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The story of Rancho Nuevo is central to my own theology. If you view theology as a framework through which you interpret the message rather than as incontrovertible law, then the ease through which you interpret the message is greater. If you focus on the story, with the figures and the events having more relevancy than the message the story carries, then you will lose your way.
This has been true of religion since beliefs were first organized and shared as tribal truth following through to modern religions. When the theology is valued more than the message, the religion loses its meaning. Theology is the transportation that carries the message. If you value the car more than the passenger, then you will never understand the reason for the journey.
RANCHO NUEVO
In the beginning, Rancho Nuevo was a desert, but slowly it became populated with the physical embodiments of certain lost and misguided souls. Most had led dark and hateful lives in their previous frame of existence. As a soul passes from one frame to another, it judges itself within the definitions of its most powerful personal reality. This chooses its next frame, and those consigned to Rancho Nuevo were generally of the seedier sort, who spent their previous frame of life seeking self-gratification and hurting and ruining the lives of others in their pursuit of it. Others, who often seemed out of place, were those who carried so much guilt for their own perceived wrongdoings that their soul felt the need for penitence. In essence, Rancho Nuevo become a destination for souls that sought to use and abuse others as well as those who made themselves victims.
The first soul to inhabit Rancho Nuevo took the physical form of a man who would be known as Blackjack. At the center of town would be constructed a saloon. The vision of Blackjack created a vision of a town similar to depictions of the American West of the 19th century. Every frame tends to take on the personality of the first soul to inhabit it, and Rancho Nuevo was no different. For the remainder of his existence in Rancho Nuevo, Blackjack would serve as the bartender at the Blackjack Saloon, which would become a focal point of the town.
The victims were tortured, used and otherwise violated by the abusers of power. This would go on for a very long period of time before Rancho Nuevo became so populous that it would attract the attention of the angels.
In order to understand what this means, one must understand that my definition of "angel" is anyone who is able to travel freely between frames of existence. The angel wings are not so much a physical necessity as they are a symbolic representation of the angel soul being able to travel between frames and communicate with souls within these frames.
Rancho Nuevo attracted a dark angel of great power. He became known as The One of Great Power and was feared by both victims and victimizers. His word was law and no one dared defy him.
When the One of Great Power came to Rancho Nuevo and took control of the town, things became worse. Those who would not serve his whims were buried under the streets of the city without air to breathe, and in those days no one who lived in Rancho Nuevo had the ability to die, so they lived eternally, buried beneath the streets.
The center of any frame's energy rests with its first inhabiting soul. Blackjack would become a quiet and unassuming character that would participate in no crimes against others. He would only continue to stand behind his bar, selling drinks and dispensing advice and direction to those who patronized his establishment. His role was as a conduit for the energy, keeping its flow steady in the times to come.
Those who survived and thrived were strong and could commit crimes against the physical person of others without blinking. Those chosen to closely serve The One of Great Power were capable of nearly any dark art. Beautiful women, and sometimes men, would be kept at the Blackjack Saloon. Those found physically desirable were kept for the pleasure of the men who drank and fought at the Blackjack Saloon. New methods of torture and abuse would be tried on a regular basis against anyone the masters of Rancho Nuevo desired to use in such ways. It would be like a game to find the weaknesses of individual souls and isolate and torment those weaknesses and fears.
The darkest power of Rancho Nuevo was that no one could die and no one could leave. There were legends of those who had escaped or had managed to die, but stories were often told, especially amongst those living in eternal torment, for these stories gave hope to the hopeless.
In the human frame we know, Rancho Nuevo would likely be thought of as a kind of purgatory or Hell. The One of Great Power could be considered a devil or demon, since his power comes from a stronger and darker frame than Rancho Nuevo. Unlike our frame, the population of Rancho Nuevo were fully aware of beings that could ascend and descend to their frame. On rare occasions they had been visited by two different kinds of angels. The first were those who appeared in white with graceful and strong wings. The second were the red riders, with three sets of wings. The riders always wore red, carried swords and traveled on horseback. They are very similar to the Christian concept of the seraph.
THE ANGEL WAR
Eventually, there would be a war. As the visits from the white and red angels increased in frequency, there would be confrontations with The One of Great Power as well as with those who had immersed themselves in his darkness. Both the red and white angels sought to take control of Rancho Nuevo, but for different purposes.
It is not certain why the frame of Rancho Nuevo was so important to both groups of angels. The easiest interpretation is that the red riders and the angels chose the frame of Rancho Nuevo to have a frame to call their home. Neither angels nor red riders can die outside of their own frames, and both groups of angels were migratory with no home frame, making the quest for a place to call home important to them. Neither could die outside of their own frame, but once they fought to make Rancho Nuevo their home, they became mortal. The angels were slaughtered, and once the battle ended, both groups lost their wings and their ability to travel between frames. Those that survived would remain in Rancho Nuevo until they died. In their previous existence, the red riders' purpose was preservation of law and order. Their lust and desire for "home" cost them dearly in the end.
Mortality is, for some reason, a great desire of immortals.
Following their design and natural course, they sought to control and instill order within the chaos that was Rancho Nuevo. The white angels were revolutionaries who sought to liberate the souls of the eternal frames. This was the cause of great conflict between the riders and the angels. The freedom of the soul sought by the white angels went against the preservation of law and order that was paramount to the existence of the red riders.
ANASTASIA
Much time would pass before it was discovered that one winged angel still lived in Rancho Nuevo. She had been holding "underground" meetings with the souls of the formerly white-winged angels, remaining outside of the jurisdiction of the law givers, the former red angels. When she made herself known, the riders saw her as a threat, and sought to put her to death in order to silence her voice, fearing what she taught would cause an upheaval that will threaten their order. The name of the last winged angel in Rancho Nuevo was Anastasia.
The angel Anastasia, pure in her understanding of the truth, never desired Rancho Nuevo in the way the others did. Because of this she never became mortal and never lost her wings. She was arrested and crucified on a hill overlooking the town of Rancho Nuevo. She never died, but continued to hang on the cross overlooking the town for many generations. Retaining her angelic ability to travel between frames, she could have left Rancho Nuevo before, during or after her arrest and prosecution by the former red angels, but she chose to stay. Only by sacrificing herself could she save the souls of those who had lost their way over a desire for "home."
THE SECOND WAR OF RANCHO NUEVO
Over a great deal of time, Rancho Nuevo spread out from a single town to a wide range of settlements. There were now two distinct groups of mortal beings in Rancho Nuevo, identified as the reds and the whites, and for the most part they kept themselves segregated. As building continued throughout Rancho Nuevo, strange writings were discovered. The writings were the diary of a red rider who sought to put in print everything that had happened and how both the riders and angels had fallen. The whites studied this text secretly for many years before those who wore red discovered their work. Copies of the now sacred text had been made and distributed amongst the whites. The reds sought to destroy all copies except the original and keep it in a place of safety. They treated it as The Word of God while the white saw it as something else, something to be learned from in an understanding of who they all were. Despite many generations and the loss of contact with their origins, the reds and whites had remained true to their nature. The reds continued to work to preserve order while the whites sought greater understanding and freedom for the soul.
A war began as the reds sought out the copies and destroyed them. The whites did everything they could to preserve the copies, sacrificing themselves in the process. Eventually, a second war between the reds and the whites began. The reds slaughtered entire families of the whites and covered their doors with their own blood. This was meant to be a warning of the seriousness of the offenses. For the reds, the theft of The Word of God and making copies of this sacred text was a crime for which no punishment was too severe. For the whites, the only important element of the war was preservation of the text. The single-mindedness of both philosophies ran so contrary to the other that the war was almost inevitable, but the violence and horror of it was more than ever could have been predicted.
The original text disappeared, but was found in the possession of a woman who claimed to be a descendant of the angel Anastasia. This was treated as blasphemy and intensified the war. No one could be descended from the angel who hung on the hill. She was the symbol of God’s forgiveness of the crimes of Rancho Nuevo’s past.
The second war had given rise to an aggressive and militant wing of the reds who spared no effort in duplicating the crimes of the past. These reds had drifted in darkness, and with God no longer responding to their pleas for help in preserving His order, they turned to The One of Great Power, who had left Rancho Nuevo during the angel war, but still paid close attention to the frame he formerly called his own. By accepting his assistance in their quest to destroy copies of the text, they filled themselves with darkness, drawn from a lust for power that raged out of control. The woman who held the original text was tortured and raped by these militant reds.
The tortured woman was eventually rescued by unknown souls before being put to death by the militant reds. Those who rescued her wore green tunics. They were of the same design worn by the reds for ceremonial and religious purposes. The only difference was the color. The most common interpretation of these events was that certain reds had broken away from their people and were taking action for their own purposes. The reds splintered into various sects and groups, each taking their own interpretation of events. As the power hungry militants had formed their own sect and became the most powerful sect of Rancho Nuevo, the greens had formed an underground network of former reds that sought justice and order through love and understanding rather than violence and coercion. They had rediscovered their original purpose, the purpose that dated back to when their people had three sets of wings and could travel freely between frames.
Soon after, the whites were all but exterminated. The reds destroyed all copies but were unable to find the greens or the woman who held the original. The original disappeared along with her and was never found. All copies of the text were destroyed. They were seen as flawed transcriptions of the original that contained lies and mistruths designed to further the vision of the whites. Soon after, Rancho Nuevo would fall into a great famine and would become a desert, as it had been in the beginning.
The angel Anastasia would eventually die and depart Rancho Nuevo. Her soul sought a new destination and eventually it was given to her when it was clear that Rancho Nuevo was doomed. The passage of Anastasia is seen as the moment that the soul of Rancho Nuevo died, and with it all who had called it home.
The souls of the fallen angels of Rancho Nuevo would pass on and continue, splintering their souls and sending them out like shards of glass. The pain of the souls of the reds and the whites passed on in this way to many frames. The shards of the white angels would seek to enter a new soul, usually that of a victim who was seeking answers. The shards of the red angels would take root in new souls as well, but they would always be the souls of those with a desire for power, control and the preservation of order.
THE TRIBE
Because of the conductivity of souls, when they orbit other souls and feel an attraction or bond, they tend to seek each other out again. Because of this, the majority of shards rained on one particular frame. The whites eventually reunited much of themselves in the form of a tribe that wandered the landscape of this frame. The reds became warriors, kings and men of great power. Some of the darker shards fell in positions of far less influence. Amongst the tribe were souls who would betray the tribe and some of the shards of the reds fell into corruption, thievery and acts of violence.
The tribe would travel the countryside for many generations, but the frame was changing. Darker forces were becoming more visible, with roving gangs of souls who had embraced the darkness of power, lust and greed. The memories of Rancho Nuevo still in their souls, they found themselves seeking to rob, rape and murder those who were weaker and to fight to the death those who were strong enough to oppose them.
Soul memory caused those who carried shards of the former white angels to bond together, drawn to each other for reasons they could not fully comprehend. Those who carried shards of the white came together as a tribe. They tended to be artists, visionaries and creative souls who would see the message they once knew and communicate it through their own unique artistic expressions, whether they were musicians, actors, writers, painters, philosophers, visionaries, etc. The tribe would travel from town to town, putting on shows and displaying their art and vision to those who would pay for the entertainment and enlightenment. From the shards of the former white angels were born the souls of the true artists.
As the souls born from shards of the red were often prone to corruption and lust for power, the souls born from shards of the white also had weaknesses. Some were prone to behavior that ran contrary to the law of the frame’s collective reality. As the corrupt and darker souls of the reds were prone to banding together to control and abuse those who were weak, the corrupt and darker souls descended from the whites were prone to self-serving and anti-social behavior.
The conflict would rise again, but this time neither side would understand why. Shards of memory were incomplete and neither the troubadours of the tribe or the leaders and lawmakers knew why they did not trust or fully accept the other as equally valid. There was silent contempt for the philosophical differences between the two. Eventually there would be violence, but this time it was not a war. The darker souls who carried shards of the former red angels would prey upon the tribe, watching and waiting for their opportunity.
The law of the frame of the tribe was strict. The frame was at a level of advancement that was similar to medieval times within our own frame. Kings and queens ruled over the land, chosen by the will of God and holding supreme power over all subjects. The people were used for their talents, to work and build as directed by those who ruled over them. The tribe was outside of this organization of people, seen by most as serving a useful purpose as entertainers and jesters, but seen by the darker souls as being useless clowns who refused to submit to the order of the land.
While there were corrupt souls that fell into darkness, there were also good souls descended from both red and white. Wise and caring leaders would commission the artists, players and thinkers to bring joy, happiness and inspiration to their people and make certain they were well cared for. Many artists and players would seek to enlighten and better the situations encountered by those amongst the worker and peasant classes, giving back all they could to those who admired and enjoyed their talents.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TRIBE
The tribe came to one of the largest cities of their frame. They were to do a long series of plays and shows for some of the city’s most powerful leaders. They arrived a day early to settle in and prepare, but on their first night in the city they were ambushed. The gang that ambushed them was made up of some of the darkest souls of the frame. Rapists, thieves, and murderers made up the bulk of this gang, dark souls descended from the shards of the darkest souls of Rancho Nuevo. They would rape, torture and kill most of the tribe.
The tribe itself did not have official leaders, but there were those who were seen as the strongest members of the tribe and they were the de facto leaders. Those whose vision was strongest and who could make decisions and inspire the others were the leaders of the tribe. They were counted on to give guidance and inspiration to the others in times of trouble.
During the torment of the night the tribe was destroyed, the leaders ran away instead of trying to help the others who had looked up to them for guidance. Knowing this would be a more painful fate for them than any torment they could apply, the gang allowed the tribe’s leaders to escape, giving them the option to escape alive and unharmed or be tortured and killed along with the others. The leaders were never pursued and some lived their lives out until they died of natural causes in old age, always carrying with them the pain of what they had allowed to happen to those who trusted in them and loved them.
Because they had been forced to watch the severe torture and brutal rapes of those they loved, the memories and dreams later tormented them. Some of the former leaders of the tribe later committed suicide in order to stop the flood of painful memories. Those that lived stayed by themselves, hiding in caves and in forests for the rest of their existence within the frame.
The souls that were created from the shards of the former angels, destroyed in Rancho Nuevo, were always drawn to each other. They would follow each other from frame to frame, and eventually the conflict would rise again.
According to the strictest interpretation of the theology of Rancho Nuevo, a vast number of these souls are now here, in this frame, and the conflict is going to happen again. It will keep happening until the pattern is somehow broken, because the purpose of the continued existence of souls is to break free from the patterns that bind them and trap them and keep them from attaining true freedom.
RANCHO NUEVO AND THE NOW
In most of the dreams and visions, I see myself walking through Rancho Nuevo during its various periods, but I cannot determine who or what I am or if I am just observing. During the period of the tribe, I am one of the leaders of the tribe, one of those who ran away and lived out his life in hiding. I never forgave myself for not giving my life and staying with those who loved and trusted in me and I must now break this pattern. I already screwed up once, by taking my own life in 1994, and the vision of myself on a tiny raft alone while people I cared about burned alive on the shores was a reminder.
Rancho Nuevo can be interpreted as symbolic of the constant struggle between polarized souls. It can be seen as a parable that teaches us how we need to break away from our violent and hateful struggle against each other. It means many things to me, but mostly it is the theology through which I interpret the blueprint of the soul, the document that was at the heart of the second war in Rancho Nuevo. I have only translated a very small part of it. I understand the heart of the message and more about it than I can presently translate, but translation and explanation are more difficult than understanding it within yourself.
It is also difficult for me to present a fair and balanced account of the history of the reds and the whites, since I know that I am descended from the whites and therefore carry a natural prejudice against the reds. The only thing I can say in regards to that is that both sides were always right in their beliefs, but it was the way in which each pursued their beliefs in disregard for the other than caused the conflicts and the wars. This is how the pattern is broken, by accepting that everyone is right.
This is the foundation of the theology of my religion. Remember, the theology is irrelevent, only the message matters.
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