The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 1 opens seven years after the visions that produced the Book of Remembrance of Enoch, as the seer Achee takes up the Urim once more, fasting and praying for twenty-two days to prepare himself, determined this time to interfere as little as possible with his own expectations so the Lord can speak for Himself. During his fast, the Spirit tells him simply to “look for Iona” — a woman only briefly and unflatteringly mentioned in the Enoch record as the mother of Lamech and grandmother of Noah, said to have departed from the testimony of her fathers. From this obscure starting point, Achee is drawn into a vision of the Great Council of Heaven, where Motsah the Lamb reveals a task Achee never knew was necessary: preparing the world for the long duration between the Flood and the Second Coming, once the righteous people of Maween are taken back to Eden, so that a faithful remnant will still remain scattered among the wicked. In council, a small Eerkodeshoi named Masowsiel — the spirit of the Menorah bush, whose very name means the rejoicing and mirth of Anokeesed — speaks up to explain that just as holy men brought about seven great divisions in the earth (the naming of the sons of heaven, the sanctity of marriage, the division of the authority of Elda, the division of days, the four periods of instruction, and the dividing of the earth itself), holy women will now bring about seven great joinings, so that every person born after Maween’s departure can still freely choose whether to join with Anokeesed’s desires. Cavah, Achee learns, is honored as the very first of these seven grandmothers, for it was her sevenfold dance of repentance and joy at the rock of Ariel that first established the enduring pattern of forgiveness the others will build upon.

The vision then descends to earth, to the peaceful encampment of Nod, where Achee watches in horror as a commotion breaks out: Kenneh, driven by jealousy for Matteniah’s wife Sephi, has used evil chanting to call down a stone from heaven that strikes his brother dead while he tends his sheep — the first death anyone has ever witnessed, and a terror so total that the Eerkodeshoi themselves fall silent, the birds stop singing, and the wind stops blowing. In the aftermath, roughly a third of Yaatsekawd and Cavah’s thirty-one children flee Nod in fear, a departure Achee recognizes as an eerie echo of the one-third of Watchers who abandoned Anokeesed’s council during the First Great War in Heaven. Kenneh and Awan themselves flee not from fear of vengeance but from an entirely new and devastating feeling — shame, never before known to mankind — retreating into the valleys of Heleah, forever distant from Anokeesed’s presence. The chapter closes by tracing where each of the scattered children went: Kodesh east into the high country, Edra and Pethuah southwest toward the southern sea, Chathan north of the Aral Sea into forest country, Yakol north into the cold never to be heard from again, and Matteniah’s own children eventually lost to the south and west. Achee reflects that this dispersal planted the earliest seeds of racism — righteous native peoples like Mahujah, later mocked for their old-fashioned dress and manner by those who adopted new fashions like cotton, were treated with the same disdain and contempt still recognizable, Achee notes, in the world of his own day.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 2 opens in the shadow of grief. Yaatsekawd and Cavah, now old, tend the sheep of their murdered son Matteniah in the very valley where they first met in Eden — renamed the valley of Yo-ash, the valley of grief, since his bones still lie there unburied and the whole ravine is shunned. Their sorrow weighs so heavily on their grandson Mychar, a big, gentle man deeply loved by his family, that he takes to his bed and refuses to rise or eat. His wife Arookah, whose name means “the one who can restore happiness,” cannot reach him and turns in her distress to her sister Emoriy — a young woman known for having been the very first to put language to the experience of hearing the Holy Spirit, so that others have come to depend on her for guidance. Emoriy climbs the northwestern slopes of Mount Mahujah and remains there three days; on the evening of the third, she returns to the anxious encampment with a vision of comfort — a distant mountain in the west, a sparkling sea beside it, and a peaceful valley beyond. Her account carries such truth that the people feel it as certainty, and Emoriy is recognized as the very first of the seven grandmothers Motsah spoke of in council, the one who joined mankind to the Holy Spirit Kahee.

As the community prepares to follow Emoriy’s vision west, her brother Azan resolves to go as well, troubled and unable to bear watching yet another sibling depart; a dream from Motsah tells him to pack double provisions, though he doesn’t understand why until later. Emoriy, devastated at the thought of losing Azan, seeks out her father Yaatsekawd by the waters of Simca, who tells her gently that he now believes she may be Azan’s very rib — the two of them joined since birth by the same gift of hearing the Spirit. They marry, and in time Emoriy stays behind in the valley while Azan and Mychar’s family travel on. The travelers follow the vision precisely: they find the sparkling Shaman Sea, name a great river beyond it the Pishon, and settle along its banks. Mychar, restless in the low valley and longing for the sight of Mahujah, climbs the southern mountain until he finds a high mountain lake, builds an altar, and lays a stone he carried from his parents’ land in Eden beside an identical stone he finds waiting on the new mountain — a ceremony of introduction between the two peaks, which he names Mount Qatar. From that day, Mount Qatar and Mount Mahujah are spiritual sisters, sharing the feelings of Eden between them and establishing, Achee notes, the very foundation from which the Religion of Shabuwa will one day arise.

Eighty-five years of peace follow in Qatar, until the fourth generation, when the wicked descendants of Kenneh and the people of Towah begin settling the lower reaches nearby, bringing contention, illness, and vanity — the pride of cotton garments and status — into the world for the first time. When the wicked draw near, the righteous of Qatar simply withdraw quietly into the hills rather than confront them, and their humility and unfamiliar customs are mistaken by the wicked for backwardness and superstition, a misunderstanding that — ironically — keeps the wicked too fearful to pursue them, and eventually seals off the whole valley to outsiders; the farthest, most distant valley to the north becomes known as Heleah, for being furthest removed from Anokeesed’s lovingkindness. The chapter closes as Shamar and her husband Khanan, guided by a messenger and a vision the Lord grants Shamar of her infant son Mahal’s future purpose, arrive safely in Qatar and are warmly welcomed by Mychar himself.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 3 opens with Achee watching Enoch himself, seated against a stone, carving what Achee comes to recognize as the very Guidance Tablet later given to Moses on Sinai — one of the Tablets of Elda, meaning simply “God is here.” The Lord speaks each of the Ten Guidances for Happy Living to Achee in turn: to love Anokeesed with heart, mind, and power; to walk in the sanctity of marriage and anticipate it from childhood; to follow no religious example but lovingkindness itself; to love one’s fellow as equal, without ranking rich or poor, beautiful or plain; to love and protect children and teach them holiness; to purify oneself by sevens, the root of the Sabbath and Shabuwa itself; to honor Motsah as the Living Water and be content rather than envious; to respect and guard all life, including enemies and the unborn, forbidding both war and capital punishment; to seek no authority but that which comes through the authority of Elda; and to bear oppression without violence, loving one’s enemies rather than resisting them. Achee learns these guidances were first given through Enoch to comfort Anokeesed and secure the seven joinings of Masowsiel. But he is then shown, with real grief, how they were slowly corrupted: as the scattered, loosely connected encampments of Qatar drifted from a shared community into isolated groups increasingly gripped by fear of the wicked surrounding them, the gentle guidances hardened first into social rules, then — after the Flood, under the rise of controlling “sons of god” within the Secret Society of Saycoo — into rigid commandments enforced by threat and even by stoning. Achee weeps to see that this same corrupted framework would one day be used to justify Motsah’s own persecution and death when He came in the flesh, His Father’s name invoked to sanction the very cruelty His guidances were meant to prevent.

The chapter’s second half follows Mahal, the young son of Shamar and Khanan, guided by repeated dreams to a stream of unusually clear water near their new home. Anointed by his father with the oil of life and dressed in a messenger’s mantle, Mahal follows the stream for three days until he finds it gushing up from the very heart of the sacred mountain — the pool of heaven itself. Kneeling as instructed, he drinks and is filled with the Spirit, and Motsah tells him that this Living Water will carry His presence to mankind for generations, sustaining a covenant renewed each harvest. That night Mahal dreams further: he sees Anokeesed as a Man bent under a crushing burden, bruised, bleeding, dressed as a slave — a vision so unbearable he begs for it to be lifted — followed by the same Man now clothed in righteousness, unburdened. Motsah explains that He will become a Man to follow His children out of Eden, carrying not the sins of the righteous, who love the Living Water freely, but the corruptions of the wicked who claim to know Him yet do not. Mahal carries this news to the aged Mychar, who has awaited such a discovery in dreams for years and weeps with joy to learn that this pool of heaven — the Living Water — will be the very element that fixes deep, enduring love for Motsah the Lamb in the hearts of the righteous for all the ages still to come.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 4 opens at a wedding feast, where Lamech — seventh from Yaatsekawd and a Master of the Secret Society of Saycoo — secretly plans to abduct a maiden named Awkhoo, dragging her bound and gagged through the night to a hidden cave. There, while Lamech sleeps, Motsah the Lamb comes to her gently, loosens her bonds, and cleans the sand from her face, telling her softly that His heart grieves with her. He then asks something remarkable of her: that she forgive Lamech completely, not for his sake but because her forgiveness will thwart the plans of evil and, in time, bring salvation to a multitude of people, if she can find her way to forgive him again and again. She does. By morning, Lamech finds her sitting free of her bonds yet she has not fled — bewildered, he can find no sign of outside help and, in his pride, simply concludes that no woman can resist him. Watching this, Achee is so shaken by the scale of forgiveness he’s witnessed — the kind he’d believed applied only to Anokeesed Himself — that he sets the Urim aside for days, worried he has misunderstood. When he returns to it, the Spirit answers with the Second Decree of Creation: that the affairs of salvation must be carried out through the agency of man himself, just as Anokeesed would one day become a Man to work alongside His children — meaning forgiveness this complete had to be modeled by a woman, not simply demonstrated by God from a distance.

Renamed Adah, she is taken to live apart in a small encampment in the hills south of the Shaman Sea — a land Lamech, hiding from the other Masters of Saycoo, comes to call Elam, meaning “hidden” — while his embittered first wife Zillah dwells with him on the hilltop above. In secret, Adah raises her children in holiness: a daughter she names Naamah, quietly honoring her true husband Naom back home; then twin sons, Jabal and Jubal. Later, taught dark rites by a figure named Asael, Lamech forces upon Adah an act that produces the first Niphilim child ever born on earth — a horror that leaves her crying out to Motsah in despair, though He comforts her and promises her endurance will be richly rewarded. When jealous Zillah discovers how the child was conceived, Lamech’s secret reaches the other Masters of Saycoo, who turn against him, forcing him into a life of fear and hiding even as Adah, in her twenty-second year of captivity, gives birth to Iona — a daughter, the Lord tells her, who will not follow the testimonies of her fathers but will burn instead with vibrant love for Him. When Iona is twelve, the Lord warns Adah that a broken and violent Lamech — having just killed his own Niphilim son in rage — is coming for her children’s lives, and she must send all four west by night toward her grandfather Reshuya, trusting completely though she herself must remain behind. She does. Lamech burns the abandoned camp in fury, drags Adah east, and blindfolds her at the border so she cannot find her way home — but cannot bring himself to kill her, and finally abandons her bound in an empty field. There, at first light, her true husband Naom finds her, guided across many days by dreams of his own; he unbinds her, feeds her, and re-ties her hair exactly as he had at their wedding — reclaiming her as his wife — and they travel home to Nod rejoicing, without a trace of bitterness in her heart.

Years later, Jubal and Jabal, passing through the Aral Sea region to visit their grandparents on their way back to Qatar, carry their mother’s story and her spirit of forgiveness with them; Jubal becomes the first to teach it openly there, so thoroughly that even the wicked pressing in around Qatar’s borders begin, in time, to be met with kindness rather than hostility. Achee closes the chapter recognizing Adah as the second of the seven grandmothers — the one who joined mankind to the spirit of infinite forgiveness Cavah first modeled — noting that Iona herself was born carrying that very element of righteousness within her own soul.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 5 opens with Adah, still in captivity, giving birth in secret — her children dig a hidden pit inside their dwelling over three days so no sign of her labor will reach the Society of Saycoo. Sending her children outside, she falls asleep alone and wakes to find a gracious, gentle stranger sitting beside her: Pethuah, wife of old Edra, sent by Anokeesed to deliver her daughter. Pethuah prophesies over the unborn child — that from her line will one day arise one “kindred to Motsah Himself,” who will hold the divisions of Elda in his hand and be a constant companion to the Lord throughout the course of the earth — and instructs Adah that her twin sons must one day travel to find Edra himself, still living, to meet the granddaughters destined to be their wives. When the baby is born laughing, Pethuah washes her, names her Iona, and gives Adah a white kaf stone as a token of the child’s acceptability in heaven, before simply vanishing. Adah’s daughter Naamah, who had been listening quietly the whole time without ever seeing the woman enter or leave, is the one who confirms what happened; Adah explains gently that Pethuah died many years earlier in childbirth and now lives with Anokeesed — meaning Iona was delivered by someone already passed from this life. This astonishing account, carried by Naamah as she grows into a young woman respected for her firsthand testimony, becomes the first proof many in Qatar and Maween ever receive that life continues after death, transforming how people understand accountability, hope, and their own mortality. For bringing this knowledge to the world, Achee honors Naamah as the fifth grandmother, the one who joined mankind to the hope of eternal life.

The chapter turns next to Shamar, granddaughter of Cavah in the third generation, teaching children and youth in the grove by the Pool of Heaven during the season of Ingathering. Because no words yet exist for virtues like patience, honesty, diligence, loyalty, or respect, Shamar must search her own soul to invent language for concepts no one has ever needed to name before — a labor Achee recognizes as reshaping the emotional and moral vocabulary of the entire people. Some of the men grumble that she talks too much to children, but the women rally behind her completely, some even joking that they might soon be teaching the men their own waywardness — and in time, the men do come around, moved to real repentance by what their children learn from her. Shamar is honored as the third grandmother, joining mankind to reproval and to the Man Anokeesed would become. Alongside her stands Ashmoreth, a daughter of Yaatsekawd and Cavah through their son Elah, disfigured since childhood by a fire that left one eye scarred shut and an arm and leg permanently bent, yet radiantly joyful, active, and beloved by everyone around her. Ashmoreth establishes the clans of women in Qatar, organizing their expressions of service around reproval, repentance, and forgiveness — the Living Water — in a structure distinct from the clans of dominion Enoch had set in place for the men and women of Maween. As the senior elder of the Protection Clan, alongside Shamar’s Virtue Clan and Adah’s Service Clan, Ashmoreth’s quiet, uncelebrated devotion earns her a place among the four grandmothers honored so far, and when she passes away in old age, Achee sees her swept up gently into Anokeesed’s loving arms.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 6 opens with Iona, grown into a kind young woman surrounded by children in Qatar, spotting a large, confident stranger who has followed her from Rabshalish: Methusemer, son of Enoch, whose presence causes a stir given his father’s renown. Iona initially wants nothing to do with him, calling him a ruffian after overhearing him speak with too much confidence at a gathering, but he lingers through the winter, hunting with the young men and attending the teachings at the pool of heaven, and the two slowly grow acquainted. They marry in the spring — Iona carrying with her the prophecy that she is Methusemer’s rib, and the white kaf stone Pethuah once gave her mother. But the marriage sours: Methusemer becomes wayward, disappearing on long hunting trips and leaving Iona to raise their children largely alone. Their son Javen grows up as his mother’s chief support, eventually leading his own family west into the mountains and islands of the sea, becoming the first people to build vessels for crossing open water — a people who, when asked where they came from, would simply answer “We are from Iona,” becoming known as the Ionians. Methusemer’s waywardness deepens into something darker still, and he eventually sends word demanding Iona come live with him behind the fortified walls of his camp for her “protection.” Devastated, Iona performs a wrenching ceremony of divorce prescribed by the Guidances of Anokeesed — cutting off her hair, releasing half to the wind and tying half to an oak tree to return the espousal gifts, then fasting and mourning alone at a rock in prayer for seven days — comforted afterward by her brother Jubal and the gentle elder Ozen. When she asks the Lord whether she should go to Methusemer in hope he might yet repent, Motsah tells her plainly to decline, reminding her of her calling as keeper of one of the tablets of Elda and mother of great men still to come. In response, Iona is given a vision of the coming Day of Judgment, seeing herself standing to give an account of her life before Anokeesed, and beside her, Methusemer doing the same — the first glimpse anyone receives of the reckoning awaiting every soul. Achee honors Iona as the sixth grandmother, the one who joined mankind to the responsibility of standing accountable before God.

The chapter’s second half turns to Tavah, a young unmarried maiden espoused to Nahal, great-grandson of Iona’s own kin Azan and Emoriy. Sent to fetch water, Tavah encounters a stranger sitting on a rock by the spring; she shares her cup with him without fear, and he reveals Himself as Motsah, telling her she is “the feelings of Anokeesed made flesh” and that through her the covenant of Gabriel — the promise that the righteous will one day return to Eden — can be extended beyond the people of Maween to the righteous of Qatar as well. This charge arrives at the darkest possible moment: the wicked masters of Saycoo, locked in a seven-year struggle to unite under a single supreme ruler in the valleys of Heleah, have begun breeding Niphilim expressly to hunt down and destroy the righteous leadership of Qatar, and the men of the village — furious and frightened — are ready to take up arms and fight. Tavah, though only a girl not yet old enough to be married, stands before the whole assembly and asks them plainly whether they will abandon their Father’s desires and return evil for evil, or trust Motsah to lead them to safety the way their ancestors once dispersed to found new homes. Her words move Jubal to repent on the men’s behalf, and by morning the people determine to migrate west rather than fight. Only the elderly Reshuya and Awkhoo — Adah’s own aged parents — refuse to abandon the pool of heaven, and are found and killed there by a hollow, soulless Niphilim named Bohoo, sent specifically to destroy them; their son Azaz buries them in the grove where they died, and it is only after their deaths that the last holdouts finally flee west with everyone else. Achee reflects that had the people of Qatar chosen to fight, the gentle inheritance of lovingkindness would have been lost entirely — and that it is precisely because of Tavah’s single act of restraint that Noah and Melchizedek would later come from this same line to bring forth the Flood and establish Shabuwa. She is honored as the seventh and final grandmother, the one who joined all the desires of Anokeesed to the desires of the righteous, completing the circle of seven first promised in the Great Council of Heaven.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 7 turns from the stories of the seven grandmothers to a different kind of revelation: Abarah, son of Adah, teaching the assembled righteous at the pool of heaven about what awaits every soul after death. Abarah explains that both the righteous and the wicked are resurrected immediately upon dying, entering what he calls the Seven Stations of Heaven, sometimes known as the Seven Heavens — the pathway by which every departed soul moves toward either eternal fellowship with Anokeesed or eternal separation from Him. The first four stations, he teaches, are each about oneself. In the First Station, every soul is bathed in the light and love of Motsah the Lamb, engulfed completely in truth, acceptance, and exquisite love; those who longed for that love in life find themselves home at last, while those who spent their lives resisting or justifying themselves against it may find the light unbearable, choosing instead to shrink away from it until they suffer what Abarah calls the second death — a far more frightening and lonely descent than the first, since it strips away even the false comforts the wicked relied on in life. Those who die this second death bypass the Second, Third, and Fourth Stations altogether, remaining in their diminished state until the Fifth Station begins, a thousand years later.

For those who continue forward, the Second Station brings the love of the Eerkodeshoi, the Holy Watchers, filling each soul with the joy of full companionship and relationship with all creation; the Third Station brings each person face to face with the Man Anokeesed became — Motsah the Lamb Himself — where those who truly knew and loved Him fall into His arms in an overwhelming reunion, while those who merely believed in Him from a safe distance, or wanted only the comfort of His name, find Him a stranger they must linger to come to know as He truly is. The Fourth Station brings the spirit of Anokeesed’s own Presence, where each soul confronts, gently and without wrath, exactly how their life affected His heart — whether their choices brought Him companionship, comfort, and joy, or contributed instead to His grief. Those who have loved completely may enter immediately into service as angels of the Presence, and Abarah teaches that all of this — the first four stations — can, to some degree, be experienced even now, in mortality, by anyone willing to spiritually “cross over” and walk hand in hand with the angels of heaven while still in the flesh.

The Fifth Station is the Millennium itself, a long era of fulfillment and the joining of families that begins only after Motsah’s Second Coming and the final defeat of the Decadarchoi, gathering together everyone who has completed the first four stations along with those who lingered there and those who suffered the second death, now finally permitted to rejoin the rest. From there, all souls proceed to the Sixth Station, the Eternal Judgment, where the full light of Anokeesed’s own Presence reveals with total clarity what each person has made of themselves through their choices and their use of Motsah’s redeeming work — a light of truth rather than punishment, in which repentance has finally run its course and what a person has chosen to become is set as who they will forever be. At last comes the Seventh Station, when the soul is caught up into the very arms of Anokeesed Himself, a completeness of joy Abarah says no words can capture. Having delivered this whole teaching, Abarah sits in prayer with the overwhelmed assembly, and Achee closes the chapter reflecting that this knowledge — carried down through Abarah’s own connection to their souls — will remain a treasure for the righteous even to the very end of days.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 8 continues Abarah’s teaching at the pool of heaven — his very name meaning to cross over in spirit between Eden and the temporal world. Sent by Motsah the Lamb to prepare the righteous for coming turmoil, Abarah explains that “crossing over” can mean anything from feeling and hearing the Spirit clearly, to seeing Motsah standing before you and hearing Him speak with His own mouth, to comprehending the life present in all created things, and for some, even being transfigured in His presence. He begins by describing Motsah’s own nature: soft, mild, gentle, and utterly incapable of imposing Himself on anyone, so sensitive to being unwelcome that He will withdraw entirely from those who approach Him with hesitation, doubt, or fear, not out of weakness but out of complete respect for what a person freely chooses to desire concerning Him. From this gentle nature, Abarah teaches, flow seven qualities of spirit that anyone can cultivate to begin crossing over and experiencing the conditions of Eden even while still living in the temporal world.

The seven qualities unfold as a sustained, daily discipline: spending most of one’s waking hours thinking, feeling, or speaking to Anokeesed or Motsah as one would with any close companion; approaching Him with deep and genuine humility rather than self-consciousness or a desire for others’ admiration; distinguishing clearly between casual, ongoing conversation with Him and more formal, reverent approach, since a friendship lived only casually remains superficial; acting with Him on every level without any self-image or performance getting in the way; recognizing that He shares emotions with you in all things holy, rather than fearing your feelings will be unwelcome to Him; genuinely loving repentance and reproval, seeking it out wherever it can be found rather than avoiding it; and, finally, addressing in some form each of the first four Stations of purification while still alive, so that one walks the same pathway as the angels of heaven even before death. Abarah teaches that anyone who diligently pursues these seven qualities becomes a true home for Motsah — a place He can come to for comfort, since He needs those who love Him enough to make the effort crossing over requires.

After teaching this to the whole assembly during the Ingathering, Abarah remains behind at the pool of heaven with his companion Loolki, and it is there, years later, that an aging Shamar seeks him out to learn more, and he teaches her the same seven qualities in gentler, more personal terms — explaining each one as an expression of Motsah’s own tender, easily-wounded nature, the way a person might describe a beloved friend’s particular sensitivities to someone hoping to understand him better. Achee, overcome with gratitude at having witnessed these teachings, reflects that Enoch himself named an entire order of service after this humble man — the men of Abarah, whose calling is to seek the ability to cross over so they can live as visible demonstrations of who Motsah is, and to enter the next life already prepared in their salvation. It seems fitting to Achee that the pool of heaven, where the Living Water first flowed among the righteous, should also be the very place where formal learning was first established upon the earth.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 9 opens with Shamar, still turning over Naamah’s account of Pethuah, seeking the Lord alone at the oak Nasheem after purifying herself in the waters of the pool of heaven, longing to know whether she might ever see her own husband Khanan again after death. That night she dreams of the very day Kenneh murdered Matteniah — the hateful chanting, the falling stone, her ancestor lying lifeless in the field — and then watches Motsah come to him, take his hand, and raise his spirit up in perfect form to ascend together toward the north amid the singing of the Eerkodeshoi. Brought at last into the Presence of Anokeesed, Matteniah discovers his Father mourning — the very first grief Anokeesed has ever known, over the loss of Kenneh and Awan, who have become vagabonds far from His love. Moved by this sorrow, Matteniah falls to his knees and asks Motsah for something extraordinary: permission to go and abide with his own murderer, to guide Kenneh toward repentance and bring comfort to Anokeesed’s grieving heart. Motsah grants it, and from that day Matteniah becomes the first Abiding Angel in the earth, keeping watch over the very brother who killed him. Achee, hearing this, is struck with shame at having harbored only condemning thoughts toward Kenneh, and listens to the rest of Shamar’s teaching on abiding angels with new humility: that every person is assigned one from birth, first to guide their parents and later to become their own emissary and friend as they grow, that a broken stone once found by Seth can be used in ceremony to learn an angel’s name, and that even the wicked have abiding angels — sometimes Motsah Himself, when no one else remains to love them — a mercy that will hold true even for those who perish in the coming Flood.

The chapter’s second half turns to a vision Achee is shown of Adullam, an elderly shepherd and son of Yaatsekawd and Cavah, dying peacefully among his family in the far northern wilderness above the Aral Sea, fed berries by a little girl and washed tenderly with leaves by a young woman and her daughter, surrounded to the last by love. When his spirit rises, it is not floating but rising the way any living person would, younger and stronger than his worn body had been. Entering the First Station, Adullam is engulfed in the light and love of Motsah the Good Shepherd and cries out, “My life is mine,” radiant with a joy Achee can barely describe. In the Second Station he is led among the Eerkodeshoi themselves, his senses opening fully for the first time to friends whose spirits he had loved only in fleeting moments during his mortal life. In the Third Station he meets Motsah face to face as his Creator and Redeemer, and overwhelmed by the meaning of a life well-lived, bursts into an ecstatic song of freedom and redemption — a song so beautiful that Achee, fearing he would lose it if he tried to sing it himself before the scribes, has to wait until it returns to him in a dream of his own, so it could be preserved. Adullam then passes into the Fourth Station, entering the very Spirit of Anokeesed’s Presence alongside his beloved Eerkodeshoi companions, his whole life’s quiet righteousness now fully known and rewarded. Achee closes the chapter reflecting on how the tender care Adullam’s family showed him in his final days seemed to encircle the very doorway through which he passed into the next life — a gentle lesson, he notes, on how the righteous ought to treat their elderly in the time before they, too, must pass on.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 10 opens by returning briefly to Iona, now forsaken after Methusemer takes two new wives; the Lord counsels her not to heed his summons, and she withdraws instead into the deep reaches of western Qatar, where the people rename her Allmon, believing she herself chose to abandon her marriage. The chapter’s true subject, though, is the coming of Noah. Born unusually pale-skinned, an oddity his parents fear could invite ridicule or superstition, his family resolves to raise him proudly rather than let his appearance shape how he is treated, dressing him in special linen with a covering to shield his eyes and soften the curiosity of others. Noah grows strong and robust, but spends much of his boyhood in solitude by the river, with few playmates besides his much-older sisters; in that quiet, his mother teaches him to discern the Spirit, his father Lamech — son of Iona and Methusemer, and the most respected man of righteousness in the land in the years before Enoch’s people departed for Eden — teaches him to walk with the Eerkodeshoi, and his grandmother Iona instructs him fully in Enoch’s divisions and the gentle Guidances of Anokeesed. By the time he reaches manhood, it is plain to everyone, and to Achee watching through the Urim, that Noah is a man of God who will one day help determine the whole course of the earth.

Around the same time, a daughter is born to a man named Rak, so beautiful and rosy-cheeked at birth that he names her Emzara, after the apricot blossoms in full bloom that day. Noah and Emzara, born within days of one another, grow up together as playmates — Achee is shown a tender image of Emzara as a little girl dancing among the apricot trees in her father’s orchard, passing fruit hand to hand with her friends while Noah looks on — carrying between them the same sacred dance-song passed down from Cavah through Baraka, Iona, and Boten. As they grow, their love deepens, and when Lamech recognizes that Emzara’s very name — “the man of turbulent waters who will harvest and cast out the dross” — speaks prophetically of Noah’s own destiny to call forth the cleansing waters of the earth, it becomes clear to everyone that the two are meant to be married. They exchange espousal gifts rich with meaning: Noah gives Emzara grape juice and bread, asking her to keep him patient and content with life; she gives him a bright, sweet-sapped leaf and a honeycomb, asking him to stay strong for what is coming while never losing the sweetness of childhood. Emzara becomes the first woman ever to cover her head in a mantle like Noah’s, without his rope of bulrushes, as a personal sign that she is joined with him in all things — a gesture that becomes a lasting symbol of modesty and grace among women. Tall, graceful, and devoted to the Service Clan, she dances in pure joy by the riverbank near Noah’s altar, moving him deeply each time he watches her. They marry and build a household known for taking in abandoned and orphaned children, growing into a wider fellowship the people call Ebenim; Emzara bears their first two children, Maud, prophesied to become a great rememberer whose knowledge of her people will reach distant generations, and Ahah, prophesied to build a wall of protection between his family and the forces of evil, who grows up to become a maker of ahtoon cloth.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 11 opens after the heartbreak of Yatishya’s departure — renamed Japeth by his grieving father, since he abandoned his family to pursue a life of lust among the wicked women of Heleah. In his seventy-second year, Noah begins encountering Motsah the Lamb more frequently, and the whole encampment grows used to seeing the light of the Lord’s presence glowing from his place of prayer. One morning Noah hears a cry — “Help me, help me” — coming from the direction of Heleah, and though he finds no one when he searches, the cry returns the following morning too. Determined, he journeys a full day toward the valleys and finds a woman lying dead, killed while fleeing Heleah, and two frightened children hiding nearby: a girl, Dalah, prophesied at birth to be delivered from evil, and a boy, Gadal, destined to rise up in excellence before the Lord. Noah gently coaxes them out with food, brings them home, and Emzara raises them as her own; grown, they marry each other, and their son becomes Canaan, prophesied to father a new generation of lovingkindness. The rescue leaves Noah newly burdened, wondering how many more righteous souls might still be trapped in Heleah, dreading the Flood that must one day come before they can be found and saved. Around this same time, his son Melchizedek marries Sedeqetelebab, and as violence, cruelty, and bloodshed continue to spread through Heleah under the wicked Masters of Saycoo, the Spirit begins urging Noah’s tender heart to call forth the Flood — though he hesitates, hoping still that more of the righteous might be discovered first. Noah frequents a hidden grove with a spring where animals drink without fear and the light of the Lord’s presence is sometimes seen even at midday, and it is there that the mysterious cries first began.

The chapter’s central event is the arrival of Ozen, a small, thin, white-haired listener whose two braids mark him as still married, sent by Motsah to teach Noah the sacred, long-buried knowledge of the languages of the Eerkodeshoi — a knowledge traceable all the way back to Yaatsekawd in Eden, quietly preserved and given fuller language over generations by Azan and by Shamar, though it had never yet been used. Noah confesses his despair to Ozen: he has already built the ark exactly as instructed, and holds the Water Tablet Iona brought down to him, yet cannot discern how to actually call the Flood forth. Ozen’s answer changes everything — water cannot be summoned from a place of safety; it must either approach a person or depart from them, and Noah must go to the very place the Flood will come and call the waters to himself there. Ozen then teaches him the deeper principle beneath this: every element of creation carries its own feeling, or language, put there by the Creator, and to learn any one Eerkodeshoi’s specific feeling is to become able to hear it speak and commune with it in return — never to call it against the wicked in hatred, but only to invite it to act out of love and grief for Anokeesed, exactly as Yaatsekawd once guided all creation in Eden. Achee, watching, is struck by how completely Noah’s whole life has been shaped by a lineage of extraordinary women — Emzara, his mother Boten, his grandmother Iona, his great-grandmother Adah — each of whom turned unbearable trials into perfect holiness, and reflects that the gap left by Noah’s own fatherless father was providentially filled by Ozen’s teaching instead. Before departing to guide a group of Ionians to higher ground ahead of the Flood, Ozen stays through the season, beloved by the children of the camp; afterward, Noah spends four more years mastering the languages of the Eerkodeshoi, growing especially close to those of the great valley of Heleah itself, sharing their shared sorrow and their mutual hope that their shame, too, might one day be covered and made whole.

From The Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers — The Guidance Tablet

Chapter 12 opens with the aging Lamech, longing to see his righteous forefathers before he dies, setting out with a company of strong young men toward Maween. Encampment after encampment they find completely empty — homes still holding grindstones, kellies, and bark coverings, flocks wandering the hills unshepherded, yet not a single person anywhere, and no sign of violence. Praying alone in one abandoned dwelling, Lamech is found by a traveler named Orak, a descendant of Kodesh, who tells him plainly what has happened: all the inhabitants of Maween have returned to Eden. Together they journey on to Nod, where they find Shayiree — Lamech’s own great-grandson, left behind and quietly waiting for someone to come — and learn from him the full wonder of what has taken place. When Lamech finally returns home with this news, Adah’s grieving children, believing all their kindred gone, resolve to travel to Eden themselves in hopes of finding their mother’s spirit there; Nahal, whose very name means to expand the covenant of Gabriel, agrees to guide them, and old Iona herself joins the great company setting out toward Mount Mahujah.

Back in the valley, the four years following Ozen’s visit become a period of deep purification for those who remain, even as nearly everyone Noah loves gradually departs — some to Eden, some to new lands in the west — until only Melchizedek, Sedeqetelebab, and a handful of others remain at his side, and the earth itself begins to feel unbearably empty to him. When the time finally comes, Noah goes to the very place the Flood must fall and, wearing the Water Tablet bound to his forehead, spends twenty-two days lovingly summoning each of the Eerkodeshoi by name in their own language — the thunder, the rain, the wind, the clouds, even the trembling hills reassured not to be afraid — in the first joining of man and creation through agency since the world became temporal. The Flood comes, and after seven days upon the ark, marked by the extraordinary birth of a baby girl named Mabool, born in the treetops above the floodwaters, the ark comes to rest and the people disembark in joy, fasting broken at last, their many rescued stories shared tenderly around new fires. Families scatter to rebuild their lives — some returning to Qatar, some staying together, a pair of ravens choosing to remain loyally with Noah for years — while Noah sends word ahead to Emzara that he and Melchizedek are safe.

Alone with his son afterward, Noah bids farewell to the ark itself, and it is then that Motsah the Lamb comes to sit beside him and explain the deeper meaning of his work. Of the forty Niphilim ever brought into being by the wicked through the misuse of blood, thirty-six were destroyed already in the Flood, born of nothing but petty jealousy and greed; but the last four Masters of Saycoo had deliberately created one Niphilim apiece to attack each of the four orders Anokeesed set into creation, meaning their corrupted spirits still linger dangerously upon the earth. Motsah then walks Noah through those four orders one by one: the order of forgiveness and repentance, undergirded by the springs and streams of the Living Water; the order of the Holy Spirit, which Emoriy joined to mankind, allowing any repentant heart to seek real guidance; the order of the sanctity of marriage, which Shamar joined to mankind, undergirded by fountains, the very body of Anokeesed’s purity; and the order of the authority of Elda, or service to Anokeesed, undergirded by the rain, the body of His own feelings. Motsah explains that any reproval, repentance, or forgiveness that flows outside these four orders does not come from Him, and that the entire, long struggle between good and evil for the rest of the earth’s history will be waged within these very boundaries. Before the Flood, He tells Noah, the righteous and the wicked lived apart from one another; from this point onward they will be blended together in every generation, their conduct shaped by the very divisions their old fathers gave the earth and the joinings their grandmothers gave to the family of mankind — and just as the conscienceless were destroyed by water in the Flood, the wicked in the end of days will one day be destroyed by fire.