I made some scene errors putting this chapter together but here it is before I begin the audio-draft which should flow better. This chapter took more time than I had imagined it would. For one, I did not realize the end focus would be so much on Merlyn. This conclusion needs more balance with the beginning. I will work on this. This, along with these notes, shows me the work, like all the other books, is first, an experiment in unconscious writing, reason, imagination, and more reason mixed with my basic humanity. - rho
Chapter Five
Scene 1
A long way from Thales’s mental focus on branches, nests, and Elysium, deep within the looped entanglement of roots of the tree of thought and light, lies the esoteric and fantastical grave of the Fates missing letter Paradise. The letter, like no other, is being prodded, toyed with, and if you will, played. How it slid from an accidental leaf back into root alone, is a mystery to all of higher consciousness, who have been bred into cells of life. Its mistranslated story is likewise misunderstood throughout all the leaf-like universes grown from original said roots. The game of allegorical chess has its present moves.
Merlyn stood in a private aside, surprised at what he could see from Avalon when he lay on his bed in his privacy room and stared, asleep and tranced into the area a few inches above his toes. All he had to do was to stare at his long toes, which he no longer really had, of course, appeared to burst into reddish-orange spiritual flames with a mark of blue now and then. Above the flames rose atmospheric-like distortions of heat rising in a desert. Within the rising heat from no flames and no toes, an image of the great board sat at a favorable tilt and he could and did watch a figuration of the chess game from this thirteenth move on.
White Move Black Move
13. White Bishop to King 2 Black Queen to Knight 3
14. White castles King Black castles King
15. White Bishop to King 3 Black King’s Rook to Bishop 1
Scene 2
Visualize the perfect form of a full size exterior model of the Roman Coliseum and multiply its size one thousand times and reduce the size of an average human being to one-thousandth. Once you have the ratios in mind consider the model to be the home of Zeus on the fabled Olympus, with you the reader observing the home from the distance of ten miles.
Zeus is sitting at the top of the outer wall facing both Hades and Earth. He watches the Three Sisters walking along the top towards him. As they grow closer he realizes they have been rendered the same physical-like size as himself in keeping with an ancient Greek perspective.
Not a waster of words, Zeus asks the three-becoming-one, “Why did you take a piece of golden strand from the sky’s navel?”
Necessity-in-Clotho responded, “To cast the die.”
Necessity-in Lacheis added, “It was rolled for the sowing.”
And, Necessity-in-Atropos sang, “The Dead must grow from what the Living hoe. The Living must reap what the Dead will sow.” She continued to sing as the trio she is, an eclipse inside out and tossed about as a dark wind blowing between the branches, a vertical clef between nothing less and nothing more.
The great Greek god king blinked, seemingly unaware, while the three grand dames in fortune, flew to Necessity’s higher lair.
Scene 3
Merlyn soon found himself slipping into dreamtime during the pleasant blue light of day. On introspection he thought, I’m not that tired. Being dead has a pleasant side, no aches or pains unless I want them. All sensory appears psychosomatic. I think in my native Celtic tongue but when I want to be heard I appear to be immediately understood by others I am in presence with. Irish, Latin, Greek, English, Norse are my in my resume. Languages are my forte.
Therein his mind glided naturally into, Ogham, the Celtic alphabet, which has letters based on the names of trees as they are shaped in reasonably forked branches. Kenning-like poetic thoughts produced the alpha-an-beta, and in this poesy not all the tree letters are known to humankind, never were, and in that lies a wisdom in the Mystery of the Letters. Merlyn thought, once alive, now dead, I sound the letters and still they are heard by the Living through their eyes alone. In this sounding sense of reason the silent ears of the Dead are but whispering eyes to the living.
A lot of people effected my living. Family, friends, acquaintances, and perceived enemies. People are not an indifference to me. Living or Dead each is a piece on the crystal board. Each is in herorhis own squared area of consciousness or lack of it. All have a shared square area of the same heavenly blue sky randomly flight decked with clouds of similar fluff.
Two friends float above the rest within my soul. Why? I have never known because some friends are older, better known and deeper within. Both at once were living druidesses who snaked and coiled their way around my very soul.
Brigit of Iona was a human reincarnate of the earlier Brigit, who was thought by some a goddess. She was not. She was a female sage, a physician and a smith as was her druidic father, who also had been a physician and a smith. I was placed to dangle on the bottom of her moon silver charm bracelet. She stirred my fiery passions into her hot and throaty caldron and had the summary of my Celtic faith for an immediate dinner.
The second was Vivian who designed a silver and golden brooch to capture my reason with the heavy breathing in and out through her tangling net of erotic charms. A crystallized madness she became in my imagination alone. I never touched her nor her me. No need when she was already a haunt beneath my boneless bag, a sorry sack of skin.
Both women were equally a damnable pleasant witchery. I, Merlyn, a once shining jewel, druidically placed in a rolled leathery piece of ancient pre-Celtic phylactery by Priestess Brigit and Priestess Vivian. Both druidesses became leather strapped, amulet-like pistons in the youth of my flamed mortal earthly engine. Scroll-like I was wound and unwound from mind to soul and soul to heart. And, thus bodiless, I was driven into an inconceivable madness while making a sorcerous choice. Unthinking, I chose both to be in a spiritual magic with both women at once.
Merlyn peered into the elementary considerations of his being included in the highest first order of druidic shamans. The same druidic hierarchical setting in which he would also place Brigit and Vivian. He immediately determined his chess queen’s position to be off the board, a Betweener, no one would question this. He smiled, no one Living or Dead can legitimately question this because I am ElseWhere. I am off the Board. I am consciousness outside and before the Creation of the Tree of Thought and Light.
***
I, Merlyn, exist.
Still
Within
Silence
Non-Begotten
...B-E---I-N-G…
Non-Begotten
Silence
Within
Still
I, Merlyn, do not exist.
Yet, Here I Am, Thinks Merlyn
and echoes
Yet, Here I Am, Thinks Merlyn
and echoes
Yet, Here I Am, Thinks Merlyn
Heart and Echo
an
Soul
an
Mind
At Once Shredded
and
At Once Re-stitched
Again
and
Again
and
Again
***
Scene 4
Late morning of the seventh day and Thales and Mario are sitting at an old small wooden table in Mario’s private quarters. Both had just finished their normal chit-chat before getting down to the business of the moment, What contingencies should be made for what they may discover is on the other side of the River Styx? A momentary sub-question relating to this is: What does Justice say about what the original First Cause might be? Nature or a God?
Thales said, “We ought to begin with First Cause and work our way up to what may be on the other side of the Styx.”
“Anaximander said that the First Cause was an element he called Boundlessness, a nature that first immortal and also unborn.”
Mario countered, “Anaximenes said air was the First Cause and that everything that exists evaporated from this air, that the stars that surround the Earth are like floating fiery leaves, that the sun circles around the Earth and not under it.”
Thinking this was going to be a short discussion, Thales replied, “Both Anaximander and Anaximenes appear to think the First Cause is natural element or event. As such we should be able to reason from what we know of Living and of Death that what is probable on the other side of the Styx.”
Mari o smiled slyly and added, “But your namesake and their teacher, Thales of Miletus, is reported to have said that the soul is the cause of movement. He thought the lodestone or magnet had a soul because it causes iron to move. Some say this logic jumps to the concept that everything is full of gods.”
Thales smirked, “Thus supposedly the aphorism attributed to Thales of Miletus, ‘What is the divine? That which has no origin and no end,’ at least according to Diogenes Laertius.” He went on to say, “A god then has no origin and no end. This does not make sense. Everything has a beginning. It is observed in nature, but alas, Living or Dead, we each began in the middle of things. We cannot envision what was before us or what will come after us, we can only know that something was before us and that something will follow us. We exist. We are the evidence to support this.”
“How are these concepts supported by our human sense of Justice as a virtue?” asked Mario. “We are here in Elysium where the where the heartsansoulsanminds of the good and virtuous are selected to be after the death of the body. Does this mean that those who are not so good and not so virtuous are outside Elysium on the other side of the River Styx? Why is the river here if not to give a place of selection?”
“Why is the Earth where it is, Mario? And the stars where they are? If you are looking to add Justice to this argument, this discussion will never end.”
“If the discussion of Justice never ends does this mean it may never had a beginning? If so, then perhaps, the god of all gods is not Zeus or the Supervisor or anyone else, perhaps the god is Justice,” admonished Mario.
“If Justice is a god, then what of the other three classical virtues, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude, not to mention Humility, Hope, Faith and Charity. Do we have four virtuous gods in charge or seven? Who is the top god, the lord and master of the virtues?” charged Thales.
Self-discipline ordered Mario to silence while he thought it out first. He noted there was no smugness in Thales’s face. No pride. Thales was waiting for a response for the question he did not have an answer to. He had blurted out his last comment, it had just rolled out, and mostly from anger. He sat self-aware of his shortcomings in this discussion and he had forgotten why the discussion had begun in the first place. Finally Mario muttered in defeat, “I would have thought we would have learned more by being Dead.”
Scene 5
I don’t know what Sophia wants to see me about. I was going to have lunch with Agathia. She glanced into the front window of the Mikroikia from across Eleusis and saw Salaman was about to leave. As she had not been seen she turned and walked the other way already angry at herself for having done that. Where am I going? She stopped, waited momentarily then retraced her steps and crossed the street without hesitation.
Once inside she spotted Sophia who, looking towards the entrance, stood. The two women headed to the small back room where they found the old chairs and table. After the hello’s each sat with a memory assembled glass of favorite wine and sat back savoring the taste.
This simple pleasure of relaxation was so habitual that neither considered the other to be empty handed. None of the Dead appeared to consider it at all. After all, it was the company and the illusion of ambience and memory of good tastes that was important in sharing a meal. Most refreshment sharing is a personal subjective reality based on gustatory and amicable pleasures. That is the usual social element at the table, but not this one.
“I already had a lunch set up, Sophia. What is this about?”
“It is not about lunch. You can see Agathia later. I need to know where you stand on searching for the other Dead among us?”
“It is hard to imagine other people, foreigners would want to be here in the first place. Even with loved ones involved, this is not their culture,” said Cassandra without hesitation.
“You don’t feel love brings a stronger attachment than culture?”
“I was not thinking about it in that way. It is hard to say which is stronger love or hate.”
“Hate takes a toll in all the vices.”
“Hate is hate, Sophia. That is all there is to it.”
“What about Envy?”
“There is nothing for anyone to be envious of in Elysium. We are comfortable here, just as the Dead of another tribe or culture is comfortable where they are.” Cassandra paused, glancing at the door to see if others had been invited. “Greed and Pride are not normal occurrences here. Though I think men are more prideful than women, even Here.”
“I tend to agree. Men are more lustful too, they demand a particular dominance in their thinking among men as well as women.”
“They are closer to the lower animals, less civil.”
So, then, thought Sophia. Perhaps if there are foreign Dead somewhere in Elysium, it is more likely that they are women. She stated, “Men are more hateful than women.”
“I don’t think so, but they are fuller of Pride. At least they show themselves to be. Even in Elysium you can see it. Mario, for instance, enjoys his station as second in command, but somewhere within him he would just as soon be in your position.”
“I had not thought that, Cassandra. I do not really think of him as second. He is an equal partner.”
“That’s how many women think, Sophia. They make themselves equal to men and believe it is true, and believe men think it is true also. If most men had their druthers, they would say they are equal to women, and a little more than equal when push comes to shove. Even here in Elysium.”
Sophia’s only comment was, “We are tolerated.”
“Foreigners could be tolerated too,” said Cassandra on a positive note. “I take that as a sign other Dead could be among us, although in privacy, only with specific friends and family.”
“Everyone has herorhis own privacy space. I have always thought it for our individual selves. We need to rest from others, even Here. We need to be alone to think and to grow within.”
“Then, Greeks in love, romantically or in friendship, may harbor foreign guests from time to time. No one would ever know.”
Cassandra laughed at the thought with the realization that neither she nor Sophia was or never had been tied to any foreigner to the point they would be allowed into their privacy chambers. And, she suddenly realized more time had gone by than she thought. It was like we were discussing these foreigners in slow motion.
Suddenly, Thales walked through the doorway, said “Hello,” and looked for a chair.
“Where is Mario,” asked Sophia without surprise.
“He stopped at the bar. Aeneas had come in a half a block ahead of us.”
“He is not invited to this meeting, Thales.”
“Oh.” He thought with some anger and embarrassment, why then did you have the meeting here rather than in your private quarters? “Well, we thought he was and said something to him.”
“Why did he not come in then, with you?”
“Aeneas was about to explain something to Mario. I just decided to come on in, as it appeared private.” Thales paused awkwardly then smiled politely and said, “I’ll go retrieve some extra chairs.”
Momentarily he came back with one chair for himself. “They disappeared. I don’t know whether they just walked out or what.”
Scene 6
Beneath the great limbed tree in the center of the stone circles the three, Mother and Aeneas and Mario, sat cross-legged in the grass at midday.
“It is always strange sitting beneath a tree with no shade,” continued Aeneas.
Mother smiled. “It has been like this since the day I arrived. No sun, a few clouds on a fair day in April, and no rain. The basics are here otherwise.”
“What did you call this Place when you first arrived?” asked Mario politely.
“Continuity.”
“That’s a strange name.”
“I didn’t know I was dead. Here I was in a strange but familiar landscape. It was daylight but I thought I had just missed the son. That night the familiar stars were out, all but the north one. Then I remembered the old shaman’s story. I laughed to myself and pointed to where the north star should be and said, ‘Earth is there. I am Here.’”
“It must have been a very comforting thought,” noted Aeneas.
“It was. I had my sense of humor which made up for the loneliness. Then I set out a search of the territory. I assumed there would be scattered tribes but found none.”
“When did you realize you were dead?” asked Aeneas.
“It took me a while. I was busy exploring. I felt alive because the other people had accepted me.” This has been a long time, thought Mother. People don’t ask me such questions anymore. I used to hate telling these stories over and over. Now everyone is busy with one another. I am family but feel remote. Then she added, probably by my own choice.
“The other people, the people with no nipples?”
“Yes. In those days I thought about them from time to time and eventually it dawned on me that they were out among the stars too, just as I was. When others began to arrive, I knew some personally but others were strangers though we spoke the same language.” She laughed comfortably and more casually than usual, “They asked where they were and I told them they were in continuation, that their bodies were dead, then I told them the old shaman’s story about being Here and There.”
“Is the shaman here?” asked Aeneas.
“Yes, he is.”
“What did he think about the other people?”
“He didn’t understand what I was talking about. He never did. Finally, I stopped the discussion and he seemed the happier for it.”
Mario asked, “What is his name?”
“Panagiotakis is his formal name but he has always gone by Takis.”
“Where can he be found?”
She smiled thinking he was like her first son. “That is a good question, Aeneas. No one knows. He likes to live alone so that is what he does. He can generally be found in the territory of Arcadia Forest.”
Mario was suddenly struck with an idea. “He may be our key, Aeneas. He is one of the oldest Here.”
Mother shrugged, “Elysium is not on my shoulders, it was Here first. Takis may know something.”
“Elysium was Here because Takis said it was,” replied Aeneas.
“That is true,” replied Mother.
Coincidence, thought Mario. “Mother, we will look into this and what we were talking about earlier.”
“Yes,” concurred Aeneas. “I think this is a connection among the Dead that the others have not considered.”
“Meanwhile,” she ordered, “Keep the plan as it is. Continue with the bridge as it gives a focus people can see. Those who newly arrive may be able to help.”
Scene 7
Ten miles upstream from the bridge construction the Shaman Panagiotakis also sits cross-legged under a tree which is on the wooded edge some two hundred yards west of the River Styx as the other three, Mother, Mario and Aeneas are beginning their conversation in the previous scene.
Takis, as he likes to be called, has eyes for all of his natural-like surroundings in Elysium. The greatest of human virtues in his moral eyes is Prudence not Justice. He governs and disciplines himself by reason and sometimes Reason with a capital. That is his perspective. Good Judgment and Circumspection surround this sense of Prudence like the great circles of stones surround the great tree at Mother’s. He is the stone and the wood that reflects the reality of wherever he finds himself. He is a chameleon, a Master shape-shifter of mind. Takis was as a ghost when alive. Now Dead for over 170 thousand years, he has a mind that has danced far beyond Merlyn’s and his Druid clans.
Takis waits in Silence as Patience is another virtue. Waiting is easier when Dead. Besides, Takis has been to the other side of the Styx. Takis knows what others do not. He understands some of what he knows. This is what makes him a dangerous man even among the Dead.
Takis sits drifting over the surface of the River Styx in the distance. He thinks. ‘Vertical this river appears to Mother. A wall. Mother’s elite are constructing a bridge to walk across the Styx when they should be building a ladder for the climbing. When they arrive for my advice I will tell them of the necessity of the ladder.’
Foreign Dead. A strange term. No one is foreign Here just as no foreigners exist among the Living. Consciousness finds its own kettle for cooking. Up, down, left, right – these mean nothing by themselves. Intensity flowers and seeds then flowers again. Corners tackle the mind, corners pointed in or out comes nowhere closer to the truth than the River Styx. Thoughts end in tangles as reason bends into itself. The elements the Dead miss. Take away gravity and grave and where is Life’s purpose? Illusion is more important than the reality that creates it, just as Consciousness is more important than the reality it creates.
When we leave this Place our Elysium will surely fade like childhood, and become another footstep left for heartsoulmind to puddle into.
Unclouded, Takis’s mind lucidly dreamed in symbols as nearly always.
Aa Bb Cc Dd
Ee Ff Gg
Hh Ii Jj Kk
Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp
Qq Rr Ss Tt
Uu Vv
Ww Xx Yy Zz
The storied Letters run to and fro,
Where they land is where I go.
A Cracker-Pop runs the Intangibles above and I see two young ones, Aeneas and Mario, a-walking this way from Mother’s to discover an untold mystery Here at Elysium, these Elysian Fields, these Islands of the Blessed. Where are the others? This is a question a long time coming. I ran the symbols above through three books and the beginning of a fourth told by Merlyn to one younger. Dimensions are two-fold in a symbolic language that roots Indo-European in reading but the dimensions are greater than four to the approaching mind. Strange they kept the Roman letters, children of the Greek and Egyptian pictograph in formation.
The Styx, a one way current near the top and an opposite current near its bottom. Modern quantum electrodynamics theory coupled with the slanted and ancient view of these Elysian Fields and another vision may be seen where we Dead view a river, branch reality. What use is such modern physics here as there is no light. We Dead have no eyes but memory. Strangely, few remember this. Fewer still act upon it.
I am Here because I enter at this place in the six books. I enter in another Here in the beginning of Grandma’s Story in book one. A good place to be from, the Beginning of Expanding Consciousness as seen and felt in a symbolic reasoning that fellow human beings can understand. One’s person is named in such letters as my own. Takis. Even my fourth letter ‘I’ is in such as you the reader as well as Mario. My second letter ‘A’ is the first in this modern alpha-beta. Every T and A and K and I and S is a part of my own human nature and yours too in translation to these books. This is what I will tell young Mario and Aeneas. From this they are on their own. The Dead are on their own Islands as Earth is an island of their once Living and memory.
Now I wait for questions as they wait for answers. It is not an easy task to deconstruct to something less than a Dead consciousness, but it is possible, and even probable in such a place where even light is a construction of mind alone. Heart is another place altogether. If one desires real physics one begins with the beginning which is soul without it one is not touched.
Scene 8
Early afternoon. Mario and Aeneas are on the north cliff looking back and down to the bridge construction in progress. “The temple gate appears done from here,” said Aeneas, “and there is progress on the first section of the bridge.”
“It will take a while but the path is the optimum way to find Panagiotakis,” replied Mario a few minutes later. “We ought to be there by dusk.”
Walking the river’s edge was comfortable and somewhat relaxing, and Aeneas wondered why he didn’t take it more often just to escape the ordinary urban environs. Aeneas was also the first to notice a disheveled looking stranger walking towards them. Upon the observation the stranger waved in a familiar and friendly fashion. “Hello!” shouted Takis with an energetic smile. “I hear you two boys are looking for me.” He said nothing more until they met with a greeting ritual of a slight bow of the head and an extension of the right hands in a short clipped clasp at the same moment. The hands are let go as the nod of the heads rises. Surprisingly to Mario, Takis took Aeneas’s hand first but he greeted both of Mother’s boys warmly.
Mario broke the ice first as they sat cross-legged a few feet from the Styx and observed the man carefully. Bedraggled and loosely woven clothing, olive skinned, wide thick eyebrows, a large nose and ruddy cheeks, a red rumpled and somewhat torn towel-wrapped turban on his head. The old man grinned at him with worn and yellowed teeth, the front one gapped enough to squirt a strong line of spit through. His dark eyes mirrored the young man’s puzzled gaze as he heard Mario speak, “You are one of the exceptions.”
“I am.” And, you are not, said Takis to himself.
Mario added, “You are Mother’s grandfather.” And, I am one of her much later children, thought Mario.
Takis sat with his right hand and index finger raised skyward. “I knew I was being dreamed by Merlyn in the beginning of Book One.” Takis paused then continued, “He was wrong, you know.”
“We were not in Merlyn’s dream. We have not read the dream.” said Aeneas. “Who is Merlyn?”
Merlyn dreamed I was eighteen thousand years ago, but now in the present it was one hundred and eighty thousand years ago.”
“We are dead,” responded Aeneas, “we are not in the present. We are in Elysium.”
Old Takis winked at Mario and said, “Aeneas, if the Dead are not in the Present, then they are in the Past or the Future.”
“Wait,” said Mario in a quick defense, “On Earth we are in the Past. Here is our eternal Present.”
“If this were so, young Mario, then you could not be building a wall into the Future.”
“You do not make sense, old man,” rebuked Aeneas.
Old Takis, with wide eyed grin, pointed above his head and replied, “Sense is not made, boy. Sense is.”
“The Future is already walled. How can we be building one?” asked Mario.
“The bridge is a wall,” stated Takis calmly.
This is a trick, thought Aeneas, “Takis, you are old and wise. No Dead is older Here. We want to know if it is possible to visit the Dead of tribes other than Greece?”
“I am not of Greece, nor is Mother.”
“How are you here in Elysium?”
“I am no more here than you are,” said Takis as he studied Aeneas’s eyes. He turned to Mario, “Does young Aeneas here have eyes?”
“Yes, of course. We all have eyes,” said Mario.
Takis feigned a deep sigh and with finger still pointed upward asked, “Where is the light?” Noting the sudden silence, Takis added, “Where is the matter?”
Just as suddenly being Dead took on an added meaning of emptiness in black. Just as surprising to Mario and Aeneas, the three still sat cross-legged on and within Nothing. Intensity held them to the clear foreign mind of the old, once disheveled one, whose name is Panagiotakis and not Panagiotakis both at once.
Scene 9
The three appeared standing near the west bank of what appeared to them to be a smaller River Styx. Looking further west they saw a large temple which appeared to Panagiotakis be a built to the sun-god Amun-Re.
Takis said, “This temple appears in a replication of an area Luxor and Karnak near the Nile River. The Valley of the Pharaohs, at least some of them is further west.” While he was thinking, I do not know which is the replication, he thought, the one Here, in this Land of the Dead, or the one on Earth.
“How is the Styx so narrow here?” as if he could not think differently.
“The major Styx is on the other side of that rise a few miles. This is the minor Styx. No life within. No rain. Same blue sky with a trace of clouds. Same stars. Same moon, or so it appears.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mario.
“They created the island to the east so they would have a Nile.”
“Like we are attempting to build a bridge. I am amazed,” he replied. We know we could go out into the river but no one ever thought to build an island out there.
“The lush foliage is different from our Elysium,” noted Aeneas wondering how that can be as the Styx does not support life.
With a hardy laugh, old Takis replied, “It is easy to see an illusion that is not your own.”
“Where are the Dead?” asked Mario.
“They don’t see us. A shaman will appear soon enough. We might as well sit.”
They returned to the comfortable cross-legged sitting positions, saying little but glancing about from time to time hoping to see someone.
Amenhotep stood at the base of a thirty two foot column one of many huge columns which make up the Hypostyle Hall in Amun-Re. He stared out towards the Nile and saw three cross-legged men shining as if they had armor breast plates reflecting direct sunlight. ‘A crossing,’ he ruminated. He encouraged himself into the nonexistent air and drifted, light breeze-like to their sides, dampened himself into resolved dew and lay sprinkled like ear drops on grass blades within an arm of discovery by the shaman, Takis.
“No one is aware of our presence,” said Mario.
Takis disagreed, stating, “Mario it is you who are not aware of these Egyptian Dead who are walking about unperturbed by your non-being.”
“I feel a presence,” disclosed Aeneas, “like the time Apollo protected me from Achilles after I was wounded by Diomedes during the great Trojan War.”
“I doubt Apollo protected you, Aeneas,” suggested Takis kindly. “I think you weren’t as wounded as you thought you were. Your wits were being machined from the inner shadow of yourself, and you and fortune saved your life that day in battle.”
“Are you saying the presence I am feeling is my own machinery of mind?”
“May be, boy. I am not a fan of the Parthenon.”
“Odd, you say that,” mentioned Mario. “Mother is not a fan of the gods either.”
Takis smiled but said nothing. Reverting into a trio of silent beholders of Egyptian cultural metaphysics – willfully constructed materials that do not exist, rather than the immaterial heartsansoulsanminds that do. That is, until Takis made an quiet observation of dew in a seemingly shimmer of sunlight.
“My dear Amenhotep,” he asserted, “these two Greeks have come across a mystery and rather than explain, I decided in this case it was better to show.”
Aeneas, turned slightly and saw the dark browned skin of a hairless man of light framework wearing only a translucent-like linen loincloth which appeared to be leopard-skin. He was not even carrying sandals. “Who are you?” he blurted.
Looking solely at Takis, Amenhotep asked, “Why are you here?”
Ignoring Aeneas, he responded, “Mother says it is time.”
Amenhotep stood far from surprise and declared, “We must gather at the River.”
With that the four evaporated into soul alone and the three were transported back to the bank of the River Styx where they began their short journey inwardly.
Scene 10
The big wheel run by faith and the little wheel run by the Grace of G---D. Spin. Three raindrops equal in size, snowman like, whirling one on top of the other like toy tops. Whirling, each whirling a different direction one on top of the other. Always different directions. Spinning so fast they appear to be touching which they are not. When they slow and appear to melt they become solid in a much of nothing. The dance of twelve begins. Meanwhile, back on Earth a lonely man by the name of Ezekiel looks up in the air near the river Chebar and reportedly sees:
I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire enfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. This was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. Every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.
Their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot: and they sparkled like the colours of burnished brass. They had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward.
As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle. Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. They went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.
As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.
Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colours of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.
And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colours of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above. And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies. And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings.
There was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings. And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the colors of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.
Scene 11
Takis took note of Mario and Aeneas sitting solemnly cross-legged but with eager anticipation in eyes that did not reflect light on the bank of the River Styx close to where he first met the two not long before. Time twinkled in his own eyes as they drew themselves up within the outer appearance of his skull. ‘Neither Here nor There surround the thought pool of nowhere.’
Without so much as a thought by Takis, the soul’s spinning axis is felt in the core stem of Takis’s mind. The soul immerges as a full spinning globe as an unorthodox soul-like atmospheric energy is released in his lower non-mass of middle body.
A nymph’s light, thought Aeneas at first. Takis is cut in half by a thin horizontal blade of light which is slowly upward full turning into a small replica of the moon in the sky. His head is becoming a spinning moon-world of light above and his lower torso and legs a spinning moon-world of light below. Three small independently spinning she-moon-deities have eaten or taken Takis’s human form.
Mario analytically observes Takis’ once head-shape, a full moon circle, moves more slowly to the right while his mid-chest full moon circle moves quickly to the left. Below, Takis’s lower full moon circle spins more slowly than the middle but faster than the once head. The faster the spin the brighter the three global lights. The spectrum dances strangely without rhythm across each of the disks, until – violet to blue to green to yellow to orange to red to black to violet to blue to green to yellow to orange to red to black to . . . .
At once a dance of three vertical balls of light centered in a circle of twelve independent vertical balls of three around Takis who is centered, or seemingly it is Takis centered. Neither Mario or Aeneas can understand the dancing ever changing disks of light, circling first to the left, then to the right, the in a spin of the three lit balls of twelve. Thirty-nine identically sized and shaped balls all spinning in thirty-nine separate directions at thirty-nine separate rates of speeds. Mario’s mind jumped: a spinning stone circle with a center stone axis. Light. And, for once in their time being Dead, each, Mario and Aeneas, cast an eerie green and ghostly shadow that caused their heartsansoulsanminds to sense a heaviness, a weight.
Circles of thirteen identities in thirty-nine dancing lights over the River Styx and another Light enters with wall-less shadows churning and painting a starless tent over the River and both its shores. The lesser, the thirty-nine dancing lights flicker and disappear into such a shadowed enclosure. And from such a darkness a small speck, a needle prick of a light appears and draws in the weight of real, imaginary, and invisible worlds. Were not so dark with freedom between an individual’s heart and soul and mind the Unsupervised Light would glow unnoticed.
Unknown, the Supervisor pulled what modern humans might call a magical hat trick beneath the stage of gravity and all its darkly material attractions. It was nothing of the sort of course. In the seed of a quantum tangle of all realities is imagination. Separating imagination from reality is like separating an individual’s heartansoulanmind, and therein lies the contrivance, the automaticity, built into the Supervisor HeranHis self.
Interfaced within the minutely lit outer darkness forms maneuvered within the multi-wheeling minds of Mario and Aeneas fire shot upward and downward in the center of an instant in being Dead. The voice of the dreamer became the silence of dream. Whole drops the W and what IS, IS NOT. Those who say they know, know nothing. Those who know nothing bask in an interlude of understanding of their lack of knowledge.
In less than the blink of an eye neither man had, a lull, a lack, formed a refreshed library in their minds. Study developed into a new meaning of experience. As Mario and Aeneas calmly observed, the still quiet waters of the River Styx lay out beyond the mid-afternoon shore as usual. The dancing lights had disappeared, night and day also disappeared. Unknowingly, Mario and Aeneas had died for a second time and neither could begin to understand the consequence.
The original twelve shamans however, the dancers who understood, had quietly returned to who they had always been in life and death. Ishtar, a woman from Assyria; Enki a high priest from Babylonia; Jun from China; Amenhotep from Egypt; Amrita, a woman from India; Teja of the Indo-Europeans; Meir from Israel; Kagami, a woman from Japan; B’alam from the Central American Olmec; Tiwanaku from High Peru; Dido, a woman from Phoenicia; and Mother’s first, Panagiotakis from pre-ancient Greece. The meanings of the Shamans’ given names in no particular order are: Truth; Holy; Glow; Light; Pharaoh; Immortality; Virgin; Lord; Star; Mirror; Jaguar; and Center-Stone. This witnessing and understanding of Mario and Aeneas was silently taken back to Mother for her perusal.
Scene 12
Mother listened to Mario and Aeneas’s observations and kept her comments to herself. The surprise was that she had never attended such a sacred ceremony. My own grandfather, why did Takis keep this from me, she thought, and when she thought it she felt a sudden sharp pain from near her right heel up through the back of her leg into the intervertebral fifth disk of her lower spine.
I am alive, shot through a sudden almost numbing separation in our Mother’s mind. I have not felt such an intensely physical pain since life. Between another shot of pain Takis’s words, “We are from there, to here.” An epiphany arose between the third and final shot of pain from leg to lower back. She immediately shut her eyes and closed her mind to it.
In a blink she found herself lying on her bed. She heard Aeneas’s voice, “Are you all right, Mother?”
“I have not seen anything like this since life,” commented Mario. “You fell in what appeared to be excruciating pain.”
“My back,” she mumbled. “It is my back.” Then embarrassed, she smiled slightly as most any mother would seeing her children in anguish. “I have no spine. I feel better. An old memory of life. I am sorry you witnessed it. I will be all right. Thank you for comforting me. You are both good boys.” She could see the relief in their faces. “I think I just need to rest.”
“Yes, Mother,” responded Mario.
Quietly she requested, “Don’t leave the house. I will see you shortly. Let me relax for a few moments.”
“Yes, Mother,” said Aeneas, and he was surprised how much it meant to him to say those words.
***
That evening Mother quietly sat with Grandfather Takis along the River Styx. She asked, “How did you know I would come here?”
Takis smiled with an unusual twinkle in the upper corner of his left eye and responded, “Because you knew I would not come to you.”
She slowly adjusted her body to the ground, “I had a talk with Mario and Aeneas.”
He said, “It is your spine.”
“It is. I have not felt such a pain since being in life.”
“What caused this, child?”
“I do not know. Mario and Aeneas were telling me of their experience with the shaman circle dance, and . . . .”
“You did not realize we could return.”
Surprised she replied, “That’s right. I did not know.”
“You were never told.”
“That is no reason for such pain to return.”
“It never left.”
“It is only a piece of papyrus that separates the Dead from the Living.”
“We want to return. You know this Grandfather. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“One cannot go back.”
“You went returned?”
“No. We entered old consciousness. It was as a dream, a memory returned.”
She asked solemnly, “Do you ever enter the real Earth?”
He paused and his eyes rolled up into his mind. “I do not know. There is no way to know. Our minds are moved. That is all we are sure of.”
“What about our project? Our bridge building?”
Sadness enveloped his face. “Child,” he said quietly, “The river is no more real than we are.”
“How can you say this? We are conscious. We have our memories of life and this life after death.”
“Presently, you are having painfully searing physical memories.”
I am not, she thought. Grandfather is wrong. She looked into his eyes dumbfounded that he could be wrong, but she said nothing.
Scene 13
Takis found himself comfortably alone with the early stars already sprinkled about as the full moon rose in the east. Merlyn pulled himself out of what was supposedly thin air.
“Hello, Panagiotakis. Merlyn here.”
Takis immediately thought, a mix of dreamtime, and he replied rather dryly, “How uncommon.”
Merlyn whispered, “I touch all within the lines.”
“So be it,” droned Takis aloud. “Where are you, Merlyn?”
“Within.”
“How can this be?”
“I am the Dreamer,” acknowledged Merlyn with a determinable amount of emphasis.
Quickly, a surprised Takis understood and affirmed, “You are alive.”
“I am within a friend of living consciousness,” said Merlyn as politely as he dared.
An enigmatic probability within matterless range, thought Takis, and did not reply. Step by step Takis thought this problem out. Merlyn’s spirit is within my own or appears to be. The friend, his carriageless carrier, must be of an earlier age than myself. What human spirit could stretch so far without a Betweener’s help?
Takis felt a Betweener to be morally indeterminable, a distinct possibility in the natural order but not a probable one. An accident of being, he thought, is better than one of purpose for good or ill. I need counsel. He walked a short distance upstream then out above the Styx and summoned the other eleven.
The full moon stood almost directly overhead as each shaman emerged from the air dancing in a whirl near Panagiotakis. Reason, directed by from the modernized Latin alphabet, places each in a particular moment. Amenhotep, Amrita, B'alam, Dido, Enki, Ishtar, Jun, Kagami, Meir, Teja, and Tiwanaku was the last whirling shaman to emerge alone from the air above the moving waters of the River Styx. From the energy of the shamans’ perspective they, twin-named in meaning, were Pharaoh, Immortality, Jaguar, Virgin, Lord, Star, Truth, Mirror, Light, Luster and Stone who danced over the River Styx and around our genetic Mother’s shaman, named Holiness. Name and Name Meaning are separate aspects, the stone and cement of consciousness in the first twelve Earth-minded shaman Dead."
First, the consciousness of the four women froze in place. Pillars of determined thought, a focused will of being. Then, the willed consciousness of the eight men froze, also in place. The setting above the River Styx became seemingly synthetic, a shadowy seamed substance of collective will filtered through the moonlight above the darkly moving waters of the Styx. The now filtered moonlight of a moon which only existed because the collective hypnotically unconscious human wish of the Dead made it so. Each shaman thus planted heranhis own garden of real determined thought and consciousness to grow and spread flat without accident. And, where below where the shaman stood as well as above where the shaman circle of twelve stood the River Styx reached the edge, the first corner of Merlyn’s chess board and lapped itself around three more new corners. Up or down, it made no difference. Where thought exists in its own place nothing comes close, nothing becomes a protective skin, as it were, and new forms of the After-World rise and dance throughout the minds of the cultured Dead in Elysium, Assyria, Babylonia, China, Egypt, India, Indo-Europe, Israel, Japan, Olmec, Peru and Phoenicia.
The awareness of the shamans few became, almost overnight, the awareness of the many. The many human Dead became as one, with a secretly sun-yellow yoke of common hope centered in a monstrously dark egg of self-centered regret.
Such it was for all, including our individual characters in this up-start of a story of the first Rebellion of the Dead which began for the Living two thousand and some seven hundred years ago.
Merlyn thus reached another level of understanding, a place beyond words and knowledge but not beyond reason. If an Angel exists, thought Merlyn in those and these days, Reason still stirs her Heart.
Scene 14
Merlyn’s Mind felt a movement, a tincture-toned tearing, a two color rupture, an imbalance caused by one disembodied spiritual plate sliding over another more cerebral. Two forest green pillared candles spiraled in blue, appear pulled, one on each side of the dark matte(re)d square of White King Five. Empowered, he thought, but not so smooth as an earthly running with legs. From this rafted mind-set Merlyn stood flat and carpet-like with that Merlyn eye above observing the River Styx below. A distant river tensely Cobra-coiled with its open-ended mouth set to engorge or regurgitate.
The infrared coming and ultraviolet going of electro-magnetic-like and yet human understanding in his ecclesiastical soul appeared tainted by a non-descript metaphysical nonsense not generated by his own once factual species. This streaming gray nonsense is but a mask, thought Merlyn immediately, it is the pointed antithesis of the reasoning Angels. Sharpened chaos, a two-edged blade slicing on one side and healing on the other while still in a downward stroke. My mind drains into the Styx far below while at the same time this mind and others feed the River’s source. The mind is the diamond atop the great coiling River beneath once brain registering patterns of thought. The mind is at once formless and formed, from coiled serpent to chessboard. Both or one in the same because they are beyond registry even with my wisest judgment at hand. It is no wonder the dervish of twelve appears to have stopped cold and as solid as the dark naked mold of the yet to be heated and fired blade.
A master smithy I am to forge the melding of heartansoulanmind to more easily bridge timeanspace by a conditional thought wheeled from the footsteps of an Angel’s afterthought. With board underfoot I walk the sixty-four squares, the warming bridge of calculated reason to mix a cemented soul and cold-hearted stony iron beams into a new form of shadowed light within the joining minds of the Living and the Dead.
Merlyn’s mind in an long and drawn ecstasy, but without the hammering force of passion to temper this cutting and healing blade of his. He does not have the force for the downward stroke and what becomes stuck in the awakening minds of many is an embittered sense of injustice and painful sorrow. And, in a flash of insight, Merlyn understands the reason he spent his life running from what he had previously done.
The moment had come. Merlyn owed a confession of thought to Mother before the consequence was known to the Living and Dead alike. He slowly walked from square to square with no other piece seen there. The Queen’s power alone on an empty board. He heard the timely voice of the Supervisor’s whisper, “There will be no chess mating here, boy.”
***
All this and more he confessed directly to our genetic Mother. A confession of thoughts alone, thoughts that caused no rippling wake as thoughts cannot do without the plentiful minds of humanity stroking the oars to get things done. Dreams, Merlyn came to understand can be bound up but still register as nothing without so much as a cover to hide the nakedness of a once-mothered soul alone, without so much as a spiritual twig to hide behind.
The many, the Dead at hand, heard or saw nothing of Merlyn’s deeply inner, and now confessed reality. The Dead moved on, as did the Living, each with their own weighted relationships, each, like breathing air in and out, with an invisibly touching tip of one into the another, like unconscious billowing lungs of passion. No blade in sight, only a thread of consciousness built on hope alone, a hope that had the collective power to drive a great River coiling around the many cultural islands of the Dead. Hope the species-whole secretly and collectively felt would bring the Dead to the Living as it once brought them, the Living, to the Dead.
This was the issue before the dawn of the eighth day. The Supervisor observed, as always. The CareTaker watched as if viewing the birth of a great star, far, far away. He had an inkling that it wasn’t a star, however, or a child either. The closest translation Merlyn heard or perhaps misheard is :.:.:.:. . The word suddenly sat in his mind’s center without context, an enigma in four ever scrambling sequence of letter-like dots without known alphabet or reason.
Scene 15
An earthly mental framework formed without Merlyn’s conscious knowledge, the inward vision of the fourteenth century cathedral at Canterbury in southeast England’s district of Kent. In life, in the sixth century, this Scottish bard, Merlyn the Druid, had once tread the local grounds of St. Martin of Tours, the oldest church in England still in use today, in hopes of speaking to the then pagan Kentish King Ethelbert and his Queen, Bertha, the Christian daughter of Charibert I, King of Paris. Merlyn had surprisingly reflected upon his arrival at the church to meet Ethelbert that ‘this St. Martin’s is hallowed ground, but it is not Druidic hallowed ground.’
Merlyn’s unconscious mind, trained in the Classical and Druidic way via Greek and Latin, worked its magical frame and stone. The earthly minded ecclesiastical nest-work settled into a mélange of added understanding – a crucible of powdered red earth, fire heated and slowly stirred in a beaker of the waters from the mighty Styx.
Merlyn dipped this sacred mixture into the nave and quire of his now cathedral-like mind. The unconsciousness and consciousness of dreams wafted about leaving the characters of the first three books therein high and dry, standing or milling about in the great nave, baptized, as it were from duty rendered and listening to the echoes of their dialogues running along and up and down the walls of the quire. Ghosts of page filled dreams stuck within the cathedral that rose transformed from the voice of Grandmother Earth in a Medieval choral duet with an unknowable Voice only recently capitalized for the moment at hand.
The great Board and the Cathedral became one. Each stone block of esoteric architecture cemented in a fiery mix of reason in imagination and imagination in reason. The great Tower Bell rang once. Only those with an inner eye and inner ear saw and heard the explosion that flashed within its own light and reverberated within its own sound. Merlyn saw and heard nothing but the characters of the dreams stood as still as the walls and embedded in the heart of one conscious reader in ten thousand. The rest, the emotional fire buried in the vaults of dead human and dead marsupial unconsciousness waiting for the unknowable echo of the great Tower Bell.
My pupils, thought Merlyn, the dark lettered lines running the living white of my eyes. Pages bound into books to leak out our knighted Dead on squares of light and dark. And from within and beyond a secret hope squeaked from his unvoiced soul, it whispered to Merlyn alone, “What is once done cannot be undone.”
Merlyn unconsciously responded, 'Learning I have done, and learning more I'll do.'
