“The handle! There is no handle on the right window sash!” I noticed.
“It was already half broken at that moment. It was raining that night, a devil came to you and once again tried to inspire you to step down. The Guardian Angel was there, but suddenly…”
“My God, did I slip? And the handle, as the only thing I could hold on to, came off! They must have found it, there, on the ground, torn off … in my … well… hand … or nearby!”
“The handle might have been missing before. Everyone knew about your inclination, it never occurred to anyone that you had slipped.”
“They know everything in Heaven! There, in the Court of Judgment, I saw a huge screen on which my life is scrolled.”
“Not only actions and words are being judged, thoughts and desires as well.”
“That’s terrible, Ray. What can I do now without my body and voice?”
“Some people hear and see us. Shortly before the memory loss, you wanted to do something, I’m forbidden to tell you what it was, but it was your sincere wish. You need to fulfill it. I don’t know how, and whether it can affect the Court’s verdict. Come back here, dig into things.”
“There’s nothing but icons here!” I was surprised.
“You passed by the second room. The fear of pain clouds your vision so much that you stubbornly don’t notice many things.”
I returned to the corridor and found a door with a lock.
“Courage! What is there to be afraid of now?” Ray pushed me inside, and there was a mountain of things piled on top of each other from floor to ceiling.
“Oh,” I burst out. “How many days will it take me? I can’t get in time, Ray! Where did all the stuff come from? What are these things?”
“Trying is not torture. The torture’s in Hell in a frying pan.”
“Is it very hot in Hell?” I asked with an eye to the future.
“Unbearable. Shall we drink tea?”
Ouranoupoli
“Alice, jump!” Leah exclaimed when she saw me coming back from the Athos’ border. “Let’s see your Stairs!”
“Wow! It’s amazing!”
“I didn’t expect it either,” said Janis, coming up to us. “Both devils and souls are painted in details.”
Janis returned to the customers, Leah brought coffee and asked me,
“Jacob’s Ladder?”
“He has a different one. Jacob is the 3rd Old Testament Patriarch, the son of the Patriarch Isaac and Rebecca, revered in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He fought with the angel and after it was transformed and acquired a new name, Israel. He dreamed about the Ladder connecting Heaven and Earth, of 12 steps, with human faces on both sides and fiery faces at the top. The angel told Jacob the meaning of each step, but Jacob’s Ladder is interpreted as Christ’s descent to Earth – the incarnation of the Spirit into matter by passing 12 steps, I would say, 12 Spheres, the path from Heaven to Earth. It’s also a symbol of the Virgin, as the Akathist says, ‘Rejoice, Heavenly Ladder, by which God came down’. Jacob had 12 sons, the founders of the tribes. He lived 147 years. According to Egyptian customs, his body was embalmed by his children and transported to the Promised Land of Canaan for burial in the Cave in Hebron.”
“Where is it?”
“Hebron, or Kiryat Arba, the City of Four, not far from Jerusalem. The oldest of the 4 holy cities for the Jews, where King David was anointed to the kingdom. It’s divided into 2 parts, 20%, including the Cave of the Patriarchs, belongs to Israel, and 80% belongs to Palestine.”
“Have you been in that Cave? Well, tell me about it!”
“The Cave of the Patriarchs, or Machpela, is translated as ‘Double Cave’. They say whoever descends into it, immediately goes to the Kingdom of the Dead, or Paradise. Remember the icon of Abraham and Sarah, treating the angels. It looks like an icon of the Trinity. So, it was in Hebron that God appeared to Abraham and Sarah in the form of three strangers and told the good news – they would get a son. They had no children for a long time, perhaps because Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister. Abraham wanted to feed the wanderers with a calf, but it ran to the Cave. Abraham caught up with the animal, discovered the tombs of Adam and Eve, from which the Heavenly Light and the wonderful smell of Paradise emanated, and felt that Heaven and Earth were united in the Cave. By the way, ‘Hebron’ comes from the word ‘connection’. After the death of Sarah, Abraham bought a field with the Cave for the burial of his beloved wife. He was buried nearby.”
“Next to Adam and Eve?”
“Where, according to legend, God himself buried Adam, who had previously buried Eve there, and where the entrance to Paradise was located. Abraham lived about 175 years, the first of the 3 Patriarchs after the Flood. The second, the son of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, was buried there with his wife Rebecca. The son of Isaac, Jacob, was the one who saw the Ladder of 12 steps. Both he and his wife Leah …”
“Leah? That’s my name! What does the Cave look like?”
“Visually, the structure above the Cave resembles the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. They say it was built by King Herod 2,000 years ago, the outer walls are about 12 meters high, and the stones in the lower part are about 7.5 meters long. The territory is divided into two parts, in proportion approximately like Hebron itself, there is a mosque and a synagogue. Each has a separate entrance. Since 1967, the entrance to the Cave has been open to tourists 24 hours per day, but you can’t get into the underground part. There are symbolic tombstones inside the mosque and the synagogue.”
“Has no one ever gone down there?” Leah was disappointed.
“The entrance to the lower part was walled up by the Arabs in the 10th century. In the mosque, in the hall of Isaac, there is a small hole in the floor, 28 centimeters in diameter. Every morning it is opened and a burning lamp is lowered into the dungeon. One day a little girl was sent there to explore and measure the lower floor with steps. She saw the graves and a corridor leading to the next room. Several people entered the dungeon in a different way and found not one, but two levels connected by corridors, but the lower level was filled with earth to the top.”
“It’s a pity!” Leah sighed. “Although, the cave-like conditions help keep the bodies incorruptible. Remember the Seven Youths of Ephesus. If people enter inside, they’ll tear apart the bones, try to get them together after that! What Ladder was painted for you?”
“In the 6th century, the hegumen of the Sinai Monastery, the Monk John, originally from Constantinople, but moved to Egypt, where he spent 40 years as a hermit in the desert, wrote the book ‘The Stairs’, or ‘The Paradise Stairs’, ‘The Spiritual Tablets’. There are 30 steps of ascent to God in it, and the book, originally written for monks, is a guide to spiritual self-improvement. Each step means the renunciation of one of the earthly passions and the acquisition of the quality needed for the ascent to the Light. The 23 steps are dedicated to the fight against sins, and the 7 higher ones to the acquisition of virtues, the highest is the union of Faith, Hope and Love.”
“In a Greek book about the Posthumous Ordeals, there are exactly 23 tests. There is an icon ‘The 7 Pillars of Faith’!”
“They calculate 20 Ordeals in Russia. If one goes into detail, it could be even 40. John himself is depicted the closest to God on the Stairs with a scroll of his manuscript “The Stairs”. On the icon, John is without halo, since he hasn’t yet reached Christ, there are 3 steps left. Behind him,