncle stayed with us for two weeks, putting off his departure twice in that time. Just before he left me he took my hand, seeming against his will, and held it tight. He had brought me there with servants and trappings; for he was wealthy and this was his custom. His eyes glazed with tears and spoke to my heart and my Spirit knew him to be my Father, in the spirit if not in the body. I called him Father then and he wept and I also wept and clung to him. Parentage was for us, as it will even be with mankind, a thing bound up between the Spirit and the flesh. For to be a father in the flesh is a thing that counts little, but to be a Father in the Spirit, is to give of the Spirit, and this is the greater gift, always. I grieved for him that night as I never had thought to. I never saw him again in life for within the year he was dead. I watched with him in the Spirit through his passage and cried only when he was safe in the Place of Rest.

Jeptha had said nothing about the size of the chest, but others did and I suffered for my Uncle's generosity. Some laughed and some sneered, but almost all commented. One scribe asked if he had meant to make it a house in the shape of a chest. I ignored them. But those early days in the Community I was both joyful beyond bounds and cast down entirely. The Work went quickly and I was easy in that part, but the day to day speaking and customs annoyed and hurt me. I was barely a woman, and yet I was Discipled and already broaching on the Higher Mysteries. I had no close family here, but Jeptha, Elder of the Voiced, sponsored me. Jeptha was a Teacher to me and told me of the hierarchy among the Gifted. He would not have done this if I had been male, but he was concerned that my sex not be a cause of dissension. So I learned almost immediately that the six Voices each oversaw the Teaching of six Disciples. And these were ranked. There was, generally, a first degree of attainment, with three rankings within it, and a second degree which was further defined in the same way. All progression was marked by heightened development. I was formally in the Teaching of another Voice, whose name was Jarek, but Jeptha worked with me more often. I stayed with a woman of whom I will later tell you, who I came to care for. She was a distant relation of both my House and Jeptha's. But always I wanted more freedom and more latitude to do as I pleased. Learning to curtail this was hard.

I came to live within the Rule, but taming my will to this was harder for me that anything of the Spirit. I would rise late in the morning, as I had done in my Uncle's house. I would laugh out loud and dance with the overabundance of my energy. This was one of the causes that brought the Counsel of Elders to find me a husband before I had entered my 15th year.

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2007-05-08T23:01:00.000-07:00

I did not wed because I was forced to. I was the ward and heir of my Uncle and without his permission I could not be given to any man. But I took the man they chose for me because he suited me. It is difficult for me to tell why I chose this course, knowing now what was to issue from my hastiness. I was a willful child and had not come easily to the Rule of the Community, the daily routine, and the curtailing of spontaneity although I had achieved a kind of peace within myself. But the thought of having a man, any man who could order me and control me. I would not have it. I had been raised in a house that gave me unusual freedom and part of the wretchedness I had suffered on entering the Community was the pain of conforming to a woman's place. Men were subject to the Rule, but otherwise they were free. Women were never free.

I did not want to marry. But I did want the issue of marriage eventually. I wanted children, both to continue my Uncle's line and for myself. So I took the man who was offered because I knew that I could control him utterly, and thus be free.

I was joined by the law of our people and by contract to Jobadiah, a good man with no sense for the Sight, no Gift. He was one of those who worked at the crafts. He was a stone mason and skilled at his trade. Jeptha counseled against this marriage strongly and would have contacted my Uncle if I had not pleaded with him to let me have my way. Jeptha was concerned for both of us. For me, who entered into a relationship that was so unequal in every way, and for him who, as Jeptha said, would be as one chained to a tiger. But I had my way and so was wed. As one of the Called I was married at the entrance of the Grove. The Grove was the structure which was built within an actual grove of fruit trees. It was a building with six sides. There were columns at each of the six sides and a wide porch running around it. In the East end was the cistern which bubbled with water for the cleansing. There were doors in each of the six sides which were normally left open. It was made of wood and the columns were cedar. It was twenty-five paces across.

We were married at the outer portico and all of the Called and most of the dedicated gathered for the short ceremony. Mary Rhea acted as my mother. I liked my husband well enough as a person, although he was unlike anyone I had ever known. He was a quiet man, not given to idle talk. Most among the Order were so. To reserve speech was a part of the discipline, but few were as bound in silence as was Jobadiah. He would bring me things he had made in those early days. Sometimes they made me laugh and I could feel that this pleased him. But there was a fear in him that annoyed me. I had known that I could control him but had not realized that he feared me. It seemed odd since he had been so eager to wed.

We came together as husband and wife but I was left unsatisfied and unfulfilled, and in the early days, in pain and disgusted by his use of my body. I had been warned of the humiliation but it was worse than I had expected. Later I understood that he had been advised to refuse the match. Jeptha told me he had gone to him to persuade him of the wrongness of the marriage. But then it seemed well enough to me. As a married woman I was free of restrictions. I thought he was eager to be linked with one with my standing in the Community. But this was not true. He would have preferred me ungifted. This did astonish me. In those early days he ventured, hesitantly, to talk with me when the ebb and flow of our days brought us together. But I was full of my work and was, more often than not, annoyed at his attempts. In our bed at night he was clumsy and untutored, although I did not know that at the time. Sexual congress was needed to seed the womb, this I knew. I saw no point in engaging in such activity when I was not ripe, and soon told him so. Our son was quickened when I chose.

I was approached on one occasion, after we had been married for several months, by the Elder of the Council appointed to represent his family. By rights Jobadiah should have gone to the Elder who was from my house after we were wed. But he had not done this. The man, named Jobriack, was obviously embarrassed at his task and, eyes downcast, asked to talk. He ventured to tell me that Jobadiah had come to him unhappy and disturbed to complain about my unwillingness to submit to his needs as a man. New as I was to the Studies and the Community still I knew, as did he, that he had overstepped his bounds. As a disciple of the Mysteries I was not subject to the discipline of the Council. I told him this with a slight smile and walked away. I was angry to have something so intimate subject to the ordinary consideration of someone who was practically a stranger, no matter if I called him Brother as a matter of form. And my anger at my husband grew as I considered the outrage I had just undergone.

No one Gifted as I was would have entered into a marriage with another so Gifted. It was not fit to have two such in the same house. It was felt that this would result in terrible contention and disquiet. It must be said that the Gifts were not always nurtured even where they were strong. I was unusual as a woman both Gifted and not denied the ability to realize these Gifts. But, as I have said, my gift was so strong that I had been Seen when I was still a young child wreaking havoc in my Uncle's home, even before I knew. I did not then understand the reasons for isolating one such as I in this way, and I did not know that other disciplines were quite different in this regard. Even where Parent and child were so touched, the child was fostered elsewhere.

When I came into our home later that night Jobadiah was already there sitting on his stool before the fire with dinner not yet started. He was nervous and his unquiet spirit made it impossible for his body to be at rest. I drew water from the reservoir and drank deeply. Then I ate a piece of fruit and collected myself, sinking onto the carpet in the attitude of meditation. After some time he quieted. Then, when the night was gathering in intensity and all noise of habitation had stilled, he rose to find his dinner in the Common room, where those unmarried might eat if they chose. Later we did talk of what had happened and agreed between ourselves to keep our discontent within the home. Else, I told him, I would ask for my right to live celibate and divorce him. After that we were comfortable enough together, he in his work in the pottery shed, and I in the Grove of the Gifted. The only joy to come from our marriage was our sons, Judas and Jarriash.

Mine was a marriage of convenience. But this was not the only form of marriage recognized by the Brotherhood. If I had found a Spiritual Marriage the civil contract with my husband could have been dissolved. I had heard of this, since it was an aspect of the Mysteries, but overlooked what it might mean to me.

Essenes, those of the Brotherhood, entered into marriage as suited them. It could be a civil contract hedged around by tradition, but there was also Spiritual Marriage, which for the Essene was completely different from the marriage of the bodies, which was limited by the needs of procreation and our society. It was a joining that could not be dictated by any law; family, religious or civil. It was not a matter of the drawing up of contract; it was, or it was not. They who served as the Voices of the Families witnessed its Truth and attested to its knitting of lives. But it was rare, even in couples united for many years, and sometimes it existed in couples of the same sex and others who were wed, in this world, elsewhere. This Spiritual Marriage could not be sundered or denied. Two or even more were as parts of a whole and would meet over and over in the twists and turns of time.

We, of the Inner Light, Gifted with the Spirit, did not live as celibates, but celebrated the spirit in flesh holding the act of sexual congress to be good, appropriate and affirming of the Spirit.

From my marriage until the time in my 19th year when I was numbered among the Voiced, life was for me only the Spirit. The conception and birth of my eldest son, Judas, was a minor incident. I loved him, nursed him at my breast, and yet could not make a place for him in my life. Jeptha had made it clear to me that any turning aside to things of my womanhood would be viewed as weakness. And I was not much tempted. I was absorbed by my work.

In that time I came to know all of the Disciples. All of these were Gifted, meaning that they evidenced some ability with the world of the Spirit. But there were great differences in their Gifts. Many of them resented me. I was younger than any and a woman, but they must needs give precedence to me. This did not happen overnight, but within two years of my coming I was the most adept among the Disciples and ranked only by those who were Voiced.

The laity knew this, but I saw less of them. But even those who were Gifted and accepted that Gifts came where God willed, were reluctant to give way to me. But I demonstrated my ability and after that none questioned me.

For the first year I worked and the labor was exhilarating and easy for me. I moved steadily up the rankings until I was third ranked below the Voiced. Then there was a change. I had been diligent and went about my work. All knew that Jeptha had sponsored me, but other women had studied and none had risen far in the rankings of the Gifted. Most had left after a time to become mothers and give their time to the work of women. But then, after I had married and was with child and did not leave, they realized I was different. I was married but I rose in the ranks past many who were years older. Then it started. First there were jokes and mild jeering. There were calls to my husband to take me in hand. And then, one named Jerobeph, who was second ranked below the Voiced, was passed over and I could feel his anger, it came off of him in waves. This had been announced in the daily meeting, as all such announcements were made. But this meant he had to give way to me and accept my authority. He bowed his head in assent, but I knew it was only begun between us.

First he was slow in obeying me and then openly defiant when none other was about. He would come close to me and touch me, pretending that it was a joke. He laughed when I pushed his hands away. But after that he talked about me with the others of his rank, and together they acted to try to drive me from my Disciplehood. The Voices knew this, and did nothing. I went first to the Voice to whom I was discipled and then to Jeptha and asked him to intercede and he refused. He told me then that trials come in many different forms and to remember what I was. I bowed to him on hearing this and waited.

I made sure that the demonstration was public. I chose the next evening when all gathered to talk after completing the work of the day. There are exercises that are conducted, Teacher to Disciple. And it was within my duties to take those disciples under me through these when it was called for. These exercises called for the linking of minds and then the calling out of that which was committed to memory and also the naming of the inner guideposts and signs that had been achieved. The Voice might also bring the Disciple to task for that which was not as it should be. The exercises were not frequently undertaken, and were a form of punishment. I was not Voiced, but I was an acknowledged Illuminated. I called Jerobeph to me and told him to perform the exercises. He started to object and resist and I smiled at him and then entered him in the Spirit. He knew I was within him and tried to resist my probing. I could feel the panic in him. But there was nothing he could do and I plumbed him, discovering all of his secrets and taking him through each of the segments in turn. He responded against his will, and then I named his failings. I told these as I found them, chastising him for the pettiness of them and remonstrating with him for the unkindness he had shown his wife in their bed. He could not move because I forbade his body and it was mine to control. We were surrounded, walled up in silence. I found that in looking into his eyes I saw there instead myself. I was not frightened by this but elated. No one moved during the entire exercises, which lasted from the time the sun was just touching the hills until it was entirely gone. When I was finished I left him, reminding him then of the obedience and respect he owed me and he bowed, tears streaming down his face and thanked me for the lesson.

Later Jeptha came to me and told me I had done well. I had not harmed his body or torn the fabric of his mind, but I had shaken his spirit. Many assume that because our work was of the Spirit it was gentle. But this was not true. It was silent, but it was completely unforgiving.

After that his behavior towards me changed. But I had lost something. I was no longer jeered; no one joked about me. There was less resentment, too. It was the beginning of the awe that one who was Voiced evoked. No one talked to me unless it was necessary. I was isolated. I lived among them and was of them but I was apart. After some time I came to know that this had been necessary and that each Voice had in turn earned the right to be Voiced by demonstrating in some manner the power that was within. My demonstration had been less painful than most, more than some. But I was a woman and so, to these men, it was more terrible.

Within a month I was first ranked below the Voiced, having been raised over Jorborach who had been first ranked for ten years. Then all knew that I would be Voiced, for no one was nearly my equal. In this time I worked with all who were ranked below me, reaching into the Spirit to increase their understanding and power. I undertook a larger part of the training of those below me than was usual. This was because I was able and also two among the Voiced, Jarek and Judaph, were growing feeble and were less able to continue the work.

A Voice's duties were all in the Spiritual realm. It was ours to oversee the progress of the disciples, introducing and guiding them through the small mysteries and outer studies as they learned to control what Gifts were theirs. It was not a School in the sense that we could give what was not inherent in the soul to have although this was tried from time to time. The Gifts, which gave so much, could also take. This was a coin to be paid in the life and the mind of the disciple who faltered. This is true because the body and the spirit are united in life but the tie can be severed or damaged by many acts. We were committed to developing the Gift and, while some came to this naturally, others were moved towards it with decoctions of plants made for the purpose. This was a cause of dissension among us and was argued first one way and then the other among all of the Called. Some among the Gifted had come to their Gifts by use of the drugs and these approved and urged their use. Among these was John, who was later Voiced. He had come to the Grove from the scriptorium and was Gifted. But after some years he had not progressed and if this had continued he would have been returned to the scriptorium. He was discipled to Judaph. Judaph was a strong advocate of the use of decoctions and prepared these for him. Through this he Illuminated. But it was not the same as when it happened without decoctions. I went with him when he soared and it was as if the sounds and lights and taste was exploding inside my head. I could not find my direction and was enveloped in a cacophony of noise and confusion. Colors came in waves and penetrated me. No one Watched Without. I reached out in the Spirit to catch myself and was helpless to stop my fall into the abyss. This was what I Saw, looking through his mind. Judaph was able, barely, to catch him and bring him back but it was a close thing. He was lost in that abyss for a day and a night. He returned drained but also changed in the Spirit. These differences also troubled me. I was shaken entirely by the experience. I spoke of these concerns in the meeting the next evening, describing what I had seen and felt. Judaph and John had known I was with them and resented my interference. Judaph spoke saying, ``It is our charge to open the world of the Spirit to the Gifted. This means has served us for many years and will continue to do so. John was not harmed." Judaph looked at John who nodded at this. ``If it frightens the woman," he paused. ``My apologies. If you Mary Judeth are afraid you need not use the means. But it had opened John in the Spirit and what further must be said?" I acquiesced grudgingly and Judaph and John were elated at the success advocated the use in other disciples.

This means was used more frequently but proved to be a two edged sword. I refused to allow those I oversaw as disciples the use of any decoctions no matter what. I still remembered the frightening aspects of the Illumination of John and doubted that the means could be controlled. Then, in the next four months the Grove saw three young disciples die in this way and all among us were shocked and appalled. Another lost his mind to their use, and thereafter wandered, destroyed and simple, unable to even care for himself. He did not even uncover himself to pass water or squat to defecate. He seemed unaware of these things as a babe. His eyes were vacant and his Spirit was locked within him and cried out to be released. He died mercifully one night, falling asleep and never waking.

One of the three was a cousin who I had known well as a child and seeing him die while unable to intercede made me an implacable in my opposition. His father was proud and had hoped for a son to be numbered among the Voiced. They had lived near to us in Jerusalem and he was an older brother to my friend, Sarah. Jonathan’s spirit went out from the body and become disoriented and unable to find its way. His Guide, who was Jarek, to do him justice, tried to turn him and bring him back, but he continued to wander and would not or could not return. The ordeal lasted for nearly a month. In the end his body died and the spirit was set free to find the Light. In that time he could take little water and no food, no matter how we tried; and he could not be brought back. I tried to give him drink and he spat it up, spraying me with the water and with his blood as well. I sat with him and grieved for the solemn and humble friend who I was losing. He had been among the few of the Gifted who had lent me support after I was raised in the rankings.

His body dried and curled into itself like a leaf, and the sight of it shook me. It was not deemed appropriate to intervene in the training of a Voice, but if I had been Voiced then I would not have stood by and watched him die through those long days. I went to Jeptha with this and he was also troubled. In the end all of the Voiced tried to turn him, but he was lost. This was terrible to See and to Know, for he wandered and was alone and afraid in the void. I could feel his fear and it was as if a child wept and I could not reach it to comfort. I would wake in the night and feel him near me and yet be unable to turn him. The Voice who was involved died soon after and I took his place. Jonathan was the last to die in this way for although this means had been used for many years it was abandoned forever.

It was I who wrote to the family to tell them of his dying. I did not tell the whole of it. He had been the quiet, giving, loving child who was the light of his mother's life. It was gall in my mouth to think of what he had suffered. So I spared them the knowledge of it telling them that he died in honor in the service. They did not know, of course, that I was myself discipled. I wrote as a friend of the family saying that I had had the nursing of him.

Jeptha was often called on to give needed insight to his fellow Voices as well to those who were Disciples and Gifted. Although I was not yet Voiced then, I know that he offered this insight and comfort to he who preceded me for he has been a strong advocate of the use of decoctions and was shaken in the Spirit by the deaths. He also had come to be tormented by the failings of age and could not control them in the flesh or the Spirit. His hands shook with ague and he frequently lost his thoughts and wandered in his mind. Jeptha eased him in the body and in the Spirit by bringing him to recognize where he had erred. He came to death having found peace and after having fulfilled all those rituals and customs that were needful to him. His name was Judaph.

Arrogance, greed, lust, gluttony; all of these and all failings in man act to skew the Sight and the Hearing and the Voice. And these we set ourselves to extinguish not by denial but by understanding that from which they arose.

I erred often, and was shamed by my failings. Time and time again I would school my mind to control my words which sprang forth, caustic and biting, to hurt those around me. This was even truer after the death of Jonathan. If I had been a man they would have heard my concerns and considered what they did. Jeptha was to me the one who could hear and understand and give me to see where I had turned wrongly on the Way. He was both a father and mother to me in this way and I loved him.

At the time of my own Mantling the use of decoctions had ceased entirely and forever. Much of the Training was frightening or disorienting, and Disciples came and then departed with regularity. Some of these returned to their homes, but most remained to work among the laity. It was forbidden to talk of what they had seen if they did leave. But some did, of course. This contributed to the awe with which the Brotherhood was viewed.

There was a seemingly endless amount of work to be done, and more hands were always welcome. Disciples were dismissed from the Grove of the Gifted if they showed no progress or if they could not control the use of their Gifts. Only those who had passed through the period of Disciplehood and were in the first and second rankings could engage in the outer work of the Order. This was the work of preaching among the people who were not of the Brotherhood. And this was deemed to be an essential part of the work. If I had been a man I would have been sent forth to preach before I was Voiced. But the customs of our people made this impossible so within days of the death of Jarek I was Voiced.

I had known that it was to be. But the simple ceremony still awed me. I was taken by the five from my home without a word, walking barefoot, and escorted to the Grove of the Gifted. There I knelt at the center of the Place of the Light, which was the center of the Grove.

The night had not yet started to slacken its hold on the world, and so their voices came out of the dark all around me. As I knelt the Voiced came forward and knelt opposite me, each tested me, entering me in the Spirit and pressing me in this way and that. I responded to this and proved my place among them by parrying their Spirit with my own. I was a solid wall and I was fluid as the water which purged us or the air that we breathed. And then, when the time of trial had ended, Jeptha came forward and intoned, ``In the beginning there was Light and there was only Light. God was there then and the world was perfect. And in the last days the world shall be Light and Truth and God and this is all that it will be. In the time between, this is counted out in the ages that have passed and are yet to come, that which is Light and Truth is also the Law. These three are the same. We find ourselves in the void that is the Light and the Truth and the Law. You our God, named or unnamed, have given us life and all that was and is and will be on into the mists of time. We know You and walk on the path that was marked for us by Ezekial and all who followed him." Then he addressed me directly saying, `` Will you give yourself to the Search?" I replied that I would with all of the days of my lives and even with the time between my lives. Jeptha then said, ``So it had been promised and the promise which is given can not be taken back. It is lodged within the Lord forever. We have given ourselves to the Work, and you are joined with us in this for now and for all time to come. We are One, and from us shall come the Spirit who is the Word and our Salvation, and all are within the Light."

The ritual went on and each spoke out of the darkness echoing that which had been said and saying aloud that which was never spoken at any other time. I answered them and named them as my Guides and Teachers. They came to me and placed in my hands the pledges of the Earth, which is our Mother, in the form of the fruits which spring from Her. Then they anointed me with that which is of the Father and which is the gift of the cleansing of the Light. This is symbolized with the oil of myrrh.

Then there was first one voice which rose to sing in the flat tones of the chant, and was joined in turn by another and another until all were joined. As the light cast its first glaze over us although the colors were still swallowed in grey. I could see them gathered around me, also kneeling. Their voices first rose and then dropped away. Through all I was silent and still as death.

After this I was taken to the cistern, which was within the Grove, for the cleansing and after was left alone in the Grove for the length of the day. None came near me. For this was the ritual and we kept it unchanged.

I spent the day from my body which lay in the Grove. But I was testing the fabric of my ability and for the first time placed my cipher upon the Design. I returned to my home that night both exalted and barely able to move. My body ached from the disuse of it, and my breasts were overfull of milk and close to caking. My husband was there and the babe in his arms and he was a confusion of anger and awe and fear. Jeptha had gone to him and told him that he was not to look for me but that I would return with the fall of night. But he was afraid and I saw into him clearly. He was afraid even to express his fear to me. I took the babe and went to the bed and collapsed. The babe sucked hungrily and I grimaced with the pain and relief of it and slept the night through. My husband spent the night watching me from the fire he kept burning on the hearth.

The Words of Jobadiah

2007-05-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

That night I trembled for what I had done in taking this woman to wife. I had wanted her passionately from the first moment I saw her and had never dreamed that she might be mine. It was the morning of the day after she had arrived. I had seen the entourage the day before but thought it just another delegation from some House or another come to ask the blessings of the Grove. I had seen many such, from all parts of the world. Instead I slipped off by myself to the fields. I enjoyed the quiet and was working on the shaping of a flute.

That next morning I practically ran her down. She was looking towards the Grove just after the early morning ritual and I was looking down at the flute I had completed the last afternoon. And then there she was and I was holding her arm so that she did not fall. She laughed at this and also at my embarrassment. She did not cast her eyes down but looked straight into my eyes. She never did what was expected of her. Later I came to know that she would laugh and cry with abandon and dance, twirling among the collection of houses.

She asked me my name and I gave it to her. She did not give me hers, although I asked. She just capered off towards the Grove. And I raised my hand and started to call after her in warning of what she approached but then I saw Jeptha beckoning to her. She scampered up to him and embraced him and they turned and went into the Grove.

I stood there stunned. I had never spoken to Jeptha. He was the Eldest among the Voiced. And all of the Voiced were frightening. They moved always as if wrapped in power. I walked on but could not forget her. In taking her arm I had dropped the flute and did not know until a child ran to bring it to me. Even if I had not asked I would have soon known her name. For it was murmured among us from that day.

She had come with the trappings of a princess. Her uncle who had brought her was like a king. Her clothes were fine and the furnishings of her quarters awed me. This caused jealously and comment and I know she suffered for this. She could hear a jeer and her face would tighten. I saw the place made for her in the part of the Community set aside for the Gifted. I knew then but it was already too late. I loved her and was miserable for loving her. She was born of wealth and power and was herself powerful yet hardly more than a child. I was already committed to the work of a man having assumed an apprenticeship in the craft of the mason. We were then working on the extension to the Library which had been mandated by the Council of Elders at the time I declared my manhood.

I made it my practice to be where she would walk by. Sometimes she ate in the Community dining hall and so I started eating there, too. My mother was upset with this, taking it to be a condemnation of the meals she made for me. I talked to Mary Judeth only once for a moment. She was in the hall waiting to eat, the food before her. She was talking to Mary Elizabeth, a girl her own age, and a young man whose name I did not know but who was dressed as one of the Gifted. There was a place near them and so I rushed to sit there. In my haste, I spilled my dinner into my lap and they looked at me in astonishment. They did not joke but helped me to clean myself and I thanked them as I looked at her. She smiled past me and returned to her conversation.

Then after all those weeks of wanting the Elder of the Council who spoke for my Family came to me and asked if I would consider marrying her. I was not the first who was asked but most feared to have her. I thought I had misheard him and asked him to repeat himself. He frowned at this and did so, commenting on the unseemliness of her behavior. I just nodded.

She consented almost immediately. And I was a fountain of joy and did not know what to do to express this. My friends laughed at me. I was unable to keep a proper reserve on my feelings. Jeptha came to me then and cautioned against the marriage saying that it was too uneven. But, I asked him, afraid to speak to him but afraid to find the offer withdrawn even more, she consents? He conceded that she did and that he wished she would not. I saw the kindness in Jeptha and was less afraid of him. But after that I would not hear him and only later understood what he had been trying to tell me.

So we were wed. Just outside the Grove the words were spoke that bound us and the papers were signed. I had agreed to be her husband. I was not to put any claim on that which was hers from her Uncle. If I left the Community I was divorced. If she should leave we were divorced. Mary Rhea had curled flowers into her hair and she moved like a blade cutting through air. Her hair was unbound and fell in tendrils to her waist. I could barely speak and my voice wavered when I gave my vows. Mary Rhea acted as her mother and provided what was necessary afterwards. But it was a perfunctory gathering and felt more like a gathering for mourning that a wedding feast. Then we were led to the house which was hers as one of the Called and we were alone together for the first time.

I had never even truly talked to her. She was fine and delicate and I was afraid to hurt her. She seemed shy then and I felt a rush of pride in having her. But I was also frantic, fearing to find that she had been withdrawn as if she were water and I a man dying of thirst. I could not wait and took her then. I pulled her down on the bed which was hers from her uncle and fondled her, pulling her clothes up around her breasts. She stiffened as if to resist but then lay passive. She turned her face away from mine and grimaced. This enraged me and I pulled her face to mine and kissed her forcing her lips open and thrusting into her mouth with my tongue. Then I entered her and with the tightness felt her fear and pain. The moment after it was as if she was gone and her body was as a thing which was dead. But I was devoured with my heat and did not stop. As I lay still shuddering upon her I felt her pull away from me. She went to the reservoir and got water to clean herself and then turned her back on me and washed.

Only then did she look at me. Her face was filled with pain and anger. I knew I had hurt her for there was much blood but I did not know what to do. She dressed and went out and I went after her and saw her entering the quarters of Mary Rhea. She stayed there until it was almost dawn. And then she returned and laid down next to me on the bed to sleep. I knew she had been crying for her eyes were swollen and red, but she would not talk to me then and cringed away at my touch. Later we did talk and she told me that she had married me only to be free of the restrictions on unmarried women. She was bored by me and this made me even more tongue-tied than I usually was. She resented the Elder who had gone to her because of his concern for me. I damned my tongue which had criticized her. I could see the toll that her work took from her even if I could not share in it. I had thought I loved her body but I loved her, her Spirit and courage, more.

But then she would make me small and I hated her then. I tried again and again to stop loving her and failed. Instead I redoubled my efforts to make her love me. Soon after this the addition to the Library was finished and there was no further work for a stone mason. So I worked at the craft of the carpenter for a time. I made things for her. This was frowned on, and I was chastised for this use of my time, but still I tried to entice her with these small offerings. I made her a rabbit that found its burrow and the back of it looked like a badger. It made her smile and when she looked at me then she was not cold.

When she quickened and I was in agony for worry for her. Many women died in birthing and she was so fragile. But she gave birth easily it seemed and then there was Judas.

He looked like her. And his eyes and the love in them made me feel powerful and strong as I had never felt with her. I did not grudge the time I spent with the child. It was accepted and never discussed. But I was alone among the men in caring for a babe as would a mother. My friends said nothing. Judeth was a presence in the Community and she was feared. She did not discuss her work or what went on in the Grove but I heard whisperings and once she came home and cried. She tried to hide this from me but I held her and she clung to me and sobbed. She would not tell me what had happened. I asked Jerome, who had gone from the craft of the mason into the Grove and he told me, reluctantly, of the conflict with Jerobeph. I wanted to kill him, but said nothing to Mary Judeth. The tension in her grew over a period of two weeks and then she came home later than was her custom and was flowing with energy and relaxed for the first time in months. I knew that she had earned respect and that the crisis had passed.

I wanted to talk to her of what had happened but could not. But after that she was less remote and sometimes she came to me to be held. I hungered for more but was content.

And I had Judas. It was as if I had this small part of her to love me without question. It healed something in me that loving her had wounded. My mother offered to take the child during the day, but this I refused. Judeth never questioned my staying with Judas. She simply assumed I would be there. And I was, always.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

That which is the Truth was called also the Law and the Light, and these different manners of speech were used because that which is Light and Truth and Law are the same and yet seem different to people. For the Light is seen as an illuminating principle and the Truth as that which is discovered in the Light and the Law is the same but evokes the image of that which is fixed and unchanging through all time. And all of these are true, and what is spoken of is one and the same, but the manner of speech changes with that which must be demonstrated and made clear.

The Community accepted the ancient Truth of the Seven, dividing the week into seven days, and thereby acknowledging the seven aspects in the Spirit and of the Earth. The study of the mystic relationships between numbers had also taught us, from the time our Order began, of the relationship between the time to come, the cycle to close and begin within the life of our Order, and the Six. This was among the Higher Mysteries and was close held and shared only with those both Illuminated and Voiced, and revealed only in the Spirit. This was one of the things I learned at my Mantling. The discipline required that any part of the teachings be drawn from the mind at will. Memorizing by rote was not acceptable.

In those days after the Mantling I learned what it was to truly Speak. It was so clear: the clarity and power of it still amazes me. After my Mantling there was nothing I could not do, and I ranged far into the world of the Spirit and knew many there who I would never meet in the body. To Speak was to enter into the mind of another and there make yourself and your thoughts known. To Hear was to listen to another in the Spirit. To See was to see that which was too far or too small to be known to the physical eyes. Seeing could also extend the Vision into the past and future. These were the Senses, and from these we perceived in the Spirit. But it was also possible to act in the Spirit. And Healing, or Killing or any of any number of other acts were possible. Our lives were dedicated to evoking the fullest possible abilities in this matter, as they were in defining the relationship between the Truth and the soul and body of man. I remember the time coming on when I slowed my breath, sank down onto the woven woolen mat, unconscious of its muted, beautiful colors and intricate design, and reached out to touch my Brothers with my mind. And I remember also the times when it came on me even as I tended to the most mundane of tasks. I was engaged thus, burnishing the iron skillet used for the bread, when I first touched the Spirit of the Promised One. I paused, surprised, where I had come to half think there was nothing to astonish or even awe. And humbled; because, in the Spirit I could feel the weight of He Who Would Come and knew Him to be more than man, so easy was his Spirit within the folds of the Truth and the One.

The Voiced came together in ones or twos or combinations of this during the day. In the evening hour on every day but the Sabbath we gathered together, Voices and Gifted alike, to talk before the time of evening prayer. This was as suited the work in which we were engaged. After I was Voiced I took the Teaching of six of the disciples, as was the custom. Among these was Jerobeph. I did not pick him. He fell to me because he had been the charge of Jarek, who I replaced. He was well trained in the aspects for which he was Gifted, this being the Seeing of that which is past and minor Healing. But he had encountered a resistance and was unable to progress in these. I worked with him through these, and his Sight came more clearly with time, but he never Illuminated and so was never admitted to the High Mystery. His work was in the aspect of healing and he worked with John more and more. John was highly Gifted in this.

There was a peace that grew between us then. I was comfortable in my authority and he had come to weigh me as a Master and not as a woman.

Disciples came to us only if they had shown some sign of possessing the Gifts. For those there was a ritual marked in years that was designed to bring them into attunement with the Law of Wisdom so that they might know the Truth. Although this was set aside at times, as it was with myself and others. Most among us never reached the point where they could continue into the study of the Greater Mysteries, being able to Search or See or Hear. Some could only See, faintly, echoes of the past or future. Others developed a facility with Healing the physical body of the Spirit. The gifts manifested in more ways than we could name, and it was not possible to know the extent of it. This worked to breed in us a humility that was well called for. But always we Searched.

Many among us, good men, longed and hoped for the Gifts and waited in silence for the

Sight and for some small glimpse of the Gifts and died never having touched them. These usually found their way into the discipline of the scribes, doing the work of the scriptorium where we collected copied and preserved our library. This was added to it with all the documents we could find that chronicled the history of our people and served to enlarge our knowledge of this world as well as the world of the spirit. There was a shame associated with moving from the discipline of the Gifted to that of the laity, but there seemed to be no help for this. As a part of our discipline, all were encouraged to study the wisdom that had accumulated in the Library, and the Gifted respected the benefits of the work that was accomplished there.

The gathering in the evenings was an essential part of the training of the disciples. This dialogue revealed the different facets of their progress. A question would be posed and answered again and again, as if peeling the onion into nothingness. The training was primarily in the Spirit, but some evidences of it that pertained to their needs were revealed more clearly when they were observed at rest and in the company of their fellows. But on the evening of the Sabbath the Six gathered, and no others were allowed to be present.

In that time we worked on those things which were not for the ears and minds of any others. Then the essence of the Great Work was laid bare and the threads of the lives within our care and holding were discussed. There the decisions were made to bring in this one who appeared to show promise of Gifts. Here the decision was made to send a disciple to the Library or the pottery sheds for training in that discipline if the Gift in them was too weak or not controllable. And here each of us spoke and revealed that which we saw fit to bring to the light. After Jacob became one among us he took the greater burden of this work on himself.

This was a meeting that was in the Spirit as well as in the flesh. And in this we tested one another constantly. There was a respect between us who were Voiced. But then there was also a reluctance to intrude for each of us maintained a privacy within ourselves that was the only privacy we could have. And we had need of this.

We, who were the Voiced of the Community, achieved a balance among us, in the Spirit, that was nourishing and fulfilling beyond anything we could have had in the flesh. But we were human and heir to all the failings of man. No one could sit in judgment on those of the Spirit but those who were Voiced, and there was no one to judge us, who were Voiced, but ourselves. Therefore between us there arose, not a tribunal of judgment, but that which acted to console the spirit in torment. In this way we offered to each other support and the tool of objectivity. A Voice might err, but the error was understood and used in its turn. Our concern was not justice but to always heighten our knowledge of the Spirit.

In my early years in service as a Voice, there was little I did not bring forth, but later I was to know what it was to maintain a silence, too. You will come to know the Voiced from their own words, and in all fairness, this is best, so I will leave it to you to discover their Truths.

In the first such gathering in which I was included, on the Sabbath after my Mantling, I saw for the first time the full majesty and beauty of the Design. Much of what we came together to do was accomplished in the Spirit, and linked in this way I came to know these men in new ways. For then I knew them as equals.

The Testament of Jeptha

2007-05-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

I was the prodigy of my generation. Seeing and Understanding the use of all of the Gifts at almost the same time that I entered my manhood in my 13th year. I was invested as a Voice when I was just leaving my 17th year and I was steady and confident of my control.

I married the daughter of my mother's cousin that same year. Her name was Rachael. She was older than I, being in her 23rd year when we were joined. It was a good match giving both of us much in the way of comfort and warmth. She was like the Earth, warm and giving and fertile. She birthed three children to our home and gave to our lives a gentle humor that helped me leaven the seriousness of my nature. The times of birthing were hard for both of us. Each birth was long and arduous and in every case the child was born in the breech. I suffered with her, taking what I could of the pain and yet unable to ease her. This was frightening for me since I had considerable skill as a Healer. It was through this that I learned the limitations of the Gifts when these were used too close to the self.

I had grown to be a solemn man from being a quiet and withdrawn child. From my earliest memory I was drawn within myself. My grandparents had dedicated my father to the service of the Brotherhood when he was just past his manhood, and he had served the Order all of his life. He was trained in the craft of the mason, and laid the foundation for the Library as it originally stood, before the additions in the sixth generation. He was not Gifted, but my mother, whom he took to wife when he was just leaving his 37th year and she was entering her 16th, was so endowed. He name was Mary Naomi, and I remember she glowed with the power of her Gift. She was not Illuminated, but had great abilities of the Sight into the Past. Although they were separated in age by many years, my mother and father were also wed in the Spirit. Growing up in the golden beauty of this richness and seeing what grace it imparted to their lives made me see what marriage could be.

This is why I was reluctant to give my consent to the marriage of Judeth and Jobiadiah. They were not so much married as caged together, and this harmed him terribly over the years. If he had wanted her for her status or her beauty it would not have wounded him. But he loved her without understanding what she really was. He did truly love her. She was blind to this, which is not unusual. In things that cut so close to the bone the Gifted are as blind as the ungifted. She suffered for it, but he could not have been expected to see the wrongness of it. He was dazzled by the thought of having her.

Each child of our marriage was for me a special gift, and I held them close, soothing and cherishing whenever I could. This surprised her because the men of our people were not close to their children, especially in the early years. Babies always fascinated me. The softness of them against my arms, and their easy hungers for love and food never grew stale.

Rachael was not comely. She was massively built and had rather harsh features. But when her spirit shone through in her eyes I didn't notice. And in time I came to find in her a loveliness that I did not suspect when we were first wed.

I was born of the fourth generation of my Family after the Founding and so my life's work stretched out to touch many different lives. The Great Work was, of course, the main focus of my life, of all of our lives. When it was started, in the first generation, it was well known that the Design must admit to much in the way of change. We awaited He Who Was Promised, but the means by which His Work would be upheld and supported changed with the years. In the first days it was thought he would come as a temporal leader and would lead Israel in war. Then, with the coming of the Teacher of Truth this changed. I know this by the report of the men who lived in that time. The Teacher of Truth came among us, and dwelt with us and this was in itself astonishing. He was not Hebrew, not of the faith or of the people. But he was admitted without question because of that which he carried with him. He brought the Word, and even then there were those of the Gifts among us although the Teaching in the Way of the Spirit was scarcely begun. He was a man grown to our young childhood. He Saw and carried us with him in the Vision of Truth. He introduced the cleansing Ritual and gave Words of Truth to the Breaking of Bread. There were then only five who were Voiced. The Teacher was made a Voice among us. Some even thought that in him we had found the Promised One, but he denied this always.

The Gifts come as they will. But with the Training it is possible to hone and sharpen them until they are as a sword is to the lump of stuff that is yet to enter the forge's flame.

He gave this Vision to us knowing Who we Awaited, for he had known this even before coming among us and he came to aid us in the creation of the Vessel which was readied for Him. He had seen and he came to us.

The man who told me of him was a Voice who was of the second generation and was named Jacob. Jacob was grey and dried with age when I knew him, but the newness of that he had learned still stirred him in the Spirit. He was one of those who was Taught by him who was the Teacher of Truth and much of what I learned before my own Mantling was through him.

When he spoke of the Teacher of Truth it was as if he became a young man again. His eyes gained something of the vibrancy I remembered them holding in my young childhood, and his voice, which normally shook, grew steady. He described the Teacher as standing over all men in height, and of having very fair skin and blue eyes. He came from the east, and so this surprised me a little. But Jacob said that it was so. He had married while among us, and his wife had given birth to a daughter before his death. This girl had married into the House of Judaph but was not Gifted herself. Her eldest daughter married the man who became the grandfather of the father of Judeth. I never told Judeth of this and don't think she was aware of it. In the generations after his death it was not usual to note the quarterings that did not return to the descent of David.

I was told by Jacob, the Voice of the second generation, that while there were those among the Gifted then who were inclined to reject him, this could not happen because of what he brought with him. The study of the spirit had been undertaken to become a weapon in the arsenal of the Messiah as well as to light our hope for the future as it had in the days of the Captivity. But because of his Teaching this was called into question. But one among those who would continue the course was Jachin, and as a Voice he reserved this for himself. The Teacher showed us the result of the path we had undertaken and eventually all except Jachin agreed that the course must be changed. But the laity, who until that time had been privy to what was planned, objected and so were told only that the new direction would result in a more assured future for the work of the Messiah.

So the Great Work changed with him coming among us and then changed again when it was decided that the risk of losing what had been so hard won was too great. We believed that our collection of writings to be the largest ever assembled. It was far larger than any collection in Israel. To counter the risk of losing this it was decided that with the Coming the collection should be broadcast to distant points where it might be kept safe. This was the beginning of the work to build the repositories that would hold the daughter libraries. And it was the last true change before the Coming. This change made it necessary for the Brotherhood to find more disciples to the work of the scriptorium, and the Families were each asked to dedicate one among their sons to the Work. The call was answered and fifty more were added to our number. They ranged in ages from 13 to 43, and all became trained in the way of the scribe and followed this discipline thereafter except one. In him was found evidence of the Gift and eventually he was numbered among the Voiced. His name was John, and he was among those who completed the Design of the Great Work.

It was my task to see to the more complete understanding and defining of the Gifts. Since it was forbidden to commit this part of the Work to the physical this presented many difficulties. In the early years it had been determined that the Gifts fit into six categories with some crossing between them. So the Voices took it upon themselves to focus in the same way. There were Six Voices, Six Gifts to the Spirit of man from the One. Each of the Gifts, an aspect of the Spirit that is the One was thus concentrated in the Sight of a Voice who would explore its Mysteries.

The Gifts were considered in three groups of two. The first, Seeing the past and future, the second, Healing the body and healing and directing and Guiding the Spirit in transition. The third: controlling the physical and controlling the Spiritual. The Gifts, as I have said, flowed together and utilized many external techniques as well. Music was one of these, as were all the different arts, although the laity of the Brotherhood sometimes felt this was an unnecessary addition to the Work and grudged the expense.

Part of my training included the disciplines of the Greeks. Something of it was included thereafter whenever the particular circumstances of the individuals training warranted it.

As I have said, I had been born into the generation that held within living memory the teaching of the Teacher of Truth, as so was moved towards sympathy with the arts of logic and math. For along with that of the Spirit, the Teacher brought a new understanding of these to us. I also was moved by the vision he left us of a world in which all men were one. The Voiced knew this to be true. But it seemed to contradict the Covenant and contravene the very words of Ezekial. Only the Illuminated could see that the original faith of our people was little more than the worship of those dead and buried. The Covenant was not to the seed but to the essence. This essence was within the Voiced. This was True and our preeminent value, but it was a close held secret.

It seemed to me sometimes that many of the Community, the laity and even some of the Gifted, rejected the beauty of living on the Earth and held that the Earth was merely a stopping place for the Eternal. I disagreed. For those of my time the Earth was as aspect of the Truth, and the Mother of the Spirit. For us, the Spirit could not grow or endure without the grounding and testing provided only by the mixing of the two.

Marrying was much encouraged with my generation but this, too, became less common. The laity preferred to live celibate, deeming this the more God-like state. For those who could remember the echoes of the Teacher of Truth, the energies of man and woman balanced and strengthened each the other. Even in the symbols that bound us together, for instance, the six pointed star, this is expressed as one of the levels of understanding. This symbol was drawn to show two triangles, one pointing up, the other down, to emblemize the two united. When then two grew and lived as such, much was to be gained.

There is much I could have done to draw the Gifted and laity together during the course of my life. But this I failed to do. This was a blindness in me. It was an arrogance that I overlooked in myself. I viewed them as children, needing discipline and order for their lives. I also saw them as potential enemies, and this colored my judgment. I should have seen them as men and women who were also within the One. But life was comfortable as it was, and I did nothing.

In my own marriage I found that the Gifted and the lay may teach each other. My wife was not Gifted yet she gave me the marvel of her insight into this world, which I would overlook being so often in the Spirit. Together we were greater than the sum of each of us separate. I remember once when I had labored long in the Spirit with little result and, frustrated, returned to the home short of temper and stiff with exhaustion. Looking at me she busied herself and then came forth with a bowl of nuts to be shelled. She put this before me and said, `these will not resist your will.' How I laughed. We laughed together and that was the best of it. In the end we were joined in the Spirit, and when she died I stopped loving the life God had given me for many years.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

The Rites of Women

I often heard Jeptha speak longingly of his wife. She had died two years before I was discipled. But Hearing Jeptha speak of her taught me more of what should be possible between man and woman than my own marriage did. For his love was a palpable presence whenever he spoke of her. And it was through this that the woman's ritual gained meaning for me.

I have said that there were rites special to the service of women and these rites were held to be small mysteries by the men, but those among the Gifted who were women knew better. The rites themselves were as are all rites; a means of encapsulating the knowing and beauty to magnify understanding so that those who are not Gifted might see in the Spirit. Thus knowing was reserved from those who were not yet ready for this. There was no such ceremony for men. The manhood declaration was entirely of the physical world. But women are all of the Spirit in a way that men cannot know. Our rites were different in one regard. In the course of the ritual there came a time when the woman might use the eyes of the Speaker to See. This was not known to the men, and this was by device.

The origin of the rites was lost in time. They had been ancient at the time of the Captivity. Men knew that women gathered but had no inkling of why. No man was ever admitted to the ceremony and the ritual was contained entirely in the memory of the Speaker for the Mother Earth. She took one disciple to follow her, training her, and that disciple did the same when she succeeded to the position of Speaker.

The ritual began with a calling out to the Earth, symbol of the Mother Eternal, and the woman being initiated was lead to the altar. There she knelt and the Speaker knelt beside her and traced on her body the Sacred symbols of fertility, touching each of her woman's parts gently and calling upon the Spirit to reach into her and give her the gift of Life Eternal on Earth. By this was meant that only in women was the principle of Spirit and the body blended to become mankind.

The young girl thus learned the way of man with woman and was told of the rightness and beauty this could foster. She was taught to know her body as a sacred vessel and also that, no matter what might be said to her, she was the property of no man, ever, being a Spiritual Being Eternal and one with God.

Then the Lesson of the Searching soul was recited and the beauty of the Dance within the body of woman told to her who knelt. This was an astonishment to most women since they were taught outside this place that their bodies were the vessel alone. But we who Searched and oversaw the Dance knew otherwise. She was then cautioned to give her nestling child peace while within as well as when born by tempering the humors and leavening living with laughter, so to nurture the surety of acceptance and love that the child might prosper and continue the Life Eternal on Earth.

Then, through the device of the Seer, the woman was given to glimpse within herself and to see the Spirit even as it hovered round about us. She would come to understand that Man and Woman are less different that she supposed, seeing the organs move up into woman or downward from man while still within the silence of the womb.

To the Essene woman this experience was most holy and never spoken of outside the Circle of Sisters since so few of us were given to the arts of the scribes it was of necessity that this knowledge was passed only through the spoken word - and through the Spirit.

My investment in the Woman's Mysteries came only when I was in the Community and past my first bleeding. But, in looking into the eyes of the ancient Speaker who guided me, I first saw one who I recognized though, in this life, I had never met her.

Her name was Mary Rhea, and she was Gifted. She became for me a kind of Mother of the Spirit guiding me through the small mysteries to stand at the Greater eager to learn. She also acted as Mother for me in the days before my wedding and taught me the making of the consecrated bread and the preparing of food in the Essene manner. For those of us who had originally lived outside the Community, the matter of what we ate was quite different.

When you were joined in the Brotherhood part of the discipline was the making of such acts as eating and cleansing a part of the continued act of Worship and Communion. We took those foods into our bodies that best nurtured and sustained these bodies. I was astonished to find that fat of any kind was avoided, as was an overabundance of bread and grains. We ate simply of vegetable and fruits and some fowl and fish. The taking of water was also a part of our daily cleansing. Water without - and water within Mary Rhea would say as she smiled at me in the morning.

She had been widowed for many years but was still youthful in her movements. Her hair was shot with gray but her eyes were clear and bright with intelligence. Her husband had been a scribe and had brought much of his work home with him in the sense that he talked about the texts as though they were living things. He had loved learning, she told me, and was downcast that he was unenabled to move forward to broach the Mysteries since he possessed no Gifts except a quick mind. It was from Mary Rhea that I first learned of the design of the Missions. It is accepted in the Brotherhood that single Essenes will go out among the people to preach taking nothing but a poverty of the body and a wealth of the Spirit. But this Mission was different in kind as well as in method. It had been set forth in the design from the time of the advent and death of the Speaker of Truth in the second generation, that when the Purpose was fulfilled and the Promised One had taken up His Work that Missions would go out to far points of the Empire of Rome. Then in the sixth generation this mission was enlarged to include daughter libraries which would include copies of the most essential scrolls of the Library and establish, in this way, the means by which the Order might set the Truth loose in the world and achieve all that they had been set to do. Those who were dedicated to the Library as an end worthy of support also saw this as a means to distribute the work broadly enough to ensure that it was never entirely lost. She said this to me and I could see that her husband had impressed on her the beauty of what was contained in writing. She could not write, of course, but he had read to her and so she had learned. Her Gifts had not been great enough to give her access to the Greater Mysteries. And she had been content thus.

I lived with her after my investing in the Mysteries and would have been contented to remain so if I had not had to marry. The simply rhythm of our lives, with the getting up, the cleansing with water and the companionship of one who gave me affection along with intelligent understanding had made me realize my loneliness, something I had not understood in the years of my childhood.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

The Council of Elders

In many ways we lived in two different worlds. There was the world of the Rule, with the appointed hours of the day, and the other world of the Spirit. The Called were free to act as the Spirit moved, in contrast to those merely dedicated. To understand what I must tell you first I must explain to you something of the meshing of the world in which we lived.

While we were referred to as Essenes by those without our Order, those within called ourselves as the Brotherhood of Inner Light. The Community itself had been in or near the north end of the Sea for over one hundred and seventy years. We were inland from the sea on the west side, and established on the south side of a group of hills. The closest town of any size was Bethlehem, and it was here we went occasionally for marketing. We were not the only group who lived under the Rule, there were others. These came among us from time to time to study and to find direction. But ours was the Community and all others deferred to us, for only the Community was Voiced.

The governing of the day to day business fell to a Council of Elders, respected and named so for their even-handed dealings as well as for their ability to see us through bad times as well as good and keep harmony with our neighbors. The membership of the Council of Elders rose and fell with the need - but only laity were called to serve on it. It was a thing of the world and those of the Spirit were apart from this. The Inner Council, never called so out loud or even referred to, was that body that held the governance of the Spirit, if you could rightly call it that. So this was left to the rule of the Six. The Inner Council was, in fact, the Six.

For us there was only the Truth, which was both more exacting than the Rule and harsher when contravened. For we would say, we were not Blind and Deaf, and Mute; we could See and Hear and Speak, and we did so within the Truth in all things.

The gatherings of the entire Community were a rare thing. When they took place we gathered in the square which was between the Library and the Synagogue. There were benches edging the square and it contained a fine mosaic which had been laid in the sixth generation when the Synagogue had been added. I came to know then that there was a rift within the very fabric of our Order. This first was shown to me at the meeting held just months before I was Voiced. We came together, the Gifted and laity both, to discuss the man who sat in Jerusalem and made pretense to be the King of the Jews although he was not of the blood or the Promise. He was called Herod. Many among the laity were offended at his claims of descent and at the pretense thus made at a Nation of Israel when in reality he was the Whore of Rome. Rome had seen fit to reward him again and in celebration he would have his majesty acclaimed by the people. I had heard of the goings on in a letter from Ruth, and had half wished I could see the pageantry. The color and excitement of these festivals brightened the lives of the poorest, as I had learned this from my childhood friends in crime. This festival was marked by a profusion of offerings to the Temple, which Herod had rebuilt entirely. Herod was a whore for Rome, but he was a useful whore. Under his hegemony there had been less civil strife. The Order had prospered and grown even larger. He had ruled first by appointment from Rome, but he was firmly in bed with those in power. Mark Anthony was a close friend of his by report. So after he was ousted once Rome restored him and named him King.

Ruth had also written that Samuel, the head of a Familial House also in Jerusalem, had become the father of a son after many years of childlessness. Samuel had been close to my Uncle and I saw him when he came among us, which he did on occasion. Soon after I received this word from her Samuel came among us.

To go in pilgrimage to the Community was a mark of piety and it was common for young men and those who were advanced in years to spend time among us. These usually confined themselves to the Library and Synagogue but some among them were welcomed into the Grove. Samuel was with us when the meeting with the Council took place and frankly told us of what Herod had done. He had come to give thanks for the birth of his son, who was also named Samuel. James would not hear him and raved on.

The laity wished to visit some punishment or judgment on Herod. Others wished to speak out against him. Those of us who were of the Gifted were more amused and contemptuous than anything else. Samuel clearly agreed that the better course was to do nothing. The Eldest of the Council of Elders was distraught and raised his voice in argument first with Samuel and then with Jeptha, the Eldest of the Voices. This shocked all who heard it since it was both unthinkable and unseemly. But it was a measure of the depth of this feeling, and Jeptha, who answered, understood this and was gentle. Jeptha listened to him until the rage within was more muted and then he said, ``That which is done in the name of Israel but is false will be known as such to those who Know, and what care we for the thoughts of others who are nothing and less than nothing? He who is thus falsely anointed and enthroned is a puppet and nothing more. His is the pretense of children, and so we should turn our backs and refuse him even an acknowledgement. To object gives him more respect that he deserves. Do not dignify this pretense by giving it more thought than it deserved."

James, the Elder who had challenged Jeptha, listened and acquiesced. I felt in him a sudden spurt of fear, and wondered at this. He had lost the argument, since he had been answered by Jeptha, but he was not convinced. And then I knew that this arose from his knowledge of the power that resided in the diminutive body of Jeptha, who he topped by two heads. This I could see in his mind. Later I asked Jeptha about this and he dismissed the thinking of the laity among us as irrelevant. But I was unsatisfied with this. To dismiss the thoughts and fears of our brothers, and the larger number of them at that, struck me as unwise. But I was young then and hesitated to say this to Jeptha. So Herod did not exist for us or to us for his kingship was not of the Light or the Truth or the Law, and so we did not see it.

I wondered then why they stayed. But even as I framed the question I had answered it for would I leave, even if to remain might cost my life? No, I would not. It had been made necessary for me to demonstrate my control over Jerobeph and I had known his fear and pain as my own. I had seen the fear in the laity clearly. But while this was not forgotten all who had witnessed it were bound even more closely. Such power affirmed that we were truly the Voice of God. What pious man would turn his back on God?

The laity also shared in this. Those who were dedicated to the service of the Community necessarily knew something of what was possible having heard the whisperings and half truths carried in the wind. They also shared in the knowledge that what was given was the Gift of God and that its presence among us lifted them toward Him.

I asked Jeptha and he responded saying to me, ``But their history is ours for there is no true division among us. We are the Children of Light, chosen by God to do his Work. If this is sometimes painful then that is part of the sacrifice that we owe God for having chosen us. This was the promise of God through the prophecy of Ezekial, and to leave would be to lose part of ourselves. Remember," he said, ``they have their work and it is a part of the Great Design. They cannot abandon this for it is their lives as the Spirit is ours." I nodded at this and understood. But still I was uneasy. It seemed wrong for men to accept without agreement and live in fear.

For the laity there was the Rule, and the discipline of the flesh to which they submitted. This could involve the punishment of minor infractions, such as sleeping during the hour of prayer. The punishment for this might be three days of fasting. Harsher punishments were rare, for one who was so flawed would be sent from us. But I remember once when a young disciple to the Library was whipped by the order of the chief scribe, whose name was Harick, until his back was laid bare. Those of the Spirit were shocked and horrified and a Healer, it was John who was later Voiced, went immediate to him to relieve his pain and suffering. If Harick could have prevented this attention he would have. But nothing could be denied those of the Spirit and he would not have attempted this or even raised a voice to protest it.

The boy, whose name was Romarius, was taken to stay with the eldest daughter of Jeptha, where he would be safe and cared for. This was the first time that the nature of the Elder had been opened to us. On the next Sabbath we came together as Voiced and talked of what was to be done. I had plumbed Harick and told the others of what I had found. He did not know that I had entered him in the Spirit. I showed the others what I had seen in him and we examined the content of the life he would lead and considered the ways in which his life would balance with those around him. He was badly placed in life. He lacked judgment and humor and empathy. We felt then the lack in us which had caused us to disregard the affairs of the Elders of the Council. From that time no man was affirmed to the Council of the Elders without having been plumbed. James, the Eldest of the Council, was consulted and agreed with out assessment. He could not remove the Scribe himself but took the question to the full Council. Harick was removed. He was life long of the Community and was angry at the dismissal.

Harick was married and the father of two sons and a daughter. These felt the brunt of his anger since his wife was dead. The Elder of his House counseled with him and was driven from the house. He would not go and his staying strained those discipled to the Library. Then it found that he was secreting scrolls to take with him to sell to the priests at the Great Temple. After that there was nothing we could do. Joab plumbed him and found a softening in the veins supplying blood to his brain. This was further weakened and he died in his sleep. He was not a good man but the Voiced mourned his death.

The Testament of John

2007-05-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

Accepting the Godhood of He who we called the Promised One was, for me, an act akin to self destruction. Now, having passed through the Covenant of Forgiveness I can see this aspect of myself and grant that it was the product of ego. It was a failing in me, and one that is with me still. I was late to the Gifts, attaining the Mantle of the Voice in my 35th year, after a disciplehood of fifteen years. I was not Illuminated until I was just entering my thirty-first year. I thought myself humble because I did not begrudge the meanest beggar the Healing that might be needed. I washed the feet of the poor, I taught where teaching was wanted. Every time I thought myself purged I would discover that the fault was with me in another, more subtle, form. I asked in the Spirit that whatever needful be done, even to the taking of my life, and still it was with me like an incubus. In that life I did not truly accept that this failing was in me and looked constantly for some outer cause, blaming and reviling those among my Brothers who most annoyed me. Of course I erred, but I have come to know that my arrogance had different faces in the Spirit, and in this life have come to begin the unmasking as I was unable to do in that life I lived as John.

Even in that life I lived another life in the Spirit, and that was, and is, a blemish that still haunts me. I told my self it was needful if I was to do the Great Work and add my cipher and my labor to the whole. It harmed no one, I reasoned, because it remained in the Spirit and therefore could not touch the living. And since it was needful to me, making my life whole and giving me the will and energy to endure, it was, in its way, a virtue. I can laugh now; what signs can we ignore utterly when the pain or need is too great? And my laughter would not be so loud if the pain was not still present in me.

I had remained unmarried by my own choice, although this had been counseled against by my Uncle, the then Voice, who was also called John. Jeptha also advised against my remaining single. Several young women were suggested to me, but I refused. You will come to know Jeptha in his own testament. Let me tell you something of him from one who saw him as a man as well as a Voice.

He was a small man, standing a head shorter than me - and half a head shorter than his wife. He wore his hair long even after it started to thin in great old age. When I knew him it was entirely white, but in his early life it had been red. His nose was a great beak of a thing. He was easily overlooked by those who saw only the body and not the spirit. I remember once a visitor to us, before I was even Voiced, walking straight past him to me, and asking in humble tones if I was the Great Speaker of whom he had heard. I quelled the laughter that rose in me when I humbly took him to Jeptha. But only in the body was he small. In the Spirit he was great and loomed large over my entire life. I resented this, of course. It was only after a time of utter dejection that I was able to realize how my fixing on the physical in appearance had lead me astray.

I was proud of my own appearance. I was the tallest among the Gifted and lean and powerful of body. I had little bodily hair, but what I had was light brown. The hair on my head was light brown and tightly curled. My face was handsome. The glances of women had told me this since I was just a boy.

I had come into the Brotherhood to serve the purpose of the Library, and then one of the Voiced, Jeremiah, had found the Gift in me. I was proud of this. My family had been glad to send me, since I was the seventh child and fifth boy. The rest followed my father in to his trade as a weaver, and I despised this work. The time I spent as a scribe suited me better, but when the Gift surfaced in me and Isaac, who sat on the stool next to me in the scriptorium, was awed to see me advance to the Grove. Later he boasted of having known me and fed on this kind of attention I waxed on to arrogant. I was promptly deflated by my slowness in acquiring the skill to use my Gift.

I think my greater fault was born then, in that jealousy and well capped anger for I was many years in the training, and was angry for this.

If I had been asked while within the veil of that life I would have fixed the blame for my failings on the beauty of the woman. Even now I cannot look on such in man or woman and not be moved to want to possess it. But the beginning of wisdom is complete Truth, and now I can see Truth, at least in this small regard. And now I can laugh at myself - a little.

I did not marry because, as I said, I felt that women, or a woman, would distract me from the Great Work. No, I told them Jeptha and Uncle John, a little smug, my whole life should be a gift to the Great Work and spent in service to the Brotherhood.

But in the secret, dark place of my mind, where I also lived, I knew this to be false for I had not one woman, but many. Either they were weak and supplicant, eager to please in any way I wished, serving me in the body and with their entire wills, or they were proud and beautiful, and I set myself to destroy them with the ruinous power of my desire for their bodies and their minds. I enjoyed their pain. I drank it in and became addicted to it as another man might to strong drink. Hiding this from those Ungifted was nothing. It required caution to keep it hid from those who shared these Gifts, however. I learned over the years to seal it away so that the intensity was never understood by enclosing it in a kind of religious ecstasy that others found uncomfortable to admit. I was thought a little odd, but never depraved and more than oddity would have been forgiven and overlooked in one who was Gifted. The Brotherhood was not rigid in its guidance of its Brothers. It could not be, since all but the Truth is subject to change and reinterpretation.

I was contented thus for many years, never seeing the effect a life split in such a terrible manner would have on me. Then someone entered my secret life and the fantasies took on a reality that drew both of us in to hover close to our own destruction.

I savored the pain of others. I had created in myself a desire to control - and to destroy. And I could not see the contradiction or the hazard, so involved was I in the heat of my need. But I was, in the end, saved from utter ruin by being discovered, which I welcomed, though I knew not what I did. I was a man, and fallible.

I was, myself, of the eighth generation of the original family of my name and the forth of those so numbered to be called to the Mantle of the Voice. It was I who first gave Jesus instruction in the arts of Healing. The ordinary disciple had need to begin with the simplest of herbal remedies, and to conform the mind to the Truth as well as to breed humility. The disciple was required to do service among the poor. All who came, the lepers, the insane, those gasping out their lives with lungs unable to hold the breath of life. All of these became their charge. This learning had taken every mite of strength I possessed, and almost turned me from the Study. I was many, many months set to the most disgusting tasks before I was given to explore even the smallest mysteries and search within my own body with the Sight. I always feared I would be sent beck to the scriptorium and this drove me to the use of decoctions which finally gave me the Sight I had hungered for.

I had been discipled to Judaph. He was not the most powerful of the Voiced but he was astute and able. He had also resorted to the use of decoctions and was familiar with their use. Jeptha advised me against their use but when I persisted said nothing more. The experience was frightening. I was badly dehydrated when I returned. But it was my choice and I resented the objections and comments of those like Judeth.

After that I focused on the study of Healing, enlarging on what I knew and doing further reading from the Greeks, as well. There was a text from Heroditious on the circulation of blood that was beautiful and I studied it for hours. Eventually I made a copy for myself and enlarged on it.

Those that entered into these studies and then were admitted to the larger came to know that with each enlargement of the sphere of knowing there came a need to relearn what had been previously known in its entirety. This was nowhere more true that with the study of herbs for healing. The study of such was numbered in the small mysteries, and the healings that they could accomplish was also known. But the healing of the body was, in some respects, a minor matter. Some products of these could, with the proper compounding and support in the spirit, Heal the Spirit and also those ills of the body that did not seem to admit to any healing. A thing considered in the Spirit evidenced different aspects, and this changing had become known to us and was a part of the Study.

It is odd, that a thing may be known well and yet remains a mystery for I harbored within myself a disease which I could not name but which was to shame me. Things which confound us often come in a form we are blind to see. So it was with me. But I was not alone in this.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T22:41:00.000-07:00

I remember the dust rising from the way outside the door of my home in lazy, golden waves, drifting softly in the air, which was already hot by mid-morning. We rose early by the Rule, especially in the heated months of summer. It was the time of the ripening of the fields, and even days, taken one after another in turn. Always from that time I remember the baking of the bread, the rich smell of it, filling the room and the feel of the dough in my hands, smooth and warm to the touch. The bread had a life of its own.

I remember that the land in which we lived was beautiful, not lush but fruitful and forth giving of all that we needed to sustain us. We worked with the Mother, she who is the Spirit which is invested in the Earth, to make it so. There was richness and a pleasure in bringing forth bounty to sustain and nourish us. We had fields in which we worked, side by side, and those in which we worked alone to raise what most pleased us as individuals. This was a part of the rhythm of the day, to rise before dawn and join in prayer, in accordance with the Rule, and then cleanse the body and take up the work of the day. I was spared the rough physical labor because I was Discipled so early. It had been hard enough learning to do for myself. I had been used to the attentions of servants in the House of my Uncle. But I came to love working in the plot set aside for the use of myself and my husband. When Judas was old enough he also helped, solemnly pressing the seeds down into the soil and covering them as he had been shown to do.

I loved to feel the sun beating down on my back and arms, warming me. The feel of the soil in my hands as I broke up the clods and smelled its musty, earthy tang nourished something in my Spirit. I loved best the time when the first shoots appeared, pushing their tiny heads out of the ground to spread across the furrows. I also grew flowers, from seeds sent me by both Sarah and Ruth, although many thought this frivolous. I remembered this as a part of the tapestry of my life.

When we did the work of the Order we worked among the laity. As a mark of humility all of us gave time to the work of the fields. There we mixed freely, forming groups to work which changed and shifted. But being Voiced my calling never was lifted from my shoulders. I found myself watching those who shared the work with me in the Spirit. The other Voiced closed themselves then. If my gifts seemed to be greater it was probably from this. I knew the people in a way that the others did not.

The work found a rhythm that bound us and I traced the threads of this as I worked. In this way I came to know them. The work we shared could not cut through the shroud of my isolation, though. I was among them as I was with the Gifted. But I was not of them. They were awkward with me, treating me as Voiced and yet uncomfortable with my womanhood.

From the Testament of Jeptha

2007-05-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

Going into the fields to plant and harvest and then glean; to do the work of the shepherds and care for the trees; this was a part of our lives. None were entirely exempt, but the Gifted spent only a few hours at the work that involved most of the Community for all their waking hours.

Those discipled to the scriptorium and the library also went into the fields. It had been seen in the earliest days that a chasm could grow between us if it were not knit by some of these common duties.

But this knitting was our true purpose in exacting the labor. Much of what we ate was bought for us. Our land was not greatly fertile. We stood at a crossroads and were natural traders. This had been the way of the Families since the Return. The wealth of the Families supplied us.

The heads of the Houses came among us regularly. Even those who were established in foreign lands came at five or ten year intervals. This was not mandated but it was expected. They came to renew their vow to uphold the word of Ezekial. Different Houses kept different customs in this. But all sent their wealth to be used for the Work. Those who were close by came more frequently. They came to share in the Breaking of Bread and to hear the words of the Ritual which bound us, one House to another and all to the Community. Those who served in other communities also came in the same way.

The House of Samuel was based in Jerusalem and Samuel of the House came often, sometimes three times a year.

We lived by the Rule, but even in bowing our wills to this we knew that it was not the Truth. Only the Truth, unchangeable, immutable, and perfect could be the Truth, but the Rule served to bind us together in the rhythms of the day. In the Rule we rose together and together joined in our prayer and in each ritual in turn, from the first prayer of morning unto the last in the evening hour. None of us followed the Rule from fear, but only from love and reverence. We complied with the Rule; knowing that it existed to bound us together more than anything else. But as with any group of men, there was that in each of us which resisted this.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

The Library and Scriptorium

The Library itself was a place of beauty and serenity. I spent much time there in the beginning reading the texts and simply running my hands over the coverings. I loved the smell of old leather and the touch of parchment between my fingers. It was forbidden to touch the parchment, but I did when I was alone. I loved the sharp, incisive marks of the pen. I learned to know many who were then dead and felt that through these works that a part of them still lived. The smell, dusty and rich with time and study, evoked in me a sense of comfort and also excitement.

Over many years we had collected the Teachings of Masters, where it was possible for these to be compiled and where it was not, those of the students of Masters. Included were the scrolls and letters of the Nation of Israel, Holy Scripture, arguments on the nature of religion, and every other topic one could imagine. Numbered among the disciples to the Library were those who spoke every tongue known to men. These did the work of translation. Many such were available to us because of the practice of the Families to send sons out to the daughter Houses in apprenticeship. This was also the conduit through which we acquired our new writings. Our Library, not including the six copies being prepared, was over 40,000 separate manuscripts. Some manuscripts were massive and took a number of scrolls to contain them. The making of these daughter libraries had been given into the special charge of the scribes and was essential to our ultimate purpose. The cataloguing and accounting of these required the services of ten of the laity. The pottery sheds were kept busy with the production of the repositories, and the shepherds with the production of sheep, to provide the skins for scroll leather.

Our Order had been started in the hope that it should be possible to facilitate the learning of Gifts so that this might, in time, come under the control of the Order. This also was a part of the foundation of the Great Work. We understood the danger to us in having that control which was ours. The laity feared us, and those who knew something of the power that was in us also feared. Our indifference to the temporal world was two fold, first, to those of the Spirit the temporal receded in importance. Second, if our control had been realized we would have been living under a warrant of death. No temporal authority, not the man who would be king in Jerusalem or that of Rome would have suffered us to live. Our Gifts were great, but no great enough to protect us from armies.

But also, we could only have that which was given. There were times when some among the Voiced did not Speak with the power they did in the end. The Gifts came as they would, to whom they would, and in what degree they came and were realized was also not within our control. We might facilitate, but we could not give - or withhold, for that matter. This was left to the Spirit, or God, by what ever of His names you call Him.

We were not engaged in charlatan's tricks, or the telling of the fortunes of love and avarice, or in the selling of potions and such like. Using the Gifts, we Taught the Word in silent Speech that left no doubt as to nuance or intent. We searched constantly for those few among us who were capable of finding Voice, in any degree - and they were few enough among us as among any people. These few became Teachers and Guides, Healers and Speakers. We oversaw the conversion of soul through each soul passage, supporting, nurturing guiding, explaining in the Spirit what could not be said through the body.

This was my function. I was a midwife of the Spirit. We were each of us Searchers for the One Who Would Come. This was accomplished by going out from the body into the void. There the Searcher would see the brightness which is the spirits of men, born and disembodied. Those who were among the Gifted shone brightly and thus attracted our attention. This is the way in which I can say what was done, but it was accomplished in the Spirit and so should be considered in that light.

I was one who had the Gift to help balance the soul in passage. Many do this work, both in and out of the body. Each man, in the course of life, passed through these points. But all are safer when Guided. I stood by even during the Dance, that time when the physical is united and realized in the flesh, and the soul takes possession of the body, becoming part of the body even as it creates that physical vehicle in every particular.

It was an odd experience, I suppose, to be within the body of another and to See this thing which was so small and yet which was also man. I learned to watch that the numbers in the material that danced would be True. I stood by to help when that soul dropped into Forgetfulness and Confusion at birth and again when the coming of Speech caused the temporary cessation of Spiritual Communion.

And then I steadied the soul with the awakening of Soul Self and rejoiced and joined with them to soar if Illumination was reached. Illumination was rare with us, as it is with all people. And the lesser Mysteries and Gifts were more common. But we were not alone in our Searching. Sometimes before the spirit was ready for the ascent into understanding which is Illumination, we would see the coming of the Golden Haze, and sense the succoring of Those who Watch Without. Our work at times caused us to join with one such, but this was always very draining. Afterwards I would find myself aching as if I had pressed myself for days when only a few minutes had been spanned.

Our lives were of the Spirit, and in the Spirit, and those Who Were From the Body were neighbors to us. They who Worked in the Spirit did the Work and did it with love and concern. We did not fear them, or see them as dangerous. There were those among these who were evil intentioned, for course, but these could be dealt with in the Spirit by us and by those of the Spirit. It was important to be there for the Newly Illuminated as they learned to regulate the flow and ebb of energy, and use their Sight, and it was deemed a special honor for this to be Guided by both those in and out of the body.

The Newly Illuminated are like children then. Strong with the power that was so new, as a child just learning to walk will test its new achievement. And it was a time of danger when the Spirit might cause unintended harm to itself or others. But for us who watched, it was the vital, precious renewal of our selves, a chance to give, and by giving, receive that precious gift; understanding of the multitude of facets the spirit represented. Our work was a continuing act of worship.

From those few who had reached Illumination were chosen those among us who would Guide those of the Spirit in the evolution of the Gifts in all of its Aspects. These were the Voices.

This was our Work, but it was just an aspect of the Great Work which was undertaken. And the greatest of this was to be accomplished within the life of the One Who was Promised.

The Messiah. I knew from the time I first entered my training that The One Who Will Come would be my especial charge, to guide through his Passages. I could feel him long before he was even conceived and it did not feel like a sacrifice to me to live my life for him. It was a joy and gift to be able to know his Spirit as I did.

Of course, I was not his only teacher. It's odd to realize that there is so much misunderstanding about what he was like and how he was taught - and what never needed teaching. I have seen long, elaborate dissertations on how the Promised One traveled from Mystery School to Mystery School. As if his body needed to move to touch the minds of his teachers and draw from them everything that was necessary to his Mission.

Travel he did, after he stood among us numbered as a Voice and Teacher himself, One with the Truth for being of the Truth. It was understood as necessary to carry the Presence to the far flung repositories at the ends of the Empire, although as you will see, by then the pattern we had thought engraved in stone had fractured and been reformed in a way that left us in disarray. In the beginning we hoped to believe his Mission was as we had learned from our earliest years to expect it to be and were glad and ready to serve in in all ways. At the end we were divided, not just from the laity, but also within. The Voices accepted the change because, given Sight and Speech, we could see the necessity and knew that he had not contravened our Knowing but enlarged upon it and was in balance with the Truth. But the others, whose Sight was less clear, and who did not follow him, felt betrayed by him and the Voices together. And those who prepared the scrolls and art for the journeys, these had turned their backs on him entirely.

Our misunderstanding of his mission and our subsequent death as a movement, a people, and a School was through no fault of his. It was the necessary self-protection of a people who cannot afford to understand that, once the butterfly has fled, the cocoon has no purpose.

For us prayer was not a divorce from life but a continuing presence in life. We made our lives a prayer to God. We Created a tapestry with the myriad of threads of our own acts woven with those of others. The pattern was visible only in the mind's eye, only in the Spirit; but it was awesome in its beauty. The Discipline of the Light and the Truth told us how to conduct ourselves. And we went through each day, from the rising up to the last prayer, so as to make the day an act, not of worship, but of reverence, balance, goodwill and charity. Our lives were the threads that would end, and our world the tapestry, which was eternal.

We of the Brotherhood observed an austere life, as I have said, but we were, together, a community, and lived cheek and jowl every day of our lives except when we were in seclusion. It was our custom to gather together in the last hour of the evening to celebrate our Community with a communion of the Spirit, evoked by the use of bread and water.

A single loaf was taken and broken into six pieces, and then the six were broken again until a piece had been broken for each. One of the Six would break the bread, as one of the Six would pour the water into the chalice that symbolized our unity with our Creator. After the bread was broken and the water was poured another of the Six would reach out and take the hand of the person standing next to them, that that person would reach out to and do the same until all were joined and, perfect, One.

Then the ritual would be spoken, and the bread taken on the lips and savored with a sip of the water as the words of the ritual faded into the night air. Then, the oldest among us would speak forth a blessing and we would gather to laugh and celebrate, renewed and glad.

It was a simple ritual, growing out of the meager supplies that nourished us in the earliest days of our Order. The ritual was strong and spoke to the heart - direct and pure and clean.

Our day to day life moved more slowly in that age. Each day was composed of the small ceremonial moments, the courtesies of Brothers and Sisters; a simple nod, a hand raised to the eyes as the lids lowered; the soft kiss of greeting given on the cheek; and times when we were Speaking silently to each other. There were things not to be rushed over, but to be performed as a part of the ritual that bound us. The discipled entered the Grove with head bowed and prayed briefly before entering into any work. A disciple worked primarily with the Voice to whom he was discipled. But any disciple could work with any Voice, if there was need.

Those times when we worked in the Spirit were the clearest and also the most difficult to convey. For the things of the body admit to the anvil and hammer of words and the things of Spirit can be known whole only in the Spirit. But for the newly discipled there were exercises to awaken and strengthen the Gift. Some included the plumbing of early memory and others used the methods of `the single grain of sand upon the hand,' `the aroma of a flower held at a distance,' and `the discovery of the layering of Truth.' This last was essential. Without it no disciple could move on in the studies. The later work was less easily understood. A part of each day was given to the work of the Community. But those who were highly ranked among the disciples spent little time in the fields.

* * *

2007-05-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

I was the first and only woman to be Voiced within the Community. After the time with Jobeph I was never again challenged. I became a man in their eyes. Or maybe it is better said that what was a woman in me became invisible. There was no easy talk and questions about my child. The child was treated as any other but spoken of as the son of my husband and I was never named as his mother. And from that time all stopped calling me by the name I had taken on entering the Community. I became Judeth only. I drew away from the women of the Order after I had been discipled for a time. At first this was because I was centered on my work, and then because of the pressure brought to bear on me by those among the disciples. I was lonely as I had never been as a child, for I had lost the sisterhood I had come to cherish. But even more did I enjoy the communications from Ruth and Sarah who alone among my childhood friends wrote to me. Neither of them could write, of course, but their husband's scribes would do this for them and then read my responses. But this made the communication somewhat limited for there was much that could not be said.

Although the Community was apart from the bustle of the world still we were of the world. There was much coming and going of messengers bearing letters and such. Ruth came to us twice in those years. The first time she came to grieve with me at the loss of her first son. She feared that this would turn her husband's affection from her. Also, she had not stopped bleeding from her woman's parts in two months and feared that this might mean that she could no longer bring forth another child. I healed her in the body and eased her mind. A piece of the tissue of the afterbirth had not come out after the babe and this had continued to bleed. It was good that she had come, for it was close to poisoning her.

In that time we talked long. My husband still lived and I had not yet filled with my second child. But we found time to talk and I laughed occasionally. Her husband had given her leave to come to me and brought her himself. He loved her and while he grieved for the babe who had died, still he was more wroth over her flow which did not stop.

After she was healed she told me of the controversies that surrounded the court. Many we had known went there and it amused me to hear of this world that seemed so distant. Ruth's husband did much of his trade through the court since he was a supplier of rare and beautiful dyes for cloth. Herod loved vivid and beautiful colors. Ruth went home after two weeks to conceive another son who was one of four she gave her husband along with two more daughters.
While Ruth was among us she was given the Rite of Women and I was her Speaker. It was a special bond between us when I took her to see that to which she had been blind. And when she went from us she knew that her name was Mary Ruth.

All women of the Families were given the name Mary coupled with another name that they usually used. Mary was told by prophecy to be the name of the Mother of the Promised One who would also be of the direct descent of David. David symbolizing the pure essence of the heritage we got direct from the living hand of God. The practice of counting descent through the mother's womb had come into being during the Captivity. I kept the name my own mother had given me at birth. This choice had shocked many since it was spelled as a man's name. My mother was said to have possessed something of the Gifts herself, although she never lived in the Community and did not develop these. She died while I was still at the breast and I was told that there was some trouble in finding a wet-nurse for me, so that for a time I was suckled with the milk of a goat.

All of the Voices had names that started with `J.' Men born or adopted into the Order took a name that began with the letter `J'. This made them one with God, sharing the most sacred Name that could be given with the silent name of the Deity.

The Testament of Jacob

2007-05-08T22:29:00.000-07:00

I was neither the youngest nor the oldest among the Voices either in age or in Service. I came to the Mantle of the Voice when I was 23, not a prodigy but still a little young for it in the way of thinking of many. But it was I who bound us together to work and to plan in a way that was different that any that had come before. Even before I was cloaked with the Mantle it was so. The Voices would come together with their disciples and discuss the aspects of the Great Work that were active and all were free to participate in the winnowing of thoughts to consensus. And even in the first days of my disciplehood I could see clearly the consequences of our acts and failures to act. I was discipled to another Jacob. He was a third cousin and I knew he was unhappy that one closer in blood was not to take the Mantle of the Voice. He was of the fifth generation and died in his 62nd year. This was remarkably young to depart life for one who was a Voice. My family had not been active within the Brotherhood for all of those seven generations. They were jewelers having their store in the city of Jerusalem itself, so near to the Great Temple that it was visible over to roofs of the buildings opposite us on the street. I was trained in that craft starting from the time I was a young child, coming to know the value and weight of gems and the purity of the precious metals as another child would have known the faces of his playmates. I found this craft fascinating and followed the logic of it into the world of commerce, taking on the task of selling and buying before I was a man. But soon after my 13th year the visions started and my mother knowing the meaning of such, sent word to the Brotherhood. I think she hoped to find that this could be stilled in me or that it was some minor matter that could be overlooked.

I will never forget the night when I was first Found. It was Judeth who first touched my mind in the Spirit. I felt as if I knew her and understood her gentle concern. I also knew that she was familiar to me, although I did not recognize her as the harridan who had pummeled me until I saw her in the flesh.

It was not usual for one untrained to soar through the careful structure of the notes of caution, but that night I did, with her. She showed me wonders and steadied me as a child is steadied in its first steps. I looked on the faces of my sleeping family, never leaving my bed, and crested through clouds like a bird. I found the Sight to see that which was so small so to be invisible to the eye, and walked backward in time to know from where I came. Judeth was to be among us, in her later years, the most adept with the opening Spirit, always knowing where and when to show, and turn and give. She had not then been Cloaked in the Mantle, but she made me that night one among the Brotherhood. And in the morning I awoke and told my parents that I must go. I was then 16 years of age and betrothed. I had no heart to marry the girl. It had seemed well enough before, and I had been eager enough to have her. She was deemed to be beautiful by all who knew her. Her face was all eyes and lips that were deeply red and carried in a perpetual pout. She moved in a way that was entirely sensual, and I wanted her and had been counting the days before the marriage. But now she was like a inanimate thing, shallow and uninteresting. The marriage was never realized and she recovered from her wounded feelings easily as, from guilt, my father augmented her dowry with gold.

There was that in me that could not simply see, in the Spirit and in the flesh without knowing what must be done in those times when the future became elastic and refused the Vision of even the most adept of Seers.

We lived in such a time, and this troubled many of us, especially Jeremiah, chief Seer, more than he would say. It was the Coming of the Messiah, of course, that had charged the future with such a myriad of possibilities during the time surrounding his birth.

When I entered the Community, accompanied by my father and his servants the first person I saw was Judeth. And I was struck speechless. I did not greet her but laughed. My father was horrified by this unseemly display. He recognized Judeth and had known from her Uncle that she was dedicated. He spoke to me sharply, recalling me to what was right. Judeth smiled at this and greeted him, ignoring me. The fact the Judeth was numbered among the Illuminated was not discussed with those outside the Community, so my father had no idea that this girl he saw was what she was. But he knew her to be her Uncle's heir and a cousin and so she was owed a courtesy I was flouting. She offered us the hospitality of her home and, when we had entered, offered us water to drink and food. Her husband entered just moments after we had been seated and he carried the babe in his arms. He greeted us gruffly and took the child to Judeth telling her it wanted the breast. As she sat to suckle it she commanded him to serve us. This was shocking to my father. Men did not serve their wives, but wives their husbands. But he went meekly to do her bidding as she talked to us. I saw a swift wave of irritation on her face and felt her annoyance. She had forgotten the customs of our people. But she did not move to change what she did but instead bid her husband to escort us to Jeptha for our housing. My father was eager to leave her but did not question her husband or Jeptha on the meaning of this before he departed and left me there.

I was given a place in a house close by the Grove. I later learned that this had been done at the request of Judeth. We never talked of our meeting in her Uncle's home. Although once when I was annoying her with my clumsy attempts at the second degree of exercises she looked at me and said that my hair would make a handy hold. In time I came to know that the relationship I had seen with her husband was unique to her. No other woman of the Community behaved in this way. But Judeth was alone among women for she was Voiced.

Judeth trained me in many of my Gifts. She was quick and sure in the Spirit and the Voice to whom I was discipled was growing old. I was to succeed him eventually. If on his dying there had been one who was more trained I would not have been chosen. But there was not, and so after almost a year I was cloaked in the Mantle.

I had made myself a student of the work of the Teacher of Truth. This man had dwelt among us for a time and died violently, murdered by those who could not stand to hear the Truth spoken aloud. He was not of us, he was not Essene, but he added to what we were and changed it in subtle and benevolent ways. It was from him that those of us with Gifts began to see the violence done to the Work by our rejection of brotherhood with those who were not of our race or faith. This was never discussed with the laity. It would have caused terrible dissension. We of the Spirit hoped to lead them to this easily as a small and loving Teaching, but were met by continuing waves of fear and rejection when the subject was broached. I know that Jeptha blamed himself for not starting this earlier. But who can know if it would have been possible to teach them to share our view? For us, to work and know another in the Spirit was to accept our essential sameness regardless of aught else. But for those who cannot See the world is a different place, and we had come to accept that this would be slow in changing.

The Teacher of Truth had left us with many insights, coming among us when the Order was less that 50 years old and most among us then of the first and second generation dedicated to the Work.

What he had told us became part of us. The manner in which he taught became the essence of what we were for he taught by the Spirit and also by parable. He showed us, by example, the richness, beauty and virtue of freeing Truth to be known by garbing it in ways that respected the ability of people to Know. He taught this subtlety, by which many layers of Truth could be taught at once, reaching in different individuals different parts of their minds, and spirits and hearts, there to seed and flower.

To teach in Parable was for us a skill to be studied and learned and revered. It was the only means by which those without Gifts could be given insight into the world of the Gifted. The best parables were added to that which would be committed to the memories of the disciples before they went out among the people to Teach the Word. Such journeys were undertaken to both teach the Word and to find those who were of the Gift. The parable was their art and their tool. Such was the subject for endless discussion and consideration, both in the Spirit and in the mind.

Each Voice, at the time of Cloaking in the Mantle added to this richness anew from their own Learnings. It was one of the aspects of our Work that was most enjoyed and anticipated. The nuances and subtleties of the Parable would be considered and viewed from every possible point of view. It was, in its way, a testing of the fiber of the Voice and told us much about the weight he would bring to the Work. For the form of the parable was available to all. It was the Light shed by its use and the enrichment and illumination of the Work through this device that determined who among the Illuminated would be Voiced. We did not like to think of it as a competition, but, in some cases, it was.

In other cases it was nothing of the kind. I was not yet born when Jeptha was Voiced but I knew from the stories that abounded that this had been unquestionable. Some among them had even speculated that he was the Promised One, although he laughed at this speculation. For Judeth, too, this had come without question of its rightness, although even with the evidence of her Gift clear among us it was hard for some few to accept this surety in a woman. It was once suggested, as it had been with Jeptha, that she was the Promised One herself. The horror evidenced by some was felt as a shudder of anguish in the Spirit and in their faces. She was a woman, they cried. Can we know in what form the Promised One will come was the answer. Those of the Gifts knew how minor the differences between the sexes truly were. This was one of the causes for the drawing apart of the Gifted from laity. These differences were the cause of a fundamental error on our part. We made the mistake of treating the laity as if they were children. They were held to a stern discipline of the body and of their time which further accentuated the distance between us. This was not enforced by our wish, but by the Council of Elders, made up entirely of the laity. But it was within our power to have changed it and we did nothing. They gave us obedience and we accepted it without a thought.

In the Library were many writings and teaching from many different parts of the world, and I, more than any of my generation, made a study of these. It was there I found recorded the debate discussed in the Texts of the Teacher of Truth, called Ornibas, who opposed the practice of marrying those of the Gifts only to those ungifted. He had spoken of a manner of Spiritual Enlightenment that used the physical senses to concentrate and enlarge the available energy of the Spirit and thus quicken the development of the Soul. But it was unthinkable to do so with couples so unbalanced in their understanding. When I read this I remembered the girl I did not marry, named Leigh, and imagined for a moment attempting such with her. It made me laugh.

The Testament of Jeremiah

2007-05-08T22:27:00.000-07:00

I was the Seer among us. I had a special Gift although not even the practice of a lifetime had brought it entirely under my control. I often think that if I had not been born to be dedicated to the Brotherhood I would have been lost to the Spirit altogether. Do not be mistaken, the Gift was ready in me and with me always, but I was not by nature drawn to the life of withdrawal. I was often restless with the regularity and predictability of our lives, even in my old age. Most of my Brothers would not have seen it so. Enough happened, I suppose.

I was married for a time but my wife withered and died with our first child still small in her womb. Even the Healer could not stem the ebb of her life into death, and it seemed as if she would not fight to hold fast. Later the Healer told me that she had held the child wrongly and it had not quickened within her womb but adhered to her other parts. I accepted this but still grieved for what might have been. Those few months that we spent together had a magic for me. I was just new to my disciplehood when we were joined. She was of the house of Jeptha, being his great-granddaughter. She was just entering her 15th year when we wed. I was just leaving my 19th. For my own parents there had seemed to be little between them but the marriage bed, and that resented on my mother's part, I think. My mother gave life to six children, three of which lived, before she died in her 47th year of a growth that made her sag with the weight of pregnancy even while it killed her. But there was no child. After she was dead they opened her and exposed a hideous thing, ugly and yellowed with pus. The Healer had been reluctant to open her, knowing there was no child within, but my father insisted, hoping to have it. He was there when they cut her and even he paled to see the thing that had eaten out her substance.

By then I was hard upon my manhood, and already knew that I was Gifted for I had seen my mother's death. This was my first Knowing and it rested hard with me for many months while I watched her first gladden with the expected birth and then sicken and die. Father changed after that. I wish I could say that he missed her but; in fact, he blossomed and spent more and more of his time among the scribes, where he had always been happiest. There he had risen from copying to filing. I think I hated him then. Mother had always been a good wife to him and a loving mother to us, her sons, and she deserved better from him.

My two brothers who had lived were left to my care and that of our cousin, Bernice. They were eleven and nine when she died. In the absence of our father I became a father to them. And it bred in me a maturity beyond my years. When they had passed the age of twelve with out having shown any Gift they were sent to live with our uncle, Benjamin. In later times they took up crafts, becoming skilled carpenters under his tutelage. I missed them, and was glad to know that they married and that their wives gave them both sons and daughters.

Between then and the time I gained my disciplehood at 15 I employed myself in the fields. I would not spend my time in the Library until my father was dead, and this happened in the fifth year of my disciplehood within months of my wife's.

I had seen her death even as we were joined. But what do you do, what do you say? I made her happy and loved her, as she did me. I was new to much of the Gifts but was able to ensure her peace, and when she died I Guided her and left her happy and at rest along with the child who was not born.

The Testament of Joab

2007-05-08T22:24:00.000-07:00

It is fitting that I be numbered last among the Voices. For didn't Jesus say that the first would be last, and the last, first? I was the first to know His Godhood. Even before Judeth found him in the Searching I had known Him. I did not find him, He found me.

I was of the fifth generation, just one younger than Jeptha, but came to my Mantle in my 27th year, and so many years after him. I believe I remained a cipher for many of the Gifted. I was born within the Community to the House of Jaboaz. We were proud of this descent. Jaboaz was spoken of as the Right Pillar of the Spirit and he was pictured holding aloft the world of the Spirit. Jachin chose me to be discipled to him in tribute to my lineage. Jachin was the Left Pillar and was even in his life pictured as holding the Earth in his keeping. My father had served in the potter's sheds and been a careful and meticulous craftsman. He died before I entered my eighth year and I sorely missed him. He had taught me to work the clay when I was little more than a babe, and it was in the pottery sheds that I first came to know the world of the Spirit. I stood one day watching the wheel go around and I lost myself in the motion and the texture of the clay. And I Saw. I Saw the pot being thrown before my eyes fall to the ground and break. It was dried and fired and when it struck the earth it shattered and a scroll was jarred from its resting place and lay upon the ground. I cried out and caught myself and my father stopped his work and took me in his arms as I sobbed.

This was the first time but it was not the last and soon I had awakened the interest of those who dwelt in the Grove. I was discipled to the service of the Gift as soon as I was past my manhood in my thirteenth year.

My father had died of a constriction of the lungs and I had followed him into death in the Spirit and came close to joining him for I did not want to leave him. But I was drawn back by Jachin and from that time it was known that I would be his to teach.

My mother never remarried and I lived with her until she died in her sixty-third year. She simply laid down and slipped into death without suffering or grief. I Saw her to the Light myself. By then I had been Voiced for many years. She was a good woman and was disappointed that I never married. But I had no desire to have a wife. Most women were larger than I and this embarrassed me. My Gift was an oddity to them, and some of its applications made them uncomfortable. “He is neither fish nor fowl,” I heard one say, and then he was hushed and looked to see me listening. In the generation in which I was born it was not so odd. Jeptha could have told them if they had thought to ask.

My Gift had a simplicity to it. To myself I called it the 7th aspect, but this would have scandalized many of my fellows and so I was silent. It is probable that I would never have been Voiced if I had been born a little earlier - or a little later. But I was Voiced from the teaching of Jachin, and this marked me and all of the days of my life. What I did was necessary, but it was better hidden. My Gift was strong and sure, and I felt some pride in doing my part to ensure the success of the Great Work. It was a work given to me from the hand of Jachin, who was one of the two who were the first Voiced of the Community. Jachin had been the Sword in his turn and had decided that this should continue.

My Call was to protect the Order by ensuring that those who opposed us or threatened us in some way, or sought to harm us might sicken and die. Now I have said it. I had done what I was called to do but hated the way in which some of the others avoided me. Oddly enough, the laity never suspected. I was the smallest among the Gifted, smaller that most women. And my appearance was that of a boy and then an old man. To kill at a great distance and without suspicion is was not a thing that could be done so easily. To make a death seem natural and a part of the cycle is a subtle matter. I was careful to always ensure as peaceful a death as was possible and to see the Soul safe to its haven. It is not so difficult a matter of take that which is already weak in the body and bring it down. But in those in whom I worked that were young and who bore no such weakness, my method was different. In them I used their minds to so confuse their perceptions that they met death in the way of the young, as a result of their own misstep. I was the cause and the sword, and this was a bitterness for me - especially when the Coming of the Promised One censured me so. He did not reject the sword, but he rejected utterly the use of the Gift in this manner. I should have died before he was old enough to know me except in the body. I was one who Saw well, both into the past and future as well as that which is in motion. This was needful. You cannot be the Sword of Righteousness and be Unsighted. My Gifts had other applications, he said, and forbade me to act, no matter the cost to any one of us or the Great Work. He forbade me to do aught to change the future that Jeremiah saw for him - and for all of us. And so I was given to watch where before I had acted to protect the core of the Gifted always. It was an irony and, I later saw, a judgment.

I have said he found me and that I was the first to know. He was not born a child into our lives. He was full in his Godhood, if he was a God, and I know not what else to call one like him. When I first felt him in my Spirit and knew him for what he was he was yet unborn, not yet danced or planted in the womb. And in that moment he showed me to myself as I appeared to him. And in my Spirit I wept, and wished for death, for the coming of a forgetfulness and a healing. He showed me the deaths I had brought and some small measure of the grief of these cut off before their time. And also I then knew how I was joined with these for all time. He said it was better to work through the bodies of men in the things that were of the body. He gave me to know that the Spirit was made a thing of evil when it was used so. I begged him for my own death, but this he would not have, and he told me that my years would be many and that I could serve him, and the Great Work in ways that would serve to heal me even while I was within the veil of this life.

So I awaited his birth and Saw with a clarity that had been denied me before, the future that awaited us. It was I who came to know those who would become our downfall and with whom our lives were to be so close bound. In these were numbered those I cannot call either friends of enemies. They were ciphers, as were we in many ways who moved within the boundaries of life laid out for them and did what they would - or did not.

Instead of killing, I was given to know that I must act as Guide in the times to come, not for those among us, but for those without. He told me that we faced a time of trial and that in these times the guilty must also have an advocate. He showed me the manner in which the lives of these would mesh with ours and then he showed me the future, and I knew and Saw the rightness and the reason in his prohibition, for it supported the Design which we would come to accept.

From the Testament of Jeptha

2007-05-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

The generation after that in which I was Voiced was one of dissension. There arose in the laity a consciousness of the changes that had come into being within the Gifted, and many grumbled at this. They had known a vision of worldly domination and were dissatisfied to change this for a Higher Truth. There was contention among us and, for a time, it was thought that we might become split into two different groups. This contention was cut off before it came to fruition, but the manner in which this was accomplished was the lesser of two evils and not a thing of which we were proud. But it must be told, and there is some alleviation of blame which he will not think to tell. So it is mine to do. Joab did not choose his calling. It was given to him by Jachin, who was the eldest among the Voiced then. The Brotherhood came into being in a world that was all uncertainty. It had felt the betrayal of a homeland and a people that refused to know them after their long imprisonment. This had been a kind of abandonment. Before the coming of the Teacher of Truth such acts in the Spirit were not necessary, or possible. Such hazards to us would have been killed by the means of the flesh. But the coming of the Teacher introduced new thought among us. The violent taking of life to achieve our ends was rejected. The Teacher never imagined that what he brought would be used in this manner. But the means of pruning such lives quietly was achieved, and he was not among us to warn us. The fear and loathing that this could cause was not seen. To kill in the Spirit seemed a lesser evil, but it sowed the seeds of that which was to be our undoing. And we were wrong to blame Joab for this. He was the Sword, but we, the Voiced, were the hand that thrust.

This pruning became too easy, to much relied on. Instead of persuasion we used death, and not a death that was clean and understandable but a death that brought in its wake terror. We faced a time of insurrection and had created this ourselves from our ignorance.

Judeth wondered once at my dismissal of the objections of an Elder of the council. This was possible for me because I knew past any doubt that if the unspoken line were breeched, the man would die. I would have killed him myself if I were pushed to it. But it would never be necessary for Joab was there, and this he took as his labor. Joab told you that he killed. But did he tell you that the first and most of these `prunings' were from within the Order? No. He could not. It was a struggle for him to even think of it.

The first man who it fell to his lot to remove was his own cousin, and they had been close as children. It was for this reason that the man was defiant. And so for this he died.

He questioned the wisdom of allowing women among the Gifted. He objected to the changes in the Ritual, mandated by the Teacher of Truth, which made clear that our Design was a Work of the Spirit and not of the world. He wrote to those outside the Order on this and with this he signed his death warrant.

I had tried to enter him and change him but he resisted and I could not do this against his will since he knew what I was about. I lacked the subtlety. In a later day Judeth would have made this unnecessary, for she would have entered him without his knowing and done what I failed to do. But I was not so adept. So Joab killed him. His friends among the laity knew, or at least suspected. And from that time there was no more true dissent, just sporadic and meaningless talk.

But the deaths were few, and most remained unsuspected. And the Gifted did not intrude into the affairs of the laity except when there was need. They were left to rule themselves, which they did with a harshness I, for one, thought unnecessary. They were men with a Mission. And if it was somewhat different that what was within the Design, we did not tell them this.

So Joab was not to blame alone. We came jointly to this decision, and we all shared the blame. The Order survived. And this was our purpose.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

We were not an Order separated from the community of Jews. We were an Order that received our support from the larger community, made up of those descended from the thirty-six families. The families were spread over half the world. They had returned from the Captivity easily conversant with the ways and languages of other people. They used this to their profit, for they went among others easily and established their presence in every trading center. Most of us lived in the world, and did the work of the world. And whether they followed a craft or traded they were tied to each other and to the Families that were the Houses; for our entire world tithed to the Order. And a number of us, thirty-six of the Spirit and others, many more, of laity, kept the Community. And the Community was of the Spirit and was the essence of our faith.

The age into which our Order was born was a confusion of languages, sects and traditions. There was no Hebrew faith, no sense of unity as a people. The practice of worship had been adulterated by the influences of every passing caravan, it seemed. The contradictions in belief and mixing of faiths made that time a Babel. And the captivity of the people of Israel, the Chosen of God, we would say, was made anew in this age by their own hands. There could be no cohesion, no acceptance of a common way without the coming of the Messiah. We, the people of the Order, the Brotherhood, were the buttress that was established to make the way clear for Him and for the purification through him of the Children of God.

The Brotherhood was composed of two parts, the laity who accepted this statement of the purpose without change, and the Gifted, who had changed with their greater understanding of the Mission and the Truth.

But there was much in which we were united always. In temples consecrated to the Holy Presence there had grown up an infestation of priests, I cannot call them Teachers, who traded for favors and despised and mocked everything we held to be Sacred. It was a blasphemous concatenation. Gilded bulls and harlots were tolerated. It was the despair of our ancestors that drove them to act.

The Numbered Families had joined together over 200 years before, refining and honing their purpose. From that beginning the Gifted had reached out in the Spirit to know others who shared the Search in other lands. As I have said, this was not understood by the laity or the greater number of the Gifted, either. There were many paths, we, the Voiced, would say, but only one Path; and this hallowed by repetition in our ritual and so known also in that form by the Gifted and laity as well. We of the Gift respected the differences between peoples and searched always for the common element of Truth. We had come to find our fellowship beyond narrow measures such as race and soil to see our Community in terms of our purpose of mind and Spirit.

This had come to us through the Teacher of Truth, who had come and dwelt among us and here died. He had seen beyond that which had before been accepted and showed us the Greater Truth which is the Light and the Law. And with him we understood more fully that which was to be our Mission.

* * *

2007-05-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

I have said that Judas was my son. Born of my body and nurtured at my breast. I loved him. Motherhood brought an unexpected richness to my life that bound me more closely to the world than I had been. In those years my husband grew in the spirit. He loved the child, carrying it everywhere with him during the day. This was necessary since I could not Work with a child in hand. He brought Judas to me to nurse and the babe slept within the circle of my arms. I also came to have some love for my husband who I saw in this child. Judas was a loving, clinging, intelligent boy. He was sensitive in some ways and yet not open to the Teaching, not even to the small Mysteries. After the initial shifts through Soul Birth his energy gravitated to this world exclusively. Things of the Spirit were myth for him, and he was not different than most men in this. Many among the laity who had not seen what could be done doubted the Gifts and their power. And it was better so.

Judas hated the Romans with an intensity that was almost a tangible presence. Romans were always with us. On market day you would see one or two walking through the stalls as if they were personally masters of the world. It was a natural enough projection. It even amused us of the Order. We simply avoided them, humoring their arrogance was no different for us that the arrogance of the Temple Priests.

I remember once, one roman soldier walking single, in the market place in Bethlehem, which was unusual and brooked no good for our people usually, was followed by a group of young children. He would stop, and they would also, darting behind the stalls to stare at him. He was a young man who perhaps had something of the child still in him. He knew they followed and bought some sugared fruit, eating a little of it. When he started to walk on, slowed and turned as if about to strike, and grabbed the leader. The child kicked and screamed as if he was to be eaten alive. The Roman laughed and set him down, giving him the fruit. Neither could understand the language spoken by the other, but they smiled together for a moment before the Roman walked off, leaving the child to gloat over his candy and be pummeled by his friends. Romans were men, and not all were bad.

But Judas could not see this. He was a passionate believer in freedom for the physical body, not seeing the real dimensions of the spirit. No matter how often I tried to help him understand the greater slavery of spirit to which the Romans - and the greater number of our own people were subject - he simply dismissed me with a shrug. He could not see. It was as if there was a blindness of the spirit. And it was this that was the most painful for me.

For such as we, who soared through unimaginable beauty and understanding when we met in the Spirit, it was as if they were impaired. The touching of minds, of spirit, is so much more that the physical senses. But later, much later, I came to understand that if one could not see in this way talking about it would be first, depressing and then evoke anger. To ask him to accept the existence of a world he could only know second hand was to ask him to leap from a cliff into the void. And this, of course, it was blasphemy to even suggest.

Judas was an angry boy who grew to become a man possessed by a rage so large it came close to destroying him. But this is not a mother's chronicle but the Testament of a Voice speaking from beyond the tomb. It is a chronicle of events that I have promised to give. So here is the story of the Birth and Death of Him called Jesus and the Speaking through her who was Mary Judeth.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

The Birth of the Child

He was born is the bleak and dying hours of the night, just before the first touch of morning light, not in the longest night of winter but in the lengthening days of earliest spring. I had already Watched with him through Searching and Dance and steadied him toward his birthing. He needed little help and was always aware with the gentle humor of a man grown wise with age.

His mother was a cousin; Young and joyful with the delight of the child to come. It was our way to hem the ripening mother around with good thoughts and protect her as a way of buffering the hardship of transition for the child.

She knew and did not know that this child would be special. She wanted it, in the way a child wants something without really believing it possible, as all young women dreamed of being the vessel, but the reality, no, she never imagined it.

Men and women each share their humanity and are at the same time different. There were the women's rituals specific to the time of bleeding and birthing. These spoke to the power of women to give life; the special gift of the Spirit that was theirs alone. Mary had not been brought into the Woman's Rite at the time of her first bleeding, contrary to what was usual for us. So we gave her this time during the hours of her birthing.

Every child was a new light into the future for us; A promise of continuing life against the uncertainties of the world in which we lived. The community was divided in knowing, those who had achieved some Gifts were aware of the excitement. Those who had not achieved Gifts walked through those days oblivious to what was about to happen. We who Watched and Searched said nothing but the tremble of anticipation touched each of us.

I was heavy with child myself, weighing the burden and the joy together as I watched with Mary. She came to us already ripe with child, arriving late at night with the arduous labor already close upon her. She was with us just days when her labor began. As with first children her labor was long although towards the end she came to attune herself with the process, working with it. She bore down to bring him forth, squatting down with the birthing mat beneath her. She looked up then between the strong tightenings of her womb and smiled. And I saw in her a knowledge growing stronger by the moment. Her water never burst, so he was born within the membranes. I broke it to give him air and his eyes opened ready to see.

He entered the world with eyes already intelligent with thought and wisdom. My eyes met those of the child and I knew him - and his mouth opened in a wail and I knew also, with some relief, he was a babe yet.

I wrapped him and gave him to his mother to suck while I attended to the afterbirth, which came out clean and sudden, moments after his birth. There was little bleeding and after a few minutes they both slumbered. Joseph, exiled to the common room with my husband, was relieved and glad, and the night had given way to the red glow of morning before I slept.

The next day the new mother and child were visited, as is the custom with us, by representatives of the Families. The Voices already knew the babe and said nothing. He was among us as a babe would be. We admitted no Mystery although some might have wondered.

To us with Sight he was glazed in the palest gold Light. But the Discipline taught that acknowledgment was improper and in the body we complied. But in the Spirit this child now among us was a Presence from the first day. There came those who had shared the vision of his conception and growth within the womb to see with eyes the physical body he wore. We welcomed them, offering the simple hospitality that was ours to give.

Among these were numbered those from the Mystery Schools of Egypt, Greece, Persia, and Britain. They came over a period of months, never overtly admitting the force that had drawn them. It is said that they came bearing gifts, and this is true. They came. There were 26 from the thirteen Schools which then existed. It never ceased to amaze me how different and yet the same were the ways of the Spirit. With some schools the medium for Seeing might be enumeration, for others prayer, but no matter which way they used the places at which they arrived were the same - and through them we Spoke.

There were gifts of precious commodities, such as gold and jewels; myrrh as well as gifts of rich cloth, even silks. These things were given and accepted as a bond reaching into the future to be redeemed by the pledge of him now embodied. They were accepted as such and laid away for future use.

This next is hard to tell, as it was hard to live. Not we alone anticipated the Coming. As I said, those of other Schools Saw also that One Awaited was imminent among us and they came. And in doing so they stirred the powers of temporal might to action. Sensing the danger although unsure of the source, we sent the new mother and child with Joseph into Egypt.

And less that a month later the Romans came.

Moving swiftly, coldly, they killed our boy children, all under one year, and our anguish ran off of us in rivers of tears that seemed to have no end. We did not move to defend; we could not, having not the means, except in the Spirit, where the use of such would reveal us. But their killing extended to one other and in one day I lost my new born son, Jassiash, and my husband, Jobadiah.

He moved to stop the killing of our son even as the soldier raised his sword to strike and took the blow himself. It did not save the babe, for he was also dead in the next moment. Judas was there, hidden, and saw them die.

In the months that followed I was consumed with grief and guilt. I had done what was needful and I was torn and bleeding within. And the husband who I had never loved weighed me down with guilt for I should have been different to him.

As a new widow the custom of our people would have mandated my withdrawal from the communal life. But since I was the Voice this privilege was not within my taking. The days continued each with its charges and each carrying its reminder of my loss. The small cradle carved special for this child by the father who loved him unto death, stood by the fire unmoved for three months until Judas took it and, in a rage reduced it to splinters.

Perhaps if I had been less drawn within by my loss I would have been able to reach out to Judas. He had so loved his father and glowed with pride at the birth of his brother. Jassiash had just learned to know him and smile in recognition when he died. But night after night I would put down the work of the day, prepare food without a word, and send him to sleep. Judas was consumed with anger and grew distant. He took for himself all that had been his father's and kept it carefully, for remembrance.

He spoke of it only once, blaming me for letting them die. He said the Voice could do all things and to stand passive in the face of evil was itself evil. He was just 7 years old then. And in answering him I knew I had failed to reach him. Although he was not Gifted he knew that, if I had chosen, I could have saved both the tiny brother and his beloved father.

What I could never make him see was that I could not have saved the others as well. And if I had sent them away to safety I would have betrayed both the others and the integrity of the Design. The Gift of Power demands from each of us the discipline necessary to the wielding of that power. Action, or refusing to act, carries with it the balancing costs. I understood that there would be a price to be paid before they died and I paid it gladly seeing, as I did, the future which my acts would work to create.

But Judas could not see, and words could not heal the hurt in him. The hatred which was in him was centered on the babe whose birth had brought the visits and the Romans in his wake. He hated his cousin and could not bear to hear him talked of. I feared that he would harm him if the chance offered.

In the way of our people when Judas reached his 12th year and was Unsighted he was sent away to my cousin to grow to manhood educated as a merchant, eventually to assume the position of my Uncle, held for him since that good man's death.

* * *

2007-05-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

After three years in Egypt the family of Jesus returned to the Community. They lived among us until Jesus gained his majority at 13 and, by our tradition, announced this ascendancy.

These were good years. My grief faded and I knew the delight of seeing Judas when he came among us on occasion. I had had little time for him when he was young. But now that he was a man I yearned to know him and bind him to me. Even after the death of my babe and husband I had not been permitted to take time from the Work. And I knew he had needed me then, but I had nothing to give him. I closed off the guilt and lived with it.

Now, viewed from a distance and knowing what was to come after, it is hard to acknowledge my love of Judas without having its taste tainted by bitterness. I have examined the course that I chose over and over again and still I cannot find one that would have left him whole, and myself free of guilt.

He had not accepted readily that his place was not among us and, in moving out into the world to find a place for himself, he carried that anger with him. He was well lettered and intelligent, giving much time to considering the public debate over points of scriptural inclusion and philosophical issues. There was much in him to make me proud. And eventually he came to control his resentment of Jesus and could meet him amiably.

The Teaching of Jesus was the richest experience of my life. We did not so much Teach him as Guide his mind, always quick and knowing, into the seemingly endless facets of argument at the intellectual level and then at the Spirit. In him the two fit together with no contradictions, no discontinuity. He could smile at the man, see the child within, accept the pettiness and cherish the whole person. He did not see us as contradictory and vain, but noble and courageous. He was the first to praise and the last to blame.

He was not perfect, far from it. He was a rowdy, who tumbled and raced with the most physical. He was not above low humor either. Once he conspired to replace the chicken eggs with duck eggs for two weeks running, convincing Brother Jepka that his chickens were inspired. But even Jepka laughed when the joke came out. It was impossible to stay angry with Jesus.

All the children followed him about and not a few of the young men, even when he was still very much a child himself.

He could put off this childhood at the mere touch of a thought, though and when Called came instantly to attention and Joining.

When he returned to us after the years in Egypt, he had made the transition to Speech and was grasping with some confusion at the guideposts, not quite finding his feet without memory.
His mother, Mary, was a strong arm for him to lean on. She was not Gifted, but she understood through our teaching and counsel what he needed. Her family had allowed her to come with her young betrothed to be married here in the Community. They were much in love but were never to be joined in the spirit. But they were wed in the law and that was enough.

The father's name was Joseph after he joined the Community. Before that he was called Issah. He was the child of merchants, a younger son, and had been committed to the Order when he was still a child and a Calling showed him to be sensitive to the Voice Within. Both of them were of my family, and I had been the Voice for five years by then.

It always amuses me now to hear it said that Jesus was not the bodily son of Joseph, but of God. But then if you believe that the body controls more than the raw materials the spirit builds with I suppose it is not so unreasonable. But I tell you this; his features reflected his parents, both of them, in every particular. You could not look at him and say, ``I cannot tell where that nose came from," for you saw it living in more mature form on the face of his father, as his wavy hair surely had its origin on the lovely head of his mother.

From the Testament of Jeremiah

2007-05-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

If my Gift had not been so strong, I might have been tempted to the Aspect of Guiding. But it had been many years since the Brotherhood had had a Seer as able and so I acquiesced in this. My duty was not always painful. I was often able to foresee before the thousand threads of fate had locked the course and so allow for it to be changed. It was I who saw the coming of the Romans after the Birth and gave the warning that resulted in the Flight to Egypt. I also saw the other deaths, but if they had been also moved the flight would have been known, and the Child followed. All the Voices knew this, but only they. I have never allowed myself to know the pain and grief this must have brought to Judeth, who knew even as she suckled her child in the warmth and security of her breast how soon it would end and how terrible the death would be.

Some women would have stilled the child by overlaying it to avoid this. But she would not stand in the way of fate in this regard. It was against her view of what was right. I think that her husband was not sorry to die, because he knew, in those last minutes, that she could have saved their child and did not. He had loved the babe absolute, and for him no other value was more precious.

It was odd, but to be the Seer made the laity much more fearful of me than of any other Voice. I have to laugh a little at this. My Gifts could only predict, while those of most of the Voices could rend the fabric of their lives. But, you do not fear the tiny spider that can kill while you scream and run from the harmless serpent.

I was not close to Joab, none of us were. But it amused me to see how he was treated by the laity. He was the spider who kills unsuspected. If there had been one who would have been thought to act the assassin it would have been either me or John. I was tall, almost as tall as John. But where he was thin with a knifelike face I was big. Not fat, none among us was fat. I was big and muscled like a man who gains muscle over a lifetime of labor. I know they feared me because I felt it when I went among them. But Joab, small and always self-effacing; he was the one most likely to find them at his door asking for those boons only a Voice might give.

The gatherings of the Voiced were a time of intensity. And they changed from the first days of my Mantling to the last. We moved towards each other in the Spirit. After the Mantling of Jacob, who was the last to come among us in this way.

The training of Jesus did not fall much to me. He was able as a Seer long before his manhood. He did come to me from time to time to test his Sight, and some aspects of the future troubled him because he could not see them clear. Here I was of some little help. Together we traced the threads of time and watched as they became bound and unmovable. The smallest threads were the last to bind thus, and the larger ones the first. Jacob once said that a Greek wrote that with a large enough lever he could move the world. So Jesus learned that to change the path of time required either great lengths of thread or a lever no man could hold. I think this amused him.

From the Testament of John

2007-05-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

When it became known that the time was upon us that the Messiah would be born I was still a disciple at the Study, working towards the Higher Mysteries. When I saw the babe held in the arms of his mother he was just another babe to me. But later, when I saw him walking sturdily about and romping with his cohort, then I saw him as he was.

His growing up among us after the return from Egypt marked us all, in a way. Before the Community had been a refuge with its quiet and orderliness. Even with some children and those married among us, this was true. With the childhood of Jesus we were drawn closer to life. He was vital and aware and alive among us. Every day was impressed with his acts and with his mind. He made us his, every one, man, woman and child he saw and touched. While he was among us, and of us, I was different. Later much happened that shamed me, but then, all our energies were needed to deal with him. We, his teachers, grew with him - because of him. We had always accepted that the Truth was immutable and unchangeable, and it was, but we had not known how different this would appear given the eyes of the Master to enlarge the world of the Spirit.

Jesus went immediate from his childhood studies to the laying on of hands. He did not change, it was as if he had simply finished with one thing and having understood it in its entirety simply put it aside. The poor and the sick and maimed were his and he loved them absolute. To look into his eyes when he beheld them was to see both his love and complete empathy as well as the human dignity in each of them. I purged in myself the hatred, yes, hatred I felt then. I looked at that which in myself could breed such and ripped it out again and again only to have it grow, insidious in its strength.

I remember once watching him with a leper I had been treating. He had just entered his ninth year and had just broached the discipline of Healing in the Spirit. I had prepared a simple of herbs to ease the man's suffering and had bid Jesus to apply it, cautioning him to be careful when handling the open wounds. Jesus went to the man, who sat upon the ground, and knelt before him and gently took his face in his hands and smoothed on the paste. I saw what he did and started, angrily, to reproach him. But before I could speak the leper, who had always seemed afraid with me, was looking up into his eyes and I could see that a Healing had started within the man, both in spirit and in the body. I was struck dumb, and said nothing.

This is the kind of boy he was. It has been said that you could not know Jesus and not love him. This could not be truer. But he also could awake in men - and women too, a rage, perhaps not so much at him as at themselves ultimately. It can be a terrible pain to the mind and to the heart to see one who is able to do with complete and absolute ease what is a life's greatest pride - and surpass one in the wink of an eye. This was my fate.

I was humbled, and I was not a man who could easily forgive this. I bent my will to that of him I came to call Master because I could not do else. But in my heart I hated him as much as I loved him and it was not the gift of joy it should have been. This was my failing, although not my worst. Where I could reduce boils and ease the anguish of a fever he could raise the dead. He knew this in me and had forgiven it before I was even aware. I felt his love and acceptance while he was still a boy -but this did not ease my pain and my anger.

The years after he went from us should have been easier for me given my feelings, but I found that this was not so. What I hated and resented I also hungered for. And ultimately, to my horror, I found that in hating him I hated myself. In the years Jesus was among us I was more alive, more aware. If I used this in ways that were evil, it was my own failing.

When he returned I went to him and asked for a purging, I asked him to whip me for my wickedness. He answered me with an embrace and a kiss. It was then I discovered the love that accepts everything, making no demands. I came to know what is possible. And in Seeing this in him coupled with all that he was, I came to forgive myself. He knew me, knew every evil thing I had done and forgave and knowing me thus, loved.

The Teaching was for me a time of special communion with my Brothers. I was solitary by habit and was uneasy with the give and take of familiars. I was more at ease among the scribes when our hands were not to the work because the discussion would be well defined and set. Their work interested me in any case. They were set to collecting and reproducing the Library to offset the normal wear and tear of usage as well as to make ready the six sets of scrolls that would accompany the six Missions when they went out after the Coming.

There was that in me that wanted to love. And Jesus saw this and answered it.

From the Testament of Judeth

2007-05-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Coming of the Priest

It was in this time that Ruth came to me again. She felt a need to be alone for a time. The children, there were now five, were all well. Her husband prospered. But she was anguished for she was haunted by the memories which were not quite memories of the family she had never known. She found these with me for I gave her the means. And she wept to remember the embrace of her mother and she knew the cruel pain and pure joy of seeing the faces of them who she had loved. There were tears, but more important there was a healing.

It was from Ruth then that I first heard the name of Simon and knew that Judas was often in his company. Ruth told me that he was a Priest in the Temple and often at court currying favor. Judas was with him there also. They appeared to have become close. Simon was known as a powerful influence in the Great Temple and thus had entry in the Court. I wondered at this, for Judas had never been a boy or man to spend his time idly.

After she was healed we talked long of the times which were past and also of the things that happened at the court. Her husband's success had brought them even closer to those in power. He had an exclusive right to sell a dye which was eagerly sought and with this had found the means to move into other parts of the trade.

When she left she was younger in my eyes, and she had promised me news of Judas, who was in my mind.

Many came to us who were bound by ties of family. But others came, too, demanding to be heard, asking for succor; money, food, a place to live. Some came lifting angry voices while others came lisping honeyed, cloying tones asking for much, giving nothing and eyeing our simple goods even as they spoke.

Remembering that time I can see in the mind's eye the ligaments of one who disgusted and repelled me from the moment I laid eyes on him. He was vested with the fine linens of a Temple Priest, etched with threads of gold and his hands were clean and perfectly manicured; the nails shone with burnishing.

He had come, he said, to be instructed, as a humble disciple to the renowned Voice, Judeth, he came to this humble abode on the instruction of the Elder, and now waited for me to take him to this Voice, the most Clear Speaker and Guide.

Taken unaware I paused. There was a dark, smoky core of hate in this man. He was dangerous. A danger to us I heard in my mind and answered, amused. Nodding my head in benediction and in greeting I introduced myself. His face grew red and his neck swelled in size. But you are a woman, he cried and his voice dripped venom and horror. For all the days of this life, I assured him, and then I smiled and entered his mind.

* * *

2007-05-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

There are some few things that do not admit to a telling. I did not harm him. To use a Gift in that way was unthinkable for me. But I turned his mind, which was set on a hateful course, to one more benign. He did not realize his thoughts were open to any Voice and to any number of Brothers of the Smaller Mysteries. and did not know that I had plumbed him and turned them.

But even after I had done this and shifted his building rage I was not at ease. His face had burned itself on my mind and, for a moment, I trembled. I thought to look through him to the future but the smoky eddies of his mind so repelled me that I hesitated and then left him as he was, for the most part. I did not then imagine that any man calling himself Priest could seriously hazard us. Priests were things of the world, and I had never known one to be conversant with the things of the Spirit.

He posed also as an academic, a man of books, he thought Gifts could be used to make his rivals sicken and die, and that this was a training he could attempt. This belief was not unusual among the common people and often we would be visited by such seeking a talisman or potion. We denied the possibility utterly. And even as I lied to such as he I felt the anger to knowing that in the past the Gifts had been so used. I argued against this always.

After that we sat together and talked for some while, he giving vent to his anger and rage, now less murderous and intent, and I, listening. His anger was aimed at another among the High Priests. The man, named Ciesptro, had angered him by managing to manipulate for himself the appointment Simon wanted. He lusted for revenge, and I knew that eventually he would have it. I hoped to have turned its form into one less lethal.

I knew that this man was a friend to my son, and wondered at this and feared for Judas. For Simon was evil. I was tempted to change him again then, for I saw that he would want to use Judas badly. But I had already changed some things in him and there were limits to what I could do without damaging his essence.

I undertook then to show him a child's mystery, how the mind can recreate the world for us, and doing so ease our pain. He might have known once, the use of it is common with children, even those ungifted and untrained.

He left soon after, thanking me for the heart's ease that was his. I did not hold to hope for much lasting change, but was glad for what good I had done. Simon turned to glance at me just before he disappeared beyond the Library, and I was visited by a terrible coldness that hung over him and yet was not of him. I had glimpses the future and for that moment was again tempted, but this time to the craft of Joab.

When I turned I sensed a presence behind me. He had stood there ever since Simon had entered the house, in full sight. He was big for his age, tall and muscled, smooth though, with the energy flowing. My shock was complete. Not since I was a child myself had anyone been able to come upon me unaware, and I had failed to see him in full sight until, until now I realized, he allowed it. He had been guarding me. And my amusement reached out to him even as I was overcome with shock. Jesus was just in his eighth summer.

I invited him to sit, offering water for his thirst in the ritual manner and as if he were full adult. He nodded and sat, taking the water and sipping to the last drop. Then, like a child, he laughed. I caught the humor and joined, laughing at my discomfiture.

Jesus had mastered the art of Walking Within the Cloak. It was not a small Mystery, and I had not known he had undertaken its study. He recounted then for me the Mysteries he had within his grasp, and I could not keep the surprise out of my mind, for he was well versed in all but the highest. All that asked a command of one's own flesh were his, he was able to give Voice and Speak and Search, although he assured me he would not do so until I had Walked with him in each of their ways.

He then asked me for further Mysteries. I Spoke to his Spirit and showed him what could not be until he, himself had set the time. Then he asked, as is proper for a disciple to ask the Master, if as a Teacher he might become a seeker after the mysteries of other schools.

There are some questions, which to be able to ask is to give yourself consent and having said that we both knew that I was acknowledging him to be his own Master. And so it was that Jesus, in the first days of his ninth year undertook the mysteries that proscribe the relationships between all things, those unseen because of distance and size and those things we cannot see which reside in us and are of us. For this kind of knowing the presence of the body is necessary, and one among us, Jeptha, the Eldest Voice, had studied once with one who remembered the discipline of the numbered relationships and gave Jesus the means to explore the work of that school. Jacob also entered into this part of his Teaching later.

Jeptha was soon himself left far behind. Jacob also joined in the Teaching of this work to Jesus, but he to was overmatched. This was a discipline many of us feared, but Jeptha and Jacob loved it. We were all conversant in the small mysteries of this study, using numbers for proscribe and attune relationships of the spirit. But we were as babes ourselves so ignorant were we of the way he chose to walk.

While such as this does provide a means to expressing Truth, it also holds within it a terrible potential for destruction. And we saw then the potential for this within the mind of man, which we had overlooked before. It must always be, we agreed, the servant of the spirit, for if ever it becomes the master; the Spirit itself will be at risk. But this became one of the subjects on the Great Debates, and so it was to occupy us for many years.

* * *

2007-05-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Our Husbander had reason to complain more than once over the hides and parchments that were used up in this search by Jesus. For hours Jesus would be still, not moving, gazing at something too far in the distance to see, and then of a sudden, he was writing. But too soon we were nostalgic for those times and no longer grudged him the cost of hides and parchment. For through them he discovered that this art had applications we had not imagined, and everything around us was levered and measured, moved and used to make something else. The wheels in the pottery shed disappeared and were later found converted to the use of one of his devices. After this he was counseled to ask for the supplies that he needed.

For three years the quiet and measured silence of our lives was lost to an eruption of activity. We never knew what would happen next. And if that was not enough, he lead the other children into this study, creating a little school for them beneath the orchard trees where they met after completing their chores every morning. They met as if they were soldiers and he the general who led them. He lectured and they listened. It was here I first heard Jesus use the form of the parable in teaching. They were soon joined by some few of the younger disciples, though this was frowned on. But Teaching was a part of the discipline, and Teaching was a skill he also studied, so this was tolerated. Although Jesus was chief among them John, just two years older than he, also seemed to find no end to the means by which he might try us. I do not mean to say by this that they intended, or even did real harm, they simply tested us, the Rule, and even the nature of the world itself, in every way one could imagine.

But, in the end, we were not losers by this. Many tasks we had accepted as changeless and veiled in time were lifted from our shoulders by their industry. Where before we carried water in irrigate our small holdings now we flooded them with water at a touch through use of a clever system of canals. Jesus designed the pump that moved the water. He learned from the Romans as well as from all others, and nothing of the Roman arts, war or engineering, was left unstudied. I blush to admit I cannot tell how most of these wonders were accomplished. And from this sense of irritation at being less and knowing less grew in me a discontent with myself and the Brotherhood. And also at this time was born in my Brothers a sense of anger at the changes this child brought among us.

For Jesus was not as we had thought he would be. He was not centered entire on the Spirit. He was of the world, and in the world, in a way we had never been and never wanted to be. While we had occasional congress with other schools he questioned the Rule that limited the Teachings to those who were already Sighted. This was another of the issues that sparked and fed the Great Debates.

At first this was a dialogue not unlike that of other disciples. But as time passed it became something more. Always we had moved within a clear consensus. And only the Gifted were heard to raise their voices. But this had also changed. The laity had started to come among us at the invitation of Jesus, at first to listen and then to join their voices with ours. Not all came; the older stayed away. But the younger came and started to question what we had thought firm as the foundation of the world. We would debate, in and out of the Spirit and instead of seeing a clear path we all might walk, we grew more divided. And now, the more we talked, the more we touched each other in the Spirit the more we were divided. Many among the Gifted objected to this change but were answered by this boy who was more than a man. Some number of us sided with Jesus, and others, most of them older, grew angry and resentful and the havoc he had wroth among us. Where before there was peace, now there was disturbance and questions.
From the beginning we had known him, known that he had been born to be invested with the Trust and Power. Now many waive red, wanting to withhold this investiture until he had grown in years and judgment, they said. But I could see that this meant to withhold it until he bent to their will. And thus began the chapter of our history that was ever after referred to as The Great Debates. And looking back on that time I now see that we were like moles seeking to withhold the field from the farmer who waited, patient in the shadows of the orchard to spare our feelings.

And so the debates raged among us. These grew more and more intense until they ended after one week that threatened to tear us asunder. First the purpose of the missions was called into question and the collecting of the scrolls for the Library was not only questioned, it was attacked. The writing down of this was seen as taking from it the essential spiritual nature of what was done. The fear was expressed that those discipled to the studies would cease the practice of committing all to memory and thus never become the knowledge. This had already been seen among the disciples of the library. Many among these were continually rereading the scrolls and remembering very inaccurately the body of knowledge. Instead of examining each word and tasting its essence and extracting the nuance and meaning they interpreted what had been into something else. But some among us pressed to commit all to the scrolls not excepting even the Mysteries as far as this could be done. The Voiced said nothing. We knew how impossible it was to reduce that which is of the Spirit to markings on leather or parchment.

Those among the Gifted who were most desperate and intent on gaining access to these Mysteries welcomed the debate. They hoped that Jesus would provide the means by which they might become Illuminated and enter into the High Mysteries. But this he would not do. He taught this by singling out Syric, the Disciple who was most vocal. Jesus said to him, ``What you seek cannot be given for it is said and it is true that while you live within this body your Spirit does not age and become old. For your Spirit is eternal." Syric agreed to with this, since he knew it to be true. Then Jesus said, ``Your flesh had been trained in the way of the flesh with the things of the flesh, for when you were a child you learned first to crawl and then to walk, is this true?" Syric assented. And Jesus said, "And now you are a man and no longer have need to any training of the flesh." And again Jesus assented. Jesus rose then for he had been seated, and went to Syric and touched him. ``So the flesh knows. But the Spirit does not, and you ask that which is of the Spirit be made as flesh so that you may learn?" Syric was cast down but then he understood. All of this troubled us. We thought than our world could not become more unsettled.

And then Jesus questioned the customs which bound us as a people. He saw those who were not of us, those of the faith but outside the Families, those outside of the faith, all mankind as more than brothers. He saw them as himself. This came to those of us who were Voiced with more ease than to the laity or those in the lower degrees of the Gifts. We already knew this to be true, although it was a Hidden Mystery. When this was broached the Voiced could not remain silent and entered into the debate telling something of the Mysteries that related to this question. This spurred more debate, for none among the laity and few among the Gifted understood that the Spirit moves freely among the peoples of the world. And so what had been close held within the Voiced was given even to the laity and some portions of this found its way into the history of the Great Work.

Then, when we had thought to find some peace, the question of the inherent rightness of the customs of our people came to be questioned as well. Jesus told those who were assembled to hear Him that women and men were not bound to be different. He questioned the right of husbands to demand obedience and of fathers to give daughters in marriages that they did not chose. He told us that women should be free to choose to marry or to remain unwed. He said that they should own the product of their work as men are allowed to do. There were some women among the listeners and this caused excitement and contention. Morick and Levi, who were chief among the Elders at that time, actually moved to attack him, so wroth were they to hear what he said. But even as they moved they were as turned to stone. Jesus then entered them both at the same time and gave them the minds of their wives to dwell in. And they wept, so great was their pain and degradation. For their wives lived within a rigidity that made the Rule seem lax. Their time and work and even their bodies were the property of men and they could not say a word that reflected what was honestly of their own spirits.

After this the debates were ended. Those among the younger laity still came among us but there were changes. A woman could laugh and not fear. No man among us made pretense of owning a woman through blood or marriage for they had seen that while they had rejected slavery of the flesh they had kept a slavery of both the flesh and the spirit for their mothers, their wives and their daughters. For he told us that servitude came in many different forms and that outright slavery was, perhaps, the lesser of these evils for those who were called slave could more clearly see the shackles that bound them. And to the Gifted he said, ``you have taken many liberties unto yourselves. And it is right to take that which is yours by the gift of the spirit. But it is wrong to take it and then deny it to any other who would have it, too." And with this his eyes rested on two men among the Gifted who were lovers but who had stood by when Heronad, who had loved one of them before, was sent from the Community by the order of the Elders.

Many among the laity still refused to accept Jesus. But none refused to acknowledge him.
Those that had thought to control this child who was more than a man, never seemed to understand until then how pathetic was the setting of their wills against his. This the Voices had seen. Those of the intellect only are subject to a strange blindness to the things that are most real. The laity questioned and learned and questioned more, as did those of the Gifted who were not far advanced. Jesus had brought them among us and yet while he admitted the chaos this brought in its wake defended this practice. Where we had been all stability and established form now we were flux. Those who were of the intellect alone were not changed by this. But they were shaken also for Jesus was their Master as well in the intellect and they came to know this through the dialogue which he invited.

Those of the intellect who reject the Spirit see man as the body he wears and nothing more. They are blind to the essence and so cannot see that which is the larger part. But the Voiced understood that this as necessary for if they were to become that which was the mind and Spirit united they must first gravitate entirely into the mind. These never accepted but they were to keep the Library for another generation.

In the spring of Jesus' thirteenth year the time came for him to make pilgrimage to the Great Temple and declare his manhood and take the first steps on the Foreseen Path to Acknowledgment as the Messiah. His parents walked with him, as was our custom, and he was also accompanied by the Elder Voice to speak the scripture. There he was to commit himself to the common heritage of our people. It was not a long journey or an arduous one, but in that span of one week the boy who left became truly a man, and so, in a sense, Jesus never returned to us. I know that the man I greeted in his stead grieved my heart even as my Spirit rejoiced to feel the growth within.

I have, perhaps mentioned the steps to spiritual knowledge to which we were accustomed. Jesus has passed through them all as a fish cutting through water, but he did pass and we of the Spirit could see the transition. But then in that week he moved from his questing boyhood through Illumination and beyond it, so far beyond that we could not follow or See.

This took the heart out of all Voices for a time. Looking back from the prospective of time piled up in centuries I can now laugh. What did we expect? That one so close to the Godhead would be like us? He was not; and he moved surely and without hesitation. He was never truly unkind or unfeeling because he was always there to comfort, even before one was conscious of needing such.

I have heard it said that he was a kind and gentle boy, and that is also true of him. He often stopped in the midst of some work he had set himself on to comfort or teach another. He was such a boy as he became such a man. But there was no weakness in his soft touch given in need. There were no lies in his kindness. I never knew him to as much as shade the truth, even if it would hurt unto death. He would say, ``Honesty is the coin that is owed between us. If given it is the Light on a dark path." Then I did not understand entire as I would come to, but I sensed a rightness that drew me toward him and away from the main of the Community.

``Our ministry is not to the Hebrew, not to further divide the world, but to make it one." And then he would smile with eyes so old they held all eternity within them, and said. ``I will be the Light so that none may falter. It will be my Gift to each of them - even as I give this Gift to each of you." And then he would laugh, great joyful sounds as if what he had said was funny.

The Brotherhood was solemn in its demeanor and habit. This behavior shocked all of us, not excepting myself. He introduced us to laughter. And I think at that time every other Voice cut themselves off from the Vision he brought. It was too alien; to different from that to which we had dedicated ourselves for so long. They did not reject his right to change it, or deny the Truth of that which he brought, but they could not yet accept the whole and retreated into things that were familiar.

I said he never returned from Jerusalem, but he did come back for a short time, so changed we hardly knew him in the Spirit. What he had seen with his eyes had shocked him. The prostitutes in the Temple itself, the money changers, the sacrifices of blood, and the idols disgusted him.. He was repelled. Also, things we had not even thought to question, had accepted all the days of our lives as necessary and good, he rejected whole. But with that surety he rejected our vision of the Hebrew world united in one faith. He said, "We of the Brotherhood were still a part of the culture that had bred us, had still accepted the different roles for men and for women and the customs that bound us." This he rejected whole, and called us to do so as well. He said that in time we would come to see the Truth of it and know that the beauty of the Way found this in us an impediment to realizing that Truth.

But the time had come. Voice could deny the rightness of his Investiture and Mantling. So in the dark hours of the morning, out under the trees that had witnessed so much of his growing and changing, we came together three months after his return from Jerusalem, and spoke the words. And he became the 36th Voice Mantled since the Founding. It was the same ritual each of us had undergone - and yet so different, for even as he named us each as his Teachers and Guides we knew Him as ours. The symbolic giving’s of the fruit of the Earth and the Words of the Spirit were invested with a power and a different dimension than any of us knew existed.

But when we would have drawn him down to the cistern for the cleansing he drew back and told us that the time was not yet. He looked into the eyes of Jeptha the great-grandfather of John, his friend from childhood, and told him that other hands would make these ablutions in good time; that this cleansing would mark the beginning of the Gift which he would give to all mankind. He then blessed us and, turning away, left us there.

We kept the vigil which was to have been his and in that time we came together in a way that was new for us, and we saw each other differently in the Spirit. But it was as if we had seen what was to be a blossom while it was still within the leaf and we did not guess then what it meant.
It was full light before we were moved to speak or even look at each other. Each of us felt drained but also surfeited in peace. No work was accomplished that day. We each returned to our pallets and slept the day through, ignoring the questions and unease of our Brothers.
That was the last we saw or heard of Jesus for many months. And then we heard, as even those isolated as we were will, that he had joined with first this sect and then that. Always he sought that which he did not know and sucked it dry. In this time he joined and left a half score of such groups. Each greeted him with a joy born of the belief that he saw Truth in their Teachings, and each was left shaken and wondering at his leaving.

From the Testament of Jeptha

2007-05-08T11:51:00.001-07:00

It was I who arranged the training of Jesus in the arts of Pythagoras. Jesus so enlarged upon this study that I was tempted, even after he left us, to commit that of it which I knew to be new to the library. I hesitated only because I feared that it might be destroyed by those who resented the changes he had brought. So I made three copies myself. One I kept, the second I sent to the Library, and the third I sent to the House of Samuel in Jerusalem. When he returned to us, as he did in later years, we spent long hours in discussion. I was versed in the ways of the scribe and made notes of the points on which we touched. Some of this may be included in the Text of the Great Work, for I set it down carefully so that it might be preserved.

Jacob also was interested in the work and afterwards we came together to talk of this from time to time. We would have pursed this further if we could have, but we lacked the skill.

After the Investiture of Jesus and his leaving, we were changed. Where all had been motion and challenge suddenly there was peace, but not a peace of the mind balanced in serenity, but the peace of the tomb. We took up our work again and continued, but we talked less among ourselves and those dialogues which we called the Great Debates, were stilled. I think some among us hoped that Jesus would not return, but the Voices knew that this was a quiet in the storm and not the end.

The Teaching of Jesus was a thing apart, and I cannot talk of it in the same way. But there was much of the Teaching that was more understandable, and of which, something should be said.
There were various kinds of training, some of the Spirit and others of the body. Some combined both at different times or even, the same time. Some days were drudgery and others - magic. Although the rate at which we found new aspects of the Gifts slowed as life lengthened, it never ended.

But no Gift ever brought me the satisfaction of opening for another an aspect of the Gifts. I came natural to Teaching and, at one time or another, Taught each Aspect in turn.

The training of the Healer and the Guide were always two among these. I took for my special disciplines that of controlling the physical, which had been much despised by my predecessors.
The actual training is not something of which was spoken, taking place as it did, in large, in the Silence of the Spirit. But I was of a loquacious nature, perhaps because I had for so long studied the disciplines that were of the mind. Because of this it was that Jesus was, to me, such an astonishment. I was of the Spirit, and comfortable with it and familiar in its ways. But I never felt the intense need to go farther into its study; That sense of curiosity was, for me, satisfied in the mind; the intellect. And Jesus was, at first knowing, a child not of the Spirit, but of the mind.
It has been said, and is true in my experience, that those of the Spirit are impatient and awkward in things of the mind. There were exceptions among us, such as myself and a few others, but it was not usual. Certainly those of the mind, the scribes, were universally devoid of the Spirit. It was as if a dark cover enclosed them and they could not see what was no matter how clear it stood in front of them. But Jesus possessed the strongest of minds - and the greatest of Gifts.