Ahrinziman

This story came to me under peculiar circumstances. It is printed as told by Ahrinziman himself, but the names of the characters are purely fictitious and have no claim to historical accuracy.

The accounts given by historians of the Persian history of that period are meagre and often conflicting, although there is a general agreement as to the leading events, and as it may interest some readers to know who the actors in this true tale are, I give the real names: El Jazid was Artaxerxes Longimanus of Persia, said by the Jewish historians to be the Ahasuerus mentioned in the Story of Esther and Vashti.

He is said to have been a singularly handsome, graceful man, tall and of commanding presence. Josephus, the Jewish historian, in giving the story of Esther and Vashti expresses the opinion that the action of the King in proposing to exhibit his beautiful wife to his boon companions after a banquet was intended as an insult to her and that she was justified in refusing to appear.

In the opinion of Josephus there were indications of a private quarrel and that the King took this public method of finding an excuse for deposing Vashti from her position of dignity and honor. If Artemisia was Vashti then it is quite possible that the "Damaspia" who has gone down in history as the queen of Artaxerxes was some other wife than Vashti. Other historians ignore the story of Vashti and Esther.

Artemisia was Vashti, the haughty, beautiful Queen of Ash. Selim was Xerxes, the only legitimate son of Artaxerxes, who had reigned only forty days when he was assassinated (it was said by Sogdianus).

Ahrinziman was Sogdianus, the illegitimate son of Artaxerxes. Various accounts are given of his character and the manner of his death, but all agree that he in his turn was assassinated by order of "Ochus," whom I call "Ahmed," a third and illegitimate son of Artaxerxes. Ochus then ascended the throne and reigned for a number of years. Ben Al Zulid was Megabyzus, the noted general of Artaxerxes. The other characters of the story are not mentioned in history.

The hypnotically-induced trance is as pernicious to the Soul as would be the habitual use of narcotics to the body. Whether the hypnotiser (or, more correctly, the magnetiser) be in the flesh or out of it, the results are the same; an habitual use of magnetism to induce sleep or "trance" is an evil and one which it would require a whole volume to properly illustrate.

And yet, through the power of TV, the internet, smart phones and chemicals in the food and water, the hypnotic trance has become our normal state of being.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) said that black magicians and other evildoers will create medicines that will deaden people to all things spiritual: "Endeavors to achieve this will be made by bringing out remedies to be administered by inoculation . . . only these inoculations will influence the human body in a way that will make it refuse to give a home to the spiritual inclinations of the soul." (Steiner R. Secret Brotherhoods. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2004, pp. 90-91).

It is thought that higher beings should make use of these conduits of mind control to utterly destroy humanity and wipe the whole evil blight from the face of the Earth.