Jaldabaoth: Encounter with a Lessor God

By James J. Pallante

Jaldaboath; Encounter with a Lessor God immerses the reader in a dark world gnostic doctrine and ritual, necromancy and human last and greed. The boundaries separating a Catholic cemetery from St. Barbara's College fade into darkness as the evil conjured from a grave threaten the lives of the young loomed at the college.

There is little to combat the voracious and primordial being let loose to execute the evil of a sinister Romanian family. Only Monsignor Gabriel Riri, a priest in charge of the Office Consecrated Sites in the Vatican, has the knowledge to understand the true meaning of "antagonism to God".

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663213884

James J. Pallante

Dr. Pallante earned four degrees, taught at every education level from Elementary to Graduate School, served as the University Vice President Dean and full professor. His first novel was Days of Joy and The Story of the Red Suit. He is currently writing a cookbook, Beyond Seven Fishes. He is an excellentamateur chef, dedicated golfer and accomplished skier. He has four children, twelve grandchildren and six great grandchildren. He lives in rural Pennsylvania. This is his second novel.

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Copyright © 2021 James J. Pallante.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-1387-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1388-4 (e)

iUniverse rev. date:  05/12/2021

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

Chapter 118

Chapter 119

Chapter 120

Chapter 121

Chapter 122

Chapter 123

Chapter 124

Chapter 125

Chapter 126

Chapter 127

Chapter 128

Chapter 129

Chapter 130

Chapter 131

Chapter 132

Chapter 133

Chapter 134

Chapter 135

Chapter 136

Chapter 137

Chapter 138

Chapter 139

Chapter 140

Chapter 141

Chapter 142

Epilogue

For Joan

Prologue

Wisps of dark smoke wavered in the wet air above the smoldering bones. Shadows folded over the grave like dark wings. A sheet of white flame stabbed at the forms, then disappeared. The figures grew in size as expectation blazed in their hearts. The ancient chant and responsorium drifted into the night. A black fear crawled from the damp earth as the invocation continued. Acrid smells from the burning ooze was imperceptibly altered by the aroma of fresh blood. The figures murmured in unison as they labored, Vemite, Venite, Submiritillo Lucifuse,.. Tiny flames from the candles at the edge of the grave struggled with dead night. The fire in the figures beside the grave seemed to die as well; the darkness in them grew. Their minds whispered in distorted counterpoint to the silence, Qui facit per alium per se. It was time.

Chapter 1

Matt Lechet wandered from the shower into his bedroom; unconsciously appreciative of his body, still a bit dull from the three cocktails he drank while correcting papers. He wrapped and tuck-tied a towel around his slender waist, which allowed his muscles to show through with stunning effect. His build and good looks were only partially a gift from nature. He has spent a considerable part of his early life in rigorous training to become a national class diver while he was an undergraduate at Saint Joseph’s University.

The TV glowed to life. Some part of his mind thought for the thousandth time that TV was not a very good companion; it was boring. He raked his fingers through his thick brown hair, his back muscles ripped; droplets of water corkscrewed off the ends onto the already damp carpet.

His medals earned on the ten-meter platform and three-meter springboard were ample testimony to his athletic talent; his Ph.D. and several publications were evidence of his gifts as a scholar of emerging importance. Matt’s twenty-seventh year found him a diving coach and assistant professor at Saint Barbara college. Still, most people thought of Matt as the ex-diver, an athletic performer.

Matt’s long time dedication as a student of the martial arts tended to feed his image. The zanshin aspect of Kenjutsu (mental concentration combined with physical form) was a perfect skill for a diver to develop, and attracted Matt to the art as a youth. But, he earned his black belt in the more conventional Goshin Jutsu karate.

Just as the eleven o’clock evening news reached the weather forecast the phone rang. He reached the phone effortlessly, before the second ring.

Hello, he said into the speaker.

Excuse me, sir came a deep voice into his ear, Is this Professor Lechet?

Ah, yes, what can I do for you?

My name is Rooney. Bill Rooney, from Campus Security. We’ve found something weird in the cemetery behind campus. And we really didn’t know what to do, we’ve notified the Edessa police, and Frank Pomager, my superior, suggested calling you.

What’s the problem, what did you find?

It’s not too late for you, is it?

No, no… what is it?

There seems to have been some kind of ritual or voodoo or something last night. I don’t think it was tonight, looks like there has been a bit of rain since then, and it’s well… pretty odd. Probably some kids, but it doesn’t look like the sort of thing kids do. You might come down…

Now?

Not if it’s inconvenient. Tomorrow will be fine, I suppose, but…

Now would be O.K. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Meet you in the security office?

No, the officer replied, I’m going back out to report in with the Edessa police who are arriving right this minute. I can see their lights. You’ll spot us at the cemetery.

I’ll be there, Matt replaced the receiver, moved to the closet, dressed, closed the outside door and made for his car with practiced, controlled strides. But his mind wasn’t controlled. Part of it was searching for rationality and calm, but he thought to himself, I’m Doctor Von Helsing. Fantastic! For years he had kidded people who asked the obvious question, You don’t seem religious, why are you teaching religion? His secret motivation was to be Von Helsing, or at least model himself on that character, the sage old professor to whom the desperate hero turns to discover what secrets of darkness must he understand. In vampire movies it is Von Helsing who knows the spell and devices to ward off the demon’s evil, not a religious priest but a sort of secular savant, learned in areas few priests dare discuss. Matt knew a good bit about that sort of thing. He was well read in the Grimoires of Black and Goethic magic, in the Books of Jue and the Nag Hammadi gnostic mythologies, in the Hermetica and the occult rites of the Golden Dawn. But up to now that has been a hobby, half professional papers written on other subjects. No one ever used such knowledge for everyday living.

As he drove toward the Saint Barbara campus his mind floated. Nature was conspiring to feed his daydreams into life; fog lay heavy on the terrain pooling in pockets near swampy lowland regions, fading to mist on the hilltops, Matt found himself sorting his memory for passages from Musashi’s Go Rin No Sho. He has a strange vision of the book glowing, burning on the shelf in his office. His mind was calling back that masterful treatise on strategy- dominations of others… the cemetery…

Chapter 2

Father Gautier paused in front of a dark wooden door bearing only a small brass plate reading, in Latin, Office of Consecrated Sites. He adjusted his cumbersome load of correspondence, knocked quietly, then admitted himself without waiting for a reply. The room more nearly resembled the archives of a medieval university than a working office in the Vatican. The imagery was heightened by the various hanging charts and drawings: Mystic Figures of the Enchiridion, the Angels and Olympic Spirits of the Silver Planets. The character of Bethar, an attempted reconstruction of the Ophite Diagrams fed the overall feel of the office.

The office’s sole occupant, Monsignor Gabriel Niri, fit the mood dictated by the accouterments. He was at home with the heavy old texts that cluttered his desk, and the deep maroon velvet, which covered the large wooden chairs. He has great facility with ancient languages and was the senior specialist in the Gnistic-Manichean heresy in the Vatican.

Father Gutier stood quietly waiting. Monsignor Niri carefully closed the gold-leafed volume he was reading, fixing his place with a worn marker inscribed in French, Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point, a keepsake from his younger days when he was a student at the Sorbonne. It reminded him of his favorite bookstore. His movements were subdued, and genteel, in keeping with his office and responsibility.

Good morning, Louis. What do you have today? his tone was even, but betrayed his suspicion that the dull truth would be nothing, really, routine correspondence-international bureaucratic junk mail.

The Office of Consecrated Sites had been established formally in 1448 for inquiry into any recommendations regarding serious desecration. It had no responsibility for the act of the consecration, so the title of the office was somewhat misleading. Pious zealots did not infrequently write the office asking that one or another place, where upon the Blessed Virgin or Our Lord had been espied walking or floating by local visionaries, be declared consecrated. Such requests were forwarded, without comment, to local Bishops.

Serious desecration was not a common occurrence. Three conditions had to be met: (1) the site in question needed to be consecrated in the eyes of the church: for the most part this meant cathedrals churches, and consecrated cemeteries. (2) the desecration had to have been done deliberately and not accidentally. Local officials could easily handle cases of the latter. (3) Deliberate desecration must be done for purposes defined as in antagonism to God. It was easy enough to make decisions regarding the first two conditions. Father Louis Gautier easily and routinely dealt with them. But what counted as in antagonism to God? Monsignor Niri following tradition and precedent, defined thus clause to mean that the desecration must have been done by knowledgeable persons aware of the nature of the Charistian God, and intending to perform a ritual or ceremony of homage to or for the assistance of a deity or power representing principles anathema to Christian principles. Monsignor Niri turned in his chair and gazed out his office windows at the dirty rooftops of Rome. He spoke to his assistant without turning around, OK, Louis, let’s get started.

Chapter 3

Betty Krevenko could smell the garlic the instant Maria Nicolosi opened the apartment door. Maria beamed, Did you get the chocolate truffles?

Yep, Betty replied, And I grated the black radish myself. It’s really nice of you to have me over for a birthday lunch.

Maria peeked into the bag that Betty handed her as she walked toward the kitchen, It’s my pleasure. Besides, you are practically family. Like a cousin. And, it is a good excuse for me to trot out the old cooking skills. Your family’s old recipes are different from mine. but, they include garlic, so they must be good.

As Maria reached the kitchen she called back to Betty who was frowning from the tart garlic infused pickle that she snatched from the set table, For an area spilling over with Rumanians, you would think it would be easier to get Rumanian soul food.

Betty stopped fluffing her silky brown hair and patted her flat stomach, Just as well that we confine ourselves to birthdays. I’m not ready to waddle around in a peasant dress yet. And it’s hard enough to stay in shape eating that goo the cafeteria serves up.

Maria laughed, I know. But take heart, I omitted the mandatory syrup pitcher of chicken fat. I won’t tell if you won’t.

They were both beautiful women. Betty was twenty, today; Maria was twenty-five. Both had figures that turned heads. The sunlight shining through the window danced with Maria’s short auburn hair, and created flashes of red sparkle as she moved around the kitchen.

Betty’s tone became fanciful, Maria, I wish we really were cousins. Or at least I wish we knew for certain that we were cousins.

Maria was upbeat. I know we’re a little short on immediate family, but we both have roots in the venerable families that we are in. Cluj in the old country. Mine are from Sicily. So we probably are cousins. They both laughed. Anyway, we are what we are. Tell me about your internship next week.

No big deal. Six weeks, twelve credits, and a sure ‘A’ in the old business major. Betty continued, but, I do get a break from Saint Barbara. And I’ll trade the cold, grey skies of Edessa for the cold, grey skies of Pittsburgh. And, you have to admit that’s a trade up. Smells good. What did you cook?

Maria shrugged. Vat else? Skirt steak with stuffed derma. Derma mind you. And, of course, potato cakes, But I couldn’t find unborn eggs. Thank God!

They chatted easily through the meal, retelling their favorite stories, guessing what Betty’s old county was really like, and joking that they would one-day chop down both family trees and figure out if they could be related. Betty smiled. Maybe, I can reciprocate on your birthday when I get back."

Betty leaned back in her chair and rubbed her stomach. "Thanks Maria, that was delicious. It was really nice of you to go to all this

Maria laughed, A girl my age isn’t so anxious about birthdays. I’m already practically a freak with all the young guys around here. Too old. Much too old. But we’ll get together.

Betty’s eyes twinkled as she asked, What about Professor Lechet? Anything happening? I saw you two at lunch in the cafeteria again. He’s old enough, isn’t he?

Maria shrugged, Nothing’s happening. We lunch. We talk. We lunch. We talk. That’s it. I think he’s tied up with Terry from the Registrar’s office.

Betty turned both hands palms up and pushed them at Maria, Hang in there. She can’t hold a candle to you.

Maria rolled her eyes, Eat your truffles.

Betty’s eyes twinkled, He’ll be at the joint Faculty Senate-Student Senate presentation with the president tomorrow. Maybe you can get a seat next to him, or get on a committee with him, or something.

Maria assumed an air of mock seriousness, Betty, you know such matters are managed by the gods, not mere mortals like undergraduate women. Besides, Dr. Lechet is not a member of the Faculty Senate this year. she shrugged her shoulders as if to say, What can you do?

Chapter 4

Dr. Roland Hill, President of Saint Barbara College, spoke into the microphone attached to the tabletop lectern, Good evening.

His audience of faculty and student senators continued to chat with one another. He tried again, Good evening everyone. Thank you for coming.

Gradually, the side conversation ceased. The President smiled and nodded, as if to say, That’s better.

He walked around in the front of the lecture. He likes to let his audience see his full size; he is a large-framed man, six feet two inches tall. His size always gave him confidence against his seated audience, and he used it well. I don’t think we need the microphone. Can everyone hear?

Without waiting for a reply he continued, My interest tonight is to report to you in the state of the college, as is my custom. And, to answer any questions that you might have. he removed half-glasses from his suit’s breast pocket, set them in place on his nose, and glanced at the manila pad in his left hand on which he had written some notes.

Enrollment is slightly down this year, About six percent. I view this as a temporary setback. The budget will be affected adversely a little by this decline, of course. So, I encourage the faculty to be sensitive to this situation when they submit budget requests. John Mariner, the rotund, red haired (once natural, now dyed) senator from the political science department glanced at Agnes Payer from English as if to say, So what’s new? The academic budget loses again.

Agnes, who was awkwardly tall, and John had been advocating for years for a larger share of the institution budget for instructional use, especially to increase library holdings. Their efforts had been to no avail.

President Hill raised himself to his full height; he glanced at the student senators. I am pleased to announce that we will be going forward with the planned expansion of the athletic facilities. The Board of Trustees is confident that this will be a wise long-term investment.

Maria Nicolosi had her usual internal feelings of conflict. As an elected student senator, she felt obligated to be an advocate for matters of interest to the student body. However, her common sense told her that the last thing a college in economic difficulty, with declining enrollment, needed was more athletic facilities. Especially since most Saint Barbara students were not athletic and didn’t care very much about being spectators either. Mostly they wanted to get a degree that would lead to a job that they needed to pay back debt they incurred to pay for their education. Moreover, the college’s teams were terrible despite the fact that virtually all team members were on full scholarship. Each was heavily recruited. Most were academically poor students.

John Mariner raised his hand, then stood without waiting to be called on. He tugged both lapels of his tan Harris tweed jacket, then brushed a piece of lint from the front of his cotton shirt as he waited to be recognized.

President Hill was not one to be easily flustered and he expected a reaction from the outspoken Dr. Mariner sooner or later. He smiled. Yes, John, question?

Yes sir, the veteran senator began, I’m wondering if you would provide us with a rationale for the decision. From our, that is the faculty, perspective, funds are in short supply. Faculty salaries are well below those elsewhere in the state, and the instructional budget has been reduced for three consecutive years. Also, will you be reporting tonight on our situation relative to the continued decline in SAT admission scores?

Thank you, John, the President’s tone was soothing. "These issues are, of course, all related to the well-being of Saint Barbara College as we know it now, and as we wish it to be in the future. Our position is that keeping enrollment at adequate levels is best accomplished with a well-educated, happy student body. Happy students are our most effective recruiting tools. Until we have the luxury of a large endowment, we must keep enrollment