My thoughts on the Jesus Incident and Ar-Kaïm

I have a few thoughts on the Jesus Incident in the game lore. For some background to get you up to speed...

The US version

So in the US rulebook, page 64–5 explains:

In this context the Jesus incident took place. Reports of the events are muddy, having been obscured by Templars, the Church, and others in the time since they occurred. Even most Nephilim are not exactly sure what happened, or how. 

Human, or perhaps more correctly Humanistic, history has a theory. According to them Jesus was a prophet who announced the coming of a spiritual kingdom. He delivered his message throughout Judea and was condemned by the Romans for attempting to spark civil war. He suffered the Roman torture of crucifixion. 

Accepted religious history professes a different message. The Christian Church says that Jesus was the Messiah who had been announced in the Old Testament, that he is the Son of God, and that he came upon Earth to spread the Good News. During his life he accomplished numerous miracles and ultimately proved his divinity by resurrecting himself after being dead for three days, whereupon he ascended into Heaven. 

Nephilim say differently. They say that Jesus was a Zero Arcanum Nephilim. More importantly, he was the first Nephilim to be embodied within the foetus of a human being, and was thus born incarnate. So claims the sources of The Jesus Conjunction Incident. This document says that the Wheel of Fortune, forewarned through calculations of conjunctions, joined with two other Arcana, the Sun and Temperance, to manipulate the gigantic magic energies which would be released at that time. They brought about the merging of a Nephilim with an unborn human foetus. 

As had occurred with Akhenaton, the established powers found this new way to be threatening and dangerous. The birth was full of magic as many groups, including the Templars using their m called the Mysteries of Dumuzi, the Rosicrucians, always too curious for their own good, several Gnostic groups, and the Roman government each independently sought the child. Several of these sought to destroy the child. They failed. 

The child had vast abilities in all known occult practices. But soon troubles began, for the child was truly different, thanks to the powers of the unique conjunction. Instead of following the teachings of the three Nephilim Arcana messengers who came to instruct him, Jesus decided to follow his own way. Then the miracle occurred he became aware that he could manipulate the normal magic fields, and also that of the sun. In this way he became a Zero Arcanum, the unnumbered, the one who listened to his own heart, the Fool. He discarded all loyalty to the established governments and religions, and embarked upon his own teachings. 

The ignorant among humans feared and hated him. Many societies, following the traditions of the Black Star Order who hated Nephilim, sought independently to destroy Jesus and all which was connected with him. They succeeded only in killing him.

In the Gamemaster's Companion p14:

Around 4 BC, a child is born in Judaea. To some humans, He is the Son of God. To others, He is merely a great teacher or a magician. To most Nephilim, He is the Zero Trump, the first Nephilim to be born Incarnated in a human fetus. In 29 AD, He is turned over to the Roman government of Judaea by the religious authorities and crucified as a rebel. The orthodox Nephilim version, promulgated by the Wheel of Fortune Arcanum, is that He was killed by the Templars or by one of their puppet groups. Others believe the Nephilim lie about the Incident because they cannot explain it themselves, or because some Nephilim Arcana might have had reason to oppose One who was free of illusion and constraint.

Routt's thoughts...

In Liam Routt's old FAQ, he explained it differently:

Stases and the Jesus Incident

The Jesus Incident described in the Past Lives section of the rules was not a deliberate Nephilim experiment. Rather, it was an organic happening in which a Nephilim was born incarnate in a human foetus, and thus was immediately aware of both of the spiritual and material realms; it was created in an enlightened state.

Babies are often considered to be very spiritual. It seems at times that they know things which we later forget. The very young seem to already understand everything on the other side of the mirror, but as intellect develops, that knowledge is lost. Some have commented that the moment of spiritual insight seems more like a recalled memory than a new idea. The sufi actually call such insights rememberings.

Incarnating into a foetus allows a Nephilim to remain aware and in harmony with the human side of itself. It is essentially born Agarthicly aware, and keeps that awareness as it grows. Jesus was the first of this new type of Nephilim, but after the coming of the new aeon, more will be born, spontaneously, as Nephilim reach a new level in their collective development.

Such advanced Nephilim are only possible if when the conception (or ensolement - depending upon your politics) takes place in a Nexus where a Nephilim is also coming into its first incarnation.

The first stases were discovered in the same, way, from a single event that did not seem at the time to be important in shaping the destiny of all Nephilim. A Nephilim came up with a new way of incarnating into temporary stases, but it was only gradually that other Nephilim adopted it. The same pattern was followed with permanent incarnation as well. Within the next few thousand years, Nephilim may learn how to incarnate into genetically engineered Star-Ka superhumans, the result of Alchemical experiments with golems, and this, too, will spread through the Nephilim community.

In the French...

In the French version, Le Codex des Nephilim p95 adds:

Jesus is the result of thousands of years of work by the Essenes, the heirs of Melchizedek. Allies to Major Arcana—Wheel Fortune, Sun, Temperance, Magician...—The Essenes took advantage of an incomparable Conjunction to incarnate a Nephilim in a fetus. At its birth, the guinea pig escaped its parents to develop its own message: the Jesus project became the Jesus Incident.

In the French version, Le Codex des Ar-Kaïm p85 adds:

Fallen or Revealed? Was the Immortal incarnated in a fetus born for this despicable experience of the Major Arcana or did he exist before the project? The Ar-Kaïm point out that the Kabbalist message developed by Jesus fits relatively little into the ways of thinking of the Revealed... In return, it is true that the protest behavior and revolutionary violence of the messiah correspond well to the state of mind of an Ar-Kaïm.

For context, in the French version the nature of Nephilim was different from the US version. All Nephilim were former Kaïm forcibly bonded to Stasis items and forced to reincarnate in human bodies. Unlike the US version, no more Nephilim were ever born after the Fall of Orichalka. Instead, after the Fall were "born" Ar-Kaïm when a fated human entered a Nexus under a Grand Enthronement. Thus, Jesus could not have been a newborn Nephilim, but either an existing Nephilim reincarnated or an Ar-Kaïm born in that moment.

My thoughts...

I prefer Routt's explanation of Jesus as a natural event rather than an experiment, so I use that in my campaigns. Jesus represents the first(?) of a new kind of Nephilim, those born with Agarthan awareness when a newly born proto-Nephilim incarnates at conception.

As I've explained before, my campaign setting reinterprets the Nephilim as fusions of a mindless elemental and a human being whose Solar-Ka provides awareness, identity and will necessary to use magic and pursue Agartha. They're not body thieves, but the fusion awakens a "higher self" in the human soul that may appear to external observers to be a case of possession. In truth, this higher self desires a return to spiritual unity that fundamentally terrifies the human ego.

The human and the elemental both originally come from the Sun, a nuclear furnace of spiritual perfection. The Solar Ethers come to Earth, forming the Solar-Ka of the human's soul. The Solar Ethers reflect off the planets to become the Planetary Ethers, which come to Earth and form the Ka of the elemental's pentacle. On some deeply unconscious level, the Ka remembers what it was like to be part of that solar union. Indeed, the quest for Agartha is essentially a quest to recreate that spiritual perfection.

Nephilim usually awaken/incarnate as adult humans, those with an ego already formed and the loss of the spirituality initially possessed by infants. Although the higher self still emerges, the ego isn't actually destroyed: it is merely submerged and continues to influence the higher self, even taking control during Shouit episodes.

What makes Jesus unique is that he never developed that ego nor any biases from his past lives. Both conditions were necessary for him to have Agarthan awareness, otherwise he would be an ordinary Nephilim. A Nephilim released from stasis that incarnated in a fetus would develop an ego normally due to the interference from the egos of its past lives.

But how do the Ar-Kaïm fit into that? Chaosium and Routt developed their ideas before Ar-Kaïm were written into the French! In my campaign setting, Jesus may or may not have been Ar-Kaïm. His ability to manipulate Solar-Ka in some capacity definitely suggests he was one, as that is one of the key distinctions for Ar-Kaïm. Maybe the "advanced" Nephilim described by Routt were Ar-Kaïm all along?

One of the key distinctions in the US version is that Nephilim continued to be born from Nexuses after the Fall of Orichalka, so the added Ar-Kaïm would not be the only ones born after. This removes one of the key distinctions between Nephilim and Ar-Kaïm compared to the French version. Of course, the French version also added natural Selenim born from the lower planes, so it's not like this is that big a deal by comparison.

The French version didn't get a chance to detail the history of Ar-Kaïm prior to the 21st century. It was stated at multiple points that they existed for centuries already, but their reincarnation was hampered due to their lack of Stasis items and limit to reincarnating within the descendants of their first simulacrum or their "occult dynasty." Several figures in the lore were speculated to have been Ar-Kaïm. Unfortunately, any further exploration was halted when Multisim went out of business and subsequent publishers have shown no interest in continuing where they left off. The fifth edition lazily and insultingly stated they all vanished mysteriously in 2012.

Anyway, I need to go back to translating the third edition books. Bye!