Read The Alchemist’s Code Online
Authors: Martin Rua
The Alchemist’s Code (19 page)
Palm upwards, Old Lorenzo Aragona senior raised his right hand, and upon it shone a key engraved with the solar symbol of the circled cross.
“Look for me, Lorenzo, look for me,” murmured my grandfather in the vision.
Slowly the other figures in military uniform gathered around him. Some had young faces, others â perhaps three or four â seemed old. I counted them, and that was the last thing I saw: there were nine of them.
The Baphomet Code
From the diary of Lorenzo Aragona
Zurich, January, 2013
Despite my profession being that of an antique dealer, I've never limited myself to the everyday business of buying and selling precious objects, and, thanks to my passion for the esoteric, I have often found my hands full of occult artefacts, so it was hard for me to come to terms with such an outlandish phenomenon being caused by a run-of-the-mill, mass-produced plastic toy.
The faces, the colours, the uniforms of World War II, and finally, the figure of Navarro, whose face turned into that of my grandfather â it was all very confusing.
I was just about to go back inside the clinic, when, with what little light was left, I saw a figure staring at me from the other side of the parking lot.
“Well? Did you see them?” asked Anna as I approached her.
I nodded.
“Did you also see the Nine?” she continued.
I gazed at her, stunned, and nodded again.
“And one of them had a key with a symbol of a spoked wheel in the palm of his hand,” concluded the girl.
“How can we possibly both have had the same vision?”
“It isn't a vision, Lorenzo, it's a message.”
“That old man I saw a few days ago â Navarro, the one I told you about: he was in the vision. His face turned into my grandfather's, and then he showed me the key. What does it mean? And what has it got to do with us?”
The girl hesitated.
“You know more than you're telling me, Anna. Why don't you explain what's really going on? You've travelled so far to find me.”
Anna's face grew gloomy, while I waited with trepidation for the answers I so desperately needed.
“My grandfather was killed, Lorenzo. I didn't tell you before. He saw something during the Second World War â and many years later, that same something killed him.”
“And what was this something?”
Anna pulled a battered looking volume out of her bag.
“This is the book that I found in Konstantin's package. I was waiting for the right moment to show it to you.”
I read the title, which was in English, of the little old book:
The Baphomet Code. Vol. I. Edited by Vladimir Afanas'eviÄ Glyz.
“
The Baphomet Code, Volume I
. Do you think that the answer to our questions is here?”
“I've asked myself that question many times, Lorenzo. Read the page where there's the bookmark,” said Anna, gesturing to the volume.
In this fragment of the Chaldean Oracles, a text which has never previously been published and which is impossible to find, but which by a series of fortunate coincidences we have gained access to, we will speak about the so-called idol of Gilgamesh, which became known in the West as Baphomet, a mangling of the original Arabic name Abufihamat which means 'Father of the Unknown'. Through the idol it is possible to acquire the power to evoke The Guardian of the Threshold â the Father of the Unknown â and bend it to one's will, forcing it to grant a wish. It is, in hindsight, the same well-known figure which we find in dozens of legends and fairy tales. The Guardian of the Threshold has indeed taken many forms over the millennia: it was Bes, the deformed guardian of the temples of Egypt, the Dvarapala Buddhist god Janus and, in literature, the dark entities evoked in the novel Zanoni.
In the Chaldean source we have studied, it is argued that the Guardian is a genie â an entity somewhere between a living being and a product of the mind â created by Chaldean magicians using their psychic powers, channelling those metaphysical energies which permeate the world, evoking the higher beings living among us and giving them shape.
The wise author of that ancient Chaldean text, however, gave a warning to those who would dare summon the Guardian without being properly prepared. It is, in fact, a being so powerful and dangerous, with a face as terrible as that of the Medusa, that it petrifies anyone who is unprepared. Only the Initiate, the true philosopher, may dare open the nine seals of Baphomet and face the monstrous Guardian.
THE LODGE OF THE NINE
Discovered in mysterious circumstances in the Middle Ages, the Baphomet was entrusted to an elite group of initiates responsible for ensuring that no adventurer lacking the proper knowledge may evoke this evil-eyed being, whose face must not be looked upon. These initiates are members of the so-called Lodge of Nine led by The One. Nine sages, nine philosophers, nine masters to whom the task of guarding the secret of evoking the Guardian with the Baphomet Code was given. From time immemorial the nine Masters have prevented this dark power from wreaking havoc and destruction.
At the end of the paragraph concerning this mysterious Lodge of Nine was a drawing: a circle of nine flames with a central number nine in Roman characters.
I looked at Anna. “This is a legend, or rather a mixture of various legends. The Chaldean Oracles, the Baphomet of the Templars, the Guardian of the Threshold, there's even a reference to Freemasonry â the ninth degree of Master Elect of the Nine of the Scottish Rite, to be precise. But look, none of this proves anything. At best, it's an anthropological study.”
Anna took the book out of my hand, flipped through a few pages and handed it back to me. “Look here.”
At the end of the chapter devoted to that preposterous legend, there was another drawing, the sight of which, I must admit, troubled me. It looked, in fact, in every way like the key that my grandfather was holding in my vision. The key with the symbol of the spoked wheel.
“Lorenzo, before your vision, had you ever seen that key?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I don't think so.”
“I too saw it for the first time in what I believed were visions. But this book is confirmation that these messages are very specific.”
“No, Anna, this book doesn't prove anything,” I said impatiently. “I'm a Mason myself, and I deal with alchemy, it's my bread and butter. Have you any idea how many texts full of charming but nonsensical esoteric theories I've consulted in my life? Hundreds. And this has all the signs of being a collection of fascinating legends that your grandfather was maybe passionate about. But that's all.”
Anna took the book from me, this time briskly flicking through one of the first few pages. “This book is different.”
She showed me the information on the title page. Under the name of the book were those of the editor of the original Russian version, the name of the typographer which had printed it and the year, with the month and day.
The Baphomet Code. Vol. 1
Edited by
Prof. Vladimir Afanas'eviÄ Glyz
Kiev, 09.09.1953
Printed At Michail IzbrannoviÄ Deviatov Printing House
15 Andriyivskyy Descent, Kiev, Ukraine â USSR
“My grandfather was a serious person, Lorenzo. If he edited this collection of texts, his intention was not to divulge nonsense. The old man who gave me the box and the book â this Konstantin, whoever he was â knew my grandfather and his secrets and, I bet, he also knew who or what had killed him, and why.”
“And you think your grandfather was part of this Lodge of Nine?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Just like your grandfather,” she added.
I shook my head. “That's impossible, my grandfather didn't have the slightest interest in such things.”
“How do you know? Do you go around shouting from the rooftops that you are a Mason? Or would you reveal that you were a member of your country's secret service and that your mission was to safeguard a dangerous weapon? It's the same thing. Our grandparents were part of an elite group, the Lodge of the Nine, and they are somehow trying to tell us their secrets. What happened to you and me, this deception we've been subject to, and the visions: it's all connected. I want to continue the search, because only then can I find out the truth about my grandfather, and about my own life.”
“The Guardian of the Thresholdâ” I murmured.
Anna looked up, towards the window of Ãrtemis's room. “How is your wife?”
“There have been complications. She's in intensive care. I don't know how long she's got left to live.”
“The Guardian of the Threshold can fulfil a wish, Lorenzo.”
I sighed, then looked at her. “Anna, I can't save my wife's life with a fairy tale. I stopped believing in that kind of dream.” I handed her back the book. “Please, leave me alone.”
I turned around and headed for the clinic without looking back.
*
That night, I was watching over Ãrtemis through the glass that separated me from the intensive care ward. The medical staff had felt so sorry for me that they had permitted this huge breach in their regulations. It seemed that my sweet Ãrt was leaving us.
On the other side of the window, I watched her there, hooked up to dozens of tubes and wires, and I thought back to the day when I had met her, with her mass of black curls that swayed like the Aegean in winter. I thought back to when, shy and awkward, a ring in my hand, I had asked her to marry me. I thought about all the crazy adventures I had involved her in, the treasure hunts that she, with her lucid rationality, always treated like some game for overgrown children, only to change her mind when the latest
impossibility
was finally in her hands.
She was everything to me. And now she was lying there in that bed, so young and beautiful, and preparing to abandon us â and there wasn't even a physical enemy there in the flesh to combat. just an insidious disease that devoured you from within. The alchemy that I had practiced for many years hadn't given me the gift of creating a universal panacea. I no longer had any unconventional means of saving her. I had nothing, except a stranger's crazy story and a vision.
I thought of Anna again at first light when, by now exhausted from my nocturnal vigil, I saw Ãrtemis fidgeting on her bed and the medical staff rushing in. I jumped up and pinned my nose to the glass.
“Please move away, sir,” a nurse told me. “Your wife is much better, we can unhook her from life support. We're taking her back to her room.”
Around four in the afternoon, as I was dozing in a chair by her bed, Ãrtemis woke up. I heard her mutter something and turn over in bed.
I went over and took her hand. “Hello darling. Welcome back.”
Ãrt looked at me and smiled weakly. “Hello Lore,” she whispered, “you don't look so good, you should get some rest.”
“Yes, you're right, I will. How do you feel?”
“A bit weak.” She looked up at the ceiling and then spoke again. “You know, I had a strange dream. I saw Matteo, your teacher.”
Matteo Rinaldi, Thirty-third degree mason in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, the man who had first opened the doors of the Masonic temple to me and initiated me into the mysteries of alchemy, revealing the secrets of the greatest alchemist of Naples, the Prince of Sansevero. For several years Matteo had guided me through the fascinating, complex world of esotericism and hermeticism, until one cold December morning, his lungs, poisoned over the years by the fumes of his alchemical laboratory, had stopped working. Struck down by a chronic respiratory problems at little more than sixty years old.
“I dreamed of Matteo,” Ãrt continued.
I sat there listening, open-mouthed, as she told me once again about her dream, and then, finally she turned to look at me and smiled again.
“I'm dying, Lorenzo aren't I?” she asked, resignedly.
I shook my head decisively, trying to convince both of us. “What are you talking about, darling? We're in the most advanced clinic in the world, you'll be better soon.”
She smiled in that special way of hers. “Really? Is that what the doctors say? What are my chances?”
I swallowed hard. I didn't want to tell her the truth, but I didn't want to lie to her. She would have known. I shook my head and said, “â¦your condition is serious, but they seem optimistic.”
She was silent for a few seconds, then just sighed.
“I won't leave you, darling, Iâ”
“There's nothing you can do, Lore.”
Overwhelmed with despair, I gazed at her. I was so desperate that, in the end, I decided to tell her what had happened, omitting only the part about Anna. She listened intently to every word, then, at the end of the story, asked thoughtfully, “You believe the story that you told me, right?”
“Well⦠it's just another one of those fantasies I tend to lose myself in.”
“Aragona, tell me the truth,” she whispered ironically.
I sighed. “All right, I'm beginning to believe it.” In that moment, Ãrt must have seen in my face all the despair which had accumulated over the last few weeks. In another moment she would probably have insisted upon rationality, which had always been her forte in the past, would have shrugged her shoulders, put on her reading glasses and sighed, “Ok, fine â go and lose yourself with your alchemist friends, Masons and seers. I'll stick with my Plato.”
But this time, her attitude was unlike her. She stroked my hand, sighed and then smiled again. “Then go, Lore â go deeper. This time do it for me.”
I looked at her in disbelief. I was afraid she was only saying this to make me feel better, sending me on a treasure hunt to stop me from worrying about her. It would have been just like her to do something like that for my sake.
“What are you talking about, Ãrt? It's a legend â just another story with no foundation.”