Barry:        The flame flickers on the altar. I see two black rods that are embedded in the sand. A bright copper disc engraved with radiating lines is on the altar.

Rob:            The flame on the altar dances, moves, changes shape to become a doorway of flame. Beyond it smoke swirls into darkness. The fire brightens. The doorway’ shape is curved and it meets at a point. I take a rod and step through. I’m in a large room. The ceiling has a reddish light, showing ornate pillars. Their tops are boxed in to form sub pillars. The room is full of shifting smoke and there is a sulphurous smell. Shapes are revealed and then hidden by the smoke.

Barry:        I join you. The copper dish contains two drops of blood and an ear of corn. I cannot see the ceiling. The pillars seem to be holding up a wall of smoke.

Rob:           I can see a definite orange horizon to the room.

                    The smoke clears to reveal a figure with arms outstretched. A skirt stretches out like a cone from the waist. He wears an ornate headdress of gold and a jacket with a tall collar and heavy sleeves. It is made of shiny dark red cloth.

Barry:        He holds a richly carved scimitar shaped dagger encrusted with jewels.

Rob:           Away from the figure is a boat with two smaller figures within. The boat carries a box and a glass case. It is a funeral barge and the figures are in mourning. As the boat moves along hands grasp at it from beneath the water. It then enters a river of flame. Its not burning and no more hands are grasping at it.

The figure in the long skirt slowly spins and moves towards the boat. There are flames around the edge of its skirt. The figures in the boat see this bearing down on them, they look frightened. Then they are gone. The barge starts to burn now, very quickly. The spinning figure is still approaching.

                    The coffin splits open and a figure emerges intensely bright on one side and dark on the other. It holds a sceptre in one hand, the other hand is held low and outstretched. The spinning figure stabs the glowing figure. The glowing figure splits into two birds, they might be swans.

Barry:        I saw an image while you spoke. The body in the coffin was a dead priest. The spinning figure had taken blood from the body in a crowded ritual at a large open topped stone tower under the sun. Seven bulls had been sacrificed. The figures job was to return the blood to the priest. The two smaller figures were sins the priest was clinging to from life. The bull sacrificed helped. The spinning figure did not belong to the priest’s community but something beyond that.

Rob:            I now see burnt wood, charcoal. Wood split in the pattern of regular segments. Brittle, shiny, ash covered, it crumbles. Earth and Fire. I spread it around me.

Barry:        The bulls blood is also Earth and Fire. The regenerative powers passed from one generation to the next.

Rob:            I see a flat outcrop halfway up a hill. On it stands a tower of black marble. It dominates the surrounding area. It looks forbidding, with no windows and one small door. On top you can see in one direction another hill, and in the other another tower. A beacon on top of this tower has been previously lit. It’s darker. I can see that between this hill and the next tower is a straight path that glows slightly.

Barry:        I see myself on a tower looking at you from a distance. Gazing from the past to the future. The past is brightly lit, known and understood. The future is forbidding.

I see you as a light. I must keep the path in mind. There are dangerous animals are either side of the path. The rod has become light and protection, it is charged.

The beacons are far apart, but lit by a bright blue light. I reach you and bring you the light of the past. The tower begins to grow. Together we light a beacon which burns slowly at first. I look ahead and in the distance is another tower, as yet dark.

                    I see us as complimentary opposites, you the future and I the past. Together we forge ahead, without loosing sight of each other. 

Rob:            The beacon flame becomes the altar flame. It is its normal size.

Barry:        We set the rods back. I see that the copper plate is empty.

 

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