Gate: The Hanging Man
I stepped through the vision gate and found myself in an ancient forest with trees far larger than anything I have ever seen with my waking eyes. I felt quite small as I moved beneath the behemoth branches and a strong wind moved high above the trees but, such were the size of the trunks, they barely moved in the gusts. I, on the other hand, had to gather my strength so that I wouldn’t be blown away like an errant leaf.
“I require a guide, please,” I said as I shielded my eyes and grounded my form during yet another gust of wind. As I endured the elements, the blades of grass came to life beneath my feet.
“This way, Heidi!” they said in their myriad voices. “You have got to see this. Pretend you’re grass like us and you’ll do much better in our world.”
Utilizing a little imagination, I visualized my feet reaching deeply into the ground as if I was a plant rather than a woman. To my surprise, it worked like a charm and I was no longer bothered by the wind through the trees. My diminutive guides moved about me in swirling patterns upon the ground, leading me deeper into the woods.
The grass brought me to a tree that looked like all the rest in the middle of this forest and, hanging from the upper branches and swaying in the breeze, I beheld a man. He hung upside down, bound hand and foot with ropes, and was apparently unconscious. I gasped when I realized what I was looking at.
“Blades of grass,” I said in some distress. “Please cut that man down. I can’t fly up there because the wind will take me to another place.”
Half of the plant guardians rushed enthusiastically up the trunk on a rescue mission for the hanging man. “Those of you who are soft and cushioning, please position yourself beneath the spirit,” I said to the rest. “He is going to need a soft place to fall. It would not do to injure him further as we’re trying to help him.”
The blades of grass who had ascended the trunk cut through the ropes with their sharp edges and the hanging man landed with a thump on a springy patch of green beneath the tree. I was at his side immediately, untied the remaining ropes and saw the man was not breathing.
“I hope we didn’t arrive too late,” I said as I reached into the bag at my hip and pulled out the grail from the Castle of Skye. I raised its perpetually full brim to the spirit’s lips and dashed some of the cup’s contents down his throat.
At first, there was no response. But then, the spirit coughed weakly and his eyes opened. He began to struggle in an effort to sit up and I gave him some assistance, offering him my hand as the blades of grass shifted beneath his back, lifting him from his prone position upon the earth.
“You’re an angel of mercy, whoever you are,” the spirit said. “Was I dead?”
“You were either dead or so close to it I could not tell the difference,” I said. “The angels are in the grass, I am merely a visitor here from another world.”
“Another world? Which one? I am somewhat of a world traveler myself,” the hanging man said. “How did you bring me back?”
“It is this cup that I picked up once upon a time in a castle in the sky,” I said, handing it to him. “It heals all wounds and returns life to the body and also the spirit if it has departed. I consider it to be a gift from Love herself.”
“I was dead, are you sure?” he said, becoming excited. “I was dead!” The hanging man tossed some of the water from the grail upon the ground and started digging through the grass in a state of agitation.
“Oberon promised me,” he muttered. “I wish I had more faith in his predictions.”
“If what you seek is hidden in the grass, we can make your search easier,” I said and, with a motion of my hand, the living blades of grass departed. The formerly hanging man and I were left sitting on bare dirt beneath the giant tree.
The spirit laughed as he scooped up hardened patches of ground caused by the combination of the water and dirt, and placed them in the grail.
“Oberon said if I hung from the tree, the runes would appear beneath. And here they are,” the spirit said with a smile. “He says lots of things that never come to pass. I’m so pleased this is one of the prophecies whose time has come.” He filled the cup to the brim with earth.
“We must write the runes down before they vanish again into the dust,” he continued. “I don’t want to be forced to ascend the tree and hang again tomorrow because I was too slow to record their knowledge today.” With surprising speed for one who had been so recently deceased, the spirit rose to his feet and sprinted off into the forest.
“Good plan. What’s your name?” I called after the fleeing figure. “I’m Heidi.”
“Odin,” the spirit replied and vanished through a doorway cut into one of the enormous trees. I followed at my leisure and soon entered the tree myself.
The interior was carved into a huge, open living space. Odin settled himself at a roughly hewn table in the center of the room and carefully extracted the clumps of dirt and grail water from the cup.
“I need bones,” the god declared, when the earth was spread about the table in a semi-organized fashion. “Woman, have you any bones?”
I laughed at his question. “Yes, I have bones,” I said. “My own and I have met some skeletons in my travels.”
“Then summon one,” said Odin, impatiently. “Or give me one of yours. We haven’t much time.”
“Time has always been my friend,” I said. “But I will hurry for you, Great One.” I waved my hands over the ground within the trunk and the skeleton of Horus began to unearth itself as it did so long ago in the gnomes’ quarry.
Odin admired the skeleton I had provided as it floated in the air before him. “You are a handy one to have around,” he observed. “Where did you say you were from again?”
“I’m from earth like these bones,” I said. “I don’t think Horus would mind donating his hands to this cause. He’s been ever-helpful to me in the past and one of the first to welcome me to the Inner Worlds.” Odin reverently separated the skeleton’s fingers from the rest and moved back to the clumps of earth from beneath the tree.
While Odin was occupied with his activity at the table, I moved my hands over Horus’ skeleton and returned his hands to him by imagining them back into place. “Thank you, Great One,” I whispered and, with another wave of my own hands, the skeleton began sinking back into the trunk of the tree.
As I returned the god’s skeleton to his eternal rest, Odin took a small knife and pricked his index finger. Then, he began replicating the shapes which were formed in the soil by the water from Love’s cup onto the finger bones, written in his own blood.
“Bones, water, and blood,” I said. “It seems this rune knowledge comes with some sacrifice. Did you know what would be required, Odin?”
Odin nodded, completely engrossed in his work. “Oberon can be most helpful in his revelations of hidden knowledge and what is needed to retrieve such,” the god said. “It is his inability to give me precise timelines and dates that is the problem. He sees so far into the past and future that it can be quite impractical to act upon his advice. Now please, a little silence while I do this arcane work would be greatly appreciated.”
I stepped away from Odin’s work table to give him some space and began to explore the god’s home. In a distant corner, I discovered a flock of birds, fluttering about on branches sticking into the carved inner room of the tree.
Two large ravens croaked in the center of the congress of birds. “Heidi,” one said, his voice eerily clear while he cleaned his feathers. I smiled at this clever bird.
“How do you know my name, Raven?” I said.
“I remember you,” the raven said. “Don’t you remember me?” The birds began to murmur to each other, moving against and away from their fellows upon the branches as if stirred by a singular intelligence that controlled them all.
“Muninn, Muninn,” whispered the birds. “Heidi, Muninn.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember you,” I said. “I wish I did. I wish I could remember everything I’ve forgotten.” Then, I held up my hand and a yellow finch flew to me from the flock.
“What brings you here?” she chirped in my ear. “We remember all. What do you want to remember?”
I delicately stroked her downy back with my finger. “I seek the lessons this place has to impart,” I replied. “Please help me remember what those are.”
The finch returned to her fellows and the flock began muttering to themselves again. “The well, the well,” they whispered. “Well water, Heidi.”
“You have a well in here too?” I said. “What a finely appointed tree home this is, probably the finest I’ve ever been in.” I peered through the shadows about us and on the other side of the room, I discovered a well sitting near the tree trunk. Another whispering voice called my name from the depths of it, summoning me to its expertly crafted, circular stone walls.
Attached to the top of the well, a chain and hand crank hung suspended on a wooden frame. I turned the handle and the well’s bucket rose from the deep. The water smoked, emitting a thick fog, and appeared completely opaque to my eyes.
“Heidi…” whispered the water and its words were echoed by the birds on the other side of the room. “We are Mimir, the Well of Knowledge and Forgetfulness. We hold all that knowledge which the world has forgotten and contain that which the world has yet to know and then forget,” the draught sighed. “Would you take a drink and remember?”
“Remember,” murmured the birds. “Take a drink and remember, Heidi.”
“You’re a well of both knowledge and forgetfulness?” I said to the bucket. “I don’t want to forget even more than I already have. Maybe I shouldn’t take the risk.” I looked at Odin who was still busy with his task of transcribing the runes.
“Would you drink the waters of Mimir?” I asked. “Is it safe?”
The god chuckled. “Safe? What in the world is safe, Heidi? Nothing, that’s what,” Odin said. “Nothing is guaranteed, only promised.”
“Oberon said if I died upon the tree, I could unlock the secret of the runes or I could simply die,” he continued. “The choice was mine to take that chance as this choice is yours alone. And, it is a simple thing. Would you choose to live in a world with or without the runes? Would you choose to live in a world with or without your forgotten knowledge?”
Odin again became absorbed by his task of transcribing the runes. “I know what I have chosen,” he said with finality. “Knowledge through sacrifice.”
“I choose knowledge too,” I said in solidarity and brought the well bucket to my lips, taking a long drink of its misty water. “Tell me, Mimir, what is it I have forgotten?” I asked as I licked the last drops from my lips.
“Courage and sacrifice…” whispered Mimir.
I blinked and found myself moving backwards in time. I was rising from the earth below the tree where Odin had hung as a drop of sweat from his brow that had fallen to the ground and become a rune of knowledge long before the water from Love’s cup arrived.
He was still hanging from the tree and I, as a drop of his sweat, returned to his forehead where I was reabsorbed into his spirit through his third eye. Then for a moment, I could see nothing and ceased to exist.
When I could perceive my surroundings again, I found myself gazing over the shoulder of a medieval warrior dressed in armor. He had a white surcoat draped over his chest and upon it was a large, red cross.
The knight was writing in a journal bound in soft leather. Forgotten knowledge raced through my spirit and I suddenly felt as if I was this man or had been in this man in a previous life. I read the words the knight was writing in the journal and remembered writing them:
Most of the order left last week to return to England. They asked me to come with them but I was loath to leave Jerusalem.
Besides, unlike some of my brothers I have nothing to return to- no family, no property, nothing. All I have I brought with me and what mystery resides here is worth more to me than the place where I was born.
We expect the attack to come at dawn. May God be with us.
The man rose with a sigh and shut the book. I followed behind him, like a spirit, unseen.
“Jerusalem belongs to the world,” I whispered into his ear. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to hear me and continued through a hallway, out into a noisy courtyard.
We came to the entrance to a temple made of carved stone. On either side of the doorway, knights dressed like the man I followed stood guard.
“I go to see the mystery one last time,” the knight I was following said. “I will return to Jerusalem’s walls with the others once I am finished.”
The men let us pass. We went through the doorway into darkness which was alleviated by torches on either side of a beautiful sanctuary made of stone. The warrior genuflected at the end of the aisle to an altar at the front of the space, then he turned into a narrow passageway that led away from the sanctuary down a tunnel into further shadows.
I heard chanting and murmured prayers and caught the scent of roses.
After progressing for some time, we reached a chamber below the earth. A narrow shaft of light descended into this place from above and shone down onto a hearty rose bush in full bloom. Its heady fragrance filled the sacred space and half a dozen knights knelt around it in prayer. The warrior I followed joined their number, falling to his knees and folding his hands.
Unseen by the knights, a lithe elf dressed in green hunting attire with a rose blossom behind his ear stood behind the bush. I watched him with great interest for a time as he caught invisible twinkling fireflies from the air of the sanctuary and then sprinkled them over the rose bush where their energy joined the miraculous plant.
“What are you doing?” I asked the industrious elf.
“I am the spirit of this rose,” he replied, golden sparkles flying from his fingers. “The knights transplanted me from a grave in France where I bloomed in every season. Now, because of their beliefs and fervent prayers, I continue blooming here in this waterless desert, far from my home.”
“How could you bloom in every season?” I said. “This seems against nature.”
“I have transcended the requirements of the natural world for I once rested on the head of a god who came back from the dead,” said the spirit of the rose.
“Are you saying you were the thorns on the head of Christ?” I said. “I don’t think that’s historically accurate but I’m no Bible scholar.”
“It matters little what you and I think, but more about what they think,” said the spirit of the rose, pointing at the praying knights within the sanctuary. “They say and believe I am a great mystery and so I am.” With those words, the elf took the flower from behind his ear and put the blossom behind my own ear.
I raised my hand to explore the rose’s petals with my fingertips and its texture was as smooth and soft as silk. Then, the elf waved his hand at the stone wall behind the kneeling knights. “A greater mystery is that way,” he said. “Would you like to see it, wandering spirit?”
“I would indeed. Thank you for the blossom,” I said as I went through the temple wall and into a new space.
Within the inner sanctum, I discovered a simple coffin made of wooden planks. A spirit in the shape of a woman in a dark blue robe checked with shining gemstones dwelt within the room also. She faced away from me towards an undecorated wall of stone blocks and knelt in prayer like the pious knights in the outer chamber.
She turned towards me in some surprise as my feet touched the floor of her chamber. “Who are you?” she said, turning away from the wall. “I asked not to be disturbed in my grief.”
“My most humble apologies, Great One,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your devotions. The spirit of the rose said a great mystery was here and curiosity brought me to your doorstep.”
The spirit smiled faintly. “I am no great mystery. I am Mary,” she said, but to my ears it also sounded like she said, “I am the Mother.” The woman rose from her knees and from within the depths of her robes a laughing child appeared. The girl, as incorporeal as I, smiled at us both and then ran straight through the wall.
“Mary, my name is Heidi,” I said. “Would you speak to me of the one called Christ?”
“He was a man. He was more,” she replied. “To one like me, he was the world.”
“One like you? What do you mean?” I said.
“To a woman who loved him like I,” she said. “He was the world.”
“Did you love him, truly?” I said. “The preserved knowledge from that period of time is rather murky about that part.”
“What is love?” Mary said. “I will tell you what it was for me. He was like the air in my lungs, the breathing in to my breathing out. He was like the sky above me and I was like unto the earth under his feet. He was more than a mere mortal love or a son of God. He was a reason for my existence.”
“I believe you and share your vision of love,” I said. “And I am honored you shared this forgotten wisdom with me. I will write it down when I return to the world so that maybe it will never be lost again. If you could teach me one further lesson, Mother, what would it be?”
The child who had run from the room returned suddenly, carrying a single rose. She gave the flower to Mary and they embraced, then the girl disappeared into Mary’s robes once more.
“One further lesson I will impart to you,” Mary said, smiling at the rose in her hand. “The great mysteries of life are not concealed underground or hidden from the multitudes. The greatest mysteries walk among you and masquerade as everyday truths. But for those with the eyes to see them, the ears to hear them, and the heart to comprehend them, the great and forgotten mysteries are there for the knowing. Though they may never be fully understood except through the passage of time, they are there for the knowing.”
The lady began to fade from my sight. “Like the rose that blooms forever or the love in the eyes of a child who has yet to know language to express it, the greatest mysteries are in plain sight,” she said and vanished.
Suddenly, I heard a horn sound from above the crypt.
I walked through the wall of the inner sanctum and saw the knights rise from their knees and run towards the exit of the temple. Following in their footsteps, I floated upwards through the ground and found myself rising above the walled city of Jerusalem.
An army of proud warriors came from the hills, attacked the city and the cries of battle rose from the ramparts into the sky. I continued to rise into the air along with the sounds of strife and found myself emerging from the bucket of Mimir’s water in Odin’s tree.
“Good timing,” the god said as he put the finishing touches on his runes and placed them back into the grail which sat at his elbow on the table. Then, he shook the cup and said into its bowl, “From whence comes this traveler into my domain?” With those words, he threw the runes upon the table.
“Fascinating,” he murmured, after studying them carefully for a time.
“What do they say?” I asked, peering over his shoulder. To my eyes, the runes appeared as a mass of glowing symbols spread in repeating patterns. Beyond this simple observation, I could see nothing.
“They say: She comes from a world where the horses are metal and men fly in the sky like birds without feathers. She lives in a sanctuary of learning and shares the knowledge of hidden things through the ether like a breath from the lungs of a god.” Odin grinned. “You are full of surprises and not just bones, my friend.”
He cast the runes a few more times wordlessly and kept their interpretation to himself.
“If I ask the runes a question, would you translate their meaning for me?” I said. “I do not speak their language.”
Odin put the grail back into my hands. “Because you provided some materials for the runes, I will give you some of my talent for reading them,” the god said. “A fair trade, all things considered. Ask your question, Heidi, and you will see what I mean.”
“What can you teach me about this place?” I asked aloud and cast the runes onto the table.
The symbols flashed and I saw the knight of my vision running to defend the walls of Jerusalem. “Like the other defenders of the city, you died that day,” whispered Mimir, through the runes.
I saw a warrior wearing a turban and carrying a scimitar, scale the mighty walls of Jerusalem. He slashed my knight viciously across the heart and then raised his weapon to strike off what felt like my own head. I turned my eyes away, unable to stomach the sight.
“Your last thought was of the rose that bloomed eternal and the promise of everlasting life for those who believed in the one called Christ,” Mimir continued.
As the unnamed host triumphantly entered the city, jubilant warriors rushed through the homes and temples alike, killing and maiming as they went, even overturning the articles of worship in the sanctuary and tearing down a large crucifix from the wall.
A few warriors went down the tunnel into the underground space of the hidden sanctum. The rose bush was ripped from the ground and burned to ash.
Mimir spoke again: “Mortals, who live their many lives, forget more wisdom than they will ever remember. They carry grudges and commit atrocities for no reason other than belief. The pain that comes with asserting one mystery is greater than another is one of the many causes of misery in the realm of physical existence.”
The vision of Jerusalem faded and I saw myself as a bead of sweat on the forehead of Odin once more. I fell from his head and towards the ground. Around me, other beads of sweat also fell, shaping themselves into runes in the dust.
When I hit the ground, I didn’t become a rune as I had once before, but instead grew as a rose from the hand of Mary the Mother’s child. I felt the child hand me to her mother and the lady smiled at me even in the depths of her grief over the loss of her great love who was the world to her.
“Do not lose hope for your world,” Mimir whispered to me through Mary’s mouth. “For from the perpetual struggle and toil of the flesh-bound, there will rise the flowers and songs of enlightenment from the worlds beyond. The mysteries are there for those with the eyes to see them, the heart to hold them, and the spirit to embody them. Bloom, precious one, bloom.”
And my vision ended.
The Light Congress 