Liminal Tales

It’s been a while, again. Things have been busy for me the last few months, though.

Years ago, back in 2017 or 2018 (I’d have to look), Anubis asked me into a position with Him. It was a liminal thing. He asked me to be His official consort in the Between…that’s the liminal no-man’s-land that exists between this world and others or Otherworlds and each other. Ish. And I agreed. By that point I’d worked as His magickal counterpart/partner in things that felt so very far above my pay grade, but each time it worked out and went well. So it didn’t seem so far out really.

I took that Work and commitment very seriously, but went into it thinking the titles were more de facto. Titles are cheap in the Between; anyone can claim any title, style themselves any way they please, and no official and centralized authority exists to deny it. Anubis has the strength and magick and respect to hold His titles, so if I was working with Him under his auspices then it made sense there be honorary things.

The night came and I’d made, under direction from Anubis, all these symbols and jewelry and tools (so maybe I should have seen it going somewhere, but it’s what I do as an artist and so I saw it in that context) and I wore them and was dressed up in this ceremonial garb. And thus I gave my word publicly in the astral and Anubis presented me Out There…as His wife, His Sacred Consort, and His Sacred Queen in the Between. I think that’s what it feels like to be hated, or to be despised at the very least. There were a few beings happy or maybe just polite, but mostly it felt like hurricane-force wind that sounded like “who the $#!% is this?” and/or “how dare He?” blowing over me. I still sort of feel chills remembering standing there holding His hand so tight, hoping they couldn’t tell I was shaking at that moment.

In the days that followed, I did the Work as I understood it and Anubis had additional things He wanted me to do and learn. And maybe a week after, some spirits Out There attacked me and a couple spirit friends intending to do awful things to us for my sake—and almost worse, it was in a public place in the Between and not one of the other forty beings present intended to raise a finger to intervene—but I fought them off and Anubis dealt with the ones I didn’t. So, I realized He was hoping for or even expecting me to take a larger view of my position and that everyone else was treating me as if it were already so. So…maybe it was and I didn’t quite known it yet. I wasn’t tricked or anything: He told me the titles, described the job, did everything but give me a checklist and daily schedule. The trouble is, I’d spent just enough time in the Between to know how fleeting and ephemeral and hard to pin down things like authority and sovereignty can be Out There and so I didn’t misunderstand the scope of my job in relation to Anubis’s so much as the scope of His that I was joining.

There was this strange deck of cards Anubis  had me get that was unlike any others I’ve seen, were read completely differently, had odd meanings and associations, and I received messages once He’d taught me how…but I had no way of understanding them, no context. I was still just learning how things worked in the Between, didn’t know most of the major players, had hardly been anywhere but the Free Court’s moving camp and his caravanserai fortresses Out There. He had asked for and received my oath and given me titles under His auspices to a job I simply qualified for, and I wasn’t prepared to half-it and didn’t deserve them until I saw and knew and understood to right by them.

Anubis agreed with me: if I didn’t enough to do it right, then I was correct I shouldn’t be doing it yet. And He sort of…suspended it for a while. He didn’t take anything back, but it was like it was made mostly dormant except for my offerings in support of Him, and then I spent the next year or two involved in other Otherworld things that had been in the works since 2015 and 2016 and had to happen the way they did. And yet, almost every step I took and choice I made and thing I learned felt like it was further into the liminal aspect of my myself and my path. Then 2019 was all about what was to come after and I learned a lot that year and all of it trending still toward the liminal.

In the waning part of the year, Anubis asked me if I still meant what I’d said before. Did I still want to see the Between, really see it, get to know it…all of it, good and bad. I said of course. He said I knew enough—now—to try to do that. Beginning January of 2020, he would put my name back Out There and make it known in the Between I was under His authority but could be called upon separately, myself. He made sure I understood that I could call upon Him anytime, anywhere Out There, for any reason, and He would intervene and answer, but otherwise I’d be working on my own. The only way to get to know the places and people of the Between was to get Out There and get to know them, the only way for them to get to know me was to do it out from under His shadow, and the only way to really learn the parts of the work I didn’t already know was do them.

So that’s what I’ve spent the last four years and change doing, that’s the dreamwalking that’s happened at least two-thirds of every night since. I’ve seen so much and learned so much, and I’ve discovered a lot of things about myself, too. Back in February of this year, Anubis told me it was time to come back and do this together again, instead of just in the same direction. During the eclipse recently I rededicated myself and all my tools and on April 30^th, He sort of presented me Out There again after the years…only this time I was recognized.

Honestly, it was harder than I’d thought it would be to come back to the official Work and the titles and everything. I was a lot more comfortable thinking of myself as the nobody who could help out sometimes that I was pretending to be. (I ended operating up under three personas: one that was known, one that was who I was back in another life when I secretly did work in the Between, and one that was meant to be as hard to recognize as possible for the times the work demanded not drawing attention; eventually the fact the first two were one person was known, as well as the fact there was a shadowy third who moved under the radar.) And there were times I was told the only reason they felt they could call for help was because I was just a spirit not so different maybe from them. I don’t want that to change. But they had four years to know that’s what I believe, too, and so far things are mostly the same except sometimes Anubis and I travel and Work out there together.

The Work itself has been terrifying and exhausting and I could never tell anyone all the things I’ve experienced, but it’s not something I think I could ever give up. It’s a continuation of who I chose to be before, only this time it doesn’t have to be a secret. And I’ve heard what spirits said and seen how their energy and emotion change when they realize someone came; they called and wished for help, sometimes without any real hope it would work, only it did. I get it: I lived as a soul for a long time Before in despair and for years in this life the same. I remember what it’s like to wish or pray for help long after you have any belief left just because you don’t know what else to do and it’s like one last act of defiance to pretend the universe is the sort of place where if you cry for help you might get it. In some small way, I get to be a little for others what Anubis and the Free Court were for me and I get to do it alongside Anubis and with the blessing of the Free Court. And that’s everything.