The Templar's Code

CHAPTER 63

Manna from heaven, Mercurius thought as he watched from his study window a delicate swarm of cherry blossoms haphazardly tossed in the morning breeze.

But, as he knew all too well, such splendors were suspect, both blossom and breeze animated with a dark fire.

His heart heavy, Mercurius turned away from the window. Because of Caedmon Aisquith’s expansive breadth of knowledge, he’d had to make a painful decision. For the greater good. Although, mercifully, the Englishman had been unaware that there was a fourth stream of hidden knowledge — a disclosure contained within the pages of the Luminarium.

As he left the study and walked down the hall, he glanced at the grandfather clock in the foyer: 7:07 A.M. The deed had been done. The secret was still safe.

When he’d been unceremoniously given the Luminarium seven years ago by the Greek crone, he quickly realized that Moshe Benaroya’s manuscript was more than a fascinating text; it was a revelation into the secrets of the universe. Secrets that had been safeguarded by the Sephardic Kabbalists, and before them, the Levite priesthood. Those secrets had never been transcribed for fear they would fall into the wrong hands. Not until Moshe Benaroya put pen to paper in 1943.

Like many academics, Mercurius had been a card-carrying secular humanist, firmly believing that morality was rooted in reason and justice, not supernatural mumbo-jumbo. But all that changed when he read the Luminarium, composed of three separate parts. The first, titled “The Great Work,” was a lengthy commentary on the four streams of hidden knowledge.

According to Moshe Benaroya, the first stream was alchemy, a word derived from the phrase al-khem meaning “from the land of Egypt.” The goal was to find the Prima Materia and to affect its physical alteration by transforming it into a different material substance. In the next stream, Kabbalah, the adherent calculated the numeric equivalences of the individual words and phrases of the Torah. And in the third stream, magic, the novice mastered the art of crafting protective amulets and seals based on the Mogen David hexagram.

In actuality, it was a misnomer to refer to these three streams of knowledge as “hidden,” since seers, soothsayers, and students of the arcane had been practicing the proscribed rituals for centuries. But as Moshe Benaroya tellingly revealed, these three streams were merely a smokescreen. A carefully contrived decoy. Indeed, a man could devote a lifetime to studying alchemy, Kabbalah, and magic — and many did — blissfully unaware that there was a fourth stream. Well hidden from the uninitiated, and with good cause, the fourth stream contained the secret of Creation.

Moshe Benaroya named this fourth stream of sacred knowledge the Divine Harmonic.

The sacred sounds intrinsic to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are at the heart of the mystery, each of the twenty-two letters of the Otiyot Yesod animated with its own unique vibration. This was the reason why the Hebrew word for “letter,” ot, also meant pulse or vibration. When the letters were sounded out in a prescribed sequence, these sacred utterances initiate a flow of vibrational energy. Not only is sound a fundamental element of the universe, but everything in the universe vibrates. And it was vibrating clusters of energy bound together that created mass.

This vibrational energy was the basis for Creation.

According to the Luminarium, our world came into existence through the Divine Harmonic, the entire Creation dependent upon a sequence of nonverbal utterances, or kol. Before God ever recited the phrase “Let there be light,” he made a series of inarticulate sounds that created the vibrational energy that created “the light.” This was why “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” transpired before the Almighty uttered a single coherent word. Furthermore, the Hebrew word for that phrase “In the beginning,” Bereshit, can also be translated as “He created six.” Sound moves outward in a spherical wave. And the wave always travels simultaneously in six different directions.

Adept at using the fourth stream, the patriarch Moses knew that by changing the energy vibration through sound, mass is either altered or destroyed. Moses used the Divine Harmonic to perform every single one of his so-called miracles.

Exodus 14 recounts the famous story of the parting of the Red Sea. Students of the Bible (and fans of old Charlton Heston movies) know that six hundred thousand Hebrew slaves stood stranded on the banks of the mighty sea, the pharaoh’s army in pursuit. Suddenly, a pillar of cloud appeared near the Hebrews’ flank, casting a dark shadow that the Egyptians could not penetrate. In that instant, Moses extended his hand over the waters, causing a gale-force wind to drive back the sea, enabling the Hebrews to cross the exposed seabed.

What the story fails to mention is that it wasn’t God who parted the sea; it was Moses.

And Moses, who authored the book of Exodus, arrogantly gave the secret away in the biblical text. The tale is told in three verses, nineteen through twenty-one, each verse containing exactly seventy-two letters — the actual code! Albeit cleverly scrambled. The story also failed to mention that while Moses stood on the banks of the Red Sea, he chanted the sequenced code of seventy-two letters. The change in the vibrational energy current was what parted the Red Sea. The Divine Harmonic. An ancient technology whose roots extended back to Atlantis.

As the Hebrew tribes began their conquest of the Sinai, Moses used this ancient technology repeatedly, enabling the so-called Chosen People to crush every army that came between them and the Promised Land. Nine thousand years before that, Thoth used the same technology to destroy the continent of Atlantis.

Create. Transform. Destroy.

All of which proved that the process of Creation, or an act of cataclysmic Destruction, could be put into motion by a mere mortal. No omnipotent god required. A man had only to utter the correct sound sequence to alter the vibrational energy that permeated the entire universe. Any man could do it provided he had the encryption key to unlock the sequenced code contained on the Emerald Tablet, the relic encoded with a complex pictograph composed of symbols, letters, and glyphs.

Not only did Moses possess the encryption key, but he taught it to the Levis, the hereditary Hebrew priesthood. Committing the key to memory, for generations the Levis passed the secret from father to son. Because of the inherent power contained within the sound vibration, they were expressly forbidden from transcribing the key. The Levite priests and, later, the Sephardic Kabbalists, didn’t dare cross the line that the patriarch had drawn in the Sinai sands more than three thousand years ago.

Until Moshe Benaroya valiantly defied the patriarch and transcribed the key in the Luminarium.

Part 2 of his courageous manuscript, titled “The Key,” contained a detailed formulary for the Emerald Tablet. A sequential equation, which if correctly applied, would alter the vibrational energy of the universe. But the undertaking wasn’t for the fainthearted. It had taken Mercurius years to master the correct tone for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Years of laborious practice before he could move effortlessly through the Otiyot Yesod.

Opening a door at the end of the hallway, Mercurius entered a windowless room. Ten cubits by ten cubits. A faithful re-creation of the Holy of Holies, the Kodesh Kodashim. Painted gold, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were stenciled on the wall. Here, each morning, he practiced the sacred chant. Over and over.

Barukh hamelamed et yadi lesapper et ha’otiyot.

“Blessed is the One who has taught my hand to scribe the letters!” he softly murmured.

Removing his red babouche slippers, he seated himself on the room’s only piece of furniture, a hardback chair, bare feet firmly planted on the floor. As he stared at the twenty-two stenciled letters, he tightened his abdomen muscles, preparing his diaphragm. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air before pushing the inhalation through his nostrils. Controlled breathing was vital to the correct execution of the chant.

In Part 3 of the Luminarium, titled “The Deception,” Moshe Benaroya revealed how the patriarch Moses profaned and corrupted the sacred knowledge, using the Divine Harmonic to commit heinous acts of unimaginable brutality. The dark energy created during Moses’s bloodthirsty rule had yet to dissipate. That dark energy was a curse suffered anew by each generation of innocent victims. This was the reason why Moshe Benaroya violated the ancient restriction.

That long-ago day when the Greek crone unexpectedly gave him the Luminarium, Mercurius had an epiphany. After nearly seven decades, he finally knew his life’s purpose. Moshe Benaroya had written a magnificent sacred text but had been killed before he could use the ancient knowledge for the greater good.

His life purpose, his mission, was to find the Emerald Tablet and use the encryption key to extinguish the dark fire that permeated the earth.

Like his forebears, Mercurius was fearless.

He’d lived long enough to know that evil could not be contained; it had to be destroyed. Only then could the Bringer of the Light illuminate the way back to the Lost Heaven where all souls originated and where we all yearned to return. That luminous place where the Light dwelled.

Where there was no hatred or brutality.

Where children weren’t raped or women murdered.

Where no one had to live in dread fear of being dragged away in the middle of the night. Of having a gun put to his head. Or a noose slipped around the neck.

If he had the Emerald Tablet, he could activate the harmonic sequence that would end all suffering. For all time.

That was the message that Osman de Léon and his milk brother, Moshe Beneroya, had imparted to him before the SS officer forcibly led them to the train station on that fateful night in 1943.

You must always remember, little one, that you were named for the Bringer of the Light.

Do not fear the Light, Merkür. For it will lead you to your life’s purpose.

About to begin the sacred ritual, Mercurius stopped in mid-breath, his reveries disturbed by a ringing telephone. Given the early hour, it could only be one person calling — his amoretto, Saviour.

Hurriedly, he padded barefoot to the nearest telephone, the one on the hallway credenza.

Moments later, he listened intently as Saviour, in a highly agitated state, briefed him about what had transpired in the last few hours.

The well-laid plan that they concocted the previous night had only been partially successful.

“A moment, please,” he told his amoretto, his heart painfully thumping against his chest. He placed the phone on the credenza.

Bending at the waist, he placed his hands on his thighs, gripped with a sudden case of vertigo. He closed his eyes. Took several deep breaths. Dear Lord. He could hear the pain-racked screams of all the victims. Too innumerable to count.

The shrieks. The sobs. The agonized bellows. A hideous cacophony of suffering.

The persecuted masses.

Oh, the horror of it!

Mercurius put his hands over his ears, trying to block out the anguished dissonance. To no avail. The screams and shrieks only got that much louder.

Building toward an unbearable crescendo.

Deliver us from evil!

“Yes! Yes! I intend to do just that,” he gasped aloud. To deliver the world from the evil energy that was all-pervasive. To shepherd the pain-racked souls of mankind home to the Lost Heaven.

It had been done once before. In Atlantis millennia ago. It could be done again. It had to be done again.

Yes! Fearless.

Determined to fulfill his sacred purpose, the Light Bringer grabbed the cordless phone.