I like to think that I’m agnostic or an atheist. I like to look down on tarot users and Christians alike. I think I’m being dishonest with myself. I think there’s an active discipline that I return to on occasion. These methods are not good for my mental health. I don’t think I ever really left the world of magical thinking.
In dreams, staring at the sky has been met with scorn from figures I can’t see. To look up when dreaming is to defy explicit orders from something ancient. The few times I have looked up, have been at the direct command of dream figures.
There was a curse placed on the wall, and I was shown it over the course of a week or so, and I had little to no way of defending against it. The methods for getting out of it were spoken of directly, when I had no one else to turn to. There’s a metaphysical shop downtown, by the university. It’s out of the way. They pride themselves on carrying esoteric items.
I asked if they had sage or sweet grass. They told me they specifically do not carry any of the Four Medicines to discourage “wrong use.” This was a problem, because I am from the Plains. We use sweet grass, sage, and ceder to pray. Even as modern people, who left superstition in the past, we still go to smudging if we have no other options, and at that point I felt absolutely hopeless.
I can say with complete honesty, that I unknowingly invited this into my life. It was a mistake on my part, and it had long lasting effects. I was unable to sleep in the dark, unable to sleep without Lakota prayer songs in my headphones, something visited me and refused to leave.
When I was young, I’d listen to recorded shaman singing from some Ayahuasca drinkers. It never really worked, is the problem. I mean, technologically, it wouldn’t work. If I was listening from a phone or an MP3 player, the stream would drop or the files would get corrupted. It seems as though there was medicine in there somewhere, some level of sanctity managed to stand up to ignorance of a spiritual tourist.
I often wonder why it is that we listen to human interpretations of biblical stories, instead of listening to the tales of those who have had Near Death Experiences. I listen to new Near-Death Experiences. I listen to old ones. I read them. The trail of something real and outside of this reality lies in their stories.
There’s a book about the Lakota called Lakota America. In it they talk about how our ancestors first approached government officials, whether that be French or American, I can’t remember. The main point is that they would go up to these officials and cry. They’d weep and ask for help. They did this ritualistically.
We are a people who hurt ourselves.
Those old wounds and that wiring still exists, at least in me, and in our sad relatives.
I get desperate, I get plenty desperate. I get scared, all the time. I get worried, and I don’t know how to solve my problems. The only path that I know is the creation of art. It’s devotion to the unconscious. I have reverence for dreams and visions. This outside world has never really been a place that gives comfort.
I look down on tarot readers and Christian prayers. But I have no qualms about using the I Ching as a means of divination. I have used this book for nearly 20 years, and it has been poignant damn near every time. It will reprimand me for asking the same question, while looking for a new answer. “It is not I who seeks the fool; the fool seeks me.” I have no problems with dream-incubation. If things are bad enough, I will turn to dreams for instructions or insights.
These are living paths to me. I unironically do not see the disconnect between what I do and believe, and what others do or believe.
In late 2024/early 2025, multiple streams met one another, and it was very hard to pull myself out of it. I can say, with hindsight, that something went wrong with me on a mental level. There was no guidance. There were no doctors. I had to weather it, and hope that things got better.
I have known about the Tibetan Book of the Dead for a number of years. Carl Jung and Timothy Leary spoke about it. Jung saw it as a metaphor for the individuation process and Leary saw it as a guide for the psychedelic experience. I saw it as a way of getting payback towards God and the hand He dealt.
You’re supposed to read it and familiarize yourself with it while you’re still alive, while you’re in the process of dying – someone is supposed to read it to you, and when you do die, someone is supposed to either read it to your body or to where you usually sleep.
I listened to it while trying to sleep.
I think that was a mistake. My dreams weren’t given a ritualistic or inward quality. Instead, I found a roadblock. I would see a decapitated head, rotten, skin dried and pulled back tight, a portion of the neck still attached, and this head would be next to me. It’d be next to where I sat and slept. It would vibrate and thrash around at speeds so fast that the damn thing became a blur.
Over and over again. Never seeing the Bardo Thodol. Never practicing for my dying experience. Instead, I saw a thrashing head.
Something got through.
I’m supposed to be agnostic. I’m supposed to be an atheist. These are just dreams. There are no ghosts. There are no spirits.
And here we were.
I would paint with my back against the room, with my desk facing the wall.
I could feel the presence of many-beings in the room. I don’t know about you, but I can hear when someone walks around a room, there’s weight blocking ambient noise. I know when there are people around me, and for a stretch there, I felt something. Somethings. They didn’t present themselves as human. They instead felt like disembodied orbs, invisible to the eye, but audible. They looked over my should while I tried to paint.
It got so overwhelming that, often times, I’d simply stop making art.
I lost out on cash because I wasn’t able to make new art for at least three weeks.
Something got through and it was everywhere.
I couldn’t sleep in the dark after that. I couldn’t sleep without sound blaring in my ears around the clock. I started hearing metallic voices exploding between my ears just before falling to sleep.
We use sage to cast out bad spirits; we burn sweet grass to invite in good spirits. We burn ceder for protection. I had to get what I could, which was honestly the silliest part of this dark period in my life. Spiritual protection was delivered to my doorstep after putting in my card info.
I started asking the dreams for help, because this was something that the Christians probably weren’t equipped to deal with.
The dreams were explicit in their diagnosis and advice.
First, I was shown what happened. There was a curse placed on the house, or maybe on, specifically, me. The curse was drawn on the wall. In the corner of the room, where the two walls meet, there was half of an owl drawn on both walls, meeting in the center.
Next, I was shown how to see what found its way into my life.
There’s a curtain on the window. The dream said that I should smudge with sage and push the smoke outwards to the window curtain. The spirit that was fucking with me would temporarily show itself, coming towards me, made visible by the curtain.
I found myself on a boat, floating in a massive body of water. I saw a Thunderbird, with my own eyes but it wasn’t like what I’ve read about, at all. It was a massive, slow-moving cloud. A section of the cloud seemed to be pulling the rest of the cloud behind it. That forward section took the shape of its head, and the entire cloud became its massive wings, while a storm followed closely.
A star fell to the earth.
I walked up to it and found a monk. He exuded peace and love. He was only peace, and only love.
No amount of prayer or sage burning could stop what was happening in that room or that house.
Symptoms didn’t lessen.
It took me leaving for it to stop.
Elders and medicine men exist for a reason, and I wasn’t either.
Behold A Red Horse 