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The Summoning of Mara
- The Summoning of Mara -
Being a faithful and true account of an out of body experience I underwent during the week previous to my having committed this to writing.
When in the spirit, what compels me to travel unto realms and places unbidden? Not by my will alone, but called at times by the will of powers unseen... which by ancient and forgotten pacts and ties are able to call me hither unto them. Such a thing happened to me recently when in the grasp of mighty visions I heard a small group of voices calling me by one of my ancient names... “Mara!” they called out to me, invoking this name. “Mara! Return unto us once more.” and they kept chanting this, and I heard them and somehow, in a manner beyond even my understanding my spirit obeyed their call. I found myself on a familiar street, but not one on this world, not one of this Earth. I passed a family who seemed concerned over their eldest daughter, and a choice she had made. The mother of the family was no older than in her late thirties by the look of her, and wore a yellow dress with elaborate gold designs upon it. She was golden-haired, and golden-eyed also, and said that her daughter bore the same features and was renowned for her beauty. She implored me to seek out her daughter, and render her any aid I may, and look out for her if possible... for she sensed that there was trouble involved in her daughter's decision to leave her home. The girl had left behind, other than a mother, a brother and a father and a grandfather too... all of whom were dressed in clothing in various shades and hues of yellow, gold, orange and red. I asked the mother: “Where has your daughter gone, and why do you suspect trouble due to her leaving?” And the mother told me that her daughter had chosen to join a cult that worships the primordial goddess Mara... whom I had once been in a life now long past... and that the cult had betrothed her to the goddess and insisted she leave her home to travel to their temple, where her destiny would await her. The grandfather was kind enough to explain to me that the temple lay in a city that was reachable by way of a fast train that traveled on a monorail which linked the small town I was in then to the city that I was supposed to go to in order to find the temple and the girl who had chosen to journey there. The family, evidently, did not know who I was and seemed to not be the ones who had called me to this other planet on which I now found myself. I did not tell them, but agreed only to do what I could. I warned the little boy who was the missing girl's brother not to go in search of his sister (for he expressed that he desired to do so) but to stay with the safety of his family. The old man, the grandfather, led me back behind several buildings and into one of them. Once there, he slid open a wooden wall panel and revealed a metal corridor that led out unto a series of catwalks that looked out over a bustling area of town below. This was a small town, but even so it had lofty buildings many of which were white and some of which had great square towers topped by pyramid-like tops. There was a railed catwalk leading out to the monorail, and a train was just arriving as we got there. The old man then said I needed to hurry and behind us I could hear the sound of heavy boots falling on the ground. I saw a squad of soldiers wearing green and blue uniforms and wearing green helmets with blue tinted visors. Only their mouths could be seen, and they yelled for me to halt and go with them... yet they did not say why or to where they planned on taking me. They all carried dangerous looking rifles of some heavy sort, all of white metallic design. I have never seen an equivalent on Earth in any era at least thus far of its' history. The rifles seemed to have cylinders attached to them that contained what looked like bottled blue lightning, which seemed to power the weapons. “Run! Get out of here fast.” the old man said, and I boarded the train and settled into a seat by a window as it went fast upon its' way, leaving the soldiers and that family far, far behind me. As the train bolted along as a rapid speed, I took the time to look around and saw that the train was white and silver, with black in places. The windows appeared dark on the outside, but on the inside you could see out of them as clear as if there were no windows there at all. All of the passengers were dressed the same way as the family I had left behind, in similar styled garments of pretty much the same colors. Most of the men wore tunics and loose pantaloons, and I noticed many women did too... and some of both genders wore robes. This was definitely not Earth, wherever it actually was. I did not dare to ask, lest someone think me insane for asking such a question... so I decided simply to wait and see. I looked out a window and saw the small town become a magnificent city in but the briefest of moments whilst the lush green countryside between the two sped by like a blur. Such speed we must have traveled at, and yet inside that train it did not feel like we were moving at all, and I felt no motion sickness of any sort despite the intensity of the speed as evident by what I saw outside the window. The train eventually slowed down to a leisurely if not slow pace and many people started to walk up some stairs to a roof area of the train that was open to the sky and which provided a magnificent view of our surroundings. I joined them and took a look for myself. The city I saw was practically gleaming with great skyscrapers and towers of the sort I described previously. All lit up with lights of various sorts... great metal antennas rose up here and there, some atop buildings, and I saw that this was a very advanced culture here, not a primitive society by any means. I could only assume that there were some who were living in poverty even among all that opulence because between the gleaming structures there were the humblest of hovels and shelters in places, and some were inhabited by people who appeared destitute or perhaps even homeless. I wondered if those who dwelt in the splendors above even noticed or cared about the plights of those below. This was no utopia, and right away I felt something about this place that made me feel a tremendous sense of unease and disgust. A group of what I took to be pilgrims pointed out a towering structure that loomed ever closer the more the train neared it. It was a step pyramid of some sort, all of red and orange bricks at least on the outside, and atop it was a beautiful white marble temple with ridged columns and a domed roof topped by a silver ankh. Holding all of this together were sections of metal and I saw the way that ancient and modern techniques were being used in order to create these sorts of architectural marvels. Murals and reliefs adorned the lowest-level entrance into the pyramid temple, and the processional way leading over to that was flanked on both sides of the road by statues atop slender columns. Statues of women warriors of various sorts, all of whom bore the same face, a face that once had been my own. The face of Mara! I knew without being told, that this was our destination, and that those who had called me to that world awaited me within. Suddenly, I saw the girl I had been sent to find among a crowd not far from the entrance to the pyramid temple. I called out of to her, but I did not know her name and she seemed not to acknowledge me and upon noticing that I walking in her general direction she hastened into the great edifice itself. I hurried as fast as I could... the train had stopped a while back... and I ran down from the roof area of it and out unto some more catwalks and eventually unto the processional way. I hurried into the temple, following the way that the girl had gone. She had been dressed in a gown of white and gold, her long golden hair long and free behind her with only a thin gold band to hold it back from her face. She was singing a song about getting married and becoming a happy bride, and as I neared her at last I noticed she was in the company of other girls and women who sang the same song and wore similar garments. Not one seemed to pay me any heed, and the closer I got to them the more they hurried away from me as if they actually wanted me to follow them but not reach them just yet. We passed through interior gardens grown upon walls of solid rock in one area... the area immediately past the main entrance... all watered by man-made waterfalls that fell from pipes from the walls and ceiling in spots. It was beautiful, just as almost everything in this city appeared to be.... but there was a stillness and a sense of something sinister that permeated the very air of this place, and I liked it not! We ascended stairs past shrines and the apartments of those who lived in and tended the temple, and soon we reached that white marble upper temple that I had seen before. Within there were what seemed to be beautiful living spaces and meditation areas that had been set aside for these girls and women who immediately seemed to be making themselves at home. I did not bother to ask them anything... they seemed to regard me as one may a ghost. They would not have answered me in any case. My attention was mostly drawn the girl I had been sent to look after, and thus far I had no reason to suspect that she might be in any sort of trouble. She seemed genuinely happy, and if anything rather more than a bit childlike and innocent. She picked up a golden harp and played upon it whilst singing again. During the trip through the temple, all had been silent save for distant chanting I heard coming from various alcoves and places out of site... but now the girl sang and the others with her sang, and they sang like angels. I wondered.... might this place be some sort of heavenly realm to which I had been called? But if so, that did not explain my sense that something was wrong here after all. I had wait and see. I had to know why I was even here at all in this place! These apartments we were in were all white-walled with gold and silver trim, and the windows of them were ornate but of plain clear glass otherwise. White draperies hung from about the windows, and white pillars supported the roof above us. We passed out of there and up some stairs into a meditation area that consisted of a circular balcony overlooking the city and surrounded by the great columns that supported the dome high above us. There were murals decorating the interior of the dome, but I could not make them out, so lofty was that dome and so far below it were we. The girl was still playing her harp, and soon a group of strange people entered the meditation area... all men and women in white robes and wearing white hoods with white cloths covering their mouths. Only their eyes could be seen, for they wore white gloves as well. Only their leader was not thus masked... an old man with white hair and a clean-shaven face with sharp, almost bird-like features that had a naturally predatory way about them. “Welcome, brides of Mara, to your new home! One of you will be chosen to help us bring our goddess back to us this day.” and the old man pointed to that girl I had been sent to follow. “You shall have the honor on this day, of serving the goddess.” and she followed them very meekly out of the room, and I followed after the lot of them. I called out to the old man, wanted to find out what was going on, but he ignored me utterly as if I was not there at all. We ascended a spiral stairway leading up the interior of the dome from the outside, but it was all totally enclosed, and there were no windows. The stairs were gradual, not sharp, and the climb felt endless and soon we arrived at a room at the top of the dome. It was not a very large room, only about the size of someone's living room but it was round and above us was a small dome of plain white marble. White pillars ran the whole length of the room and in the center was a white coffin on a raised dais. Behind the coffin was a statue of the goddess Mara that looked exactly as I had looked back when I bore that name. The high priest (for that is what that predatory-looking old man was) walked over to the coffin whilst the girl played her harp and sang, and the priest opened the coffin's lid and cast it aside. Within the coffin was a woman's skeleton wearing tattered garments. It was my skeleton, from when I was Mara... they had kept it, preserved it somehow for thousands upon thousands of years (it appeared expertly mummified, even deteriorated as badly as it was), and were now using it for some purpose I could not begin to guess at. You could smell the preserving fluids the moment the coffin was opened, so strong were those they had used! The priest then ordered the others to seize the girl, and they began to cut pieces of her skin off and the priest would take them and place them on the skeleton. They cut out the girl's organs and gave them to the skeleton. They kept up this grisly ritual until the skeleton was a skeleton no more but through these grisly rites was given a new patchwork skin over fresh organs. The girl's blood was then transfused into this horrible body, and the girl's soul and spirit were removed from her and placed into a small vial that appeared to be practically alive with her divine spark and vital essence. The priest used the power of the girl's soul to begin knitting the skin together and causing the organs to start working again, and the more my old body began to gain a semblance of life... the more the girl's chopped up corpse decayed. I screamed, I wanted to tell these people to stop this horror, but they seemed to not even notice I was there. I was a ghost to them! Or I might as well had been. I tried to strike the high priest as soon as his people had begun to “harvest” the girl's body at the start of this bizarrely alien necromancy ritual but a blue force field prevented me from being able to do so. I was helpless and forced to watch this, all of this, and at the last when my old body began to move and breathe I felt my own soul and spirit beginning to transfer themselves into it involuntarily. The whole time, the priest and his flock were chanting the very chant that had brought me to there... wherever there was. “Mara! Mara! Mara!” they cried, and I opened my long-dead eyes and moved my long-dead lips to speak. Only now they bore the likeness of that girl whose flesh and blood and all else they had stolen to remake me. “Stop! Stop this, I do not want this! I never wanted this!” I screamed, and that is when the high priest saw the body I was being taken out of and beheld blue energy arcing between that and the body they had prepared for me in so gruesome a fashion. His acolytes were waving around rosaries made from human bones, and I realized that if this were some sort of heaven it was no heaven I wanted any part of. Suddenly, I recognized that cruel old man and I went to speak his name. “Sabaoth? Sabaoth! Why did you call me here, to your realm on this world? What do you want from me!” And he seemed to be stuttering at that point, unable to form the right words. Many in that chamber were shocked and yelled out: “Mara! She has returned to us! Mara! The goddess is here, she is with us!” and I was angry at their evil and cruelty. “Was there no other way to bring me here?” I asked, my tone a wrathful one. “There was not... this is our way... this is how we bring you here when we bring you here.” Sabaoth explained, his tone confused and almost bewildered. He could not understand why I was so angry, why I would even ask this question of him. “I never liked you, Sabaoth.” I said to him. “And I want no part of you, and nothing to do with you.” and I left that body behind me, and felt myself being pulled away elsewhere. I could hear him trying to call me back to him, but his ritual had failed and he could not muster enough power to keep it up or perform it again. I could hear him from far away, even as all else faded about me and darkness and shadows enclosed all. “It is only our way, goddess.... please, forgive me and try to understand. It is only our way!” And after that I found myself spiraling about through time and space for a while. I relived the final days of civilized life on the planet Kobol... known also as Kolob... when the gods had departed it, myself included, and it fell into savagery and near-uncivilized barbarism whilst atomic fires and war ravaged its' surface. “What had we done there so long ago?” I mused. “All that horror, and for what!” I saw the fates of everyday people there struggling to survive in the hell that life had become on that world following our war there and our exodus from it. I never knew just how terrible it was, until that moment! At one point in that time period, children and teenagers were recruited into makeshift military units and the lucky ones became the new guardians of law and order on what was left of society on Kobol. The unfortunate ones fell prey to the cruel gangs who ran arenas for the perverse and twisted entertainments of what remained of the wealthy and elite. The very technologies that once lengthened life and granted near-immortality to the very gods themselves was not put to new and more sadistic purposes. Those in power kept themselves alive and eternally young and healthy whilst those who displeased them were tortured beyond human limits in unspeakable ways, the life-prolonging skills being used to keep their suffering lasting for years and years on end. The boys and girls who were chosen to become gladiators and fight in the arenas were scarred and mutilated until they bore inhuman and even demonic looks and appearances. What should have killed them did not, for they were kept alive past the point where pain and torment should have killed them... and in these twisted forms they were forced to kill each other so that the ones governing them would spare their families and perhaps share food and luxuries with said families. Many of these truly unfortunate souls had even volunteered for this! It was so awful I found myself crying and weeping to see what had become of life on that planet after we had left it. I saw the downward spiral of things... I saw those in power turning to human sacrifice in the vain attempt to bring their old gods back to Kobol once again. When the gods did not come (why would they have?), these survivors despaired and many took their own lives in final acts of desperate madness. I now knew why Kobol had become so desolate, so nearly devoid of life that when some of the gods did return there to restore order and create new civilizations over the ashes of the old.... there was almost no one left to be found of those who had dwelt on that world in ages past. In some pockets of the world, the inhuman creations of the elite sought in vain to end their own lives, but the life-prolonging technologies (some of them cybernetics of various sorts) that kept their bodies immune to their own pain and agony would not let them. So they knew pain of a far worse sort than physical! The gods who found them in the end destroyed the creatures' cybernetics and other devices that kept them living, and allowed them to die at last. So that is how old Kobol perished so that something else, something more truly heavenly, could be built in its' place... but it would be long before the new order would rise, and even longer before human life could flourish where once desolation had been supreme. It was inevitable that a new order would replace the tragedies of ages past, and I had this sudden awful realization that global peace can only truly exist when all those who dwell upon a world no longer wish for war. When all hearts are united instead in a desire for peace alone, and naught else. Kobol learned that lesson the hard way... and I hope every day that this planet, this Earth I am living on today will fare better. Peace can never be achieved through technological advancement and immortality alone. It requires wisdom, knowledge, and reason to make it mean something, to make it last beyond a single day, beyond a single generation. To make it last forever! Was this your plan all along, Sabaoth, to show me all of this, so that I would realize these truths? I knew them already... part of me always knew them and always will. For I am a part of a divinity that is beyond you, beyond your sight, your ability to comprehend, and far, far beyond your ability to puzzle out the meaning thereof. I remember when you were but a child, before you were a self-proclaimed god. You are but one god of many, and even you once bowed before me! Your way was always the way of cruelty, of pain, of blood and terror. Mine is of love, of compassion, of gentleness and refinement. All things you have never understood nor shall you ever understand... for your nature is set in stone by your ego and by your arrogance. I said these things as I felt myself being drawn back into my body here on Earth once more.... and even though he could not hear me say them I knew that he knew all these things to be true. The gods never change... I know this because I never change. I am always striving for light, even amid darkness, and I realized that if there was one thing I could take away from my journey to Sabaoth's domain it was this: sometimes humanity gets more than just one chance to get things right. And the hell that Kobol became prior to its' resettlement need not be Earth's future too... we have choices, we have chances more still, and we may yet learn from the mistakes of our past. You humanity and we gods, together. We walk among you, we are you.... we who made our homes among the stars of old. Anyone you glace upon could be one of us... and we know what came before. Sometimes, we notice that you too remember instinctively... for your divine sparks awaken in you tremendous things and even more tremendous potential for either good or evil. Just as ours does in us! I who was Mara and who bore countless other names besides... I have written this true account of an out of body sojourn that occurred to me only just this past week. I was called, and I came as I was summoned. I learned what I was called to learn, and I am wiser because of that learning. May you, dear reader, learn from my words likewise, and may your knowledge and wisdom grow thereby. Blessed be, and love and light to you forever and all of your days! The path to illumination begins with awakening, and one may awaken to greater truths at any time. Just as I am always awakening anew.
Being a faithful and true account of an out of body experience I underwent during the week previous to my having committed this to writing.
When in the spirit, what compels me to travel unto realms and places unbidden? Not by my will alone, but called at times by the will of powers unseen... which by ancient and forgotten pacts and ties are able to call me hither unto them. Such a thing happened to me recently when in the grasp of mighty visions I heard a small group of voices calling me by one of my ancient names... “Mara!” they called out to me, invoking this name. “Mara! Return unto us once more.” and they kept chanting this, and I heard them and somehow, in a manner beyond even my understanding my spirit obeyed their call. I found myself on a familiar street, but not one on this world, not one of this Earth. I passed a family who seemed concerned over their eldest daughter, and a choice she had made. The mother of the family was no older than in her late thirties by the look of her, and wore a yellow dress with elaborate gold designs upon it. She was golden-haired, and golden-eyed also, and said that her daughter bore the same features and was renowned for her beauty. She implored me to seek out her daughter, and render her any aid I may, and look out for her if possible... for she sensed that there was trouble involved in her daughter's decision to leave her home. The girl had left behind, other than a mother, a brother and a father and a grandfather too... all of whom were dressed in clothing in various shades and hues of yellow, gold, orange and red. I asked the mother: “Where has your daughter gone, and why do you suspect trouble due to her leaving?” And the mother told me that her daughter had chosen to join a cult that worships the primordial goddess Mara... whom I had once been in a life now long past... and that the cult had betrothed her to the goddess and insisted she leave her home to travel to their temple, where her destiny would await her. The grandfather was kind enough to explain to me that the temple lay in a city that was reachable by way of a fast train that traveled on a monorail which linked the small town I was in then to the city that I was supposed to go to in order to find the temple and the girl who had chosen to journey there. The family, evidently, did not know who I was and seemed to not be the ones who had called me to this other planet on which I now found myself. I did not tell them, but agreed only to do what I could. I warned the little boy who was the missing girl's brother not to go in search of his sister (for he expressed that he desired to do so) but to stay with the safety of his family. The old man, the grandfather, led me back behind several buildings and into one of them. Once there, he slid open a wooden wall panel and revealed a metal corridor that led out unto a series of catwalks that looked out over a bustling area of town below. This was a small town, but even so it had lofty buildings many of which were white and some of which had great square towers topped by pyramid-like tops. There was a railed catwalk leading out to the monorail, and a train was just arriving as we got there. The old man then said I needed to hurry and behind us I could hear the sound of heavy boots falling on the ground. I saw a squad of soldiers wearing green and blue uniforms and wearing green helmets with blue tinted visors. Only their mouths could be seen, and they yelled for me to halt and go with them... yet they did not say why or to where they planned on taking me. They all carried dangerous looking rifles of some heavy sort, all of white metallic design. I have never seen an equivalent on Earth in any era at least thus far of its' history. The rifles seemed to have cylinders attached to them that contained what looked like bottled blue lightning, which seemed to power the weapons. “Run! Get out of here fast.” the old man said, and I boarded the train and settled into a seat by a window as it went fast upon its' way, leaving the soldiers and that family far, far behind me. As the train bolted along as a rapid speed, I took the time to look around and saw that the train was white and silver, with black in places. The windows appeared dark on the outside, but on the inside you could see out of them as clear as if there were no windows there at all. All of the passengers were dressed the same way as the family I had left behind, in similar styled garments of pretty much the same colors. Most of the men wore tunics and loose pantaloons, and I noticed many women did too... and some of both genders wore robes. This was definitely not Earth, wherever it actually was. I did not dare to ask, lest someone think me insane for asking such a question... so I decided simply to wait and see. I looked out a window and saw the small town become a magnificent city in but the briefest of moments whilst the lush green countryside between the two sped by like a blur. Such speed we must have traveled at, and yet inside that train it did not feel like we were moving at all, and I felt no motion sickness of any sort despite the intensity of the speed as evident by what I saw outside the window. The train eventually slowed down to a leisurely if not slow pace and many people started to walk up some stairs to a roof area of the train that was open to the sky and which provided a magnificent view of our surroundings. I joined them and took a look for myself. The city I saw was practically gleaming with great skyscrapers and towers of the sort I described previously. All lit up with lights of various sorts... great metal antennas rose up here and there, some atop buildings, and I saw that this was a very advanced culture here, not a primitive society by any means. I could only assume that there were some who were living in poverty even among all that opulence because between the gleaming structures there were the humblest of hovels and shelters in places, and some were inhabited by people who appeared destitute or perhaps even homeless. I wondered if those who dwelt in the splendors above even noticed or cared about the plights of those below. This was no utopia, and right away I felt something about this place that made me feel a tremendous sense of unease and disgust. A group of what I took to be pilgrims pointed out a towering structure that loomed ever closer the more the train neared it. It was a step pyramid of some sort, all of red and orange bricks at least on the outside, and atop it was a beautiful white marble temple with ridged columns and a domed roof topped by a silver ankh. Holding all of this together were sections of metal and I saw the way that ancient and modern techniques were being used in order to create these sorts of architectural marvels. Murals and reliefs adorned the lowest-level entrance into the pyramid temple, and the processional way leading over to that was flanked on both sides of the road by statues atop slender columns. Statues of women warriors of various sorts, all of whom bore the same face, a face that once had been my own. The face of Mara! I knew without being told, that this was our destination, and that those who had called me to that world awaited me within. Suddenly, I saw the girl I had been sent to find among a crowd not far from the entrance to the pyramid temple. I called out of to her, but I did not know her name and she seemed not to acknowledge me and upon noticing that I walking in her general direction she hastened into the great edifice itself. I hurried as fast as I could... the train had stopped a while back... and I ran down from the roof area of it and out unto some more catwalks and eventually unto the processional way. I hurried into the temple, following the way that the girl had gone. She had been dressed in a gown of white and gold, her long golden hair long and free behind her with only a thin gold band to hold it back from her face. She was singing a song about getting married and becoming a happy bride, and as I neared her at last I noticed she was in the company of other girls and women who sang the same song and wore similar garments. Not one seemed to pay me any heed, and the closer I got to them the more they hurried away from me as if they actually wanted me to follow them but not reach them just yet. We passed through interior gardens grown upon walls of solid rock in one area... the area immediately past the main entrance... all watered by man-made waterfalls that fell from pipes from the walls and ceiling in spots. It was beautiful, just as almost everything in this city appeared to be.... but there was a stillness and a sense of something sinister that permeated the very air of this place, and I liked it not! We ascended stairs past shrines and the apartments of those who lived in and tended the temple, and soon we reached that white marble upper temple that I had seen before. Within there were what seemed to be beautiful living spaces and meditation areas that had been set aside for these girls and women who immediately seemed to be making themselves at home. I did not bother to ask them anything... they seemed to regard me as one may a ghost. They would not have answered me in any case. My attention was mostly drawn the girl I had been sent to look after, and thus far I had no reason to suspect that she might be in any sort of trouble. She seemed genuinely happy, and if anything rather more than a bit childlike and innocent. She picked up a golden harp and played upon it whilst singing again. During the trip through the temple, all had been silent save for distant chanting I heard coming from various alcoves and places out of site... but now the girl sang and the others with her sang, and they sang like angels. I wondered.... might this place be some sort of heavenly realm to which I had been called? But if so, that did not explain my sense that something was wrong here after all. I had wait and see. I had to know why I was even here at all in this place! These apartments we were in were all white-walled with gold and silver trim, and the windows of them were ornate but of plain clear glass otherwise. White draperies hung from about the windows, and white pillars supported the roof above us. We passed out of there and up some stairs into a meditation area that consisted of a circular balcony overlooking the city and surrounded by the great columns that supported the dome high above us. There were murals decorating the interior of the dome, but I could not make them out, so lofty was that dome and so far below it were we. The girl was still playing her harp, and soon a group of strange people entered the meditation area... all men and women in white robes and wearing white hoods with white cloths covering their mouths. Only their eyes could be seen, for they wore white gloves as well. Only their leader was not thus masked... an old man with white hair and a clean-shaven face with sharp, almost bird-like features that had a naturally predatory way about them. “Welcome, brides of Mara, to your new home! One of you will be chosen to help us bring our goddess back to us this day.” and the old man pointed to that girl I had been sent to follow. “You shall have the honor on this day, of serving the goddess.” and she followed them very meekly out of the room, and I followed after the lot of them. I called out to the old man, wanted to find out what was going on, but he ignored me utterly as if I was not there at all. We ascended a spiral stairway leading up the interior of the dome from the outside, but it was all totally enclosed, and there were no windows. The stairs were gradual, not sharp, and the climb felt endless and soon we arrived at a room at the top of the dome. It was not a very large room, only about the size of someone's living room but it was round and above us was a small dome of plain white marble. White pillars ran the whole length of the room and in the center was a white coffin on a raised dais. Behind the coffin was a statue of the goddess Mara that looked exactly as I had looked back when I bore that name. The high priest (for that is what that predatory-looking old man was) walked over to the coffin whilst the girl played her harp and sang, and the priest opened the coffin's lid and cast it aside. Within the coffin was a woman's skeleton wearing tattered garments. It was my skeleton, from when I was Mara... they had kept it, preserved it somehow for thousands upon thousands of years (it appeared expertly mummified, even deteriorated as badly as it was), and were now using it for some purpose I could not begin to guess at. You could smell the preserving fluids the moment the coffin was opened, so strong were those they had used! The priest then ordered the others to seize the girl, and they began to cut pieces of her skin off and the priest would take them and place them on the skeleton. They cut out the girl's organs and gave them to the skeleton. They kept up this grisly ritual until the skeleton was a skeleton no more but through these grisly rites was given a new patchwork skin over fresh organs. The girl's blood was then transfused into this horrible body, and the girl's soul and spirit were removed from her and placed into a small vial that appeared to be practically alive with her divine spark and vital essence. The priest used the power of the girl's soul to begin knitting the skin together and causing the organs to start working again, and the more my old body began to gain a semblance of life... the more the girl's chopped up corpse decayed. I screamed, I wanted to tell these people to stop this horror, but they seemed to not even notice I was there. I was a ghost to them! Or I might as well had been. I tried to strike the high priest as soon as his people had begun to “harvest” the girl's body at the start of this bizarrely alien necromancy ritual but a blue force field prevented me from being able to do so. I was helpless and forced to watch this, all of this, and at the last when my old body began to move and breathe I felt my own soul and spirit beginning to transfer themselves into it involuntarily. The whole time, the priest and his flock were chanting the very chant that had brought me to there... wherever there was. “Mara! Mara! Mara!” they cried, and I opened my long-dead eyes and moved my long-dead lips to speak. Only now they bore the likeness of that girl whose flesh and blood and all else they had stolen to remake me. “Stop! Stop this, I do not want this! I never wanted this!” I screamed, and that is when the high priest saw the body I was being taken out of and beheld blue energy arcing between that and the body they had prepared for me in so gruesome a fashion. His acolytes were waving around rosaries made from human bones, and I realized that if this were some sort of heaven it was no heaven I wanted any part of. Suddenly, I recognized that cruel old man and I went to speak his name. “Sabaoth? Sabaoth! Why did you call me here, to your realm on this world? What do you want from me!” And he seemed to be stuttering at that point, unable to form the right words. Many in that chamber were shocked and yelled out: “Mara! She has returned to us! Mara! The goddess is here, she is with us!” and I was angry at their evil and cruelty. “Was there no other way to bring me here?” I asked, my tone a wrathful one. “There was not... this is our way... this is how we bring you here when we bring you here.” Sabaoth explained, his tone confused and almost bewildered. He could not understand why I was so angry, why I would even ask this question of him. “I never liked you, Sabaoth.” I said to him. “And I want no part of you, and nothing to do with you.” and I left that body behind me, and felt myself being pulled away elsewhere. I could hear him trying to call me back to him, but his ritual had failed and he could not muster enough power to keep it up or perform it again. I could hear him from far away, even as all else faded about me and darkness and shadows enclosed all. “It is only our way, goddess.... please, forgive me and try to understand. It is only our way!” And after that I found myself spiraling about through time and space for a while. I relived the final days of civilized life on the planet Kobol... known also as Kolob... when the gods had departed it, myself included, and it fell into savagery and near-uncivilized barbarism whilst atomic fires and war ravaged its' surface. “What had we done there so long ago?” I mused. “All that horror, and for what!” I saw the fates of everyday people there struggling to survive in the hell that life had become on that world following our war there and our exodus from it. I never knew just how terrible it was, until that moment! At one point in that time period, children and teenagers were recruited into makeshift military units and the lucky ones became the new guardians of law and order on what was left of society on Kobol. The unfortunate ones fell prey to the cruel gangs who ran arenas for the perverse and twisted entertainments of what remained of the wealthy and elite. The very technologies that once lengthened life and granted near-immortality to the very gods themselves was not put to new and more sadistic purposes. Those in power kept themselves alive and eternally young and healthy whilst those who displeased them were tortured beyond human limits in unspeakable ways, the life-prolonging skills being used to keep their suffering lasting for years and years on end. The boys and girls who were chosen to become gladiators and fight in the arenas were scarred and mutilated until they bore inhuman and even demonic looks and appearances. What should have killed them did not, for they were kept alive past the point where pain and torment should have killed them... and in these twisted forms they were forced to kill each other so that the ones governing them would spare their families and perhaps share food and luxuries with said families. Many of these truly unfortunate souls had even volunteered for this! It was so awful I found myself crying and weeping to see what had become of life on that planet after we had left it. I saw the downward spiral of things... I saw those in power turning to human sacrifice in the vain attempt to bring their old gods back to Kobol once again. When the gods did not come (why would they have?), these survivors despaired and many took their own lives in final acts of desperate madness. I now knew why Kobol had become so desolate, so nearly devoid of life that when some of the gods did return there to restore order and create new civilizations over the ashes of the old.... there was almost no one left to be found of those who had dwelt on that world in ages past. In some pockets of the world, the inhuman creations of the elite sought in vain to end their own lives, but the life-prolonging technologies (some of them cybernetics of various sorts) that kept their bodies immune to their own pain and agony would not let them. So they knew pain of a far worse sort than physical! The gods who found them in the end destroyed the creatures' cybernetics and other devices that kept them living, and allowed them to die at last. So that is how old Kobol perished so that something else, something more truly heavenly, could be built in its' place... but it would be long before the new order would rise, and even longer before human life could flourish where once desolation had been supreme. It was inevitable that a new order would replace the tragedies of ages past, and I had this sudden awful realization that global peace can only truly exist when all those who dwell upon a world no longer wish for war. When all hearts are united instead in a desire for peace alone, and naught else. Kobol learned that lesson the hard way... and I hope every day that this planet, this Earth I am living on today will fare better. Peace can never be achieved through technological advancement and immortality alone. It requires wisdom, knowledge, and reason to make it mean something, to make it last beyond a single day, beyond a single generation. To make it last forever! Was this your plan all along, Sabaoth, to show me all of this, so that I would realize these truths? I knew them already... part of me always knew them and always will. For I am a part of a divinity that is beyond you, beyond your sight, your ability to comprehend, and far, far beyond your ability to puzzle out the meaning thereof. I remember when you were but a child, before you were a self-proclaimed god. You are but one god of many, and even you once bowed before me! Your way was always the way of cruelty, of pain, of blood and terror. Mine is of love, of compassion, of gentleness and refinement. All things you have never understood nor shall you ever understand... for your nature is set in stone by your ego and by your arrogance. I said these things as I felt myself being drawn back into my body here on Earth once more.... and even though he could not hear me say them I knew that he knew all these things to be true. The gods never change... I know this because I never change. I am always striving for light, even amid darkness, and I realized that if there was one thing I could take away from my journey to Sabaoth's domain it was this: sometimes humanity gets more than just one chance to get things right. And the hell that Kobol became prior to its' resettlement need not be Earth's future too... we have choices, we have chances more still, and we may yet learn from the mistakes of our past. You humanity and we gods, together. We walk among you, we are you.... we who made our homes among the stars of old. Anyone you glace upon could be one of us... and we know what came before. Sometimes, we notice that you too remember instinctively... for your divine sparks awaken in you tremendous things and even more tremendous potential for either good or evil. Just as ours does in us! I who was Mara and who bore countless other names besides... I have written this true account of an out of body sojourn that occurred to me only just this past week. I was called, and I came as I was summoned. I learned what I was called to learn, and I am wiser because of that learning. May you, dear reader, learn from my words likewise, and may your knowledge and wisdom grow thereby. Blessed be, and love and light to you forever and all of your days! The path to illumination begins with awakening, and one may awaken to greater truths at any time. Just as I am always awakening anew.
Published 27th Mar 2016
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28th Mar 2016 1:52am
29th Mar 2016 8:36am
Such visions always are powerful, dear one... whether they impart upon one a measure of wisdom or increased knowledge, or even when they are of a more trivial sort, such visions as these are always powerful and leave one with much to think upon. Thanks for stopping by to read and comment, Zoey! I appreciate it very, very much indeed. :)
