“I’m afraid that the golden age of the mediterranean civilization is about to end”, spoke Lord Vishnu. “The Rome just fell, and the Western part of the Empire is crumbling down. That, however, is a minor problem, and in itself wouldn’t cause bigger issues for centuries. The reason why I brought you all here is because I want us all to consult now, because very soon the Judges of Karma will have been overwhelmed and thus unavailable”, he finished with a serious tone.

“A natural disaster of some kind?”, wondered Lord Azazel.

“Yes, in fact. And not just one. Multiple volcanic eruptions, serious global cooling, agricultural collapse and starvation, and a major plague upon all that. A civilisation ending event, to be followed by hundreds of years of misery and suffering in worse darkness than ever before. The good part of it is, they will have belief in the afterlife. The bad part is, the living will envy the dead”.

“Is this something Sanat Kumar cooked up? He simply told the Jewel to crush it all in order to stop the process we started with the transcendence, and most prominently, Christ’s resurrection?”, asked Kay.

“It seems so, but it’s hard to tell since we can’t actually see clearly inside. Look too strongly, and you really find yourself on the inside”, Buddha answered. “But we can make educated guesses based on what the consequences will be”.

“This is not merely a European disaster, but the consequences will be the gravest there, since they are already having a serious civilisational decay, and this will finish it, and hinder any attempt at mitigation. The blow is going to be hard and deadly. Basically, the warlords will fight over the land that will be worked by the starving serfs, agricultural yields will be miserable because all the knowledge will have been lost, and religious philosophy will be reduced to the most basic concepts, as most literate people will be dead. It will truly be an age of darkness. Centuries, maybe millennia will pass before we again get minds such as the angelic Bishop Augustine, or the Divine Lady Hypatia”, Buddha bowed to the aforementioned. “We are likely to get souls that are greatly disenchanted with the physical world, and follow transcendence. However, their ideas about transcendence are likely to be basic, so it’s hard to tell how much of a progress they will make. It will also be an ideal time for superstition, and the Church will likely entertain its despotic tendencies. However, in India my disciples are founding a great university in Nalanda, near Rajagriha, where I used to teach. Many good things may come out of that. India is spiritually quite vibrant and doing well. That, at least, is of some comfort”, he finished.

“So, essentially, we are getting a thousand years of darkness in the Mediterranean, and a thousand years of enlightenment in India?”, asked Lord Azazel. “Sounds like someone wanted to break Christianity just as it was on the precipice of developing a really sophisticated philosophy, so that it could be reduced to its most basic interpretation”.

“I am actually afraid that it all began with the vicious murder of Lady Hypatia”, spoke the Mind of God. “It looks like the villainous bishop Cyril gave Sanat Kumar the idea as to how to deal with the problem; basically, wipe out the intellectual infrastructure of Europe altogether, and what remains will be the people like Cyril, who are supposedly the ardent defenders of Christian faith, but who would in fact crucify Christ instantly, had he appeared before them today”, she ended with much more severity than was to be expected from her otherwise bubbly personality.

“We were winning too hard”, mused Lord Shiva. “Just look at what we accomplished. The former divisions of the souls in the astral nursery no longer apply, and I mean that quite literally. We needed to introduce multiple new astral sub-planes to accommodate for the new types of souls. We have new types of angels, such as St. Paul and St. Augustine, whose experience on Earth, as well as their thought processes, are likely to result in good things in the future. Since Sanat Kumar started scheming, the number of Gods grew from four to twelve. However, I must also acknowledge that we had losses. We lost angels, we lost astral souls of various types, and it’s too early to tell what the ultimate losses will end up being. On the upside, new souls are starting to nucleate in the new atmosphere of increased transcendental presence on Earth, and it remains to be seen what they end up becoming as they mature”, he nodded. “We were winning, so he kneed the playing board and said ‘oops’”.

“This is why I brought our resident experts on Christianity – I mean, other than the Christ himself, his wife and mother”, Krishna smiled. “I mean St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Augustine and Lady Hypatia”, he bowed. “I would appreciate their thoughts on the likely spiritual developments as this catastrophe unfolds”.

“I am afraid I am greatly to blame for what is to happen, along with my fellow hard-necked apostles, who kept trying to organise the teaching of our Lord Christ as if it were a mere commentary on the Law of Moses and the Prophets”, Kefa spoke mournfully. “This is why they will treat God the same way Israel did; as if he were a weapon for them to wield, and a heavenly general to lead their victorious armies. That is why Israel is no more, destroyed under Vespasian and Titus, and finished under Hadrian, and the Christians are to meet the same fate eventually, if they persist in their hubris”.

“That seems to be quite true”, nodded Paul. “Where the Jews acted as if they had the Lord of the Armies on their side and continued tempting fate against more powerful nations, which eventually led to their demise, the Christians just supplanted this with Christ, and other than eating pork and celebrating Sunday instead of Saturday, much else remained the same. I am afraid they will not invite people to accept the joyful news that Christ rose on the third day, but threaten them with murder lest they submit to their worldly rule, the way they murdered Lady Hypatia. They will use worldly means to achieve worldly ends under a guise of Christ, until other worldly powers rise against them under some other false guise, and depose them. This is unfortunate and quite depressing, but this is how I see it”, Paul concluded.

“The holy apostles have spoken, and I agree with their understanding of the sad state of the Church, to which I have unfortunately contributed in my foolishness”, Augustine took the word. “But what they said is merely one aspect of the problem. Yes, as Christianity became the religion of power, it started speaking the language of power, acting as if they owned God, to use him as a club with which to beat their enemies into submission. This is as sinful as it is true. However, another aspect of the problem might be as important. As I left my mortal life, I faced judgment at the hands of her holiness, Lady Hypatia, the much revered Judge over the dead. From her, I learned that I was wrong about the very concept of salvation, and I also learned many things about how the apostles introduced clumsy counterfeits of history in order to dismiss the holy wife of our Lord, and present a teaching that was so heavily biased against women and their important role, that I am sorry to say that we are going to see the grave consequence of this bias within the Church. The hard lesson I have been taught, and with the ultimate authority of the Lord, is that God is both male and female, and male and female together. This would be an easy thing for normal people to understand, but the influence of the Jewish tradition was so heavy, that we adopted a superbly male-centred view, which was easy in the male-centred Roman society which made adoption of such beliefs easy. I’m not saying we should adopt some kind of a female-centric view, which would also be wrong, but this kind of imbalance in favour of men is opposed to the will of God and will not end well. The first thing I learned here was that I was a Christian and a man, and my judge was a Neoplatonist and a woman, and she was fully in the favour of the Lord and acted with his authority, and I was in the wrong about many fundamental doctrines, and was at her mercy. However, this bitter lesson later proved sweet, as I found her to be a wise, merciful and righteous judge and teacher, and if more women like her had authority in the Church, the Church might actually start reflecting what is true in Heaven, and to which we can all attest: that male and female persons of God are equally represented in the country of God, and none are boastful, foolish and hard-necked; unlike, I must mournfully concede, my fellow Christians on Earth”, he finished in a grave tone.

“I thank you gentlemen for your frank and straightforward assessment of the state of Christianity”, Vishnu bowed to them. “I will now ask the Mind of God for her analysis and recommendations”, he turned to Lady Karuna.

“I think I can see a pattern emerging in all of this. Ever since the souls have started taking birth on Earth, our greatest losses have been caused by the despotic, tyrannical mentality Satan seems to favour and nurture wherever he can. Uriel the angel was lost because he fell into evil, by embracing the mentality of despotism, rule of fear and violence, and his endless cruelty and disregard for suffering of other beings”, Kay started. “Furthermore, we lost angel Athena due to her arrogant foolishness in which she challenged Satan to do his worst against her in his own realm, which he did, and the despotic, tyrannical priests of Baal, which seems to be a name they had for his own person, meaning Master, as he wants to be called, imprisoned her and raped her daily until her spirit broke and she gave her soul willingly to Satan, and now she is his property, as we acknowledged our loss and surrendered her back to the one she calls Master. We also saw seemingly religious people who acted as if they own God, how they killed Lord Jesus in a terribly torturous way, under direct guidance of Satan himself. We saw an almost identical mob, that acted as if they own God and act as his instruments, also owned and controlled by Satan, but now calling themselves Christians, how they viciously murdered Lady Hypatia, who was so holy that she became a Goddess before her corpse had the time to cool properly”, she managed a smile. “Unfortunately, a pattern of Christianity being adopted by Satan as an instrument of tyranny is apparent. However, since the fundamentals of the faith are transcendental and good, Satan’s control will never be absolute, as the transcendental opposition will have the word and deeds of Christ himself to use as evidence”, she concluded, curtsied, and returned into her husband’s arms.

“This is a grim analysis, but I see no fault in it”, Christ himself took the word. “We must now see what can be done as to mitigate the disaster that is to follow, and how we can possibly turn it all to some greater good”, he concluded and gave word to his Father.

“I think it would be proper to give word to the one most immediately and directly affected by this development in Christianity, as she might have a more educated perspective than the rest of us”, Lord Vishnu bowed to Lady Hypatia.

“To be honest, I am more optimistic than the rest of you seem to be. Yes, the Church encourages its believers to think that men should be in charge and women should be submissive. However, let me ask the Ladies in attendance: which one of you does not wish to be submissive to her holy husband?”, she smiled, seeing the Goddesses frown in horror. “As I thought: each and every one, starting with myself, would like nothing better than to be submissive to and under the power of her husband. That is because we love and worship them with all our hearts, and our souls find fulfilment and bliss as we cherish and serve them. And as we do so, our Lords will love and cherish us back, with their entire hearts and souls. That is what the relationship between men and women is to be. Truly, if one wanted to harm women, he would tell them that they should seek power and emancipation from men, that they should seek career and education rather than to serve their husbands and raise their children in love and most attentive care. This might come as a shock, coming from a renowned academic, philosopher and a scientist, but let me inform you that I spent this day in the company of a Goddess who in her earthly incarnation was nothing but a wife and a mother, and I sought her wisdom and love, and was greatly comforted. Her life was what the esteemed speakers who preceded me painted as the life of submission and inequality that awaits poor women of the dark age, under a tyrannical fist of men. Well, she lived in an even more tyrannical kingdom of old, and she was fully under the power of her husband, who treated her with great kindness, simply because she was his wife. She attained perfection with nothing but love as her weapon, and it was such a powerful weapon, that it made Gods and Goddesses cry over her and champion her, and her Title is now the Love of God. If this is to be the fate of women in Christianity, then glorious times await us, for she is a most praiseworthy person and I am immensely honoured to call her my sister, and bow before her endlessly”, she finished with a blissful smile, as it was Zina’s time to blush into deep cherry hues.

“Lady Hypatia has a valid point”, Maria Magdalena took the word. “If someone offered me to rule the world rather than submit to my husband, I would refuse it instantly and without a second thought, as only a most foolish woman could accept such nonsense. Only those most susceptible to Satan wish to rule, to boast and to rise above others. There is not a single one among the Gods who would want to rule over the others, as we find serving the others much more fulfilling. My fellow apostles treated me exactly as we now suspect Christianity to be treating women in the future. They marginalised me, silenced my voice, and sent me to the kitchen with other women. As a result, I am my Lord’s Lady forever. Truly a terrible fate, I must admit”, she laughed. “We should be more afraid for the fates of the Christian bishops who embrace evil, for they might share the fate of Cyril of Alexandria, who was rightfully sent to a hell intended for people of cruel hearts and without God’s love, to cool down and await further judgment by the very woman whom he tried to savagely extinguish. Certainly, Earth will not mirror Heaven. This is not surprising, as it was designed to oppose Heaven and be a mockery of God’s Creation. This is why my Lord’s prayer asks for God’s kingdom to be on Earth, as it is in Heaven; for that is not so at the time being. However, as long as Heaven remains the choice and destiny of the souls who suffer through that terrible illusion of a world, I will be content”, she finished, and nothing was to be added, for it was the Word of God.

Zina smiled and sipped her coffee, as the woman across her was fidgeting and turning increasingly stronger shades of red.

“Hypatia, you’re going to have a stroke. Relax. Breathe. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I did have a teenage daughter who needed to have the sex talk once her monthly bleeding started”, she winked. “Just ask whatever you feel like asking, I’m not going to bite you”.

The woman smiled uncomfortably. “Well, your daughter wasn’t a virgin at fifty, so she at least had a valid excuse”, she relaxed a bit. “What I wanted to ask you is, well, you had certain experiences as a human woman that I.. didn’t, and you are also a Goddess now, so, what I want to know is, how does it all work here and there, and am I missing something?”, she turned a stronger shade of red and fumbled half the words.

“You mean, is there something about human sexual experience that you’re missing in your relationship with Azrael now?”, Zina smiled.

Hypatia nodded, obviously embarrassed. “I mean, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything, but since I don’t know for sure, I thought…”

“Well, human sexual experience is certainly great, at least relatively, for a human experience. There are certainly things we don’t have an analogue for here – such as the bodily instincts taking over, overriding your mind; and orgasm as something that resets your brain in complete surrender; that doesn’t exist either. Also, we don’t actually have the special girly bits, if you know what I mean”, Zina explained, as Hypatia squirmed with embarrassment.

“However, we don’t actually need those, because here, our very soul is also our sexual organ, so to speak”, Zina was now more serious. “It’s as if souls have polarity. My husband is the brain of the family so he can probably tell you more about kalapas and their organisation into a karmic matrix, and apparently they have ‘left’ and ‘right’ orientation, or you can call them ‘male’ and ‘female’ on a very fundamental level. In young souls, those kalapas are arranged in all sorts of haphazard ways, left and right interchangeably. If you look at young souls in the astral nursery, you can almost never tell their gender, and it doesn’t seem to mean much either, the way gender of a coffee cup or this table doesn’t matter. However, as we mature, our souls start polarising, and the farther up you go in the spiritual hierarchy, the less likely you are to find a soul with indeterminate gender, or with unclear, alternating or reversed sexual proclivities. And us Gods, we are extremely polar, because the entirety of our being is in alignment and following what God, or you would call it The One, desires”, she nodded, and Hypatia was now completely in her element, as the talk was taking a philosophical turn.

“So, what you’re saying is, there are no hermaphrodites, homosexuals or beings with ambiguous gender in heaven?”, she asked.

“It’s not because there’s some rule that says entrance is forbidden to them”, Zina smiled. “It’s just that those ambiguities and reversals are malformations and disorders, and disorders are something that needs to be sorted out in the evolutionary process. They are not the end result”.

“There are also no assholes in heaven, either, because being a nasty person is an impurity and a malformation that needs to be sorted out in the evolutionary process”, Zina continued. “But when you reach the pinnacle of spiritual evolution, the end result always seems to be either a perfectly sorted out man, or a perfectly sorted out woman, and they always have a counterpart, to the point where it seems to be a requirement. Being a single God is as unheard of as being a genderless or a homosexual one. It just doesn’t seem to reflect God’s desires”, Zina finished.

“So, God always wants to be a male God married to a female one, and a female God married to the male one?”, Hypatia asked.

“Yes. At least that is something that has been repeated universally in our experience. It is as if some deep aspect of the unmanifested Absolute can manifest properly only as an intimate, profound spiritual connection of mutual worship, adoration and surrender between an enlightened, divine Man, and an enlightened, divine Woman”, Zina confirmed. “Absolute is indeed One, but One apparently doesn’t mean lonely. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that its nature is closer to the absolutely perfect union of male and female, and all the perfect God-couples in existence, and all the God-couples that are yet to become. It is an endless, ever-blissful, complete ocean that is totality of all perfections”, the Love of God was now glowing.

“That is amazing. But you were saying that our very soul is a female sexual organ. What did you mean by that?”, Hypatia inquired.

“It’s simple. As a divine woman, when you worship your divine husband, which will be pretty much constantly, you envelop his soul with yours, and simultaneously open yourself to him and draw him in with the power of your worship, and this makes you glow with both pleasure, wisdom and consciousness as you both touch the Absolute in your mutual worship”, Zina nodded wisely.

“That is exactly how I experience it”, Hypatia confirmed. “I couldn’t have stated it more precisely myself”.

“So, a human woman has a special female organ she opens towards her husband, she takes him in, and pleasure of the act makes her open up and surrender even more, and when they both reach the blissful climax, they touch a small aspect of what we feel, as God-couples. The difference is, they lose their consciousness temporarily, while ours grows stronger, and we don’t have orgasm in the sense of having reached a point where the pleasure is too strong for our brains to keep functioning, so they reset. Our minds, on the contrary, are being fed by the pleasure and we keep getting clearer and wiser as we are experiencing pleasure. This means we can keep going far, far further than the point where a human being would reach orgasm, and our normal state of consciousness is way beyond a human orgasmic experience. As you would say, sex for us is more of a philosophical ecstasy than a culmination of biological urges. And, of course, we also don’t have a monthly cycle, or pregnancy, or the mess that drips down your leg after your husband finishes in you, that you have to clean up afterwards”, Zina giggled, and Hypatia again blushed with angry crimson.

“Do you miss those physical things you described? The orgasm, the mess, the pregnancy, everything…?”, she asked.

“It was fun and lovely, as a part of my human experience”, Zina nodded. “But it’s important to understand that it’s a part of a different package. It was great as human experiences go, but what I have now is so much fuller, better and greater, that I would cry with inconsolable desperation if I had to return to the human limitations now, even if it consisted of only the best parts of the human experience without the bad ones”, she concluded firmly.

“I think I understand what you mean. When I was a human woman, I would periodically desire sexual union with a man very strongly, but I controlled myself because I understood that I don’t actually feel a spiritual connection with any particular person, and once I would get pregnant, I would have to choose between my career as a philosopher, or my family, and it would invariably end by having neglected either one or both”, Hypatia was now reminiscing. “I considered trying sex with a woman, because then there would be no risk of pregnancy, but I didn’t really feel any attraction to any of them. The whole thing was a struggle, and although there were things I was missing, the tradeoff just wasn’t worth it”, she nodded.

“So, are there any other embarrassing points you would want to cover with your sexually experienced sister?”, Zina joked. “I mean, watching you squirm with embarrassment is highly entertaining”, she hugged the woman, who hugged her back with great relief.

“No, I think I get it now, and I am so grateful I could talk to you about this”, Hypatia smiled blissfully.

“Any time, sweetheart. Any time”, Zina whispered.

“Oh”, she suddenly got serious. “We are being called to the war council. Something is up”.

Azrael’s life significantly improved since he became a God. The reason for that wasn’t that the Gods treated him any better. In fact, he thought, they treated him as if he were a God before, and continued treating him the same now, which is to say, they loved him and showered him with every form of kindness. He smiled. They are the best people in all of Creation. Literally. Having them as friends and family was an incredible joy.

The reason why his life improved was the smiling, dignified woman at his side.

“My Lord and husband, I think it might be advised that I stay away from the Christians as they arrive. I’m not sure I will be completely impartial, and in any case, if they see me and start cursing me as a godless Pagan witch, like they did in Alexandria, their odds at achieving spiritual recovery after Earth might be diminished. Also, I might become angry at them”, she mused as she leaned into his side.

“You mean, you wish for them to see you here in charge of their fates and you’re feeling justice and empowerment, and then you’re feeling guilty over it, and your feeling of equanimity and justice advises you against taking advantage of your position and implementing what might be a petty revenge?”, he smiled.

“You are absolutely correct, my Lord”, she whined, ashamed of herself.

“Don’t you think it’s exactly what they need for their spiritual growth, if any is to take place at all?”, he pressed. “They expect your place to be occupied by Simon Kefa, whom they call Saint Peter, and expect him to hold the keys to the heavenly kingdom. They are self-righteous, even if they commit vile crimes, as they think they have been washed clean in the blood of their saviour, and our job is merely that of a concierge in a hotel, showing them their rooms and meal schedule. They think themselves absolutely righteous by virtue of belonging to the right cult and espousing the right beliefs. A clear demonstration that it is not so is in fact paramount if anything is to become of them. In fact, I would recommend non-Christian Judges to greet Christians, and vice versa, because there are many non-Christians who are arrogant in their belief that Christians are stupid, inferior and wrong”, he explained as he held her.

“You guys are so cute, I wish I could take your picture and put it on my bedroom wall, so that I can always look at you and smile”, Zina told them.

“You don’t have a bedroom”, noted Azrael.

“I can make one”, Zina grinned mischievously, as the Piercing Insight blushed. She was relieved, tough.

“So, you are telling me to trust my first instinct, although it might look petty?”, she asked.

“Yes, because your feeling of justice is advising you correctly, and your first instinct was correct. They truly need to see you here, in your full glory, power and authority of God behind you, because remember, you got your authority directly from Lord Vishnu, the Father of their Lord Jesus”, he reminded her. “You are fully in your right to be here. They, however, need to tread lightly, and they absolutely need that experience in their lives, so that they would truly learn the humility they keep talking about, and yet it remains elusive whenever they talk to someone who doesn’t share their beliefs to the letter. They already had multiple internecine fights over orthodoxy, and more are sure to follow. Allowing them to take their prejudice to Heaven would be counterproductive and ill-advised”.

“So, you’re saying I can just be myself?”, she prompted.

“That’s why you are here. The Lord appointed you to be here because he trusts you. He trusts you. He doesn’t want you to become someone else, or to censor yourself. You are valued, worshipped and loved for what you are. We need you as you truly are, and the souls you have been put in charge of need you as you are”, he bowed and kissed her brow, as she blushed from his praise and melted into him.

“I guess I will have to live with that”, she sighed and smiled.

“Incoming”, warned the Love of God, smiling at them, but pointing at the shimmer before them.

…

“Greetings, angels of the Lord. My name is Aurelius Augustinus, servant of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in his name that I greet you, and surrender myself to your justice and mercy”, the man bowed.

Hypatia was impressed. “Greetings, Bishop. I am Hypatia of Alexandria, a Judge of karma”, she curtsied. “I will be happy to answer any of your questions and be your guide in your post-Earth experience”.

The man was shocked. “If I am not mistaken, you were not Christian in life. You rejected our Lord and Saviour, and salvation is possible only if one accepts his redemptory sacrifice on the cross, where he washed away our original sin, as well as other sins of our former lives, so that we may enter into the glory of God”, he was thinking out loud. “And yet, the Glory of God is immediately obvious from your holy presence, Lady Hypatia. It is clear and undeniable. The blessing and authority of God is obvious from your presence, which means something is clearly wrong with my thinking, and this makes me anxious and disturbed, and I can’t find peace until you explain how all of this is possible”, he bowed to her, completely distraught.

“Please, calm down, revered Bishop. Let me first tell you that I am well aware of your person and writing. You are highly esteemed in learned circles, and I have read some of your works. Second, you are wrong to think that I rejected Christ. In fact, I was in his holy presence just moments ago, where I bowed before him and kissed his hand. Rejecting him would be a terrible thing, as he is a family member and a friend”, she smiled, to his utter consternation.

“But you were a neoplatonist pagan who argued with the Christian bishop of Alexandria constantly!”, he exclaimed.

“I did. The bishop is a villainous fool, and to argue with him and reject his foolishness is a sign of virtue, which everybody should exercise, if only for the sake of moral and mental hygiene”, she laughed. “However, I have read your holy scriptures, and there is not a single thing your Lord said or did, that I disagree with or disapprove of”.

“But how is it possible that you didn’t accept Christianity in life, then?”, he inquired, still completely confused and upset.

“There are multiple reasons for that, the first and foremost being that I already had my own philosophical framework, which in my humble opinion works much better than the disjointed and often chaotic and contradictory Christian ideas, and I find further evidence for that in the fact that your Christian scholars are increasingly adopting neoplatonist ideas and framework themselves. Also, your ideas about ‘accepting Christ’ or ‘accepting Christianity’ are incredibly shallow for a man of your intellect. Did Christ himself not say: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven?”

“Truly, he did”, affirmed Augustine.

“I will now ask my holy husband, Lord Azrael, to testify as to who put me here and why”, she turned to her man.

“She was appointed to be the Judge to the dead by the Father of your Lord Jesus, and the Lord expressed his full faith in her and gave her the authority”, Azrael confirmed solemnly.

“I fully accept her holy authority, and it is also in abundant evidence”, nodded Augustine. “But how have I misunderstood the concept of redemption and salvation?”, he wondered.

“You accepted the mistaken Jewish concept that salvation is about sin, and obedience to law. It isn’t. It is about the light of transcendence, about the ability to see it, and decision to follow it always”, she nodded seriously. “The entire process in which Father broke the ceiling of the earthly hell, blasted the pure light of Christ through it, and sealed the cracks open, so that the light would always shine through them and point the way out of darkness; that is salvation and redemption”, she continued. “The problem isn’t that you have sin. The problem is that your souls are immersed in the darkness of Satan, and wallow in despair, finding stupid and sinful things to amuse themselves with. But now that Christ shows the way, and the light keeps being visible, salvation is an option for all who choose it”, she finished, glowing with the wisdom of God.

“And you and I have both chosen it and followed it; it’s just that we had different labels on the jars with the same honey”, Augustine mused. “You would have made a wonderful Bishop, my Lady, had you openly embraced Christianity, and if the Church allowed for female priests”, he smiled.

“Christ agrees”, Azrael nodded. “He said she would have been one of his best disciples were she alive at his time”.

“Then I am honoured to have been put at your mercy, Lady of God, for one who is praised by our Lord himself, and appointed a Judge to the dead by the Father, must be the holiest person of a character most pleasing to the Lord, and I feel greatly blessed to be in your holy presence”, Augustine bowed deeply, glowing blue with the light of God.

“You would have been a great guest lecturer at my academy, holy Bishop”, smiled Hypatia. “I would have greatly appreciated if you had given lectures on Christianity there. Alas, it wasn’t destined to be”, she smiled.

“Come”, she invited him. “Let’s talk more”.

…

“What is this infamy?”, yelled Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. “A heathen whore of Satan to greet me here? May Lord Jesus Christ judge you for your sins and cast you to the eternal darkness, you witch!”, he growled and cursed menacingly.

“Thank you for your wishes and recommendations, Bishop, but I am needed elsewhere”, she smiled; she turned her sight inwards, made a hand motion and he was gone.

“That one requires some cooldown, I would say”, she turned to her husband.

“Indeed”, he confirmed. “But I’m afraid they made him the doctor of the church down there, so there’s more where that one came from”, he waved his head disapprovingly.

“Satan is working his deeds within the Church”, Zina added, bringing coffee. “That is unfortunate, but not surprising. The dividing line between good and evil, between transcendence and the satanic, doesn’t go between nations, and between religions. It goes within them and through them, and within every soul”.

“Indeed”, nodded Lord Azrael. “The only way to be certain that you’re on the right side is to be in God’s holy presence, and of it. If you’re not, what salvation and ‘right side’ are we even talking about?”, he nodded, and sipped from his cup.

“This is not actual coffee, you know that, right?”, Hypatia raised an eyebrow.

“I know”, Zina smiled a conspiratorial smile. “But unlike the actual coffee, this actually tastes great, so let’s not give them ideas”, she winked.

It was the least intimidating gathering of high-ranking individuals she ever took part in. In fact, the relaxed men and women sitting in a lounge over a beverage looked everything but intimidating. And yet, when Zina introduced her to her parents; the young woman in her twenties and a polite, kind man in what appeared to be early thirties, who were introduced to her as Lady Shakti and Lord Shiva, it wasn’t intimidating. No, nothing of the sort. Neither was it frightening. What she felt looking at their eyes was something she didn’t expect to feel once she became a Goddess. She thought Zina the Love of God and her husband Buddha, the Teacher of the World, were the most impressive people she would ever have the honour of seeing. Now, however, meeting the “parents”, she fought the instinct of dropping to her knees and kissing their feet.

“You two are the Alpha”, she stuttered as she looked at the God-couple. “You are the Beginning, the Origin. You created Time, Space and Thought. To call the two of you ‘Gods’ feels like an act of disrespect. I feel like I could meditate on you for millions of years and just slowly absorb things that you are, and it would be the best possible use of my time. The hair on my head stands on end when I’m near you, so much that I probably look like a hedgehog”, she managed to smile, as she curtsied to the young couple.

“Be at ease, wise one”, Lady Shakti embraced the older woman, who felt as if she were hugging the primordial Light of God emanating from The One, and understood that it might be exactly the case.

“I am right, am I not?”, she asked them. “You actually are the Primordial Principles?”

“Psst!”, hushed Lord Shiva in a mock-conspiratorial voice, with a finger before his lips. “Don’t tell anyone”, and he hugged the incredibly impressed Goddess, who felt such honour in his presence, that she trembled like a leaf.

“So, how are your impressions so far, young Lady?”, a deceptively younger man asked, acting in such a kind, supportive way that it miraculously put her completely at ease.

“I found my husband, now that I didn’t have to fear being courted for my flesh alone, since I no longer have any”, she smiled back. “I don’t know how he wasn’t a God already, though, with his incredible virtues and wisdom”.

“I was waiting for you, Goddess”, Lord Azrael embraced her from behind and smiled. “I, too, am overjoyed to finally have joined the family in earnest”, he joked.

“You were always family, Azrael”, Zina smiled and hugged him, as the others nodded in assent.

“Speaking of which, allow me to introduce you to the others”, smiled Lord Shiva.

…

“You are the Omega”, the stunned woman couldn’t help staring at Lord Vishnu and his wife. “You are the Ultimate Manifestations, the Goal”, she bowed deeply, trembling like a young tree in the wind.

“Rise, Piercing Insight”, Lord Vishnu smilingly embraced her, as her Title changed, and she blushed so hard she looked like a radish.

“Now you know how the rest of us feel around these four”, joked Lord Azazel as he bowed to the Lady.

“I don’t think I will ever get used to it”, she curtsied to the God and smiled back.

“Nobody ever does”, the Mind of God smiled as she embraced her new sister.

“I am very sorry for your experience with my supposed followers”, Jesus bowed and felt quite embarrassed.

“No”, Hypatia waved her head decisively, as she curtsied to the Lord with great respect. “That mob was the same as the one that wanted to stone you in every village you preached in, and spat at you as you were whipped on your way to Golgotha”, she kissed his hand.

“You know about my life?”, Christ was taken aback.

“Of course. I taught mathematics and astronomy to many Christian students, and we talked about you and your life a lot. I probably know more about you than that supposedly Christian mob that tore my body to pieces. Had we been contemporaries, I would have followed you everywhere as one of your apostles. Lack of respect and admiration for your holy person never participated in the reasoning behind me not being a Christian. I merely conceptualised things in a different way that felt less constrained than what I perceived the Christians to be; their thinking was too formulaic for my liking, and yet, the other point of dispute I had with them, your resurrection and the afterlife, is where they proved to be decisively in the right, and I regret not believing them”, she mused. “However, the ease with which the bishop sicced his mob on me, and the hatred and cruelty which they displayed, showed that I was not entirely wrong to keep my distance from them, as they embraced beliefs that felt more Jewish than Christian in their essential nature”.

“Tell me, what do you think, how much did your gender play a role in how they treated you?”, asked Magdalena as she came to embrace her.

“There was definitely a certain glee in how they tore my clothes off and tried to strip me of my dignity as they were killing me”, she nodded. “Part of it was definitely vindictiveness and desire to punish a woman for daring to be, I don’t know even what”, she shrugged. “However, that is a completely misguided line of thinking, because if you look carefully, the same mob did the same thing to your holy husband. They stripped his clothes off, whipped him, and made him carry his patibulum to the crucifixion site, as they mocked him for daring to think he were a God. That attempt to debase, to strip one of dignity for daring to be more than mud under their feet, this is a fundamentally satanic urge, and has nothing to do with my gender; only with how they perceived my spiritual and social status”, she answered, still holding the Goddess in her embrace. “They will try to humiliate a woman in a slightly different way than they would a man, but the intent and most of the actions are exactly the same. Also, it would be unjust and hateful to God to blame men as a gender for any of that. Yes, men crucified Christ, but Christ was also a man. Men were dismissive of you, any yet you adore a man. Men tore me apart, and yet other men learned from me every day in the Academy, they were extremely kind and respectful, and when they spoke of me behind my back, they spoke words of praise. It was not women who gave me high status in society, but men. It was not a gender war of any kind, nor was I a poor woman in a men’s world who rose up despite men’s efforts to put me down. No, it was the contrary. My honoured Father taught me mathematics and astronomy, and it was men who supported me, respected me and gave me honour at every turn, while women, in fact, gossiped and gave me nasty looks, trying to make me feel as if something was wrong with me. So, I bear witness to the virtue and goodness of men in my life, as much as I bear witness to the malicious and vile sinfulness of the mob that ended it”, she concluded.

“I wish I had you as my disciple”, nodded Jesus. “You would have brought me and my Father honour, unlike those sectarian satanic miscreants who made me ashamed before you”, he bowed to her again.

“I repeat, you have nothing to be ashamed for, my Lord. Your noble deeds bear testimony to your noble and godly character, as their deeds bear testimony to their own. This is why you are a God, and what they are, I don’t know, but I can’t say that I want any of it in my life, either”, she grinned.

“And likewise, they tried to deprive you of your dignity, and all they did was make it shine even more brightly, my Lady”, Jesus kissed her hand. “For it is not what others do that affects our dignity, but our own actions alone”.

“So, dear Goddess, what would you want to do now?”, Lord Vishnu smiled at the woman.

“My Lord, were it at all possible, I would want to join my husband in his work. I don’t know what qualifications I need to possess, but I am willing to undergo whatever training and education necessary. I find his work to be noble, compassionate and worthy, and a wife must always support her man”, she smiled.

“By all means”, Vishnu nodded, and her Title changed again. “You are in fact vastly overqualified, being a Goddess, having a human experience behind you, and furthermore, being a teacher and a Lady of great insight and discernment, not to speak of your overwhelming wisdom and compassion”, he bowed with great respect, as she blushed again. “Your husband will show you the practical details as you go, but all in all, we are all exceptionally honoured to have you”.

The recent days were eventful, to say the least. Azrael didn’t complain, because it gave him plenty of material for philosophical discussions with his two best friends. Since they just happened to be Gods, those discussions were incredibly deep and satisfying, and he noticed changes in himself. His soul frequency became deeper, and due to karmic benefits of helping distressed souls, he also grew bigger. In fact, he now rivalled the size and colour of Mary of Magdala when she first arrived, and he seriously doubted there was a more advanced angel in heaven. To him, that didn’t mean much. Conversations with Buddha and Zina, however, did.

“Everything changed since Lord Vishnu performed that ritual”, he mused. “And not just Christianity. Have you seen the Neoplatonists, Mahayana Buddhism, and Vedanta? Hindu descriptions of the Gods are sometimes uncanny in their accuracy, when they get it right. There’s a simultaneous breakthrough of philosophies and religions based around transcendental reality that is the One Principle beyond all manifestation, and also ethics based on compassion, kindness and calm acceptance of worldly things. When we compare them to the ethical systems of antiquity, where people thought they will be rewarded by the Gods if they killed more people in more brutal ways and conquered more land, this is astonishing”, he finished.

“Also, the belief that soul survives physical death and continues to have a meaningful existence seems to be spreading, and is no longer limited to Christianity alone, although Christianity has actual evidence”, Buddha noted. “This looks like an anchor that solidified ideas and things that used to be easily dismissible, because the argument for them was essentially ‘it would be terrible if it were otherwise’, and the response would be ‘terrible things happen daily, so, if anything, that is an argument that the most terrible explanation is more likely to be true’. Now, the answer is ‘Christ rose from the dead on the third day’. There are witnesses. It’s a physical fact, not a hypothesis, not an ungrounded Platonic theory”, he added. “Also, the heroic acceptance of death by the Christians, as they were brutally persecuted by the Romans and blamed for whatever the current problem was, added significantly to the credibility of their cause. And also, something else started taking place, that none of us expected. Karmic nucleation catalysed by the increased strength of the transcendental connection”, he looked both pleased and shocked.

“You want to say that ‘blanks’ are growing souls when they hear the enchanting talk about God and the beautiful and immortal Heaven, and participating in acts of love and kindness that seem to be more common”, his wife giggled and kissed his neck. “You intellectuals seem to be working hard on making things hard to understand, because you want to make them general and abstract, and by doing so, nobody understands what you’re talking about anymore”, she pretended to be annoyed.

“It’s not just that”, Buddha ruffled her hair and kissed her hand. “People used to listen to all kinds of stories before, and this didn’t happen. I’m saying that reality is starting to respond at the most basic level, where that world-illusion is based on reality, reality that was first cracked open by Lord Shiva, and then further tilled by Lord Vishnu. As stories resonate with truth, the ‘blanks’ are nucleating and starting to grow real souls. They start primitive, but since human bodies are much smarter than what such primitive souls would normally have access to, they grow into complex structures very quickly, and that seems to accelerate with further incarnations there. There wasn’t enough time to see where this is going, but it’s as if that whole world is growing souls and doing something. It’s hard to tell what the end result will be, but it’s an extremely noteworthy development”, he finished, struggling while his wife was trying to find his ticklish spots to make him laugh.

“So, we will soon be dealing with a completely new soul-type; no longer grown in the astral nursery, or incarnated in a mature form from heaven, or grown from a tear of God or some artefact, but grown on Earth, from the bottom up”, Azrael continued, while those two were both listening very carefully, and fooling around like children, to his great amusement. “Illusory as that world may be, it’s all still taking place within the mind of God, for there indeed is nothing else. And when you’re in the mind of God, God is indeed the most fundamental reality of your existence. If things could grow out of God in heaven, I see no theoretical reason why they could not grow out of God on Earth, as well; the Veil is the same anywhere”.

“And by the way, I love you two, and the way you are acting”, he smiled. “I only wish I had a wife so that I could do something like that with someone. But barring that, watching you two is a great pleasure”, he bowed smilingly.

“She will come”, Zina hugged him. “It would be against God’s nature and Will for it to be any other way”.

“I do hope so”, Azrael nodded and hugged his friend back.

…

“The Christians are starting to become a problem”, Buddha told his angelic friend. “They are turning from a virtuous, transcendentally-bound persecuted minority into a vicious, self-righteous Middle-Eastern monotheistic cult that uses God as if he were their property, and a club they are entitled to use for bashing the ‘infidels’. After a few centuries of persecution and growth, they are now powerful enough to use force as an argument, and since they are philosophically undeveloped, they aren’t really doing well in arguments. Also, other nasty aspects of their faith, inherited from Judaism, are showing their ugly head”, he concluded, lost in thought.

“That is true. However, look at the bright side. Ever since that sheepiest of all sheep, Simon Peter, the sheep have been awakening left and right. It also mobilised incarnated angels, giving them a transcendental tether to which they can attach themselves and focus; it mobilised the incarnated demons, whose proclivity for family life and useful skills and arts has gained a transcendental meaning, and we had more souls that were aware and in good condition, despite their often terrible deaths, than ever. Yes, we always had fanatics and hotheads, and the blessed Lady Kay had to do further splicing of the astral plane in order to accommodate for their specific needs. You can’t put rabid fanatics among the normal souls, and those rabid fanatics are still pretty nice souls overall, just immature and lacking perspective. It would be good if this fanaticism could be mellowed down theologically on the Earth itself, but I’m afraid that’s beyond my pay grade”, smiled the Angel of Death.

“If by ‘fanatics’ and ‘hotheads’ you mean people like those few who called you Satan pretending to be an angel of light in order to lead them astray from the true faith in Jesus Christ the Lord, and God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, making the sign of a cross in front of you and expecting you to be struck by the lightning of God for the blasphemous act of telling them how things actually work, then I both agree with you, and stand in awe of your incredible tolerance and kindness, my friend”, smiled Buddha, as his wife giggled behind him.

“Talking about fanatics and their victims, I think we have incoming”, Zina pointed at the emerging shimmer in space, suddenly serious.

…

Her terror and shock started to subside, once pain was no longer there. The absence of pain was incredibly blissful, and she could see again. That felt wonderful, regaining her eyesight after they cut her eyes out with shards of pottery, which they used to scrape flesh off her bones and tear her to pieces, slowly, torturously, and with bestial glee. Everything happened so chaotically, with such unexpected fury and hatred, that she didn’t even get around to being angry at her murderers. She was just terrified and in pain, losing control of her life, losing her eyesight, and losing life itself in the end. But it didn’t feel like it; it felt like she lost pain, blindness, fear, helplessness and her assailants. Her life was more hers than ever. Her senses were better, her mind was quicker, and the calm bliss she felt appeared to be the baseline of her new reality.

The problem was, it didn’t look possible. Of course, Plato spoke of his analogy with slaves bound in a cave, who perceive mere shadows of the reality outside, but it would be a stretch to think that this could be a description of an actual reality of a soul’s relationship with the physical world, and a greater ideal world beyond. If anything, she thought that she participated in the ideal world through the course of her work on mathematics, astronomy and teaching.

Maybe she is in the process of dying, and this is her dying brain comforting her? Maybe it will all end in mere moments? Regardless, she decided to relish in the experience, for the absence of pain was so luxurious, so peaceful, and there was no mob screaming insane things and most vulgar profanities at her, as they tore her flesh. She shivered at the recollection, and tried to push it away.

At some point, she perceived a change. The space around her felt different, and seemed to solidify in form of a room with three… people? No, they just looked like people, because she could feel profound spiritual light beyond their form. Are they Gods? As she tried to understand who they were, their identities became known to her, as if by some magic. Two were Persons of God, which probably meant they were Gods, but their names were unfamiliar. Definitely not the gods she knew. Also, not The One, although they felt like First Manifestations. She didn’t know how she understood that, but the more she thought of it, the more certain she was; or were they the Final Manifestations? They were extremely holy, and incredibly kind. Also, she knew they were husband and wife. “Plato was right”, she thought.

The third one, the closest, identified as the Angel of Death, and was a wonderful, powerful, incredibly deep being of dark blue and deep purple light, and she intuitively felt that he, because it was a ‘he’, was on the utmost precipice of becoming a God himself, and was a friend of the God-couple. She felt such deep kindness and love between them, that tears instantly welled up and her soul seemingly just exploded from the beauty of their existence, and they didn’t even say a word yet. “Where are my manners”, she thought. “Those are the most beautiful beings, or perfect philosophical entities, I have ever seen, and I haven’t even introduced myself properly”.

“Greetings, honoured Gods. I am Hypatia of Alexandria. Please be kind and patient with me, for I am confused as to the nature of this new reality I found myself in, and I must beg you for explanations and your kind guidance”, she bowed and smiled, in the most dignified way she could manage in her condition.

“Greetings, Lady Hypatia; or, should I rather say, angel Helena?”, Azrael, bowed, as he cleared the veil of memory in her soul. This was usually something he did later on in the process, but the Lady in question was so stunning, so self-possessed, powerful, beautiful and kind, despite her most horrible death, that he treated her more like an equal, and less like a patient.

“Azrael? This is you? I now remember seeing you before, many times. How many lives? Nine? And before, in Heaven? It’s still unclear, but I think more so because I’ve changed, than due to any memory lapse. And you’ve changed as well. You are greater, stronger, kinder, so much kinder and more loving than before. You used to be cold, distant, calm and self-possessed, but now you are amazing, and honestly my heart just flows to you, and I am afraid I might commit some unintended transgression”, she blushed. “And please call me Hypatia. Helena was a caterpillar, whilst I am the butterfly”.

Azrael was stunned, for a reason unlike any in his long experience. He looked at the super-angel in front of him, her deep purple and indigo hues and enormous size, her incredible handling of the situation, and understood that something fatally and irrevocably changed in him.

“My Lady”, he bowed. “Take my hand, and see into my heart”; and they felt each other in earnest.

She was astounded, because as she felt him, his incredibly pure soul, his oceanic mind and his love and admiration for her, her heart responded in ways she never thought possible, for it wasn’t an emotion. The One ripped through the Veil in her heart, and claimed her as himself, and not just an abstract her, but her as a woman who finally met her husband, whom she could worship and adore in the safe knowledge that she was The One who worshipped The One, for they were both persons of God.

And so the words of the Love of God came true, and the Gods were twelve.