“May God almighty have mercy on me, for I am a sinner”, a man mumbled.

“We’ll see what we can do about that”, Lady Zina smiled.

“I am Bernard Gui, my Lady. Could you please tell me where I am and what is going on? I see that I died, and this seems to be a place of judgment. Are you here to take me before a judge?”, he asked politely.

“No; I am to be your judge, Inquisitor. My name is Zina”, she curtsied.

“I see. Have you been appointed to this duty by our Lord Jesus Christ?”, he inquired.

“No, I have not. In fact, I have been on this duty for almost five hundred years before Christ was born”, she smiled. “I was appointed to this duty by his Father”, she smiled again.

“Are you not a Christian?”, he was shocked.

“I’m afraid things are not quite the way you expect them to be, Inquisitor. Just think about it: I was appointed to this duty somewhere around the time when Socrates was born. I achieved apotheosis soon after I met my husband, the Buddha, which was soon after that. You can think of me as Christ’s older sister, if that pleases you, although I am no more Christian than he is a Zinian”, she laughed. “If that makes you happy, you can look into me and ask to identify me”.

“Lady Zina, Person of God, Judge of Karma, the Love of God?”, he was shocked. “Your title is ‘Love of God’? You are a Person of God, like Father, Son and the Holy Spirit?”

“I am indeed”, she nodded.

“I sincerely apologise for questioning you, my Lady, but I don’t know what to think at this point”, the man appeared to be in shock. “On Earth, I was in charge of establishing orthodoxy and eliminating heresy, and yet if one on Earth happened to profess belief in any of what I am now seeing, I would have condemned them. And now, I am afraid it is my turn to be condemned, for I was obviously ignorant and in the wrong”, he mumbled, very much disturbed. “What have I even done?”

“Oh please, Bernard, let us dispense with judgmental and radical thinking and first establish the facts. I am not known as the ‘Love of God’ because I’m a judgmental person. None of us Judges are, despite what our title might make you believe. We are here to teach you, to inform you, to go through your past life with you objectively and see what lessons may be learned from it. Only in the most dire cases do we actually condemn souls to hell, and if you had witnessed those cases, I am sure you would agree with me that it would be a greater evil to let them roam among the normal souls, than to sequester them into a place where they can do no harm”.

“I am at your mercy, my Lady”, the man bowed humbly, obviously experiencing grave moments.

“Let me take a look at your life. You were known as a fair, pious and intelligent man with good political connections within the Church, and as such you were appointed an Inquisitor to deal with the Albigensian heretical uprising, also known as the Cathari. This was done as to ferret out the true heretics from the seduced and mostly ignorant general populace of the region, so that the true ringleaders and ideological heads of the movements could be isolated and condemned, and their seduced, ignorant and foolish followers converted back to orthodoxy. During the Albigensian crusade, many terrible slaughters were committed, starting with the one in Béziers, under the motto that went somewhere along the lines of ‘kill them all, and let God sort them out’, am I right?”, she smiled.

“It was ‘Kill them all! God will know his own’, my Lady, but your account of the facts is otherwise perfect”, the man nodded in assent.

“So, over twenty thousand people were killed in Béziers alone. Also, hundreds of men and women were burned at the stake, being stubborn Cathari ideologues, and the entire population was contaminated by this ideology, which had terrible consequences for public morality, as their ethical teaching was terrible; they were essentially allowed to do as they willed, resorting to murder, plunder and rape, they could lie as much as they wanted, and terrible things happened regularly where they were in power. The Church desired to weed out the heresy itself, but bring as much people back into the folds of the Church, and they appointed you to implement this intent. They were also intoxicated with arrogance and acted as if mad. Am I correct?”

“You are, my Lady”, he nodded.

“And so, after almost a thousand court proceedings, you condemned forty five or so hardened heretics to be burned at the stake, and prescribed penance or imprisonment for the rest who were found guilty, and the result of your work was that you successfully exterminated the Cathari infestation from the Languedoc region. Am I correct?”, she smiled at the obviously concerned man.

“Yes, you are. Your account of the events is faultless”, he nodded in expectation of punishment.

“Your efforts in establishing the Catholic orthodoxy in the region were an unqualified success, and your approach to justice was very mild, considering the numbers I mentioned before your acceptance of the inquisitorial role. Truly, one less reasonable and moderate than yourself could have easily condemned thousands more, and one could still find scarce reasons to blame him. Still, you accomplished your task, and this satanic insurgency was quenched”, she bowed.

“Wait; am I to understand that you support the position of the Church regarding those heretics?”, his eyes opened wide.

“I understand that the Church, for its many flaws, was a factor of reason, order and virtue compared to the Cathari, who were a truly Satanic infestation. Had they spread and overtaken Europe, it would have been a regression into a yet unseen darkness”, she confirmed. “This doesn’t mean that I fully support the position of the Church in everything. You will see later that its teaching leaves much to be desired. However, souls are not condemned or saved based on the correctness of their belief, but on the purity of their hearts and kindness and virtue of their deeds. If you remember, my brother Christ commanded his disciples to love each other as he loved them. The philosophical and theological content of his teaching was quite superficial, and essentially stated that one should obey the Law sincerely, and not hypocritically. His teaching was so thin philosophically, that the early Christian theologians adopted the philosophical views of the Neoplatonists, and later Aristotle, for there were none to speak of in the original teaching. So, it would be foolish to expect God to condemn people based on something Christ himself didn’t care to teach properly”, she smiled. “The reason why I condemn the Cathari isn’t their teaching. Were it but for that, their teaching would have in fact been closer to the factual state of things than the official Christian one. No; they are condemned because of their immorality, and for the fact that they embraced the satanic urges of arrogance and madness. Contrary to them, you behaved with reason and kindness, and tried to save as many people as you possibly could, without releasing such obvious madmen that it would have been a greater abomination to free them than it was to burn them”, she nodded.

“But my Lady, I condemned people because they adhered to a wrong belief, whilst I myself adhered to a wrong belief, merely a different one. Surely I deserve the same fate as those I condemned?”, he wondered.

“This is not how I choose to look at it. The way I see it, all beliefs are somewhat wrong; some more than others. In the long years of my service, I have seen perfectly holy people who adhered to beliefs that were almost completely wrong and evil; on the other hand, I have seen vile and corrupt people who adhered to beliefs that were technically quite correct. It is not belief that I condemn or absolve souls for, and neither did you. You did not condemn the heretics because they were heretics, but because they were immoral, vile, arrogant and satanic, and would have turned the world into a hellish nightmare, if unopposed. The reason why we Judges exist is the same. We need to filter out the evil souls, so that the normal ones might live in peace. We also have many separate locations for souls of different origins and character, so that they wouldn’t confuse each other and interfere with each others’ paths towards God. Don’t think that we separate people into good Christians and those who are condemned to hell. In fact, I have condemned many ‘good Christians’ to hell, because their souls were cruel and satanic in their nature, and in the choices they made in life. On the other hand, a vast number of non-Christians were good souls who in fact followed Christ’s teaching about love and kindness”, she pointed out. “My husband the Buddha, for instance, was the first great teacher of the world, and his success was an inspiration to Father to send Christ to improve upon his mission and designs. Lady Hypatia of Alexandria, as another example, is also a fellow Judge and a Person of God, a sister of Christ and our good friend. The fact that the Cathari were heretics in the eyes of the Church has absolutely no bearing on my judgment. The fact that they were attached to the satanic attractor, drunk with arrogance, and that their consciousness and actions were for the most part terrible, does”, she nodded seriously. “However, if you look at your personal feelings, you condemned the heretics based on the fact that they were vile, terrible people, who stunk of satanic defiance. Those who were not bad usually reacted well to your invitation to repent and embrace orthodoxy, am I right?”

“I see what you mean, my Lady”, he nodded. “I would not have put it in those terms during my life on Earth, but the moral quality of one’s life was indeed my main criterion of guidance, because I thought that those who are irredeemable have the air of Satan around them; proud, spiteful and full of madness and evil, while those who are merely confused and seduced react well to reason and virtue, and have modesty and humility to them”, he nodded. “But am I to understand that you do not condemn me?”

“Indeed, I do not. I am very much as you were – trying to teach and guide, to show souls light, truth and love of God, rather than find fault that would justify condemnation, for it is God’s will that souls find Him and love Him, and the will of Satan is for souls to be condemned and lost. I am appointed to this duty by God, and not Satan, which is why I try to teach and save, rather than condemn. I condemn only those who embraced Satan and evil to such a degree, that it would be a sin against the loving and truthful nature of God to absolve them”, the Goddess smiled angelically at the profoundly relieved man.

“But I must beg you to teach me, for I see that I am very much in the dark. Honestly, as I saw how things here greatly differ from all that I would have expected, I had darkest thoughts about my fate, and yet, you truly justify your title of Love of God, for I feel God’s love from you. You say you are Christ’s sister?”, he smiled.

“Indeed. He and I know and love each other ever since his resurrection, and I have served his Father for many centuries before. Truly, only the earliest books of the Bible have been conceived in the time of my life on Earth, as it was before Assyria and Babylon. I was one of the first souls to come back from Earth, after it was first created”, she reminisced, as shivers went up Bernard’s neck, in understanding how ancient the holy woman before him truly is.

“Does this mean you are one of the ancients of the Old Testament?”, he wondered.

“I am their contemporary”, she nodded. “I was not someone of historical importance, merely a loving mother and a wife whose family was brutally slaughtered by bandits, and I was murdered as I tried to stop them as they were taking turns raping my poor daughter. I arrived here where you stand, but in such a terrible emotional state that I would have died, save for the mercy of my Mother, Lady Shakti, who healed my dying soul with her love and compassion, and I remain forever her loving daughter”, she smiled.

“I am sorry for the pain you suffered, my Lady”, Bernard’s eyes were wide.

“Those were cruel times, and it was very, very long ago”, she nodded slowly. “But, as you can see, I am ancient by your standards. To me, Rome was yesterday, and Carthage a day before. Ashurnasirpal was the first of our ancient terrors. And I was among the first fools who accepted Satan’s invitation to be born in that vile world, and suffered terribly as a result”, she concluded.

“You were there immediately after Adam and Eve?”, his eyes were wide in wonder.

“Adam and Eve were a metaphor for the first souls who were deluded by Satan to ‘eat fruits from the tree of telling good from evil’, because he promised that we will become Gods. Since I’m one of the first, you can rightly say that I was Eve”, she smiled. “I am an ancient fool; but fortunately, by the grace of God, I learned to love deeply and purely in my earthly life, and was saved. Later, I loved my Mother and my husband so much, that I truly attained apotheosis, becoming like Christ in my inner nature, somewhere around the times of Socrates and Plato”, she smiled an ancient smile.

“My Lady, I only now begin to understand what an incredible honour it was to have been assigned to your tender mercy”, he bowed deeply.

“I will now send you to my brother, Christ, to teach you the full truth about the world, because there is more, and yet our work here is done”, she curtsied with a blessed smile, and the man was gone.