SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,29

rocked back and forth in the warm shimmer, started to keep me from finding my bearings. Our claws, partially protruding from our toes, pawed the stony soil, so that our steps caused some eerie echoing. Afar I could see a junction, which actually raised the panic inside me. Samantha though stayed totally unaffected from the danger of our excursion and crossed the underworld like a fired bullet, which for sure wouldn’t miss its target.

»Theosophy goes back to the last quarter of the 19th century. It’s the attempt to create one united religion for mankind out of all existing religions. Arisen from spiritism, which back then had affected the whole world. This already had been characterized by the longing for the ability to test religious messages with scientific methods, for example the immortality of the soul and life after death. With the help of human psychics, the spiritists tried to get in contact with the netherworld and learn about its creatures. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, the German-Russian founder of Theosophy, was such a psychic. The common statements on the netherworld weren’t enough for here, so she tried to bring light to the history of mankind and the cosmos. This is how they exceeded Spiritism and gave birth to Theosophy.«

»Alright«, I said. »But maybe we should go back and listen to La Traviata once again before we attend some resurrection of the dead?«

»I would love to laugh at it if it wasn’t such a serious matter, Francis. This club is dangerous, even more than that, meanwhile they’ve become a mean cult. No surprise, as Theosophy is also the mother of all strange New-Age-movements and the pseudo-scientific foundation of racial ideologies. The Nazis already referred to Theosophy, and Hitler was an ardent admirer of this theory. The members considered themselves to be knights of a new order. The meaning of life, according to them, is learning and reaching higher levels through incarnation, until they’ve become an angle-like being. Just that their believes are rather evil. It starts with seven so called root races which seem to exist in the theosophical view: the Polarians, the Hyperborean, the Lemurians, the Atlantiens, the Aryans and two that will come in future. Goes without saying that the theosophists belong to the Aryans, descending from the first kingdom which is said to have been built in the Atlantic Ocean, namely in legendary Atlantis. The rest of the humans though belong to the sub humans and aren’t of great value. Considering the big refugee and foreigner issue in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, this is an explosive charge.«

We now reached the first junction inside the maze. The arced ceiling divided our way into a dark side on the right and a bright side on the left, which was partially lightened by the torches. We kept on the Prince’s tail and took a turn to the left.

»Yeah, it’s a shame«, I said. »The world becomes weirder and weirder. But hasn’t it always been weird? I mean, there have always been weird cults with weird beliefs, Samantha. What’s so special about this one? And what in the world is the connection to the rampant murders?«

Samantha smiled one of those askance smiles that indicated that I was too stupid to put one and one together.

»First of all, the explosive force is that this theosophy-plague has infected high-level conditions of this city by now. Politicians, members of the judiciary, leading businessmen, aristocrats, as you have noticed, mighty wealthy people and parts of the young priesthood within the Vatican. Torn between their church’s strict dogmas and the temptations of an increasingly fast pulsating world, these young people have turned away from their true belief and joined up a hidden faction within the Catholic Church. They have actually become the driving force of Theosophy.«

As early as after just a short while, I stopped counting the many ramifications and crossways, which, guess what, crossed our way. Also the path we had left behind us so far wasn’t comprehensible to me anymore. The torches caused enough light to get some glimpses into the gaping dark holes long the sides of the corridor. Chambers, from which towering skulls with open jaws laughed at us, fluttering spider webs, behind which unspeakable things seemed to happen, and almost endless corridors full of rats, which choked off any hint of hunting instinct inside of me due to their mere majority. We also passed burial niches with loose bones and flagstones, in which Latin or Aramaic inscriptions had been engraved. I almost feared