28

Lake Avernus and Baia

While packing a small suitcase for the trip to Naples with Claudia, Sarah thought about her thesis. She felt like she’d finally found her voice and her ideas were flowing. Meanwhile, she wondered what Simon really thought about her trip with Claudia. Sarah had been reluctant to mention she was going because she wasn’t sure how he’d feel about her getting so friendly with Claudia, but when he called last night, she had told him their plans. His reaction took her by surprise. He was excited about the prospect of visiting the Tomb of Mary and was happy to hear she had such a wonderful opportunity while he was away. Simon is such a great partner! He truly wants me to be free. It was silly to think he’d feel Claudia is a bad influence. I’m sure Daddy, however, would keep his eye on Claudia.

They left for Naples at the end of the rush hour at 10 a.m. “Oh goddess! It is great to drive south,” Claudia said as she accelerated her vintage silver Fiat and pushed back deeper in her crackled forest-green leather seat. “I hope you will like my plans. I’ve reserved at the Lago D’Averno Hotel, the best place to feel the vibes of Lake Avernus. It can be risky to stay there because the lake is a volcanic crater surrounded by smaller craters. The region often smells of sulfur. Around thirty-nine thousand years ago, a supervolcano exploded and the whole region is still very seismically active. Pompeii, just south of Naples, erupted only two thousand years ago. The nearby town, Pozzuoli, is located in the center of the huge caldera, the Campi Flegrei, which in English means ‘Fiery Fields.’ Last year, a big flap occurred between British and Italian seismologists because the British wanted to test the magma chamber. The mayor of Naples forbade drilling because he thought it could explode the fabled monster. Pozzuoli slowly sinks when the magma chamber lowers and rises when magma flows in, causing days of earthquake swarms. Lake Avernus means ‘Lake of the Underworld’; the whole region is a gateway to the underworld. So I thought we should sleep on the edge of the lake, the crater. I hope you will like this? I’m always amazed anybody lives there, although the beaches are wonderful and the views out to sea are spectacular.”

Sarah vaguely listened to Claudia going on and on about seismic activity. It seems bizarre to go down to sleep in a hotel on the edge of a crater over a supervolcano a few weeks before the Mayan end of the world! Oh well, if everything is going to blow, this could be the perfect place.

“How did the Mayan Calendar end date get calculated?” Sarah wanted to return to their unfinished conversation.

Claudia smiled broadly. “Oh, Sarah, I’m so glad you want to hear more about the Mayan Calendar! Most of what we hear in the popular media uses the traditional date from scholars, the GMT Correlation—December 21, 2012. People got very curious about the Calendar during the 1970s because they wondered whether this end-date indicated catastrophe or enlightenment. A slightly different end-date—October 28, 2011—gained prominence around 1999 based on the writings of Carl Johan Calleman. Have you ever heard of him?”

Sarah said no, so Claudia went on. “Calleman writes about a fascinating series of nine calendar cycles that track the evolution of the universe over 16.4 billion years. His ideas attracted widespread interest because he related the Maya cycles to Darwinian epochs and extinction events. Well, how could the Maya have known about these evolutionary cycles a thousand years ago? But what really interests me is an intriguing sub-theme in his books—the divisive force on the 12 E longitude line we spoke about last time we were together. This hypothesis caught my eye because it runs through my city. I took the idea more seriously in 2011 when revolution ignited in Tunisia exactly at 12 E longitude! I think your visions were generated by this strange, potent underground vortex. Calleman says this line generates what he calls ‘the winds of history,’ cycles of historical tension between East and West. His analysis is very detailed and complex, and I find it fascinating. How could a geographical division line generate historical patterns? How does the inner Earth influence our minds?

Claudia was growing more and more excited and gesticulating dramatically, so much so that Sarah began to wonder if she should offer to grab the wheel. The car’s trajectory remained steady, however, as Claudia continued. “I think the ancient people—Neolithic and Paleolithic—were very aware of this force and intentionally used it to enhance our planet and their lives. Also, thousands of years ago, Earth’s magnetism was much stronger than it is now, so they probably felt it much more than we do. Global evidence exists for an ancient earth science that archaic people used to live in harmony with Earth, for example, the megalithic system of Carnac in France. When history emerged around five thousand years ago, the global elite figured out how to use this force to control people by building temples and pyramids on ancient places of power. Now we’ve come to the point where their recklessness and greed could destroy our world!” As Claudia’s voice sped up in her excitement, so did the car. Sarah discreetly clutched her seatbelt as Claudia turned to her. “And here, Sarah, is where the Church enters the story! Christianity joined with the elite to take this earth science away from the people by demonizing them as pagans. Meanwhile, in secret they use this force for their agendas. We’re down south where this force is free and uncontrolled. The Sibyl channeled during the Magna Graecia when the early Greeks came to Italy. Mysteriously, somebody constructed sacred earth portals, such as near Baia, before the Greeks came, then the Greeks enhanced these portals, such as at Cumae. In those days, the whole world venerated sacred sites with female oracles. We need her voice more than ever! The Gnostics venerated the wisdom of the goddess Sophia, and I think the Sibyl of Cumae was a version of Sophia!”

Caught up now in Claudia’s enthusiasm, Sarah forgot to be nervous about her driving. She nodded vigorously. “You’re right; the Gnostics did venerate Sophia, and I have thought the Sibyl could be a version of Sophia. All this information about longitude and earth science is fascinating, but please don’t tell me any more specifics. It could enhance my sensitivity, but at the same time I don’t want to taint my intuition before I visit the oracle. I’m impressed with your knowledge, though. You’ve obviously spent a great deal of time studying science.”

Claudia laughed. “Darling, once a priestess, always a priestess—the primal scientist. I am a devotee of the Sibyl and Sophia because they revered Gaia. The suppression of feminine wisdom is destroying our species and all living things. I embody her powers as an initiate; they were my gift. The knowledge was given to our clan, the Stone Clan. We already know all about Earth’s midline, so we wait for the scientists to discover these things and report to the public. For example, last year a group of scientists announced that the eastern and western hemispheres are separated by sharp asymmetrical boundaries in the same place we know these midlines to be. There is a string of crater lakes and volcanoes on this line through Italy, and the greatest turbulence is in Campi Flegrei. Of course, scientists do not consider the possibility that such measurable systems affect human behavior, but they do!”

As they rounded a bend, the lake came suddenly into view. Claudia continued, “For example, the eruption of the supervolcano around thirty-nine thousand years ago corresponds with the downfall of the Neanderthals, the takeover in Europe by Cro-Magnon man! These forces are detectable intuitively, as you well know. I want to know how the elite uses these forces, since the people in power today are so destructive. The public must wake up to what evil science is doing, for example governments are researching ways to control the weather while scientists distract the public with the global warming rant. In the ancient days, men and women listened to the Sibyl, who taught them to care for our planet.” She braked suddenly and turned onto a side road. “Ah! Here we are at the hotel, so let’s go in and settle.”

They checked into two small bedrooms that opened into a central parlor with a balcony out to the lake. The doors were closed and a small gas fire was already burning since it was chilly.

“Claudia, this is lovely,” Sarah said, looking out at the mirror-calm golden lake.

“Yes, this is how I hoped it would be. We will not have problems with sulfur odors since it is December and our windows are closed. Let’s rest for a while and have an early dinner. I will take you to Cumae early in the morning.”

Sarah lay down on a pristine pine twin bed covered with a Greek cotton cover embroidered with poppies and lilies. The sun-warmed terra cotta floor exuded an earthy aroma, and heavy corbelled ceiling beams were cozy. She fell into a deep sleep, losing all sense of time as curling swirls of gray clouds spun above her body. Her eyes were twitching as she saw herself in the midst of an enclosure where moist ferns grew in wall cracks the color of peach skin. Light flooded her cranium. Her hand wearing the ruby crystal flopped heavily over the edge of the bed while her body floated in thick density. I am turning to stone. Tingles in her cells rushed through nerve pathways, making dormant muscles quiver. Oh, I am so sleepy, so sleepy. I have been here for thousands of years. Where am I, what is this aqua-blue water? What is this constant shaking in my body like a swarm of quakes? The fire melts the rocks into hot liquid, a murderous force that reverses and cools, cracks, and congeals, making fossils through the ages.

How long ago is this? “Long before the Romans, my dear.” How long ago is this? “Long before the Greeks, my dear. We are the ancient people of the lake. You are to remember one thing: if you detect the feeling of men in my oracle, push yourself further back in time before they cloud your eyes.”

Claudia and Sarah were famished when they sat down for an early supper of tagliatelle, salad, bread with local olive oil, and red wine. “Now, darling,” Claudia began, “we will discuss The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I assume you have read it, since you are an American from New England?”

“My goodness,” Sarah replied. “That’s the last thing I thought you’d bring up. I read it when I was around twelve, so it may be hard to remember. . . .” Sarah paused and closed her eyes for a moment. “Oh, now I remember, it’s about nineteenth-century travelers in Rome.”

“Yes, Hawthorne explored the strange energy in Rome better than any other novelist,” Claudia replied. “Do you remember a character, the Count of Monte Beni, the scion of a really ancient family that goes back to the early sylvan days, the time of the Etruscans and earlier, rather like Armando? Possibly he fascinated you because you read about the Count at such a tender age?”

“Well, that’s always possible, but that isn’t the most interesting thing about The Marble Faun,” Sarah replied, preferring not to discuss Armando. “The scene I recall best is the one in the catacombs when the heroine is seized by an evil spirit.”

Claudia was disappointed. Even though Sarah had read the book, she didn’t seem to have a strong impression of it, so perhaps this discussion was a dry well. She persisted, “Hawthorne danced around the idea Rome was trapped in layers of time by power intrigues, the battle between the dark and the light. Since the city is on the midline, people who travel to Rome would tend to constantly repeat archetypal dramas like the ones Hawthorne describes. Rome was the perfect place to sink the goddess into a hole and drag her down into the Underworld! Now that we have come to the end of history—his story—we can see that the goddess has been whipped back and forth between East and West on the midline for thousands of years! Hawthorne knew nothing about the midline, yet his characters display its influence.”

“Claudia,” Sarah broke in, “honestly, I don’t know where you’re going with this. I’m confused.”

“Actually, darling, I struggle for words. I’ve pondered The Marble Faun since I was thirteen when I first detected the possessive force. Soon after that Armando took me down into the Underworld. I’ve always thought foreigners like you in Rome could feel this force, but I’ve never been able to talk about it with anyone. You are my guest and you may wonder why I chose you? May I surprise you?” Claudia reached across the table and touched Sarah’s hand. “In The Marble Faun, the two female characters are strong and independent women who don’t get neutralized by men. You and I are the same, Sarah. Do you realize how unusual you are? It takes guts to explore Marcion, the first and greatest heretic. You are snooping into what blocked the incoming light two thousand years ago when Christian revelation was distorted, history piled on it, and Jesus was lost. Hawthorne also went after the burial of truth in Rome, but he didn’t have the information we have. Hawthorne said Confession encouraged priests to become sociopaths because Absolution relieves them of guilt, an amazingly advanced insight at the time. There’s a reason Hawthorne made guilt his primary theme in The Scarlet Letter; he knew guilt is the basis of human manipulation. Do you know about the Fatima Prophecies?”

Sarah, absolutely baffled by Claudia’s constant changes of direction, murmured, “Just a little,” so Claudia hammered on. “A hundred years ago, the Virgin Mary gave three prophecies to three little Portuguese girls. The first two, about the world wars, were revealed in 1941, and then the third one was partially exposed in 2000. Our current pope, Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger at the time, has been behaving in ways that guarantee the Third Prophecy, which is reputed to say Satanic infiltration of the Church will cause clerics and laity to abandon the Church, an apostasy. That is what’s going on! Financial and sexual abuse is emptying the Church. For god’s sake, the pope’s butler is in the Vatican prison because he tried to leak information about the corruption! Rumor has it the Third Prophecy says Islam will defeat Christianity, which will happen if the Church goes on as it is!” Claudia brought her hand down on the table, causing the silverware to rattle and Sarah to jump. “Think what Rome will be like if that happens!”

Sarah shook her head. “It makes sense to me that there is some sort of power in the Earth that enables the Vatican to divide and conquer the world, but I don’t quite know what to make of the idea that the West will be defeated because it’s the elephant sitting on the fault that’s ready to crack. To me, though, the real shift is the resurgence of the goddess, the reemergence of her wisdom. When she returns, the priests will love women passionately, off go the burkas, men will mother children, and war will cease.” Sarah stopped and massaged her temples. “I’m getting a headache just talking about the midline. Leave me alone so I can embody Sophia. And do I get dessert?”

“Oh, yes, darling. But I want you to have a rudimentary sense of the midline because its tectonic power is so potent. There are signs the supervolcano is going to explode again.”

Sarah laughed as she ordered tiramisu. “I enjoy you, Claudia, just because you are so serious. Simon is about to lighten the mood on all this Church mystery: his first column satirizing Olimpia Maidalchini and Innocent X will be published next week, ‘Between the Sheets in Roma.’ All the Roman gossips are going to crack up over his thinly-veiled satire of the pope, his butler, and the dashing personal secretary. And as long as Romans are laughing, the supervolcano will not explode, not even at the end of the Mayan Calendar next week!”

“Now you are in for a treat, darling,” Claudia said early the next morning as she drove into the Sibyl’s Grotto. “This is one of the most serene and beautiful sacred sites in the world, yet few people come here. We can tune in without being interrupted. We’ll walk slowly through a long corridor that leads to Sibyl’s chamber. If you feel yourself picking something up, just go ahead. I will be doing it myself, and I will not disturb you. Once we’ve gone down the corridor, I will take you into her chamber and we will sit down and I will not interrupt you. If someone is around, ignore it. Women come here to meditate all the time.”

Sarah looked around her in wonder. This is a dream come true. My new life started at the Sibyl’s home in Rome and now I am here. They walked very slowly, enjoying the distant sound of thundering waves and twittering birds. Sarah moved over on the path when a snake slithered under a bush to escape a twitching golden feral cat. Another cat, black, raced across the path, its fur brushing against her legs. At the bottom of a steep cliff Claudia indicated a cavelike entrance to a tunnel. Sarah looked up to the left side of the opening, and her heart stopped because facing her was a strong web with a large wolf spider as big as her fist in the center. Ugh. Spiders were her phobia.

Once in the tunnel, however, Sarah forgot all about spiders. She could hardly believe what she saw! Ahead was an extremely long, beautifully-fashioned trapezoidal corridor with light coming in on the right around every twenty feet like a progression of receding mirrors. The corridor ran parallel to the hillside and contained many slit openings on the right side that admitted light and sound. The sidewalls fit perfectly to the eight-foot-wide smooth stone floor. The walls rose to a deep rock ledge at shoulder height, creating the side cut of the trapezoidal support for the upper walls that rose up to a three-foot-wide flat ceiling fifteen feet overhead. The trapezoid excited Sarah’s skull as she felt wings growing out of her shoulders while she moved slowly forward. Passing by one slit after another, the light on her right side stimulated her right brain, which quieted her left side. I have seen this pentagonal shape in the corridor to the Tomb of Pacal Votan at Palenque. This form supports me up to my neck and the tipped-in upper sides make me feel like I’m flying! Certainly my mind is. I have been here before, many times.

Cumae passage to the Sybil’s Oracle

Sarah came to the end of the corridor, where it opened into three chambers. Claudia gently nudged her to the left to the Sibyl’s chamber. The round-topped room was about twelve feet high; the back rock walls were encrusted and serrated by snail trails and lichen, nature’s hieroglyphs. Standing in the center, Sarah turned around to face outward and spread her feet apart, closing her eyes. Claudia sat on a stone bench to her left. The silence was total, the peacefulness absorbing. Sarah turned the key in Gaia’s heart. Losing awareness of where she was, she felt energy course up her body through the soles of her feet. A crystalline aura sparkled in dappled sunlight waved around her body. I am safe with Claudia; I trust her. Yet this is not the place. This place was chosen after the Etruscans. Men blocked the energy here. There is another place, maybe Baia, but this place connects to it.

She breathed in to find the link to the real place, and then a hot poker like a branding iron stabbed her in the heart. She propelled further back in time. Before the Greeks, before the Etruscans, back to the forest people of this place . . . Oh my, even further back, back before the explosion, back to the time of the great crack, the rift that tore the line from south to north, the time when the core expanded the planet. Now I see people. Oh the pressure, the pressure on my body is so intense! Who are they? What is happening to them?

Claudia was watching her very carefully, occasionally closing her eyes for a moment to ground the electric energy coursing through Sarah. She glanced at her watch and realized Sarah had been standing rooted in the same spot for almost an hour! Nobody else was around, so Claudia said, “Would you like to speak? Would you like to share what you see?”

To Sarah Claudia’s soft voice sounded like it came out of a tunnel deep in the Earth, the soft whisper of the Goddess. A voice rose in Sarah’s body, and when it came out of her mouth it was full-bodied like a roaring lion. Claudia checked the corridor once again to confirm there was nobody there and then closed her eyes to listen.

“OH THE WRENCHING PAIN OF THE SPECIES THAT GUARDS EARTH—NEANDERTHALS! YOU GROVEL IN CAVES TO ESCAPE THE FIRE IN THE SKY, THE SICKENING WAVING MOTION IN EARTH. THE SUN IS GONE, THE RIVERS DRY, ANIMALS SHRUNK TO NOTHING; THERE IS NO ESCAPE. EARTH ROLLS AND STRETCHES IN PAIN; SHE CRACKS TO EXPAND!”

Claudia’s eyes flew open and she saw that Sarah’s face was contorted in agony as she clenched her hands and swayed.

“IT IS LATER NOW; THE NEW PEOPLE COME. THE OLD PEOPLE HAVE LOST THEIR HABITAT. FOR THE NEW PEOPLE, OPEN LANDS FREED OF HEAVY BURDENED ICE ARE A BOON. NEEDY MEN TAKE THE FEW WOMEN OF THE OLD PEOPLE AND USE THEM FOR RELIEF. OF THESE UNIONS CHILDREN ARE BORN BUT THEY ARE WEAK AND NOT WANTED; THE MOTHERS WHO BEAR THEM DIE. THE NEW PEOPLE KILL THE OLD PEOPLE IN THE WAY. THE OLD PEOPLE ARE LAID OUT FOR VULTURES.

“THE NEW PEOPLE DO NOT FEAR THE EARTH FORCES BECAUSE THEY WERE FAR NORTH AND EAST DURING THE GREAT EXPLOSION. THEY FEAR THE GREAT ICE, BUT IT DOES NOT RETURN; THINGS GREEN, LIFE BLOSSOMS. BUT THE NEW PEOPLE DO NOT WANT THE WISDOM OF THE OLD ONES. IN FACT THEY DON’T NEED IT. THIS LOSS WILL HAUNT THE SPECIES—MAN—IN THE FUTURE.”

Sarah slumped, and Claudia stood up quickly to support her. She brought her over to the bench and cradled her like a mother holding her child. Sarah sobbed softly. “Oh, Claudia, how will we ever get anybody to listen? I saw the Neanderthals dying out after the volcanoes and earthquakes forty thousand years ago. Cro-Magnons came from the East in a wave of dominance; this was the first genocide. They did not value the ancient Neanderthal wisdom. They refused to learn the ancient ways of the planet, so the new race flowed mindlessly back and forth over Earth’s new crack. This hot fissure goes all the way down to the core that turns at a different speed than the mantle. I saw a vision of it! I heard a horrible grinding sound down there that will haunt me for the rest of my life, the cries of the Fallen Angels. The new people forgot about the incredible force in the center, the keeper of all living things. They began the process of using life instead of aligning with it. Then I saw the Sibyl! She said the time has come to learn how to remember the intelligence in the core.”

Sarah sat up, her tears drying on her cheeks. “We’ve come to the logical end of one dominant species. If the one-species will not remember how to listen to Earth, the crack will widen and the inner forces will expand the planet. This dominant species cannot travel out into space after they’ve destroyed Earth.”

Minutes passed in silence. Sarah was calm now and felt complete, her message shared and embodied. The two women walked slowly back down the corridor. The trapezoid with light on their left balanced their brains as they departed.