Gate: The Stomach of Jörmungandr
I entered the vision gate and found myself at a remote cabin in an ancient forest which was situated in a stark mountain range. Giants made of the night sky and spiders formed of the elements and storms occasionally made their way over the peaks, causing brief periods of disruption to the otherwise peaceful nature of the realm. I wandered the slopes of the mountain for days which turned into weeks, seeking a respite from the constant energetic pull of the Light Congress and their fight against the great shadow and their own darkness.
But there was little peace to be found. Despite the best efforts of my friends and fellow warriors of light, the Night King had slipped into the world of dreams, a hidden and elusive realm that had so many connections to the collective imagination of humanity that his paths were impossible to follow. He came to me in dreams almost every night in the guise of my loved ones and his trickery was only revealed by his actions which were designed to generate a feeling of complete helplessness and confusion with my spirit. They were usually successful and I resigned myself to his innate power over my nighttime dreams.
I would have been completely lost to despair at this time of seemingly endless transition if it had not been for Odin’s wolf, Freke. I met him long ago in the Garden of the Mind and he appeared to my sight as a giant gray wolf with golden eyes. Though he understood when I talked to him out loud, the wolf responded in mind-to-mind communication with vibrant images and emotions, revealing the leader of the wolf pack had a gentle soul. When Companion saw the cheering effect Freke’s company had on my spirit, he insisted that the wolf remain with me at all times, waking or asleep.
I was simply grateful for the company. Though Badger and Dream appeared whenever I asked, I found myself asking less and less because they were traveling further abroad in the Inner Realms, exploring the mysteries and patterns of existence in order to share the hidden knowledge with others. The purpose was to use the knowledge to help create a better tomorrow and carry the torch of Prometheus into the future for those who followed on the paths of existence.
And the knowledge was used for this purpose by the Light Congress. However, I also saw its use abused by others in creation who wanted to enrich themselves and their descendants at the cost of the less fortunate or well informed. More troubling than that, some of the patterns of the psychological development of the young were utilized by unscrupulous predators to trap innocent hearts in webs of inescapable situations of power imbalance, and those of the shadow realms used the innate abilities of the downtrodden for their own purposes and twisted agendas.
The shadows of those who took advantage of others were out of control and the only way forward that I could imagine was for all of us to take responsibility for our own shadow creations. In this way, I theorized, we could change the world for the better by working on ourselves and not just discovering forgotten knowledge. However, the predators of the Inner Worlds not only refused to take the paths of self knowledge, they built and strengthened the shadows of those they oppressed, creating an endless cycle of suffering, the samsara of the Buddhists made manifest through their repeated dismissal of others modes of existence.
“It’s so depressing, Freke,” I said as we reclined together in front of a cheery fireplace in the cabin in the mountains. “Nothing ever seems to change, does it? If the world must move in the patterns dictated by our existence under the sun, then why don’t we choose the best patterns? All I see are shadows running amok through war, hunger, poverty, political persecution…I could go on but what’s the point. I’m really discouraged.”
The wolf pressed his cool nose into my cheek, breaking my rumination. “Then speak to me of other things, Heidi,” Freke said, projecting his voice into my mind. “There is light on the other side of shadow, always. Tell me something new I have never heard and I will share a story with you.”
“You’re so well-traveled that this could be tricky,” I said. “But I’m certainly willing to give it a try.”
Over the next series of days and nights, I told the wolf lord stories, spoke to him of the Light Congress and other fairy tales. Freke knew of every topic and spirit that crossed my lips. After we had exhausted much of my repertoire, he asked me to sing for him, so I did. I sang songs and hymns, musical standards and whatever leapt into my mind. To my surprise, Freke knew music as well as I and shared that he had spent a great deal of time at Odin’s side, listening to the wandering bards of the Inner Worlds as they entertained the deceased warriors of Valhallah.
“Well, I give up, Freke,” I said. “Despite my inability to present you with a new story or song, I hope I have at least earned one in return.”
Freke opened his mouth and panted with his tongue out, his wolfish version of laughter. “We have spent enough time in conversation,” he said. “Let us take a journey, you and I, so that you can understand more of my true nature.”
“Very well,” I said. “I have hidden in the mountains long enough, I suppose. The Light Congress must be wondering where I have gotten to.”
Though I dithered around the cabin for a few more days, Freke continually encouraged me to brave the wilds of the world, so one afternoon I finally climbed aboard the wolf who was the size of a horse. He carried me on his back out of the safety of the cabin and raced through the woods with a speed that took my breath away. I lost track of how long we traveled before we abruptly stopped in a clearing where an ornately-carved throne made of black wood sat empty beneath a towering tree. Above the throne, two huge ravens circled slowly and came to rest in the branches of the tree.
The wolf grinned at me as I tumbled from his back and shook his body from his tail to the tip of his nose in happiness.
“The god is away right now because his throne is empty,” I said. “Why are you so happy?”
Memories of comfort and joy poured through my mind, all taking place in the vicinity of the throne. “And the goddess is awake,” Freke finished the image-filled thought with words.
“Goddess,” I said. “What goddess? We’ve met so many, you and I.” The wolf didn’t reply, but continued to sit by the throne, panting happily and emitting memories of peace and joy, until I decided it was time to go back to the cabin.
Once there, my spirit didn’t settle within me as it had before. I felt restless, pacing the woods around the cabin, looking for something or someone but what or who I desired was unclear. I began to hear whispers as I moved through the woods and lay down to sleep at night. Generally, the whispers were my name and at first I tried to discover the genesis of the voices by asking their identity.
“Yes, I am here,” I said to the disembodied voices. “Who speaks?” After a period of silence, the murmurs would return again, leaving me as unsettled and confused as before. Images and snippets of music would pop unbidden into my mind and I began to feel certain that someone or many someones were trying to communicate with me, but our connection was sporadic and not all of the images or words were pleasant. I was speaking to those of both shadow and light and it was unclear to me what either side desired of me.
Freke remained by my side during these new developments, experiencing my awakening and further psychic development in his unflappable way. I leaned upon his quiet strength when the whispers caused fear in my heart, the unmistakable fingerprints of the shadow or the Night King or the Devourer, but who was responsible remained unclear for they never spoke their identities- only words, images and songs.
“I may have made a mistake visiting the empty throne beneath the tree,” I said to Freke one night.
“Why?” the wolf lord said, turning his golden eyes my way.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said. “I think it awakened something that slept deep within my spirit. My connections to the Light Congress and their shadows are becoming real to me in ways I didn’t expect. It’s bewildering to hear so many whispers. I wonder if they can hear me.”
The wolf considered my words for a moment, his furry face unreadable to me though we had spent so much time together. “Who is the guardian in your Many from the One?” he asked at last.
“I have many who protect me in the Inner Realms,” I said. “But my favorite is Badger. We’ve had so many adventures together that sometimes it’s hard to tell where his spirit ends and mine begins.”
Freke sat attentively throughout my declaration, strangely silent and emotionless, emitting nothing to my mind whatsoever. “I would meet this Badger,” he said.
“Of course you can talk to Badger,” I said and sent out the call to bring my dearest friend to me. He appeared immediately, in his giant badger form, and bumped my side with his head. I smiled in welcome but the wolf lord fell into a crouch and started to growl menacingly. Badger responded in kind, curling his lip and emitting his warning snarl.
I put myself between Freke and Badger, blocking their view of each other with my form. “Stop it right now,” I said. “Despite whatever has transpired between you two in the past, you’re both on the same side in the great struggle against the shadow, I swear it.”
“What sort of guardian allows shadows to walk like the ones I’ve seen in her?” said the wolf. “You are no guardian, maybe a shadow in badger clothing.”
“Who are you to judge me?” said Badger. “Heidi hides her light here, exploring nowhere and speaking to no one but the Whisperers and you allow it. You are the predator, not I, Wolf.”
Freke started to grow in size, and advanced, gnashing his jaws together so his sharp teeth showed in an unmistakable threat. “This one needs a guardian,” he said.
Badger grew larger in response, like looking in a mirror. “This one has me,” he said.
“Useless, cowardly creature,” Freke snarled.
“Ravenous beast,” Badger growled back.
As both spirits continued to ignore me and advance on each other, I threw myself on the wolf’s snout so he couldn’t attack my friend. “Peace please, Freke,” I said. “Please, for me. There’s enough going on in my mind and heart; I can’t have my companions fighting as well.”
The growl died in his throat and he shrank back to large rather than mammoth-size. “He doesn’t deserve your loyalty,” he said, to my mind only.
As I pulled Badger into my spirit, his form disappeared from sight. “You don’t understand,” I said, rubbing my chest as Badger’s still-angry energy joined my own, causing my heart to ache. “He is me and I am him. We are two who are one.”
The wolf pulled back from my arms in confusion. “You said he was a guardian,” he said. “Guardian is not self.”
“Maybe not in your world,” I replied. “But he led me to the path of the Light Congress and has walked beside me for much of the journey. Sometimes, I feel like Badger is all I have.”
Freke shook his head in negation. “Untruth,” he said. “For now I am here and I intend to stay.”
And that was all we spoke on the matter. Then, we fell asleep, curled up together in a warm heap in front of the fire. My sleep that night was dream free and I was grateful for the change.
“What’s your true name?” I said in the morning, feeling more refreshed than I had in ages. The wolf opened his mouth wide, stuck his tongue out and panted at me, laughing again.
“You know it,” he said. “I’m Freke.”
“Not your common name, Freke,” I amended. “What do you call yourself? The names we give ourselves are the most powerful, you know.”
He put his head down on his great paws before answering. A series of feelings swirled through my spirit, too fast for me to grasp their meaning. “I didn’t catch that,” I said, rubbing my forehead as the feelings quickly subsided, leaving a slight headache in their wake.
The wolf’s sides rose and fell in a deep sigh. “He-who-finds-uses-for-things-of-Odin,” he enunciated crisply.
“Things of Odin,” I replied and the wolf gave a snort of assent. “What things?”
Instead of talking, Freke lifted his head and pressed his snout to my forehead. When he removed it, I felt a cool circle of moisture upon my skin from where his nose had rested, directly above where my third eye would be.
“You’re so weird,” I said, rubbing my face against his neck to remove the tickling feeling from my forehead. This time he didn’t bother to respond, but I felt agreement in his silence. “And alone in the worlds,” I continued. “I thought Odin had two wolves, not one.”
Freke sat up straight, dumping me unceremoniously onto the floor before the embers of our fire. I laughed as I picked myself up, but fell into silence when I saw the serious way the wolf was regarding me. His head was tilted slightly and he blinked slowly, looking at me from the corner of his eyes instead of the direct gaze I was accustomed to.
“What’d I say?” I asked and a feeling of deep melancholy came from the wolf and took root in my heart. “Where is your Geri, Freke? That is her name, isn’t it?”
The wolf’s eyes rolled back into his head as he raised his nose towards the ceiling and gave a mournful howl. As he did, a series of images raced through my mind: the full moon, white fur, the forest floor, Odin in his hooded cloak. Then, as the howl died in Freke’s throat, I felt something awaken in my spirit behind my belly button, manifesting as a surge of new energy.
“Don’t cry,” I said, throwing my arms around the wolf’s neck. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m so sorry!” He took a few deep breaths as if preparing to howl again, but I didn’t release my grip on his neck and I could feel him taking comfort from my presence as I had so often taken comfort from him.
Though I didn’t speak the truth of the moment because I wanted to spare him unnecessary pain, I knew some as-yet unknown power had come to life within me, ignited by Freke’s summons. As the wolf and I settled in front of the fire once more, I made up my mind to go into vision at once and find the newest member of the Light Congress.
Within the mountain cabin, I cleared my mind as my breath entered and exited my lungs, then I heard the crashing of waves upon a shore and opened my eyes to find myself transported to a beach filled with crystalline white sand. I stooped to bring a handful of it to my face and saw it was anima mundi. For within each grain of sand, there were myriad images that twisted and spun, a holographic echo of the entirety of creation. I walked once more upon the building blocks of life itself.
Then, I turned and gazed out over the ocean, which was the color of fresh blood. The waves crashed into the shore as usual, creating a froth that I imagined would stain the sparkling, white sands. But, when the waters retreated, the anima mundi was as untouched as the rest of the beach, shining with a light that came from deep inside of it.
“I cannot flourish beneath those waves,” I murmured to myself as I watched the sea surge and retreat. “I’ve tried and failed, but here I am again.”
As I contemplated what to do next, I felt a sadness within me, building in intensity. It was a familiar feeling, the ache of the wound that doesn’t heal. As the pain moved from my chest to my fingertips and back again, I resigned myself to the inevitable and walked down the shining sands into the blood-like water. It reached my knees, thighs, stomach, chest, and I didn’t stop. I continued until the waves were moving far above my head and I breathed the blood in, praying for an end to my pain.
Deep under the ocean, I continued moving forward, the tears on my face dissolving into the waters around me. But then, far away on the horizon, something swirled and twisted in the depths.
At first, I thought it was a shadow, but in the little light that drifted down from the sun somewhere far above, the thing gave off a brilliant, deep green light. The green was quickly consumed by the ruby red of the waters but it was still perceivable if I looked directly at it.
Once I ruled out the possibility of a monster made of shadow, I thought perhaps I was looking at a wall, an enormous construction of some sort of plant or vine that ran along the ocean floor. “I must get closer to be sure,” I thought and summoned the currents of the place to take me there.
It grew in my vision until I was next to it, gazing up at the green something that rose to the height of a modern skyscraper. I placed my fingers to its surface and felt tiny ridges lining it in concentric shapes like scales.
It was then I realized that this was one small piece of a serpent and far larger than anything I had encountered before. Now that I was so close to it, I could see the snake was moving, inching forward so slowly that I could have kept a walking pace with him if I desired.
Even as the thought entered my mind, a piece of the snake’s skin retracted and I was gazing at a doorway through the side of the serpent into the unknown. Hesitating for a moment only, I walked through this doorway into a great domed room where the green light of the serpent shone through the encroaching darkness. The blood of the ocean remained outside, kept back by an unseen force on the threshold. A foot of clear water was in the space and I splashed through it.
In the center of the domed room within the belly of a snake which circled the world, someone glowed with a different light, a light all of her own. I was pulled towards this light, compelled not only by its brilliance but also by the gnawing feeling in my chest because there was an answering sadness here. I fell to my knees beside the still form of an enormous wolf.
I knew, somehow, her fur was white, the brilliant white of the sands of anima mundi, but here, within Jörmungandr, she was covered in blood and viscera, and she wasn’t breathing.
“Goddess have mercy,” I cried and pressed my weight to the side of the wolf. “Creator of All, hear my plea and deliver this one from the shadows.” Again and again, I threw myself onto her ribs, forcing blood out of her lungs and mouth. Just as I was going to give up the effort, the wolf stirred, twitching one of her forepaws and emitting a hacking cough.
I wrapped my arms around the wolf’s neck, pressing my forehead to hers and lending her both my strength and Freke’s. “I am here with you now, don’t be afraid,” I said. “I swore to Odin I would not let him fall to shadow. That promise extends to his friends as well.”
I visualized the forest in the immediate vicinity of the mountain cabin and reached with my spirit towards the promise of safety it always provided for me. In a blink, I pulled the two of us there from the belly of the great serpent where we appeared in a puddle of blood but otherwise unscathed in our escape.
I remained at her side until the wolf opened her eyes, then I pulled back to give her some space. As the white wolf began to stir, I felt a gentle pressure in my mind and then she spoke as Freke did, directly to my spirit. “Where?” she asked simply.
“A safe place with safe friends,” I replied, and as I did, Freke made his appearance from somewhere deep within the ancient wood. He was beside himself, shimmying and bumping into Geri, and I feared he might do her some further injury. But, there was obvious affection between the two as she leaned into him and he started to lick the residual muck off of her muzzle.
“Come, we must return you to your former glory,” I said and led the pair to the cabin, where I ran some water into a silver bowl. Using a cloth, I rubbed it over the white wolf, filling the bowl with blood, emptying it, and beginning again. Between Freke’s and my attention, she was soon clean and I marveled at the beauty of her gorgeous white coat.
When she flopped to the floor in front of the fire in weariness, I felt my consciousness pulled into her form, becoming one with the white wolf. Suddenly, my teeth were too big and my legs were too long and I was bone-deep tired. As I settled, I searched Geri’s memory for how she came to be in the belly of the snake.
Suddenly, I heard Odin’s voice echoing in my mind, reciting a story he told me years ago:
“I traveled once to a far land where blood fell from the sky like rain and the plants that grew from this water were twisted and obscene like mouths with teeth for leaves. With much difficulty, I passed through this jungle and within its deepest reaches, there lived a tribe of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.”
But this time, instead of simply hearing it, I was living Odin’s story as a large white wolf who traveled at the heels of the god.
He continued:
“They had hair of blood red and eyes like the bluest sky though the sky never showed its face there from beyond the blood rain clouds.
I was enchanted from the moment I laid my eyes on the first one. They challenged me to my maleness because the women said that the plants within their realm consumed all male creatures. I explained that I was no ordinary man, but a god, and that I would walk where I willed. Again, they challenged me, so I bedded all of them in turn.
After three years, three months, and three days, they were finally sated and convinced of my manhood. They took me even further into their realm where sat a palace constructed of a single blood red shell. Within this shell, sat the Queen of the realm, her red hair the longest of any of them, filling the palace with its lovely waves. I had to tread upon it to reach her, but when I did, she unrobed for me, revealing one final beauty for my enjoyment.
I lay with her and when I did, she changed into a sea of blood. I drowned within her waves and when I opened my eyes again in the land of the living, I was suspended from the great tree by my leg, the blood of the Queen herself dripping from my body.
That was the second time I died and came back to life.”
When Odin disappeared from the sea of blood, the white wolf who had traveled faithfully at his side had remained, drowning eternally beneath the waves of the Queen of Blood. I saw and lived this reality through her eyes as she lived the same experience through my own sad history. The moment I felt I couldn’t stand it any longer, a merciful angel in the form of a monstrous snake came from the nothingness beneath the ocean and swallowed the wolf, where she remained in a form of half-life, half-death, until someone entered the darkness and brought her out.
My vision ended as I fell asleep in the form of the white wolf and prayed for some dreamless rest at last.
The Light Congress 