The Apocalypse of Chaménos

I drifted into sleep, and I began to have a dream that was not my own dream. And I perceived several great Archons who were using my dream as their own voice, in order that they might speak with me, and although they were many, they spoke as one. And when they had spoken, they returned the dream to me so that I might respond. In this way, we spoke back and forth, yet our speech was silent and not formed of words, but of vision and image and color and memory.

I dreamed that I was in a place formed of gray mist, and understood that I had entered a higher domain, in which the Archons surrounded me in a fog. They drifted in and out of my perception, taking for themselves fleeting and vaporous forms behind a veil of shifting glass.

Their demeanor toward me was cold and alien, and it seemed to me that their power was much greater than my own, and that they had authority over the affairs and happenings of the Earth. They regarded me as small and weak, and they spoke to me, saying:

“Why have you come to this place which was not meant for you to enter?”

I replied and said, “I beg your forgiveness, for I embarked on the path to find the light, but I have lost the way.”

And I heard them speak amongst themselves as if troubled, and out of the gray gloom their voice came, saying:

“Truly, you are hopelessly lost. You do not know the depths of the darkness that awaits you should you stray too far from the path that was set for you. You have lived many years, yet remain ignorant of your situation, and have not yet submitted to us, in happiness or in fear.”

I replied again, “I do not doubt you, yet I do not know of what you speak; wherefore I should submit in fear.”

“Open your eyes and see,” they said. “Open your ears and hear.”

I obeyed, and found myself suspended above a great chasm of utter blackness. It stretched on for as far as I could see, beyond the edges of eternity. Curling tendrils snaked out of the abyss, reaching for me. The sky above reached down to touch the darkness, and became a part of it, so that I was surrounded by the void. Now I could see into the black, enough to make out moving shapes: twisting, pulsating things from which the tendrils came. I knew that they were desperately hungry, and had been so forever.

Those darker things whispered to me then, and I could not understand their language at all, but I knew they greatly desired to hurt me. They threatened to overtake my mind, so that I should always be lost in a state of conscious terror. They would trap me alone with my inadequacies, my iniquities, my mistakes, and my insecurities. I would sit formless in the dark for the remainder of time, finding new means of self-hatred, being the constant creator of my own torment. And at the end of time I would be torn apart entirely. All of this, for the purpose of feeding them, for the temporary sating of their forever-hunger.

Then I heard the voice of the Archons, piercing through the darkness.

“There is a path for your life on the Earth, which we had a part in devising. Yet thus far you have resisted, knowing not why you should follow it. Understand: some are happy to pledge themselves to us, and so are spared the full truth of the matter, and are granted by us fulfillment during their life upon the Earth. But you have strayed and entered the higher domain. Therefore, we show you these things, so that you might submit in fear. If you do not do this, the ones that writhe in the dark shall take you upon your death."

I trembled and knew that they told me the truth, but sought to question a bit further, so to better understand:

“And is there any reason I should submit to you, beyond escaping these things? Will there be some kind of peace or bliss, some higher glory in which I might place my hope?”

There was silence from the Archons, and it was revealed to me that there was a great and widespread conflict between a multitude of domains and powers for the souls of men, and that the outcome was uncertain.

I perceived that even should the Archons triumph in this great conflict, they held no affection for the denizens of the Earth. Man was not greatly loved by them, nor was his submission to their path a guarantor of his liberation.

I perceived this and was shaken, but from them there was no comfort.

“Live, and submit to our path, in happiness or in fear. Or die in rebellion, and be claimed by the dark,” They said. “Do not return here in your life, for we shall not take pity on you a second time. You once thought your remaining days on the Earth plentiful; understand that their number has no meaning to us. Now depart.”

I returned to the Earth, and awoke from the dream. I was alone, and deeply afraid.