(This vision was experienced October 2007. It has remained with me to this day and has been a pivotal event. How greatly different would my life had been, if I chose not to open Door #1.)
Long live lazy Saturday afternoons! And what a delightful afternoon this particular one was. Partly cloudy, cool, quiet. My window open to allow the autumn chill to play with the light blanket. Mmmm. I’m so damn lazy right now, even thinking about how lazy I am is too much work.
Neither sleep nor awake. I’m aware but not active. I don’t want to get up, but my mind is starting to turn restlessly. Too bad I don’t have a boyfriend to distract me. Oh, there is a distraction! One delightful daydream, coming up!
Well settled under the blanket, I allow my imagination to indulge in personal delights. Just when things were getting quite good, I feel a physical shift underneath me. An earthquake? I sit up in bed and place a hand down to steady myself.
My hand settles onto a hard and cold horizontal surface. Looking down, I see I am sitting on a brilliant white floor. My pillow behind me, my blanket over me. The rest of my room is gone. I feel a shift of movement in front of me. Looking up, I see two worn tracks in the floor, starting at my feet.
The tracks start side by side, heading directly forward for a few feet, then diverge away from each other. The track on the right, turns away and leads to a scene from my daydream, where the Protagonist is waiting for me to rejoin the soap opera. The track on the left, turns away and leads to a cottage fence door.
The cottage fence door is slightly taller than I am, and slightly wider than I am. As if built just for me. The frame appeared made of one long moulded length of wood, as wide as my hand. The wall the frame is set into is as white as the floor. It is too high for me to look over, and fades into nothingness on either side of the door. The door and wall is featurelessly white. No keyhole. No doorknob. The frame at first, appears featureless as well. But I see it is engraved with climbing roses from ground to top.
There are no sounds. Only a sudden knowledge. I have a choice. I could take the right hand path, return to my daydream, and this event will be quickly forgotten. I will return to my life as I know it, with no esoteric consequence. Or I could take the left hand path, see what vision awaits me behind the door, with full knowledge that my life will not be the same if I do so.
This was a very hard decision for me. I had dealt with visions before, when I was very deep in the Christian faith. It drove me to madness and attempted suicide. I lost much. I wound up walking away from both the visions and the faith. If I open this door, what will I be inviting back into my life?
On the other hand, I had to acknowledge it wasn’t the actual visions themselves that were my undoing. It was my mismanagement at the hands of the local church I was integrated in. The political back and forth between various elders. The continual berating that no matter how the visions had been verified by others within the church, I would ever be “not fully accepted” because I dared to divorce my husband. Years of being treated as forever “unclean” was what pushed me over the edge.
There was only one way to know for sure. The two paths began at my feet. But I could only walk one. If I waited too long, the door would fade away. I may not get this chance again.
I stood up and pulled myself as brave as one could be in pajamas. I made the decision I would go through the door.
The moment my decision was made, the engraved roses on the door frame changed. The stems and leaves of the engraving remained as white as everything else. The rose petals turned a deep, crimson red. The door swung open towards me. I saw no latch that had held it in place. The door now fully open, I could see past the wall.
I knew it to be daylight in my room, yet beyond the door was a night time scene. Lit only by bright stars, I was able to see a forest setting with wild roses blooming in the chill night air. Beyond the door, a dirt path, well worn, led further into the forest.
I was being given a chance to reconsider. I look to the right hand path, where the Protagonist from my daydream was waiting with other companions. The tender Adonis is waving me over to him. Forget the door, his gestures said, come to me and I will pour delights upon you.
I smiled at the forms my daydream had conjured. I knew the daydream to be idle fantasy. I can always daydream him later in the day. I step through the door onto the forest floor.
It’s good I had on long pajamas. The temperature dropped significantly on entering the forest. I took a few tentative steps further, looking around for bears, wolves, and strange night creatures. Only the occasional fly assaulted me. The air was thick with the scent of flowers. Wild red roses, with only five petals grew here in abundance. These were joined by a white flower, trumpet bell in shape, with delicate scent. Off the dirt path before me, trees grew thickly and freely.
I looked back, somewhat afraid. The white door was still open. The wall on either side of the door faded into nothing. I saw the forest extended beyond the portal. But the dirt path began at the door.
I looked up the path. It ran mostly straight, definitely uphill. Not too far away, the path ended at a huge stone structure. The trees brushed against each other overhead, I was unable to see the height of the stone structure. In the distance, I heard something like waves crashing against a beachhead.
I made the decision to proceed to the stone structure. I was looking forward to walking amongst the plentiful roses. But once my decision was made, I was transported instantly to the door of the stone structure. I look back towards the white door, turning just in time to see the door close shut, fence and all completely fading from view.
I am now committed to the vision.
I see I am standing at the large heavy door of a large stone building. The building has been built on the very edge of a cliff, with the ocean dashing against the rocks far, far below. In the distance, over the ocean waters, I note clouds moving this way. The air now has a chill and a hint of humidity. A storm is rolling in. I’m dressed only in my pajamas. This does not bode well.
Inspecting the masonry of the wall, I note the outside wall is made with large stone blocks. No mortar is used here, the blocks having been fashioned to meet its neighbor with precise accuracy. The wooden door is made with large beams, and fortified with iron straps. While made very strong, there is no decoration on the iron. This door was made to keep shut, not to appeal to the eye.
The wind has picked up, and carried the sharp scent of impending rain. In the distance, I now hear thundering rolling across the ocean. I know there is no other shelter here than this tower. I know there are people inside.
Banging on the door is like banging against a large granite boulder. All that is accomplished is a bruised hand. Little noise is generated. Looking the door over again, I note there is no door knocker. There is no means of announcing a visitor at the door.
The vision adds to my knowledge again. The people inside the tower consider themselves to be the greatest people humanity has ever produced. The tower was built for their benefit by their command. They will never degrade themselves with the presence of a mongrel such as myself. They are the Elite. I am the Outcast. As far as they are concerned, they are where they deserve to be, and I am where I deserve to be. They are within, enjoying the warmth of a fire and each others company. I am without in the driven rain. They don’t even consider this to be misanthropic in nature. To them, this is the proper way of the world.
As the knowledge soaks in, the cold rain begins to pelt against me. I am completely exposed at the tower door. I know that even if I were to move to the leeward side of the tower, I would still be drenched by the driving rain.
I shout angrily at the tower’s occupants. As the storm clouds boil directly overhead, the ocean waves increase their assault against the cliff. I suddenly realize how precarious the tower actually is. Erosion has eaten away much of the cliff already. If this storm brings a large storm surge with it, the cliff can be eroded right out from under the tower. How haughty the inhabitants. They think themselves to be secure and unassailable. When they are packaging themselves for destruction when the tower falls.
Wait. I pause as a sentence repeats in my mind. This is a stone tower. A tower.
A half forgotten memory teases at me. I forget the rain, cold, and biting wind for a moment. Completely oblivious to the great danger I am in, standing drenched next to a tall stone edifice with embedded ironwork in a thunderstorm, I place a hand on the tower wall and ask out loud…
“Isn’t there a card in the Tarot named ‘The Tower’?”
I look up just in time to see a lightning leader growing quickly from the tower’s crown. The realization of what I am seeing arrives with the matching lightning strike. The bolt sears down the exterior of the tower, to my hand, through my body, to the ground. In that same instant, the force of the electricity ignites some explosive matter within the tower, and the entire edifice blooms into a bright death blossom.
The force of the strike disintegrates my body and forcibly ejects me from the vision. I jerk awake on my bed, as if I had been thrown across it. My mouth is bitter and my arm tingled that impossible way it did when I had been severely shocked as a child. My ears were ringing despite the lack of sound within the house. It took me a few moments to register the destruction of the tower was just a vision.
I lay still on the bed for several minutes. Recalling over and over again the events of the vision. I noted I was still (somewhat) sane and was not running into the street shouting some gibberish. But I also had the distinct knowledge that the visions were back, and this time, I would not be able to run from them again. That meant I had to educate myself about the symbols in the visions, instead of allowing someone else to tell me how to decrypt them.
“Tower go boom.”, I said to my pillow. “What the hell does the Tower card mean anyway?” My arm still tingling in remembrance of the strike, I reluctantly get out of bed and begin to dress. I had heard about a little metaphysical shop in a nearby city. I was told the folk there were glad to answer questions. Surely they could tell me about that witchy Tarot thing.
And that’s how this all got started. Finally. Sometimes I wonder if my spirit guides didn’t have a bet with each other over how hard they would have to kick my ass to get it in gear.