This arch is about two and a half hours from the covenant, going down and towards the west. The corridor the characters know for access is off of the water carved corridors that lead to the cavern that once housed Mushussu. The corridors are obviously carved, but show signs of damage. There are many corridors branching off, many of which are natural. This is not a straight route. An interesting thing is that every third turn off along the way has carved pillars before the opening. Each pillar has two snakes curled around them. The deeper you penetrate into these side passageways, the more lost you find yourself. No one has managed to penetrate to whatever secrets may lie hidden along these ways.
The corridor ends at stone arch, carved with two life-like dolphins. The arch and the dolphins are carved from a grey stone that has an inner iridescence. They are frozen as if swiming. Any large amounts of magic used here will trigger an unusual effect, the dolphins will start swimming, lifelike, around the arch and through the floor, as if water.
This whole area attracts ghosts of a nautical bent. What they are doing so far away from the sea is anyone's guess.
Beyond the arch is a corridor, 3 paces wide and 100 paces long. On each side of the corridor are ruined sea scenes. On the left a sea at night, on the right in day. It appears, from the ruins, that this was once the same scene.
This leads to a large circular chamber, domed. 33 paces in diameter, with a central height of twenty-four paces. The room is lit by a soft glow that emanates from the ceiling. From this light one can barely see the cloud designs that grace the dome. The room itself has a fine white marble tessaract floor. The walls are mosaics of sea scapes, following the same pattern, left of the entrance is darkness, right is day. Opposite the entrance way is a nine pace wide, twelve paces high mosaic of Aphrodite in the Shell, rising from the sea. The mosaic has wide swaths of ruin. Two corridors, one at eight-o'clock the other at the four-o'clock areas lead from here. There is a new wooden door, with silver hinges, at five-o'clock.
|
The 'Marine Jupiter' is the reflection of Ocean, the 'separating deity' who remained behind with Father Heaven when Saturn and the others revolted. As already explained so often these gods have their aspects on every plane. Thus in the sublunary sphere we are told that 'Heaven terminates, Earth corroborates, and Ocean moves all generation' (Proc., Tim., v.298). Here we see the reason why Neptune is between Zeus and Pluto, a middle and not an extreme. The kingdom of Neptune extends as far as the sublunary regions, all below that properly belonging to Hades or Pluto. But there is yet another reflection of Ocean and his consort Tethys ('who imparts permanency to the natures which are moved by Ocean') in the sublunary regions themselves, so that 'their last processions are their divisible allotments about the earth: both those which are apparent on its surface, and those which under the earth separate the kingdom of Hades from the dominion of Neptune' (Proc., Crat.; Taylor, Myst. Hymns, p. 189). It may be of advantage, however, to point out that the Earth was imagined as surrounded on all sides by Ocean that Heaven was above and Tartarus below. Now of the three, Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, 'Jupiter subsists according to being; but Neptune according to power; and Pluto according to intellect. And though all these divinities are the causes of the life of all things, yet one is so essentially, another vitally, and another intellectually. . . . Neptune is an intellectual demiurgic God, who receives souls descending into generation [reincarnation]; but Hades is an intellectual demiurgic God, who frees souls from generation. 'For as our whole period receives a triple division, into a life prior to generation [beyond the sphere of reincarnation] which is Jovian, into a life in generation, which is Neptunian, and into a life posterior to generation which is Plutonian; Pluto, who is characterized by intellect, very properly converts [this being the characteristic of intellect] ends to beginnings, effecting a circle without a beginning and without an end, not only in souls, but also in every fabrication of bodies, and in short of all periods; which circle also he perpetually convolves. Thus for instance, he converts the ends to the beginnings of the souls of the stars, and the convolution of souls about generation and the like. [He is Lord of the Cycle of Generation and the Cycle of Necessity, and the Guardian of the "Ring Pass Not", on every plane.] Whereas Jupiter is the guardian of the life of souls prior to generation' (loc. cit., ibid., pp. 190-192). |
Each of the corridors angles fourty-five degrees from the room. Each is four paces wide. Each ends after fourteen paces at a lead seal, with hermetic engravings.
The wooden door leads off to the former sanctum of Christiano. This abandoned laboratory is still in fine shape, and has been locked. The chambers beyond have three things of interest. One, the main chamber contains a crystal, embedded on a dias, that seems to capture images that are detached aspects. The second is a small room that hasa ceiling that always depicts the outside sky, as if from the center of the caldera. And the third is a wall paiting of the Caldera as it was 300 years ago
Last modified: Thurs Nov 19, 1998 / Jeremiah Genest