What is the Weave?

In my current novel, I’m flushing out a concept that has been my muse for over two years now. In the book I call it The Weave. In real life, I was inspired by the idea that generations past have mulled on, theorized and eventually discarded, only to be picked up again here and there by others like myself. It’s known as the 5th element, the Aether, an invisible complex web of reality that is as much part of the universe as water, air, fire and stone. While it’s nuanced understanding falls in the realm of a quantum cosmology, I hold a much more simplistic view.

Image the entire world as you know it: the land on which your home or office sits, the trees that emerge from the edges of two lane highways, the ocean cliffs and distant galaxies seen as stars that twinkle across the night sky; imagine all of it as just ONE side of an immense tapestry. Every single thing that exists, be it a slab of bedrock, a person or a sequoia tree, has been woven into reality as a thread, unique to itself. That thread (whale, ladybug, segura cactus) is material, tangible, concrete in its reality. It has matter, atomic presence, electromagnetic frequency, as we know ALL things do. We are all familiar with this aspect of the Weave, for us, it's just life as we know it.

Now. Imagine there is an entire world that exists on the other-side of this tapestry we are calling life as we know it. For as long as humans have told stories, we have told of places beyond life as we know it. Heaven, hell, the dream world, the spirit realm, Tartarus, Elysium, Mt. Olympus, Asgard, Valhalla, Dreamtime and paradise are just some to name a few. Thanks to the enlightenment and the disenchantment of the Modern world, we have been educated out of believing this things to be anything more than myth and fairy tale. Fairy land, another I forgot to mention! But if you have hears to hear and eyes that see, you know better.

How else do explain the gut sinking feeling of being watched when no one is around you? Why does your ski shrink and every hair on your body stand alert when you know that there is an unseen and hostile presence lingering nearby? From what deep well do the emotions of rapture, awe and gratitude bubble up from when you confront beauty that is wondrous and fleeting in a moment there and then gone? We’ve been dumped to believe there is nothing beyond what we see with our eyes and feel with our fingers tips. We’ve been told to ignore the internal voice that can only be felt and requires no eardrum, to ignore the visceral reaction of our intuition and instinctual and microscopic muscular reactions to invisible stimuli. But that is a topic for another day. Today, we’ll pretend the other-side of reality is unquestioned and presumed to be as real as our own, however different it may express itself.

The Weave, as my fictional characters have coined it, is the substrate that connects and separates the two realms, life as we know it from life as we don’t know it. This substrate can be considered in terms of a grid or network of connection points, like a web or a net. Like a woven tapestry or fabric, there is a vertical arrangement of warp strings that disappear beneath the horizontal threads of weft strings. The warp strings are what attach to the framework that holds the loom together. The warp strings are really what separates the seen realm from the unseen realm. The weft strings are the interlacing connectors, they weave in and out of the warp strings and touch both sides of reality.

Every string, whether warp or weft, has an anterior face and a posterior face. At anytime, there are portions of a string facing the front of the tapestry and portions facing the back side. I’d suggest that this is a simply way of explaining that all things consist of material aspects and unseen aspects. Physical and Spiritual. Tangible and Intangible. Narrative and Backstory. Seen and Unseen. The Weave delineates between the two in myself but also unifies them so that all may be whole within my own life. The Weave also delineates between my thread and all others, while they may touch here and there, they are separate, and while they may be separate, they are connected to every other all the same.

We know this and are learning more everyday about the wild and mind bending claims that are supported by quantum entanglement. That a mere touch is all that is needed for continued interconnectedness across not only space but time. The Weave is an ancient telecommunication fiberoptic network operating as fast as the speed of light or faster.

Another analogy may be that of the internet. Much like the World Wide Web connects people across space and time to certain threads of information, memory, experience and real time communication, through their own IP addresses and digital identities, the Weave is a world wide webbing through which no computers, no electrical plug ins and no temperature controlled servers are needed. The Weave is the access point of all things to reality, all things having their own electromagnetic signature, all humans are in their own way incredible electrical and mechanic communication devices, the human body a temperature control server, the human mind an ultra sensitive radio tower and super computer. If the internet is an ethereal concept we don’t understand but use daily, literally incorporate into our lives regularly without knowing it, how easy it is to view the Weave the same way. The ethereal that transcends and anchors reality without detection or comprehension.

So, what? Why would it matter? Where is the source? To what end does it serve? What about the other-side?

All those questions and so many more I hope to answer soon.