The Magic Circle (55 page)

I also enclose the letter I’ve just received from my son. As you see, he requests that I share his words with no one. But his letter triggered in me such turbulent feelings, Miriam.

There are things I fear I should have told you earlier in your capacity as apostle or messenger. However, I admit these things meant little to me until John’s recent letter brought back so many memories of events that took place in the last week in the Master’s life. Specifically, what occurred that very last night.

As you surely know by now through reports you’ve received from others, even before reading this letter of John’s, the last Passover supper attended by the Master took place here at my residence in the upper city. But what perhaps no one knows, except myself, is the attention the Master himself paid to the planning of this meal down to the finest detail. He was very clear about the appointments he wanted to be made within the upper chamber of my home, where he’d designated the meal would take place: some of these appointments were actually so lavish as to surprise me. It was most important, the Master stressed to me over and over, that everything before, during, and after the meal must happen precisely as he asked. Then he added, strictly in confidence, that he hoped just after the supper to retire to the cave on Joseph’s estate at Gethsemane, to perform an initiation ritual. This now seems significant.

The evening of the supper, also at the Master’s request, we arranged that Rosa and my staff of servants would prepare the meal and carry the courses upstairs, but they were to remain outside the door for greater privacy, while my son John and I would serve the guests on our own. This explains why I was so fortunately able to see and hear everything that passed during that most remarkable meal. I wrote it down soon after, as a kind of story. Only now, for the first time, do I see that evening in a whole new light. And, Miriam, although you were not present at the meal yourself, and though what I have to say may shock you, in rereading my observations I’ve come to realize that a great many of the events that took place at that strange supper must in fact have revolved around you.

Of course, it has long occurred to me there must have been a valid explanation why you were not asked to what the Master surely knew would be his last supper among his disciples. After all, it was known to everyone you were the chosen disciple—“alpha and omega” he often called you, didn’t he? Then too, after his death you were the first witness of his ascent to the bosom of God. But the decisive factor, as I see it, Miriam, is that well before the supper you were already initiated into the Mysteries!

Undoubtedly, you’ve received many reports of those events from others who were present. But their reports may have been colored by their own participation, thus missing the crucial point. Indeed, it is possible that the whole meal and the events surrounding it were designed by the Master as a kind of test of the other disciples, as my son once speculated, to see which among them might turn out to be wheat or chaff: that is, which would—at the end of that evening and of the Master’s life—prove worthy of the transformation he’d always offered those who passed such tests. I have written this story as if I were an outside observer. I ask you alone to be the judge.

THE LAST MEAL

Some days before the Passover, for reasons unknown to any but himself, the Master told his disciples by what means they must enter the city that night, to locate the site of their supper: to wait by the Serpent Pond near the Essene Gate south of town. There, a man bearing a water pitcher would come and lead them, one by one, to the appointed spot. By this device, the Master ensured that only the twelve would be present at the meal. By arriving last himself, therefore, the Master was thirteenth.

There was controversy over the secrecy, this unorthodox approach to planning a ritual meal whose rules, after all, had been handed down more than a thousand years ago, directly from God to Moses. How could they know, for instance, that the meal would be prepared according to Torah, using proper rules of cleanliness and cooking technique? And according also to the Mishnah, the leaven must be searched for by candlelight, and cast out, the night before—who would see to that? The Master ignored these complaints. He shrugged and simply said all was arranged.

It was a surprise that the water-bearer was young John Mark, the ten-year-old son of Maryam Mark, who along with her brother Barnabas from Cyprus was among the Master’s wealthiest patrons. Her palatial residence on the western side of Mount Zion had for years been Simon Peter’s second home when not in Galilee, and the Master’s “fireside chats” there with his disciples, lavishly catered by her staff of servants, were often known to go into the wee hours of the night.

But on this occasion, a surprise was in store. When each disciple was greeted at the gates by Rosa, Maryam Mark’s housekeeper, he was escorted by another servant, not to the dining hall, but up several flights of stairs to an unknown room beneath the very rafters of the house. Furthermore, this room was outfitted with costly furnishings the like of which none had seen before in a private home: low marble tables, exotically inlaid with colored stones that glittered in the yellow light of Persian hanging lamps; thick carpets from the Ionian coast and multicolored tapestries redolent of the African north coast; huge samovars of tea and giant urns brimming with foamy wine, set everywhere around the room.

Although many of the twelve were successful professionals—tax collectors like Matthew, or well-to-do proprietors of fishing fleets, like Simon and Andrew and the Zebedees—still they were taken aback by this extravagant splendor, which seemed to approach a nearly Roman level of decadence. They stood awkwardly, gazing around Maryam Mark’s upper room at the Roman couches where three together could recline while dining, too awed to help themselves to any wine or to converse much until at last the Master arrived.

He seemed somehow preoccupied, and motioned for the others to be seated. He didn’t sit at once himself, but paced back and forth beside the door as if waiting for something to happen. The servants brought bowls of water and towels. When they’d departed and the door was shut behind them, the Master, without speaking, took up a bowl and towel and set them on a nearby table. Then removing all his clothes, he wrapped the towel around his waist, knelt on the floor before Judas, and began to wash his feet. The others were embarrassed and more than a little shocked. More so, when they saw he intended to do the same to each. One by one, he came before them to wash their feet, wiping them dry with the towel as they looked on uneasily. But when the Master reached Simon Peter, the disciple jumped to his feet in refusal, crying,

“Never, never! You shall not wash my feet! Not mine!”

“Then it seems we have nothing in common,” the Master told him quietly. He was not smiling. “If you all believe I’m your Master, you should follow my example. I hope you’ll do the same when I’m no longer here to show you what love is. It’s an arrogant servant, Peter, who can learn nothing and thinks himself greater than the one who sent him. When I’m gone, I hope my followers will be recognized by the fact that they serve one another and love mankind.”

“Then wash me, Master!” Peter cried enthusiastically, sitting again in haste. “Not just my feet—wash my hands, too, and my head—”

The Master burst out laughing. “Only what’s dirty,” he said. And glancing at Judas with an enigmatic smile, he added, “Most of what I see here is clean—but not all.” A comment that later was interpreted by many as a reference to the “dirty” money Judas had accepted, in exchange for betraying him.

When the Master put his linen robe on again, he reclined on the couch between Simon Peter and young Johan Zebedee, whom he’d affectionately dubbed
parthenos
, the virgin girl, for his childlike if often unruly innocence. The Master spoke throughout nearly the entire meal, with a flushed intensity, eating little save some sips of the ritual wine and a few tastes of the traditional symbolic foods.

As to what he was speaking
about
, it appeared his principal interest was to recite—as age-old tradition dictated—the history of the Passover and the exodus of our people from Egypt. But despite the Master’s keen interest in rabbinical law, it did seem to those present that he placed unusual emphasis on the food and drink connected with this ritual meal, and even more upon those things forbidden by God—especially the leaven. Here is what the Master said:

THE LEAVEN

These are the things wherewith a man fulfills his obligation on Passover: barley, wheat, spelt, rye, and oats
—
Pesachim 2; Mishnah 5

In ancient times the two holy days we call Pesach and Massot—the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread—were separate events, unlike today. The feast of unleavened bread was the more ancient tradition, dating to the time of Abraham and Noah, and was only later made a part of the Passover ritual that commemorates the escape of our people from bondage in Egypt.

The first Pesach meal was eaten in haste as our people prepared for flight. On their lintels were painted
tau
symbols in lamb’s blood, as instructed, so when the Lord passed over, Egyptian firstborn males would be struck down instead of our own. Also as instructed, during the period before the flight, no leaven was permitted.

The law pertains to five specific grains: barley, wheat, spelt, rye, and oats. The flower of each, if in contact with water for more than a brief time, becomes leaven. God told Moses and Aaron the people must not “eat leaven, touch leaven, profit by leaven, neither shall they keep leaven in their house,” during seven whole days, from the fourteenth of the month of Nisan through the night of the twenty-first when they left Egypt. Anyone who disobeyed, God promised to cut off from Israel,
forever
.

Why was this strange commandment so important? And since the feast of unleavened bread is older than Moses’ departure from Egypt, the ritual of searching for leaven is
more ancient than the Hebrew people’s recognition of the one true God
. What does it mean?

The number of grains we classify as leaven—five—was important to the Greeks, who called the number five the
quintessence:
the fifth essence, the highest level of reality, to which all others aspire. The five-pointed star—the pentacle, with a pentagon at its heart—was the symbol of Pythagoras, and also of King Solomon. It stands for wisdom, reflected in the apple, a natural form that conceals this symbol in its core. And within that symbol—the true Solomon’s seal—is the secret of the eternal flame.

The process of leavening raises something to a higher level and transforms it. We can see that during the first Passover, God forbade earthly leaven for Jews in favor of transformation to a higher state, making us able to attain that celestial bread which Pythagoras called the Eternal Leaven, a food we also know as
manna
, wisdom,
sapienta
, the Word of God. It is associated with a mysterious, invisible element called “ether” that the ancients conceived as binding the universe together: the axis.

Miriam, I may tell you, when the Master finished this story, no one in the upper chamber of my home made a sound. The Master gazed slowly around the circle of his disciples, and in that absolute silence he posed an unexpected question.

“Does anyone know the true identity of ‘the Shulamite’?” He added, “I speak of King Solomon’s darkly beautiful and mysterious love in the Song of Songs. Shulamite means Salem-ite, for she was a city-dweller, and Salem was an early name of Jerusalem. When Solomon asked God for her hand in marriage, perhaps she was more ancient than the city itself. So who was she, really?”

After a moment’s awkward silence, Simon Peter responded for the others.

“But, Master,” he objected, “for a thousand years since the time of Solomon, rabbis and priests have debated the matter of that famous woman who was neither queen nor official royal concubine, but only a lowly keeper of vineyards. Yet the efforts of those wise men met with no success. How can we, here in this room, untutored as we are in all the scholarly aspects of Torah, be expected to fare any better?”

The Master’s answer, though delivered in the same soft tone, struck Peter so bluntly that he nearly recoiled.

“Miriam of Magdali would know the answer.” Then the Master smiled. “It
is
a knotty problem. But perhaps you’ll recall that the night before Solomon began construction on the temple, God appeared in a dream and told him to ask anything he wished. The young king replied that his only desire was the Shulamite’s hand in marriage—”

“Forgive me, Master,” young Johan Zebedee cut in. “I’m afraid that isn’t so. As everyone knows, Solomon’s first wife was Pharaoh’s daughter. Furthermore, Solomon only asked one thing of God that night—not marriage, but
wisdom.
”

“Exactly,” agreed the Master, still smiling. “And though Solomon had many wives, the one that remained first in his heart, as you’ve correctly said, was the dark, mysterious beauty with whom he celebrates his betrothal in the Song of Songs. To what better bride could a king wish to be yoked, throughout his days, than Wisdom? In the Song of Songs, she herself tells us her symbol is that five-pointed star that Solomon later accepts as his own seal:

“‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.… the coals thereof are coals of fire.’

“This is the secret flame, the eternal leaven,” the Master said. “For the Greeks, the morning star was Artemis or Athena, virgins noted for their wisdom. The evening star was Aphrodite, goddess of love. Since we know these two stars are one, it reveals that in earliest days, men held the key to the highest mystery: the knowledge that wisdom and love are one, a knowledge permitting us to transcend even death.”

Those in the room remained in stunned silence as the Master casually tousled the hair of the young, and very confused-looking, Johan Zebedee, who was reclining near him on the sofa. Then he motioned for my son to pour him more wine.