Is Love Stronger than Death?

Is Love Stronger Than Death?

                               by @2006 Aurora Terrenus

(this story takes place sometime between 430-500AD)

"Father, I cannot believe you are leaving mother for an older woman" said the young boy.

The father drew his young son slose to him and kissed him on his forehead.

"No, my son, I am not leaving your mother for an older woman.  I am leaving your mother for an old woman.  But I will return.

I am sailing tomorrow to the island of Samos to seek an old wise woman who lived in Alexandria during the height and decline of its renaissance and perhaps may be the only witness that is free to tell us what really happened. She wrote some books on Alchemy too."

"But, Father, can't you just read her books?"

"No, my son, the books she wrote were burned along with hundreds of thousands of books in the great fire of the Royal and Public Libraries in Alexandria.  When I return I will tell you all of her stories, but I am compelled now to go and meet her for she is very, very old."

"Father, what is her name?"

"Alithea of Alexandria."

Now this is one of Alithea's stories....

          IS LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH?

Alexandria had become a beacon of light and a rainbow bridge uniting three continents - Asis, Africa and Europe celebrating a new spirit and a renaissance of culture, art, science, math and more.

Scholars, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, the greatest thinkers, the greatest minds, the greatest writers of the ancient world were drawn to Alexandria making it the world's first major learning center and the oldest university in the world.

The Alexandrian Library was the largest most magnificent library.  It had from four hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand priceless hand-written papyrus scrolls.

The outer library or public library had more than forty thousand books.  The libraries were next to the palace and the museum and the seafront where there were warehouses of books.

It seems as if for hundreds of years all of the kings of Alexandria loved books.  They had custom officials search every ship that came into Alexandria harbor and there were many for the lighthouse Pharos at Alexandria was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world making Alexandria one of the busiest ports.

The kings paid ransoms and searched ships not for exotic treasures of gold or silver or silk or spices but for original manuscripts.  In return for their manuscripts, the owners were paid huge deposits of gold and silver coins.  And it is told that all deposits were forfeited by all kings making books more valuable than gold or silver.

Then the mood of Alexandria began to change.  The decree of all books forbidden not only to read but forbidden to own was followed by the decree that ordered all books considered heresy to be committed to the fire.

I left Alexandria after Hypatia was murdered, after the library was burned, but before people began destroying their own private libraries of cherished books not to be caught, condemned or murdered for owning certain books.

Hypatia was the last great teacher before the library was burned.

Hypatia was a scientist always loving the assumption that any time, any place, the same physical causes give the same physical results.  In mathematics, that past, present and future equations ended in the same results.

Hypatia was also a philosopher of the oldest school of wisdom accepting that insight, intuition and creative imagination birth genius.

When Hypatia, which in Greek means 'highest', stood at the podium in the auditorio of the great Royal Library all were captivated not only by her words but also by her beauty.  Some even said that it was as if the goddess Athena with all of the beauty and wisdom in the world was standing before them and speaking.  Hypatia was the most popular teacher.  Her lectures had sometimes as many as five thousand people.

I always knew when Hypatia entered the front gate of my house.  There was a certain way that the gate swung open, as if a little breeze was blowing and then instead of coming up the front steps, Hypatia would walk around to the side garden and sit in the shade under the fig tree and call to me.  "Alithea, come!"

A week before Hypatia was murdered, she told this dream to me:

"I dreamed that I went through a purification ceremony and somehow came out on another side without my mortal flesh.

It was as if I was spiritual energy experiencing ultra-life.

As if I had been purified by fire; and love and wisdom and peace were the triumphant powers.

I dreamed four angels took me up through celestial spaces to a beautiful garden of the blessed where love and wisdom welcomed me with open arms and a kiss.

I sat beneath a singing tree laden with blue roses and I experienced love and happiness and an illumined center of eternity.

Alithea, I do not know how to say it exactly but I knew in an instant Life without Death."

On the morning of Hypatia's murder, I went three times to the door thinking that I heard her footsteps approaching.

All the while, unknown to me, a mob met Hypatia on the road as she left the library.

Hypatia, the scientist, the mathematician, the author, the thinker, a genuine human being and my friend from the cradle was killed because she was also a philosopher, a priestess of the goddess and a pagan.

To believe something different, is that a crime punishable by death?

And what a bloody, barbarous, brutal death.  Before they burned what remained of her in the churchyard, they had dragged her through the city, had beaten her and they had scrapped off her skin with abalone and pottery shells.

As if killing her would destroy the memory ofher, her works and her existence.

Had her dream been a harbinger of a divinatory or prophetic secret?

That day that Hypatia told her dream to me is the last time that I saw her.

The last thing Hypatia ever said to me as she left my house that day was ~

"We are one with the world, the All.  And the world and the All are one with us.

Let's pass it on, Alithea.

Love IS stronger than Death."

*******************

notes:

There are contradictory dates among historians about when this really happened.

Hypatia 335-370 AD

Suda Lexicon, a 10th century Encyclopedia lists Hypatia as a famed philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and author of:

- A Commentary on the Arithmetica of Diophantus

- A Commentary on the Conics of Apollonious

- Editor of one of her famous father Theon's book - Commentary on the Almagest of Ptolemy

inventor of the astrolabe and the hydrometer.

March 10 - Martydom of the divine Hypatia

************

1995 Egyptian and British archaeologists discover site of Great Library in Alexandria with auditorio capable of holding 5,000 persons.

Great Library - complete annihilation 409AD

Decree to destroy all things pagan 391 AD

Alexander the Great 356-323 BC

Library had sections on law, medicine, tragedy, comedy, religion, lyric poetry, mathematics, science, miscellanea - Taoist writings, Buddhist texts, Old and New Testament Books, Goddess religions, alchemy, 2 million lines of Zoroastrianish, history of Babylon in Greek.