CHAPTER ONE
ESOTERICISM IN MUNICH
This is the story of a dear friend of mine, as told to me by Gianni Alessi, Master Chef and renowned playwright.
Gianni is renowned for his cooking and his part in the creation and production of the acclaimed play titled “Osteria Del Tempo Perso”, which roughly translates to: The Inn Where Time is Lost.
I feel particularly compelled to tell Gianni’s story.
I was present during the unfolding of the events that I am about to relay.
I was and still am deeply moved by what happened.
I met Gianni soon after his fifty-sixth birthday, in Munich, in 2012.
Despite his grey hair and beard, Gianni looked about fifty years old.
It was the agility in the way he moved that made him appear younger.
He walked very fast for his age, so it wasn’t until he complained about the soreness in his varicose veins that I realized that he was in his late fifties.
“I have been living in Munich for the best part of twenty-five years,” said Gianni one sunny day as we walked to the local market near his home.
“I left Italy in the late 1980s. I travelled all over Europe before finally settling down in Germany where I met my wife Alga,” continued Gianni.
“After I proposed to Alga, we decided to move back to Italy, where I had a lucrative job offer, as a head chef in one of Rome’s most prestigious restaurants. Alga and I were married soon after arriving in Italy, over thirty years ago, in Rome,” Gianni explained.
According to Gianni Alga was a typically attractive, blond, blue-eyed, slim German girl five years his junior.
The couple settled in the heart of Rome.
Rome was a chaotic city that bustled with Italians going about their daily life through historical ruins and architecture.
Their first daughter Julia was born soon after their wedding.
Gianni noticed that his new wife, unfamiliar with the Italian language, and with a new baby, was finding it hard to cope.
They decided to move back to Germany so that Alga could be near her family.
It was at this very point that Gianni’s life became a surreal nightmare.
Alga’s family had been wealthy landowners; owning land, factories, rental properties, and a supermarket chain throughout Germany.
Alga’s German family harbored a profound dislike for Italians in general and Gianni in particular.
It might even be fair to say that they were the real masterminds behind the disastrous events that ensued.
Alga’s mother, Anna, had a passion for Esotericism – the occult to the uninitiated - and had been visiting a cult leader for years.
Soon after Alga returned from Italy with her husband, Gianni, and their little daughter Julia, Anna introduced Alga to the cult leader who had initiated Anna to the occult.
Gianni, who was spending most of his days looking for work and trying to familiarize himself with the German language and culture, was unaware of what was happening until it was too late.
The arrival of a second daughter, Serena, seemed to at first bring the family closer together, but Anna who realized Alga was vulnerable and lonely when pregnant, took her daughter Julia to see the cult leader throughout her pregnancy.
“Gianni was your husband in your previous life too, dear Alga. Your husband murdered you in your past life Alga,” the cult leader would say to Alga on her visits.
“Your marriage to this man Gianni is doomed. Every time that you are reborn and in every life that you live Gianni will try to marry you and kill you,” the cult leader would go on to say to Alga.
This turned out to be more than the already susceptible Alga could bear.
Yet Alga trusted her mother Anna, who in turn worshiped the cult leader.
When Gianni returned home one night, he noticed his wife and daughters were missing.
“Had they not returned for the whole night?” pondered Gianni.
Gianni was distraught.
This had never happened before, so you can imagine Gianni’s state of mind.
After worrying that something might have happened to them, Gianni resolved to contact Anna, Alga’s mother.
“My daughter and granddaughters have come home to their family. Alga wants a divorce,” Anna told Gianni on the phone.
Gianni was stunned, but every attempt he made to contact his wife failed.
Anna had rallied the whole family around, and Gianni, a foreigner in Germany, didn’t stand a chance.
The divorce went the same way.
Gianni, unable to speak the language was ridiculed in court and his daughters were placed in the care of the mother.
Gianni had no choice but to reconcile himself with the court’s decision.
Anna was surprised when Gianni chose to remain in Germany so that he could be close to his daughters.
Now living separately, Gianni and Alga maintained a strained relationship for the sake of their children, whom Gianni would be allowed to visit on rare occasions.
You may ask yourselves how Gianni’s paternal rights could be so callously infringed.
The answer is: with great ease.
Gianni was wise and honest enough to admit that if the divorce had taken place in Italy the result would almost certainly have been in his favor.
“Each country looks after the interest of its citizens,” Gianni would say.
Years passed, until one day in 2004, Gianni received a call from Anna telling him that Julia, his eldest daughter, then thirteen, was missing.
Gianni immediately contacted the police and then Alga.
“There is no need to worry. I know where Julia is,” was Alga’s response to Gianni’s frantic questions.
It later transpired, because of enquiries made by the police, that Alga, having succumbed to the cult leader, had been taking her eldest daughter to see the cult leader, since Julia’s seventh birthday, and leaving her in his care.
Through the internet, Gianni and I discovered that the cult leader would be visiting Benjamin Crème’s lecture, in Munich.
We arrived at the venue in January 2013.
Gianni and I walked down the aisles of the conference hall, looking for a seat and settled in one of the back rows.
We paid no notice as Benjamin Crème started to speak.
As we scanned the lecture room our eyes fell almost simultaneously on an elderly man dressed in shabby clothes.
The old man was wearing a checked winter coat with the collar turned up and a snow-white beret on his head.
The mystery old man slowly pushed a walker for seniors through the crowd.
Gianni noticed that people were photographing the old man surreptitiously.
Gianni later discovered the very same photographs on the internet.
Gianni could not take his eyes off the mysterious old man.
The old man moved around slowly, presumably looking for somewhere to sit.
The old man walked to the front of the hall, then turned around and shuffled towards the back rows.
The seats on either side of me and Gianni were free.
The old man stopped and looked at these seats and then directly at us.
I felt an incredible feeling of revulsion.
The old man’s eyes seemed like dark pits in his sockets.
These were the eyes of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
I had the distinct impression that the old man was staring at us deliberately.
At first glance, the old man came across as confused, but the look he gave us was that of an intelligent man who knew the power his presence could wield on susceptible people.
As the old man looked up, I noticed that he had, a fine nose, dark eyes, and grey stubble.
The old man’s eyes, it appeared to me, were constantly darting around the room, and seemed to be completely lacking in warmth.
The eyes of this calculating old man missed nothing.
I remember thinking that the old man’s demeanour, coupled with the beady eyes and unpleasant smirk, was that of a sadist, or a man completely lacking in empathy.
I quickly placed my bag on the seat on my left and Gianni dumped his coat on the seat on his right.
The old man smirked and shuffled on, slowly pushing his walker forward, eventually finding a seat a couple of rows behind me and Gianni.
I had to fight the impulse to turn around and look at the old man.
When the lecture ended, I noticed that, as the people moved towards the exit, some would stop and stare at the old man, while others whispered.
It was as though they were waiting to see what the old man would do.
Presently, the mysterious old man slowly walked over to a book stand, near the center of the conference hall.
The old man stared at the books and pamphlets on display there, and after what seemed to me to be a theatrical pause, he placed his hand on a photograph of the hand of Maitreya, displayed on a pamphlet.
“Maitreya the World Teacher” is a personage I later discovered to be of great importance in the esoteric world.
With this little performance, the old man was able to give everyone the impression of energy being passed through his hand onto the photograph or vice versa.
I remember thinking that the old man behaved like a born actor, and with eyes like his, was probably a seasoned hypnotist.
Then the weirdest thing happened.
I kid you not.
People started pushing forward and fighting amongst each other to buy the pamphlet displaying the photo of the hand of the Maitreya, that the old man had touched.
I overheard a woman saying in English, that the face of the mysterious old man was the image of Christ.
I thought that the old man looked more like the infamous Rasputin, advisor to the Tsars, the Russian Royal Family.
It later transpired that the mystery old man’s name was Egon and that many worshipped him as though he was the incarnation of Maitreya himself.
The whole time we were there I never heard the old man Egon speak a word.
Gianni and I followed Egon outside and saw a woman with him.
Egon and the woman got into a taxi and drove away.
Gianni told me he’d seen Julia in the hall.
Gianni looked crestfallen; his daughter Julia had been there at the lecture.
With all the commotion that the old man’s presence had provoked, coupled with the fact that I had only seen old photographs of Gianni’s eldest daughter, I had failed to spot Julia amidst the crowded hall.
“Why didn’t you point Julia out to me and why didn’t you try to approach her?” I asked Gianni.
Gianni told me that his daughter, now twenty-three years old, had been one of the women shadowing the old man Egon throughout the lecture.
Gianni decided that the time had come for him to meet with Egon, the cult leader, face-to-face.
I could not refuse Gianni when he asked me to accompany him to the cult leader's mansion and demand the return of his daughter to him.
After, extensive enquiries on Gianni’s part, we discovered the cult leader’s headquarters in Munich.
Upon arriving at Egon's home, we were greeted by a thin girl with pale skin and short brown hair.
The girl looked like an undernourished prisoner of a concentration camp.
Gianni, recognizing his daughter asked her to leave with him immediately.
Julia refused, saying she loved Egon, the cult leader, and that he was her real father and lover.
The look on Gianni’s face will haunt me until my dying day.
There was no running away from this.
Julia, like her mother Alga and grandmother Anna, had succumbed to the cult leader and his teachings of the occult.
Egon had told Alga, Julia’s mother, that Julia had been his child in a previous life and that Julia should live with him.
Julia had been thoroughly conditioned by Egon and his cult, for over a decade.
Julia’s claims that she was romantically involved with the cult leader, implied that she may have been coerced into acts of intimacy by Egon.
Gianni never recovered from that meeting with his daughter.
I still visit Gianni sometimes in Germany where he still lives to this day.
During my last visit, Julia had been at Gianni’s home on one rare occasion.
Julia, now in her mid-thirties, still looks pale and underfed, her shaved hair a replica of a communist prison convict’s.
Julia’s scalp was visible through the bald patches on her head, from where the hair had been hacked off, probably for the benefit of their esoteric ceremonies.
When I asked her why her hair was cut so short, she just smiled disturbingly and said simply.
“I do what my master tells me to. He tells me to cut my hair with a knife, so I do”.
Gianni was inconsolable.
Gianni spent most of this time hiding in the kitchen pretending to cook when really, I could see his shoulders trembling as he sobbed his eyes out.
