The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and the Priests of the Temple (John 5)
- Chapter 38 -
The expertise and works of the three wise men.
I said: "That is all very fine and praise-worthy of you; but it was once said that those three wise men who visited the miracle child in Bethlehem afterwards - about fifteen years ago - had died. How can it then be that you as the same people are still alive and carrying out your performances all over the world?"
2
The oldest said: "Noble friend, in our land you can die five or seven times and as newly revived continue living. That is because of the air, the earth and its spirits there, the wonderful herbs and our powers, created from the secret forces of nature.
3
But when we were in Bethlehem, there were three spirits in us from the ancient times of the people of this earth; these are now no longer in and with us in conjunction, but instead we are now single and alone.
4
When those spirits left us, it indeed had the outer appearance as if we had died; but our spirits reanimated us again, and we now live very well for ourselves and will continue to live for a certain time. If this body however then becomes completely useless, we will not die, like the poor people in this land die very pitifully, but instead we will step out of our bodies with full consciousness very willingly and then live on as spirits and also continue to work among the likes of us. Behold, noble, great Master, that is how things are with us because we are still unspoiled ancient and natural people."
5
I said: "I indeed know about this and I also know that on this earth there are still some such peoples whom I have nothing to chastise for, and I accept that you are those three wise men from the far-off eastern lands who visited the new-born miracle child in a stall in Bethlehem, and now have come again to find the miracle king who has grown from this child, in order to show him your respect again, which is very praise-worthy of you all.
6
But I also asked you all what sorts of arts and deeds you performed on your long travels, and what sort of use they were for you. You must also tell Me something about that, so that at least these disciples of Mine can gain something from you. I then will tell you some details about Myself."
7
The eldest said: "Yes, great master, if you can do all that we have heard about you, your disciples will not actually gain very much from us; but since you desire such, I can give you the main points. Our first, and the actual main issue is this: to predict many a useful thing for the people from the stars, which mostly comes true. Of course, to be honest, it depends more on the skilful ordering of words than on the order of the stars, which in any case always remain the same apart from the few planets.
8
Only at the birth of the Jewish miracle child, when we were still more or less inhabited by those certain spirits, did we saw towards the west quite a strange positioning of the stars and a star of particular size which had a long tail towards the west, and since we noticed quite well that it was moving faster towards the west than the other stars, we thought that something great must have happened in the western lands. And soon we read from the stars like writing: 'A new king has been born to the Jews, who will found a kingdom that will never have an end in all eternity, and he will reign over all the people of the earth!'
9
Well, this writing was fully true, and we then set our journey according to the movement of the star, which seemed to us to remain standing in the right place and in the right position, and we actually found a birth there which was accompanied by all kinds of possible miracles, so that we could not doubt for an instant whether we were in the right place or not. Accordingly our star-reading was full of truth; in as far the later and subsequent predictions contained more or less truth we, to be honest, cannot bear witness. Hereby thus the matter pertaining our astronomy wisdom.
10
But as far as our magic is concerned, this falls into three parts. The first main part comes from the knowledge we have through many tests, trials and experiences and familiarity with the secret forces of nature, through which we are capable of performing thousands of things and deeds which naturally must cause the greatest amazement among the blind and ignorant humanity and bring us a great reputation and also a great profit.
11
At the moment we are in possession of a secret of how to create a type of grain that is extremely easy to ignite, but which develops such a power during its quick ignition in a confined space that the strongest and firmest cliff, if beforehand one puts a few pounds of the mentioned grains into a pre-made opening and then ignites it by an invisible burning torch, will split into a thousand pieces of rubble with a great thunder. As a pretence before the people we do this as if commanding the cliff to split; but basically it is only our explosive grains that do this, which we have already set in an appropriate place some days before quite unnoticed.
12
And in this way we still have a large number of things, of which the experimentation must cause great amazement to the ignorant people. In addition there are also our fire arts, with which we can imitate lightning and its effects very deceptively. - Therein thus consists the first part of our magic.
13
The second part is a purely mechanical one, whereby we also achieve certain effects through previously unknown machines, which likewise must put every lay man into the greatest amazement, because the cause of the effect is foreign and cannot be explained by anyone but us.
14
The third part of our magic is the actual least significant one, because it is achieved simply through a certain secret correspondence. This creates nearly the greatest sensation among the blind people, although there is actually nothing behind it besides a certain practised skill and ability. Those are our three magic parts.
15
But we are actually doctors as well and can heal many illnesses with certain secret means with the best conscience in the world, can drive out evil pests of all sorts, and all types of evil animals must flee before us or be controlled by us - with which ability of ours we have also served the people well. And now, great master, we have revealed all our arts before you. But now we ask you to also tell us some more details about yourself."