Gate: The Fool
I stepped through the vision gate and saw myself as a star falling from the night sky. I fell along with other bright, shining stars. We tumbled towards Earth together.
When I hit the ground, I stood up and looked at the other falling stars/people. Some hit the Earth as I did and stopped, others crashed through the ground and continued on towards the center of the world. It was impossible to tell who among us would stop or who would continue on until we hit the ground.
The crowd of shining people who remained on Earth with me started to run. A golem made of clay sprang from the ground. “Run, Heidi, run!” He encouraged me, taking my hand and attempting to pull me forward to join the stampeding stars.
“Sorry, friend,” I said, extricating my hand from his grasp. “I do not run from the unknown anymore.”
“But you don’t know what will happen if you stay here,” he said, trying desperately to take my hand once more.
“I will face what comes,” I replied and turned my face to the heavens just in time to see one of the fallen star people come smashing through the clouds, crash into me, and take me with him through the ground towards the center of the earth.
We fell through the Earth together until we reached a central core that shone bright gold like the sun. Other star people stood on this concentrated, bubbling surface, milling around each other and trying to get somewhere else but there was nowhere else to go in this underground sanctuary.
My clay golem popped out of the core of the Earth and took my hand again. “We must get out of this golden prison,” he said. “Come on, this way!”
I looked around at the pushing, shoving fallen stars and reached down to touch some of the golden liquid beneath our feet. “There is nothing here,” I observed. “But these trapped people and this precious core.”
The golem shook his small head in negation. “I think I see something new over there, if you would just walk that way,” he said.
“I will take this exit,” I said. “For there is nothing I desire here.” And I sank into the shifting, golden core far beneath the ground. A bright light overwhelmed my senses and then there was nothing.
When I could see again, I was standing in thick, foggy mists and a tiny plant grew from the Earth within this moving cloud. “Hello there,” I said to the sprout. Then, the golden light of the core poured out of my body and touched the delicate leaves of the plant.
It suddenly grew upwards, reaching and stretching, until an enormous tree stood in front of me. Its trunk was the size of a small house and its upper leaves reached so high that I could not see the top of it.
The clay golem popped out of the ground once more. “Let’s go into your creation,” he said.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“I am Silence,” he said. Hand in hand, we walked towards the enormous tree, then a doorway appeared on the side of its trunk and we went within.
The interior of the tree was a wide, open space, but all around there were vision gates so I could not see further into the room. Within the vision gates, I saw myself, experiencing first this journey and then that- each one depicting a different trip into the Tree of Life.
The mirrored remembrances were vivid and clear, more like actual experiences than the dreamlike way I had lived through them.
As I viewed my pathwalking adventures, someone started calling my name, “Heidi…”
Silence and I tried to go through the vision gates but there were too many and everywhere I turned, I ran into another experience. “I hear you, but I cannot see you,” I said aloud, dodging around yet another gate.
“I will help you…” said the voice. “If you would allow it.” Then, all of the vision gates turned into shining star people like the entrapped beings I had seen within the Earth’s core.
These otherworldly spirits all turned to gaze at me and then melted into the trunk of the tree, becoming age rings in the wood. Standing at the center of the trunk, where the newest growth would occur, I saw the Fool, a version of myself wearing a ridiculous multi-colored hat with a golden tassel that had a bronze bell on the end of it.
“Can you see, can you see, can you see yourself within the tree?” she cackled wildly, while dancing madly about the central point.
“Yes, I can see through the gates now,” I replied. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. Imagine that, thanking the Fool,” said the spirit who looked so like me. “Would do everyone more good to thank yourself or the sky or the floor.” The Fool shook her head and the bell dinged, punctuating her words.
“You seem wound up,” I said. “A bit manic… maybe? Are you alright?”
“So says the end to the beginning,” she said, continuing her wild jig. “So says the sun to the moon, so says the known to the unknown. The Z to the A and the omega to the alpha. Dance with me, Heidi, and free us all from time!”
My golem companion tugged on my hand to get my attention. “She needs a dose of Silence,” he said. “The primal energy of the Fool prevents her from making any sense. I will settle her so you can talk if you wish it.”
“I would be in support of this plan, if you think she’ll accept you,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” said the golem. “We know each other intimately. There is plenty of Silence at new beginnings.”
He ran from me to the Fool and climbed up her leg until he sat upon her shoulder. Silence kissed the Fool on the cheek and he melted into her forehead. The Spirit of New Beginnings stopped her mad capering and stood quite still, looking right at me with her rictus grin painted across her face.
“You have come quite a ways to find me,” she said. “Through mist and shadow and light. Past time and fear and triumph. You, brave girl, have finally met your Fool.” She bowed to me with a fancy flourish of her left hand.
“What is your true nature?” I asked, impressed by Silence’s calming influence upon this unbridled being.
“I am that which you will be when you’ve become who you were,” she said. “I am the beginning of a whole new set of visionary adventures.”
A new doorway appeared in the side of the trunk of the mammoth tree and it led to a platform jutting over a blue sky-filled void containing puffy clouds which floated serenely within it.
“The beginning doesn’t have much to say to the end,” the Fool said, almost apologetically. Then, with a jaunty wave, she stepped off the platform and fell into nothingness.
Surprised by her unexpected departure, I moved to the edge of my tree and looked down into the unknown. The Fool was continuing to fall through the mysterious depths below. I watched her progress until she was too distant for me to see clearly anymore.
“I suppose that is where I will go next,” I said, seating myself on the ledge. “I hope there are some friends waiting to be discovered down there.”
“Heidi, don’t go!” I heard and turned to see all of my embodied stars in the tree trunk. They retained their shining, human shapes and, as one, they began to pull me back from where my Fool had leapt. “Aren’t we enough? Isn’t existence enough? Haven’t you had plenty of adventures?”
“Visions,” I said, trying to free myself from their grasp. “You are now known but you were once unknown. I am not trying to downplay your beauty for you are all extraordinary in your individuality and myriad talents. There is simply so much more out there. I know it, I know it in my very soul and they call to me.”
“I cannot allow them and their forgotten knowledge to remain lost in the shadows,” I said. “Friends, don’t remain here in the safe confines of the known. Come with me and we’ll go find the unknown together- come what may.”
The shining ones looked at me and then at each other, coming to an agreement in complete silence within my tree. Then, as groups and occasionally solitary, they began flinging themselves off the edge into the vastness of the beyond.
“We’ll go before you to create the way,” said one star as he passed me. I acknowledged his words with a bow of my head and watched as he fell, feeling some unknown, powerful connection to this being as he did so.
After an uncounted period of time, the remaining stars departed my tree for the worlds below. I felt alone until my badger lumbered out of the empty room and sat on the sky platform with me.
“Are you afraid?” he asked. “They won’t remember you down there, you know that right?”
“I’m not afraid of either the unknown or being forgotten,” I said. “How could I be afraid when we’ve learned so much about creation already in our journey. Did you see the variety of experience that went before us? I saw, I saw each and every one of them, and they bring me hope.”
“I am afraid,” Badger confessed. “Afraid that you’ll change so much that I won’t know you anymore when the time comes. Look at the changes already…” He pressed his paw into my hand and grids of light exploded into being all over my body. “And you have so many spirit friends now. I’m deathly afraid that you’ll outgrow me.”
“Oh, my dearest friend,” I said, putting my arms around his neck. “I love you and that will never change. Come with me and we will explore the universe together. I will always need your help because I can’t possibly do this thing on my own even with the unwavering support of the star people.”
Badger snuffled my neck then threw himself off the platform. “I’m not afraid anymore! Please do not be overlong in arriving,” he spoke over his shoulder as he disappeared into the unknown.
I took a deep breath and prepared to jump. But then, a quiet voice said, “Don’t go without me.” My Inner Child came from within the tree and approached the drop. I stopped her as she reached the edge by grabbing onto a stuffed bunny she had clasped firmly in her small hand.
“I don’t know, Heidi,” I told my child self. “It is an awfully long way to go and you’re so little. You do not know what is down there in store for you, but I know and it makes me afraid.”
The Inner Child looked at me with her innocent eyes. “But the dreams need me to flourish,” she said. “I am big enough to know my own mind and I am not afraid.” She pulled her pink rabbit from me and stepped off the platform.
“There’s no stopping her,” said an elderly woman, who emerged from the tree as I watched the child fall.
“Hello, Ancient Self,” I said, nodding my head respectfully.
“Hello, Current Self,” she said, pinching my cheek in her gnarled hands. “Why are you so protective of the Child? She is as much you as I am for age is an illusion in these lower worlds, as you well know.”
“But it feels so real,” I replied. “It feels like a matter of life and death. Tell me, lady, are you proud of the life you have lived?”
“The life ‘you’ lived, you mean,” the elder cackled at me. “The journey we go on now sets the tone for the rest, Heidi. My past changes as your present evolves. I know you feel I am a long way away, but every day I come closer to where you are now.”
My Future Self threw aside the staff she had been leaning on and flung herself into the unknown before me just like all the others. “Every day, I come closer…” her voice faded to a whisper and then she was gone.
“My turn,” I said and, once again, prepared myself for the leap.
“You would not go without me.” I turned to see my Shadow come from the tree. A premonition gripped my heart and I grabbed her hand before she fell.
“Must you go too?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you consider waiting here for me to return?”
“What is light without shadow?” she hissed and flashed her fire-filled eyes at me.
“What is your shadow without my light?” I countered.
“You want me with you,” my Shadow said, then twisted and shifted, changing herself into a dragon as she flew off the platform into the unknown. “I promise you, Heidi, I will make the experiences worth having.”
I sighed and the edge I stood upon began to shake and tremble in an earthquake. The tree shifted and moved as if in a mighty wind. The clouds parted and I saw, advancing towards me from the sky, the great centipede, Time.
His mouth was open and he was consuming my tree from the top down. I knew if I did not jump now and join my friends below, I would disappear into his endless expanse.
With a shout of defiance, I threw myself into the unknown. Time consumed the platform just as I left it and, together, the giant centipede and I fell into the void.
When I could see again, I was standing within the clouds. Something was pushing up through the clouds from underneath but then sinking again. The clouds rose and fell, rose and fell, hypnotically, like waves upon a distant shore.
Suddenly, a black cat with gold markings who was the size of a horse appeared at my side.
“Heidi…” she addressed me, changing into a lounging woman with long black hair as she did so.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” I asked this apparition.
“You named me, Daemona, and I am catching dream fish for you,” she said, changing back into a mammoth cat. Just then, one of the bumps in the clouds broke through the surface revealing a wriggling goldfish. Then, the fish flopped back within the cloud bank again.
“What do you do with dream fish once you catch them?” I asked.
“Make a wish,” she said and pounced as another fish broke through the clouds.
The two of us hunted the bumps in the clouds together for a time. Finally, one popped through the surface near me and I caught it. To my astonishment, my dream fish changed into a full-sized man.
“You’ve caught me,” he said and yawned in my face. “Tell me what you want so I can go back to sleep. It is hard to dwell above the clouds for one such as I.”
“Daemona, what do you wish for when you catch a dream fish?” I asked my cat.
“Catnip, tuna, and treats,” she said, eagerly trying to land a fish of her own. “In no particular order.”
“Well, those wishes won’t work for me,” I said. “Because I am a woman, not a cat. Dream Fish, I want to go somewhere to see more deeply into my own nature. Somewhere I have never been before to learn something I didn’t even know I knew.”
“I’m a fish not a god,” he said, grumpily. “Don’t you know the difference between the two?”
“Well, at the very least, can you think of anyone I need to meet?” I asked.
“Now there is a wish I can work with,” he said and changed back into a shining goldfish. He flipped out of my hands and traced the shape of a vision gate in front of me. It lit up with rainbow colors and his body changed into a door.
“Would you like to come with me?” I asked the cat who was sometimes a woman.
“No, I’m dreaming,” she said, pouncing here and there among the clouds. “Go have your own adventure, Heidi.”
I gave my cat a pat on her head and opened the rainbow door. I fell through it and was sliding down a multi-hued ramp into a rainforest. The trees and shadows shifted beneath the canopy and I saw human forms moving through the darkness.
“Hello, is anyone there?” I called.
The trees rustled and whispered to each other. I perceived a voice, as if the forest itself was speaking, “She fights against us. She won’t let out what wants out or let in what wants in.”
“Hello?” I said again. “I can hear you but I can’t see you.”
There was movement and, at first, I thought a pile of leaves walked out of the rainforest. But then, when I looked closer, I saw the leaves were actually a wizened old man, so covered in rainforest debris that he appeared to be a walking plant himself.
“Merlin?” I asked this ancient spirit.
“No Merlin here,” grumbled the man. “In the Forest at the edge of Dream, there are no Merlins.” From out of the leaves and vines encircling his body, he pulled a large, black cauldron. “I’m sorry to report there is only me.”
“Who are you?” I asked. “My name is Heidi and I find myself far from where I began.”
“Names, names, names,” the being mumbled, building a fire and putting various things into his pot. “I have had many names at many different times. But now, the forest itself called me here. They say you have something stuck in your throat.”
“No, that’s no longer correct because Anxiety came out of my throat last week,” I started to explain, but the old man hushed me.
“The trees say, you block them with your throat and something speaks to them from your chest,” he reached out dirt-covered fingers and poked at my neck. “They can’t get in to see what it is and you won’t let it out to declare itself to the waiting world.”
“Well, yes, I do have allergies,” I said. “If that’s what they mean.”
“Explain: allergy,” the forest spirit said.
“My body has a reaction to plant pollen and mold which causes my throat to swell and I have drainage that pains me,” I said. “Aren’t you allergic to anything?”
The old man looked at me, aghast. “I have no blockages against nature,” he said. “At least, none that I’ve discovered so far.”
“That’s not what is making my throat sore…” I said, shaking my head.
“It is,” the being insisted. “And we will release it, together, right here and right now.” Whatever he had thrown into the pot bubbled and stank, releasing a black smoke. Then, the forest spirit pulled a boar’s tusk from within his strange garments and stirred the contents of his cauldron.
“Open wide, wanderer,” he said. “The forest and I will pull whatever this is out.” Before I could protest, he shoved the thinner end of the tusk down my throat and dumped the contents of the pot through it, like a drinking straw made of ivory, into my stomach. Then, he twisted as he removed the pointed tusk, so it felt as if my throat was being ripped apart from the inside out.
I screamed with the shock of it, holding my neck in pain. The spirit ignored my discomfort and began dancing and chanting around his bonfire and, now empty, pot. Something monster-sized shifted in my stomach and I felt it begin to crawl up my throat from inside my body.
I opened my mouth to scream again and a black panther paw exploded from behind my teeth. A huge cat came out of my body, ripping and tearing as he emerged. Then, this newly born animal spirit turned on me and tore my physical body apart with his teeth.
I saw the forest spirit confront the panther and watched as he drove it away with a sharpened stick. He gathered my component parts together from where they had fallen and put them into his black cauldron. Then, I knew and could see nothing else for a time.
When I could perceive again, I was moving through darkness and shadow. I broke through the surface of a black lake and realized I was emerging from the elder’s cauldron which yet bubbled and smoked above his fire. I breathed a deep sigh of relief that my body was whole once more. Whatever liquid was in the pot clung to me as I pulled myself over the side and fell down onto the rainforest’s earthen floor.
“A mighty predator made of fear came out of your body,” he said, rubbing me with leaves to try to remove the tar-like substance. “But don’t worry, he is out now, and you are born again beneath the canopy of my forest.”
“You could have warned me,” I said. “That transformation hurt!”
“If I had known what was going to come out, I would have,” the being said and put down his pile of tarred leaves. “New beginnings can be very painful. I thought you knew.”
After the man’s attention with the plants upon my skin, the shadow of his cauldron began to drip off of me. Beneath the remaining liquid, I was a being made of diamond light. Even as I noticed this change, I saw some of the light pulled off of me and returned to the cauldron.
The black cauldron, for a moment only, appeared to be the Earth from a great distance. The light pulled from me shaped itself into falling stars. Then, the vision faded and all was quiet beneath the rainforest canopy once more.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “I have passed your trial and have earned an answer.”
The forest spirit began to shrink beneath my gaze and turned into the clay golem who led me to the sky tree I had fallen from. “I told you, Heidi, I am Silence,” he said and took my hand once more.
The golem gestured and a gateway appeared beneath the trees of the rainforest. I knew in my heart that it led into further shadows and the unknown. After all of the pain I had experienced to reach this point in time, I hesitated to approach the new gate.
Suddenly, my badger popped his head out of the mist within the doorway. “Heidi, you have to see this!” he said and pulled his head back again. I gathered my courage, looked to Silence, and the small, clay golem went before me through the door.
I walked through the gate as well and my vision ended.
END OF BOOK TWO
The Light Congress 