Network of Initiates

Alex Monroe Feather bracelet — Alex Monroe

Lucas stood up straight. He felt remarkably alert and energised, with no unpleasant symptoms or side-effects whatsoever.

Feeling on top of the world and filled with unusual zeal, he turned swiftly on his heel as if following directions from an all-powerful, albeit benevolent force.

Immediately upon turning, his eyes alit upon an extraordinarily bright and lucid body in the now-clear sky. He instantly reverted back to a trance-like state, with both eyes fixed on the beautiful blue light that was shining like a jewel. It twinkled vigorously and he was compelled to speak loudly and with peculiar emphasis:

“PUL-SAAARRR”

Then Lucas came back down to Earth and headed back up the stairs to his third-floor apartment.

As he turned another corner he spied the fullness of the moon, a perfect circle of such astonishing radiance that its dark-side was easily visible to the naked eye.

At first sight of this orb he ground to a halt like a rabbit stunned by headlights, feeling instantly and unmistakably reflective: “I’m a mirror”, he murmured thoughtfully and then paused as if searching for a reason. “It’s the mooooooon”, he added spookily, with an intonation that implied he’d achieved a fathomless knowledge of spheres.

What a night!

Shortly released from the lunar entity, Lucas bounded up the stairs with child-like glee, having absorbed enough energy to power a small village. Come to think of it, with his broad and extensive range of contacts, both personal and business-related, he had the virtual potential to do such a thing.

He was overjoyed by the thought of the brilliant network of initiates he could create.

So many people to start communicating with!

Once inside the flat, Lucas strode purposefully into the bedroom and lay flat on his back on the bed with his legs pressed tight together and his arms crossed over his chest. Within five seconds he was deep into a lucid dream world where radiant male and female angels in tuxedos and debutante gowns attended to him while he sat under palm trees before a turquoise ocean.

From the eyes of every one of them shone a dazzling and strangely penetrating, silvery white light.

The hour flies

“Deo Gratis!” the woman said with feeling.

The other voice – the one that seemed to be in Lucas’ head – came forth once again with perfect timing, the words forming organically like blooming flowers in his brain. As the words emerged the white light was transformed into a shimmering aura of translucent colour; pink, gold, violet and azure.

“ADSUN VIA AURORA AUSTRALIS ET AURORA BOREALIS.”

Her response was free of doubt: “You are lovelier than life itself. May you last forever.”

“FUGIT HORA”

The hour flies.

This time the unearthly voice was accompanied by the crystal clear sounds of a thousand bells ringing in harmony inside Lucas’ head.

“Esto perpetue”, the woman murmured softly, taking the words right out of his mouth.

All of the ordinary words were taken out of Lucas’ mouth. Without realising it, he had begun to make a strangely meaningful humming sound of his own, in an entirely spontaneous – yet somehow appropriate – response to the bizarre situation in which he’d found himself.

As the girl and the omnipotent light-sound-force conducted their intensely cryptic dialogue without interruption, from outside the window of number eleven an extremely supportive and repetitive Ooo-hhh-mmm-mmmm….Oooo-hhh-mmm-mmm…Ooo-hhh-mmm-mmm Shanti was provided by this exceedingly handy man.

Lucas would remain outside this window for just over two hours, chanting the Ohm without tiring, while the woman of his dreams conducted a conversation with a voice that appeared in his head – from God knows where – and spoke in foreign languages.

For the first in his life he understood several dead languages and one that was dying, although precisely what was said he could never quite recall, try though he would to piece the night’s events together.

As the parish church clock struck twelve, the spell appeared finally to lift. The light disappeared from whence it came and the woman inside the room got up silently and left the room, closing the door behind her as she went.

I am here

Lucas perceived a distinctly audible humming noise in the air, which started to sound increasingly like a distant rush of water, falling fast and strong over ancient stones from a very great height.

Endlessly falling, relentlessly rushing….

Or perhaps he was hearing static from the Earth’s electromagnetic field; maybe even the noise made by a pulsating group of planets or stars?
Shortly before he lost his mind completely, Lucas was destined to vaguely wonder why he had never noticed that unmistakable sound before.

The woman began to speak and at first her tone surprised him so much it was a shock. Two seconds later and her every word was like music to his bewitched ears.

“Je t’aime, te amo, ad infinitum.”

She was breathing deeply, her chest rising and falling with emotion, her hands lying on her thighs with the palms turned upwards.

Suddenly, supernaturally – apparently out of nowhere – Lucas perceived a voice of indefinable gender or origin. The resoundingly clear tone seemed to be coming from the centre of his head and to hear it was, somehow, the most beautiful sound he had ever experienced.

Even though the words were in a foreign language, he understood them perfectly:

“ADSUM”

I am here

The last thing Lucas thought was:

Who is here?

The Incredible Left Eye

Lucas’ heart had started to beat rather quickly. He assumed this was because his actions were illicit and somewhat unscrupulous, but this was not the only reason.

Also helping to raise his pulse was the extraordinarily potent white light that was emanating from number eleven.

Lucas could never have guessed that powerful, electromagnetic waves were drawing him nearer; he could no more have resisted the force than he could have hit himself hard with a mallet or swallowed his own underpants.

Inching forwards that little bit further, he failed to notice that his will was drifting away and his mind falling – second by second and with mathematical precision – into an inescapable, hypnotic trance.

Later he would note having felt a novel sensation of super-intelligence, which left him with a glow of total well-being, but also an ongoing and relentless desire for more: More of the intelligence and more of what he saw.

There was a two-inch gap between the pale green curtains and the top part of the window was open slightly. Like a lunatic, Lucas jammed his face up against the glass. His jaw dropped as he saw what was inside the narrow room.

Kneeling serenely in the middle of the floor, staring straight at Lucas with eyes that saw something other than him, was the most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes on.

Quite what it was that set her apart from other females, he could not have said, but weirdly, a visible ray of light spilled out from her left eye in a clearly discernible beam. Or perhaps it was pouring into her left eye from some external force. It was not clear which.

Whatever the case may have been, the woman pierced the depths of his soul with the light from her incredible left eye.

And then there was the sound….

33 Degrees

As he strutted past the row of third-floor flats with his hands in his pockets, confident of another successful evening, a peculiar chill in the mid-summer air made Lucas step up his pace. “Bit parky”, he muttered to himself, with an uncharacteristic shiver.

Lengthening odds and a cool breeze aside, this man’s progress to The George would have proceeded uneventfully and in precisely the same fashion as had occurred on most Saturday nights for the past fifteen years, had he had not fumbled with his keys and dropped them through a gap in the railings onto the second-floor walkway below.

He cursed under his breath and, instead of carrying on to the small private car park outside the flats, Lucas took a right turn at the second floor in the direction of numbers eight to twelve.

The outside lights had broken on this level and there was no visible moon to properly illuminate his way, for at that point of time it was hiding behind the only cloud – a great, dark skudder – in the otherwise crystal-clear sky.

Scanning the floor for his key ring, Lucas soon spotted a steely glimmer close to number ten. Stepping forward and bending down quickly, he scooped up the keys with relief.

That would have been the end of that had he not noticed a very strange light emanating from behind the partly-closed curtains of number eleven.

Lucas was not usually a nosy person, but something about the light seemed to draw him closer, almost against his will; almost as if he were being hypnotised.

For some strange reason, the closer he got to the window, the warmer the atmosphere became. By the time he reached the window-sill of number eleven’s spare bedroom, the temperature would register at a distinctly Egyptian 33 degrees.

The George and Dragon

We live in a changing reality to which we try to adapt ourselves like seaweed bending under the pressure of waters*.

The air was pungent and the sky was dark as thirty-two year-old Lucas White locked the door to his flat and headed off for his regular Saturday night appointment at The George and Dragon.

He was filled with anticipation for this usually predictable occasion, not least of because he and his friends were to be joined by an extremely attractive aerobics instructor called Kiera and her two bosom buddies.

Lucas hoped the evening might lead to a panting embrace in some dark alley or other while he walked Kiera home from the pub.

This embrace would – in his dreams – render her so helplessly overcome by his testosterone-fuelled animal magnetism that she would insist on dragging him upstairs to tear off his clothes, whereupon she would subject him to a naked horizontal (or even vertical) version of one of her sweaty routines.

To an objective bystander this may have sounded like wishful thinking on Lucas’ part, but there was actually a one in three chance that his dreams would come true before midnight.

There was also, however, a two in three chance that he would awaken to a deeper dream before the clock that night reached 11.

*The Leopard, Tomasi Giuseppe de Lampedusa

Precession of the Equinoxes

Descending twilight saw the Master sitting on the floor facing East in a distinctly prayerful posture, calling the Earth to witness. By the time the sun had set and Venus rose like a diamond on its band of gold, each cardinal direction and each of the elements had been called upon in turn.

Flame, Air, Water, Earth, Reflection; Starlight is the love inflection.

Looking up at the sky, the Master saw how the quintessential force was thrown into relief by the glowing pharos of Mars, silently beckoning his paramour as he bequeathed to her the dark and endless night.

The god of war was preparing his surrender at the temple of beauty, but he also had a message for the Master and this was the key to understanding other things:

Here in orbit turn the star-lings – planets binding, suns inclining – in such ways that whole dimensions fold inside the vaults of Heaven.

Mars was in perfect conjunction with Venus and the half moon, signaling the return of The Lovers to Earth.

Not only this, but the equinoxes were on the verge of their precession; together they gave rise to the most potent cosmic conditions that had been witnessed from Earth since the Star of the Magi heralded the turning point of history.

That the cosmic design might remain undefined was inconceivable, but how, precisely, it manifest was a mystery beyond even this:

“Meek”, He said, “the World is Thine,

This the reason: Just, Divine.

Bless these words, inform the start.

Energy, Created Art.”

Return of the Archangels

Saint_Michael_and_the_Dragon — St Michael and the Dragon

Host of Archangels returns: Praise the Lord!
Dissolved are the chains of impassable doors.
Survivors released make a way to home shores,
Looking not back as the gateways are closed.

Youthful-faced Uriel, hold fast the beast of Hell.
Healing force, Raphael, bring us to best of health.
Veiled with light Gabriel, let us inspire yourself.
Hold the fort, peace in heart, endless Lord, Mi-kha-ael.

Soaring Eagle

Half an hour later the Master re-emerged sans magazine or whiskey glass but clutching to heart an exceedingly large, old and important-looking volume.

The much-lamented loss of Pros Theon had abruptly ended a few short minutes after entering the small, cluttered bathroom, where it was at the bottom of an ever-increasing pile of toilet-reading material and duly rescued by its ecstatic owner.

Tremendously relieved, ten or twelve years of life added back on – a full Jupiter return! – the Master placed the book on the desk in the study, switched on the ancient desk lamp and turned to the penultimate section:

‘Los Días de la Transformación’; The Days of Transformation.

Translating and interpreting the elaborate text was a mission. It took every effort of will and much metaphorical ploughing for the book to yield its rare fruits.

After only half an hour the Master, who had a surprisingly short attention span for one given to meditating, looked up from the text and out of the window for inspiration. In that same instant a piercing set of eyes imparted the truth – a reminder – with almost unfathomable simplicity:

‘‘Forwards backwards; time is taking
Cosmic steps through every section.
Herein find the secret waiting:
Future from the past; reflection.’

Soaring Eagle then spread his wings and flew towards the Master, who felt like a very small child in that same instant and rushed towards the great bird as if pulled along on some invisible line between them.

Stoned Immaculately

Holy Krishna, Siddhartha Gautama, Christ the Lord, please don’t let it fall into the wrong hands! Forgive me for so carelessly misplacing it – I beg of you – let me find the book!

After at least another hour spent rearranging the whole of the small but extremely high-quality library, the Master ascertained that Pros Theon definitely was not on the bookcase. The situation had become intolerable.

For God’s sake, give me a sign!

A prayerful sound that was verging on the desperate escaped the Master’s lips, but still no response was forthcoming.

Did I put it in a safe place following the comet’s ominous portent?

This time the direct question yielded an instantaneous and equally direct response from a spirit guide.

No, you’ve lost it, man.

The Master sighed deeply. It had to be this one; why couldn’t Soaring Eagle have dropped by?

Any idea of where it could be?

Maybe it’s in the outer limit.

Yes, maybe it is, but I just need some light to be shed on where PRECISELY it is right now.

We need lights out here in the perimeter as well.

And why would that be? The Master scowled ferociously. As if we didn’t know already!

Because out here in the perimeter there are no stars, out here we are stoned….

Immaculately, yes, well, if that’s all you can say then I’d prefer it if you maybe meditated in silence or something, perhaps had a think about your shadow.

Hey, why don’t you just chill, man, it isn’t me whose lost it!

I can’t ‘just chill’ – as you so eloquently put it – until I’ve found the book. The Master leveled a thunderous glance at the ceiling.

Two more hours of anguished searching ensued, during which all the drawers were pulled inside out (the contents checked thoroughly for the first time in years) and every cupboard and closet, including the drinks cabinet, turned upside down.

Finally, giving up in despair, The Master poured a quadruple Jack Daniels and injected it with a splash of coke, smoked a large pipe full of pure marijuana and headed into the bathroom with a recent edition of Psychic Circular.

That’s the spirit, man, if you relax, it’ll find you.