This is part of the Mystical Journey series. If you’re new to the journey, you can begin here.
Turns out, your experience in the coral reef was different from mine.
Instead of seeing Another You, like the alternate version of Me I stumbled upon in the sleeping nook, you crawled up a carpeted set of stairs, the mirrored ceiling low, your fun-house double shuffling on hands and knees above you.
At the top was a narrow vestibule with a circular plastic window set into the floor. Peering inside, you encountered a hypnotic display of lights, colors rippling like waves as they reflected off angled mirrors, the entire effect that of lights swirling down an endless drain, taking your consciousness deeper and deeper.
Your awareness slipped into a sideways pocket of reality, and you felt diffuse, less held together, as you drifted toward a set of double doors, ornate ironwork curled in snake-like patterns over the polished wood. Your palm moved to press against the heavy panel, but your arm disappeared through the door up to your elbow, like dunking your hand in a bucket of ink-dark water.
Yanking it back, your hand, thankfully, was still intact. Solid wood, it appears, was no barrier to your wispy form, and you stepped through unscathed. But where was this? A library, you surmised, but where tables and lamps might be, instead low cots, each with a slumbering form, were arranged like spokes inside the circular, book-lined walls.
You marveled as tendrils of multi-colored energy spun from the figures’ heads, snaking toward the shelves of books.
What was happening here? A wisp of emerald green unfurled in front of you, vaporing like smoke from the nearest figure, and you crept closer, following its whispy way to a yellow, leather-clad volume.
Somehow you could see into the book, though it lay unopened on the shelf, and you watched as the emerald tendril wove itself into other coils, a rainbow of colors already on the page.
And then, as if a switch had been flipped, a scene emerged like a hologram: a young child carefully spooning dirt from a potted plant onto the cushion of the nearby couch, little palm cupped beneath, careful to not get dirt on the carpet. Wide-eyed shock when a woman burst into the room, apron tied to her waist, her lips curling in anger as the spoon bounced on the carpet in a spray of soil.
But of course…it was a dream. The figure on the cot–they were dreaming, their face an older but unmistakable echo of the child holding the spoon.
So this, this library of dreams, is where our nightly sojourns are captured for posterity?
The question no sooner thought, you found yourself back in the carpeted vestibule, blinking in the dizzily rippling lights.
The Dreamscape. How to know if we witnessed different locations of the same land, or are there different Dreamscapes for different dreamers? Could you access your dream book while awake?
I wish I had something to write with, I told you. There are too many threads, too many details swimming in my head. I can’t make sense of them all. Well, I said, standing to stretch with a yawn, where to now?
And comically on cue, a sign blazed into life, a giant arrow embedded in a wall of cellophane jelly fish and felted sea stars: EXIT.
We made our way to the door, and once beyond, a simple sight after the exuberance of the crowded reef: a pair of old school desks in an otherwise empty room. My thoughts finding more room to shuffle into categories of connection with nothing on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all clamoring for my attention. Here…just space.
Easing myself sideways into the bolted-down seat, I ran my hands over the desk’s smooth, timeworn surface, unsure what to do next.
Inside, you exclaimed. Look inside the desk!
Hinging open the top revealed a purple notebook, my name embossed in gold. You were holding up one of your own.
Something to write with, I smiled. Smoothing back the cover, I recognized the neat, cursive type immediately.
Here is a place to weave the threads, to record all that you’ve seen, all that you’ve learned.
Magic lies in these pages, conjured through the translation of thought to symbol, the magic of the Scribe. Since oldest of time, your psyche has drug forth meaning from the innermost depths, baited with the hook of language. Awaken those ancient pathways now, spinning words of gold from thoughts unknown.
This is the third key of Jungian Magic.
I uncapped the fountain pen…and began to write.
