Revelations of the Ruby Crystal

by Barbara Hand Clow

  Sarah smiled. “She’s great. She shared some stories about her life that I’m not free to repeat. You’d have to hear it from her. But when she shared her truth, the glitzy, arrogant veneer stripped away. The woman within is a loving and brilliant goddess. I am so happy to have another friend in Rome.”

  “I sense what you mean,” Simon said thoughtfully. “When I knew her and enjoyed her so much, sometimes the veneer cracked and I found the real Claudia. She is a proud, elegant, strong, and brilliant woman. I didn’t want to drop our friendship when I found you, but I had to release the lover. I’d like to have her as my friend again now that you’re fond of her. There is nothing greater in this world than friendship.

  “My father is my friend, which seems like an odd thing to say. Because he knew I wouldn’t always be his little boy, he befriended me by teaching me about the deeper aspects of life. He’s the reason I was able to have that experience in the Tomb of Mary. He prepared me by initiating me. We can’t be free in this sick world unless we are in touch with other dimensions. Now I realize my extended aura is multidimensional.”

  Sarah hung on to every word. She was joyful he was home, and she wanted to listen to him all night. She also felt there was something else, so she touched the ruby crystal while he told her more about Jerusalem. She said, “Something else prepared you for waking up; I feel there is something more. What is it?”

  Simon followed her eyes to the ruby. “Maybe you know something, Sarah, since I see you touching the stone? Tell me if you know something. What do you know about my sense of being smaller yet extended? Anything? This is very disorienting and intense for me.”

  She replied, “Something is radically altered in your field, the field in this room, and the way I feel you. When you described the vibrating strings in the air above her tomb that extend out to cosmic zones, you woke up my cells. Something rearranged in my body.” She dropped deeper into an altered state, with Simon holding her elbows to support her. “You made me feel less solid when you described yourself as a small seed and extended. I became filaments of dandelion seeds flying in the breeze. When I felt like that, I knew your seed would blossom soon within me, just like the filament carries the seed in the wind.

  She swayed slightly, like the dandelion seeds in the breeze she had just described. “Right now the ruby crystal is downloading a file in my brain so complex and multidimensional that it will take me a lifetime to explore it. But there is one thing I must tell you: today was the end of the Calendar, and I am so happy you came home because something did happen today, something that will take many years to unravel. We are being lifted into a quantum realm; Claudia says it’s the fourth dimension where everything functions in duality, non-locality, and by probable choice. Her definition is not the same as Einstein’s, since she describes a series of higher dimensions above the fourth. I think this is detectable, like you being in Mary’s tomb seeing the strings. When you told me about the icons of saints with golden auras, I could see the quantum fields in their halos.”

  She opened her eyes and continued. “We’ve had saints like Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, and Jesus, who were in touch with these expanded fields. What’s different now is many people won’t be able to avoid seeing these multidimensional fields. Since most people are all locked up inside with unprocessed emotional trauma, this awakening will create massive waves of healing yet also chaos. More and more people expanding means we will see good and brave acts again, such as ending war and protecting children. If enough people expand, our world can heal. We will find peace when we open.”

  “Well,” Simon said, laughing as he rose from the table, “If a cynical Jewish reporter can have a mystical experience in the Tomb of Mary, then anybody can. Let’s go see what my new state of advanced consciousness creates in bed!”

  Their lovemaking culminated in an ecstatic mutual orgasm that was so intense Sarah felt like she was passing out. Later as she drifted off to sleep, she felt something moving inside. She lay very quietly feeling new potent life, her egg in tension amid swimming sperms prodding it and pushing against its sheaf. Then one slipped inside. When Sarah awoke in the morning, she already knew she carried a new being in her womb, her secret for just a while.

  33

  Orvieto Cathedral

  Armando swept down Lorenzo’s tight spiral staircase and recoiled from the splattered blood and goo swarming with hungry little ants. God, what a beast! Emerging from the tower, he turned to his left to go out into the narrow alley and through an ancient round-topped iron-strapped gate to the garage where Lorenzo’s clients parked. He climbed into his vintage Karmann Ghia, gunned the tightly wound engine, and backed out. He was ravenous as he snaked his way to the Lungotevere de Cenci to make his way out of Rome. Soon he was on the way north to Orvieto for an early supper.

  Glancing up to his right as he drove along the Pozzo della Cava near Orvieto Cathedral, he noticed a placard that said the Cathedral would be open in the evening from now to Christmas. Maybe I’ll have the energy to go inside after dinner; now I need to think. He left his car at the Hotel Palazzo Piccolomini and then walked over to I Sette Consoli, his favorite restaurant in Orvieto when he dined with Claudia. He sat down at the table they enjoyed when they were still lovers back in 2002 and asked for a Montepulciano bottled that same year. Perhaps the taste of the grape will bring her back. The wine was outstanding. Once he had ordered dinner, he fell into profound stillness. He remembered their final dinner here when she told him about the cathedral, that it was built on top of a volcanic plug that probably formed when this area of Umbria was a seismic hotbed 370,000 years ago when the nearby crater lake, Lago Bolsena, formed. They had both thought it was strange Urban IV built a cathedral on a magma plug to house the chapel for the “Corporal,” an altar cloth said to be soaked in Christ’s blood. Why does the Church have to be so graphic?

  In 1263 a German priest on pilgrimage had offered Mass in a church in nearby Bolsena. The priest was in serious doubt about transubstantiation—the doctrine claiming that during Mass the wine is transformed into Christ’s blood. When the priest raised the host and whispered the magical words in Latin, he felt blood dripping on his wrists from the chalice, so much blood that it stained the altar cloth! Alarmed, he stopped the Mass, something a priest must never do. Feeling confused he wrapped the altar cloth and took it to Pope Urban IV in Orvieto, who declared it a miracle and instituted The Feast of Corpus Christi: every year on that day the altar cloth in the reliquary was carried through Orvieto in procession and returned to the sacred chapel. The cathedral, which had been constructed in the thirteenth century, housed some of the finest works of medieval artists, such as Luca Signorelli and Fra Angelico.

  When Armando made a pilgrimage to Orvieto, he always came here to view the magnificent frescoes, yet he had not returned since Claudia left him. He gazed out the window to a thick, rough stone ledge, wondering if he was going crazy while he shoveled pici all’ Arrabiata into his mouth. Never thought about it before: the name of this dish means “angry pasta.” Maybe I like it because I’m angry all the time? Claudia insisted the chapel of the transubstantiation was built on a volcanic plug for some reason, yet I laughed at her. How could I? Considering what I found out with Lorenzo today, she knew a lot. She always knew things.

  His mind drifted back to that afternoon ten years ago when he had been in the Corporal Chapel staring at the exquisite gold and silver enameled reliquary wondering if Christ’s blood was really inside. He had felt compelling energy coming from the reliquary that upset his stomach. Claudia had been very annoying that day and fomented a big crisis over the art. He thought she was losing it, so he told her in a loud voice to shut up, which upset the mumbling Christians gazing piously up at the reliquary. This made her so angry that she eventually broke with him. He could still see her proud ass from behind the very last time she went down his stairs; he felt panic in his heart. Funny, here it is ten years later and I know I am supposed to be here tonight. He finished his supp
er and thanked the waiter.

  Armando climbed the magnificent stone stairs up to the golden façade and turned around to survey the wide piazza and the narrow streets below crammed with charming old houses divided into apartments and cafes. Everything was lit up to chase away the December gloom. It had been summer when he was here with Claudia ten years ago, when the flowerboxes on stairways and window ledges were filled with deep red geraniums and white daisies.

  The cathedral in the Sienese Gothic style was like the Siena Cathedral by Giovanni Pisano, the great master who was discovered by Armando’s ancestors. Lorenzo Maitani had added many Sienese features to Orvieto, maybe because they also patronized Maitani. Claudia is right: the volcanic plug does make the cathedral feel like it’s a mountaintop. Why would anybody go to all that trouble? It must have been almost impossible to build it! She said they did it because it collects deep earth forces that the Church broadcasts around the world. I laughed at her then; I wouldn’t now. My father was privy to many arcane Catholic secrets. I wish he’d shared them with me, but he didn’t want me to have more power. I wonder if my father thinks I am evil?

  He walked through the entrance into the dimly lit nave as things Claudia had said to him flooded back. Do I still love her? The alternating thick rows of alabaster and travertine on the high interior walls were like dramatic dark and light zebra stripes. The aisles on each side of the nave were sectioned off by round arches held up by thick round columns of alternating rows of travertine and basalt. He’d forgotten the beauty of the Gothic frescoes in the cavelike apse. Back then while he was admiring them, Claudia went on and on about the basic building materials. He got sick of her voice when she said the marble floors were resonating with the volcanic core. Like a witch she whispered in his ear that alabaster was the stone of the Egyptian goddess, Bast. If that wasn’t enough, she insisted travertine resonated with sacred springs, since travertine formed when hot water mineral deposits harden the soil. She said these springs gushed with the fluids of the goddess hardened into crystal. Of course, then the basalt in the columns was cut out of the volcanic cone like columns in the Underworld! Right? All this was just too much. Right in the apse he had said in a loud and nasty voice, “No wonder my mother can’t stand you! Don’t you ever shut up? The only thing that shuts you up is a penis in your mouth!” Claudia was silenced while the pilgrims shuffled nervously away from her. Why was I so mean to her?

  Be that as it may, the fight that ended their relationship had ignited over the art in the Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio. Now he realized he had never understood what made her so mad; he knew his return to the chapel would be disturbing. As he entered, he saw her angry face telling him she hated the way he hid from himself, the way he refused to see that this art expressed his spiritual journey. What did she mean? First he looked up to “Christ in Judgment” by Fra Angelico. What was he thinking about when he was way up on the scaffold eight hundred years ago? He was a believer and I am not, yet I carry him in my blood. I wonder if he really believed in the themes he painted. Who did judge Christ? Was it Yahweh?

  He walked over to view the first painting in the Judgment Day series by Signorelli, the frescoes that always got Claudia’s attention. “Deeds of the Antichrist” was very special because the lower left-hand corner had a very lifelike portrait of Fra Angelico standing with Luca Signorelli and viewing the scene with the Antichrist. When he was a little boy and his father brought him to see Fra Angelico and Signorelli, Armando was always captivated. He never looked much at the rest of the painting because seeing his ancestor standing with Signorelli was a thrill. Maybe that’s why I am a painter? Fra Angelico was a grown-up version of himself, and by age thirty they were twins. That’s what made her mad: I wouldn’t look at the rest of the painting even though she said it is about me. Well, what? The Antichrist looks like Christ while the devil whispers in his ear. I know all about that one!

  His gut hardened when he looked up at the sky above a crowd of contemporary historical figures—Raphael, Dante, Boccaccio, Christopher Columbus—all viewing the Antichrist. I always looked at the famous people and never noticed they were staring at that yucky smoking black blob in the sky being chased out of the heavens by the Archangel Michael. Nearby, admirers of the Antichrist were dying in a rain of fire. Now I remember what she said to me: “Armando, Signorelli makes a point in this fresco: when devils whisper in your ear, evil forces are fighting a great battle with heaven for your soul.” Her voice lowered to a raspy whisper to make sure nobody in the chapel could hear and she spit in my ear, “Now that I’m thirty, I realize the devil whispers in your ear when you use me sexually. The war in heaven rages and you transform into a Fallen Angel to ravage me. You will never touch me again.” She had strode haughtily away while he remained behind to admire the Pieta Ippolito Scalza, a disturbing painting of the grieving Madonna and the dying Christ. It was sad because Signorelli portrayed his son Antonio as the Christ, since Antonio died of the plague while Signorelli executed the painting.

  I wonder if my father would care if I died?

  His stomach was filling with acid and bile, and he wondered if he could go on. But he wanted answers. He went over to view “The Damned are taken to Hell and received by Demons,” and this time he really looked at it. My god, that is magnificent. In an apocalyptical vision of entangled writhing bodies, Signorelli had evoked the agony of the damned. Decomposing demons staggering around with frayed wings picked at convoluted piles of naked bodies, a great collision of dimensional forces. I am rotting inside and I’m only forty. My heart is made of stone; my cells weep while water flows through me as if I am the River Styx.

  Armando in tears in the Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio

  Armando wasn’t aware that he was standing in the middle of the chapel like a shrouded wraith with tears streaming down his gaunt cheeks and soaking his elegant linen shirt. People walked by him wondering, “Who is that wretch?” I am one of them, the damned, and the whole rest of my life will be miserable. I can’t go to Confession because the Antichrist lurks in the bowels of the Church like a tapeworm. I can’t ravage women anymore to push hell out of my mind. How did I get this way?

  He walked over to “The End of the World.” Great thing to see on the day the world ends! The painting was of cities being destroyed by great storms while people fled burning apocalyptic skies. The Sibyl sits on one side with her book of prophecies while King David raises his hand to predict the end of the world. Funny, that’s the Sibyl Claudia always talked about. Sarah too. I remember being disgusted with both of them and women in general. But now I am not sure. I must heed these warnings. What a terrible age I’ve grown up in, the age that abandoned belief. I studied these paintings when I was young to master Signorelli’s fantastic technique, but I never thought about what he was trying to communicate. I need to be forgiven, but not by a priest. I need to be forgiven by the people I hurt. I need to remember how I became one of the damned.

  Later Armando climbed in between delicious linen sheets in an opulent suite in the Hotel Piccolomini, the same suite where he had spent his last night with Claudia before their final fight in the cathedral. They’d had too much red wine, and he pounded on her until she was nearly dead. Like a vampire he sucked the life out of her, not caring what she felt. Tonight before going to bed, he took a long luxurious bath in the white marble tub. Relief came with the warm water as the marble purified him, a cleansing baptism. He asked for one thing before he went to sleep. Please give me a dream that will help me remember when I became one of the damned. Drifting off, he felt very strange because he was getting younger. I am getting smaller and smaller.

  Waves of white clouds in a pure blue sky passed through his mind as he felt his little hand clasped by the large hand of Father Cesare Vasari. “Now, come along with me, Armando. You are ready for your First Communion, so first you must confess to me. You cannot have Communion with Christ until first you tell me all of your sins.” Deep green cedars passed by while dusty yellow soil
crunched underfoot as they walked on the path through the woods to a tiny chapel. “This is our secret place, Armando, a special place where you can always come with me. Your mother loves this little chapel. But you must never tell her I brought you here because it is our secret. You will see what I mean.”

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” his little, high voice said expectantly. Armando was in a place in his mind that had closed long ago. A puppy floated by, the puppy he had crushed soon after he went to the chapel with Father Cesare. His mother Matilda’s tear-filled blue eyes passed through the back of his mind. Back, back, as Lorenzo said . . . My body is being stroked and massaged, I feel helpless. “Now, Armando, this is our little secret, a secret you must never tell. Your time to feel Jesus has come; I am Jesus for your First Communion. When I become him, you will be in heaven.” Father Cesare stroked him all over his small body. He felt jolts of hot energy when Father touched his little penis while rubbing his belly. “You’ve confessed, so you are pure and ready. You have told me you already touched it even though we told you not to. So you chose to have Jesus; you chose Jesus, Armando.”

  Darkness surrounded Armando with night sounds roaring in his ears—the wind, loud insects, and a barking dog. I am a horse being ridden, a horse being pushed and pushed. Around the chapel, the stars sparkled and a soft breeze came. He was in the starry heavens traveling to a planet. Maybe I am going to the Moon? Yet his body lay there in filth and pain, broken as if somebody had beaten him. A whisper came in his ear just when he thought he’d never get to go home, “Now you are ready for your First Communion next week. Do not tell your mother because this is our secret with Jesus. If you tell her, then it will be a sin and you will have to come for another Confession with me.”