GRM 3.2.4
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
3.2 I am beginning to see and I write.
Outside the walls of Jerusalem, on the hills and among the olive trees, there is a large crowd. It looks like a large market. But there are no stalls. There are no shouting charlatans or pedlars. No games. There are coarse wool tents, certainly waterproof, hanging on posts fixed to the ground, and tied to the posts there are green branches, providing both ornamental decoration and practical coolness. Other tents, instead, are made entirely of branches fixed to the ground and tied, thus forming small green tunnels. Under each tent there are people of every age and condition, speaking quietly and earnestly, with the cry of a child breaking the quietness now and again.
It is nightfall and the lights of small oil lamps are glittering here and there throughout the odd camp. Around the lights some families are eating their supper on the ground, the mothers holding the little ones in their laps. Many of these tired infants fall asleep holding pieces of bread in their tiny pink fingers while their small heads fall on their mothers’ breasts, like little chicks under hens. The mothers finish their meals, as best they can, each with only one hand free, while the other hand is holding the child against her heart. Meanwhile other families are not yet having supper and are talking in the dimness of twilight, waiting for the food to be ready to eat. Small fires are lit here and there and women are busy around them. Slow, somewhat plaintive, lullabies soothe children who are having difficulty in going to sleep.
High above there is a beautiful clear sky, which is becoming a deeper and deeper blue until it looks like an enormous black-bluish soft velvet velarium. On this cloth, a little at a time, invisible craftsmen and decorators fix gems and night lights, some isolated, some in odd geometrical patterns, amongst which the Great Bear and the Little Bear stand out, in the shape of a cart, with its shaft resting on the ground after the oxen have been freed from the yoke. The Pole Star is smiling in all its brightness.
I realise it is October because the loud voice of a man says so: «This month of October is beautiful as very rarely in past years!» (...)
3.4 The night is more and more crowded with stars and the camp with lights. Then little by little many lights go out. They are the lamps of those who were the first to have supper and who now go to sleep. Also the buzzing slowly decreases. No more children’s voices are heard. Only some babies still unweaned raise their lamb-like little voices seeking their mothers’ milk. The night blows her breath over places and people and obliterates pains and memories, hopes and ill-feelings. Or perhaps these last two survive in dreams, although alleviated by sleep.
Detail
The Tent Festival seemed to take place in October. Maria describes the atmosphere.
Annotation
Outside the walls of Jerusalem, a large crowd is found on the hills and among the olive trees. The "Field of the Galileans" on the Mount of Olives. This is where the Galileans gather for the feasts (see Tome 4, chapter 143 /vo 279.1).
There are many rough woollen tents, certainly waterproof, spread out on stakes fixed to the ground. On the feast of Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tents or the Feast of Tabernacles, each family builds a hut (or sukkha) made of four kinds of branches tied together. Their name evokes the huts under which people camped during the harvest.
I understand that it's October, because a big man's voice says so: "A beautiful month of October, the likes of which you rarely see!" October: The Feast of Tents (Sukkot) is celebrated in early autumn from 15 to 21 Tishri (24/9 to 2/10 in 22BC). Sometimes," writes Maria Valtorta on a typed copy, "the names are expressed in Italian so that the reader can understand better."
Our month of October straddles the Hebrew months of Tisri (or Etanim) and Marchesvan (or Bul). The Jewish calendar was in fact based on the lunar year, which begins in spring (as shown in 68.4), and ours on the solar year, so the correspondences are approximate.