On his sixth birthday, the Mother took Peter to meet the oracle of her Sect. Peter remembers two things about that trip. One, that it was a restaurant which served fried scorpions as an exotic dish, and he spent most of lunch peering into a terrarium wondering what it’d be like to be stung by one of those little buggers. It was the first time he’d seen a real scorpion. Two, the oracle saw his future.
“You will be a great general”, the man decreed. “A commander, a leader of men and women.”
Peter doesn’t remember the face of the man but imagines him to be a pot-bellied, bearded thing with crooked blacked teeth and a bald patch, looking eerie and sinister.
Peter had known about the Mother’s faith. She held high office at her Sect and managed their worldly affairs. She even met the Master a few times. The Master was a Deva, Buddha incarnate, Angel in flesh. It was said that he was born ugly and deformed and lived his early years in suffering and sorrow. When the last of his blood passed away, the Master embarked on a pilgrimage in search of Enlightenment. He traversed cities, rivers and mountains for many years and finally discovered sainthood on the summit of Mount Wutai. He meditated in solitude for twenty years, learned inhuman powers, transcended death itself. On the day of his descent from the mountain peak, the sun stained the Eastern skies violet.
Sometime after the encounter with the Oracle, the Mother took Peter on a fourteen hour train ride to meet the Master himself.
*
A beaded curtain hung between him and the world. The Master sat in a den of silk cushions. Steams of sunlight smeared across the room, bouncing off thick plumes of incense. The walls and floor were muffled by a black, velvety fabric. Peter felt like he was walking on clouds. The fumes made him dizzy, the musky blend of sweat, burning flowers and chlorine made him want to vomit.
He had imagined the Master to be a grand, graceful, Godly man. The Godly man wore glasses – those wide-rimmed, rectangular ones that framed half a face. The Godly man was cradled by two young girls, barely out of their teens. One of the girls scratched the skins off a grape, tenderly, sliver by sliver until if was half-peeled, and squeezed the tender green flesh into a ceramic bow. The other girl picked it up with her figures, fed it to the Master, and wiped off the juices with a handkerchief.
The Mother told Peter to kneel. Kneel he did, with all the sincerity and reverence. He was in the presence of a God after all. He felt warm and serene and drowsy and safe, in the way that only a small child could feel in the embrace of their mothers. The Godly Man placed his palm on Peter’s head and chanted something. The Mother wept.
The Mother ushered Peter out of the black velvety room. He was blessed, he was reborn. His had secured a future of love, faith and abundance. He spent the rest of the afternoon in meditation with other disciples even though he didn’t quite understand what meditation was. The Mother withdrew into the inner sanctum with the master. She stayed there for a long time.
*
That was the day Peter encountered Faith.
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