What Is Growing Inside Maria

by Heidi King

Bar is Messy

  By Steve Banks

  Andrew,

  I find myself quite fetching these days when I look in the mirror. Have a pin mustache, suspenders, Panama Hat and wife beater.

  Hot girls in the bar last night… right on! Bar is a mess though… cleaners can’t get in.

  Steve

  P.S. I know what everything tastes like.

  Response:

  Hey Steve,

  Good to hear you got skinny girls in the bar. Remember a hard on counts as personal growth. Put that on your resume.

  Andrew

  P.S. Why? Why on earth would you think to eat hair follicles?

 

  Masonic Pillars in the Rosicrucian Temple

  By Mathew Hope

  When I arrived at Bambu Hostel in David, I asked for the discount I heard was given to volunteers at The Lost and Found. I was denied. I went back to the pool where María was lounging on a deck chair, wearing a bikini and soaking up the sun. There was a small collection of backpackers dangling around her aura. I offered her a kiss on the cheek. She looked at me as if I had been testing her. She grabbed the back of my head and gave me a kiss on the lips. I told her we had to pay the regular price for the dorm.

  “Dorm?” she said, raising an eyebrow. She took off her sun glasses and sauntered up to the front desk. She came back with a private room at half price.

  “I guess I don’t have the face for a discount,” I said. She smiled sympathetically, as if she detected resentment.

  “Oh Matt,” she said. “I am a woman. There’s no face. It’s your eyes that see what you want to see.”

  The first few weeks with María I was waiting… waiting with nervous anticipation to see if she felt the same as me. I was ecstatic to learn that she did, and even more so to discover we were exclusive. Now I am still on edge. The interview, where we put our best face forward, is over, and we are now making the contract. Everyone writes this differently but we sign when we are on the same page… when we both know what we would consider betrayal… when we think we know what the other is capable of.

  At three a.m. that night, María woke me up.

  “Did you hear that?” she said. I listened and heard the distant sound of thunder.

  “A storm?” I said.

  “Yeah, I have been counting. It’s getting closer. We have to leave now.”

  She pulled a small backpack from under the bed and told me to get dressed – not like a gringo – while she looked for a taxi. We took it to a 24 hour fast food chicken place not far away and continued on foot, toward the David fairgrounds.

  After a few minutes, María dropped her backpack and flopped down on a curb in an area with almost no houses. It was dark and I could really only see her in flashes of lightning. Despite the electric, metallic smell that filled the air, the rain had yet to come. María took my hand, and we sat in the blackness.

  “Matt, there is something I have to do – three things actually, that Tuna asked me to do, during our last visit.” There was stress in her voice.

  “You don’t have to believe any of this. I don’t even believe it, but listen. You know she confessed that her husband was digging under the giant stones with the symbols, the petroglyphs, to find the gold of La Mina. The gold that everyone thinks came from a mine. Well, what she didn’t say when you were there was that he was working for the hydro dam. He was a night watchman in a nearby town, Los Planes.”

  I knew Los Planes; you pass it on the way to The Lost and Found from David. It is a huge ghost town, a collection of dark wooden complexes enclosed by a dense, foreboding ring of pines. It once boasted a school and even a hospital. But now it is all shut down and boarded up. A huge barbed wire fence surrounds it. Gabriel told me the hydro dam company built Los Planes in the ‘70s to house the workers’ families.

  “Well,” María continued, “Tuna told us that the Indian legend says that the rocks will rise when the outsiders shake the earth and light the fires. Who else could that be but the dam? They are moving the earth to drill tunnels and the fires are the electricity they’re making.”

  Light rain came and I took back my hand. I was clueless as to where this was going, but I knew if the details came at three in the morning that this was all an exposition she needed to convince me of doing something stupid. I was getting a little pissed at the trap she set for me. I asked her to get to the point.

  “Matt, the gold Tuna’s husband stole was only part of the gold being extracted by the hydro company. It was kept in Los Planes until the American Invasion in ’89. They built that…”

  She grabbed my head and pointed it across a field to a large white building half illuminated by distant street lights. On the front was a large Egyptian symbol, the gold disk and colorful wings on either side.

  “Orden Rosacruz,” she said. “I don’t know how to say it in English. When they hauled off Noriega they built that temple to move some of the gold they were taking from Los Planes. But it was a cover to hide the gold from invading American soldiers.”

  I thought it was a test. I know María has balls. I know she plays with people – making them guess where her childlike sense of naivety becomes pure adult recklessness. I was about to call her bluff and express some disappointment when a bright flash cut through the darkness and the following boom of thunder shook the ground. Several car alarms sounded, and the light rain became a crashing torrent all at once.

  María jumped to her feet. “There’s danger on the edge of town.”

  I sat waiting, letting myself get drenched. Fuck María. She grabbed her backpack and disappeared in the darkness. Within a few moments she reappeared under the light of the whitewashed building called the Orden Rosacruz. She rested the blade end of a tire iron between the double doors and then whacked it with a hammer, breaking the lock.

  Sure enough, there was an alarm, but it was clear now that María had timed her breaking and entering with the thunder of the storm and the wailing of the car alarms. Dogs barked, but they stopped when the alarm ceased. I was still waiting for police. I thought that building security systems, even in Panama, must be connected to the police.

  I got up and walked around the block to hide near the wall of the fairgrounds. My heart pounded and it seemed like forever, but nothing moved. A moment later the rain stopped and everything was once again silent and dark. I must have waited ten, fifteen minutes. Then I went to look for María.

  I looked at the building and before I was consciously aware that I was contemplating entering, the hair on my arms stood up. I don’t know what the hell overtook me, but before I knew it I was standing in front of the splintered doors and found myself pushing the doors open automatically, with no fear, like it was a lucid dream – a lucid dream I, like the others, was learning to control.

  It smelled like my old elementary school. Where I was there was nothing unusual, just a foyer with a low porcelain water fountain and small cloak room off to the side. Swinging doors led to an empty room, much like a community hall, with stairs stacked to the side. I heard a humming sound coming from across the room and instinctually followed it. The glossy hardwood creaked under my feet as I walked toward a small kitchen at the back.

  I found the origin of the sound. White and red wires lead from the wall to a sink full of water that muffled the sound of an alarm. Maria must have ripped it from the wall and dropped it there. Beside the sink was a note written in English and an arrow pointing to a flight of stairs at the back: This way to the ancient gallery.

  María had melted candles onto tin foil pie plates and placed them on every other stair. I picked one up to light my way. Each step groaned as I ascended to a room that had the feel of a waiting room to a university dean’s office. There was a big leather sofa and locked glass book cases with large leather bound books and group portraits of older, white men, some in formal wear and others in white robes. There were mysterious framed prints on the wall. Prints tha
t resembled old auspicious maps and puzzles filled with esoteric symbols and graphs, yet revealing no destinations or the locations of treasures. There was no sign of anything that looked as if the antechamber hid raided antiquities.

  On the door to another room, María had left a small paper held by a heavy brass knocker. The paper read, “Weird scenes inside the gold mine.”

  I pushed open the door. It led to an elaborate ritual hall dimly lit by two candles on a marble altar in front of me. The hall stretched on to the left and the right, disappearing in shadow. Facing me on the opposite wall was a large golden fresco of Isis standing over the coffin of Osiris. The flickering battle between the gloom and the candlelight made the fresco seem larger, more alive and ominous. I suppose Isis was raising Osiris from the dead. The fresco made me think of Dr. Anderson and the art María and Estrella had been painting at the Lost and Found. Placed along the other wall to either side of me were seats covered in purple velvet, like old movie theater seats. At the far end, I could barely make out two large pillars that stood like sentinels on either side of an ornately carved throne. I walked toward the pillars and saw they had perfectly symmetrical globes resting at the top, almost touching the high ceilings. María sat on the throne a couple of steps above the black and white chessboard tiles that covered the floor. She was barefoot and wearing a white robe. Tied to each of her arms were golden cords each about a meter long. Her clothes were folded in a neat pile in the corner of the hall.

  I was the first to break the silence. “María, there’s nothing here that looks like the gold idols of the Ngäbe.”

  Without responding, María stood up and pointed to another throne in the opposite end of the room. “Sit,” she commanded. I obeyed.

  María stood up and slowly circled around the altar, resting on the balls of her feet with each stride. She stopped at the altar with her back to me and blew out one of the candles. There was something else there that she picked up – a digital camera. She turned and lifted the last candle to her face, casting a giant shadow of herself on a dark curtain behind the velvet seats. She approached me, turning toward an electric organ near my throne. She pranced over and turned it on. A low electrical hum resonated through the room. On top of the organ she found a cordless microphone used for addressing groups. She tied it tightly around her neck like a collar.

  “Under your chair you will find a strip of cloth,” she breathed. “It’s your blindfold. Put it on.” I did as she told, without knowing why. I felt a current of excitement run through my body. I could see nothing.

  She spoke slowly, in a whisper, but when amplified through the organ speaker it sounded like she was all around me at once. “This is the story of the princess Janca, the daughter of the great warlord Chief Urracá of the ancient Ngäbe tribe. Janca fell in love with Tam Weh, a man from the next village. But she was already promised to a powerful shaman from that same village because the Chief Urracá needed the shaman’s magic to protect the villagers from the invading Spanish. When the shaman learned that Janca had fallen in love with Tam Weh, he cursed her. He cast a spell to transform her into her power animal on the next full moon. The shaman did not know that she was to become a black jaguar.”

  I heard a soft click and the quiet hiss from speakers. She turned up the volume. Her voice and breath, even louder now, resonated throughout the room.

  “Frightened at what she had become, she ran home and went to the room where she slept. When her father entered, he saw the jaguar and thought his daughter had been eaten. He ran at her, ready to tear her to pieces with his bare hands. Janca, in the form of the jaguar, fled.”

  I could see nothing through my blindfold but I could smell the waxy smoke and knew she blew out the last candle.

  “Urracá summoned all of the best hunters in the land to hunt the jaguar. Thinking that the cat had killed his one true love, Tam Weh took up a sword he had won killing a conquistador, ready to kill the cat. He tracked her to a cave high in the mountains. Catching a glimpse of her shining eyes, he drew his sword. Janca, defeated and overcome with sadness, waited to be killed. But then a strange thing happened. Their eyes met and he saw the sadness, saw Janca behind the face. The shaman had only given her the mask of a jaguar. Tam Weh dropped his sword. When Janca rested her paw on Tam Weh, he was transformed into a jaguar too.”

  The room went silent. I listened carefully. María took in a sharp breath that echoed through the room.

  “Matt?” She spoke softly but her amplified voice echoed in the temple hall. “Have you ever seen two cats fuck?”

  “No.” I kind of squeaked it out. My throat was dry. The darkness and the pulse of the organ mesmerized me. I felt like I was floating.

  “The male cat seems quite uninterested even though he can smell that the female is in heat. He can smell her from yards away. Maybe the male cat knows that she’s just dying to come. Cats have an uncanny ability to see in the dark. When the male of the species doesn’t pay attention, the female brushes by the docile male with her tail straight and stiff in the air and lets out a low pitched growl.”

  Although my blindfold held tight I knew she was near me now. I could feel the air change around me.

  “She’ll stick her wetness right into his face. He can smell her. He wants her but still he’ll wait. Just sitting there in the dark. He loves to humiliate the dripping female. He wants her to beg for it. But inside the male is an intensity he cannot suppress.”

  She was right in front of me now. I could feel the heat of her breath and smelled her – like lavender and sweat -- but her voice came through the speaker and echoed in all directions.

  “The female turns around and swipes at the male’s face. The female draws blood and quickly turns. With a ferocious hiss the male digs his claws into the female’s back, sinking his nails into her flesh. His cock is hard. He thrusts into her with his claws firmly tangled in the flesh of her back. He hisses with dark intensity. The female’s claws dig into the ground. She growls with such pain and ecstasy that the sound carries for miles.”

  She stopped and told me to take off my blindfold. The moment I pulled it off a blinding flash assaulted me from the darkness. It was her camera. For a brief moment, a stunning red glare blinded me and I felt a sharp sting across my forehead and right cheek. She whipped me with the cord that was tied around her wrists. I don’t know what happened to me… I never lose my temper but that fucking hurt. I swung my arms around trying to catch what hit me.

  I calmed down. It was a game. I could hear María breathing harder now. I just didn’t know from where. I got down on my hands and knees and slowly crawled in a kind of twisted adult hide-and-go-seek. There were brief moments where I could make out the camera’s red glare. I found her robe. She was using it to block a little sliver of light from under the door. I took off my belt, pants and underwear there. I moved her robe to let some light through so I could at least try to catch her shadow.

  She taunted me. “Meow, I’ve been a bad cat.”

  I felt my way to the throne where María had been sitting and rested behind it. I closed my eyes, trying to get them to adjust to the dark. When I opened them I could make out a nebulous dark form. She was sitting on one of the velvet movie theater chairs and there was something metal catching and reflecting the scant light under the door.

  “What will you do when you find me, Matt?” She had a sword. She had the point pressing into the floor and the hilt resting between her legs.

  “I’m wet, Matt,” she breathed. “When you catch, are you going to fuck me?”

  I could see her hands moving along the sword. She moaned softly through the organ speaker.

  “Osiris.” She took in a sharp breath. “The little ridges along the grip …”A pause. A breath. “Good exercise for the muscles.”

  When I moved from my position, I lost sense of where she was. I slowly crawled down the center of the floor. All
of a sudden I felt something. She heard me. She stopped breathing. It was the loose end of the cord tied to one of her wrists. Then I could see it – the red battery light for her camera. She heard me and we both lunged for it at the same time. She pulled the camera away from me, so I grasped at the cords. I got them just as she blinded me with another flash. She put her foot on my chest and forced me to the ground, but I wouldn’t let go of the cords. I pulled hard and she toppled on top of me, naked.

  This is all very graphic I know. I am not a porn writer but it is hard to convey just how the hell I would have done what I did – commit a serious crime that would get me time in the closest thing to hell – unless you knew how María has this ability, this ability to seduce you into turning off your rational mind. It is like she does it to herself, too.

  We were set to have sex and she stopped. She killed the momentum. It was like the details of some ritual in her mind were more important than the sex. She turned on the lights and made me help her push the marble altar between the pillars, the wooden pillars with the globes. She bent over the altar, and with her cords, I tied her legs to the base and her wrists around the pillars. Once she was tied, she told me to turn out the lights.

  Now most people would be pissed if they were having sex and the girl called out another guy’s name. It started as a whisper but then she didn’t hide it. As she climaxed her voice reached shouting level that brought me to reality. Images of a Panamanian jail almost destroyed my orgasm. She was calling out, “Osiris, Osiris!”

  Then María did it again. She flashed the camera and I fell back in temporary blindness. I heard her pull off the microphone and stumble around. I groped around for a moment, looking for my clothes. Suddenly I heard a crash – breaking glass. I jumped to my feet and smashed my toe against the altar on my way over to find my underwear and pants. They weren’t there. María must have tossed them aside.

  Then there was the blaring of a siren -- very loud.

  “María!” I shouted. “Cops! María, cops!”

  I found the light switch and then jumped into my pants that had been thrown across the floor, stuffing my underwear into my jeans pocket. If I get hauled off to jail in Panama, I thought, at least I have to go with my clothes.

  I recklessly ran past broken glass at the top of the stairs and stumbled down to the kitchen where I had entered. It wasn’t the cops, not yet. María had pulled the plug on the sink.

  There was a happy face below the note she had written there before. And another note: I bet that’s a face from the ancient gallery you never wore before… I love you.

  Outside, Maria was stuffing robes into her bag. “No time to wallow in the mire,” she said, “Let’s run!”

 

  Second in the Cock Fight

  By Steve Banks

  Poopy Pants,

  Gabriel hasn’t come to work in a while. Could he be sick?

  Minor setback on the zip-line. Came down when we were looking for Papa Smurf and clipped a backpacker. Looked pissed. But that might have just been because of the way his face was cut. Idiot… he needed plastic surgery before the zip-line clipped him. “Hahaha,” I laughed when he said he would sue. I don’t even own the place. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him that.

  O.K. some errors were made but if there is a law suit we can find people to blame.

  P.S. what is your address there in Canada? Do you have addresses in Canada? Do igloos have house numbers?

  P.P.S. Good new! We found Papa Smurf. Turns out Gabriel had taken some people to town for the cock fights. Well, they dressed Papa Smurf up as a rooster. Good news… he came in second! But, bad news too I guess… Gabriel says it is not so good to come in second in a cock fight. And here’s me… I thought a cock fight was two dicks making a dive for the anus in a threesome. I learn something new every day.

  P.P.P.S. Patrick I will no longer make fun of you… it is like poking a stick at a Down syndrome baby.

  P.P.P.S. I fart in your general direction.

 

  New Employee

  By Steve Banks

  Andrew,

  You should see me now. I got the cigar and accent now with the Panama Hat and wife beater. Snap my fingers and say, “Luz, una margarita más por favor.” Now all I need is the cocaine. Wait…

  Luz wears a tight little French Maid’s uniform now. Billed that to you.

  Looking for cleaners that can fit through the door, so we started interviews. Here is the girl I interviewed at a cool little bar called La Esmeralda:

  Can you speak English?

  Sí.

  Why is the letter C in the word yacht?

  Qué?

  No C, C, bitch.

  How do they get the Caramilk into the Caramilk bar?

  Anal es mas dinero.

  How do you feel about this uniform?

  Muy bueno.

  If I were an animal what animal would you want me to be?

  Grrrrr.

  Have you met Papa Smurf yet?

  I can smurf yes. I smurf real good. Grrrr.

  How do you feel about reporting people who do soft drugs?

  I having to go.

  Can you fit through this door?

  Does Patrick really need to come back?

  Steve

  P.S. Like you have never smelled your own dental floss. Why on earth would you eat yuka?

  If I could only screw her while she is on top of me and I had to keep eating a bowl of her shit then I would. And she stops riding when I stop chewing. And I would do it with a smile... you wouldn’t? I would eat her inner labia after that doctor from doctor 90210 removed. Hell, I’d eat it a week after it was removed.

 

  Return of the Blue Bus

  By Mathew Hope

  Consciousness is the road lit by the waking mind. The rest is darkness. The life of the soul reaches beyond the consciousness into the night. To find the light we venture into the darkness. The shaman can guide us through the darkness in ritual, or, as Freud said, we can ride the “king’s highway, the best route into the unconscious” and be our personal shaman through lucid dreaming. And when we truly understand our unconscious, when we have touched it, then we feel true freedom. Then we become a whole person.

  I looked down at the palm of my right hand and saw the crown. I knew I had entered my dreams with control. It was like greeting an old friend.

  María appeared in the distance in a white robe, the wind blowing through her hair and her arms spread open like she was welcoming the wind. Or maybe me. She smiled and then gestured for me to follow her up a flight of stairs. Above the stairs was a stone lintel with the words Novus Ordo Seclorum engraved upon it. I followed behind her up the stairs but after a bend in the staircase I saw that it was a little girl, not María, that I was chasing. She stopped and stared back at me with such a sad face, that of a little dark-haired girl in a tattered blue dress. Tears drove clean trails down her muddy cheeks. She ran to the top of the stairs and a vast wilderness opened up. As soon as I arrived, the trees began to wilt and die. They turned to ash and blew away. Now there was nothing but desert and two tall pillars. The little girl in the blue dress looked so sad, like she wanted me to help her. Suddenly a third pillar rose from the ground and the girl hid behind it, watching me shyly. At the top of her pillar was a crescent moon, and on top of the pillar to her left was a five pointed star. On the top of the pillar to her right was a shimmering cup. I thought it must have been the Holy Grail.

  I look down at my hand to make sure the crown, my dream symbol, was there. When I looked up again I saw that the three pillars were now people – angry looking people with weapons and Roman helmets.

  “Do you have the word?” one of them shouted.

  I looked up and he belted me on the forehead with a kind of wooden hammer, like a gavel.

  I fell to my right knee. When I regained focus I could see I was in what
looked like the courtyard of a great temple with high stone walls.

  I got up and saw a door to my left. I ran to it. Another man hit me on the head. I saw a door to my right and ran to it.

  I saw María. She was wearing a white robe, billowing in the desert wind, and her arms were outstretched, waiting to embrace me. Then they turned to the sad eyes ... sad for me. And they were for me. A snake wound between her feet. I felt a sharp burning pain in my groin then a blunt thud on the back of my head. I tried to look at the palm of my hand but everything went black. I have never experienced going black in a dream before. Like I was dead. I was frozen, I couldn’t move. Petrified in fear. At first I heard nothing. Then I heard the sound of a bus, followed by the sound of children singing, getting closer … the blue bus of children from the Volcano.

  I woke up struggling to breathe. I reached beside me in the bed for María. She wasn’t there.

 

  Dream Analysis

  By Dr. Mike Anderson

  Dear Mathew,

  Thank you for your email. I know we will see each other again next week for the next phase of our journey into the collective unconscious, but since you felt the urgency to share with me the details of your dream, I thought I would respond promptly in written form.

  Mathew, please don’t take this as if I am passing judgment, but my limited experience here has taught me to exercise caution before considering engaging in activities contrary to the law in countries such as this. As a Freemason, it would have been quite possible for me to arrange a visit to the Rosicrucian temple. You see, our fraternal orders, at the core, are one and the same. Rosicrucians are but Freemasons that believe our philosophies and rituals are owed to a much more distant period in antiquity – ancient Egypt. Let me start at the beginning, for the beginning is the end of your last lucid dream, the dream you have asked me to help you interpret.

  If you recall, the ancient Egyptians worshipped the gods Isis and Osiris. Isis was widowed but used an artificial phallus, the obelisk, to fornicate with her husband and give birth to Horus, the reincarnation of Osiris. Horus was the son of the widow. This was depicted in the fresco at the Rosicrucian temple and the story María chose to depict with her painting on one of the walls at The Lost and Found.

  What I didn’t explain was that this myth, if you will, was preserved in ritual through the Cult of Isis. The reason it resonated beyond ancient Egyptian culture was because it addressed a primordial fear, death, by unlocking an archetype of the collective unconscious: the resurrecting god.

  The cult traveled across many lands, but each culture adopted it with slightly different metaphors and symbols. The Greeks translated Egyptian hieroglyphs and gleamed information essential for learning the arcane practices of the cult. Dionysus, the dying and resurrecting god of ancient Greece, substituted for Osiris. The Greeks of the Dionysian cult erected theaters for the performances of the cult’s mysteries. Theater, after all, is simply ritual with an audience. The members of the Dionysian/Osiris cult became the most skilled builders of the Mediterranean. But beyond that they were rumored to possess symbols with which they concealed the mysteries of the soul and the secrets of human regeneration. King Solomon needed their skills to complete his temple. But an obvious contradiction arose. Could the monotheistic Jews of the Yahweh cult and the pagan resurrection cult build a temple together?

  Solomon hired Hiram Abif, who like Horus was known also as the son of the widow, to build the shrine. So charismatic was he that when he converted to the cult of Dionysus/Osiris, so too did the Jewish builders. The Cult of Osiris then became the cult of Hiram Abif. They shrouded their mysteries in the symbols of the construction of the temple so as not to upset the cult of Yahweh – the symbols of building tools like the compass and level. That’s right, Mathew, the cult of Hiram Abif is the Freemasons.

  Many modern Freemasons believe their institution has a direct linear link to the building of the temple and have produced volumes of documents to prove this. I believe the point is moot. It is more important that the building of the temple began the codification of philosophy, belief and ritual that was considered heresy by any religious tradition that claims its priesthood is the only road to salvation – the only conduit to God, so to speak.

  According to Masonic legend, Hiram entered the temple through the twin pillars of Jachin and Boaz.

  Let me pause.

  Mathew, the following is what is known as a Masonic tracing board. It is used to teach the uninitiated simple Freemason allegories.

  But I think you know already that there is more here than allegory. You saw these pillars in the Rosicrucian temple, did you not? More importantly, you saw them in your dream. You asked me to help you interpret the symbols of your dream. Yes, obviously you dreamed of the pillars after your experience in the temple, but you dreamed also of the obelisk. Mathew, you are tapping, more than any of us, into the collective unconscious that is shrouded in myth, Masonic myth, and its symbols. This is not typical. You are in possession of some truly remarkable gifts. But let me continue with myth.

  The pillars represent the male and female – relevant to the inner secret of the inner sanctum. Inside the holy of holies was the presence of God, or more specifically the female aspect of God present on earth that the Jews called Shekinah. This inner sanctum, the holy of the holies was the site for communion with the high priest. The secret of this communion was the secret Hiram would not divulge when he was confronted by three fellow craftsmen envious of the secret or the secret word. In rage they each in turn struck him with a mason tool used in the building of the temple.

  Hiram died and was buried under a sprig of acacia. Remember, so too was Osiris. And like Osiris they found the acacia and learned of his internment and raised him from the dead. Have a look at the next tracing board.

  What is the secret Hiram would not divulge?

  It is the secret that was destroyed when the Romans destroyed the holy of holies and the temple along with it. It is the secret pursued by arcane cabals like the Knights Templars who excavated the ruined temple and discovered the mysterious idol Baphomet. It is a secret that became known as The Holy Grail. You can only comprehend all this as an initiated Freemason.

  Mathew, I am a Freemason and I took an oath not to divulge the secrets of my secret society. But my studies have led me to conclude that we are but a shell. We are just a common interest group. A group of men with silly rituals that preach rather pedestrian morality. We are merely a society with secrets, not a secret society.

  I cannot initiate new members into the institution I have become disillusioned with, but I can initiate new members into the ancient order that predates the modern society. And in all my years as a Freemason and as a psychologist, I have never met someone who was more ready to be truly initiated, to truly understand the mysteries – perhaps even more than I. Your dreams are closing the gap between the divine and the mundane, the conscious and the collective unconscious. You as an initiate and me as your guide are on the verge of discovering what the institution has lost. If you let me plan your next ritual, you will be putting your dream into ritual, but you will also learn the secrets of the lost brotherhood of the Freemasonry.

  Become a Freemason – you dreamed it – put dream into action… into ritual!

  Your friend,

  Dr. Mike Anderson