The Wake World

Now I shall tell you about the chariot race in the first passage. The chariot is all carved out of pure, clear amber, so that electric sparks fly about as the furs rub it. The whole cushions and rugs are all beautiful soft ermine fur. There is a canopy of bright blue with stars (like the sky in the dream world), and the chariot is drawn by two sphinxes, one black and one white. The charioteer is a most curious person; he is a great big crab in the most glittering armour, and he can just drive! His name is the mysterious name I told you about with the eleven letters, but we call him Jehu for short, because he's only nineteen years old. It's important to know though because this journey is the most difficult of all, and without the chariot one could never do it, because it is so far - much farther than the heaven is from the dream world.

The passage where the twins live is very difficult too. They are two sisters; and one is very pure and good, and the other is a horrid fast woman. But that shows you how silly the dream language is — really there is another way to put it: you can say there are two sisters, and one is very silly and ignorant, and the other has learnt how to know and enjoy.

Now when one is a Princess it is very important to have good manners, so you have to go into the passage, and take one on each arm, and go through with them singing and dancing; and if you hurt the feelings of either of them the least little bit in the world it would show that you were not really a great lady, only a dress lady, and there is a man with a bow and arrow in the air, and he would soon finish you, and you would never get to the Third House at all.

But the real serious difficulty is the outdoors. You have to leave the House of Love, as they call the Fourth House. You are quite, quite naked: you must take off your husband-clothes, and your baby-clothes, and all your pleasure clothes, and your skin, and your flesh, and your bones, every one of them must come right off. And then you must take off your feeling clothes; and then your idea clothes; and then what we call your tendency clothes which you have always worn, and which make you what you are. After that you take off your consciousness clothes, which you have always thought were your very own self, and you leap out into the cold abyss, and you can't think how lonely it is. There isn't any light, or any path, or anything to catch hold of to help you, and there is no Fairy Prince any more: you can't even hear his voice calling you to come on. There's nothing to tell you which way to go, and you feel the most horrible sensation of falling away from everything that ever was. You've got no nothing at all; you don't know how awful it all is. You would turn back if you could only stop falling; but luckily you can't. So you fall and fall faster and faster; and I can't tell you any more.

The Third House is called the House of Sorrow. They gave me new clothes of the queerest kind, because one never thinks of them as one's own clothes, but only as clothes. It is a House of utmost Darkness. There is a pool of black solemn water in the shining obsidian, and one is like a vast veiled figure of wonderful beauty brooding over the sea; and by and by the Pains come upon one. I can't tell you anything about the Pains. Only they are different from any other pains, because they start from inside you, from a deeper, truer kind of you than you ever knew. By and by you see a tremendous blaze of a new sun in the Sixth House, and you are as glad as glad as glad; and there are millions of trumpets blown, and voices crying: "Hail to the Fairy Prince!" meaning the new one that you have had for your baby; and at that moment you find you are living in the first Three Houses all at once, for you feel the delight of your own dear Prince and his love; and the old King stirs in his Silence in the First House, and thousands of millions of blessings shoot out like rays of light, and everything is all harmony and beauty below, and crowned above with the crown of twelve stars, which is the only way you can put it into dream talk.

Now you see you don't need to struggle to go on any more, because you know already that all the House is one Palace, and you move about in your own wake world, just as is necessary. All the paths up to the Second House are open - the path of the Hierophant with the flaming star and the incense in the vast cathedral, and the path of the Mighty Ruler, who governs everything with his orb and his crown and his sceptre. There is the path of the Queen of Love, which is more beautiful than anything, and along it my own dear lover passes to my bridal chamber. Then there are the three way to the Holy House of the old King, the way by which he is joined with the new Fairy Prince, where dwells a moonlike virgin with an open book, and always, always reads beautiful words therein, smiling mysteriously through her shining veil, woven of sweet thoughts and pure kisses. And there is the way by which I always go to the King, my Father, and that passage is built of thunder and lightning; but there is a holy Magician named Hermes, who takes me through so quickly that I arrive sometimes even at the very moment I start. Last of all is the most mysterious passage of them all, and if any of you saw it you would think there was a foolish man in it being bitten by crocodiles and dogs, and carrying a sack with nothing of any use at all in it. But really it is the man who meant to wake up, and did wake up. So that is his House, he is the old King himself, and so are you. So he wouldn't care what anyone thought he was.

Really all the passages to the first Three Houses are very useful; all the dream-world and the half-dream world, and the Wake-world are governed from those passages.

I began to see now how very unreal even the Wake-world is, because there is just a little dream in it, and the right world is the Wide-Wide-Wide-Wake-World. My lover calls me little Lola Wide-awake, not Lola Daydream any more. But it is always Lola, because I am the Key of Delights. I never told you about the first two houses, and really you wouldn't understand. But the second House is gray, because the light and dark flash by so quick it's all blended into one; and in it lives my lover, and that's all I care about.

The First House is so brilliant that you can't think; and there, too, is my lover and I when we are one. You wouldn't understand that either. And the last thing I shall say is that one begins to see that there isn't really quite a Wide-Wide-Wide-Wake-World till the Serpent outside has finished eating up his tail, and I don't really and truly understand that myself. But it doesn't matter; what you must all do first is to find the Fairy Prince to come and ride away with you, so don't bother about the Serpent yet. That's all.