Highmoon's Ponderings

I got curious after seeing similar threads at EN World’s Industry Forums, so I decided to take a look and compile Highmoon Media Productions’ 1st Quarter 2006 Top 10 in sales:

1. MonkeyGod Presents: Hellstone Deep
2. Liber Sodalitas: Erzsak’s Drake Riders
3. Liber Sodalitas: The Blind Path
4. MonkeyGod Presents: Black Ice Well
5. MonkeyGod Presents: From Stone to Steel
6. Bardic Lore: Ogham
7. Liber Sodalitas: Scions of the Holy Triad
8. Bardic Lore: The Fachan
9. Bardic Lore: The Villa of Mysteries
10. MonkeyGod Presents: All The King’s Men

Strictly speaking, the list should be a little longer, as various of these titles actually share a spot with the same number of sales (in which case they got listed in alphabetical order). Hellstone Deep has been a great surprise, being a consistent good seller month after month (which is funny, because we hear that people don’t want adventures, and yet 3 of the top 10 are, and that’s not counting the rest of my catalog, which is overwhemingly adventures!). Original lines Liber Sodalitas and Bardic Lore enjoyed a resurgence this quarter due to new releases and a couple of promotions, outselling in a very short time heavy-hitters such as From Stone to Steel and Frost & Fur (though make no mistake, those titles are as evergreen as they come). All in all, I am happy with my 1st quarter sales, though I admit they could be better, something I will work towards now in the 2nd quarter.

I have decided to refer to MySpace as NecromancerSpace from now on, due to the amount of people who have reappeared from the dead while we have been using it. Most of these resurrectees are actually a great thing we have come upon them as again, but there have been a few here and there that one wishes the Necromantic powers of MySpace would have left resting. I mean, seriously.

Please people, spread the word: EASTER AND BUNNIES DO NOT MIX!

You want a bunny for Easter? Get one made of chocolate or stuffed with cotton. Leave real ones alone unless you are ready for an 8-10 year commitment. My wife and I have had 4 rabbits in the last 9 years, and 3 have been rescued bunnies, 99.9% dumped on the streets after Easter by people who were too dumb to realize what it means to care for a rabbit.

Spread the word.

Passover starts tonight, so I’ll be offline for the next two days as we proceed to stuff ourselves with two back-to-back seders full of yummy food and featuring the main item of this holiday, matzah!

Happy Passover, and may we all celebrate it, hopefully this year, if not the next, in Jerusalem.

The net is awash in articles about this news: The Gospel of Judas has been found, restored, translated and released. This long-sought text details a conversation between Jesus and Judas in which Jesus asks Judas to betray him as part of a Mystery shared only by both teacher and student.

A few links:

• ‘Gospel of Judas’ Surfaces After 1,700 Years – NY Times (Requires registration)
• Did Jesus Ask Judas to Betray Him? – ABC News
• The Lost Gospel – National Geographic
• Gospel of Judas Google News search result

National Geographic will be playing a new show, The Gospel of Judas, on Sunday, April 9, at 8 PM EST (and I’m sure quite a few times afterwards), and at their site, you can download a PDF of the coptic transcription of the codex (not that most of us can read coptic, but it’s cool nonetheless). Also, ABC’s Primetime and Nightline will be reporting the news tonight (Thursday) at 10 PM and 11:35 PM EST respectively.

So, what does this all mean? At least that things are about to get very interesting in the Christian world. Though undoubtedly the Christian establishment will reject the new Gnostic gospel, it nevertheless raises some very hard and interesting questions about the established account of Jesus’ last few days. According to this new account, in which Jesus actually asks Judas for the act for which the man has been condemned for some two millenia, turns the whole characterization on its ears, putting Judah not as a betrayer, but as Jesus’ closest disciple, the one with whom the teacher shares a gnostic mystery by the uttering of the words, “you will sacrifice the man that clothes me,” referring to the act that will liberate Jesus from his physical flesh.

So what does this mean to me? I’m not Christian, so ultimately it means nothing beyond the historical importance of such documents. However, I grew up as a Catholic, and my family is still Catholic, so there is some sort of interest in such a story. While I was still a (if only nominal) Catholic, I always felt the establishment was way too rigid and had lost some of the essential message of the Rabbi from Nazareth. Much later on, after I had begun my journey into Judaism, I learned about the gnostic tradition, and over the years I have come to realize that the gnostics were perhaps a lot closer to what I consider a truer version of Jesus’ message, based especially on the knowledge I have (however small) of Rabbinic teachings of the 2nd Temple Era.

Ultimately the greatest realization this new finding should bring to all is that we do not know everything that happened, and at best, we are trying to decipher the picture by looking only at its shadow. As a Rabbi-Historian I heard a lecture from once said (and this should be a t-shirt), “Lack of proof is not proof of lack.” As time goes on we will make new discoveries that will force us to re-evaluate everything we have held as fact for so long, and I truly believe that eventually, that path will lead us towards a better understanding of humanity and of the true nature of G-d, eventually to the time when “He will be One, and His Name will be One.”

On a less serious note, though, I am now officially starting the wait for the next Dan Brown-esque writer to mine the new revelations from this gnostic codex for the next blockbuster novel. Maybe Dan Brown himself will write a sequel to The Da Vinci Code based on this.

It seems my last post was read and transmitted, and now a solution is coming down the line. More info later on, but HMP will gain some new life from it.