The second son of a petty noble family, John was shuffled off to the Church at a young age. His parents believed the scrawny bookworm was unfit for the duties of soldiery or nobility. He toiled his youth in a monastery, manufacturing new copies of ancient manuscripts between his prayers. It was a task that induced excitement at first, but these tomes of wisdom became uninteresting after he had every word memorized from all the labors of copying. It was a constrained existence.
That is, until that day, when a mysterious woman appeared at the monastery. She called herself Theodora and was in search of an ancient text on botany. The young John, who had endlessly copied the very text, was assigned to assist Theodora. She was nothing like solemn, dreary monks that constituted John’s peers. Enchanted by her gentle cheerfulness and subtle charisma, John once again felt excitement and wonder when working with her. He ravenously took in her tales of her journeys to exotic lands like Egypt and Russia, where she met kings, queens, and sultans. Scholars and adventurers. Strange plants and beasts. Theodora saw in John a young man held captive, his unquenchable thirst for knowledge waiting to explode. After several inefficient but enjoyable days, they at last came across what Theodora was looking for. She explained that she had a rare and incurable terminal illness which could only be remedied by a certain medicinal herb. John did not question her further on this, instead departing her early for his scheduled prayers. He felt a distinct sense of dread knowing that he would never be able to see Theodora again. However, before leaving the monastery, she specifically requested to see John one last time. She offered him a parting gift: a new book to read, a tome containing knowledge of magic. He greedily took the book but wearily looked around, cautious of any monks seeing him with such a heretical text. As John pondered, his mind returned to his duties of copying texts endlessly and he imagined memorizing and copying the book on magic. He began to weep and Theodora caught him in her arms. “Come with me,” she whispered to him and his heart began to race. Fear and excitement flooded his mind at the thought that her adventures could be his. And so, he snuck away from the monastery and went with Theodora into the unknown future.
Venturing to Athens, Theodora revealed her true nature to John. She was a mage, a practitioner of the arts deemed the ultimate evil by John’s former monastic family. Moreover, she was the inheritor of forbidden divine knowledge. The goddess Isis, who holds all nature’s mysteries, all that cannot be comprehended by humans, had long faded from the world before the Church exterminated her cult. Theodora was her final devotee, the last high priestess of Isis. Her duty, passed from master to apprentice, was to guard the goddess’ wisdom so that it would not entirely disappear from the world. And, due to her illness, she had chosen John as her successor. His initiation began with a series of mystery rituals to open his mind to the divine. While the Church taught him God was beyond human comprehension, his apprenticeship under Theodora was specifically designed to train his mind to tolerate divine knowledge, even if he could not consciously comprehend it. He readily abandoned the teachings of the Church and learned Egyptian alchemy. Though John excelled in all his studies and trials, Theodora lectured him that being the chosen of Isis required more than skill and intelligence, that wisdom for its own sake was hollow. Her duty was also to provide the people with miracles and hope for salvation. John saw her true beauty unveiled when she healed the sick, provided harvests for the hungry, and consoled those who were alone or abandoned. He strove to emulate her. These should have been the most joyful times of John’s life. Yet, he harbored a submerged feeling of sadness. In truth, he loved Theodora from the time he met her and his love had only grown. He was living a heavenly dream, one which was tainted by knowing that he would wake up when she descended into eternal slumber. Theodora, too, had been developing feelings for her apprentice as she watched and nurtured the growth of his life passions. She, however, did not come to terms with her feelings, knowing that they would only result in tragedy.
Theodora and John’s weariness festered. The medicinal herb helped her, despite her illness, keep her ability to function and her appearance of elegance and calm. However, it became more and more difficult for her to hide the worsening of her symptoms from her apprentice. At last, one day, John broke down. He confessed his love and begged her to let him care for her. His training to inherit the wisdom of Isis nearing completion, she relented. Their tears subsided while he brought her food and medicine in bed, prepared cold compresses, and stayed by her side during the worst times of her symptoms. Lacking the strength to fight off their love, they fully embraced it. Though she only had months to live, Theodora came to bear a child. But, fate had frowned upon this child. Its mother would not survive the full term and would take the child with her. On her deathbed, Theodora prepared the final ritual for John to become high priest. Before the final rite, she smiled and consoled John. “I regret nothing fate has given me. I have been saved and you will be, too.” With that, she transferred the wisdom of Isis to John and died. All of it overwhelmed his mind. Divine knowledge he could hardly fathom along with the memories of past high priests and priestesses. Experiencing Theodora’s memories and fully realizing her love for him, he collapsed over her.
John set his ambition beyond any previous inheritor of the wisdom. He would rid the world of tragedy and bring hope to everyone. Whether through hubris or selflessness, he tasked himself with bringing about salvation for all. He moved to Rome, rejoining the Church while studying in secret the wisdom he had inherited. John gained the reputation of being the most learned man in all Rome and became popular for performing minor miracles. He rose quickly, from priest, to bishop, to cardinal as the scale of his miracles rose as well. Rome was the center of temporal power and divine authority, though John had no interest in this. As he healed the sick, produced alms for the poor, and preached the promise of salvation to the people, powerful figures in the Church felt increasingly threatened and suspicious. They coated their jealousy by questioning whether this man was truly chosen by God. The people, however, could not be resisted and John was finally elected pope. While the clergy were said to be married to the mother Church, Pope John took the maternal role for himself. He amassed the wealth of the Church to nurture the people, undermining the temporal power of lords and bishops. He also utilized the Church’s resources to conduct more ambitious and dangerous alchemical experiments. Even though the lives of the people had improved dramatically, it was not enough for John. In a sense, he would not be satisfied with anything less than a return to the Garden of Eden: the elimination of all sickness, strife, hunger, and even death. This was John’s greatest sin, attempting to usurp the role of Mother Goddess. His heartbreak had blinded him to the most important teaching of Theodora: that they were to prepare for salvation after death, rather than provide it themselves. Rather than guide the people to salvation, he reached too far. This world, this life, was not meant to experience salvation.
The Pope’s final ambition was to create life in his own image. By becoming a master of life, he thought he could bring an end to suffering itself. In an experiment that taxed his mind and body to the limit, he found no results, and doubted the possibility. John was wrought with grief. However, unbeknownst to him, an unnoticeable pain appeared in John’s bottom rib. Several days later, he was in a procession down the Via Sacra, surrounded by the elated, hopeful people of Rome. Their emotions only fed his melancholy until it manifested as physical pain. The pain surged and blood spewed and stained the papal robes as John shrieked in agony. He collapsed onto the road as the fleshy and bloodied rib tumbled out of his robes. It steamed, fluctuated, and grew, until it took the form of a child. The people were stunned. Not a sound pierced the air until the child gave out a cry. At that moment, Pope John’s senses were overwhelmed by the sound and sight of the child. He briefly, if only for a fraction of a second, gained total comprehension of the mystery of Isis before collapsing unconscious. The people were rendered frozen by the impossibility and mystery of this miracle, their minds emptied of any assumptions. Finally, a cardinal who hated the pope the most, decried John as a sorcerer and worshipper of the devil. These evil intentions filled the people’s minds and drove their actions. They carried the maimed man, once their messiah, to a square where they stoned him and burned his body. To conceal the truth of this last miracle, an abomination against God, they spread the rumor that it was the result of a natural birth by a woman who became pope. Nevertheless, John’s child grew up to be a bishop himself, and had his father exhumed and buried in a basilica. Although the legend became warped, the truth of Pope John’s generosity persisted. Though the line of the High Priestesses and Priests of Isis vanished, the mystery of Isis did not disappear completely. As later occult mages in the Renaissance began to re-discover ancient Egyptian magic, they uncovered the true story of Pope Joan. This is imbued in the High Priestess, or Popess, trump card of different tarot traditions. The secrets of this card, which depicts the emissary of Isis, is said to hold the last link between Isis and the modern world.
Originally Posted by WhiteFrenzy
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