Art, Inspiration and Higher Intelligence

The Book of Revolution references some of the most iconic and inspired artworks in human history via an examination of a common thread of received truth about life in our Universe. From William Blake’s masterpieces and Shakespeare’s plays, to the poetry of Rumi and the Bible itself.

In a 60 Minutes interview which aired on 5 December 2004, Bob Dylan told Ed Bradley: “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written.” And in the very same way that artists across centuries have been inspired with lyrics, brushstrokes or visions, the Bible is a record of human beings receiving downloads from higher intelligence. Those early writers glimpsed metaphors and symbols too vast to be contained in ordinary language. But each did the best they could to describe what they saw through the lens of their own culture and time (not to mention the later veils of mistranslation and distortion).

Within the immense and complex download he received, John of Patmos – the alleged author of The Book of Revelation – appears to have glimpsed visions of light-beings and the fastest vehicles his world could conceive. But in his time, the most powerful metaphor John could reach for was: “armies of heaven on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.”

In the first century, linen was far more than just a fabric – it was a marker of refinement, purity and elevated standing. Unlike wool, which was common and practical, true linen was costly and labour-intensive to produce, reserved for the wealthy, for priests and for sacred rites. To John’s readers in Revelation, the mention of “fine linen, bright and clean” would have carried a dual resonance: on one hand, the prestige and “swankiness” of luxury garments worn by the elite; on the other, the holiness of priestly robes consecrated for divine service. Linen symbolised both an elevated status and spiritual purity, so when John describes beings clothed in it, his audience would have heard it as the ultimate sign of divine alignment – a fabric woven with both wealth and heavenly light. 

Of course, we can’t prove John saw “light-beings” or “vehicles of light” literally (and besides, he received a prophesy so – only time will tell…) but the language of “armies of heaven” plus “clothed in fine linen” is exactly how one would describe luminous, otherworldly visitors using a 1st-century vocabulary.

In the book of Genesis, Jacob quite possibly glimpsed the double helix of life, but without the language of DNA, he described it as a ladder reaching to heaven. Jacob didn’t know molecules, genetics or biochemistry, but the imagery he describes – a ladder with rungs, stretching between earth and heaven, alive with messengers – is eerily consistent with what we now understand DNA to be. And thousands of years later, science confirmed that the fundamental blueprint of life is literally a ladder structure, alive with messengers carrying information.

There is also a profound irony in the fact that both Joseph in Genesis and John of Patmos in Revelation – separated by over a millennium – received visions framed by the same celestial symbols: twelve stars, the sun and the moon. Joseph dreamed of the sun, moon and eleven stars bowing down to him, making him the twelfth; John saw the Woman Clothed with the Sun, the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. Two different men, in two different eras, with no way of colluding, both grasping for the same archetypal language. The golden thread runs so cleanly through their visions that it is difficult to explain it away as coincidence. More likely, it reveals the constancy of higher intelligence – embedding the same message across centuries, waiting for humanity to finally recognise what the symbols point toward.

By the way, DNA – the very code of life – is built on carbon, the element forged in stars.

In our age, with the language of photons, quantum physics and consciousness, we are able to re-articulate the same truth with greater clarity. The golden thread, embedded through so much art across time, remains the same – only our capacity to comprehend and translate it has expanded.

Read my full work, The Book of Revolution, a guide through alchemy, revelation and human consciousness.