by Mike Crowson
* * *
Millicent, Tobias NDibe and Judith Easterman sat in the still calm of Millicent's small garden, sipping at long drinks. It was a warm evening, just right for relaxing in garden chairs. Tobias and Judith were drinking Pimms gin slings, but Millicent was drinking a mixture of red wine and lemonade - what the Spanish call tinto de verano or summer red wine. Baildon was quiet. Many people were away on holiday and this was a quiet neighbourhood anyway.
"Well," Millicent said, stretching luxuriously. "It's nice to unwind after a major investigation, but it wasn't a very satisfactory end."
"On the contrary," N'Dibe said. "In terms of the universe as a whole, I think the conclusion was entirely satisfactory."
Millicent started to protest, but N'Dibe continued. "This Hunter individual was a highly undesirable person. He will have to be born again and again as he seeks union with his God, and he really does have a long way to go. The only option his immortal soul can have, when it sets itself lessons to learn in the next life, is to find something a little more challenging than a middle class male with no real handicaps in life."
"Are you suggesting that we set ourselves challenges in our lives?" Millicent asked
"Oh, indeed so." N'Dibe was listening sharply and got to his feet. "A moment," he said, and hurried down the path and out of the gate.
"What's wrong?" Millicent asked Judith, who was laughing.
"Listen!"
Millicent listened, but she could hear nothing beyond the faint tune of an ice cream van bell, playing a couple of bars of Greensleeves.
"I can't hear anything," Millicent said. "Only the ice cream van."
"That's it. Our great leader, the famous Tobias, has a great weakness for ice cream. He's like a kid with it."
As Millicent took another sip from her glass, thinking about the meal in the restaurant in Manningham Lane and the night of the Remote Viewing. N'Dibe came back into view. He was holding three large cornets each with a milk chocolate flake stuck into the ice cream, one dripping with chocolate sauce.
"Here we are, ladies," he said as he turned into the gate. "I didn't ask for sauce on yours because I didn't know your tastes."
N'Dibe handed a cornet each to Millicent and Judith, and took an enormous lick at the other cone, to prevent it dripping down the side, then licked the chocolate from his hand.
"Ahh," he said, nodding. "Not bad. Not bad at all for a van."
"Toby is a connoisseur of ice cream," Judith remarked. "Aren't you Toby?"
"I know what I like," N'dibe agreed, taking the flake bar from the cornet and biting into the chocolate. "And I know a good ice cream when I eat one. Very pleasant taste, this particular brand - a little sweet but otherwise very acceptable."
He had licked down to the edge of the biscuit and took a bite from the cornet itself. "Yes, indeed," he added, and said again, "I know what I like." He finished the flake and returned to the ice cream.
"I thought we were going to talk about tomorrow night," Millicent said, between licks at her own ice cream, "but the esoteric doesn't seem to mix with ice cream."
"No reason why not," Judith answered. "Ritual and ice cream don't mix, possibly, but ..."
"Ritual and ice cream do not mix, definitely," N'Dibe corrected pedantically. "But this evening we are only talking. As I understand it, you are uncertain about the probity of the step you are about to take?"
"I'm very uncertain," Millicent said. "Pentacles and things."
"Ahh. Very interesting, the origin of the pentacle," N'Dibe remarked. "Both the Pentagram - the five point star - and the hexagram - the six point star made up of interlocking triangles, like the Israeli flag - are very ancient symbols. Nobody is quite certain how old, but many centuries BC. I will put to you how I think they arose and give you a conundrum to consider."
"Venus orbits the sun at about the same speed as the earth, but it is nearer to the sun than the earth, so it gradually pulls ahead, like an athlete on the inside track in a race. If you take a starting point when the Earth, Venus and the Sun are in line - a conjunction is the proper name for it, both astronomically and astrologically - it actually takes eight earth years until the two planets arrive back at the same starting point together. In that time, Venus has completed ten orbits. You follow me so far?"
Millicent nodded. "It's fairly clear so far", she said.
"I'll draw it I think," said NDibe. He took out a small pocket book from the inside pocket of his jacket, hanging on the back of his garden chair, and drew something like this:
"It follows that in ten orbits there are five times when Venus the Sun and the Earth are in Line with Venus between the Earth and the sun. There must also be five occasions when the three are in line with Venus on the far side of the sun like this drawing. You are following me?"
"So far," Millicent said.
"You're doing better than I did when he first explained it to me," Judith remarked.
N'Dibe frowned ever so slightly and continued, "If you can imagine a circle and you draw on that circle where the five lesser conjunctions occur, and the order in which they occur, and then take another circle and do the same for the superior conjunctions, then join up the points in the order in which they occur - one to two, two to three, three to four, four to five, and five back to the starting point, six, you have a perfect pentagram each time. Like this. He drew another diagram in his pocket book."
Millicent sucked in a breath as she took in the implications of N'Dibe's explanation, but she said nothing.
"There is, however, more," N'Dibe said. "Mercury is much nearer to the sun than earth, so it orbits much more quickly. Three times in a little less than a year, in fact. If you were to mark your circle with the six conjunctions - three inferior and three superior and, again, the order in which they appear. Then for each of the sets of three you join the points one to two, two to three, three to one, and you have two exactly interlocking triangles like the Israeli flag, the Star of David or the Seal of Solomon."
N'Dibe finished his ice cream with a flourish and wiped his mouth and hands on a large hanky. He took a sip of Pimms and continued, "It seems to me that there are four possible explanations for the phenomena I am describing," he said. "Firstly, there is the scientific solution that it is mere chance that a modern discovery should discover that these ancient symbols illustrate something entirely real."
"I don't know the odds against chance of ancient symbols being the same as conjunctions of Mercury and Venus," Judith said, "but I should think the odds must be astronomical, if you'll pardon the expression."
"I should think so too," Millicent agreed, laughing.
"In deference to science, however, that must remain the first possibility," N'Dibe said. "The second possibility is that this is the last remnant of the learning and wisdom of an earlier civilisation now lost. Even the Bible tells the Noah story in such a way that it seems that much learning was lost. That, interestingly, is the old medieval Masonic belief too, in some of grades of the Scottish rite. There are many other such stories too."
"For example?" Millicent asked.
"The story of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh for one. Then there are references in the Vedas of Manu being warned about the flood and climbing high into the Himalayas to avoid it. The Vedas tell that Manu came down from the Himalayas to restart the human race."
"And there's always Plato's Atlantis," Judith added. "And the Mayas believed that civilisation had been destroyed not once but four times. They called the current age the 'fifth sun'."
"I've heard the expression El quinto sol," said Millicent. "What's the third alternative explanation?"
"Thirdly", N’Dibe began, "I would draw your attention the idea Carl Jung had of meaningful coincidence - synchronicity he called it. The traditional scientific view is that events are linked by cause and effect or they are not linked. It seems possible to me," he continued, taking another sip of his drink and wafting away a fly, "that these symbols reflect something about the nature of r
eality. Jung speculated that events could be connected by something other than cause and effect. The interesting thing is that some modern quantum physicists - David Bohme for example - are thinking along similar lines. Thus, the third possibility is that these symbols reflect a synchronistic view of reality."
"I think you're losing me," Millicent said.
"No matter at this stage," NDibe said equably.
"And the fourth explanation?"
"The experiments into dreams conducted by Rhine University and some of the experiments of the Stanford Research Institute arising from Remote Viewing both imply without much doubt that what one might call future dreams are possible. The fourth possibility is that these symbols were a dream insight into what we now know to be reality."
N'Dibe downed the last of his drink and added, "There you have it. Four absurd explanations for this phenomenon. These phenomena, I should say," he said, hastily correcting his usually impeccably correct grammar. "I am interested in knowing which you think the most likely and why."
Millicent frowned in thought and tapped her fingers absently on the arm of the chair.
"Well," she said, "I think the least likely is mere chance. I have a scientific background which is sufficient to tell that the odds against chance are huge." She paused, still drumming her fingers.
"I can't really accept the idea of future memories, at least, not on that timescale." Millicent continued. "That leaves lost civilisations and synchronicity. I think both sound plausible but I'll go for lost civilisations, simply because I don't know enough quantum physics to consider the alternative. Which do you think?"
N'Dibe did not answer, instead he observed obscurely, "According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the physical world is a dream and we must each go on living life after life, until we discover how to awaken. This brings us neatly to the nature of events tomorrow night."
"I wondered when we'd come to that," Millicent said.
"You will need a magical name or motto, by which you will always be known within the temple," Judith said. "What do you feel sums up your intentions for yourself?"
"I see all but control myself," Millicent said. "Something like that."
"Video omniam sed me coerceo," Judith said.
"She's very good at Latin," N'Dibe remarked. "And her Greek, Hebrew and Coptic are not too bad either. I believe she's correct, by the way. but she manages to make everything sound impressive."
"She does," Millicent agreed. "Now, about tomorrow?"
"The first step is as a neophyte," N'Dibe said. "If you find that it is not for you and you drop out, there is no harm done. The next steps are the four elemental initiations - earth, air, water and fire, in that order. I strongly suggest that, once you take the first, you take all four. If you do not you may be forever slightly out of balance. Even if you decide after one or two that this path is not for you, I would urge you to stay on and take them all."
Millicent nodded. "Shall I refill the glasses before we get down to details?" she asked.
"That's a nice idea," Judith said.
"Yes indeed," NDibe added.