I was lost and broken when I first arrived at the Seatemple Inn, and unsure as to what was expected of me.

“Don’t worry,” the clerk had told me as I surveyed the empty lobby, you will meet the others soon.

Were the others at an event that I hadn’t been given clearance to attend? I heard a peal of laughter down the hall as I checked into my room. then nothing. 

i listened, heard my own breathing, the exhaling of the air conditioner, the running of someone’s shower, and later, the footsteps in the hall as another researcher arrived. 

Each alone in their room, each waiting for the moment to go to the main banquet area for orientation. 

At the first session, we all dutifully arrived on time, looked at one another and checked each other out. But there was no real meet and greet. 

Before we began, one of the participants came up to me, saying, “I’ve  opened up your initial report, and found a way into your material. Very useful, very interesting.”

I hadn’t met her before, and didn’t know exactly what to say. I was confused that my reports had been read by someone else, particularly because I hadn’t seen any of theirs. Oh, I knew others were doing the same work in their own areas, but I hadn’t even been aware of them all as individuals. How had she seen this, I had only reported in a few weeks before? Had it been circulated to all, or what were the criteria for viewing? There was no time to consider these questions. The presentation had already begun:

The presenter was speaking comforting words, “You’ve taken your work out of exile and are giving it the profile and legitimacy it deserves. You can stand beside it as a companion.” I listened but wondered how many of the others had read my previous ramblings, the words I’d thought only the archivist and founder had seen. But then I recalled that the clerk at the warehouse seemed to know much more about my mission than he had let on. The presenter continued, “…emerging from exile as an artist. It is liberating.”

I couldn’t keep my concentration on the group and presentation. In vision I was sent into a rapid series of corridors, and with each transition, felt myself shedding matter, revealing meaning. Transubstatiation. My own ritual of the soul. I saw myself standing tall, without clothes before the light of the sun. Reborn as a light to travel into the next iteration of the great line of beauty and wisdom. A release into truth.

Objects danced about in spirals and cotillions. The musical variations brought by life were now all transmuted into ephemeral form, becoming implicit. Withdrawn into the unborn.  I chose my new way, and was immediately sucked down into the funnel with all the others, whirlpooled in the maelstrom of birth once again. What had just happened?

There was nothing more to say. The presentation ended and we all applauded. I looked around and saw the others – had they all experienced their own deep insight or what? Who were they? Parts of me or influences or beings in their own right? Was the Seatemple Inn a reality or was I having a vision of an imagined liminal place where the contents of the cabinets meet the magicians who hold them? If so, how did I fit into this picture, if at all?

I began to discern some understanding in words to bring me to the next level of awakening and awe. I knew that this vision transcended the good guys-bad guys duality. I wondered, “Have I just been crafting visionary fantasy in tandem with a loose grasp of metaphysical reality?” 

Is there such a thing as the wunderkabinett? An answer came to me, hard and fast. It is all this world and cosmos, and me in it. And it is a living being, not a created built structure found only in the imagination. For here is the root of it all – there is only one way we can find our own inner cabinet, which for some cosmic reason holds the soul’s purpose and its instruments, which are implements of her self-expression while the soul is embodied. When the body is left, the soul finds other finer implements for her expression, until finally we see that the soul is all in all, and has access to all corridors, rivers, dreams and beings, through time and across the loss of time, into what we call eternity but have never beheld. 

The guessing, the trying, thrown like a grappling hook over the lip of the high wall, the clambering for a view of the cascade of waterfall beyond, while above in the sky the parade of planets indicates our presence is all an appointment in eternity. 

Platonic futurity. A glimpse of what can be through the wall of what is. 

Now we see with the flash through the great eye, we see and know with an intuitive becoming. There, in the heart of the cabinet, our metaphor for the great body of being, comes an appearance of not one or two but innumerable stars, each with its directive purpose – to illuminate darkness and to evolve the world through its sympathies with designated friends and beings, seen and unseen.