Argus
I have heard that back in the late 1960s, a house near the base of the mountains that lie to the south of my city was haunted by a strange supernatural being; a monstrous black cat, who’s appearance accompanied various so-called poltergeist phenomena. The house was at the time occupied as a studio-workshop and display centre for artists (one of who’s rendering of the beast is included below).
A particularly eerie event is recounted which came to my mind in connection with what I spoke about in the previous essays, namely the mysteriousness of being and it’s impenetrability, or at the least, it’s elusiveness before analysis. The house was undergoing some redecorating work and one cold night in early spring, the owner and some artists were there together. They had finished the days work and were locking up. One of them had just bolted the heavy front door. A moment later, the door was discovered to be wide open. Something seemed to be there - just out of easy perception in the darkness at the entrance.
Thinking that someone was playing a trick, they peered down the shadowy hallway. One of them said -“Come in, I see you” .
A voice answered- “You can’t see me. Leave this door open’.
Only one of them claimed to have been able to decipher what was said- the others heard the voice, but thought it was speaking in some foreign language.
“You can’t see me. Leave this door open”....
Truly, the declaration of mysterious being!
From a different angle on the mystery, here’s something from Schopenhauer. He’s talking about the ‘will’ as the thing-in-itself of all beings. If we took it as “Being” itself, we could imagine it issuing from out the shadows of the merely present, or the world which we think we know (conventional, common-sense understanding)-
“With the disappearance of willing from consciousness, the individuality is really abolished also, and with it it’s suffering and sorrow. I have therefore described the pure subject of knowing, which then remains over as the eternal world-eye. This eye looks out from all living beings, though with very different degrees of clearness, and is untouched by their arising and passing away. It is thus identical with itself, constantly one and the same, and the supporter of the world of permanent ideas, ie, of the adequate objectivity of the will”.1
painting of the Black Cat of Killakee, Tom McAssey.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume 2
I always have maintained that some animals have the ability to travel to other worlds. The liminal state is available to them, and can be perceived by sensitives. Really cool story!
In European "folklore" familiars were believed to be supernatural entities, interdimensional beings, or spiritual guardians. Folklore springs from real events ...