In our sessions together, as the group wrote their accounts, I recalled the warehouse clerk’s advice.
“There are many other resources, not collected here, that may be of service to you if you choose to use them.” He took me to the other side of the office area and opened a door that initially appeared to be a closet, but upon closer examination, it revealed itself to be another library dedicated to data storage. “ We enter it here, “ he said, and he gave me the password before leaving and closing the door.
It was a new system that had just been implemented, one we were unaware of in our work until now. I can’t possibly describe what this was all about, but suffice it to say that when I noticed we could not actually discover everything available, we had to rely more and more on our inner and personal resources. Here we were on our own, and the VR capabilities of the machine allowed me to completely personalize my search to such an extent that I felt myself and all I was and had been doing reflected there, in the output. It was my specific dream, in my own visual language.
I should say that this material was not presented in words but in visual language with audio augmentation. I found it all amazingly overwhelming, and I was so thrilled I had to take off the headpiece and breathe deeply. I looked around, astonished, and watched for the next aspect of the work to reveal itself.
Into my line of vision—emerging from the left margin but swiftly taking place in the centre of my attention field—a shaman appeared, in full regalia, with shakers and a large moondrum, marked with detail so fine and elaborate it took my breath away.
To my astonishment, he looked at me and spoke. Up until this point, the figures and information were passive, and I was a passive observer, assessing and participating only as a recorder of what was being seen. Now, I was interacting, and he was speaking in a language I had never heard or known. I checked to the side, and there were no correlating details about his origin or being. He had somehow appeared from a sort of nowhere.
I took off the headset again. Stood and opened the door to the office, but all the lights were off and it seemed that the clerk had left or gone elsewhere for a time.
Time passed and I was not sure now how I would return to normal life.
it seemed to me that the shaman was an an essential companion in the creation of this account, and that its completion needed to wait until he had become sufficiently developed to appear here. I hadn’t named him yet.
Then from his mind he projected innumerable names, and with each name I saw an aspect of him, standing beside him as an equal being in that function. As each group of fragment selves appeared, the new group was more ancient than the one before, and it seemed to descend ever-deeper.
“Call upon us, call on us,” they said. “We are here to help you.”
The first to step forward: Moonshadow, Bonecaller, Stormwhisper, Thornheart, Duskchanter.
Then came Thulak, Elderbone, Arak-Shai the First Dreamer, Worldseed, Rootfather, Zurathi of the First Fire, Eternal Eye, Vaanak the Unspoken.
“Call on us, call on us, we are here to help you.”
They all stepped aside and allowed even older Ones to appear: Firststone, Deepearth, Primabreath, Moltenheart, Starspeaker, Changenot, Flame, Oldendark
They hailed their older cousins: Bonemarrow, Great-hunt, Cave-Father, Firetamer, Mammoth-Speaker, First-Stone-Striker, Who Dreams in Ochre.
“Call on us, call on us, we are here to help you.”
This last being, stood tall and free, and with open arms welcomed Hand-Painter, Who Dreams in Red Earth, Dancing Bison, Shadow-Maker and Time-Marker. Behind them stood Spirit-Drawer, Deep-Place, and Speaks Through Stone.
“Call on us, call on us, we are here to help you.”
In their semi-circle they welcomed Dak-Rul of the Hidden Chamber, Vor-Shan Echo-Walker, Muth-Ka of the Singing Caves, Kal-Thar Deep-Dreamer and Roth-Pan Guardian of the Starless Temple. Behind them emerged Sak-Vu Keeper of Sacred Depths, Nak-Tul Who Walks Through Stone, Ur-Mak of the Stone Womb.
“Call on us, call on us, we are here to help you.”
They all faded, disappeared into smoky mist.
I heard them calling the names of the others of the first circle, but could not see them. They were unstable in the mist:
Smoke-Weaver, Blood-Drummer, Spirit-Dancer, Bone-Singer, Vision-Keeper, One Who Marks the Chosen,
Shadowborn, Soul-Shaper, First-Cut, Death-Teacher, Birthscream,Threshold-Guardian.
Again, I heard their spiralling voices, calling the next names, and crying in a lamenting language unknown.
Who Dies Each Moon, Grave-Crawler, Birth-Death-Birth, Bone-Breaker-Healer, Who Walks Both Worlds, Empty-Vessel-Filled, Serpent-Skin-Shedder, Ash-Risen.
The shaman gathered all these into himself, and looked up then toward me with shimmering eyes that projected the Milky Way and all planets, eyes that had seen all worlds, and their histories and powers were held in that depth.
“Thank you for seeing me, for calling me. We are here now to help you in everything you do.”
He dissolved back but then left only a voice inside my mind.
“Call me Cory, I will be your son, and I will sacrifice myself for your life.”
You would think that the disorientation and confusion would come from the shamanic vision and the appearance of all the Ancient Ones, but for me, that small voice at the end was the most scary of all. It meant that I was being taken into a personal aspect of myself, the fourth wall forever broken and the author with all her separation and omniscience was instead given a new directive, “Be yourself.”
I am the Seeker, and I am the Wise One, just as Cory is the Seeker and also the Wise one.
For what is incarnation but the bringing together of all these names and forms and forces that are so impossible to identify yet we do name them, and form them.
Why is it so difficult for me to say the name Cory and why is it so deep inside my own cave of the self, the ancient part of me that is dark, hidden, not easily found even by me?
A dream is the answer. Each dream I had of him each night until he was destroyed and returned the next night and the next to be born and to be destroyed. This is my own Orphic myth, my own mystery, my life’s meaning in this mystery. and to find its cause and chart its course to its source is the goal of my soul. To recommission all the powers that were first given to me to unfold, then to open them all up again to their original purpose: Is this not the true meaning of the wUnderkabinett? Somehow, I am the cabinet and i am what I am seeking.
That is to say I am that decommissioned magical field of beings and objects, and my awakening soul discovers them and with a touch of the magic wand brings them back into form and life again. But it can never bring back my son who was only a fragment of the great being beyond and is now only a memory, yet an animated memory that infuses all my living discoveries.
I went to the east and I went to the west and all the gods and great beings couldn’t find the secret cause of all my sorrow. I went to the south and to the north and all those gods and great ones couldn’t find the secret cause of all my sorrow. I went to the centre where past and present have no place, and there I couldn’t find the cause of all that sorrow, because without time there cannot be sorrow, only myth. I have mythologized my son in my life and have forgotten all the little details that brought life into being and into meaning. all these were washed away in the flood, and were never to return. The ability to have easy friendship, the ability to understand myself simply. But this was foretold long ago, in my childhood and earlier, that I was to be born as a woman who was not easily incarnated, as a person who was to know the mathematics and the planets and to read the world’s literature and to synthesize all this. For this is the platonist philosophy, the love of wisdom, and it is hard won.
Cory came because he was a great soul, a great wizard who knew all this long before. and he came specifically to me, no one else, because he was here before and knew i could learn from him all these wise things before he had to leave. I incubated him as I was his great cave of birth and death, of wisdom and of unknowing. I was his embrace of love and his deepest mummy. For in all this, and with ourselves as our own cabinets, we are, for all of it, just human beings with very brief lives. As such we are each a decommissioned magical object/sacred embodied thing, and the work of the wunderkabinett project is to open this magic back up in each of us, to bring us each into form and meaning . I had thought that the end of this book would bring my death, and perhaps it has brought to a sort of death this hidden way i have of holding the life of Cory as a separate part of myself, as a secret to never come out of the cave, to never be found, the body that was sent down life’s rushing river and disappeared forever. Dental records reveal the skull was that of a 7 year old boy who accidentally drowned June 15 1974.