We sat in the kitchen, balancing our plates of chicken skewers on our
laps and listening to the rain rat-tatting on the corrugated plastic roof of
the porch. Leonard was keen to continue our discussion about boy mediums and he
dashed off into the workroom to fetch something. The second that Leonard left
the room Luke seized the opportunity to speak privately with me and to
apologise for the intimate nature of our last encounter. I reassured him that I
was fine, but he apologised several times and he insisted that I alert him to
any relapses of my illness or new ailments that I experience over the next few
weeks, even minor complaints such as headaches or lethargy. Although he sounded
terribly remorseful and it was satisfying to my ego to see him so concerned
about me, the urgency and firmness in his voice was a little worrying and so I
have promised to keep him informed.
I expected Leonard to re-emerge from the workroom with an ornate crystal
ball and to demonstrate one of these strange divination rituals at the very
least, but he simply returned with his bible and sauce for Luke (he thinks that
even the spiciest food tastes too bland). Leonard thumbed through the bible,
handed it to me and instructed me to read two verses from the Gospel of Mark; one
from the scene in Gethsemane in 14:51-2 (‘and there followed him a
certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body and the young
men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked’) and one from the scene in Jesus’ tomb in 16:5
(‘and entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the
right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted’).
Leonard asked me to identify the young men in these passages but I had
not questioned their identity before and so I was unable to give an informed and
coherent answer. I suggested that they might be superfluous characters that exist
solely to flesh out the storyline, but Leonard disagreed and he said that they
must serve an important function within the narrative because it is unlikely
that the Gospel author would include anonymous characters that are dressed in
such a bizarre fashion without good reason. Leonard then asked whether I considered
the young man in the tomb in Mark 16:5 to be the same man who appeared in the
earlier Gethsemane passage or whether I understood them to be two separate individuals.
I wasn't sure whether the Gospel author intended them to be recognised as the
same person but, given that the figure in the tomb in Mark 16:5 is dressed in white
and sitting in a tomb, I proposed that this particular individual could be an
angel. Once again Leonard disagreed and he said that the author of Mark uses ‘angelos’
(a Greek term that is strictly translated as ‘messenger’ but often translated
into English bibles as ‘angel’) elsewhere within his Gospel seemingly without
embarrassment therefore it is highly likely that he would have used the term ‘angelos’
if he intended the reader to identify this person as an angel. Fair reasoning,
I thought.
Leonard then pointed out that all three Synoptic writers mention that the
near-naked young man who accompanies Jesus in Gethsemane is dressed in a
‘sindon’ and he explained that the term ‘sindon’ refers to a linen fabric that
was commonly used as a burial shroud. Referring back to our previous
conversation on child mediums, he said that a number of ancient divinatory and pseudo-burial/death-rebirth
magical rituals require a naked boy medium to be wrapped from head to toe in
linen - specifically a ‘sindon’ - in the same way that the young man is dressed
in this Gospel passage. Given the widespread popularity of these divinatory and
necromantic rituals and their requirement for a young boy dressed in a ‘sindon’,
I asked whether the early readers of the Gospels may have suspected that this
young man was dressed in ceremonial attire and Jesus was preparing him to
participate in some kind of magical ritual. Leonard agreed that his clothing might
have raised alarm bells with some readers and he said that he is surprised that
the Gospel authors have preserved a reference to this young man and his unusual
mode of dress, particularly since they have a tendency to remove as much suspicious
activity as possible when constructing their accounts of Jesus’ life…
Before I could question
Leonard about this last comment, he asked if I was familiar with the Secret
Gospel of Mark. A secret Gospel? I had no idea that a secret Gospel
existed! He told me that the text of the Secret Gospel of Mark is riddled with secretive
and suspicious activities and the circumstances in which it was discovered are
equally as mysterious too. To cut a very long-winded short, in 1958 a professor of ancient history named
Morton Smith allegedly stumbled
upon a letter in a monastery in Mar Saba.
Smith believed that the author of the letter was the Greek theologian Clement
of Alexandria and he claimed that
the letter described a Secret Gospel of Mark and hinted at a distinction
between the ‘doings of the Lord’ that are recorded in the canonical Gospel of
Mark (i.e. the version of Mark that we have in our regular Bibles) and the
‘mystical’ or ‘secret’ ‘doings of Jesus’ that are missing from our versions but
remain preserved in this mysterious Secret Gospel of Mark.
The letter contained an
excerpt from the Secret Gospel which describes a scene in which a young man comes
to Jesus in a secretive manner and wearing a linen cloth (specifically a ‘sindon’)
over his naked body and this young man remains with Jesus throughout the night.
Leonard said that the statement ‘Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of
God’ that appears in the text suggests that the youth is undergoing a secret
initiation of some sort, however he also drew my attention to a number of other
elements within the excerpt that are suggestive of magical activity, such as the
presence of a naked young man dressed in a sindon, the performance of the ritual
at night (a time which, although terribly clichéd, is closely associated with
necromancy and other unsavoury magical activities) and a strict preparatory
period of six days elapses before Jesus summons the youth to him (Leonard explained
that most magical procedures require an uninitiated individual to complete a
period of preparation and purification prior to the ritual and the pre-training
of a child medium is a customary requirement in the magical papyri).
I agreed that this all sounded very suspicious to say the least and I
was beginning to entertain the idea that Jesus engaged his followers in strange
necromantic magical rituals, but then Leonard made a confession. He said that
the authenticity of the Secret Gospel of Mark has been called into question and
debate still rages in academic circles concerning whether the document is genuine
or a forgery. I felt deflated by this revelation and I was annoyed that Leonard
had led me to believe that the Secret Gospel was entirely legitimate, but he followed
this admission with a mischievous smile and there was a twinkle in his eye which
suggested that he knew more than he was letting on, so I was not entirely disappointed.
When the brief rain shower
stopped, I made my apologies and informed Leonard that I should be leaving as
it was getting late. On the whole it was a very enjoyable afternoon, but there
was one thing that troubled me and, although it may seem minor and
inconsequential to the reader, I couldn’t help but dwell on it for the entire
bus journey back home. Leonard and I watched Luke trim the hedge for at least half
an hour but, when the rain died away and the sun came out, I noticed that there
were no hedge cuttings to clear up afterwards. I realise that it was a hot day
and we had been drinking alcohol for a large portion of the afternoon, but I have
observed a number of peculiarities like this around Elmfield House recently and
I really hope that I’m not going mad! I suspect that I am simply distracted
because my mind is preoccupied with all manner of things recently. For example,
our discussion about boy mediums invoked strong memories of Daniel several times
and Daniel has been at the forefront of my thoughts over the last few days. I
am becoming increasingly mindful of the importance of spiritual powers in my
magical experimentations and I have discovered that although the magical
manuscripts are the practical tools that are needed to facilitate a desired
effect, they require a spiritual component to empower them and bring them to
fruition (or, as Luke concisely explained, the magical text is the car that you
must drive in order to reach your goal and the spiritual powers are the
petrol). I have appealed to Daniel on a number of occasions now and if I was inclined
towards superstitious reasoning then I would interpret my excellent degree
results and Luke’s affections towards me as an indication that Daniel is
assisting with my magical experimentations, not to mention the fact that a
number of important decisions have fallen in my favour this month and I have
attracted several complimentary comments from Alex's male friends. Maybe this
good fortune is entirely coincidental, but I can't help but feel a pang of
guilt when appealing to my deceased brother to assist with something so trivial
as attracting funding for my studies and the affections of another man...
The rituals in The Omega Course
have taught me that the power of heroes, ancestors and loved ones that have
passed from this earth should not be underestimated and I want to believe that these
connections can endure beyond death. Only time will tell if I have been doing
all this for nothing.
