Card #26 – Portal Opening

Opening the magical doorway. You open it every night when you enter the dream time, and death awaits as a magical doorway for the integrated spirit. You may access magical doorways in all sorts of other ways as well. Empowered imagination can open portals into other worlds. For example, both the writer and the appreciative reader of a great fantasy work can step through a portal and experience an alternative reality. One of the greatest magical portals is when a soulmate grants you access to their inner world. Oracles are designed to open portals into the plane of inner vision.

Portals may open amid the haste and bustle of the mundane world. Sometimes, we recognize the portal by its numinosity — it lights up in our mind’s eye with an uncanny significance. Numinous objects are always worth investigating, but some should be approached with caution. The most unreliable numinous object is a person of great physical beauty because we will tend to literalize that person’s numinosity and assume that the uncanny feeling of significance derives from the beautiful person, so we assume we should explore it interpersonally rather than intrapsychically. This can be disastrous because the numinosity may have more to do with us than with the person sparkling in our mind’s eye. And, of course, even if the person has a numinosity radiating from their core, and not merely their topography, they may not be available. (See Stop the Hottie!)

Other times, the portal opening goes unrecognized because it comes as a seeming accident, as an irritating, annoying, disturbing, unsettling, unexpected event. It takes intuitive skill to recognize the accident as a window of opportunity.

Windows of opportunity are opening and closing all the time. It takes vigilant awareness to recognize the key portal openings that could further your quest. We also need to be wary to avoid getting sucked into side-tracking portals.

Recognize doorways as they open and close in your world, and make a conscious choice about entering or passing them by.

See: A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler
The Path of the Numinous.
Examples of Portal Experiences:
Corridor
Shred to Black — Salvia Blue Moon Apocalypse
Journey to the Lower Astral — A Role Playing Game
My epic story related to portals:
Parallel Journeys