Beschreibung
JohannisMond
or the Door of the Timeless by Ulrich Taschow
A wondrously visionary-poetic journey through Christian world history and a deeply moving search for the precious treasure that waits to be lifted in each of us, far beyond the banality and lovelessness of everyday life.
with 55 fantastic illustrations by Ulrich Taschow
500 pages, 55 illustrations, published in 2020
paperback, series: avox fantasia, ISBN: 978-3-936979-21-3
Target groups
Young readers and adults, lovers of historical novels, Christian-fantastic literature, and artistic illustrations
On June 23, 1843, the day of his eighteenth birthday, Arian learns from his grandfather Aodhan MacDonald that, according to ancient family tradition, he wishes to initiate him on St. John’s Night into the secret ancestral legacy reaching far back into the past.
Arian hastily sets out with his grandfather on a nocturnal adventure into the Scottish Highlands, without remotely suspecting that this midsummer night, confusing both mind and senses, will be only the beginning of an adventurous journey through centuries, times, and worlds.
In a completely inexplicable way, Arian’s fate seems from the beginning to be linked with the course of world events. People he loved or feared, avoided or valued, well-known and unknown actors in world history, cross his path.
And in the ever deeper entanglement of his personal destiny with earthly events, he gradually begins to understand the true background of what is happening and of his own existence, which, like a step-by-step spiritual preparation and awakening, finally leads him almost inevitably to Jesus of Nazareth and his companions ...
With the novel JohannisMond, woven through with a wondrously visionary-poetic and romantic tone, Ulrich Taschow joins the long tradition of Christian-fantastic writers from Wolfram von Eschenbach, Heinrich Seuse, and Friedrich von Hardenberg to George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, and others.
JohannisMond is a deeply moving and at the same time unsettling journey into the inner, deeply hidden, invisible human being, always in search of the precious treasure that waits in each one of us, far beyond the banality, coarseness, and lovelessness of everyday life, to be lifted.
By placing at its center the questions of reality, truth, beauty, and the meaning of our earthly existence, while understanding creation itself as wondrous poetry, JohannisMond is also a book of decisions. For as authors of the story of life, in the spirit of Jesus Christ and with a confession of truthfulness and humility, we hold our own fate in our hands.
The world is already old; the final lines in the book of life are being written now. You can accept it, its magnificent gift. There is no time left to wait ...
For we have become a spectacle to the world,
both to angels and to human beings.
We are fools for Christ’s sake ...
Paul (1 Corinthians 4:9-10)
“I know that you wish to hear a word of farewell from me, my good boy,” Sophronius said, laying his withered hand upon my head as lightly as a small bird, “a word you may remember for the rest of your life, to which you may hold fast, and of which you will think when you too, as I do now, must one day look death in the face. And it is your good right to receive this word from me. So listen:
Without love there is nothing of value in this world! Love is the fulfillment of the law. Therefore a faith without selfless love for your neighbor will always remain dead, like the stone that will one day cover your grave. For that reason, my dear child, strive always, when one day you stand face to face before your Lord, not to belong to those who say:
‘Lord, I was zealous in your truth,’
and to whom he must then answer:
‘No, you were zealous only in wanting others to see the truth as you see it!’”
Sophronius of Bethlehem in the year 420 A.D.
Contents
Johannis Moon 1844 ..... 12
[West Highlands, Scotland, in the year 1844]
Johannis Moon 1843 ..... 14
[West Highlands, Scotland, in the year 1843]
The Song of the Stars ..... 18
A Light in the Darkness ..... 29
The Deep Forgetting ..... 36
[Eastern Mediterranean, 3832-2170 before Christ]
Love Never Ends ..... 44
[Glasgow, Scotland, winter 1844]
A Message from the Past ..... 49
[Highlands, Scotland, in the year 1844]
God’s Loneliness - The Flight ..... 57
[Scotland, St. John’s Night 1844]
A Stranger in His Own Land ..... 67
[An unfallen world in eternity]
Jerim Jahu, the True Existence ..... 75
[Adon, an unfallen world in eternity]
Bahoth’s Promise ..... 85
Tahschwa - Sabbath ..... 95
Sound of Life ..... 102
Small Waves on the Sea of Infinity ..... 105
Destroyed Trust ..... 111
The Voice of Death ..... 117
With Broken Wings - Innocence ..... 124
The Commission ..... 130
Back on Earth - The Spirit of Sorrow ..... 136
[Scotland, autumn 1832]
The Journey Begins ..... 151
The Dark Shadow ..... 156
[Somewhere and sometime]
A Demonic Game ..... 160
[Scotland, sometime]
The Difficult Road ..... 173
The Mysterious Garden ..... 187
[Somewhere and sometime between heaven and earth]
The King of Righteousness - The Decision ..... 193
Rejected - The Gate ..... 199
[Somewhere and sometime]
Transformed ..... 207
[Verdun in Occitania, in the year 1221]
Let Us Weep ..... 211
[Occitania, in the caves of Lombrives, in the year 1221]
The Consolamentum ..... 218
The Diary of the Apostle John ..... 224
Doubt and Love ..... 231
Lurking in the Darkness ..... 236
[Jerusalem, Coenaculum, Yom Shishi in the year 31]
The Kiss of the Betrayer ..... 242
[In the caves of Lombrives, Occitania, on St. John’s Night 1221]
Burn Death, Burn Earthly Sorrow ..... 246
[Mirepoix, Occitania, June 1221]
The End Before the Beginning - The Treasure of the Garden ..... 251
[Judaea, in the year 30]
Who Are You, Wondrous One? ..... 258
[Somewhere in nothingness - on an island somewhere and sometime]
The Soul Treasure ..... 269
The Gate of Death ..... 273
The Roaring of the Wind ..... 277
[On an island and yet somewhere entirely different]
Grandfather’s Library - On the Other Side ..... 281
[In the kingdom of Avalun?]
Longing ..... 290
[Peloponnese, 1343 before Christ]
The Burning Thornbush ..... 294
[Heroopolites, 3211 before Christ]
In Search of Spring ..... 297
[On the other side, in and beyond time]
Dew from the Heavenly Tree ..... 303
[A garden in the midst of the cosmic sea]
A Rain Fell ..... 309
The Harvest ..... 313
The Last Decision ..... 317
The Decision ..... 328
You Shall Not Kill ..... 334
[Jerusalem, the fourteenth Nisan in the year 31]
The Judgment of Wise King Solomon ..... 341
The Insight of the Heart ..... 343
The King’s Gift ..... 347
[Jerusalem, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, the fourteenth Nisan in the year 31]
The Treasure - A Story Without Beginning ..... 353
[Judaea, Bethany in the house of Lazarus, the fourteenth Nisan in the year 31]
Cardinal Magalotti ..... 361
[Rome, in the year 1625]
The False God ..... 376
[A Platonic world, sometime - Florence, in the year 1423 - center of materiality, sometime]
A Long Road ..... 388
[On Earth, sometime after creation]
The World Behind the Illusions ..... 397
[Rome, palace of Cardinal Magalotti, in the year 1625]
Sophronius and the Truth of Holy Scripture ..... 405
[Rome and Syria Palaestina, in the year 420 after Christ]
The Book of Life ..... 422
[Judaea, Bethany and Jerusalem, the fourteenth Nisan in the year 31]
The Last Day ..... 432
[Jerusalem, Yom Shishi, the fifteenth Nisan in the year 31]
I Am He ..... 436
[Jerusalem, judgment house of Caiaphas, Yom Shishi, the fifteenth Nisan in the year 31]
Final ..... 450
Go, Go Now! ..... 455
[Bethany in the house of Lazarus, Yom Shishi, the fifteenth Nisan in the year 31]
The Kiss of the Nightingale ..... 465
[Jerusalem, arched gate, Yom Shishi, the fifteenth Nisan in the year 31]
Awakening - Love ..... 473
[Sometime and somewhere in another reality]
The Cosmic Spectacle ..... 483
[Avalun, for endless ages]
The Beauty of a Divine Soul ..... 489
The Door of the Timeless ..... 494
Wake Up! ..... 498
[Highlands, Scotland, Johannis Moon 1843]
