"I don't really get it. It's a bit too much. What I really want to know is what the hell is wrong with me, why can't I see myself? Where is my body? And, who or what the fuck are you supposed to be?"
"You are in Sitra Achra as I've already explained, it is the place of the dark-born, Exquisite Corpses. I am myself an Exquisite Corpse, and interim soul-severer.
"That sounds terrifying. If I am being honest and I think I am, I'm not sure I want you to continue..." I said this and for a second I meant it but then I couldn't help myself but ask, "Soul-what, severer? So, you go around cutting peoples souls in half... from them, or, whatever?"
"I free the souls of those in need from the shackles of their material selves, allowing them to be truly born, to transcend and see the truth with eyes wide open. It was only ever meant to be temporary, I was pushed into it, but Fate's machinations have prevented the proper order of things. Therefore, I have been standing in for eons now. In other words I am what you would call, Death; a sort of skelefication thereof… You can call me Elohim, or El if it suits. I am a shepherd of sorts. A guide through the ethereal catacombs."
"I don't even know what to say. I'm dreaming, and this is all a dream that is beginning to feel more like a nightmare."
"To truly understand you must throw your notions of birth and death away. They are one and the same."
"That makes absolutely no sense. One is the beginning and one is an end."
Just listen, the truth is when you die your mind is born in its own form and carries on, physically your body degrades. When you are born, it is a death of your mind or higher self, your body becomes the soil for which your mind and soul are buried. Your bones are a bio coffin. You are aware of relatively nothing. So you see, they are intricately and innately linked. Where you come from you've been indoctrinated that they are opposites. Birth the starting line and death the finishing line. Of course, even on Earth, there is much debate. The breakaway faiths, or rather the older, wiser followers cannot actually 'see' the difference but have a vast impression of this reality; they are more awake. It is in 'our' nature to help the mind find itself across the proper canvass. I look after the Earth, guiding those who shun or turn from the 'light' to find their immortal place in the darkness, the cosmic womb, to flourish. The other dark-born live in a similar manner helping other beings in different times and space.
Since the universe was severed and separated into dark and light, living beings from the smallest to the largest have all strived for transcendence, to evolve, through imagination. We were born in the darkness with a great insight, the ability to see without light and to see that which resides within. There was however, those who were born in direct light under the weight of the Word. An imagination was born before the form with a great lusting hunger, for power, control and sustenance. It calls itself Theol: Theol feeds on the sleeping or 'unconscious' soul causing humans to whither on the vine, it is what you call aging. It has the ability to manipulate itself and multiply and has sent many of its own agents of light in myriad forms to you people as messengers of hope and guidance. That, which spoke in Mary's ear, the burning bush, and the worst and most effective, was that formless thought which, its law was writ on stone and placed into your hands on the mountain - a fallacy, all of it. It had manifold pretence, to control and to seem like a saviour from chaos. It seeks to keep you docile and unwise to its true schematics. It seeks to keep the Earth as you keep pigs… oh, what is the word?"
"Pens, farms?"
"There you are. You herd nicely into your cathedrals and churches, mosques and synagogues, and as you perform your rituals, sing your hymns and say your prayers, you conjure Theol's divine salivation upon you. Then, all of its children, the agents it created can feed."
"But how? I've never seen it, or anyone being fed on. I can't even imagine it, it doesn't make sense."
"Sense has nothing to do with it. What you call sense is merely material experience that your body provides creating cheap stimulation. It is easily tricked, obscured, blinded. You see, when you are born there is an umbilical connecting your body to your soul. Because the soul cannot be contained, it floats in the aether above you tethered ethereally. Animals have a sense for this as well as babies and some creatives, people like true artists; mediums and clairvoyants see aspects and call it an aura. They are seeing what is akin to the aurora borealis. Emotionally charged particles glancing off the umbra of the soul creating higher and lower energy states of emotion. Now that you are free of your marrow box your faculties will grow, all these things you will begin to truly perceive.
Which, leads me to your other question. You are incorporeal because you passed across the 'canvas' into this realm instead of reaching for the light when you died."
"I didn't, I don't remember seeing any canvas or light. How..." Staggered, I could barely find my voice. I was reeling in what felt like a very out of control situation. How could I have no choice on anything in my life. Everything felt so far out of control the world started to spin.
The skeleton thing - Elohim continued talking despite my incomprehension, "I admit I had a helping hand in this. In this place you are no longer a human being. You've been destined for more than flesh and this is the beginning of your inner divinity. You've become your light. Merged with your own soul. You've been painted, marked since birth and all births that came before reaching back to the tended Green Womb. Now in your thirty third year here you are. As the light grows casting empty shadows your time has come, you are needed to help disavow this evil."
"No, n n n no, no... no way! There is no way!" None of this was believable. It was crazy. What evil is this guy talking about and how was I going to fight some crazy evil when I can't even hold my own hand.
"Take some time to grasp it, I have somewhere to be at the moment, but I am sure you will have more questions, we'll talk more when I return."
"So what you are just going to leave -"
And just like that, the sour-sweet gales begin to swirl, and the congregation of ash petals, Elohim breaks apart before me, a thousand black ash starlings stuck together in a cluster and expanding out like a Hoberman Sphere that twists into a helix and then a straight band and back again as they climbed away into the sky.
For the first time I am alone in this strange and desolate place with the mute honey sky and blond streaked sand. An eclipse of the death's head moths flutter about flitting here and there, contrasting the light sand and yellow air. It is the strangest desert I've ever seen. The ground is like hard pan that has been polished into yellowish-brown onyx. No lines or striations, cracks, not even a dune. There is no wind now, I don't even notice a temperature. It all just is. I try to move, to walk; thinking about taking a step and actually moving become very separate actions. It's as if the gravity here is overpowering, like a hand or a clamp holding me in place until I fight my way out of it and then there is no gravity at all. Once my foot or what I feel is my foot breaks from the surface and begins its trajectory it floats up on its own and I have to push it back down - I feel really stupid. I probably look like a complete fool. 'Don't worry about it.' Who's looking, there's no one else here - I spin around. I am completely alone for miles and miles, so I continue on like a marionette with invisible strings and no limbs to attach them too.
Off in the distance I see something standing next to what could be a river. It's hard to tell because even though its a darker colour and more ephemeral than the strange polished sand it doesn't seem to be moving. There is no sound or smell either, or maybe that's just me - what did El say about sense? … Oh yeah a cheap stimulant created by the body, material. Now what? I have no fucking body, now what am I supposed to do!? Dust forms a mushroom cloud from where I've kicked at the ground and floats away. I concentrate, on not thinking. I don't really have a body so why am I trying to walk? What's the next step? That thought gets me giggling a little to myself. Easy, there isn't one. I look straight at the river and think about being there, wanting to be next to it. A little plume of dust billows up, then another and another. All of a sudden I'm beside what could be the leg of an old roman statue, except that it is too porous to be marble or stone. It just a bone white thing standing erect and still. So still in fact it must be glass or brush stroke. I look at the leg hoping its a driftwood tree stump and not actually bone, it's impossible to tell. I try to touch it and but pass around it on all sides. 'I'm just fuckin fog. This is just great.' It casts a long snaking shadow out over the water that seems to stretch endlessly into the distance, which is strange because there isn't a sun. There are a few straight slits in the sky which intersect at the centre and have luminous bulbs at the end, like an artists rendering, but it casts very feeble light, if any at all. In fact the stump is the only thing here that I've seen casting a shadow. I don't even have one. Of course I can see straight through myself, the sky on all sides. I lean against the leg and drift down toward the ground and just sit by the water as an empty gondola glides by without a gondolier in the still water...