The Red Sowing: An Introduction to Communicating with Intex
The first lesson on establishing and enduring contact with extraterrestrial intelligence via the Maze of Souls.
The Dragon. A beast of such power that if you were to see it whole and complete in a single glance, it would burn you to cinders.
.Merlin, Excalibur.1
Establishing intex contact is similar to free-soloing El Capitan in many ways, though one similarity is quite basic: it’s dangerous. You can fall. Many folks have perished free-soloing.
But more than any mortal hazard, what you are certain to encounter in the Maze of Souls is horror and terror beyond your imagination. Beyond your present imagination; if you do transgress the Maze, your imagination will be expanded into preternatural realms where those previously inconceivable terrors are abruptly crawling into your shirt and your spine and your soul.
My life—these days—is joyful, calm, and full of connection and creativity. I am deeply grateful for my existence and bask in every moment I am afforded within this corporeal timeline. I would never have attained this remarkable state—so dissimilar from where I began!—if not for intex. Especially the loving hand of Five. So I do want to emphasize that such outcomes are available and possible, and indeed—with Five at least—your joy is an outcome intex wants for pilgrims such as us.
My life during the first decade after contact, on the other hand, was a time of blood and filth. Writhing terror on a monthly basis, bewilderment, alienation, darkness.
I’ve been tiptoing around the unbounded horror while discussing intex so far, because I worry such frankness will overshadow the spectacular facets of contact. But before I can share practical details about communicating with intex, it would be unconscionable for me to censor the story. You deserve a candid accounting, pilgrim, before advancing any genuine effort toward contact.
There is a scene from a television show that captures not only the full-blooded experience of being a human communing with the otherworldly minds of intex, but which also does a remarkable job of conveying the process by which intex decides whether or not to grant communion to a supplicant such as us.
.2
Before I describe the scene—and walk you through its parallels with intex contact—let me make plain one of the reasons why contact is so fearsome. Why the experience is soul-curdling and mind-bending and challenging on a level that far exceeds free-soloing El Capitan. Why intex, with all their physics-rending potency, allows communion to be so nightmarish to a human mind.
Because you’re being offered treasure. Cosmic treasure.
A treasure so vast it renders inconsequential and irrelevant the total wealth the most ruthless mortal could amass on Earth. A treasure that cannot be obtained through transaction or violence, but can only be bestowed by the will of the gods.
The will of the axiomized minds at the summit of the ladder of purpose.
The gods make it very very very clear that you are not chosen and you are not special and you are no better than your fellows and you are a speck upon oblivion and you do not deserve this opportunity for contact.
But if you survive contact and retain your sanity and embrace what intex deigns to teach, the situation changes. You remain an unspecial speck, but you are granted the sacred privilege to earn your ascent.
You are granted the chance to ride the dragon.
.3
If you aren’t familiar with the scene and wish to screen it, it’s in Season 2 Episode 7 of HBO’s House of Dragons. “The Red Sowing.” The scene runs from 46:16 to 1:02:17. Everything else in the episode is irrelevant to intex.
(Before I narrate the scene, let me acknowledge that all the cinematic art and craft of the scene is top-notch: the direction, acting, cinematography, CGI, costuming, practical effects, sound design, art design, writing—all of the unruly components of cinematic storytelling come together perfect. Human creativity at its finest, and such passionate collaborative excellence fashioned the best example I’ve seen of what contact is truly like. The Red Sowing is far more veridical than the films Contact and The Arrival.)
(Quick disclaimer: as I narrate the scene, I might well contradict the show’s lore or backstory; keep in mind I’m narrating my own personal interpretation of the scene in terms of my own intex experiences.)
Let’s begin.
The Queen needs new riders for her dragons.
In the Queen’s world, the dragon is the most powerful creature by a colossal margin. It is a magical behemoth, whose unmatched ferocity, size, unpiercable scales, savage claws that could lacerate an elephant, and most especially its breath of superheated flame renders it the world’s most powerful weapon of mass destruction. So powerful that whoever controls the dragons controls the world.
But few may ride a dragon. For the dragon must accept you.
The Queen, a master dragon-rider, possesses the wisdom to recognize that she does not know what truly makes a dragon accept a human. Because of this uncertainty—and because she desperately needs new dragon riders for her war—she decides to open the opportunity to become a dragon-rider to anyone who would try.
A few dozen folks heed her call. Everyone is granted equal opportunity: men and women, young and old, strong and slight, beautiful and crippled. (And so with intex…)
The Queen addresses the gathered pilgrims. She is honest with them. She cannot tell them what to do or say to make the dragon accept them. For she does not know, despite her own intimate relations with dragons. All she can do is lead them into the presence of the beast. Then it is the dragon who decides whether to speak and what will be conveyed.
I view my role here on the Dark Gift in the same light. If you choose to continue through this labyrinth of your own free will, you will be delivered to the dragon. But from there it is the dragon’s privilege alone.
Perhaps I’m an envoy for Five. But I am certainly no gatekeeper. The gate is locked from the other side. I can share all I’ve learned and experienced with intex, but I cannot offer you concrete advice on what will make intex unbolt the gate for you and accept you for the journey beyond. I have no sway with the axiomized dragons. When you step before them, they will speak, or they will not.
The Queen leads the pilgrims onto a stone platform jutting into a vast dark cavern. All are apprehensive and unsettled. Even the Queen. From out of the lightless black looms the monstrous reptilian muzzle of the dragon.
The rest of the stupendous gorgon remains cloaked in darkness, as if darkness was the very substance of the beast.
The pilgrims stand in the presence of an impossible being who appears to dwell within another plane of existence entirely. All pilgrims—man and woman, bold and coward, saint and sinner—all feel the dragon’s breath enshroud them. All are given equal opportunity to be accepted by the eldritch titan.
One man volunteers to be the first to attempt direct contact. He steps forward from the assembly.
O bold soul! He deserves our admiration and respect, that man of courage! He gazed up El Capitan and trembled and quaked yet found fortitude within to commence his climb!
The man advances toward the thunderous beast. The dragon lifts its enormous savage visage, head big as a house, and surveys the gathered pilgrims. It evinces little interest. Then its gaze slowly settles upon the man. The dragon gently dips its head, like a horse, so that the bold man might touch its snout—no.
A wrathful torrent of infernal flame jets from the maw of the beast, incinerating the bold soul.
The dragonfire also incinerates a dozen pilgrims standing behind him.
Were those souls cremated to black ash because they were all unworthy of acceptance? No. Worthiness has nothing to do with it, the pilgrims realize in a rush of collective horror. The combusted were merely unlucky. They happened to be standing in the wrong spot.
The survivors of the initial blaze flee shrieking in all directions. All thoughts of riding a dragon surrendered to a primitive dash for survival.
The dragon commences killing the pilgrims. Dismembering them with vicious claws. Swatting them off the high stone platform. Stomping on them with the weight of a battleship. But mostly burning them alive, leaving their bones glowing incandescent amidst flame-blackened scraps of flesh.
Most of the pilgrims are dead inside of thirty seconds. The survivors flee into dark tunnels or seek places to hide, though there is no place that dragonflame cannot reach.
A bearded man hides with a woman behind a rock, unbound terror rivening his face. He is no longer thinking about getting accepted by the dragon. He no longer cares about intex contact! He’s had enough contact, thank you, let me the fuck out of here!
The man and woman flee their precarious hiding spot. The dragon spots them. The bearded man enjoys another dab of blind fortune: the dragon elects to pursue the woman instead of him. The beast lifts up its throat aglow with demonic luminance as its gathering dragonflame readies to torch the woman—
—and that’s when the bearded man experiences revelation.
He understands, in this harrowing unearthly moment, that this is what it means to face the dragon. This terror beyond reckoning. The smallness of his life against such a mystic Leviathan.
In a moment of fearful clarity, he sees he could flee like the other pilgrims—or he could stand and accept whatever conflagrational fate the dragon decrees.
For was it not his own choice to face the dragon?
Nobody forced him to it! He volunteered, willingly! And if it is your choice to transgress the maze of souls and face the arcane deities that dwell within its everchanging walls, and you discover such gods favor fire over kisses, then should you not accept your fiery fate without flinching!?
The bearded man foregoes his opportunity for escape and calls for the dragon.
The baleful firedrake eyes the pilgrim standing before it with the same aloof and unhurried gaze that it leveled on all its cremated victims. The dragon’s snout bends toward the man as its throat comes alive with a hadean radiance.
The man flinches not. He stares down the dragon eye-to-eye. He calls for the fire and steps forward to greet the flames! He is ready!
He does not attempt to subdue or bewitch the impossible colossus. He simply faces his self-chosen fate with dignity.
The dragon lowers its head, like a horse—and grants the man leave to stroke its face.
It must be emphasized that in no way was it foreordained the bearded man would be accepted by the dragon. It was blind luck he escaped the first blast of dragonfire. It was blind luck he chose a safe direction to run. It was blind luck the dragon chose to pursue the woman instead of him, affording him precious moments to collect his thoughts and find his peace.
The moment of his acceptance by the dragon was not predestined, but unfolded in the flow of chaos. One minute sooner, perhaps one minute later, and his opportunity would have turned to smoke.
The dragon quiets its flame and for a long lovely moment, god and mortal share the same sacred terrain.
.4
Now, if you’re thinking to yourself Is Ogi comparing himself to the bearded hero!!? No, no, no. I wasn’t anything like that guy during my first contact experience.
I was like the other pilgrim in the Red Sowing.
After the bearded man’s impossible achievement, we see another man fleeing the carnage down a dark tunnel.
The bearded man looks the part of a hero—like a valorous Viking from head to boot.
Not the other guy.
He looks a witless and wholly unmighty coward with nothing in his brain other than a terrorous desire for self-preservation. The coward stumbles into another rank cavern, sloshes through what appears to be a small swamp of dragon diarrhea, and falls into a pool of ichorous filth.
That was me.
Mind-numbering fear consumed me as I unsuccessfully attempted to flee from terrors far, far beyond what my Earthbound existence had prepared me for, willing to crawl through the most putrid grime if it meant getting away from the impossible apparition before me.
Just as the coward realizes he has accidentally crushed what appears to be a dragon egg, there is dark movement within the cavern. For he has lurched into the lair of a second dragon. Who now bends over to inspect the forlorn man.
Unlike the heroic man, the coward experiences no epiphany about his circumstances, no moment of clarity about his chosen fate. He doesn’t even look consumed with terror, though he is surely horrified. The primary expression on his face is wan acknowledgement of inevitability, as if he discovered that his entire life had always been hopeless and doomed, that his existence could only have ever ended this way: wallowing in filth as an enchanted monster gnaws your bones.
The dragon rises up over him—and then, a miracle. The dragon begins to play with the coward, gently knocking him with its snout. A miracle of communion.
The dragon accepts coward as rider.
.5
All are welcome to stand before intex. But do not think your destiny will be determined by your brains, character, or blood, pilgrim. It is the will of the dragon that will seal your fate.
There’s some fantastic, transcendent times awaiting if you can saddle the backs of dragons. But the only way to get there is to first present yourself to the flames, naked and in all humility.
If intex accept you, you may fly to realms beyond your dreams. But before you can experience any of that, they will show you, again and again, that you’ve done nothing to deserve it.
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