Chapter 7 - Jenny's grand day out

Er... where was i?

Oh hi Jenny. I didn’t know you were upstairs. What’s that you’re reading?

Er...

Spells? Aren’t you a bit old for that?

Er... Actually it’s poetry. Age doesn’t matter.

Fair enough, but you’ve already done the Harry Potter thing. I thought you’d be more into romance by now.

Please Mary...

You like Jane Austen.

That’s different. That’s classical literature.

Ok, if you want to split hairs. Anyway, I’ve got to go to the hairdresser. I have a date tonight.

Oh great! Who is it this time.

You don’t know him.

Do you?

No, not really. He’s tall, dark and handsome unless he photoshopped his picture.

Well, good luck. Eh Mary, I need some advice.

Yes?

Do you think i should wear black, purple or green to the witch’s Halloween ball. Here, i have three sample pieces of material.

Oh the green, definitely, it suits your eyes.

Thanks, see you around...

Has she gone?

Oh my God, what on Earth are you doing here?

Jenny, we haven’t time for this. I’m here, ok, which is only possible if you invited me here.

It is? I don’t remember inviting you.

That’s immaterial.

Is it? I don’t think so.

You’re not likely to remember much of anything that transpires in other spheres of conscious-ness, are you, and yet you control who or what is able to step across from one sphere into this one, so let’s move on.

But if I’m really in control can i send you back?

Sure you can, if you go to the 33 level where you arrange permits and security clearance for cases such as this.

And how am i supposed to go to the 33^rd level?

You’re asking me when you’ve just been there yourself?

Yes, because I don’t remember being there.

Well, it simply requires fierce intent. Failing that you could ask me to give you a nudge.

Could i? But how do i know you’ll nudge me the right way?

You’ll know once you’re there, as you always do, but how do i know you’re not going to repeat this ridiculous procedure ad nauseam if you haven’t yet figured out how to connect your right and left spirals into one circuit.

Er... I don’t know. How can i set up a fool proof way of proving whether this is real or not?

I have no idea. Actually that’s not entirely true, but I’m certainly not going to do your thinking for you.

Ok Merry, give me a nudge.

Wait a mo. Tie this to your left ear and this to your right.

Oh, ok, if i must.

And put on this tiara.

Wow, it’s beautiful.

Yes, it should be, i made it myself. Now, brace yourself – this is going to be a little

A little? You call that little? What just happened? How come I’m still alive? I should be dead. That wasn’t a normal push…

Er…

Quit stalling Merry. I want an explanation and I want it NOW!

Oh right, I get you. Most impressive Jenny. I didn’t realise you had a 72 font size red in you. Awesome.

If you’ve quite finished dodging the issue.

Dead – yes, of course you died.

?!

It was atomic. The entire universe crashed, collapsed, cascaded down into its zero point – so, technically speaking, you and everyone else just died.

But…

But obviously you live to tell the tale – so what does it mean?

Precisely – what?

It means that +1 physicality – the material world you know and love – ain’t the touchstone, the grand arbiter of what is and what is not.

Er…

You and everyone died – but it happened in no time at all. In fact, the same thing happens trillions of times a second. You’re all constantly dying and reincarnating – usually in a slightly different position – which is how you’re able to move around.

You mean to say we wouldn’t be able to move around if we weren’t popping in and out of zero point?

Naturally. If you could but see how every thing is in fact locked in a web, a lattice of probabilities – you’d understand how absurd it is to imagine that things can just slide around, and move relative to each other. In fact, to move a single atom or a single point requires that every other point in the universe is recalculated and restated. In other words, you can’t move a single point without moving everything else.

But…

Yep – bloody crazy – but entirely logical if you think about it. So, you’ve been living in a dreaming world – because you’ve been operating within “time”.

And what, pray tell, is “time”.

Fairly obvious, isn’t it, or it should be by now.

Just get on Merry, I’m in no mood for your intellectual snobbery.

Time, dear Jenny, pretty Jenny, sweet, lovely Jenny, is an average, a smoothing away of those nasty little jerky jumps – as one thing reappears in another position. It’s the same thing that makes a movie animation look like it’s real movement, as opposed to a series of disjointed frames.

A blurring and smudging.

Precisely. Which is fine, as long as you’re operating within the paradigm.

Paradigm? You mean 3D.

You bet. Doing the usual thing within 3D you have no need to circumvent time – it’s a nifty programme that ensures continuity and cohesiveness, but…

Yes? Don’t try my patience Merry – I’m not in the mood.

Well, the minute you need to step outside Windows operating system, or whichever one you’re using on your computer or smart phone – then it’s necessary to collapse time.

And destroy the entire universe?

Well yes – a little dramatic I admit – but it gets easier with practice.

So, you mean to say it’s ok to obliterate the entire effing universe?

Well, that depends from whose perspective you’re looking.

Well, I seem to be alive.

As indeed you are – but the rest of them – they’re a-gonner.

No. I can’t believe that. You’ve got to be kidding.

Nope. They’re all gone – at least the material side of them is gone. The essence, of course, is completely unharmed, and will spring back the minute you come back into time.

So what are they experiencing at this moment.

Zilch. They’re locked out of time. This moment simply doesn’t exist for them.

Then it’s no big deal, is it?

Yes and no – you see we might decide to fork left or right, and then their universe would no longer be remotely the same – and some of them – many of them in fact, could be obliterated or transmuted. Such is the nature of things.

But you said their essence is unharmed. You’re contradicting yourself.

Yes. I always do, at least when I’m talking about things like this. You have to understand that most people invest all or much of their awareness into things, including that fussy little thing called “me”. They have little or no awareness of their essence – and so – they’re kind of screwed when you or someone else forks left or right. If they’ve invested all their eggs in one basket.

But that means you’re like a murderer or something?

Nope.

But they’re all dead.

Yes, but are you the thing – really? The thing is just a thing – like a corporation. It has no conscious-ness of its own. It’s only conscious and aware as long as you’re sustaining it with your attention. It’s like a puppet that you’re playing with – nothing more.

But you can’t really mean to say that the entire universe – all the people on our planet

and millions of other planets

and millions of other planets – that they amount to nought?

That, dear Jenny, is precisely what I meant to say, and I’m very grateful to you for being so succinct. You see, mathematically, a thing never, ever amounts to more than nought.

Huh?

Because a thing can only be thinged into existence if on the other side of the ledger a non-thing, an anti-thing is created. The two are both completely separate while at the same time, one and the same. There’s a meaty paradox for you to set your teeth into – and when you’re talking about your dark side – or experimenting with magic – you’re obviously getting a little closer to being aware of that duality, and exploring the extent to which it can be either resolved, or over-ridden from within the matrix.

And can it?

Of course! Things can always be fudged or smudged – time is elastic and so is space and so is x.

X? What’s that?

Oh, that’s the third element – the thing that you can never focus on, talk about or be aware of while you’re in the system. From outside, you see x as the third to space and time – but please don’t ask me to explain it using 3D terminology or I’ll really get in trouble.

Er… why?

Because exposing x, or bringing it too close to the other two can really make the entire pseudo-entity start to hiccough or choke.

I beg your pardon.

Damn.

Did you say “pseudo-entity”.

Bugger. Just forget it, ok. It was a mistake.

You mean to say that the whole matrix, the entire universe is a pseudo-entity.

I mean to say nothing of the sort.

That’s… gee… that’s mindblowing. It can’t be a real entity because it’s within time – but a pseudo-entity – so the entire universe is a conscious being – as long as we’re giving it our attention – which we are, of course, constantly.

Not now – right now it’s nowhere to be seen. In fact, right now it never existed and may never exist again. Things are nought, so to speak.

So what does one do when one is outside time?

I’m not at liberty to say.

But you brought me here.

At your request. Actually, I didn’t bring you “here” because here is nowhere in particular.

Oh yes, I asked you to give me a nudge, because… you just barged into my house – without permission – which is a violation of the 23^rd statute of inter-dimensional relations. Now, let me see, level 33.


Hum – that wasn’t too hard. Funny – it all seems very normal apart from the odd BANG and WHOOSH. The problem is, if I send Merry away, am I going to be cutting off my nose to spite my face? I mean – he’s a pain at times – er – most the time in fact – but even then… I’m not sure I really want to lock myself down into that strictly 3D space I used to occupy. Let’s try this console here. I love the way this place just kind of moulds itself to what I can understand and readily perceive. Now, my problem is how I can actually remember anything that’s happening here when I get back down, otherwise it’s all going to be a waste of time – he’ll just be able to say I invited him in, when I didn’t…  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP  I did? I invited him in but have no recollection. Damn – that’s kind of like losing the bet. I hope he isn’t listening in – otherwise he’ll be gloating. Come to think of it – what made him stay away from here? Can Merry actually hear any of this without my permission? X  Which means no – I guess.  Y  Ok – so I have my privacy, and Merry can't ride roughshod over my soul integrity – my zero equals one. Y  Well that’s a relief… because Merry doesn’t actually exist here at level 33? Y Amazing. He’s dead? YX  He just doesn’t exist – because this is my fundamental node – in which the entire universe is expressly only, onely, totally through me? Y  Unbelievable… So is there anything I can do to… now how to phrase the protocol? I don’t want to stop Merry from actually visiting me… in fact… what do I want? Um… You can’t advise me, can you? X  Oh dear, responsibility, responsibility… This is, after all, my very own 0=1… Ok – I’ve got it – I think – I’ve had enough of living in the dark. I need to have some kind of link between the levels – between the dimensions. Can I arrange that? Y  How – I wonder. Ok – let’s try this console – I wish to reconfigure my self, my basic set up, to rewrite the code of my reality down there, such that I may now hold memories of the different levels in some common inter-dimensional space. Enter. Signature. Date. Let it be. YYY Excellent. It looks like… what the heck is that… oh my God… that must be it… that must be the x Merry was talking of… Jesus… I can see why he didn’t want to describe it… the very words we use are derived from its essence – meaning they can never refer back to it in any way… So… ah… that tickling sensation somewhere in the middle of my brain – is that the pineal gland by any chance? Y  but more – it extends down through the heart, in fact, it extends throughout… it reminds me of the humming bird, or a butterfly – the humming bird, that will do – wings beating so fast you can’t see them – and yet you can hear them and feel the breath of wind on your face. Ah ha… This is going to be a whole new ball game. Ok Merry, I’m ready.

I’m not stopping here at zero point – I’m going to restart the universe – it looks like it’s my turn to be God. Here goes: one, two, three: let there be light

 *********************************************

888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888889

The beauty of in=finity!

Jenny – you did it! Here’s your "X marks the spot" sticker and your gold starry Gandalf hat.

Oh Merry – how pleased I am to see you again – and all this – oh me, oh my, oh…

Merry Spells it out - part three

Chapter 6 – reading between the lines

Zoe was gazing at her copy of Spells, transfixed.

It wasn’t that the verse was particularly special, in fact, she was hardly aware of what she was reading, if she was reading at all.

Something else.

She was sensing something rising up, rubbing against the underbelly of her consciousness as she stood there, going through the motions of reading the book. And it wasn’t anything she knew or understood.

“Good book Zoe?” her mother asks as she walks past her room on the way to the laundry.

“Er, yes, more or less…” Her voice trails off as she feels parts of her anatomy she never knew existed – as if she’s connected to some kind of web, which apparently extends beyond anything imaginable. “Very good,” she adds when her mother’s already out of earshot. “Very stimulating.”

That was the last her mother sees of her in this world.

Dramatic – I know, but what can be done. The minute Zoe reconnects the fibres of her web, she suddenly remembers things she never even knew she didn’t know – and calmly, passively allows infinity to reach up through the space between the lines, to absorb her into its quantum field, causing her to vanish physically without a trace, without a sound, without so much as a by your leave, not as a thief might steal a Faberge egg, but as a librarian might remove a book from a shelf where a careless reader has inadvertently misplaced it – restoring it to its rightful place. And Zoe’s rightful place just happens to be on the other side of things – a place she has often visited in her dreams – yet never quite managed to understand, nor even accurately recall.

You might be concerned for her parents, her brother and sister – Mike and Marge – but if you knew how the quantum field operates you would have no such disquiet. You see Zoe had always been something of an aberration – like a misplaced codicil, and as soon as she was restored to her proper home – everything felt more right – much more right for all concerned – like an awkward equation has now been resolved. Observe – if you will – how your perfectly rational, 3D mind, struggles to accept how things can change imperceptibly in such a way that they’re restored to a natural state of harmony, which satisfies all. “How could Zoe disappear and her family just accept that?” you’re wondering – but really – is it so strange, when in their hearts, all of them and all of us, are children of nought, children of infinity, children of the great all that is. True, shock waves were created by her sudden disappearance – yet on the other side of things – waves of poetic resolution are dancing back and forth – calming, soothing the hearts and minds of people who would otherwise be running around, frantically clutching for straws.

“But where – where is she now?” you persist in asking – and I persist in answering not – for the minute you allow yourself to see her, the minute you allow yourself to sense her whereabouts – is the minute you too will transmute, you too will transform, you too will transliterate your bonded word into an other narrative, and thus, to all intents and purposes, disappear.

“Transform?”

Amazing the way humans pick up on certain words – which light beacons in their mind, sounding the alarum of what cannot be. Sometimes I even regret using such words – and yet I must. Without scrupulous honesty my kite will not fly, my magicks will fizzle out, with neither a whimper, nor a squeaky pop – and I, proud to the last, intend to go out with a resounding Bang. Any shift in the quantum field, any leap into the bubbly waters of infinity – is always going to be accompanied by a fundamental change of perception. So from our 3D perspective – Zoe is now a beetle, but from her own, things are seen differently. In fact, from her perspective we are worse than beetles, falsely assuming we’re humans. “Humans?” she’s thinking, “how could they so foolishly assume they’ve reached the honour, the dignity, the sublime perfection of humanity, when from over here they look like sorry little grubs, feeding on faeces and detritus?” But, you see, perception is a remarkably powerful tool which can fill in every gap and utterly convince us that we’re noble creatures making minor errors along with the way, as opposed to being filthy grubs, almost incapable of apprehending our vile grubbiness.

“Speak for yourself,” laughs Molly.

You see, in the space between lines, in the silence between words, in the silence between the notes in a symphony is where infinity makes and unmakes everything we think we know, everything we think to be real, everything we think matters – and in that space – we ourselves merge with the tone, the signature, the essence, the shape, the spin, the feel of that thing or those – experiencing it or them in every way imaginable – it is i am – so to speak, and thus there is the unspoken potential, the distinct possibility to experience that thing, or those, in any number of different ways – just as long as I’m willing to give time of day, to embrace, to engage infinity, just as long as I’m willing to let the magicks flow and swirl and surge around and through the it that is me.

Ah me – the triumph and despair of what i be.

“Triumph and despair?! You do talk a lot of nonsense Ethelred. Indeed you do.”

I smile knowingly – there’s really nothing to be said. Until/ unless people are willing to embrace/ engage infinity they are compelled to see things rightly or wrongly – from one side or t’other – yet never wholly, never simply, never isfully. Any attempt to lead them into the quantum stream is only going to cause fear and discomfort. They are there to keep you aware of the other side of perception – to help you to continue to hold the various fields in alignment – for you neither want to sink into hell, nor fly off into heaven – your job is remarkably simple – and decided unglamorous – to maintain equilibrium – to hold the balance. Infinity will do the rest, not you. You could never move fast enough, or think fast enough for that matter. Only by holding the balance – do you eliminate yourself from the equation, and enable infinity to work its magic, for all hell to break lose – shifting every molecule, every filament or field in the universe, not to mention every x, y or z in alphabet soup of consciousness. Infinity, infinity, there’s no thing like infinity, it rewrites every line of code, it dances with divinity – ah yes – once infinity is let loose God will never be the same again…

Merry spells it out - part two

Chapter 3 – stuff and nonsense

I’m sick to death of all this nonsense about magick. People waving their arms around, muttering incantations, cutting off chickens’ heads or lighting candles in the dead of night. When will they learn? When, I ask you, will they learn?

Sure, they can sometimes get lucky and move the pieces around a little, and then they’re convinced they’ve got the hang of it. They’re convinced they are growing into a powerful sorcerer, while all the time they’re sucking themselves deeper into the quicksand of 3D reality, making themselves heavier with stuff and nonsense, clogging and disrupting their connection with something truly magical, truly wonderful, truly breathtaking – their connection with all-that-is.

Sounds boring doesn’t it? Sounds ridiculously simple? Sounds too good to be true – that instead of studying hard and learning and occluded craft – that the real path to a magical life is by taking off the blinders and embracing the all-that-is – stepping out of the mind-gaol we find ourselves in, and rediscovering everything we’ve been missing out on, everything we’ve been blocking, everything we’ve been denying all these years. You see, in our viciousness, we convinced ourselves that life is fundamentally rotten, that God created a kind of hell for us to live in, and the only way to mitigate the hellishness of life on Earth was a kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest approach – that we needed to be smarter and perhaps even more ruthless than the rest to get ahead and stay ahead. We certainly didn’t imagine, believe or accept that in fact, we had it all wrong – that the only thing keeping us from beauty and bounty, from light and life’s limitless capacity to surprise, evolve and grow beyond whatever situation we find ourselves facing at any given moment – was our own reluctance to embrace life, to embrace the magick of all-that-is instead of pointlessly trying to defend ourselves from the inevitable. Try and stop the rising tide – try and stand against the force of life, the power of infinity – and you’re either a damn fool, or a suicidal maniac. Why would you want to?

So, if doesn’t take a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to realise that life itself contains all the keys, all the wisdom, secrets and knowledge you might possibly need – just as long as you’re willing to see, willing to hear – willing to remain sensible to the magick all around, and within – for that way there’s a reasonable chance you’ll avoid the pitfall of falling into the highly reasonable, rational, reality delusion.

What? What? What?

The reality delusion – I call it – though you might refer to it otherwise. You might, for example, call it the 3D reality delusion, or the objective reality delusion – by that as it may, but I choose to keep it simple and economise on words.

So what, you ask, is the reality delusion – other than reasonable and rational? Well, it’s the belief or assumption that this is it – that you’ve attained the full, undiluted perception of reality. Oh dear – how little we bother to test that assumption, and how far from the truth it could in fact be. You see, if, as I suspect, we’re only operating at 10% of our conscious capacity – or somewhere thereabouts, then what you’re calling reality today – is a far, far cry from what it truly is, and magick has nothing to do with hocus pocus or mumbo jumbo, and everything to do with opening up that conscious-awareness – letting a little more light into the darkened chamber of the mind in order to discover where we really are, what’s really going on, what we’re really capable of and… that will do.

The central avenue is paved with questions. Unless we’re willing to question our assumptions we’ll never learn anything – and that requires Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, otherwise he’ll be moving at the sluggish speed of thought, the miniscule speed of mind – and he’ll never get airborne. In order to be nimble and quick we need to take a step back and start looking at how children think – and what assumptions they’re making. They’re a lot closer to the balance point, to the main axis, to the circle’s centre – which is why they’re good at make believe – pretending, imagining, playing… which is why they don’t have a problem shifting into other states of consciousness. Sadly, after years of education children become ponderous dinosaurs known as adults. That’s the end. They’re finished. Babies, house, car, dog, pension, cancer treatment – that’s all that remains, unless they’re willing to dive back into the [what appears to be] insanity of the inner child – the unfettered flow of the human being – the poet, the madman, the druid, the dancer, the dreamer, the highly pragmatic magick worker.

Chapter 4 – if there’s more than this – where the hell is it

Precisely. Where the hell is it – if there’s more than this?

Aren’t you sick of hearing airy fairy waffly stuff about other dimensions or subtle energies. Screw that. If this magick stuff is for real – then where’s the proof, where’s the pudding? Anything less should be unacceptable, don’t you agree?

Actually, I’m not sure I was being uncouth when I used the word “hell”. Contrary to what the etymologists suggest, “hell” is in fact a very simple Germanic word meaning “bright”. Forget all that stuff about torment, penitence or holes in the ground. These may all exist – but they’re largely the product of our self-inflicted misery – our willful blindness or wrongmindedness – our obsession with suffering and sin and guilt – all of which are very real, and well capable of generating the deepest psycho-emotional hell imaginable. But at this moment, I’m using the word “hell” in its original meaning, which was/ is a place of brightness, lightness and perhaps wholeness or holeness, if you prefer to drop your w’s.

But, but… Look, dear friends of gnowing, friends of gnowledge, history has been rewritten, words’ original meanings have been altered dramatically – so it behoves us to apply a little healthy scepticism, and do our own research. One thing we do is play around with words that sound the same or similar. They might give us a clue. So whole and hole – in English – what else – hell, hall, hill – they’re all somehow connected or related energetically – because they have a similar sound, a similar vibration. What can we draw from all this fanciful speculation? Well, the magicks are not accessible through the right mind alone – because that’s the way you’ve been trained to think in order to eliminate them, or eliminate your access to them. Instead we need heaven and hell, father and mother, right and left. Only then with the hill – upward curce and hell, downward curve, can we be whole enough to enter the hall of the unfucked mind – apologies once again for seeming uncouthness – I assure you I do not wish to shock or offend – only then are we able to pass down the hole and open up the real architecture beyond the flat mind we’re otherwise bound by.

So, to answer your question – in a manner of speaking – the more we sure simply doesn’t exist – does – in the one place we don’t wish to look or go – because it scares the life out of us – it’s the hell hole.

But, but…

Yes, I know, most people don’t really believe in hell – and few are aware of a yawning gulf – a hell hole that is right there before the rational mind – which is hardly surprising – as the rational mind is designed to deal with the hell hole by insisting constantly, that that hellish hole is of no significance, no import, amount to nothing more than nought – and thus it wholly obliterates all trace of it, to the extent we’re not even aware it’s there. It has effectively become our nought – our one great constant – our one great certainty – that which is not – that which amounts to nought – that which our conscious, rational mind simply refuses to see, refuses to countenance, successfully.

How – you might ask – is the mind able to pull off this coup de grace? And the answer is – as simple as simple can be. As long as we’re either in left or right mind – there’s nothing there – nothing to be seen. Nothing. Nothing at all – for only the whole mind can see the hell hole we carry within. We have some vague terrors which afflict us from time to time. Depressions, panics, an occasional sense of monsters lurking – but our mind is remarkably good at containing these issues – relegating them to the status of irrationalities or unknowable unknowns, and thus we bat the mind’s ball into another court every time it gets too close to falling down the hell hole – we kick the can, we distract, and tell ourselves that we simply haven’t the time, the resources to look at it – and society does the same – it would be irresponsible, dangerous, perhaps even sinful, if society still plays that card, to flip the switch, to go wholistic for a moment, and confront the great what is not at the centre of our being.

So there you have it. Ironically, the magicks are caught up in no man’s land – a place we cannot, will not gaze for fear of breaking the great taboo – for fear of losing our way, for fear of ostracism by all our good friends and companions in this our table top reality – which is constructed on the very premise that anything else, anything lurking within the great nought, cannot, must not be given a moment’s attention – or all hell might break loose. And so, we do noughtt – and to be honest, probably that’s wise enough – for Pandora’s box is not the kind of thing you want to mess with, unless you’ve reached the end of a cycle, unless you can no longer survive as a race without accessing the magicks – for before you there has now appeared a gulf – a break in the fabric of space and time, a meaninglessness, a void which cannot be solved thingfully, by thought alone – which seems to require something else – something more – something we lack, have no access to, unless, until we decide to reunite mind and mynd – to discover what’s really hidden beneath the earth.

Chapter 5 – where angels fear to tread

Usually it happens when folk fall sick, or else when they fall in love. That’s when the tools on the table top reality they’ve been comfortably living in are no longer adequate to the task. That’s when they’re compelled to start casting around for something else – something else which doesn’t appear to exist at all, and yet a murmur, faint, yet persistent, hints that there’s an 0ther, a something else, hidden from sight, God only knows where, which might just offer the solution. With the dreadful life threatening disease of love infatuation, or some other malignancy, the patient now finds the courage to life the stone, to look under the cover, to go where angels fear to tread, not for the sake of greed, vanity or even curiosity, but in order to save a life – in order to restore some semblance of normalcy to a table top turned upside down. And thus the quest begins.

Little is the faith, these days, in the power of nought – for we have been taught to think of it as no thing whatsoever, and thus, of no consequence – but the mathematician will speedily correct this misapprehension – he, or indeed she, will make short shrift of such a fallacy – for how could one, the humble number one, rise to the dignity of ten, the nobility of one hundred, the potency of one thousand or the majesty of one million without the aid and assistance of noughts. Noughts – I ask you – what an absurdity is that – how can there be noughts – either there be nought or not – but in our right minded wonkish way of thinking, nought is a little empty thing, a cypher that fills a gap. No, that cannot be so, and though we are accustomed to use three for a thousand, six for a million, yet in truth, there is only one nought – which expands or shrinks to fill the space, to raise or lower one, or any other number, to the level required. Indeed, we might suggest that nought is the fabric of all things, all reality, and the number, the label, the name, merely a surface marking to indicate the extent that nought has reached. But enough of this metaphysical speculation. We have a meeting with immanent death, and are obliged to go where angels fear to tread, will we, nil we.

There’s nothing like impending death to override the great taboo, to enable us to sense, to see, to surf the dark waters of infinity which hide just behind the right mind, just prior to the lunacy of the left. By all means insist that my left and your right are confused – it makes no difference whatsoever – the fact remains that no sooner have we more to lose by remaining amid ships, in table top reality – a world of sense, reason and profound normality – than we discover an urgent desire to investigate the other side of things – the side that we neither suspected nor accepted a moment prior – yet as life’s candle flame sputters, we suddenly get wind of something else – an upwelling of life force, a magma column indicating that there be more beneath the surface than nought. And the fear of dying works its magic – equalising, cancelling out that fear of the void – and so at last I’m on my way. But what do I find?

This is a journey that can take you anywhere – I assure you. But to do so it has to start rubbing out layer upon layer of what – layer upon layer of things that have accumulated, things that are only true to the extent that nought is not, only true to the extent that right is right and left is cursed – which ironically, is true as long as you’re comfortably encamped on the table top, yet ceases to be true, utterly, the minute you need something more, something else than the table top world of normalcy affords – and so – we proceed, turn by turn, twist by twist, revolution by revolution, with the grand disillusion of things that were conditionally true, normally true, things that now only get in the way and prevent you from experiencing what you need to in order to survive – in order to evolve, in order to become the butterfly, the frog, the new expression of all. These things – however – many of them are deeply held beliefs – deep convictions – things that emerged from a time of upheaval and fear, as you sought to establish yourself bodily in a material world – which enabled you to get a foothold on the slippery slope, and establish yourself on the table top. In other words, you’re not going to let them go lightly. You’re going to hold on for grim death – until the warm waters of Lethe rise to the level where it’s either all or nothing – either you relinquish that prop or you damn yourself – so, you may find yourself parting with many a sacred cow along the way – to keep the hot air balloon from landing prematurely in the icy waters. And yet many folk go down heroically, preferring death – for the alternative might appear to be apostasy. They do not, however, escape their encounter with infinity by dying. Death merely transfers the venue to an alternative level. Alternatively, there are some folk who start by throwing out one shibboleth – a conviction which no longer serves, then another, and another, until it gets easier and easier – for this is a homecoming, a reversion to the cosmic mean – a return to zero equals one, and now our journey takes us beyond physical realms, beyond words into colour and sound, into wave and particle, into the very quantum stream – which, paradoxically, is equally no less a field, down to the very roots of  consciousness.

Should you care to go that far – I would ask you to look at prehistoric cave paintings – to get an idea of what we’re talking about, or the Nasca lines in Peru. Likewise, I’d ask you to take a look at the oldest version of fairy tales you can lay your hands on. These contain a wealth of information. It goes without saying that you should carefully study Spells, for this are by their very nature archetypal, and can help you cut through much of the garbage and dead wood that afflicts the night as he strives to reach the princess in her tower. What I would not advise you is to follow any one’s instructions – for the minute you read words telling you what or how – you’re guaranteed to table top your way back into things, rather than transporting yourself electro-magnetically back to a plasma realm of being ineffably.

Paradox, is it not, that your friend is that which you most fear. Paradox is it not, that without a terrible scourge such as a pox, be it a love pox or a malady, you’ll never make it out of the vice like grip of the system, the world, the matter you’re embedded in. So, instead of giving full rein to your fears – let fear be your friend, and discover the fearless knight – knight as in night – a darkness within that is not all dark, which can cope with things that you cannot.

Paradoxical, is it not, that our spirit opens the sluice gates, allowing in poisonous waters when it senses the time is right for us to effect a change. We, in our hobbitishness, may be terrified of what is happening, sensing more than we realise – realising that this is the end of the world as I knew it – yet the knight within, or the hero – which sounds very like zero, does it not, is evidently delighted – for it has been bored and listless all these years that you have endeavoured to work within the system, conscientiously. So, spirit opens the biblical flood gates, and suddenly all hell breaks loose – for hell was never far away, and now you find yourself in a life and death environment – hating it, and yet, somewhere else within, loving it too. What happens next depends entirely on you – on your willingness to listen to spirit – listen to your soul, to sense what is really happening – for no sooner do you do so than things start swinging round into their proper channel. Your lines have been cut, your anchor either weighed or left behind, and you’re now adrift on the waters of Is – the i s – three dimensions if you care to see – the dot, the line and the curve or wave. That is what you/ where you now are. That, and only that, is how you can survive – if you are to do so yourself – by embracing, engagine the magicks of May – which may or may not come to your assistance, depending on whether you present a story sufficiently compelling for them to be inspired by your tale.

Merry Spells it out

Chapter 1 – chance encounter

Third time lucky.

What do you mean “third time”? You’ve only just begun.

I deleted the first two. This is my third attempt to break through – to make contact.

Well – how’s it going?

Not bad. I seem to have found you.

Found me? I think it was me who found you.

You do?

Yes. I’m in the bookshop.

Which bookshop?

Oh – does it really matter? In the airport, if you must know – but please don’t ask me to tell you which one.

So, you’re in the bookshop and what happens?

Nothing so dramatic. I just happen to notice this brightly coloured book and find myself listing through the first few pages. Hey presto – here I am.

Precisely – here you are – and whether it’s you who found me or I who found you – we’ve made contact at least.

I suppose so – but I find it hard to believe you’re chatting with me now – I mean, you wrote this ages ago, and the book’s probably been on this shelf for weeks.

Four days, five hours and sixteen minutes to be precise.

Oh. Okay. And I expect loads of other people have taken a look at it.

Well yes – you’re absolutely right.

Then how can you say you’ve just made contact with me, like it’s all happening right now?

Funny time.

I beg your pardon?

Funny time.

Yes, I heard you first time, but it doesn’t mean anything to me.

Well, it’s a bit like different time zones. Story time, you see, is funny – not in the “ha ha ha” sense of the word, but funny in the “weird” or “spooky” sense.

Er – I still don’t follow.

Okay – story is a kind of timeless portal. It joins together whoever’s reading or writing it, no matter how far apart they may seem to be in terms of space or time.

Right – I get you. But that doesn’t mean you’re writing this now, does it? I mean – you’re not going to change what you’re writing based on something I’m about to say, are you?

Try me.

The fox among the hens…

The cat among the pidgeons…

But how?

How what?

How can you hear my thoughts now if you wrote this months ago?

Or years ago, for that matter… like I said – it’s known as funny time. It’s non-linear, to use a technical term.

But what about all your other readers? How come it’s only me? Where are their thoughts?

Believe it or not, Zen, there’s a space somewhere between what’s written down on the paper and where your thoughts are. Story can access that space. It can draw you imperceptibly into that space, so that you’re having an entirely personal experience, even when you’re looking at the same page everyone else is.

No, that sounds weird. I can’t accept that.

Fair dinkum, mate.

Fair dinkum – what did that odd expression come from?

Australia.

But why would you use it here?

Oh, I don’t know. One of the other readers was using it a moment ago.

You mean you’re in communication with multiple readers at the same time?

Like I said, Zen, this is a funny time zone. In actual fact, in your reality, that reader was reading this three years from now.

You mean three years ago? Amazing!

No, I mean three years in the future – but I don’t always deal with my in tray chronologically. Sometimes I go alphabetically, geographically, or by age of reader.

But…

Yes?

That’s impossible. How could you be reading and replying NOW to something that’s going to happen three years in the future. That breaks all the laws of physics.

Hey ho.

Hey what?

Hey ho – once you get more into this funny time phenomenon – you stop worrying about things like that, the same way you don’t worry that it’s evening when you skype your aunt in Australia, but still morning in Cardiff.

!!! Wait a minute. Who told you I have an aunt in Australia, and that I live in Cardiff?

Or that your name’s Zen? Who do you think?

I have no idea.

You, of course.

But when, I don’t remember.

That’s because you haven’t told me yet – you haven’t even bought the book, so get a move on or you’ll miss your flight, but rest assured, there’s no supernatural agency at work here Zen. You do, indeed, tell me all this and more not too far into your future, otherwise I wouldn’t know all this.

But why would I bother to tell you if you already know?

Good question. The thing is, you’re in this kind of mental chat room with me right now – while trying to decide whether or not to get the book. Now, the minute you switch back into normal 3D reality – this whole conversation gets filed away somewhere at the back of your mind, and you basically forget it happened.

Oh.

Precisely. O or zero or nada – because then you’ll be back in linear time. Now, if you get your act together and start to integrate funny and linear time – then you’ll have access to this conversation any time you like, and much, much more – but that’s another conversation. Right now you’ve got to walk before you run – so I’d suggest cashier number three – she’s quicker than the others.

Ok. Er – one more thing?

Yes?

This may sound stupid…

I don’t think so.

But who are you?

Look at the cover.

James Merry Davidson?

The one and same. But usually they call me Merry. James is a guy like everyone else, walking around in the same 3D reality as you. In fact, he hasn’t figured out a half of what it’s all about yet. He needs time. Lots of time.

So you’re…

I’m Merry, and so are you, if you’re reading this. It’s a kind of magick – if you get my drift.

Not really.

Well, not to worry, there’s plenty of time to deal with technicalities, but only if you make your flight – so one, two, three – snap out of it Zen, Zulifa, cashier number three awaits your convenience – don’t forget to show her your boarding card.

Oh… Okay.

Chapter two – Zoe’s dilemma

You mean to tell me that the book I’ve just purchased is of no literary merit whatsoever?

No exactly Zoe.

Then what? A Trojan Horse is how you just described it. In my book that constitutes gross deception or even fraud.

Yes, obviously I’m sailing close to the wind – I admit – but the world of magick always involves smoke and mirrors. What really matters is the intention – and the question is whether mine be honourable or not.

I hardly think the end justifies the means, Merry, or whatever else you choose to call yourself.

Merry will do, thank you.

So, I buy a  book of Spells – assuming it’s either going to be either or – verse or some kind of magick

And you score on both counts – verse it is, and a portkey designed to take the horse to water.

Oh – so I’m a horse now, am I?

You’re the one who can either drink this water, or refuse. I cannot drink it for you, nor can I compel you to do so.

But you’ve just admitted the Spells themselves are merely decorative.

Decorative, or you might say descriptive. They’re a little like flowers, but how else are you going to access the magicks you’re so keen to lay hold of.

By finding a book that actually teaches me something.

This is not Harry Potter, Zoe. You can’t just learn a formula and wave a wand – that’s not how it works.

Why not?

Because real magick is innate. It’s within you. It needs to be felt, to be experienced, to be known. It’s a part of you that sometimes emerges, in moments of crisis, but which is generally locked away.

But why? Why should it be locked away?

Why do you think?

Honestly, I have no idea?

Well, consider the world you’re in.

I’d rather not.

And why is that?

Because it’s so vicious, so retarded, so dull, so anal – like it’s been photoshopped to remove all the colour, all the passion, all the exciting bits.

You’ve not fallen in love of late, have you Zoe?

No, but if I had – that’s not going to change the world I’m living in, is it?

You’d be surprised – but if, as I suspect, you’re ripe for magick, then you’re not likely to allow love to distract you from the quarry you’re pursuing.

What do you mean?

Well, the 3D reality you’re in doesn’t work for everyone, does it? Some people are not satisfied, even if they have it all – career, relationship, money… There’s something else they’re looking for, something else they need, something else that gnaws away at them – that seems to be lacking, though try as they might they can’t put their finger on what it is.

And you’re suggesting I’m such a person?

You suggested as much when you bought a copy of Spells in Upper Winthrop last week.

I did?

Well yes. And your disappointment that the book fails to live up to your hopes or expectations is merely confirmation of this.

It is?

Well yes. You were looking for a pass, a formula, a golden ticket that could deliver what you’re searching for – and hardly surprisingly, the book could not.

Then as I said, it’s all been a waste of time, and you’re just a fraud.

Am I?

Obviously. You sold yourself under false pretences – like any snake oil trader might.

Ah, but you fail to realise that magick is not a thing that can be got or purchased.

No? Then what?

Magick is something you’re either ready for or not. It’s a growing awareness that the container you’re presently locked in is too small. It’s an awareness that there’s more – much, much more somewhere out there – and that “out there” might not be there at all – it might just as well be here inside me.

You make it sound like a change of states – a larva becoming a fly…

A caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Yes, that’s more or less what it is. It’s way too big, way too deep, way too fundamental to be something that can be taught.

Then why bother selling a book called Spells – if it’s innate – as you put it – if it can’t be taught.

To refresh the mind, to rekindle the heart, to excite the imagination, to restore a vibrant sense of things being way, way more than what 3D reality allows them to be.

Just words – all you’re giving me are words.

And this – what about this? Zoe finds herself waking up, so to speak, in a kind of dungeon. Real – there’s no question that this is at least as real as 3D reality. It smells, feels, tastes, sounds just as real as anything she’s ever experienced. More so, in fact, because there’s another sense, another factor, another dimension in play which is absent in our 3D world – a conscious-awareness which makes everything more connected, more vibrant and present in the moment than anything she experiences in ordinary life. It’s as if someone has removed the filter – a kind of cotton wool – and now she can sense that 3D is a derivative – a subset, perhaps even a distortion of where she now is.

And how, pray tell, am I supposed to get out of here?

No idea Zoe. You’re going to have to figure it out. The fact that you’ve actually made it here indicates you’re ready to advance to the next level. You got here under your own steam. I did nothing.

How likely is that?

The sleeper awakens. But hush – something tells me danger lurks in this dank dungeon. I think it’s time you considered your options.

My options? What do you mean?

Well, you can continue pretending this is all just a dream – in which case you’ll never have the energy to come back and try to break out, or you could take the plunge – commit yourself to dreamquest – even if it kills you, as it might, and thus get started – start to reclaim your lost and scattered magicks.

I thought you said magick isn’t a thing to be bought?

Correct. It needs to be fought over, it needs to be won. So what’s it going to be – the safety of Upper Winthrop or a mortal struggle for the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Well I wish I had more time to think things through.

You’ve had all your life to think things through. The speed of thought will never ever get you airborn. Just consider the thought of turning your back on the quest – and if you can live with that – then go – you’re better off 3Ding it, but if something inside rebels at the thought, then now’s the time to take the plunge – now or never.