Gate: Five of Wands

I stepped through the vision gate into a blasted landscape. The world was a barren wasteland composed of dust and waiting shadows. Suddenly, across this empty realm, there was a rumbling sound like thunder and energy swept across me in a rush. I looked towards the source of the sound and perceived a great mass of charioteers riding straight towards me. Then, just as I considered the danger of being trampled by the army, I was swept up by one of the riders and placed on the chariot with him.

“Hello, warrior,” I addressed the one who had saved me. “My name is Heidi and I come to this place seeking your true nature. What is your name?”

“I am Samson the Undefeated and the leader of this host,” the great warrior responded as I studied him. He was clothed in the now-familiar burnished red and fiery armor of the war gods whom I had thus far encountered on my journeys. Long black hair sat upon his shoulders and he carried a long spear tipped with a wickedly sharp point made of the same metal as his armor.

“What are we doing here, Samson?” I asked. “This world has been ravaged by war. I miss the sight of green and growing things.”

The warrior gave a short, rough laugh. “So do I, Heidi, but sometimes my presence is required in realms such as these for we are the Warriors of Light,” he said. “We ride against the shadow wherever it may be found and the loss of natural beauty about the battlefields can be a sacrifice on the altar of Mars like all the others.”

I looked ahead to where our passage was taking us and beheld another great host gathering on the horizon in opposition to my current company. “You ride towards more conflict with the shadow,” I sighed and held on as the chariot rattled over an errant stone.

“We are always in conflict with the shadow,” Samson agreed. “It is why we exist. Why do you exist, Heidi?”

“Good question, Great One,” I said with another sigh. “Maybe I exist to dream up new modes of moving through reality. Do you think there could possibly be another way to handle this confrontation with the shadow? It seems like a pointless struggle and waste of resources to me since it never ceases.”

“What other way might there be?” the warrior said. “The banishing of shadow is never a waste of time or resources for our actions benefit all the worlds. The result is worth the sacrifice.” The chariots of the army halted as they reached their destination, a strategic spot some yards distant from the gathered shadow forces. Samson gestured for me to leave his chariot as he and the other soldiers raised their spears to their shoulders. “For the light!” the warrior screamed and in a great rush, the armies raced towards each other across the desolate field.

I found the ground rising under my feet and looked across the battlefield from my new vantage point. On the far side of the fighting armies of light and shadow, I saw my shadow self standing behind the warriors of darkness and observing as I did. Ridges of earth rose beneath both of us causing Shadow and I to move higher and higher above the battlefield. As mountains began to form beneath my feet, I found myself floating off of the ground and among wispy clouds wreathing the heights of the new earthen formations.

From this immense height, the warriors with Samson appeared to my eyes as a shining, white liquid. The shadow army formed a point of darkness at the center of the warriors of light. The mountain ranges of earth on either side of the battlefield moved briefly over the light and the dark and I realized that I was gazing into the eye of a giant made of red earth. The battle with its attendant warriors was his eye. The giant seemed transfixed by the struggle in his mind and his mouth gaped in a perpetual scream of conflict and pain between the light and shadow of his being.

I kept moving further away and I found myself holding a crystal ball with the suffering giant of war in its center. I realized I was back in the Treasure House of my Imagination and carefully put the artifact back into its chest upon its standing pillar. “Michael,” I called as I shut the treasure’s lid upon the nightmare. “I need your help please.”

“Back again so soon, Heidi?” Michael said as he materialized at my side and took my arm in his. “What realm are we exploring today?”