"Holt of the Elves" – January 2, 2008

2008-1-2

The Books of Fae

2008-1-2 – "Holt of the Elves"

"…Leaving the Academy on the inaugural journey of Calliope’s Dream, I return to the  realms of the elves where I first acquired the Elphinstone Coat. Out of all the realms I have traveled, it feels the most resonant, the most connected to the tribal knowing that calls me home. …"

The path leads northwards, past the gates of Washington into the realms of Canada and towards the place of the northern elves, the small tribe of characters who i'd discovered in my acquisition of the "The Elphinstone Coat" in 2007.  As I did then, I find the place flush with the morphic signature of the elves, the textures matching the energies I had felt beneath the surface of the books and films i'd perceied as a child.  There was the sense that just as I had been living the life of a mystical fae explorer that the people here were living in their own mythos, their lives an expression of a subtle pattern which I could feel beneath the surface of the worlds.  As I arrive I can feel the strength of the mountain moving through the space, carrying with it the vibrational impressions of the vision that had been granted to me of the layers of Gaia's consciousness I had experienced before, and I find my way to an RV camp at the edge of Robert's Creek and Sechelt.

It is so beautiful to have my own ship! To be able to move about with the wolf, making our way across the realms! It is a freedom and a grounding, the likes of which i’d never felt befor, a sense of coming into greater resonance with the element of Earth, protected in a silver skin in my passage across the realms of the Mythica.

To have a home, a place to call my own that was made of the magics of earth was new for me, and I was deeply grateful for it's existence.  It was the first time I had felt the resonance of such a thing, the first time i'd felt any kind of grounding into what was the earth element of the wheel and I savored it, loving the sense that I was in the living mythology of a traveler between the realms searching and exploring his place in the world.

Totem of the Rabbit

I discover something peculiar about the campground I am staying at.  Rabbits are everywhere. As I see them moving around by the hundreds, I consider the totemic significance that I learned at the Academy.  As a totem, rabbits represented the passage into other worlds, and I regarded my arrival in a place flush with rabbits to be an affirmation of that thing, the morphic signature of their presence in my manifest world a sign of my travel from the mountains of Tahoe-Tahingaard and the reality of mystic apprenticeship to a new world, one occurring along the string of my synchronicity as my placement at the RV camp.

It is only through the deva that I find solace, moving through the snow and the green.

Waters of the Kami

I continue regularly doing the misogi cleansing meditation, bathing myself in the icy cold waters that lie just next to where Calliope’s Dream lays docked in the RV park …

The Elphinstone Forests

Daily, North and I prowl the forests of Elphinstone, often bare-pawed upon the ground where I may feel the touch of the Goddess, the energies flowing and grounding my form ….

The lands of Elphinstone are powerful, thick with the vital energy of the aina.  As North and I wander through the forests, I sense a robustness, a pristinity far removed from the exploited and overtrod territories of the Americas.  The air calls to me here, singing the tones of the forest, tendering the hearts of the people.  There is a closeness that I feel, more intimate with the land, more connected to the fellowship and connection that lay beneath the surfaces of the world.

Again the land speaks to me, the roots of the trees and the land hinting at something deeper.  Like my journey to the realms of Shamballa and my passage through the underwater forest, there is a message, an understanding that they are trying to convey.  I wish to hear it properly, yet I cannot, my mind torn by shifting tones of anger and confusion, of feeling alienated and wondering at my place in the worlds.

Yet while this is difficult, I am on the adventure, deep in the realms of the elves as they appear in this Age, smelling the musk of that tribal connection, the roots between each other and the world.

It’s exciting.  To have left the faerie mountains of Tahingaard and making my way along the northern roads, following the trail of the magic.

Holt of the Elves

The gate is more than it appears.  In the subtle fields beneath the surface, I sense it as a delineating, a boundary between the realms.

I come back to the realm of the templekeeper, the shaper known as Copper Chris.  To the place known as the Dreamberry Farm, so named for a book of lore shared with me by the people which  one destined to trigger a vast remembrance within me and granting sight of the mythos that defines this realm and her peoples.  It’s name – ElfQuest.

Like all the tomes i'd encountered before this was more than what it appeared on the surface.  What looked like a graphic novel was a true magical item to me, one that spoke to the very qualities of consciousness that defined the people I had encountered.  It was a teaching, a way of looking at our relationship with ourselves and the world which sang within my heart and which I knew sang in the hearts of others, reminding me again that who we have been and could be again was held in sacred memory, preserved through the hearts and minds of the writers and illustrators of the modern myth.  In such context, the elves of ElfQuest were real, and I was living amongst them, among human beings who carried the traits of culture and couture that defined such things.  They were a part of the mythology of the land upon which I was staying, a codex of culture which touched the souls of it's people with remembered light.

It wasn't that I did not see human beings.  It was that I saw a certain type of human being, one defined by a signature beneath the surface which held a certain quality, a morphic resonance with the text that spoke volumes into the living mythology I saw before my eyes.

In particular there was a quality in the ElfQuest series they called recognition which played out as a soul-connection whose gravity was stronger and more enduring than the cultures and transiences of the world, that drew the elvish people into a deep resonance, a kind of telepathic communion which defined the intimacy of one's true heart.

For me, living with the mystical wolf North who had come to me through the application of spellcraft only a year or so before I found parallel, a reflection of my own inquiry into self presented in perfect timing through the medium I had known and cherished all throughout my life.  I felt myself as part of that mystical undercurrent of the world, an fae magician coming down from the mountains to encounter the tribes of my magical kin in a faraway land.

Divinations of Story

Canadian winters are a harsh thing, and being inside a trailer designed for the summer months was challenging.  The RV camp I stayed in had electrical power and internet, and I spent a good amount of time next to a constantly running space heater and consuming media to pass the time.

I'm watching videos on my laptop when I encounter a series called 'Babylon 5' which has a certain energy that I like.  A continuity which feels organized, like a tightly woven spell.  There is the sense in the ethers that it is a work of story from a single mind as compared to the medley of many different concepts which I perceive beneath most media.  I like it.  It feels … cohesive, and it inspires my curiosity to watch all it's seasons throughout the winter months.

As it turns out, the series was written by an artist named J. Michael Straczynski, and in looking up his work I discover a comic series called "Rising Stars" which provides me with a significant piece of inspiration that will shape the idea of the Mythica project.

There is something I sense within the idea of a collection of individuals each gifted with a particular quality meant to serve the larger collective that rings true for me, and I feel the threads of it tracing back to a very real sense of our own collective consciousness, of the talents and abilities which define myself and the other characters i've met along the way in service to a larger thing.

I love it.  There was a sense of realism to it, one which reminds me of the Wild Cards series that i'd followed all throughout my life, which presented the idea of subtle powers in a more realistic context, and I considered it an affirmation from the universe, speaking to a resonance between myself, the author of the piece and many others in the comic book industry whom I considered to be the magicians and glyphmakers of the current Age.

More, it related deeply to my quest.  During my time at the Academy, I had seen that the people were made of the elements, and that those elements came together into archetypes of personality, each possessed of their own skills and talents related to their elemental form.  It related it to my sense of the people as Goddesses and Gods, each holding a particular vibrational quality that defined them and their gift to the world.

Here I questioned the path and the land.  Why, out of all the places I could have arrived, did I come here? Why were the people I called the northern elves the only tribe i'd encountered who felt even remotely resonant with my style of being and what was the connection between us all I felt in the subtle planes of the world? How did my arrival in this place relate to the journey into the Mythica?

Lord of Knives

The knives are hand-forged, damascus steel. Like what Ogun forged for me in the realms of the deep masculine.

he isn’t the only one.  to be in the bosom of Elphinstone is to be around a tribe of makers and dreamshapers, all imbued with one degree or timbre of creation or another, like prismatic flowers blossoming from the collective tree.

Again I ask the question, out of all the characters I could have encountered on my line of time, why did I meet a shaper of knives and metals in this way? Nothing was random, everything felt to be a part of some grand choreography that went on beyond my knowledge, hinting at a mythology playing out in everyday life.

A Problem of Water

My difficulty in anchoring the understanding of the Earth plane made itself abundantly clear as the piping system within Calliope’s Dream sprung a leak, leaving me baffled.

I had no idea why the water was leaking when I turned on the pump. Like so many aspects of the Incarnate plane, I simply could not digest it. While for others this may have seemed a thing of simplicity, like so much of the Earth, it was incomprehensible, where the very idea of the physics of moving water held within the pumps hoses was ungraspable.  It felt like a continuation of the difficulties i'd had all throughout my life and which had been abundantly clear at the Academy, that there was something deeply out-of-sync with my perception of the physics of earth, unable to understand the basest of things and struggling to make sense of the mechanics of ordinary life.  Ultimately, it was the knife-master who came to my aid, the strength of forging and mechanics that defined his character easily identifying the issue and giving me cues on how to fix what to me was an unknown thing.  I was thankful to him, yet inside I seethed, and resented how the element of earth was so difficult for me that I had to ask for help in what for another would have been a simple thing.

Filth & Feathers

Kaija leads me to a place in the forest flush with squawking birds and a vast amount of trash.

“The birds make their nests from the trash” she says.

While I appreciate the magic of gathering the feathers with her, the trash agitates me. Feeling led to pick it up, I gather a few bags worth so that the land may breathe again.

As she bends down to gather the feathers, a sense of hope fills me, contrasting the disgust I feel at the level of trash humans are dropping on the land.

Characters