THE PORTAL OF LIGHT: THE RHYME OF THE UNDYING SINGER

Morning Walk (Original Artwork by Veronica Medina & John Wheeler)

Music & Lyrics by John Wheeler (Johanan Rakkav)

MAP: THE MAJOR GALACTIC POWERS 01

The Galactic Powers (Negative)

This kind of map has been long overdue. Not all of my ideas for Galactic Powers are on it, and the names of those that are may be difficult to read at this scale. But I did have other maps prepared for other, long-since-deleted posts and I can put them up again as I have time.

The map puts my fictional doings in the perspective of the large-scale structure of the Milky Way (after which my fictional Ring of Stars – what it is called as viewed from the inside – is patterned). The center of the Kingdom of Ariel is where the “Sun” is: the star Helios, with its Homeworld Rosette including six planet/moon pairs in the same orbit, including Ge/Selene.

Image via Wikipedia

The original map itself is taken from an image of the Milky Way contributed to Wikipedia Commons (left). It is much larger there and it’s proven very useful to me in many ways, real and fictional. Kudos to the astronomer(s) who put it together from the presently available data!

- John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב הסופר)

THE METACOSMOS: ORIGINS

The Alef-Tav Glyph

On occasion I get asked about various aspects of the Metacosmos, or Metacosmic Tree, and the Realms that are in it and those who inhabit it. Here is the first of a series describing the origins and background of my fictional multi-verse – this one from the perspective of someone living within the Covenant Realm where my chief protagonists make their home.

THE FIRST REALM

In the beginning (says Genesis 1:1) God created the Heavens and the Earth: the Old First Realm.

In due time God created Humans – the original Adamim – on a small, rocky but rather damp planet called Earth. God planned to reproduce Himself spiritually through the Adamim – to make them His spiritual Sons and Daughters in Power, to give them His very Divine Nature through His eternal Spirit, and thus give with that Nature everything that a created being can share with a Being that has existed forever.

That Being called Elohim contained more than one Person, sharing the same Divine Power, Mind or Rational Faculty, Presence and very Essence: the Holy Spirit. They had the same primary Proper Name in the beginning: Yehawweh (יהוה), the Eternal Creator God. That very Name shows how they created the original Heavens and Earth: as the generation of all possible frequencies from a single tone.

Such was the creation of the First Realm. It was effectively sung into existence, by the Second Personage of the Godhead, the “Word” of John 1:1. “He spoke, and it was done,” but how He said what He said, His vocal inflection, was as important as what He said. It carried the reasoning behind His speech, as always in vocal music.

The history of the Old First Realm is described in the Book of the Covenant and its Commentaries: how before the creation of the Adamim, there was a great rebellion of angels, spirit beings who were meant to help bring the Adamim to salvation; how those who rebelled were used despite themselves to bring those Adamim who were willing into God’s Family; how the Word became flesh and became Jesus Christ (John 1:14), the One who made possible the reconciliation of the Adamim to Himself and the one who had become God the Father; and how the vast majority of the Adamim, stage by stage, accepted God the Father’s offer of eternal life as His spiritual children. Those who refused to surrender were destroyed, and the angels who had rebelled faced their final punishment for all time.

Then the Old Earth and its First Heaven, its atmosphere, were burned up and replaced by the New Heavens and New Earth. New Jerusalem came from God’s own spiritual plane to the New Earth. The rest of physical creation was reconciled and remade, and no story told among us in these times tells how glorious that has been, for who can describe how Children of God in Power can use a universe?

One of the Four Portals

THE PORTAL OF LIGHT

In the New Heavens and New Earth, there was no sorrow or sighing or pain; all such things had passed away. There was no longer any living remembrance of them.

After ages beyond reckoning, one of the Sons of God in Power asked to remember. And that request changed everything.

Chris Alan Ralston he had been born, in the twentieth century Gregorian of Old First Realm Earth, in what was then called the United States of America. Every person created by God has his unique gifts; this Adami had a gift of imagination, the capacity to ask “What if…?”, coupled with what some of his peers called an almost desperate desire to know the truth and a comparable ability to find it.  He wanted to know, and wanted others to know, why God had worked out His plan of salvation this way and not some other way. This desire was never quieted completely even upon his apotheosis and “ages and ages hence”, it awakened in a way that his Lord could use for His own purposes and in His own time.

There was only one way to answer Chris Alan’s fundamental questions in a way potent enough to match his desires and ambitions: to create a generator of the infinite possibilities of potential reality, a place where an angel or a Son of God in Power could explore a timeline or a set of timelines and, using wisdom, could learn for himself aspects of God’s mind and purposes. Only by such means could the integrity of the New Heavens and New Earth and their changeless way of life be maintained.

The Lord Jesus Christ appointed John Barnabas, a gifted scientist and engineer, to create the generator, which he called the Portal of Light. From that time forward, from the perspective of what would lie on the other side of the Portal, the New Heavens and New Earth became the First Realm.

The Lord Jesus stepped through the Portal first and sang the Metacosmos into existence there. In so doing He became the One we know of as the Lord Joshua Davidson, the Hooded Man: the first and by far the greatest of the Three Undying Singers.

JOSHUA DAVIDSON (THE HOODED MAN)

The Book of the Covenants (in Adamic, Sefer ha-Beritot) is all about the Hooded Man’s distant past and no one within earshot needs to have that history recited from the beginning. In Adamic His name is Yeshua ben David; in Common, Joshua the son of David, or Joshua Davidson. He is also called Yeshua ha-Mashiach (Joshua the Anointed One, or Jesus Christ), combining the offices of Priest, Prophet and King.

For several millennia the Lord Davidson walked unseen hither and thither among and within and beyond the Metacosmic Realms, using the system of Four Portals (Light, Starlight, Twilight and Darkness) which had its center on the world He had chosen as His capital, Ge (Angelic: Earth). As the first and greatest Realmwalker, the Lord Davidson wore a charcoal-gray hooded cloak endowed with the power to hide His identity and even His bodily presence: the Cloak of Shadow. No “magical” cloak in any Realm has ever matched its power when fully armed.

The Catalyst's Glyph

CHRIS ALAN STARBRIGHT

By the Lord Davidson’s invitation, Chris Alan Ralston – renamed by God long before as Chris Alan Starbright – stepped through the Portal of Light immediatedly after his Lord. And in that very act, the infinite possibilities of the Metacosmic Tree became finite, and Chris Alan became inserted into the Metacosmic matrix – specifically in that of the Second or Covenant Realm.

No one but the Lord knows exactly what happened next – not even Chris Alan himself. All he knew is that he was conceived and born normally of two normal parents of the House of Starbright, but with the Holy Spirit – manifested in the Covenant Realm as the Dove – in him from conception, as with John the Baptist of the Old First Realm. By this means Chris Alan became the second Undying Singer, the Lord Davidson’s Steward and Heir among Lightchildren, and the Locus of the Metacosmic Realms.

What did that mean? From Chris Alan’s perspective the Lightchildren had arisen some four thousand years before his birth. Like them he was meant to live a thousand agelessly youthful years in the flesh before receiving the same glorious Destiny of Man that the other righteous Adamim of his Realm received. Yet his access “Within Measure at Need” to the White Hand – the Nine Gifts of the Lightchildren, beginning with the Gift of Light attached to the Dove – was greater than that of his fellows, much greater. Thanks to the special circumstances of his birth, he was also the Locus of the Metacosmic Realms, the pivot on which all of Metacosmic history mysteriously turned. Finally, he had unique access to the Sign of the Resurrection, one that imitated that of the Lord Davidson of old; he could not be killed permanently, unless he himself chose to rebel against his Maker. That he would never do, considering who and what he was; his character was set. And thanks to that, he alone among Lightchildren could wield the White Hand “Without Measure at Need” after his resurrection: a truly God-plane level of power, an Irresistible Force or else an Immovable Object by turns as necessary, for a short period of time. Only the Power of the Lord Davidson Himself, the White Hand Without Measure at Will, could outmatch it.

As the Hooded Man’s Heir, Chris Alan received in due time four special tools: Raphael Goldwing, most powerful of meta-technological Sentries; Shalhevetyah (“Flame of the Eternal”), wrought of imperishable durin and duringlass and the mightiest blade in created hands; the Locus’ Ring bearing the Catalyst’s Glyph; and the Cloak of Shadow, a charcoal-gray cloak clasped with the Ark of the Covenant at its neck.

Alain Harper 01 (Framed)

ALAIN HARPER

In time after many adventures and trials, Chris Alan attained apotheosis and became a Son of God in Power, no longer walking openly in the Metacosmic Realms. It was said among us that he had returned to the First Realm, never to come among us again.

A thousand years later another Adami was born. His mother was a Starbright and his father a Harper. Like Chris Alan before him, he had the White Hand within him from his mother’s womb. And strikingly, he was the spitting image of Chris Alan, right down to the DNA, yet strangely no one came to the right conclusions about that fact when it was learned. Reincarnation, after all, was not part of the metaphysical framework of the Metacosmos. Alain Harper’s generation thus was considered a highly improbable and God-directed coincidence, but no more. As the third and last Undying Singer, as he obviously was as he grew, this coincidence seemed not so surprising.

When Alain was grown, the Hooded Man passed on the tools once owned by the second Undying Singer – and after putting them on, Alain remembered. He was not merely like Chris Alan Starbright; he was Chris Alan Starbright, reborn into the Metacosmic matrix. His brain growth inevitably had been different in this lifetime thanks to his experiences, but in every other way he was as he had ever been. And with that memory came the memory of his true origins, just as he had held that memory once it was revealed to him originally: his birth, death, resurrection, glorification and eternal life in the First Realm.

At the end of Alain’s own allotted thousand-year span in the flesh, the Hooded Man gave him a choice. He could return to the First Realm and the glories of New Jerusalem, or he could remain as he was within the Metacosmos, helping to guide its peoples for as long as the purpose for the Metacosmos remained unchanged. Alain agreed to the second choice.

And still the third and final Undying Singer walks among us, more often than not unseen, changing everyone without changing himself. And so he will remain, while stars are born, while stars die, and while the Metacosmos and its peoples advance toward their unimaginable destinies.

REALMWALKERS: A COLLABORATION

Realmwalkers (Cover by E.V. Medina)

Once upon a time (that always seems to be a good beginning for stories like these), an aspiring author of allegorical science fiction encountered a role-playing authoress of medieval fantasy on Triond.com. After a while they wrote a four-part series combining her main characters with his, as based in the MMORPG EverQuest II which she played with her friends. After that, they did role-playing over Yahoo Messenger, as the author wasn’t involved in EQ II and didn’t have time to be. And after that, they got the crazy idea of creating their own universe, a sort of neutral meeting ground between her ultimate aim (creating the Dark Forest Realm) and his ultimate aim (creating the Metacosmos featured on this blog and on another as well as on Triond.com).

The book Realmwalkers (see left), which first saw the light of print this past August (see this sample chapter on PDF), was the result. It was authored under a pen name I’d not used before; I wanted to keep my given name for my serious non-fiction and Johanan Rakkav for my more religious writings (non-fiction or otherwise creative, such as poetry). The book itself took a tremendous amount of work for both of us – considerably more for E.V. Medina (another pen-name) than for me in the end.

Realmwalkers is an eclectic blend of medieval fantasy (of the sort that features in online RPGs these days, but also in the genre overall) and of an allegorical sort of science fiction. From a certain point of view, then, Realmwalkers is a compromise. But at least it’s a fun compromise. Those who can “suspend disbelief” far enough and not take its mixture of worldviews too seriously (if they can do it in C.S. Lewis‘ The Chronicles of Narnia, they can do it here) will find it an enjoyable read. I do (if I do say so myself). And to that literary effect, we both contributed a very great deal. Only one person I know of has been able so far to spot where E.V. Medina’s writing style leaves off and mine begins. We worked that hard on making the book “read smoothly”.

For my part, I got to exercise a great deal of my recent learning in models of personality – giving a sort of “science fantasy genre” basis (yes, there is such a genre) both to my characters’ abilities and (to a certain extent) those of E.V. Medina. And, of course, there is so much more, designed to appeal across ages and genres, as we both intended. Finally, it gives me a foundation on which to build my own fictional “franchise” (should I actually be granted the time to do so).

I haven’t thought through how to set up orders for the book here yet (although I’m told by E.V. that it would be easy). When I do, I’ll add a P.S. In the meantime, you’re certainly welcome to order directly from here through the link above, or via Amazon.com.

- John Wheeler (writing as Jack Shepherd)

TALES OF THE UNDYING SINGER: DRAGON’S FANG 02

The Catalyst's Glyph

C.Y. 5104:130 – Aboard the Deep Space Ship (D.S.S.) Hind of the Dawn

On the last morning of her Best Year, Autumn Harvest Selene, the Girl Named after the Moon, awoke in her comfortable variable-gravity bed, stretched and looked around.

“Raphael,” she said with a yawn, “where’s Alan?”

“He is presently on the bridge.” Raphael Goldwing, Chris Alan’s Sentry (as he’s formally named), has a masculine, baritone voice that’s lively, mellifluous, yet unusually precise. “Shall I alert him to your status?”

“No, he’ll see me soon enough, and Amber knows anyway. Let me sit up, then bring the bed’s gravity back to normal.”

“Acknowledged.”

Autumn smiled to herself as the weight on her body slowly increased. For my part, I’d be delighted to describe to the uninformed how the bed worked: not by generating anti-gravitons, but by using a species of n-crystal called tesseractite to generate a space-time matrix and to accelerate objects within it. Beyond that level of description, my technical interest generally wanes. I know a lot about a lot of things, as most Ne’fis like me do, but I’m no expert in applied high-tech and hyper-tech. With a Sentry as formidable as Raphael, I don’t need to be.

(Read more on Triond.com…)

THE NINE GIFTS OF LIGHTCHILDREN

Moon minerals

Here is a revised summary of the nine supernatural Gifts of my fictional Lightchildren and their connections to the cognitive processes present within their psyches. (The text was originally published on Triond.com.)

I owe much of the following content to the works of Carl Jung, Linda V. Berens, Margaret Haas, Gary and Margaret Hartzler, Vicky Jo Varner, Howard Gardner, and others who study personality type from a multi-model perspective. I also draw upon biblically based ideas, particularly the order of cognitive processes given here (which is based on the order of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and includes the Holy Spirit as the first and most important cognitive process).

The names [in brackets], like the names of the Nine Gifts themselves are my own fictional creations and some of all these are featured in more detail in the book Realmwalkers by E.V. Medina and Jack Shepherd.

Since my fictional Metacosmos is allegorical, its chief heroes – the Lightchildren – are the equivalent of Christians with miracle-working powers added through the presence of the Holy Spirit. In their ensemble the Nine Gifts are called the White Hand and may be wielded “Within Measure at Need” – the “need” being determined by the sole contextual discretion of the Lord Joshua Davidson, the Hooded Man (a very thinly veiled allegory of Jesus Christ).

Hs [Dove] – The Light [asks and answers existential questions]

The Gift of Light

Si [Scroll] – The Conservator [Library Computer - compares present to past]

The Gift of Memory

Se [Eye] – The Scout [Sensors - collects data objectively through senses]

The Gift of Strength

Ni [Flame] – The Seer [abstract ideas > symbols > visions and images of the future: Navigation? Sees connections and possibilities in the internal world]

The Gift of Foresight

Ne [Net] – The Brainstormer [Sees connections and possibilities in the real world, focuses on how things and relationships could be - Alain Harper's primary mental attribute]

The Gift of Insight

Fi [Diamond] – The Conscience [internal value system that maintains personal integrity - Alain's supporting mental attribute]

The Gift of Wisdom

Fe [Balm] – The Guide [attempts to educate other people as to appropriate behaviors in given situations, takes cultural values as if they were personal values and decides accordingly; loss of personal relationship through disharmony is to be avoided at almost any cost]

The Gift of Healing

Ti [Framework] – The Analyzer [fills in gaps in taxonomies; continually sorts and resorts ideas and data into categories, seeking precision]

The Gift of Understanding

Te [List] – The Administrator [Objectively and logically organizes people and resources and evaluates against measurable goals and standards; also used in natural science]

The Gift of Knowledge

How these supernatural Gifts are applied in an individual depends on his personality type and the archetypes that are associated with it. Thus in an ENFP (Ne’fi) like Alain Harper the array looks like this:

Process – Archetype: Gift

Hs – Divine:* The Gift of Light

Ne – Hero: The Gift of Insight
Fi – Good Parent: The Gift of Wisdom
Te – Innocent Child: The Gift of Knowledge
Si – Aspirant:* The Gift of Memory

————————————

Ni – Opponent: The Gift of Foresight
Fe – Critical Parent: The Gift of Healing
Ti – Mischievous Child: The Gift of Understanding
Se – Daimon:* The Gift of Strength

(*) The terms so marked are more or less my own, based on modifications of ideas and terms put forward by others.

The dotted line marks the boundary of the psychic Shadow: of the mostly-unconscious mind in a mature adult.

TALES OF THE UNDYING SINGER: THE MIDDLE KINGDOM 01

Moon minerals

Wherever and whenever the Undying Singer goes, he causes change without changing himself. Can he help a leader used to believing in his people’s, culture’s and kingdom’s superiority appreciate the gifts of others

Guotin Ding-Bang Sying – which is to say, the Strong Leader or Admiral named “Protects-the-Country / Star” – somehow found non-Adamim, not-Humans, easier to deal with face-to-face than “round-eyed barbarians” such as the barley-blond White Tribesman sitting with him in his quarters and drinking ginseng-flavored green tea with him. The very uniform he wore – flight jacket, belt, trousers and boots all in charcoal gray, a white collared shirt, and nothing else – seemed rough and uncouth compared to the silk robes and sash that the Guotin wore. Sying didn’t insist that his visitor take his boots and socks off according to custom, partly because it made no sense under the present circumstances, partly because even as clean as the stranger was, he had muskiness in his natural scent like no Yellow Tribesmen in the Middle Kingdom had. It was much worse after White Tribesmen exercised, although not as bad as the aftermath of exercise by Black Tribesmen. Sying had enough experience with mercenaries of both Tribes of Man, and with Red and Brown Tribesmen too, in pitched battles to know what to expect in that department. The Yellow Tribesman didn’t really want to find out firsthand how his visitor’s feet smelled after being cooped up in the faux-leather straitjackets that both of his guests seemed so fond of wearing.

But that wasn’t the end of the oddities of the stranger. Recessive genes such as caused his blond hair, fair skin and (as Sying erroneously thought, naturally) blue eyes were unknown in the Middle Kingdom, and the shape of his eyes, nose, cheekbones and chin were much different from what most of the Huang Fu would find attractive. Sying had heard that Alain Harper was considered very handsome by his own people, and the rest of his body was as slender and fit as one could ask for, but the Guotin still wouldn’t want his daughter to marry him. Thankfully, Alain had married a princess, an Enoshi no less, and she had the grace to follow Huang Fu custom and bow out while men discussed the business of men.

Read more on Triond.com…

A FASCINATING “TAKE” ON ELVES

Elusyve Jewell 01(Framed)

The female Elves featured on this Blogger archive page apparently are based on various “skins” provided by the online Second Life site. All of them are striking, some of them are incredible, a trio (the one with the “cubes”) out of this world. I may need to ask someone’s permission to use that last design, somewhere in my own fiction. The idea that a being could “wear” (by some kind of force projection no doubt) something like that fascinates me.

The graphic I chose (and framed) from the above page, truly lovely though it is, doesn’t do justice to the page and all its “fashion statements” (all of which are designed to be sexually attractive one way or another – be warned).  I don’t conceive of my own parallels to Elves (Levanim) wearing clothes like this, nor my parallel to Half-Elves (Enoshim) doing so, but should there be large numbers of Enoshim “out-of-Sphere” (that is, outside the Kingdom of Ariel and its Covenant Sphere and Annexes), I could easily imagine them wearing clothing like this. All but the one wearing metallic cubes, somehow; I’d expect her to be some supernatural being, say an Archon, and a seductress at that.

- Jack Shepherd

UPDATE 2011-11-29: It’s enough to make one paranoid but immediately after I tried to contact the owner of the above links, they all vanished off the Web! Google came to the rescue to a point, however: the owner apparently calls herself Elusyve Jewell and has a specialized blog for Second Life avatars still up and running. She also has a fashion blog but apparently the other two links (including the home page given above) are dead. Other pages have further information.

All in all I don’t think my Levanim or Enoshim would go in for her kind of florid fashion on the one hand or posing in the nude in another – at least not in public. Modesty in public and charms in private would be the rule in the Kingdom of Ariel. What people would do “out-of-Sphere” is another question.