Once a soul arrived in the hall of judgement, Horus led it by the hand to the awaiting Osirus, seated upon the throne.
—Christine El Mahdy, from Mummies, Myth and Magic
I fell ill recently. Don’t worry, everything is fine. Merely a touch of the Influenza. I hadn’t been taking care of myself very well, and one night all I had for supper was an enormous piece of chocolate cake. It was tasty, but not very nutritious. The next day I felt a bit “under the weather”. When I got home, instead of the ham steak and scrambled eggs I was planning to have, I made some chicken soup and drank orange juice. But, alas, it was too late. As I was preparing for bed I caught the chills so badly, that I didn’t have time to get the proper afghan. I grabbed the one I had handy, curled up and fell asleep shivering. Then, I died.
The Egyptian Bureaucrats
I found myself watching a group of ancient Egyptian bureaucrats examining the contents of an ornate golden crate. Their strange heads shook from side to side on their human bodies. They had opened it, and were peering inside. A guide was standing beside me and said, “They’re looking at you. That’s you in the sarcophagus.”
The bureaucrats were shuffling about, trying to decide who I was, and what to do with me. When I told them who I was, they didn’t believe me.
“If it is you, where is the cloak of blue lightning?” they asked.
It’s true. If I am very ill, which is rare, I often put a particular afghan on the bed to keep me warm. But I hadn’t used it, and therefore I was unrecognizable to them. This wasn’t the way I was supposed to arrive according to the papyrus work.
The guide and I stayed in a corner of the office (which was a deep red stucco), and I could see a bureaucrat pulling files, examining the body, sitting at his desk and scratching his crocodile head. I kept pleading them to ask somebody higher up the chain of command. They ignored my request and continued to fumble.
Eventually Thoth somehow found out about the confusion, came down to the offices and confirmed my identity. The papyrus work was signed, stamped, dated, and they moved me along to the next step in the process. They buried me in the cold ground like a seed.
Later I felt someone digging me up. Farmers, peasants, and midwives were unfolding the seed which now resembled a strange nut, with wooden rose-like petals. Layer by layer they peeled, until they found me, curled tightly into a ball, and in the center was a black cat. And as I awoke, I found that I was curled tightly into a ball, still shivering, and at the center was Püs, the cat that lives with me here at the Shop. She was radiating as much heat as she could from her little black body, and she was the only thing keeping me warm.
A City in Ruins
When I fell back asleep, I was in a city made from gelatin and meat. Loudspeakers were blaring, and my guide had become a gibbering newsfeed, broadcasting nonsense from a communications station damaged by the raging illness. The city had suffered a massive attack. The devastation was like the scenes of cities after a bombing, but structures were more membraneous, more organic. Some buildings had lost their façades, and exposed floors drooped dangerously. Towers slid more than crumbled, in slithery chunks.
I realized that I was the city, or, more accurately, the city was part of a world which was an ambulatory biological megasystem, which is me.
So I had descended from the subconscious level, down to the cellular level, like Meg into her brother Charles Wallace, to save his mitochondria. I commanded three times loudly for the gibbering newsfeed to keep quiet, to cease the maddening confusion and disinformation. It stopped. Soon Medieval knights arrived with their standard bearers from many different regions, sporting their individual insignias, and their coats of arms. They were in rough shape from the battle, but they brought food and supplies for the city, and vitamin C glinted off their armor like golden sunlight.
The Feast of Pluto
The next dream I remember took me to the cold, yet opulent cosmic nether regions of the solar system. I was in the dining hall of Pluto, Lord of the Underworld. He was enormous, and towered over the black oak table. His cloak and the walls were the same glittering emerald green, and it billowed, so it was difficult to see where the walls ended and he began. His robe, however, while green, was curiously covered with wavy hair like an Irish wolfhound, and upon his head he wore a triple crown wrought of iron.
As in ancient days, pigs were sacrificed to the Queen of the Underworld during the rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries, so Pluto commanded me to feast on a ham steak—and also eggs, which are a symbol of regeneration. The knights from the previous dream arrived for the feast. Large studded wooden doors groaned as they were thrown open, and dazzling sunlight flooded the room. I awoke to a bright, warm morning, and I arose and cooked myself a breakfast of ham steak and eggs.
Posted by Ned at janvier 30, 2004 04:32 PM