The Secret Magdalene Read online

  Seth taught us this as we stood on the highest place on the library wall so that the wind might blow the heat from our bodies. And even then, as the wind blew and Salome hallooed out over the Royal Harbor and the seabirds were swept from the sky and the waves foamed over the seawalls, Seth talked of Socrates.

  He said all men experience themselves first as the eidolon, which is the mortal self, the personality, becoming lost in the belief that their eidolon is all there is of self, and when this died, they died. Blinded by the eidolon, small and suffering, they could not do otherwise than perceive God as “other” and separate: that which is enormous and unknowable. Anything that is enormous and unknowable is also a thing to be feared. As this small self, they would see their higher self, which Socrates called the Daemon, as also separate; they would think it an independent thing, call it a guardian angel. But to those who blessed themselves by seeking gnosis, or complete self-knowledge, the Daemon would be discovered to be the Divine I, the One Soul of the Universe, the Consciousness in all men and in all things. To know this, all men could say: I am God. To know this would be to know what is meant by I AM.

  Over the wind, I hear him say this of “men” and that of “men” and all things of “men,” and I call out, “Seth! I am not John the Less, but Mariamne. Salome is not Simon Magus. How does a man teach women?”

  And this is how he answers me. “Do you not know Socrates was taught through the use of reason by a woman, the wise Diotima of Mantinea! Do you not know that he taught women! Am I less than Socrates that I should do less?”

  Salome begins to laugh so hard and so long that she tumbles backward off the library wall and into the garden below, there to lie struggling with her robe. If the wind had not blown all the scholars inside, everyone in Alexandria would have known within the hour that Seth teaches women.

  In the early spring of our second year, I am almost killed. It happens in a most suitable place: the City of the Dead. Julia, thinking to have us each write an ode on death itself, takes Simon Magus and John the Less and Helena of Tyre out through the Gate of the West, and thence into the goddess Hathor’s city called by all Alexandrian’s the Necropolis.

  We pass the shops of the embalmers, so many of them, and so eager for custom, they crook their long brown fingers: come here, come here! These we veer away from in great horror. We pass the small gardens for mourners to sit and weep in. As for these, we try not to stare at the grief so publicly expressed. We pass the stonecutter’s huts and I am reminded of Addai and by this am saddened, but not for long, because by now, filled with a kind of curious gloom, we come on the labyrinth of tombs cut into the solid rock, so many we stand awestruck. As well as dismayed. Or I, at least, am. How long have they been here? How many have died to fill these holes in the ground, one layered on the other, down and down to some unutterable depth? As well as on and on for as far as I can see in all directions. I peer over the edge of one among the uncountable many. Stone steps descend down to small stone rooms and in the stone walls of each room are holes like honeycombs. But there is no honey here. Some of these are newly filled with what seems a cocoon of rags; some are so old those who once lived but now are long dead are no more than a carpet of dust on the stone shelving. How deep does it all go?

  Far below there is movement, perhaps three, perhaps four levels down, and I see this by the light of a small lamp held by someone who has business there.

  I am leaning forward; I am exclaiming, “Oh, what a place this is…” when I lose my balance, tip forward, clutching out for something to stop me. But there is nothing near, and no one close. All have been moving farther into the City of the Dead, making their way toward a large and recent cave-in.

  I tumble headfirst into the tomb.

  I know nothing else for I do not know how long. And when I awake, I awake in the rooms of Sabaz who hums over me with a pot of one of her vile ointments in her ancient hands. I also awake with a headache the like of which I could never have imagined having. I see that my left arm is bound and the broken ache of it makes me set my teeth and my eyes water. Sabaz has shaven my head. She must have, else how does she smooth on her ointment on my skull? But there is Simon Magus, white of face, and there is Julia, who cannot sit still for nerves, and there is Seth. Seth is not white of face, nor does he move from place to place. He is as still as the stone of the tombs.

  “Until your true time comes, John, I bid you stay far from the dead.”

  And then he smiles. And I try to smile. But when I try, I cry out for it hurts my head. And then I cry out because crying out has hurt my arm.

  I did not write a poem about death. But Salome did. In it she compared me to Thales of Miletus, but where he fell into a deep dark well from looking up at the stars, I (disguised as a fallen neter) fell in from looking down.

  Soon after my arm is fully healed, as is my head, though my hair is as short as a dog’s, Simon Magus discovers a Brahmin from India inspecting scrolls in the seventh hall of the library and drags me from my books to meet him. Sudheer is a follower of a prince of India known to him as the Buddha. I have heard of this Buddha. The Buddha taught that life is filled with suffering, and that suffering is caused not by a thing outside the self like a demonic serpent, but by the self in the form of desire. Sudheer explains that if we would cease our desire for things, we would not suffer. By this, I am reminded of something I have read in Plato’s work, “Each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails the soul to the body.” This so pleases Sudheer he grins ear to ear. “Indeed, indeed,” says he in perfect, oddly accented, Greek, “and if we would pry out these nails, we would be wise to follow the Eightfold Path.”

  This path turns out to be much as the commandments of Moses, but being only eight in number seems more understanding of a human heart. I like best, “to intend to resist evil.” I am charmed by the word intend. Does Joor not talk of intention in his magical teaching of mind controlling matter? Does not Seth talk of intention? But we both like best of all what Sudheer has us read. The Vedas of his people are so old and so beautiful, I touch the words on the silk paper as I would touch a lover.

  Today Apion is pleased to tell me thousands of Jews have recently been driven out of Rome. He says that Tiberius, who once banished all magicians, now tires of so many Jews shouting so loudly that Rome is soon to fall before an avenging Jewish god and his messiah. Worse, people everywhere are weary of Jews who go about inciting them to revolt against tyranny, while at the same time shunning and scorning them for being unclean.

  I ask Seth, “I am a Jew. Father is a Jew. What am I to think of all this hatred of Jews?”

  He replies, “The Children of Israel are not more beloved of the gods than the Children of Greece or Rome or Egypt, yet ours is a noble race. Did we not create the Sabbath which brought leisure to the people? With leisure, the mind had time enough to play. And from this, did we not come to value the mind? And did we not also create justice for the powerless and charity for the orphan and widow?”

  I nod, yes, though I remember the Sabbath on which Salome said, “You Jews are not so much allowed to rest, as commanded to rest. You make a law of it.” Since we were, by Law, shut away in our rooms at the time, Father fortunately never heard that.

  “Best of all,” continues Seth, “is that we argue with God. If one can argue with a god, surely this means that one’s own thoughts count, however humble the source. In the Jew, humanity is elevated, for while other gods and goddesses bestow gifts on their people, the god of the Jews requires us to gift ourselves.” Seth touches my hand. “Was Moses not a Jew? Is Hillel not a Jew? Is John of the River not a Jew or, in any case, a Nazorean? Are you not a Jew and the Magdal-eder? Are these not great things?”

  Listening, I think I am pleased to be a Jew. But I also think I shall be even more pleased when I am an inner Nazorean and understand what he means by Magdal-eder.

  This is a day I share with no other. On this day, I have been walking in the park, a thing I would never have done had I not c
ome to Egypt. To walk on grasses, to sit by fountains, to smell flowers of rare beauty and startling color, I am transported. I have found a small bench under a tamarisk tree and I hold no scroll to read, nor tablet upon which to write. I do nothing but sit and stare about me.

  After a time, a woman draped in cloth of many colors sits beside me. I have not invited her. Nor have I signaled she not do so. She says nothing. Nor do I. Moments pass during which I am beguiled by her color and her scent.

  It is she who speaks first. “You must forgive my impertinence, sir, but I have overheard you conversing with great scholars in the library, and I have longed to speak to you.”

  I am surprised. “With me?”

  “Oh yes. You have said many things with which I wholly agree and there is something about you which makes me think speaking with a woman would not distress you.”

  I look at her now. A woman of beauty, I have not seen her like. Her hair is so black it is blue, her nose is small and flat, her brown eyes are long and tilt up at their outer edges. I have never looked into eyes like these.

  I spend an hour, two hours, on my bench with this woman and this is what I learn. The questions she asks me, the answers I give, the way she listens to me, and I to her—I know now what I would be. I would be a teacher.

  I do not tell Salome of this day. I do not tell Seth. It is my secret and I hold it close.

  THE SIXTH SCROLL

  Glory

  Theano comes in time to believe her favorite pupil, Simon Magus, should benefit by meeting the Master of the Therapeutae, he who she calls a hierophant of Jewish Mysteries. She believes even I, John the Less, might be worthy of such a meeting. I think, a priest of sacred mysteries? Jewish mysteries? Salome quivers with what I call a lust to know more. As do I. But all we are told for now is that her master has a brother, the very wealthy Alexander, who is the alabarch of the Jews of Alexandria, and therefore the center of Jewish business and civic life, but that the man we are to meet is nothing like this rich and important brother.

  So, on a day of heat, Theano takes me and Salome to the Jewish quarter. Seth would come as well for Theano, who has come to love him, would not leave him behind.

  The house we come to, entered into by nothing more than a small blue door, is as no other. Within there is nothing of comfort and everything that would excite curiosity. There are a hundred odd things lying about to attract the attention, and I would run from one to the other exclaiming, What is this? What is that? And by Isis, whatever could that be for? But glancing once at Theano, she of the bald head and firm mouth, I behave myself. As does Salome.

  But I see the glint in Salome’s eye, as she sees mine.

  I have been staring at a machine of some sort lying on a table of some sort, when suddenly, and without a slave to announce him, there he is, the hierophant of Jewish Mysteries, and I pinch myself not to cry out. It is said that after the death of Abel, Adam abstained from Eve for 130 years; but he did not go without. During this time, Adam knew the Dark Queen, she of the shadows, and from their union came a frog, one that taught the languages of men and of animals and of birds, but a frog nonetheless. Here is that frog, big headed and big eyed and so wide of mouth. Salome leans against me, holding back her laughter. I will myself to stare at his beard instead of his person, for by a philosopher’s beard one can tell which his school of philosophy.

  As his house, the beard of Philo Judaeus is like no other.

  Is, then, his philosophy like no other?

  No greeting, no offer of wine or grape or cake. Theano’s frog master fixes first Salome and then myself with a large and intense eye, looks us over without the hindrance of self-consciousness. Under his gaze, I am back in the rounded room of sun and stars and fish under the wilderness settlement. I am back in the house of Heli and Dinah of the Many. Three times now, I and my beloved Salome stand before a man who judges us, who wonders if we are worthy. Twice we have passed such scrutiny. Will we pass a third time?

  This Philo addresses us, “Which of you knows what philosophy means?”

  I beat Salome to the satisfaction of answering. “It is a word coined by Pythagoras meaning lover of the goddess Sophia who in her person is the Holy Ghost, which is blessed Wisdom.” And then I remember myself, especially noting how Theano stiffens beside me. I add, “It means lover of wisdom, Master.”

  “And wisdom is?”

  “It is—”

  “Wisdom is the seeking of gnosis through the goddess Sophia. And gnosis is?”

  “I—”

  “Direct experience of God. Very well then. I am assured you are born philosophers even though you are Jews of Jerusalem.”

  Salome winces at this, but as Simon, a Jew she is and a Jew she must remain, though hopefully, one day, she can be an Egyptian once again.

  “Theano swears she has never met two more Greek than you.” The master pauses to adjust something on the table nearest to hand, closing one eye to check that it now satisfies. “I tell you that philosophers are those who dwell in the cosmos as their city. I tell you that philosophers are an international brotherhood. They are the select of the earth and it is their duty and their joy to raise up those who are not philosophers. What do you think of this?”

  Seth has come forward and now stands before Theano’s master as we have been standing. I think him radiant in his beauty, in his natural pride in self. Without blush, he says, “This is what I think, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria. I think you have said a thing that sings with truth.”

  Immediately, Philo cranes his head forward so that his frog snout comes close to meeting the bent nose of Seth. “Who is this person who speaks so to me?”

  Theano, whose ugliness has gone pale from fear of having insulted her master, rushes her answer, “Seth of Damascus, the last of the House of Hasmonaean, orphaned by the Herods, and raised in exile by the Queen of Adiabene, Helen of the Assyrians. He has studied with both the Carmelites and the Nazoreans.”

  “Indeed?” Philo raises an eyebrow. “An actual living Maccabee. Another Jew among Jews. He carries a great name, complex in its meaning. Tell me, is he a philosopher?”

  “It could be that he will become in time one of the greatest philosophers,” replies Theano, who is not immune to either the beauty of Seth, or his intellect.

  “Good,” declares Philo. “Shalom and welcome, philosopher. Welcome three philosophers! There cannot be too many such men, especially if they are Jews.”

  From this day forth, Seth and Philo Judaeus can barely leave the room in which the other is to be found. Not only are they bonded by the similar inclination of their character, but by blood and by natural privilege and by early teaching. In moments, they also discover they are bound by their love of the Greeks. As Seth lives and breathes Socrates, Philo lives and breathes Plato, whom he calls the Most Holy Plato.

  In the soft blue etesian winds curling in from the sea, Philo reads from certain Egyptian papyri he calls the Book of Coming Forth by Day, but which he says some call the Book of the Dead. He says he would rather we did not use this name as it is sure to mislead the simple who take such things literally. “It is a book of life eternal, not the cessation of life.” Listening as he reads, I have never, save in the Vedas, heard such beauty of thought, such beauty of language, such grace in the face of life and death. It seems my ear is sharper now, for this makes certain books of the Torah sound nothing more than howls of uncomprehending mortal terror. In the ancient papyri of ancient Egypt, there is no terror before the world, above or below, no righteous way else all is lost, no man exhorting other men to do as his god demands, no god willing to destroy those who would not obey. Some chapters are so old, there is no knowing who first spoke them, who first heard them. In this book is all of creation, all of being and becoming and living and dying, all that is finest in the mind of man and neter, as the Egyptians call a god, though they do not think of any god as my people think of their god. To an Egyptian, a neter is a spiritual essence or principle, and I come to understand that Egypt
ian gods and goddesses are in truth not many and many a god such as the Jews claim pagans have but instead are as the Jews claim Yahweh to be, One God. The seeming many are only aspects of the One.

  As I listen, I wonder, could not the visible world be God speaking to itself? I run with this thought to Seth, as a child runs to its mother with something it has made.

  On the evening of a day that fire rages through most of the buildings crowded round the Lake Mareia docks, and threatens not only the bandit community that makes its home in the thick reeds of the shoreline, but also Alexandria’s second, younger, and lesser library, the Serapeion in the Rhakotis district where the Egyptians live, we are driven inside the house of Philo Judaeus for the ash that darkens the air and chokes the lungs.

  On a night of burning buildings, Philo lectures us, saying, “In the Beginning there was Nothing, which can be thought of as ‘dazzling darkness’ or Absolute Mystery. This is the singularity before all thought and all things, which is called Temu. Temu came even before the shapeless void which the Greeks name Chaos and the Egyptians call Nun. Temu cannot be Consciousness because Consciousness needs something to be conscious of. It cannot even be said to exist because what exists does so within Consciousness. Temu is unknowable. Temu is unthinkable. Temu is beyond being. But by some way not even the most sublime of philosophers can yet say, came from Temu the First Idea, named by some Logos, the unknowable knew itself by becoming both known and knower. And thus was created duality, as in, the witness and the experience, the God and the Goddess, Consciousness as the witnessing God and experience as the Goddess Sophia. The First Idea is that Temu is conscious of itself, being the One Soul of the Universe that is conscious through all beings.”