The Path to the City of Pyramids^[1]

There is no god where I am. Divinity is found in the dissolution of ego: there She waits. But who will ever approach Her?  It is easier for a laden camel to fit through the eye of a needle.

[Before beginning, read through the text once or several times. Then undertake the journey for yourself, allowing space for what arises. Trust your imaginal capacities. Become camel…

Upon return, note down any impressions, images and ideas.]

Start in the garden, but do not take the downward path. Close your eyes  and picture first the silver studded darkness of space, and the shifting landscape of sand underneath. In this half light, it looks as though the sand itself were a moving, living, breathing thing like snakes and camels. Look there, is it a snake or a snaking line of camels, treading through the dunes?

From the shifting sand a wind arises, a wind which speaks. It says:

In the Wind of the mind arises the turbulence called I.

It breaks; down shower the barren thoughts.

All life is choked.

This desert is the Abyss wherein is the Universe.

The stars are but thistles in that waste.

Yet this desert is but one spot accursed in a world of bliss.

Now and again travellers cross the desert; they come from the Great Sea, and to the Great Sea they go.

And as they go they spill water; one day they will irrigate the desert, till it flower.

Open your eyes. You are seated in the desert. The sky is purple, and full of stars. The sands are purple too, with shifting gold. It is not clear where the skies end and the sands begin. Before you is a vast procession of camels, stretching toward the horizon; behind you this procession continues. Where did this procession begin? Where does it end? The only way to answer is to walk the procession yourself.

You stand up, and find that you are already part of the procession. You fall into step with the camels in front and behind. Plodding through the sand, you feel your feet begin to spread and harden. Looking down, you see hooves where your toes once were. Once smooth skin is covered with a coarse tan hair, and upon your back you carry the weight of a thousand gallons of water. You are a camel, now. You do not fear; you know that only thus might you cross the midnight desert.

You trudge, trudge, continue. You see the camel before you leave hoof marks in the sand. V.V.V.V.V. you shift your path, so your hooves fall slightly to the left of the former camel’s path. It is through their use of symbols and signs that man may be distinguished from beast.

Trudge, trudge, trudge, the march marches on. Yet whenever you would falter, whenever you would stray, just then you see a pylon, white and tall as the sky, marking out the path, keeping vigil. On the top of the pylon is a flame. You continue.

From around you comes a voice, like a small god in the dusty wind. It says:

Why are so many gods to be found in the desert?

I, Thy Mother, M.M.M.M.M., am to be found on the path to the City of Pyramids

We have stars inside of us, you and I. We have galaxies and empires of bacteria inside.

Stars and bacteria, gods and grime: it is all just a matter of perspective.

An infinity of empires, distinguished only by scale.

All images fall to the Abyss. They are all in on the joke, the absurdity of it all.

Big Mama Cephalopod says: once this desert was an ocean. See how my serpentine tentacles sprawl? Are not the sea anemones like stars?

I, M.M.M.M.M.: these are the things that she has told me.

Bacteria, Stars: are these not images, symbols?

A thousand different kinds of intelligence, and we are blind to see.

I, M.M.M.M.M. ponder. Is not the tree of life a psychic cephalopod, too?

Our Lady like an octopus, a spider or a crab: many-legged. Tentacular.

I, M.M.M.M.M. ponder this, in my sojourn across the desert.

When will I win the narrow gate? There is no time in the desert. There is only the infinite, aimless trudge, the horizon shimmering in the distance.

How will I know when I find the thing for which I do not seek?

I shall be as the blind leading the blind, and only thus shall we reach the eternal city.

The caravan trudges on. Yet again a small god speaks:

It matters not whether I sleep, or dream; ever before my eyes there stretches an unending line of trudging, splay-hoofed quadrupeds, bowed neck and bumped back, a river of coarse-haired fleshiness against the infinite empty orange sand. For the desert stretches beyond the horizon and in the distance, ever in the distance, rise the monumental backs of mountains.

Oh, infinite sand and infinite sky above; orange glowing against the glowing blue. A sky of infinite blue embroidered with infinite stars (stars so small, mere pinpricks in the silk; but come closer, for each pinprick is another universe), illuminating the infinite desert.

And across this ancient, infinite scene trudges the eternal line of quadrupeds, camels beyond counting. Shaggy hair and stinking breath and trudging feet.

They trudge past in their unending stream and I understand; I must adopt their splayed-hoof-walk if I am ever to make it across the desert; if I am ever to pass through the eye of the needle, that camel-shaped-hole.

The caravan trudges on. Time spills and falls as the sand. Time, space and will lose all conception. You are the sand, you are the hoof, you are the eternal trudging of the camel. After an eternity in the desert, it appears on the horizon: the city of pyramids.

Do not attempt to enter the great city: now is not the time to shed our camel skin. For now, it is enough to see that holy temple. To glimpse its glories, and retreat.