Confession of a Ghost. F.M. Dostoevsky award. Playing Another Reality. Alexandra Kryuchkova

and persistently and humbly continuing your Path, clenching your willpower into a fist, you’ll be able to climb a high mountain and receive a deserved reward.”

      “There isn’t even a bed to sleep in here,” I said thoughtfully.

      “You’ll have rest, don’t worry,” the Guardian encouraged me, “in an ascetic mode. Monks, for example, sleep several hours a day.”

      “Now about the fortress,” Saturn continued. “You’ll cling with claws to everything that brings you the feeling of safety and security in the outer and inner worlds, based on the principle that good is not sought beyond good. You need guarantees, being especially concerned about the issue of comfortable old age, to create a reliable family, to have your own, albeit small, house-fortress, any real estate, that is, something material. You’ll carefully and reverently treat everything that you get by hard work, and without it, as you understand, nothing will be obtained. When ties are broken or solid ground under your feet is lost, a deep depression is possible.”

      “If I understood correctly,” I suddenly remembered, “Saturn gives difficulties and deprives of something, restricts me in some way. So the breakup is going to happen anyway, House No. 1 in the timeline corresponds to the period of childhood, doesn’t it?”

      “You are all like your Guardian, running ahead, although your thought is working in the right direction. The most important emotional traumas happen in childhood. Usually, children with Saturn in Cancer, not receiving care and affection, have certain difficulties with their parents and subsequently in their own families with spouses – due to the difficulties in expressing feelings, and with their children – due to strictness in upbringing, which leads to disappointment in people, withdrawal into oneself, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction with life. If everything is fine in the family, the ties may be forcibly severed, the dissolution of the continuity of generations. In this case, one constantly returns to the Past, as for the life-giving source from which one draws strength, and in general lives more in the Past than in the Future, falling into childhood memories and nostalgic for the lost or unfulfilled, has a painful dependence on the Past or on parents. An eternal child at heart, one tries to preserve the connection disappeared into oblivion at least in one’s own inner world, constantly connecting the thread torn by reality, supporting the continuity of generations with all the fibers of the soul. Even if there was no gap, but childhood was spent in cold alienation as for the level of feelings, one will try to compensate the warmth in one’s own family.”

      “So my parents won’t love me!” I felt very sad.

      “I didn’t say that,” Saturn stated, not without a note of sadness. “The Creator said, ‘Be like children, and you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Anyway, traditions, family values and the Past are very important to you. Now a little about personal life, since the Moon and the Sign of Cancer mean the intimate Sphere too. I deprive of earthly temptations by some restrictions on emotional joys. It’s not you who restrain yourself in passions and don’t enjoy life to the fullest, it’s the set up in your passport. Everything that happens in your destiny, according to the Creator’s plan, is exclusively for your benefit. You may become not just a serious, but a very deep and wise person who sees and is able to express in exact words at least part of the truth that you’ll definitely unearth in the process of working on yourself. And now I’ll show you something interesting, let’s go.”

      Saturn took a candle, we left the cell and went down to the Dungeon.

      “This is the Well from which you’ll draw your strength,” Saturn commented, “you can look inside.”

      I hovered over the Well. It seemed bottomless, but suddenly I noticed the Moon in it!

      “It’s not the goal of our journey,” Saturn said, and we flew along the corridors, that resembled an intricate labyrinth.

      Suddenly we found ourselves in a beautiful cave with a mountain lake and an unusual garden.

      “My Garden of Stones. Sometimes I cross trees to get a unique healing effect.”

      We wandered slowly between the trees, and Saturn, not without pride, spoke about the energy contained in the stones and its influence on souls.

      “As a child, playing in the yard with girls, when choosing one of the four Realms, you’ll take under your control the Underground one. Later you’ll start looking for stones and make jewelry. You’ll feel stones like the Moon and love them like Saturn. Here is Larimar, for example. The magical stone of the lost Atlantis. It awakens the memory of the Past. Delicate, isn’t it?” Saturn asked, and his gaze became softer. “And this is the Moonstone. It’s yours, Rukh. It knows to fulfill wishes and contributes to the disclosure of creativity. The Moon will give it to you.”

      “Saturn gives a penchant for collecting,” the Guardian clarified, “an interest in antiques, history and archeology, due to fixation on the Past with a particular focus on its values. You’ll enjoy diving headlong into the information flow, digging out something interesting and hidden, fishing out rare specimens, analyzing and systematizing data, making collections and showing them to friends, sharing knowledge.”

      “The Garden of Stones will bring you joy, even if not much. You’ll find also unique alive icons on Earth. You’ve already seen some of them in my cell… Now I need to rest a bit,” Saturn apologized, and the Guardian and I left for the Library.

      Library of the Universe

      “Angel, Saturn said he would limit my earthly passions and temptations, and he doesn’t like children. Will I have children?”

      “You’re so funny, Rukh!” the Guardian smiled. “You’ll get children, but your Saturn is a wizard. You’ll become a very pretty creature with magical attraction of the opposite sex beings. In order to prevent you from sinking into the abyss of earthly passions, a heavenly tattoo will appear on your earthly body at the moment of incarnation. I’ve recently sent a little mouse to your mother, she got frightened of it and … Any birthmark is a sign of Heaven. Trying to attract attention, people make something similar on their skin, but their sophistication has an artificial flavor. Given the nature of Cancer, you’ll be very shy of the heavenly sign, minimizing the number of contacts in the Sphere of earthly passions.”

      We settled down in the chairs of the Reading Hall, the book flew into my hands and opened at the page with “The Mist” miniature.

      “There is nothing scary in this book, believe me,” the Guardian reassured me, instantly scanning my feelings.

      “So will I never know the cause? What happened in the Future?”

      “You’re too fixated on the cause, Rukh. You should read the story about the broken mirrors in the City, which inhabitants left for the World of Mists, ‘And your last thought is ringing like a bell – life is over, and you haven’t managed to do something very, very important…’ You will write that at the age of 13, Rukh.”

      Gifts of the Magi

      Ouranoupoli

      Taking the icons already acquired, I went to the pier at the Tower. The excursion ship used to depart for the foot of the Holy Mountain every morning at 10:30. It ran along the south-western coast, sheltered by neighboring isles and the peninsula Sithonia, only in good weather and only to the foot, since right beyond it, at the cape of the peninsula, there was an abyss with a sharp drop in depth of up to 1,000 meters. The other side of the Athos peninsula was almost always turbulent, so people travelled to pay their respects to the Holy Mountain from Ouranoupoli.

      Traveling along the shore, you could admire the natural beauty, but there were many beautiful places on Earth, Mount Athos was unique. According to legend, the mountain was named after the titan Athos, who threw a stone at Poseidon, then the legend ended in two – according to one version, Athos the Titan died, according to another, Poseidon