Okay, this is even more humiliating than usual, and you're all going to think I'm complete git when you're done reading. I really don't want to post this, but I've got to.
Thing is -- and this is the part that soulds really pathetic -- a month or so back I was stood out on the landing, watching the sunset, and I asked the guides for a prophesy. They were well into the idea and started saying stuff about an incident involving a train. I didn't pursue the line of enquiry because I knew I'd never actually report it in case I was wrong, but they reiterated the train incident thing several times, very clearly.
I was on the train yesterday, heading for the anti-terrorist vigil in Barcelona. I was feeling like I needed to make contact with something bigger than me, something more powerful, so I took out my notepad and called up the guides. I asked if they had any advice, if they could tell me what I should be doing.
They immediately brought up the train thing and said that
that is what I'm supposed to be doing in relation to such events: listening to the guides, reporting back to the world. Shaman, messenger, scribe. It's bittier and more fragmented than usual because I was generating a lot of anxiety noise and having a hard time hearing the guides.
Thing is: I don't trust this whole prophesy thing. Not because I don't trust the guides -- the gut feeling I get in relation to them is wholly benign. No, what I mistrust is my ability to retrive and relay information accurately. I also mistrust my ego: say I am right, say I get it right once or twice -- what if I start craving success so badly I make stuff up in my own head?
And this looks... you know, typing it out, it looks really lame. Like I'm using this horrible, horrible thing that's happened to puff myself up into something I'm not.
So anyway, those are my fears, and here's the conversation. Plain = me,
bold = them.
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Help me out here. What should I be doing?
We warned you, did we not?
Yes, you did. But that aside: what should I be doing now?
Report this warning wherever you think appropriate: This is only the first. There will be three such calamities. More are to perish.
This is in Europe?
Yes.
When?
Not more than one year hence. Expect the first in August, the second in winter's darkness.
August, and then sometime in winter?
It is fixed in flame, dear one. 15th of August. Beware.
Where?
The land of the tower of steel. [Sketchy; not hearing them clearly.]
Not helpful. What, is that Paris?
[Even sketchier; the words were coming with an effort.]
The tower of steel: the sun of gold and bronze. A painted sun sinks. More will perish; we mourn them.
Can't I stop this? Can't I do anything?
No*. You can only warn, and love, and grieve.
Why?
Your heart is closed, and falters. It flutters like a bird and then falls back. Your hand falters even now, as it has faltered before.
We are not gods. We are only as strong on earth as a thought is strong. Broken is the bridge that might let us reach.
How do I access the rest of the information?
With time. With practice. With patience. And the surcease of fear. Remember your dreams, scribe. Make this recall your meat and drink. In dreams there is much truth. Look to the cards, also.
Are you sure about the date? August 15th?
Yes. Now make prophesy for us.
What will occur then [on the 15th of August]?
A great place of commerce will suffer a calamity.
What, a mall? A supermarket?
One of the great edifices raised by your people in this time.**
[After that, I was only getting bits. It's too vague to be useful but I'm including it anyway.]
...In a city by a great river...
...Knights of a red cross. Beware. [NB: I got an image there, not like knights in armour, more like riot police]
...A tree in fruit and blossom at once, growing in ice. The Queen of Fire comes, and all tremble. [Image of a ship, an enormous ship like a big cruise ship or something. Then the image changes and I'm watching a plane explode in midair. I'm getting Spring, April/May, 50-60 dead.]
[At this point, Mael speaks.]
Forget not, in your grief, the hiunger of the silent millions; forget not the cries of the children and the lamentation of the bereaved. For their suffering is ever-present, and is not cut by suffering elsewhere.
When I walked the earth, to live was to suffer. Fifty summers was a great and venerable age. Only the most fortunate lived longer.
[Another image: Bodies frozen in ice. I get the impression that a plane has gone down or something in some icy place, because the people are wearing summer clothes, they don't look like hikers. I see a dark-haired man in a jumper, half-in, half out of the ice.]
*They later clarified this, saying "
It is beyond your powers." They seemed to be implying that other people have greater powers, and might help to curtail the damage, if not prevent it altogether.
**They're telling me 150,160 dead in this incident. Maybe 500 hurt?
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So there you go. File under Plot, Loss of, I guess.
They've just gone and interrupted me in the middle of internetting. Just now. Cheeky so-and-sos.
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We would speak with you.
I'm in the internet caff!
Nonetheless, we would speak.
Okay, okay, but this is a bit awkward.
We see that you fret yourself over small things today. You must put this from your mind at once. You are upon a swift and sudden part of your journey, and must not permit such distractions.
If you say so.
We do. Put your mind to other things. Know also that you are almost on the right track, as you say. Read your cards when you go home, and mind well what they say.
Know also that this work to which you put your hand tonight has out blessing and our fullest aid. We shall be with you. Fear not weariness or a late hour. We shall bear you up throughout.
And put all petty anger from your mind as you would put off a shabby cloak of rags in favour of a bright rich rayment. The time approaches when our first promises to you will be fulfilled.
Be at peace.
(Know that the Tarot is the way for you at this time!)
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Text of a conversation yesterday evening. Basically, I've been keeping up with the psi and other excercises, but in an increasingly half-baked way. My momentum isn't gone, but it's going. I've been having lots of chats with the guides in an attempt to get to the bottom of my problems with energy work and also magick.
They gave me some news that I
really didn't want to hear.
Hoping to get past all this navel-gazing stuff soon and onto something a bit more useful. Please bear with. Plain = me,
bold = them.
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Okay. Well, I'm having serious problems with doubt here, guys. I'm also finding it increasingly hard to focus: I keep getting distracted by petty little worries, anxieties and resentments. Can you help me with this? Please?
You know what you must do.
[I am about to ask what, but before I even write the word I'm presented with a slew of images, all of myself engaged in various meditative, divinatory or magick-related tasks. My new tarot deck features heavily.]
You must strive to be free of your all consuming doubt. You drown in it. You have forgotten much, our scribe.
[This is true. I'd been going over some old magickal records, and was shocked by how many acheivements I'd managed to blank out, or write off as 'coincidence' or 'imagination.']
NOW is the time to free yourself. Fret not over the small things and move through the door. Now is the next great step you have to take.
What step, though? I mean, what system should I work with? How can I work with any magickal system when they all seem so hollow right now?
Know that you are free, first. There is a gate within your chest that you have locked. You fear: lies, deception, self-delusion; you fear stealing and twisting the beliefs of others. You fear also the fate of [certain mages in the past]: not the death that may await, but the selfishness and callousness that hubris brings in its wake. You fear to make slaves of those you might teach.
Fear not. You are not those other men and women. You are yourself. Open the gates of your heart and mind once more. You have nothing to fear from yourself. There is only freedom beyond.
But I'm sort of lost right now.
You will not be lost forever.
You fret yourself over Gods. Fret not over Gods at this time. Only say in your heart: "It is my desire to be wise and virtuous. I know I will stray from that path, but I shall always return; I do not claim perfection. I do not claim virtue but the striving for virtue; I do not claim wisdom but the striving for wisdom."
In this manner the penitant and seeking soul may become wise and virtuous, in time.
Know that there are many spirits in the world. They walk up and down from earth to air and air to heaven; they walk from air to ocean and cavern and rock. Know that there are great multitudes of spirits, and that they appear in certain guises, both true and untrue. The way will be made for you to treat with these spirits. Beware falsness, but fear not.
[The word Gods in this context was used to refer to religious systems, and my own unease about muscling in on others' cultural turf. The term 'virtuous' is used more in the Daoist sense. Thus the passage as a whole tells me not to worry right now about finding the 'right' system; it'll find me.]
Great changes are afoot in your heart, our scribe. Open that gate now, and be at one.
(I don't know where to start.)
You have already started. Have faith, not in us but in yourself.
Maintain your journals. Meditate. We would advise you to pursue your plan of increasing the reach of your sleeping memory. In dreams there is much wisdom.
Note well: In all things you must banish shame. The shaman -- for that is what you are -- (Oi!)
must fullfill --
OI! I am DEFINATELY
NOT any sort of shaman!
Yes you are. This you know.
No, I'm bloody not!
Yes you are. You have always been In the past, we know, this gift has been ill-used. It went hard with you in those days, and so you foreswore the name of 'shaman'.
Yet that is what you are. More, you shall be a shaman and scientist in one, so that the gifts you bring back will be rendered easier to comprehend.
I'm worried about becoming one of those "Look at me, I'm a shaman, I'm so magickal and mystical and spiritual and wise, pay my gas bill and buy me beer" types of people.
You contrubute nothing to others by witholding power from yourself.
To return to our initial thread:
A shaman must be focused. She must not allow herself to be distracted by fear of mockery and ridicule. To be a shaman, you must be shameless! [RML, laughing]
And sham-less.
Understand that this is no easy thing. You must work, you must strive; you will suffer.
I'm afraid of losing everything.
Dear scribe, do you not see? You have nothing left to lose anymore.
[I was drawn up short here, because they're right. Materially speaking, I'm where I was always afraid of ending up if I got "too far" into magick: unemployed and dependant on another.]
I have my relationship. I have this life.
But you will not lose them.
Promise?
Nothing is certain. But you won't lose them to magick. You might, on the other hand, lose much to stagnation, to ennui, to despair.
But job, career, wealth, you are bereft of these, and fearful because of it.
Fear not. Give of your time to magick. You will gain strength that will aid you in your mundane life, the earthly foundations of your magickal world.
You must be free. You can be nothing else.
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But I don't want to be a shaman. It's all hard and stuff. *Whine*
