Three Trials
Buffeted by unseen forces, Dodo tries desperately to fly away from the center of the vortex, but it’s useless. His wings are too small, and he is too weak. Aggravating the whole situtation are huge vacuousness ordnances exploding all around him. Dodo feels as if they are pushing him towards the center of the vortex, which is definitely not where he wants to go. Adding to his terror now that he knows he is not going to be pulled into a million pieces is: How is he going to navigate this vortex? He wishes he could hear DJ’s guiding voice, but he is gone; so too are the watery voices from his Forsaken Playlist… evaporated into nothing leaving Dodo without sound or images to navigate by.
Just then, a huge red blob explodes inches in front of him, making him veer violently to the right. Dodo employs as much wing strength as he can, which isn’t much but enough to avoid the blob and obliteration. Dodo’s heart races, and so do his thoughts, which go something like this:
“How can I… a sorry misshaped bird with useless wings… navigate this stormy vortex…”
A strange thought interrupts his victim thinking that simply states: “I’ve been here before… I don’t need to go here again.” So, with a slight turn of his wings, he banks to the left. As he does, the negative voice in his head fades, going something like this:
“I might as well die… nobody know…”
Just like that, the victim voice is gone!
“This must be progress,” Dodo thinks joyfully! However, now he’s heading back into the thick orange fog left behind by the red blob’s explosion. He can’t see anything for the fog is getting thicker, making it hard for Dodo to breath. Soon, Dodo is completely disorientated with no idea which way is right or left—even up or down. He wishes for a sound or speck of light to guide him.
“Heck,” he thinks, “I would love to slam into something hard just so I could follow it to someplace solid.”
His thoughts are abruptly brought to a standstill by a booming voice echoing from the vacuousness fog that says:
“We do not approve of your mission Dodo. It has no meaning to the system. Rejoin the system or be terminated.”
Dodo is shocked by the power of the voice and how it seems to be a strange amalgamation of many voices of different ages, genders, races, and dialects blended into one singular thunderous sound. So many questions tumble through his mind such as…
Is this the voice of God?
Where is it coming from?
Who else is out here in the void with me?
Why can’t I see them?
How do I rejoin the system?
Equally puzzling to Dodo is why the voice sounds so cruel. Obviously, it has no idea what he’s just been through for if it had, it surely would offer kindness and compassion, not threaten his life!
Stammering Dodo asks meekly, “Who are you?“
“We are reality Dodo! You must face reality! Your mission is dirt… it has no bearing on reality. We are everything. We have always been and always will be all of reality. You can only submit to us…bird…submit and obey!”
Dodo doesn’t even have a second to respond to the demand because coming at him sounding like 1,000 screeching cats are reality barbs. These are weapons meant to injury, maim, or kill the beings they are flung at. Usually, they are invisible, but Dodo sees them coming because of the thick orange fog.
Ducking, he barely misses being hit by the first barb, which whizzes over his head ruffling his feathers. All he can do is tuck his tiny wings tight against his body and let himself drop. He plummets further and faster than he ever thought possible. As he falls, he considers: “Just how big is this vortex? Does it not have a beginning, middle, and end as all things in reality must have or does it go on forever? Perhaps this place is not real…“
The further Dodo falls, the darker it becomes and the colder Dodo grows. Soon, he can no longer feel his wings or feet; he doesn’t even feel like he’s falling anymore. After a long time, he realizes he is moving… just so slowly and in such large circles it doesn’t seem like he’s moving. Finally, far in the distance, he sees a purple-blue glow and knows this must be what he’s moving towards… or rather being pulled towards like waste flushed down a toilet.
He tries to fly, but there is nothing for his wings to push against because there is no air… there is only silence… until there is not! What he hears is a sound so strange, so alien he wonders if it is real. The sound is a low trembling vibration that starts high and descends into a deep, guttural groan, which repeats over and over so it is one continuous tone. In his bones, he knows it is the endless cry of an uncountable number of sentient beings about to be erased from the White Board of consciousness, but why? He remembers the sad stories DJ told him of sentients who had become victims of unspeakable and treacherous fates through the forsaken songs, but this cry is even more awful than those sad stories and songs—something much more dreadful is going on. Dodo flaps his wings and struggles, but it is useless!
“Anyhow, what’s the point?” Dodo thinks, “I’ve been flung here into this place of nothingness…perhaps it is a holding tank before oblivion where my existence has no meaning. Could this really be where all sentient beings end up?”
Deeply troubled, a new understanding begins to well up inside of him… he senses that not all sentient beings end up here at all, and an image jumps into his mind of hunters aiming their guns at a small pack of elephants. They shoot, making one of the young elephants run away from her mother. But, she doesn’t get far before she falls hard on one knee. The hunters show no mercy and shoot at her until she is dead. Dodo knows these men are hunting for pleasure. They will not eat her meat—oh, they may take a tusk or tooth as a keepsake of their bravery and prowess as hunters. But they do not recognize her pain and suffering, nor will they ever honor her sacrifice in protecting her mother and baby sister by drawing their fire.
Dodo feels a deep despair at the futility of life, and it’s not just his own life. He senses how all sentient beings are slowly crawling out of the Sea of Unconsciousness but they have been pitted against despicable forces…evil spirits…fragments that have broken off from the divine and now torment and interfere with the progress of sentient beings. These sinister elements have slipped into creation through the backdoor, as it were, bringing with them disease, accidents, and death.
A kaleidoscope of horrifying images flash through Dodo’s mind—children dying in their mothers’ arms succumbing to starvation and preventable diseases wrought by rich men who are bombing everything around them, making all the food disappear. Dodo knows these men have been devoured by their unconsciousness, making them capable of the most despicable acts… acts that shattered, scattered, and maligned life. It is the same unconsciousness at work in people who hear the cries of these children…the cries of all suffering beings, but do nothing to help. By taking no action in the face of evil, life is further denigrated and derailed, and the hope it may someday achieve something delicate and exquisite…something ethereal and divine…becomes more lost and less likely.
Dodo knows he is caught in a death spiral created by these powerful heinous forces and their earthly vassals—the unconscious ones who have descended into this fiendish realm in spirit before their earthly death. First, victims of the powerful weapon the evil ones forged long ago—the Blade of Unconsciousness—now they are minions wearing many masks in life—deception, denial, apathy, fear-mongering. No matter their disguise, the results are the same: Chaos that assaults and rocks the cradle of life—a matrix created of peace, balance, and harmony meant to help sentient beings make the difficult journey to consciousness. And, this vortex is a concentration of all this evil spreading through the world like hungry worms.
As the purple-blue light looms larger, Dodo sees there is something moving inside of it. His skin begins to crawl, and then every fiber in his body screams: “Fly Dodo, Fly!”
But he can’t fly! He can only swirl along with all the other beautiful sentient beings trapped in this vortex of evil. And now far more terrifying to Dodo is the knowledge that consciousness does not end at the moment of death because it is energy, and energy is never destroyed. He realizes the consciousness of the beings swirling with him have been hunted… much like the hunters who shot the elephant. These evil spirits haunt and stalk living beings at the time of their death when they may be afflicted by terror or cling to their earthly body, causing them to become even more disorientated. Caught in tremendous turbulence and shrouded by fear and confusion as they shift between energy states, the sentients become easy targets for the evil hunters who lure them to places like this with promises of deliverance or a brand-new life. The endless sound permeating this place is their final plea for salvation, a cry for mercy, but there is none, and so it simply becomes a lullaby of obliteration.
Now all Dodo can do is swirl with these dying golden remnants of consciousness. Resigned to his fate, he swirls faster and faster towards the thing at the center. As he does, the last strands of hope slip from his hold. But, just as the final thread is falling from his grasp, DJ reappears! Dodo’s heart leaps for joy, but also seizes up with fear for DJ is too close to the beast, and he knows even an apparition can be pulled into this monstrous force… and if DJ goes, there’s no salvation for him because DJ is his only hope!
Dodo holds his breath waiting for DJ to make a move… and move he does!
DJ begins to dance, and as he dances, magnificent colors radiate from him making sounds like nothing Dodo has ever heard! It is an ancient chant sung by 100 men who understand how dangerous the world has become since evil entered it. They know how evil manifests through wild beasts and unpredictable natural events. They also know the most dangerous form it takes and that is inside other human beings…for these are people who have become bent by the gravity of unconsciousness. This is how the blade works, it bends a human back to the unconsciousness from where they emerged, causing them to abandon their ascent to consciousness. And, if this human lacks resilience…like the water that sprung from Dodo through his tears and then spread through him holding him together as he began to break apart…then these humans snap, becoming severed from their soul. Such a human is capable of killing men, women, and children simply for power, control, a queer idea, or entertainment. It is a sickness that runs deep through the marrow of life. And the diabolical consequences of these human beings have been recounted again and again by story tellers such as Shakespeare in King Richard III—a most despicable tale about a man plagued by his own physical deformity who then becomes devoured by a more decrepit spiritual deformity that leads him to destroy and kill almost every kin and friend he has, except his mother. She alone seems to survive his cruelty and curses him during their final encounter just before he rides to his doom. But, even death does not scrub this plague from the living left behind for it is an affliction of the soul—thus, it is eternal and will always be reborn.
The men DJ calls forth know how this story goes. They know where and how the evil flows. They know it exists in all beings, thus they repeat their chant—Hammer Hippyer—to gather their collective wisdom and strength needed to vanquish it!
Their voices are raw, but they are beautiful, unified, and hypnotic. The drummers beats begin to weave a web across the void using the rainbow light. Drum beats mix with human voices, and Dodo begins to think they sound like birds and bugs and frogs. Soon Dodo is completely mesmerized and feels transported to a warm, green, wonderful place where he is safe.
Abruptly, the men change the chant and the drum beats grow harder and sound more menacing as the men begin to chant: hanga dýra mingja. As they chant this new refrain, they also groan and cry out in sounds of agony or shouts of anger. The mood goes from croaking crickets and frogs to fighting wolves and raging beasts, which frightens Dodo.
Dodo wishes he understood the words they are chanting for if he understood, he might not be afraid. As if DJ hears his wish, the words are translated directly into Dodo’s head. The men are chanting: hang the animals.
Dodo’s heart almost stops as he imagines himself nailed to the net of light being woven by the drummers and chanters for he’s an animal, is he not!
Terrible thoughts consume him:
Are they going to hang me to this net?
Has DJ forsaken me?
What terrible trick is this?
Dodo is convinced DJ is nothing but a terrible trickster. How could he be anything but a cheat, fraud, and villain in this realm of evil and obliteration. It is all simply a game to DJ, a cruel form of entertainment for the beast as it eats…like a pinch of salt adding flavor to the feast.
DJ is not his savior! DJ is a demon! DJ is the executioner his doom!
Special Thanks to Music Artists and Translator
Artist: Heilung
Song: Hamrer Hippyer
Translator: Birmm (made on Fri, 16/02/2018)
Postscript:
Since publishing this episode of the Divine Dodo’s journey, I came upon this image two days later in C.G. Jung’s book Dreams. [i.e., page 151, Figure 28. Capture of the Leviathan with the sevenfold tackle of the line of David with the crucifix as bait—Herrad of Landsberg’s Hortus deliciarum (12th Century)]. The parallels to Dodo’s journey are interesting for the images I have been creating for The Divine Dodo story occur spontaneously (often as a quick vision or flash of imagination) and the story is rising in a similar manner. This part of the journey was written and drawn before I came upon this image. Jung is using it to interpret a dream of a patient he was working with at the time. Part of Jung’s life work is the idea that we all rest upon a great sea of the collective unconscious that is contained in each human being and within this sea are eternal archetypes. Just as the physical body has a heart, lungs, spleen… our minds have psychic organs (e.g., the king, the queen, the trickster), and these are the archetypes; they have formed the bedrock of myths and legends for millennia. The stories of gods and goddesses and their dramas have informed and defined human civilizations, but recently many humans have lost this vision or ability to see into the unconscious. Archetypes are infinitely diverse. No one civilization or culture or time has any more claim to them than any other. It is simply part of what it means to be human—a multidimensional being that is equipped with body, mind, and spirit. However, some civilizations, cultures, and times have understood this better than others and have learned to navigate this realm that exists in everyone better. Coming back to this picture and the Dodo’s journey, it is significant because of how this part of the Dodo’s tale ends… perhaps Dodo is about to encounter the Leviathan! This was certainly not in the realm of my awareness when I wrote or drew it. And, seven is a significant number to Dodo in upcoming parts of his tale. I shared this in humble humility as an observer of my own life and nothing more. It seemed important to share a little bit of how this story is being written and drawn and created, and then the small synchronistic discoveries I have made in conjunction with this fictional journey, especially how they may relate to myth and the collective unconscious.
Sapience 
5 thoughts on “The Divine Dodo — Hanga Dýra Mingja”