THE Kingdom of the Web

Chapter 5.

THE CREATION OF MOW

 

Being merged in the W.E.B. was a miraculous way to know an other's

innermost workings, their truths and revelations, Shantu Ya' reflected. But

when it came to specific, practical details, he nodded in agreement with

himself, a face to face talk was called for.

He awaited the arrival of L'Met, one of the youngest of the Inner

Circle, but already quite influential in his gifting. The Wizard had only

been in link with the W.E.B. a few years and he couldn't track all the

patterns of change and growth in it. But over these last months he'd sensed

a kind of reaching, of budding in the W.E.B., a yearning to extend or

replicate itself. When he shared this awareness with Kyxara, she took it as

confirmation that the Inner Circle held this intention of the W.E.B. focused

on him, a request for his special and honored skills. He pulled at his graying

beard, feeling both honored and a bit intimidated. This visit from the

influential young Chimera, he felt sure, was to let him know specifically

and in full what the W.E.B.'s need was, what the Inner Circle expected of

him.

While he waited, he humorously toyed with his growing sensitivity of

the painstaking balance needed between the W.E.B.'s absorbing enticements of

connectedness and his own call for isolated apartness. He was by now

pleasantly accustomed to being in the W.E.B.. Yet, this strengthened all the

more his being's need for absolute separation, too. He had never shared

company so deeply or pleasurably as when in the W.E.B.. But he also felt as

strongly about the mystery that was himself, and him alone. This wasn't

conflict, he was pleased to honor and to affirm how wonderfully both these

callings went together and suited him. The W.E.B.'s total openness, an

interweaving of compassionate presences, and his most private consummation

of uniqueness. Two views on one and the same realization, he knew and

chuckled. Two edges of the same sword.

At the sound of the soft thump and scratch of a Chimera's claw at his

study's rough, wooden door, the Wizard let his expected visitor in. He went to

the perch and got himself settled in on his side so he was face to face with the

Wizard. After the preliminary politeness phrases and gestures, but without the

licking each other as they new his reticence, the Chimera explained his mission.

At the beginning L'Met seemed brusque --for a Chimera-- till Shantu Ya'

realized he was simply being very factual in what the Inner Circle envisioned.

A creature, a living being. They wanted him to create a life that had

never been, a personage who was to be in complete resonance with and able to

manifest every facet of the W.E.B.. "A Minion of the W.E.B.," L'Met spoke the

phrase like a title.

Shantu Ya' smiled with awkward pleasure to realize that, to the

Chimeras he was a legendary power, a miracle worker who could do anything.

He "created" them, didn't he? In a sudden wave, he recalled his prayerful

intentions throughout his researches, finding the bounteous reticent gene,

creating the Imago... At every moment he held the intention of attending to and

being a servant of the Great Mystery. And when he'd drifted, that intention was

quick to call his attention back.

"Form this creature you're describing and bring it to life, is that what

you would have me do?" the Wizard inquired of his orange hided informant.

L'Met answered with the ascending whistle for yes and a brisk shake of his

barbed tail for emphasis.

"Do you think I'm a god?" the Wizard questioned incredulously.

The Chimera paused with a wide amethyst eyed stare, gave the same

affirmative whistle, and hissed, "Of course. Who isn't?"

 

Shantu Ya' was soon happily absorbed with this Work. He pondered on

all he knew and had experienced of the W.E.B., seeking for what the character

of this new being might be like, understanding that this imaginative questing

was his way to prepare for W.E.B. to create this unique being. What were the

qualities the W.E.B. had nurtured in him; honesty --developed through being so

nakedly in contact with the others; clarity --from seeing himself with so many

contrasting psyches; experiencing deepest immediacy from having his own

experiences amplified in resonation in the W.E.B.'s vast inter-connectings.

What kind of creature could manifest such energy and characteristics?

Shantu Ya' stoked the fires of his imagination. Minion of the W.E.B., its servant

and representative, as I am a minion of the Great Mystery, he reflected. As

W.E.B. was the acronym for Wholelife Energy Bond, so this being would be

called MOW. The Minion of the W.E.B.. Yes, the Wizard was pleased. That will

do. MOW will be the seed-name for this creature that we are to engender.

The Chanters were in song that evening. Perhaps it was the extended

splendor of the sunset, but it was especially moving for him. He opened himself

to the beauty and majesty of the long sunset's colors that played amidst the

encircling mountain peaks. He thought of their song as chanting, because it so

moved his soul, like the monks chanting when he was here as a student. But, of

course, the Chimeras didn't at all have similar vocal cords, or, for that matter,

even a similar sense of music.

Perhaps it was more like multitonal whistling or wheezing, the Wizard

wondered. But the sounds' range and richness was beyond imagining. It well

covered the full range of his hearing, and, he sensed, it went quite a ways

beyond and beneath that too. He felt their tones as biomagnetic waves and

psychic pulsations as well. As varied as their looks, so were their sounds as

they created unique interweavings and counterpoints that expanded and

fulfilled the possibilities of his farthest imagination.

The Wizard happily gave himself over and bathed in the sound's waves

some while, floating, being swirled and exalted. Given over, completely given

over to the moment to moment aliveness of it, his mind, relieved of all its

concerns, soared. Their chanting carried him aloft into heavenly plains of being

and consciousness. He understood he was being prepared for his task. Perhaps

he was always being prepared for this.

Here, in his early years at the Hermitage, his mystical life had been

expanded and nurtured. And now, back here in his maturity, his inner life has

been brought to an even greater fullness through the awakening to the W.E.B.

and the miraculous changes it had wrought in him.

 

Again Shantu Ya' went searching through the musty corners and

cabinets of the Hermitage's laboratories and libraries. He found a large vat that

seemed as if it would serve the in process he was beginning to envision There

were huge magnets, copper wiring, dynamos. He was able to reassemblethe

solar powered electrical supply. He came on flasks and retorts to grow and

process the needed nutrients. He found a wondrous storehouse of crystals, many

sizes and colors to fit his every purpose. That was when he felt certain he could

do it.

Gestating such a being at one go, rather than over many generations as

he'd done biologically with the Chimeras, would be totally unique. He asked the

Inner Circle for more time to refine his ideas and techniques before he started.

"It is clear in the awakenings of the W.E.B., as you also perceive, that it

is timely to soon create this MOW, as you rightfully name it," L'Met counseled

him. "The birthing is to be soon!" He stretched and bowed his long, orange-

scaled neck and, chin to the floor, rolled his eyes upwards. Shantu Ya' knew the

gesture as one of non-deniable request. "It is needed as a link into the next

stage of the W.E.B.'s unfolding. The W.E.B. is the doer!" The Chimera spoke

these last words as a sacred invocation.

From the particular glint in L'Met's livid purple eyes staring up at him

and the nervous flicking of his barbed tail, Shantu Ya' was aware that this was

not a matter for further discussion. As L'Met lumbered out through the

doorway, the Wizard recognized that he was left feeling only the urgency in

L'Met's message, and felt no offense with his stern presentation. 'Truly," he said

to himself, enjoying the inner spaciousness, "this is to be a gift of the Great

Mystery via the W.E.B.."

For some days he sat in the small alcove he used for reflection and

prayer. Gazing out over the snow muted ragged mountain peaks and stark

precipices, the Wizard gathered and focused himself for the task.

On the wall was a scroll that he'd drawn and watercolored in his early

years there that he'd kept with him. It was of the owl-like bird he'd visioned

during his initiation into the Order of Wizards. "A Bird of Crystal like a Poem,"

he'd described it to a teacher as the Imago for his new life. Its name was Crazy

Owl. And now he was living it.

Across the bottom of the scroll, under the drawing, he'd inscribed:

 

A Bird of Crystal Like a Poem

A Bird, whose wings carry it on the flowing wind,

from the past to its awaiting destiny;

Of Crystal, whose facets refract and recombine

the Light into resplendent rainbows;

A Poem whose rhythm and rhyme resonate

with the Truth beyond all words.

 

The image of that metaphysically splendid creature awoke the

awareness in Shantu Ya' that went beyond his conscious knowing. Now there

was no doubts, no problems to be solved. Crazy Owl was there to assure him

that he could also just rest suspended in the wind and let the Light refract

through his being. He need not try to design and analyze but trust in the

W.E.B.'s wisdom and guidance, as he had been shown through the evolving of

the Chimeras.

 

He consulted with the Inner Circle through Kyxara asking for more

direct guidance and empowerment.

At last, after many days fasting and in solitude in the remote room just

under the roof, fitfully pondering while anxiously awaiting their answer, as the

night sky outside the room's low arched windows began to blossum with the

hues of sunrise, he had a very clear teaching dream. He was given an image of

how MOW sprang from the W.E.B. as if from a woman's loins. This time is was

not to be a bio-engineering process, using his clairvoyant skills in manipulating

the DNA strands and creating "imaginal disks", as he'd done to guide the

evolution of the Chimeras. But he was still to be its sire, now also guided by the

council of Crazy Owl and his gem knowing. He felt confident that the W.E.B.'s

need was also his empowerment. And what better personal advisor for him than

Crazy Owl, his own embodiment of gem wisdom.

 

The next day, he began the project by sorting through the cache of

crystals he'd gathered. Clear in his purpose, he chose a double fist-sized, egg-

shaped stone. It was many faceted, limpid as water, yet filled with a myriad of

living rainbows. Light was drawn through each facet like a prism, refracting it

down to its component color elements.

The key to its best serving its purpose, the Wizard felt assured, was in

its symmetry. Using the laser aspect of his higher sensing and discernment,

boosted by the Inner Circle's psychic amplifiers, he examined and modified the

crystal's cellular geometry. By holding this consciousness, multitudes of its

dimensions were present. He could examine the relative angles of their

microscopic facets and study the subatomic diffraction patterns in which they

mirrored each other. He experienced the electromagnetic fields created by its

every plane like an elaborate fluxing latticework of energy form. It was a mega-

thought, an abstract conceptual matrix, pristine, its impeccable structure utterly

free of distorting content.

It was his mind's delight. Exploring the intricacies of this completely

ordered and self-duplicating structure held him in a level of consciousness

which, he realized, was primal knowing. As he had explored and experienced

the W.E.B. through his visioning and higher emotions, now, this gem awoke

him to his own gem-like knowing. The archetypes within all thought were

present and real for him, along with the corresponding essential geometrics at

the core of all creation. In its holographic form, each fragment of the crystal

was a replica of the whole. From this level of perception, he attuned it's facets,

one by one, to bring them into perfect symmetrical alignment with the W.E.B.'s

range of aspects. He fine tuned it, carved and incised it, molecule by molecule,

down to the very arrangement of their atoms, until it was in perfect resonance.

The crystal's form exactly duplicated the W.E.B.'s electromagnetic and

psychoenergetic fields. The oceans of orderly refracted waves of the overall

pattern carried the Wizard from awe to awe.

It was now ready to become the Minion's brain, able to mirror and

transpose the W.E.B.'s ethereal character into the realm of words and actions. It

was to manifest and express the W.E.B.'s personhood. In such complete

resonance, the crystal too was now able to reverberate with the consciousness

of all beings, simultaneously, the One and the many, the individual and the

Universal.

Crazy Owl's wisdom was always present as the Wizard found or devised

other crystal driven circuits and apparatuses to serve as the creature's senses

and interconnecting nervous system. Through them biomagnetic pulsations,

waves and vibrations could be sensed and integrated. He was pleased with the

guided ease of designing and aligning all this. But growing the bioform to

contain this grid work still seemed completely beyond him.

In his vision, he was given a distinct understanding of all the needs

involved: how to create the womb, where it was to gestate, the nutrients needed,

the microorganisms, the temperature to be maintained. He was to hold a

biomagnetic field around this and the actually creation of the form would be

guided by the W.E.B. through its resonant with the crystals at its core. But the

Wizard understood, without doubt, that it was the Great Mystery that held

MOW's Imago.

The Wizard formed the placenta around the substructure of crystalline

circuitry from scroll parchment he'd found hidden in one of the ancient

libraries. He marked his symbol and a prayer offering on it in charcoal ink. This

he then rested in a huge vat he'd found in his searchings in a basement kitchen

and filled it with the specific bionutrients his teaching dream had instructed.

From then on, this took his constant attention and ingenuity. He was

often at the vat night and day, regulating its sensitive parameters of heat, light,

and the biomagnetic field as the cells differentiated and took form. At times he

felt great confidence as he observed its development in the liquid nutrient bath

and did picture of it as a cosmic womb. Other times he grew impatient with

himself as his mind wandered, his energies failed, or he felt he'd misjudged the

possibilities of such a procedure.

To relieve himself from this constant vigil, he liked to watch the

Chimeras in flight. His favorite vista was from a high attic porch, though it took

his crawling through small passage ways and climbing several ladder like

stairways set along the outside of the Hermitage's steep walls. He imagined the

perch was originally built for an astrologer or magician so that he could more

intimately track the planets and meteors. Because certainly watching the

Chimeras soaring in the sky felt like mystical gyrations to the Wizard. As he

watched them, entranced, the Crazy Owl soul in him accompanied them. They

were, of course, too huge to make their ways effortlessly. But between their

enormous, gossamer thin wing spans and wise sensing of the winds, their bat-

like strokes managed to keep them aloft some long whiles.

As with different breeds of birds, each unique Chimera had somewhat

their own style of flying. Some seemed in perpetual challenged motion, others

floated next to them with but an occasional effort. Instinctive as flying is, he

watched them learn from one another and adapt style and wind-maneuvering

tricks for themselves. At times they flew with total independence, each with

their own mode and direction into the vast distances over the snow brushed

mountain peaks. At other times, by way of pre arrangement, he supposed, they

gathered and flew in huge patterns across the sky. They were celestial emblems

that flowered one into another in their flight. It moved Shantu Ya' deeply from

where he watched in his rooftop lookout.

Somewhat possesed by Crazy Owl, he sometimes fantasied devising a

means, a saddle of some sort, so the Chimeras might carry him along with them

in flight. But he realized what a great strain it would be. His conscience scolded

him not to debase them into beasts of burden for his pleasure. But later, through

the W.E.B., he was to get his compensation.

MOW was well along its way. A few of the Inner Circle sometimes

visited to check in and peer into its vat, but mostly without comment. The

Wizard and Kyxara met often as friends, usually indoors, sometimes climbing

in the mountains when the weather allowed. But they seldom spoke of MOW.

These last days had been difficult. The Work seemed to continue well,

but Shantu Ya' was having unsettling doubts. Had he stepped too far out in faith

this time? Was that a true minion of the W.E.B. growing in there, or some

monster?

The sky had been heavy and torpid all day and as night fell the storms

began. Rain slashed through the windows and across the room. Winds shrieked

down the passageways, whistling across his doorway as the Wizard huddled,

self-protecting, in a corner.

He felt release, the weather so matched, so expressed the turbulence in

his soul. Thus freed from stifling those emotions, as if its very wings enfolded

him, he knew Crazy Owl's presence was his true sanctuary.

 

Finally, after a ten-months' gestation, the Wizard understood that all

was complete and ready for MOW's birth. He hoisted it out of the vat, an exotic,

hybrid creation of crystal circuits and flesh, out of the womb of his handiwork.

Then, with prayer and supplication to that Power he called the Great Mystery,

Shantu Ya' jolted it into life with a torrent of coherent sunlight and

psychospiritual radiance into its shimmering crystal Third Eye.

MOW lay on the table some long while, breathing smoothly but

immobile. Shantu Ya' was aware that the Inner Circle had been present in spirit

throughout, enlivening MOW, helping create a soul for it out of the being of the

W.E.B. itself. At last, MOW opened its jeweled eyes, sat up and spoke.

"We are the Minion of the W.E.B.," it announced in myriad voiced

invocation. "We are of it and for it. Our substance is a reflection of its being.

Our only purpose is its purpose."

Shantu Ya' was startled by the obvious full development of its mind and

by its rumbling voice that sounded like the synthesis of hundreds of voices

simultaneously. "I am Shantu Ya'," he told it in return. "I am one who

ministered to your creation."

MOW turned to face him, light glinting off the facets of its eyes. "We

are grateful with the W.E.B.'s gratitude for your service to us." Now it answered

in a voice that duplicated Shantu Ya's.

MOW was patient as Shantu Ya' methodically checked him over

physically and energetically. He found many things he neither expected nor

could explain. To begin with, there was its weight. He knew, to the gram, how

much bio-nutriants he had put into the vat during MOW's incubation. And here

it was nearly half again as heavy as the Wizard had calculated. Nearly 300

pounds and well over 8 hands tall, once it got used to standing after all those

months buoyed up by liquid. Wherever all that extra mass had come from, the

Wizard soon saw that MOW had many characteristics and gifts beyond his

estimations, including it's physical strength. Apparently the W.E.B. control

over it's formation was far stronger than he'd known.

There was also an anomaly with it's joints that articulated with equal

ease in both directions. His hands, that Shantu Ya' had seen fit to give only

three fingers with an opposable thumb, could flex either way and grasp onto

things with either side of it's hand acting as the palm. When it walked, it's knees

would flex either front or back, depending on balance and the lay of the land.

Also, unexpectedly, there was a greenish cast to it's skin. Shantu Ya' shrugged

and assumed it would probably look more natural to the Chimeras' eyes than his

own reddish-brown color.

All in all, Shantu Ya' was more than pleased with his achievement. He

had tried to give MOW the semblance of a humanoid --a prejudice, he had to

admit. But, what with it's multifaceted crystal eyes, bald skull expanding above

to enclose it's crystal brain and associated devices, lack of gender --to save

Shantu Ya' complications in it's formation and MOW in it's mission-- and loose

swinging arms that came down to it's erratically flexing knees, it was hard to

tell exactly what form it had been modeled on.

MOW was powerful and smooth moving. Calm yet present, it wasted no

effort, in thought or body. The Wizard sensed emotion in him, but open and

dispassionate, seeing all aspects at once through those faceted eyes and brain

It was MOW's temperament that Shantu Ya' enjoyed the most. His

presence exuded a deep and intelligent peacefulness. He answered when the

Wizard spoke to him, then returned to a state of complete, inner repose. It

wasn't hard to imagine, that, being the embodiment of the Wholelife Energy

Bond, it had access to depths and complexities of reflection that would keep

anyone entranced. The only quality of MOW the Wizard was unsure of was that

it saw the humorous paradox in everything. He believed everything was

obvious, except for human motives and reasoning.

At the appointed time, the Wizard and MOW left the Hermitage and

went to a cave further up the mountains that the Inner Circle favored as a

convening place. Being creatures of the sky and flight, they seemed to find

being earth-enclosed most focusing. They entered the bowel shaped cavern, lit

by the eerie iridescence of glow tubes and found the Chimeras awaiting them.

They were in deep link with the W.E.B., for, as the Wizard and MOW

approached, the energy field around MOW grew to near audible, tangible pitch.

Shantu Ya' and MOW paused in the low arched doorway. The seven

Chimeras were sitting in a circle on their haunches, leaning back on their

perches. The Wizard and MOW took the two empty places on perches that had

been modified for the humanoid form. MOW looked around at them each in the

Circle, the many lamp's around the cave multiplied in it's eyes. He spoke their

names in turn, as if introducing them to himself.

"Hello Kyxara. Hello L'Met. Hello Tlin. . ." it said to each in it's

multitonal voice, slowly, with full attention and a bow. Shantu Ya' opened

himself to the music-like overtones of the W.E.B.'s activity. Inwardly, in that

place dreams are seen, he saw MOW greet each of the Chimeras as one would

greet different parts of oneself, the Wizard reflected. Hello Hand. Hello Heart.

Hello Eye...

"You are called the Minion of the Wholelife Energy Bond. How is that

so?" L'Met uncurled from his perch to peer closely at MOW as he questioned,

precise and probing.

MOW answered in L'Met's own clipped tones. "All that happens in the

W.E.B., I resonate with throughout my being. It is my sole purpose and

intention is to reflect and serve it."

"We are also committed to the W.E.B.. How are you fit to serve it in

ways we are not?" Tlin whispered, holding to his perch with his claws as he

peered around the Circle with a question that had not been fully answered.

"You are many. Your interests are gifted and varied. I am but one and

am at one with the W.E.B. as none of you could ever be, because there is no

other me than the W.E.B.. I am a budding of its Unity Mind." As MOW

answered in words, it also opened it's consciousness to the Circle's witnessing

awareness.

Then, again as a bubble bursting, the girdings of the Wizard's psyche

vanished. The constrictions of his own personhood, his life's history, all

dissolved. He was left breathless, without self-image or intentions. All

boundaries of time and circumstance were gone. He was left comfortably

suspended in a voidness. He knew this was MOW's psyche he now shared.

For Shantu Ya', this was a realm never seen, a realm with no subjective

references, no self-haunting fantasies of what one yearned for or feared, what

fantasy pleased and which displeased. Everything, everything around and inside

Shantu Ya' just was. Without the restrictions of self-image or intention, all he

beheld was a field of awareness like a huge, unbounded sea where fleeting

waves of thought and feeling gently rose and fell as MOW spoke.

Unexpectedly, Shantu Ya' had full recall of his being brought into the

W.E.B., his head opened and leads implanted connecting him to a multitude of

other brains. Now, again, he was taken through the leaps to higher and higher

dimensions, mergings till his vision encompassed the Cosmic Brain, its gigantic

thought-forms awesome as whirling nebulae and black holes consuming

galaxies.

Now, as he experienced that intricate connectedness and expansion

through MOW's psyche, he touched on each being's soul in the Circle directly,

without the distorting filter of personality and social self, able to transmute

into the Cosmic Brain without interpretation or distortion. The Wizard was

convinced that, however MOW had come into being, his unfathomable nature

suited his calling to perfection.

The Chimeras of the Inner Circle recognized this too, for they all stood

on their hind legs to face MOW, swinging their long necks up and down and

hissing their emphatic sound for "Yes! Yes! Yes!

 

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Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010