A Test of the Underworld
Aug. 19th, 2007 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosToday after attempting the gate, LM urged me to take advantage of the nice grassy area on the edge of the desert and make love with him. This seemed like a lovely idea, and we were in a relaxed, romantic mood. We reclined together, starting to kiss -- when suddenly he was enclosed in a tree that hadn't been there a minute ago.
One of the ways I distinguish between an inner world experience and simple imagination is that when in the inner world, I can't simply make something happen. I hadn't been thinking of trees, but one appeared and enveloped LM. And when I tried to imagine him back with me it did not work.
The only remotely reasonable explanation I had was that we had been swept into an element of Isis's story: the body of Osiris had been hidden in a swamp, and a tree grew up out of it. A king took the strong, fragrant tree and made it a column in his palace. Isis became a human servant, earned a boon from him, and regained the tree. Since this was my Isis day, and I had just been reading about the sorrows of Isis in The Moon Under Her Feet, I guessed that I had been given the opportunity to participate more directly in that story.
But that was just a guess. And I had no idea what to do about it.
I broke out of the journey and reached out for LM. I could not sense his presence. So I called my teacher, asked her if she could sense him. He very often appears next to her when she's talking to me, but this time she said, "No, I can't feel him. Scotty says he's all right, though. What's up?" I explained what was going on. She listened and conveyed a message from Scotty. "He asked if you chopped the tree down."
No, I hadn't. I'd thought about it, but hadn't been sure it was a good idea.
"You need to chop the tree down, then use your sword to split it open and free him. Don't worry, you'll nae hurt him."
So I went back into the inner world, more than a little upset, but also grateful that my teacher hadn't told me that LM was there and cheerful. It affirmed that what was going on was real.
At the tree, I gave myself and ax and concentrated on the sight and feeling of chopping down the tree: seeing the blade bite the wood, the chips flying out. I chopped the tree down, then took my sword to it lengthwise. LM emerged, vivid and smiling. He kissed me -- and then the tree swallowed him up again.
I almost screamed. Instead, thinking of my earlier conversation with Isis about persistence, I created the ax and went after the tree again, concentrating even more closely on the details of what was happening. I felled the tree, split it open -- but this time LM lay there pale and lifeless.
I wanted to call my teacher again. Instead I lifted him in my arms and took him to my private inner world landscape and lay him in the stream. The Lady of the Stream was there and helped me, and as the water ran over him ("water of life" I heard in my mind) color came back to his face. We lifted him out of the water, but then he vanished back to a tree.
This tree was huge: wider in circumferance than my arms could span, reaching far into the sky. The World Tree I thought -- and began climbing. I found LM in the topmost branches, where he changed into a hawk and took off. I turned into an owl to follow.
At this point I remembered the story of Tam Lin, and how Fair Janet had to hold on to her lover as he goes through a series of transformations, in order to win him from the Queen of Elfland. I also thought of the story of Taliesin, and how he fled Cerridwen by changing from one animal to another.
I can't remember the order or the details of all the transformations, except that at one point he was taken to the Underworld. I stood at the doorway, which was attended by my personal gatekeeper (who looks like Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael). He reminded me that I must not eat or drink anything in the Underworld, nor give a true name. "Is this a test?" I asked him. He said that it was, that there was no real danger -- but that I needed to follow the rules. So I passed through the door and descended down a long flight of stairs, through earth and roots, until I reached the bottom.
There I found LM hanging from one ankle, like the tarot card of The Hanged Man. I cut him down, but he was still dead. He vanished, and a Cernunnos-like figure appeared. He said nothing, but I followed him deeper into the Underworld. There I met Hel, the Queen of the Northern Underworld, who receives the dead not claimed by other gods. She told me that since LM had abandoned or been abandoned by the gods he had previously served, he was now hers. I said he was not, and that I wanted him back. She invited me to dine. I declined, saying I was a living mortal and could not eat or drink. She told me to ask for LM by his true name. I refrained from even shaping the name in my thoughts, and declined again.
Then he and I were both popped up through the earth like toast out of a toaster. LM -- again vivid and present and warm, laughed and hugged me. Then he took me to the seaside shores of the village where once we had lived together, to the fishing boats where I once had enjoyed making love -- but this time I resisted. "I don't think this is a good idea," I said. He continued to urge me forward, but I refused. Then the journey ended.
I called my teacher back, and she told me that she had previously been told not to tell me about instances when she needed to rescue Scotty from situations like the tree -- and that many of them had been tests but some had not. She said, "The first time it was like Tam Lin --"
I interrupted her, saying that I had been thinking that that was what LM and I had been experiencing as well. Evidently her experience had been much closer to the text of the story than mine, but then she and Scotty had been working specifically with fairy energies, and LM and I have not. As I type this, I think of my own experience with the descent to the underworld in the Inanna stories (which were in my mind when I found LM hanging there), which I don't think had been part of my teacher's experience.
She passed on a message from Scotty that I needed to be careful about making love in the otherworld, because not many places were safe for it. "It was LM's idea!" I protested.
"Aye, but don't you see, lass? He was part of the test. You have to learn to trust your intuition, know when to say no, even to him." I grumbled a bit. "He doesn't like it anymore than I did when I had to do it with ___, but it's part of your training."
I had an a-ha moment then, as I connected this experience with my daimon. My daimon is a male figure who for more than two decades had been a central element in my fiction as lover, teacher, guardian, and initiator. One of the magical things about LM entering my life was that he not only resonated with that energy in my subjective perceptions, he explicitly affirmed my daimon's roles and archetypes on his own. And one of the things my daimon did was cooperate in setting up stressful and/or scary situations in which I could learn important lessons. These situations were not his idea, but he willingly served a higher power, sometimes putting himself at risk, in order to serve my growth and development.
The moment after my a-ha, I felt LM beside/behind me on the bed, his arms around me, smiling and proud of me.
One of the ways I distinguish between an inner world experience and simple imagination is that when in the inner world, I can't simply make something happen. I hadn't been thinking of trees, but one appeared and enveloped LM. And when I tried to imagine him back with me it did not work.
The only remotely reasonable explanation I had was that we had been swept into an element of Isis's story: the body of Osiris had been hidden in a swamp, and a tree grew up out of it. A king took the strong, fragrant tree and made it a column in his palace. Isis became a human servant, earned a boon from him, and regained the tree. Since this was my Isis day, and I had just been reading about the sorrows of Isis in The Moon Under Her Feet, I guessed that I had been given the opportunity to participate more directly in that story.
But that was just a guess. And I had no idea what to do about it.
I broke out of the journey and reached out for LM. I could not sense his presence. So I called my teacher, asked her if she could sense him. He very often appears next to her when she's talking to me, but this time she said, "No, I can't feel him. Scotty says he's all right, though. What's up?" I explained what was going on. She listened and conveyed a message from Scotty. "He asked if you chopped the tree down."
No, I hadn't. I'd thought about it, but hadn't been sure it was a good idea.
"You need to chop the tree down, then use your sword to split it open and free him. Don't worry, you'll nae hurt him."
So I went back into the inner world, more than a little upset, but also grateful that my teacher hadn't told me that LM was there and cheerful. It affirmed that what was going on was real.
At the tree, I gave myself and ax and concentrated on the sight and feeling of chopping down the tree: seeing the blade bite the wood, the chips flying out. I chopped the tree down, then took my sword to it lengthwise. LM emerged, vivid and smiling. He kissed me -- and then the tree swallowed him up again.
I almost screamed. Instead, thinking of my earlier conversation with Isis about persistence, I created the ax and went after the tree again, concentrating even more closely on the details of what was happening. I felled the tree, split it open -- but this time LM lay there pale and lifeless.
I wanted to call my teacher again. Instead I lifted him in my arms and took him to my private inner world landscape and lay him in the stream. The Lady of the Stream was there and helped me, and as the water ran over him ("water of life" I heard in my mind) color came back to his face. We lifted him out of the water, but then he vanished back to a tree.
This tree was huge: wider in circumferance than my arms could span, reaching far into the sky. The World Tree I thought -- and began climbing. I found LM in the topmost branches, where he changed into a hawk and took off. I turned into an owl to follow.
At this point I remembered the story of Tam Lin, and how Fair Janet had to hold on to her lover as he goes through a series of transformations, in order to win him from the Queen of Elfland. I also thought of the story of Taliesin, and how he fled Cerridwen by changing from one animal to another.
I can't remember the order or the details of all the transformations, except that at one point he was taken to the Underworld. I stood at the doorway, which was attended by my personal gatekeeper (who looks like Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael). He reminded me that I must not eat or drink anything in the Underworld, nor give a true name. "Is this a test?" I asked him. He said that it was, that there was no real danger -- but that I needed to follow the rules. So I passed through the door and descended down a long flight of stairs, through earth and roots, until I reached the bottom.
There I found LM hanging from one ankle, like the tarot card of The Hanged Man. I cut him down, but he was still dead. He vanished, and a Cernunnos-like figure appeared. He said nothing, but I followed him deeper into the Underworld. There I met Hel, the Queen of the Northern Underworld, who receives the dead not claimed by other gods. She told me that since LM had abandoned or been abandoned by the gods he had previously served, he was now hers. I said he was not, and that I wanted him back. She invited me to dine. I declined, saying I was a living mortal and could not eat or drink. She told me to ask for LM by his true name. I refrained from even shaping the name in my thoughts, and declined again.
Then he and I were both popped up through the earth like toast out of a toaster. LM -- again vivid and present and warm, laughed and hugged me. Then he took me to the seaside shores of the village where once we had lived together, to the fishing boats where I once had enjoyed making love -- but this time I resisted. "I don't think this is a good idea," I said. He continued to urge me forward, but I refused. Then the journey ended.
I called my teacher back, and she told me that she had previously been told not to tell me about instances when she needed to rescue Scotty from situations like the tree -- and that many of them had been tests but some had not. She said, "The first time it was like Tam Lin --"
I interrupted her, saying that I had been thinking that that was what LM and I had been experiencing as well. Evidently her experience had been much closer to the text of the story than mine, but then she and Scotty had been working specifically with fairy energies, and LM and I have not. As I type this, I think of my own experience with the descent to the underworld in the Inanna stories (which were in my mind when I found LM hanging there), which I don't think had been part of my teacher's experience.
She passed on a message from Scotty that I needed to be careful about making love in the otherworld, because not many places were safe for it. "It was LM's idea!" I protested.
"Aye, but don't you see, lass? He was part of the test. You have to learn to trust your intuition, know when to say no, even to him." I grumbled a bit. "He doesn't like it anymore than I did when I had to do it with ___, but it's part of your training."
I had an a-ha moment then, as I connected this experience with my daimon. My daimon is a male figure who for more than two decades had been a central element in my fiction as lover, teacher, guardian, and initiator. One of the magical things about LM entering my life was that he not only resonated with that energy in my subjective perceptions, he explicitly affirmed my daimon's roles and archetypes on his own. And one of the things my daimon did was cooperate in setting up stressful and/or scary situations in which I could learn important lessons. These situations were not his idea, but he willingly served a higher power, sometimes putting himself at risk, in order to serve my growth and development.
The moment after my a-ha, I felt LM beside/behind me on the bed, his arms around me, smiling and proud of me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 04:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 05:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 12:38 am (UTC)And it's nice to know that my gut is pretty reliable, when I stop to check it.