Gate: Justice
I stepped through the vision gate and saw white boulders rolling down a steep hill. I pulled my vision back from this scene and saw these weren’t boulders at all, but giant, white pearls which dangled from the headdress of a veiled woman in silky, Saudi Arabian-style robes.
The veiled spirit was sitting upon a palanquin atop an enormous gray elephant and many more elephants followed behind, moving through a bleak and blasted landscape in a trailing line. With flowing, ground consuming steps, the elephants plodded on, carrying the lady towards a distant oasis which sparkled on the horizon.
“I require a guide for this place,” I said and a whirling, sandstorm came from the dusty ground at my summons. As the storm blew and twirled around me, I saw, within the tornadic sands, a face formed of the wind and desert itself.
“Goddess, I am here,” said the living sands. “What do you require of me?”
“I am no goddess, but a seeker from another world,” I said. “Thank you for responding so quickly to my call. Who are you?”
“Some call me ‘Sand Demon,’ but I prefer ‘Desert Spirit’,” he said in a voice like sand shifting over rock. “Thou art a goddess or I would have never heard thee.”
“I will not spend my time in the other worlds arguing with you,” I said. “But I promise, I am a servant of a far greater power. Desert Spirit, where am I and who is in this caravan before me?”
“Thou art in the Desert of Knowledge,” said the sand storm. “Thou seest before thee, the traveling household of the Desert Rose, a ruler of this realm and its keeper. The Rose travels to the Place of Justice for a wrong that was committed upon her.”
“Can I speak with this Desert Rose?” I asked. “I expect she’s much too busy to chat with everyone who shows up on the passing breezes.”
“I shall bring thee to her doorstep,” he said as the sand spirit whirled and plucked me off the ground with his winds. “Know this, one from another world, her people consider her a living, embodied goddess. I do not know if she will consent to speak with thee. That is a decision that is hers alone.”
In the space of a few heartbeats, Desert Spirit whisked me over to the lead elephant and I knocked in what I hoped was a polite manner on the wooden support beams of the conveyance. “Desert Rose,” I called above the winds of my guide. “I have come from another world seeking your true nature. May I have an audience with you?”
The silks of the palanquin were moved abruptly aside and I again beheld the veiled face of a lady, covered with pearls.
“Who speaks?” she asked cautiously. “How did you bypass my guardians and where are your head coverings? It is not seemly nor safe for a female spirit to be so dressed.”
“My name is Heidi and, as I am a traveler to this place and many others, it is not a simple task to keep me from the worlds I chose to explore or those beings I am destined to speak with,” I said. “I understand you are a person of some importance and Desert Spirit shared with me your true name. What is your nature, Desert Rose?”
The goddess smiled beneath her pearls. “You are the messenger named Heidi and you wish to know who I am?” she asked. I nodded in response. “I have been expecting you for some time. Enter and be welcome,” she said and swept aside the trailing silks of her personal travel space to allow me into her divine presence.
The royal compartment above the elephant was surprisingly spacious. In a far corner of this space, there was a tall basket with bindings all around it so that its lid was secure. Otherwise, the palanquin contained only embroidered pillows, silk piled here and there to make the journey as comfortable as possible, and the Rose herself.
“Messenger Heidi, I travel far from my seat of power to seek redress for this,” the Desert Rose announced and drew back her flowing sleeve to reveal her left hand. The first finger was gone and the third finger had been cut at the middle knuckle. Many rings of precious stones and ivory decorated her thumb and other, whole fingers.
“The serpent contained in the basket bit me while I slept in my palace,” the Desert Rose said. “My guards captured the creature and he has been my prisoner from that day to this. He shall answer to the desert gods for damaging me and marring my fabled beauty.”
I reached for the lady’s hand. “Do not fear, goddess, I can heal that injury if you allow me to do so,” I said. “Then, the justice you seek will not be needed and you and the serpent can continue your lives in blessed peace and harmony.”
The Desert Rose abruptly pulled back. “No one may lay a finger upon me,” she said. “Even the doctor who performed the surgery to save me never allowed his skin to touch my skin for I am divine.”
I considered this a moment and then reached into my bag and pulled forth Love’s cup. It was filled with water as it always seems to be. “Lady,” I said. “Would you consent to put your hand into this cup? You would only be touching water and, in this way, we can both heal you and preserve your great dignity.”
The Rose looked deeply into my eyes and seemed to trust what she saw there. Slowly, she reached forward and put her damaged fingers into the grail. The desert winds that had been continually stirring the silks about the palanquin suddenly ceased and all became still. Moments later, the Desert Rose pulled her hand back from the cup and it was whole again.
“It is magic, powerful magic,” she exclaimed and moved as far away from me as she could in that small space. “I should have known that you were a great wizard to have survived the vastness of the desert with no method of transport or protection from the punishing sun. What is your true name, traveler, for you are no mere messenger. Your actions prove thus.”
“I am Heidi, as I said,” I replied, putting away the grail. “This cup was a gift from Love and heals with her power, not mine. Desert Spirit brought me through the sands and dangerous weather with his own power as well. My friends and companions bring me to where I am required throughout all time and space. So, as you see, I am a messenger and a servant of the Creator of All, just as they are and, Great One, as you are too.”
The Desert Rose admired her restored hand and covered it with her silken robes. “If you do not care to share your true identity with me, I still owe you a boon for this healing,” she said. “Name what you wish and I will grant it, Messenger Heidi.”
“Give me only what you see fit,” I said. “I desire to know your true nature and anything more is a gift beyond price that I have no ability to repay.”
“For restoring my glory to me, I shall hand you the desert sword of justice and you shall be the judge of this serpent,” she replied. “I will let you choose his fate, whether he lives or dies. In this way, you will reveal your true identity to me whether you will it or no, a gift for all the worlds.”
“I bow to your superior wisdom, goddess,” I said. “Let all unfold as you desire, for I seek greater self knowledge as well.”
At that moment, the elephant ceased his motion and a guard drew aside the silken curtains. “Goddess,” he said. “We have arrived and humbly request your presence among us once more.”
The Desert Rose slid gracefully from the elephant’s back. Servants threw themselves beneath her feet so she walked upon their backs rather than the ground. With four steps, the Rose came to another palanquin borne by four of her strong and armored guards.
She seated herself within this new conveyance and was carried towards a temple made of sandstone which sat beside the desert oasis among the endless and shifting dunes of the Desert of Knowledge.
In the departure of the goddess, I saw my desert spirit whirling at the side of the elephant so I jumped into his winds once more and the spirit bore me effortlessly alongside the Desert Rose. Together, we moved across the sands through the door of the sandstone temple carved out of the living rock.
Within its walls, where I expected to encounter sacred silence, I instead heard shouts and cheers coming from a great arena. Men in robes with headdresses shielding them from the relentless sun were seated in a huge circle around a gladiator’s pit. A ferocious tiger and a badger the size of a horse circled each other while the watching spirits cheered and encouraged them on to further violence. I threw myself from Desert Spirit into the arena between the two combatants. “Cease this madness,” I yelled, striving to make myself heard over the roar of the crowd. “Why are you two always battling each other?”
Despite being an invisible and unheard presence between them as they rushed at each other once again, I put my hand on the head of the tiger and another on the head of the badger. At my touch, their many wounds were healed and their eyes drooped in instantaneous slumber. Both animals collapsed, completely and deeply asleep as my form coalesced in the arena’s center.
A groan went up from the crowd and then the boos and hisses began. “She ruins the game!” one called.
“Who is this unveiled woman to come into our sacred place!” yelled another.
“We will show her the meaning of justice,” said a third and the mob ran towards me.
“I am not one to be threatened in this world or any other,” I said, a warning in my tone. Desert Spirit appeared at my side with six or seven others of his kind so I was surrounded by protective tornados of living sand. The angry mob halted their progress towards me and murmured to each other behind their hands.
“She controls the demons of the desert,” one said. “We should stone the witch and end her unnatural existence.”
“Forgive my intrusion and unconventional appearance in your sacred space, desert folk,” I said. “But I will not tolerate the torture of innocent creatures wherever they may be found.”
“Innocent, hardly innocent,” said a being, stepping forward from the crowd. “That badger ruined my field, trampling the grain and ripping the plants from the ground. I brought him to this place to face the judges for his destruction. He was sentenced to a fight with the tiger for his carelessness and baseless rage.”
I waved my hand and an amphora filled with grain appeared before the spirit. It was filled so high it began to overflow and kernels of grain tumbled to the sand at his feet. “You will find fifty more of those jars in your home,” I said. “Consider the badger’s debt paid in full, a gift from another world to amend your loss in this one.” The farmer faded back into the crowd with his hands wrapped around the tall jar.
Another spirit pushed his way forward, holding the hand of a child. “That tiger is a menace and deserved the just sentence of this court,” he yelled. “See what he did to my son, desert witch, and tell me again that the tiger is blameless.” The left half of the boy’s face was a ruin. Four claw marks ran down the side of his head and his eye was missing from the tiger’s mauling.
I knelt sorrowfully in front of the child and laid my hands onto his face. A tear fell from my eyes and sank into the sands between his feet. As I wept at the fate that had befallen an innocent child, a light came from my touch and, when I removed my hands, the boy was whole again.
“The Divine Mother’s servant weeps for you,” I said. “Go and grow in peace and consider the tiger’s debt paid.” The man took the hand of his child once more and they began to bow to me, again and again, backing away slowly into the encircling crowd that had grown frighteningly silent and still.
The peace was broken by a new voice. “Who dispenses justice in my temple?” someone said, shaking the ground with the power of their voice. The crowd dispersed and took their seats once more around the gladiator’s arena.
An enormous sphinx appeared in the sacred space and her size was such she filled almost a quarter of the arena by herself. Her eyes glowed red and malevolent from her monstrous face, which was made of the same stone as the walls of the temple.
“I declared the badger and tiger would be judged by the ancient rules of combat,” roared the sphinx’s voice though it was pitched at hardly above a whisper. “One of their deaths would have paid the blood guilt of the other.”
“That is hardly a fair judgment,” I said. “It is said the sphinxes of the Desert of Knowledge are renowned for their justice and mercy. I despair to discover that this universal truth is not so.”
“Blood paying for guilt is not new,” said the Sphinx, settling herself on the temple floor like a giant cat with her paws folded in front and her tail swishing the air behind. “It is one of the oldest forms of justice. Who are you to deny its veracity?”
“Just because something is old and has been done, doesn’t make it right or fair,” I said. “Why does no one ever consider new ways of moving through reality? Such paths exist, I promise they do, for I have walked one to get to this place.”
The Sphinx growled deep in her throat and I realized she was laughing at me. “How strange are your ideas,” she said. “All paths lead to the same destination so what does it matter which path one chooses.”
“It matters very much,” I said, indignant in the face of the Sphinx’s mirth. “All choices, no matter how trivial, affect the spirit of the one who makes them for either the light or shadow. Your nature, Great One, is clear to me and all in this arena through your barbaric judgement of the tiger and badger. I will make mine clear in the passage of time through my own choices as do all who walk in the worlds.”
“Sphinx of Judgement and Desert Spaces,” yelled the Desert Rose, emerging from the watching crowd. She approached with her retinue of servants, who were still bearing her upon their mighty shoulders. “This wizard healed me with powerful water magic from another realm and has earned the right to judge the guilt or innocence of this beast.” One of her bearers dumped the reed basket with its tied lid and prisoner into the arena where it rolled before the Sphinx’s paws. “Do you consent to her interpolation?”
The ancient desert guardian looked from the basket with its writhing contents and then back to me. “I do consent,” she said. “For I have no idea what is going to come from this one’s mouth next. My great curiosity overrides my prerogative.”
Then, the Sphinx opened her mouth wide and a vaporous mist came from her throat, concealing all from my sight. I could see nothing of the arena, the Desert Rose, or the crowd of silent watchers. In the gray void around me, I saw the basket and that was all.
“Answer my riddles, one from another world,” said the voice of the Sphinx from the mists. “If you can clear this traditional hurdle, which exists to protect creation from previously unknown ones such as you, then you may dispense your justice. What is twelve units long but only three high? What dwells in the belly and in the sky? What rises in spring and dies in the fall? What breaks men, owns them, and rules over all?”
As I considered the Sphinx’s words, the bindings burst from the basket of the Desert Rose and an enormous serpent spilled from it. He hissed and spit venom in his rage, coming towards me out of the mist like an avenging spirit of old. My breath caught in my throat as I began to panic, when suddenly words sprang to my tongue, unbidden.
“The answers to your riddles are as follows, Great One,” I said, gazing into the eyes of the approaching serpent and speaking as if in a trance. “The year with its seasons, the heat of passion both mortal and divine, summer’s natural span, and finally, love’s shadow and love itself.”
The furious snake coiled himself before me and I prepared myself to be struck down in the desert arena. “If this is your idea of justice, Great One, then I resign myself to annihilation,” I said. “I would not dwell in a world whose god allowed such miscarriages of reality to occur.” The serpent struck but froze in mid-air a handsbreadth from my face within the twisting fog from the mouth of the Sphinx.
“You have named the ruling powers of this place and many others,” the Sphinx said. “Clever wanderer you must be, to answer my riddles so quickly and with such insight. Now, use your cleverness and judge this creature and we shall see your secret heart and nature both. May I remind you, if I had not intervened, he would have killed you with no pang of conscience or compunction. Speak your judgement with this knowledge in mind.”
“Speak to me, accused one,” I commanded in turn, stepping away from the threatening figure before me. A spirit in the shape of a young man with tumbling brown hair stepped from the body of the serpent and I sensed this was the human form of the snake.
“Why do you not let me strike and die as you were meant to?” he asked, petulantly. “They would have killed me afterwards and I wish to die too.”
“It was not yet my appointed time to pass from this place, Serpent, or yours,” I said. “If it was, we would both now be dead. Tell me why did you attack the Desert Rose?”
“My mate entered her gardens to devour the delicious white mice who dwell in the shade of the palace,” said the snake. “While she was glutted with mice and warming herself in the sun, that one sent her men with sticks and they struck my beautiful mate to pieces. Then, they tossed those pieces out into the desert, to be devoured by the creatures that dwell there as if she were nothing more than an animal with no words or consciousness of her own. This so-called Desert Rose cut my heart out and I took only a few of her fingers in return.”
“You were seeking vengeance for your love?” I asked and the serpent blinked his hooded eyes at me in acknowledgment. “I am sorry for your loss, I really am,” I said. “But two wrongs do not make a right.”
I reached into the bag at my hip and pulled forth the grail. “Next time, Serpent, though it may be contrary to your nature, do not seek to harm those who harm you,” I said. “In this way, you break the cycle of endless violence and the Creator smiles at your new mode of being. You will reap untold blessings from this decision, I promise this is true.” Then, I raised the cup over my head and dumped some of its contents on the dusty ground.
Words rose unbidden to my lips from a power outside of my own once more. “I call you, mate of Serpent, from the realms beyond this world,” I said, an unearthly echo rising from my throat. “Love herself calls you. You must return to me.” The ground began to quake and Desert Spirit along with his companions rose around me in another protective circle. “Rise again from the earth to return to dust at your new appointed time,” I intoned. “For justice is not blind in the realm of the gods.” The desert sands split apart and a serpent, much larger than the male, came out of the floor of the arena.
Upon the returned spirit’s back were two gossamer wings made of rainbow-tinted light. The spirit of the male serpent went back into his snake form, and slithered towards his resurrected mate. He hooked his fangs into her side and she flapped her heavenly wings and flew from the arena with her love attached securely to her.
The mist from the Sphinx dissipated and I found myself standing in the arena of the Temple of Justice once more. The retinue of the Desert Rose and observing crowd had disappeared, back to their homes, families and lives. The Sphinx had also vanished, leaving not even a single indent in the sand in her departure as if she had never been.
Desert Spirit whirled to my side and I felt some relief that I was not alone in that empty space. “For solving the Sphinx’s riddles and dispensing an acceptable form of justice, Heidi,” he said. “She hast left thou a great gift.”
He moved to the place where the Sphinx had lain and revealed a tiny glass bottle with a stopper upon the sand. It contained a miniscule amount of liquid that sparkled like a diamond in the desert sun. “What is this, Desert Spirit?” I asked, taking the bottle in my hand.
“A Tear of the Sphinx,” said the spirit, reverently. “Very precious, very rare, a gift beyond price. Thou holdst a single tear from a guardian made of the rock of the desert, the realm without abundant water.”
“I shall treasure it always,” I said as I put the bottle in my bag. “Where shall we go next? You are far more familiar with this world than I.”
“The desert is full of wondrous places,” said the spirit. “Come with me, Tear Holder!” He twirled and spun, lifting me from my feet, and soon I was flying at the speed of the wind, out of the temple and across the dunes of the desert.
Within moments, Desert Spirit sat me down in front of a towering sword. Its tip barely touched the ground and its hilt reached high up into the pink-hued sky like a monument from another time hovering above the earth.
“Thou standst before the Sword of Justice,” said Desert Spirit and disappeared into the ground beneath the sword.
“Wait for me!” I called out and moved to where the point of the sword touched the desert sands. I tried to follow Desert Spirit into the ground, but some force resisted me and I found myself trapped on the surface of the sand. Then, in a flash of inspiration, I pulled the Sphinx’s tear out of my bag, removed the stopper and dumped the liquid onto the sand beneath the sword.
The moisture soaked into the ground and a rumble came from deep within the earth. The sword sank into the tear and pierced the ground with its point. It cut deeper still within the sands of the Desert of Knowledge. Finally, with a sound like thunder, the hilt of the sword passed into the ground and it was gone. In the passage cut by the descent of the Sword of Justice, a spiral staircase led into the depths of the earth.
Seeking Desert Spirit, I followed the path cut through the desert by the sword, down the stairway into darkness. When I finally reached the last step, I discovered an echoing space with a roof that barely cleared the top of my head. The enclosure was wreathed in shadows, dusty with disuse, and an unseen presence moved in the darkness, one which I couldn’t see but I could feel with my heart.
“Are you there, Desert Spirit?” I said into the room. When I received no answer from my friend or the shadows, I took a step into the space. “We need light,” I said and, following my words, torches lit themselves along the walls. Then, I took another step forward and moved directly into a spider’s web. It was sticky, the strands were thick as large around as my wrist, and so closely spun I could move neither forward nor back to the safety of the stair.
Within moments of my entrapment, an enormous spider descended the web strands, opening her maw and preparing to devour me to feed her endless hunger and existence in the shadows.
“Light defend me from this nightmare!” I cried out in fear and the bright torches pulled themselves from the sides of the room as if they were living beings. Their flames effortlessly cut through the webs and encroaching darkness. The spider saw the torches consuming her web, but, rather than defend her ancient trap and machinations, she continued towards me, preparing to strike me down before her own fiery end. “Please, Lord above, if you can hear me, please send help,” I prayed as the light shown in the spider’s compound eyes and her fangs dripped poison upon me.
A presence materialized in that dark hour at my side. “Begone, foul creature!” said my angel, Michael. He held his sword at the spider’s head and she hissed in impotent rage at both his consecrated weapon which she could not touch and his untimely appearance.
“I am Doubt and I dwell beneath the Hall of Justice,” the spider whispered. “I cloud and obscure, I devour and maim. Who are you to enter my place of power and deny me my prize, armored fly?”
The creature’s many eyes glinted again in the faint light of the moving torches as they continued to burn and eliminate the webs of the room. “I see something there, tasty morsel, set in the pommel of your sword,” said the spider. “Are you quite sure the vanquished temple guardian is contained within that stone? No doubts? No fears? No questions asked?”
Michael and I looked at his sword together and I felt a great fear enter my heart. There was a rushing sound of wind and the devil guardian from the gate of the Temple of Sleepers was now standing free in the room. He howled with glee at his release from the angel’s weapon.
Michael raised the sword once more to strike at the celebratory devil but I put my hand on his arm before he could move from my side. “Look at me, my friend,” I said, urgently. Everything in the room became very still from the menacing spider to the devil himself. “I am sure the shadow is still contained within your sword. Though I am afraid for my very life, I have no doubt of that simple fact,” I said. “We contained this particular shadow long ago. Do you agree, Michael? Please tell me the truth in your heart.”
The angel paused in reflection, then slowly smiled at me as I hung from Doubt’s web. “It is as you say, Heidi,” he said. “We have no need, you and I, to fight shadows we have already conquered within our own hearts.” And, with those words, the devil disappeared back into the stone he had emerged from of the sword within my guardian angel’s hands.
Doubt hissed in rage once more and moved to attack in her final moments of existence as the clearing torches had nearly reached the threshold where I stood, frozen in time. Michael raised his sword to protect me from the darkness yet again.
“Wait, Michael,” I said, stopping his downward swing with my voice. “This feels so familiar to me. I feel as if you and I have stood here before and failed this trial.”
“That may be so,” said my angel. “But why hesitate to strike down a demon? She comes for your life and self defense is a legitimate reason for a violent response.”
“Let us send her back to the shadow rather than destroying her,” I said. “I feel even Doubt has a purpose yet to serve though I do not know what it may be.”
Michael did not let down his guard. “How can you be so sure, Heidi?” he said. “You stand within the demon’s web and it clouds your mind. How can you trust your own judgement at this point?”
“Because I’ve never had anything else to base my judgement on than the intuition of my heart and my belief in divine justice,” I said, as the torches burned the binding webs from my form. “I will trust this knowing because it is who I am,” I continued. “Doubt, begone from this place and return to the shadow from whence you came.”
I reached out to place my hands on the spider to complete the banishing, but felt nothing. Despite the evidence of my eyes, the creature wasn’t there. I continued moving through the spider’s form, reaching but finding nothing. Finally, at the very deepest part of the beast, I touched something that coalesced into the small hand of a child.
“Are you my mother?” the child asked as her hand closed around mine. “Did you come back for me? Are you my mother?” Shadowy arms wrapped themselves around my neck and I was hugged tightly by a spirit who existed within Doubt.
“No, small one,” I said, embracing the shadow’s child. “I am your mother’s light and you belong with her. Return to her and leave this place in peace.”
The moving torches resumed their places, lining the hall so not a single corner was in shadow. I drew a doorway with my fingers in the air and it opened to a space of total darkness and the void.
The shadow’s child passed the threshold and a small stone dropped from her form to the ground as she left. I moved closer to it and beheld a diamond born from the shadow laying in front of the door. I picked up the stone as the door through reality snapped shut.
Peering closely at the gemstone, I said, “What is this, Michael?”
“You hold the amount of goodness that was left in that particular shadow,” Michael said.
“Can a shadow contain any good?” I asked. “Can anything beneficial emerge from the void? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Discernment is needed when dealing with anything from the shadow realm,” he replied. “I don’t know how to answer your questions, Heidi. Perhaps we should believe the proof of our own life experience.”
The diamond floated out of my hand and embedded itself in my forehead between my eyes. There, it glittered like a tear in the light of the torches.
Suddenly, the low roof lifted from the room and I saw, arrayed about the hall above the line of the torches, seated Egyptian statues of gods and goddesses who had various animals for heads in the place of their human forms. There was a crocodile, dung beetle, yak, hippopotamus, and numerous other desert creatures, far too many to take in at one glance.
These statues sat in two lines, facing each other. At the far end of the hall, sat a shining scale as large as the temple wall. I felt some trepidation at the rapt attention of the observing gods and the size of the waiting scale.
“I recognize this hall, it is a place of judgment,” Michael said. “The light and the shadow in your soul will be weighed and thus will you be known throughout creation by its measure.”
“Who judges me?” I asked. “Only one who has walked each step of this journey with me could possibly understand how I have come to this place and time.”
“You judge yourself,” he answered. “These scales allow for it.” Bowing to fate, Michael and I traversed the hall, moving between the gods and goddesses as they gazed down upon us. At the far end of the hall, I moved to step on one side of the scale and my angel went to take the other when a voice rang out from the temple behind us.
“Wait, you fickle light!” my shadow self cried and ran from the darkness of the far end of the hall, holding the hand of the child called Doubt. “If you and your avenging angel are weighed against each other, you will not be in balance,” Shadow said. “But if my child and I stand on the scale opposite of you both, you will be.”
Michael looked doubtful. “Why should we believe you?” he asked. “Shadows lie at moments like this to keep us from our appointed destinies. I’ve never heard of a spirit like you getting a second chance upon the Scales of Justice.”
“Heidi spared my child when, by all rights, she could have struck her down beneath your sword,” Shadow said. “I will repay this blood debt in kind.”
“I believe her, Michael,” I said, when my angel turned to me with a question on his face. “What happens to Shadow, happens to me. If I’m wrong, I deserve to be cast down once more for being the biggest fool in all creation. If I’m right, we will finally be in balance, something I’ve desired for as long as I can remember. I will stake my future on it.” Michael nodded his head once in agreement so I took my angel’s hand and moved to the left scale. Shadow and her child moved to the right. Together, the four of us moved onto the scale of the Temple of Justice at the same time.
For a moment, it seemed that Michael and I would be heavier upon the shifting scales, but then Shadow lifted her hand and the diamond removed itself from between my eyes and flew to her. She placed it in the hand of her shadow child. Doubt swallowed the diamond and the scales settled, perfectly in balance.
There was an earthquake and the Egyptian statues in the hall came to life. Shadow disappeared along with her child and the golden scales.
I heard the babble of many voices and then an ibis-headed man stood from his stone throne. “You have been judged and found worthy, wandering soul,” he announced. “Will you rule in this place as a god or goddess?”
The living statues gazed at me expectantly.
“I am no god or goddess,” I said into the waiting silence. “I just try to make the best decisions I can in every situation. I expect the inhabitants of this place to do the same and rule their own worlds as they see fit.”
The Ibis frowned. “You will have chaos without a single unifying intelligence,” he said. “This is not how creation is run.”
“No, Great One, this is not how creation has run before,” I replied. “There shall be a new form of existence in the Inner Worlds and we will have balance and justice at the individual level with all beings responsible for their own actions and emanations. It has never been attempted and I suspect it might be a mighty struggle at first, but I think it’s time we gave it a try. We have tried it the old way countless times and failed. Let us have balance and justice.” There was a flash and it suddenly seemed as if I was the Sphinx and I was gazing down upon myself as I stood in the arena with the serpent in the basket.
“Balance and justice,” I heard my voice echoing from the gods and goddesses, and again, there was a flash of bright light and my vision shifted. Now, I was the Desert Rose, gazing down at my healed hand in astonishment and at the woman who held a magic cup towards me atop my elephant.
“Balance and justice,” I heard once more and I was the shadow child called Doubt, gazing at an angel holding a sword and a woman who prevented him from swinging and separating me from my mother once more. Then, I blinked and was standing in front of the ibis-headed spirit in the hall of the Egyptian gods and goddesses.
“Balance and justice,” I whispered in my own voice. With one last flash of insight, I saw all the gods and goddesses were myself and I was peering out from the eyes of every single animal-headed figure in the hall. The multiple points of view focused upon me standing next to Michael in my singular form and I shut all of my eyes so as to not lose my sanity in the complexity of existence in that timeless moment.
“They must rule themselves and balance their own shadows,” I murmured to my angel. “Please Michael help them understand.” He squeezed my hand in solidarity as I stood blind in the Hall of Justice.
Then, my vision ended.
The Light Congress 