They laughed and continued walking down the path, Claudia feeling grateful to Armando for being her inspiration to individuate long ago.
28
Celestial Swan
The group of friends arrived well before the chapel opened its doors. A guard was expecting them and let them in. To avoid attention, Armando and his parents didn’t go. The security was intense with guards set up to confiscate all cameras. The four of them wore nondescript dark clothes and made their way through the museum to the wide stone stairs. Once inside the chapel, they stopped in the back and held their breath.
Chapel of Princes
Intense spotlights beamed focused light down from the high dome. Tiny silver molecular fragments, like minnows swimming in illuminated darkness, flashed and sparkled in the thick rays of light, the four beams aimed down to Armando’s painting. Bizarre Medici tombs, heraldry, and pompous statues were on all sides, but Jesus and Mary Magdalene were the focus. Simon and Sarah took chairs in the back to avoid scrutiny from people when they came in. Claudia, who was having difficulty breathing, sat close to the front on the right side near Jesus. She relaxed into her chair and contemplated his body rising while Mary reached for him. She detected a low hum in her sphenoid and cochlear bones. Do I hear bees buzzing? She opened her eyes to his face, which looked even sweeter than before. As the heavenly face opened her heart, a geometrical crystalline lattice formed all around her body. She glanced over at Jennifer at the other end of the front row.
Jennifer focused on Mary’s hands reaching for Jesus. A guard watching her knew she was the painter’s wife. As her hands came together in front of her heart involuntarily with long fingertips delicately touching, her face was shining. Something pulled her forward, so she steadied her feet on the stone floor. Pachelbel’s Canon played softly way up in the dome. Am I hearing things? No, they are playing the Canon, a lovely idea.
Hushed expectant people filed in. The intense light coming down from on high directed their eyes right to the painting—low gasps were audible. Jesus and Mary’s flesh in vibrant and touchable clothing was alive in the full color spectrum. Her luscious and sensual red hair was shocking as if the goddess had descended on Florence. People were seeing something they’d always been waiting for. Soon all the seats were taken, they would have twenty minutes; the music ending would be the cue. The denizens of Florence saw the painting, not Jesus on the cross above the altar. Yes, it is true, just like the rumors. It is Jesus and Mary Magdalene showing their love! He rises as she reaches for him to hold him. His face is so beautiful and feminine that I can only cry and wonder how a man can look like that. He is in heaven while still on Earth simply because she is with him. She grasps for him, but how can anybody grasp the Divine? It is like reaching blindly for the one you love during marriage when you know they will eventually die.
Claudia felt the people’s energy fields weaving into oneness, the Canon braiding their souls into cords of light. No mistaking it. The morning breeze vibrating the old glass in the windows up in the dome pulsed in tune with Pachelbel—sound waves responding to temperature differentials. Her body expanded with the music beating with her ecstatic heart. Sweet joy penetrated her body while the people touched their hands, their shoulders, and stroked their thighs to circulate the extreme kinesthesia. They closed their eyes feeling their skin absorb the heavenly sight. Involuntarily they swayed in unison responding to the sensual sacredness. Without knowing Lorenzo, I would not understand.
What is that? Claudia could see and hear high intensity light particles slicing the air—infinitesimal star photons escaping the reliquaries. Are old bones sending memory particles into the brains of the people as they stare at the painting? Weird. I feel their brains expanding and pressing against their skulls. Some had their hands on their faces making sure their bodies were still in their chairs. Then a strange thing happened . . . simultaneously their minds emptied when the wholeness and oneness of Jesus and Mary opened the cosmic lens to their souls: they sighed in unison when Pachelbel’s Canon ended. One by one they got up and filed out of the room while the four remained. The people left quickly, shuffling down the staircase without uttering a word. Then the next group filed in as the music began anew. This would go on day after day with light penetrating people as they absorbed the real story of a great man and a great woman.
Later, they went to lunch in a trattoria below street level near the Arno, making their way to a private booth. They ate lightly and quietly. When the plates were cleared away, Sarah looked at Simon and said, “How did you respond to the painting?”
“For me, it stopped time. Sarah, can you tune in to your ruby crystal and give us some kind of read on what we’ve just seen? I swear those people were transported and didn’t care if anybody could see it happening. I thought some of them were going to levitate!”
“It was exquisite, and they certainly have it displayed beautifully, a Medici miracle, yet Armando created the miracle. But, it wouldn’t work its magic without the great presentation in that awesome space.” Her breathing slowed as she closed her eyes and put her right hand over the ring and began speaking in a very low voice.
“I see a lodestone, an omphalos laced with a lattice covered with bees. The light around it is strange, perfectly split between the dark and light like the yin and yang. White light presses the darkness, a substance functioning in another dimension that imprints what’s going on in the Chapel of Princes. Light shining on Armando’s painting transmutes the Medici darkness in the dome; it cuts through the primordial zone between the dark and the light.”
“Sarah,” Simon said in a very low voice. “Can you tell me more about how the light affects darkness?”
“Hmmm,” Sarah continued in a total trance, “I’m not sure. The light makes the edges of the darkness organic, magnetized, like when a cell detects cancer cells and alerts its surface. Darkness is more fecund when light pressures it. Seeing the light in Armando’s painting transforms dark things in the world, makes them transparent. Ugliness seethes out of a nest of writhing snakes turning to slime. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen when the real story of Jesus is known by enough people.”
“Why are you afraid, Sarah?” Claudia broke in. “Exactly what are you afraid of?”
“Wait a moment; I’m gathering images . . . This omphalos is the world surrounded by darkness struggling to control things. Bombs go off and people scream as Yahweh hovers over the omphalos, laughing obscenely.”
“Sarah,” Simon said quietly. “What does Armando’s painting have to do with this struggle?”
“I see flecks or balls of light all over the Chapel of Princes . . . No . . . bees! They fly all around the painting and the room, looping and diving behind it, then flying into the reliquary rooms. Bee buzzing vibrates the bones to open the painting’s codes in the minds of the observers. With time going faster, everything in the world is increasing exponentially as the light exposes the truth. Nothing can hold this back. The pressure makes people psychotic, but curiosity stronger than fatalism keeps them from losing hope on the edge of the dark and the light.”
“Sarah, come back to us,” Simon said softly. “This is too much for you now. We hear what you are saying, and we feel it too. We’ll be watching to see how this works out. Thank you, my love.”
She took her hand off her ring and sucked in a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, she had no idea what she’d just said.
During fall 2015, the world went further out of control. The European Union tottered, Greece bled financially, and young Europeans in Spain, Italy, and France suffered widespread joblessness. England considered leaving the Union, and the Ukrainian crisis upset Europe’s balance with Russia. Syrian refugees streamed through Lesbos as frantic migrants just ahead of them pushed through Hungary, Serbia, and Croatia to make it up to Germany and Scandinavia. Eight months prior, the attack in Paris against the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, had made Europeans feel very unsafe. Then, like gasoline thrown on the fire, October 13 c
ame with a second Paris attack. Heavily armed radical Islamists butchered 130 innocent young people out enjoying an evening. French society was breaking down as Islamic extremism grew among the children of the mostly North African immigrants confined to ghettos rebelling against a society that offered them little opportunity. France heightened its security and tightened its borders. Europeans realized they had to find ways to work with Russia and Turkey to solve the Syrian crisis.
Pietro reflected on the European crisis while he waited for Armando. A few days ago Pietro put on a gray turtleneck and black pants, donned a beret that slightly hid his face, and went to the Chapel of Princes. He sat in the back corner to watch people streaming in and out for hours; something remarkable was happening.
“Hello,” Armando said as he walked in and closed the door. “You can’t imagine how much I’ve looked forward to some time with you.”
“It is the same for me, son, and thank you for coming. The other day I visited the chapel to observe people’s responses. They are finding truth in your painting, balance between men and women, our only hope for peace in the world.”
“Something is going on in the chapel because I’ve been feeling electrified ever since the viewing started. My fears about the unveiling are gone. Almost every day I feel hot energy in my body, you know, kundalini. I didn’t expect that!”
“There’s more to this than we realize. I’ve not shared the main family secrets with you because of their complexity. It is easy to imagine Jesus being married, though millions have died over it. Our family records are difficult because they are cosmological, that is, maps that show us how to enter the universe, star mythology—understanding the constellations by means of the human view of the stars. Our family, based in Siena for at least 5,000 years, is the family of Leo because Pierleoni means locating the lion, Leo.”
“May I ask questions?”
“Yes, of course, and we can stay up all night.”
“I thought our family only goes back 1,000 years, except for the fact we certainly have Etruscan blood, but more than 5,000 years?”
“Yes, because we carry Etruscan blood. Contrary to archaeology, the Etruscans probably came here around five thousand years ago. Remember, this is partly legendary, yet also deeply informed by archaeology. Archaeologists investigate the physical world, yet legends and stories access many dimensions by means of symbols passed down through generations. Our family has retained the secrets of the swan, teachings that go back 17,000 years, that is way before the Ages of Cancer and Leo. Last July you had a visceral response when I told you about the cataclysms. Do you recall me saying we’ve retained knowledge going back 17,000 years marked by the swan taking flight?” Armando nodded and looked up at the family crest.
“Swans have magnetic crystals in their brains that enable them to fly on yearly flight paths, navigating by the stars. Around 17,000 years ago, when we entered the Age of Libra by precession, the polestar was Deneb, the brightest star in the Northern Cross. Deneb becomes the polestar every 26,000 years. You do understand precession and the Great Year?”
“Only because of Claudia. Everyone in our discussion group has learned about the Great Ages because Claudia and Lorenzo insist it is one of the most informative orientations. They say we lose cultural intelligence by not tracking the influence of the ages. It’s fascinating that we actually can go that far back. Certainly, symbols such as the ram for Aries and the bull for Taurus verify this idea.”
“Your friends have really gotten you up to speed! The Age of Libra is important because it was when humans attained a high point of intelligence, a time when anthropologists say humans mysteriously advanced very rapidly. Our family records say this occurred because of the orientation to Deneb by precession. Armando, listen carefully: we cannot know what we are capable of without comprehending this Libran peak. We can’t make the transition into Aquarius—slated to be an enlightened era—without knowing what our species discovered then. Look at the state of the world today; our species is going to fail without this knowledge. We always learn a lot during any age, but sometimes the negative aspects of a previous age retard us. For example, if we’d retained the real teachings of Jesus, war would have ended by now.
“When Deneb is the polestar, Earth is directly oriented to the place of entry and exit to the sky world—direct access to cosmic consciousness. It would have been an incredible sight when the Milky Way was turning around Deneb, which formed a great star tree in the northern sky for a thousand years, the source of the extremely ancient Tree of Life legends around the world. Shamans use these legends to travel into the lower and upper worlds for healing. My point is, during the Age of Libra, our souls easily traveled out to the cosmic realms when our bodies died; we were not constrained by death.”
“Well, I’ve heard the Age of Aquarius is supposed to be a free age, so maybe this is the information we need to remember, how to be free—no fear of death?”
“Yes, exactly Armando. As long as we are in bodies, freedom is shamanic. Ancient Egyptians and Native Americans retained the knowledge of how to travel out to Orion, then out to the Great Rift in the Milky Way through Cygnus, the Northern Cross. Andrew Collins and Gregory Little call this the Path of Souls. In our case, the swan has always been the symbol for the soul’s path, the secret to star traveling. Once there was a temple that is now deep below Siena where people accessed the Path of Souls 17,000 years ago; it’s right there under the piazza. That is why the energy is so heavy and dense in Siena, a somber place of encapsulated force. We run the Palio every year to release it.
“Except for remnants of shamanic practices, the world has lost cosmic freedom. Recently Andrew Collins decoded many symbolic systems that portray the Great Ages and orientations to Cygnus. For example, the symbols on the Göbekli Tepe pillars portray the constellations with the orientation to the Northern Cross, particularly Deneb. Eventually he wondered whether there was something unusual about Deneb besides its orientation, and there is! The sudden leap forward in human evolution—a nearly instantaneous change in our physical and neurological makeup 17,000 years ago—was caused by a huge increase in cosmic rays that reached Earth from a binary star system that is close to the crossing point of the Northern Cross near Deneb. This star system—Cygnus X-3—is one of the brightest sources of high-energy gamma rays in our galaxy. Since 1980, scientists have been detecting periodic cosmic rays coming from Cygnus X-3 that they call cygnets—little swans.
“This research is highly controversial: Some astronomers propose Cygnus X-3 is our galaxy’s first discovered microblazer, a star close to a black hole encircled with ionized gas that feeds the star. When it eats too much, the star burps and emits plasma jets perpendicular to the star’s rotational axis. Mysteriously, these jets sometimes aim at Earth sending high-energy cosmic particles our way. This may sound outlandish, but Carl Sagan proposed that cosmic rays trigger human evolution. Mysteriously, Cygnus X-3 has been active for around 700,000 years, the time frame for the evolution of mammals.”
“Very interesting. I can’t say I understand you, but it fits with what’s coming up in my conversations with my friends. We believe we are in the middle of a fast wake-up right now, which sadly is in tandem with rising violence in the world. In that regard, I worry that my work disturbs people, but I can’t stop creating. Maybe we are unusually affected by cosmic rays these days; maybe I am.”
Pietro considered Armando’s thoughtful face. “I agree with you, and the rising violence also makes me very unhappy. But, when science starts discovering the cosmic factors that accelerate human evolution, nothing will stop the process. Ignorance is the problem. I believe people will overcome the centuries of lies that keep them stupid and crazy. Nothing can stop this quest for the truth.
“The Celestial Swan is our symbol, and now you have a sense of what that may mean. As we speak, science is confirming our ancient wisdom. For thousands of years, people have used shamanic techniques to lead the soul out into the universe at death and to guide ne
w infants into our world, the fundamental orientation of our world to the sky, our way to be free. The religions of the Age of Pisces almost eliminated our cosmic access, but it is coming back with Aquarius by means of scientific and alternative research. In other words, Armando, we are freeing ourselves amid dire times. I am proud of you, my son. Your painting helps people; you have improved life on our planet. As we reweave our link to the sky world, over the years you will share your Pierleoni knowledge as the leading lion and then hopefully pass it to your child.”
“Well then,” Armando said, his face blazing with a happy smile, “you might as well know it now; you are about to have another grand child. Jen is pregnant!”
Pietro blinked. “Are you sure? I can’t wait to give Jennifer a big hug tomorrow. Matilda will be ecstatic. What a blessing!”
“Too much is happening all at once, but it’s all so great. I look for ward to more time with you. Let’s call it a night.”
29
Christmas 2015
The Appels and the Adamsons came to Rome to be with their children during Christmas 2015. The Adamsons stayed with Simon and Sarah, and the Appels enjoyed the Pierleoni villa. It was Rose’s first visit with the Pierleonis in Rome, and she was utterly delighted with the rambling Renaissance home. She spent hours in the library perusing architectural and house design books. Matilda came in when she was lounging in a comfortable chair near the fire. “Hello, Rose. It certainly looks like you are having a lovely morning.”
“Oh, yes. Please come join me. I love old buildings as you can see by the pile of books I’ve been going through. Come sit with me to talk about your lovely home. It must be wonderful to live in such a venerable old building.”
“Well, we have our creaks and groans, but over the years, every board and stone has molded into place as if the house is a person. We tend the roof, gutters, and drains and keep the rats away. I love how our home feels because it shelters us against adversity, which is so comforting. If this villa could last this long, there’s hope for a better future. Jennifer loves it here and enjoys the way we all live together. When any one of us feels like it, we can have a week or two alone in this house while others go up to Tuscany, sometimes to Majorca. I think she’s very happy, and we’re all so excited about the baby.”
Revelations of the Aquarian Age Page 28