Part 2
Realising that I needed other guides was a big step forward –
A door had opened.
But the problem was that I had little idea where to turn: The local pagan community had given me support, but as anyone with this experience knows there is only so far others can lead you. The library had already given up all it could offer in this area.
I had struggled and read and asked all the rational questions that were
possible, and now it seemed as though I had come to the end of the road. For weeks I wrestled with the problem, tied
up in my need to find signs, a map, a guide – something to tell me where to
step next, how to lead myself out of the maze.
I spent the summer plagued by insomnia as I lay awake thinking. Most nights, I eventually gave up trying to
sleep and walked for hours, alone in the early hours of the morning – bathed in
moonlight and soaking up the silence of the sleeping city streets. My summer
job suffered, my friends thought I was cracking up, and maybe they were almost
right.
September came again, and I was back in classes. I tried several times to work up the courage
to go to the office of the professor who had sent me into this experience, but
could never shake the fear that she would berate me for taking it too
seriously. This was the ivory tower – we study these things, we don’t live
them. (an odd attitude for an anthropologist, but there you have it) For a time, the rush of the first weeks of
school pushed the confusion and yearning to the side, but as the days wore on
the sense of urgency began to reassert itself.
It was getting cooler, but even so insomnia drove me back out into the
night.
One night there was a light mist rising from the river, and the usually
familiar streets were suddenly strange and mysterious. I had never had a dread of graveyards or
tombs, but the coiling mist shifting like a living thing made my skin prickle
as I went past.
I stopped, and looked out over the riverside graveyard. The prickle was still there, but it seemed
less alarming than it had when it first came and anyway I was struck by how
beautiful the scene was – It wasn’t foggy, just a waist high mist that had crawled up off the
river, so the sky above was clear as it tended to be on crisp nights in that
city. The stars were bright, and the Moon was visible as a dark circle against
the sky – somehow blacker than the infinite space behind it.
I wanted to see more, so I stepped through the gate and into the
graveyard proper, moving away from the soft glow of street lights behind
me. The cemetery ran all the way down to
the river bank – though there were no graves close to the water’s edge. I
walked along the main path as far as it would go, and to my surprise there was
a low stone bench set up there – nothing fancy, just a spot where visitors
could sit and rest and maybe look at the old headstones, most of which dated
back into the early years of the 20th century. It wasn’t the graveyard that interested me,
though. I sat facing the other way –
looking out over the river.
The city was still green. One of
the great things about that city is that the streets are all lined with huge
trees – lots of elm – and so once you get off the streets themselves the street
lights are mostly invisible. There at
the edge of the river, the night seemed even darker, and I looked out over the
inky water at the line of “forest” on the other side.
And then a rectangle of light that seemed as bright as the sun appeared
A door had opened.
Almost right in front of me, someone in one of the houses nestled in
those trees had stepped out into the cool night. Music drifted across the mist, stretched so
thin by the distance that only the thrumming bass beat was strong enough to
make it all the way. The shadow figure
stood there, framed by the light, as thought looking out into the dark,
searching for something. Or someone.
It felt as though she was looking straight at me, and the prickle of
Presence grew slowly as I was drawn deeper and deeper into the illusion. My breath sounded thunderous, my heart was
pounding, the beat of the music being played at that house party rolled over me
in waves as I suddenly realised what had to be done.
Not what I needed to do, I now
realised – this had been my mistake the whole time, the thing that was keeping
me tangled in the weeds – but what needed to be done.
Then the figure raised one arm as though waving to me across the river
of mist that roiled between us, tossed the spart of a spent cigarette into the
dark, and the door closed.
I was exhausted by the experience, but my mind raced as I walked back
to campus, back to the little monastic cell I called home. I was pulling out all the things that I had
learned over the last few years, unpacking memories from my teens that I had
thought wrapped in cotton forever.
I was planning my first active foray into the realm of spirit, and I
was determined to gird myself with the right tools.
I knew from childish experiments with self-hypnosis I’d tried in high
school how to script things.
I knew from my studies how shamanic journeys were usually begun.
I knew universal themes, I knew structure (and lack of it), I knew the
story as told second hand by others.
Now it was time to tell a story of my own.
I had the weeks – months! – of intense study since my experience with
the Elders to draw on for symbols and rites to work with.
The equinox had passed, and Calan Gaeaf was swiftly approaching. If I was going to do this thing (and the
pressure building in my head said that I had to) then it would have to be
done right: I would need to choose the timing, choose my tools, choose my
travelling raiment.
I spent the next few weeks all but ignoring my studies. I spent hours looking back through notes, referring
back to books I had torn through and reading them more carefully.
I choreographed how I was going to approach this. I had clear ideas of the geometry I would
use, the lines I would speak, the symbols I would imbue with power.
It was all very heady, but I was a total novice – I had no idea what I
was doing, really, no matter how well I fooled myself. Indeed, I was the fool, in all its tarot
glory.
Lines were written, props found, made or purchased. The date was set, and a private place
selected – somewhere where I could have privacy and seclusion, somewhere
safe. I had no idea what would happen.
The day came.
I had fasted for three days, purifying myself in preparation for the
event. The night was dark and clear, the
Moon just barely past New, its face not yet showing any perceptible edge of
light.
It seemed perfect.
Hand trembling with anticipation, adrenaline, lack of sleep and lack of
food I set my hand to the metronome I had prepared and started. Taking my chalk in hand I began to draw the
complex geometry I had confected over the weeks of preparation. Looking back, it was ridiculous. At the time, it seemed profound and
momentous.
I whispered the refrain I had composed for the occasion over and over
as I drew.
I laid out offerings at each of the directions, intoning a prayer to
each. The metronome rhythm was starting
to seep into my bones as I walked the circle, building it into a spiral as my voice rose. It was
starting to feel as though I was harmonizing with myself, the drone of my voice
rattling my ribs and leaving me breathless.
I drew the spiral in again, walked the circle, stopped to call for aid at each point, then lay myself down and began the breathing exercises I had planned. I let my body relax into the rhythm of the metronome, of my breath, of my heartbeat.
Eyes closed, the flicker of candle-light danced like Platonic shadows
in my personal darkness. The scent of
wax and incense and spice and sweat seemed to fill me. When everything inside
me seemed still, I willed myself into that cave once more.
It took time, but gradually my heart slowed, my muscles relaxed so that
I seemed to be floating, and at last my mind seemed to be filled with a
pregnant nothing. In the darkness, I
smelled the moist perfume of soil, felt the chill touch of stone. I built up the image until it was a part of
me:
I could see it, I could see the
steps leading up, I rose to climb them.
At the top of the steps, it seemed as though the world opened out
around me and what happened next was so profoundly affecting, so personal that
I have struggled for years to put it in words.
I have written reams, only to shred them. I have spoken for hours,
until the words came sputtering to a stop.
But every effort, every drawn-out struggle to explain what happened to
me that night, on Nos Calan Gaeaf in 1989 always seems to be drawn back to the
same thing:
A door had opened.
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