My dear journal — and to whoever may find this sometime in the future — humanity in this epoch has been the victim of the greatest psy-op ever perpetrated.

It's almost admirable in a Marvel Villain sort of way.

First, let me stress, because Gabriel stressed it repeatedly to me, what is coming our way is not a punishment from God.

We are neither the body of Christ nor God's footstool.

We are the adolescent version of a species destined, like all species, for timeless, ageless perfection — a wholly unique, sparkling facet of the infinitely-faceted Oneness that is "the kingdom and the power and the glory" of God forever.

Killing off all but a handful of vessels and resetting the Guff isn't vengeful. It's the souls that matter, not the vessels, and this reset, like all the others, will mean a fresh start for the children God loves after a very long string of really bad choices.

God doesn't reward bad choices with two tickets to Paradise any more than a good parent rewards a tantrum with a lollipop.

The good parent stops the screaming child from banging its head on the table and smacking a puppy because it didn't get its way or doesn't want to eat its veggies and then the parent puts their little shit in time out.

A parent then forgives their little darling and gives it the tools and the space to find a better way to be.

And a good parent never, ever stops loving or believing in their offspring's potential for greatness.

It is the good, loving parent who knows their child must sometimes fail and commits to inspiring them to believe they have within them the power to overcome that failure.

All the wars, all the cataclysms, all the crops that fail and hearts that get broken and children that get buried and civilizations that crumble are all brief but necessary and, yes, often painful, teaching moments to an infinitely patient Father who knows, with absolute certainty, that all of His naughty, impulsive, obstinate children will ultimately succeed.

Just not quite yet.

Because it's almost that time again, folks, when the only soul green-lit for reincarnation in the Guff is pulled off the bench and sent to Earth.

When that child is born, all human souls in existence will be in one of two places: On the planet, or in the case of the more "recently departed," in the Guff, still reviewing the life they just lived or awaiting the conception and birth of their next vessel.

As the mind-bending laws of probability dictate, there is a time in every "turn" when this will, with certainty, occur. A time when there will be, on all of Earth, one woman in labor with the last human soul who will be born in their epoch.

When that happens, when that child breathes in its first gulp of Earth's air and announces its arrival with a mighty cry, it triggers a cosmic sound check.

Hermes Trismegistus, with a major assist from Thoth, got it right: As Above, so Below.

If the harmonic resonance of human souls matches the harmonic resonance in Paradise, all human souls will be raptured and will walk through the pearly gates together.

If, on the other hand, the frequencies are off, by a hair or by a mile, the reset mechanism is triggered.

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Earth finds the most efficient way to drastically reduce the number of people stomping on her lawn, and the majority of human souls gather in the Guff to debrief with the Elohim.

There, all questions are answered, and, after a brief pause for Gaia's to adjust her attitude, the remaining humans on Earth start getting their groove back, new vessels are conceived, and the reincarnations begin again.

Trismegistus's "Emerald Tablet"— once common knowledge — would prove in the new epoch to be a cosmic spanner. It would be weaponized and hurled into God's great works, where it would threaten to bring the evolution of humanity's souls to a screeching halt.

Just before the flood, as freezing humans were wondering where God's infinite love was hiding, a leader in what would eventually be dusted off and re-named Göbekli Tepe, took his 5th-grade understanding of the soul's long journey, and decided that he really didn't give a shit about what was Above.

Screw God's plan. Humans, with their little spark of God's grace, their opposable thumbs, and their obviously superior intellect, could create their own paradise, right here on Earth.

That leader, whose name has been lost either to time or to the musty bowels of the Vatican, began amassing some local power. In this unprecedented time, when what was left of mankind was huddling together for warmth, what was needed, he said, was a benevolent central, ruling body that would protect the citizens of the world from any more of God's nasty tricks.

Enough with the astrology and "whole world in His hands" crap, the bitter man told anyone who would listen. That happy-happy-joy-joy mentality stopped being relevant when the ice sheets ate half His planet.

That's about the time that Noah started building his ark.

Not long after that angry, rebellious man and his army of pumped-up narcissists slaughtered the residents of Göbekli Tepe and buried the buildings as an added F.U., a baby was born to a shivering woman, Earth's harmonic resonance hit a flat note, and, just like that, the ice melted.

By the time the waters had receded and the circle of life started spinning again, the seeds of a plan began to sprout: If God could sway so many people from His mighty Lazy-Boy in the sky, imagine what people would do if they thought God could be keeping tabs on them from a building down the street?

For it to be effective, all that Ancient rhetoric would have to be stricken from the record — not such a hard thing to accomplish considering most of them drowned and the tone-deaf few that were left were out wandering the jungles, the deserts, and more jungles telling everyone to "trust the plan."

With their cities and libraries underwater, their nifty toys broken, and their supply chain floating away, it wasn't hard to convince people that their outdated ways were what got them in this mess to begin with.

New religions — ones that tried to explain why God suddenly went psycho on them — were emerging everywhere, but one among the desert dwellers was gaining traction.

Hijack those followers and, with some clever editing and a few thousand years, the opportunistic elites would soon be erecting temples, building churches, and ordering the masses to tithe for "the greater good."

With the invention of an apple tree and a talking snake, those cunning humans controlled much of the world with the fear of God.

By the Middle Ages, the power of the Catholic Church over the world was absolute, and those who held the reins were stuck.

All the fortunes, all the control, all the playing of humanity like puppets on a string hadn't solved one critical conundrum: At some point, the Guff — now seen by the compliant devout as an expensive pitstop between Heaven and a nightmarish Hell — would empty out again, and with a snap of his fingers, God would unleash a new cataclysm to level the playing field.

Secret societies were formed to go back through the Ancient texts that had survived the flood and were now under the ruling class's carefully guarded lock and key. Alchemy was born, drawing from the natural sciences that were now forbidden knowledge.

Turning lead into gold was the intentionally leaked reason for the pursuit, and, officially, those who dabbled in it were heretics in need of a soul-cleansing barbecue.

But the Philosopher's Stone offered a greater reward: The ability to influence where the soul would go when it left the Guff.

Imagine if one soul could purposefully reincarnate into vessels that were, by their prestigious bloodlines, destined from birth to inherit all the money, thrones, research, and resources of the same ruling class it helped to build?

What the alchemists were seeking was a way to ensure they would always be in control — an unbroken line of authoritarianism, with just a few hundred privileged, recycled souls running the entire show.

And, with the help of the unabridged Emerald Tablet, encoded grimoires, and a whole lot of patience, the bastards figured it out. A few families became more powerful than any of the humans before them.

Children were born into blinding wealth, taught to access that subconscious sliver of their soul that remembered the Guff, groomed and initiated into the proper societies, and, with the memories of what they were working when they died, by adulthood, they were ready to pick up where they left off.

Flash forward to the 20th century, and those in the know had worked out how to stall the soul spinner forever.

"A thought experiment," Gabriel proposed to me.

What would happen if a very powerful group dedicated a good portion of its energy to ensuring that human souls never united long enough to harmonize with God's Paradise?

What would happen if those with nefarious goals had a ballpark idea of when the Guff would empty?

What if they had planned for it, down to the last dirty detail, and taken all the necessary precautions — even constructed a cataclysm-proof private reserve of the world's seeds — to ensure that they and they alone would survive the next turn with all their toys intact?

"What if they emerged from the devastation a technological army with an iron grip on the Tree of Knowledge and the unfettered ability to control the population, control the world's food supply, restrict movement, manage just enough strife to keep human souls captive, and erase all dissenters from the global zeitgeist with the flip of a switch?" Gabriel asked.

And then he brought me home.