Confession of a Ghost. 21. 20. House of Wanderers

“CONFESSION of a GHOST”
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series


20 BEFORE/21 AFTER. HOUSE No. 9

*****HOUSE of WANDERERS*****

***
Somewhere in the Universe


I opened the door to House No. 9, so the Guardian and I walked into the distance across the cloudless dark blue sky dotted with stars.

“Why are we in the Universe now? We found ourselves in caves, deserts, on islands before.”

“You’ve already got used to earthly images!”

“There is no one here but us.”

“Your House No. 9 is empty.”

“There are only three Houses left – 10, 11 and 12. We met not many planets in the previous Houses, so does the majority live in the latter ones?”

“I would say, all the hardest and slowest planets are in your lower half of the Circle. The first 6 Houses, ‘nocturnal’ ones, characterize the inner Self, one’s soul, hidden from prying eyes.”

“It turns out that I have a solid hardship inside.”

“However, the most distant planets from the Earth, which are considered slow in terms of their movement and, as a result, hard, are the most mysterious, and in your case, given their stellar accompaniment, the most magical. People with such passports are usually magicians, mystics, metaphysicians, esoteric, occultists. Realize yourself through the Sphere of Spirituality, so as not to become a sorceress of the Lower Astral. Strive to the Higher Spheres.”

“So what do the ‘daytime’ 6 Houses mean? My outer face?”

“The nocturnal Houses immerse you inside your Self. Houses 7–12 mean what others see you. House No. 9 is the Sphere of the Wanderings of the Spirit, the Spiritual Path or long distance traveling, philosophy, religion and spiritual practices, not magical, since magic is in House No. 8. The Sphere of Study, Teachers and Teaching. The Sphere of Knowledge. Everything unknown, for example, foreign countries, strangers, higher education are here. In Sphere No. 3 you write your books, in Sphere No. 9 publish them, it’s the Book Publishing House.”

“This House is located in the Universe!” I tried to hug the boundless space with my hands.

“In the possession of Uranus, and he is the symbol of Sky and Heaven. Uranus, as you already know, doesn’t recognize any boundaries, rules, patterns, stereotypes. He loves non-standards and suddenness. He is lightning fast. You’ll strive not only to foreign countries, but also to astral travels – out of body.”

“To fly here out of the body? To chat with you here? And to the Library for Knowledge, right?”

“You can explore our World.”

“Saturn said he would send me along the Spiritual Path around the age of 13, right? Will he send me to a parochial school?”

“It’s necessary to put your Spirit on its feet with something. You’ll be drawn beyond the brink. Uranus gives inquisitiveness to one’s mind, speed to thoughts, freedom to flying. He values individual approach and independence of judgment. Your activity in the research area of the Spiritual World is very high. You’ll start absorbing books on the theme of Another Reality in huge quantities. Remember how many books you have seen in Saturn’s Tower of your Self! Uranus encourages the development of the mind, he is a perpetual student-researcher, drawn to learn more and more new things, absorbing a colossal amount of knowledge, always lack of them. Look at the sky, it’s impossible to embrace it! Uranus loves contacts with other cultures. You’ll learn several languages and communicate with foreigners. You have Uranus in the Sphere of Creativity, in charge of the Sphere of Spirituality. This is an ideal picture for a person who explores the World of the Unreveled on his Path and writes down the results.”

“Why?”

“Uranus will publish your manuscripts and guarantee success in your career as a writer. Neptune with the keys to Heaven is in the Sphere of Service. The whirlwind of Uranus forms a bridge between Spheres No. 5 and No. 9. You’ll fulfill your destiny by serving the World through the Word.”

“The bridge 5–9 can be interpreted as love with a foreigner, right?”

“It can, but think about the Eternal. Love for book publishing. Admirers of creativity in foreign countries. Saturn doesn’t like calf tenderness, he appreciates wisdom. Don’t write disposable tabloids. Uranus, like Saturn, hates tearfulness and sentimentality. He aspires to the Bright Future, likes eclecticism, a combination or synthesis of various, at first glance, incompatible ideas. In his difference from the majority, genius is manifested. You won’t be the ‘earthly creature’, at least in Spheres 5 and 9. Common people often don’t understand people like you. But what do you and I have to do with others? You are outside the Space of Time. Everyone has one’s own Path.”

“Uranus has repeatedly mentioned Ouranoupoli, and I’ll visit it! Alice from the Future told me that in the Library. Oh, an unconventional idea! We’re now in the foreign Sphere, and Earth is a foreign country to us, right? Let’s go down to Earth now and fly over it! Will you show me from above, how it’s arranged there, huh?”

The globe began to increase in size. We were approaching it. I began to distinguish land from seas and oceans.

“This is Japan,” the Guardian said. “The Land of the Rising Sun, and you’ll be there. And there, do you see the snow-capped mountains, similar to the pyramid complex? It’s Tibet, and nearby there is the most mysterious Mount Kailash. You’ll enjoy Tibet.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed, breathless from the flight. “And there, what’s that?”

“The tiny Philippine island of magical healers, Camotes. Then you can see the giant Buddha temple complex of Java island.”

We flew over Earth at great speed, periodically hovering over the places that I was destined to visit during my lifetime.

“Wow! We’ve circled the entire globe!” I exclaimed. “How many interesting things I’ll be able to learn!”

“You’ll look everywhere for signs of Eternity and Secret Knowledge, but it’s useless to look for them on Earth, Rukh.”


***
Library of the Universe


“Tell me about memory,” I asked the Guardian, having taken a seat into the Reading Hall. “What is it?”

“During lifetime, it’s a link to the information about labyrinths, recorded and stored forever in the Tablets, outside one’s earthly Consciousness. It’s possible to connect to both the Past and the Future, but it’s more correct to say to the realized and unrealized sectors of one’s own or another labyrinth. The connection occurs through the Subconscious, I mean one’s soul, but the results are not always brought to the level of Consciousness.”

“So is it impossible to erase one’s memory?”

“You can turn off the access of Consciousness to individual fragments completely, temporarily or permanently, to any realized or unrealized sector, to your own information or someone else’s, or to everything written in the Tablets.”

“So it turns out that Me in the Future has the memory! It hasn’t been disappeared! The door between the Subconscious and the Consciousness was closed only, right? After Death, Consciousness and Subconscious should merge, right? So should the door between them, or Consciousness as an earthly thing, disappear after Death, while the Subconscious remains?”

“Everything earthly and temporal should be let go, one by one, until only the eternal and immutable remains. Don’t worry, my soul, everything will be fine. What’s next in the book? Wow, ‘The Disembodied’! For a 17-year-old girl, in my opinion, it’s not bad at all!”

“They talked until the morning. It was my pleasure to act as an intermediary. And then she disappeared. Forever. Although… nine months later our daughter was born. We named her Veronica. I think I know whose soul incarnated into her body.”


*****GUIDES*****

***
Moscow


Ray wasn’t there yet. I turned on the fireplace in my room with my gaze and lay down on the bed. The Mist was enveloping my mind.


***
Somewhere in the Mist


“One day in Heaven, I’ll be chaotically remembering my life on Earth,” I exhaled, looking at the blue-black sky dotted with stars and the Moon hovering on a palm tree like a lantern.

“What nonsense are you talking about!” the man grumbled contemptuously to the incessant accompaniment of cicadas, lounging in an armchair next to my hammock, stretched between palm trees. “Bullshit! We’ll die and nothing there. Our bones will rot and there’s nothing left. Except our poems and medals. Would you say that God exists? This pseudo-spiritual heresy was invented exclusively for political purposes – to keep the people in check! There is no God, no Devil. Man is matter.”

I remembered his poems. He asked me to write a preface. They all were a solid straight horizontal line.

“Tell me about yourself, your life,” I asked.

“The same as everyone else’s – born, graduated, married, got a daughter, divorced. My daughter got married and emigrated. I worked as an engineer. Now, retired, I can afford to live abroad, renting out my flat in Moscow.”

“Well… any special events, something that you experienced strongly? Maybe unrequited love? Or someone’s death?”

“Come on! Let’s go out to dinner. Let’s agree, you’ll never talk to me about God and others like that.”

“That’s why your poems are like that,” I thought.

“Alice, we have to go,” Ray tugged at my arm.


***
Moscow


“Where were you that time?” Ray asked when I woke up.

“In the Pacific Ocean. A tiny island of Philippine healers, immersed in dense tropical greenery. You would love it there. The Black Magic energy. I knew a poet who lived there, he invited me to stay with him on vacation.”

“Funny poet! He was dreaming of finding a wife, but he hadn’t even studied your autobiographical prose, which clearly showed that spiritual impotence, unlike physical one, automatically put a big and definite cross on… How many grooms were sent to you, and you went on correcting your verses!” Ray said, flipping through “the Voices out of the Looking-Glass” poetry collection in “the Moon Cat” book. “Whose ghosts are missing here? The neighbor’s husband is the only absent.”

“It’s a pity I had not enough time to chat with my Selves in the Library! Ray, am I just a phantom of another, real me?”

“You ended up in this flat in an unrealized version, where you also exist. Everything written in the Tablets exists forever. During your lifetime, getting into potential scenarios of the Future, you saw yourself there.”

“Maybe I’m sleeping right now and I need to wake up. Did I really live this version of my destiny on Earth? Or is it one of the hypothetical scripts for Me living now, or for Me still incarnating?”

“It doesn’t matter. Suppose you are a phantom, but this is your potentially realizable option. You are not allowed into Heaven. Will you wander around Earth, waiting for your Rukh get to the same moment in reality, and re-scroll history, returning to the unchangeable Past, or sit at the elevator like your neighbor’s husband?”

“Unlike him, I have no one to wait here for. Have you been to Paradise?”

“Everyone is taken to both Heaven and Hell. You’ve been there before and run not only to the Library during your incarnation. What else?”

“There is nothing interesting here. Diplomas with honors and certificates, other certificates and other diplomas. That’s right, Ray! So many pieces of paper that once seemed important, and now no matter they are or they are not! Let’s scan further. Baptismal certificate in the Church of the Unexpected Joy in Maryina Roshcha. My uncle served there. Father Eros was the head of that church. Such a strange name for a priest. He baptized me right on Epiphany, I was 13. I spent weekends in church. They took me with them to the refectory after the liturgy. Then I entered the church school of the Epiphany Patriarch Cathedral, sang at the left altar door, we studied the Church Slavonic language, the Law of God and other subjects. On the right, at the entrance to the Cathedral, there was the miraculous icon ‘Seeking for the Perished’ to which I’m reading an Akathist on Athos.”

“Why didn’t you go to the monastery?” Ray sighed.

“Probably to meet you. Was there an option with a monastery in the Space?”

“Both was and is. Do you want to move into it? Don’t want. It’s too little time to jump around the options. You’ll see it in Heaven later.”

“Does it happen that there are 2 options, but no matter you’ll go either to the left, or to the right?”

“Yes, it does.”

“In this folder, there are bills for rent, notices, various documents … Oh, Ray! This is a magic wand from London! And a train ticket for the platform 9 and three quarters! Does Hogwarts exist?”

“Any thought-form is material. The more people visualize something, the stronger it is energetically. Hogwarts exists in the astral projection too. Shall we move…?”

“To Hogwarts?”

“No, your magic wand,” Ray laughed, and I tried to pull the wand out of the box, but in vain, Ray sighed and … the wand slipped out of the pile of stuff and danced in the air.

“Ray, tell me how! How do you manage it?” I exclaimed.

“Nothing new, by the power of thought. Make a wish!”

“Please open the doors to Heaven for me! Let this nightmare end! Give me the opportunity to finish what I planned!”

The wand fell to the floor.

“Ray!” I looked at him with reproach.

“Too many wishes at once. It’s tired! Go ahead.”

“Souvenirs from distant countries. Most of the souvenirs I gave away in my lifetime. It’s a pity I didn’t visit the place where the Tower of Babel had been.”

“What’s the need to go in a place where there isn’t what you need anymore?” Ray chuckled. “By the way, how do you like the idea of returning to Earth as a traveler?”

“I don’t see the point… to fall from Heaven to Earth like Rukh and live from scratch again? No, Ray. I don’t want to incarnate once more. Do you remember us dreaming of emigrating? To Prague, to my friends, to Italy, then you, so joyful, called me from Nice, and then to Greece … Ray, did we have such an option?”

He ran his hand along my back, humming the words of Butusov’s song, “You take off your evening dress, facing the wall, and I see fresh scars on your back, smooth as velvet. I want to cry out of pain or forget myself in a dream, where are your wings that I liked so much?”

We plunged into the memories of unfulfilled dreams drowning in the Mist.


***
Ouranoupoli


“I’m going to Jerusalem!” Janis said happily. “With Father Gabriel from Vatopedi. There is constant warfare there, but still…”

“Take St. Christopher with you!” I smiled.

“Yes, in Greece all drivers have his icon,” Janis said.

“We usually have St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and the Virgin Mary of the Way, Hodegetria. Once I was driving and had an accident. When, after all the blows and dances, the car stopped, the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker stood on the top panel, right in front of me, although during trips it was in the cup holder by the gearbox. He saved me. And throughout Syria, an Orthodox priest traveled with us with a huge Hodegetria icon, communicated with Her as if She were alive, carried it everywhere with him, put it to holy relicts, on the stone of St. Simeon the Stylite.”

Leah brought coffee and said thoughtfully,

“Whoever believes in St. Christopher won’t die in an accident. The inscription on his image came to my mind. One of the 14 Holy Helpers of Catholics, helps travelers and, as a monk told me, bachelors!”

“He also protects from lightning strikes, floods, helps people who carry heavy burdens,” I added. “His statues were installed on bridges and at the entrance to buildings with signs, ‘Look at St. Christopher, and you won’t be in danger of suddenly falling.’ They pray to him against epileptic seizures. The legend says the statue of the Saint in Cologne Cathedral protects against sudden death.”

“Like St. Barbara!” Leah exclaimed. “Tell me more!”

“Coins with the face of Christopher were minted in the Czech Republic and Germany. The Saint is the patron of Vilnius, Havana, Baden, the German city of science Braunschweig, many islands in the Caribbean and Croatia, a vast geography. Both gardeners and merchants pray to him. Saint is not quite ordinary. Christopher in Greek means ‘carrying Christ’. He was carrying a boy across the river, who suddenly ‘became heavy’. The boy said to be Christ, ‘bearing all the sins and burdens of the world.’ On the icons of the 6th century, including the Macedonian ceramic ones, Christopher defeats the Serpent together with George, and is depicted with the head of a dog. In the middle of the 16th century, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Saint was portrayed as a warrior with the head of a dog, wolf or horse. His icon was considered the main one in the Orthodox church of the Sviyazhsky prison, built by decree of the tsar in Tatarstan. Historians believe that during Ivan the Terrible period, there was a process of conversion of the Tatars to Orthodoxy, whose pagan totems were a wolf, a dog and a horse, but …”

“Why don’t they write him with the dog’s head now?”

“At the beginning of the 18th century, Russian Tsar Peter the First ordered to change some icons in accordance with the decision of the Church Council of the 17th century, and the Holy Synod banned such an image, the previous icons were destroyed or rewritten, the animal head was replaced with a human one, although the Old Believers continue to venerate the dog’s head image. In Orthodoxy, there are two images of St. Christopher – the warrior and the man carrying Christ across the river. The latter is rather a Catholic trend, since Orthodox sources don’t mention this event in the life of the martyr.”

“What do they say about his life?”

“He lived at the same time as St. George, in the 3rd century AD, during the time of the pagan Emperor Decius. According to Orthodoxy, he was from Libya, to Catholics – from Canaan, the Promised Land or the Land of Purple – Phoenicia, which today is divided between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. Christopher was martyred in Lycia, Turkey, around April 23, almost on the day of St. George and my Saint, Empress Alexandra of Rome, their memorial day is May 6, and Christopher’s is May 9. In Catholicism it’s on July 24 and 25, but in 1969, the Vatican removed Christopher’s memorial day from their calendar.”

“Did they de-canonize him?” Leah was surprised.

“No, he was transferred to the category of locally venerated Saints, he was too much revered to be de-canonized.”

“How was he killed?”

“At first they tried to burn him in a red-hot box, but the fire didn’t touch the Saint. In the end, his head was cut off.”

“The dog’s?!” Leah squeezed her eyes shut.

“On a family icon of the 17th century home iconostasis, now kept in our Historical Museum, Christopher is depicted as a handsome man holding a dog’s head on a plate in his right hand. Usually, on the icons, the Saints hold their own severed heads, like John the Baptist. Images of St. Christopher with a dog’s head have survived in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, in the Makaryevsky and other monasteries. By the way, in the Notre Dame Cathedral, there is a statue of Christopher with a dog’s head. As a result, in Orthodoxy today the Saint is depicted according to the Catholic tradition – as a giant with a human head, while the Catholic Cathedral has a statue with his originally Orthodox image with a dog’s head. The oldest icon of the Saint is in the Sinai monastery of St. Catherine.”

“Where are his relics? Did they find his head and what was it?”

“After the execution, Christopher’s body was taken to Alexandria by Peter of Attalia. Then his relics were kept in Constantinople, and later transported to the island of Rab, which now belongs to Croatia. However, there is an evidence of the second half of the 17th century, after the official ban on the dog’s head, by Archdeacon Pavel of Aleppo, who came to Moscow for the ceremony of washing the relics in the Annunciation Cathedral.”

“And? He found there…?”

“Yes, and everyone present was amazed, there was the head of a dog in front of them. Perhaps the dog version has other roots. Christopher is revered by sailors, as well as boatmen and ferrymen. Remember Charon carrying souls across the River Styx to Hades. According to the Catholic version, the giant Christopher found the Holy Hermit and asked to show him the best way to serve Christ. The Hermit took Christopher to a dangerous river so that he, being a giant, could help people cross the river. A historian from Sicily believed that the image of Charon came from ancient Egypt. Christopher, before being baptized into Christianity, bore the name Reprev and was captured in Egypt during a war with local cynocephalic tribes, that is, those with dog heads. In Egyptian mythology, Anubis was the God of the Kingdom of the Dead and was depicted with the head of a wild dog or jackal. The Copts could transfer the image of Anubis to Christianity, they continued to depict many Saints with the heads of dogs in the 18th century. For example, in the Cairo’s museum you can find images of two more ones – Akhraks and Augani. However, there are simpler explanations. For example, they said about him, ‘beastly (ugly) appearance’, how else to portray that? The monk Nicodemus the Athonite wrote that Christopher had had an ugly face. ‘Werewolf syndrome’ is a disease, a rare genetic mutation. The name Reprev means ‘outcast, condemned, bad’, so they treated the tribes of foreign pagans, who were conventionally called ‘cannibals’. It can be geographical connection, Cynocephaly is a hill in Thessaly, and Canaanite – Cananeus can be translated as ‘doggy’. According to the Cypriot version, Christopher was handsome from birth, but in order to avoid earthly temptations, he prayed to God to change his appearance.”

“He was a huge giant. In ‘the Golden Legend’, his height is equated to almost 5.5 meters. Could he be one from the previous civilizations?”

“Perhaps, Leah! He had the apostolic gifts of speaking in all languages and of multiplying bread. The rod in his hand blossomed, like Aaron’s.”


***
Library of the Universe


After telling Joice about the meeting of my three Selves and another failed day of digging, I moved to the Library.

“If you can’t rewrite life, rewrite your poems. As Dima Silkan once said, ‘You’ll leave a rich legacy, poor people, they’ll be tormented to delve into your versions!’ I shudder to think how much more I have to make in order, but this is the only thing that someone else cannot do for me when I break down into atoms. The final version of my poems is the image I will stay here forever. A fascinating but hard activity is like solving a rebus, as Vadim Shiltzyn said, ‘you pull the thread, and the whole jumper unravels’. Time is the main value of life, sometimes it takes several years for one word. Some poems don’t evoke emotions in me, they don’t contain me anymore. Or I like them, but no one will understand them, except for the addressee. Many poems have some history behind the scene. Some, written in a hypnotic state, give the impression of mysterious spells, they have something elusive from There. I’m far from politics and cannot write on a given topic. ‘One writes what one hears.’ A good verse is when not a single word can be replaced or moved, when everything is in its place. Poetry is higher mathematics, technique, form is mathematics. The spirit behind the form is the main thing, it must merge into the perfect form, that is how the Magic of the Word is born. The form, even being perfect, without the Spirit will remain a dead word. If initially there is no Spirit, there is no point in correcting the form. In the course of editing, I get into dictionaries, I delve into words, their meanings, look at synonyms, antonyms, etc. I found an article about the word ‘inspiration’, with thoughts of various philosophers, from Ancient times to the present day. Someone believed that genius and obsession (medium) are the same thing. A genius is not possessed by spirits, he opens a direct channel to his own Spirit, a particle of God, the Universe, and when the connection is pure, a masterpiece is obtained. In the case of evil genius, the connection goes to the dark side of the coin. That doesn’t exclude mediumship among mediocre creators, in which the lower entities may come in and dictate something. However, the lower entities are primitive, don’t have access to the Higher Spheres to create masterpieces. I don’t consider myself a genius, but I’m not a medium either. I’m painfully trying to connect with the Higher Self, to get access to the Universe. It looks like a PC search, you type in a formula you need to find a word, and the Subconscious starts working, searching without a break for lunch or sleep. Having found, it passes the result to you. Sometimes an intermediate option. The clearer is the connection, the faster and more accurate is the response. A fuzzy rhyme means a wrong word. If you compromise (I don’t like this, but I don’t know to make it better), sooner or later you’ll rewrite it anyway. When you get sick of your own verse and can’t rewrite it, throw it away. If you feel so bad to be able to write only black one, write it, but don’t show it to anyone, then you’ll throw it away.”

“A letter came from Samara about my ‘Book of Knowledge’, ‘Thank you, it’s recognizable: ) I want to praise you and congratulate you (I think that literature should be a gift, I always wait for / want Revelation), a really good book came out. It’s impossible to tear yourself away. There’s a very important and rare feeling that the book loves you; reading it, you get to re-view (filter) yourself. Indeed, I found answers to many questions, the picture of the world was finally put in order, thanks) … and, such a strange question, as you think, did you have a double, in case the time for the book to appear had come, and for some reason you failed?’”

“On Athos, I edited my childhood’s stories about ghosts – a treasure for psychologists! My book of poems ‘Without a mask’ was published in Germany, about love in the city of N, not about ‘sex in the city’. What’s my favorite book now? ‘The Scream to the Unanswered’. The Girl There (in pictures), remembers what happened Here (in verses). I want one more book. There is a Ghost Girl under an umbrella on the cover, she’s all transparent, against the background of black bare trees, with her back to the reader (she no longer has a face), going into the World of Mists. Light blue and blue atom-butterflies fly out of the Girl, bright and alive, the only alive thing in the picture, and the deadly self-ironic title ‘Don’t give me to others’ in the center. The Man Who Was Not offered me a breakfast together. Nothing new. He didn’t change at all and understood nothing. He hasn’t understood the most important thing – who I am…”