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I embrace the darkness we invoke. We all invoke the darkness we embrace.

The ceremony is moving towards its scheduled conclusion at the falling of darkness at the end of the day on the night of the dark moon, the darkest of the year. It is also time to free our inner darkness, whatever we hide or fear.

I’m in a circle of women four-deep and though it’s a circle its centre is at a point on its diameter, where Mahadevi is leading the chanting, her voice amplified by an invisible mic pinned to her robe.

Mahadevi is facing that way, so are the women either side of her, and they saw it first: there’s that moment when she does not call the next line of esoteric syllables, a moment too long, and we all open our eyes to look her way.  The look on her face has frozen, staring behind us. And along with everyone else I turn my head.

At first it might have seemed the effect of twilight, the lights of dusk, mind and magick might have intermingled or interacted to tint the air and give it that texture.

That moment as our minds do their mind thing and look for a cause.

We’d embraced the teaching that thinking effects had causes had damaged us, but I think I wasn’t the only one quickly trying to fit this into the reality I had known.

The last echoes of our chanting have died away, I suppose. We are all gaping and facing the same way in a sudden dense silence. Just light, strange light, intriguing light, and then

Then we all go like this, drop our jaws, blink hard, hold your eyes wide open, don’t blink. As if unreality might flip over into reality. The way you might realise you’ve lost your wallet and keep shaking out your pocket as if this time it might fall out of a concealing fold. But we aren’t looking for something that wasn’t there. We are looking for something not to be there.

It is gently, increasingly apparent, Cheshire-cat-like, fading into sight. Not diving or even gliding or whirring from the high sky. The vehicle. The spacecraft. It is there.

What I’m thinking, what I remember thinking, the laws of physics and reality as I have known them suddenly have no meaning. And that’s got to be good. I mean, that’s always been obvious, that’s why a minute or however long ago we were chanting and circling. We’re all committed to living fully in a reality not circumscribed by patriarchal physics.  But it took a moment.

It had arrived. It meant that we were ready for this kind of thing. Knowing knew when we were ready before we really knew we did. But I don’t know if I knew that at that moment. Of what was this made? What substance had our combined energy manifested? What could we be feeling? Expectancy, terror, adoration, calmness, excitement? I got all of those energies from everyone there, we all felt the same, didn’t we. It was, it was as if, it seemed to be made of nothing but knowing. Or did anyone already just think it was weird?

The video recordist makes the first sound, ‘Shit!’, the tape has stopped at that moment, just stopped right there.

So it is a few moments before we turn again to Mahadevi, who, hand it to her, is acting like it’s an etiquette challenge of the order of, say, visitors due for a drink after dinner Friday arriving Wednesday ready to stay a week. A gracious and commanding host, she’s stepping forward, holding out her hand, like she’s greeting maybe a guest maybe some kind of co-host.

So, she is - she functions as - a leader, in this situation, did we know this, a situation in which aliens from outer space arrive. Or, is that part of this? Is that arrival part of what we’re doing here? Did our apparent leader have something to do with it? Quite a few present would have thought so.

We all turn our heads again, and make way for Mahadevi.

The door of the vehicle is sliding open, or, more like, this doorway has become open.

Was it just some very amazingly realized special effect? An Events stunt, very professional?

So, this doorway has become open and some figures roll out. That’s how they moved, they rolled, in comparison human movement is, like, very jerky. They glide, like an olden-days debutante learning deportment with a book on her head and wheels on her shoes. Rounded, metallic figures, that pinkish, silvery-grey. Somehow difficult to focus on, weren’t they, the details of their physical features elusive.

They roll forward, five of them, extending arm-like protuberances, on which, though none of us take this in yet, the fingers stretch into a significant configuration. No-one quite gets the gesture at first, but suddenly all these white birds fly free, doves, white birds let free by the visitants, who hold up some kind of banner or shield with a symbol painted – somehow marked – upon it. It takes us a moment, but at some time all of us have seen that peace sign, the old nuclear disarmament peace sign. We then realise the upheld palm, two fingers extended, was an old peace sign too.

***

I knew something like was going to happen, says Ulya, bursting to speak first after Mahadevi had entered the vehicle and its door was no longer open. Ulya always knows when something was going to happen but she only tells you afterwards.

We all now remember our prophetic frissons, says Sophie, reliable for a skeptical gesture or mere sarcasm.

No I mean it, Ulya insists. Before it happened I felt something, something expectant, subliminally aware of something dis-arranged in the universe, our universe.

The word universe has a certain curious resonance now, and even Sophie is part of a moment of intense silence.

We can all be prophetic in retrospect, I finally say. What do those subliminally aware feelings of yours tell you now?

It’s all going to work out perfectly, says Ulya.

Glibness or conviction, who’d know. We have been used to hearing such affirmations among us: may the divine manifest, perfect for all concerned, trust the goddess, by goddess grace. This kind of things works as our unofficial mantra, credo, vision. The addition of ironic quotation marks was not unknown to us, but the craft had never let us down.

And now, how many of us are proven intuitive, clairvoyant. Natural traits, only too perfectly acceptable. We are people who not only tell each other our dreams, we ponder each others’ dreams. We are a tribe partial to prophetic feelings, for women never lose our sense of powerlessness, truly only relieved by gifts like these. Even I had come to argue there was besides science another kind of science in the world. Another kind of scientific thought. A kind that changed the meaning of what science was. Or needed a new word.

Distinctions between the world out here and the world inside of us – our perceptual world – these distinctions, examined without the prejudice of patriarchal thinking, became unnatural. That was the kind of thing I’d been prepared to argue. I’m not saying I knew what was going on right now.

We are hanging out in our little groups in the main gathering area, now lit by a few candle lanterns and that luminosity from the vehicular apparition, waiting for Mahadevi to report back to us, and reporting to each other how astonishing to think that, oh, only three hours ago…

Me? Well, I was driving here, five hours to do nothing but think, I report.

It’s not five hours from your place, points out Ulya.

From Donna’s, I confess. I could say I was myself disarranged today. If only it had occurred to me it was not my individual ego that was kind of fractured but the universal gestalt, I’d have saved myself some brooding.

I bet that gave you something to think about, says Sophie, probing, disapproving.

Yeah, well, I thought I was over her so I thought it’d be all right to see her.

She’s your, what’s that word again? says Ulya. She turns up and there’s a crisis.

At first I’d been in a vile mood after the four days with Madam Donna. I spent an hour mentally composing my email to her, goodbye, this friendship is over, it’s been rocky for a long time. This was not what I wanted to be thinking about, I had a paper to give and I wanted to be thinking about that. Deal with it after the gathering, I tell myself firmly, I’d be in a much better state then to deal with it.

Look, I tell them now, I knew the best thing to do was concentrate on the days ahead. The thing we get doing this. All of you.

That’s what we all told ourselves, said Ulya. Centre ourselves and be here. My whole journey here was this whole transition from the so-called real world to this.

I had stayed uneasy as I’d driven on. I wasn’t centred, I was mentally rehearsing a whole circus of unpleasant suspiciousness. It could have been time of the month, it could have been time of the life, it could have been not quite focused. I so nearly did not come to the weekend. No, not just because anything Donna said, I’d be away from it all a while and begin to think I didn’t need it. Well, it would all seem so silly when you see it from so far away. A lot of us have that feeling at times. Not everyone. Donna acts like the silliness is all there is, and my insistence on going to the gathering some kind of thing I’m doing to her.

Donna wanted us to be an Us apart from all of Them. I have to stay one step ahead and not fall into all these traps. After all this time. She mutates, Donna does. It’s not really relevant to all this, but this is where I’m going, thinking it through.

Finally these thoughts float away and stay away as I turn off the highway and the road undulates through green paddocks and pretty stands of trees. I drive in a drive trance, a drive meditation, the single-pointed mind sharply alert to driving, the rest of the being resting and watching and soaring. Country roads.

The almost hidden turn-off and the last bumpy mile. In memory the atmosphere at the site seemed fraught with odd expectancy. No-one remarked on it at the time. Now I’m making the adjustment from solitary driving.

Ulya says now, I mean we were all so excited and everyone sort of arrived at once, and we all had to register and find our tents and go oh-my-god and oh-my-god and hug.

And now each one of us swearing we only knew at the last possible moment that we would make it; every one of us had a story, a mythological story: how clearly this or that was going to be an obstacle to coming here but all obstacles fell away; how she had been guided to be in this place at this time; how she was here not necessarily with a reason, but an unreasonable reason, just to experience this, whatever this was going to turn out to be. It had so much against it, each one of us for a while there totally resigned to it being another season before we could even think about making it here, and suddenly what happens, money happens, time off happens, chance happens, and you know what is meant to be.

And as for what to wear. Being the first gathering on the darkest moon and the first in this place. Rugged bush gear is mixed with elegant jackets, bright resort wear with the princess-fantasy floaty organza look, for some the thing for this kind of thing. Boots are often a good idea.

She made you doubt yourself, doubt what you knew yourself to be, your achievements, your very existence. Time with Donna and I’d indulge in doubt over all this, the gatherings, the practice, the craft.

All the guided visualisations, all the processes, all the ceremonials, they add up: their effect on you, your life, who you include in your life, what you banish from your life, what life is all about for you now.

But show me the centre, Donna would keep asking, when you say centredness? When you’re being aware what are you aware of? I wasn’t to answer her tone, just answer. If I couldn’t make her understand, I was wrong. That is, I was wrong when I made her refuse to understand. But she wanted me to beg to try and explain again, partly to keep me involved with her, partly to show me how I stayed wrong about it.

You look great, someone says, we all look fabulous.  We do. We were bankers and stockbrokers and artists and Monica the Media Babe and Mahadevi the Formidable Feminist Icon and other women of influence in various spheres, all spheres really. The Gathering was meant to be secret but people gossip about it far and wide and say we control all kinds of power, in ways both blatant and subtle. We do.

***

As Mahadevi emerges the video crew snaps to attention. The crew is ready, been ready all along, testing, checking, all set up. Sky, the camera person, leans her face into the camera, looking worried. She tells the crew something urgent. Someone’s running up with another camera.

We gather close as Monica, of the famous wide-set eyes and irresistible interviewer style, appointed exclusively to interview Mahadevi, begins to voice our questions: did they come in peace, where were they from, did they know the meaning of peace, how come…

Yes, they come in peace. By peace they mean what we mean. The beings come from a technologically advanced planet. They are able to travel because they are technologically advanced. They picked us out…

Cut! Cut! comes the urgent calls from Sky and her crew, who have refrained from butting in for the first minute or two, but Mahadevi must be told, the equipment isn’t working. Some of us are concentrating on what Mahadevi is telling us, others on our own technological unadvancement.

Here we are at what could be humankind’s most momentous moment and we have picture-taking instruments that can’t be relied on.

Sky begins again with the other camera.

So they speak English? Monica continues.

Mahadevi pauses before her reply, observing the flutter and fret among the crew, the relief that falls upon them, that they have resumed recording.

They have developed this translation device, a universal instant total translation device. They knew that the planet where this universal instant total translation device would work, is also the planet that’s able to give them some kind of answer about something, which is why they are here, for this answer.

Monica expresses all our anxious bafflement. Answer? she asks. To a question? What is it?

Cut! calls Sky.

Mahadevi clamps her mouth shut while Sky calls for all the tech backup there is. Then Mahadevi looked out at the gathering in the field and beheld a multitude providing backdrop, cutaways to audience, ambient sound, but who was there to film us all?  Whence should recording equipment come when the camera crew were in trouble?

A child is coming forward first, Penny’s adorable seven-year old daughter who holds out her new disposable paper camera.  Look, says someone, there is someone here with a walkman that records, a minidisk recorder, we’ll get sound anyway.

But what use is this among so many?

And Mahadevi says, let the women form a circle, and all should bring whatever they have. And she holds the walkman and the simple cardboard camera in her hands. And then –

We all look at each other and begin rummaging in our bags and pockets. We produce several mini recorders, digital cameras, mobile phones that transmit video, nifty notebook computers and electronic pens. And there is enough to record the multitude.

I don’t know that any one of the recording devices actually is working, but at least they are all trained on her and Monica is able to continue the interview. This translation device, she probes, it translates from their language to English? They are looking for English speakers?

Mahadevi explains, It’s not exactly like that, it translates thought, and while a lot of thought is verbal a lot is not,  we know this of course. So, what happens, the idea is transmitted to me, which, in effect, I now am translating for you from thought to language. It’s a kind of trans-verbal experience, or post-verbal experience, listening to them. It’s like thought is a language of its own. But we are definitely communicating. Look, thank you, all right, I think I had better get back.

One more question? Would another person receive the same communication, or make the same translation? Isn’t translation interpretation?

While Mahadevi took a moment, in that moment a general consternation became apparent.

Some of the women had, against the rules, but rules seemed not to apply any more (if their rules of physics and reality no longer applied, why should our rules of no phones or pagers at the gathering) so some women had begun punching their cell phones: loved ones, media, car services, but guess what, no matter how many times they punched, moving from this side of the area to that, fiddling with antennae, shaking the units, wiping down their sim cards, checking the batteries, nothing was working, no-one could get through, not the vid equipment, not any other camera or audio recording device, not a phone, nothing. The phrase vast-electro-magnetic fields was murmured around the gathering. Modems, the landline, radio, none of it worked. Not in the immediate area and not at its perimeters.

And no one could get beyond that boundary. I was amazed that anyone would want to, would even think of it, but some had wanted to depart, and it had become mysteriously impossible. No-one was going anywhere.

Was this just a movie cliché we had absorbed out of the cultural noise? How could we have known that alien phenomena went together with vast electro-magnetic fields?

What exactly is a vast electro-magnetic field? It turns out there is no simple answer to this. Anyway, do words really refer to real things, is the reality of things less real than the reality of words?

The beings have remained in their space ship, which has faded from view although it still visibly fills a space. As darkness falls around us, within sight of the vehicle twilight remains. Ghosts would look like this, both present and not present. Is this the new physics?

Mahadevi tells us to get those blessed machines working for the next interview and climbs back up into the flying saucer. 

***

The former abductees among us begin to recite their testimonials. Everyone has heard these things before. They come and poke about your body and commit sexual abuse, for which counseling is required for, oh, ages, until you come to our Gathering and don’t need it any more. They take specimens and do experiments and it can hurt. They want to breed with us. It happens so often that these things are common knowledge, even if you don’t know anyone it happened to. Or you know because it happened to you and you repressed it which would explain a lot. The former abductees confirm they are recovering abductees for life. You think you’re over it but you never are, it will always have its effects. It was different for them though, they said, different than what’s going on here, they were taken away by the aliens. Why do aliens come to earth? To conquer or experiment. They know more than we do, obviously, and they see us only as subjects, objects, or refuse.

Sophie mutters to our inner group, I heard it can be explained, it’s all to do with sleep paralysis, natural causes, that experience of being asleep and awake at the same time, your dream or hallucination seems real because you also know who and where you are…

There are other theories being expressed. The alien abduction is today the culture’s metaphor for profound experience. Once it was saints, animals, ancestors in dreams. The sandman, a sorceress. Aliens are ours. Our metaphor for otherness. But we are not to be more skeptical than necessary, or we would never learn a thing. For the truth is, the extra-terrestrial vehicle is there, we are all awake in this experience, and Mahadevi has gone back inside to learn the next stage of the intelligence they have come to deliver to us.

What we should do, Ulya proposes, is work out what to tell them so that they’ll leave, let someone else take care of it.

Oh let them stay, says Sophie, there is so much room on this planet, all this space.

It is us they came to, we point out to each other. Some of us are certain that horrible interventions and conquests have begun. Weapons and experiments are predicted.

In one part of our crowd, the phrase pre-emptive strike is heard, for if such beings can mean no good to us, attack is the best defense, and though we do not use weapons we have our ways.

We’re only a small part of earth, I say. Did they come to anyone else? But of course no-one knows.

***

When Mahadevi appears again, her serene features seemed somehow fixed or frozen more than truly serene. We gather about her, eager for the revelation. What did they want to know?

Now we are going to be told the purpose of their visit, whether it is to take over our governance and law, whether to impart spiritual wisdom, technological instruction, plans for interbreeding…

It turned out to be more drastic, more scary than any thing any of us could have imagined.

None of us grasps, at first, what Mahadevi says, and she seems to be in shock.

But that’s what she says, she herself has had to check that she understood them rightly, that they mean what it seems to mean.

They have come to us for guidance.

Guidance? we all ask her and each other. They couldn’t mean guidance. Guidance about what?

Something that guides the decisions we all make, a blue print or maybe paradigm, says Mahadevi, retaining her long-cultivated veneer of impassiveness. Apparently this is the most peaceful planet in the universe.

Values? asks Monica, holding a microphone to her lips then to Mahadevi’s in spite of the electromagnetic thing and the anguish on the faces of the vid operators and everyone trying to record. They are inquiring about our values as a civilisation?

More a moral system. They have come to us for a moral system. An ethics. They need one and they came here for it.

Naturally we have some trouble here, as it has to be a mistake yet Mahadevi could not be mistaken.

Who is the us they have come to? Us in this nation, or us humankind in general? Or a specific us at this gathering – if that, then, some of us suppose, they might have reason. Humankind in general might see us as a tribe of freaks, a verdict not entirely unwelcome to us. We always had a notion that advanced forms of life would smile on our endeavors.

What the aliens are doing, they are testing us, that theory comes up next. They are seeing how we would respond to such a notion. So it is a trick? A test? The scariest reason of all.

If indeed the notion we have was the notion they meant. Given that Mahadevi admits she is interpreting some kind of subjective vision.

After a while Sophie says, why the assumption of a mistake? Why do we all believe we are so flawed – as a race, as humankind – so tinged with inherent violence and weakness? Why do we come here, as women of the new age, of the Mahadevi, to the Gathering, if not to accept that the spiritual progress we have made is genuine and so might be recognised?

But we find ourselves all affected by the reality that these beings do now dwell among us, and suddenly previous reality seems… dream-like. Everything we once counted on as true – our name, address, occupation – was being recalled in a fog of anxiety and suspicion. It wasn’t only me, right, it’s all of us. I mean, no one ever expects extra-terrestrial aliens to come to earth for this of all purposes.  Guidance. They came to us.

[ends]