The Inquisitor walked towards a woman who set alone in the orchard, resting. “Lady Zina”, he bowed and sat across her. “I don’t want to bother you, but there’s something I have to tell you”.

“Hello Bernard”, she nodded and smiled back.

“I want you to know how much of an impression it made upon me when I saw you yesterday; so tired you were about to pass out”, he smiled. “I know how much effort you put into explaining things to me as you judged my life, and so I can imagine how much it must have taken to get you so exhausted, and yet, you kept going, because it was your duty, and because you’re an embodiment of God’s love”.

“When we first met, you jested that you are no more Christian than Christ is Zinian. I just wanted to know that as of yesterday, I consider myself ‘Zinian’, if that is a word”, he grinned. “I talked to the Tibetans and Christ about it, and they explained how those things work so I’m no longer confused. I now consider you my primary spiritual allegiance. You are the Goddess I worship; and of course Christ and his holy parents, but yesterday it clicked for me, when I saw you here in the orchard, half dead from exhaustion, but holding yourself together in firm discipline because you felt bound by love and duty. It is as if my soul reacted to you and told me: this is what God feels like, and I said ‘yes’”, he finished, as the teary eyed Goddess approached to hug him in silence. The light in his heart exploded, and all impurities on the lower elements left him, and he crystallised into vajra, and continued growing, then and there, drinking devotion to his Goddess of love and duty.

…

Two women sat in comfortable silence. It was good here. No worldly people with discordant thoughts to bother them. Nature was more beautiful than anywhere on Earth, and free from all the impurities and annoyances such as ants, mud or animal droppings.

“I’m sorry you had to arrive just after the worst of the plague, when all the Judges were dropping off their feet with exhaustion, Catherine”, Clare of Montefalco finally broke the silence. She saw it as her duty to help the newly arrived woman adjust, although she herself was here only of recent, as well. And it was not a hard duty by any means, since they became friends instantly.

“It is fine”, Catherine of Siena smiled at her new friend. “I was incredibly lucky to be assigned to Lord Buddha. He immediately saw the symptoms of my ongoing spiritual transformation, and believe it or not, while talking about my life, he guided me through the crystallisation process with his peerless expertise. He did look tired, but it took nothing from the absolute dedication with which he took care of me. He guided my mind through the exact steps it needed to take, and adjusted my devotion to Christ to be focused in just the right way, and it took me one long breath, or should I say, swallow of the devotion energy, to complete the process. The purity and depth of his soul were such, that I must admit mixing devotion to him with devotion to Christ, and he immediately told me that it’s all right, since the two of them are brothers, so that my concerns wouldn’t interfere with my meditation”.

“I underwent a similar process during life, but I don’t think it was quite finalised until I came here”, Clare replied after a deep consideration. “I was judged by Jetsun Albert Rimpoche, who is a strange combination of a Christian, who is devoted to Lady Hypatia, and a master of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual energetics, so I can sympathise with you being devoted to both Christ and Buddha. It seems to be normal, as multiple persons of God are ubiquitous here, and they are all so wonderful one just falls into devotion to God by merely seeing one of them in passing. Albert saw how my spiritual energy works, explained everything immediately, and told me how to breathe and meditate, and I now consider myself his student and a humble servant. He was so gentle and considerate with me, and so skilled and powerful, it never ceases to amaze me. I was so used to nobody having a coherent idea about what I was going through on Earth; everybody was talking in terms that meant nothing clearly defined, and they had no experience with mystical ecstasy, so when I came to him and he immediately knew everything and taught me what to do, I almost melted into a puddle at his feet”, she giggled. “It’s unfortunate that he is married, but he told me to keep meditating and my true spiritual husband will come, as God will arrange our meeting”.

“I used to think it was Christ, but on Earth, Christ was all we knew, so everything of God that felt human enough to bond with had to be Christ”, Catherine smiled. “And of course Christ too is married”, she made a sour grin.

“Have faith in God’s providence, holy sister”, Clare chided her with a blessed smile. “He led us thus far; he will lead us to our eventual destiny as well”.

“Let us pray together for God to guide us on the next part of our spiritual journey”, Catherine nodded in assent, and they held hands and prayed together in silence.

…

“Good morning, Ladies”, a kind female voice raised them from the ecstasy of prayer. “I heard you loudly enough”, Lady Zina grinned blissfully, holding a man by the hand. “Chiara, I have someone I want you to meet. This is Bernardo Guidoni. Bernardo, this is Chiara da Montefalco”, she introduced them. “And you, Caterina, come with me”, she took the woman by the hand. “I wish to introduce you to Apostle Paul. He was recently praying as you did now, and it is time for you two to meet”.

“What’s wrong?” Kay felt that her husband was inordinately quiet. Something was obviously bothering him.

He was quiet for a moment, as if considering whether to say anything.

“You know when I said that Sanat Kumar hated women, never loved and never married?”

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid that I later thought of something that contradicts that. I think he actually did marry, in his own way”.

“What do you mean, in his own way? How many ways are there?”, she smiled weakly.

“I think we even saw his wife, or at least what goes for wife in his head”, he frowned darkly, and she saw the muscles of his jaw harden. “It’s Anthea”.

Kay’s mouth opened, and she reflexively put her hands in front of her face as tears streaked it in silent shock.

Zee nodded gravely.

“Yes, the broken angel, whom he enslaved, tortured and ordered to be repeatedly raped and then beaten until she miscarried, and then he fed her aborted fetuses to the dogs, and repeated the process until she was his willing slave, obedient, terrified and completely, irrecoverably insane. That’s the relationship he wanted to establish with a woman, and considering how she is bound to him, I think it’s the closest to her being his wife”.

Kay looked at him with red eyes wide open in horror, silently mouthing a word.

“Why? Because that’s who he is. People think I was joking or exaggerating when I described how much it shocked me to look inside his mind and truly know him. That’s what he truly is, in his heart of hearts. He’s someone who wants to have a wife so that he can have a broken, tortured, serially raped slave with a destroyed soul, who calls him ‘Master’ and pisses herself when he makes a sudden movement”.

“People are starting to treat his world as a legitimate place for spiritual evolution, a place where you go when you want to speed things up in your evolution, purposefully reincarnating there, sometimes with excellent results, but they don’t know who they are dealing with. He may be putting on an act in order to evade punishment. It may even be God’s will to allow him to do what he’s doing for a while because it serves a legitimate purpose. However…”, he shrugged, looking his wife straight in the eyes.

“Others should know”, she managed to use words finally. “They should know what monster they are dealing with”.

“Lord Shiva knows”, Zee nodded. “I think he got it when the bastard tried to buy Berfrid’s soul by starving his family to death, so that he could tear it apart and use it as bait to destroy more souls; I never saw him that angry, not even when he killed people. I think he, too, is keeping that knowledge to himself, because there’s no point in alarming people. When I see how you took it, I wonder if I should have told you anything at all. We would just traumatise them, and they wouldn’t do anything differently anyway. But I wanted you to know what I think because you’re my wife and I have no secrets with you”, he managed a smile.

“Thank you. It’s horrible beyond measure, but thank you for telling me”, she nodded. “I needed to know, so that when Father tears him to pieces as he promised, not a single thought of compassion would go through my mind”.

He hugged her and kissed her hair. “Let’s go comfort and teach people”.

“The disease itself is literally the same as the Plague of Justinian. It is a microscopic organism that lives in fleas that live on rats. It congests the flea’s digestive tract, making it starve. A starving flea desperately tries to feed and attacks and infects everything, including humans. The disease then continues to spread among the humans. Low levels of hygiene contribute to the disease starting, but after it gains momentum, the epidemic essentially just burns through towns and villages, creating secondary effects of starvation, as dead and dying people can’t farm, and the societal structure collapses; children die as their parents are no longer here to provide for them and so on. Tens of millions dead within a few years. It completely overwhelmed our Judges, and I am sorry to have thought of controlling Time as to ease their burden far too late in the process, and they are now all burned out and in dire need of rest. Fortunately, as I slowed the process to a trickle, the angels are dealing with all of it now without issues”, Lady Kay nodded, obviously not very pleased with herself.

“It’s not your fault, daughter. We were all caught by surprise”, Goddess Lakshmi smiled. “It is as if Satan made a sudden decision and implemented it instantly”.

“But why?”, Augustine rubbed his forehead. “I understand why he wanted to break the inertia of Rome and Greece’s intellectual heritage and shroud Christianity in darkness before it had the time to properly find itself. Is this something similar?”

“We think so”, Lady Hypatia answered, obviously exhausted to the point of slurring words. “Christianity was reunited with the ancient libraries of Antiquity, that found their way to Europe through various trade routes. The process would have eventually produced the same results he successfully worked to prevent with the plague of Justinian and other calamities that preceded it. We had so many wonderful holy people in Europe; your Divine wife one of them”, she smiled to the blushing Lady Hildegard. “Many new wonderful angels, beautiful in ways we haven’t seen before. It was starting to be a golden age of God-awareness and piety, and it was quite balanced between men and women, which is a rare thing. And now, a terrible darkness came. People are blaming the Church for the plague, although it bears no fault. Priests have been struck disproportionately, as they have been aiding the sick and contracting the sickness themselves. People are turning to all sorts of superstition and sorcery to aid them. The older, wiser and more educated people are struck disproportionately, as they are old and their immunity can’t deal with the sickness as well, so wisdom is removed from the Earth. Again, people pray to God for help, and feel betrayed as they and their loved ones die; Satan again uses the misapprehension that is spread by the monotheistic religions such as Christianity, that God is the supreme ruler of Earth, which spiritually harms people as they see abundant evidence to the contrary. The spiritual aftermath of this calamity exceeds the physical one”, she concluded.

“First things first”, Lord Vishnu smiled and turned his sight inwards. Deep spiritual light enveloped the Judges present, and all their weariness and troubles were taken away. “I am sorry for your suffering, brothers and sisters. We missed the important developments, and you were left to suffer for our mistakes. As always, you saved the day and I thank you”, he bowed at them, and everybody else joined him.

“Now let us return to the matter at hand. This is the second time that Satan saw that things are going too well, and he reset the board. Judging by past experience, this means he already has something in preparation, that wouldn’t be as successful if it had the continued intellectual tradition of Europe to contend with. It is for us to discover what it may be, and how to counter it”, he smiled.

“I think I have a pretty good idea”, Bernard Gui whispered, more to himself.

“Please, Inquisitor; you are here because we value your insight. Tell us what you think”, Vishnu nodded in encouragement.

“I’ve seen the Cathari. It is as if their beliefs and theology were completely secondary, and the primary thing about them is satanic defiance and arrogance. They acted as if they had the holy light of truth, and the Church was an evil satanic thing merely because it was in power. They wanted to tear everything down, as if that alone will make everything better, and they lied and counterfeited history as was to their liking. I think we are going to see more of that in the future. Not of the Cathari, because they seem to be a finished story, but I have seen many examples of this revolutionary defiance and arrogance, both in the Church and outside it, and it always felt as if Satan himself was looking at me through the eyes of those people, and they looked maddened, as if under influence of some evil spirit or a drug, like sick men under a fever that influences the brain adversely. I am a newcomer here, but due to the nature of my job I faced all kinds of people accused of vile spiritual crimes, so it is likely that I am more familiar with this phenomenon than anyone else, save perhaps for the honourable Judges present”, he bowed.

“The attractors”, Azazel nodded to himself, and his wife nodded in assent. “Now we know how they manifest in practice”.

“Excuse me?”, Bernard was confused.

“Satan was buying souls of the incarnate angelic beings whom he placed in terrible situations, for instance he had their families starve, and offered to help if the angel sold him his soul. He then used those souls as sources of true spiritual light, placed in evil places within the world, so that they would attract souls like beacons, and lure them into desolate places of ruin”, Zina, now glowing with an inner light, and free from all weariness, smiled at him blissfully.

“That is absolutely vile. And yet, quite what one would expect of Satan”, Bernard shivered. “So you think he is powering all sorts of evil, starting with the Albigensian heretics, but not limited to them?”

“In a word, yes. However, it is a very general assessment, and it would be of great use if we could constrain it somewhat”, she confirmed.

“He hates women”, Azazel was scratching his chin. “He never loved, he never married, and I’ve seen his actions in the world. Whenever someone really hates women, and manifests this hatred and contempt in ways Cyril’s criminal mob manifested it against holy Lady Hypatia, or the way priests of Baal and Muslims treat women, you can always see his finger there. I think an increase in number of holy women in the Church, who were respected, admired and venerated, drove him insane and he wanted to put a stop to it”.

“Does he hate women as such, or merely the concept of male-female harmony and happiness?”, wondered Buddha.

“Hard to tell. He was always insane and hated everybody, and was full of malice. But about women, he always wanted to ‘put them in their place’, by which he meant enslavement, humiliation, rape, beatings and murder”, Azazel shivered from his recollection. “I regret not killing him then. Had I done so, many evils would have been prevented”.

“And many good things as well”, Zina smiled. “It is good that you didn’t, because had you done so, I would still have been a nasty demoness, thinking of what vile prank to pull on some innocent person, in my spiritual misery”.

“And humans seem to find it very easy to learn hatred and resentment, against any conceivable target”, Kay noted. “But oppressing the opposite gender that is meant to lead them to God by giving them the freedom and opportunity to love, that seems to be vile even for their standards”, she shrugged, as all nodded in assent.

“It can’t be just his contempt for holy women”, Hypatia noted. “It has to be a wider thing, connected with the strengthening of his attractors and his failure with the Cathari. Some evil thing against women is sure to be part of it, but it can’t be the whole plan”, she went on. “Let’s see what I would have done if I wanted to create a mechanism that will divert souls from God and towards something pointless, destructive and evil. The Church stands in the way; flawed as it is, it routinely leads souls to salvation and spiritual advancement, and as such it is his enemy on Earth. He will certainly work on weakening, sidelining and corrupting it. This is something we can take for granted. Furthermore, he will want to introduce alternatives. Dissent within the Church, of the kind similar to the split between Rome and Constantinople. Dissent always works in his favour because people work against each other instead of towards God. Prejudice, resurgence of paganism, worship of matter instead of spirit, involvement with the material things in pointless endeavours. If I were him, I’d put an attractor there, towards the matter, making it shine brightly so that people make it a false deity. Treat spiritual things as mere figments of imagination rather than the true reality that it is. Make reasons for people to hate each other; all kinds of groups for all kinds of reasons. Make them desire material things enough to hate and murder one another. Make them see each other as enemies rather than brothers and sisters. And, of course, his hatred of women and marital harmony will surely find its place in the context of all this”, she waved her head in dismay.

“I can’t find error in your thinking, beloved sister, and this troubles me greatly, for it means we are going to see an age of unprecedented darkness, where the darkest evils will be illuminated by the true light of murdered angels, to serve as beacons that will lure others into ruin”, Augustine lamented.

“I also agree with Lady Hypatia’s analysis”, Azazel nodded. “And I share Lord Augustine’s dismay, as we are sure to witness terrible things in the future”.

“I think we now know enough to plan for it”, Vishnu nodded. “I am grateful for all your contributions, for they were indeed insightful and wise. And now, we must heal the immediate wounds he inflicted, as there are tens of millions of souls who suffered and died there, and who will have all sorts of misplaced resentments that will fester unless we heal them with true knowledge and compassionate kindness”.

“All the Gods volunteering for healing and teaching sessions in the orchard until this is resolved?”, Lord Shiva raised an eyebrow.

“Indeed”, Lady Lakshmi confirmed, and all others nodded in assent. “The Judges and their angels will remain busy with the incoming, but the rest of us are on teaching and healing duty until further notice”.

“Good morning, Inquisitor”, a man holding a cup of a steaming beverage approached Bernard.

“Good morning to you too, Meister Eckhart”, he bowed. “Although ‘morning’ doesn’t seem to mean much in these realms”.

“You know, I feared we would exchange those greetings somewhere in France, under less pleasant circumstances”, Eckhart laughed. “Fortunately, I managed to die before the Inquisition managed to find something on me”.

“From what I heard, it was mostly political nonsense and very far removed from the actual heresy I had to deal with”, Bernard gestured apologetically. “What was it even, some uneducated cleric not understanding Scripture well enough, and coming after you in consternation when they saw you quote it?”

“Something very much along those lines, yes”, Eckhart nodded. “The problem with being a theologian is that every semi-literate dunce thinks he’s one, as well. Especially the Bishops and Cardinals”, he giggled. “May God be my witness, some of them don’t look like they have actually read the Bible since they left the seminary”.

“So, how does your theology survive this place?”, Bernard pointed around them. “Mine lies in ruins somewhere in the reception room”, he laughed.

“Mine is keeping yours company”, Eckhard snickered. “Along with, I suspect, everybody else’s”.

“Oh, they fared quite well, I hear”, Bernard pointed at the far end of the orchard, where the Buddhists were teaching. “The Christian theologians are mostly recovering from shock. The Muslim theologians are looking for their promised virgins. The Hindu theologians can’t agree on what the word ‘Hindu’ even means”, he smiled. “Who was your Judge?”

“Lord Buddha. Now, that was a shock”, Eckhart grinned. “I expected things on the higher planes to simplify; essentially, God turns out to be everything, other things turn out to be a mirage that vanishes. Not exactly how it works in reality, as I found out”.

“I met his holy wife, Lady Zina. My expectation was that I would be punished for theological error, the way I punished others; that would have been fair, for Christ said we shall be measured by the same measure we use on others. Imagine my surprise when she just shrugged all that off, and focused on my true intent, and mostly just explained things. I would say I fell in love with her by the end of it, but I wouldn’t want her husband to take offence”, he smiled.

“Nobody here cares much for theology, in a sense that it matters much what ideas we use to describe things that are true. But falsehoods and deceit are completely absent. Everybody is straightforward: they look at what is true and they say it as they see it. It is very refreshing after Avignon”, Echkart sighed.

“I still haven’t met Magdalena, Christ’s wife. I hear she spends all of her time with Christ’s parents, meditating, as their consciousness is so vast, she finds the experience addictive”.

“I can’t even imagine what that must feel like, but I don’t blame her. I would spend all of my time around Christ, but I don’t want to annoy him”, Eckhart mused. “But it’s the differences between the Gods that I find stunning. Buddha, for instance, is completely different from someone like Karuna, or, for that matter, Augustine. But they feel like different ways to perceive God. The Greeks expected things to get simpler and yet more powerful as you go up in the heavenly realms, and we took that expectation from them. They certainly grow more powerful, I’ll give them that. But it is the diversity of perfections that stuns me. I could look at them whole day and never get tired. I always expected there to be only one way to be God, and I would try to see all sorts of perfections in one person, but the thing is, most of those perfections sort of negate each other. It’s like carriages – it is either fast, or it fits many people. You can’t have it both at the same time. An ox is strong, but a horse is fast, and a swan flies to great distances. The Gods seem to be like that – split into dozens of different perfect combinations of qualities, and when you see one, you can’t imagine anything being better, and then you see their brother or sister and you see a different perfection. I tell you, I could go on about this until the sun goes down, and since here it apparently never does, that would be a long time indeed”, he snickered.

“Something seems to be going on”, Bernard was suddenly serious. “The number of people here seems to be increasing. And by quite a lot, from what I can gather”.

“Are they dying suddenly in great numbers?”, Eckhard scratched his neck. “This can’t be good”.

“Lady Zina!”, Bernard Gui stood up and bowed to the woman approaching them. “What’s wrong?”, he looked at her in alarm, as she looked weary and exhausted.

“Bernard, it’s nice to see you again. And you must be Meister Eckhart?”, she curtsied and smiled weakly, as the other man bowed.

“A great plague has struck Europe; the same if not worse than the one under Justinian, that ended the ancient world. I suspect the number of holy people in Europe recently was too great for Satan to bear, and he kneed the chess board again”, she shrugged.

“You must be flooded by the recently deceased”, Bernard observed the signs of mental exhaustion on the Goddess. “Can we help you in any way?”

“Thank you for the offer”, she smiled. “I have multiple legions of angels assisting already, and they are all busy. I’m afraid I overestimated my abilities and didn’t ask for help until very late in this deluge of souls, which is why I now had to take my leave and recover. Meister Eckhart, please, assist and guide the newcomers to the best of your abilities, because they will need instruction. Bernard, I must ask you to join me in the war room. You have extensive experience with the Cathari, and I’m afraid Satan is going to make his next move along those lines soon. If I am to judge by what happened the last time I had such a plague on my watch, this is likely going to be the end of Christian Europe”.

“So, my friend, what has been the most shocking for you here so far?”, Paul sat by Bernard’s side and offered him a cup of coffee.

“Thanks, Apostle”, the man nodded. “Most shocking? I don’t know where to even begin”, he gestured. “Probably multiple persons of God. I’m still trying to get my head around that. Not just that there are more than three, but that new ones can be born when existing souls reach their final stage of evolution. The concept that one can become God sounds outright satanic, until you remember that Christ urged us to do just that, but we seem to have swept that part under the rug because we didn’t know how to interpret it”.

“The next thing are the women”, he waved his head. “The fact that women can be very holy and smart was always completely normal and expected to me. But that you can have female persons of God, that was a shock, because when one says ‘Goddess’, the first association are the Pagan deities – Artemis, Isis, Venus and so on; you would expect some fertility deity of nature surrounded by Satyrs and bunny rabbits, and similar heathen nonsense. But no, they are nothing like that. The first person I met here was Lady Zina. May the Lord forgive me, the first idea I had was that she’s someone’s assistant. But when I understood who she is, I expected the worst – a non-Christian woman is going to get her payback on an inquisitor who burns witches on a stake and whatever nonsense Pagan enemies of the Church are spreading whenever we have to punish some woman who practiced actual witchcraft, gave someone a preparation brewed from toxic herbs and toads, and the person got possessed by demons or died. So, I expected Artemis to get her payback and send me to hell. Instead, she was incredibly righteous, her account of the facts was superb, and she interpreted them all in my favour, as if she were my own attorney, and not the judge. She behaved as if it was her goal to save me, teach me, comfort me, and she even told me stories from her own life on Earth, somewhere in the early Genesis, thousands of years before Babylon was a thing, if you can believe it. She even said that Adam and Eve are a metaphor for her first group of souls that inhabited human bodies on Earth, and I believed her. Instead of being vengeful, she was just, kind, and her judgment was the most charitable and in my favour. May God forgive me, but by the end of it, I loved her as much as I love Christ himself, and since she sent me to him and I actually talked to him in person, I know what I’m talking about. He asked me about my impressions of her and I told him the truth, that she is nothing how I would have imagined a female deity, but every much as I would have imagined him, and he nodded, praising her greatly. Let me tell you, everything in the Bible about how God is jealous, I expected to see it, but they love each other so deeply, it melts my heart as I see it. He told me that the part about the jealous God is about worshipping Satan and all other unworthy things, such as the made up Gods or nature, not worshipping other persons of the One True God”, he ended the tirade with a sigh and a smile.

“Did he tell you about his wife?”, Paul snickered.

“He did, but at that point, after all that I’ve seen, that part actually felt normal”, Bernard laughed. “What actually still shocks me is how the Gods are with each other”, he mused. “They are innocent like small children, and yet there is such wisdom and power in their eyes that I just stand there like a fool and can’t get my thoughts to move. One would expect them to be strict and stern, but they feel like family members who know each other for eternity, and yet every time they see each other they react with such deep joy, as if a brother and sister who see each other for the first time after being apart for years. It’s a wonder to witness. It feels absolutely pure and innocent, and yet, God forgive me, more intimate than sexual intercourse. When I was with Jesus, Lord Buddha came by and brought us coffee. The way those two greeted each other felt like diving straight into the deep mind of God, and yet they just greeted each other in passing. I read the books of Marco Polo about Buddhism in China, and I imagined that it must be some religion much inferior to our belief in Christ, but when I saw those two, I understood that I know nothing about God”.

“Want to hear some gossip?”, Paul grinned a lopsided grin of mischef.

“?”

“Augustine became a God just recently”, Paul nodded.

“St. Augustine?”, Bernard’s jaw dropped.

“Indeed. He used to sit here with me, brooding, as you do now. Then he met his wife again, the one he wrote about and regretted leaving in ‘Confessiones’. She remained celibate in that life and three more that followed, spiritually evolving so that she could be his true match. They are inseparable now”, he smiled. “I miss our talks, though”.

“Somehow, I’m not surprised; the Goddesses are incredible. Soft as feathers and virtuous and powerful as Christ. I’ve never seen anything like it”, Bernard shrugged. “Who is the Lady?”

“You might even know her, she was quite famous. It’s Hildegard of Bingen”.

“Of course I know her. Of her, at least. She wrote excellent music and interesting books. Incredibly virtuous and holy person of bright intelligence”, he nodded. “And you say she saved herself for him through all those lives and centuries?”

“Yes. She said she found her man, and until she could be with him properly, no other man had any appeal”.

“This is such a high standard for loyalty, chastity and faith, that I stand wordless. And is she a Goddess too? If not, she ought to be, because what you are telling me is amazing”, he was stunned.

“She is. Apparently, souls become Gods in couples. No single man, or single woman, can become a God or a Goddess. It’s always a couple of perfect souls who love each other perfectly”, Paul explained.

“Be perfect as your Heavenly Father”, Bernard quoted.

“Indeed”, the Apostle nodded. “Augustine told me that his heart stopped when he sent her away, all those centuries ago, and he couldn’t make any true spiritual progress since. And when they were reunited, they both attained perfection almost instantaneously”.

“We really messed up with celibacy, didn’t we?”, Bernard nodded in dismay.

“I’m not sure about that. We’re talking about really perfect souls here, great holy people in their own right, capable of incredibly strong and pure love that is of God, and when they meet their counterpart, Divine magic happens. But ordinary people, they are more likely to be just male and female fools, doing foolish things each in their own worldly ways, making life difficult for each other. It might be better to be celibate and hone your spirituality in solitude until you are ready for this Divine form of love that makes you a brother or sister of Christ, than to lose yourself in the quagmire of worldly nonsense. That, at least, is what I am telling myself”, Paul shrugged.

“You are probably right. I would prefer staying celibate to being married to a worldly woman. But when I see those perfect, godly women, I am amazed at their perfection. It’s like seeing a female Christ, and not just one, but several different ones, all perfect in their own right. I can’t imagine myself being married to a woman like that, because I’m not worthy. But I want to be”, Bernard nodded. “It is a thing to aspire toward, because I can’t think of a more worthy goal”.

“There is a good thing about worldly marriage in a lesser standard of love”, Paul nodded. “You get to practice. Learn how to be with a woman, learn how one thinks and feels, how to help her and be a man for her. As a celibate, you are unlikely to learn any of it, and as such, you won’t know how to be with a woman, or develop spiritual features this requires. Sure, it’s unlikely that your wife on Earth and yourself are to develop the deepest form of love, like Christ and Magdalena, or Buddha and Zina, but it is going to be vastly better than lusting after boys, as pederasts do. Practice will show you both right and wrong ways, so that you can learn and improve”.

“You are indeed wise, Apostle”, Bernard nodded.

“Not as wise as Augustine, regretfully”, Paul smiled his lopsided grin.