Q and A with Penelope Holt, author the spiritual mystery novel, “The Angel Scroll”
August 2024.
Q1. In your novel, “The Angel Scroll”, the plot involves Jesus visiting India. Did the real Jesus travel to India?
There are several books and scholarly theories which assert that Jesus did travel to India. This idea is believable in light of the claim that He was a member of the Essene sect that was influenced by Hinduism and reincarnation. The gospels tell the story of Mary losing Jesus in Jerusalem when He was 12, before finally finding Him in the Temple. The young Jesus reprimanded His mother, saying, “Did you not know that I would be in my father’s house?” After this incident, the gospels pick up the story of Jesus much later, when He begins His ministry around age 30. It was during these missing or “hidden” years that scholars claim Jesus traveled to India.
In “The Angel Scroll”, the book’s heroine, Claire Lucas, has a vision of Jesus at the death bed of a beautiful young woman in India. She is compelled to paint a masterpiece depicting this scene, which, when placed with two other incredible paintings, is destined to create a miraculous triptych that serves as a visual gospel.
Q2. The characters in “The Angel Scroll” travel to a number of sacred places. Why did you include Glastonbury Tor in their adventure?
As Claire tries to make sense of the supernatural events surrounding her, which includes visions, psychic experiences, and the channeling of a painting that is a masterpiece of spiritual significance, she meets and questions characters from different faith traditions. These include a Buddhist and a Benedictine monk. She also encounters Josie Mclean, an anthropologist who gives her a tour of Glastonbury Tor, the home of Celtic Druids and Early Goddess worship.
Josie awakens Claire to the power of her creative unconscious and the archetypes to be found there, including the Great Goddess. Celtic Druids were ancient priests, scholars, and custodians of religious and cultural knowledge in Celtic societies, who served as priests, advisors to rulers, judges, healers, and educators. They inhabited Glastonbury Tor, forming perpetual choirs that chanted 24/7, literally “enchanting” the land to invoke powerful spiritual energies.
Druids were polytheistic, with reverence for nature and the cosmos. They worshipped a variety of gods and goddesses associated with natural phenomena such as the sun, moon, and elements. Druids conducted rituals that included ceremonies for seasonal festivals (such as Beltane and Samhain), agricultural rites, and sacrifices to appease gods or seek favor for the community. These often involved sacred sites such as stone circles, groves, and hilltops. They passed down their traditions orally and were skilled in memorization and recitation of myths, histories, laws, and genealogies.
Celtic knots, the tree of life, and various animal motifs were used in their religious practices and art. They also practiced divination, interpreting natural signs and omens to guide decision-making. With the Roman conquest and later Christianization of Celtic lands, Druidic practices declined. Their legacy persists in folklore, mythology, and modern interpretations of Celtic spirituality.
Part of what makes the story line in “The Angel Scroll” so unique is that it knits together several controversial religious theories and claims. Is the Angel Scroll a real missing Dead Sea Scroll? Was Jesus an Essene? Did he travel to India and why? Beyond this, Claire learns on her trip to Glastonbury Tor that it is the place where Celtic Christianity was born.
Joseph of Arimathea, an Essene who gave Jesus his tomb after His crucifixion, was allegedly sent by the disciple Philip to evangelize the Celts in England. The Druids worshipped a deity called Easus and saw him in in the story of Jesus of Nazareth that Joseph told. They gave a site on Glastonbury Tor to Joseph, where he built the first above-ground Christian Church, which Jesus is claimed to have visited and dedicated to His mother, Mary.
She also learns how the Celtic Druids believed that a life-renewing caldron was buried under Glastonbury Tor. Intertwined with this is the legend that Joseph Arimathea brought drops of Jesus’ blood in the chalice that was used at the last supper and buried this Holy Grail in Glastonbury. King Arthur, who later ruled in that region, famously established his Round Table of Knights who ventured out on the Great Grail Quest to locate the mythical Holy Grail.
Adding color to the myth is Glastonbury Tor’s famous Chalice Well. Thousands of gallons of water from the Well flow daily into underground, man-made chambers. It’s argued that he waters are tinted red due to a high iron content, but the faithful hold to the notion that the color is due to the blood of Christ in the chalice that Joseph buried there. Druids, Goddess worship, Celtic Christianity, the Holy Grail, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, these are the alluring legends that are woven together and have their place in the sacred and mystical landscape of Glastonbury Tor, and feature in “The Angel Scroll”.
Q3 How did you use the concept of reincarnation in the book and why?
Reincarnation is a widely held spiritual belief across many faith traditions. It even makes an appearance in early Christian lore. The novel explores the notion that if Jesus belonged to the Essene sect, he would have been influenced by Hinduism and reincarnation.
During her adventure, Claire also encounters Bodhipaska, a Buddhist monk, who explains his belief in reincarnation and how it works, that our actions, good and bad, determine the type of rebirth we will have in another life. Finding herself at the center of the scroll’s prophecy, which is at the heart of the novel, Claire sets out to learn whether or not the figures she encounters in visions, who were followers of Jesus in India, reincarnate in the present to create a visual gospel. A gospel that uses imagery instead of words to have a more direct and transformative effect on the 21st century humans who view it.
Q4. Why in the book did you explore the idea of a visual gospel that is formed when three miraculous paintings are assembled into a triptych?
The famous Russian mystic George Gurdjieff believed that true works of art are divinely inspired and trigger profound meanings and associations when we look at them. Our unconscious is stimulated by symbols and archetypal images that we find in the world around us and depicted in art.
Meanwhile, Sacred geometry explores the belief that certain geometric shapes, patterns, and proportions have spiritual, symbolic, or metaphysical significance. These shapes and patterns are often found in nature, art, and architecture and are believed to represent the fundamental structures of the universe, embodying the connection between the physical and the spiritual.
Claire experiences mystical visions through a third eye or vesica pisces, the almond or eye shape from sacred geometry that is created when two circles intersect, representing the intersection of upper and lower worlds, the conscious and unconscious. As Claire visits sacred places in Jerusalem, Rome, Siena, and Glastonbury Tor, she encounters again and again the power of sacred geometry and how it appears in sacred art and architecture.
She learns that the emergence of the printing press brought widespread production of the written bible. As a result, Christian Reformers were able to promote the written word to replace the religious paintings and icons, embraced by the masses, which told the story of Jesus, His Church, and His saints, and which Reformers believed were idolatrous and should be stripped from religion.
It makes sense to Claire that a new gospel adapted for a new millennium might represent a return to inspirational and divinely inspired art. In this way, the work can avoid faulty analysis, diverging viewpoints, and the misinterpretation that comes with arguments over language and meaning. The novel’s three paintings are created to be soul opening, to bypass the intellect and penetrate the individual to inspire love and healing.
Q5. Why does your heroine encounter characters from different faith traditions—a Benedictine monk, a Buddhist monk, and an anthropologist who studies ancient goddess worship?
Claire is lost, widowed and bereft, and in the grip of bewildering supernatural and visionary experiences. All of this turns her into a spiritual seeker, looking for answers to life’s big questions. And like most modern spiritual seekers, she has cast off the religious practices of her youth. She is left with a God-sized hole in her life that she desperately wants to fill, so she can regain hope, have greater understanding of life’s trials, and find answers to why she is being beset with mystical experiences.
Claire hears different and sometimes conflicting ideas from the religious and secular characters she meets in the book, who give their explanations of her strange experiences. Claire must feel her way along to find truth for herself, taking in the wisdom of others, but understanding finally that she must use her own intellect, intuition, and creativity to design a life for herself that can expand enough to accommodate the unique, other worldly, and miraculous events that are challenging her old identity and belief system. 
Q6. Why is there an implication that Claire, the lead character in the book, is having visions and supernatural experiences because of a medical problem versus embracing her role as a psychic?
As each of us explore a vision for our lives and a belief system that can guide us, we are confronted with a myriad of perspectives from the people around us, and from a world that is filled with a multiplicity of ideas and beliefs. Among these, inevitably, are the materialists who find little value in metaphysics and the concept of God or higher power. They adhere strictly to the scientific method, to observing only natural and physical processes, and never allowing the ineffable qualities or evidence of the supernatural world to enter their analysis.
Claire explores faith traditions on her journey, but front and center and influencing her is her doctor, Dr. James Bentley, a benign materialist who sees her strange visions and visual disturbances through the lens of medicine. He ties them to a medical problem Claire is experiencing. This means that Claire must decide whether or not her spiritual experiences are nothing more than symptoms created by her malfunctioning body, or something else entirely.
Learn more about Penelope Holt and her work at www.penelopeholt.com She is available for interviews or as a guest author at book clubs.