Gate: Judgement

I passed through the vision gate and found myself in a field of wildflowers under a bright, midday sky.  Spirits in the shape of young women in old fashioned bonnets moved here and there in the field, picking flowers.

“Hello, my name is Heidi and I come from another world,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“My sisters and I pick the flowers of the field for ourselves, to please our eyes and nose with their pleasant colors and smells,” one of the women said.

“But when you pick the flower, it begins to die,” I said.  “Wouldn’t it be better to let them grow so others could enjoy them too?”

“At the moment of birth, everything begins to die,” said the maiden.  “Let us have our enjoyment while we may.  There is no harm to it.”  She called her sisters and the women rushed towards me.  They began to pile their flowers into my arms and laughed at how many they had been able to collect.

As a group, they turned and ran from me, laughing and dancing among the remaining flowers in the field.  “At the death of the bloom, there is a release of fragrance beyond the norm,” called the maiden.  “It is our gift to you, Heidi from another world.”  Then, the dancing sisters disappeared from my sight.

I lifted the blossoms to my face and inhaled deeply.  Then, with a flourish, I tossed the flowers over my head where they changed into a golden cloud of light and this cloud descended around my head and shoulders, trailing the delicious fragrance of the flowers and making the whole valley appear to shine with gold.  As the cloud reached the ground, it gathered around itself into the shape of a powerful man swathed in shining cloth.

“Who are you?” I asked in surprise. “I have never heard of an armful of flowers changing into a god.”

“I have many names,” the god said, as his features crystallized into those of an older man with a flowing white beard. “But you know me as Zeus and I ask that you call me, ‘Father’. Why shouldn’t a god emerge from flower blossoms?”

“Well, it’s not that one ‘shouldn’t’ do something,” I said. “I’ve just never read a myth that goes that way before. Anyway, Father Zeus, my name is Heidi, we met once long ago, and I am pleased to stand in your presence again, however that may have occurred. What are you doing here?”

“I enjoy the laughter of the maidens,” the god replied.  “Their play and innocence reminds me of what it was like to be young and vital, and in remembering I embody that aspect again. It is an ability one receives when you exist in the timelessness of the moment as I do.”  As he spoke, his hair changed from pure white to the deepest black.  His beard disappeared and instead of being clothed in a robe, Zeus wore a hunting outfit made of brown leather and green cloth. 

He reached up into the sky and seemed to touch the bright sun.  “This isn’t right,” he said and twisted his wrist. “The path ahead requires some concealing shadows.” Under the god’s influence, the sun changed to a full moon shining in the night sky.  Zeus gestured that I should follow him so we moved together through the fields of wildflowers in the sudden darkness.

“Where are we going, Father?” I asked. “Despite the briefness of my visit, I was enjoying the fields of wildflowers. Could we not stay a moment more?”

“We’re off to find an adventure,” the god replied. “Left to your own devices, Heidi, you might stay in the field for ages. It is time to take another step down the path to self knowledge. Don’t worry, you can thank me later.”

“I would thank you now, because I never know when I’m going to run into someone again in the Inner Worlds,” I said. “My future is in your hands. Maybe some day when my journey is through, I can come back here and spend more time among the flowers until I learn their secret language and then we can talk to each other.”

The god laughed. “And you thought a deity emerging from the blossoms was strange,” Zeus said. “It’s not nearly as bizarre to my mind as a woman who chats with flowers.”

“I think all in creation have knowledge to impart if only we knew how to communicate with them,” I said. “I know my ideas are somewhat odd. Thank you for walking the path with me despite them.”

The god and I finally came to the edge of the seemingly endless field of wildflowers and moved into the darkness of a forest filled with trees.  Ahead, a bright bonfire appeared.  “We must move silently now, Heidi,” Zeus said. “The pixies do not allow outsiders to observe their rituals.  Allow me to clothe you in further shadows.”  He waved his hands over the two of us and we disappeared from sight.  I moved towards the fire again, unable to see or hear my companion or my own form, which was slightly disconcerting at first until I got the knack of traveling as consciousness without a body.