Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  Father Paulo shrugged. “With all due respect to the Holy See, what the Vatican chooses to worry about does not always match what is most important to the faith."

  They didn't have time for this kind of fencing. “We're asking you to trust us, the way we're trusting you. We showed you the Cross. You can't believe that we would cart the True Cross around the world just to entrap you."

  "If it is the True Cross."

  "What we haven't showed you is this.” Ivy reached into her bag.

  Father Francis shouted something and picked up his computer keyboard, holding it as if it could somehow defend him from attack.

  Ivy withdrew the veil, then unfolded it for the two priests.

  "Clearly you think this object is important,” Father Paulo's hands twitched with a transparent desire to touch the holy object.

  "The Veil of Mary was the most holy relic in medieval Constantinople,” Zack said. “It protected that city for hundreds of years against Russian, Slavic, Arab, and Turkish invaders."

  "That could not be the Mary's Veil,” Father Paulo protested.

  "Couldn't it?” Ivy said. “The Patriarch of Constantinople disagrees with you."

  "But look at it.” Father Paulo's fingers, only millimeters from the fabric, traced the silver stars embroidered into the dark blue of the silk. “These eight-pointed stars are the symbols of the Goddess Ishtar. No proper Jewish woman would ever wear such a garment."

  Which prompted a quick Italian conversation between Paulo and Francis.

  "He says it could have been,” Paulo admitted. “The Hebrews battled the other Semitic religions for a thousand years after the exodus from Egypt. For hundreds of years, the chosen people worshiped God but read the commandment to have “no gods before me” only to mean that the God of Abraham was to be first among many rather than the only God. And of course, women were not really part of the Hebrew congregation. It is certain that some of them worshipped a goddess cult. But that would have been centuries before Mary."

  "And those Ancient Semitic religions?"

  "Many had the worship of the Goddess at their center,” Paulo admitted. “Ishtar was the name the Sumerians gave this great mother-goddess. They called her the Queen of Heaven and her color was blue."

  Paulo's hand traced the shape of the veil, his fingers only millimeters from the ancient silk. “What you have here is a holy object. But it is the veil of a priestess of Ishtar. If Mary wore it, that would mean that the worship of Ishtar continued in Judea after the northern tribes were lost, even after the Babylonian Captivity.

  "This would revolutionize the Church.” Paulo's eyes lit as he considered the consequences. “Jesus is not merely the Hebrew Messiah and Holy Son of God. He is also the true Son of the Great Goddess. The holy trinity is not Father, Son, and some amorphous Holy Ghost, but Father, Mother, and Child. It is possible. Nazareth is far from Jerusalem. Far enough, perhaps, that the older religions might have lived on. Especially because the contemporary Hebrew religion was so male-centered. Remember the secret language of women in China? Perhaps Hebrew women maintained their secret religion through Biblical times."

  * * * *

  Ivy and Father Paulo waded into esoteric considerations of how Christian faith could be re-interpreted with the understanding that Mary was a Priestess in her own right. A Priestess or even, as Father Paulo suggested in an excited moment, an Avatar of the Great Goddess herself.

  Zack listened for a few minutes, uncomfortable with this divergence from his beliefs. Finally he cleared his throat. “This is interesting, Father. But right now, we need to figure out how to stay alive, and how to keep the Cross out of the hands of the Foundation."

  Father Paulo nodded. “The two go together, Zack. But your point is well taken. We must learn more about our enemy."

  Zack wasn't sure how the Foundation had become their enemy, but he wasn't going to argue. It was about time he and Ivy had some allies. Unfortunately, their flight had been hard on allies.

  "We know what the Foundation wants. They want a war between Christianity and Islam. A new crusade."

  "Why would they need the Cross for that?"

  "After Iraq, it's pretty clear that the U.S. needs help from other countries if it's going to continue its warfare,” Zack said. “The Cross will whip up fervor. Remember, it was used in the medieval crusades."

  "So, did finding the Cross whip up your fervor and make you want to attack Moslems?” Father Paulo demanded. “Instead, you found many Moslems, even their religious leaders, to be among your helpers."

  "The Foundation literature called the Cross the ‘key,'” Ivy said. “I think they want it for its power to open hidden powers."

  "Possible.” Father Paulo stood abruptly, then paced the room like a caged tiger. “I'm a priest, not an exorcist, not someone who has studied the occult."

  "What's the Gog-Magog war?” Ivy asked.

  "Is that part of their plan?"

  "Several of the Foundation Agents mentioned it."

  Father Paulo nodded slowly. “You know, all of a sudden, this has a horrible, sick logic."

  "What?"

  Instead of answering, Father Paulo turned to Father Francis and demanded that he search the Christian boards on the Internet for something tying together the Foundation and the radical believers in the millennium. Although the accent was dramatically different, twenty-four hours in Italy was honing Zack's ear to the point where he could hear the Latin connection between the poverty-trained Texican-Spanish that had been spoken in his home when he'd been a child and the educated Italian spoken by the priests.

  "I take it you have some ideas,” he said.

  Father Paulo's hand shook as he raised it to his forehead and wiped away a few small beads of sweat. “Perhaps."

  "What does it mean to be a radical believer in the millennium?"

  "Possibly nothing,” Father Paulo admitted. “But the reference to a Gog-Magog War comes from the Prophet Ezekiel. Israel is threatened with horrible enemies from around the world. There are those, especially among the Pentecostal movement, who claim that these prophesies have not yet been fulfilled, but are a part of the same end-times as described in the Book of Revelations. Revelations is a part of the inspired words given to man by God himself. But it is also a particularly difficult work filled with strange and cryptic allusions. Revelations is where our concept of the end times is most clearly found."

  "So, that Foundation agent was claiming that the Iraq war is the beginning of the end of the world?” It seemed like a strange belief to Zack, but he couldn't see how it was especially harmful, unless believers started neglecting their everyday activities in vain attempts to get ready for an end that Jesus had said no one could predict.

  "There are those who do more than believe,” Father Paulo corrected. “In every generation for hundreds of years, there have been those who predicted the end of the world. But recently, there have been those who not only predict the end, but who are attempting to fulfill prophesy and bring about the end times, to hurry the Lord along in his job."

  "And you think—"

  Father Paulo cut Ivy's question off. “I don't think anything, yet. But I do believe it is worth looking into the possibility that the Foundation is attempting to complete prophesy and bring about the tribulation and end-times."

  "Would that be so bad? Haven't we all prayed for Christ's Kingdom on Earth?"

  For the first time, Father Francis addressed them in English. Perfectly unaccented English. “Attempting to force the hand of God is the ultimate in blasphemy."

  * * * *

  Ivy wished she'd paid more attention in her catechism classes because listening to Fathers Francis and Paulo was like drinking from a fire hose. The more obscure Hebrew prophets and the Book of Revelations forecast certain specific events that would occur before the triumphant second coming of Jesus. Catholic and Orthodox doctrine had evolved to the point where the eminent return of Jesus was prayed for but not urgently anticipated. The Lord would return in
his own time, when his return could do the most good for the world, for the souls of men, and for God's greater purposes. In the meantime, the Church would spread the word of forgiveness and salvation, as well as help the sick and weak.

  Not all Christians, Father Francis repeated, were so patient. Many urgently anticipated the second coming, seeking connections between the events of their age and those predicted in Revelations. In its two thousand year history, the Catholic Church had seen many such moments of fervor—moments that led only to despondency and a turning away from the faith when Jesus did not return according to the artificial schedules of misguided prophets. Eventually the Church's leaders had decided to focus their attention on what they could control rather than on the eventual return.

  But deliberately trying to bring about the end days was new. According to Father Francis, it was something that only the arrogant Americans would even contemplate.

  Zack bristled a bit at what could be seen as a slam on Americans, but Ivy figured Father Francis was right. Her nation's great strength was also its weakness. It saw itself as unique in the world and wanted to act on that uniqueness. Sometimes that led to wonderful results. Sometimes it didn't.

  "So, what does Mary have to do with all of this?"

  Father Paulo shook his head. “Some Protestants seem to think that venerating the Mother of God takes away from the holiness of the Lord."

  "Maybe they're right,” Zack said. “Did you listen to yourself a few minutes ago when you were coming up with a new Trinity based on father, mother, and child? There is no Goddess in the Bible."

  Father Paulo smiled. “Is that what you learned in your Catechism? Because it's quite wrong. Throughout much of the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew descriptions of God often take the female form. Although we Catholics prefer to think of God, the Father, it is certainly not anti-scriptural to speak of God, the Mother, as well."

  That simple statement felt, to Ivy, like a punch in the gut. Her priests had never told her that. They'd gone on about how Jesus had accepted only male disciples, proving, to their satisfaction at least that women were second-class members of the human race. Her own disillusioning from religion had started with that discovery. Certainly that way of believing was not unique to the Catholic faith. Many officers and NCOs in her National Guard unit had loved to quote from the Bible about how men needed to order women around because of Eve's sin and because only Adam had been created in the image of God.

  While Ivy had known that the Priestess in her Iraq vision had worshipped a mother-goddess, that Priestess had been dead for thousands of years. Conceiving her own God, the God she'd believed in from her earliest memories as being a Goddess as well as a bearded male patriarch, changed everything.

  "Father Paulo is correct about the literal translation of the ancient Hebrew,” Father Francis interjected. “But that does not make it established doctrine. Because of the mystery of the Holy Spirit, the Church long-ago considered the possibility that the third person of the Almighty might have a female form—considered and rejected it."

  "At the risk of repeating myself, do we really have time for this?” Zack interrupted. “We have people after us—people who don't hesitate to kill. I know that being in a Church provides the Cross a bit of protective cover from psychic detection, but we've got to figure out a more permanent way to hide. Deciding the true nature of the Trinity is a bit like debating the number of angels who can dance on a pin, don't you think? Not helpful."

  "You might be right, Zack.” Ivy was still trying to deal with the consequences of this revelation, with how her own faith was being transformed by new information. “But we've reached the end of the line. The Priestess told us to go to Byzantium and then to Venice. She didn't say anything about moving on after that. Besides, I'm tired of running. We've got the information now. I think it's time to stop hiding and start doing something."

  Zack shook his head. “Hiding is exactly what we need to do. The Foundation needs the Cross. It's their key. Without the Cross, they have no ability to start their countdown to the apocalypse. If we can just keep it out of their hands, they're defanged. If we try to take the fight to them, they'll beat us and capture the Cross. Staying alive and keeping the Cross from them is our most effective tactic."

  "I'm not saying you're wrong, Zack.” Although she wasn't sure he was right, either. “But how would you propose permanently hiding the Cross? After they captured it in the Crusades, the Moslems hid it in one of the greatest mosques in Iraq, hundreds of miles from the nearest Christian country, and in the midst of what became a nation that was a great enemy of the U.S.

  "Despite that, the Foundation still managed to find it and take it. Hiding it in Italy, a country shot-through with Americans and our spies, a country that was a part of the coalition in our invasion of Iraq, and a country where the Church has issued an order for all of its priests to cooperate with the Foundation, hardly sounds like an improvement."

  "Wait a minute.” Zack held up a hand as if he thought it could stop information from seeping through. “Surely you're not saying that the U.S. invaded Iraq just so the Foundation could gain control of the Cross."

  "I'm not saying that—the Foundation said it. Vice President Cheney always claimed that there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, despite all of the evidence that Clinton's bombing raids had destroyed everything Saddam had tried to retain. What if the weapon of mass destruction wasn't some nuclear or biological device, but something even more powerful, more primal, more ancient? What if it were the Cross, itself? Isn't that what the Foundation has been telling us?"

  Zack sputtered, but no words came out.

  "If you're prepared to believe that The Foundation is trying to bring about the end of the world and, as Father Francis said, ‘force the hand of God,'” she continued, “how hard is it to believe that they'd trick our nation into invading a country that happened to be in possession of the one thing they need to make their dreams come true?"

  Chapter 22

  Governments lie. Zack hadn't been especially surprised when the original justification for invading Iraq had proven to be based on manufactured data, wishful thinking, and suppressing anything that didn't agree with what the generals and politicians had wanted to hear.

  But he had believed that the American invasion, and the sacrifice of American and allied soldiers, had been undertaken on the nation's interests—however misguided the war planners might have been. That his native country might have been led into war by fanatics to access a tool they could use to create future wars sickened him.

  "There's got to be a way we can hide the Cross so completely they'll never be able to find it.” Or was that sensible? Maybe Ivy had a point about hiding being a doomed strategy.

  Father Francis shook his head. “It could remain hidden as long as it was only because so many people believed that Saladin had destroyed it after capturing it from the crusaders. Now that its existence is known to so many, both within this Foundation and outside of it, it can never be truly hidden again.

  "Already rumors of the Cross are circulating on the bulletin boards read by the religious and by conspiracy theorists. It can only get worse from here. How long before the sailors on your ship talk? What about the imams who helped you in Turkey? What about the priests in the Patriarch's circle? Men like to talk, like to share their secrets."

  Unfortunately, all of that made sense. “Maybe we should go public with it. It was one thing for the U.S. to bomb a Mosque or raid an unknown little church. But imagine if we gave the Cross to your church, Father Paulo. It would instantly become a huge pilgrimage center. The Foundation wouldn't dare pull anything then. Sometimes the light of knowledge becomes our best protection."

  Zack didn't need to be a mind-reader like the gypsies in Turkey to see the temptation that offer posed to Father Paulo. Paulo might be happy with his congregation of aging women and his deteriorating church, but what priest wouldn't want to find himself at the center of devotion? What priest wouldn't want
his church to be the repository of the holiest object in the Christian faith?

  "Lead me not into temptation,” the priest quoted.

  Ivy shook her head. “Wouldn't work. How long do you think it would take before the Foundation snuck in a substitute and stole the real thing?"

  This was getting a bit annoying. “I suggested hiding it and you say that won't work. So I suggested putting it in plain sight where it could be guarded and you say that won't work. Haven't you just backed yourself into a corner? Maybe there is nothing we can do and we should just give up."

  "Hey, Captain. You're the planner. What does West Point have to say about this?"

  "I came up through the ranks. I'm not a West Pointer.” Still, Ivy had a point. Until his career had turned on him, he'd been a lifer. He'd attended officer training school. He knew how to fight. And giving up was no more a part of his makeup than it was of Ivy's.

  One thing he'd learned from military training is the importance of seizing the offensive. They'd tried to turn the tables on the Foundation, seize control of the situation, but only in small ways. Basically, they'd spent weeks on the defensive, running away. They'd succeeded, which meant they'd managed to stay alive. But the Foundation only had to get lucky once. He and Ivy needed to get lucky every day, every hour, just to stay one step ahead of their doom. Neither hiding the Cross, nor simply handing it over to the Church would let them escape their fate.

  "If this were a military campaign, we'd plan to seize the strategic offensive,” Zack finally answered Ivy's question. “But I have no idea how to do that. We've followed your Priestess's orders, visited Byzantium and Venice. We've learned a lot about what we're facing, but we're no better equipped to confront aircraft carriers, drone missile launchers, and the world's strongest military force than we were when we started this adventure."

  Ivy smiled at him. “Do you remember the name of that famous church in Constantinople?"

  "Hagia Sophia?"

  "Know what it means?"

  "Saint Sophia, right? Whoever she was."