The Book of Knowledge. Playing Another Reality. C. Castaneda award

8. PEOPLE of DARKNESS

I didn’t know why I came there. The Woman was late for an hour to spend about half an hour more telling me how cool she was and what cool people she had to work with. A too sweet doll-like smile froze on her masked face. She repeatedly called me by another name, at first I corrected her, but soon stopped, it was useless, since the Woman listened only to herself. Having finally spoken to her heart’s content, she said, “You must come to cast your spells to the Passage Court on the 5th of September!”

“Dad’s birthday,” I breathed out.

“Great, Marina! Invite dad!” exclaimed the Woman.

“I have everyone dead for a long time,” I said calmly, but the Woman didn’t hear and continued to talk nonsense about her cool friends who had come to the Passage Court on the day of someone’s birthday.

“So, Marina, invite your dad!”

“Of course. And dad, and mom, and others too,” I nodded, realizing that dialogue was inappropriate.

The girl at the next table cringed and tried to convey my previous words to the Woman. However, she was not at all embarrassed and with the same doll-like smile, looking at me as if at a child from the youngest group of a kindergarten, in an insinuating voice, as if sharing a terrible military secret, said, “Marina, there is a belief that the souls of the dead do not die, but… remain close to us!”

“Unbelievable! Really?!” I asked, supporting her sudden image of Christopher Columbus.

The Woman almost jumped at the discovery announced to me, “So invite dad! And one more thing… You must come shocking!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” the Woman looked displeased at my dress and hair. “You must come… how to say… to shock the audience!”

“Do you want me to come naked?”

The Woman didn’t understand that I was joking, got scared and cried out, “No, no! In no case! But you should do something at least with your hair!”

“I have horns at home. They can crown my hair,” I said absolutely seriously, and the Woman barely restrained herself from losing the smile.

“You will cast spells for about half an hour and exclusively by heart!”

“I don’t know my spells by heart.”

“Take it as your home task. You must cast by heart,” exclaimed the Woman, simultaneously opening my White Book of Spells at random, and as a speaker on the podium added, “You will be casting like that…”

Very loudly, with a pretentious look and the same smile never leaving her face, throwing her right hand in the direction of someone’s bright Future, the Woman began to cast my spell dedicated to the memory of my deceased mother, which was very sad and not at all intended to be cast from the podium before the public.

“Stop, enough, I got it.”

The Woman closed the book.

“Have you ever read my spells?” I decided to clarify, although the answer was obvious even to non-clairvoyants.

“No, Marina, I can’t stand spells! I read detective stories!”

“I understand you,” I nodded, mirroring the Woman’s smile in response.

“Anyhow, sign your book for me! By the way, how do you write spells?” the Woman asked, holding out her pen, and I thought, “If I don’t sign it now, will she finally part with her fake smile?”

“They come, I write them down.”

“So, maybe they are not your spells.”

“Maybe not mine. Perhaps yours.”

“Do you really think I could write a spell?”

“Certainly! Take any rhyme and put it at the end of the line. For example, Love – Dove.”

“So simple? I’ll try it today!” the Woman rejoiced.

Saying goodbye, she once again scanned me from head to toe with a disdain look, clearly unsatisfied with my appearance, and demanded that I come at least in a witch hat.

“Why?”

“All spell-casters correspond to the image that includes at least one element as a must. And this is a hat! You must also prepare a list of questions that I will ask you in public!”

“You may ask me any questions,” I said, thinking that I would gladly make a list of questions long enough for all the spell-casters in the world, but for a part of the Woman’s salary.

“No, Marina, you must think of the questions yourself!”

“Meanwhile, there are crowds of the unemployed outside,” I sighed at the elevator and…

…went to meet Olga, a spell-caster who had decided to publish her first book and wanted to consult with me. Besides, agree that, it’s always nice to talk with a kindred soul.

We met in a cafe in the city center, talked for a long time about spells and were just about to say goodbye, when Olga asked, “How are you doing… well, in life in general?”

“Hard times. You know, everything has been collapsing since January.”

“What else expect from the age of Christ? We all go through a kind of breaking. We must give to the world what we know.”

“Who are you?” I asked, already anticipating the answer. “Can you look through?”

“Yes, I can, but I don’t do Black Magic and advise you the same,” Olga said, simultaneously peering into my palm. “Oh, your extrasensory line is so clearly expressed that I may say nothing to you! And who are you according to the stars?”

“Mars in Cancer, Venus in Pisces, Lilith on the Sun, Selena and Sirius on the Ascendant, the Master of VIII in I, the Master of the I in XII, evil Pluto in V in opposition to the Sun.”

“Wow, ‘lucky’!”

“Yes, all the same in every Sphere: Spells – Magic, Magic – Spells, Love – Death, Death – Love. Anyhow, I don’t know who I am. If count the name, my full name means the Sun, and the short one means the Moon.”

“You must urgently sort out the knowledge you have acquired in your life and systematize it. Your head is overloaded with information in a chaotic form. At the age of 33, a new Solar cycle begins. If you don’t start doing for the world what you came into it for, you’ll be punished. I went through this myself. I didn’t have a childhood either. They say you paint. Would you show me your paintings?”

Then we talked about earthly things. I told Olga about the Creepy Woman, and we laughed, and I was happy that, fortunately, other women still existed on the Earth.

…For four months I had been asking the Man Who Was Not to meet me. I wanted to tell Him about my spells, job, the Creepy Woman. He promised to materialize himself on Wednesday or Thursday, but on Monday I knew that the meeting wouldn’t take place. He disappeared. On Thursday night, I wrote to Him, “Are you alive?” and got the answer, “Yes, why?”

So for three days I had been lying on the bed looking at the ceiling, when suddenly a word appeared on the phone screen, “Come”.

It was Ray, a mystical creature, I would even say, a real Black Magician, with whom we had known each other for about 100 years, but recently communicated exclusively mentally.

“Mistaken the number?” – “No, you just need it now.”

“So where, when?” – “Tomorrow afternoon.”

Ray always felt me, knew what was happening to me at a great distance, suddenly appeared on the horizon, and then just as suddenly disappeared. Memories of Ray took me back to the distant Past. Returning to the Present, I met the Sun in the window and went to the cottage.

The next day, waking up in the old attic, I felt that the depression had gone. The weather corresponded to the real summer, and I wanted to swim in the lake. I sent Ray a question mark and immediately received an answer, “Don’t come. You don’t need it anymore.” I got out of bed, stamped my foot and… laughed.

I looked around, as if seeing the attic for the first time, and suddenly realized that its strange decoration was nothing more than a mirror of my Subconscious. The bright Tunisian blue colored walls with Indian paintings with Arabic script, Moroccan lanterns and candles, oriental lounge with black bedspreads and a lot of lilac-orange-burgundy pillows on the floor, a hookah and cards, a pile of carpets underfoot, a red-yellow-black plaid on the bed under a white ceiling with black wood beams as all sorts of other things reminded me of Ray and Brother. In those years when they had been nearby, I felt truly happy. Parting with them was one of the biggest wounds not yet healed. They both saved my life that terrible autumn. How could I choose between them? And then I took a step into Another Reality, where none of them existed anymore.

Brother (that’s what I call him, we are not relatives), ten years older than me, is an oligarch, who, despite the enormous money and power, managed to remain a child at heart, a mischievous and eccentric boy I love very much. We are incredibly similar in character and appearance, although he is very tall and very, very handsome, next to him I seemed a fairy dancing on his palms. Full of doubts and hopes, Brother played business always moving forward, no matter the cost. Possessing excellent intuition in business, he understood nothing in people. I wanted to protect him, but he used to get angry when I tried to explain what I saw. We often quarreled at full, but quickly made up. He read no books, but my spells. Once I said, “Someday you will be proud of me,” and when I was officially recognized as a spell-caster, despite the fact that we almost didn’t communicate anymore, Brother called me and somehow embarrassed said, “Alice, I’m proud of you!” I caused him pain he couldn’t forgive. Of course, I can call him at any time, just like then, and he will definitely help, but we both know the door to that reality of ours is forever closed and will never be opened by any magic key.

…I met the Man Who Was Not two weeks plus those four months later… I wanted to wander with Him around the city, but we had dinner. He was hungry, I couldn’t eat at all – a common reaction to food when I was nervous. I was afraid of Him. He could hurt me and kill me with a word, deed or even just with silence. He, and not someone else, because no one had any power over me, except for those whom I loved.

I wanted to sit not opposite, but next to Him, pressing my cheek to His shoulder in silence, but… He was interested exclusively in earthly food, therefore, in order to avoid useless pauses, I told Him everything that came first to mind: about my job, Brother, that terrible autumn, the attic in the cottage, acquaintance with the Creepy Woman; but all that aroused no interest in Him. The MWWN was worried about one thing only – whether I had written in the Blue Book, which should be published by the date of the spell-casting at the Passage Court, that it was all dedicated to Him. I asked if He had received my paintings by email.

“I rarely check my mail.”

“How can I communicate with you?”

“We are already in communication!”

“I can’t see you.”

“Am I not with you now?”

“I write, but you don’t read my letters.”

“I’ve already said that I rarely check mail, and I don’t like writing letters.”

“I can’t call you, and you don’t call me.”

“I don’t talk to anyone on the phone.”

We were so similar! I liked neither talking on the phone nor writing letters. I almost never called anyone myself, and my home telephone was in mute mode for many years.

Having returned home, I wrote that I would like Him to remain in my life as a person with whom I would have the opportunity to simply communicate. As always, He didn’t answer.

…The world continued collapsing. Nonna said that she didn’t see me at the place where I had recently got a job, and that the Higher Forces wanted me to start giving people what I know. I completed the project in three weeks instead of eight, realizing that the owner still didn’t and wouldn’t have money for its implementation, and on the day the project was started up, the company was closed for an inventory with confiscation of property for non-payment of debts. I invited the owner to pay me out and let me go. The owner invited me to wait for the evening and get drunk with him in a haunted place with the last money he had, clearly not enough to cover even a negligible part of the promised to me for the project. The owner was all dark.

People are dark in different ways. In the dream called life, Black Magicians were sent to me repeatedly. They immediately recognized me, as I recognized them. During my student years, our teacher, a Black Magician, taught me not only a foreign language, but also the identification of the dead by photos. I was grateful to him for making me watch a film I would hardly have watched myself, since even then I had almost never turned on the TV. Few people like the film, basically everyone criticizes it for its immorality. Few people realize that one may not watch the screen at all if one sees what is left behind the scenes, but when asked why the girl kills the man – they both are the main characters – everyone answers differently.

Black Magicians offered me to play with them on their black field, but I didn’t agree. Thus, the wars used to begin, because the Black Magicians, as well as the White ones, know that two magicians – Black and White – cannot exist on the same territory at the same time, someone must leave. To be honest, I don’t like wars. Therefore, if I don’t have to communicate with Black Magicians due to forced circumstances beyond my control, for example, at work, I prefer not to communicate with such Entities at all. Black Magicians are not vampires. They are strong, clever and know to play well. They play so that ordinary people don’t even suspect who is nearby. The only advantage of Black Magicians over White ones is that the latter will never allow themselves to use the methods of Evil to defeat Evil. Evil will be punished in any case, and Black Magicians are well aware of it. Once it seemed to me that I could turn a Black Magician into a White one. However, this is an illusion, because Black Magicians themselves and quite consciously chose their Path. It is impossible to change the Magician unless the Magician himself wants it. If he wants to, he will do it without anyone’s help.

There is another category of Dark Entities. My grandmother the witch was not a Black Magician, but a clairvoyant vampire. She seemed to be an absolutely harmless old lady, but she had negative energy, so people tried to avoid her. Grandma knew everything about those near and far, about what was happening anywhere in the world, but she constantly needed outside energy to go on living. When I was eleven years old, the grandma was about to die, and I found myself in the intensive care unit in hospital. My mother wished in her hearts to change places with me. I was back. Mom died. The grandma survived. Exactly a year later, my mother’s sister moved to Another Reality too. Everyone around was dying, the grandma continued to live. She was unbaptized and never went to church even to listen to me singing there. She didn’t attend her daughters’ funerals and never went to the cemetery. When she fell down breaking her hip and was chained to bed, doctors gave her a maximum of six months to live, but she lived for five years. Feeling the approach of her death, the grandma asked me to bring her a cross, but immediately returned it back, saying that it was strangling her. The priest refused her communion and absolution, and ten days before death, she admitted to see the Lower Astral, where the sorcerers were intensively dragging her to. Relatives were so afraid of her posthumous power that cremated her body. Anyhow, I had to thank my grandma, since she taught me a lot. For example, to see without intermediaries. As a child, I asked her to tell fortunes by cards and say what each of them meant. The grandma chuckled, assuring that she didn’t know the meanings, but just knew. I understood her words many years later. All magical attributes are theatrical scenery. They help people open the Door to Another Reality. The highest level of obtaining information is when you know without intermediaries, and no cards are needed anymore.

There are simply Dirty People. These are precisely people, whose Light has gone out. I had to communicate with such man on business. Every minute of his life, every body movement, every ‘yes’ and ‘no’, as, indeed, everything in the world, had a certain value for him, expressed in pieces of paper. Someone once invented those papers, painted them in different colors, put numbers on them, and since then they have been called the magic word ‘money’. Magic, yes, because in this world money has a black magical power with a hypnotic effect on practically everyone. After communicating with dirty people, I always want to wash my aura.

However, there is one more category of Darkness as a Disease of the Soul that can affect the most ordinary People of Light and even White Magicians when the Higher Forces put them in a difficult situation. Such disease doesn’t manifest itself on the physical level immediately.

It’s necessary to dig out the cause in time so that, on the one hand, the body doesn’t get sick, and on the other, and more importantly, so that the Light doesn’t go out.

We were sitting in a cafe. The owner was all dark. He talked for a long time about his factories and the people who worked with him, about what could have been done and what could not. It was a pity, I couldn’t help him, since I had so little energy left that I didn’t even go out into the Flow.

“Alice, you’re so cool,” the owner said sadly. “If you had been with me from the very beginning, we would have already… Sorry, I played too much. I owe everyone a lot of money and I don’t know the way to get out of that Darkness. I wanted to take out a loan, but the banks refused. A jail or a shot… A shot or a jail…”

We said goodbye. He called me several times just like that, and then disappeared. So I was left without money, without job, but with a bunch of problems that snowballed at me from all sides.

All I had was the Man Who Was Not.

I tried to think what I could do on my own, giving out my knowledge to the world. I wanted to talk to Him. He promised to call back when he was free. He called me late at night. I managed to say only a couple of phrases before He said He couldn’t speak anymore, so He would call me back the next day. However, tomorrow has a habit of never coming… I wrote to Him several times, but His monosyllabic answers indicated that He didn’t read my letters at all.

9. EXAM of LIFE

I was woken up by a call from the Creepy Woman’s assistant, who specified the time of the performance at the Passage Court and reminded me about the shocking way I should come. I said I would come as I was. The girl didn’t agree. So I proposed them as a compromise option to write and cast spells instead of me. The girl was unsatisfied, she invited me to the Creepy Woman for face-to-face negotiations. The Woman had my phone number, but apparently considered herself too cool to call me directly. I didn’t want to meet her again, so I asked the girl to tell the Woman that I was waiting for her call. The Woman called only on the eve of the performance and, barely hiding her anger, demanded to appear at least in a hat.

Until recently, I was considered a trendsetter. I could afford to dress myself on the most expensive streets of Milan and Venice. Brother trusted no one but me to choose his clothes. I never wore the same evening dress twice. I gave it as a gift after going out in it. I could go for a walk and return home with diamonds, because butterflies were fluttering on a random ring, and I really loved butterflies. I always made spontaneous purchases because I had everything and didn’t need anything. However, I didn’t attach any importance to clothes, rings and other decorative nonsense, because I looked at people through their bodies and expected the same in return. The words of the Creepy Woman awakened in me the desire not to wash the time left before the performance and to take a bath in the garbage in order to appear at the Passage Court in the guise of a homeless person. Wouldn’t it be shocking? I never planned my clothes for the next day, dressing according to the mood of the morning. However, I wanted to come to the Passage Court in the dress of my official initiation into the Spell-casters, the MWWN had barely touched my back then, but I immortalized His touch in my “Dress” spell. So I asked if it would suit Him if I came to the Passage Court in That Dress, and He answered, “Of course.”

Of course, I was very worried, not about the casting of the spells at the Passage Court, the spells all written to Him, because of Him and for Him. I felt nervous as everyone before meeting the person one loved. He would be there, nearby. He promised to come. The only person, the virtual presence of whom in my life kept me on the Earth.

I came to the Passage Court to meet Him. He was absent. The Blue Book with my spells, promised to be published, never came out. The girl kindly offered me coffee, I agreed. There were ten minutes left before the performance. The Creepy Woman appeared with the same doll-like smile. Rolling her eyes languidly, she burst into exclamation to the entire Passage Court, theatrically holding out her hand to me, “Oh, thank you!!!”

“For what?” I asked, trying to restrain myself and, as always, already knowing the answer in advance.

“You did as I had asked and came looking like this!”

“I’m always looking like this,” I said calmly and turned away.

“First, you cast spells for half an hour, then questions. By the way, have you brought a list of questions for me to ask you?”

I wanted to dematerialize her, I couldn’t stand the presence of the Creepy Woman in my personal space.

It was uncomfortable for me to cast spells while sitting in their chair, moreover, casting spells for half an hour without a break, as the Woman ordered, was stupid. I got up and started as I should at that time in that place. He was absent. I was casting. He was absent. They were asking me questions. He was absent. I even managed to answer something and smile. To all of them. Someone came up and asked to sign my White Book. I signed automatically. Someone took a photo of me. I was already somewhere very, very far away. I was leaving. The girl asked me to stay for ten minutes to wait for the flowers, which they suddenly thought of and decided to gift me. She promised coffee and ran away. There was no place to sit down, I had to settle, like a poor relative, on the edge of the aisle, where I was constantly getting in the way. People around were talking about something, but I didn’t hear them.

Suddenly, the MWWN called. He said that he hadn’t managed to come because of something. I actually didn’t care why. I didn’t know what to tell Him. Or rather, there was too much to tell, and also… I just wanted to see Him. That potential meeting, I was looking forward to, and maybe the last one, looked like a ray of Light, but someone extinguished the Light, and the black tunnel of the Void was absorbing me again.