by
Ante Wessels
to fleur
The sense of the great instruction is:
to clarify the vivid shine of Virtue,
to love man,
and to only find rest in the absolute good.
the student cannot work out the other three for himself,
I do not go on.
A man with a beautiful, trained body,
really very beautiful, beautiful muscles and beautiful hair,
and very strong, very masculine,
with a golden energy.
And it’s like you were the leader of something,
and that you went on an expedition to do something,
and it almost feels like that
it was a spiritual cause for you.
You return from this, you did it,
and you feel mighty, you feel great, you feel...
high, or something.
You return with the feeling: I’m the greatest.
I really did it.
Meanwhile, in the city you departed from,
something strange has happened.
What you did is suddenly seen as annoying.
Suddenly it is not appreciated at all,
and among other things this has to do with the way you returned.
You set yourself on a pedestal.
Like... here I am!
As a victor you came out of battle.
And then an unbelievable reaction comes from the people
you all did it for,
it goes so far, they lock you up,
you’re put in prison, you’re terribly humiliated in public,
I see you as if you were pulled away in an open cage,
with horses a hooting crowd, these kind of things.
You’re infuriated, you’re really infuriated...
At that moment you’re terribly angry,
really very, very angry,
but you’re caged, you’re enchained,
you can’t get rid of that energy.
And you’re thrown in a dungeon, and it’s totally dark there,
and in fact, nobody cares for you anymore.
Once in a while food is thrown in,
you’re sitting in that dungeon
and you’re sitting there terribly long,
and the feeling comes over you that you’re nothing,
that you’re absolutely nothing.
You’re getting
smaller
and
smaller
and
smaller
and
smaller.
And you’re left with the feeling that you’re nothing at all.
A general anger and disbelieve in other people.
You do something in accordance,
you agree to do something in a certain way,
and then all of a sudden they let you down.
Such a disbelieve in people.
I see how behind that part of enlarging yourself,
magnifying your strength actually,
there is a longing to be here with your heart,
to be here in an ordinary, easy, own way.
It is as if this stems from before that whole story.
In an easy, friendly way it emerges from your heart chakra.
That’s what you really want.
Simple love, simple being.
I see you really being in contact with it too,
simply loving yourself, simply loving life.
I see tiredness at your being for always fighting and struggling.
Yes, very old.
Certainly in this life, but also in other lives."
In a small room three students of a center for intuitive development
sat face to face with me.
They told me the images that appeared
before their minds’ eyes,
when they concentrated on who I am in essence.
I never understood anything about myself.
Psychotherapists left me unimpressed.
This was something else.
This went to the heart.
I was happy.
I went for a pizza.
I started to follow courses
and subscribed for a training in aura reading.
That summer I heard I was admitted.
Of course, I knew such a training to be confronting.
You meet yourself.
Even before it started all kinds of things happened.
Yet even more unexpectedly than I expected.
I will tell you about it.
Caution: it’s a strange story.
I don’t know whether you will make it till the end.
The way you sit and read at the moment
makes me doubt.
We’ll hit the deep immediately.
There will be the devil to pay...
Many of you will turn against me...
Do I have assembled a bunch of headstrong souls?
All ready for a journey through time and space?
For vistas, phantasy, deep insight?
Open the gates...
Machiavelli, he could have been an earlier live of mine.
That morning I stayed at my parents’;
I looked in the encyclopedia.
I was startled.
Earlier that summer I had shaved my head,
then let my hair grow again.
My eyes fell on an image of Machiavelli
with exactly the same length and model of hair
as I had at that moment.
I was reading and in fact it seemed familiar to me.
I went for a walk.
Good gracious, Machiavelli ?!
whether Machiavelli had ever met Dante.
Machiavelli,
so I read, had often visited Italian courts.
Dante,
I knew, had resided there.
Had they ever met?
Back home I found out how poor my knowledge of history was.
Dante had lived two centuries earlier.
Both were Florentine,
both were concerned in city government,
both were banned.
No, now I must stop!
I’m not the reincarnation of Dante.
Impossible.
Dante is a seize too big for me.
However, the encyclopedia kept attracting me.
What about the relation between Dante and Virgil?
Striking.
As Machiavelli in his book Il Principe
holds up Cesare Borgia as an example,
as Dante in his Divine Comedy
reserves a throne in heaven for Henry VII,
Virgil gave Augustus a divine origin in his Aeneid.
Following the line back from Dante and Virgil
one thinks of Homer.
Nothing is known about him.
this crossed my mind:
If you think of Homer, Shakespeare is one of them.
Shakespeare!
Someone who always seemed to me
enwrapped with gloom.
I never wanted to read his works.
This was an insane fantasy.
Don’t talk about it!
Madhouses are full of people who think they are Napoleon.
This was extra,
a fantasy,
just for me.
A few weeks later, again while waking up:
I have always known I am the reincarnation of Goya.
I read about the above mentioned artists.
I saw parallels in life and work...
was I on track of something,
was it a delusion?
Were these artists incarnations of the same soul?
And what’s all this got to do with me...?
Thirsty?
Have a sip of water and read...
How will this end?
Got some guts left?
Ready for the next move?
We’ll go deeper into it.
Let’s find out whether we can form a picture of this all.
I first present the basic knowledge,
then more will follow.
Come along...
Vistas will smile before your eyes...
Mark Antony held a funeral oration.
Brutus and the other conspirators fled town.
Mark Antony,
Lepidus
and
Octavius,
Caesar’s adopted son,
joined forces.
They killed many senators and took over power.
Lepidus was set aside.
And so there were two left.
They fought as well.
Octavius won.
Now he was the Roman empire’s unchallenched number 1.
"The princeps".
The man whose physical condition was
subject to a host of ills and weaknesses
had made it to the top.
He was bestowed the title Augustus.
Historians are ambivalent about Augustus.
His actions were unscrupulous,
he eroded the republic.
On the other hand he proved to be a good principal.
To quote the Britannica:
‘One of the great administrative geniuses of history."
He ended the civil wars and secured the frontiers.
His principate brought stability and prosperity.
The pax Romana.
His name lives on in the name of the month.
called upon his former fellow-student,
Octavius,
who by then had won power,
to make peace.
He received a commission to write the epic Aeneid
about the founding of the Roman Empire.
En passant he constructed a direct line
between the Gods and Octavius,
who acquired a divine origin that way.
This was of great propagandistic value for the ruler.
The Aeneid impressed.
In later centuries it was regretted that Virgil had
died before Jezus.
He had missed a well-deserved place in heaven that way.
read out poems at a party at Cleopatra’s.
All the hairs in my aura bristled when I read this.
As a child I wondered what Cleopatra had looked like.
What a pity that such a person is gone forever,
that one cannot meet her anymore...
And now I read about that party at Cleopatra’s...
Did Virgil secretly have his eye on her?
had lost battle against Octavius.
Cesarion,
a son of her and Julius Ceasar’s,
was wasted.
le oscure qualità ch’amor mi dona,
e venmene pietà, sì che sovente
io dico: "lasso!, avviene elli a persona?";
ch’Amor m’assale subitanamente,
sì che la vita quasi m’abbandona:
campami un spirto vivo solamente,
e que’riman, perchè di voi ragiona.
Poscia mi sforzo, chè mi voglio atare;
e così smorto, d’onne valor voto,
vegno a vedervi, credendo querire:
e se io levo li occhi per quardare,
nel cor mi si comincia uno tremoto,
che fa de’ polsi l’anima partire.
Dante, member of the Bianci,
was moderate.
Unfortunately,
his party was worsted,
he was banned.
In 1310 he met Henry VII.
Dante expected him to unite torn up Italy.
and went to Italy.
To be crowned emperor.
That, he felt, suited him.
And indeed, he was crowned emperor.
He failed while establishing his power.
After an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city of Siena
he was stricken ill with fever
and died.
This happened in 1313 near Siena.
In his great poem that takes place in 1300,
partly written after 1313,
Dante reserved a throne in heaven for Henry VII.
Dante called his work La Commedia,
others added Divina to it.
the Florentine republic’s second chancellery’s secretary,
traveled a lot. One of his journeys was made to the court of duke Cesare Borgia.
Borgia was,
in an unscrupulous way,
conquering the Romagna,
under the protection of his father,
pope Alexander the VI.
He also threatened Florence.
the pope died.
The duke lost his power.
Later he was killed in a skirmish in Spain.
This happened in 1507 near Viana.
Aut Cesar, aut nihil.
It turned out to be nihil
- nil.
Florence tried to reconquer Pisa.
Many attempts failed.
Machiavelli reorganized the Florentine army,
after which Pisa was reconquered
again lost her freedom.
because of its unwillingness to take up arms.
Machiavelli wrote Il Principe
- the principal, leader, sovereign, prince, ruler.
He also wrote a commentary on the first ten books of Livius,
a history of Florence,
a comedy,
a short story,
a study of the art of war
- dell’arte della querra -
letters and frivolous carnival songs.
A parody on the Divina Commedia remained unfinished.
I quote the encyclopedia:
"His style is excellent."
"I love my country more than my own soul."
twinkling eyes, half-smile.
A brilliant kid.
A little rascal
didn’t make a system.
He philosophizes like a chinese.
His heart longed for democracy,
anarchy in his vision demands someone
who constitutes himself as a leader.
Whenever the Florentine describes the advantages
of a strong rule it is in comparison with anarchy,
never in comparison with democracy.
In an autocracy one person has the power,
the other doesn’t.
This leads to envy,
distrust,
intrigues,
murder
and
man slaughter.
How to deal with this and at the same time be a good principal?
The Florentine tried to find the answer.
to free Italy from foreign domination
and bring peace to this country torn by war.
Il Principe is partly a tribute to the killed duke.
It includes a call to Lorenzo dei Medici
"to take possession of Italy and free it from the hands of the barbarians"
- one could say to take over Borgia’s role.
without order,
beaten up,
plundered,
torn up,
overrun
and
fallen a prey
to all sorts of destruction.
(...)
This opportunity to give Italy
a liberator after such a long time shouldn’t be missed.
I can’t say with how much love
he would be received in all regions that have suffered from these floods of foreigners;
with how much thirst for revenge,
how much obstinate loyalty,
how much devotion,
how many tears.
(...)
For everybody loathes this foreign domination."
He describes how to come into and remain in power,
how to free Italy.
Some of the advises in his hard headed manual
make your hair bristle.
In those days nobody was surprised by them.
At a certain moment the Roman Catholic
church realized that the things the Florentine
wrote about pope Alexander VI and his son
were not so nice
- he wrote the truth.
The book was put on the index.
Machiavelli concludes Il Principe
by quoting Petrarca:
will take up arms. And fighting will be brief.
For the ancient spirit
in Italian hearts did not yet die."
Coral is far more red than her lips are red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I on her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
and
the Rape of Lucrece
to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
After an unsuccessful rebellion the earl was put in the Tower.
Later he volunteered to fight for the United Provinces against Spain.
Landing in the Netherlands
he was attacked with fever,
he died a few days later.
This happened in 1624 in Bergen op Zoom.
Macbeth felt driven to seize power,
after which things ran out of hand.
They tell him his wife died.
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Julius Caesar;
Antony and Cleopatra.
In King John,
Shakespeare describes an indecisiveness in Angers
resembling that which knocked off the Florentine republic.
Machiavelli spoke bitterly about it.
A recurring theme,
I would say that he had not got over it.
Anyhow,
Shakespeare wrote:
the murderous Machiavelli.
A rare case of self-hatred?
In this play the Greek took a lot of stick.
Except for Ulysses.
Shakespeare’s method resembled Homer’s.
Steal and make it better.
can
someone
with
so
little
education
write
pieces
like
that
?
Shakespeare’s talent is completely incomprehensible.
It came out of thin air,
Horatio.
Antony is speaking to his soothsayer.
Caesar = Caesar Octavianus = Octavius,
later called Augustus.
Caesar’s, or mine?
- Caesar’s
Therefore, o Antony, stay not by his side:
Thy demon (that thy spirit which keeps thy) is,
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable
Where Caesar’s is not; but, near him, thy
angel
Becomes a fear, as being o’erpower’d: therefore
Make space enough between you.
- Speak this no more.
- To none but thee; no more, but when to thee.
If thou dost play with him at any game,
Thou art sure to lose; and, of that natural
luck
He beats thee ‘gainst the odds: thy lustre thickens,
When he shines by: I say again, thy spirit
Is all afraid to govern thee near him;
But, he away, ‘tis noble. - Get thee gone:
Say to Ventidius, I would speak with him.
(Exit Soothsayer.
He shall to Parthia. Be it art, or hap,
He hath spoken true: the very dice obey him;
And, in our sports, my better cunning faints
Under his chance.
Painting the portrait of Count de Floridablanca,
prime minister of Spain,
was important to him.
He was never paid for this painting,
but it led to an introduction to the king’s brother
and eventually Charles III,
the king.
His appreciation for Charles IV
and
his wife
was not high,
he portrayed them as he saw them.
In letters the queen stated the likeness pleased her
- more commissions of this nature failed to come.
The dressed one I like most.
"the most beautiful woman in Spain."
He painted her portrait,
in the sand at her feet he wrote:
"Solo Goya"
the Spaniards began a guerilla.
During this war Goya traveled the country.
He looked.
What he saw he showed in etchings:
Los desastres de la guerra.
he painted the Black Paintings.
I walked through the Prado.
All at once I stood face to face with the Black Paintings.
It was as if I went through the floor.
I fell in a slough of black fever.
I managed to reach a bench.
I noticed others looked at the paintings as if nothing was going on.
The poet wrote a few major works in honour of the king.
In the epic’s demidevine principal character,
Ulysses,
he incorporated traits of the king.
Both were pleased.
With loving mockery he was called
"the blind’.
Now I sat in the opposite chair,
described the images I saw.
Dead scary in the beginning,
slowly but surely I developed self-confidence.
the students,
also practiced on each other.
I held my tongue about my fantasy.
Of course I was curious whether there were images in my aura
that would amplify it.
And indeed,
they told me things like:
"Your eyes have seen to much.’
And:
"In earlier lives writing a book was very important to you."
There will be more adventures.
Then I will round off the story with a confession.
You pretended to be insane.
That’s how you escaped execution.
They let you go, but you had to stay in town.
So you were forced to go on pretending being insane,
otherwise they would kill you after all.
Always laughing, always joking.’
a character in King Lear.
"The bloody proclamation to escape,
that follow’d me so near
(...)
taught me to shift,
into a madman’s rags"
It was as if the origin of the theme was found
- in my aura!
Dinner was served in one pot.
You learned to eat quickly.
Only at night there was room for your own thoughts."
secured...
your playfulness and humor in earlier lives...
was...
in monasteries.
There you can play and be humoristic
and don’t have to think about everyday worries.
There you mounted the playing-field of the cosmic,
during prayer and choral singing,
etc,
etc."
I see a sort of very big shining dome far in the distance,
and a very big throne
and I see a lot of staircases going up
and there, as you see it,
sits an enlightened being.
I see a lot of rays coming from that enlightened being,
all sorts of paths,
in all kinds of directions,
and it is as if you are one of those rays.
As if you are an incarnating energy sent out by that being.
At the same time I see another part of you,
your own being,
that clearly chooses to make contact with that being,
a sort of marriage,
to get an incarnation on that ray,
and that’s you.
You’re doing two things at the same time,
on the one hand...
gee,
what’s it like to incarnate,
what’s it like to be on earth,
on the other you are manifesting the energy of that cosmic being,
carry it out by your being.
It’s darting,
it’s very quick,
very bright and very quick.
Very mercurial.
When I see it as a function,
it is like you have a function as a messenger,
as if your energy can bring so much lightness on earth.
As if you are both experiencing the weight of the body,
its materiality,
and at the same time keeping that lightness."
quite nasty energy,
that had to do with the use of my intuition for struggle for power,
in earlier lives.
Then it occurred to me that
I could meet God.
Well, I was willing.
I almost went out of my mind.
It was the light where things come from.
Because things come from the light,
the light has sympathy for all things.
This sympathy can be called love.
The way I see it,
there are all sorts of strata around the earth,
with stratosphere and things like that...
There are also levels of consciousness,
strata of consciousness.
It is as if this level of consciousness is attached to the earth.
It has to do with the earth’s ethical level of energy.
It has nothing to do with politics,
nothing with good and evil,
it has to do with sense of beauty.
Whatever you do down here,
you always have the option to stay in contact with that energy.
and a lot of understanding.
Like I just said, it has no good and evil in it,
it is much more comprehensive than that.
And it is a level of consciousness you won’t find on earth,
certainly not in our culture with all its good and evil.
It’s a level that in itself doesn’t judge,
but just provides information...
much broader than that.
It also strongly has to do with being able
to see the magic of everything.
The magic of live,
the magic of a seed you chuck on earth
and then there is at a certain moment a plant.
That’s not beautiful or ugly,
it’s much more than that...
the name Averroës crossed my mind.
I remembered that this name also occurs in the Divina Commedia,
although not in which connection.
So be it,
I thought.
But the name kept going through my mind.
There was something about it.
Back to the book, the books.
Averroës proved to be the latin name of Ibn Rusjd, born in 1126.
He wrote commentaries on Aristotle,
whom he highly revered.
His commentaries were in conflict with the Islam,
his books were burned,
he was banned.
Later he was allowed to return and became qadi again,
now in Marrakesh.
Averroës a forbidden ánd influential commentator.
One of his writings has the beautiful title:
Tahafut at Tahafut,
the Incoherence of the Incoherence."
It treats of the LAT-relationship between philosophy and religion.
Averroës also wrote about Plato’s republic and about the Jihad,
the ‘Holy War".
State & War,
themes we have seen before in this story.
Dante,
a Christian,
put in his great poem Mohammed in hell.
Wrong faith, here you go!
He made an exception for Averroës and Avicenna,
they were found in limbo.
Siger de Brabant,
considered an averroist,
went to heaven.
Words of Siger were put in the mouth of Thomas Aquinas,
a fierce opponent of Averroës.
Dante,
always careful,
didn’t let the anti-averroist sing his own song,
on the contrary.
even though he is a prophet.
He is spared this dire fate if he is a philosopher.
This is,
knowing Dante,
understandable.
It is also understandable that Siger de Brabant goes to heaven.
A Christian,
seemed to be on the side of an unchristian commentator,
but:
a philosopher.
However,
why that twisting of Thomas Aquinas’s words?
Usually it only happens from self-interested motives.
in bocca al lupo!
One day I got ill.
Something urged me to write down everything
I remembered from the books I had read.
I got better and started to find out whether
my memories corresponded with the books.
I finished my training as an aura-reader.
At a certain moment it was time
to work my notes up into a story.
After that I started to send it around.
My silence is over...
It’s no delusion,
it is a revelation.
Of course I mask my knowledge.
There is no proof and moreover it is ridiculous.
In your eyes.
I tried to make the story amusing.
Maybe the insights will survive
in high spirits.
Knowing too much is unhealthy,
when it is in conflict with current beliefs.
Unless you shut up .
That’s what I learned about this planet by now.
This confession is made once-only.
Yes I will say it is nothing more than a literary trick.
That’s what it is.
You better be silent about it.
Of course you could say I seemed sincere
when I made the confession,
but who will believe you?
I know.
With just a good encyclopedia
you can find more similarities between the artists.
Good luck,
yit’s your business from now on...
Beware of the Larousse,
it gives you a lick and a promise.
Just check for fun the inaccuracies about Machiavelli...
to jump from one work to another.
For instance from
Rules for a Gay Society
to
Los Proverbios.
Just find it out for yourself...
Did the story broaden your mind?
Did it open your eyes?
I hope the story was worth your dough.
I wish you all the best.
For,
oh,
I forgot to tell you,
I’m a painter.
Moderne encyclopedie van de wereldliteratuur; De Haan Weesp.
Wereldgeschiedenis, Mensen en culturen van prehistorie tot heden;
De Haan Bussum, 5de druk.
Homerus, Odysee; Bertus Aafjes; Meulenhof.
Vergilius, Aeneis; R van der Loef; Wereldbibliotheek Amsterdam.
Vergilius, Aeneis; A van der Wilderode; Davidfonds Leuven.
Carlo Maria Franzero; Cleopatra; Elsevier 1962.
Dante Alighieri, De Goddelijke Komedie; C. Kops / G. Wijdeveld
Wereldbibliotheek Amsterdam.
Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova; Frans van Dooren; Kwadraat 1988.
Machiavelli, De Heerser; Frans van Dooren; Atheneum Polak & van Gennep 1977.
Machiavelli, een autobiografie in brieven; Carlo Depreytere & Frans Denissen;
Bert bakker 1990. De werken van William Shakespeare; L. A. J. Burgersdijk;E. J. Brill Leiden.
The works of William Shakespeare; Victorian edition;
Frederic Warne & Co; MDCCCXCVI.
The great artists: Goya; Lawrence Gowing; Funk & Wagnalls, inc 1978.
Anthony Hull, Goya: Man among kings; Hamilton Press.
Geschiedenis van de filosofie, Hans Joachim Störig; Aula pocket 1990.
A history of Philosophy, F. Copleston, sj; Doubleday.
J. Last, Confucius; Kruseman, 1961.
I Tjing; Richard Wilhelm; Ank Hermes 1991.
Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe + scritti politici; Mursia.
Quotations from aurareadings.
about parallels in life and work of Dante Alighieri and Niccolò Machiavelli.
Miquel Asin has pointed out Islamic influences on Dante:
Miquel Asin, Islam ans the Divine Comedy; John Murray London. Introduction by the Duke of Alba.
Translation: Ante Wessels.
Copy right 1996. You may make a print for personal use.
I would highly appreciate it if you recommend this story, for instance by making it a Suggestion for Further Surfing.
I heartily thank everybody who helped me to put Vita Nuova on the web.
http://huizen.dds.nl/~vitanova