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Mystical Tarot Realms
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Pestles on a Pounding Stone
egdz23
00:00 / 04:48
APT. 20
In Apt. 20, one memory plays over and over: the day that you climbed over the barbed wire, careful not to hook your clothes, following a trail to the creek, wading through a turpentine scent exhaled from blue curl--tough stalks with tiny purple steer's skulls--the silence heightened by squirrels and lizards scurrying over cinnamon-colored leaves curled into boat shapes as you touched the silver puzzle of the bark, knowing you could never fit it back together as you pulled it apart, noting the bones like huge drum-sticks scattered on the slope just before you turned to discover the pounding stone for the first time--all this keeps replaying to the exclusion of everything else, as if something were about to fit together, thousands of years flooding the hillsides, yet there was no time, the far-off howl of a coyote joined by another howl, children in the distance or the faint cries and laughter of some tribe, somehow near and yet far away, reaching you in the stillness.
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(You realize that you might be on the right path because in a corner of the room you find an old box containing a story entitled Alternate Reality Apartments....)
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Poppies and Lupine after Rough Fire
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ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS:
CHAPTER ONE
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I stood peering beyond the clouds, glimpsing the shadow of a surfacing turtle, then turned and reached into the cracks between rocks sprouting star-moss, the pounding stone always at the center, the mortars filling with leaves and bugs and creek water and pounded only by rain for over a century, the smooth cups in the stone my only evidence. A slightly haunted satisfaction washed over me even though I found nothing but dirt or slime under my fingernails, even though merely sitting by the creek as the breeze stirred my hair, the leaves, the languid water.
I have experienced, in this life and another, the two signs of the final terror--while ravished by the flowers and trees, the purling water, the breath of all the species flowing around me.
Once, I had driven toward the obscured mountains, straight on an avenue past orchards where a snow of blossoms revealed budding leaves, the road suddenly straying from the grid and veering northeast into the grasslands at the base of the foothills, across a canal that contained in concrete most of the San Joaquin River heading south now instead of north in its natural course to the Delta, the road winding over a ridge into a small foothill valley. I knew they would pursue me until I paid, but I kept accelerating into the curves, suddenly noticing a slightly opened gate. I felt an uncharacteristic desire to trespass, so I turned around, parked the car, opened the loosely chained gate, and dashed down a short trail, over a berm with large boulders meant to hide a once-oiled road, now cracked, eroded, and quilted by cow droppings that sprouted red maids and miniature lupine. After hiking down the hill about half a mile, I wandered off the road onto a path next to the creek. At dusk alone in the foothills, the woods breathing peacefully as the air darkened and cooled, the bats looping soundlessly overhead and crickets chirping in the still-warm grass, I saw a flock of wild turkeys, resembling small dinosaurs, scurrying along the bank about fifty feet away. In the quiet, my chest heaved slightly from an inexplicable rage.
It wasn't just that I was trespassing, which I was considering an act of civil disobedience, or that I was six months out of work. I had walked straight to a pounding stone, the mortars in the rock black with slime and decaying leaves. I suddenly knew without a doubt that I would find a path leading to another pounding stone. I stumbled a few feet and found the path right away and followed it. Soon I found another pounding stone about two hundred yards away on a ridge overlooking the creek.
The two pounding stones were close but blocked from view by a slope on the north side where the creek bends. I went back to the first pounding stone I had first encountered and sat near a shallow mortar, which someone had not had time to deepen. Feeling the coolness of the rock and trying to empty my mind, I closed my eyes and felt the breeze and in spite of myself heard the laughter of young women. I opened my eyes to the pounding stone that had not changed in over a century, only now there were no people.
Picking up an oak branch to use as a walking stick, I was suddenly seeing through the eyes of someone else who was bent and dizzy and deeply troubled, ready to lie down forever. The walking stick was in my hand which was also someone else's hand. I had someone else's face or no face at all. I held the stick away from my body, imagining myself stretching out on the earth many years before as the trees turned, everything passing away except the stone and the sun, and then my arrival again.
Listening to long, almost human groans of utter despair, possibly from a bullfrog being swallowed by an eight-foot garter snake that ruled the evaporating creek, I returned to the pounding stone with the feeling that I was on the verge of remembering something. All that surfaced was the overwhelming urge to find my way to the top of the opposite ridge. I hopped over the rocks without getting my feet wet and climbed up the slope, avoiding poison oak, seeing nothing at first but dry grass and gray pines and a few bare spots with a little rosinweed. I strolled back and forth on the ridge several times, sure I was missing something, until, sweaty and tired, I surrendered to the shade.
I looked first to my right at a large stone under an old oak tree, and then to my left, seeing poison oak near a stone that the earth had nearly submerged. Looking down I realized that I was practically sitting on a shallow mortar. Suddenly drawn to the oak tree, I discovered in the stone beneath it that a large pestle was plugging a mortar. With oak leaves needling my fingers, I cleared the pounding stone, finding ten other mortars. Looking back, I decided to check out the other stone and discovered that it also contained mortars, filled with earth and grass. I was in the middle of another ancient village site, the round hollows of the house pits still faintly etched in the earth.
I suddenly felt like a woman. Before I could begin to cope with that feeling, a terrible sorrow overcame me, as if I had lost someone I had deeply loved. Even though I had suffered many times from loss, this grief was different, right on the surface. I felt the emotional surges of a teenager combined with the maturity of an adult. Then I found a trail down to the creek, and suddenly imagined that I was in some procession, and that I was about to say goodbye to someone for the last time. The grief was different from any I had experienced, nearly unbearable, impossible to suppress. I felt compelled to go on, as though it were out of the question to stop, crossing the dry creek and snaking up a trail to a level stretch of land where I found more round hollows in the earth.
I knew right away that the round hollows were house pits, which confused me at first, until I remembered that the Native Americans sometimes buried the dead under their houses. I felt an absurd desire to keep anyone from being buried there. The woman in that other time must have fought with all her strength to stop the burial. I imagined that others, overcome by their own grief, did what they could to comfort her. Somehow I knew that she had remained inconsolable, and I had no rational explanation for how I knew this or why I had found my way to those house pits.
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All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
One Pestle in a Pounding Stone
conf23
00:00 / 06:07
APT. 21
Sure that truth and morality and the arts don't mean much to people anymore, you fill the hot air balloons connected to your room and gently lift away from the apartment building. Exhilarated by the view, you glide over the valley, a vast quilt of farms with packing sheds and processing plants and towns that have developed outward around a nuclei of malls, fast food restaurants, box stores, and gas stations. You notice that the small towns in the valley resemble serfdoms, with a few extravagant mansions and a few run-down middle-class homes and numerous tawdry shacks surrounding the inner core of affluence. You glide over to the foothills, some areas of which still seem pristine. You glimpse a network of trails and amuse yourself by trying to map the paths, realizing that they must form an ancient web connecting Native American village sites all over the range, but the trails keep vanishing in the grass. You go higher above the smog and glimpse all the cultivated and urbanized land where wetlands and lakes used to be, and the dams on every river; beyond that are strip mines and patches of clear-cut forests. You go even higher where the oxygen grows thin and view a huge fault and the opening of a volcano, the ocean in the distance. Every now and then you hear jets and explosions, and you wonder how high you need to go to escape the wars and disasters as, breathing through an oxygen mask, you approach the cold blanket of outer space.
(You realize that you are on the right path because in the middle of the room you find an old box containing Chapter Two of Alternate Reality Apartments....)
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Pestles in the Mortar of a Pounding Stone
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ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS:
CHAPTER TWO
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Ninety seconds before midnight, I was wide awake and trying to figure out a rational way of avoiding ecocide and genocide and the total annihilation of the planet, so I did something I normally wouldn't do.
I had become more and more excited about the possibility of reincarnation, and even though I had always considered myself a rational man, I decided to go to a hypnotist for a past-life regression. The experience of being hypnotized at first struck me as more than a little awkward and perhaps even a little risky since I would be giving another person control over my psyche, but I couldn't resist seeking out the truth, so I made an appointment with a hypnotist, a Dr. Browning, who had a reputation for helping people quit smoking.
I drove to a house surrounded by tall pine trees, the natural setting as inviting as a forest. A woman in her late fifties ushered me into the house. She stared at me coldly for a moment and then led me upstairs to a loft above the garage with a window that revealed the midsection of a pine tree.
"Have a seat on the couch," she commanded. "My husband will be here shortly."
I wondered if making the client wait was standard procedure. In my case it wasn't working; I had the urge to fly back down the stairs and out the door. Instead, I looked around the office--clean, decorated in a Southwestern style with paintings of Native Americans curled up next to big clay pots-- a room devoid of any instruments for mesmerizing people, as far as I could tell. Suddenly Dr. Browning rushed in, apologizing for being late.
He was an older gentleman, with protruding white eyebrows. "I just have a couple of questions before we get started," he said. "Have you ever been hypnotized before?"
"Nope," I replied.
"What do you expect to gain from this experience?"
"You'll probably think this is silly, or maybe not, I don't know. Recently, I've had feelings that I've lived before, and I was hoping that you might be able to regress me back to that time--if that's possible."
"Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I'm not sure."
"Are you religious?"
"I'm not sure what that means."
"Do you consider yourself a Christian or a Buddhist or a Druid or a Muslim?"
"No. Really, I don't believe in any particular religion. Usually, I find my spiritual strength in the 'church of nature,' so to speak. In fact, that's where I first had these feelings. I was near a creek and I felt like I'd been there before. I felt like a Native American woman who had lost someone she had deeply loved. And I don't fantasize about being a woman--if that's what you're thinking," I laughed.
"I appreciate your frankness. What you're asking is not easy, and if we are successful you might not like what you find. Every life contains a certain amount of brokenness and suffering, as I'm sure you know."
"I'm willing to risk it."
"As long as you understand that there is an element of risk, or at least the possibility of some unpleasantness, I'm going to go ahead and start the process. You realize that I'm going to record this session. Is that all right?"
"Yes."
Apparently, I am a receptive subject. I remembered everything that had transpired during the session. After regressing me back to my birth experience, the hypnotist asked me to walk on the trail next to the creek again, but this time in my previous life. He asked me to describe what I saw. I described the huts on the ridge and women at the pounding stone gossiping and laughing. One man was making a spear, another a trap, while others appeared to be playing some game--possibly gambling.
"Tell me what happened to you," the hypnotist commanded.
I suddenly saw the village at dawn, noticing a hut near a small pounding stone by a trail. A few people were huddled around fires but almost everyone else in the village was still asleep. I gazed far off into the valley, where herds of animals were stirring. Rain was beginning to fall. I had a feeling that something terrible was about to happen, but I was thirsty, so I decided to stroll down the hillside to the creek for a drink of water. When I crouched down to cup water in my hands, I looked up to the hillside and saw white soldiers attacking the village. I screamed. At that moment, I realized that I was the woman whose life I had unexpectedly remembered when I was wandering through the foothills a few days before.
Then I remembered what had happened to the woman. She had been knocked unconscious by a rifle butt while the white people, mostly in uniform, were burning the village and the winter stores. When she came to her senses, she discovered that her hands were tied tightly behind her back. A few members of the tribe were wailing over the dead strewn across the ridge. They dragged her over to a group of men who were being whipped into line. A white man with a long beard and dressed in skins was arguing with a man in uniform and pointing at her angrily. Suddenly the bearded man stomped over to her and pulled her aside, just before a line of soldiers marched in front of the prisoners, lifted their rifles on command and shot the prisoners dead.
The white man tied a leather strap around her waist and dragged her along behind him with her hands still tied behind her back. She could see her aunt wailing over the body of her uncle. She wanted to scream but could only grimace and weep, falling to her knees as she was dragged along and then pulled face down onto the ground. The white man turned around and whipped her hard across the neck and back until she got on her feet again. After that, every time she slowed, the white man whipped her until she moved at a pace more to his liking as they hiked up a trail that led to the village where she had grown up, finally making camp on a ridge overlooking the great valley in the west and the foothill valley in the east where part of her tribe was still encamped.
The white man used her like a wife that evening and then tied her up tightly to an oak tree. She sat with her back to the tree, gazing at the constellations, seeing fires like tiny stars in the valley on land that no longer belonged to her people, as though part of the great sky had also been taken from them. In the morning, she stared, unable to move, as men in uniform marched past her over the ridge into the foothill valley. Later that morning, she heard gunshots in the distance.
They remained camped on the ridge several days, occasionally hearing gunfire.
Finally, she heard only birds and squirrels and frogs and crickets. The white man dragged her behind him on the trail into the foothill valley down to the creek near the village where she had grown up. They hiked along the hill above the creek, but even hundreds of yards above the village, she could smell smoke. The white man whipped her when she paused, so she trudged along behind him with tears streaming silently down her cheeks.
They finally made camp east of the creek, close to a place where the tribe had settled long ago. He used her practically every night whether or not she cried, and then he tied her to a tree. At times she could hear animals trampling through the brush, and one night woke to a bear sniffing her. She remained perfectly still until the bear grunted and wandered off. The next day the white man dragged her down to the creek, untying her hands, and then he tied a string around her finger and slapped a bush with his whip to let her know what would happen if she tried to escape. He showed her large flat rocks next to the creek and where to carry them--above the river bed in the clearing where he began stacking them as evenly as possible on top of each other. By the end of the day they had four walls, all several feet high. In a few days they built a solid house with planks and branches for a roof.
Soon other white men made camp nearby in the clearing. They all had large pans and shovels and picks and spent most of the day by the creek. Her companion also spent a lot of time by the creek, and he would show her the nuggets of gold that he occasionally found, but he would usually go hunting in the hills, leaving her untied but always whipping the bush before he left. All the while, he had kept her well-fed with deer and rabbit and squirrel and quail. After awhile, she realized she was pregnant. She had nowhere else to go, so she spent her days gathering acorns and making mush at the pounding stones by the creek just like her people had done for innumerable years. The white man refrained from whipping her, and they began to work more like partners.
After she had the baby, she spent most of her time near the house while her companion went off hunting, sometimes for two or three days. He even had a mule that he had bought from one of the other miners. He would sell some of the meat he brought back for the gold of the other miners. She took care of the baby and did what her companion wanted.
She was always the first one to rise, just before dawn. The baby was usually asleep at that time, which gave her a little time to prepare herself for the day. One morning while she was at the creek at sunrise, the camp was attacked by several men from her tribe, who shot the sleeping miners in their tents and then either crushed their skulls with clubs or slit their throats. She started running toward her house just as her companion was coming out. A gun went off close by, and he looked at her, surprised and pained, before he fell flat on his face. As she screamed, one of the attackers crushed his skull. Her baby, who had been screaming, suddenly became silent, and one of the men stepped out of the house with blood covering his knife. She tried to rush into the house but a man from her tribe stopped her. She fell to her knees, wailing.
The men from her tribe took all the mules and the gold and whatever else they decided they could use and left her alone with the dead. First, she buried her baby under the house and then tore down the stones from the walls, one by one, to lay on top of her companion's shallow grave, the way she had seen the other miners bury an old man who had died of fever. She buried the miners the same way, five in all, before she headed back up the creek to her old village. She found two more bodies near a stone house by the creek and buried them as well, side by side.
Her companion had once shown her how to load and shoot a rifle, so she took a rifle and powder and bullets that the men from her tribe had overlooked in the raid and made camp where her old village had once stood. She built a small hut on the ridge and survived by hunting and grinding acorns. (I understood then why I had found only one pestle in the pounding stone on the ridge.)
All of this passed before my eyes fairly quickly. Some parts seemed to move in fast forward. I saw clearly only what seemed the most significant aspects of the experience.
The hypnotist woke me gently from my trance. "Do you remember what you just told me?" he asked.
"Yes, I do," I replied. "I can't believe it. This is incredible. Why don't more people know about this?"
"'This' meaning reincarnation?" the hypnotist asked.
"Yeah. Imagine if everyone knew they had lived before and would live again. Wouldn't that eliminate a lot of social problems?"
"I doubt that everyone is ready for this. You weren't ready until now, and how old are you?"
"Forty-one."
"I doubt that we could force anyone to do this. They have to be ready for it, like you. Anyway, realizing that you have an eternal soul doesn't automatically make you a good person."
"Yes, but look at the power you have to do good! The racist would realize that he could have once been a person of color. The sexist would realize that he was probably at least once a woman. The homophobe would realize that he might once have been gay, or might be in a future life."
"Yes, but prejudice is a type of power that very few people are willing to give up."
"But what if this became an accepted practice. Children could be regressed before they could become prejudiced!"
"You mean they would go to their hypnotist like they go to their dentist?" the hypnotist grinned.
"Why not?"
"You are not only a receptive subject but extremely brave! Unfortunately I don't have time to change the entire world right now. I have another appointment," he said with a warm smile.
I thanked him and left the office, pondering the significance of reincarnation for many days afterward, without telling anyone.
I suspected that I was tapping into something huge, something that connected me to everything else in the world. All of experience must be imprinted in the subconscious mind, I thought, or maybe the subconscious can somehow tap into a record of experience somewhere in the "Universal Mind." Perhaps that was why I could view the woman's experiences at times from her perspective and other times from a different perspective. That raised a question: What is identity? Was I the woman in a past life or was I simply reliving someone else's experiences? If the latter, does that mean that we are all facets of a collective mind? For most of my life I have believed with great certainty that I am a distinct individual, separate from everyone else.
Insanity is a denial of reality that can lead to catastrophe. If I, for instance, were to deny that I have celiac disease, foods with gluten that everyone else believes are safe to eat would eventually kill me. I have at key points in my life had to adjust my thinking and change radically for unexpected--sometimes even strange reasons. So I decided that I couldn't truly ignore this haunting experience.
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All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Pounding Stone at the Confluence: Bottom of Pine Flat Reservoir in a Drought Year
kings
00:00 / 04:12
APT. 22
Apartment 22 contains a scale model revealing a section of the foothills during the drought, with large rocks and even most of the trees--oaks, gray pines, sycamores, buckeyes, red-buds--accurately positioned. The reservoir is so low that the river resembles its former self. The slopes of the canyon, however, are stripped of life, except for a rusty crop of cockle-burs, which has flourished underwater, the seeds brought in by the first herds of cattle. If you examine the terrain carefully with a magnifying glass, you can even see ancient Native American trails stretching from one abandoned village site to another, where pestles still protrude from the mortars of a few pounding stones. You can also still see in the floodplain an old road used before the dam was built, as well as abutments where bridges spanned the river and its tributaries.
Buried under water for sixty years, a stone chimney still stands erect near pounding stones. Preserved by the cold water, dead trees still tower, stripped bare, almost black. Overgrown mining and logging roads, sometimes built over ancient trails, wind around the hillsides above the denuded slopes, and in some places the collapsed mines can be still be found, often near Native American village sites. Below the dam are canals and ditches that spurred one of the first water wars in the valley, but no obvious signs of conflict remain. Not far from the river is a creek whose water irrigated the first bumper crop of wheat that attracted the railroad. Around the tracks, the city continues to grow. Not far away from the creek new houses are popping up, the city slowly leapfrogging into the foothills.
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(You realize that you are still on the right path because near the model you find an old box containing Chapter 3 of Alternate Reality Apartments....)
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Ithuriel's Spears and Lupine
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ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS: Chapter Three
BEYOND EXISTENTIALISM
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If your child is dying, you don't sit in a chair by her side and think that life is absurd and meaningless. With every ounce of your being, you want your child to survive and to experience all the joys and, yes, sometimes even the horrors and tragedies of existence. If your child is dying, you'll probably feel broken. But through brokenness we know God.
The greatest mountains break down into sand and dirt. Through our brokenness we develop empathy and know God in the stones and the flowers and grasses and bushes and trees and the animals and in human beings. Through empathy we know love and learn how to transmute negativity into harmony. Through our brokenness, through our sense of absurdity and meaninglessness and mortality and through all of our losses, we come to know God in all things. We come to know that the personality and the ego are transitory but the soul is eternal.
Several weeks before we were scheduled to move into John Blackmore's rental house, I peeked through the garage door at empty shelves, smelling the familiar scent of dust and wood and turpentine and oil. At first I sensed the potential within the perpetually rough, unfinished space reserved traditionally for vehicles, junk, and men. Since women tend to avoid the garage, fearing plump black widows and rats, for a moment I imagined that I could turn the empty space into a man cave, a work space full of tools, or a modest gym with weights, or a music studio--each of which would require more effort than I am usually willing or able to expend. At that moment I also felt that I was not alone--even though nobody else was in the garage. My attention suddenly turned toward the ceiling. Long boards of different lengths--even what appeared to be a painted door--stretched across the rafters.
When I was five or six my brother coaxed me up a ladder to a similar makeshift ceiling in the rafters of the garage. After we climbed up the ladder, we searched the dim, fusty space, then stretched out, remaining silent when our mother called us. I felt oddly comfortable in that secluded space and closed my eyes. Apparently I fell asleep, and as I was snoozing, my brother climbed down and moved the ladder. When I opened my eyes, I realized I was all alone. After a moment of panic, I again began to enjoy the sense of solitude, and I stayed in the same spot, furious that my brother had left me stranded, until my father pulled the car into the garage a few minutes later. After my Dad closed the door to the garage and went inside, I hung from one of the rafters, then dropped several feet onto the roof of the car. I was so small that I barely made a dent.
Curious about the rafters in Blackmore's otherwise empty garage, I found a ladder and climbed high enough to peer over the large planks of wood. After my eyes adjusted, I could tell that water had seeped through a hole in the roof. I was about to step down but noticed a lumpy shape that resembled an old canvas bag in a corner. I moved the ladder as close as I could, curious but without much hope that anyone had left any items of value.
The former tenant had died on the property. There was a remote chance that the item had been overlooked or ignored, so I strained to reach the bag, barely brushing it with my fingertips. I would have to move a heavy plank to get closer. Instead I strained to reach it one more time and pressed down with my fingertips on the edge of the bag, dragging it with great effort a fraction of an inch. Encountering success, I tried again, and eventually inched the bag close enough to pull towards me.
As soon as I got it down to the ground, I unzipped the bag, which was stuffed full of old clothes. Disappointed but still determined, I dug to the bottom and felt a hard item wrapped in linen. I unwound the cloth and discovered ten gemstones hanging like earrings from a strange matrix, each gem a different color. Not being a jeweler, I couldn't tell whether the gems were authentic. I do not know much about jewels in general, but out of the ten gems, I recognized a diamond, a sapphire, a ruby, an emerald, an opal, and an amethyst. Purple is my favorite color, so I was immediately attracted to the amethyst.
As I touched the gem I felt a door open between my eyes. I don't know how else to describe it. Suddenly I sensed that I could see into another dimension. I let go of the amethyst and blinked my eyes, and the sensation vanished. I have always been a little psychic, but right after I touched the amethyst, I thought that I had glimpsed a ghost in the corner--which vanished as soon as I became aware of it. The experience was so fleeting that I ignored it.
I stared at the matrix on which the jewels were positioned. Each jewel hung inside a circle. I counted three pillars, the middle pillar with four circles and each outer pillar with three circles, for a total of ten circles. I then noticed also that the matrix could be viewed as triangles positioned on three pillars. Some of the triangles pointed upward, and some of the triangles pointed downwards. One circle stood alone at the bottom.
I needed to do more research to understand the significance of the matrix. I carefully wrapped the structure back up in the linen, then carried it to my car, unsure about whether I should share the treasure with John Blackmore or anyone else.
When I got home, I stretched out on the couch to contemplate my treasure and perhaps catch a quick nap. I soon drifted off. When I woke up, I was still fatigued, so I closed my eyes again and let my mind drift in a timeless state. I don't know how long I remained in the void--perhaps over an hour--but suddenly I beheld a horizontal gray figure-eight floating above my head. I also saw the walls of my room so clearly that I thought I had opened my eyes, so I blinked. The figure-eight disappeared.
That vision, I now believe, was stimulated by the energies in the amethyst. I also realize now that when touching the amethyst, I experienced the energy of the ninth Emanation of the Tree of Life known as Yesod, an energy that opens up the psychic centers of the aura. Someone must have charged each gem on the matrix with the energy of each respective Emanation on the Tree.
Only an idiot would deny the existence of germs because he doesn't see them, yet most rational people still don't believe in spirits--because they have never "seen" one. Instruments for revealing spiritual entities in a scientifically verifiable manner do not yet exist, so people tend not to believe in ghosts or demons or angels until they have encountered one. All the while, a person might unknowingly become more and more unbalanced because of a subtle dark influence. Blackmore has attempted to kill me more than once--how many times I can only guess. I believe he has become obsessed with the notion. It's possible that his mind has become unhinged by a dark force, what many call a demon, the way that the body can be sickened by germs.
A few days after the vision of the gray infinity symbol, I visited the bookstore. I was immediately attracted to a book on the Tarot and continued browsing until I discovered the Universal Waite Tarot deck.
As the cashier was ringing up the items, he confided that he had been thinking about "getting back into" the Tarot himself. Not knowing quite how to respond, I paused, and suddenly the word "synchronicity" popped out of my mouth. I confess that at the time I wasn't even totally sure what the word meant. The cashier smiled and handed me my purchase. I then drove to another store on a different errand.
Before I got out of the car, I flipped through the book and stopped at a page that featured a striking photo of a man named Carl Jung. I glanced at the text below and immediately discovered that Carl Jung had coined the term synchronicity to suggest how events in the external world can significantly mirror the symbolic world of the subconscious mind; in other words, just as events are connected by causality, they are also connected by meaning. I then opened the pack of Tarot cards. The second card I encountered, known as "The Magician," shows a figure with a horizontal gray figure-eight floating above his head. I flipped through the book to a description of "The Magician" and discovered that the gray figure-eight, called an infinity symbol or lemniscate, is a symbol of eternity. In the card, the lemniscate suggests the knowledge of the infinitude within.
I continued reading the book and decided that in my vision I had tapped into another dimension and had encountered a symbol, which a few days later surfaced in my conscious "real" life, and as I read on I discovered that the symbol system of the Tarot dove-tails in every way with the mystic symbol system known as the Tree of Life, which is an expanded version of the primary chakra system.
I usually avoid telling people about the other "coincidence": Before I envisioned the infinity symbol, I had discovered a version of the matrix of the Tree of Life in the garage with gems hanging within the ten circles that represent the spheres known as the Sephiroth, or Emanations.
When I experienced the vision of the infinity symbol, I had been mentally purifying my chakras. As I continued meditating, I envisioned pearls in the joints of my fingers and I could clearly see the rainbow of wheels spinning in front of me along my spinal cord. I could clearly see impurities in the vortices, and I mentally wiped them clean with a damp white cloth.
Some of the spinning wheels were harder to keep clean than others, however. I kept mentally draining the blackness from my heart and emptying trash from my crown chakra, for instance, but the blackness and the trash kept returning, so for a long time--in fact, until this day--I continue to purify the primary chakras in my aura.
I also repeatedly experienced a vision of a golden equal-armed cross with an indistinct angel at each end. I did some research and discovered that the symbol was the basis for an extremely powerful ritual known as "The Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram." Nevertheless, despite my visions, I still doubted the existence of a spiritual dimension. So I began to perform "The Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram," which invokes the Archangels of the four "Elements of the Wise." Even though I felt clumsy while conducting the ritual, I was touched by the energy of an intelligence so far above my own that I felt like an amoeba in comparison--I was suddenly immersed in a thought-bubble of mind-boggling complexity, which impressed me with a sense of eternity and a level of knowledge and power that I still cannot even begin to comprehend. My personality vanished, but I knew that my soul is eternal.
The next day at the end of the ritual I glimpsed a vague presence from a different dimension. It seemed to to be slanting into our dimension. Distracted, I neglected to do the banishing ritual of the pentagram, perhaps, I realized later, because I subconsciously desired to know for sure whether or not I was experiencing a spiritual entity. That night, as I was falling asleep, something shook me so violently that I felt like every cell in my body was vibrating. I didn't know what to do, so I just continued to lie there, hoping it would go away.
But just as I was falling asleep again, something nudged me hard four times. I felt around for my dog and turned on the light, discovering that my dog was sound asleep on the other side of the room, and no one else that I could see was in the room.
When you contact other spiritual dimensions, beings on the other side notice you. If you are unbalanced in any way, some beings from the other side might try to unhinge you. The people around you become vulnerable, especially if the evil or malicious spirits cannot immediately unbalance you.
A dark spirit began tormenting my daughter. According to her, as she was falling asleep, she heard a voice that sounded like her mother's voice whispering, "Don't turn around." This terrified her but piqued her curiosity. She slowly turned her head and saw a figure that resembled black smoke in the shape of a human being next to her bed. Suddenly the figure started shaking her bed. My daughter bounced up a down for a few seconds, then tore off her blankets and dashed to her mother's room. On another night, my daughter could hear a man weeping and begging for mercy in her closet--a closet which I discovered later had blood splatters on the ceiling.
My wife began having nightmares. Several times, she stood up, sound asleep, yelling and swinging her arms. When she woke up, she had no recollection of fighting for her life.
I had no idea, when I first touched the amethyst on the Tree of Life, that each circle on the matrix represents a state of being, and each state contains both a balanced and an unbalanced aspect. Since someone charged each gem on the Tree of Life matrix with the energy from its respective Emanation, anyone touching a gem on this matrix also touches the energy of that state of being and opens himself to both the unbalanced and balanced aspects of the energy, a virtue and a vice, so to speak.
The second gem I touched, the emerald, represents the sphere of Venus: the Emanation of nature and the arts and beauty. The virtue of the sphere of Venus is unselfishness and the vice is unchastity--a chronic state of lust.
Right after I touched the emerald, I had the urge to drive out to the Kings River. While lounging on a rock, surrounded by oaks and sycamores, I sensed an overarching consciousness, as if all the plants and trees and even rocks in that place had tuned to one frequency, a peace beyond understanding, and I too had effortlessly tuned my mind to that vibration. My mind had tuned to the Spirit of Place, the Over-Soul. I was on the path between Yesod, the ninth Emanation of psychism represented by the amethyst, and Netzach, the seventh Emanation of nature represented by the emerald. In other words, I had become psychic enough to experience the spirits behind the "outer robe of concealment" of the natural world.
After I got home, however, I began compulsively surfing through porn on the internet until I recognized that I had to deal with the influx of energy from the state of Netzach (Venus) in a more balanced manner. I was only able to return to a sense of harmony after I mentally cleansed myself and the house with the banishing ritual for two days.
I am afraid--and I should emphasize that I am not entirely sure about this--that a demonic spirit might have followed John Blackmore and edged him even farther into a state of homicidal rage. Whatever actually happened on the spiritual level, I know that I had achieved a low point in my own karmic career, considering the circumstances. I could blame my failings on chronic illness and the way society crushes artists and activists and free thinkers, but I intuited that I needed to change radically in order to resolve the karmic debt. Unfortunately, I do not know exactly what I have done to deserve my fate, though I am pretty sure that it is warranted for one reason or another. Perhaps I had committed a heinous crime against John Blackmore in a previous life, or maybe all the negative energy that I had subconsciously projected at other people was boomeranging back to me. I continued meditating to heal my mind and heart to become more balanced--to attract harmony instead of the dark, destructive energies that had attracted John Blackmore into my life.
As I continued meditating and performing The Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, I began to experience black energies flowing into me, and I released them into the fires below the surface of the earth, just as I had released many of the dark energies within my chakras. I soon recognized that I was releasing the negative energies within the collective consciousness of humanity, and Gaia, our beloved Mother Earth, was burning the negative energies up and transmuting them into harmony, for the dark energies at a certain point in each ritual transformed into light. This of course was an act of sacred reciprocity, for humanity is destroying itself and the earth due in large part to the negativity in our collective consciousness....
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All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Goldfields near a Native American Village Site
betwnd
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APT. 23
The door opens on tules bordering a lake, and you remember dragonflies and red-winged blackbirds, which suddenly appear--the memory, perhaps, surfacing because of the faintest rustling of transparent wings and a burbling call far off in the distance. You hear an echo from a large rock outcropping, but instead of someone emerging from the grove, a woodpecker glides to a nearby tree and forages in the bark, knocking again without any rhythm you can follow. The woodpecker flies away. Suddenly the knocking sound resembles footsteps, and you find yourself waiting for the people who brought you here to appear at the edge of the woods. Off in the distance, the sound of footsteps, more and more indistinct, continues. Sitting quietly in the breeze as dragonfly wings rustle in the tules, you gaze beyond the deep blue water to the mountains covered in snow.
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(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the room you find an old box containing Chapter Four of Alternate Reality Apartments.)
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Goldfields and Baby Blue Eyes
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ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS: CHAPTER FOUR
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As I stepped into my bedroom, I sensed the presence of a fierce, menacing spirit. After a moment, I recognized who it was because each soul has a unique energy, an invisible signature written on the spirit, both in life and in death. I was surprised because I had not encountered the man in many years, and even though I knew he was extremely old, I was unaware that he had passed away. I try to avoid insulting people, but a few years ago I had gone out of my way to offend the man because he had pretended to stand up for the powerless but had abused the little power that he had managed to command. He was a megalomaniac, a hypocrite, and I had publicly let him know my opinion of him.
The sensation of being attacked by a spirit is unmistakable. A malicious spirit will sometimes engulf a living person with a freezing, dense energy. Since the energy is so heavy, a sense of paralysis often occurs whether or not the living person is petrified by fear. At the mercy of an invisible spirit, a living person will usually emanate sheer terror, upon which the malicious or demonic spirit feeds, the way the legendary vampire feeds upon blood. Without any social constraints, a bully in life often becomes a malicious spirit in death (at least for a while).
I have been attacked by spirits before, so fortunately I knew how to handle it. After I stepped into the room, the spirit did not immediately jump me, possibly because he was new at the game or waiting for me to get into bed. Since at first he didn't seem intent on attacking me, I ignored him. He soon overcame his hesitancy and made his move, engulfing me with his dense, freezing energy. I could tell that he soon regretted it, however, because he quickly lost his zeal when my soul started radiating light like the sun. When he experienced the intense light and realized that he was not scaring me in the least, he loosened his grip on me, and his energy dissipated and eventually vanished.
The morning after my encounter with this man's spirit, I discovered in the obituaries that he had died of cancer.
His spirit came back to visit me a few days later. He was at that point profoundly despondent because, I believe, without the distractions of the physical world, he could see himself clearly, which might have been a challenge for him. I don't know if he wanted anything from me, but during the second visit he made no attempt to attack me. I mentally acknowledged his presence without hindering his progress in any way, and he soon disappeared again.
I have made myself sensitive to the spirit dimension through physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual purification. I usually do not see spirits with my physical eyes. My subconscious senses the energy and an image of the entity is cast upon the screen of my mind. I see it, in other words, with my "third eye." I have only seen a spirit with my physical eyes once. Faintly effervescent, the spirit was transparent and seemed to slant in and out of this dimension. That spirit, extremely powerful and malicious, was the first I had ever encountered, and I could tell that it wished to do me harm the moment I glimpsed it. One night--invisible the whole time--it shook me so hard I thought I was going to fly into pieces. In other words, it was revealing that it could easily kill me. Then it nudged me hard in the ribs four times as I was falling asleep. A few days later, it made disgusting noises right behind me. That was when I began making an effort to learn how to deal with malicious spirits.
After I cleansed my aura and began having visions of spiritual archetypes, while totally awake I have been touched lightly on the head and face numerous times, tapped on the shoulder, poked, prodded, held down, shaken, caressed, and enveloped by beings that I cannot see. I have heard a capella singing and strange noises even though no other person is even remotely in the vicinity. To some extent, I have become clair-sentient and clair-audient and clair-voyant, experiencing spiritual vibrations with the subtle senses of the aura, the "soul senses."
I ignored paranormal experiences for most of my life because society forces us to live within a very narrow range of vibration, conditioning us to block the pathways to the soul--that essential aspect of each one of us connected to vast, powerful cosmic forces. Human beings also contain these cosmic vibrations. (One symbol system, known as the Tree of Life, reveals the different types of energy in the cosmos and how they correspond to the individual human being.)
These powerful subtle forces can make people feel small and without any control. Our social system, on the other hand, strives to create the illusion that humans are in control of the world. We become afraid of any forces that challenge our limited perceptions of the cosmos. How many years did it take before we accepted that the Earth is not the center of the universe? It will no doubt take at least as long for humanity to accept that the physical universe is only a small part of the cosmos as a whole.
One night, a thud woke me up. The cat would sometimes leap to the floor or knock things over, so I wasn't concerned at first, but then I remembered that I had rigged an "alarm" by positioning the ironing board, with the iron at its edge, next to my wife's bedroom door, so that when the door was pushed inward from the patio, the iron would tip over and plunge to the floor. As my eyes adjusted in the darkness I remembered that I was in my daughter's bedroom. I stayed alert, telling myself that I was being silly, when suddenly I heard, right in front of the door to the guest room across the hall--my "bedroom"--the sound of someone cocking a gun.
I held my breath. For a long time, silence dominated the house until I distinctly heard the click of someone unlocking the bathroom window. Besides the family, only one other person knew that I slept in the guest room because of my snoring. Only one other person knew that my wife and daughter were away. One other person had a key to the house. One other person never caused the dog to bark. That person was probably lying in wait outside my door with a gun.
Suddenly I heard the clicking of claws on the wooden floor and my dog sniffing under the door. At that moment I realized that my friend had no doubt rehearsed this intrusion while everyone was away during the day, no doubt several times, so that he would know exactly how and where to step on the wooden floor without causing creaking noises.
This was his window of opportunity.
I listened carefully again. No one was stealing anything. I quietly lifted the shade and noticed the cat sleeping outside on a rug. Then I recalled that John, who had a reputation as a perfectionist, would never hire anyone else to do jobs around the house even though often he would start something and never finish it, overwhelmed by so many odd jobs that refused to be done just right....
One day, my daughter had noticed what looked suspiciously like blood splatters on the ceiling of her closet. Maybe there was another reason Blackmore never let any "professionals" into his houses....It would be just like John to paint over the wall perfectly and not notice the ceiling. When he was done painting the walls, he'd probably smiled, admired his work, and then with a sigh remembered all the other jobs he had to finish.
That afternoon, as I pulled into the driveway, I had discovered Blackmore, now our landlord, hard at work on the sprinkler system, which made me a little uncomfortable since my wife and daughter had already left on their trip, and no one had told me that John had planned to work in the backyard. He was on his hands and knees scooping dirt from a shallow trench with a large spoon. He had already used a narrow shovel to dig a trench, placing slabs of earth in a row on the sidewalk. John was methodically making the sides and bottom of the trench even, something that apparently was necessary before he could confront the leaky pipes. John practiced the art of maintenance better than anyone I have known. Most of the solutions that he found for practical problems remained a mystery to me, but I also respected the fact that he rarely did anything unless it was absolutely necessary.
"I hear Bush signed the bill for the feasibility study for Temperance Flat Dam," I muttered.
"They just keep throwing money at that project, hoping something will actually happen."
"You don't think anything will?"
"Everyone knows that the era of dam building is over. I doubt that the federal government is going to build another dam when the budget is hemorrhaging due to the war."
"But if the Interior Department finds the dam feasible, it is automatically authorized."
"That is probably the bigger problem, the way Bush keeps gutting environmental laws, but I think the project will probably be tied up in court for years, hopefully long enough at least to get another administration into the White House."
Since John is twenty-five years older than I am, I occasionally feel like a child in his presence, especially when discussing politics or practical matters. But I also suddenly began feeling a little uneasy again as I gazed at the dirt piled up in the flowerbed next to the garage. John and I had shoveled the dirt out of the bed of his pickup a while back because John had claimed that he was going to use it to "even out" the lawn. At the time I was living in another house, and I was simply helping him with one of his "rentals." To me, the lawn already appeared level. Over time, a small trench had formed at the top of the dirt pile where rainwater had fallen from the eaves, and Bermuda was taking over the flowerbed.
"So what sort of project have you got going here?" I asked.
"The sprinkler system is hemorrhaging. It's clogged in one place and leaks in another. I'll be at this for a few days."
"Well, thanks," I muttered. I again felt uncomfortable because I hadn't even noticed the problem. At that moment I felt like the debt we owed John could never possibly be repaid, especially since I am chronically ill and struggling to hold down two part-time jobs. I focus what little energy I have left on being an artist, writer, composer and activist--activities that generally don't make a person rich. I confess that I am not a powerhouse provider for my family, and I'm certainly not as practical as I could be. I would rather gaze at flowers all day than kill myself making a buck.
I went inside and stared at John through the window. I suddenly imagined a human body in the flowerbed and blinked to rid the image from my mind.
My wife and daughter were visiting a friend for the weekend, so that evening I binged on a six pack of beer. Just as I was finishing beer number six at around ten-thirty that night, I had a feeling that I was in great danger. I usually sleep in the guest room because I snore and my wife is a light sleeper. Since the door to my room does not have a lock, and since my wife's bedroom features a door opening onto the patio that doesn't always latch well, I decided to sleep in my daughter's bedroom, which no one could enter without breaking down the door.
The house was built in the early forties with solid doors and plaster walls. A previous owner had cut one bedroom in two to create a hall and a guest room and added on the back bedroom, where my wife sleeps. My daughter's room, the only bedroom left untouched during the restructuring process, is still virtually impenetrable except through the windows, both of which are visible to the neighbors.
After awhile, as I stretched out in the darkness, I started drifting off to sleep, telling myself that I would have enough time to react if I heard someone trying to break into the room. He would have to break down a door in his own house, one of the most solid doors I have ever encountered, and in the process he would lose the element of surprise. He might have to engage in physical combat. The thought that he might lose the fight even though he had a gun no doubt caused him to hesitate. If he did lose, he would be exposed as a homicidal sociopath, which would destroy his reputation--and land him in a prison cell.
When I woke up the next morning after staying awake for most of the night, I inspected the house carefully to make sure no one remained hidden there and nothing was stolen. For a moment, I started to believe that I had imagined the intrusion, but then I remembered the most chilling sound of all: the unlocking of the bathroom window. I suddenly realized that I was the intended victim of a premeditated murder.
I have never told anyone except my wife, and she refused to believe me. During the first murder attempt, after several hours of straining to hear the intruder, I fell asleep and found no evidence of a break in. If I had accused Blackmore, he no doubt would have evicted me and my family from his house, and my wife would have lost a generous patron. You see, Blackmore was letting us live rent-free in his house and paying for her classes while she worked for a teaching credential. Since the house belongs to him, fingerprints would prove nothing.
John has remained an effective activist for many years and has "touched" the Emanation of Mars in his battles for environmental quality. He has, therefore, unlocked both the virtue and vice of that Emanation. He has courage and discipline and strength, in the form of mental acuity, but he also experiences the potential for cruelty and destructiveness.
Descriptions abound of hauntings and demonic possessions. Has it ever occurred to anyone to ask why people aren't visited by angels just as often? Despite our so-called rationality and all our laws and social conditioning, we remain in a highly unevolved state where our lack of balance attracts dark, horrific forces. I suspect that angels can hardly tolerate the unbalanced minds of human beings. Angels usually only show up if we invoke them--and usually only after we have purified our minds.
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All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
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