“...For He drew the maps of ages
And He focused on the bad:
Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Dien Bien Phu, and Stalingrad.
Now every telex is His nerve cell.
Now His ghost haunts every phone.
With each internetted whisper,
Now all maprooms He calls home.
And you too can hear Him, Michael.
Every newsman can who tries.
In the darkness of His musings,
Like this ink upon your eyes.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Charts


I SAW my past on the Island far in my wake. I thought not of the cold, damp winters when jobs were scarce among us locals. What floated back from my wake were the warm foghorn nights of tourist season summers.

I had loved my job as a tour bus driver. It might seem a silly job, but I took it seriously. Into it I had put great effort. It was a tour of mystery and of magic.

Those were leisurely days when I could, with coffee and all the papers, wait out on the rocks for the Island Queen to round the chop. The tourist would amble, camera laden, from the Queen to the bus. I took the tickets and began the talk:

"I think today I will give you a very special tour. Not the pre-packaged tour the bus company gives out. Tell you all the real secrets. Tell you what the real Vineyard is about. All right with you?"

I amost always used the exact same words. I made every tour the 'special' tour. They always smiled. It was always all right with them.

"All right, then. I wasn't kidding. Do you want to know the biggest secret? The biggest secret is something called the 'Mystery of Babylon'. It has everything to do with the Vineyard. It is also called the 'Mapmaker's Baseline of History'. It is khown only to the secret rulers of this Earth and the mapmakers. You will have to listen very closely now. It is not easy to grasp, and even after you grasp it you must mull it over for some time before you grasp also the enormity of the implications. Ready?"

A few, always just a very few, would perk up, lean forward, and be ready to truly listen.

"I am from a family of mapmakers. I will tell you what was told to me while on my Father's knee a long long time ago. This is the 'Mystery of Babylon'. It is the key to the true Vineyard."

There was a map of the Vineyard posted near the mirror above the driver's seat. There were other maps as well. Again, they loved the show, but few, so very few, one or two per tour, would be truly awake to what I was saying.

"It is hard to fathom that the biggest secrets lie not in some government computer, but in very large overall outlines, obvious generalities, used and known by only a few. This is the knowledge of the secret rulers. Think truly of our history...

"Humans have only been able to navigate with any accuracy on blue water for about 500 years. Think about that: 500 years is a mere microsecond of our history. Prior to that we were just a land mammal. Our center of communication was in Babylon. That is where the camel caravans crossed; here from Asia, here from Africa, and here from Europe.

I poionted to the small map of the globe. "See how you can see this better when you stand back from it? See how, by caravan, the communication from these great land masses of Asia and Africa and Europe would centralize here in Babylon?" Then I would add one of my Father's 'rules'. "So Babylon became the information center and the banking center. 'Banking follows information' is the hard rule." At this juncture I would glance through the bus to see who caught the implication. Now and then, on one or another tour, a light would go on behind someone's eyes. "Ah hah!" But, that was rare. Very rare.






When we first started to navigate we navigated maily around the shores. So, by geography, another information network started to form amongst the fishermen, here, around the Mediterranean, the 'middle sea'. These two informations centers fought each other for about 4000 years then combined here in Jerusalem. The real information center was here in the town of Biblos in present Lebonon. It was code named 'The Words". But, that was a poor place to bank. It was unprotected. The better place was here in the mountains, Jerusalem. There it was close to the Mediterranean on one side, and the Dead Sea and the camel caravans on the other side. Navigation improved even more, and more seamen would venture out away from the shore. The information center moved to here, the Isle of Rhodes, it meant crossing of roads. Then here to Rome. Then here to the Isle of Malta. This was the center through the time of the Crusades. Then, as we humans really started to hit blue water, it went to here, Lisbon. In the 1500's Lisbon was a world metropolis with Scandinavians mixing with Blacks from darkest Africa. Around this time an Italian monk wrote a tract in Latin concerning the best way to control economies. He reasoned that the best control would come from controlling an 'outside addiction'. People then made their own wine and meade. Tea, however, had to be imported. It came mainly from the hard route of caravan. What if a sea route could be found? This tract was passed around through the known world among the elite. It was the basis of the British East India Tea Company. They formed this way before they could really manage the navigation. They saw the future. Then, from Lisbon, our species really hit blue water. By geography the information center rested for a time on the Azores. Then it crosssed the Atlantic to this small island here, Nantucket. Nantucket had a problem, the sand bar built up and the deep water ships could not manage the harbor. So..., during the age of sail, before the Suez and the Panama canals, the information center rested on this small island here, Martha's Vineyard. See...? It was just off the sea lane. When all the information came by sail all the main current events of the world came together here, on the Vineyard, in Vineyard Haven. Here the Luce family owned a very private postal system with world wide connections through the tea trade.

One member of this family, Henry Luce, who grew up in central China, used this inside information to form Time Magazine. Even though information has changed that 'old boy' network still confabs here."

Often, then, I would mention all the owners of major media who had connections to the Vineyard: The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, CBS, and on and on.

I would again explain how banking follows information. "See how if you had you bank in the center, and a better center would develop, you would move your bank, move your trusts?"

On the very rare occasion, where one of the people had started to catch on to the implication in the beginning, that person would smile. Again, rare. Usually at this point one or two out of the forty in the tour would really begin to think.

Sometimes I would add a bit about Abigail Foldger. She grew up on Nantucket and learned this 'naval intelligence' or 'central information' on that central island. She moved to Boston and married a candlemaker named Franklin. Her son was Benjamin. He learned his international diplomacy from his mother.

Sometimes I would tell how John Paul Jones was sent to Russia from the Vineyard. How few knew that the founder of the American Navy was the founder of the modern Soviet Navy as well!

Sometimes, though not often, I would tell of the next important ingredient in the 'Mapmaker's Baseline of History' or 'Mystery of Babylon': the Wu Tui conection. At the time of Christ, from which we measured the millenniums, there were two great empires on two side of the Earth, Rome and China. At that time a secret message was sent along the Silk Road trom the Emperor of China, Wu Tui, to Rome. It is a test of logic to figure out what this message was: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," so, "why don't we pretend to be enemies but be very secret friends? There we could secretly know all the important intelligence." Mapmaker's know that this agreement, in the age of sail, 'went to sea', and moved westward with the banking and the secret trusts. But I would not tell this often because I knew that in a speech it is wise to stick only to one main point.

I knew my main point, if enough people knew, to be strong enough to bring to the people knowledge of secret control..., control of banking and wars that led in a line all the way back to Babylon. I knew this secret banking and the secret trusts created were the Harlot that drank from the blood of nations. I knew that for the children, if I could stand and let the people know, that they too would stand and trample these secret trusts. For these trusts were the bottles of the lizard vintage.










Sometimes I would get questions.

Where was Britain in all this? Didn't Britain rule the waves, almost rule the world? I would explain how this exception proves the rule. Britain was just off the 'Mapmaker's Baseline' or 'Mystery of Babylon' and had one distinct advantage: Isaac Newton. Newton brought us not just gravity, but calculus. It was calculus that enabled her to acccurately fire cannon from a moving boat and rule the waves.

Some would catch on: “Oh, so the Vineyard is the small information center and Boston, the banking center is close, that is why Boston too is called 'The Hub?' ” “Yes, it was the canals and the railroad that moved 'Wall Street' to New York. Even when we put down our first underwater cable, it bypassed England. It went from Sayville Long Island, we split the difference bwtween Boston and New York, and went directly to Hamburg.” Rarely, but sometimes I would explain why the Navy kept Einstein in Sayville.

Sometimes, by example, I would tell of Henry Luce's trip to Tehran, Iran in the 1950's. There he met with the Soviets and the Chinses. As he was on his way back to New York the Chinese divisions crossed the Yalu and entered Korea. They knew that we would not use the bomb. Agreements by which we could build the bombs, test them every so often with the only purpose to keep the population in awe, while the very few took so very much from the many.

I loved the tour. “Step right up, folks. If you didn't get a ticket on the boat, I will sell you one on the bus.“ It was a tour of magic. It was a tour of mystery.

But I was stopped! The tour bus, in broad daylight, was run off the road by a black truck in Gay Head. The tour company notified the police. Even with all these witnesses the police would do nothing. The next day men who identified themselves as members of the Anguilo crime family made the threat more specific. I knew that they were 'playing for keeps,' that I must back down. I tried the local paper as they offered a reward for information on a black pickup truck dowing the same thing at night. I gbrought the paper the company's report. The newspaper would do nothing.

I was sly. I had also included some information, sensitive information, on Naval unpreparedness during a showdown at sea with the Soviets in 1984. This was what I deleted, not the 'Mystery of Babylon.' I also started a small tourist newspaper and again wrote on this 'Mystery of Babylon.' I was stopped again. This time my small newspaper and my property was taken as well. The methods were very underhanded. It did, however, prove to me again that it was the 'Mapmaker's Babylon Line' that was the most sensitive information. If I could stand and tell enough people, they could use this as a key to understand the world's secret history. I was right. I had stood. But, I had failed.

Yes, The Mystery of Babylon was a small concept. A concept that would have great implications if many understood. I could be put in a little book. Most, when they first heard it would smile. It was cute, clever maybe. If they saw the true implications they would see the blood shed of many. They would see all the waste in battles from Lampanto to Leyte Gulf. Yes, a little book. It would be sweet in the mouth. But it would be bitter in the belly.

But, no, I had failed. These were the thoughts in my wake as it trailed from the winds of the Vineyard. Now my legs and arms were frozen numb too. I could not turn my head. A far voice within me screamed, “Move or you will freeze to death.” But I did not move. I started to remember something David had said about the 'standing with maps,' but I could not remember. Some unconscious force in my arm guided the tiller. I felt death near.

“Lizard Island,” I said aloud. I laughed. My words surprised me. I saw the steam from my voice drift back over my wake. Words of a dying man. Yes 'Lizard Island' was my private joke. I did so wish for the children to stand and reveal this 'Mystery of Babylon.' The secret trusts, the true bottles of the Lizard Vintage, would be seen, would be trampled. Privately, I sometimes thought about this secret rulership. Could these be real reptiles? Real lizards? With what I had just learned from David, anything was possible! I laughed silently to myself at this silliness. “Move,” an inner voice screamed, “Move or you will freeze to death!” With great effort I managed a small “Ha.” Again a small whiff of steam floated back over my wake. With another great effort I moved my elbow. Moved my knee.

Slowly, without moving my head, I saw the light slowly increase. Perhaps this is David again, I thought. But there was no voice of David. Perhaps this is the light of death. It grew brighter. Then I realized that it was the light of pre dawn. Slowly I began to move. Though I knew not why. I was ready for death.

Again I thought of David and the maps:

Some would use the maps to start other dogma. Some would confuse the symbols with the realities they stood for. Some would be confused because they would see teachings suddenly gone. I knew that the only message from all angles and angles was to own, as the one true inheritance, these energies of emotion to where the soul balance of eternal structure would be realized, be found. That this was the message, a message more important than any messenger. I knew, too that these letters together formed the substance of stars. That the realities on these maps were the Word to be received, that in these charts was the Word and the Word was a sword... a sword with a cut that would heal all nations, forged Of this Calibration; and was - in its truth - a mantle and anoiting balm that not even all the waters of that rough rude sea could wash away.

Of a sudden our Solar Ball broke in the East, a golden dawn, and with that the wind died down to nil. But it mattered not that the sun took my wind, for I was happy and warm indside, had just made the inner harbor, and was close enough to row ashore.