I stand in a room, devoid of color, with light coming from somewhere almost above me, as if it were a grand black stage and I the only actor upon it. My thin skirts swirl around my pale legs and I realize there is a door in front of me, ornate and with seemingly nothing behind it or beside it. I know I must open that door.
I walk to the door, and open it to see beyond, a pale green twi-lit world filled with mists and the smell of death and rotting beyond it. Still I am enchanted and feel called to step through. I gingerly step over the threshold and find myself ensconced in this place. The door seems to disappear and fade into the ghostly mists beyond me and I feel a moment of panic as I realize the way back has been taken from me.
slowly, I pick my way down a hill, the mists growing thicker, this pervasive greenish and magical fog covering everything, vining plants and tall moss covering the trees. Everything is so still here and yet such a feeling of death and deep bogs that I might not spot until I am upon them. I notice a barely discernable path and my feet follow it willingly, something of predictability in this world where there is none. I find the longish moss brushing my head from the towering trees above, and I wonder at spiders and other creatures of night in this dim barely lit place.
I slip a bit and reach out my hand instinctively to break my fall and find a gravestone, the old stone crumbling a bit under my hand. I wipe the wet dust of it on my skirt and realize there are more stones, each standing slightly askew, tilted, so many broken and needing repair. I can't make out the words on them, faded and molded in this constant damp twilight. Still the path winds on, barely there, but an energy that encourages me to follow.
And now a cross, in better shape than most of the tomb stones here, appears to my right and I gaze at it, feeling it is pointing to something. And surely to my left, I notice a grotesque figure appearing out of the mists and faint light. A twisted tree but one that is uprooted and up-ended, its roots far above my head and a beam nailed in the center, across his trunk, and on it hangs this gruesome creature, his head hung upside down on this makeshift cross. Blood pours from his mouth and over his forehead into a basin below and I find myself caught, listening absently to the sound of the fountain created by that flow. He seems to have a crackling energy around him and I am drawn closer, almost without stepping that way. Vines grow around him as if he has been here for some time, or there is a magick here that has trapped him when he least expected it.
Now I stand before him and feel he is speaking although I cannot hear his words with the rush of blood from his mouth. Still something in me hears. There are words even if they are not spoken and then I realize I am hanging as he is, the blood rushing from my feet to my head, a light airy quality pervading my legs and the weight seeming to crush my skull. I feel the pins and needles behind my eyes and my own awareness shifts. I can see as if I were wearing some sort of special vision, the tiny creatures, the tiny things in this bog and forest.
I am missing the details, I am plodding along. My sacrifice is more of what is expected by others than what I intend. I am executing the bigger strokes to fulfill all these things, but missing the tiny things. What tiny moments or details am I missing? Sacrifice is so hard. I ask the hanging man what follows this moment and in a pragmatic way, with nothing added, he simply says, "Death". and I realize that as the blood flows away, as his life force drains, so does mine. Death must come after this. Change must follow. I cannot continue as it is. I tremble to realize it. The feeling of the death card is with me so sure in this brief moment.
And then I am standing once again, caught in his fading image. He sees what I cannot now. And slowly I retrace my steps along the path now grown over more with vines, and I find the way back is more difficult. And yet the door appears out of the green mists. I find no surprise in myself as I open it and step through. In the pale light of that dark stage, I look to see how much my dress has disintegrated from being in that place, a putrefaction of the fabric, threadbare and covered in black mold. I start to notice these black splotches on my skin - I too have begun to die as he has. Change is imminent. I feel left with the question of whether I will create this change? Or be consumed by it?
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