Gate: Nine of Wands
I passed through the vision gate and found myself on a path under the full moon. To my right, there was a pack of wolves, howling and running near to the path, but not touching it. Their snarls and growls echoed in the darkness and observing shadows. To my left, I heard a skittering sound which revealed itself to be a swarm of scorpions. They also approached the path but did not move upon it, waving their stinging tails in a threatening manner at me and each other. I walked forward beneath the full moon between the gathered predators, safe and protected by the moonlight as I continued my journey.
After some time, a living light came towards me down the path. “Heidi,” a voice called out from its center. “Heidi, don’t stop believing in the journey. I’m here to help you at last.” As the illumination came closer, I saw the light was actually a small, glowing moth. He flew around my head and landed on my shoulder.
“Hello, Moth,” I said. “Thank you for coming to me, I was so lonely out here in the shadows by myself. Who are you and how do you know my name?”
“I am the Moon Moth and was sent from the worlds above to guide you upon the current path,” he replied. “I was given your name so that I could find you but the wolves and scorpions appear to have been given it as well. I hope they haven’t made your journey difficult. I would have appeared sooner but it is quite a ways from the moon and I had to travel far indeed to be here at the present moment. Please forgive my tardiness.”
“Don’t fret about it a moment more,” I said. “If I had known you were coming, I would not have felt so alone. That being said, you’re here now and all sorrows are forgotten and forgiven. Where are we for I have not traveled this path before.”
“On a path towards the Treasure House of your Imagination,” he said. “I am truly surprised you have not wandered this way before as the Treasure House is a wonder in the Inner Worlds.”
“Well, I’m here now,” I said. “I look forward to experiencing this wondrous place. If it is so prized, why are there monsters on either side of the path leading to it?”
The moth fluttered his feathery wings. “They are figments of your imagination,” he said. “And guardians against those who find themselves upon this path but have been consumed by the fears and sorrows plaguing their spirits. Pay them no mind. They cannot harm you for you understand the nature of your shadow rather than allowing her to steer you.” The moth and I continued forward between the wolves and scorpions, and towards the unknown.
After a short journey, our path ended at a Grecian temple where white pillars rose high into the air under the moonlight. I began to ascend steps to this building but found my way barred by two dark suits of empty armor who were wielding pikes. They crossed their weapons in front of me, effectively closing the entrance against all intruders, myself included.
“No one may enter,” said a deep voice from the temple doorway behind the armored guardians. An enormous frog hopped out of the temple’s shadowy interior and landed between the guards on the steps.
“My name is Heidi. I have come seeking the nature of this place and all who dwell here,” I said. “I understand it is a location of some importance to those who wander the Inner Worlds. What manner of sacrifice is required for entrance? I can’t promise to fulfill such requirements now, but, in the fullness of time, I swear I will honor any obligation demanded for entry.”
The frog suddenly spit out a long, pink tongue and, in one quick motion, consumed the Moon Moth, snatching my friend from where he had been floating upon my shoulder. The moth’s light exploded from the center of the frog where it melded with his light and caused his form to change. Now, instead of a frog, a spirit in the shape of a man in a glowing suit of armor stood before me.
“Why did you eat Moth, Frog?” I asked in dismay. “He came for me when I was all alone and I was looking forward to exploring this place with him.”
“Did you say your name is Heidi?” the new being asked, ignoring my question.
“Yes,” I replied. “That is my name. If the Moon Moth’s death was required for entrance, I would have liked some warning. He was my friend, as I said, and I would have found another way in. There always seems to be alternative routes to the places I need to go. Who are you?”
“My name is Michael,” the knight said. “There has been no death this evening for I was the moth. I was the frog. I am a guardian and a guide. By splitting my natures, I was able to both accompany you and protect the Treasure House simultaneously.”
“And this place belongs to you,” Michael continued. “Come within and we can explore the temple together as you desired.” The knight gestured and the guards that blocked the way forward vanished. He offered me his arm so I took it and we finished ascending the steps.
“Why does the Treasure House need protection?” I asked as we climbed.
“From the shadow-ruled monsters who seek this place, as I told you before,” Michael said. “It is my sacred duty to do so. In case you’re wondering, this isn’t my usual appearance. I usually look like this.” I glanced over at my companion and discovered I was walking beside an angel with garments that gleamed with fire and he carried a flaming sword in his right hand.
“I protect sacred places from the profane,” the spirit said. “I am the archangel whose sword guards Eden.” Then, that vision faded and the knight in armor walked beside me again. “For whatever reason, you prefer to see me in this form though it has no effect on my function.”
“It is probably a way of perceiving reality that followed me from my waking world. I’m far more likely to see a spirit as a knight in armor rather than a winged guardian of the sky who is wreathed in flames,” I said. “Whatever the reason, I find myself in need of a guardian more times than I’d care to admit while I explore the Inner Realms. Thank you again for walking the moonlit path with me.”
We reached the top of the stairs and entered the temple. Pillars stood evenly spaced in the large interior and treasure chests sat on top of the pillars. Some moved, jiggled and bounced by whatever they contained. Others shone with light or gave off music and there were chests as far as I could see in every direction. “What are the temple treasures, Michael?” I asked. “What an incredible amount to explore.”
“They are your creations contained within your imagination,” he said. “Each belongs to you.”
“There are far too many for one person,” I observed. “To truly appreciate this place would take lifetimes.”
“Of course. The imagination is an infinite place,” the angel said. “Full of endless possibilities and potentials.”
“Is this my own personal imagination?” I said.
“Yes,” Michael said. “This particular part of the temple is yours to share with others as you desire.”
“Is there a place where my imagination touches the collective unconscious or the imagination of others?” I asked.
Michael paused beside me. “There are places, certainly,” he said.
“Would you take me to one of those?” I asked.
“Are you sure that is what you want?” the angel said. “Wouldn’t you rather view one of your own personal creations?”
“I can view what I want in my own mind whenever I choose,” I said. “While traveling the Inner Worlds, I like to see those things which are usually hidden from my sight. I value this collective knowledge highly for it belongs to all and deserves to be recorded for the lessons it imparts to the living, now and in the future.”
Michael nodded as if in understanding. “Then come this way, Heidi,” he said. “We will travel to a nexus of the collective unconscious, see what may be seen and discover if there is a message for your waking world therein.”
My angel guide and I passed countless pillars holding chests in the main temple space. We finally reached a point where the pillars were spaced further and further apart, then our surroundings abruptly changed. I blinked and found myself climbing steps again with my arm in Michael’s. At the top of these steps, we discovered a circular area like an amphitheater that shone with light. We stood on the edge of this space and looked down into a pit made of the void within which light particles spun, combined into shapes, dazzled, and broke apart again.
Hypnotized by the spinning light, I nearly fell into the pit but Michael held my arm firmly and steadied me. “Careful,” he said. “This is a place of immense power and you can lose yourself in its vastness if you are not grounded in the present moment.”
We stood by the nexus for a time admiring its mysterious beauty until a ball of light separated from the rest and began to rise from the pit. Suddenly, instead of light, the energy from the collective unconscious formed a completely dark sphere. This circle shaped itself into a waxing moon, then a full moon, then a waning moon, and was then a dark sphere again. This miniature moon of living energy came closer until it filled my vision and I released Michael’s arm and passed into it as one would walk through an open door.
I found myself in a field under the light of a full moon. Trees surrounded the field and the moon shone brightly upon me like a spotlight. As I moved about this space, the light followed me, revealing small wildflowers dotted throughout.
As I admired the flowers in the moonlight, an antlered being emerged from the trees, as silently as a woodland creature. He had feet like a deer and the torso of a man. “Hello, Friend Stag,” I called across the field. “My name is Heidi. Who are you?”
“I am Bertaxus and this is my wood,” the antlered spirit said. “You are blessed by the moon, see how she shines so brightly upon you. Why are you here, sky spirit?”
“I walked through the phases of the moon to learn the nature of this place,” I said. “I am no sky spirit, Bertaxus, just a seeker from another world.”
“Walk with me and you will learn about my world in my presence,” he said. “And you cannot fool me, sky spirit. I see you as you truly are, I wonder how it is you see yourself.”
Bertaxus turned and held out his arm to a lady with long, dark hair who appeared next to him in the field. Wherever they passed, more flowers like the ones I had been admiring sprouted from the ground. Then, as I walked over the flowers to join the couple, they bloomed with blue blossoms in the light from the moon that shone down upon me. We continued in this manner through the woods for some time.
Then, as if moving to a song that only they could hear, Bertaxus and his lady began to weave and dance around each other in a pattern like a helix. I was able to follow them down the path for a time but their movements soon became mesmerizing as they danced and danced, and I eventually found my feet rooted to the ground of the woodland field by their pattern through its hypnotic power.
Finally, the couple drew closer to each other and, through a spinning embrace, combined into one form. I had to shield my eyes because the light that came from their transformation was so blinding. When I could see again, a dazzling, white unicorn stood in the place where the two had become one.
They pawed the ground, releasing some of the energy they had raised together back into the earth. “Heidi,” they said with their mind. “I am the union of Bertaxus and his wife. I am the spirit of this field and wood.”
“You’re beautiful,” I said and came closer to stroke their mane.
“I am,” they agreed and allowed me to touch them. I marveled at the silky smoothness of their sides. “You may call me, Lightning. I will bear you where you need to go.” The unicorn knelt down on the ground.
“I do not know how to ride,” I protested. “Even if I could, lightning in my waking world is not a steed to carry one from place to place, but a force of nature and a dangerous one at that.”
“You do not have to know how to ride,” the unicorn replied. “I am a creature of pure imagination. As Lightning, I move with ease and grace and bring whomever I wish with me as far as they desire. Now we go…” With those words, I scrambled aboard the unicorn’s back and we took off across the field and into the woods.
Lightning moved like the wind or light through the clouds, so swiftly that the trees blurred and obstacles melted away before us. As an unstoppable force of the natural world, we crossed streams, rivers, countless fields and forests, until we finally arrived at the base of a mountain that went so high into the sky that I could not see its peak. The unicorn gestured with their horn and a doorway appeared within the rock of the mountain. Before I could draw a breath, we passed within the solid stone and into an underground chamber. My sight deserted me for a moment.
When I could see again, I was alone on a bare rock floor. The moon somehow continued to shine down upon me even though I was in the bowels of the earth beneath the mountain. Then, in that dark and silent place, I heard someone call my name, “Heidi… Heidi…” It echoed through the space.
“I am here,” I said to the darkness and shadows. “Who calls me?” Then, the moonlight split in two so it was on me still but also shining down upon an ancient spirit standing in a shallow pool of water in the center of the underground sanctum. Within the water, to her right, there was the reflection of a beautiful young woman and, to her left, there was the reflection of that same woman in her middle age.
“We call you,” said the ancient one. “We are Hecate, Lady of the Moon and her cycles, Mistress of Magic and the Void. Have you come with a question to our most sacred, hidden place?”
I nodded my head in respect to the goddess. “Thank you for allowing me into your presence, Thrice Great One,” I said. “I have many questions but never seem to understand the answers I am given. Perhaps you could help me grow in knowledge as well as understanding.”
“We have all the time in the world beneath my mountain,” Hecate said. “You may remain as long as you wish and I will instruct you in my ways. I have been looking for someone like you, Heidi, someone with an open mind and heart to share my knowledge with. In this manner, we can help each other understand our shared reality.”
“Then, it is in the spirit of understanding shared reality that I ask my first question,” I said. “Lady Hecate, the moon seems to have a large influence on the mind of humankind. Throughout time, we have observed ‘madness’ during the full moon’s cycle on earth. Why is this?”
The goddess chuckled deep in her throat. “Mankind is influenced by many things in nature though he does not acknowledge this fact,” she said. “He shuts himself in his houses away from natural light and the spirits of the earth, air, water, and sky, but we are always there with him, always. He carries nature within his spirit and denies its potent existence.”
“Is that why humanity creates such turmoil on earth? The denial of the powers of nature within the spirit?” I asked. “Or is it the influence of forces from outside of the spirit that causes such pain?”
The ancient one gestured and a staff topped with a moon in its phases appeared in her hand. She struck the surface of the water beneath the mountain so ripples moved her reflections and she answered me with three voices that were one. “Turmoil and suffering happens by the exercise of free will of those with power over others,” said the tri-goddess. “There are no outside influences that cause such things.”
“I do not understand. How can there be influences from nature within the spirit but also complete free will?” I asked. “Why do the ruling powers of nature not subvert the free will of those who injure others around them in their greed or anger or lust for power? Do the gods not care about the fate of those within the shadows of the mighty?”
Hecate smiled, her teeth glinting in the moonlight beneath the mountain. “Child, you ask such questions, such strange questions,” she said. “I will enjoy learning about your experiences in the embodied worlds. But first, I will answer you in a way that you can understand. Observe.”
The goddess reached into her robes and drew forth what appeared to be marbles. She threw them into the air and, as they began to rotate about themselves, I understood that they represented the moon in its phases. There was a black marble for the new moon and then three other glowing white and black marbles that represented the other cycles of the moon. They spun in a circle around each other, changing and sparkling with light and shadow.
“Behold the moon, Heidi,” Hecate said. “She receives light from the sun which illuminates her form so that she may be observed by those with the eyes to see her upon the earth. The earth comes between the sun and the moon and blocks first one part of the light and then another. Note how even though the moon appears to change, she is always, in essence, the same. It is only a trick of the light caused by the heavenly bodies moving around each other that drives the phases in the observation of the moon.”
I watched the marbles circle each other and agreed that this was so. The sun appeared above Hecate’s hands and a miniature earth appeared within the center of the four marbles. The motions of the moon circling the earth as it moved around the sun became mesmerizing. It began to take up my entire vision as I found myself falling into a deeper trance.
“Hear my words and remember, Heidi. In this metaphor of moon observation, the sun is the influence of nature in shared reality like the weather, age of the body, the choices and actions of other beings both in power and in shadow. See how they ignite the moon beneath their light,” Hecate said. The sun continued to shine upon the four marbles as they moved about the earth ceaselessly. “The earth is your own free will, shaping and molding these natural influences be they of fate, magic, or time, in the manner that is most pleasing to you. Your free will and how you direct your intentions is the lens through which you perceive reality, in this case, the moon.”
“Though the light and shadows change and move, causing your perception of the moon to change,” the goddess continued. “Does the moon’s essence or, what it is representing, reality’s essence, ever truly change?”
“No, Hecate,” I answered, my voice breaking the trance so that I could perceive the cave and the goddess once more. “Even though it looks differently at different times to those upon the surface of the earth, it is always the moon and its form is set no matter which phase it appears to be in.”
“And so it is, Heidi,” the goddess replied. “This is how shared reality is viewed and shaped. It can appear to be different because of how or when or where individuals view it with their unique lens of perception, but it is always the same to those who understand tricks of the light. That is how the influence of nature and free will of the spirit dance with each other to create what you call reality and what, from many different lenses of perception, you call shared reality.”
The four moon marbles removed themselves from orbit about the earth and combined into one glowing piece. The moon of shared reality floated into Hecate’s open hand.
The goddess walked out of her pool, drawing her reflections from the water’s surface into her spirit. Then, she placed the large moon marble in my hand and kissed the center of my forehead. “We have answered your questions for now,” Hecate said. “Go in peace and be well, Heidi. Know that all is well with your world even though appearances may say otherwise at times. Remember shared reality and the development of the soul in its eternal journey has phases like the moon. Take this message to those in your waking world and may those who are prepared to understand my meaning do so.”
I blinked and found myself standing next to Michael again at the edge of the swirling pit of patterned lights in the Temple of the Imagination. In my hand, I held the moon stone gift from Hecate. A final whisper from the goddess emerged from the pit: “Be well and remember.”
I pulled my eyes from the lights and looked at the angel in a bit of a daze. “Are you alright, Heidi?” my knight asked. “What do you have there in your hand?”
“Hecate gave me the moon and a lesson about shared reality,” I said.
“When did she do that?” he said. “You’ve been standing here with me the whole time.”
“Well, she is a Mistress of Magic and the Void, by her own admission,” I said. “She said she wanted to teach me her ways so maybe she manipulated our shared reality to do just that. I hope I have the chance to speak with her again someday. I feel like she has further messages to impart.”
“I suppose anything is possible,” Michael said. “Anyway, I know the perfect place to store that moon. Come with me.” The angel brought me to an open space among the pillars of treasure chests where a model of the earth spun by itself in the air. I lifted my hand and the moon from Hecate floated away from us to the earth and began to circle it in a perfect orbit.
“Where are the rest of the planets?” I asked after watching the peaceful scene for a time.
“They are coming. It is just a matter of time. See where they will be?” Michael said and indicated the rest of the open space around the earth model. I looked closely and could see, almost like shadows, the rest of our solar system. “You have prepared the place for them. Once you finish this ascent of the tree, they will appear.”
“Thank you, Michael, for leading me here,” I said. “This is the perfect place to keep the moon safe in the imagination of the shared reality.” The angel and I sat for a time and observed the earth and moon, spinning in the darkness. I felt a heaviness returning to my limbs as the trance I experienced in Hecate’s presence beneath her mountain reasserted itself in my reality through my observation of the moon. Giving in to this new energy, I felt myself walking from the room and down the hall towards one of the pillars in the temple.
I opened the chest that sat on top of this pillar and the Moon Moth emerged from the box, whole again. He landed on my forehead and opened his wings so that they covered my eyes. Then, the moth sank into my flesh and became one with me.
“She approaches the temple even now,” I said, Hecate’s voice coming impossibly from my own mouth. “Moth, you must go to her and bring her to us.”
“It shall be as you desire,” Moth said, emerging from my forehead and making his way towards the spinning model of the sun, moon, and earth. As he passed Michael, a portion of energy came from the knight to join the moth and the angel’s form shifted from a man’s armored body into a frog.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 