The Veil: Metaphysical Musings By Renee Ranke

         This is all there is...

I received this message a few months ago. I really don’t remember what I was ruminating on at the time or why I was receiving this particular message. What I instinctively knew was that these words weren’t meant to tell me that all I believed was wrong. The ‘this’ did not refer to the physical world. I was not being told that once we left these physical bodies, that was it…show over. 

Instead, the message referred to something so much bigger. What I was being asked to understand was that we all exist, the seen and the unseen, in the same place. If we could strip away the trappings that block our view, we would see that.

Many, if not most, of the problems in our current world relate to an infiltration of an ‘us and them’ philosophy. We have become experts at drawing lines that divide us in politics, nationalism, religious beliefs, societal status. Heck, you can even get a passionate ‘us and them’ argument going on social media by posting a status that touts the only correct way of hanging your toilet paper roll.

But have you ever thought about this concept on a grander scale? Do we ‘us and them’ the unseen world or the thought that there is other life out there somewhere in the folds of time or the expanse of the universe?

It was the autumn after I had begun my spiritual journey.  The days were getting shorter, and the air was getting colder. It was almost Halloween with its plethora of scary movies, ghost walks, and haunted attractions.

That evening, I joined an on-line session of a psychic mentoring group that I belonged to. The first half of the meeting focused on a discussion about ghosts and how, as psychic mediums, we didn’t really believe in the traditional manifestation of ghouls and hauntings. After the discussion, we took a short break, and I headed out to my garage on an errand. I opened the door without turning on the light, stepped into the darkness beyond, and was greeted by an audible, ethereal “woohoooo”. 

I burst into laughter!

Let’s set the scene a little better. It was dark and cold. I was newly widowed, living alone in the country. And yet the random sound of a ghost in my garage made me laugh with delight?

Well, yes it did!

My journey was unfolding itself into something more than just an ability to tune in to other people’s loved ones. I was finding myself regularly communicating with my own energetic team of loved ones, ancestors, guides and teachers. So, this experience was evidence to me that those beings were right beside me and wanted to show me that they were not just paying attention, they were actually enjoying the topic of conversation and wanted to play along.

Later that night, I replayed the experience and realized just how Halloweeny the atmosphere had been. Dark, windy, cold, overcast, with conversations about ghosts and the great beyond! Those thoughts led me to wonder why it was this time of year when the veil between the living and the dead was expected to be at its thinnest. 

And I knew the answer almost immediately. It is because this is the time of the year that everyone is looking for that connection. The more of us that are looking towards it, the thinner the veil becomes.

On that October evening years ago, I was satisfied with that answer. Tonight, though, I would like to understand more and delve into some deeper questions. 

I would like to understand what this veil is that we speak of and why it exists to begin with. I would also like to expand on the reason that we expect it to be thinner this time of the year. I mean, did humanity just decide one day that late October, early November was the time to start looking for a connection to the unseen world? Was there some type of election day ballot that I wasn’t aware of?

I started out thinking that maybe somehow the answer was in the air. The air in the fall and winter is crisp and clear, unlike the heaviness of the summer’s heat and humidity. Maybe somehow our air quality works like static interference and that is what the veil between the worlds is, a radio station that sometimes has trouble connecting through our atmosphere? 

Nope. 

Wrong answer, Renee. 

I seem to have temporarily forgotten any of my school science classes. Warm air is lighter, that’s why it rises. Cold air is denser, that’s why it sinks. So, I may think that the air feels clearer and crisper in the fall, but air density apparently doesn’t explain what makes the veil thinner.

I continued researching and I came upon a Reddit discussion thread that brought things more into focus for me. The thread said that the veil seems thinner at our human transition periods. When someone is coming in or going out. During birth and death, the veil between the worlds seems to melt away temporarily. 

If we expand on that and view our seasons through a similar lens, things start to line up. In nature, autumn seems to usher in darkness and death. The fields have been harvested, plants die, trees lose their leaves and stand naked before us. It is the beginning of the darkest period of our year where the day is short, and the night is long.  A time of transition in nature.

The ancient Celts understood this. The celebration of Samhain, or Summers End, was when the spirits of loved ones were thought to return. Burial mounds were opened as portals to the other side and extra places were set up at meals and celebrations to give those visiting a space to join with the living. The Aztecs also understood this, and the Mexicans still celebrate Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, by setting up ancestral altars containing food and drink for loved ones to partake in. 

Thanks to following the breadcrumbs of that Reddit thread, maybe I now understand why it is this time of year that so many of us reach towards the veil and expect to see it part for us. Some of this was passed down to us from our ancestors who saw this time of the year as a liminal period where the boundary between the seen and the unseen became blurry.

Let’s back up a little bit. What exactly is this veil? 

The concept again goes back to our ancient ancestors. 

In the ancient Egyptian city of Sais there was a statue of Isis shrouded by a veil. There was an inscription on the statue that read:  “I am all that has been and is and shall be and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle”

Did that Veil of Isis, as it became known, represent the mysteries of nature, knowledge of the Divine, or an actual shroud between worlds? What was Isis hiding behind her mantle? We may never know the exact answers to what the Isis mystery schools in ancient Egypt taught about the supreme goddess’ veil. But in the late 17th and early 18th centuries Theosophists referred to lifting Isis’ veil as a metaphor for enlightenment.

If we make a quick jaunt from ancient Egypt over to Asia, we find that the ancient Chinese thought that our worlds were only separated by a thin membrane. During the Zho dynasty (1046-256 BCE) it was believed that the smoke from burning incense would act as a bridge between the worlds; a way to cross that membrane.

So, the ancients did believe in some type of veil, mantle, membrane between the worlds, but I am not sure that I quite understood yet why. And thinking about this world, and where it stood in comparison to the next world, and still yet to the world that came before……well all of this had me feeling slightly dizzy and like some mystical DC character dashing between Earth 1 and Earth 35!

I decided that it was time to connect and try to get some answers from Spirit through automatic writing. I settled into a comfortable chair with a pen and paper, lit some incense and a candle and began to relax. As I tuned in, my clairsentience went into overdrive; my eyes started burning and my chest got tight. The words started coming but they didn’t immediately make sense to me. 

One Rock

Larger Humanity

Larger than each

Larger than we

I ended the writing more confused. I had been sure that I would receive guidance, but I just wasn’t understanding. I leaned back in for a moment, without pen and paper, and asked for clarity. And I received my symbols for:

Spirit no

Human no

I wasn’t overly surprised. When I receive deeper, more prophetic wisdom messages, they rarely come in clear American English. There were times early in my journey where it sometimes was years before I clearly understood what had been conveyed to me.

I receive writing, feelings, and audio messages. Sometimes the written words are in several foreign languages and need to be translated. Sometimes they are in old English and still need to be researched. Other times I may get just a single letter representing a concept. I may receive writing while I am also hearing and feeling additional parts to the message. 

Even though the lack of clarity wasn’t totally surprising, I still went to bed a little frustrated. But, early into the next day I suddenly understood.

The physical feelings of burning eyes and the tight chest were my signs for not being able to see clearly and fear. The words that I had received in writing kept stressing larger, larger, larger. And my additional hand signs were telling me that it was not about Spirit and it was not about human.

Which took me back to the words I had heard several months ago: This is all there is

One Rock. My answer was that we are all here, in the same place at the same time standing on the same firmament. That one rock is bigger than the earth, bigger than the heavens, bigger than the tiny reality that we have walled ourselves into. It is not about being in a body or being formless, it is just about being.

The veil is something that somehow, we as physical beings, created. And now we can no longer see clearly because fear of the unknown keeps us from experiencing the larger world beyond our physical senses.

I was looking for where the idea of the veil came from. I looked to the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, the ancient Celts, the ancient Aztecs. But maybe the beginning of the veil stretches back even further. All the way back to the Bible’s creation story. Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and suddenly realized that they were naked. Those very first garments of vines and leaves that they covered themselves with may well have been the metaphoric beginning of the veil. Maybe the veil is not something hidden from us, but rather something that we are hiding ourselves from.

If the veil is thinnest as we come into and go out of this reality, then wouldn’t it follow that we ourselves are the portals between the seen and the unseen, the living and the dead, the manifest and the un-manifest? And if we are the portals, then there really is nothing separating us except for our unwillingness to see the largeness beyond our tiny physical existence. And the best part about all of this? 

If there really is no veil that needs to be parted…

If there really is no specific time of year when we are allowed to communicate with those in Spirit…

If we all walk together…

It means that we have unending access to our loved ones and the Divine. It means that we are never alone and have eternal support from the unseen as we try our darnedest to walk through this physical existence. 

About Renee Ranke: Renee Ranke is a psychic medium, channel, intuitive teacher, spiritual healer, and metaphysical minister. But, most of all she considers herself a mystic who is always searching, learning, and growing.
 

This pathway laid out for her after the unexpected passing of her husband, and in her ongoing search for metaphysical knowledge and spiritual understanding she has studied with various teachers through ISD Oneonta, Lily Dale NY, Omega Institute, and Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment.
 

Her passion is helping others discover ways to align their physical world with the beauty and grace of their spiritual self.  
 

Renee's website:  www.reneeranke.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mysticalmomentsReneeRanke

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