Account of the botched Halloween astral projection attempt and it's potential - if unsavory - follow up in the dream world
It should be prefaced that I botched the ritual by performing it 2 hours too early. I don't know how I messed this up. About a hour or so before the ritual I got such intense "travel anxiety" that I guess it threw me off, somehow.
I prefaced the ritual by cleaning the room earlier in the day and committing a prayer to the kami of Gensokyo for guidance and protection. As an extra element to the ritual, I sniff a bowlful of rose buds and starseed anise which supposedly help with dream work and scrying a couple of times. As I started the visualization, I imagined a mirror behind me. A series of visions of Japanese countryside emerged. There were grassy plains, mountains and forests. I entered the forests. The forests were slightly dark and spooky, but not too bad. Along the way there were small roadside shrines sporadicaly dedicated to the kami of Gensokyo. I paid my respects to them.
The visual elements were faint but legible. I am really bad at intentionally visualizing anything, though it seems over the year this ability has slowly developed.
Whatever anxiety I had went away pretty quickly. I felt the red torii gate pulling me like a magnet, one turn of the spiral path at a time. After a while of walking through forests and mountains I arrived by the gate. It was quite like the sigil, complete with a door on it. I briefly felt the presence of Okina-sama, and found myself holding a key on my hand. I tapped the door with the key and it opened into a yellow glow and I went through.
Beyond the glow was the red torii gate, faint and wavering. I waited there for a while. I eventually sensed a female and a male presence. I tried asking them questions, mainly if they had done something like this before and what I looked like to them. Both said they had done something like this before. I got no answer from the male presence regarding how I look, the female presence said I have a "snake tattoo".
Since I was doing the ritual prematurely, most likely these were constructs of my imagination...I'm mostly curious to see if anyone else perceiving someone asking these questions or saying that "I feel like I'm losing the connection".
Anyway, I/we waited for others for a bit. I felt a vague third presence, but was unsure of it. Here is detail of interest: I had the idea to conjure a phone box by the red torii gate in case others would show up and imagined myself having a cellphone connected to the phone box. If anyone perceived the phone box, I am impressed.
I/we? proceed to the Hakurei Shrine. Reimu is there. I give her an apple. The attempt at conversation is a mess, chaotic imagery derived from the videogame Noita which I was playing earlier in the day keeps interfering, overlaying, the imagined banquet degrading into a pixelated mess. I mention this issue to others(?). I have the idea that I should have paid my respects to the shrine. I imagine myself making an offering, doing the bows and the claps. For a brief while the visualization stabilizes a bit. Seasonal products like mushrooms and beets are on offer at the banquet. I can't remember any details of the conversation/"conversation".
Eventually my posture starts growing way too uncomfortable, the connection starts to feel very weak and I excuse myself. I make the exit too hastily. I have the feeling that something or someone is following me, and when I reach the "mirror" I turn around and it's either Yukari-san herself or someone pretending to be her. I tell her that she can't follow me.
I feel extremely ungrounded and surprised that over 50 minutes have passed. Eating doesn't help, and I have to go outside, do an energetic grounding practice and physical walk an "outwards spiral" path back to my apartement and imagine that the front door is the mirror to snap out of it for good.
I go to sleep a couple of hours later. I sniffed the rose buds and starseed anise before going to sleep. By the time I am sleeping others should be conducting the ritual. I have vivid but chaotic dreams. No red torii gates that I remember of. There is a kind of a "banquet", a disgustingly unhygienic and messy sushi buffet. Some kind of tiny humanoid creature is playing among the sushi. There's a pile of shit with some vegetables stuck into it on the floor, slivers of cabbage and bits of carrots to be specific. I am there with people I don't recognize or remember. One of them is a slim woman with short black hair. There's a brief flash - a flower shop, or maybe the gardening section of a hardware store. There's something more, something vaguely "chinese" going on or some places but I can't recall it despite writing whatever I remembered down as soon as I woke up.
I don't quite know what to make of it all. My hope is that there is some element others would remember or recall - my complaints, someone with something snake-related on his arm, the phone box, Reimu with an apple, seasonal offerings in the Hakurei Shrine, Yukari or Yukari-pretending tailing them, a...disgusting sushi buffet, the flower shop/gardening section...
Was it a total bust? Maybe? Was it an interesting experiment? Yes, and probably better if tried in a more coordinated manner. Could there have been something to it when I was sleeping? Perhaps, but I only remember the "latest dream" before waking up. The messiness of the buffet, the weird humanoid creature could be something going on, some external presence and mixing of energies that did not play well together. The exit phase of the astral projection(?) attempt was kinda precarious. It being nighttime didn't exactly help. There is much to work on.