The Cauldron by Charles Goodwin Chapter 1

The Founding Of Chiron

Chapter 1

The Amsterdam Connection

‘I feel all Hell is going to break loose!

Yet I’m not really here. I must stay detached. Merely an observer to this surreal drama.’

Rebecca Childs reassured herself with all the raw courage she could muster. Her intuition crashed at the door of her mind for attention.

‘My body is here. My consciousness is directed to this play of life. But I am total, beyond spatial time and space.’

‘I feel all Hell is going to break loose!’ her whisper now trembled with grave inner understanding. ‘God, why do I keep thinking that?’

Rebecca had no way of foretelling how prophetically accurate her heart feeling was to prove.
No way of even remotely conceptualising, the intensity and total ferocity that a Master of the black arts, breaking loose from the shackles of the lower dimensions, could materialise in the physical world.

There was however but one certainty, beyond even a dark shadow of a lingering doubt - today was the beginning of the end. And her higher self sensed acutely that she no longer belonged.

A morbid augury or inner knowing, rather than logic, had guided her for the last time to the foreboding square in Amsterdam, but she was certain that today would be her final protest.

The early morning late October mist silhouetted ghostly images as the pallid crowds gathered. Unfamiliar strained faces from the peace movement greeted her with unfeeling distrust.

She crunched over the frosty grass . Vapour escaped from her frigid lips as she exhaled. Her own vibrationary rate quickly became affected by the depressive energy about her.

The group mind beast was forming.

She scanned the gathering. The tattered banners, the placards, the worn out slogans and clichés: With an eerie detachment, she felt as if an apocalyptic play was about to commence. A play of profound destiny in which she would not only be an observer, but also an unwitting participant.

Rebecca’s awareness heightened as the usual dimensions of time and space became translucent and unreal.

2

Rebecca Childs was now utterly dissatisfied with the peace organisation. An organisation, she thought, had become so hypocritically militant.

As far as she was concerned, the international Peace Movement had been secretly infiltrated - manipulated at the highest level - reduced to a sinister vehicle. A controlled pawn to further the covert agendas of those who were tightening their rigid grip on power across the globe.

But she wondered:

Who are the manipulators of power?

The spontaneous outbreak of riots - of strikes - the various bank closures: The economies of many third world countries collapsing; degenerating into bloodied feudal systems. Mass unemployment, food shortages and hour long queues were now commonplace. The democracies of the world appeared to be slowly disintegrating into compost. As if a sinister world jigsaw was being sadistically completed, piece by enslaving piece.

Rebecca’s fertile mind demanded answers.

But the jigsaw was complicated and unsolvable.

Well almost, perhaps.

The challenge was voracious and irresistible to Rebecca. Whether out of an insatiable morbid curiosity, or a devoted sense of humanity, she would risk her life in the attempt to complete the jigsaw.

She grimaced despairingly.

The papers that early morning were filled with the grisly details of another terrorist bomb that had exploded in a crowded cinema in Hamburg, three days previous.

105 dead and at least twice as many wounded.

Everyone knew which group was responsible.

Her mind centred on the ugly world phenomenon, the hideous gangs of urban gorillas known as the ‘Radicals’, who haunted the major cities, terrifying the populations.

The Radicals readily took responsibility for the planting of the latest bomb. They boasted they needed the publicity as a campaign for their latest recruitment drive. A fearless attraction to death and violence was apparently a pre-requisite of membership.

The Radicals were a cult-like terrorist movement, run by powerful underworld war-lords, who each administered their own agreed territories - and their own particular brand of justice. A sinister, inter-linked organisation whose proclaimed agenda was simplistic - and murderous.

Total and complete anarchy.

And intent upon the destruction of any remaining decency in the remnants of a decaying and dying society. But the Radicals too served their purpose well. Rebecca knew their existence was neither co-incidental nor a cancerous accident pertaining to the times. The Radicals symbolised the globe’s tragic upheaval. They were ‘archetypal’, but not the architects.

And of course, an unparalleled looming world disaster necessitated tough counter measures of unparalleled ferocity.

Thus, the Radicals became the justification for the formation of the new global security service, the ominous ‘Peace Keepers’ force, created some 15 months previous.

International co-operation at last! she’d thought. If only it were possible.

Rebecca’s cynicism pained and her face hardened , as she pictured in her mind’s eye, the manner in which the feared security and intelligence units, ironically named the Peace Keepers, had mutated.

They’d began their operations simultaneously, in all major cities of Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and America. For some obscure reason, only Australia and New Zealand had elected to remain neutral.

Another piece of the puzzle yet to be explained.

The tyrannising Peace Keepers were falsely heralded by the controlled media as the saviour of society. At first they boasted many ‘apparent’ successes against the Radicals.

The future looked hopeful - and the public held their breath.

The nasty tasting medicine prescribed by the world’s political doctors, as the panacea of all ills, appeared to be successful.

And the tabloids relentlessly splashed their propaganda onto a shell shocked public.

‘Global Peace Keepers Ensure Peace For Our World,’
‘Peace Keepers Versus The Radicals’
‘Global Breakthrough For International Co-Operation’

‘Some break through,’ Rebecca murmured angrily to herself, ‘This abhorrent Gestapo has been re-created to terrorise us into submission, not to protect us!’

Creeping forward silently - but swiftly, and with now near total authority the Peace Keepers, month by month, cemented their power and domination over the populace. Their intimidating military style of uniform confused and overwhelmed the public into passive acceptance.

A public that was only too aware that the impotent regular police force had ‘failed miserably’ in their blunted attempts to eliminate the Radicals or to control crime at bearable levels.

As an ‘aware’ schoolteacher, Rebecca considered, that she of all people, should have known better. Yet even she was conned with the orchestrated deception. The constant propaganda of war, of civil unrest, of economic disasters. Surely any international co-operation, simply had to be a step in the right direction.

Rebecca couldn’t validate all of her theories.

She was after all, just one concerned individual. An angry and somewhat cynical lone soul, in a world that seemed to be going slowly mad.

A world hurtling to a new dark age.

Or to a miraculous new beginning!

She originally joined the peace movement to render a personal protest against the new world global system that was deliberately being introduced. She felt an icy disdain that the increasing disappearance of outspoken humanitarians, was accepted without a whimper of protest by a repressed and gullible population.

The Peace Keepers’ tentacles tightened, advancing ever onward to complete subjugation of the populace.

The constant eroding of the individual’s personal freedoms, the repression, and the acute realisation that the so called democratic system was an illusion, became not only unacceptable to her, but repugnant to her whole concept of the spiritual advancement of the planet.

I just couldn’t watch with apathetic eyes and do nothing. I needed to become actively involved somehow - in some way, she’d convinced herself with charged idealism.

The peace movement had promised much to her and delivered so little.

She was now an old soul of thirty four years, bright blue eyed and alertly intelligent.

Her deep understandings and experiences of the spiritual and supernatural areas of life had brought her into sharp conflict with the ordered and repugnant changes taking place about her.

The over populated human race was now at cross roads.

And God seemed a hell of a long way off!

Rebecca’s life had been radically transformed from her comfortable but claustrophobic earlier years in England. She’d felt unbridled freedom upon escaping from the subtle, yet possessive clutches of her conservative, and to her way of thinking, narrow minded parents.

Her father was a computer hooked accountant, efficient, strict and ‘Protestantly God fearing’. Her mother kept the house tidy and forever worried about performing her lacklustre duties correctly.

Rebecca never really felt a sense of belonging to her family.

Some relationships are karmic, thought Rebecca. One knows there is a connection deep within. Other relationships are purely physical and a heart connection is lacking however hard one tries. But alas, the destructive and most useless emotion of guilt fails to understand the difference between a karmic or physical relationship.

Releasing herself from the dollops of guilt associated with this feeling of non-belonging, was a mountain she was still climbing. A Geminian free spirit with a stubborn Mars in Taurus, Rebecca was now an independent loner and loved it.

She did not suffer fools at all well. Especially males.

And unless an unlikely miracle, in the form of the perfectly, imperfect, challenging man, occurred in her life, she was not about to give up that freedom so easily.

The previous Wednesday she’d received the long awaited acceptance to her offer to volunteer her services as a teacher in a new alternative life style community being set up in Australia.

Rebecca had felt ecstatic upon reading the letter.

The fast expanding community was known as Chiron and situated in the picturesque Blue Mountains of New South Wales. To Rebecca, Chiron appeared to be the sole light in a darkening world. A spiritual straw to desperately clutch hold of - a life saving ark in a stormy sea of despair.

Chiron was headed by a mysterious, yet beautiful, shamanic North American Indian God-Man, known by his followers as Wakonda. Wakonda is the Sioux Indian term for ‘all embracing essence.’ Rebecca had heard from her new age friends a great deal about this new ‘Christ’ or ‘Buddha’ that had incarnated on the planet. She experienced an instant profound spiritual connection when she first sighted Wakonda’s picture.

The love emitting from his eyes, she thought, just seemed to engulf her and cry out a soul call, awakening distant memories deep within her spirit. Wakonda was famous for his miracles of healing and the immense celestial love and total compassion he gave forth.

His profound teachings merged the beautiful dream time spirituality of the Australian Aboriginals and the Shamanic Indian, with the esoteric teachings of the world’s major religions.

‘All religions have as their essence, Love, Truth, Peace, Non-Violence, Right Conduct and Service,’ claimed Wakonda, ‘And that the one all encompassing God, is the God of us all.’

‘Are you God?’ Wakonda would often be asked by his followers.

‘Yes I am!’ he would answer, without a taint of ego and with much love and compassion. And then he would add, ‘But so are you! All is God. The only difference between you and I, is that I am aware of my essence. And I am here to lead you to that same essence and understanding. Love is God!’

Wakonda’s parables gently reached out and touched the purest inner essence of the soul, opening new realities of wondrous experience for the seeker. To actually live near his physical form! Rebecca’s spirit glowed with attunement to the positive creative thought.

As she ambled in the crowd down the narrow, cobbled Amsterdam street her heart was already in Chiron.

3

‘Down with fascism! We demand our freedom! - Down with fascism! We demand our freedom!’

Rebecca’s serenity shattered as the loud-hailers began to chant their monotonous slogans. She sensed the intimidating anger of the demonstrators mounting.

But she felt alone. Alone and indifferent from the group beast mind - a mob consciousness - forming like a shapeless emanation of destructive evil about her.

She was near the front of the column - three rows back and to the left. Close enough to observe the self appointed leaders whipping up the dire hatred of the frustrated protesters. Close enough for her to realise that something was wrong - terribly and insanely wrong!

She glanced over her shoulder. She realised that this crowd was strangely larger than usual. About six hundred, she thought. Mostly aged from late teens to early forties. Some carried makeshift shields. Others were armed with baseball bats and clubs.

And all had that same fetid look of anger and frustration in their possessed eyes.

‘Hell, they seem ready for combat,’ she murmured, and of course she was right. The throbbing unease in her stomach intensified.

‘Peace for Mankind!’ The chanting continued but now in a far higher volume.

A smirk of cynicism crossed her face as she grappled with the irony that for people who were protesting for their individual freedoms, why the need for such group or class action?

She asked herself, If humans are created in God’s own image, why then are we rendered so pathetically inadequate as individuals. Why would a loving Creator tease us with torments of unobtainable Godly visions?

A silver BMW in the path of the human juggernaut was quickly overturned and set ablaze.

Rebecca recoiled, and was forced to shield herself from the searing heat of the flames. The stench of burning rubber and oil clogged her nostrils and made her eyes fill with black tears. The polluting smoke soared high into the sunless sky. The noisy crowd hooted and jeered victoriously.

And the protesters lumbered onwards.

The strongest of the leaders suddenly stopped and flexed his muscles. With a grunting Olympic weight lifting pose, he swatted and lifted a heavy concrete planter box, up over his shaven bald head. He stood erect, held his wavering position momentarily, as if waiting for the three lights signifying all clear, then hurled the 60 kilos of concrete, through a newsagent’s shop plate glass window.

The deafening crash, sounded like an exploding terrorist bomb. Splinters of razor sharp glass sprayed back onto the glaring protesters.

‘Down with the fascist media. The propaganda weapon of capitalists!’ he bellowed emotionally in Dutch.

A blazing torch went hurtling through the shattered window onto the inflammable magazines and newspapers. Red orange flames spewed into the street, sucked by the pressure of the fierce up draft. Within minutes the building became a burning pyre of released hatred.

The hysteria frightened Rebecca. She felt the tension rise electrifyingly up her spine.

‘We’re no better than the Peace Keepers or the radicals,’ she gasped out loud. ‘This is crazy, we are supposed to be a peace movement.’

But nobody agreed.

The group mind beast was now well in control.

The crowd lurched into Spuistaat parallel to the Singel (canal).

Rebecca felt nauseous and claustrophobic. She was now shoved along. The compressed wall of protesters fanned the narrow street. There was no way out but to keep staggering onward.

Another car became a target of vented rage. Like the BMW, it was at first rocked, then lifted onto its side and effortlessly overturned as if made of balsa wood. The flames at first flickered, then exploded into a hellish petrol fireball.

But the automatic roar of approval fizzled to a silent horror.

The protesters halted - stopped dead en masse!

Rebecca stood mummified.

From two opposite side lanes, only one hundred metres ahead, three columns of the dreaded Peace Keepers marched stealthily across in front of the crowd.

They carried automatic rifles and blood red truncheons.

And the hated name ‘PEACE KEEPERS’ and their logo, an inverted pyramid and panther’s head enclosed within a yellow circle, was emblazoned on their shields and helmets and on the backs of their black leather jackets.

Their knee boots were known to be steel reinforced at the toes and heals, like safety shoes, but for different, more painful reasons. They epitomised darkness and were trained rigorously in the ways of torture and execution..

Rebecca began to tremble. Her fingers and ears felt painfully stiff with frigid fear. She had some idea of what to expect. And that only made the terror multiply in her heart. In the constant TV news broadcasts, she’d often seen the Peace Keepers bloodied assaults and street battles on the armed radicals.

‘My God,’ she gasped with pure terror and some disbelief, ‘Today it’s the peace movements turn. The bastards are actually going to attack the Peace Movement.’

‘They’re at the back of us as well. We’re trapped!’ yelled a distraught woman further back in the crowd, shattering the tense silence.

Rebecca’s pulse raced. Her breathing irregular. She spun a glance anxiously to her rear. The crowd broke into frenzied convulsion. Wild screams of panic filled Beursstraat. Bodies and bruised limbs crashed into each other with fiendish ferocity.

A hefty shoulder pushed Rebecca violently from the side, catching her off guard. She became unbalanced, stumbled over a kneeling sobbing young woman, and crashed to the damp cobbles.
‘Someone please help me! I’m so scared,’ cried the young hysterical woman in English, hands clasped over her ears.

Only Rebecca could hear her depressed cry amidst the violent sea of legs.

Rebecca tried frantically to get up. A boot crushed down on her flat hand.
She squealed with intense pain.

‘Get off!’ she yelled, punching blindly at the leg of the culprit swashing her fingers. The boot lifted just two centimetres at the heel. She pulled her sore hand free.

Even above the thundering bedlam she heard the Peace Keepers’ order bellowed through the loud speakers. The young English woman beside her, slowly stood up in a state of shock, like a rabbit caught in the glare of high beam headlights.

‘Duck down!’ yelled Rebecca. ‘Don’t be a fool!’

The woman didn’t move.

‘Pick your targets. Take aim! Fire!’

‘Crack!’

The first volley of high powered rubber bullets rang out. An instant aftermath of painful screams echoed through Beursstraat.

‘Fire!’ The second and third volleys, in military precision, followed within seconds.

The young English woman didn’t cry out. Her expression remained blank. Scarlet blood gushed from her face. She slumped backwards, at first held up by the crowd, but then crumpled to the street next to Rebecca.

‘Oh God!’ cried Rebecca in horrified agony.

In place of the dead young woman’s left eye was a bloodied gaping recess. The rubber bullet had pierced through the eye and into her brain, killing her instantly.

Rebecca’s became angry. Her bare instincts was to survive at all costs. Her pranic adrenalin empowered her higher self to fight for her primal right and duty - the right to claim her destiny.
Maimed bodies fell dazed and became trampled in the now total and utter panic. Rebecca tight lipped and jaws locked, could hear the Peace Keepers shouting brutishly in Dutch. She dared look up for a split second.

A tortured expression enslaved her milk-white face. ‘Oh no,’ she cussed, ‘The caustic water cannons!’

Six of the Peace Keepers were lining up, each with bulky twin cylinders strapped to their backs. In their hands were the familiar tubular cannons, attached by hose to those dreaded cylinders.
She instinctively clambered, sidestepped and crawled her way to the adjacent buildings. Her thoughts now disconnected by shock.

The reinforced doors were locked and barred.

She glanced back.

The chemical water cannons began to extract their grisly toll. Gushes of bright pink torrents, fired high into the air, rained down upon the hapless screaming prey. The caustic additive burning exposed skin like fiery sun burn, making the eyes stream in acidic tears.

Rebecca shielded her face with her jacket. She dodged and fought her way between one barricaded shop and the next. Her limbs felt weighted and uncooperative.

The rest of the Peace Keepers now began to march towards the pitiful rabble, shoulder to shoulder, their truncheons thundered upon their shields in unison. They drew terrorisingly closer.

A sob burst uncontrollably from her lips.

They halted, only twenty four metres ahead of her. She saw them donning their alien like gas masks. Her mouth was croaked dry.

‘Quickly now! Fire!’

Rebecca quivered.

The Peace Keepers lopped their canisters of ‘happy gas’ into the bloodied and soaked crowd.
No smile came to Rebecca’s face. Instead her forehead glistened with icy sweat. Escape was her only soul call. The Peace Keeper’s infamous happy gas was so named because of the tranquil look on the faces of its victims, as they’d stagger dazed, before lapsing into temporary unconsciousness.

She was deathly aware that any unfortunate soul still standing, or even partly conscious after the gas attack would either be clubbed or on the receiving end of those steel reinforced boots.

And how many of the unconscious victims will be dumped into vans, never to be heard of again, she raged mindfully as she battled through the terror.

The Peace Keepers were total in their brutal efficiency.

A narrow, one and a half metre wide, no exit laneway, the barriers demolished by the stampede, and leading to one of Amsterdam’s many canals, became Rebecca’s only chance of escape.

Unhesitantly, she scrambled over the unconscious and maimed bodies and hurtled herself down the lane. Her heart thumped against her rib cage.

Her fear at the knife edge of consciousness.

She tripped on the slippery cobbles. She dared not look back. Clambering to her feet she could hear the thuds and the wailing terror echoing behind her, as the Peace Keepers bludgeoned and kicked the hapless remaining victims.

‘There’s one bitch getting away!’ screeched a nasal voice in Dutch.

A hurried shot seared past her ear - missing by only centimetres. She ducked, even though the bullet was past. She weaved and her weaving probably saved her.

Two more bullets pinged past at the vulnerable eye level and ricocheted against the red brick side wall.

Without slowing her sprint, at the edge of the canal she held her nose and took an almighty jump into the icy bracken water.

Her eyes opened under the cold olive water. Visibility was nil. A contrasting eerie silence, except for the amplified sound of her bubbles, engulfed her. It reminded her of being submerged in a soupy flotation tank - submerged with the ghosts of the legions of poor labourers, who with picks and shovels and waist deep in icy water, carved the canals out of the worthless swamps.

Rebecca’s appreciation and feeling for Amsterdam, a city originating in history as a refuge from religious and political persecution, never did extend to a passionate love for the 80 kilometres of murky canals.

The water felt soft, almost slimy.

She broke the surface gasping and choking. The noise was now deafening. She swam desperately, up and across the waterway to head for the nearest steps and freedom.

‘Ah!’ She groaned. A sharp piercing pain in her back made her gasp and swallow mouthfuls of the putrid canal water.

‘I think I hit her!’ An excited heavy voice shrieked from the edge of the canal, from where she had just jumped.

But the water had also taken the velocity from the rubber bullet.

Through the blurred haze of fatigued shock, she was able to make out four or five black uniformed figures with automatic rifles aimed at her.

She could hear their haunting mocking laughter, as if the whole brutal assault on the protest march was merely their afternoon’s sport.

Rebecca was to the point of nervous and physical collapse. Her face grimaced with death white trauma. She groaned with pain as she battled through the water to the steps.
She struggled up the stony bank.

Three more shots rang out. She slithered, rather than crawled a few metres, then collapsed into semi unconsciousness. Her soaked through skirt and blouse silhouetting her bruised and supple body.

Desperate and delirious, she called out into the ethers.

‘Wakonda, help me, please help me.’

The firing stopped!

She was only vaguely aware of the large chauffeur driven black Mercedes Benz braking to a halt. A strong tall shadowy figure, athletically jumped out from the back seat and lifted her gently into the car.

She felt herself drifting into unconsciousness. Rebecca clung earnestly to her rescuer - like a little girl cuddling her safe, secure daddy.

She recognised the distinctive smell of a French aftershave.

Rebecca knew her perfumes. Since her teenage years, when ever an occasion to stroll through a major department store arose, she would purposefully select her fragrance for the day, by testing an expensive perfume on herself. In the same fashion she’d kept abreast of the aftershaves - always romantically imagining the type of male who might wear each sensual fragrance.

Her rescuer was definitely wearing Egoiste by Chanel.

A feeling of warmth and security overwhelmed her as the sleepy darkness enveloped.

And for her rescuer too, there was just one certainty. Beyond even a dark shadow of a lingering doubt, today was the beginning of the end.

*
-----000O000-----

*

Copyright 2004 – 2006 © Charles Goodwin. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, storage in a retrieval system or otherwise, without the prior express written permission of Charles Goodwin.

All characters - other than obvious historical figures - in this book 666 The Cauldron are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Prospective publishers with expressions of interest are invited to contact Charles Goodwin at cgoodwin@wealth-creators-club.com

.