The Riddle and the Key

By Mike Crowson

In the far past there really stood a 200 ft tall statue overlooking the harbor of Cadiz Spain. It was pulled down in 850 AD, described by a traveler in 300 BC and said to predate a city built in 1200 BC - but when and why was it built? Tracy Nicholson remembers a past life as successively daughter of a General, slave and wife of a Roman Centurian. The statue marks the defeat of a great evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Crowson
• Release date: Dec 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458005922

Mike Crowson

Former teacher, former national secretary of what became the UK Green Party and for 40 years a student of things esoteric and occult. Now an occult and esoteric consultant offering free and unconditional help to those in serious and genuine psychic or occult trouble

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The Riddle and the Key

Mike Crowson

Copyright 1998 Mike Crowson

Smashwords Edition 2010

The Riddle and the Key

Prologue

The heat was simply too much. The pick grew too heavy to wield, too heavy even to lift, after just a few strokes. The rock, which had once crumpled easily before an onslaught of iron and sinew, now seemed to resist all further progress, though it was the heat and not the rock, which differed. One of the workers turned to the soldier wilting against the tunnel wall, and rasped, Atl.

With the aid of his spear shaft, the soldier levered himself to his feet and bent to pick up the skin of water, now tepid from the heat, and the worker grabbed at it. He held the skin to his mouth and let the lukewarm liquid splash over his face, as well into his dry depths.

The tunnel and work-face were nearly dark, lit only by the limited glow of the crystals. They would glow for several hours more before they had to be laid in the sun again: the crystals seemed oblivious of the heat that was killing the men.

There was rumbling and the mountain shook. The ground vibrated and small stones fell from the walls and roof. The men were not exactly afraid of the shaking of the volcano or the growling of the waking giant, for they had heard it many times before. Of course, they were tunneling now into the very heart of the mountain and Atlas no doubt resented that, but the priests would make their sacrifices to the fiery giant and the work would go on. No, what scared the soldier and the men and made them uneasy the whole time underground was something more subtle. They suffered in the heat and did not go at all willingly to the work, of course, but it was something in the mountain they feared. It was something dark and evil but shapeless and formless. It was something generated by the ambition and greed of the high priest and his followers.

These once holy men had corrupted and forgotten an ideal. Now they just wanted more - more gold and silver, more opal, amethysts and diamonds. They opened new mines and further workings in the mountains around about. They added fresh work-faces and additional tunnels in the volcano itself until, over the generations, the mountain was riddled with passages and undermined with workings - and with priestly greed personified.

If one individual thinks one thought, however transient, it has a fleeting independent reality, so the mystic will say. If the thought is an obsession, meditated upon continually: if it is a driving, all-consuming passion, then that reality will begin to have a true actuality, visible even to others. If hundreds of people share the same driving emotion, then the resulting thought form has a totally independent and objective existence that can be shared - or feared - by others. A thought form of this kind can provide worshippers with a god and either, depending on the nature of the emotion behind the thought, produce the experience of goodness and light or demand and devour animal, or even human, sacrifice.

The thing lurking beneath the mountain shambling towards awareness feasted on the sacrifices given to it. 'It' was not Atlas, - the volcano that towered the nineteen thousand feet upwards and scraped the sky. The mountain was itself an impersonal and impartial threat, though the priesthood referred to 'appeasing Atlas'. The entity was not Poseidon, though their god was Poseidon. 'It' was just an expression of the ambition, the greed, the lust for wealth and power, the gratification of the senses and the self-indulgence. And 'it' was shambling towards the surface and towards the human race. All the evil of the deluge stories - the Biblical and Chaldean ones: those from the Koran and the Central and North American versions of the myth - was feeling its way towards humanity, though it was the consummation of an evil which already exists.

Chapter 1

There are times when my mum sounds thoroughly stupid, though she's not at all like that, really. She was a teacher all her life, except for when she had us kids, and was deputy head of a junior school when she retired. No, she's not stupid at all and certainly not senile either, but she sometimes gives the impression of being really 'thick' because she doesn't listen to what you say. It's probably me that's the brainless one in the family, but at least I listen. Well, most of the time anyway.

What set me off on this occasion, and sort of showed me up, was her remark about me getting married in Gibraltar. What she actually said was, I can't see why you don't get married in Torrox. Why come all the way to Gibraltar to do it?

There's nothing wrong with the question at all, except that I'd written to her beforehand, explaining it all very carefully. To make it worse, Ken had just that minute finished explaining it all again to Gill, Steve, his dad and my mum, which was a waste of breath and a complete bore because everybody knew already. Except my mum! I'm fond of my mum but, like I said, there are times when she really shows me up.

In case you're wondering why we did come all the way to Gibraltar for the wedding, can I say first that 'all' is actually only about 170 kilometres and that's only just over a hundred miles - Torrox is not so far along the coast. The second thing about Gibraltar is that it's the marriage capital of Europe and people come from the other end of the continent to get hitched there. Gib. is to Europe what Gretna Green is to the British. The thing that decided us, though, was the Spanish marriage law. If you're Spanish, getting married in Spain is a very quick and easy and cheap affair. All you do is go before a Notario - a sort of Government lawyer like Francisco, who was a guest at our wedding as well - prove that you're actually alive and free to marry and he issues a licence. Quick, easy and it doesn't cost anything. Unfortunately, if you're not Spanish, you have to have certified translations of your birth certificate first. That means either flying back to visit a Spanish Consulate in your home country, which costs a bomb, or getting it done in Spain by a government translator, which takes ages. I must say I could have waited for the ceremony or even done without it altogether, but Ken is very proper. Well, he was a Catholic priest for twenty years, so you can guess how proper it all has to be for him: he wants everything legal first. I just want Ken, but there had to be a wedding to satisfy his conscience.

Anyway, it was a warm sunny day for a wedding. It's nearly always warm and sunny in southern Spain, even in late October, so that's nothing special, but the day seemed special to me. We left our cars on the Spanish side of the border, because it was less hassle than taking them through. We took a taxi from the Gibraltar side of the border to the Registry Office. It isn't far. Nowhere's far in Gib., because it's small. Most of it has the sort of magnificence which is of interest to the tourist and pretty well useless to everything and everybody else. I suppose a military person might think differently about its strategic position or something. Most people, though, speak of visiting the 'Rock of Gibraltar', and it's just that - a bloody great lump of bare rock you can see for miles. There's a cramped city of narrow streets at the foot, which looks as if it has slithered down the steep side of the rock, to crowd awkwardly at the bottom of it and jostle around for what little space is left. One thing you can say about it is that it's a sub tropical resort where the official language is English and nearly everybody speaks it. Another thing you can say for it, is that it's also really nice in parts. Around the Registry Office is one of those parts.

The Registry Office is a scaled down version of the British Museum in London, with a garden of palm trees instead of a flagged courtyard. I mean the building is sort of classical or neoclassical, or whatever you call it. I don't know much about architecture, so I can't use clever talk, but there is the same columned entrance with much smaller columns and far fewer steps than you see at the British Museum. The general look is the same though.

Standing in the garden before the ceremony I had the last minute doubts that I suppose everyone has, if they're serious - which I was, and honest - which I'm trying to be. In fact my whole life seemed to flash before me, as if I was drowning or something. Well, the less desirable parts of it did. I had been married before and I'd made a mess of it. They say it takes two to quarrel, but I don't suppose I could have done much about him leaving me. After that, though, I'd gone on to make a mess of being a mother as well. At almost forty I'm not as young as I was and I knew I was no great catch, but Ken knew that too. Then he'd reached nearly fifty himself, without being married at all. I didn't cause him to give up the church incidentally: as he says himself, That's another story entirely. On the other hand it does mean that he's a bit set in his ways and not a very experienced lover, though I'm working on it. Against that, he's patient, charming and kind and, for those who believe in reincarnation, there's good reason to think that our attachment goes back through several lifetimes, but I'm getting ahead of myself and I'll come to that later.

The garden in front of the registry office was a quiet spot in a bustling town, and a shady spot in a sunlight that was going to be hot shortly. I also remember thinking that it would make a nice background to the photos when the important business was over. The registrar - at least the bloke who did the wedding ceremony, I suppose he was either the registrar or an assistant of some sort - was really nice. He took Ken and me in first and dealt with the routine things like examining passports and my divorce decree before he invited everyone else in for the wedding proper. Ken's father and my mum were witnesses. There was my sister Michelle and an old school friend of mine called Julie, along with some friend of Ken's called Victor that I suspect was a priest, though he wasn't wearing a dog collar. Francisco's wife Maria, his daughter and our friends Steve and Gill made up the rest of the group, which made the ceremony quite a small affair.

When the wedding was over, the rings exchanged, the certificate and the register signed by everybody who needed to sign it, we shook hands with the bloke. Ken kissed me and everybody trooped out to that peaceful garden. When we had taken the photographs, or rather, when Ken and I had posed for them and everybody else had taken them, we left the oasis of silence and wandered down a pedestrianised street to a cramped and crowded little square, full of vehicles and people. From there we took taxis back to the border.

We had gone to Gib. for the wedding, but the meal after it was back in Spain, at a roadside restaurant run by a friend of Maria. That lady is about the same age as me, and both looks Spanish and speaks perfect Spanish. Well, it sounds perfect to me. In reality she is, or was Dutch. Judging by her looks, I should think her mum must have been Spanish or something, but her name's Maria van der Haagen and she was a hypnotherapist in Amsterdam before she married Francisco.

From the Spanish side of the border at La Linea to the N340 Malaga to Cadiz road is a short drive. Then, if you turn south, the road skirts Algeciras and climbs steeply up the mountains blocking the way to Tarifa and gives you stunning views across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco. From up there Gibraltar is just an isolated outcrop of rock, and the Straits - which are barely seven miles wide at the narrowest point - seem more a boundary marker than a barrier. I was full of a totally unreal happiness and I just looked at the scenery and clung to Ken, which probably didn't improve his driving.

The roadside restaurant was a whitewashed farm building in which they did the cooking (and, presumably lived) and an amazing thatched awning, rather like a straw marquee with no sides. I suppose it would have kept off rain if there had been any. Outside a few winter months, however, it just doesn't rain in that part of Spain, so it's more parasol than umbrella, if you see what I mean. Outside, the day was getting hot. Inside it was cool and shady. We ate rather early by Spanish standards but it was a leisurely, friendly meal with wines and toasts. Francisco made a short speech in English, which is pretty good, because his English isn't. Then Ken's dad proposed a toast and wished us well. I was very touched, because I think he was very disappointed when Ken left the priesthood. I know that was quite a while before he even met me, but Ken getting married must have brought it home to him. On top of that there was the little matter of me having been married before and him being a Catholic so, like I said, I was quite touched. I hope I can live up to what he thinks I will be. I hope I can live up to Ken's ideals. I hope Ken doesn't get tired of me. I hope I don't get tired of Ken. I hope to God it all works out!

I'm not quite sure who first mentioned the ruins of the Roman town of Baella, but they're only just off the main road and not far from where we were having the meal. Apparently Gill was there once, a few years ago, and wanted to visit again. We had been going to drive straight to Vejer de la Frontera, where Ken had booked everybody into a hotel for the night. The idea was to go our separate ways the next morning. It was quite a nice idea, though it was for the benefit of his dad and my mum really. Anyway, the upshot of the conversation (and perhaps the wine and the warm afternoon) was that we all decided to go to the beach beside the Roman ruins and have a swim. It would be about two or two thirty when we left the restaurant and the coast was only ten or fifteen minutes drive away

The sign on the main road pointed to the ruins of 'Bella Claudia', but Gill had said that was a later name than Baella and I think the place is called Boloñnia now in Spanish. We turned onto a narrow country road, and headed over a low ridge between two rocky crags. When you go over the ridge the coast is spread out before you. There's a lighthouse and rocky headland to the right and a wide strip of really inviting looking sand in front of you, curving away to the left. There are only a handful of modern buildings, three of which turned out to be cafes and one a sort of office for the people who look after the ruins.

The remains are extensive. I expected something like those at Torrox, where there's not a lot to see but when Gill described them as the ruins of a whole town, she wasn't joking. The roads and market place were paved and the paving stones remain. The ruins of three temples stand with some of the columns still upright, and you can see the layout of houses, shops and the walls that went round the town. You can even see the gates in the walls and the niches in the stonework of the gatehouses for hinges to fit. There's a fence around it all - modern, I hasten to add - to keep people from nicking bits of ruin as souvenirs, I suppose. Admission is free but you have to walk round with a guide.

I'm trying to tell you what it is like, but it isn't easy because I wasn't exactly paying attention to the twentieth century remains. Right from the approach up the ridge between the two crags I had this really weird feeling of deja vu. I've never been to Boloñia before ... but I thought then, and I'm convinced now that I've been to Baella - when it was still a thriving city.

I was so preoccupied with the feeling that I'd been here before that I took it all in with a bemused silence. We parked the car in the little car park between the ruins and the beach and went first to look round the Roman remains. We were shown round what was left of the town and the tour ended with the guide showing us the remains of a garum factory. Garum is some kind of fish sauce that was highly prized by the Romans and, I think, other ancient Mediterranean races. It sounds a revolting recipe, starting out with fish left to rot until it turns black.

You don't think of the idea of a 'factory' being connected with the ancient world, but this was big. For instance, there were four or five huge stone vats in one part and big stone tables in another. The guide pointed to what had been pillars holding up the roof. He said that some were in the Phoenician style. Stupid beggar. Obviously this was a Phoenician building that the Romans just took over. Funny thing is, I knew that from living in Roman Baella. I don't care whether you believe me or you think I'm some kind of a nut really, as long as you buy the book. No, on second thoughts, I'm telling a true story, so I do sort of hope people believe me.

You wouldn't believe how much beach there was and how few people there were. We didn't quite have the place to ourselves, but we nearly did. We had our dip in the Atlantic, which was quite warm but not as warm as the Med. Mind you, it was probably cleaner. After the swim we lay on the beach. Ken rubbed on the sun cream for me. Living in Spain all the time now I'm quite tanned, but being blonde and naturally light skinned I'd burn if I didn't watch it. All the same, Ken worries more about me than anyone else, including my mum. I like being worried about, though I don't think I'd admit it to him, and his concern is really sweet. Anyway, after he finished with the sun screen, I lay down beside him, holding his hand and hoping he noticed how well I had preserved my figure so that I look good at nearly forty. I was relaxed and somewhat sleepy, but I told him about the feeling that I'd been here before.

Ken believed me all right, from his own experiences I suppose, but he didn't say a lot right then. He was taking in what I said and chewing it over in his mind, I think. He does that a lot - thinking over in complete silence what people say to him, I mean. It drives people up the wall when he does it in the middle of a conversation!

Anyway, we lazed on the beach for a time, a sort of substitute for a siesta, then everybody dusted off the sand and trooped into one of the cafes. I was ready for a nice cold beer but Ken dithered between a coffee and a sparkling water - water with gas the Spanish call them. Coffee is all right for breakfast but I couldn't have even considered a coffee on a hot afternoon. Ken, though, is hooked on the stuff. After we'd all had a drink, we drove our little fleet of cars back over the ridge to the main road so that we could drive on towards Cadiz again. Vejer de la Frontera is only about half an hour's drive down the road.

My first glimpse of Vejer was of a strip of white on a hilltop. As we got nearer I could make out battlements and a church tower and buildings. The road doesn't actually go through Vejer. It goes past the bottom of an extremely steep hill with Vejer on the top of it. When you get level with the place, you can't see the town from a car no matter how you turn or crane your neck, because the hill's too steep and too high. The road up is narrow, and it twists and bends like the approach to some almost inaccessible alpine village. Suddenly the road widens out into a car park and a view point. We turned into the small car park, followed by Michelle's car and Ken's dad's car. The others were already there and waiting.

The view from the mirador is quite something. It looks out over a huge area with rolling farmland and some lower rocky hills, towards more distant mountains. In the days when the town was a fortress, a guard on the battlements must have had a really commanding vantage point. The main road cuts through the ridge of hills to the North of Vejer, where the river Barbate has carved a gap for itself.