Fifth Gospel: A Novel (Rosicrucian Quartet) Paperback

by Adriana Koulias

  Lazarus closed his eyes and his thoughts turned to arduous journeys, to rain and to sun, to being hunted and to fleeing. In his dream he saw his master sending the followers away to the townships to proclaim him, and he saw himself journeying home with the women to Bethany.

  For a moment, the mislaid world returned, and he opened his eyes. He was in the booth. He heard the women arguing in the house. He saw his master. His eyes closed, and he was sunk down again, into half dreams where he heard his master’s words:

  ‘You must forsake not merely your worldly riches, which are easy to sacrifice, Lazarus, but those riches of your old soul, the riches of other lives,’ he said to him. ‘You must become like a poor man who has not even a loin cloth; like a little child, that is not ashamed to stand naked before God. Only then will you enter the kingdom!’

  He opened his eyes again, and realised his master was returned again, and was looking upon him with kind concern.

  Jesus said to him, ‘I have been in Jerusalem…in secret.’

  Lazarus shivered. ‘At this moment…as you sat in contemplation?’

  ‘My spirit is still able to leave the body, and so I can speak in the Temple while I sit here with you…this ability will not last.’

  At that moment Magdalena entered the booth to bring Lazarus a cool cloth. She was so beautiful to his eyes, his little sister whom his master had saved from the madness of her visions.

  His master looked upon her with love, for she was also his spirit pupil. He said to her, ‘Stay a while…I must speak with you.’

  She sat at his feet.

  ‘Listen to me Magdalena…soon the time comes for my sacrifice, but first must come the sign.’

  Magdalena fell to weeping, and Christ Jesus put a soothing hand on her head and said to her tenderly, ‘Weep not for you will be the first to see me when I am raised, so be strong. For now we will speak of the last sign that must be performed before the Son of Man can go to his death. Your brother has near discarded the garment of his body, and soon he will pass into spiritual worlds. He will die, and you and your sister will have to prepare his body for the burial. You will sit with him and hold him in your heart, you will be the guardian of his soul, Magdalena, while Martha will be the guardian of his body. Do this until I return. Have faith, support your brother as you have support me. For in every death there is a rebirth. Wait for my call when the last sign shall be accomplished. I will raise your brother from the world of the dead. I will do this to reveal to all that Christ lives in me.’ He looked to Lazarus then, ‘Remember Lazarus, my brother, this is only a preparation for you will live long. Years from now you shall see the heavens part above you, and all those things which you shall witness, in your dying and becoming, will be made more clear to you. Your heart shall catch on fire and your soul shall be as a parchment on which God shall write his words. This is not the end for you but it is only enacted to show the glory of God in me.’

  Lazarus could barely hear these things. He felt a sudden peace overtake him. The world was still. Quiet was the sea and air, and the very heavens came to rest, and among this harmony did his acquiescent soul lift up from him.

  And that is when he entered the Kingdom.

  51

  THE SIXTH SIGN

  It was the Feast of the Tabernacles, a time of great commemoration in the Hebrew Calendar and Claudia Procula, having heard that Jesus was in Jerusalem and discoursing with the Pharisees at the temple, made hasty preparations to see him.

  She took herself out into the streets dressed like a Jew so as not to attract undue attention, and it was not long before she sensed as she made her way through the crowds, the presence of Gaius Cassius, following some way behind her.

  It was her custom in those days to alert him of her movements by way of a note sent with Susannah. She understood that he followed her not only because it was his charge but also because between them was formed an understanding, bound not by duty, but by a friendship grown over many months as they now and again travelled to see Jesus.

  This understanding had made her feel strangely disloyal to her husband, and there were many times when she almost told him of her doings, of her soul’s newfound joy, and the wide horizons that lay open to her heart’s senses. She wanted to tell him that she considered herself a follower of Jesus, but each time something had prevented it, and the words had come into her mind – not yet.

  She considered that these feelings of guilt may have been the cause of the frightful dream that had woken her in the night and left her drenched in perspiration.

  In the dream, she had seen herself walking into a world that above and below was the colour of blood and storm cloud. Into this world, she walked towards a great gathering of people, like a statue dressed in white. In her arms she carried a ream of the finest white cotton, which was taken up by the gentle breezes and began to unspool behind her. Where it touched the ground, it became soaked in blood. The smell of blood was everywhere, and a terrifying sense of urgency. She sensed something of grand and frightening proportions awaited her beyond the crowds, but the crowds would not let her pass, and she knew the reason: within her lived the cursed blood of the Caesars! How could she cross the threshold to see the portent of her dream, when it was sure to send her mad, as it had sent her forebears before her?

  When she woke she could taste blood and smell it on her hands and the smell did not go, no matter how many times she washed them.

  Distressed now to think on it, she made her way to the temple on the Octave of the feast. As she pushed past the worshippers and entered through the porches to the court of the Gentiles she thought only of finding a way to Jesus to beg him to cleanse her blood of the sins of her forefathers.

  When she saw him she was filled with hope. He stood in that grand court like a dream, for it seemed as if the day’s light alone had collected itself into the form of his shape. He was speaking to the Pharisees and her heart swelled to hear his voice resound with so much authority. But something caused her to pause, something not outwardly apparent, a fidget of the eye, a whispered word, she could not tell. She looked for Cassius but he was nowhere in sight. Of course! The man’s eyes were not good and she was dressed like a Jew! How could he tell her among so many? Her husband’s words of warning rang in her ears now and into her heart came Jesus’ voice.

  ‘‘I am the foundation of the very world! I am not only one with Abraham, but I was before Abraham was!’

  The Pharisees seemed to have become incensed. A great commotion erupted all around her. She could not understand it for she only knew the language of the people, the simple and beautiful Aramaic. She knew nothing of the harsh language of the Pharisees, whose whipping words struck the crowds like blows fomenting their anger and causing them to take up stones to throw at Jesus.

  She felt herself pale. She thought of her dream – the blood, the crowds! Was this the meaning of her dream? Would they kill him now? Would they stone one of their own, in their very temple? She pressed through the crowds to find Cassius. Surely he would prevent it! But the people crushed forward, clamouring to get to Jesus. She slipped on her own skirts then and fell into the tangled darkness of arms and legs.

  She could not breathe.

  She heard shouts in Latin and the world of bodies above her parted and a hand heaved her up and away.

  Dazed, she felt herself taken through the throngs. Pilate’s guards were around her and Cassius was hitting out at the people to make them give way. He yelled and spat and cursed as his strong hands helped to move her out of the court.

  ‘Make way! Make way, you animals!’ he shouted.

  Trumpets sounded and soldiery on horses arrived and the people dispersed in fear. Beyond the crowds, through the confusion of voices and bodies, she looked and saw Jesus. This time he was stooping over a blind man. How he had escaped the madness she did not know.

  When Jesus looked up again, his eyes found hers, and into her mind he said these words:

  See this man born blind? His parents
have not sinned, nor has he sinned in this life, but his blindness comes from a former life in which he had sinned. I can work with what passes from life to life; I can make null and void the consequences of your former lives, so that you can start anew.

  She saw him spit on his hands and take up the clay-dirt at his feet. He made a paste with it and used it to anoint the man’s eyes.

  Now the words of the poet, Virgil, came to her lips:

  What a sublime vision for the eye of the seer! A superman walks on earth again! A hero…a new Dionysus…a ruler over the hearts of men…full of peace!

  This was not Jesus alone she could see, for she could see something else, yes…that Sun-like godhood…the Christ in him!

  ‡

  ‘What happened to her, Lea?’

  ‘She was born again, pairé, nine hundred years after Christ, as a blind child.’

  ‘A blind child? But what had she done to deserve it…is this compensation again?’ I said squinting and rubbing my own tired eyes.

  ‘Listen, pairé, her father was the Duke of Eticho and he wished to kill his own child because he did not want his vassals to say that her blindness was caused by some fault of his. But the mother spirited the baby away and later, when the child was baptised by a Bishop, her sight was restored and she was given a new name, Odile, which means Sun of God.’

  ‘Saint Odile? Oh, my! Claudia Procula becomes Saint Odile! There is something in that!’ I thought on it, ‘She was born blind because she remembered the healing of the blind man, is that what you are saying?’

  ‘The healing she had seen lived so deeply in the soul of Claudia, pairé, that it became a part of her body in the next life.’

  I took a moment to ponder it. ‘We are not meant to escape the endless wheel of incarnations, are we Lea? We are meant to return, again and again as Buddha told Jesus. Perhaps we have been like the Essenes in our faith!’ I fell into despondency to think this. ‘We have kept ourselves pure by closing ourselves off from the world. Perhaps we too have become prideful? Have we not forsaken the earth as a place of the devil, and do we not see the incarnation of the soul again and again as a punishment? We even take the consolamentum so that we may never return!’

  ‘But the Catholics too, have erred, pairé, since they do not see past one life and have bound themselves to dogmas and laws like the rabbis. Your faith has grown too light, and the Catholic faith has grown too heavy. One sees only purgatory while the other sees only heaven…the ideal lives between them, in the middle,’ she said.

  52

  SEVEN

  In those days I wondered: Why must morning always come with such regularity? Why can I not remain a vassal of the everlasting dominion of the night? Only fools love the day more, for the night is like death to them!

  It was not so to me. I lived for the night.

  One such night, waiting for Lea to come, I had a moment to look out onto the world outside the fortress. A heavy rain was falling to entice the buds on the trees and to attract the wild flowers from their beds. It reminded me of standing at the gates of the fortress a year ago, when I had the sense that I would not live to see a new spring. It had been a true sense, to my reckoning, for despite my newborn love of life and youthfulness, despite my open eyes and light-filled heart, I knew the end was near and the sadness I felt was not for death itself, but for a wasted life.

  I heard a humming in my ear then, a bee, crawling on the windowsill. Strange it was to see a bee out at night, with her little wings drenched from the rain. Guilhabert’s words returned to me. He had told me that I must seek the rose like a bee and my thoughts turned now to those songs sung by troubadours, songs of a love so chaste that it recalled the love of a bee for a flower.

  If I were a bee, then surely Lea was the rose!

  I did not tell her my musings when she came, finally. I was ashamed and confused, elated and forlorn as I listened to her voice tell about the Mother of God and her concerns for Jesus, who had just returned from his travels to Bethany.

  ‡

  Jesus seemed weary and old, and his face, which had once shone so brightly with the majesty of youth now waned, pale and dry, as if the fire in his soul had all but consumed the wood of his body.

  These long months she had gradually come to know in her heart the measure of her son’s destiny, of the pain and suffering he would have to undergo, and it caused her a deep sorrow. Perhaps her son sensed her sadness, for he began to spend long moments with her. They walked in silence together or sat in each other’s presence in prayerful meditation, each feeling the wave-like proportions of the future hurrying towards them. Sometimes he touched her arm as she walked past, and she was full of comfort. At other times it was a look or a word that filled her soul with warmth and strength.

  In one sense, the pain of these dragging days made her almost unable to breathe, and in another, her heart wished to hold back the time forever, for she wondered how she would endure it when it came? How long would last her strength? How long could she bear to witness the violence and hatred and death that were to be visited upon him?

  Recently, Lazarus, the young man who had provided so well for all of them these many months, had become unwell. His sickness had grown worse and he had lain consumed with fever in the cool of the booth for most of the feast. He did not rise even when Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea came to warn of the desire of the Pharisees to seize her son.

  Soldiers had been dispatched to look for him in every place and they must be careful. To add to this, the disciples began to return again, two by two, from their apostleship in the villages and towns of Judea and Galilee. They brought more followers in their train and now the household was consumed with activity and the forward march of things - the feeding and housing of so many men and women. And yet in the quiet of the afternoons, beneath the date palm in the walled garden, she found time to sit among the other women to listen to his teachings

  These past months the women had marched in her son’s train with their skirts tied around their ankles and their sandaled feet bound in cloths. They did not sway like the women from the cities when they walked, for they had learnt that to travel long distances one had to conserve one’s strength. Now he was speaking to them without the men, of things only appropriate for the ears of women.

  He said, ‘Listen to me…men will rule over you only for a small time, for it is the task of the male to make a way in the world of matter, since it is the task of the mind to tear the world apart. But a future will come when what lives in the heart, what lives in you, will take precedence over the mind. What lives in you will unify the world, not tear it apart. Into your souls will be born a new spirit of good will, and it will not be male or female. Then the world will rejoice when a child is not born from the womb of a woman, but when the spirit is born in the heart, in the soul like a sun. Then shall healing come to the earth, for my spirit shall unite with my mother in heaven, and the earth itself will give birth to a new sun. This is the mystery of the blood, which I did unveil to the men when I raised Jairus’ daughter, but they could not yet understand it, for only women who bleed can know it – how the blood shall have a sacred task in future times, the sacred task of fashioning the heart into a sun.’

  These things he taught them because they were seven, since every truth has seven meanings and that is why wisdom has built her temple on earth with seven pillars.

  ‘I tell you, that I will be with you always,’ he continued, ‘even unto the ends of the earth. For even though I shall not be among you in this body I will return in the beating of your hearts and in the pulsing of your blood…here shall you always find me. This is what I mean when I say that you abide in me and I in you, like a bride and groom abide together in the bridal chamber of the heart. Soon I will be beaten and killed and my blood will spill over the earth. Even so, take heart! When I was conceived in the Jordan I died to the spirit. Thus my death in the world will be a spirit birth! You will soon behold me as a man of sorrows but remember, I will soon be joy
ful and among you again. I shall rise again. Remember these things which I have spoken to you for I tell these things to no man, since women were the first to think, to imagine and to remember and they will be the first to see!’

  After these teachings her son gathered to him his male disciples and left for a place beyond the Jordan where John had baptised his followers. In the meantime Lazarus finally succumbed to his fever and Martha fell into an inconsolable grief. She could not help in the preparations so it was left to herself and Magdalena to wash and dress the young man’s body in linen cloths for his burial.

  Magdalena sent word to Jesus and together the women waited, knowing, awake, mournful and praying. For they understood that the time had come: ancient time, the devourer of its children had moved forward, despite all their efforts to restrain it.

  53

  SCORPION~EAGLE

  They came into Bethany and Judas followed last of all, his mind full of strange thoughts. The sun began to drop its bruised body into the godforsaken hills as they neared the township and the men were weary, having travelled since yesterday.

  It was now more than three days since word had reached them of Lazarus’ worsening sickness and all feared that he was dead. But Judas was not concerned for it, something else made his brow dark and his eyes aflame. That spirit which had plagued him these many months had begun to make a way into his head and he could feel it, rearranging the rooms of his mind. It wrapped around his heart to combine his disappointments, his hate and his lust into a poisoned leaven for his limbs.

  For months now he had waited for Jesus to bring back the glory days of the Maccabees, but benevolence and kindness, patience and love were all that he had offered. In Judas’ mind all the deeds of salvation enacted so inconspicuously by Jesus whatever they might be, were worthless. Words of compassion and tolerance were not enough to change the world, only the sword could change it. Blood for soil!