Gate: Eight of Pentacles

The Great Library

I entered the vision gate and found myself in a cathedral of learning. Books were stacked from the floor and continued upwards to a vast, vaulted glass ceiling through which I could see the blue skies above with a few puffy white clouds. Standing along the walls, scholars pulled tomes from the collection upon the shelves and stood reading in quiet contemplation.

“I am in a library!” I exclaimed quietly. “I have always loved libraries, centers of learning, literature and community. I know just where to find a guide in a library.”

I approached the closest help desk, well-lit and prominently placed in the foyer. The floor of the entry way was a complex mosaic made of multi-colored tiles that shone with their own inner light like the sun. The picture within the mosaic was so intricate that I could not figure out what it was supposed to be depicting and the lights made it even more opaque to my sight. “Though,” I thought to myself as I walked across it. “The overall effect is quite pretty, a lovely entrance for a library.”

Behind the desk, I beheld a spirit who looked just like me. We were so similar from head to toe that it was as if I was looking in a mirror. She blinked when I blinked and even smiled like me when I said, “You look so familiar, almost like we could be sisters. What is your name?”

“The Spirits of Learning call me Heidi,” the help desk attendant replied. “Welcome to the Great Library, whoever you are.”

“Heidi is also my name,” I said. “I can’t get over how alike you and I are. I wonder if it means something.”

The spirit bearing my name laughed and for a moment I saw a cloud of shadowy serpents around her body. This impression quickly faded from my eyes and then she appeared again as a woman just like me. “I’m a librarian, you know,” the being said. “What is it that you do? For work, I mean, to put food in your mouth and a roof over your head.”

“Well, I’ve tried many different occupations in my life but have yet to find a perfect fit,” I said. “At various times I’ve been a librarian like you as well as a journalist, retail inventory expert, columnist, script writer for a non-fiction internet series, legal secretary, social media expert and the list goes on a bit depending on how you describe the work I was doing or the roles I was filling at various companies.”

“Ah! A jack of all trades,” said the Heidi librarian. “Just like me.”

“I suppose so though that also makes us a master of none,” I said. “Please, Heidi, I need your help.”

“What kind of help?” the librarian replied. “I’m sure I can assist you as I am one of the most helpful persons in this place. That’s why they stationed me at the front.”

“I need your help in finding a book,” I said. “I imagine that I was sent to this time and place to find one book in particular but you have so many I don’t know where to start.”

“Easy as pie to find a book in this library,” she said. “Which one do you want?”

“I need the book that is most appropriate for me at this time,” I said. “I’m sorry I don’t know the title or author. If I knew details like that, this would all be so much easier.”

Entering the Library Proper

The librarian stood from behind her semi-circular desk made of darkly varnished wood. “Have no fear, Other Heidi. I know the location of everything in this library,” she said. “We will find your book for you. Follow me.” As she moved away from her chair, I saw an enormous set of gray feathered wings sat upon her shoulders.

“Lovely wings,” I said, admiring how the light from above reflected off of her feathers like oil on water. “I wish I had wings just like yours. Are you an angel?”

My comment caused a chuckle in the librarian’s throat as I followed her deeper into the library. “Me, an angel? Only if all the spirits of this library are for we all have wings here,” she said when her mirth was spent. “I suppose we get used to them after a while and don’t even notice that they’re there anymore. Thank you for the compliment anyway. It’s a new one in my experience.”

As we walked past countless stacks and shelves stuffed to the brim with books, scrolls and digital devices I did not recognize from my waking world, I caught glimpses of the other patrons of the library though their countenances were concealed from me by the light pouring from their faces. “What is this place called again?” I said. “I know you told me but I’m having trouble remembering what you said.”

“The Great Library, Heidi,” the librarian responded patiently. “Every book that has ever been or will ever be written resides here.” She ran her fingers along the books on the shelves we passed, deftly skipping from one tome to the next.

“You describe the impossible,” I said. “If you have every book that will ever be, you would have to exist at all times, simultaneously.”

“As long as physical existence has been, so has this great library stood both within and out of time,” the librarian cryptically replied.

“No wonder they call it ‘great’,” I said. “Seems to me that we should come up with some new words to describe a place like this.”

“We’re always open to suggestions,” said the librarian and we continued on in companionable silence.

After much walking and observing of scholarly wonders and seekers who shone like stars, we came to a metal, spiral staircase. The steps of the stair were intricately worked floral patterns woven into grates and the handrail was a well-polished spiral of dark wood like the entryway desk. I felt the smooth texture of this wood upon my palm as I followed the winged version of myself up the stairs to a high walkway above the rest of the library.

Back we went, the librarian and I, along the walkway beneath the library’s glorious vaulted ceiling. At the end of this long path, and it was very long indeed because it ran the length of the building, the librarian produced a skeleton key and inserted it into a locked door. “Welcome to the special collection,” she said as she turned the key. “Your destiny as well as your book is within, Heidi. Please make sure to keep your voice down. The guardians of this room are incredibly sensitive to sound.”

I passed through the door and entered a circular room that had a distinctly different feel from the rest of the library. “How can you be sure what I need is in here?” I whispered as a shadow passed across my heart. “I don’t want to cause trouble with any library guardians. I just want to find the book that was meant for me.”

“It has been my sacred calling for ages untold to guide those who enter this library to their desired destination so do not be afraid,” the librarian said as my feet crossed the threshold. “You are quite safe here. Take my words as a promise from one librarian named Heidi to another.” Then, she shut and locked the door behind me with a definitive click.

The Special Collection

The room wasn’t particularly large but I couldn’t see much of it because there was a bright light shining directly down upon a podium placed in the center of the space. Small particles of dust occasionally passed through the light, though I could see no other spirits in the room who were causing the rising dust motes. I walked to the speaker’s podium, taking care to make my steps as quiet as possible, and picked up a large, dark brown book from its smooth wooden surface. The book I believed I had come to this world to discover had no title but on the cover was the symbol of a tree inset in an oval.

With much anticipation, I opened the book to examine the pages but they were all blank. I released my held breath with a sigh of disappointment. “What might the purpose be of a book with no writing in a library that holds every book ever written?” I mused. “I have to say, I am rather disappointed. Maybe I’m missing or forgetting something important again. Let’s keep looking and see where that takes us.”

I shut my book and, beyond the podium, I noticed another door whose wood matched the library’s wall so perfectly that it would have been possible to walk right by it and not notice its existence. Praying the door wasn’t locked, I tried the handle and it swung open silently on expertly oiled hinges.

Through this doorway, I discovered a long hallway filled with more leather-covered books, lining its walls in double shelves on both sides. Along their spines, they each bore the same symbol that was on the front of the book I held from the podium.

I wondered silently if the hidden journals belonged to seekers like me and I felt a sudden fellowship with these unknown explorers from different worlds and times. Like my librarian counterpart, I trailed my fingers along the books as I walked the hall and it began to get smaller, the walls nearly collapsing in on themselves the further I traveled down it. The hall ended in a blank wall which contained a spark of bright light which I knew intuitively was a gate to another place.

A whisper came from the tiny illuminated gate in the wall. “You have to pass through the eye of the needle to continue on, seeker,” the voice said and a further hush descended over the hall. I felt suddenly as if the other journals along the hallway had eyes and they were all focused upon me.

“I have trouble understanding how a wall is like a needle,” I whispered to the journals and whoever was speaking to me through the gate. “At any rate, I shall have to leave my body to move through an opening this small. Good thing I have an excellent imagination.”

I took a moment and visualized myself turning into a particle of light or a mote of dust similar to those I had observed bobbing and weaving through the air of the special collection of the Great Library. My book fell out of my hands as I pulled my spirit into myself and it came to rest below the tiny gate of light.

“I am dust,” I murmured as I grew smaller and smaller. “And to dust I will one day return.” With that simple thought and a brief feeling of motion in my heart like a thread passing through the eye of the needle, I passed through the wall of the library into a new place.

In the Presence of a God

I now stood in an open space with nothing below or above me but darkness and I floated suspended in the air. Before me, a mysterious spirit wearing an orange, hooded robe hovered as well. “Hail, Great One,” I said and nodded my head in respect. “Did you pass through the eye of the needle too?”

“Long ago, New Spirit,” the being said. “I passed through that particular gate long ago. Welcome to my world.” He nodded briefly in my direction as well and then he pulled a bright red apple out of his robes. He brought the apple to his mouth and took a large bite, giving off a satisfying crunch as he did so. Through a mouthful of fruit, he murmured, “Who are you and why are you here?”

“My name is Heidi and I come from another world, seeking the true nature of all I encounter in the Inner Realms. I thought I was sent to the Great Library to look for a book to assist me in my life journey but a librarian and I found it and it was nothing like I expected,” I said. “So now, I think perhaps it’s best to simply inquire about the nature of this place and make that knowledge into a book instead. Do you know anything about this world’s nature and reason for being?”

“Ah, then you seek me,” the spirit said. “For I am the center of this world’s universe.” The being threw off his orange robes, tossed his half-eaten fruit aside and I watched it disappear into the void. A wooden throne appeared in the air behind him and he seated himself rather carelessly with one of his legs thrown over the throne’s right arm like a spirit of eternal youth made manifest.

But no child was this. The spirit in the shape of a vital young man bore a winged cap on his head, Roman sandals on his feet, wore a short white tunic and carried a wand shaped like two serpents intertwined. With a flick of his wrist, he gently tapped his left cheek with the wand. As he did so, I had a quick glimpse of two shadowy serpents circling his body and realized I was gazing at the winged librarian whom I had spoken to earlier and who had so cleverly copied my face and form that I had believed I was speaking to myself.

The god laughed down at me from the heights of his throne because he knew from the look on my face that I had realized his trickery. “You would know the nature of Mercury for that is who I am in this place and time,” he declared. “You passed through my gate with flying colors and have therefore earned an audience with me. Tell me, seeker called Heidi, what is the purpose of change?”

“The purpose of change is growth, survival, adaptation, and evolution,” I responded, the words springing magically to my tongue. “Among other things. Why did you sit at the front desk of the Great Library bearing my face, Lord Mercury?”

“Thus is the nature of Mercury, change and eternal evolution,” the god said. He shifted slightly in his seat and put both of his feet on the ground which had appeared beneath us as we had exchanged words. “I played at mirrors with you because no one has come to see us in a very long time or sought our wisdom,” Mercury said. “To our surprise and delight, you not only showed up as predicted but you amused us and provided a type of entertainment that we had forgotten even existed, the teasing of a mortal mind. If you ask for a boon from us, we will grant it. But first, seeker of truth and essential natures, we would know why you bear your name.”

“My parents named me ‘Heidi’ because my father liked the name. It is no more nor less complicated than that,” I replied. “Lord Mercury, I ask of you only what you think is fit for this stage of my journey. Boons can be stumbling blocks when you’re walking in worlds of the spirit.”

My vision shifted the moment I finished speaking and suddenly I was viewing Mercury from his left side and the details of his face became as clear as looking into a mirror. The god had raven black hair brushed effortlessly away from his forehead beneath his golden helm. His eyes were heavily lashed and dark though I could not perceive their color. His skin was as smooth and unblemished as marble and his face was shaped in such a pleasing manner that none I had ever seen in my waking world held a candle to him. Beholding the god’s real visage hit me like an intoxicating wave in that otherworldly realm and I found I had to shake my head to clear my eyes of his immortal beauty.

“My goodness, he’s gorgeous,” I thought to myself. “I suppose Lord Mercury was made to look that way so that the gods’ messenger would always be received in the places he is sent to. To my mind though, Eros himself could not be more attractive than this god. I hope Venus will forgive my impugning of her son.”

As I had my frivolous passing thought, Mercury rose from his throne and was carried aloft by his winged hat and sandals, lifting his hands in benediction above my head. “May you find what you are seeking and may you be protected in your journey. May the roads pass easily beneath your feet and may every door open itself for you,” he said. “Every time you experience laughter in your search, may you remember I, Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, a harmless trickster and musician as well. By remembering me, you honor me, Heidi.”

I smiled at the god, grateful for his blessing. “Thank you for your generosity, Lord Mercury. I will not be able to forget you even if I try to do so,” I said. “The mirror game is far more dangerous than I ever imagined. They should warn seekers about it.”

My vision ended with the god’s laughter.