Revelations of the Ruby Crystal

by Barbara Hand Clow

  The morning sun casting long shadows behind the Dominus Flevit felt warm on his back. This eye-catching church was shaped like a teardrop to express Christ’s sadness when he saw a vision of the Second Temple’s destruction. Simon decided to come back later. It looked interesting, but he needed to get to the tomb. He slipped through a stone gate to an olive grove and read the historical plaque: “The Romans cut the original trees in 70 CE and then planted this grove sometime after they destroyed the Jewish Temple.” He breathed in cool, refreshing morning dew. The lovely grove thrived and grew quietly while history rolled along. Before the Romans came, it had been the garden of Ashtoreth, the old goddess.

  A huge gnarled olive tree with a trunk easily three feet in diameter beckoned. Simon wondered if the healthy new sprouts breaking through the old dry bark would actually produce olives this summer. They stretch like yogis in the sunlight trying to calm the tense city of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. An old Arabic man with a stubby brown cigarette in the corner of his mouth watched him. Simon checked out his eyes, intensely brown like tobacco leaves, then smiled at him and looked down respectfully. He walked out of the garden looking for signs to the nearby Tomb of Mary Theotokos. As he approached the small white stone church over the tomb, he realized it looked very different from what he’d remembered. It was so simple, almost stark. No one would notice it if they didn’t know what’s down below; it feels guarded here. After passing quickly through the arched entry, he was at the top of forty-seven wide stone stairs that descended into the dark tomb.

  As he walked slowly down, light coming through high narrow slits in the top of the stone sidewalls barely illuminated the dusty worn stairs. Magnetic heaviness constricted his lungs. Thank goodness I came back. I could not feel this place with a group. At the bottom, the street level two thousand years ago, there was a palpable shift. A sign said “Remove Shoes,” so he took them off and set them down. As he stepped gingerly through a large and ancient round stone archway, the back of his skull began to tingle.

  He was in a vibrant sanctuary glittering with reflected light that flashed in his dark eyes. Exquisite Greek Orthodox icons painted bright red, royal blue, deep purple, and lime green—saints with radiating gold auras—gleamed in the lamplight. Their soulful eyes grabbed Simon. Crabbing his feet on worn stone floors, he felt hot energy rise through his legs, into his torso, and then a flame ignited his chest. What is that? He was able to calm himself because the sanctuary felt cozy and domestic, a little home for saintly monks, apostles, the Madonna, and Jesus all shining with heavenly golden halos. They judge me! He released that idea when his logical mind flowed out in a hot filament that disintegrated in cosmic space. I am empty! This feeling terrified him because he was so used to clinging to his intellect. These eyes know everything about me; wizened hands grasp for me.

  To avoid passing out from the strange sensation and the sticky incense, Simon made his way to a kneeler. He was mesmerized by staring beings undulating with their edges transforming to shimmering waves of light. Man! This is like acid! I am afraid I’m having a heart attack! What if somebody sees me? Since he’d become a reporter, he worried about public displays; he preferred being seen as cool and neutral. My god, I’ve never felt a force like this; it could kill me. No wonder few people come down here, especially Christians.

  A heavy, out-of-breath Arabic man came in and slammed onto the same kneeler with aloud crack, almost hitting his head on the altar rail.

  Here we are, a Jew and probably a Muslim praying together while my heart is liquefying. I see Sarah! She had materialized right in front of them in a white gown standing by the primitive entrance to the tomb. What a vision! This is crazy!

  The man beside him sobbed quietly as Simon’s heart opened. Oh, my god, I’m shrinking into a tiny seed—the homunculus conceived by my parents. Sarah! We will have a child! I am turning to stone. I see a great blue egg surrounded by deep burgundy flames, the inner egg fertilized with shining gold stars. Does the man next to me see it? Is this what the icon painters see?

  The stars within the blue cosmic egg burst and emitted rays of golden light like the great flash at the beginning of time. A new universe descended from the sky, blanketing Jerusalem, heaven’s goddess. Simon’s eyes blinked open to see a primitive stone entrance to her tomb. He’d never been in such an altered state; he wondered if he could walk. It’s time to go into the sarcophagus. Incredible. This burial was two thousand years ago and never disturbed! The man poked him, so he turned to look into his eyes—dark bottomless pools of infinity. I’m dizzy. These are the most soulful and loving eyes I have ever seen. His heart pulses in his large careworn hands. They both looked back to the tomb entrance where a new vision materialized: A four-year-old girl with wide, beautiful blue eyes and golden curls floated through the entrance. Her bare feet brushed the floor as ethereal light glowed in the ancient entrance. Simon touched the man to see if he saw it too. Yes, he smiled joyfully. The little girl—she must have been real—wended her way to them. She touched the man on his shoulder and transformed into a feather!

  They both knew it was time to go to the Mother of God. The man pulled his long robe off the kneeler, and they both went through the entrance to kneel by the tomb together. Crystalline light reflected in their eyes from gypsum specks that pocked the stone lid of the tomb. As their retinas adjusted, a shaking blue light formed above the sarcophagus. It swirled into a frenzied quantum field of billons of tiny blue-white vibrating forms—elemental spectrums spinning information out to spiral galaxies Oh my god, I see the vibrating strings—a miracle! For one incredibly long second, they became one with the magnetic power of the feminine. Then Mary Theotokos spoke.

  She said to Simon in a childlike musical voice, “It is time for you to embrace me. Men of good heart come to me here. I want your absolute trust in spite of evil. Evil will expand until it removes its mask. I am goddess keeper of Earth; I say keep finding and describing evil plugs—nexus points used by the elite to destroy the feminine heart, the home of the child.

  “As for you, Abu, I have my eyes on Moloch, eater of children. Possessed by the evil god, here Solomon built Moloch’s altar. He also built an altar for Ashtoreth, the Canaanite goddess. Solomon died and Yahweh split the Kingdom. The Jews try to put it back together again, but their efforts are futile. Yahweh said Ashtoreth was the evil one, but it is Moloch, who wanted to eliminate the goddess of the Pleiades. The time is coming again when she will rule with Gaia. Abu, you mothered your children. Soon you, Simon, will mother your children. When enough men mother, they will sever the generational chain of abuse.”

  When Claudia and Sarah arrived back in Rome, insiders all over the city were agog at Simon’s column. Despite the darkness of the moonless skies, new light was being shed on St. Peter’s Dome! The first installment of “Between the Sheets in Roma” shot a hole through the layered Vatican cover-ups:

  All right now! Why was Olimpia Maidalchini stuck in the Vatican prison? Even those who knew her best could never figure it out. How could she have made a disastrous mistake after mastering so many games? What coveted secret incurred such disfavor? Did she complain too much about Pope Innocent X’s randy obsession with his secretary, the blond and dashing pretty boy who went past the cardinals and climbed to the top? We’ve heard that Innocent laughed at his secretary’s lurid descriptions of priests raping boys in the school for the deaf where nobody could hear their cries in the night.

  Or had Olimpia discovered something else she could not stand? What would she have thought when she heard about priests fondling young nuns in the confessional and hoarding money in secret accounts? Well, Olimpia got rich by embracing a man rather than the nunnery. But which man did she prefer? Look through the “double doors” between Olimpia’s private quarters with her husband, Pamphilio Pamphili, which led to the inner rooms of future Pope Innocent X, her husband’s brother, Gianbattista Pamphili.

  It’s so hard to imagine the true rewards that come with controlling the pope’s time
, being the one who opens or shuts that holy door. Regardless of the exact facts, we’ve heard a few things that are worth mentioning while hanging around in the back halls outside the confessionals. Rumor has it Olimpia lost her mind when she was young, poor thing. Maybe it stemmed from the same patriarchal disobedience that got her in the end?

  They say, once a pope always a pope, since once the mantle is donned Satanic power possesses the holy mind. In those days nasty rumors leaked out like sewer gas in the Vatican. Truth be told, the poisonous vapors that rise from Hell corrupt all those who breathe them. But why did Innocent X incarcerate Olimpia of all people? Why? What did she do to incur such horrid displeasure? Did she withdraw her favors when she saw the evil serpent? Perhaps the heady joys with blond and dashing Monsignor Matthew Boffonini outclassed Olimpia’s golden aura? Or was it Monsignor Bertonini?

  Yes, Roma, we know: even you can’t keep the names straight; nobody ever could. Of course if we knew what they were really doing back then, perhaps we could know what’s going on now? Then getting the names right would be a piece of papal cake. It’s all very nuanced but I’ll take a stab!

  Olimpia mastered the game when she got Gianbattista Pamphili made a cardinal and later a pope. Once selected to rise in the hierarchy, Gianbattista was appointed to the Holy Office of the Inquisition. His qualifications? The same in his day as now: appointments are offered to those who most enjoy the sins they must detect! Gianbattista’s great flaw was his obsessive love for Olimpia, a woman! You’ve all heard about the homosexual underground in the Vatican? So can’t we see why Olimpia lost favor long ago? We think Olimpia would have done better with the rest of the clergy if she had a longer appendage!

  In our global world, we must examine all patterns, since each new trend goes everywhere and takes over everything. Innocent’s loss of innocence was no isolated incident in the clergy then and we know it isn’t now. It is an open secret that the priesthood is filled with adulterous love affairs and active gay men, so what does that mean for the Church? We think it important to ask whether sexually active men are qualified to be priests? What happened to practice what you preach? The workings of the gay underground in the Vatican will be the focus of the second “Between the Sheets in Roma: What’s Up in the Vatican?”

  Tune in February 2013 for the next juicy installment, and remember to keep an eye on the secret passages! We need your eyes and ears. What about the tunnels below the Vatican that go under the Tiber? Whisper, whisper: the clergy use them for trysts in the Trastevere on the West Bank of the Tiber, and the night of the full moon is the best time.

  Sarah tried to read Simon’s article, but her Italian wasn’t good enough to catch the satire. She headed right over to see Claudia, who promised to explain it to her.

  “Darling!” Claudia expelled a mouthful of smoke. “I can’t believe Simon dared; he has struck exactly the right tone. Finally people are laughing about this three-ring circus—The Holy See. ‘Between the Sheets in Roma’ is a thinly veiled spoof on Ratzinger, his butler, and his hot private secretary! Simon is revealing the truth about today’s cast of characters through the lens of Innocent X’s love affair with Olimpia Maidalchini. I always wondered how Monsignor Ganswein, ‘Gorgeous George,’ got so far with Ratzinger back in the old days when they both worked for the Inquisition! Nobody will ever know what really went on, since now the pope is old. I’m sure Ratzinger was selected by Vatican insiders because they could blackmail him. He was the nasty hit man behind the scenes for John Paul II, who ran around the world kissing babies and smiling. John Paul II died and Ratzinger was the perfect choice.”

  “Okay,” said Sarah. “I did see that Simon was alluding to Vatican snakes like Cardinal Bertone who actually said the pedophile crisis has arisen because too many priests are gay. And that ‘Boffonini’ was for Dino Boffo, the journalist who’s said to be a voracious gay stalker. I don’t really care whether someone is gay. But it’s too much for me to have priests sleeping around with men or women at the same time they preen and strut around as pious celibates. Still, that’s nothing compared to the priests who prey on children in the confessional.”

  “Sarah,” Claudia went right on as usual, “of course, darling, now you realize the way to figure out the game is to know what goes on between the sheets?”

  Sarah found Claudia’s words and tone more than patronizing. She had had enough of that in her life. “You know what, Claudia?” Sarah said, narrowing her eyes and leaning forward. “I hope we will be friends after our trip to the oracle. But I am sick of you always railroading our conversations and treating me like a ninny, especially acting like I’m innocent. I am the one who married Simon, not you.”

  Claudia was so surprised by Sarah’s words that she almost choked on her cigarette. “Ooohhh!” she expelled in a hurt voice. After a moment, though, she got mad. “Let’s get one thing clear. I didn’t want to marry Simon, even though he was great in bed.”

  Sarah took a deep breath, suppressing the thought of Claudia in bed with Simon. So what. I knew he had a past. Of course he slept with her; who wouldn’t? But I can’t stand being treated like an idiot. “Claudia,” Sarah retorted, “I’m not threatened by your past relationship with Simon, and I certainly do not want the details. I’m trying to get through to you because you limit our communication by being so dominant and knowledgeable. I have just as much to say as you do, if you would only listen. “

  Claudia listened carefully. She was hurt, yet she knew Sarah was right; she had been patronizing. I want to talk deeply with her; I really do. I don’t want to be an aging bitch. She took a deep breath. “Sarah, I’d like to tell you about my experiences with Armando. I think it will help you understand me better, and then perhaps we can be closer. I haven’t told you this before, but I know all about what Armando tried to pull on you, and I don’t think of you as a prude. Can we talk about that? Maybe the end of the Mayan Calendar is forcing us to be more honest?”

  Sarah barely heard Claudia because suddenly her inner eye was back at Sybil’s chamber. What had come through in words was a small part of what she’d seen. She recalled the message she’d gotten on the first day in the hotel: if you detect men in my oracle, push yourself further back in time before they cloud your eyes. While Claudia droned on, Sarah recalled a delicious time before she was controlled by men. I’m sexually free! We do not marry, and we do not keep men unless they cherish us. If they restrain us, we discard them like old rotting vegetables in the compost. We leave the children with others, sometimes with the men. The old world was like swimming in the Caribbean in silvery blue salt water amongst colorful tropical fish in bright coral.

  This vision of a time when women worked together with the help of men still dancing behind her eyes, Sarah responded. “Claudia, I’d love to have a conversation with you about Armando. I want to know why you loved him, maybe still love him? Even though I didn’t love him, I care about him and his family. I wish I could understand him better, but I know Simon worries about me ever seeing him again. Simon had to help me afterwards when I almost went crazy.” She gazed off into the distance, relieved that the thought of Armando now brought her more pity than pain. “Judging from what I experienced, I think Armando needs a lot of therapy. I had this insight about him at the time.” She looked at Claudia, who was watching her intently. “I thought that maybe Armando was a Fallen Angel.” Sarah was quiet for a moment, remembering the cries of the Fallen Angels she had heard during her vision in the cave. Then she shook her head, ridding herself of these unpleasant thoughts. “Anyway, I’m sure I was just one more potential seduction in a long line. At any rate, I would like to be able to see his parents again.”

  Claudia stubbed out her cigarette. Sarah understood more about Armando than she had realized. “We should talk about these things, but it is late and I am tired. Yes, darling, it will be our next talk, perhaps on December 21? And it’s too bad his parents didn’t like me better twenty years ago.”

  “Yes, Claudia, and will you please
stop calling me darling?” Sarah said in a low voice as she went out the front door to catch a cab. Thank goodness Simon will be home soon!

  30

  The Shadow of Moloch

  Sweaty sheets gripped Simon’s waist as he wrenched himself over by the nightstand to grab his ringing cell phone. Where am I, in Mary’s Tomb? When he came back to his room last night, he had thrown his dusty clothes off and collapsed, no dinner, no set alarm. Now he groggily answered his phone and heard his father’s voice. “Hello, Simon. It’s Dad. I have news to share with you, news I don’t want you to hear from anybody else. It’s not about Sarah or the family. It is about a tragic massacre of small children. Are you ready?” David’s voice was very strained, almost taut. His father almost never called him about the news, so Simon steeled himself for the worst.

  “A mentally disturbed twenty-year-old shot and killed his mother in their Newtown, Connecticut home. Then he drove to the nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School with an arsenal of guns and multiple-bullet magazines. He crashed through the doors, and murdered twenty children and some teachers. Then he shot himself in the head and died obscenely among the children on the floor. Your mother is mumbling incoherently and staring off into space, and I can’t fathom how such a thing could happen. I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in my life but this is incomprehensible. Can we talk? Can you help me with this?”