Lupelius - The School for Gods

mask…a strategic mask…Father S. was a fake old man. My heart leapt in my chest. Father S.was…a Lupelian. I was certain. I could hardly contain my emotion at this discovery…I feltsubtle pleasure at the complicity that was being established between us…A ten centuries‐longcord linked us to that race of warriors who knew how to live strategically and understood theart of disguise. His chameleon‐like talent had allowed him to live among the folds of hisorder, hidden in the bosom of Christianity. A tunnel had opened in time and more than athousand years had been compressed into an instant to lead me to the doors of the School.Before me was perhaps the last of its immortal custodians. A question pounded at mytemples, pulsating with my arteries. Did Father S. know the Dreamer? …I was tempted to tellhim about my encounter with the ‘dream’ and the extraordinary adventure that I wasexperiencing in those days.“Lupelius is the prophet of physical immortality, the birth right of every man – revealedFather S., interrupting my feverish thoughts and dropping his initial reserve – A right that wehave relinquished and which we must reclaim.” Then, as if he were taking cues from aninvisible book, rather than quoting, with his eyes closed he read the following words: “Thebody is the spirit made flesh. If the spirit is immortal, so then is the body.”The joy he felt as he remembered the School and listened once again to the words which hehimself seemed not to have heard for years, was evident. He told me that Lupelius had beenbanished from Christianity for his ideas and that it was a miracle that he had avoided beingburned at the stake. The worst threat posed by Lupelius was his faith in the immense powerof the individual and in the final victory of life over death. For the Catholic Church, and forall religious institutions aimed at the masses, there could not have been a more dangerousphilosophy: the ‘revolution of the being’, the rebellion to which every man is called tooverturn his fragility, his mortal destiny. A struggle against demons, dragons and innerchimeras, against psychological monsters and giants which men have called doubt, fear andpain, which for Lupelius were the true cause of every evil, of every misfortune.It was not surprising that such subversive ideas should have resulted in persecution andattempts against his life. In effect, every trace of Lupelius and of his work had disappeared.Now this seemed to me to be the effect of a deliberate strategy on the part of Lupelius himselfrather than the result of implacable hostility towards him.To be accepted by his School meant to be put to the most severe test and living with himrequired being able to withstand great effort for long periods of time. Lupelius wanted hisfollowers to have direct experience of physical immortality and of invulnerability, byexperiencing how it was possible to survive the gravest of dangers unharmed. In effect,having left with his blessing, not one of his men ever returned even slightly grazed.I asked to what he attributed such an extraordinary thing.“A man’s shield is his purity, his love of life and for his Master” said Father S., his eyes halfclosed. Rather than reflecting on how to respond, it seemed to me that he was remembering“For Lupelius, purity is the fundamental quality of a man, and the way to achieve physicalimmortality: the supreme asymptote of the human parabola”. He paused for what seemed tome an extremely long time. I had noticed that whenever he referred to Lupelius Father S.14