Red Solstice (Alfheim Book 1) (5 page)

There is a loud knock at the door during all this and finally John and Ben are there with my clothes.  Hilda brings them up to speed with the events of the day so far and John has to be talked out of going off on a fruitless search for Red.  To be honest I would worry more for his safety than anything else at this point in time as I feel as if I am dealing with  someone whose abilities far out stretch anyone I have ever met.

Aylsa suggests that I spend an hour or two honing my kick boxing skills and John offers to join us  so we set up on the back lawn and I get a thorough if ruthless work out which actually makes me feel good on more levels than one as I can see a friendship blossoming between Aylsa and John.  I then have the pleasure of another long soak in the bath with scented oils and a welcome change of clothes.  Admittedly jeans and yet another T shirt, but clean ones.  Then the boys offer to go and get a pizza for us all and I get to have a whole one for myself which borders on paradise. 

Hilda wants to take me through some more paces this evening and as the boys are heading out to their gig, they suggest that Aylsa and Truthy might like to join them.  Two more enthusiastic groupies I have never seen as they all go forth.

I had jotted down notes about ideas that had begun to form in my head relating to sound and how colours vibrate trying to link all this together with auras and other things that had been in her books.  I had managed to leaf through another couple whilst having my bath and consuming the pizza.  Not much had really made sense but I just felt on the verge of something that was huge and all I need is the ability to communicate some of it to someone like Hilda who might be able to make head or tail of where my mind was taking me.  I could see that the complex rituals and patterns in the books were just tools to focus the mind clearly and I felt that this must be why she had wanted me to meditate in the first place so that I could clear myself of all negative and unrelated thoughts.  However, I did not have time to fully absorb the rituals so that they were all tight in place before Wednesday night .  It would take years at the pace the authors seemed to want me to travel and my time had somehow become too precious to accommodate them.  So, I am attempting to explain theses ideas and feelings to Hilda and she at first looks bewildered and then appears to grasp some of the principles I am playing with.  I explain to her that what I need is to make a chart that links between the odd ideas and what she knows can be achieved and that is what we set out to do for the evening.

We end up with sheets of paper pinned to her outbuilding walls for ease of movement as we need to establish an order for them first.  I have told her how music seems to open doors inside me that need to be safely bolted in place from the likes of Mr Red and this reminds her of something that she read a long time ago about how the people could use music to enchant or even kill.  I cannot see how it could kill but certainly some does tend to drain a person and lullabies send babies and small children to sleep.  It is definitely a mood shaper in its own right so maybe it could be subverted in a more magical sense.  I have heard of great musicians influencing theatres of people and at least one composer that caused a riot when his music was played.  Even in our small way we influence the people that come to hear us and I know when the crowd is with me because I can feel the emotion  quite tangibly in the air, although I am not certain how I know this and maybe I should ask the others what they feel on stage and compare it to my feelings.  I just know for myself that I can get an amazing buzz from the crowd that are there listening to us and this seems to give what I am doing  more energy.   Like I am reaching out to them and they are reaching back so we are suddenly something bigger.  I can sense in some way this is all important to what I need and also that it should be familiar, because it feels familiar, but like a headless chicken I cannot fathom why or how.  I am growing more and more frustrated with myself.  I start systematically going through Hilda's books and putting markers in on any pages that relate to music and sound.  There are not many in the actual magic manuals, apart from where you need to say certain words numerous times with rising volume,  but I do identify quite a few in the ones concerning religions and their practices and also some connected to healing.  First it is best if I separate these out and then they can be added to the wall of ideas to see if and where they fit.

From what I have noted down most religions have a sound at the point that they believe the universe was created whether this is by a god or the god is in some way the sound, which to be honest does seem a strange idea for everyone to be having at the same time unless there is some truth hidden in there.  The trouble with religious texts is they are usually translations and therefore they may carry more of the translators ideas than the original writer and the original writer is probably not where they started out from but just the person who decided to write them down at some point maybe hundreds of years later.  But there are similar ideas at work and for that to happen there has to be that core point of truth. 

According to one of Hilda's books, there was a sound or chord at the beginning of the universe.  A chord that called matter into being and this is  a universal belief in many ancient and still surviving religions.  This sound has various names but the most popular seems to be OM or Aum.   This ties in with the rest and the fact that it is still used by practitioners today adds some credence to its potential of being that sound that the others have written about.  I quite like the big bang theory but when you look at it there are similarities because you have to have some matter there already to make a big bang and the chord thing supposedly calls matter into being, so potentially they could be both correct as they were originally proposed, although I am not certain if I quite understand myself there.  Anyway sound supposedly created matter which is roughly what the next group of texts proposes.

What do I know about sound?  Some sounds are so exquisite that they move us to tears and others can be almost too painful to bear like when someone drags their fingernail down a chalk board.  Then there are high notes that shatter glass.  I have heard of  other  pitches that will destroy living tissue or even non living matter more substantial than glass, and this is  recorded in many places, in fact I believe that weapons were constructed to do this with sound, even if I have no knowledge of them being used for such.  This indicates that sound is a very powerful thing and that it does not only affect our emotions but can be crafted in different ways to produce a specific effect.

This is also something that is fairly universal and in the Eastern religions it sits side by side with the chord sound and in the Western area it has moved out of religion and into something called Alchemy.  The proposal in all being that there are four elements that have their being through a fifth element..  There are according to most ancient civilisations elements that are responsible for all matter and these are generally referred to as  Fire,  Air,  Earth,  and Water as main.  But there is also this fifth element cited and this has various names such as ether, akasha, void, aether with some religions  considering this the element of sound.  This is going a little too deep for me to take it all in and make sense of it, but it does seem to have a place in this mess to fit into, and maybe in time I can figure out where and what that is.

According to one text that was written by a Hindu philosopher  back in the 9
th
Century A.D. A deity known as 'the Creator' used the element of aether, which they saw as being the most difficult to control and explain, to create the others and this he supposedly did by using the second to create the third and so forth.  The reasoning for this seemed to be that the elements were connected to the five senses held by humans, and these were on a scale so that the finest were at the top and they gradually descended to the lowest which could be appreciated by all five senses; so the aether was actually seen as inaccessible to the any of the senses but from it came Air, which can be felt and heard.  This was followed by Fire which can be heard, felt, and seen and then Water that can be heard, felt, seen and tasted and finally Earth which can be touched, seen, heard, smelt and tasted, although I personally wonder why anyone would want to be tasting earth.  This philosopher, Vacaspati who wrote of it in the Tattwa Kaumudi, claimed that it is through the elements that we experience our senses, which seems the sensible part of the whole.

Then there are the chakras which are points on the body through which energy flows.  There are lots of these but most are only minor.  Many of the Eastern religions use them and so do people that only practice meditation and healing, though they all seem to stem from the same idea.  The main points of the chakras align to something called the Kundalini and that is a serpent like structure rising out of the base chakra and connecting through the others to the top of the head where the universal energy flows in, although some say this is where earth energy rises to meet it.  I think it may be a two way process depending on what you are doing it for, but for Tantric needs, and here they can be erotic, it definitely goes up, which makes me giggle to myself. 

It seems to be this bit where the Om or Aum fits in with this energy surge as chanting it properly can raise the energy through the Kundalini to the head chakra.  The only problem I am getting is finding how to do Om and as I do have to make a trip to the library sooner rather than later, I hope to raid their CD section in the hope of finding a copy of it.  John has often talked about the senior librarian's interest in Eastern religions and yoga so I suspect it is the kind of thing she would have in stock, so to speak.

I am beginning to think that all this concept of energy, and moving it about to utilise it for different things, links in some way to Qi,  Chi or Ki , which are some of the words for life force or expressions of it. Ki is the Japanese version of Chi and shows up in Reiki which is a healing practice that draws on the universal element of the ether to re-establish the  balance of those who are sick by assuring a steady flow between the main chakra points of the human body.  There is a word for 'life force' that is found in various ancient Eastern practices including martial arts, medicine, particularly Indian style medicine, and some elements of the yoga tradition and that is prana which they believed to be energy from the cosmos.  At the time that they formulated the idea they thought it might be generated by the sun as that effects growth in plant life, but it does feel that it ought to be more universal than radiation.  It is just a thought, but when the books speak of auras then I can connect this to them as they seem to interact with energy from outside ourselves, drawing this in through the chakra points in various measured dosages, rather like a plant using sunlight for photosynthesis to absorb and create the sustenance it needs from its surroundings.  It would seem that quite a few of the Tibetan and Hindu practitioners also equate this prana or 'life force' with Qi and the fact that it still seems to have a place in what are both religious and secular practices today must mean it has managed to prove itself either useful or holding more of the truth than is immediately apparent to our western mind sets.

I cannot remember a time when I was not writing down lyrics or rather small poems that were not very good in retrospect, but I know I have got a lot better with age and some of my latest stuff Benjamin has been kind enough to set to music.  He can do the really hard bit better than I could ever hope to.  What I know about poetry and lyrics  is they need to evoke feelings without being perhaps straight forward, so that you can take the feeling from inside yourself and apply it to the picture created by the words.  Also evoking is a very close word to invoking which is what a spell should do, so spell or geas I feel if you have the ability to push this over into the lyrics,  I can see how a geas can be formed from a song because the lyrics can be tailored to what the adept needs to do.  This then  can be connected back with the correct sounds to push it forward and make it happen, and some songs lend themselves to this as if their music was purposefully written to enthral.   So by bending these to a different set of lyrics and having the knack of delivering them to the correct target it should be possible to create almost anything that you need.                                                                               For a special geas you could write the words of your intent as song lyrics,  but be very precise.  Then if you set it to music or subvert  an already produced  piece of music it should be possible to even link words to the notes of the chakras to enhance this.

It was very late by the time we had finished looking at the papers and trying to place them into some order.  I do not even know if any of this is the correct way it just feels as if it might be the best I can do in the small amount of time that I have.  It is the one thing that I have some knowledge of and maybe that added to the small portion of magic that seems to be mine, will be the best defence for me.  I would like an offensive weapon too but that will have to be a reliance on the martial arts skills that I barely have.   And maybe general trickery if that counts.  I am exhausted, as I suspect is Hilda, even though she tries to hide it.  In fact it is she who finally says that we should call it a day and she has my instant agreement on that subject.  I will go through all these notes again over the next few days when my head has caught up with it all.