We headed up the path, and I recalled an image of a woman dressed in green with shoulder-length dark hair—pants and top—and, I realized, I’d seen her in a dream or parallel to my normal experience. I recalled my desire to recall and to have awareness in this realm.
(Paxson encourages looking for or making a door or gate-like passages, to draw upon our expectations of narrative and travel conventions. I should try to do so when dealing with the barriers, or at least the wall of trees.)
We passed the first barrier and came into the Dark Wood, and I had a bit clearer vision. We ascended towards the waymarker Demri had noted. We found the stone and followed its path, which seemed level and the air felt cooler and mountainous, which I loved. We came to the pool, with a dark haired woman in a pool.
The pool itself was maybe thirty feet across with a light runoff forming the stream, and it was filling from a spring that fell down from stones into the pool. I introduced us and the nymph—my mind wanted to see some sensual, mature woman—and she called herself Gli’an. (Water maiden, though maybe not maiden.) She welcomed us, and I asked her blessing to bathe with her. We negotiated: she wanted me to live in the pool with her, but I could not do so, would not do so. We settled upon, well, enjoying each other’s company, and that I would visit on occasion. I stripped down and left K to watch my clothes, but he suggested I keep the blade near the pool. I slid in, and Gli’an immediately embraced me, and we kissed and felt our bodies against each other. I felt the waters over my body and head, and she pulled me under as we made love.
She asked me if I would stay and live with her, but while I might have wanted to remain in the waters with her then, I told her I chose not to do so, though I did tarry. K apparently gave her a look, and she let me go, as I pulled myself out onto the stones even if she playfully tugged at a foot.
She told me to open myself to love and to surrender to it. Love was like the waters. They would wear at you, and wear you down from without, but if you let them in, they filled you, fed you.
I felt light, bright, free, and wet as I returned to K. More immediately myself than most anytime I recall. I rested before dressing again, leaving my hair down. I felt excited[…], and K appreciated that. We returned quickly to the glade, and I emerged.
Ú-prestathon a berthathon
The skies have been beautiful of late, with clouds and bright blue expanses over the trees. It makes me think of the skies of the HW that the Morrigan had me see a short while back—She wants me to look to the skies, and I often want to do so. I want to say this is a general injunction rather than a “look for something.” The skies point to the HW, and the ascent in my trips with K have been up a steep incline, a mountain, but it is an ascent into the HW. The coolness, the “mountain air” I felt at the pool isn’t even so much that, though I note the path there seemed rather level, but I think it’s a higher elevation and “high” for me in the HW. I do wonder if it’s in the HW, and K tells me it’s “high” in the MW—climbing the root brings you closer to the HW, to the branches. In which case, the Morrigan told me to wait on the HW, to work in the MW for a time.
That path straddles the divide, the transition from HW to MW. The waters do—help. And ___ _______ is somewhere in there for me to claim.
I have noted that open-eye Otherwordly actions seem—clearer, or they can seem such. There’s a fear of mis-sensing and seeing the Otherworlds in this world, but—eh?
The trance journey paradigm is distinct. Paxson notes some like to try to teleport everywhere, but their vision[s] are often less stable or clear. I’m a fan of that, and the GD can be said to do that, too, but they “teleport” into the entry point to the WtaW via tattvas. They still do pathworking. They move forward from the entry point.
There are—brews that facilitate vision into the Otherworld. Herbal concoctions, booze, drugs—mind you, anything you’d want would be illegal.
There may be other approaches—
K noted that some places may open to the Otherworlds, and in a sense, all wooded areas kind of connect to Otherworld woods and Elethis, but their immediate correspondence goes to local geography more so.
And I come back out, and there’s the moon hanging in the sky, waxing half-full.
I want med’n again, and to channel [Elethis] and [Corunor] some again. I should take some time to do so soon. Med’n would be helpful, in general.