LUCID

CHAPTER 15

My training started immediately after we got back to Ember's balcony, and it meant I got to spend the rest of the day alone with Ember working on 'Frequency-Module Assimilation'. This was just a lofty title for learning and understanding enough about frequencies to help me become somewhat of a 'wizard' of the astral realms. With that title though, I was imagining it on offer as a university study, with all the nerds signing up thinking it was something technical and scientific, then finding themselves stuck with a class-load of weirdo spiritualists and occultists. Made me smile to think of it.

Ember started by explaining the four categories I'd be practising: Detection, Modulation, Application, and Cloaking.

Detection... was basically a matter of being able to sense and recognise independent frequencies within my environment – of place, of people, of objects – and to notice subtle changes when they are occurring. We all do this naturally of course – we sense danger, another's mood swings etc. – and we call it our sixth-sense, but with practise it's possible to 'read' the signatures of everything from a cup to a colour, a tree to a thought, a word to a wish... everything!

This ability is difficult to master in the physical realm – though not impossible – but in the Astral it becomes exponentially easier as you ascend through the higher dimensions, until it's as natural as seeing and hearing. It's why telepathy is so easily possible here... and also why two people can meet for the first time and instantly know there is a mutual sexual attraction, without having to fish around for it with clumsy conversation and suggestive innuendos.

I already understood all this, and experienced it in some measure – with Ember, with Kat's mood on the boat, with the sense of the Durge approaching – but I needed to refine it. To achieve this, Ember had me sit with my eyes closed while she played a game of 'what's in my hand now?'

We played with colours and objects and thoughts for a couple of hours, took a break, then moved on to the next category.

Modulation... was the practice of influencing the frequency of other objects and environments, in order to make things manifest or change form or disappear. In other words – basic wizard magic.

I was already adept at manifesting objects – cigarettes, coffee, beach huts, motorcycles, you name it – but I needed some practice with the other two skills, so we had some fun for another couple of hours while I played with various objects in Embers apartment.

Making things change form wasn't too difficult, it was simply a matter of intending it to happen. I understood this naturally because I'd done it often enough before too – altering something I'd manifested myself. With things that already existed however you first had to tune to its signature before 'willing it' to change. This was easy enough with small objects, bending spoons for example, or turning water into wine, or making Embers dress turn suddenly transparent... but larger objects required more focus. Ember explained that many objects within the environment were created through the collective intent of the people inhabiting it, so changing the form of say, a building, would be working against the memory of that collective intent, and though it could be changed, once your attention is removed, it would return to its original form.

She also explained that this was the technique used in healing, by raising the frequencies of living beings, or repairing damaged body parts. But it was a specialist technique and not to be applied lightly.

"Don't go around turning people into mice and frogs," she warned me.

This warning fortunately didn't apply to the Durge or any other creature I might encounter in the Void. Well that was good to know.