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“Oh, how very nice!” she said. “It's always pleasant to have newcomers. Please join us. Cecil is just finishing.”

My hope had been to arrive early enough to make this a brief reconnaissance: chat with whoever might be in charge, find out what I could (which I expected wouldn't be much), then make a quick departure before anything ceremonial got started. No such luck. Having spent so long finding the place, I'd come in on the middle of the lecture. Parading me through the dimly lit interior of the tiny chapel like a living trophy, the woman in white sat me in the front row. The curious faces followed me down the aisle, now looking discomfortingly eager—as if, just possibly, a recruit had come their way. There were fewer than a dozen members in the flock, all but two of them women, all of them old. Very old. I couldn't recall ever feeling more agonizingly out of place.

The woman, who had returned to her place at the lecturer's side and who I now gathered must be Aunt Natalie, the Mater Suprema herself, had said Cecil was “just finishing.” Twenty minutes later, Cecil was still finishing. By then I had the distinct feeling that he was doubling back and repeating for the newcomer's benefit, lest I miss any of the gems he had to offer. He needn't have bothered. What he said may have had the sound of coherent speech: grammar, syntax—it was all there. But no meaning, none at all. Not that it didn't sound familiar. I'd absorbed enough Cathar vocabulary to recognize themes and variations; it was simply that nothing I read or heard connected with any reality I knew. Even when the reverend paused for my benefit to restate his topic for the evening, it didn't help. With the gusto of a maître d' announcing that day's special, he explained, “We are examining the third syzygy of the Ogoadad.” Cathars went in for racy stuff like that. I smiled with polite interest. A mistake. It only encouraged him to prolong the analysis.

The Grand Archon was a small man with a benignly moon-shaped face and goggling watery eyes behind inch-thick spectacles. He was bald except for a wispy fringe of white hair that flared out from behind his ears lending a certain zany wildness to his aspect. Like his wife he also wore an ankle-length robe, but his was black and satiny, tied
at the ample waist with a silver sash. Around his neck he wore a Maltese cross that looked heavy enough to drown a cat; it lay unsteadily balanced on his prominent paunch. He too was English, though his accent was tinged with just enough cockney to make its use for heavy metaphysical discourse sound faintly ludicrous.

As he droned on, my attention wandered to take in the decor of the chapel. Behind the Reverend Feather at his lectern there was a small, tastelessly ornate altar constructed of an obviously fake marble veneer. It was cluttered with what must have been a small sampling of Aunt Natalie's pricier collectibles: tinny-looking candelabra, some shiny metal cups and plates, a few framed pictures of faces caught in various beatific raptures, and at the center a large Maltese cross carved from wood. Above the altar in mock-Gothic lettering a foot high were the words
Duo Sunt.
I knew the phrase from my reading:
There are two,
the basic Cathar doctrine.

I turned to survey the rest of the interior, quickly discovering that I would have to do this with a minimal rotation of the head. Whichever way I shifted in my seat to look around, I found a smiling, questioning face staring into mine. The expressions were friendly, but unnerving, all of them obviously asking “… and just what might you be doing in this geriatric assembly, young man?” Wondering the same, I smiled back and looked away, knowing that the inquiring eyes of the tiny congregation remained fixed on me. From what I could catch out of the corner of my eye, it seemed the same hand that had done the awful gargoyles on the turret had cartooned the interior walls and ceiling with a thicket of painted columns, arches, buttresses. The place might have been the stage set for a high school production of
The Vagabond King.
The lighting, such as it was—a string of Christmas-tree bulbs stretched along the moldings, some red, some amber, some purple, and about half of them burned out—managed to be both dismal and lurid. Dim as the chapel was, however, I could make out its main aesthetic embellishment: a series of drab and dreadful oil paintings along each wall that depicted atrocities and martyrdoms. Whatever issues of doctrine may have divided the Orphans of the Storm and the Albigensi Fellowship, the tastes of both sects ran to the macabre.

At last, mercifully, the Reverend Feather brought his exhaustive exegesis to what I'm sure he took to be a rousing conclusion. With arms outspread, he intoned, “Once again, beloved sisters and brothers, we stand at the threshold of the Bridal Chamber. Apolytrosis
awaits us beyond. May Lord Abraxas bestow upon us the bliss of the Pneumatic Union.” With a single voice, the congregation called out “Amen!” I clocked his lecture at just over an hour since I'd arrived. It was now going on toward five in the afternoon. The service was not, however, over. There followed “the sacramentum.” After the reverend had mumbled a brief blessing at the altar, he turned, holding out a silver chalice. Each member of the flock rose and walked solemnly forward to the altar to kneel and take a sip from it. As the rite transpired, Mrs. Feather moved to a small pipe organ at one side of the chapel and proceeded to play a potpourri of lugubriously funereal tunes. The organ was powered by a foot-treadle that creaked louder than the tones that were being pumped out of the wheezing bellows. Her playing was wretchedly amateurish, embellished with piercing organ stings and arpeggios that her arthritically stiff fingers could no longer negotiate. But buried in the syrupy cacophony was a recurrent motif that I would have sworn was a doleful version of “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

When the last parishioner had taken her taste of the wine, the reverend offered a brief benediction in cockneyfied Latin, wiped the chalice, and stored it away. Then, turning to the congregation, his eyes on me especially, he asked in a cheery tone, “Shall we adjourn to the garden for tea?” He and his wife at once descended upon me offering hospitality. By now stiff in every joint, I more than eagerly accepted. We repaired to a far corner of the yard where a member of the congregation—a wiry little woman named Althea—was already laying out the promised refreshments: some expertly brewed tea and cute little cookies. The rest of the flock bustled after us, gathering to listen at a respectful distance around the umbrella-shaded table where we sat. As soon as I introduced myself as a professor I could tell that the Feathers regarded me as a valuable catch. “We do so appreciate having people from the university join us,” the reverend announced, “because, as you know, we move in deep waters here, deep waters. There are so many questions… .”

“So
very
many questions,” Mrs. Feather echoed.

“… and all of them requiring the attention of the keenest minds. Because of course, as you realize, these matters are vital.”

“Absolutely
vital, oh yes,” Mrs. Feather echoed again. I gathered that it was her habit to provide the verbal italics for her husband's remarks.

“Your field is religion … philosophy?” he asked.

“Actually, it's more historical.”

“Yes, of course. Reliable scholarship,” the reverend went on. “That's what we need. Because, as you realize, the truth …”

“The
whole
truth,” Mrs. Feather made clear with a decisive wave of the finger.

“Yes, certainly, the whole truth has yet to be told.”

“As only those who know it can do so,” the wife added.

“So you are a historian, then?” the reverend asked. “Possibly you know Professor Carstad?” I said I did. “Ah, well, then! Excellent. He visited with us just a while ago… .”

“Some years ago actually,” Mrs. Feather corrected.

“And you gained your interest in our faith from him?”

I decided to keep things simple. “Yes, I did.”

“Extraordinary man. Such a vigorous mind. Though not, I might say, gifted in the area of doctrine.” Mrs. Feather was nodding her head in sage agreement. “No, definitely not in the area of doctrine. Historical detail—yes, I would say that was his strong point.”

“About the sufferings,” the wife added.

“The passion, yes. Very good on the passion.”

“And yourself?” Mrs. Feather asked me, a certain exuberant light coming into her eyes. “Does passion interest you?”

“Oh, more than interest.” This, I saw, pleased them both and sent a ripple of murmured approval through the rest of the flock, a few of whom now edged their chairs forward. “Of course, I'm really no more than a beginner. A seeker.”

The reverend nodded with kindly indulgence. “We are always prepared to make room for another among our numbers.”

Numbers? There were all of eleven faces before me, not one of them less than twice my age. A dying congregation, I would have said. “Are there others in your church?” I asked, trying not to sound too challenging.

“We have access to many others.”

“Here in Hermosa Beach?”

The reverend wagged his head; behind him, his flock mimicked the gesture. “No, no. Those who have gone before.”

I failed to pick that one up. “But there are other Cathars in the area.” The reverend cocked his head inquisitively. “I believe I've heard of another group in Malibu. They call themselves Orphans… .”

The reverend showed not the least curiosity. “No, no. Ours is the only authentic lineage.”

One of his parishioners leaned forward over the cane she was using to prop her up and sought to clarify. She was a scrawny old crone who seemed to be in a constant state of hostilities with her dentures. “We are
connected”
she clattered. Grinning rigidly at me, she raised a bent finger to point upward.
“Con-nec-ted.”

The Feathers' prim little garden might have made a gracious enough setting for this more social portion of the service. It was well shielded from the grubby street beyond the gate; but not, unfortunately, from the roar of the occasional jet overhead making its approach to L.A. International only a few miles to our east. The Feathers had clearly adjusted to the intrusion; even during his lecture, I noticed that whenever the planes came growling over, the reverend's voice automatically stepped up a few fractional decibels and then fell back. Seeking for a question that might place us on common ground, I asked, “The slogan above your altar …”

“Slogan?” asked the reverend and his wife in chorus.

“Duo sunt.”

“Teaching,” the reverend corrected, his wife underscoring, “the teaching of teachings.”

“Forgive me, I'm rather new at all this. It means ‘there are two,' I believe.” The reverend and his entire flock nodded gravely in unison. “Two gods, am I right?”

“… gods.” The reverend weighed the word judiciously. “Such a misleading term. So many distorted associations. Should we not rather say ‘principle.'”

“Yes,” the wife agreed. “Definitely principle.”

I groped my way forward. “Gods or principles … whichever you prefer. Quite honestly, here in the twentieth century, what difference does it make, there being two … or five, or ten? After all, the Hindus worship dozens of gods … or principles.”

The reverend arched a knowing eyebrow. “Dozens, hundreds even, it makes no difference. Only these numbers are of significance: the One and the Two. For, indeed, these are not quantities at all, but ontological substrata, two being the principle of polarity. You do see?”

Aware that I didn't see a thing, Mrs. Feather hastened to clarify. “Perhaps if we were to consider music …”

“Ah yes,” the reverend agreed, encouraging her to take a hand
with the untutored newcomer. “Natalie is so much more concrete about these things.”

“I sometimes think when I'm at the organ: so many notes, but all in harmony. The result is a pleasure to the ear. But to produce discord only two notes are necessary.”

“Necessary and, more to the point, sufficient,” the reverend added.

“Yes,” his wife agreed. “Isn't that it? Sufficient. You see, the Two—where there is no harmony—are a condition.” She was holding up fingers, two on one hand, one on the other. “The Two takes over the One. After that, it doesn't matter. Hundreds, thousands. It's simply that the One isn't there.”

“Exactly so,” the reverend concurred. “The rending of the unity.”

“The
war,
” his wife interjected gravely. A ripple of consensus passed through the surrounding congregation.

They seemed open to more questions, even dumb ones. I asked again. “But—forgive me—is all this anything more than a fine theological distinction?”

“It depends, does it not, where the principles are quartered?” the reverend answered patiently. “For example, if
bonum
is the spirit, and
malum
is the flesh. You understand?”

“… not quite.”

“Each soul divided. The war
within.
You do see? If the flesh itself, the flesh…”

“And this makes enough of a difference to kill for?” I asked.

“The only difference
worth
killing for. Not on
our
side, of course.”

“No, no,” Mrs. Feather emphasized.

“We are forbidden to shed blood.”

“Until …” Mrs. Feather reminded him.

“Until the Last Days, of course.”

Whether it would have been of any value to continue the little catechism lesson I'd started, I cannot say. At some point, before I'd clearly registered the transition, we were no longer discussing cosmic principles but hollyhocks. The old crone with the chattering teeth had passed an admiring remark about Mrs. Feather's hollyhocks at the foot of the garden. The reverend picked up on the compliment, reminding one and all of his wife's prizewinning talents as a gardener … and from there the conversation began to drift and diffuse. I gathered this meant religious instructions were over for the day; apparently I'd drawn a blank—and after such a long drive.