January 15, 2023
This morning was an odd one but, then again, all of these journeys into the Imaginal are odd. I found myself staring into the blue eye of a mare. Well, her appearance was that of a mare but she was, of course, not just a mare. Her coat was grey-black and shiny. At first, I thought I was supposed to ride her and she would take me somewhere but she sighed after I climbed on her back and said something like, “Why do men always think that a horse is meant for their use.” Chagrined, I dismounted.
I’m not sure if the mare was a messenger or if she was the human soul I encountered next because as soon as I dismounted, I was standing in the middle of a great hall. It was nighttime and the moon was shining down through the glass ceiling overhead. The floor was a checkerboard of black and white tiles. Beside me stood a woman in an ornate black gown very much from the Civil War period in the United States. You know the kind: Hoop skirt like Scarlet O’Hara wore in Gone with the Wind.
This journey was full of missteps and misconceptions. The first one had been when I assumed I was supposed to ride the mare. The second one was that this woman was someone I was meant to help. This was wrong, too, although I suppose I did end up helping her in a way.
I walked through the hall with the woman. The wall next to us was lined with portraits of men. Yes, all men because, well, in this woman’s world at least, men were the only ones of importance. We stopped before a portrait of a stocky man with mutton chops. He was a rather unremarkable individual and seemed to be about middle. Is this the guy I’ve been sent here to help? I wondered. Turns out, that, no, he wasn’t, although he was the husband of the woman in the black hoop skirt.
The man came alive as we stood in front of his portrait and he was standing beside us. I was a little confused about why I was here if neither of them were the ones I was sent to help. I should know by now that I needn’t have worried: The one who I had been sent for made his appearance in a moment.
The husband and wife had barely been reacquainted when a horrible monster lurched into the hall. He came out of pitch blackness and was covered in mud, shit and blood. Beneath his offal coating, he was severely wounded.
As soon as I saw him, I started crying because I could see that this monster was really no monster at all but the couple’s son. I don’t know how he died but he died young and tragically and somehow they were to blame, probably through their indifference or possibly through their active malevolence. Why did I think so? Because this young man, their son, was obviously gay and his father and mother had been violently opposed to his queerness.
I ran to the ‘monster’ and immediately began scraping the excrement off of him. The young man revealed wasn’t what you would call handsome but he had a certain cuteness about him. He was short and somewhat pudgy with reddish hair and a reddish beard. I cleaned him up as best I could until he was no longer shit-covered. He was naked and somewhat hairy underneath all the filth.
Reunited, the trio weren’t exactly thrilled to see each other. I don’t know what their exact history was but I could guess it was a fraught one. Nonetheless, they were together again after who knows how long. We stood there, looking at each other and not knowing what to do. After a while, I gazed up at the moon and realized that the silvery light was not coming from the moon but from the Woman in White. She descended into the gallery and stood before us expectantly.
At last, I thought, she’s here to take the family on their way. I stepped back, thinking I was done. Once again, I was mistaken. My work was far from done because, as I stood there waiting for them to leave, I realized that the young man was connected to a soulmate. There was a thread that led us to the coffin of a big, robust man. He was perhaps a little older than the younger man and verging on fat. He had black hair and a black beard. His corpse was grey-skinned and not moving. The young man and I stood there, looking down on his coffin.
After a time, I was drawn into this man’s memories and found myself in a sitting room. Yellow sunlight flooded in from the windows to the west and, in the center of the floor, was a boy under a sheet. The sheet was stained gold by the rays of the sun. I approached the sheet and, lifting it, discovered the young boy was naked underneath. He was glowing gold, just like the sun. I knelt down and was lifting him up when I realized that this memory that I’d stepped into had a darkness to it: In this memory, the man who lifted up the boy (his uncle?) had proceeded to sexually abuse him.
Seeing his abuse chilled me and I cried for him and for what he had endured. When I looked up, I could see the uncle before me. He was grey-skinned like a corpse and sort of skeletal. You might think that I would reject him for what he had done to the boy but I didn’t. Why? Because I could see how this man had himself been abused as had his abuser and that abuser’s abuser. There was a chain of abuse connecting all of these men together and they were all present. It was a serial clan of child abusers.
Somehow, I got the sense that the boy (who had been the corpse in the coffin) had not continued this legacy of child abuse when he grew up. He had fallen in love with the young, red-haired man and they had had a mostly clandestine relationship. It was not a happy relationship, being fraught for obvious reasons, but they had loved each other and they were still connected. They were soulmates and I certainly understand how fraught relationships with gay soulmates can be.
I found myself back in the nighttime gallery with the Woman in White, the red-haired man and his parents. This time, however, his lover was with us as were the host of child abusers. It was getting crowded! I knew that now this journey was drawing to a close and stepped back, taking my farewells from the group and wishing them a good journey wherever it might lead.
It kind of goes without saying that I have mixed feelings about this encounter. One takeaway, though, is that I’m merely present as a catalyst and it’s not up to me to judge who gets to continue their journey and who is punished. I can only assume that a much higher wisdom than my own is at play in these experiences.
But, wait! There’s more!
After the retinue departed, I could feel the presence of another being, this time not a human soul. I wasn’t surprised by this because frequently I encounter so-called demons or other parasitic creatures after helping free someone who has been stuck. These demons often help to ensnare the human soul and keep it in a stasis, feeding off of it. This one was no different.
He appeared sort of bat-like with grey skin and a wide face with a snub nose. His arms were like bat wings and his eyes were bloodshot. His mouth was small but filled with tiny, sharp teeth. Probably the most notable characteristic, though, was his engorged penis. It reminded me a dog’s penis. You know, the shiny, red part that pokes out of the animal’s furry sheath when it’s excited. This penis was shiny and red and grotesque and very, very big. It was probably three or four feet long and it looked painful. I certainly wouldn’t want a penis that was chronically erect and covered in a very vulnerable and sensitive membrane of blood vessels.
“So, this is what a demon who feeds on pedophiles looks like,” I thought to myself. Of course, I can’t make any broad conclusions based on one demon. For all I know, there are a whole range of such creatures feeding off the unholy urges of child abusers.
As I regarded the creature, I felt pity for him. He was obviously suffering and meant me no harm. When he cried, he cried tears of blood.
We were back in the nursery room–at least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was–where I’d seen the child under the sheet with the golden rays of sunlight streaming in through the window. The golden sunlight was still streaming through the window and it began to have a curious effect on the bat demon. His form began to alter and he gradually became more human-like in appearance. Further, he seemed to be aging in reverse. As he lost his demonic appearance and became more human, he also grew younger and younger until he was baby, then a fetus and finally a zygote. The last I saw, he was like a tiny, glowing, golden seed suspended in a sea of gold light. I interpreted this to mean that our demon was now ready to become truly human and be ‘implanted’ like a fertilized egg in the uterus.
This is an inherently hopeful view of how demons can be transformed in human souls. I know there are many who would disagree with me on this but I’m just reporting what I saw. It’s possible that I am misinterpreting something. The only way to know for sure is to have similar experiences and see what happens. Maybe after I’ve seen it repeated a few times I’ll have more insight?
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