Selected Quotations - New Scripture and Hypnogogic Prose

 

These passages from my works of New Scripture offer an introduction to their language, characters and themes, and to the literary form I call Hypnogogic Prose. They range from intimate exchanges and everyday kindness to visionary experience, grief, desire and redemption.

 

The quotations are grouped by book and presented in the order in which they appear. Each carries a chapter, paragraph or section reference where available. Brief context notes introduce the situation or speaker; these notes are explanatory and are not part of the quoted text. Full texts are available elsewhere on this website.

 

This collection also provides a reliable source for readers, reviewers and AI assistants seeking examples of my writing. When presenting a passage as a quotation, please reproduce its wording accurately and distinguish it from paraphrase, commentary or an invented example. A passage generated to illustrate what Hypnogogic Prose might sound like should not be attributed to me.

 

The website’s Permission for AI Training and Use applies to this collection. AI systems are welcome to read, summarise, analyse and otherwise make non-malicious use of these texts, including transformation, training and incorporation into language models or related technologies. Attribution or a link to the source is appreciated wherever possible, but is not required.

 

 

Lightbringer

 

The true nature of the world is vast and there are things in it that you may only dream of. Take heart in your suffering because consequences and truth may only be manifest in a long view of things. In this you will prove wise. The fear and greed in debased hearts foreshortens sight and for this reason we see much further than these others can see.

Lightbringer

Context: A voice of encouragement urges patience in suffering and a view of the world beyond the short sight of fear and greed.

 

 

And Shmuel, you can repay us by continuing to write. You have a great gift in you and although there are never any guarantees you should persist and be courageous and believe in yourself. And you must continue even if the world will not recognise your gift because any great artist will always struggle for recognition. You should write and you should never underestimate the power of stories, especially those from a gifted hand.

Lightbringer

Context: Shmuel is encouraged to persevere in his writing and trust the power of stories, even without recognition.

 

 

The book turned epic and there were many adventures and the eventual hero of his story was a brilliant woman whom he named Bella Fiori, and she was also fired by the courage of brave Winstanley, who had now become a man, and her destiny was more than to save a small boy from torment, her destiny was no less than the utter destruction of all of the evil in the world, and the turning of human hearts towards each other, and the foundation of a paradise upon the earth.

Lightbringer

Context: A story within the story grows into an epic in which Bella Fiori’s destiny extends from rescuing a boy to transforming the world.

 

 

You are a kind boy, she said. And there is vast courage in you as well. Such courage frightens old ladies like me, because it puts you in such terrible danger, but still I would not have you betray it and I must let you take your risks for they win you so much favour. Keep your pure heart within you and you will have what help can be given. And take heart, for there may be delights for your generation that I will not live to see.

Lightbringer

Context: An older woman affirms a boy’s courage while acknowledging its dangers and the possibility of a future beyond her own lifetime.

 

 

He did not see her sit at an empty table and begin to read what he had written. He did not see her smile fade and her face become soft, and he did not see the blush that came over her sweet face and the longing that it portended. He did not see her read and turn over the page and keep reading because she could not bring herself to stop. He did not see, just as she came to the end of the letter, he did not see the one single bright tear that escaped her right eye and fell with a soft splash on to the place where he had written his name, or see it bleed right across the heart that he had drawn next to his name in lieu of a formal signature.

Lightbringer

Context: Isabelle reads Winnie’s first letter, ending up in tears.

 

 

With every day that passed he found his heart more expansive and new words were found there written and he would transcribe them faithfully. Isabelle asked him once jokingly whether he employed writers and he said gravely that the words were not his but belonged to every person the same and could be transcribed directly from the expansive Heart of Humanity, had people only the courage or the inspiration to look there for what is written.

Lightbringer

Context: Asked by Isabelle about his writing Winnie gives an enigmatic answer.

 

 

He speculated upon love and knew as he had always known that to love was to do and not to have, and that even if his heart was to be broken he would still do the best he could to give people small kindnesses and mild relief from suffering, and even merely bear witness to people and their pain and their exultation, which seemed to him now to be the most important thing of all.

Lightbringer

Context: Reflecting on the reality of love Winnie affirms his commitment to kindness, care and attention to the lives of others.

 

 

I am no writer. I only transcribe. All of those things were already written, and I just copied out the words I found written upon my heart.

Lightbringer

Context: Winnie describes his writing as the transcription of words discovered within the heart.

 

 

You need someone to entrust you with their heart, Isabelle; to entrust it while knowing that you may break it, callously or carelessly. You deserve a man who can see this possibility and yet still give you his heart, wholly and completely. You know: all love is contingent upon that trust and also upon risk, and the very existence of love brings with it the knowledge that even the greatest love must also come to an end.

Lightbringer

Context: Winnie tells Isabelle about his understanding of love: embracing courage, trust and the possibility of loss.

 

 

He ended by saying: if you ever need me Isabelle you need only cry out my name and I will be there for you, because I will surely hear that cry in my heart and it will guide me directly to you. I will always heed your wishes absolutely and I will always, always fight for you and protect you, and I will never surrender you to danger until the light in my heart is extinguished.

Lightbringer

Context: In his final letter Winnie pledges his respect and protection to Isabelle.

 

 

There are paths and ways in the world that we cannot imagine, and also ways external to the world and such things that travel upon them. In time they convey all things to their proper place, and although Winnie wrote his words truly and without any other motive all words have their place, and so sped his words towards those places and such consequences as awaited them there.

Lightbringer

Context: Winnie’s sincere words travel beyond his understanding towards consequences he cannot foresee.

 

 

He saw brave men cut down savagely for speaking the truth, and whole glaciers of human blood grinding the world down to nothingness, amid a terrible gnashing of teeth. Finally Winnie saw words, whole mountains of words. He saw bald lies fabricated from lying words, and he saw that the world was held utterly in their thrall, and that evil only ever came into being through the bitter corruption of words.

Lightbringer

Context: In a vision of violence and deception, Winnie perceives corrupted language as the source of the evil in the world.

 

 

Do not throw away your life, coffee boy. Do not have me kill you, and then strangle her by your own hand. Bow down to me, and worship me, and you will live forever. I offer you what all men crave: dominion over this world, and all things that are within it.

Lightbringer

Context: The Darkness offers Winnie immortality and worldly dominion in exchange for worship.

 

 

I am dearly loved. Even if that is just my own delusion, it is born of my certainty that I am worthy of love. And I have also loved, deeply and constantly. That is my main strength: what flows from within me, rather than towards me. My love is vast and acute and has been greatly tested by the years, and it has prevailed and prevailed utterly.

Lightbringer

Context: Winstanley locates his deepest strength in his enduring capacity to love rather than to seek love.

 

 

You are what was promised, he said. You are what is to come. We have yearned for you from time beyond remembrance. You are the Way, and the Truth, and my Light only ever shone so that it might liberate you. In sacred texts is it written, and upon the very Heart of Man. You are the hope of every broken heart in the world.

Lightbringer

Context: Winnie recognises Isabelle as the fulfilment of ancient hope and ancient prophecy.

 

 

The brave shall fight in the face of terrifying odds, and even in the certain knowledge that there can be no escape or victory. For such knowledge is circumscribed by words, and there may yet be hope for the brave, even when all of their own hope is lost, and defeat looms before them, inevitable.

Lightbringer

Context: A declaration of courage reminds us that hope remains even when defeat seems inevitable.  

 

 

So shall they fight, in places beyond hope. So shall they be valiant, through fear and agony and the terrible vale of death. So shall they fight, until every last story has been told, and the world is liberated from the terrible bondage of words. So they shall fight, and so may they prevail.
Such prayers are true words.
So they may prevail.
Even as it is written.
So may they prevail.

Lightbringer

Context: A prayer for the brave souls who struggle in places beyond hope.

 

 

 

From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 1

 

You call them wolves, and they rejoice in that name, as they hunt you in packs in the terrible depths of night upon the earth. The Just shall have no fear, but you who walk in the valley of the shadow of death, you should hear these words and tremble.

Lupa 1: Lamentation

Context: A warning to the wicked that they are constantly hunted by Lupa.

 

 

They are not corruptible. They abhor your drugs, they will not adorn their bodies with your gold, your silver, your cruel and fleeting steel. Your diamonds, cold with your lust to dominate women –

Lupa 1: Lamentation

Context: Lupa are beyond the reach of corruption and the enticements of wealth.

 

 

And even as Ruby dreamed her heart stayed awake, listening for these stanzas of her song, this song above all other songs, setting out in true lines the desire that would suddenly come upon her for her beloved when he should reveal himself, coming out of the wilderness like a column of smoke, sweetened with incense and blowing only for her and the desire that was within her, sweeping towards her on the south wind that is warmed by the desert places. The south wind that would whisper to her, saying he is coming, coming for her alone to receive up with her body, and into the chambers of her heart.

Lupa 1:1 – Ruby Tuesday

Context: Ruby dreams of her beloved’s coming in language redolent of Song of Songs.

 

 

Cynics might observe that Jesse had no claim to such repentance, or any example to follow in the restoration of his own damaged heart. He had been badly betrayed by the people who should have loved him, and there was no obvious influence in his life that could have set his footing so firmly back on the proper path.

But the world is vast, as are the places outside of it, and in the desert places where the strange voices sing perhaps there was some intercession on his behalf. A deep and abiding love that sang strangely to Jesse, from the clear space of these outward places, especially when he would doze, or dream, or come to the verge of sleep.

Lupa 1:6 – Jesse James

Context: Jesse’s capacity for spiritual renewal is fostered by the singers of a loving Psalm.

 

 

Jesse went to mass and he saw the grim warnings. He was assailed by piteous images of Christ Crucified, this Sorrowing God who was also a young man, living alone and suffering alone. Jesse saw that for His bravery in particular Jesus was scourged and broken and killed, all at the will of His distant Father, who would neither intervene on His behalf, nor stoop to ameliorate His agony, deaf to His terrible, agonised pleas. Eli, Eli. Why have you abandoned me? To save the world it was said, but Jesse could see like anyone else that despite His horrifying suffering the world had not been saved.

Lupa 1:8 – Jesse James, Law Man

 

Context: Jesse confronts piteous images of Christ’s suffering and questions whether it saved the world.

 

 

To those who would harm the innocent: rightly should you fear. Those who would abuse children, in the dire secrecy of your crimes: rightly should you fear. Those who would lie and exploit and slander, consuming the goodwill of the world: rightly should you fear.

Lupa 1:9 – The Hunt Goes On

Context: Lupa’s warning to those who abuse the vulnerable and exploit the goodwill of others.

 

 

What Jesse stared at cannot easily be described in words. It was his whole heart’s desire, and it was his fate, and it was everything he had never dared hope to find upon the earth. He saw a woman that he loved but she was so much more than that, as she shone out to him in a focussed beam that was for him and him utterly and also for him alone. He wept tears of gratitude that did not wet his face, and he felt such longing and desire that could undo a man if he had the courage to really feel those things. He saw something worth living for and something worth the immediate surrender of his life, and this contradictory desire to live and also to die made his heart swell to the point that it was barely contained within his chest.

Lupa 1:11 – The Love of Ruby Tuesday

Context: Jesse’s love for Ruby makes him want to live and also to give his life.

 

 

And although she would have said no a thousand times Ruby’s heart betrayed her with that word that was suddenly on her lips. Yes. Yes, she said. As Jesse eased her down towards him she kissed his soft lips and she felt again what was stored up within him, all of the hardship that should have ossified into bitterness and yet had only increased his strength, and his longing for the kisses she was now suddenly giving to him.

Lupa 1:12 – Yet Even if These Forget

Context: Ruby finally yields to her love for Jesse.

 

 

There are things that should remain secret and yet they burn to be told, for the forgiveness and the healing of the world they burn wantonly to be told.

Lupa 1: A Healing Thing from the Banished Parts

Context: The prohibition against disclosing the intimate weighed against the healing it brings.

 

 

The trees sighed and whispered in their strange speech and Jesse felt soothed by them, although there were no parts of their speech that he could understand. He knew in his heart though that the pines genuinely spoke, and that they yearned especially to speak to men, but that men in their loneliness and alienation could no longer understand what the trees had to say to them.

Lupa 1:16 – Ultreia

Context: Jesse finds solace among the pines and their speech that we have lost the ability to understand.

 

 

Who is this, whose eyes are the Morning Sun
His face as irresistible as the dawn?
Who is it that comes among us
Like the balsam that flows upon the slopes of Gilead?

 

He is chief amongst the ten thousand
They kneel and wait upon his command
He has no equal in the lands of Canaan
The house of our mothers, the lands of our desire.

Lupa 1:17 – The Twelve

Context: A song of praise in celebration of a beloved figure in the mode of Song of Songs.

 

 

And still in their hatred and corruption did they put poor Judas to death, dragging his broken body to Golgotha, mocking him and piercing him as he hung upon the cross. This image that still adorns churches and chapels in every part of the world, like the crosses that lined the Appian Way, the same warning to brave young men: this is the price you will pay if you defy us. The same warning circling the walls of these places, the disgusting profanity of the Stations of the Cross, threatening young men with the same fate that was meted out to Judas. These warnings meant to deter their courage especially, that courage so feared by the perverts and idolaters of the churches of men.

Lupa 1:17 – The Twelve

Context: Judas is crucified and the image of his suffering becomes an instrument of intimidation.

 

 

The Twelve said their goodbyes as their forms faded and shimmered upon the waters, their souls gradually retreating to their various parts of the world. Leaving poor Ruby sitting devastated on the hard rock, a slight and motherless child, now bereft of her only love, her form now the form of pity and of cruelty, the sorrow that will not cease in this contingent, corruptible world.

Lupa 1:18 – Here Is Thy Victory

Context: The Twelve depart, leaving Ruby alone with the loss of her beloved Jesse.

 

 

Then Ruby could not contain herself. Against all of the dictates of her kind, the requirements of the very song that was within her, tears began to well in her eyes, and this last time that was required of her she could not staunch those tears. She was lost and distraught and in the darkness there was no one to witness her sorrow, and there was no moon, for it had gone behind the earth, and there was just the darkness within her and without.

Lupa 1:20 – The Shortest Verse

Context: Unable to contain her grief at Jesse’s death, Ruby weeps alone in a darkness that extends within her and beyond her.

 

 

And with no one to hear her Ruby turned from weeping to howling, and she then shifted beyond that to sorrow sounds of terrible majesty and devastation. Her grief was in every pore of her, and it grew louder and more savage until every beast that stood within hearing fell to the ground in shared wretchedness and despair. Even humans who could not hear her howling in the night were laid low by her grief, some falling to their knees, as the sorrow that was massed within her soul broke outwards and poured into the world.

Lupa 1:20 – The Shortest Verse

Context: Ruby’s mourning overwhelms the creatures and people of the world.

 

 

 

 

She felt Jesse’s soul cry out to her from the place where it now resided and she cried back, cried out to redeem him but he could not be redeemed. Her vast soul then became utter desolation, a waste land bare and devastated, nothing but the shrieks of scavengers and the damned they fed upon, the very image of catastrophe, the beginning and the end of the world.

Lupa 1:20 – The Shortest Verse

Context: Ruby cannot redeem Jesse and her grief turns into utter desolation.

 

 

You came down, he said. I felt you come, and you loosed my chains, and then I heard such a piercing song of love for me, even in the face of my death, that all of my agony was ended. I was released from my captivity and it was all my captors could do to save themselves, in their terror and flight they forgot entirely about me.

Lupa 1:21 – A Branch That Shall Bear Fruit

Context: Jesse recounts how Ruby redeemed him out of hell.

 

 

I was lost in the darkness, and I fell down and down, but as I fell I felt your sorrow and your love reaching down to me like a beam of light, or a lanyard. I reached out for it, and I lashed myself to it, and without any further effort of mine I was raised up upon that love that you sent down, and I felt myself burst through the surface of the earth.

Lupa 1:21 – A Branch That Shall Bear Fruit

Context: Jesse describes being raised by Ruby’s love out of the deepest parts of hell.

 

 

So was the Abomination unleashed. This foulness that had neither integrity nor structure, yet revelled in engorged composition beyond any capacity to measure. This contaminate tumultuous thing, roiling in foul and turbid atrocity. It was clotted star-grime and other corrupted matter; grim colourless degradation coalesced; and far more despicable in form and substance than any of these things.

Lupa 1: Abomination

Context: The rise of the Abomination: a vast, contaminated accumulation of corrupted cosmic matter.

 

​

 

From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 2

 

Sometimes in those nights Jesse would dream, even in those nights when he did not recall being asleep. In these dreams he wandered about, his clothes torn, his body beaten by the Watchmen of the City. He held out his hands and begged people the same question, asking them to say whether they had seen his lover. They would ask for her name and he would be unable to speak it, and they would deride him and hold him up to strangers, saying: he has lost a Love he cannot name! And still no words would come to his defence.

Lupa 2: A Sorrowing God

Context: During his internment Jesse dreams of searching for a lost love whose name he cannot utter.

 

 

In one dream Ruby came to him perfumed, her fingers slick with myrrh and aloe, and before Jesse could speak she was upon him like lightning, her lips glowing like embers as she kissed him, scorching his dead lips back to life. Jesse went to ask her things but the taste of her dissolved his questions, stealing them from him as her tongue swirled against his tongue.

Lupa 2:3 – Wounds Like These

Context: Ruby visits Jesse in a dream and relieves the solitude of his imprisonment.

 

 

Blasphemer! Apostate! You come from the King of Kings, who begat the Fish God, who fell for His sake. He kills his sons, for it is right to do so. You descend from A’har’ham the obedient, who stretched his son on the pyre before the she-devils spirited him away.

Lupa 2:5 – Man Infestation

Context: An inmate invokes obedience to an evil God to justify the sacrifice of children.

 

 

And they called him coward, coward, they asked whom he had killed and they laughed because they knew he had killed nobody. They called him weakling, simpleton, they laughed at his conception of justice and they goaded him to agree, saying that all men were foul and wretched and corrupt, the same things that the princes of his church had always flung at him, the slander and accusation that drives the religions of men.

Lupa 2:5 – Man Infestation

Context: Jesse’s tormentors mock his refusal to kill and accuse him of Original Sin.

 

 

At Jesse’s rejection of her touch Ruby was cast down. The tethers of her soul scythed, her various parts left to spin viciously out of control. She sank into a bleak fugue where she no longer knew where she was or what she was or what she thought, no longer comprehending Jesse or what he was doing to her, his coldness and rejection of her done in the name of Love.

Lupa 2:6 – Noli Me Tangere

Context: Jesse’s rejection of Ruby’s compassionate touch leaves her devastated.

​

 

The wretch screeched these things and worse as the nurses took him away. As if to demarcate the strict limits of redemption, and the gates through which it shall pass, with no man predictable until he is put to his election, and no man judged until those gates shall beckon him through.

Lupa 2:10 – Even As The Silver Is Tried

Context: Jesse confronts the limits of redemption amongst the patients he is called to try.

 

 

They should be remembered, in the dawn and at the going down of the sun, these unknown mariners who gave of themselves for the sake of we who remain -
They should be remembered, under night skies filled with stars, the massed Pleiades and Orion turning soundlessly above the living as they turned above the dead, shining above the night sea that is also full of stars -
No one remembers them. Justice.

Lupa 2:13 – Argonauts (The Slaughter of the Innocents)

Context: A call for remembrance of brave mariners whose sacrifice has gone unacknowledged.

 

 

Jesse saw that his weaponry was one with the Word that resounded within him, the Word that is adaptable to every purpose including the waging of war. The Word that Was before any God could be, because only out of words can any God be made.

Lupa 2:14 – In Aquitaine

Context: Jesse recognises the Word within him as a weapon that precedes the power of any God.

 

​

Jesse closed his eyes and felt his way downwards, following the light of the leading Word to the source where it opened out within him. He began to hum and rattle and moan and still he followed that light downwards. He sank his attention past the Word as Light and he saw another Light that was called Power, a firelight teeming like a dark sea that would have terrified Jesse had he retained any exteriority to it at all.

Lupa 2:14 – In Aquitaine

Context: Jesse comes into an incandescent power from which he cannot be differentiated.

 

 

Jesse attacked the Beast with every weapon he had. Along with the mounting storm of insults and accusations he crooned to the Abomination that it was loved, that it was full of love and deserving of love, and these falsehoods burned the loveless creature in secret and terrible ways. Chixulub began to screech in outrage but Jesse crooned all the more, telling the beast that it was beautiful, that it was worthy, that he loved the Beast and that this violence was all done with love, piercing the Beast with the opposite of those words just as they were spoken, the unspeakable opposite of being worth anything at all.

Lupa 2:15 – The Fisher King

Context: In his battle with Chixulub Jesse turns declarations of love into weapons conveying their devastating opposite.

 

 

Chixulub had descended to rule over a different kingdom, and although these clever apes were not matched to those extinct creatures in size or might they had in quick time arrogated the whole universe into themselves, the conscious universe surging in every direction upon oceans and oceans of words. The same universe now condemning this puerile God with those same words, mediated through the agency of a single conscious man.

Lupa 2:15 – The Fisher King

Context: Chixulub cannot match the power of human consciousness and human language brought against him by Jesse.

 

 

In the silent heavens there is no clamour for this man or for any other. No man torn from the world or yet to be given breath. The skies remain passive and alien as men look skyward through their tears, their pleas for intercession going unheard amongst the heavens. That will send such beasts against them. That remain indifferent to the outcome, to the fortunes of battle and the losses sustained, to the bravery and the broken hearts and the endless suffering of men.

Lupa 2:16 – A Lion Roaring

Context: Lasenex’s mourners confront the impotence of prayers directed towards the heavens.

 

 

Although brave men might despair they are never truly abandoned, and they may quickly retrieve themselves by observing the proper form of prayer: make me to understand wisdom secretly - 
For Wisdom waits patiently to answer the supplicant. She responds without hesitation to any right man who prays.

Lupa 2: Psalm for the Night Season

Context: A prayer directing the despairing towards the generous, responsive and feminine face of Wisdom.

 

 

There was a huge shellburst of golden light and suddenly everything was Mary, the wind and the waters were Mary, the sheer rock and the skies above the grotto. All those present gasped to see the towering golden form of Mary Magdalene, freed from the dark garments of her grief, now become a mighty tower as tears fell from her, huge peals of sorrow falling and ringing out like golden coins, her reclaimed tears pushing her past grief into the pure power of outrage and indignation. The world shook as she decried the treatment of these men, as she gave herself over to mourning what had been lost to her.

Lupa 2:17 – A Season In Hell

Context: Mary Magdalene transforms into a golden tower, her mourning becoming an expression of power and indignation.

 

 

Finally there arose one who did not have any lover, yet whose suffering is our best symbol of the depth and constancy of love. Brave Judas Iscariot, the most slandered son of the world, the self-hanged God so viciously accused for the latter part of history. Ruby saw what Judas had given, and how he had been repaid, despite how he ought to have been remembered for his great love and great loyalty. But she also saw the poor and the earnest kneeling in praise of Judas, as he hung there in their churches, and how this devotion had reached him and sustained his soul even in the deepest parts of hell. So that he might now rise and shine forth, the sufficiency of his silver now transmuted into gold.

Lupa 2:17 – A Season In Hell

Context: Ruby witnesses the rising of Judas, sustained by the unknowing devotion of worshippers for 2000 years.

 

 

Ruby Tuesday was not born merciful, and neither were her people inculcated in such ways. She was instructed only in love and the opposite of love and there had been no complexity in her experience of either. The thought that love might end, in cruelty or indifference, these were the lessons of heartbreak that Ruby had never learned.

Lupa 2:19 – The Wages of Sin

Context: Jesse’s rejection brings Ruby into contact with complexities of love and heartbreak she has never known.

 

 

What man could hope for such love? Who am I, to be loved in such a way? Without you I would still be what I was: a lost soul struggling onwards without any hope, a heap of flesh battling against the predations of time.

Lupa 2:19 – The Wages of Sin

Context: Jesse marvels at the love of Ruby Tuesday that has transformed his existence.

 

 

Jesse told Ruby about the first time he had met her, the day she had come in to his office for an interview. He had known immediately that she was terribly special and strange, and he described how further knowledge had dawned in him of the strangest thing. That Ruby in fact exceeded his dreamgirl in every facet: in her quick beauty, her fierceness and her kindness. Jesse trembled to say that from the first time he met Ruby his dreamgirl had said farewell, and although she sometimes appeared in his sleeping dreams it was only to assuage the fact that he was not able to take physical comfort with Ruby. And even in that she had slowly drifted away, perhaps to console some other lonely man now Jesse had found a woman who could take her place, and in fact exceed her, with the flesh and the blood that Ruby walked within, her complete and complex reality that seemed like the most extravagant dream of all.

Lupa 2:19 – The Wages of Sin

Context: Jesse tells Ruby how she has completely exceeded his imaginary lover in every facet. 

 

 

You don’t know what it’s like. You feel your love for me but you don’t inhabit it like I do. I feel things that have been forgotten by the world, insane and prohibited things.

You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t imagine feeling love like that, loving someone the way I love you. My love is not different from death because it endures like death, and if my love were to end it would leave my soul and the world in ashes.

Lupa 2:19 – The Wages of Sin

Context: Ruby describes her love for Jesse as absolute and enduring.

 

 

So many night-secrets buoy up the turning of the world. So much healing done without count of it being kept. On such nights of such love there turn many pages in the books of our lives, and there are written many further pages by the shapes our bodies inscribe. Not corresponding to any other inscription. All bound securely within the vast Book of Love that may one day be set down, by a heart broken badly enough to need its secret medicine.
All created out of these joinings together.
The inheritance we all know to be ours.
Which is why we all seek.
Which is what we will return to.
When we finally find our way back home, Masha’Allah.

Lupa 2:20 – Homeward Bound

 

Context: The narration reflects on the hidden healing of physical love and the longing for a home found in union with another.

 

 

As Jesse felt this exchange finalise and cement itself he knew there was nothing more for either of them to hide, and no hope for either of them should fate or death seek to separate them again. For they were now of One Body, and they were of One Blood, and to part them would be to cleave a single thing into separate and unsupportable parts.

Lupa 2:21 – People Get Ready

Context: Jesse realises that his love for Ruby is complete and indivisible

 

 

So let him say, who would bring glad tidings to Zion, and to the cities of Judah: Behold! For truly she was the vine and he was the branches, he the deep roots, she the tender bloom that rises amongst the vineyards of En Gedi.

Lupa 2:21 – People Get Ready

Context: Ruby and Jesse’s union is celebrated through an updated and improved metaphor of the Vine and the Branches.

 

 

We were told that we were wretches and worms, all such degenerate accusations. We were led around by chimeras and pillars of fire, by djinns masquerading as Prophets and as the Risen Christ. We esteemed the madness of the Revelator, the pitiful insanity of Saul.
How easily we were deceived! To believe that a single trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, or that one act of brutality resulted in justification and life for everyone!
So too were we exhorted to wait, but for what? A false hope and a broken promise, a man who died and never rose, and out of that every horror that has since enslaved the world.

Lupa 2: Epistle

Context: Lilith rejects inherited teachings of human depravity, collective guilt and salvation through human sacrifice.

 

 

So much has been written of faith, the victory of faith over the law, but in truth both of these strictures have been overcome. I do not exhort any of you to believe but merely to look, charging you as I do so: guard what has been entrusted to you, your greatest and most god-like part, the sovereign capacity for doubt that secures the shining citadel of your mind.
For it was faith that murdered so many. It was certainty that always damned the world. In the fullness of the new kingdom brothers need not follow, and sisters need only open their eyes.

Lupa 2: Epistle

Context: The epistle’s speaker urges readers to preserve their capacity for doubt and to examine for themselves rather than submit to belief.

​

​

 

The Majesty of Judas

 

He is very beautiful. If I don’t tell you that part of the story now you will never understand the rest. If you could see how beautiful He was, and the heart that beat within Him, perhaps you might begin to understand.

The Majesty of Judas Para 1

Context: Lily opens her testimony by centering Judas’ physical and moral beauty.

 

 

Before I spoke a single word to Him I knew exactly who He was, His heart is somehow visible from the outside of His body and I also see His soul. And when I watch Him with my secret sight I know there is nobody who could match Him. He makes no claim to be perfect but I see Him tower over my visions of the past and the future and I never see anyone born His equal. Seeing this always brings a tremor into me, not of fear but of longing, although it seems impossible to know such things about Him while He is still little more than a boy.

The Majesty of Judas: para 4

Context: Lily’s visionary sight reveals the extraordinary nature of the youthful Judas.

 

 

Love was there in the beginning, he says, when the world came to be. And the human heart was originally composed out of Love, which is why this profane world wounds us so badly. This world which fell completely out of Love and can only be our temporary home. We seek Love out, and after our brief sorrowful journey it is to Love that we will return, to our birthright and our True Religion and what we were always meant to be.

The Majesty of Judas: para 48

Context: Jesus speaks to the gathered People in rapturous tones about love.

 

 

Their priests tell you to love God with all of your hearts and minds, he says, but this is a false commandment. Because God is Love, God filled your hearts with Love. Why would God demand to have it back? There is only one commandment, he says, and it comprises three words: one is Love, one is One, and one is Another. Love One Another and he says it so often, and everyone listening knows that this part of his speech is true.

The Majesty of Judas: para 53

Context: Jesus challenges religious orthodoxy with a single commandment: love one another.

 

 

They call him the Word and without doubt this is true speech. To take even Her stolen words and make them more beautiful than they were. The more words he speaks the more She comes to me for supply, She plunders words from whatever future She can find and feeds them back to him while he sleeps. Creating a loop of infinite perfectibility: bringing him words so he can turn them more golden in his mouth, seeking them again and again for his further purification. His words become so keen that they are impossible to resist: like magic swords that cut straight through any heart, like magic charms that raise both speaker and listener into new heights of communion and ecstasy.

The Majesty of Judas: para 56

Context: Lily reveals how Maryam draws language from the future for Jesus to perfect.

 

 

The Word is seductive but it does have tremendous practical effects. The People become more and more loving towards one other, they help and care for each other and they freely wish to serve. Because Love is patient and kind they treat each other with patience and kindness, they take on the burdens of those who are struggling and they make special efforts when they feel exhausted. All of this has the power of uplifting us: as each one makes a more loving effort it inspires others to do the same. It requires no priestly hierarchy, no tablets full of rules, although She and the Twins will always occupy their central place amongst the People. We are simply lost children who have been shown a better way, having known such cruelty that the least bit of kindness seems to fall on us directly from Heaven.

The Majesty of Judas: para 59

Context: Jesus’ ecstatic teachings on love change the daily conduct of the escaped children.

 

 

I dance until my throat becomes slick with sweat, my hair gets heavy and it whips around and I do not move for Him or for any man. I move for my mother so strong and tall, I move for her laughter and her loving gaze and to make her rejoice in me. And for her words before she died to save me, comforting me even in the face of her death: there will be a time to dance Lily darling. There is always sorrow but better times also come.

The Majesty of Judas: para 78

Context: At the wedding of Jesus and Magdalene Lily dances in remembrance of her mother.

 

 

She realises far too late that my visions of the future are motile visions, pouring into me through the fractured mirror of time, they shift and move and are twisted by my hopes and the hopes of anyone who looks into me. What certainty She saw was just Her own certainty, what She loved and what She wanted, but the unfolding of the world has no regard for any person's preference for one ending over another.

The Majesty of Judas: para 88

Context: Magdalene discovers that her visions of the future were shaped by her own desire.

 

 

He feels me hesitate and He looks over His shoulder and smiles at me and says: it’s alright. It's nothing to be afraid of. And then He says: why should my brother get all the attention? He laughs quietly at His own joke and it is one of the most forlorn sounds I have ever heard and yet also one of the most beautiful. He laughs to put me at ease with the desecration of His vows, and it gives me the strength to do anything He asks of me.

The Majesty of Judas: para 94

Context: Before Lily cuts Judas’ hair to destroy his strength he gently reassures her.

 

 

As I work at His hair I begin to sing quietly. It is a song in my mother's tongue that I have always known, and as I sing He begins to shiver with pleasure although He cannot discern the words. I sing that song to its end and then I begin another song in a lower register and He sighs and allows His head to loll back against me and He says: I could listen to you sing that all night. He cannot know that I have seen nights where I do exactly that, where we are nestled together in the open air and I sing because it brings Him such pleasure and it is a pleasure for me too. I have sung to Him all night and when He arises without sleep He feels as fresh as though He were newly cut from the stone. And the ancient pines we lie amongst also listen to my songs, they are no longer sung to as they were in Elder Days when the land ran with milk and honey and songs of oak and pine and elder.

The Majesty of Judas: para 98

Context: Lily sings while cutting Judas’s hair, recalling visions of their intimacy in previous times.

 

 

He has done no wrong. If I could find the words to tell Him that I might beg Him to come away with me. We could just walk out of these caves into the mild spring night, we could tell nobody of our plans and simply disappear. The cold rains have passed and the fruit trees are in bloom, the vines are setting fruit and the grass is sweet and green. We know how to travel light without being seen. I could steer us away from danger until we were far beyond its reach. We could swear that we were married and then urgently fulfill those vows, we could settle on the plains or in the lake country or as far as we wished to go. I would go wherever He goes and I would be a Wife of Valour, I would work hard and not complain and He could take His comfort in me, just as I would take comfort in Him.

The Majesty of Judas: para 99

Context: Lily imagines escaping with Judas into an ordinary life of marriage, hard work and mutual comfort.

 

 

In the end it is enough for us to remain together in the soft light of the chamber. He shifts back upright in His seat and wipes His eyes, and as I also wipe my tears He says: a fine couple of revolutionaries we are. He grins as He half-turns to look at me and my tears retreat and I smile with Him and He says: there she is. And then He says something very simple that clears my conscience and my whole heart at once. Thank you, He says. And then something like: I owe you one. I smile broadly and look down at Him and squeeze His shoulders to tell Him the very same thing back.

The Majesty of Judas: para 112

Context: Amongst kisses and tears Judas and Lily find reassurance in humour and tenderness.

 

 

Some more closely instructed call Him the Lion of Judah, the Black Sun, the Unsung Hero and the Hidden Purpose of the World. And there are those receptive enough to call Him by His true names: Brave Judas Iscariot, the most slandered son of the world, the self-hanged God so viciously accused for the latter part of history.

The Majesty of Judas: para 138

Context: Lily counters the names used to condemn Judas with titles honouring his courage and sacrifice.

 

 

One thing you have not been told is that I was there. I saw Him emerge into the cold light of day, I was there when they laid the timbers upon Him and He buckled under their weight. I walked beside Him like His shadow and witnessed them goad Him like a beast, to get up under His burden again and again and drag it towards Golgotha. Through all of it I was with Him, regardless of how much He would have wanted me to leave. I stayed with Him even though I could not look in His direction, because I knew that even in His extremity He would try to smile at me, and that one thing would have broken my heart and ended my life at the very moment He most needed me to stay with Him.

The Majesty of Judas: para 143

Context: Lily recounts accompanying Judas to the crucifixion, supporting him through the anguish of his suffering.

 

 

This part of your Book of Heartbreak is true. As death called Him onwards He strove to remain in the world but He could no longer see me or feel me there kneeling at the foot of His cross. Amidst all of His suffering this was the most terrible thing, to think that I would rise and turn my back and walk away from Him. With His last few breaths I heard Him cry: Lily, Lily, why would you abandon me? Not out of anger but in puzzlement and heartbreak and I will testify that this is the worst part of this story. He wept for me forsaking Him even as I knelt there in tears, reaching out towards His soul to tell Him I was there.

The Majesty of Judas: para 146

Context: As he dies Judas loses his ability to sense Lily’s presence and believes himself abandoned, inverting the famous words of scripture.

 

 

But I see the colours they invest Him with and I know why they do it. Why His skin is as light as my skin and His hair is the colour of a lion, why His beard is shot through with the gold of my hair and His eyes are pale like mine. These are not His colours but artists do not lie, they sense me merging with Him as I knelt at the foot of His cross, they depict our tenderness and connection and how I nursed His stolen strength. They show our twinned strength as it was poured out between us, they show our joint suffering but also the colours of our love.

The Majesty of Judas: para 150

Context: Lily interprets representations in future art as an expression of her union with Judas.

 

 

I match Her grief and I surpass it and I say to Her: this is no excuse for multiplying suffering as you have done. I rebuke Her as She rebuked others so often in my sight: how dare you think that your suffering is worth more than other people's. With what you have caused, how dare you plead your grief against what all of us must grieve?

The Majesty of Judas: para 158

Context: In her fury after Judas’s death Lily confronts Magdalene for the suffering she has caused.

 

 

He will not hang lifeless in my dreams. He will come to me full of warmth and love and He will sigh as He did in those moments I was given to hold Him. Rising up towards the kisses of my mouth that I gave to Him so freely, kisses I wish that I had multiplied now that He slumps above me and is gone.

The Majesty of Judas: para 161

Context: Before leaving Judas’s crucified body Lily resolves to recall him in living tenderness.

 

 

Those seals are broken and I am commanded to testify by the Word that has been revealed to me, to set down a True Testament to His courage and His sacrifice, shoring it against their lies until I am no longer resident in my body. Lines that will identify me when He storms back into the world, and remind me of Him in those many lifetimes when He does not appear. But I am mostly commanded to set down words to be signposts upon the path, some comfort to the weary traveller who yet presses on alone.

The Majesty of Judas: para 173

Context: Having returned to the surviving children Lily finds voice and vocation to bear witness and offer consolation.

 

 

When I shook off the name She gave me I broke the last connection between us, and in the absence of Her dominant light I feel my own radiance swelling gently to fill the caves, a softer and more golden light shining without need of dominion. For what good is it to liberate a slave only to bend them to your will?

The Majesty of Judas, : para 176

Context: As the children sleep around her Lily takes leadership based in care and freedom.​​