by Martin Rua
The wise author of that ancient Chaldean text, however, gave a warning to those who would dare summon the Guardian without being properly prepared. It is, in fact, a being so powerful and dangerous, with a face as terrible as that of the Medusa, that it petrifies anyone who is unprepared. Only the Initiate, the true philosopher, may dare open the nine seals of Baphomet and face the monstrous Guardian.
THE LODGE OF THE NINE
Discovered in mysterious circumstances in the Middle Ages, the Baphomet was entrusted to an elite group of initiates responsible for ensuring that no adventurer lacking the proper knowledge may evoke this evil-eyed being, whose face must not be looked upon. These initiates are members of the so-called Lodge of Nine led by The One. Nine sages, nine philosophers, nine masters to whom the task of guarding the secret of evoking the Guardian with the Baphomet Code was given. From time immemorial the nine Masters have prevented this dark power from wreaking havoc and destruction.
At the end of the paragraph concerning this mysterious Lodge of Nine was a drawing: a circle of nine flames with a central number nine in Roman characters.
I looked at Anna. “This is a legend, or rather a mixture of various legends. The Chaldean Oracles, the Baphomet of the Templars, the Guardian of the Threshold, there’s even a reference to Freemasonry – the ninth degree of Master Elect of the Nine of the Scottish Rite, to be precise. But look, none of this proves anything. At best, it’s an anthropological study.”
Anna took the book out of my hand, flipped through a few pages and handed it back to me. “Look here.”
At the end of the chapter devoted to that preposterous legend, there was another drawing, the sight of which, I must admit, troubled me. It looked, in fact, in every way like the key that my grandfather was holding in my vision. The key with the symbol of the spoked wheel.
“Lorenzo, before your vision, had you ever seen that key?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
“I too saw it for the first time in what I believed were visions. But this book is confirmation that these messages are very specific.”
“No, Anna, this book doesn’t prove anything,” I said impatiently. “I’m a Mason myself, and I deal with alchemy, it’s my bread and butter. Have you any idea how many texts full of charming but nonsensical esoteric theories I’ve consulted in my life? Hundreds. And this has all the signs of being a collection of fascinating legends that your grandfather was maybe passionate about. But that’s all.”
Anna took the book from me, this time briskly flicking through one of the first few pages. “This book is different.”
She showed me the information on the title page. Under the name of the book were those of the editor of the original Russian version, the name of the typographer which had printed it and the year, with the month and day.
The Baphomet Code. Vol. 1
Edited by
Prof. Vladimir Afanas’evič Glyz
Kiev, 09.09.1953
Printed At Michail Izbrannovič Deviatov Printing House
15 Andriyivskyy Descent, Kiev, Ukraine – USSR
“My grandfather was a serious person, Lorenzo. If he edited this collection of texts, his intention was not to divulge nonsense. The old man who gave me the box and the book – this Konstantin, whoever he was – knew my grandfather and his secrets and, I bet, he also knew who or what had killed him, and why.”
“And you think your grandfather was part of this Lodge of Nine?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Just like your grandfather,” she added.
I shook my head. “That’s impossible, my grandfather didn’t have the slightest interest in such things.”
“How do you know? Do you go around shouting from the rooftops that you are a Mason? Or would you reveal that you were a member of your country’s secret service and that your mission was to safeguard a dangerous weapon? It’s the same thing. Our grandparents were part of an elite group, the Lodge of the Nine, and they are somehow trying to tell us their secrets. What happened to you and me, this deception we’ve been subject to, and the visions: it’s all connected. I want to continue the search, because only then can I find out the truth about my grandfather, and about my own life.”
“The Guardian of the Threshold—” I murmured.
Anna looked up, towards the window of Àrtemis’s room. “How is your wife?”
“There have been complications. She’s in intensive care. I don’t know how long she’s got left to live.”
“The Guardian of the Threshold can fulfil a wish, Lorenzo.”
I sighed, then looked at her. “Anna, I can’t save my wife’s life with a fairy tale. I stopped believing in that kind of dream.” I handed her back the book. “Please, leave me alone.”
I turned around and headed for the clinic without looking back.
*
That night, I was watching over Àrtemis through the glass that separated me from the intensive care ward. The medical staff had felt so sorry for me that they had permitted this huge breach in their regulations. It seemed that my sweet Àrt was leaving us.
On the other side of the window, I watched her there, hooked up to dozens of tubes and wires, and I thought back to the day when I had met her, with her mass of black curls that swayed like the Aegean in winter. I thought back to when, shy and awkward, a ring in my hand, I had asked her to marry me. I thought about all the crazy adventures I had involved her in, the treasure hunts that she, with her lucid rationality, always treated like some game for overgrown children, only to change her mind when the latest impossibility was finally in her hands.
She was everything to me. And now she was lying there in that bed, so young and beautiful, and preparing to abandon us – and there wasn’t even a physical enemy there in the flesh to combat. just an insidious disease that devoured you from within. The alchemy that I had practiced for many years hadn’t given me the gift of creating a universal panacea. I no longer had any unconventional means of saving her. I had nothing, except a stranger’s crazy story and a vision.
I thought of Anna again at first light when, by now exhausted from my nocturnal vigil, I saw Àrtemis fidgeting on her bed and the medical staff rushing in. I jumped up and pinned my nose to the glass.
“Please move away, sir,” a nurse told me. “Your wife is much better, we can unhook her from life support. We’re taking her back to her room.”
Around four in the afternoon, as I was dozing in a chair by her bed, Àrtemis woke up. I heard her mutter something and turn over in bed.
I went over and took her hand. “Hello darling. Welcome back.”
Àrt looked at me and smiled weakly. “Hello Lore,” she whispered, “you don’t look so good, you should get some rest.”
“Yes, you’re right, I will. How do you feel?”
“A bit weak.” She looked up at the ceiling and then spoke again. “You know, I had a strange dream. I saw Matteo, your teacher.”
Matteo Rinaldi, Thirty-third degree mason in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, the man who had first opened the doors of the Masonic temple to me and initiated me into the mysteries of alchemy, revealing the secrets of the greatest alchemist of Naples, the Prince of Sansevero. For several years Matteo had guided me through the fascinating, complex world of esotericism and hermeticism, until one cold December morning, his lungs, poisoned over the years by the fumes of his alchemical laboratory, had stopped working. Struck down by a chronic respiratory problems at little more than sixty years old.
“I dreamed of Matteo,” Àrt continued.
I sat there listening, open-mouthed, as she told me once again about her dream, and then, finally she turned to look at me and smiled again.
“I’m dying, Lorenzo aren’t I?” she asked, resignedly.
I shook my head decisively, trying to convince both of us. “What are you talking about, darling? We’re in the most advanced clinic in the world, you’ll be better soon.”
She smiled in that special way of hers. �
�Really? Is that what the doctors say? What are my chances?”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to tell her the truth, but I didn’t want to lie to her. She would have known. I shook my head and said, “…your condition is serious, but they seem optimistic.”
She was silent for a few seconds, then just sighed.
“I won’t leave you, darling, I—”
“There’s nothing you can do, Lore.”
Overwhelmed with despair, I gazed at her. I was so desperate that, in the end, I decided to tell her what had happened, omitting only the part about Anna. She listened intently to every word, then, at the end of the story, asked thoughtfully, “You believe the story that you told me, right?”
“Well… it’s just another one of those fantasies I tend to lose myself in.”
“Aragona, tell me the truth,” she whispered ironically.
I sighed. “All right, I’m beginning to believe it.” In that moment, Àrt must have seen in my face all the despair which had accumulated over the last few weeks. In another moment she would probably have insisted upon rationality, which had always been her forte in the past, would have shrugged her shoulders, put on her reading glasses and sighed, “Ok, fine – go and lose yourself with your alchemist friends, Masons and seers. I’ll stick with my Plato.”
But this time, her attitude was unlike her. She stroked my hand, sighed and then smiled again. “Then go, Lore – go deeper. This time do it for me.”
I looked at her in disbelief. I was afraid she was only saying this to make me feel better, sending me on a treasure hunt to stop me from worrying about her. It would have been just like her to do something like that for my sake.
“What are you talking about, Àrt? It’s a legend – just another story with no foundation.”
“We’ve always been sceptical at the beginning of our adventures, me especially. And then—”
“And then?”
“And then we’ve touched these things with our own two hands. You’ve convinced me that certain things really do exist. I’ve seen with my own eyes what you’re capable of doing in your alchemical laboratory.”
I looked at her in silence, still holding her hands.
“I’ll be fine here, don’t worry. You said it yourself – these are the very best doctors.”
At that moment Christa and Mitzos came in.
“Mama, babbà, ti kanete?”
The old couple smiled and made a gesture to show they were well.
“Listen, Lorenzo has to leave. I’ve asked him to do something for me. He’ll be away for a few days.”
The two of them looked surprised, but made no objections.
“He’ll be back soon, I’m sure,” concluded Àrt, hopefully.
18
To Kiev
Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragon
Zurich – Kiev, January, 2013
I hastily gathered together the few things I had brought with me, pulled on my coat, and before setting off for the airport made a phone call, hoping that the number would be working again.
“Hello?”
I was lucky.
“It’s Lorenzo, I’ve decided to try to find the Baphomet. I’m leaving for Naples. Are you still in Zurich?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to Naples. There are more promising leads elsewhere. Meet me at the airport and we’ll take the first flight to Kiev.”
I thought for a moment about Anna’s grandfather’s book and the strange package that had been sent to me from the Ukrainian capital. Maybe Anna was right.
“Ok, I’ll see you there.”
Two and a half hours later we were flying over Austria heading East.
“What made you change your mind?”
“My wife.”
“Really? She must be a very special woman.”
“How else could she put up with me? Anyway, she’s in… good hands. And who knows, maybe I’ll find a mysterious Chaldean remedy to save her,” I said with a smile, thinking about the absurdity of my words.
“Perhaps that’s exactly what it is.”
“The Baphomet described by your grandfather? I don’t know, but there’s something you need to know about Kiev.”
I told her about Bruno, his safe and the strange package which had been delivered from the Ukrainian capital, and then I showed her the copy of the Cardan grille that the package had contained.
“What is it?”
“An encryption system invented by an Italian mathematician in the sixteenth century.” I explained how it worked.
“Obviously the person who sent it knew you’d find a way to use it.”
“Yes, but I need the text that contains the secret message, otherwise it’s just a key without a lock.”
“Perhaps there’s something in my grandfather’s book. Let’s take a look.” Anna took out the little tome and opened it at the title page. “The Baphomet Code, Volume I. I wonder if we’ll need to find the second volume too to solve the riddle.”
“Let’s hope that this one will be enough, or at least enough to begin to make sense of it.”
“Did you notice the date it was printed?”
“The ninth of September 1953?”
“That’s right: nine, nine, 1953. Add up the digits that make up the year and you get eighteen. One plus eight—”
“Is nine.”
“Yes, the full date is three times nine, that’s twenty-seven.”
“Nine again. It looks as though your grandfather, or the publisher, wanted to leave a message for other members of the Lodge of Nine.”
“That’s undoubtedly so. Moreover, if the date of 1953 is real, we must remember that publishers at the time were all state owned and the Soviet regime didn’t allow everything to be published freely. As you can see, in fact, on the title page it doesn’t say that the book was published, only printed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Lorenzo, I don’t think this book was ever sold in the Soviet Union, it was only printed for a few people. The Michail Izbrannovič Deviatov Printing House is the name of a typographer, not a publisher. I’ll tell you more, I did some research and discovered that this typographer never even existed.”
“Great, then why are we going to Kiev?”
“Precisely because he’s called Michail Izbrannovič Deviatov, and there’s his address.”
“Yes, I know. So what?”
“In Russian, Izbrannovič Deviatov, means Elect of the Nine.”
*
We arrived in Kiev late at night, welcomed by a blizzard which blew ice cold snow across the open space in front of the entrance to Boryspil airport. The thermometer showed minus twelve degrees celsius.
Anna had booked a hotel just a few doors away from the address where, presumably, the book had been printed.
We crossed the dark, snowy plains which stretched between the airport and the Ukrainian capital. The traffic was slow, due to the heavy snowfall.
The hotel was located at the top of the Andriyivskyy Descent, one of the most charming streets in the Ukrainian capital, where, in an atmosphere redolent of Bulgakov, it was possible to stroll past theatres and cafes and take in a remarkable view of the lower part of town. Halfway along this road, just before St. Andrew’s church, was the address indicated in the book.
*
As we made our way there the next day, Anna told me the story of the building which appeared to have been home to the typographer we were looking for.
“On the Andriyivskyy Descent there was a famous building, built in the early twentieth century belle époque style. It was originally to be named The Orlov House after its architect, but the Ukrainian writer Viktor Nekrasov renamed it the Castle of Richard the Lionheart in 1966: the address of the Mikhail Izbrannovič Deviatov Printing House corresponds to that building.”
“Let’s hope it’s not just a wild goose chase. Everything would seem to point to that date as being fictitious. We migh
t not find anything.”
“If the date is fictitious, it means that we’re on the right track,” said Anna.
Her answer didn’t do much to convince me, but in any case, we were almost there now. As we walked along the road, we at last saw in the distance the Castle of Richard the Lionheart – an elegant, beige building topped by spires and towers and constructed in a mixture of art deco and art nouveau styles. As we approached, however, we found that the building was completely uninhabited and closed to the public, sealed off by a high wooden fence.
“Well, that’s that, then,” I said sadly.
Anna didn’t lose heart and began to wander along the fence. A few metres from the entrance, an old man wrapped in a bundle of clothes that left only his eyes visible, was selling souvenirs on a wooden stand. While I remained near the entrance, Anna approached him and began to speak sweetly to him. The old man nodded and mumbled something. Then she showed him the book. The old man reached out and took it, and it was only then that he looked up at the girl. He studied her for a moment then, with an effort, as though the cold had frozen him to his chair, stood up and walked towards me. He pulled out a bunch of keys and opened the door, beckoning us to follow him.
“What did he say?” I whispered to Anna. “That he was waiting for us,” she said in amazement.
The bundle of clothes took us inside the fence to a small space in front of the building’s entrance, which was littered with tools, half buried in the snow. It was evident that no work had been done there for months.
There was a sinister feel to the inside of the castle. Anna had told me of the legends that had circulated over the years since its construction: it was said that the place was plagued by ghosts, and that at night you could hear strange noises. In fact, it seemed that the building had been constructed in such a way that the wind, blowing in through the chimneys, produced a noise that some had mistaken for mournful lamentations. A construction error, basically, but the rumours had been so persistent over the years that only a few had wanted to live there. At the moment it was still uninhabited, awaiting the completion of renovation work. And I noticed that the icy January wind actually did create disturbing noises as it howled between the shabby beams.