There's three things you need to know about me before we can begin:
1) I do not have sex dreams. Which isn't to say that I don't have sexy dreams. It's just that the actual acts of sex never manage to happen in the dream. I've had many, many dreams where I'm about to have sex; more than I could count, in fact. But something always interrupts at the last possible second, and the dream then flows on to something else, and I wake the next morning and remember almost having sex the night before. (I've always assumed the reason for this to be that there is just something about the act of having sex that my mind simply cannot recreate for me, and knowing this, it always comes up with some last-minute coitus interruptus to avoid having to cross that particular body-mind barrier.) I have never had a "wet" dream.
2) Far more than any other form of art, entertainment, or media, graphic depictions of rape disturb and upset me. I can watch graphic, bloody, violent horror movies all night every night and not be disturbed in the slightest. But the second a dramatic movie suddenly veers into a rape scene, I know I will be having nightmares and disturbing daytime fugues for the next week. It doesn't have to be violent; it just has to be forced sex. I don't know why I respond this way. I was not raped as a child (far from it, I was sexually adventurous), nor as an adult for that matter, nor have I ever witnessed anyone actually being raped. But something about forcing sex onto someone against their will, something about twisting that highest of all loves and pleasures to its darkest apotheosis, repulses and scars me every single time I experience it. Every single time in my life that I have encountered graphic rape scenes in movies, or read them in books, I have become very upset and traumatized. For several days, or weeks, I will have a hard time getting the images out of my mind. And I will feel sad and scared and small every time I have to see them in my head again, almost as if I am reliving this moment - this fictional moment that did not actually happen to anyone at all, much less to myself. As if I am trapped in my own fictional hell.
3) I am currently reading Moore's Neonomicon. Some of you will understand the significance of this. The rest of you are lucky.
+ + +
Last night I dreamt that I was attending the upcoming national moot (chaos magickian retreat). Late one night, after a long, hard day of black magick, I went back upstairs to my hotel room to go to sleep. I found my roommate waiting for me there, getting ready for bed herself. She was young (and she looked a lot younger even than she was, almost disturbingly so), blonde, very pale skin. To my waking mind now, I do not believe I had ever seen this person
before, and as far as I am aware, she is entirely ephemeral. But in the dream, she was a close friend of mine; perhaps a temple-mate. So the familiar, intimate, affectionate ways we touched as we orbited each other around the hotel room getting ready for bed, did not seem unusual or in any way out-of-the-ordinary for us.
But something changed this time. Somehow, the friendly affection we showed one another began to feel deeper, and more intense. Being unafraid of the other's touch suddenly became wanting to be touched. I don't know how it was communicated, but we both knew we wanted each other, and we knew it was going to happen now.
There was holding, and cuddling, and running of hands along outlines of form. Layers began to get peeled off. Bare flesh was marveled at, and taken by the handful. Our mouths grew sore from kissing. My eyes were closed but I could see and my fingers were inside her and I could feel the wetheat on my fingers hands wrists arms legs and
We were in the water now - dark water dark night where?
A swimming pool, it seems. After hours. All the lights off, water black, can't see the bottom can't see ourselves. We're not swimming. We're floating upright. No need to swim, the water holds us up like gentle caressing hands of Mother. It is warm.
We're completely naked, this girl and I, wrapping arms and legs around each other in the dark water. I can feel myself throbbing against her under the water. I can feel her licking me all over under the water, while I am holding her and kissing her and running my hands all over her.
Suddenly, she takes a fistful of my hair and then slips me inside of her. After, there is not the usual motions, no thrusting, no rocking back and forth. We are not fucking. She is pressed against me, sucking me. I can feel her undulations as she sucks me inside of her, rippling up and down the length of me. The pleasure of this sensation is indescribable. I look down and can see through the water clear as glass at the mouth that is surrounding me, pursing lips sucking up and down. Please understand, this is not hyperbole or poetic license in my description - what I saw was not a vulva, it was a mouth.
I looked up from this scene of mounting horror to find her young, beautiful face now leering at me with an impossibly wide smile, and black eyes of terror madness. At the same time, I felt the will to resist being drained from me, as the astoundingly pleasurable sensations emanating from our conjoined bodies suddenly intensified beyond anything I had ever known. I recall the sensation of licking tongues caressing my entire sex all over; wand and orbs inside and outside, it was the Hell of All Flesh.
I wanted to scream, but her tongues were in my mouth down my throat, writhing fat worms, wrapping my tongue, stroking it sucking it. I felt tongues sliding along under me, caressing and licking the underside black door searching for purchase finding entrance. Licking me opening me impaling me gods pleasure fire fear I can still hear the sounds as they plunged in and out of me still feel the fire fire gods heat no no no no
I remember wanting to fight her, to stop her, to scream, anything. But I couldn't make my body respond at all. The pleasure was overwhelming to the point of paralysis. The last image I saw, as we began to descend beneath the still surface of the water, was our bodies' intersection, one last time. It was a star. Or had become a star. Her occulted mouth had split open eight ways from center - each ray of flesh a prehensile tongue that squicked and squiggled around my naked body, wrapping me and pulling me and licking me and draining me and taking me down down down and in the center of that eight-rayed star of inhuman flesh, a pink, pulsating mouth, with row upon row of concentric rings of tiny pink tentacle teeth, sucking me down, pulling me in, eating me raw, draining the nuclear fire from my very atoms, returning me to the black void of the bottomless unending sea.
+ + +
It must be Spring.
Showing posts with label mythos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythos. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Dreaming For Witches' Night...
Seeking the Enchanted Wood
beyond the Gate of Dreams
again another night
naked but for my Silver Key
that heavy antique carved
with undecipherable
arabesque
symbols
stolen from the Messenger
of the Faceless One
hung from a chain around my neck
the Key to the Dreaming
a comfortable weight against my chest
I descend those too-familiar
Seventy Steps of Light Slumber
ancient worn stone cold under my bare feet
climbing down through the dusky emptiness of Pre-Dreaming
one-by-one
until they suddenly end
at Nothing at all
Without hesitation
(I've been here so many many times before)
I take the leap
and step off into emptiness
and enter the hidden Cavern of Flame
In the far corner of that inky darkness I can almost see
the shadowed forms
of Nasht
and Kaman-Thah
the Gatekeepers
whose temple this is
those towering black figures
bare-chested with carved, curved beards
and elaborate head-dress
stand stone-still but all-aware
waiting to judge my worthiness
again
I perform for them
a different routine every night
to demonstrate my power
my understanding
my worthiness to traverse The Dreamlands beyond
Tonight
as most nights
I begin by conjuring myself a robe
a simple black thawb with cleric's collar
hemmed just below the knee
black linen gi pants
in the Thai style
and comfortable black tabi boots for my feet
Now dressed appropriately
I begin the ritual proper
so They may see
my mastery of The Dream
I rise myself up to float in the center of the cavern
in lotus-posture
and expand out from my center
a dodecahedral lattice-work of blue plasma
until it fills the space
and I float serenely in its center
From each pentagonal face of this construct
I then project white-hot jets of flame
offensive defense
effective ward against
the many horrors that await a Dreamer
But here in this realm of un-real
this is but simple hedge-magick
unimpressive
amateurish
They require better of me
I reach out
and project myself
to the far end of the cavern
and instantly I am there
And then again
and then again
teleporting myself around the cavern
disappearing and re-appearing at random points
to demonstrate my control of Self
and reality here
They continue to stare down at me
black and stone-faced
I draw my perception down into the center of my form
and push Out
against my flesh
against my skin
until I feel it begin to tear
down my back
and I keep pushing
Out
and Out
screaming
until it all comes free in one blood-soaked blur of agony
and I am left standing as
naked muscle sinew bone and nerve
From the scraps of my skin I fashion
a new robe to wear
to show them
my immunity to the horrors I will face beyond
Finally
they consent
From the center of the cavern erupts
the Pillar of Flame
floor to ceiling
I step into it
and my flesh-robe self-sacrifice burns away to ash in an instant
the price paid for passage
but I am left unsinged
and after a moment I step free from the flame
with a new skin
and again re-robed, as before
black thawb and gi and tabi
but now also something new
something never experienced before
(every night
something never experienced before)
something not of my own crafting
a blue turban
electric royal blue
adorned with an onyx jewel
I do not understand this gift
or who
or what
might be the giver
but I accept
with gratitude
An open door appears in the cavern wall in front of me
and I step through
and begin my descent
of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber
gleaming black stone staircase
descending into darkness
through an empty night
I know that at the bottom of these stairs lies
the Enchanted Wood
and further beyond the rest of The Dreamlands
Ulthar and Dylath-Leen
Oriab and Celephaïs
Leng and unknown Kadath
and as I descend further and further
and closer to the Dream
I can feel my Self coming apart
as if dissolving into mist
and I try to hold my Self together
and focus on those far-away lands
and their cities of Dreaming
and remember how much I long to see them
how every night I long to see them
and I try
and I try harder
and I take another step
and I am gone
And then I am awake
I will try again tonight
as I try every night
and I will make my way to the Cavern of Flame
and I will perform my tricks for the Gatekeepers
and I will begin my descent of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber
and one night
maybe tonight
I will make it all the way
to the bottom
to the Enchanted Wood
and to the Dream beyond
and I won't ever
have to return
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Our Dreamings...
My brotherfriend wrote me the other day about some of his dreams. This is something we often do. His writing sparked this conversation between us:
My dreams have been all psychic angst lately. Last night I took a sports car out for a test drive, and immediately crashed it into a harbor or boat dock or river channel or something. The night before I had to let Her be gang-raped by a group of nasty, drug-addled urban pirates, because it was the only way to get us both out of the situation alive (if I'd tried to stop them, they'd have just killed me and raped her anyways). Others have been more mundane - She and I fighting or bickering in some strange, emotionally-amplified way; uncomfortable, awkward, ego-bruising social situations. In one memorable one, I was living in my office on the weekends for some reason, and as I was laying in my tiny office bed masturbating one Saturday morning, the whole office suddenly showed up for work/a party (it was a party, but people were working - ??) and I was caught naked and furry-handed, as it were, and then fired in the most humiliating manner imaginable.
So - this may be a dumb question, but how do you feel about these dreams after you wake, is it more of a nightmare response - quickened pulse, hard breathing, kind of thing? Do you take them as expressions of turmoil, or do you see much omen in them?
I don't think that's a dumb question. When I wake I can usually feel the residual, coming-down edge of adrenaline, the fleeting wake of anxiety. Not quite a quickened pulse or hard-breathing (it's been a long time since I had a dream that upset me to that degree; what I wouldn't give to have a true full-bore, holy-fuck nightmare), but I can tell that something just happened. Then I'll remember the dream, and that will lead to a feeling of "ugh, fuck" and then I'll be in a bad mood for a little while. (Or sometimes longer, depending on how bad the dream was. The gang-rape left me pretty fucked up for most of the day.)
I don't generally interpret my dreams, or try to divine from them, unless there is something unusual or interesting about the dream; some quality that makes it stand out from the usual nighttime fluff and cerebral noise. Whether pleasant or painful, if it feels like "just a dream" then I usually treat it that way. But dreams that are particularly vivid, say - I will pay more attention to those, and go over them afterwards again and again, sifting for relevant or interesting data. Those dreams where I have an interesting quality of consciousness - where I am more aware than usual, that I remember in more detail upon waking, etc. - will also usually attract my attention and therefore garner greater scrutiny. I've also learned to recognize certain signs over the years that I know mean something to me. For instance, whenever a dead person appears in my dream, and does not speak, I know that something different was happening that night, and that was not just an ordinary dream. (For some reason, dead people never speak in my dreams. They communicate, but only through body language, facial expressions, and hand gestures. They never say anything. And I only ever remember after I wake up, "oh, wait a minute - that person is dead.") Dreams with multiple layers, dreams with puzzles or labyrinths, dreams where I am lost, dreams where the lights go out, dreams where I display some vulgar magickal ability; these all usually mean something to me.
As for how I interpret those dreams worthy of attention - as coded messages (either from myself or Other), as portents or omens, as communications from or meetings with outside spirits or entities, or what-have-you - depends entirely on the specifics of the dream itself. It's just a sense of that particular dream. What did it feel like? That's probably what it was.
Most of my dreams lately have just been the usual noise. The fact that they've been less than pleasant is due, I believe, simply to the fact that I've been under more stress than usual lately. I've been working hard, both at work and home, and not relaxing enough, or expressing enough, and so the pressure-release valve of my unconscious is blasting all that psychic bong-resin out the back of my head as I sleep. That's how it feels to me, anyways.
+ + +
Every night, when I lay down to go to sleep, I perform a Dreamlands visualization. I see my Astral standing naked on the bed where we're sleeping, and I take my Silver Key off of my bedstand where it hangs, and put it around my neck; as soon as it is around my neck it morphs into the Silver Key (complete with "arabesque" symbols, etc.). At that point, a hole opens up in my bed, revealing a staircase leading downward into the Dreamlands. I count out each of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber, down to the Cavern of Flame, where I then have to perform some feat in order to convince the gatekeepers Nasht and Kaman-Tha that I am worthy to travel in the Dream. It is usually something gruesome and grotesque, such as flaying myself alive and magickally creating a robe to wear from the strips of my skin; or transfiguring myself into some many-limbed, many-eyed, many-teeted, many-tentacled thing that tears its way out of my body, or burning myself alive in magickal fire until all my flesh is burned away and I am just a spirit of living flame. Stuff like that, whatever I come up with that particular night. It's different every time. If I'm then judged worthy by the Gatekeepers, they will open a doorway in the CoF revealing the staircase of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber, which lead down to the Enchanted Wood that is the entrance to the Dreamlands, and I will then begin to descend those, again counting out each step as I go. I always arrive in the CoF naked, but always leave robed. I almost always make it to the CoF before I fall asleep, and I am almost always judged worthy. I have made it to the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber many times, but have never made it to the Enchanted Wood before falling asleep. I often fall asleep in the CoF while performing for Nasht and Kaman-Tha.
Just curious - is there a particular reason that your feats are all body horror related? Is there any relationship between those feats and the kinds of dreams you have? I really like the path working, and might use it myself - but I wasn't sure if the transformations were something you feel is important to the entire process, or if it is the best way for you to convince Nasht and Kaman-Tha that you should be permitted to descend the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber.
I've never felt any anxiety about these nightly grotesqueries; they've never upset me. If anything, they're kind of a thrill. I'll never get to do any of these things in real life, so it's kind of fun to get to do them in my head, and let my imagination run wild. So, no, I wouldn't say that they have anything to do with the unpleasantness of my recent dreams. Though I guess it's certainly possible. I've never kept tally of the number of good vs. bad dreams I've had after passing through the Cavern of Flame.
As to why they are all "body horror" related (which I originally read as "bloody horror"), I'm not quite sure what you mean. I guess I can see now that the three examples I gave were each an instance of me mutilating my body in some fashion, but that was just a coincidence; I didn't mean to imply that I always need to rend my flesh in some manner in order to impress the Gatekeepers. I've also often done astral work, or summoned a creature, or something else. So, the only real requirement is that it be a feat of magickal or psychic prowess.
All I'm really trying to do there, is impress upon Nasht and Kaman-Tha that I am worthy to enter the Dream. That I am both powerful enough to take care of myself, and that I am familiar enough with the kinds of oddities I am likely to find at the bottom of that long staircase that I am probably not going to go mad as soon as I get there. Probably. I am trying to display to them, both the powers of my imagination and an ability to control the dream. And then no doubt the simple fact that it's a Mythos working must also color my imagination in some fashion, leading to a greater incidence of performances of "unimaginable horrors." You work with the Mythos, and you're gonna get some tentacles. That's just unavoidable.
I imagine that everyone's experience with the Gatekeepers would be unique to the individual magickian/dreamer, though. I'd be really interested to know yours.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
The Interzone...
I had a strange dream this morning. (Oh, what I wouldn't give for the ability to come up with something interesting to write about on my own, at will, and not have to rely on the random firings of comatose neurons in order to conjure my art from the void. But that's a worry for another day. For now, I'll take what I can get.)
+ + +
I let three birds fly into my home.
Then I laid down on my couch to watch them.
I was paralyzed as I lay there, unable to move.
One of the birds, the smallest one, kept turning into a young woman. She wore a t-shirt of alternating thick blue and yellow horizontal stripes, white shorts, and white canvas topsiders. She was sitting on my living room floor, using one of my laptops. She wasn't beautiful, but she was very attractive.
And while she wasn't quite masturbating, she seemed like she was building up to it.
She was rubbing her hands all over her body with sensuous intent, as she stared transfixed at the laptop screen, her face awash in bluegreen glow. Every once in a while she would lift her shirt up to run her hand across her belly, or up over one of her small breasts.
Unsurprisingly, I was completely entranced by her. I could not look away.
I knew she was really a bird, but that didn't seem to make any difference. Every once in a while she would turn back into a bird again, or I would see her as a bird again, just for a moment. And in those moments, I could see the other birds, too. They were poking holes all throughout the walls of my apartment. Burrowing into them, building nests.
I didn't care. Couldn't care. Couldn't even imagine caring. All I wanted was to keep watching this young woman enjoying herself at whatever it was she was doing.
But suddenly, all too soon, she was gone. The room had gone dark, like the sky outside was ready to storm. The walls were crumbling and full of holes. And I was staring at an image of myself on the floor in front of the laptop, where the birdgirl had been; a projection of my own unconscious creation, from myself to myself.
With this realization, I could move again.
As I started to rise from the couch, I heard a crunching noise behind me. I stood and turned, to see my living room in a fantastical state of decay, and crawling all over with the most enormous bugs I have ever seen. The walls and front door were wet, rotten planks of wood, layered with moss a foot thick, like a fallen tree that had been rotting on the forest floor for fifty years. Indeed, the advanced state of woodland decay displayed in my living room gave off a distinct Rip Van Winkle feel, and I found myself afraid that I might have been watching that girl for a hundred years without even knowing it. Dark stormlight poured in through the holes between the rotten planks of door and wall.
And the bugs! Oh gods, they were everywhere. And they were enormous. The size of guinea pigs. Long, beetle-like things, with pincers like serrated scissors on their heads. Thank the Sun they didn't seem capable of flying. But they were crawling all over everything. I could hear them chittering behind the walls. They crunched under my feet as a I walked. I discovered that a large portion of them appeared to have been torn apart, their carapaces left discarded about the floor like crushed, empty walnut shells.
I realized that the birds had been eating them.
I stooped to examine some of these remains. They were covered in this sticky brown goo, like a cross between molasses and motor oil. It was all over the place.
It was at this point that I began to have a freak-out.
I ran down the hall to the back of my apartment, screaming for help, and found a girl there that I know from the IOT in waking life. She was cleaning my apartment. It was completely spotless back there, in fact; no evidence at all of the chaos from the front rooms. She didn't live there, and we weren't lovers (either in or out of the dream), yet it didn't strike me as at all odd that she was cleaning my home.
I tried to describe the situation to her, screaming hysterically, but she was completely nonchalant about the whole thing. Very, "yeah, yeah, I'll be right there; let me just finish this first." Which only made me panic more, as if she didn't understand the gravity of the situation, or wasn't taking me seriously enough. So I started to freak out on her even more, to try and get across just how seriously fucked everything actually was. I held out my hands to show her as evidence. They were cut up and bleeding, apparently from the bugs. But she still didn't hurry.
Eventually, at my desperate pleading, she followed me out into the living room, to see the destruction I had been raving about. She was not impressed. Nor was she particularly concerned. It seemed as if she viewed it all as just one more mess to tidy up.
I began to run around the apartment, frantically closing all the doors and windows, of which there were suddenly way too many - more than was rational - and all of which were wide open. I crushed several of the giant beetlebugs in various window frames, as I closed the windows on them. I didn't actually want to kill them, surprisingly; I was just afraid to touch them to move them out of the way.
I flung open my front door to try and sweep the forest of decay and bugs outside, and in so doing let in warm Spring sunlight, and a life-scented breeze.
And the birds.
All three returned.
But whether to watch, or to help, or to hinder, or to take me away, or otherwise end me, I will never know.
Perhaps one day I'll remember.
+ + +
I let three birds fly into my home.
Then I laid down on my couch to watch them.
I was paralyzed as I lay there, unable to move.
One of the birds, the smallest one, kept turning into a young woman. She wore a t-shirt of alternating thick blue and yellow horizontal stripes, white shorts, and white canvas topsiders. She was sitting on my living room floor, using one of my laptops. She wasn't beautiful, but she was very attractive.
And while she wasn't quite masturbating, she seemed like she was building up to it.
She was rubbing her hands all over her body with sensuous intent, as she stared transfixed at the laptop screen, her face awash in bluegreen glow. Every once in a while she would lift her shirt up to run her hand across her belly, or up over one of her small breasts.
Unsurprisingly, I was completely entranced by her. I could not look away.
I knew she was really a bird, but that didn't seem to make any difference. Every once in a while she would turn back into a bird again, or I would see her as a bird again, just for a moment. And in those moments, I could see the other birds, too. They were poking holes all throughout the walls of my apartment. Burrowing into them, building nests.
I didn't care. Couldn't care. Couldn't even imagine caring. All I wanted was to keep watching this young woman enjoying herself at whatever it was she was doing.
But suddenly, all too soon, she was gone. The room had gone dark, like the sky outside was ready to storm. The walls were crumbling and full of holes. And I was staring at an image of myself on the floor in front of the laptop, where the birdgirl had been; a projection of my own unconscious creation, from myself to myself.
With this realization, I could move again.
As I started to rise from the couch, I heard a crunching noise behind me. I stood and turned, to see my living room in a fantastical state of decay, and crawling all over with the most enormous bugs I have ever seen. The walls and front door were wet, rotten planks of wood, layered with moss a foot thick, like a fallen tree that had been rotting on the forest floor for fifty years. Indeed, the advanced state of woodland decay displayed in my living room gave off a distinct Rip Van Winkle feel, and I found myself afraid that I might have been watching that girl for a hundred years without even knowing it. Dark stormlight poured in through the holes between the rotten planks of door and wall.
And the bugs! Oh gods, they were everywhere. And they were enormous. The size of guinea pigs. Long, beetle-like things, with pincers like serrated scissors on their heads. Thank the Sun they didn't seem capable of flying. But they were crawling all over everything. I could hear them chittering behind the walls. They crunched under my feet as a I walked. I discovered that a large portion of them appeared to have been torn apart, their carapaces left discarded about the floor like crushed, empty walnut shells.
I realized that the birds had been eating them.
I stooped to examine some of these remains. They were covered in this sticky brown goo, like a cross between molasses and motor oil. It was all over the place.
It was at this point that I began to have a freak-out.
I ran down the hall to the back of my apartment, screaming for help, and found a girl there that I know from the IOT in waking life. She was cleaning my apartment. It was completely spotless back there, in fact; no evidence at all of the chaos from the front rooms. She didn't live there, and we weren't lovers (either in or out of the dream), yet it didn't strike me as at all odd that she was cleaning my home.
I tried to describe the situation to her, screaming hysterically, but she was completely nonchalant about the whole thing. Very, "yeah, yeah, I'll be right there; let me just finish this first." Which only made me panic more, as if she didn't understand the gravity of the situation, or wasn't taking me seriously enough. So I started to freak out on her even more, to try and get across just how seriously fucked everything actually was. I held out my hands to show her as evidence. They were cut up and bleeding, apparently from the bugs. But she still didn't hurry.
Eventually, at my desperate pleading, she followed me out into the living room, to see the destruction I had been raving about. She was not impressed. Nor was she particularly concerned. It seemed as if she viewed it all as just one more mess to tidy up.
I began to run around the apartment, frantically closing all the doors and windows, of which there were suddenly way too many - more than was rational - and all of which were wide open. I crushed several of the giant beetlebugs in various window frames, as I closed the windows on them. I didn't actually want to kill them, surprisingly; I was just afraid to touch them to move them out of the way.
I flung open my front door to try and sweep the forest of decay and bugs outside, and in so doing let in warm Spring sunlight, and a life-scented breeze.
And the birds.
All three returned.
But whether to watch, or to help, or to hinder, or to take me away, or otherwise end me, I will never know.
Perhaps one day I'll remember.
Friday, June 4, 2010
In the Dreaming of Olde Fredericktowne...
Friday, May 28th (last night of the full moon)
-8:39p - Sacrament: sick rose
-8:45-9:19p - ritually deconstruct altar, construct altar to Cthulhu
-9:20p - Sacrament: liao
-9:25p - all lights off, ignite altarcandle/Lya'o incense, take meditative posture of half-lotus, hands on knees in Kish mudra and engage mindfold
-~9:30p - decide to perform Battery Activation Meditation (routine chi-visualization ritual I often use as an opening rite; activates the power-centers, opens a Black Lotus at each of my tan-t'ien, encases me in a geometric energy construct that serves as both a dimension portal & a protective barrier, and finally centers me on the Axis Mundi) - sitting inside my construct, I feel powerful, serene, comfortable, safe, strong, secure, aware - hesitant to perform the last step for some reason - don't want to "break the bubble", which I've never felt here before - eventually I gather my chi along my spine and launch out the top of my skull and down my tailbone and out to the ends of creation until I am centered on the Pole of the Universe - something strange, different from other times; something I've never experienced here before - normally I feel god-like from this vantage point - but now I suddenly feel absolutely infinitesimal - instead of retaining my own perspective, as has always happened before, it seems as though my perspective on the Axis Mundi has shifted to the infinite universe itself! - I feel like I've shrunk to the size of a particle - and, yet, I also feel, quite distinctly, as though the ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS NOW STARING DIRECTLY AT ME - I shrink even further
-9:43p - Journal Entry: "mindfold - darkness, which had been comfortably enveloping me suddenly became oppressive and claustrophobic - I wanted out - then malevolent! - some thing was coming AT ME through the dark - trying to get into me - masses of black worms - tendrils IN MY EYES" [note added here: my entire field of "vision" inside the darkness of the mindfold was filled with the writhing of black tendrils - I quickly removed my mask and opened my eyes, and saw my new altar for what felt like the very first time]
-9:46p - JE: "almost as if in response(?) sudden overwhelming urge to masturbate myself before the altar - pleasure was overwhelming, yet remained flaccid throughout, even through orgasm and ejaculation - very aware that it was the mental image of my limp cock birthing millions of tiny tentacled blobs of slime that finally triggered my orgasm" [note: another experience unknown to me before tonight - afterward, felt slightly nauseous, kind of sticky & gross; wanted to take a shower] [addendum: realization as I'm writing this that I should have consumed this sacrament, as well! a missed opportunity.]
-9:59p - JE: "decide it's time to begin my descent" [note: following this entry, I gathered my tools and got dressed - I wore the Silver Key on a ribbon wrapped around my wrist, and an ankh (for ghouls) on a chain around my neck - I filled my pockets with small sacrificial offerings from my altar, a few tools I thought I might possibly want or need along the way (bag of runelots for divination, iPod, etc.), and some basic practical items for the journey (water, phone, etc.)]
-10:29p - JE: "Begin descent." [note: after making this entry, I opened the blinds covering the window above my altar, letting the world back in, and letting it out onto the world - then I turned around, put in my earpieces and turned on my music (Aklo, "Unnameable" and "Beyond Madness", shuffle/repeat), formed both hands into the Kish mudra and began to count out the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber that begin the descent into the Dreamlands]
-seventy steps from my altar turned out to be the second to last step at the bottom of the stairs before reaching the courtyard of my building - was this the Cavern of Flame? - I waited - no, it wasn't - what now? - there is a secret door at the back of the courtyard; an iron gate that leads out into the wild of vines and weeds and giant, gnarled, hundred-year-old oaks hidden in the darkness behind the building - going through the gate is step 1 of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber
-I count my steps through the dark, leading along the path from the gate and out into the gravel lot behind the building - there is a large, ancient, rectangular hunk of shattered concrete embedded in the middle of that lot for no apparent reason, and the seventieth step places me square on the South side of that block, facing North, looking directly at the gate leading out of the lot, and exactly in the middle of a 2' triangle formed by three intersecting cracks in the concrete - when I step into the triangle, the music crescendos and the chittering sounds grow louder and more insistent - this is the Cavern of Flame
-I stand waiting in the middle of the empty lot - I am in darkness, but I can see the cars and people on the street not fifty feet in front of me - none of them seems to notice me - despite the security of the darkness, I feel open and exposed - I become aware of two large, columnar shadows suddenly flanking either side of me - I don't want to look directly at them - tall, shadow-black, man-shaped, arms folded over chests, wearing headdresses - Nasht and Kaman-Tha - am I worthy to proceed? - I stand waiting, waiting, under the weight of their gaze - why am I sweating? am I starting to shake? - cold rush of fear - I look to my right, directly at... Kaman-Tha, as it turns out - then to my left: Nasht - I am left alone - stepping out of the triangle is the first of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber
-counting out my steps toward the gate at the N end of the lot, I am suddenly aware that I am about to walk out onto the street, in public, walking in an odd and stunted way, with both of my hands rigidly held in what, to anyone else, is the middle-finger sign - I think this might arouse a bit too much attention - I jam my hands in my pockets so that I can continue to hold the mudras without being so obvious about it - now, with my hands jammed awkwardly in my pockets, and my staccato off-kilter walk, I feel as though I look like someone doing a very bad job of trying very hard to act nonchalant - this becomes especially tense when, around steps 450-500, I have to walk directly through a party of people that has spilled over the stoop and onto the sidewalk - I cannot hear any of them, am acting VERY weird, and have to walk right through the middle of everyone, very aware that I am interrupting everything and everyone is staring at me - I just continue counting - 523, 524, 525...
-at step 600, reach a crossroads - to my right is an alley - I feel very strongly that the remaining 100 steps lead in that direction - however continuing ahead of me, I know there is a sacred spot I've been to before; should be about a hundred steps away - which way do I go? gut feeling or intellectual curiosity? - usually I'll go with gut, but that alley looks like it leads into someone's backyard; I really don't want to get caught trespassing in someone's yard, right now, do I? - better proceed fwd instead
-at ~step 660, reach the gate of a public park, wherein lies the most potently magickal natural setting in my neighborhood - surely the Gate of Deeper Slumber is in there - but there is a large sign drilled into the gate - have I ever seen it before? - it says it is illegal to be in the park at this time of night - seems no matter which way I go, I'm going to have to commit some type of crime in order to reach the Gate of Deeper Slumber - there are a lot of people about on the street - no way I could walk in without being seen - how long have I been standing here, staring at this gate? - ... - ... - I can't do it - I guess I failed this attempt - nonetheless, I hold my mudras, and cross the street counting down the last steps, until I reach the seven hundredth
-10:45p - it feels wonderful to release my hands, roll up my sleeves, take a drink of cold water, and walk like a normal person again - am I in the Dreamlands now? - I don't know - decide to just start drifting
-L onto W. Patrick - "Crystal Row" - all the yoga studios and Reiki treatment centers and naturopathy clinics - never realized before, but all of these buildings are old *houses* - this has been a business district my whole life, but looking at it now, I can't help but see the residential neighborhood it was a century or more ago - these huge, old, Victorian "homes"; what would've been "mansions" back then - some of them still fitted with gaslight - how sinister and imposing they seem to me now, as never before - what horrors and atrocities had been birthed within those walls a hundred years ago? - how oddly out of place it seems to me now that they should all be housing new-age wellness centers! - like an amusement park built from the ruins of a concentration camp
-R down a street I've never seen before - lined with several multi-story condominiums I hadn't known were there - road makes a 90* bend to the R, and I follow it - end up in a back-alley that ends at a T - L, another alley - follow that to a crossroads where R looks like it leads out to a road - I take that R and end up... on the opposite side of Baker Park from where I just was up on W. Patrick. - I'm about a mile to two miles away from where I'd first turned down this street - ??? - how can that be?? - I'm on the other side of the fucking CANAL for fuck's sake! - how did I get to the other side of the canal without crossing a single bridge?!
-disoriented, I walk to the nearest bridge and cross the canal, then work my way back to the other side of the park, to where I'd been just a few minutes earlier [note: realizing now that it never even occurred to me to trace my steps back in the direction I had come - ??] - the path leads me through the park, following the canal - the water is black, and stagnant, and smells like a marsh - it is full of flies - I stop and sit down beside it to gag on the smell for a few minutes - doesn't take long before I'm actually starting to retch, so I continue on my way
-at this point, my wife begins txt'ing me from her night, and we continue to txt back and forth for the next couple of hours, until she goes to bed - the experience feels somewhat like getting a phone call from the other side of the looking glass
-TXT-Received: "Where you @, baby?" - Sent: "Dreaming"
-11p - finally free from the park, I am shocked to discover that the entire ordeal, everything from the seven hundredth step on, which seemed to last for hours, has only taken 15 minutes
-TXT-S: "How did that year only last 15mins?!"
-leaving the park, I cross Bentz and head E down W. Church St. - the mansions lining this street are pre-revolution, colonial - by American standards, they are ancient - if the houses on Crystal Row held hidden horrors, these ancient estates bled and screamed with unseen atrocities - every edifice seems to leer - every shadow has fangs - every well-tended topiary squats lifeless, like flowers in a tomb - I can hear screaming children being raped and sodomized - a young nigger slave girl's gurgling wails of uncomprehending terror while she watches as her infant is viciously carved from her womb - the sickening snap of bone - the sharp sting of a whip - the sloppy wet sound of vomiting - the smell of blood and shit
-then I come to the churches - this is Church St., after all - they've been built upon and added to and refurbished and renovated so many times through the centuries that they look modern now in comparison to the brick mansions all around them, even though they are technically much older - these are the "famous" Seven Clustered Spires of Olde Fredericktowne - standing on the street I look up to the top of the spire above me - from the smoky blackness above, I see the image of a dozen gargantuan tentacles free-falling out of the sky - they land squarely on the church, absolutely demolishing it in an explosion of brick and dust - I look down the street and see another mass of tentacles descend similarly, crushing another huge old church on the other side of the street - then the first mass of tentacles to my right lifts up into the sky almost as quickly as it came down, and I see it come down again, further down the street than the second mass but still on the same side of the street as it was before, again crushing another building - I realize now that these are limbs of some Thing that is *walking* down Church St. - every step utterly destroying some giant old stone building like a toy model - it quickly stomps off into the darkness at the far end of the street, several blocks away - I decide to follow it
-PIC1 - What long-forgotten tomes of ancient occulted knowledge are held hostage by the insidious Mr. Marshall Etchison??
-11:12p - JE: "reach the funereal [sic] home on Church St. it begins to rain. no... mist" [note: an enormous gothic mansion, the first time I visited this funeral home was to view my mother's body; this fall, I was back again, in the same room as a matter of fact, for the funeral of my wife's father - as I stood there staring at it, contemplating the width and breath of that horrible old building's place in my life, the air suddenly became wet - at first I thought it had started to rain, but then I looked down the street and realized that a mist had rolled in off the canal]
-turn R down Carroll Alley - past the post office - the stench of manure - end up on another bridge crossing the canal again - decide to turn L and head E down the canal towards the other side of town - quickly reach the end of the renovated "garden/shopping district" area of the canal and keep going, past the art museum, entering into the "flat, wide open river of concrete with a sewer running down the center of it" portion of the canal walk - suddenly notice there are marks covering the concrete here - no, wait; paintings - the entire expanse of concrete has been marked off into a grid of squares - each square is numbered - some of the squares are filled in with paintings - a couple indicating classes of schoolchildren - a couple apparently done by (and to promote) local civics organizations - a few of them simply artistic - I imagine that people must be purchasing the rights to paint these squares - but why? - it begins to rain in earnest now; silent lightening strobes the sky - a few of the painted squares grab my attention
-PIC2 - this square was apparently painted by Ms. MacGregor's 4th grade class - the knowledge of the Horrors Beyond the Stars has already infected our young!
-PIC3 - suggestion: skip lines 5-7, instead going from line 4 ("We are more than") directly to line 8 ("...life") - re-read - what is it saying now?
-PIC4 - in case the image is unclear, this block of stone displays the message "the stars eat your body." - someone PAID to write that there - I feel simultaneously wigged out and a growing affection for my hometown - this phrase would repeat in my mind for the rest of the night
-I follow the canal until it goes under E. Patrick - turn R and head E down E. Patrick - wife is txt'ing me again - we have a small chat back and forth as I walk - going back and forth from staring at the bright screen to trying to find my way down the dark, unlighted street is disorienting me - every time I close my phone and look up, it takes what seems like forever before I can begin to see anything again, and every time I get a new text it feels as if the screen's light is going to burn out my eyes - I end up taking a dark side street I've never been down before - I take a couple of turns this way and that [I don't remember exactly] - I have no idea where I am anymore - suddenly, I find myself in a housing project I've never seen or heard of before - there are more people out here than anywhere else I've been so far tonight other than the heart of the bar/restaraunt district downtown - every single one of them is poor and black - any of them could have ended up here after being forced to move out of my neighborhood after my wealth magick had succeeded in gentrifying most of downtown, starting with my neighborhood - and here I am taking a stroll through the middle of *their* neighborhood, their home, in the middle of the night - and they are all looking at me and it is obvious that I do not belong here - I'm hoping to walk through the project and out the other side to who-knows-where, but I get to the end of the street and it empties out into a huge cul-de-sac of project buildings - there are people everywhere and they are all staring at me and I am The Outsider and there is no way out - and now I have to turn my back to all of them, only the sounds of madness in my ears, and find my way back out - I can't hear them, I don't dare look back - I'm lost and don't know how to find my way out of this maze - but I remain calm, keep walking, and make the Voorish Sign to appease any deranged savages or gibbering creatures that may accost me from the darkness - eventually, I find a side-alley that cuts through two backyards and leads me back out onto E. Patrick - a few blocks further down, I take a R down a street I know very well, but have never known the name of
-~11:55p - TXT-S: "I'm starting to limp." [note: three days later, I am still limping - if this is the beginning of some transfiguration, I am not amused]
-~12a - down this unnamed street, I find a small church that I have never seen before - how many hundreds of times have I been down this street? how could I never notice this church?! - I realize just how many fucking churches and chapels I have seen over the course of the night - it seems like every street I've been down has at least one house of christian worship - often it's an actual house that has been converted to a chapel, but just as often it's a huge, stone church, bordering on "cathedral" - why do we need SO MANY CHURCHES in this town??
-TXT-S: "There are churches EVERYWHERE!"
-reaching the end of that unnamed street, I suddenly realize where I am
-~12:10 - TXT-S: "Wait... this is... South St.?"
-realizing I've ended up back on my "home turf" as it were, I feel the pull to return home - I'm exhausted and my nerves are shot - I'm soaked in sweat and I'm out of water, and I have to piss like a camel - I send the street names in txt's to my wife as I make my way out of the mists and fog of my dream, and back to the more stable footing of the "real world"
-~12:15 - TXT-S: "East"
-~12:20 - TXT-S: "Carroll"
-~12:25 - TXT-S: "All Saints"
-12:29a - JE: "home"
-being home again felt like being tightly strapped into the most comfortable bed ever made - I showered the slime off myself, got dressed in a more relaxed and normal outfit, and at 1a went to catch last call at my local and get a pint and a shot of whiskey before the night was over - I felt I'd earned it - couldn't really interact with anybody much in my current mental state, so I passed my time by reading up about the city of Kish online while I drank (apparently, it is the first city we have record of after the Great Flood, etc.), and for the next couple of hours after
-~4a - began the coming-down process - rest of the evening progressed relatively "normally" - nothing unexpected or unusual - eventually drifted off to sleep about 6a - no dreams I could recall
-in hindsight, I don't think I made it INTO the Dreamlands that night - but something was definitely different - maybe I was skirting the edge of our Dream? - what happened? - perhaps I lost the path somewhere along the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber? was I not judged worthy in the Cavern of Flame? - either seems possible/plausible
-CONCLUSION: this experiment must be repeated - try a different path for the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber? - try the same path but follow it to its conclusion this time, now that I know where it goes? - what do I need to do to ensure worthiness at the Cavern of Flame? - READ DREAMLANDS STORIES - STUDY DREAMLANDS!
-8:39p - Sacrament: sick rose
-8:45-9:19p - ritually deconstruct altar, construct altar to Cthulhu
-9:20p - Sacrament: liao
-9:25p - all lights off, ignite altarcandle/Lya'o incense, take meditative posture of half-lotus, hands on knees in Kish mudra and engage mindfold
-~9:30p - decide to perform Battery Activation Meditation (routine chi-visualization ritual I often use as an opening rite; activates the power-centers, opens a Black Lotus at each of my tan-t'ien, encases me in a geometric energy construct that serves as both a dimension portal & a protective barrier, and finally centers me on the Axis Mundi) - sitting inside my construct, I feel powerful, serene, comfortable, safe, strong, secure, aware - hesitant to perform the last step for some reason - don't want to "break the bubble", which I've never felt here before - eventually I gather my chi along my spine and launch out the top of my skull and down my tailbone and out to the ends of creation until I am centered on the Pole of the Universe - something strange, different from other times; something I've never experienced here before - normally I feel god-like from this vantage point - but now I suddenly feel absolutely infinitesimal - instead of retaining my own perspective, as has always happened before, it seems as though my perspective on the Axis Mundi has shifted to the infinite universe itself! - I feel like I've shrunk to the size of a particle - and, yet, I also feel, quite distinctly, as though the ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS NOW STARING DIRECTLY AT ME - I shrink even further
-9:43p - Journal Entry: "mindfold - darkness, which had been comfortably enveloping me suddenly became oppressive and claustrophobic - I wanted out - then malevolent! - some thing was coming AT ME through the dark - trying to get into me - masses of black worms - tendrils IN MY EYES" [note added here: my entire field of "vision" inside the darkness of the mindfold was filled with the writhing of black tendrils - I quickly removed my mask and opened my eyes, and saw my new altar for what felt like the very first time]
-9:46p - JE: "almost as if in response(?) sudden overwhelming urge to masturbate myself before the altar - pleasure was overwhelming, yet remained flaccid throughout, even through orgasm and ejaculation - very aware that it was the mental image of my limp cock birthing millions of tiny tentacled blobs of slime that finally triggered my orgasm" [note: another experience unknown to me before tonight - afterward, felt slightly nauseous, kind of sticky & gross; wanted to take a shower] [addendum: realization as I'm writing this that I should have consumed this sacrament, as well! a missed opportunity.]
-9:59p - JE: "decide it's time to begin my descent" [note: following this entry, I gathered my tools and got dressed - I wore the Silver Key on a ribbon wrapped around my wrist, and an ankh (for ghouls) on a chain around my neck - I filled my pockets with small sacrificial offerings from my altar, a few tools I thought I might possibly want or need along the way (bag of runelots for divination, iPod, etc.), and some basic practical items for the journey (water, phone, etc.)]
-10:29p - JE: "Begin descent." [note: after making this entry, I opened the blinds covering the window above my altar, letting the world back in, and letting it out onto the world - then I turned around, put in my earpieces and turned on my music (Aklo, "Unnameable" and "Beyond Madness", shuffle/repeat), formed both hands into the Kish mudra and began to count out the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber that begin the descent into the Dreamlands]
-seventy steps from my altar turned out to be the second to last step at the bottom of the stairs before reaching the courtyard of my building - was this the Cavern of Flame? - I waited - no, it wasn't - what now? - there is a secret door at the back of the courtyard; an iron gate that leads out into the wild of vines and weeds and giant, gnarled, hundred-year-old oaks hidden in the darkness behind the building - going through the gate is step 1 of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber
-I count my steps through the dark, leading along the path from the gate and out into the gravel lot behind the building - there is a large, ancient, rectangular hunk of shattered concrete embedded in the middle of that lot for no apparent reason, and the seventieth step places me square on the South side of that block, facing North, looking directly at the gate leading out of the lot, and exactly in the middle of a 2' triangle formed by three intersecting cracks in the concrete - when I step into the triangle, the music crescendos and the chittering sounds grow louder and more insistent - this is the Cavern of Flame
-I stand waiting in the middle of the empty lot - I am in darkness, but I can see the cars and people on the street not fifty feet in front of me - none of them seems to notice me - despite the security of the darkness, I feel open and exposed - I become aware of two large, columnar shadows suddenly flanking either side of me - I don't want to look directly at them - tall, shadow-black, man-shaped, arms folded over chests, wearing headdresses - Nasht and Kaman-Tha - am I worthy to proceed? - I stand waiting, waiting, under the weight of their gaze - why am I sweating? am I starting to shake? - cold rush of fear - I look to my right, directly at... Kaman-Tha, as it turns out - then to my left: Nasht - I am left alone - stepping out of the triangle is the first of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber
-counting out my steps toward the gate at the N end of the lot, I am suddenly aware that I am about to walk out onto the street, in public, walking in an odd and stunted way, with both of my hands rigidly held in what, to anyone else, is the middle-finger sign - I think this might arouse a bit too much attention - I jam my hands in my pockets so that I can continue to hold the mudras without being so obvious about it - now, with my hands jammed awkwardly in my pockets, and my staccato off-kilter walk, I feel as though I look like someone doing a very bad job of trying very hard to act nonchalant - this becomes especially tense when, around steps 450-500, I have to walk directly through a party of people that has spilled over the stoop and onto the sidewalk - I cannot hear any of them, am acting VERY weird, and have to walk right through the middle of everyone, very aware that I am interrupting everything and everyone is staring at me - I just continue counting - 523, 524, 525...
-at step 600, reach a crossroads - to my right is an alley - I feel very strongly that the remaining 100 steps lead in that direction - however continuing ahead of me, I know there is a sacred spot I've been to before; should be about a hundred steps away - which way do I go? gut feeling or intellectual curiosity? - usually I'll go with gut, but that alley looks like it leads into someone's backyard; I really don't want to get caught trespassing in someone's yard, right now, do I? - better proceed fwd instead
-at ~step 660, reach the gate of a public park, wherein lies the most potently magickal natural setting in my neighborhood - surely the Gate of Deeper Slumber is in there - but there is a large sign drilled into the gate - have I ever seen it before? - it says it is illegal to be in the park at this time of night - seems no matter which way I go, I'm going to have to commit some type of crime in order to reach the Gate of Deeper Slumber - there are a lot of people about on the street - no way I could walk in without being seen - how long have I been standing here, staring at this gate? - ... - ... - I can't do it - I guess I failed this attempt - nonetheless, I hold my mudras, and cross the street counting down the last steps, until I reach the seven hundredth
-10:45p - it feels wonderful to release my hands, roll up my sleeves, take a drink of cold water, and walk like a normal person again - am I in the Dreamlands now? - I don't know - decide to just start drifting
-L onto W. Patrick - "Crystal Row" - all the yoga studios and Reiki treatment centers and naturopathy clinics - never realized before, but all of these buildings are old *houses* - this has been a business district my whole life, but looking at it now, I can't help but see the residential neighborhood it was a century or more ago - these huge, old, Victorian "homes"; what would've been "mansions" back then - some of them still fitted with gaslight - how sinister and imposing they seem to me now, as never before - what horrors and atrocities had been birthed within those walls a hundred years ago? - how oddly out of place it seems to me now that they should all be housing new-age wellness centers! - like an amusement park built from the ruins of a concentration camp
-R down a street I've never seen before - lined with several multi-story condominiums I hadn't known were there - road makes a 90* bend to the R, and I follow it - end up in a back-alley that ends at a T - L, another alley - follow that to a crossroads where R looks like it leads out to a road - I take that R and end up... on the opposite side of Baker Park from where I just was up on W. Patrick. - I'm about a mile to two miles away from where I'd first turned down this street - ??? - how can that be?? - I'm on the other side of the fucking CANAL for fuck's sake! - how did I get to the other side of the canal without crossing a single bridge?!
-disoriented, I walk to the nearest bridge and cross the canal, then work my way back to the other side of the park, to where I'd been just a few minutes earlier [note: realizing now that it never even occurred to me to trace my steps back in the direction I had come - ??] - the path leads me through the park, following the canal - the water is black, and stagnant, and smells like a marsh - it is full of flies - I stop and sit down beside it to gag on the smell for a few minutes - doesn't take long before I'm actually starting to retch, so I continue on my way
-at this point, my wife begins txt'ing me from her night, and we continue to txt back and forth for the next couple of hours, until she goes to bed - the experience feels somewhat like getting a phone call from the other side of the looking glass
-TXT-Received: "Where you @, baby?" - Sent: "Dreaming"
-11p - finally free from the park, I am shocked to discover that the entire ordeal, everything from the seven hundredth step on, which seemed to last for hours, has only taken 15 minutes
-TXT-S: "How did that year only last 15mins?!"
-leaving the park, I cross Bentz and head E down W. Church St. - the mansions lining this street are pre-revolution, colonial - by American standards, they are ancient - if the houses on Crystal Row held hidden horrors, these ancient estates bled and screamed with unseen atrocities - every edifice seems to leer - every shadow has fangs - every well-tended topiary squats lifeless, like flowers in a tomb - I can hear screaming children being raped and sodomized - a young nigger slave girl's gurgling wails of uncomprehending terror while she watches as her infant is viciously carved from her womb - the sickening snap of bone - the sharp sting of a whip - the sloppy wet sound of vomiting - the smell of blood and shit
-then I come to the churches - this is Church St., after all - they've been built upon and added to and refurbished and renovated so many times through the centuries that they look modern now in comparison to the brick mansions all around them, even though they are technically much older - these are the "famous" Seven Clustered Spires of Olde Fredericktowne - standing on the street I look up to the top of the spire above me - from the smoky blackness above, I see the image of a dozen gargantuan tentacles free-falling out of the sky - they land squarely on the church, absolutely demolishing it in an explosion of brick and dust - I look down the street and see another mass of tentacles descend similarly, crushing another huge old church on the other side of the street - then the first mass of tentacles to my right lifts up into the sky almost as quickly as it came down, and I see it come down again, further down the street than the second mass but still on the same side of the street as it was before, again crushing another building - I realize now that these are limbs of some Thing that is *walking* down Church St. - every step utterly destroying some giant old stone building like a toy model - it quickly stomps off into the darkness at the far end of the street, several blocks away - I decide to follow it
-PIC1 - What long-forgotten tomes of ancient occulted knowledge are held hostage by the insidious Mr. Marshall Etchison??
-11:12p - JE: "reach the funereal [sic] home on Church St. it begins to rain. no... mist" [note: an enormous gothic mansion, the first time I visited this funeral home was to view my mother's body; this fall, I was back again, in the same room as a matter of fact, for the funeral of my wife's father - as I stood there staring at it, contemplating the width and breath of that horrible old building's place in my life, the air suddenly became wet - at first I thought it had started to rain, but then I looked down the street and realized that a mist had rolled in off the canal]
-turn R down Carroll Alley - past the post office - the stench of manure - end up on another bridge crossing the canal again - decide to turn L and head E down the canal towards the other side of town - quickly reach the end of the renovated "garden/shopping district" area of the canal and keep going, past the art museum, entering into the "flat, wide open river of concrete with a sewer running down the center of it" portion of the canal walk - suddenly notice there are marks covering the concrete here - no, wait; paintings - the entire expanse of concrete has been marked off into a grid of squares - each square is numbered - some of the squares are filled in with paintings - a couple indicating classes of schoolchildren - a couple apparently done by (and to promote) local civics organizations - a few of them simply artistic - I imagine that people must be purchasing the rights to paint these squares - but why? - it begins to rain in earnest now; silent lightening strobes the sky - a few of the painted squares grab my attention
-PIC2 - this square was apparently painted by Ms. MacGregor's 4th grade class - the knowledge of the Horrors Beyond the Stars has already infected our young!
-PIC3 - suggestion: skip lines 5-7, instead going from line 4 ("We are more than") directly to line 8 ("...life") - re-read - what is it saying now?
-PIC4 - in case the image is unclear, this block of stone displays the message "the stars eat your body." - someone PAID to write that there - I feel simultaneously wigged out and a growing affection for my hometown - this phrase would repeat in my mind for the rest of the night
-I follow the canal until it goes under E. Patrick - turn R and head E down E. Patrick - wife is txt'ing me again - we have a small chat back and forth as I walk - going back and forth from staring at the bright screen to trying to find my way down the dark, unlighted street is disorienting me - every time I close my phone and look up, it takes what seems like forever before I can begin to see anything again, and every time I get a new text it feels as if the screen's light is going to burn out my eyes - I end up taking a dark side street I've never been down before - I take a couple of turns this way and that [I don't remember exactly] - I have no idea where I am anymore - suddenly, I find myself in a housing project I've never seen or heard of before - there are more people out here than anywhere else I've been so far tonight other than the heart of the bar/restaraunt district downtown - every single one of them is poor and black - any of them could have ended up here after being forced to move out of my neighborhood after my wealth magick had succeeded in gentrifying most of downtown, starting with my neighborhood - and here I am taking a stroll through the middle of *their* neighborhood, their home, in the middle of the night - and they are all looking at me and it is obvious that I do not belong here - I'm hoping to walk through the project and out the other side to who-knows-where, but I get to the end of the street and it empties out into a huge cul-de-sac of project buildings - there are people everywhere and they are all staring at me and I am The Outsider and there is no way out - and now I have to turn my back to all of them, only the sounds of madness in my ears, and find my way back out - I can't hear them, I don't dare look back - I'm lost and don't know how to find my way out of this maze - but I remain calm, keep walking, and make the Voorish Sign to appease any deranged savages or gibbering creatures that may accost me from the darkness - eventually, I find a side-alley that cuts through two backyards and leads me back out onto E. Patrick - a few blocks further down, I take a R down a street I know very well, but have never known the name of
-~11:55p - TXT-S: "I'm starting to limp." [note: three days later, I am still limping - if this is the beginning of some transfiguration, I am not amused]
-~12a - down this unnamed street, I find a small church that I have never seen before - how many hundreds of times have I been down this street? how could I never notice this church?! - I realize just how many fucking churches and chapels I have seen over the course of the night - it seems like every street I've been down has at least one house of christian worship - often it's an actual house that has been converted to a chapel, but just as often it's a huge, stone church, bordering on "cathedral" - why do we need SO MANY CHURCHES in this town??
-TXT-S: "There are churches EVERYWHERE!"
-reaching the end of that unnamed street, I suddenly realize where I am
-~12:10 - TXT-S: "Wait... this is... South St.?"
-realizing I've ended up back on my "home turf" as it were, I feel the pull to return home - I'm exhausted and my nerves are shot - I'm soaked in sweat and I'm out of water, and I have to piss like a camel - I send the street names in txt's to my wife as I make my way out of the mists and fog of my dream, and back to the more stable footing of the "real world"
-~12:15 - TXT-S: "East"
-~12:20 - TXT-S: "Carroll"
-~12:25 - TXT-S: "All Saints"
-12:29a - JE: "home"
-being home again felt like being tightly strapped into the most comfortable bed ever made - I showered the slime off myself, got dressed in a more relaxed and normal outfit, and at 1a went to catch last call at my local and get a pint and a shot of whiskey before the night was over - I felt I'd earned it - couldn't really interact with anybody much in my current mental state, so I passed my time by reading up about the city of Kish online while I drank (apparently, it is the first city we have record of after the Great Flood, etc.), and for the next couple of hours after
-~4a - began the coming-down process - rest of the evening progressed relatively "normally" - nothing unexpected or unusual - eventually drifted off to sleep about 6a - no dreams I could recall
-in hindsight, I don't think I made it INTO the Dreamlands that night - but something was definitely different - maybe I was skirting the edge of our Dream? - what happened? - perhaps I lost the path somewhere along the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber? was I not judged worthy in the Cavern of Flame? - either seems possible/plausible
-CONCLUSION: this experiment must be repeated - try a different path for the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber? - try the same path but follow it to its conclusion this time, now that I know where it goes? - what do I need to do to ensure worthiness at the Cavern of Flame? - READ DREAMLANDS STORIES - STUDY DREAMLANDS!
Gibbering in the Dark...
Journal - Saturday, 5.22.10
Why do they keep coming at me through her??
Going to bed last night, about 3a; wife had gone to bed a couple hours earlier. Room was dark, just a few shafts of sickly green-yellow light from the streetlamps outside peeking in through the closed slats covering our windows, casting everything I could see in the room a dark purplish-black. I was standing next to the bed, getting undressed, and I heard my sleeping wife behind me... giggle.
Slightly startled, I turned to see if she was awake, but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully, just as I'd expected. I turned back around and finished getting undressed, when I heard that soft giggling from behind me again. I turned back around and leaned over the bed to get a closer look at her face this time.
It's hard to describe. The dark was playing tricks on my eyes, for sure, but I also know what I saw. There were two faces, and it kept switching back and forth between the two. It was as if, every time my eyes would adjust to the darkness and register what I was seeing, her face would change again and my eyes would have to adjust again. And it kept going back and forth that way, so that my eyes seemed to be constantly trying to adjust and register, and her face seemed to continually shift back and forth between two very different visages.
The first was exactly what I would expect - her peaceful, sleeping face. But the other one... Her eyes were half-open, and she was looking up at me from under those heavy lids. Her face was split nearly in half by a huge, toothy grin. Picture Jack Nicholson in The Shining ("Heeere's Johnny!"), and you've got a bit of an idea what I was seeing last night.
Haltingly, I asked, "Are you awake?"
"Ur sidge a sumber gu bik cha verml."
"What did you say?"
"Ur. Sidge. A. Sumber. Gu. Bik. Cha. Verml." She/it spoke slowly and loudly, enunciating each syllable as though talking to a retarded child, or a foreigner from another land. As though she/it was actually saying something. But it was just gibberish! Nonsense.
Right?
Then she giggled again.
At this point I (hesitantly, I'm not afraid to admit) took my Silver Key from my nightstand, secured it around my wrist with the key in the palm of my hand, made the Sign of Kish, and climbed into bed next to her.
There were two more moments before I feel asleep. At one point I was terribly startled by a short, sharp, very loud sound like a small girl giving a quick cry of pain or fear from behind me, sounding like it came from directly next to my bed. No clue what that was. And then shortly after that, my wife began to snore very resonantly (which she never does). I wasn't disturbed by her snoring, but after a while, I started to hear...something...in the "echo" or resonance of the snores. I don't know the correct word for what I'm trying to describe here, but it wasn't the sound itself that she was making, but in the short seconds after the sound as it was reverberating around the room. (Perhaps aided by the resonance coming from our whirring ceiling fan?)
I didn't want to hear it. I tried not to. Oh, gods I tried. But once I first recognized it, suddenly it was as if I couldn't hear anything else.
I swear to you, in the echoing snores of my wife reverberating through the dark of our bedroom, I heard... whispering.
Why do they keep coming at me through her??
Going to bed last night, about 3a; wife had gone to bed a couple hours earlier. Room was dark, just a few shafts of sickly green-yellow light from the streetlamps outside peeking in through the closed slats covering our windows, casting everything I could see in the room a dark purplish-black. I was standing next to the bed, getting undressed, and I heard my sleeping wife behind me... giggle.
Slightly startled, I turned to see if she was awake, but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully, just as I'd expected. I turned back around and finished getting undressed, when I heard that soft giggling from behind me again. I turned back around and leaned over the bed to get a closer look at her face this time.
It's hard to describe. The dark was playing tricks on my eyes, for sure, but I also know what I saw. There were two faces, and it kept switching back and forth between the two. It was as if, every time my eyes would adjust to the darkness and register what I was seeing, her face would change again and my eyes would have to adjust again. And it kept going back and forth that way, so that my eyes seemed to be constantly trying to adjust and register, and her face seemed to continually shift back and forth between two very different visages.
The first was exactly what I would expect - her peaceful, sleeping face. But the other one... Her eyes were half-open, and she was looking up at me from under those heavy lids. Her face was split nearly in half by a huge, toothy grin. Picture Jack Nicholson in The Shining ("Heeere's Johnny!"), and you've got a bit of an idea what I was seeing last night.
Haltingly, I asked, "Are you awake?"
"Ur sidge a sumber gu bik cha verml."
"What did you say?"
"Ur. Sidge. A. Sumber. Gu. Bik. Cha. Verml." She/it spoke slowly and loudly, enunciating each syllable as though talking to a retarded child, or a foreigner from another land. As though she/it was actually saying something. But it was just gibberish! Nonsense.
Right?
Then she giggled again.
At this point I (hesitantly, I'm not afraid to admit) took my Silver Key from my nightstand, secured it around my wrist with the key in the palm of my hand, made the Sign of Kish, and climbed into bed next to her.
There were two more moments before I feel asleep. At one point I was terribly startled by a short, sharp, very loud sound like a small girl giving a quick cry of pain or fear from behind me, sounding like it came from directly next to my bed. No clue what that was. And then shortly after that, my wife began to snore very resonantly (which she never does). I wasn't disturbed by her snoring, but after a while, I started to hear...something...in the "echo" or resonance of the snores. I don't know the correct word for what I'm trying to describe here, but it wasn't the sound itself that she was making, but in the short seconds after the sound as it was reverberating around the room. (Perhaps aided by the resonance coming from our whirring ceiling fan?)
I didn't want to hear it. I tried not to. Oh, gods I tried. But once I first recognized it, suddenly it was as if I couldn't hear anything else.
I swear to you, in the echoing snores of my wife reverberating through the dark of our bedroom, I heard... whispering.
My Silver Key...
Journal - Thursday, 5.20.10
One of the very first group-rituals I ever performed was a Dreamlands pathworking, in which Nyarlat-hotep gave to each of us our own Silver Key to the Gate of Dreams. Since that night, my Silver Key has become one of the most used fetishes of my magickal career.
Last night, I took my Silver Key from my altar and wore it to bed. And dreamt for the first time in recent memory. (I don't usually remember any dreaming I do. Sleep is a short blankness in between periods of consciousness for me. My own petit morte, if you will.)
It was a nightmare. Incredibly vivid. Again, it wasn't the typical eldritch horrors I've come to expect, but it still left me feeling quite unsettled.
It started with the discovery that my wife had been cheating on me for a quite a while. When I confronted her about this she sneered, "Well, sometimes I need it in the fucking ass and he can do that for me!" (I don't think my wife has ever actually sneered at anything her entire life.) The rest of the dream was the slow, dawning realization that my wife was nothing like the person I've always thought she was. My wife is a sweet, patient, compassionate, and very loving woman - in the dream she was a raging coke-whore. She was constantly yelling at me and calling me names, or alternately ignoring me completely, throwing tantrums, and more than once she laughed to the point of tears at the pain and anguish she was causing me. I spent most of the dream chasing her around, trying to get her to stop... being that way, but the more I pleaded with her, the worse she got.
I remember, towards the end of the dream, finding her in a flop-house down the block from our apartment building, sucking off a group of guys for some crystal. When I dragged her out of there, she shoved the crystal into my hand. (Just a bunch of loose crystal, no baggie, like trying to hold onto a handful of crushed glass shards.) When we got back to our building, there were a bunch of cops hanging around the entryway for some reason, and I had to sneak by them with the crystal in my hand, terrified the entire time that she was going to tell them and get me arrested.
I also remember that our building was *off*, somehow. It was definitely our apartment building from waking life, but nothing about it was exactly the way it really is. Some things were a bit bigger than they were supposed to be, some a bit smaller; some things weren't pointed in quite the same direction they really are; some doors and windows that were supposed to be there weren't, and there were doors and windows that were only there in the dream, as well. There was nothing I could point to and say "There! That is not supposed to be like that - it's supposed to be like this!" But the whole place, normally so comfortable and familiar, felt slightly strange and alien.
So, again, it wasn't getting eaten by a giant, tentacled alien, or being transported to another plane of existence by a grey-skinned, faceless man with bat-wings, but I would still definitely consider this a mythos-colored dream. I was forced to confront the madness of having the thing most precious to me in this life taken and twisted into a monster before my eyes. I woke up very agitated by the experience, and I've remained slightly nervous and anxious and just generally unsettled all morning because of it.
My wife's kisses somehow just didn't seem as sweet this morning.
One of the very first group-rituals I ever performed was a Dreamlands pathworking, in which Nyarlat-hotep gave to each of us our own Silver Key to the Gate of Dreams. Since that night, my Silver Key has become one of the most used fetishes of my magickal career.
Last night, I took my Silver Key from my altar and wore it to bed. And dreamt for the first time in recent memory. (I don't usually remember any dreaming I do. Sleep is a short blankness in between periods of consciousness for me. My own petit morte, if you will.)
It was a nightmare. Incredibly vivid. Again, it wasn't the typical eldritch horrors I've come to expect, but it still left me feeling quite unsettled.
It started with the discovery that my wife had been cheating on me for a quite a while. When I confronted her about this she sneered, "Well, sometimes I need it in the fucking ass and he can do that for me!" (I don't think my wife has ever actually sneered at anything her entire life.) The rest of the dream was the slow, dawning realization that my wife was nothing like the person I've always thought she was. My wife is a sweet, patient, compassionate, and very loving woman - in the dream she was a raging coke-whore. She was constantly yelling at me and calling me names, or alternately ignoring me completely, throwing tantrums, and more than once she laughed to the point of tears at the pain and anguish she was causing me. I spent most of the dream chasing her around, trying to get her to stop... being that way, but the more I pleaded with her, the worse she got.
I remember, towards the end of the dream, finding her in a flop-house down the block from our apartment building, sucking off a group of guys for some crystal. When I dragged her out of there, she shoved the crystal into my hand. (Just a bunch of loose crystal, no baggie, like trying to hold onto a handful of crushed glass shards.) When we got back to our building, there were a bunch of cops hanging around the entryway for some reason, and I had to sneak by them with the crystal in my hand, terrified the entire time that she was going to tell them and get me arrested.
I also remember that our building was *off*, somehow. It was definitely our apartment building from waking life, but nothing about it was exactly the way it really is. Some things were a bit bigger than they were supposed to be, some a bit smaller; some things weren't pointed in quite the same direction they really are; some doors and windows that were supposed to be there weren't, and there were doors and windows that were only there in the dream, as well. There was nothing I could point to and say "There! That is not supposed to be like that - it's supposed to be like this!" But the whole place, normally so comfortable and familiar, felt slightly strange and alien.
So, again, it wasn't getting eaten by a giant, tentacled alien, or being transported to another plane of existence by a grey-skinned, faceless man with bat-wings, but I would still definitely consider this a mythos-colored dream. I was forced to confront the madness of having the thing most precious to me in this life taken and twisted into a monster before my eyes. I woke up very agitated by the experience, and I've remained slightly nervous and anxious and just generally unsettled all morning because of it.
My wife's kisses somehow just didn't seem as sweet this morning.
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