C. Palov - Templar's Code

Seating herself on the divan, Edie tucked one leg under her bum, the silk kimono a splash of color against the white leather. A vibrant red poppy in impish full bloom. “I’m still confused as to why the Emerald Tablet is considered a sacred object. If it’s a big emerald, then, yeah, I can see why it’s priceless. But that’s not the same thing as being sacred .”

“According to legend, the Emerald Tablet isn’t made of emeralds but was instead fashioned from a green crystalline substance. Thus the confusing moniker.” Caedmon crossed his legs at the knee. Noticing a hairy shin, he frowned. While Edie and Rubin both seemed perfectly at ease, he felt slightly ridiculous gadding about in his bedclothes.

“Which doesn’t answer the lady’s query,” Rubin said around a chewy mouthful, the man already on his third macaroon. “The Emerald Tablet is not considered sacred; it is sacred. One does not have to believe in a god to respect the sanctity of creation. Oh, for God’s sake! Drink up!” He jutted his chin at their untouched martini glasses. “You’re acting like a pair of Calvinists at a prayer meeting.”

Edie obediently raised her glass. “Earlier, when we were upstairs, Caedmon also mentioned something about the secret of creation. Do you guys mean the Creation with a capital C?”

Rubin spread his arms wide as he gazed at the ceiling, his expression theatrically pious. “ ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ Yes, my dear, capital C .” He lowered his arms and smiled. As pleased as Punchinello after he’d committed a truly heinous act. “The Emerald Tablet contains the code to set the whole of Creation into motion.”

“Unlock the code and one can create the primeval atom from which the fabric of time and space comes into existence,” Caedmon explained.

At hearing that, Edie’s jaw nearly came unhinged. “Whoa! You’re talking about the Big Bang, right? Admittedly, quantum physics isn’t my strong suit, but according to the theory, the universe was created when one incredibly dense atom exploded.” No sooner were the words spoken than her brow furrowed. “Now I’m really confused. Is the Emerald Tablet a device of some sort?”

“No, it’s not a device. It is a relic. And as Rubin so aptly put it, the relic contains the code for creation. Sequenced steps to put the process into motion.” Caedmon raised the martini glass to his lips. “A Genesis code, if you will.”

“Okay, we know from the frontispiece that Moses mined the Emerald Tablet, but who made it? How did it become, well, the Emerald Tablet?” Edie’s gaze ricocheted between Caedmon and Rubin, signaling she’d take an answer from either court.

Rubin was the first to hit the ball. “References to the Emerald Tablet have turned up in several Egyptian source materials, most notably the Book of the Dead, which dates to 1500 B.C. And while it’s true that the relic’s authorship is unknown, the honor is most often accorded to the Egyptian god Thoth whom the ancients considered the originator of all forms of knowledge, hidden and seen.”

Edie’s eyes opened wide. “Thoth? How can that be? I thought that Thoth had the body of a man and the head of an ibis. How could a bird-man have created the Emerald Tablet?”

Lurching to his feet, Rubin strode across the room to the baby grand piano and seated himself at the keyboard. “The aforementioned Book of the Dead records that in the Zep Tepi, that being the epoch before the Great Flood some twelve thousand years ago, mysterious visitors appeared in Egypt, the sole survivors of Atlantis. These visitors, who were deemed gods by the more primitive Egyptians, introduced the hidden stream of knowledge to the Nile valley. Thoth, the preeminent visitor of the group, became known as the vehicle of all knowledge, the word made manifest. For it was Thoth who created language, science, and medicine. Thus he was deified as Thoth the Thrice Great.”

Pronouncement made, Rubin wiggled all ten fingers, then launched into a Schubert piano lied. Winterreise , unless he was greatly mistaken. Caedmon wondered at the musical selection, one of those dreary pieces that harkened to the pain of love lost.

As abruptly as it began, the recital ended.

“There are numerous ancient writers who claim that Thoth hid a number of sacred relics and esoteric texts inside a massive pair of magnificently crafted columns,” Caedmon said, untangling a few more strands. “The cache, which included the Emerald Tablet, remained concealed for centuries.”

Still seated at the piano bench, Rubin swiveled in their direction. “Which brings us to the great Egyptian heretic, the pharaoh Akhenaton who ruled during the Eighteenth Dynasty.”

“The charge of heresy was leveled when Akhenaton insisted that there was not a central god in the Egyptian pantheon; there was only one god, the Aten,” Caedmon informed Edie, the conversation having veered to a topic that had long fascinated him. “Aten was declared the Supreme Being of Radiant Light, his divine essence embodied in the rays of the sun disk and manifested in the creative process.”

Edie set her empty martini glass on top of the cocktail table. “If Aten was declared the only god, what happened to the bird-man Thoth?”

Rubin graced her with his trademark Cheshire smile. “Absolutely nothing. The creator of knowledge, Thoth preceded and transcended the entire Egyptian pantheon. During Akhenaton’s reign, the sacred Eye of Thoth was transformed into the Radiant Disk of Aten.”

Edie’s brows drew together. “Sorry. Not following.”

Rubin got up from the piano bench and walked over to the built-in bookcase, where he retrieved a sheet of paper and a pencil. Reseating himself in the Le Corbusier knockoff, he quickly drew three images. When finished, he shoved the sheet of paper in Edie’s direction.

“A thousand words, as they say. The Eye of Thoth symbolizes knowledge.” Rubin tapped the drawing on the far left. Then he tapped the sketch in the middle. “The Radiant Disk of Aten symbolizes the divine creation. And, finally, we have the All-Seeing Eye, which embodies and combines the attributes of both Thoth and Aten. Knowledge wedded to creation. Each builds upon the previous one. But at the core of each symbol, you will find Thoth, who designed and fashioned the Emerald Tablet. Which contains the secret of all knowledge and all creation.”

“And that is the reason why the pharaoh Akhenaton searched the whole of Egypt, desperate to find the Emerald Tablet that had been hidden away by Thoth centuries before.” Caedmon leaned forward, the conversation about to get very interesting. “The task of finding the Emerald Tablet fell to Akhenaton’s most trusted magician and fellow Aten devotee, the aptly named Tuthmose.”

“Aptly named because Tuthmose means ‘son of Thoth.’ ” Rubin’s eyes twinkled with delight, the man well aware of where the conversation was headed.

“And though Tuthmose located the Emerald Tablet in a pillar at Hermopolis, the discovery came too late to save Akhenaton’s empire.” Caedmon reached for a macaroon, his first of the evening. “When the heretical pharaoh died, a rebel army led by the ousted temple priests descended on Akhenaton’s capital city of Armana. It fell to Tuthmose to save the royal court from the impending slaughter.”

“Tuthmose and his entourage fled Egypt in the dead of night, their trusty Hebrew slaves in tow. A mass exodus unlike any other in history,” their host said airily, waving his right hand in the air to punctuate the remark. “And the only reason the venture succeeded is because Tuthmose had the Emerald Tablet. An Egyptian grimoire, the inscriptions carved onto the Emerald Tablet enabled Tuthmose to create the Ark of the Covenant, that legendary weapon of mass destruction.”