Gate: Hestia’s Oven
I stepped through the vision gate and stood upon a path made of black volcanic stone that shone with its own inner light. A blood red glow began to emanate from the stones beneath my feet so that a way forward was revealed and I followed the red path through the darkness.
At the end of the path, a doorway appeared. Before I could reach it, the door threw itself open and through the space between the lintels, I saw the pupil of a giant eye.
“Who are you?” I asked as the eye began to force its way through the doorway into my reality.
“Who are you?” it echoed, the white flesh of the eye obscenely squeezing itself through the tight space into my world while remaining attached to whatever the larger thing was that it had emerged from.
“Who are you? Tell me,” I said. “Perhaps I could help you if that’s what you require.” The eye inched its way closer.
“Eye am who eye am,” it replied. Laughter came from beyond the doorway. The eye moved over me so I was within its viscous boundaries then it pulled backwards and I was yanked from the path through the doorway which shut behind me.
“My name is Heidi,” I said into the nothingness that surrounded me now. “Who are you really?” There was no reply but the sound of wind blowing through that desolate space.
“I require a guide for this place,” I said at last and a small eyeball popped up from the void next to me. It had stick-like arms and legs, and no physical body beyond one huge eye.
“Eye can see well enough for the both of us. Come with Eye,” it said, grabbing my hand with its twiggy fingers. The energetic creature pulled me down a path that appeared in the air.
“And who are you?” I asked as I raced through the dreamscape with my new guardian.
“Eyes that see. Eyes that hear. An eye for an eye, the eye of the storm, the eye in the door…” it continued talking in rhyming nonsense.
“Where are you leading me?” I said finally, exasperated with the conversation.
The Eye stopped and pointed. A tall stone staircase stood above us, waiting to be climbed. “Come on,” I said, beginning to take the stairs.
“Eye cannot go where the teeth will lead on the edge through the seas,” it said, apologetically. But, as it vanished, a pointed fang rose from the stairs and took my hand as the eyeball had.
“You must be Tooth,” I said, accepting my new guide’s hand.
“Sets your teeth on edge,” it replied and gestured outwards from the staircase. On either side, a stormy sea blew impossibly high waves towards the stair. As the tooth led me onwards, the waves began to crash onto the path and I was nearly washed off of it.
“Hold on to me,” said Tooth. “I am of the staircase and cannot be parted from it.” I discovered the truth of its words when the next wave hit as it was only by holding on desperately to its hands that I was kept from being thrown off the stairs.
Frantically, the tooth and I climbed the stairs but the waves grew stronger. Finally, after one last smashing strike, the seas calmed and the sun came out. Tooth and I had reached the top.
“The tooth will see you through,” it said and gave my hand one last squeeze. “You must seek the Maiden in the field.” Then, it sunk back into the stairs and was gone.
“But where am I?” I asked and shaded my eyes against the blinding light coming from the space. Wind blew, then ceased, then blew again. The light dimmed somewhat revealing a field of blue wildflowers.
As the wind blew, all of the petals came off of the buds in a wave of color. Then, when the wind stopped, the flowers grew back as a different color, this time, yellow. The wind blew, a yellow wave of petals flew off the field, and the field grew back red. This harvest of petals and color change happened again and again.
I followed the continuous stream of multi-colored petals towards a space in the center of the field. As the petals reached this area, they changed from flowery remnants into powdery words that gathered together to form the walls, roof and floor of a physical structure.
“Hello…” I called, approaching the house built of flower words.
The door to the home was thrown open and a young woman said, “Who comes into my realm?”
I watched another wave of petals change to words and then weave themselves into the structure of the house. “I am Heidi,” I announced. “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I am the Maiden in the Field,” she replied and I passed across her threshold.
Within the home, a beautiful lady with long flowing hair sat before a spinning wheel. As I watched, she took the end of one of her hairs and fed it into the machine. It didn’t rip from her head but somehow grew as fast as she spun it. Fine, gold colored thread overflowed from the end of the wheel, made of this goddess’ own hair.
“Lady,” I said, after observing her work for a time. “What is the field outside of this house?”
“The Eternal Flowers,” she said. “My children in a way. They support me here, always.”
“Have you another name, Maiden?” I asked.
The woman ceased her spinning and gathered her hair and voluminous green robes about herself. “I was once known as Hestia,” she said. “Goddess of the home, hearth, and all domestic activities. Come, see how I weave my thread. Then, perhaps, you can do the same.”
I followed Hestia into her house and she took me to a hallway that didn’t fit within the confines of the structure I had seen. This palatial space belonged in a castle rather than a cottage in a field. Along both sides of the hall, huge drapes, the type that cover the front of a stage, hung from the ceiling. Hestia pulled one of these back with a flourish, revealing a gleaming tapestry depicting the tarot card, Judgment.
“It’s beautiful,” I said as the goddess moved to the next curtain. “I can’t even imagine how long these works of art must have taken you to complete.” Rather than reply, she flung back the curtain and the next and so on down the hall. Hanging along both sides, the tarot deck shone out at me, woven in Hestia’s own hair.
“This way to the kitchen,” she said, leading me down the hall into a smaller space. A low, wood burning oven took up one whole side of the room and the other side contained a simple table and two chairs.
“Tell me, Heidi,” Hestia said, grabbing a large wooden peel and thrusting it into the oven. “Do you bake bread?” The paddle came out with six different loaves upon it. Each loaf looked different. One was unleavened, another burnt along the edges, but, of the six, there was a single perfect loaf.
“No, Lady, I can’t say that I do,” I replied. “At least, not at this moment in time.”
“Baking is an art as care of the home is an art,” she said, gesturing at the different types of bread. “See how small changes in the recipe cause such different outcomes?” Hestia took the perfect loaf and gave it to me. “Eat this, then gaze into my oven. We will see what you came here to learn.”
I took a bite of the loaf and the taste of honey filled my mouth. Then, I swallowed and peered into the fires of Hestia’s hearth. “Tell me, what do you see?” the goddess asked.
“I see a bull with pointed horns,” I said, watching figures moving through the flames. “He lowers his horns and runs at something outside of his herd.”
“Go on,” said Hestia. “And now what do you see?”
“I see a bird flying over the sea. It travels a great distance but never tires.” The scene within the fire changed once more. “I see an old woman lying on a bed, above her head there is a ticking clock.” I peered closer. “I am seated at the bedside, holding her hand.” The details became even clearer. “It’s my father’s mother,” I said finally and pulled back from the fire.
“Do you know the meaning of this vision?” Hestia asked. I shook my head negatively. “The bull with the horns, that is you in your inner worlds. Do you know what the bull was so threatened by?” Hestia gestured at her oven and the bull appeared in its flames but, this time, I was able to see the scene from further away and could perceive more details. “He was afraid of his own shadow,” she said.
Next, the bird reappeared, wreathed in flames from the hearth. “When a swallow leaves her nest,” said Hestia. “She may fly very far but she always returns home. If seen from the sky, the path she travels is always a circle.”
The vision pulled away from the bird and traced her flight patterns as if on a map. I saw many circles appearing in the air like flowers upon a petal. “She always moves in a circle but still she flies,” the goddess said. “The journey is the reason. You go again and again into vision but you return to where you began like a circle, bringing back knowledge from the worlds beyond with you. Trust me, Heidi, the journey is the reason for the repeating pattern.”
Now, my grandmother appeared again on her deathbed with me beside her, bathed in the flames of the bread oven. “Life itself is a kind of circle. From birth to death, all life travels the same journey,” said Hestia. “The woman who taught you how to bake and other homely arts, she ages, this is true though you do not want to hear it. Her time is drawing to a close here on earth. She is a wellspring of life experience and love for you, enjoy her presence while you may.”
I stood, angrily, and turned my eyes from Hestia’s flames. “I will not sit here and listen to you predict the hour of my grandma’s death,” I said. “I do not like it when the lives of the ones I love end on earth. It makes me feel separated from the infinite existence of spiritual reality.”
I ran from the kitchen down the tarot card hallway. I heard Hestia calling my name but I ignored her, exiting the house and running to the field of changing flowers. “Show me the reason why I am here!” I demanded of the field and suddenly the petals exploded into the air, filling it with a roaring wind of color and sound.
A voice came to me from the wind: “Why are you so angry, Heidi? You cannot outrun the truth of physical existence though you try very mightily to do so.”
“It seems so pointless,” I shouted into the whirling petals. “Shadows always return. The bird flies in a circle. Death comes to us all. Why do any of us attempt to build anything at all?”
I felt myself changing into a bird and was thrown into the sky by the wind. I blew through the heavens faster and faster, trailing fire in my wake, becoming a living comet. Then, I smashed to the earth and found myself sitting at the bedside of my grandmother as I had seen in the fires of Hestia.
I opened my mouth to scream but only petals came out instead of sound and dripped from my eyes in the place of tears. All was petals once more, but then, everything disappeared and I stood in a void.
Then, out of the nothingness, I saw the sun rising far away on the edge of the realm in which I found myself. The voice on the wind spoke to me again: “Do you know what else travels in a circle, Heidi? The earth around the sun. Everyone you have ever known in this life rides on a blue planet that travels in circles. In the future, this may change but that is the reality of the situation for now.” As the wind’s words drifted around me, I watched the sun continue to rise.
“Would you deny that life experiences of varied hues have worth? Would you deny the beauty of existence simply because you don’t want it to end?” said the spirit of the field. Then, in place of the rising sun, I saw my father’s mother lying sick once more. “Birth is an art. Life is an art. Death is an art and the purpose is contained within the journey.”
The wind blew a petal across my cheek like a falling tear. “Do not be sick of heart, Heidi, for there are many reasons you have chosen to be here at this moment in time. And, as the sun rises each day or as the bread rises in my hearth, so too will you. This I do promise you.”
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 