Cinderella blew light across the Four Directions. She tried to follow the Fairy Godmother’s instructions. But nothing stopped the fraying spiral’s disintegration. Tried and failed. Was it that she didn’t believe it possible to return? Now that she was at one with the dream, at one with the sacred whirlwind of life, divorced from her body and time, could she ride the streams of light and return to her body?
Did she want to return? Love, earthly love, was a vague memory.
The Fairy Godmother of the South stamped her foot. Cinderella felt the reverberation in the strands of the spiral she held in her hands. She looked down at her hands. She pulled them across the gravitational forces of Nature with supernatural strength she raised her hands to her face. Then she leaned over to peer at her feet. Her dream body twinkled composed of starlight.
She heard as if traveling down a long tunnel of time, the South Fairy Godmother shout. The echo jarring every cell, once again she felt the turquoise beads pressing on her heart a message of comfort and nurturance. Inexplicably she wanted to laugh.
Did she just giggle at the Fairy Godmother’s frustration?
The Fairy Godmother of the West shouted, “Oh for heaven’s sake! Follow the transverse waves. Your dream body composed of light will travel through the vacuum of the Chimera, to reach you where your elemental body is trapped.”
Cinderella gave a great shuddering sigh. Once again she pulled her hands of light up to her face. It was as if she pulled against the weight of the ocean. Immense strength required to define her dream body. She peered over to look at her feet. Now, once again, her dream body had feet!
“But can anyone define a dream?” She wavered. The Fairy Godmothers faded. When she next felt the West Fairy Godmother’s grip the light of her dream body stabilized. Now the Fairy Godmother of the North also stood beside her. “Good, very good, Charlotte. Infuse your light with prayers. Prayers for the Kingdom free of the Chimera’s vacuum. Prayers for the Prince’s freedom, see him At One, vibrant with health, liberated, standing in the Cradle of Life.”
But Cinderella was lost again. Floating through dreams, the cumulative dreams of thousands upon thousands: all the people in the Kingdom. Finally she slipped into the dreams of the Prince. She stirred and sighed.
The Fairy Godmother of the West pinched the skin of Cinderella’s cheek, “Wake up!” she hissed.
Cinderella, floating through layers of dreams could not distinguish the Fairy Godmothers from the millions of images floating throughout the Kingdom. Sweet memories of the years spent with the Prince in her childhood. Running the halls of the castle, dressing up in clothes stored in the attic, stealing the molasses cookies dusted in a fine layer of baker’s sugar from the kitchen, every room was an adventure waiting to be discovered. For days at a time they staged their fun while their parents played in Bridge tournaments.
The Fairy Godmother of the West positioned her self at Cinderella’s side. Brushing aside Cinderella’s hair, leaning into her ear she shouted, “Intentionally rest!”
“What is important about intentional rest?” Cinderella could not quite grasp the significance. The weight of imagination undirected sank through wispy layers of Cinderella’s dreams. She drew imagination to her and embraced the, sometimes frail other times enormous, power of her imagination.
She was sitting in the cave with the Fairy Godmother of the West. Images shifted on the wall beyond the fire. Cinderella found she could enter them at will. She saw Blackie dreaming. His four feet running in the air, belly exposed and his throat open while his head lolled to the side. His tail thumping in the dirt signaled his happiness in the chase. The Fairy Godmother called her. She patted Blackie’s stomach.
In the end it was Cinderella’s love for Blackie that brought her to the Fairy Godmother’s call. Cinderella landed in the dirt beside her with a lurch. The Fairy Godmother laid a hand on her leg. Peering at her with concern, she said, “We almost lost you. Do not indulge yourself in the fragmented images of the undisciplined dream. Combine your imagination and intentionality. Together they unite your biology with consciousness.”
Cinderella drew the words into her belly. Spiral flaring she realized knowledge translated to wisdom was incredibly important. “But I can’t remember why.”
The Chimera floated by like a piece of trash carried downstream engorged on the river of her blood. The stink of its putrification so malodorous Cinderella screamed. The Fairy Godmother and Blackie telescoped into infinity shattering her dream.
Standing in the North, wind siphoning up the gorge, whipped peaks in turquoise blue water. With her belly’s strength Cinderella pulled together light infused with prayer, the quintessence, electromagnetic force distilled with love. She called in the intention of focused power and imagination uniting biology with light.
She was fighting for her life. She fought for her life with the Prince. She fought for the privilege of cultivating the well-being of the Kingdom, joining the sacred and the mundane. Light infused with prayer, the quintessence, the sacred calling of love.
From a great distance, echoing down the canyons of time, she heard the Fairy Godmother of the West saying, “Ceremony. It’s our only chance to break the hold of the Chimera.”
Patting Blackie the Fairy Godmother sighed, “Young love. It doesn’t have the protections and innocence of a baby’s love. Nor does it have the wisdom to avoid these kinds of problems.”
The Fairy Godmother’s instructions were coming together in the language of love: light’s power to transverse the Chimera’s vacuum. Standing at the pinnacle of the Four Directions, blinded by the force and power of the Cradle of Life, Cinderella descended the spiral twining together memories of her family, the Prince, together with a new understanding of the totality encompassing the Kingdom.
Light united with prayer, intention and imagination, biology and consciousness. Initiating light designed to transverse the vacuum. A brilliance tinged pale violet. Absorbing, quintessential, bonded she was transported. She was her dream body, she was spirit infused with light. She was the rising sun. She was at one with the elemental, the substantial life of the physical body.
Opening her eyes she was surrounded by the Fairy Godmothers. She sat on a throne. For the first time she understood the simultaneous nature of forgetting and remembering. Unfathomable yet yielding, golden light infused with the powers of the Four Directions. This throne was centered between Tibetan Mountain dogs. Guardians of the cross roads between substance and spirit, they towered above her. Cinderella pressed her palms together the pressure of bringing her hands together and holding them was enormous.
Swiveling to face the Fairy Godmother of the North she said, “Can you help?”
A nimbus of light edged in violet surrounded the Fairy Godmother. Nodding, she handed Cinderella a staff. “I hope so,” she said. “You’ll need this.”
Cinderella took her staff examining it with wonder. It was infused with violet light, engraved with her symbols. They were no longer the pictures she had drawn. Well, that wasn’t quite right. They were the same images but they were etched like crystal glassware at the palace. She could smell the pine forests of the North when she pressed on the symbol of tree. A joy she had never known flooded Cinderella.
She was transported back to the day before she met the Fairy Godmother of the West. The Prince had taken her on a picnic and taught her the meaning of colors. Pointing to a tree trunk he said, “Brown. I bet you can guess, brown means ‘down to earth.”’
Cinderella laughed clapping her hands together. “Let me guess. Green means growth!”
“And purple?” The Prince nudged her.
Cinderella frowned. She thought of the King’s crown; gold and purple. “Royalty?”
The Prince shouted, “You’re too smart for me!” He took her hand and held it. “Colors have meanings depending on the context. Soon after you work with the Fairy Godmother’s you may be able to see the colors surrounding people.” He winked at her, “Which could be helpful. Okay, red
is a call to action. Yellow illuminates. Blue aids in clear communication, reflecting honesty. Tell me what gold means.”
Leaning back on the picnic blanket Cinderella picked out a molasses cookie dusted white with baker’s sugar. She took a dainty bite and ate thoughtfully. Swallowing she shook her head. She handed the cookie to the Prince.
Taking an enormous bite of cookie, with a spray of crumbs he said, “I’ll give you a hint…” Laughing, chewing, swallowing, he said, “Jewelry is made of gold and what does it represent?”
“Love? No. Wait! Wealth?” Cinderella guessed.
“Very good.” He handed back the little bit of the cookie left.
Looking at the small leftover cookie with dismay, “Hog,” she sniffed.
“You’re losing her!” The Fairy Godmother of the East shouted as she threw a handful of sage into the fire. “For heaven’s sake can’t anyone here make a clean beginning? Keep her attention centered on the throne!”
The Fairy Godmother of the North sent the East Fairy Godmother a withering look, “Charlotte, listen to me. Light purified by prayer draws in the power of heaven transmuting into Quintessential Essence.”
“Can’t you speak plainly?” The Fairy Godmother of the East complained.
The Fairy Godmother of the North, substantial yet concurrently translucent, glared again at the Fairy Godmother of the East, “I know your obsessive about speaking plainly in thoughts. Let me see if I can accommodate you.”
She tapped her foot, a staccato of impatience. The Fairy Godmother of the West winced.
The radiance around the Fairy Godmother of the North grew brilliant. “I’m demonstrating,” she said with a wink at the Fairy Godmother of the East.
Pointing her staff, alight with a corresponding brilliance, she said, “As the Fairy Godmother of the South explained, light is composed of transverse waves that easily travels through a vacuum like the Chimera.”
Stamping the glowing rod its brilliance intensified. Even with their eyes squeezed tightly shut the Fairy Godmothers squeaked. Thunder pounded in the distance. The Fairy Godmother of the North smiled, “Light combined with prayer is an electromagnetic force. Distilled it creates quintessence, the essence of heaven.” Turning to the left and tilting her head she asked sweetly, “Are my thoughts clear enough for you now?”
The Fairy Godmother of the East grimaced, “Stop showing off!”
Humming a corresponding note, the Fairy Godmother of the East, dissolved the mounting north storm. The other Fairy Godmothers opened their eyes with a sigh of relief.
In the East the Fairy Godmother, still holding the pure tone, spoke through the celestial music she had created. “We’re wasting time! Send this quintessential light to Cinderella’s spiral. Thank god she was blessed. The elasticity and spin of the spiral will absorb the vibration of quintessential prayer. I have no idea what will happen next but we’ll take it from there.”
The fluttery hug signaled the arrival of the Fairy Godmother of the East in Cinderella’s dream. “Is this a dream?” she asked. She wasn’t sure.
The Fairy Godmother ignored her question, “Why do so many who use ritual and prayer to generate an effect on the physical world fail?”
She laid her hand on Cinderella’s arm. The heartbeat of a million humming birds shot through Cinderella. She felt the increase in her brain’s metabolism, the eternal and infinite merging with the power of the East and new beginnings.
Humming the same tone she heard the Fairy Godmother sing, Cinderella broke through the Chimera’s vacuum. Light transporting her thought she mumbled, “Beginnings, the point in time or space in which something starts….”
After remembering her picnic with the Prince she wanted nothing more than to see him, feel his arms around her. It was a longing she felt in body-mind-spirit so profound sitting on the throne she began to shake.
What was she missing? What was the component that brought prayer and ceremony alive? Images of her childhood, flashes of memories with the Prince, her body flared with their chemistry, their physical, emotional and spiritual effect on each other.
She felt rather than saw the Fairy Godmother of the North. She was the perfect balance of substance and spirit, elemental and metaphysical. She embodied the electromagnetic force of all things in the material world and something else. Cinderella reached for the pinnacle, the perfect balance between heaven and earth and fell. She tumbled into the heartbeat of the essence of life.
The spiral, the Prince’s love, Cinderella’s love, she felt its flutter; the vibration of quintessence. The pure heavenly substance, drawn through the spiral exploded the Chimera’s web. Quintessence, limitless and endless, uniting substance and spirit, empowering prayer and ceremony awakened within the love Cinderella and the Prince shared.
Epilogue
In the Fairy Godmothers traditions
Students, seekers, and apprentices; having awakened the
individual powers of the Four Directions, seek the Center.
The sacred geography
Where the East, South, West and North intersect:
The strands of remembering and forgetting woven together
Join to become one.
The eternal present, the Center of the Four Directions
Mediates the conflicting,
Synergistic dynamics of the directions
Giving birth to
The transcendent function of creativity
Beauty and truth, in their limitless expressions
Inhabits this sacred realm
No one can understand their totality
Without sitting in the seat
Where remembering and forgetting are at one
A Throne,
The one path with infinite possibilities
The Center is the journey,
The realization
Home to the Self
Embracing completion
Moonlight streamed through the garden along the edges of the castle. The bay trees, hundreds of years old, guarded the four corners of the stone patio. Their branches filtered moonlight. Soapstone pots scared by weather housed herbs. The night air carried a hint of bay leaves.
The Prince stood outside the castle on the stone balcony overlooking the pale pre-dawn outline of unfolding hills. The scent of rich minerals, the earth clean and potent, filled his nostrils. He smiled watching an owl circle high above the panorama barely visible in the edges of dark night. For a moment he was the owl. A night vision more exacting than any other predator the owl’s perspective provided him a vast field. As the owl he chose among many possibilities, potentials and goals. Diving, hurtling soundlessly down, his wings retracted and streamlined, his target had only just heard his piercing cry. Talons striking.
The Prince catapulted back into his body standing with his back to the glass doors framed in wood. He gathered to him a mountain’s stillness waiting for Charlotte to arrive with the Fairy Godmothers. His pounding heart told him the moment was at hand. Would he find her much changed? Did the difference between knowledge and wisdom reside in her?
Could Charlotte feel the vitality of earth, the conduit air, or the streaming fluidity of water and mystery of fire? Curling vapors of miniature flames burst from his fingertips. Dipping into a pool of ever-present water he extinguished fire with a sigh of frustration. This was the element he had the least control over. Maybe Charlotte could help?
Would Charlotte be alive, as he was, to the Four Directions? Would she carry their directional beauties? Not beautiful in the superficial sense of eyes, nose, mouth and ears in perfect proportion. No. He wondered would she be more beautiful because she was authentically alive. Had she claimed the throne, of forgetting and remembering? Only if she held the Four Directions, alive and potent within her, would she be his equal. He could settle for nothing less.
Working with the Fairy Godmothers did Charlotte know how to manifest in the South the material realizations of her Deepest Desires? Did she know how to transform the pains of the inner chil
d with intentional compassion?
In the West where all of life is transformed by the dream had she built her dream body? Could Charlotte walk into her own dreams and the dreams of others? Could she walk between the dreams? Did she embody the perfection and ecstasy of the West? The Prince paced along the edge of the balcony. In the distance he sensed water pulled by its reflection.
Charlotte would need endurance to meet the challenges presented in times of harsh winter, literally and figuratively. Could she dance, choreographing the invisible threads of life and spirit, into greater harmony?
In the East, the land of the old wise ones and new beginnings, did Charlotte have the personal authority required to build a new beginning? Did the sunrise live within her as breaking dawn lived within him? Was it too much to hope for?
The weight of his hopes and desires crashed through him. Carrying him in the tumult to the crest, where the dew point evaporation, signaling a new beginning, the dawning of a new day in their relationship was the yawning abyss at his feet.
Most of all he wondered had she found the place where the center of the Four Directions lived within her? The pinnacle place of beginnings and endings, the boundaries where remembering and forgetting meet, where abiding love flourishes; and if she knew this location within herself would she still want to marry him?
Lost in his reverie he was surprised when Charlotte floated into the circle of his arms. He tugged. She leaned into the kiss. A sharp inhale, their lips whispered words of longing. Articulating, brushing the edges of her mouth, fueled by the star at the center of the solar system, balanced in the filtered dawn piercing the bay trees, their kiss deepened into honey. Melting muscles and bones Charlotte’s joy exploded.
Millions of infinitesimal stars, comets flaming through eternity, they streamed through Charlotte and the Prince as the sweetness of their kiss transformed into starfire. Blackie barked. Charlotte broke the kiss. The moment shattered. The Prince slid his eyes over Blackie’s shiny black fur. It caught flashes of barely visible rainbows in the dawning sunlight.
Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions Page 19
