The Serpent's Coil

by Christy Raedeke

  Justine and I look at each other in disbelief. “What? So these guys all symbolize the sun?”

  “Yes, the ‘Sun of God,’ the ‘giver of life.’ And the son’s mother, the Virgin Mary, is the constellation Virgo—Virgo in Latin means ‘virgin’—which happens to be the constellation where the sun rises at the end of December. What’s more, in Hebrew, ‘Bethlehem’ means house of bread, so the sun rising in Virgo, the House of Bread, is the son born in Bethlehem.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Then what’s the cross and death and resurrection about?” Justine asks.

  “After the summer solstice, days become shorter and colder until December twenty-first and twenty-second, when the sun makes it to its lowest point in the sky. This place where the sun rests happens to be in the vicinity of the Crux constellation, also known as the Southern Cross,” Uncle Li says.

  “So the sun dies on the cross!” Justine says, putting it all together.

  “I’m so tripped out right now,” I say.

  “There’s more,” Uncle Li says. “Then this strange thing happens—to the eye it looks as if the sun stops moving at all for three days, resting in the vicinity of the Southern Cross constellation. Then, on December twenty-fourth, the sun moves one degree north, rising again. So in these story-myths the sun dies on the cross, is dead for three days, then ‘rises’ again to bring light to the world.”

  “All these myths have another thing in common,” Nima adds, “and that’s the twelve apostles or brothers which represent the twelve constellations of the zodiac that the sun/son travels around with. This is, of course, the code for the precession of the equinoxes: the sun moves through the twelve constellations annually, and the Earth travels through the twelve constellations every 26,000 years—a full cycle of precession.”

  “Um, I’m not really sure what to say?” Justine whispers.

  “I know. I mean, can we really tell anyone this? Can you imagine the reaction?” I ask.

  “This is like burn-you-at-the-stake kind of stuff,” Justine adds.

  “Though volatile information to be sure, what has always baffled me is how accessible it is,” says Nima. “You could get all of this information from a university library. It’s just that people prefer not to have their worldview shaken—it’s easier to believe what you’ve been told than to realize you’ve been fooled. Similar information shows up in almost all cultures, but the Fraternitas has done a great job of making it seem like it’s unique to the story of Christianity.”

  “I still don’t get why the Shadow Government, the Fraternitas, would want to push this,” I ask. “I don’t see the point.”

  “Truth resonates,” Uncle Li says. “Deep down we all know there’s truth and power to the solar fable. By combining the stories of real, powerful people with mythological components, the Fraternitas can create a supermyth, one that billions of people will believe century after century.”

  “And because there’s no firsthand account of the life of Jesus, it was easy to layer on a solar fable,” Nima adds.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Well, the first mention of Jesus in written history was several decades after his death. And the December twenty-fifth birth date wasn’t even celebrated until the fourth century. That’s when church leaders decided they needed a ‘Christian’ alternative to winter solstice celebrations that were already happening on December twenty-fifth. They just started folding earlier pagan solstice rituals, like trees and Yule logs, into the Christian tradition. The very first recorded ‘Christmas’ was the Feast of the Nativity in Rome in 336 A.D., which was designed to coincide with what had been the Roman Festival of the Undefeated Sun.”

  “So they took all this solar mythology that had been around forever and just put Jesus in the center of it?”

  “Exactly,” Nima says. “Just as other cultures have done for centuries with Mithra, Attis, and the others.”

  Somehow knowing all this information terrifies me.

  “Deep,” I say.

  “Vast,” Justine replies.

  I look at Nima and Uncle Li. “I get everything you’re saying—and I’m truly disturbed by it—but if you’re asking me to go out and debunk religion, I’m … I’m just not equipped for that.”

  “You never have to mention a word of this,” Uncle Li says. “We just need you to see the big picture. To understand, as you say, how deep and vast all of this is.”

  “So,” Nima says, “let’s put this all in context. If at the base of many myths from almost all cultures lies the story of the heavens, including the precession of the equinoxes, wouldn’t you agree that precession must have some profound effect on us?”

  “Ancients knew that with each turn of the Great Year, human life evolved,” says Uncle Li. “This makes the alignment of the sun with the Galactic Center, which is what the Mayan calendar is pointing to, even more profound.”

  “You mean because this alignment is only meaningful to humans?”

  “Exactly!” Uncle Li says. “If you were out in the galaxy, you wouldn’t notice anything different about 2012.”

  “Yes, this is a human event,” Nima adds. “This is about human evolution—an evolution the Fraternitas is terrified of.”

  “And you two will help usher this in.”

  I stand up and shake my arms out. “I need to cruise around for a minute or something. I’m a little … overwhelmed.”

  Justine gets up and grabs my hand and we walk out by the river together. Sitting on the edge of the bridge, we dangle our feet over the water quietly moving below us.

  “You okay?” Justine asks.

  I breathe deeply. How can I answer that question?

  EIGHTEEN

  I’m not sure I know what ‘okay’ is,” I respond. “It’s just so devastating. It was so easy to go about being a kid when I just believed that the people in power had my best interests at heart.”

  “But would you really rather go back to not knowing?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I really don’t know.”

  The glow of the pagodas on the far rock wall reflects off the water, warmly lighting the inside of the immense cave. We both sit silently and take in the beauty of the place. I wish I could stay here forever, tucked safely away.

  “Are you sorry you came with me?” I ask Justine. I don’t look at her because I want her to tell me the truth, not just what I want to hear.

  “Not even one single teeny tiny bit,” she replies without hesitation.

  I squeeze her hand and we sit there until our legs get chilled from the cold water below.

  “Come on,” she says, getting up and pulling me with her. “We’ve got intel to gather.”

  As we walk back over to the pagoda where Nima and Uncle Li wait for us, I feel the earth move slightly under my feet, as if rocks are falling or ground is being drilled. I look at Justine, whose face tells me she feels it too. Filled with the terror of being caught underground as the cave crashes down, we both run screaming to Uncle Li.

  “Did you feel that?” I yell as we get closer. I’m surprised to see him standing calmly and smiling.

  “It’s just the daily movement of the calendar,” he says. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “What do you mean?” Justine says, now bent over trying to catch her breath. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come,” he says, “you can see from the River Pagoda.”

  We walk back to where we were sitting before and Uncle Li moves the grass mat from the center of the floor to reveal a square cut into the wood. He slips his finger in a small hole and pulls up a piece of flooring. We look down but see nothing but black space. Uncle Li holds a lantern over the hole and we catch a glimpse of a piece of a massive stone cog.

  “Oh! It’s like the gears under the tower at the castle!”

  “Precisely,” Uncle Li says.

  “I gotta see this,” Justine says, lying on the ground and lowering the lantern to see the twenty interlocking cogs that make
up the Mayan calendar system.

  “And when one turns, they all turn?” she asks.

  “Right, but because they’re different sizes, they turn at different rates. Like the one for the Tzolk’in turns once a day for 260 days,” Nima says.

  “The cogs at Breidablik are much smaller than the ones here,” Uncle Li adds. “When this turns, you really feel it.”

  “Are there more of these, or just this one and the one at Breidablik?” I ask.

  “There’s one more that we know about—in Duluth, Minnesota. These stone calendar cogs have been placed in areas of strange magnetic behavior, almost equally spaced, all at a 46 degree north latitude. Just in this century geologists have identified these three places as having a ‘magnetic basement.’ But of course the ancients knew about these places.”

  I throw up my hands and laugh. “So I’m going to assume that the fact that my mom is from Duluth is no accident.”

  “In the past few months, have you noticed that there are no accidents?”

  I nod.

  “So if Caity is from San Francisco, it must mean there are some weird things about that city too, right?” Justine asks.

  Nima and Uncle Li look at each other and smile. “We would need days to go into that! But soon enough, San Francisco’s secrets will be revealed to you.”

  “And right now we have to get back to the other half of the Fraternitas’ manipulation tactics,” Nima says. “We have talked about the manipulation of the solar myth and the changing of the calendar as a control vehicle, but what other methods do you think the Shadow Government uses?”

  “Fear?” Justine answers. “To keep people scared. Provoking terrorism and then pretending like you’re the only one who can protect the people.”

  “Good! And what’s the benefit of keeping people scared?”

  “You get to keep wars going. You get lots more support for military funding—and a good chunk of that goes to companies that the Fraternitas has interest in.”

  “Precisely,” Uncle Li says. “Fear allows you to control the masses and make money. Justifying war is high on the priority list.”

  “Okay. Now for the big one: How is the Shadow Government engaging in modern slavery? What keeps us working so hard that we don’t look up and notice what’s going on?”

  “Being in debt?” I say. “Working without ever getting anywhere?”

  “That’s exactly right, especially for what we call wealthy nations. But do you know how it works in the third world?”

  Justine and I both shake our heads.

  “See, it’s a matter of scale. In wealthy nations you can keep individuals in debt, in third-world countries you can keep the entire population in debt. This is much easier to manipulate.”

  “But how?” I ask.

  “Take almost any third-world country today. The Shadow Government identifies a country that has resources that corporations need, like oil, and then they arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or one of its organizations.”

  “I thought the World Bank and the IMF were like non-profits,” Justine says.

  “They’re both private, for-profit financial institutions that make themselves look like aide organizations. Basically, they’re just massive banks owned by a handful of wealthy people.”

  Nima adds, “But the money they loan to third- and fourth-world countries generally doesn’t go to the country, but rather to big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country that make it easier for corporations to come in and export goods. At that point, the whole country is left in overwhelming debt.”

  “For something that wasn’t really to help them in the first place?”

  “Right. Because the key part of the plan is that the country cannot ever repay the debt they owe; this keeps them essentially enslaved. Then the bank or corporation goes back and says, you owe us a lot of money, so you have to sell us your oil or natural gas or diamonds or gold—whatever resource it happens to be—really cheap. Or maybe they’ll build a military base there, or ask for troop support in a war. Or even more damaging, the bank or corporation will take over the country’s utilities like electricity or water and sell them to other corporations. Often it is social services like schools and hospitals and prisons that get privatized and sold off.”

  “So then what was pitched as something that would help the country actually ruins it?” asks Justine.

  “Exactly. And everything worth anything in the country is left it in the control of a group of corporations, banks, or governments.”

  “But how is that all legal?”

  “How indeed?” Nima answers. “As with most things controlled by the Shadow Government, legality has nothing to do with it. Morality has nothing to do with it. This is about control. About world domination.”

  “I want to make sure I’m getting this,” I say. “So the IMF and the World Bank offer loans to countries, then put the countries into such a big debt that they can’t pay it, and then someone steps in to offer to help pay the debt by having the people sell off their resources or schools, power, and water?”

  Nima nods.

  “It is important that you really understand this,” Uncle Li says. “Because it is you who will help destroy this system.”

  We both look at Uncle Li to gauge if he’s joking, but he’s dead serious.

  “Uh, no,” Justine says. “I’m out.”

  NINETEEN

  Okay, let’s back up here,” I say. “I was told that I’d be uniting the youth and creating some kind of global unity or coherence thing that would help with this shift in consciousness. No one ever said anything about destroying financial systems.”

  “Think of it as releasing, not destroying. And you will have quite a lot of help,” Uncle Li says. “But know this: we cannot shift consciousness without also shifting currency—you cannot have any hope for equality and coherence while there is so much rampant oppression. It is the only way to effect real change.”

  I glance at Justine. For the first time she looks absolutely terrified.

  “Most of this can be handled at the Fraternitas Regni Occulti headquarters in San Francisco,” Nima says.

  Justine replies, “And the fact that the Fraternitas headquarters are just blocks from where we grew up …”

  “Coincidence is merely a fleeting glimpse at wholeness,” I whisper.

  Uncle Li looks at his watch, then stands up. “Dawn is about to break,” he says. “We must get you back.”

  “Wait, what about instructions?” I ask. “Like what exactly are we supposed to do?”

  “You’ll know. Things will fall into place,” Nima says.

  Taking me by the arm, Uncle Li says, “We’ve stayed far too long. We must go now.”

  He pushes a button on the wall, which makes three high-pitched tones. “Summoning Mr. Papers,” he explains. “We’ll meet him at the Maglev.”

  We quickly say goodbye to Nima and then make our way through the cave to the tunnel of trees where the Maglev waits.

  We barely speak on the ride back; after the download of information we had at Atala, our minds are frazzled. My entire worldview has been shaken. It’s a bit like finding out you parents are convicted felons who stole you as a baby.

  Nothing can ever be the same after learning all this.

  We climb out of the Maglev in Dunhuang, getting a whiff of the dank cave smell that Atala was free from, and walk carefully along the precipice to the hidden door in the grain storehouse cave. Before Uncle Li unbolts the door to let us outside, he pauses.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, unable to figure out why he’s looking at me long and hard.

  “This may have to be the last time I see you for a while,” he says quietly.

  “What? Why?” I ask.

  “We must never let the Fraternitas find out about Atala,” he explains. “Your coming to Dunhuang once with your teacher is fine, but you cannot come back.”

  “Of course,” I say.
>
  Justine crosses her heart.

  “You may be under the radar right now, but as you get things moving, the Fraternitas may find you. Stay in the light.”

  I shudder at Uncle Li’s warning.

  “When necessary, we will get information to you. But you must never try to contact any of us. The Council has survived for centuries because of the circle of trust. Now that you two are in that circle, you must respect it above all else.”

  Justine and I solemnly agree. I feel queasy knowing that we are on our own.

  “Will Bolon still visit?” I ask. “We need someone to be there for us!”

  “Less and less,” Uncle Li answers. “We really must go underground. This is a tense time, and as you know, many powerful souls are here for this shift—both on the light and dark sides.”

  I nod.

  “One last thing,” Uncle Li says. He pauses for a moment as if to find the right words, and then says, “If I am captured, you must make no attempt at rescue. No attempt,” he repeats. “Most likely, it will be a trap to catch you.”

  Justine reaches over and takes my hand. We were not prepared for this kind of a talk.

  I nod again and Uncle Li comes over and gives me a hug.

  Then he holds me by the shoulders and looks in my eyes. “You can do this,” he says. “You must do this. It is out of our hands now.”

  Mr. Papers jumps from my shoulder to Uncle Li’s. I see his tiny eyes well with tears as he hugs Uncle Li’s neck.

  “Goodbye, Caity. Goodbye, Justine. Papers.”

  I don’t reply.

  I don’t want to say goodbye. I refuse to say goodbye. I don’t want to leave the safety of this cave. I don’t want to know what I now know and I don’t want to face what I need to face.

  “I have loved you for lifetimes, Caity,” Uncle Li says. “Know that we will always be connected.”

  I nod, because my throat is constricted and I can’t speak.

  “I must go back to Atala. Could you please put the false wall back before you leave the cave?” he asks.

  “Of course,” Justine says, taking over for me; I’ve been made useless by the heavy talk.