The Cycle: Making the Halves Whole

 

Let’s go back to Set for a minute. I mentioned back in the first post that Set had given me instructions about making my halves whole. He was never very specific about what he meant by this. I took it to mean something fairly ‘fortune cookie’ in nature. Quit being at war with yourself. Make peace with yourself. Make your dark and light sides balance… make that stuff whole.

Which, is partially right.

But now we’re back to layers again. And how everything has layers in Egyptian religion. And sometimes something is as straight forward as it sounds (at least on one layer or another). And in this case, Set wasn’t being entirely vague in his statement. He was being quite literal for once.

Allow me to explain.

Back in college, I ran with a group of entities on the astral. Although I’ve been only recently discussing astral stuff, I have had my fingers in the astral pie in some form or another for many years now. I had trusted these people, they were like family to me.

Well one day, something changed. I don’t entirely understand what or why, but I woke up one morning to someone that I would equate to my father standing over me. I was on the ground, unable to move. He smiled, said something about ruining me, and then slammed his whole hand into the center of my chest. The reverb was so painful- it’s one of the most painful things I’ve experienced in my life. It felt like someone had literally ran a hole punch through me. It had quite literally created a black hole in my chest. He had taken a part of me away and ran off with it.

Its because of this black hole that I stepped away from astral crap in general. I could feel that pain everywhere- waking or asleep. And over time, this darkness, this taint would seep from it. In many ways, taint is a lot like isfet. It corrodes your body, your mind, your will to do anything, and over the years, that taint began to consume me- to the point that my brain was nothing but negativity- it was this black ooze that existed in the Pit that Set sent me to. Whether Set actually sent me to the insides of the physical hole in me, or a metaphorical version- I can’t say, but the parallels are obvious (plus, who better to send me to fight something that is very isfet in nature, but the deity who is responsible for handling isfet every night). The layers of meaning and symbolism are miles thick. But there is more to this.

As I had mentioned- that person ran off with a piece of me. And then someone somehow got that piece from him, because I guess it contained something he wanted. He then took that part of myself, and beat the crap out of it- trying to get at whatever was inside. As he would do this, I would see visions and flashes of myself being bound, beat up, smacked around, you name it. And as it turns out, when Set was telling me to make my two halves whole- he was literally saying- get this part of you back. Reclaim it. Take up your pieces and make yourself whole again.

I couldn’t really appreciate that until I started to work with O in the river. Truth be told, I expected to never get that part of me back. I expected to live the rest of my life with this huge hole in me, and part of me being man handled by someone else who was out of my reach.

Turns out Set and O had other ideas, other plans. I would be useless to them long term with such a large wound in me. For them, there was no other option but to fix this.

Through the help of some other friends, I was able to have that piece of me freed and returned to me, where I drug it back to the river to be cleansed. As I had written at the time:

I’m standing on the banks of the river, and I run down to the waters edge, where this huge ball of light comes flying out of the sky and lands in my arms. Like a falling star, but much bigger. I hold this portion of me. This beat up, pathetic looking, dead, sad portion of me. I speak some words to her. Healing words. Words of happiness. As I start to enter into the water, O appears behind me, telling me its safe, and handing me my stone. I go into the center of the water and fall back. We fall into the water, and I give her more words. More peace. And slowly the water turns into blue and gold… a lot like lapis. I then see that both O and S are standing on the river banks. And after a little bit of me floating in this lapis, they come into the water, and pull me up and take me to the bank. I’m laying there, O to my right S to my left, and they are drawing stuff on me.. it glows gold. They say some stuff I don’t remember and O places his stone in my right hand and S places his stone in my left. They say some more stuff and take my arms up and clink the stones together, which causes some sort of light show on me and around me. Set tells me that the two halves are now whole. And then I’m told I should go home and rest. At which point I’m plopped back into the Room, onto the bed, soaking wet.

Suddenly, things made so much more sense. And with that, the Cycle had ended, well at least the first round had. Cycles are never ending- and as soon as you finish one, you’re just as likely to be sucked into another (which I have). This cycle took 3 years to complete, but I came out the other end much better for all of the strife I endured.

I don’t really know what the moral to this long story is, other than to keep your mind open (and that O wanted me to tell it to you). Many of us have preconceived notions on what the gods will do for us, and its entirely possible that one day you’ll wake up, and find that a god is throwing you down a rabbit hole that leads to somewhere completely different and better (and off of the history books). Many times we try to claw our way back up, instead of riding the chute down, but if you ever do find yourself being hurdled towards something crazy and different, and there just so happens to be a god along for the ride- I urge you to consider riding it out, to see where it takes you. Odds are, its somewhere filled with crack, but still pretty awesome.

Other Parts of This Series:

• The Cycle: The Pit
• The Cycle: The River