I am lying in my bed, on my back looking up at the ceiling. The covers are pulled up to my chest, and I am struggling in vain to find my way to sleep. The crack on the ceiling is currently holding my attention, and I am wondering how it got there.
But as I watch that crack, something begins to happen to it. The edges start to fuzz and effervesce, then they widen and the center pulls upwards and away, like a little whirlpool made of mist.
There is a harsh screech, and a head pushes its way through the mist. It’s alien and foreign, and yet it’s not unlike that of a serpent. There are other screeches, more distant, more muffled, and I see signs of other creatures trying to also push their way through the opening above me. I understand somehow without knowing how that these are spirits, powerful and dangerous, and yet for all their strength, they are finding it difficult to cross the threshold between their realm, wherever that is, and mine. This small opening is all they can manage, but it is enough.
The first spirit, the one who formed the opening, the one with its head stuck through now peering at me, opens its mouth and begins to inhale. Others sneak their long mouths in beside it and do the same. The air in my bedroom is being drawn into these spirits’ open maws, and so am I. I am being lifted from my bed and pulled upward, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Then, light appears on the far wall of my room. It bursts through in colors like a pane of stained glass, that rapidly shoots forward to hover in mid-air between the spirits and me. There are figures in that stained glass, difficult to make out, cut out of smaller pieces of glass, until they suddenly burst forth into the room that has now become an open-air peristyle. Four figures stand before me in all their glory, though they seem to pay me little attention. Their focus at this moment is on the attacking spirits.
I recognize these figures as gods, come to intervene on my behalf. I know this because the figure in the center is Odin. He is draped in a simple brown traveler’s robe, bearded with a patch over one eye. He holds a staff in his left hand, and he points it at the spirits.
Before him, just off-center to his left, is Thor, helmeted in silver, blonde locks spilling out from beneath. He holds Mjölnir, and a storm of lightning sweeps out from the great hammer to strike the spirits. I can’t tell if they are destroyed or simply banished. I only know they are suddenly gone and I am safe.
My eyes adjust to the afterimage of the flash, and I am alone now with these gods. I take a moment to observe the other two figures. They are both shrouded, wrapped entirely in grey cloaks, hoods concealing their faces, faces which are shadows that I cannot see through. Even so, two things I know immediately.
The figure on the right is a woman, a goddess. She seems familiar to me, but it won’t be until much later that I realize she is Hecate, there to lend her influence on behalf of my partner.
The final figure, the one on the left, is a true enigma. I am able to ascertain only one thing about this one — that he is male. Beyond that, it is clear that he does not yet wish to be known. There are other traits that I sense might be true about him, but those traits also carry with them the notion that they may be things I am imposing upon him. My partner has suggested that he will reveal himself when the time is right, that that time is not now, and that suggestion feels right. Whoever this shrouded god is, he seems to be of greater importance, but only time will tell.
And then I awaken from my dream, awaken to my real bed and my real room having had the sense of being visited by divinity, something that never happened in all my years as a God-fearing, Bible-believing Christian. I feel as though the door has now been opened to a different kind of spirituality for me, and I’m excited to see where this path takes me.
