Q and A with Penelope Holt, creator the non secular thriller novel, “The Angel Scroll”
August 2024.
Q1. In your novel, “The Angel Scroll”, the plot entails Jesus visiting India. Did the true Jesus journey to India?
There are a number of books and scholarly theories which assert that Jesus did journey to India. This concept is plausible in gentle of the declare that He was a member of the Essene sect that was influenced by Hinduism and reincarnation. The gospels inform the story of Mary shedding Jesus in Jerusalem when He was 12, earlier than lastly discovering Him within the Temple. The younger Jesus reprimanded His mom, saying, “Did you not know that I’d be in my father’s home?” After this incident, the gospels decide up the story of Jesus a lot later, when He begins His ministry round age 30. It was throughout these lacking or “hidden” years that students declare Jesus traveled to India.
In “The Angel Scroll”, the e-book’s heroine, Claire Lucas, has a imaginative and prescient of Jesus on the demise mattress of a lovely younger lady in India. She is compelled to color a masterpiece depicting this scene, which, when positioned with two different unimaginable work, is destined to create a miraculous triptych that serves as a visible gospel.
Q2. The characters in “The Angel Scroll” journey to quite a few sacred locations. Why did you embrace Glastonbury Tor of their journey?
As Claire tries to make sense of the supernatural occasions surrounding her, which incorporates visions, psychic experiences, and the channeling of a portray that may be a masterpiece of non secular significance, she meets and questions characters from totally different religion traditions. These embrace a Buddhist and a Benedictine monk. She additionally encounters Josie Mclean, an anthropologist who provides her a tour of Glastonbury Tor, the house of Celtic Druids and Early Goddess worship.
Josie awakens Claire to the ability of her artistic unconscious and the archetypes to be discovered there, together with the Nice Goddess. Celtic Druids had been historical clergymen, students, and custodians of non secular and cultural information in Celtic societies, who served as clergymen, advisors to rulers, judges, healers, and educators. They inhabited Glastonbury Tor, forming perpetual choirs that chanted 24/7, actually “enchanting” the land to invoke highly effective non secular energies.
Druids had been polytheistic, with reverence for nature and the cosmos. They worshipped a wide range of gods and goddesses related to pure phenomena such because the solar, moon, and components. Druids carried out rituals that included ceremonies for seasonal festivals (equivalent to Beltane and Samhain), agricultural rites, and sacrifices to appease gods or search favor for the group. These usually concerned sacred websites equivalent to stone circles, groves, and hilltops. They handed down their traditions orally and had been expert in memorization and recitation of myths, histories, legal guidelines, and genealogies.
Celtic knots, the tree of life, and varied animal motifs had been used of their spiritual practices and artwork. Additionally they practiced divination, decoding pure indicators and omens to information decision-making. With the Roman conquest and later Christianization of Celtic lands, Druidic practices declined. Their legacy persists in folklore, mythology, and fashionable interpretations of Celtic spirituality.
A part of what makes the story line in “The Angel Scroll” so distinctive is that it knits collectively a number of controversial spiritual theories and claims. Is the Angel Scroll an actual lacking Useless Sea Scroll? Was Jesus an Essene? Did he journey to India and why? Past this, Claire learns on her journey to Glastonbury Tor that it’s the place the place Celtic Christianity was born.
Joseph of Arimathea, an Essene who gave Jesus his tomb after His crucifixion, was allegedly despatched by the disciple Philip to evangelize the Celts in England. The Druids worshipped a deity known as Easus and noticed him in within the story of Jesus of Nazareth that Joseph informed. They gave a web site on Glastonbury Tor to Joseph, the place he constructed the primary above-ground Christian Church, which Jesus is claimed to have visited and devoted to His mom, Mary.
She additionally learns how the Celtic Druids believed {that a} life-renewing caldron was buried beneath Glastonbury Tor. Intertwined with that is the legend that Joseph Arimathea introduced drops of Jesus’ blood within the chalice that was used on the final supper and buried this Holy Grail in Glastonbury. King Arthur, who later dominated in that area, famously established his Spherical Desk of Knights who ventured out on the Nice Grail Quest to find the legendary Holy Grail.
Including coloration to the parable is Glastonbury Tor’s well-known Chalice Effectively. Hundreds of gallons of water from the Effectively movement each day into underground, man-made chambers. It’s argued that he waters are tinted purple because of a excessive iron content material, however the devoted maintain to the notion that the colour is as a result of blood of Christ within the chalice that Joseph buried there. Druids, Goddess worship, Celtic Christianity, the Holy Grail, King Arthur and his Knights of the Spherical Desk, these are the alluring legends which are woven collectively and have their place within the sacred and mystical panorama of Glastonbury Tor, and have in “The Angel Scroll”.
Q3 How did you employ the idea of reincarnation within the e-book and why?
Reincarnation is a extensively held non secular perception throughout many religion traditions. It even makes an look in early Christian lore. The novel explores the notion that if Jesus belonged to the Essene sect, he would have been influenced by Hinduism and reincarnation.
Throughout her journey, Claire additionally encounters Bodhipaska, a Buddhist monk, who explains his perception in reincarnation and the way it works, that our actions, good and dangerous, decide the kind of rebirth we may have in one other life. Discovering herself on the middle of the scroll’s prophecy, which is on the coronary heart of the novel, Claire units out to study whether or not or not the figures she encounters in visions, who had been followers of Jesus in India, reincarnate within the current to create a visible gospel. A gospel that makes use of imagery as an alternative of phrases to have a extra direct and transformative impact on the 21st century people who view it.
This autumn. Why within the e-book did you discover the concept of a visible gospel that’s fashioned when three miraculous work are assembled right into a triptych?
The well-known Russian mystic George Gurdjieff believed that true artworks are divinely impressed and set off profound meanings and associations after we take a look at them. Our unconscious is stimulated by symbols and archetypal photographs that we discover on the planet round us and depicted in artwork.
In the meantime, Sacred geometry explores the assumption that sure geometric shapes, patterns, and proportions have non secular, symbolic, or metaphysical significance. These shapes and patterns are sometimes present in nature, artwork, and structure and are believed to characterize the elemental constructions of the universe, embodying the connection between the bodily and the non secular.
Claire experiences mystical visions by means of a 3rd eye or vesica pisces, the almond or eye form from sacred geometry that’s created when two circles intersect, representing the intersection of higher and decrease worlds, the aware and unconscious. As Claire visits sacred locations in Jerusalem, Rome, Siena, and Glastonbury Tor, she encounters time and again the ability of sacred geometry and the way it seems in sacred artwork and structure.
She learns that the emergence of the printing press introduced widespread manufacturing of the written bible. Consequently, Christian Reformers had been capable of promote the written phrase to switch the spiritual work and icons, embraced by the lots, which informed the story of Jesus, His Church, and His saints, and which Reformers believed had been idolatrous and must be stripped from faith.
It is smart to Claire {that a} new gospel tailored for a brand new millennium may characterize a return to inspirational and divinely impressed artwork. On this means, the work can keep away from defective evaluation, diverging viewpoints, and the misinterpretation that comes with arguments over language and which means. The novel’s three work are created to be soul opening, to bypass the mind and penetrate the person to encourage love and therapeutic.
Q5. Why does your heroine encounter characters from totally different religion traditions—a Benedictine monk, a Buddhist monk, and an anthropologist who research historical goddess worship?
Claire is misplaced, widowed and bereft, and within the grip of bewildering supernatural and visionary experiences. All of this turns her right into a non secular seeker, in search of solutions to life’s huge questions. And like most fashionable non secular seekers, she has solid off the spiritual practices of her youth. She is left with a God-sized gap in her life that she desperately desires to fill, so she will regain hope, have better understanding of life’s trials, and discover solutions to why she is being beset with mystical experiences.
Claire hears totally different and generally conflicting concepts from the spiritual and secular characters she meets within the e-book, who give their explanations of her unusual experiences. Claire should really feel her means alongside to search out fact for herself, taking within the knowledge of others, however understanding lastly that she should use her personal mind, instinct, and creativity to design a life for herself that may develop sufficient to accommodate the distinctive, different worldly, and miraculous occasions which are difficult her previous id and perception system. 
Q6. Why is there an implication that Claire, the lead character within the e-book, is having visions and supernatural experiences due to a medical drawback versus embracing her position as a psychic?
As every of us discover a imaginative and prescient for our lives and a perception system that may information us, we’re confronted with a myriad of views from the individuals round us, and from a world that’s stuffed with a multiplicity of concepts and beliefs. Amongst these, inevitably, are the materialists who discover little worth in metaphysics and the idea of God or greater energy. They adhere strictly to the scientific methodology, to observing solely pure and bodily processes, and by no means permitting the ineffable qualities or proof of the supernatural world to enter their evaluation.
Claire explores religion traditions on her journey, however entrance and middle and influencing her is her physician, Dr. James Bentley, a benign materialist who sees her unusual visions and visible disturbances by means of the lens of drugs. He ties them to a medical drawback Claire is experiencing. Because of this Claire should resolve whether or not or not her non secular experiences are nothing greater than signs created by her malfunctioning physique, or one thing else fully.
Be taught extra about Penelope Holt and her work at www.penelopeholt.com She is accessible for interviews or as a visitor creator at e-book golf equipment.
