Tours and fun were had in Edinburgh, the first of which was a tour of the underground and the vaults under the city.
Of course the most morbid, occult (false) and otherwise “spooky” elements of its history were emphasized for the tourist dollar, a little theater can be fun after all!
Upon being brought down into the vaults and into a cell that had no light in it, the guide snuffed out his flashlight and we were thrust into something familiar to me: Silence, darkness profound, wet tepid air and little, very still air at that….the natural state of being deep underground.
Why though would this be familiar to me? As a younger person, from childhood till about my mid twenties, there was a frequent destination in the deserts of New Mexico that provided the same atmospheres, smells and sensations, though much deeper, Carlsbad caverns had familiarized me with this experience. It’s something I’ve always feared but also found impossibly comforting when alone.
As we stood there in the dark, I placed my fingers in my ears anticipating some cheap jumpscare (and was worried over a sudden startle with my heart issue)
As I stood there listening to the muffled mumbling in the dark, I began to feel a strong, distinct and familiar presence: 57
Initially I was put a little on guard, wondering if perhaps there was something that had set him off, some danger as he is my guardian/ protector. He welled up inside of my senses so massive and close and so very present, I truly expected to be able to just make him out faintly in the pitch darkness and I did indeed look! The guides flashlight suddenly flashed back on and the cheap jumpscare never came only the anticipation. As we were hurried out, I lingered here and there, looking into the darkest spots and corridors to see if just maybe…:but nothing was seen, no big badger faces just visible in the black.
A few days later, as my husband and I sat in a public garden off the main road, sipping our coconut milk coffee after a long day of exploring Edinburgh, a small tan mouse ran just across the path and into the flowers, while he may very well have his own little writing soon, his small performance in this story is important in that it turned my mind back to “my animals” as I call them, “The mice and moth” and their connection to nature lead me to think back on 57 and just how heavy and close he felt there in those cells.
What was it? There were of course talks of bad spirits, Covens who left because of maladies and bad energy and so on and so on, perhaps I had conjured him defensively out of some spirit paranoia? But no, that’s not quite how he and those like him work is it?
The animals show up when there is something to be learned.
But why there? Why in that darkest place? Why 57?? Why not Ben? A dungeon or sewer of sorts seems more his calling card? But no, again I’m afraid that’s never quite how these things work.
As I sat in the garden pondering it, my husband pointed out some flowers and then a big hole dug next to them. “Oh! A burrow!” He said, and looking into it, into its darkness the prickle of tears at the corners of my eye and the unexpected lump in my throat, signaled clearly my answer to why he had been so present there. In truth.
57 had drawn so near me, because I drew so near him and his domain. The earth and the within it, “within a burrow”.
Remove all the pre notion of history and aesthetic here:
A badger digs his den, and where he rests is IN the earth.
What I was standing in down there in the vaults, was the same, but for people, what my body is. As I stood in that thin place, as close as I could naturally cross paths with that world, with his world, it was not some protective thing that he came so close, but rather that he and I were simply “close” in some proximity of understanding and experience and it was a space of his learnings.
There, where the mind, MY MIND, at first was overcome with thoughts of death and burial, eternal darkness, pain, fears. When the lights were on, I thought of these things, caskets, burials my own death and though I brushed the thoughts aside as quickly as I was able, they were the instinctual first thought.
When the light was taken, what was in the quiet, sightless dark? Nothing that wasn’t there when the lights were on. The room was full of people still. But there was suddenly that overwhelming feeling that “he” “badger” was very near me. I could not touch him, but I could feel the wet and warmth of him, The muffled voice, became his.
Firstly I came to deeply know:
I will one day be buried.
After my death, nowhere in the world will anyone be able to go and find me physically, sitting under some tree in a garden, laughing about some animal story or painting my little paintings.
I will be gone.
And deep in that vault
In the reflection of foxes mirror as it does.
Badger said:
“One day you will go along
As all have
As all will
As all must
But this fear of the dark, of going on
The fear that holds you
That consumes your time
Must leave you
Feel how close we are here
In this
The darkest of darkness
Stillness of stillness
You may breath my breath
As we walk this darkness
You may reach out to me in these tunnels
You may rest in my burrow
And this earth contains within it
As vast a silent peace as you may ever know”
I left the vaults unsure of what I’d experienced.
I left the garden in Edinburgh with a slight idea of what had happened and why.
And am now somewhere in the sky, flying in a plane over the Netherlands thinking of badgers, so deep below the ground.
And my own death one day
A strange Memento Mori, there was only comfort and love in it and for that I am grateful to the one I have called 57, and for the chance to be so near him there in those vaults. Massive badger of the earth, strength of my spirit. Guide us through the dark and silent stillness in great peace. Let fear not be my guide, lead me on as long as we may travel. I will breath your warm wet breath, and follow your padding paws and digging claws, deep, deeper still.
Brotherrat: July the first, 2024; somewhere above Amsterdam.
(There are countless ambient pieces that deeply signify this feeling, however at the moment, the one that does a well enough job of walking the line I felt between overwhelming peace and deep fear, is this one: Lustmord, The Dark Places of The Earth: Primal: https://youtu.be/6zp34F-mk18?si=4X9LOlHK3bhpU8fK )
