The Rings of Poseidon (32 page)

"You need the way of Kether, the creator of
all things manifest. Go by the path of the high priestess and reach
the source of all that is. Thus you can send what you carry, before
all manifestation to be unmanifest," he said.

"He's talking in riddles," thought Frank, but
he heard the words and saw the golden king. He did not think that
there was nothing there.

"What he means," thought Gill, exchanging
meanings and images with Frank, "is send the rings back before
creation. Back to the beginning of time"

* * *

Cornelius and Ian followed the route through
the paths of the tree of life that Gill, Alan and Manjy had
followed before them. Most of the path was the same as that
followed by the band of souls on Hoy. They did not, of course, see
each other, because the tree of life is entirely subjective. To
share Alicia's tree they must have been with her. And they weren't.
The astral is a different reality too, but it is objective. Once on
the astral they would be able to reach the travellers and the
rings.

Cornelius and Ian entered the astral from
Binah. A different place where places are not separated by
distance. A different time where time is always the same.

* * *

This time it was Manjy who led the way, out
through the door the king had indicated and onto a narrow path
through the bleakest wilderness and up through soaring mountains.
At length they came to a deep chasm. So deep the bottom was lost
from sight. At the other end of a narrow rope bridge were two stone
pillars and by them sat the high priestess, impassive, upon a rock.
She was dressed in a long white dress and blue cloak, with a
crescent moon at her brow for a headdress and rolled up on her knee
was a scroll. She beckoned them across the bridge and they went,
each with his or her own particular fears, temptations, stresses,
doubts, desires, loves and faiths. The bridge was long and narrow
and the void below them bottomless. A chilly wind from the imagined
mountains stirred the images before them but they reached the
safety of the other side.

"You have crossed the great abyss that
divides Kether and the supernals from the rest of the creative
force," said the great High Priestess, unsmiling but in a tone
which suggested approval and support. "Few choose to take so direct
a route. Pass my friends and seek to uncreate the evil that you
would destroy."

They filed past the Tarot High Priestess and
onward towards a glowing whiteness ahead. The glow grew brighter
until they stepped into a room so brilliantly lit that they could
see almost nothing. An ancient king sat upon a white throne,
grizzled white and bearded. He did not turn towards them and said
only, "Pass through this place, and do what you must."

It was necessary for all six of them to lie
down in the grass. They did this, feet facing outwards, heads
inwards, holding hands. "We are going to enter the astral world,"
said Gill softly. "Close your eyes, relax and we will go
together."

There were eight simultaneous 'clicks' and
six personalities moved into the completely non-physical.

Chapter 26

The place in which they found themselves was
an empty wilderness of rocky mountains, rising from a small grassy
valley. All six of them had 'passed over' to the astral.

"What you see," said Alicia, "is only an
image of reality so that human eyes can relate to it. These
mountains," she waved an arm around, "are not really there, but the
feelings expressed by the idea of 'mountain' and 'emptiness'
exist."

"What we must do," said Manjy, "is create a
'thought-form'."

Gill interrupted, "Thoughts can be intense
enough to have an existence, however fleeting, independent of the
thinker. A 'thought-form' is a deliberately created thought,
intended to have a more permanent and independent existence. If we
think together of the same image we can create it."

"What we must do is create a thought-form to
be the guardian and to act as channel for the power of the creative
force." said Manjy. "Form a circle."

A circle was formed.

"Now," said Gill, "I will make my guardian
look like something simple and understandable. I will try and
imagine a twenty foot high bear. Visualise the eyes and ears, Build
up an image of a face, benign, like a teddy bear. Make it more in
appearance as a friendly grizzly. Feel the love of humankind in a
gentle giant and give the eyes humour and intelligence. See the
body, the arms and long, long claws with no purpose but defending
the goodness of the race. See it standing, gentle, holding the
briefcase with the rings and knives.

The six souls working together imagined that
they thought of the giant bear, and there it was on the astral.
They filled it with the love which souls can feel towards humanity
when they have evolved through many, many lives. And then they let
it channel all the creative force of the universe that manifests
itself through Kether.

To Alicia the bear said, "A sacrificial
victim when the power of the rings was born, you have lived and
loved many lives: in Egypt, Ancient Greece and as vestal virgin in
Rome, as shaman in Africa, as a Bishop of the Russian Orthodox
Church ... many lives of service you have lived and already earned
your oneness with the creative spark had you not undertaken this
last great task.

The bear turned to Manjy. "You too had
already earned Nirvana when you accepted this last great challenge.
A sacrifice of sorts in a cave in Spain, a sacrifice in Aztec
America, a Christian missionary killed in Japan and an Indian guru.
Serenity and peace in this life await you now, and unity with
godhead when you shed this body.

"I'm sorry that you had to see such sorrow,"
said the bear to Gill, "but a means had to be found to delay you,
so that you could join this expedition. Now you will be free to
enjoy your peace with the young man you love, and you will be all
women and he will be all men, for you have loved this man
before."

"The night of his death he spent with you
when you were priestess, he the victim, and the day of his death he
spent with you when he was chieftain, you a priestess-victim. The
world will be a better place for your love."

"You almost lost what you had gained in many
lives," the bear told Steve, "Now you have found your mate again,
do not lose her."

To Frank it said, "You too have evolved
through many lives. You do not fully believe, but the good you do
does not depend on belief."

"You forged the rings," the bear told Alan,
"but you did not create the evil that they did. It was not your
curse that destroyed Atlantis, the earthquake, fire and flood were
natural enough consequences of that vast meteor. However, it was
your curse that brought to notice the evil of the rings. Now, many
lifetimes later you are present at the destruction of the power of
those rings."

Alicia said, "Now it is the will of us all
that the rings go back before time itself began, so that they cease
to exist and even the thought is gone."

The bear said simply, "I am the creation of
those who destroyed the evil and the servant of the souls before
me. I go at your command."

Gill said, "Before you go, a question."

"Ask."

"What will become of the
professor-priest?"

"He will shortly be born again to begin his
many lifetimes paying off that vast karmic debt. He will be
Juliana's child, as was his wish before he died, but it will not be
as he expected then."

The huge bear which they had created picked
up the briefcase, now seeming insignificantly small, and turned to
lumber off.

It stopped and turned just his head, saying,
"Others follow you on the astral. Take care on your return and stop
for nothing."

It pointed behind and to their left. Then,
while they watched, it turned again and lumbered away.

"He goes backwards in time," said Alicia, and
they watched him disappearing in the distance. Once again the place
was an empty valley, surrounded by soaring mountains. A wilderness
where nothing stirred.

"Look," said Gill. "What the bear was
pointing at," and they turned.

Far away two figures hurried across the
wilderness, trying to catch the lumbering, fading bear. Cornelius
and Ian ran across the empty landscape, split by a chasm -
sometimes narrower, sometimes wider but always there.

"Stop," shouted the maddened, ambition crazed
Cornelius. "Stop, I command you."

The bear began to de-materialise, though
Cornelius was still the wrong side of the chasm. "I will have those
rings," he shouted hollowly, and, with the same lack of any
prudence which had crashed the car, took a running jump to cross
the abyss at a narrow point.

His scream of hopeless emptiness as he fell
filled all the wilderness and seemed to last for ever. For a long
time nothing moved, then Ian turned and walked away.

"It is time to return to Kether," said
Alicia.

With one accord they too turned and, with six
distinct but simultaneous 'clicks,' they returned to their
bodies.

Chapter 27

As six pairs of eyes opened they loosed
hands, stretched and scrambled to their feet. Nobody said anything,
not even Frank. Gill thought he looked subdued. They gathered in a
rough circle facing inwards again and slowly the brilliant
whiteness around them seemed to grow until, once more, they could
hardly see. This time it was Alicia who turned without turning and
moved without moving, and they all put the brilliance and glow
behind them, to tread again the rocky path among those barren
mountains, downwards to the abyss and the rope bridge across
it.

The High Priestess stood beside the bridge.
"You have done what you came to do," she said to Alicia. "The way
back to earthly reality is clear and easy, and the memory of what
you have achieved in time will fade in time."

The bridge was no less fearsome a second
time, but no more fearsome either, and they crossed it without
problem. Alan went first, then Frank and Steve, followed by Gill
and Manjy, with Alicia at the rear and it felt as if some kind of
blessing went with them, though none was spoken.

The tree of life consists of paths between
the Sephiroth, or aspects of the Creative forces of the universe;
aspects of God. When they entered the 'room' that was the Sephira
'Tiphereth' the travellers found it empty. There was still a golden
glow, but, as when Gill had led the way back before, no king.

The Sephiroth are not places, they are
'aspects', but the human mind must have symbols with which it can
identify, so there was likewise no being on the path to Yesod and
none of them even heard an elephant trumpet, much less saw anything
in the violet mist. There was nothing on the final path and they
came through the laurel wreath, back to reality.

As the first time, the ritual ended as it
started, with the banishing ritual. When it was done, Gill and
Manjy broke the wool and all of them relaxed a little, like actors
after the final curtain of a play.

"So it's all over and the rings are gone,"
Alicia remarked.

"There's still the amulet," said Gill.
"Without the rings it has no real purpose. We can produce that as a
part of the excavation. Just erase all mention of the ring from the
computer and change the references to it in your diary to
'amulet'."

"I take your point," said Alicia. "That does
sound reasonable, I suppose. Nobody but me sees the diary anyway,
so nobody will know."

"I don't understand," said Frank, "All that
'tree of life' stuff is subjective and the astral part is
non-physical. I can't see where the rings went. It's like a
conjuring trick."

"They appeared at Boloña like that, but in
reverse," said Manjy.

"I don't know what the secret is either,"
said Alicia, "but the Professor said it needed a lot of power to
send them out of time."

"Talking of time," said Steve, "It's time we
were going back."

"Can you find your way?" Gill asked.

"There's enough light from the moon to see
everything and the road leads nowhere but home," he answered.

"Seems odd that those rings have been sought
so long and attracted power and evil," said Frank, "yet we gave
them away as if they were nothing."

"Do you regret that?" asked Manjy.

"Not at all. There was nothing else to
do."

"The rings were evil and commissioned from
the very start with an evil intent. They could only have been used
for evil purposes," Alan observed.

"I'm glad you see it that way," said
Manjy.

Day was beginning to break as they packed up
and loaded the Landrover. The fine weather seemed to have passed
and it was spotting with rain as they clambered in. The moon had
disappeared behind the clouds by the time Steve had turned the
vehicle around and he was forced to drive carefully on the tracks.
By the time he reached the road it was raining harder but getting
light and by the time they arrived at the camp, there was a steady
downpour.

Steve brewed cocoa all round and broke open
another box of biscuits, while Gill cut wedges of bread and jam.
They sat about the cabin for this impromptu meal while the steady
rain beat down, still thinking much but saying little.

When the local men reported for work, Alicia
saw no point or possibility in work that day, there was just too
much rain, so she sent them home. This enabled the rest of the team
to catch up on some sleep.

As she said, archaeologically speaking, they
had actually done very well. The entrance had been found, the
passage cleared, the damaged house excavated completely, the second
house taken apart, excavated and reconstructed and the third and
fourth houses uncovered. By the time the dig was finished for the
season at least the third house would have been reconstructed and a
fifth one excavated.