Soul Matters, Book 2: Wrath of the Goddess

Work was slow the next day. Phil met with the other department heads, and they reviewed their goals for the next quarter. The dry pep talk from one of the senior vice presidents reminded Phil of the lamentable fact that senior management rarely took management classes. They didn’t have to; they wielded all the power. The VP droned on and on, probably thinking he was as good as the Gipper rallying a football team for a second half comeback.

The room was stuffy. The power-point presentation was canned and boring. The VP just read what was on the screen, as if they couldn’t read it themselves. The goals were the same as they were the previous quarter. Phil stifled a yawn and tried to look supportive of his immediate supervisor. It was one price for climbing the ladder.

Phil declined the martini-lunch his peer group planned and returned to his office. Telling Beth Ann he wouldn’t be taking any calls (except for Betty), he sequestered himself to ponder the elaborate beauty of his deepening psychotic break.

Not only was he fully enmeshed in angel politics, he was now battling archetypes -- a word he didn’t even know two months ago. He wished there was somebody he could talk to -- other than Sandy or Dr. Loreen.

Dr. Loreen made him feel secure with her self-assurance, and with her detailed explanations for his condition. There must be somebody else like her, but he had no idea where to look. At this point, he wasn’t sure if he would be allowed back into his local church. He was sure Dr. Loreen, who was a personal friend of the pastor, informed him of the demons in her radio and whatever else Manuel did to her.

Sandy was his only confidant in this strange adventure, and he would discuss it with him. Still, whatever demons haunted Sandy as he stumbled along his own path might preclude him as a trustworthy advisor. It seemed depressingly sad that Sandy was the only confidante in Phil’s life. What had he been doing the last twenty years? As the answer formed in his mind, he pushed it away. The answer was more depressing than the question.

Turning to his computer, he pulled up the file on all his recent research. The Grigori, the Nephilim, the various interpretations of Genesis, and the notes he collected on archetypes in general, Morrigan in particular.

He clicked through it all, realizing there was a compelling logic to his psychosis. It was internally consistent -- a seamless whole grounded in its own unassailable tidiness. Or by contrast, it was an alternate reality his overworked mind manufactured to deal with his mid-life crisis, his doubts about God, and his fear of death. Either way he was screwed. His current choices were to lose his mind or lose his soul.

He swiveled in his chair and gazed out the window. It was another cloudless day in the Southland. No birds flew. No trees waved in an ocean breeze. There was nothing of Nature outside his window. It was concrete, steel, and glass. Cars and trucks serviced these buildings. Men and women scurried about their oh-so-important business. And Phil was making himself even more depressed.

Then there was the unhappy fact the sleeping memories of his youth were awakening. Would they, once jostled into consciousness, go back to sleep? Or was he further doomed to dealing with his tangled past -- replete with all its conflicted emotions, addictions, and confusion? The prospect of facing those issues was enough to drive him crazy by itself.

To make matters even worse, he was up for his annual performance review a week from now. He wasn’t sure he could hold it together through a probing interview. What if he lost it in the boss’ office? What if he began blubbering about angels, devils, gods, goddesses, and a magical trail through the forest that led to an archway that gave him access to his past lives. It wouldn’t be pretty.

He pivoted to clear his computer screen. Then he stood to gaze out the window. It was another sunny day in southern California, he recounted. Sometimes he thought it was boring to live where there was really only one season.

Bringing himself back to his dilemma, he reluctantly admitted to himself Manuel’s world appealed to one part of him. Psychotic or not, the world of Spirit revolved around key principals: justice, compassion, evolution in Spirit, and seeking balance through transcendence. However, security of any sort was the price of admission. It was a world adhering to an Unknowable agenda. Therefore the comfort of the known was abjectly absent.

While much of him would agree to an uninsured condition, much of him did not. There was his job, Betty, the house, the kids’ future, his prestige in the community, and his membership at the golf club. All of it was at risk if he remained caught up in Manuel’s psychotic web.

Maybe he could go surfing. It used to help him clear his mind, and he always left the ocean feeling better. But then he would have to buy a wetsuit, a board, wax, and probably a car-top carrier to transport the board. All of which might serve as evidence of his deteriorating state of mind.

The idea of it was compelling, though. On his way home, he further realized he was in no kind of shape to be surfing. Whereupon, when he reached home, he went to the Yellow Pages to find the nearest swimming pool. At least others wouldn’t frown on swimming for exercise. Surfing would have to wait. As he flipped the pages, he laughed at himself for not immediately consulting Google. His kids would laugh at him too, if they were around, and would have probably already found the best location.

Dinner was the routine affair of listening to Betty’s account of her day. Phil did have the presence of mind to comment on her hair -- newly dyed to its original blonde, and attractively bobbed to disguise her double-chin. Of course, the new hair-do required an outfit to match, and it too had a sliming cut and line to it.

Telling Betty he must meet with an after-dinner client, he hustled to Sandy’s. Since it was mid-week, there should be no party going on, no Monday Night Football, just the solitary Sandy seeking to find his own soul.

Betty gave him a curious look as he left, and he suspected she didn’t buy his excuse for leaving the house. He was treading on thinner and thinner ice with her, but one part of him really didn’t care anymore.

Phil arrived at the one-story house as dusk turned to dark. He hoisted a half-rack of beer out of the seat next to him and plodded up to the porch and knocked.

Sandy seemed to be in a more chipper mood than usual. They secured beers and went out back. In the clear, still night, the light from the kitchen was sufficient.

Phil gave a brief report of his near-miss disasters with both Typhon and Sammael. He concluded, “I don’t get how these things can exist. Well, angels, maybe, but archetypes or masks of God -- I can’t make myself accept their existence; even though they are frighteningly real.”

“At least on that plane of existence,” Sandy added.

“Well, yeah, but the higher does inform the lower. They must somehow exist here.”

“They do. It’s why Jung could discover them and study their influence.”

“But then some archetypes are masks of God; others are not. Manuel wasn’t clear on how that worked.”

“Jung said archetypes are next to the instincts. They’re ancient patterning structures, Plato’s original Forms. When you look at the Tree of Life as a biological structure with specie, family, genus and so on, you’re looking at an archetypal construct.”

Phil finally got it. Archetypes were the templates for every-manifest-thing, both physical and psychological.

“What about the masks of God?”

Sandy sipped his beer before answering. “We created the need for gods. We made them as the rungs on the ladder we’re climbing. Our collective need manufactured them at the level of pattern on the archetypal plateau. The language at that level is, as Jung said, myth, symbol, and metaphor.”

“Manuel said something like that. Then he said the ones acceptable to God became masks of God somehow. The ones that didn’t make the grade were given to the angels.”

Sandy was nodding his agreement. “Makes sense. Yahweh would be a mask of God; whereas, St. Jude is a mere patron saint of miracles. Both are archetypes needed by man, but one is infused with God; the other is not.”

They sat in silence for a while as the moon rose over the ocean. The clear sky lost its warmth quickly, but the two of them continued to sit outside in the deepening dark.

Eventually Phil said, “You don’t think I’m going crazy, do you?”

“I could be glib and say, ‘No more than the rest of us,’ but I think you probably need a serious answer.”

“I do. I even began seeing a counselor about it. Manuel ran her off.”

Sandy smiled, “I’ll bet that was interesting. But, Phil, the old adage, about knowing you’re going crazy means you aren’t, is still true. As a consequence, there may never be a way to verify your adventure in Spirit -- except by the changes it produces in you. And I can see those changes.”

“Like what?”

“You’re out of the box, Phil. And there’s a lot that goes with an out-of-the-box orientation. Before all this, I never saw you out of the box for any reason.”

Maybe not all the way out of the box, Phil equivocated in his mind. He still had one foot firmly planted in the box, in the yuppie orientation. Still, Sandy was right about his other foot. Manuel nailed it in place out of the box some time ago.

Phil returned to their previous conversation by asking, “The esoteric history of the world has gods acting on creation as it hardens. Those gods aren’t masks of God the way we think of them.”

“Maybe not, but they are still representatives of the Great Mystery.”

“I can see the Law of Involution would need shepherds to make sure it all unfolded the way it was supposed to,” Phil went on. “What I don’t get is the need for the successive amnesia during the fall into matter.”

Sandy smiled and sipped his beer, “You can’t have a relationship with your hand or foot or kneecap. God wants a relationship with free beings. So we gradually fell from the bliss state of Oneness to the fear-bound state of individuality.”

Phil frowned, “It really does seem unfair.”

Sandy chuckled, “Job’s insight. He pointed it out to God, and that’s when God launched his famous rant.”

“His what?”

“It’s in Job, chapters 38 to 40. It’s a long rant about what God can do that mankind cannot. It ends with a big slap in mankind’s face. 'Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.’”

“Okay,” Phil smiled. “We started off at-One in a misty Universe of sub-atomic particles. Over time, it hardened into matter.”

“Yeah, but you’re skipping over that process of hardening. Matter was the last thing that hardened. First, the Void was created, and it’s ruled by Sophia. Then the Spirit or Deity level came into existence with the clash between Yin and Yang. Then came the ch’i field and the realm of Nature. Adam, in the esoteric tradition, was a living being that, like ch’i, filled the entire Kosmos. Finally, matter came into being.”

Phil pondered this version of Creation for a bit before he observed, “The Fall was when Adam claimed Earth as his home.”

“That was one of the falls, but then we are talking about the Law of Involution -- a series of falls from Oneness to the Void to the Spirit and Nature realms to dense Matter.”

Phil grimaced, “It’s a long climb.”

“It’s a long climb,” Sandy sighed.

The next day Phil hesitated on the leather pillow. Going back into the crazy political maneuvering of the bureaucracy of angels just seemed a bad idea. If he followed his clear sense of logic, he would forego meditation forever. Yet, his clear sense of duty and loyalty, which he seemed to have been born with, demanded he stand next to Manuel before the bar of justice.

Not justice, he caught himself. It was the Council of Punishment, and it meted out punishment -- the very topic initiating this ‘adventure of the Real,’ as Manuel called it -- punishment. Phil asked about the Divine Purpose behind the Flood. Was it really punishment for wickedness? Manuel said it was not the case, but the idea of punishment was fully illustrated in the complete story.

As yet the moral of the story remained untold. He did know, first-hand, the reason why mankind in the West brutally repressed Mother Earth and the Goddess, but what was the punishment for doing so? Or was the punishment of human manufacture: pollution, deforestation, strip-mining, and resource depletion that all led to a planet where humans would be no longer welcome. What if, like the Celts prior to the 12th Century, man had kept the Goddess and maintained a reverence for the Earth? What would it have meant?

He didn’t know, and he realized he was stalling. Therefore Phil took a deep breath to begin the process, and step-by-step he dropped deeper into a meditative state. Once there, the singular door opened, and he popped into Manuel’s garden.

Manuel was sitting on the marble bench. He turned to Phil and said in a listless voice, “I was hoping you wouldn’t come back.”

“Why not?” was Phil’s jaunty response. This evening he wore a suit. It seemed fitting attire for a court appearance.

“I wanted you to save yourself,” Manuel answered, and his aura was dull white, almost gray.

“I gave up on being saved,” Phil rejoined. “I want to know God’s Plan -- or at least my part in it.”

Manuel stood, “English really is a bastard language. You just used the word ‘save’ in a different way than I meant it. And as far as God’s Plan goes, I already told you. It’s compassion and social justice. It’s feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, protecting the innocent. What more do you need to know?”

“The role of Divine punishment,” Phil answered, his tone turning more serious.

“Oh, yeah,” Manuel’s aura brightened. “There is that piece, isn’t there. Well, I can’t tell you what it is. They did get around to forbidding me to tell you anything useful. I just hope what I did tell you was enough.”

“Me, too,” Phil smiled. “Shall we go?”

Manuel stood and placed his hand on Phil’s shoulder. At once they were flying out of the patio, across the level of Physically Manifesting Spirits, specifically the angel compound, which looked like spokes of a wheel. They headed for the domed buildings at the hub. They descended through the roof of one dome to a circular room. At the perimeter were twelve thrones. A desk was in front of each with two angels manning each one. The center area was a large, gray-speckled, marble floor. Embedded in the floor was a mosaic. At its center was a small triangle inside of a tight circle. Long leaves stretched out from the inner circle to a much larger one. On each of the leaves, in the small circle and the triangle was Hebrew writing. Phil learned this mandala was called Samhamforae -- the 72 names of God. He also learned some of these names had some kind of conjuring power. Apparently when the Council spoke these names of God, it could at least pull beings into the room.

Phil smiled as they alighted on the floor. Up here there wouldn’t be any problem with fugitives, nor a need for bounty hunters. Samhamforae took care of it.

Raguel appeared a few moments later and intoned, “Council of Punishment, please convene to hear testimony.”

The head of internal affairs boasted flowing black hair like the swirling skirts of a flamenco dancer. His locks accentuated his stern chiseled face. He stood quiet, awaiting the arrival of the twelve angels of judgment.

They appeared in their seats, and Phil anticipated the collective power of their presence by staring at the floor. The shock of their presence squeezed against his frail ego, which really didn’t want to believe that any of this existed. The squeeze lessened once Phil got used to it and he felt like he could breath again.

In due time, one of angels of judgment said, “State your case, Raguel.” Phil recognized the voice of Kezef, the head of the Council.

Raguel lifted off the ground to hover some eight-feet high. He began to slowly turn clockwise as to successively face each angel. He spoke, “The charges against the Archangel Manuel, who is present, are a detailed and lengthy account of offense upon offense....”

Phil blocked out the litany to hazard a glance at the angels and archangels who sat on their thrones. He couldn’t really tell the differences among them, but there were definite varieties in their auras. Their dress was mundanely routine, just different colors for their robes -- white, black, brown, red, blue, yellow, green, and other colors Betty would probably know the names of. Since he was a guy, he only recognized primary colors. Ones, like puce or chartreuse or whatever --.

Manuel elbowed him in the ribs, “Stay in the present moment.”

Raguel was concluding his list of Manuel’s crimes. Then he paused before saying, “We also have serious complaints from Sammael against Phil, a human who is also present.”

Raguel continued to pivot in the air, and he was apparently waiting until he faced Kezef before he continued.

When he did he paused and said, “Sammael will speak for himself.”

“Call him to witness,” Kezef said in a flat tone.

Phil noticed the angel-secretaries join hands. Then their auras blazed to a bright ‘darkness’ as they intoned one of the names of God. Moments later, Sammael appeared. His regal presence jolted Phil, who looked down at the floor again.

Immediately Sammael floated up and began the slow-turning, which was probably proper etiquette.

“My lords,” he began. “I was reluctant to bring this trivial matter before your august body, but there seemed no other solution. You have no doubt heard how Manuel aided and abetted the human’s illegal use of my property -- in human terms, it could be called joy-riding. What you haven’t heard is how the human desecrated the holy relic to escape a foreordained fate. A fate sealed by his own hand before he incarnated this lifetime.”

“You can’t hold him to a contract he has no present knowledge of,” one of the other angels interrupted. Phil recognized the voice of Hutriel, the rod of God. He also remembered from before ‘rod’ meant ‘knowledge’ as well as a switch for punishment. Hutriel seemed to be one of Phil’s allies, but he wasn’t sure.

Another voice boomed in, “But you can hold him to the charge of desecrating a religious symbol.”

Sammael’s aura flashed crimson as he retorted, “We can hold him to the contract. Balberith wrote it to insure his free will. This human agreed to a series of temptations and/or punishments he knew would work on him. He wished to return to us in this current life, and we helped him confirm his own intention. He retained the right of refusal at all times.”

The devil produced a document from his dark robes, and it floated to one of the angel-secretaries. After a quick read, he nodded his head in agreement.

“The contract stands, then,” Kezef said. “What is your proposal, Sammael?”

“Return the human to Hell so we can offer him our hospitality,” the devil said with satisfaction dripping from the words.

Hutriel countered, “We already did so, and he refused your hospitality.”

Sammael paused before answering, “Then I leave it to the Council to pronounce his sentence. However we reserve the right to preserve the contract until all its conditions are met.”

“Agreed,” Kezef pronounced. Then he turned to the pair of felons, “Manuel, it’s your turn. What do you have to say for yourself -- this time?”

Manuel floated up to rotate in the air as the others had done. He was less flamboyant than usual and spoke in a flat tone, “Since when does any one of us get to own something? I didn’t know Sammael ‘owned’ Typhon. And even if he did, I was using Typhon for his original purpose. Where’s the harm?”

He let these questions ring in the air before continuing, “And as for all the stuff Raguel said, it was also true internal affairs approved my contact with Phil. And this time I kept them in the loop about what I was doing. Except for this last little adventure. But I was going to give them an after-incident report.”

He paused again, then sighed, “So there you have it. Judge me as you will, but leave Phil alone.”

A long silence ensued before Kezef said, “Phil, I’m sorry you are before us again. You seem to be breaking our precedents a second time. You were the first human to be called before us. And now you are back. Please make your statement.”

Phil cleared his throat and straightened his silk tie. Then he attempted to look at least towards the angels. He found he could do so by unfocusing his eyes and gazing above their forms.

He began his defense, “I’m sorry to be before you as well. And we would not be here at all if a proper investigation was conducted by internal affairs.”

Phil paused in the hopes this would immediately prompt a more thorough investigation, but the room sat silent.

Dismissing his disappointment, he continued, “The facts are these: First, Typhon and archetypes like him belong to mankind, because we created them. No angel can have a prior claim to any of them. Second, the task Manuel laid before me was one I asked to undergo. Third, the destruction done to Typhon was due to Morrigan. Fourth, Sammael’s account of this was I cheated. It is an inaccurate assessment. He changed the structure of Manuel’s lesson, and I out-smarted him. Sammael is a sore loser and lied to Raguel.”

After a moment Kezef said, “Thank you, Phil, for your statement. We will now ask for guidance.”

All went silent, and the silence deepened as the presence of the Void entered the room. Phil knew the Void was the home of Sophia -- God’s Wisdom. It was a place prior to Creation, a place of pure potential, potential yet to be manifested. All thought ceased in the Void, and one could claim a direct intuition from God. The Council sat in the primordial stillness to find guidance and consensus.

After an eternal moment, the Void receded.

Kezef intoned, “Phil will return to the past-life we were shown. Manuel will accompany him and incarnate as well. Should Phil -- through the being he is in this past-life -- deny the temptations Sammael has scheduled for him, then both Phil and Manuel are exonerated from these charges. Should he not, then Sammael will have the human’s soul.”

With no further discussion, all the angels began disappearing. They silently popped out of their thrones. Sammael dissolved; as did Raguel. Even the secretaries left. Manuel placed a hand on Phil’s shoulder to initiate their flight. Without a word they flew out of the domed building, and back to Manuel’s patio.

Once there Phil said, “You told me the past was set. It can’t be changed. Only my relationship to the past is changeable.”

Manuel shrugged, “It’s usually the case. But God can change the rules as he sees fit.”

“I wish I could have seen the contract I signed,” Phil muttered as he sat on the bench. “Then I’d know what I was up against.”

Manuel laughed a rather mirthless laugh, “You’re up against yourself -- your shadow, your Divine-nature, your weakness, and your strength. But I can’t help, remember? It is now forbidden. You’re on your own.”

Phil soaked in the implications as a new concern hit him, “What will happen to you once you’re trapped in the Flesh.”

“Nothing good, I’m sure.”

Phil smiled and observed, “At least Raguel will enjoy your new assignment.”

Manuel’s aura flared into life and he started chuckling, “Maybe then we would have something in common -- I just hope I don’t get stuck in the Flesh for 6,000 years like he did.”