A reference to Alexander's legendary military assault upon THE WATERS OF LIFE. Unfamiliar? The following is a little of what your teachers and textbooks never told you: It had been prophesied of Alexander that he would conquer most of the known world, yet die at such a young age that he would have little time to rule it. Having encompassed and extended Hellenic civilization by his victories, he abruptly laid off further efforts at mundane conquest, and, like Gilgamesh before him (but backed by the greatest army ever known to their history), went in quest of THE IMMORTALITY OF THE GODS, the second part of the prophecy    apparently having finally become a creditable concern.

    After many marvelous adventures (and a few contrived feats that showed a sense of historical rivalry with Moses, such as the crossing of a strait through the artifice of a quantity of molten lead poured in to hold back the waters) his guide led him to the mouth of a cave hoped to be the entrance to the Mystery he sought. Alexander lent his mysterious informant a luminous stone heavier than lead, sent him in as an advance scout, and waited there with this troops. Far within the cave, our Scout tired in his search, and, resting by a pool, prepared to eat a salted fish brought among his provisions. As he dipped it in the water to clean for eating, the fish jolted from his hand and swam toward the depths (note the resemblance to an account of Moses, cave mouth, river, and dried fish in the 18th Sura of the Koran, esp. passages 59-64).

    In the Ethiopic version, it was indeed the conquerer¹s scout Matun who had found the pool (or well); in the Greek, it was Alexander's cook Andreas. But whether Professor or Gilligan, he who had held the fish dove in after it, driven as much by the need to know as by hunger. Deep in the fountain pool, he found his fish, whose strange liveliness was sustained and visible in the flashings that lit that water like those of lightning in a cloud. We do not know if he caught it - only that when he emerged from the Living Water, he neither hungered or thirsted, nor needed any worldly thing, for he had become EL-Khidr, "the Evergreen" - one Ever Fresh with Life.

    Now more than a man, having gone therein, he returned therefrom, taking with him some of the water in a silver vessel. Returning from the cave, he omitted only all that was important in his report to the world-conquering Macedonian. Yet determined, Alexander pressed forward on his own (and, according to the Greek version, being Alexander, that meant with a 360 man contingent!). He of the two horns (as he was called in Ethiopian tradition) continued until faced by several towering radiant figures before a rotating pillar of fire reaching from ground to ceiling, blocking his way. By one, the figures in concert, or the Voice of the Eternal booming from above, he was warned to turn back, as in his worldly conceit he could not set foot in the place where the Eternal One's Mysteries stood revealed. At this, even the Two-Horned was terrified, but being Alexander, he pushed forward. In Aramaic (the secular language of Jesus' Jerusalem) the word Gamla means both Knot and Camel. But either was the more to be threaded then the Two-Horned, so greater than any Rich man was he. As he forced his way toward the flame, he felt its cleansing radiance - and all that he had sought, lived for, known, developed, cultivated and prided in himself, defined his identity by, the very separateness of his being, it sought to burn from him in a purificatory process that would unveil in an aspirant that which is meant for Immortality. Alexander shrank back from the Pillar's Dazzling Heat, none of his arrogance consumed.

    Thus ended the greatest of all campaigns to take The Kingdom of Heaven by storm. Alexander died soon after he returned to his empire, late in the 33rd year of his life, while yet 32. Many historians approximate his age of death as 33 out of a sense of the uncertainty of ancient dates (and an unawareness of the significance at stake!), but it is not so. What became of the silver-bound liquid kept by Andreas? Of that, and his fate before the Rage of Alexander, there will shortly be an icon to click on here soon to read that Titillating Tidbit. For those tantalized by this tiny sampling and wishing to learn more of that history of Alexander, as reliable as that of modernly canonized sources (i.e., NOT VERY), but that academia dares not teach, and/or who are wanting to corroborate for themselves whether we have rightly appropriated from the various versions of pseudo-Callisthenes legends exploited toward different ends for 20 centuries (till the last 3, in which recent period man has, in the main, finally fallen beneath the effort), we are making both primary and rare popularized secondary sources available to the public. Please inquire.

    To undertake the Great adventure of superseding our human limitations, it will not be necessary to ship off to parts unknown, dried fish in hand, which could easily be a herring. We who aspire to paradise honor the prospect that as the freshening waters of life manifest both cosmically and individually, likewise the Tree of Life (whose microcosm is to be found within man, appearing for one quickened by its transfiguring radiance and immortalizing fruit as an ever sustaining burning bush revealing purpose and the Great Self Eheyeh - the way, the Truth, and the Life - no one cometh unto the Father but by Eheyeh!), so do they planetarily as well, as Above, so beneath - our living Earth needing all the same Life Forces represented in it as sustain the Universe. However, Oh readers made in the Image of the Most High, forget not that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, and it is within that we must first seek Paradise and its principles. Like is knowable unto like alone, and until we have, AT LEAST TO SOME EXTENT, found and tasted these therein, we cannot be admitted into the Presence of any externalized expressions of these Mysteries.

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