A Conversation with Constantine the Great

He’s been waiting for a while, but I wasn’t feeling it. Today I thought, what the heck. It’s not every day an emperor of ancient Rome comes calling.

K: I think I’m just going to wing this.

C: (grins) Why do you feel you must wing this.

K: Because (thinks) I don’t know why you came to me and I’m not a history enthusiast…plus, I don’t really connect with spirits that are…new faces these days. I guess that’s how I would put it.

C: Ah. I see. (nods) Well, I won’t ask you to regurgitate your history or that which others have written in their books. I am aware that you have spoken with faces that you have not acquainted yourself with and that has not changed in the years that you have been practicing this type of communication. You are simply more comfortable with the energy that you are used to. I (gestures to his chest) am not a fan of repeating what has already been stated throughout your artifacts, museums, and libraries. I am only sitting with you because I wish to share…space with you. I think others have called it breaking bread with another.

K: Well, I do enjoy bread.

C: Don’t we all.

K: I think what really gets to me is that you’ve been painted as some arsehole, but you’ve also been painted as a great man.

C: I suppose it depends on who is speaking of me at the time you hear these differing…opinions.

K: Does it matter to you?

C: (shakes his head) It does not. I was but a face… a figure…a place holder in a dark time.

K: Do you feel like those times were dark?

C: (sits back) Personally or professionally?

K: What would be the difference?

C: Depending on stature…maybe whoever you are speaking with from that time would have a different idea about the meaning of an age of darkness.

K: I just assume that a lot of what you lived was…and I’m sure it was great big wars and battles since you were dubbed “the Great”.

C: Battle…forces of men.

K: Yes.

C: (looks contemplative) Do you know what battles are?

K: Killing people for power?

C: (playfully stares at me) That is the end result. The beginning of that…it’s thought to be brute strength. To be a warrior is thought to have strength in the body. But battles are strategic. If you are a man…or a woman…of great strength but have no mind for strategy, the side you play will lose. The battle is always strategic in gaining what power you desire at the time.

K: While I was walking this evening, you said something about land and people. You said, you gain the people, you gain the land but I said that the opposite was true. I think that if you gain the land, you gain the people.

C: And if the people rebel?

K: If you’re strategic than there wouldn’t be an opportunity for the people to rebel.

C: Even if the number of people relented and bowed to the person now holding the power was great in numbers, you would still have the few that would rebel the new rule.

K: Was there a lot of that with you?

C: There were the few who were cunning and shrewd in their made up strategies to have me die…to have my life taken and in doing so, hold the power that I had. That was a great assumption on their parts.

K: It was said that you were the great usurper.

C: Anyone in a position to go to battle against those in power was a usurper. I simply had the armies to be called the great.

K: What would you call the times when you were given your power?

C: Where I was handed it after my father died?

K: Yes.

C: The time of eat or be eaten.

K: (chuckles) That’s a new one.

C: Kill or be killed. Ensure those around you were loyal to your cause and no other. There were many snakes around me.

K: Do you feel like you had to be…a snake to hold onto that power as well?

C: I had snakes around me that worked for me in that way so I didn’t have to stoop so low.

K: Dear! God!

C: Do you know why I believe I was so successful?

K: Why is that?

C: I always looked up. If my outlook of life was downcast, I wouldn’t be able to envision the horizon of the future. I always looked up.

K: To be honest, you come off as a really nice guy. A pretty easy-going guy.

C: (nods) Thank you.

K: But history paints you as a cocky son-of-a-b.

C: (laughs) In your times…you could equate me to that of a CEO of a rather large corporation…an international corporation. Some are shrewd. Some believe themselves to be a god. Some are nice and easy-going guys. Take your pick. I could be all of them.

K: You were never confused about who you were?

C: Never.

K: Do you excuse how much…I mean you were someone that caused a lot of pain to people by having loved ones killed and it seemed that you did it…gladly.

C: Yes. I will admit that I did keep power through…fear. I struggle with…of today’s standards, it is never okay. However, the way of war…the way of power was such until very recently. It only changed drastically after your World War Two. If World War Two did not happen, the same battles would continue to start and be won or lost in a repetitive cycle. Only instead of a sword there would be a gun. And instead of an arrow, there would be bombs.

K: But there are still those things…those weapons.

C: And they are relatively controlled. Your nuclear bombs…one had slipped through the cracks to again, show the world, what can happen with a lack of…rules to the game.

K: That’s one way to say it.

C: The past was never policed. The land and the people went to the ones who could take over and the more violent, the more control. By today’s standards, it was very wrong but by the standards of which I lived and died, it was the way things were. I was a face of those times. But I have also come back and been a soldier who witnessed the cloud of the bomb that changed the face of the weapons game. I have been the commander of armies and have been the protestor for peace. I have played both sides of the coin. One must, to understand both sides of the experience that a human plays out with whatever face and body that experience plays out in.

K: You lived a life as a protestor of peace?

C: I did. I was adamant that I did.

K: Which life gave you…or made you feel better about life?

C: If you are talking about that life that played to my soul, of course it would be the protestor for peace. If you are talking about the life I lived that fed my need for power, it would be the emperor.

K: And now, as the spirit that comes to talk?

C: I would answer the same because those were my experiences. I chose to live both sides and I learned from both sides neither being more than the other. Life and the life after that and the life after that is an ebb and flow but the ocean is the ocean. There are storms and there are the peaceful currents, but it is still the ocean and it still contains life.

K: I guess I was just wondering if you excuse your behavior as Constantine?

C: It was very dark. I carried out heinous deeds. I was not always proud of that but in those times, it was more about surviving than thriving. Would I sit here and tell you that I’m proud. No. I was neither proud nor guilty. I understood, after my life, why and that is what I am most at peace with. The why. The why is the reason of my life as a soldier that watched…and could do nothing…as Japan was blown to bits. The why is the reason I returned and fought for peace. The experience of my spirit was for all of that within that storyline.

K: Do you feel like…as powerful as you were as Constantine, you needed to be just as…like the opposite end of that extreme?

C: No. It’s not about stature. It’s about the experience. People believe the extremes have to appear as extremes. One lives the high life and then the low life. But the experience can still be lived without the extremes at play. There are businessmen and politicians that have the power that I held, and physical death toll of their battles are much lower but the consequence of their actions and inactions continue to affect those who put them in their seats of power…death or not. It appears very different. Lives are still affected. There are just rules around death. In your day and age, powerful people cannot continue taking lives even though some continue to do so.

K: Yes. (thinks) Yeah.

C: Have I upset you?

K: No. I just think that you’re the first spirit that’s had me look at it that way. Even though the circumstances evolve and change over time, the bottom line is the same in some way.

C: It will never be exactly the same. It can’t be and I hope it would not be because as the people of earth evolve, the meaning of life does as well. Not for everyone but for most.

K: For sure. Yes.

C: Good.

K: I want to talk a little bit about your…I guess spiritual views when you lived as Constantine because rumor says that you thought that you were made in the image of Apollo and you got off on that.

C: (laughs) Hhhmmm…yes.

K: Tell me about that.

C: (shifts in the chair while he thinks) Okay. Would you like to know something about me?

K: Absolutely.

C: (grins) I would say that I was made in the image of Apollo but I…I purposely made myself into the image of Apollo to be hailed as a prophet so what I would say or command would be taken seriously with the Pagan people.

K: Huh…I actually believe that is legit. People will do what they will do to keep the attention on them.

C: (laughs) Again, to be as powerful as I was, it wasn’t just about physical strength. It was about strategy.

K: So, then was that the same idea about you saying you saw some sort of cross in the sky and because you saw that you said Jesus was giving you some sort of sign to go into battle because you would win? What was it that you saw?

C: Hhmm…(thinking about how to say it) I would always stare up at the sun. Always. And you know, when you stare up at the sun…send a prayer up to whatever god you believe in, when you look away, you have the images…in your eye.

K: Like that image that sort of burns into your eye and you look away and it’s still there. The after image?

C: Yes.

K: Then…you’re telling me, that the cross shape that you saw in the sky was the after image of whatever cloud was passing by the sun and took on that image?

C: Yes.

K: You’re joking.

C: I’m not.

K: Why did you make it look like it was Christ coming to cheer you on?

C: I had an army to command. There was sickness. There was exhaustion. There was malnutrition. I needed them to fight so I fed their spirit because I could not feed their bodies. I wanted to give them something to believe in for my own advantage. I must admit, after the war…the wins and the losses, I considered what I had done. That if Christ…a message or a sign from Jesus could bolster a people…an army…to win a war…was there something to it? I couldn’t shake it. I could not shake the possibility of the unseen power of that. It haunted me. It taunted me. I was conflicted. There were many people that were Polytheists and there were many that were Christian. I had never seen such faith until the bridge.

K: It says that the Battle of the Milvian Bridge was a turning point. Where you made Christianity legal or something.

C: It was a turning point. I could not deny that the Christian faith…contributed to my success. That success was more…beloved than any win I had emulating Apollo. It was a turning point within me to ask myself what was true. I searched within myself. In pondering Christianity, I wanted to know more where…with my faith in the Greek gods…I assumed I knew more.

K: Wow!!!! You were humbled.

C: (nods) I was humbled. Yes.

K: You were baptized.

C: I was.

K: Why did you wait until your death? Before you died?

C: The idea of sin is a great motivator.

K: (laughing) Seriously?

C: Oh yes.

K: Then you were scared to go to hell.

C: (smiles) Not entirely. Christianity continued to be the great question for me. I thought that if I was baptized, in my death, I would learn the answers?

K: And did you?

C: Not all of them. It’s why I chose to live the other side of the coin…as they say. Christianity is but one part of faith. To know faith, you must know all parts of the experience. Religion…ways of worship…of prayer…are the many roads that lead home. The experience is the map.

K: That is so cool. You are so cool. I loved how you just wrapped that up with a lovely bow.

C: Cool…(smiles and rubs his chin) Thank you. I don’t believe I’ve ever been called such a thing. I like it.

K: I mean, you are a little bit rough around the edges. Thank you for not coming in full…regalia.

C: There really is no need for such things. A costume. A very heavy and awkward costume.

K: Agreed. I can see that for sure.

C: (gestures around him) See, I’m not so bad. Humans like to rehash what has been done and buried. There is mystery there. The dead, don’t necessarily feel the need to do that. We like to hold conversations just as anyone would.

K: Thank you.

C: I would say that I was introduced to you through Marcus. But that would not be true.

K: Who sent you, then?

C: A man you know as Tony, but I know as Antony. (That’s how he says it. Not Anthony.)

K: I was just talking to my son about him the other day.

C: We know.

K: Of course you do. Okay your greatness, anything else on the whole…emperor deal?

C: No. (shakes his head) I don’t attach myself to that soul as much as any other would. It is, like I said, a part I played. It was rather big, but the small parts hold just as much weight.

K: Because it’s the experience and not the part.

C: Precisely. (looks at me and smiles warmly) Thank you.

K: Thank you. This was great. Thank you for allowing me to see, think, and assume differently about you.

C: If I was a part of that, I am pleased.

K: Me too. Take care, Constantine.

C: Be well. Ci siamo visti. (winks)

Images shown are representational and experiential rather than historical.