I am Phillip Ghee, Gypsy and sometimes Pharmacy Technician. I  have a wealth of true stories to tell about my own personal and mythical adventures. These stories follow much in the prescribed manner as archetypical myths chronicled by Joseph Campbell in his Hero's Journey.

I  hitchhiked through Texas on one such outing and road a bicycle cross-county on another. Much like the adventurers of fairy tales and myths, I was to meet a whole host of characters who would offer me assistance and aide me on my adventure. 

What makes these true stories uncommon is their humorous delivery despite their mystical, mythical and symbolic content.  In many cases the ˜Deus Ex Machinca ˜  is actually reveled; as I was often in such jams that unearthly interventions  were required to usher through them.  Friends and strangers alike have delighted in my telling of the tales. I have recently been moved to document them in written form.

Lover of Horses

Have things  or objects ever been placed in your path? Once interpreted, these things or objects tend to have meaning, in some cases meanings that go beyond your personal realm of importance, meanings of even mythic proportions.  I had the pleasure, at least I think it was a pleasure, to have had such an experience.

During the same time period when events of the extraordinary, metaphysical and supernatural seemed to be occurring to me on a daily basis, I happened upon what appeared, and yet at the same time did not appear, as a mysterious object. A simple bundle of red cloth.

Directly in front of the building where I lived was a geodesic dome situated on the beach sands. This structure is a playground apparatus, the type, as a child,  we used to call a ‘Jungle Gym ‘.

One fine summer morning as I was going out to the beach for a jog,  my eyes came upon this object.  A red bundle of cloth hanging like a nest of spider eggs from twelve o’clock high, dead center,  from the top of the Jungle gym.

I had the strange sensation that somehow this cloth was put there for me. I felt like it had something in it for me to see. 

"Okay, Phillip, stop seeing Angels in the Architecture,"  I told myself. Because of the multiplicity of extraordinary things that had been happening to me during that period of time, I feared that I was beginning to see symbolic meaning in everything (and who knows perhaps there was).

However this time I was not going to surrender my rational thought. I suppressed my gut instincts to investigate. I walked right pass the Jungle gym and embarked on a morning jog.

It was an excellent morning for a jog and I exceeded my usual jaunt and nearly doubling the distance of which I was usually accustomed to. I took a considerable rest break then made my way back to the apartment a couple of hours later.

I was surprise to find children advancing up and down and all around the Jungle Gym. The children were immersed in hands on, contact play and yet the bundle of cloth appeared undisturbed. Given the inquisitive nature of children, I found it odd that they should have allowed this item to remain at rest,  a foreign body encroached on their playtime turf. I puzzled at this for a moment then once again I suppressed the instinctual feelings that the object was for me and my eyes only. I went upstairs and puttered around for a few more hours.  When I returned to the outside around midday the children had gone and guess what was still in hanging in place?

Enough is enough, I retrieved the bundle and with much anticipation made my way back to the steps of my building. Something seemed to be inside of the bundle,  judging by the hard interior. I went to work trying to get at the center of the bundle.

Are you familiar with the old box within a box routine? A person will open a nicely wrapped gift box only to find another wrapped but, smaller box inside and, this process would continue on and on. A similar thing was happening to me in regard to this bale of red cloth. I would undue one knot, unfurl the material a bit;  only to find another knot. Likewise, this process continued on and on.

Whatever was in the bundle also seemed to be attracting the company of my friends. One by one, some of my favorite friends appeared and gravitated towards the steps where I was sitting.  I did not say anything about the bundle or the circumstance in which it came into my procession. I tried not to draw any undue attention to it at all. While I engaged in casual conversations with my friends, I idly worked at freeing the cloth from the endless series of knots.  At this point two odd things were brought to my attention. Firstly, although I had relationships with all the five friends who eventual made their way over to the steps;  I did not recall them having any real affiliations with each other and I had never encountered them all in the same place at the same time. Each one of these friends I also considered as either a mentor or a fellow traveler in my quest to fathom the questions of the unknown. Second, no one asked about the bundle but everyone seemed to have more than a curious yet, flighty focus on the object.  In fact this suspicious ogling without questioning made me so uncomfortable that I excused myself and went upstairs to my apartment. What ever was in this bundle I knew was for my eyes alone.

I finally made it through to the last knot and was disappointed to discover no sacred gem inside, no medieval medallion.  There was nothing inside the bundle at all. The hardness of the bundle was caused by the series of knots. I will never be able to ascertain how so many knots had been presented in the material which was by and large whole and only slightly torn. If you were to try this with a piece of whole piece of cloth you would quickly discover that only after constructing a few knots that you would have used most of the material up.

The cloth turned out to be some sort of banner. It was approximately twenty inches in width and about three feet in length. The blood red background supported figures silk screened in white. The artwork had a chilled an ominous look about it.

Years later, I found that the entire piece of artwork was merely a representation of a known trademark.  This knowledge however does not dilute the spiritual/metaphysical significance of the find. Strangely enough, it enhances it. But let's return to the actual time of the find.

The figures on the banner consisted of a monk clad Specter leading (not riding) a horse which is drawing a carriage, circular 1800’s. I did not have a clue to what this ominous looking banner might imply. As with most things that happened to me of the supernatural variety, I took the banner to be forecasting of my eminent and quickly approaching death. I was not exactly your optimistic mystic. Well, If I am gonna die, I might as well be involved in a fun activity in the process of doing so.  I shook off the dread of doom and gloom and went back out for a full day of fun and sun at the beach. As I finally gesture or rebellion, I  proudly hung the banner on the wall before exiting.

Having put in a full day of activity on the beach, I retired to my apartment and settled in for the night. A few day earlier a friend have given me a book which featured abstracts from Hinduism and other religions of the East. I had actually started on a chapter the day before finding the banner. I knew that the Hari-Krishna festival was due to arrive on the beach in the coming weeks and I wanted to prepare a good arsenal of debates for the devotees of that faith. I just want to rattle their cage a little. I did not necessarily have a spiritual bone to pick with them but rather a historical one based on what I perceived to be the ignorance of devotees in not knowing the historical occurrences which helped to change and shape the nature of their religious observations.  However, this book was all spiritual based and hocus and pocus, yada, yada, yada.  But during this period of time,  I was being spiritually loosen up. I did enjoy a good myth every now and then.

I had started reading this chapter in the book which told the story of Vishnu.Vishnu is triad God,  one of the supreme beings in the Hindu Trinity. Vishnu would incarnate himself as different avatars to save the world when it was in a time of crisis. Once he came as a lion headed God, once as a giant tortoise, and so and so. I had gotten as far as Krishna on the first night of reading before putting the book away.

I retrieved the book and continued my reading. I made it through to the ninth avatar when I came upon something interesting, no, something so amazing that coincidence is far to weak a word to describe it. Apparently Hinduism is not a dead religion. They also have an equivalent to a ‘second coming ‘ like in Christianity.  According to Hindu sacred texts, the tenth and final incarnation has yet to come. Vishnu will come as Kalki. This incarnation will be known as the horse incarnation. In this final incarnation Vishnu will come as an invisible rider on a white horse, the horse will be drawing a carriage. Unlike previous incarnations, this time Vishnu will not come on his own. He will be lead by a man.

This story was one of my favorite stories to tell because it allowed me to present the evidence, without speculation or conjecture,  in the manner in which I found it and subsequently let the listener be the final interpreter of the facts. Recently while telling the story to two friends, I was confronted with two question that had never been put to me before in relation to the story. My friend and coworker R. Selai is a resident of India who is temporarily living in the United States. He tends to be very skeptical of my mystical stories and my humorous presentation of the events does nothing but fuels his skepticism.

I told him that years later I discovered that the banner was an artistic rendering of a known trademark. Hermes is a French company that markets high end perfumes and small but expensive line of fashion accessories. My Indian friend posed a very important question to me. “ What does a perfume company has to do with Indian religion.”  I quickly defended my story by attempting to inform him that this was a mute point and the artwork of the banner was the issue not who commissioned it. But Mr. Selai is as stubborn as they come. He insisted that if this was indeed truly a mystical find then all factors involved in the find would have to serve a purpose crucial to the mystical statement which was being mystically expressed. “ What does perfume has to do with horses, etc., etc.”? He really knew how to ruin a good story. To make matters worse, he challenged me to find out about the company. Thank God we have the Internet or else I would have simply considered Mr. Selai too! Linear minded and conservative in view,  to benefit or enjoy a good accounting of the spiritual.

A few days after having my story bubble popped by Mr. Selai, I was surfing on the net. I remembered what he suggested: that I should research the company.

With the keyword ‘Hermes’ selected, I started my internet journey. I was immediately distracted. The first entries dealt with Hermes as the God in Greek mythology.

Hermes  was a playful and mischievous god in the Greek Mythology pantheon of deities. His primary function was that of Messenger of the Gods. He would deliver messages from Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, to earth, the home of humans. I further learned that the root word of Hermes can be conjugated to read as Message of God as well as Messenger of God.Could the red bundle of cloth be a message from above?

I continued my research and clicked on the actual site for the Hermes Company. It appears there is an explanation why a perfume company should use such equestrian imagery for its product line. The company was originally founded as a saddlery and leather goods manufacturer during the last century. It transformed itself into a perfume company fairly recently. Nice choice of symbols for a playful god huh!

Now I was truly amused at the connection and on a whim decided to look up Kalki on the net. After getting a short description of the events surrounding the future coming of Kalki (most of which had been expressed in the aforementioned book), I came across something I had not seen before. The end quote was that Kalki will also be known as the perfumed one.

Another friend I told the story to asked quite defiantly why should such a prophetic gift of such magnitude  be delivered into my hands,  noting that I was neither Indian nor was I a potential devotee to any one of the numerous Hindu faiths. This was and still is a valid question to which I can only answer that Phillip translates as lover of horses in Greek, maybe it’s that darn mischievous Hermes getting in a few more cosmic yuks.