Leviticus de Tenebris: Tales of the Oneirophrenia

By Tyson Teeples

In book II of the Exodus Ad Aeternum series, continue the adventure of the warrior as he takes what he learned at the mountain summit and returns to the misted lowlands to illuminate the shadows deep in the fissures of his mind. Here he considers the possibility that the characteristics he fears, represses, rejects, and hides all have the potential to become powerful assets.

In the depths of the valley of the shadows, the hero finally understands his worth in this vast universe, embracing his character strengths and weaknesses, personality heights and depths, conscious action and unconscious instinct, divine light and diabolical darkness, and brings both halves of his existence into one complete whole.

As he descends into the depths of his soul, there is another who has awoken and begins her ascent up the mountain to find her purpose in the presence of the divine. Along the way she encounters prophets and parchments, learning powerful principles of personal perception.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: May 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781662943805

Book preview

LEVITICUS 0.0 INTRODUCTION

They know not, neither will they understand;

they walk on in darkness: all the foundations

of the earth are out of course.

*

Psalms 82:5

A battle rages in the lands of the Fallen.

The casualty count is catastrophic.

It is not a skirmish of physical injury and mass destruction, although violence is often the endgame of a much more subtle type of warfare. Rather than bearing arms of physical death, weary warriors wage a war of words.

The weapons are the doctrines, dogmas, policies, and philosophies of man.

Paul said to the people of Corinth, For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.¹

In the modern melee, as in ancient times, murky morals are paraded as medicine, yet the misled medics on the battlefront administer Band-Aid size dressings for gaping spiritual wounds. The masterminds of the misery stand at the general’s tent table, arms folded, looking at the maps, moving troops, and giving orders.

In a deep state of deceit, they arm their admirals with an artillery of ideas where vices are paraded as virtues, their intent to secure power and money to strengthen their own dark cause.

Illicit ideas become indoctrinated, incarcerating ideologies, inflicting injuries on individuals for the imagined strength of the whole.

Illusions of grandeur abound, and indignity is offered as an illusion of integrity.

Paul taught the people of Ephesia: For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.²

Indoctrination land mines dot the earth. Schools of thought, political committees, global summits, and even universities of higher learning have become the shadowed corners where evil men conspire, leading those who are under their stewardship as sheep to the altar of self-sacrifice of individual freedom. Such martyrdom is heralded as a victory for the greater whole.

Indeed, the mighty kings and rulers of the earth ask for the self-sovereignty of the sheep to be surrendered for the good of the wolves in shepherd’s clothing. Such self-sacrifice brings the suffering of many yet bolsters the comforts of the elect few elites in tyrannical positions of worldly power.

Steps must be cautiously navigated, or soon the spiritually wounded individuals become prisoners of war, entrapped in a society where personal freedoms, opportunities to pursue happiness, and realizations of lasting joy are lost.

Cultural conditioning becomes a prison, binding generations.

Contrastingly, the True Shepherd testified, I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.³

Indeed, institutional disregard for inalienable individual freedoms is the inversion of the truth taught by the One who suffered greatly for the benefit of all.

Said Paul to Peter of the Good Shepherd, He who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously; Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.⁴

Thus, safety from the adversary of thought is found in standing in the holy places where the forces of good congregate and prepare.

Momentum in warfare is gained through recruitment of minds to join the like-minded masses on one side or the other. Recruiting to the side of Christ the Royal Captain, saints offer refuge through the covenants and promises of the high places, while the adversary to our souls is busy recruiting in dark valleys, where fear and shame abound.

Oh, it is not a new war; it is ancient. It is older than mankind.

The war in heaven—before the world was framed—has moved to the battlefield on earth.

John the Revelator tells the story:

There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

They overcame the dragon by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony. When the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.⁵

Lines are drawn and soldiers shift loyalties. Men, women, and children drift to the shadows where a perception of safety is sought in the foolish surrender of personal freedom. Alas, the pretend protection of tyranny is a pseudo pavilion of peace, a great prison of mindsets contrary to a lifestyle lived in pursuit of lasting happiness.

Individual consciousness is lost in the misted unconsciousness of the whole.

Comrades become casualties in caustic conversations and cultural collisions. Captains collude and captured citizens are cloistered in camps to continue the cause of spiritual carnality.

Entire cohorts are conditioned for chaos.

The collective unconsciousness shifts as a cultural gene pool where mindsets are transcribed and translated into phenotypic personalities within the metaphysical DNA of customary society. The protein-spliced fabric of society is morphing and mutating to become a self-replicating, malignant mass of misery.

Morals are molded to match mankind’s motives for mischief.

Suffering becomes the cancerous, festering battle wound of wandering minds. Epigenetic warfare is the molding of an intergenerational collective psyche.

How is such a battle to be fought in this modern theater? One may ask, What is my part in this mortal arena of moral warfare?

The biggest battles and the greatest victories are found when each warrior on the field stands his own ground and defeats the immediate enemies in the microcosm.

Indeed, the entire battle scene is a map of another battle.

A smaller battle.

A daily battle.

The battle within.

Alas, the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm.

A prophet declares, The greatest battle of life is fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.⁶

The division of light and dark, day and night, past and future, good and evil, pleasure and pain, health and sickness, joy and suffering, heaven and hell, exists inside of you just as it exists in the home, community, nation, world, and entire universe around you.

You are of this Universe, after the order of creation God has placed you in.

The fractal is a map of the whole.

The golden ratio of the Universe is, on a small scale, represented in you. The golden mean of the most minute particle, on a grand scale, is represented in you. The aliquot of your days and seasons of life is a fractal portion of eternity.

Simply put, the divine proportion is you.

Phi: The divine ratio.

The scale of the battle is seen across Phi. The war of the mind, the war of society, the war of the world, and the war of the Universe are all patterned after each other.

The angels in the heavens above and the devils in hell below combine and conspire to lead you by the inspiration of your own angelic intuition or to tempt you and try you by your own diabolical drives.

God is at the Summit.

Above all things.

But Christ is in the depths.

Below all things.

And from that grave He rose! From the depths He said gently, Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.⁷ You must follow His battle plan—follow His footsteps—and do the same.

You stand between the heights and the depths of your capacity to fully experience life.

Gamma and Delta.

Delta: The gap between where you stand and where you long to be.

Gamma: The daily change over time through small and simple things.

You stand between the beginning and the end of your life.

Alpha and Omega.

Alpha: The beginning scene.

Omega: The final breath.

If your mind resonates on a frequency of light, God is knowable. If vibrating in harmony with darkness, the devils will appear. It’s not a question of whether these forces exist, but rather if you are able to perceive the Universe acting upon you, and if you are aware of your own force upon the Universe.

The patterns of the Universe exist as an expansive mural that is a pattern of your own consciousness.

As within, so without.

If you plant a seed, a sprout will appear.

If you neglect a flower in the sun, it will wilt and die.

If you nourish your body, it will grow strong.

If you neglect your mind, it will fade to unconscious instinct.

Entropy. Energy. Thermodynamics. Kinetic energy. Movement. Consciousness. Spiritual intuition. Physical instinct. Revelation. Probability and outcome. Cause and effect. Faith and sacrifice. The higher law. Divine nature. Carnal conditioning. Diabolical drives.

It’s all inside of you. All of it.

The light battles the darkness.

The darkness fights the light.

You don’t get to choose whether or not the battle continues, but you do get to choose what side you will fight for.

You choose under which banner you march.

You choose which weapons you wield, and how.

The war rages on. The battle for the souls of men is waged in the microcosm of the individual mind as it ravages the nations of the earth.

The pattern is seen in all of God’s grand creation.

Catabolism and anabolism.

Creation and destruction.

Fire and ice.

Wind and stillness.

Calm and storm.

Pulsars and nebulas.

Black holes and brilliant suns.

Physical and spiritual.

Matter and energy.

Day and night.

All things exist in balance. One cannot exist without the other.

For is God in yonder heavens if there is no devil in hell?

Is there a definition of evil if there is no determination of good?

Can you truly experience joy if you’ve never known suffering?

Said Saint Augustine, God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist. There is power in understanding the darkness inside of you, just as there is power in understanding the light that exists in your soul.

There is power in bringing that darkness into the light.

Winning little battles over time brings great victories.

There is strength in uncovering sacred truths and discovering hidden treasures of the journey.

Ascending the summits of light is a journey of learning rewarded with token weapons and armor, but it is the venture onto the battlefield of mortality that determines how the energy of the soul is channeled into creation and order.

Or . . . lost to destruction and chaos.

Ascension of consciousness requires condescension into the unconscious and bringing those energies and capacities into the realm of consciousness to be used as confidence-building assets of life.

Shame, pride, ego, fear, rage, and the tugs and pulls of reactionary instinct hold no power over one who stands in confidence before the nations of the world, wielding the power and energy of the psyche according to the will of the awakened mind.

A mighty change of heart is the miracle to be found in the darkness and the ability to turn weakness to strength and vice to virtue.

The outcome of a well-fought inner battle is a miracle of faith.

Transcendence.

Confidence.

Oceana.

Zen.

Therefore, don’t run from the darkness; learn from it.

Don’t hide from the light; wield it.

Endure the truth. Endure the facts. Endure the reality of the physical, external world as well as the metaphysical, inner world of the soul. Never give up, and you will conquer at last. You will proclaim as confidently as Paul, I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.⁸

The process has been provided.

The way has been prepared.

The strategy is to subdue the shadow and assimilate its energy into the whole picture of who you are.

Whispered Socrates, Know thyself.

Penned Shakespeare, To thine own self be true.⁹

Take the light in your heart, go into the misted valley, and illuminate the pathway to wholeness of character. Spread your wings of awareness and fly into the wilderness of the unknown so that you might know your own soul. Take up the sword of the spirit and overcome the shadows cast in the corners of your cranium. Protect your heart with the breastplate of righteousness. Gird your loins with truth that you may withstand the errors of mankind. Clutch the Urim, the philosopher’s stone, that Liahona, that Gauntlet of your own intuition, and discover who you really are.

You are a sacred aliquot of the Universe, a child of the most high God.

Once the self is conquered, then you may discover the ability—and opportunity—to conquer your immediate microenvironment, and then advance to your growing sphere of influence. Protect your house. Enlighten your community. Defend your nation. And then?

You may even change the world.

And thus, you will cast out the dragon from the high places of your own mind and live in harmony with all of the systems and functions of your soul in a state of transcendent nonduality.

Said a prophet, Pray always, that you may come off conqueror; yea, that you may conquer Satan, and that you may escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work.¹⁰

Vincit qui suffert. He conquers who endures.¹¹

I hope you enjoy these dreamscape encounters with the darkness, where the truth is made known to the hero not through strategies of sheer strength, but by strategic surrender.

—Tyson J. Teeples, MD

Inspiration:

Contemporary man is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by powers that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely taken new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food—and, above all, a large array of neuroses!

It is a frightening thought that man has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.

Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.

In the dream, the psyche speaks in images, and gives expression to instincts, which derive from the most primitive levels of nature. Therefore, through the assimilation of unconscious contents, the momentary life of consciousness can once more be brought into harmony with the law of nature from which it all too easily departs, and the patient can be led back to the natural law of his own being.¹² —Carl G. Jung

Introduction References:

1. 2 Corinthians 10:4–5 (KJV)

2. Ephesians 6:12

3. John 10:11

4. 1 Peter 2:22–24

5. Revelation 12:7–15

6. The greatest battle of life is fought within the silent chambers of your own soul. David O. Mackay. In Conference Report, Apr. 1967, 84–85; or Improvement Era, June 1967, 80.

7. John 16:33

8. 2 Timothy 4:7

9. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 author. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

10. Doctrine and Covenants 10:5

11. He conquers who endures —Persius

12. Jung, Carl Gustav. 1997. Man & His Symbols. New York, NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.

If not so, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness,

neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.

Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one;

wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead,

having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption,

happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught;

wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation.

Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes,

and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.

And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin.

If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness.

And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.

And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery.

And if these things are not there is no God.

And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth;

for there could have been no creation of things,

neither to act nor to be acted upon;

wherefore, all things must have vanished away.

And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning;

for there is a God, and he hath created all things,

both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are,

both things to act and things to be acted upon.

And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man,

after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air,

and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition;

even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.

Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself.

Wherefore, man could not act for himself

save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.

*

The Prophet Lehi

2 Nephi 11:11–16

My demons are innumerable,

and appear at the most inconvenient times,

creating panic and fear as they go.

But I have learnt that I can master these powerful forces,

by harnessing them to my holy chariot,

making them work to my advantages,

rather than against them.

—Kenneth Grant

LEVITICUS 0.1 PROLOGUE

The amber glass on my wrist pulsates; I gaze at the glowing surface of the crystal, saccadically scanning and searching for answers. I see the ring of light at Urim’s rim in the pupils of my reflected face.

Like a spark in the center of a black hole, the light of Urim shines into the aperture of my soul.

Words appear on the golden glazed surface; the script burns in deep saffron, as if a fire illuminates my mind with the truth of my past.

Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt. The light shines into the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not.

I smile. I nod. I know that through my faith and diligence, I will comprehend it in time. This is my quest, my work, my glory: to bring to pass the eternal light within.

To comprehend the light of my own soul!

And to illuminate the unconscious darkness that surrounds it.

LEVITICUS 1.0 THE FALL II

The scariest monsters are the ones

that lurk within our souls.

*

Edgar Allan Poe

The darkness that surrounds us cannot hurt us.

It is the darkness in your own heart you should fear.

*

Silvertris

The fall from the top of the mountain is long. The rapid movement around me creates flashes of light, as though the entire universe passes in a whirled blur. I blink slowly.

The phosphene flashes continue on my inner eyelids.

The swirling heavens around me perfectly match the inner cosmos with the swirling emotions in my heart and spinning thoughts in my mind. I am confident, yet apprehensive as to what my armor and weaponry will meet in the dark spot of the infinite cosmos. I feel anxious anticipation and excitement when I ponder what battles await me in the abyss.

I inhale. The Gauntlet reflects the declarations of my faith-filled heart.

Incepto ne desistam. May I not shrink from my purpose.

The mountain covenants were a necessary prequel for the battles of the pits. The temple summits of Ephraim are but a preparation for my life, not the endgame or the crowning event. The journey thus far was merely preparation for that which is to come.

The tokens are not the trophies.

The lessons are not the laurels to rest on.

The covenants are not the prizes of the destination.

The tokens, lessons, and covenants of the cornices and crests of the skyline’s cascading cordillera are instruments of creation; in them I find the endowment of power necessary to ignite the light in the darkness, even in the deepest fissures of my mind.

I am endowed with the power to rise.

I smile as my thoughts continue to spin, inverting into the equally true yet opposite sentiment.

I am endowed with the power to fall.

I inhale with confidence. I will not be alone.

He is already here preparing a way.

My Captain.

My Redeemer.

My Advocate.

My Savior.

My Lord.

The Gauntlet adds two more titles.

Adoni. The Lord of Light.

Messiah. The Anointed One.

I thought I had arrived when I reached the vertex of Mount Simeon. I smile in wonder.

But the end was just the beginning.

I thought my decision was made and my destination determined at the end of my time in the Tower of Babel, when I bid Babylon farewell so long ago.

The end of my unconsciousness was the beginning of my awareness. The end of my blindness was the beginning of my sight. The end of the darkness is the beginning of light.

The end of my prison sentence in the tower was the beginning of my freedom to climb from the pits of the Fallen.

I am free to choose my destiny!

And now, at this moment—as I fall—I find the true beginning of my adventure through the Fallen. I shake my head.

I’ve jumped headfirst into the darkness!

The vision of my quest is clear.

I have chosen this path. I was charged with a task, but as my mantra dictates, I am culpable for the outcomes of my life.

Mea Culpa. Through my fault.

I am culpable.

I am responsible.

My life is my own.

The Gauntlet glows, matching the amber brilliance of the heart of the sun.

Astra inclinant, sed non obligant. The stars incline us but do not bind us.

I smile.

I have work to do. It’s up to me.

Invictus maneo. I remain unconquered.

I am a glowing comet, trailing clouds of the glory of God whose child I am.¹

I am as the son of the morning; my heart light is a star in the cosmos, not falling from the heavens as one cast out, but purposefully descending to create light in darkness.

The light of love.

The shower of meteors around me slows until I am suspended in light. I look down. Two wheels of light spiral and a conduit opens at my feet. I pass through the conduit and my boots immediately slam onto the hard, ashen ground.

I awaken from the softness of the summit’s tranquility into the harshness of the Fallen’s reality.

I slowly open my eyes.

The hypnic myoclonus ends as I transition from one dream state to another.

I am fully aware now, jerked from the cumulus dream state of heaven back into a brusque, nimbic existence of the Fallen. I pause and breathe. I listen. I hear water lapping at the shoreline nearby.

I have landed on a beach.

I remain in a crouched position, one knee and one fist in the black sand. My head is bowed. I rub my sleepy eyes to acclimate to this darkened estate and arouse my sensory acumen. I orient myself briefly and look down at the sand beneath my black boots. I run my fingers through the murky soil.

It is gritty and coarse.

I look up to see radiant galaxies and the nebulous pink and orange billows of space dust swirling over me in the distant cosmos, the conduit remaining open for a brief moment. Then, in the blink of an eye and a whir of cosmic wind, the conduit closes. I am left in silent darkness. I blink several times to clear the hemeralopia, allowing my eyes to adjust for a moment before I move.

I exhale.

I level my gaze and look around cautiously. It is a long, dark beach. I stand, stretching and adjusting my spine side to side, my vertebrae cracking and self-adjusting. Orthostatic regulation is quickly balanced, and I slowly approach the tide line. I see eddies in the tide pools swirling as my mind spins in the vertigo of the fall. Gentle lapping waves of dark water crash on dark sand. The moon is covered. I smile and shake my head. In a flashback to my past, I remember.

Is it the moon that is covered? Or is it the eclipsed sun? Is it mist in the air? Fog? Storm clouds? Smoke? Or smog?

The world is black and white. It is a stark contrast to the vibrance of the heavens.

Compared to the wonders and glory of God, the Fallen is cold and gray.

I open and close my eyes again and again to gain a trichromatic bearing.

I see no color.

I shake my head in a quick shiver and try again.

Perhaps I hit the sand harder than I thought.

I walk a few steps. I remember the lightness of transfiguration felt on the mountain.

This gravitational pull will take getting used to.

The Gauntlet glows; the only color I can see is its gentle amber luminescence.

Nihil est. Man is nothing.²

In the distance, smoke rises from holes in the ground. There are smoking mountains on the horizon, though I cannot see too far. The tide pools vibrate as the earth groans and rumbles with seismic forces below me. I shake my head again, now in the affirmative, my lips pursing. I swallow. My blood runs cold. My nose stings. My tired eyes mist.

I know this place.

I am in the delta planes of the rift that divides the earth.

The rift that divides my mind.

I am far beyond the building, downstream, downwind. In the eclipsed night of my soul so long ago, I perceived the winds blowing to this place, my future.

I am far downriver from the deep gulf that divides the earth. I am far beyond the misted valley where the river drains into this fan of stagnant alluvium. I am here where the river empties its filthy water into the rank cesspit below all things.

Volcanic vibrations rock the earth. The world is angry below its surface.

I pause, rephrasing my perception as a question.

Or am I feeling the eruptions of molten emotion inside of me, projected onto the landscape?

Another question forms; my mind is suddenly unsure of my geographic location.

Where am I?

I whisper the words of the Gauntlet.

Tartarus. Shores of the damned.

I walk a bit further, hoping to acclimate quickly. I walk down a steep swash zone, the coarse sand becoming finer yet more difficult to traverse. Approaching the shoreline, the sand hardens as waves lap at my boots. I kneel and put my hand in the water. The water is warm and the smell is fetid.

Grimmia. Black moss.

I cast the water from my cupped hand.

Mare Mortuos. The Dead Sea.

There is a rank wind upon which I hear voices: haunting voices, wailing voices. The fog, or smoke, or clouds, or whatever covers the sky shifts and the moon peeks out. My vision widens but only briefly as I inhale; then the fog sets in again, enclosing around me with an exhaled sigh.

There are things hidden in the fog: the past, the future, repressed emotion and denied reality, and myriad addictions of thought, emotion, and reaction.

I sense conditioned chaos in the chasms of my cerebral cortex.

I shake my head and mentally return to the clearing in which I stand.

This is a clearing of my consciousness within the mist of my mind.

This is the walled-off shell of my ego-perception.

My shadow appears on the sand below me, morphing in a melancholy dance of moonlight and shadow. In the dimness, the wings on my shoulders are extended; the shadow cast on the sand appears as the silhouette of a winged angel. I smile, remembering.

The sign of the dove.

I watch the shadows move. Without any effort or conscious thought, they move as easily as I move my feet.

They are part of me. They are a symbol of ability and capacity for objective observation and increased awareness in my navigation of this landscape in the depths of my mind.

The sign of the dove is a symbol of divinity and cannot be conceived in counterfeit.

These wings of awareness are a witness of my awareness of God’s goodness.

I look down. A gap appears; my feet hang down.

I’m hovering over the sand.

I practice for several minutes. My movements are graceful and natural.

My shadow is my mirror to observe what my ego mind is doing.

I am grateful for the dim moonlight to observe my movement. I spend a few moments moving about the beach, acclimating to this newfound ability.

I move in the strength of the spirit on the wings of awareness!

I smile. I remember again the inversion of this moment, lying in the sand after I fell from the lofty tower, exposed to the elements and buffeted by the storm. I am comfortable now, protected within the token armor of the mountain covenants.

I feel protected. I have brought the strength of the mountains with me.

I nod. Yes, I remember that boy in the sand, fading out of consciousness, only to painstakingly maneuver to the place where he was confronted by the shadows of the pit. My spine tingles at the thought. A cold wind wisps at my back, and I am chilled in the memory. I draw my sword. I hover. I look around as best I can in the fading light of this rank hell. I look again at the ground.

With the memory of the pit, my shadows shift.

As if that harrowing hallucination recurs.

My brow furrows.

My eyes are playing tricks on me.

I squint in foveal frustration. I focus. The wings of my shadow have changed shape. I study the scene, trying to make sense of it.

I feel fear, but it is not paralyzing.

With the memories of shifting shadows of that dark night so long ago, chilling emotions resurface. I can see my breath. I descend back to the sand. I study the shadow in front of me.

It is connected to me. It is my shadow. It comes from me.

The wings are no longer those of a dove, but those of a dragon, a bat, a creature of the darkness. Unlike the light-feathered wings of divinity, these wings do not move with my movement; they do not seem to obey my will.

The shadow has a mind of its own.

Nocturnal. Of the night.

They are mine, but they are not me.

Acerodon. Flying fox.

A rejected fraction.

I study the Urim for clues about the shift.

Vulpine. Cunning. Full of guile.

My elusive shadow, the inversion of my light.

I look to the shadow again, squinting further, again trying to correlate what I know with what I am perceiving. The wings stretch out widely, as if they are also waking up from a deep sleep. The pandiculation is painful, as if there is a tension pulling at my insides. The skin of the wing is tough as leather, pulling at my spine as I stretch.

I feel stretching from the inside with great tension at my core; the vertebral traction has my full attention. It is as if something is waking up inside of me.

Propatagium. Gilded edges, skin of the wing.

I hear a voice from the darkness. My stretched spine tingles. I feel weak.

Sciatica.

I feel a burning tingle now to my extremities.

Dysesthesia.

I hear the voice again but cannot understand what it says.

It is angry. It is gruff. It is fierce. And yet, it is still. It is small. It is subtle.

I look around and then spin, my body following my frantic gaze. My wings wrap around me as a protective cape. My pupils dilate. No one is there.

It is a real voice.

I hear it.

It is the inversion of Her voice, the voice of the Divine. Her voice flowed with the euphony of the universe and its flowing felicity, and now the inversion of these words is the jarring cacophony of the damned.

I hear it again, repeating itself; I search inside myself and look at my wrist in an attempt to make out what it is saying. I tremble but am not yet paralyzed with fear. I look down at my shadow again. I still hover in the smog, yet the wings engulf me as if in an embrace.

Or in a cobra’s clutch.

I shake my head.

My leathern wings are now a severed cocoon of apprehension.

My shadow is blurred. I blink away the asthenopia and strain in palpebral elevation against the dimness of the night light.

No, it is not blurry. No nystagmus. My vision is acute.

There are just two shadows.

Then three.

Then four.

I look up to see if there is more than one source of light, not sure what to expect other than the solitary, cold moon.

My shadow splits again and again. The shapes shift and change and grow longer, and then begin to move independent of each other. I am terrified, reliving the strained pain I experienced near the herd of prodigal pigs I had joined for putrid slop so long ago when similar shadows emerged from those unclean animals.

I hear the voices again. I look at the Gauntlet for help. The azure glow of the amber glass refracts off of my face and I see my blank, terrified reflection. There are no words inscribed on the face of the Urim, and yet I feel warmth and confidence from this oracle of light. A warm energy of confidence washes over me. I exhale. My expression calms.

The voice speaks again.

I recognize it now.

It is my own voice.

It feels separate from me.

I am out of harmony.

I am disconnected.

And yet I recognize it as my own.

It is the voice of my unconscious mind.

The voice of my shadow.

The voice from the deep.

The voice of tension.

The voice of duality.

A voice of repressed pain now surfacing to be heard.

I feel a tensile pain not only in my spine but now inside of my heart. I look down. There is a tightness in my chest, a burning. A lump that I cannot relieve by swallowing.

Guilt.

Grief.

Guile.

Gloom.

Globus.

I feel my body. I feel its heaviness.

Malaise.

Melancholy.

Mourning.

Misery.

I speak again. The statement is resolute. I cry at the words coming out of my mouth. The words reverberate through my cranium, confusing every system of its contents.

I am legion.³

My ears are ringing now. I am terrified. I look to the Gauntlet for help.

Epilambanein. Epilepsia. To be seized.

What does this mean?

My muscles flex as my mind bends. They repeat the words that ring out in a tinnitus tone of tension and terror.

I am legion.

My heart is beating quickly now. The chilled mist feels like the icy fog blowing upon a frigid, storm-tossed sea. A horripilation of fear erupts from my core to the distant ends of my extremities.

Every hair stands on end.

A rigorous shiver shoots through me as I make a connection with the voice of revelation.

They are inside of me.

I think of the pigs of my past. I think of the mindless beasts at the lake as I drifted into the future, looking back at them at the shoreline. I think of the beasts near the pool with their darts.

Always there, as a phantom in the background of my mind.

I nod.

They have always been there, in my lucid dreams and in my waking nightmares. I feel them in the silent lairs of the stony cliff sides of the rifts and canyons of the Fallen. I feel them in the hidden shapes of the trees when I walk in the forests. I feel their energy in the crashing waves when I traverse the streams or walk the shores of the seas. I feel their haunting whisper in the howl of the wind. I feel them in the storms of midnight and in the shadows cast at noonday.

Always there.

Watching.

Plotting.

Lurking.

Stalking.

I think of their menacing cries, now mimicked in my own inner voice.

Their cries are the anxiety of my heart and the numbness of my mind.

I say it again slowly in my mind.

I am legion.

I feel dizzy all over again.

They are inside of me.

How can this be? After I have been to holy places and made sacred promises? I have felt the power of eternity inside of me! I am prepared! I put on this armor to protect me! I practice with this sword, honing my skills! I bear the wings of awareness! How can this be my current reality? My voice is deliberate in a dark yet definitive declaration of identity.

I. Am. Legion.

I must be a dozen feet off the ground now. My back is arched, my neck extended. My body is paralyzed in tonic terror. My voice is intact. Twelve times I mutter that haunting line.

I am legion.

I am wailing now in silence, a laryngeal spasm blocking any air from forming a scream. I am writhing inside my body, manifested in the strain on my face. My chin is elevated. My crying eyes are squinted. My nose and forehead are wrinkled and creased. My teeth are clenching, grinding, and gnashing in clonic, gnathic contention. I tense my tympanic tether to tame the unrelenting scree of enamel grinding. The sound is making my whole body tingle in a painful torture.

Psychosomatic. Physical pain inflicted by the shadows of the psyche.

The shadows detach from me, one by one. As they do, they take form. Great beasts appear, long shadows with dragon-like wings.

This is Mahujah, in the valley of Shum, beyond Babylon, beyond the gulf of misery and beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Abaddon. Doom.

This is the land of giants on the borders of the Dead Sea.

Enoch prophesied to me of this moment.

The giants of darkness are inside of me. They look like me. They are familiar to me. They spawn from a place deep in the fissured shadows of my mind.

They are familiar spirits.⁴

They peep and mutter.⁵

They hiss and spit.

They are me.

My giants.

My Goliaths.

My shadows.

My demons.

Distortions of me.

Distortions of godliness.

Distortions of the night.

Distortions of my light.

Distortions of my perception.

The clearing of my ego-perception is not the negative space of the clearing at all; it is the wall.

It is the protective wall behind which I hide my rejected shadows in the foggy storm front of my inner world.

I look down and see my chest glowing. With the beasts extracted, my heart light is visible, pulsating with warmth and confidence.

The heart light I saw and felt in other instances of encounters with umbrage.

My body relaxes. I take heart in seeing the core of my being.

The shadows are cast from this source of inner light. The shadows inside of me take form with the light of consciousness, the breath of life, the spark of inner awareness.

The elevated awareness gained in the mountains allows me to see my shadows clearly.

The contrast is crisp when I perceive the light.

I whisper the words of the alchemist, Ezekiel, "Conscious Ascension." The glowing light in my heart has cast these shadows from within me into this dark wilderness.

I understand.

The armor protects me from the outside, but these demons are extracted from within by the light of my Conscious Intelligence.

The Gauntlet chimes now, awakened and glowing.

Exorcize. Extract. Separate. Remove.

Exhort. To incite.

The demons encircle me now. The shadow cast by the light in my heart reveals that my wings have again turned to those of the dove, yet now surrounded by a blurred flurry of bat-winged demons. I look at their faces. I look at their movements. The painful strain expressed on my face is now seen projected onto them. The wind chill sends electricity through my back. My skin seems to crawl. The earth shakes me to my core. The waves crash over my perceptions. A distant cinder cone spits red fire, lighting up the ashen faces of my soul images.

Air. Wind. Water. Ice. Fire. Smoke. Earth. Stone. Mercury. Sulfur. Salt. Iron.

I recognize the patterns. The elements of the Fallen.

The elements of a fallen man.

The elements of my unconscious mind.

The unproven elements of the prima materia.

I look up to the cosmos from whence I have fallen. The galaxies are veiled with mist. And yet, I remember the voices at the vertex of Valhalla.

Yonder is matter unorganized.

I nod.

The matter is me.

I take confidence in the words of heaven.

My son, you are prepared.

I smile.

I saw Her.

She called me Her son!

She has not sent me to fail.

My work is not done!

Yet I stand in my hell.

Mobile again, I tighten my grip on the hilt of my sword.

Immediately the largest of the demons shoots through the air from the sand, hovering face to face, suspended at eye level. There is fire in its eyes to match the ice in mine. We hover eye to eye for several minutes, each unwilling to yield in any way. I feel an intense surge of rage inside me. I break the silence and hiss in its face. Beast of these pits of fire, slaves of these dark beaches, get behind me! I am a son of light.

The demon pauses, expressionless. The silence is uncomfortable. Then, the demon smiles and finally laughs, my words seemingly without effect. It cocks its head back with arrogance, undaunted and unfazed. It then whispers into my ear, Worship me.

I clench my jaw and say nothing.

I refuse.

The shadow is in the form of a man. He is winged, scaled, and animalistic. He continues, apparently in disgust at my hesitation. The world is cold and silent at this moment. The demon stretches out his arms, beckoning to the others who flutter as a battalion behind him, and states with exclamation, his words echoing in an otherwise silent world, You have worshiped us your entire life! He motions to his companions on the sand below. You have fed, fostered, and nourished us with great care! These are my brothers. We are the quorum of demons that you yourself have summoned to guide you through your life in the Fallen. We are here for you, faithful, valiant, and true.

I inhale and hold my breath.

Could it really be?

All this time I could not see?

These shadows are created by me?

His words continue, We are because you are. We thrive on the attention you give us. We thrive on your nourishment. You can hide from us in the towers at Babylon. You can run from us and ignore us, repress us and forget us. You can distract and deceive yourself, but we are always with you. There is only one place you can go where we cannot be. The demon points to the far horizon in the darkness and continues, There, on the mountain, beyond the veil, you neglected us. We have been starved in your absence. And now you have returned as the prodigal son. We are hungry for your attention. Our energy has swollen to a critical mass, the complexes of your mindscape—complexes of behavior—yearning to be animated with our energy. He nods and declares, We are gathered now to extract our dues, possess your actions, guide your behavior, and dominate your life.

His voice deepens in frequency but raises in amplitude,