“We Medici have saved this story with art, especially in Italy, for example, displaying Armando’s wonderful painting. People need to wake up on so many levels. If I may ask, just between you and me as fathers who bear the burden of instructing our sons, why haven’t you explained to Armando the full meaning of your family crest?”
Pietro coughed and sat back in his chair while staring into his crystal gazing at a ruby-red Knights Templar cross in the center. “Armando is not quite ready.” Alessandro was on the edge of his seat staring at the Templar cross shimmering in the record crystal when Pietro surprised him. “My dear, dear Medici cousin, our Pierleoni family records go back seventeen thousand years ago and more to the Aurignacian period, the Paleolithic, when we were still enlightened, the time before the cataclysmic regression. The point is Armando is not ready to comprehend such ancient knowledge, so I haven’t shared it with him. I will, within a few years for sure. He’s not asking the right questions . . . yet.”
Deep warmth and joy flooded Alessandro’s heart, his pineal gland oscillated at a high vibration, and his eyes were misty. “My God, Pietro, we were sure that record was lost, and now you say your family has retained some pre-Flood knowledge? Incredible, this is true joy and happiness for me. As for us, we have been eagerly following the Göbekli Tepe excavations because the site links us to the deeper past 11,500 years ago. Its discovery has made me feel that we will recover the original information and remember that we are a grand species with cosmic freedom, what Cosimo III was looking for when he brought Marcilio Ficino to translate Hermes. Now I see that we will know, maybe while you and I are still alive. I am beginning to see why your family has always been the most guarded one with all your silly shadow games like the Siena contrade and the mad Palio races. I wait for the time when you will instruct me in your most ancient wisdom, a joy! As we move into Aquarius, we are to recover our multidimensional intelligence.”
“You are more right than you realize, so I will share more. Spend time in Siena Cathedral and in the central plaza where we run the Palio. The ancient wisdom is encoded there and protected by our family going back to the Etruscans and before. For us, the thread disappears into the mists of time, but like Ariadne, we still hold on to the end of the thread.”
“Thank you, Pietro, you are so kind. I look forward to spending time with you again as soon as possible.” After taking his leave, he walked down to his driver waiting with the car.
Pietro was surprised to find Matilda still up waiting for him. He was very tired, but she wanted to talk. She offered him a brandy, which he declined. “I think you heard me in the hall outside the genealogy room? I backed down the stairs when you shut the door; it was me.”
“Matilda, why on earth would you ever spy on me? There are no secrets between us.” “Well, yes and no regarding secrets, I’m not stupid you know. I know you and Armando share all kinds of secrets. I am a member of this family, and I don’t see why I’m always kept out.”
“Matilda, our family has information that could be dangerous for all of us. For thousands of years, we have passed it from father to son.”
“I know that, Pietro, and I haven’t cared about it much, but now it bothers me. My concern began when I noticed Claudia coming to spend hours alone with Armando after he married Jennifer. When the Medici Foundation people came to see you in Armando’s studio, I was not invited. It is rather hurtful; these actions reduce me. Surely you don’t want to glorify the patriarchal tradition?” She stared defiantly into his cautious eyes.
“Dear one, please, I will have that brandy. I see what you mean from your point of view. Really, there are some things I must still hold in confidence, but there are other things I can share. Perhaps if I share more things with you, it will all come clear.”
“Please yes, this is getting tiresome. I feel left out, demeaned as though I am being treated like a mere woman.” She did look very hurt.
“Ironically, Matilda, much of what is at stake has to do with the most hallowed sense of what it means to be a woman. Just trust me that it’s not because you are a woman that the passage system has been male to male; your concern is another sign of the big shift. It’s no secret that Armando’s painting is of Jesus and Mary Magdalene; you’ve seen it.”
Matilda took a deep breath and put her hand on her heart. “Yes, and it has changed me. I’ve always wanted to know why the Church lies about the family of Jesus, making it look like he didn’t have any siblings, yet there they are in the Bible. When I absorbed Armando’s painting with its sanctity, grace, and heavenly expression, I finally understood: Jesus was divine because he was married to her. When the story gets out, the Church is doomed.”
“How right you are. Going back to Pope Gregory VII and Matilda of Canossa, our families knew all about their sacred union. They were deeply bonded, probably the reason he was one of the great popes.”
“So, it is true,” she broke in. “They were joined—my ancestor and your ancestor—which means this affects our union. I’ve always felt our marriage is very sacred, Pietro.” She peered deeply into his calm gray eyes detecting the joy she found there when she first encountered him—a spark from a higher realm that meant they would be together for the rest of their lives. “Be that as it may, I think this blood mixing has affected our children. Armando and Giaconda are fine, but our first two little ones couldn’t survive and died young; I think it was the bloodline.”
Pietro could not bear the thought of it. “For now, let me share with you what I can comfortably say, things that will interest you very much. The reason the Medici came to see Armando’s painting is because I wanted to ask them to display it in the Chapel of Princes in front of the altar. I did ask them.”
Matilda’s eyes were like saucers and when she tried to speak, her voice wouldn’t work. She squeaked, “And, have they agreed? Pietro, this is the most shocking thing I’ve heard in my life.” She took his hand and held on to it for dear life.
“Yes, Matilda, they have.”
“Does Armando want this to happen? Pietro, I don’t know where to put this in my mind. This is too astonishing!”
“It is unprecedented, and even I don’t know why this must happen. I saw a vision of it in my record crystal as I gazed into the future; I had to tell the Medici. This is the first time I’ve asked anything of them, the first time anyone in my family has asked anything of them in hundreds of years except for marriages. I told them about it so they could decide whether this should happen. My request must be part of their story, something they’ve been waiting for, since they’ve agreed. That was Alessandro you were spying on earlier, and we will be having more important talks after so much separation. The Church separated us, but that is over now. We are not afraid of the Vatican anymore.”
“Is this what Armando wants too?”
“I can’t answer that for sure, but I think he feels we must do it. Of course, I’m sure he’s very honored. Keeping the painting out of the last show really angered his dealer. Then later we found out the Vatican bought that wonderful triptych at the opening, and he really began to worry about his significant works. Showing his Jesus and Mary Magdalene painting in the Medici chapels means the Vatican can’t hide it from the public. If they had gotten it, they would have hidden it in a vault, a painting that could collapse the hierarchy!”
“Isn’t this dangerous? Won’t they try to destroy it, even murder Armando? I’m frightened.” Her small mouth fluttered.
“The Medici will assign special guards in the chapel day and night so that a fanatic can’t slash it. As for Armando, I have special ways to protect people.”
“How can you do things like that?”
“For years these things have gone on. Are you sure you really want to know?”
She stood there silently thinking about it. “A part of me doesn’t want to know, but reality is changing now. I can’t be a Pollyanna. I want the truth, Pietro.”
“Okay. Let me put it this way. Within the Vatican, Italian, American,
and European organizations, there are protection services. These inner circles know that the various old families know way too much about them, for example we know they stage mass trauma events, such as 9/11 in the U.S. So, we agree to not talk about certain things we know, and they protect us if we need it. I think it is best to leave it at that, don’t you?”
“You could actually make sure our son and those we love are safe?”
“Yes, and when you think about the little girl you just enjoyed, there has to be fairness and compassion in this world. I work with my order, the Maltese Templar, to find ways to make the world safer for all people. For a thousand years we’ve done what we can, and soon things will be changing in really exciting ways. Each family guards certain secrets that we do not share with each other because it is too dangerous. We learned that lesson when Philip IV of France tortured Jacques de Molay in 1307. Actually, Matilda, I’m relieved we’re having this talk because things will go so much faster when Armando’s painting is seen by the masses. I will need to talk with you in the coming months.” He smiled warmly and took both her hands.
“Pietro, this separation has not been good. We need to walk together in this world.”
Pietro embraced Matilda for a long time. Then they went to bed and fell into a deep sleep.
25
Chapel of Princes
Something very unusual was going on in Florence during mid-October 2015. The Medici chapels were closed for a week, unprecedented, and the local citizens wondered what the Medici were up to this time. As usual, the Medici were doing as they pleased, but no one could recall a time when they just closed a museum on short notice. Everything was being rearranged upstairs in the Chapel of Princes, and a large sign placed by the entrance said absolutely no photos would be allowed during a special exhibition. Something was going on display that was changing all the rules, so smart locals bought up the tickets for the coming weeks because they sensed something unusual was about to happen.
The bells in the campanile next to the Duomo—Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore—rang out twelve times sending sweet music throughout the Piazza de San Giovanni. Lovers kissed passionately when they heard the beautiful bells. Meanwhile a large black van pulled up behind the Medici chapels near the shuttered day market. Armando and Guido hopped out, waved to the guard by the back door, and within minutes, four guards came out to help them carry in the large shrouded painting. Guido stayed with the van while Armando trailed behind the guards. They brought the painting through the museum and up the wide stone stairs to the large and cavernous Chapel of Princes. When they entered the room, Armando peered into the dimly lit, large octagonal chapel capped by a dome rising a hundred feet above the floor. The tombs of six princes of the Medici royal line lined the walls, and four spotlights up in the dome aimed down at the ornate altar. When he looked at the altar bathed in excellent light at the opposite end, he remembered something . . . That altar was put there in 1939 for the visit of Hitler and Mussolini. He shuddered.
Two guards carried the painting over to the altar and placed it in front. Gone! Armando muttered. That’s the end of Hitler and Mussolini for a few months. They set it up without removing the cover. The light coming from high in the dome really pleased him. This will be magnificent! The painting was raised a few feet, just the right height so that crowds of people could see it easily. They would not be allowed to stand in front of it with their tablets and iPads aimed at it instead of really looking at it. Each visitor would be given a beautiful card with a high-quality print of the painting to take home. He was pleased with the perfect symmetry of the arrangement; the altar was in exactly the right place. He said to the guards, “Signore, per piacere. May I spend an hour with the painting while you guard the entrances?”
When the last footsteps of the guards at the bottom of the stairs echoed through the empty museum, he pulled the cover. Then he walked around the large space a few times to admire the mosaics on the walls and the tombs made of jasper, porphyry, alabaster, lapis lazuli, coral, and mother-of-pearl. He lingered in front of a pompous statue of Ferdinando I dressed in an ermine cape and jewels and said to the lifelike statue, “I hope you will enjoy some action in here for a change.” Then he sat down in a chair placed among others for the viewing of his painting. Jesus ascending as Mary reached for him looked like Jesus was about to fly up into the dome. Mary, with sensual long red hair and glowing white skin, was a strong woman amid the Medici family crests and ornate civic shields. Yes, this is exactly the right place for people to see it. The doors to the reliquary rooms were more noticeable now that the easel partially blocked the ornate altar; the painting became the altar. He returned his gaze to the canvas. Ah, yes, the very first layer of swirling long strokes keeps Jesus moving, flying. Then he saw it—the subtle luminescence around Jesus’s head. The titanium paint works in this light. The light must be exactly like this.
His eyes were drawn to the side of the Magdalene’s face. He felt her desire for Jesus in his own heart as his eyes followed her right arm to the hand reaching for him. She yearned for him, and the dome contained this feminine force as his heart expanded into its greater geometrical form. I hear it! I do! The silvery sounds of a choir of angels singing to the light of Christ. Then a great low voice coming through wind and water trickling over rocks boomed,
Armando, we begin.
A strange rattling sound in the reliquary rooms disturbed his ardor, a chill clenched the muscles in his legs. Then the odd sounds ceased. I have to do it. I have to go back into those rooms to see if everything is all right in there. He went behind the painting fastened with straps to the altar. Somehow that’s significant. He walked through an arched door into the reliquary room on the right and peered through the protective glass at one gilded and bejeweled reliquary. Looking closely at the little quartz box in the center sealed with a glass top, there it was, a small white bone. Yes, no doubt about it, that bone is glowing, very subtle but noticeable. He went around the small room to check the rest of them and detected glowing light in the bones. What’s going on?
Claudia and Lorenzo had arranged a special Saturday afternoon, warm with the French doors open to the garden, lacy sheers billowing out in the light breeze. Claudia was stretched out on the bed up against a large Moroccan pillow, nude except for a loose wrap. She was watching Lorenzo moving around the room, occasionally glancing at her lying like a lazy cat following him with dark eyes. He lit candles, gathered precious essential oils, and then he shut and locked the French doors and pulled the drapes. He took a fat joint and matches out of a carved wooden box, lit the joint and sucked on it, and then came slowly over to her as he took a deep drag and kissed her to pass marijuana smoke from his lungs into hers. She touched him delicately with her left hand as he touched her breast.
He rubbed massage oil onto her long enticing legs, her arms, then used patchouli to massage her abdomen, inner thighs, hips, breasts, and chest, and finally her pubis. Claudia was in an altered state that made her feel thick and watery as she filled with otherworldly light. When she closed her eyes, she could see organic green light that was alive like the bioluminescence of plants. Her head fell far back as she said thickly, “Lorenzo, I am so far away, I feel like I am in the stars.”
“You are darling, that I can see, and as we touch, your skin is intoxicating, your nipples erotic.” They lay together stroking and touching when a light appeared between them that started growing larger as if it was alive. They both began to vibrate, breathing softly to circulate the delicate pulsating field. She whispered, “I feel it, I feel the subtle presence of the Divine. As I feel it, I sense you feel it with me. Magnetic currents deep in our cells will flow when we orgasm; we are on the sacred edge, I feel it.”
He entered her body, and when he entered, she expanded. He went deeper into her, and for an undetermined amount of time they were in such high consciousness that they couldn’t detect the room—they were nothingness in the solid world. She swam in the shimmering light of other worlds as gr
eenness filled her expanding spherical field.
Later wrapped in soft robes Lorenzo said, “I have tasted it again, the honey of heaven. If everything ended, everything went away, it wouldn’t matter to me. All I would seek is you. I’m devoted to you, so in love with you that I am complete. I never imagined anything like this existed. With you, I am whole, more than I ever was before. You are transforming my work, with my sessions reaching an entirely new level. Recently, a client accessed a remarkable past life as well as the life previous to it that was blocking him. We accessed that earlier lifetime, and it merged into the more recent one; the fusion resolved a huge block in this current life. His consciousness flowed freely through both of those past lives and miraculously released my client. I knew how to help him break these ancient locks, yet I don’t know how it will affect him. I hope I will see him again. I am amazed by how our love is empowering me.”
“And I am becoming more psychic, Lorenzo, potently psychic the way Sarah is. I have always been profoundly intuitive as you know, but with this new ability, I x-ray reality. When I figure things out, I literally see things. That bee on the rocks in Armando’s painting has been giving me visions, like the way I felt the other day when I was reading the new translation of Joseph and Aseneth. As she prepares for him before their bridal night, the text says she has ‘the appearance of virtue and marvelous beauty of the gods.’ I could see her like that when I read those words! I am becoming what I see as I see it, my elixir spreading all over the world.”
“Darling, I think I understand you, things so difficult to express in words. I think we are given sight when we become whole and share the sensual way of being, the gift of love. You feed me, so I need no other food; Mary needed nothing more than a honeycomb. All that remains for me is my curiosity about my clients and my desire to help them break through their blocks. What a profound reality we inhabit when we go through the doorway to the Divine, our bodies.”
Revelations of the Aquarian Age Page 25