Gate: Venus of Willendorf
As Companion reached out his hand to help me stand from the floor next to Hades’ coffin where I had fallen, my consciousness was pulled into the Venus statue in my hand before I could speak a further word to the ancient lion spirit.
Through the statue’s gate, I saw a group of sky giants gathered around a massive game board. There was only one piece on the board and it looked like me. They picked the piece up and passed her around, moving me to and fro on the board in some sort of arcane pattern but I couldn’t understand what it was. This continued until one of the giants raised his hand above his head and smashed me.
I blinked and was laying in a field of wildflowers. Badger appeared beside me and pulled on my arm to raise me from the field. “Come to the Castle Skye with me,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
I looked up and saw the shining castle, standing at the edge of the field with its drawbridge down. Badger and I moved together through the flowers and across the bridge to stand before its gates, but I hesitated at the door.
“What’s wrong, Heidi?” Badger asked. “Don’t you want to explore the castle anymore? I’m sure there are still treasures to be found for those who seek them.”
“It’s not that I want to give up the search, Badger. There’s a trick to entering the Castle of Skye,” I said. “But I can’t remember what it is because it has been so long since I visited.”
“I think you should knock anyway,” Badger said, laying a comforting paw on my arm. “I believe in you.” Taking courage from his words, I raised my right fist and knocked three times on the door.
A viewing window opened in the door of the castle and a man with an ornate cap stood behind it. “Why do you wish to enter the Castle of Skye?” asked the doorman, suspiciously.
As the spirit spoke, I remembered the Castle Skye holds what you seek but first you have to pass through what you are. It grants all desires but you have to know who you are to reach your destination. It was as difficult or as simple as that.
I cleared my throat. “I’ve come to heal the wound that does not heal,” I said. “Would you please let me in?”
“Enter,” said the doorkeeper, shutting the viewing window, and then the gate flung itself wide.
The door opened not onto the light-filled hallways and rooms of the Castle of Skye but instead it revealed a stone staircase lit by torches that led downwards into darkness. The red light flickered as Badger and I made our way down the stone steps.
The walls were so close on either side that if I spread my hands I could touch both walls. After a few steps, I put my right hand on Badger’s head for comfort and we continued our journey onwards and downwards.
Deeper and deeper we went into the shadows. A window into further darkness appeared in the wall which I only noticed because it formed a darker shadow in the red light. As I passed, a paper airplane sailed from beyond and hit me in the middle of my forehead before tumbling to my feet. I picked it up and unfolded it. On the creased paper were the words, “Go Back.”
I looked at Badger and he looked at me. Neither of us said a word as I crumpled up the paper and tossed it back through the window. Then, our journey began anew.
From below, a drum beat began, pulsing through the stone of the staircase. It was so deep and compelling, it changed the rate my heart beat and the flickering red light of the stairs began to match it. Our pace down the staircase increased so that, when we suddenly reached the bottom of the stair, we nearly fell into a room at its end.
The tribe of the lost Gargantua were in this new space. They were just as I remembered them- short of stature and very cute with small horns standing up on the end of their snouts both male and female. The tribe was tied by ropes in long lines and strained in unison to pull an enormous statue from the floor where it laid in a horizontal position.
The drum beat told them when to pull and its call was incessant. BOOM went the drum. The pygmies pulled, the ropes went taunt and the statue began to rise. But, just as it seemed the statue would come off the floor, something smashed into it from above, pushing it back down to the floor again.
The drum sounded again, they pulled, the statue rose and the cycle repeated, over and over again. The tribe was exhausted, yet they continued to struggle against the ropes to the beat of the drum that was also the beat of my heart.
“It is enough,” I said, raising my hands. “This fearless tribe has suffered enough under the weight of the expectations of others.” I focused my energy and used my mind to lift the statue the rest of the way off of the floor. As I felt the resistance increasing, I recognized the statue as the game piece the giants had been manipulating on the board. I pushed through the pressure that desired to keep the game piece on the ground until finally it stood upright at last.
As the statue settled to the floor, the tribe of the Gargantua took a deep breath and released it, as one entity rather than separate beings. Their outbreath changed them into living flames that traveled along the ropes binding them to the statue and they passed into her through her carved eyes and mouth. The statue filled with fire and her eyes came alive. Her mouth opened and flames began burning within an enormous, living furnace shaped like me.
I stood before this new being with my Badger and the flames came shooting out of her mouth, changing from living fire to small, twinkling lights like fireflies, faeries or the living thoughts that flow perpetually from the Divine Mother in her garden. As I came to this realization, the room changed again, filling with vines and yet more lights. The statue began to flow like water, condensing and shrinking, until she wasn’t a statue anymore at all but a stone altar.
“Divine Mother, are you there?” I tried to call into the vines and lights and darkness, but when I opened my mouth, the flames that had come to life in the furnace were now in me. They came streaming out of my mouth and burned through the Mother’s vines, leaving a scarred and empty patch behind.
I covered my mouth with my hands, but the flames began to seep out of my eyes, creating the same devastation in the vines even when I just glanced at them and igniting the darkness about the altar, banishing the watching shadows.
In order to prevent more destruction, I closed my eyes and, with my hands over my mouth, I laid down on the altar in the midst of the vines. For a time, I knew nothing else but the pain of holding in living flames for the fear of destroying everything and everyone around me.
When I thought I couldn’t stand it a moment more, I felt a gentle touch on my arm. “Open your eyes,” he said. I shook my head, but he nudged me again. “Your fires do not consume me, I promise. Open your eyes.”
I bit my lip as I raised my eyelids, but whatever was causing the flames to pour out of me before seemingly stopped. Someone stood over me, a shadow with many arms like a god from the Hindu pantheon. The arms caressed every inch of my body and I felt the fires within me draining into the shadow of the one who could stand the intensity of my presence in the Inner Worlds.
At first, I was grateful for the new god’s reality in my existence because I could have my eyes open without the flames shooting out and harming everyone around me. But then, as the arms of the god continued to move over me, I just wanted them to stop because my inner fires were sinking so low that I became afraid they would go out.
“Leave me be,” I said, but two of the god’s arms changed into a creature from the deep ocean and he wrapped two tentacles around my head, sinking their ends into my ears. As the god entered my mind, I heard him begin to speak again in multi-layered whispers. Wherever he touched, the flames retreated, leaving a searing cold and numbness in his wake.
“Abandon all hope, ye who would enter here,” he said. “This is the end for you, Light Congress.” I felt the light in my eyes going out and all giving way to darkness. One of the shadow’s many arms raised a knife, preparing to send it into my heart and I found myself welcoming the end if only to make the pain stop.
Then I felt Badger fling himself on top of me. “I love you, Heidi,” he said, as the shadow’s dagger entered him instead of me. “Let them have me in your place.” I watched the life go out of his dark brown eyes, then his body dissolved.
The knife went up again, and Dream appeared, sheltering my body with his own. “None shall harm you through me ever again, Heidi,” he said, sacrificing himself in my place and it went on and on. The Light Congress flung themselves between me and the knife and I witnessed the end of all of them, one after another. After the first dozen of my friends departed my reality, I felt a numbness enter my spirit and my voice left me so that I could only watch their selfless actions on my behalf in stunned and helpless silence.
The last to the altar was the Inner Child, who appeared not separate from me, but within my very womb as a child yet unborn. Even so, the knife found her and pierced my flesh. The shadow creature with the god’s arms dragged the knife upwards, splitting me in two, but I had lost so much and all my friends that I just wanted the pain to stop and I welcomed the end of all things.
Through the latent power of the Light Congress, I was still awake and aware as I lay in two pieces on the altar, one of deepest shadow and the other of shining light. I thought I had nothing left to give, but in the center of my chest where my heart resided, one final light shone. My innermost spirit pulsed and glowed though I could not imagine what was keeping her going.
One of the shadowed arms of Abandoned Hope reached out and when he touched all the love that I had left within me, I blinked, and was sitting in the field of wildflowers in front of the Castle of Skye once more.
“Come to the Castle Skye,” Badger was saying, pulling on my arm to help me stand once more. I rose to go to the castle again, thinking I must have failed in my first attempt to enter its hallowed grounds, when a paper airplane came sailing out of the sun in the sky and struck me in the forehead. I uncrumpled the paper and written within were the words, “Go Back.”
I pulled my hand from Badger’s grasp and clasped the paper to my suddenly fearful heart. “Badger,” I said. “What would you do to assist me if I told you I was afraid to go on? I feel the return to the Castle of Skye will be the death of me.”
“Point me at the monster causing you to fear,” he replied without hesitation. “And I will save you.”
“What would you do if I told you the monster was in me?” I asked.
Badger laughed. “I wouldn’t believe you,” he said. “You are no monster.”
“What would you say if the way around the monster guarding the path to healing the wound that doesn’t heal was to sacrifice everyone and everything I love,” I said. “To give up all hope of healing or light and to give myself over to the shadow.”
Badger’s body was wavering in and out of existence now. The sun was blinking in the sky. One moment it was pure sunlight, the next it was the flickering red light of torches against stone. The wildflowers changed from shadow-wrapped vines to colorful blooms and back again. Where Badger had four appendages, suddenly he had six, then eight, then more.
He appeared as a god-formed kraken made of shadow when he said, “Then I would say give up all your hopes and dreams. Stay with me, please, Heidi. I do not want to wander the paths of the world tree alone.” My vision shifted and I realized the god’s tentacle arms were still in my ears, changing my perception of reality, and the sacrificial knife was raised above my stone altar, preparing to strike the last bit of living flame from my body.
“I can’t give up on my dreams,” I said, allowing the lingering pain to flood my senses once more and remind me of my purpose for being. “For love is who I am and all that I have left. My dreams were all I ever had and I will share them with you, but never abandon them.” With those words, I saw myself dissolving into particles of swirling light like the blinding radiance that comes from the mind of the Divine Mother herself.
As I did so, the god roared in anger, flinging his arms this way and that, trying to gather my light back into one form so he could sacrifice me on the altar of the Gargantua’s furnace. Within the particles of light of my disembodied state, The Light Congress danced and played, alive and vital once more. Badger and Dream and all the rest nipped at the god’s form, chasing him from one corner of the room to another and back again, a deadly dance of war as we fought for our very existence.
One moment I was a cloud of light floating around the room and the marauding ruling power, the next moment I entered the shadow of the god, taking my brightness with me. I multiplied myself so for every particle of darkness the god contained, I had an answering particle of light.
I put myself back together within the god and he exploded outwards, changing into ropes of ivy, which continued to pull the bits of shadow into himself until finally I was standing in a dungeon room filled with torchlight, an altar with a small piece of the vine, and nothing else.
Light dripped from the open wound on my chest and formed Badger, who pushed himself between me and the altar. “The god your Shadow loves yet lives,” he said and I saw he was right. Small tendrils appeared from the center of the darkness upon the altar, reaching outwards and growing as they became the grasping arms of a powerful deity once more.
“If he can’t be banished from reality because of Shadow’s fierce love, perhaps he could be contained,” I mused. I visualized the altar changing and the rock flowed back into the shape of the furnace statue it had been when we first entered the room. The drum beat of my heart began again, but before I could respond to it, the roof lifted off the room and there were giants peering down upon Badger and I from high above.
One of the sky giants reached in and lifted the furnace of the Gargantua, passing it from hand-to-hand before putting it on a game board that sat between them. They moved my furnace statue with the power of a god inside of it here and there in a game with rules and victory conditions that only they knew. Then, in an echo of the beginning of the vision, one of the giants smashed the statue beneath his mammoth hand and there was an explosion of light from the game board in the sky.
Faeries emerged from this light as if from the mind of the Divine Mother and began to dance upon the game board, dodging the grasping hands of the sky giants who were trying to corral them in first one direction and then another.
“That should keep them busy for awhile,” Badger said. “Heidi, we need to find Love, Eros, Dionysus and the great tiger god, Khan. All four went missing when Odin returned the sun to the skies. Are you up to the task or have you been too injured by shadow to journey on?”
I took a deep breath in and out, reminding myself of my mantra of love as I did so. “Badger, in some ways I feel like this was a task I was born to complete,” I said. “With you and the Light Congress by my side, anything is possible. We are only bounded by our dreams now for we have literally been to hell and back.”
“I’m so very glad to hear you say that,” Badger said. “For Merlin has returned from the Khan’s palace with someone who very much desires to meet you and join the ranks of the Warriors of Light.”
“Lead the way, my friend,” I said. “I am completely at your disposal.”
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 