by Douglas Gabriel
In the north, there is an island that looks desolate and barren to the uninitiated eye but is, in fact, home of the Master of the Threshold who guards a holy river where the narwhals go to take their last breath and die on the land they have always longed for, later, to be swept back into the sea at the river’s mouth to their final resting place. There, at the place where fresh water and saltwater meet, where land and sea create the shore; there, between land and water, the northern lights and the ocean’s dark depths are where myth and reality meet.
The Master of the North sings his songs to the World Tree which reaches to the stars that are motionless above his head, like so many distant fires twinkling amongst the limbs of the tree that reach into the dark sky. This is the place where the sun does not shine for months but the sun’s breath can be seen whipping the waves of colorful northern lights through the star-studded night in spectacular displays of living rainbows that are ever mobile. It is this night-bow of color that creates the wall of the aurora borealis within which you can stand at the top of the world and feel the forces of the rotating earth dividing time and space through the cadence of long, cold, dark nights. This is the brink of the world that stands between the edge of twilight and the advance of dawn. This is the threshold of consciousness for traversing the realms between earth and heaven.
This northland is not quite what it seems even under these singular conditions. For the Master of the Threshold tends the hopes and dreams of the unicorn whales as they take their last breath upon land in hopes of running again through the golden pastures of the Blessed Isle. On the other side of this Threshold is where unicorn dreams come true. and they find the enchanted island where virgin souls, who love them dearly, await their arrival. The unicorn whales’ collective dream is to return to the solid ground they once came from in ancient times. The Master knows them well and appreciates their sacrifice for humanity. For unicorns once roamed all parts of the earth and their horns were the most sensitive wand of power in the natural kingdom. Through the horn of the unicorn, all languages could be understood and healing of every ailment was accomplished.
Of course, the land surrounding a unicorn flourished and blossomed with fruit year-round, like a garden of paradise that reminded humans of Eden. It was from these sacred lands that the Hyperboreans sent their golden apples and peaches of immortality to the gods and goddesses of the ancient worlds. But eventually, unicorns were driven from every land and their horns were taken and sold by the greedy for miserly profit.
Finally, the last unicorns were driven into the sea and became narwhals who wondered north into the coldest lands were humans are seldom found. There in the far north, they came to live in between the ice-flows where the killer whales cannot reach them, under the northern lights dancing around the pole star. In the northland, many falling stars come to their rest and the sounds of the flowing ocean currents, the Nine Great Sisters, turn the earth on its axis like a colossal grist mill. The Nine Sisters grind out salt, gold and meal for the whole world by churning the nine deep ocean currents that long for warmth but love the salty cold. Only there, at this threshold between heaven and earth, can narwhals hear the music of the spheres, see the aurora borealis and resonant with the rotating earth that sings out humanity’s love of the divine. Human thoughts of wisdom and acts of love create brilliant ribbons of colorful aurora that fly around the Blessed Isle sending messages to the heavens above.
This crown of light and symphony of color and sound creates a living wall that separates waking consciousness from dreamless sleep and encircles the Blessed Isle. It is a tall fortress that surrounds the Mountain of the North that reaches to the sky like a world tree where the stars hang like fruit. This is the land of eternal wakefulness inside of deep sleep, the sun at midnight within the dark cold of endless night. This land is where humans tread lightly, where our wealth cannot be stolen, and our dreams may always dwell.
What a wonder! The spirit of the narwhal arises at death and enters the Blessed Isle as the Master watches and tends each gentle soul as it rises from seeming death and ascends the slopes of the sacred mountain to the dazzling pole star above.
Often the Master of the Threshold takes on his form as a golden seal with skin that glows like radiant sunlight. He dives to the depths of the sea or frolics near the river where the sea laps against the Blessed Isle and washes the remains of the liberated narwhals into the deep waters below the river’s mouth. His radiance illuminates the deep ocean shelf that has been carved out by rip-tides just offshore. The great mountains of the island form a horseshoe valley that drains the slopes into a central river flowing with a mighty force into the sea. Fresh water and salt water combine into a milky white brackish water that creates opaque veils hiding the deep waters. The golden seal dives deeper below the shelf to the place where narwhal remains have rolled to their resting place for thousands of years.
There is a hush over the unicorn whale’s final resting place and an eerie sense of ancient silence and sacred respect looms. The mounds of narwhal tusks speak of the passing of millennia and sing in resonance with the hum of the earth rotating around this mountain of ivory tusks. The golden seal takes a tusk in his mouth and swims back to the hut where the Master uses the tusk to create replicas of the earth’s biological sphere as living homes in the north for the initiated.
Behind the small hut of the Master lies a beautiful valley with a broad plain above which is built a city of light, invisible to most, with twelve great gates and seven concentric rings within, topped with three mighty towers. A flashing sword of a guardian bars the way as the living wall of color prevents anyone who is not in a state of dreamless sleep from entering the city. Each night, a great host of people arrive through the different entrances and gather in groups throughout the seven rings to discuss great matters of life and affairs of humanity. Wise judges, wonderful teachers, wizards of music, math and magic are there to answer questions and pose riddles that delight and illuminate the mind. Some, who have recently awakened, believe they are in a library or a school or a temple of some sort. They studiously develop their skills and hone their courage for the battle outside the walls of this sanctuary. Some visitors arrive each night and build new and more wonderful sections of the city but do not consciously know that they are there and cannot clearly see their surroundings.
From the city’s three central towers ray forth forms of light that have never been seen before in the waking world. These flashings of light and color create wondrous worlds of luminous consciousness that can take on any form or background in any time or space imaginable. They sound forth lyrics and songs of the divine and paint pictures that are timeless and full of wisdom. Brilliant columns of light stream from the three towers and unite in a great fountain of effulgent light connecting the city with the entire earth, the sun, the planets and the starry sky. The city shines forth with light like the sun and luminous ribbons of color paint the dark sky like flowing curtains hanging from heaven to earth.
The city of the Blessed Isle hovers over the valley of the unicorns. The narwhal’s dying songs and hopeful dreams create the foundation upon which this wondrous city and the Temple of Sophia is built. The risen body of Christ, the Being of Love, can also be found there as a new heavenly kingdom come to earth to unite with Sophia, the Being of Wisdom. When Love and Wisdom unite, sacred ground is created. This spiritual ground is called by many names in many lands, like: the divine city foursquare, New Jerusalem, Shamballa, Home of the Jade Emperor in the North, Mount Meru, Tushita Heaven, Eden Regained and Paradise Found. The Master of the Threshold is aware of all of these traditions and helps ferry humans across the holy river to the Temple of Sophia. Many spiritual beings have worked for millennia to create this sacred isle and protect it from the uninitiated. A drought of sleep and forgetfulness overwhelms the uninitiated who approaches the veil of Sophia that hides the burgeoning wisdom of worlds that burst forth from the fountain of wisdom.
The Master of the Threshold is also a great blacksmith who gathers the meteorites that fall throughout the northland and takes them to the fastness of the Iron Mountain on the Blessed Isle and there he smelts them down until he purifies the palladium gold from the mix of iron, cobalt, nickel, and other metals. When he unites this meteoric gold with purified carbon and iron, he creates the most wondrous metal known to man that has supersensible qualities. This metal never rusts and can cut through any other metal. It is this meteoric metal that will defend the faithful in the coming cold days of the wolf, for this heavenly forged metal glows with light and gives off warmth and nourishment to those who know the divine and have turned from dark to light. This heavenly metal cannot harm the flesh of the initiated and protects them day and night. It is from this metal that the Archangel Michael’s sword of light was created to defend the Throne of God. Michael used his sword of light to cast down the old dragon from the starry realms to the dark cold earth.
When the Master combined the meteoric gold with the essence of the purified bodies of the initiated, he fulfilled the prophecy of the forging of the Sampo that was spoken about in Norse mythology, in the Kalevala. This new Sampo, the magic mill of the north, gives forth three gifts of gold, salt and meal while flashing colored lights are emitted from its rotating lid. These three gifts are heaven’s response to humanity’s nightly offerings of perfected thinking, feeling and willing that arise during sleep. These gifts of humanity are offered up each night in the Temple of Sophia and are rewarded with gold, salt and meal from the newly forged Sampo, the heavenly mill of the northland. The gift of gold is the love of the divine which is planted in each person’s heart, salt is the fruit of higher thinking, and meal is spiritual nourishment for the physical body. Salt, gold and meal are also other names for the divine gifts of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition that are found on the Blessed Isle naturally and nurtured by the Beings of Wisdom in the Temple of Sophia.
When you remember your spiritual nature, the possibility arises to begin to sense this sacred land that reminds us so much of our home in the stars. Someday, WE each will become a Master of the Blessed Isle who lovingly tends the crossing of the threshold between this world and the divine world of wisdom.