When Celeste first showed up at his class, Silas had a sinking suspicion that Nous was somehow responsible for her arrival. After all, Nous was the Order of Thaddeus's archrival, the Church's archenemy. And she was the head of a project within the religious order that had pledged itself to counter Nous's attempts to dismantle and destroy the memory of the Christian faith. Project SEPIO.
He had first learned about this ancient enemy of the Church and covert project earlier in the year after a terrorist attack had left his colleagues and one of his mentors dead. He was also the target and would have been taken out had it not been for the team of SEPIO operatives grabbing him before the other black-clad Nousati had. Once he was brought to the Order’s operational headquarters hidden underneath the Washington National Cathedral in DC, Rowan Radcliffe had laid it all out for him.
As he had explained, the Order of Thaddeus was a religious order formed early in the life of the Church by one of Jesus' disciples and the early Church leader Thaddeus, or Saint Jude as he is often known. As the patron saint of lost causes, he was acutely aware of the forces already pressing in against the Church and the teachings of the faith, which he wrote about in a letter to Christians living in Asia Minor. The heart of his epistle included in the canon of the New Testament reflected this urgency: “Contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people.” Not only for the faith itself, but the shared, collective memory of the faith. Thaddeus had already seen evidence for the need to preserve and protect this memory and worked toward institutionalizing this preservation effort with the ecclesiastical organization.
Around a decade ago, the Order realized it needed to make a more deliberate effort in contending for and preserving the memory of the faith. In the face of a number of threats from within and without, the Church was quickly coming to a precipice unless they took measures to deliberately preserve and protect the once-for-all faith and teaching tradition. Project SEPIO was launched to spearhead that movement, the full acronym being: Sepio, Erudio, Pugno, Inviglio, Observo.
Protect, Instruct, Fight For, Watch Over, Heed.
The meaning of the Latin word sepio itself captured the project’s mission perfectly: “to surround with a hedge.” In the case of the Order’s project mission, surround the memory of the Christian faith with a hedge of protection. Not only the dogma and doctrine of the faith, but also the Church’s objects and relics containing the memory of the faith, exploiting them to inform and nourish the faith of God’s children—and keeping them safe from Nous.
Originally a Catholic religious order and Vatican-run initiative, the Order was now an ecumenical effort. Rowan Radcliffe was the Order Master, Celeste Bourne was the operational director of SEPIO. She had been recruited by Radcliffe after serving in the United Kingdom's military-intelligence arm, commonly known as MI6. With a background in Church history combined with her intelligence field work, she made for a steady, sturdy guide for the Order's memory-preservation efforts, as well as a formidable opponent to Nous. Which the Order has been keeping at bay since the earliest days of Christianity.
The scourge of the Church, Nous, has manifested itself in various ways over the ages. At its heart is a teaching rooted in the original divine principle, the eye of reason for comprehending the divine, leading to higher knowledge and salvation. The essence of its worldview is ancient Gnosticism, the root of the Church’s earliest heresies, teaching that salvation was reserved for the select few who could reach spiritual enlightenment and progress and push the human race forward through self-salvation. The central kernel of Gnostic and Nous teaching, gnostikos, begins with the basic assumption of the divinity of the individual, a God-consciousness and God-in-hiding that every person bears to greater or lesser degrees. There is no sovereign deity, but lesser spirit-deities. Pantheistic to the core, Nousati believe the Divine invades all things, living and non-living. And they assume that pre-historical humans enjoyed uninhibited access to the kind of spiritual truth that would bring about a humanistic salvation. Like Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch (Overman or Beyond Man) the individual has become like God—not only knowing good and evil, but deciding it and transcending it.
The Beyond Man, transcending this world and armed with the knowledge to determine good and evil, is the essential aim of the Nousati, to hammer and hone reality into the imago homo, the Image of Man, through brute force. The pursuit of spiritual power through ritual magic has been a constant theme throughout the history of the Church's archenemy. In fact, some of the highest-ranking Nazi officers were members of Nous. Joseph Goebbels, even Hitler himself, were Nousati. Heinrich Himmler himself was a Grand Master. Which makes sense because Gnosticism and the kind of occultism leveraged by Hitler’s monsters are closely allied. The Shaman has a prominent place within the Nous occult system of spiritual enlightenment. Gnostikos and Nousati are governed by Guides, as they are known, who steward human knowledge in order to help the masses climb out from the pit of ignorance to achieve spiritual enlightenment and salvation.
Nous is the organizational embodiment of this ancient worldview—an organization that's laid hidden in the shadows of history, until now. There is a militancy about Nous that has always threatened the Church and the faith, but has resurfaced with a vengeance. Early in the life of the Church, Nous tried to undermine the essence of the Christian faith by destroying her teachings. Its power and influence has waxed and waned over the centuries and manifested in various ways. The Order and SEPIO have been following the organization for generations, keeping tabs on it and keeping it at bay to preserve and contend for the faith.
And stop it from destroying it.
“So give it to me. What’s this got to do with Nous?” Silas asked.
They were speeding across the slick payment on their way to Newark airport for a flight out to Tel Aviv courtesy of the Order. Celeste had informed him that she was sent by Radcliffe to recruit Silas for an exploratory operation at the Pryce dig in Jerusalem. Given the significance of the Ark of the Covenant's possible discovery and unveiling, not only for Judaism and Islam, but also Christianity. Radcliffe wanted his own set of eyes and ears to gather as much intel as possible. And given Silas's previous connection with Pryce, he thought Silas would be the perfect candidate to create an opening for SEPIO. The team was going to be light: just Silas and Celeste.
“We don’t have details. Only that cryptic string of numbers from the source.”
Silas considered this, but continued pressing as he drove through the slick roads toward the airport, rain lashing the car. “There has to be something. The source didn't offer anything else in his intel reports that could point to some sort of connection between Nous and Pryce's dig?”
“There was one thing that may be connected. The source had overheard a conversation that mentioned something that seemed totally disconnected from the Ark, which was why he flagged it for us.”
“What was it?”
“It was a word that kept coming up. Helena.”
Silas snapped his head to Celeste. A horn blared to his right as he began drifting into the other lane. He corrected and swerved back into his lane.
“Watch it!” she exclaimed, grabbing the handle above her window.
“Celeste, does that name mean anything to you?”
“No, why? What does it to you?
“Helena is also known as Saint Helena.”
Recognition washed over Celeste. She sank deep into her seat and stared out the window. “As in mother of Constantine, Emperor of Rome.”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Because Helena wasn’t even around until nearly a thousand years after the Ark. What connection does she have to this ancient Hebrew artifact?”
Thunder rumbled in the distance as silence enveloped the SUV. “Helena…” he mumbled as he continued driving, deep in thought.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Huh?” He looked at her, veering slighting to the right again.
“Watch it, mate, before you anger another evening commuter.”
Silas corrected again, the synapses in his brain making the connections between the revelation of Celeste’s source.
“So, what did you say?”
“I said Helena.”
Celeste turned toward Silas. “What are you thinking? You know something.”
“What do you know about her, other than she was the mother of Constantine?”
Celeste smirked. “Alright, professor. Give it to me.”
He looked at her and smiled. “After Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, she became interested in the faith of her son and led a contingent of Roman officials and soldiers into the Judea-Palestine region to investigate all things Christian. Tradition has it that she found the original site of Jesus' resurrection, and buried inside were the other relics from his crucifixion. The scourging post, the crown of thorns, the nails, the shingle above him announcing he was the King of the Jews—”
“And the cross,” Celeste said turning to Silas.
He looked at her and nodded, then fixed his eyes back on the road.
“But why was Helena referenced at a dig purporting to unearth the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem?” she wondered.
“Good question,” Silas said as he pulled into the airport, following signs directing them to the terminal of their private plane. “But something tells me we’re about to find out when we have a little chit-chat with my old buddy Lucas Pryce.”