After a few more minutes, Bryce asked, “Finding anything?”
Chase’s brow was furrowed. “Yeah, as a matter of fact.” He turned the computer screen toward us. “Can you see the screen okay? Any glare?”
On the screen was the symbol from the ring, an elongated oval with an X next to it, one of the ends of the X touching the oval, enlarged.
“No glare,” I said.
“Good,” Chase said. “Now watch. I’m going to twist the ellipse into a circle.”
Slowly the oval rounded into a perfect circle, the X still attached.
“Does that make sense to you?” Bryce asked.
“Not yet. Not like this. But if I take the other part of the symbol and twist it the other way, look what we get.”
The X slowly maneuvered until it emerged as a cross at the bottom of the circle. The female symbol.
“Now you recognize it?”
We both nodded.
“Why would they put the symbol for female on their ring?” Bryce asked.
&nbs
p; “We don’t know that they did,” Chase said. “All I can tell you for sure is I moved each part of the symbol in opposite ways to the same degree, and this is what I got.”
“How did you think to change it in that way?” I asked.
“The ellipse is simply a circle seen from a different slant,” Chase replied. “But I noticed the X was comprised of right angles. It’s not a stretch from the X to a cross if you know what you’re looking at. The ancient Romans used both for crucifixion.”
“I can’t believe my father would have come up with that,” Bryce said.
I didn’t believe it either. But Theodore Mathias? I wouldn’t put it past him. Everything about him was twisted.
“Whether he did or not, there’s something else you should know about this symbol,” Chase said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s known as the symbol for female, but it’s also a planetary symbol. It represents Venus.”
“So?” Bryce said.
“That’s not all,” Chase continued. “The symbol has another meaning.”
I held my breath, not sure I wanted to know where this was heading.
Chase’s low voice emerged. “Lucifer.”
Satan. The devil. Nausea crawled up my throat.
“Before you think your father was a devil worshipper, Bryce,” Chase said, “some scholars believe that Lucifer has nothing to do with Satan. It literally means ‘light bringer,’ which coincides with the planet Venus being the morning star.”
My nausea didn’t subside.
“Still,” Bryce said, “Lucifer is associated with the concept of evil, the devil.”
“That’s true,” Chase agreed. “But there are many symbols that occultists believe are more associated with the devil than this one. There’s the sigil of Lucifer, the double-horned pentagram, and that mythological bird, whose name escapes me at the moment. You know. The one that erupts in flames and then rises from the ashes?”