Revelations of the Ruby Crystal

by Barbara Hand Clow

  He watched her intently. Her facial muscles seemed to be in the grip of something, something that was making her puppet-like. Could she be bipolar? That didn’t seem to fit with what he had learned of her so far. He was taken aback by the earnestness of her little speech. What kind of father had laid down such strict rules? Could he have beaten her up or abused her? He felt a powerful urge to get up from the table and leave his lunch, but he was rooted to his chair. It’s time to vow to never pursue a non-Jewish girl again, especially a Catholic from Boston.

  Instead what came out of his mouth in a kind, brotherly voice was, “Sarah, you are only twenty-five, and if you haven’t had any experience by now, your time will come. It might not be with me, since your father would kill me, but it has to be somebody unless you become a nun or a celibate scholar. You are beautiful and desirable. You can’t let your father rule you to the point of never being able to have a lover!”

  Sarah’s eyes grew wet and she blinked rapidly, but she maintained firm control.

  Simon went on gently. “If I may ask, did your father tell you that you have to be a virgin when you marry?”

  To Simon, such a thing was unbelievable. This whole conversation was making him feel like he’d been thrown a century back in time. Maybe I’ve landed on another planet and found a lost species?

  “Simon, he not only expects that, on Sundays he made me promise it to him many times when I was a little girl. But look, my father is a good and well-intentioned man—strong, successful, and self-made, the lord in his own house. I think you’d like him, actually. However, he totally believes what the Church teaches and nobody ever crosses him, not even my mother.”

  Again his peripheral glance was drawn to the tight muscle group that pulled in her mouth and reshaped her whole face for a moment. He’d seen expressions like this before with people who were mind-controlled—Christian fundamentalists or people who had been brought up in cults. He shivered. It’s time to run; run, Simon, now!

  Her face soon returned to normal, however, and for the first time she intentionally touched him by reaching for his left hand and gently holding his wrist. Her touch sent a strong electrical shock through his arm up to his shoulder and up in his neck.

  She said, “Can we share more of these ideas and explore Rome together? Can we just be friends for now? I don’t know if it could become something else; who knows that? Can we be friends?” She captured his gaze. “Maybe I was wrong to assume you are attracted to me. Perhaps that is my issue, not yours? I hope you can offer me some more time because I’m having feelings for you that I’ve never felt before. That’s why I’m asking you to help me. For now can we stick with the sheer joy of exploring ideas together? Can we be enlightened Stoic philosophers, friends in moderation in all ways?” She giggled.

  Simon wondered if she knew she was flirting with her eyes. He was thinking along very different lines. I’m going to get someplace with this strange and evocative girl, regardless of her damned father. She just propositioned me with the wackiest set of rules I’ve ever heard, and we’re going to break every one of them in due time.

  As she went on and on, a realization struck him as if an unseen god or an angel had just knocked him on his head: He was in love with this woman. He was already more in love with her than any woman he’d ever met. It had begun when he first laid eyes on her last week, and he felt it would never end. Instinctually his eyes slowly travelled along her right thigh, which she didn’t seem to notice because she was so excited about her grand proposal. I can wait until she’s ready, but I don’t give a shit about her damned father, Opus Dei, or the pope. She doesn’t even know what kind of challenge she has just proposed to me. Eventually she will change her mind. No daddy is going to have his way because I have the patience of Job. It’s time for Daddy to get real about how things work when you have an enchanting and beautiful daughter.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “You shall be the virgin Sibyl of Cumae, and I shall be Cicero or Appelles listening to Philumena. You shall attain wisdom while I learn how to attain a peaceful old age. If you succeed in repressing your sexuality around me too long, then perhaps you will have ecstatic visions of god and the angels like Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila. If I repress mine, perhaps I will attain peace of mind. You may go crazy, but I will be sane. This will be fun. And if I recall, weren’t the members of Marcion’s community vegan celibates? Perhaps we both can empathize better with the Marcionites if we live by their rules?” He laughed. “One more thing. Don’t expect me not to have sex with other women anytime I want to.”

  Sarah nodded, smiled sweetly, and returned to her lasagna and salad, leaving Simon staring at her fork as it cut into the oozing pasta.

  What a crazy flirt she is! Does she realize how seductive she is in her innocence? We will be like the characters in a nineteenth-century Anthony Trollope novel where the marriage always occurs in the last chapter.

  Luigi the cook was watching them from afar. Firing up another pan, he muttered with a smile on his lips, “Che bella!”

  3

  Borghese Gardens

  Walking briskly along the Via del Babuino approaching the Piazza del Popolo, Simon couldn’t keep a broad smile from his face. The sun shone as radiantly as his mood, brightening the pink magnolia blossoms that lined the street. Sarah had agreed to spend the whole day walking with him in the Borghese Gardens and discussing Marcion and patristics. He spotted Sarah standing below the obelisk, craning her neck to look up a hundred feet to the deeply incised hieroglyphs that were very readable in the angular light of the clear morning sunlight. Her strong body, arching in response to the tall obelisk, turned him on.

  Lost in another time for a moment, Sarah shivered back into reality when she heard Simon’s soft voice behind her. “Odd that anybody would go to so much trouble to bring this huge obelisk all the way from Egypt a few thousand years ago, isn’t it?”

  “Hello again,” she said. “Yes, when I visited Egypt I had no idea so many obelisks had been removed and taken to Rome. Of course, this occurred when the Romans conquered Egypt, so they probably believed the obelisks would enhance their power. Yet it does seem odd. Let’s see if the marker says anything about it.”

  Moving over to the historical marker they read: “This obelisk was removed from Egypt to Rome during the first century BCE. The Emperor Augustus erected the obelisk in the Circus Maximus to commemorate the conquest of Egypt. After Rome fell, it was lost in the ruins of the circus for more than a millennium. It was re-erected here in the Piazza del Popolo in 1589 CE. Seti I incised three sides of the obelisk, and the fourth side (west facing) was cut by his son Ramesses I. Originally it was located at Heliopolis, the Sun Temple in Cairo.”

  “Well, of course,” Simon said. “Rome became the Temple of the Sun once the Republic ended. When the emperors stripped the temples in Egypt, they brought the power objects to Rome.”

  His black curly hair shining in the morning sun, he charmed her with his laughing dark eyes as he took off his soft tan leather jacket. Taking her arm like an English gentleman, he steered her over to a bench on the side of the fountain. “This piazza is just plain beautiful whether you like obelisks or not.”

  Carved lions in the Egyptian style spouted water into cool basins below the obelisk, which was raised high on a marble platform with benches on all four sides. Mothers and small children played in the fine spray made luminous by the rays of sunlight warming the stones.

  Sarah took a seat on the bench. “It’s ironic that this is here while there is almost nothing ancient left at Heliopolis near the Cairo airport. Only one obelisk remains there, in the middle of a wealthy suburb. It’s one of the oldest temple sites in Egypt, but now people go there to walk their dogs. Little attention is ever given to its archaeological importance. It was significant when Egyptian religion was pure and devoted to the reception of light.”

  Simon pulled an apple out of his backpack and crunched into it while listening to her. A mangy butterscotch dog stared hungr
ily at the apple. Air wheezed in and out between his sharp teeth and pronounced ribs, which protruded so far they seemed close to puncturing his skinny sides. Simon dug deeper into his pack, pulled out a dog biscuit, and held it out to the starving animal, who quickly snatched it with his teeth. Multicolored pigeons perched on the edges of the fountain basins dropped down to the pavement and moved quickly in their direction.

  Sarah said, “It’s funny. When I visited the temples in Egypt, there were always dogs like this one faithfully guarding the sites from bad energy. I always took food with me for them.”

  “Well, dogs really are our best friends. So I always carry treats when I go out. Do you suppose this obelisk is related to the things we’re trying to figure out?”

  Despite his casual tone, Simon’s words, and their implication, were very much intentional. Women love synchronicity, even Ph.D. candidates. It felt to Simon there was a fated quality to the way they were getting to know each other. The only cover Sarah had was the subjects they had agreed to discuss, but it didn’t matter to him what they talked about. He could happily gaze at her all day.

  She took the bait and replied, “Well, many people think Jesus got his knowledge in Egypt. He could have studied with Egyptian masters in the temples, and he also must have studied with the Jewish Gnostics in Alexandria who lived close to the great library, the repository of thousands of years of wisdom. Considering the influence Jesus has had on religion, he must have mastered ancient knowledge. But trying to nail down anything historically accurate about him is like chasing a phantom, since all we can do is guess where he got his knowledge based on what we think he said.”

  He smiled at her encouragingly. “If Jesus had studied at the Sun Temple, what would he have learned there?”

  “He would have learned all about the Heliopolitan mysteries—the most multidimensional teachings in ancient Egyptian wisdom. Until recently, they were thought of as incomprehensible riddles with hidden messages. In the light of modern science it seems that when these mysteries describe how things become solid in our world—the language of light—they are actually describing the basic principles of quantum mechanics and string theory. According to one linguistic scholar, Laird Scranton, hieroglyphs are a quantum mechanical language! I think this obelisk is engraved with these dimensional principles.”

  Watching her face as she examined the tall red granite form, he wondered if her information came from inner knowledge as well as academic study.

  “Back to Marcion, if I may,” Simon said. “Like Jesus, maybe he knew something that threatened the status quo? What else explains the concerted cover-up of everything he said? Do you suppose Marcion knew anything about what Jesus studied, even where he studied?” Simon paused, looking off into space he searched for an answer to his own question and then continued, “Let’s go walk in the gardens. It’s one of the most magical places on Earth. Maybe the setting will help our insights flow.”

  They stood up and gathered their belongings as the hungry hound followed closely behind, hoping for another treat.

  As they walked along, Simon admired Sarah’s off-white loose linen dress. Her elegance thrilled him. Her long and muscular legs and dark leather sandals reminded him of an early Roman patrician woman. Simon wanted to touch her; however, he was totally committed to the strategy that he was sure would eventually get him everything he wanted. Maybe, when she knew him better, she’d be willing to move beyond discussing ideas.

  Strolling along they marveled at the five-hundred-year-old umbrella pines. The thick canopies way up high were sculpted by salty wind and afforded delicious coolness below. The ancient pathways under the proud trees seemed to be in another dimension, the world of ancient gods and Roman aristocrats. As they neared the Villa Medici, Simon remarked that Galileo had been imprisoned there by order of the Inquisition from 1630 to 1633 CE, a powerful example of thought suppression in those days. While he spoke, sun warmed the moist cool air rising out of the gardens; everything shimmered.

  Lake in the Borghese Gardens

  Sarah forgot all about heretics as they selected the perfect spot to spread out the blanket on a small rise sloping down to a sparkling blue lake. The lovely Roman temple across the lake looked like a temple for Venus. She laid out fruit and sandwiches while Simon uncorked red wine. Everywhere around them were delightful glimpses of the villas and gardens of the Renaissance elite. Sarah wondered if they could focus on anything as serious as Marcion in this enchanting setting.

  But as Simon poured the ruby liquid into her glass, he said, “Sarah, I’ve been wanting to ask you, why was Marcion so determined to start a new religion based on cutting out the Hebrew Bible and any references to it?”

  Sarah wished he’d just let her relax for a moment and enjoy lunch, but this discussion was the reason they were together today, so she sat up and replied in her lecture voice, “He believed the god of the Hebrew scripture—Yahweh—was not the same god as the one Jesus described. He believed the new religion could not develop if it retained the old Jewish god. This attitude was common during the early second century, so Marcion wasn’t really that extreme. For example, although Marcion wasn’t a Gnostic, many of the Gnostics of his day had a more negative attitude toward the Hebrew god than Marcion did. For many Gnostics, Yahweh was a jealous, murderous, and avenging monster! Many firmly believed that Jesus came to abolish the worship of this ancient tribal god. They said he came to Earth to teach people god is compassionate.

  Sarah’s voice grew more animated. She had forgotten all about her desire to relax and enjoy lunch. “Marcion said that Yahweh was the god of law and Jesus was the teacher of love. Regardless of who the Hebrew god actually was, Marcion wanted Christians to start out fresh with a New Covenant based only on what Jesus said. So he founded his own churches and wrote his own scripture based on these principles. Back then, a lot of people agreed with him. By 150 CE his church was the largest Christian church in the world! Marcion brought more converts to Christianity than any other preacher during the second century, and they used his bible, now lost. His church was a threat to the supremacy of the emerging church in Rome based on Peter as the vicar of Christ. In reaction to Marcion, the Petrine Christians attached their own writings to Hebrew scripture. The truth is, Marcion inspired the creation of the New Testament!”

  Simon had been lying on his side watching Sarah as she spoke. Now he propped himself up on one elbow. “Okay,” he broke in, “So if Marcion had his way back then, Jews today would have our own scripture; Christians would have theirs. If it had gone that way, maybe there’d be less fighting in the world now? Regardless, the early Christians who followed Saint Peter erased Marcion from history, and they must have had their reasons. What were they?”

  Sarah nodded vigorously. “That’s what I ask myself every single day. It’s the core topic of my dissertation,” Sarah responded. “Around 150 CE, early Roman Christians began suppressing the Gnostics and the Marcionites. When Constantine adopted Peter’s Church in the early fourth century, this religious-political fusion produced a violent and insanely bloody culture. At the end of this period, dark ages ensued that weakened militaristic Roman Christianity, barbarians took Rome, and the lights went out. The more I look into this period—when time wound down to zero and then moved forward through 500 CE—I see it as a great big wrong turn. Next came a thousand years of schism, brutality, and holy wars.”

  He watched her animated face and her hands, which pulled compulsively at blades of grass as she spoke. I’m sitting here with a beautiful girl I can’t touch. Maybe it goes all the way back to that wrong turn? I’m the guy who is supposed to find a Jewish girl so that my children will be Jewish. She has a father who’d shoot me if he saw me with her today. Maybe this weird separation is coming from some kind of strange shadow, some kind of divisive force from way back in time that separates us now?

  “Can you be more specific?” he interjected. “You say Marcion was not a Gnostic. Most of what we hear about the Gnostics is that they saw
everything as black and white, dualistic, and that they hated their bodies. Was Marcion like that? Maybe he was since his communities were ascetic and taught people to avoid sex. What was that all about anyway?”

  Sarah turned to look at him, her eyes wide with excitement. “It fascinates me to see you take the same path I’ve taken. Right now I’m deeply immersed in Gnostic sources looking for answers to those questions. Gnostic simply means “to know.” Many Middle Eastern, Druidic, and Greek philosophical schools were Gnostic. When the Essene and the Nag Hammadi scrolls were discovered and translated, finally we could read what these forgotten people thought about, not just what their enemies—the Christians—said about them.

  “Now we know that the period just before Jesus and just after was tumultuous. For example, as you said, what we always hear about the Gnostics is how they hated their bodies. But in those days marriage and childbearing were the kiss of death for women who married in their teens and who usually died very young after having many children. How could a woman like that be spiritual and have time to think as I do? No wonder people seeking spirituality often avoided sex! Many thinkers hoped that religions would adopt entirely new beliefs that could bring peace; Jesus was that hope. Marcion is pivotal because he built a religious establishment based on his belief that Jesus came to our world to abolish the old law and establish a new religion. But even though the calendar dates wound down to zero and then started up again, Christianity did not start fresh! Like a stinky old garbage dump, more layers were piled on the moldy old ideas, the old angry god growled in the trash, and Marcion and the Gnostics were crushed.”

  Simon nodded. “From a Jewish point of view, the winners—the Roman Catholic Church—set themselves up as legal murderers. They carried out genocide against the heretics and conspired to control the world from Rome. This lethal combination of religion and imperialism gave wings to the angry jealous god of the Hebrew Bible. This is exactly what Marcion said would happen! When Christians retained the old god, they allowed Yahweh to possess Christianity. Religious fanaticism intensified during the Dark Ages, became perverted during the Inquisitions, and now the Church is collapsing morally and financially in a wasteland of priests abusing sex and their vows. When I look at it as a Jew, Christians are more atavistic than we are. Just when the Jews were evolving and outgrowing the ancient characteristics of the old tribal god, the Christians put frosting on him and spread him globally! During the Inquisitions, the Jews became more compassionate and cried out for mercy when Christians persecuted them.”