Almost every other week she would call me with a tale of some miracle or other that had happened as a result of that retreat. "Come," she would say. "You must come." I would always decline.

I had an aversion to even the idea of India, particularly the multi-armed deities. My great uncle, a British soldier who had traveled to occupied India had a curio room. In it was a statue of Kali wearing a necklace of skulls like so many gruesome pearls. She was carried a sword in one hand and a severed head in another. She had a lot of arms and I was terrified by the sight of her.

Unfortunately had to pass Kali's room on the way to the washroom. As a small child, I would take a deep breath and run real fast, slamming the door behind me and ducking behind the sink, heart racing and eyes wide, hardly breathing, waiting for her footfall. In my mind I could hear her shuffling down the hall, skulls chattering, her anklets jingling as she walked. I knew that if I opened the door and saw her I would fall down at the sight and she would have my head.

"Mom!" I would yell as Kali approached the bathroom and began to turn the handle on the door. "Can you come here?" My mother was a tigress, a warrior goddess in her own right. She would defend me with her life, and surely not even Kali would be any match for my Mother. I was right. The dark goddess sidestepped into her room and was gone before my mother even set foot in the hall.

Mom would take my hand and we would safely pass Kali who would stick out her tongue at me if I gathered enough courage to peak though my fingers. We would return to the sitting room just in time to see my Great Uncle demonstrating with a scarf, some coins and his coat rack, how the Thugees would strangle travelers in the night. When the coat rack had been properly murdered, and laid to rest in a shallow grave, he would go to the self and take down a small hollow red seed with a tiny carved ivory elephant as a stopper. He would remove the stopped and pour out 100 little elephants and we would count them all.

I could not imagine, when my friend called, what kind of being from a temple would deliver the wish and in what horrific way. “The Monkey’s Paw” by WW Jacobs came to mind. Still my friend called and called and called. In November she called and said that she had wished for a way to communicate with her son at the retreat and on Monday he indicated that he wanted pizza and not spaghetti. The child was clearly communicating. Still he was taking G-Therapy, a homeopathic out of Pune, India with some impressive, almost miraculous results with autism, mental retardation, cerebral palsy and other disorders. I went to see the boy. He held up his arms as if for a hug and laughed and clearly recognized me. It was amazing!

Early in January my friend called once more. “If you are my friend, you can pray by my side for a weekend for my son. The retreat is next week.” How could I refuse?

“What does this god look like?” I asked. If something with a lot of arms was going to come out of a picture and hug me I needed to be psychologically prepared.

“Just a guy with a beard in a yellow robe.”

“How many arms?” I asked.

“Just two.”

“Do I have to make a wish?” I asked, still wary.

“Not if you don’t want to. You can give your wish to my son if you like.”

So I agreed to go.

The weekend before the retreat was very cold. I was upstairs sleeping deeply, in my Pre-Civil War farmhouse when I woke up to hear Ivan, my RussianWolfhound barking furiously in the orchard. Huge and silent, Ivan never barked unless there was a real good reason. In that quiet hollow there was rarely any reason at all. Something must be wrong. I grabbed my robe and went to the window.

There in the road by the barn was a man on a horse. He was dressed in nomadic clothing and he had a beard and a small sword or a dagger. He looked ancient, like he stepped out of some exotic land centuries ago. The horse was small and well bred. I could tell that she was very fast. She shifted impatiently from hoof to hoof and her breath billowed around both horse and rider like some ethereal fog. They seemed to be waiting for something.

The man was turned away from the house, looking at the waterfall in the forest grove across the road. “Who is this?” What does he want? Is he coming to the house?” Thoughts of fear were flying about. I reached in the drawer for the 357 and parted the lace curtains to get a better look or perhaps a better shot, depending on what this strange fellow had on his mind.

He caught the movement and turned his attention to the window. The horse pawed the ground. He looked right at me, and in one swift motion the horse bolted. Lightening cracked and thunder roared though the hollow echoing against the mountain to the front and the mountain behind. It sounded like the end of the world. I could not tell if the sound came from the horse as she thundered down the deserted country road or from the sky.

Then there was silence except for the pounding of my heart. It began to snow. Tiny glittering specks twirled about before the mercury light on the barn, falling softly on the orchard. Heat lightening flashed on the ridge. The wind blew down the chimney making the unheated room even colder. The white Victorian rocking horse on the hearth began to slowly rock back and forth in the draft.

I climbed under the quilts watching the wooden horse rocking in the wind, shivering and waiting for the sound of hooves and thunder. With a start I remembered Ivan. My beloved Ivan had died several years before and was buried beneath the old lilac trees in the orchard. I ran to the window and opened it, “Ivan! Ivan!” Waiting for his deep bark. Silence. Just the whistle of the icy wind and the shimmering flecks of snow.

Heartsick, I went back to bed and rested my face on the cold iron headboard. I could not ever remember feeling so alone or so empty. The white hobbyhorse rocked back and forth and looked at me knowingly with her amethyst eye. I stayed awake until dawn.

I did not know what it all meant, but I was real sure the visitation had something to do with the following week’s retreat. I had decided that when the clock struck seven, I would go downstairs, heat up the fireplace and call my friend and tell her I was not going. I began to formulate excuses. I was just finishing dressing and was heading downstairs to the telephone, when the most beautiful voice imaginable, coming from nowhere that I could see, said, “No. Go. You must go. You must go. “ It soothed me to the very core, bringing with it such peace that I never did call to cancel.

Even though the following weekend brought the worse storm of the year and my Ford truck was horrible to drive on ice and in snow I made the 70 mile trip, almost half of which was over country roads, in under an hour. I started to turn back as I was pulling out of the driveway, thinking that there was no way that I could make that trip on such a day, and again the voice said, “No. It’s all right. You must go.” I passed numerous jeeps and SUV’s with tire chains that were stranded in ditches. Even the salt truck had slid off the road.

Each time there was fear the voice came bringing with it peace and courage. I have never felt alone after that time.

At the retreat I learned that the symbolic form of Kalki, the Lord of Enlightenment- the tenth Avatar of Vishnu, (Gautama Buddha & Krishna were earlier incarnations) was that of a man with a sword upon a white horse.

Dharma Dharini
More at www.vedicshamanism.com/index28.html