Hi, I’m Mary Lambert.  Some of you may be familiar with my classic videos for Madonna, Janet Jackson, Live, Motley Crue or others.  I’ve directed 15 feature length films (Pet Sematary) and hundreds of music videos and recently I’ve been working with FEARnet  on the webisodes for The Dark Path Chronicles.  The Dark Path is a first of its kind sort of project, a hybrid way of telling a story that uses music as the underpinning for the narrative, as I’ve always tried to do in my videos. 

So what is the Dark Path??  That’s the big question, isn’t it?

This is how Jurgen (a vampire) describes the Dark Path: “THE DARK PATH is difficult to describe to humans.  You don’t see things as Vampires do.  The world of humans and the Dark Path are alternate realities separated by vibrational frequencies. Vampires use the Dark Path like a subway to travel unseen beneath the human world.  Sometimes they use it to hide, especially in the daylight. Not every vampire can do this. To travel the Path, one must be an adept.  Humans can become adepts, but very few do so, because of the danger both to your mind and body.  I was an adept before I was made a vampire.  I think my skill in traveling the path angered some of the very Old Ones and put me in conflict with them from the beginning.”

It is true that all things are vibrations.  Light, sound, human beings, skyscrapers, all things are vibrations.

There are people who believe there is an astral plane that exists as a parallel reality but on a different vibrational frequency from the physical realm. The ancient Egyptians, believed in the Ka.  The Ka is an etheric double which leaves the body at death, but can also leave the body for periods of time while the person is still living. The cells of the physical body exist within the vibrational framework of the etheric double as a pale “ectoplasmic” projection. Christian scientists sometimes call this the “mortal mind”. An adept, that is, one who is trained in the occult arts, can project this etheric double and travel with it  along the astral plane, leaving the physical body behind in a weak and vulnerable state.  (A particularly vivid dream where the dreamer “sees” something that is really happening in another location is thought to be an Astral Projection.)  An Adept can use this skill and knowledge for spiritual advancement or to help others, but there are those that use this knowledge for evil.   These unscrupulous men and women are called Adepts of the Left Hand Path.  In our story we call it The Dark  Path.

Okay so far?  I hope that explanation made sense, because now I’m going to start making things up.

Vampires, whose bodies operate on a completely different vibrational frequency than humans, can travel the Dark Path in bodily form.  That is to say, they do not leave their physical bodies behind in a vulnerable state and when they reach their destination they can exit the Astral Plane like getting off at a subway stop.  It’s not easy.  It’s a skill like swimming.  And the farther one travels, the harder it is.  Like swimming the English Channel is more challenging than the pool at the YMCA.  Not every Vampire can manouever the Path so well.  Some can barely move a few feet.  Some are so adept at it that they can drag physical objects (or humans) along with them.  A human dragged onto the Dark Path in this way would experience it as a traumatic shock, have difficulty breathing and ultimately perish.

Sometimes the Dark Path is just that, dark and formless, but everything in the physical world has its counterpart in the astral realm, so sometimes The Path is chaotic and confusing like a hurricane.  A lot of mental debris exists in the astral and this debris can take on fantastic forms.

When webisode one of The Dark Path premieres, you'll meet Samantha, a sixteen year old girl.  Here is her description of The Path.

“First of all, you should know something about me, which is that I hear voices.  I don’t know where they come from exactly but’ sometimes they seem to vibrate up from the earth and sometimes they sound more familiar, like the voices that echo up from the city streets.  I live in Los Angeles and our apartment is near a subway stop, so my sister says that I’m just hearing the rumblings of the trains beneath our building and the shouts of the construction workers across the way.  But sometimes she believes me, because it’s true.  Usually people are freaked out when I mention the voices and when I used to go to school no one believed me and the kids there made fun of me.  Now I’m home schooled and that is much better.  But I was going to tell you about the Dark Path.  A vampire named Jurgen  took me there and it was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.  First he grabbed me and it was like an electric shock vibrating through my body and melting my body into his.  Then a strong wind seemed to push us backward only it was more like a wave pushing us under the water and  it wasn’t wet, but when I tried to breathe, it was like trying to breathe under water and then Jurgen didn’t have his arms around me anymore, but I was still connected to him, like I was on a leash but  billowing around in the waves.  All around me the trees were bending and vibrating and changing shape.  Blood was coming out of my eyes and my ears and Jurgen was calling out to me, but I couldn’t understand him. And then it was like someone cut the cord that connected us.  I felt a strong push and I fell down and I was on the sidewalk outside of Father Raymond’s church.  I think Jurgen let go of me because he could see that I was going to die or something.Because of her experiences with hearing  disembodied voices, Samantha can deal with an experience like that better than most people.

That’s all for now.  Watch the first webisodes and I’ll be back next week to answer some more questions.

Copyright: Mary Lambert 2008