The Televisionary Oracle (56 page)

The myriad reports were not in complete agreement, but many of their descriptions overlapped. The consensus was that the other side of the veil is not a single territory but teems with variety, some relatively hellish and some heavenly. Among its many names: the Dreamtime, Fourth Dimension, Underworld, Astral Plane, Collective Unconscious, Afterdeath State, Eternity, Bardo, Hades, and Realm of the Archetypes—to name a few.

There was another issue on which all the explorers agreed: Events in those “invisible” realms are the root cause of everything that happens down here below. Shamans visit the spirit world to cure their sick patients because the origins of illness lie there. For Qabalists, the visible Earth is a tiny outcropping at the end of a long chain of creation that originates at a point which is both inconceivably far away and yet right here right now. Even psychotherapists believe in a materialistic version of the ancient idea: that how we behave today is irrevocably shaped by events that happened in a distant time and place.

As I researched the testimonials about the treasure land, I registered the fact that dreams and drugs were not the only points of entry. Meditation could give access, as could specialized forms of drumming and chanting and singing and dancing. The tantric tradition taught that certain kinds of sexual communion can lead there. As does, of course, physical death.

I wanted to try all those other doors except the last one. Pot, hashish, and LSD were very good to me (never a single bad trip), but their revelations were too damn hard to hold onto. As I came down from a psychedelic high, I could barely translate the truths about the Fourth Dimension into a usable form back in normal waking awareness. At least in my work with dreams I had seen a steady growth of both my unconscious mind’s ability to produce meaningful stories and my conscious mind’s skill at interpreting them. But my progress was almost nil in the work of retrieving booty from the holy places where drugs took me.

The big problem was that unlike the other techniques on the list, the psychedelic substances bypassed my willpower. Their chemical battering ram simply smashed through the doors of perception. No adroitness was involved on my part, no craft. One of my meditation teachers referred to drug use, no matter how responsible, as “storming the kingdom of heaven through violence.”

Gradually, then, I ended my relationship with the illegal magic that had given me so much pleasure. Instead I affirmed my desire to build mastery through hard work. Dreamwork, meditation, and tantric exploration became the cornerstones of my practice. In time, I learned to slip into the suburbs of the mysterium via song and dance as well.

I must confess, however, that in the many years since I swallowed my last tab of acid, my plans have not borne the fruit I hoped they would. Even my most ecstatic lucid dreams and illuminated meditations, I’m afraid, do not bring me to dwell on the other side of the veil with the same heart-melting vividness once provided by my psychedelic allies. Even my deepest tantric love-making and music-induced trances fail to provide the same boost.

Until recently, that is. Two nights after Rapunzel eased herself in through the window of my upstairs bedroom and delivered her crushing invitation, I had the “superdream” she promised me.

“Super” isn’t a strong enough modifier, really, to describe how far beyond a dream it was. Though my long practice of cultivating my dreams has made them strikingly rich and detailed, not one has ever achieved such resplendence as this thing, which Rapunzel apparently delivered to me through some telepathic means I can’t fathom. It was of a far higher order. A previously unknown species.

The first miracle was that it satisfied my deepest fantasies. By that I mean I experienced something like the metaphysical version of an orgasm. When I awoke I felt utterly at peace, more at home in the world than I can ever remember.

The second miracle was that the texture of the dream was way beyond the flamboyant palpability of even my best lucid dreams. The things I perceived there seemed more solid and fully realized than any of the props of the physical world. It’s as if I were able to revel in a symbiotic blend of the highest, finest awareness I’ve ever achieved in normal waking consciousness and the deepest, most elemental awareness I’ve had in drugs or dreams.

The best part: I remembered it all. Every detail of this excursion remains with me now.

As the superdream began, it was late afternoon. I was lying down with my face in the grass. The engulfing sexual fragrance of the earth was so intoxicating I couldn’t pull myself away for a while. Then I felt a tickle below my navel. Upon investigation, I saw that a short, scrubby weed had pricked me. There was no pain, but a little blood.

I raised my head to look around. The air and light were—and I know this sounds crazy—
drinkable
. As I inhaled, I felt I was supping a delicious azure nourishment, sweet and filling.

I became curious about where in the world I was. Nearby I saw a garden where enormous pumpkins and tomatoes were growing. Behind it was a three-story pyramid composed entirely of smoked bronze-colored glass. I could also see two thick reddish towers, each four stories tall. My attention was drawn by a large green envelope hanging from the branch of a birch tree next to the garden. I pulled it off and opened it. It read as follows:

MENSTRUAL LINGERIE FASHION SHOW

Feeling most delighted, I followed the directions on the invitation. When the door opened, I was greeted by an androgynous person. Her thick flaxen hair, which looked like a helmet, evoked the aura of a tomboyish Norse goddess. Witchy yet elfin, extravagant yet tricky, her
face was
loud
. She was wearing a baggy, V-neck, black silk blouse and black silk pants.

Actually, I recognized her. She was the woman who had jumped up on stage with Rapunzel during World Entertainment War’s show at the Catalyst—the prankster who got down on all fours behind me so that Rapunzel could easily push me over.

After I delivered my cabbage-head rap, this leprechaun warrior placed her left foot on top of my right. She lifted up my shirt and pulled down the waistband of my shorts a little. I saw the same thing she did: A red ooze was still trickling from the wound below my navel. She swiped her finger down to capture a daub and then brought it to her mouth for a lick.

“Pure menstrual stigmata! Hooray!” she exclaimed. “Consecration by the Goddess!” I felt an inexplicable burst of pride.

“From now on your home must be everywhere,” she said as she patted me sympathetically on the shoulder. “Your names must be legion. Your dates of birth must change daily, and your horoscope must be a fluctuating medley impossible to interpret by anyone but a well-integrated owner of multiple personalities. Your body must be a five-dimensional hologram telepathically in touch with all sentient beings simultaneously, as it was before the Big Bang bonged.”

As she gave me this strange pep talk, she led me down one hall, passing several closed doors, then another, at the end of which was a room with an open door. We went in.

The floor was black and rubbery. The walls and high ceiling were dark red. Hundreds of lit red and black candles lined the periphery of a room maybe seventy feet square. There were several pomegranate trees in big pots, and next to one was a seven-foot-tall scarecrow with many arms. She was composed of a metal skeleton and a skin consisting of vines. I knew it was a “she” because pendulous eggplant breasts hung down from an armature composed of branches woven together. Lodged in her belly was a TV that was animated by two fetuses, as in a sonogram. Her face was a jet-black mask with blinking red lights for pupils. Her hair was a tangle of electrical wire, knotted shreds of fabric, and tree roots.

As we passed it, a crackly voice emanated from the creature.

“What did the scarecrow say?” I asked my host.

“ ‘Come be our sovereign janitor shaman.’ ”

She escorted me to an area in a corner enclosed by three huge, freestanding TV screens. Here there were five beds, each swathed in a red comforter and topped with copper-colored pillows. Tapestries hung on the walls. They depicted an eight-armed, blue-skinned goddess with long red hair. A round lapis lazuli table stood in the horseshoe space formed by the beds. It was piled with hot food on silver trays.

“Help yourself,” my host said.

I filled two plates and a bowl. There were grilled sweet potatoes, a thick orange soup, broiled salmon, wild rice, corn on the cob, Greek salad, and pecan pie. I was thrilled.

“While you eat,” she said, “maybe you’d like a story.”

From under a clutch of pillows on one of the beds she slid out a thick black loose-leaf notebook and handed it to me. Then she turned and walked away, leaving me alone. I got comfortable on one of the beds and opened the notebook. It had a long title.
The Heroine with a Thousand Ruses: The Autohagiography of a Close Personal Friend of the Sly Universal Virus with No Fucking Opinion
. Its author was Rapunzel Blavatsky.

“Dear Rockstar,” read a note paperclipped to the first page. “Feel free to plagiarize this story of mine for your next art project. If you do, though, try not to take too many liberties with it, please. Remember, good writers borrow; great writers steal. Love, Rapunzel.”

The food was delectable—I can think of no comparable taste treat in my repertoire of memories from waking life—and the manuscript was so vivid that it became like a dream within the dream. It told the tale of Rapunzel’s birth, and how she was the avatar of an ancient mystical order.

Was it a true story? I hoped so. But even if it weren’t, this intimate view of how her mind worked made me feel close to her. I felt I’d broken through to see the real,
personal
Rapunzel for the first time. Not my glamorous projection. Not my mythic wish-fulfillments.

Just before finishing the third chapter, I was interrupted by the arrival of a small crowd of women, including Rapunzel herself and the leprechaun warrior from before. They were dressed in a bizarre melange of goofy costumes, as if they’d raided a costume store right before Halloween. Rapunzel, for instance, was wearing a mauve silk
sari that was lovely except for the fact that it had several large rips in it, baring patches of skin. She was also sporting an orange mohair vest and a bright blue cowboy hat.

“We want you to be our menstrual king,” Rapunzel said as she sat down beside me on the bed and slapped me playfully on the face with light strokes. “We want to give you the key to slipping into Crazyland at will.”

“Get the key to Crazyland, get the key to Crazyland,” the other women chanted together like a chorus. They were hopping up and down, bouncing randomly around the space.

Rapunzel lifted my shirt and pulled down my shorts as the leprechaun warrior had done. The trickle of red was still there. She swiped her index finger over it and brought the blood to her mouth.

“Holy communion! It
is
the real thing,” she exulted. “Menstrual stigmata! Who’d’ve thunk it? Our very first recruit and he just happens to be bleeding one hundred percent genuine menstrual blood. Like no man has bled in more than six thousand years! Who else wants a taste?”

The women lined up, tittering excitedly. I was nearly paralyzed with excitement and bewilderment. Though I was a bit concerned about the continued bleeding, I decided it was worth it if it garnered this much attention.

Rapunzel held open my shorts while the first petitioner, a pretty, young, big-boned blonde with wild blue eyes and a bikini made out of the yellow plastic streamers that police put around crime scenes, reached in and partook.

“You’ll help us out, won’t you?” she told me while she licked her finger with a dreamy, slit-eyed look that I couldn’t help but interpret as seductive. “You know how much we need you, right? Come live with us. Make us all very, very happy. Please?”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what I was agreeing to.

The next woman in line reminded me of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo: dark, bushy eyebrows joined in the middle and a face like a beautiful ocelot. She sipped her share of my scarlet flow, then addressed me. Her piercing brown eyes were just inches from mine. “The pandemic muzzling of the female libido has got to stop,” she said. “It has turned the tender, poignant penis into a berserk cosmodemonic doomsday machine. Do something about it, Mr. Janitor
Shaman. OK? Starting here. Starting now.”