The heavens have their own presences and processes that mirror and compliment those of the underworld, but the underworld has a few repeating paths. Things that surface in experience and the minds eye as well as in dreams. Where the heavens have apathy, the underworld has fury. Where the heavens have inspiration, the underworld has provocation. Each and every thing having it’s mirror.

The path that perhaps springs most readily to mind in peoples experience of the underworld is contact with the devourer. The devourer is not the same entity as death. Death tends to be a liberator and guide where the devourer detains and is perceived as a tormentor. When one encounters the devourer, there is often fear of losing ones mind or soul, even perhaps fear for ones life, and the devourer is not just an eater of flesh. The devourer often manifests as a rapist as well. This spirit, presence, force, call it what you will, is the embodiment of our own blind appetites. That sense we have when without any comfort of reason we pursue a course of action that serves only to gratify one of our impulses or more morbid curiosities. We can flee the devourer or we can face it. The risk, as has always been the case, is to remain forever confined to the darkness. With every challenge, the risk of being lost or condemned is always close at hand, but we are our own jailor as well as liberator.

How does one face the devourer? One faces the devourer by realizing the devourer is blind. Like the Cyclops, it only ever sees one thing, and it accepts any bait offered it at face value, which means we can give it our ego in order to preserve our soul. We can give it our ideals in order to escape with our real strengths. The devourer hunts us by certain set patterns. There aren’t countless self images. There are only a limited number of roles or masks. These masks generate a psychic scent the devourer follows. The most common mask, and the one most popular with the devourer, is the victim. Those who see themselves as victims send off a psychic cry that is like a stuck rabbit for a wolf.

Shall we move onto another of the powers of the underworld? The wailer.

The wailer is the goddess Nepthys, the grand banshee, the screamer of despair. She seeks not the victim, but the despondent. Those who despise themselves and thus all life. For those who weep without wisdom she comes offering her own brand of comfort and many accept her embrace with open arms. The wailer is a grandmother spirit that will let you believe whatever you want about your suffering, and laugh in your face as you keep playing the game of pretend that brought you into her parlour in the first place. The wailer is a sly one though. She is so fond of her humour that if you take even a moment to ask what is so funny about your situation, she will let you in on the joke, and thus show you the way out of her home.

All of these seem to be parasitic energies? A virus is harmful only until it becomes symbiotic. Many plagues are now the seeds of our own evolution, but the underworld journey is not something many are well equipped or willing to undertake, and few are the truly awakened in this realm of darkness.

Now we can discuss the slayer. Few see the slayer because he prefers to wear your face, or the face of those you consider a threat. The slayer revels in the willingness that souls have to see anyone as an enemy, and offer the promise that your problem could be over in a moment if you just give in to his desires, dance his dance, answer the cry of the blood hounds. We can easily get trapped in the hunt and not see the waste we make of the world. The slayer is quite strong in the world today. He holds sway over many minds.

Another so called friend of humanity is the dealer, the merchant. I don’t mean human traders. I mean that intelligence that encourages you to put a material value on anything and everything. To consider even the sacred as a medium of trade. What would you give for true love? The dealer will offer it to you. What would you give for deep wisdom? The dealer will offer you an easy road to that as well. All of the ways of the dealer are very easy.

What does the dealer get in turn? Your attention. Your faith. Your imagination. From his point of view you weren’t using them anyway. You didn’t want them so it was a fair trade. We got objects, sex objects, solutions to problems that weren’t originally even problems for you, plenty of channels for all that energy, while your actual creative powers get used by the dealer to make more objects. But the dealer is a being of his word, a deal is a deal, and when you realize that the promise doesn’t deliver the experience, he refunds your awareness. Then perhaps not so politely asks you to leave, usually with the parting gift of a financial loss to remember him by.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~