"So . . ." he continued. Thomas Manning looked up from the deep burgundy armchair that he was ensconced in. "So, you mean to tell me that we do not have the ability to get her out? Nor do we have the means of shutting up Vincent Sinclair?" asked His Eminence.
"We do have the means, Your Eminence. Unfortunately, this has now become a battle between the Crux Decussata Permuta and the Illuminati."
"What power do the Illuminati have in that region?"
"Well, India presently has excellent relations with the current administration in the White House . . . and we all know that the White House is dominated by the Illuminati."
"But why? What can they possibly want with Vincent Sinclair?"
"Your Eminence! How can you even ask a question like that? It should be abundantly clear that the primary goal of the Illuminati over so many centuries has been to discredit the Church. They would use Vincent Sinclair to do precisely that!"
"The American President"s public image is that of a G.o.d-fearing Christian-a born-again."
"Born again as an Illuminati. Not as a Christian!"
"The Church is an inst.i.tution that has been built over 2,000 years. We cannot let it be destroyed. The Illuminati be d.a.m.ned! Now they have got their illegitimate offspring, those Satan-worshippers, Rhodes and Skull & Bones to do their evil work!" shouted His Eminence.
He got up abruptly and walked out of the room. He was on his way to the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, the Secret Archives of the Vatican. Thomas Manning hastily got up to follow him. They quickly reached the entrance to the archives through the Porta S. Anna in via di Porta Angelica. They hurried inside and their conversation became hushed. "What exactly are we looking for, Your Eminence?" whispered Manning.
His Eminence Alberto Cardinal Valerio looked Thomas Manning straight in the eye and said softly, "Damage control. In the event that anything comes to light from the Bom Jesus papers, it is vital that it be discredited immediately."
"And how would we do that?" asked Manning.
"Vincent and others will try to poke holes in the fundamental pillars of the Roman Catholic Church. Jesus did not die on the cross. There was no resurrection. He married Mary Magdalene. Mary had children."
"So?"
"Our archives contain a family tree. A tree that talks about Mary Magdalene and her lineage till the present day. And just as the Priory of Sion has been attempting to protect Mary"s bloodline, our group has been doing everything possible to destroy it, discredit it, discard it! That"s how I came into contact with Aki Herai," said Valerio.
"Who?" asked Manning.
"Swakilki"s mother. She was descended from one of Mary Magdalene"s daughters. I impregnated her-I broke my vows for the greater good," explained Valerio.
"Why?" asked a bewildered Manning.
Valerio thought for a moment before replying. "I thought that if I could get Mary Magdalene"s bloodline to become staunchly Roman Catholic, discarding its beliefs in the sacred feminine, I would have achieved the greatest victory ever for our glorious Church. Swakilki does not know this."
"But what about the theory that Mary and her child were taken to France by Joseph of Arimathea? Isn"t this at odds with the official position that there were no children?" asked Manning.
"Officially speaking, there was no offspring. Off the record, yes, there was a bloodline. The problem with acknowledging the bloodline was that one would have to accept that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene. If one accepted that, then one might also have to accept that the crucifixion was nothing else but a pagan rite, part of the sacred marriage ritual, Hieros Gamos."
"So the bloodline continued in France?"
"No. The sacred powers of the divine feminine could only be pa.s.sed down from one female member to another. Mary Magdalene herself had derived these powers from a long lineage that could be traced back to the empire of Ashoka the Great, who had sent his missionaries to Egypt. Do you know the name of Ashoka"s empire in India?"
"No. How is it relevant?"
"Ashoka"s empire was called "Maghada". Can you now understand why Mary was Mary Maghada-lene? It was obvious that Jesus and Mary would go to India after having escaped death in Jerusalem. Over the next 2,000 years, the bloodline of the sacred feminine would travel all over the world, including Maghada in India, France, j.a.pan and North America."
"And Ghalib? Was he descended from this bloodline?" asked Manning incredulously.
"That was precisely the trick played on us by the Illuminati. Ghalib and his followers were an illusion. There was certainly a bloodline left in India by Mary Magdalene, but that was not Ghalib and his band of thugs! By creating an illusion that a descendant of Jesus Christ was now living in India as a terrorist, the Illuminati would succeed in bringing shame and dishonour to the Church. Precisely what they wanted."
"But the Tarikh-i-Kashmir spoke of Jesus having married a woman, Marjan of the Sakya clan, at the insistence of King Shalivahana . . . it also spoke of several generations of children thereafter . . ."
"My dear Thomas, Marjan is merely another derivative of Mary. As regards the Sakya clan, you may not know this, but the Buddha was called Sakya Muni. Mary Magdalene herself was descended from a sacred lineage. So, what was being said was that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, nothing more, nothing less."
"But why talk of a son of Jesus called Benissa, and his children, then?"
"Think about it, Thomas. Ben merely means "son of", so Benissa means "son of Issa". A little too convenient! No, the line spoken about was fict.i.tious. You know why? To draw attention away from the real bloodline, that of La Sara Kali."
"But they could still discredit the Church if they get lucky on the Bom Jesus trail. Even if there is no Ghalib as an anti-Christ, the Bom Jesus papers could still show that Jesus did not die on the cross and that there was no resurrection."
"Yes. And that"s why we need Vincent Sinclair out of Illuminati hands and in our own."
"And the Islamic connection? Why did the Sheikh cooperate with you? Why was he willing to follow instructions conveyed by me to Bakatin?"
"Because it suited both of us. Just like Saladin the Great and Richard the Lionheart of the Crusades, we had to reach an uneasy agreement. He was happy to let Ghalib"s men do their worst because it furthered his caliphate aims, even though the actions were Illuminati-financed."
"No, no . . . why was he willing to give up Ghalib?"
"Because he knew that Ghalib was not of the bloodline of Jesus. He struck a good deal with us. Genuine nuclear weapons for a fake anti-Christ!"
"And we were willing to allow a nuclear holocaust for a fake anti-Christ?"
"Well, a nuclear explosion at Megiddo suited me fine. The other eleven events also suited me. They only strengthened the claim that the biblical prophecies were true."
"So, for all this time, the Church has known that Jesus had actually married Mary Magdalene?"
"It was a ritual. Jesus had a secret dynastic marriage with Mary, who was a daughter of the tribe of Benjamin. It was a royal dynastic marriage of King Jesus. In such sacred marriage rituals, the G.o.ddess and land would be wedded to the king. The G.o.ddess would bring him wealth. She would then take care of him as a nurturer. This would be followed by a ritualistic symbolic slaying of the king, when the G.o.ddess would manifest her destructive force."
"So did she actually slay him?"
"No. The slaying was symbolic. After the slaying, the king would be resurrected, depicting the multiple cycles of birth, death and rebirth."
"But was Jesus actually crucified?"
"Well, that"s really the core issue. If Jesus went through a sacred fertility ritual with Mary Magdalene, Hieros Gamos, then isn"t it possible that the crucifixion and resurrection could have also been mere rituals? In fact, the raising of Lazarus from the dead could also have been a similar ritual."
"So you don"t believe that Jesus died on the cross?"
"Well, all indications are that he did not. Why did he faint when he was given a sponge of vinegar? He should have revived. His fainting indicates that he was deliberately drugged. Why were his legs not broken when that would have accelerated his death? Why was Joseph of Arimathea allowed to take down his body? Why were herbs such as aloe vera and myrrh used to heal his wounds if he was dead? Why were there Essene monks inside the cave? I"d say that there"s enough evidence to indicate that he did not actually die."
"If he did not die on the cross, then where did he go?"
"Well, indications are that he went to India. Jesus had derived many of his teachings from Essene and Buddhist thought. Mary"s sacred powers and rituals were also from there, from Maghada. Also, Kashmir was a land that had been occupied by one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. It would have been logical for him to return to his spiritual roots. Moreover, the discoveries by Dmitriy Novikov, Nicholas Notovich and other explorers in the late 1800s seemed to give further credence to the theory, leading to the discovery of the Rozabal tomb in Srinagar."
"But one can"t actually prove that the tomb is that of Jesus, can one?"
"No. But consider this. Even though the burial chamber is Islamic north-south, the actual body is placed along the Jewish east-west. The word Rozabal is thought to have been derived from the Kashmiri term Rauza-Bal, meaning Tomb of the Prophet. But what if the term is derived from Rose-a-bal? You know about the Rosslyn Chapel in Paris, right? It was dedicated by the Priory of Sion to Mary Magdalene. The sign outside the chapel reads Roslin. This ancient spelling is derived from the Rose Line meridian on which the chapel sat or from the Line of the Rose-the ancestral lineage of Mary Magdalene. In Kashmir, it is a.s.sumed that the word bal means place, what is often forgotten is that bal also translates in Urdu to hair-a single strand of hair, a single line! Isn"t it possible that Rozabal has exactly the same meaning as Roslin-the Line of the Rose?"
"So the Roman Catholic Church has known this all along?"
"I"d say yes. The early years of the Christian faith were extremely difficult for the faith. There were multiple versions of Christianity being propounded. The Gospels were not merely the four canonical ones but also the various Gnostic ones such as those of Thomas, Philip and Mary. Furthermore, Christianity needed a wider audience in Rome, and to that extent, it had to be brought more in line with existing pagan beliefs. Christmas Day. Easter Day. Weekly rest on Sunday. Resurrection. The divine nature of Jesus. These were elements that were liberally borrowed from various other characters and stories including those of Krishna and Buddha. How many people today realise that the Hindu G.o.d Krishna"s mother was Yeshu-dha, the mother of Yeshua? Who recalls that Buddha"s wife was Yeshu-dhara, the wife of Yeshua? Given the circ.u.mstances, what the Church fathers did was not wrong. It was the need of the hour to make the Christian religion sustainable, acceptable, marketable."
"And Alphonso de Castro"s discovery threatened to bring it all down?"
"Alphonso de Castro was an imbecile! He was sent to Goa to strengthen the Inquisition. Instead, he meddled with ancient texts and books. Unfortunately, he could not be recalled immediately because of his father"s influence over the Portuguese royal family."
"Why did he not go public with his find?"
"Well, I think he intended to but was dissuaded by his father. His father arranged a meeting for Castro with the Pope, and some secret deal was struck. The doc.u.ment went into the archives and Castro"s family never ever had to work again-they were made wealthy forever. Castro left church life and settled down in England, where he married a young girl by the name of Patricia Kaetzel. Their son, Herbert Castro, entered the lucrative opium trade between India and China. He soon became well acquainted with Samuel Russel, who had established Samuel Russel & Co. for trading opium between Turkey and China. Some years later, a cousin of Samuel, William, helped set up the Skull & Bones society at Yale, a de facto chapter of the Bavarian Illuminati."
"Ah. So the Illuminati has always had access to Castro"s secrets?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Your Eminence, you seem to know virtually everything. I, your brother in the Crux Decussata Permuta, have never questioned your directions or motivations-but this seems to be asking me to go beyond the line of duty."
"Let me share a little secret with you. In the immediate aftermath of the death of Jesus, Mary Magdalene attempted to take over the leadership of the Christian faith by telling the other disciples that Jesus had communicated several matters to her alone. Quite naturally, both St Peter and St Andrew were not in agreement with her."
"That is common knowledge."
"Yes, but the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion took it upon themselves to protect the bloodline of Mary Magdalene and protect the powers of the sacred feminine. It was precisely to counter the Priory that the Crux Decussata Permuta was created. As you know, crux is Latin for cross, decussata implies the X-shaped cross, and permuta means inverted. As you also know, St Peter was crucified in Rome upon an inverted cross and St Andrew was crucified in Achaea on an X-shaped cross. The loyalists of Andrew and Peter decided that they needed to protect the Catholic Church from the pagan and Gnostic influences of Mary Magdalene and her continuing bloodline and created a secret society for this purpose. This would be called the Crux Decussata Permuta, of which you and I are loyal members."
"Yes. But we never get to meet other members," said Manning.
"That"s because you and I are the last surviving members of the Crux Decussata Permuta," said Valerio.
"There"s no one else?"
"One died just recently. He also wore the pendant secretly."
"Who?"
"The Sheikh."
Jerusalem, 1192 The great Saladin had become Master of Jerusalem in 1187. Pope Gregory VIII reacted hastily and commissioned Richard the Lionheart to mount the third Crusade to recapture the holy city. Richard marched on Jerusalem in 1192 but he and his army were plagued by fever, hunger and thirst.
He appealed to Saladin to provide him with food and water. And Saladin obliged, but on one condition. Richard would need to convert to Islam.
A negotiated settlement was eventually reached. Five of Richard"s ten men belonging to the secret Crux Decussata Permuta offered themselves for conversion. They would allow themselves to be converted instead of Richard. Deal struck, Saladin remembered his duty to help the needy as a devout Muslim. He sent frozen snow and fresh fruit to revive Richard and his men.
Richard eventually sued for a truce with Saladin under which Christian pilgrims would be free to visit the holy city without being troubled in any way by Saladin"s Muslim brothers. They would be watched over by five Muslim guards-the members of the Crux Decussata Permuta who had been converted from Christianity to Islam.
The five converted Muslim men in Saladin"s camp and the remaining five Christian men in Richard"s camp continued to operate the Crux Decussata Permuta secretly. It suited them to have a secret organisation with a foot in both camps, Islam and Christianity.
Islamic conquests encouraged devout behaviour among Christians and vice versa. Muslims and Christians alike saw each other as lesser evils than the "sins" of paganism, polytheism, abortion, and h.o.m.os.e.xuality. A secret alliance between Chris-tianity and Islam had matured.
"So who exactly was the Sheikh? Osama-bin-Laden?" asked Manning.
"No. Osama was a creation of the Illuminati. He created world terror and made the Illuminati ever more powerful around the world-in positions of government, banking, business, military and politics. He gave the Americans an excuse to police the world."
"And the Sheikh?"
"The Sheikh was descended from the original five members of the Crux Decussata Permuta who had been converted to Islam by Saladin. All along, he tried to cooperate with us . . . unfortunately, his Master"s cooperation was always with the Illuminati."
His Eminence did not notice the two ropes snaking around his ankles. They suddenly tightened into two nooses and he was yanked off his feet. The ropes had been individually pulled from a terrace above. In less than a minute, he was dangling upside down. Each ankle was firmly in a noose and his legs were spread apart because of the distance between the two ropes. Seen from a distance, his body looked like an "X", but upside down, feet up, arms down. Crux Decussata Permuta.
The single sniper bullet wound to his genitals caused immense bleeding and by the time Manning was able to get help and bring his body down, he had already bled to death.
Swakilki had avenged the death of her mother.
Chapter Thirty.
Maryland, USA, 2012 Stephen Elliot, Prithviraj Singh and Zvi Yatom were back in the darkened room of padded velvet. The Grand Master, Alissa Elliot, spoke: "Achaita, divine revelation. Rome will pa.s.s away, Jerusalem will burn and the reason will become broken. And my Law, the Law of Zion, will be acclaimed by the whole of humanity."
"Achaita!" said all those gathered in unison.
"Oh illuminated, brothers and sisters, see what we have before us!"
"Achaita!"
The Grand Master, dressed in scarlet robes, held the knife close to Vincent"s heart. Vincent had been placed on the large black granite slab in the centre of the room.
"Elevate and proclaim the Light! The last of the Crux Decussata Permuta is finished. We have created an abundance of wealth by keeping the world in fear! Achaita!"
"The truth must emerge. And the Church must crumble."
"Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion! Zion!"
As Prithviraj saw the Grand Master"s golden knife aimed at Vincent"s heart, he saw a vision of Pandit Ramgopal Prasad Sharma flash before him.
"Son. The brother who died, took on your karma to save you. You were destined to die and he died for you. He has died or killed for you in previous lifetimes too. He has a karmic relationship with you . . ."
"Find the priest, my son . . ."
"And son . . . that brother, who died for you . . . You will know when you have to return the favour . . ."
The next few seconds were a blur. Prithviraj pulled out his .357 Magnum pistol and took a shot at the Grand Master. The consequences came in slow motion.
Because of the dark robes of the Grand Master, the blood was not visible to the others in the room. They were still chanting, "Zion! Zion! Zion!"