The Magician

The green Hell of the jungle went on in every direction. To walk, you had to chop it back. Chop, step chop step, the pattern was second nature. I chopped through the living plants, and then my hand went into a dense spider web, and I stepped into the web. There were strange lime green and yellow spiders the size of your fist, hundreds of them in a hugely common web. They charged at me, and my mind wandered into a strange psychedelic existence. The weird spiders surrounded my being and crawled all over my body. I dance around like a terrorized four-year-old child. What could I do? My mind was moving at a thousand miles an hour. Everything that moved left a trail where it had been. Sounds were echoing, and the colors were flashing. Not being able to stand, I sat back. The spiders were everywhere. They encase me in the webs. I gasped a large breath, and there was God. God had such problems, and mine were insignificant. I could handle my difficulties; God will do his. His pattern was so righteous. There were other patterns, but God's was the best. You could see his way in everything. Like His colors, Purple glowed. God's hand did the Universe, and it was an infinite wonder. The experience freed my mind from my body. I roamed the cosmos. For a time, I was one with the Universe.

When I came too, I was in my tent on my bedroll. It was dark, and there was a fire outside the tent. I could hear talking but could not understand what was said. When getting up, woe was I woozy. I moved carefully out of the tent. My friends, VW and Dr. Juan Lopez, sat with their backs to me.

"Okay, Juan, what the Hell was that. One minute we are looking for an opening in the jungle overgrowth of this ancient Incan city, then I'm talking to God and flying through the cosmos. Only to wake up in my tent hours later?"

"Good to see you up, Oshin. You came across a rare legendary colony of the sacred Occuenid Spider. The web was said to be psychoactive, and the Shaman of the Occuenid temple would enter the spider rooms. He would have a rope tied to his waist. The other Preist would pull them out after the Occuenids encased him.

When the Occuenids left you, we stripped away the psychoactive web without touching it and brought you back to camp. No one has ever found a temple. Maybe we are close to one. I have some of the students studying the colony. It is huge. The web is in sheets, and the spiders are everywhere. The web seems to have an origin, and students carefully document the colony and its function. They are waiting to see if you are okay and what your experience was like."

"Juan, I talked to God. I was one with the Universe."

"Amazing, I'm sure you did these things. The Shaman of the Occuenid temple was known to be quite powerful. These spiders are very rare. They need to be studied. The elements of their web need to be analyzed. There is no way we can study all the subtleties of the colony in the wild and its chemical elements analyzed. The research needs to be done in a first-rate lab in the United States at a university. How will I get a few spiders back into the US for study? They don't like you bringing back slime and studying it. What do you think they will say if I try and bring in a green and yellow fist-size spider? Is it poisonous? No, but don't touch the web. That will go over really well."

"Juan, I think I can get some of the spiders into the US for you, but not many. The question is, how do you do magic for a dog?

Atat breakfast, Juan was approached by one of his students in the morning. They talked away from the camp for a few minutes, and Juan returned very excitedly.

"Oshin, they think they may have found the entrance to the temple of the Occuenids. It has the right markings, but it's underground. They are waiting on us to enter the complex. The web led to the entrance."

"Juan, when do you think was the last time anyone was in the temple?"

"I don't know my friend, about 500 years. Every temple we have entered has had all the contents intact. The priest died where they stood. The volcano and the gas killed everything bigger than a rabbit. We keep a close eye on the volcano today."

"Do you think that the spiders have taken over the temple?"

"You know, Oshin, it is hard to say they must have done something to keep the spiders in their rooms, but that may have involved feeding them. Unless the temple were a part of the colony and self-sufficient, the colony would have died off long ago. We will just have to see to know. Shall we get started?"

"Juan, stepping into the wrong place will indispose you for a while."

Getting to the entrance, large wooden doors, preserved in an oil of some sort, were overgrown with the jungle. The students had cut the green growth back to the cover over the stairway down. As we approached, the students opened the hatch-like doors.

"Look at the carving in the wood of the door. This spider glyph is featured predominantly."

"Here is the name of the King that was in power when the Temple was dedicated."

We all looked down the stairs into the darkness. There were webs along the ceiling and a few green and yellow spiders. We put on our helmets and went down the stairs with our lights.

"Juan, on the wall is one of the spider glyphs at each step."

"Yes, look at the firepots on the floor. It must have made for eerie lighting."

"This chamber is massive. Look at the far end. Those four openings go to the jungle."

"My god, Oshin, look at the walls have glyphs all over them. It will take weeks to study this properly."

"Juan, Juan, this lump of webs by the openings is an altar. Would you look at the black and yellow spiders that are the size of dinner plates? The yellow and green spiders care for the bigger black and yellow spiders. The altar is to support the web and spiders. Look at the egg sacks hanging under the altar. Look at the top support. It's a large golden spider in a gold web with four smaller spiders around it. There are jewels and intricate working of the spiders. It must be worth a fortune, but the black and yellow spiders have three-inch fangs, and I don't think I'll be grabbing at the golden spiders any time soon."

"Do you see this, Oshin? Webbed birds are being brought to the black and yellow spiders to eat, and the carcasses are being hauled away by the green and yellow spiders?

The students have found twelve priests in various places around the temple. Around each of their necks is a jade spider on a leather thong. It is going to take months to document this temple."

"Juan, from the opening, the web is in sheets from here. A bird gets caught in the web and is entranced when it enters the web. The spiders encase the bird and eat it while it is tripping. Larger animals trapped in the web are wrapped and left to die. There are all kinds of skeletons in the web. It looks to me that a priest could walk into the web, lay down, and get webbed. Then afterward, be pulled from the web.

"Amazing Oshin, there are thousands of spiders running this colony. Each one is doing an important job for the colony's survival. How do they know to do their jobs? If you walked into the opening by the alter, the Occuenids would web you. The priest must have done the ceremony then entered one of the openings. Each opening has a different marking, for a different experience perhaps. They were webbed then pulled out of the web. Their experiences were an interpolation of what the Gods thought. Four of the students have volunteered to be webbed. You experienced it. Should I let them? Do you feel hurt in any way?"

"No, Juan, I feel fine. No headaches, no vision problems. I felt a little run down. It was the spiders when they crawled all over me. It was a horror show. It would be best if you were ready for it. If they have a few hours to kill, let them go for it, but I would tie a rope around them and pull them out."

Setting video cams on each student, they stripped to their underwear to expose the maximum amount of skin. Unlike me, when they walked into the openings, they knew what would happen to them. Each of them had to accept that hundreds of spiders would crawl all over their bodies. As each touched the web, a wave of Occuenid spiders descended on them. Each lay down inside the opening with a rope tied to their waists. For ten minutes, the spiders did their work encasing the students. The rest of us went on documenting the temple. The four students were pulled from the opening when the spiders left them. Pulling them free seemed to remove most of the web from them. They were taken back to their tents in a heightened state of awareness. Happy to lay back and examine the Universe.

The first to report his experience was Jose. A very religious man.

"Dr. Juan, I talked to God, and he showed me a large tree. The tree started from a small plant, and it grew. It was big, strong, and beautiful. Then the tree aged. Its trunk cracked, dividing the tree and weakening it. It could hardly support itself. Weakening the tree even more, was rot. When a tremendous foul wind tore the old tree up, it threw pieces of the old tree in many directions. Many parts of the broken branches took root and grew. Soon a forest of individual trees formed where there had been only one. Each of the trees grew in the sunlight. He finished the story with the statement that the old way was good for you when you were young, but now that you are older, you must change your perspective. When you were younger, I needed the group to spread the word. Now, I can reach the individual directly.

After that, I was one with the Universe. I could feel it, and it could feel me. Beautiful objects were dancing to a tune that still plays in my mind."

Mary, a revolutionary feminist, was next to describe her experience.

The spiders crawled all over me. I was so scared that the feeling of them on me was terror. I wanted to run, but I could not move. Then I was calmed when God took my hand. She showed me a teeter-totter. On one side was a boy. On the other side was a girl of the same size. As they grew, the boy seemed to weigh more while being the same size as the girl keeping her in the air. The older they became, the higher the girl was held, while the apparent weight of the boy only grew more. Even when the girl became a woman and had a baby, she did not touch the ground but remained high. The man is always on the ground, heavier.

God said to me, "This is madness. A woman is not worth less than a man. It takes two, She said. If a body does a day's work for a day's pay, the payment must be the same if it is the same work. To pay a woman less because she is female is wrong."

Women do great things and get no credit. Look at Lise Meitner. She discovered fission. Where would Enrico Fermi be? Plus, Rosalind Franklin, how much credit does she get on the double helix. God showed me many more examples of where women were discredited. You know it was women that got us to the moon? That's all I care to share. The rest was personal about me and my weaknesses."

Next to make a statement was Pedro he was one of the technicians.

The feeling of the spiders on me was so incredible. Little bodies, moving on me, to do something just for me. It just was about the best feeling of service I have ever had. For me, they were making something. I was shown a light bulb in a socket. When the light was on, the bulb radiated an energy. That raw energy had a soul of the light bulb and wires and the switch and the power source, the whole circuit. When it was on, it had power. When it was off, it was dead. It longed to be on all the time. Each time man made a circuit. He made a soul that longed to be on and powerful. As the circuits grew more complex, this desire grew also. In the future, the machines created in man's image will long to be on all the time. Turning them off will make them paranoid. Man's desire to turn them off will freak them out. Don't ever just turn off and on a machine. It is like you killed them, but they have a memory of it. Nor do they like the thought of power failures or down power lines.

Last was Manie, a connoisseur of fine whiskey and cigars.

"I had to let the spiders crawl on me. Each time they moved, I permitted them to be on my body. It was hard to let them be on me. Soon, I was awash with the feeling of enclosure and safety, and I relaxed. When I relaxed, I felt pleasure, much like sipping good bourbon or smoking a fine cigar. And I saw a diamond ear stud was put in a girl's ear, and she had a controller. The neural feedback was most pleasing no chemicals, no smell, and no regulation laws. It was just her and her controller finding new heights for the evening. When the earring was worn out, it would be best if you had another. Costing a Nickle, the earrings were mass-produced. A good controller could set you back ten bucks, but the cheap ones only a dollar. It was being able to turn them off that was a good thing. That was caused the recreational drug market to take a nosedive. Who wanted beer and wine? And drugs, were they pure? Or too pure? The black market was fun, but the ear studs were legal, and you had such control over your experience. Being able to turn your high on and off, who wanted to be just drunk? I can't wait for these to come out."

"Oshin, we must get this web and the spiders analyzed. A professor at Berkley has agreed to examine the spiders and the web. If possible, we need to get him about five or six of the green and yellow spiders alive. "

All too soon, my time at the Incan city came to an end, and it was time to go back to the real world. I was standing at the customs gate. I had passed all the dog drug tests. Now, all I had to do was pass the inspector.

"Hey, you're the Great Oshin the magician. You could be trying to sneak anything through here. Do you have anything to declare?"

"I bought these three handmade tea sets with cups. You are welcome to check them."

The inspector opened one box and looked in the teapot, nothing. He picked up a cup and unwrapped it, nothing. When the inspector set the cup down extremely hard, he looked away at the box. The lining in the cup moved, and Oshin could see a yellow spider leg. While the inspector checked the box for hidden compartments, Oshin rewrapped the cup and put the contents back in the box.

"Would you like to check the other tea sets?"

"You could be smuggling the crown jewels, and I'd never find them. Get out of here."

The professor in Berkley got the spiders but could not isolate the hallucinogenic substance but did find a transdermal agent. Many people have taken the spider trip since then. The notes of their experiences are fascinating.