‘And so, as the moon had shown Joseph that morning in his garden he was destined to become the first guardian of this sacred knowledge, which he took westward to the island of Glastonbury, to that land of Druid priests. They would come to call this knowledge, The Mystery of the Holy Grail.’
75
DO NOT TOUCH ME!
In the early hours before day rise, the mother of the Lord and the other women went to the rock-hewn tomb in Joseph’s garden to see to the proper anointing of their master’s body. Magdalena was late in following and she had not yet reached the garden when she was met by the mother and the others returning again from the tomb. They told her that on arriving they had found the tomb open and empty. In and around the tomb they had seen a vision of angels who said their lord had already risen and to look for him among the living.
Magdalena, full of concern, returned with the others to the cenacle to tell the men and found only Lazarus-John with Simon-Peter in the upper room.
Upon seeing them Simon-Peter came directly to the mother to beg her forgiveness. He recounted how on the night of Passover he had denied his Lord three times for fear of his life. Because of this, full of shame, he had gone to Olivet where he found a cave. In it he had slept fitfully until awakened by an overwhelming effulgence. It was the brilliant form of his master illuminating the gloom of his cave. His master told him to go and tell the others what he had seen.
The Mother of the Lord recounted what the women had seen: angels, rolled away stones and an empty grave. Full of wonder the men resolved to see it and took themselves out of the city with Magdalena following in their train.
By the time the three of them arrived at the tomb a red-gold promise of sunrise lay on the margins of the horizon. Lazarus-John was carrying the lamp and he was first through the low door of the sepulchre. He told them what he saw: a great gash in the earth, a deep cleft had opened up and now the linen cloths were lying on one side of it and the head napkin on the other.
Simon-Peter, having by now entered the sepulchre himself, confirmed that the grave was empty. There followed some discussion between them and not knowing what they should do they left to find the other disciples.
Magdalena remained behind.
Alone at the entrance to the sepulchre a deep sense of loss beckoned tears from her eyes. Her master was gone, his body was not found and she did not know how he could return again without it. Not having seen the angels like the others she wanted to know it for herself but she had lost her spirit sight! She watched the sun rise over the hills and when it cast its benevolent rays on the mouth of the tomb she braced herself and dared to look inside.
She gasped.
Lit up by the birthing light were two angels, one at the head of the great stone bier and the other at the foot of it. She had regained her sight!
Woman, why do you weep?
She harnessed her mind to answer. ‘Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have taken him!’
Fearful she turned to go but there was a man standing before her, haloed by sun. She did not know him but he seemed full of the power of bourgeoning and sprouting life, as if he were a gardener, a planter or a cultivator. To see him made her hope that he might know where her master’s body would be.
He took the words from out of the mouths of the angels,
‘Woman, why do you weep?’
‘Sir, if you have borne his body from here, tell me where you have laid it and I will take him away.’
The man now called her by her old name, ‘Mary!’
The memory of her master’s words rose through her feeling to her thinking:
Unite with the bridegroom in the bridal chamber of your heart, and from this union will arise in you a knowledge of Who I Am!
Her eyes saw Him now! The youthful body of Jesus, in all its flawless fullness!
‘Master!’ She moved to go to him, but he forestalled her.
‘Touch me not, dear Magdalena, for it will pollute me, the mystery is not yet consumed. Christ must yet unite fully with me. Go, tell the others to wait, tell them not to be sorrowful for I will soon come to them!’
Joyful and obedient, she ran all the way back to the cenacle.
76
LEAVE-TAKING
That evening when his followers were gathered in the cenacle Christ Jesus returned to bestow peace upon them. He brought them the comfort of the Holy Spirit and they witnessed the nascent forces, the creative power, of his resurrected body of light.
Forty days passed in His presence and He taught them sacred things. When they listened to his teachings they imagined themselves in those far off places they had frequented with Him. Sometimes they saw themselves in a boat floating on the glittering Sea of Galilee with the sun shimmering in their eyes and their ears resounding with his words:
‘Become fishers of men!’
But the vision of Christ Jesus walking and talking among them began to fade. He seemed to be ascending to a place beyond their ken and they began to fear they would never again see Him and so they lost sight of him. Only Lazarus-John, Magdalena, and the Mother of God could sense how he hovered over them in blessing.
Full with despair, Jacob, stepbrother of Jesus, knelt in prayer from dawn to dusk. So intensely did he beseech with his questing heart to know the One whom he had not recognised until the very end that Christ Jesus appeared to him in the fullness of his glory.
He said to him, ‘Remember the bread and the wine, my brother? You who did not eat and drink of it must do so now in memory of me. I entrust this sacrament to your care – remember, where two or three are gathered in my name, I will be in the midst of them.’
‡
‘And so it was, pairé, that in that cenacle, Jacob celebrated the first sacrament with the disciples and it affected him so deeply that in lives to come he would find the strength to suffer martyrdom time and time again to protect Jerusalem – that sacred place where he had celebrated the sacrament.’
‘So is this is why Crusaders go to the east and feel so much kinship with Jerusalem, Lea?’ I asked.
‘Yes, for every Crusader senses in the depths of his soul that in the soil and air and water of Jerusalem there remains a memory of Christ Jesus, and for this reason to them it is the centre of the world.’
All things were making sense.
‘And the Pentecost?’ I asked.
‘Well, pairé, as you know, on the tenth day after the Lord’s ascension His disciples were assembled again at the cenacle to observe the ancient festival of Pentecost. The celebrations had lasted all night and it was near sunrise when a wind entered the city. This was that ancient wind called Ruach and it moved again over the colossal bridge, sweeping through archways and forcing its way through the streets until it made a rise to the upper room where they were gathered.
‘Ruach, Elohim, Aur! Breath, Elohim, Light!
‘This is the Holy Spirit!’ I said.
‘Yes, pairé, and the disciples had heard the roar of it before, on the night of their Lord’s sacrifice. Now it entered the room and swept over the mother of the Lord and she became a pillar of fire before their eyes; a fire whose cool flames swathed them in good will.
‘Yes Lea! This is like our consolamentum, this is the consoler!’
‘It came through the mother because it was her task to unite even those who were not kin by blood…this is the community of the future, pairé, which Christ Jesus had said Peter would lead.’
‘I remember now! How the water had tasted of wine at the marriage of Cana where the husband and wife were not kin! I remember now what He said about the fish swimming together as one!’
‘You remember well, pairé, but do you know what it means? It means, that it does not matter what blood a man possesses, what nation or race he belongs to, if his soul has married the spirit then he can unite with others who have done the same.’
I took a moment to understand it. ‘Why does the church of Peter not recognise this spirit of the Pentecost, then? Why
do they persecute us? Is it because we have a reckoning of it?’
‘Because they fear it, pairé.’
‘Why do they fear it?’
‘Because if all men believed they could come close to God without a priest or a church they would fall into error.’
‘Perhaps this is the same reason the church of Rome does not allow the translation of the bible into the vernacular; why only priests can own a bible without incurring punishment?
‘But listen now, pairé,’ she continued, ‘for I will tell how a mighty awakening was experienced by the disciples and they went into the world to proclaim the good news to those who would hear it. They were not welcomed by Rome or by Israel and many of them suffered horrible martyrdom and yet knowledge of Christ Jesus survived despite Roman and rabbinic hate. It survived because of their suffering, which engendered love.’
‘And what of the women?’
‘They lived on. Some of them grew old and died far from Jerusalem. But they all returned, whether in body or in spirit, to be at the side of the mother of their Lord and to see her taken by the spirit of Mary to the bosom of the great mother in the heavens.’
‘Oh my, Lea! This is a beautiful picture!’
‘Yes, that is how each, in their own way, drank from their master’s cup and surrendered their lives for the One who had always been worshipped by men and had been called by different names; the God who lived and died like a man – Christ Jesus.
Lea fell quiet. Her words were spent.
I went to the window to watch the sun throw its gold mantle on the world. For a moment the entire Gospel stood before my eyes in the awakening clouds that were spread over the skies above the valleys and mountains, rivers and streams of the world.
‘Yes…it is magnificent!’ I said.
She pointed to the dawn and she seemed to grow tall, white and fair before my eyes. I trembled, for her voice was grave, ‘Look there! Do you see a world full of wonders and marvels?
I looked and I saw a twilight land of strange buildings and contraptions.
‘That is the future. Do you see, pairé, how there are castles that fly, carriages that go at great speeds without horses and torches that have no flame? In this future, pairé, the thoughts of men will travel like lightning from one end of the earth to the other and a man will be able to hold all the books in the world in the palm of one hand.’
‘All the books in the world!’ I smiled to think on it. ‘This is truly remarkable!’
‘Yes, but every light casts a shadow.’ She looked at me, cold and solemn. ‘The greater the light of goodness the darker the shadow of evil. Wars will continue again and again and lead to dark times. In the past men fought over their misunderstandings of Jesus and Christ, now they battle because they no longer understand the Spirit, but in the future the battle will be for the human Soul itself. It shall be more heinous and violent than any other battle that has come before! In those far flung days what is written in John’s Apocalypse shall come to pass: the woman with the sun in her belly and the moon at her feet shall come to give birth to the spirit of Christ in the clouds; the soul of humanity will give birth to the spirit and the dragon will try to kill it as soon as it is born in the same way that Herod tried to kill Yeshua. That is when this gospel shall be needed pairé; before the end of the fifth age.’
I was breathless, caught in the swirl of images, which she had shown in the sky before my eyes. Fear and dread entered into my heart and a sudden thought came. ‘Soon I will descend this pog, Lea, and what you have had me write down on those parchments,’ I pointed to them, ‘will turn to dust. It has all been for nothing! No man will know the Fifth Gospel!’
‘There is no accident in the universe pairé, nothing is ever lost. What you have written will come to you again, though differently and you will remember.’
‘What must I remember?’
‘Look at me, pairé, what do you see?’
Before my open gaze her face seemed to change: one moment I saw the evening star, the next she was Demeter the mother of nature, again she was Solomon’s bride and after that the lady who steals into the heart of every troubadour, the ideal woman, the good and beautiful and true in the soul of every poet. When her face paused in its transformations I realised with a sense of wonder and awe that I was gazing at a countenance that I had only seen in my imaginations, it was the face of Mary, the Galilean mother of Jesus. I realised that I had been in the company of wisdom all along, night after night! As I suspected she was the rose which by another name was Evangelea, the angel that carries the Fifth Gospel into the souls of men to make them evangelists and she was directing my gaze not to the future this time but to the past again. When I looked back I saw a hillock overhung by dark clouds on which stood three crosses. There was a man standing beneath them holding a spear in his hands and staring at me. In that fragment of a moment the two places were woven into the same space in life’s evolving stream and our souls could look upon one another, knowing the other as himself. Ah!
It was only an instant, but to me it was an eternity of gazing with wonder and awe at all that would pass in between: sorrows and battles, births and deaths, lifetimes. Just as she had said.
After that Lea lifted a further veil to show me other things, things that had passed and things that would come to pass, things I am not permitted to tell suffice to say that I understood now how this very moment was the culmination of what had begun long ago on that hillock called Golgotha, and that many who were here at Montsegur had been with me before.
And so it was that when I had looked into myself, I had found Lea, and now, miraculously in Lea, I had found myself.
77
THE BEE AND I
I am not a troubadour and yet I sing. I am a bishop and yet I do not belong to any church. I have come to what I know by way of ignorance and what I possess is mine because I am dispossessed. I am only here because I have sacrificed all certainty and yet, that is how I am certain that the end of my song is only a beginning.
It has taken me long to descend this pog and all the while you have listened to my song. I think you and I have always known how it would end, haven’t we? I am not sad for it and neither should you be. I must atone for all the lives which I have taken and all the mistakes that I have made. Those that have suffered at my hand are now waiting to pronounce judgement on me on that field below, this is the Wisdom of God and I bow down to it in freedom and choose to love even those whose task it is to carry it out.
And yet all is not lost. I look now to the summit of Bidorta like that centurion who long ago sat upon a horse waiting for the sun to creep over the rim rock of the mountains. This dawn however, I am not looking for Mithras, I am looking for the sign that our treasure is safe for only then can we go to our deaths in peace. My eyes are fixed to that summit as I walk into the palisades built to contain us on this field, a field which one day you will know as The Field of Fires. Holding the hand of the Marquésia de Lantar on one side and the hand of Saissa de Congost on the other I step onto the logs constructed into one great pyre and I think of Guilhabert.
Poor Guilhabert had seen the future those moments before he died. He had seen where his promise might lead and had been desperate for my forgiveness. How strange and yet how natural it is to know that he was once that stubborn woman, Claudia Procula! In Guilhabert her independence had been transformed into service, her love into his joy, her devotion into his understanding. The woman I revered in one life became my dearest friend in the next, and so it will go on, from life to life.
But the soldiers of France are setting fire to the straw and the fagots that have been dipped in pitch. The air is damp and the smoke rises black at the perimeter and we, two hundred men and women, all Friends of God, huddle in the middle, watching the plumes stain the air around us. The black friars, the inquisitors and the Clergy move away, singing their songs and so they do not see what I see.
There is the sign! High above on the snowy summit of Bidorta a light is kindled,
a blaze of yellow fire as bright as the sun illuminates the dawn and causes us all to smile! I am full of peace, for the child is safe! You see amongst those many things that Lea showed me was the identity of the charge of the Marquésia de Lantar. That beautiful boy who is Lazarus-John born again. He is our greatest treasure, a child destined to be the founder of a great school of knowledge whose members will be called Rosicrucians, those who can add the living wisdom of the rose to the cross of death, for Lazarus John was baptised with fire by Christ Himself. Perhaps in those far off times I shall meet him again? Perhaps I shall be one of his followers?
Matteu will also safeguard books of John and those writings I have called The Fifth Gospel which are interpolated among them. For now they are safe! Lea showed me how in future times Matteu will return to find these treasures again as a young Grail historian, a German. He will save them from the grasp of unworthy souls.
But the bee’s buzzing takes me from my ruminations. It circles over my head one last time before flying upwards to that saffron dawn. And as the flames rise higher and come nearer and the heat begins to prick my skin – in that moment before the pain consumes me and my own screams fill my ears – I imagine that I follow the bee out of this momentary terror and waste. I imagine that I float over the Fields of Fires a moment before flying away with her to a rose hedge to wait for the future.
In that far off time the sun will continue to rise in the east and to set in the west, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci will have come and gone, thoughts will travel from one end of the earth to the other in the blink of an eye and a man will be able to hold all the books in the world in the palm of one hand. And if you are holding this book in your hand, then perhaps it is because The Fifth Gospel has not been forgotten?
Only you can know this with certainty, my friend, for although it is true that no accident rules the universe, it is also true that the heart of a man has a will and something of his future must remain a mystery, even to God.
Fifth Gospel: A Novel (Rosicrucian Quartet) Paperback Page 40
