First Contact

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Despite a life­time of athe­ism, in the sum­mer of 2020, I was called by The Mor­ri­g­an, a pre­his­toric Irish god­dess of war, death, prophe­cy, and mag­ic. This is my sto­ry of being called by Her (and even­tu­al­ly our work togeth­er).

You can go back to the last part, Spaghet­ti at the Wall, here. 

Or you can go all the way back to where the Jour­ney Begins. 

Today I under­stand more than I did in the sum­mer of 2020.

I don’t under­stand everything—I don’t under­stand MOST things, really—and I’ve giv­en up attempt­ing to under­stand those things that seem to exist in the lim­i­nal space of what can be quite eas­i­ly explained with transper­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, and what in the 21st cen­tu­ry we’re call­ing super­nat­ur­al. These days I can look back on some of what was hap­pen­ing that sum­mer, and at least under­stand the fun­da­men­tals.

At the time, of course, I had no idea.

Learn­ing to close and open (“shields up”) was a fun­da­men­tal shift for me in what­ev­er the hell was going on. I did­n’t know what I had met in my dreams or if its expla­na­tion of what was hap­pen­ing was accu­rate, but it worked. Whether it was a mind­set or actu­al­ly mag­ic, it worked. I was again able to do sim­ple things like go gro­cery shop­ping with­out being over­whelmed by peo­ple’s ener­gy. I could sit in a dri­ve-through with­out sens­ing every­one’s impa­tience. I could talk to some­one I sensed malev­o­lent inten­tions from with­out my skin crawl­ing in revul­sion. I could go about my life.

But I also had to learn new ways of doing almost every­thing. I was under­go­ing a trans­for­ma­tion, and my old habits no longer served me. I could­n’t eat in the same way I had before. Junk food was abhor­rent to me—I could han­dle some salty, but greasy and fat­ty would make me sick, and did­n’t taste good any­more. I did­n’t dis­like sweets, but I’d lost all crav­ings for it. I could bare­ly stand how bright and vivid col­ors were and how intense music sound­ed. Light seemed too bright. Sim­ple tac­tile sen­sa­tions felt like almost as much as I could stand.  I came home from work every night, ate bland food and raw veg­eta­bles, and tried to fig­ure out how mag­ic worked.

I had trou­ble sleeping—shaken awake night after night by dreams of a woman (or women) in black. After she taught me how to close myself, so I could (most­ly) func­tion from day to day, she went back to say­ing cryp­tic shit about how I need­ed to open my eyes and know her. 

After a month it had begun to pass the point of an odd­i­ty and a nov­el­ty. I was start­ing to get des­per­ate. I was hear­ing voic­es. My entire taste palette had been scrambled—my favorite foods made me sick. I could­n’t sleep through the night. I felt drenched in how unhap­py most peo­ple were. And the vol­ume on sen­sa­tion had been turned up too high. 

I was still Chris The Lit­tle Skep­tic™ at this point. For me, mag­ic was a con­cen­tra­tion of will that steered the uncon­scious. Spells were rit­u­als of focus. Accou­trements were affec­ta­tions. This all had a per­fect­ly rea­son­able expla­na­tion. And I was­n’t quite ready to imag­ine that some­thing out­side of me was try­ing to get my atten­tion. I thought I was work­ing some­thing des­per­ate­ly urgent out in the deep cor­ners of my psy­chol­o­gy at night, and this woman rep­re­sent­ed some­thing that I need­ed to grap­ple with.

But my con­fi­dence that I had all the answers was waver­ing. Mag­ic was work­ing for me in ways that were tech­ni­cal­ly not impos­si­ble, but at least seemed implau­si­ble in their sta­tis­ti­cal improb­a­bil­i­ty. I was expe­ri­enc­ing more and more events that were not so easy to dis­miss as an over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion.  Maybe…just maybe there was some­thing beyond what I could eas­i­ly and ratio­nal­ly explain as pure­ly nat­ur­al. One way or anoth­er though, I had to fig­ure it out. My life was upside down, and I was sure that I was going crazy.

I des­per­ate­ly reached out to all the mag­ic prac­ti­tion­ers I knew to help me fig­ure out what was going on, and their advice was unan­i­mous. 

“Some­thing is try­ing to con­tact you.”

I felt a curl of ter­ror corkscrew up my spine.

All the peo­ple I talked to had dif­fer­ing advice about how care­ful to be and what I should do about some­thing try­ing to con­tact me (from ward­ing my bed­room to invok­ing pro­tec­tive spir­its), but they all agreed about what was hap­pen­ing.

“How do I fig­ure out what she is?” I asked one of them.

“Have you you tried ask­ing her?” she said.

I had­n’t. It had­n’t even occurred to me. I knew how to lucid dream at least to the point where I could con­trol myself. Why had­n’t I sim­ply asked?

That night I fell asleep with a mantra going through my head. “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?”

In the dream I stood on an ancient bat­tle­field after the car­nage had com­plet­ed. Bod­ies and arrows and swords and spears and shields lit­tered the ground all around me, and in the dis­tance a fire burned and curls of black smoke smudged the sky. Crows (or ravens, I thought, but now I know it was prob­a­bly crows) stood caw­ing amidst the bod­ies, blood­cur­dling caws that sound­ed like screams. In par­tic­u­lar five of them began to hop towards me, and they trans­formed into five women wear­ing black. The one in the front—the one that most often did the talk­ing to me—wore some­thing between a duster and a dress (with open legs) over leather armor. 

“You must pre­pare for bat­tle,” she said. “You must know me.”

I could feel the dream fad­ing away, but I sud­den­ly real­ized I was dream­ing. I remem­bered what I had to ask.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Who are you? Who are you?”

Her eyes looked at mine. “I am She. I am Queen. I am many. I am all. Among us you can call me…”

I woke up twist­ed into my sheets, my hands clenched into fists around my blan­ket, with jagged breaths hitch­ing out of me.

But I had heard it…in those last sec­onds between dream and wake, I’d heard a name. A name that I had nev­er heard before. 

Anu.

Next: Dis­cov­er­ing Anu—The Sec­ond of the Great Dreams

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