Then once again I was seeing Egypt. However, this was not the ancient civilization of the Nile Valley but rather an archetypal Egypt that exists independently in space and time. It seemed to lie in the direction of Sirius and to have some connection with the sign Gemini and the planet Venus, but I could not tell how or why these ideas came to mind.
"There is an innerdimensional Egypt!" I exclaimed. "It hovers over our world, yearns over it, caresses it. Oh world, I love you!"
All at once I was Isis herself, the virgin mother-goddess brooding lovingly over this world that I had created and was enfolding with arms like wings. I was making the sun shine, the crops flourish and the waters flow. The golden stream of my solicitude was turning the skies blue and the fields green. This microcosm was my beautiful garden of delight. I treasured every bit of it with undiscriminating concern. If anyone or anything there wanted to grow my blessing rested upon the endeavor, leaving it to some more austere male power to decree who or what might have to be weeded out.
Although I am far from being an expert on the Tarot it also struck me that this figure with which I was identifying was like the empress on the Tarot card. In any event, the feeling was that associated with one of those full-bosomed mythic earth-mothers who simultaneously exemplify the qualities of fertility and purity.
Returning to the space-pocket of our bedroom I saw Howard's dark-bearded face and gentle Piscean eyes. He seemed a long way off. In this state of meditative repose his countenance was the absolute image of the face of Jesus on a Russian icon. Was that a hallucination or was it really his face? I determined to check it out later.
To my right, the thorn tree outside the bedroom window was still silhouetted against the clouds on the horizon. But straight ahead, beyond the large glass doors that opened up on fields and forest, the sky was blue-as blue as the sky in my inner "garden of the world." I had been in Seattle a month now and the rain seldom ceased, even to the point where flood emergencies had been declared. Never once had I seen the sky this blue. It seemed as though I had created it expressly to match my inner vision.
Again, the reality-testing part of my mind jumped in, making it supremely important to discern whether the sky really was this color. I wanted so much for that azure stretch of heaven to accord with my garden world, and for subjective and objective realms to blend in a single interacting continuum. "It's impossible. The sky can't be that blue just because I so much want it to be. Is it really the color or am I just imagining?"
"It's blue." Howard assured me, laughing. Indeed it was, and remained so for another ten minutes, at which point the clouds closed in and the heavens returned to their usual lowering gray. Assured of being back in our charcoal-shaded dimension I stole another glance at Howard. His was still the face of the icon, and I still loved him to the point of blasphemy
For several years I had been giving much thought to the issue of synchronicity- the so-called meaningful coincidence. A long chapter on this subject contained in my book Astrology and Time presents the thesis that it is within the power of the mind to manufacture helpful or adverse coincidences. In my own case, as long as there is a sense of being alined with the universal Will items craved appear with absurd regularity a few days, or even hours, after the desire is formulated. Larger benefits also come but require longer to materialize.
Ever since our encounters with the goddess Ketamine synchronous events had been occurring with astounding consistency, as though the distinctions between inner realms of thought and outer realms of mundane circumstances were melting away. Etymological-ly, the word "psychedelic" derives from the Greek psyche (mind) and delos (manifesting). Now this term was acquiring new depths of meaning as chance happenings dovetailed with the thought processes that were manifestations of our individual minds. Omens, signs, and portents justified themselves while the whole universe seemed plastic, so easily did its lineaments conform to the conjurations of my visions, dreams and reflections. Yet I desperately wished to refrain from deluding myself on this issue.
An example of synchronicity had occurred the previous spring when my friend John Dunshee died of cancer of the bone. For several months I had been living in my motor home which John kindly allowed me to park in the oak grove below his house. Gazing at the largest of oaks, a gnarled giant of a tree, I kept thinking, "That tree is going to fall down." The thought saddened me because in some way the oak reminded me of John.
"That's nonsense," my friends replied when I voiced this fear. "That oak has been there at least five hundred years. Why should it fall down now?" That winter, however, the tree did fall down and shortly thereafter John died.
Now musing over the blue sky which my mind seemed to have solicited, my thoughts turned again to John and the tree and to the growing synchrony between objective and subjective spheres of our departmentalized existence. Was that our purpose in being-to manifest the archetypes of which our physical plane selves are but dimly focused projections? To what extent are we all living legends, the dreams of some great mind that imagines our coming and goings in order to amuse Itself with the play of creation? By any standards it was becoming spooky-as though I too could make things happen through wishcraft. This was the stuff of which paranoia is born, but yes, the sky had been blue, and Howard's countenance in that particular state of repose indisputably was the face on the icon.
Later that day I picked up Eden Gray's A Complete Guide to the Tarot from our bookshelf and turning to the page entitled "The Empress" read:
The Empress is the Earth Mother, here seated in a blooming garden. A field of ripe wheat lies before her, sacred to the Egyptian goddess Isis; behind her is seen the stream of consciousness flowing between cypress trees sacred to Venus. The heartshaped shield is inscribed with the symbol of Venus. The Empress hair is bound with a wreath of myrtle-again reminiscent of Venus as are the seven pearls around her neck. She wears a crown of twelve stars, each with six points, denoting dominion over the macrocosm, as does her scepter surmounted by a globe.
The High Priestess symbolizes the virgin state of the cosmic subconscious, but the Empress typifies the productive, generative activities in the subconscious after it has been impregnated by seed ideas from the self-conscious. The subconscious has control over all the steps of development in the material world; therefore the Empress represents the multiplicator of images.
She is the Goddess of Love, Venus, the symbol of universal fecundity. As the High Priestess is Isis veiled, the Empress is Isis unveiled.
Yes, that was exactly what I had seen, even to the associations with Isis and Venus. Now I understood why Catholic theologians had incarnated the memory of this bright being in the figure of the Virgin Mary. How marvelous that an assemblage of misogynous monks in their Medieval cloisters should somehow have recognized the everpresent reality of the mother goddess of old and incorporated her in their mystical pantheon-even if only to cater to a superstitious populace! Or had some of those church fathers actually glimpsed her as she was, yearning over her world and impartially accepting all the sons of men as her own beloved children.