I am writing this for no reason. There is no purpose, no end goal, just an extrusion, an extension, a growth; words upwelling, evoking and recalling: I remember staring at a tree yesterday from a distance as its branches swayed in the warm summer breeze and the leaves stirred, whispering in their sussurating voices.

Imagine then, if you will, the warmth of summer on skin; the heat that seems to thicken the air and enrich it with a variety of scents excited by the sun. The smell of hair and flesh and the subtle perfumes of the worlds, all woven together; city, town and countryside all rising to meet the sky, that azure blue dome that kisses the cold velvet lips of the void.

If this were Ancient Egypt, that arched back, that slow and infinite curve, would be Nut, the goddess arched above the black land of Elder Khem; the red land of blazing heat and liquid tongue. If this were the land of pyramid and stellar river, of solar barque and Seven Gates, then my shape might be different, my voice might be different.

I might be a black-faced Pharaoh, the serpent springing from my brow; the snake all silvered gold with eyes of glittering lapis lazuli, bluer than blue and brighter than fire. Or, if that doesn’t come easy, brought to mind double quick and strong as stone…then I could come to you as a dog-faced god, dark of muzzle and white of teeth.

Kin to the wolf-lords of far distant lands I would be, with lolling, laughing tongue and lazy loping gait as I fill your mouth and slip the words of Opening behind your teeth and bury them like the bones of knowledge, hidden deep within your tongue.

Still again and yet to come, I might stand with sceptre in hand, bright as blood and red as earth, lord of storms and stranger ways, hawk’s-head kin with bright spear and roaring strength, to drive the serpent back in the night-black Nile of the Deep-Below; lend the gods my arm so that the sun might rise anew.

All of these could I be, were this that land of magic, all of these allowed by ancient pact, lit by moon, etched by the hand of curved-beak and unwinking eye. Those oh-so potent words written by a smiling ibis-head in an ink made of blood, spit and semen and drawn from between the stars – those words, these words which would bind and set you free to dream so strongly, to summon up ancient wisdoms and deep roots untouched by time!

By those dreams, rich and strange would I sit before you and smile, raise a hand and bid you welcome! By that mystery that stirs within your heart, though it may be long forgotten, I might rise from the hiding place, the secret and impregnable fortress which rests amidst the seas of wild and inexorable, unstoppable imagination.

By all these things, by the reading of these words, their evocation and conjuring within your mind, and by your very attention to the same, could a great change come upon you, might the scales fall from your eyes and you may allow yourself to see truly once more.

Would that this were that land where all these things are possible, would that I might invite you to sup with me at the source…

Alas, this is a different land, this land of summer, where I stared at a tree amidst the green. So green it was that you would forget the sand and silence of Khem, the black earth rendered fertile by the Nile. So green and pleasant that you might forget the perfumed incenses and the glyphs and the spells and the ancient temples, the hymns of praise raised to gods of old, the multitude of wonders lying there in your memory.

So soft were those whisperings of leaves, there in that yesterday. Softer than the silks and satins adorning smooth bodies in service to ancient understandings. Softer even than the suppleness of flesh, gleaming in torchlight as rites were performed to blend deity and humankind into a thing of wonder and strangeness.

Forget all these then, I beg you, though they may rise to mind as you drift to sleep, or set your mind loose while the flesh is busy. Forget them, for they are not what we are about, here and now. Here and now, we are about the green and the whisper of the wind, about the summer sun and long nights beneath a sky of endless twilight.

Here then, the words that bind and twist and shiver and set images to dance in the mind and inflame the soul; these words are carved in wood, painted on rock, breathed to life and risted by blood. Runes they are, and Mysteries too, just as the glyphs in that far southern land of sand and wonder held keys long etched in stone.

For as I stared yesterday, I saw those leaves anew. I watched them unfold, uncurl as you might uncurl your fingers, might stretch your back and circle your head to loosen the tension, ease the restriction in your muscles even now, or sometime yet.

The ease of the movement, the flow of it, like a cat sprawled on a windowsill; all lazy yawn and purring pleasure at touch and warmth and life – this I saw, this I beheld, this I knew inside myself.

Do you know, have you seen such ease all about you in times past? Or perhaps you have forgotten it. Perhaps it lies sleeping, waiting to be wakened at the proper, perfect time.

Whichever, be it sleeping, or awake and aware, nestled within, the truth of it is shown in what I saw, revealed to me in that stare, in that frozen moment of epiphany in summer’s light. For you it may be different, whoever you are, and that is right and good.

I am, after all, all I ever was. No matter which land I may have dwelt within, no matter what earth I called my home, whether that be the black or the red of Egypt, or the rocky shores and roaring spume of the Island-in-the-Sea. If I laid my head on granite or swam beneath storm-tossed lakes and walked over ground carved by glaciers countless years before, it did not, and does not matter still.

I spoke and sang, I brought forth the Mysteries, I pulled aside the curtain, rent the veil and opened the door. So as I sat before that tree, and became aware of the uncompromising beauty of each leaf, the merciless fractal relationships of growth and vitality; as it whispered to me of leaf and branch and questing root seeking the sweet waters of the Deep Below in spite of stone and pavement and works of man; as all this came upon me do you know how I felt, can you imagine how the shock of it bubbled up within me like a boiling cauldron?

Even now, as I write this, I am transported to that very threshold, to that very sense of climactic tension, the awareness rising like a wave, moving like sap within that very same tree; as each letter follows its fellow, syllables making words, making phrases, making sentences, making sense!

The words find a way, weird though it is; the trees grow, the leaves unfurl. From seed to shoot, to root and branch, stretching high and seeking low, onward wyrd shall ever flow! And by the noun and by the verb, by the plant and by the herb, by the ever lasting word…we find our road, our journey right, and so we live and wax in might!

Stronger now than ever before, the words reveal unwritten law, reveal to us the hidden shore that lies beneath the world of men. So now we see the path before us bright, merciless and unyielding in the light of dawn and dusk; the in-between, that hour most blue,when all seems strange and new.

Thus we stand as trees upon the beach, the depths of the earth at our feet and the stars within our reach, our fingertips brushing heavens, yet capable of stooping down to hells. Here we drink of freezing wells, the waters crystal clear and burning like fire, visions of your life appear; from birth to death, from womb to pyre – all are carried on desire!

For death is not the issue here, nor life at all, but that which quickens the seed and sets the tree to be tall! That which gives nourishment to ravens despite their feeding on the dead, perching there on fleshless head with unending smile; that which is the memory of mortality, the burning of the world’s fire until only black ash remains!

What is it that burns, what is it that drives; what invisible concatenation of events; what confluence of contact, what coming together of circumstances gives rise to the terrible fury of existence?

Unassuaged of purpose, unyielding and cold beyond cold, seemingly insatiable, there is within, a terror. A terror which is never still, which is ever moving, uncaring of obstacle or barrier, that seeks no goal for it is complete in and of itself.

This is stone medicine, storm medicine; smoke on the wind made of rime and frost that nurtures and preserves, recalls survival and disrupts the notion of stasis. Have you ever become aware of your own breathing and found yourself suddenly gasping for air as the rhythm ceases, as stillness occurs?

Now, in that disruption we find a truth, harsh and uncaring though it may be. Severe in its focus, the tree grows, the glacier moves and the fire burns. Would you know more of it, allow yourself to open that door, and in doing so run a risk that you will never be able to return? Or perhaps you would rather board up the the door and pretend it does not exist, wall it up and attempt to forget the howl of the wind in the night that means the wildness is unleashed, despite your attempts to convince yourself otherwise.

Maybe you will not notice the way that same wind sounds eerily like voices as it rattles your windows, or the way there is an invisible presence behind the roar and rumble of the storm; a silent voice speaking in a way that bypasses hearing and language, reaching inside you and setting you to shiver in spite of your walls and roof and sanity.

Such things are not held by locked doors, not swayed by disbelief or rationality; a million years of evolution tells you this is true, the reflexes and responses that kept your ancestors alive and surviving have no truck with such things. You recognize this, even if you are not yet fully aware of it.

It keeps you awake at night, trickles into your dreams and manifests as strangeness, sets you to loop along old paths to reinforce the urgency. You must survive, you are not safe, never safe completely.

Perhaps you might start at shadows; those times when something flickers at the corner of your eye, or a familiar shape is somehow infused with menace.

An angle, a building, a particular arrangement of lines; these can become unnerving; a cold shiver up your spine as you recall a disturbing memory, a snatch of everyday speech suddenly becomes meaningless babble, then reconstitutes itself and twists into a message from somewhere deep and dark, the buried bones gone yellow and rotten with sublimation and age.

In cities it bleeds through architecture, the hollow spaces contrast with the thrumming hive – the solid with the void, the flies on garbage in crooked alleyways that the civilized would rather ignore. The world behind the world; the world behind the wallpaper that is no world at all, no place of safety and peace.

There is a fierceness there, an awful joy which does not care for your concerns, beyond boundaries and restrictions and within them also. The walls may melt, may breathe, may give ground to your shadows, site your terrors and bring the inexorable nature of it home to you.

Can you imagine what that would be like, to have it seize you, until your fastness becomes your prison? Are you capable of entertaining such a notion, playing with it now, as if you were a child, as utterly single-minded in your play as you were back then, in defiance of apparent rationality?

Because if you are, then you are on that crooked path already. All that remains is the choice, and you are presented with that choice every day, and now that you have read, now that you have tasted and seen these words, the threshold can reveal itself, visible everywhere you look, lurking behind your sight and around every corner.

It is fine to be afraid, whether it strikes suddenly, or slowly as a nagging unease. Equally, you may find yourself exhilarated by it, your heart racing and the blood pumping as the excitement rises.

Both of these are valid ways, and whichever occurs to you, and whenever it begins, believe me when I say that what lies over that threshold is way beyond the ordinary. It is in fact – and grammar, and spell, in truth and faith – an extra-ordinary thing.

For beyond that that threshold lies the the Other world, whose denizens are Otherworldly by definition. The nourishment found there is unlike anything else, its sights are endless in permutation and possibility, its movements near endless in configuration.

Already it has reached to you, in songs and stories, old tales and patterns you did not notice because they were ancient and ubiquitous. Consider then, all those things you have heard, that slipped silently inside your mind to work with subtle influence upon your life; recall those icons and narratives which you have had passed down to you, their nature cloaked and hidden – truly occult.

As you consider them, as you brush the dust from them to peer at their faded colours anew, as you feel the heaviness and richness of their worth, you can taste their heady mix.

Embrace the intoxication then, as you wish, and feel the crooked grins spreading across inhuman faces as they welcome you across the threshold.

“Hello. It’s nice to see you again.”