Today I am going to visit death… in trance.

My friend is guiding us into a shamanic journey to meet death as it appears for us. I have met her before; she is my strongest ally in this life.

Deep underground in a familiar space, only deeper than usual. She stands before me. A priestess. Tall and slender with the fiercest emerald green eyes. I am intoxicated. Black feathers move around her, silken and iridescent. Her embrace melts all of my shells.

Suddenly we are above ground souring high into the relief of open space above the earth. We are in the realm of angels, the same realm I visited some 10 or 15 years earlier. Facing inwards towards the earth, hovering in the familiar grid of paper thin entities tending to the little sparks of light below……….

Death motions to one little spark. It isn’t white like the others. It’s red. ‘That one is ready to leave. That one is for me to tend, not the other angels. Would you like to come?”

Oh, I would so love to come, but our journey time is ending. “Come back soon” she nods as I leave. “We have work to do.”

We do indeed. My one truest friend in the universe, ever present, ever welcoming, yet never so hungry as to take before her time.