On their return to Callirrhoe, Herod heard of the riots inspired by John the Baptist’s sermons against the pagans in Dothain and instantly he knew what pretext he would use to have him arrested. He would go with his captain and take stock of the situation and report back to the Sanhedrin.
He was confident that soon he would have it all, a sorceress for a wife, a nubile lover, and a cure for that shadow of madness! For the dungeons of Machareus were good for making even the most disobedient man acquiescent.
20
SCORPION
The sun entered Scorpio on the night of his birth. In a dream his mother had seen that her boy child would be the agent of three betrayals: he would kill his father to marry his mother and he would bring about a disaster so great that it would taint his name and stain the blood of his people for all ages to come.
On hearing of the dream the father wanted to rid himself of the child, but the woman feared committing a sin and convinced her husband to have the boy taken from Cariot in Judea to a far distant land, to avert his maleficent destiny. And that is how it came to be, that in the night the child was spirited away, and taken by merchants to a community of Diaspora Jews on the Tigris, near Seleucia in Parthia.
It was a quiet, hidden community, peopled by Mandeans - those who had brought together the mysteries of the Persians and combined them with the religion of the Hebrews. Within this group there lived a wealthy childless couple known to the Jew merchants who upon seeing the tiny innocent creature, grew warm with love, exclaiming to one another that here at last was a son delivered to them by God! Gladly they paid the merchants thirty pieces of silver for him and raised him as their own.
They named him Judas.
As the years passed, Judas grew into a bright youth with a sharp mind, excelling beyond all others at his instructions on the laws and the prophets. What he loved most were those Hebrew stories of the great Jewish Heroes, the seven sons of the widow and the five sons of Matthatias, warriors who had struggled against the enemies of Judaism.
He was particularly interested in one of the five sons of the priest Matthatias, his namesake – Judas Maccabeus. Judas Maccabeus was described as a lion from the house of Judah, and many a night did young Judas spend thinking on him.
Lying awake he pondered the hero’s alliance with Rome against the Greeks and his underestimation of Rome’s powers, which had caused so much sorrow for his people ever since. This pondering affected him in two ways: on the one hand he dreamt of leaving his village to return to Jerusalem and join the fight against the Romans like a Maccabean hero; on the other he longed for a life of piety and simplicity as a Mandean priest.
In his heart he could not decide which of the two he was destined to be, the fearless warrior or pious priest.
He grew into a strong man with a dark face framed by unruly black hair whose curls hung loose above eyes the colour of grey stones. His beard was as red as clay and from its deeps there would come a smile that spread over the geography of his face like a snake moving through grass. His brooding nature and his heart’s wild-hearted lean attracted the young girls of the small colony to him and they pursued him with their shy eyes. But the warrior in his soul struggled with the postulant in his spirit. The warrior was red-blooded and desirous for these attentions while the postulant was full with disdain and looked away from these displays of sexual promise with a superior eye.
The villagers and his teachers could see that Judas’ soul was made of two opposites, for his face was like a dial created to measure that running quarrel, which never ceased, and could find no shared purpose in the wilderness of his soul. In time, however, he proved to his superiors that he was a good scholar, hard working, devoted and pious. Soon his mystical abilities grew beyond even those of the priests and they found they could not prevent him, when he finally reached the appropriate age, from entering through the portals of the mysteries. For he had passed every test they had given him and had almost, without their noticing it, begun to steal into their hearts.
So it was after much deliberation that they had agreed to allow him entrance to the House of Creation.
The House of Creation stood not far from the Mandean settlement. Here the secrets of light and darkness were revealed to those who risked life and madness and were capable of overcoming the abyss of death to find daylight. Here, the successful ones were baptised with water and anointed with fire.
One fateful night, in the inner sanctuary, Judas was given the lighted lamp and told of the original causes of things. He was given a cordial to drink and told to lie down and after a time the high priest came to fetch him and to guide him to the underworld, where he would have to pass those strenuous tests meant to measure his endurance and his courage, his revulsion and his steadfastness.