"Neon Isis" – September 20, 2003

The Books of Fae

2003-9-23 – "Neon Isis"

"…After leaving the Haven of Ravens in the fall of 2003, I make my way to the Earthdance gathering, there to encounter Coyote Highway once more and the priestess Gentle Doe …"

While living at Shangri-Lafayette in the guardianship of the Great Oak, I continued to move through the western coastlines of the Americas, finding my way to gathering places, festivals where the energy felt more free and transformative, where the magic was flush.

Upon the recommendation of Mitch Boxwell; I head northwards towards a place called Earthdance. Here, I place the statue of the Goddess on the back of my truck. Soon afterwards, he appears, a lady on each arm. One of them, Rebecca, makes fine comment on the statue …

The art of photography has always been sacred to me, a way of documenting the magick as it occurred on the Quest. My elemental nature could barely understand the mechanics of the camera, yet there was something deeper, something more sublime, that occurred in the mix of energies that made up a perfect moment.

Over the years, I would come to see that.I was photographing the deeper auric and energetic qualities of the beings I saw, illuminating them as I perceived the subtlety of their energies with the camera. One of the first instances of this was the priestess Gentle Doe, whom I would meet at the festival called Earthdance in 2003.

It is at the festival called Earthdance that I first encounter the beauteous priestess Rebecca, destined to lead me to the mountains of Lake Tahoe and my apprenticeship at the Academy of the Ancient Arts.

Earthdance marked the first time I deeply saw the emanations of the Mythica through the surface plane, where the totemic sculpture of the Millennial Gaia granted to me by the wizard Oberon Zell would serve as a beacon for like-minded individuals walking the subtle roads of the magical World.

The Gorilla King

Once again I encounter the Old God that peers at me behind the eyes of Mitch Boxwell, our Paths intersecting in the sacred gathering of the Earthdance.

He leads me towards a copse of trees, where his roadship is docked, holding space for a gathering of avatars of the festival realms. Here, the deva energies of Story, Song and Dance are flush. It is the Good family, the rainbow family. It is here I first encounter the elfin beauty of Rebecca Kinelski, a natural priestess whose sacred essence embodies that of the gentle doe …

Though I do not know it at the time, the connection with this priestess would soon lead me to the mountains of Lake Tahoe, where I would discover the Academy of the Ancient Arts and devote myself to the study of the magic ….

As I approach the campsite, a vision comes to me of gods and goddesses, and the RV shifts before my eyes, visioning as a great ship, an ancient craft that merely seems a certain way on the surface of the world. It fades a moment later, as I become entranced by one of the ladies, a bright vision named Rebecca with whom I have immediate resonance.

The Light of Isis

It was at the Earthdance festival that I would experience a vast opening into the worlds beneath the world, the lens of my perspective shifted to open in adoration of Divinity in motion.

Here, I would meet the priestess Gentle Doe and witness photos of her in illuminate transformation, feeling the textures of Isis moving through her form. Where the veil of perception between the mundane and mystical versions of our embodiment crumbled, and the Universe affirmed my intuition that we were the modern versions of something greater. Something more constant than what things appeared to be on the surface.

It was here, in the light of the Gentle Doe, that my sense of the Mythica clarified, opened through my adoration of her in that moment, flush with the light and love that was her being.

It was the quality of light. The energies that moved through her inspiring my fingers as they worked the camera. I felt my heart opening, and with that, my vision, shifting across the octaves, seeing the deeper aspect of that which was always there. The song beneath her skin.

Here, opened by the ecstasy of silver, I could feel the energies moving beneath her, my fingers dancing across the settings of the camera in intuitive response. Such was an initiation for me, deeper into what would become Postcards from Faerie and eventually the Into the Mythica platform, revealing the light and legend beneath what we appeared to be.

It was a definitive level-up. A shift in my clarity regarding the gift of lightning and my witnessing of the events upon my path. To arrive in such alchemy with her was a thing of instant and deep magic, a willingness to explore the space that would turn out to be part of something far larger awaiting in the coming days.

As we moved between the shifting lights in the space I felt the edges of her form dissolve, falling away like leaves in an hourglass, the layers of who she was and could be becoming clearer and clearer in the space. It was a fugue, a magic of opening, our shared light blending and dancing beneath the moonlight and the background of a DJ set.

The inspiration moved me, my fingers dancing on the dials of my camera, the energies of my body reading and listening to the light beneath the light beneath the light, watching us unfolding together in a moment of inspired art, her outer form dissolving into a primal pattern, a language of light that lay beneath the surface of her skin.

As she starts to move, I feel my fingers, caressing the camera, intent on honouring her. There is something in-between the shutters, I feel. A Light, beneath the light. My fingers start playing with the time that the shutter is open. I am just learning to work this device which, like so many aspects of the Earth plane, shifts in and out of my facility like a flickering dream.

In this liminal space I see, she is far more than the woman that stands before me, she is Isis, Herself, or an aspect of such. Light and symbology stream around her and I Know, on some level, that I am tapped into a deeper plane of awareness, recognizing the magick I am working even while unable to understand the mechanics of the Earth plane in constancy.

At this time, my photography abilities are growing, steadily. It seem the more I do it, the more I understand the nature of the thing. (As always, in the context of being a newcomer to this plane and not understanding form)

The Mirrors of Me

I step into one of them, a series of mirrors reflecting my image back to myself, words of potency emblazoned above amidst a hail of sacred symbols.

There was a sanctity to this. A sense of the symbols of the World and their transcendence that played out for me across the underlands. I was wearing a shirt that had somehow migrated from Vogel’s inventory into mine that showed a pair of dice as I remembered the Einstein phrase, “God does not play dice with the cosmos”.

Even then, there was a sense of implicate pattern. Dimly held, my gaze constantly shifting around it’s nature, yet there. A sense of the mirrors, the symbols and the self.

“Journeying We Are Abundant” it says, reflecting my inertia of travel across the realms of what in time will become the mission of the Mythica.

Once more united with the Chocolate Faery, we make our way through the art installations of Earthdance, recognizing them as the manifest reflection of our shamanic adventure. I step into one of them, a series of mirrors reflecting my image back to myself, words of potency emblazoned above amidst a hail of sacred symbols.

There is a significance to the synchronicity of meeting with the dancer again, a sense that we stand within a portal of many mirrors and worlds, connected by colors far deeper than our shared time in the Garden Island. While I cannot discern it fully, the feeling of being connected radiates from within the space.

“Journeying We Are Abundant” it says, reflecting my inertia of travel across the realms of what in time will become the mission of the Mythica. Something about it felt good. Aligned. A way to heal the splinters through the act of my journey.