The Cemetery.

I had a very interesting dream almost a month ago. Most of it is hazy around the edges, except for the fact that I was visiting a fellow Filthy Magician out in California. At some point the question was raised: "Can you find a place of power here?" and at once I indicated off in whatever direction lie behind his kitchen.

His comments suggested that, yes, there is something off in that direction but that's hardly a place anyone wants to go. I, of course, wanted to go there. Amid protestations that one does not simply walk into Mordor, off I traipsed - directly through the wall. I called his bluff.

It was an excruciatingly beautiful cemetery - I've seen it before. I know it by it's scent, it's sight... by the waymarks at it's gates. It is, more or less, the exalted double of every cemetery that has ever, or will ever, exist. It is picturesque, moss-draped, and rife with the cthonic power of decay and rebirth. Here soma grows upon the knolls where the beloved dead sleep. Mandrakes sprout here, datura blooms, the whole place stinks of dark earth, and poisonous perfection.

I have spent whole nights roaming this place, greeting it's citizens and royalty. A particularly large tree overshadows a portal to the underworld. My magician companion is standing back, smiling fondly at the scene.

There was a funeral in full swing, a family who's attire and regalia marked them as practitioners of some form were laying one of their own to rest. Attending the services was a skeletal woman (her skull had been painted into the likeness of makeup) wearing a large flowered hat, and carrying a truly ruined parasol. She even had a tiny skeletal dog tucked under her arm as though it were a fashion accessory. My mind hesitates to say this is Holy Death, but perhaps her emissary, Vainglorious Death? A man lowers himself into the grave and impatiently motions for soil to be piled on.

The headstones read names that I knew - and yet did not know. Though I got the impression that a certain row was actually just me. Numerous copies of me from centuries passed, dead bodies I'd once worked with living vigor. And at the end of the row was an open grave - a promise and warning.

The ground is soft with growth, the trees bear no leaves, but stunning blooms and fruit. The fruit are stunning, in colors and textures of minerals rather than vegetation. Here, I get the sense, the Apple of Sodom and Fruit of Knowledge are not so mythotypal.

Being there, hell - thinking about being there, it seems to fill my lungs with air and soothe me and with the right eye, on the right "day", you can see into an unending green land, overcast, and misty. Bits of sun glinting through heavy clouds and intermittent showers.