Among the Stars, Into the Abyss

This was my introduction to the Otherworldly, on February 6th, 2011, in the Province of Québec:

After a six-hour-long near-death experience (in which I entered a state of indescribable communion with the Great God Pan in his highest cosmic form, looking as if he was made of all the stars and galaxies in the Universe), my mother told me that the first time she came to visit me at the hospital, right after surgery, when I was practically comatose, she clearly heard her sister’s voice in the room with us.

My aunt was telling her, “I’m so sorry, I was so selfish, I’m so sorry…” over and over again. That freaked my mother the hell out, so much so that she was still very deeply disturbed even a year afterwards.

I naturally DIDN’T tell her about my whole experience on the other side—the part where Pan looked at me from the corner of his eye and smiled upon me knowingly, and I then fell into his endlessly spiralling ram’s horns, literally made of the fabric of the cosmos, and ended up walking down a spiral staircase made of black stone. Not a proper staircase, really, simply steps made of what was probably onyx, floating above oblivion.

After quite some time walking down the onyx steps, I found my aunt completely listless on the stairs (she had violently put an end to her life five years earlier), and she said, “I’m more lost than ever. This is the Abyss. I’m more lost than ever.”

Without thinking, I took her hand and replied, “You’re not lost anymore. I’ve found you.”

She looked up, her eyes full of life again, and that was it. The next thing I remember was waking up at the hospital days later.

About a month later, I was at the public library when I noticed a tall, young, beautiful woman looking at me, smiling. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember who she was. It suddenly hit me that she obviously was my aunt, looking as she did in my childhood, when she was in her twenties. When I turned around, she literally disappeared.

I rationalized it as an unintentional “Orpheus travelling to the Underworld to rescue the soul of a loved one” sort of journey. In this day and age, for heaven’s sake.

I haven’t seen her since. And my life now, from waking to sleep, is devoted to the mysteries of Pan.