That night, the night that Sarai conceived Isaac and Ishmael, the twins, I dreamt that I stood again in front of that great green tomb with the rounded top, as I had in my vision. And now it was I who knelt before it in a brown robe, waiting for the sun. I saw again the great curb stone in front of me, with that inscrutable symbol on it: three interlinked spirals, like a maze, each leading to the other. A voice whispered in my head, saying “Newgrange, Brugh na Boyne.” I did not know what this meant.

Behind me I felt the sky grey into being. Soft radiance pressed into the spears of green grass, each one, individual, glowing red, translucent in the dawn, and the dew shivers, turning crystal. An ancient wind sighed through the valley, and blind Homer turned his head, hearing again and again, on the zither of the mountains, the three-fingered chord of Aurora.

I walked into the tomb, into the cool, mossy darkness. In a moment I was followed by a pale finger of light casting itself to the grey, ageless dust. It moved with the rising sun up the passage—and I with it—into a smooth rounded chamber with three alcoves.

I stood in the center of a circular room. Directly to my left, right, and directly ahead of me, were three rounded outcrops from the central circular chamber. In each outcrop lay a circular white stone which in the slowly growing light glowed like the moon.

Around me, carved deep into the rock, were countless symbols just like those on the curbstone at the entrance. The tri-spiral. And on the ceiling, which I could not make out the light continuing to intensify, was a carving that seemed to be of the phases of the moon or the sun.

I felt the weight of thousands of years, older even than the pyramids, and each year, this god of light walked his way down that hallway and into the rounded room. What did it mean?

The beam of light entered my mind and I saw. Some men think of this world as of a closed circle, but it is not. One exits it, in the end—one enters it at the beginning. From where?

I moved to the wall and ran my finger across the curves of the tri-spiral. When you are within the lines of the map-like tri-spiral, it appears as if the walls are closed around you, they do appear to present a closed shape.

But at the moment of entrance or exit of the spiral, all three of them stand open to you.

At the moment of exit or entrance into this life, you will become aware, of the other worlds, just outside your walls, their entrances, just for a moment, open to you. Three spirals sharing one mouth.. Life, Death, Rebirth. And something I could not see told me other names as well. Demeter. Ereshkigal. Inanna.

I thought of something else. On the stone at the front, from right to left, each spiral is that much smaller than the one to next to it. And these semi-circular chambers around me, they too diminished in that same order. I smiled. ]

Another tri-spiral. I knew what was going to happen next.

The beam of light broadened. A phantom walks up the narrow passage, lighting the dust. Slowly, slowly, it walked.

At the end of the passage the burial chamber with the three niches carved around it stands, expectant. In each one, a flat white stone. The light stretches, reaching out a ghostly hand for the farthest white stone, the one at the end of the passage.

Light is fire. Fire is that substance which turns matter into spirit, consumes the physical and sends it skyward. Thus ashes, on the worn, white stone. Three spirals, joined only once a year for countless, countless years, linked for an instant in the same consumptive blaze, the element which transforms.

For an instant, in the jointure of fire, the three worlds stand open.

The light takes what it has come for and turns, retreating slowly down the passage. I stand alone, now, in total darkness.

The voice of my son speaks to me from the silence. I kneel and whisper a prayer to the great Lord above.To all the names by which He is known, and for all the worship that is done Him. Here, now and forever, combined in this moment of union and grace.