Atlantis: Precious Stone

By Lyric LaMage

In the remote past, the legendary lost continent of Atlantis existed as a temporary laboratory for the intervention by sentient visitors into the evolution of Terra. The invading Atlanteans brought with them the alchemical panacea which they modulated magically in their magnificent diamond Temple, then introduced medically to the indigenous creatures of the planet, the intent being to improve their DNA, particularly that of the natural hominids.

The esoteric plan, revealed through the musings and memories of Lynci, an Atlantean Princess, was to produce of Terra the Philosophers' Stone through the magicians inspired performances of the Magnum Opus in Projectional Atlantis...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 8, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469112985

Lyric LaMage

Lyric LaMage is a Magician and has studied extensively the Western Esoteric Tradition, including Qabala, Tarot, Magick, and others arcane disciplines. She believes that she may be the recipient of the memoir revealed to her by Lynci, an Atlantean Princess, who is also a magical Aspirant at the Temple of the Mysteries in Atlantis. The books of the Atlantis trilogy are the accounts of Lynci’s disclosures.

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Copyright © 2002 by Lyric LaMage.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Prologue

Day One

SOLUS: FIERY CIPHER

Chapter One

MAGNUM OPUS

Chapter Two

GEMATRIA

Chapter Three

GRIMOIRE

Chapter Four

TRANSFORMATIONS

Chapter Five

CONNECTIONS

Chapter Six

DIVERSIONS

Day Two

LUNA: ARCANE IMAGES

Chapter Seven

COMPLICATIONS

Chapter Eight

PRECARIOUS TRAVAIL

Chapter Nine

CONVERGENCE

Chapter Ten

INTERRUPTION

Day Three

MERCURI: RADIANT GEM

Chapter Eleven

DECIMATION

Chapter Twelve

QUEST

Chapter Thirteen

IMPACT

Chapter Fourteen

INTERLUDE

Chapter Fifteen

TURBULENCE

Chapter Sixteen

DIRE PROSPECT

Chapter Seventeen

ASTRAL PROJECT

Chapter Eighteen

MAZOHIR?

Epilogue

FOR MY MOTHER WHO GAVE ME THE PRECIOUS GIFT OF TIME AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE; THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Timeless Memory

I recall the Temple of the Mysteries stabbing skyward, A magical lucent, gilt-edged, ten-tiered diamond dagger Sparkling in a shower of scintillating sunlight; ever Gleaming in its emerald velvet milieu: the Isle Avalyn Set en centre within the azure bowl of the Inland Sea.

Lovely Gem! I view encircling that sea the rugged ring Which was Atlantis, her spine of towering mountains Sweeping gloriously to sea or ocean at either coast, Her perimeter studded with twelve jewels: Zodiac Islets. Exquisite Atlantis! Doomed continent! Dazzling dream!

Brilliant eponymous City of Atlantis! I see her, also, Spreading gracefully and charmingly over seven hills Along the sea’s interior western shore. Enigmatic City: Veiling myriad secrets, flaunting her dissolute beauty, A paradox of pristine radiance and seductive glitter!

I assent sweet Atlantis was but a thrall to Aurl’s eye; His desire projected into ineffable and transient being Wherein our decreed esoteric travail, our Magnum Opus, Was to be completed within an annum’s ephemeral term; Yet, our Alchemy rendered Atlantis the Precious Stone!

Some of the Atlanteans:

The Atziluthans: Dwellers in the Highest Qabalistic World of Ideas: AurL: The Magus; the Limitless Light Qabalistically Yris: AurL’s Wife; Keeper of the Eternal Flame Yerusha: Master of the Mystery School in Atlantis Zenn-Tao: Master of the Mystery School in Lemuria; the Eastern Mystic; the Oriental The Berians: Dwellers in the Second Qabalistic World of Concepts: One Hundred Demigods and Angels who serve as Instructors of the Mysteries in Atlantis at the Great Temple of Avalyn and at the Twelve Astrological Temples in the City of Atlantis: Raphyl Gaebryl Athena Hermes Zeus

Isis and Osiris

Apollo

Merlin

Aphrodite

Myriam

Kokopelli

Epona

Adonis

Odin

Clarion and eighty-four others

The Yetzirans: Dwellers in the Third Qabalistic World of Forms: One thousand Enlightened Citizens of Atlantis who are Students of the Mysteries at Avalyn or engaged in other Work of the Projection, including, but not limited to, the Biological Intervention which is the Magnum Opus of the Atlantis Projection.

The Assiyans: One million Atlanteans who are Dwellers in the Fourth Qabalistic World of Matter (in Atlantis the para-material plane where they are the populace of Atlantis); they have no memories of the Higher Qabalistic Worlds and were created in Yetzirah by the Yetzirans at AurL’s behest.

The Royal Houses of Atlantis:

The House of Blayd:

The King: Lyne

The Queen: Lo-yssa

The Princesses: Lynci, Lornyl, Lylith, Lycia,

Lucia The Grandparents:

Paternal: Georj and Marah

Maternal: Dav and Genni

The House of Kayn:

The King and Queen

The Knights: Lornyl’s husband Thom; his brother

The Princesses: Thom’s two sisters

The Pages: Thom II, Eriq, and Hana-Talya

The House of Chalyce:

The King and Queen

The Knights: Shaun and Tymethi

The Princesses: Jeweli and Dotsi

The Pages: Tym’s children:

Aimee, Cori, Kayti, and Matthiu

Tym’s Assiyan Wife: Tara

The House of Dysc:

The King and Queen

The Knights: Jerryl, Steev, and Rychi

Their Women: Suna, Marlayna, Jenna

The Pages: Steev’s two daughters and one son

The Residents of Palacia Way:

Audri and Loy, and Audri’s sons Jai and Dee

Nanci and Dann

Jacqueli and Myhk and their daughter Julynn

Shelsi and Toni

Patryssa and Randyl

The Diamond or First Class at the Temple:

Tym and Lynci

Tahdyas and Lylith

Jeph and Dorthi

Jerryl and Suna

Rychi and Jenna

Wyllice and Shareen

Thom and Kahleen

Arturo and Elysa

The Ruby or Second Class at the Temple:

Jymmi and Carlette

Robyn and Maurene

Charl and Ylene

Daryl and Xanni

Crag and Caryn

Duglys and Maerlynn

Wylf and Judi

Russyl and Denys

Laury and Vernyl

Davi and Chryssi

Launce and Gwynneth

Garyth and Morgyn

Others:

Marq: Lylith’s and Tahd’s landlord in the City

Coron: Bartender at Coral Cove in the City

Gyorji: Coron’s partner; Metatechnologist

Phyla and Rahb, Andre and Jeeni: Friends and Neighbors

Hart and Oscaro: Former Neighbor and her Consort

Bobbi and Marilu, Zero and Rosaleta: Metatechnologists

Mychil: Yris’s son

Anji: Mychil’s paramour

Jonn and Kandi: Restaurant Servers

Jaefke: President of Atlantis

Mej: Tym’s Father’s Assistant

Barbette and Debri: Mej’s Daughters

Evond: Temple dropout

Morderd: Saboteur at the Temple

Satyron: Master of the iniquitous Iridium Fountain

Asmodon: Satyron’s cohort

Prologue

Answer the Sphinx thusly:

A Day is a Life:

Dawn; Midday; Sunset; Midnight.

A Year is a Life:

Spring; Summer; Autumn; Winter.

A Life is a Life:

Birth; Maturity; Decline; Death.

The Spirals of Time are Eternal …

Day One

SOLUS: FIERY CIPHER

Chapter One

MAGNUM OPUS

The oblique rays of Sol’s dawning awakened Lynci, and her trepidations—dormant while she had been asleep—surfaced simultaneously. Cautiously, so as not to arouse Tym who still slumbered peacefully beside her, she assumed a sitting position in order to peruse the great cylindrical chamber for any vestiges of the predestined disaster. She detected nothing immediately indicative of damage to the fulgent Central Column, as the tubular core of the diamond Temple at Avalyn was designated. Its encompassing diamond wall continued to reflect and refract the sun’s radiance in dazzling bolts of light and color.

At the midpoint of the diamond terrace where she sat and which was the Column’s floor, the lofty and lovely Fountain of Quintessence persisted its cascading in shimmering effervescence into a capacious enclosing cubic gem receptacle, seemingly in perpetuity, while the quartet of wine founts, each purveying a unique variety of Lynci’s Royal House of Blayd’s finest vintages, likewise bubbled unabated into hemispheric basins contrived of diverse jewels and set into the terrazo adjacent to the corners of the cubic pool.

Lifting her head slightly, Lynci could determine by their surface reflections that the ten sephirothic vessels of the Otz Chim or Mnemonotron, which was submerged in the Quintessence’s reservoir beneath Ain, the Orb of Infinity, emanated yet their preternatural multicolored luminances.

That magical vehicle, she concluded, remains undamaged, thankfully!

Persevering in her visual reconnaissance, Lynci observed moreover, to her right across the Column, that the diamond masonry of the Pyramid Temple of the Diamond and Ruby Sphinxes still glittered arrestingly. There, on the previous day, she and Tym had been allowed each the attempt to resolve a conundrum posed to them individually by their gender counterpart—one of the duo of masculine/feminine sphinxes who guarded its entrance. And, she and Tym had answered brilliantly, presumably, since afterward they had been granted admission via the Pyramid’s crimson gem-rose portal and its adjunctive pellucid passageway into the crystalline octagonal sanctum suspended at its core. Therein, before the beautifully faceted diamond-solitaire altar upon which was enshrined amazingly a throbbing incandescent Coeur de Vie—representative, they had surmised, of the genuine Heart of the Temple and thus, of Projectional Atlantis—they had vowed their eternal love-bondage to each other. By that ritual, they had consummated the Alchemical Wedding, they understood, completing the Philosophers’ Stone symbolically as their climactic Templar Act of sex magick.

Lynci disengaged her attention reluctantly from the Pyramid, wishing that she and Tym might have explored its intrinsic enigma more thoroughly. There had been available to them, on their penultimate day in the Central Column, a dearth of time for so complex an investigation.

Momentarily, she resumed her current examination: at the Column’s opposite diameter, then, its terminus the verge of the Quintessence Fount’s pool, Lynci perceived that the free-falling diamond stairflight—whose steps the eight pairs of Initiates comprising their preeminant class, in their partnerships, had realigned recently through their acts of dual mental impetus or transfigurational magick—remained in that improved formation, spanning in a graceful and sparkling spatial arc the one hundred ninety foot precipice between the ten-foot truncated interior wall of the tenth or zenith tier of the Temple and the Central Column’s circular diamond floor.

There currently, Lynci’s fifteen classmates—all sixteen of them aspirants of the Temple’s premier class—lay, fully clothed as was she, pending the chance they might have been required to flee during the antecedent night in response to an ill-timed onset of the cataclysms, those actually intended to commence no earlier than the prevailing morn.

Pensively, Lynci directed her gaze further upward. Two hundred forty feet overhead, forty feet higher than the tenth ring’s twenty-foot high encircling ceiling and completely occluding the acme of the sixty-foot diameter Central Column, was set the vital stone, the diadem of the Temple and finial of its pillar: the ArgentAurL prismic Lens which was the focal point of AurL’s Atziluthic attention onto Projectional Atlantis through his own central Qabalistic channel of Mildness. AurL: their sponsor and producer of the plan which his projected progeny were working to complete as the Magnum Opus for Terra, which planet corresponded Qabalistically to the Otz Chim’s lowest sephirah of Malkuth.

The eight pairs of students—their Magick ever demanding the alliance of two minds to accomplish—with Yerusha, the Master of the Mystery School and AurL’s Atziluthic emissary to the Projection, as well as aided by three others of their Beriatic instructors, had spent their latest two-day requisite interval of matriculation in the Column imprinting the Lens esoterically with the Assiyatic or material memoir of the Atlantean Projection, transferring to it in metaphysical increments the recondite record of all that had transpired during the single annum of the Projection’s existence, additionally committing archivally to the Lens a miniature semblance of the ring-shaped island continent, complete with its attendant surrounding dozen Zodiac Isles, and fashioning the intricately detailed model to a scale entirely filling the sixty-foot diameter/twenty-foot high convex lens.

The Lens was meant to survive the fall of Atlantis by its imperviousness to all mundane forces, plummeting into the ocean’s depths at the Temple’s moment of desecration, therein to abide through the following ages until its portended retrieval by sentient Assiyans or terrestrials at End-Time: the occasion of the dissipation of physical creation’s original dynamic or energy derived by the primordial expulsion of the cosmos from a naked singularity. That destiny was designed to produce the cessation of cosmic expansion and of space/time as well as to incite the convergence of the physical creation with its metaphysical twin, for, as AurL had explained, creation was a two-fold operation: that which was tangible and real and that which was magical and invisible. The fusion of the two was intended to induce Eternity.

Or, such is AurL’s scheme, Lynci reflected, if that has not been irreparably defiled by acts of the Atlantean dissenters and Satyron with his Demons of the Iridium Fountain in the City.

Yet, all seemed serene in the early light of that fresh Atlantean morning. Perfumed, balmy zephyrs wafted pleasantly into the Column through vents situated about its cylindrical wall just beneath the Lens, and turquoise sky was visible via those same apertures. Nonetheless, Lynci could not suppress her cognizance of the date’s being twenty-eighth Pisces: the three hundred fifty-eighth day of the three hundred sixty-day Projectional annum, that finite period further divided into twelve thirty-day astrological months which had commenced with Aries and progressed serially to Pisces. Only three days remained until the annum’s denouement which would likewise be the interregnum for Atlantis, the preordained destruction of the island continent with its concommitant withdrawal by AurL of his Projection.

So swiftly the time has elapsed, Lynci mused, while we were excitingly absorbed by the Magnum Opus here at the Temple of the Mysteries and by erotic Qliphoth Magick in the numerous clubs of Underground Atlantis in the City, as well as by the multifarious pleasures and perplexities of life in the enchanting City of Atlantis itself. Now the days of disruption have arrived, and there exist myriad delights which we have lacked the time to experience …

The Temple’s carillon chimed the two dulcet arpeggios announcing the second astrological hour of Taurus, and Lynci sighed synchronously. Almost at once, though, her happiness, was revived irresistibly, when Tym roused promptly at the musical summons, turning to Lynci with his customary sensitivity to her moods, drawing her into his arms and kissing her sweetly and lingeringly before brushing a betraying tear from her cheek, telling her gently:

We have done all that was asked of us, Lynci, to ensure the success of the Intervention and to master the magical techniques for our return to Yetzirah at the fall. As you are aware, Darling, this is an ephemeral world, not truly Assiyah of the material plane as that will evolve once the Projection is terminated. Atlantis can not endure in its present state of pseudo-reality, nor could we.

Lynci nodded but did not speak, fearing that her voice might break, thereby revealing the potentially irrational pain she was experiencing so acutely.

Tym persisted dispensing reassuring logic, therefore, saying, Much remains for us to achieve, Love. If we are to regain Yetzirah safely as Atlantis dissolves, we can not afford the luxury of grieving for her irrevocable demise. Terra’s future, if we have been victorious here, will compensate in substantial wonders for what we seem to be losing now, and which truly we have sought to preserve within the Lens, although, I suppose that we can not know with absolute certainty that we have won the unqualified triumph here, that we have prevailed utterly over Evond, Morderd, Mej, Satyron and his evil shards of the Iridium Fountain—

His discourse was interrupted abruptly by the clamorous conversations of their stirring classmates who speculated animatedly upon the day’s probable contingencies. Silently amidst the cacophony, Lynci met her cousin Dorthi’s eyes which mirrored exactly her own dismay.

However, Dorthi’s partner Jeph smiled cheerfully and proclaimed, I am eager to behold whatever is to ensue during these concluding days which are, after all, the climax of our pseudo-manifestation here and the crown of Atlantis’s esoteric existence. Too soon, alas, we must return to the Formative World, forfeiting our marvelous Assiyatic physiques.

Lylith, Lynci’s sister, interjected, Which bodies are nonetheless unreal, Jeph, far too idealized to withstand the rigors of life on the true material plane. In supplement, our labors here are yet incomplete so that we can not simply relax and relish—if that is your concept—the coming debacle!

Much is the pity! Jeph conceded, laughing good-naturedly, and Lylith smiled in capitulation.

She and her confidant Tahdyas had lain adjacent to Lynci and Tym, to their left, while Dorthi and Jeph had slept at Tym’s and Lynci’s right. The eight couples’ sleeping facilities were large, lush pallets-for-two strewn in a semi-circle about the diamond floor nearby the Fountain of Quintessence where the Initiates could receive infusions of its metaphysical exudate as they dozed.

Next to Lylith and Tahd had lain Tym’s cousin Wyllice and his woman Shareen. To the right of Dorthi and Jeph were Jerryl and Suna, his partner. Then beside them farther to the right were Jerryl’s brother Rychi and his companion Jenna. Those six pairs comprised the Yetziratic complement of the Diamond Class. The two Assiyan couples, Lynci’s and Lylith’s nephew Thom and his friend Kahleen, Arturo and Elysa, had occupied places more distant to the right …

Suddenly, the event Lynci had dreaded, the object of their group’s discussion, transpired without warning. That initial jolt was almost imperceptible, and, had it not been foretold, they might actually have failed to notice it, but they were anticipating the incipience of the activities, both physical and thaumaturgical, which would signify the fated collapse of temporal and projectional Atlantis. Her classmates’ facial expressions unanimously revealed their recognition of the inception.

It has begun, Jerryl confirmed, his voice hushed, Precisely as scheduled.

The Initiates remained mute, then, pensive and wary in their postures, Lynci noted. Mentally, she felt devastated by the irrefutable evidence. She gazed at Tym in anguish that she could not disguise, and he reached for her, holding her close in his warm embrace in the effort to assuage her misery.

Atlantis’s termination in ruins, while dictated and imperative to AurL’s design, nevertheless elicited Lynci’s torment by its finality and inference of inutterable loss, a situation analogous to nothing she had experienced previously in the intangible Qabalistic Worlds of Yetzirah and Beriah, the world of her origin. In those immaterial provinces there were no beginnings nor endings. Certainly, the prospective aspirants had been prepared by AurL prior to their emigrating to Projectional Atlantis for the ringed continent’s status as transient, its predestined doom.

Being aware cerebrally, Lynci felt compelled to acknowledge, differs greatly from living the actuality.

In truth, she had been somewhat reluctant and troubled preceding the Atlantis experiment at the thought of leaving the security of Yetzirah for the unknown realm of Assiyah, exchanging her nebulous but familiar effigy for more corporeal but alien paraphysical anatomy. Now that day of their exiting Yetzirah and transmigrating, via the processes of disintegration and then reintegration cellularly, through the Qabalistic channels of Mercy and Justice—females and males, respectively—en route to Assiyatic Atlantis, seemed remotely past. Solus, first Aries, was the distance of the annum and a world behind them, and Yetzirah possessed for her currently no more than the essence of a dream. And, truly, Lynci had instantly adored her lovely face and her beautiful Assiyatic body with its delicious receptivity to tactile sensations …

Thom dispelled their meditative silence, then, saying with his accustomed optimism: There is no error in the commencement of the ruptures. We must all keep that fact foremost in consciousness.

Still, Kahleen told him, articulating Lynci’s thoughts, I am loath to abandon our idyllic Atlantean lives.

We shall recover Atlantis one day, Tahd averred.

But, Suna protested, That is far from guaranteed!

And Dorthi observed, My thoughts of the coming catastrophes are unavoidably disquieting, endangered as the Intercession is by the saboteurs’ successful subversions! We can hardly be tranquil in the credo that the finale will unfold perfectly to AurL’s specifications.

I feel as you do, Dorthi, Lynci acceded, Uneasy at best. Since the deliberate assault upon Illicit Affair in Underground Atlantis while you and Jeph, Tym and I were in attendance there, AurL’s exquisite timing for the Projection has seemed somewhat distorted.

Rychi commented, Nor could AurL promise his full authority over the Projection from its outset.

Elysa murmured, We can not even be entirely confident that we, Yerusha, and the Beriatic Adepts have programmed the Lens unerringly.

Of certainty, we can! Jerryl retorted emphatically. I am convinced that we have consummated that feat deftly. Did you not detect AurL’s subtle wink emanating from the Lens upon our completion of its programming? That act was his signal to us that we had succeeded in the Lens-work, that he can shortly relinquish his optical vigilance over Atlantis and Lemuria. Additionally, AurL is wont to play the jokester; he does not care to reveal to us either all of his methods nor the extent of his omnipotence.

You may well speak accurately, Jerryl, Shareen conceded, But there exists no warranty that the Lens will be salvaged auspiciously millennia hence or even that the incarnate Assiyans of that portended era will apprehend the enigmatic ciphers and communiques which we have secreted therein and which could lead them to discover it.

Wyllice agreed, appending, We have beheld at the Rites of Mars which were observed during the month of Aries the horrors that mortality can wreak upon planetary Malkuth, the bloody conflicts which will persist throughout the generations of Terra’s history. In addition, the traceable radiant-factor of the Lens must cease transmitting one day, possibly before the Lens’s existence is recalled by the Assiyans or revealed to them.

We shall be among the incarnate terrestrials during that Aquarian epoch at End-Time, Tym reminded him. Surely, we shall have retained sufficient of our Atlantean mnemonic to recollect our preparation of the Lens and our reason for being incarnate at what is meant to be End-Time!

Jerryl objected, Do not depend upon it, Tym! That era undoubtedly will be rife with the identical intolerance which we have viewed through the telespectral system here. Almost indubitably, the message coded within the intoxicant flower and revealed through its smoke will be misinterpreted if not totally rejected, even corrupted, by the unenlightened of the times, likewise feared and scorned as a vehicle for magick. Because of AurL’s compassion, the future of reality is relegated to the equivocal domains of caprice. Still, as AurL’s primary alteration of consciousness to produce duality, I am satisfied that his arcane genius will subsequently transform or, at least, bewilder the miscreant minions—

A second, more forceful convulsion rocked the Temple sickeningly, and the wines and Quintessence overflowed their confines and spilled across the diamond floor toward the students’ location. Hastily, dragging the pallets with them, the

Initiates retreated several feet. No one seemed certain what was next expected of them, so they assumed seats upon the bedrolls to await whatever might occur.

Only a minimal interval preceded the subsequent event: another quake which struck just as Yerusha emerged from his elaborately carved marble laboratory situated across the Column from the Initiates’ positions. His progress was naturally impeded by the Temple’s movement, and he hurriedly grasped for support the sturdy embedded golden stem of the majestic floral Chronologue, Avalyn’s peerless timepiece. When the dizzying upheaval finally ceased, Yerusha came at once to their midst.

Smiling at his proteges encouragingly, he spoke calmly: The Adepts have induced the end-phase of the Geological Intercession, and it is proceeding smoothly. Summarily, I shall excuse you, but prior to your permanent departure from the Central Column, there is supreme sorcery which we must foment to emancipate the Great Magical Agent from its imprisonment within the Orb of Infinity—symbolically, Ain in this semimaterial world—that it may penetrate and permeate the Lens!

The Initiates clustered about the Master of the Mystery School while Yerusha allowed them a moment to assimilate his meaning, then continued:

You will concentrate upon the infinity orb: the separator of the Quintessence’s initiatory ring from the Otz Chim. Therefore, please position yourselves one pair to each twenty-foot side, one pair to each corner of the cubic pool. When I raise my right hand, direct your concerted interest intensely upon the sphere, thereby inspiring the Magical Agent’s expulsion from captivity. Go now!

The Initiates sped to their sites about the fount, the identical loci from which portions of their earlier Great Work with the Lens had been incited: Tym and Lynci on the aspect of the pool facing the diamond stairway or front of the Temple, Suna and Jerryl opposite them. The adjoining flanks were occupied to Lynci’s right by Lylith and Tahdyas, to Tym’s left byJeph and Dorthi. The corners were claimed by Kahleen and Thom between Lynci and Lylith; Arturo and Elysa between Tym and Jeph; Wyllice and Shareen between Tahd and Jerryl; Jenna and Rychi between Suna and Dorthi.

Obeying Yerusha’s gesture anon, the aspirants complied with his instructions, converging their attentions steadily onto the mysterious sphere of infinity: the paradoxical manifestation of the no-thing of Qabalism in their quasi-material world. They appraised the globe keenly for a timeless interlude.

Her hand resting lightly in Tym’s, Lynci easily transferred her devout desire to the orb, truly longing for the Magick’s escape from Ain, its postliminary inundation of the Lens, believing that such instillation would advance the probability of the consequent salvation of End-Time Assiyah …

As she stared, mesmerized by the incomprehensible globe, resisting with all her might its eerie magnetism, clenching Tym’s hand in her tension, slowly the AurLight—the archetypal beam of magick—eluded Ain’s realm of nothingness, surging therefrom in an ascendant spiral of scintillation, soaring unerringly toward the Lens through the Quintessence which responded to the ionizing effect by emitting a shower of radiant particles. In an evanescent stream the magical elixir flowed into the ArgentAurL stone, imbuing the softly gleaming living Lens with material light, a fusion designed to forge alchemical accord.

Yerusha addressed them presently, liberating the students from their entrancement; he advised:

Now, I am required to perform the crucial esoteric office for which all our preliminary enterprise was but the exordium! AurL’s rationale in generating an invincible Lens is to provide encapsulation for the AurLplasm: his immortalizing panacea which I transported to Assiyah from Atziluth where AurL contrived it in his own image. As you are eminently aware, we have employed AurLplasm in dilution here in Atlantis to alter the defective deoxyribonucleic acid of the indigenous terrestrial fauna. AurL wishes me to commend the remainder of his gold, which is pure, to the Lens from whence we Assiyans can be allotted it propitiously at a stage in our evolution when we have acquired the stamina to assimilate its properties, thereby attaining immortality of the flesh rather than to hasten our premature deaths. That era is meant to coincide with the dawning of the eternal mode—

Excuse me, Yerusha, Lynci said, But when we viewed the Assiyatic future at the Rites of Mars, we saw how the Assiyans settled their disagreements by slaying each other and waging warfare. Indeed, they seemed often to relish the savagery. There will be those, then, who may spurn immortality!

Not likely! Jerryl predicted with a laugh. Those same barbarians will surely embrace the idea of their prospective indomitableness!

Indeed! Yerusha agreed. Nor will the subject be debatable, for AurL will have his way if he can, whatever his creatures may think they desire. But, no whit is to be sacrificed for immortality! Not only will the entirety of time and space be open to adventure, so also will be the labyrinths of AurL’s imagination as well as the quantum worlds.

Lylith offered: I predict that such change will instigate psychic shock too stupendous for many of the Assiyans of the era to bear.

Yerusha smiled and nodded, saying: "AurL intends that the Assiyans who are in need of counseling receive it, that those who are misguided be corrected humanely, and that others who are implacably in error make amends or atonement psychically for their culpability. No moment of the eternal now can be evaded. The healing process may consume considerable time before the aeons of pleasure commence. The Assiyans who are addicted to violence and death will ever be able to satisfy their cravings in End-Time, so waste no concern over them.

Do not either underestimate AurL who is the magical source for all that exists. He is capable of a mighty wrath besides his irrepressibly delicious humor. He has twice that he can recall averted the annihilation of his consciousness within Ain or the naked singularity, impelling his quiescence to deliverance. Cosmic creation is a languid process, and AurL has no enthusiasm for commencing it anew; therefore, will condone no blatant overt dissension by intractable Assiyans!

Arturo asked, What of the evil which AurL has allowed to emigrate to his cosmos? He has eluded one evil only to imperil his creation by sequestering another.

Yerusha nodded, but replied, Evil is AurL’s idea of a challenge. There is no goodness without its antipode to provide recognition. Ain, however, is not malevolence—it is not anything! But now, we must finish the Great Work here with expedition, however, if we are to execute alchemically the polished Philosophers’ Stone!

He went to the most conveniently located of the ten carved-gem bench/chests which were distributed artfully about the expanse of the Column’s circular base, each fashioned of the jewel serving as ornamental decor on one of the Temple’s ten tiers or rings. Lifting the heavy hinged cover which was the opal bench’s seat and the lid of its chest, Yerusha withdrew a resplendent oblong opal coffer, its hardware of glimmering gold. The casket was amply sized, Lynci decided, to encase a generous quantity of the AurLplasm …

Carrying the cumbersome chest, Yerusha crossed the floor to the fountain. There, he made a circuit of the pool to exhibit for the students the contents of the case whose interior was lushly padded, then lined with pristine satin. The glowing viable gold—AurLplasm—was indeed abundant within and was bestowed in its diverse consistencies to sealed crystal phials, flasks, and jars. Additionally, there were stored among the essence’s containers magical tools necessary for handling the lambent substance, a slender formulaic volume bound in snowy leather, and a small ceramic athenor: the furnace employed by Templar Qabalists and Alchemists to anneal the AurLplasm in order to facilitate its safe reception by Assiyan fauna, or presumably, by the deserving Terrans of End-Time.

Yerusha closed the coffer, thereafter fastening its golden padlock with an extravagant auric key attached to the box by a substantial linked chain, also golden, finally sliding the key into a golden sheath affixed to the chest.

Then Yerusha strode purposefully onto the slightly viscous surface of the pooled Quintessence. Being somewhat more light than material, having rarely ventured from the Temple of the Mysteries during the projectional annum, thereby avoiding the acquisition of the more integrated systems which the students possessed, he was borne easily by the fluid, thus, confidently trod upon it to the center where he stepped onto the Orb of Infinity, standing immediately beneath the Quintessence’s cataract which appeared not actually to deluge him but instead, to enclose him inside a shimmering bubble …

He resumed speaking: I shall appreciate your providing me your support in this levitational industry. Please, dedicate your meditational assistance to my efforts.

They proceeded therefore to regard Yerusha’s endeavor intently. He extended his arms toward the Lens so that Lynci feared that the elaborate iridescent chest must surely tumble into the cubic reservoir. She suspended her respirations while she watched Yerusha’s operation, again clasping Tym’s hand to complete their magical union. She felt his mind meet hers in collaboration, then focused her desire onto the treasure in harmony with Tym, exactly as they had applied their dual consciousnesses to the inert square mirror which had been the object of their initial trial of magick at the Temple. And, as they had induced that obdurate slab of glass to float, they seemed presently to contribute identically to the levitation of the weighty coffer which commenced subtly to rise from Yerusha’s hands.

Once freely aloft, its ascension at first seemed tentative and was exceedingly slow and wobbly until, autonomously, the precious object accelerated as it gained elevation and momentum, presently attaining a velocity which carried it upon an infallible and irresistible course toward the Lens where, when momentarily it penetrated the resilient surface, a fissile sunburst erupted. That wound of incursion dissolved instantaneously as the chest containing the AurLplasm vanished into the interior of the Lens.

To Lynci’s surprise, then, applause rained from above. Turning from her observation of the Lens toward the sound, she was stunned to discover that the Adepts who commanded the Temple’s concentric tiers stood precariously upon the tenth ring’s wall, clearly having lent their own considerable powers to Yerusha’s endeavor. All were present: Raphyl of the exoteric first Emerald Level; Gaebryl of the second Sapphire Tier; Athena who headed the third Amethyst Ring; Hermes who minded the fourth Opal Tier; Zeus of the fifth Garnet Level; Isis and Osiris of the sixth Golden Topaz Ring; Apollo representing the seventh Peridot Level; Merlin, wizard of the eighth Aquamarine Realm; Aphrodite of the ninth Ruby Ring; and Myriam, Yerusha’s companion, who labored in virtual solitude upon the tenth Diamond Tier since the preeminent class of Aspirants had quickly gained magical admission to the Central Column upon their having completed the Diamond Ring’s work. There afterward, they had studied the more erudite Columnar Magick taught by Yerusha …

The Angels and Demigods saluted Yerusha jubilantly, then retreated to the tenth tier again via the diamond stile which gave access to its truncated wall, thence for those who had earned the honor, admittance to that free-falling stairway descending into the hallowed Central Column. Assumedly, the Berian Adepts were among that meritricious number, Lynci believed. However, only Merlin, his partner Vivienne, and Myriam had, in Lynci’s experience, ever actually entered the Column, and they on but the single occasion of their assisting in the programming of the Lens from within the Mnemonotron where the ten couples, inclusive of the Diamond Class Initiates, had occupied in pairs the ten sephirothic spheres of that magical machine …

Yerusha withdrew from the Quintessence’s pool, beckoning to the aspirants to follow him as he moved to the site where their sleeping pallets lay. When the group had joined him there, he addressed them anew, saying: The chest of AurLplasm will be securely cached in a hidden compartment beneath the correspondent Temple of the Lens. The gold can never be extracted therefrom but can only be presented by way of an infallible system to the Assiyans when they, or in fact, we, are deserving of its cure. I am truly exhilarated by our accomplishments here today, believing that they must surely presage the triumph of the Projection in totality—

A fourth paroxysm erupted sharply, seeming to Lynci in contradiction of Yerusha, though such could not be the reality, certainly. However, the floor became as liquid under her feet, and she clung to Tym who managed to retain enough poise to prevent their toppling. When the temblor subsided, Yerusha told them:

We are in no danger here. The fifth ring’s Adepts are well able to regulate the tectonic shifting of Terra’s mantle through deft application of their telespectral instruments. So kindly be seated here as I have a final lesson to deliver ere you depart.

The sixteen settled themselves upon their cushions, and Yerusha continued:

"I appreciate that you are somewhat anxious for the future, not simply for our scheme to generate a more equitable land-to-sea ratio upon true Malkuth or Terra—the actual world of matter—thereby promoting the flourishing of the improved terrestrial denizens of our Biological Intervention, but also for this planet’s supreme destiny and your own roles at End-Time. As you are aware, your amnesia in physical incarnation will be an oppressive curtain obscuring your Atlantean memories. However, your voyage by starcruiser during this annum to carry altered AurLplasm to my progeny of Yliana in the Pleides—as the Assiyans of Terra will come to label that region of the celestium—has secured their vitalization.

"Perhaps you have heard that when AurL encountered me during his reconnaissance of the void, preliminary to his inciting his creative venture, as he cared not to destroy any others’ attempts with his own, he discovered me while I was indeed involved in creating somewhat unsuccessfully, I must confess, because I lacked mentally the erotic strategem of color which AurL has incorporated so beautifully into his own efforts. Admittedly, he is more the complete genius than I, being entirely uninhibited and recognizing no tabus. So, once AurL had explained to me his grandiose plan which I could not hope to duplicate, he offered magnanimously to incorporate my small galaxy into his greater universe. My elegant creatures, though, had ever been in peril of obsolescence since their genetic material was weak and thready, prone to unfortunate mutations and rampant immunity deficiencies. Now the AurLplasm you have delivered has vivified their recombinant DNA, and my human beings there are thriving!

"Your courageous generosity in daring that dangerous journey has gained for you the Ylianans’ everlasting gratitude and affection, and they will serve happily in Assiyatic Malkuth as monitors, overseeing the progress of the Terrans in times to come. Because they are in actuality of a diverse dimension, being alien to AurL’s cosmos, their travel through space in plasmic vessels is not limited by the laws of physics as those apply to AurL’s domains, and they are not bound by relativity nor the speed of light. Supplementarily, though in truth the Ylianans exist now in bodies commensurate to those which future Terrans will inhabit, they may appear in that material world—if they are detectable at all—as exotic wraithlike creatures. They will attempt to communicate AurL’s tidings to the natives of Malkuth, especially to you people as End-Time approaches, hoping to restore your remembrances of Atlantis and of the Lens. Therefore, do not expend these last days in worry over the future fate of Terra.

Another topic, he continued. "AurL has determined that the Mnemonotron, the Otz Chim in its vehicular state, is to be transferred metaphysically by the Temple’s Adepts to Star Launch for the use of you Initiates in your quest to regain Yetzirah at the fall. He was quite satisfied with its performance in response to our communal minds during the Lens-opus and believes that it represents your optimal probability for triumphant return to Yetzirah. Additionally, your success in escaping Atlantis will establish the Mnemonotron’s potential for application in time-travel on the true manifest plane in eternity.

"Although AurL has felt compelled to create mercifully, allowing sanctuary within his universe to all manner of vile entities from the abyss, his resultant cosmos with its mandatory space-warp and evolutionary status thereby rendered imperfect, he entertains no intention of abandoning the ideal of his original theme. Once linear time has terminated, continuum will ensue with all the annals of the past, present, and future available for our exploration. AurL means then to inaugurate reparations to heal the flaws of antiquity, even to resurrect the dead. He is avid to implement his vision of wholeness and equilibrium, ultimately to enter his cosmos in embodiment.

"To those ends, he envisions the Mnemonotron as himself in a machine.

"As omniscient as AurL is so will the Mnemonotron be, providing that you aspirants can return it to the higher Qabalistic Worlds where AurL can perfect it pending End-Time’s arrival. He is confident of your abilities.

"Next issue: Yris, Mychil, and Anji are to accompany you in the Mnemonotron, arriving in Atlantis from Lemuria on the morrow at the hour of Leo. Yris is not traditionally an Oriental despite AurL’s having discovered her with Zenn-Tao traversing the void, the two recent escapees just narrowly from the imploding production of an evil master who wished fervently to relieve Yris of the Eternal Flame. She has claimed that she would have extinguished it rather than to relinquish it to so execrable a brute. She has been more than agreeable, however, to AurL’s employing the essence of the Flame in his own creativity, without which concept he could never have accomplished his cosmic vision. Fire is, after all, the heart of creation. Yris maintains that the Flame must return to Atziluth through the lower Qabalistic Worlds in order not to be quenched accidentally. Mychil, being AurL’s and Yris’s son, and Anji are also not Lemurians, thus untrained in the eastern arts. Mychil was preoccupied in Mu with another enterprise as you are aware. They are unable to achieve Nirvana and demanifestation in the oriental way, therefore must attempt to ascend in the western custom. For your efforts to reach Yetzirah, Yris will occupy Kether, and Mychil and Anji, Malkuth. You others may reclaim your original sephiroth:Jerryl and Suna, Chokmah; Rychi and Jenna, Binah; Thom and Kahleen, Chesed; Wyllice and Sharen Geburah; Tym and Lynci, Tiphareth; Arturo and Elysa, Netzach; Jeph and Dorthi, Hod; Tahdyas and Lylith, Yesod. Obviously, Zenn-Tao will endeavor to lead the Lemurians to their spiritual home.

"To introduce another topic, in reward for your magical accomplishments both here at the Temple and in the Underground, you may each invite twenty-four adult Atlanteans of your choice—families and friends—to join you in your quest for Yetzirah, traveling with you in your sephiroth. Children of those whom you select may, of course, accompany their parents uncounted. By your preeminence in the hierarchy of candidates to the Mysteries, you are to be awarded the greater number of colleagues on the excursion, while the succeeding classes will be permitted sixteen comrades each in the cases of classes two, three, and four, or eight guests apiece in the instances of classes five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.

"As you can extrapolate from those numbers, the one million Assiyans and one thousand Yetzirans comprising the general populace of Atlantis can not all aspire to Yetzirah at the fall. Only those whom you students have invited will gain the opportunity. Some of the others will not care even to return to Yetzirah as they possess no memories of the Formative World.

The Assiyans who existed there previously as diminutive models in the state of suspended animation will have no desire to reprise that situation. Indeed, since Assiyah is the magnification of Yetzirah, the Formative World in its present state is incapable of supporting comfortably so massive an extant population. Therefore, arrangements have been instituted here whereby the Atlanteans not invited aboard your ships will find salvation through their assignments to inter-and intragalactic vessels and starcruisers designated for dispersement throughout the cosmos. A few select citizens have volunteered to transport the altered terrestrial creatures, including the hominid subjects of our Intervention, to the New Lands which are to arise on Terra upon the demise of Atlantis.

"There is, of course, abundant transportation to accommodate all Atlanteans if they will simply heed the intelligence to be provided them through the telespectral medium—Atlantis’s unique and infallible electronic system—and by us, the Adepts of Avalyn, as well as by President Jaefke and other members of the Government, including your own Sovereign Fathers. We want urgently to avoid panic or dissension among the Assiyan population, but there are those as yet ignorant of Atlantis’s irreversible fate, others who remain hopeful of the continent’s reprieve and survival, many who have failed to notice or are steeped in denial regarding the ominous changes previously underway. Because of Aurl’s need to invoke social conflicts as stimuli to the Projection’s eventual detachment, we can not predict how the Atlanteans may respond emotionally to their imagined peril. Still, we must hope to be convincing in describing the mechanisms by which every Atlantean can escape.

"Of further concern, there persists here the matter of the fragmented hordes who inhabit the Iridium Fountain’s environs in the City. We possess no notion as to what route they may elect to employ, even whether they will attempt to flee, or if they will strive to coerce additional calamity of their own derivation upon Atlantis, even if they may try to interfere with our retreat. They are defective intellectually, as you know, but they obey Satyron implicitly so will follow his directives. Despite their hideousness and their lack of personal hygiene, should they wish to enlist in the exodus, we shall concede them admission to whatever conveyors are not previously filled with our citizenry. This is AurL’s fiat, thus, not in dispute.

"There is naught to be accomplished in wondering how the uninitiated may or may not behave, so I shall proceed with my directives to you who will follow them sans argument, I trust! Upon your alighting at the Mnemonotron’s site on Star Launch, you will find your ship flanked by the two vehicles intended to transport our second and third class students. The three vessels delegated for the fourth, fifth, and sixth classes will constitute a third rank and will be surrounded by the four ships designated to transport the students from the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth classes.

An outermost ring will consist of the eight crafts which are to be shared equitably among the two hundred forty couples whose initial interpretations of one of the Ten Esoteric Laws of the Mysteries were judged to be insufficiently erudite to earn them admission to the Temple, though they had been among the thousand of you—three quarters Yetzirans, one quarter Assiyans—deemed Illuminates and, therefore, called to the Mysteries. Regretfully, not everyone could be chosen for enrollment. Still, the dismissed seekers have studied dutifully, twenty couples assigned to each temple, with the forty-eight Adepts, four at a temple, serving at the twelve astrological temples in the City, so are meritorious of the privilege of striving for return to Yetzirah, additionally asking four affiliates respectively to partake in the effort with them. All the assembled will be permitted access to the Mnemonotron’s occult force-field to fuel their less mystical equipment—

Yerusha! Suna interrupted plaintively. You Adepts and AurL seem to be placing an impossible burden of responsibility upon us in spite of your providing us the Mnemonotron!

Particularly with you on board, Suna, Shareen muttered, Unskilled as you are in the magical arts!

Suna glared at her murderously.

As if in repartee to their discord, another sharp shock struck, and the Temple actually groaned when its groundpin—the tapering argentalloy structure of two hundred feet in length into which the foundation of the diamond edifice was entrenched, that shaft then plunged deep into Avalyn’s core—seemed to twist torturously. Lynci stared in horrified fascination as the Temple swayed visibly, then rotated several degrees.

Do not become contentious! Yerusha implored Shareen and Suna, revealing to the group afterward, "AurL believes that you will be triumphant in your mission. Therefore, you must not dwell upon demoralizing doubts. I shall dismiss you shortly, the moment after I conclude my instructions to you. We Adepts can maintain close communication with you telespectrally while you are in the City. If Veil Tower in the Northern Mountains should fail, we shall try to employ psychic means of conversing with you, thereby assisting you to the moment of Atlantis’s expiration. That event, I assure you, is not to be recorded within the Lens whose role, after all, is to perpetuate the celebration of this Projection. These last days will be modified therein.

"Another advisory now: arrange for tomorrow evening at the hour of Libra to convene at dinner those whom you have selected to accompany you aboard the Mnemonotron. Doubtlessly, you will be able to reserve a hall in one of the grand hotels upon the Plaza of Illumination or elsewhere in the City. During that affair, following the banquet which will be provided you and your guests, at the hour of Scorpio we Adepts shall address your gathering telespectrally with esoteric education in the methods for your amalgamate propulsion of the Mnemonotron, concurrently also instructing the students of the lower classes comprising your entourage with similar erudition. As your invitees are required to assist you, you may wish to apply a certain wisdom in your choices of traveling companions, for you will want them to be able to discharge their tasks adroitly. Your success will not be solely incumbent upon your own levitational talents.

I imagine that you are growing restless, and I promise to release you imminently, but I am not quite finished issuing pronouncements! When I excuse you, follow this mandate: upon your exiting the Column via the stairflight to the tenth tier, employ the spiral staircase from there for descending the rings. Both the esoteric and exoteric elevators will be preempted by students evacuating from the other levels. You may stop to visit your suites to bathe and dress for the City, collecting whatever possessions you deem requisite to your comfort during your final days in Atlantis. All five hundred twenty of you aspirants will be fleeing Avalyn this morning, you Diamond Class students being last to leave. When you arrive at the dock to sail for the City, promptly at the hour of Gemini, your aquacraft will await you.

He paused, and a shadow seemed to pass over his bright countenance fleetingly, but he smiled again and continued: AurL is pleased by your performances here in the Projection. Your decorum and labors have been exemplary but for several minor indiscretions and one major infraction …

He glanced pointedly at Shareen who returned his look defiantly. At their exchange, Lynci was flooded by a wave of shame at the memory of the mortifying penance which had been exacted of them by the Adepts as a consequence of that treachery. Shareen had revealed recondite information to Evond who had employed devious means to extract it from her. Nonetheless, the entire Diamond Class had been punished in a most shocking way. They had been forbidden for one entire day at the Temple to wear clothing of any kind …

Tym met Lynci’s eyes, and he smiled wickedly.

In verity, the male members of their coterie had actually savored the opportunity to flaunt their splendid Assiyan nudity.

Lynci, however, had suffered truly dreadful humiliation, simultaneously feeling doubly disgraced by the fact of her wanton sexual arousal at her predicament, her desire for Tym …

Yerusha smiled knowingly and said, The Lens has registered every minute-unit of our time in Atlantis and beautifully shelters likenesses of us so that we shall now survive endlessly as dual-personae, in immortality within the ArgentAurL Lens and in transience either in the higher Qabalistic Realms or in mortal incarnations upon Terra of the future. And, now my lengthy address is complete. Have you any questions before you depart?

How will you escape Atlantis, Yerusha? Lynci inquired.

I shall ascend to Atziluth as the Projection dismantles. Have no concerns for my safety nor that of the hundred Berian Adepts. We are quite competent in the techniques of demanifestation and rising in the planes.

The Initiates were easily