The Western Gate

Header Illustration The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy, AKA The Triple Hecate ~ William Blake (1795)

Psychopomp~ A poem in seven verses of seven lines, for the Emerald Kingdom of Devas

Verse 1
I woke, not once but many times,
My thoughts adrift in nightly rhymes.
My body sighed, my senses leapt,
As consciousness its vigil kept.
Yet this time! Falling—dark, profound,
Through indigo, where dreams are found,
Then emerald green, where trees arose.

Verse 2
Kensington, where gardens breathe,
A private square, a waking dream.
And there he sat, serene, alone,
Upon his lap, his palms were shown.
A yogi’s pose, yet not the same—
Rumi smiled, he knew my name.
“Badru,” he called, beneath that moon.

Verse 3
This Persian sage has Eastern face?
Not as in books, nor time nor place.
Yet still he shares my fateful birth,
A thread spun deep within the earth.
And though his words perhaps my own,
They guide me still, this path unknown.
A dream, yet more—a whispered sign.

Verse 4
No Pan appears where legends play,
Though gardens call, he stays away.
Yet Ammit’s jaws entrap below,
Where Maat’s confessions weigh and grow.
Why Thoth not speak? Why Rumi’s hand?
Why Hebrew script on Egyptian sand?
The answers shift like desert wind.

Verse 5
“Then call your judgment,” Rumi said,
“Or leave behind what fills with dread.”
Yet how to flee when shadows cling?
When Goddesses their whispers bring?
I move, I, the horse, to fated course,
No force, no will—just silent pause.
The waking world now dreams the same.

Verse 6
A magic square, a chessboard’s scheme,
Snakes slide where ladders reach.
“Not this,” he mused, “but art will rise,
In measured lines and hidden skies.”
Yet purpose fades—what work is worth?
To trace the constants of the earth
Or dance where souls and nature meet?

Verse 7
A rainbow bridge, a chakra’s glow,
A psychopomp—but why, I know?
To lead them back, not through the veil,
But to the wolf, the storm, the whale.
Yet Rumi sighed, “What good, what end?
To bind free souls, the light defend?”
I woke—to incense unknown in air.

Commentary;-

I had awoken a few times instead of maintaining inward thoughts to watch my body relent and drift to its nightly rejuvenation, my physical senses jumping, the muscles reacting to consciousness. This time however I felt my self fall and did not slap back into the physical, I was falling, headlong, faster, Dark, Indigo, Violet. and, Green, beautiful Emerald Green that at once became the curtain of trees before me and I stood now in Kensington Gardens. They were the private garden squares for the rich and well to do in the houses that surrounded them. Here of course, I were in dream. My Trespass is my domain.
I saw him over in the corner, he sat regally, one foot across the other knee, his arms resting in his lap and hands upturned as if he were a yogi in meditation.
I greeted him. Rumi. Every time I tell this story I remind the reader of this fact. Rumi, the old Persian poet was born on the same birthday as me. I did not know it, but have come to assume I must have known it, seen it somewhere in a list of “who shares your birthday”.
Rumi calls me “Badru”, apparently this is an Arabic word for someone born on the Full Moon. I must also have known that somewhere in my subconscious mind as well, read it in some obscure book, and forgotten it, only to regurgitate it these years hence.
You would expect, being Persian, this Rumi I speak of and meet in my wanderings would look Arabic, but he doesn’t, he looks almost Oriental, and as I have seen portraits of Rumi, I can only admit they do not look like the old gentlemen there, now smiling at me and offering me to sit with him, I conclude it’s not Rumi as he would be, but as I myself have imagined him somewhat, no idea how I ‘remembered’ the real Rumi shared my birthday and as for the Arabic ? who knows, I cease to be amazed, and refuse to be perplexed.
Kensington Gardens. I wonder if Peter Pan would join us at this famous spot. He never does. Even though it’s my dream, my lucid dream, Peter Pan never comes.

The last time we had met, briefly, the dream was quick, I had the notion on waking to study the 42 negative confessions of Maat, most of which I answered negatively. And. Therefore, like Captain Hook, would be eaten by the Crocodile, Ammit, so called in Egypt’s ancient past who consumed the guilty souls. I had wondered why it were not Thoth who had instructed me to study these confessions instead of Rumi, who is from a different path?
It didn’t matter, I studied and became confused as interpretations differed, certain Gods in one text came from a certain old city, then from another, and one minute a certain God is concerned with whether you overturned the Sacred offerings in the temple or the next minute whether you defiled the neighbours wife. I converted the Egyptian names, to Hebrew, why? Rumi had suggested to modify the Master’s word, for the builders. Still at the end… nothing.
The angst is this.
Why Am I lucid dreaming?
Why am I still into ‘this’?
No-one I know is into “Witchcraft” or the “occult”. I have researched my ancestry looking for the answers. I have found some wonderful connections, but they are so far up the ancestral scale as to be little more that quaint images. Yes, I found a connection to Morgan la fey~ and she’s probably fictitious, To The Moray Firth and the shenanigans at Auldearn, to travellers and Romany in Ireland and to Mad alchemist Milliton of Devon, and to Anne Boleyn. Which begs the question, why then aren’t all my family influenced somewhat by the same ‘suchness’?

“So what next” I asked Rumi.
” Then call judgement” he said squarely.
” Judgement?”
” Well”, he offered,” be content or place before you that which hinders.”

I thought for a moment. More and more I had been wondering the why’s;- why me? for what reason? and why should I care.
No sooner do I try and distance myself from all this ‘nonsense’ than the sacred and arcane, the occult and ‘Wyrd’ comes gnawing at my Achilles heel.
I cannot run from the liminal world that haunts me, I cannot turn to distraction and immerse myself in video games, or obsess over a football team, as if nothing else matters, because…. She comes a calling, the Goddess, the triple fates, be they Spring,Summer and Autumn, three moves for the Goddess, and I move accordingly, as the horse.
So it is, I have come to “go with the flow”, just to observe, much as I do in the waking world. Just be there and watch, and this almost laissez-faire attitude seems to be the same in my other pursuits, that I could label the Orphic path, Art, I get an inkling of what to do, don’t question -just do it. I write and its pretty much on auto pilot with hardly any wheels or cogs of engagement, I make music, and make the best music when I’m not actually thinking logically about what I’m playing. On it goes, I’m not really here, lucid dreaming has began to spill over into the waking world.

“Rumi,” I say, ” are you going to tell me to create a magic square of 22×22 numbers and in each create a unique pair of Hebrew letters, together with their gematria?”
Now, in dream, this conversation didn’t happen, but I thought of it, and Rumi knew, and what’s more he knew i’d already worked on this and was leading him into a trap.
“No” he said, ” but your next art folly will be an 8×8 square ala Mercurius, for Thoth, 32 squares and snakes and ladders.Or chess.”
It were true, I had thought that in the waking world, and had made a quick sketch. But, what for?

The 22×22 square, as created on Excel, The pink highlighted squares are prime numbers, the yellow are thsoe squared possible. In black are the pairs of Hebrew letters that are the same. The left hand numbers above these are the pairs sequence i.e.e A,A =1 A,B = 2 and the right jhand letter the hebrew gematria. Each line vertical or horizontal or diagonal adds up to the same .

Also fig below quick preliminary sketch of the 8×8 square. Why? I have no idea…. Yet,.

“So Rumi, these magic squares, the work on the 42 negative confessions have no purpose whatsoever, even though you would guide me to complete them”

Rumi did not answer, what is work on the great Arte but to find the common, the hidden images in art, the flow and meander of poetry, sacred geometry and the constants in Maths, connections, unity, equilibrium. For what?
“Content, the unassuming man sits silent, but you are agitated, why so?”
I reasoned for want of purpose, the whys and wherefores of this lonely path, where I am little understood by my peers when I discuss such things who assume I’m borderline mad and at best strange, and not understood at all by others who say they are “on the path.”
“Does it matter Badru?”
Does it?

“What divine purpose, if such a thing were manifest would Badru do?”

Ah! fanatsy, desire, speculation. That’s more like it.

I remember a long time ago now, I were but in my late teens. I had attended a psychic festival in London. I had my ‘aura photograph’ taken. Some bearded bloke interpreted it for me. I was sure he read my body language. Sure he saw me gesture as if to say “impress me then.”
Perhaps my eyebrow rose, as if to mock, that he was about to talk bollocks.
“ Your throat chakra according to this photo suggests you find it difficult to talk about lots of things…”
I wonder how he picked up on that, what body language movements had he seen? My photograph showed a gap at my throat where there should be light, it unnerved me.
”You know,” he continued, “a lot more than you make out to? Youve seen more than you care to share”
He looked me up and down, my old bikers leather jacket, my favourite ripped jeans in homage to The Ramones, my Doctor Marten boots.
“Now this…” he said pointing to the array of different colours over my head, “is a rainbow bridge, do you know what that means?”
I didn’t, synchronicity states when something new enters your life it will repeat, like a new word, or an event, ripples of space-time-experience, a few days after this conversation I came across Bifrost bridge. I never hunted for it, it just came up randomly channel hopping the Tv.
“It means,” said the interpreter, “You have the ability to lead souls to the other side.”
I mean, what the fuck was I supposed to make of that? It was the first time I had heard the word, psychpomp, and obviously, that word was repeated thereafter many times from many random different sources.

The auric Photo, note emptiness around “throat Chakra”. nearly 40 years ago.
And still none the wiser. Well actually I think it improved as this photo from about ten years later seems to suggest;-

Now in lucid dream, obviously this memory never played out like that, but just the thought, even though it would take minutes to replay, was just a flash ! Insight, and it’s whole story was known in an instant.

“A psychopomp!” I exclaimed to Rumi.
”You wish to help souls to the other side?” He asked.
”No,” I figured, “If I can lead them across, can I not bring them back? Not to their perished bodies of course, but to nature?”
”For what purpose Badru would you bring back a soul that is free from limitation to the parameter of defined existence. From its essence of oneness to this duality?”
I thought and replied, “ Those who existed with nature, the free tribes were always free, those whose mindset was set on equilibrium, on a symbiotic life with nature, them, to have them dance in the bodies of panthers, trees, bees, crows, the wind, the storm. The fallen tribes, native to the garden. And.” I added, ” They were always one with everything?”
“For what purpose Badru? what would these watching souls now do?”

I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but if the axim As above, so below, then let above come Below. If we go up the ladder we are prepared to fall with the serpent.
Bring the souls of the free back, allied to Nature.
Pyschopomp.

I awoke. I could smell spent incense, Some florally night stock smell. and whence does that odour come from?

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