Photo: CNN.27th Sept. 2018.

Is it not time we took climate change seriously?  There have been so many natural disasters in the past few years, surely we cannot call these incidents “natural” in the true sense of the word.  Humans need to be accountable.  As we continue to dig into the entrails of Mother Earth and manufacture weapons for more wars, we need to take notice of the fact that we are all living on borrowed time.  More pain, more mental health issues.  No planet, no life.

My condolences to all involved.

The art of reading symbols is a complex discipline, but those who have this skill can read the details of another secret world that remains cloaked in mystery and suspicion; and along with the hidden mystery and suspicion there comes the hidden trauma.

Take for example Homer’s ancient story of Odysseus who is on his way home from the Trojan War when he is captured by the nymph Calypso who professes her love for him.  Odysseus finds compassion in the goddess Athena and she has him released, but on the way home Poseidon creates a great storm and shipwrecks the vessel that carries Odysseus.

Odysseus then blinds Poseidon’s son Cyclops and continues his journey home only to be turned into a pig by a witch. Odysseus then arrives home disguised as a pig and sees his wife has a number of other suiters. Athena sets a test for the suiters, whoever can string Odysseus’ bow and blast an arrow through twelve axe heads has Penelope’s hand.  Only Odysseus passes the test and he celebrates by killing or mutilating everyone in the household.

The story of Odysseus reveals an important transition in the ancient human history of killing,  from the sacrificing of animals to the gods to sacrificing humans.  The sacrifices to the gods still exist today, only the gods take another form, they are in the building of monuments, the insignia of generals and leaders.  They are robots, machines, drones, guns bombs and fighter planes, everything we value over nature and human existence.   Each new invention must be put to the test as must each new leader or general and the winner takes all.

Such worlds rarely reveal their presence in ordinary circumstances, they arrive with the unexpected, through crises and altered states of consciousness. Trauma is intergenerational and it changes consciousness. These extraordinary states come with memories, histories and the emotional feelings of abandonment, pain and suffering.   Trauma also comes with a loss of identity and a loss of belonging. It happens to everyone, no one is alone with their trauma and we are all put to the test.

We can experience these traumatic events in two ways, we can continue the suffering by transferring it onto others, or we can create new pathways to freedom.  The lessons on transformative freedom are available to everyone willing to undertake the journey.   We might think the Homeric poems are not valid today, but we need them more now than ever before.

Patience opens the door to more meaningful opportunities.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media  having been banned from posting on Facebook for several weeks. I have no idea why I was banned, all I do is post positive messages of peace and joy.  There was no one to contact when the ban occurred and no appeal process. When I see some of the destructive messages posted on social media that seem to stay there for weeks on end my ban does not make a lot of sense.  Maybe this is just an indication of the world we are now confronting, a nonsensical world out of which we must create some order. Order requires all of us to exercise some discipline.    Besides going vegan, doing my daily yoga exercises and taking a walk every day, writing has been my greatest form of discipline.  Writing helps me to delve into the past, explore the unconscious and the emotions that get attatched to every day events. Below is a taste of my research for the new book I am currently writing.

                                            Medieval woodblock, Anonymous.

Fact.

The Knights Templar.

In 1300 BC a great famine in Palestine forced the Jews out of Palestine and into Egypt. There the Pharaohs used the Jews as slave labour and treated them with immense cruelty.   Moses, the first of the great prophets, then led the Jews out of Egypt and into the desert. While the Jewish travellers were resting Moses went alone to Mount Sinai as ask for God’s advice.   On Mount Sinai Moses received God’s Ten Commandments, also known as the Ark and the Covenant, but Moses was away for so long the people, fearing their plight, made a Golden Calf for their worship.  The Jews rejected God’s Commandments and instead worshiped their old idols, Astarte, Baal and the Golden Calf.

In the first millennium BC David a descendant of Moses conquered the city of Jerusalem from its indigenous inhabitants the Jedusites. David and Moses both arose from the same lineage that dated back to Jacob, also called Israel.  They came from different sons of Jacob, David was from the tribe of Judah, while Moses was from the tribe of Levi. The Ark of the Covenant was in the care of the Levites.

Below the citadel on Mount Moab David bought a site for a Temple that would house the Ark and the Covenant, but David had no right to it, he was not even allowed to touch it.  David assembled the materials for the Temple, but it was eventually built by his son Solomon in about 950 BC.  The Ark remained with the Levites until Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem.

Israel remained an independent state until Solomon’s death when it was conquered by nations to the east that included the Assyrians, the Chaldeans and the Persians. The Temple was destroyed by the Chaldeans in 568 BC and the Jews were transported to Babylon as slaves. The Chaldeans were then conquered by the Persians who allowed the Jews to rebuild their Temple in 515. The Persians were then conquered by the Greeks, but due to their absence many of the regions were actually governed by Jews.  In 167 BC the Jews gained their independence, but not without constant struggles against neighbouring states. Jerusalem was then placed under the guardianship of the rising Roman Emperors who became the arbiters of power over the entire Jewish State.  The Jews could not assimilate into the Greek or Roman way of life.  Instead, they retained their destiny as God’s chosen people. This was to result in an inevitable fight for their homeland.

A group calling themselves the Zealots resisted the Romans, but they were outnumbered.  Many Zealots burned their possessions, took their own lives and those of their families rather than being tortured and killed by the Romans. A second uprising, led in part by the Messiah Jesus of Nazareth was predicated on the idea that the only way to a victory was to turn the Gentiles into Jews and increase their numbers, but the Jewish conservatives rebelled against this idea. Hence, the second uprising produced a worse result than the first. Many Jews were forced to flee. Nonetheless,  a small number of Jews began preaching to the Gentiles, thus the religion of Christianity was born.

During the many ensuing wars over the governance of Jerusalem a group of men called the Hospitallers assisted the wounded and sick who came to their hospitals from the battlefields. The Hospitalers were so concerned about the ongoing wars they banded together to create their own military order aiming to drive the Islamic forces out of Jerusalem.  They became the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, otherwise called The Order of Saint John.    They were joined by another group, The Order of the Temple who were a religious-military institution founded by a group of warriors in Jerusalem in the decades following the First Crusade of 1097–99. The group first received royal and church approval in 1120, and papal authorisation in January 1129. They protected Christian pilgrims on the roads to the pilgrimage sites around Jerusalem and also helped to defend the territories that the First Crusade had conquered. As members of a religious order, they made three vows: to obey their superior officer, to avoid sexual activity and to have no personal property. They were called ‘Templars’ after their headquarters in Jerusalem, the Aqsa mosque, which westerners believed was King Solomon’s temple.

Western European Christians gave the Templars gifts of land, money and tax concessions to help their Crusades, and the brothers of the order also traded and acted as government officials for the rulers of western Christendom. They acquired large estates in western Europe, set up farming businesses, travellers inns and they  acted as bankers.   In the Middle East they and their fellow military orders, the Hospitallers, faced increasingly devastating assaults from the well-equipped and well trained Islamic forces. The sultan of Egypt conquered Jerusalem in 1244, and in 1291, Acre, the final capital of the crusaders’ kingdom, fell to the Muslim army. The Templars and the Hospitallers who escaped the massacre at the hands of the sultan’s forces moved their headquarters to Cyprus and set about trying to organise a new crusade.

The Templar grand master, Jacques de Molay, was in France planning such a crusade when he and all the Templars in France 
were arrested on the order of King Philip IV of France in October 1307. The brothers were charged with heresy, tortured and killed.

In April 1312 Pope Clement announced that although the Templars were not proven guilty, the order’s good name had been so damaged that it could not continue. He dissolved the order and transferred most of its properties to the Hospitallers. The Templars were sent to live in other religious houses, and their order ceased to exist.

The Templers in 14th-century Britain.

At the time of the arrests in January 1308, there were Templars resident in only 35 of their known houses in England. The king’s sheriffs who arrested the Templars also confiscated their lands. Royal officials administered these and sent their revenues to the king’s exchequer. The king gave some of the estates to his favourites and to important nobles. Many lands were returned to the families who had originally given them to the Templars.

In May 1312 Pope Clement gave the Templars’ lands to the Hospitallers, but the king and his nobles refused to give them up. It took the Hospitallers more than two decades to gain the bulk of the Templars’ English estates; they never recovered some properties.

The Templars’ estates in Britain were concentrated in the east of England and the southern Midlands, with some lands on the English-Welsh border, and there were two sites in Scotland. Their location depended mainly on property which landowners had donated, someTemplars also purchased their own estates.

Templar farms and other lands were grouped into commanderies with the larger manors  administering the lesser holdings. Commanderies in Britain were on flat or gently rolling land, and often sited on rivers for trade and good transportation.

 The Trials in France.

King Philip IV of France ordered the arrest of all the Templars in France on 13 October 1307, charged with denying Christ when they were received into the order, spitting on the cross and exchanging obscene kisses, committing sodomy with each other, and worshipping an idol. He ordered they be tortured and killed.

Pope Clement V initially protested, then ordered the arrest of all Templars in Christendom and their interrogation for heresy. In August 1308 the Pope reported that the leading Templars in France had confessed to “horrible things” and that he had absolved them – on condition that they perform penance –and  he tried to ensure that the Templars had a fair hearing. In fact, the only Templars to confess to any of the charges were those under the jurisdiction of the king of France or his relatives.

In the kingdom of Aragon, King James II ordered the Templars’ arrest, but had to besiege them in their castles before he could enforce this. The Templars were interrogated, but failed to confess to anything.

In northern Italy the archbishop of Ravenna refused to allow torture to be used and no Templars confessed. In Cyprus, the Templars and non-Templars who gave evidence insisted that they were innocent. In Portugal King Dinis brought a legal case against the Templars to recover lands given to them by his predecessors, but there was no heresy trial. In all, the results of the trials outside France supported the Templars’ innocence.[1]

Much of the history written about the Templars gives focus to the exotic warrior knights,their exploits and their demise,  but there were many Templars with smaller, less conspicuous roles who were clerks, builders and community officials.  There are families with Templar origins that no one has ever heard of.

The Templars organisation still survives to this day and as individuals they have left their mark on the most unsuspecting of people and places.  My work examines some of the Templar influences at a grass roots family level.

[1] https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/the-templars-a-brief-history/

                                                             Don’t overthink it!

Do you believe in the Law of Attraction?  I do!  I gave up teaching last year to focus on my writing. Focus is the key to succes I am told. A year later I discovered a book I wrote with little expectation of big sales has attract the anthropology departments of universities around the world, including China.  How much more can a writer ask for?  Writing for money is a lost cause, even the greatest of writers have to rely on movie or television series contracts to make a killing.  Writing for one’s self is a good place to start, but writing to share with no financial motivation has its own rewards.

I find the most difficult form of writing is disclosing oneself to others. I am by nature an introvert.  I also find writing about one’s self rather narcissistic. I have learned that focussing on the self simply makes a person neurotic.  It is better to be writing about others.   Writing for others is much more rewarding.

 I have a problem.  I am currently writing an historical novel, it is kind of an esoteric family history ( a family I have never known) but I don’t want it to be a poor version of the Dan Brown mystery model.  Nor do I want it to be somebody’s confessional (although confessional literatures do better than anything else in the mainstream markets).

The work started out as a straight forward depiction of individuals, but clearly none would wish to be identified, so I turned it into a novel. Now I am thinking does my work lose much of its purpose as a novel?  I don’t think so.  If one looks a literary history in the works of Lawrence, Dickens, Austen, Hemmingway and many more we see more than just stories, what we see is an epoch in history we can learn from. That said, a novel requires an excellent command of dialogue and being an introvert, I tend to make dialogue analytical and complex, it is just what introverts do; we are complex people. There is another option, the epistolary novel.  I turned to Wiki for guidence.

“There are two theories on the genesis of the epistolary novel. The first claims that the genre originated from novels with inserted letters, in which the portion containing the third person narrative in between the letters was gradually reduced.  The other theory claims that the epistolary novel arose from miscellanies of letters and poetry: some of the letters were tied together into a (mostly amorous) plot.  Both claims have some validity. The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish “Prison of Love” (Cárcel de amor) (c.1485) by Diego de San Pedro, belongs to a tradition of novels in which a large number of inserted letters already dominated the narrative. Other well-known examples of early epistolary novels are closely related to the tradition of letter-books and miscellanies of letters. Within the successive editions of Edmé Boursault’s Letters of Respect, Gratitude and Love (Lettres de respect, d’obligation et d’amour) (1669), a group of letters written to a girl named Babet were expanded and became more and more distinct from the other letters, until it formed a small epistolary novel entitled Letters to Babet (Lettres à Babet). The immensely famous Letters of a Portuguese Nun (Lettres portugaises) (1669) generally attributed to Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues, though a small minority still regard Marianna Alcoforado as the author, is claimed to be intended to be part of a miscellany of Guilleragues prose and poetry.  The founder of the epistolary novel in English is said by many to be James Howell (1594–1666) with “Familiar Letters” (1645–50), who writes of prison, foreign adventure, and the love of women”.

Below is a list of epistolary novels.  I was very touched by Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, which leaves me thinking that the epistolary novel is the methodology I will employ.  Like The Color Purple, my work tells a sad story with a happy ending.

List of epistolary novels.

• John Cleland’s early erotic novel Fanny Hill (1748) is written as a series of letters from the titular character to an unnamed recipient.
• The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton (1797) by Hannah Webster Foster is a series of letters between several characters.
• Sophia Briscoe used the form in both her novels: Miss Melmoth… (1771) and The Fine Lady… (1772).
• Marianne Ehrmann wrote the epistolary novel Amalie and Minna around 1787.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky used the epistolary format for his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), as a series of letters between two friends, struggling to cope with their impoverished circumstances and life in pre-revolution Russia.
• The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins uses a collection of various documents to construct a detective novel in English. In the second piece, a character explains that he is writing his portion because another had observed to him that the events surrounding the disappearance of the eponymous diamond might reflect poorly on the family, if misunderstood, and therefore he was collecting the true story. This is an unusual element, as most epistolary novels present the documents without questions about how they were gathered. He also used the form previously in The Woman in White (1859).
• Spanish foreign minister Juan Valera’s Pepita Jimenez (1874) is writing in three sections, with the first and third being a series of letters, while the middle part is a narration by an unknown observer.
• Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897) uses not only letters and diaries, but also dictation cylinders and newspaper accounts.
• Jean Webster‘s Daddy-Long-Legs (1912).
• Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace‘s The Documents in the Case (1930).
• Haki Stërmilli‘s novel If I Were a Boy (1936) is written in the form of diary entries which documents the life of the main protagonist.
• Kathrine Taylor‘s Address Unknown (1938) was an anti-Nazi novel in which the final letter is returned as “Address Unknown”, indicating the disappearance of the German character.
• Virginia Woolf used the epistolary form for her feminist essay Three Guineas (1938).
• C. S. Lewis used the epistolary form for The Screwtape Letters (1942), and considered writing a companion novel from an angel‘s point of view—though he never did so. It is less generally realized that his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964) was a similar exercise, exploring theological questions through correspondence addressed to a fictional recipient, “Malcolm”, though this work may be considered a “novel” only loosely in that developments in Malcolm’s personal life gradually come to light and impact the discussion.
• Thornton Wilder‘s fifth novel Ides of March (1948) consists of letters and documents illuminating the last days of the Roman Republic.
• Theodore Sturgeon‘s short novel, Some of Your Blood (1961), consists of letters and case-notes relating to the psychiatric treatment of a non-supernatural vampire.
• Saul Bellow‘s novel Herzog (1964) is largely written in letter format. These are both real and imagined letters, written by the protagonist Moses E. Herzog to family members, friends, and celebrities.
• Up the Down Staircase is a novel written by Bel Kaufman, published in 1965, which spent 64 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. In 1967 it was released as a movie starring Patrick Bedford, Sandy Dennis and Eileen Heckart.
• Shūsaku Endō‘s novel Silence (1966) is an example of the form of the epistolary novel, with half of the novel composed of letters from Rodrigues and the other half composed either in the third person or in letters from other persons.
• The Anderson Tapes (1969, 1970) by Lawrence Sanders is a novel told primarily in the form of transcripts of tape recordings.
• 84, Charing Cross Road (1970), though not a novel, is a true account by Helene Hanff written in epistolary form as an exchange of letters between the writer in New York City and a bookseller in London over the course of two decades.
• Stephen King‘s novel Carrie (1974) is written in an epistolary structure, through newspaper clippings, magazine articles, letters, and excerpts from books
• In John Barth‘s epistolary work, Letters (1979), the author interacts with characters from his other novels.
• Alice Walker employed the epistolary form in The Color Purple (1982). The 1985 film adaptation echoed the form by incorporating into the script some of the novel’s letters, which the actors spoke as monologues.
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ (1982) by Sue Townsend – comedy diary set in 1980s Britain.
• The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1984) by Studs Terkel is a compilation of interviews with people who lived the events that went from the beginning of America’s involvement in World War II, Pearl Harbor, to the end.
• Michael Dibdin‘s A Rich Full Death (1986) is an epistolary crime novel set in 19th century Florence.
• John Updike‘s S. (1988) is an epistolary novel consisting of the heroine’s letters and transcribed audio recordings.
• Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer‘s Sorcery and Cecelia (1988) is an epistolary fantasy novel in a Regency setting, from the first-person perspectives of cousins Kate and Cecelia, who recount their adventures in magic and polite society. This work is unusual in modern fiction in being an epistolary novel written using the style of the letter game.^[5]
• Avi used this style of constructing a story in Nothing But the Truth (1991), where the plot is told using only documents, letters, and scripts.
• Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding was written in the form of a personal diary
• Last Days of Summer (1998) by Steve Kluger was written in a series of letters, telegrams, therapy transcripts, newspaper clippings, and baseball box scores.
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) was written by Stephen Chbosky in the form of letters from an anonymous character to a secret role model of sorts.
• Richard B. Wright‘s Clara Callan (2001) uses letters and journal entries to weave the story of a middle-aged woman in the 1930s.
• The Boy Next Door (2002) by Meg Cabot is a romantic comedy novel dealt with entirely by emails sent among the characters.
• The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot is a series of ten novels written in the form of diary entries.
• Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography (2002) by Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler uses letters, documents, and other scripts to construct the plotline.
• Several of Gene Wolfe‘s novels are written in the forms of diaries, letters, or memoirs
• La silla del águila (The Eagle’s Throne) by Carlos Fuentes (2003) is a political satire written as a series of letters between persons in high levels of the Mexican government in 2020. The epistolary format is treated by the author as a consequence of necessity: The United States impedes all telecommunications in Mexico as a retaliatory measure, leaving letters and smoke signals as the only possible methods of communication, particularly ironic given one character’s observation that “Mexican politicians put nothing in writing.”
• We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) is a monologic epistolary novel, written as a series of letters from Eva, Kevin’s mother, to her husband Franklin
• The 2004 novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell tells a story in several time periods in a nested format, with some sections told in epistolary style, including an interview, journal entries and a series of letters
• In the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly novels, out-of-context text messages, usually humorous, mark transitions between sections
• Griffin and Sabine by artist Nick Bantock is a love story written as a series of hand painted postcards and letters
• Where Rainbows End (alternately titled “Rosie Dunne” or “Love, Rosie” in the United States) (2004) by Cecelia Ahern is written in the form of letters, emails, instant messages, newspaper articles, etc.
• Uncommon Valour (2005) by John Stevens, the story of two naval officers in 1779, is primarily written in the form of diary and log extracts
• The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life (2005) by Thomas Kent Miller, comprises a variety of letters, parchments, and journal entries that bring to light an adventure by H. Rider Haggard‘s Allan Quatermain
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006) by Max Brooks is a series of interviews from various survivors of a zombie apocalypse
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2007) by Jeff Kinney is a series of fiction books written in the form a diary, including hand-written notes and cartoon drawings
• The White Tiger (2008) by Aravind Adiga, winner of the 40th Man Booker Prize in the year 2008. The novel is a series of letters, written by an Indian villager to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is written as a series of letters and telegraphs sent and received by the protagonist
• A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) by Jennifer Egan has parts which are epistolary in nature
• Super Sad True Love Story (2010) by Gary Shteyngart
• Why We Broke Up (2011) by Daniel Handler and illustrated by Maira Kalman
• The Martian by Andy Weir, written as a collection of video journal entries for each Martian day (sol) by the protagonist on Mars, and sometimes by main characters on Earth and on the space station Hermes.
• The Closeness That Separates Us (2013) by Katie Hall and Bogen Jones is almost exclusively written as an exchange of e-mails between the two forbidden lovers, Lena and Ed.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel     Retrieved 22, Sept 2018.

[2] Ibid.