Confession of a Ghost. 37. 4. The Moon Girl

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

4 BEFORE/37 AFTER. HOUSE No. 12

*****The MOON GIRL*****

***
Somewhere in the Universe


“Tell me the truth about my mother,” I asked the Moon when the Guardian and I returned to House No. 12. “In that story…”

“You’ll read more than one story, they are all different,” the Moon said, taking my hand to continue our journey through the mysteries. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Let’s first talk about the Sign of my location.”

“It’s the Air element, Gemini, right?” I remembered.

“Yes,” the Moon nodded. “13 degrees away from my Cancer home. The Moon in the Sphere of Isolation from the world is double introverted, but the airy Gemini is, on the contrary, the Sign of a talkative and sociable Mercury. Such contradiction has an excellent opportunity for a successful resolution, unlike Pluto’s opposition with the Sun. My location in Gemini is easy and beneficial. I’m responsible for the astral body – feelings, emotions, intuition. I give the gift of clairvoyance and provide depth. Mercury is responsible for the mental body – mind-intelligence, thought and word. The Moon in Gemini makes excellent thinkers, researchers, writers and musicians. They easily clothe their feelings in something tangible, they are prone to psycho- and introspection. Turgenev, Kipling, Darrell, Ostrovsky, Kafka, Freud, Krishnamurti, Mussorgsky, Rossini, Haydn had the Moon in Air Signs.”

“The Moon in Gemini is a guide, the Moon in Gemini in House No. 12 is the guide of Secret Knowledge,” the Guardian smiled.

“You won’t be sociable, your destiny is solitude and isolation, but you can write very deeply,” the Moon continued. “Gemini is active, mobile. I crave constant change. Feeling the eternal need to receive new information, also via transfers and travels, including astral ones, you’ll begin to transfer knowledge to the world and will never stop, never stiffen. I have been inspiring writers and poets for so many centuries! If you only knew how often they mention me in their works!”

“A treasure box of fantasies, a storehouse of thoughts, a kaleidoscope of sensations, clarity of mind and wit, the ability to perceive and assimilate sign systems, including astrology,” summed up the Guardian. “You’ll professionally operate with numbers and symbols, be fluent in foreign languages, easily adapt to any country.”

“Inner freedom, love of music and art,” the Moon added. “By the way, how do you like my Moonlight Sonata? Do you hear it here?”

“It’s too sad and deep,” I sighed. “What is your relationship with my Mercury? Are you friends?”

“Yes,” the Moon smiled. “A sextile, or a distance of 60 degrees between the planets, means a lucky chance, a chance falling right into your hands, a door that will open giving you the opportunity to do something important. I’m a planet of Water, which is interpreted as ‘create a chance by yourself’, and Mercury is a planet of Air, ‘the chance that falls from Heaven’, so work on yourself, Rukh, so as not to miss happy opportunities.”

“The sextile of the Moon with Mercury,” the Guardian added, “will definitely lead you to tangible results. The Moon animates the mind of Mercury, and Mercury makes the soul rational, the mind and feelings are in harmony, ideas and fantasies are embodied in reality.”

“Rigorous spiritual growth, up to Teaching in the Sphere of Secret Knowledge,” the Moon specified. “Spiritual Teaching is also confirmed by my friendship with the Sun. The direct contact with our World and getting info for transmission to Earth occurs through the Subconscious, or astral body, during meditation, sleep or prayer. Over time, your developed intellect will acquire the wisdom of Saturn. He commands your Self in my Sign, but the Master of your House No. 1 is me, not Saturn. Besides, as the Master of Destiny, the Moon indicates the meaning of one’s incarnation as planned by the Creator, the sphere of activity predetermined by Heaven.”

“What about the degree?” I asked.

“The degree is one of the dual, and critical, taking into account the stations of the Moon,” the Guardian chuckled. “The degree of Jupiter and Leo, another confirmation of childishness of the eternally young soul, a little Moon Girl. The Moon in Gemini, similarly to the Sun in Aries, is an eternal child with a childish attitude to the world, trusting and spontaneous. A degree of literary talent, madness, the death penalty, prophetic dreams, innate wisdom, constant growth.”

“Why are you silent about my parents?”

“They’re in the House of Mysteries, aren’t they?” the Moon smiled sadly.

“Does the Moon in the 12th means the Moon Girl, isolated from the world?”

“You are the Moon Girl because of the Master of your Destiny, that is me, the Moon. Isolated, yes, because initially such children are isolated from their mother, I symbolize her, and it happens in childhood, since I’m responsible for the period when the child is not yet independent and needs protection. Isolation means prison, psychiatric hospital, monastery, emigration and death – leaving the Earth. What would you choose, if you could, for your mother, Rukh? She won’t be taken to a monastery, because she has you as a child, and I’m the strongest planet in your passport, practically kind, which means that your mother cannot be your enemy. Your destiny can be realized in the way the Creator needs it in isolation. Many monks and Saints have a similar position of the Master of their destinies. You analyze and systematize information, sum it up, but, given the brightest Sun in the Sphere of society, you return to the world to shine for people, having the opportunity to secretly influence them with the Word.”

“In the beginning, there was Pain, not the Word,” I exhaled sadly.

“In your case, yes,” the Moon agreed. “I’m in the 12th Sphere, that means hypersensitivity – any mental pain is felt physically, and the fear of people, since they can hurt. The Moon shows the Sphere where one feels protected.”

“In seclusion and monasteries. Can they imprison me?”

“With such passport, no,” the Guardian smiled. “And you are unlikely to go to the monastery. Judging by the gigantic size of the 12th Sphere and the strength of your Moon, the entire Universe will be your secret shelter, and the White Moon, Selene, will provide you with the strongest support of the Forces of Light.”

“Yes, and the other side of hypersensitivity,” the Moon continued, “supposes open and direct access to our World. One is constantly heard here, and not just heard, but instantly answered. Many consider such people to be magicians, but the Sphere of Magic refers to House No. 8 and Pluto. Although, in your case with the Master of the Magic Sphere in your Self, this is true. Due to friendship and equality of the Moon and the Sun powers, the Subconscious is not separated from the Consciousness by a deaf partition. What other people with a developed Moon intuitively anticipate, you just know. Your rare dreams are as real as our World.”

“The Hypersensitive Moon is distinguished by sacrifice, compassion and care,” the Guardian added. “People will flock to you to weep on your chest, and feeling their pain as if it were your own, you will do your best to help them.”

“I bind to the Past,” the Moon continued, “Moon girls more than others need the warmth of family hearth, because I’m its symbol. However, in the House of Isolation, I deprive of the roots in childhood. House No. 12 is a bad place for me personally, and this is the worst House for the Master of Destiny, because one is depressed already at an early age, forcibly separated from the world by a visible wall so that one remembers the true Homeland. You have to turn into an upside down tree whose roots are in Heaven.”

“The Moon in Gemini in House No. 12,” the Guardian explained, “means a lack of attachment to the earthly homeland, to family and clan, isolation, voluntary or forced, a strong indicator for emigration.”

“Wherever you are, Rukh,” the Moon sighed, “you won’t feel at home, except monasteries, they are part of Heaven, the true Homeland of any soul. This is a sign of eternal wanderers roaming the Earth in search of Heaven. Work on yourself through the Subconscious to get rid of the programs of the Lower Self as much as possible. Even in life full of restrictions, hardships and losses, secret enemies, envious people and ill-wishers, don’t despair, act according to Saturn, get up and move on, along the Stairway to Heaven.”

“The location of the Master of Destiny in the second third of House No. 12 also inclines a person to an early return,” the Guardian said calmly. “However, the dark periods are caused by some bad location of the planets, which, although not as fast as the Moon, are moving in the Circle. Sooner or later the dark period will be changed by a bright one. You just have to wait.”


***
Library of the Universe


“So was the story that I read last time true after all?” I asked the Guardian.

“They say on Earth, there’s a grain of truth in every joke, and in each of your stories there is something from your own experience,” the Guardian answered evasively. “In that story, the girl suddenly disappeared with her father, but in reality you went on alive. We have only 3 steps to Earth, and your parents are looking forward to meeting you. Imagine, they planned your birth for now 5 earthly years ago.”

The book flew into my hands, opened at the title “Tea Drinker”, and I read the story about the ghost’s apparition to a surgeon.

“I was drunk exactly a year ago and stabbed her mother to death during the surgery! How could I forget it?!”

“Dr. Rip, what the hell are you talking about yourself! Do you drink at work?!” the Head of the Department laughed and, taking Dr. Rip by the arm, led him to the staff room to continue the ‘tea party’.


*****CHAMOMILE*****

***
Somewhere in the Mist


“So you’ve been to Pefkochori!” he exclaimed loudly after we had been on the phone for about an hour.

“Well, yes, that year, in May,” I answered smiling.

“Wow! How did we not meet? If you want, I’ll send you photos of the icons I painted. And send to me the ones you have!”

“Okay,” I looked around the wall, filled in the gaps after my returning from Athos, thinking about what to photograph in response.

“What a pity, Alice,” Ray sighed, embracing my shoulders, “you passed by each other then, in Pefkochori. Wake up!”


***
Moscow


“A Greek icon painter who spoke Russian, looking for a wife, with his own house by the sea opposite Mount Athos and an apartment in Thessaloniki. He was your option!”

I got up from the bed and sat down next to Ray.

“If we had met then in Pefkochori, I was still married and having a kid. He was not my option. And then, when we were introduced, it was already too late. He wanted a child.”

“How was your night? Did you get to Valday?” Ray asked, gently taking my palm, stroking the patterns of destiny already frozen on it forever.

“You won’t believe it, that monk is alive! I’m happy to have found him and talked to him in reality. He’s praying that the Saints will give me a solution. But what to do now, Ray? Suppose I ask Boy the Lawyer to break the front door to my flat and the door to the room with children’s books, pick up the books and take them to the orphanage.”

“Not the way,” Ray sighed. “Even if he remembers your request after the alarm clock rings, and then also dares to start fulfilling it, he needs to blow up the front door here, and not to break. In critical situations, earthly logic usually only gets in the way. Do you remember what you did here yesterday?”

Ray got out of bed and walked over to the rocking chair where my book about ghosts lay.

“Oh my God! You see, I don’t remember even that!” I was horrified. “But how? Tell me, Ray? How did it happen?”

“How should I know? You did it, not me,” Ray shrugged. “Automatically, you make flying to the sea even turtles!”

“Turtles?!”

“Well, yes. Okay, don’t waste your time. What about the icons?”

“It’s even more complicated. When I brought icons from Athos not for myself, at random, God gave me those who needed them. I don’t have anyone left here. I can’t pass them to my neighbor, she’s not Orthodox. There are plenty of icons in monasteries and churches, and mine are smaller than church ones.”

“It’s logical, Alice. If the transfer of icons to a monastery or a church could be the right decision, I think the Valday monk would at least give you a hint. How many icons do you have here?”

“I have never counted, but not less than 150. Let’s suppose I will give the ‘Seeking for the Perished’ with books to an orphanage, because this icon helps orphans. What about the others? I can’t help feeling that icons should not go to one place only!”

“Do you have to define as many as 150 recipients?”

“Yes, Ray, and I have only 2 nights left. The Full Moon won’t save me anymore. I’ll spend it in the abandoned building. I’d also like to go down to Hell to understand what I did there during my lifetime. It’s important to me.”


***
Ouranoupoli


“Hi, Kiri! How are you?” I entered her icon shop.

“So stuffy, it’s 40 degrees today. Thank God, we have air conditioning,” she sighed, looking meaningfully at her tummy with the baby. “In the morning, a group returned from Athos, they climbed the mountain, big guys, but they snorted at my large icons, “They are so heavy!” And we say, icons carry themselves!”

“Oh yes, that’s right! Free baggage is up to 20 kilograms. Once I was bringing home a lot of icons, but there was no money left to pay extra for the overweight. I put my luggage on the scales with bated breath, and it stops exactly on the border. Having come home, I weigh it, and my luggage got plus 12 kilos.”

I turned around, feeling someone’s eyes on me, and saw the Monk following me, he was listening to our dialogue with Kiri. I took a step to the side. The Monk shifted his gaze from Me in the Past to Me the Ghost. I plucked up the courage to speak to him, but a cat entered the shop, sniffed me from all sides and meowed loudly!

“Ouranoupoli is the City of Heaven and the village of cats,” smiled Me in the Past. “So did those guys end up buying the icons?”

“The City of Heaven loves cats more than its locals!” Kiri answered not without a bit of sarcasm and sighed, “Not a single one!”

I turned to the mysterious Monk, but he was no longer there.


***
Tower of Ouranoupoli


“I don’t believe I can transfer the books and icons in time, Joice.”

“To be honest, I don’t believe it either,” she said with a smile.

“Are you smiling?” I exclaimed not without resentment. “Do you want me to stay here forever? Or are you not Joice at all? Just a devil sent by the servants of Darkness to make me drunk with jasmine tea and lead me astray from the True Path?”

“Perhaps it’s not jasmine tea at all,” Joice laughed. “I believe in the wisdom of God the Creator and in the power of prayer that comes from the depths of the soul. The door to Heaven is in the depths, not on the surface. Since the day we met, I really want to give you a little gift from myself. On the one hand, being a ghost, I understand that this is unrealistic, that is, I’ll never be able to do it myself. On the other hand, I believe that you’ll get it. On Sunday.”

“A gift? To me? Thank you, Joice, you are very kind to me! However, my only wish now is to wake up on Sunday on Athos, realizing that what I have experienced in 40 days is just a dream.”


***
Library of the Universe


“Tell me, how can I determine those to pass my icons and books to?” I asked, scratching the Moon Cat behind the ear.

“Why did you decide that the recipients should be determined by you?” Moony purred, making a question mark with his tail.

“I went to Astral. A lot of people, both local and terrestrial. I saw Raisa Akhmetovna and the seminarians at some pyramid and sat with them by the fire. Everything is conditional, I’m trying to describe the indescribable. There are a lot of what I know, but I don’t see there. Or first I know, and then I visualize. Two Spirits nearby were answering my questions, talking about Sirius and the Moon, showing the surface of the Moon. I saw my Silver Thread, it was so long! Like a kite, I flew back and forth on a silver thread, did all sorts of tricks, and the thread was like a gymnast’s ribbon. I flew up to my physical body, the thread went to the head, and the purple flow from the head went upwards.

For some reason, it was necessary to put the phantoms of my ex-closed ones in a row. The order they appeared and what they looked like was interesting. Those Two Spirits worked with my astral body. I was rocking in a cradle, as if I had returned to childhood, a pleasant feeling of absolute safety, care, love and tranquility. All that was interspersed with questions and answers, which I displayed with the power of thought on the dark blue screen of the Universe. Not all the answers were desirable, the Subconscious and Consciousness periodically conflicted. Then we looked at Spirits working with Earth.

Alla came up, crying, “Am I dead?” I hugged her and asked not to worry about their daughter, because her Sasha was the best daddy! I asked, “What do you think, why did you die?” She answered and went to visit her daughter.

“Let’s go, it’s your turn!” My astral body turned into a spindle. Spinning at a lightning speed, amazing work was made to the music in order to thicken (?) aligning (?) the protective cocoon (?) or field? I watched it from the side, and I could be (turn around) inside. I might even not be spinning, but it was spinning around me and getting denser. Light was pouring into the cocoon. At first, the cocoon was small, and then it became more and more bigger up to gigantic sizes. When I spread my astral arms to the sides at 90 degrees to my body, my hands were inside it. Those Two watched the cocoon, as if checking, aligning it. The music ended and I was at home. Although it’s still a question: at home or in a guesthouse.”

“… in the solar plexus, there is chamomile… the core is the Sun, the source of energy, white petals are our links with loved ones. When one dies, one’s petal disappears. Sometimes it seems that someone can replace the departed, but no, and over the years there are less and less petals left. Their energy feeds the flower. You feed the petals, giving them your energy as well. It looks like an energy bridge between people. When one dies, one’s own flower with the Sun as the core fades away. When a loved one leaves, we feel it. We don’t always realize, because we don’t want to. It happens that someone alive forcibly tears off his petal from your chamomile. It’s very painful. Think about it, are there many people for whom you are such petal? Is it worth tearing it off?”

“It’s much easier to write a beautiful necrologue and come to a funeral than to communicate with alive one, help and appreciate people during their lifetime. Appreciate people alive (!) It’s ridiculous for the dead – some of them were ignored, some were kicked around, they were taken revenge on… Live long and love those who are nearby.

I woke up, the Sun and a text message, “Tatyana died”. She died on Friday. On Saturday, her grandson was born. Probably bright people leave lightly, in a dream. She said she didn’t want to cause anyone any trouble. Her name was the same as my mother’s. She used to come to Petrovich club, sat at the next table. Her son went with me to London and Italy, she had Italian roots, but she went to Prague with a report. She called me often. There was not a single bad word that could be said about her.

Once Mr. Alyoshin invited me to the basement of Boris Ilyukhin’s “Old School”. While everyone was gathering, I looked at the portrait of Tatyana. Yes, she was completely childish, open, forgiving, with huge radiant eyes, with the smile of a child. She even dressed like a girl, not playing it. So she remained a child, that’s what we had in common. And her poems, and her voice, and her gait were all airy, as if she forced herself to walk rather than fly, she hardly touched the ground.

She radiated the Light and considered me “different”, read my prose, being different herself. Once she came and said, “My husband took your calendar card from me (they made a business card calendar in the Union of Writers) and wears it near his heart, he says you help him energetically.” I bought her white chrysanthemums that looked like daisies. I came up, asked her to say hello to my mother. In the rays of the Sun in that church, I could almost see Tatyana smiling, airy, instantly moving from one to the other, comforting everyone who came to her. I took her son by the hand, “Your mother was a saint, she will always be next to you!” – and went away.”

“A butterfly, my favorite, flew into the house and threw itself back into the window, couldn’t get out. I went to the window and held out my hand. The butterfly sat on my palm, I took it out into the garden to the flowers. However, it continued to sit on my hand. I said, ‘Fly away, what are you waiting for? Look how beautiful the flowers are here!’ I transferred the butterfly with flower petals on a flower, but it liked the flowers less, and flew away somewhere … People come into my life and fly away to Heaven … He is already forever somewhere in me. Lives and will live forever. As well as everyone who was once dear to me. And I love them all. The same Unconditional Love. Wherever they are. Whoever they are with…”


***
Courtroom in the Universe


The Moonlight Sonata, it was sounding there constantly, and through the Mist I saw ghostly souls at the Scales, the left bowl of which greatly outweighed the right. Who were they? I didn’t know, I didn’t remember, but I was grateful to them for remembering me, and I was infinitely ashamed of the erased memory.

“I came to Alice for the icon of St. Dmitry, that’s my son’s name, but in parting, Alice gave me an icon of the Solovetsky Monastery Saints. I didn’t tell her then that my son had fallen seriously ill after the trip to Solovetsky Monastery. None of the doctors could make a diagnosis, he practically ate nothing and was fading in front of our eyes. I brought the icons home, and suddenly my son understood the reason! One can’t go to the Holy Places with devilish intentions. And then he began to pray to the Solovetsky Elders and ask their forgiveness, and he got healthy!”

The Mist was enveloping my Consciousness, and I was falling, falling into it, to the sounds of the incessant Moonlight Sonata.


***
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem


I opened my eyes in a church with no lights burning, but with angels singing.

“After me!” a ghost of a man said sternly.

I obediently nodded and looked around. There were only ghosts and winged guards of the church. I had been there in my lifetime.

“Is this the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem?” I asked the stern ghost.

“Do you need another one? The main thing is to get there before the Key Keeper!”

“Why?” I was surprised.

“People,” said the ghost pointedly. “Let’s get to know each other! You… how did you die?”

“Slipped, fell, woke up … on the 9th day.”

“Lucky! I died of cancer, three years of suffering,” the ghost sighed and pointed me on the queue. “I had no idea how many visitors are here at night!”

“You probably had time for confession,” I sighed.

“I’m not baptized at all,” the ghost waved his hand. “I didn’t believe in God either. I died yesterday, and my grandmother appeared and said, ‘Go to Jerusalem, my grandson, and pray for 40 nights, repent for your life of a robber, so that God will take you to Himself, like the one who was hanging next to him on the Cross, and I’ll ask for you in Heaven’. How can one not believe one’s grandmother? Maybe He really exists. Although, to be honest, I don’t care.”

“Would the angels be singing here if there were no God There? And queues don’t appear from nothing,” I said, and the queue moved forward.

“Did you… steal something?” the ghost whispered in my ear, as if he feared that the guards could hear him.

“No, it’s worse.”

“Did you kill?” exclaimed the ghost for almost all the queue.

“One may say so as well,” I said sadly.

“And whom, if it’s not a secret?” the ghost went back to whispering.

“My memory.”

The ghost froze, looking at me in obvious incomprehension,

“What are you going to ask for?”

“A transfer.”

“Of yourself to Paradise?”

“No, of books and icons.”

“Icons and books?” the ghost got surprised even more. “And where to?”

And for some reason, I answered without thinking,

“Wherever they need.”