From: “Historical Analysis Project” <[email protected]>
To: Daniels, Troya M. <[email protected]>
CC: <none>
BCC: <none>
Date: Apr 28, 2008 10:16 AM
Subject: CCA Results
Hi Troya,
I’ve uploaded the results of the census correlatory analysis to the database. You can find my summary of the data in the same folder with the name “Analysis Summary.doc”. Very broadly, it looks like we’re finding correlations for the “cohort” through to the sections dated 1770. Interestingly, Joseph Bologne – our “chevalier” – would go on to become an acclaimed composer and French revolutionary. However, we’re still trying to confirm some of these correlations before our final historical assessment can be reached.
I’ve been having some trouble uploading certain documents to the database, and as a result, they were excluded from the CCA. Others will need to be manually added to the database, as the relevant microfiches are all non-digitized. Specifically, I’m looking at Castilian and Spanish Secretariat documentation of interrogations, confessions, auto-de-fe, etc. and having some issues. Lacunae seem to omit identifying information which prevents us from knowing for sure, but one possible analysis is that the Jesuits in the “Wickham cohort” are the same group (in part or even entirely) as that mentioned in institutional proceedings. They stand accused of alumbradismo, or membership in a sect (and/or adherence to a belief set) associated with the alumbrado, a Late Medieval/Enlightenment-era Spanish movement of mystics and heretics. It’s difficult to summarize without getting too deep in the historical weeds, but the basic narrative is this:
- Alumbrados believe that the unity of a “divine” nature and a “human” nature is possible, as evidenced by Jesus Christ. They further believe that this “state of divinity” necessarily excludes one from the possibility of sin, insofar as divinity is infallible.
- Many alumbrado monks would, indeed, claim to have achieved this “state of divinity”, and were held in such esteem that many would keep their belongings as relics and take their word as canon.
- This esteem brought the monks close to many politically-connected lords within Spain and Castile, and earned them even greater respect within their local communities. The monks, indeed, seem to have generated quite a significant amount of political support for the lords they engaged with, and were themselves enriched with newfound capital.
- These monks – and alumbradismo broadly – were known for engaging in heterodox rites, which earned them the ire of the Inquisition; considering the Inquisition is the sole source of documentation from this period, the specifics of these accusations should be taken as, at best, biased.
- The heterodox nature of the movement involved rejection of all doctrinal rites and laws as “worldly” and “material”, while elevating the role of divine inspiration and prophecy. This devolved into demanding that nuns and laywomen lift their dresses and reveal themselves as penance, and even (as the prosecutors accused) the ritual sacrifice and abuse of children in order to “break with the false Law of Moses” and “abolish the love of world in favor of love of God”.
- Most shockingly, these monks weren’t executed, despite a finding of guilt. Again, gaps and lacunae are interfering, but it seems some of those political connections held strong, and the members were simply exiled to a different church order.
Maybe I’m going down a rabbit hole on this one, but many of the details seem correct. Although the names are different, they bear a regionally distinct nature which allows for almost a 1-to-1 comparison. It’s like they were forced to pick new names but couldn’t come up with good ones. One, for example, is a blackfriar named “Franklin Ayre”. It’s distinctly similar to Francis Avery. The ecclesiastical order they were assigned to as “penance” is called the Ordo Lamina Domini Crucis, or “Order of the Plate of the Lord’s Cross”. It was reorganized as an order of nobility in the 19th century, but it seems to have served as a military order prior to that. Apparently, the order had a membership primarily composed of Dominican and Jesuit monks, or at least presented itself as such.
Like I said, maybe I’m going down a rabbit hole here, but I think there’s something to this. It’s at very least worth investigating why I can’t push them through the CCA. Let me know what you think.
Jacob Thorn
Lead Historical Analyst - Historical Analysis Team
Society for the Authentication and Verification of American Religious Artifacts
(212)-513-0435
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From: Gabriel Macollum <[email protected]>
To: Daniels, Troya M. <[email protected]>
CC:
BCC: Seth Hunt <[email protected]>
Date: Apr 30, 2008 6:28 AM
Subject: RE: FWD: CCA Results
Hi Troya,
Unfortunately, many of those documents are not available for viewing or for access. Your team might not have been aware, but The Barbelo Foundation maintains a policy of maintenance and stewardship regarding many of the documents that we either hold in our archives or licence out to 3rd party archives.
Although I cannot go into further detail regarding our motivations or operating procedures, I will tell you now that it is unlikely those specific documents will be accepted into a database system which operates under The Barbelo Foundation as they’ve been tagged as requiring maintenance or stewardship, which can take months or even years to complete fully. As an example, your team member highlights the many lacunae; it is the policy of the Foundation that any documents which suffer from “...extensive material loss, loss of data or information, loss of identifying marks or signs, or collapse of provenance” are catalogued as such and marked for readmission into the Foundation’s archives for professional restorative assessment.
What your team member admirably did not highlight is the fact that many, if not most, of the documents you’ve listed in your addendum to their email lack full translations. As a result, the scholarship on them is also very thin and limited to Latin or Spanish. While the Foundation indeed sees part of its mission as filling these gaps in academic and institutional knowledge, we also view the practices and functions of the academy as laying outside the purview and proper warrant of this institution. In short, we let the researchers research, archivists archive, and analysts analyse; we simply attempt to provide them with the resources necessary to best achieve those ends. When the interests of two institutions come into conflict, as we have here, it must be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention – although I’m sure it’s not the answer you were hoping for, it does help me tremendously to know these documents were still being accessed despite their condition. the microfiche process was quite uncharacteristically destructive to these documents, so even facsimiles like the microfiche themselves must be treated with the utmost care and caution.
All the best,
Gabriel Macollum
External Coordination Manager, Operations
The Barbelo Foundation
“Building Light From Darkness”
(+44) 020 0145 3192
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A Journal. October 15, 1769.
WE ARE not yet back at the fort, as Rosenkreuz has in his camp a preparation of poultices and tinctures which are still in the midst of fermentation, a process he declares an intimate knowledge of. He says this begrudgingly, as to betray the laborious nature of its concoction.
Vapours are heavy in the air here, perhaps as a result of his chymical works, and even the slightest exhaustion is accompanied by want for breath. It is little matter, as we have been sitting in communion with Rosenkreuz the full duration, our breath bated until his next word. We are all in the audience of an immortal who has answered questions we have asked our entire lives. It is not an entirely pleasant experience, and there is little satisfaction, for the answers which do not themselves warrant further inquiry only strike in us varying degrees of fear, disgust, or extreme despair.
It is horrifying to be faced with the full sum of what one does not know. Surely we can accept that a single person may not know everything; neither the capacity of the mind nor the length of a human life allow for it. But what if those limits were erased? Not only through the accumulative development of society, building upon the knowledge of those before us to establish new Truths, not in this figurative sense, but in a real sense?
What if you could live forever? What if you could remember everything?
In life, we search for closure. We want a conclusion. We want to assemble discrete parts into a unified Whole, or rather, break every whole down into its individual, constituent parts, until it cannot be broken down further. At that point, we will declare that we have achieved an end to knowledge, that we have finally found Truth. What if there is no end? What if every part breaks down further?
To accumulate knowledge over an infinite life is, it seems, this same process – a perpetual breaking-down, a spiritual and epistemological entropy, where for everything one knows, there is a plurality of new unknowns – and, eventually, even those First Truths which served as foundation for the entire project are broken down. They lay there, on the ground, in parts. You are not yourself.
He speaks with not only a different accent, what strikes me as a travelled Castilian rather than the Austrian I had remembered, and there is a youthful, yet brusque, lilt to his speech. Every word penetrates. Every word impacts us. Always smiling, he shares these horrible truths. That the one thing we may know is that knowledge is impossible; that progress and action in any field, be it scientific, spiritual, political, or philosophical, will always be stymied by reaction and the eternal inertia of ignorance; that our actions and beliefs are not within our own remit, nor the remit of God; that our senses, too, lie.
All of our actions have consequences beyond our understanding, he says, and as a people grow, the consequences are magnified and multiplied and become, exponentially, their own causes, autonomously, beyond our control but within our responsibility; to save a life today may cost one hundred lives in the future, and their deaths may themselves cause a further thousand.
I, myself, speak with the language of possibility; Sir Rosenkreuz spoke with a certain confidence, within the language of certainty. Fundamental to his conceptualisation, that is, that the multiplication and magnification of harms and wrongs is a necessary and certain fact, is how he perceives time to operate. To him, time is not a straight line; the past does not always precede the present, which does not always precede the past. The notion that neither past nor future can be touched is, to him, simple; it is a belief of convenience that one might ascribe to a child, such as believing that objects which one cannot see cease to exist. They are merely outside your view.
To view things as isolated, standing apart, able to be broken down and reunified – these are, too, beliefs of convenience, poorly reflecting reality. The past touches the present. The future touches the past.
Can the opposite be said? Are harms the only thing magnified and multiplied across time, or can we say that Good, too, echoes across eternity, spreading like a droplet in a still pool? It, in a sense, does not matter – there is no Good you can bring to someone which will account, for example, for the loss of a family member – the only Good is to prevent it. There is not a neatly-isolated spectrum of morality; Good is not the opposite of Evil. Good, seen as the providing of aid, can co-exist with Evil, ontologically apart from it; Good, seen as the privation of Evil, is merely that, the absence and prevention of the Bad. If a man is murdered, you certainly do his family a kind of Good by paying them; another type of Good is performed by preventing the murder. In life, they always blend together: the murderer is the man paying. The Good is corrupted, and the Bad is invigorated.
As a student, he believed, Knowledge would cure this system, it would Enlighten Man and allow him to express autonomous control, to decide (free from causal forces) to achieve Good. He was given Knowledge, but to his alarm, this primarily achieved a multiplication by which Evils could be performed. He taught his disciples of Ammon; from his essence, they made the most potent poisons ever known. He taught his disciples of his teacher, known to him as the Thrice-Great, The Second Hermes; the disciples created from his Sciences many new arts of cruelty and pain. At every stage, the actions taken by Rosenkreuz would shake the world, and leave it in a state he saw as no better off. His lessons and words were used as justification for, indeed, what could only be described as the most reprehensible actions: the torture of children. Infliction of misery upon entire populations of people. The sacking of kingdoms. The seizing of slaves. He sat next to Christ, in the Ninth Strata, receiving the sermon of Light, of the Greatest Works; he, too, saw the Cross borne by the knights of Antioch who strode steeds across piles of Turkmen corpses, pulling bowels from the living, ivory tabards turning a putrid black as the blood saturating them begins to necrotise.
How much do we bear responsibility for? How can we blame Christ?
The truth is, according to Rosenkreuz, that death is not the end. That there is not one time, with a beginning, middle, and end. There is not one Christ. There is, too, a Christ in a world without the Crusade; it is not our world. It lies out there, however; we exist within an infinite realm, and it is infinite in every sense; in boundary, in range, in scope and breadth and possibility; there are infinite Christs. He intends to demonstrate this. This is the function of the tinctures.
I cannot reflect on the mental or physical states of the others at this time, for I was far too entranced by Rosencreuz, who produced again his magnum opus, the Perfect Sphere, the Center from which all Perfection radiates. How could this create Evils? To be freed from all want? Holding it in his open palm, he passes his hand evenly over the vessels he has arranged below, and to my amazement, they do begin to produce much gas, and an acrid odour. We are each handed one, and I am not ashamed to admit that the mere thought of imbibing this wretched potion caused my heart to begin beating with a terribly powerful tremor, which I could only interpret as fear. I do not know what it will do. I still do not know what it has done. Was I choosing to drink it? Were my actions predetermined? Did Christ know, in his perfect wisdom and complete knowledge, that I would? With his ultimate power and infinite grace, did he command it? It slid down my throat, burning and sticking.
Everything was black, and dark, with rivers of Light, and I could see the Nine Strata. I was falling with tremendous speed, and penetrated a river of Light, only to find myself sitting where I was not one week ago, in the Fort, in the company of Falk and Sidia; except, I was occupying Falk’s chair. I looked up, and I could see Sidia, and I could see myself. There I was, sitting across the table, sharing a candle-light; my vision was pulled downwards. I see the Hebrew text, and my brain is flooded with semantics, nuances of meaning and conceptual connection (which I felt to be quite a distressing and uncomfortable flooding of Understanding, as these words held meaning to me).
I (or, Arthur) asked me what I had found. At this point, I remembered the conversation, and, indeed, Falk had answered; we were discussing the Perfect Gospels, and he shared with me the tale of discovering fragments of a Marian Gospel in the inventory of a Persian antiquities dealer. Could I express my own will, here, within Falk? Could I deny an answer?
The Arthur I saw grew cold. His vision dropped, and the light deep within his eyes suddenly muddied. His expression did not shift, but I could see his knuckles turning white as they gripped the edge of his wooden chair. I looked back to his eyes – who is in there? It was upon him – I, we, me, Arthur – lunging at me with a terrible speed that I awoke.
Again, I am in the camp. The Jesuits to the right of me are, respectively, moaning and wailing with great pain; curled over their own lap, unresponsive; laying foetal on the ground, vomit pooling around their mouth; and, lastly, one (Fontaine I believe) is thrashing against the ground, fighting against it apparently, leaving his fists quite bloody and swollen, screaming with a horrible sharpness all the while. I was blanketed with sweat, causing me to be at once quite hot and cold, which I was quite concerned (although now it seems quite impertinent and small) that I might catch some illness out in these woods, and find the end of my life here; but lives do not end.
We shall return, soon, to the fort; indeed, we have not yet confronted the murder of Rosenkreuz as a matter of inquiry, and he seems quite happy to leave as many questions as possible without answer for now. However, I am quite sure that it will become relevant in the coming days, and the revelation of such a fact (as I know Rosenkreuz to be capable of) will surely bear, itself, great consequence.
AW
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Apocalypse of the World-Archon Ialdabaoth (First English Edition). This work is a translation of the text first published by Dr. Setos Deilokous, “Apokálypsi Tou Kósmou Archon Ildabaoth” (JAR 1992; 47, 112-129). Dr. Deilokous’s work was based upon scrolls first uncovered in the Nag Hammadi Library, particularly fragments 4257-4316 and 4781-5125, collectively known as the “Lion Codices” and recently transcribed as “The Mournful Inward Gaze of Zahar” and “The Madness of the Lion-God”, respectively. Although only existing in a fragmentary state, Deilokous posits in his translation that these two sections can be read as existing in dialogue with one another, and frames them as such throughout. I have also consulted with Dr. Jann Mieter, Professor of Biblical Archaeology at the University of Jena concerning the inclusion of Cairo-Masoretic Fragments #414-438, for which he gave his deeply appreciated insights and opinions. Other manuscript versions of this work are available in the Oxford Collection (lib. #320281-AW), Tel Aviv University (DB#140873190), and Cambridge University (CU fols. 110-115; AXC2964).
1: (This is) the world upon which Zahar found him, (one which) is besieged by hostile forces on every side, (where) poverty is rampant and many are hungry although the rains are plenty; 2: for many local lords hold power which is not balanced against their goodness, and benefit from the want of others; 3: and Zahar, (who) was a man of pitiable fortunes, he (whose) family cursed him and blighted him; 4: for he wished to marry a woman named Sophia, from the kingdom of Edom, (whose) father promised him great wealth to only bring (his) daughter happiness; 5: but the family of Zahar, and (most particularly) his father Ersus, who was filled with such anger at (his) son’s defiance towards the wife assigned to him, a woman Bethany, that he (himself) tore Bethany into sections; 6: and made his son Zahar eat from Bethany. 7: It was supposed by many that (this) drove Zahar into the cave; 8: where he could only feel inside him disgust and resentment (towards) his family, and too, towards Sophia; 9: for all her immaculate beauty could not provide him the grace of liberty; 10: for it was her beauty that he blamed for his condition, as Zahar was trained from his birth by his father to look only to beauty as the prize of man; 11: and to never accept fault at his condition in life, but to find where (to) seek vengeance for the ones who have wronged him; 12: and so he found himself in the cave (which stretched) forever downwards and only grew darker and darker, which had a suffocating darkness which pressed down upon Zahar and did make his breathing heavy; 13: and, from his exhaustion, (did) he stumble even further downwards, under (greater) pressure until his mind went entirely black; 14: and he was able to only scream out one last thing; 15: ‘God, why hast thou forsaken me? Where is the sin I have committed which permits thou to embrace me with such cruelty?’ 16: and the cave was no longer dark, for many lights emerged from the rock (itself), which was smooth and perfect, the walls planes which defied the construction of Man; 17: nor was it silent, for a great voice spoke thus, ‘I have not forsaken you, my child, but you have misunderstood my teachings, for you have not received the correct insights [gnosis];’ 18: ‘that I have never wanted thou (to) feel happiness, as happiness invites satisfaction, and (discomfort) pushes thou to perform the tasks (set out) for you; thou art my creation, and I have made thou for a (certain) purpose.’ 19: From (the) retreating shadows His face was revealed to be Golden and Glittering; 20: The light emerging from the stone reflected in his Perfect visage demonstrated no blemish or tarnishing; 21: His face turned to meet Zahar, who was stricken with terror and fear, and the Voice spoke again; 22: ‘I am Ialdabaoth, (the) World-Archon, Lion-Faced, and there are no Gods above me;’ 23: ‘for at my self-birth, Ionia and Attica (were) first divided from the lands of Ethiopia and Cush; Beer-Sheba and Spain; Uruk and Cyprus;’ 24: ‘your oceans (are my) excrement, (and) your screams my music;’ 25: ‘I alone have power to create and to destroy, an inviolable power, but I can bequeath (to you) this power;’ 26: ‘and with it you can cast thine enemies into the dark and sublime cave, with Moloch and Marduk, where (they) can learn every pain imaginable;’ 27: ‘to see everything (your enemies) love ripped open and what exists inside it made to be plainly visible outside, this is the power I can provide you;’ 28: ‘to turn your enemies to ash, you need only follow me;’ 29: ‘I can give you everything if you only learn to take it.’ 30: Zahar was troubled by Ialdabaoth, for he could not see under the autodiety’s mask; 31: his face was obscured and great were his Glittering fangs. 32: ‘O, Ialdabaoth’, spoke Zahar, ‘but how should I know you can truly deliver unto me this power?’ 33: and with this, Ialdabaoth delivered upon Zahar a vibration within his skull which gave him (a) torturous pain; 34: (they) came with such alacrity and speed that Zahar could no longer speak or hear, or (even) think, and blood poured freely from his ears and nose. 35: ‘Thou may question my power (in the) same manner thou might die; openly and quickly. But thou shalt not test me;’ 36: ‘for I am the judge of all value, and the Good is that which serves me;’ 37: ‘I have given (you) your choice and I have given (you) your ability;’ 38: ‘you are less than nothing, but (by) surrendering everything thou hast kept from me, you may become a fragment of (the) Divinity that I bear.’ 38: Even breathing had become difficult for Zahar, (whose) lungs were becoming full with inhaled (vomit); [Missing sections] 114: Thus, Sophia did follow Zahar into the Perfect Cave, (where) the walls gave no evidence of tools or marks, (yet) lay as a flat plane; 115: and Zahar lifted the stone above his head, ready to strike down upon the frail body of Sophia; 116: (but) he felt again the rush of blood from his ears and nose, (and was) overcome with the sensation of movement inside his skull; 117: and he could see Ialdabaoth standing in the corner, unseen by Sophia; 118: and Ialdabaoth (at once) had in his hand a thin blade, which he called (knowledge-taker; maker-of-lakes; first void) [dimiourgós límni]; 119: it was by turning this blade in the air (that) Zahar was robbed of all insight [gnosis] and could (no longer) complete a thought; 120: for he had forgotten his own name, and for what reason he was here, but he could remember how he had felt before, that he had loved a woman; 121: and here, in front of him, was her skull broken in parts, and her essence spilling across the perfect floor, pooling into a perfect circle; 122: and the blood sank into the stone as if absorbed by dry land; 123: and in this manner, too, did Ialdabaoth fade away, into the darkness; 124: For he was teaching his acolyte to take life, but also reminding him that there is no reward but what thou taketh; 125: (that) seizing what thou wants is the only power; 126: that (to) kill the one who holds what you desire is given (the) blessing of divinity. 127: For Ialdabaoth is the God above all Gods, (and) those who hold him in horror and fear (are the) least fortunate; 128: as the only mercy he can deliver is the mercy of ignorance, to have never known (of) him at all.
