The Western Gate

The following was a lucid dream bought on by fixing in the mind a sigil or a symbol, sometimes I would be presented with a door onto which I would project the image and then open it. The dream, though lengthy to describe was actually very fleeting and passed quickly, was able to make notes very quickly on waking. The gestures outlined below and performed by the ‘stranger’ were repeated somewhat and so in the report each time I tried to expand on what was being shown, perhaps this creates confusion in the text but I hope the full picture can be seen.
Have only omitted some details which on reflection seemed to arise on waking, I have therefore omitted this though may add it as an addendum postscript soon, these details seemed to emphasise that death is liberation and therefore the wielder of that scythe has come not to end but to free.

I had a small sigil fixed within my mind as I began to drift to sleep, so too this sigil was drawn on a small square card that now was under the pillow, this more a subconscious thing than having any magical properties to affect the work commencing.
Sleep was beckoning and it would be easy to stop my active mind and drift off, I could easily allow the conscious switch of the physical mind to close, I am tired after all but doing so would render the work sought in vain. Many’s the time I have submitted and allowed myself to sleep rather than hanging on between the waking and the sleep, and thus forfeiting dream, “let me sleep then”, I would ponder, “perhaps I’ll do the experiment the next night” I’d kid myself and let go, to awake in the morning heckle.
However, at the last moment I maintained a semblance of consciousness and felt myself ‘fall’. Over years I have stopped myself at this moment jumping- waking up- in fact it is a physical reaction, you fall, you react, but I have steadied the mind to allow it, and so am able to allow the fall to continue.
Into darkness I fell and then amidst a dense deep blue, so deep it were almost indigo black, the noise was a reverberation, a saw-tooth wave signal, very low and buzzing and then a mergence with white noise, a hiss, and the reverberance turned to the rumbling of distant thunder and now I felt as though I was forced headlong through a flume, this wasn’t restrictive nor did I feel concerned.
I manifested in a courtyard at once, it was now I felt free and alive, as if a hand over my mouth had been released and I could breath.
The area I now stood looked at first as if it were an abstraction of the park garden where I would, in lucid dream, hold discourse with the man called Rumi or sometimes the moody Jerome, the area it served was much the same size.
It were a tiled courtyard throughout with large marble flagstones and there were columns in three rows lined across this square. The columns to the left supported a trellis roof which offered shelter from the sun and the rain as it supported a thick blanket of fragrant (I think) jasmine, the other two rows of columns merely rose to height and stopped, they must have been hollow for all manner of creeping vines and roses poured from them as water from a faucet.

She walked towards me, Her skin was the colour of that deep indigo black I had seen in the falling, yet her features were more Indian than African.
I saw in her waist belt she had a small sickle and my first thought was that I stood in the presence of Kali, The sickle looked very much like the sigil I had crafted, The fear and the thought that the Goddess terrible and uncompromising was now close to my shadow dispersed, and I knew therefore this, she, wasn’t so. Fear evaporated as quickly and as instantly as the first thought of who I believed her to be.
She was thin though not such that bones protruded, nor svelte alike a fashion model, her eyes were entrancing, deep black as Onyx. I could smell the overtones of some resin, part sickly and part sweet.
” May you speak to me?” I offered, not as an order or that it should be so, more that my entire constitution seemed empty, I didn’t seem to be of any significance or concern here at all, it were perhaps a pathetic plea from me.
I did not hear the first words she spoke, they were a mixture of a whisper and a chant.
“This morning you awoke, and this evening that day is memory.”
It wasn’t a question or a statement, I knew it were the introduction to revealing herself.
I suddenly saw she opened a scroll and it was a picture of an androgynous person with the five Tattvas painted alongside it, it was a picture I had done years ago and threw, but she held it in her hand and pointed to the Black Egg that I had painted upon the figures forehead and I had written the Sanskrit letter Ya (य).
(I am not sure why I chose the letters to describe each Tattva, Ya for spirit, Va for Air, Ra for Fire, La for water, Ma for Earth, I looked them up after the drawing was complete and saw that the references I had found *stated they were wrong and so -threw the drawing away. )
“Ya,” she pointed to the Black egg and almost smiled, then to the Square at the base of the figures feet, the person I had drawn actually stood upon it much like a pedestal, “Ma” she said, I wasn’t sure if she mocked the drawing but she was certainly happy to repeat what I had written there. She stood back a little waiting for me to answer. I wanted to say, “I know it was wrong, that’s why I threw it…”
“Ya Ma” instead I repeated and my whole self seemed to shatter as I reasoned I was in the presence of Yama, the…. Goddess of death? But Yama, was a God, A man? she smiled and pointed to the figure, and repeated “Yama”
In the morning my day had begun and in the evening the day was but a memory,
I then, knew, the following;- Yama, awoke at Sunset, and until the next sunset as a vulture she followed the soul to be cast out from its body. And then, that day would repeat, until all the souls that day were judged and ‘freed’ , sic “one hundred a saxity sak shara times for the day.”
This was as revealed, it is hard to explain but almost telepathically as a movie downloaded into my mind I instantly knew this prose to be true.
She would shadow each person for their remaining moments of life and like Atropis with a sickle for a knife cut asunder that silver thread. With no mercy or judgement, just to do.
Each day she relived, groundhog day, for 160,000 times with each last 24 hours of the victim, and the next day, the same or thereabouts. For eternity.
“Ya” again she said at the black Egg, the symbol now as death and not of the promise of life, “Ma” she said at the Golden Cube, the pedestal of a persons life, their eulogy, that by which they are remembered, that by which they are judged. Yama, and then I felt her say, I am not here to Judge, Just to dance in the freeing of the soul, the liberation.
“YaMa” She spoke, descending her hand from egg to cube, of death to judgement, and now she reversed the motion…. “Maya” she said , this time her hand passing from the cube to the egg, from judgement to the second death- rebirth and to either relive in the illusion of self, or perhaps freedom-the end of samsara- merging into the archetypal constant. She smiled as I understood this path, this wisdom and teaching, but with her eyes there was a quizzical look, her head turned slightly awaiting for my hesitation, waiting for me to question. Did I understand?
“Ya” she said more firmly now, pointing to the egg, and then her hand rested over her womb. Then she handed me the sickle, it was stone cold and any heat from my body seemed to be forced into the handle of the sickle. She motioned me to turn the sickle upside down in the air, and now I saw the sigil I had drawn. “Ma”!” She ordered, and the symbol before me was fixed, and then the sickle dispersed into the ether. Gone.
“Yama” she said, her forefinger and thumb formed an impossible shape that looked again like the sigil, her fingers looking broken, bent backwards, contorted, the Hebrew letter Lamed, the scythe, the Egyptian Ma.
She pointed now to the crescent on the picture which was drawn just below the belly and above the vulva, that womb that she had cradled, “La” she said, and to the cube “Ma”.
The path- the way, “Lama” but this was my interpretation, Lama, The way, the path, of womb to self, the foundation and the temple of our being. She said nothing and now fixed me a stare, cast as stone, and for a moment scornful, my mind was silenced.

In front of me reappeared that sickle and I saw the letter Lamed (Hebrew), the letter Ma (Egyptian), the sigil I had drawn. Yama moved her arms to each of her side, contorted such that they each looked like this sigil, and she motion them, as a dance that looked as though she held in each hand something, swaying each as if balancing or juggling, “La” she said, instantly stopping the dance.
I did not think or question, but observed.
She pointed to her head, “Ya” and then to her feet “Ma” and to the crease below her stomach, “La”” and then again posed with her arms that she were holding aloft with slight bent elbows some support. “Yamala” she sang happily. (Postscript :Yamala- means, apparently in sanskrit- equal- balanced)
To emphasise again now she said “Ya” and rested her left hand at her forehead, “Ma” she said again and she offered the word with her right hand to my feet, and “La” -both hands together.
She smiled, and in an instant I felt very close to her and then at that moment, with that thought, that union, all was gone, I felt myself awake in the body as if billions of particles of light converged together to form a mass and in the darkness of the bedroom I felt laughter. And then silence, absolute deathly silence and loneliness.
It were not Yama that I had just had counsel with, for if it were, I would not have returned so? And Yama, is a God, a Lord of death. She were as an assassin, as the dark angel Azrael perhaps. We are equal as she espoused, she determines that which will die, pass and be delivered, and I, here, upon my pedestal, self-judge.
I was Born when the aged old archetype of Saturn, he with the scythe and the sand timer, was seen in the heaven with the age of Pisces, the two fishes. End then. End that time. It is done.

Postscript;- In works I have seen related to the Tattvas I have seen the following;- Ya-Spirit, Va-Air, Ha-Water, Ra-Fire, La- Earth. In the diagram that I drew, I had the following correspondence which was drawn purely from intuition- Ya-Spirit, Va-Air, Ra- Fire, La-Water, Ma-Earth. I have no idea of the correct forms.

To verify YaMa in sanskrit means-Restraint, I could conclude in this context being shown between the possibilities of potential- The black Egg and the life as measured – The Golden cube (yellow square) we have the idea of restraint in as much as between them is what is ‘Judged’.
Yama is also The God of Death and more importantly, justice. He is said to be the twin of Yami ! And here I began to draw parallels, they are both the first born archetypal race and where Yama is the Lord of Death, Yami is the ‘Lady of Life’. Thus these are in eternal and equal balance or Yamala.
YaMa is also spoken of in the text as its natural reversal MaYa- or that of illusion. Life and existence, that which lorded over by Yami is Maya as it is ruled by our self ego and duality, just as the twins seen as separate and yet are each a natural harmony and therefore negation of each other. Yami is the Goddess of Death by virtue that she presides over life, and thus, the mother of the promise of death.

* (Cite Sanskrit Reference)