All mystical traditions have some sort of other world.
That other world is a place removed, yet connected, to the world we spend most of our time in. It may be very similar to our world. It may be quite different, inhabited by all manner of strange creatures and beings. Some traditions may have multiple other worlds, each with its own special properties or residents.
There are many reasons for seeking entrance into another realm, just as there are many ways to find a doorway that grants passage. Some go seeking knowledge. Others initiation. Some go to help others. Some to explore. They traverse the divide through altered states of consciousness–be they induced by meditation or medicine. They part the veil by sheer force of will or through a natural thin spot. Some even claim to make the trip in a physical manner. Others have been there only in dreams or visions.
I have been to some of these other places. Some I went to willingly and knowingly. Some I found myself in accidentally or unexpectedly. Every time, there was something to learn, some bit of growth to be found, a challenge to be surmounted.
One of the other worlds I visited most frequently is a place I refer to only as “Elsewhere”. If it has another name, I am not aware of it (though I expect it does). It is a world not unlike our own was hundreds of years ago, sometime before the Industrial Revolution.
Most of the folk are workers of the land and share the same faith. They have built cathedrals to their god (or gods) and are generally pleasant and peaceful.
Elsewhere, it would seem, occupies the same space as our own world, just at a different vibrational frequency, one slightly out of phase with our own. I consider it being “half a step to the left” of where we usually are. When I have gone there, it has been through an overlap in our worlds, a place where the separating harmonics are more in tune.
What I know of there comes from a very limited area. The visions were often ghostly, overlaid on the normal surroundings. I did not interact with the inhabitants, they did not know I or my friends were there. If anything, we were ghosts to them, some odd tingling at the backs of their necks.
But when last I was there, all was not good in this pastoral landscape. A dark presence had imposed itself there. It came from the horizon, blackening everything in its path. Breaking the peace. Sewing death and fear as it went.
The last I saw this land, the holy men of the village had gathered most of the people in the cathedral. The few warriors fortified themselves and prepared to face the war machines and siege engines of the invading force. The priests themselves gathered for a final ritual in a sacred space behind the cathedral. I do not know what it was they were attempting, but I do know it was something none of them had ever done–or had ever hoped to have to do–before.
What I saw of the battle was gruesome and vile. For now, the details matter little.
The true final outcome is still a mystery to me, as I have not been back to that place. But things did not look good.
And since then, I cannot help but feel some impending dread that some similar dark force marches through many worlds, including our own. It may wear different armor, its war machines may be designed differently and its siege engines not six story metal and wood constructs. But its purpose is the same: to conquer and subjugate what it can and to destroy all those that stand in its way.
It is the duty of those who are aware and those who are willing to watch for the encroachment of such a force and defend those most threatened. Those protectors may not be priests in cathedrals wielding ages-old magicks. They may be simple farmers, more used to tending their fields than defending their homes.
In a world less like the once idyllic Elsewhere and more like our own, those dark forces and defenders may be more difficult to tell apart. This makes vigilance and discernment even more important.
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