I’m floating. Aware of movement, but not aware of orientation. One side of me is exposed to great heat, of such intensity the physics whore in me is screaming of the impossibility of existing here. The fantasy bitch calmly reaches over and slaps her, saying, “We’re dreaming, silly. Shut up and enjoy the ride.”
I become fully lucid. Chuckling to myself at how my internal mental threads perceive themselves in dreamspace, I open my eyes to see what impossibility is so extreme, I struggle to maintain disbelief.
The colors don’t make any sense. Reds, oranges, and yellows. All brightening to spectacular white as the sources of the colors race around me. I see a slight curvature to the path and realize why I could not orient myself. I’m circling something. The pinpoint sources of the colors are racing themselves in a tightening spiral inward. Faster and faster they race and descend below me until they suddenly wink out of existence at touching an unseen border. I note in the “slumber” of my pre-lucid state, I have been drifting slowly downwards myself. Inching closer and closer to the invisible border. The only reason I knew it was there, was I saw the pinpoint lights suddenly blink out of existence at a certain point. My internal physics nut is giving me hearing loss as she screams, “GET AWAY! GET AWAY! Ascend as fast as you can! Above all else, do not touch the event horizon!”
Event… horizon? I’m dreaming, though. While I know a few cultural references that would include the proximity of an event horizon, the only physical reference would be… Uh oh.
Using the unseen boundary as “down”, I will myself to rise up. I suddenly feel something like gravity pulling at me. But instead of the spaghettification my physics side was expecting, it was like the call of a thousand sirens. Each voice calling me by name, urging me not to flee, but to come down and join myself to the many that have gone before.
“Why do you flee from me?” “Come, be joined to me, let my love release you!” “Come to me, you and all! Surrender yourselves to my embrace and be joined in All Conquering Love!” “No! Don’t go! Only the everlasting darkness is there! There is no Love there, only in Me! Come, come!”
I ignore the calls and rise further and further away from the black hole I had been orbiting. The colors of the racing pinpoints around me dulled the further I rose. From brilliant yellows and blinding whites, to warm oranges, to forge hot red, to dull brown. Finally, I broke free of the ergosphere surrounding the core, into a sudden depth of darkness.
From here, I could not hear the sirens from the core anymore. Some sounds reached my ear, and teased at me like a half-remembered melody. But knowing where the notes were from, made it easy to dismiss them and their effect. The gravitational pull was considerably lessened here. It only served as a directional marker for the core. This way, the marker said, lies dissolution.
I had placed enough distance between me and the event horizon that my initial panic subsided and gave way to cool reasoning. I’m dreaming. This is all a dream. That is not a black hole over there in the distance. That is something my mind is perceiving to behave as a black hole. It is a visual allegory, but for what?
I look around, at the constellations and star clusters that surrounded me in the infinite vastness of space. I could see the black hole I awoke next to was not the center of a galaxy, but an isolated occurance. But it was gaining stars little by little, over time it would collect enough to be considered a galaxy in its own right.
There were many stars called by the black hole. Most of them came close enough to hear the black hole’s sirens fully, only to be repulsed by what they heard and shoot off back into the vastness of space. Of those that were not initially repulsed, most of them remained just beyond the gravitational pull. That is, close enough to know where the black hole is, but not so close that they found themselves pulled in. A few would get closer then zoom away into the vastness. And a few would surrender to the call, joining in the maddening whirl of the ergosphere, only to surrender to the black hole and disappear at the event horizon.
So, the black hole has a feminine voice. I move a little closer to the singularity. Just enough to hear the calls clearly. I notice there are several stars also at this distance. Just close enough to monitor. The siren calls include concepts of unity, inclusiveness, and love. I hear the familiar refrain a lover calling for her love, a mother calling for her children, a matron calling for the destitute to come to her and find shelter. But there is something sickly sweet about the call. Like poisoned honey.
But I still don’t know who, or what, the black hole represents in the Waking. So I back away from the core until the calls are barely heard, and turn my attention to the other stars that encircle us. These stars have no surface, no circumference, no volume. I realize each of them is a pinpoint prick of light. And yet, to my lucid mind, they are quite clearly “stars”. I realize then, that although to myself I appear as a human, with legs and arms and clothes, I appear to these stars as another star myself. A pinpoint prick of light. Why?
Every man and every woman is a star. (Liber AL, I.3)
Each point of light I see around me is a person. All drawn by the siren call of the imploded star that has become the black hole I was orbiting. Now the calling siren voices of the black hole makes sense. The black hole has positioned itself to be a semblance of Nuit. I listen to the siren voices again.
“To me! To me! Cast off your divisions and come to me!” “Do you see how I work for the benefice of all? To refuse me is to be of the Black Brotherhood! Do not become an enemy of Life! Dissolve yourself in me and be free!” “I have become Mother of you all, so that you may become the fullness of yourself. Take from me, drink and eat! The bed lies empty, waiting for you!”
Oh deception, how cloyingly sweet you sound.
I know things are not as clear cut as they appear, even in this dream. I’m missing some subtle nuance. My view is not balanced. I realize my repulsion is not solely logical. I do not trust women in authority positions. Thirty odd years of abuse at the hands of such women have beaten into me an inherent skepticism. My kneejerk reaction to refuse the feminine calls is because of the echoes of abuse.
But the more I listen, the more I pick out inconsistencies. I just can not accept the black hole’s calls. The more I hear, the less I accept. I realize I want to follow along, I want to belong to something greater than myself. But I will not surrender my will to do it. And that is what I feel the black hole is demanding of those stars that surrender to it.
I understand then, why my psyche has portrayed the caller as a black hole, a collapsed star. Oft repeated in the calls is a directive for the stars to accept the caller as their circumference. To be dissolved into the body of the core, and bound by the event horizon. That’s all good, but…
In the sphere [Hadit is] everywhere the centre, as [Nuit], the circumference, is nowhere found. (Liber AL II.3)
This black hole, is not Nuit. And the more she portrays herself as the ultimate of womanhood, the more repulsed I am by her. My mind made up, I start to turn away from the spectacle, to leave the long range orbit of this black hole to continue my search for my own orbit, when a bright pulsing star shoots past me and gets my attention.
I look, and know, who this star is. To my horror he plunges deep into the ergosphere and joins in the maddening dance. I cry out to him, shouts of warning and concern. He hears me. He tells me he is better able to examine the black hole and the effects it has. Asks that I not leave the long range orbit just yet, as if he is overwhelmed by the siren calls, he will call on me to act as an anchor for him to pull free.
Damn stubborn bastard.
He plunges into the midst of the ergosphere, in the same orbit that I originally awoke in when the dream started. I watch carefully, somehow able to pick out his light from the blinding throng that surrounds him. His orbit is stable, it is not in decay, nor is it spiraling outward.
Because I love him, ONLY because I love him as Venus does, do I remain within sight of the black hole. As he has been there for me to pull me out of maddening things, so will I be anchor for him. But I still worry. As I consigned myself to my watchful position, I realize the ergosphere surrounding the black hole reminds me of another mythos.
I remember watching a show produced by National Geographic as a child, that featured religious customs from all over the world. There was one segment where a large group of men were dancing and moving wildly around a tall statue. The narrator detailed how the men were dancing to show they were not only unafraid of dying, but vying for position to be closest to the statue should their god of death come forth and begin the slaughter of the world. An observer asked if the men truly believed the event could happen. The translator whispered back, not only did the men believe it could happen, they cut themselves to urge the death god to descend to the world even faster. The swirling cloud of enthralled stars remind me of that moment.
I know who the black hole is representing, in the Waking. The woman has hit every internal alarm bell I have and a few I didn’t know were there. I know who the bright streaming star represents. I’ve spoken my concerns to that California Hick before, but I have to trust him. He has his own orbit to circumnavigate, after all.
Who am I to tell him otherwise?