OUT OF ESSEX – CHAPTER 28
I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship
Louisa May Alcott
After the sparring, Maggie chose to return to her room. Her excitement bubbled. New worlds were opening.
“Akash?”
“At your service.”
“A question about a film, The Matrix.” She had watched it, on God’s advice. “The martial arts software programme that was front-loaded into Neo. Does that exist in reality?”
“Yes.” She had known it in her waters. She asked if it was available. “Indeed yes. Any software is available to souls in limbo.”
She clenched a fist in delight. The Place walked its talk. Now she moved again, tiptoeing across a dark landing and back. Bladder empty, ready for more.
***
Again, she found herself astride the Highway to Hell. Following Morgana’s guidance, she reached an area dominated by a round cylindrical tent, with a conic roof. Yurts had been deployed in Central Asia, by Genghis Khan’s hordes. Stepping inside, her vision was overwhelmed by repeating geometrical patterns. Morgana later explained how these were based around the five unchanging elements of the cosmos: fire, water, earth, metal, and wood. The patterns embraced the interior walls, also suffusing the furniture and embroidery, which looked Arabic to her untutored eye. Musky patchouli notes swam in the warm air.
Mid-yurt, a candle-lit table was draped with a purple and blue Moroccan tablecloth, emblazoned with more of the fractal configurations that characterised Islamic art. Bottles of wine loosely punctuated bowls of olives and flatbreads. Sporting pink pyjamas, Morgana arose from a deep leather sofa, smothered by a sable throw. She held out her arms. “Mags, you made it. Grab a glass and meet Mary. We’re having a girlie evening!”
Not for the first time, Maggie found being dead quite incredible. Pouring herself a large red wine, she looked at Mary Magdalene, perched, in vivid purple pyjamas, on a massive pouf. Lustrous auburn hair topped an olive-skinned, Levantine face, in which sat a fathomless smile. Music played softly: a zither and flute cocktail, flavoured by tambourine backbeats.
As the first glass settled, Maggie seized her opportunity to ask timeless questions. Mary responded in detail, beginning with the resurrection. While Morgana lit a spliff, Maggie listened, spellbound. Mary described her time as a disciple of Jesus, one of those deemed worthy of his gnosis, or secret knowledge.
She told of life with Jesus in South Asia. Their yogic and tantric practices. She emphasised how red hair often characterised their DNA line. Maggie pinched herself hard.
Once Jesus had left his human body, Mary taught and healed through the laying on of hands. “I passed on the essential teaching of Yeshua that the true divine mystery is love.” Her hair shone like a sun. “I also initiated women into the Sex Magic of Isis, and in using their life force to heal and elevate themselves.”
Maggie could think of nothing to say. She vaguely remembered Isis as an Egyptian goddess; Mary as a prostitute. She sensed they could both see through her.
Mary told how she had taught knowledge of herbs for healing, and the use of essential oils to alter consciousness, “to experience the spiritual worlds directly.” She had passed on the “inner teachings” of Jesus to smaller, more advanced groups. “I revealed that all persons are nothing less than the living mother/father god. Maggie, there is nothing separating you or anyone else from this numinous reality – except belief.”
Maggie was sad. Nobody had ever discussed this in Grantham, or in Parliament. Now the strange thing happened again. Morgana looked to have lost several of her toes. Mary carried on. “The core teaching was to use their powers as prime, supreme creators in their lives. I also taught this to men, but not the Sex Magic of Isis.” She paused, eyes flashing. “I let their wives teach them that.”
Grinning, Morgana commanded nearby minions to bring food. Maggie poured another glass to steady herself. The claret had a focused intensity: blackcurrants, coffee and chocolate.
Mary took a draw, offering the joint to Maggie, who tentatively accepted, taking a single puff. Mary spoke with horror of the Middle Ages, when the patriarchal Church reached rock bottom, and many women with her knowledge of healing and self-transcendence were labelled as witches and burned at the stake. “Ironically, this frontal attack was committed in the name of the Holy Mother Church, meaning of course the Church of Rome. To this day, the Church places females in subservient positions.”
Maggie glanced at the label on the bottle. 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild. That name again! Memories that seemed like future visions came flooding back. Or had she surged forward? After several more puffs, she perceived with total clarity that N. M. Rothschild & Sons would be hired to advise on the 1986 privatisation of British Gas. Or……had long ago been hired. Time had become meaningless. And that the same bank would advise – or had done – on most of the UK’s other privatisations of state-owned assets: British Steel; British Coal; all the British regional electricity boards; and all British regional water boards. It seemed odd. Why and how could that happen?
Spicy fish tagine and couscous arrived. As did another tangled thought. Some of her ministers had gone on to work for the bank, yet the time when she would have ministers still lay ahead. She yielded to the linear impossibility, enigma dissolving the binary.
Tucking in, Maggie suddenly heard an agonised scream. She almost dropped her bowl. Morgana’s reassuring hand reached across. “Nothing to worry about Mags. Beelzebub is ‘entertaining’ two senior ex-bankers from the IMF and JP Morgan.”
Mary touched Maggie’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Are you thinking about that name on the bottle?”
Maggie took more of the psychoactive smoke into her lungs, coughing loudly. She considered asking her companions’ view on interest-bearing loans; but forgot this when Morgana revealed that she and Sal still had a fabulous sex life after thousands of years together. She giggled, nervously, at the description of “mixed tails and tongues”. She changed subject to her period of limbo, and strange attraction towards martial arts.
Morgana replaced the music with the Byrds. Eight Miles High. Maggie revealed her favourite ‘pop song’ as Telstar, the first single by a British group to reach number one in America, in 1962. They smiled politely.
Mary and Morgana danced together, sinuously weaving in and out each other’s space, while walnut and almond baklava desert arrived. Chomping on the heavy, flavourful Greek pastry, Maggie was wistful. She struggled with simple, uninhibited pleasure.
It was time to leave. They all hugged. Morgana held out Maggie’s sports bag, flicking dirt off Satan’s nose.
***
Mary’s voice was suddenly a cleaver cutting the air. “OK, let’s lose this girly shit.”
Ten times sharper, massively less affable.
“We thought it might help you assimilate. But it’s time you spoke up. Can we help you? What has God said? My mother-in-law can be petty and vengeful, not to mention indecisive.”
Wanting more hashish, Maggie struggled for precision. A rabbit in their sudden headlamps. She was grateful for Mary’s summary; unprepared for its harshness.
“Let me start then. You fell out of alignment with benevolence, you and your fine friend Mr Reagan.” Maggie remained vulnerably silent. “Mr Raygun,” whispered Morgana.
A new Mary seemed to rise, then tower above Maggie. “I do not care about trying to pin labels on political philosophies. Those are just words. I do care – and so should you – that entire nations, such as Indonesia and Chile, were tied up, raped, and then used as economic guinea pigs for capital’s intrinsically plundering tendencies. The rich became richer, while the poorest continue to perish.”
Maggie’s vocals were paralysed.
“Let’s talk about Britain.” Mary’s face was contorted, almost wobbling. “As the captain, you steered that already tainted galleon into dreadful new waters. A shrunken welfare state; privatised public services; and rising inequality. Now, hundreds of thousands of British citizens cannot afford to live. Education, medical care, and infrastructure are eroding and crumbling. The country has sunk so low under those waters that many of its children are starving. Pupils go to school hungry. Was that your aim? Hungry children?”
Morgana was staring at her. Maggie could hear her eyes ask the question. (Is that what you wanted Maggie?). She shook her head.
Mary carried on: “Woefully, since your premiership, the very idea of neoliberalism – yes, I will name it – has steadily buried older British values and ideals. Replacing ethics and good daily conduct with a series of swindles, rackets and orgies. But no sex magic, oh no, none of that deep nourishment.”
Maggie drank in sound, noting Mary’s wet eyes. “No moral or spiritual response. Just greedy food orgies, worthless sports orgies, selfish property orgies, lustful pornography orgies, rubbish pop culture orgies, and empty travel orgies. But above all, to Britain’s eternal shame, the homeless, the starving children, have been incorporated into the country’s idea of what is and will be. Part of the fabric.”
An image came to Maggie. Of God’s ‘crapocracy’. All the financiers, oligarchs and sociopaths were represented by the lurid form of a sadistic teacher holding a ruler over the fingers of a petrified pupil, threatening more punishment unless there was complete compliance.
“So, come on, what in hell do you want here?” said Mary.
“To find Jesus. Where is he?” Maggie asked, desperation in her voice.
“Damned if I know,” said Mary. “He can be gone for days, weeks, months, so good luck with that. Anyway, you know where I am now. Don’t be a stranger.”
The Biscuit Factory 
As an afterlife, this is more appealing than harp lessons!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Or harpy lessons!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Favorite lines: “The claret had a focused intensity: blackcurrants, coffee and chocolate.”
Mmm……..
“She giggled, nervously, at the description of “mixed tails and tongues”
LOL
“As the captain, you steered that already tainted galleon into dreadful new waters.”
Man, I was just thinking: if’/when you put your book out, you could get some pretty strong responses to this book from those who would take offense to your suppositions. I wonder how many who think “everything’s fine the way it is” would be honest enough to argue with you? Hmm…
Also, I hate to beat a dead horse, but was glad you’d quoted Louisa May Alcott and not Laura Ingalls Wilder. As a child, I enjoyed the show Little House in the Prairie a lot, but I think they made it a lot more “liberal” on TV, ’cause I found out later how badly Ms. Alcott spoke of the Native Americans, basically calling them unthinking savages, etc. I’m always shocked when writers, especially, have that moronic streak in them. I thought that to be a writer meant you were a thinker…and you’d sort of intuitively, automatically steer around the narrow-minded popular views of the day and rise above them ’cause, well…you were supposed to be more thoughtful than the Kardashian crowd or, back in her time or, say, Lovecraft’s time (another HUGE racist), the “gossip at the general store” or “cigar-smoking men’s club” crowd.
But no. Writers or not, they did not rise above the status quo in many thought processes and were standard, cliched, and unremarkable in that way.
I feel like I’ve missed some chapters. But they’re not all in one place and accessible, I don’t think…………
LikeLiked by 1 person
Alcott….I wanted a quote from a female about pushing out into unknown waters. Hers was the first I came across. All the top-of-chapter quotes will now be from women. It’s part of an overall drift in the story towards a feminine principle that might begin to turn things around. I imagine that if you dug into all the males that I quoted you’d find some monsters in terms of their everyday lives and interactions.
Not sure about what reactions I’d get on publication Stace. If the story is robust enough, and people can go away and think about some of the angles, maybe that’s the best I can hope for? Among my friends who subscribe to mainstream narratives, there is politeness, or silence.
You might have missed Ch 27 (blog 248), as it was a rewrite of a rewrite. I’ve e-mailed it.
Always appreciate and look forward to your responses and questions. They keep me on my toes, and keep me going. So thanks. 🙂 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks a lot for sending the chapter. I think I’ve lost count and lost my way with where I am a little bit, but it’s not too hard to follow once you’re six or seven chapters in anyway, I think.
Weirdly, on a side note, tonight out of the blue without any prompting from me, my husband said, “You know, Lovecraft changed later on. He was a huge racist but later in life he realized how crazy he’d been and changed his point of view.”
I did NOT bring up your blog or our discussion!
God, Kev….do you think he’s started reading minds now??!!!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hah! I think when you are close to somebody you subconsciously tune in.
Have never read Lovecraft but he seems to have been influential. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, definitely. Very weird, spooky, creepy, and out and out scary, all wrapped in very stilted turn of the century writing.
LikeLike
An heir to Poe?
LikeLike
Yeah. Not knowing the exact dates off the top of my head, that still sounds about right….
LikeLiked by 1 person
PS: I have a fistful of notes for chapter 248.
Hopefully you wont roll your eyes and heave a huge sigh that lasts for, like, 40 seconds straight, lol…. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
We find as we read this that we keep stopping and discussing the theories and corruption and so much more. Sonce moving here we worked for a couple, he was from JP Morgan bank, high up, headhunted to Australia
. She was anglo indian and treated everyone as if they were minions and servants, needless ro say she fot told ber fortune by me, and told to stick her jib up her arse. Vile people, no surprise they never paid on time! ❤️
LikeLiked by 2 people
No surprise there Moisie. It is an industry so embedded into our perceptions of how things ‘naturally’ operate that it goes largely unchallenged….although that has changed since the bailouts back in 2007-08.
I worked mainly by interviewing hundreds of City bankers for almost two decades until about 7 years ago, when the penny finally dropped that I could hardly ever find anything in common.Every situation was viewed through a lens of potential profit. Everything. And I didn’t want to socialise with them out of hours. Never had. But it all seemed fairly ‘normal’ to me, simply the way that the world runs, and in which I was perhaps a misfit, until something clicked in my head to question its very essence.
Once that began, I started to feel seriously uncomfortable being around them. Especially those nearer to the top of the pyramid, whose lack of empathy became glaringly obvious. As I finally looked into how banking works, it seemed like a legal equivalent of gangsterism.
Anyway, glad it makes you take a new look at things. Hope that can continue! ❤️
LikeLike
PPS: Good notes, obviously. Just topics of conversation.
Will send on dinner break later tonight at work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cool. Always love to read your thoughts and prompts and questions. No point in doing this without feedback. So thank you. Never a sigh!
LikeLike
Oh boy, that’s good.
I feel like a little wind has gone out of my sails, though, as the news of the day sinks in more and more over what this ###@@@@!!!! orange idiot has done NOW.
It’s 2020. It just started. Not a good omen.
And I feel like he definitely wanted to start trouble for the sole purpose in getting re-elected 10 months from now.
Bleh.
Okay, anyway, on to bigger and much better things:
I couldn’t find 248, of course, so I’m just writing in here about it.
Nice image: The flat stone top of the altar made Sal think of the monolith in Kubrick’s film, 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Favorite lines: Yet, like an angel peeing on my tongue, the taste is beautiful.”
(Wow! What an image !!!)
He had found little in the way of nightlife, certainly no single malts, after Gaddafi banned alcohol in 1969.
(certainly no single malts–ha ha)
It was there in full view in his last life, where he had taken a vow of celibacy, without consulting his wife
LOL
I was thrilled with the elaboration on Ghandi’s past behavior and how he changed; I’m sure not many people know about that (or care, probably, ha) but I thought it was a good fleshing out. Also the physical description of Satan becoming more detailed; it’s fascinating while aiding the imagination.
Once again, the stuff about Gaddafi is just mind-blowing. But it also reminds me of two things: how Tesla wanted electricity to be free, too, and we all saw how HIS life turned out, right? They pretty much destroyed him. Worse (but only because it involved a lot more people) Gadaffi’s out-of-the-box thinking and advanced society being destroyed, Gadaffi being murdered, and everyone there reverting back to “darkness” reminds me of Green.
I can’t remember if I talked to you about it already: the African-American town in the ’20s that was doing very well (it was actually called the Black Wall Street) while everyone else was in the Depression, and because of a lie a woman told about being accosted by a black man, people from neighboring towns swarmed in there started killing people and destroying everything. They burned down businesses, homes, and there were reports that planes flew overhead and dropped gasoline bombs.
So…yeah. Nobody likes anybody doing better than them, thinking differently than them, bucking the status quo. You’re pretty much doomed when that happens.
BTW, is “puppet” the key element in your list of folks on Satan’s list? ‘Cause there’s so many more that I think have done worse things. Lincoln didn’t care about the slaves; he only cared about the Union. Nixon prolonged Vietnam violence for his own gain. I know these are our presidents and you don’t necessarily have a handle on our history. But Obama, compared to some? I don’t know. Am I saying he’s a “lesser evil”? I guess.
Okay, back to work. I hope your eyes aren’t bleeding. 🙂 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
My eyes are saying thanks for all the feedback Stace. No blood. The tale of Green is really compelling. I might weave it in somewhere. Funnily enough, I mentioned Tesla in the final chapter of OOE.
Satan’s list was pure Libya-related. Hence Obama’s inclusion. The country started up black slave auctions again a couple of years ago. Barack’s achievement in becoming the first black president was phenomenal. But he didn’t have enough about him to say no on occasions when it mattered. Just my opinion.
Trump ….he committed a war crime. There’s the headline that no western media dare print.
Really appreciate your comments.
🙂 🙂
LikeLike
Hey, Kevin, sorry–type above. GreenWOOD. Greenwood. Left off the last part.
About Libya–I gotcha. And I actually agree with your opinion about Obama not speaking up enough about LOTS of things. His achievement WAS phenomenal…but then the actual presidency, unfortunately, was anything but phenomenal. We were especially pissed when it was his last term and he had nothing to lose by going into “beast mode” against the GOP but still just kept putting his hand out for a high five that they NEVER returned.
And war crimes. I know. We said we’d stop assassinating leaders, like, 40, 50 years ago? Made a deal or signed something? And here we are. It makes me very sad. I don’t blame the world, on many levels, for loathing the U.S. *sigh*
LikeLiked by 1 person
Greenwood it is!
Doesn’t even seem to be any proof that the Iranian general was responsible for American deaths. Just the usual propoganda and narrative bending.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is incredibly intriguing, Kevin. I’ll have to go to chapter one and read from the beginning. You are a very fine writer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m honestly flattered that you say so. Thank you!
Because my blog is on the basic Word Press template, with no index, you would have to scroll back laboriously to number 199, the prologue, to start reading the book. if you can be bothered, I would of course enjoy any feedback.
Cheers!
LikeLike