Stranger in a Strange Land
*
Shaman of Centraxis 18
*
“I looked at my hand and arm, and they were the same; all my joints were clearly articulated and every part of me was transparent. Every living bit of me was visible, all interlocking in a seamless throbbing cooperative where nothing was separate. When I focused on any particular level or detail, it magnified and became much clearer.” The teenage shaman licks the edge of the small sheet of rice paper with a darting tongue-tip and absently rolls the grass joint into a near-perfect tube.
“So it’s true, what they say about you,” Leo observes. “You Northerners don’t use filters, do you?” Ram’yana bestows a brief indulgent smile on his friend and continues his rave; “When I looked at everyone else in the room they were all perfectly normal, except I could see auras around their outlines and colours were swimming all over their skins. The other trippers all had the same light glowing in their eyes, as if their heads were lamps with burning wicks inside them; unlike the rest of the party, who were mostly just stoned and pissed.
“But I couldn’t see right through anyone else unless I really concentrated.” The hippy rips a strip of card from the pack of papers and rolls it into a small cylindrical spiral. “When I looked down at this body it was easy, automatic; all my organs were alive and individually conscious – all communicating with each other - and everything was surrounded by colours and filled up with light.”
Leo crosses his legs and cups his chin in his hand. “So you believe people have auras?” Ram’yana fixes the other lad with an unblinking stare, unsure whether to openly declare his unusual beliefs to his naturally sceptical friend. He’s accustomed to Leo enacting the role of mentor in their conversations, and as he speaks with the slightly older teen he feels a little uncomfortable at the shoe being on the other foot. “I do,” he says.
“And you do, too, by the way… it’s a greenish flame with an orange core, and blue flashes and blobs are circling your eyes. There’s a slowly swirling purple spiral moving around your head like a smoky turban. If you relax your attention and just see for a little while…” Leo returns Ram’s fixated look and they sit in silence for half a minute and stare into each other’s eyes. “All right,” he says. “I can see something, but it’s probably just an optical illusion. Go on.”
“Try practicing in a mirror,” his friend advises. “Later that same night…” the shaman recommences, but Leo interrupts; “I can sort of see a bluish fringe around your head and shoulders, but it may be a trick of the light.” He glances at his feet and shakes his unkempt mop of hair. “How long did the acid last?” His dark brown eyes traverse the shaman’s body and settle upon his face.
“All night, really – but I was really peaking out for two or three hours. Most of the rest of the time it was a lot more contemplative and peaceful; less of an uncontrollable roller-coaster ride – except for the part where I lost my virginity.” He addresses his friend’s inquiry before it can be voiced; “It was my sixteenth birthday. Anyway, later on, when the party wound down, I was waiting for a saucepan to boil - and you know what they say about watched pots…” He squeezes the small cardboard spiral into the end of the joint. “It seemed to take hours to boil, though it was probably only a few minutes. While I stared into the water I could see the flames of the gas jets outlined inside the liquid – their shapes went right through the metal pot and wavered like holograms inside the water; the liquid held the forms, perfectly visible as extended jets of fire. The tips of the flames were the places where the bubbles started to form on the surface. There were six of them, in a perfect hexagonal lotus, rising up inside the water like extensions of the flames beneath the pot.”
He notices that Leo’s eyes are glazing over. “You see?” he says. “I told you it was hard to describe…”
“No, no,” Leo demurs as his eyes snap back into focus, “that’s really amazing. I was just trying to visualise it… It’s sort of like I thought it might be, after reading John Lilley.” He reaches toward the top of the piano and retrieves a paperback, balancing The Doors of Perception on one knee as he leans back on the stool. “And do you have… I don’t know, insights? Does acid enlighten you - and do you think it can be dangerous?” Ram’yana smiles as he takes a breath; the question is one he’s heard (and answered to his own satisfaction) unsurprisingly often.
“As Leary says, ‘it’s all a matter of set and setting’,” he quotes. “And purity, of course. You only want to score from a dealer who drops the stuff they sell themselves.” His mind spins for a moment at the unintentional double entendre. “Your mindset and the setting you’re tripping in have to be and feel just right – preferably in natural surrounds away from the city, in a place where you’re perfectly comfortable and can let it all hang out - otherwise you can get overpoweringly paranoid, or otherwise have a real bummer, man. It’s best if you’re tripping with good friends, somewhere exceptionally beautiful and comfortable – and the same is true for mushies, natch.”
“So I’ve heard,” Leo replies, incessantly nodding his head. “Have you had any bummers?” He stares at the shaman while Ram’yana pauses to phrase his response. “Quite a few,” he admits after a lengthening interval. He’s unwilling to discuss his recent near-death experience with his older friend, lest he put Leo off the idea of tripping entirely. “The trip magnifies whatever it is that you’re going through – or whatever you have to see in yourself, and we all have a lot of programming and other shit to work out. But I’ll keep on tripping – though not too often. You need to leave at least a few weeks between trips, to recharge the batteries.”
“Or brain cells. Do you develop a tolerance?”
“That’s one reason,” Ram’yana agrees. “Though I wouldn’t worry about brain damage - not unless you think you’re a bird and jump off a cliff or out of a window; and those stories are really just urban myths, you know,” he hurriedly adds. “You can’t believe those bullshit stories; you’d have to already be seriously unhinged to do something that stupid, or at very least mixing your drugs – unless you were easily led, and allowed yourself to be hypnotised by someone like Charlie Manson, maybe.” He reaches for the box of Redheads. “But you need time to assimilate a trip – it’s a life-changing experience, and waiting for your tolerance to catch up with you is kind of a safeguard. The visuals are amazing, but they’re just the icing on the cake.”
Leo riffles the pages of The Doors of Perception. “So what’s the actual cake taste like, then?”
“Oh, God…” Glimmerings of the continuing story that his higher faculties oft parade before Ram’s monkey mind return to him as Leo awaits further elucidation. “Uhh…” A magnificent tale of epic proportions unfolds through the teenage mage’s inner landscape, a multivolume Book of Life interspersed with episodes of science fiction-like visions and real life adventures right out of the matinee serials of his childhood. He recalls some of the ongoing series of notions and teachings that have accompanied every climactic peak of each feature-length trip during the young shaman’s year-long experiences with LSD. “Um…”
He goggles at Leo as his mind reels, and Ram’yana is awed afresh at the import of the living legendry that has incorporated his resurrected being into an ancient and continuing nonlinear lineage - a tapestried narrative of interwoven ancestors and descendents that stretches between the poles of time in an infinite nesting series of curling helices. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way; I know it sounds stupid…” He struggles for words. “All I can say,” he finally declares, “is that evolution isn’t over. Our immortal coils are strung out halfway between a heavenly consciousness and our animal senses, partaking of both and neither.” He takes a deep breath and plunges over the brink of common credibility; “And… there was – and is - a war in heaven…”
As he awaits a likely untoward reaction from his erstwhile mentor a sudden rapping sounds on Leo’s door. Ram’yana conceals the oversized joint in his hand when his friend’s grey-haired yet blossom-cheeked mother enters the room with a tray of gefiltefish canapĂ©s. “Don’t mind me,” she says in a well-concealed Polish accent, “but I was sure you’d both be hungry. Your friend looks so skinny, Leo! Do I know your parents?” She watches the way her son’s guest eyes the comestibles. “You aren’t a vegetarian, are you?” The word is tinged with a blend of suspicion and sympathy. “Fish aren’t meat, you know.”
“Almost,” Ram’yana replies with a winning smile. “But I still eat fish every now and then. Thanks so much!” When his mother has finally left them to enjoy the oily preserved fish, Leo wipes his hands on his trousers and spins his stool around to face the piano. He locks his hands together and flexes his arms to crack his knuckles. “Do you mind I play something for you? I wrote it myself.” He swiftly opens the keyboard cover and strikes a chord that resonates throughout the chambers of the double brick home before his guest can respond. For the next forty-five minutes an extraordinary outpouring of melodic arpeggios and complex progressions weave an intricate yet breathtakingly uplifting tapestry of sound; a symphonic creation which fills the boxy bedchamber with all the heart-felt young passion of Leo’s unsullied delight.
Yet even as he leans back in the overstuffed chair, enthralled by his talented friend’s amazing concerto, thoughts of Natasha fill a slowly increasing proportion of Ram’s attention. The girl’s alluring image is accompanied by a weird mixture of inspiring lust, insistent curiosity, empathic concern, expectant anticipation, compassionate regard - and the young shaman assures himself that the insuppressibly nascent glow in his breast signals the wondrous tender blossoming of undeniably genuine love.
He yearns to tell Leo about his accidental meeting with the girl they both knew so well when they were younger teens – and to subtly grill him about anything he knows of Natasha or her family. Yet he can’t bring himself to betray the unspoken pact that lingers between them. The memory of the girl’s beautiful smile imbues him with a distinct awareness of her heartfelt trust in his discretion. He recalls the desperate hope that shone in Nasher’s tear-swollen eyes when he assured her he’d return on the morrow. How can I possibly ask Leo for information or advice about Nasher or her brother without triggering his suspicions? He’d almost certainly catch my drift…
When the impromptu performance draws to a resonant conclusion Ram’yana draws his consciousness back to the small bedroom and greets the last reverberations of the final chord with effusive applause. “That was really something else!” he crows, leaning forward to read the handwritten sheet of musical notation sitting on the narrow shelf of the piano. “And you’ve written it all down note for note?”
“Yep,” Leo agrees, “Just like the real thing.”
“Wow, man – I never knew you were so good. That was fantastic!”
“I’ve written some songs, too, but… you really liked it?” Leo’s expression betrays an insecure suspicion that he’s merely being flattered by his old friend. “It was great!” Ram’yana assures him. “You need to record it!”
“It’s not quite finished…”
“Well record it anyway!” the shaman encourages him with an effusive thumbs-up. Leo slumps on the piano stool, rotating from side to side on the circular seat that surmounts the thick wooden spiral. He flicks his long black fringe from his eyes and a forlorn look slowly dislodges the enraptured expression that had lingered after the music’s reverberations faded to inaudibility. “What’s the point?” he sighs. “I could never be a musician.”
“Why not? You are a musician, Leo – like it or not.”
“Oh I like it,” he agrees, reaching for a canapĂ©. “Love it, in fact. But let’s face it, it’ll never pay the bills – and my parents would go nuts…” He crunches down on the slimy fish and the cracker crumbles onto his lap. “They expect me to go into law – they’ve given up on medicine.”
“But what do you want to do? You don’t really want to be a lawyer, do you?” The shaman almost spits the word out with a venomous disbelief.
“Are you kidding?” Leo glares at him incredulously. “Who in their right mind would want to be a fucking lawyer?” He smoothes his hair and wipes crumbs from his chin before brushing the detritus from his lap. “If it was possible, I’d like to try a career as a musician… maybe get together with some guys and form a band… but it’s just not going to happen in real life.” His right hand drops to the keyboard and a diminished minor seventh vibrates through the sudden stillness of the plastered chamber. “Except as a hobby…” Ram’yana tries to prise open a chink of hope in his friend’s hangdog demeanour. “Is there anything else you can see yourself doing – and enjoying?” he asks. What about writing? You were always a great storyteller…”
“Funny you should mention that.” Leo spins around on the stool to face his friend and his eyes begin to regain a glimmering lustre. “I’ve been toying with the idea of becoming a journalist – but my father says ‘Look what happened in Balibo.’ Then again, he thinks walking through a foreign city is still as dangerous as it was in the war.
“But that’s something I might be able to do – if I can get a cadetship on some great metropolitan newspaper or other.” He closes the piano’s cover. “I could be another Clark Kent, maybe; but a musical Supermensh?” he sighs. “No way, I’m afraid. What about you?” he asks the Centraxian shaman with brightening effusiveness. “What do you want to be - when you grow up?”
“Do you mean what do I want to do – or to be?”
“There’s a difference? To be, I suppose – or not to be…”
After a pregnant pause the shaman replies. “A Renaissance Man,” he announces; “And a really great lover!”
The Cold Wanderer glares through the narrow chain-fastened slit of the suburban front door. His darkly framed eyeglasses loom beside a tattered bumper sticker that reads ‘Maintain the Rage!’ “Oh,” he says, “It’s you.” Ram’yana frowns through the slim gap while his friend undoes the chain. “Awa Ken,” he declares. “Expecting someone else?”
“Not exactly; yer have a pretty thick hide comin’ back here so soon. Must be an act of foolhardy bravery – or desperation.” Wanderer shakes his head as he closes the door in Ram’s face and the chain rattles all the way out of its groove. “Y’always were a hardy fool.” The door swings wide to reveal the bearded Centraxian tactician’s frowning countenance. “Awa Ken yerself.”
His skinny frame is clad in an incongruously neat black polo-neck jumper and his normally woolly beard has been trimmed to a shadow of its former wildness; reduced to a grizzly echo of his jawline. “So yer old friends weren’t so friendly after all?” His usual grin returns as he shakes his head. “Well, yer in luck; Penny and Dot’ve split fer a couple of days and Loren reckons it’s okay fer yer to crash here while they’re gone.”
The teenage shaman shoulders his way past his blood brother and hesitates in the communal flat’s cluttered hallway. “How fortuitous,” he remarks, eyes scanning loosely stacked piles of Rimbaud, Plath, Kant, Marx, Engels, Neitche, Dostoyevsky, Krishnamurti, Jung and a leftie librarian’s hit parade of philosophers and professional thinkers. He heads down the hallway while Wanderer closes the door and clips the privacy chain back onto its brass slide. “What happened to yer pack?” he asks the back of Ram’s head. “It’s in a safe place,” the shaman assures his travelling partner over his shoulder. He traverses the obstacle course of the communal flat and makes his way into the untidy lounge room.
He steps over a magazine rack and drops onto the couch, returning his friend’s quizzical grin with a feline smile. “You’re looking unusually neat and tidy.” The slightly older man grimaces and walks into the kitchen. “And you’re lookin’ unusually clean,” Wanderer parries. “Caffeine?” he inquires as he rummages through cabinets and drawers. As far as the Cold Wanderer is concerned it can never be too late or too early for another cup of coffee.
“Sure. Loren isn’t here?” Ram’yana automatically glances at the huge silent black and white television set which dominates the small room. For a moment toys with the notion of pressing the square ignition switch, then realises that white noise will be the only show in town; all stations cease transmission after midnight in Bleak City, just as they do in the metropolis of his birth. The lowered tones of his comrade’s Canadian accent drift into the room. “She’s asleep – uni tomorrow.” Ram’yana automatically scans the piles of reading material which spill from the hallway and line the edges of the lounge room, searching for an edifying distraction from his romantic concerns.
“It’s cool with her if yer crash out in the laundry or garage,” Wanderer confirms while the sound of running water reminds his young friend that he needs to visit the loo, “but only ’til the other girls get back. Yer better be out of here before tomorrow night. If Penny sees yer she’ll be ropeable. Here,” he says as he leans into the room, throwing a thick paperback onto Ram’s lap. “Try this – it’s one yer might dig.”
Ram’yana stares at the author’s name on the thick book’s cover, printed in much larger lettering than the title. “Another Heinlein, eh?” Wanderer bestows his patented glare on the younger Centraxian. “The Heinlein,” he corrects the mage in a tone laden with graven certitude. “Never mind about Starship Troopers – this’s the only Heinlein yer really have to read. I’m surprised yer haven’t grokked it yet; I saw a copy back at J.J.’s place.”
“Our place, you mean?” the younger Centraxian inquires rhetorically. “I hadn’t noticed; it must be one of his. Appropriate title,” he observes, noting that the tome is a Hugo Award winner from the blurb on the front cover. “Stranger in a Strange Land. I’ve seen it, but never had a copy in my hands before…”
“That’s ’cause not many people want to part with it after they’ve read it – unless they know someone they want to turn on. And it’s even more appropriate than yer may think,” Wanderer calls from the kitchen. “Y’can hang onto it for a few days; it’s Loren’s.” Clattering cutlery precedes his re-entry into the living room. He flings a packet of biscuits onto the low coffee table while his friend opens the book at a dog-eared page. “If yer hangin’ around, that is. Better start at the beginning with that one,” he advises as he notices that Ram’yana is scanning a random paragraph.
“Just testing,” replies the shaman. Thoughts and visions of his rediscovered girlfriend keep obtruding across the wriggly lines of printed characters. He finds it unusually difficult to concentrate on the stagy beginning of the sci-fi classic, and when a strong mug of instant coffee arrives a minute later the slight jolt of adrenaline barely makes a dint in Ram’s vaguely inebriated languor. He closes the book and watches Wanderer watching him over the rim of his mug.
The young shaman fairly bursts with the news of his extraordinarily coincidental meeting with Natasha, but fears that if he starts to mention their encounter the entire tale of their rudely interrupted union will fountain forth in an embarrassingly revelatory torrent. Although he’s overheard many frank and specific discussions of various women’s sexual talents, proclivities and peccadilloes while working behind lighting desks in pubs and clubs, the idealistic young teen’s carefully cultivated sense of discretion always ends any detailed description of his own ‘conquests’ before they can commence. Unlike many or most unreconstructed pre-feminist males, he keeps intimacies private and doesn’t divulge pillow talk to his contemporaries – not even to his blood brothers. Am I just hung up with all that Victorian programming? he wonders as the scalding coffee burns a track down his throat.
The beer swilling footballers, boorish cricket players and wannabe sportsmen in the uptight straight world of violent pub-going drunks are invariable sexists and chauvinistic pigs, almost to a man. They bandy details of their dalliances – fanciful, factual or obviously embellished - to friends and strangers in a rank competitive pecking order that pervades every aspect of their obtuse daily lives. Most sincere feminists and rare sensitive males avoid these fraudulent scenes of male piggishness like the plague - although many otherwise intelligent women follow in their mothers’ footsteps, drawn to the very type of men they loathe and fear; falling in love or lust with men who are just like their fathers.
Very few of Ram’s male associates in the alternative environment of the hippy counter culture reveal precious details of their relationships with lovers and spouses. Any conversation about their ladies’ lovemaking talents or sexual abilities and proclivities is regarded as a breach of honour and a distinct invasion of privacy among his peers in the Court of Centraxis – even though many share in the love of the same girls and women, and often at the selfsame time.
Their sense of discretion isn’t entirely due to an inherent sense of nobility; after all, more intelligent males generally realise that it’s oft unwise to provide potential rivals with any tips on seducing one’s spouse or girlfriend. They see little point in encouraging competition or desire for their beloved mates in the horde of untrustworthy males that always surround them. This isn’t the sole motive for Ram’s current reticence; the passionate compassion that warms his breast and heats his loins whenever he thinks of his lovely young girlfriend maintains an unbroachable barrier around the details of their private interaction. Besides; how could he possibly explain their relationship – or Natasha’s challenging behaviour - to his Canadian blood brother when he can’t even explain it to himself?
“Loren and I are goin’ to split fer Mont Salvat tomorrow,” Wanderer announces. “D’yer want to come along?” The hippies have often discussed the famous artist’s commune ensconced in the most southerly mainland state’s rustic foothills. They’d agreed to visit the inspiring location during a rural side-trip on their current sojourn to
The Cold Wanderer grunts in reply; the science fiction aficionado turns his attention to a relatively new groundbreaking work by Samuel R. Delaney. “Found yerself a princess, hmm?” He doesn’t glance up when Ram’yana puts his mug down on the low table and leans back into the recesses of the lounge. “Thought that was a love bite.” The silence xtends until he raises an entirely different subject; “Loren reckons we ought to ring the cops...” Ram’s eyes flash from the page to the face of his friend, who continues speaking into the open book. “…about those loggers.”
The young shaman is still so absorbed in the events of the evening that it takes him a moment to decipher his friend’s meaning. “And tell them what, exactly?” he asks. “That we jumped out of a car before anything happened? Or that they were drunk drivers carrying guns? The fuzz would be more likely to haul us in…”
“That’s what I said to Loren – but she reckons if we don’t tell the pigs – anonymously, at least – those arseholes will probably kill someone. And she’s probably right, y’know; we’re lucky to be alive.” His pale blue eyes flicker at the shaman through veiling reflections that dance on the distorting surfaces of his lenses.
“Don’t let me stop thee,” Ram’yana replies as he glances at the vertical space-age curved telephone handset, sitting upright on the table like a misshapen plastic bong. “But make sure ye make the call from a public phone.” Wanderer grunts in reply. “Dost ye have any idea where they picked us up – or ken the place where we escaped onto the highway?”
“Within a fifty mile stretch or so,” the Canadian replies with a shrug. “I told Loren there wouldn’t be much point…” As Ram’yana recalls their potentially deadly encounter with the drunken redneck hillbillies a strange blend of anger, thrill and trepidation swells somewhere within him. “Didst get their number plate? Not I – certes not while we were hiding in the forest.”
“Nah,” Wanderer confirms. “No way. But we could give the pigs their description and tell them the make of the station wagon; I think it was an EJ Olden…” The notion of calling the police is so outlandish to the young hippies that Ram’yana has a difficult time grappling with the concept. He closes the book with a sigh. “I suppose if those bastards picked up a couple of girls – or a single guy hitching – we’d be partly responsible for anything that happened,” he says after an extending pause. “It couldn’t hurt to tell the cops. Probably.”
“Maybe I’ll do it in the morning,” the Cold Wander mumbles as he gulps down the last of his coffee. “I’m gonna crash. Will yer be okay in the laundry? There’s a pile of bedding in the corner. Come on – I’ll show yer where it’s at…”
Later, as he reclines in a comfortable nook that Wanderer has arranged for him in the flat’s concrete-floored laundry, the teenage mage finds he’s been rereading the second page of the thick old Heinlein paperback over and again, unable to concentrate on letters, syllables or words; a vision splendid fills his internal world, leaving no room for other concerns.
Her name resonates through his dreams, an evocative word that he repeats silently and automatically, over and again as the Centraxian shaman drifts into a particularly appealing yet challenging vision quest; Natasha…
“Atoh, Malkuth, Ve Geburah, Ve Gedulah, Le Olahm, Amen!” The nubile priestess of the Great Goddess completes her ancient Hebrew invocation of the primordial Kabalistic Cross. Palms thrust upward toward heaven, she resembles a feminine teenaged Atlas supporting the lowering roof of the raw stone grotto that surrounds her. Slick rocky surfaces frame her pale compact form, barely perceivable in the swirling mantle of shadows. His sight fastens on the recurving surfaces of ripe conical breasts, arching upward and glowing with sinuous ripples of lunar light reflected from the wavering pool at the girl’s unshod feet.
She leans back into silvering rays of a half-occluded moon, a stark revelation of snowy-skinned beauty shining in the pervasive tenebrous gloom. Her finely chiselled features flare in argent beams streaming through holes in the cavern roof. Lustrous dark hair is wound up atop her head to form twin conical spirals and her smile is warm and inviting to legions of flittering sprites and translucent spirits that hover all around, flickering just at the brink of perception. A low murmur begins in the depths of her throat, only gradually becoming audible as a repetitive series of anciently divine names; “Asherah, Aloah, Anat, Ba’al…”
The syllables resonate through the dripping grotto as the priestess’s musical contralto resounds from faceted walls and awakens forgotten memories, vibrating within Ram’s supine body while waves of indistinct presences spread into toroids and helixes like slow moving swarms of ectoplasmic insects. The shaman recognises the names of the Babylonian-Hebrew-Canaanite heavenly family, primordial archetypes from the earliest unexpurgated Talmud and more primal pre-Biblical texts and traditions.
“Asherah, Aloah, Anat, Ba’al…” The divine mother, father, daughter and son predate the predatory priests of Jehovah, who all but erased their names from human memory and replaced their balanced familial pantheon – along with those of myriad suppressed matriarchies and a plethora of various fair-minded, enlightened, ruthless or savage cultures – with the monomaniacal warlike rants of their uber-male newcomer; the lightning-fisted, one-eyed mad warrior sky god of the codified Tetragrammaton.
The shaman prince knows all the old stories by heart; he comes from that very line of supplanting high priests who carried the Ark alongside the Redeemer, officiated in the rites and sacraments of the living deity who masqueraded as Jehovah, and bore the resultant stigmas (and concomitant elevating or fracturing psychic stigmata) for thousands of years thereafter.
Ram’yana lays unmoving beneath the grave young priestess. He notices he’s lying on a rude stone altar, peering into liquid moonbeams that limn her naked young body in a luminous wavering nimbus. Her chant twists and weaves through the songs of other shifting voices that echo inside his braincase, a phantasmagorical chorus of chaotically contradictory yet strangely dovetailing images and instructions which stream through the young man’s being;
Her ancestors are thine… Some spirits were closer to the Divine Breath when it blew across the waters of Creation… Open thine heart… Deep red blood fed bowl, shining with overflowing fullness… Giving font of needful creation… The moment of wonder is never far away… Truth and virtue are the bread of blessing… The Goddess is all… Only the empty open vessel is filled by the divine… Drift within the inner circle… Mind will come to understand… Cease striving to serve… Io Pan… All bounty flows from the womb of the Goddess… Taste the fruit of the vine… She is thy doorway back into the fold… The glorious pulse of silver seed, passing from plane to plane… Mind to mind, heart to heart… The inner sense of innocence will guide thy inward passage…
A cool feathery sensation flitters against the centre of Ram’s breastbone, recalling his attention to the glorious feral feminine vision that rears above him in the damp dark cave of uncarven stone. The priestess’s upper face is masked by shadows ’neath the thick coiled horns of spiralling hair; twin glittering points of light shine down at him from the pits of dark eye sockets while her tongue darts between delectable moonlit lips and flashing teeth, an awe-inspiring sibyl weaving multiplex sibilant spells over his semiconscious soul. Her fingertips flicker across his exposed surfaces like stones skipping across the meniscus of a pond that swells with the anticipation of an approaching storm.
The teenage mage quivers at the thrill of feminine fingertips playing teasing notes across the monochrome ivory keyboard of his smooth nude body. His surging erection is an obvious distraction that he manfully attempts to ignore while the repetitive chant continues washing his mind clean of worldly impediments. Limber fingers trip along Ram’s goose-pimpled skin, teasingly circling his tumescence as they dance all the way from his upturned toes to the top of his long-haired crown. Fingernails skim along his supersensitised surfaces and when a warm feminine hand incidentally brushes against his irrepressible hardness the untameable drug of a wild rush of lust rips through Ram’s racing bloodstream.
A shuddering shiver caroms up through his spine. He yearns to move, to reach up and caress the priestess’s fine young body in return, but his limbs remain leaden and immobile on the granular stone as her staccato tickling touch raises his senses to a vibrant pitch of utterly receptive longing.
The shaman examines his motives through a curious cloud of forgetfulness as the damp hard stone of the old cold altar provides a stark contrast to the enticing entreaties of feminine fingertips. He attempts to divine the meaning of his presence in the womb-like temple and simultaneously keep track of the priestess’s arousing touch as she outlines his form in the cool pool of moonlight. He ponders the possibility that he’s an uninitiated supplicant come to beg favours, or simply to present the Gods and Goddesses with an offering. Or perhaps he’s a source of young yang energy, little more than a ritual tool to the wise young priestess; Yet surely not a mere plaything, he hesitantly concludes from her actions.
“Asherah, Aloah, Anat, Ba’al…” Culling details and hints from research and training, the young shaman realises he’s likely the ongoing focus of the priestess’s continuing invocation as she calls upon the ancient divine family of humanity’s archetypal dawn. Or is it an evocation? he wonders as spiralling spirits surround his recumbent form. Distant lights twinkle and glow beyond an all pervasive veiling aura, wilful phantasms of indefinite resolution sparkling and whispering within the cavernous space. Vaporous scents fill his nostrils with alluring intimations of a half remembered promise as lithe fingers glide upward to glance across his parted lips and seal his blinking eyelids.
All that we can see or seem… Surrender all thought, all desire to control… The moment of wonder… Is but a dream… A shatan names thee… Sunder what’s mortal in the pyre of the soul… Within a dream… Thunder down under… Hers is the voice of a great shatan… Is never far away… She knows both ways…
The babble continues, leading the shaman onward to follow an underlying thread of meaning through an apparently random labyrinth of synchronous concepts and images. He feels the priestess lean over his supine form and his eyelids slit open to a subterranean moonlit fantasia that sheathes their bodies with an eldritch flowing light. She blesses his soul with droplets of sacred oil that flick down from her eyes and spatter his skin as transforming forms wreathe her features in a fey masque of colourfully shifting masks. Droplets spring from her fingertips and drizzle down onto his chest, sinking through his surface and spreading out beneath his skin with a vividly heated rush.
Then she speaks a new spell, a low ensorcelling chant that he barely comprehends as he shivers beneath an encircling vision of barely seen whisperers; “Isis, Astarte, Hecate, Demeter, Diana, Kali, Inana…” Her voice is strangely unfamiliar and completely mesmerising as she repeats the spell with ever concentrating volume and intensity. “Isis, Astarte, Hecate, Demeter, Diana, Kali, Inana…”
Other voices join the breathy tones of the ethereally beautiful priestess as he’s lulled into the cyclic song of the seven Great Goddesses; Seven Mothers, Seven Daughters, Seven Sisters and Seven Consorts. The feminine principles of all seven chakras light up into a dazzling rainbow fanning outward from his spine as the names of their respective goddesses are evoked into the shaman’s subtle bodies. His eyes widen onto a sightless horizon of sparkling infinitude while colours concentrate into glowing crystalline gemstones in the centreline of his scintillating being.
Fractal flowers of expanding geometries blossom and spin within his body, mind, soul and spirit as the Names flow though him, syllables blending into a continuous cant as twin serpents uncoil from his roots and weave up his spine, bowing outward and in, to cross and recross across and around the glowing rainbow vessels of his chakras; tiny crystals shining at magnetising nodes in the octaval chord of his being. He’s dimly aware of several unseen presences circling the altar and a series of seven divine male names suddenly start reverberating in an ascending scale, in counterpoint harmony with the ongoing chant.
The cognomens of consorts combine with the names of their respective goddesses as the priestess steps back into shadow. “Isis/Osiris, Astarte/Mithra, Hecate/Adonis…” She joins a slow circumambulation around the supine aspirant’s pleasantly numbed and virtually paralysed form, becoming indistinguishable from the rest of the worshippers who consecrate his sleeping flesh and dreaming plasm to the divine Ladder of Lights; “…Demeter/Dionysus, Diana/Pan, Kali/Shiva, Inana/Dummuzi…”
The circling chant rises in volume and the young shaman feels Her smooth hands paint the soles of his feet with the heat of Her palms. Lightly gripping fingers interlock with his toes and thumbs lock round his ankles before warm silken hands glide around his calves, slide up across his knees and stroke the fine down on his slender thighs. The astounding heat of a feminine forearm brushes his rigid erection as She proceeds to caress his belly with circular serpentine motions. He feels soft warm thighs sliding up over his body as the chant swells through his being; babbling voices flood through his mind as the priestess kneels astride him.
Never far away… Like unto like… Birds of a feather… A bird in the hand… A sudden surge of energy rises from the base of his spine, surging all the way upward between the twinned serpents in a blinding blast of light and heat - and his eyes flicker open to the shadowy deeps of a suburban laundry, where his body has slipped from the thick warm bedroll and fallen onto a cracked slab of concrete - an inexpertly laid sepulchre encasing the old cold bones of Bleak City’s lost legions of secret spirits.
The shaman takes a deep breath before struggling back toward unfathomable unconsciousness, diving deeply into the moment of wonder in an attempt to return to the splendid nether realm of the enchanted grotto; to once more see all that he can ever seem…
*
A true story
*
- R.A.
Images – author’s
Further true tales of The Prince of Centraxis -
Shaman of Centraxis Part 1 - The Whole is Greater
Shaman of Centraxis Part 2 - Surfing the Cosm
Shaman of Centraxis ३ - Turning Tides, Breaking Waves
Shaman of Centraxis Part 4 - To Infinity and Beyond
Shaman of Centraxis Part 5 - Land of the Living
Shaman of Centraxis Part 6 - All the Way
Shaman of Centraxis Part 7 - South of Eden
Shaman of Centraxis Part 8 - The Whole is Greater
Shaman of Centraxis Part 9 - Crossing Boarders
Shaman of Centraxis Part 10 - Believer
Shaman of Centraxis Part 11 - Behind the Veil
Shaman of Centraxis Part 12 - Peace, Love & War Games
Shaman of Centraxis Part 13 - Pole Dancer
Shaman of Centraxis Part 14 – Waking Wet Dream
Shaman of Centraxis Part 15 – Rending the Veil
Shaman of Centraxis Part 16 – Interrupted Dreams
Shaman of Centraxis Part 17 - Wherefore Art
Shaman of Centraxis 18 – Stranger in a Strange Land
Shaman of Centraxis 19 – Supplicants
AND
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Part 1
Adder Ladies & the Dawn of Ra Part 1
Latest – http://centraxis.blogspot.com
And see
Imagine Nation – Artwork & Images
The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com
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From The Prince of Centraxis - http://centraxis.blogspot.com
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2 comments:
What. The. Fuck. did I just stumble onto? I can't tell if this is set up to recruit cult members (Jonestown: Part Two) or if it's the online portfolio for the guy who did all the album-art for those bands in the late 60s/early 70s. Is this a parody? Wow.
If blogs could trip on acid, this is what it would look like.
Glad someone appreciates art, if not truth...
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Please add your perspective to the collective mind NOW! - Prince Ram'yana