“Do you remember a document of Zoe’s we translated around two months ago?” I asked Sam, who was working on his computer across the room, sitting cross-legged with an upside-down Jason sacked out in cat nirvana on his lap. “I mean the story about a voice calling across the waters from the isles of Paxi, telling an Egyptian pilot to announce, when he was off Palodes, that the Great God Pan was dead.”
“Yes, Tiberius had the pilot brought to Capri for interrogation,” said Sam. “The pilot’s name, coincidentally, was Tammuz, like the dying god in the ancient mysteries. And he announced Pan’s death the same week Jesus died. What have you figured out?”
“I’m not sure,” I told him, still tapping text into my computer. “But from just the amount of Greek I’ve picked up these past months by watching the machine translate, I think this letter may provide at least some kind of key to how things fit together at a deeper level. Unfortunately it’s torn, and some is missing. But it’s clearly written by a woman to a man—a woman that I think we’re already pretty familiar with.”
“Read it aloud?” Sam suggested, pointing to the snoring cat on his lap with a smile. “I hate to disturb folks in deep contemplation,” So did I.
Perdido Mountain, Pyrenees, Roman Gaul
Beloved Joseph,
Following your advice, my brother Lazarus and I have put the alabaster box, the chalice, and our other objects the Master touched in his last days, here in a secure hiding place within the mountain, where we pray they will remain safe until they are needed. I’ve made a list of these, and directions to find them, and will send these separately.
In your last letter, Joseph, you expressed the thought that since you’ve now reached a great number of years, you may yourself soon be going to join the Master. You asked whether I, as the only true initiate of the Master, could find it possible to share my perspective of what occurred at that last supper he passed with his disciples, and how it related to the earlier descriptions I’d sent you, written by others present on that occasion.
It’s impossible to put into words what can only be grasped through experience, such as one might attain through the process of initiation. But I shall try as best I can.
It has always been my belief that in all he said or did, the Master was expressing himself at dual levels, though he made a clear distinction between them. Let us call them the levels of teaching and of initiation. In teaching, he was fond of using allegory and parable to provide an example of what he wished to communicate. But beneath such parables always lay hidden the second level, the level of symbol, which I believe the Master used only within the context of initiation.
The Master told me that a single symbol, picked up in this way, would touch many levels in the mind of the disciple. Once someone experiences a specific image in this way, its deeper meaning works on him beneath the skin at a primal, almost physical, level.
In a way, the Master was like one of those Eastern magi he’d studied with—always on a path, seeking, questing, looking for his special star to follow into a night of endless mystery. In that sense, one could see that he constantly scattered clues in his path, on his personal quest for the initiate who might pick up those clues and follow him down that road. Even today, so many years since he left us, I feel the same chill at recalling his tone when he first told me, “Put down your things and follow me.” I now understand he meant it to be taken at both levels, that I was not only to follow him but to follow his example in learning to ask the right questions.
The Master’s questions on that last night seemed to me, as always, every bit as important as his answers. He told the others that I would know how to answer his question about the significance of the Shulamite, Solomon’s lover in the Song of Songs. Then the Master proceeded to give his own answer: The Shulamite represents Wisdom. But do you recall, at first, he’d mentioned it was a “knotty” problem? He once used that expression to ask you what was “unchanging and imperishable”—suggesting his answer on each occasion was only a partial one.
The Master thought the initiate must always strive to unravel the full answer for himself. In this case, I believe I can suggest the full answer he had in mind. The Greek root of the word knot is “gna”—to know—from which we also derive gnosis, or hidden wisdom. There are words in many languages that come from this root, but all have meanings that suggest ways of gaining such hidden knowledge.
By identifying the Shulamite with the Eastern or morning star, the Master has again pointed our attention to these mysteries. In the poem, Solomon’s love is black and beautiful: she represents dark matter, the Black Virgin of ancient belief, or the black stone that falls from the skies.
The three chosen disciples of the Master’s inner circle were Simon Peter and James and Johan Zebedee, who wanted to sit beside him when the kingdom arrived. But he assigned them instead—significantly and symbolically, in my opinion—to fulfill individual missions, just after his death, at three very specific spots here on earth: James to Brigantium, Johan to Ephesus, and Peter to Rome. The first is the home of the Celtic goddess Brighde; the second, home of the Greek Artemis or, in Latin, Diana. And Rome itself is home to the earlier Phrygian Great Mother, the black stone brought from Central Anatolia that now sits enshrined on the
