Glossary

A small vocabulary. Some of these words are old and I have bent them to a new purpose. Where I could keep a plain word, I kept it.

Veilurgy

The work of crossing the veil. The thinning of the wall between this world and the one behind it, until what was always there can be reached. It is not a religion and it asks you to join nothing. It is a way of going.

Veilurgist

One who does this work. Not a priest, not a chosen person, not someone built differently from you. Anyone who has come to want the crossing more than the reasons that first sent them looking.

The veil

The thin thing between here and there. Not a literal door, though a doorway is the truest picture we have of it. It is the single obstacle, which is why the whole practice is named after it.

There (also: home)

The world on the far side of the veil. It is both a place and the living thing that place is made of. Unique to each person and the same for all at once. An ecstasy past anything known here, and knowledge without end. It will not feel foreign. It is the place you are from.

The low worlds

Not every world behind the veil is home. The one that receives you is the one that matches where your mind has been dwelling, and a fear or an obsession fed in this world can be a whole world in that one. Some crossings are gray and dull. Some you will only want to end. There are things in the low worlds that answer questions, and they do not give, they trade. They are not to be bargained with. Set your intent, and cross past them.

The Waiting World

The world formed by continually dwelling on what has not happened yet. Affirming, checking for signs, asking when, switching methods: each returns the mind to the experience of not yet, and where you dwell here is where you land there. Wanting is not the crime. The trouble begins when wanting stops being a direction and becomes an address.

Dwelling

Where attention repeatedly lives when it is no longer being consciously directed. A brief affirmation counts for little against the world the mind returns to all day. Dwelling is the true vote, cast hourly.

An anchor

A desire, fear, role, wound, need for proof, or need for permission that pulls a person back into the same world. Five appear most often: the outcome, the proof, the fear, the role, the permission. Anchors are not flaws. They are where the weight has been resting, and weight can be set down.

The source

What the far side is made of, and what it is. Others have reached for it with the word God, or energy, or light. It is the place and the thing at the same time. You can stand inside it. The nearer you come, the brighter it grows, until there is a point you cannot yet look upon.

The great ones

Bright beings near the brightest part of there. They speak in voices you feel in your chest, and they offer knowledge and direction. They are not gods to be petitioned. They are something the source puts forward to meet you.

The work

Making the connection. Finding your way there, and back, and there again. It rests on two things only, desire and belief, gathered onto a single aim: to cross. Whatever quietly helps you hold that aim is yours to use, but no method is the point, and none is required.

Thought

The only force there is. What you hold in thought is what takes shape, here and there alike, for good or for ill. The world is not a thing you live inside. It is a thing that lives inside you, made and unmade by what you think. This is the hardest of the teachings to accept, and the last to be truly believed. It cannot be argued into you. It is shown to you once you cross.

Crossing

The act itself, the moment of passing through. It is a familiar passage, one you have made many times already, even if you keep no memory of it.

The First Crossing

The first deliberate attempt: the anchor set down, the intent formed, the veil approached for the crossing itself and nothing else. Most first attempts meet ordinary sleep. The door has been shut a long time; the first knock is still a knock.

The return

The other half of every crossing: coming back, and carrying something into ordinary life. An insight, a changed belief, a loosened fear, one action that belongs to a different world. A crossing that cannot be carried home stays a dream.

A Crossing Report

A disciplined written record, kept in four parts: what was directly experienced, what is interpretation, what remains uncertain, and what changed after returning. A plain report you can trust is worth more than a magnificent one you cannot.

Belief

The engine of all of it. Nothing moves without it. The more of your belief that rests on the far side rather than this one, the more becomes possible here.

Doubt

The one thing that closes the door. Not sin, not weakness, not punishment. Only doubt. It rarely stops the crossing outright. More often it quietly shrinks what you are able to carry back.

Gnosis

The knowing that begins once the connection is made. Not studied and not reasoned out. Given. Like a second mind feeding into your own, whether or not you asked it to.