He was taken then to a black place without light. Alone, and only guided by a voice he ventured towards one test after another, each more gruelling than the next. He passed each trial until exhausted and near broken in his spirit, he heard the resounding voice of the priest and saw the lighted torches come to meet him.
Weak and fatigued he was led by them to a room where he was dried, dressed in fine linen, and told to rest. Overcome by lassitude he then stretched out on the soft couch provided and soon fell asleep. A languorous music entered his dreams, the sound of harp and flute and sighs reached his ears and when he opened his eyes he saw a woman, clothed in a dress of iridescent gauze which hung loose and limpid over her oiled, Nubian body. On her face he observed a mocking smile, full-berried and white of teeth. It pulled upwards to high-boned cheeks. Around her neck, precious necklaces gleamed in the dim light and around her wrists bracelets of different coloured metals shimmered. In her hand she brought forth a cup filled with aromatic wine. She told him it was the Soma juice of bliss, the sacred ceremonial wine of remembrance. She told him to drink it, for he was in the Temple of the highest wisdom and she was his prize, the ceremonial meal.
He paused a moment, uncertain. But the woman held the wine closer to him, and he, sensing her womanhood, was taken with the vigour of his victory so that his manhood became heated with ardour. As his pride swelled so did his body swell for he had outwitted the priests and could now collect his reward! He took the woman to him and pulled her to the bed, bending his lips to that mouth, to that long neck, to that perfumed breast, to that bronzed shoulder and bejewelled ear. He took the cup from her hand and let its contents fall down his throat and held her then, beneath him. He commenced to pull away the silken dress and would have taken her with the wild insatiate desire of a beast had he not been plunged at that moment, not into the depths of desire, but into the deeps of nothingness.
When he woke again he was alone in that first dark chamber where the priests had given him the cordial of forgetfulness. Disoriented he tried to bring reason to his mind and in a moment realised that he had been fooled. He had been duped! The priests had deceived him! His trials had been illusions, his triumphs dreams!
The smell of failure hung in the air. He fell into a rage, and called out with an angered voice to the priests. The hierophant came to him then. Awesome was his expression and grave were his words:
‘You were victorious over the darkness, over fire and water and because of this, you are alive and are not dead. But the earth has conquered you, you have killed your father, your body, to marry wisdom, but you have wedded your soul to lust and darkness instead, killing your soul, the mother in you. For this reason you are like a scorpion, which must sting itself and die to avoid the light of the sun. And you shall ever more be named scorpizein.’
He was taken then, by the broad-bodied servants of the House of Creation, and sent into exile.
A deep, violent hatred moved inside the mechanisms of his thinking, it moved into his will and drove him to Seleucia, where he announced to its leaders the whereabouts of the order’s hidden house. Artaban, King of Parthia, despised the practices of the Mandeans as aberrations, and he took no time in ordering his generals to send forth soldiers to the community to slaughter every woman and child, to hang the priests from the trees and to topple the House of Creation.
Thus did Judas perform his first betrayal.
Full of hatred and dissatisfaction Judas travelled to Judea with a sting in his tail. He sought restitution of his other hopes. If he could not be a priest he would be a warrior, another Judas Maccabeus. He would lead his people towards the creation of a great empire.
In Jerusalem he found a group of like-minded men who called themselves Sicarri, or dagger carriers, because it was their custom to slip, sleek and unseen into the crowds to assassinate enemies or to inspire bloody revolts. He met one of their leaders, a man called Bar Abbas, and three other men, Simon of Nazareth, Dismas and Gesmas. His charm seduced them and they allowed him gradually into their confidence, telling him their secrets and of their every conspiracy and plan. One such plan was near ready for implementation.
Pontius Pilate was a new Roman Governor and he had no care for Jewish custom and religion. Time and again he had transgressed the laws of the Jews and recently had misappropriated Temple funds to build an aqueduct for Jerusalem. The Sicarri, seeking everything to their advantage, planned to use this sacrilege as an excuse for inciting a riot.
Judas thought long on it. A week before the Easter festival, disguised Sicarri would enter the city of Jerusalem via a series of ancient passages and tunnels built to carry water from the Gihon Spring into the Ophel quarter. These were large enough to hide a number of men until the city was overfull with pilgrims from near and from far. When the festival was at its height and the crowds began to throng to the Temple for the services, no one would notice the Sicarri merge with them and begin to incite them with speeches. Pilate’s sacrilegious tampering with Temple funds would feature prominently in their rhetoric, and it would take but one strike of the flint stone at a time when sensibilities were heightened by religious fervour to ignite a conflagration of passion against the Romans.