The Black Popess could feel every hair on her head tingle as she continued to read the commentary that was eerily corresponding to all the clues left by Sauniere long ago on the facade of a house at Rennes-le-Chateau. Unbeknownst to Miss O and Mr. Lone Star, 22 was privy to certain astrological facts, facts that Olivia had touched upon in a recent email to her friend:

Have you read 'The Grail Legend' by Marie-Louise von Franz and Emma Jung, based largely on EJ's husband Carl Jung’s book on Grail and fish symbolism, Aion? EJ and her co-author compare the alchemical figure of Mercurius with the mythological mermaid known as Melusine, an ancestress of the Angevin royal house. The book even features a woodcut from 1588 of 'Melusine Wounding the Heart of Christ with the Lance of Longinus.' She also states the belief that the Grail is associated with the planet saturn (which she, like her husband, considers to be the patron deity of the Judaic religion). Whatever the case may be, it's kind of strange that Mercury is the ruler of Gemini, which could make the sun in Gemini allusion of June 15th really about Melusine. The traditional color of LIBRA (saturn in Libra) is GREEN......green, damn it! So, let's just play with this scenario: if sun in Gemini is Melusine (Magdalene) and saturn in Libra was the green queen, green ray, Grail or Emerald Tablets, who or WHAT is the moon in Scorpio - because if the sun is in this instance a woman (or maybe man-woman?), then the moon is a man...is it the dark sun, Christ....or old Horny Toad hisself? Nope, scratch the moon in Scorp is the dark sun idea, because the dark sun is associated with saturn, so that could be the green whatever hidden from the light...thus far I see, the Magdalene, the green Grail and a moon in Scorpio. What sayest thou?

Unable to respond honestly to her inquisitive friend's sleuthing, 22 smiled and remained silent. She might have been inclined to reticence, however, Bayley's damnable book was firing-up her Aries Equinox sun and she knew she would have to share this quote with Miss O:

It is evident that Water, whether in the form of sea, river, fountain, well, rain or dew, has universally been employed as a symbol of the cleansing, refreshing and invigorating qualities of Spirit. Virgil is represented cleaning Dante's face with dew, and it is eminently likely that the old idea that maidens were rendered beautiful by washing their faces in the dew of a May morning had its rise from a symbolic origin.

And also, quoting a Bayley contemporary, R.P. Knight, 22 might add:

The most obvious, and consequently the most ancient symbol of the productive powers of the waters, was a fish; which we accordingly find the universal symbol upon many of the earliest coins; almost every symbol of the male or active power, both of generation and destruction, being occasionally placed upon it; and Derceto the goddess of the Phoenicians, being represented by the head and body of a woman, terminating below in a fish, was employed to signify the same meaning; that is, the Spirit upon the waters; which is otherwise expressed by a similar and more common mixed figure, called a Triton, terminating in a fish, instead of an aquatic plant. The head of Prosperine appears, in numberless instances, surrounded by dolphins.

"Ah, but Derceto bore Semiramis, the Babylonian dove, did she not, Mr. Knight?" 22 thought as she began to write on her computer screen. "Yes, Olivia, the E-MER-ALD tablets are most probably guarded by Mermaids: whether named Cinderella, Maria Magdalena, Emma Calve or Melusine, be certain a water witch, a maid of mer, is privy to their hiding place."

"Yet do not forget this, my friend: Les Dames Blanches, or White Ladies of French mythology, have some of the same characteristics as do the Irish Banshees; therefore, it is possible that the Melusine myth originated in Ireland, was carried over time to the northern regions of France, such as Normandy and Brittany, and was gradually assimilated into local French myths. Perhaps this coincidence explains why, even today, Ireland is know as the Emerald Isle! A theory of which, I am certain, Ms. Maddie is not aware."

Marie Negre touched the green stone hanging from the chain about her neck and smiled. "I'll get my papers back yet," she vowed confidently. "We Irish Maids of Mer are very slippery when whetted-down with vintage 1894 French dew."







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