Gate: Violet Eyes
I stepped through the vision gate and found myself standing within a cauldron. Its metallic walls rose through the mist within its bowl which was filled with multiple versions of the Horned King.
They were milling about until Badger and I entered the space at which point they all froze in place with their faces pointed in my direction. The silence and gaze of so many figures was oppressive and I began to feel their attention upon me like numerous spiders moving about beneath my skin. Badger started to growl because of my discomfort.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything to break the tension, when the sides of the cauldron were struck by an unseen force and gave off a loud bell-like clang. Once, twice, and thrice the walls sang and the figures, who had stood so still until that moment parted, revealing a stunted version of the Horned King in their midst.
At first, I thought the spirit was crouching as he was half the height of the other gods around us but, on closer inspection, he was simply very small with a hunch in his back. The top half of his head was the tufted and feathered shape of an owl but he had the mouth and jaw of the Horned King.
The mist cleared from around his face and I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were lidless and far too large, taking up about half of the surface of his face. Something moved within the depths of his eyes, a red light that danced and shimmered with a life of its own even though his pupils were not moving.
I gasped in a sudden panic under the power of the god’s fiery eyes and Badger moved to confront the figure. But instead of speaking, the Horned King made a gesture with one hand and a tunnel through reality opened behind him. Then, he disappeared within it.
The other figures within the cauldron remained silent and still during this encounter. They did not hinder or help me or my badger as we followed the god with the haunted eyes into another reality.
Now, Badger and I stood upon a beach during a violent storm at night. Lightning flashed across the sky and thunder boomed as the wind gusted, throwing waves and spray upon us. I raised my hand to keep the sand of the beach from blowing into my eyes. In the distance, a lighthouse shone, a welcoming beacon in the dark.
“That way!” I yelled above the tumult. Badger and I sprinted down the sand, stumbling now and then in the storm, shouting encouragement to each other as we went.
“It can’t be much further,” Badger said, panting in effort. “I’m going to assume my animal form now so that my feet will not become caught in this quagmire.”
“Clever plan,” I said, pulling one of my legs out of the wet muck. “I would fly to the lighthouse but I fear the lightning of the sky might strike me down. I think if we just keep pushing on as we have been, you and I will get there in the fullness of time.”
“Why waste time, Heidi,” Badger said. “Climb on my back and I will get you there even faster.”
“I never thought of you, my dear Badger, as a horse,” I said. “Let’s instead join our energies in one form as you and I together are greater than the sum of our parts. Remember the time upon the hilltop that we drove Fear’s avatar away together? Maybe that’s what we need to do now.”
“That’s not quite how I remember the story going,” Badger said. “But your plan has merit so let’s try it and see how we get on.” Badger and I pressed our foreheads together, becoming one being, and I looked through his eyes as he ran as light-footed as a cat or fairy spirit across the beach, hardly leaving an indent in the sand in our wake.
We reached the lighthouse’s base, separated into two entities once more, and could find no door into the structure, only a rough opening that led into further shadows. The moment we passed within the lighthouse the noise of the storm ceased and all was quiet once more.
The only light in the building came from above where a beacon shone to bring ships safely home and its revolving light illuminated a winding staircase that climbed the lighthouse’s walls to the upper platform.
Badger and I quickly and quietly took the stairs and arrived at the top just in time to see the Horned King with the haunted eyes of fire on the far side of the lighthouse. He made the now-familiar gesture with his hands, creating another door in reality, but this one became a tunnel within the world we were inhabiting rather than a gate. Before I could say a word in greeting, the god fled down this tunnel.
“I wish he’d stay still a minute so I could ask him who he is,” I mumbled. “I think I may know his identity but sometimes I mistake the evidence of my own eyes.”
Badger bumped into my hip to draw my attention. “Look,” he said, pointing a long claw at the mirror that circled the lighthouse beacon.
The mirror wasn’t reflecting the light but instead showed an Age of Enlightenment era school room filled with young boys. They were all dressed in clothing two or three centuries out of fashion. A middle-aged professor with an astonishing amount of facial hair was lecturing at the front of the class and his English accent came from the mirror like a television. I caught only glimpses as the mirror turned, but I discovered if I paced slowly in a circle, I could follow the rotation and catch more of the vision.
“Sound is related to vibration,” the professor said, holding up a glass and tapping it with his fingernail so it rang as he paced among the class. “The louder the sound, the bigger the vibration.”
The children in the classroom nodded along. “Any questions?” the teacher asked.
A small boy with tousled blonde hair who was sitting towards the back of the class raised his hand. The professor indicated he could speak. “What’s on your mind, Andrew?” he said.
“I don’t have a question about sound, sir, but something from mythology has been bothering me,” the boy said. “I would like to know your thoughts about it.”
The professor put his demonstrative glass down and tiredly leaned against the table where it sat. “What’s your question?” he asked. “I think we have enough time to entertain a detour from my lesson plan for today.”
“It’s a question of science,” said the boy. “And myth, as I said. How could Medusa have turned men to stone, scientifically speaking?” Titters erupted in the classroom from the other children.
The professor took off his spectacles and began cleaning them, appearing to my eyes to give some serious thought to the question before answering. “Though the mythological story of Medusa is a metaphor of spiritual matters,” he said slowly. “I confess I have often wondered the same thing.” He put his glasses back on. “Any ideas?” he asked the class at large.
“A chemical reaction,” one boy called out. “By combining elements perhaps the flesh might be changed to stone.”
“Chemicals produced by her eyes?” the teacher said. “I think not, Ryan, but thank you for giving us a place to start our inquiry.” There were a few more murmurs but no one else in the class voiced an opinion.
Badger bumped my hip once more, drawing my attention from the mirror. “Heidi, something is coming up the tunnel,” he said, the entrance of which still stood within the wall of the lighthouse.
I couldn’t see through the shadows at the far end of the tunnel where the Horned King with the haunted eyes had fled. But there was a hissing sound that was growing louder by the minute, indicating something was indeed coming towards us out of its depths.
“Hang on, Badger,” I said, rushing to catch up to the mirror with its classroom vision once more. “I think the professor is working up to an idea we need to understand.”
“He needs to work faster,” Badger said, stationing himself at the entrance where whatever it was that approached us would have to emerge.
I sighed. “There’s no rushing these things,” I said. “Even though sometimes I wish this was not the case. Please guard my back while I finish this lecture.” Badger nodded his head in consent and I turned my eyes back to the lighthouse mirror.
“…and her shape was changed into a monstrous form by Athena, if you recall,” the professor was saying. “What was her crime?”
“Being beautiful,” I said but no one within the mirror could hear me. “And being desired.”
“Performing sacrilege within Athena’s temple,” the professor continued when the class remained silent. “Why would Athena give Medusa, within the curse she laid upon her for her trespass, the power of life and death over men?”
“Because Athena hates men,” I said but, again, went unheard. “For they only value and view her for her body rather than her lightning quick mind.”
“Because the gods and goddesses were jealous like people,” the teacher said. “And demanded undivided attention from those who cared for their temples and sacrifices. This undivided attention consisted of both the body and the mind.” His pacing took him in front of the boy who had asked the question in the first place.
“I think, Andrew,” he said, his voice growing softer so the class and I leaned closer to hear what he was going to say next. “I think when Medusa gazed upon a man, the goddess Athena herself was looking through her cursed eyes and giving that unfortunate soul her undivided attention. I have no proof of this but I think life itself is a sort of sound, a vibration if you will, that the gods, the goddesses, and their attendant spirits have complete control over.”
I cupped my hand to my ear as the professor’s voice was only a little louder than a whisper when he said: “I think Athena silenced the life music in the men who dared approach her Medusa or her sacred temple spaces with divided attention. And that act of godly power, the silencing or cessation of vibration in the known world, was the as-yet undiscovered science that turns living flesh to undying stone.”
“The power to silence life’s music,” I mused as the hissing sound within the lighthouse reached a fevered pitch. “One would have to be able to hear the music first to do such a thing, I imagine. Badger, have you ever heard of something like that?”
“Music is the purview of the gods-s-s-s-s-s,” said a voice that was definitely not my Badger. I turned my eyes from the mirror and beheld a creature with hair made of snakes who pulled herself to the tunnel entrance. She balanced her upper torso upon a lower body which was shaped like an enormous serpent. As the lighthouse’s beam brushed over her face, it illuminated two empty sockets where storied eyes had once been.
She held up human hands that had talons like an eagle’s claw on the tips of her fingers. “I cannot see you, intruder, but I still have the strength of a goddess and can rip you to pieces for your trespass,” Medusa said. “How dare you come into my sacred home. You do not belong here.” She shifted her focus and reached for Badger so he squared his shoulders and prepared to launch himself at the threat in my place.
I raced to his side and pulled him backwards as Medusa’s claws raked where his muzzle had been a moment before. Gesturing to Badger for silence, I began to tip-toe backwards in a circle, following the lighthouse’s lighted mirror as it rotated and, in this manner, remaining a step ahead of the monster as she continued to menace us, speaking abuse and hateful words all the while.
My vague plan was to get to the tunnel entrance somehow and take it to another place beyond Medusa’s grasp but, by the time we reached it, another figure, the hunched Horned King with the enormous eyes, was blocking our way. He gazed at us with his unblinking eyes as Medusa came ever closer.
I pressed Badger and myself as close to the lighthouse beacon as I could and held my breath, hoping we had created enough space so that Athena’s monster wouldn’t touch us as she slithered by. But when Medusa passed in front of the tunnel entrance, she stopped and turned towards me, sensing my presence somehow even though Badger and I had not moved a muscle.
The lighthouse beacon turned and for a moment I was out of my body, looking down upon the scene – Badger and I clinging to each other near the center of the lighthouse, Medusa approaching, always approaching with her words of hate, and the hunched god in the tunnel entrance who allowed it all to happen under his watch.
Then, the lighthouse beam with its mirrored light shone upon Medusa’s face and, in my out of body state, I could easily see her reflection in the concave mirror with its English classroom. The classroom itself had disappeared and the mirror was simply a mirror once more. Within the reflection, appearing over Medusa’s shoulder, the Horned God with the haunted eyes looked directly into her face.
And Medusa, even with her empty eye sockets, somehow perceived the figure behind her in the mirror and she began to scream. She wailed and cried, and as she did so, the serpents fell off of her head and began to slither about the floor of the lighthouse, striking here and there at shadows which only they could see.
“My eyes, my eyes,” the goddess’ shadow monster cried. “Give my eyes back to me, you fiend, you interloper, you godless heathen.” But as the serpents left her, so too did her godly strength desert her and within moments she fell, lifeless and still to the floor, a Samson shorn of her hair.
I returned to my body and found I was still holding on to my dearest friend. Badger and I looked into each other’s eyes in stunned silence for a moment which was broken much too soon by the god in the tunnel’s doorway.
“Why didn’t you follow me down the tunnel, Heidi?” he said. “I would have led you a merry chase, one of the best that’s ever been seen.”
“I am unaccustomed to chasing those who want to speak with me,” I said. “Usually, they simply present themselves in my experience and we proceed from there. Who are you and how do you know my true name?”
“Guess,” the god said and seated himself cross-legged on the floor. “This should be hilarious.”
“Badger and I saw you among the others gathered within the Gundestrup Cauldron,” I said, puzzling it out. “I think you are an aspect of the Horned King, one who may not have been observed before, a new spirit so to speak. That still doesn’t explain how you know me.”
The god smiled and his shape changed, twisting and stretching, growing horns, until he appeared in the guise of the Horned King except his eyes continued to glow strangely with red light and shadows moving within.
“Getting warmer, well done you,” he said. “Kiss me, Heidi, and I will show you my past.” The god reached out a welcoming hand. I felt the red light from his eyes gripping my limbs, encouraging me in his direction. Badger moved to prevent my motion forward towards the Horned King but the serpents from Medusa’s head attacked him from multiple angles and he snarled as he fought them off.
“Heidi, don’t do it,” Badger growled. “Shapechangers cannot be trusted, especially with you.”
“She’s not afraid of anything,” the Horned King murmured as he pulled me onto his lap. “I’ve seen her in action.” My arms went around the god’s neck without any effort on my part. “See with my eyes,” he said and laid his lips upon mine.
As his kiss ensorcelled me, I saw through the Horned King’s eyes as if I was him and began to live his past.
I came from another world with the baying of the hounds of my enemies at my heels and my own blood staining my hands from a new wound. The portal I opened took me to an ancient forest in a young world where the creatures and trees themselves bent in obeisance to my power because their essential natures still dwelt on their body’s surface whereas mine had gone underground long ago. Where I wandered, they went also, moving or destroying anything that might hinder my path out of their fierce love for me and my unassuming visage.
On my command and because of my fear of the shadows that always found me no matter where I walked, entire villages with its inhabitants were swallowed by living trees and wolves the size of horses. My frown could change the river’s course. My smile could light a fire in the harrowed fields. My dance made all creation move in concert with me. My music put the fiercest villains to sleep upon their thrones even within their own spheres of influence. I was powerful indeed.
But the nearly-hairless creatures who walked about on two legs did not worship me as their animal brethren did beneath the trees of my forests. They built villages on hills, cutting the living and moving trees, my friends, down to create their palisades and fortresses of wood lined in stone. I watched as my armies washed about the various hill bases and threatened, but no longer engulfed, the life within the villages. In one settlement after another, they resisted me and my allies, a force of nature itself.
I ceased throwing my power where it did not conquer but waited beneath the forest’s eaves, seething in rage at my newfound impotence. I waited and watched, taking the shape of an owl, sitting for days or sometimes weeks at a time. The living trees sat as still as I did while they waited for my next command and eventually forgot they could move at all, let alone speak and share their incredible knowledge of the natural world with me and those who were mine.
The forest creatures lived, bred and fed on each other, becoming smaller and less powerful with each generation. My wolves the size of horses decreased in solidarity with their brethren though they could have remained as large as they desired for as long as they wished.
They too forgot about me while I waited and watched humanity’s evolution. And I marveled, I did, at the miracles I saw taking place before my wondering eyes.
Once upon a time, a child wandered to the edge of the wood and I enchanted him through the motion of a bee buzzing about the bloom of a flower. It was a small matter to me to take his form while he daydreamed and wandered through the village wearing his face. What things I learned among the humans this way!
At the end of the day just before sunset, I released the child’s mind and body back to his village, making him believe he had simply fallen asleep and passed the day away in that manner. But, as for myself, I had seen a new world, a world of tools and community, and a power stronger than anything that moved beneath the forest leaves- language or the spoken word.
Though I did not at first know or understand what I was seeing and hearing, I moved from one town to another, enchanting young children away into the woods of their own minds so I could take their conscious place among their fellows and friends. I absorbed stories and the magic of communication this way but I always, without fail, returned the child’s mind to his or herself when I departed. Another ironclad rule I followed was that I never embodied in the mind of anyone older than myself. My age, which I measured with my heart, was always newly arrived from my old world. Time itself ceased to have meaning for me as I existed in a perpetual state of effortless observation, discovery, and innocence of spirit.
It was there in the minds of my new world’s children that I learned stories of the gods and goddesses, titans and governments, businesses and churches, science and art- all the ruling powers of the civilized world beyond the forest’s boundaries. I was the young boy, Andrew, who asked how Medusa could change a man into stone. I wanted to know not only so I could take back what I believed was mine- dominion of the Earth and all who walked upon it- but also so that I could finally escape the relentless shadows that haunted my every step throughout time.
I believed the spoken word was the key to unlocking not only communication but also the music of the spheres, which I had such trouble hearing in this new place, and life itself. My music from my origin world was so different from the music I heard now. I hypothesized that my difficulty arose from the unique configuration of nature that existed in this new world but I was never able to confirm this suspicion because, with each new piece of information I learned, I forgot the corresponding detail from my home world. This happened more times than I could recall until I learned how to write things down and make art and music of my own.
Despite developing sophisticated coping mechanisms through countless years of education, writing, art, and music, sometimes I had to shut my eyes and ears to bear the horror of an ever evolving world where I felt I did not belong. After periods of rest and reflection in a timeless space where I hid during my darkest moments, I emerged anew, always willing to try existence again and never certain of what I recently forgot.
My personal Shadow never forgot anything and used this advantage to increase the shadow realm’s influence around my presence- a reality I was unaware of until it was brought to my attention far too late to do anything about it. I came to believe I was the source of my greatest fear, the shadowy hunters who had driven me away from my home world in the first place. I started to move through time more quickly and erratically in an effort to leave the shadows behind, even traveling back to times and places I favored rather than the usual forward motion through existence and evolution.
Instead of having a disheartening effect on my pursuers, my skill at evasion and gate creation only led them to greater efforts in their sadistic chase and they became more ruthless and systematically heartless each time they discovered me. Worse than the constant fear and anxiety their presence aroused in me, the shadows used my gates and my face and my voice to draw more power from my numerous allies throughout time as well as the world I was still desperately trying to understand and assimilate myself within.
It was a reoccurring nightmare that I wished I could escape but I never did because I could not see the path forward though the reoccurring failures of my past wars against the shadow were now alarmingly clear through the records of civilization itself. “Maybe this time,” I said to myself before emerging from the timeless realm to explore mankind’s world yet again. “Maybe this time I will learn fast enough so that the music of the spheres doesn’t play before I understand what it means. Maybe this time the shadow legions will be two steps behind me instead of breathing down my neck. Maybe I will find myself in a time and place that makes sense to me and I can sing my song once more. I miss my friends, I miss my place in creation, and I miss my home. Please let it be this time.”
Then, one lucky day, I embodied in the mind of a child who could hear the music of the spheres and who, though she did not have the words yet to speak it, intuitively understood what I already knew in my heart to be true. “Could this be my chance?” I thought. “Can I escape my own shadow with this particular spirit?”
I resolved to find out and stayed for the first time in that mind, ceasing my constant journey at long last. I knew the child wouldn’t mind because her soul was the same as mine. We were cut of the same cloth though how that could have happened was beyond my comprehension because, as usual, I forgot the most important detail from my past that would have explained our connection the moment I found her.
Images continued to flood my mind and they came faster and faster but my attention was drawn away from them because my hands were suddenly cold. I realized I was in the Horned King’s arms in the lighthouse once more. His fiery eyes were shut as he shared his secret heart with me and my hands were wrapped around a Gundestrup Cauldron that fit as if it was made for me in my own lap.
I pulled my mouth away from the god’s kiss. “Release me,” I said and began to struggle against his grasp. “I know you have been lonely for your other half as long as you’ve drawn breath and so have I. I know it because I was there with you the whole time. I never wanted dominion over this world as you did, I wanted to escape the shadows of our home world and never be injured again. I wanted to learn the music of our new world so I could help others move to creation’s patterns and find their happy place within it. But, most of all, I wanted to sing the song that was ours and ours alone because I love you. I always have and I always will because we are one soul. I swear to you, this is true.”
The god’s face was flickering back and forth between the Horned King with the eyes of fire and the owl man with Medusa’s eyes. “You will write it down,” the deity said. “You will release me from this forgotten realm where I am nothing but an image on metal. You will bring me into your world so that we may be one once more.” He shook me so hard my teeth clacked together. “Obey me for once in your timeless existence, Heidi! If you ever loved me, please make it so.”
I raised the Gundestrup cauldron until it was between us and struck it with the palm of my hand where it rang like a bell. The vibration moved from the metal into the flesh of my hand, causing the strength to leave the god’s arms and he dropped me to the floor. I struck it again and Medusa’s stolen eyes fell from his face, his own version of having his warrior head shorn.
The god’s true eyes were older, darker and afraid, just like my own. I was so terrified of what lay within their depths that I could hardly look at him. He had seen horrors of which he only allowed me to glimpse because my inner child’s spirit could not handle the truth of his shadowed reality. I took all this in at a glance and tears began to fall from my eyes.
“Release me,” the god whispered, his order becoming an echo of my own plea, as I smashed my hand to the cauldron a final time and its metal rang. The deity disintegrated and his spirit was pulled into the vessel I held in my hands. It flickered with red light for a moment then was simply a metal object once more.
Badger bit a final shadow snake of Medusa in half and, panting, raced to my side. “Are you alright, Heidi? Do you still know where you are?” my friend asked. “And who was he?”
“He was a very old vibration,” I said, carefully putting the cauldron down. “Someone as old as me and that’s saying something.”
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 