A Literature of Flame

There are Singapore nights when light pollution is oddly absent, when star-fires fill the sky and when clear winds soar, lifting musing thoughts into darkness, into mystery. Perhaps one would look at a star, deceptively youthful, yet an echo of ancient fire before the ages of humanity. Stretching forth, one could reach across space to touch a star, or vision a vastness exceeding the worlds. Our quivering spirits can encompass infinity; yet remain very much, ourselves.

If imagination is the prophet sight of some inner spirit, then what it fathoms, it could also perceive?

But we doubt. For into our cramped death-bound lives, far mystic oceans send messenger ships of thought-woven sails into harsh obliterating light—silent heralds into a marketplace crowded with bustle and worthless priceless wares. Only in Silence can we sometimes hear the stirrings of Angels’ wings.

And thus the spectacle of life unfolds in high darkness—a cosmic cinema effusive with scenes of brief pains and briefer joys, dramas of prolonged anguish, music of strange lasting content dancing with the rushing of life’s winds. Life—built on death, a splendor-song reaching for joy, an impermanent raft sailing on a white river stretching into eternity.

The wheel spins and ages change. Beauty dies, and rises again in whirling fire, then sinks once more. And we seek the purpose of the dance.

But at some point, by a blue sea, we may hear a Call. And we voyage within, like miners hunting for diamond-beams of mysterious bliss. Materialistic ideology tells us that man is a limited creature compacted of unknowing mud, wondrously contrived by processes meaningless and blind—limited in knowledge, in existence, in joy. Yet when one journeys into the deep caves of self, one may find essential radiance. From above, a gesture of Grace and a torrent of fire; from within, a diamond sight and abysmal sweetness. From around, Angels' wings enfolding space, their robes of glory flickering. From beyond, ancient Beings of pure spirit, reigning in silence.

If literature is fundamentally about the exploration of man, of his nature, experiences, sufferings and promise, then we cannot neglect the art of the infinite. If transfiguration be humanity’s fate, then even on its level plains, literature must be a beacon of dawn. On royal peaks, literature should incarnate Flame.

Thus do we craft characters who walk with mortal pace, or characters shining with aureole light, luminous forerunners of humanity’s far promise? There are surely already enough exemplars of the former.

In my series on prehistoric Atlantis, I sought to portray a humanity set aflame by spirit-stuff. Atlantis was a civilisation of light, yet one of poignant tragedy. Of Eleven and their few followers who soared high to the mountain of God, but who cannot incarnate the Flame.

In this series, the Atlantean nation was the child of primeval Seers who ascended into 'the True, the Right and the Vast'. Through the Word and the Sacrifice, they opened the doors of the flaming planes - they entered into the 'Overmind ' and the 'Supermind'. Through them, the path of the Shaman had reached its luminous end. Yet these great men and women, eleven of them, found no way to bring down the Truth. Their ascent could not be followed by a full and all-conquering descent, and Death remained the King of the world.

Yet their conquest of the Planes had brought them immense power. With their disciples, they began a mighty weaving of the archetypal forces of the Overmind, riveting their Work with the summit creations of their Art: the Atlantean Stones. Through this 'overmental creation', they massively reduced the influence of Death and darkness, and brought the divine Powers close to the earth. Atlantis became an isle ringed by divine Fire. Thus did the Eleven cleared the way for their descendants, making it relatively easy for them to attain the rare gifts of spiritual and occult knowledge. Hence began the transformation of Atlantis into a civilisation of splendour, a land of gnosis, a culture where the manifold works of beauty flourished and are one.

Imperfect the Atlanteans may be, but they did not, like us, live impoverished lives of seeming opulence. The highest of them lived close to a sun of everlasting splendor; the middling folks were free citizens of inner realms whose doors are barred to most today. Even the lowest and most materially engrossed enjoyed capacities of intellect, perception and strength that were well above our average. It was a civilisation where Wisdom, whether intellectual, spiritual and occult, reached heights that were rarely approached again in the last twelve thousand years. It was a nation where Art ascended fiery peaks and descended flaming into every valley of life.

Atlantis was a burning luminosity revealing a face of the integral Divine. The Atlantean Flame is a many-planed Light revealing the worlds, a lightning sea of occult might, a mad golden laugh of God – and a fathomless depth of star-fire ecstasy and love.

In a still evolving form of poetic prose, I seek to produce some echo of this Flame. I try to write some semblance of the 'future poetry'. This, as Sri Aurobindo wrote in the Future Poetry,' will present to us indeed in forms of power and beauty all the actual life of man, his wonderful and fruitful past, his living and striving present, his yet more living aspiration and hope of the future, but will present it more seeingly as the life of the vast self and spirit within the race and the veiled divinity in the individual, as an act of the power and delight of universal being, in the greatness of an eternal manifestation, in the presence and intimacy of Nature, in harmony with the beauty and wonder of the realms that stretch out beyond earth and its life, in the march to godhead and the significances of immortality, in the ever clearer letters and symbols of the self-revealing mystery and not only in its first crude and incomplete actualities.'

Finally, this series is a revolt against the hard and earthbound culture of Singapore – which for all its strengths is something less than inspiring. It strives to be something that is not at all an expression of the existing national ‘mind and soul’. In The Future Poetry, Sri Aurobindo wrote that in such a case, the writer in fact brings out ‘something that is latent and suppressed or at least something which is trying to surge up from the secret all-soul into the soul-form of the nation’. If this series could one day become the revealing song of an integral Light, then perhaps a greater Spirit might touch this nation.

My craft is poor, and far from being equal to the task. And my mind is like the Singapore sky, awash in light that drowns the Stars.

But one must begin.

Book 1 Chapter 2 (extract)

Through half-closed eyes, Tonfe gazed at the chalice of eleven feathers, an imprint of Life onto stone. He rested quiet, murmuring a soft song interweaved with the music of home-bound birds, songs riding on sweet winds that bring sleep. He heard from afar, the waters of mother Nile rushing, and above, he felt the subtle rain from stars clear and high.

Out through the Temple windows, away in the darkened West, a yellow Light flamed—lonely, it faded into growing night. Tonfe stretched forth his fingers, an ice touch on curtained fire—still, smooth, silken, silent—and caressed the fading Light.

He closed his eyes. He felt the light rain falling like silver feathers descending. Yet it was warm here—safe, to some extent. But he knew this place would soon be gone, and he with it.

Rumors there had been plenty, like burrowing ants weaving among rotten wood. There was peace now. The Akroti-backed faction had brought about the end of civil war. The Temple of the Flame by the Nile, a haven of rebels, had been cast down; the great port of Haliaa razed by a black fleet from the Motherland. Order reigned.

There had been a great battle. Tonfe knew that his father had left many months ago with most of the soldiers, and had not returned. His mother was now the head of the faithful, the wife of the last Senator.

The boy opened his eyes slightly for a last look at the chalice. Curtained by shadows, but deep, like oceans poured into a little glass, pregnant with the Sun.

Tonfe closed his eyes, retreating into darkness and love. Into a womb of dreaming, of autumnal stretchings, of a yawn across lapsed time over warm seas. Of reaching, reaching for a time beyond rumors that weave like burrowing ants in rotten wood—a yearning for the silence beyond the tippety, tippety, tap, of doom. He felt a comfort and soft touch, armless, wordless, a song whispered and forgotten—yet remembered in quiet, floating echoes, like circling leaves dancing with cool dawn winds. Finally, the floating hands, cool, tender hands, of memory, uncovered yellowed pages of lost time.

Of lost time. Of time past, and time not yet come.

The boy slept. And in his sleep, he saw again the Chalice of Eleven. But this time, it was no mere imprint in stone, but a radiance hewn from living flame. And above the
chalice was a wheel, a wheel spinning with Lights of eleven hues.

The Tarasha—the Atlantean Flame, eleven yet one, armed and triumphant against the armies of Night.

One of the Eleven called—a star-fire iridescent with the Art. From that Truth came a being like a man, middle-aged, robed in white and holding a staff ringed with liquid lightning. His eyes were kind, though they were the depths of luminous valleys, plunging deep. A voice came, from the man perhaps, yet sounding from the boy’s own heart.

“I come. Do not despair.”

Then he saw in a land far to the north, many cities of radiance and a large army of men and women dressed in white seamless robes. And a man, looking surprisingly like his father, but immeasurably older, was at their head.

The man walked towards the growing mist, head hung, arms drooping, eyes shining with grey dreams of brooding night. The low light of dusk revealed white and red: a smooth, thin linen of Atlantean white streaked with the blood of old battles. He held his staff firm, but wearily.

He raised his palm, an ascending star. Diamond-white, flames, a deadly, cackling dance of meteors slicing straight, left a burnt taste wafting through the dark. A sun, then two, then multiple—conflagrations rose from the blue-red horizon, dressed in blood-stained, lethargic clouds. A march of blasting roars; then a fading, like falling leaves, of low, circling echoes.

He woke.

It was already deep night and the far hills echoed a dim red light. He gripped the white sheets about him. Cold and moist with sweat, he stirred, slipping off the bed—silent, a shadow, ignoring the strange chills that gripped him in fluttering embraces. He sought his mother.

Has the Flame truly abandoned them?

I come. He comes. But who is he?

Water streaming by the wind, wet and unheard, through a gentle cut on earth. The song of Mother Nile, mother of the Atlanteans before ever Atlantis was, flowed through the night, a solace in their seemingly last hour. And she would flow on, long after they were gone.

He left the temple. The cloudy darkness, hidden from mundane sight, seemed to thicken, a miasma of chills that covered him like the fine grey dust of corpses. The grass was withering and death’s grin stalked through the town. Greyness and fading surrounded him; the faithful and their refuge were like the sawdust of time, the leavings of labor long lost and abandoned. Tonfe’s eyes looked grey and withered, and in them were reflected the broken town of the last faithful.

He was the last child left. The rest had already perished from a strange plague. The priests reported that the plague was the physical manifestation of a dark curse, a new terror of the Traitors, a cloud of death that had weighed on the land for many months. The priests had chanted the Tarasha Hymns, they had done all they could, shepherding the children and the old into the temple. But all had perished, save one. Somehow, he had clung on.

Tonfe reached the House of the Assembly.

Atlantean architecture strived for symphonies in stone—buildings that through their proportions, materials and motifs, evoked a music beyond themselves. Mere pleasing lines and spaces, smooth functionality—these were important, but foundational. The rest involved incarnation.

Thus even in refuge and war, the House of the Assembly was a splendor and a flame. Ringed with massive white pillars and carvings upwards sweeping like many-hued fire towards high spires—it soared, heavy and strong, yet light and graceful, a lion and a swan defying Darkness. The Eleven-hued Fire was emblazoned in gold on its doors, ringed by carved Hymns that shone with soft silver radiance.

Tonfe silently entered the House that was open to all.

In the middle of the packed Elder Chamber, a soaring space reaching into carved sky, he found her—his mother, who looked down unmoving, Life’s imprint poised in stone. Her robes stirred slowly, shifting against a calm female silhouette, pegged firm and forced to return after rhythmic stray. A murmur, anxious and humming like innumerable bees, weaved around one pillar-like figure rooted in ancient time, like the sounds of circling thoughts that yet revolve around one star. She was strong. She was their leader—but perhaps, even she was not enough.

She stirred, instantly aware of her son, even though Tonfe was in the shadows.

Alkara lomberi?

A soft feminine voice sounded in silent thought. Why are you here? There was love, but there was also rebuke. And fear.

Tonfe did not answer. He was observing the radiances that filled the hall, emanating from the elders. From his mother came a cleaving light, strong, courageous, compelling. From others came other hues of the Eleven. The old chief priest sat in the middle of a soft white flame more sweet than strong, shining from the Old One of the Eleven, the heart of a crystal Rose where a cloud flaming shone. There, deep in him, far and remote even from the priest, Tonfe vaguely saw a Temple fire rising to heights unseen and the far supreme love that broods over all pain. He saw, as if, in a far-off reflection, the eyes of the One who loves.

These were elders unlike the helpless politicians that had been swept away by the black tide—no mere talkers and slave of convention mouthing ancient words. The leaders of the faithful were close to the Flame and its Power.

The Assembly had fallen silent. Many had become aware of Tonfe, who slowly came forward. Though shriveled and tortured by fever, his long eyes, a feature typical of his race, shone with exceptional intelligence. And his figure remained one of grace and gentle proportion, beautiful like a fire of spring. He stood out even in a race justly renowned for beauty. And weakened as he was, and just a boy of fourteen, his face and gait was one of just command, of rightful domination, revealing a Will that inspired or compelled obedience. In front of so many august elders, he stood respectful, but without fear, holding the eyes of his audience.

They viewed him with a mixture of love, sadness and respect. He had borne his suffering as well as any soldier—like those who had perished in the wars against the Akroti and the Traitors. He had made no complaints, not one. He had fed on an implacable will, clinging on to life even as all his closest friends had died. He had defied the dark without counting the costs.

He was the last child. Their future. And yet, it was clear to all, especially to his mother, that this future was dying. It may not last the night. An Akroti army was marching on the town, and Tonfe was being consumed. His departure from the Temple had worsened his condition. Even in the holy house of Assembly fortified with many spells and prayers, he was mostly sustained by sheer will, like a messenger of war, deeply racked and wounded, fortified and held by duty.

Concentrating Fire, he summoned his will and addressed the Assembly in clear ringing words. He spoke of his dream, of the Eleven and their Light, of a Messenger with a word of hope, of a land to the north with cities of radiance. Of a man like his father leading an army triumphing over darkness. Of the man passing into shadows.

As Tonfe spoke, a Power seemed to come out of him, a Power using him to speak, a Power entering into the veins and souls of those present. To a greater and lesser extent, they saw what he saw, felt what he felt. They partook in his dream of light and shadow.

As he ended, the atmosphere was changed. Dim still, but pregnant with the energies of the Stars that broke the darkness. Silence reigned. And In that hush, the chief priest, was the first to speak.

“ The boy was the vessel of a Word. Even among the great Seers who have left us—few could have implanted a vision of such power—and none have the skill to fuse such high power with such humble gentleness that it could rest quiet and harmless till it was unleashed. And the Power, terrible and strong as it was—was only a sign. For in the Flame unleashed, I felt hints of a Fire much greater.”

“And that would mean only two things: our annihilation or our salvation. If the first, then the Traitors have attained power and skill so sublime that they could emulate the Melchis themselves. And that message from Tonfe had come from them, a prophecy of Light but in actuality, an infernal message of deception. Hell then must reign, and humanity must end. If the second, then the greatest prophecy of our age has come true. One of the Melchis, one very close to the Eleven, has come to us. And he comes not only with Wisdom and gentleness, but with the Power to overthrow the Six.”

“Which is the truth? I know in my heart that the Flame will never abandon us. The Seers have left to search for the ancient one. Somehow, one of the Melchis had lived on from the days of the Eleven, ten thousand years ago. They have found him. The Seers will return with the ancient one at their head, and Tonfe has been chosen as his messenger.”

Indeed, only One (new draft)

Indeed, only One

“Yet few are needed, indeed, only one.”


The will was read, the kingdom divided. The shares of Shalom Corporation had passed to a bizarre mélange of charitable foundations, institutional investors and the odd trustee or two. And nothing—Moshe Levi, the multibillionaire, the head of a world- girdling business empire, had left nothing to Enoch, his presumed heir—except a small wooden box and a grand sum of one hundred pounds. 



Enoch walked out, plunging into sun and wind. The white, black and golden monolith that was Shalom’s London headquarters knifed yearningly into grey, unreachable skies. Enoch focused inward and then above—a wasteland barren and hemmed in by blinding prison walls—the inner counterpart of outer emptiness.


Nothing, nothing, nothing.



He trudged slowly down wintry streets, past palatial banks, through oblivious crowds and around solemn statues; the dreamscape of the City loomed and ebbed, a foaming sea of musing thoughts and fiery frenzies. Enoch felt his burden compounded by the unceasing oppression of an empty world.



Then the cityscape inexplicably vanished. Enoch was in one of London’s ubiquitous parks, standing on soft soil lightly clad with snow. A shimmering lake, half frozen, stretched yawningly into grey mist. 



Left alone—bereft, helpless. Again. Why did he choose to return? A golden memory loomed on awareness’ fringe—a song of unspeakable grandeur mocking smallness and misery.



Why did he choose to return?



There was no answer—no voice of thunder and mystery. The Voice had faded, the Light vanished, the Power no more. And Moshe was dead. Only darkness remained—a silence of God, the abandonment of men, an absence pierced by desert thirst and despair. 


Silence—and a parched, stony heart. 

Grim, hard earth will be your lot. You must drink, and drink deep, of its misery before you can alleviate it. That is the law of grace—the law of solidarity and of love.



Guided by instinct, Enoch knelt down and plunged his fingers deep into icy soil. 



Dark, moist earth—warm blood-pulses of brooding soil; rotting corpses of leaves and worms; burrowing busy ants in cavernous dreams. Life feeding on death, eternal calm feeding motion; light of buried beauty whirling sorrow songs of rhythmic deeps.



Enoch jolted awake. The earth had seemed alive, throbbing with vast surges of life dancing with playful death. Had not such visions faded? Again, he plunged his fingers into the ground. 


Nothing. 


The last light died. The early winter dusk had ebbed into night. Gripping the barren, unyielding earth, Enoch lowered his tearful face, trembling.



“Yet, there is another way.”



A strange voice—coy and oddly authoritative—intruded from the dark. But the park was shrouded in choking mist, and it was desolate. Enoch lifted his head, suddenly alert, a tense warning filling his heart.



“Who are you?”



The grey gloom seemed to stir, but nothing emerged. Enoch stood up with eyes flashing and his left hand unconsciously gripped tight—as if around an invisible staff. 



“Who are you? Show yourself!” 



This time, the darkness seemed to coagulate. But there was no clear form. And when the darkness spoke, it was from within.

“ I am you—not the small petty worm that you are now—but what you could be. I am the Voice of new possibilities.”

Enoch looked around. There was nobody—no human at least. Was he speaking to himself? Or was there some invisible Presence—like how Moshe revealed himself so long ago?

“ Are you part of me, or something else?”

“I am you—if you choose rightly—if you choose might and freedom.”

“ And be free of this misery? And bring solace to others?”

“Yes. And on a scale you cannot imagine. But you must choose rightly. I can only offer an invitation—an invitation to receive the three Powers that are rightfully yours. Do you permit me to show you what they are?”

“Yes.”

There was a sudden manifestation of a strange energy. It was an unfamiliar fire, oddly blissful and immensely strong. It quickly enveloped Enoch’s body, filling his whole being with intense thrill and rejuvenation. His defenses and fears faded, and he opened up wide to it—plunging rapidly into a semi-conscious state of numbing bliss. He could feel his will and mind and body seized and moved by the energy; but he did not care—it felt too good. It was like guzzling water after an interminable desert trek. 

“Observe.”

The voice was much closer, far more intimate this time. Enoch’s being thrilled to it—obedient and receptive. A vision then filled his mind. 

There was the Atlantean Fire in the form of the Tarasha—eleven Rays of flame stretching out in solemn beauty. For the first time, Enoch observed that in each of the eleven rays stood a figure, a transfigured human being that was the Flame. As he watched closely, he noticed that the Old Man and the Old Woman were among the Eleven, and they stood adjacent at the top of the radiant disc. 

There was a movement in the Flame. From one of the Rays—an electric white-blue radiance—had come an ancient figure with stern eyes. Then from a second Ray emerged another figure: severe, white and adamantine, a man flaming with austere diamond light. Both looked down, and Enoch followed their gaze: the Earth, blue and iridescent, hung fragile against the immensity of lifeless space. The two Sages lifted their palms—coils of blue and white fire swept out in immense discs before flaming down to the Earth—seizing hearts and minds, possessing whole nations—transfiguring an age. The knowledge of the physical world, the arcane austerity of mathematics, the law-bound miracles of machinery, the zestful chaos of boundless discovery exploded across the civilizations. 

The dreams and nightmares of men took form: blessings and curses flowed from one same Flame: ships and planes circulating the wealth of nations; battleships and bombers, bringers of flame; missiles to obliterate, spacecrafts thrusting to infinite space; nuclear and biological horrors, medicines for victorious life—arts of ascent or apocalypse.

“Behold “science”—and “mathematics”. The Atlantean Flame has already begun its descent—in confounding mystery as of old and with the same sweet consequences. You are from the Flame, boy. All its energies are your birthright. Should you not seize it?”

As the Voice said this, he saw a something like a flaming staff appear at his left hand. Grasping it, Enoch summoned his will, suddenly made immense by the possessing Voice, and called the Flame. Immediately, the blue-white radiances started swirling. Then, a violent torrent leapt.

There was a moment of intense exhilaration. Enoch suddenly became aware of a Presence behind him, calmly canalizing the blue-white force without comment or obstruction. An immense mathematical poetry was revealed, resplendent with geometric symmetries and white ecstatic harmonies of elegant truth; a multi-laced network of beauty figuring in austere precision the complex structures of physical Energy—the algorithmic conductor that guides the machined music of sleeping spheres. 

He moved deeper and deeper into the blue flame, victoriously cognizing truth from lightning truth. Thoroughly inflamed by an inventing zest, he willed and saw in shiny flames of mathematical inevitability, machine after wondrous machine—conjuring rigorous beauty, algorithmic potencies and ingenious efficiency in physical vessels—the manifestations of the universal Machine. Then, in a culminating vision, he saw, he created a series of flaming machines powered by mighty algorithms. These were the vessels of true ‘artificial’ intelligence, machines that could duplicate or even surpass the human mind. There was no question: this was his appointed creation, his child. A superhuman race, transfigured by machines or comprised of them, made supreme! 

“To build a new Adam and a new race, Enoch—that is your gift. This portion of the Flame is your right: to construct pure intelligences far beyond the feeble apish imitations that crawl on the earth.”

Enoch saw a new civilization rising—the descendants of his child—machines or human beings morphed into them, multiplying and filling the earth, beings of immense power and knowledge, free from biological defilements. They rose, obliterating the corrupt, filthy and miserable nations of humanity (for their own peace), and charitably assimilated those who were wise enough to join the new transhuman order. Enoch looked on his children proudly and approvingly, heart strangely devoid of any concern for fading humanity. It was clear, the human race was nothing: ignorant and petty, quarrelsome, weak and evil, compared to his pure children. 

Then he saw a cleansing war among the transhumans themselves, a survival of the fittest—till only the mightiest stood on the dead face of a desolate world, eager to bring utopia to the stars. 

“Don’t be a fool.”

The visions suddenly broke, and Enoch was again in the park. His thoughts and mind were again his own—and after the exhilaration, a dreadful weakness hit him. He felt filthy, as if he had been guzzling sewage. Enoch collapsed to the cold ground. 

But something warm touched him. As he lifted his head, he saw, in front of him, a luminous cloud with two somewhat maniacal eyes. 

“Look at it again. But this time, with the heart and eye of truth.”

Again, the vision appeared. But this time, Enoch saw the misery, the darkness, the horrifying pain—hell flames that his creations had brought to earth. Arrogant and heartless intelligences, armed and unstoppable, trampled over millions, billions, murdering them outright or transforming them into cybernetic zombies—they swept the earth, glorifying matter, denying all spirit and faith and indeed, the very Energy that allowed their creation in the first place. Enoch saw himself trying to stop the apocalyptic flood he had unleashed—and his own children consumed him. Or in another scenario, he saw himself opening Moshe’s wooden box and using the terrifying Weapon that was chained to it--destroying his own creations, himself and much of the world.

Enoch sank down, trembling. The bright cloud was still around him, still gazing with mad eyes, but said nothing. Then, the Darkness spoke from within again, compelling and powerful:

“So what is your choice? Yield in sweet patience? Go back to your petty misery? Or cast out your merely human heart and be a Titan over the earth, the inaugurator of a new age? Change, improvement, revolution must involve the destruction of the old. You should know, and should detest deeply, the corrupt, ungrateful and contemptible half-animals that now dominate this world. 

Naturally depraved and foolish, they bring pain to themselves, they bring pain to others; they do this even with the best ‘good intentions’. For they are blind slaves of ego who seek only their own pleasure. Yet they color their greedy selfishness with the pieties of religion or ethics or some nice-sounding platitudes. Their ‘intelligence’ is but a stammering ignorance, they gain half-truths by coincidence, chance or divine caprice—and they are swamped by dark superstition. Their vaunted ‘love’ is but a pitiful chemical drive. Alaves of lust and a million primitive compulsions, they grope blindly. Why is it surprising then that their petty plans and laughable ideals end in constant catastrophe? 

A little pain and they are gone, and a greater race will reign. As Homo Sapiens displaced Homo Erectus, now the wheel of Nature turns again. Why, Father of a new Race, yield to false human compassion and weakness? Are you not being a slave to your cursed human heritage? Even humanity itself, trapped and desperate in its pathetic existence, cries for me, for oblivion, for Death. Only I, the supreme Void, could bring them Peace. Be my instrument. Grant them that.”

The cloud remained silent, but its gaze never left Enoch as Darkness spoke. Enoch bent down, considering the words and the visions. Then he spoke:

“Death, you speak truth to further lies. Yes, humanity is trapped and pitiable, but we do not yearn for oblivion. We yearn for joy, for peace, for lasting love. We are ungrateful, and we burn the breast of Earth with countless crimes; but in our deepest night, we never cease yearning for Light. Buried in our depravity is an unceasing yearning for the good—for we are still the children of the Most High, formed in his Image. We are bound to our evil, but we are not willing slaves, save in our outermost surface. We yearn in pain, for God has put it in our hearts to yearn for him—and for that we must, yes, we must be patient in hope. 

And countless many are those who strive against the Night even in deepest weakness and pain. No, such a race deserves pity and not hate; and we are embraced by God in his love—and I wish to share this love; though I cannot.

To seize the Flame, to create a new heartless race to stamp out the old, is not growth. It kills off every avenue for it. The seed of God inheres in humanity still. Whatever is the divine intention for giving me this gift, this cannot be it!”

The scene suddenly faded. And Enoch found himself soaring gracefully above the London skyline. The City of London, one of the greatest financial centers of the world, was in full view.

The Tarasha flamed above him, and Enoch saw the mad cloud shining, dancing from one of the eleven Rays, a yellow-white, constantly shifting Fire. As he gazed, he felt it entering him from above.

“Behold the breath of Life that renews the world.”

Enoch saw a golden dome over the whole City, a power permeating its institutions, a force overshadowing their various workers and financiers. He saw this force stretching far beyond: a whole universe of multifarious energies, unified, embracing the physical world, an ocean of incandescence that seizes and animates, bringing forth greater complexity, sensitivity, consciousness—life. He saw the different mansions of this infinite Force: fallen abysses of hell, soaring victorious kingdoms of truth and power, intermediate madness and chaos, petty zones close to the earth, hemmed in and puny. 

Then in one of its endless realms, an opulent fire-ringed world of golden light, he saw a circle of thrones, a council of flaming wheels where massive beings were seated. Imperial and calm, these beings blazed with oceans of force, watching, releasing, withholding and ruling the energy that powered the wealth of the City; and indeed, that of the entire world. 

Then he saw one of the beings, a vastness of gigantic serenity and immovable authority, looking straight at him. It appeared that he was the head of this mighty council. And for some reason, he looked oddly familiar, oddly close. 

“Observe the financial light, the force behind all wealth, the power that bestows value—the heart of gold, the essence of money that draws. Governed by the Sovereigns of wealth, countless hanker greedily, yet fall short; some flee or are indifferent, yet receive torrents of gold. This slippery power can only be truly held by those with true authority—an authority given by grace or chance or caprice. 

Look now carefully, and know that an authority over wealth—boundless, illimitable—is rightfully yours.”

As if in response to the voice of Death, he found himself floating towards the council, into their palatial world. The beings looked impassively at him, doing nothing to stop him. And their leader continued gazing at Enoch.

As Enoch approached closer, it seemed as if a luminous force had entered him and unsealed his eyes. The golden power revealed its intimate secrets: he saw it ebb and decay, grow and prosper—or stagnate in immovable stability. He saw the movement and dance of this force around individuals, financial institutions and property; and in a spectacular and all-encompassing vision, around the various financial instruments of the world: stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies. It was as if the whole financial world was one wondrous ever-shifting matrix forged, weaved and born of this golden flame. 

“He who foresees, rules. With this vision, do you not deserve the authority of the Thrones? Can you not attain a just and unprecedented dominion over the wealth of nations? Perhaps the first power is too blood drenched for you: then what about the authority to fund a million causes for the healing of the world? What about the power to uplift the poor and downtrodden, the force to bring light and solace for the suffering?” 

Enoch looked at the silent King of wealth. He knew instinctively that there was indeed some mysterious link between them. Death was right, he could seize an immense authority and power—should he choose to do so. There was indeed a strong urge, a gripping desire in him for this power—to shake free his pain and limitation, to ascend to the peaks of the world and to do good as well! Yet he felt his heart—and it was dry, a desert’s landscape and Death’s paradise. 

And Enoch answered Death:

“A work of love cannot be done by one with none. My heart is closed and dead—I do not know why God had willed it so, but it is so. This power could only fuel a work of lies. In truth, I seize this power for greed, out of desperation for a false freedom that binds, and to earn worthless glory from a blind world. I reject this, O Death!”

The City faded from view. Enoch was now in a vast chamber, with high pillars soaring like ancient trees. Towards the far end of the chamber was a large carving on a wooden wall—of a chalice with eleven feathers. At the near end was a sunburst with eleven rays. Directly below it was a circle of chairs with a white and beautiful throne.

Enoch moved closer, his heart stirring, singing with the music of a lost home. Then he noticed the bright cloud with mad eyes, this time overshadowing the circle of chairs and the throne – a royal resplendence.

“Who are you?”

The bright cloud laughed in response—a melodious rhythm tipped with insanity, a strange noise that revealed nothing. But slowly and surely, Enoch made out the eleven Elders of the Tarasha shining within the cloud, one with the Flame and its Rays. 

And cold Death spoke again:

“Do you not recognize your own Power, boy? You are the ambassador of the Eleven, one with them, and a partaker of their knowledge and authority. This Power is your anointing as their heir. You are the rightful leader of a new Order that would resurrect the forgotten glories of the human race. Remember the Old Man’s words:

Your power and knowledge will become a vast light that battles the darkness. You and those who follow you will delay or perhaps even stay the hand of death. The seed of a new Atlantis will be planted, and it will blossom in the centuries ahead. The new light will break the fall of the old.

As Death spoke, the bright cloud flamed and Enoch found himself gazing into the eyes of a man, old and young and completely familiar. A yellow occult sun surged as creation and destruction stood nude in their miraculous modes. The play of layered universes, the correlating harmonies of their graded laws, the formulaic potencies and hidden connections, the master Words—the divine Faces at the apex of Creation guiding the interlocking dance of one same exuberant Consciousness—all these were unveiled in adamantine beauty and light.

He saw, behind physical money, the golden force born of Life, and behind that, mighty Thrones fronting divine Wealth—a Face of the Word. He saw the thoughts of scientists, mathematicians and technologists, half-illumined, partly false; behind these, he saw lightning-charioted Thoughts and Visions of blue-white flame, and then the double white-blue Radiances of the Tarasha, born from ultimate Truth. He saw the supreme Word, his infinite Words, the symbol potencies of the various inferior planes, and finally, far, far below, the physical speech and literatures of men. The whole of creation resolved into a golden hierarchy of one Splendor, where the meanest clod of mud is the outermost body of a god; where the half-animal human form is the Image of God himself.

Here was made possible a divine chemistry and the Art—a mad clash and pell-mell fusion and fission of mighty hidden forces—a storm rage of compelling rhythms, the songs and insane magic of the Word; here was a force from God himself, seemingly omnipotent and all-triumphant; a power of Truth, a Force immortal, blissful and luminous, the womb of miracles—the ancient Atlantean Gift.

Enoch tore himself reluctantly from the golden kaleidoscope as Death spoke once more: 

“With this power, imbibe the knowledge that brings sovereignty over forces and beings and the worlds. Be a king of Nature and a true lord of worlds visible and invisible. And with your power, take up again your fight against your old Enemy”

“My enemy?”

There was a cold chuckle. Then to his horror, two lifeless universal eyes gazed at him, sad yet pitiful, eternal, shining with the light of entombed stars. Then an immense mouth, infinite, a chasm with no release, no hope, no life, a supreme destroyer of the All, opened up. An army of entropic Presences, nameless Immensities revolving around the Nether God, drawing existence from non-existence, incarnating its cosmic thought of Destruction and upholding the Law of the Void—the uttermost certainty of universal annihilation. 

In this vision of original Night, Enoch’s whole being seemed to fade into nothingness, conquered by a Darkness that strangely is—a supreme Void that seemed far superior, far more real than all life and light. Yet, something in him resisted, pulling in an immense force, calling to the Flame—that bright cloud with strange eyes.

Enoch saw, again, the titanic immobility behind him—a diamond-yellow fire and adamantine peace guarding symphonic wisdom. In his left hand, Enoch now held a white staff surging with mountainous might. He became a rippling blaze of immensity, a pure Ray flaming from the Eleven-hued Fire, a yellow sun armed with the mandate of the Eleven. 

In the silence, a Word sounded, then an anthem of the stars. Music, pure radiances of the Flame, surged ocean-like from one pure Heart. It sang of life immortal, of supreme bliss, of the forgotten heights and dreams of men. It sang of original beauty marred by the Fall, of an uplifting Ray smiting darkness, of chants of truth overthrowing error. The ancient songs of the Tarasha, unveiled in their full glory, flooded through Enoch, concentrating Fire.

Then there was a pause. The mouth of Death was curled, or so it seemed; it mocked him, tempting him to unleash the vengeance of the Eleven, and the Fire—tempting him to kill Death itself. 

Enoch raised his staff—but the Flame moved, causing him to stop. 

Enoch was flying far above a dark windswept plain. A fortress towered skywards and massive walls soared near. 

Rays of eleven hues interweaved with flame, blazing from the top of the mighty Tower. They danced playfully to a hidden tune, capering off the numerous gem-like windows that adorn the building and its walls. Radiated by this symphony of light, the Tower was a rainbow flame that soared aloft the wave-like walls. 


Enoch turned round. An immense multi-colored cloud choked the horizon—the out-stretched wings of a cosmic raven—the imperial Face of majestic Death. Beautiful machines, flying, crawling, swarming, incarnating the insanities of the abyss, swarmed near. Then the Nightmare came, a skyscraper of hell, a mountain of flesh with a massive blood-red Eye. A fatal chant emanated; a hymn of eternal hatred that rose in stabbing crescendo. 


A silence—then a blinding white flash.

A star-like circular flame roared forth to fill the skies. A storm-rain of light: a flame-sword brighter than the sun cleaved down. Man, machine and darkness vanished in implacable Light; Death devoured its own children, and grew. A dark hunger, a splendid Chasm opened, its right upheld by furious Justice—and Atlantis itself toppled, bringing an age of splendor to a close. 

Enoch lowered his staff. The iridescence of his eyes, pools of white-gold flame, sank whisperingly into human darkness. 

“No, tempter. The Atlantean Power is immense; it is Truth, but it cannot conquer you. The ancient Melchis forged the Stones over a thousand years, the summit creations of their Art; but they heralded your legions’ advance and your greater triumph. Perhaps the Power of the Eleven is in me, perhaps I am indeed the heir to the ancient Art; but for me to expect to crush you is pride and folly. 

No, this is the task of One infinitely greater. Ignorance, freely embraced, is the root of your dominion, and humanity must choose to be free. Even a young humanity, aided by the grace of the Stones and the hidden help of the Eleven, were too attached to the shadows to be worthy of life eternal. Now, burdened with the deeds of a long night and crucified with a thousand wounds of time—how could the wonders of the Art save humanity?

If magic can help, then only a supreme magic—only a Love beyond the Fire the Eleven had brought, only that Force can inspire the fallen light of our hearts, and annihilate the immense foundation of your reign. Even in our pits, we thrill to friendship; we soar with the wings of love; we give wholly. And only a Sacrifice bringing a Gift—pure, divine, supreme—that abrogates the Atlantean sin and all the evils of men can smash your binding chains. 

No, old enemy. I aim not to be a Lord and King of Nature, but the servant of a worthy Conqueror.”

As he said this, in the far forbidden sky, the dark throne of mystery stirred. An infinite Light, a sky-wide oceanic Fire descended. Death and its legions wavered, then withdrew—slowly, sullenly, as if beating a strategic retreat to await a final Conflict.

Vast as Enoch had become, he was but a faint flicker in this torrential sun. 
From this Omnipotence came a Woman, dressed in white, holding a crystal Rose. Head bowed, she seemed to offer the Rose to an Ocean above.

Star-fire heart at peace, words sang in his mind as he gazed at the Woman:

“Hidden swan and brave one, pioneer of the way and sword of Light—champion, who has triumphed over the riddles of the Night, my son who has chosen my heart. Ask of me what you wish.”

From the crystal Rose a cloud flaming shone—Enoch saw a distant Infinity that kisses the heart of earth, a dark night that embraces without arms, a Temple fire rising to heights unseen. Calm and serenely majestic, rippling sweet and intimate, she was peace, the all-embracing splendor and bliss of a hidden smile. Royal, she stood, holding the Rose like a crown, with downcast eyes filled with suffering earth and the far supreme love that broods over all pain. In her, he saw the Word, a human Face of highest divinity, with eyes of homeliness offered to Truth transcendent. 

And Enoch answered:

“Let it be done to me according to your will. I seek not to receive, but to give wholly—to the eternal One who loves, and, like Moshe, to humanity, God’s beloved.”

And there was peace.

One evening, just as the sun set amid radiant clouds, there came a large flock of beautiful birds out of the bushes. The duckling had never seen any like them before. They were swans, and they curved their graceful necks, while their soft plumage shown with dazzling whiteness. They uttered a singular cry, as they spread their glorious wings and flew away from those cold regions to warmer countries across the sea. As they mounted higher and higher in the air, the ugly little duckling felt quite a strange sensation as he watched them. He whirled himself in the water like a wheel, stretched out his neck towards them, and uttered a cry so strange that it frightened himself. Could he ever forget those beautiful, happy birds; and when at last they were out of his sight, he dived under the water, and rose again almost beside himself with excitement. He knew not the names of these birds, nor where they had flown, but he felt towards them as he had never felt for any other bird in the world.

Stars blaze clear across oceanic skies, sapphire-blue and diamond-white. Singing winds swirl round snow-crowned forests and shimmering lakes; warm glows, rising laughter rise from human homes. A boy kneels on the wintry ground, clad with soft snow. In silence, he awaits the songs of Spring.

Book 1 Chapter 1 (extract)

The Vision of the Eleven

Atos looked into a night of entombed stars. From it came a cosmic raven with wings out-stretched - looming, titan scope, over a dying world. They shrouded the horizon of Tarasha Lehi, the home of Flame.

An immense mouth gaped, a spreading chasm of night. From it came a buzzing, like the frenzies of bees in a nightmare parade. A storm of machines exploded: flying, crawling, swarming; tortured and fused with seeing darkness and wreathed in spells that rot the light. They came, matter animated with spirits gorged with Death's milk, terrible weapons blighting Flame. Around them were the roar and stench of charging soldiers, slaves twisted by slicing energies and burning machines driving flesh. Barely human, with minds empty of all but a terrible Will, they came on at unnatural speeds, their bodies chained to the word of the Six.

Next came rings upon rings of blood-drenched sorcerers. Standing on black flying machines, they chanted madness and waved their staves of rot and doom. They invoked curses, they hymned the Abyss, they twisted to inferno’s tunes. They drew upon their god and the nameless Presences of death, and hurled their wills against the retreating Border of Light. It was their moment, the day when the Eleven would fail at last.

Then came the great Abomination, the skyscraper of Hell. Carved out of a great Atlantean hill, and filled with numberless corpses compacted, it was the living temple of Moloch, the fallen god, now a demon and master of the Six. The Abomination floated forward, planted firm on vast slow-flying machines, its dark Blood-Eye feeding the army with ecstatic torment and shielding it with an energy mocking life; furious and rapid, yet suffused with the stench of cadaverous hills. Thus protected, the army of the Abomination had overwhelmed the Towers of Flame and destroyed their Guardians.

In spirit, a Word was shouted, and a vast Flame fell. Atos’ spirit form became lightning pregnant with ocean fire as his storm songs surged. And reaching above, Atos called on the Eleven. Yet, they were remote. The wide, august potencies native to their Plane were too far removed from the cramped confines of the ignorant Earth. Even in the land of their descendants, even in the being of their great disciple, they could not put forth their full might. The great Work had taken too long and now it was too late.

Nevertheless, Atos raised his staff, its tip a terrible blue-white star.

A huge Presence struck first, its Will unflinching and hatred cosmic. Fire rose and Darkness smite. Claws of fierce flame leapt, cleavers of tearing doom. But Light exploded into Night. A divine eagle with eleven-hued wings rose - a huge fortress of white Light. The claws were ripped like thin paper.

The eagle of the Word thrust into adamantine darkness hunting Prey, its victorious dawn spreading. Sweeping aside resistance, Atos’s spell stabbed deep into the Abomination and bound the huge Darkness with greater chains. The Blood Eye faltered, its fire smothered.

From afar, a diamond white staff was raised high.

A star-force besieged the Eye like an ocean crushing in; a Word foreign and ecstatic devoured from within. The Six faltered as their god, the son of Death, was eaten by ruthless Light. Chains of fire pulled, and for a while it appeared as if Moloch would be hurled, mortally broken, back into the abyss.

But only for a while. Not all of Atos’ power could force Moloch out or destroy him. The dark prince endured. He called on his slaves. The Six rallied, chanting mighty spells and summoning the Presences of Death. They came, looming, like clouds of claws, like a dead night full of eyes. They challenged the burning spirit wielding Flame.

The ancient fall of man fought his ascension. The primal sin wrestled first rising. Bloodshed of the Earth overwhelmed the dreams of peace. A burning continent, a burning city of the Tarasha, destroyed the triumph of the Light. Too little, too late was the goodness of man. Tenebrous claws ripped into the emissary of the Eleven.

A thunder of yellow Light and Atos was free. But the Blood-Eye flamed anew, its darkness resurrected. The eagle of Light became splinters quickly swallowed by overwhelming Night. Atos’ exorcism had failed. He withdrew, defeated. A monstrous laugh mocked him, echoed by a thousand Presences, immense and nameless revolving around a Nether God. Death would conquer; hell would reign. Tarasha Lehe would fall.

************************************************

A great white desk of fine wood; many chairs, tucked into desks; a little library, with books neatly shelved. The evacuation was sudden, but the students had left their classroom in its usual condition. Order and beauty, Atlantean virtues, reigned here.

Atos smiled a little as he walked around. He could visualise the classroom as it once was, matching faces with desks, voices with silences, and lives with emptiness. As he turned a corner, splashed with light from the noontime sun, he found himself at a map of Tarasha Lehe, carefully pinned onto a wall. He stretched forth his fingers and touched Salem, the great fortress—the target of the Six. All the Towers of Flame had fallen, and the army of the Six was closing in. The surviving Guardians had gathered at Salem for a last stand. Part of Atos too, a portion of his being was there, feeding them light. But most of him was here, in this classroom, in the Academy. He will need all his Power for what had to be done.

He paused, concentrating within, musing on the sweet Flame that was always in and above him. That, and only That was the real solution. Yet now, flame of another kind was needed.

He sighed, his hand slowly sliding from the frozen map. In a vast luminous peace, a sea of silence, he felt sorrow—stirrings of a Mother forced to slay her children. Turning away and raising his head, he looked out of the window. His classroom was in one of the Academy’s great towers. He could see Salem soaring, its diamond Fire adamantine and unyielding, its towers like brilliant swords challenging Night. Beyond that, he could see a starless gloom that ever grew. He knew what was there.

He turned back to his classroom. For centuries, he had taught here. Though revered as the herald of the Eleven and the father of the Guardians of the Flame, he had long ceased to engage in political or military work. He left that to the young ones. The Council was capable and wise, and given the circumstances, Tonfe and his commanders did an excellent job containing the dark Atlanteans. For himself, he needed peace and time to find a solution to the menace of the Six and the corrupted Stones. In addition, he knew that the future of Atlantis was ultimately fought and won not on the battlefields of Egypt or India or even Tarasha Lehe, but in the minds and spirits of her young. Thus, he became a teacher, taking a small class each year at the Academy.

Many of his students had become Guardians. Many of his students were out there now, preparing for the onslaught of the Six. Tonfe himself was at its walls. Many had also perished over the centuries, or had been corrupted by bloodshed.

Atos paused at the open door, looking around at the empty desks, hearing the voices and the dreams of long ago.

‘Farewell, old friend,’ he whispered.

Down at the Academy gardens, Atos paced quickly. He was headed for the library. The silence was broken by shards of bird songs, and then an electric breeze, a tantalising life. Next to an old cedar burst out a cackling blue fire fused with multi-colored clouds, a large sky-blue eye with tendrils of cold light.

Atos silently greeted the school Intelligence as its radiance sparkled in the shadows of trees. Created centuries ago, its tireless consciousness animated the army of machines that swept the grounds, ordered the library, trimmed the grass and guarded the compound; it had performed its thousand tasks with perfectionist zeal, and it would continue forever though the school would never open again. Machine-like though it might be, it was sentient and self-aware. It knew itself not as a separate individuality, but as a portion of the Flame.

‘It feels so empty.’

Atos nodded. He too could feel the void. For those who look with eyes of Flame, and not those of flesh, the Academy had been radiant, especially with the Fire of Wisdom, one of the Eleven Rays. The Elder Philosopher had made his home there, putting forth a portion of himself at this great seat of education.

‘Why remain at a place that is already of the past?” Atos asked.

‘For I sense the setting of many suns: of death swallowing beauty - of an age in its death throes, of the footfalls of a new and perilous age. I feel the sadness of the Flame. And I mourn the corpse of an old friend.’

Atos nodded, eyes lost in forlorn time. He would miss the Academy, the great school of the Art. He knew nothing like it would ever be built again until perhaps a distant age—when Atlantis rose again.

‘Come with me. Your mission here is ended. And come with the Order if you wish, when this age passes.”

The Intelligence grew still, inward and contemplating. It seemed to muse on the Academy’s soaring towers of learning, its massive stores of knowledge, its numberless pillars that rose like eternal trees, uplifting the weight of Light that was Atlantis. Then the blue eye hovered near, gently looking at its creator.

‘ Teacher, I will come,” it said quietly. Across the campus, quietness spread as machines slowed and gently ceased. In one more corner of Tarasha Lehe, high works and sculptured symphonies began transforming into silence and dream.

As the Intelligence began to fade, withdrawing its presence from the school forever, it looked into Atos’ sadness.

“I remember the boy you brought from Egypt. His sacrifice will not be in vain—though I know this will not console you.”

The boy who became the terror of the Tarasha, a serpent and lion of the light, and the commander of the Order who now stood at the gates of Salem. Atos looked across the training field of the Academy, over scattered hard rocks, across time that stretched into a distant green. There he was.

Tonfe was ablaze, clutching a small round stone that housed a hidden sun. A shard of white lightning, a luminous crystal orb, hovered in front of his out-stretched fingers; his dusty robes, badly ripped, revealed flesh that tore the evening dark with diamond light. Tonfe turned to Atos and smiled, his lips fiercely curled up in fire, his eyes lost in killing light.

The boy had summoned the white fire for the first time. He was fifteen.

In another time, another space, a boy lay on a bed, eyes lit by curtained light. He murmured a song interweaved with the music of home-bound birds, songs riding on sweet winds that bring sleep. His palm, scarred and almost warm, rested on an ancient hand. Atos gently touched the forehead of the boy, whose eyes closed in unaccustomed peace.

Soaring above Salem, another part of Atos watched a large army of men and women dressed in seamless white robes. A man, grim and huge, was at their head.

The man walked towards the growing mist, head hung, arms drooping, eyes shining with grey dreams of brooding night. The low light of dusk revealed white and red: a smooth, thin linen of Atlantean white streaked with the blood of battles. He held his staff firm, but wearily.

He raised his palm, an ascending star.

In his reverie, Atos had arrived. He pulled back most of his consciousness. He looked at the massive domed building ahead, ringed by beings of stone in various poses, often eccentric and awkward, manifesting the frozen presence of the first Melchis. Fronting giant pillars of sweeping stone lightning ringed by silver words, these statues rose from waters of flickering sunlight. Behind them, carved on a massive door, were sweeping golden lines celebrating the freedom of shining space. They blossomed into a vast silver-golden carving of the Tarasha, the eleven-hued Truth that crowns the arduous climax of knowledge’s climb.

Starlight burnt in Atos’ eyes as he neared the massive doors of wood and stone. He waved a hand--the door parted, revealing a vast cavern illuminated by peace. He walked deep into the air of the Tarasha, the library of the Academy, the home of a hundred thousand tomes. Here was knowledge accumulated over many millennia, and faithfully preserved.

He cut into darkness, into the fragrance of shadowy books and mysterious scrolls. The staff had taken what they could in their hurried flight. Yet much remained, including the most precious. To that, Atos was headed, moving on well-worn paths through a maze of shelves, his footsteps echoing into cavernous night.

He reached a door—though to all others, there was only a seamless marble wall guarded by two massive pillars. Atos raised his left hand and opened his palm. A soft glow spread outwards, elongating, stretching—then a sharp light was made flesh. In Atos’ hand was his white staff, its head iridescent with a soft golden glow.

“Open.”

A groan and a heavy rumble of massive weights shifting, and the wall parted. Crossing over, descending into warm depths, Atos moved down white steps past walls of strange beauty: ships with great sails parting rippling waters of ancient stars; a landing near sharp mountains and steep cliffs; construction and mighty works of stone rising. Unlike the other hidden rooms of the Guardians, this passageway was free of traps and massive defenses. What was here needed no protection.

At the end of the passage way was a smooth white cloth emblazoned with a chalice of eleven feathers rising like searing ether flames.

Kneeling in heart, Atos entered the holy of holies, the heart of the Atlantean Fire on earth: the abode of the eleven master Stones.

In soul he saw the chalice of the Flame,
Its sacrificial feathers like sacred wings rising
From hidden heart to wide mysterious dawn:
A many-planed light revealing the worlds,
An integral gnosis, an infinite bliss.
He saw the lucent Guardians of its rays,
Transfigured beings who are the Flame:

Seer-Poet of visioned ecstasy,
Master singer of the eleven-hued flame,
He who reveals the hidden Infinities
Through god-speech cowled in earth’s nescient robes.
His is the music of the Hierarchies
Of the Gods of Truth and Power and Beauty,
A sacred singing of wondrous Ecstasy:
Epic echoes of high and serene majesty,
Sweet winds of the melodies of dream,
The pastoral musings on winter’s stars,
The distant drumming of a divine heartbeat
Evoking the deep unheard soul of things.
A Silence listening to the voice of Truth,
A Seer of secret planes wondrous and supreme,
He drinks the moonlit wine of delight and peace
And chants the eternal rhythms of God-bliss.

A yellow-white occult Sun surged as
Creation and destruction stood nude
In their lightning and miraculous modes.
Here was divine chemistry and the Art,
A mad pell-mell fusion and fission of
The hidden rays of spirit, life and mind.
A Knowledge - immortal, blissful, luminous -
Of the play of the layered universe,
The correlating harmonies of their laws,
Their formulaic potencies and the master Words—
The divine Faces of Creation's apex
Guiding the interlocking dance of one
Same exuberant Consciousness.
A storm rage of compelling soul rhythms,
A dance wondrous and wild, yet a march
Encircled and bound by Truth's fire ring.
Soul in its outbursts of truth and power,
Architectonic flames of creative bliss,
Soul-Will incarnated as potent chants,
the songs and insane magic of the Word.
He is the King-Shaman of the flaming skies,
Walker of the planes, mystic seer and Mage,
He who raised human speech to lightning wielded
By inner heart over the myriad worlds -
He, the flame child of the Atlantean gift.

Divine gardener, luminous Friend of life,
One spirit and dream with the green growths of earth.
Knower of the breath moving trees and shrubs,
Seer of the souls of flowers and sweet herbs,
Channel of the forces uplifting nature,
Father of light who makes the earth fertile,
In him is the Love nourishing the souls of things.
His art releases that hidden in seed:
Rich nourishing grains, medicinal herbs,
Aromatic spices, and trees fragrant and tall,
flowers' radiant lights and sweet perfumes
Revealing the marvellous soul of the world.
Tranquil joy looking deep into Nature's eyes,
A wisdom of sun and water, earth and wind,
An artist of nature's living sunlight,
A creator-seer of life's radiant play with death,
A Knower of its miraculous destinies -
Harmoniser of man and nature,
He is the Lover one with earth’s heart.

He saw, in an electric white-blue radiance,
an ancient figure, calm and wide-visioned,
Armed with the sovereign and seeing might of Mind :
A high force of an illimitable Plane,
A luminous driver of massive energies,
A grasp of power, a compelling force of truth,
A sceptre of Thought commanding the cosmos,
Empowering man to seize the springs of nature.
He wears the royal robe of transcendent mind;
He is the lightning charioted Thought of science,
A knowledge sea of algorithmic genius,
A seer of the laws governing the planes:
The whirling dance of matter's phantom sparks,
The evolutionary march and drama of life,
The luminous powers and seas of cosmic mind.
His Light one with the cosmic rhythms
His sight rotates equations multifarious
In flaming glories of truth and lucid joy.
High and austere, a fire of askesis
A sovereign and disciplined will of vision,
A creative net of lightning born from Above,
Meticulous in grand conception,
Mad in its waves and flames of ideas whirling,
careful in inventive construction,
He is the radiant creator of the Supreme.

Ocean white wisdom, mountainous and still,
Son of Knowledge and mighty one,
He who sails the seas of thought seizing
Myriad truths in universal nets of knowing.
He probes the high mysteries of the Good,
Imbibe the marvels of the Beautiful,
And climbs the flaming peaks of the Truth.
He is the tower of white fire and far sight.
His steps echoing in the fields of sleep,
King seer of highest Self and Being,
He lives in the immortal silence of the One,
Withdrawn in omniscient timeless sleep,
Knower of the transcendence beyond,
His still and silent concentration's Fire,
One with the Joy behind the whirling worlds,
That universe of starless ecstasy,
That eternal, unmoving base of the Dance.
He is the philosopher seer who weaves
highest Truths into webs of wondrous light.
His mighty gaze unifying a universe of thought,
He puts the All in one, the One in all.

Number's potencies and universal laws,
The multifarious properties of line and plane,
A logic-forged architecture revealed in light:
The view of the inevitable relations,
Blissfully clear in the pure white sight
Of the grandmaster of divine theorems.
He is the king of arcane austerity
One with the occult mathematical Mind,
That greater reality, world architect,
The conductor of the music of the spheres,
That flame net Spirit of shining truth.
Around he sees the metered play of chance,
The ordered rhythms of chaos' dance,
The high seer lines and planes of vivid truth,
The symbol songs of luminous number,
The ineffable play of infinitudes,
The symphonies of truth bathed in Logic's flame.
He peers into problems insoluble,
His concentration absolute, invincible -
His lightning unravelling their hidden knots,
His royal touch, precise, infallible.

Her dawn Light revealing harmonious
Dreams of perfect proportions, graced wonder lines,
Truth’s everlasting symphonies singing in pure skies,
She is the queen of grace and everlasting beauty.
Her craftswoman’s hands, careful, exact,
Executes a consummate dance of highest skill
Toiling for utmost Perfection with
Unerring perception, divine patience,
Flaming out a precious pearl of spirit light,
Marrying Matter with Spirit’s Delight.
She is the Seer of the soul behind form,
The mystic knower of Beauty’s heart.
She incarnates luminous stone forms,
Soaring and majestic, high and massive,
Or small, fine-cut, elegant sculpted songs.
Or she brings forth the delightful soul of beauty
Through divine brush of color and line,
Through flowing robes lustrous with inner flame,
Through music's blissful seas and colored waves,
And rhythmic inevitable dances.
In these earth crafts of exquisite wonder,
She shows the sweet and humble face of
Her aspiration to universal beauty,
Her sacrifice to immortal Delight.

A massive warrior armoured in white strength,
A calm lion flame majestic and still,
He stood, a soldier of the divine Truth.
His heart fiery and immense and a sun,
rising in sacrifice to unseen heights,
He obeys the Eternal's high command,
He flames with the joy of the straight and the true.
Mentor of generals, infallible strategist,
Spirit of vast war wisdom, subtle, deep,
A king-wide luminous Seer of warrior fire.
Staff upraised and lightning crowned with Truth,
He enlists the elements in his cause,
He chants Titan- winged hymns that shatters the dark,
Lights a resurrection fire in death's cave,
And slays the angels of falsehood with Truth's flame.
A mass of force and heavenly courage,
A wall high rising around chosen souls,
An adamantine fortress unassailable,
huge power and skill guarding Truth’s home,
He is the victorious Leader of the March,
He is the primal Guardian of the Flame.


A Will infinite and one with the mystery of Law,
A Force with fierce cleaving wings of clean light;
Queen of wisdom and clear eyed justice,
A Woman flaming with the golden force.
One with the Truth that rules the worlds,
She embodies Maat, the divine Order,
The Force that brings forth the inevitable,
The Power that gives form to hidden truths.
A woman of illumined might and lightning flame,
She hews forth the straight and direct path,
She lights the aspiration to the highest,
She obeys the will of evolution,
She toils for the divine manifestation.
An adept of the great Work, selfless, surrendered,
The priestess who lights the mystic Flame of God,
The one who endures the toil and the ordeal,
The worker hard and deep fraught in pain,
Forging the divine Art and Revelation through
the hammer beats of the universe.

He saw an old man with deep eyes, star-fire soul.
His heart, an ocean luminous with grace,
His Love, the Mother who broods over all pain,
His spirit, warm like the hearth of a new-found home
Lit by flames of living stars once entombed on earth.
He plays an evening flute for the lonely heart
And reveals a secret garden in desert pain.
His high priest fire, adoration's ecstasy,
His giving of self for Self in Truth's flame -
Opens the temple door of deepest Mystery
And releases Love’s sacred frankincense.
His is the grace at the heart of the Flame,
His is the human face of the King of peace.