The Elders were good to me. They could tell that something different had happened to me than to any of he other visitors, and while the young First Nation participants went to join a discussion circle and the visitors went to join a seminar, I ended up sitting at a desk in the back office of the community center, shuddering like a new-born colt as I stared into a cup of black coffee.
The kind Elder who had tended me in the last moments of my journey had gone, but in her place was a younger man who lived in the city. We talked about my experience, explored it as best we could, but he had no context to work with and I was completely unprepared for the strike of lightning. When he was sure I wasn't just having a trip and was safe to go home he let me go. He gave me his number and offered to talk again, but I could tell he wasn't sure what he thought he'd be able to do for me. I did call a few times, but he was right.
I needed other guides.
To that point, most of my sources of "wisdom" had been dusty books on the history of Roman Britain. The gods were mentioned but between Roman propaganda and the dismissive attitude of 19th century scholars my view of them was anaemic at best.
I started digging into the Uni library, but the books they had there were as dusty as ever. I could tell that there was truth there, but I needed more depth, more perspective to get at it.
I tried at the "occult" bookstores. The people there were kind and helpful, everyone seemed eager to help me find my way. But the paths they offered didn't seem quite what I was searching for. They didn't fit right with the memory resonating in my soul like a single string.
I tried books I found at the occult shops, I tried books in the religions section of the book shops, I tried recommendations and loans...
But all of it seemed empty.
Not empty as in without value, but empty in the sense of speaking in an unfurnished room. The frame was there, the outline, but the meat of it was missing.
I needed other guides.
It was all so confusing. Over the days and weeks following the initial experience, I found myself wondering more and more if it had even been real.
My education had prepared me for one thing, but the visceral nature of what I had actually experienced was more than I could handle. I started to wonder:
Was it just a hypnotic trance induced by the drums and chanting?
(I know now how stupid a question that was)
Was it a parietal lobe event triggered by nerves and exhaustion?
(I hadn't slept well for days before)
Was it suggestion - had I built the experience out of whole cloth based on what I had been told to expect and what I had read?
(I know answers to this now, but it seems so much more complex than when I first asked it)
The thoughts kept spiraling around in my head, pulling me deeper and deeper, and yet I didn't seem to be able to get anything out of anyone that made any sense.
The people in the local pagan community were very kind to me. They endured questioning that bordered on interrogation and responded with gentle advice and help. I tried joining some of their groups, but nothing seemed to mesh. Something was missing, something just wasn't right. It wasn't that I didn't see where they were coming from - I did - but I could tell that while the message they were offering me was close it didn't point the way. I understand now why that was - that it wasn't a matter of them being wrong - but the lack of mesh made my enthusiasm fade.
I continued going to the local shops and circles, but my presence was fading and they could feel it. Even as I drew away, they drew away from me - no doubt certain I was just another teenage dabbler who wanted to shock his folks as much as anything else. My reading matter started to shift as well, drifting away from things like the books on the shelves of the ritual goods shop and the local pagan magazine, and gravitating back toward what I knew: the academic tomes in the Uni library and on my own shelves at home.
I threw myself into it. I read more about ancient Celtic gods and mythology than I ever had before. I was searching for something but I only barely knew what it was - how would I ever know when I found it?
To start with, I thought it would make sense to try to figure out what exactly it was that I had seen - that I didn't know seemed strange, and yet...
And yet, although I didn't know, I knew if that makes any sense at all.
Hours poring through books, long evenings spent at the Uni library until security kicked me out and I had to sleep on a bench in the students' union because the last bus had long gone. My test scores suffered, but my essays were doing well. And I seemed to be making progress.
I learned all I could about the iconography and mythology of my homeland - the pre-Elizabethan stuff, the pre-Saxon stuff, the pre-Roman stuff insofar as such things were even available. It was all fragmentary, all threads of gold in a haystack but I threw myself into trying to weave it back together at least enough to make sense to myself.
That religion and ritual course came to my rescue in the end: I knew how to pull out the key symbols in a myth, and applied the technique to my vision.
A cave.
A tree.
A raven.
A cat.
A woman.
It was starting to make sense. The symbols were hanging together in a way that resonated. But I needed more.
I needed to dig more deeply than the books could teach me.
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