I had felt it all day, a flicker at the edge of the vision, something, someone making itself, oneself known. First there was restlessness, then Hunger, then certainty.

   In bygone days and nights there were forces raging this world. There still is. Human beings were those forces. They still are. Humans are the source of all Magick. Not places, not tools or buildings.

   There is a persistent old legend, a whisper in the wind, about The Other. All of us have one. In ancient times meeting one was seen as powerful Magick, as something infinitely precious. These days it's seen as a bad sign, a premonition of sorrow. The Other has many names. I call it The Shadow. It's the part of us that endures. It's everything we are, past, present and perhaps even future. It is all our previous lives, an ancient spirit of incalculable Power. This is who we are.
   When we meet our Shadow, we meet ourselves. Its name is our true name. To do magick you must come face to face with yourself, and many years ago, I did. I accepted it as part of me, me as part of it. I, Amos Keppler is just a very small part of it, but at the same time I am also everything it is. The human soul in combination with a body is the most powerful force in existence. We are fire-spitting dragons walking between the stars, giants rocking the Earth.

   I saw it in a mirror, just a glimpse this time, but enough, a flash containing a thousand years.
   Since I became Aware almost ten years ago, I've met people I have met before. Amos had never met them before, but I had. I, the Shadow, the Other, the Maker of worlds. We've kept in touch, of course, and we meet when we sense something important happening. We have done so for longer than I can remember. By the screaming of ravens we gathered around the circle for the first time long ago, and thus we have met many times since. We are one Circle of the Raven.
   There are others, and the individuals in each circle may change occasionally, as we move across the land, the land now called Europe, but which have had many names. There hasn't been merely one universe, but many, and we have walked it back and forth more times than we can ever remember. So much has happened. So much is happening. And I do feel sorry for the majority of the present day humans who are missing so much of it. They see, experience just one single wave. One single wave of the ocean, in a multiverse of oceans.

   The old church hasn't been used as a church for a long time, fortunately so. There is hardly any remains of the corruption created by religion there anymore. But tonight we feel something far older within its walls. Sometimes a bit of Magick is left on places. One of the interesting aspects of this is that what we sense here this night, wasn't there yesterday. So it might be caused by one of us or another person close by, or something else. We don't know, but we do sense it, like the burning of flesh, a scent of blood, embers from a dying campfire.

  

  

  

  

   Ten. There are ten of us in the circle. Sometimes there are nine or eleven. But most of the time it is ten. One is chosen as the guide. He is standing. The rest of us are stretching out on the thin carpet. We are slowly relaxing, emptying ourselves, filling ourselves. There are no lights, artificial or natural except from the distant dim streetlights outside.
   - Close your eyes, the guide says. - Open your eyes. Let go of the Self. Embrace the Self. Find the point within yourself that is floating. Sink to the floor, rise to the ceiling.
   And we do. The floor far below, the ceiling far above. Everything is open here in the old stone building. There are no windows, no doors. Everybody can just walk in from everywhere. We are not alone here. We can hear movement all around us. We see no one, but we know they're there.
   - I want you to walk down the stairs, now, the voice says, the voice coming from everywhere. - It's dark all around you, but you have no problems seeing the steps. You're relaxing and you're floating down the stairs, into the basement, the dark, dark cellar.
   I have walked a long time now. I can hear the music. The door is appearing before me. This is more a concentration exercise than anything else. I've done it many times before. The door is sliding open without me consciously thinking about it. It isn't really opening, but dissolving before my eyes. And suddenly we opened our eyes. Suddenly everything was wide open. Shapes were dancing around the guide. He was always vulnerable, being the keeper, being alone. We sat there on the ground looking at each other. We didn't move our head, but we saw what was behind us, what was above and on all sides. It was as if we weren't there... or our surroundings weren't there anymore. There is a constant trickle down my spine. The floor didn't actually move beneath us, but the pattern in the carpet was changing, rearranging itself. We see a pattern, a circle, a circle of stone in a field.
   - THE FLOODGATES ARE OPEN, someone is crying out. I have yet to find out who.
   We're stretching out on the floor, our bodies covered in blankets. After what seems like an eternity we're hearing the guide's voice, telling us to return to the box, to the cellar, to start walking upwards. And we do. He is our Guide. Without him we may get lost out here, in the wilderness of the Other World. I remember being cold, remember someone driving me back to the hotel, not really awake. Whatever happened that night we didn't "properly" return from our Journey. Whatever outside, inside have visited us were still here. I have experienced it before. It can be dangerous, but is also incredibly exciting. I fall asleep. I am asleep long before I go to bed... and I wake up screaming, and it seems like I have double vision. But it isn't like any normal double vision. I see the hotel room. I see the interiors of the church. I see it change. I quite simply fall asleep again before my head hits the pillow. Sometimes I wonder if I have ever been awake, and after a bit of thinking I realize that I am awake, naturally. Suddenly we're all sitting outside. I remember the day, how it all passed in a daze. I remember the talk with the others, the drive out of London, westwards, but it isn't important. We're sitting outside in a field, within one of the oldest witch-circles presently known, the one in Awebury. Some say it's one of the first stirrings of civilization. Others that it fortunately predates any feeble attempt at civilization.
   A ghostly flame is burning around us. Everything is shifting and changing. We are, too. There is a song, seemingly just outside normal hearing. We can hear it. There is a shadow on the edge of normal vision. We can see it.    We can sense the very air move, sense it far from our skin, taste the very fabric of it all.
   On the ground we're sitting there is an ever-shifting pattern of fire. In the air above reality is reinvented every moment. And in that moment there is a thousand deaths, a thousand births. We're passing by the enormous wilderness called The Wasteland, as nightmares and horrors rise up to greet us, just beyond the mundane reality we left, just a tiny scratch of land compared to what lies Beyond. I blink, and another door opens, another door to infinity. There is a hot breeze coming from somewhere. We're pulling it to us, pulling, pushing everything. We're downloading life from ourselves. We're creating, re-inventing ourselves, not just from the primordial soup, but from nothing.
   In death there is life.
   I'm sitting naked in a shadowy room. It is impossible to tell how long time has passed. The cold trickle is running down my spine. There are others in the room with me, but none from the circle I entered all those billions of years ago. Light is coming from somewhere, everywhere. Is this air? Is this even a room? I believe I can see trees. There are no walls, but this is a room, a pocket of reality outside everything. I look at the others present. We aren't, none of us are casting a shadow. We are.
   We are Shadow.
   And then I see it, I see me, The Shadow. Just as incredible a Sight as it always is. I had forgotten. The full memory of it is always fading. It's like seeing myself in a mirror, but no mirror resembling a normal one. In one sense the shape is no bigger than my physical form. In others it is an enormous creature completely transcending Time and Space. There is no way mere words can do it justice. I speak, and it speaks. It's like thunder in close confines. I stretch, it stretches, and reality moves around me. This is what followers of religion glimpse in their eternal slumber and call "God". I laugh. What a ridiculous show of low self-esteem. Entire universes are trembling as I scream in contempt. I feel totally, utterly complete, as I keep growing, keep creating myself from the nothing I have left behind. An enormous universe, a black hole is appearing above my head. I blink, and it is just a pinprick far behind, nothing compared to the universe I have become. I look back at myself, at the one I was a second ago, and it's like looking at dust at my feet, and I know that it's nowhere near a justifiable comparison. The small lights by my side. They are not stars, or galaxies or even universes. They are countless clusters of universes. And even that isn't sufficient, since size, scale doesn't truly matter, no more than Time does. When I look in one direction, I look in billions times billions, and I take it all in, in a glance. I see Life spread in all directions, becoming everything. This is what the religion of science call empty space? They claim one needs bulky, mechanical devices to Travel. They're so narrow-minded, so insane. I shake my head and I open up an infinite number of new caskets, not caskets. Somewhere, manywhere on the places I've left behind, the human I was is sitting up, standing up in the field in the ancient circle, the circle of stone, and I hear the cry of the Raven. Even though he will remember, his memory will fade to virtual nothingness. Mine never will. And sometime, somewhere I will take the Journey again, and the Universe will scream again, be born again. This is us. This is who we are. In one scream, in one spit of fire there are a billion times billion years, a communication, an experience beyond belief. Far beyond, I'm happy to say. What is true death? Death is to forget, and I know I never will.

  

  

  

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