The Priest's Secret(vikki ramsay) The Priest’s Secret

A short by Vikki Ramsay


Here I sit in my favoured chair, the view being good from the porch on a dust free day, and it is a view that is so very familiar to me. I had spent many an afternoon with my Mother in this place.

The day is clear, however all my thoughts turn inward this morning. Signs written in the stars tell me that it is drawing close to my duties of The Full Disclosure and I have been meditating deeply for many, many moons. It is of paramount importance that nothing is left out, that no Information is lost.

My thoughts are crystal clear, much clearer than a day in Egypt could ever be.

I cast my mind back to the day of my Full Disclosure. In my case I had been apportioned The Information in instalments. These instalments had spanned decades. I recognize of course that I had been an exception, a special case. But back then this had been a different story.

A Priest was forbidden to talk about his Disclosures. A Priest was to acknowledge no family ties. Once taken into The Priesthood no other life was available…ever.

Our Order is closely tied to "The Royal Path" and the Royal slaves quarters are situated within The Palace grounds between the Monastery and The Palace.

I was born into The Priesthood myself. This was known to have happened before. Others were gathered from all four corners of the land as likely children. It was considered in general society something of an honour or status symbol to give up a child to The Order. Reared with the best of education, food and lodgings, we wanted for nothing.

Nevertheless it is natural for a young man to question his surroundings, and as I felt the call of individualism rise in me. I saw much that made me question.

It bothered me that my Mother lived her life as a slave. In the same breath I could see that within my Priesthood I too was a slave. That personal choice was not an option in my life.

My elders taught me that every-one is a slave. The King, the courtiers, the merchant shippers, all the seemingly free people in the world were also slaves. It's just that they didn’t know it. They were not aware.

My mind would not accept this. I could see a world where there was freedom of choice. Where humans had access to what I saw as our natural born birth right to be free to seek food and shelter and to do what we wish.

Among The Palace slaves there was great rivalry. It was considered the highest honour within these slave families to be chosen for The Funeral Rites. To accompany one's dead King into The Underworld. Although the slaves did not keep records like the Priests, it had not gone unnoticed over the generations that there were a few families whose members almost never got picked for The Funeral Rites. Assumed to be lower class because of this, these families were somewhat ostracized within Palace life. My Mother was part of one of these families.

I was chosen by birth for the Priesthood, but being Palace born set me aside from the other young lads. As a result Mother and I spent a lot of our time out on this porch. That is, until The King died. My Mother, begging for the honour, accompanied The King on his journey to The Underworld and I was alone on the porch from then on.

At the time of my Full Disclosure, I remembered this with immense sadness and the High Priest, my mentor, had met my eye with emotion, telling me that he had loved my Mother too and I was to study The Family Tree available to me now only at this Full Disclosure.

I asked him how he could have let her go knowing what he knew, that her absence served no point. She could have been with us for all these years, grown old. He told me that she would not have lived with the shame. It had been his every wish to continue her employment within The Palace. If she had not cared so much, not believed so hard, it would have been easier for her.

I could see the truth in his words, the pain that he had surely experienced with this knowledge at that time.

You see, the reason why I am special is because this is The Time for The Key to The Nile. I am the High Priest of this Time. All other Funeral Rites since the Last Crossing have been Enactments, necessitated by the need to keep The Secret. The Time is now drawing near where the Coils of the Serpent close much more tightly together around The Earth. The Royal Path into The Underworld using The Key to the Nile will NOT be an Enactment. The Underworld shall become The Overworld and The Overworld shall become The Underworld.

All these many centuries and centuries of careful planning become apparent on examining The Family Tree. I will not go into details but it is clear that the Priests and the slaves have been as carefully bred as The Royals themselves. In fact our blood and The Royals is intertwined. For that matter, all of the peoples of the land are related as they are all born of The Peoples of the Last Crossing.

The Funeral Rites for the current King will be extensive. He will not actually be dead, or I very much hope not anyway. The drug has been duly tested.

His resume will be huge. There will be enough grain to plant entire valleys. There will be flocks of animals, birds and insects of every kind. There will be vegetables of every variety, fruits and olive trees. There will be wild seeds, flowers, everything that we have been able to gather and we have been planning this for ever so long.

The Genetic makeup of all the people making The Crossing with The King are of the finest, gathered from far and wide. Their skills, strengths and vision are what have chosen them for The Royal Path and they will be numerous.

I won’t be making The Crossing myself. I am too old. It has not been for nothing that we have had to put up with so many young folks around The Palace these last years here, always under your feet disturbing ones thoughts. They have come along very well though if I don't say so myself.

How ironic that the families who have been so looked down upon will all now boast members for the next Funeral Rites. We shall try to squeeze as many and as much into the space we have available. A fitting Genesis for the future.

As for myself, I’ll be spending the time I have left in The Overworld making Full Disclosure to the next High Priest, already well versed in all Scripture. Bred and reared so carefully for his vision and memory, we will go over everything again and again like a mantra.

He is a little young for the task, but it is only the young who can make The Crossing. You see, as The Coils of The Serpent close tightly around The Earth creating great turbulence, everything outside of the Chamber is destroyed. There is some Art, a science of sorts, that keeps these tightening Coils from entering. It reacts in unison with the loose Coils trapped within the Chamber. We do not understand how this works. The Information has been lost to us. Making The Crossing is the most important task a High Priest could ever undertake. It is my highest hope that more Information can be regained for future Crossings.

We do not know exactly how long The Genesis should stay in the Chamber. Having given it much thought I imagine that the concept of Time loses its normal meaning. There is supposed to be noise. When it stops is perhaps the signal. Or maybe it’s quite simply a case of having to open up the Chamber when the air is running out.

The Serpents Coils outside of the Chamber coil so tightly around The Earth that Time is passing by very fast. The Coils of Time trapped within the Chamber remain loose and our Genesis passes down The Royal Path and through the turbulent fast Times outside at a very much slower rate.

Our Genesis emerges into The Underworld/now Overworld, after the turbulent, chaotic Times have passed. The King awakened, Legend and Myth safely intact, hopefully in an environment ready to plant and continue with life. Time will have returned to its slower more hospitable rate and The Great Storm of The Serpent's Coils will be over for another 50,000 or so years.

Why the Secrecy I hear you ask? Well... The Art of building Chambers is lost to us. There quite simply isn't enough room to take every-one and of course every-one would want to go.

This did not used to be so. Legend has it that before The Information was lost every-one used to make The Crossing, young, old, the whole family. That there was an Art to more extensively lengthening the Coils of the Serpent in Chambers that were easy to make and The Crossings transpired through much more Time. That the conditions facing the emerging Genesis were milder, more further into their development of recovery from the turmoil.

Of course these where the Times before The Kings, the Priests and slaves became a necessity.

The Arts were common knowledge...

No need for The Priest’s Secret.

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